hoghead

A hogshead is a means of storing a commodity--beer, wine, sometimes other foodstuffs--of about 63 or 64 gallons. As a part of the lading (that which is stored in the ship), it represents a large and heavy part of the cargo. So if a hogshead were to get loose, it would represent a danger to the interior structure of a ship.

In nautical terms, to start means to open. The plates are the planks which are laid between the internal girders of a ship to form decks withing the ship. All wooden sailing ships leak to a certain extent because as the ship is subjected to the stresses of the sea and the wind, the spaces between the planks of the hull will flex, alternately pulling away from each other and then slamming together. These planks are said to "work." As the planks of the hull work, water seeps into the lower sections of the hull. Wooden sailing ships needed to be pumped out, and all such ships had what were known as chain pumps for just that purpose. The chain pumps brought water up from the bilge, the lowest section of the interior of the ship.

If the plates, the separate sections of flooring within the ship, were started, if they were opened, then water from the bilge could seep into the cargo hold. This could damage the cargo. Sea water in the cargo hold could ruin the cargo stored there, causing significant loss to the owner of the cargo being transported. In more extreme conditions, water could accumulate in the cargo hold, in places where the action of the chain pumps would not remove the water from the hold, or remove it so slowly as to endanger the ship itself.

A wooden warship would have had carpenters and carpenter's mates who could make repairs while at sea. But wooden warships also had crews of hundreds of men. Merchant ships, those transporting cargo for sale from one port to another, only ever had a very small crew--just enough to handle the ship in two or three watches. Even a very large merchant ship might not have more than 20 or 25 crewmen. A smaller merchant ship might only have a dozen crewmen. Although all such ships would have a carpenter on board, this is not the kind of thing he could be expected to deal with by himself. They were in no position to repair the ship while at sea, so it would be necessary for such a ship to put back into port to effect such a repair.

As the piece says that the repair was effected within 12 hours, it appears that the damage was not extensive, and the repairs were, therefore, very likely made to protect the cargo while in transit.

hogs•head (hôgzˈhĕdˌ, hŏgzˈ-)

n. Any of various units of volume or capacity ranging from 63 to 140 gallons (238 to 530 liters), especially a unit of capacity used in liquid measure in the United States, equal to 63 gallons (238 liters).
n. A large barrel or cask with this capacity.

By the way, if you are attempting to translate a text about sailing ships, or just to read one, you are going to be running into uncommon vocabulary all the time. Nautical terms are among the most specialized, arguably [g]the[/b] most specialized vocabulary in the English language.

That was really interesting Set. I always thought a hogshead was just a barrel full of wine or ale. I certainly didn't know about the plates, or the rest of it.

I remember reading a parody on some book, maybe the Hobbit, where they said something about "hogsheads full of hogs heads" Funny stuff.

Oh, btw Yeats...in regards to your title, it's "hogshead" not hoghead.

A favorite dish of sailors was soused hog's face. In order to feed soused hog's face to the hundreds of men on a warship, you'd probably need more than one hogshead of hog's heads.

In case anyone thinks i made that up, there's a recipe for soused hog's face:



Source

Of course, sailore would eat soused hog's face with ship's bread, also known as ship's biscuit, and sometimes called sea biscuit or hardtack. It was a twice-baked round of whole wheat flour:



Since ship's chandlers, those who sell sea stores to merchant ships and the navy, were notoriously larcenous, their barrels of ship's bread often turned moldy, or more likely, were soon infested with weevil's. Sailors often referred to ship's bread which had gotten old as "Old Weevil's wedding cake." Nobody minded a few weevils in their bread.

Jack Aubrey once had some fun with his surgeon, Dr. Stephen Maturin, by displaying two weevils on a plate, taken from the ship's bread. He then asked Maturin to select one of the weevils. When he had done so, Aubrey asekd him why he had chosen that weevil. Maturin told him he supposed it was because the weevil looked bigger. At that point, Aubrey told him he was dished--and asked him: "Don't you know that in the navy, you must always choose the lesser of two weevils?" The officers present then laughed until the tears ran down their faces. It was an old joke, an ancient joke, but that did not lessen their appreciation.

That awful film, at least to me as a Patrick O'Brian fan, not least because of the New Zealander (who lives in Australia) Russell Crowe's attempt at an English accent. He once stormed out of a BBC interview when it was suggested his accent in 'Robin Hood' sounded Irish. Brits will know what another critic meant when he said that Crowe sounded like "an Australian doing an impression of Jim Bowen off Bullseye". Another said that Crowe had 15 accents during the film, which is just about right for the ship movie too.

There's no doubt that Russell Crowe is a legend in his own mind. I found him to be the worst part of the motion pocture. However, those familiar with O'Brian's work would immediately see that we'll not be subjected to Crowe as Aubrey again. The title was, of course taken from the first novel and the tenth novel. The scene of "the lesser of two weevils" was taken from the second novel. The trepanning of the seaman was taken from the fourth novel. (There was also a reference to trepanning the gunner in the first novel, but the operation was not described.) When he wonders at the inveteracy of the French captain, and says "I wonder if i killed his son, god forbid." (or words to that effect), the line is from the fifth novel. Maturin using a mirror to remove a bullet from his own chest is from the third novel. One can go on for quite a while with that. It appears that the screenplay writers took what they thought were the best lines and scenes from all of the O'Brian novels, and that no sequel was ever intended.

It's a shame in a way, because with a good treatment and without Crowe, the series would be worth doing with a motion picture for each novel.

EDIT: I should also add that Crowe did not play Jack Aubrey at all. Aubrey is the bluff, English sailor, not stupid but no phoenix, either. From Aubrey's comments about Philip Broke in the sixth novel, we are to believe that they grew up in East Anglia (i don't recall it well enough to know if it were Norfolk or Suffolk). The character would have been accustomed to the sea and a lover of the sea from earliest childhood. Crowe simply could not convince me that he was Jack Aubrey.

Excellent answer~


Thank you~