Dunkirk Little Ships in Ramsgate Harbour 2011 some pictures and a Sunday Ramble.

 It is fairly windy today so I would expect such little ships as are in the harbour will stay there until the wind drops, if you get the opportunity I would recommend going and having a look at them.  

 I took some pictures, excuses here, my camera is on its last legs, the replacement is on its way, here are the links to today’s pictures.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/shop511/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/shop511/id4.htm

 the pictures I took of the little ships last year are at

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id15.htm when you arrive there use the links at the top of the page to get to all the pages of pictures.

I took a short piece of video so you can get a better feel of today on the pontoons,



there is a fairly strong wind, the harbour was choppy enough to make some people feel seasick, not my children however, many thanks to the little ship owners who entertained them and gave me a cup of tea to sustain me. 

Looking at the first page of pictures I am reminded of something that made me annoyed, the door to harbours magazine was open, this is a gunpowder magazine built in the mid 1700s and should be one of Ramsgate’s tourist attractions.

As it is it has been left to decay with a leaking roof and is being used as a storage shed, only in Ramsgate do we have a Royal residence owned by the council, which has nets on it to stop bits of the building falling on passers by, so I suppose this is a relatively minor desecration of our heritage by the council.  

We stopped to chat with Laura who I know (Harold Macmillan who ran the government her farther served in was a friend of mine when I was younger, it’s a small world) 

I think the rest is fairly self explanatory as the little ships are fairly easy to identify.

On to a rather funny little spat about the council cabinet that is happening on the blogs, Labour seem to be proposing that the council would be better run by young women, see http://thanetlab.blogspot.com/2011/05/proud-to-be-pluralist.html while the Conservatives seem to favour mature men see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/05/age-before-beauty.html

I should like to make it quite clear here that I prefer young women and if I ever consider supporting a particular political party this is likely to be a decisive factor


Thinking about the issue of young women I suppose the local Conservatives were discouraged by their candidate Payam Tamiz who held strong views on the subject.  

The airport is also figuring on some of the blogs, see http://stopmanstonexpansiongroup.blogspot.com/2011/05/independent-consultant-doesnt-predict.html and http://in2thanet.blogspot.com/2011/05/night-flying-consultation-now-would-be.html flights over Ramsgate have been a contentious issue for some time even to the extent that some of the Manston crowd tried to implement racial apartheid here in Thanet, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/09/kent-international-airport-night.html

Another interesting post is Nick Bateman’s A Fairy Tale of Corruption in Margate (Allegedly) see http://blogs.kentonline.co.uk/post/A-Fairy-Tale-of-Corruption-in-Margate-(Allegedly).aspx#ixzz1NlkwKNn3  

I will probably ramble on when I have had a look at today’s pictures.

The Little Ship Sundowner back in the water.

As you can see from the picture Sundowner is back in the water after the disgrace of Dynamo Day see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/05/dark-and-dishonourable-day-for-ramsgate.html

With our wonderful open local government of course it will only be a matter moments before the council tell us exactly what happened and why.

Perhaps it will also only be a matter of days before the maritime museum is open and the historic ships returned to The King George IV Maritime Heritage Pontoon.

A few more pictures around the harbour this lunchtime http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id19.htm

Pictures of The Dunkirk Little Ships Leaving Ramsgate 27th May 2010

About 300 pictures of the little ships leaving Ramsgate this morning, it was a bit wet but at least the sea was calm for them.

Click on the links below for the pictures, they are publishing to the internet as I write, about 10 am so I would imagine it will be a couple of hours before all of them are visible.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id19.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id20.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id21.htm

I never really know which pictures to delete so once again they are all there, so I suppose you can make your own minds up about what you don’t want to look at.

Here are some of five years ago http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/done/id7.htm sorry they are pretty dreadful, the moral here is don’t by a camera without an optical viewfinder if you wear reading glasses.

Sundowner didn’t go but I am told that they have the anodes and would be happy to put them on and go at any time if only they could get permission from the East Kent Maritime Trust.

Sad really as Hitler couldn’t stop her from going, the whole situation begs some very serious questions about Ramsgate’s maritime heritage.

Much of the problem is about getting the people in charge of the harbour and the various projects there to realise that it is only by having a combination of a commercial marina, leisure and maritime businesses combined with a strong and visible local and marine historical presence that a sensible way forward can be found for the harbour.

Proper management of the museum and historical vessels, concessionary fees and rentals to things that enhance the historic atmosphere not only attracts tourism but also much needed grant funding.

Pictures of the Dunkirk Little Ships in Ramsgate Harbour for the Operation Dynamo Commemorative Crossing to France May 2010.

Here are the links to the pictures taken this morning

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id15.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id16.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id17.htm

they are publishing to the internet as I write so you may have to wait a while for them all to appear.

Some thoughts on the pictures at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id17.htm

The first event was at 1100: Dedication of the George VI Memorial Pontoon, Ramsgate Royal Harbour by Celia Sandys, Grand Daughter of Sir Winston Churchill. This pontoon was put there to display historic vessels.

I should point out that this pontoon isn’t a desirable mooring being immediately opposite the late night hostelries, it is subject to ate night noise and projectiles, glasses bottles and even on occasions pub furniture. It has no proper plumbing and a very limited electricity supply.

The idea was that by granting historic vessels free of or concessionary mooring fees an otherwise useless part of the harbour would have a display of historic vessels opposite the emerging café culture.

Recently by raising the mooring fees there until they are now pretty much the same as the rest of the harbour, Thanet District Council have effectively evicted all of the historic vessels and now have an empty pontoon.

The Visitor Information Centre.

After Thanet District Council closed Ramsgate’s Visitor Information Centre a new privately run one has opened in the Custom House, this is to be funded by an associated gift shop, which among other things will be stocking some of my publications about Ramsgate.

I was somewhat amused to see Thanet District Council officers erecting a temporary visitor information tent right outside the Custom House, as were the people running the new centre inside.

The William and Katy Johnston lifeboat.

This historic vessel is due to take part in the run to Dunkirk tomorrow and has been on one of the harbour slipways that were built for the maintenance of costal command vessels during WW2, this seemed rather appropriate to me.

She was on the slipway when I first arrived this morning, the topsides had been given a new coat of paint but not the bottom, so I was quite surprised to see her being tied up at the George VI Memorial Pontoon an hour later and just in time for the dedication.

To my mind a protective coat of paint on her wooden hull while she is out of the water is far more important than having here there to decorate an otherwise abanond pontoon.

The Sundowner Ramsgate’s Historic Little Ship.

What I feared would happen and have mentioned a few times on this blog Sundowner won’t be going to Dunkirk this time, there is a post about this here http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2010/05/little-ship-nazis-couldnt-stop.html from some of the chaps at the council.

To me as someone with some experience with historic vessels, from a purely practical point of view, what they have to say doesn’t entirely make sense. There are two reasons for this that are visible and suggest and suggest short term fixes for this event rather than a long term concern for an historic vessel.

The first is that although all of the part you can see has been repainted, the bit under the water hasn’t, this seem a bit strange as she is out of the water but isn’t life threatening.

What is life threatening is that the sacrificial anodes haven’t been replaced, so despite what they say she isn’t ready to go into the water.

Bit of explanation, wooden boats are held together with metal fastenings (screws nuts and bolts etc) and the effect of the electricity and the salt water is similar to what happens with electro plating.

This electrical action means that the fastenings just dissolve over time and the boat falls to pieces. One over come this by fitting sacrificial zinc anodes that dissolve instead and the ones on the Sundowner are almost completely dissolved.

I managed to get out of the bookshop for a bit and take some pictures of the military vehicle display and the some of the reenactors click on the link for them http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510b/id18.htm