Thetis

This recent issue with the second hand British/Canadian submarine has reminded me of a small piece of family history, or a small member of the family watching history unfold.

On the 1st June 1939, my dad, Arthur Weldon and his Cousin, Stanley Weldon were going on holiday, travelling along the Mersey Estuary in a bus when the driver stopped. Arthur was 12 years old, Stanley was just 10

Stan Weldon, who lives near Prescot, remembers that June day quite vividly :

In Liverpool Bay, HMS Thetis, a submarine that had just been launched at Cammell Laird Shipyards in Birkenhead, was seen with her stern raised above the waterline, her nose buried in the sea bed.

Stan has told me that they could see a few boats sailing around the stern of the ship and lots of activity in the water and on the shoreline. It was an exciting and somewhat fascinating time for all the children on that bus, many of whom did not realize what history was happening before them.

It seems that day, HMS Thetis sailed out of the River Mersey on her first and final voyage. She was overcrewed for some reason, loaded with civil workers, officials and crew, setting out on sea trials, never to return.

On her very first dive, her very first venture into the element for which she had been designed and built, she died. Those with her, save four died too. So close to safety, with the stern above water, the steel hull that should have protected them from the dangers of the deep, became their coffin wall, it was said that the rescue workers could hear the occupants, but were powerless to save them.

On board were many civilians, technical and industrial workers from the builders yard, officers and ratings , not just from Thetis but from other ships, even food catering staff: there was to be a grand buffet on board as this was to be a grand event. Thetis had almost double the number of souls on board that she would usually have. In fact a total of ninety nine people lost their lives on board the Thetis that day.

The Thetis was to claim one more life on August the 23rd, this "100th man" was a Navy Diver, Petty Officer Henry Otho Perdue, who died in efforts to salvage the ship.

Sunday 3rd. September saw Thetis intentionally grounded ashore at Moelfre Bay, Anglesley. It was the same day that war was declared.

The "Thetis" was eventually taken back to Birkenhead, and after an extensive rebuild, was re-commissioned as "HMS Thunderbolt". She sailed on her first operational patrol on December 3rd 1940. On March 14th 1943 she was depth-charged and sunk by the Italian "Cicogna" off Cape San Vito, Sicily, with the loss of all hands.




Many Thanks to http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/britsubthetis.html for information on this subject.

Pining for the Fiords

I've just finished reading a book that celebrates 20 years of HPCC, the Handheld and Portable Computer Club (formerly PPC-UK), and found myself pining for the Fiords once again.

Before blogging and the web, before PDAs, before PCs, there was a time in my life where hand-held calculators and portable computers provided all the excitement, my first electronic calculator, a four banger Sinclair Cambridge, came into my possession in 1975 and replaced my British Thornton slide rule. In the years that followed during my apprenticeship, several more powerful machines entered my arena, cash permitting.

The cash was usually depleted by the time it was even considered for electronic devices, payday would come around and the rent would be paid, food, train tickets and whatever was left was spent on beer. I've always had a problem with beer. However, sometimes the peer pressure or overwhelming urges for a square root key or some other amazing function would force my hand to upgrade, it's been a thirty year upgrade path folks.

If it wasn't the square root key, it was the ability to program, or save to tape, or print, or play Choplifter on a computer like the Commodore 64 or Attic Attack on the Spectrum, then onto the PCs with Microsoft Flight Simulator, followed by Falcon, then Wolfenstein, then Doom, Quake then Unreal and all the other stuff that excitement was made from at the time.

At the weekend I shelled out a hundred and twenty bucks for a DVD dual layer burner and my reaction after installing it was one of complete disinterest, this is my problem nowadays, upgrades are boring, capabilities improve but the result is the same, it's like that invisible c:\ prompt that is always there, a faster machine that sort of does the same thing that the old one did but bigger and faster and basically boring.

So, back to HPCC and those user groups of the seventies, it seems that quite a few people my age have gone through the same thing and yearn for those days when things were a challenge, when programming was exciting, when standards were in the making. I suppose that's just the process of becoming older, nothing has really changed from a people perspective, it's just the technology has moved beyond the novelty items to the appliance level.

Foot Steps

My last blog addressed the similarities between generations, it was only after my dad died that I was actually interested in those previous generations, only after the prime source of family information had passed away was the boy genius prepared to research his lineage. I'm certainly not the brightest bulb on the tree.

The family information was difficult to come by, but two of my dad's sisters were still alive and I made contact with them, one of which had good information, the other quite vague and forgetful. It was through the pair of them that I found my full grandparents names and approximately when they were born, once a few pieces of information were found the detective story grew exponentially.

In late 1975 me and my first steady girlfriend got slightly pregnant, we were eighteen years old and frightened. I thought for the longest time that I was a disgrace to the Weldon family, an outcast, a black sheep for doing this terrible thing.

In reality I was just following a family tradition, which was uncovered through my family tree research. My great grandfather, Joseph, met his girlfriend Rachel in 1883 and within a few months she was pregnant. At the time it was probably a more shameful experience than my own, the social stigma of a child out of wedlock in the late nineteenth century.

What was uncanny though, besides the echo in time, was the location of that echo. I was born in Liverpool and we moved to Whiston when I was eleven years old, I moved to Romford, Essex when I was sixteen but was still coming home to Whiston at the weekends. I met my girlfriend in Liverpool, she lived in Kirkby a few miles away and I'd see her at weekends, mostly in the front room of my parents house on Pottery Lane.

A short walk away from the house was an area called the Whiston Pottery and it was here in 1883 that a young girl called Rachel Hardman lived. Rachel, who was a potter there, somehow met Joseph, who was a potter at the Prescot pottery a few miles away. Rachel was soon very much pregnant which resulted in baby William Hardman in 1884.

Ninety-two years later, my daughter, Susan, was probably conceived within five hundred yards of the Whiston Pottery. the birthplace of her great-granduncle.

It was a difference in time of nine or more decades, but we were all fundamentally the same people, in the same situation and it amazes me how, even though we all move about on the planet, we unknowingly travel in similar peoples footsteps.

Echoes.

Looped

A buddy of mine received a photograph from an old friend he hadn't seen for years, the picture taken just a few weeks ago showed his friend and his father.

The odd thing was the father died ten years ago and the picture looked untouched and was therefore assumed to be a clever illusion, however, on closer inspection and when rational thought returned it was evident that it wasn't his friend and his father, it was in fact, his friend and his son. The family likeness passed down through a generation, a DNA photocopy.

Spooky for him, and spooky for me too because I've seen the same thing in my own family tree.

We're all just passing through here and if we reproduce then time just replaces one set of people with another, all living in different ages, but experiencing similar emotions. In 1969 man landed on the moon and as a twelve year old I was amazed and excited about the space age and the exciting future ahead of us all.

Rewind a hundred and forty years back in time, to 1829, when my 3rd great-grandfather, Michael Wheldon, probably felt the same rush upon seeing Stephensons Rocket at the Rainhill locomotive trials (a few miles from his home town of Prescot, Lancashire), the beginning of the age of steam and the Liverpool & Manchester Railway.

Looped.

It makes you wonder what it's all about.

Douglas Adams wrote that there is a theory which states that if anyone discovers just exactly what the universe is for and why we are here, that it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Then, as he points out, there is a theory which states that this has already happened.