Boatswain the final scene. "Typhoon" by Joseph Conrad has a nameless boatswain who tells Captain MacWhirr of a "lump" of men going overboard during the peak of the storm. Also, the character Bill Bobstay in Gilbert and Sullivan's musical comedy "H.M.S. Pinafore" is alternatively referred to as a "bos'un" and a "boatswain's mate." Another boatswain from literature is Smee from "Peter Pan". Lord Byron had a Newfoundland dog named Boatswain. Byron wrote the famous poem "Epitaph to a Dog" and had a monument made for him at Newstead Abbey. Quartermaster is the highest rank in the Sea Scouts, BSA, an older
Newfoundland English example of these constructs found in Newfoundland is "Throw grandpa down the stairs his hat", a dative construction in which the hat makes the trip, not the grandfather. Another is the use of French reflexive constructions in sentences such as the reply to a question like "Where are you going?", reply: "Me I'm goin' downtown" (this reflexive form of grammar also exists in Irish Gaelic and Jerriais). Newfoundland French was deliberately discouraged by the Newfoundland government through the public schools during the mid-20th-century, and only a small handful of mainly elderly people are still fluent in the French-Newfoundland dialect. In