Before hydraulic winches, electric motors, and steam capstans transformed industrial labor, moving multi-ton loads aboard wooden sailing ships and across muddy battlefields depended entirely on human muscle multiplied by the physics of the lever. At the center of that mechanical world stood the handspike—a deceptively simple wooden bar tipped or shod with iron. For more than three centuries, this specialized lever served as the indispensable tool of the Age of Sail, enabling crews to haul up massive iron anchors, aim three-ton naval cannons, and manhandle siege artillery across continents.
Etymology and Mechanical Design
Entering the English maritime lexicon in the early seventeenth century, the word handspike originated as a direct borrowing from the Middle Dutch term handspaecke (combining hand with spake, meaning a wooden bar, spoke, or pole, later influenced in English spelling by the word “spike”). Unlike an ordinary straight tree branch or an all-iron crowbar—which was too heavy and slippery to wield safely on a pitching wet wooden ship deck—a maritime and military handspike was precision-crafted by shipwrights and wheelwrights from tough, shock-resistant hardwoods, primarily white ash, hickory, or rock elm.
Measuring between five and seven feet in length, the wooden bar was carved with two distinct geometric sections:
- The Square or Beveled Heel (The Toe): The lower working end of the bar was planed into a square, rectangular, or wedge-shaped cross-section, often reinforced with an iron shoe. This flat, squared face prevented the bar from rolling or twisting sideways when wedged beneath the axle of a cannon carriage or inserted into the square socket holes of a ship’s windlass.
- The Rounded Grip: Above the square base, the shaft tapered smoothly into a round, ergonomic cylinder about two inches thick, allowing a sailor or artilleryman to wrap both hands securely around the wood and lean their entire body weight onto the lever.
Hauling the Anchor on Windlasses and Capstans
Aboard seventeenth- and eighteenth-century merchant vessels and warships, the handspike was the mechanical key that turned the windlass—the horizontal octagonal wooden barrel mounted on the forecastle deck used to haul up the heavy hemp anchor cable. Cut into the rotating wooden barrel of the windlass were rows of deep square holes.
To raise the anchor from the seabed, sailors stood in a line facing the windlass, thrust the squared heels of their six-foot handspikes straight up into the vertical holes, grabbed the top of the bars, and hauled them downward toward the deck in unison to the rhythm of a sea shanty. As the barrel clicked around one notch on its iron ratchet pawls, the sailors pulled their handspikes out of the lower holes, plugged them into the fresh holes at the top, and hauled down again. On larger warships that used a vertical rotating drum called a capstan, similar long wooden bars known as capstan bars were slotted horizontally into the drumhead, turning the upper deck into a human-powered gear wheel.
Aiming Three-Ton Cannons: The Gunner’s Handspike
In both naval broadsides and land artillery batteries from the Thirty Years’ War through the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War, the handspike was the steering wheel of the cannon. A single naval 24-pounder or 32-pounder cast-iron cannon barrel and its oak carriage weighed upwards of three tons (six thousand pounds). Every time the gun fired, the violent recoil slammed the carriage backward across the deck, requiring the gun crew to run it back out the gunport and re-aim it left, right, up, or down within seconds.
Two dedicated crew members—the “handspikemen”—stood on either side of the rear of the wooden gun carriage holding heavy beveled handspikes:
- Elevating the Breech: Using the wooden step-cheeks of the carriage as a fulcrum, the handspikemen wedged the tips of their bars beneath the heavy rear cascabel of the iron cannon barrel and pried downward, lifting the multi-ton breech effortlessly for a split second so the gun captain could slide the wooden aiming wedge (the quoin) in or out to set the vertical range.
- Traversing Left and Right: To aim the cannon horizontally toward a moving enemy ship, the handspikemen jammed their bars under the rear corners (the trail or axletree) of the carriage and heaved sideways in short, coordinated hops, pivoting three tons of iron across the oak planks with millimeter accuracy.
