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If anyone ever asks you about sails
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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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Are you fucking kidding me? You're gonna look me in the eye and tell me the sail flying above the poop deck is called a spanker?
Unfortunately not! The poop deck is an elevated deck, aka a sterncastle; back aft on this one is the quarterdeck.
Question, if I may: in some sailing / pirate works I've read, a ship has been said to be making a "spanking pace."
Any relation with that back sail there?
Interesting! I can't actually say on that one; to me, "spanking" sounds like an old fashioned intensifier I've heard "brand spanking new" a few times, which feels like the same kind of use. As to whether that has anything to do with the sail, I'm not sure. It looks like the sail itself was introduced in the late 18th century; in Seamanship in the Age of Sail, John Harland reports that one William Nicholson complains about the new sail design in a book of his in 1792. That's the closest I can get to origin of the term.
Thanks for checking that out! On my end, I found this version of "spank": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spanking#Etymology_1
Which of course is different from the other meaning, to "punish by swatting."
As for an example, from Tintin's Secret of the Unicorn:
https://i.imgur.com/6BguONT.jpeg
Interesting! That definition kind of fits with the sail that the Spanker replaced, which was called the Driver.