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Need help with sea term: flaked or faked
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: radriano Date: 16 Aug 01 - 06:50 PM I just heard from Skip Henderson, one of the shanty singers that comes to Hyde Street Pier. According to him, the International Maritime Dictionary says "flake" and "fake" are interchangeable. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Amos Date: 16 Aug 01 - 05:47 PM It also needs to be pointed out that in the original posting the capstan is being used to raise a cable (which is reported as being flaked) meaning the anchor cable. Depending on when this song was coined, this could have been a fat hemp cable, or a chain, the word having being carried over when chain technology got good enough to be used for anchors. I have heard flaked being applied to chain and to sail, but I have always thought "faked" was correct for towing lines, mooring lines and other ropes -- this could just be an opinion on my part. The American heritage dictionary provides the following for "flake": flake 2 (flEk) n. 1. A frame or platform for drying fish or produce. 2. A scaffold lowered over the side of a ship to support workers or caulkers. [ Middle English fleke from Old Norse fleki hurdle] and only provides the rope-handling definition for "fake": fake 2 (fEk) n. 1. One loop or winding of a coiled rope or cable. v. tr. faked fak•ing fakes 1. To coil (a rope or cable). [ Middle English faken to coil a rope] Note that the use of fake to coil rope goer back to the Middle English era, while the root or parentage for flake is totally different. Regards, A. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 16 Aug 01 - 05:42 PM The ship floundered through rough seas before it foundered. I think this thread is about to founder. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: catspaw49 Date: 16 Aug 01 - 05:33 PM Oh....You mean like "Kelloggs Sugar Plastered Fakes?" Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Charley Noble Date: 16 Aug 01 - 05:25 PM I doubt if there is an error in Hugil's TWO vesions which use "flake." I suppose if it were snowing, one would then have frosty flakes. I feel a lucrative shanty commercial coming on for a major cereal producer. What joy! |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: dick greenhaus Date: 16 Aug 01 - 04:31 PM There really is no commonality of nautical terms. I've heard both fake and flake. You probably shouldn't pay too much attention to sailors from Maine: they're the ones that call vangs "kicking straps". |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: catspaw49 Date: 16 Aug 01 - 03:59 PM And of course the other meaning, as in Kendall is a flake of the first order. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 16 Aug 01 - 03:48 PM Note to Kendall- flake has many meanings. Like Now I am going to flake out because I worked hard setting up a flake on which to dry my fish. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 16 Aug 01 - 03:35 PM Merriam Webster's 3rd International unabridged gives flake as a variety of fake. Both words are English in origin. There is an earlier quote for fake than Stuart's in the OED but it is hard to write because it is in 15C English and does not really apply nautically. The online Webster's does not have all of the words in the unabridged, but the latter last came out (I think) in 1976 and is out-of-date. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: catspaw49 Date: 16 Aug 01 - 03:23 PM Kendall, I agree on flemished but as I said, flaked does apply in terms of allowing a sail to be lowered to the boom. It is said to flaked, being folded oppositely and evenly as it is lowered (similar to the way you describe a line......It's the mos t common method used when you put a cover on the main over the boom when docked. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: mousethief Date: 16 Aug 01 - 02:54 PM I'm not familiar with Chamber's dictionary. Is that a British thing? Webster's online gives no nautical definition of "flake." Maybe it's a UK/US difference, then? Alex |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 16 Aug 01 - 02:53 PM Radioano, you will just have to go back and record a companion version so both fake and flake supporters are happy. Stuart, Seamans Catechism, 1860- "The chain cables and messengers are faked in the chain lockers." (quoted in OED). Flake: Quote from Capt. Smith, 1626- "Coyle your cable in small flakes." (also OED). Later applied to wire cable in electrical applications. Could this also be a case of shifting pronounciation? An example is asphalt, which often is pronounced ash-phalt. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Whistle Stop Date: 16 Aug 01 - 02:46 PM Yes, kendall, you are right (been a while since my last enlistment expired). "Faking" a line is laying it back and forth, as you described. Coiling it flat is "flemishing". |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: kendall Date: 16 Aug 01 - 02:36 PM faked and coiled are two different methods. Let me see if I can explain in print...faked... take a length of rope, lay it down on the deck, uncoiling it as you go, when you run out of room, make a loop at the end of your working room, then lay more down alongside the first strand until you come to the other end of your working room, make another loop and repeat the process until it is all faked down. This works well for a "Towing hawser" because it will pay out by itself. Flaked is something you do to vegetables. English can be very imprecise at times. How often have you heard someone say "The ship FLOUNDERED, when the right word is FOUNDERED"? |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 16 Aug 01 - 02:27 PM Unless it's a typographival error that he missed reading the proofs, if Stan Hugill said it was "flaked", it was sung as "flaked". Which doesn't mean to say that it mightn't have been sung as "faked" as well.
Of course a typographical error is always possible. Does the word come up in any other shanties in the book or in the notes? |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: GUEST,Willa Date: 16 Aug 01 - 02:24 PM Chambers dict. fake (1); v, to fold, coil n, a coil of rope etc flake (3) same as fake (1) so it seems as though you are all right; choose which you like! |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: kendall Date: 16 Aug 01 - 02:24 PM Maybe I have the wrong picture of what you mean by a "Flat circle" of rope. The picture I see is called "Flemished" It is used in boats and, unlike coiled or faked lines, it can be walked on without disturbing it. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Gareth Date: 16 Aug 01 - 02:17 PM Funny that Cadbury's gets mentioned. An old matloe (ex RN) put it very susinctly. "A Flake is something you eat. You fake a rope or sheet" Gareth
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Charley Noble Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:49 PM Now a Cadburys flake bar is something I can identify with. Richard, maybe you can work that into your notes. I've only "faked" by making spirals of excess line. Sounds to me that "flaking" is a different process, with at least two different functions: inspections or preparatory to letting it run out. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Cobble Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:36 PM In my navy time I have flaked out more ropes than had hot dinner's. As Charley Noble said it is run up and down the deck, you can do it with cable as well, but the most common reason for flaking a rope was to pay it out etc, to take a ship in tow. Each time it is layed out the next flake is laid over the previous one, so when it payed out it does not tangle. If you look at a cadburys flake bar it is similar. Cobble. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: radriano Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:34 PM Well, it's even money so far. Rolling Home appears in Stan Hugill's Shanties of the Seven Seas. In the two versions printed there the term is shown as "flaked." Chanteyranger, who works at Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco, says that the captains he's talked to say it's "flaked" but I've had other people (who are familiar with sailing and sea terminology) tell me it should be "faked." The thing is that I've recorded this song using "flaked" and if it should indeed be "faked" I need to say so in the liner notes. Richard |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Whistle Stop Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:27 PM Another former sailor here (USCG) -- "faked" is the term I'm familiar with, defined exactly as rangeroger, Devilmaster and mousethief have already said. Perhaps there's another term called "flaking" that applies to transatlantic cable, but I'm not familiar with it. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: MMario Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:20 PM perhaps both are used? |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: catspaw49 Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:17 PM Well this is interesting isn't it? I only know the term relating to sails and I have also known it to be used on lines as when they are coiled but I would think a cable would be hard to do the same to.......... Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: mousethief Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:15 PM A rope laid down on the deck in such a way that it can be easily played out (coils or figure-of-eights being the most common) is "faked." I suppose with cables it would be the same thing. From Webster's online:
Main Entry: 1fake
Main Entry: 2fake ----- Alex |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Charley Noble Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:15 PM Oh, my, this could be one of them dangerous threads that could ignite! According to THE OXFORD COMPANION TO SHIPS AND THE SEA (not my personal knowledge and I wouldn't dare to try to "fake" it) to flake meanns "the operation of laying out the chain anchor cable of a ship on the forecastle deck for examination. It is hove up out of the cable lockers and ranged up and down the deck so that any weak or worn links can be located and the shackle of cable in which such a link occurs can be taken out of the cable and replaced with a new one." Diving below for cover... |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Devilmaster Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:07 PM as a former sailor, i add my assent to rangeroger, it is faked. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: MMario Date: 16 Aug 01 - 01:06 PM An article re: the transatlantic cable definatley says "flakes" of cable - which are pictured as large flat coils. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: GUEST,rangeroger Date: 16 Aug 01 - 12:58 PM Radrino, the term is "faked".It involves coiling the rope in a flat circle on the deck. rr |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: catspaw49 Date: 16 Aug 01 - 12:58 PM Flaked is a term often applied to folding a sail onto a boom for instance.....Cables? Don't know Radriano........ Spaw |
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Subject: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: radriano Date: 16 Aug 01 - 12:53 PM One of the most famous homeward bound capstan shanties is Rolling Home. The first verse of one setting of the English version of Rolling Home is: Call all hand to man the capstan See the cable flaked down clear Heave away and with a will, boys For old England we will steer The question is: Is it flake the cable correct or should it be fake the cable? Richard |
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