The Gulf Stream, the Barrage, boatyard skulduggery….

Edward Allcard has a spot of bother in the Gulf Stream:

Sights of the sun checked my week’s run through the Horse Latitudes. It was surprising that it was as much as 225 miles, considering the often glassy conditions. Ominous squalls passed me on either side, enabling me to carry light canvas all day. At dusk the boat was snugged down, and she plunged along on her own. Away to the south, uneasy flickering lightning and black clouds gave rather an ominous air to the night, and it looked as if another storm was brewing. I went to tap the barometer, which promptly shot down in an unpleasant manner. What was coming?

Julian Blatchley navigates in the Doldrums:

In the days of gps the vastness of the Pacific has become a casual metaphor, but in the time before satellites the sheer mind-bending size of that body of water was not underestimated by anyone who knew anything about it. In the Second World War, lines of high-flying patrol aircraft hundreds of miles long searched for days for fleets occupying fifty square miles of sea, and sometimes failed to find them. Majuro is an isolated atoll. Atolls are dreadful radar targets – the human eye sees them well before the radar does. From a low bridge like the Fetuilelagi's you won't see them at anything more than eleven miles. If they are in the glare of a low sun you won't see them at six miles. In rain it might be two miles, and at night not at all.

Stephen Crane attempts to run guns to Cuba:

On the decks of the Commodore there were exchanges of farewells in two languages. Many of the men who were to sail upon her had intimates in the old Southern town, and we who had left our friends in the remote North received our first touch of melancholy on witnessing these strenuous and earnest good-bys. It seems, however, that there was more difficulty at the custom house. The officers of the ship and the Cuban leaders were detained there until a mournful twilight settled upon the St John’s, and through a heavy fog the lights of Jacksonville blinked dimly. Then at last the Commodore swung clear of the dock, amid a tumult of goodbys. As she turned her bow toward the distant sea the Cubans ashore cheered and cheered. In response the Commodore gave three long blasts of her whistle, which even at this time impressed me with their sadness. Somehow, they sounded as wails.

Mike Smylie goes fishing along the coasts of Britain:

Clovelly, like Amsterdam, was built upon herring. The shoals came close to the little harbour’s quay end to lay their eggs on the gravelly seabed. It was easy fishing - if there is such a thing - for Clovelly men with their drift-nets and open boats. Nearly three hundred miles to the north, Tarbert sits a neck of land across which Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway was carried in his longship to claim Kintyre as his. This was the birthplace of the ring-net, a seine towed a short distance by a pair of trawl skiffs, then closed to encircle a shoal - not unlike a purse seine, but with no drawstring to close its bottom. This was a deadly method of fishing for Loch Fyne's famously abundant herring, and replaced the older Scottish drift-nets.

MGBs rescue agents and evaders from occupied France:

From the sea the first indication of approaching land was (with luck) a sudden lessening of the echo-soundings as the mgb passed over the western tip of Le Libenter bank; and then (given more luck) the appearance of La Petite Fourche buoy marking the seaward end of the Aber-Benoit Channel – left there by the Germans to guide local fishing boats, though night fishing was not allowed and the buoy was not lit. From the buoy the gunboat had to make its way into the Aber-Benoit Channel, in some places only a hundred yards wide, and often with breaking water on either side, to the rendezvous anchorage ninety yards off the south-west tip of Île Guennoc.

Aside from the natural dangers, the area selected for the pinpoint was in the middle of a very heavily defended part of the coastline, featuring two batteries of heavy artillery firing seaward from blockhouses, and numerous smaller pillboxes with heavy machine guns.

Graeme Stones helps build the Thames Barrier:

After several years earning a living as a diver in the coastal waters of the Hebrides, I was hungry for work offshore in the North Sea oilfields - for the challenge, the money, the kudos, the girls in port. Competition to get out there was intense. You couldn't get work offshore unless you had already worked offshore, or unless you made such a nuisance of yourself that someone in the offices finally wearied and threw you a bone, in which case you could be sure it would be a bone that no-one else wanted. I had had good advice from the old hand who had spun the seductive tales about the challenge, the money and the kudos: ‘You keep your bag packed and you sit by the phone. When it rings you just say, "Yes. Yes, I've done that before. Yes, I know all about that. Yes, I can be there yesterday." Don't ask questions, don't be late’. Which is why I found myself one afternoon in Greenwich, with a slippery hint that if I came up to scratch in the Thames the firm might, just might, have something for me offshore. Later. Sometime. Maybe.

Henry Faire discusses John Clerk of Eldin:

The remarkable change of outcomes of British naval battles that began in the early 1780s could simply be a result of general experience and the individual inspiration of individual brilliant commanders. One man, however, a less well known figure, has a strong claim to be the originator of this change of tactics: John Clerk of Eldin. Clerk was truly a man of the Enlightenment. He is remembered chiefly as a geologist, anatomist and topographical artist. Arguably, though, his greatest claim to fame is as a naval tactician, although by his own admission his longest sea voyage was a ferry ride to Arran.

Robert Johnston decides that revenge is a dish best eaten cold:

People must think that owning a small boatyard is an idyllic lifestyle – playing with boats all day long, and on the river when you feel like it. Forget the days when it is pouring with rain and a cold north wind is blowing, or there is a heavy frost on anything you touch. An even worse thing sometimes is the customers.

Nicki Faircloth tells a story of the wartime canals:

In 1941 the Ministry of Information took an extensive series of photographs of women's war work in this country to send to Russia to show the contribution of British women to the war effort.[1] They are of two slight, often smiling women. One is white-haired, usually in the tiny cabin of a canal boat preparing some food. The other is at the tiller or heaving hundredweight sacks of cargo. They are Margaret and Daphne March, a mother and daughter from Worcester, who worked their boat, the Heather Bell, the length and breadth of the canal system, carrying coal, flour and anything else that could be transported by boat. Margaret, the widow of a Worcester solicitor, was 61, Daphne 25. After reading French at Oxford, she taught in London and drove an ambulance in the Blitz. They were my grandmother and mother.

Captain Massam takes a shipful of refugees to Russia in 1914:

I had 5 first class, 79 second & 457 third class total of 541 passengers & a crew of 54. After breakfast was over I went on my official visit & was not much impressed with the 3rd class for they appeared to be very poor & almost destitute chattering and gesticulating in Russian & nearly scared to death, however I spent a long time amongst them & my presence certainly quieted them somewhat. I then went through 2nd class who appeared to be mostly students & a more unmannerly lot of young men it has never been my lot to meet. They were almost ruffians; not one of them would speak anything but Russian although there were many that could speak English & German as I fully proved later during the voyage. The Doctor came along and told they were saying all kinds of insulting things so I left them.

Jo Stanley tracks down the first woman yachtmasters:

‘I believe the first lady owner to pass the Board of Trade examination for yacht-master was Lady Ernestine Hunt’, wrote the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. Ernestine Brudenell-Bruce was ‘neither handsome nor beautiful, but if . . . [Scottish] would be called "sonsie" as . . . [she had] bright eyes, a clear skin, and a look of much intelligence’ the Tatler later announced. The eldest daughter of the Marquess and Marchioness of Ailesbury, '[Her] ability in handling a yacht is said to be almost equal to that of the most experienced "old salt" who ever went to sea’, marvelled one of the many articles extolling her as part of the new breed of huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ females.

… and of course there are Flotsam and Jetsam, the musings of the ghastly Captain Ray Doggett, the beautiful illustrations of Claudia Myatt, excitement, reflection and blasts of salt spray and fresh air….