At Sea - November 09, 2012

Another wonderful sea day and our last formal night, which can only mean one thing - time for the Parade of Baked Alaska, a great tradition. Also tonight for the final formal night on this crossing of the Atlantic and the Farewell Cruise from the Mediterranean for this season a Black and White Officers Ball was held and this does result in my only real disappointment of the cruise. When holding an Officers Ball it would be expected that the top end officers show and be involved in the obligatory first dance, oh well they got just about everything else right... A few pictures of tonights events, the first with a wonderful couple, the future cruise consultants Michael and Joanne Gardener - a couple we met on last years Grand Voyage. Some information on Land and Nautical miles. The term “nautical miles” may have some mystification in its origin as terms relating to land and marine use. When the Normans conquered England, William I divided up the country, other than the crown-owned lands, amongst the nobles who supported his conquests. The common people living on these divided lands (or manors) were required to give their services for free for three or four days of work a week to the Lord of the manor in return for such privileges as having a cottage and garden, grazing rights on common ground and the right to collect as much firewood from the Lord’s forest as they were able. As time went on however, people began to commute their services by paying rent. The yeoman farmer developed and the manorial lands were slowly broken up. To establish ownership some unit of measure was required. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, an act of Parliament was introduced which stated that one “mile” should be 5,280 feet in length. At sea however, the term “miles” has a mathematical basis and the nautical mile is the length, in fact, of one angle of latitude. As the earth is not a perfect sphere, but flattened at the poles, this minute of area varies between 6,046 feet at the equator to 6,108 feet at the poles; therefore a mean of 6,076 is actually used. As a result, 1 nautical mile equals 1.15 statute miles or about 2 kilometers.