Reply To: Finger Rings and Sailors and Finger Amputation

[Frank Scott]

When serving in modern sail training ships I was very hard line on this, and forbade rings because of the risk that they became caught up in ropes or rigging, resulting in the loss of a finger, or that appalling finger injury that is delightfully known as ‘gloving’.
Although I cannot recall any formal prohibitions in the naval regulations of my time, the risks were well known, and engineers were actively discouraged from having them.
I doubt that there are any merchant ship records of such ‘minor’ injuries, but there might be something in the medical reports from warships of the Victorian era, for whom record keeping became a serious issue.

Frank