Able Seaman

Able Seaman (AB)

To be an able seaman a man would have served many years at sea and would be experienced in any duty he was asked to carry out.

An able seaman is referred to as an AB which comes from the first two letters of ‘able’. AB's in the Royal Navy did not get a recognised uniform until 1857.

In a wooden man of war an able seaman had to be able to ‘hand, reef and steer’.

The Oxford Companion to Ships and The Sea gives the meanings of "hand, reef and steer" as follows:

HAND
HAND, to,(1) the term used to describe the act of furling the square sails of a ship to the yards. In a strong wind the two leeches of the sail were first brought to the yard since if the leeches were left to belly or fill with wind, it would be impossible for the men on the yard to get the sail in. The order given in a square-rigged ship was ‘HAND IN THE LEECH’.

(2) As a noun, a member of the ship’s crew. ‘ALL HANDS’, the order for all seamen to come on deck either in an emergency or to assist in some operation which is beyond the capacity of the watch on deck.

(3) HAND-OVER-HAND, to haul rapidly on a rope or tackle by men passing their hands alternately one before the other thus keeping the hauling part in motion. A seaman was said to go hand-over-hand when he went up the mast by means of a stay or shroud without using the ratlines. The expression also means rapidly, as e.g., ‘we are coming up with the ship ahead hand-over-hand’.

REEF, the amount of sail taken in by securing one set of reef-points. It is the means of shortening sail to the amount appropriate to an increase in the strength of wind. In square-rigged ships, sails up to the topsails normally carried two rows of reef-points, enabling two reefs to be taken in; sails set above them usually had no reef-points as they would normally be furled or sent down in a wind strong enough to require the sails to be reefed.

STEER, to, to direct a vessel by means of a steering oar, or a tiller or steering-wheel connected to a rudder, so that she proceeds in the desired direction. Up to the end of the first millennium A.D., all steering was achieved by means of the steering oar, usually projecting from the starboard quarter of the vessel. It was a short step, taken in about the late 12th or early 13th century, to replace the steering oar with a rudder hung on the sternpost of the ship and worked by a tiller attached to the rudder-head. This was very efficient until ships grew in size to the extent where the tiller had to be relatively long spar in order to provide sufficient leverage to counteract the pre`sure of the water on the rudder when it was put over. In a gale of wind it could require several men to control the tiller of a large ship, even with the aid of relieving tackles. The introduction of the steering-wheel in the late 17th century replaced the long tiller in larger ships and made easier the manual task of controlling the rudder.