Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Come in through the hawse-pipe

 As I head to Seattle for the Left Coast Crime mystery conference this week, it seems apt to highlight a fairly obscure (to me, anyway!) nautical expression that I bumped into while writing The Secret in the Wall: Come in through the hawse-pipe.

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I no longer recall where I first read this term, but do remember being befuddled. I had no idea what a hawse-pipe was, and as an expression, come in (or up) through the hawse-pipe clearly meant something idiomatic, although it wasn't at all clear to me what that meaning was. However, since the expression was nautical in origin and popped up in 19th century writings,  I really wanted to use it in my book. But first, I had to track down the meaning!

According to an article about nautical language on the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Center website, a hawse-pipe is a pipe in the ship's bow for the anchor cable to run through. The entry continues, "Anybody who has risen to Captain from lowly deckhand is said to have come up through the hawse-pipe." A page on the USS Constitution Museum site also provides the same definition :

... A person makes officer by "coming up through the hawse hole (or pipe)". Meaning, that person rose through the ranks from the lowest rating as an enlisted individual to that of a commissioned officer.

If you want more information about hawse holes (or pipes) and the restoration of the USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides"), please check out the whole article.

And with that, it's time for me to set sail, er, that is, hop a flight and head north to Seattle!

There's a hawse-pipe there, somewhere...
Portrait (circa 1895) of the full-rigged ship Canada, painted by Antonio Jacobsen (1850-1921). Portrait is part of the collection of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, Nova Scotia, accession number M96.43.369. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.