"Walk the plank", 1763 (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Dan Goncharoff]

An interesting dichotomy -- searching for "walk the plank" and mutiny
finds mainly non-fiction hits; changing mutiny to pirate leads mainly
to fiction.

DanG



On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Walk the plank", 1763 (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Good find.
>
> 1860.
>
> No pirates.
>
> ("Nore muling" is scannerese for "Nore mutiny," alluded to in _Billy Budd_.)
>
> JL
>
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "Walk the plank", 1763 (UNCLASSIFIED)
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Adding to the confusion is the claim that making someone "walking the
>> plank" was not an act of murder but a dunking:
>>
>> The sailors' and soldiers' magazine, Volume 40 (1860) p313
>>
>> [About twelve years ago, it was generally rumoured in Penzance that G.
>> C. Smith would appear at the Guildhall beiore the Mayor, respecting
>> some interruption that disturbed him in the chapel where he preached.
>> The consequence was that a large assembly gathered at the Hall upon
>> the occasion referred to; and Mr, Dark, a respectable attorney, stood
>> up, near the Mayor, to address G. C. S. in cross examination, to such
>> an unlookedfor extent, that at length G. C. S. seeing the design of
>> the attorney, by various appeals, was to defeat the object he had in
>> view, ha said," Had you, sir, been with us in the Nore muling, you
>> would haw been ordered to walk the plank, if yon had been thus severe
>> with any of us on board then." G. C. 8. was Midshipman in H.M.S.
>> Agamemion, 64, belonging to Admiral Lord Duncan's North Sea fleet, in
>> the year 1797, when the ship's company of five hundred men took
>> possession of her, and ran that ship to the Nore, to join the other
>> ships in mutiny there; and confined all the officers in the cabins,
>> but some with a rope round their loins, which denoted they were to
>> walk the plank, as it wai called, and sink overboardå‚­ut to be pulled
>> up again and fixed in their berths. To " walk the plank" therefore,
>> became a common expression for temporary punishment; but when G. G. S.
>> mentioned this in the Town Hall about Mr. Dark, the Mayor very
>> naturally called upon him to demand of the words, and G. C. S.
>> replied," He would have got a dipping in the sea."]
>>
>>
>> DanG
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Jonathan Lighter
>> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> "walk the plank"
>>
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>>
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>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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