Abigail Brady

I just got back from a lunchtime tour of the D/S Hestmanden, a Norwegian freighter built in 1911. In honour of the 80th anniversary of VE day, she and a small flotilla are outwith Norwegian waters for the first time since 1946, visiting ports in Northern Britain.

It was fascinating to tour this vessel, especially the engine room - because she still has her original steam reciprocating engine, now 114 years old. It was converted from coal to oil in 1947, but everything otherwise (aside from some modern safety items) works as it did.

The cargo spaces have been converted to a museum covering the experience of Norwegian sailors in WW2 and since. It's fairly brutal, without being hyperbolic - something that I admire. The Norwegian merchant fleet was split during the war: vessels in port and unable to escape at the time of the German invasion were put to use by the Nazis, while those elsewhere in the world - the majority - ended up part of the Allied war effort, as freighters under attack in convoys. I'd never really considered before the experience of being a civilian seafarer in this scenario, being on the far side of the world when you learn that not only are you suddenly in a war, you also can't go home.
The museum doesn't stop with the end of the war, but continued following the survivors, who mostly arrived home in 1946 and 47, after Norway had finished celebrating peace, and so far as I understand it got pretty much ignored. It gets into PTSD and lack of understanding of such at the time, and the relationship between the wartime seafarers and the Norwegian state up to when they got an official apology in 2013.

It was a fascinating, if at times saddening, way to spend an hour. It reinforced what I'm feeling quite a bit at the moment: the world is sliding back towards facism, but I have papers to grade.After this week in Orkney the Hestmanden is sailing to Aberdeen, then Edinburgh, then Newcastle, before returning home. If you get the chance, go see her.

You know those things that get posted by Facebook pages every so often which are clearly intended to cause arguments, and hence maximise engagement statistics, and hence benefit the pages' owners through monitization?

One that I've seen a few times lately is one about metric vs other units, and how the US is pretty much alone with its units. Here's one version, though there are others:



The comments are obviously a couple of thousand people getting wound up by, and winding others up by, "debating" the merits of the two systems. This annoys me each time I see it, because not only is it cynical and exploitative, it is also *wrong*. Not about the status of the UK, that's somewhat accurate, but because - to make an incredibly nerdy but little-known point - the US does not use the Imperial system.

The Imperial system was introduced by the British government, to be used across its Empire, in 1885 (or 1884 or 1886 depending on which date you consider important and how pedantic you are). The US did not adopt it - possibly because it had won independance just a few decades before and wasn't about to do what Britain told it, thankyouverymuch. So the US carried on using what it already had, which were a load of customary units inherited from Britain prior to indepenence. Those American "English" units were standardised separately somewhat later, so nowadays they are just as well defined as the Imperial ones (entertainingly, this definition is actually in terms of metric units), but in some cases they are *different* to the Imperial ones. The best-known example of this - and the only one I know off the top of my head - is the Gallon. Imperial ones are bigger.

That's it. That's what I needed to say.

Except that there is one theoretical consequence which... I don't know how it works in practice. Canada. Canada officially uses the metric system. But also has a tendency to adopt US conventions on many things, for obvious reasons. But also, Canada was part of the British Empire until... er, complicated, but the 20th Century. And hence to my understanding, when gallons are used in Canada, they should by law be Imperial gallons. But across the border are US gallons, which are something in the ballpark of 10% smaller. Cars will (appear to) get less fuel-efficient as the enter the US!
So, I've no idea what happens. Does everybody just use US gallons? Or are Canadians mostly aware of the difference? Or what?