Three bits of a boat you may be calling the wrong thing

Speed limits are knots, a nod to when a ship’s speed was calculated using a knotted rope and an egg timer as a stopwatch. There’s no left and right, and instead, there is port and starboard. Boat hulls are still mostly measured in feet rather than metres, and engines have reserves of horsepower, not kilowatts.

Big changes in the way we enjoy going out on the water mean that in the last 100 years, the number of people who can own and operate a boat has soared. However, where in the past taking to the water was a skill that had to be learned much like a skilled carpenter first has to serve an apprenticeship, Australian boaters need only get a boat licence, and then a boat.

It means that a lot of the rich history of boating is slowly slipping away as the quaint terms once widespread on the water slowly fade away.

Here are three of the old-world nautical terms we’d like to see preserved... 

Technically, the only bit of rope on a boat was the one attached to a ship’s bell, used for marking time in the days of sail.

What a rope is called on a boat depends on what it is used for. If it pulls something up or lowers it, it’s a halyard. If it trims a sail, it’s a sheet. If it holds something up, it’s a shroud or stay.

If it ties something to land it’s a line, springer or, if it’s especially thick, a hawser, and if you use it to pull a boat, a warp. If it extends out the front of a small boat such as a tender and is used for towing behind the motor yacht or tying up, it’s a painter.

If it attaches your anchor to the boat, it’s a rode.

We’ve already indicated that the rope (and chain) used to connect the anchor to the boat is called a rode. The end of the rode that attaches to the boat is called the bitter end – a term that even today remains firmly entrenched in our language.

Why is it called the bitter end? It’s because it is the end of the rode that was attached to a post on the forepeak of the boat called a bit.

In theory, if your anchor rode is attached to something that sticks up on the front of the boat, technically it’s a bitt, even if we prefer to call it a bollard.

Smaller boats traditionally have a single bitt, while larger ones will use a double bitt. A cleat, something that’s common on just about every boat, is pretty much a horizontal bitt.

You don’t go to the toilet on a boat. Instead, you hit something called the head.

Back in the days of sail, there were no toilets on a boat. Instead, sailors wandered up to the head, or front, of the boat to do their business.

The reason for this was pretty simple – the action of the waves washing over the hull of the boat as it made its way through the water helped clean out the head and scrubbed the hull of anything that happened to be stuck to it. 

Since sailing ships tended to be crewed almost exclusively by men, the head was used for number twos. For number ones, a pissdale – the forefather of the urinal – was usually fitted along the rail. 

Oh, and the poop deck is not what you think. It’s an old reference to a raised deck that was built above a cabin in the rear, or aft, section of the boat. It comes from the French ‘poupe’ meaning ‘stern’, the rear of the boat.