In which city were the best Russian anchors made? Russian anchors. "Great diligence and extreme skill"

It would seem, what can you tell about the anchor? The simplest design at first glance. But he plays a huge role in the life of the ship. The main task of the anchor is to reliably tie the ship to the ground, no matter where it is: in the open sea or off the coast. A motor boat or a yacht, a cruise liner or a multi-ton tanker - safe movement across the sea for any vessel depends on the reliability of the anchors.

Anchor structures have evolved over hundreds of years. Reliability, ease of use, weight - each parameter was tested in practice by the sea itself, counting nautical miles. Most anchors have common names: Admiralty, ice, plow, cats. But there are anchors named after their creators. Among the inventors of reliable designs are the following names: Hall and Matrosov, Danforth, Bruce, Byers, Boldt.

“The chains of anchors ring in the port...”, or the ship’s role of the anchor

The anchor must provide safe anchorage for boats or yachts in the roadstead and on the open sea. In addition, the anchor plays a huge role in solving other problems:

• Limits the mobility of the vessel during mooring to another vessel or berth in adverse weather conditions, strong currents, and loading operations.
• Allows you to make a safe turn in a confined space (for example, in a narrow harbor).
• Can quickly extinguish inertia and stop the ship when a collision threatens.
• Helps to refloat the ship by the crew.

Parts of the anchor structure (chains, fairleads) are sometimes used for towing.

Situations when an anchor is used can be divided into two groups.

The first group is for emergency use: in situations where the anchor must hold the ship at maximum wind strength and sea waves.

The second group is for everyday use: for short stops in good weather

Anchor structure

The bow of the ship is the place where the anchor device is located. An additional anchor structure is installed at the stern of large-capacity vessels, icebreakers and tugs. This design includes a chain or rope itself, a chain box, a device with which anchor chains are attached to the ship’s hull, a hawse, a stopper, as well as a capstan and windlass, with the help of which the anchor is released and raised.

And what does the anchor itself consist of, in the steel claws of which is the safety of the ship, crew and passengers on board?

An anchor is a special structure (welded, cast or forged) that sinks to the bottom and holds the ship with the help of a rope. It consists of several elements:

A spindle (longitudinal rod) with an anchor bracket in the upper part - with the help of this bracket the anchor is attached to the chain;

Feet and horns, which are attached to the spindle either fixedly or on a hinge.

For anchors with a rod, a transverse rod is installed in the upper part of the spindle, which enhances the holding force.

Anchor structures: purpose, type

According to their purpose, ship anchors are:

• Auxiliary: anchors, ropes, docks, crampons, ice. The role of auxiliary anchors is to help the anchors in certain situations: when boarding and disembarking passengers, loading and unloading, to refloat a vessel, to hold the vessel at the edge of the ice field.
• Deadlifts: on each ship there should be 3 of them (2 in the hawse, 1 on the deck).

Based on the method of soil collection, they are divided into two groups.

One group includes anchors that pick up soil (that is, bury themselves in it) with one paw. First of all, this includes the Admiralty anchor.

Another group includes anchors that pick up soil with two legs: Hall, Byers, Boldt, Gruzon-Heyn, Matrosov anchors.

Dead anchors must meet the following criteria:

• strength;
• quick return;
• good soil sampling;
• easy separation from the ground when lifting;
• convenient fastening in the “stowed” position.

One of the most important criteria is a large holding force, that is, the maximum force, measured in kilograms, under the influence of which the anchor will not come out of the ground and will be able to keep the ship “tied.”

Anchor - "admiral"

The Admiralty anchor can rightfully be considered a veteran among ship anchors. This is perhaps the only representative of structures with a rod. Despite the fact that it has been replaced by more modern and reliable models, it still fulfills its role as a ship in the fleet. This is due to the versatility of the design.

The structure of the Admiralty anchor, proven over centuries, is laconic: the fixed legs and horns are cast or forged together with the spindle and form a single whole with it, without additional mechanical elements. The rod is wooden or metal. Its task is to help quickly remove soil and correctly orient the anchor clinging to the bottom.

The design itself folds compactly: the rod is laid along the spindle, and in modern models the legs can also be folded. This simplifies the storage and transportation of the anchor during a sea voyage.

The advantages also include a large holding force (its coefficient is 10-12), which is higher than that of many “brothers” with the same weight.

“Admiral” is able to cope with any soil: it is not afraid of large stones, among which its “colleagues” often get stuck, or the insidious pliability of silt, or the thickness of underwater algae.

The disadvantages of the naval old-timer include bulkiness and bulkiness, labor-intensive handling - this leads to the fact that it is troublesome to attach it to the stowed position and cannot be quickly returned. The anchor is forged from iron with strict requirements for the quality of the material and workmanship - this leads to its high cost.

The rod often fails: the iron one bends, and the wooden one is damaged by mollusks; it is fragile and short-lived.

When immersed in the ground, one paw sticks out, posing a threat to ships in shallow water, and the anchor chain can get caught on the horn protruding above the ground and get tangled.

In 1988, the Englishman Hall patented an anchor named after him. This anchor is also considered a naval veteran, only rodless. The design consists of a spindle and two legs, cast together with the box.

The paws in this design are unusual: they have a flat shape, swing and can rotate on an axis.

The box and paws are weighted with tides with thickenings in the form of blades. Their task is to turn their paws, forcing them to go into the ground to a depth that can be 4 times the length of the paws themselves. This is especially important if the soil is weak and you need to go deep to reach a solid base.

The undeniable advantages of the Hall anchor are considered to be a fairly large holding force, fast recoil (it can be released on the go, and this method of recoil even helps to deepen the paws as much as possible) and convenient cleaning into the hawse.

In shallow water, it is not dangerous for other vessels, since the paws lie flat on the ground, and the anchor chain or rope cannot become entangled around the paws.

The disadvantages of the design include the unreliability of anchor fastening on soil of heterogeneous composition when a torque occurs or while parking in an open roadstead when the wind direction changes or there is a strong current, when the anchor begins to creep jerkily. In this case, with a strong jerk, the anchor jumps out of the ground, and then deepens again thanks to the shovels, which manage to raise the mound from the ground. This is due to too much distance between the paws. In addition, the hinge box may jam when sand or small pebbles are collected in it.

When pulled into the hawse while retracting the anchor, the paws cannot always independently take the required position due to the not very good location of the center of gravity.

This anchor is one of the most modern designs with increased holding force. Created by the Soviet engineer I.R. Matrosov in 1946, it absorbed the advantages and eliminated the disadvantages inherent in the paws of two types of anchors: with fixed paws (such as the Admiralty one) and with rotary ones (Hall anchor).

The design of the anchor is as follows: spindle, legs, side rods, anchor bracket.

In Matrosov’s system, the wide rotary paws are almost very close to the spindle and are so close to each other that when digging into the ground they begin to work like one big paw. The area of ​​each of them is larger than in other anchor structures. Together with the paws, a rod with side bosses is cast. The rod is shifted upward relative to the spindle rotation axis. Its task is to protect the anchor from capsizing and increase the holding force by sinking into the ground along with the paws.

The advantages of the design are stability when dragged along the ground, high holding force even on soft sandy and silty soils and in stones, relatively low weight and ease of retraction into the fairlead during harvesting. When the vessel turns 360 0, it stays confidently.

The design also has its drawbacks. On dense soil at the initial stage of deepening, the anchor is unstable. If the paws are turned out of the ground, they do not re-enter the ground, and the anchor continues to crawl. The space between the legs of the spindle is so narrow that it is often clogged with soil - this does not give the legs the opportunity to deviate freely.

Production

The Matrosov anchor is available in two versions:

• welded (welded paw)
• cast full-weight (cast paw)

The technical standard for Matrosov's anchor is GOST 8497-78. It is used for anchors that are used on surface vessels, ships and inland watercraft.

Technical characteristics and parameters are determined by mass (weight of the anchor)

Welded anchor

Matrosov's welded anchor is made weighing from 5 to 35 kg from stainless steel or from steel with an anodized coating or paint coating.

Anchors coated with paint require additional care (removal of rust and painting), since the paint is quickly peeled off by soil. The anodic coating is more resistant, but is also subject to physical impact upon contact with the ground. The most resistant of welded structures are anchors welded from stainless steel.

Cast anchor

Cast Matrosov anchors are made weighing from 25 to 1500 kg.

They are usually cast from cast iron and coated with anode coating or paint.

The cast Matrosov anchor in its experimental version was successfully tested on sea fishing vessels under operating conditions. Its advantages over the Hall anchor turned out to be indisputable.

Which one is better?

Given the wide variety of ship anchors, it is impossible to definitively answer the question of which design is better.

However, numerous tests to determine the magnitude of the holding force on various types of soil have shown that the Matrosov anchor is 4 times greater than the Admiralty and Hall anchors with equal mass.

The anchor is effective for use on inland navigation vessels, river vessels, boats and yachts. On ships it is practiced to use it as an auxiliary one.

In the life of a sailor, the anchor and the land are inextricably linked. The beginning of each voyage begins with raising the anchor, and the voyage ends with the anchoring of the ship.

After lifting the anchor, when leaving the base (as well as when entering it!) or when passing through bottlenecks, the anchors are always ready for immediate release in order to prevent the ship from fatal surprises. After all, if the steering is turned off, the ship can end up on the coastal rocks in one minute. The threat of a collision with a ship entering the base cannot be ruled out, when even the most timely maneuver by changing the speed and course is unable to prevent trouble, and only the released anchors are able to extinguish the inertia of the move and avoid an inevitable collision.

Before the advent of echo sounders on ships, when the process of measuring depths with a hand survey was lengthy and did not allow making the right decision when they quickly decreased, especially when the voyage took place in poor visibility in areas replete with shoals, bottlenecks and banks, experienced commanders dropped the anchor at 15- 20 meters to detect navigational hazards in a timely manner.

But as soon as the ship goes out into the open sea and there is no danger on its way, the anchor chains are completely retracted into the chain box, and the anchors themselves into the fairleads - special oval or round holes in the sides, reinforced along the entire circumference with a durable casting. To prevent the anchor from releasing spontaneously, a special stopper is placed on the anchor-chain.

An anchor is one of the ingenious inventions of mankind, which can be put on par with an axe, a plow, a wheel, a sail and others.

Of course, this invention is international, very important and is an integral part of every ship. Nowadays, for example, according to international rules, the absence of even a spare anchor (not to mention those that are supposed to be in the hawse) does not give a sea vessel the right to go to sea. How important an anchor is for the safety of a ship is understood not only by experienced sea wolves, but also by young cadets just preparing for a captain's career.

At Wustrow, the oldest naval school in Germany with more than a century of tradition, during one of the navigational exams shortly before the First World War, the examiner interrogated one of the cadets with prejudice.

What will you do if the ship loses control near a navigation hazard in a severe storm? - he asked.

The navigator candidate replied:

I'll drop the anchor.

What if the anchor chain breaks? The examinee is not embarrassed:

Then I will release the emergency anchor. However, the pedant in a starched collar still does not give up:

What if you lose him too?

At this point the candidate’s patience ran out:

Then all I have to do is take care of clean pants!..

“In the past, the anchor was a very ingenious invention of its kind. The proof of this is at least its size - there is no other object so disproportionately small compared to the enormous task it performs! - this is the assessment given to the anchor by the writer and ship expert Joseph Conrad. He called it “a device, created over centuries, brought to perfection, perfectly serving its purpose.”

The principle of its design, developed several thousand years ago, is rightfully considered classic and continues to be used in all anchor designs today.

According to scientists, shipping began at least six thousand years ago. Ever since primitive man built his first “ship” - a raft or dugout boat tied from tree trunks, he realized that it is not always possible to stop the ship by resting a pole on the bottom, holding on to seaweed, or clinging to a stone or tree growing on the shore . After all, sometimes it was necessary to stop in the middle of the river or far from the seashore, for example, for fishing.

Ancient anchors; a, b - stone; c, d - wooden

Sometimes primitive man used leather bags filled with stones and tied to a plant rope as an anchor.

The inconvenience of such anchors is obvious: the stones slipped out of the cable loop, and the bags became soggy and torn.

Finally, someone thought of hollowing out a circular groove in the central part of the anchor stone. This made it possible to more firmly fix the anchor cable to the stone. According to the Italian archaeologist A. Fioravanti, the appearance of these anchors dates back to the Neolithic period, approximately 4-3 millennium BC.

Anchor stones of Roman triremes

Basket with stones

During the period of development of the slave society, states with access to the Mediterranean Sea already had a large fleet with fairly large rowing and rowing-sailing vessels. The design of the stone with stakes could no longer satisfy the sailors in terms of holding power.

The first anchors that met this requirement were, paradoxically, wooden. In essence, these are hooks made of very hard wood that sinks in water. If it was possible to find a small tree trunk with a branch extending at the desired angle, the anchor was made from one piece of wood. More often the design consisted of two pieces of wood connected by leather straps or animal tendons. But such a one-horned anchor, even weighted with stones, often lay flat on the ground and did not hold. Therefore, in ancient times, the position of anchor diver was established on ships. At the moment when the ship, under the influence of wind or current, began to drift and approach a navigational hazard, the diver jumped overboard and, carried away by the weight of the hook, sank to the bottom. Here he had to direct the anchor with its horn into the ground. When the rope was pulled, the horn was buried. After this, the swimmer surfaced and climbed onto the ship. The holding force of such anchors turned out to be significantly higher than that of anchor stones and crosses weighted with stones. But the diver could place hook anchors only at shallow depths. How to keep a ship at great depths?

Someone thought of making another horn next to a wooden hook with a crossbar. Now, when pulling the rope, the crossbar served as a lever that turned the anchor onto the end of one of the horns, which was buried in the ground. This is how wooden anchors appeared, the principle of operation of which is rightfully considered classic and continues to be used in the designs of Admiralty anchors to this day. According to scientists, their homeland is Southeast Asia, the time of their appearance is the second millennium BC, the inventors are the Chinese, Malays and other seafaring nations of this region.

These anchors have two horns, a spindle and a crossbar perpendicular to the plane of the horns. It was that crossbar, which was later called the rod, that replaced the work of the diver: the anchor, having fallen to the bottom, always rests on one of the ends of the rod and the base of the horns. This position of the anchor is unstable and, as soon as the traction force on the rope arises, the anchor turns over onto the end of one of the horns and begins to go deeper into the ground until the spindle takes a horizontal position.

Anchors-hooks of sailors of the Ancient East

In the most distant times, from about the 10th century BC, anchor stones became ritual, ceremonial objects. Thus, in 1961, in Saqqara (Egypt), during the study of the mausoleum of Merukki, the caretaker of the royal pyramids, an anchor stone of a pyramidal shape was discovered in the central hall. According to some scientists, sacrificial animals were tied to such anchors. Near Mars Gavasis on the Red Sea coast, a place for open-air sacrifices was found - an altar made of anchor stones, which dates back to the 2nd millennium BC. e.

Here they are, the ancestors of the Admiralty anchor!

Let us remember how dependent the ancient sailors were on the wind and waves! How many times did their imperfect, unstable ships, sailing mostly with a fair wind, become victims of storms. Fragile boats drifted near dangerous reefs and shoals at the will of the wind and prevailing currents. In such cases, all the hope of the sailors in trouble was placed on the “sacred” anchor - the largest and heaviest of all those on the ship. It was used only when the ship was in danger of imminent destruction.

The sailors of ancient times were very pious and superstitious. Therefore, in order to give the “sacred anchor” the power to fight the evil spirits inhabiting the sea, its production was completed with a special religious ceremony. In Ancient Greece, for example, after the master finished the work, the anchor was solemnly transferred to the temple of Zeus. There, for a whole week, magnificent honors were solemnly given to the anchor, incense was smoked, prayers were said, sacrifices were made... After this, the temple servants carved sacred signs on the horns of the anchor, the purpose of which was to win over good spirits and ward off evil spirits, illnesses and illnesses from the sailors (owners of the anchor). death. The standard stamp and motto was stamped on the stem: “Zeus - Almighty God and Savior.”

In memory of the former meaning of the “sacred” anchor, a popular expression remained in Latin: “Sacram anchoram solvere” - “To be saved by the sacred anchor,” that is, to resort to the last resort.

With the development of iron smelting technology, anchors began to be made of iron, although the rods could be either metal or wood. Both Greek and Roman iron anchors usually had two eyelets. The second eye was wound through the thickened lower part of the horns. The purpose of this eye is interpreted differently. There is a second eye or just a hole on many modern cast anchors. A buoy rope was attached to it - a strong end with a float-buoy, which was made of cork and made it possible, in the event of a break in the anchor rope (anchor-chain), to pull the anchor by the buoy rope. The ancients were more thrifty than modern sailors! They knew the value of their anchors and literally prayed for them. Indeed, in the 7th-2nd centuries BC. iron was valued on a par with silver and cost 120 times more than copper, which people found in nuggets. For average shipowners, an anchor cost a pretty penny. Ancient anchors had two eyelets. The lower eye, some scientists claim, served to secure the anchor at the side.

One of the anchors found in 1932 in Italy on Lake Nemi is a forged iron one. It consists of three soft iron bars tightly bound together. Weight - 545 kilograms, spindle length - 3.5 meters. The anchor rod is 2.7 meters long, removable. It was inserted into a slot at the upper end of the spindle and secured with a flat iron pin. There are no paws on the horns. One cannot help but be amazed at the accuracy of its proportions, the symmetry and the purity of the forging.

Find at the bottom of Lake Nemi. Wooden and iron anchors of Emperor Caligula's pleasure galleys

Both anchors were intended for two rowing ships - giants of the ancient world, which had impressive dimensions: length 73 meters and width 21 meters. True, these were not transport or warships, but so-called “pleasure galleys,” built at the very beginning of our era on the orders of the Roman Emperor Caligula, perhaps the most wasteful and power-hungry emperor of the Ancient World. Unfortunately, these ships were burned by the German fascists during the Second World War...

According to scientists, the appearance of the anchor in the form in which we imagine it dates back to the 5th century BC. e., however, regarding the name of its inventor, the opinions of researchers differ. Pliny, for example, attributes the invention of the anchor to the Greek Eulampius (?), others claim that King Midas invented it.

Probably, immediately after the appearance of the double-horned anchor with a rod, its still far from perfect design became a symbol of navigation, long journeys, and maritime trade. The sailors of the Ancient world, convinced that the anchor more than once turned out to be their only salvation in trouble, began to consider its image a symbol of hope. In the art of Ancient Rome, the anchor is one of the attributes of the allegory of joy and return to the homeland after long and difficult wanderings in a foreign land. During the period of the emergence of Christianity, the anchor became a symbol of steadfastness, hope and salvation among many peoples living on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Perhaps this happened because in the image of an anchor with a rod deployed in the plane of the horns, the upper part was perceived by Christians as a sign of the cross. Speaking about the anchor as a symbol of hope and navigation, a few words should be said about the graphic representation of this object. Unfortunately, some modern artists often confuse the image of a real Admiralty anchor with a stylized one. When they need to draw a real anchor, they draw one with the rod turned 90 degrees. This mistake, which can be forgiven by the masters of the fine arts of the ancient world, too often ends up on the pages of printed publications. The stylized images of anchors on the ribbons of caps, emblems, breast badges and belt plaques do not shine with clarity and completeness of form. Modern stylization of the anchor is often inexpressive, very far from the original - the Admiralty anchor.

Modern Admiralty anchor. One of the most reliable anchors

The ancient emblem of the French admiral of the galley fleet is interesting. Instead of an Admiralty anchor, it depicts a four-horned cat anchor. Why? Because admiralty anchors were never used on rowing and sailing galleys.

The meaning of the anchor as a symbol of hope can be found in aphorisms and popular expressions from literary sources in many countries around the world.

In the English literary language, you can count dozens of idioms and figurative expressions with the word anchor, which, in addition to their direct meaning, also have a figurative meaning. For example:

Sheet anchor of happiness - a reliable anchor of happiness;

That anchor one "s hore in (at) - to place hopes;

To lay anchor to wind ward - to foresee danger, to take precautions.

The most common English proverb with the word anchor is Hope is my anchor.

In written form, the word anchor was first mentioned in Russian in Nestor’s chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years” - the oldest written monument of the history of our Motherland that has reached us.

It says that under the terms of the peace treaty dictated by Oleg to the Greeks in 907, the Russians, in addition to other tribute, should receive anchors, sails and tackle for their fleet. The word anchor has long been used in ancient Russian Pomeranian proverbs and sayings: “Faith is my anchor”, “Language is the anchor of the body” and others.

Russian classic writers also did not forget about the anchor. For example, I.S. Turgenev wrote: “Our life does not depend on us; but we all have one anchor from which, unless you want to, you will never break free - a sense of duty.”

A stylized image of an Admiralty anchor is an integral part of the emblems, signs and seals of the maritime departments of almost all countries with fleets.

Therefore, the anchor, which has become a symbol of hope since ancient times, eventually became a symbol of navigation in general...

The desire to increase the holding power of the anchor with the same weight led to the installation of paws at the ends of its horns. This innovation was carried out at the beginning of our era. It can be assumed that the anchor paws were the first to be made, as the Roman writer and consul Pliny the Younger claims, by the ancient inhabitants of Etruria - the Etruscans, of whom he was a contemporary. On a marble column in Rome, erected by Emperor Trajan around 114 in honor of the victory over the Dacians, among many reliefs with scenes from the period of this war, there is an image of this anchor, which is considered classic: almost nineteen centuries have passed, and the design of the anchor has not changed.

In the Middle Ages, only iron anchors with wooden rods were made. Judging by the images on miniature ancient manuscripts, coins, seals and paintings, we can say with confidence that practically the shape of anchors during this historical period did not change, with a few exceptions. For example, in the middle or at the end of the 14th century, three-, four-, five- and even six-fingered cat anchors appeared on Scandinavian boats. They were very convenient for rooks: light and tenacious. During naval skirmishes with enemy ships, the Vikings often used similar anchors (much smaller in size) as grappling hooks. For large ships such an anchor was of little use, but only four-horned anchors were used on galleys.

Scandinavian shipbuilders made an important improvement on their ships: they were the first to pierce the ship's cheekbones and make fairleads for anchors.

Using cat-type anchors without a rod, they realized that if a hole was cut in the cheekbones, then when raising the anchor, it could be pulled inside the boat until its paws rested on the plating. The labor-intensive manual operation of transferring the anchor through the boat, which threatened to break through the bottom of the boat, became unnecessary.

During the Crusades, they began to build cargo-passenger-military ships - naves - with a displacement of up to 600 tons. On the naves there were up to twenty anchors weighing from 100 to 1500 kilograms. This is explained by the fact that in those days they did not yet know spiers; anchors were lifted by hand, and if the anchor could not be pulled out, then the rope was simply cut off.

The size of ships continued to increase. The main core of the military fleets of the great sea powers were galleons, carracks and galleasses. The displacement of Spanish galleons averaged 700 tons. However, among them there were also giants, such as the famous “Madre de Dios” with a displacement of 1600 tons and “Sovereign of the Seas” - 1530 tons.

Shipbuilders learned to build reliable seaworthy ships in other European countries, for example in France and Holland. But the situation with anchors for these giants was bad. Blacksmiths did not know how to forge reliable, strong anchors for large ships. To make them, hammers were needed that were heavier than those that could be wielded by the most powerful hammer-breakers in Europe. In those years, such hammers could only be driven by the force of falling water. Where this was not available, lever hammers were used, driven by the power of several workers or a horse. Their device was very primitive: the head of the hammer was attached to a rope thrown over a block fixed to the ceiling of the forge. People or a horse pulled the rope. Having raised the head of the hammer to a certain height, the rope was released on command, and the woman fell onto the forging on the anvil.

In the middle of the 15th century, man finally learned to use water mills to drive forge hammers and use water energy to move bellows, the levers of which he connected to the wheels of water mills.

Although metallurgy and shipbuilding made significant progress in their development by the end of the 17th century, the anchor did not undergo any changes. In principle, it remained the same as we see it on Trajan’s Column in Rome. True, the anchors manufactured in different countries differed from each other.

For example, in such maritime powers as Spain and Portugal (XV-XVII), anchors were made with horns curved in the shape of a circular arc. The anchors of Holland, which by the beginning of the 17th century took first place in shipbuilding among European countries, were almost no different from them. English-made anchors from the 17th to 18th centuries differed from Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch anchors in that their horns were made completely straight from the joint with the spindle to the toe of the horn.

The anchors of the Swedes and Danes were almost similar to the English anchors. Almost their only difference from the British anchors was the smaller bend angle of the horns. The French during this period of time forged anchors, the horns of which were curved into the shape of a circular arc or had a break under the trailing edge of the paws.

Anchors with straight horns were also forged in Russia. They were replaced by simpler shaped anchors with rounded horns and a spindle. Over time, the number of anchors on large warships increased to ten, and each of them had a specific name, purpose and place on the ship.

According to their purpose, anchors are divided into main anchors (in the bow) - to hold the vessel at rest, and auxiliary anchors (in the stern) - to turn the vessel standing at the anchor anchor, holding the vessel with its lag to the wind (stop anchors, ropes).

The largest anchor of a sailing ship - the right anchor - is called the plecht. In the sailing fleet, the plakht was the standard for calculating the mass of the remaining anchors of a given ship, each of which was lighter than the plakht by a certain part.

The heaviest of the auxiliary anchors - the stop anchor - was intended to hold a vessel with a displacement of over 800 tons in a certain position relative to the wave, wind or current. The stop anchor was usually much lighter than the main anchor and was located in the stern of the ship. Ships with a displacement of 800 tons or less were equipped with a verp anchor. This anchor is used as a dead anchor in case of its loss or in emergency situations, for example, to refloat a ship, move it to another place if there is no progress, and so on. In these cases, the rope is brought in on boats from the stern of the ship and dumped in the desired place.

On the starboard side of the sailing ship there is a spare toy anchor (toy-an-ker). It was used in cases where the ship lost both anchors and required an additional third anchor. That one was placed behind the right main anchor and belonged to small-sized ship anchors. The ship's left main anchor is called a daglyx. It was a medium sized anchor. The anchor rope of a daglix was called daglix-tou (daglix rope). In addition, in the hold of the main hatch there was a large spare anchor - a mooring line. Its spindle was lashed to the stand supporting the beam of the cockpit, and its paws were buried in stone ballast. For convenience, this anchor was stored without a rod, which was attached to it as needed.

Centuries of experience have developed a number of rules and formulas by which it was possible to very accurately determine the required mass of the anchor for a ship under construction.

One of these rules stated: the weight of the main, anchor anchor, on which the ship was firmly anchored (hence its name - dead anchor), on sailing ships is calculated so that the weight of the anchor, expressed in pounds, exceeds in numerical terms the displacement of the ship, expressed in tons . And the thickness of the anchor hemp rope was determined from the calculation: half an inch of its thickness per foot of the width of the ship’s deck along the midship frame.

But in the book of the Frenchman Bourdet de Vilget, which is called “Naval Science, that is, an experience on the theory and practice of controlling a ship and a military fleet, which was translated from the French book with the addition of many necessary explanations and actions, published by Nikolai Kurganov, a major and mathematical and navigational sciences professor. Published in St. Petersburg at the Imperial Academy of Sciences,” in the section “On the size of anchors” it is said that to determine the mass of the largest plecht anchor “one must take 2/3 of the width of the ship and multiply cubically, and divide the product by 33, because This proportion is Dutch, and there are 33 Dutch pounds in a Russian pud. The quotient of the division is the weight of the anchor anchor in poods. Daglix anchor weighing 9/10 plecht. Toy anchor at 9/10 daglyxl Half the weight of the toy anchor and daglyxl taken together will be the weight of the mooring anchor. The large verp is 2/3 the weight of the daglyx, the medium one is 2/3 or 1/2, and the small one is 1/2 the weight of the large verp.”

In the 17th century, in the English Navy, the mass of the largest ship was taken at the rate of 2/3 of the total mass of all its anchors. There were also “purely Russian” rules that were used by domestic shipbuilders:

The weight of the anchor in pounds must correspond in numerical terms to 1/4 of the area of ​​the immersed part of the ship's midsection, expressed in square feet.

To determine the weight of the anchor corresponding to the size of the ship, it is necessary to multiply the midsection area by 3 and, reducing the resulting product by 1/6 of it, take the result as the weight of the anchor in pounds.

The weight of the plecht, expressed in pounds, must exceed in numerical terms the displacement of the ship, expressed in tons.

Nowadays, shipbuilders use tables of classification societies - Register of the Russian Federation, Lloyd's Register, Bureau Veritas, etc. to select anchor mass.

These tables are calculated using formulas that, depending on the known displacement of empirically calculated coefficients, make it possible to determine the mass of the anchor anchor in kilograms.

It must be said that the mass of the anchor calculated using these formulas is always close to the mass determined by the mentioned rules. Experience is experience!

From the moment the first metal anchors appeared on ships to the present day, sailors have been and continue to be concerned about their strength. Very often, the life of sailors depended only on the strength of the connection between the horn and the spindle. Most shipwrecks near the coast occurred precisely because of the fracture of the horn at the junction with the lower part of the spindle.

Analyzing the fairly frequent cases of accidents and shipwrecks near dangerous shores that occurred in the English fleet at the beginning of the 19th century, one of the officials of the royal shipyard in Plymouth, Richard Pering, came to the conclusion that the main reason for these incidents was the insufficient strength of English-made anchors. In a note submitted to the First Lord, Pering argued, “... that some mistake was made in the technology of their manufacture...”. The main drawback, in his opinion, lay in the fact that not every anchor master was able to properly weld the outer and inner bars that make up the assembly of the spindle or horns of the anchor. However, the report of the Plymouth shipyard official went unheeded. But he didn't give up. At his own peril and risk, Pering did thorough technical work on the study of the design of anchors - English, French, Russian, Dutch. And so in 1815 he asks the Admiralty to examine and test his anchor. But this request also remained unheeded. And English ships continued to suffer accidents due to bad anchors. Only seventeen years after its manufacture, Pering's anchor was delivered to the naval base in Chatan. In appearance, it was an ordinary anchor weighing two and a half tons, differing from its counterparts only in shorter and thicker horns and a spindle that had an elliptical (instead of square) cross-section along its entire length. After the most severe tests of its strength, the commission members had no choice but to admit: the anchor, invented by a simple clerk, turned out to be stronger than the anchors for “Her Majesty’s Navy,” and Richard Pering was issued a patent or, as they said then, a “privilege” for his invention .

What was the secret of the increased strength of the Peringa anchor? The innovation was that instead of the bar iron usually used for making anchors, Pering used iron strips ranging from 3 to 10 inches wide with a thickness of 1/5 and 1/7 of the thickness of the spindle. This gave him the opportunity to better weld the spindle and horn assembly. Pering also changed the proportion of the anchor: the spindle and horns became shorter and thicker, and the section of the spindle, as shown above, became elliptical.

A significant drawback of the new anchor was the very labor-intensive work required to manufacture it: the hand hammer was too weak, and the steam hammer was inconvenient.

That is why, ten years after the appearance of the Pering anchor, the English admiral William Parker proposed a new anchor to the Admiralty. He simplified the technology for connecting the horns to the spindle and changed the basic dimensions of the anchor. It was this anchor that was recommended in 1852 by a special Committee formed under the English Admiralty as the optimal standard anchor type for use on warships and merchant ships of the British Navy. This decision was preceded by special comparative tests of many anchors of other designs, which were exhibited at the Great Royal Exhibition in London.

Including the Parker anchor in the test reports, the Committee members named it the Admiralty Pattern Anchor. Hence its modern name - Admiralty anchor. Old anchors of this type, but with straight horns and a long spindle, the British began to call anchors of the old drawing with a long spindle or old plain (old plain), or long shanked.

The name “Admiralty anchor” very quickly and firmly came into use in the English fleet, and from there it migrated to other fleets, including the Russian one. Since then it has become a thing: an Admiralty anchor.

An unacceptable mistake is made by those historians who believe that metallurgy in our country began to develop since the time of Peter. The Russians knew how to make iron long before him, and as for iron anchors, they were forged even before the baptism of Russia.

Even before Peter I, anchor production was widely developed on the banks of the Volga. For centuries this craft flourished in the Nizhny Novgorod province. Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kazan, Gorodets, Voronezh, Lodeynoye Pole, and many cities of the Urals were also once famous for their anchor craftsmen. The names of good anchor masters were known far beyond the borders of the cities where they worked. In 1667, when Russia was building its first combat sailing ship, the Eagle, blacksmiths from the villages of Dedinovo and Kolomna did not agree to forge anchors, and the craftsmen had to be sent from Kazan.

The domestic shipbuilding that developed under Peter I, as a result of which Russia received hundreds of ships, led to the rapid development of blacksmithing. Peter I himself was a good Blacksmith, and he always treated blacksmiths with great attention and care. But the demand from them was also great. From the anchor master, Peter I demanded not just “manage the work with diligence and good skill,” as from other blacksmiths, but “great diligence and extreme skill.” The anchor master was especially reminded that it was he who must answer if the ship’s accident occurred due to a broken anchor: “Since this is the whole integrity of the ship, he must give an answer if anything is done by negligence.” To increase the reliability of the anchors and protect the ship from accidents, under Peter I they were subjected to severe strength tests. In addition, the best iron was used to make anchors, which was superior in quality to English iron. That is why Russian anchors were in great demand abroad.

What was the shape of Russian anchors in the Petrine era? In the domestic practice of shipbuilding at that time, Dutch methods prevailed, and Peter I ordered anchors “to be made according to the Dutch drawing,” that is, with horns curved in the form of an arc of a circle. In accordance with the “Regulations on the management of the Admiralty and shipyards” issued by Peter I on April 15, 1722, anchors were supposed to be made of the approved proportions from good iron and looked at tightly, “so that the rods were tied tightly and tightly with good iron before they were put into the forge " When heating in a forge, it was prescribed to carefully ensure that the metal “neither burns nor takes it out cold, so that it is tightly welded everywhere and there is no undercooking.” The same conditions had to be observed both “in welding the horns to the spindle” and during “beating on the anvil.”

Anchors for large ships of the Russian fleet were manufactured in Izhora, where in 1719, by decree of Peter I, the Admiralty factories were founded. The forging hammers in these factories were driven by water wheels. In Russia, since the time of Peter I, each battleship was equipped with five anchors.

In addition to Dutch-style anchors, other anchors were also manufactured under Peter I. It is known that ten years before his death, Peter I began to replace the Dutch shipwrights who worked in Russian shipyards with English ones. That is why “English drawing anchors” - with straight horns - have become widespread in Russia.

By the middle of the 18th century, the production of anchors in Russia had reached its perfection. By this time, Russia had developed its own national type of anchor, differing in its proportions from the anchors of the Dutch, British and French. After the death of Peter I, the heaviest anchors were forged at the Botkin plant: they weighed up to 336 pounds (that’s almost 5.5 tons!). The largest battleships of the Russian fleet were supplied with them, the best metal was used for their forging, they were made by the best craftsmen, they withstood the most severe test that has ever existed in the history of metallurgy.

Before starting to assemble the parts of the anchor, they made a life-size drawing of it and made patterns based on it. All dimensions of the finished anchor had to correspond exactly to these patterns. Until 1838, at all factories in the Urals, anchors were made according to the so-called Russian method, and later - according to the Pering and Parker methods. Work on the manufacture of large anchors in the 18th-19th centuries all over the world included the following processes: the assembly of individual parts of the anchor from iron bars or plates, their welding in forges or furnaces, finishing under the hammer, demolition of the spindle with horns and the final finishing of the welded anchor.

Making such an anchor was truly hellish work. We can safely say: in the list of blacksmith products of the last century there is no thing that was made with such diligence and attention as an anchor. Each anchor made in the Urals rightly deserved the name Tsar Anchor, and each of the found Ural anchors is worthy of being installed on a pedestal, just as they did with the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell, although the first one never fired, and the second never rang, while the anchors of the Urals served the strong Russian fleet for a long time and faithfully under Ushakov, Lazarev and Nakhimov.

Hall anchor. The first anchor of this type was made in 1888 in Sheffield (Great Britain). Anchors of this type are very technologically advanced and “take up the soil” most quickly. Initially, anchors with a rod were used, but then they were abandoned

Given the enormous difficulties involved in making large anchors, it can be argued that the cost of "symbols of hope" a century ago was prohibitive. For example, at the Botkin plant, a pound of anchor cost the treasury (with overhead costs) 4 rubles 99 kopecks. Thus, an anchor, for example, on the battleship “Twelve Apostles” weighing 330 pounds cost about 1,650 rubles. That was a lot of money in those days!

The development of the fleet, especially the increase in the size of ships and the desire to get rid of bulky devices for fastening anchors with rods in the bow of ships, required the creation of anchor designs that were easy to handle when fastening them in a traveling manner and had increased holding power. In the last quarter of the 19th century, numerous types of anchors appeared. Almost all anchors are manufactured with swivel legs and without a rod. In England in 1885, the Admiralty conducted a series of tests and experiments to identify the best anchor. In 1891, the British Admiralty tested Ingefield, Hall, and Byers anchors. They were released from the same ship one by one, and the crash site was marked with a buoy. Then the machine operated at medium speed backward for 20 minutes, during which the diver monitored the maneuver in the water and determined the position of the anchor. This time preference was given to Captain Hall's anchor, which dug deep into the ground while being dragged along the ground only a few feet.

In the 1970s, the requirements for anchors and anchor chains around the world were already determined by state standards and rules of maritime classification societies: Lloyd's Register in the UK, Bureau Veritas in France, North German Lloyd in Germany, American Bureau of Shipping in the USA , Russian register - in Russia. Without the approval of these organizations, not a single anchor design that appeared was accepted for mass production.

Anchor system of Russian engineer I. Matrosov with anchor chain

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, heavyweight anchors for our nuclear icebreakers and large-capacity dry cargo ships and tankers were produced at the plant in Nikolaev. The weight of anchors required for arming a particular vessel is determined based on its cargo capacity, and for warships - depending on the displacement. Thus, eighteen-ton anchors were installed on the first Soviet supertankers of the Crimea type with a cargo capacity of 150,000 tons. With a displacement of the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser (TAKR) "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov" of 55,600 tons, the mass of its main anchor is 15 tons, and one anchor-chain link is 66 kilograms. Each such link is made of a steel rod with a diameter of 82 millimeters, in other words, an anchor chain with a caliber of 82 millimeters.

After a long voyage, the command given from the main command post - “Stay in place, anchor” - sounds like music to the crew. This means that there will be a quick meeting with family and friends, that the sailor will again feel solid ground under his feet, that sleepless nights and the continuous struggle with the ocean, which at any moment can become angry and destroy the ship, will end.

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“Salt, hemp and wax” - we remember these words from school. This is a simple list of goods that Ancient Rus' traded. Later, grain, timber, furs and flax were added to them. We are so accustomed to considering old Russia as an agrarian power that we are sometimes surprised: was it really possible that long before Peter I Russia exported iron to the foreign market, and iron that was famous throughout Europe? It was taken in strips and in the form of products: axes, ploughshares, etc. The anchors included in this list, made of “swamp iron,” were as famous as Russian sables. An unacceptable mistake is made by those historians who believe that metallurgy in our country began to develop since the time of Peter. The Russians knew how to make iron long before him, and as for iron anchors, they were undoubtedly forged even before the baptism of Rus'. This is evidenced by many exhibits collected by local historians and folk epics. The emergence of anchor production in Rus' is lost in the mists of time.
Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kazan, Gorodets, Voronezh, Lodeynoye Pole, and many cities of the Urals were once famous for their anchor craftsmen. For example, anchor craftsmen from Yaroslavl and Vologda forged about a hundred “large two-horned anchors” for the nomads of the naval flotilla, built on the orders of Boris Godunov for sailing in the Arctic Ocean.
It is sometimes believed that Tula was once famous for its anchors. This is mistake. In Tula they never forged anchors. It is famous for its thinner and more elegant forgings. In 1667, when Russia was building its first large ship to sail along the Volga and the Caspian Sea, Tula craftsmen refused to forge anchors for it. Blacksmiths in the village of Dedinovo, where the Eagle, a three-masted sailboat 24.5 m long, was being built, also stated that they themselves do not know how to do this, and the only anchor master in the village is busy making the tongue for the Great Assumption Bell. The blacksmiths called from Kolomna also did not agree to forge the anchors, and the craftsmen had to be sent out from Kazan. It was they who made two large anchors with rods and four grapple anchors for the Eagle.
Even before Peter, anchor production had developed widely on the banks of the Volga. For centuries this craft flourished in the Nizhny Novgorod province. From the travel notes of Russian academicians of painting G.G. and N.G. Chernetsov, who one hundred and twenty-five years ago traveled along the great Russian river, we learn that anchors were made mainly in Gorodets:
“Gorodets was formerly a city and the residence of the Gorodets princes and even had its own bishops. Now it is only a significant village. Forging anchors and bell tongues is a significant trade of the residents. Anchors are made weighing from thirty pounds to eighty pounds. In Gorodets with the surrounding villages throughout the year they forge up to twenty thousand pounds of anchors alone.”
The domestic shipbuilding that developed under Peter I, as a result of which Russia received 895 ships, led to the rapid development of blacksmithing. Peter personally established strict rules for testing the iron produced in the country. And soon Russian metal had no equal in quality in the whole world.
The anchors for the ships of the Azov Fleet, built by Peter in Voronezh, were forged by blacksmiths gathered from all over Russia. By a special decree, Peter forbade them to forge any products other than those related to the navy, and obliged the monasteries to pay for their work. The forges of the first Russian manufacturers - Demidov, Butenat, Naryshkin, Borin and Aristov - were also supposed to supply anchors. Later, “state-owned iron factories” were established in the Novgorod and Tambov provinces, and exploration work began to identify iron ore deposits near Lake Ladoga.
Anchors for the first frigates of Peter the Great's fleet, which were built in 1702 on the Svir and Pasha rivers, were forged in Olonets (Lodeynoye Pole). Iron obtained from the Olonets “swamp ore” was valued in Europe on a par with the famous “Swedish iron” and was famous for its flexibility, good malleability and extreme toughness. In addition, it was easily welded: the clean surfaces of two pieces of iron, heated until sparks appeared, were combined into one mass from a hammer blow or strong pressure. And this property is important. Here's a good example. The anchors for the ships of both Kamchatka expeditions of Bering-Chirikov (1725-1742) had to be carried across all of Siberia on reindeer. Since such a load was beyond the strength of the fragile animals, the horns were knocked off from the anchors ready for shipment. Parts of the anchor were transported through Siberia separately, and already on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, in temporary forges, the horns were again welded to the spindle. Wooden rods were made, of course, from scrap materials on site.
Such anchors, made from “swamp iron,” were many times stronger than English ones, because in Russia charcoal was put in the furnace to make iron, and puddling furnaces were heated with wood. In England, coal and coke containing sulfur and phosphorus, which reduced the quality of iron, were used to make iron in a furnace. The Russian two-welded iron used for the production of anchors was superior in quality to the English three-welded iron. Under the blows of the hammer, the “swamp iron” hardened well, and with the next heating and annealing, its former softness was easily restored. The fact that Russian anchors were in great demand abroad can be judged from many documents of Peter the Great’s time. Here, for example, is a letter from the Russian ambassador to Denmark Vasily Dolgorukov to Peter I dated March 8, 1718:
"...There are ship anchors here in Your Majesty's stores, with paintings attached to them; there are also cannon lathes and grapeshot. And since I do not have an order to sell them, I order them to put grapeshots and anchors, as much as possible, on the ship "Egudiel" and I will send it to St. Petersburg, and with the rest I will await Your Majesty's decree. The naval commissioners of His Majesty, the Danish King, traded those anchors with me and told me that they needed them so much that several ships would not be able to put to sea. I refused to sell them and said that I don’t dare without a decree..."
The heaviest anchors for large ships of the Russian fleet were then manufactured in Izhora, where in 1719, by decree of Peter, the Admiralty factories were founded. The forging hammers in these factories were driven by water mills.
The high demands Peter made on the quality of the material used for anchors can be judged by his decree “On testing iron in factories,” sent out in April 1722 by the Berg College “to all iron factories where iron is made.” In fact, this is a law on mandatory rules for testing and subsequent branding of iron. The first test of strip iron, invented by the tsar, consisted of winding an iron strip around a pole dug into the ground with a diameter of six inches. This operation was repeated three times (in different directions), after which the strip was examined, and if it showed no signs of destruction, stamp No. 1 was stamped on it. The second test: “take an iron strip, hit it on the anvil three times with all your might.” If the iron withstood, stamp No. 2 was stamped on it. On strips that did not withstand either the first or second test, stamp No. 3 was placed. The sale of strip iron without these stamps was strictly prohibited. To supervise the blacksmiths, Peter established the position of “commissar working on iron.” Peter's decree on testing iron, despite the primitiveness of the samples, marked the beginning of the struggle for the quality of metal on a national scale.
Other decrees of Peter related to anchor production have also been preserved. One of them, dated January 17, 1719, in particular, says:
"...send a good two men from the anchor foremen, one to the lower Gorodets volost, where there is a large anchor factory, the other to Tikhvina as a foreman, and with them one blacksmith, and give them a spot with such a decree that no one will use any anchors sold without their stains, and so that they would establish this business there in both places.”
Peter himself was a good blacksmith. Arriving to inspect the Plaintiff factories, in one day he forged eighteen pounds of iron with his own hands. He always treated blacksmiths with great attention and care. For example, when he learned that Maxim Artemyev and his apprentice Gavrila Nikiforov were considered the best anchor masters in the Nizhny Novgorod province, he immediately issued an order to transfer both of them to the Voronezh shipyard. The first was appointed anchor master with an annual salary of 12 rubles, and the second was appointed as an apprentice with a salary of 10 rubles. At that time this was a lot of money. In addition, they also received “day and fodder”, that is, in modern language - “daily allowance”. And when the construction of the Azov Fleet was completed, they were first sent “to anchor work” at the private iron factories of Butenat, and from 1706 they forged wonderful anchors at the Petrovsky plant.
We learn about the technology of making anchors in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century from the “Regulations on the management of the Admiralty and shipyards,” issued by Peter the Great on April 15, 1722. “The anchors must be made according to the required proportions from good iron, and make sure that the rods are tied tightly and tightly with good iron before they are put into the forge.” When heating in a forge, it was prescribed to carefully ensure that the metal “neither burns nor takes it out cold, so that it is tightly welded everywhere and there is no undercooking.” The same conditions had to be observed both “in welding the horns to the spindle” and during “beating on the anvil.”
From the anchor master, Peter demanded not just “to manage the work with diligence and good skill,” as from other blacksmiths, but “great diligence and extreme skill.” The anchor master was especially reminded that it was he who had to answer if the ship’s accident occurred due to a broken anchor: “Since this is the whole integrity of the ship, he must give an answer if anything is done by negligence.”
Under Peter, anchors were subjected to severe strength tests. The new anchor was first raised to the height of the spindle and thrown with its heel onto a cast-iron beam, then, having raised the anchor to the same height, it was again thrown down with the eye and, finally, sideways, with the middle of the spindle onto the cannon barrel. If the anchor survived these three throws, a special mark was stamped on it. This test of anchors by throwing became traditional in Russia and was preserved almost until the end of the last century. Here's how it was carried out in the thirties of the last century at the Ural factories:
“...Hold the anchor by the ring that has the fore-end with a rope and thread that rope into the block that was made for the iron described above, and lifting it up to the block itself, lower it, without holding it, onto a cast-iron beam or board three times. And if it resists, then the craftsman will notch on it, where it was made, and the date of the current year and his workshop and government, whoever, with one sample of the incident, name and weight and the letter P, which means that it was tried, and according to the notch, give it to the treasury with a note. And those samples that do not stand up, but break a hole or a tear that shows, do not accept such, but order them to correct them properly, and after correction, try again against what was described above and, based on the sample, give them to the treasury. And for the time that they stay during the correction, for work not to give anything, because they are responsible for doing it correctly at once.”
In 1963, an old anchor was raised from the bottom of the sea in Ilyichevsk. In addition to the factory mark, it still bears the inscriptions: Andrei Krotov, Ivan Cherkasov, Alexander Moskvin, Matvey Tyurin. In all likelihood, the first name is the name of the anchor master, the second is the name of the forge manager, the last two are the names of the witnesses who were present when the anchor was tested for strength.
The above excerpt is from the chapter “The Case of Anchors, Hammers, Clamps and Other Things” in the book “Description of the Ural and Siberian Plants.” The author of this book is Georg Wilhelm de Gennin (1676-1750), a Dutchman from Amsterdam who had been in Russian service since 1698. He was an outstanding engineer and metallurgist of his time. He managed Ural factories for twelve years and was one of the best experts in mining and metallurgy in the 18th century. It is not for nothing that Academician M.A. Pavlov once called this book an encyclopedia of mining and metallurgy in Russia.
In Russia, since the time of Peter, each battleship was equipped with five anchors. The largest and heaviest, usually the right stanovoy, was called the plekht. The second largest, the left one is a daglyx, the third is a bay. It was stored stowed under the second crambole behind the daglyx, on the left cheekbone of the ship. The fourth anchor was called the mooring line. It was a spare anchor, and it was stored in the hold behind the mainmast. The spindle of this anchor was fastened to the beam, and the paws were buried in stone ballast. The mooring rod, so that it would not interfere with loading into the hold, was laid flat on the bottom flooring. The fifth heaviest anchor was called a toy; it was fastened in the same way as the bays, but on the right cheekbone of the ship behind the plecht. In addition to these five anchors, Russian sailing ships could have several verps, the heaviest of which was called a stop anchor.
In the “Explanatory Marine Dictionary” by V.V. Bakhtin, published in St. Petersburg in 1894, there is the term “babai”. This is how the largest anchor on a seaworthy ship used to be called in the Astrakhan province.
"KING-ANCHOR"
In the middle of the last century, the most reliable anchors in the world were considered to be those forged in the Urals at the Botkin, Serebryansky and Nizhneturinsky factories. Egor Petrovich Kovalevsky, a mining engineer, progressive public figure and brave researcher, became interested in the production of Ural anchors. In 1836, while still a Bergheimester of the Ural gold mines, together with engineer Noskov, he began studying the technology of making anchors at the Gornobladatsky factories. Having described in detail the process of producing anchors at various factories in the Urals, Kovalevsky came to the conclusion that this process was incomparably simpler and better than in England. Later, he proposed a number of improvements to the administration of the Ural factories, which further improved the quality of products and reduced their cost.
The weight of Ural anchors often exceeded five tons. The largest battleships of the Russian fleet were supplied with them, the best metal was used for their forging, they were made by the best craftsmen, they withstood the most severe test that has ever existed in the history of metallurgy. Every anchor made in those years in the Urals rightly deserves the name “Tsar Anchor,” and the few anchors that have survived to this day would be worth installing on a pedestal as monuments to the remarkable skill of Russian blacksmiths.
At the same time, we note that the Tsar Cannon never fired, and the Tsar Bell never rang, while the Ural anchors served the Russian fleet for a long time and faithfully under Lazarev, Ushakov and Nakhimov.
To give the modern reader an idea of ​​what kind of work it took to make an anchor for a battleship a hundred years ago, we present an excerpt from an article by D. Leontiev, an engineer at the Botkin plant. It was published more than a hundred years ago in the magazine "Sea Collection" No. 5, Volume XXVIII, for 1865.

“When assembling a spindle for a 270-pound anchor, the strips are placed four in a row: three 4 1/2 inches wide and one 3 1/2 inches wide, while the width of the row will be 4 1/2 + 4 1/2 + 4 1 /2 + 3 1/2 = 17 inches. There are eleven such rows in the spindle assembly. And since the thickness of the strip iron for a 270-pound anchor is 1 1/8 inches, the thickness of the assembly will be about twelve inches. The seams of each row are overlapped by the strips of the next row , and for this, strips 3 1/2 inches wide are laid one at a time in a row, now on the right, now on the left. The length of the assembly (package) is 11 feet 4 inches.
The package assembled for the spindle, weighing about 250 pounds, is inserted into the welding furnace with the end that is subsequently trimmed into a collar. He is given heat so strong that the heated part of the package can be compressed until the strips that make up the assembly are tightly connected to each other. In this order, the package is cooked and crimped to the middle, after which the package is wrapped and placed in the oven at the other end, and crimping is also carried out from it to the middle. Of course, due to the uneven elongation of the strips during crimping, the middle of the package becomes convex, and the relative position of the strips should change, and in order to equalize their length, you need to heat the middle and slightly compress it, and then give a strong boil to boil the strips and connect them into one whole, and from excessive cooking, and sometimes two, the middle of the package burns significantly and comes out thinner.
Thus, to crimp the entire package, you need to put it in the oven for heating nine to ten times and put it under the hammer for crimping the same number of times.
When crimping the first half of the package, it is easy to notice, by the volume of the crimped area, whether enough iron was taken to make the spindle, and if not, then wedges of strip iron are stuffed into the other end before giving it varus. Sometimes up to thirty pounds of such wedges are hammered.
The crimping welds are given the highest, or, as the masters say, cruel, in order to more thoroughly cook the inside of the assembly at first. If you do not give strong welds, and thereby do not facilitate, if possible, the close connection of the strips into one whole, then later, when forging the spindle, it will certainly split, crack along the length, and then there is nothing left but to secure the cracks with strips, and This remedy is only suitable for appearance.
Crimping is followed by forging; it starts from the middle and goes to the ends. The vars are given high. Of course, the blacksmith ensures that the spindle is forged to the specified dimensions in length and thickness. The forged spindle for the 270-pound Parker anchor is five feet longer than its assembly and thinner by one-third the cross-sectional area of ​​the same assembly. The weight of the spindle is only 165 pounds. Consequently, weight loss is eighty-five pounds in a frenzy.
For the horns, the assemblies are made of the same iron that was taken for the spindle, and the strips are also arranged in rows in width and thickness, only the packages are made shorter, namely, four and a half feet for a 270-pound anchor; the weight of such an assembly is about 90 pounds.
Of course, crimping a package with a small length takes two or three vars, but forging into the dimensions specified for the horn is carried out with the assistance of nine vars.
When forged, the length of the horn with weasels extends to eight feet, and the weight is 65 pounds.
At first, when the Parker method of making anchors was introduced at the Botkin plant, the assembly of the horn was given a wedge-shaped appearance, suitable to the shape of the finished horn, but such assembly represents unnecessary work, which could not be avoided while the anchor parts were forged under light hammers; when a 4 1/2 ton steam hammer was installed, the same horns began to be forged from a prismatic assembly, now used at the Botkin plant.
When forging horns, the same techniques and precautions are observed to ensure the actual welding of the strips that make up the assembly, as described above when welding the spindle.
It often happens to see on individual horns and spindles the seams between the stripes that make up the assembly; This usually happens in cases where there is not enough iron taken for the spindle and horns, and therefore during forging, in order not to make these parts thinner, they are forged weakly.
The paw is made up of three layers welded into one whole. Each plasti is prepared from three puddling pieces weighing from 3 1/2 to 5 poods, connected into one plasti. Thus, 35-40 pounds of iron is taken to cast one paw, and after preparing the paw its weight turns out to be about 30 pounds; missing weight is waste. The work of the paw is completed over the course of eight vars or more.
The horn and paw are joined together by boiling in two furnaces and forging under a steam hammer, after which a complete horn is obtained weighing up to 90 pounds. Therefore, when the paw was applied, a waste of 3-5 pounds occurred in the iron. Usually, the removal of the paw with the horn should follow in two vars, but this is not always possible and often a third var is required, but more vars cannot be given for fear of burning the paw and the thin part of the horn, called the boletus.
About 45 poods of strip iron is taken per chain clamp, and the package made from it is boiled in an oven and drawn into a round grade, leaving the ends square. To make thickenings in which holes could be punched through which a bolt should be inserted through the anchor, bars are welded to the square ends of the prepared iron on two opposite sides, and then, to give these places the agreed upon shape, they are supplemented with strips at the top and bottom. This is how the ears of the staple are formed. After which, by bending, a bracket of the required shape is obtained, but only in rough form, and it weighs up to 25 pounds. This work requires at least thirty vars.
The bolt is forged from puddling pieces, which take about eight pounds, and when forged it weighs 572 pounds. Forging a bolt requires up to six welds.
The spindle, horns, bracket and bolt, rough forged under a steam hammer, enter the anchor forges for finishing, which consists of bringing them more precisely to the established dimensions, giving them the agreed upon shape and preparing them for a strong connection with each other.
So, first of all, the necking of the spindle is trimmed. To do this, they give it 15-20 vars, depending on whether it is necessary to put strips on it when it is forged thinner, or whether it can be brought to the proper size and shape without strips. Then the shoulders (nuts) for the wooden rod are welded. They take up to eight poods of iron for the shoulders, and in order to weld them and trim them to measure, they give ten poods and the same amount of heating or so-called idle welds. The first welds are necessary when it is necessary to remove excess metal or weld strips, and the second - when the matter is limited only to straightening the spindle. There are about ten vars.
After straightening, smoothing or polishing begins, for which the spindle is slightly heated and the scale is knocked off with hammers (two-handed hammers weighing from 7 to 10 pounds), and then smoothed with light hammers, and at least ten heatings are also done.
For horns, first they bring the horn to measure and then trim it and the paw, just like that. The kick horn comes out from under the steam hammer with an uneven, thick and very often imperfectly cooked paw, and often it is incorrectly applied to the horn or is narrow, short, wide, or long. To correct such various errors, first of all, up to eight vars are given and with their help, the excess iron on the horn is cut off; then, to align the boletus, the horn is heated 4-5 times; after this, up to eight vars are needed to straighten the paw and to weld it, where it is necessary, finally, to chop off excess metal into the paw or to weld the missing metal to it in the form of strips, up to 14 vars are required and then, although the horn and paw have received the proper shapes and size, but in this state the horn cannot yet fit in with the spindle, it has a rather rough appearance and the weasel (the wedge-shaped extended thick tip of the horn) is not fitted to the spindle lock.
Thus, you need to give the paw with the hog up to 20 more heats to iron them; Moreover, often there are either bubbles or deep caps on the paw, both of which are cut out and filled with slats, and for such work, vars are again needed. After the paw, the toe of the horn is finished off. In this case, three vars are given when the sock is moderately and well cooked, and more vars - if it requires welding with strips or significant cutting of excess metal. The fitting of the weasel horn against the spindle spike is done on welding furnaces, at the steam hammer before bringing down the anchor. When the spindle and both horns are ready, they begin to take down.
The removal of a spindle with horns is done in one step. To do this, the ends of both horns and the spindle, which should be combined into one whole and form the anchor gate, are placed in three welding furnaces. When all three parts have heated up to the proper temperature, they are taken out of the furnaces on cranes under a steam hammer and first the weasel of one horn is placed on the anvil, and on it the spindle spike and then the weasel of the other horn, trying to bring all three parts into mutual relation as accurately as possible. a position corresponding to the shape of the anchor, with the upper horn being made shorter than an inch or two, taking into account that the hammer, striking directly on it, lengthens it more than the lower horn. After this, they let the hammer go to the highest rise and hasten to strike more often in order, as the blacksmiths say, to hammer in the pitch. When the master sees that the upper horn is well welded with the spindle spike, they stop the hammer and, raising the anchor, place an iron gasket under the lower horn and again launch the hammer, which presses the tip of the lower horn against the gasket with blows and thereby facilitates proper welding.
After this, they begin to trim off the excess metal in the gate and at the same time try to bring the horns with the spindle to their normal position, which could have been damaged during forging, and then the anchor is taken to the forge for final finishing. The removal of the 270 pood anchor lasts more than a quarter of an hour. Agree, you need to be able to do such an important and cumbersome job conscientiously.
The anchor that arrived at the forge is in an unenviable condition: the place where the horns were connected to the spindle (gate) presents deep cracks, depressions or unnecessary elevations of metal; the horns are not in the same plane with the spindle, and their outer contour does not constitute that part of the circle that should be formed with a radius equal to 0.37 of the spindle length. In addition to these inevitable shortcomings, it often turns out that both the spindle and the horns in the places adjacent to the collar have become much thinner as a result of the strong wares given to them before the anchor was removed - in a word, they were burned. In order to give it both strength and a decent appearance in such, one might say, pitiful state of the future symbol of hope that has entered the forge, a lot of time, labor and expense are required; and, out of necessity, tedious work begins.
First, the horns and the spindle are straightened, they are bent, pulled back, twisted, twisted, and when, finally, these parts along their width are aligned with each other in the same section plane and the extra outline of the horns, although only partially, is introduced into the orbit of the normal curve, then, being content and with this, they begin to apply the strips, which achieves the goal of giving the anchor a nice appearance.
For a 270-pound Parker anchor, the planks are used in different sizes (from 4 pounds to 4 pounds), depending on where they are placed. Thus, heavy strips are mainly placed in the collar and in the places adjacent to it, when these places are either charred or thinly forged; smaller strips are placed in the arms, on the forehead, on the horns and on the spindle, according to the amount of missing metal that needs to be replenished. In general, it is very inconvenient to apply strips to the forehead, in the lobes, in a word, in those places where blacksmiths have to hammer in the warps from the side, which is why often, where it was enough to put one strip of 3-4 pounds, three or four smaller strips are applied and, of course, , for each of them in the same place they give sequential changes to the anchor.
Thus, it should not seem an exaggeration if for a 270-pound Parker anchor they use iron on the slats, up to 80 pounds and up to 20 days of time during which at least one hundred and twenty strong vars are given to the anchor in its various parts and mainly near the collar and on the horns , not to mention the weak ones. It's boring and annoying to follow this endless patching. Indeed, what is a more decent name for such a thankless job?
No matter how carefully the planks are applied, you still need to remove excess metal here and there; this also requires at least thirty vars, and by the way, hardening is also performed.
When riveting, the anchor is heated red-hot and the hammers are moistened with water. The water, evaporating, knocks off, as anchor craftsmen say, the welded strips, as a result of which captivity is formed; the latter are cut down and those places are again welded with planks. Of course, caps are formed in places where the edges of the planks are not welded to the anchor; Through such cracks water can penetrate and there transform into steam, and by the force of the latter the thin parts of the planks will be raised. When riveting, the number of vars extends to 20.
The long torment of the anchor ends with riveting. But polish for an anchor is necessary when entering the world. In fact, after hardening is completed, the anchor in decent shape is taken out of the gloomy factory to the yard to the sample site; This is where the bracket and bolt are fitted to it.
The final finishing of the bracket requires up to four welds, and then it weighs 22 pounds.
The finishing bolt weighs 3 pounds 30 pounds; it takes two varnishes to finish it. It seems that everything that needs to be said about the fabrication of Votkinsk anchors has been said."

Rice. 47. Shape of the horns and paws of the Ural anchor

This is how anchors were made a hundred years ago. Hell of a job! Such work really required “great diligence and extreme skill,” to use the words of Peter’s “Regulations.” And the anchor masters of the Urals were virtuosos of their craft. Behind D. Leontyev’s dry but precise presentation, one can feel all the stress of very long and hard physical labor in smoky forges near puddling furnaces and furnaces bursting with heat. We can safely say: in the range of blacksmith products of the last century there is no thing that was made with such diligence and attention as an anchor. In Fig. 47 shows the shape of the horns and paws of the Ural anchor.
The forged anchor was subjected to several tests. The cleanliness of the finish was checked by heating to a dark cherry color, when all the imperfections of the forging appeared. Then the anchor was tested for impact - dropped onto an iron plate from a height of 12 feet. If he passed this test, he was hung up and beaten with seven-pound hammers. At the same time, a clear, ringing sound indicated that the forging was dense and there were no holes or cracks in it. If the anchor passed the test, a mark was stamped on it. Now it was necessary to deliver the manufactured and tested anchor to its place of service - the Black Sea Fleet.
The finished anchors were loaded onto rowing barges and floated down the Kama River, and then along the Volga to the village of Perevoloki. There, anchors were transferred from barges to shallow-draft barges, and barge haulers dragged them along a tributary of the Volga, the Kamyshinka River, to the source of Ilovlya, which flows into the Don. Winter was coming here, and anchors were carried along the first route on huge sleighs for as much as fifty miles. In the spring, when the rivers opened up, the anchors fell into the Don basin, and only then into the Azov and Black Seas. In Sevastopol or Nikolaev, oak rods were attached to them.
Now it was necessary to distribute the anchors among the ships. After all, one ship needs an anchor of one weight, and another - another.
In addition to various simple formulas of a purely empirical nature, which have already been described, in the middle of the last century, the Russian navy used a rule derived from comparing the weight of anchors with the dimensions of ships of the Russian, English and French fleets. The length of the ship between the perpendiculars was multiplied by its greatest width with plating , and the resulting product was divided by a certain number. It was: for three-deck ships - 40, two-deck - 41, frigates - 42, corvettes - 45, brigs - 50, tenders and schooners - 55, large transports - 45, medium and small transports - 50.

Rice. 48. Russian names of anchor parts

The resulting quotient showed the weight of the anchor in pounds. For example, the length of the three-deck battleship "Twelve Apostles" - one of the largest battleships of the Russian fleet - on the gon-deck was 211 feet and 9 inches, the width with plating was 58 feet and 6 inches. The product was 12599.125. This number, divided by 40, showed the weight of the anchor in pounds - 314. The length of the ship "Rostislav" along the gon deck was 197 feet and 4 inches, the width with plating was 57 feet. The product 11,246 divided by 41 showed the weight of the anchor - 274 pounds. In fact, on the ship "Twelve Apostles" the anchors weighed from 283 to 330 pounds, and on the "Rostislav" from 264 to 278 pounds. If the shipyard did not have an anchor calculated by weight, then it was allowed to take an anchor several pounds more or less, namely, for anchors from 300 to 120 pounds, an increase of up to 9 pounds was allowed, and a decrease in weight of up to 6 pounds. If the weight of the calculated anchor was less than 120 pounds, then the actual weight of the anchor could be 6 pounds less and 3 pounds more than its calculated weight. What is the weight of the largest Admiralty anchor made in Russia? The heaviest Russian anchors of this type currently decorate the Admiralty building in Leningrad. They were forged in 1863 by blacksmiths of the Nevsky Shipyard for the battleships Admiral Sviridov, Admiral Chichagov and Admiral General.

Considering the enormous difficulties associated with the manufacture of large anchors, it can be argued that the cost of “symbols of hope” was prohibitively high just a hundred years ago. Here is one interesting fact taken from the book “The First Continuation of the Review of Foreign Voyages of the Russian Military Fleet of 1868-1877,” Volume II, published in St. Petersburg in 1879 (p. 143):
“Although the month of April is considered the best time of the year in Table Bay, nevertheless, the heavy rains and fresh winds almost did not stop. On April 2, 1874, standing on two anchors, with the yards covered, the clipper “Vsadnik” experienced a severe storm blowing at SO quarter . The chimney was raised, the fireboxes were charged and the boilers were filled with water. When at 1/2 7 o'clock in the evening the braiding rope burst at 83 fathoms, they immediately began to breed steam, and at 1/4 8 o'clock the machine was ready for action. The proximity of the standing behind the stern of the merchant ship did not allow the daglyx rope to be poisoned, which was only 38 fathoms at the hawse, and the incessantly flying squalls, interspersed with calm, had a highly destructive effect on the rope, first stretching it, then weakening it again.At 1/2 2 o'clock in the morning another rope burst at 18 fathoms; then instantly, giving full speed to the car, the clipper went out to sea, where it stayed under steam and sails until the next afternoon. Arriving at the roadstead, we received a 100-pound anchor sent from the shore with 120 fathoms of 2-inch rope (1/2 inch thicker than the clipper's), hired with the assistance of our consul for the entire stay of the clipper in Table Bay for 160 pounds. Having no anchors and no longer relying on his ropes (at least in the local roadstead), the commander was forced to accept the sent anchor with a rope for the safety of the ship, despite the high price. Having anchored in the same place, at the first opportunity we began to raise our anchors and ropes, which was completed successfully three days later.”
Before moving on to the next chapter, let's clarify the names of the parts of the anchor. established in the time of Peter I and partially forgotten or distorted in our time. These names are given in Fig. 48: spindle (forehead), horn, paw, toe of the horn, collar (forehead), heel, mouse, nuts (shoulders), rod, yoke, collar, eye, ear - these are the original Russian maritime names. They were used by both blacksmiths and sailors. True, at the end of the last century, such an “improved” name for part of the anchor as “trend” (gate or forehead) appeared in Russian books on maritime practice. This name came into our maritime language from the English language (trend - bend, bend). But nevertheless, this term has stuck with us.

The history of the plant, in a good way, deserves a separate story, if only out of respect for the enterprise, which began with forging anchors, and then within its walls produced steamships, steam locomotives, the first Soviet excavators and ballistic missiles. Oil and gas equipment, machine tools, household appliances - who said that Russian industry is dead? Has she died yet?) Well, “Topol-M” and “Bulava” are also gathering here, in an inconspicuous town far from the main roads.

Every single one of the residents of St. Petersburg and guests of the northern capital are well acquainted with the work of factory craftsmen, even if they have no idea about it: the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral was made and installed by them. When the question of the spire arose, the emperor was informed that it could only be made in England or at the Votkinsk plant, and the Russian craftsmen took half as much for the work as the English specialists asked.
Votkinsk residents will definitely show you the spire of their Annunciation Cathedral, hinting - it’s similar, isn’t it?


A legend is connected with the founding of the church in this very place, developing the traditional motif of the confrontation between paganism and Orthodoxy for the Vyatka, Udmurt region. The legend was outlined by the Archpriest of the Annunciation Cathedral A.I. Chernishevsky: “On the hill where the Annunciation Cathedral is, they (the Votyaks) had a tent, that is, a strong barn with a floor and a ceiling, where they kept haymaking tools, provisions, and honey from the beetroot. Here, according to the legend of the old people of this village, for ten years before the founding of the plant, from time to time they began to hear a hum, as if from the ringing of a bell, which had never happened before. Then the Votyaks began to interpret that there would once be a Christian church here and would crush their places of worship, where it was so convenient for them to make sacrifices to Keremet" (VEV , 1863, No. 2, p. 588)

A symbol of the city, directly related to the history of the plant.

Just a discovery for myself, dug up on the Votkinsk website:
“The first monument on the territory of Udmurtia, reflecting factory production, was a 167-pound anchor, manufactured at the Votkinsk plant in 1837 for the Black Sea Admiralty. The heir to the All-Russian Throne, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (future Emperor Alexander II) took part in forging the anchor, as evidenced by the inscription carved between the arms of the anchor: “His Imperial Highness the Sovereign, Heir to the All-Russian Throne, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich deigned to forge with his own hands an anchor weighing 167 pounds . May 22, 1837." On the other side of the anchor was carved the inscription: “Done under the mining chief, Lieutenant Colonel Tchaikovsky, the plant manager, Major Romanov, and the commission agent of the Admiralty Department, Alekseev.”

It was decided to leave the anchor at the Votkinsk plant as a monument. The monument project was carried out by the plant manager V.I. Romanov. The monument was inaugurated on June 16, 1840. His Grace Neophytos, Bishop of Vyatka and Slobodskaya, performed a prayer service with the council of clergy and consecrated the monument.

"Monument "Anchor"". Drawing. Author: Vasily Vasilievich Nepryakhin. Paper, watercolor, ink. 1859 (1860?) year. In the lower right corner of the picture there is an inscription: “July 25, 1859.” On the back of the drawing there is an inscription in ink: “Drew by the clerical servant Vasily Vasilich Nepryakhin.”

“The anchor rested on a cast-iron pedestal, hung along the rod with chain ropes, surrounded by a very elegant lattice, divided into several parts by columns also made of cast iron, on which sat double-headed eagles with spread wings. On two opposite sides of the pedestal the following inscriptions in gilded letters read: “His Imperial Highness the Sovereign Tsarevich, Heir to the All-Russian Throne, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich deigned to forge an anchor with his own hands in the Troitsk anchor factory when visiting his Kama-Votkinsk plant on May 22, 1837" (extract from the News of the Sarapul Zemsky Museum. Issue 2. Sarapul. Printing house N.E. Onchukova, 1912).

The anchor, which was one of the main items in the range of forge products of the 19th century, served the Russian fleet for a long time and faithfully under Ushakov, Lazarev and Nakhimov.

The Votkinsk plant accounted for 62 percent of the total number of anchors manufactured in the 19th century at 24 Ural factories. In terms of quality, Votkinsk anchors (produced at the Votkinsk plant by decree of Catherine II since 1779) had no equal; they were supplied to the largest battleships of the Russian fleet. The outstanding naval commander Admiral P.S. Nakhimov, who tested the anchors of the Votkinsk plant on the Black Sea in October 1847, noted that the anchors “turned out to be completely appropriate for their purpose.”

In 1849, the Russian maritime department confirmed that the anchors manufactured at the Votkinsk plant “earned full approval and turned out to be excellent.” Votkinsk anchors were honored to stand on pedestals in the years. Sochi and Votkinsk. A 137-pound anchor forged at the Votkinsk plant in 1803 is on display at the Klaipeda Maritime Museum. During the years of Soviet power, the monument, to the creation of which the tsar himself had a hand in, was melted down. However, for the 200th anniversary of the Votkinsk plant, it was restored in the same place (a similar anchor can be seen on the territory of the plant itself).

The Votkinsk anchor today is not only a city insignia, but also a Russian one. Five years ago, a local exhibit passed a competitive selection in an international project where the main symbols of our country were determined. Several museums from Udmurtia also took part in the competition, including our Museum of History and Culture. Votkinsk museum workers, as an object from their collections that most closely corresponds to the image of Russia, chose the drawing of the clerical servant Vasily Vasilyevich Nepryakhin “Monument “Anchor””, made in 1859, in the year of the 100th anniversary of the Votkinsk plant.”

Monument to the Soviet era, Yubileiny Palace of Culture.

"Great diligence and extreme skill"

“Salt, hemp and wax” - we remember these words from school. This is a simple list of goods that Ancient Rus' traded. Later, grain, timber, furs and flax were added to them. We are so accustomed to considering old Russia as an agrarian power that we are sometimes surprised: was it really possible that long before Peter I Russia exported iron to the foreign market, and iron that was famous throughout Europe? It was taken in strips and in the form of products: axes, ploughshares, etc. The anchors included in this list, made of “swamp iron,” were as famous as Russian sables. An unacceptable mistake is made by those historians who believe that metallurgy in our country began to develop since the time of Peter. The Russians knew how to make iron long before him, and as for iron anchors, they were undoubtedly forged even before the baptism of Rus'. This is evidenced by many exhibits collected by local historians and folk epics. The emergence of anchor production in Rus' is lost in the mists of time.

Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kazan, Gorodets, Voronezh, Lodeynoye Pole, and many cities of the Urals were once famous for their anchor craftsmen. For example, anchor craftsmen from Yaroslavl and Vologda forged about a hundred “large two-horned anchors” for the nomads of the naval flotilla, built on the orders of Boris Godunov.

It is sometimes believed that Tula was once famous for its anchors. This is mistake. In Tula they never forged anchors. It is famous for its thinner and more elegant forgings. In 1667, when Russia was building its first large ship for sailing along the Volga and the Caspian Sea, Tula craftsmen refused to forge anchors for it. Blacksmiths in the village of Dedinovo, where the Eagle, a three-masted sailboat 24.5 m long, was being built, also stated that they themselves do not know how to do this, and the only anchor master in the village is busy making the tongue for the Great Assumption Bell. The blacksmiths called from Kolomna also did not agree to forge the anchors, and the craftsmen had to be sent out from Kazan. It was they who made two large anchors with rods and four grapple anchors for the Eagle.

Even before Peter, anchor production had developed widely on the banks of the Volga. For centuries this craft flourished in the Nizhny Novgorod province.

From the travel notes of the Russian academicians of painting G.G. and N.G. Chernetsov, who in the middle of the last century traveled along the great Russian river, we learn that anchors were made mainly in Gorodets:

“Gorodets was formerly a city and the residence of the Gorodets princes and even had its own bishops. Now it is only a significant village. Forging anchors and bell tongues is a significant trade for the residents.

Anchors are made weighing from thirty pounds to eighty pounds. In Gorodets and the surrounding villages, up to twenty thousand pounds of anchors are forged throughout the year.”

The domestic shipbuilding that developed under Peter I, as a result of which Russia received 895 ships, led to the rapid development of blacksmithing. Peter personally established strict rules for testing the iron produced in the country. And soon Russian metal had no equal in quality in the whole world.

The anchors for the ships of the Azov Fleet, built by Peter in Voronezh, were forged by blacksmiths collected from all over Russia. By a special decree, Peter forbade them to forge any products other than those related to the navy, and obliged the monasteries to pay for their work. The blacksmiths of the first Russian breeders - Demidov, Butenat, Naryshkin, Borin and Aristov - also had to supply anchors. Later, “state-owned iron factories” were established in the Novgorod and Tambov provinces, and exploration work began to identify iron ore deposits near Lake Ladoga.

Anchors for the first frigates of Peter the Great's fleet, which were built in 1702 on the Svir and Pasha rivers, were forged in Olonets (Lodeynoye Pole). In 1718, part of the anchor forge from Olonets was transferred to Ladoga, and from there in 1724 to Sestroretsk.

During underwater archaeological research 1971 - 1975. on the island of Khortitsa, in addition to many sunken ships, cannons and cannonballs, they found about 30 four-legged cats and Admiralty anchors with inscriptions and marks indicating that they were made in 1722-1727. The wooden rods of the anchors were not preserved, but square yokes were found nearby.

The stamps on two Admiralty-type anchors and one with four arms repeat the word “LADOGA”, indicating that some of the anchors for the Dnieper flotilla were manufactured at one of the first Russian shipyards on Lake Ladoga.

Iron obtained from the Olonets “swamp ore” was valued in Europe on a par with the famous “Swedish iron” and was famous for its flexibility, good malleability and extreme toughness. In addition, it was easily welded: the clean surfaces of two pieces of iron, heated until sparks appeared, were combined into one mass by a hammer blow or strong pressure. And this property is important. Here's a good example. The anchors for the ships of both Kamchatka expeditions of Bering-Chirikov (1725-1743) had to be carried across all of Siberia on reindeer. Since such a load was beyond the strength of the fragile animals, the horns were knocked off from the anchors ready for shipment. Parts of the anchor were transported through Siberia separately and already on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, in temporary forges the horns were again welded to the spindle. Wooden rods were made, of course, from scrap materials on site.

Such anchors, made from “swamp iron,” were many times stronger than English ones, because in Russia charcoal was put in the furnace to make iron, and puddling furnaces were heated with wood. In England, coal and coke containing sulfur and phosphorus, which reduced the quality of iron, were used to make iron in a furnace. The Russian two-welded iron used for the production of anchors was superior in quality to the English three-welded iron. Under the blows of the hammer, the “swamp iron” was riveted well, and with the next heating and annealing, its former softness was easily restored. The fact that Russian anchors were in great demand abroad can be judged from many documents from Peter’s time. Here, for example, is a letter from the Russian ambassador to Denmark Vasily Dolgorukov to Peter I dated March 8, 1718:

“...There are ship anchors here in Your Majesty’s shops, with paintings attached to them; There are also cannon presses and grapeshot. And since I do not have a decree to sell it, I will order that as much grapeshot and anchors as possible be placed on the ship “Egudiel”, and I will send it to St. Petersburg, and with the rest I will await Your Majesty’s decree. The naval commissioners of His Majesty and the Danish King traded those anchors with me and told me that they needed them so much that several ships would not be able to put to sea. I refused to sell them and said that I don’t dare without a decree...”

In the last years of the reign of Peter I, ten state factories worked for the needs of the fleet: in the north of the country - Olonetsky, Petrovsky (the cities of Beloozero and Kargopol, which were previously under the jurisdiction of the Olonets shipyard), Izhorsky, Konchezersky, Ustretsky, Povenetsky and Tyrnitsky were assigned to it; in the south - Lipetsk, Kozminsky and Borinsky. In 1722, some of these factories were sold to private entrepreneurs.

The heaviest anchors for large ships of the Russian fleet were then manufactured in Izhora, where in 1719, by decree of Peter, the Admiralty factories were founded. The forging hammers in these factories were driven by water mills.

The high demands Peter made on the quality of the material used for anchors can be judged by his decree “On testing iron in factories,” sent out in April 1722 by the Berg College “to all iron factories where iron is made.” In fact, this is a law on mandatory rules for testing and subsequent branding of iron. The first test of strip iron, invented by the tsar, consisted of winding an iron strip around a pole dug into the ground with a diameter of six inches. This operation was repeated three times (in different directions), after which the strip was examined, and if it did not show signs of destruction, stamp No. 1 was stamped on it. The second test: “take an iron strip, hit the anvil three times with all your might.” If the iron withstood, stamp No. 2 was stamped on it. On strips that did not withstand either the first or second test, stamp No. 3 was placed. The sale of strip iron without these stamps was prohibited.

To supervise the blacksmiths, Peter established the position of “commissar over iron work.” Peter's decree on testing iron, despite the primitiveness of the samples, marked the beginning of the struggle for the quality of metal on a national scale.

Other decrees of Peter related to anchor production have also been preserved. One of them, dated January 17, 1719, in particular, says:

“...send a good two men from the anchor foremen, one to the lower Gorodets volost, where there is a large anchor factory, the other to Tikhvina as a foreman, and with them one blacksmith, and give them a spot with such a decree that no one will use any anchors sold without their stains, and so that they would establish this business there in both places.”

Peter himself was a good blacksmith. Arriving to inspect the Plaintiff factories, in one day he forged eighteen pounds of iron with his own hands. He always treated blacksmiths with great attention and care. For example, when he learned that Maxim Artemyev and his apprentice Gavrila Nikiforov were considered the best anchor masters in the Nizhny Novgorod province, he immediately issued an order to transfer both of them to the Voronezh shipyard. The first was appointed anchor master with an annual salary of 12 rubles, and the second was appointed as an apprentice with a salary of 10 rubles. At that time this was a lot of money. In addition, they also received “day and fodder”, that is, in modern language - “daily allowance”. And when the construction of the Azov fleet was completed, they were first sent “to anchor work” at the private iron factories of Butenat, and from 1706 they forged wonderful anchors at the Petrovsky plant.

About the technology of making anchors in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century. we learn from the “Regulations on the management of the Admiralty and shipyard”, issued by Peter on April 15, 1722: “Anchors must be made according to the required proportions from good iron, and make sure that the rods are tightly and tightly tied with good iron before they begin to lay to the forge." When heating in a forge, it was prescribed to carefully ensure that the metal “neither burns nor takes it out cold, so that it is tightly welded everywhere and there is no undercooking.” The same conditions had to be observed both “in welding the horns to the spindle” and during “beating on the anvil.”

From the anchor master, Peter demanded not just “to manage the work with diligence and good skill,” as from other blacksmiths, but “great diligence and extreme skill.” The anchor craftsman was especially reminded that it was he who must answer if the ship’s accident occurred due to a broken anchor: “Since this is the whole integrity of the ship, it must give an answer if something is done by negligence.”

Under Peter, anchors were subjected to severe strength tests. The new anchor was first raised to the height of the spindle and thrown with its heel onto a cast-iron beam, then, having raised the anchor to the same height, it was again thrown down with the eye and, finally, sideways, with the middle of the spindle onto the cannon barrel. If the anchor survived these three throws, a special mark was stamped on it. This test of anchors by throwing became traditional in Russia and was preserved almost until the end of the last century. Here's how it was carried out in the thirties of the last century at the Ural factories:

“...Grip the anchor by the ring that has the forend with a rope and thread that rope into the block that was made for the iron described above, and lifting it up to the block itself, lower it, without holding it, onto a cast-iron beam or board three times. And if it resists, then inscribe on it the master, where it was made, and the date of the current year and his workshop and government, whoever, with one test of the incident, the name and weight and the letter “R”, which means that it was tested, and give it back according to the notch to the treasury with a note. And those samples that do not stand up, but break or show cracks, do not accept them, but order them to be corrected to the proper order, and after correction, try again against what was described above and, according to the sample, give them to the treasury. And for the time that they will be there during the correction, do not give anything for the work, because they are obliged to do it correctly at once.”

The above excerpt is from the chapter “The Case of Anchors, Hammers, Clamps and Other Things” in the book “Description of the Ural and Siberian Plants.” The author of this book is Georg Wilhelm de Gennin (1676-1750), a Dutchman from Amsterdam who had been in Russian service since 1698. He was an outstanding engineer and metallurgist of his time. He managed Ural factories for twelve years and was one of the best experts in mining and metallurgy in the 18th century. It is not for nothing that Academician M.A. Pavlov once called this book an encyclopedia of mining and metallurgy in Russia.

Peter introduced severe punishments for branding anchors without testing their strength. From the list of executed sentences and resolutions of the Admiralty Collegium for Judicial Cases dated 1723, we find the following:

“An anchor foreman and a blacksmith for branding anchors without testing are supposed to be declared dead and hanged, but not executed, and upon punishment with a whip they are sent to the Astrakhan Admiralty to work for 5 years, in which they will always be shackled.”

In Russia, since the time of Peter, each battleship was equipped with five anchors.

What was the shape of Russian anchors in the era of Peter the Great and later?

In the domestic practice of shipbuilding at that time, Dutch methods prevailed, and Peter ordered the anchors “to be made according to the Dutch drawing,” that is, with horns curved in the form of an arc of a circle. Six such anchors (their wooden stocks have not survived) can be seen in the estate-museum of Peter I “Botik” in Pereyaslavl-Zalessky. They date back to the period of the “amusing fleet” (1691-1692), when the Dutch built the first ships for Peter under the supervision of the masters Cort and Class.

In Fig. 70 there is a drawing of a Russian anchor of the Dutch type from the early 18th century. It was built by the chief curator of the ship fund of the Central Naval Museum A.L. Larionov as a result of a thorough study of the proportions and drawings of anchors given in ancient books of Dutch shipbuilders of the 18th century, and the surviving six anchors in Pereyaslavl-Zalessky. In his research, A.L. Larionov determined a number of proportions of individual parts of Russian anchors of the early 18th century. For example, the thickness of the spindle in the anchor gate was established as follows: from the length of the spindle, the number of inches equal to the number of feet in the length of the spindle was subtracted, and the resulting remainder was divided in half, which gave the number of inches of the spindle section in the anchor collar. The length of the anchor was equal to 2/5 of the width of the ship with plating, the collar was 2/13 of the length of the spindle, the eye was equal to 1/6 of the length of the spindle, the cross-section of the eye was equal to 73 times the diameter of the spindle, the arc length of both horns was 7/8 of the length of the spindle, the length of the rod was equal to the length spindles with a ring, the ratio of the length of the paw to its thickness was 4:5.

In addition to Dutch-style anchors, other anchors were also manufactured in Russia under Peter I. It is known that ten years before his death, Peter began to replace the Dutch shipwrights who worked in Russian shipyards with English ones. That is why “English drawing anchors” - with straight horns - have become widespread in Russia. They were forged in Russia along with Dutch ones from the 20s. XVIII century One of these anchors, made in 1722, was found in 1975 on the Dnieper island of Khortitsa.

70. Diagram of a Russian anchor of a Dutch model from the Peter the Great era.

By the middle of the 18th century. the production of anchors in Russia has reached its perfection. By this time, we had developed our own national type of anchor, different in its proportions from the anchors of the Dutch, English and French.

Over the past 15-20 years, many interesting underwater archaeological finds of ancient anchors have been made in different seas washing the shores of our country. Of these, about ten belong to the period 1720-1773. It is interesting that all these anchors have the same characteristic “pattern” (Fig. 71). Apart from slight differences in their details, they are almost similar in their proportions. Moreover, these proportions appear in ancient Russian manuals on shipbuilding and in maritime practices (Kurganov, Gamaleya, Glotov, etc.).

71. This is what Russian anchors looked like from the middle of the 18th century until the beginning of the second half of the 19th century.

spindle length - 3/8 of the width of the ship with plating;

horn length - 3/8 of the spindle length;

paw length - 1/2 the length of the horn;

paw width - 2/5 of the horn length;

spindle circumference at the gate (trend) - 1/5 of the spindle length;

spindle circumference at the rod - 2/3 of the spindle circumference at the gate;

the thickness of the horns at the collar is equal to the thickness of the spindle at the collar;

the thickness of the horns near the paws is equal to the smaller diameter of the spindle;

the angle of the horn with the spindle is 56-60°; neck length - 1/6 of the spindle length; neck section - 1/20 of the spindle length; the length of the rod is equal to the length of the spindle (sometimes plus half the diameter of the eye);

72. Russian anchor 1761, found in 1968 in Kronstadt

rod thickness at the shoulders - 1 foot of rod length gives 1 inch of thickness or 1/2 inch of rod length;

the thickness of the rod at the ends - 1 foot long gives 1/2 inch thickness;

eye thickness - 1/2 the thickness of the spindle collar;

the diameter of the eye is equal to the length of the collar (three diameters of the spindle at the collar).

The anchor, built according to these proportions, almost exactly corresponds to authentic examples of Russian anchors of the 18th century, found in recent years in the Baltic and Black Sea.

In 1968, during the repair of one of the piers in Kronstadt harbor, four anchors weighing about three tons each were found. Now two of them stand at the main entrance of the A. A. Grechko Naval Academy in Leningrad, and the other two (without stocks) were transferred to the Central Naval Museum.

From the remaining letters of the inscription stamped on the anchor, it was only possible to understand that it was made in 1773 and weighs 169 pounds. On the second anchor you can read: “1761 April 22 days. Weight 163 pounds 20 pounds. Made... by master Kharitonov...". At which Russian factory they were forged remains unknown (Fig. 72).

73. Russian names of anchor parts:

1 - spikes (shoulders, “nuts”); 2 - rod; 3 - ring (eye); 4- ear; 5 - collar;
6 - yoke; 7 - spindle (forearm); 8 - paw; 9 - horn; 10 - heel;
11 - collar (forehead); 12 - blade; 13 - sock; 14 - mouse

Detailed measurements of these two anchors clearly showed the correctness of the above list of proportions of the Russian anchor of the 18th century. and allowed A.L. Larionov to recreate the methodology for constructing working drawings of domestic anchors of the second half of the 18th century. Since not a single working drawing of an anchor from that time has been preserved in our country, this was a great creative success for the chief custodian of the TsVMM ship fund.

Anchors with straight horns were forged in Russia in the first quarter of the 19th century. They were replaced by simpler shaped anchors with rounded horns and a spindle. We will talk about them later.

Over time, the number of anchors on Russian warships increased to ten, and each of them had a specific name, purpose and place on the ship. We find an accurate and clear description of them in the book “Experience of Maritime Practice”, published in

1804 in St. Petersburg by Platon Gamaleya - “captain-commander, inspector of the Naval Cadet Corps and member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.”

“They are on the bow: plecht and toy on the right side, daglyx and bayts on the left side. Of these, the toy and bays are placed next to the forecastle on the sides, and are firmly attached to them with lashings; The plekht and daglyx are held at the sides on pertulins and rustovs, in readiness for throwing them. A spare mooring anchor is placed in the hold in the main hatch; its spindle is lashed to the stand supporting the beam of the cockpit, and its paws are buried in stone ballast; This anchor, for its most convenient placement, does not have a rod with it, which is specially stored and attached to it when the need requires it.

There are five small anchors, called verpas, on a ship: the largest of them, called the stop anchor, is placed on the anchor and lashed both to it and to the side; the other two lie similarly on the bay; the remaining two are placed on both sides of the latrine.”

As soon as our further story goes about the technology of manufacturing Russian anchors, we remind the reader of the names of the main parts of the anchor (Fig. 73): spindle (forearm) 7, rod 2, horn 9, paw 8, blade 12, toe 13, mouse 14, collar ( forehead) 11, heel 10, collar 5, spikes (shoulders, “nuts”) 1, ear 4, ring (eye) 3, yoke 6.

These are the original Russian sea names. They were used by both blacksmiths and sailors. True, at the end of the last century, such an “improved” name for part of the anchor as “trend” (gate or forehead) appeared in Russian books on maritime practice. This name came to our maritime language from the English language (trend - bend, bend).

"Tsar Anchor"

As already mentioned, the production of anchors in Russia by the middle of the 18th century. reached its perfection and by this time we had developed our own national type of anchor, different in its proportions from anchors manufactured in other countries. The large Russian anchors that have survived to this day delight us not only with the clarity of their design and the cleanliness of the finish, but also with the amazing preservation of the metal. Many of them, having lain on the seabed for more than two centuries, show almost no signs of metal destruction from rusting, and some still have marks and inscriptions. Of particular interest are anchors with marks from the Ural factories, especially Votkinsk. The article “Description of the Votkinsk plant”, published in the second (February) issue of the “Marine Collection” for 1858, states: “The production of anchors at the Votkinsk plant was introduced almost from the very foundation of the plant and, improving year by year, has recently reached that degree of strength and purity that rightly attracts the attention of experts in the matter.”

Now let's look at the methods and processes of making anchors in the Urals in the 18th-19th centuries.

After the death of Peter I, anchor production began to develop in the Urals - at the Botkin, Serebryansky and Nizhneturinsky factories. The first of them was founded in 1759 during the reign of Elizabeth by Count Shuvalov on the Votka River at the confluence of Berezovka and Sharkan. The abundance of forests, rivers and cheap labor provided the plant with rapid development, and it turned into one of the largest mining plants in Russia in the 18th century. The raw material for the production of wrought iron - cast iron from the ore of Mount Blagodat - was delivered to the Votkinsk plant along the Chusovaya and Kama rivers, from the shore of which it was located 12 versts. The best puddled double-welded iron was used to produce anchors after careful selection and quality control.

Work on the manufacture of large anchors in the 18th-19th centuries. throughout the world included the following processes: the assembly of individual parts of the anchor from iron bars or plates, their welding in forges or furnaces, finishing under the hammer, demolition and finishing of the welded anchor. Before starting to assemble the parts of the anchor, they made a life-size drawing of it and made patterns based on it. All dimensions of the finished anchor had to correspond exactly to these patterns. Until 1836, at all factories in the Urals, anchors were made according to the so-called “Russian method”, and later - according to the Pering and Parker methods. The technology of manufacturing Ural anchors, which were famous for their strength, became interested in mining engineer, Russian progressive public figure and brave researcher Yegor Petrovich Kovalevsky. In the 30s of the last century, being the Bergheimester of the Ural gold mines, together with the engineer Noskov, he began studying the processes of producing anchors at the Goroblagodat factories. The third book of the Mining Journal for 1838 contains his article “Anchor production in the Goroblagodat factories.” In it he compares Russian and English methods of making anchors.

Describing the entire process of making an anchor, E.P. Kovalevsky notes that according to the Russian method, its individual parts were assembled and welded from strip iron, while in England, plates were first prepared from strips of iron, and then parts of the anchor were made from them.

According to the Russian method, the footnote of the anchor was made in four places, and according to the English method - in five.

The reasoning of this mining specialist about the reasons for the poor quality of anchors is interesting. In the same article he writes:

“The fragility of anchors is particularly influenced by the general property of all iron - to change its strength to a greater or lesser extent, both from individual and from combined actions on it: heat and cooling, the touch of coal and forging, so that the best soft iron can be used in a product become brittle if the final operation on it is not adapted to restore the softness it lost during processing. To achieve this, if possible, a completely finished anchor, as stated, is heated and allowed to cool slowly.

If soft iron is subjected to too high a degree of heat, it can become granular and its particles will become larger the greater the degree of heat and the thicker the anchor. If at the same time they cool down in this position without being constrained by forging, then they have a weak connection and make the iron brittle. But if such iron is then forged, its parts return to their previous form and softness is restored.

If iron is subjected to forging with significant cooling, then its parts take on a flattened appearance and make the metal brittle despite all its best qualities.

When iron is often heated during processing, then from frequent contact with coal it can undergo cementation, become more carbonaceous (steel-like) and from the effect of cooling during forging - more or less brittle. Cementation with coal is more likely to form in areas of the anchor that are heated adjacent to the area receiving pitch and not covered by the blast that counteracts cementation.

The places of the anchor adjacent to the places of the footnotes, the paws with the horn and the horns with the forend, can get burned and become brittle. To counter this, the demolished parts of the anchor are left thicker and are finally rolled when finishing the entire anchor. In addition to the examples given, there are many cases that amazingly change the quality of iron, and it is obvious that in no other product is the same iron subjected to such frequent changes in different cases as in the manufacture of anchors.”

Having made a comparison of two methods of making anchors, E. P. Kovalevsky comes to the conclusion:

“Comparing both methods of making anchors, we see that preparing Russian anchors is incomparably simpler in all respects.

There are no such frequent welds as with new demolished parts of the anchor, therefore, there is less waste of metal and fuel consumption, and less debt from day laborers. Therefore, Russian anchors are incomparably cheaper and can be prepared in the shortest possible time. These circumstances constitute a very important advantage of the old method. To confirm this with numbers, it is enough to say that according to the Russian method, each finished anchor contains 71/2 pounds of iron per day labor or 12 working hours, and according to the English method only 3 1/2 pounds.

According to the Russian method, 2 pounds of iron are used per pound of iron in the finished anchor, therefore, the waste of metal is equal to 1 pound, and with new waste, 1 pound 34 pounds comes out.

To prepare a pood of iron in an anchor according to the Russian method, you must burn one box of coal, and to prepare the same pood using the English method, you must use 2 boxes. Consequently, at the same time, using the Russian method, it is possible to prepare more than twice a pound of anchors compared to the English one, while reducing waste and fuel consumption by almost half.”

This interesting article ends with the following words:

“Mr. Guryev writes (Mining Journal, 1837, No. 5) that at the Royal Guerigny Factory in France, the preparation of anchors using the English method has now been abandoned, because they have found that English anchors do not present any advantages over Swedish ones.

If the Swedish method used in France is the same as Rinmann and Gausmann describe it (from loud blanks), then our method has a proven advantage over it” (my discharge. - L.S.).

E.P. Kovalevsky proposed a number of technological improvements to the administration of the Goroblagodat plants, which further improved the quality of products and reduced their cost.

Until 1850, at the Votkinsk plant, welding of all parts of the anchor was carried out in forges, but since that time they were replaced by welding furnaces, which were heated with wood. Around the same time, a 4.5-ton Nesmith steam hammer appeared at the plant, which greatly simplified and improved the anchor manufacturing technology. In the middle of the last century, 250-350 people worked in the anchor shop of the Votkinsk plant, depending on orders for anchors. On each fire of the forge or furnace, on each shift, a team of one master, one apprentice, two to five workers and one teenager worked, not counting the workers involved in transporting coal. The plant produced anchors from small ones of 3-10 pounds to large ones of 250, 275, 300 pounds and more. The total weight of anchors manufactured in one year reached 15,000 pounds.

The heaviest anchors from the Votkinsk plant weighed 336 pounds (that’s almost 5.5 tons). The largest battleships of the Russian fleet were supplied with them, the best metal was used for their forging, they were made by the best craftsmen, they withstood the most severe test that has ever existed in the history of metallurgy (Fig. 74).

To give the modern reader an idea of ​​how much work it took a hundred years ago to make an Admiralty anchor weighing 270 pounds for a battleship, we present an excerpt from an article by D. Leontiev, an engineer at the Votkinsk plant. It was published more than a hundred years ago in the magazine “Sea Collection”, No. 5, vol. XXVIII for 1865.

This is how he describes the demolition of parts of the anchor: “When the spindle and both horns are ready, they begin to demolish.

The removal of a spindle with horns is done in one step. To do this, the ends of both horns and the spindle, which should be combined into one whole and form the anchor gate, are placed in three welding furnaces. When all three parts have heated up to the proper temperature, they are taken out of the furnaces on cranes under a steam hammer and first the weasel of one horn is placed on the anvil, and on it the spindle spike and then the weasel of the other horn, trying to bring all three parts into mutual relation as accurately as possible. a position corresponding to the shape of the anchor, with the upper horn being made shorter than an inch or two, taking into account that the hammer, striking directly on it, lengthens it more than the lower horn. After this, they let the hammer go to the highest rise and hasten to strike more often in order, as the blacksmiths say, to hammer in the pitch. When the master sees that the upper horn is well welded with the spindle spike, they stop the hammer and, raising the anchor, place an iron gasket under the lower horn and again launch the hammer, which presses the tip of the lower horn against the gasket with blows and thereby facilitates proper welding. After this, they begin to trim off the excess metal in the gate and at the same time try to bring the horns with the spindle to their normal position, which could have been damaged during forging, and then the anchor is taken to the forge for final finishing. The removal of the 270 pood anchor lasts more than a quarter of an hour. Agree, you need to be able to do such an important and cumbersome job conscientiously.

74. Shape of the horn and claw of the anchor of the Votkinsk plant in the mid-18th century.

The anchor that arrived at the forge is in an unenviable condition: the place where it should have been connected to the spindle (gate) presents deep cracks, depressions or unnecessary elevations of metal; the horns are not in the same plane with the spindle, and their outer contour does not constitute that part of the circle that should be formed with a radius equal to 0.37 of the spindle length. In addition to these inevitable shortcomings, it often turns out that both the spindle and the horns in the places adjacent to the collar have become much thinner as a result of the strong wares given to them before the anchor was removed - in a word, they were burned. In order to give it both strength and a decent appearance in such, one might say, pitiful state of the future symbol of hope that has entered the forge, a lot of time, labor and expense are required; and, out of necessity, tedious work begins.

First, the horns and the spindle are straightened, they are bent, pulled back, twisted, twisted, and when, finally, these parts along their width are aligned with each other in the same section plane and the extra outline of the horns, although only partially, is introduced into the orbit of the normal curve, then, being content and with this, they begin to apply the strips, which achieves the goal of giving the anchor a nice appearance.”...

This is how anchors were made a hundred years ago. Hell of a job! Such work really required “great diligence and extreme skill,” to use the words of Peter’s “Regulations.” I. anchor masters of the Urals were virtuosos of their craft. Behind the dry but precise presentation of the engineer D. Leontyev, one can feel all the stress of very long and hard physical labor in smoky forges near puddling furnaces and furnaces bursting with heat. We can safely say: in the range of blacksmith products of the last century there is no thing that was made with such diligence and attention as an anchor. Each anchor made in the Urals rightly deserves the name “Tsar Anchor”, and each of the found Ural anchors is worthy of being installed on a pedestal in the most honorable place, as was done with the “Tsar Cannon” and “Tsar Bell” , although the first never fired, and the second never rang, while the anchors of the Urals served the glorious Russian fleet for a long time and faithfully under Ushakov, Lazarev and Nakhimov.

The forged anchor was subjected to several tests. The cleanliness of the finish was checked by heating to a dark cherry color, when all the imperfections of the forging appeared. Then they threw it three times onto a cast-iron plate from a pile driver, lifting it the first time by the length of the spindle, the second time by half the length of the spindle, and the third time by the length of the horn. The anchor that withstood this test was thrown two more times with each side of the spindle onto a sharp cast-iron anvil. If he passed this test, he was hung up and beaten with seven-pound hammers. At the same time, a clear, ringing sound indicated that the forging was dense and there were no holes or cracks in it. If the anchor passed the test, a mark was stamped on it.

This should be discussed in more detail.

The brand on the anchor is his face, his “passport”, so to speak. And if you know how to decipher it, then you can learn a lot about the anchor from the surviving mark.

Since the time of Peter the Great, there have been certain rules for marking anchors in Russia.

Here is an excerpt from one of them, extracted from the file of the Central State Archives of the USSR Navy.

“The case of 1860 about the request of the Department of Mining and Salt Affairs to send naval officers to the Votkinsk plant to be present during the testing of anchors” (Sheet 251). “At the end of the test, when the anchor can withstand it, marks are placed on it: 1 - indicating the name of the plant; 2 - name of the manager; 3 - name of the master; 4 - caretaker's name; 5 - name of the commission agent, sample manufacturer; 6 - year of manufacture; 7 - anchor weight in pounds.”

From the Ural factories, the anchors that passed the test were sent to their place of service - the Black Sea or the Baltic. Their journey to the ship was long.

The finished anchors for Sevastopol were loaded onto rowing barges and floated down the Kama River, and then along the Volga to the village of Perevoloki. There, anchors were transferred from barges to shallow-draft barges, and barge haulers dragged them along a tributary of the Volga - the Kamyshinka River - to the source of Ilovlya, which flows into the Don. Winter was coming here, and anchors were carried along the first route on huge sleighs for as much as fifty miles. In the spring, when the rivers opened up, the anchors fell into the Don basin, and only then into the Azov and Black Seas. In Sevastopol or Nikolaev, oak rods were attached to them.

Now it was necessary to distribute the anchors among the ships. After all, one ship needs an anchor of one mass, and another – another.

In addition to various simple formulas of a purely empirical nature, which have already been discussed, in the middle of the last century, the Russian navy used a rule derived from comparing the mass of anchors with the dimensions of ships of the Russian, English and French fleets. The length of the ship from the stem to the sternpost at the height of the gon-deck was multiplied by its greatest width with plating and the resulting product was divided by a certain number. It was: for three-deck ships - 40, two-deck - 41, frigates - 42, corvettes - 45, brigs - 50, tenders and schooners - 55, large transports - 45, medium and small transports - 50.

The resulting quotient showed the mass of the anchor in pounds. For example, the length of the three-deck battleship “Twelve Apostles” - one of the largest battleships of the Russian fleet - was 211 feet and 9 inches on the gon deck, and the width with plating was 58 feet and 6 inches. The product was 12387.37. This number, divided by 40, showed the weight of the anchor in pounds - 310. The length of the ship "Rostislav" along the gon-deck was 197 feet and 4 inches, the width with plating was 57 feet. The product 11247, divided by 41, showed the mass of the anchor - 274 pounds.

In fact, on the ship "Twelve Apostles" the anchors weighed from 283 to 330 pounds, and on the "Rostislav" - from 264 to 278 pounds. If the shipyard did not have an anchor calculated by weight, then it was allowed to take an anchor several pounds more or less, namely: for anchors from 300 to 120 pounds, an increase of up to 9 pounds was allowed, and a decrease of up to 6 pounds. If the mass of the calculated anchor was less than 120 pounds, then the actual mass of the anchor could be 6 pounds less and 3 pounds more than the calculated one. They were similar to those that currently decorate the Admiralty building in Leningrad on the Neva side. They say that they were forged in 1863 by blacksmiths of the Nevsky Shipyard for the battleships Admiral Spiridov, Admiral Chichagov and Admiral General.

What is the mass of the largest Admiralty anchor made in Russia?

There is an opinion that the heaviest admiralty anchors in Russia were made to launch the battle cruisers Borodino, Izmail, Kinburn and Navarin. These huge ships at that time, with a displacement of 32,500 tons, were launched (but unfinished) from the slipways of the Baltic Shipyard and the New Admiralty Shipyard in 1915-1916. The anchors, whose mass reached almost ten tons, had wooden rods.

Given the enormous difficulties involved in making large anchors, it can be argued that the cost of "symbols of hope" a century ago was prohibitive. For example, at the Votkinsk plant, a pound of anchor cost the treasury (with overhead costs) 4 rubles 99 kopecks.