"Baton down the hatches" would mean to beat them mercilessly with a billy club (baton) to force them down. You mean "batten down" the hatches, which means to secure by means of clamps or nailing strips of wood across them. As a people, we seem to have trouble with homonyms, words that sound alike but mean different things and are spelled differently.
"Baton down the hatches" would mean to beat them mercilessly with a billy club (baton) to force them down. You mean "batten down" the hatches, which means to secure by means of clamps or nailing strips of wood across them. As a people, we seem to have trouble with homonyms, words that sound alike but mean different things and are spelled differently.