The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172462 Message #4175955
Posted By: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
01-Jul-23 - 09:11 PM
Thread Name: New Chanties Documentary
Subject: RE: New Chanties Documentary
Reposting from the other thread - 1851:
“Ships' Capstans.-There were exhibited two specimens of Ships' Capstans, worked like fire-engines, with a pump handle motion, instead of the old capstan worked by handspikes, which the men pushed against while they ran round to a lively tune of the ship's fifer, with great exertion, tremendous stamping noise, and occasionally serious accidents, from the weight of the cable overpowering the men, and flinging the handspikes in all directions. This old-fashioned capstan has been superseded in the Navy by some one or other of several patent machines. The full-sized one exhibited by a London house seemed very good; the turning power, obtained by simple friction-bands, making no noise on the return stroke, worked by two arms that require no shipping and unshipping, which is always so dangerous on a dark night: it has the great advantage of simplicity––there is nothing to clog.” [The Great Exhibition, Year-Book of Facts in Science and the Arts, 1851] Great Exhibition (1851)
Note: Windlass/capstan, hard to tell in some places. Been looking at 1851 Exhibition images but nada so far.