Fires on Board

Like you Ron, I always thought Clarkson a bit of a prat.
It was with this in mind I watched the the documentary, but he came across as very thoughtful.
A very good informative programme to watch.

Maybe a lot of the general public will now know what the merchant navy is, or was . The merchant seaman in that doccu, or three of them, had all died since it was made, without receiving their medal. Also Clarksons closing words with regard to the awarding of the medals was *and about bloody time* which i thought had impact, KT

realy soory john two many cans crazy night

Reading all these posts about fire on board vessels. Brings to my mind one press release made in 1988 re. a report about claims made by people associated with the Piper A disaster. A seaman supposedly on a vessel approx. 5 miles away from the disaster put a claim in for being traumatized on having to witness the inferno. This if true put a big distraction on the seamen who did all they could and gave the MN a bad look. Whether this report was true or not I don't know, however true or false it took away all the excellent work performed by a large amount of seamen. If true that same person should hang his head in shame. If he was traumatized by having to watch from a safe distance, he would have been useless in the actual actions required and has a nerve to call himself a seaman. John S.

You can download a fantastic book of Convoy PQ17 by by David Irving. It is in PDF format & called THE DESTRUCTION OF CONVOY PQ.17.

http://WWW.fpp.co.ukbooks

I can strongly recommend it, it is 450 pages long but so engrossing I sat over Saturday & read 300 pages until 1am, then completed it on Sunday.
Interestingly I note there is a case been started by him as to the J Clarkson doco in which Irving says there were whole pages lifted word for word apparently from his book. Clarkson is denying this as is the BBC. It appears Irving is put out, rightly so if correct that he received no acknowledgement at all.
Do bring this down if you have an interest as it is an amazing read.

Convoy PQ17 repeated tonight BBC2 9.30pm..
Regards.
jim.B.