A type used by sailors in the 19th and early 20th century was weighted with a heavy lead ball at one or both ends of a piece of baleen, which is then wrapped in woven or plaited or and then varnished over. Some carefully made examples were likely to have been used by a boatswain or ship's master-at-arms or ship's mate as a badge of office and discipline-enforcer, so some modern sources call this weapon a "bosun's cosh." The term "blackjack" is sometimes applied by early 20th-century maritime sources to a lead weight knotted or woven into the end of a short piece of rope that serves as a handle, though most sources would consider this weapon a type of slungshot.