A Galleon and Ladybirds
Oct. 15th, 2025 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnOn Friday, the Galeón Andalucía came to Fishguard. She's a replica of a 17th century Spanish Galleon, launched in 2010, which has spent the last 15 years sailing all over the world. Not a lot happens in Pembrokeshire in October so everyone became very excited, and we all rushed over to see her (apparently there were more visitors in tiny Fishguard than there were in Liverpool, and there were so many of them that on the last day, they had to stop some people getting on board because of the crowd. It felt rather appropriate, after reading that each of the 150+ people on board a 17th century galleon would have about 1.5 meters of space each. Varied, of course, according to status. The officer's cabins were snug, but not excessively so even by modern standards. The hammocks, on the other hand, made my back ache just to look at them.
We had originally planned to go and visit at 5pm when it was still light, but then we got a notification to say that because of the tides, nobody could go on board till seven. I am not sure what it was about the tides. Pp's dull theory is that the gangplank would have been at too much of an angle to be safe at low tide: my more theory is that putting so many extra people on board at low tide might have risked grounding her but now I think about it, she was moored next to the Irish Ferry, which surely needs more depth. So probably PP is right.
It was fascinating to see the modern and the ancient-styled ship moored next to one another, both lit with bright modern lighting against the dark water. Though in a way, some of the interesting things about the Galleon were not the deliberately 17th century things, but stuff like the modern galley that we got to walk past and peer into, and the cunningly disguised liferafts wrapped in hessian to make them look like sea-chests. I would have loved to see where they hid the engines! I enjoyed feeling the ropes too - those were authentic, I think, it's not often you encounter ropes made of hemp rather than cunningly-wrought plastic.
It was a pity they couldn't have found a way to light the great stern lamp, I'd like to have seen it illuminated, even if with electric light.
There's been a great rush of ladybirds this week, mostly appearing in the late afternoon when the air is still and the sun is on the house. I'm not sure where they have come from. Most of them were red with a dappling of many black spots, but a few were plain red, and some were black with two or four large red spots.
I thought, looking at the variety of them all over the south wall like shiny dice that someone had rolled, that they must be different species. But BBC News says they are all Harlequin ladybirds, originally from Asia, and now well established in Britain.
We had originally planned to go and visit at 5pm when it was still light, but then we got a notification to say that because of the tides, nobody could go on board till seven. I am not sure what it was about the tides. Pp's dull theory is that the gangplank would have been at too much of an angle to be safe at low tide: my more theory is that putting so many extra people on board at low tide might have risked grounding her but now I think about it, she was moored next to the Irish Ferry, which surely needs more depth. So probably PP is right.
It was fascinating to see the modern and the ancient-styled ship moored next to one another, both lit with bright modern lighting against the dark water. Though in a way, some of the interesting things about the Galleon were not the deliberately 17th century things, but stuff like the modern galley that we got to walk past and peer into, and the cunningly disguised liferafts wrapped in hessian to make them look like sea-chests. I would have loved to see where they hid the engines! I enjoyed feeling the ropes too - those were authentic, I think, it's not often you encounter ropes made of hemp rather than cunningly-wrought plastic.
It was a pity they couldn't have found a way to light the great stern lamp, I'd like to have seen it illuminated, even if with electric light.
There's been a great rush of ladybirds this week, mostly appearing in the late afternoon when the air is still and the sun is on the house. I'm not sure where they have come from. Most of them were red with a dappling of many black spots, but a few were plain red, and some were black with two or four large red spots.
I thought, looking at the variety of them all over the south wall like shiny dice that someone had rolled, that they must be different species. But BBC News says they are all Harlequin ladybirds, originally from Asia, and now well established in Britain.
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Date: 2025-10-16 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-16 08:10 am (UTC)...each of the 150+ people on board a 17th century galleon would have about 1.5 meters of space each...
Oof. 150 people living on what is, by modern standards, a really tiny ship...
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