Inexplicably, I’ve been obsessed with sailing—right here in the heart of winter in Minnesota. Well, there is a reason, but it’s not what you think… just a new personal obsession, originating here and here. In my ongoing effort to reverse a previous decision never to reread a good book (so many other classics I’ll never get to, for shame!), I picked up Moby-Dick again. For years now, I’ve called it the all-time best American novel. But looking back—and attempting a re-reading— I realize now why it took a graduate course in theology to force me to finish the book on a schedule. All those victorian flourishes and bygone references, they become goads, not impediments, when you are reading a book for an elective credit. It may no longer be the best American novel—probably Twain deserves that honor, I guess.
So, anyway, I’ve just finished reading the chapter on mastheads on the Pequod. Apparently, the word did not come into regular usage until the 1740s—when whaling was beginning to become one of the world’s most vigorous commercial enterprises. There have been masts, and the heads of masts, since boats were first equipped with sails (Jonah was thrown from a sailing ship, you know). But no one thought to stand at the top of one until it became a useful perch from which to spot whales spouting far off in the distance. (Pirates, seeing other merchant mariners as plunderable whales, no doubt manned the masthead too.)
So how did newspapers and other publications come to use the term as it is used today—to let you know who all the fine folks are that are responsible for creating your favorite magazine or journal? Some etymological sources say that the masthead on a ship is where you fly the flag—thus the “flag” (in a newspaper sense) is flown from its masthead. But that is a tautology. Why is the flag in a newspaper called a flag? (We’ve stopped using that word in the magazine world. We call the flag the “logo.” Stubborn newspapermen persist, as ever.) I don’t really have an answer, other than the rough guess that it originated with some broadsheet of shipping news. The first newspaper in America was Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick in Boston, in 1690. There could not have been a newspaper in the American colonies that did not concern itself with shipping and mariners and the like, and most likely on the front page, over the fold.
I like the association, actually. It’s neat to think of every little publication as its own ship, on its own journey, with captain and crew steadfast and loyal at the helm. We may not really compete with the Titanics and Lusitanias and Disney Cruise Ships of the world, but we have our own white whales to chase. Personally, I am not afraid of heights, and I don’t mind being on the lookout for ice bergs and pirates and friendly trade winds. Avast!—The Editor in Cheese
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