Emerald Shellback -Imperium Neptuni Regis Patch

There is no land at Null Island, just open water in the Gulf of Guinea about 600 kilometers south of the West African coast and nearly 5,000 meters to the bottom, and that is exactly why a sailor who crossed it remembers it. Null Island is the name for the point where the equator meets the Prime Meridian, zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude. Cross the line anywhere and a pollywog becomes a shellback. Cross it right there and the old hands call you an Emerald Shellback. Few ships ever have a reason to pass through that one spot, so the title shows up on far fewer sea bags than the plain shellback card.

The crossing the line ceremony goes back to the age of sail, when there was no marker on the water and the ship made its own. Pollywogs who had never crossed answer to King Neptune and his Royal Court, and they come out the other side as trusty shellbacks. The tradition has its own grades by location. Crossing at the International Date Line makes a Golden Shellback, and crossing at the Prime Meridian makes an Emerald Shellback. Sailors aboard the expeditionary sea base USS Hershel "Woody" Williams (ESB-4) ran an obstacle course at 00.00N/00.00W to earn the emerald title. A weather buoy named Soul, part of the PIRATA array in the tropical Atlantic, sat moored at that point for years before it was retired in 2021.

The patch is round, 4.5 inches across, with a black merrowed border and a bright green outer ring. Across the top in black letters runs IMPERIUM NEPTUNI REGIS, the realm of Neptune the King, and across the bottom, EMERALD SHELLBACK. In the center King Neptune rises out of the sea in teal and gray thread, hair and beard flying, holding a white trident in his right hand. A 0° sits on each side of his head for the two zeros of the coordinate, set against an orange disc ringed in yellow, red and salmon. NULL ISLAND is stitched in white on the wave at his waist, and the back is iron-on.

Ask any shellback about his crossing and you will get a story, usually with a grin. The day is part initiation and part ship's holiday, the one time the crew gets to turn the chain of command upside down with the chiefs and the old salts running the show. It is earned at sea, far from port, on a voyage most people ashore never think about. The emerald version adds a coordinate that only a handful of ships ever reach. That is why the sailors who have it bring it up.

Sew or iron it onto a sea bag, a deck jacket or a vest, or frame it in a shadow box beside your shellback card and ship patch. It also makes a good gift for a shipmate who was on deck that day at zero and zero. One patch, one spot on the chart.