Titanic
-
If you hear a wailing and gashing of teeth, both anguished sounds will be emanating from me. Why? Because my rudimentary archaeological endeavours in my garden continue to unearth clay pipes The darned things show no sign of becoming rare and valuable. Other people find great treasures of one sort of another; I find…
-
Sir Ernest Shackleton: “What the ice gets, the ice keeps”
Abraham Shackleton, Antarctic, Arctic, Aristotle, books, Captain Cook, Captain John Davis, Captain Scott, County Kildare, CRVO, Discovery, Dublin, Dulwich College, Elephant Island, Endurance, Fabian von Bellinghausen, failure, Frank Worsley, frostbite, Grytviken, heart attacks, Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Ireland, Irish rebellions, lectures, Lord Frederick Cavendish, Mount Erebus, Nimrod, Polar explorers, quest, reconstruction, Roald Amundsen, Royal Geographical Society, Sir Clements Markham, Sir Ernest Shackleton, South Georgia, South Pole, Stromness, symmetry, Titanic, Weddell Sea, welfare, Winston Churchill“For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.” —Antarctic explorer Sir Raymond Priestly For those new to Shackleton, it might seem counterintuitive to celebrate the leader of a failed…
-
We now know a lot about Henry V’s Holighost, Henry VIII’s Mary Rose and the Kingmaker’s “Newport ship“, as well as the Boyne’s mediaeval log boats. Now there is evidence of a much later find, also in Ireland. The SS (HMS) Laurentic was a White Star liner and sister to the Titanic, sunk by two…
-
Well, it’s interesting to see the top 33 “historically accurate” movies , as voted for in 2017 by IMDb readers. I confess to being disappointed that only three of the medieval period made it to the list (which is in number-of-votes order). Well, three if Elizabeth actually counts as medieval. This last of the Tudor…
-
The headless Lord Chancellor and the legless aviator
A Night to Remember, A Tale of Two Cities, Aberdeen, Andrew J. Mitchell Gill, aviation, Catholic Emancipation, Catholic families, Charles Lightoller, Douglas Bader, executions, Father Brown, Gerrards Cross, high treason, India, John Buchan, Kenneth More, Lord Chancellor, Martin Wood, Moirs of Stoneywood, pilots, Polar explorers, Poona, RAF, Reach for the Sky, Richard Hannay, Scott of the Antarctic, The 39 Steps, The Family and Descendants of St. Thomas More, The Forsyte Saga, The Franchise Affair, Thomas More, Titanic(or “Reach for the Woolsack” or “More Mores”) Kenneth More (left) was most famous for his role as Douglas Bader in Reach for the Sky, as well as appearing in A Night to Remember and The 39 Steps, but he occasionally spoke or wrote about being descended from Sir Thomas More, without providing references. Here,…