Rowing a whaler. 

Whalers are heavy boats, clinker built with thick planking, strongly ribbed and planked across the beam so you could sit and row.

Ours had a hole for the mast (not all the way through of course), so if we lost our oars in a squall (whatever) we could sail out of trouble. 

There weren’t that many whales round Plymouth sound, so I suppose that’s why we got pretty good at rowing. 

One day as we rowed, we followed a small 2 man yacht which decided to sail under the bows of HMS Essex, an aircraft carrier. 

(It was grey. Some fool had painted it grey) 

As we followed this yacht, within yards of the prow of the aircraft carrier, I was quite struck as to how blunt it was. I thought that the prow of a ship would be really sharp, but this pointy bit wasn’t. It was a little like looking at a solid reproduction of the flat iron building in USA. It was unimaginable that this thing could bludgeon its way through all those tons of water.

In looking up at it, I suddenly became aware of just how high the bow was. It actually curled over my head. That was a very strange sensation, and it felt a little like you were going to be ploughed under even though it was stationary. 

But then the strangest thing. 

Way, way above my head I noticed a tiny square hole in the otherwise seamless lines of the bow. It was quite dark inside too.

As we pulled away from the great ship, I noticed that there was a sort of platform, and I wondered what on earth a magnificent ship was doing with such a tiny square hole in it’s front. It was probably no more than about a foot high. 

Then a sailor walked out onto the platform. 

Oh boy. He was at most a fifth the height of the hole. 

Immediately the scale came into perspective.

It took my breath away, and I think every oarsman in our whaler stopped rowing and simply gazed in sheer awe.

I recall putting my hands back on my oar and leaning back to the first pull, and noticing the yacht was heading into the sunset, and thinking that life doesn’t get much more wonderful than this. But it did.

Edited by - John T on 11/05/2008 01:30:55 AM


The string theory proves that everything is connected, though it may  just be in a different dimension.
I wondered where I was going wrong!