Vintage Taffrail Log Rotator With Fish And Line

This is a vintage Taffrail log Rotator with fish and line. It is made of steel and was painted black. Sailors have used various methods such as tracking a chip of wood pass the side of a boat and how many knots in a line unreeled as the ship moved (where the nautical term knots comes from). The Taffrail log gets its roots in the middle of the 27th century. Sailors started using a small paddle wheel or a rotating spinner to measure distance and speed. This method, in 1878, lead to the invention of the modern-day mechanical Taffrail log.