Knowing the Ropes on the Sea

Although we generally refer to all ropes aboard our boats as lines, there actually are about 40 properly named ropes on some good-sized sailing vessels, especially older ones.

The cordage used on most tackles was called rope, and even today we use the name backstay runner tackle rope. I won’t list all of the proper ropes aboard a ship, but here are a few of them: bolt rope, awning rope, bell rope, boat rope, clew rope, jaw rope, buoy rope and luff rope.

So, you see, rope doesn’t automatically become line when it goes to sea.

This information didn’t casually come to mind. I dug it out of books by sailors L. Francis Herreshoff, Hilaire Belloc and that non-sailor, Harry Houdini, for a talk before the Yachtsmen’s Luncheon the other day at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club.

At first I thought I might call my talk, “Fun with Ropes,” because I was having so much fun learning about ropes and knots. But the deeper I dug, the title of “Magic with Ropes” seemed more appropriate, for there’s truly magic in the use of ropes.

Most sailors gain deep, magical satisfaction from working with rope. It’s a wonderful feeling to make up a beloved little ship after a cruise, getting her all shipshape and Bristol fashion by arranging her lines just right. It’s a ritual, kind of like in church, right down to the tying of the commonly used knots--bowline, half hitches, clove hitch, reef knot, figure eight. Parceling, whipping and making eye splices fall into the same category.

Belloc, musing about rope, thought it was strange that they had never been worshipped. Men have worshipped the wall, the post, the sun and the house. They’ve worshipped crowns, mitres, music, food and drink, but never rope.

Yet, he points out, think of all those things done with ropes that couldn’t be done without them. But for ropes, there would be no sailing; no execution of men; no tying of bundles, which is the solid foundation of all trade; no lasso for catching beasts; no casting of bridges over chasms; no escapes for kings and heroes.

Also, we’d be without the ringing of bells to summon worshipers to church. Bells are worshipped, but never the rope that rings them.

I don’t know why all this is so, but it’s not nice to treat rope so shabbily. In my talk I attempted to instill a reverent attitude toward rope.

With the help of a couple of Houdini’s books from my library, I instructed the yachtsmen in ways to tie knots that mysteriously dissolved, I cut a length of rope in the middle and magically restored it. My thumbs were tied together and I escaped. I did that old trick, “My Grandmother’s Necklace,” in which three large beads strung on ropes pass off them like ghosts through a solid wall. Nobody knows how old that trick is. It was first described in a book in English published in 1584.

Yes, there’s ancient magic in ropes, but I guess it just isn’t powerful enough to create worshipers. I learned this to my dismay when the yachtsmen didn’t genuflect when they came up to the rostrum to congratulate me on my talk.

It’s gray whale watching time again. The longest annual migration of any marine mammal is under way as the gray whale travels from the Bering Sea to shallow calving lagoons and coves along the Baja California coast--a distance of about 6,000 miles.

Thanks to federal law protecting eight species of endangered whales, recent counts indicate a California gray whale population of 13,000. Some observers estimate the population along the Pacific coast as high as 20,000. In the middle of the 19th century, when commercial whaling for the mammals’ oil was at its peak, the population was about 30,000. Excessive commercial whaling activities prior to 1946, when whales were protected by federal law, drove the count down to 6,000.

Some scientists believe the gray whale population is increasing by as much as 11% a year.

Presently about 200 grays are killed by man each year. The Soviet government takes about 160 annually to feed Siberian aborigines. A few more are taken by Alaskan natives.

John Scholl of Long Beach, a State Fish and Game biologist specializing in marine mammals, warns boaters not to get too close to a mother with a calf. Calving often takes place before a pregnant mother can reach the Baja California lagoons.