Holystone

For the place in England, see Holystone, Northumberland.

Sailors holystoning the deck of HMS Pandora in the early 20th century

Holystone is a soft and brittle sandstone that was formerly used for scouring and whitening the wooden decks of ships. It was used in the British and American Navy for scrubbing the decks of sailing ships. The term may have come from the fact that 'holystoning the deck' was originally done on one's knees, as in prayer. In realistic reference to their size, smaller holystones were called "prayer books" and larger ones "Bibles"; also, a widely quoted legend attributes the name "holystone" to the story that such pieces of stone were taken for use from St. Nicholas Church in Great Yarmouth. More plausible is the use of stones taken from the ruined church of St Helens, Isle of Wight; tall ships would often anchor in St Helens Roads (the strip of water immediately adjacent to St Helens) and take provisions and fresh water from St Helens before setting off on their journeys.

According to one source holystoning was banned in the US Navy by General Order Number 215 of 5 March 1931, as it wore down the decks too rapidly and caused excessive expense to replace the deck. However, a photo on the US Navy's Navsource photo archive of the USS Missouri) purports to show Navy Midshipmen holystoning the deck of the USS Missouri in 1951 (albeit in a standing position) A Time Magazine article (June 8, 1931) discusses the end of holystoning (archive article (fee) ) in the US Navy.

A 1952 graduate of the Naval Academy (Val Smith)states that he holystoned the deck of the Missouri on his Youngster (sophomore) cruise to England in the summer of 1949. It was with a stick in the depression of what we were told was brick normally used as insulation in the boilers. A group of 30-40 would stand behind an estimated 4-5" board and would move the brick back and forth in coordination with the others while the person in charge would establish the cadence, and then command 'shift' when we would all back up one board and repeat the process. As I recall sea water and sand were used to aid the effort.

The result, once finnished with a sea water rinse and a sun bleach, was a clean white deck, just in time for our arrival in Portsmouth England.

John Huston's 1956 film Moby Dick, and most recently Peter Weir's 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, shows sailors scrubbing the deck with holystones. Holystoning is referenced in Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s diary, the 1840 classic Two Years Before the Mast in what he calls the "Philadelphia Catechism":

“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,

And on the seventh—holystone the decks and scrape the cable.”

The Iowa class battleships (New Jersey, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa) all had wooden decks (over the steel decks) and were holystoned regularly until they variously came out of commission during the 1990s.

The Baltimore class of heavy cruisers all had wooden decking in the area around and near the quarterdeck, and extending fore and aft along the sides of the ship. The USS_Saint_Paul_(CA-73) was the last of this class left in commission, serving in the Vietnam War as Seventh Fleet flagship. It was decommissioned in 1971. Her "cruise books" have many photographs of the deck divisions holystoning the wooden decks.

Holystoning in the modern navy was not generally done on the knees but with a stick resting in a depression in the flat side of the stone and held under the arm and in the hands and moved back and forth with grain on each plank while standing - or sort of leaning over to put pressure on the stick driven stone.

See also

• Ship transport