Jack Tar

 

Jack Tar

The True British Tar, 1785

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

John was the most popular name for a boy from around 1150 to 1470 and its pet name or diminutive was Jack, which became widespread from the late fourteenth century onwards. It denoted an ordinary or low-class man, or peasant, and was applied to any low-born or common male.

It gave rise to expressions like, ‘Every man Jack,’ meaning every man in a group, with no exemptions.

 ‘Jack of all trades (master of none)’ indicated a person who could turn his hand to any task, while ‘Jack the lad’ described a youth who was self-assured and maybe roguish. These idioms are still used today.

In the seventeenth century, someone trying to improve his social standing, to ‘rise above his station in life,’ would be described as ‘Jack would be a gentleman.’

Royal Navy Boatswain (Bosun) 1820
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

There are a few suggestions for how the name Jack Tar came to be applied to sailors. In the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, when wooden sailing vessels relied on wind for power and propulsion, the rigging for the sails was hemp rope. Being permanently in a damp atmosphere, they were prone to rot, so were covered in tar, which had to be replaced frequently. Tar was also used on the deck planking, and the ship’s hull, to make everything waterproof. Sailors were therefore often liberally coated in tar. Tarpaulins, canvas material coated in tar, were used to cover objects on deck, and sailors’ clothing was made of tarpaulin. It was but a short jump from the name of the material to the name for the man.

There is a belief, unsubstantiated, that sailors tarred their hair, which they wore in a long plait, to prevent it being caught in the rigging. This led to another plausible legend, that the purpose of the square collar of a sailor’s uniform was to protect his uniform being stained by tar from his queue or plait.

Coopers were skilled craftsmen in the nineteenth century whose job was to assemble or maintain casks on board. When a barrel of wine or spirits was emptied, it would be filled with boiling water and rolled about. The drink thus produced was known as grog and the coopers became known as Jolly Jack Tars or groggers.

The invention of grog is ascribed to Admiral Edward ‘Old Grog’ Vernon. His nickname came from his habit of wearing coats of grogram (grosgrain) In 1740, he sought to counteract and reduce inebriation among his crew, by adding water to the rum. With the addition of lime juice, to combat scurvy (and the reason Englishmen are called ‘limeys’) and sugar to sweeten the taste, grog became a staple drink.

Natives of Swansea, in South Wales, are known as Jacks, or ‘Swansea Jacks.’ Swansea men had a reputation for being skilled seamen and, as such, their services were greatly desired by the navy.

Random thoughts

 

Random thoughts

Random thoughts flit in and out of my brain. It’s not always possible to know what prompts them and sometimes they take me on ‘voyages of discovery and other clichés.’

Recently, I have been thinking about sailors, that is, Royal Navy sailors. Obviously the trigger for that was my recent blog about sailing. I wondered why sailors were referred to as matelots.

Why would a French name be assigned to a naval rating? Maybe it was a hangover from when Calais belonged to England, in the sixteenth century. The English King Edward III captured Calais in 1347. It was returned to France in 1558.

I looked it up. Matelot is a Middle French slang word meaning sailor. Middle French covers the period from the 14^th to 16^th centuries. It came into use in the Royal Navy about 1847, so, nothing to do with the possession of Calais!

Another common term for a naval rating is Tar, or Jack Tar. It seemed logical to suppose that this name was applied because of the necessity of tarring a ship to waterproof it. Anyone involved in this messy task would soon be covered in the sticky, pungent coating.

I looked it up. I was wrong again. Apparently, it is thought to refer to the tarpaulins sailors wore. Tarpaulins were a type of strong canvas containing tar to make them waterproof. ‘Jack Tar’ to describe a sailor was first used in 1781 by George Parker, possibly Admiral Sir George Parker.

People born in Swansea in the UK have often been called Jacks or Swansea Jacks. Swansea people had a reputation for being skilled sailors and were much sought after for recruitment to the navy.

The official march of the Royal Navy, ‘Heart of Oak’, has a line which says, ‘Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men’.

John was the commonest boy’s name in England in the 16^th century.  Jack is a diminutive of John. An interesting article from ‘Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources’describes how the nickname for John developed.

Jack was a common name applied to any man and is still in use in many phrases today, as in Jack of all trades, every man Jack, Jack of both sides, Jack the lad, Before you can say Jack Robinson, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, I’m all right, Jack (pull up the ladder)

The infamous Whitechapel murders of the 1880s were not committed by a man called Jack the Ripper. In the twenty-first century a more accurate name for him would have been ‘Anyman the Ripper’.

From this point, I started thinking about Jack in children’s literature, in particular nursery rhymes. Jack and Jill, Jack be nimble, Jack Sprat, Little Jack Horner are all rhymes that have been sung and recited to small children, who respond to the rhymes with delight, in the process building a sense of rhythm and rhyming and developing their vocabulary in a most pleasurable way.

Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack Frost are well-loved children’s stories. This is the house that Jack built is a wonderful cumulative story that children love to join in with great enthusiasm.

 

Things aren’t always what they appear to be . . .

Two drunken yobs in Swansea recently got more than they bargained for when they picked on two men dressed in drag who were on their way to a stag party. One of the yobs punched one of the party-goers in the face and was then floored, along with his companion, by the other man, who was clad in a short dress, suspenders and stockings. The two party-goers then picked up their handbags and left the scene. The drunks had picked on two cage fighters!

The dazed yobs tried to walk away but a combination of drunkenness and concussion had them staggering around narrowly avoiding collision with street furniture. Eventually they were questioned and arrested by police, charged with using abusive words and behaviour. Previously in the evening they had got into a fight with a man dressed as Spiderman.


Their defending counsel said the two had been drinking cocktails and one of them had drunk at least ten pints of cider. Addressing the magistrates he said, ' . . . you know it cannot have been a good night when you get into a fight with Spiderman and two cross-dressing men.'