No. Too many people, mariners included, have arrested development & are too biased to change their paradigms on how they see reality. BTW, which insurrections are you referring too? The ones who overran police stations, those who participated in months long siege on federal lands, those who participated in months long sieges on federal courthouses, those who vandalized & destroyed countless federally protected landmarks & buildings, those who caused 3/4 of a billion dollars in damages in Minneapolis, the ones who created their own autonomous zones where they said was separate from the US government or the ones who assaulted the US Capital in Washington on Jan 6th? Me personally, I really donât want to hear anything from any of them. The skills they lack should have been learned before adulthood & them watching some PowerPoint presentation & being forced to give public apologies they donât mean wouldnât help anyone except for a select conceited few.
Youâre probably right.
Well said Sand Pebble. A well educated Asian-American female relative of mine was cheering the riots and such this summer. I told her this is not the way to get a positive result for a decent cause. Her sister chimed in with âBurn Baby Burnâ. Am curious their reaction would be opposite when these assholes rioted in the Capitol. They didnât realize they and their neighbors could have been victims as well, instead cheering the media coverage from imagined safety of their homes. We donât communicate like we used to since all this crap started⌠They have never experienced violence as I have, and I donât wish that upon them. Perhaps a different age, but seen really stupid things over my lifetime. I try to temper my time to the last few minutes of world news, there is usually a good deed or item to view, but not always.
I think many families can relate to that these days.
Correct sir.
That was exactly the situation in the old days on Dutch ships. Almost every Dutch ship was subscribed to a copyright news service. It was called De Oceaan Post. A topper always was the weekend editions with the soccer results.
A daily press message dated July 13, 1971 on board the ocean going tug âZwarte Zeeâ.
A problem was that the RO had to use a typewriter. Readability was poor due to the use of max three carbons. Although he rammed away at the typewriter keys the quality of the last copy was always very poor. If you held the original copy to the light you could see all the holes which were punched out, especially the letter o.
Politics were no issue and hardly discussed. The political lines were simple. You had mainly a employers, workers, catholic and reformed political party. For the next elections in coming March no less then 89 (!) political parties will be in the race. Only a small part will pass the threshold.
Same on Norwegian ships. Daily new bulletin via Rogaland Radio and typed out by the Sparks.
This service ended in 1987.
I was a new 2rd mate about three decades later on a much uglier looking ship, we had email but severely restricted in size downloaded 3 times a day (and no web surfing of course). Used to get a daily 5-6 pages of text only news from the Dutch World Service (now defunct I would imagine?). Had to do a quick translation during pikheet at 10 for the non-Dutch speakers.
Nowadays everybody is glued to their little device on the WiFi - though we have re-introduced the 10am coffee break on the internet-free bridge for deck and engine as an informal meeting to discuss whatâs going on.
Luckily we have a seperate recreation room for the telly (if the sat TV works - otherwise thereâs usually some sort of play station competition on), so no TV in the mess during dinner. Nothing as deadly for dinner time conversation then a TV blaring away (regardless of the channel).
Yes, In May 1912 the Dutch broadcasts of Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (RNW) came to an end. It was the end of an institution and an era. It was considered a great loss that RNW had stopped spreading Dutch radio news to the farthest corners of the world.
The setting of a broadcast of a Ship of the Week with the family members present.
One of the services of RNW was the weekly greetings program for seafarers called âShip of the Weekâ. Telephone was not fully established in the 1940s and 1950s, calling to distant regions was difficult and expensive, cassette tapes and phonopost - let alone e-mail or skype - were still unknown concepts. The shortwave radio offered a possibility to let groups of people talk to other people thousands of kilometers away, although one way.
In the old days we were much longer away from home and therefore such a service was legitimized. For instance I sailed on one ship a little over two years. Crew exchanges only happened when the ship arrived at a Dutch port. Flying was out of the question, too expensive. You signed on for the âvoyageâ which meant leaving Rotterdam and returning there at the end of the voyage, never mind how long that would take.
That was early to start such a service, let alone ENDING it. (??)
The Ship of the Week was already ended in 1972. This program was only a small part of the total programming with Dutch and international news, sports, interviews etc. With beam antennas the different parts of the world were reached like Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and North America.
Last year I Skyped my 1921 born grandmother using the ships WiFi 400NM offshore⌠Weâve come a long way in her lifetime.
Just to take this even further off topic -sorry- does the library for seafarers still exist? Used to get two crates of books on board (40 Dutch and 5 each English and Spanish I think?). Could be exchanged in Rotterdam and Singapore.
Was this something that exist (or existed) in other maritime countries?
Been working FoC since 2008, so no such services for us anymore. Canât complain too much though, the company has a 2k a year entertainment fund.
Most of the contents of the grey wooden book chest with padlock consisted of edifying literature of an irreproachable signature. Hard to digest to put it mildly. Sailors were treated like children by landlubbers. The one thing that did catch on were the comic books which were later added. We preferred to read English language pocket books. The quality of the books was generally not very high, but it was a diversion.
Never again have I read so many books as I did on board, sometimes a book a day. In certain ports, such as Mena al Ahmadi, where you couldnât leave the jetty anyway, I went to the ships also lying at the jetty to exchange books. I then took with me a carton box filled with pocket books and often returned laden with rich booty. Another advantage was that on every ship I visited I was offered drinks and afterwards I returned in a happy mood.
There was also another possibility of reading on board. I liked to dig into the pilots, it was pleasant to read, interesting and educational. A good addition to the sometimes sparse range of the book chest. In the Pacific pilots in particular, drawings and descriptions from the time of William Bligh were still to be found. (Bounty).
I have always considered seafarers of years past some of the most well read folks on the planet. Many were not avid readers before being on board a ship. The evolution of their reading was interesting to watch. Theyâd start off reading books relating to the sea or whatever part of the world they came from but then graduate to other subjects, eventually theyâd be reading everything from science fiction to actual science. Never underestimate the intelligence of people restricted to ships or prison who spent years reading books.
Itâs not lunch time until the Price is Right is playing. We dont know what to do with ourselves at lunch on the weekends.
There was no TV in the saloon in my early days on a coastal ship but in a duty mess during morning coffee â Aerobics Aussie Styleâ was played to an appreciative audience weekdays.
As a general rule the crew were generally left of centre and the officers to the right but the variance from the centre was small, politicians being generally regarded as being right up there with used car dealers and pawnshop operators.
And then there was the Film library that was provided by Walport. They consisted usually of a tin box of 3 movies in 16mm format - 2 reels per film. These were exchangeable in most large ports through the shipâs agent or directly with another vessel in the scheme. These boxes were very heavy and if you had to walk the length of the jetty at Mena, for example, to the agentâs office carrying one of these boxes to exchange then your fingers bore the scars for a few days afterwards. Very rarely in my time (50s, early 60s) did we get a film in colour.
The 
film projector provided by Walport.
The films were usually shown on a Saturday night. I remember that in tropical weather conditions a canvas screen was rigged up between the derrick masts behind the midship. Officers and crew watched the film from the captains deck. In bad weather situations we had separate viewings in the officers and crew messes.
Western Approaches
Films were meant to be exchanged in good order, i.e. without breaks, but in my experience this rarely happened. It was best to check the film for breaks on the hand rewinder provided before the film was shown. Delays in showing films were not tolerated and the operator could be subject to torrents of abuse or showers of empty beer cans.
I remember movies like Tora! Tora! Tora!, G.I. Blues and Jailhouse Rock both with Elvis Presley. Especially the latter caused great excitement and ecstasy amongst the crew.
Jailhouse Rock
I gauge the end of the ability to have rational political discussion on board ship to be about the time crew stopped asking each other, âHey, you got anything to read?â Weâd exchange books and I read some books out of desperation I would never otherwise read, philosophy, psychology, religion, science fiction and porn without photos. It was a liberal arts education of sorts. Being exposed to what interested others and what they were reading was a great education. I was on a ship where there were a lot of US western paperbacks, old west stuff which I would never read if I had other choices. But, interested me enough to go there on my time off and came to appreciate the clear skies along with the people that could stand more cold than I.
Now with the internet folks can hide in their own tunnel and never be exposed to those outside of their narrow point of view. Civility declined.