Yesterday we asked, what does “holystone” mean and where did the term originate?

A holystone is a soft and brittle sandstone that was formerly used for scouring and whitening the wooden decks of a ship.

The term may have come from the fact that ‘holystoning the deck’ was originally done on one’s knees, as if in prayer. Another widely quoted legend attributes the name to the story that such pieces of stone were taken for use from St. Nicholas Church in Great Yarmouth. More plausible is the theory that “holy” stones were taken from the ruined church of St. Helens on the Isle of Wight, where tall ships would often anchor and take on provisions before setting off on a voyage.

A few other interesting tidbits:

John Huston’s 1956 film “Moby Dick” and most recently Peter Weir’s 2003 film “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” depict sailors scrubbing the deck with holystones.

The U.S. Navy’s Iowa-class battleships (New Jersey, Wisconsin, Missouri and Iowa) all had wooden decks (over steel decks) and were holystoned regularly until the ships were decommissioned during the 1990s.

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. One source claims holystoning was banned in the U.S. Navy in 1931, as it wore down the deck, however, a photo on the U.S. Navy’s Navsource photo archive shows Navy Midshipmen holystoning the deck of the USS Missouri in 1951.