The Superstition Locker
Patterson compiled a working dictionary for practical seamen — and then, between the blocks and the bilge pumps, filed away every ghost, devil and omen of the fo’c’sle. Eight of the strangest entries in the book, each linking to its page.
The ship that cannot round the Cape
The FLYING DUTCHMAN entry tells the whole legend straight-faced: in 1652 Captain Cornelius Vanderdecken, raging at contrary gales, shook his fist at the sky and swore he would double the Cape of Good Hope “in spite of God Himself” — and has been trying ever since. The entry closes with the driest sentence in the book: the Dutchman “has not been reported now in some years.”
Davy Jones, alias Jimmy Squarefoot
The devil of the sea gets a two-line biography: “a mythical sea devil, otherwise called Jimmy Squarefoot.” His locker, one entry over, is defined as “infernal regions at the bottom of the sea where Davy Jones holds court.”
Why parsons made bad shipmates
A JONAH is any passenger blamed for the ship’s bad luck — and the entry names names: “parsons and women are considered the most perfect specimens of this order,” the logic being that the Evil One followed both around to tempt them, and his presence was bad for the weather.
The king with the windy cap
The SUPERSTITIONS entry traces “a capful of wind” to the Norse king Eric VI, who directed the wind wherever he wished by turning his cap — and reports a 1615 almanac that marked July 19, 20, 24 and 31 as “no good anchorage.” Spanish sailors added a rule for Tuesdays: “Don’t marry or go to sea or leave your wife.”
A mermaid, technically
Patterson defines the mermaid with the precision of a surveyor: “a fabulous sea woman having the body of a human from the head to the waist, and the form of the after-half of a fish below the hips.” Note the nautical exactness of after-half.
The tattoo that isn’t ink
In an 1891 navy, TATTOO meant something else entirely: “the drum-beat previous to 9 p.m., at which time two bells are struck and ‘pipe down’ made” — the drummed order to be quiet and turn in, centuries older than the sailor’s ink.
A stranger on the horizon
The sea kept its own vocabulary of unease: a STRANGE SAIL is simply “a vessel whose nationality is in doubt” — two words that carried a full cargo of suspicion in the age of privateers.
A gallows on every deck
Every well-found ship carried a GALLOWS — nothing sinister, merely “a framework above the main deck” for spare spars and boats. The dictionary needs five entries (gallows, gallows tops, gallows frames, gallows frame, gallows bitts) to hang the whole family.
The full forty, ranked
The locker above tells a few of these at length. Here is the whole haul — forty of the strangest things Patterson set down in 1891, ordered by how good they are, each one linking to the entry it came from.
- The Flying Dutchman legend, dated and named: in 1652 Captain Cornelius Vanderdecken, beaten back by gales at the Cape of Good Hope, shook his fist at the sky and swore he would round it “in spite of God Himself” — dooming his ship to sail forever. Sighting her meant gales, shipwreck and death. The encyclopedia adds, deadpan: she “has not been reported now in some years.”Read the entry: Flying Dutchman
- The line-crossing ceremony in full: a sailor crossing the equator for the first time was blindfolded on a plank over a tub of water, met “Father Neptune” (rope-yarn beard, deck-swab hair dipped in green paint), was lathered with tar, shaved with an iron barrel hoop, and dumped in the tub.Read the entry: Neptune
- Ships fired cannons at waterspouts. “A gun directed toward one and fired with a heavy charge of powder will often break and disperse it.”Read the entry: Waterspout
- A “hen frigate” was any ship on which the captain’s wife interfered with the rules, regulations and customs.Read the entry: Hen Frigate
- “A capful of wind” comes from a Norse king: Eric VI (d. 907), nicknamed “Windy Cap,” was believed to direct the wind by turning his cap on his head.Read the entry: Superstitions
- A 1615 almanac marked July 19, 20, 24 and 31 as “no good anchorage” days. Wednesday (Odin’s day) and Thursday (Thor’s) were lucky; Friday was fatal — except to Spaniards, who venerated it because Columbus sailed and found land on a Friday.Read the entry: Superstitions·Friday
- Chinese pirates threw “stink pots” — earthen jars of gunpowder and asafoetida. The stench alone could incapacitate a crew with nausea before the pirates boarded.Read the entry: Stink Pots
- The smallest holystone for scrubbing the deck was called “the Bible” (also the “prayer book”) — because sailors knelt to use it.Read the entry: Bible
- Naval signal books were bound in lead covers, so that when capture was imminent the book could be thrown overboard to sink with its secrets.Read the entry: Signals
- “Railroad duff”: plum pudding with raisins so few and far between that sailors said you found one only at each station.Read the entry: Duff
- A “Jonah” brought a ship ill luck — and parsons and women were “the most perfect specimens of this order,” since the Devil was believed to follow them aboard to tempt them.Read the entry: Jonah
- Davy Jones, the sailors’ sea-devil, had a second name: Jimmy Squarefoot.Read the entry: Davy Jones
- Sailors would not harm an albatross, believing it would bring gales, dead calms, and personal ill fortune.Read the entry: Albatross
- “Jibber the kibber”: wreckers lured ships onto the rocks by walking the beach at night swinging a ship’s sidelight, imitating a vessel’s rise and fall on the waves.Read the entry: Jibber the Kibber
- In 1891 the encyclopedia lists, matter-of-factly, a planet that does not exist: “Near the sun is a small planet named Vulcan.”Read the entry: Planet
- Above the skysails, the loftiest old ships were said to set “sky-scrapers,” then “moon-rakers,” and above those, “jolly jumpers.”Read the entry: Jolly Jumpers
- Every Ascension Day the Doge of Venice threw a ring into the sea from his gilded state galley Bucentaur, to “espouse the waters” and claim dominion over the gulf.Read the entry: Bucentaur
- St. Elmo’s fire: sailors believed the glowing balls were spirits — and that being touched by one meant your life would be short.Read the entry: Corposant
- A “galley packet” was an imaginary ship that brought secret news to the ship’s cook — because the cook always claims to know everything first.Read the entry: Galley Packet
- The Great Eastern was so big she had to be launched sideways — and the launch took three months. She carried a mile of chain cable, and was finally sold as scrap iron in 1888.Read the entry: Great Eastern
- A single suit of sails for the clipper Great Republic contained 15,653 square yards of canvas — enough to cover about three and a quarter acres of land.Read the entry: Ancient to Modern Shipbuilding
- The “crimp”: a shore predator who plied sailors with liquor, shipped them out while drunk, and stole their advance pay through false claims.Read the entry: Crimp
- “Hazing” is a nautical word: to haze a man was to punish him with dirty and unnecessary jobs.Read the entry: Haze
- Night challenges at the gangway revealed rank by the answer: the captain answered with the name of his ship, wardroom officers “Aye! aye!”, warrant officers “No! No!”, and the crew plain “Hello!”Read the entry: Hail
- Salt beef was “salt horse,” and the ship’s cook was always addressed as “the Doctor.”Read the entry: Salt Horse·Doctor
- The Confederates nicknamed Ericsson’s revolutionary ironclad Monitor “the cheese-box on a raft.”Read the entry: Monitor
- French sailors were “Johnny Crapaud” (Johnny Toad) — because France’s coat of arms once bore three toads, later exchanged for the fleur-de-lis.Read the entry: Johnny Crapaud
- The “Devil’s Table-cloth”: the white fleecy cloud that settles on Table Mountain at the Cape of Good Hope — the forerunner of a southeast gale.Read the entry: Devil's Table-cloth
- Cracker hash, “a great breakfast dish on board a man-o’-war”: sea biscuit soaked soft, spread with grease skimmed off the cook’s boilers (“slush”), and baked.Read the entry: Cracker Hash
- The “camel,” a machine for floating ships over sandbars, reached Russia because Peter the Great learned of it while working incognito as a common shipwright in Holland.Read the entry: Camel
- Friday sailings were once unthinkable. By 1891, steam had “robbed the ocean of most of its romance” — and several American steamship lines pointedly adopted Friday as their regular sailing day.Read the entry: Friday
- Several short toots of a steamer’s whistle had an official meaning: “there is confusion of ideas — that a misunderstanding exists.”Read the entry: Whistles
- Grog was abolished on U.S. warships in 1862 — the encyclopedia still defines the “spirit ration” and the grog-tub it was served from.Read the entry: Spirit Ration·Tub
- Sailors knew that during a gale a lull called a “smooth” comes after about every third sea — and waited for one before daring to turn the ship.Read the entry: Smooth
- The life kite: wrecked crews flew a kite of sticks and muslin to carry a rescue line ashore over the breakers.Read the entry: Life Kite
- Archimedes designed a ship for the King of Syracuse containing gardens, stables, fish ponds, baths, floors inlaid with scenes from the Iliad — and an engine that threw 300-pound stones.Read the entry: Ancient to Modern Shipbuilding
- In 1609 a Dutchman named Peter Jansen built a ship with the exact proportions of Noah’s Ark — it turned out to hold a third more cargo than ordinary ships of the same tonnage.Read the entry: Ark
- The International Code of Signals could spell 78,642 different messages with just 18 flags.Read the entry: International Code
- You can see the sun after it has set: near the horizon, refraction bends light more than the sun’s own width, so it “may actually be entirely below the horizon and yet appear slightly above it.”Read the entry: Refraction
- Arctic ships filled their compasses with pure alcohol; everyone else used it diluted — because pure alcohol ate the paint off the compass card. And in electric storms a compass could go “crazy,” spinning round and round.Read the entry: Compensated Compass