You’re more right than you know about the housekeeping part of dropping/weighing anchor. First, the windlass does the work of dropping. It’s necessary to throttle the payout or the guides just get too hot, smoke, burn, melt paint. The bitter end is anchored but on modern ships there is a shock coupling that takes the “bang” out of a dead stop.
Reeling the thing back in is the housekeeping part. Nobody wants ground coral, mud, sea growth back aboard, because it stinks, so a fire hose is played on the incoming chain.
But Naval ships don’t drop anchor all that often so they want clean chain back in the locker. A couple of sailors with big paint brushes stand by to touch up the scraped paint on the chain as it comes back aboard. Don’t want rusty chain in the locker either. Except on submarines-—there’s no ready access to the chain locker on a sub.
Someplace around the yard I still have a link of anchor chain I salvaged from a dive I did some decades ago. That link must have 30 coats of paint on it. If a sailor tells you that he worked anchor just give him a hug-—he earned it.
OWB; Thanks! I can visualize the entire process!
Besides painting to keep things “Tidy”, I would think that another reason to avoid rusting iron and steel in a closed area is depletion of oxygen. (If you have an an airtight locker and extended period without it being opened.)
Maritime paints use rapeseed oil as a vehical since it allows you to paint on wet metal.