WHAT IS A MIDSHIPMAN?

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12967, 21 November 1907, Page 7

WHAT IS A MIDSHIPMAN?

By luck, I, for the first time in my life, have found a plausible derivation for midshipman, saya Captain A. T. Mohan in "Harper's Magazine." It would appear that in the days immediately after the flood tho. vessels were very high at the ottds, between which there was a deep "waist," giving no ready moans of passing from cit6 i other. To meet this difficulty there were employed a class of men, usually young and elert, who from their station wore called midshipmen, to carry messtiges #hich were not snbjoct for the trumpet shout. If this explanation holds water, it. like fore-caetle and after-guard, and. knight-heads," gives another instance of survival of nomenclature from conditions which have long ceased, , Whatever the origin of his title, it -well expressed the anomalous and undefined position of the midshipman. Ho belonged, so to say, to both ends of the ship, as well as to the middle, and his duties and privileges alike fell within the broad saying already quoted, that what was nobody's business was a midshipman's. Whin appointed as such in later days, he came in "with the hayseed in his hair," and went out fit for a lieutenant's charge; but from firs* to last, whatever his personal progress, he continued, as a midshipman, a handy-billy.