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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by krump excuse my Canadian ignorance - I understand the Navy stuff a bit, but squid appears as slang connected with Navy position--- I'm lost on the "bubblehead" comments though and can only offer the guess that this term would refer to a Navy DIVER ??? - or is it simply referring to submarine personnel? any clarity here for me...? [8D][:D][^][C):-)] [/quote] Sailors have been developing jargons and slang for centuries. It's often difficult for the outsider to determine what's being talked about when a couple of sailors start talking. In answer to your question, bubblehead is U.S. Navy slang for a submariner, not a diver. As further examples of slang, there's [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by dharmon I'm a brown shoe, still on active duty....... ......but coffee is only a buck a week at the geedunk.[/quote] A brown shoe is also known as a airdale, which is slang for an aviator. BTW, black shoes are skimmers, or surface sailors. The geedunk is the snack bar, something only found on bird farms (aircraft carriers) and other large ships or the geedunk can be an informal coffee mess. Sailors are also fond of nicknaming ships. Some of these nicknames are innocuous, for instance my first ship was the James K. Polk, nicknamed the Jimmy K. Some of the nicknames aren't so nice, as with my second ship the Ulysses S. Grant was called the Useless S. Grunt. My favorite story about ship's nicknames comes from the Royal Navy. In 1912 Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, the civilian minister running the Navy. He wanted to call a battleship that was being built the Pitt, after two Prime Ministers, father and son, named William Pitt. The British monarch doesn't have particularly much power, but he does have a veto over ship's names (they are, after all, His Majesty's Ships). So Churchill submitted Pitt to King George V. George was originally the second son, wasn't expected to become king, and was expected to actually work for a living. So George entered the Royal Navy and served for nearly 20 years, rising to the rank of Captain and commanding a cruiser, before his elder brother died and he became the heir to the throne. George vetoed the name Pitt. Churchill saw George and gave him a 15 minute lecture on the Pitts, explaining that either one of them was deserving of having a ship named after him and the two of them together? Well, there could be no question that there should be a battleship named Pitt. George replied that he had no objection to the Pitts, but rather to the name. He knew what sailors were going to nickname a ship called Pitt. The ship was called the Warspite, and was one of the more famous battleships in both World War I and World War II.
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