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Updated: July 29, 2025
Now, nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing land-lubber; a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him. Yet, useless as such a character may be in many respects, a ship's company is by no means disposed to let him reap any benefit from his deficiencies.
My father's early seafaring experience gave him the latter title to the end of his life. It was hard to keep the boys from going off to sea before they were grown. No inland occupation attracted them. "Land-lubber" was one of the most contemptuous epithets heard from boyish lips. The spirit of adventure developed in them a rough, breezy type of manliness, now almost extinct.
My face might have told tales upon me; for more than once I was taken to task by my ruffian companions, who jeered me for my scruples, calling me "green-horn", "land-lubber", "son of a gun", "son of a sea-cook," and other like contemptuous appellations, of which, among sailors, there is an extensive vocabulary.
My uncle pitied my dejection, and bid me prepare myself against next year, for no land-lubber should touch his money. A reprieve however was obtained, and perhaps some new stratagem might have succeeded another spring; but my uncle unhappily made amorous advances to my mother's maid, who, to promote so advantageous a match, discovered the secret with which only she had been entrusted.
Before we were half way across the lake nearly all were sea-sick, passengers and sailors. The poor fellow at the helm stuck to his post casting up his accounts at the same time, putting on an air of terrible misery. This, I thought was pretty hard usage for a land-lubber like myself who had never been on such rough water before.
"Captain's name?" "Captain Antonius Merrydew." "Ah, poor chap! He was lying sick below when she struck, wasn't he? And he had a wife aboard, and a child born at sea, hadn't he? Fell sick in the Bay o' Biscay, like any land-lubber, didn't he? Why, 'tis like play-actin'; damme! 'tis better than that."
She glanced back, nodded, said, "Come in, children," picked up the "widow," and discarded with quick twitches of the cards. The frightened Mr. Wrenn, feeling like a shipwrecked land-lubber, compared this gaming smoking woman unfavorably with the intense respectability of his dear lost patron, Mrs. Zapp.
And knowing what sort of navigation a fellow'd have in the hands of that sort of land-craft, I began to think about laying my course for another port. 'Hold on here, says a big-sided land-lubber, seizing me by the fore-sheets. 'Cast off there, says I, 'or I'll put ye on yer beam-ends. "'I'm a constable, says he, pulling out a pair of irons he said must go on my hands."
He and Lloyd spent hours laying their course and making out lists of stores with which to furnish the schooner, regardless of the doubt expressed by their friends as to the capacity of the boat. "They calmly proceeded with their interminable lists and scorned the criticism of a mere land-lubber. All conversation that was not of a nautical character failed to hold their interest."
"I think you need a guide, for you walk the quarter-deck better than the dry land; and, if I mistake not, there are sundry pit-falls in the way to your present home. I know my path; and, besides, am a regular land-lubber." "Save and bless your honour!" exclaimed the young sailor, holding all land-lubbers in thorough contempt: "that ye're not: land-lubber, indeed!
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