You know, the big, often mushroom-shaped bollards on a quayside used for tying boats up to, and/or tripping up pedestrians who aren’t watching where they’re going. I’m sure they have a proper nautical-sounding name, but my mind’s gone blank. Anyone?
Asked and answered, actually. Bollards would indeed be the proper nauticalish term for them. From thefreedictionary.com:
bol·lard
n.
- Nautical A thick post on a ship or wharf, used for securing ropes and hawsers.
- Chiefly British One of a series of posts preventing vehicles from entering an area.
[Middle English, probably from bole, tree trunk; see bole1.]
Another possibility is bitts - but this is generally used for a pair of short posts (on a ship or a pier) to which a mooring line can be made fast.
When they are on a ship’s deck (as opposed to a dock), they can alo be called timberheads (as they used to be the tops of timbers) and there is a similarly formed racist name for them, as well. I have heard the term extended to the shore-mounted ones, although I do not know how widespread that usage may be.
Similarly, since many of them were simply extensions of the piles/pilings that supported the dock (in the way that timberheads were originally extensions of the supporting ship timbers), they are sometimes called piles or pilings. In the Great Lakes, they use the alternative name spile. Bollards, piles, and spiles are generally placed individually, while timberheads generally come in pairs (on the Great Lakes) replacing the word bitts used elsewhere. (This may explain why I heard some bollards on shore called timberheads when they were set in pairs.)
Ah - I think “spile” was the more unusual name I was thinking of. I remember thinking it might have some kind of drink-related meaning, too, and a spile is also the name for a bung in a barrel.
But I guess “bollard” is good enough.
I’ve always heard them refered to as mooring bollards or mooring posts, mind you I was an engineer not a deck guy, so I may be wrong.
If we’re talking about the little ones made of metal, they are often called “cleats”.
One of the most amazing inventions ever, IMHO.
Spile is the term used throughout the Great Lakes, but I have never encountered it anywhere else. (It is even difficult to drag up in most dictionaries.) Maybe Great Lakes sailors simply drank more as soon as they tied up? (Ashtabula claims that at the height of its business, it had the most bars in the world, beating even Singapore. I have never been able to verify the claim.)
C’mon, people. They’re called thingies.
No a cleat is something different.
And yes, in close to a couple of decades in the industry, I’ve never heard them called anything but bollards.
Actually several of you are correct. But I think that Ethilrist was the closest and the article title is wrong. Ethilrist identified a BOLLARD as “A thick post on a ship or wharf, used for securing ropes and hawsers.”
If you are tying up a boat, for example, a sail boat or row boat, you would tie a rope around the CLEAT - that smaller metal thingie that has “arms out each side.”
If you are tying up a ship, for example a cruise ship, tanker, or Navy ship, you would use a hawser -" a “very large rope”, to tie up to a BOLLARD, a post like large item sticking up out of the pier.
P.S. I was told that “the difference between a boat and a ship is that you can carry a boat on a ship.”
(18+ years US Navy Reserve)
Doing a bit of googling, it looks like mooring bitts are composed of bollards.
Here’s an example:
No argument there, but I’m also told that all Great Lakes vessels are also called boats. (Oceangoing ships are sometimes also found on the Great Lakes, but “salties” are exceptions to this rule).
Ashley explains:
A bollard was originally a knighthead and, later, a large post at either side of a dock. Nowadays the name generally refers to round bitts of cast iron which may be either single or in pairs and are to be found either on the dockside or on shipboard, in the latter case generally on steamships.
Generally true, but fishing boats are often called boats even when they carry life boats on them. Some are referred to as fishing boat ships, I guess to recognize the rule.
I don’t think a small dinghy or lifeboat counts - if it did most small-medium yachts - would be ships.