Heaving line bend


The heaving line bend is a knot dubiously presented as supposedly bending a smaller line to a larger line to be brought across some span. This particular knot gained its name and was put forwards to assume this role after a mistake in illustration. Hjalmar Ohrvall found the knot in a museum on a Japanese shamisen ; in his 1916, enlarged edition of Om Knutar, his daughter mis-drew the knot with a crossing at the top of the hitched-to bight of the larger material. Presumably, Ashley et al. saw only the mistaken image and assumed the function of the knot. Whether it has ever seen actual nautical use is unconfirmed the knot is of a rather insecure/instable nature for pulling a line through heavy seas. It is knot number 1463 in The Ashley Book of Knots, and appeared in the 1916 Swedish knot manual Om Knutar.