IN THE COURSE of tracing my paternal family through the fenland parishes of south Lincolnshire, one crude, recurrent declaration stood out above all others: Occupation: Ag-Lab. Two blunt syllables. Generation after generation, the same entry appears in parish registers and census returns. Agricultural labourer. Not farmer. Not landowner. Not even cottager. But labourer. It is …
A Warship for Uncertain Times IN MY PREVIOUS post — 'May They Both Flourish' — I looked at what it was to be sailor aboard the Royal Navy's County Class cruiser, HMS Shropshire, during World War Two. Here, in a post that will draw a curtain on the series covering my father's wartime naval experience, …
A Sailor's Life Aboard HMS Shropshire & the First Arctic Convoy IN MY RECENT post, “Wet, Cold and Always Tired,” I explored the harsh realities faced by ratings who served aboard Britain’s corvettes during the Second World War. Now, I turn to a very different warship — the Royal Navy’s County-class heavy cruiser, HMS Shropshire. …
MY INTEREST IN The Battle of the Atlantic runs deep. You see, both my grandfather and my father served in the Royal Navy during wartime. During WW1, my grandfather, then a Chief Petty Officer, was a master gunner aboard the iconic battleship, HMS Dreadnought. HMS Dreadnought A couple of decades later, in WW2, my father …
I have already declared on here that I’m an avid reader of novels. Of those I’ve read over the years, I’m sure I could count on one hand the number that were written by women. That statement may be interpreted as sexist, but it is in no way meant as such. I’m not discrediting female …
On February 10, 1906, the Royal Navy launched its latest warship out of the H.M. Dockyard, Portsmouth. The vessel, the first capital ship to be powered by steam turbines, represented such a momentous development in naval technology that its commissioning in December of that year spawned an entire generation of battleships, the classification for which …
My daily dog-walking exercise often takes me through our village’s churchyard and its cemetery. As I meander among the graves, my past interest in researching my own family history often causes me to stop and read some of the headstones. Inevitably, these often raise questions in my mind. Who were the characters whose names live …
RAVEN MOON 