Messing About in Boats

The Daily Ostrich has taken a turn toward the marina, with our eels, otters, whale facts and sailing sagas. This was never an intentional choice, and yet we recognize it in retrospect. The best thing we can do, like swabbies hiking out to windward, is lean into it. Here, then, are two nautical tidbits that may be of passing interest.

1. The Salvation Army once had a navy.

I'm impressed by William Booth, in a certain way. It takes an uncommon thinker to pity Christ's failure to marshal an army, and appoint himself repairman of this oversight. I'll leave you to your own opinions about the Salvation Army, whether you like them for giving quarter(s) to those in need, or dislike them for scorning every awesome thing ever done by anyone. Whatever your bent, you may have chuckled to yourself as to why there's no Salvation Navy, and I, with thanks to the BBC, am here to tell you that there was one.

Back in 1884, William Booth thought a well-appointed yacht could be just the place from which to save a soul, and it happened that a Welsh industrialist by the name of John Cory had a stately sailing steamer called Iole that he was pleased to offer up.

The Salvation Army's own newspaper couldn't help but skewer the SS Iole. “We fancy our comrades have little use for the pier-glass and sofas which adorn the cabins, but the piano fitted to the saloon can hardly come amiss to them,” snarked the War Cry. She bobbed around the coast of England, intent on saving sailors from their favorite vices, with a "former lifeboat skipper" at the helm.

Skippers are often chosen for their maritime resumes, not their moral ones, and apparently there's a reason for this. Iole ran aground at the port of Hull, leaving hers irreparably holey.

Yet Cory came through with another, larger yacht named Vestal, which came to be known as the "Salvation Gun-Boat," since why should a plowshare be a plowshare, when it could be a sword. Having learned his lesson, Booth hired a "former Torbay fisherman" as the new captain. The crew was reportedly successful in "converting men by appealing to their own interests, organising events such as bicycle stunt displays,” but not in navigating the Thames. Vestal collided with another ship, leaving her, and John Cory's zeal to throw boats at the seabed, beyond repair.

2. Bobby Builds a Bezos Boat

(Advisory: I used to say fuck more frequently, before our readership became as wide and varied as it is. These days I mostly restrain myself from fuck and the like, but the following video gives no fucks about fuck, nor other words and pictures that are bad for children. If you're wishing that I might have said fuck less often than I have just now, you're amply forewarned about the video.)

For myself, I like watching people make stuff, especially when that stuff is useful, well-constructed, or artistically satisfying. I don't like Jeff Bezos. I find his taste for human flesh a tad distressing. But I do like boats. So when YouTube suggested that I might want to watch a guy called Bobby Fingers build a rowboat in the magnified, meticulously sculpted, unflatteringly-realistic shape of Bezos's face, I figured I might as well.

The video was not what I expected. I mean, it was—it absolutely features the building of a rowboat in the magnified, meticulously sculpted, unflatteringly-realistic shape of JB's lizard-eyed mug. I'll say no more, since I think it deserves to be experienced, but I'll mention that you can't judge a three-act play by the first five minutes. I'll also attest, without a jot of irony, that it's a better film than Titanic.