I Crossing the Line USS Nebraska

 As all sailors knew well, Neptune, god of the sea, was fickle. He played an important role in ancient rituals just as he does in today's initiations into the Orders of the Deep. At his slightest whim, Neptune, it was believed, might throw a storm into the path of a ship that would splinter her oars and spars like matchwood, or cast her onto the rocky coast.

And that was when he was feeling playful. What would the dread deity bring to a crew if, Zeus forbid, they made him angry?

The superstitions of the sea provided for ways to stay out of that kind of trouble. In the earliest days, oxen and goats might be sacrificed to make the old man of the sea more favorably disposed. He could, under proper circumstances, become downright protective and benevolent.

Also, in those early rituals, the location of the rites had to be right. If every element surrounding the ceremonies was not just so, all Hades might break loose. The location of the ship had an effect on how acceptable the honors to Neptune were. A rite performed off certain capes (for instance, those with temples on them) would work best.

And finally, the apprentices had to be instructed in the behavior that was acceptable and unacceptable. As a later Ancient Mariner discovered to his grief, the rulers of the deep frown on anyone who kills an albatross. There were dozens of such strictures - and woe betide the sailor, no matter how green, who transgressed just one.

As previously stated, an ox or a goat was normally sacrificed to appease the sea gods. But not always. Jonah, for example (as our Bible experts recall), was dropped over the side when the crew of the ship on which he was a passenger decided he had brought on the storm that threatened to wreck them. It worked. The storm stopped, Jonah was picked up by a passing whale, and the ship sailed on.

Even as late as the 17th century, when no one (well, hardly none) believed in Neptune or other marine deities any more, initiation into the mysteries of the deep could be a rough process. According to a writer of the time, apprentices "who pass certain places, where they have never passed," undergo various penalties - for example, to be dropped "from the yardarm into the sea."

Such are the origins of the granddaddy of all seagoing ceremonies: the shellback initiation when a ship crosses the Equator, in which "pollywogs" (sailors who have not previously crossed the Line) become "shellbacks" (fit subjects of King Neptune).