Peter W. Meek wrote:
On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 16:26:28 GMT, Peggie Hall
wrote:


Doug Kanter wrote:

Well, sometimes it's a partial deck above a ship's main
afterdeck. But sometimes it's not. :-)

Nope..ALWAYS a raised afterdeck, high enough to prevent taking on
water over the stern that could, in a heavy following sea, swamp
the boat and even sink it...a condition--as you correctly
noted--from the Latin, referred to as being "pooped." Hence the
name "poop deck" for a RAISED afterdeck.


I think you have it backwards. Puppis to poop deck, thence pooped.
The OED finds the use of poop (actually pouppe) for the stern of a
ship as early as 1489, but not until 1748 does someone use the word,
in an account of a ship's voyage, to mean hit by a large following
sea. The OED is not clear as to when it was first used as a modifier
of deck, but I see citations that clearly predate 1748.

The first account in English perhaps, but that doesn't necessarily make
it the first account to use a derivation of the word to describe the
event in any Latin-based language...Common use nomenclature often
emerges much later than the design or device it refers to, and is often
derived from another language, so you'd have to research French and
Spanish accounts of voyages too, to know when any derivation of the
Latin word "pouppe" to describe an event was used.

The real question is whether ALL ships' sterns were called pouppe, or
only raised sterns...or whether all oceangoing ships' sterns originally
had raised afterdecks or a high stern to keep a following sea out. Most
did, as far back as the Vikings and even the Oriental middle eastern
trading vessels that pre-date the Viking explorations by quite a few
centuries. Most of their vessels would be called "canoe" hulls today, so
"afterdeck" or "transom" may not be the appropriate term for the aft end
of those vessels...but many were even higher in the stern than in the bow.

The history of shipbuilding and seafaring is fascinatin' stuff!

--
Peggie
----------
Peggie Hall
Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987
Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and
Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor"
http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_rid_of_boat_odors.htm