It would take us two weeks to voyage to the Portuguese African colony of Mozambique. From Beira, King Arthur voyaged to Durban in Verwoerd’s South Africa where we experienced apartheid first-hand. No problem but there was much mirth at the predicament this posed to our West Indian engine room rating.
Thomas Moss, based in Birmingham, England, was known as one of his time’s most resilient chain makers. Birmingham was the heart of Britain’s chain-making industry, and Moss was famed not only for his physical strength but for the durability and reliability of his chains, crafted primarily for heavy lifting in shipyards and construction sites.
In what way could a winged sardine compare to ocean travel by superliner? Several generations of great ships on which one could live a lifestyle previously reserved for the super-rich and Hollywood’s greatest movie stars.
These real and legendary celebrities included Frank Sinatra, Roy Rogers, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis Jr, Tom Jones, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Harry Houdini. Ma’s is still a favourite haunt of performers from stage and screen.
One by one, down the gangway she led them out of the ship.
During my sleepwalking state, I had made my way from my afterdeck cabin to the stern of the vessel. Reaching the stern, perhaps dreaming that I was clambering over or straddling a stile or garden fence I was poised to plunge into the Sargasso Sea.
It is not a task for men weak of arm and spirit. The ocean’s pull on the line could jerk one’s arms from the armpits as the line is fed out over the ship’s taffrail into the sea below.
the poacher ensnared the poacher. From being a trader in the human flesh of the Dark Continent he was coopted to being a looter of seaborne gold, treasure, ingots, jewellery and whatever else caught his glad eye.
I could now see the community churches and farms. I recall being able to make out figures on the shoreline and vehicles using the lanes of the Irish Republic who I imagined were gazing entranced at such an unusual spectacle.
Norwegian fishermen caught an American nuclear submarine in its net. A fishing vessel from Tromso snared 200kg of halibut and 7,800 tons of American submarine A nuclear-powered US submarine got tangled up in a fishing net when cruising off the northern coast of Norway, giving one local fisherman […]
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
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