IF YOU READ a lot of books about
sailboats you will surely come across mention of a part of the boat called the
truck. Quite often it’s in a phase such as: “She is a real sea-going vessel
from truck to keel.” This might puzzle you because most sailboats don’t have trucks
these days.
There are, in fact several meanings
of the word truck. There’s the vehicle, for a start, such as the well-known
pick-up truck. There’s also the noun that indicates “dealings with” someone:
“That boatyard robbed me blind. I’ll have no truck with them in future.”
But the truck we’re concerned with
here is a flat disk of wood fitted horizontally on the extreme upper end of a
mast of a sailing ship. On ships with more than one mast, it was found on the
tallest mast.
It usually had holes bored down
through it for flag signal halyards, or small sheaves instead, if it was a
fancy truck. In old navy days men used to man the yards as a salute in honor of
a visiting sovereign or high official, or in celebration of a national event.
In ships of the line this display was topped off by a man standing on each
truck.
If you know how the movement of a
ship is exaggerated and quickened at the top of a mast, you’ll understand that
this was an onerous duty for the poor soul chosen to man the truck, especially
when you consider that the only way he could stand on this lofty perch for
hours at a time was by steadying himself with the help of a small iron rod
temporarily inserted in a hole between his feet.
There are very few sovereigns who
need saluting these days, and probably just as few private yachts with mast trucks big enough for a person to
stand on — but I think that’s something for which we can all be truly grateful.
Today’s
Thought
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get him
into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail with the chance of being
drowned.
— Dr. Samuel
Johnson
Tailpiece
“Any sovereigns in your family?”
“No,
but I had an uncle who was a Peer.”
“Really? I had an uncle with bladder trouble, too.”
2 comments:
Funny how customs change, when I was a Navy man and our ship was to host some Mafia type Sultan we had to line the deck. Nobody was allowed aloft.
My Military experience tells me that a "truck" is the ball on the top of the flagpole that holds the colors of my nation.
Contained within the truck are: A copy of the Constitution of the United States of America; An American flag; And a .38 caliber bullet.
The reasons for these items are:
No matter what flag is raised on the pole, the American flag will always be above it.
The Constitution is the greatest document ever created by the mind of man, and needs preserved, at all cost.
The .38 bullet is for the commander of the property to climb the pole and kill himself before surrendering everything America stands for.
Personally, I think it should be a .45ACP, but, that is what I was "learned".
Whatever the legend, there will be these things and others inside the "truck" on my boat.
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