[Paddlewise] My great-uncle, the Monster (was Re: [PaddleWise] Snippings)

On Thursday 12 October 2006 05:00, Doug wrote:
> Hey, seen the new King Kong remake yet? There's some great rock garden
> navigating, including a seal landing in extreme seas along a wild
> coastline. However, it happens aboard a cargo ship.
>

Sure have! Nice remake in every way, if maybe a little too much
CGI (just because you have the technology you don't have to use
it all the time - just like rolling - nice to be able to, but you can do 
other stuff, too!).

Re seal landing ...

When I was a kid we occasionally met Frankenstein's Monster on weekends, 
when he played bridge with my grandparents. At least he looked just like 
that beast, with that huge scar across his forehead, so I was a bit 
scared, and his deep, booming voice didn't help either. And he was just as 
tall, but with silvery-white hair, which I guess the Monster would have 
gotten, had he  lived to a similar great age (No-one had told me the 
Monster had died, or that he couldn't speak Swedish - I might have been 
five at the time!

Captain Eriksson was my great-uncle, brother to my maternal grand-dad, 
and like so many other Scandinavians, had been a captain in the merchant 
navy during the war. 

In '42 (I think it was) his ship got torpedoed, off the UK coast somewhere. 
The force of the torpedo blast was so strong that his head was smashed 
through the windscreen in the pilot house - those windows would not break 
from a mere hurricane-powered 40 ft wave, so you know this was one hell of 
bang! 

After having come to, he couldn't see much, due to all the blood that was 
flowing from the huge gash across his forehead. Even an improvised turban 
made out of towels didn't stop the flow, so he told the first mate, to get 
some needle and thread to sew him up. The first mate, always the doctor 
onboard a ship, if no other is available, disappeared below, while the 
rest of the crew was ordered to abandon ship.

After a while the first mate returned to the bridge with the items needed, 
so my great-uncle told him to sew him up, pronto! The mate valiantly 
tried, but just couldn't do it, with all that blood, the reeling, stricken 
ship that slowly, but surely, foundered under them, so my great-uncle 
swore and muttered to the first mate that 'if you want something done, 
you'll have to do it yourself!'. So he did. 

After the crude patching up - he was no seamstress even on a normal day - 
he did kind of a seal landing with his huge cargo ship, jamming it between 
two huge rocks, as he wanted to save the precious cargo, if possible. 
Which he did! 

The crew picked the captain and the mate up in one of the lifeboats and
they all got safely to shore, to man another ship, another day!

Tord
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