Overboard by Chip Dunham for October 23, 2010

That’s awful nice of you, Nate!

Good Saturday Morning, crew!

Yeah, Nate’s more into tyranating and dominizing anyway!

A willing foe and sea room, mateys!

You could have body slammed him into the deck, Nate.

Good Morning, Crew!

So, you just stand there in the corner and pretend to be thrown overboard.

Good Morning, Maties!

A pirate on the open seas that can’t swim?

Good Morning Crew,

Looks like the Green Ship Pirate has a little time out.

Thanks Nate.

Have a GREAT DAY MATIE’S

lazymud, in the days of sailing ships (and I’ll venture tosay, even today) many sailors didn’t know how to swim, and were superstitiously afraid of the water..

^ Also, it was sometimes thought a bad thing to know how to swim. If you DID wind up overboard (more probably, the boat itself would sink), it was considered preferrable to drown quickly than to struggle fultilely for hours before you finally went under (or even worse, to still be alive when the sharks found you; think of Quint’s story about the USS Indianapolis in “Jaws”). A sailor who can’t swim is going to be far more careful on deck than one who can.

In one of Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin books, Jack Aubrey jumps into the sea to rescue a sailor who’d gone overboard, and the rest of the crew were AMAZED that their captain actually knew how to swim. Aubrey’s nickname was “Lucky Jack”, but he wasn’t NEARLY as lucky as the crewman he fished out of the drink…

Nate’s such a softie! :-)

Hello, Crew!

Put a Life Saver around him first Nate, then throw him overboard.