Anchor

An anchor is a device, usually made of metal, used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water and prevent it from drifting with the wind or current, its name derived through the Latin ancora from the Greek ankyra. The earliest anchors were most likely simple weights such as rocks, and rock anchors have been recovered dating from at least the Bronze Age; the ancient Greeks also used baskets of stones, sand-filled sacks and lead-weighted logs, all holding a vessel by weight and friction alone rather than by grip. Anchors with hooked flukes that dig into the seabed appeared later, and the Viking Ladby ship, probably from the 10th century, was found with an iron fluked anchor of this improved type.