Tag: Greenwich

I must down to the seas again

History repeating itself in terms of the commercial sailing ship.

Most Brits have heard of the tea clipper Cutty Sark. As the Cutty Sark website explains,

Cutty Sark has travelled across the world, sailing under both the Red Ensign and the Portuguese flag, visiting every major port in the world through the course of her working life. In admiration of her beauty and in recognition of her fame, she was preserved for the nation by Captain Wilfred Dowman in 1922.

Since then, the old clipper has been berthed in Falmouth and Greenhithe, finally arriving at her current resting place in Greenwich in 1954.

And elsewhere on that website,

Cutty Sark matters because:

She is the epitome of the great age of sail.

She is the only surviving extreme clipper, and the only tea clipper still in existence.

Most of her hull fabric survives from her original construction and she is the best example of a merchant composite construction vessel.

She has captured the imagination of millions of people, 15 million of whom have come on board to learn the stories she has to tell.

She was preserved in Greenwich partly as a memorial to the men of the merchant navy, particularly those who lost their lives in both world wars.

She is one of the great sights of London.

I mention the Cutty Sark because it seems a historic connection with something very relevant to today’s world that was the subject of a recent item on Rob Hopkin’s Transition Culture blogsite. In it Rob presents his first podcast, the topic being the sailing ship Tres Hombres, that is being used for commercial sea transport. The link to the Transition Culture story is here, and the podcast follows, (just click on the link to listen to the fascinating 14 minutes audio story about the ship Tres Hombres.)

Tres Hombres podcastfinal

The first Transition podcast! A visit to the Tres Hombres, tasting a revolution in shipping

Last week I did a course with the Media Trust on how to make podcasts (highly recommended). So, here, with some fanfare, is the first ‘Transition podcast’, I hope you like it. If so, do embed it in other places. It means I spent the time I would spend writing editing pieces of audio. Let me know what you think. So, the podcast is about a fascinating morning I spent visiting the sailing ship Tres Hombres which visited Brixham earlier this week. It explores the potential of sail-powered shipping as the price of oil rises and the economy tightens. It’s an exciting story.

Finally, let me close with a very well-known poem about sailing the big ships.

“Sea-Fever”

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

By John Masefield (1878-1967).
(English Poet Laureate, 1930-1967.)

Greenwich Observatory

A rich and beautiful place in British History

view3 — View from Observatory Hill of Queen Anne's Palace, the old naval buildings & across the river Canary Wharf

Paul Handover recently published an article about “Daylight Saving” and the Greenwich Meridian. THIS SITE with its photos and links is of particular interest to those with little personal knowledge of London.

Greenwich Park – where stands the magnificent Royal Observatory – is one of the jewels of London. Steeped in history, it provides the perfect day-out for the family, including foreign tourists. Forget the jostling crowds in the frenzied den of useless consumption that is Oxford Street and take a train out to Greenwich. There you will find a magnificent park, wonderful views of London and the Thames, the Royal Observatory and the National Maritime Museum. Too much to mention in detail, but if for nothing else just go to see the clocks of John Harrison, horologer extraordinaire in a time when chronometry meant everything to men at sea. You don’t have to be British to take pleasure in the great skills and achievements of British sailors and explorers, backed up by men of science responsible for some of the most important advances in scientific history.

I can’t count how many times I’ve been to Greenwich Park, but every time I get back to London from my current home in Germany, I try to take my son there. I want him to see this rich place in British history, but also to enjoy its enormous beauty.

The Greenwich Meridian

Don’t know what time it is? Hardly surprising in Spring and Autumn.

Today is exactly one month before the United Kingdom ‘moves’ its clocks forward and enters British Summer Time; 1am (UTC) on Sunday 28th March 2010. Is that date the same across the world? One would think so because it makes life, especially international air transport, so much easier.

But no! In fact the way that time zones are applied and changed for Daylight Saving is a complete hotch-potch.

In the United States of America, daylight saving starts at 2am on March 14th, 2010. And just three years ago that start time would have been the first Sunday in April. Changes were made in the US Energy Policy Act of 2005.

From this geographic site comes the following:

Other parts of the world observe Daylight Saving Time as well. While European nations have been taking advantage of the time change for decades, in 1996 the European Union (EU) standardized an EU-wide “summertime period.” The EU version of Daylight Saving Time runs from the last Sunday in March through the last Sunday in October. During the summer, Russia’s clocks are two hours ahead of standard time. During the winter, all 11 of the Russian time zones are an hour ahead of standard time. During the summer months, Russian clocks are advanced another hour ahead. With their high latitude, the two hours of Daylight Saving Time really helps to save daylight. In the southern hemisphere where summer comes in December, Daylight Saving Time is observed from October to March. Equatorial and tropical countries (lower latitudes) don’t observe Daylight Saving Time since the daylight hours are similar during every season, so there’s no advantage to moving clocks forward during the summer.

Of course, someone had to create a web-site to track all these various time zones and changes. Here it is.

Last year, the BBC News website published an interesting article about the Greenwich Meridian aka The Prime Meridian. The setting of the Prime Meridian was done just over 125 years ago, in October 1884. When one thinks of the importance in having a standard meridian, both for time keeping and navigation, I would have guessed that it went back much further in time.

The other aspect that was news to me was that the conference had been convened at the request of the American President Chester Arthur.

From that BBC article:

Until the 19th Century, many countries and even individual towns kept their own local time based on the sun’s passage across the sky and there were no international rules governing when the day would start or finish.

Maps with multiple meridians were confusing

Enlarge Image

However, with the rapid expansion of the railways and communications networks during the 1850s and 1860s, setting a standard global time soon became essential.

“The world was in a very big mix-up,” explains Dr Avraham Ariel, author of Plotting the Globe. “People had lots of prime meridians. Earlier in Europe there were 20 prime meridians. The Russians had two or three, the Spanish had their own and so on.”