Page 139 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

128 History and Science of Knots

The Boas Bowline is the other type of reliable loop knot, which is based on
the Sheet Bend structure. Like the Bowline, there are four types of Boas Bow-
lines. They are determined by placement of the working end and handedness
of the gooseneck. Two types of each form are illustrated in Fig. 15.
This knot owes its name to the fact that F. Boas reported its use by the
Inuits of Baffin Island and Hudson Bay at the end of the last century [3, p.
35, figs. 44a,b,h,i,j and p. 86, fig. 124a].
The Bowline proper is usually hailed as being the typical Mariner loop
knot. Yet it is not referenced in their literature before 1627. The Boas Bowline
has been very rarely recorded anywhere until this century. Accounts indepen-
dent of Boas seem to be references where the structure is used as a hitch. [23,
p. 27, fig. 180a/b]; [12, p. 600, pl. 320]; [34, p. 165, #14]. However, the
past decade or so has shown that as a loop knot the structure is actually used
elsewhere too, albeit very rarely. In the summer of 1978 it was shown to me
by a Dutch boatman, who learnt it on board a barge and used it daily. This,
however, is no evidence that Mariners know it well. It has been discussed to
a somewhat greater extent in the more recent literature [6], [9], [14] and [29].
Day [9, pp. 84-851 raised the question about this knot's being indigenous
in the Inuit knot repertoire. In his book Boas had already indicated its use
by two distant groups of users. The Boas Bowlines occurring on the Ross
sledge and those tied in baleen from 1700 found at Nuuk (Fig. 5) along with
numerous identical knots to be found in hunting equipment from the Thule
District dating from the beginning of this century, on display at Denmark's
National Museum in Copenhagen, all seem to confirm their being indigenous.
Furthermore, a not totally unambiguous drawing [25, p. 228, fig. 219] appears
to be yet another Boas Bowline, making it plausible that this structure was
known to the Point Barrow Inuits in Alaska too.
If one assumes it was not indigenous, then it would have had to have
spread fast after Viking settlers set foot on Greenland, as they were the first
(unless they were preceded by the Irish monks, of course) to bring elements of
Western culture to large parts of Greenland. The ships on which these settlers
came to Greenland were fitted with basically the same kinds of running and
standing rope rigging of the early Mariners. We have seen that Mariners have
very little or no tradition of using the Boas Bowline. There is thus no reason
to believe that Vikings should have had a tradition of using a Boas Bowline,
which they could have left in Greenland.
The Boas Bowline may be easily tied by spilling a Slip Knot. I have
collected empiric data on the tying of Nooses and Slip Knots, which suggests
that irrespective of user handedness, people are more inclined to tie Slip Knots
rather than Nooses. This seems to be due to the fact that the forming of
a Noose from an Overhand Knot Starting Configuration requires taking the
standing part in the preferred hand, instead of the customary working end. In