It's a Navy/Marine Corps thing. You cross the Equator on a ship you are a Shellback, You cross the Date Line on a ship you are a Golden Dragon. If you cross the Equator at the Date Line you are a Golden Shellback. If you cross the Arctic Circle you are a Blue Nose. If you are the first crew of a ship or unit you are a Plank Owner.
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This article needs additional citations for. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: – ( July 2016) The line-crossing ceremony is an that commemorates a person's first crossing of the.
The tradition may have originated with ceremonies when passing headlands, and become a 'folly' sanctioned as a boost to morale, or have been created as a test for seasoned sailors to ensure their new shipmates were capable of handling long rough times at sea. Equator-crossing ceremonies, typically featuring King Neptune, are common in the and are also sometimes carried out for passengers' entertainment on civilian ocean liners and cruise ships. They are also performed in the and aboard sail training ships.Throughout history, line-crossing ceremonies have sometimes become dangerous. Most modern navies have instituted regulations that prohibit physical attacks on sailors undergoing the line-crossing ceremony. Contents.Traditions Australia In 1995, a notorious line-crossing ceremony took place on the submarine.
Sailors undergoing the ceremony were physically and verbally abused before being subjected to an act called 'sump on the rump', where a dark liquid was daubed over each sailor's. One sailor was then with a long stick before all sailors undergoing the ceremony were forced to jump overboard and tread water until permitted to climb back aboard the submarine. A videotape of the ceremony was obtained by the and aired on Australian television. The coverage provoked widespread criticism, especially when the videotape showed some of the submarine's officers watching the entire proceedings from the conning tower. Canada In the, those who have not yet crossed the equator are nicknamed Tadpoles, or Dirty Tadpoles; an earlier nickname was griffins.
United Kingdom. Line-crossing ceremony aboard on the first of July 1816.By the eighteenth century, there were well-established line-crossing rituals in the.
On the voyage of to the Pacific in 1768, captained by, described how the crew drew up a list of everyone on board, including cats and dogs, and interrogated them as to whether they had crossed the equator. If they had not, they must choose to give up their allowance of wine for four days, or undergo a ducking ceremony in which they were ducked three times into the ocean. According to Banks, some of those ducked were 'grinning and exulting in their hardiness', but others 'were almost suffocated'.Captain of suggested the practice had developed from earlier ceremonies in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian vessels passing notable. He thought it was beneficial to morale. FitzRoy quoted 's 1830 description in his 1839 Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the Years 1826 and 1836.There is a detailed account of the ceremony on board in 1825 by Petty Officer John Bechervaise in his private publication Thirty-Six Years of a Sea Faring Life (1839), available from Kessinger in facsimile.
Blossom was just starting a three-year voyage of exploration around the Horn to the Arctic.A similar ceremony took place during the. As they approached the equator on the evening of 16 February 1832, a pseudo-Neptune hailed the ship. Those credulous enough to run forward to see Neptune 'were received with the watery honours which it is customary to bestow'. The officer on watch reported a boat ahead, and Captain FitzRoy ordered 'hands up, shorten sail'. Using a speaking trumpet he questioned Neptune, who would visit them the next morning. About 9am the next day, the novices or 'griffins' were assembled in the darkness and heat of the lower deck, then one at a time were blindfolded and led up on deck by 'four of Neptunes constables', as 'buckets of water were thundered all around'. The first 'griffin' was, who noted in his diary how he 'was then placed on a plank, which could be easily tilted up into a large bath of water.
— They then lathered my face & mouth with pitch and paint, & scraped some of it off with a piece of roughened iron hoop. —a signal being given I was tilted head over heels into the water, where two men received me & ducked me. —at last, glad enough, I escaped. — most of the others were treated much worse, dirty mixtures being put in their mouths & rubbed on their faces.
— The whole ship was a shower bath: & water was flying about in every direction: of course not one person, even the Captain, got clear of being wet through.' The ship's artist, made a sketch of the scene. United States United States Navy The has well-established line-crossing rituals. Sailors who have already crossed the Equator are nicknamed Shellbacks, Trusty Shellbacks, Honorable Shellbacks, or Sons of. Those who have not crossed are nicknamed Pollywogs, or Slimy Pollywogs.
History In the 19th century and earlier, the line-crossing ceremony was quite a brutal event, often involving beating pollywogs with boards and wet ropes and sometimes throwing the victims over the side of the ship, dragging the pollywog in the surf from the stern. In more than one instance, sailors were reported to have been killed while participating in a line-crossing ceremony.Baptism on the line, also called equatorial baptism, is an alternative initiation ritual sometimes performed as a ship crosses the Equator, involving water of passengers or crew who have never crossed the Equator before. The ceremony is sometimes explained as being an initiation into the court of.The ritual is the subject of a painting by Matthew Benedict named The Mariner's Baptism and of a 1961 book by Henning Henningsen named Crossing the Equator: Sailor's Baptism and Other Initiation Rites.U.S. President described his crossing-the-line ceremony aboard the 'Happy Ship' with his 'Jolly Companions' in a letter to his wife on 26 November 1936. Later, during World War II, the frequency of the ceremony increased dramatically, especially in the United States Navy in the Pacific, where the service's fleet operations grew enormously to counter widely dispersed Japanese forces. As late as World War II, the line-crossing ceremony was still rather rough and involved activities such as the 'Devil's Tongue', which was an electrified piece of metal poked into the sides of those deemed pollywogs. Beatings were often still common, usually with wet firehoses, and several World War II Navy deck logs speak of sailors visiting after crossing the line.
Efforts to curtail the line-crossing ceremony did not begin until the 1980s, when several reports of blatant began to circulate regarding the line-crossing ceremony, and at least one death was attributed to abuse while crossing the line. Neptune Day celebration on the Fall 2013 voyage ofToday The two-day event (evening and day) is a ritual in which previously inducted crew members (Trusty Shellbacks), aka Seamen of the U.S. Navy, are organized into a 'Court of Neptune' and induct the Slimy Pollywogs into 'the mysteries of the Deep'.
Physical hardship, in keeping with the spirit of the initiation, is tolerated, and each Pollywog is expected to endure a standard initiation rite in order to become a Shellback. Depending on the Ocean or Fleet AOR, there can be variations in the rite. 'Imperial Domain of Golden Dragon' card given to Graham S.
Eyers, Jonathan (2011). Don't Shoot the Albatross!: Nautical Myths and Superstitions. A&C Black, London, UK. ^ (1839) Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the years 1826 and 1836, London: Henry Colburn. Pp. July 10, 2005, at the.
Retrieved 2013-11-18. ^ Keynes, R. (2001) Charles Darwin's Beagle diary, Cambridge University Press, pp. Banks, Joseph (1962).
Beaglehole, J.C. The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768-1771. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Pp. 1: 176-7.
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(1830), Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, London: eBook. Retrieved 2013-11-18.
Appleton, Victor (1916). Grosset & Dunlap. The Bellaconda 'crossed the line,' and there was the usual horseplay among the sailors when Father Neptune came aboard to hold court. Those who had never before been below the equator were made to undergo more or less of an initiation, being lathered and shaved, and then pushed backward into a canvas tank of water on deck.
February 11, 2006, at the., Blanche (1999). Eleanor Roosevelt, vol. 2 (1933-1938). New York: Penguin. P. 398. By the end of WW II, the United States Navy had added nearly 1,200 major combatant vessels to its combined fleet. This amounted to over 70% of the world's total number of military ships measuring 1,000 tons or greater.
King, Ernest J., USN. 'Major Combatant Ships Added to United States Fleet, 7 December 1941 - 1 October 1945', ibiblio.org.
US Navy at War 1941-1945: Official Report to the Secretary of the Navy. Retrieved June 7, 2017. ^ Richardson, Keith P. (1 April 1977).
'Western Folklore'. 36 (2): 154–159.
Retrieved 2013-11-18. Retrieved 18 November 2013. Silvey, Frank. Naval History and Heritage Command.
Retrieved 3 July 2017. Director of Naval History. Naval History and Heritage Command. Retrieved 3 July 2017. Www.shortsnorter.org.External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to.
Lydenberg, Harry Miller (1957). New York: New York Public Library. Some accounts of baptism on the line:. The Anti-Vacation. Pust-Norden.
on ships' ceremony.
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