Sunset over Immingham’s industrial landscape.
Grab bucket in b/w
Tug Switzer Josephine waiting for her next assignment.
Buckets and cranes waiting silently on an early Saturday morning.
Archive for the 'England' Category
Been a while since I sat behind the keyboard for this blog. Plenty water has passed under the keel and many port visits have come and gone. Time to blow new life into Tims Times again.
I had a chance to take the bicycle ashore in Immingham, a port I hadn’t been to in many moons, maybe even years. The opportunity to get ashore for a cycle is always great, Immingham is of course hardly the greatest place on earth in fact I think God has forgotten about the place to be honest. It defines the phrase “It’s grim up North” the port is busy as hell ships in and out all the time, but the poor village and environs are depressing and gray even the sunshine couldn’t warm the atmosphere up. The recession has given a further blow to this region, or it hadn’t recovered from the previous recession and it has been flattened again. Derelict buildings, shut down pubs and shops, weeds and briars growing out of the roadside and kerbs. Rubbish all over the place, for sale signs on houses that no one will buy and old cars with hopeful prices scrawled across the windscreens. All that was missing was the “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” sign. The economic turnover at the port must be enormous, millions, the place is huge, the scale of operations is colossal. But none of this money seems to have filtered down to the poor misfortunate souls that inhabit the village which is surrounded by the port.
I went looking for an old pub called the “Lock Inn” which was beside the locks surprisingly enough but it was gone, demolished, not only shut down but erased from the skyline. It was a shrine to plastic, Formica and fluorescent lighting with a heavy coating of nicotine on the wall, I suppose the smoking ban must have killed the place off completely, the shop was held together by the tar stained wall paper. The atmosphere was smoky and oily and you could get chips and gravy at the bar along with your bitter while listening to the swearing. The smell would have brought a tear to a glass eye, another good reason to knock the place down. Pint of Bitter? Great name for beer!
It wasn’t beyond redemption however, everybody you met was friendly. Even the security guards at the gate, dead friendly and chatty. All oblivious to the gray surroundings, so it only looks grim, and looks can be deceptive.
Who put the Grim in Grimsby? The Vikings of course but Scunthorpe is another kettle of fish altogether.
The Royal Navy’s newest ship on trials off the coast of the Isle of Wight a few weeks ago. I could say I delayed posting for reasons of national security but that would be a load of shite, every man and his dog has a camera these days and you only have to look on flickr or any of the other social network sites to find acres of photos of everything. There are plenty of pictures of the derring-do Daring around, so much for the tag of stealth ship on that count. I got 88000 hits on google for “HMS Daring” and a lovely link on Wikipedia
The stealth refers to the shape of the hull which reflects radar signals at an angle either into the sea or up into the sky and not back to the enemy radar. You can see the angles in the hull shape which this theory is based on, however our radar showed a nice healthy target echo as she passed by, which means we either have a friendly radar or it was too close. I’m guessing the stealth capabilities mean that it can get within shooting distance and deliver a missile to an unsuspecting enemy before it is seen on a shore based radar station or from patrol ships. These days, the places that this ship will be deployed probably won’t have great detection equipment anyway, like Somalia and so on.
Another photo below with the Southampton Pilot boat in the forewater to give an indication of scale.
One of my favourite vistas, the ship fading into a speck on the horizon and me being carried away at high speed in the opposite direction. The water in the photo being churned up by the launches twin props is Southampton water, as I left the ship at anchor near the Isle of Wight, and got a boat trip into Southampton docks, before being taxied up to Heathrow for further processing.
I don’t know what it is about the English but they have some sort of Irish detection thing going on, I don’t know if it was my leprechaun looks and the bright green outfit with large black belt and shillelagh, while I tugged my forelock shouting “begorrah and top of the morning to you” even though it was 3 in the afternoon or they had been given intelligence prior to my landing on the deck, but the first thing the coxswain said to me was, “You’re Irish, aren’t you?” No good afternoon sir or sit down and let me take your shillelagh and bags of gold sir, straight to the identification of nationality, No I replied Judas like, I’m from Kilburn, London and was raised by an itinerant builder named O’ Sweeney due to the fact that I was orphaned at birth so in fact I’m as English as you are….I only picked up the accent from my guardian and mentor O’Sweeney, …….
Naturally I was taken aback with the sudden request for an authentication of my origin, Yes I replied, Irish as Guinness and Shergar, the two lads in the boat gave a laugh and both started to relate their experiences of Ireland as if I would be in the slightest bit interested. They didn’t ask me if I was a member of the IRA, but mentioned Mountbatten, I said it wasn’t anything to do with me being only 10 at the time. I wondered silently if any other nationalities got the same treatment or was it only reserved for the Irish.
They left me on the docks in the good hands of a taxi driver, who said “You’re Irish, aren’t you?” No I said American from South Boston, but the accent kicks in thanks to a genetic code and the proximity of Ireland, the closer I get the more thick the brogue, and if I landed in Shannon for example I wouldn’t even be able to understand myself.
Yes I said I’m Irish as DeValera and U2, what he said? Nothing I replied a bit of Irish humour.
He of course turned out to be an ex-military and proceed to tell me all about Norn Iron, as if I had never heard of the place and how the problem could be solved, more military seemed to be the gist of his argument. I begged to differ and suggested that the “problems” were being sorted out better now that in a long time and maybe better off to be sorted out by the people that actually live there. This seemed to be an alien and incompatible suggestion, and he changed the subject to his love of tanks and how he had driven across Salisbury plain in one and fulfilled a boyhood dream. Dream on I thought, but said no more as it was he that was driving me to the airport and imminent departure.
I had been dreading the thoughts of Heathrow the whole time, my least favourite airport on the planet, but terminal 4 has now become a ghost town thanks to the new terminal 5, and was manned by a population almost exclusively descended entirely from South East Asia, they were friendly and not really interested in me at all, and they didn’t say “You’re Irish, aren’t you?”
We have had a few days at anchor, so we have had a good opportunity to do some repairs, painting and other useful activities like fishing….
We also got to do a rescue boat drill. But we needed to call the VTS before launching the MOB boat to get permission, so the second mate called up Southampton VTS on the VHF, they said we also had to call QHM on channel 11. At this stage I picked up the mike and informed them that it would only be in the vicinity of the ship and only for about 15 minutes. Still the operator at VTS was adamant, you must call QHM and give them an ETS and ETC.
I looked at the 2/o and said “what the f..k is QHM?”, he nearly fell on the deck laughing, so I switched to Channel 11 and called “QHM, QHM…”and told them our intention to launch the rescue boat, a friendly female voice replied “QHM has approved”
We didn’t have to reveal our apparent lack of knowledge to the VHF listening operators because a quick check on Google revealed our mystery….thankfully we have an enlightened shipowner, who has seen fit to install satellite internet on all of his ships.
QHM: Queens Harbour Master in Portsmouth. and here are the other TLA’s (three letter abbreviations)
VHF: Very High Frequency
MOB: Man OverBoard (not something you really want to experience, but you have to practice for that eventuality)
ETS & ETC: Estimated Time of Start/Completion
Of course there are millions more abbreviations and phrases and not just in the shipping world, use of jargon defines the users knowledge, the more you know, the better it sounds to those within your branch or profession. The converse is also true, the less you know, the greener you sound. So better to not say anything and let other people think you are stupid, than to open your mouth and prove it!
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