Anchor

“ Like a ship at anchor, with all sails set and filled by a strong and ever increasing gale, it was inevitably certain that before long either the anchor must give, or the white sails of her reputation be blown to rags and tatters—bitter state, indeed, for a wife and mother! ”

“ And soon within an Indian bay the ship at anchor swings.
Not idle then the busy crew—ere long the spacious hold
Is emptied of its western freight, and stored with India's gold.
Again the ponderous Anchors weighed—the shore is left behind
The snowy sails are bosomed out before the favouring wind;
The mighty deep around her seems a calm and mirrored lake
And thousand trains of sparkling light are gleaming in her wake
For home she steers! She seems to know and answer to the word,
And swifter skims the burnished deep like some fair ocean bird.
"For home! for home!" ”

“ And flashing red darts through the air,
We'll bring our good craft to an anchor
Near a shore where the white birches shine:
Look out! or your rod will be broken,
A black bass is fast on your line! ”

“ All this time the men were working to clear the anchor, and just as the schooner was hove into the wind to weather the corner of a long shallow point of breakers, our moorings were let go, our sails sharply brailed up, and we had soon the satisfaction of finding that we rode easily to our anchor in about eight fathom water, with a great labyrinth of sand-banks and low ledges of rock around. ”

“ An anchor is forged and fashioned for faithfulness; give it ground that it can bite, and it will hold till the cable parts, and then, whatever may afterwards befall its ship, that anchor is “lost.” The honest, rough piece of iron, so simple in appearance, has more parts than the human body has limbs: the ring, the stock, the crown, the flukes, the palms, the shank. ”

“ The anchor is not down before we are surrounded by rowboats, six or eight deep on both sides, with a mob of boatmen and guides, all standing up and shouting at us in all the broken languages of three continents. ”

“ Your blows make music sweeter far than any steeple's chime. But while ye swing your sledges, sing, and let the burthen be— The anchor is the anvil king, and royal craftsmen we! Strike in, strike in!—the sparks begin to dull their rustling red; Our hammers ring with sharper din—our work will soon be sped; Our anchor soon must change his bed of fiery rich array For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay ”

“ From first to last the seaman’s thoughts are very much concerned with his anchors. It is not so much that the anchor is a symbol of hope as that it is the heaviest object that he has to handle on board his ship at sea in the usual routine of his duties. The beginning and the end of every passage are marked distinctly by work about the ship’s anchors. A vessel in the Channel has her anchors always ready, her cables shackled on, and the land almost always in sight. The anchor and the land are indissolubly connected in a sailor’s thoughts. ”

“ Ay-way! Hay-ho! As she will! Now then! Again! As she must! Come in!” Or we are just coming to anchor and it is, “Haul down your outer jib!” in stentorian tones from the wheel. “Haul down outer jib,” in obedient response from the bow . . . more orders, further echoes. Then the rattling of the anchor-chain over the deck, the scamper of the hands to make down fore and main sail and, lo! the Tikirau, with her wings furled—and yet how beautiful still!—and tethered, and yet how still alive! ”

“ To anchor on a lee shore in a gale of wind would be an act of madness that I could never excuse to the underwriters, under any circumstances, so long as a rag can be set; but to anchor close to breakers would be insanity. ”

“ For four days they lay at anchor swinging to the tide, in the entrance, lonely and unvisited, while the eager, bare-footed, bare-legged and bare-chested men gazed longingly at the distant port and tried to persuade themselves that the vessel must go up there for coal and water. ”

“ The anchor that is to keep the ship of your life from dragging and finding itself, when the morning breaks, a ghastly wreck upon the reef, must be outside of yourself, and the cable of it must be wrapped round the throne of God. ”

“ There is no man of all our following who will forget that day, because of what happened almost as soon as the anchor held. It was very hot that morning, and what breeze had been out in the open sea was kept from us now by the hills, so that for some miles we had rowed the ships up the winding reaches of the firth; and then, as we laid in the oars and the anchorage was reached, there crept from inland a dim haze over the sun, dimming the light, and making all things look strange among the mountains. ”

“ One Pump and that not half workd kept the ship clear all night. In the morn we weighd with a fine breeze of wind and steerd along ashore among innumerable shoals, the boats keeping ahead and examining every appearance of a harbour which presented itself; nothing however was met with which could possibly suit our situation, bad as it was, so at night we came to an anchor. ”

“ An anchor is now carried out to hold us in position when we make a new start; more ropes are taken to the shore, two hitched to the bow and one to the stern. Straight before us is a narrow passage through which the water comes in foaming ridges with extraordinary rapidity. ”

“ He weighs anchor in the midst of tempestuous gales; by night and day he spreads his sheets to the winds; he repairs as he goes along such damage as his vessel may have sustained from the storm; and when he at last approaches the term of his voyage, he darts onward to the shore as if he already descried a port. ”

“ They found, too, that there was a place where a ship might come to an anchor on the north side of it, though indeed the anchorage is inconvenient; for the bank extends but a little way, is steep too, and has very deep water upon it, so that you must come to an anchor very near the shore, and there lie exposed to all the winds but a southerly one. ”

“ To throw anything overboard. To cast, as heaving the log or the lead. Also, to drag, prize, or purchase, as heaving up the anchor.
HEAVE ABOUT, To. To go upon the other tack suddenly.
HEAVE AND A-WASH. An encouraging call when the ring of the anchor rises to the surface, and the stock stirs the water.
HEAVE AND A-WEIGH. Signifies that the next effort will start the anchor from its bed, and make it a-trip. "Heave and a-weigh, sir," from the forecastle, denotes that the anchor is a-weigh; it inspirits the men to run it to the bows rapidly. ”

“ The ship is in sight now. . . . When the anchor is down, then I shall say: Farewell—a long farewell to business! I will never touch it again! I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it; I will swim in ink! ”

“ The anchor may have caught at a place where the cable passes over the edge of a sharp rock, which soon cuts [Pg 202] it off, in consequence of the motion. Then the ship must go on shore.
"At other times," continued the captain, "the ground for the anchor is too soft, instead of being too hard; and the flukes, therefore, do not take a firm hold of it. Then the anchor will drag. Every sea that strikes the ship drives her a little in toward the shore, and she is, of course, in great danger." ”

“ For although it is not common to anchor in a greater depth than forty fathoms, yet if there is only one cable, and the ship rides in a storm and tempestuous sea, the anchor will of necessity sustain the whole weight and violent jerking of the ship, in a direction too nearly perpendicular. ”

“ Anchor-ground, fond de bonne tenue, is a bottom which is neither too deep, too shallow, nor rocky; as in the first the cable bears too nearly perpendicular, and is thereby apt to jerk the anchor out of the ground: in the second, the ship’s bottom is apt to strike at low water, or when the sea runs high, by which she is exposed to the danger of sinking: and in the third, the anchor is liable to hook the broken and pointed ends of rocks, and tear away its flukes; whilst the cable, from the same cause, is constantly in danger of being cut through as it rubs on their edges. ”

“ We say 'anchor,' or 'let go the anchor,' or 'dropped the anchor,' or some such reasonable expression, and not 'cast anchor,' as if a bit of iron, weighing two or three tons, is to be jerked about like a stone big enough to kill a bird with. As for the 'cable-rope,' as you call it, we say the 'cable,' or 'the chain,' or 'the ground tackle,' according to reason and circumstances. You never hear a real 'salt' flourishing his 'cable-ropes,' and his 'casting-anchors,' which are altogether too sentimental and particular for his manner of speaking. ”

“ But another job requiring men and muscle was the getting ready the anchors. I went forward and examined them. The best anchor was to port, the lighter one to starboard; and both were swung inboard on the topgallant forecastle, and lashed together. ”

“ Our people, it appeared, had gone to sleep the moment our anchor was down; shortly after this, the other junks, which, it turned out, were only waiting for the rise of the tide to enter some river in the vicinity, had all weighed anchor and gone off. All on board were now in great consternation, lest the pirates should come down upon us whilst at anchor, and no time was lost in getting it up and proceeding on our voyage, much, of course, to my satisfaction. ”

“ In the night it raind and at times blew strong not much to our satisfaction who were in a situation not very desirable, as if our anchor should come home or cable break we had nothing to expect but going ashore on some one or other of the shoals which lay round us. The night passd however without the least accident, and at day light in the morn the anchor was got up and we proceeded, in hopes of getting out of our Archipelago. ”

“ A grand sight it was, yer honour, to see so many fine large craft lying at anchor, all clean painted, and looking as gay as so many women rigged out for a dance ashore, with their red and striped ensigns all fluttering in the sunshine; and the lads all as neat and clean as shore-going gemmen. ”

“ Every detail of the anchor, the curved portion, the little teeth at the head, the arms, etc., can be interpreted in the most beautiful way, above all the form of the anchor itself, for the two arms prevent it from swaying round to the side. ”

“ To pay a vessel's head off, or turn it, is getting under weigh on the tack she is to sail upon, and it is casting to starboard, or port, according to the intention.—To cast anchor. To drop or let go the anchor for riding by—synonymous with to anchor.—To cast a traverse. ”

“ I am supposing, for the sake of good luck to this venture, that in weighing anchor you have the wind so that you can sail with it full and by, or freer still, right past the walls until you are well into the tide outside. You may tell me that you are so rich and your boat is so big that there have been times when you have anchored in the very open, and that all this does not apply to you. ”

“ Now, gentle reader, what would you do if you were on a small boat, rolling in the trough of the sea, a trysail on that small boat's stern that was unable to swing the bow up into the wind? Get out the sea-anchor. It's just what we did. We had a patent one, made to order and warranted not to dive. Imagine a hoop of steel that serves to keep open the mouth of a large, conical, canvas bag, and you have a sea-anchor. Well, we made a line fast to the sea-anchor and to the bow of the Snark, and then dropped the sea-anchor overboard. ”

“ An anchor at each side—an anchor—stands for an old sailor, you know—stands for hope, you know—an anchor at each side, and in the middle Thankful.’ It is not easy, on any system of punctuation, to represent the Captain’s speech. ”

“ The holding ground is so good that no ship can part her cable, however strong the wind may be, as we proved by experience, for while riding at anchor on the coast we were overtaken by a gale in the beginning of March, when the winds are high, as is usual in all countries, and we found our anchor broken before it started from its place or moved at all. ”

“ In moderate weather, and where you are not in a strong tide-way, it will generally be sufficient to let go one anchor, since, if you have out a good scope of chain, you will ride by the bight of it, and it will require a very heavy blow to bring a strain upon the anchor. ”

“ When the Cable is Perpendicular between the Hawse and the Anchor, it is then said to be a Peek; when hangs right up and down by the Ship's Side, it is said to be a Cock Bill, upon the Ship's coming to an Anchor; when a Ship drives by the Violence of Wind or Tide, and the Anchor cannot hold her, then it's said to come Home. Those which have lost one of their Flooks, are made use of for Moarings. ”

“ It was necessary to carry an anchor heavy enough to hold well in strong tides, in bad weather, and through the long nights, so that I could sleep then without anxiety. On the other hand, the anchor must be also light enough to be weighed and stowed by one man, and this too in that precious twenty seconds of time, when in weighing anchor, the boat, already loosed from the ground but not yet got hold of by the sails, is swept bodily away by the tide, and faces look cross from yachts around, being sure you will collide, as a lubber is bound to do. ”

“ An anchor man, Mr. Danley, is called that for more than one reason. You cannot anchor your boat to a rock unless there is an eye-bolt set in it. And if it already has an eye-bolt, you would have no purpose on that rock. In a way, you will be the anchor of your boat, since you will be tied to it by your safety line. If the boat drifts too far from your rock while you are working, it will pull you off the surface, since it has more mass than you do. ”

“ A look at the land satisfied all that the vessel was actually moving through the water.
“Let’s try the anchor. It must be dragging,” said Bart.
So they all went to work at the windlass, and in course of time found the anchor raised. As they worked, they found it lighter than they expected; and when at length they had ended, they ran to the bows. All was explained. The anchor was broken off short at the fluke.
“That’s how it happened,” said Bart. “And so we’re in for another adventure.”
“What shall we do now?”
“Sail the vessel, of course,” said Bruce. ”