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HOLY-STONING AND THE
BRITE BOY TRADITION
HOLY-STONING IS AN OLD NAVAL TRADITION. TO CLEAN
their decks, sailors would get down on their knees with a
piece of sandstone about the size of a brick, and rub the stone
up and down the width of a single plank until told to move on.
Progress was grindingly slow. Inch-by-inch, shoulder-to-
shoulder these long-suffering gobs would move in a weary
line along the deck. Smaller pieces of sandstone or ‘prayer
books’ and larger stones called ‘bibles’ were used every day
to scrub off salt, grime and, oftentimes, blood.
Eventually, all this time spent on their knees paid off. Our
sailors’ prayers were answered.
Somewhere, some labor-saving genius bored shallow holes
in his ship’s stones. The idea caught on, and within decades –
things move slowly in the sea service – broom handles were
shoved into the stones making them true nautical tools. For
the first time in centuries, sailors could get off their knees,
but the scrubbing effort was the same and so was the pur-
pose: clean, white, wooden decks.
Holy-stoning was a back-breaking drudgery that every midship-
man and gob faced. But eventually it was banned in the United
States Navy, not because it wasted sailors’ time when they could
be chipping, grinding, and painting, but because it wore out
decks. Or was it because steel replaced wooden decks?
TRACK CLEANING CAR |
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