The Cap’ns English

My father-in-law, the Cap’n, owned a beautiful Ketch called Psyche. As a general helper, crew, and cook,  I tried to keep up on all the maintenance and provisioning. One day, I was aboard cleaning up from a week-long family jaunt to Monhegan when the Cap’n appeared and started getting ready to make sail. I fumed that half the items stowed below were adrift, and I needed a whole day to re-stow them. That started an argument.

One didn’t argue with the Cap’n, he’d spent the years ashore since swallowing the anchor selling soap for Lever Brothers. Saying NO was just another opportunity to get you to yes.

Getting Biblical

After ten minutes of futile argument on my part, he just tamped a new charge of Holiday tobacco into his pipe, lit up, puffed to get it going, looked at me, and said, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Let’s get underway. Now these savory bits of Biblical quotation had less to do with any actual religious belief, and more to do with the style of Coastal English the Cap’n had grown up with. Over the years of working and sailing with him, I had cataloged many of them. Once in a while, I was even successful in turning one back at him. One takes you victories, however you can get them.

After thinking frantically for a moment, I piped up that all the navigation gear was ashore for reorganization- we’d get lost. “I’ve sailed these waters all my life, I could bring her home in a new moon with a heavy overcast!”

Sweet reason never worked with the Cap’n. I began digging through my collection of the biblical quotations he loved to quote at me. Let’s see – “He who sups with the devil should use a long spoon”? No. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” ( Proverbs). Nope. “The wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the promotion of fools ( Proverbs). Nope. Then, thinking of how tired I was and how hard I had worked all day, I came upon “Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn” (Corinthians). This one stopped the Captain for a few seconds. It was a personal favorite of his.

Off to Sea

Then his eyes took on that steely glare that most Master Mariners learn, and he replied to me with a phrase that was probably ancient in the days of the Athenian Navy -“ “Grumble ye may, but go ye shall!

We went for a lovely sail.

That was years ago, but somehow my kids will tell you that I’ve stopped them cold with a steely glare and a firm “Grumble ye may, but go ye shall! I learned from one of the best!