Tag Archives: Charles Dickens

AI or A1?

Just recently it has been impossible to get away from AI (artificial intelligence), because it is being used, abused and debated the world over. Reading about AI is disconcerting, because at a glance it looks like A1, and with some typefaces it is impossible to distinguish between the letter ‘I’ and the numeral ‘1’ (and to add to the confusion, I is the Roman numeral for one).

Classification of ships

In maritime history, A1 referred to the highest classification of seagoing vessels. Lloyd’s Register was founded as a classification society in 1760, and surveyors recorded the condition of vessels. The information was printed in annual Lloyd’s Registers of Shipping, whose abbreviations and symbols changed over the years. The earliest known Register covered 1764–6, when top-quality vessels were classed as AG – the hull being A and the equipment G (for ‘good’). AG later changed to ‘a1’, but the Register for 1775–6 used A1.

In order to keep their class, ships had to be well maintained. Although classification was not compulsory, it was highly desirable, as it facilitated insurance and was a reliable sign of quality, reassuring underwriters, merchants, passengers and crew. Disasters could still happen to A1 shipping, Continue reading →

Boz in Oz and Exeter

Charles Dickens is a constant favourite. Some weeks ago, we received a copy of Boz in Oz, the wonderfully named annual journal of the New South Wales Dickens Society in Australia (‘Oz’, of course, meaning Australia, while ‘Boz’ was Dickens’s pen-name). What a treat – 86 pages of beautifully presented articles, news, snippets and reviews, illustrated with loads of colour and black-and-white pictures. It is surely worth joining the society for its journal alone. We have an article in it called “Mile End Cottage, Alphington” (pp. 73–5, with footnotes on p. 86).

Rural banishment

Dickens never had a good relationship with his parents, mainly because he had to constantly Continue reading →

Bottle Papers

Litter or letter?

In these times of sensitivity to the environment, a glass bottle washed up on the beach with a piece of paper inside is quite likely to be dumped in the nearest bin as rubbish, but it was not always so. In the 19th century such occurrences were newsworthy, and in October 1821 a report of such a bottle in a French newspaper was also published in British ones. The Graham Moore was a brig, and James Lash was her captain:

‘On the 15th ult. on the coast of St. Jean de Mont [about 60 miles north of La Rochelle], arrondissemont of Sables d’Olonne, department of La Vendée, was found a sealed bottle, containing a paper, stating, that it had been thrown from his Britannic Majesty’s ship the Graham Moore, on the 6th of July last, lat. 47d. 47m. N. long. 7d. 51m. W. Mr James Lash, an officer of the English navy, who had signed the paper, stated his intention to be to discover the direction of the currents in the Bay of Biscay.– Journal de Paris.’

In the 18th century mariners had been especially concerned with finding a reliable way of establishing the longitude of a ship at sea, but in Britain this was eclipsed by the wars with the Continue reading →