In naval parlance, does ‘gundecking’ mean to do a shoddy job? Where does this term come from?
Thanks
- Bubba.
The following is a link to a naval terms and expressions website which gives 2 possible etymologies for the term, which I have pasted below.
http://www.cvn70.navy.mil/facts/navterms.htm
Gundecking
In the modern Navy, falsifying documents reports, records and the like is often referred to as gundecking. The origin of the term is somewhat obscure, but at the risk of gundecking, here are two plausible explanations for its modern usage.
The deck below the upper deck on British sailing ships-of-war was called the gundeck, although it carried no guns. This false deck may have been constructed to deceive enemies as to the amount of armament carried. Thus the gundeck was a falsification.
A more plausible explanation may stem from shortcuts taken by early midshipmen when doing their navigational lessons. Each man was supposed to take sun lines at noon and star sights at night, and then go below to the gundeck, work out their calculations and show them to the navigator.
Some of these young men, however, had a special formula for getting the correct answers. They would note the noon or last position on the quarterdeck traverse board and determine the approximate current position by dead reckoning plotting. Armed with the information, they proceeded to the gundeck to “gundeck” their navigation homework by simply working backwards from the dead reckoning station.