Behold, the Head!

[Clyde A. Phillips]

Well, Greg started me thinking.  Do you know why a head is called a head?

It started innocently enough back in the old days.  Not the old days when I was a boy, but back in the beginnings of sailing off shore on long voyages where you could not wait until you got home.  Something was needed.  Now, for stand up jobs it was easy; just walk to a convenient spot at the rail and pump out your personal bilge.  But a real need for a place to sit didn’t take long to make itself felt.  The first idea, that of sitting on a rail with your bare after section hanging over worked well.  Well enough on boats with either vertical or flared topsides or on the lee side when that rail was down by reason of a steady wind.

Mankind’s internal system doesn’t allow for a long shot and the only power used is basically gravity.  So, the smart sailors (there are some smart ones) or the owners of the boats looked for a way to keep their boats clean and shipshape and Bristol fashion.  This led to going forward farther than the hull went.  That took them to the area where only the bowsprit and its rigging was and still is.

Have you ever heard of head sails?  Do you know where the figurehead is?  What about the head gear (what we called the bowsprit rigging)?  Yep, you’re right, they are at the head of the boat, forward of the majority of the boat.  Benches were built to each side of the sprit.  On the top of the benches were some holes (not too large, not too small) and below the holes was the sea.  These holes, set as they were at a comfortable sitting height, soon were found by the swabbies  who were moved to use them.  In time these benches became known as just “heads.”

But soon it became necessary to move the head astern.  Think of it, sitting up there at the head on the head in a head sea.  This situation may have been the inspiration for the bidet.  Any newfangled feature of any type often has a long acceptance period and the bidet is no exception.  The boys on the earliest heads had no desire to find their head converted to a bidet when in a heavy sea, so they looked for another place to locate the head.  The use of the word head to mean a place of relief was so ingrained by that time that when the head was moved aft it carried with it its long acquired name.

When the passenger trade picked up the discomfort of being out in the wind and the weather did not sit well with the non-nautical mind, so privacy was provided by building outhouses aft on the sides of the vessel and across the stern where an overhanging transom allowed benches to open to the sea below.  Behold, the head.

[brent and leslie bandi]

Haha! This was a great read! Thanks for posting.

[bob mitchell]

ARRRRRG ..........to much information! (and clyde, of course since you are a generation ahead, "to much information" is also known as TMI, is not derogatory, but simply wondering if I wanted to sea the images that you conjured up.