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Dreadnought Holiday

@dreadships.bsky.social

13K followers 350 following 9.2K posts

Snarky history. Hideous French battleships. Nautical nonsense. Always check the alt text.

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · Nov 19

Starting a temporary thread of threads so I can find stuff again, starting with a subject close to my heart...

Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · Oct 8

This here is one of the great U-boat hunters of the Second World War.

Grab a comfy seat and a glass of something pleasing. We're going on a journey...

Wren Janet Okell, staring at the camera with a slightly awkward smile. Fair enough - as we'll see, she did her best work hidden behind a screen...

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 4m

The quote I always remember was from somebody whose job it was to drive around collecting carcasses due to the legal situation in the UK.

"Sheep are so stupid," he said. "They'd kill themselves twice if they could."

Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 7m

I think a lot of pop cultural stuff came through adverts and cartoons, tbh. The Chewits advert is pure B movie, for example, and god knows that was on TV often enough when I was a kid.

a giant monster is standing on top of a building in a city .

Alt: Chewitts advert with an own-brand Godzilla clambering over buildings before grabbing a satisfying lorry load of Chewitt sweets.

media.tenor.com

Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 24m

Maybe they were accounting for having to go uphill?

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 6h

Hope both go well

Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 16h

And smiling if your reaction to Rembrandt is anything like mine. Especially with his self-portraits, which often feel like a shared joke.

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 17h

Same. Tomorrow though, eh?

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 1d

Air India were used to pitch MS Copilot to the company I work for (they learned such stunning insights as "customers are annoyed by delays", which I'm sure was worth the investment).

When one of their jets crashed two days later I'll admit to some very dark thoughts about the possible cause...

Reposted by Dreadnought Holiday

lynnemmcd.bsky.social @lynnemmcd.bsky.social · 1d

She also wrote a non-fiction book about mongrel dogs, "Intelligent and Loyal". Useful, too. Lets you know if you have a Borderline Collie, a Spanish Policeman's Hat Ear Dog, a Lancashire Hot Pet, a Bertrand Russell or whatever.

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 2d

(It's not literary snobbishness, btw - it's that I spent three years at university trapped with people very much like her characters and have no particular desire to renew the acquaintance, no matter how much extraordinary shagging I seem to have missed out on...)

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 2d

I mean that's it, isn't it? If she'd done nothing with the proceeds except get blindingly drunk and give amusing interviews I'd still regard it as a profitable investment.

Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 2d

I've never read a Jilly Cooper book - they're not written for me and that's fine - but she made an absolute mint and spent it on things like rescuing greyhounds and having a jolly good time. She made the world a better place with the cash and will be mourned.

An example somebody could learn from...

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 2d

Looks like a plan to disguise it as Boris Johnson

Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 2d

At the end of the day though they were pilots. What they were mostly doing was most likely hanging around in bars telling everybody they were pilots...

Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 2d

Not much gunnery spotting with the advent of radar (and the rise of the carrier and hence decent opposition).

I think Matapan is sometimes cited as the last time the Walrus was used in the role, for example?

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Reposted by Dreadnought Holiday

Sindre @grautbakken.bsky.social · 3d

This one might be of interest to #NavalHistory Bluesky. The Norwegian Coastal Administration has released an underwater 3D photo scan of the wreck of the German heavy cruiser Blücher, sunk in the Oslofjord in April 1940. Super cool!
#ww2 #norway #blücher

dykkerteknikk.nira.app/a/Ip_mJ3EFQK...

Blücher - NIRA

dykkerteknikk.nira.app

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 2d

Feel sorry for Amy, but this series is instantly better.

Reposted by Dreadnought Holiday

Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 3d

A 3,500 year-old Egyptian glass cosmetic jar with two little duck heads!

Glass was a relatively new material at that time, so this jar would have been a precious possession.

From Merit’s beauty case, found inside Theban tomb (TT8) of Merit and her husband Kha in 1906. 📷 Museo Egizio

#Archaeology

Museo Egizio Turin photo showing a small, dark-blue, core-formed, round glass jar which tapers in at the shoulders below the neck. It has yellow, white, and light blue festoon decoration trailed around the main body. There is a single yellow trail just below the neck of the jar. There is a dark-blue circular glass lid, the top of which is adorned with two dark-blue duck heads with yellow bills, a yellow trailed stripe on the top of each duck’s head, and indents for their eyes. The jar is displayed on a perspex (?) stand against a grey background. Glass jar dimensions: 7.6 cm x 9.6 cm.

Core-forming is one of the earliest glassmaking techniques. Glassmakers shaped the body of the vessel around a core, wound colored trails around it. They then let the vessel cool and removed the core.

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 3d

Not sure of the derivation off the top of my head, I'm afraid.

Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 3d

Flip side is that I saw a Monet exhibition at the National and everybody else was completely fried by the time you got to the real bangers, so I had them to myself.

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 3d

It was worse than that - it was starboard and larboard until the 19th century...

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 3d

Given HMS Satisfaction was on its way to Jamaica, negligence doesn't begin to describe it...

Samuel Pepys @samuelpepys.bsky.social · 3d

To my office till 9 at night, among other things examining the particulars of the miscarriage of the Satisfaction, sunk the other day on the Dutch coast through the negligence of the pilott.

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 3d

Shredded Wheat was only invented in 1893, so there's your problem right there.

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 3d

I'd come across this myself, and yeah, it's almost shockingly recent.

To flip it the other way though, how advanced must seafaring have been in relatively early times to bag virtually everywhere else?

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 3d

Hang on! I think we've found him!

fesshole 🧻 @fesshole.bsky.social · 4d

I've been a pilot for over 20 years. I still struggle with telling my left from my right, and I have to think hard about getting East & West the right way round too.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 3d

My dad has turned up this photo from a visit "many years ago" to the Forth Bridge. I think it's taken from what he calls the howff, just below track level, used by the maintenance workers.

I guess when you're engaged in a proverbially endless task, you need a wee cup of tea once in a while.

Black and white photo showing a kettle on the sill of a very dirty window. Immediately outside the window is the very recognisable steelwork of the Forth Bridge.

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