I was called a Flat Earther
Gordon Brown called me a "Flat Earther"
In December 2009 the Prime Minister, Mr.Gordon Brown, called me a "Flat Earther". His remarks were pointedly directed at anyone who harboured any scepticism of Climate Change and that included me. Now I am a retired Master Mariner so that epithet seemed somewhat silly as I have spent a life time sailing over the horizon and not falling over the edge of the world. Anyway I have decided to briefly write about my experieces at sea and let you judge me and tell me if I deserve the sobriquet "Flat Earther".
In 1954 my Father indentured me to Sir William Readon Smith & Sons of Cardiff, tramp ship owners, as an Apprentice Deck Officer. I was just sixteen years of age. My life long affair with weather and climate started at the same time as my voyage to command and management in shipping.
I was eight years with tramp ships, man and boy, and sailed away for anything up to a year circling the world, going through both canals and rounding both Capes. Tramp ships of those days were very basic, the only electronic aid was a gyro compass, but they were well equipped with all the best gear to monitor the weather. Mercury barometers with Gold slides, barographs, thermometers, Stevenson screens, and so on together with folios of charts produced by Lt. Fontaine Maury recording many many years of weather and passages from the era of sail, and volumes of Sailing Directions by the Hydrographic Office covered one bulkhead. The weather was not a case of "Is it raining?" to a seaman - it became a factor of life and livelihhood each and every day and the experiences of those who had sailed before were invaluable.
In those days there were no weather satellites, and very few countries broadcast meteorological data. It was very much up to each vessel to determine the weather systems exigent and decide what course to take. If the wrong decision was made the ship could founder or lose its cargo and the lives of 30 or more seamen be placed in jeopardy.The climate of each and every ocean was important, the loadline was marked to reflect the changes of the North Atlantic with the passage of the year.The tramp ship is a low powered vessel so the routes to traverse each ocean changed with each season, deciding to take the great circle course in the Black Stream to Vancouver from Japan or the the effects of the Bora in the Adriatic were all considered in the time of the year and the ship's trade at that time. My voyages in tramp ships over eight years gave me a grounding in weather and climate that would provide a foundation for me to take up all challenges in seafaring experienced in the next five decades.
In the first part of the 1960's I sailed as Chief Officer and finally in command in the cargo liner trade serving NW Europe. This is a demanding area in terms of weather and navigation. Weather forecasts were provided but the mariner still had to interpret the information and make decisions. During this time I saw the loss of a ship just 2 miles astern of our postion in the Bristol Channel with the loss of all hands including a boy on his first trip.
In the latter part of the 1960's I was in command of tugs off Namibia, the Skeleton Coast, and the Arabian Gulf. More experience gained - off Africa in the cold currents welling up from the Antarctic and in the Gulf the katabatic winds tumbling from Persia's mountains. With the experience came the two invaluable assets to any mariner that are knowledge and respect of the environment. It also gave me awe of God's majestic creation and the awareness that it was not within our power to influence it but to become part of it. I guess that is why a sailing ship is so beautiful.
Cunard recruited me in 1970 and I joined the team lead by David Shannon that faced the enormous challenges of developing offshore oil and gas in the North Sea and Canada. I had command and fleet management in Canada's East Coast, the North Sea, and London. This was really pushing the frontiers of ship design and procedures. It was again a series of tasks that again brought me intimately into the world of meteorology and climate. We even had a polar bear board one of our German fleet but that's another story. In 1974 I first encountered the theory that Climate Change was "the possibility that man-made pollutants of CO2 and particulates, from industrial sources are responsible for climatic change." Dr.G.E.Millward wrote at length on the subject in the in house magazine Cunarder in the Winter of 1974 and discounted the idea concluding, inter alia, that man is a spectator to climatic changes induced by natural phenomena. The stimulus for the debate was the fact that ships under my management were involved with French interests in attempting iceberg deflection and that Lloyds recorded that a quarter of a million tons of shipping was being lost due to weather.
In the latter part of the 1970's I undertook more challenging marine management tasks in the Middle East, Japan, and Ireland and then in 1980 I took a really momentous step. I went from the realm of shipping into the domain of deepsea fishing. Weather and climate dominate each and every facet of these operations - it is the world's most dangerous occupation.
I became Fleet Operations Manager for Fishery Products in Newfoundland. Task was the safe management and operation of fleet of 51 deep-sea fishing vessels serving 19 processing plants in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Massachusetts, USA landing at 8 dedicated ports.The fleet operated over 1200 miles off the East Coast of Canada from the Grand Banks into the Davis Strait and sub Arctic catching 130,000 tonnes of various fish species per year. There was a budget C$80million and 900 fishermen to consider. Task required close working relations with the Canadian Coast Guard, East Coast, and the United States Coast Guard in ice navigation and management.
The introduction to the awful might of the sea was the loss of the oil rig "Ocean Ranger" in February 1982 with the loss of 84 souls. We, that is our fishing fleet, had ships at sea on that day but navigated to the outer parts of the storm and made it safely to port. I was fortunate in that my boss was a Canadian Basque, Gus Etchegary, a man's man who one could count on in any endangerment so that making our operations safer was always supported. The other great man was James Anderson, the local head of the Canadian Coast Guard, he's dead now but his contribution to marine safety offshore Canada was immense. And then we have the other human component, the Newfoundland Fishing Master, extolled by Winston Churchill as a man of note and competence in seafaring. The years that I spent there were to be the most challenging in my life. Death was never far away and it is hard to tell a family that their son or husband is lost at sea, hard too when you have no body to finally mourn. burying a man in the snow and harsh winter is very savage. My own life too was at risk at times, twice we crashed on the ice and in the forest in a helicopter going to the northern ports. But the overriding facet of that experience is the knowledge of the power of the climate, the world of ice, and the surety that man cannot control it but has to be part of it.This was my life for nearly a decade.
I looked at the calving of icebergs that would take many months to move south. I flew each season on ice reconnaisance with the United States Coastguard to cement the liaison between them and our fleet in reporting bergs. I worked closely with Transport Canada on the development of sea ice and the later use of ice breakers. We had factory ships working within the ice catching shrimps. We had to decide if ports could be kept open. The tasks, the degrees of cooperation, the consideration of data were immense. And now, although retired, I monitor the activity that gave me so many challenges and such a sense of the might of nature.
I returned to the United Kingdom in 1991 following the collapse of the East Coast fishing industry. History shows that in past centuries that industry had experienced drastic collapses possibly due to perturbations in the Gulf Stream, in other words a climte change.
I then took up management and operation of the Shetland Islands inter-island ferry service that comprised 14 diverse passenger and cargo vessels; a shipping company owned and operated by the Council supporting the socio-economic activities of Unst, Fetlar, Yell, Out Skerries, Whalsay, Bressay, Fair Isle, Foula, and Papa Stour. Staff of 163 persons provided 18 hours per day service. The service safely moved 2.7 million passengers and approximately 1 million vehicles in a decade. The main task was to enable a work force to operate safely within the harsh weather regimes experienced in the Northern Isles. All 163-ferry employees had extensive training; by 2001 SIC made the transition to STCW 95 and manning the next generation of ferries. This had proved to be a hard task that met with much political resistance. I do not subscribe to the theory that a person born within sound of the sea will be a good seaman, the man or woman has to be trained and learn to understand the awful power of the sea.
So now you may pass judgement on this Old Salt who has spent some fifty years seeing all the oceans and many lands. I have a deep suspicion of the fervent, even zealous, promotion of what is now called climate change, for me it does not sit well with my experience of life and its history. Ironically as I write there are vessels bound in ice in the Baltic Sea; if asked i say we are entering another period of cold. But then I am only an Old Salt, and, possibly according to the Prime Minister, a Flat Earther. And then maybe I am the boy who questioned the Emperor's new clothes, you decide.
In 1954 my Father indentured me to Sir William Readon Smith & Sons of Cardiff, tramp ship owners, as an Apprentice Deck Officer. I was just sixteen years of age. My life long affair with weather and climate started at the same time as my voyage to command and management in shipping.
I was eight years with tramp ships, man and boy, and sailed away for anything up to a year circling the world, going through both canals and rounding both Capes. Tramp ships of those days were very basic, the only electronic aid was a gyro compass, but they were well equipped with all the best gear to monitor the weather. Mercury barometers with Gold slides, barographs, thermometers, Stevenson screens, and so on together with folios of charts produced by Lt. Fontaine Maury recording many many years of weather and passages from the era of sail, and volumes of Sailing Directions by the Hydrographic Office covered one bulkhead. The weather was not a case of "Is it raining?" to a seaman - it became a factor of life and livelihhood each and every day and the experiences of those who had sailed before were invaluable.
In those days there were no weather satellites, and very few countries broadcast meteorological data. It was very much up to each vessel to determine the weather systems exigent and decide what course to take. If the wrong decision was made the ship could founder or lose its cargo and the lives of 30 or more seamen be placed in jeopardy.The climate of each and every ocean was important, the loadline was marked to reflect the changes of the North Atlantic with the passage of the year.The tramp ship is a low powered vessel so the routes to traverse each ocean changed with each season, deciding to take the great circle course in the Black Stream to Vancouver from Japan or the the effects of the Bora in the Adriatic were all considered in the time of the year and the ship's trade at that time. My voyages in tramp ships over eight years gave me a grounding in weather and climate that would provide a foundation for me to take up all challenges in seafaring experienced in the next five decades.
In the first part of the 1960's I sailed as Chief Officer and finally in command in the cargo liner trade serving NW Europe. This is a demanding area in terms of weather and navigation. Weather forecasts were provided but the mariner still had to interpret the information and make decisions. During this time I saw the loss of a ship just 2 miles astern of our postion in the Bristol Channel with the loss of all hands including a boy on his first trip.
In the latter part of the 1960's I was in command of tugs off Namibia, the Skeleton Coast, and the Arabian Gulf. More experience gained - off Africa in the cold currents welling up from the Antarctic and in the Gulf the katabatic winds tumbling from Persia's mountains. With the experience came the two invaluable assets to any mariner that are knowledge and respect of the environment. It also gave me awe of God's majestic creation and the awareness that it was not within our power to influence it but to become part of it. I guess that is why a sailing ship is so beautiful.
Cunard recruited me in 1970 and I joined the team lead by David Shannon that faced the enormous challenges of developing offshore oil and gas in the North Sea and Canada. I had command and fleet management in Canada's East Coast, the North Sea, and London. This was really pushing the frontiers of ship design and procedures. It was again a series of tasks that again brought me intimately into the world of meteorology and climate. We even had a polar bear board one of our German fleet but that's another story. In 1974 I first encountered the theory that Climate Change was "the possibility that man-made pollutants of CO2 and particulates, from industrial sources are responsible for climatic change." Dr.G.E.Millward wrote at length on the subject in the in house magazine Cunarder in the Winter of 1974 and discounted the idea concluding, inter alia, that man is a spectator to climatic changes induced by natural phenomena. The stimulus for the debate was the fact that ships under my management were involved with French interests in attempting iceberg deflection and that Lloyds recorded that a quarter of a million tons of shipping was being lost due to weather.
In the latter part of the 1970's I undertook more challenging marine management tasks in the Middle East, Japan, and Ireland and then in 1980 I took a really momentous step. I went from the realm of shipping into the domain of deepsea fishing. Weather and climate dominate each and every facet of these operations - it is the world's most dangerous occupation.
I became Fleet Operations Manager for Fishery Products in Newfoundland. Task was the safe management and operation of fleet of 51 deep-sea fishing vessels serving 19 processing plants in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Massachusetts, USA landing at 8 dedicated ports.The fleet operated over 1200 miles off the East Coast of Canada from the Grand Banks into the Davis Strait and sub Arctic catching 130,000 tonnes of various fish species per year. There was a budget C$80million and 900 fishermen to consider. Task required close working relations with the Canadian Coast Guard, East Coast, and the United States Coast Guard in ice navigation and management.
The introduction to the awful might of the sea was the loss of the oil rig "Ocean Ranger" in February 1982 with the loss of 84 souls. We, that is our fishing fleet, had ships at sea on that day but navigated to the outer parts of the storm and made it safely to port. I was fortunate in that my boss was a Canadian Basque, Gus Etchegary, a man's man who one could count on in any endangerment so that making our operations safer was always supported. The other great man was James Anderson, the local head of the Canadian Coast Guard, he's dead now but his contribution to marine safety offshore Canada was immense. And then we have the other human component, the Newfoundland Fishing Master, extolled by Winston Churchill as a man of note and competence in seafaring. The years that I spent there were to be the most challenging in my life. Death was never far away and it is hard to tell a family that their son or husband is lost at sea, hard too when you have no body to finally mourn. burying a man in the snow and harsh winter is very savage. My own life too was at risk at times, twice we crashed on the ice and in the forest in a helicopter going to the northern ports. But the overriding facet of that experience is the knowledge of the power of the climate, the world of ice, and the surety that man cannot control it but has to be part of it.This was my life for nearly a decade.
I looked at the calving of icebergs that would take many months to move south. I flew each season on ice reconnaisance with the United States Coastguard to cement the liaison between them and our fleet in reporting bergs. I worked closely with Transport Canada on the development of sea ice and the later use of ice breakers. We had factory ships working within the ice catching shrimps. We had to decide if ports could be kept open. The tasks, the degrees of cooperation, the consideration of data were immense. And now, although retired, I monitor the activity that gave me so many challenges and such a sense of the might of nature.
I returned to the United Kingdom in 1991 following the collapse of the East Coast fishing industry. History shows that in past centuries that industry had experienced drastic collapses possibly due to perturbations in the Gulf Stream, in other words a climte change.
I then took up management and operation of the Shetland Islands inter-island ferry service that comprised 14 diverse passenger and cargo vessels; a shipping company owned and operated by the Council supporting the socio-economic activities of Unst, Fetlar, Yell, Out Skerries, Whalsay, Bressay, Fair Isle, Foula, and Papa Stour. Staff of 163 persons provided 18 hours per day service. The service safely moved 2.7 million passengers and approximately 1 million vehicles in a decade. The main task was to enable a work force to operate safely within the harsh weather regimes experienced in the Northern Isles. All 163-ferry employees had extensive training; by 2001 SIC made the transition to STCW 95 and manning the next generation of ferries. This had proved to be a hard task that met with much political resistance. I do not subscribe to the theory that a person born within sound of the sea will be a good seaman, the man or woman has to be trained and learn to understand the awful power of the sea.
So now you may pass judgement on this Old Salt who has spent some fifty years seeing all the oceans and many lands. I have a deep suspicion of the fervent, even zealous, promotion of what is now called climate change, for me it does not sit well with my experience of life and its history. Ironically as I write there are vessels bound in ice in the Baltic Sea; if asked i say we are entering another period of cold. But then I am only an Old Salt, and, possibly according to the Prime Minister, a Flat Earther. And then maybe I am the boy who questioned the Emperor's new clothes, you decide.
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Al