Introductory material
Reading edition
“The sea language is not soon learned, much less understood, being only proper to him that has served his apprenticeship: besides that, a boisterous sea and stormy weather will make a man not bred on it so sick, that it bereaves him of legs and stomach and courage, so much as to fight with his meat. And in such weather, when he hears the seamen cry starboard, or port, or to bide alooff, or flat a sheet, or haul home a cluling, he thinks he hears a barbarous speech, which he conceives not the meaning of.”
(Sir William Monson’s Naval Tracts.)