The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" Glossary

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Reading William Hope Hodgson's novel The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" now, one can imagine that he or she is looking through a spyglass backwards through two lenses. First, it has been about 100 years since Hodgson wrote this novel. And second, Hodgson himself was writing about fictional events that he imagined had happened at least 150 years earlier. This puts some of the vocabulary at a double remove. Here are annotations for a few of the terms Hodgson uses in the text:

Batten: in the context of boat repair, a thin strip of wood.

Bent: in the novel, it is used as a verb in the past tense to indicate "tied," and is used to describe tying the ends of two ropes together. The usage survives in the term bend knot.

Bight: the main body of a rope, as opposed to the ends.

Biscuit: "ship's biscuit" or hardtack is a dense, unleavened bread designed for long storage. They would be very dry, and probably not very easy to chew without soaking in some kind of liquid. Accounts of the flavor vary -- if you were starving to death, ship's biscuit probably tasted quite good.

Bo'sun: slang form of Boatswain. A sailor in charge of the deck crew and lifeboats. We aren't told what happened to him, but it seems likely that the captain of the Glen Carrig "went down with the ship" and thus the bo'sun is in charge of the surviving crew and passengers in the boats.

Breaker: in context, a small water cask or barrel. Finding fresh water is one of the crew's main concerns.

Brig: a two-masted sailing ship.

Bulkhead: a wall within a ship. Hodgson describes the bulkheads of the ship in the creek as having a "rubbed" appearance after the assault by the strange unnamed creature.

Capstan: In this context, a human-powered winch used to wind up the rope stretched between the island and the Seabird.

Chafing gear: Chafing is wear on a rope from rubbing against a hard surface and can lead to breakage; in this context Hodgson is describing wrapping something, possibly canvas, wool, or leather, around the rope to prevent chafing, particularly at the point where it is pulled over the cliff. Various techniques were traditionally used for this purpose; see "parcelling," below.

Colza oil: a vegetable oil pressed from a seed of the rutabaga. It is used in oil lamps and for lubricating machinery.

Cut-and-Thrust: the term refers in general to fighting with knives. In context, the weapon in question may be a rapier, a slender sword with a sharp point. Hodgson gives the narrator a rapier, a fancier sword which would have required more extensive training, as one of the signs that he was of a higher social class than the sailors, who are armed with cutlasses.

Cutlass: a short, thick sword with a sharp edge. A cutlass required little training to use effectively and, being short and heavy, could be used for fighting in confined spaces such as on board a ship.

Devil-fish: this word has been used to describe several different sea creatures, but in context it seems that Hodgson was referring to a monstrously large octopus. In several places Hodgson describes its movements as "flickering," which makes it sound like it is moving with unnatural speed.

Dip: a candle. Hodgson refers to "tallow dips" made from rendered beef or mutton fat.

Fathom: a unit of length, about 1.8 meters or six feet. The term is now usually used only for water depth, but Hodgson uses it for distance as well.

Flake (verb): In this context, an archaic term for coiling rope.

Fo'cas'le: the forecastle. The forward (Hodgson uses the slang spelling "forrard") part of the ship with the crew's quarters; on ancient vessels these resembled castles.

Frap: A "frappe" (with or without an accent on the e) is a frozen drink or milkshake. The word "frap" is an archaic nautical term roughly synonymous, in this context, with "wrap." Hodgson uses this term to describe the way the strings of the stacked bows are bound together so that the bows can be fired as one.

Freak: Hodgson uses the word in the following context:

Then there came to her a sudden idea, and what must she do but propose that we should climb to the look-out, and to this I agreed with a very happy willingness. And to the lookout we went. Now when we had come there, I perceived her reason for this freak; for away in the night, astern the hulk, there blazed half-way between the heaven and the sea, a mighty glow, and suddenly, as I stared, being dumb with admiration and surprise, I knew that it was the blaze of our fires upon the crown of the bigger hill; for, all the hill being in shadow, and hidden by the darkness, there showed only the glow of the fires, hung, as it were, in the void, and a very striking and beautiful spectacle it was.

In context, this is an archaic usage of the term to indicate that that the climb to the look-out was done impulsively, on a whim.

Futtock: A curved piece of wood that forms the rib of a boat. Not directly related to a futtock shroud.

Futtock-shroud: An iron bar used to stabilize a "top," or platform on the top of a lower mast.

Grain: in a list of miscellaneous items removed from the boat, Hodgson mentions "a three-pronged grain without the shaft." He may be referring to some kind of iron grappling hook.

Gunwale: pronounced (and sometimes written) "gunnel," the top edge of the side of a boat.

Hawser: a rope used to tow the ship.

Jorum: a drinking vessel, or the quantity that it contains. Hodgson uses the term to refer to a quantity of rum given to Job for medicinal purposes -- presumably a large dose, since he calls it a "stiff jorum."

Kedge: a light anchor used to turn a ship; see warped, below.

Keel: the main structural member, running the length of the boat from bow to stern. It is very fortunate that the boat's keel is not damaged by the devil-fish attack, but only some of the boards adjacent to it.

Larboard: the port (left) side of a boat, to someone facing the front (the [[Bow (ship}|bow]]).

Lazarette: This is a small compartment below the deck of a ship, used for storage. Hodgson uses this term in many of his sea stories.

Loom: part of the shaft of an oar. Job is injured while struck by the "loom" of an oar, when a devil-fish attacks the boat.

Mantilla: a light lace scarf worn over the head and shoulders. Hodgson uses this word in his dedicatory poem, "Madre Mia," as a metaphor for the effect of age on his mother's appearance.

Masts: Many different types of masts are mentioned in the text, including the royal, topgallant (t'gallant), and mizzen. See the Wikipedia entries on masts and rigging for more details.

Oakum: This is loose hemp fiber, hand-picked out of old rope (an extremely labor-intensive process). The loose fiber could then be mixed with pine tar and used as caulking, was stuffed into cracks in wooden boats with specialized tools. The work of "picking oakum" from rope was done in work-houses, prisons, and asylums.

Ordinary Seaman: a sailor with between one and two years of experience at sea. An ordinary seaman would have been expected to do a wide variety of labor-intensive jobs on board a ship.

Parcelling: in context, wrapping a rope with overlapping thin strips of canvas in order to prevent chafing. See Worm, parcel and serve.

Punchinello show: a traditional, humorous (but violent) puppet show; more commonly known in modern American usage as a "Punch and Judy" show. The narrator is indicating that the cloth-covered box kite in progress resembles a puppet show stage.

Scuttle: a hatchway in the deck, side, or bottom of a ship, with a cover. Hodgson refers to the "leaf" of the scuttle (the covering).

Sea-anchor: a sea anchor does not anchor a boat to the bottom of the sea, but instead is designed to drag in the current, and helps to stabilize the boat during bad weather and keep the bow pointed into the waves, which minimizes the risk that the boat will be overturned.

Shears: in context, an apparatus for raising masts; essentially, a structure made of spars with tackle (pulleys) at the top.

Sennit: A form of braided cord; Hodgson describes "three-yarn sennit" made from old hemp rope found on the island.

Snatch-block: this is a kind of pulley used to change the direction of a rope; it can be opened and closed on a rope without the need to thread the end of the rope through the pulley. The crew of the Seabird uses a "great iron-bound snatch-block" to direct the rope from the island to their "mizzen-capstan," so that they can pull it taut.

Spar: a horizontal pole used to mount sails.

Starboard: the right side of a boat, to someone facing the front (the [[Bow (ship}|bow]]).

Step (verb): Hodgson describes the crew "stepping" the mast after the storm. This means to literally re-attach the mast, which they had removed and used along with the oars as a sea-anchor.

Stern: the rear of a boat.

Stranded: in context, an adjective indicating that a rope has become chafed and individual broken strands are visible.

Taffrail: a railing around the stern of a ship.

Thole: an oarlock. A holder that holds an oar in place for rowing.

Thwart: a seat extending across the inside bottom of a boat. Hodgson several times describes the men as standing on a thwart: they are standing up on the seats to see clearly over the gunwales.

Tithe: in chapter 14 the narrator says that they did not "discover more than the merest tithe of the mysteries which that great continent of weed holds in its silence." Traditionally this term meant the donation of a tenth of one's income to the church; in context it means "a small fraction."

Vast: when used in a phrase like "we vast heaving," or "vast hauling," it seems to mean "ceased."

Warped: when used as a verb, as in the phrase "we warped ourselves to windward" it seems to mean "turned." The term may specifically mean turning a ship by deploying a rope attached to an anchor. Given meanings for the terms "kedge," "vast," and "warped," it is possible to make some sense out of the following passage:

...having loosed the hawser, which fell from the hill-top with a prodigious splash, we had the boat ahead, towing. In this wise we opened out, presently, the end of the hill; but feeling now the force of the breeze, we bent a kedge to the hawser, and, the bo'sun carrying it seawards, we warped ourselves to windward of the island, and here, in forty fathoms, we vast heaving, and rode to the kedge.

The passage describes how the Seabird, free of the weed, but with no sails or even masts, is moved away from the weed to the open sea. The ship is first towed by the now-repaired lifeboat from the Glen Carrig. When the ship passes the end of the island, the crew ties an anchor (kedge) to the tow-rope and throws it in the water to turn the ship, and shortens the rope to reduce the turning radius. The crew then stops hauling and allows the ship to complete the turn. See Kedging.

Whaleback: the term refers to a type of boat designed to shed water, but in context Hodgson seems to be referring to some kind of rib-like structure that could be raised up and covered with canvas to protect the lifeboats from rain and water.

Yard: Hodgson refers to various types of yards including the main t'gallant yard, foreyard, and topsail-yard. A yard is a horizontal spar (a wooden pole) on a mast.