Sailor's Breastplate (Noun)
Meaning
A knot in the rope used to drag a gun carriage.
Classification
Nouns denoting man-made objects.
Examples
- A sailor's breastplate is used to drag a gun carriage along the beach to change the battery's position for attacking enemy fortifications.
- Historians point out that during a sea siege the rope knot forming a sailor's breastplate around a cannon helped shift it more effectively to strategic spots on shore.
- Archaeologists working at an 18th-century beach battle site identified evidence of rope use forming a sailor's breastplate as means of mobilizing cannon guns for artillery operations.
- Experts conclude that effective repositioning of cannon required creating a sturdy sailor's breastplate that evenly distributed forces of tension among several points.
- Militarily it's noteworthy that properly arranged ropes used in making a sailor's breastplate facilitate swiftness of movements by decreasing heavy carriage pulling time to only hours for substantial defensive equipment repositioning.