Nautical Research Journal Shop notes


Making hearts By William E. Sproul


Just about all sixteenth- through eighteenth-century sailing ships used hearts to tension stays and various other large diameter ropes. A heart is just another form of deadeye and, as such, they were used in situations where standard deadeyes would not be strong enough to handle the job at hand. T e reason for the added strength of a pair of hearts over a pair of deadeyes is simple: a deadeye usually had three holes for lanyards, which resulted in six strands of lanyard handling the tension. A pair of hearts, on the other hand, can handle a dozen or more wraps of a lanyard. T e more strands of lanyard holding the stay, the larger the stay that can be held. Note that a


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2. Heart cross section.


block was not used for this job because a block was perhaps a hundred times less strong than either a deadeye or a heart and would fail almost instantly.


Figures 1 and 2 show the proportions of a generic heart. Every dimension was based upon the diameter of the rope that


it tensions, so hearts essentially


were custom-made items for each application. Nevertheless, even though scratch made hearts are relatively easy to fabricate, I cannot say that I have seen many of them in use on models of the period made by today’s modelers.


Materials


Since a heart is a relatively large item, there is a wider range of wood species that can be used successfully


1. General heart design. All images by the author.


3. Pencil design.


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