Fouled Anchors

Last modified: 2005-03-19 by phil nelson
Keywords: anchor: fouled |
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Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom

by Tom Gregg

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I am writing a paper on the origin of the "Fouled Anchor" as a universal naval symbol.

I know that it was the personal seal of Lord Howard of Effingham (helped to defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588), and then became the official symbol of the British Admiralty. I believe a variation of the seal had been in use by the Lord High Admiral of Scotland about a century earlier.

My essential question is: why the "Fouled Anchor"? A fouled anchor is a condition at sea that is to be avoided, as it may cause the vessel at anchor to "drag" its anchor, thus endangering the vessel.
Dick Katzman, 10 December 1999

The Oxford Companion to ships & the sea, edited by Peter Kemp, 1976, has the following explanation:

The use of the foul, or fouled anchor, an abomination to seamen when it occurs in practice, as the seal of the highest office of maritime administration is purely on the grounds of its decorative effect, the rope cable around the shank of the anchor giving a pleasing finish to the stark design of an anchor on its own.

Jarig Bakker, 10 December 1999

Helene Philibert, "Those Carried in the Tops of Ships," US Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1931, quotes Cmdr C. N. Robinson's book The British Fleet [no date given] as follows:

[Up to the late Tudor or Stuart period] the Admiralty badge was a crescent moon with a golden star between the horns, but about that time the crescent was replaced by the anchor which was also used a seal with a motto round it according to the fancy of the Lord High Admiral. When the Earl of Northumberland was in office, the anchor had a cable festooned about it in a wonderful manner. The Duke of York put this anchor into the Admiralty flag. About 1720 the foul anchor which had before been the badge of the victualling officer was taken for the Admiralty and it was put into the seal, badge and flag. In 1815, the clean anchor was restored to the flag, but the foul anchor remains the badge at Whitehall.

Joseph McMillan, 11 December 1999

For the record: Robinson, Charles Napier (1849-1936) wrote 'The British Fleet' in 1894; it was largely a study of the development of materiel and naval administration. Source: The Oxford Companion to Ships & the Sea, 1976
Jarig Bakker, 12 December 1999