Grappling hook
The metal bar attachment is called a grappling hook and is used in shipping to pull another ship closer to your own ship, possibly to be able to board it. Its tip is shaped as a hook-shaped head. It resembles an enlarged fish hook (used upside down) and is often provided with an additional point that can (could) serve as a stabbing weapon in close combat. There are regionally different versions.
Grappling hooks can also be found as a heraldic figure in heraldic shields .
commitment
Boarding an enemy ship was usually the crucial part of a battle between the crews of two vessels . Attempts were made to hold the enemy ship, if one had come close to it, by means of grappling devices , four or more armed anchors , grappling hooks or, in ancient times, grappling bridges . Then the crew climbed up the wall of the enemy ship or crossed the boarding bridges. Boarding with grappling hooks was made more difficult when ships were built with a collapsing board , in which the hull receded towards the center line of the ship with increasing height.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Johann Carl Baehr: The graves of the Lives: A contribution to the Nordic antiquity and history. Verlag R. Kuntze, 1850, p. 121, p. 117 plate 8, fig. 4.
- ↑ grappling hook . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 5, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 0672.