Tonking post

[cliffordpope]

I've just come across this word for the first time, accompanying a picture of an east coast smack.
It appears to mean a short temporary post, fitted into the slot where otherwise a removeable boom crutch would fit, used as a bollard or cleat.
Is this a general term, or is it specific to this particular function and locality?
It sounds jolly useful - I'm tempted to start using the word, or even making one, but I'd like to get the definition right first.
Is anyone familiar with tonking posts? Can anythink else removeable be described as tonking, or only posts?

 

[Lakesailor]

Was this Web Page the one? I haven't found any other mention on Google.

 

[DRW]

Well I this should be a lively thread, or so I thought at first, a tonking good post? /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

When I was a brat, a tonking was a hammering defeat in sport, to give someone a tonking was to beat them right and proper. (as in - we gave them persons of uncertain parental origin a right real tonkin.)

Not to be confused with stonking, which was a useful word for something pretty impresively large. (as in - that stonking great prop forward is a right real mean spirited person of uncertain parentage.)

Both words used on my boat, but not perhaps in the way meant here. I do like your version of a tonking post, much more appropriate than my heathen upbringing for this forum.

 

[Peterduck]

I have a vague feeling that I read of this in one of the late John Leather's articles on winter stowboating. Might pay to trawl [sorry, I couldn't resist it!] back through the back issues of CB.
Peter.

 

[cliffordpope]

That's the picture, Lakesailor. I have found no other reference to the word on the web.
It sounds as if it could be Chinese - isn't there a gulf of Ton-king? Perhaps the idea came originally from junks?

I'm on the lookout for an idea for a satisfactory boom crutch. I'm told the kind consisting of two posts with a board with 3 leathered indentations isn't appropriate for a victorian boat, more 30s. I hate the conventional scissors that fall overboard when you raise the boom. A single post, either folding or of the tonking variety, sounds a good idea, but it has to do more than just support the boom to hold an awning when tied up. When reefing in a wind there can be considerable sideways force on the crutch, which I suppose is the advantage of the scissors, with the mainsheet in hard.

One possibility with the tonking post would be to have a shorter, working post for reefing etc, but a higher one to give good headroom under an awning.
The picture doesn't give any detail of how an offset post actually supports the boom.

 

[cliffordpope]

I've just found this, in a dictionary of nautical terms:

Tompion, or Tomkin

The bung, or piece of wood, by which the mouth of the canon, is filled to keep out wet.

Not quite the same, but on similar lines.

 

[Mirelle]

Your typical 30\'s gallows set up.

Having a 30's boat I have one of these. One advantage is that should anyone inadvertently let go of the topping lift, the helmsman iin the cockpit is not "brained" by 3 cwt of boom, gaff and mainsail!

Since we have roller reefing, we don't actually use the gallows for reefing. Its other great benefit is that when one wants to lower the mainsail at sea, one can drop it into the gallows and not have to try to secure the boom in the scuppers as it sweeps the deck, which is not a lot of fun to put it mildly.

Jolie Brise, a 1900's French pilot cutter, has a good solid two position job. Whether this was fitted by M. Paumelle, or by EG Martin, or by Robert Somerset, is a question which a Jolie Brise expert would know the answer to.

All HW Tilman's pilot cutters had similar arrangements.

I don't at all fancy the idea of using a scissors crutch when under way - a guaranteed recipe for MOB, I think!

The issue with the tonking post is that rain water will get under deck, a Bad Thing IMHO, as the hole is always there, and it might be fun trying to ship the crutch with the boat behaving like a bucking bronco, but it has its attractions.

I would fit a good solid three position job and reply to the critics that 30's yachtsmen knew better than Victorian ones. After all, they had read Worth!

 

[Sniper]

Re: Your typical 30\'s gallows set up.

The little smack yacht that my Father used to own (built 1912) had a gallows like 'Mirelle's. Unfortunately, she didn't have a tonking post. I've also heard the expression applied to the thwart (as in tonking thwart) to which the post was fixed - visible in the picture of 'Sunbeam'

 

[mrswigglestick]

As far as I know, it's a term peculiar to East coast smacks (peculiar things, smacks); I've never come across it with the same meaning anywhere else. Of the local smacks, only one uses a crutch through the tonkin thwart, though it always seemed a good idea to me. The smack next door to my boat has little limber holes in the tonkin posts' sockets to try and drain the water out of them and avoid Mirelle's point, but I can imagine they'd get blocked.

 

[nmiller]

Hervey Benham's book The Stowboaters gives Tonking Post as the name used at Tollesbury for the portable timberhead or post socketing into the stern bench to which the stownet pinion was belayed. The pinion is the line used to retrieve the cod end or sleeves of the stownet.