Piece Identification

[Kate]

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0tN4MSYL989EzPPi-ohhZhOhA

Trying to identify this piece found on a remote Alaskan beach. General consensus is it’s part of the rigging from old sailing ship. Can anyone identify what part and what kind of ship? 

[Mark P]

Good Morning Kate;

 

It looks to me like what is called an 'open heart', which is used to set up the lower end of one of the principal stays of a sailing ship, with a lanyard (a length of rope passed repeatedly through each of a pair of hearts, placed end to end, and about 3 feet apart) The two metal loops of one heart would have been fastened to the end of the stay, and those of the other heart would be fixed to a firm anchorage point. The lanyard was used to pull it all taut, and could be adjusted if necessary.

 

The stays were large diameter ropes which ran down and forwards from the top of the masts, to a fixed point on or near the deck or bowsprit. I believe that open hearts were also sometimes used to set up the bowsprit shrouds in some merchant vessels. 

 

I am not fully qualified to comment on the date, but I would suspect it to be of either 19th century date, or early 20th.

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

 

 

[wefalck]

On first sight, this indeed looks like an 'open heart'. However, the fact that the internal opening is round is a bit strange. Normally, part on which the lanyard rests would be straight, perhaps with shallow grooves, to make sure that the individual turns of the lanyard do not check each other. In the present configuration the lanyard turns would have the tendency to squeeze each other, thus making it difficult to set it tight. One would need to find similar images in the 19th century literatur to corroborate this shape of 'open heart'.