TinyProf's Guide to Early Modern English Nautical Syntax 🧭

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1. What We're Solving

You've encountered a genuinely tricky phrase in Hakluyt's Principal Navigations — "sogate the sea to our friend" — and you're asking two excellent, layered questions:

• Is "to our friend" a parallel construction echoing a theological "God as friend" idiom?
• Could "sogate" be parsed as "so [we] got the sea to [as] our friend"?

These are sophisticated instincts, and working through them carefully will sharpen your Early Modern English (EModE) analytical skills considerably!

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2. The Approach

Before jumping to interpretation, we need to reconstruct the syntactic skeleton of the sentence. Early Modern English frequently drops or implies elements that modern readers expect to see explicitly. The strategy is:

• 1. Identify the verb (the engine of the sentence)
• 2. Identify the subject (who is acting?)
• 3. Classify "sogate" etymologically and grammatically
• 4. Locate the idiomatic register — is this nautical jargon, theological borrowing, or everyday idiom?
• 5. Test your hypothesis against parallel contemporary texts

This matters because EModE syntax can look like a theological or literary parallel when it's actually a frozen idiom from a completely different register — nautical language had its own vocabulary that frequently mystifies modern readers.

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3. Step-by-Step Solution

Step 1: Unpack "Sogate" — What Kind of Word Is This?

"Sogate" is a Middle English/early Scots adverbial compound:

• "So" + "gate" (from Old Norse gata, meaning "way, path, manner")
• It means "in this way/manner" or "thus"

> 💡 Think of it as a cousin to "anyway," "likewise," or the archaic "in this wise."

Crucially, "sogate" functions as an adverb modifying the entire following clause — it is not a verb phrase.

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Step 2: Test the "So [We] Got" Hypothesis

Your instinct to read "sogate" as "so [we] got" shows good phonological awareness. However, grammatical and etymological evidence points in a different direction:

The problems with this reading:

• "Sogate" appears consistently in period texts as a single adverbial unit, not a verb phrase. You can find it in Scottish chronicles and voyage narratives doing the same adverbial work throughout.
• Splitting it into "so" + past tense verb would be etymologically irregular — "gate" derives from gata (way/path), not from "get/got"
• The verb "got" in 1600 would more typically appear as "gat" (past tense) or "gotten," making the phonological merger unlikely in a written text

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Step 3: Reconstruct the Syntactic Skeleton

Now let's parse the full clause properly:

> "and sogate [we made/had] the sea to our friend, and tried out all that day with our main course"

The implied verb here is almost certainly something like "made" or "had" — a verb of rendering or causing a state. The construction follows a pattern:

[Subject] + make/have + [object] + to/our + [noun complement]

So the structure reads:

| Element | Function | |---|---| | sogate | Adverb: "in this manner/thus" | | the sea | Direct object | | to our friend | Predicative complement ("as our friend") |

The whole phrase means: "and thus [we made/had] the sea [as] our friend"

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Step 4: Is "To Our Friend" a Theological Parallel?

Your question about whether this echoes a "God as friend" construction is worth exploring, with attention to context.

Evidence that suggests primarily nautical idiom:

• "Making the weather/wind/sea one's friend" is a documented nautical idiom of the period, meaning essentially gaining favorable conditions
• "Tried out all that day with our main course" is pure technical sailing language (maintaining position under sail), which suggests the register here is predominantly practical/nautical
• The idiomatic pair — making conditions friendly + managing sails — reads as a seamless nautical sequence

> 🎯 Key insight: The construction is idiomatic rather than parallel. "To our friend" employs a conventional nautical/colloquial idiom meaning favorable or on our side. Think of how we still say "the wind was our friend today."

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Step 5: How to Confirm Your Reading

Here's how to verify this interpretation:

• 1. Check the OED under "friend" for idiomatic nautical or weather-related uses
• 2. Search EEBO (Early English Books Online) for "sea to our friend" or "wind to our friend" to find parallel constructions in other voyage narratives
• 3. Look at Hakluyt's surrounding text — does he use similar "making X our friend" constructions elsewhere?
• 4. Consult the Dictionary of the Scots Language for "sogate" — this resource may provide additional citations

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4. The Answer

"Sogate" is best understood as a fixed adverbial compound ("in this manner/thus") derived from Old Norse gata, not as a compressed "so [we] got." The phonological similarity is real but etymologically misleading.

"The sea to our friend" is most likely a nautical idiom meaning the sea became favorable/on our side, with the implied verb being something like "made" or "rendered." While the surrounding text carries a providential worldview consistent with Hakluyt's religious context, the dominant register is idiomatic nautical usage rather than a deliberate theological parallel.

The modernized reading would be: "and thus [we made] the sea [as] our friend, and kept our position all that day under the mainsail."

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5. Memory Tips 🌟

For "sogate": Think of it as the ancestor of "so anyway" — a word that summarizes manner and moves the narrative forward. Norse gata (way/path) → "in this way" → "sogate." The "gate" is a path, not a verb!

For EModE idiomatic constructions: Always ask "what register is this text operating in?" before reaching for literary parallels. Nautical texts, legal texts, and religious texts all had their own frozen idioms that can look like cross-register borrowing when they're actually domain-specific shorthand.

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You're asking exactly the right questions — the instinct to look for parallel constructions and to interrogate etymology shows real literary-linguistic sophistication. Keep pulling on those threads! 🚢