Navy Boys

-
I don't think the Spanish Navy is very big. From a quick Google it seems to consist of 28 ships including the oilers, the support vessels and everything else. So the question is why do I keep bumping into Navy officers?

When I was in Ciudad Rodrigo over in Salamanca I taught English to a bloke who was a lieutenant with a ride on one of their 6 frigates, the Canarias based in Rota down in Cadiz. This evening I met a chap for a language exchange and his ride is on the S-70 Galerna class submarine Tramontana built and based here in Cartagena. 

There are currently four submarines in the Spanish Navy all built in the mid eighties. The original design is a French one but France retired the last of this class in 2001. The Pakistanis still use them though. The replacement S-80 boats are being built by the Cartagena based Navantia shipyards. They should be finished in another four years.

Anyway the interesting thing was that this chap told me that back in December 2008 his boat sprang a leak when they were in 300 metres of water. They followed procedure and dumped the lead ballast in double qick time and were soon bobbing along the surface with little harm done.

Apparently my bloke's grandad was killed in a submarine accident back in 1946 when a Spanish destroyer, the Lepanto, sliced his sub in half during exercises killing the 44 men on board.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit bigger than 12 gauge

-
Image
If you ever feel the need to launch armour piercing shells weighing 885kg and loaded with 18 kilos of TNT a little over 35 kilometres out to sea then I know where you can find exactly the device to do it. 885kg by the way is about the weight of the current Fiat 500 car. Just down the coast from us at Azohía there is an abandoned, but well maintained, fortress that houses two rather fearsome looking cannons. The fortress was constructed between 1928 and 1936. The guns themselves were built by Vickers. Their barrels are 17 metres long with a calibre of 38cm. Not quite wide enough to launch that Fiat but pretty big nonetheless. You're going to need 20 pals to help you fire each gun and you'll probably need to fill in some official paperwork, this being Spain, but it would make you the envy of anyone who thought they were pretty cool because they owned a pair of Purdeys. Fabulous location too. Nice bit of the coast.
Read more

Second class citizens

-
Image
We have house guests at the moment - some of Maggie's family and their lovers. Generally all we've done is to walk, eat and drink with the occasional museum stop to imitate cultural longing. Yesterday we boarded the Tourist Boat for a gentle tootle around the harbour. It's a while since I've been on the boat so I was a bit surprised when there was no recorded "to the left the such and such fort and to the right the old fisherman's quay" - commentary. It used to come first in Spanish and then in English but now all is silence. Anyway we stopped at Fuerte de la Navidad - Christmas Fort. Non Spanish speakers were directed one way and Spanish speakers another. We got to see an English language film extolling the virtues of Cartagena and then we were left to stroll the fort at leisure. As we walked and nosed I realised that the Spanish speakers were getting a detailed introduction to the fort. I joined in. Interesting stuff I thought. Lots about the de
Read more

Shopping

-
Image
Closing in on 30 years ago now I went to a Spanish class in Peterborough with a teacher called John Richardson. On the first night he asked us why we wanted to learn Spanish. I said that I wanted to be able to buy a beer. He lied to me and said that would be easy. I still have trouble getting a beer. Other people in the group said that they wanted to learn the language because they had just bought a house in Torrevieja and wanted to be able to talk to their neighbours. I distinctly remember John saying that it seemed that half of Peterborough had a house in Torrevieja. So there have been Britons in Torrevieja for over 30 years and it shows. We went there to buy specs. We went to Specsavers because I had heard that they were cheap. From the initial phone call to the final fitting everything was transacted in English and the only Spaniard I encountered (to my knowledge) in the whole process was the optician. Specsavers is in a shopping centre and the principal language throughout the
Read more