Sea Stories
10 Navy Nicknames Only a True Old Salt Will Remember
From “Deck Apes” to “Bubbleheads,” how many of these are still stuck in your head?
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One thing you figure out pretty quick after leaving the Navy is that civilians have absolutely no idea what half the stuff we say means.
Spend enough time in the fleet and you end up speaking a completely different language. Some of it was official. Most of it definitely wasn’t.
We had names for rates, ships, jobs, places, and just about everybody around us. Some were meant as insults. Some were badges of honor. Most depended on who was saying it and whether they had earned it or not.
Here are ten that ought to bring back a few memories.
#1The “Birdfarm” and “Airdales”
If you served on a carrier, you already know.
The birdfarm was its own world. Jets screaming overhead, tiedowns everywhere, JP-5 in the air, and Airdales running around the flight deck like all of that was perfectly normal.
Most of us below decks lived in an entirely different world.
#2The “Pecker Checker”
Doc was the guy you went to when you were sick, hurt, hungover, or came back from liberty with something you probably didn’t want entered into your permanent medical record.
Motrin, clean socks, and the occasional unpleasant shot usually seemed to be the cure for just about everything.
We gave Corpsmen a hard time, but when things got serious, everybody wanted a Corpsman nearby.
#3The “Bubbleheads”
Submariners.
The guys who volunteered to climb inside a steel tube, disappear underwater for weeks or months, breathe recycled air, hot-rack, and live within arm’s reach of enough weapons to ruin an enemy’s day.
There’s an old submariner line that says there are only two kinds of ships: submarines and targets.
Bubbleheads will remind you of that every chance they get.
#4“Hurry Up and Wait”
Not a nickname, but there’s no way this one gets left off the list.
Muster at 0630.
Working parties throughout the day.
Nobody knows where the Chief is.
Nobody knows where the equipment is.
And somehow you’re the one getting yelled at for standing around.
If you served, you spent a significant percentage of your time waiting for something to happen.
#5The “Snipes” and “Hole Snipes”
Now we’re talking.
Snipes were the engineering crowd. Engineroom, fireroom, pumps, boilers, diesels, evaporators, steam, oil, grease, heat, noise, and machinery that always seemed to pick 0200 to start acting up.
While topside sailors were looking at the ocean, we were usually looking at gauges, yelling to be heard over the roar, and sweating our asses off.
First aboard. Last ashore.
And yes, some of us still consider “hole snipe” a compliment.
#6The “Deck Apes”
Boatswain’s Mates.
If something needed to be chipped, painted, hauled, tied down, tied up, dragged across the deck, or somehow moved using six sailors and a piece of line, the BMs were probably involved.
You could usually hear them before you saw them.
And since Boatswain’s Mate is one of the oldest rates in the Navy, they made damn sure the rest of us knew it.
#7The “Nukes”
Some of the smartest people you’d ever meet.
Also occasionally capable of making you wonder how somebody who understood nuclear propulsion could have trouble with the simplest of tasks.
Most of us non-nukes didn’t completely understand what was happening back there.
We just knew there were reactor logs, a lot of procedures, and people who took those procedures very, very seriously.
As long as the lights stayed on and the screws kept turning, we were happy.
#8“Gun Monkey” and “Monkey’s Mate”
Gunner’s Mates and ordnance types.
If it fired, exploded, launched, or made a very loud noise, these guys wanted to be around it.
Like most sailors, they generally operated on coffee, nicotine, sarcasm, and questionable decision-making.
The difference was that Gunner’s Mates were surrounded by ammunition while doing it.
#9“Squids”
This one has been thrown around the Navy forever.
Depending on where you first heard it, “Squid” could mean a sailor in general or a submariner. Submariners will tell you it means Submarine Qualified Until I Die. “History” will tell you it’s a word the Marines used for sailors in general.
Like most Navy nicknames, the exact meaning didn’t matter nearly as much as the tone you used when you said it.
And somehow, after you’ve been out for thirty years, being called a Squid doesn’t sound half bad.
#10The “Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club”
This one belongs to a particular generation of sailors.
During Vietnam, Navy ships operating in the Gulf of Tonkin picked up the unofficial name “Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club.”
There wasn’t much yacht-club living involved.
Long deployments, brutal heat, flight operations, gunfire support, and everything else that came with operating off Vietnam made membership something you earned the hard way.
To the Vietnam-era sailors who were there: we appreciate your service.
So how many of these did you hear when you were in?
More importantly, what did I leave out?
Every ship, rate, squadron, and era had its own collection of names that made absolutely no sense to anybody outside the Navy.
Thirty or forty years later, you can hear one of them and suddenly you’re 20 years old again, standing on the mess decks giving somebody grief.
Civilians may not understand the language.
But we do.
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