ANCHOR, ancre (anchora, Lat. from αγκυρα, Greek) a heavy, strong, crooked instrument of iron, dropped from a ship into the bottom of the water, to retain her in a convenient station in a harbour, road, or river.
The most ancient anchors are said to have been of stone, and sometimes of wood, to which a great quantity of lead was usually fixed. In some places baskets full of stones, and sacks filled with sand, were employed for the same use. All these were let down by cords into the sea, and by their weight stayed the course of the ship. Afterwards they were composed of iron, and furnished with teeth, which being fastened to the bottom of the sea, preserved the vessel immoveable; whence ὀδοντες and dentes are frequently taken for anchors in the Greek and Latin poets. At first there was only one tooth, whence anchors were called ἐτερόστομοι; but in a short time the second was added by Eupalamus, or Anacharsis, the Scythian philosopher. The anchors with two teeth were called ἀμφίβολοι, or ἀμφίστομοι, and from ancient monuments appear to have been much the same with those used in our days, only the transverse piece of wood upon their handles (the stock) is wanting in all of them. Every ship had several anchors, one of which, surpassing all the rest in bigness and strength, was peculiarly termed ἱηρὰ, or sacra, and was never used but in extreme danger; whence sacram anchoram solvere, is proverbially applied to such as are forced to their last refuge. Potter’s Antiquities of Greece.
The anchors now made are contrived so as to sink into the ground as soon as they reach it, and to hold a great strain before they can be loosened or dislodged from their station. They are composed of a shank, a stock, a ring, and two arms with their flukes. The stock, which is a long piece of timber fixed across the shank, serves to guide the flukes in a direction perpendicular to the surface of the ground; so that one of them sinks into it by its own weight as soon as it falls, and is still preserved steadily in that position by the stock, which, together with the shank, lies flat on the bottom. In this situation it must necessarily sustain a great effort before it can be dragged through the earth horizontally. Indeed this can only be effected by the violence of the wind or tide, or of both of them, sometimes increased by the turbulence of the sea, and acting upon the ship so as to stretch the cable to its utmost tension, which accordingly may dislodge the anchor from its bed, especially if the ground be soft and oozy or rocky. When the anchor is thus displaced, it is said, in the sea phrase, to come home.
That the figure of this useful instrument may be more clearly understood, let us suppose a long massy beam of iron erected perpendicularly, Plate [I]. fig. 2. b c; at the lower end of which are two arms, d e, of equal thickness with the beam (usually called the shank) only that they taper towards the points, which are elevated above the horizontal plane at an angle of thirty degrees; or inclined to the shank at an angle of sixty degrees: on the upper part of each arm (in this position) is a fluke, or thick plate of iron, g h, commonly shaped like an isosceles triangle, whose base reaches inwards to the middle of the arm. On the upper-end of the shank is fixed the stock transversely with the flukes: the stock is a long beam of oak, f, in two parts, strongly bolted, and hooped together with iron rings. See also fig. 3. Close above the stock is the ring, a, to which the cable is fastened, or bent: the ring is curiously covered with a number of pieces of short rope, which are twisted about it so as to form a very thick texture or covering, called the puddening, and used to preserve the cable from being fretted or chafed by the iron.
Every ship has, or ought to have, three principal anchors, with a cable to each, viz. the sheet, maitresse-ancre, (which is the anchora sacra of the antients) the best bower, second ancre, and small bower, ancre d’ affourche, so called from their usual situation on the ship’s bows. There are besides smaller anchors, for removing a ship from place to place in a harbour or river, where there may not be room or wind for sailing; these are the stream-anchor, ancre de touei; the kedge and grappling, grapin; this last, however, is chiefly designed for boats.
To drag the Anchors, chasser sur ses ancres, implies the effort of making the anchor come home, when the violence of the wind, &c. strains the cable so as to tear it up from the bed into which it had sunk, and drag it along the ground; as already explained.
Foul-Anchor: it is so called when it either hooks some other anchor, wreck, or cable, under the surface of the water; or when, by the wind suddenly abating, the ship slackens her strain, and straying round the bed of her anchor, entangles her slack cable about the upper fluke of it, and easily draws it out of its place, as soon as she begins to ride with a strain. To prevent this, it is usual, as she approaches the anchor, in light winds, to draw the slack cable into the ship as fast as possible.
To Anchor, ancrer, mouiller, &c. is to let go the anchor, and to let the ship ride thereby.
The Anchor is a cock-bill, ancre est àla vielle, implies that the shank-painter, or rope by which the flukes were hung to the ship’s bow, being cast off, the flukes drop down perpendicularly; whilst the anchor is suspended at the cat-head by its stopper, ready to be sunk from the bow at a moment’s warning.
At Anchor, à l’ ancre, the situation of a ship which rides by her anchor in a road or haven, &c. Plate [I]. fig. 6. represents the fore-part of a ship, as riding in this situation.