mooring boats and ships

[tedp]

It is true that you tighten the spring lines as much as you can, but that is to prevent fore and aft movement, not to keep the ship alongside the quay. On short vessels you can cross the springs. It's the angle and the length that's important - they need to be set as horizontal as possible. If they are long enough there is no need to adjust them in tidal conditions.

[Turin 60]

May I attempt a slight hijacking  of this thread although my query is slightly related. Look around any small harbour these days and you see a large number of old tyres and modern  moulded items (probably has a proper name but I'm not sure what that would be!) hanging from the quayside. So what would have been used in previous times say 20's or 30's, I was wondering if they would have been made from rope or similar?

Your thoughts would be most welcome.

John Bruce.

[tedp]

They used wooden fenders (a square piece of wood suspended from a spliced rope) or rope fenders (a knitted yarn 'stocking' filled with discarded rope ends). You can still see the latter as a bows protection on tugboats. I'm not sure when tyre fenders came into use but I expect around WW2.

[Turin 60]

Thanks very much for that Ted, I assume the wooden fenders would be of a round section when viewed from above.

John Bruce.

[tedp]

I'm not sure round section wooden fenders would be wrong either. I just had an image of square ones at the back of my mind. Probably offcuts of heavy section timber. Note they would splinter a bit if a steel ship would rub really strongly against them. The edges would wear off quite fast.

[Hugh Norwood]

Right... I've now put mooring rings on Angst-Lesspork to tie up the smaller vessels.
So the next question is.. How are the moorings ropes tied on? I realise, of course that I'll have to tie them up each time I erect the layout - and untie them again.

BTW I know there's some old tale about the only true "rope" onboard a vessel is the bell rope, so I guess they are mooring lines?

[tedp]

Mooring ropes or lines are threaded through the rings and doubled back on board. The advantage is you can release a rope from the vessel without climbing ashore or reaching for the ring from the deck.

By the way, I'm not aware of the word 'rope' being banned in seafaring language. It is used in sternrope, headrope, breastrope, etc, but funnily a spring line isn't a rope.

In model form if the rings on the quay are attached to, say, a split pin, you can lift it and thread a piece of yarn through the ring. Use an eye (a loop) to the end and flip it over a bollard or a cleat on deck.

[Hugh Norwood]

Thanks, Ted!
That's given me some good ideas.

[Hugh Norwood]

I think I've got it sorted. I shall post a photo or two sometime to show what I've done.

[Hugh Norwood]

Here we are:

and

(the one at the sharp end looks a bit slack, but I was hoping it might eventually take up a real sag.)