Posted by Mathew Walker on January 17, 2001 at 17:09:50 from 212.159.141.189:
Ahoy there my hearties, let's try to get back onto a Ransome course!
I'm a Tarry knotty nutter and I've long been bothered about the ropework that Mr Hawkins showed the Coot Club that afternoon aboard the WELCOME, Many of them were working bends and hitches used by dockies and cargo seamen, of little use to young freshwater sailors or gentleman yachtsmen in the thirties such as was Ransome himself.
The Blackwall hitch and it's mates the Double Blackwell and the Midshipman's Hitches are specialist ways of making a rope fast to a hook and not for the inexperienced youngster. Likewise, the selvagee strop is a soft sling made from a large quantity of small stuff and requires a couple of nails to be driven into a bit of plank and the strop built up upon them. Not really entertaining for a crowd of youngsters to watch, so did Ransome really even know what a selvagee strop was? Oddly enough almost all of these knots, bends and hitches appear in my 1937 copy of the Admiralty Manual of Seamanship volume 1 so I wonder if this was his source?
Now to the real problem, the HANDSPIKE HITCH. Even amongst my colleagues in the International Guild of Knot Tyers can I find no knowledge of this hitch. There is a handspike CLINCH mentioned in a very rare book on seamanship publshed in about 1820 but my guess is that Ransome had in mind the very useful MARLINSPIKE HITCH.
Knots often have local names so I wonder if Ransome came across the name up some lonely East Coast backwater?
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE SOMEWHERE!