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Sun 15 Sep 2019 10:44:14 AM EDT
Slept from eleven to four, laid awake, then slept again from seven to ten.
High of seventy-five and rainy today.
Goals:
- Go stuff
A bit.
- Play D&D with Ed and Jay?
Done.
Washed dishes.
https://www.damninteresting.com/dead-reckoning/
> In the Earth’s extreme southern latitudes, where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet, there is a rocky gap of sea between Antarctica and South America known as the Drake Passage. Among 18th century seafarers, this corridor was also known by a more ghoulish nickname: The sailors’ graveyard. In the so-called Age of Exploration, the Drake Passage was the least impractical route for large European ships to travel around South America to access its west coast. The passage hooks far south—almost to the Antarctic Circle—to navigate around Cape Horn on the extreme southern tip of the continent. Sensible sailors avoided the corridor except in the relatively calm summer, yet on 12 April 1741—deep into blustery autumn—the British Royal Navy ship HMS Wager was at full sail in the dead center of the Drake Passage.
> Commodore Anson’s orders were to capture profitable Spanish possessions on the west coast of South America. The mission was delayed, however, due to a severe shortage of men. The Admiralty acquired some sailors through the controversial institution of the press-gang, where civilians were forced into military service on pain of death. To fill the remaining vacancies, the Admiralty waived their “able-bodied” requirement and drafted 500 men from the “Corps of Invalids,” a stockpile of army veterans who were too old, injured, or otherwise infirm for further army service. Some of these men were barely able to stand unassisted, let alone walk, or handle rigging on a lurching deck. Among those who could walk, many of them did, directly away from the navy ships, before the squadron was even underway.
> > It is difficult to conceive a more moving scene than the embarkation of these unhappy veterans. They were themselves extremely averse to the service they were engaged in […] to be thus hurried from their repose into a fatiguing employ to which neither the strength of their bodies nor the vigour of their minds were in any way proportioned, and where, without seeing the face of an enemy…they would in all probability uselessly perish.
> > We passed those memorable Streights, ignorant of the dreadful calamities which were then impending, and just ready to break upon us; ignorant that the time drew near, when the squadron would be separated never to unite again, and that this day of our passage was the last chearful day that the greatest part of us would ever live to enjoy.
> At around 4:30 in the morning, a tremendous thump rattled Wager’s weary bones. She was stuck on a rock. This lasted only a moment before a rolling wave scraped her off again. Captain Cheap ordered Lieutenant Baynes to drop the anchor, but before he complied, Wager’s hull shook from another impact, this one much harder than before. Stacks of heavy items in the cargo holds shifted and collapsed, knocking holes through the hull. Water poured in from the sea. There were wails of protest from hull and crew alike. Wager drifted and bobbed, her rudder broken. Finally, with a shudder, the ship ground to a halt, wedged in a gap between two rocky protrusions.
> > Every person that now could stir was presently upon the quarter-deck; and many even of those were alert upon this occasion, that had not showed their faces upon the deck for above two months before: several poor wretches, who were in the last stage of scurvy, and who could not get out of their hammocks, were immediately drowned.
> In the days that followed, the officers organized the retrieval of additional provisions and survivors from the hulk of the Wager. Some of the seamen left behind, having located and appropriated the ship’s cache of liquor, decided to remain aboard the wreck indefinitely. Liberated from their inhibitions, they argued that they were no longer duty-bound to Captain Cheap. After all, the loss of the Wager meant that their pay would be suspended. Three sheets to the wind, the cantankerous holdouts plundered the cabins of the command crew, emerging with weapons in hand, draped in the officers’ special-occasion lace and finery.
> The ocean intensified its heaving, so much so that the creaking hulk of the Wager seemed on the verge of disintegration out on the rocks. Officers ashore noted that one of the few remaining holdouts on the wreck—Boatswain John King—was signaling for rescue. However the sea was too heavy for any of the small vessels to cross the water, so King would have to wait. When King realized that no one was coming right away, the indignant boatswain aimed one of Wager’s cannons toward the shore and fired. The whoosh of a passing cannonball ripped the air just above the captain’s hut. King fired a second time, again narrowly missing the captain’s quarters.
http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2019/the-10-best-folk-horror-movies-of-all-time/
1. Witchfinder General (1968)
2. Kwaidan (1964)
3. The Wicker Man (1973)
4. A Field in England (2013)
5. Midsommar (2019)
6. The Witch (2016)
7. The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)
8. Apostle (2018)
9. The Devil Rides Out (1968)
10. The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
Servings: grains 6/6, fruit 2/4, vegetables 2/4, dairy 1/2, meat 2/3, nuts 0/0.5
Brunch: pineapple, cucumber, tomato, banana
Lunch: coffee, French toast
Dinner: pierogi
123/76
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