Sandy Kinghorn
Sandy belongs to: Cullercoats RNLI & The Coble and Keelboat Society
Sandy was born in North Shields. At the age of 16 he began his maritime training and went to sea at 18. He is Lifeboat Visits Officer for Cullercoats RNLI and a member of the Coble and Keelboat Society.
Sandy was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 9 December 2005. The interview took place at Discovery Museum People's Gallery and lasted 46 minutes and 7 seconds.
Training school for the merchant navy
"It was a public school, but it was orientated towards the marine life"
It was a public school, but it was orientated towards the marine life, so we didn’t do Latin, for instance. I had Spanish as a foreign language because there’s a lot of Spanish spoken around the world. We had mathematics and navigation and especially nautical mathematics, astronomy, meteorology, signals, seamanship, fire fighting, boat work- everything you need to know.
Two years there, it was hard, you know, it was pretty tough. You got the rope’s end on your backside for anything you anything that you didn’t do right. For instance, when you first joined you were introduced to your hammock and you had to lash up your hammock every morning, before breakfast. And you had to lash it up with seven turns and then the cadet captain in charge would bend the hammock right over and pull it out and if he could pull out a bit of bedding you got one over the backside for that.
Sandy has 19 memories in the memorynet:
Training school for the merchant navy
- Adjusting to life at sea
- Progress through the merchant navy
- A day at sea
- Taking the family to sea
- Ships in bottles
- Smells
- Chooky the rooster
- The RNLI and the Coble and Keelboat Society
- The Doxford Song
Continuous Certificate of Discharge- Notebooks and diaries of flights and voyages
- Master's certificate
- The Panama Canal
- Loading cargo in Ghana
- Taking the family on ship
- Teaching knotting skills
- Chooky the Rooster
- The Golden Bear
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