Recognition to the Merchant

[Ivan Cloherty]

Why has the Great War effort of the Merchant Navy received so little recognition ? We all know that this country would have been starved out without the transport of food and commities.Compared very little has been written about the service in comparison with the other services.Anyone got any idea why?

Alas politicians, like most of the public, newspapers, TV and radio commentators, documentary makers have no idea that there is a difference twixt the RN and MN, they have no idea that the troops, ordnance, equipment, vehicles, tanks, mules etc are carried on merchant ships to various ports and beach heads and that wounded troops are taken home in MN hospital ships, many of which were sunk off Gallipoli and other beach heads.

They have no idea that over 600 cargo ships were involved in Dunkirk evacuations, 3000 MN vessels involved in D-Day landings, 57 MN vessels involved in the Falklands fleet, also that they came under fire in Aden, Malaya, Borneo, or were shelled by both Chinese Nationalists and Communists in 1949-1950, or that British MN vessels were involved in the Vietnamese situation, being chartered by the USA as they could not get their mothballed MN fleet back into action.

They are even less aware that these days that 95% of what they use everyday is brought by sea, they seem oblivious to the fact that we are an island even though no one lives more than 72 miles from a shoreline, and alas thus it will ever be.

[j.sabourn]

As Brian ( Kong) often says. We are the last of the mariners of our era. Even though everything was metric when I retired , such as your water depths in metres and your distances in kilometres. I still right up to The bitter end converted back. To what we were all brought up with. A nautical mile was 6080 feet, a cable was stil one tenth of a nautical mile, or if anchor chain was 15 fathoms. Your draft figures in. Decametres a tenth of a metre was still feet and inches, and numerous other. Things on a ship for hundreds of years.The younger people will shout the metric system is much easier. It probably is for engineers who if not taught at school learned during their apprenticeships ashore. But to the old time sailorman off the deck habits get hard to break, and why should we just to appease someone else. When pilots asked me for draughts and trims always gave it to them in feet. And inches let them work it out if they had to. Many will say. That is a retrospective and backward statement and I. Couldn’t care less, the old marks on the lead line will always be the same To me. By the mark 5 and a half less 7 will always refer to fathoms and not metres. If changing everything they change is called progress, then a lot they can keep would rather do it the hard way. Shore people have absolutely no idea of ships neither do they of seamen. Cheers JWS. PS and a bent banana was still a bent banana and legal, and ate. JS

[Keith at Tregenna]

Very few left of the WW1 / WW2 MN heroes.

Respect.

K.

[happy daze john in oz]

John, nautical terms have been around for centuries and there is no reason why they should be forgotten.
Modern ships may well now use metric, but that is no reason to forget the past.
The shipping industry was built on imperial and ship board measurements and the Plimpsol line has to the best of mu knowledge not changed.

[j.sabourn]

It has though John. As said your drafts and plimsolls are now metric unless you join a very old ship. The old sea measurements used everyday will soon be only a memory. I would imagine very few modern seafarers would know the names of the watches and the bell system. In future times people will have to refer to sites like this or books to find out. This is what they call progress get rid of the old and in with the new. I doubt if any army recruit of today would know of the old american world war 1 rifle the P17: apart from having a fixture for a bayonet also could launch a grenade from. Weapons of war also change and advance faster than anything. The calibre of the old rifle was a .300 bullet as against the Lee Enfield with a .303. JWS

[robpage]

I would suggest that few under 60s have the slightest idea how their X-Box , Kia , Levis , Nike or Bananas get here . Some one was complaining the other week that a shop would not have stock of an item for several weeks and the goods had been shipped , I suggested that it was 5 days to get loaded , 40 days at sea another 5 days to get to the warehouse here , making two months , the person I was talking to had no concept of the days at sea for a container . The Merchant Navy has gone , and is forgotten , except by a few .