1944 U.S. postage stamp commemorating the SS Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic in 1819
14 August 2024
The Pond is a jocular and understated way of referring to the Atlantic Ocean, often in the phrase across the pond. By reducing the tempestuous ocean to placid pond, it makes the ocean manageable and domestic, recognizing the cultural differences between Britain and America and Canada, while at the same time diminishing them.
The use of pond to refer to an ocean generally dates to the seventeenth century. The earliest use that I know of is in Joseph Hall’s 1612 Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holy Storie:
There is no varietie in that which is perfect, because there is but one perfection; and so much shall wee grow neerer to perfectnesse, by how much wee draw neerer to vnitie, and vniformitie. From thence, if wee goe downe to the great deepe, the wombe of moisture, the well of fountaines, the great pond of the world; wee know not whether to wonder at the Element it selfe, or the guests which it containes.
Hall’s treatise was evidently widely read, for it is quoted in at least three other texts in succeeding decades: Edward Leigh’s 1646 Treatise of Divinitie, George Swinnock’s 1662 The Christian-mans Calling, and the 1677 edition of Thomas Herbert’s Some Years Travel.
Toward the end of the seventeenth century we see pond being used specifically to refer to the Atlantic, especially in phrases such as herring pond, fish pond, or great or big pond. Writer John Dunton uses herring pond in a 1685 letter to his wife:
To-morrow if a gale presents we saile on for a new-world (for soe they call America): at my first arrivall I’le send an account of the wonders I meet on the Great Herring-Pond and a Particular Character of it.
(By “gale,” Dunton would seem to mean what Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary defines as “a wind not tempestuous, yet stronger than a breeze.”)
And we see the phrase across the pond as early as 1780. It appears in a poem in New York City’s Royal Gazette of 22 January 1780, during the Revolution when the city was under British occupation. The poem, titled Mary Cay, is about a mother who enlists a group of men (Dick, Will, and Jack) to discipline her wayward daughter Mary Cay, or Moll, who is consorting with her boyfriend Sam. The poem opens with the lines:
GOOD Neighbours, if you’ll give me leave,
I’ll tell you such a story!
Twill make you laugh, I do believe,
Or I’m an errand Tory.
Yanky Doodle
And the relevant lines are:
Then Mother call’d for Dick and Will
To teach the wench her duty,
They drubb’d her now and then, but still
They coax’d her as a beauty.
Then Jack was sent across the Pond;
To take her in the rear, Sir,
But Dick and Will did both abscond—
We thought it mighty queer, Sir!
Jack is a common term for a sailor, especially an English one, and “take her in the rear” would seem to use a metaphor of a ship raking the stern of an enemy vessel with cannon fire to represent a spanking. (The poem does not support a sexual reading of the line.) So “Pond” would almost certainly seem to be a reference to the Atlantic.
The poem is also an extended metaphor for the American Revolution, written from the Tory perspective. There is of course, the use of Yanky Doodle as a pseudonym for the author. The mother is England, and Moll the American colonies. Dick and Will would be Richard and William Howe, the brothers who commanded the naval and army forces, respectively, in North America until 1778 when they “absconded.” Moll’s boyfriend Sam would then represent the revolutionaries, hinting that it might be a precursor to Uncle Sam. Although this last is quite a stretch.
With that digression complete, by the early nineteenth century, pond was firmly established as a slang term for the Atlantic. We see this in a 24 May 1832 letter by John Lothrop Motley:
I should have been very sorry to have crossed the Atlantic (or the pond, as sailors call it) without a single storm, but one every day in the week is rather too much.
Analogous to across the pond is the phrase over the ditch, which is found Downunder as a reference to the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. As with pond, we first see ditch being used as a general slang term for the ocean, albeit much later. It appears in a 1915 naval sketch written by L. A. da Costa Ricci under the pseudonym Bartimeus. In the story, two men have gone overboard in a storm, and the coxswain of the rescue boat is yelling to his men:
Oars all ready, lads! Stan’ by to pull like bloody ’ell—there’s two of ’em in the ditch.
Specific use of over the ditch to reference crossing the Tasman Sea appears at the end of the century. A 15 January 1998 post to the Usenet group alt.tv.xena-subtext uses the phrase in reference to travel to Sydney for Mardi Gras:
Unfortunately my finances over the next couple of months will only take me as far as the Auckland Hero Parade, not over the ditch to Sydders.
A few months later we see a column titled “Strange Happenings Across the Ditch” in the New Zealand gay periodical Out! And there
“Strange Happenings Across the Ditch” (title)
And there is this about the in the gay newspaper Queensland Pride for 28 September 2001:
Its great having the Games in Sydney—I was born and bread [sic] in NZ and we are never going to get the Games close to us again, so we’re very excited that its [sic] just over the ditch, and very excited that it’s being hosted in our part of the world.
These last three are all in a gay or lesbian context, but that is just happenstance of which sources are preserved in the databases I have access to. (My access to North American and British/Irish sources is extensive, much less so for Australia and New Zealand.) Over the ditch is not especially associated with gay subculture.
Sources:
Bartimeus (pseud. L. A. da Costa Ricci). “The Greater Love.” Naval Occasions. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1915, 231. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Dunton, John. Letter to Elizabeth Dunton, 25 October 1685. In John Dunton’s Letters from New-England. Publications of the Prince Society. Boston: T. R. Marvin & Son, 1867, 19. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. pond, the, n.; ditch, n.
Hall, Joseph. Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holy Storie, vol. 1. London: M. Bradwood for Samuel Macham, 1612, 20. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Herbert, Thomas. Some Years Travels. London: R. Everingham, 1677, 374. ProQuest: Early English Books Online. (This is a revised edition. The OED dates the edition in which the quote appears to 1665, but the 1665 edition in EEBO does not contain the quote).
Leigh, Edward. A Treatise of Divinitie Consisting of Three Books. London: E. Griffin for William Lee, 1646, 3.59. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
“Mary Cay.” Royal Gazette (New York), 22 January 1780, 3/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Motley, John Lothrop. Letter to his mother, 24 May 1832. In 11. George William Curtis, ed. The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, vol. 1 of 2. London: John Murray, 1889, 11. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2006, pond, n.; second edition, 1989, ditch, n.
Preston, Joseph. “Strange Happenings Across the Ditch.” Out! In the Land of Oz (column). Out! August–September 1998, 30. Gale Primary Sources: Archives of Sexuality and Gender.
“Profile: Fa’ataualofa Aiono, Softball Participant.” Queensland Pride (Mount Gravatt, Australia), 28 September 2001, 10/3. Gale Primary Sources: Archives of Sexuality and Gender.
Swinnock, George. The Christian-mans Calling. London: T.P. for Dorman Newman, 1662, 41. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
“Sydney Mardi Gras.” Usenet: alt.tv.xena-subtext, 15 January 1998.
Image credit: U.S. Postal Service, 1944. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.