Learn English – Where does the phrase “holy crap on a cracker” come from

There is a nice explanation on ask.yahoo.

British fugitives in the 1800s would rub a herring across their trail, thereby diverting the bloodhounds that were hot in pursuit. In the 1920s, American investment bankers started calling preliminary prospectuses "red herrings" as a warning to investors that the documents were not complete or final and could be misleading.

Edit: Also there's this wiktionary entry

It originated from a news story by English journalist William Cobbett, c. 1805, in which he claimed that as a boy he used a red herring (a cured and salted herring) to mislead hounds following a trail; the story served as an extended metaphor for the London press, which had earned Cobbett's ire by publishing false news accounts regarding Napoleon.

the first definition for "berth" given in the Oxford English Dictionary is

1. Naut. ‘Convenient sea-room, or a fit distance for ships under sail to keep clear, so as not to fall foul on one another’

with examples from 1622.

The OED says of the word's etymology:

A nautical term of uncertain origin: found first in end of 16th cent. Most probably a derivative of bear v.1 in some of its senses: see especially sense 37, quot. 1627, which suggests that berth is = ‘bearing off, room-way made by bearing-off’; compare also bear off in 26 b. The early spellings byrth , birth , coincide with those of birth n.1 ‘bearing of offspring, bringing forth,’ but it is very doubtful whether the nautical use can go back to a time when that word had the general sense ‘bearing’; it looks more like a new formation on bear, without reference to the existing birth.

So the word berth is very likely closely related to birth; but this meaning is far removed from it.