8 Bells For The Bounty

I don’t really suppose that many people will care greatly about this but the replica of the H.M.S. Bounty has by this point been lost at sea approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras Cape Hatteras, NC to hurricane Sandy.

H.M.S. Bounty
H.M.S. Bounty

Her 17 man crew had to abandon ship earlier this morning because her engines had failed, the storm was too bad to raise sail, and she was taking on water faster than her pumps could cope with.

God bless this frail ship of mine,
tho’ tiny it may be;
God bless its youthful skipper,
and those who sail with me;
Grant thy grace to all the stalwart lads
who bravely man its deck;
Come sail with us O Blessed One,
and each of us protect;
We’ll sail upon the northern breeze
to roam in search of glory;
It has been and always will be,
fate will set my life story;
So when you take this sailor, Lord,
forever from the sea;
I’ll sail my ship through Heaven’s gate,
for a sailor I’ll always be.

— Wayne E. Walters

In 1961 she was built in the traditional manner to the original Bounty’s specifications from drawings from British admiralty archive files at the Smith and Ruhland Shipyard shipyard – who also built the Blue Nose – in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia for MGM’s 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty. Since then she has plied both the seas and film.

32 Down On The Robert McKensie, Featuring the HMS Bounty

And so the Graveyard of the Atlantic will claim another toll, as is its due, and another of the few tall, gallant ladies of the sea left to us in these days shall hear the tolling of eight bells as her watch is ended forever.

 

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Cast Drift And Lost

This post is solely due to the emotions that my friend – you don’t really know me so you don’t understand the weight of that word upon my soul –  ichabod dredged up out of my memory by including a simple image in one of his articles.

I refer you, my valued reader, simply to this video – a rare glimpse of Canada’s Bluenose as she lived and loved upon the Widowmaker,


The Bluenose vs. Gertrude L. Thebaud

Years and years ago I stood the deck of the Bluenose II, which was a true replica of the original great lady of the Grand Banks. Standing there I wept. I wept with both the joy of her lines and life and with grief over Man’s casting her and her sisters aside along with the love of them in favor of the practicalities of modern maritime shipping.

I wept as I read and commented on ichabod’s article and I wept still as wrote this one.

I f you can’t understand why I weep without shame over the loss of these grand queens of the seas then the languages of our souls have too little in common with each others’ to ever truly understand each other.

I say that without reproach for I know that I’m a living, or plausible facsimile of living, atavism in this modern and needfully oh-so-practical world.

For those very few who will care, the Bluenose died in January of 1946 when she was gutted on a Haitian reef. With her died an era and large part, – in my estimation – of Man’s soul.

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