Rope – Paper or Plastic?

March 2, 2009 · Filed Under Current, Lore of the Sea, Rigging · Comment 

Rope is the connective tissue of tall ships.  Magically both strong and flexible, for centuries it secured the masts and controlled the sails of an endless armada of ships.  For most of the age of sail, rope was made of hemp, as were better quality colonial bibles and the paper on which the U.S. Declaration of [...]

Animated Knots and Marlinspike Sailors

November 13, 2008 · Filed Under Lore of the Sea, Rigging · Comment 

For those wishing to learn just a bit about sailor’s knots, Animated Boating Knots by Grog is a lot of fun.  Here is a rolling hitch, a marvelously useful knot that I invariably forget how to tie whenever a need one.   If you need to climb a halyard,  tie a warping line to an anchor rode, or [...]

My Quest for Catharpins

September 23, 2008 · Filed Under Rigging · Comment 

“Ignorance of the crosscatharpins is not necessarily fatal. Explanation almost certainly would be.”
Patrick O’Brian.

The cliché goes that there are two types of people – those who believe that there are two types of people and those who don’t. There are no doubt many more than two types of types of readers of nautical fiction. Nevertheless my guess is that as it applies to jargon, there may indeed be only two types.

The first type, and probably the smarter of the two, are those who read the jargon and let the words wash over them like a breaking wave, catching what they can in context but not caring too very much if they understand the finer points of rigging an eighteenth century ship, or, as is often the case in Patrick O’Brian’s books, the lost art of English suet puddings with exotic names like “drowned baby” and “spotted dick”. Their approach is like that of reading the more technical sub-genres of science fiction, where one need not necessarily understand quantum physics to enjoy the story. (Indeed, I suspect too much understanding of the science might get in the way.)

Video of the Moment

HMS Surprise and Star of India

Also featuring the Californian
and the Lynx

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