My parents are both prolific readers, and I grew up with a veritable library of reading material. There are many books from my youth that made an impression on me, but perhaps none that inspired my imagination like one particular book.
Clifford Warren Ashley was an artist, author and sailor from Massachusetts. He authored one of the seminal texts on marlinespike seamanship called “The Ashley Book of Knots”, and it was a book that I must have flipped through a few thousand times during my formative years.
Books about knots don’t seem all that inspiring, but Ashley’s wonderful pen-and-ink sketches of a lost captain’s gravestone adorned with elegant rope work (page 8), a couple of sailors carrying a trove of goods (page 155), and a beguiled child watching a rope trick with wide-eyed amazement (page 405) made me want to shed my safe suburban upbringing for the intrigue and adventure of the 19th century Maritimes.
But it wasn’t just the artwork. Ashley’s schematic sketches of each knot can delight for hours, and I remember many evenings with no more entertainment than this book and a length of rope. To this day, I can tie from memory a monkey’s fist (knot #2202), a farm splice (knot #2640) and a sailor’s eye splice (knot #2725). The mysteries of the Turk’s Head are not unfamiliar to my fingers, and I’ve even tied some double wall knots (knot #676) in otherwise perfectly good line, just to see if I can make it look as good as Ashley does in his sketches.
Ashley manages in this book what so few can: he turns an otherwise mundane act into an adventure. One can’t help but imagine sharing in the mysterious art of the mariner’s craft with a bit of rope in hand, and the little symbols he uses (the legend is somewhat cryptically hidden on page 27) make you want to search for similar knots. And who among us hasn’t wondered if knots marked with the “dangerous” skull-and-crossbones symbol could actually be found on a pirate ship? I certainly did.
The copy of the book I stumbled upon recently is old; a first-edition published in 1944 (sadly, only 4 years before Ashley’s passing). It has the wonderful musty smell that only an old book can offer, and the pages have the well-thumbed feel that makes this reading this book as tactile an experience as the knot tying it inspires.
If you’ve read this book, you’ll certainly understand my sentiments. If you haven’t read it, a copy shouldn’t be hard to track down at the local library. Don’t bother reading it if you don’t have a few feet of good sturdy rope handy – and get ready for a nautical adventure!