In Poul Anderson's Murder Bound, the Norwegian ship, the Valborg, has an "'...oiler...'" (vi, p. 48) There are no Oilers in the Lancaster and South Cumbria Telephone Directory. (I once read a book review of a new Telephone Directory. It said, "All our old friends are here," then listed some well obscure surnames.)
The Valborg's owners have done business with a "'...ship chandler...'" (vi, p. 57) called Perlmutter. We have three Chandlers. A "perlmutter" was probably a worker with pearls. See House of Names. We have no Perlmutters.
While the Valborg is in port, its "black gang," including the oiler, are on watch, keeping the generator going. The black and deck gangs "'...work different places and keep separate messes.'" (p. 48) I never knew that. (Armed forces, elaborately hierarchical, keep three keep three separate messes: officers, NCOs, privates.)
Reading Poul Anderson is an education.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I should have realized it, but of course the furniture in mess rooms would be bolted to the deck!
Maybe we don't have people named "Oiler" because by the time oil came to be used as fuel for ships after 1900, Anglo/US surnames had become fixed and standardized, with "new" names coming largely from foreign languages.
I knew about the "black gangs" of ships. It referred to how men who worked at fueling ships with coal became covered with black coal dust.
Sean
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