Decker (pronounced dek-er)
(1) Something (typically a bus, ship, aircraft, bed,
sandwich et al), having a specified number of decks, floors, levels, layers and
such (used usually in combination with a numerical or other expression indicating
the number in the construction (double decker, triple decker, upper decker, five
decker etc (sometimes hyphenated).
(2) As “table decker” an employee who “decks” (ie sets or
adorns) a table used for entertaining (used also as a “coverer”) (archaic). The idea lives on in the verb “bedeck” (to
adorn).
(3) In boxing slang, a fighter with a famously powerful
punch, able to “deck” an opponent (ie knock them to the canvas with a single punch).
(4) In historic naval slang, as “quarter-decker”, a label
applied to officers known more for their attention to matters of etiquette or
trivial regulations than competent seamanship or ability in battle. It was an allusion to a warship’s “quarter
deck” (the part of the spar-deck of a man-of-war (warship) between the poop deck
and main-mast (and originally (dating from the 1620s), a smaller deck above the
half-deck, covering about a quarter of the vessel’s LOA (length overall)). In many navies, the quarter-deck was reserved
as “a promenade for officers only”.
1785–1795: The construct was deck + -er. Deck in this context was from the Middle
English dekke (covering extending
from side to side over part of a ship), from a nautical use of the Middle Dutch
decke & dec (roof, covering), from the Middle Dutch decken, from the Proto-Germanic thakam
(source also of the noun “thatch” and from the primitive Indo-European root steg & teg- (to cover) and the Old Dutch thecken, from the Proto-West Germanic þakkjan, from the Proto-Germanic þakjaną and related to the German Decke (covering, blanket). The –er
suffix was from the Middle English –er
& -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been
borrowed from the Latin –ārius where,
as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals. In English, the –er suffix, when added to a
verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action
indicated by the root verb. The use in
English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our),
from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.
When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or
describing the person whose occupation is the noun. The noun double-decker was first used in 1835 of ships with two decks above the water line and this extended to land transport (trains) in 1867. Decker is a noun &
adjective; the noun plural is deckers.
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Flight deck of the US Navy's Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70).
The
reason ships, trains, buses, aircraft and such have "decks" while
buildings have "floors” or “stories (or storeys)” is traceable to nautical history and the
nomenclature used in shipbuilding. English
picked up “deck” from the Middle Dutch decke
& dec (roof, covering) where the
use had been influenced by the Old Norse þekja
(to cover) and in early shipbuilding, a “deck”
was the structure which covered the hull of the ship, providing both a horizontal
“working surface” and enclosing the vessel, creating a space for stores, cargo or
accommodation which was protected from the elements. In that sense the first nautical decks acted
as a “roof”. As ships became larger, the
nautical architects began to include multiple decks, analogous with the floors
of buildings in that they fulfilled a similar function, providing segregated
layers (ie the storeys in buildings) used for cannons, crew quarters, storage
and such. As the terminology of
shipbuilding became standardized, each deck came to have a specific name
depending on its purpose or position (main deck, flight deck, poop deck, gun
deck etc).
Until the nineteenth
century, although the vehicles used on land became larger, they tended to get
longer rather than higher but the advent of steam propulsion made possible
trains which ran on railways and these could pull carriages carrying freight or
passengers. The first “double decker”
versions appeared in France in 1867 and were described as voitures à imperial, (imperial cars) were
used on the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest
(Western Railway), the upper deck roofless and thus an “open-air experience”, Rapidly, the idea spread and double-deck carriages
became common for both long-distance and commuter services. An outlier in the terminology is car design;
cars have a floor (sometimes called the “floor pan”) rather than a deck,
presumably because there’s only ever one.
In the narrow technical sense there have been cars with “two floors” but
they were better understood as a “double-skinned” single floor and they were used for armor or to provide a space for something specialized such as hydrogen
fuel-cells, the technique often called “sandwich construction”.
Boeing 314
Clipper flying boat cutaway (left) and front schematics of Boeing 747-300 (right). Re-using some of an earlier design for a
bomber which failed to meet the military’s performance criteria, between
1938-1941, Boeing built twelve 314 Clippers, long-range flying boats with the
range to cross both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Although used by the military during World
War II, most of their service was with the two commercial operators Pan Am
(originally Pan American Airways) and BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation). Very much a machine of the pre-war age, the
last Clippers were retired from service between 1946-1948, the advances in
aviation and ground infrastructure built during war-time rendering them
obsolete and prohibitively expensive to maintain.
Because
train designers adopted the nautical terminology, it naturally came to be used also in
buses, and aircraft, the term “flight deck” (where the pilot(s) sat) common
even before multiple decks appeared on flying boats and other long-distance airframes. The famous “bubble” of the Boeing 747 (1968-2023)
remains one of the best known decks and although most associated with the glamour
of first-class international travel, was designed originally as a freight
compartment. The multi-deck evolution
continued and the Airbus A380 (2005-2021) was the first “double decker” with two
passenger decks extending the full length of the fuselage (with cargo &
baggage) carried in the space beneath hence the frequent description of the
thing as a “triple decker”.
Lindsay Lohan contemplating three decker sandwich, now
usually called a “
club sandwich”. Many menus do specify the number of decks in the clubs.
Deck widely was used of many raised flat
surface which people could walk or stand upon (balcony, porch, patio, flat
rooftop etc) and came to be used of the floor-like covering of the horizontal
sections or compartments, of a ship, a use later extended to land transport
(trains, busses etc) and in the twentieth century, to aircraft. A pack or set of playing cards can be called
a deck as (less commonly), can the dealt cards which constitute the “hand” of
each player and the notion was extended to sets of just about anything vaguely
similar (such as a collection of photographic slides). , Because slides tended
to be called a “deck” only when in their magazine, this influenced the later
use in IT when certain objects digitally were assemble for storage or use and
in audio and video use when cartridges or cassettes were loaded into “tape
decks”. In print journalism, a deck is a
headline consisting of one or more full lines of text (applied especially to a sub-headline).
The slang use in the trade of illicit
narcotics to describe the folded paper used for distributing drugs was a US
regionalism. There are dozens of
idiomatic and other uses of deck, the best known including “all hands on deck”,
“swab the decks”, “hit the deck” “clear the decks”, “deck-chair”, “deckhand”, “deck
shoes”, “flight deck”, “gun deck”, “observation deck”, “play with a full deck”,
“promenade deck”, “re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”, “decked out”, “stack the
deck”, “sun deck”, “top deck” & “to deck someone”.
Schematic of the Royal Navy’s HMS Victory, a 104-gun
first-rate ship of the line, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765, most
famous as the flagship of Admiral Lord Nelson’s (1758-1805) flagship at the
Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805; it was on her Nelson was killed in
battle. Uniquely, after 246 years on the
active list, she is the world's oldest naval vessel still in commission. Although the term wasn’t in use until the
1830s, Victory was a “five decker” configured thus:
Orlop Deck: The lowest deck, mainly used for storage and
ship's equipment.
Lower Gun Deck: The deck housing the heaviest cannons.
Middle Gun Deck: This deck contained another set of guns,
slightly lighter than those on the lower gun deck.
Upper Gun Deck: The third level of guns, with even
lighter cannons.
Quarterdeck and Forecastle: The uppermost decks, where
the captain and officers usually directed the ship during battle.
The early meanings in English evolved from “covering” to “platform
of a ship” because of the visual similarity and it’s thought the idea of a deck
being a “pack of cards” (noted in the 1590s) was based on them being stacked
like the decks of a multi-deck man-of-war (warship). The tape-deck was first so described in 1949
an was a reference to the flat surface of the old reel-to-reel tape recorders. The first deck chairs were advertised in 1844,
an allusion to the use of such thing on the decks of passenger ocean liners and
deck shoes were those with sturdy rubber soles suitable for use on slippery
surfaces; the modern “boat shoes” are a descendent. The old admiralty phrase “clear the decks”
dated from the days of the tall-masted warships (the best known of which was
the big “ship-of-the-line”) and was a reference to the need to remove from the
main deck the wreckage resulting from an attack (dislodged masts, sails, spas
etc) to enable the battle to be rejoined without the obstructions. Being made of wood, the ships were hard to
sink but highly susceptible to damage, especially to the rigging which, upon
fragmentation, tended to fall to the deck.
It may have been a adaptation of the French army slang débarasser le pont (clear the bridge).
Ford 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) Windsor V8 with the
standard deck (left) and the raised deck 351 (5.8) (right). In production in various displacements
between 1961-2000, the 221 (3.6), 255 (4.2), 260 (4.3), 289 (4.7) & 302
(4.9) all used what came retrospectively to be called the “standard deck” while
the 351 (5.8) was the sole “raised deck” version.
For decades, it was common for US manufacturers to
increase the displacement of their V8 engines but means of creating a “raised
deck” version, the process involving raising the height of the engine block's
deck surface (the surface where the cylinder heads bolt on). What this allowed was the use of longer connecting
rods while using the original heads and pistons which in combination with a “longer
stroke crankshaft” increases the displacement (the aggregate volume of all cylinders). The industry slang for such things was “decker”
and the technique was used with other block configurations but is best known
from the use in the 1960s & 1970s for V8s because it’s those which tend to
be fetishized. The path to greater
displacement lay either in lengthening the stroke or increasing the bore (or a
combination of the two) and while there were general engineering principles
(longer stroke=emphasis on more torque at the cost of reducing maximum engine
speed and bigger bore=more power and higher engine speeds) but there were
limitations in how much a bore could safely be increased including the
available metal. A bigger bore (ie increasing
the internal diameter of the cylinder) reduces the thickness of the cylinder
walls and if they become too thing, there can be problems with cooling,
durability or even the structural integrity of the block. The piston size also increases which means
the weight increases and thus so too does the reciprocating mass, increasing friction,
wear and has the potential to compromise reliability, especially at high engine
speeds.
Increasing the stroke will usually enhance the torque
output, something of greater benefit to most drivers, most of the time than the
“top end power” most characteristic of the “big bore” approach. In street use, most engines spend most time
at low or mid-range speed and it’s here a longer stroke tends to produce more
torque so it has been a popular approach and the advantage for manufacturers is
that creating a “decker” almost always is easier, faster and cheaper than
arranging one which will tolerate a bigger bore, something which can demand a
new block casting and sometimes changes to the physical assembly line. With a raised deck, there can be the need to
use different intake and exhaust manifolds and some other peripheral components
but it’s still usually a cheaper solution than a new block casting. Ford’s “thinwall” Windsor V8 was one of the
longest-serving deckers (although the raised-deck version didn’t see out the
platform’s life, the 351 (introduced in 1969) retired in 1997). Confusingly, during the Windsor era, Ford also produced other 351s which belonged to a different engine family. Ford didn’t acknowledge the biggest Windsor's
raised deck in its designation but when Chrysler released a decker
version of the “B Series” big-block V8 (1958-1978), it was designated “RB”
(Raised B) and produced between 1959-1979.
1964 AEC Routemaster double decker Bus RM1941 (ALD941B)
(left), two sightseeing AEC Routemasters in Christchurch, New Zealand (centre) and one
of the "new" Routemasters, London 2023 (right).
London’s red, double-decker busses are one of the symbols
most associated with the city and a fixture in literature, art and films needing something with which to capture the verisimilitude.
The classic example of the breed was the long-running AEC Routemaster,
designed by the London Transport Board and built by the Associated Equipment
Company (AEC) and Park Royal Vehicles. The Routemaster entered service in 1956 and
remained in production until 1968, changed over those years in many details but
visually there was such continuity that it takes an expert (and buses are a
thing so experts there are) to pick the model year. They entered service in 1956 and remained in
regular service until 2005 although some were retained as “nostalgia pieces” on
designated “tourist” routes until COVID-19 finally saw their retirement; since then, many have been repurposed for service around
the world on sightseeing duties and other tourist projects.
Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) will
leave an extraordinary political legacy which in time may came to be remembered
more fondly than it now may appear but one of his most enduring achievements is
likely to be the “New Routemaster” which had the typically bureaucratic project
name “New Bus for London” but came to be known generally as the “Boris Bus”,
the honor accorded by virtue of him championing the idea while serving as Lord
Mayor of London (2008-2016). In truth,
the original Routemaster, whatever its period charm, was antiquated years
before it was withdrawn from service and although the doorless design made
ingress and egress convenient, it was also dangerous and apparently a dozen
passenger fatalities annually was not uncommon.
The Borisbus entered service in 2012 and by 2024 almost 1200 were in
service.
1930 Lancia Omicron with 2½ deck coachwork and a clerestoried upper windscreen
(left) and a “three decker” bus in Pakistan (right).
The Lancia Omicron was a bus chassis produced between
1927-1936; over 600 were built in different wheelbase lengths with both two and
three-axle configurations. Most used
Lancia's long-serving, six-cylinder commercial engine but, as early as 1933,
some had been equipped with diesel engines which were tested in North Africa
where they proved durable and, in the Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya and Algeria, once
petrol powered Omicron chassis were being re-powered with diesel power-plants
from a variety of manufacturers as late as the 1960s. Typically of bus use, coachbuilders
fabricated many different styles of body but, in addition to the usual single
and double deck arrangements, the Omicron is noted for a number of two and a half
deck models, the third deck configured usually as a first-class compartment but
in at least three which operated in Italy, they were advertised as “smoking
rooms”, the implication presumably that the rest of the passenger compartment
was smoke-free. History doesn't record
if the bus operators were any more enthusiastic about or successful in enforcing smoking bans than
the usual Italian experience. For a
variety of reasons, busses with more than 2.something decks were rare and the
Lancias and Alfa Romeos which first emerged in the 1920s were unusual. However, the famously imaginative and
inventive world of Pakistani commerce has produced a genuine “three decker” bus,
marketed as the “limousine bus”. What the
designer did was take a long-distance, double decker coach and use the space allocated
usually as a luggage compartment to configure as the interior of a long
wheelbase (LWB) limousine, thereby creating a “first class” section, the four
rows of seating accessible via six car-like (ie limousine) doors.
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