marlinspike

plural marlinspikes · alternative marlin spike · alternative marlinespike · alternative marline spike · alternative marlingspike · alternative marling spike

1. A tool, consisting of a pointed metal spike, used to manipulate the strands of rope or cable when knotting and splicing.

   […] the afterguard, of whom they have but a sorry opinion, chiefly landsmen, never going aloft except to reef or furl the mainsail and in no wise competent to handle a marlinspike or turn in a dead-eye, say.

   1924, Herman Melville, chapter 12, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.

   2 more examples

   In a certain sense the captains were good sailors, but their knowledge and ambition were limited to dead reckoning, the tar bucket and marlinspike, a wife in every port, and plenty of rum and tobacco with no desire or ability to master the higher branches of navigation and seamanship.

   1911, Arthur Hamilton Clark, The Clipper Ship Era 1843-1869, Chapter 2

   There was / that interval of moonless calm filled only / with the water's and the rigging's usual sounds, / then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries / and they had fallen on us with machete / and marlinspike.

   1962, Robert Hayden, “Middle Passage”, in David Lehman, editor, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, Oxford University Press, published 2006, page 585