Cockpit of a Boeing 787
17 July 2020
Most people know that a cockpit is the location in an aircraft where the pilot sits and controls the plane. But, if you think about it, it’s a strange name for it.
The original cockpits were literally that, cock-fighting arenas. Here is a 1556 example by Miles Huggarde, likening the Protestant practice of stripping churches of their decorations to turning them into cockpits:
And some, because they would hyt it ryght, pulled downe the Rode loftes, makyng such a confusion that neyther was there quyer, nor body of the churche, but makying it lyke Westminster hall. They stalled it aboute in maner of a Cocke pyt, where al the people might see them, and their communion.
And the word was quickly applied to other places where battle, either literal or figurative, took place. Roger Ascham, who had been the Latin tutor to then Princess, later Queen Elizabeth I, used the metaphor of a school being a cockpit in his treatise on teaching Latin, The Scholemaster. The book was published posthumously in 1570:
For euen as a hauke flieth not hie with one wing: euen so a man reacheth not to excellency with one tong.
I haue bene a looker on in the Cokpit of learning thies many yeares: And one Cock onelie haue I knowne, which with one wing, euen at this day, doth passe all other, in myne opinion, that euer I saw in any pitte in England, though they had two winges.
Perhaps the most famous use of cockpit as a metaphor is in the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Henry V, when it is used to refer to a theater where the battle of Agincourt will be staged:
But pardon, Gentles all:
The flat unraysed Spirits, that hath dar’d,
On this unworthy Scaffold, to bring forth
So great an Object. Can this Cock-Pit hold
The vastie fields of France? Or may we cramme
Within this Woodden O, the very Caskes
That did affright the Ayre at Agincourt?
But lofty metaphors like Shakespeare’s weren’t the only ones in circulation in the seventeenth century. Cockpit was also slang for a vagina. From a 1658 poem by John Eliot:
If then the stone, as doctors tell the story,
Be a disease that prove hereditory,
I trust her daughter will have so much wit,
Early to get a cock for her cock-pit;
And rather then be barren; play the whore,
As her great mother hath done heretofore.
On board ship, a cockpit was the portion of the orlop, or lowest, deck that was the home to midshipmen and junior officers, presumably because close quartering of young males would inevitably result in fights. In his 1691 book on the navy, Henry Maydman describes these quarters:
These Alterations are sure to be the enlargement of their own Accommodation, and the Abridgment of others: Notwithstanding all the Accommodations he hath contrived by the Builders, ten to one, but he is to enlarge his Store-Room, and confines the Steward-Room into so small a Room, that it is a miserable place to handle the Ships Provisions in, from which proceeds no small damage; many times to the King in his Provisions, and also the Purser; and the Cock-pit, a Hellish Pit, to transact the most, and constant business of the Ship; and by the thronging it with Cabins for Creatures, Boys, &c. that they are meerly choaked up.
And Maydman records, or makes up, a dialogue among the officers in which the purser says:
Faith, never so Lousie in my life; and we are choaked all in the Cock-pit, the steem of the Hold, for want of passage up the Steeridge way, kills us: I cannot endure my Cabin, for the Men come so thick down, and the Room is so strait, that we cannot turn; for you know, the Captain's Store-Room, is half the Cock-pit.
For the future development of the word’s meaning, it’s important to remember that the cockpit was on the lowest deck of the ship. Because by the mid eighteenth century, the sunken area of a deck of a small boat, which holds the helm, had become known as the cockpit. This ad for a boat ran on 28 November 1754:
To be Sold by AUCTION,
At the Ship-Tavern Ratcliff Cross, on Saturday the 17th
Day of December, at Four in the Afternoon,
A BOAT, with a Deck Cockpit and Long
Hatchway, two standing Cabins, with Masts and Sails almost
new, suitable for a Fisherman or a Luggage Boat.
And when the automobile came on the scene, the use of cockpit to denote the helm of a ship was transferred to the driver’s compartment. From the pages of Automobile on 15 October 1904:
It was a case of too much oil in the cylinders, which caused such a smoke that breathing in the car cockpit was difficult.
At about the same time, the term was applied to aircraft. From a description of a dirigible that appeared in New York Times on 14 February 1909:
Still another radical departure will be the arrangement of the passenger quarters, which will be directly behind the motor, resembling the cockpit of an open launch power boat.
That same year, cockpit is applied to the pilot’s compartment of an airplane. From a description of the Antoinette monoplane that appears in Flight on 20 October 1909:
Further aft the cedar gives place to a covering of rubber-proofed fabric, and this material is also carried over the top side of the frame, thus forming a kind of deck. An open cockpit is provided for the accommodation of the pilot’s seat.
The cockpit of a modern airplane is no longer open and looks very different, but its name comes from the more primitive versions of early aviation, the helms and junior officer accommodations on board ships, and eventually from cockfighting arenas.
Sources:
“The Antoinette Monoplane.” Flight, 30 October 1909. 682. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Ascham, Roger. The Scholemaster. London: John Daye, 1570, 51v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Classified Ad. Public Advertiser (London), 28 November 1754. Gale News Vault.
Eliot, John. “Upon a Lady That Went to Tunbridge Wells.” Poems. London: Henry Brome, 1658, 58. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. cock n.3.
Huggarde, Miles. The Displaying of the Protestantes and Sondry Their Practises. London, Robert Caly, 1556, fol. 73v.
Maydman, Henry. Naval Speculations. London: William Bonny, 1691, 104–05, 224–25. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2019, s.v. cockpit, n.
Shakespeare, William. Henry V. In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. London: Isaac Jaggard and Ed Blount, 1623, 69. Folger First Folio no. 68.
“Touring Type of Dirigible Balloon Is Latest Thing in Aeronautics.” New York Times, 14 February 1909, S2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Alex Beltyukov, 2011, license under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).