shearpole

Example Sentences

• "He then excavated under the upper edge as much as possible, so that the escaping air passed through and loosened up the material on that side, wedged up and strained the pipe as before, and, with a battering-ram made of a 12-in. square oak timber, 12 ft. long, and in the middle suspended from shearpoles, struck successive blows against the top of the pile; while it was desceending; it was thus quickly brought into position."
• "The best example of these devices that I know of in Aberdeen is at the shearpoles, where the worm and wheel are used for the hoisting motion, the screw and nut for the derricking."
• "The shearpole tradition is so strong that even in some national forests where regulations specifically prohibit cutting live trees, the rangers look the other way when they see freshly chopped shear poles supporting a tent."
• "so careful were our officers to keep the rattlins taught and straight, that we were obliged to go aloft upon the ropes and shearpoles with which the rigging was swifted in; and these were used as jury rattlins until we got close upon the coast"
• "On the greasy deck of a whaling vessel, piled as high as the main shearpole with immense slabs of blubber sizzling in the heat of a tropic sun, the task is peculiarly disagreeable."
• "The man who had trodden on his fingers stood holding on to the shearpole as if paralysed, but the skipper, who was just descending from aloft, saw what had happened and leapt clean over the intervening boat into the sea."