This evening was checking out new items at one of my favorite online hobby stores and saw two new 3-D stockless bower anchor product offerings; one sold as battleship size, the other as destroyer size. What caught my eye on these was the shape of the ring at the top of the anchor shank; the ring being the device by which the anchor was attached to the chain.

Rather than being the inverted "U" shape ring common to warships with stockless bower anchors, or perhaps an inverted "U" with a circular enlargement at the end, the 3-D anchors had a real ring 360 degree circular ring.

Thinking this circular ring strange, I checked out all my Anatomy of the Ships volumes and found none that none of the 12 volumes (spanning 5 countries and vessels from HMS Dreadnought to CV USS Intrepid) had a 360 degree ring at the top of their stockless bower (and sheet) anchors. Also checked my father's 1940 10th edition Bluejacket's Manual and it corroborated the U-shaped "ring" variants.

So can we conclude that the 3-D anchor manufacturer got it wrong? Or does some member of our forum have insight and wisdom into this question that will make this super-detailing part an accurate after market add on?

Note carefully that the scope of this discussion is stockless bower and sheet anchors only; it was common to find the 360 degree ring on smaller stream, stern, kedge boat anchors, especially those having stocks and stowed on a billboard or secured to a clump cathead.

Kip

Kip