What is "handspike"

Usage examples of "handspike".

The handspike which secured the chief leak had worked out of its place, and the blankets and boards were forced inwards.

The other gunners fetched shot and powder, sometimes heaved on a handspike or pushed on the wheels as the gun was re laid then swabbed and loaded again.

That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars.

I say with your handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains.

Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear with their clothes in their hands.

They dragged the guns forward after each shot, levered the trails round with handspikes, and pushed the ammunition into the hot muzzles that steamed from the sponging out.

The gunners desperately slewed the guns round, the men heaving on the handspikes as yet more bullets came from the north.

Then the re-loading, the swabber pushing wet sponges down the barrel with a long sssshhhhhh of steam to quench sparks, the powder-bag and wad, two loaders tipping the heavy steel ball in like a giant ball bearing, the rammer pushing it down, the crew hauling on the tackle to run the gun forward again and the captain slamming in a new friction-fuse, glaring over the barrel, heaving on a handspike, spinning the elevation screw and making hand signals to the crew to push the breech around and bring the gun to bear.

He saw the team of the starboard brass quarter-deck fourpounder with crows and handspike in their hands and a common look of anxious, almost frightened concern, waiting for the roll: it came, and they gently urged their gleaming, highly-polished gun overboard - their pretty number fourteen over the side.

Porter, whose courage was none of the fiercest, and who had been for years given over to that terror of discipline which servitude induces, made but a feeble attempt at resistance, and forcing the handspike from him, the sentry, Jones, rushed aft to help the pilot.

The wagon's real purpose was rescuing dismounted cannon barrels, but now its crane jib hoisted the rotting horse car-casses six feet in the air, then swung them onto the logs, where a team of men with their mouths and nostrils scarfed against the stink levered the swollen corpses into place with handspikes.

When this foundation was laid, the next nearest surrounding logs were drawn alongside and rolled up on skids, by the logmen stationed there with their handspikes for the purpose.

Beside the guns were the tools of the artillerymen's trade: drag-chains, relievers, rammers, sponges, buckets, searchers, rammers, wormhooks, portfires and handspikes.

As he handed it to Tilton, the old ordnance man exclaimed, "It's a handspike!

Throughout the last dogwatch of Sunday, therefore, and in what few moments of leisure the forenoon and afternoon watches of Monday allowed, the captains of the guns and their crews titivated their piece, making sure that all blocks ran free, that all crows, worms, sponges, handspikes and other instruments that ought to be there were there in fact, smoothing their already well-smoothed roundshot, gently swabbing the name painted over the gun-port: Towser, Nancy Dawson, Spitfire, Revenge.