Sea snakes, square rig, Jutland, Scilly….

Nick Skeats hits the rocks:

The yacht was doomed. But where exactly where they? As they looked around, the fog thinned just enough for them to make out the lighthouse of North Astrolabe Reef about a mile and a half away. Nick took a compass bearing and they launched their seven-and-a-half-foot pram dinghy. They could not take much stuff – some water, food, a set of oilskins and boots each, two bottles of whisky and a ukulele. Loaded down with this lot they pushed off, rowing desperately in the force six. They eventually reached the lighthouse, found a place to land and pulled the tender ashore.

According to the literature, the lighthouse was manned; but it seemed to be empty, at least of humans. The reason for this was that at this precise time of year a particularly venomous form of sea snake traditionally conducted its reproductive activities on that island, and the lighthouse keepers had found it was safer to abandon the joint than try and live with the creatures.

Will Darby voyages in the South Seas:

The dawn sounds of the bush came softly on the air, the echoing screeches of parakeets and the hum and whistle of insects intermittently muffled by the crunch of the tiny waves on the coarse white sand. For a few moments nobody spoke. The village was invisible behind the curtain of jungle lining the riverbank. Its only giveaway was a wisp of woodsmoke that drifted skyward from an unseen kitchen house, swirling silently with the mists that were now rising from the treetops, before being lost amongst the green slopes of the extinct volcano that makes up Kolombangara Island, almost always shrouded in shifting, glinting cloud, a massive cloaked watcher peering out over the sea.

Geoff Mellor discusses mud:

I had heard many stories of deep-laden barges sticking in the mud and failing to float on an incoming tide, but it had never occurred to me that my own meagre possessions might have the same effect as 130 tons of bricks. Casting what I hoped looked like a casual glance over the side, I saw that the tide was indeed two feet over Ethel Ada’s marks, and still rising. Keeping my face straight, I went forward and picked up the sledgehammer that is basic equipment on a barge. Then, radiating confidence as best I could, I climbed aloft and smote the top of the mainmast a mighty blow. Much to my surprise and relief there was an enormous whoosh, and Ethel Ada flew into the air, landed back alongside the Anglia, and floated happily, bang on her marks.

Gordon Davies tells the story of the 'Great Western':

Her engines fitted and tested, Great Western steamed for Bristol on 31 March 1838. At Gravesend the vips on board were rowed ashore to return to London. The Great Western continued for Bristol. The machinery had now run for longer than on test, and it transpired that there was a problem. The boilers had been lagged to conserve heat, and there was some grease on the lagging. The Great Western’s chief engineer, George Pearne, recorded in his log ‘a fire broke out in the region of the chimney, from the oil in the felt on the steam chests having ignited, which threatened destruction to the ship . . . the steam was generating fast from the flames round the upper part of boilers’. The boilers, designed for very low excess pressure, were now at risk of exploding. A few boilermen fled in a dinghy, but most of the crew, led by Christopher Claxton, fought back, and ‘all hands bailing, pumping, etc, succeeded in extinguishing the fire.’

Wilfred Thesiger goes to sea:

I had read Eothen and other tales of Eastern travel and my imagination endowed Constantinople with all the magic of the East. Samarkand, Merv and Bokhara were inaccessible but Constantinople was within my reach. I went there during my first summer vacation from Oxford, working my passage in a tramp steamer bound for the Black Sea.

Julian Blatchley solves a pipeline problem:

Peering aft into the grey of the dawn I could see the orange-striped main section of the hose lying docile and straight astern, undulating gently in the long ocean swell. The marker buoys which allowed the retrieval of the hose-end lifting chains were floating normally. The restraining wire connected to the hose where it touched the water was in place and lightly tensioned. All seemed well.

I was about to turn away when I noticed a splash erupt from one side of the hose about five sections out from the stern. As I watched it happened again, then again. I went back to my office for my binoculars; but I knew what it was before I focussed. There was a marlin stuck in the hose.

George Fairhurst takes command of a square-rigger:

We set about turning the Phoenix round. The dock is about 110 feet wide and Phoenix is 112 feet long, so given the overhang of the bowsprit and a full dock to get her up as high as possible it should be simple enough – though she weighs eighty tonnes, so if our gentle manoeuvre went wrong the bowsprit would snap like a carrot. Quietly and with little fuss, ropes were singled up, springs laid out and inflatable engines started in case we needed a push. I imagined we might start the main engine, but Pete the mate gently suggested it would not be needed, and quietly walked forward to manage the bow lines. With minimum fuss and even less noise, her bow swung into a great arc out in the dock. Lines were surged and hauled. The huge wicker fender creaking under her stern to keep her rudder off the wall was persuaded to stay engaged by heavy kicking. Ninety degrees came and went; a little nudging from the dotty boat, and round she came.

Neil Munro runs into Para Handy:

The Vital Spark, I confessed, was well known to me as the most uncertain puffer that ever kept the Old New Year in Upper Lochfyne.

‘That wass her!’ said Macfarlane, almost weeping. ‘There was never the bate of her, and I have sailed in her four years over twenty with my hert in my mooth for fear of her boiler. If you never saw the Fital Spark, she is aal hold, with the boiler behind, four men and a derrick, and a watter-butt and a pan loaf in the foc'sle. Oh man! she wass the beauty! She was chust sublime! She should be carryin' nothing but gentry for passengers, or nice genteel luggage for the shooting-lodges, but there they would be spoilin' her and rubbin' all the pent off her with their coals, and sand, and whunstone, and oak bark, and timber, and trash like that.’

‘I understood she had one weakness at least, that her boiler was apt to prime.’

‘It's a lie,’ cried Macfarlane, quite furious; ‘her boiler never primed more than wance a month, and that wass not with fair play. If Dougie wass here he would tell you. I wass ass prood of that boat ass the Duke of Argyll, ay, or Lord Breadalbane.

Rozelle Raynes goes to sea with the WRNS:

On Monday afternoon Winkle and I set to work on the cutter with the Kelvin engine. It was in a filthy condition and we spent several hours scrubbing the decks and thwarts, cleaning out the bilges, mending the bilge pump and polishing all the brasswork. It was suppertime by then, and we felt it wiser to give evasive answers to the others, who showed a certain curiosity about our disappearance.

Having made the cutter shine and sparkle with soap and polish, we could hardly contain ourselves until we came on duty again. It would then be up to me to plumb the depths of my meagre knowledge to get the engine running. Back in our boat, my brain felt like a vaporous whirlpool. Treating engines like human beings seemed to me of paramount importance. As a first step, for this one had obviously been neglected and maltreated over a long period, Winkle cleaned down the outside with cotton-waste soaked in paraffin while I changed the oil in the sump, cleaned the jets, took the sparking-plugs to a garage to be sandblasted and examined the magneto with a morbid fascination. Electrics were a closed book to me, so I telephoned to Margaret and she promised to meet me at the dance at the Guildhall that night and unfold some of the mysteries of what induces an engine to spark.

It turned out to be an uproarious evening, with half the crew of Abatos inviting us to take the floor in quick succession. As a result I only gained some fragmentary hints about the interior of a magneto, and it was nearly the end of my first week at Squid before I considered the engine in a fit state to respond to the starting-handle.

John Muir visits a director tower at Jutland:

He ran up the bridge ladders and finally reached the upper bridge, where the captain and navigating officer, officer of the watch, and signalmen were busy getting ready to go down to the armoured conning-tower. Above him towered the foremast, a central thick steel tube supported by two smaller steel tubes running down and outwards to the deck. On the after side of the central tube steel rungs were let into the mast. Seizing hold of these, he climbed rapidly upwards until he reached the trapdoor communicating with the top. Pushing up the door, he pulled himself bodily upwards and at last stood on the platform, 120 feet above the level of the sea.

He was in a circular box about ten feet in diameter, covered with a roof and with bulwarks rising breast-high all the way round. His duty was spotting for the secondary armament. To assist him there were two other officers and eight men acting as range-takers, messengers, timekeepers, and in charge of deflection instruments. He gave the range for the guns to the transmitting station, watched the fall of the shot, estimated its distance over or short of the target, and supplied the necessary corrections. As it was useless to expect that firing the secondary guns would be of any value until the range came down to about 12,000 yards, or to repel destroyer or light cruiser attack, there would be a long interval of waiting before he would have anything to do. Meanwhile, he went round the instruments and saw that they were all in working order, tested the voice-tubes, and gave hints and instructions to his subordinates.

The sky was rapidly becoming more overcast and the clouds were lower, although the horizon was still plainly visible. A message came up the voice-tube from the conning-tower, warning him to keep a sharp lookout on the port bow, as the enemy battlecruisers should be shortly sighted proceeding in a northerly direction.

Vyvyen Brendon describes her Scillonian ancestors:

In 1680 Trinity House had commissioned the building of St Agnes lighthouse on the highest point of this low-lying island, the last inhabited landfall before America, to warn ships of rocks which sent in ‘more wrecks of ships by the sea than to any other of the Scilly Islands’. Despite objections that such a beacon would deprive Scillonians of the salvage which made ‘some amends for the forlornness of their abode’, the round white tower was erected by the end of the year. Its light was provided by a coal fire in an iron brazier, which required ‘much care . . . to keep a good light’ – there are possibly apocryphal stories that the first keeper, Samuel Hocken, let it die down deliberately on the approach of a Virginia trader, and even took part in the subsequent plunder. Whether this was true or not, the Elder Brethren of Trinity House in their wisdom resolved never thenceforward to appoint a Scillonian to the post on account of the islanders’ ‘former piracies’.

The Cox'n bails a whaler:

The weekend had started bright and clear, but as the day progressed the weather deteriorated and it was now blowing hard and pouring with rain. At this point the coxswain of the local pilot boat reported that just off the Forts was a Royal Navy whaler sitting full of water with its gunwales awash, and what appeared to be eight persons on board trying to bail it out. The pilot boat was escorting a supertanker, and could not abandon his duties to render assistance; so he informed the coastguard, who notified the Queen's Harbour Master, who dispatched a police launch to investigate and tasked our lifeboat to render assistance.

… and of course there are Flotsam and Jetsam, an interview with an oligarch in which he reflects on the joys or otherwise of yacht ownership, books old and new, the beautiful illustrations of Claudia Myatt, excitement, reflection and blasts of salt spray and fresh air….