Wiktionary
n. (context nautical English) each of the two main anchors of a ship, carried permanently attached to their cables on each side of the bow, always ready to be let go in case of an emergency.
Usage examples of "bower anchor".
Meanwhile the bosun and his mates, together with the most experienced forecastle hands and tierers, roused out the best cable the Diane possessed, the most nearly new and unfrayed, a seventeen-inch cable that they turned end for end - no small undertaking in that confined space, since it weighed three and a half tons - and bent it to the best bower anchor by the wholly unworn end that had always been abaft the bitts: the bitter end.
With an enormous smithy-noise the ball struck the fluke of the Sophie's best bower anchor, bent it half over and glanced off into the sea far behind.
After his long abstinence it worked beautifully: but even half a pint of laudanum (and he was nowhere near his old excesses) could not have kept out the enormous crash as lightning struck the Surprise, melting the shank of her best bower anchor, running along the seven foremost larboard guns and setting them off, but above all rending and shattering her iron-hooped bowsprit in the most extraordinary manner.
The first lieutenant and boatswain employed a portion in backing the best bower anchor with the sheet.
Carefully, the remaining bower anchor was lowered into it, and the boat moved under oars to the full length of the spliced anchor cables.
A bower anchor carried out, dropped in deep water and heaved upon would bring her off: but even the barge could not bear the weight of such an anchor.
I'm going to wear round, shoot up into wind, let go the larboard bower anchor and drift back.
They have no money or credit of course, but they have traded six nine-pounders, with a quantity of roundshot and grape, 27 muskets, two cables, one bower anchor and a kedge, for food, mostly sago.
The mizzen sail, which was bent for the occasional purpose of making the vessel ride more easily to the tide, was immediately set, and the other sails were also hoisted in a short time, when, in no small consternation, we bore away about one mile to the south-westward of the former station, and there let go the best bower anchor and cable in twenty fathoms water, to ride until the swell of the sea should fall, when it might be practicable to grapple for the moorings, and find a better anchorage for the ship.
Yet scarcely had she made a few yards, still grinding along the Shannon's side, but her quarter-gallery hooked in the fluke of the Shannon's best bower anchor.
She would stop in just about the right place - there, she had: the bowsprits of the two ships were just abaft each quarter of the Calypso, and he could see Southwick gesticulating to the boatswain at the starboard bower anchor: it was already hanging down only a few feet above the water.