Symmetric Hawser Bend (Over)

The Symmetric Hawser Bend (Over) joins two ropes of similar size and construction. A hawser is the large diameter heavy rope or steel cable that big ships use for mooring, towing and anchoring. The bend's curves are comparatively gentle, which is what makes it suitable for large ropes and cables that resist tight bending and lose strength where they are sharply kinked. The finished bend is flat and symmetrical, with the standing parts in line and the two working ends emerging on opposite sides. It shares that quality with the Carrick Bend, the traditional choice for joining hawsers. Match the two ropes carefully. On ropes of unequal size this form can let the smaller rope pull out, and the Symmetric Hawser Bend (Under) should be used instead.

Jack Reinmann of Ohio submitted this bend and its companion to the International Guild of Knot Tyers (IGKT), and both appeared in Knotting Matters issue 43 in the summer of 1993. They descend from Ashley's Hawser Bend, number 1450 in The Ashley Book of Knots, which Brion Toss had recommended in The Rigger's Apprentice. Reinmann found an old note of his own showing how to alter that knot's final tuck to make it symmetrical, and called the result the Symmetrical Hawser Bend. He was encouraged by a principle Harry Asher had reported from the inaugural meeting of the Guild in London, that a symmetrical knot is likely to be a good one. Ashley's original can be loosened by lifting a loop at one end. The symmetric form has that lifting loop at both ends, and ties just as easily, the two knots being identical except for the final tuck.

The word hawser reached English around 1300 from the Anglo-French hauceour, a hoister, which goes back through Middle French haucier, to hoist, to the Latin altus, meaning high. A hawser was first the rope you raised something with, and only later the heavy line a ship moors, tows and anchors by. Its resemblance to hawse, the part of a bow that carries the anchor cables, is not a shared origin. Hawse came separately from the Old Norse hals, a neck. The two words did grow together in English all the same. Hawser was reshaped by association with hawse, and a hawser is in practice the rope that runs out through the hawseholes.

The working end of each line passes over its own standing part and then under the loop of the other line. This arrangement is not as secure as the Symmetric Hawser Bend (Under). What holds the bend together is the nip each working end receives under its own standing part as it leaves the knot. Drawn up, the result is symmetrical about its center, with the standing parts in line and the two working ends emerging on opposite sides.

The bend is secure in ropes of similar size and construction. Its comparatively gentle curves are the reason to choose it for heavy work, since a rope loses strength where it is bent sharply, and a bend that avoids tight radii keeps more of the line's rated strength than a compact knot of the same security.

It should not be used on ropes that differ in size or composition. Reinmann tested the extreme case of joining three sixteenths of an inch of smooth braided dacron to half an inch of three strand nylon, and the thin rope slipped straight out of this form as soon as any load was applied. Ashley's original Hawser Bend failed the same test. Where the two lines are not well matched, use the Symmetric Hawser Bend (Under). Its outside loops close into single hitches, which grip the smaller rope where this form does not.