All @ Sea and Up in the Air

I’ve been playing with the labels again. Stephen started it by posting recently on a history of the Royal Navy. I made a comment about having some navy related (or at least seafaring related) books in various piles which got me thinking about how many such books I’d already read – a lot I discovered. In fact I was rather surprised by how many such books I had read – from expected topics like naval warfare in both world wars to the Titanic sinking and beyond. I had long been interested in the great voyages of discovery and had, since my teens and my growing fascination in all things SF, looked on sea stories as a sort of substitute for space stories. The carrier based War in the Pacific in particular felt like a good facsimile for interplanetary conflict (or maybe that’s just me).

Of course I naturally moved on from all things water based to all things of the air. Again I surprised myself in how few books I had read on aviation – most of which centred around WW2. The other thing that surprised me is that I seem (as I’m still adding) to have many more pictures of aircraft here that ships. I’ve already mentioned my interest in flying boats – most especially those of Imperial Airways which flew around the world/Empire between the world wars. Yet despite this interest (and the posting of multiple pictures and travel posters) I have yet to read anything about them in book form. Odd….. I do have an abiding interest in aerial combat and have read extensively on the subject (mostly pre-Blog) and will continue doing so. As will naval combat standing in for space combat operations I have long seen aerial combat likewise standing in for space combat from my teens onwards. Whenever I see space combat in movies or TV shows I always look at their ‘realism’ compared to what I know of both real historic naval and air combat scenarios. As you can imagine some are far more realistic than others. How actual space combat would really be? That might be something different entirely.

Despite the strong tug of war I’m going to try very hard to spread both my reading and pictures beyond the realm of conflict. I love, for example, tales of pioneers and there are plenty of those on the water and in the air. Likewise there are the explorers and adventurers with sails and wings. No doubt stories of the search for the North West Passage and the attempts to break the Sound Barrier will both appear here. No doubt I shall also be reading about heroic tales of navigation from the likes of Shackleton and others. I’m a sucker for heroics and I can’t help feeling that the cultural life of the world is diminished when heroes of old are forgotten or, worse, dismissed or denigrated. I’ll see what I can do about that (in my own very small way).

Looking through various book piles over the last week or so there was, as I expected, a much heavier preponderance of sea stories over air stories (even taking into account my collection of books about the Battle of Britain). Even looking at my Amazon Wish List I found a similar lean towards the sea. I’m sure that I can’t ‘blame’ my Viking heritage [lol] but I could try. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on far more boats/ships from rowing boats to aircraft carriers than I have been in aircraft: a few helicopters and commercial airlines. I do love a good air show though and attend them whenever I can. So, you should probably expect to be seeing more boats than planes to come at least in the near term. But we’ll see, won’t we?