2/14/15
Marathon FL
Posted by Bill

This is the Tiki Hut at Harbour Cay Club. Every day around sunset, everyone brings cocktails and gathers at the Tiki Hut to watch the sun go down and socialize. There is a sign hanging in the hut that reads “The Cone of Knowledge”. Sometimes there is a good exchange of knowledge, and some days a good exchange of bullshit, but it is usually a fun time.

The other day,at the Tiki Hut, I learned something new that I think everyone would find interesting. There are many phrases and terms that we use in our everyday conversation that are derived from nautical origin, and often it is not obvious. Such is the origin of a term that we use quite frequently, and one that has multiple meanings.

In the 1700s and 1800s, the northern part of New England was primarily a crop producing area. Cattle and livestock were typically raised in the southern New England states. As such, there was a lucrative market for fertilizer in northern New England, where there was no animal waste to fertilize the fields. The cattle farms would save the animal waste and mix it with hay, forming it into bails. The bails were loaded into cargo ships and transported to northern New England in the typical bilge storage. During the first series of shipments, the water that naturally accumulated in the bilge of the ship mixed with the bails of fertilizer, creating a less than desirable environment for a ship, and they quickly learned to store the bails higher in the cargo area and away from the bilge water. Consequently, they labeled the bails to insure proper stowage: Stow High In Transit, abbreviated S.H.I.T.

There you have it…direct from the Cone of Knowledge!