It was a special pleasure to be on land again.The place was the Greyhound bus station in downtown Los Angeles and I was going to Tijuana, Mexico – eventually further to the state of Baja California Sur.I’d just paid off a ship in Long Beach and rather than immediately return to the UK, I asked the ship’s agent to rearrange the flight home.You could…
At 19 years old you knew it all. Or so you thought after a world-wide trip on a container ship. You saw oil sheikh kingdoms sitting on their wealth.On the other hand, you saw the industriousness of Japan and it’s famed work ethic.You learned that California isn’t just Hollywood mansions; there were homeless people and food stamps too.It was all new. But…
Allegedly the instructions sent to Interforce security guards ( many are ex-military) on 17 March 2022.Note the comment about ‘Cuffs, Utility belt and Body Armour?’ Against long-serving employees who had done nothing wrong.Remember the miners’ strike? Well, it looks like Thatcherism all over again, doesn’t it? I usually got called for a P&O ferry assignment in Dover once or twice yearly and although well…
Surely not another preserved WW2 warship? We’ve got plenty in the U.K. already (yawn!). Maybe, but from hundreds built as sturdy dependable escort craft, the Sackville is the only Flower-class corvette left in the world. She’s in Halifax, Nova Scotia as Canada’s Naval Memorial, a WW2 combat veteran and latterly a museum ship open to the public. And the top of the gangway has a mural of Disney’s sailor-suited Donald Duck, broom in his…
Battered by the pandemic (haven’t we all been?), cruise ship industry owners with no immediate passengers have filed for bankruptcy, while others reduced operating costs by retiring ships early. More than two dozen vessels have been scrapped since and whilst some companies have recycled in an environmentally responsible way, others have not, allowing their ships to be broken up in India enabling high profits, but ignoring…
Ripping apart a neighbourhood just to build yet another neighbourhood, isn’t always a good idea.Plenty of ‘new town’ residents can attest; the idea is basically sound insofar as people graduate into better quality housing, although sad to say, not necessarily better communities.Nonetheless, Belfast in the late sixties was dealt the wrecking ball in an area called ‘Sailortown.’ Just as the name suggests, it was…
‘The coins just kept spinning out onto to the deck’ commented one of the seamen. It was a pub conversation and at first I thought he was boasting about his luck on the fruit machine until I realised that he’d just paid off a vessel chartered by Dover Harbour Board (DHB) to dredge the Goodwin Sands off the Kent coast.I am fairly sure that the year was…
‘Half the scum of England are going into the Merchant Navy to escape National Service’ (1) pronounced Judge Ewen Montagu, a hard-line Law Lord, way back in 1955.An ex-military officer, Montagu’s reactionary opinions seemed to reflect the nation’s mood of the day insofar as conscription was considered to be a duty. Anyway and to the point, arraigned in his court was a merchant seaman…
When the German heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee came to her end in December 1939, one of the main factors that led to her demise could be blamed on part of her shipboard equipment. The British knew all about their enemy’s woeful blundering, and with their own superior design ensured that it wasn’t going to happen to them. Indeed, that weakness in…
I’m pleased to say that we’ve been in contact with retired seafarer, author and painter, John Richardson and that we’ll be doing an interview with John in the next couple of weeks. Before leaving his last ship, the SAS Kimberley, and after retiring from theservice in 1990, John has painted many of the South African Navywarships and numerous sailing vessels…
An excerpt from ‘Victims of Atlantis’ by John Richardson Monday 11 November 1940 was Armistice Day; a day of remembrance when the warring sides of WW1 ceased hostilities and came to peace. On board Atlantis a service was being held at 0800 in honour of those men and women who’d lost their lives in the conflict. However, while the service was in…
If you’re another old salt you realise there’s nothing unusual about glimpsing the navigation officer taking a noon-day sight.Except that these days checking coordinates is just like pushing a keyboard on your car sat nav. So noon-day sights aren’t such common practice anymore. No waiting for the angle of the sun at midday; the truth is that using a sextant is rarely leisurely and the need…