For those wishing to learn just a bit about sailor’s knots, Animated Boating Knots by Grog is a lot of fun. Here is a rolling hitch, a marvelously useful knot that I invariably forget how to tie whenever a need one. If you need to climb a halyard, tie a warping line to an anchor rode, or take the load off a sheet fouled on a winch, there is nothing like it. And even if you don’t need to do any of these things it is still a very nice knot to know. After all, what’s knot to like? Sorry.
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Having sailed last week on the Hudson River sloop, Clearwater, a voyage by another Hudson River sloop came to mind. In 1785 the Hudson River sloop Experiment was only the second ship from the young American republic to sail to China.
Hudson River sloops were developed by the Dutch for the specific conditions in vast tidal estuary that is the Hudson River below Trenton. They are beamy with low freeboard and shallow draft. Their rig is simple – a huge mainsail to get he most of Continue reading
An update on the MV Faina – still being held hostage by Somali pirates.
Somali pirates hold whip hand in standoff
And a comment by my 12 year old son, Ted. He suggested that he would like to learn some Somali so that next year when “Talk Like a Pirate Day” rolls around, he will really be able to talk like a pirate.
There are two Maine “Windjammers” currently for sale. This may not be terribly useful information for those of us feeling more than usually penurious in the current economic downturn. Nevertheless there are moments when the idea of chucking it all and making a living on a sailboat or saling ship does have a certain appeal.
The two boats for sale are the Rachel B. Jackson and the venerable Victory Chimes. Continue reading
As this is a nautical blog, I do feel compelled to at least tip our hat to Andrew Sullivan’s recent article “Why I Blog“, in this month’s Atlantic Monthly . (I do recommend Sullivan’s political blog for the Atlantic – The Daily Dish.)
I feel the need to recognize Sullivan because he labors manfully to use a nautical metaphor, the ship’s log, to explain the process of “blogging”. As he notes “the word blog is a conflation of two words: Web and log.” He goes on to say:
I am every fond of the Irish sea song “Holy Ground”. The song is about a sailor bound for sea, leaving his lady love and hoping to return. “And still I live in hope to see the Holy Ground once more..” It is also known as the “Cobh shanty”, and indeed the “Holy Ground” is a neighborhood in the Irish port of Cobh.
This brought to mind the notorious area neighborhood in colonial New York, known for its high class brothels, also known as the “Holy Ground”. It made me wonder whether there was more to the “Holy Ground” than one might first imagine. Continue reading
An intriguing news story. (Thanks to LizMc on the Horatians forum.) According to the BBC, Ann Carghill was “was the Britney Spears of her day.” I think they slight poor Ms Cargill.
“When the packet ship, The Nancy, was wrecked off the Isles of Scilly in 1784 one of the victims included Ann Cargill, one of the most famous and highest paid Opera singers of the time and whose numerous affairs and elopements had scandalised London.”
Divers close in on lost fortune of Ann Cargill, a scandalous star
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A friend pointed this book out to me. It looks intriguing and is coming out in mid-November. Jean Lafite was Jewish? Who knew? (Thanks Henya!) From a review in the Jewish Press:
“They did not sing “Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Manischewitz,” nor do they ever seem to appear in any of the Disney films about pirates in the Caribbean. The website piratesinfo.com carries not a single reference to them.
One of my particular frustrations with the “Talk-Like a Pirate Day” folks is that even if one ignores the very nasty nature of pirates, historical and modern alike, a second and perhaps even great problem remains. The Talk-Like-a-Piraters do such a lousy job of talking like pirates. A few “Aarghs”, “avast-ye maties”s and “shiver-me-timbers” isn’t very impressive. If that is the best they can do, why bother?
So in the spirit of fellowship I offer two phrases for those with an interest in sailor talk, whether for the sake of TLAP or not. Continue reading