“As the Crow Flies” – When lost or unsure of their position in coastal waters, ships would release a caged crow. The crow would fly straight towards the nearest land thus giving some sort of navigation fix. The tallest lookout platform on a vessel was used to watch the crow’s path, and became to be known at the “Crow’s Nest.”
“Dogwatch” – A dogwatch at sea is the period between 4 and 6 p.m., the first dogwatch, or the period between 6 and 8 p.m., the second dog watch. The watches aboard ships are:
Noon to 4:00 p.m. Afternoon watch
4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. First dogwatch
6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Second dogwatch
8:00 p.m. to midnight 1st night watch
Midnight to 4:00 a.m. Middle watch or mid watch
4:00 to 8:00 a.m. Morning watch
8:00 a.m. to noon Forenoon watch
The dogwatches are only two hours each so the same Sailors aren’t always on duty at the same time each afternoon. Some experts say dogwatch is a corruption of dodge watch and others associate dogwatch with the fitful sleep of Sailors called dog sleep, because it is a stressful watch. But no one really knows the origin of this term, which was in use at least back to 1700.
Pooped: The term goes back to sailors who brought the word to land.
The stern of a boat is called the “poop.” During strong winds and storms, waves smashed against the poop repeatedly. Any ship’s stern that showed damage from this was called “pooped” and be luck to still be floating after days of battering waves.
So when sailors got ashore, in their descriptive way they would often say they were as tired as battered and as “pooped” as their ship.
Soon those on land took this saying to refer to being “pooped out” when they were really tired, fatigued and exhausted from anything.
The term “head”, meaning toilet appeared around 1748 and referred to the location of the crew’s toilet in the bow (or “head”) of a ship.
Good thing these ship were not good close hauling (sailing close to the wind or up into the wind) although there was probably already a profusion of bad smells on ships in those days.
Today, even though the head is rarely located in the bow, sailor still call the toilet, the head.