Art...

Damn.... another modeler as wordy as me.... welcome. Since you started with a confession, I'll add mine. I confess to a love of the model ship, a passion for understanding the technology of the wooden ship and a fascination with the social history of the trade, but a dread of the sea itself. I'd make a poor sailer, most likely sick and far too terrified to go aloft...

Since my fellows have resorted to poetry (perchance to make happy sailors of the lot of us?) I'll add my own favorite....

Who hath desired the Sea? – the sight of salt water unbounded –
The heave and the halt and the hurl
and the crash of the comber wind – hounded?
Who hath desired the Sea? – the immense and contemptuous surges?
The shudder, the stumble, the swerve,
As the star-stabbing bow-sprit emerges?
Who hath desired the Sea? Her menaces swift as her mercies?
The in-rolling walls of the fog and
The silver-winged breeze that disperses?

From "The Sea and the Hills", Rudyard Kipling

Kipling went to sea aboard a fishing schooner to research "Captains Courageous". Apparently the experience wasn’t all together wonderful as Kipling admitted to being “Immortally seasick” but the result was a fine novel (and later a movie) about the sea and those who make their livings upon it. I like to think that the poem describes the experience of being at sea aboard a fishing schooner such as I am modeling.

Once again, welcome and Regards

Jim

 

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Art:
I had a brother-in-law who served in the USN during WWII (he was at Pearl Harbor on 12/7/41). Other than him, I have no family heritage of the sea.

However, my father worked as a "yard bird" (carpenter) at Terminal Island Naval Base during my "younger years", and every year during "open house" at the terminal, we would go and visit every ship that allowed visitors.

I remember reading Navy training manuals for "fun" as a teenager, and always had a desire to "join the Navy" at the first opportunity (I wanted to be a Gunner's Mate).

So, I quit High School at 17yrs. old and enlisted. The Navy wouldn't let me be a Gunner's Mate, they sent me to sonar school, and I delibrately "bilged" it (failed) so I could go to sea as a "Sailor Man" (Boatswain's Mate). I served on numerous types of Amphibious vessels for 6yrs as "deck crew", working with small boats, handling cargo, standing watches at the helm, etc.

I loved sea duty, but intensely disliked being "ordered around" by my "so called superiors" (teenage angst). If I could have had permanent sea duty, I would have been a "lifer"; But it was not to be, so I wound up a civilian again. I have no love for the "military life", but I still wish I could go back to sea.

From time to time I go to the Oregon coast and just sit for hours and watch, and listen to, the surf pound the rocks, and look at the horizon searching for ships wishing I was out there.

Gary and Jim's poems sum it up for me quite nicely, and far better than I could ever say it. Thanks Guys.

I was just the opposite of Jim, I loved storms at sea, and "going aloft" to the mast head, swinging back and forth with the ship's roll and pitch. However, I DO NOT like typhoons (hurricanes in the Western Pacific); The most frightening night of my life!

I just had a birthday (64yrs) , and hope I have enough time left to finish the three kits I have in the closet, so I leave something behind that shows my love of ships and the sea. I guess I still have "salt water" in my blood.

Jim: I seem to be another one that "babbles on" about this subject. Please pardon my long response.

 

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