At yesterday’s monthly meeting of my writers’ group I offered a few hundred words from the manuscript I am still slaving over. I had my heroine walking up the gangplank of a sailing ship in 1885. The problem with using that word is it conjures up pirates in the reader’s imagination. Did I have it wrong?
In checking the newspapers of the day to confirm I am correct (should I have ever doubted) I came across this amusing piece from 1888. Clearly, not only I found it amusing. It was republished in many newspapers of the day and repeated every year until 1901, and then one more time in 1914.
Source: The Richmond River Herald and Northern Districts Advertiser (NSW : 1886 – 1942); Friday 27th January 1888; page 3.
Hardships of an Editor.
” Our paper is two days late this week,” writes a Nebraska editor, “owing to an accident to our press. When we started to run the edition Wednesday night, as usual, one of the guy-ropes gave way, allowing the forward gilder-fluke to fall and break as it struck the flunker-flopper.
This, of course, as any one who knows anything about a press will readily under-stand, left the gang-plank with only the flip-flap to support it, which also dropped-and broke off the wapper-chock. This loosened the fluking from between the ramrod and the flibber-snatcher, which also caused trouble. The report that the delay was caused by over-indulgence in, intoxicating stimulants by ourself is a tissue of falsehoods, the peeled appearance of our right eye being caused by our going into the hatch way of the press in our anxiety to start it, and pulling the coupling-pin after the slap-bang was broken, which caused the dingns to rise up and welt us in the optic. We expect a brand-new gilder-fluke on this after noon’s train.”
Sigh … so I have come away from that piece of research with more questions than I started and am now thoroughly thrown off track. Are these pieces of a printing press? Was it on a ship? What was it doing there? etc, etc, etc. And back to my gangplank … did it have steps or was it simply a piece of wood?
Some call research procrastination – how dare they!
The Reluctant Retiree 
;>) Exactly, Gwen. And did they make the person responsible for the break-down walk the gang plank?
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This made me laugh out loud, Gwen. What an amusing piece. And I definitely agree that research is by no means procrastination. It is absolutely essential, even when one ends up nowhere near any useful information for productive writing. 😇😆
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Now I’m digging around to see if the new organ really did arrive at a particular Sydney church in time for the fictional wedding scene which finalises the novel.
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Almost made me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins with his wonderful words, except he never made me laugh with things like “wanwood leafmeal”! The flunker-flopper is great!
And yes, I probably would think pirates though the context would presumably explain it!
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Gangplank is a bit tricky. It is the correct word, whereas the ladders, etc internally are the gangway. But it is quite clear to the reader that one moment our heroine is on the wharf and next boarding the sailing ship. It’s probably one of those words the reader won’t even see in the context of the wider picture – and yet – so much angst on the writer’s part to get it right 🙂
Maybe a case more of flipper-floppering rather than flunker-floppering.
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That’s a mouthful, Gwen..LOL
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haha, OMG, this was hysterical!
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I know, right? And we think people were always so serious, “back then”.
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Well, their pictures were always so glum, who knew they could write like that?!!
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Giggling now. I think it was because they had to stay still for the long exposures?
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😂😵❗
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I wouldn’t dare
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