Frank and other Fellow Dialers Having no clue to the "dead reckoninng" mystery, I have a suggestion to the meaning of the "dog watch". The exact translation is being used by Polish sailors. Being the nation of land-lubbers for most of our history, we took to sea seriously in XIX century only. Most of our maritime terminology came from Dutch and German, next from more distant Britain, there are also few Scandinavian terms and few our own. So if we have the term "dog watch" in our language then I think it existed in every maritime nation. The meaning however is closer to life, "the worst watch of the day" that is from midnight till 4 AM. No explanation necessary. The following "dawn watch" is not that bad even you are awaken before 4 as shortly there will be more and more light, you have a chance to view the sunrise, and of course breakfast will be coming.
Slawek P.S. The mentioned terminology, the less understandable by prophanes the better, is passed as sanctity from generation to generation of Polish yachtsmen during initial stages of conversion of land-lubbers to sea dogs. And this in spite of loud protests of language purists. At 08:30 PM 2/12/99 +0000, Fran Evans wrote: > I'm interested in origin of the term "dead reckoning". I read >somewhere that it came from "ded' reckoning" i.e. "deduced reckoning". >Any thoughts? > >Tony Moss. > > >Tony and all, > >I doubt if "dead" reckoning has anything to do with "deduced" reckoning. >There is a parallel nautical case where "dog" watches, the half watches >used to change watch order in successive days, was supposed to be >derived from "docked" watches. I recently wrote to the "Mariner's >Mirror" as follows: > >That the word "dog" is a corruption of some other word, as "dock", or >"dodge", seems to me unlikely. > >Is it not more probable that the word is one of a family of modifying >prefixes used to signal that the substantive is not the real thing. >Examples include dog-latin, french leave, dutch courage, horse-chestnut >and cat-silver. Other examples are easily supplied and the usage is so >common that this seems a sufficient explanation. > >Dog-watches are not real watches but only half watches. > >In the same way I think we should concentrate on possible meanings of >"dead" and not look for corruption of other words. There are similar >problems with "neap" and "spring" tides. >-- >Frank Evans > Slawek Grzechnik 32 57.4'N 117 08.8'W http://home.san.rr.com/slawek
