bow-line
bow-line
Middle English/Low German
“The bowline knot — the one sailors say you must know to be saved at sea — has kept its name unchanged since the 14th century, and the knot itself may be the oldest functional knot in human history.”
A bowline (pronounced BOH-lin) is both a line attached to the bow of a square-rigged sail (to keep the sail taut when sailing close to the wind) and the knot used to tie a fixed loop at the end of a rope. The line came first: Middle English boweline, from bowe (bow of a ship) plus line. The knot was the standard way to attach that line, and eventually 'bowline' meant the knot itself more than the line.
The bowline knot creates a fixed loop that will not slip or jam, can be tied with one hand, and can be untied after bearing heavy loads. It has been used in sailing rigging since at least the 14th century. The 1627 English seamanship manual by John Smith (the Virginia colonist) describes it. The Scouts' manual of 1908 calls it one of the six essential knots. Maritime survival training teaches it first — a bowline can be a rescue loop thrown to a man overboard.
The mnemonic for tying a bowline is 'the rabbit comes out of the hole, goes around the tree, and back down the hole.' Sailors have taught it this way for generations; the rabbit and tree have survived every change in maritime technology. It is one of the oldest pedagogical phrases in the English language still in common use.
A bowline around the waist — the 'Swiss Seat' of climbing — can support a fallen climber until help arrives. A bowline on a bight makes a harness. The knot's geometry (an interlocked overhand knot) distributes load without the tightening that makes a slipknot dangerous. It is the difference between a loop you can trust and a noose.
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Today
The rabbit goes up through the hole, around the tree, and back down the hole. A sailor who knows this mnemonic knows how to make a fixed loop that will hold a person's weight — a loop that can pull someone from the water, that can lower a child from a burning ship, that will not tighten into a noose.
The bowline has been tied by the same sequence of movements since the 14th century. The knot is older than the mnemonic. The mnemonic is older than any living person. This is how physical knowledge survives: hands teaching hands, the rabbit and the tree going around the same loop forever.
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