navy – Page 3 – intheboatshed.net

Does anyone know the story of WWII minesweeper tender Waldemar?

William Hughes has got in touch to ask for help in tracking down some information about a minesweeper tender called Waldemar built in 1931 that belonged to the mustard manufacturing Colman family and was later provided to the Royal Navy at the start of World War II. (For photos of another Colman family vessel, the Norfolk Broads wherry Hathor, click here.)

The reason for William’s interest is that he has what he has been told is the Waldemar’s compass in a rather fine binnacle, which has a certain amount of navy grey paint here and there. The compass itself is marked ‘E Dent & Co of London BOAT COMPASS No 43698′.

He’s also been told that the vessel is laid up in Pin Mill.

From what he’s seen on websites about the Navy, he believes the Waldemar was used as a first contact into port vessel as well as a minesweeper tender.

William would be grateful for any photographs or further information. Please either use the comments link below or email me at gmatkin@gmail.com and I will pass the information on to him.

Sea songs from Gavin Davenport’s new CD

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My musician and singer friend Gavin Davenport has kindly agreed to let me publish a couple of MP3s of two sea songs from his new album Brief Lives, which is available from the shop section of his website. In each he accompanies himself using a beautiful old ebony-ended Wheatstone anglo concertina.

The songs, British Man Of War and On Board Of A Ninety-Eight come from the Navy’s wooden walls era, are striking and are really two sides of the same coin.

In the first, a swaggering and excited young tells his worried lover that he’s joining the Navy and will return covered in glory; in the second an old sailor tells the story of his heroic career as a sailor in the Navy, and finishes by explaining that he has been well looked after, and is now nearly 98. The ninety-eight of the title is a ship with 98 guns, by the way.

Neither really engage with the downsides of war and, like many sea songs, contain strong elements of boasting and wishful thinking. Well, I guess they had to have something to keep them going.

Was Sir Walter Raleigh a murderer?

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Sir Walter Raleigh painted by Nicholas Hilliard, from the The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei via the Wikimedia

Ex-Naval man, 20th century historian and Roman Catholic Bishop, David Mathew describes Sir Walter Raleigh’s importance in 1596 like this: ‘With Hawkins, Drake and Grenville lost on service and Frobisher dead the previous year, Sir Walter Raleigh alone remained. Though much less of a naval figure, for he was in essence a Renaissance magnifico, Raleigh set the lines of later doctrine.’

British schoolchildren are taught that he was an important figure in Queen Elizabeth I’s court and navy, and that he was always getting into trouble with his queen, on one occasion for secretly marrying one of her ladies-in-waiting. But was he also a heartless murderer?

A street ballad in Samuel Pepys’s ballad collection certainly suggests he was. Read the story as told in a ballad that was widely sung and part of the oral tradition in England and America well into the 20th century. Sussex singer, fisherman and ferryman Johnny Doughty had a a particularly good version.

It’s sometimes also known as the Sweet Trinity and has its own Wikipedia entry. Mudcat has versions, and a surprising range of really good tunes for the song.

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