Budding Navigators of the 50"s

[gray_marian]

#10, 'No doubt my kids will put everything in the skip after I've gone to Fiddlers Green'

Ivan we have had the conversation before....please promise me you will take time to make a list of items that you want kept for gt,grandchildren to inherit. I doubt there is a besotted daughter anywhere
who would throw out a box of treasured memories.

All I have is "The King's Shilling" from my paternal grandmother's first husband [not even blood] and my paternal gt,grandfather's "British Mercantile Marine Certificate" which brought me here I could weep thinking of what has been lost.

As I speak my mum is clearing out "her Stuff".... I labelled several small boxes years ago but she has accumulated more My siblings and I have already chosen what we would treasure and the rest will go to charity/Church as requested.

As you are aware there are hundreds of little fishing ports around us who I'm sure would be delighted to receive a box of goodies for their museums. Campbeltown has one full of all sorts even has a small skiff suspended from the ceiling Everything is labeled and from whom it was donated, a
budding genealogist's dream

[j.sabourn]

#2... John in Oz, everyone talks about this modern era, when not so long back and may even still be the way of lighting the flare for burning off the waste gasses from an oil exploration rig in certain parts, was initially ignited with a bow and lighted arrow. In my time used a verey pistol. There is still a lot of the old methods out there which most people just gloss over and ignore. We are not yet living in an organised Utopia, in fact the world is going backwards by the accounts one reads about in the Press. Coming back to the burning off on every rig, no one ever mentions the adverse affect (if any) of the hundreds of rigs on the planet doing so, also the effect of all the explosions and after effects of the wars at present going on. Everything is blamed on a lump of coal. For these magic words to explain the changing weather patterns which have always been there. Cheers JS

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi John.
Good nostalgia, the ship owners providing oilskins now that's something, I remember making an oilskin from an old tarp and sealing it with fish oil and something I mixed with it can't remember offhand. but it stank, but many blokes where quite willing to borrow it in bad weather.
Cheers Des

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[Chris Isaac]

Like many of you I still have my old books, in fact they stare down at me from a shelf right over my computer.
Looking through my Nories I see that I underlined every foreign port that I had visited, how many others of you did that as well?

[Ivan Cloherty]

Like many of you I still have my old books, in fact they stare down at me from a shelf right over my computer.
Looking through my Nories I see that I underlined every foreign port that I had visited, how many others of you did that as well?

Also kept a list Chris of countries visited whilst at sea and also later in my shore based travels, clocked up 90 countries so far, have a list of ports also but haven't counted them up (yet)

[j.sabourn]

#14 and#15 Dash knew I forgot to do something. Can we go back and do it again and try not to forget this time. Can remember the first two trips only. 1st. Avonmouth, Belfast, Cienfegous (Cuba), Panama, Kawasaki (Japan), Cairns (Queensland) Purfleet (Thames), 2nd. Cardiff, Buenos Aires, Villa Constitution, Rosario, ( River Plate) 99 days from there to japan, Kobe, Osaka, Cairns Townsville, Mackay, Rotterdam. The next 47.5 years a blur. Although can remember on retirement the wife went and hired a passenger boat on the canals where I live with all the food etc. and about 50 odd friends and B.O.T. acquaintances as ballast. Would have preferred if she had hired a lounge in some hotel, found out too late to change. So my last trip was on the canals at Mandurah south of Perth. Good job she had a bus laid on to get them all back to my house to sober up. JS

[Ivan Cloherty]

God bless our well intentioned Reli's

Being away at sea I sent my wife to be's aunt, with whom she was living, money to book a honeymoon venue for us and keep it a secret from my intended, I left the choice to the aunt, who in her well meaning thoughts booked us rooms in the Yacht club in Palma harbour, as she thought I'd like to be surrounded by boats!

Mind you it turned out to be a good choice, as we were treated like royalty, my beautiful wife had that effect on people although she thought of herself as being a plain jane, which she definitely wasn't

[j.sabourn]

My Mother in law chose ours Ivan which was a week in the Ivanhoe hotel in London near to the theatres. Unfortuanetley it was a temperance hotel which she probably knew, I never forgave her. I was back at sea again coming back off honeymoon a couple of days later. The wife came across to Hamburg 6 months later when the ship was in Hamburg with the Mates wife, we all went ashore one night and I forgot we were married and went sauntering off by myself down San Pauli, a couple of hours later memory returned and went rushing back to ship and have never lived it down. Loss of memory is a terrible affliction, really will have to start writing things down. Cheers JS

[j.sabourn]

Ref. to Chronometers which don't think has been mentioned in a previous post. Anyone who thinks they are infallible is working under a mishapprehension. They are or were the most reliable timepiece of their day, but as everything else have errors the same as the sextant. Today the days of expensive watches could also use the same as long as one knew the error on the watch. It was a daily occurrence to check the chronometer by radio time signals given out from I believe Greenwich, and most chronometers had a daily plus or minus couple of seconds loss or gain, if knew the daily rate was ok. The correction to the chronometer reading was applied first to the Time by Chronometer to get the GMT. Now believe is called UTC. The same as the Index error which nearly all sextants had. This you found yourself. The Chronometer used to be wound each day at the same time so as to use the same part of the spring winding to try and keep the error as close to constant as possible. Just a bit more of useless knowledge not practiced anymore. Cheers JS

[John Arton]

we all went ashore one night and I forgot we were married and went sauntering off by myself down San Pauli, a couple of hours later memory returned and went rushing back to ship and have never lived it down
J.S.
Well that takes the biscuit, forgetting your newly married partner in order to saunter down into Saint Pauli. Used to think I was pretty forgetful but at least I have never forgotten the wifey having lived in terror of the dire retribution that would be heaped upon me by her Scottish relations if I ever treated her wrongly, this on the night that I proposed to her on a News Years eve in a house on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, filled with all her Scottish relatives. I have only to hear the sound of Bagpipes to bring it all back as I proposed just after the piper had piped in the New Year.
On our first trip to sea together (I was mate) I did try teaching her how to take star sights but getting her to count from getting the stars angle to taking the GMT in seconds caused some disagreements so gave up after a couple of tries. (navigators will know what I am talking about)
rgds
JA