Unsurprisingly, the officer of the watch came through the wheelhouse door like Batman on steroids. With the glazed-eye look of an unhinged madman, his eyes rolling and soundlessly mouthing, Michael gathered he was saying something along the lines of, ‘What the frigging hell have you done, you half-witted bastard.’
So, what can ail the men who sail,
On the endless oceans free?
Who wish no more than to stand their watch,
As they peer at the endless sea?
It is difficult to imagine anyone more respectful of the female gender than I am. As a matter of fact, my mother was a woman as were roughly half my family. Vera, my first girlfriend was female: Come to think of it all who followed her footsteps were […]
Faithful unto death I lacked the sense, experience and chutzpah to deviate from the course set for me by the ship’s 2nd Officer. That U.S. warship was going to get out of my way or it was going straight to Davy Jones’s locker in fore and aft pieces.
Never forgotten was the drama as the Enugu Palm skimmed a row of moored freighters at the quays of the Ivory Coast port of Abidjan. The mariner on the wheel of that fateful day in June 1965 tells the story as it unfolded. MIKE WALSH: Had it not […]
MAKE READING GREAT AGAIN: SS America was an ocean liner and cruise ship built in the US in 1940, for the United States Lines and designed by the noted American naval architect William Francis Gibbs. She carried many names in the 54 years between her construction and her […]
Three mariners spent several days on a deserted island after their boat was damaged. Three stranded sailors were rescued from a deserted island in the Pacific on Tuesday, ending a week-long torment after their boat was damaged, the US Coast Guard said in a statement this week. Rescuers […]
Recently, I came across a story of immense poignancy even though nearly 200 years have passed since the Irish Famine was a major talking point. It is estimated that starvation and deportation of the Irish, Scottish and English folk led to a 50 per cent loss of population […]
MICHAEL WALSH AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN. From June 1941 onward the possibility of a German invasion of England had all but vanished. Another press-promoted lie was that Ireland faced a serious threat of invasion by Germany. In fact, Germany’s twice-elected (1933 and 1936) German Chancellor never contemplated invading the […]
MICHAEL WALSH FORMER MARINER: The vast oceans and seas that touch all of our lives abound with mystery. The fathomless and mysterious oceans consist of ever-changing horizons hardly touched by human hands. Mysterious because we know more about the distant moon than we do of the enigmatic waters […]
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
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