The Sailor’s Word-Book

A ship’s sails can be “taken aback” by a sudden wind—and a person can be taken aback by surprise. In W. H. Smyth’s opening pages, even a familiar phrase carries the weather and discipline of life at sea.

Written in the nineteenth century for sailors and landsmen alike, The Sailor’s Word-Book sets out to make a sprawling maritime vocabulary precise. Smyth moves from ship ratings and the duties of an able seaman to rigging, navigation, astronomy, old slang and the hazards of abandoning a vessel. His definitions are not dry labels: they open onto the working ship, where a mistaken direction or an unfamiliar order could matter, and where words preserve customs already slipping into the past. How much of the sea’s world is hidden inside its language?

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