Tall Stories!
| One Winters Night... |
| I remember one dark and stormy night I
walked along the sea front, leaning hard into the wind as the rain beat against my
chest and the waves crashed onto the shore. Eventually I was forced to take shelter on
the Pier where I waited for the rain to ease. With numbing fingers I fumbled for my
cigarettes and matches and as I protected the flame in my cupped hands, I noticed a
movement in the shadows just behind the metal grill. A figured moved towards me from out
of the gloom. I caught the glint of something metallic in the moonlight and took a pace
backward into the protection of the night. The dark figured limped toward me and I saw before
me a sea faring man, his peg leg thumping against the wooden boards. 'Got a light me
hearty' he said, 'Aye' I responded and held a lighted match towards him. I felt the
roughness of his palms as he held my hand to steady the flame. It was then I noticed in
the light of the flame the metal hook that protruded from the frayed cuff of his oil
skins and the black leather patch he wore over one eye. He took a deep draught of his pipe and blew the
smoke into the wind. 'How did you get that peg leg mate?' I asked. He gave me a hard look
and said 'Lost it to a whale matey, when I was but a little older than yerself.' He fell
silent as he remembered that day. '..and how about the hook then?..' .....'Shark'...he
spat at me and turned as if to leave. 'You must have traveled some leagues in your time
friend' I said. 'Aye..I have that' he responded. ' My curiosity had the better of me by
now and throwing caution to the wind I asked how he had lost his eye. 'A bird did it,' he said, 'What! pecked it
out?' said I. 'No lad...a'pen I was looking skyward when this ere seagull s**t in
me eye. I remember it well.' 'You mean you lost your eye because of a passing seagull?' I
retorted. 'Narh....'' he said, 'because it was the day after I got this ere blasted
hook!!'
Anon. |
|
Great Balls Of Fire! - But Its True - Honest ! |
| Back in the days when
every sailing ship had to have a cannon for protection, cannons of the
time required round iron cannonballs. The Captain or Master wanted to
store the cannon balls so that they could be ready for instant use when
needed, yet not roll around the gun deck. The Solution was to stack them
up in a square based pyramid next to the cannon. The top level of the
stack had one ball, the next level down had four, the next had nine, the
next had sixteen and so on. Four levels would provide a stack of
thirty cannonballs. The only real problem was how to keep the bottom level
from sliding out under the weight of the higher levels. To do this, they
devised a small brass plate with one rounded indentation for each
cannonball in the bottom layer. Brass was used because the cannon
balls would not rust onto a brass plate but would rust and stick to a iron
one. When the temperature falls, brass contracts in size faster than iron.
As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass plate would
get smaller than the iron cannonballs they were holding. If the
temperature got cold enough, the bottom layer would pop out of the now
smaller indentations, spilling the entire pyramid over the deck. (look
out below! - Ed). This brass plate was called a ''brass
monkey'' - Thus it was quite literally cold enough to '...freeze the balls
off a brass monkey!..' Hands up anyone who thought it means something
totally different?
Submitted by Dai |
|
|