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The phrase 'casting off cables' appears often in the Odyssey translation I'm reading.
What exactly does this mean nautically? I don't know anything about sailing and obviously not about sailing eight centuries B. C.
The men cast off cables when they're ready to go off to sea, if that context is helpful at all.
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Carpal Tunnel
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it brings to mind (modern day?) bitts and bollards.
bollard
1) a post of metal or wood on a wharf around which to fasten lines
2) a post or pair of posts on the deck of a ship for securing lines: bitt
(on a "ship", lines <> cables)
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Dr. Bill just sent this possibility:
"The Greeks would have had two choices when
they brought ships to shore. They could beach them
if they had a beach that was just sand and wouldn't
hurt the hull. But if the beach were cobble, they would
have put an anchor out from stern of ship, and then
had a cable running up shore to some place where they
could fasten in. I think the word for cable was 'byssus'.
And our word for deep water 'abyss' meant orignally
'too deep for the anchor rope'."
Thanks, Bill.
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As a sometime sailor, what Dr. Bill says makes sense and the "byssus/abyss" story is deeply interesting.
Sailors "cast off" when they leave shore. What they are "casting off" is their tethering to the shore.
If they are docked at a pier, they will have lines from the vessel strung fore and aft to pilings on the pier.
Before they can set out again, crew members must leave the vessel momentarily to untether the lines and cast them aboard ship to be used again. Of course, these crew members must leap aboard smartly before the vessel sets sail without them.
So, somewhat ironically, before you can "cast off", you have to "cast on" your tethering lines or cables.
Perhaps 3000 years ago, in the absence of man-made piers, permanent cables were tethered ashore at heavily trafficked landing sites, as Dr. Bill suggests, so that the tethering cables were literally cast off the vessel in preparation for departure, the very opposite of what happens today.
So, it would seem that this seafaring lingo remains tethered to its origins in the past, altho it no longer makes any sense in the present.
Today, sailors cast off lines when they arrive at a dock, and cast on lines when they set sail. But they still say they are "casting off" when they are really casting on.
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Plutarch, you and Bill just can't seem to mind your own business, can you. Now you've got me confused. Do you mean when I go bass fishing with my buddy Bob Huddleson and his dog Tramp, I gotta say "cast on" instead of "cast off"? Shove off mates. This is another example of Logical Correctness gone amuck and of it I'll have none. 
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Robert Fagles translates Homer as 'casting off' when the ships are about to leave shore.
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I gotta say "cast on" instead of "cast off"?
Well now, themilum. What are you gonna "cast off" when you say "cast off"?
If you "cast off" your lines you won't have any lines to tie up with when you return. And you won't be casting Tramp overboard if your buddy Bobby has anything to say about it.
"Cast off" the skipper commanded
To a novice since his ship was short-handed
Into the drink
Went the lines in a blink
"Keelhaul him!", the crew countermanded.
P.S. I've got it, themilum. You can say "Shove off".
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>Before they can set out again, crew members must leave the vessel momentarily to untether the lines and cast them aboard ship to be used again. Of course, these crew members must leap aboard smartly before the vessel sets sail without them.
Having spent many a fine morning or afternoon riding the ferry from Ocracoke Island to the mainland, I will have to disagree with you a bit on this. The ropes that tether the ship to the pier or dock are called hawsers, and are permanently affixed at the landward end. When the vessel pulls in a shoreside person tosses the hawser to the crewmember at the bow or stern, which latter person ties around the whatever they call the things on the ship. Of course this only works where the vessel is pulling in to its normal port of call, I'd guess, but ferries do just that.
Otherwise, somewhat like (but not exactly like) the famous cry at Ford's Theatre on 14th April 1865, you would hear, "Is there a hawser on the dock?"
TEd
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>whatever they call the things on the ship.
<exaspirated sigh>
that would be your bitt; or, your bollard, if you are so inclined to only keep one of these silly words in your vocabulary.
-joe webster
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Said the ship's dog, "Cables and bitts! Cables and bitts!"
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