SAILORS' SLANG

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24250, 16 April 1942, Page 4

SAILORS' SLANG

CHAPLAIN'S MEMORIES TRIBUTE TO THE SERVICE The young and nervous chaplain had just joined one of his His Majesty's ships of the New Zealand Navy. From his cabin he heard sailors discussing his sea trunk. Whose was it? "Belongs to the new sin-bosun." was the reply. Hence the title of the address by the Rev. R. A. Noakes to the Auckland Creditmen's Club yesterday — "Reminiscences of a Sin-Bosun." Mr. Noakes provided a most entertaining half-hour for the club. Most people, he said, knew the army language. The Air Force probably had not yet evolved one. That of the Royal Navy, so long established, had to be learned. "I am chocker. My square is going out with a killick. And I have just had a bottling from the buffer." This, said Mr. Noakes, who rendered it with the appropriate accent, meant that a sailor was "fed up" because his girl was going out with a leading seaman — killick having reference to an anchor — and that he had been subjected to some measure of reproof from the chief bosun's mate. Next to the "jaunty" —the master-at-arms —is the "crushed." This individual got his strange title in the days when cockroaches often were plentiful in ships, the suggestion being that when he was "snooping" about at night his approach was revealed by the fact that nis boots crushed cockroaches with a marked report. The "tiffie," originally an artificer, is now anyone avlio wears the "fore-and-aft" cap. The "square-rig" men feel that they are superior to any "tiffie." The chaplain on a ship was formerly an instructor, but part of his pay, as that of the surgeon, was deducted from the men's pav. Incidentally the finest navigation tables in use to-day were compiled by a chaplain of former days. "The British sailor is the finest ambassador of the Empire we have," said the speaker, who referred to the woiir derful impression left in Bombay by the sailors of his ship during a period spent there in refitting. Another great memory he had of the sailors was when in the Indian Ocean they committed to the deep the body of an Italian sailor who had died on board from wounds. It was wrapped in the Italian ensign. Apart from the honours paid, the respect of the British sailors for their enemy left a memory of the most impressive funeral in the chaplain's experience.