Anchor Windlass

An anchor windlass is the maritime form of a windlass, a type of horizontal winch used to move heavy weights, built around a rotating cylinder or barrel turned by a crank, with larger versions adding separate winch heads at the ends to handle additional lines. The windlass is credited to the ancient Greek scientist Archimedes, and a surviving medieval windlass from between 1360 and 1400 is preserved in the Church of St Mary and All Saints in Chesterfield, England; the oldest known illustration of one appears in the Yuan-dynasty official Wang Zhen's 1313 Book of Agriculture, where it is shown raising water. Aboard ship the windlass is used specifically to raise and lower the anchor, a maritime application substantial enough that it is generally treated as its own device within the broader windlass family.