Events - Part 13

Crossing the Line

Crossing the equator on a ship, known as "crossing the line", has long been an event that merits an initiation ceremony for sailors who have not crossed the equator before.  In the British Navy, it dates back to at least 1768, when Captain Cook's vessel crossed the equator.  First-timers were ducked into the ocean three times.

By 1832, on Charles Darwin's famous voyage aboard HMS Beagle, the initiation was presided over by "King Neptune" in costume, a custom that continues to this day, and the hazing had become more pronounced.  Darwin was one of the first-timers, called "griffins".  Darwin recounted how he was blindfolded and placed on a plank; then his face and mouth were lathered with pitch and paint and scraped off with a rough piece of iron; then he was dumped into a large bath of water, ducked under, and finally escaped.  The drawing above of the Beagle's crossing the line ceremonies was made by the ship's artist Augustus Earle.

The crossing the line tradition was adopted by the Australian, Canadian, and U.S. navies, where the initiation hazing was sometimes more extreme.  In the U.S., sailors who had already crossed the line were called shellbacks and those who had not were called pollywogs.  In 1929, above, on the USS Canopus, a submarine tender, a shellback is painting a naked pollywog's body.  The favorite substance for painting pollywogs seems to have been a mixture of lampblack and grease.

Another 1929 USS Canopus photo shows a naked blindfolded pollywog getting a haircut.  Often the hair would be cut into a bizarre pattern like a mohawk or worse.

A final 1929 photo from the USS Canopus shows a naked blindfolded pollywog.  Is there something sticking out of his rear end, or is it just the hand of the guy standing closer to us?

George Hollister Foote, Torpedoman's Mate on the submarine USS Narwhal, kept photographs of his line-crossing initiation in 1940.  Above, a naked sailor awaits hazing.  The caption for the photo was "Sea pig."

In a second photo from Foote's album, a pollywog has to crawl through a gauntlet of shellbacks while being sprayed by a firehose

These initiations were not limited to Navy ships.  The photos above and below are from the SS Charles H. Windham, a "liberty ship" in the merchant marine in World War II.  Above, a pollywog's stomach and genitals are being painted with grease.

Then he gets a shot of grease up the ass with a grease gun.  I have to say this is unusual.  I haven't heard of that being done on other ships.

A more typical initiation is shown in this video of the crossing of the line of the USS Marblehead in 1939.   The naked pollywog has some black glop poured over him, is dumped into a trough of water where he is ducked, manhandled and paddled, and then runs the gauntlet of shellbacks paddling him.

Despite all that, most sailors were proud to have undergone the initiation, treating it as a male bonding ritual.  The widespread acceptance of this hazing is apparent in this 1945 Coca-Cola ad in Boys Life magazine.  Though the ad doesn't show the nudity that was common in these initiations, it does show a pollywog getting a bizarre haircut (apparently a reverse Mohawk).

The ad says, "It's a fine old custom – the good-natured initiation of those who cross the equator for the first time.  In much the same spirit of good-natured fun, people everywhere respond to the fine old invitation Have a Coke."