Gun deck
The term gun deck used to refer to a deck aboard a ship that was primarily used for the mounting of cannon to be fired in broadsides. The term is generally applied to decks enclosed under a roof; smaller and unrated vessels carried their guns on the upper deck, forecastle and quarterdeck, and these were not described as gun decks.[1][2]
Slang
The term "gun decking" is also navy slang for fabricating or falsifying something. A possible explanation relates to
extrapolate and back calculate observation data from dead reckoning courses and speeds since earlier observations, and the computations performed on the gun deck were suspect.[2][3]
This term is now used to indicate the falsification of documentation in order to avoid doing the work or make present conditions seem otherwise acceptable.[3]
See also
- Glossary of nautical terms (A-L)
- Son of a gun
Citations
References
- "Origin of Navy Terminology". www.history.navy.mil. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
In the modern Navy falsifying reports, records and the like is often referred to as 'gundecking.'
- Cutler, Deborah W. and Thomas J. Cutler (2005). Dictionary of Naval Terms. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland. ISBN 978-1-59114-150-1.
- Knight, Austin M. (1941). Modern Seamanship, Tenth Edition. D. Van Nostrand Company.