And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Friday, February 14, 2025
The Cathead
A special tackle is fastened to the ring of the anchor and it is fished and catted (brought up and secured) in its riding position on the bow.
The black loop of rope that holds the anchor to the cathead is the “stopper”. This could simply be cut through to drop the anchor. The main anchor cable is bent onto the ring. The ring itself has been wrapped in cord as an anti- chafing measure called “puddening”.
A second ‘cat head’ was connected to a ship's anchor cable and windlass. This was a square pin that was inserted into one of the hand spike holes of a ship's windlass. When the ship was at anchor, the anchor rope (also known as a cable or catfall) was attached to it with a smaller rope, known as a seizing. The English name for this bolt was ‘Norman’. In German, however, it was called a ‘Kattenkopf’, and in this case this is a reference to the traditional way in which the tip was notched and bevelled so that it resembled the ears of a cat in cross-section.
According to ‘The Sea-mans Dictionary : or, an exposition and demonstration of all the parts and things belonging to a shippe’ compiled by Sir Henry Mainwaring, 1623 , the term was already in use at the time the book was published.
I like to keep politics off this site and on my Patreon, but this is a WOW! thing. I tell my daughter that she's living through a huge political realignment, akin to the north and south poles switching, and this is just more evidence for that.
Who could have predicted? Not me, for sure. You could say the same thing about Tulsi.
We are living in interesting times indeed.