Out of Steam.
 

Have we run out of steam?
This site is now reduced to a Jig-Saw emporium and things are similar on our sister site. A recent post there says,

"It's not any particular forum. Participation seems to have dropped significantly. The Gallery offerings have slowed to a crawl. Examples: Engine and Mechanics no post in over a month, like wise Life on Board. Even Members Faces only 10 posts in the last month and I only picked those at random. Marine Casualties was extremely busy, now little or nothing".

Divide and conquer.

SH has a properly working gallery where one can post and interact with others.
The useless unsearchable 'new' gallery on SN is also not user friendly, there is NO interaction - one can leave a comment or correction but nobody ever sees it, it just disappears down a hole.
That part is still very active on SH but, for whatever reason, SH forum has never really taken off despite best efforts of some.
Maybe the site has yet to reach 'critical mass' - Something SN achieved quite soon in its life because it filled a needed space at that time.

I must agree with you ES. I paid off SN some months ago having found it almost unworkable where at one time it was full of banter, information, arguments etc. I joined SH around that time and hoped it would pick up the lines from SN. So many contributors on SN made it a good hours perusal on a wet windy morning. No longer do we have the wonderful poems by BY anymore and some grand arguments that went on for weeks. Hope things improve.

Regards

KR

I miss the ability to leaf back through comments in the gallery, it was what I started with in the old SN.

Edit: On reflection, what I wrote was a load of rubbish and I have therefore deleted it. It was in the wrong thread apart from anything else to start with.:egg:

The only sensible bit (relating to the current COVID-19 threat) is all that now remains:

Stay safe you lot as most of you are probably a lot worse off than we are here in Oz.

Geoff (YM)

Australia; a land God has blessed with a great diversity of creatures, white sharks, box jellyfish, blue ringed octopus, many snakes, even more spiders, a few salties and koala bears (many smoke damaged).
Add to this abundance; drought, floods, bush fires, didgeridoos, Paul Hogan, £10 Poms and you think you are better off than us in Europe!!!

We in Dublin today are expecting sunshine and scattered showers and know we will not be poisoned, envenomed or eaten on our morning walk.
Worse off my ar$e. Put that in your 4-6-2 and steam up to Alice Springs.

It is quiet. But we are grown long in tooth - not that I have a full set of teeth these days. Many are gone to Fiddlers Green, we who knew the great days are moving on.
All very sobering, indeed I cannot drink so much these days - not had a proper hangover for years.
But, the veg patch is looking handsome; the leeks are the best ever and not disparaged by her indoors anymore. Meanwhile, I dream and type memories into an Apple. Speaking of apples - the workshop is aromatic with this year's stored crop of cookers. I spend hours in there.
The wife hands me lists of jobs while she knits, watches 'Move to the Country', or works on the jigsaw puzzle. I've only been awake two hours but have already unblocked three sinks - there's success for you: I now own three sinks!

May I respectfully suggest the wife be handed a job. Bake me two apple tarts.
And put one of your sinks in Exchange and Mart.

E-S is being disingenuous. Oz is largely free of belligerent Hibernians?

(How is that? They must have figured mightily on the earliest 'passenger' lists).

Coming from Kiwi land I find I am lost with some of the banter, I will stick to the jig saws

Garry, exactly the reason SH is running out of steam.........

JJ.

Exactly....

Please be more Jolly, Jack. One can always bypass chatlines to which one takes objection one can even do so without appearing to import the loud negativity coming over here on SN's lifeboats.

Jigsaws on hold due to ill health! Maybe we should all join in the banter. I do try.........
Rgds.
Kiss of Death
Dave

I think I will agree with Malcolm G in #2. On SN in its heyday there was at least two experts on every theme related to historical shipping, and who could debate and explain and draw others to the subject. Without that "critical mass" postings just drop dead after a day of silence. We have got Tomwart, Tim Webb and Spursnut engaging each other on the subject of war at sea, but we have not got Shipbuilder on models or Stephen Card on Marine art, and a number of others with infectious enthusiasm for a specific subject. I think they will eventually arrive here, or else new fresh and energetic blood will arrive. One problem not easy to overcome in this context is of course that much of the original SN membership is now shared with three websites.

re: original SN membership is now shared with three websites
 

SN & SH what is the third site?

I think Stein means Sea the Ships... maybe?
As is my understanding it was set up by ex members of SN.
I am not a member but I suppose it would not hurt to go and have a look sometime.

Tony Blair had a Third Way but it tarnished after a few years but I will investigate.

BTW Greg, what was the original colour of your boilersuit?

#10 & 14

The banter on this site can be distilled into a love of Harland & Wolff and a dislike of the Isle of Man. And a sense of adventure when you sign articles on RMS/mv/ss Golden Dreamer II. The ship or "Old Girl" as BillyBoy calls it has a strict and rigid chain of command::; Pay no heed to that, irreverence and irrelevance is the order of the day.
Start posting.

I had one like that, tried to wash it. Discovered that the grease had become part of the structure and had been holding it together.

Stephen was also an expert on ocean towage subjects, something that he could draw on from his own experience.

Faraday preserve me from fresh and energetic blood (also from H&W loving Hibernians). Fresh and congenial, please, but do post.

RE # 20 and falling apart boiler suits.
Anyone remember the old ' Sew Sew' chinese lady who came onboard in Hong Kong looking to do repairs to various bits of clothing?

She was given a very disreputable boiler suit by some sort of Junior or 4th/5th engineer, and he was well impressed with the result.


Please don't take from this that I was a boiler suit wearing person. That didn't come till much later in my career when I had to do things like fix telephones in that hot noisy nasty place down below the waterline.:bad_mad:

Confirming that; going down below one day for a short river stand by, I threw a couple boiler suits into the top-loading washing machine and added a few scoops of GreaseKiller. Unfortunately, we had some sort of trauma down there and I didn't escape the engine room for at least two hours. Equally unfortunately, the washing machine didn't have a timer and when I eventually returned, my boiler suits were still there but I found four arms and four legs floating around separately.

She's out of pastry, and avoiding the shops since the bug has arrived in the village. Even so, she contrived a magnificent lunch today, of a lentil something or other, with homegrown swiss chard alongside, aided by Australian Artan red, and a handsome apple crumble for afters.

#1 - sea the ships does not exist per Google


#2 - Boiler suit original color either dark green or dark blue.

Moi H&W issue boilersuit was white although God alone knows why :smoking: ones minions were issued with navy coloured garments :rolleyes:

FYI we are NOT running out of steam as the boilers is broke due to some twat filling the condenser with HFO :mad:

Try seatheships all one word.

It’s See the ships. Three words and see, not sea.

OK, I'll just cut out the subtle stuff - link here:
http://www.seatheships.org.uk/forum.php?

No, it is SeatheShips, one word and sea, not see. I have mentioned it here before, but it is not a name you find by happenstance, and that claim has been adequately illustrated here.

For the more sporting sailor;

Sea The Stars is a champion Irish Thoroughbred racehorse. Regarded by many as one of the greatest racehorses of all time, he is best known for winning the 2000 Guineas, the Derby, the Eclipse Stakes – the first colt to accomplish this treble since 1989 – the International Stakes, the Irish Champion Stakes, and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.
SeatheShips couldn't win a Bumper au Uttoxeter in February.

Which remind of a likewise irrelevant story. I was working as a night watch in the Aker ship-yard in Oslo. An in the early morning I picked up the newspaper that we received one free of, and which could be studied in the small office-cabin that us watchmen occupied at the gate of the yard. The papers ranged from the Stalinist "Friheten" (Freedom) to the ultra conservative "Morgenbladet" (The Morning Blade). And there were a number of workers that when leaving their shift popped in and leafed through a paper. Particularly on Fridays. What I found perplexing was that none of the socialist papers were ever touched. Not "The Freedom" , not "The Class War", not "The Worker's Newspaper", what everyone wanted was the two on the outer right, particularly "The Morning Blade". So I had to ask one of the better know reds inthe yard, one usually with much revolutionary fervour behind every comment he made upon anything. But now he was curt and laconic - "Superior turf reporter." (And that may explain why poor workers vote for the likes of Donald Trump?)

Very good SJB. My Uncle Teddy (so the family has it) always took the Salvation Army's War Cry. He reckoned there was wining runner encoded in it somewhere (I wonder if this was deliberate propaganda to groom the heathen with the Devil's music).

I don't know if E-S would be allowed to read such a publication.

This is the same uncle that considered it to be not gambling if the bet could be afforded. His 'system' was every bit as good as Pa's, which wasn't.

I am a big fan and have the utmost respect for the Salvation Army, manys a seaman got a helping hand from them when no one else gave a damn. Worthy of big support. Their charitable nature is such that they would be glad if Teddy Varley won a few bob on the horses.
Next time someone jingles a tambourine near you be solid and throw a £50 in it.
I guarantee you will feel better.

I've noticed many Socialist/Communist publications were too wordy for the average proletariat.

If we are to enter into a discussion of why the democratic socialist parties - type British Labour - are leaking voters to the populist right, I will suggest a perfectly simple explanation. It is this; back when the Labour parties could produce a majority on their own, what Labour voters voted for was more pay and better conditions for the workers. Period. Today those that runs those parties are out to save and liberate and create sympathy for every downtrodden grouping imaginable. Which may well be highly laudable, but not competitive with the simple message of the populist right, that promises the results Labour once promised to obtain by squeezing the worker-exploiting capital-owners, by keeping the hungry foreigners out and getting rid of all speed and joy-hampering rules and regulations.