Here at gCaptain we are really excited by the possibilities of Google Books. Not only to help us study for the next license exam but to do research of all sorts. So here’s a challenge… Use Google search to find a book published before 1900 to look for a seamanship technique that has been lost in time. The catch? It must be still relevant today.
The person who finds the best tip (with book/page reference) will win a gCaptain t-shirt.
The Mariner’s Handbook (NP100) I eventually found to be interesting reading…sheesh the things you will read when bored on watch! Anyway, up until around the early 1980’s in the section covering Arctic survival there was a very important reference to the dangers of eating polar bear liver (high vitamin A content or some such)…although it never gave any hints on how to kill the animal first!
The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist by E. Billings, April 1856, Volume I, Number II (page 111) has this reference:
“One of the most singular facts relative to the polar bear is, that its liver is to a great degree poisonous, a circumstance unknown in almost every other animal. <meta http-equiv=“CONTENT-TYPE” content=“text/html; charset=utf-8”><title></title><meta name=“GENERATOR” content=“OpenOffice.org 3.1 (Win32)”><style type=“text/css”> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style> Three of Barent’z sailors were very much injured by eating of it; and Capt. Ross, in his late Arctic voyage, verified the observation by experiment.”
Even though there is no longer mention of this in the current Mariner’s Handbook, I believe that the advice is still relevant today.
Did my t-shirt get lost in the mail? I never seen if there was a winner to this contest. Maybe runners up could get a GCaptain bumper/bulwark sticker or sumpin for their efforts?:rolleyes:
I have three; ‘Never stand in the bight of a line’, ‘Acta non verba’, and ‘Give me a stout ship with a good crew and I will sail her to the ends of the earth and back again’.
[quote=10talents;19708]Yea, but their nose is always up someone’s A??
(referring to the dog philosophy)[/quote]
suspect that somewhere in the early evolutionary process humans were “ass sniffers” as well…perhaps some still are…hence the exclaimation…“some thing smells like ass”!!
I find a portion of my posts highly disturbing but I know my disturbing (to some) sense of humor…please don’t take any of my posts personally. I shall endeavor to curb my occasional sarcasm…
