Rope/Cable Types

            The traditional classification of the types of natural fiber rope used in large sailing ships up until the advent of steel cable in the mid to late 1800s has three categories:

Hawser-laid: Natural fibers are twisted together to make yarns. Multiple yarns are then twisted together to make strands. Then 3 or 4 strands are twisted together to make a rope.

Shroud-laid: Same as 4-strand Hawser-laid with the addition of a 5^th strand to fill the void in the center.

Cable-laid: Three or 4 ropes twisted together to make a bigger rope.

Most, if not all, Hawser-laid rope and Shroud-laid rope is right-handed, all cable-laid rope is left-handed.

Essentially all running rigging on big ships was, and is, hawser-laid.

Contemporary documents say that some standing rigging was cable-laid.[1]  Specifically, stays, backstays and shrouds were cable-laid. The rest was Hawser-laid. Cable-laid was used because it was seen to be more waterproof.  The belief that cable-laid was more waterproof faded in the late 1800s.

Some writers and sailors stopped using the traditional terminology in the mid 1800s by referring to hawser-laid rope as “rope” and then to cable-laid and hawser-laid interchangeably.[2]

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[1] Steel, David, Elements of Mastmaking, Sailmaking and Rigging - merchant ships, 1794 – pages 271-289, Steel, David, Elements of Mastmaking, Sailmaking and Rigging - navy ships, 1794 – pages 234-258, Force, Peter, Tables Showing the Masts and Spars, Rigging and Stores, etc. of Every Description, Allowed to Different Classes of Vessels Belonging to the Navy of the United States, 1826  - pages 7-15 of pdf

[2] Richard Henry Dana, The Seaman’s Friend, page 44;