Page 6 - D:\AA Warsash Association\Journals\2020\AH2020-1\DEK\

All Hands 2020-1 (UK Spring) P a g e 4

1.3 Webmaster’s Message – Chris Clarke (ClarkeC59)
WA Website: Webmaster’s email: wawebmast@warsashassociation.net

WA Membership worldwide is 530 (including 73 Officer Cadets), of which 503 (95%) are online.
If we have a new editor in time, the shipping company we shall feature in the next edition of All Hands will be
Houlder Brothers. Please send in any information and stories you may have about the company.
All Hands Journal: You have read our advert inviting members to volunteer as editor. After putting together 28
All Hands journals and editing the last 17 editions I have finally wrung ‘FWE’. I cannot manage another extension
so once again thank you for the help and support over the last nine years.

For All Hands to continue we need a keen and pro-active editor. Whether we get one is entirely in your hands: if
not it is likely All Hands will close which would be a great shame. As at the end of every voyage there would be
a handover period of support. Also we are inviting more members to volunteer as reporters joining a worldwide
network helping locate articles for the next editor, whoever that may be.
I can promise whoever takes it on that being All Hands editor is extremely interesting, very informative and highly
rewarding. For decades we have been very proud of our journal and none of us want to see its demise. I therefore
recommend you think seriously about our request for volunteers. If you need further information please email me.
1.4 Ex-Editor’s Message - Michael Frost (FrostM61)
All Hands Journal: Email waahed@warsashassociation.net articles or suggestions about future editions.

(The following was written prior to Michael Frost’s resignation). It need hardly be said that we are living in
interesting times, and as of going to press, the picture that we face on a worldwide scale is unclear at best, and
close to incomprehensible at worst. Within our own sphere of particular interest, the sea, shipping, maritime trade
and the lives of our members, there are some startling headlines (cruise ships lockdowns, all types of vessels being
obliged to remain offshore, the closure of borders and the like) and a great deal more conjecture than factual
information. There is an accompanying change in worldwide economics (the collapse of the price of oil for
example) that have little or nothing to do with the Coronavirus, but which play into the scenario with a curious
inevitability … and probably mean that there are a good number of tankers which are steaming slowly around the
oceans simply awaiting a change in prices before discharging in the expectation of better prices. As we watch the
battle for dominance in the crude oil industry between Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States, we do not know
when and if a winner will emerge, we are seeing the beginning of the end of the dominance of the black stuff in
international commerce, or are we witnessing a tussle for temporary dominance that will sputter out without
disturbing the business in any fundamental way? But don’t watch this space for enlightenment: we are in
unchartered waters.
Mankind is, as a species, not unaware of the effects of pandemics. This one differs only in the world’s present
composition, now that all nations are so dependant, each upon the others (including, like it or not, the closeted
beehive that is North Korea). Virtually everybody is richer and more secure than they have ever been in the past
when pandemics have alighted upon us. Not all are similar, of course, as the Black Death, the post 1914 -18 flu
th
epidemic and the 17 century plague are rethought, all of which inflicted mass death upon mankind, but because
of the bizarre kinks of economics, the net result in most cases of similar tolls upon the world’s peoples was an
increase in wealth, leisure, urbanization and personal security, though not, of course, to those who were afflicted.
On a lighter note, like a number of other past WA members, I engaged in the practice of law after I decided to sell
my sextant (which sale I have always regretted, mine being an example of unusual beauty in appearance and
accuracy, it being rather finer than its owner warranted), and in the course of that career had the opportunity to be
involved in some interesting court cases. One obtained some notoriety because of a collision with a local landmark
and I was retained by the local officers’ union, the Canadian Merchant Service Guild. A witness was one Captain
Rose, a typical and experienced tug skipper with a knowledge gleaned from many varied marine incidents in and
on the waters of the coast of British Columbia, which I submit is one of the most difficult coastal environments in
the world (while at University, your correspondent undertook 45 Alaska cruises, with and without pilots, and can
attest to its complexities).