backing vbl n Comb backing-line: long line to which a creeper is attached, threaded under the ice to retrieve seal-nets.
   1861 DE BOILIEU 107 A series of holes are made in a direct line over the nets, at about twenty feet apart, say for near half-a-mile. When this is done, two long poles, tied together, are put into the first hole, and, as it were, are threaded from one hole to the other. At one end of the poles is a line called a backing-line; and at the extreme end—say where the whole length of line has been passed under the ice—a creeper or small species of anchor is let down and trailed over the nets.

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