You've got me going now! The notes in the DT lyrics refer to two ships the Polynia and the Baleana. Indeed the Polynia (Captain Guy) did have an incident outward bound in 1891, when she lost a man and had ten others seriously injured in a huge sea in a WSW gale. Polynia was the 1861 auxiliary steam whaler of 472 tons (Dundee Whale and Seal Fishing Co) mentioned in the notes.

In 1862, Polynia (then captained by Captain Gravill) had been the first steam whaler to visit St John's Newfoundland when she had lost both blades of her screw in rescuing 24 men of the Newfoundland sealing fleet. While at St John's her boats rescued 60 men from vessels in distress (one in flames) outside the harbour.

Captain Gravill lost his life when the Hull whaler Diana was beset by ice in the winter of 1866-67. Gravill was an old man by then and did not survive the privations of that dreadful voyage. He is buried in Hull's Spring Bank Cemetery when 15,000 people attended the funeral. I can see the place where his body was landed from Diana from my living room window. Hull had been the major whaling port of the UK for many years, but the whaling was very much in decline in those latter days.

I think that the song may have referred to Polynia originally but was then transferred to Baleana as the incident celebrated was on Polynia's last whaling voyage.

Baleana fished the Antarctic in 1882-93 for the Southern Right Whale with very little success, her and her three companions having to make do with seals. One of these companions, the Active, got fast to a blue whale which towed her and three boats with six lines out for 14 hours till the lines broke when Active reversed her engine!

This information is from Basil Lubbock's 'The Arctic Whalers'

At least your experience with Fairmiles shows that you can't always believe what a CPO tells you! Many service personnel will swear blind that they're telling the truth, they were there etc. when all published facts point in a different direction.

One of the Fairmile B MLs sold out of service at the end of the War was used by the Humber Conservancy Board as the tender/yacht 'E P Hutchinson'. Up to the 1960s she was berthed in the same dock I mentioned earlier, Hull's Humber Dock, and she was very smartly turned out. The main difference to look at between the MLs and the HDMLs was the former had a 'funnel' (diesel exhaust).

Getting back to Harry's songs I've been singing 'Pot Stove' for years (from the Nic Jones version). I'm surprised about Jerry's comment about Nic 'stiffing' Harry for the royalties. I always thought that Nic was very careful in naming his sources. If anybody 'stiffed' Harry would it not be the record company? I don't think that artists have to collect the money for songwriters.

Les