A Hostile Environment

I spent forty-odd years in the shipping industry and got to travel on a variety of ships in a variety of oceans. In all that time, I think there were only a dozen occasions when the ship I was sailing in encountered such severe weather that there was danger to life and limb.

They were all very unpleasant occasions and a reminder that the sea can be a hostile environment no matter how large a ship might be. Despite this, when you speak to a seasoned cruise passenger about, for instance, the hurricane you were once in, the chances are that you will be countered by their experience which they are sure was worse than yours. As I’ve said before, some passengers very often wear their bad-weather experiences like medals and are more than happy to talk at length about them.

So I was interested in two recent bad-weather stories affecting cruise ships. The first concerned the small Clelia II which, returning from a trip to Antarctica, suffered an engine failure in severe weather and, for a while, was escorted by an Argentinean Naval ship until things were sorted out. In this instance, there were no injuries except to one crew member.

In the second incident, dozens of passengers and crew were injured when the much larger Brilliance of the Seas encountered such bad weather in the Mediterranean that giant waves sent people and furniture flying around the ship. One report said that the wavs were of such intensity that it caused the ship to ‘rock dangerously from side to side’.

I spent a little time looking up the blogs and twitters of some of those involved in these two and other incidents and was not disappointed for there were some who thought their own experiences were more dramatic.

But none of them were as bad as when I was on the old Victoria in June 2000. We had left Akureyri and had spent a day sailing round the coast of Iceland trying to avoid the worst of some very bad weather when the ship was hit by a hurricane. The ship’s motion was quite unbelievable and ...
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Ice Tragedies

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The snow turned the world into a winter wonderland, but the ice has turned it into a death-trap for some.

We have already heard of young people who have tragically lost their lives falling through ice into the icy water of ponds and lakes after having, foolishly perhaps, thought the ice was stronger than it was.

Youngsters tend to feel they are immortal and some take risks that older people would not. In most cases this is part of the growing up and learning process. In some cases, it is sheer stupidity.

Take, for example, the CCTV footage of children foolishly crossing the frozen Oxford Canal. The police report that some of them, standing on the ice, were even trying to break it by bashing it with their feet! What luck they didn’t succeed.

Just last weekend when walking the dogs, we witnessed a car being repeatedly driven at speed by youths along an ice-covered back lane while other traffic was using the same road, Driving at speed was bad enough, but the car was towing another youth sitting on a plastic sled and this was careering wildly from side to side of the road. The lad could easily have been killed or maimed if the sled had moved in front of an oncoming car, and it was a miracle this didn’t happen.

And then another couple of youths were having a great deal of fun using the same stretch of icy road as a skid-pan and were having a rare old time braking and spinning their van in circles. They were having a great deal of fun, but they were also having it in the path of oncoming traffic.

While other children and youths have been having fun in various ways in the snow, some of those that took risks have tragically paid for it with their lives. One’s heart goes out to their families and friends, but that is little comfort to them now.
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Say Again?

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I can’t say I lay any blame on the government, despite David Cameron’s posturing to the contrary, for the shortage of salt for the nation’s roads during what is clearly an unexpectedly prolonged bout of snow.

Nor, for the most part, do I blame the government for taking control of salt and grit distribution since I imagine, naively perhaps, that there is a master plan somewhere laying out which roads and which areas must be prioritised for these essential items.

In the same spirit, I accept that my part of Essex had to go without salt or grit for the last two days and that, as a result, many bus services had to be suspended because of the treacherous road conditions and folk advised to stay indoors.

But I exclude from this amiable spirit of acceptance the babble of an official from the Local Government Association who announced that, ‘At the moment we have done everything we can do. We are in partnership with the government and we are dealing with the problem of grit shortages.’

What does that mean I wonder?
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Bad Weather. Bad Attitude?

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The country’s obsession with the weather continues with the news that last night was the coldest so far this winter with temperatures in the Highlands plummeting to minus 21 degrees. As usual, schools and businesses have been closed, flights cancelled, trains late, roads not all gritted, people and villages cut off by snow drifts and the whole place at a standstill.

It is said that this spell of cold weather is the worst since 1981, for that also affected much of Europe. This is certainly true for it was this month in that year I saw it at first hand.

I was standing by a ship being refitted in drydock in Bremerhaven where, at the time, it was said by the German weather agency that it had been the coldest winter since the war. There was no doubt of that in my mind because the ships bottom had to be heated by braziers set up in the base of the drydock so as to keep the ship’s plumbing warm; an unusual and awesome sight. Since there was limited heating on board, conditions were also pretty grim.

What impressed me, however, was the way in which the Germans just got on with life. All of the roads were gritted and even the cycle paths and pavements as well. Schools and businesses kept open, trains and buses ran regardless and only Frankfurt airport closed down for a while.

I wanted to get home that particular weekend and took a taxi from Frankfurt Airport to the railway station where I stood on a crowded train that took me to Dusseldorf. Here I caught a flight to my local airport and was back in the comfort of my home not long afterwards.

The apparent ease with the way northern and Scandinavian countries get on with life in poor weather conditions is well known and, over the years, I’ve witnessed this many times as well as in the Californian mountains and in Alaska. Of course, it has to be borne in mind that poor weather is an annual factor in northern climes. Yet, at the same time, we also have this same problem every year.

The experience in 1981 confirmed what my father had told me years before, which was that you can do pretty much anything if you put your mind to it. So, for example, I can’t remember my school closing because of bad weather for masters and pupils did what they had to do to get in. I expect working folk did the same. Indeed, on the few occasions that smog bought London’s transport system to a standstill, my father and I walked to and from work.

Many of the schools in my area closed yesterday and many parents were forced to stay at home to look after their children. The local radio reported that some folk couldn’t get to work and, maybe, there were good reasons for this in many cases. However, I do wonder whether we have bred a generation of people that simply can’t be bothered to get to work or school if a walk of more than a couple of hundred yards in poor weather is involved.

But please don’t trouble to send me your thoughts as I think I already know the answer!
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Is This Useful?

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Stories about the latest attempt to unseat ‘Bronco’ Brown in a new Labour leadership election, the folk stranded in the snow that has blanketed the country and bought it to a standstill and even the record-breaking tuna weighing 232 kilos that was sold in the Tokyo fish market for the equivalent of £109,000 have not interested me as much as one other jaw-breaking piece of news.

The story that grabbed my attention was that of the computer scientist who has computed the value of pi to nearly 2.7 trillion digits, beating the previous record by 123 billion digits. Wow!

I have no idea what value this piece of research is to the world at large, other than a possible entry in the Guinness Book of Records, but it seems to have taken a total of 131 days to compute and then check the result.

As a further piece of useless information, it has also been calculated that to recite the formula at the rate of one number a second would take more than 85,000 years. Wow again!

I wonder if this scientist could kindly turn his attention to the state of the economy, the cost of living, MPs expenses, the price of petrol and other fuels, etc., etc. Now that would be useful!
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