[BITList] pepys

[HUGH MCINTYRE]

Colin,

One of the most useful diaries I ever kept was in 1959 on Dilwara, though it is mostly empty.  One day on watch, nothing having broken down and gennie No 5, a mismatched Polar Diesel, not being running, I filled in a sequential list of every port I'd called at with BI - I gave them stars for quality.  I also wrote what I could recall of people I'd sailed with (OK, with which I'd sailed - whatever) and something of what I felt like at various times and in various circumstances. For some reason I also wrote a short essay on shipboard morality as represented by what was going on, and not going on, around me. Not in the ER, I hasten to add - nothing ever went on in the ER that touched on morals, to my knowledge. Since then I've used that as the basis for a much much longer account that is slotted into an even longer account of my life. I once read an Australian short story about two kids who started to keep a diary of everything that happened to them.  They could never work out how to record the fact that they were recording it, recording it, recording it, ......  Going back to my comment on ER morals, I have a CD of sea shanties I bought aboard a Danish square rigger when the Tall Ships were in Greenock a few years back, and only one of the songs is in Danish.  The words are probably half in dialect, so I can't make most of it out and, from the constant reference to a woman, I get the impression it is rather bawdy. Each time the lady is mentioned, there is a lusty shout of "pumpa lëns", which is to say, "pump the bilges".  That's as close as I can link the ER and morals.

Hugh.


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