The Etymology of Keelson and Some Fourteenth-century British Evidence for Tacking Gear

摘要

This note examines two entries from royal shipyard account books from the reigns of Edward I and Henry VI that throw light on the use of keels and related timbers, and of wooden sail-trimming gear on ships identified with the Anglo-French term escomer, ‘skimmer’, judged to have been light patrol boats. The rich nautical vocabulary of these utilitarian accounts, in Latin or Anglo-French, with occasional early Middle English words, has been little studied since the publication in 1951 of Bertil Sandahl’s Middle English Sea Terms. Renewed scrutiny, initially from a linguistic perspective, will yield a better understanding of the name for a principal ship’s timber, the keelson, and for the less well known tacking spar and sail pin, also mentioned in the first account entry to be examined.