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Holystone is a soft and brittle sandstone that was formerly used in the Royal Navy and US Navy for scrubbing and whitening the wooden decks of ships. A variety of origins have been proposed for the term, including that such stones were taken from broken monuments of St. Nicholas Church in Great Yarmouth〔Dean King, John B. Hattendorf, and J. Worth Estes, ''A Sea of Words'', Holt & Co., NY, 1997, p. 238〕 or else the ruined church of St. Helens adjacent to the St Helens Road anchorage of the Isle of Wight where ships would often provision. The US Navy has it the term may have come from the fact that 'holystoning the deck' was originally done on one's knees, as in prayer.〔US Navy Office of Information - (Origins of Navy Terminology page )〕〔("Army & Navy: No more holystone." ''Time''. June 8, 1931 )〕 Smaller holystones were called "prayer books" and larger ones "Bibles". Holystoning eventually was not generally done on the knees but with a stick resting in a depression in the flat side of the stone and held under the arm and in the hands and moved back and forth with grain on each plank while standing – or sort of leaning over to put pressure on the stick-driven stone. ==Royal Navy== Holystoning was a routine activity on Royal Navy vessels until the early 1800s. The practice reached its height in 1796 when Admiral St Vincent recommended to his captains that the decks of all ships in the fleet be holystoned "every evening as well as morning during the summer months."〔Lavery (ed.) 1998, pp. 419-420〕 For a ship of the line, the practice could take up to four hours. St Vincent's successor, Admiral Keith rescinded the order in 1801, finding that "the custom of washing the decks of ships of war in all climates in every temperature of the air, and on stated days let the weather be what it may" was so onerous as to be damaging the health and lives of the crews.〔 The practice was subsequently limited to once every seven to fourteen days, interspersed with sweeping.〔 Holystoning continued as part of Navy routine throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but was ultimately regarded as merely a way to occupy an otherwise idle crew. Its lack of utility was evidenced in contemporary accounts including an 1875 British Medical Journal advice which warned against having patients "set to useless tasks simply to keep them employed, such as sailors have to do in holystoning the decks." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Holystone」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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