Ship me somewheres east of Suez

[sovay]

My life remains a double-tracked medical cavalcade, but selkie has just informed me of the latest development in the Suez: "theyre actually doing it! ever given has been there so long that theyre actually going around the cape of good hope like 1700s scurvy patients oh my god."

I can only imagine how nervous the Panama Canal must be feeling right now. I just checked and thank God the dredging of Boston Harbor is proceeding on schedule. If we Storrowed a container ship, we'd never live it down.

P.S. The breeze coming through the window smells like the ocean; there was a gyre of seagulls visible above the roofs in the afternoon. It is coincidental but pleasant, considering all the chanteys I now have stuck in my head.

Comments

[pameladean]

Historical novelists are just beside themselves!

I hope your cavalcade gets a rest soon.

[sovay]

Historical novelists are just beside themselves!

I was saying to selkie that I hope someone writes a modern report on rounding the Horn, because it's not like the Roaring Forties went anywhere in the last hundred and fifty years.

I hope your cavalcade gets a rest soon.

Thank you.

[legionseagle]

At least one of my friends has rounded the Horn. He said it was so calm that he expected the Chilean Navy would come out and expect them to sign NDAs so as to keep its reputation intact.

There is (or was) a Cape Horn Society, for which the membership criterion is having rounded the Horn under sail. In the maritime museum in Castletown, Isle of Man, there's a Cape Horn Society medal which was donated by the museum's founder, who rounded the Horn while being born.(What size of medal her mother received, history does not, alas, record.)