The war in the Far East (December 1941-September 1945) was ferocious and being captured by the Japanese was no guarantee of outliving the war. Amazingly, as many Allied servicemen and women were killed by their own forces as lost their lives during Japanese captivity.
The Great War (1914-1918) was, in retrospect, a new era conflict that progressed on emerging technology leaving everyone fighting by the seat of their khaki or fought with every kind of contemporary weapon including dashing grey pants.
As an eleven-year old schoolboy I often travelled on the Overhead Railway (the Dockers Umbrella). From the windows of the rickety train’s carriages windows one (or in our case several schoolboys) enjoyed an unfolding panorama of docks and ships loading and loading in the many docks.
Just Nuisance, a Great Dane, is the only dog ever to have been officially enlisted in the Royal Navy. During World War II between 1939 and 1944 the donkey-sized hound served with HMS Afrikander at the Royal Navy naval base in Simon’s Town (Simonstown), a once lovely, ordered and prosperous shoreline town in South Africa. The seaside community is located just 38 miles by road from Cape Town.
For $ 8000 Englishman Brandon Grimshaw bought a tiny deserted island in the Seychelles and moved there forever. When Britishman Brendon Grimshaw was under forty, he quit his job as a newspaper editor and started a new life.
On April 27, 1865, the United States experiences its worst maritime disaster in history. Mere weeks after the Civil War came to an end, the steamboat; Sultana exploded and sank in the Mississippi River, killing an estimated 1,200 to 1,800 Union prisoner of war soldiers who were released and on their way home.
75 years ago, on January 30, 1945, in the Danzig Gulf of the Baltic Sea, the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of Captain 3rd Rank Alexander Marinesko sank the German transport Wilhelm Gustloff.
In the UK, 500 people sang a folk song at the same time via video link, dedicating an unusual flash mob to the New Year and hopes that all the bad things were left behind.
THE RIVER, BAR AND BIGHT
Nostalgia for the life ashore,
But as a magnet drawn,
The gentle movement of the deck,
Tells me again I’m borne;
For distant shores I’ve never seen,
What better than to sleep and dream,
To lullaby of engine room,
Its song of fate, adventure, doom?
Ships aren’t meant to sink, but sometimes you have to wonder what miraculous forces kept a vessel afloat. The SS Baychimo was such a ship. For nearly four decades after it was abandoned, this 1,300-ton cargo ship sailed the Arctic without fuel or crew, until it disappeared just over fifty years ago, but some believe she is still out there drifting among the frozen icebergs.
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
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