Blockspulleys to a landlubberare simple machines that have many uses aboard ship, as well as onshore. Remember how your mouth hung open as you watched movers taking a piano out of a fourth story window? The guy on the end of the tackle eased the piano safely to the sidewalk with a mysterious arrangement of blocks and ropes. Or, youve been in the country and watched the farmer use a block and tackle to put hay in a barn. Since old Dobbin or the tractor did the hauling, there was no need for a fancy arrangement of ropes and blocks. Incidentally, youll often hear the rope or tackle called the fall, block and tack, or block and fall.

In the Navy youll rig a block and tackle to make some of your work easier. Learn the names of the parts of a block. Figure 2-1 will give you a good start on this. Look at the single block and see some of the ways you

can use it. If you lash a single block to a fixed object-an overhead, a yardarm, or a bulkhead-you give yourself the advantage of being able to pull from a convenient direction. For example, in figure 2-2 you haul up a flag hoist, but you really pull down. You can do this by having a single sheaved block made fast to the yardarm. This makes it possible for you to stand in a convenient place near the flag bag and do the job. Otherwise you would have to go aloft, dragging the flag hoist behind you.