Posted by Peter Ceresole on February 24, 2010 at 14:22:26 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Here we go again; Best books and why? posted by Jon on February 24, 2010 at 14:10:17:
". . . in time to make a pierhead jump the other way." (emphasis added) I read that as leaving the packet
I agree- and I never thought about it as meaning anything else, even though I'd never looked up the 'authentic' meaning. In the context, that's the only meaning it could have, anyway. I think it was just a splendid, descriptive phrase and AR enjoyed getting it in.
When I was jolly young, I thought it meant actually jumping off the packet as it passed the pierhead, and having taken cross-channel packets since I was five I had a few doubts about that, but then I got older and realised about the flexibility of language...