Editing Windlass (section)

==Spanish windlass==
[[File:SpanishWindlass2stick.jpg|thumb|Two Spanish windlasses on a bunch of sticks, in the starting position and tightened]]

A Spanish windlass is a device for tightening a rope or cable by twisting it using a stick as a lever. The rope or cable is looped around two points so that it is fixed at either end. The stick is inserted into the loop and twisted, tightening the rope and pulling the two points toward each other. It is commonly used to move a heavy object such as a pipe or a post a short distance. It can be an effective device for pulling cars or cattle out of mud.<ref name="torture">{{cite book|first=Terry G.|last=Jordan-Bychkov|chapter=Does the Border Matter: Cattle Ranching and the Forty-ninth parallel|editor1-last=Evans|editor1-first=Sterling|title=The Borderlands of the American and Canadian West|url=https://archive.org/details/borderlandsofame00ster|url-access=registration|date=2006|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|isbn=9780803218260 }}</ref> A Spanish windlass is sometimes used to tighten a [[tourniquet]] or a [[straitjacket]]. A Spanish windlass trap can be used to kill small game. An 1898 report to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations about an American vessel captured by a Spanish gunboat described the Spanish windlass as a torture device.<ref name="senate">{{cite book|last1=Davis|first1=Cushman K.|title=Report of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations|date=1897}}</ref> One of the captives' wrists were tied together. The captor then twisted a stick in the rope until it tightened and caused the man's wrists to swell.