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A rope is only useful if you know how to tie it so it holds, and untie it when you need it back. This little handbook teaches sailors, scouts, and campers exactly that, knot by knot, with clear pictures. You will learn bends, hitches, loops, and how to join two ropes into one strong piece. Master these ties and your hands will know a skill people have used for centuries.
A. Hyatt Verrill wrote so many practical and natural history books that his name became a small guarantee of clarity. Knots, Splices and Rope Work appeared in 1917, gathering knowledge sailors had passed hand to hand for generations into one inexpensive, illustrated manual. Verrill had traveled, sailed, and collected widely, and he wrote as an instructor who expected readers to practice with rope in hand.
The book works systematically, beginning with the structure of rope itself and simple stops and loops, then moving to bends that join ropes, hitches that fasten to posts and rails, and splices that make joins permanent. Later sections cover lashings, fancy and decorative work, and the ornamental knotting sailors did in idle hours. Each operation is shown in line diagrams, numbered so the eye can follow the working end through every crossing.
Rope has been partly replaced by straps and machines, yet knots remain a living skill wherever boats, camps, loads, and rescues are involved, and no screen teaches fingers like practice does. Verrill's little manual is still reprinted because its teaching is orderly and complete. Scouts, sailors, climbers, and curious beginners who like learning with their hands will find it satisfying, page by page.
A. Hyatt Verrill was a naturalist, sailor, and prolific writer on practical outdoor subjects. Knots, Splices and Rope Work, published in 1917, is his clear handbook of everything rope can do: simple knots, bends, hitches, splices, and fancy work, all shown in careful diagrams. Written for sailors, campers, scouts, and anyone who ties things for a living, it offers dependable skill in a pocket sized guide.
Knots, Splices and Rope Work, published in 1917, is A. Hyatt Verrill's compact manual of a skill that, in its day, underpinned sailing, fishing, farming, construction, and every trade that lifted or fastened by rope. Verrill, a naturalist and adventure writer of enormous output, set out to replace the oral tradition of the forecastle and the barn with something a beginner could study alone: a graded course of knots, bends, hitches, and splices, each shown in clear diagrams and described in the order the hands perform it.
The book has outlived the age of hemp and sail because its pedagogy is right. It begins with rope itself, its lays, materials, and care, proceeds from the simple to the genuinely difficult, and finishes with the decorative fancy work that marks a master. First readers should not read it at a desk. Get a length of cord, work through the early plates in order, and the diagrams will suddenly make sense in your fingers. Scouts, sailors, climbers, and stagehands still pass this manual around, and a weekend with it leaves a permanent, satisfying competence behind.
Edition: Second Revised Edition, 1917. Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 13510.
The first chapter
Before taking up the matter of knots and splices in detail it may be well to give attention to cordage in general. Cordage, in its broadest sense, includes all forms and kinds of rope, string, twine, cable, etc., formed of braided or twisted strands. In making a rope or line the fibres (A, Fig. 1) of hemp, jute, cotton, or other material are loosely twisted together to form what is technically known as a "yarn" (B, Fig. 1). When two or more yarns are twisted together they form a "strand" (C, Fig. 1). Three or more strands form a rope (D, Fig. 1), and three ropes form a cable (E, Fig. 1). To form a strand the yarns are twisted together in the opposite direction from that in which the original fibres were twisted; to form a rope the strands are twisted in the opposite direction from the yarns of the strands, and to form a cable each rope is twisted opposite from the twist of the strands. In this way the natural tendency for each yarn, strand, or rope to untwist serves to bind or hold the whole firmly together (Fig. 1).
Rope is usually three-stranded and the strands turn from left to right or "with the sun," while cable is left-handed or twisted "against the sun" (E, Fig. 1). Certain ropes, such as "bolt-rope" and most cables, are laid around a "core" (F, Fig. 2) or central strand and in many cases are four-stranded (Fig. 2).
The strength of a rope depends largely upon the strength and length of the fibres from which it is made, but the amount each yarn and strand is twisted, as well as the method used in bleaching or preparing the fibres, has much to do with the strength of the finished line.
Roughly, the strength of ropes may be calculated by multiplying the circumference of the rope in inches by itself and the fifth part of the product will be the number of tons the rope will sustain. For example, if the rope is 5 inches in circumference, 5 X 5 = 25, one-fifth of which is 5, the number of tons that can safely be carried on a 5-inch rope. To ascertain the weight of ordinary "right hand" rope, multiply the circumference in inches by itself and multiply, the result by the length of rope in fathoms and divide the product by 3.75. For example, to find the weight of a 5-inch rope, 50 fathoms in length: 5 X 5 = 25; 25 x 50 = 1,250; 1,250 / 3.75 = 333-1/3 lbs. These figures apply to Manila or hemp rope, which is the kind commonly used, but jute, sisal-flax, grass, and silk are also used considerably. Cotton rope is seldom used save for small hand-lines, clothes-lines, twine, etc., while wire rope is largely used nowadays for rigging vessels, derricks, winches, etc., but as splicing wire rope is different from the method employed in fibre rope, and as knots have no place in wire rigging, we will not consider it.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1917. Author died 1973. Public domain in the US. Share this book: WhatsApp
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