The Mystery of the Coin Under the Mast

The coin at the base of the mast on Holland America Line’s ms Maasdam

Some ceremonies began so far back in antiquity that their origins are obscure, yet we still do them today either out of reverence for our forebears or a superstitious fear of breaking the chain. It seems the coin under the mast ceremony is one of those observances that could fall into either category.

Eurodam will have its coin under the mast ceremony tomorrow, Friday, Sept. 28, as part of the larger floating-out occasion when the vessel becomes fully water-borne for the first time, and is moved from the drydock to a nearby wharf for the latter stages of construction.

The coin ceremony is as old as sailing ships, and “stepping the mast” is the singular moment when a ship’s mast first is set into a notch or step in the keel. The practice was started by the ancient Greeks … or the Romans … or maybe the Phoenicians, depending on whom you ask. Apparently, all of those ancient sailors marked the same boatbuilding milestone by placing coins in the step beneath the mast.

The inferred reasons for the practice range from the practical — to have ready money to pay for a new mast — to the metaphysical — to help sailors lost at sea pay their passage across the River Styx to the Underworld. Or it might simply have been in hopes of bringing good luck.

Sometimes unusual items are placed under the mast. In the U.S. Navy, aircraft carrier captains place their naval aviator wings under the mast. Mostly, however, it is coins in every denomination and every currency.

To find out about how the coin under the mast ceremony came to be a Holland America Line tradition, ENB asked Captain Albert Schoonderbeek, master of ms Veendam and something of an authority on the history of the line.

“There are several coin ceremonies,” he told us. “Putting a coin under the first keel plate of the ship is like paying a tax to have the gods accept the new ship in their domain. The Greeks were doing it 2000 years ago.

“The second is putting a coin under the mast,” said Schoonderbeek. “This began with HAL when they started building the S class. I think it is an Italian thing, as I had never heard of it in Anglo Saxon literature. In reality they do not put the coin under the mast but at the base of the mast behind a little clear plastic window where you can see it.”

Mystery solved.