====================================== S T O P - P R E S S We're with you slightly earlier than usual this month; Julian and Kathy are off to Menorca on location research for the series ====================================== "THE BOSUN'S CHRONICLE" --- emailed to Shipmates around the world --- VOL.4, ISSUE 2, February 2004 Avast there - and welcome aboard from the Bosun of the Thomas Kydd Shipmates' Network! 1) NEWS & VIEWS 2) ASK JULIAN 3) RECOMMENDED READING 4) SALTY SAYINGS 5) WHO'S WHO 6) FEATURE 7) CONTEST ==================== 1) NEWS & VIEWS --- publishing happenings, shipmates ahoy! --- + Shipmates' pets at sea Following the feature last month, a number of Shipmates have shared personal stories of pets at sea. Middy the dog, Eric the Chipmunk and Charlie Monkey are just three of their delightful maritime companions. Don Fisher in America has fond memories of his mixed breed dog Midnight (Middy), who always sailed with him and his family in the New England waters. She had an uncanny sense of the proximity of land, and thanks to Middy they always knew, well before it was visible. He recalls one particularly dense fog on a journey from the Cape Cod entrance in Sandwich, Ma. up to Boston Harbour. Middy was camped just abaft the rudder, her usual spot, when she sat up and "smelled" the land. Better than any modern navigation equipment! Heather Dunn, from Australia, is an ex Radio Officer. On one ship the officers kept a chipmunk called Eric who lived in an over engineered cage at the after end of the officers' bar. On Heather's 21st birthday she received a gift - and a card signed by everyone, including Eric. Heather was later told that when his paw was inked for a signature he fainted, and everyone thought he had died so they respectfully laid him in his cage. He slowly opened one eye, surveyed his surroundings - and then dashed away into the furthest corner where he took a whole day to recover from his ordeal. "Gabby" Haines emailed this entry about Charlie Monkey from the commission book of HMS Newfoundland 1955-56, Far East Station. "M Perry bought Charlie during the long refit when the monkey was only one month old... He adores tomato sauce, tinned milk and anything sweet and will readily have a go at anything from an ear to raw cabbage... he is best know for his love of alcohol. One of his favourite tricks is to go around all the glasses at his master's table at the China Fleet Club having sippers... He is so attached to M Perry that he will not sleep with anyone else. When a 'Newcastle' man took him home one night he screamed and screamed and eventually spent the night in the cells and came back adrift next morning..." + Shipmate ahoy! Shipmate Ian Urquhart's ancestors moved to Upper Canada as United Empire Loyalists after the American Rebellion. Joining the Royal Canadian Navy as a technical apprentice, Ian achieved the rate of Chief Petty Officer and was then commissioned as a lieutenant. Ian has had a long and special association with HMS "Sackville", Canada's much-loved "Last Corvette" and is now her First Lieutenant. During the recent Hurricane Juan, Sackville was tied at her summer berth, two hurricane hawsers fore and aft having been added. Ian takes up the story, "As we were tied short rather than across the jetty, the ship rose and fell with a huge surge but did not roll. Nothing in the ship moved or was broken, artefacts on shelves, glassware, trophies, even a bottle of coca cola remained on the table. However, we did break the forward hurricane hawsers during the surge and "Sackville" moved over into the side of a sailing ship, whose captain had tethered her from his bow to our midships without permission. The vessel was holed below the waterline, and despite rescue efforts she sank." Many others were lost that night, but Sackville remained unscathed. For the past few years "Sackville" has hosted the Naval Weapons Association annual St Barbara's Day shoot, using the vintage four-inch gun (with sub calibre blanks). This year, the firing mechanism didn't work well so Ian instituted the use of a ball pen "hammer" to successfully fire the gun and thus save the shoot from cancellation! The "Sackville" team, with Ian on the breech, won for the second time in three years. [St Barbara is the patron saint of gunners.] HMCS Sackville is preserved and maintained in her 1944 configuration as Canada's Naval Memorial to all those who served in the naval service. + Menorca research Kathy and Julian leave on Monday for Menorca, Spain, for a week's location research for the Kydd series. Julian has promised to report back in the March "Chronicle". The Stockwins would love to meet any Shipmates on the island; just leave a message at Port Mahon Hotel. ===================== 2) ASK JULIAN --- a forum for Shipmates questions --- Phil Greer of Sarasota, Florida, is interested in the use of the dogvane for determining the direction of the wind at sea - and has asked Julian to elaborate on how it worked. He also wants to know: "If the wind is coming out of the north and the ship is sailing on a heading of W by NW, what angle would the sails be in relationship to the wind for maximum advantage?" Julian replies: "A vane is a narrow pendant mounted on a spindle and flown at the masthead to indicate wind direction. In square-rigged ships the helmsman was unable to see the mastheads because of the spread of canvas, so a small vane known as dogvane was attached to a pike and placed on the weather side of the quarterdeck so he could judge the direction of wind. The dogvane usually consisted of thin strips of cork strung on a piece of twine and was sometimes stuck around with feathers. (An important additional usage of vanes was in convoys, which were sometimes several hundred ships. Individual ships flew an identifying vane at the masthead.) Now, the question of the angle of the sails - I regret there is no easy answer to this question: it's been the subject of professional dispute since ships were first under sail, and it varies with each ship because sailing is as much an art as a science. In Kydd's day, the principle used was Bouguer's theorem - the tangent of angle between wind and sail was double that between wind and keel, and there were published tables for mariners. But this only worked for apparent winds forward of one point abaft the beam because after sails would increasingly steal the wind from forward. Most masters considered the centre of effort of each sail separately, and also knew that many other things affected maximum advantage - trim of yards horizontally, curvature of sails, trim of ship fore and aft, bracing of yards etc. Indeed, experiments in twentieth century square rigged ships showed that the classical shipmasters knew what they were doing, that there is no simple set rule that can override the individual characteristics of a ship." Do you have a question for Julian? There's a signed set of series postcards for every published question. Please put ASK JULIAN in the subject line. Email: JulianStockwin@JulianStockwin.com ==================== 3) RECOMMENDED READING --- books, magazines and journals about the sea --- "Royal Dockyards" by Philip MacDougall Britain's royal dockyards have a tradition of shipbuilding stretching back five hundred years. At one time they were the largest industrial employees in the world. This inexpensive publication gives a fascinating account of how the yards once performed their nationally important tasks. GBP2.95 Shire Books ISBN 0 7478 0033 2 ==================== 4) SALTY SAYINGS --- what today's English owes to Jack Tar --- Toe the line To toe the line is to follow the rules of the group, to keep within the limits of defined behaviour. The origins of this phrase are definitely salty. The space between deck planks in a wooden ship was sealed with a mixture of pitch and oakum. These formed a series of parallel lines a half foot apart, running the length of the deck. When a warship's crew was ordered to fall in at quarters, sailors mustered in a given area of the deck and stood with their toes just touching a particular seam. ==================== 5) WHO'S WHO --- bio details of the characters in the series --- We had a tremendous response to the contest to identify three characters from the series and the winner is Graham Mills. A signed bound proof copy of SEAFLOWER is on its way to him. He'd "been aboard since the last age"; faded tattoos cover his body and he has a mild, seamed face - answer: Samuel Claggett He is the acerbic one of the two scientist who come aboard in ARTEMIS - answer: Edward Hobbes He made good use of "conweniences" - answer: Quashee ==================== 6) FEATURE Loblolly Boys When Joe Bowyer is mortally injured in KYDD, and carried below, the loblolly boys attend to him before the surgeon returns with his chest. The term is somewhat of a misnomer - loblolly boys were nearly always old seamen, no longer fit for normal ship duties. They acted as assistants to the surgeon, with varying degrees of expertise and levels of compassion. "Loblolly" is an old English country word; its first known use was circa 1597. The term is derived from "lob", meaning to bubble in boiling. "Lolly" was a Devon word for broth, or a kind of gruel. "Loblolly" was adopted in the navy to describe semi-liquid food given to the sick. One wag has pointed out that the word itself shakes in pronunciation like a jelly, which food it resembles. Loblolly boys were found in both the US and Royal Navy. In US Naval Regulations, the rate first officially appeared in 1814 (although it had been in common use for many years before). Sick call was announced by the loblolly boy standing at the foremast banging a mortar with a pestle. Despite their lowly status, some loblolly boys have gained a place in history. Jack Rider was a loblolly boy in the "Victory", and one of the group that surrounded the dying hero of Trafalgar. Rider's duties were "to do anything and everything that was required - from sweeping and washing the deck and saying 'amen' to the chaplain, down to cleaning the guns and helping the surgeon to make pills and plasters and to mix medicine". He once set fire to the ship as he was engaged in investigating, by candlelight, the contents of a bottle of ether! The fire was quickly extinguished, but not without considerable fuss. It's said that Nelson asked what all the noise was about and was told: "Loblolly boy's set fire to an empty bottle and it has set fire to the doctor's shop." "Oh," replied Nelson, "well I wish you and loblolly would put the fire out without making such a confusion", then continued with his writing with the greatest coolness. On the USS "Chesapeake", negro loblolly boy William Brown was the only person on board who could sound a trumpet and was rated bugleman by Captain Lawrence. Unfortunately, musical skill was not attended by martial temperament. Brown was court-martialled for failing to sound 'boarders away', as ordered by Captain Lawrence. Around the middle of the nineteenth century the Royal Navy replaced the rate of Loblolly Boy with that of Sick Berth Attendant. Likewise, in the US, the Loblolly Boy faded into history with the introduction of the rate of Surgeon's Steward. ==================== 7) CONTESTS Ahead of the publication of QUARTERDECK in November this year, here's a question that relates to the book. Which Canadian city is most associated with the North American Station? There's a mystery prize for the winner! We'll be running the Shipmate Reviewers contest for QUARTERDECK later in the year. This will be your chance to win an advance proof copy of the book! =================== And finally, here's an excerpt from a delightful eighteenth century nautical ad calling for volunteers to join one of His Majesty's frigates bound for the North American station: "Who would enter for a small craft whilst the 'Leander', the finest and fastest sailing frigate in the world, with a good spar deck overhead to keep you dry, warm and comfortable, and a lower deck like a barn where you may play at leap-frog after the hammocks are hung up, has room for one hundred active smart seamen and a dozen stout lads for royal yard men? This wacking double banked frigate is fitting out ...to be flagship on the fine, healthy, full-bellied North American station, where you may get a bushel of potatoes for a shilling, a codfish for a biscuit, and a glass of boatwain's grog for twopence. The officer's cabins are building on the main deck on purpose to give every tar a double berth below. Lot of leave on shore! Dancing and fiddling on board! And four pounds of tobacco served out every month! A few strapping fellows who would eat an enemy alive wanted for the Admiral's barge. Every good man is almost certain of being made a warrant officer, or getting a snug berth in the Dockyard... God Save the King! 'The Leander' and a full-bellied station!" But to find out what it's really like, you'll have to wait for QUARTERDECK, the fifth book in the Thomas Kydd series, published later this year -in which Kydd finds himself sailing for the North American Station ... Yours aye, THE BOSUN ++ Back issues of the newsletter downloadable from the website ++