Maritime Monday; week ending June 11, 2011

Harold Lloyd in Sailor Made Man; 1921 – via kari-young

An idle, wealthy playboy foolishly joins the Navy when the father of the girl he wants to marry tells him to get a job to prove himself worthy. When his ship docks at a Middle Eastern kingdom, The Girl and her father arrive by yacht. The local maharajah kidnaps The Girl and it is up to The Boy to rescue her. (imdb)

Writer: Hal Roach – Director: Fred C. Newmeyer

It is well past time for glasses like that to come back in style. Show some sack and get a pair when next you get your eyes checked. –Mf.

Photographer Paul Souders comes face to face with walruses in Norway

American wildlife photographer Paul Souders went on a three week-long sea expedition off one of the world’s most remote and northern islands – Spitzbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway – to photograph walruses. 15 photos

Mermaid Swimming in Tank – Detail from turn of the century circus poster (via allmermaids)

Chief Officer Margaret L Cooper, Deputy Director of the Women’s Royal Indian Naval Service (WRINS), with Second Officer Kalyani Sen, WRINS at Rosyth during their two month study visit to Britain, 3rd June 1945

Formed in 1944, 988 women served in the Women’s Royal Indian Naval Service. They wore naval uniform resembling the one worn by the British WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service) except that the brass buttons bore the crown and Star of India under the “foul anchor”. For officers, the smart tricorn topped off a trim blue jacket and skirt, with white shirt and black tie. On the shoulders appeared initials “W.A.C.(I)” in light blue. In hot weather enrolled Indian ladies wore white jackets and sarees with the same initials and “distinction lace” if they were officers, and initials and ‘distinction badges’ in the case of Auxiliaries (ratings).

Recruits joined the naval wing on general or local service terms, as cipher operators and coders, teleprinter operators, switch-board operators, stenographers, typists, clerks, confidential book correctors, mess caterers etc. General service officers and auxiliaries, who received free accommodation and messing in addition to their pay and allowances were liable to be posted to any naval shore establishment in India. Local service was open to women who lived near a naval shore establishment where vacancies existed and who could carry out the duties required of them while living at home. They were not asked to serve away from their home stations, but accompanied their husbands or relatives on whom they were dependent, if the latter moved to another part of the country.

(via http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2010/01/india-in-second-world-war-part-3.html) – http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar///UN/India/RIN/RIN-9.html

kari-young – Vintage Sailors and their Pets via Flickr seattletim

The English iron barque, North Carolina which may have been intentionally sunk off the coast of Bermuda. (thesestamps via fuckyeahwrecks)

untitled by honesty honesty honesty on Flickr – via oldcortez

oldcortez reblogged sixtiesthrowback

The Boiler Room, SS France; 1912 – The Age of Engineering Worship – The Lung and Heart. Nothing is more curious and more instructive than a visit to the lungs and heart of the colossus. The liner France is powered by four propellers. This device consists of eleven evaporating boilers eight homes each, eight boilers four homes, or a total of 120 homes overlooking a grate surface of 222 square meters. (source)

“We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.”

F. T Marinetti ; The Futurist Manifesto 1909

Dead in the Water by ~namesjames – via trixietreats

Izismile.com – Disturbing Japanese Paintings (24 pics)

noblondes: These are works of Japanese painter Tetsuya Ishida. He painted scenes of ordinary Japanese life, but with the protagonist (a self portrait) always trapped in a machine-like body, or treated as part of a production line.

Tetsuya Ishida died in 2005 after being hit by a train (possibly suicide).

Night Table Reading; Middle-Aged History Nerd Edition: feastingonroadkill: Off for a bath, reading this

Even in the chilliest water, life can thrive. This Antarctic Ice Fish, photographed during an Alfred Wegener Institute Polarstern mission, has no red blood cells or red blood pigments. The adaption makes the fish’s blood thinner, saving energy that would otherwise be needed to pump the blood around the body. (Credit: © Julian Gutt / Alfred-Wegener-Institut fÃ¼r Polar- und Meeresforschung) — from Live Science ; 1 0f 94 images. via rhamphotheca

posted by smokers-die-younger – via kari-young

Neptunite Dye, Victorian Trading Card 1883 – via allmermaids

Paddle Steamer Karteria (1826-1840)

Built in London for the Greeks, Karteria (Greek for “Perseverance”) was possibly the most modern warship in the world when it entered service in 1826. She was ordered, part financed and captained by retired Royal Navy officer, Captain Frank Abney Hastings.

At the age of 11, Hastings had taken part at the Battle of Trafalgar on HMS Neptune. He rose to commander until 1820 when due to an incident with a senior officer he was compelled to leave the service. A great philhellene, in 1822 he went to Greece to serve on Tombazis’s ship “Themistoklis”. In 1824, he managed to secure £10,000 of the £2,000,000 of the second Greek loan from England, to finance Karteria; he paid for her guns himself. A year later, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Greek revolutionary navy.

Karteria was classified as a four-masted sloop-of-war that operated under sail while travelling, but could be propelled by steam-powered paddles in battle…

keep reading on A history of military equipment of Modern Greece »

Lowestoft, Suffolk (1908) via moewie

A Shipwreck – Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714 – 1789)

“Who hath desired the Sea? — the immense and contemptuous surges?
The shudder, the stumble, the swerve, as the star-stabbing bow-sprit emerges?
The orderly clouds of the Trades, the ridged, roaring sapphire thereunder —
Unheralded cliff-haunting flaws and the headsail’s low-volleying thunder —
His Sea in no wonder the same his Sea and the same through each wonder:
His Sea as she rages or stills?
So and no otherwise — so and no otherwise — hillmen desire their Hills.”

The Sea And the Hills by Rudyard Kipling (1902)

The echeneis is a fish, half a foot in length, that clings to ships and delays their passage. When this fish attaches to a ship, even in the high winds of a storm the ship will not move, but seems to be rooted in the sea. The echeneis is found in the Indian Sea.

Lucan [1st century CE] (Pharsalia, book 6, verse 797-799) – “..the sucking fish / Which holds the vessel back though eastern winds / Make bend the canvas…”

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 9, 41): The echeneis is a small fish that is often found on rocks. It has the ability to slow the passage of ships by clinging to their hulls. It is also the source of a love-charm and a spell to slow litigation in courts, and can be used to stop fluxes of the womb in pregnant women and to hold back the birth until the proper time. This fish is not eaten. Some say this fish has feet; Aristotle says it does not, but that its limbs resemble wings.

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 6:34): The echinais has its name because it clings to a ship and holds it fast (echei-naus). It is a small fish, about six inches long, but when it attaches to a ship the ship cannot move, but seems rooted in the sea, despite raging storms and gales. This fish is also called “delay” (mora) because it causes ships to stand still.

Bartholomaeus Anglicus [13th century CE] (De proprietatibus rerum, book 13): Enchirius is a little fish unneth half a foot long: for though he be full little of body, nathless he is most of virtue. For he cleaveth to the ship, and holdeth it still stedfastly in the sea, as though the ship were on ground therein. Though winds blow, and waves arise strongly, and wood storms, that ship may not move nother pass. And that fish holdeth not still the ship by no craft, but only cleaving to the ship. It is said of the same fish that when he knoweth and feeleth that tempests of wind and weather be great, he cometh and taketh a great stone, and holdeth him fast thereby, as it were by an anchor, lest he be smitten away and thrown about by waves of the sea. And shipmen see this and beware that they be not overset unwarily with tempest and with storms.”

Amazing Stories, November, 1943; via thegildedcentury

mikantohru

thesirenchronicles via moewie

Steve McQueen in Sand Pebbles 1966 – source

Flickr / cadgirl66 – via tentaclegarden

Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 via immoraltales

Front cover from Treasure island by Robert Louis Stevenson, New York, circa 1880 – via oldbookillustrations

from fuckyeahtattoos (see full size)

Jack Tar Magazine; issue 5 hits the virtual shelves

Kim Carver (Editor and brains behind) – Six years ago I created this magazine to educate green hands and entertain maritime enthusiasts of all ages. Stephanie Robb and I were encouraging more dialogue between sail training crews around the country, and Samantha Levens took it upon herself to write a thorough article on mariner rights. Without being inspired by these two passionate women, I would have never started Jack Tar.

Several folks did not like the name, and others did not like that I had no plans to focus solely on “tall” ships, where the bulk of my friends and experience lay. But what is the purpose of sail training Certainly not to support thousands of young sailors to become captains of schooners and barques. Sail training exists to encourage teamwork, communication, community and a good work ethic. For those who choose a career in the maritime industry, traditional sail training vessels provide the very best platform where one can learn enough navigation, meteorology, bosunry, basic diesel engine maintenance and general operations to set them on a course toward any maritime career.

For hundreds of years, anyone could find a berth on a sailing vessel somewhere in the world. No money, no college degree, and often no skills were necessary. This still holds true today; many vessels welcome green hands who are working their way up the hawse, and the use of these boats as easily accessible trade schools for future merchant mariners is invaluable. I encourage every American sail training organization to put up fliers at high schools, Job Corps campuses, community colleges and youth centers around the nation. Take on at least one green volunteer per season that might benefit more than most from the communal and educational experience that only a sail training vessel can provide…

Jack_Tar_Magazine_5-1.pdf; 14947K View – Download

Round Island Lighthouse Michigan – via The Larboard Watch

Actress Myrna Loy (1905-1993), with a group of unknown sailors, date unknown – via historiful

wordsandeggs: Vintage Soviet Travel magazine, via Russian Art and Books. More on my blog HERE.

Manhattan Bridge tower in Brooklyn framed through nearby buildings – Brooklyn, Summer 1974 | HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT – via theticketthatexploded

marriedtothesea.com

THE CAINE MUTINY; Columbia, 1954. Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Jose Ferrer, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, E.G. Marshall, Lee Marvin, and Claude Akins.

This and more posters and info on Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans

Watched this again last night on Turner Classic Movies. Excellent film. See it again, you know you want to. Spend the next day walking around acting like Captain Queeg and freak people out. (Steel fetish balls optional) You probably already have brass ones, (wink).

Sailor’s From Kruzenshtern by Arrnau on Flickr. (Lots more way cool tall ships pics)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Sailor Boy (Portrait of Robert NunÃ¨s), 1833. Oil on canvas, 131 x 80 cm. Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania (art-history)