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Need help with sea term: flaked or faked
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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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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: GUEST,Melani Date: 16 Aug 01 - 07:01 PM Well, sometimes our crew is pretty flaky, but they can usually fake it. For the record, we flake our sails and fake out the mooring lines on Alma and the downhaul on Balclutha. But all said and done, Skip is probably correct--they are interchangable. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: kendall Date: 16 Aug 01 - 07:27 PM Not in the US Coast Guard they are not. I once used the incorrect term "Lapstreak" and was nearly keelhauled! The correct word is Lapstrake, or to shallow water types, "Clinker built" Spaw, I was speaking of hawsers and other types of lines. I have "Faked" many a sail as you say. I guess you have to call it something, so, why not fake? |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 16 Aug 01 - 07:36 PM Faking sail is acceptable in the best of circles. The OED compares with a similar Scandanavian word. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: radriano Date: 16 Aug 01 - 07:40 PM Well, this should prove interesting. I got a reply from Ken & Jan Lardner who run the Chantey Cabin website. "Cannot give you an immediate reply - but we are about to set off for the 2 biggest festivals of the year (Hull and Portsmouth) so we will find the definitive answer on our travels even if we have to call in the Navy (the Portsmouth Festival is in the Naval Dockyard)." When I hear back from the Lardners I'll post the results to this thread. Richard |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: GUEST,Doc Date: 16 Aug 01 - 08:12 PM Well as I started all this by pointing out the "error" during the recording session, I'll weigh (tee hee) in with an opinion that faked is the original and correct term, misstated so often in recent times as "flaked" that the latter has become acceptable. Another example that has occurred during my memory is the question, asked colloquially in New York City as, "I could care less?" This is the obverse, of course, of the statement, "I couldn't care less." In the Army, however, that mixing bowl of argot, men from elsewhere than New York missed hearing the rising inflection at the end and turned the expression into the statement, "Hey, I could care less!" This actually has become the most frequently used form of the expression, even though it means exactly the opposit of what the speaker intends. Another inelegant example of linguistic shift is the epithet, again from the New York area, of "scum bag". This amounted to calling someone a used condom and was used in rough company, as among groups of little boys, or by policemen on the job. But in the early days of TV the reference to semen was unacceptable, so the euphemism "dirt bag", which has no meaning whatever, was invented by TV censors. Now middle-aged cops, who grew up watching early TV, call the perpetrators, "dirt bag", having not a clue as to where the term came from. In a movie I saw on (unfaked) cable the other night a cop called a guy a, "motherfucking, cocksucking dirt bag!" (That last bit must have really hurt.) Flaked, like floundered, is simply a careless mispronunciation of the word: an error that has become acceptable only to those who are more pragmatic than they are respectful of tradition. The fact that a small number of people have been making the mistake for centuries doesn't make it any less a mistake. One should take into account, I believe, that for very good reason there has been a traditional insistance that young sailors learn proper nautical terminology. On my ship the term is faked, and only landsmen and lubbers say flaked. Doc
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: catspaw49 Date: 16 Aug 01 - 08:22 PM Doc, you'll be happy to know that I have called several people around here both Scumbags and Douchebags....I like to be gender specific. Kendall.....you fake your sails, I'll flake mine. Say, there is a sail loft up your way that I never bought from, but I wore one of thier T-Shirts anyway. The company is Hard Sails and of course their T-Shirt says, "Sail With A Hard On" Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: GUEST,chip2447 Date: 16 Aug 01 - 11:50 PM Tossing a head fake out there and going for the frosted flakes instead of the goal... Chip2447 |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Peter Kasin Date: 17 Aug 01 - 12:24 AM Well, I've learned something from this thread about the term. Though I've only encountered "flake" it looks as though "fake" is just as acceptable. As the old adage goes: "Different ships - different long splices." -chanteyranger |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Amos Date: 17 Aug 01 - 01:30 AM Excuse me, but "dirt bag" has a very well-established meaning. The difference between a Hoover anda Harley is the location of it. It is the replaceable paper bag that captures the stuff a vacuum cleaner brings up. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Lee Shore Date: 17 Aug 01 - 04:15 AM A sail is flaked down on the boom. A line is faked down on deck in loose figure eights in preparations for running. If it's coiled flat it's flemished. Flake with regard to laying out line is a mispronounciation of fake, but there's a lot of that, even among seasoned sailors. Many fishermen insist on pronouncing "hawser" as "howser", just as many weekend sailors refer to "knots per hour." But don't get me started on that one. |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: kendall Date: 17 Aug 01 - 05:23 AM Lee shore and guest Doc, you are right on the money. Carelessness in the civilian area is acceptable, but, in the military it can get you introduced to the Bos'ns "Starter". |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: GUEST,Doc Date: 17 Aug 01 - 05:38 AM The collection bag in a vacuum cleaner merely fits the descripion of a "dirt bag" by coincidence. The term arose as I said as a wholly invented, ad hoc euphemism at a time in the sixties when "scum bag" wouldn't yet get by the TV and movie censors, but could be suggested, insofar as many people would recognize what term "dirt bag" was supposed to represent. I hope none of you folks who say "flake" ever has trouble with your "prostrate". God forbid you should ever need any "nucular" radiation. As someone said earlier, this discussion is beginning to "flounder". I'm not sure the old terms matter any more anyway, in these days of "alunimum" spars. (They're better anyway because they won't burn, being "inflammable".) Nautical terms can themselves be quite tortured. Sitting in the half-darkened Purser's Office on B deck at about five one morning in mid-Atlantic, in August of 1952, bored by inactivity since the annunciator board wouldn't start lighting up with calls for the bellboy for another hour or more, I began to ponder what to call the rather deep embrasure into which the porthole was fitted. Because of the inward slope of the hull (is that also called the "tumblehome" or is the tumblehome only at the stern under the counter?), anyway; because of the slope of the hull and the vertical inner bulkhead, the bulkhead was about 18" in from the plane of the porthole. On the S.S. America the Third Class Purser's office was on the starboard side of the ship. But had it been on the other side I reconed, the nautical name of that deep embrasure would have been the "port port hole hole". Oh, yes, and there's "dead" reconing for Ded(uced) Reconing. I once had a patient with fibroids in her uterus tell me she had fireballs in her eucharist. 'Nother guy with cirrhosis said he had a "ferocious" liver. But in my game terms were not always safely interchangable. Remember the old story about guy who demanded to be castrated and eventually got his way. The day after surgery he was told by his roommate that the roommate was in for a circumcision. "THAT'S the word I was trying to remember !!", the guy exclaimed. Doc
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Charley Noble Date: 17 Aug 01 - 09:59 AM Wasn't it one of Magellan's ships that first circumcised the world back in 1522? (beware thread creep!) |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: radriano Date: 17 Aug 01 - 11:07 AM Now, Doc, bless your sweet little sticky heart. I'm still not thoroughly convinced although it seems like you've come into this discussion determined to prove that you're right. But just for the sake of argument why couldn't flake have been the original word that kept getting mispronounced as fake? |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: GUEST,Martin Ryan Date: 17 Aug 01 - 12:15 PM I've heard "Flemish(ed) fakes" somewhere - probably Patrick O'Brian. Not beyond the bounds of possibility that that's where the l crept in. Regards p.s As they say in Dublin "Meself? I think this thread is a bit of a damp squid!" |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: catspaw49 Date: 17 Aug 01 - 01:05 PM I know it kills you traditionalist types, but many racing sailors shitcanned some the lingo awhile back. It wasn't done with the thought of losing the heritage, but simply for the sake of communication. Nothing really wrong with Prepare to Jibe/Jibe Ho (or Gybe), or Ready about/Hard Alee........It's just a lot more efficient in crew work to say Tacking in 10/Tacking in 5/Tacking in two/Tacking the boat. I like the older terminology but at times it simply doesn't fit what is happening on a race course. And flake is still the proper term for folding down a sail onto the boom either for mooring or when taking a reef. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: GUEST,Doc Date: 17 Aug 01 - 02:22 PM Jibe. That's another one. Many people say, "that doesn't jive with what he said," instead of, "that doesn't jibe with what he said." Jibe in this sense means, to agree. (One wonders whether jibing come from that meaning: to turn with, or in agreement with, the wind instead of into, against or across it.) People unfamiliar with jibe substituted a familiar one that sounded similar. I believe they must have thought "jive" was what they heard when they first encountered the expression. Or perhaps they learned it that way from someone else who had made that mistake. Well I don't think I'm merely trying to hold back the passage of time by banishing change in this age when time is synonymous with change, although that is possible. What do I think is that one of the greatest strengths of any culture is the commonality of its language. I think a certain amount of effort should be made to protect a language from erosions of meaning and syntax when they appear to come solely from error compounded by apathy. Nevertheless, old friend, you remind me that I do not aspire to convince. I am grateful merely that I am given a chance to be heard. Doc
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: catspaw49 Date: 17 Aug 01 - 03:17 PM Actually Doc, I agree with you. One of the most enjoyable things around here at the 'Cat is running down the meaning of words.....or whether or not the word we're discussing actually was the right word! See the thread on "Wabash Cannonball" for a good example. Spaw - (and when my sailing partner of many years and I are together in a two man event such as Lightnings, we tend to take away the concentration of the rest of the fleet with a loud call of, "Ready Your Head....Hard To Cum") |
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Subject: RE: Need help with sea term: flaked or faked From: Les from Hull Date: 17 Aug 01 - 03:25 PM Fake or flake are interchangeable asccording to John Harland's 'Seamanship in the age of sail', which I consider to be the best source I've got for this sort of thing. English sources usually mention flake, but this may be a transatlantic thing. We're not talking about coiling ropes on deck, but laying cable in the orlop or cable tiers. Apart from that we've always sung 'flaked' in this song and we're not going to stop now! Les |
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