Time to reprise one of my summer meditations: the one on line. Countless line-handling events happen in the sixth boro.
Crews everywhere and from every nation do it.
The technique is generally the same . . .
The goal is to attach to a cleat or bollard.
Vikings do it.
Those seeking shelter from impending storms do it.
It has to be done safely, for the dangers with line come fast and irreversibly. I know from almost . .. key word . . almost losing some fingers. Towmasters speaks of the dangers here, aptly illustrated.
First foto thanks to Mike Lesser, last one to Elizabeth Wood, and the others . . . Will Van Dorp.
xx
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 17, 2009 at 6:51 am
George Conk
I’ve always loved handling lines at the dock. Catching the thrown rope, snubbing it on a cleat or stanchion bringing the boat under control.
When he got the call from his father – a pier foreman – my father would to run down from Fordham where he was in college to the President Street pier in Red Hook – by Atlantic Basin where the Dutch spent a night – to take the lines of an arriving ship. Earned $2.00 in 1940.
September 17, 2009 at 11:47 am
Mage B
Thank you.