This week’s Puzzle will be a little different: instead of asking you some tricky rigging question, I want you to convince me that you have the best answer to the following:
What is the best knot? The Bowline is called the King of Knots, but it has its limitations, and might be overrated. So what other knot would you nominate as a usurper? What other knot do you think is the most valuable, versatile, important knot? It need not have the same function as a Bowline, or any function at all. It is the knot that you think would make the world a measurably better place if only more people knew about it, a knot that, in your mind, deserves fame and glory.
It can be some currently obscure arborist’s complication, or an undeservedly unknown theater knot, or it might be already well-known, afloat and ashore, but not well-known enough to suit you. Tell us about it! Sell it! Send pictures, or links to videos, if you like! The answers will be reviewed by a panel of experts, amateurs, and hangers-on. Entries will be judged on eloquence, ferocity, hilarity, and (utterly subjective) value.
I rarely ask that you make a point of sharing one of my posts, but this time I am making an exception. I’d like to hear from a wide variety of trades and pastimes, from anyone who works with rope. So if you have a neighbor who is a whiz with lashings, or if you know a climber who can work magic with a belay, or any individual or group you can think of who might enjoy promoting a favorite knot, please share this post with them, and urge them to enter.
Send entries to puzzle@briontoss.com by noon Pacific Time, Monday, May 14th. We will announce the winner on Wednesday the 16th.
The winner this time will receive a prize from a special guest presenter, the magnificent Wendy Hinman, author of the award-winning, best-selling Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire. If you are a sailor – or even if you are not, but like to read funny/useful/fascinating prose – you should have this book. Here is your chance to win a wittily-inscribed, autographed copy.
On other topics, thanks to everyone who sent in fan mail about last week’s guest post, Difficult Feats, Pointless Tasks, from the lyrical Jacob Haverfield. You’ll be seeing more of Jacob’s work. Meanwhile stand by for another tale from the bark Sea Cloud called “How to Circumcise a Whale.” It comes out on Friday, May 11th.
As always, I recommend that you cruise through our Online Shop, binge-read every single previous Blog Post, and scroll down this page to subscribe to receive notifications of new posts.
Last week I posted our first Official Blog Puzzle:
“The photograph at the top of this post shows a small coil of rope lying on deck. You are looking down on it. The part leading in from the left is coming from the belay, and there is a figure-8 knot in the bitter end. Given those conditions, there are two things very wrong with this picture. The problem isn’t that the rope is hand-made, and thus a bit irregular, nor is it that gouty knot. If you think you know at least one answer, send it in to puzzle@briontoss.com. If you think you know both answers, send both; no penalty for incorrect answers, so feel free to speculate. Bonus points if you can find the ABK citations for the answers.”
Thanks to all of you who responded! Not everyone had the right answers, but a lot of you exhibited a courageous/intrigued/imaginative willingness to put forward ideas. Blessings on you.
And now to the answers. The first thing wrong with the picture is that the rope in the coil is left-laid, but the coil is made clockwise. Right-laid rope should be coiled clockwise, as it is less liable to hockle or tangle when it runs, because the twist of the rope will get looser, not tighter as the rope straightens. For the same reason, left-laid rope should be coiled counterclockwise. Left-laid rope is quite rare, and many people don’t even recognize it when they see it. Some entrants identified the rope in the picture as “hawser-laid,” and I had to disqualify that answer. While it is true that hawser-laid rope is conventionally left-laid, it is also made up of three or more whole smaller ropes. But the rope in the picture is not made up of smaller ropes, but of yarns that have been twisted together to form strands. It’s just plain old rope.
The second thing wrong with the picture is that the bitter end is on top of the coil. This makes the coil much more likely to tangle when it runs. Always lay a coil on deck “face down,” i.e. with the end on the bottom, to minimize the likelihood of tangling. Some entrants said that the end should be coming up through the middle of the coil, but this is only true for a multilayered factory coil, and even then it matters which end of the coil you pull from.
The winner of the one-correct-answer group is….. Joe Schmidbauer, who wrote, “This is S-laid rope and should be coiled in the opposite direction.” S-laid is the modern usage equivalent of left-laid, taken from the angle formed by the central portion of the letter S. In this usage, right-laid rope is Z-laid. For more on this and much else about rope, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope.
Joe — and lots of other people — noted that the bitter end lacked a whipping or other pleasing finish, but I don’t see this as structurally wrong, just crude. As Dustin Higdon put it in his entry, “I don’t know if it’s technically ‘wrong’ but it’s certainly poor form.”
Congratulations Joe. Be in touch to tell me which DVD you want.
The winner of the both-correct-answers group is…. Andrew Schmitz. Andrew’s entry was downright scholarly in its completeness, so I will just show the pertinent parts here:
1) The line shown is left hand lay, so the coil should be coiled counter clockwise, rather than clockwise as shown.
2) The coil should be flipped over on deck, such that the running end, from the belay, leads to the top of the coil. If the line needs to run, the coil as shown will more likely foul than if the coil is flipped, so that the running end feeds off the top of the coil.
extra credit: the rope is unlayed at the stopper knot in a very “lubberly” fashion. It would be more ship shape to have a whipping on the end of the line.
as for citations:
on page 512 in the beginning of chapter 40 Ashley tells us “Right hand, or plain-laid, rope is properly coiled clockwise…”
ABK 3086 instructs us to lay a coil face down such that it runs clear
page 605 in the glossary: the definition of with the lay, or with the sun, in reference to coiling a right hand laid rope clockwise
To that I will add Ashley’s #3317: “On some smart naval craft the knots were at the forward hole of the deadeye on both sides of the ship, left-laid rigging being used on the port side. If cable-laid rigging were used, all the knots were on the right side of the deadeye.” How’s that for deeply obscure rope geek info?
Andy, let me know how you would like that book personalized.
Given the enthusiastic response this puzzle had, I intend to post some more. If you’d like to join the party, write to puzzle@briontoss.com with your ideas.
In the first installment we looked at the principles underlying the Ashley Book of Knots. This time we’ll take a look at some applications, as well as a sidebar on Ashley’s pioneering work on knot security. Both installments are from an essay I wrote for the book “Thou Shalt Knot,” produced by the New Bedford Whaling Museum to accompany their magnificent exhibit celebrating the life and work of Clifford Ashley.
And now on to Part 2.
Most of the material in the ABK would be familiar to 18th- and 19th-century riggers and sailors, but that doesn’t mean it is outdated; many 20th and 21st century traditional sailing vessels, including large square riggers, have benefited from this book, notably from the chapter on Practical Marlingspike Seamanship. Here there are scores of configurations that provide modern riggers with details on basic procedures, as well as solutions to more obscure applications. This chapter concentrates on integrating rope and hardware to create, control, and manipulate structures. Thus we see rope integrated with sails, blocks, hooks, deadeyes, gammons, yards, masts, anchors, etc., as well as rope and twine integrated with each other into practical configurations (service, seizing, hitching, whipping, etc.)
Want to know how to apply a “garland” for hoisting a top- mast? Ashley shows how, by the French as well as the English method (#’s 3416 & 3417). Need to seize a batten to a shroud? Choose from among #’s 3368-3372. Need to install some deadeyes? Take a deep breath and study # 3278 – 3318. There you will see representative examples from the beginning of the 17th century on, complete with commentary on configuration and installation, including an elegant emergency repair variation (#3302).
These items, along with the almost 400 others in this chapter, might seem to have no use in contemporary rigs, but many of them have direct application today, because rigs are now, after a century-plus of hiatus, once again being made with rope – high-modulus rope, out of fibers like Spectra and Vectran – but rope nonetheless, which is unsuited to the machined terminals used on wire, but which does reward the use of creative marlingspike skills. Practical Marlingspike Seamanship is a database of ocean-proven practices that today’s riggers are regularly digging into. As a final example, consider the Selvagee (#3147), which has nowadays been reincarnated for industrial use as the ubiquitous round sling, as well as shackle-replacing “loopies,” and even as standing rigging, made out of high-modulus fibers.
Nor is this the only chapter being mined; Miscellaneous Holdfasts (chapter 26), Occasional Knots (chapter 27), and Lashings and Slings (chapter 28), could all have been rolled into a chapter called “Not Quite Ready for Practical Marlingspike Seamanship.” Here we have rope interacting with bottles, bags, bollards, bridles, blubber, and barrels, as well as hammers, flags, flag poles, tennis nets, sounding leads, thwarts, and much more.
To study these chapters is to see the possibilities of rigging. You might never need to secure a stuns’l tack block to the end of its boom (#1930), but the principle behind this entry – toggling – is nowadays integral to the design of many high-tech racing blocks. And while you might never need to pull a stump out by its roots (#2014), the principles behind this entry underlie all of rigging. This little drawing, and its accompanying text, is a highly-condensed treatise on vectors, leverage, compound leverage, elasticity, tension, compression, shear, and ingenuity (don’t have a set of lashed-together spars? Use an old door).
But then, it is hard to find a chapter that doesn’t have at least something of value to riggers. Even the Tricks and Puzzles chapter has tips on, among other things: the unreliability of the Clove Hitch; descending a cliff with a too-short rope; novel and sometimes useful methods for tying the Bowline and the Sheet Bend; restraining a prisoner; and escaping from restraints. The latter (#’s 2613 and 2614), are two of many topological exercises in this chapter. Of course, all knots are miracles of topology in action, but some fairly esoteric manipulations play a surprising role in many rigging applications, from the forming of knots like the Bowline on a Bight (#1080), to “dipping” multiple mooring line eyes for easy removal, to locking Brummel knots, much used in single-braided rope.
Speaking of braided rope, Ashley only mentions it briefly (#232), but you will find dozens of braids in his book, from 3 up to 61(!) strands. Flat braids, square braids, round, half-round, triangular and oval braids. Braids used for utility, or for decorative purposes only. A profusion of braids, published just before the development of industrial-scale machinery caused single- and double-braid ropes to explode onto the scene, transforming rigging utterly. Braided rope can be stronger per diameter than laid rope, as well as less elastic, more resistant to hockling. It fits better on winches, and can be “tuned” as it is braided to create ropes that cover an historically unprecedented range of desired characteristics. And it can be laid up from advanced materials that are many times stronger than steel per pound. And Ashley completely missed the boat on modern rope construction as well as modern rope materials.
If I had opened my copy of the ABK for the first time today, and seen that it said next-to-nothing about braided rope, I probably would have put it back on the shelf, and looked for something more pertinent to my trade. And it would have been my loss. I would have been like a physicist ignoring Newton, because he had nothing to say about quarks, or a director ignoring Orson Welles because he never used a green screen. Like those worthies, Ashley was a technician, but also, literally, an artist, who saw and described things in a way that no one else had before, and who made possible the advances that came after his time. If he had lived just a few years longer, he no doubt would have recorded/invented/speculated on the vast new field of possibilities that was opened with the revolution in braided rope: new knots, new splices, new configurations, new ways to handle new types and magnitudes of loads. But while it is true that we lost his direct input, his greatest contribution, even in his day, was not that his book was utterly encyclopedic, but that it provided a powerful way to approach knots. It can no longer lay claim to containing “Every practical knot,” as the subtitle on the cover still claims, but that hardly matters, because Ashley concentrated so fiercely on the rest of that subtitle, which reads, “What It Looks Like, Who Uses It, Where It Comes From, and How to Tie It.” If there had been room for a longer subtitle, the publisher might well have added, “What It Is Good For, Which Ones You Probably Want to Avoid, Which Ones Look Archaic or Silly But Might Just Surprise You With How Useful They Become Some Day, and Why You Should Be Studying All of This So That You, Too, Can Make Meaningful Contributions to This Ancient Body of Knowledge, Or At Least Help to Keep It Alive.”
Sidebar: Testing Knots
In the first chapter, after some extensive remarks on the history and idioms of knotting, Ashley describes a series of tests he conducted on knot security (#’s 63-68), a consideration that was quite novel in his day. The test was of bends, with each knot tied in extraordinarily slick, springy mohair. Rather than a steady pull, each of ten bends was subjected to “… a series of uniform jerks, applied at an even rate of speed, using the drip of a faucet for a metronome.”
The results showed that some knots, like the reef knot, have a deserved reputation for untrustworthiness, but also that others, like the sheet bend, were not the faultless icons that we had thought they were. In the 1940’s, mohair was such an anomalous material for riggers that these tests might have seemed pointless, but just a few years later, when the advent of slick, springy synthetic fibers brought knot security to the fore, we already had the beginnings of a database, thanks to Ashley. Elsewhere in the book, the notion of security is addressed in binding knots like the constrictor (#1249), loop knots like the double bowline (#1013), and hitches like the camel hitch (#1741), among many other examples. For today’s riggers, faced with ever-slicker materials and ever-higher loads, Ashley’s concern for security seems prescient. His approach, further developed long after he was gone, includes such vital knots as John Smith’s extra-secure Marlingspike Hitch, arborist’s friction hitches, a variety of extra-secure bowlines, and the wonderful Icicle Hitch (also from Smith). The latter was directly inspired by Ashley’s attempts to create hitches (#’s 1985 &1986) that would hold when pulled towards the narrow end of a smooth, tapering spar.
When the New Bedford Whaling Museum decided to honor their local hero Clifford Ashley, they went all out with an exhibit titled, “Thou Shalt Knot,” filling a major gallery with the great man’s art and artifacts. They also published a sizable volume of commentary and analysis, with contributions from people like Phillipe Petit, Des Pawson, and yours truly (see below), on topics ranging from Knots in Literature, Knots and Science, family history, sociology, and much more. If you would like to learn more about the exhibition or its book, visit the Museum web site: https://www.whalingmuseum.org/explore/exhibitions/thou-shalt-knot-clifford-ashley/. If you are anywhere near New Bedford, you should really plan to stop in.
And now, the first installment:
For the rigger, knots are fasteners. They are to rigging as nails, bolts, and screws are to carpenters. The difference is that, while a nail is made by someone else, and provided to the carpenter, a knot (or splice, seizing, etc.) is a fastener that is selected from an abstract inventory of candidates, and then fabricated, on site, for each application. Up to that point, the knot exists solely as a concept in the mind of the rigger.
Because the scale and nature of the work drives the selection of the knot, the tyer should properly take loads, vectors, materials, and the nature of all other system components into consideration before picking up a piece of rope. People often have trouble learning to tie knots, but this is mere topography, and really should be the least challenging part of working with knots. That most people learn a very few knots, and then tie them without much if any thought as to their suitability is a testament to the prevalence of mild loads, strong materials, and luck. But riggers cannot count fully on any of those things. They must know how the nature of a given knot relates to the demands that will be placed upon it. They must know not just how to tie, but why.
The purpose of a good knot book, then, is to turn its readers into engineers, as well as into makers – and users – of knots. This is asking a lot, and most knot books, which concentrate almost exclusively on topography, are clearly not up to the task. The most notable and influential exception to this is the Ashley Book of Knots. Published in 1944 and never significantly updated, it is still the most beloved reference work on the topic of knotting, even though it contains none of the hundreds of practical and decorative knots which have been developed since 1944.
This might doom a lesser book to obscurity, but (a) it still contains enough high-quality content to reward a lifetime of study, and (b) its greatest value lies in how Ashley illuminates his subjects as to specific jobs, historical context, and especially mechanical properties. He teaches us to see knots as characters with specific traits, suited for some jobs but not others. He does this with emoji-like icons (Ashleymojis?) that run the gamut from “unimportant” to “impractical” to “for-the-initiated-only” to “liable-to-capsize”, plus 16 more. He also does this in the opening chapter (“On Knots”), which is part historical monograph, part autobiography, part research paper, part manual of lexicon, and almost incidentally, part instructional primer. The chapter, in other words, is much more about people than about knots.
This theme is continued in “Occupational Knots,” the second Chapter. There are 364 knots here, distributed among no fewer than 86 fields of human endeavor. Intriguing though the knots are, the focus is on human lives, conducted using human-made tools. Here, and throughout the book, we are carried along by illustrations that are somehow both precise and warm.
This approach encourages us to build a resilient, situation-specific vocabulary of knots, as opposed to memorizing a list. It trains us to assess the demands of each job that we want to do, in order to be able to choose the most appropriate knot(s) with which to do it.
Many of Ashley’s gifts to us have found new life in today’s world. The Buntline Hitch, for instance, is mentioned no fewer than eight times, for everything from securing corned beef to furling squares’ls, to tying neckties. Of the originally-recommended uses, only squares’l and necktie applications (#2408, commonly known as the four-in-hand) are currently in wide use. But contemporary riggers, assessing characteristics in the way of their mentor, have adopted the buntline hitch as a general-purpose halyard hitch. Think about it: it is a knot that is extremely simple, secure, compact, and about 30% stronger than a bowline. Those virtues, in many situations, outweigh its tendency to jam under extreme loads, so out of the data base it came, to find a home in contemporary ropes.
Two other examples of database adaptations are the knife lanyard knot (#787), and an original button (#880). Both of these knots were originally meant to be primarily decorative, and they are indeed lovely things. But a few years ago, riggers began making “soft shackles” in Spectra/Dyneema. These fabulously strong button-and-becket constructions have displaced steel shackles in many applications. A soft shackle that terminates in a lanyard knot, properly tied, can be counted on to hold at over 100% of the strength of the cord- age it is tied in. And the version that terminates in a two-strand version of the #880 will hold at close to 200%.
You can find numerous soft shackle analogs in Ashley’s, including in #3180, which is made around a block with 3-strand rope. Contemporary riggers simply adapted the structure to 12-strand braided rope, and gave it the option of an adjustable eye.
In part 2 of this series, we will continue to see how Ashley cataloged the past, while equipping riggers for the future. To go to that installment, click Here
In the middle of WWII, Clifford Ashley traveled from his home near New Bedford, Mass. to New York City. He took with him a sizable manuscript, which in addition to text comprised about 7,000 drawings describing 3,854 knots. He presented this unlikely assemblage to a substitute editor at Doubleday and Co. (his boss was away in the Army). This editor happened to be something of a knot enthusiast, something of a sailor, and a world-class sucker for absurdly unlikely book projects.
All three qualities were, I think, essential for him to say, “Yes, we will publish this.” He might have been influenced by the modest success of The Encyclopedia of Knots and Fancy Ropework, published a few years earlier, but that book, which manages somehow to be both harsh and murky, stands in sharp contrast to Ashley’s effort, which is a marvel of warmth, lucidity, and thoroughgoing scholarship. In any event, production was under way and the presses were running when the chief editor returned from the war. “You did WHAT?” he said. “You published a book of 3,854 KNOTS!?! Who is ever going to read that?” Somewhat in desperation, the art department chose, for the dust jacket, a picture of some kind of faux yachty in a captain’s cap, holding up a Tom Fool’s Knot. Mr. Ashley, a student of Howard Pyle, was one of the country’s premier artists at the time. His book is literally full of his wonderful illustrations. Aargh.
You can imagine the editor’s surprise when the first printing instantly sold out. As did the next, and the next…
Fast forward 70-some years. We are at the annual meeting of the International Guild of Knot Tyers (IGKT), held this year at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The Guild chose the location because the museum has mounted a major exhibit, “Thou Shalt Knot,” about Mr. Ashley’s unlikely book, still in print after all these decades. The Guild probably wouldn’t exist without the Ashley Book of Knots (ABK), any more than country music would exist without Hank Williams, or martial arts movies without Bruce Lee. Oh, we’d have something in those categories, but they — and many others — cohered around a compelling, genre-defining individual. Clifford Ashley is the Elvis/Jesus/Hemingway/Kurosawa of Knots.
Yes, I have just revealed myself as a hopeless knot geek, an ABK acolyte. My tattered copy was a Christmas present from my family in 1969. I once traveled to England to participate in an IGKT event at which we displayed every knot in the ABK — and hundreds of others developed after its publication. I have a pile of back issues of “Knotting Matters,” the Guild’s quirky newsletter. So I am one of the devotees shuffling reverently past the museum’s exhibits. There are sinnets he made for chapter 39, buttons for chapters 9 and 10, a priest cord from chapter 30. Here is the actual pilot’s ladder that served as a model for Figure 3841, and the needle case that showed up as figure 3544, plus tools, chest beckets, cats-o-nine-tails, and scores of other artifacts, either from Ashley’s collection, or from those of the generations of knot tyers he inspired. Utter heaven.
There are also lectures, in an adjacent auditorium, on Ashley’s influence on literature and science, and his place in the context of works that preceded and followed his. In a central space, Guild members exhibit samples of their own creations, everything from belts to bellropes, from Turk’s Heads to lanyards to mats. Wandering through it all, usually trailed by a cloud of admirers, is Des Pawson, M.B.E., our own Gandalf of Knots, who co-founded the Guild, has produced numerous books and monographs on knotting, and who gave the keynote address at the event.
But as big a presence as Des was, I think he would happily acknowledge that he was put into the shade by the quiet, diminutive Phoebe Ashley, who greeted everyone with utter graciousness, sat through every lecture, admired every exhibit, and in general displayed a charm and genuine kindness and attentiveness that did her father proud. Our own Queen Elizabeth II of Knots.
Painting: The Sea Chest, by Clifford W. Ashley
Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum
To find out more about Ashley and his influence on rigging — and much more — you might want to see This Post.
The Ashley Book of Knots can be found in any bookstore worthy of the name, and it has recently been made available as a Free PDF Download.
Two other examples of database adaptations are the knife lanyard knot (#787), and an original button (#880). Both of these knots were originally meant to be primarily decorative, and they are indeed lovely things. But a few years ago, riggers began making “soft shackles” in Spectra/Dyneema. These fabulously strong button-and-becket constructions have displaced steel shackles in many applications. A soft shackle that terminates in a lanyard knot, properly tied, can be counted on to hold at over 100% of the strength of the cord- age it is tied in. And the version that terminates in a two-strand version of the #880 will hold at close to 200%.
made around a block with 3-strand rope. Contemporary riggers simply adapted the structure to 12-strand braided rope, and gave it the option of an adjustable eye.