The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-06
SEA SLANG GOES BACK MANY YEARS
'Lubber' Was In Use As Long Ago As Year
 1850

The first anthology of sea slang was made by an Englishman well known to Americans. Capt. John Smith, the his torian of Virginia and the hero of the famous Pocahontas episode? wrote the "Accidence for Young Seamen,' which was published in 1926, says the New York Times.
 Many of the slang terms noted by the sometime admiral of New England are still used by the English sailor, while others, standing for obsolete customs, have faded away. Each century has added it's handful of words to the sail or's vocabulary, which has left its mark on the literature of its period.
 Food has always been labeled by the sailor in his own jargon. Salt beef, that standby of the menu nt sea, was known during the nineteenth century as junk" ''old horse," "salt horse" or 'salt junk" It was responsible, held one writer of sea stories, for the ma hogany' complexion of sailors, which was commonly attributed to a combina- tion of rum and the weather. A stew answered to the name of '1obscouse," and was made of salt beef, biscuits and potatoes, seasoned highly with pepper. Smollett, in "Peregrine Pickle" writes of "the composition known by the name of lob'scouse," which says it was one of the dishes at the banquet given in honor of Commodore Trunnion.
 A dish of cold fish and potatoes was labeled "twice-laid," which a pudding of dried peas boiled in cloth was well comed by the sailors under the name of 'dogs body" Ship biscuits were even then called "hardtack," while soft, white bread was christened "softtack" or "soft tommy"
 Marryat in his sea stories has made most of these terms familiar to his generation and Gilbert and Sullivan's s Little Buttercup, the ''bumboat woman" in HI. M. s. Pinafore." sings of the ''soft tommy
 Borrowed On Land
 Many sea terms have wandered from the sailors vocabulary into that of his contemporary on land. For instance, the word ''loblolly" was used at sea to sig nifty gruel, but on land in the "London Spy" Ward speaks of coffee as "Mahom- etan loblolly," and Garrick, in his farce Peep Behind the Curtain," says My ingenious countrymen have no taste now for the high seasoned comedies l; and I am sure that I have none for the pap and loblolly of our present writer's"
 Days on which no meat was served on ships were known as "banyan days" This word was probbaly contributed by those who sailed to India, for in that country caste of Hundy, traders or merchants, the Banians, are vegetari- anes. Lamb shows that this wosd was adopted by the folks at homes for he writes that when he was at Christ's hospital they had three banyan days to four meat days in the week.
 Of drinking terms the oldest are ob- solete, but many are International and still up to date. "Half-seas over" dates from the seventeenth century. It oc- CUTS in Dryden and later in the Spec tator in letter telling of the celebra- tion in honor of the kings birthday. The writer of the letter says "the alder man was half-seas over before the bon fire was out" Some thing the term "seas over" comes from Holland, where the Dutch called the strong beer, inn ported from England "op-zee zeber," or oversea beer. Possibly the name of the beer was applied to those who suffered from its effects
 The "Landlubber."
 Another term applied to the same condition, ''three sheets in the wind" and not so we'll known Ca sheet in the winds eye," were both used to de- scribe the unsteadiness of those who were carrying too heavy a liquid load. At Greenwich hospital this same condi- tiOn was known as yellow fever" be- cause the sailors had to wear a coat in which yellow was the predominant color.
 The term landlhbber is generally used by the sailor in derision of those unaccustomed to the sea. The word lubber is found in the earliest known English comedy, Bolster .Doister," written about 1850.
 "He is louted and laughed to skorne, For the veriest dolte that ever was
 borne,
 And the veriest lubber, sloven and
 beast"
 The sailor added the word land to lubber, and thus expressed completely his attitude toward the unfortunates