That was labelled "Victory 1805" (the year of Trafalgar), and while I only saw it briefly, did appear to be _the_ Victory (although another terminological oddity is that she is a "three-decker" of "100 guns" which means neither that she has three decks nor that she has 100 guns - it means three gun-decks, and that her nominal rate is 100 guns, the calculation of nominal rate being similar but not identical to the number of guns aboard).
I think it's more that not enough time passed - if the age of sail had lasted a bit longer we'd just think of "best" and "small" as synonyms for "left" and "right", like "port" and "starboard".
Another favourite insanity there is that "port" used to be called "larboard", which just might be confused with "starboard" in a noisy environment; and that steering orders were given as manipulating a tiller, so "hard-a-starboard" above is an order which if the ship were moving forward would cause her to turn to port, or "larboard", and means the helmsmen should turn the wheel to port. I've read a reasonably plausible theory about the loss of the Titanic which suggests this confusion was to blame.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-05-07 02:02 pm (UTC)I think it's more that not enough time passed - if the age of sail had lasted a bit longer we'd just think of "best" and "small" as synonyms for "left" and "right", like "port" and "starboard".
Another favourite insanity there is that "port" used to be called "larboard", which just might be confused with "starboard" in a noisy environment; and that steering orders were given as manipulating a tiller, so "hard-a-starboard" above is an order which if the ship were moving forward would cause her to turn to port, or "larboard", and means the helmsmen should turn the wheel to port. I've read a reasonably plausible theory about the loss of the Titanic which suggests this confusion was to blame.