A windlass rotated in a horizontal plane

Usage examples of capstan.

He tied one end of the rope to the capstan, and the other end was tied to a large boat, a type of whaling boat, that had been filled with firewood and candlewood, all soaked with oil so it would burn well.

I hastened to the aperture, and under the crustations of coral, covered with fungi, syphonules, alcyons, madrepores, through myriads of charming fish--girelles, glyphisidri, pompherides, diacopes, and holocentres--I recognised certain debris that the drags had not been able to tear up--iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, bullets, capstan fittings, the stem of a ship, all objects clearly proving the wreck of some vessel, and now carpeted with living flowers.

Soon he was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head.

The ends of all the running ropes, with the exception of the signal halyards and poop-down-haul, were rove through snatch-blocks, and led to the capstan or windlass, so that not a yard was braced or a sail set without the assistance of machinery.

The whaleboats were cleaned, lowered and raised again, the men on the davits chanting an old whaling capstan song to lighten the chore.

Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard.

They stared a cross the channel, and in the moonlight saw the silhouette of the Gull begin to alter, as the hawser running from the anchor to her capstan Pulliede her stern round, and her full broadside was presented.

Slowly, the passage of time lost all significance, and none were sure whether it was night or day when the sound of the anchor capstan from the upper deck reverberated through the hull and they heard the faint shouts of the petty-officers relaying the orders to get the Gull under way.

The topmast men were already half-way up the shrouds, and another gang was manning the capstan to weigh the anchor.

The riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on down on the forecastle, and I went down there and stood around in the way-- or mostly skipping out of it--till the mate suddenly roared a general order for somebody to bring him a capstan bar.

They cast anchor, and then began to turn the capstan to loosen the moorings of the net.

Then there were the wines hocks, moselles (yeah, German, old stock, I guess), clarets and burgundies, even some vintage stuff sharing space on the edge and underneath the table with cartons of cigarettes Lucky Strike, Camel, Wills Capstan, Churchmans No 1, and some I hadn't even taken note of.

Gant struck up a chantey and slowly and steadily they plodded around the capstan, and inch by slow inch the schooner began to move once more.

The Tlingits, filled with their age-old hatred of Russians, fell to with a will and to the tune of chanteys they shoved and pushed on the capstan bars.

Sharina could hear the crew calling a chantey as they walked the capstan, raising the yard and sail which had rested on deck while the ship was in harbor.