LOG OF THE "DEMETER" Varna to Whitby
2 August, midnight.--Woke up from few minutes sleep by hearing a cry, seemingly outside my port. Could see nothing in fog. Rushed on deck, and ran against mate. Tells me he heard cry and ran, but no sign of man on watch. One more gone. Lord, help us! Mate says we must be past Straits of Dover, as in a moment of fog lifting he saw North Foreland, just as he heard the man cry out. If so we are now off in the North Sea, and only God can guide us in the fog, which seems to move with us, and God seems to have deserted us.
Missing the Demeter’s log for 1 August, “Two days of fog…”
https://infocult.typepad.com/dracula/2021/08/demeter-log-two-days-of-fog.html
Here is a photo of a fully-rigged schooner in fog, to go with that:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50590636@N06/6298078375/in/photostream/lightbox/
Posted by: Most Significant | August 02, 2022 at 11:47 AM
“Lord, help us!…
In our more secular times, we may have lost the emotional impact of this statement. This phrase could be restated as, “Things are going very badly and I feel powerless”. There is doubtless a pious intent, but to feel its intensity of it today, I think we might have to substitute one or more obscenities. Since I want to continue to post on Draculablog, I’ll leave it to the reader to think about which current expressions might be the best fit.
Posted by: Most Significant | August 02, 2022 at 08:52 PM
“Mate says we must be past Straits of Dover, as in a moment of fog lifting he saw North Foreland…”
The lighthouse looks almost the same today as it did in 1887. It was the last lighthouse in the UK to be automated, in 1998. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/222046.stm
Nice 10-minute BBC-2 piece on the North Foreland lighthouse: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SqzwwyGAGX8
Posted by: Most Significant | August 02, 2022 at 10:03 PM