Posted by Forrest Brownell on August 08, 1997 at 22:35:31:
In Reply to: Re: A-Rovin', Bowdlerisation etc. posted by Tim on August 08, 1997 at 15:48:03:
Tim Johns apparently wonders what a 'bloodboat' might be. So did I. After a short voyage among the book-
shelves, I can report the following:
The Country Life Book of Nautical Terms Under Sail (Trewin Copplestone 1978) gives the definition of
'blood money' as
Money paid to an agent such as the keeper of an inn or boarding house for the
procurement of men to fill vacancies in a ship's crew.
These agents, the notorious 'crimps' of the world's great port cities, were often none too scrupulous -- little
better, in fact, than kidnappers. (Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue speaks of 'persons employed to
trapan or kidnap recruits for the East Indian and African companies.') Ships manned with hands obtained by
such irregular means might well have come to be known as 'bloodboats'.
Or such, at least, was my inference. Happily, Stan Hugill offers this more-or-less compatible definition:
[A] hard-case sailing ship (usually Yank or Nova Scotian) from which crews
would desert and fresh ones be supplied by the medium of shanghaiing.
Forrest