Frank Evans et al, >-------- The watch from midnight to four in the morning is >called the middle watch, ------------ .
According to American nautical "folk-etymology," that middle watch was dubbed the "gravey eyed" watch, referring to the bleary, gummy-eyelidded state of those wakened in the wrong phase of their diurnal biological clocks to stand such a watch. Supposedly, it was this vividly concrete terminology which was later "sanitized" as "graveyard watch." Among Woods Hole oceanographers, the term "dead heading," has great currency, with "dead" used in its sense of "direct" or "undeviating." E.g., since much of the time on a scientific cruise is occupied with work "on station," at a series of selected observation or sampling points, when the last of many such stations has been completed, there is a sensed atmosphere of expectancy aboard the vessel as she "dead heads" homeward. "Dead head" has, of course, other usages, not restricted to sea- faring and flower gardening. Bill Maddux
