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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2761 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 1, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Being afraid of water but working in a coastal town is funny, though. And the kind of tough choices you might have to make in the real world: if the best (or only) job you can get is a tourist town by the sea, then that's the one you take.

I wonder sometimes about all the people who got impressed into service aboard naval vessels who couldn't even swim, and what that must have been like. But also, why would you not, at that point, learn to swim‽

Think about it. You're already on board a ship. How are you going to learn to swim? Yeah, there's the sea, but if you go into the sea then it's "man overboard" and the ship might well go so far past you, you are lost. Stop and drop anchor? so the new crew can learn to swim? Do you not know there's a war on?

For you see, sailors often leave the ship at ports, which as a rule have good water access.

I think if I've been impressed against my will, should I get to a port my main objective is "get the hell off this ship and flee" and not "time to book some swimming lessons".

Even crazier, I believe many old-timey sailors considered it bad luck to know how to swim. I suppose because you were acknowledging the possibility of going over.

My mum told me she'd heard that, if you end up in the north Atlantic, you're pretty much guaranteed to freeze to death in a matter of minutes. Being able to swim would just prolong your agony.

Depends a lot on latitude and season. I've swum in the Atlantic and it's not pleasant but felt like I could sustain it for a long time, and that was a lot colder than I assume the water in Rio de Janeiro is. But yeah much of the Atlantic will kill you very quickly.

Sorry, I should have specified that I was talking about Irish fishermen. Even going a few miles off the west coast, if you fall in the drink you will probably freeze very quickly.

If you went over the side it'd only delay the inevitable.

If you went over the side yes. But it was not unheard of for ships to get blown onto a lee shore in the age of sail. Provided there were not crazy breakers on the shore, knowing how to swim might have made the difference in survivability in that case.

Would being able to swim even save a sailor if he were washed overboard in a storm? I feel doubtful.

I expect naval vessels didn't have swimming pools in those days.

It was actually fairly common for ships to lower a sail into the water to create a safe, shallow pool for the sailors to swim in when they had good weather on a leisurely Sunday. At least according to Patrick O'Brien.

Yeah, but I imagine they spent a significant amount of time in ports or around beaches. When the ship is anchored for a foreseeable amount of time, they would have had a chance to learn it.

I know that since most didn't learn it that it probably somehow made sense to them not to learn it anyway, but it's hard to explain from my perspective too. I learned as a kid and it felt pretty much effortless, but maybe it's harder for an adult to learn it. And it's not like it's very likely to save your life; from their point of view, it's likely if you fell in the drink it was in a situation where swimming wouldn't help much (ship just got sank, big storm). Maybe it'd mean additional dangerous tasks might be asked of you if your superiors find out you can swim.

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