Grating in the ship's head

Hi all,

another lively debate has popped up on the German Forum because of another observation on the Hohenzollernmodell. I'm hoping that perhaps Fred, or someone else here has seen something similar on other ships can can explain this.

Here's a Picture of the grating of the head of the Hohenzollernmodel, it can be seen that a little square piece highlighted in yellow could be removed. The opening where it belongs when closed can be seen in front of it:

In the Image above the large square can hardly be seen through which the mainstay led is covered by the small grating a various ropes, so it is completely obscured. This was way too cluttered for anyone to reach down there let alone climb down there.

Here's my Rendering of the grating of the head, the removable part is highlighted in green:

The obvious question is: what was this for. The measurements of this opening were only 30 / 50cm, thus way too small for anybody to climb down in there. I believe that the green grating was possibly removed just to reach something in there.

In this picture it very much looks like there was something in the head beneath the grating, directly underneath the removable part, perhaps a block or something to assist heaving the anchors or so.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Peter