Hemp is a plant belonging to the same species as the moss and nettle, and the quantity used in Great Britain is prodigious. Latterly a large quantity has been grown in Ireland, and one of the chief objects of the Irish Industrial Exhibition of last year was to promote the indigenous growth of Flax and Hemp. An acre of land in Ireland produces on an average thirty-six or thirty-eight stone of hemp, and the season for sowing it extends from the 25th of March, to the 15th of June.
What the muscles and sinews are to the human frame, and what wings are to birds, ropes and sails are to ships. Their manufacture is at all times of the greatest consequence to our country, and the celerity with which they can be produced, is one of the wonders of this mechanical age.
The materiel for a great deal of our cordage comes from Russia, and more than a million of pounds, of which sixty-three make a ton, are annually imported to this country; their value is estimated at something more than half-a-million sterling. It comes over in large bundles weighing nearly a ton each, which are separated into heads or layers, each containing twelve or fourteen pounds of hemp.
The qualities of good hemp are a long, fine, and thin fibre, free from woody particles, and possessed of strength and toughness. The first process it undergoes is that called heckling. This is performed in the following manner:—On the surface of a small bench before him, each heckeller has before him a stand on which are situated, point upwards, a number of sharp steel spikes, sixty or seventy in number—these constitute what is technically called the “heckle.” The workman then taking a head or layer of the hemp in his hand, strikes it on the points of the heckle and draws it between the spikes, repeating the operation several times with each head, by which the fibres are straightened, and the thicker ones split by the sharp points of the wires, and all the loose fragments are loosened and fall to the ground.
The fibres now drawn out into long parallel threads, have to undergo the process of twisting. The fibre has to be twisted into yarn, the yarns into rope. A rope consists of several parts, and in most cases, is a twisting within a twisting, being built up by threes. In the subjoined figure we have a ship’s rope or cable. A. B. B. B. shows the three smaller ropes which forms it. C. the three ropes called strands, and dissecting one of these, D. we find it to be composed of a number of threads called yarns, and if we untwist one of the yarns, we arrive finally at the hempen-fibres themselves.
The first stage, therefore, of making hemp into rope, is spinning it into yarn, and this brings us at once to what is technically called the “rope-walk,” a long narrow space of ground, at one end of which is a wheel, three or four feet in diameter, round which a band passes in such a manner as to give rotation to a small number of hooks or whirls disposed round a semicircular frame above the wheel. Each spinner has a bundle of hemp round his waist, the double or bight being in front and the ends crossing each other behind. With his left hand he draws out a few fibres and fastens them on one of the hooks with his right, which holds a piece of thick woollen cloth—he grasps these fibres, a boy then turns the wheel and the spinner walks backwards—the man draws out more and more fibres from his bundle as he recedes, and the twist which is given to them by the rotation of the hooks on the wheel makes each length of fibre entangle itself among those previously drawn out; while the pressure of the right hand regulates the hardness or closeness of the twist. The spinner, by his long practice and skill, is enabled to make any description of yarn, either fine or coarse, by the manner in which he supplies the hemp to the revolving wheel, and can produce with the greatest nicety, any given length of yarn from a given weight of hemp. Each spinner can make about a thousand feet of yarn in about twelve minutes.
This process is in many manufactories performed by machinery, but the hand-made yarn is decidedly the best. When a spinning walk is in full operation, there are twelve spinners at different parts of its length, in three groups, each group being distant three or four hundred feet from the next adjoining, and all the twelve hooks or whirls of the wheel being engaged at once. As the yarns are twisted, they are wound in large bundles upon reels, each reel containing about two-hundred-and-fifty rounds of yarn.
If the hemp should be used for the manufacture of tarred rope—the yarn is now tarred—the reels of yarn are first warped into a haul, that is, the yarns are unwound from the reel and stretched out straight and parallel, and assembled together in a large group, called “a haul,” consisting of between three and four hundred yarns, each a hundred feet long. The haul is dipped into a copper of hot tar, and, being dragged through a grip or gauge, the superfluous tar is squeezed out; by the aid of a capstan the haul is gradually drawn forward until the whole has passed through the tar kettle.