A Nantucket Shipmaster's' 'Sea Anchor"

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A N a n t u c k et S h i p ma st er 's " S e a A n c ho r"

WRITING FROM NANTUCKET in March, 1872, a Nantucket shipmaster gave the following account of how he successfully rigged up a "sea anchor," which he presented as a "Suggestion To Mariners." It was printed in The Boston Journal on March 30 of that year, and reads:

"The second of last March I was on my passage home from Cuba in a deeply loaded brig, and hove to in the heaviest gale I ever saw, with a fearful sea running so high that it becalmed our close-reefed mainsail, and our safety depended on keeping the vessel's head as near the wind as possible. Therefor, I tried a very simple method of 'dragging her,' as follows:

"Took a large cask with one head in it, and nailed a stout piece of wood across the bottom on the outside. On each side of that I bored a hole through the head, and fitted a strap through the holes, the bight of which came through the mouth of the cask. I made one end of a hawser fast to the strap, and the other end fast to the weather bow, and tossed the cask overboard.

"It floated up to wind'ard, and as the vessel's head fell off from the seas, the cask would drag under water and keep her head up to wind and sea, so that almost every sea broke over the jib-boom and hardly a spray came on board. I after ward tried the old method of a kedge and spar, fast to a hawser, but it did not do near as well.

"In another gale I hove to in company with a schooner, which worked to windward of me fast, until I put over my 'water-cask drag,' and 12 hours later the schooner was hull down to leeward — proving that a vessel will not drift half as fast with a drag of that kind as she will without it, and it can be easily rigged and taken on board.

"I am sending this for publication. . . .perhaps it has been used before. If so, I am not aware of it."

T. H.