The crucial strand that helped Britain's navy rule the waves... ROPE!

With an average ship of the line needing 154,500 feet for its rigging alone, ropemaking was vitally important during the Age of Sail. Author TIM QUEENEY reveals in his new book how good rope helped keep the UK afloat, literally

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FOR MUCH of British history, the Royal Navy excelled in defending its island homeland. During the Age of Sail when ships of the line were built of stout English oak, the navy was often referred to as the “wooden walls” that protected Britain from invasion.

But while wood was certainly essential, there was another element without which sailing ships, both warships and merchantmen, would have been helpless — rope.

Simon Stephens, curator of the ship model and boat collections at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, explains: “Without rope there are no sails because it was the rope that supported the masts and spars and worked the rigging that allowed the ship to capture the force of the wind.

“You can have sails, but without rope they’re just meaningless.”

Ships in the Age of Sail were almost absurdly festooned with thousands of feet of rope. So important was rope to operating a sailing vessel that hemp (the fibres of which are used as raw material, unlike Cannabis Sativa buds for smoking) was an important strategic commodity.

British foreign policy was shaped by the need to procure what were termed naval stores: tree trunks for masts, pitch and pine tar for caulking hulls, and hemp fibres for spinning into miles and miles of rope.

In the early 19th century when Britain faced off against Napoleon’s continental empire, hemp was at the core of the conflict. Lord Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in 1805 against the combined French and Spanish fleets meant Napoleon’s attempt to destroy the Royal Navy in battle was dashed, and so were his hopes of getting his army ashore in Britain.

The French emperor turned to economic warfare and attempted to cut off British access to Russian hemp with a trade embargo. When that also failed, he invaded Russia in 1812 to stop the hemp trade.

When the French army retreated in defeat from Russia months later, British access to Russian hemp was assured.