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Month: July 2014

Posted on July 24, 2014

Planting your sack on the date line

From Maurice Craig’s classic The Elephant and the Polish Question, where Craig considers what he might do given unlimited funds.

J. Pierpont Morgan (I think) said that if you had to ask what it cost to run a steam yacht you were not rich enough to own one. Very well then: I shall be rich enough to have one built to my own specification. When I say a steam yacht I mean a steam yacht: not one with diesel engines. She must have a proper triple-expansion engine with polished cylinder heads and fluted con-rods, served by a scotch or water-tube boiler—I don’t mind which—oil-fired in the interests of cleanliness and to avoid drudgery. There would be no such unpleasant smells and sounds as accompany diesel operation. As to the accomodations and appointments, I am not particular so long as they are gentlemanly.

I would do all the obvious things such as cruising among the Isles of Greece and in the Baltic, and revisiting by water all those cities which must be approached by sea: Leningrad, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Genoa, Venice, Constantinople. I would go either Westwards through the Panama Canal or Eastabout via Indonesia and Japan and would instruct my professional crew to take the ship, using the extremely precise navigational aids with which she would be equipped, to the International Date Line, where I could stand on the bridge with one testicle in Wednesday and the other in Thursday. And from there I would send postcards to all my friends.

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