digital commonwealth, lesley jones collection
national park service
Rope up to a quarter of a mile long could be manufactured inside the 1,325 x 45-foot ropewalk at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. (left) Interior photo of a ropemaker laying up four-strand rope. (right) The exterior of the building as it looked in 1930. Production at the ropewalk was terminated in 1971. The building has been vacant since then and is being considered for redevelopment by its owner, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, within the protocols of the National Park Service and the Massachusetts Historical Commission guidelines. America, hemp was cultivated in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1640. Like the Chinese, American colonial tax collectors would accept quantities of hemp as payment. Hemp fibers are strong, smooth, and resistant to stiffening when wet and later dried, a constant situation aboard ships at sea. Over the eighteenth century, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Missouri became major American hemp producers. Foreign varieties from Russia and the Baltics were popular, but many ship outfitters considered the Italian strains the best. Color is an indication of age in buying rope. “New is like spun gold, but as time runs on this fades to a dull yellow, and with age eventually it loses all color and turns a dull lifeless grey.”1 Pristine rope was so valuable that some navies wove colored jute threads into the yarns to identify the composition of materials. It also discouraged theft; selling stolen navy property to merchant captains was made unfeasible by this practice. Production Historically, ropemaking evolved through four major stages: twisting or braiding; manipulating components by way of simple mechanical tools; using compound machine-like tools; and employing powered machinery. The earliest ropes were made
of plant fibers and natural materials that were braided or twisted by hand. Ancient Egyptians tied the ends of papyrus to fixed objects and then twisted a stick to provide torsion. The resulting strands were combined into a three-twisted aggregate and then twisted together in a counter direction. The length of rope was limited by the length of the area in which it was being constructed. Outdoors, racks and stands could be built at just about any distance apart, but this practice was, of course, weather dependent. By the end of the twelfth century, Europeans were making rope indoors in long narrow buildings called “ropewalks” that allowed specially trained workers to construct ropes up to 300 yards long. These purpose-built complexes enabled yarns to be stretched in a long unbroken line between rotating hooks. As the hooks rotated, the yarns would be entwined together. Longer rope could be made by splicing lengths together. Splices, however, typically doubled the diameter of the rope at the join, thus making it useless for passing through blocks or fairleads of running rigging. Shortly after the first Europeans arrived in North America, they began making hemp cordage. Rope was used to rig their vessels, but also for myriad uses ashore. The frequency of supplies arriving from
Europe was unpredictable, and settlers were keen on making their own rope, along with other commodities for day-to-day living. In 1641, John Harrison, a ropemaker from Salisbury, England, built a ropewalk in Boston, using both Salem-grown and imported hemp as raw materials. Harrison controlled Boston’s ropemaking business for years, as evidenced by a 1663 order from local authorities demanding that a fellow “twine twister,” John Heyman, stop making rope and promptly leave town. When Harrison died, his quasi-monopolistic advantage died with him, and the number of ropewalks rose dramatically. In 1792, British entrepreneur and inventor Edmund Cartwright modified his power loom invention to mechanically assist making rope.2 This apparatus enabled ropemakers to produce multiple twists of the ropes with each turn of the complex tool. The mechanism was based upon an oversized wheel that linked smaller wheels via leather or rope belts. For each revolution of the center wheel, smaller wheels would turn from as few as four, to as many as ten, revolutions simultaneously, allowing the ropemaker to twist strands faster and tighter. Cartwright’s machine included a clutch mechanism, which could be used to reverse direction for right or left-hand turnings. As the
1 Hervey G. Smith, The Marlinespike Sailor, (New York, NY: The Rudder Publishing Company, 1952). 2 The
device was called the “Cordelier” after the knotted cord that girded the Franciscan friars’ habit.
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