The Mary Gay

The Wreck of the Mary Gay

She cast away from Buzzard's Bay in that year of our Lord. The whaling vessel Mary Gay with sixty hands aboard. Her hold full crammed with kegs and casks and Northerns in the sails. To round Cape Horn they'd set to task, to hunt the sea for whales.

Now round Cape Horn the gales blow hard and seas are cruel and high. Ice coats the canvass and the yards and clogs the seas thereby. It's there good ships oft come to grief and heard from nevermore. Twas there the Mary bucked and reefed as wind and water roared.

"God's fashioned not the whale nor sea" her Yankee Captain swore, "that whips New England men like we or forces us ashore. West lies the Japan Whaling Grounds and west we'll make our way - till this damned Horn we've come around or comes the Judgement Day!"

Waves smashed the sides like mallet strokes, the Main'sles tore to shreds. The decks awash, the scuppers choked and still she forged ahead. Till battered broadside by the crest and swamped beneath the swell, she broke her back and stove her breast and sank on down to Hell.

Round Cape Horn on a screaming night, when wind and waters boil - she sails there yet by spirit light, her hull decayed and spoiled. Her rat lines trimmed by drowned dead ghosts, her sails like moulded shrouds, the Mary sails as per her boast - forever as was vowed.

James Coplin

Cutty Sark and the Real McCoy

During the first world war, Distilleries in Scotland were closed to preserve barley stocks for food. In the 1920’s there was a significant temperance movement in Britain, and the government increased the duty on whisky (plus ca change!) and in the USA total prohibition of alcohol was introduced.

Thankfully for the whisky producers, prohibition was somewhat less than effective. So much so that many distilleries exported almost their entire production to the USA through dubious sources. Indeed when I wrote recently about visiting Edradour distillery the tour guide confirmed that this was the case. It is believed that that particular distillery was actually owned by the Mafia for a time.

William McCoy was a Bahamas based bootlegger with a Dumbarton connection. Not because he was born there or had relatives there. McCoy smuggled huge quatities of Cutty Sark blended whisky into America during prohibition. Cutty Sark literally means short shirt and “weel done cutty sark” was a cry from Tam O’ Shanter in one of Burns most celebrated works. Tam had been secretly observing Nannie a young witch wearing nothing but a cutty sark doing an erotic dance amongst a group in a wood.

It was also the name of the fastest sailing ship of its day (built in Dumbarton) and the whisky (also at one time bottled in Dumbarton) took a picture of the ship as its label emblem .

McCoy illegally imported hundreds of thousands of casks of the light premium blend beloved of speakeasy customers of the day. Such was the popularity of it that patrons, unwilling to accept a substitute would ask for……
“The real McCoy”

Poetry of the Sea

The next few posts are going to be just pictures of famous sailing ships and some poetry about the sea. Although the ships look grand in full sail there is no minimizing the hardships and danger the sailors endured on routes such as those of the China tea trade or sailing on the Spanish Main.

Devil or Humanitarian ?

COUNT FELIX GRAF VON LUCKNER

(1881-1966)

"THE SEA DEVIL"

WW 1 IMPERIAL GERMAN NAVAL OFFICER

Count Felix von Luckner known as the Sea Devil, captained Seeadler, a sailing vessel carrying an auxiliary engine, and fitted out as an Armed Merchant Raider in World War 1. He was a dashing character with a great imagination, who fought his enemy both with flair and fairness. He claimed never to have harmed anyone purposely.

Swashbuckling, flamboyant German hero of WW1 known as the "Sea Devil." As captain of a marauding schooner named "Seeadler," (Sea Eagle) he sank fourteen ships with a loss to the Allies of over twenty five million dollars, though he made certain that no lives were lost. Captured in December, 1917 in New Zealand, he spent the remainder of the war in various prison camps until he was repatriated to Germany in 1919. During WW11, Von Luckner, a long time resident of Halle, was considered a self-styled Nazi hater. In April 1945, with the American's ready to capture and possibly destroy the City of Halle, Germany, Count Von Luckner, acting as an emissary, attempted to negotiate the surrender of the German garrison led by the City of Halle military commanders, Major General Fritz De Witt and Lt. General Radtke of the German 12th Army to Major General Terry Allen's U.S. 104th Infantry Division. (Timberwolf Division) The great industrial city, which was full of Allied and Axis wounded in many hospitals, was not destroyed.

In 1945, Halle was the tenth largest city in Germany, and the birth place of the famous composer George Frideric Handel. (1685-1759) When Hitler came to power in 1933, Halle became a center of Nazi organization. Even after the 500th bombing mission the city was mostly undamaged by allied bombing. Because of Count Von Luckner's intervention, the German Army withdrew to the southern portion of the city and surrendered a few days later after a few battle skirmishes, there-by saving many lives and important German monuments and buildings.

Culture

Societies that condone killing for cultural reasons is nothing more than state approved murder.

"If the human species is to survive it must provide a benign, worldwide, uniform culture as a working environment. This is essential for a creative species. An intellectual culture, one based on real knowledge, is required to provide the creative atmosphere so essential for human invention, and thereby survival. The basis for a benign culture is a deep respect for human life, one which requires a species wide sincere effort to protect and nurture all human life. Any cultural practice which involves murder (the deliberate and premeditated killing of a human) diminishes the perceived value of human life and detracts from the intellectual energy so necessary for species survival." READ MORE

3 Musketeers

$$  All for one and none for anyone else  $$

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