Every Englishman has the Sea in his Blood

So, he (Grice) was no landlubber. Actually he was Capt. with the R. N.

In

http://lsv.uky.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0903C&L=CLASSICS-L&P=R4499&I=-3

I wrote:

"M. Davidson refers to the _grit_ of this or that."

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If you do "land-lubbing Romans" in the internet, you get three hits. The first is a detailed account of how seasick, etc. the Romans felt _on a boat_. The source is 'Polibio', who describes it for us:

"When the landlubbing Romans first had to learn to row quadriremes and quinqueremes, they initially built wooden platform structures on land to practice rowing movements in time to the cox's calls." Here it's the ad. schol. which adds a note of interest: "It is not unlikely that these structures reproduced the internal organisation and architecture of your standard Punic decked ship."

The second is from Cantor's well publicised, "Antiquity". I like the
illustrations and will bear the sometimes heaviness on the slang (like 'from
scratch' (feminine simile?). Never mind the rivulet of the Rubicon. This is the
'oceanic' 'jump' between Calabria and Sicilia! "In the first war against Carthage, the landlubbing Romans built a navy from scratch to enable their conquest of Sicily" (Cantor, "Antiquity", p. 24). And I would not be surprised if some legionary suggested that they swim instead.

For the third: the implicature is clear, once a landlubber always a landlubber. Or so E. N. Borza argues in his review of "Travel in the Ancient World" (1978, p. 56): "His sixth chapter is an especially good review of Roman unity, ... travelers prayed for safe journeys, and the Romans never shed their landlubbing image. ...links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-837X(197810)73%3A4%3C367%3ATITAW%3E2.0.CO%3B...


Why, today, it's even used as a term of praise!

"We land~lubbing civilians know less about the Navy
than our maiden aunts might be expected to know about alimony."
Daily Express, 4 Oct. 1927