The Age of Rope, Part 1: Manufacture
This is the first part of a two-part series.
In 2013 Oxford University Press published my book on Renaissance Architecture. Most histories of Renaissance architecture begin with building in central Italy, Florence and Rome, and then discuss the variations of classicism that emerge elsewhere. My goal for a new history of Renaissance architecture was to offer a broad, diverse history of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century buildings from across Europe. Instead of tracing the history of style and classical traditions, I organized the book loosely based on typology and function in order to focus on what buildings do.
In the last chapter, and in a rather off-hand way, I say that while a European perspective is necessary to show the richness of architecture in places beyond the Italian peninsula, it wasn’t enough. There needed to be further work towards a global history of architecture in this period. But what would that history look like? There have been projects such as the collection of essays edited by Alina Payne that offer specialized essays on individual places. Yet that compilation gives little sense of the inter-connectedness of places across oceans or even within Europe. In a moment when there was increased connection between diverse and distant places, there are still few studies that explore the architectural interactions that were the effect of trade, resource extraction, and colonization. While there are certainly many ways to account for the increasing globalization of the early modern world and its architecture, I wanted a theme that embraces this idea of mobility. Buildings do not often move—although there are examples such as the slave castle at Elmina—but people and goods do. How might that affect architecture?
The common factor in these moments of exchange was the use of the ship. Ships are constructed spaces, a distinct building typology, with unique technological demands and environmental conditions. This essay on ropemaking and ropewalks is part of a larger study centered on ships and other maritime spaces in the early modern North Atlantic.
When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his poem ‘The Ropewalk’ in 1858 every port had its building for making rope. The sights, smells, and sounds of ropemaking were a part of every working seafront where ships and maritime industries coexisted. Rope was a maritime necessity but it also bound together the activities of everyday life. The young girl on the swing; the bucket in a well; the hangman’s noose. Mining, farming, fishing, and building are just a few of the industries that needed rope.
Figure 1. Karlskrona naval base ropewalk, Lindholmen, Sweden, from 1692. Photograph by Boatbuilder. CC BY-SA 3.0.
The most distinctive feature of the ropewalk was its shape, “long and low” (Figure 1). Like the nave of a church or a simple shed extruded along the waterfront, the dimensions give the function of the building away. What else could require such an extreme shape (Figure 2)? Longfellow sees a wrecked ship in the form of the ropewalk “with its windows all a-row,/ Like the port-holes of a hulk.” Hoisted on land the ship is awkward and ungainly. The ropewalk cuts across the irregular land near the shoreline, demanding a straight line where none are easily found. The wooden ropewalk at the naval base at Karlskrona, like many ropewalks, is prominent both from land and sea – and was certainly the largest built structure of any port.
Figure 2. Interior of Karlskrona naval base ropewalk, Lindholmen, Sweden, from 1692. Photograph by Boatbuilder. CC BY-SA 3.0.
“The most distinctive feature of the ropewalk was its shape, ‘long and low.’”
Ships were a modular technology. Each part could be replaced and changed out as it inevitably deteriorated from the effect of wind, water, and use. Rope allowed ships to adapt to the environment as conditions changed by adjusting the rigging; and for the repair or changing out of many parts while away from land (Figure 3). Each of the component parts of a ship was held fast to the other through a complex system of lines that linked through knotting, pulleys and cleats. Rope tied ships together and connected the land to the sea.
Figure 3. Rigging on mainmast and halyard. CCO.
This need for rope, and lots of it, expanded in the years after 1600 as nations and individual brokers saw maritime domination and maritime trade as a necessity in a more global political economy. The variety of cordage and the amount needed was astounding. Maritime historian Jonathan Coad suggests that a 74-gun ship (a ship of middling size) needed about 100,000 feet of rope of various sizes—that is around 20 miles. Almost 6,000 feet of the 3.5” diameter rope was needed just for the binding of the bases of the three masts and the bowsprit. Rope required replacing every few years. The need for rope was endless.
Figure 4. Advertisement for ropemaking in Bewdley, Birmingham, established 1770. Image courtesy of Bewdley Museum, Wyre Forest District Council.
From the sixteenth century, long, straight areas near ports are referred to as ropewalks or roperies, just at that moment when England began to define itself in relationship to the sea as a maritime power. In their simplest form these were open flat streets or paths near to the water and usually close by sail lofts and other ship related industries (Figure 4). Sometimes ropewalks were open to the elements, at other times covered with a simple roof, or in their most elaborate form, enclosed on all sides (Figure 5). Enclosed buildings allowed ropemaking to continue in spite of the weather. As ships increased in size, and navies developed, the need for ever more rope increased.
Figure 5. Lowe’s ropeworks, Bewdley, Birmingham. Reprinted courtesy of the Bewdley Museum, Wyre Forest District Council.
Let’s begin with the basics. Ropemaking is an ancient technology (Figure 6). Ropemaking is based on the twisting or braiding of multiple strands of various natural materials, into a line with tensile strength that is stronger than the component parts. The earliest ropemakers used their bodies to produce the tension by wrapping the strands around their waists and walking backwards. It is not only the multiplicity of the strands that gives rope its strength but also the act of twisting itself which distributes the force evenly throughout the line. The twisting, and counter twisting, keeps rope together.
Figure 6. “Lorenz Sayler, Ropemaker.” Nuremberg Twelve Brothers Housebook, about 1425. Photo courtesy of Stadtbibliothek im Bildungscampus Nürnberg, Amb.317.2°,f.16r.
As with most early modern industrial processes, ropemaking involved the transformation of raw matter from nature. The transformation of hemp, one of the most common materials, into rope was a multi-phase production each requiring its own building suited to that production. Ropemaking was physically demanding and dangerous. Fires were common and the materials themselves could be toxic. Hemp was stored in windowless houses to maintain an even temperature. Then, it was taken to a hatchelling house, where the strands were straightened and graded much as one would card wool before weaving (Figure 7).
“The twisting, and counter twisting, keeps rope together.”
Figure 7. Hackles and hemp fibers. Reprinted courtesy of the Bewdley Museum, Wyre Forest District Council.
In the spinning house, often built alongside or interconnected to the main ropewalk, individual fibers were woven into yarns (up to 1,000 feet long), then passed through vats of tar that came from the pine forests of Scandinavia and hung in the black yarn house for drying (Figure 8). Strong and long-lasting rope required workers with high levels of expertise. If the tar was too hot, for example, it could damage the rope. Too cool and it could not penetrate the fibers.
Figure 8. Tar kiln in Luomala village, Lappajärvi, Finland, 1948. CC BY-SA 3.0.
The yarns now moved into the separate laying house and were placed on reels arranged in banks at one end of the floor. The yarns were attached to hooks on “laying machines,” which then moved the length of the floor, twisting the yarns together as strands (Figure 9).
Figure 9. Laying the rope. Strands are tied to a rotating hook on the jack. Clockwise tension is kept on the other ends by rotating hooks and the strands are twisted counterclockwise to make rope. CCO.
Strands, composed of multiple yarns, were then attached again to hooks, one at the end of the laying floor and the second on wheels at the other end. In between was a cart with wooden cones with grooves along their length. When the hook on the laying machine was turned, at one end of the walk, the strands twisted into rope (Figure 10). The cart with the cone then began to move as the twisting tightened and shortened the rope. Because the twist [or rotation] of the rope was reversed at each of these stages, the rope remained coiled and taught.
Figure 10. Laying the rope using the ‘jack.’ The wooden top used to separate the strands is on the ground. Lowe’s ropeworks, c. 1900, Bewdley Birmingham. Reprinted courtesy of the Bewdley Museum, Wyre Forest District Council.
Although simple in shape, the extreme length of the ropewalk revealed the process of twisting and pulling along its length, as I discuss in the second part of this essay. The other buildings for storage, hatchelling and tarring might be more generic in their shape and size. Nothing but rope could require such proportions.
