A smaller ‘Dodge’ cleat from our exceptional collection of 1950’s American minesweeper deck fittings, the rarest and most delicious of all chandlery.

As many of you know all fittings and fixtures on minesweepers must be non magnetic so as to avoid setting off the mines, so everything from the anchor chain to the vice in the workshop must be non-ferrous. Further to that the Americans used superior gun-metal bronze to brass resulting in these sculpturally beautiful ‘gold’ fittings. With gun-metal bronze always having such a high scrap value 99% of these fittings were thrown in the scrap which is why these are so incredibly rare.

Why ‘Dodge’? Well, briefly, in the 1920’s Horace Dodge of Dodge motors commissioned a stunning private yacht to be built, SS Delphine. Whilst She was being built Dodge took great pleasure in designing nearly every fixture and fitting onboard, including these distinctive bronze deck fittings, the prefect balance of marine form & function. Following the end of WW2 the American Navy needed to build lots of minesweepers to clear up all the mines laid by the Kriegsmarine and having seen the Delphine, who was requisitioned as a gunboat in WW2, the architects realised they need look no further for the perfect deck fittings and replicated them for the whole fleet, along with nigh on all the bronze-ware onboard, from the door handles & door catches to the bollards & bow rollers.