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 *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
On 10/12/06, Tord Eriksson <tord_at_tord.nu> wrote: > > > 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! > > What a great story and an example, I belive, of tales that deserve to be told and retold. Thank you Tord. Regarding the seamanship of Scandinavians: In the 1970s I returned to the USA after having been employed abroad for what was then an unmentionable U.S. Government organization doing what was then considered honorable work. I had an education but no recent marketable skills; although it never occured to me to offer my services to HP. At any rate, I became the owner of a 35 foot salmon troller named "F/V Sea Lion" under a somewhat dubious premise. I was an airplane pilot and so knew how to navigate (I had just flown a 1946 airplane with no starter, lights or radio from Virginia to Seattle, after all) and got into commercial fishing under the premise that if the weather got too bad you could - unlike an airplane - at least stop and think it over. Shows you what I knew... My home port while fishing was La Push, Washington and it was thriving in the early 70s. There were three versions of commercial salmon fishermen: 1. School teachers. In those days you only needed a "landing permit" to be a commercial fisherman and the campground at La Push was full of school teachers who paid their $10 for a permit and would launch their boats - mostly open outboards - on nice days and go trolling for salmon. They spent their summer vacations picking up a few extra dollars to pay for their beer and campsites and had a good time doing it.. 2. Scandinavian fishermen. Mostly from Norway, I admit, but there were Fins and Swedes too. They fished from classic scandinavian wooden boats equipped with a tiny wheelhouse just big enough for the steering gear and lived in a tiny cabin just big enough for a bunk and a diesel stove. They survived, as near as I could tell, on coffee and "scrap fish"; halibut and cod that had little value in comparison to a salmon which went, even in the 1970s, for fifty cents (US) a pound. It was either throw it back or eat it but you wouldn't waste hold space on a 10-cent fish. 3. Me. It didn't take me long to learn that the group *I* wanted to emulate wasn't the schoolteachers so I hung around with the Scandinavians when they were in port. I learned how to ice up, where to fish, how to safely sleep at night (go far enough offshore to avoid the ships or anchor at "father-and-son" or behind Destruction Island) and how to make and drink coffee. I'm convinced that they don't make men like these any more. None of them was under 60 and a few were over 80 and they didn't just sneer at danger or be contemptuous of risk; they never even acknowledged either. Their seamanship was remarkable. They'd show up in a La Push coffeeshop after crossing the bar (one of the most notorious on the NW coast) in a storm that had me and the schoolteachers huddled over our coffecups afraid to even look at the entrance. I'm not at all surprised that one of them could stitch up his own forehead on the bridge of his sinking steamer. But I have to admit that making a seal landing with a sinking steamer would have never occured to me. I would have gone off searching for a sandy beach. Shows you what I know... Craig Jungers Royal City, WA *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
At first I thought I was reading one of Duane's descriptions of one of his rock garden race incidents...:-) Doug L snip > 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. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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