Thank you Squarerigger,
First, I have to repeat what I have already said in previous posts (1), about the the hitches around ropes or poles being
"close to the same thing", as you say : They are, in fact, SO different, in how they work, in the mechanisms they use to do the job, that their superficially similar "looks" should not make them
even called by the same name ("hitch").
I have tried ABoK #3141, as all the hitches around poles or ropes of ABoK. Much, much inferior to a ww hitch, believe me, or do the tests yourself to see it. I am afraid we have not invented the wheel here, not yet. It is the most difficult task we could possibly meet in knotting, and I would love to participate in a "Knot War" with a ww hitch against any other known solutions. ( Of course, with the same number of coils, because with a X number of coils, if X approaches to infinity, anything works !

)
Let me describe a real situation, that happened to me personally some years ago. A beautiful wooden boat was driven ashore by the waves, and it had already reached the sandy beach just in front of my summer house. I hate to see a wooden boat dying, so I run on the beach, tied the boat with the only long enough rope I had and I could find at the moment, tied the other end from my truck on a road before my house, and tried to pull the boat on the beach, so it will not be beaten by the waves any more. Needless to say, the boat was now very heavy with the water that came into it by the overcoming waves, and was almost parallel to the beach, so it was very difficult to accomplish the towing. In the middle of the task, that was difficult, as well as dangerous ( the rope could be broken any time), I heard the noise...The rope was starting to break, strand by strand, at the anchor point on the truck. Tensioned rope, no time, no way of fetching a second rope, if it brakes I would not even have the time or enough rope length to tie it again on the truck, IF I could bring it back from where it would have gone after it would have been launched...
Well, I had a shorter rope in the truck, but I could do nothing, because I did not know the ww hitch at the time...

I was saved by a dozen (1) of men that came by, after they heard me shouting for help, grasped the rope from some point with their bare hands, and we, all together, managed to tow the boat high on the beach, away from the breaking waves.
I still have the rope of this day we saved the beauty. It is in so deformed, thinned, ugly, lamentable, condition nobody would believe what a great heroic task it had accomplished in its life ! Every summer, I see this beautiful boat ( painted deep blue) in front of my eyes, rocking on the turquoise waters, and I say : Well, I have done something in my life..If I knew the ww hitch, I would have done it all by myself.
1)
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=2849.msg17435#msg17435