RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 210, 2 June 1936, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current

Events

(By

Kickshaws.

Well, anyway, it looks as if some body has gone off the rails in China. ♦ ♦ ♦

A speaker says that the Australian tariffs have required grit. I’crhap 4 - that is why Belgium is so upset about her lubricants.

Wilkins has decided to go to the Pole to find out all about the weather, but just at the moment the Pole seems to have come to Wellington to find us out.

Regarding schoolboy howler:-, “T.H.L.” says: “Here is an extraordinary series of events which put the Elizabeth-Raleigh episode you mentioned in that protective shade that her ultra-modern costume appeared to require: ‘One day, while his father the Earl was lathering a customer, the under-gardener rushed in to say thru his favourite cherry tree had been cut down. Hastily laying aside the nets he was mending, the distracted professor hurried out into the spacious courtyard of the family hovel. Alas! It was too true. The historic oak, or.-' of the only two hundred in which tin young Pretender ever hid, no longer occupied its position in the centre of the tenuis court.’ ”

News of a hole that was halved in one that comes from Christchurch is a reminder that there are all manner of strange records connected with e. game that is so royal and so ancient. In fact, in the year 1925 on no fewer than three occasions boles have been, halved In one; two of the occasion, occurred in Britain. The first instance was at Ramsgate in a mates between two ladies. The second was on a links near Manchester, an.’ the third took place in America. There has also been at least oue recorde! instance of a hole being halved in two. This is possibly even more remarkable. This occurred some eight year.-, ago on the Wentworth course in Australia. Two members of the Leur Club, Dr. Alcorn and Mr. Avery, worn playing E. Barnes, the professional. While playing the ninth hole Mr Avery and Barnes landed on opposite sides of the green. Each played the. second stroke, a chip shot, at exact!; the same moment owing to a misunderstanding. Dr. Alcorn at the p*n saw the balls arriving at different angles. They met in mid-air and both dropped into the hole. *

Readers may perhaps care to sen ! along yarns about freak golf happenings. There are many unrecorded one? that are more surprising than those that have been recorded. Golfers, unlike fishermen, are modest folk. Tin curious things that occur to_ them are allowed to be forgotten, if, indent., they are always reported. One heats much about long drives on the part of professionals, but little of whan happens when an amateur get-* busy. For example, there is au authentic story of one American golfer who in his own quiet way set up a record for the longest and the shortest drive ail in the one shot. He struck the bail in such a peculiar way that it went straight up into the air. The astounded player seeing that his ball wa> about to descend upon him out of th i sky, where it bad soared to a grea.. height, was compelled to defend h>s head by catching his own drive. Another player when playing out of -t bunker had the same thing happe i to him. Undaunted, be used his ciu > as a tennis racket, met the errant ba.l fair and square and made a neat tennis shot to the pin. * » *

Wo landlubbers are sufficiently interested in the Queen Mary to tolerate all this talk about knots and miles, day's run and the like, although ire know in our hearts that sailormcn for some reason insist ou measuring their miles in units quite different from our own. For that reason the nautical information regarding the Queen Mary does not convey to us the same conception as, for example, does our own speedometer. There was a time when we landlubbers had three, if not more, laud miles from which to choose. Thar, has now been eliminated. We have a mile that bears no relation whatever to anything except perhaps the length of the arm of a departed king, and we are all happy. Nautical folk, ou the other hand, scorn our miles. They have chopped up the world's circumference and called the answer one nautical mile. Our own mile Is 5280 feet, and except for Einstein quibbles it is a constant. A nautical mile, however, suffers from the disadvantage of varying length from place to place. A working average cf (5080 feet has been adopted. It will be seen that a nautical mile 1® realty a mile and a bit. * * *

A rough rule for landlubbers auxious to discover the laud mile equivalents of nautical miles is to divide tho nautical miles by seven and add tint:; result on to the nautical miles. For example, news that the Queen Mary has logged 766 miles in oue day means a distance of roughly 876 landlubber miles. In the same way when we read that this vessel has averaged 30 knots it means that she is doing 34J miles an hour. The knot, in fact, confronts us with another nautical pitfall. It is not a measure of distance, but or speed. Thirty knots means 30 nautical miles an hour. We have no similar counterpart on dry land. Our speedometers are graduated in miles per hour. Speedometers on ships arc graduated in just plain knots. It will be seen, therefore, that the Queen Mary is going considerably faster than nautical folk would have us believe. Thirty miles an hour is no more than 26 knots.

Most landlubbers are able to waive their prejudices against the knots and miles of the ocean wave, but this tonnage business is sufficiently remarkable to make most of us give up try ing. The truth is that there are fur too many sorts of tons for ships. Tin* gross tonnage, as usually quoted for the Queen Mary, Normandie and the like, is merely the' total cubic feet of all the enclosed spaces of the vessel divided by one hundred. Where two vessels are more or less the same it means a race, for publicity purposes, in the erection of cubby holes and the like to obtain supremacy. The unit of capacity of a ship, on the other hand, is the ton-register. This is founded on tlie practical measure of the space occupied by 10 quarters of wheat or 100 cubic feet. Nc tonnage is the gross tonnage with deductions taken off for crew space, on gine rooms, and other spaces not used for passengers or cargo. The dead weight tonnage is the weight of cargo the vessel can carry when full to th-, loud line. The displacement tonnag’ is the weight of sea water displaced by a vessel, presumably measured h the open sea, because it would be possible to build a sheath round any vessel and float her on a few pounds weight of water.