jack-tar

“Hush, Jack Tar. All right. An answer for an answer. We—my friends and I—are members of a fraternal organization, known as the Jacks of All Trades, or the Knaves, or by other names. We go back an extremely long way. We know...we remember things that most people have forgotten. The Old Knowledge.”

"Images of the jolly sailor 'Jack Tar' were a bit like David Beckham today," says Admiral Lord West, a former head of the Royal Navy.

The Navy was at the centre of national life - politically powerful and a major cultural force as well, with images of the jolly sailor Jack Tar used to sell everything from cigarettes to postcards.

One need only look at the Jack Tar of the service, and compare him with the appearance of almost any sailor of any merchant marine, to be convinced that his grievances to-day are of the lightest order.

The altered circumstances of the age, arising from the introduction of steam, and the greatly increased inter-commercial relations of the whole world, have made the Jack Tar pure and simple comparatively rare in these days; not, we believe, so much from his disappearance off the scene as by the numbers of differently employed men on board by whom he is surrounded, and in a sense hidden.