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.