sheepshank

[benz]

Hi Dan,

Sometimes a line that needs shortening is not accessible at the ends, or would be imprudent to untie (I used a sheepshank in this scenario just the other day, when needing to shorten a towing dinghy painter underway. If I had untied the end to shorten, it may have been jerked from my weak fingers, but if I lost my grip on the sheepshank while tying it, the ends were still secured). Sometimes both ends of a line are spliced, making it inconvenient to shorten at the ends, and the sheepshank very conveniently and quickly shortens the bight. As for cutting one leg, I can only say I would recommend against it.
Another use I learned for a sheepshank just recently (from a girl scout) is in tying hair ribbons. Who knew?

[Joe Henderson]

Dear All,

The most romantic utilisation of a sheepshank that I have heard ( and I am not sure that it is true, It may just have been a wind-up of the impressionable apprentice ) was it's use as a free-fall device during the hanging of condemned men in the days of sail in the Royal Navy.

The procedure, that I was told, was as follows.

Pass a whip through a block on the rail then up and through a block at the port yard arm, then down to the deck.
Make a hangman's noose in the end.
Make a sheepshank close up to the noose, but do not pass the upper hitch, instead substitute a weak seizing.
Pass the noose over the hangee's head and snug up under an ear.
Read the sentence.
Lay on about twelve men to the tail and run away down the deck with it.

This hoists the man smartly to the yard arm- the weak seizing comes up against the top block and breaks and drops the man about six feet, thereby neatly snapping his neck etc.

All this was done at the jump so as to get it all over and done with in a few minutes.

The man was lowered to the deck and I do not know how the body was dealt with.

No mucking about with warnings and leniency in those days!

I suppose it was the only way to control the 600 or so men on board, after all, when a ship had to carry marine soldiers just to protect the officers from the men drastic measures were called for.

Regards,

Joe Henderson.

[JohnV]

Cut any one of the three, and the knot will hold.
Since I'm talking about historical and not modern usage, and we know that modern HM ropes don't hold most knots well, obviously they're the exception.
Lots of us don't understand why the knot was used. But it was. So maybe somebody else knew something we--or some of us--don't.