I’m about half way through Post Captain, the second book in Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey series. Nautical fiction and literature is great. I really loved Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, a wonderful and accidentally romantic account of life at sea, although it took a long time to get through the first half because I had to look up every other word. Bawse, hawser, pawl, clew? And then all the parts of the ship, constantly referred to: skysail, main top mast, all the various stays and yards. Half the definitions are only found now in the OED; I admit I felt it a bit of an accomplishment to have gotten through the first chapters. Now the language is half the pleasure.

It’s a strange quality of language, whose purpose, supposedly, is to help us understand one another, that it gives pleasure in it’s exclusivity. It’s like I feel that something private is being communicated, and so when something is described in an argot that not everyone understands, it’s inclusive in a very intimate way. Like when you get that throw-away joke in the Family Guy or whatever. There’s also a great pleasure in solving the communication puzzle exactly; in finding the right word to express the moment. Nautical language is poetic in it’s exactitude. It sounds so much better to say “lay hands to the windlass and clew up the mainsail” than “grab that winch (no, the smaller one) and and raise the corners of that sail (the big one) up there”. It’s a pleasure, coming from advertising, to hear jargon that has meaning for a change.