Mystery wire rope across chainplates on 1920s trading schooner - what is it?

[Ian_S]

I'm uploading seven images showing a wire rope seen running across the chainplates/shrouds on a pre-WWII three-masted coastal trading topsail schooner (150 tons approx). It appears on both port and starboard, on main and mizzen; so four instances on the vessel.  I have no idea what it is. 

You can just see that the lines in question are bolted at their forward end to the top of the thick rubbing strake that is fixed running down both sides of the hull fore-aft just below the deckline. The aft end seems to be loosely shackled to any convenient shroud. All images are of the same ship, between 1917 and 1936.

The vessel is Australian, but the influences in its fittings are British, American and vernacular. So the rope could be a thing from America, UK, or else an Australian idea. 

 

Ian Scales

Canberra, Australia

 

Edited May 29 by Ian_S

[Keith Black]

Is it a line that a ship's boat could grab/hold temporally before a securing line is tied off? 

[Ian_S]

3 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Is it a line that a ship's boat could grab/hold temporally before a securing line is tied off? 

 

It could be. Along slightly similar lines, I've called my computer folder where I've collected photos of it, "painter thing". But why have so many such grab lines if just for that convenience? And why wouldn't it be seen more widely around the world if it was so useful for that purpose? Why leave one end loosely tied and not just fasten both ends to the rubbing strake, kind of like how a rope is becketed around a lifeboat? So I'm not satisfied with the grab line / painter idea. 

 

I have found photos of ten coastal sail traders with this feature, all located in the south east region of Australia (except one, from northern New South Wales). So it wasn't restricted to one vessel or one captain's own idiosyncratic ideas. All those vessels were coastal traders around the 100 to 150 ton mark. Smaller vessels in that region didn't have them, nor did larger vessels; and not all vessels in that region and of that size had them. 

 

[Jim Lad]

Ian, were these vessels engaged in any particular trade? A possibility is 'guest warps', used to secure boats that are loading or discharging cargo from the schooner. Not the usual configuration for 'guest warps', but at the moment I can't think of anything else.

 

John

[Ian_S]

John -- guest warps -- that was new to me so I looked it up. Forgive me for writing in below my notes from that little excursion. It could be a "guest rope" (related to a guess warp). I've quoted a few dictionaries here, but perhaps the Country Life Book of Nautical Terms comes closest to providing a clue in my own context:
 

Country Life Books 1978, Nautical Terms Under Sail. London: Trewin Copplestone Publishing, p.20.03: 
 

Quote

Guess warp. Rope with one end secured ashore and the other inboard, enabling the crew to move their ship by hauling on the inboard end (see Warp). 

(Nautical Terms under Sail was compiled with a stellar list of advisers)

 

René de Kerchove, 1961, International Maritime Dictionary 2nd ed. New York: Van Nostrand Co., pp.341-42:

Quote

Guest rope. 1. A line to assist the towline either to steady the tow or to lengthen the towline or act as a preventer. 2. The grab rope that runs alongside to assist boats coming to the gangway. It leads from forward through a bull's eye on the boat boom. 3. A stout rope slung outside a vessel fore and aft to give a hold for boats, lighters, barges to ride by when alongside. This term is also applied by some to any rope used to attach a boat astern of a vessel.

 

Howard Patterson, 1885. The Yachtsman's Guide, p.142:

Quote

Guest-rope. A rope fastened to a vessel or wharf, for a boat's use; or to haul it out to the swinging boom-end, when in port. 

 

I also looked at Gershom Bradford 1972, The Mariner's Dictionary (previous editions titled "A glossary of Sea Terms"), and Peter Kemp "The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea", as well as other entries for "guest rope" in various books uncovered in a HathiTrust keyword search, but although they all add to the context and semantic range, I don't think get to what I need here. 

The cluster of terms guess/guest/rope/warp all circle around the idea, more or less, of a line that is either used to pull a ship to wharf, or else used to tie a boat to a ship. The idea that the outboard end might well terminate in an eye splice, that could be shackled to a wharf or boat, suits the photos I attached above; which although blurry, plausibly have such a termination; while the other, inboard end, seems in the photos to be spliced or shackled to an eyebolt on the rubbing strake, consistent with the explanation of a guest rope. 

But why four such ropes? Excessive if the idea is to moor a boat to the ship. But perhaps not excessive if there is something peculiar about how these ships needed to come alongside a bush wharf to load sawmill timber or drop cargo to an isolated settlement. In which case two lines per side would make sense, which as circumstances required, might need to have been port or starboard. But it doesn't fully explain why ordinary mooring ropes wouldn't do. I don't feel this is "solved", but it might be getting close -- or else might just be barking up the wrong tree. I can't tell. 

 

[Tony Hunt]

I love a puzzle, and those are really intriguing images - both paintings and photographs. 

 

In some of the photos the forward end of the line appears to be attached to the outside of the hull approximately at the line of the deck edge?

 

I've no idea what they could be for. Fascinating!

 

PS -  I like Jim Lad's suggestion. Better than anything I could come up with!

Edited May 30 by Tony Hunt

[Ian_S]

Yes, intriguing. As a guest rope to secure to -- say -- a river wharf, Jim Lad's suggestion for what these wire ropes might be has merit, I agree. But why not ordinary mooring lines from bow and stern? These wire ropes in the photos are always located at the shrouds. Perhaps one other possibility is that, since these small ships had no gangplank but rather, at low tide when the deck was well below the wharf, the crew had to leap or fall onto the shrouds and shimmy down to deck (noted in a book called Bass Strait Ketches (Harold Salter 1991), which is roughly what these vessels were). A guest rope at the shroud might have helped haul in the vessel to shore for that purpose. But that's just speculation -- I still don't know.

Here's a few more photos that show how the fore end of the wire rope is fastened to an eyebolt (or so it appears) on the rubbing strake or thereabouts (actually called a 'sponson' in SE Australia back in the 1920s/30s, a terminological hangover from paddle steamer days I suppose), just below the deck-line. The aft end of the rope appears to have a spliced eye. In some of these photos -- which are all of different vessels -- you can see the rope is becketed to the back shroud. 
 

[wefalck]

Never heard the term 'guest-rope' before, but seems to make sense for something a boat crew could hold onto while coming alongside. However, in such a case, I would have expected the hope to be running more or less horizontally, while on virtually all the pictures one end is tied up to the bottle-screws or thereabouts.

 

I know that yachts-people sometimes jump ashore and grab the shrouds to pull their boat towards the quay, but I am not so sure that would work for a 150 ton schooner. Otherwise the 'guest-rope' could help in such endeavour. However, I would rather expect one man to jump ashore and another throwing the mooring line to him, with which the ship could be coerced more safely towards the quay.

 

A puzzle ...

[dafi]

Another pure guess: lightning conductors?

 

to be tossed into the water in thundery times?

 

XXXDAn

[Kenchington]

With the forward end fastened to a strong point, it looks like the wire was supposed to take substantial strain. Yet every illustration shows it loosely and lazily draped, with a temporary fastening somewhere towards its after end. My conclusion is that they all show the gear in its "stowed" position, not when it was serving its intended purpose.

 

Given where the wires were attached, my guess would be that, when they were serving that purpose, they projected  out from the side of the vessel. Being wire, with no rope tail and no tackle, they would project a set, fixed distance. So what needs such a rig?

 

I'd go with Jim Lad's thought that they were specific to some kind of cargo handling. Did these schooners work with lighters alongside? Maybe with rafts of logs floating alongside? Was there a particular arrangement on the wharfs were they worked, allowing them to be hooked on in some way?

 

Whatever the purpose was, the wires were important enough to the schooners that they were included in the one painting. Photographs capture every detail but artists only include what matters to them or their clients, so the wires were significant to someone.

 

Trevor

[Ian_S]

Just on paintings, here's another, but this time from the northern coast of New South Wales (the painting is held by the Nambucca Headland Museum, NSW), which is outside of the territory, if I can put it that way of all the other vessels showing these lines. Not that the painting here provides better visual detail, but as Kenchington says, demonstrates that the lines in question were important enough for the artists to include them -- but depicted in a neater and more orderly form than the reality captured in photos. 

 

[Tony Hunt]

It seems to be a 20th century innovation. This picture of the Hally Bayley from the A.D. Edwardes collection (probably late 19th century) doesn't seem to show them.

 

[Ian_S]

1 hour ago, Tony Hunt said:

It seems to be a 20th century innovation

Yes, it does seem to fit into a pattern of local innovation, where, when you look closely at the trading ketches / schooners of the south east Australian area (let's say the vessels trading between Melbourne, Hobart and Port Adelaide), various items of deck machinery in particular begin to follow a different path from British and American practice. This seems to be more pronounced in the 20th century than the 19th. But, it's hard to develop a timeline because there aren't many images from the 19th century, and very little archaeology (and anyway the few Australian marine archaeologists that exist seem unaware of these developments so aren't looking for them). And then ultimately the developing local variations are cut short by the technological leaps brought on by world war two and the post-war economy, and never return. 

Since this thread has been up for a couple of days, and a fair few people from outside Australia have looked at it, with none having said that they've seen similar fittings (the supposed guest ropes) in their own countries, it's looking like yet another vernacular development in SE Australian maritime technology. There are perhaps a dozen books from the US about local schooner fleets which I haven't seen so I can't be sure, but for Britain I've seen -- or own -- quite a few such books and don't see these arrangements there. Still open to being corrected on this though, if anyone comes forward. 

[Dr PR]

Good discussion! Based upon what has been said/speculated here is another guess.

 

It just looks to me to be a quick way for boats to tie up alongside.

 

If these vessels regularly took alongside small boats or barges to transfer mail, cargo or passengers, having the fixed lines for the boats to tie up to would be simpler and faster than having the ship's crew dealing with mooring lines and such. It appears (in some photos) that the free or aft end has an eye spliced in it. That would be convenient for the boat's crew to tie on to quickly. That end would be on the boat while they were tying on, and that would be easier to tie to than trying to tie onto a fixed part of the ship with the boat bobbing alongside. This would work with the ship moving, so the ship wouldn't need to anchor.

 

The lines would automatically position the boats alongside at convenient positions for transferring cargo, etc. Since you wouldn't want a boat alongside the shrouds the best place for the shipboard end is at the shrouds, with the other end trailing aft to position the boat away from the shrouds.

 

One thing I find interesting is that this seems to be a local custom. So some ship starts doing it and other local vessels catch on to the idea. But it didn't spread much farther before sailing vessels became history.

[Jim Lad]

When I was at sea, we called 'guest warps' ropes or wires that were rigged on the ship's side for other craft to make fast to while loading of discharging cargo to or from our ship.

 

John

[Tony Hunt]

There are quite a few photos of these vessels in various collections, there surely must be one that shows one of these lines in use. Especially since they would most likely have been used when in port, where photographers most often lurked.

[Ian_S]

5 hours ago, Tony Hunt said:

There are quite a few photos of these vessels in various collections, there surely must be one that shows one of these lines in use. Especially since they would most likely have been used when in port, where photographers most often lurked.

 

Over the years I've found many photos of these vessels, since they are my interest and I'm a deep-research type. Yes many were taken in or near docks, but surprisingly few taken of the dockside moorings. Usually it's a vessel approaching/departing port, or moored but taken photo taken across clear water showing the side away from the dock. But, I've attached the second of only two photos I have of these "mystery rope" vessels  where you can see the actual "mystery rope" at the mooring. The first of those photos I included in the OP above. The second I'll attach below. Note that the rope is not in use. The ship is moored in the usual way. See my next post which I'll write immediately following on from this, with a big surprise. Anyhows, here's the photo -- at Little Dock in Melbourne, I guess in the 1920s, ketch is small but still unidentified. The rope is there, look hard and you'll see it.

 

[Ian_S]

I think we may have all been barking up the wrong tree. The following photo, which I've only just found (online at the Tasmanian Archives, I thought I'd exhausted that source years ago but here we are ... ) shows the rope in question. It is hooked to the single-sheave block of the foremast boom tackle of the gaff sail rig. So it's a part of the running rigging. I think what is in all the photos I've shown would be called a boom tackle pendant (or pennant). 

It relates to an explanation of boom tackles (also called boom guys) in Chapelle's "American Fishing Schooners" (p.357): "Their purpose was to hold the booms outboard when running before the wind the vessel rolling." (sic, seems to be missing a word or two). In the photo I've attached below, we see the single-sheave block with a hook that if not in use would be hooked to an eye under the boom a little aft of the boom jaws. The other block in the tackle is a double sheave block, hooked and moused to a wye band near the sheet wye toward the end of the boom (can't see that in the photo, but Chapelle's diagram shows it, as do Figs 10-12 to 10-14 of Bennet's Schooner Sunset. In Chapelle's description, "To guy the mainboom, the single block was unhooked and brought to the rail near the aftermost fore shroud and hooked into a staple on the rail cap. The fall was then led off and set up, then belayed on the pin in the boom jaws.". So there should be a pin in the boom jaws in the photo below, but it's obscured, so you can't actually see it. 
 

Chapelle goes on, and his next comment reflects what is also clearly depicted in Bennet's Fig 10-13, which shows the British version of the boom tackle pendant (or pennant): "The foreboom guy led to a staple on the bow chock rail ... the fall belaying on a cleat on the side of the foreboom. Racers sometimes had pendants for guys to hook into, to avoid overhauling the tackles, which were very long on a large schooner." 

So, unless someone raises objections, there we have it. These southeast Australian skippers in their sweet picturesque old-time sailing vessels, the seas already full of steamers and motor vessels, when out on the seas far from land where nobody was watching, turned into insatiable speed freaks who held the booms as far outboard as they could, by extending the boom tackle on long outboard pendants. 

 

The photo below, in full and at higher resolution is at https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Digital/LMSS761-1-595

So we have it? I'd be interested if anyone can provide more detailed references to boom tackles.
 

Edited June 1 by Ian_S
fixed typos

[wefalck]

That makes perfect sense 👍🏻

[Tony Hunt]

Aha. What a modern yachtsman calls a preventer. Why didn't I think of that?  I've used one hundreds of times!

Edited May 31 by Tony Hunt

[Jim Lad]

Aha! Good research backed up by dogged perseverance solves the problem!!

 

John

[Kenchington]

And interesting that a specific development (i.e. permanently rigging a pendant for the boom tackles outboard) should have spread so widely in its local area without being picked up by the operators of similar vessels in other regions.

 

That must say something about the flow of ideas, locally and across distance, but I'd need another mug of coffee before figuring out quite what it tells us 😎

 

Trevor 

[Ian_S]

11 hours ago, Kenchington said:

And interesting that a specific development (i.e. permanently rigging a pendant for the boom tackles outboard) should have spread so widely in its local area without being picked up by the operators of similar vessels in other regions. That must say something about the flow of ideas, locally and across distance ...

 

Nice point. Here's my take on that. There were only two regions in Australia that had fairly large fleets of wooden-hulled trading sailships: the northern coast of New South Wales trading into Sydney, and the region around Bass Strait further southeast -- a kind of triangle between the southeast Australian ports of Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide. Steamships displaced sail traders almost entirely in NSW by 1910, while in the southeast, economic factors (not at all well studied as far as I know) meant that sail traders survived in strong numbers until World War Two. There was a bit of wooden sailing trader interaction across the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Sydney, and a fleet of wooden "scows" there in NZ, but that was far away. So the southeast Australian sailing traders were technologically isolated in the 1910s to 30s: there were no other interacting sailing fleets by then. When you look at various aspects of technology on these vessels, you do see, in the 20th century, more flecks of vernacular adaptations within that SE Aust fleet such as this one we've just discovered. I'm chuffed because here's another one, and once again, nobody knew ... just as well I'm writing a book about it. 

I do especially like this development though, because there's a hint here that this was about speed, of a kind of "don't try this at home" pushing of the limits by expert sailors operating in hard and dangerous conditions who were driven by freight rates, sure, but I have a feeling this might have been a culture thing too -- about thrill and exhilaration shared by a very select group who didn't broadcast it, and nobody else, even at the time, seems to have known what they were on about. Maybe a bit like surfing culture before the Beach Boys. I might be getting ahead of myself there, but it's an appealing thought. 

[Kenchington]

22 hours ago, Ian_S said:

there were no other interacting sailing fleets by then

Yes, I think that's a big part of the story.

 

Half-a-century before, there would have been men aboard deep-water sailing ships whose roots in other regions were in the coasting trades. They would have carried good ideas back home. After 1900, deep-water sail was almost done (not completely before 1939, of course, and not quite entirely even after 1945), so a new innovation in the Bass Strait region would not have reached, for example, the topsail schooner fleet that still operated in England at that point.

 

Not so sure about the speed thing, though. You have quoted:

 

On 5/31/2025 at 8:19 AM, Ian_S said:

Racers sometimes had pendants for guys to hook into, to avoid overhauling the tackles, which were very long on a large schooner.

But that's to make the sail-handling quicker (important when racing), not to make the boat go faster. Maybe there were times when swift handling of boom tackles mattered on a trading schooner. (Working through the channel at Port Philip Heads, perhaps?) But I'd wonder whether the concern wasn't more about making do with one less man aboard and saving on labour costs.

 

Trevor