WHAT IS A MIDSHIPMAN?

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 48, 20 November 1907, Page 4

WHAT IS A MIDSHIPMAN?

By luck, I, for the first timq in my life, have found a plausible derivation for midshipman. - - It would appear that in tho days immediately after the flood the vessels were very high at the ends, between' which there was a cloop "waist," giving no ready means of passing from one U> tho othor. To meet this difficulty there wore employed a class of men, usually young and alert, who from their station were called midshipmen, to carry messages which were not subject for the trumpet shout. If this explanation holds water it, like forecastle, and after-guard, and knight-heads, gives another instance of survival of nomenclature from conditions which have long ceased. Whatever the origin of his title, it well expressed the anomalous and undefined position of tho midshipman, i Ho belonged, so to say, to both omls of tho ship, as well as to the middlo, and his duties and privileges alike fell ivithin tho broad saying, already quoted, that what'was nobody's business was a midshipman's. When appointed as such; in later days, ho came in "with the hayseed in his hair, and went out fit for a lieutenant's charge; but from first to last, whatever his personal progress, ho continued, as a midshipman, a handy-billy.—Captain A. T. Mnhnn, in "Harper's Magazine.