WORK UPON RIGGING.—ROPE, KNOTS, SPLICES, BENDS AND HITCHES.
Kinds of rope. Spunyarn. Worming. Parcelling. Service. Short splice. Long splice. Eye splice. Flemish eye. Spindle eye. Cut splice. Grommet. Single and double wall. Matthew Walker. Single and double diamond. Spritsail sheet knot. Stopper knot. Shroud knot. French shroud knot. Buoy-rope knot. Half-hitches. Clove hitch. Overhand knot. Figure-of-eight. Bowline. Running bowline. Bowline-upon-a-bight. Square knot. Timber hitch. Rolling hitch. Blackwall hitch. Cat's paw. Sheet bend. Fisherman's bend. Carrick bend. Bowline bend. Sheep-shank. Selvagee. Marlin-spike hitch. Round seizing. Throat seizing. Stopping. Nippering. Racking. Pointing. Snaking. Grafting. Foxes. Spanish foxes. Gaskets. Sennit. To bend a buoy-rope. To pass a shear-lashing.
Those ropes in a ship which are stationary are called standing rigging, as shrouds, stays, backstays, &c. Those which reeve through blocks or sheave-holes, and are hauled and let go, are called the running rigging, as braces, halyards, buntlines, clewlines, &c.
A rope is composed of threads of hemp, or other stuff. These threads are called yarns. A number of these yarns twisted together form a strand, and three or more strands twisted together form the rope.
The ropes in ordinary use on board a vessel are composed of three strands, laid RIGHT HANDED, (1.) or, as it is called, with the sun. Occasionally a piece of large rope will be found laid up in four strands, also with the sun. This is generally used for standing rigging, tacks, sheets, &c., and is sometimes called shroud-laid.
A cable-laid Rope (2.) is composed of nine strands, and is made by first laying them into three ropes of three strands each, with the sun, and then laying the three ropes up together into one, left-handed, or against the sun. Thus, cable-laid rope is like three small common ropes laid up into one large one. Formerly, the ordinary three-stranded right-hand rope was called hawser-laid, and the latter cable-laid, and they will be found so distinguished in the books; but among sea-faring men now, the terms hawser-laid and cable-laid are applied indiscriminately to nine-strand rope, and the three stranded, being the usual and ordinary kind of rope, has no particular name, or is called right-hand rope.
Right-hand rope must be coiled with the sun, and cable-laid rope against the sun.
Spunyarn is made by twisting together two or more yarns taken from old standing rigging, and is called two-yarn or three-yarn spunyarn, according to the number of yarns of which it is composed. Junk, or old rigging, is first unlaid into strands, and then into yarns, and the best of these yarns made up into spunyarn, which is used for worming, serving, seizing, &c. Every merchant vessel carries a spunyarn-winch, for the manufacturing of this stuff, and in making it, the wheel is turned against the sun, which lays the stuff up with the sun.
Worming a rope, is filling up the divisions between the strands, by passing spunyarn along them, to render the surface smooth for parcelling and serving.
Parcelling a rope is wrapping narrow strips of canvass about it, well tarred, in order to secure it from being injured by rain-water lodging between the parts of the service when worn. The parcelling is put on with the lay of the rope.