Hope is the Anchor - Right to the Bitter End - Saved by a Sheer Fluke - Free Ackworth Motifs Mini-Chart

Felix Fabri a German monk and pilgrim gives his account of travelling to the Holy Land in a Venetian galley in 1494. A furious sirocco had blown up and threatened to blow the galley onto the rocks on a lee shore. Fabri's ship had already thrown out 17 anchors (ships always carry more than one) to try to secure the boat but still the weight was not enough to hold the ship offshore in the gale. And so they threw out the last and heaviest anchor - and the last and heaviest anchor was always called Hope. Fabri writes: This anchor again followed the galley just as a plough follows the horse. It was weighed again and dropped once more where it caught upon a rock; but when the galley stopped, and rode to her cable, sheering from side to side, the fluke of the anchor slipped off this rock and began to drag again, but of a sudden came upon another rock where the fluke stuck fast. So there we hung throughout the night.... And I am sure many prayers were uttered in the darkness as the ship rode with its cable paid out to the bitter end with no more turns left around the bitt of the ship. Reading this reminded me of my father, who when I was very small would always impress upon me the need to be able to find my way around buildings etc with my eyes closed - and this I did and continue to do in a bizarrely obsessive way. Only this morning, for some reason, it struck me that my obsession was but an echo of my father's total obsession when for 6 years, his life had depended on being able to find his way out from the very bottom of a ship to the hatches, in the dark, in 10 minutes flat, before the hatches were welded shut after a torpedo attack.
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The Ackworth School Pattern Book contains over 100 charted Quaker motifs is available as a PDF download.