At The Bottom Of The Beautiful -

Briny Sea -
Yes, gentle readers, we continue with the theme of being at sea, or, more precisely, underneath it.  
     Here an aside.  This is the only day of the year when I can legitimately bang on about the following nursery rhyme - 

"The big ship sails on the alley alley oh,

The alley alley oh, the alley alley oh,

The big ship sails on the alley alley oh,

On the last day of the September."

A big ship.  Just so we're clear.

     Today, you see, being the last day of September.  And the big ship sank.  Sorry to be a buzzkill and all that: the truth might well set you free, but it can also be a bit depressing as well.
     Going back to the title of tonight's post, I can inform you that it comes from that fillum "Bedknobs and Broomsticks", where Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson cavort on submarine sands.  Art?

"Cavort" as in dance, you dirty-minded rascals.

     Okay, let us abruptly change tack and revert to another film, also starring that comedy genius David Tomlinson (and his chicken), namely "City In the Sea", which I prefer to the better-known title it also has, "War-Gods of the Deep".  Because there is no war, no gods and at the end you can see our heroes and heroine are in waters only ten feet deep.  Which is not deep.  Art?

David, plus chicken.  It's in the basket, before you ask.

     I was intrigued by the glaring plot holes idea that Vincent Price's character, plus minions, were a variety of squatters, moving into the sunken city long after it's original denizens had died off.  I was also intrigued by the fact that this city's power was supplied by a dormant volcano, as volcanoes are not plentiful in Cornwall, where the film is set.

Volcano to port, city to starboard

     Also, it is noted on IMDB that some scenes of the city's destruction are actually lifted from a Japanese film that came out a few years earlier: "Atragon".  Art?

Blurry but as good as you're going to get.

     This is interesting, because a couple of scenes elsewhere in the film are clearly not original, given the set design for the submarine city, which Art will now clue you in on.  Art!
     

Your insight into set design and lighting

     Take a good look at that picture, because when we cut later to the "pump room" as described by Vincent Price, what do we see but the following - Art?

     Plainly this does not match with the rest of the film.  I haven't seen "Atragon" yet your humble scribe is fairly certain the scene above was lifted directly from it also.  Those do look uncannily like 1960's electro-mechanical control apparatii after all, don't they?
     Okay, time to put the motley in the forward torpedo tube and see how far we can propel it underwater!*

When I Say "Mortar" I'm Not Talking Of Bricks -
I know you all love, simply love, to hear about what military history work I am currently reading, which at the moment is "The Seventh Division 1914 - 1918", and I've just got up to the long preparatory bombardment prior to the Somme campaign.
     Here another aside.  The British (and French) gunners, as well as their hapless Teuton victims, would violently disagree with the campaign being said to start on July 1st 1916.  The artillery began it's shooting on the 24th of June, it was the infantry attacks that went in on 1/7/16.

About to deliver some bad news

     Anyway, what I noticed was the British army's gross inferiority to the Teuton's in terms of two essential items of trench warfare: hand grenades and mortars.  The Teutons had these in great abundance and used them well.  Perfidious Albion  was hampered by rubbish hand grenade designs, and no mortars - bar some from the 18th century.  I think Art can justify his upkeep here -

The Number One

The Number Fifteen

The Number Sixteen

     These last two were distinctly useless, because they required a fuse to be lit with a match; in the prevalent wet of the Western Front, they had a 95% failure rate.  They were promptly retired.

Finally -
In confirmation that I am a truly horrible person (which the jury can attest to), I have been laughing myself sick at the Have Your Say comments over on the Beeb's sports pages, because the incessant bilious invective is always amusing.  They are already up to 113 pages of Comments about someone called Joe Mourinho.  Here's a relatively sedate comment from Petronius123:

 If I gave 50% for my 22k per annum I would be shown the door.

Pogba is a lazy, self important, overpaid, infantile dullard. 

    Yes, "sedate", because although Auntie Beeb doesn't allow swearing, lots of people have gotten around this by using asterisks or substitute letters or symbols.  ? as an example, can take the place of a "P" and I leave the rest up to your imagination.

POGs.  Close enough.

     I think it's now time for your modest artisan to go get some of that 'food' stuff that you humans make such a fuss about that we all love.


*  In keeping with the submarine theme.

The Land Of Lyonesse

A Tad Whimsical, This
I was watching "City in the Sea" yesterday, about - you're probably ahead of me here - a city beneath the waves, where one character asks another whilst gazing out on a sunken cityscape "Is this Lyonesse?"
     The answer is a little ambiguous ("It may be - one name is as good as another"), which is well and good, since Lyonesse itself is pretty vague and nebulously defined.  If you are new to the name, Arthurian legends or the geography of Perfidious Albion (which is probably most of you) then I shall explain.  Art?

The real world

     You see the Isles of Scilly?  Well, Lyonesse was supposedly a land that lay between them and the Cornish mainland, getting swallowed up by the sea after Arthur's death there at the hand of Mordred - gosh, I hope that spoiler wasn't too much for you!
     Let us be clear here: there never was a Lyonesse, so don't go hiring a boat  for scuba-diving in order to plunder it's lost treasures, as all you'll get is wet and cold (and possibly chased by KILLER EELS!).
     However!  (there is always an "However!" with BOOJUM!) there is a Cornish name for this legendary lost land:  Lethowsow.  Yes, Cornwall had it's own distinct language.*  This means "The Milky Ones" in God's Own Proper English, and it refers to a reef better known as the Seven Stones, where the sea is always breaking over them, thus turning white and hence the name.  Art?

Picturesque.  BUT DEADLY!

      It's not much to base a sunken land on, yet this reef is especially deadly for all that it's small.  There are reputed to be a couple of hundred wrecks in the area, including the most infamous of all, the supertanker 'Torrey Canyon', which broke up on the reef and delivered the biggest oil spill in the history of Perfidious Albion back in 1967.  Art?

On fire
(But you knew that already)

     Those brylcreem boys of the RAF helpfully bombed it in order to burn up the oil.  Oil-spill resolution was a learning process in those days.
     "But surely - lighthouses - buoys - bells - tethered balloons slow in the dark - there must be a warning system?" I hear you protest.  Yes, there is, a lightship that is moored several miles distant from the reef, because it's dangerous to get too close.
     Hmmm.  We have travelled quite far from a film that only scored 5.1 on IMDB.  Don't worry, I shall come back to it.  O yes indeed!
     Now to see if wrapping the motley in tinfoil will protect it when we put it in the oven at Gas Mark 4!

Still At Sea
Ha-har, me hearties! <spoken like a pirate>.  We continue with the nautical theme, this time with Volume III of "The History of Naval Operations", that being the story of the Royal Navy in the First Unpleasantness.  Art?

     Nicely bound.  In fact so nicely bound that I think it was specially re-bound, because this is no ordinary volume.  Check out the interior.  Art?

     Presented to Cadet Ormsby for "Meritorious Work" at Christmas 1925, by virtue of the Tennyson Memorial Fund.
     Wowsers.  A book with a history behind it!  Our cadet would be of an age to be in service when the Second Unpleasantness rolled around, so naturally one wonders what happened to him ...

This Is Rank!
For yes, we are back on the Unanswerable Questions About Thunderbirds, and here is one that is eminently answerable, if you know a little about military titles and how people are elevated into or dropped from the same.  Do you see where the title comes from?
     Okay, Art, do your thing.  NO!  Not more pictures of Mara Corday - 

      Okay, there is a process whereby an officer can be promoted temporarily to a rank higher than that which he actually officially occupies; in the "Official History of the 7th Division", which I am reading at present, Brigadier-General Watts stands in as divisional commander after Major-General Capper is mortally wounded.  The temporary rank is known as a 'brevet' rank, and our officer''would only hold it as long as he's in that post, after which he reverts to his 'substantive' rank.
     There you go, that wasn't too hard, was it?



     ART!
     <sounds of atomic tazer being charged up>


*  See "The Kraken Wakes" for more details about this.