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Sixty years ago, coal burning trawlers heading up to Iceland and GREENLAND
FIsheries
from Hull and Grimsby in fog would arm the deepsea lead.  The comment when they
examined
the arming was "Cinders, we are on the right track"
>
> But it brings a question to mind. He has renounced engine and electronic
> equipment, and proceeds by traditional methods only (such as taffrail log,
> I was pleased to note). Just think of the complexity that this allows him
> to leave behind.
>
> But he refers to being "on soundings", and I wonder if he has accepted
> modern echosounder technology, or if he confines himself to lead and line
> (with a bit of tallow, animal-fat, in the hollow in the end of the weight).
> It's the tallow that gives lead-and-line its advantage over the
> echosounder.
>
> The tallow, by the way, was to sample the "quality of the bottom", whether
> it was mud, sand,  ooze, or gravel, and the type of shells within it. A
> navigator would compare what came up with his own experience of that area,
> and with the annotations on the chart. This information was regarded as
> particularly valuable in the Western approaches to the English channel. The
> navigator would inspect the sample closely, sniff it, even taste it, but I
> wonder if the tasting was done for show rather than anything else. It's
> hard to imagine that it tasted of anything other than salty tallow.
>
> George.
>
> ================================================================
> contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by phone at
> 01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy
> Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.
> ================================================================
>



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