Page 520 - The Ashley Book of Knots

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CHAPTER 40: PRACTICAL MARLINGSPIKE • • •
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SEAMANSHIP • •
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lVonn 01ld parcel 'with the lay,

TUTU about aud seT·"I.'e a~.:..,'ay.

SAII.ORS' \VORK RHYME

The subject of marlingspike seamanship is to be divided into two

chapters. The first of these is concerm:d primarily with what is •

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elementary and practical, while the one to follow is devoted mostly •
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to knots in combination. More often than not these combinations •

are deliberately decorative, although they are scarcely less practical

than the contents of the present chapter.

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l\luch of the matter of both chapters consists of details of the

rigger's craft. There has never been a handicraft in which innova-

tions have been more critically examined or more grudgingly ac-

cepted. But this, perhaps, is well, since many lives must have been

spared as a consequence.

This conservatism is evidenced by the fact that many of the ~U"t

smaller riggers' practices of today are exactly what they were in the

days of Lever and Du Clairbois. There was <Iuite as much difference

to be found in the detail 'work of two contemporary rigging lofts at

anyone time in this period as there was between the characteristic

work of any two dates that are a century apart.

The bark Sunbeam, on which I sailed in 1904, was probably the

last merchant square-rigger to put to sea with hemp standing rigging.

The whalers that remained at that time reflected the practices of a

day fifty or seventy-five years earlier. So I can fairly claim, with a

few reservations, a first-hand acqu'aintance with the rigging prac-

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