Sailor knots

When the Counselor tells you to pass the working end through the bight, they are speaking the language of ships. Sailor knots are the craft of ships, where every rope had a name and a job, and much of that vocabulary made its way into the Pathfinder Club. This guide explains where the names come from, sorts 15 shipboard knots by the task they perform and shows when each one fails. The step-by-step video for each knot is in the catalog.

⚓What are sailor knots?

Sailor knots are the rope work that shaped the maneuvers aboard ships and fishing boats. In Portuguese, the body of knowledge behind all of this is called marinharia, which the Priberam dictionary defines as the sailor's art and the practical side of nautical science; the closest English word is seamanship. In 2017, the Centro de Mar (Sea Center) in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, devoted an exhibition to the subject, and its leaflet pointed out that a sailor's life often depended on a well-tied knot.

The same leaflet sorts rope work into families such as knots, hitches, whippings, splices and knob knots. Knots join the ends of ropes to each other or to an object, and the hitches it describes fasten the rope to a pole, a rod or a bollard.

In Brazil, Arte Naval, by Maurílio M. Fonseca, published by the Brazilian Navy's Documentation Service (Serviço de Documentação da Marinha), is the core reading for the Seamanship and Naval Art course (Marinharia e Arte Naval) in the Waterway Transportation technical program at the Federal Institute of Paraíba (IFPB). In the United States, sailor and artist Clifford W. Ashley published The Ashley Book of Knots in 1944; its numbers, cited as ABOK, identify a knot without any confusion over nicknames.

📖Which shipboard words do Pathfinders use without noticing?

The Knots and Lashings honor card opens by asking you to define terms such as bight, working end and running end, as the guide to the Knots and Lashings honor requirements shows. The table brings together the shipboard words behind the knot names in this guide, with the Portuguese term used in Brazil in parentheses.

Sources: Priberam dictionary and the Nós de Marinheiro leaflet, Viana do Castelo (2017), which spells it retenida (both in Portuguese).

⛵Why is it called a bowline, and where do sailor knot names come from?

They were named for the job they did on a sailing ship. The Bowline takes its name from the bow line, the rope that pulled the edge of a square sail toward the bow. The first known mention of the knot is in John Smith's A Sea Grammar, from 1627, as the Boling knot. In Portuguese it is called lais de guia: lais is the end of the yard, and some Brazilian lists for the Knots and Lashings honor call it nó bolina, after bolina, the rope that trims the sail. The sources consulted do not explain where the full Portuguese expression comes from.

The Sheet Bend is named after the sheet, the rope that controls the sail (escota in Portuguese, hence nó de escota). The English term already appears in 1794, in a rigging book by David Steel, and it is the first knot presented in the Ashley Book of Knots.

The Buntline Hitch secured the buntlines, working lines, to the foot of square sails. The Lighterman's Hitch is named after the lighterman, who handled lighters, flat-bottomed barges, a trade linked above all to the Port of London; in Brazil it is called the volta de reboque, or towing hitch. And the Rolling Hitch got its present name in 1841, in Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s book The Seaman's Friend.

🪢What are the main types of sailor knots and what is each one for?

The main sailor knots fall into groups by shipboard task: docking, anchoring, joining lines, hoisting, throwing and stowing. The table shows what each one does and its difficulty in the catalog. If you are still working on campsite knots, start with the essential knots and lashings for Pathfinders.

Difficulty as listed in the knots and lashings catalog; uses according to Animated Knots and the Viana do Castelo leaflet (2017).

🛥️How do you tie a boat to a dock, and which knots work?

At the dock, a ship is held by mooring lines, heavy ropes made for tying up (espias in Portuguese). The Viana do Castelo leaflet records that the bowline forms the loop at the end of the mooring line that goes over the bollard. Its limit, according to Animated Knots: it cannot be untied while the line is under load, so it is the wrong choice when the mooring line may need to be released under tension.

On a small boat, the line goes to a cleat. The Cleat Hitch (Dock Line) starts at the far horn of the cleat and continues in crossed figure eights. The mistake to avoid is a full round turn before the figure eights, which can bite down on the turn below and jam the line. The locking half hitch at the end is for a boat left tied up for a long time, never for a tow line or a sheet, which must release instantly.

On a ring or post, use the Round Turn and Two Half Hitches: the first two passes take the strain while you tie the half hitches, which are worth practicing one-handed.

The Mooring Hitch releases with a tug on the tail and holds a kayak while you climb in, but Animated Knots condemns leaving it to hold a boat for long: the knot cannot be trusted and tends to jam. In the Lighterman's Hitch, no knot is tied: the rope goes around its own standing part one way, then the other, and each pass drops over the bollard. To release it, take the passes off one at a time, feeling the load that remains.

🧭What is the anchor knot, and which knots hold a sail, a yard or another line?

The anchor knot in the catalog is the Anchor Hitch, also known as the anchor bend or fisherman's bend. Animated Knots rates it an excellent knot for the job and notes that many people add one or two extra half hitches and seize the tail to the standing part with twine. In Portuguese, fateixa is the small-boat anchor, and the Brazilian Knots and Lashings list includes the volta de fateixa, which the Brazilian Manual de Especialidades recommends for tying a rope to a ring. Judging by the name and the use, it may be the same knot as the anchor hitch, but none of the sources consulted confirms it.

The Buntline Hitch resists shaking loose better than two half hitches, but it can jam after a heavy load. The Halyard Hitch is compact and attaches the halyard to the shackle, the U-shaped fitting at the head of the sail; it cannot be tied or untied under load, and it will not tighten around a thick mast. For the club flag, see the guide to the knot for raising a flag.

The Rolling Hitch ties one line to another when the pull runs almost parallel to it, and on board it takes the load off a line with a jammed turn on a winch. It can be tied and untied under load, but it will not hold on very slick line such as Dyneema and polypropylene. To join two heavy lines, the Carrick Bend is, in Ashley's words quoted by Animated Knots, "the bend commonly tied in hawsers and cables"; check that the tails come out diagonally, on opposite sides.

🎯How do you throw a heaving line and flake a rope so it runs free?

A mooring line is too heavy to throw to the dock. That is why the heaving line goes first, a light line with a weight at the end, and the heavy line is hauled across with it. The Heaving Line Knot wraps the line around itself in several turns to make that weight (ABOK #538). Do not tie the heaving line straight to the mooring line: once it has been loaded, it may be impossible to detach, and Ashley recommended a short length of rope between the two.

The Monkey's Fist is the ball version. The Portuguese leaflet describes the heaving line knob (pinha de retenida) with three sets of three turns, the first over the open hand, the same design as the monkey's fist, which today also becomes a keychain, a topic covered in decorative knots. Weight hidden inside is dangerous: section 25.3.2 of the UK code of safe working practices for seafarers, cited by the marine insurance association West P&I, says the fist should be made of rope only. In the club, no stones or nuts inside, and nobody standing in the throwing lane.

In the naval pentathlon, a sport of the International Military Sports Council (CISM), the seamanship race calls for throwing a 200 g heaving line 15 meters (about 49 feet) within a 10-meter corridor and making it fast with a bowline, according to a 2019 study in the European Proceedings series.

For stowing, the Figure 8 Flake lays the line on deck in figure eights so it runs without twisting; Animated Knots recommends the technique for the anchor line before the anchor is dropped. The Sheepshank shortens a line without cutting it, but it falls apart easily and never holds a person or a load, as the guide on how to care for rope explains.

🧑‍🏫How can your Pathfinder Club practice sailor knots safely?

Seamanship comes into the club through the Pathfinder water honors. The Navigation and Sailing honors date from 1953 and come from the General Conference. Navigation asks you to name and tie four of the knots most used in navigation and explain what each one does; Sailing asks for the bowline, clove hitch and figure eight, among others, and Rowing asks you to moor the boat at the dock with a clove hitch, a grapnel (fateixa) or a bowline (nó bolina).

At a Unit meeting, a stake becomes a bollard, a cleat screwed to a board becomes the dock and two cones mark the heaving line lane. Each Pathfinder draws a shipboard task, ties the knot and explains its limit. The honor's board of 25 knots can gain a row of sailor knots.

To test, pull the line in every direction, compare the shape with the knot's page and check the length of the tail.