Is of French origin and goes back to the use of horses in battle. The Generals Aide carried a loop of cord to tie up the Generals horse when he dismounted. As a practical approach the aides would loop [..]

This old traditional greeting for hailing other vessels was originally a Viking battle cry.

First and Only Sunk in Atlantic - Block Island (CVE 21) date: 29 May 1944. Sunken Carriers - CC 3/CV 3 Saratoga - Used as troopship postwar. Final wartime displacement well over 52,000 tons. Unfit for [..]

Music written by Bandmaster Lieut. Zimmerman. In 1906, Lieut. Zimmerman was approached by Midshipman First Class Alfred Hart Miles with a request for a new march. As a member of the Class of 1907, Mil [..]

In today's Navy, when you intentionally deceive someone, usually as a joke, you are said to have bamboozled them. The word was used in the days of sail also, but the intent was not hilarity. B [..]

The portion of a Navy enlisted uniform that hangs from the back of the neck. In the wooden navy it was fashion for sailors to have long hair but it would get blown about by the winds and get stuck in [..]

Many novice sailors, confusing the words 'binnacle' and barnacle, have wondered what their illnesses had to do with crusty growths found on the hull of a ship. Their confusion is under [..]

As any able-bodied seaman can tell you, a turn of a line around a bitt, those wooden or iron posts sticking through a ship's deck, is called a bitter. Thus the last of the line secured to the [..]

As required by 17th Century law, British ships-of-war carried three smaller boats, the boat, the cock-boat, and the skiff. The boat - or gig - was usually used by the Captain to go ashore and was the [..]

During the civil war, cannonballs were stacked up in pyramids called brass monkeys. When it got extremely cold, they would explode or break, hence the term cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass [..]