H.M. S/M ALLIANCE


 

A last look [we won't be re-visiting her in the foreseeable future] before she is given her well overdue facelift ! {Hopefully}

An unintended, impromptu amateur and personal film made by John Sayers in February 2011 and quite by chance !

There is much adlibbing in this movie, and occasionally, as we all might do from time to time, John gets things mixed up.  However, John left 'A' Boat service in 1964 and after nearly 50 years he is entitled to get things bum-about-face. He knows a great deal about 'P' Boats which he served in after 1964 but we don't have any of them left.

Hello.

You all know what a JPEG is, a fixed picture and an MPEG is a moving picture, a movie. This movie is a massive 65 Megs long and the problem with publishing an MPEG is that it will not start to play a visual image until is has fully download from the server which would take ages depending upon the speed of your broadband. So, we convert that MPEG into a Shock Wave Flash file [SWF] and the beauty of it, just as in YOU TUBE, is that it starts playing as soon as you open the page. It downloads its 65 Megs continuously all the time playing what has been downloaded on your screen. If the broadband link is slow, or, you watch the movie at peak times when everybody is on the internet, that continuous trickle SWF download will get slower and slower, again as it does on YOU TUBE, and your picture will occasionally stop and then restart resulting in a jerky performance. Normally the stops are brief and usually happen well into the movie towards the end.  Don't despair.  Try and watch it outside peak times or bear with the brief stops.

Just a little movie of medium size and quality with a top and bottom mourning band added, for poor old Alliance is in a dreadful state of disrepair on the outside of the pressure hull. John starts his commentary by say "poor old girl aren't you ?"

John served in Auriga, Alliance' sister boat during her Canadian commission 1962-1964 based on Halifax Nova Scotia. Both boats are identical and walking through this boat could be any one of umpteen other boats of this class.

He told me of this movie [and opportunity] and I reckoned that it was worth a page on a website. Incidentally, I was also in Auriga with John.

The end of the movie shows a motor room telegraph and you hear John saying "Well, Alliance, Auriga and all.....

"For all its faults, enjoy, and please, no undue criticism.  Many thanks.