Showing posts with label Ships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ships. Show all posts

Friday, 8 August 2014

Random Ad - Barges (1920's)

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"Barges! Get your loverly barges here! Big ones, small ones, single-screw or double! All low milage and one careful lady owner! How about a tug, darling? Now then Mrs I'm not being surgestive even if one of 'em is called 'Saucy'."
Nice little drawings.

Sunday, 29 June 2014

Sinking of the Ark Royal (1941)

Daily Express dated Tuesday December 2nd 1941
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The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal had in fact been torpedoed by U-boat U81 two weeks earlier on November 13th 1941 while heading for Gibraltar after delivering some Hurricane fighters to Malta. She sank early the next morning about 30 miles off Gibraltar. Thankfully there was only one fatality, Able Seaman Edward Mitchell, who was killed in the initial explosion.

Sunday, 8 December 2013

Chamberlain's Last Plea for Peace

Daily Mirror dated Tuesday September 27th 1938
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On September 12th 1938 Adolf Hitler gave a speech in which he demanded the return of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. On the 15th the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Berlin for talks with Hitler, but couldn’t resolve the crisis. They had further meetings on the 18th and 22nd. On September 29th Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini and the French President Daladier met in Munich and decided, without consulting the Czech government, that the country should be partitioned and Hitler should have control of Sudetenland. Chamberlain arrived back at Heston aerodrome with his piece of paper and ‘peace in our time’ speech. War had been averted – for the time being.

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Roosevelt did what he could to help avert a European war despite the overwhelming isolationist views of the majority of Americans. They were quite willing to supply arms and food to England but did not want any ‘on the ground’ involvement until Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

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Read with hindsight this is a terrible story of a Polish Jew being deported back to almost certain death, but at the time the general public in Britain were generally xenophobic and to some degree anti-Semitic. It should also be remembered that they didn’t really know at this time what was going on in the concentration camps.

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RMS Queen Elizabeth was the sister ship to the Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary and was launched later this day at the Clydebank shipyard by the Queen herself. She wasn’t ready for her maiden voyage until after the War had broken out so her first trip to New York was done in the utmost secrecy. The ship was painted grey and the crew didn’t know its destination until after it had left port.

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There’s a word you don’t see in tabloid headlines these days – ‘repudiates’.
Two words I wouldn’t expect to find in a 1938 tabloid – ‘      ‘ and ‘        ‘.

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Coin operated vending machines appeared in the UK in the late 1880’s. In my experience the most common products available were sweets, particularly chocolate bars, and cigarettes. I’d have thought that keeping fish and chips hot for any length of time would result in soggy chips and soft batter. They certainly didn’t catch on in any great numbers. 

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Just shows how dangerous it was in the 1930’s to be a woman of loose moral habits. According to The Times for November 5th 1938 David Leonard Knight was found not guilty and discharged

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Despite the War in Europe the 1939/40 New York World’s Fair went ahead. The British Pavilion displayed an original copy of the Magna Carta, but by the end of the Expo it was thought too risky to transport it back to England so it stayed in Fort Knox until 1947. Germany didn’t attend the Fair.

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A happy story for a change. A young couple in love and destined to marry? Maybe not. The only entry in the FreeBDM marriage records for Doris Deciacco has her hitching up with a Robert Jack in 1947. What happened to William?

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T.R. Newton may have been Cheshire’s strongest man and capable of swimming across Morecambe Bay but could he eat three shredded wheat?

Sunday, 29 September 2013

U.S. Denounce Hitler's Invasion of Austria

Daily Sketch dated Friday March 18th 1938
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Adolf Hitler was born in Austria but like many Austrians of the time regarded himself as German. When he came to power in 1933 he intended to make Austria a part of Germany once and for all, but Italy led by Benito Mussolini had vowed to defend Austria’s right to independence. By 1938 relations between Mussolini and Hitler had become so friendly that the Italian leader let it be known that he would no longer stand in the way of a German invasion. Hitler threatened the Austrian government with all out war if they didn’t capitulate and agree to Austria becoming part of Germany. The Austrian chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, and his entire government, except the one Nazi Party member, resigned. The remaining man, Arthur Seyss-Inquart as de-facto head of government, invited the German army to enter Vienna on March 15th 1938.

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The bombing of Barcelona on the 16th, 17th and 18th March 1938 followed France’s decision to re-open their border with Spain and allow supplies through to the Republicans fighting against General Franco. It was carried out by the Italian air force in planes disguised as Spanish. 

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Poland had taken over the Vilnius border region with Lithuania in 1920 and since then there had been no diplomatic relations between the two countries. With an eye on Germany expansion into Austria, Poland decided that it was a good time to have an ally on it’s northern border so issued this ultimatum to Lithuania. On March 19th the Lithuanian government agreed to the demands. 

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The Australian aviator Harry Frank (the ‘E’ initial in the article is a mistake) Broadbent was trying to beat the record of Miss Jean Batten in a flight from England to Australia. A Qantas mail plane discovered him on Torren Island, fifty miles from Wangipo (wherever that is).
Broadbent went on to pilot flying-boats for Quantas and then for a small Southampton based airline serving Lisbon, Madeira and Las Palmas. In 1958 he was an instructor to a Portuguese airline and was forced into an emergency landing in the Atlantic, west of Portugal. The aircraft and occupants were never found.

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The use of the cat-o-nine-tails was officially abolished in UK prisons in 1967 although it hadn’t been used since 1962 and only rarely since 1948.

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Despite the Mayor's incredulity, Greta Garbo never married and according to some contemporary sources, such as writer Mercedes de Acosta, was of a sapphic bent.

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‘Her return to the screen’ refers to the break that Norma Shearer took after the death if her first husband Irving Thalberg. She retired from the business in 1942 and died in 1983.

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“Ouch!”

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‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature from the Disney Studios, was released in the UK on March 12th 1938.

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This is the committal hearing of the men arrested in this post.

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Hitler invades Austria? Spanish civil war? Don’t worry! The toffs are having a good time so all must right with the World. The only name I recognize is Cecil Beaton. I must move in the wrong circles.

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Any excuse to include an example of my favourite comic strip. Simple and elegantly drawn.

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One channel and 3 hours of TV a day for those few people who had sets. No fighting over the remote, then.

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This is the very same HMS Belfast that is now moored in the Thames by the Embankment and can be visited as part of the Imperial War Museum. Having been launched as shown above by Prime Minister Chamberlain’s wife on March 17th 1938, she, the ship not Mrs C, was commissioned for service in August 1939 just in time for the War and was involved in the Artic Convoys and the sinking of the German battleship Scharnhorst.

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The Welshman Tommy Farr had won his first fight in 1926 at the age of 12 and fought his last in 1953. He’d beaten the American Max Baer in 1937 in England, but lost this fight at Madison Square Gardens.
Baer’s son Max Baer Jr. found fame on TV as Jethro Bodine in ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’. 

Wednesday, 18 September 2013

Random Cutting - Ship Steered by Wireless (1923)

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For those anaraks interested in such things - this was the USS Iowa desigated BB-4 that was commissioned in 1897, served in the Spanish American War and in 1919 was renamed rather unpoetically Coast Battleship No. 4. She was then fitted with radio control equipment and used as a target ship in maneuvers. As described above she was sunk by USS Mississippi in March 1923.

Sunday, 8 September 2013

Duke and Duchess of York in Baltic

Daily Sketch dated Tuesday March 19th 1929
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The Duke and Duchess of York in the Baltic. The Duke was to become George VI and the Duchess will always be remembered by tabloid readers as ‘The Queen Mum’.

The Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin during the second of three terms as PM.

George V’s wife was officially ‘Queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Empress consort of India’. Did she have lots of names? Of course she did - Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes.

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40-year-old Vera Sidney died on February 15th 1929 after a few days’ illness. Her brother-in-law, Edmund Duff had died only 10 months earlier also after a few days’ illness. A third similar death in the family, that of Mrs. Violet Sidney, less than a month after Vera’s led to so much local gossip that all three bodies were exhumed. All were found to contain much more than their fair share of arsenic. 
Edmund Duff’s widow, who is quoted at length in the article, was actually the chief suspect but nothing was ever proved and all 3 deaths remain a mystery.

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Ah! The good old days when Britannia ruled the waves. The front battlecruiser is HMS Repulse followed by HMS Renown. 

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Several passengers saw a man board an Eltham to Kidbrooke train on March 13th 1929. Several of them reported hearing a scream during the journey.
At Kidbrooke station a man was seen running away from the train. When Mrs. Winifred East failed to return home from visiting friends, the police were called and her decapitated body was found on the railway line. She had been beaten, stabbed and her head cut off post-mortem. The man was never found and the murder remains unsolved.

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Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill. Could that be a cigar in his left hand, by any chance?

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The Helicogyre was not a success, although the idea of adding thrust to the tips of a helicopter rotor was taken up again in 1957 with the Fairey Rotodyne, which was more successful but fell foul of noise restrictions.

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Cathleen Nesbitt appeared in over 300 stage productions and has 89 entries for film and TV work on the IMDb ranging from a short in 1919 to ITV Playhouse in 1981 via Hitchcock’s ‘Family Plot’, TV’s ‘Wagon Train’ and ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’. She died in 1982 at 93. 

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Just the thing for long train journeys especially for those who’ve left their laptop, ipod, ipad, DS and smart phone at home. Seriously though I’d find such a guide-book interesting.  

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Annette Benson had a short film career from 1920 to 1931. ‘A South Sea Bubble’ starred Ivor Novello.
Constance Bennett was a bigger star whose screen career spanned 50 years. The must have recovered from this illness because she didn’t die until 1966.

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“By Gad, Sir! What a thrilling sight. Young Monroe-Hinds tossing his balls around like a good’un. Pass the brandy!”
Leslie Monroe-Hinds played in the Eton vs Harrow match at Lord’s in July 1929 and contributed 74 runs in a drawn match.

Sunday, 23 June 2013

Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester

Daily Mirror dated Thursday November 7th 1935
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Prince Henry William Frederick Albert, the Duke of Gloucester was the 4th child of George V. His wife was Lady Alice Christabel Montagu Douglas Scott. Doncha just love those multiple names? Lady Alice’s first cousin, Marian Louisa Montagu Douglas Scott, was the grandmother of Sarah, Duchess of York (Fergie) who married Prince Andrew, Alice’s Great-nephew.
Prince Henry was a career soldier having joined the Army in 1919 and rose to Field Marshal by 1955 and a Marshal of the Royal Air Force by 1958. He died in 1974. Alice died in her sleep in 2004 at the age of 102.

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Tension between Italy and the northwest African country of Abyssinia had been increasing since December 1934 until early October 1935 when Italian troops invaded. As both countries were members of the League of Nations and the League declared that Italy was the aggressor and had, therefore, contravened Article 10, economic sanctions were brought against Mussolini’s government. Controversially the British and French governments did not press for more severe action against Italy for fear of driving Mussolini into a pact with Hitler’s Germany.
The war was very unevenly balanced, with Italy and all its modern weaponry against the poorly equipped and untrained Abyssinians, so by May 1936 Italian forces had overrun the country and captured the capital, Addis Ababa. The Abyssinians surrendered and the country became Italian West Africa until it was ‘liberated’ by Allied forces in 1941.
After the war, in 1937, Italy left the League and in May 1939 signed the Pact of Steel with Germany.

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A subsequent inquest into the death of the Reverend Johnson was told that he had suffered with bouts of depression and severe back pain for many years and brought in a verdict of ‘suicide during temporary insanity’.

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The American film company Warner Brothers started making films at the Teddington Studios in 1931 and carried on for the next 20 years despite a large part of the site being destroyed by a V1 bomb in 1944.
In 1935 about 45 films were made at the Studio including the Hitchcock classic ‘The 39 Steps’. 

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In my cynical old age I can’t help thinking that these days most passers-by would be filming the fire on their i-phones instead of shining up the nearest chimneystack.
It is odd to note the lack of disapproval of the mother going shopping and leaving a 5 year-old in charge of a 3 year-old.

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The National Film Investigation was a one-off questionnaire created by London Film Productions to find out what and whom the British film-going public liked or disliked. Over 10,000 people took part.

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German U-boat U20 sank RMS Lusitania on May 7th 1915 with the loss of 1198 lives.

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Katherine Hepburn had won a Best Actress award in 1934 for ‘Morning Glory’, her third film, and was nominated again for ‘Alice Adams’ but lost out to Bette Davis. She went on to win 3 more Best Actress statuettes.

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Guiseppe Sasia was beheaded by executioner Anatole Deibler on February 17th 1936. Deibler publicly executed 395 men between 1885 and 1939.

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When Lord Reith set up the BBC he defined its purpose in three words: educate, inform, entertain. Looking at the run down of this 1935 Thursday night’s programmes I would have to add ‘bore the pants off’. It was probably heavenly listening if you liked orchestral music and the odd East Anglian Herring Fishing Bulletin.

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“By Gad, Sir! The filly probably wrote this letter in the nude! I always make the memsahib wear galoshes when she’s in the scriptorium. Pass the ink!”

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Serge Alexandre Stavisky was an Ukranian born large-scale swindler who, when faced with exposure and arrest, fled but was found by the police having apparently committed suicide. After his death the scandal broke and many high-powered businessmen and politicians were implicated triggering a crisis that led to riots on the streets of Paris.
The trial reported here was of 20 associates of Stavisky all of whom were eventually acquitted.
Pierre Laval was the Prime Minister of France at the time of the trial, his second of 4 periods in office. During World War II he was head of the Nazi puppet Vichy Regime for 2 periods. 

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And you thought that the World-Cup-result-predicting octopus was something new!
As for Mr Longsight’s predictions, after much painstaking research I can now reveal that the 8 Home wins were all correct; of the 4 Away wins 3 were right (Lincoln drew with Hartlepool) and of the 3 draws only 1 was correct (St Johnstone and Aberdeen drew 0-0). I bet you will sleep easy tonight – I know I will.