Job - Ropemaking

Charleston Footprints -

Ropemaker's Lane

Many strollers notice the small lane off Meeting Street between Tradd Street and St. Michael’s Alley with the name Ropemakers. It actually was the site of Charles Snetter’s Rope Manufactory from the 1790’s until 1803. In the era before industrialization and steam power, rope was made by hand along long such “rope walks”. Workers would push an apparatus on wheels that would “lap” the long lengths of hemp and fiber, twisting strands into thick sections of ship rope or fishing net. In this method, the stress on the rope was dispersed evely among the twisted mass of strands, and to create length an mass suitable for hauling sails or docking ships, workers would walk the equivalent of six or seven miles a day up and down the narrow lane. Much of the raw material used in the colonial period was hemp from the cannabis plant, which is better known as marijuana, and the same stuff they were working on Snetter’s walk was being smoked in pipes at local taverns. The practice of making rope in this manner faded with steam-powered mechanisms that could do the work faster an more efficiently. Snetter did not live to see the day that his rope work would be made obsolete, and although he died in 1803, Charleston has “knot” forgotten him.