Sheet anchor

The Ship having thus depth of water again, and come into a place of some convenient anchourage, our first anchour not holding us, we let fall our sheet anchour […]

By Noon the Sea went very high indeed, and our Ship rid Forecastle in, shipp’d several Seas, and we thought once or twice our Anchor had come home; upon which our Master order’d out the Sheet Anchor; so that we rode with two Anchors a-Head, and the Cables vered out to the better End.

1691, Ezekiel Hopkins, An Exposition of the Ten Commandments, with Other Sermons, London: Nathanael Ranew, “The Ninth Commandment,” p. 62, And doubtless when other Arguments have been baffled by a Temptation, this hath been a Sheet Anchor to the Soul, and hath often held it in the greatest Storms, when the Wind and Waves have beat most furiously against it.

“[…] If you are afeard of goblins, brother, put your trust in the Lord, and he’ll prove a sheet-anchor to you.”

[…] you can imagine how like being struck by lightning it was to find myself in a country where written contracts were worthless!—that main security, that sheet-anchor, that absolute necessity, of business.

[…] I had the joyful vision of myself far from home, from the familiar faces, from all my sheet-anchors, sitting on a milestone in the dark […]

1971, Nelson Mandela, letter to the wife of fellow-prisoner Mac Maharaj dated 1 February, 1971, in Sahm Venter (ed.), The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela, New York: Liveright, 2018, It is the prettiest portrait of her that I’ve seen. Its message is clear & unambiguous: Darling I’m the centre of the universe; sheet anchor of all your dreams!