Ship ahoy or How to get to London the difficult way

[Threviel]

Tell us more grumbsy! As always very interesting.

[Eddie Teach]

Will the menu be hardtack and grog?

[The Brain]

Very cool! Congrats!

At least some of the pine for the decks came from a distant relative's land.

[Maladict]

Very, very cool.

[grumbler]

Tell us more grumbsy! As always very interesting.

The original Götheborg was lost by grounding on a well-charted rock that the captain and navigator were aware of and avoiding.  Suddenly, the rudder stopped biting and the ship drifted downwind onto the rock.  The captain argued that the ship had hit "dead water" and so he was not responsible.  "Dead water" is a phenomenon that sailors have know about for centuries, but which was dismissed as mythology by scientists.  It means that the ship suddenly loses control and even is sometimes slowed, stopped, or pushed backwards by some force no one can see. 

The Swedes investigated on and off but couldn't find anything until their scientists were shown a long-duration bit of dead water and they took temperature and salinity samples.  It turns out that dead water is caused by cold, fresh water flowing into a bay or harbor so strongly that it doesn't mix with the denser salt water and forms a layer on top of the salt water that can have different currents, waves, etc from the water below it (just as air does to the water below it) and so the sailors are seeing one thing (the surface layer) but being acted on by the lower layer in a way completely different than what they expect based on what they see.

It's just a kind of neat little story about how science couldn't solve a problem until scientists actually listened to those who'd experienced it, rather than dismissing the witness statements because they didn't conform to what was already known.  Science in the 19th Century didn't have thousands of grad students trying desperately to prove the conventional wisdom wrong in order to secure a tenure-track job.

[Threviel]

Thanks grumbs, very interesting.

Video on what I'll be doing:

[Tonitrus]

Will the menu be hardtack and grog?

With a side of rum and sodomy.  And lash for dessert.

[Threviel]

The ship is completely white, so I guess I'll have to do with the sodomy and the lash. Also seems to be a lot of women aboard so question mark on the sodomy 

[The Brain]

[Eddie Teach]

There are some men who will indulge you even if women are available, you know.

[Josquius]

Made it all the way back from China then sank at the harbour.... Ouch.

[Admiral Yi]

Will the menu be hardtack and grog?

With a side of rum and sodomy.  And lash for dessert.

Grog is made with rum.

[Threviel]

So... The family wants to join me in London. Wife and two kids 5 and 8.

I looked at some hotels, but I don't know London. The ship will be in Canary Wharf and they will want to be there from the 7th to the 13th or something.

What areas should we be looking at for hotels? Budget some 1000 £, preferably on the cheap end.

[garbon]

Canary Wharf is a bit dull for children but probably nicest area in east.  That said with things like the DLR and Elizabeth line, you can easily get to Canary Wharf so could end up staying somewhere closer to Central London though prices will go up.

[Threviel]

Thanks, and please assume that I'm a country hobo that's never been outside Bumfuck, Sweden. I really don't have a clue about London.

What is DLR?

Can I assume that any tube station makes travel easy? Are some lines to be avoided?

I assume that they'll be doing stuff around places whilst I have to work at the ship for a few days. They don't necessarily have to be close by.