'Loblolly Boy'

[Mission]

The term 'loblolly boy' refers to a surgeon's assistant, typically in training and therefore unpaid. It used to be used here in the early days quite a bit, probably because it appears in the Hornblower and Jack Aubrey novels. It got me to wondering if it was GAoP appropriate. The term both pre- and post-dates the GAoP. Every etymology source that mentions it on the web agrees that it was first used by the Royal Navy in 1597, but none of them give the source. I am guessing this comes from somewhere in the naval records. However, I failed to find it in any of the period sea-surgeon's, sea-physician's, naval or sailors books that I have, suggesting to me that it was not in common use during this period. (Although, in fairness, I don't have any direct access to official navy records from the period.)

The first place I find it in the books I have is the fictional book The Adventures of Roderick Random, written by the non-fictional Tobias Smollet, a former sea surgeon. This reads: "While I lived tolerably easy, in expectation of preferment, I was not altogether without mortifications, which I not only suffered from the rude insults of the sailors and petty officers, among whom I was known by the name of Loblolly Boy..." (Smollet, Adventures..., 1748, p. 175) I also found it in modern historian R. D. Merriman's book about the GAoP: "Surgeon's mates drew 30s. a month, and as a rule were a very indifferent class of 'loblolly boy'." (Merriman, Queen Anne's Navy, 1961, p. 220) However, this is not a quote from a period document.

Proceeding along this wandering path, let us look at the term 'loblolly' without the boy. I was curious about all this because I recently came across this term in reference to rice in one of Gervase Markham's books:

"...a man cannot finde a cheaper way to feede men, since one pint of water and the fourth part of a quarter of a pound of Rice (which comes not to above a halfe penny at the deerest reckoning) is a meal sufficient for a mans eating, having bisket and drinke proportionably. And this dish of meate being but thus thinne boyled, is called at sea Loblolly, and after salt-feeding is wondrous wholesome and comfortable to any man , whether he be sicke, sound or diseased, and both abateth infirmities, and hastneth the healing of all wounds." (Gervase Markham, Markham's Farewell to Husbandry, 1631, p. 129)

And it appears in the notable mid-century explanation of the English navy written as a discussion by Nathaniel Boteler, except now as corn:

"...would they [before-mast sailors in the English navy] but patiently consider of the well and lusty subsistance of the Italian, Spanish and Dutch Nations, who hereby live far more healthfully at Sea than [the English] do; Or but of our Colony People in St. Christophers, the Barbados, Virginia, and the Bermudas who for the most part live, and thrive well with their Husked-homeny, and Lob-lolly (as they tearm it) which they may make of the West-lndian Corn called Maiz, it would perhaps work them to some willing conformity in this particular..." (Nathaniel Boteler, Colloquia maritima or Sea Dialogues, 1688 [actually written in the 1640s], p. 85)

It does come up in the Calendar of State Papers: America and West Indies in 1680 (only a decade before the Golden Age of Piracy), in the 'Journal and narrative of Jonas Clough'. Clough was working aboard the ketch Susan which stopped to pickup logwood (likely in Honduras) when his ship was captured and he and about 90 other people were taken prisoner by the Spanish. They were brought as prisoners to Campeche, Mexico. (This is all more interesting than the loblolly quote, but sometimes things are like that.):

"The Spaniards having burnt the English houses, sailed with their captives for Campeachy, where they committed them to a dark dungeon, and allowed them daily a pint of "loblolly" made of Indian corn or 'mayez [maize].'" (CSPC: AWI, 1681, Item 303)

It also appears in some of my period dictionaries, transformed yet again:

"LOBLOLLY, a sort of slovenly, out of the way Pottage [a thick stew containing grains, vegetables and sometimes meat]." (Nathan Bailey, Universal etymological English dictionary, 1724, not paginated)

"Lob-lolly, Grout [porridge] or Gruel" (John Kersey, A New English Dictionary, 1713, not paginated)

"LOBLOLLY (S.) Any uncouth, strange, irregular Mixture of different Things together to compose Pottage or Broth." (Thomas Dyche and William Pardon, A New General English Dictionary, 1735, not paginated)

Notice how the meaning of the word begins to shift over time. It shifted quite a bit more before it was done, eventually coming to refer to anything thick and viscous, even a mudhole.

At the end of all this, I concluded that 'loblolly' was, like many words used during this period, pretty slippery and hard to pin down, although it is linked more often to gruel made with field corn than rice. The term 'loblolly boy' does not appear to have yet been directly tied to a sea surgeon's medical assistants and would not be strictly appropriate for the period from what I can find. It would be far more appropriate to use the term 'surgeon's assistant.

And now I must get back to working on my entry for bran which, incredibly, is how I started down this rabbit hole.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/loblolly_boy

[Mary Diamond]

Which got me thinking about loblolly pine… from the Wikipedia entry for Loblolly Pine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_taeda, under Etymology:

The word "loblolly" is a combination of "lob", referring to thick, heavy bubbling of cooking porridge, and "lolly", an old British dialect word for broth, soup, or any other food boiled in a pot. In the southern United States, the word is used to mean "a mudhole; a mire," a sense derived from an allusion to the consistency of porridge. Hence, the pine is named as it is generally found in lowlands and swampy areas.^[8] Loblolly pines grow well in acidic clay soil, which is common throughout the South, thus are often found in large stands in rural places.

[Mission]

Trying to figure out what kind of oats were served at sea, I just found this.

"...at Sea, &c. a more wholsome and pleasant Meat [food] cannot be eat, than these whole Greets boiled in Water till they burst, and then mixed with Butter, and so eaten with Spoons, called by your Sea-fairing Men, Loblolly..."  (John Worlidge & Nathan Bailey, "Oat-Meal", Dictionarium Rusticum, Urbanicum & Botanicum, 1704, not paginated)

While this does not support the term loblolly boy, it ties loblolly into oats at sea rather than referring to either rice or maize.