Thursday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Men travel the Earth seeking what they need and eventually return home to find it…their families.”

George Moore

After my career as an air traffic controller I went back to school and went into the engineering business, mostly chemical, plastics and fiber piping design including manual drawings, 2D and 3D computer modeling. This included going “in the field” and supervising the assembly and installation of piping that we had designed. I was working on a plant site near Theodore, Al. when a peculiar thing happened. I was about 30 feet above ground and walking around in a pipe rack dropping a plumb bob to people below to determine places to add “branches” into existing piping. I was working for the Fluor-Greenville, SC office at the time. I heard someone coming toward me in the pipe rack. I eventually recognized him as the head of the Fluor-Greenville office. When he got close enough I asked him what the hell he was doing here. He just said that he wanted to see how it was “in the field”. How many people do you know with that much power and status that would climb around in huge chemical plant construction site just to see how his troops worked? I was impressed.

I have finished reading about pirates in the book “Golden Age of Piracy”. The book covered from about 1680 to 1862. The most successful by far was Bartholomew Roberts. He was a deckhand/navigator on a British slave ship that was captured by a pirate named Howell Davis. Both Davis and Roberts were Welshmen. Roberts was forced to become a crew member on Davis’ ship. Davis sailed into a Portuguese port in what is now Ghana flying the flag of a British man-of-war. Soon after they entered the port, the Portuguese figured out that Davis and company were indeed pirates. The governor of the port invited Davis ashore for a glass of wine and when Davis and his entourage stepped ashore they were all gunned down. The remainder of the pirates began looking for another captain and elected Roberts as their leader because of his navigation skills. Believe it or not, pirate ships were essentially a democracy. The crews elected a ship's captain and he could be kicked out if the crew saw fit. Roberts decided it would be better to be on a pirate ship rather than a slave ship where he had no chance of promotion and monstrous treatment of the slaves. Unlike most pirates, Roberts' home base was the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa at the closest point to the Leeward Islands and the Caribbean. His logic was that the slave ships loaded with trade goods coming south from England, France, Spain and Holland would pass right by him headed for west Africa. Those ships that got by him and loaded up with slaves would have to head northwest to catch the trade winds to the Caribbean. These ripe and ready ships were passing close to Roberts also. At his peak Roberts had four pirate ships under his command. I mentioned the trade winds. In the northern Atlantic the westerly trade winds come off the Sahara desert, across the Cape Verdi Islands and then over to the Leeward Islands, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico sometimes bringing hurricanes with them. Then from the Gulf of Mexico the winds turn north up the east coast of North America then turn east heading back across the North Atlantic to Europe then they turn south. It is a giant clockwise flow of winds called a “gyre”. Seafarers have used these predictable winds since before recorded history.

This Date in History February 12

1789 On this date the Patriot General Ethan Allen died of a stroke on the banks of the Winooski River in Vermont at the age of 56. In spite of the ongoing struggle between Vermont and New York, Allen was a superb military leader for the fledgling United States. The problem was that New York felt that the lands of Vermont were part of New York and the New Yorkers had no problem selling lands in Vermont and fought against admitting Vermont to join the Union as a separate state. Ethan Allen was even arrested for treason because he got fed up with being refused admission to the Union; he approached England to allow Vermont to be part of Canada. Vermont and New York eventually settled their differences and Vermont was admitted. In the meantime Allen teamed up with US General Benedict Arnold and they attacked the British at Montreal. Allen was captured by the British and was kept prisoner for 3 years. After his release he formed a unit called the Green Mountain Boys and joined up again with Benedict Arnold and captured the British bastion of Fort Ticonderoga. It was from this fort that the Patriot General Henry Knox brought the captured cannon to Boston and then to the peak of Dorchester Heights which drove the British out of Boston.

Born today:

1809 US President Abraham Lincoln. After receiving a message from Union General Joseph Hooker who signed the message “Headquarters in the saddle” Lincoln said “The trouble with Hooker is that he has his headquarters where his hindquarters ought to be.” Hooker had just been routed by CSA Generals R.E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville, Virginia in spite of the fact that Hooker had the Confederates outnumbered more than two to one. Before the battle Hooker had said “Now we have Lee where he will have to come out and fight or ingloriously run.” Lee and Jackson did neither; it was Hooker and Yankees that “ingloriously ran”. It cost Hooker his command.

Quotable quotes:

“Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.”

Oscar Wilde

“It seems that we must hire lobbyists to protect us from the people we just elected.”

Mark Twain

“Marriage is the price men pay for sex. Sex is the price women pay for marriage”

Oscar Wilde

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow