The answers

A good sailor is never without a clew.

As promised, here is the answer (with explanations) to last week’s challenge: to pick out the one common English phrase in our list that didn’t have its origin in nautical language.

As more than one correspondent decided, “without a clue” was the red herring.  Notwithstanding the fact that a “clew” is a bottom corner of a sail, fitted with clewgarnets so it could be clewed up to clear a sightline or preparatory to furling, there is no connection with “clue,” a useful piece of information.

Most of the rest had to do with the wind.  A sailing ship could not go directly upwind, of course; if its destination lay in that direction, it would point as close as it could, with the wind coming over the starboard bow (on the starboard tack) or the port (the port tack).  To make good a course directly upwind the ship would have to change tack, a phrase that came to mean something like progressing toward the goal from a different direction.  If, while swinging through the direction directly upwind (tacking), the square sails were blown directly backward against the mast and rigging they were taken aback.  If this lasted any period of time the ship would be slowed, possibly even stopped or forced backwards; and in any case the sails could not be handled during this time.

Sailing upwind, the ship was said to be by the wind; sailing downwind, the ship was going large.  “By and large” thus meant all possible points of sail, or all situations.

The amount a ship was progressing in the direction it was pointed (marked by the ship’s head) was headway, in knots or in distance over a specified time; presumably it was what the ship wanted to do, so making headway came to mean getting closer to the goal.  However, it would always be blown a bit directly downwind, to leeward.  If there was an obstacle up ahead to be avoided, one had to make an allowance for such leeway, which was generalized to mean any extra room needed by the situation.

The classic Royal Navy tactic was to get to windward of the enemy, and then attack by sailing downwind on a line of bearing (neither side-by-side nor single file astern).  Thus the fleet would bear down on the enemy.  If, however, the enemy could maintain itself upwind, or a-loof, it could stand aloof and take no part in the battle.

Heavy weights were handled by using a block-and-tackle (and still are).  If such a machine were hauled until the two blocks came into contact it was said to be chock-a-block or two-blocked, and could not be used further until the rope inside was slacked off and the blocks were said to be overhauled.

Note that these phrases all refer to obsolete technology (except those dealing with a block-and-tackle, which is still useful).  There don’t seem to be any coming from the era of the steamship.  Why?