Favourite Poems - 'The Gate of the Year'

THE GATE OF THE YEAR

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” 
And he replied: 
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” 
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East. 

So heart be still: 
What need our little life
Our human life to know, 
If God hath comprehension? 
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low, 
God hideth His intention. 

God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision, 
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him, 
All time hath full provision. 

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes, 
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail, 
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

Minnie Haskins (1908)

Pushing the Boundaries by Michael Grey

One Apus coming into Kobe

Pushing the boundaries

Following the astonishing sight of the ONE Apus arriving in the port of Kobe, there has been plenty of speculation as to why half her deck cargo suddenly hurled itself into the sea. I don’t know any better than anyone else but would venture a guess that it might just be the old story of a fatal flaw that eventually emerges with any clever departure from long-established design norms.[You can see a video of the ship coming into Kobe here] 

There is nothing new about adventurous risk-takers skewing traditional design or operational compromises to what might appear to produce the best profit for the least capital cost. Think of the extreme clippers, which were lethal when handled badly, or the “hell or Melbourne” skippers who took ridiculous risks with their ships and the lives of those aboard, for a record-breaking passage.

“If you push your luck, you will come unstuck”, said one of those little rhymes we learned to instil in us the value of professional prudence. And if you have been around in the shipping industry for a good few decades, there is no shortage of examples where snags have emerged after the introduction of something new or clever. It seems almost inevitable.

I might go back to the late 60s, when nobody bothered about fuel price or emissions and to the fine-lined cargo liners that started to appear. Sure, they reached their destination faster and were greatly admired for their passage making. One of ours was roaring down the Atlantic off the Azores one night when she dipped her bow into a swell and about 2000 tons of sea ended up on the foredeck, which was set down a couple of feet, before they got the way off her. Then a Ben liner was bent like a banana and a Neptune ship lost most of the bow, so word got about that these beauties needed some rather careful handling, compared to their simpler predecessors.

With Suez closed and everyone screaming for oil, tanker sizes were extrapolated to extraordinary levels, somebody deciding that it was a great economy idea to equip these monsters with a single boiler and bring them up estuaries on the top of the tide to sit in holes dredged off a terminal. It worked a dream, until they started to break down off lee shores and spectacularly explode, when washing their tanks in the tropical microclimate of their vast internal spaces.

Roll-on, roll-off ships would have been prohibited in a more cautious age – class would never have permitted a huge hole in a shell plate- but they provided so many solutions to cargo-handling problems that old horrors of free surface or watertightness were thought easily manageable.  Boundaries were literally pushed and we soon saw ro-ros where the main deck was under the load waterline, so a few degrees of list with the ramp open could prove fatal, requiring a new understanding (better later than never) of this type’s vulnerability.

Big bulk carriers were the cat’s pyjamas; too large, alas, for the crew to make the slightest impression on their maintenance requirements, while pliable regulators permitted deep loading, longer intervals between drydocks and a new and malevolent philosophy of “permissible levels of steel wastage” emerged. That took a lot of ships to the bottom, along with the lives of those who worked aboard them. And that’s before we considered issues of metal fatigue, weaker scantlings (who would pay for a stronger bulk carrier?) and cargo liquefaction.

Car carriers appeared to be a design that could be endlessly extrapolated, their specific vulnerabilities of instability and fire spread, contributed to by too much haste in port, eventually becoming apparent – after they had grown to huge sizes.

Maybe we shouldn’t frighten potential passengers about what cruise ship operators have learned the hard way and to their cost, over the years. As a simple seaman, it always seemed to me that there was something wrong when you couldn’t put the helm hard over without the grand piano carrying away and crushing half a dozen insufficiently nimble passengers. We won’t go into flammable balconies and careless captains getting too close to the shore.

And so to giant containerships, the current conduits of international trade, which have grown like Topsy, both in dimensions and capacity, where boundaries have been pushed in all directions. To somebody aged enough to have written about 1500 teu ships with “too many eggs in one basket”, and who can recall agonised debates about whether a third tier of boxes would be a hazard in the winter North Atlantic, it could be better to exercise caution about the current generation of monsters and their vicissitudes.

I recall a friend who had been in at the very birth of containerisation telling me about the experiments he took part in where they piled loaded boxes on top of one another and tilted stacks to test their lashings and design fastenings. Now, of course they have computer-aided design tools of remarkable sophistication, but you just wonder whether there is anything that really replicates the terrifying forces produced by an instantaneous 40 degree lurch, as the whole length of the ship finds itself unsupported, to stop dead and hurtle the other way, as green seas crash aboard and a hellish wind blows on the ten-high stack.

Maybe it would help a little if designers spent some time at sea. But looking at some of these recent incidents, it is surely not unreasonable to ask whether lashing rules and the equipment they prescribe are really fit for purpose aboard the ships on which they are now installed? Are the ships too long and the stacks too high? Or like so much else in an industry, where development is exponential and prototypes unknown, are the designers pushing their luck, in this case, too far?

Michael Grey is a former editor of Lloyd’s List.

Stockbridge at Christmas 2020

 

                                                       The pods at the Greyhound on the Test

Stockbridge is dressed better than ever for Christmas 2020 despite there having been no Christmas shopping evening and the Christmas tree in front of St Peter's was lit without ceremony. The shops and houses have put on a superb display and the principal eateries, the Greyhound on the Test and the refurbished Grosvenor, have installed wonderfully atmospheric pods - in the case of the Greyhound - and a fully-fitted out ski hut - La Hutte - in the case of the Grosvenor. Added to this the Whisky Shop has moved to the refurbished Lillies site and has a bar, while behind it another coffee shop - Kudos - has just opened. The former Hero is being transformed into the Clos du Marquis to be opened in January, bringing French cooking to the town for the first time. Meanwhile, the Three Cups and the White Hart continue to maintain a good trade as well as highly praised food, and Thyme & Tides have continued to provide superb deli, fish and cheese counters as well as a much favoured take-away service. 

For more photos of the High St. and the shops and restaurants, click these links.

The Grosvenor

The Test pool and the Town hall

The Whisky Shop

St Peter's and the tree

Beccy's and the Vine

The garden at the Grosvenor and Le Hutte

The garden rooms at the Grosvenor

Newman's Decorative Living

Providence Court 

The Whisky Shop and Kudos

The Three Cups

                                                                          The Three Cups

The Test

                                                     King's Head House and Old Swan House

The Roundabout

Nicky Boyle 1946 - 1997

Nicky with Rosemary Martin. Background - Dodie and Pug Wallis at Hill Farm.

Nicky (Lady Nichola) Boyle was a close friend throughout my teens and early 20s and I spent hours at her house, Marwell, having meals, playing tennis or after-dinner games, or just talking late into the night in the drawing-room surrounded by her mother's books*. The house was approached down a long drive and had an impressive front door flanked by columns on which I use to hang after ringing the doorbell, driving her dog, Oedipus, mad when he caught sight of me. Tennis was often played with her brother, Patrick Kelburn, as well as regulars such as Nick Duke and Johnnie Cooke. And indeed, although Nicky and I got on very well as friends, it was Nick who Nicky was keen on, although I don't think her love was ever requited.

Nicky Boyle (second from right) with me (top left), Mark Hatt-Cook, Belinda Wallis and Nick  Fry at a hunt ball c,1969. The photo was probably taken by Nick Duke. Photo from Belin Martin's album.

Regulars were Belin Wallis, who was a close friend of hers, Charlie Skipwith, Georgina Murison and Sandra and Terry, who rented a cottage on the estate and who usually joined in when they were there, and the Hellards who lived nearby. Nicky often spent time in London where she had friends such as Rosa Monkton. Her mother had a flat in Albany which came in useful after parties.  

I remember once going up to London with Nicky on the train when we drank a bottle of sherry between us (although whisky was her usual drink). Just as well Waterloo was a terminus!  She was also often a passenger in the Mini on Sunday nights when we drove up to London after watching 'The Forsyte Saga',

A point to point at which Nicky was riding. Left to right: Will Martin, Charlie Skipwith, Lucie Skipwith, Andrew Ward, Nick Duke, Herry and Prue

Her mother (Dorothea, Viscountess Kelburn - always known to us as Lady K - was a great favourite too, She was always welcoming and didn't seem to mind what hour we turned up and how long we stayed. There was usually a shepherd's pie to be had if we got hungry and there were some wonderful parties when we played after-dinner games, making full use of the many rooms and the back stairs.  Fairly glittery cocktail parties were also held, especially around Christmas time, when friends of Patrick's such as the Dufferin's would show up. Later his wife Isabel would be there too.

Sadly, I rather lost touch with Nicky in my late twenties after I got married. She had married Tom Carter in 1976 and they had a son, Mathew in 1978 and a daughter Ella, in 1986.

I was very shocked when in 1997 she suddenly died.

Nicky was a most interesting. person, quite intellectual like her mother, but not always happy. Her parents were divorced and I never heard any mention of her father. 

Nicky is commemorated in my garden with a pear tree.  

For all then photos of Nicky I can find, click here 

* I still feel guilty about a book (Vladimir Nabakov's 'Pale Fire') that I borrowed in about 1965 and never returned.   

Stockbridge Gardens Open for the Church 2020

Stockbridge Parish Magazine July 2020 

Stockbridge opens its gardens for the Church each year, with the east and west ends taking it in turns.  Tea can be taken on the lawn in front of the church.  The event, which is organised by David Barnes, raises substantial funds. In 2020 it was the turn of the east end to open their gardens.

Sadly, this year the gardens could not be opened to the public because of the virus restrictions, but everyone who's gardens should have been shown was happy to have them photographed, and some of the photos appeared in the July issue of the Parish Magazine.

A complete set of photos can be found here:

Becky Ferris - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPiQDoj

Jill Ferris - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPiWUiV

Tony and Carole Cullen - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPiXaL3 

Hugh and Margaretha Northam - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPiR85r

Briar Phillips and Mikey O’Neil - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPjWj6R

Stephen and Karin Taylor - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPjWtLs

Pamela Marples - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPjWUxr

Neil and Sarah Romain - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPosVZX 

Di Maxwell - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPoy82q

Marjorie Rose - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPoqx43 

Robin and Chrissie - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPoA1V4 

Kim and Frances - https://www.flickr.com/gp/herry/i92LoN 

Herry Lawford - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPoAHnr

Allotments - https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPouBHW 

 

Atlantic Empress collision with Aegean Captain 1979

Atlantic Empress

On 19th July 1979, the Atlantic Empress, a VLCC of 128,000 grt, fully laden with crude oil from Ras Tanura, was sailing at full speed northwards towards Beaumont, Texas, when she was in an almost head-on collision with the Aegean Captain, another fully laden VLCC sailing from Aruba to Singapore, 18 miles east of Tobago. The collision occurred in heavy rain and thick fog and the two ships did not sight each other until they were 600 yards apart*. Aegean Captain changed course, but it was too late; the two ships collided, with the Empress tearing a hole in the Captain's starboard bow. Large fires began on each ship which were soon beyond the control of the crews. On the Atlantic Empress 26 men died, and one on the Aegean Captain. The master of the Atlantic Empress jumped off the stern of the ship into the flaming sea and survived after spending almost two years in a hospital in Houston recovering from his burns. 

The Atlantic Empress eventually exploded and sank on 3rd August, having spilled 287,000 tons of oil into the sea, the largest spillage of oil from a ship ever recorded. The Aegean Captain spilled almost 10,000 tons of oil but was taken into Curacao where her remaining cargo was off-loaded. Salvors Smit International and Bugsier attempted to salve the Empress and managed to get a line onto her to tow her further away from land, but could not save her.** 

The huge pool of spilled oil threatened both Tobago and the Windward Islands and pollution equipment and defences were flown to the area and deployed, though to little effect. Very fortunately, however, the winds and currents carried the oil away from land and it was broken down by the sea and no pollution occurred. The Empress's remaining cargo solidified at the bottom of the ocean and similarly caused no pollution thereafter.

At the outset, I had appointed Richard Shaw, then of solicitors Elboune Mitchell (and soon after, Shaw & Croft) an experienced Admiralty lawyer, to act for the Empress, while my colleague John Jillings appointed Rob Wallis of Hill Dickinson to act for the Captain. A game then ensued to establish jurisdiction for the claims between the two ships, which were enormous - in excess of $100m, I appointed Alan Ballie and John Kimball of Healy & Baillie to act for the Empress in the United States as it was likely that jurisdiction would be founded there, given that the cargo on the Empress was owned by Mobil, who's claim, for $60m, was the largest. Mobil's cargo underwriters appointed Ralph Evers of Clyde & Co to act for them. A considerable legal battle then ensued, in which much turned on the judgment given in a celebrated collision case by Henry Brandon. 

Under US law, the 'Both to Blame' collision rule applied which gave cargo interests an almost automatic 50% of their claim, and so Mobil's claim was settled by the 'Empress' for $30m, which I arranged to be paid through Richard Shaw's fledgeling office, a transaction which he said 'kept his bank manager quiet for the rest of his career'.

Both sides were gearing up for a huge and expensive battle in court in the United States to deal with liability for the collision and the remaining claims, including the total loss of the Empress, when we managed to arrange for both parties to meet in our boardroom at International House and settle the case on 'private terms', saving many hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Richard Shaw and Norman Baptist, who was the Empress's insurance and claims man in London, remained very good friends, and we used to hold an annual lunch to remember one of the largest and most significant cases we and the Club ever handled. Sadly, both Richard Shaw and Norman Baptist have now died. But the case remains in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest ever spillage of oil from a ship.

*A tropical rainstorm can be so heavy that it blanks out a ship's radar.       

**Under the terms of the standard Lloyd's Open Form Salvage Contract, the salvors agreed to perform their services on the basis of 'No cure; no pay' and so as the Empress had sunk, they were entitled to nothing. However, the Empress was entered in the UK P&I Club and the Directors were asked to make an ex-gratia payment to the salvors of $1m under the Club's Omnibus Rule, which they agreed to do. This manifestly unfair system was eventually modified through the work of Terence Coghlin, and payment to salvors for the protection of the environment was made possible with the addition of a SCOPIC clause to salvage contracts. 

 

  

Seawise University (1972)

 

Seawise University ablaze

The Seawise University was the renamed former Cunard liner RMS Queen Elizabeth, which at the end of her cruising life was sold to the Hong Kong shipowner (and father of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong CH Tung)  CY Tung whose dream it was to convert her into a floating international university.

Sadly, just before the conversion work was completed in January 1972, the ship caught fire, burned, and sank in Hong Kong harbour. There she was an obstruction to the container berths and a danger to shipping and the Marine Department ordered her to be removed. As she was entered in the UK P&I Club, the task of removing her fell to the Club, and the then senior partner, Sidney Fowler, found a salvor in Australia, Sir John Williams*, who was contracted to do so. He employed a team of Korean divers, led by salvage master Jock Anderson, who worked on the enormously complicated hulk in the dark waters of the South China Sea for almost four years, cutting her down for scrap. They were proud of the fact that none of the divers died during the difficult and dangerous work.

The cost of the removal was $10m, then the largest claim ever paid by any of the P&I Clubs, and settled under the 'Wreck Removal' Rule and contributed to by the London Group of Clubs through the Pooling Agreement and reinsuring underwriters at Lloyd's. 

The case was handled by Terence Coghlin and Francis Frost, and investigated by Bob Crawford of Ince & Co, and Richard Sayer supported by consulting engineers Binnie and Partners, fire experts Dr. Bougoyne and Partners and Dr. RF Milton. The investigation was able to show that the fire had been started deliberately, probably by the conversion crew who may have wanted to prolong their work. Fires had been set in a number of different places and the fire doors jammed open - a typical sign of arson. 

As a consequence, we argued that the whole loss fell on the ship's war risk underwriters (at Lloyd's)  as 'malicious damage' and they eventually agreed to contribute $7.5m towards the settlement of the claim.

Francis Frost had worked particularly assiduously on the case and was rewarded by the partners by being sent on a cruise to New York on the QEII with his wife Lies, one of the rare cases of anyone in the firm receiving a 'bonus'.

*Sir John Williams had worked with Sidney Fowler on the removal of the New Zealand ferry 'Wahine', which sank in Wellington Harbor in 1968. 

See also 'Memories of Seawise University' 

  

  

John Keats - On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer (1816)

 

Rembrandt - Aristotle With A Bust of Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
    And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
    Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
    That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
    Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
    When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
    He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
    Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Favourite Gardens - Old Bladbean Stud Garden Sept 2020

 

Old Bladbean Stud Garden is a most unusual place, created by one woman from a rough smallholding on ground high on the Kent downs from 2003 onwards, and without a gardener. It's a deeply felt place where the creation of each internal garden and the placing of every plant is the result of philosophical as well as botanical enquiry. Carol Bruce's written guide to her garden is a meditation on the usually hidden forces of artistic expression as she aligns them with nature. A fascinating garden, even in the dog days of summer, that I will return to in spring or summer to see it as intended. 

For more photos, click here 

Return to Journal Index

Is the Church of England Intent on Killing Off the Parish Church?

The importance of our parish churches to their communities seems to be under attack in several ways but particularly, though shortfalls in funding. 

The issue has been brought into the open by an article in the Church Times by Rev'd Stephen Trott on 10th July 2020. He argues that the decision of the Synod in the 1970's to 'centralise' the funding of parish churches has lead to a withering of the centrality of the parish church in the life of the community in favour of the diocese. 

The explanation of what has been happening cames a great surprise to many who had scarcely appreciated the danger, and it might have remained of minority interest before the issue was taken up by Canon Giles Fraser in a fine piece in the Daily Telegraph:

This, in turn, was followed up in a more explicit piece by Giles Fraser in Unheard on 6th August in which he argues that: 'The ancient institution has been asset-stripped by an expanding bureaucracy of management-speak types'

Finally, Jason Goodwin has spoken up strongly for the parish churches in a powerful piece below

Ignore parishes at your peril

St Carantoc built one as instructed by a dove. Another was raised at the spot where St Wulstan’s faithful oxen drawing his funeral bier stopped. They were built in places where people thought miracles had happened, or were blessed by spirits or where holy water bubbled out of the earth, in wastes and on pagan shrines, by the sea and by rivers, in the hills and on the plain. They were constructed where people congregated, in villages and towns and, eventually, in the heart of industrial cities.

Saints built them, sinners built them; improvers and committees; barons and crusaders; wool merchants and kings. In Christchurch, Dorset, the final timber was dropped into place by a stranger supposed to be the Lord himself. They were built for the people of Britian. They are the glory of our island: our parish churches.

In consequence, a lot of us took their closure in the spring as an affront. For the first time since the general papal interdict placed on King John in 1208, our parish churches were shut at Easter. We have had plagues, invasion scares, civil war: but at Whitsun, the churches were all closed too. Time was when the priest stayed with his flock and the church was a place of refuge and support. Instead we were enjoined to phone in or watch on Zoom.

I duly watched the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter address. My attention slipped as he went on but my wandering eye fell on no memorials to the dead, nor watched the play of coloured light on stone. The Archbishop was in his kitchen and I was at home. Every now and then, his sermon was interrupted by a video and, after a cut-away to a talking head, I noticed that someone appeared to have sneaked in to take a Magimix from the kitchen counter.

It struck me that an archbishop who thinks his kitchen is as good a place to preach from as Canterbury Cathedral may possibly think too much of his own gifts and too little of what has been bequeathed over the centuries. Churches serve believers and non-believers at various stages of their lives: at funerals (which were banned), or holy days (see above) and on Sundays (closed). Churches are places of withdrawal, for prayer and private worship – until they’re shut down.

I suspect the Church of England views parish churches as a burden and a nuisance. The diocesan bureaucrats would rather do the things the rest of us have no idea they do, such as providing strategic oversight of a growing mission area where energised parishes cluster around a resourcing church. Renewed, released, rejuvenated!

It will come crashing around their ears, like the tables of the moneylenders in the temple. The higher-ups ignore parishes at their peril. As they set about polishing their inclusivity templates, like buffoons in a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, people of faith and of no faith, people looking for something and people looking for escape, to connect with the landscape, or reconnect with their past are criss-crossing the land.

They are going to the woods and the wastes, the wells and the holy places, to the churches and chapels built by their forbears. I think it may be their experience that endures long after the corporate mission statements have been forgotten. You can lock up the parish church and turn the awkward and ungainly people away, but our churches are never quite empty, even when there is nobody in them.

Jason Goodwin

Many articles later - mostly about Bishop Dakin and the Winchester Diocese - but this piece by Giles Fraser in UnHeard shows how far we've now come from the church we all grew up with 

PS I have played a very small part in this debate by raising an idea in the Daily Telegraph that arises from the arrangement that exists at my church as the result of a benefactor deciding to adopt an ancient solution to the problem of funding the parish priest. It appears that this solution has since been discussed with approval at higher levels within the clergy. 

Return to Journal Index

Return to William Tyndale - the Translator of the Bible 

Return to The King James' Bible and the Book of Common Player