I am still reading my way
through Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick or The Whale. Awhile back I shared a bit about weaving
(March 21, 2012). Last
night I read a bit about rope. Here are
two paragraphs from Chapter 60, “The Line”:
“With reference to the
whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as for the better understanding
of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the magical,
sometimes horrible whale-line.”
…
“The whale line is only two
thirds of an inch in thickness. At first
sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one and fifty yarns will
each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope
will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures
something over two hundred fathoms. Towards
the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the
worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of
densly bedded ‘sheaves’, or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any
hollow but the ‘heart’, or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the
cheese. As the least tangle or kink in
the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take sombody’s arm, leg, or entire
body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneeers will consume almost an
entire morning in this business, carrying the line hight aloft, and then
reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of
coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and twists.”
I would like to think that I
store my yarns equally carefully, although I do not fear that my yarns will ever “take
somebody’s arm…off”.
No comments:
Post a Comment