Page 234 - The Pocket Guide to Outdoor Knots

Purpose
These two forms of the same basic knot are intended to haul or hoist logs or

entire tree trunks. They will also drag or tow wooden piling, lengths of conduit

pipe or any other similar objects.

Tying

Take the working end once around the standing part of the rope and improvise a
running eye by wrapping (dogging) the end several times around itself. Pull tight

and a timber hitch results (figure 1). To ensure the load drags or tows in a
straight line, add one (or more) half hitches some distance from the initial knot.

This is a killick hitch (figure 2).

Knot lore
The timber hitch was mentioned in A Treatise on Rigging (c.1625) and was

illustrated in the Encyclopédie (1762) of Denis Diderot. It is an old knot. A
killick was the naval term for a small anchor, and for any odd weight (such as a

lump of stone) that might be employed on the end of a line (secured by a killick
hitch) to anchor a dinghy, buoy or fisherman’s lobster pot to the sea-bed. The

killick hitch was named and illustrated in Elements and Practice of Rigging and
Seamanship (1794) by David Steel.