Not P but Moby-Dick (22)

[Ian Livingston]

Yes. Wooden ships were noisy.

Anybody here note the recent redeployment of sails (though not fabric) on
commercial ships?

On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 8:40 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> More from Chapter 40:
>
> DANISH SAILOR.
>
> Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest! Well done!
> The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He’s no more afraid than the isle
> fort at Cattegat put there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, on
> which the sea-salt cakes!
>
> What does "crack" mean here? Melville Electronic Library (
> melville.electroniclibrary.org ) says it refers to the noise wooden ship
> makes, while the Online Annotation ( http://www.powermobydick.com ) says
> it
> means "go swiftly".
>
> The latter meaning does appear in the OED:
>
> III.22.a.
> *intransitive*. To ‘whip’ on, ‘pelt’ along, travel with speed; *Nautical*
> to clap on full sail (*colloquial*)
> --
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>