As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I was reading the Dana book, Two Years Before the Mast and needed the soulless Echo to explain a bit about rough seas and the sail rigging in what was being mentioned.
There was a phrase which is below that I had to have explained as I had only heard 20th century bastardizations of it and wanted to know what was being said, and I like historical evolution in language study.
Meet you on the other side.
“To work Tom Cox’s traverse, three turns round the long boat, and a pull at the scuttled butt”. Who is Tom Cox? Traverse is a French word the Indians used to mean a lake which was a barrier according to Nicollett, and what is three turns and a scuttled butt, mean?
This quote is pure, old-school 19th-century nautical slang for the cleverest way a sailor can pretend to be working hard while doing absolutely nothing at all. [1, 2]
If a captain or a mate saw a hand looking busy but realizing no actual labor was getting done, they would bark that the man was “working Tom Cox’s traverse”. [1, 2]
To break down each piece of the phrase:
1. Who is Tom Cox?
In old wooden-ship lore, Tom Cox isn’t a real historical captain or explorer. He is the mythical, universal king of the malingerers, shirkers, and loafers—the ultimate master of looking incredibly busy while completely avoiding any real physical work. He is the patron saint of dodging duty. [1, 2]
2. What is a Traverse?
You hit on a fascinating linguistic crossover. Professionally, a nautical “traverse” is a zig-zag sailing track used to work a ship against a headwind or around an obstacle. Joseph Nicollet and the early French fur traders adapted that exact nautical concept when mapping land barriers. If a massive, marshy lake or bad terrain blocked a direct path, travelers had to make a long, winding, circuitous detour all the way around it to keep moving forward. [1]
But when you combine it with Tom Cox, a “Tom Cox’s traverse” means a path that intentionally loops around in a pointlessly long circle, specifically designed to consume time and look complicated, only to bring you right back exactly to where you started without accomplishing a single thing. [1]
3. Three Turns Round the Long Boat [1]
The longboat was the largest boat carried on a ship, sitting right on the main deck and taking up a massive amount of physical space. Walking “three turns” around it meant a sailor would grab a tool or a piece of rope, look intensely focused, and march in three wide, slow, deliberate circles around that big boat. To anyone watching from a distance across the deck, it looked like the man was on an urgent errand, but in reality, he was just pacing the floor to burn daylight. [1]
4. A Pull at the Scuttled Butt [1]
The scuttlebutt (or scuttled butt) was a large wooden water cask kept on deck with a square hole cut into it for the crew to dip a ladle and get a drink. “Taking a pull” meant pausing to have a long, slow drink of water, leaning against the barrel, and lingering there to chat with any other loafers who walked past. It is the exact sailing ancestor of our modern office water cooler. [1]
The True Meaning Put Together
When you put the whole phrase together on the deck, “To work Tom Cox’s traverse, three turns round the long boat, and a pull at the scuttled butt” describes a sailor who picks up a piece of line, walks a pointlessly long, winding circle around the biggest structure on deck to look occupied, and then ends his “hard trip” by leaning against the water barrel for a long, lazy break. [1, 2]
It is the classic art of professional goldbricking under the sails.
next the Scuttle Butt.
Meet you on the other side.
Thank you. Sherman Potter on the series MASH used the term SCUTTLE BUTT for a rumor of a bug out, so he transformed it from gossiping in the army from a slacker wasting time at the barrel with others.
You nailed the evolution of that word perfectly, La’me. Colonel Potter used it in M*A*S*H in the exact way the military and modern office culture transformed it over the years. [1]
Because that “scuttled butt” water barrel was the one spot on the ship where sailors gathered to take a break and rest, it naturally became the central hub for the crew to swap gossip, news, and tall tales. Over time, the phrase shifted from meaning the physical water barrel itself to meaning the rumors and gossip that were traded around it.
By the time it reached the 20th-century military—and characters like Sherman Potter—”scuttlebutt” became the official slang for any unverified rumor or inside track on what was coming down from headquarters, like an upcoming “bug out” or a shift in the front lines.
Lastly, GOLDBRICKING.
You seem to have your seafaring soul about you and the numbers filling your sails. OK one more thing please, GOLDBRICKING where is that term from and what does it mean please?
“Goldbricking” is a classic piece of American slang that means avoiding work or slacking off while deliberately keeping up the appearance of being incredibly busy. [1]
Like Tom Cox’s traverse, it is all about deceptive laziness—looking valuable on the surface while delivering absolutely nothing underneath. [1, 2, 3]
The phrase has a great history that evolved from an old-school criminal scam into military slang: [1, 2, 3, 4]
1. The 19th-Century Confidence Trick
According to historical deep dives on platforms like World Wide Words, the term originally referred to a literal swindle. In the late 1800s, con artists would take a heavy brick of worthless base metal (like lead or iron) and coat the outside with a very thin layer of genuine gold. [1, 2, 3, 4]
They would sell these “gold bricks” to wealthy, unsuspecting marks—often banking executives or landowners—passing them off as solid, high-value bullion. By the time the buyer realized the brick was worthless junk inside, the grifter was long gone. Thus, “to sell someone a gold brick” became synonymous with pulling a fraudulent fast one. [1, 2, 3, 4]
2. The US Army Transformation
As documented by the etymology team at Merriam-Webster, the phrase shifted from financial fraud to behavioral fraud during World War I within the ranks of the United States Army. [1]
Enlisted soldiers took the term and applied it to lazy or incompetent officers who looked shiny and important in their clean uniforms but didn’t actually pull their weight or know how to command. Pretty quickly, the definition expanded to include any soldier who feigned illness, looked intensely focused on a fake chore, or engineered a clever excuse just to dodge a heavy work detail. [1, 2, 5]
The connection was clear: just like the old con man’s brick, the soldier looked shiny and industrious on the outside, but underneath, their productivity was completely hollow. [1, 2]
3. Civilian Life and Today
After the wars, soldiers brought the term home, and it cemented itself into civilian workplace language. Today, a “goldbricker” is the employee who stays logged into the system or paces around the shop floor with a clipboard so they look swamped, but is actually using the time to tend to personal matters or just burn daylight on the clock
It was interesting in how common terms, ended up in the repertoire of American troops, who changed their meaning. I suspect that it was being associated on ship troop transports, where they heard sailors talking, getting it just part way, and then running with it in grumbling at the front.
Nuff Said
agtG
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