Rowing to the sailing ship (1940s)
Photographer: Heinz von Perckhammer, Berlin
This is a photo of the Old Heugh Lighthouse and its keeper. The Lighthouse was the first of its kind in England to use coal gas as a luminant and stood from 1847 to 1915.
Dunkirk ‘little ship’, Anne, restored and relaunched
Working through a long cold winter in Southern Scotland, Kes Travers, a former Royal Navy submariner, has restored the 30ft motor sailer, Anne, a veteran “little ship of Dunkirk” built in pitch pine and oak by Frank Curtis at Looe in 1925…
The St George’s Cross defaced with the arms of Dunkirk flown from the jack staff is known as the Dunkirk jack and is only flown by civilian ships and boats of all sizes that took part in the Dunkirk rescue operation in 1940. The only other ships permitted to fly the George’s Cross flag at the bow are those with a Royal Navy Admiral on board.
“Permission was given by the Admiralty, the College of Heralds and the City of Dunkirk for the Cross of St. George (the flag of Admiralty) to be defaced with the Arms of Dunkirk for use as the Association’s House Flag. This can be worn by Member Ships at any time when the owner is aboard. In addition, when in company, we fly the undefaced Cross of St. George at the bow.
“To avoid any possible confusion with barges wearing an Admiral’s flag, the Dunkirk Little Ships must wear the Red Ensign when flying the undefaced Flag of St. George at the bows…”
–source: Jacks of the UK
above right: St George’s Cross
below right: Blason ville fr Dunkerque:
“A lion sable passant armed and langued gules, argent a dolphin azure naiant embowed finned and langued gules. In other words, picturing a (former) Flemish city and harbour.”
The Flag of England is the St George’s Cross. The red cross appeared as an emblem of England in the Middle Ages, specifically during the Crusades (although the original symbol used to represent English crusaders was a white cross on a red background) and is one of the earliest known emblems representing England. It also represents the official arms of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and it achieved status as the national flag of England during the sixteenth century.
The flag used by the British Royal Navy (the White Ensign) is also based on the flag of England, consisting of the St George’s Cross and a Union Flag in the canton. In addition to the UK, several countries in the Commonwealth of Nations also have variants of the White Ensign with their own national flags in the canton, with the St George’s Cross sometimes being replaced by a naval badge.
more: History of the Union Jack on wikipedia
Dunkirk (1958) Movie Poster – posted by The Kent Film Office (see full size)
Dunkirk is a 1958 British war film directed by Leslie Norman and starring John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee. It was based on two novels: Elleston Trevor’s The Big Pick-Up and Lt. Col. Ewan Hunter and Maj. J. S. Bradford’s Dunkirk.
The film relates the story of Operation Dynamo, principally from the viewpoints of two people: a newspaper reporter and a soldier.
Mrs. Miniver (1942) – Directed by: William Wyler; Starring: Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon
Miss Monkey watched the old classic Mrs. Miniver the other night, and was inspired to make this week’s Maritime Monday about the Evacuation of Dunkirk.
Based on the fictional English housewife created by Jan Struther in 1937 for a series of newspaper columns, the film won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director.
Mrs. Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) and her family live a comfortable life at a house called “Starlings” in a village outside London. The house has a large garden, with a private landing stage on the river Thames, and a motorboat. As World War II looms, Clem; together with other boat owners, volunteers to take his boat to assist in the Dunkirk evacuation.
Director William Wyler wrote and re-wrote the key sermon “the night before the sequence was to be shot.” The speech “made such an impact that it was used in essence by President Roosevelt as a morale builder and part of it was the basis for leaflets printed in various languages and dropped over enemy and occupied territory.”
In 2009, it was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant and will be preserved for all time. Soon after filming, Richard Ney, who played Kay Miniver’s son and was 11 years her junior, married Garson. –wikipedia
Well, that explains the conspicuously long on-the-mouth kisses they exchanged during the film.
Final outcome of the war being no where near certain by the film’s release in 1942, the studio wisely chose to omit any sweeping declarations about Victorious Britannia and the everlasting pluck of her peoples.
A fleet of Little Ships that rescued Allied troops from Dunkirk in 1940 has set sail from Ramsgate to mark the 70th anniversary of the event. Fifty vessels headed to France to commemorate Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of 338,000 soldiers from Dunkirk’s beaches. The troops had been driven back to the French coast by the German army during the second world war…
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Gavin Bryars – Opening Part I – The Sinking of The Titanic
(click link above to listen) Richard Gavin Bryars (born 16 January 1943) is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.
Bryars’s first works as a composer owe much to the New York School of John Cage (with whom he briefly studied), Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and minimalism. One of his earliest pieces, The Sinking of the Titanic (1969), is an indeterminist work which allows the performers to take a number of sound sources related to the sinking of the RMS Titanic and make them into a piece of music. The first recording of this piece appeared on Brian Eno‘s Obscure Records in 1975. The 1994 recording of this piece was remixed by Aphex Twin as Raising the Titanic (later collected on the 26 Mixes for Cash album).
* Go log into itunes or Amazon or whatever musical teet-from-which-you-suck and download this. It’s cool and will impress the chicks.
Image description: A life vest used by a survivor of the RMS Titanic. Five days into its maiden voyage in 1912, the White Star ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg at full speed in the North Atlantic, en route from England to the United States. At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, the gigantic ship sank in 12,500 feet of water 350 miles off the coast of Canada. Within about two hours, the ocean liner Carpathia arrived and rescued the Titanic’s 705 surviving crew and passengers. Around 1,500 people aboard were lost.
Chicago physician Dr. Frank Blackmarr, a Carpathia passenger, helped with the survivors suffering from hypothermia, exposure, and shock. He collected this Titanic life vest during the voyage as a souvenir, and later donated it to the Chicago Historical Society. In 1982, the CHS donated it to the Smithsonian’s National Watercraft Collection.
Image courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
(via mudwerks)
You are what you eat—that’s true even after your bones have spent 200 years buried in the dirt. A new study using old bones from 18th century British sailors confirmed the naval diet: lots of biscuits, more protein than the average landlubber, and the same damn things sailors ate for the previous 200 years.
The Victualing Board actually kept meticulous records of a sailor’s official rations: 1 lb of bread and 1 gallon of beer per day (!), plus 1 lb of pork twice a week, 2 lbs of beef twice a week, or butter and cheese the other three days. But when the going got tough out in the middle of watery nowhere, did sailors actually get their rations?
Yes, it seems, based on an analysis of nitrogen isotopes extracted from the bones of 80 sailors. The elevated levels of nitrogen suggested that sailors did get as much beef and pork as the Victualing Board recorded. And despite being at sea, they didn’t seem to eat much fish…
keep reading on Discovery Science
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One of the Titanic lifeboats being drained of water aboard the Carpathia
For her maiden voyage, Titanic carried a total of 20 lifeboats of three different varieties:
Boats on the starboard side were odd-numbered 1–15 from bow to stern, while those on the port side were even-numbered 2–16 from bow to stern. Lifeboats 1 and 2, the “emergency cutters”, were kept swung out, hanging from the davits, ready for immediate use while collapsible lifeboats C and D were stowed on the boat deck immediately in-board of boats 1 and 2 respectively.
Collapsible lifeboats A and B were stored on the roof of the officers’ quarters, on either side of number 1 funnel. However there were no davits mounted on the officers’ quarters to lower collapsibles A and B, and they weighed a considerable amount empty.
During the sinking, lowering collapsibles A and B proved difficult as it was first necessary to slide the boats on timbers and/or oars down to the boat deck. During this procedure, collapsible B capsized and subsequently floated off the ship upside down.
painting by Henri-Pierre Danloux, pre-1809, National Portrait Gallery
painting by Thomas Whitcombe, 1798, National Maritime Museum.
The painting shows the British flagship Venerable engaged with the Dutch flagship Vrijheid.
Full resolution (2,500 × 1,616 pixels)
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