Fine naval traditions

Despite the statement (usually attributed to Churchill) that the traditions of the navy are nothing but “rum, sodomy, and the lash”, there are a few other traditions that still survive to this day.

One that amuses me is the tradition of having specific toasts at the dinner ritual. The first toast is always to the reigning monarch, and the next one was a function of the day. (I note that what the British Navy does with “the first toast is always to the Queen”, the various rebels did just as nicely with “the first toast is always to The Cause”).

Apparently the traditional second toast on each day was as follows (and apparently this tradition continues to this day):

Monday: Our ships at sea.
Tuesday: Our men.
Wednesday: Ourselves.
Thursday: A bloody war and quick promotion.
Friday: A willing soul and sea room.
Saturday: Sweethearts and wives, may they never meet.
Sunday: Absent friends and those at sea.

(Nice to see what is probably the origin of the ‘absent friends’ toast, which is a common one when I’m drinking. I wonder where I picked it up–no one in my family are/were sailors. Must have been O’Brian.)

I ran into this information on the back of a rum bottle. Surely that’s a reliable source for naval matters.

That lead me to do some more reading at the distiller’s site, where there is a considerable amount of space devoted to booze folklore.

Here’s a couple of other examples, from the site:

Scuttled Butt / Rum Tub – In earlier years, the scuttled butt was an open (scuttled) fresh-water cask (or butt) on ship decks from which issues of the daily tot of grog were served. (As it served as a gathering point to exchange daily rumors, the term also turned into “scuttlebutt” meaning gossip.) The Grog Tub became the officially designed container from which to issue the daily tot.

Sucking the Monkey – An unlawful prank and a violation of Admiralty Regulations undertaken by “Jack” in older times in the West Indies when he would fill empty coconuts ashore with rum and then bring them back on board ship filled with the illegal rum.

I always wondered where “scuttlebutt” came from.