Archive for September, 2007

Splendour of the Seas

Splendour of the Seas

More from the archives. Splendour of the Seas seen at Southampton Docks, not long after her launch from Chantiers de l’Atlantique at St. Nazaire in 1996, (more recently the same shipyard built the QM2). The paint damaged in the hawse pipe shows that the port anchor has only been used once or twice. I was 3/O on the Petro Tyne, her picture is on the side in the flickr bar(ship in ice), I obviously had plenty time for sight seeing back then!

Splendour of the Seas

Photos taken with my trusty Olympus Trip and using Ilford XP2 film, apart from that it was just point and press. The close ups were thanks to the daring seamanship of the skipper of the Hythe Ferry “Hotspur IV” a piece of history itself.

The splendid cruise ship was all flagged out and full of people, could even have been her first cruise, perhaps some reader might know more about the ship.

Splendour of the Seas

I took the photos 11 years ago, hard to believe it has taken so long for me to digitize them. The scanner is working full time getting all the old negatives catalogued. More old photos coming soon.

Sea Fever

I noticed that my Technorati was showing an incoming link to Sea Fever, so curiosity got the better of me and I went for a visit. I was delighted to find another maritime blog and you would do no harm clicking in to seafever.org if you are into maritime heritage, and the like. Sailing ships seem to figure probably because the author was in the American Sail Training Association a recent post was very interesting about Alan Villiers check it out Sea Fever

Sweden News 26th September

From the news today in Sweden.

The Fire Brigade in Södertälje south of Stockholm request police back up in future emergency calls to one of the cities more troublesome suburbs. The reason being that they were shot at with an air rifle on a call out recently……16 year old gangs compete to be the toughest criminals according to 2 youths interviewed.

The next article in the news was,

A police chief in Södertälje has been arrested for drunk driving for the second time, back in April he knocked down a 16 year old on a moped and was found to be over the limit, he was fined but reinstated. This time however he will be re-assigned…….

Could there be a connection?

Titanic Video

Can’t remember why I was looking for Titanic stuff, but it has always been a fascination, I did a post about the passenger lists a while back. Now I have finally gotten the video plugin thingy working thanks to a couple of clever German blokes.
So here it is, supposedly “new” stuff.
Hope you enjoy.

Stand Fast

Victoria Orange Hall

A day in Larne, many moons ago.

Larne is in the North Eastern part of the Irish mainland, and depending on how you lean politically speaking it is in the North of Ireland or Northern Ireland. However regardless of how you lean the day that I was there you could be in no doubt as to the political allegience of the greater part of the population of Larne, the sheer volume of Union Jacks was overwhelming, nearly nauseating for me, every building had a flag, even the public toilets were decorated with the Union flag.
I said it was many moons ago, it was around 1995 some time, we were on a run to Ballylumford Power Station, bringing heavy fuel oil since then the plant has been converted to gas, but it is an eyesore of monumental proportions with the huge chimneys sticking up, now at least they don’t belch out black smoke. Ballylumford Power station provides electricity for half of Norn Iron, and it was here that the mainly unionist workforce joined the strike that helped collapse the Sunningdale agreement.
I had a few hours to spare between cargo watches so I asked the surveyor what the crack was like in Larne, he told me that it was a great place and that I should go up the road and have a few pints, great I thought and I got my jacket and myself and the motorman headed for the jetty. To get to Larne from Ballylumford you have to get a boat, so the agent had provided a service from a local company, the boats were bright orange hardly surprising I thought and I put my question about Larne to the boatman, his reply was a bit different…..”Keep your head as low as a Larne Catholic”, he recognised my Southern accent, I was a bit put off but we were already on the way.

Jetty at Ballylumford

The long walk home down the jetty……

Even if I had had a colour roll in my old fangled camera, it would have looked fairly much the same as it does in black and white, especially the top picture, the nearest I have come to an Orange Lodge excluding the one on Molesworth Street in Dublin, not a lot of people think about that one anyway….. The phrase below the name “Stand fast in the faith” put the shivers up my spine and the Olympus got pocketed quickly.
The main street was protected by security barriers at either end to prevent car bomb attacks, the gates were good old fashioned farmyard cattle gates, on heavy duty steel poles….they are probably long since gone…to a farm somewhere maybe.
My shore going compadre was from Liverpool and sensed no foul atmosphere and was gagging for a pint so we hit the first hostelry available and had a pint, the wall was full of Rangers memorabilia so I kept quiet drank my beer and then we went to the next available bar. It was hard to tell what kind of a place we were going into it was dark and smoky and full of people and my round……I went up to the bar and ordered 2 pints of the black stuff, the barman nodded and went away. There were 2 lads in flat caps beside me, and I thought their accent was out of place, so I tried to tune in to see if I could hear better, and the accent was very out of place, it was my own accent Wexford clear and broad. So I turned to the 2 and asked what they were doing in a bar in Larne, and they said we could ask you the same thing, so I explained my presence and it turns out that they were from Irish Lights, up to fix the Lighthouse at the Maidens, one of the peculiarities of Ireland all the aids to Navigation such as Lighthouses and Buoys are looked after by an all Ireland body the Commisioners of Irish Lights so even in the heart of Norn Iron you got 2 Wexford lads up servicing a lighthouse. Needless to say the crack was great and a few pints were consumed, then it was off back through the streets of Larne, head low….back to the ship.
On the boat painted brightly orange I noticed that the deck was green and the wheelhouse white! Someone keeping a head low with a sense of humour.

Mark 1 Eyeball Method

I had many and varied training officers as a cadet, some gave me gems of wisdom others talked a load of crap, but on the whole they were well meaning and genuinely interested in seeing me do well in my chosen career. The tradition being that the seafarer trains up his successor, the more well trained the better, and even though it is no longer called an apprenticeship, it is to all intents and purposes. The training received onboard ship can’t be replaced by simulators, it can be enhanced and helped along by but not replaced, all too many of the final phase cadets and trainees that are coming out to ships today have no clue about traffic situations because they have no experience and don’t know the rules, but they can operate the ARPA and ECDIS like experts, poor foundations for a job as deck officer. Final trip cadets should know the basics. Practical hands on experience combined with a firm grounding in the basics is without doubt the best way to train cadets.

Maritime Colleges and Marine Academy’s can provide schooling in the basics which if planted correctly in the brain of the trainee or cadet will make their lives easier as an officer when the time comes, I’m talking about Collision Regulations, Buoyage, LSA, FFA, ISM, Stability, Construction and all the myriad of rules associated, but primarily Collision Regs and Buoyage, if a junior officer knows his rules verbatim then when a situation arises he doesn’t have to start wondering about what type of vessel is showing what lights and what the right move to make is, he just does it, and if it is getting hairy then wake up the old man. If confident enough wake up the old man and tell him what you intend to do, if less confident wake him up and ask for assistance, if shitting bricks then wake him up and ask him to take over, but rule number one wake him up , it doesn’t matter how much of a cantankerous auld bastard he is, he will be worse if not woken up in time to prevent a catastrophe and you may lose your ticket/license at the end of the day or worse.

Having said all that an experienced Captain won’t (should not in any case)leave an inexperienced officer in charge on his own in the Dover Straits, Singapore Straits , or anywhere that a large volume of crossing traffic and meeting traffic is likely to be encountered, thats only asking for trouble. But the junior officer should keep conning until the master takes over or until he requires assistance.

Anyway back to the title of this post, the “Mark one eyeball method”, a phrase I learned from an old professional second mate, who served his time with British India Steam Navigation Shipping Company, the likes of whom are rare if there are any left at all, when I was learning to do chart correcting with this guy he was able to tell an anecdote about whatever port or harbour the chart related to, how much the beer was what the girls were like and how much a taxi back to the dock was, a living encyclopedia of jolly jack information and it was his advice to all the cadets he sailed with, it boils down to this…look out through the window at what is happening outside in real life, forget the Ecdis and the Arpa and the AIS, take up the binoculars and look out through the window, take bearings with the azimuth ring and get a feel for what is happening, use the eyeball method, the oldest and most well proven navigation method known to the seafarer, then go back to your other Navigation equipment for distances and CPA’s and the like. If you pay heed to this simple piece of advice you will have a better feel for navigating and you won’t start to shit bricks when a ship appears on the 12 mile range giving 0.1nm CPA. You will also be able to navigate without the radar if the screens go black on the bridge, and still have a good idea of ranges. It also will improve confidence both personally and in the confidence the old man has for his deck officer, the more the old man trusts you the less time he will spend breathing down your neck, better for all parties concerned.

Hide & Seek……

I must have loved playing hide & seek as a child, so much so that as an adult I have my own version, but it’s not hide and seek it is more like, try to find things that I put somewhere a few days ago or a few weeks ago or even last year and now I can’t remember where I put them. I don’t know if it is unconscious or what but I notice that there are many jobs around the house that are 95% finished, just finished well enough to live with but not complete. When I today decided to complete the kitchen project started over a year ago, I couldn’t find the packets of clips that are needed to put the final panel on the cupboards, I found the box that everything else was in, I found money, I found a packet of batteries that was missing, but no clips. It must be some kind of perverse subconscious pleasure that has me hunting around the garage and the cellar and the attic like a complete raving lunatic getting dusty and sweaty saying “where in the name of Jaysus” and ” For fuck sake” and ” I could have sworn I put that there” . I must like doing this, otherwise I would have found a way to stop it. Or maybe the synapses have become so well worn in this pattern that it happens automatically. It could be genetic……

It’s like the time I overheard two guys in a Cork antique shop on Winthrop Street opposite the Long Valley, (that is the shop was in Cork city not made of cork or selling antique cork) talking about gambling and one auld fella said to the other ” it’s not the winning that drives the gambler, oh no, tis the losing of the money that they like” the other auld fella nodded and repeated back ” tis the losing of the money that they like”

I must love losing stuff and then try to find it a year later, that is why the jobs only get 95% finished so I can put all the tools away and then try to put the pieces back together later. The thing is that I am not so good at finding stuff, so I end up buying new stuff to replace the things I can’t find, then I find them when I’m looking for something else. So the trick must be not to be looking for one thing, then you won’t find it, you must look for everything then surely you will be sucessful. Or else I’ll just have to get more organized.

Divine intervention

One of my old ships was on a regular run to LOOP or Louisiana Offshore Oil Port we transported crude oil from West Africa and the Persian Gulf to LOOP by VLCC and then the oil was then piped on to the mainland US for refining. This was my first experience of the US Coast Guard and US Pilotage, it was before 9-11 so the atmosphere of security was controlled but not as tough as it is for sailors visiting the US today. But back then you could still get ashore if you wanted to. We arranged for the agent to buy us Levi’s and other American goods, not that we were living in the Soviet Union or anything but because they were so cheap.
Anyway one of the Able Seaman was one Jesus Rey Fernandez from Cebu in the Phillipines, Jesus (which was pronounced Hay-soos by the Filipino sailors and Jees-us by the officers probably because of the novelty and Jay-zuz by me because I couldn’t resist) was an old sea dog with a woman and child in every port the ship managed to get to, he looked about 90 but was probably more in the region of 60, he nearly starved to death one trip when he managed to spit out his false teeth into the Suez Canal, he was only gobbing over the side but the teeth went sailing in with whatever he was spitting out, he stood at the rail for ages his mouth half open and shiny gums silently gnashing in disbelief, the cook didn’t like him as it was and he had to suck down all his food until a reserve set of teeth arrived.
We were sailing from LOOP and we got instructions to take bunkers (thats fuel for the land lubbers) at Pilot Town on the Mississippi, so we headed for the entrance and took on board our river pilot for the short passage up to Pilot Town. He arrived on the bridge out of breath and proceeded to light up a Marlboro before getting down to the usual introductions and how are you Captain and would you like a cup of coffee Pilot, after the first blast of Nicotine he calmed down ordered half ahead on the engine and a man on the wheel. The currents at the mouth of the Mississippi River are strong and can be unpredictable so a good helmsman is required, the old man wasn’t so old and probably put the wrong man on the wheel, so the ships head was a bit shaky approaching the entrance, the pilot got angry and shouted with a strong southern accent “Jesus Christ Cap’n, this is no time to put a beginner on the wheel” just then Able Seaman Jesus Rey appeared like an apparition on the bridge, the Captain said “Jesus, take the wheel!” The pilot raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, he was satisfied as long as the steering went well. We negotiated our way up to the designated spot which is little more than a bend in the river and anchored 4 shackles on the starboard and 1 on the port. The pilot made his way off after doing a professional job even if he was a bit rough around the edges himself.
Later on in the bar, the old man was giving his version of the story while sucking down our newly bought Coors beer, it was a little bit more exaggerated than reality, the pilot smoked more cigarettes, and spoke with a John Wayne accent and said “Truly this man was the son of God” when Jesus took the wheel,………not really as it happened but hardly the first time a story about Jesus got exaggerated……

Carlskrona for the chop

HMS Carlskrona

The largest of the Swedish navy’s ships the HMS Carlskrona has an uncertain future, the lack of officers and government cutbacks have meant that she will be mothballed and maybe even scrapped. She was rebuilt a few years ago for 225 million kronor…..thats about $33 million, a sure sign of getting the chop in this country, pump in a shit load of money then pull the plug.
Anyway I sailed with a converted naval officer, that is he converted from military to civilian or the Merchant Navy/Mercantile marine call it what you will, and the same chap had served on one of HMS Carlskronas long voyages for which she was famous for. During his time there the ship was on an official visit to Finland, some Swedes still lament the loss of Finland to Peter the Great and Finland still has Swedish as one of it’s official languages, I digress. The commander knew he could speak Swedish with the Finns but wanted to make a special effort and do a greeting in the Finnish language for the visiting dignitaries from Finland’s Navy, so the word went out to all the officers and conscript crew if anyone could speak any Finnish, one conscript was found willing and was given the job of greeting the Finns in their own tongue as they arrived.
The Finns walked up the gangplank were greeted in Finnish they all looked slightly surprised at the speech they all individually received but maintained the official dignified look and the whole visit went down very well.
The next day before the ship was about to sail, a parcel arrived from the Navy of Finland, when unwrapped it was found to be a chainsaw painted in gray camouflage and naval insignia, the commander was baffled, it turns out the conscript either by accident or design was saying to each of the dignitaries ” Do you have a chainsaw?” so they got one. It apparently had pride of place in the ships mess and was taken down for parties and the like, the chain was removed for the sake of good order.
I wonder what will happen to that when the ship gets scrapped.

Warning! Dangerous Shell

Navtex

This message rolled in on the Navtex this morning, I was still waking up and reading at the same time, you know multi-tasking and drinking coffee at the same time. I was reading away and thinking -dangrous shell? what the f….? Immediately several images came to mind, giant clams eating up deep sea divers like in the old movies, and Popeye eating spinach to get a big shell open and save Olive.

This dangerous shell must have been pretty ferocious even at 43 metres deep, of course it couldn’t have been a joke, Navtex is far too serious for that, even the Danish wouldn’t take the piss there. It was just too simple, it should have been an EXPLOSIVE SHELL or WWII SHELL not just SHELL. For all the land lubbers, the seabed contains hazards for fishermen, merchant ships and warships alike, in this case an explosive shell, you don’t want to be anchoring or trawling near one of them  lads, they can go bang. The amount of mines and shells trawled up every year is amazing considering that WWII was over in 1945. Then I went to the chart and checked the position and the place is in the middle of the Halfdan Oilfield, so their is a either a WELL or a SHELL there…….probably a WELL, not great for fishing gear either!

NAVTEX means the system for broadcast and automatic reception of maritime safety information by means of narrow-band direct-printing telegraphy. (from the Admiralty List of Radio Signals)

The Navtex printer spits out a roll of messages printed on paper not unlike the size of toilet paper, you get weather and navigation warnings, distress signals, ice reports and other messages can be programmed in also. A basic little machine providing lots of info, and lots of rubbish also if you tune in the wrong stations.  It forms a part of the GMDSS, but that is another days work.

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