The Manuscripts of Sir Henry Mainwaring's Sea-Mans Dictionary

Abstract

I the early 1620s, the naval commander and newly appointed Lieutenant of Dover Castle Sir Henry Mainwaring (or Manwayring, 1586/7–1653) compiled a detailed dictionary of nautical terms titled A Brief Abstract, Exposition and Demonstration of all Parts & Things belonging to a Ship, and the Practique of Nauigation. He presented several manuscript copies to his personal patrons and to high-ranking naval offi cials; the dictionary only found its way into print in 1644, as The Sea-mans Dictionary: or, an Exposition and Demonstration of all the Parts and Things belonging to a Shippe (London, G. M. for John Bellamy). In his preface, Mainwaring expressed his concern that ‘very few Gentlemen (though they be called Sea-men) doe fully and wholy understand what belongs to their Profession: having onely some Scrambling Termes & Names belonging to some parts of a Ship’.1 The rise in ‘gentleman commanders’ – men appointed to naval positions due to their infl uence at court rather than any practical experience of seamanship – had long been an irritation to professional seamen.2 The Sea-mans Dictionary provided novices with defi nitions for around six hundred naval words and phrases, listed alphabetically, with an index of terms. The scribe employed by Mainwaring to copy his dictionary was Ralph (or Raph) Crane (fl . 1589–1632).3 Eight surviving manuscripts of the Parts and Things belonging to a Ship, including fi ve produced as presentation copies, were transcribed by Crane.4 A further twelve copies are extant, attesting to the dictionary’s wide