Morse Code as a Language ?

 

At its very basic, morse is a way of representing alphabets containing letters, numbers and some punctuation by dots & dashes which can be read or understood by visual or audio methods.  Its a way of representing letters by sound.  Learning to write the alphabet is not learning a new language - it simply represents the letters in a language you already know.

People will some times claim that a message sent in morse such as:-

"GM OM, TKS FOR RPRT FB UR RST 559  OP IS FRED FRED ES QTH IS LONDON HW CPY?"   is universally understood and thus is a distinct language of its own.  However all these abbreviated words are based on English words which have been  abbreviated.  The order in which they have been sent is also based on the English language.   Yes, most hams around the world will understand what is being sent in the above language for the simple reason they have learned what words they represent and the what they mean.

The grammar used to convey meaning is in the depends on the language being used - not the method of communicating it. Send morse in Arabic and you are using Arabic words & grammar. Send morse in English and you're using words & English Grammar. Likewise  a Swedish & English operator communicating in morse would need to use one common language otherwise they cannot communicate anything beyond basic information.

The structure of all morse QSOs is largely based on the language of one of the operators. If you don’t know that language you won’t be able to understand it. 

If morse was a universal language you would be able to understand what two operators were saying when they were discussing something in their own language.  An English operator for example might be able to write down a discussion between two German operators but unless they understood German they'd likely have no understanding of what was said.  If you listen to non English operators communicating between themselves you mostly will hear them using their own common language, such as French, German etc., and unless you know those languages you simply won't understand what is being communicated.

 Learning morse can be difficult for many reasons but learning morse is simply learning to represent the 26 letters (in English), numerals, & punctuation by combinations of short and/or longer sounds, commonly known as dots and dashes. In this it is no different than learning the written alphabet we use in many languages to represent the sounds which make up any particular word or thought.

Fred Neegan Cree Indian

I'd met Fred briefly in Mattice several years before.  We'd just finished a trip down the Missainabi and Fred approached me and asked me if there was enough water.  Although I'm not normally intimidated, I was this time.  What on earth do you say to someone whose and extremely good canoeist and has paddled this river hundreds of times?

This gentleman of the river knows far more about surviving in the wild and/or bushcraft than most folk. Fred is Ojibway/cree indian from Mattice on the Missinaibi River in Ontario. He's spent most of his life in the woods and on the river, paddling & hunting, guiding parties of both hunters and canoeists. He knows this river and some other local rivers better than any other living human. The great boreal forests hold no fear for Fred, for it is his home. He has two hunting cabins he built along the river. He knows the use of everything in the forest. Every noise he can identify. And if he needs to, he knows how to catch and/or kill it too. Fred is a real hunter and man of the forests. 

 He's probably the best canoeist you'll ever meet as well. Ok, he can't or won't have much to say about fancy J strokes, or whether the stroke you've just shown him is a knifed this or reversed that. He probably doesn't really care either. I asked a guide whose paddled with him what his canoeing was like. "He doesn't look like he's paddling" I was told, as his paddling skills are completely effortless. At one time or another Fred has canoed down most of the rapids on the Missinaibi and poled back up them too. I don't know whether Fred cares about grades either. If its a rapid and its canoeable then Fred can run it or pole it. When asked how well he knows the river, he says he knows every stone and rock in it, you know he's not exaggerating! He's a minimalist too. 

What you see is what you get. Fred's wearing his canoeing gear. And his hunting gear. It was also his shopping gear on this day. Most of his equipment is bought from the local hardware shop in Mattice. No fancy knives or axes for Fred. He has no web site, doesn't advertise either. But he's well know in the northern boreal forests. He's probably the only living first nation person to have a memorial erected whilst still alive.  The landing place for canoeists in Mattice is called 'Fred's Landing'.

 He can carry the heaviest load on portages too. He's 83!! and not about to give up. Whilst we were talking the mention of another guided trip came up which involved long portages over difficult trails. Fred was keen to go, saying; "I want to know if I can still do it". So if you want to learn how to survive in the forest, learn real bushcraft and canoeing from a real expert, whose been there lived it and done it, contact Fred, now! before its too late.

Since writing this, I've learned that Fred died in 2008 aged 87.

'Smugglers' tunnels in Robin Hood's Bay and elsewhere ?

There are numerous tales about smuggling in Robin Hood's Bay, Whitby, Staithes & Scarborough. and its often claimed these places contain numerous smuggler’s tunnels. There are a number of documented stories about smugglers and the press gang operating in or from Robin Hood's bay and elsewhere..  The few accounts of smuggling were collected  by JR Harrison of Whitby and published in the Yorkshire Weekly Post of September, 1936.  

The largest so called smuggler's' tunnel enters the sea at the Wayfoot  in Robin Hood's Bay and It was built to cover Kings Beck to allow extra buildings to be built above it..  It was built sometime prior to 1680.  The tunnel is only about 100 yards long and  dark. There is a junction with another beck, Marna Dale joining it and this stream is the one which enters the village a little way upstream from Albion street.  There are two or perhaps three small, now filled in, holes in the roof of the tunnel.  Non is larger than 1ft in width.  

It is the most unlikely place to use for any smuggling. It is dark, often flowing with a decent amount of water and the two or three very small holes, now blocked, are in the roof of the tunnel, just about head hight. They would be far too small to  have had someone climb in or out.  Only relatively small items could be lifted in easily. You would also need some kind of lighting - and at night any smuggler  could be seen by anyone either looking in the tunnel or outside. The tunnel echos noise and rather difficult to use..  It is sometimes claimed that the beck would be used to smuggle goods out of the village.  However, the beck is overlooked by the main village road on one side and Chapel Street on the other.   I'd also suggest that it would be difficult to use the beck to take any quantities of smuggled goods out of the village. 

Kings Beck from the bridge.

Until the public sewer was built in modern times  all the sewerage was deposited into the beck and many of the houses on Chapel street still have small ‘outhouses’, which once contained toilets.  The becks running through the village would be full of human waste.  These small tunnels were almost certainly built to carry sewerage from the domestic houses above. Still present around the village, especially along the narrow alleyways and streets are rainwater drainage holes and of course these discharges into the beck. 

There’s lots of tales of smuggled goods being passed from house to house from one end of the village to the other.  Again this is extremely unlikely and totally impractical.   Any smuggler would have to arrange for an occupant of all the houses to be present & ready to pass goods from one house to another - and that is assuming every house would have some kind of hatch to pass things from one house to the other..  It would be an extremely slow event and of course would fail completely if one or more occupants were absent from home.  There is also the additional risk that if the Revenue men did a search every house in the chain it would likely have some contraband still in it to be passed to the next house.  In the 1700s village it would be much more practical to send someone up the bank and keep watch for the customs/revenue  men and give warning to those further down the village..  

A number  of house owners over the years have said they've discovered blocked up holes in walls and claimed these were used for smuggling  These are blocked up windows rendered unusable when the adjoining property was extended upwards, therefore blocking off the light to the the next door property.  Planning laws weren't quite what they are now!.   

Likewise a number of people carrying out renovations have discovered below their floors large chambers or rooms often with no obvious entrance/exit.  These were almost certainly normal cellars and simply used as a cold store for normal perishable goods and longs since fallen into disuse.  Cellars are a common enojugh feature in many houses elsewhere.  

These and other tunnels are often claimed as  smuggler's  tunnels without considering any other purpose for their existence.   The ones  I've seen or actually been in, appear totally impractical for that use. There's a Sutcliffe photograph of Bay taken from the scaur / beach area showing several houses with narrow wooden shoots going over the cliff and exiting onto the beach. These were  simply wood or metal shoots for for getting rid of sewerage and or other waste as are the many other 'smugglers' tunnels discovered during building work.

Likewise here is  a similar smugglers tunnel leading from the basement of the Cutty Sark pub in Whitby and other houses, to the harbour .  At high tides any tunnel below street level would be subject to flooding.  And of course that means you could not enter it from the harbour side either.  And of course if it entered the harbour, anyone would be able to see it and of course know about it’s existence - including the revenue/customs men.  Whats the point of having a smugglers tunnell that could not be used when the tide was in and couldn't be used when it was out because the entrance would be obvious to anyone looking into the harbour.

Aside from the impractical use of such small tunnels for smuggling purposes we must also consider the extreme difficulties of constructing these tunnels and hiding their construction from the Revenue men, let alone getting permission from other house owners to tunnel under their property.  

Smuggling in the British Isles - A history, by Richard Platt.

A History of Robin Hood's Bay, by Barrie Farnill, published by the NYMNP

Hitchiking by plane and ship

Travelling north along the A1 recently, I saw three people stood at the side of the road  holding a sign marked ‘Scotland’ as the traffic passed by. You don’t see many hitch hikers these days and these were the first I’d seen for three or four years. Like many folk I’ve done a lot hitch hiking  in my younger days and some of it by unconventional means including hitching on a plane, but  my wife Trish even managing a trip on an oil-tanker along with her four children.

Both these trips were done prior to 1980.

Hitching by plane

I worked in the Shetlands and was on a regular  flight to Glasgow. I would normally have disembarked and traveled by train to Whitby. On the plane I ended up sitting next to the stewardess at the rear and when she was done with the trolley we chatted. I wondered where she lived and she said Newcastle. I commiserated on her misfortune on having further to travel when the plane terminated in Glasgow. “Oh, it doesn’t”, she replied, “It’s going on to to Teesside – I'll get off there!.”  “Any chance of a lift –I live in Whitby”, I asked, with no hope of being told yes.

To my surprise she said she'd ask the captain then added there would be a few more on board who probably would prefer to get off at Teesside instead of Glasgow. Looking down the cabin I could see several others who would love the chance to continue on to Teesside including at least another two who lived in Whitby. Not wanting to give her too much of an extra work load, I told her, half jokingly, that if we could stay on board I’d do her duties for her, something I could do easily as I’d flown on this route with the same airline nearly 40 times in the last three years.

As she disappeared to the flight deck I didn’t hold my breath, as I thought my cheeky request would promptly be turned down. She returned a minutes later saying that the captain was happy with us staying on board, so several of us remained seated as the aircraft discharged most of the passengers at Glasgow and we took off again for the flight to Teesside.  As we readied to take off she proffered the microphone and said, “Go on then!”. I made the usual announcements over the PA and whilst the stewardess remained seated I later took the trolley down the aisle handing out cold drinks to my work mates, receiving many ribald comments along the way. Forty minutes later we were in Teesside airport and the three of us from Whitby jumped into a taxi and were soon in town. Probably the fastest possible trip ever made from the Shetland Isles to Whitby by far.

I thought this mode of transport was pretty unique for hitching until I met Trish some years later and she told me of her trip to the Isles of Scilly, this being even more of an accomplishment as she did it with four young children in tow.

Trish takes up her story:-

We’d often been to the Isles of Scilly by boat, by helicopter and by small plane. But that had been from England and we now lived on the East coast of Ireland and had four young  children so it was much more complicated and expensive. It seemed impossible but my then husband who worked for an oil company had a brainwave – he would speak to the captain of one of the tankers that came into the port about getting a lift on board ship. After conversations with the parent company in Germany the captain agreed that they would take us to and from the Isle of Scilly, but we had to organise a pick up in the Atlantic off the Scillies. It sounded good but was complicated and this was long before mobile phones! Firstly we had to think of how we’d get picked up. Fortunately because we’d been before we had contacts who put us in touch with one of the local fisherman who agreed to pick us up. Easy? Not really because the arrival of ‘our’ tanker, The Aztec, depended on the weather. It would only be alongside in Ireland for as long as it took to discharge the oil and would be off again a few hours later. I had to have everything packed and organised for six of us and be ready for off when I received the phone call. The fishing boat had to be contacted about our ETA and to complicate things even more we were staying on St Martins, a small off island, so had to be taken off the fishing boat into a rowing boat as my then husband had to go to customs on the main island.

The day and the time came, and we were off, down the Irish sea, and twenty-five miles off the tip of Cornwall to the islands. It was rough and we were seasick but the crew made us welcome and the children had a great time when they weren’t being sick. We arrived and anchored and there was the fishing boat waiting just off the Round Island Lighthouse. Being a tanker it was fairly easy to transfer except that we had a four year old, and a thirteen month old and both had to be handed over to the fisherman. As we approached land a small rowing boat met us and we were rowed ashore whilst my husband headed off to Customs.

Our two weeks holiday started to stretch to three as off shore gales prevented the tanker from approaching the isles. We ran out of money, had to live off rabbits we caught and blackberries and crab apples we picked.

Near the end of the third week a message came through that a tanker, the Sioux was approaching our pick up point. We grabbed our stuff and walked down to the beach and all the locals came down to wave us off. We stood watching with a full moon lighting up the sea and as we climbed into the rowing boat we could see the lights of the tanker as it waited for us off Round Island. Lifting the children into the arms of one of the crew bending over the safety rail, onto the ship in the dark was a bit scary but the children  declared it a great adventure!.

I doubt hitching a lift by plane or ship would be possible now.

Buying our house in Ireland

Six weeks.  That’s how long the solicitor in Ireland told us it would take to complete the purchase of our house we’d agreed to buy in Lissacaha, Co. Cork.  Before we even put our house on the market in England, someone Trish’s niece knew found out we were moving and offered to buy it.  So I gave my employer six weeks notice, packed my bags and  six weeks later I set off in our tiny VW campervan with our cat, leaving Mrs P (Trish), who moved into her brother’s house,  to complete her degree course in England to join me later. I’d the promise of some work in Ireland  as a management trainer, and  with the sale of our house quickly completed we’d  just got enough money to pay for the house in Ireland and complete the work needed to make it liveable.   Until the sale was completed I could live in the campervan if I needed.

The warning signs came slowly.  First the guy who’d promised me the work vanished, taking my reference books and other material I’d lent him with him.  

The weeks passed by. I heard nothing from the solicitors.  Our’s told us he’d heard nothing from the vendor’s solicitor.  So I contacted the vendor who lived up the road from ‘our’ house and she assured me things were progressing normally.  Rather than live in the camper she agreed to my request to live, temporarily, in the house we were buying from her.  More weeks passed without hearing anything. Another reassurance from the vendor, but this time she told me I’d have to move out as her solicitor in the big city of Cork had told her I shouldn’t be in the property.

So I collected my few possessions (and our cat!)  and moved out.  A few more weeks passed without any contact from the solicitors. Our solicitor discovered that the delay was caused because the vendor’s solicitor  couldn’t find the title deeds to the property.  The vendor assured me the solicitor had them and that she was pushing him into competition.

Even more time passed.  A tiny campervan is not the place to live in and by now i’d learned enough about the vendor from locals to suggest we ‘formalise’ the situation by offering to to rent  in the meantime.  She accepted immediately and the cat and myself moved back in that day.

Yet more time passed and hearing nothing from our solicitors I contacted them again and was told in no uncertain terms that not having title deeds to the property meant that parting with your money meant you may end up with no money and no house.  He told me clearly that if he was in my shoes he’d walk away from the purchase.  I now had no job, no house and our dream was disappearing fast.  Another visit to the vendor and again I was told by her that she was definitely wanting to sell the house and she’d been in contact with her solicitor only the previous day to see what was happening.  Clearly nothing!.  But she handed me a copy of the deeds to the property she claimed she was selling us.

Further disappointment  came when I discovered  the threshold for paying stamp duty in Ireland was so low that we’d have to add  an additional several thousand pounds which we did not have, to our budget. Our dream was crumbling in front of our eyes as we’d absolutely no spare money and hadn’t anticipated this extra cost. 

We’d sold the house in England. We had no house, no job, income or money.  Things were  not going well.  This was overcome by a 'brown paper job', the details of which I won't go into but it amounted to me and the owner going to the bank, drawing out several thousand pounds and giving it to her in cash.

Trish visited me during a break from her studies. and we went to our solicitor who again spelt out the dire consequences of attempting to buy something without any title deeds.  In desperation I handed him the copy of the deeds & property folio map the vendor had given me.  He gave them one glance and flicked  them onto his desk..  “This isn’t the right property”, he pointed out.  I asked him how he knew and he explained the property portfolio number wasn’t the same one as the vendor’s solicitor had been selling.  But I knew it was the right house as I could clearly recognise the layout of it on the map.  This I told the solicitor.    “Are you sure?”,  he asked.  “OH yes - 100%,” I have  qualification in hill/mountain walking, I spend a lot of time map reading in the UK and europe, and then pointed out the relevant features on the property map. He wasn’t convinced and looked in his files for the copy of deed he’d got  from Doody’s, the vendor’s solicitor, in Cork.  “Look”, he said in triumph, “Her ye are, the property file number is different - your map isn’t the right house”.  This time I plucked the copy from him and examined  document & map.  It was immediately clear to me that the property deeds & map he’d got was in fact the vendor’s own one - the one she was living in now.  This I told our solicitor who still wasn’t entirely convinced so  I patiently explained that I had no doubt and could easily recognise all the features on both both property maps and I  carefully pointed these out on the two respective maps.  I had no doubt her solicitor was attempting to sell us the wrong house - her own house!.  

Rural Ireland is a very parochial place.  He gave it some thought and then said he could recall selling the very same house many years ago  for a previous vendor and went away to look for the relevant files.  A while later he returned and dusted these off on the desk.  Sure enough they were identical in layout and  proved I was right.  

The vendor’s solicitor had been trying to sell us the wrong house - the one the vendor was actually living in right now.   We called Doody’s in Cork city.  Clearly the big man in cork wasn’t used to be being told by by an unemployed Englishman he was selling the wrong house.  He spoke to confirm what I’d said.  But the matter of the ‘missing’ deeds still remained.

The vendor wan’t entirely happy  with her solicitor and told him she’d trusted him with the deeds long ago when she’d taken out the mortgage on the house she was now living in.  Our solicitor had an eureka moment.  He asked which house had she taken out the mortgage for and checked with her solicitors to enquire which house he’d registered the mortgage with.  It was the wrong house!!  All the years she’d lived there and thought she’d actually had a mortgage on her own house whilst in fact her solicitor had taken out a mortgage on ‘our’ property and consequently the deeds were safe in the hands of the mortgage lender.  To add to her anger it also meant that the property she’d been living in for many years was never insured as the insurance, tied to the mortgage, was also taken out for the house we were purchasing.

A week or two later the house was legally ours.

See it here::-https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/3144970274483656463

That of course was not the end of the matter.  The previous occupant was Ian Bailey, the most infamous  self confessed murder in Ireland and he had now he moved  a 100m up the road with the women we bought the house from.  During his High Court court case where he attempted to sue all the newspapers we had endless visits and interviews with the press, police and overseas film crews.  I was even on the front page of on of the irish red-tops.

I wrote a couple of articles about him here:-  

Living next to a suspected Killer

Ian Bailey (2)

Ian Bailey (3)

A quick Google for "Ian Bailey Cork, will turn up thousands of posts.