Sailing is one of humanity’s oldest occupations, prostitution notwithstanding. In fact, I have learned from extensive firsthand observation and experience that the two occupations are very tightly bound to one another. Wherever there are ports and sailors, there are brothels and prostitutes to service them.
From an 1811 broadside, the term "Jack" was a British term for a sailor who were generally referred to as "Jack Tar" or "Jolly Jack Tar."
Coastal towns and seaports have a nautical culture since the sea is the front yard. This is equally true of the Michigan and Canadian towns bordering the Great Lakes (which are not lakes strictly speaking and which Melville terms “freshwater seas” which is far more apt). By nautical culture, I mean that oceanic and sailing themes are used on the businesses in the area even if they have nothing to do with either simply because neither is far from people’s minds in such areas. In fact, more goods and supplies are delivered to Michigan by freighter than by train or truck combined. When the lakes remained frozen well into spring a few years back, there was worry that Michigan would start suffering shortages of everything from food to toilet paper—the vast majority of which are delivered to our state via the Great Lakes rather than highways or rails which supplement the ports more than compete with them. All along the coast, one sees businesses using all kinds of nautical motifs—ship steering wheels, oars, anchors, sails, boats or ships. These are also found in great abundance in residences—decorative anchors in people’s yards, ships or whales as weather vanes, sailboat-shaped mailboxes with the flag shaped like a sail, doormats depicting a ship on the ocean, etc.
But in past centuries, the nautical themes weren’t simply for quaintness but were deeply rooted in the lives of the people that lived within the culture. Their language was peppered with nautical references, children’s songs were drawn from sailor shanties and worksongs, hymns sung in church were also formatted as shanties or specifically geared to nautical themes. Many of the colloquialisms used in English came from sailing:
• “I don’t like the cut of his jib” refers to the jib sail on a ship.
• “I was three sheets to the wind” refers to a sail, often called a sheet, not properly tied down and goes slack in the wind and three such sails makes the ship completely useless as it meanders about on the ocean like a drunk.
• “The cat is out of the bag” refers to the cat-o’-nine-tails used to flog sailors and usually referred to simply as a “cat.” It was kept in a burlap sack while not in use. When a sailor got the wrong person angry, the cat was removed from the bag and sailor was flogged with it. So the phrase simply means some kind of line was crossed.
• “No room to swing a cat” refers to the same flogging instrument and is otherwise self-explanatory.
• “By and large” refers to sailing "large" when the wind is directly behind the ship which sailors refer to as a “bowline.” Sailing "by" was when the wind was not quite behind the ship but slightly offset. It is impossible to sail by and large simultaneously.
• “The whole nine yards” refers to a yard on a mast which holds a sail. There were three yards on all three masts and so if one had a sail flying from each one together, one had the whole nine yards.
• “Mind your Ps and Qs” referred to pints and quarts. If a sailor off the ship in a tavern started getting three sheets to the wind, one of the mates or the master-at-arms might tell him to watch his intake of alcohol by telling him to mind his Ps and Qs…before the cat gets out of the bag.
• “Slush fund” refers to slush which was kept and eventually sold by the cook. In the modern American Navy, lending money with interest is still called “slushing” which is against regulations.
• “I was taken aback” refers to wind conditions in which the sails are blown back against the masts halting all progress.
• “Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” refers to a device in which cannonballs were triangularly stacked on deck. It was called a monkey and was made of brass. If the weather got sufficiently cold, the monkey contracted enough to cause the topmost cannonballs to fall off the stack. Almost everybody believes this expression to have a vulgar meaning.
There are all kinds of nautical terms peppering our everyday speech: making headway, getting pooped, pipe down, water-logged, locker, rig, between the devil and deep blue sea, the bitter end, overhaul, dismantle, forge ahead, windfall, field-day, at loggerheads, slow on the uptake, scuttlebutt, toe the line—all nautical terms. For these terms to have made their way into our speech long ago shows how important sailing was and still is.