I would like to correctly identify the item shown in the Museum Artifact column on page 13 of your Aug. 15 issue.

It is not a pulley or a block, but a "dead eye."  Dead eyes and lanyards were used to set up a vessel's rigging before turnbuckles or rigging-screws came into use.  An example would be that a dead eye would be fastened to a chain plate on the hull's side, and a companion dead eye would be fastened to the lower end of a mast's shroud maybe 1' to 3' up.  A piece of line called the lanyard would be rove through the dead eyes and pulled hard to remove all of the shroud's sl...