Bitts

Bitts are paired vertical wooden or metal posts mounted either aboard a ship or on a wharf, pier, or quay. The posts are used to secure mooring lines, ropes, hawsers, or cables.^[1] Bitts aboard wooden sailing ships (sometime called cable-bitts) were large vertical timbers mortised into the keel and used as the anchor cable attachment point.^[2] Bitts are carefully manufactured and maintained to avoid any sharp edges that might chafe and weaken the mooring lines.^[3]

Shipboard bitts

Shoreside bitts

Use

Mooring lines may be laid around the bitts either singly or in a figure-8 pattern with the friction against tension increasing with each successive turn. As a verb bitt means to take another turn increasing the friction to slow or adjust a mooring ship's relative movement.^[1]

Mooring fixtures of similar purpose:

• A bollard is a single vertical post useful to receive a spliced loop at the end of a mooring line.^[1]
• A cleat has horizontal horns.^[4]

References

1. Knight, Austin M. (1937). Modern Seamanship (Tenth ed.). New York: D. Van Nostrand Company. p. 783.
2. Keegan, John (1989). The Price of Admiralty. New York: Viking. p. 276. ISBN 0-670-81416-4.
3. Manning, George Charles (1930). Manual of Naval Architecture. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company. p. 158.
4. Knight, p.788