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From: John Winters <jwinters_at_onlink.net> subject: [Paddlewise] Nomenclature Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 05:50:31 -0500 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:26 PDT

Richard Culpeper remarked that he did not know why Lake Freighters were
called boats.

My Dear Young Man,

It pleases me no end to hear of your keen interest in etymology. Sadly our
much reformed education system has abandoned the teaching of this worthwhile
topic (and others) in favour of standardized testing. The government now
believes that asking students to explain in twenty-five words or less why
Jesus of Nazareth was a Progressive Conservative boggles constitutes
education. Are producing a nation of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
contestants? Who teaches the virgin minds to ask the right questions?

Still some bright lights flicker. Just last week a sweet young child of
nature tugged at my coat tales and asked me, "Professor Inverbon tell my why
if my daddy owned 5000 shares of Nortel on January First he had to trade in
his Beemer on a 1982 Plymouth Volare and give up his vanity plate today?"
How can anyone give a short answer to such a question burning in her
youthful breast? Certainly not me so I smiled, patted her on her cute little
red head and asked her to stop by my home later where I would show her some
stock charts.

But I digress.

Richard asked about boats and the answer lies in our native maritime
history.

Long before the pale eyes brought social diseases to the natives of North
America the Cree carried on a flourishing trade with  the Maumee across the
Mother of Waters (Lake Superior to white folk). from what is Now Montreal to
Thunder Bay the great Cree birchships ruled the lakes as the Phoenicians
ruled the Mediterranean in their huge Flamingos ( in honour of these great
navigators the bird group of flamingos were named of Phoenicopteriformes).
But where there is trade there is bureaucracy and the Southern Indians
levied harbour taxes on the huge birchbark ships of the Cree. The Cree
didn't gain such power by being stupid and their sea lawyers drew up a
lengthy document with attached appeals stating that their  "ships" were
actually "boats" based on ancient principles of admiralty law held forth as
inviolate that no ship worthy of the name could be held together by spruce
roots. from then on all ships on the lakes were called "boats". When the
patronizing white man arrived he threw the natives a bone and agreed to
support native culture by continuing the custom of calling everything that
floated including soap a boat in trade for a few million beaver pelts and
the chief's daughter. The Chief was glad to be rid of her as she chewed
tobacco. The beaver spread Giardia so that was no great loss either.

The more modern development, the calling of large freighters ore boats,
stems from the practice of using the boats as floating brothels. Canadians
are notorious for dropping their "W's" and "H's" and so we have "Ore Boats".

Similarly the word "sponson" derives from the Swedish navigator Augustus
Spawn who first attached bags of chum (rotten dead fish)  to the sides of
his boat in hopes of drawing fish close enough to catch using a large dip
net. The dip net was handled by his son Gustav who also mixed the chum.
After steaming back and forth across the bay for a few hours  the smell of
the chum would waft ashore and people would say. "That's old Spawn and his
son fishing in the bay." The smell permeated every pore of Gustav's body and
soon every thing that stank was called a Spawnson. The Brits who believe
that naming a thing constitutes ownership, corrupted it to "sponson" which
soon came to be attached to the fatty sausages that stink up the typical
English kitchen every morning. Eventually they came to be called "bangers"
after the sounds made by those who ate them. These British Offal tubes look
so much like the tubes used by timid modern day kayakers to provide sense of
security when all else including common sense fails that the word sponson
has re-emerged.

Sincerely,
Dr. Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G

Transcribed by his humble servant John Winters who takes no responsibility
for the accuracy or attitudes express or implied.

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