Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on April 03, 2008 at 20:08:36 from 81.144.214.226 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Famour AR readers (was Rowling... ) posted by Jock on March 27, 2008 at 14:00:14:
I respectfully beg to differ, and pray in aid RT McMullen's "Down Channel", a book which enjoyed the elevated status of a sailing classic even at the date when AR was writing and which would certainly have been on Captain Flint's bookshelf (it was number seven in the Mariner's Library series, edited by AR for Rupert Hart-Davies).
The opening chapter describes a horrifying accident in 1850, when McMullen was learning to sail in which he got an un-moused sister hook on a halyard trapped in his eye. Very fortunately he did not lose his sight, but the moral is clear - the seamanlike proceding is always to mouse your sisterhooks.
In the twentieth century it was common practice to mouse them with a rubber band, which is quicker and easier than spunyarn.