Welcome to Maritime Sayings

A lot of commonly used expressions which people never stop to think about have their origins in the ways and traditions of sailors on board ship.

We thought that it would be interesting to build a collection of these sayings as part of the Jolly Roger library.

Anybody who wants to add examples is invited to contribute to this collection.

The idea is to make the phrase the title for a new topic and then add your explanation as the first posting.
Please check to see if a topic already exists before creating a new one.

Some sayings can have more than one derivation and nobody knows which is the correct one. If you read a particular explanation and know an alternative, you can add it as an extra post within the topic.

I look forward to reading the collection as it builds