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Wonderful story. Great catch, George.  And a Merry Christmas to you. -Hewitt

On 12/21/09, George Huxtable  wrote:
> I will copy below a short extract from a piece that took my fancy in the
>  recent edition of The Journal of Navigation (vol 63 No1, January 2010), in
>  case it appeals to other navlist members.
>  It explains itself pretty well. Lowestoft is the most Easterly port on the
>  North Sea coast of England. An "armed lead", has a tallow or lard smeared
>  into a dimple under the lead so that it picks up a sample of the bottom.
>
>  George.
>
>  contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
>  or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
>  or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.
>
>  ==============================
>
>  Heaving The Lead
>
>  Lt Cdr R W Cooper RN
>
>  2. BOYHOOD BACKGROUND. My experience of the practice of heaving the lead and
>  navigation goes back to 1937. My father was a North Sea fishing skipper and
>  I was the eight year old son who was obsessed with navigation. My bedtime
>  reading was Tait's Home Trade Guide, and I knew the Colregs, Morse code and
>  flag meanings off by heart. That year I was allowed for the first time to go
>  on a trawling trip with my father.
>
>  Navigation at that time consisted almost entirely of sounding by armed lead.
>  The ship would be stopped and the 16-pound lead cast. The depth was noted,
>  and the state of bottom examined closely, and tasted by the skipper and
>  mate. I tasted it too. It was foul. This was done several times at hourly
>  intervals until suddenly, and for no good reason that I could discern, the
>  trawl was shot with the traditional order " Shoot the nets in the name of
>  the
>  Lord. "
>
>  Soundings were taken at half-hourly intervals while trawling. And then after
>  hauling, the whole ritual was repeated. We had been trawling on a NNW
>  course, and before shooting again, we had moved some six miles to the
>  westward. This procedure was repeated several times until my father decided
>  to return to the home port of Lowestoft. No attempt had been made to fix the
>  position during the 72 hours. It seems that the bottom of the North Sea has
>  a fan-shaped pattern of low ridges which do not appear on navigational
>  charts. It is in the valleys between these ridges that the best flat-fish
>  are found. It is the fan-shaped nature of the ridges that make them ideal
>  for navigation, for the distance between the ridges gives the latitude
>  accurately enough.
>
>  As the trawl was hove in on the derrick out at sea, my father himself cast
>  the lead, tasted it, and then ordered something like west-south-west and a
>  half west and off we steamed. The lead was cast at hourly intervals without
>  stopping the ship. It was swung overhead three times before being slipped
>  and only the depth noticed. Perhaps the course would have been corrected by
>  half a point. Otherwise we went straight at the Holm buoy.
>
>  Note that the chart was never consulted. My father's collection of blue-back
>  charts was kept tightly rolled in black japanned-cases closed with a
>  padlock. Only he (and I) looked at them. They had originally been his
>  grandfather's and were never used for navigation. Certain sea areas were
>  covered with minute marks and symbols entered at the end of each trip by
>  mapping pen. They represented details of catches and abnormalities of the
>  seabed.
>
>
>  --
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>  To , email NavList+@fer3.com

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