This is a big rope. (It's for the ship's anchor.) It weighs five and a half tons; the anchor weighs four and a half tons.
One of the tour guides was a former army and police officer. He shared colorful descriptions of ship life - washing clothes, medical amputations, and so forth. I won't relay all of them. These are a couple tamer bits:
- cat o' nine tails - that infamous whip with bits of sharp objects tied to its ends. It was kept in its own special bag on ships. Apparently this is where the saying "let the cat out of the bag" comes from - not from any real live cats.
- biscuits - this French word means "twice-cooked." Of course the biscuits were often infested with weevils. We felt particular interest in this because we were battling a weevil infestation of our kitchen cupboards at the time.
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