As The Saying Goes

I am now into my thirteenth year of editing the bi-annual magazine of a sailing association that we belong to. When compiling the magazine there are often little pockets of space, usually at the bottom of a page, where it doesn’t seem sensible to start a new article when it would look better beginning on the following page. This means that I have to find ‘fillers’ for these spaces.

From the first issue that I produced I began a series of ‘fillers’ which I called “As The Saying Goes”. For this series I take a well-known phrase that has its roots in the glory days of sail and explain how the saying came into being and what it means. I try to find those phrases that are less obviously nautical and that I think will be of interest to the members. Another advantage of this series is that some sayings need longer explanations than others so I can pick and choose appropriate ones to fill the space available.

Having just completed and sent out our Spring/Summer issue for this year I thought it might be of interest to post here the saying that appears in the current issue:

“By and Large”

The expression ‘by and large’ is used in common parlance today to mean on the whole, generally speaking, all things considered, but it is yet another expression of nautical origin. To understand this we need to understand what is meant by the nautical terms ‘by’ and ‘large’.

A ship is said to be sailing ‘large’ when the wind is blowing from a compass point somewhere behind the direction of travel, either directly behind or on the stern quarter. Conversely to sail ‘by’, or ‘by the wind’, means to be sailing as close-hauled as possible into the direction of the wind. To ‘sail by and large’ required the ship to sail not only downwind but also against the wind. The 19th Century windjammers like the Cutty Sark were able to maintain progress ‘by and large’ even in bad wind conditions by the use of aerodynamic triangular sails and large crews of able seamen.

So there you have it!

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