MARITIME TRADITIONS at SEA

HAVE YOU EVER CROSSED THE LINE?

Every New Year many of us have traditions and customs that we follow, whether it is a New Years Eve tradition of singing the most commonly sung song "Auld Lang Syne" or  a New Years Day tradition of making a New Year's resolution.

Canada's Navy is rich in traditions and customs. Some of these traditions and customs are borrowed (primarily from the Royal Navy), some have their origins in truly ancient practices, and some are the result of a unique blend of the old, the new and the emerging aspirations and interests of new generations of sailors.

The history of sailing is almost as old as civilization itself. From time immemorial, man has yearned to cross the next frontier, to explore unknown lands. And, until very recently, that usually involved a trip at sea.

Sailors have always been one of the most superstitious groups of people out there, and remain so to this day. Most modern day Naval traditions and customs are evolved from either ancient superstition, or from the harsh punishment needed to keep discipline, when all your men wanted to do was to stay with the nice people on the warm sunny isle and eat tropical fruit, rather than go back onto the dank, dirty ship and get scurvy.

The custom of marking a sailor's first passage across important geographical parallels with a special ceremony is so old that its origins are hard to trace. Yet it lives on in modern times through a ceremony called Crossing the Line, and remains an important rite of passage even for 21st century sailors.

Anyone versed in the history of navigation will be able to tell you that humans were able, using the positions of the heavenly bodies, to determine their latitude as early as 1514. With the ability to measure their latitude, sailors now knew when they were crossing the equator. So, we suddenly had another excuse to be fearful, and have a ceremony, which creates another custom and tradition that will be followed.

The custom of marking a sailor's first passage across important geographical parallels with a special ceremony has been a tradition for centuries. Sailors who have not yet participated in the ceremony (Slimy Pollywogs) must do so in order to become Trusty Shellbacks.

Ceremonies vary from navy to navy, and from ship to ship. Pretty much the only constants will be kneeling before King Neptune, and begging forgiveness for being a filthy slimy Pollywog, and the traditional dunking in the sea. Today it usually is in a  pool (or one of the ship's boats) filled with sea water. It is this dunking which cleanses the "filth" from the slimy Pollywog, and after that point he or she can be considered a Trusty Shellback.

Depending upon which line you cross, you may become something other than a simple Trusty Shellback. Here is a list of some of the ranks sailors can acquire--

Arctic Circle: The Order of the Blue Nose / Polar Bear
Antarctic Circle: The Order of the Red Nose / Emperor Penguin
International Date Line & Equator: The Order of the Golden Dragon / Golden Shellback
Prime Meridian & Equator: Royal Diamond Shellback / Double Diamond Shellback / Emerald Shellback
Panama Canal: The Order of the Ditch
Strait of Gibraltar: The Order of the Rock
Suez Canal: Safari to Suez
Black Sea: The Realm of the Czars
Circumnavigate the Earth: The Order of Magellan

Such customs and traditions are the stuff of which a sailor's life is made.