FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THEHAMMOCKSOURCE MARCH 6, 2009 PO Box 1602 • Greenville, NC 27835 • USA (800) 334-1078 • www.hammocksource.com Note to Jack Frost: Time to chill-out! That’s a low blow, Jack. Even Old Man Winter loves a little summer leisure

The legend of Jack Frost safe from snakes and scorpions; the Ward’s quest for cool sleeping does not include any men- conquistadors who followed Co- fi nally led him to experiment with tion of a hammock. For that lumbus quickly embraced it, which hammock design. He started matter, the history of the ham- hardly went unnoticed back in with thicker rope – cotton rope mock doesn’t have Jack in it, either. Europe. In the 1600s, the British Navy – and a lattice-like weave, introduced a canvas hammock which eliminated the need for knots And why would it? Where Jack’s as its new ship’s bed; the cocoon- within the hammock bed. frosty fi ngers knit frigid winter days, ing design kept sailors from being the hammock is enticingly inter- But his true legacy is the invention of tossed about during heavy seas. By woven with warm weather. Snow the spreader bar for holding a ham- the time of the American Civil War, in a hammock is as wrong as a mock open even when in use. Ward the canvas hammock was also Zamboni in Zimbabwe. bored a row of holes in two sawed- standard equipment for U.S. Navy down staves (that is, slats) from old Though the hammock is some- seamen, who often continued oak storage barrels. He threaded times said to have been “discov- using it upon returning to shore. the holes with lengths of rope, ered” by Christopher Columbus, its Jump to the late 19th century, which he then tied to the closing history is in fact tightly tied to the when low-country South Carolina loops on both short sides of the steamy Western tropics. Hammocks riverboat captain Joshua Ward had hammock body. Next he tied each were being used as beds by native tired of bedding down atop hot, set of remaining rope-ends peoples across the Caribbean and grass-fi lled mattresses as he ferried to metal rings for hanging his the Americas for about 500 years cargo from the inland plantations new bed from post hooks on before Columbus carried a few of to just north of his home, the resort his boat. And with that, the clas- the curious things back to Spain. town of Pawleys Island. Ward had sic American hammock was born, Hammock materials ranged ruled out canvas hammocks as no becoming in the century since the widely back then, from used better, cramped and sticky-hot, very paragon of leisure. fi shing nets to bark from the and while rope hammocks allowed As for the legend of Jack Frost? hamak (thus, hammock) tree, palm air to circulate around the sleeper, He comes from Norway, by way of fronds, sisal rope and various indige- those of Ward’s day were knotty England. But the far better question nous fabrics. In the wilds of the New and unstable, the hemp or manila is where Jack goes, once winter World, the hammock offered a bed rope scratchy and uncomfortable. has wound down. To the North Pole, perhaps? Or Greenland? Not a chance! Think sand, warm and sugar-white. Antigua, maybe, and a to-die-for sunset, a seaside hammock stretched between palm trees. And ol’ Jack, lying back, stir- ring the ice in one of those tiny-um- brella drinks, his glass the only frosty thing for miles.