Ah well, said he, scratching his pate, and now to the Open University for a course in hydrodynamics! Clearly, the penalties of NOT getting things right are grim, as your photos of the tugboat suggested, Colin. But supposing I do
by the sheer laws of probability, manage to get things right, I will think very seriously of issuing tickets to all and sundry since I have the idea of testing the ship out on July 14th with White Ensigns flying from fore and main; This is likely to incense the St Germanois mightily. Protection will almost certainly be needed. Support for this provocative act from Mayhemers will be greatly appreciated!
Before that, the building of a test tank is obvious. Better than a bath any day and more so if one remembers the immortal words of the late O. Nash
"I test my bath before I sit
and it always moves me to wonderment.
That which chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid to the fundament."
Test tanks do away with this form of prior verification!
And finally just as a gesture to all who have cudgelled their wits on the matter of ballasting and its location, here is a pict of the ship. There will be cries of horror at the White Ensign flying on an American hull. But, curiously after
twenty years spent over here, one grows strangely patriotic. Accordingly I have renamed this Ship. In my flotilla it will be HMS Quiberon Bay - a strategically highly significant victory on November 20th 1759 - some say almost as
important as Trafalgar - at least for us and the Canadians, though the Québecois will not take so even handed a view. The same battle is known over here as the bataille des Cardinaux, they being the rocks off which it was
fought on the Britanny coast. Not surprisingly, few if any over here remember it!
El Neave.