A futuristic sight to greet seafarer and tourist alike: Merlion Park, at One Fullerton,Singapore – with few suspecting that this was a malarial swamp a century ago. It’s part of the city-state and during independence from the British in 1965, Singapore faced massive unemployment and declining trade. With its back to the wall, nonetheless, the country demonstrated to the world how to modernise and progress. Singapore’s transition from a backwater economy…
This talk is to the memory of 2 young men, Robert Prescot & Maxwell Biggam who died at sea in what could be described as incompletely explained circumstances aboard the Liverpool Bridge.
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…
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…
Well, they probably don’t – at least not in the popular sense. Go ask any scouser their opinion of the Beatles and there’ll be a mixed bag of responses ranging from the indifferent (granted, they were ok! ) to the downright hostile (whatever did they do for us? or, they got too big for their boots didn’t they?). And so on.But…
Introduction:A day which is probably more in people’s minds due to resumption of the Premier League football season rather than the commemoration of Britain’s worst maritime tragedy – a disaster which took the lives of an estimated 3000 to 5800 sailors, soldiers, airmen and civilians. Yes, it was a long time ago – but to keep football supporters still interested perhaps there are parallels between the 1939-40…
It starts with the bar. Nope, not the type of bar you may be thinking of – that is to say a neon emporium serving ice- cold Budweiser – but instead an off-shore geographical feature of deposited sand and rock forming a ‘bar’, or obstacle to the mighty Columbia River, its westward current of six or seven knots flowing into prevailing winds from the Pacific Ocean. …
The morning was fine and dry with enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of pants, as the saying goes.And in front of St George’s Hall, the pipe band of the Liverpool Scottish were playing Green Hills of Tyrol – that lament of a Scottish soldier in the Crimean War. Anyway, it was a full hour ahead of the firing of the…
Captain Grace was kind enough to show use around the Blue Clipper when she paid a visit to Liverpool last month as part of the River Festival. Fine out more at http://www.maybe-sailing.com
A Jimmy Cagney lookalike in baseball cap and plaid shirt, the Mississippi river pilot was quite opinionated of American society: “too many Jews and African-Americans in government” he proclaimed as the ship swung ten degrees port up river to New Orleans.I thought: oh! dear, is this the type of prejudiced society I half-expected it to be? By the way, for those fortunate…
Bob Bunker visits the U-995 in Laboe in Germany. http://www.warmuseums.nl/gal/061gal.htm