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Category Archives: Rigging
Essential Knots & Hitches You May Never Need : The Highwayman’s Hitch
Everyone should know at least a few knots and hitches. The square knot, the bowline, and clove hitch come immediately to mind. Then there are all the other “essentials” that you may never need but are great to know. One good example … Continue reading
The ‘impossible’ voyage of a Tamil ghost ship
Despite all odds, earlier this month, 492 Tamil refugees arrived in Vancouver in an old and barely seaworthy ship, then named the Sun Sea. The Tamil Ghost ship, as she has been dubbed, had been intermittently tracked by the maritime authorities of various nations as she … Continue reading
Posted in Current, Lore of the Sea, Rigging
Tagged Canada, refugees, Sri Lanka, Sun Sea, Tamil, Tamil Tigers
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Animated Knots and Marlinspike Sailors
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Lore of the Sea, Rigging
Tagged Hervery Garret Smith, marlinspike sailor, rolling hitch, rope
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My Quest for Catharpins
“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.) Continue reading
