scuttle butt

Best recent speed performance: Scuttle Butt 59.

The origin of this term is literally a scuttled butt, or breached cask, which was usually lashed on the deck.

Then he got water from the scuttle butt and ammonia smelling salts from the first-aid locker.

Scuttle Butt: Covered cask, having lid in head, in which fresh water for current use was formerly carried.

But in the wind seamen moved without bothering to seek out the shade and went less frequently to get a mug of water at the scuttle butt.

There the day's gossip was exchanged, and although the route the news travelled from the cabin to the scuttle butt was often devious, the news itself was nearly always accurate.

Water for immediate consumption on a sailing ship was conventionally stored in a scuttled butt: a butt (cask) which had been scuttled by making a hole in it so the water could be withdrawn.

He then climbed down with this to the scuttle butt, outside the galley, inserted the gun barrel into the bunghole, and, having sucked up his drink, he was required to carry the drinking tube to the main top again.

However, fours hours after first contact Barclays, Mr Tucker received an email from Mr Heywood titled, ‘Might be scuttle butt – are u hearing this rumour’, in which he said he had been told “from the money market trenches” that sterling Libor was high “because Barclays are bidding it”.