Guest 761- Registered: 10 Jul 2012
- Posts: 115
Does anyone know where the name/term 'Dover Sharks' came from?
I have heard it said that there was a time when Dover had a particularly high number of elderly people growing a third set of teeth - like a shark.
I have managed to find many recorded instances of this unusual phenomenon but none in Dover.
Can any of the local historians shed any light?
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
there were stories of when bodies were washed ashore during the napoleonic wars that local people when scavenging everything from the bodies would bite fingers off to get rings,
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Apart from learning that the 'Dover Sharks' beat Maidstone at something, I've no luck so far with the phrase, except...
I have been down the dark alley of the origins of the word 'shark' in English. Fascinating stuff. While 'Dogfish' can be explained from the Greek, why we end up with Shark is a thorny issue. I learn from The Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute that we may have gleaned the word from South America in the mid sixteenth century from the Yucatec 'xoc'. Through one of a series of expeditions of William and John (later 'Sir') Hawkins in the 1560s. A specimen (the first specimen?) of Shark was exhibited in London in 1569.
The dark alley...
http://www.mesoweb.com/pari/publications/RT07/Xoc.pdfIgnorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
nothing much changes tom yet they still send the orient express to savage deal.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Before I cast it aside here is the link to my source for the above Dover & Deal appellations...
http://archive.org/stream/englishproverbs00hazlgoog/englishproverbs00hazlgoog_djvu.txtIgnorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 684- Registered: 26 Feb 2009
- Posts: 635
And a very warm welcome Orient Express passengers get too, Howard, from Deal's very unsavage-like and friendly residents. You should try Deal sometime. You might enjoy it.
Guest 761- Registered: 10 Jul 2012
- Posts: 115
#2 Howard - thats nasty - leaves a bad taste in my mouth!
Tom, So we still need to know why a 'Dover Shark' and also now a 'Deal Savage'...the plot thickens.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
all explained in the link in post 4 mike.
normally in deal about once a week andy.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
I look forward most keenly to nibbling upon the fruits of your endeavours Mike.
If you have been following the posts of Kath-H and her newspaper clippings, or know anything about journalists in general, you will realise that the working life of a reporter stretches out like a fine thread strung between the lessons of their school English masters and their imagined, richly-glittering, future as a Novelist of World Renown.
That one tale of jewelry-jaw-lity at Dover and the fame of the sundry Cinque port men of the long shore of Deal coupled with the fashionably florid usage of alliteration and simile, not to mention hyperbole, and there you have it.
[I am, at present, reading some Wodehouse...as if you couldn't tell.]
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 684- Registered: 26 Feb 2009
- Posts: 635
Pop in and see us for a coffee at the cafe sometime, Howard - Platform 1 at Deal railway station. It'd be nice to meet you in person.
Regards,
Andy
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
been intending to for ages andy, i will get there soon. will be nice to meet nick and yourself.
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
Dover Shark.Means none of the above,it means that if you are an outsider and meet up with a person born in Dover,you have to be carefull in what you say to them,because they are on the ball 24/7 and they will catch you out if you try to pull the wool over their eyes,and they are always out to make a buck or to.
And that is True.
Guest 700- Registered: 11 Jun 2010
- Posts: 2,868
Tom - very interesting old book. I was interested to read the Lincolnshire ones.
Lincolnshire natives are always called 'yellowbellies' - this name supposed to come from EITHER: soldiers' jackets; or the underneath parts of frogs or eels !! common in the county.
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Lincolnshire Born and Bred
Guest 715- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 2,438
Vic, Itake it that it is not Dover Sharks that have overseen the decline of the Town then? on the ball 24/7, catch you out if they try and pull the wool over their eyes etc.
Audere est facere.
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
No sir it is not,but nor do I agree that the port is in decline,only by trade,the port looks good to me.Yes there are parts that could look better,but if you go to some of the ports I have worked in,within the UK you would see real deline and bigger ones then Dover.Thank you for your post.
Guest 1731- Registered: 5 Apr 2016
- Posts: 1
Re Dover Sharks. The term was coined in the news papers of the late 1700 as a derogatory term to refer to the Dover Boatmen who would take passengers and their luggage out to the ships, however, once they were halfway between the shore and the ships the boatmen would stop and demand more payment or threaten to throw the folks and their luggage overboard., hence SHARKS. refer to Dover (Kent) History pages
Guest 977- Registered: 27 Jun 2013
- Posts: 1,031
Also refers to the habit of Dover folks biting off the fingers of drowned sailors to get the rings off their swollen fingers
Dover Tales have developed a presentation of the tale of The Fiery Serpent, which tells the story of how Folkestone men became known as Turks by the Dover Sharks. We performed it recently at the mayor's fundraiser for the Western Heights volunteers to help replace their stolen tools, where the parts of the Dover Mayor and Folkestone Mayor were taken on by . . . the current Dover Mayor and Folkestone Mayor.
We will probably be performing it again as part of the Up On The Downs summer festival - watch this space.
