ANCHOR, from the Greek ayxvea, an anchor, is a strong and ponderous hooked implement, attached to a vessel, and dropped into the bottom of the sea, for the purpose of retaining the vessel in a particular sta tion.
Even in the rude ages of society, when navigation was confined to rivers and particular parts of the coast, some contrivance would naturally be suggested for keep ing vessels immoveable, when lying in the current of a river, or exposed to the violence of the winds. We ac cordingly find, that large stones, bags of sand, logs of wood loaded with lead, were employed for this purpose by the ancients ; and we learn from travellers that simi lar contrivances arc employed by many modern uncivi lized nations. The anchors of the ancient Greeks were, according to Apollonins Rhodius, and Stephen of Byzan tium, formed of stone ; and Athenxus informs us, that they were sometimes made of wood. The invention of the anchor formed with teeth or flukes, is ascribed, by Pliny, (Xat. Hist. lib. viii. c. ult.) to the Tuscans ; while Pausamas (?ttic. lib. i. c. 4.) asserts that the merit belongs to Midas king of Phrygia. In Spain, and in some parts of the South Sea, anchors have been made of copper ; but forged iron is now universally employed in Europe. The anchors, which are said to have been invented by the Tuscans, had only one tooth or fluke, the other fluke was added by Eupalamus, if we credit Pliny ; or, according to Strabo, by Anacharsis the Scythian. An chors with a single fluke will hold the ship as steadily as those with two, and have the advantage of being more light, and less expensive. They have not, however, the same chance of catching the ground, and are more dif ficult to prepare for service, as the anchor must be by the crown, in order to keep the fluke down wards.
An anchor is composed of four parts, the ring, the shank, the arms, and the stock. Pl. XXVII. Fig. 1, 3, 5. The ring, to which the cable is attached, is fixed on one extremity of the shank, and the arms on the other extre mity. These arms consist of the palms or flukes, and the bill. The palms are the broad plates, of a triangular form, at nearly the extremity of the arm ; and the bills are the sharp points at the very extremity of the arms. The throat of the arms is the rounded angular point where the arm is joined to the shank. A distance equal to that between the throat of one arm and its bill, is marked on the shank from the place where it joins the arms, and is called the Trend ; the crown is the place where the arms are joined to the shank ; the small round is the diameter of the shank where it is smallest, which is near the square part, where the stock is fixed ; the stock is a beam of wood fixed on the extremity of the shank, at right angles to the plane passing through the arms.
The shank of anchors consists of four square bars of iron, encircled by a number of lesser bars of the same lengths, which are again surrounded by other bars, like the arch-stones of a bridge. The method of building the shank will be understood from the sec tion of it, which is represented in Figure 4. The ex terior bars are then brought to a welding heat, and are welded by the blows of a large mass of iron called a Hercules. This piece of iron, which weighs between four and five houndred weight, is elevated about nine or ten feet above the shank placed upon an anvil, and is then allowed to fall upon the shank. This machine is wrought by men, in the same way as the, engine called a ringing-gin for driving piles. The blows of the her cuies and of the hammer are continued, till the bars which surround the interior cylinder appear to be one solid mass on the outside, and till every interstice or chink between them is completely closed up. The shank tapers from the extremity where the arms are fixed, to the other extremity which carries the stock, so that the difference between these diameters is from l4 inches in small ones, to 3 inches in large ones. The extremity to which the stock is fixed, is of a square form, of the same size as the trend, and hanches into the small round, one sixth of the length of the shank. Through this square part is punched a hole for the ring, at the distance of one and a half times, the thickness of the ring from the upper extremity of the square part. Between this hole and the lower extremity of the square part, are two small prominences, Fig. 3. a, b, called nuts, raised from the solid iron, for the purpose of se curing the stock in its proper position. At the lower extremity of the shank is formed a flatted surface or scarf, with a shoulder on each side, for the purpose of shutting on, or joining the arms to the shank.