
During the 2003 Gulf War there was a desperate search for biological and chemical weapons, and other stored military equipment. Soon there were press conferences where military PR officers were talking about finding weapons caches. But from day one they pronounced it as cashays (ca·chet, /kaˈSHā/)
That meant they were looking for fashionable weapons, or weapons that had prestige because that is what cachet means. That is not they were looked for, it was caches (pronounced cashes; hidden storage places) they were looking for. This cringe worthy mispronunciation went on for months and left one to wonder what else the military was confused about. Somebody must have finally gotten through and trained PR officers in the correct pronunciation, and towards the end of the war the term was properly pronounced.
That still leaves one to wonder how the military mispronunciation started out. The term cache is very common in computer engineering, and there I have never heard it pronounced cashay.
Life is a communication exercise, and as long as the message gets across, it does not matter too much what something is called, but occasionally I encounter maritime terminology distortions that make me cringe and I wonder how they established themselves.
One that personally affects me is the term “Trip in Tow”. The term is super simple and self descriptive. It is a trip where something is taken in tow. The term is very common in the context of trip in tow surveys and trip in tow contracts, but for some reason I see it too often referred to as a trip and tow survey, which absolutely makes no sense.
I wondered where that distortion came from, and turned to my trusty Ngram viewer. The term “trip in tow” did not show up until after 1875, which makes sense because Martin & Ottaway did not exist until 1875.

In Ngram viewer the term “Trip in Tow” (the blue line)shows up in insurance texts and legal decisions starting in 1875. The term “Trip and Tow” (the red line) first shows up in 1938 and then shows up again in 1951 in a “Motorboating” magazine article. Then, weirdly, it shows up in Department of Transportation documents in the late 1990’s.
Fortunately, it looks like it starts to peter out in public documents after 2010, but in the industry I still see it as recently as this week in a “Trip and Tow” voyage plan. Let’s please get rid of this silliness. I am surprised that anybody even uses “Trip and Tow”; it simply makes no sense. Does nobody wonder about it when they use it?
But “Trip in Tow” is a pretty obscure term and it pales against the cringeworthiness of the incorrect use of the term “Merchant Marine”. There is a real use for the term. A Merchant Marine is a fleet of commercial vessels. As such, when we talk about the US Merchant Marine, we are talking about the collection of US commercial vessels, and, generally, it refers to the collection of US ocean going commercial vessels.
We train people to sail on those ships in maritime academies. There even also is a US Merchant Marine Academy. The people that get trained in those academies are called merchant mariners. However, too often I hear people call them merchants marines.
I kid you not, even midshipmen in those academies will refer to themselves as merchant marines and that really makes me cringe. A marine is a naval infantry soldier. A noble and honorable human; often the cream of the military crop. However, a mariner’s job is not to fight, her job is to take ships across the seven seas (sometimes to deliver marines to the fight).
The term merchant marine for a person is an oxymoron; about the equivalent of a pacifist warrior. It simply makes no sense, confuses issues, and when the term is used by people in the industry, it leaves one to wonder what else they don’t know.

Avoid an albatros about your neck, don’t call them merchant marines, they are merchant mariners.
