How It's Used

"While serving as a yeoman second-class aboard the battleship USS Iowa from 1942 to 1945, Mr. Digney received the American Theater Ribbon, Asiatic Pacific Theater Ribbon, seven bronze stars, and the Philippine Liberation Ribbon, two stars.

"On Nov. 27, 1943, he participated in the first 'shellback' initiation while crossing the Equator en route to Bahi, Brazil, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard."

—unsigned obituary, "William Digney, 64, Worked at Needham Oil Firm," The Boston Globe, July 20, 1987.

"A raw egg was thrust in my hand and then my hand was brought down on top of my head, crushing the egg over the cold spaghetti already dangling in my hair. Meringue was still clinging to my face as I was thrown into the cruise ship's pool. We were on a Greek ship headed for the Amazon River, and I was paying my dues to King Neptune, the sea god, in a traditional crossing-the-equator ceremony."

—Daniella Sigman, "Cruising in 20th-century luxury to a culture of past and present," The Globe and Mail, October 18, 1989.

"I should make clear that becoming a Tailhooker on the Ike was a ceremonial event, like becoming a Shellback in King Neptune's Court on crossing the equator, bearing nothing more than a name in common with the now notorious and discredited Tailhook Association, a private, dues-paying organization of Naval officers, Navy enthusiasts and Navy hangers-on. Nonetheless, we live in an era of guilt by semantic association and, all things considered, among the things a Nineties editor can easily get along without is a Tailhooker certificate on his wall."

—William F. Woo, "Tailhook Marked End of an Attitude," The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 27, 1994.

"His story remains fascinating, and hair-raising. Born in Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy displayed application and ability at school and college. He also displayed from a young age a tendency to embroider the record. As Morgan says, McCarthy learned early that 'he could lie and get away with it.' In 1939, partly by means of mendacious attacks on his opponent, he became the youngest circuit judge ever elected in Wisconsin. Soon he was propelled into national politics, by way of war service in the Pacific and by way of more fabulizing. McCarthy allowed the people of Wisconsin to believe that he had been wounded in action (or, still more inventively, 'while helping to remove a pregnant woman from off a submarine'), when actually he had injured himself in a prank during the traditional festivities crossing the Equator."

—Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Point of Order," The New York Times, January 4, 2004.

"They also found time to give crew member John Wass a dousing with slime - the traditional baptism for a sailor crossing the equator for the first time."

—Steven Morris, "Missing yachtsman: New alert over Bullimore," The Guardian (UK), November 16, 2006.

Links

Related on eAlmanac
Latitude Zero

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on Line-Crossing Ceremonies
Line Crossing Ceremony at World War II Database (ww2db.com)
Video of a Coast Guard Line Crossing Ceremony in 1957