Story Notes: A Chonamare Hearth's Warming · 6:00pm Dec 25th, 2017
Got a Christmas present for y'all!
I'm sure some of you remember Silver Glow mentioning the Hearth's Warming where a feral storm came in, and the Merry Ambree sailed out to make sure that the pegasi got to eat a Hearth's Warming feast.
And there were more than a few people who wanted to hear more of that tale, so here it is.
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*Maybe not the best image/song to put y'all in the mood, but it's Starlight Glimmer in a top hat and spats.
Spats. I've always maintained that ponies look good in Victorian clothes.
We're gonna start with a long list of pony names. Some of them may be familiar to you, and others might not. If I was smart, I'd list them in the order they appear, but instead I'm going to list them by source, as best as I can.
Heart Bright, Windy Wisp, Tira-Mi-Su, Mochanut, Gingerbread, Spring Treat, and Rayito are all earlier generation ponies. Silver Glow mentioned Tira-Mi-Su and Mochanut in her journal. I'm including links to the relevant Wiki pages for the sake of completeness, but for those of you who don't know, some of the earlier generation toys were somewhat cringeworthy, so bear that in mind before you start clicking away.
Sweet Bolt and Bright Seas both get their name from the neural network.
Sky Flower, Aurora Mist, and Morning Monarch were all mentioned in Lost at Sea; they've been on the weather team ever since Silver Glow was a little filly.
Seafoam is an OC.
Princisgrass is an OC. Her name comes from a rich, thick lasagna. She's Zucche's mom.
Zucche is also an OC, and frequently was mentioned in Silver Glow's Journal.
Lazy Jack is in OC, and named for a type of rigging on a sailing ship.
Bodger is an OC, and his name comes from the traditional art of making chair legs (Bodging has since taken on a different meaning in British countries.)
Riven Ash is an OC, taken from an obscure woodworking team—to rive a piece of wood is to split it.
Finally, Spindrift is an OC, and is Silver Glow's little sister. Spindrift is the spray blown from cresting waves during a gale.
According to my research, equines can eat daylilies, and they're a fairly hearty flower. I didn't do a ton of research about whether you could grow them in a hothouse or not, but I can't imagine any reason why you couldn't.
Odds are that most fishing boats around Chonamare would be single-masted and gaff-rigged. Since most of you probably don't know what that is, here's a picture:
(It's only a model, but in some ways that's an advantage, because some of the lines are easier to see on it. It also isn't an exact representation of the Merry Ambree.)
Ropes aboard a ship are generally called 'lines,' although of course those of them that have a specific purpose have a specific name.
Sailing ships need to have some sails set in order to maneuver, although in high winds you don't want too much sail. Trysails are small sails that are set at the very top of the mast, and a storm jib is usually like a normal jib, except smaller.
Another option, if you haven't got extra sails aboard is to reef one of your normal sails, which gives it a smaller area. In the picture above, you can see a row of loose lines on the mainsail; those are reefing lines (Captain Disko would want to reef it shorter than those lines would allow, if she could).
A topping lift is the set of lines that pull the upwards boom into place (they're the lines that make the W shape above the mainsail). Without those, a gaff-rigged boat isn't going to be able to get its mainsail up.
Halyards are used to pull the sails up.
The stays are the lines that run from the front and sides of the boat to the mast, to stabilize it.
A sea anchor is generally a large canvas bucket that's essentially a water parachute, and it can be used in stormy weather to slow the ship or (depending on circumstances) to keep the stern to the waves.
A bosun's chair is a temporary seat that's carried up into the rigging so somebody can work there.
Not surprisingly, a rope yard is where rope is made. The traditional method of making rope is getting to be a lost art, and I got really lucky and found a YouTube video where a traditional rope-maker describes the process and demonstrates some of the equipment.
Cover art is "The Old Ships Draw to Home Again" by Jonas Lie, 1920.
Yep, looks good to me.
--Georg (From Kansas, about as far from salt water as you can get and not be in orbit)
Just how much work did you put into just the ship for this story? It feels like you spend as much time researching stuff for your stories as writing them.
Is Captain Disko named after Disko Troop of the We're Here?
The phrase "a boatswain in a bosun's chair" is amusing, considering they're the same word.
Noice!
Merry Christmas!
Halyards run from the front of the boat to the mast, to stabilize it, and to carry the jib (or jibs).
Nope - Halyard is short for Haul Yards - used to hoist a sail, flag or yard.
Jibs are set on Stays - such as a Forestay - from mast to bowsprit. Wikipedia has some simple rigging examples. Rigging nomenclature gets complicated fast.
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Dammit, I knew I shouldn't rely on my memory. I'll fix that.
Traditional sailing plus ponies! How can I not love this?
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I was so eager to fix it that I neglected to say how very much I enjoyed the story. Seafaring ponies have been greatly neglected.
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Meanwhile, I've got Great Lakes on three sides of me. Although amusingly enough, where I live in Michigan is probably about as far from them as you can actually get.
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Actually, not as much as you'd think. The trick there was knowing the right person to ask about traditional coastal fishing boats, which was my dad, who grew up on the Chesapeake Bay.
I do spend a lot of time researching, though, in my continuing goal to bring pony stories that are as factually correct as possible. I do slip up, though; Trump reminded me that I managed to confuse stays and halyards in the blog post (which I have since corrected).
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She is indeed. And the ship, the Merry Ambree, is named for the ship in the ballad that Kipling got the name of the book from (although I changed it from Mary Ambree to Merry Ambree).
Well, yes, but I've never heard a bosun's chair called anything else, no matter who's sitting in it. (And I actually didn't know that bosun was a nautical shorthand for boatswain.)
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Same to you!
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I know, right? There ought to be more stories like that.
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I'm actually glad you caught that as quickly as you did. One thing I really hate is when I get a fact wrong in a blog post.
I totally agree. Guess this means that I'm gonna have to write more stories like this one.
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You just can't go wrong with a good sea shanty.
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It's much clearer when you hear the words out loud--"boatswain" is properly pronounced "bosun".
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Makes about as much sense as people who call the bowline knot a "Bawlin."
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I mean yes, this is brought to you by the same people who decided on the pronunciation of "waistcoat".
Merry Christmas, Biscuit!
Merry Christmas!
Its fascinating what you learn about the era of sail.
I could not name the boat (even in french), but I do recognise the style. I saw a few of them a couple of years ago in Nova Scotia.
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I suppose so (and I'd assume that's probably where the various shortenings come from).
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Okay, I've got to know, what is the pronunciation of waistcoat?
Also, for what it's worth, around these parts (Michigan) Mackinaw and Mackinac are pronounced exactly the same.
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Merry Christmas! (Well, now, Happy Boxing Day!)
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/12/28/1327306__safe_artist-colon-aureai_derpibooru+exclusive_oc_oc+only_oc-colon-uppercute_angry_bipedal_boxing_boxing+glove_clothes_earth+pony_pony_punching.png
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Interestingly, from reading Allistair MacLean novels (mostly), I already knew about oiling the water (although I had no idea how the process worked).
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I could not name the boat (even in french), but I do recognise the style. I saw a few of them a couple of years ago in Nova Scotia.
The generic style is 'gaff-rigged fishing boat;' the specific style (of that boat) is Breton. From what my dad told me, that was also a common way of rigging off the Chesapeake Bay and along the East Coast of the US, and it's not that dissimilar to how some Arabian and Asian boats were rigged.
To an expert, there are important differences in the lines of those boats, some of which were surely because 'that was how we've always built them' and some was probably for the particular function that boat served.
The quickest example I can think of for that is the two-masted schooner. Look at pictures, and most of them look pretty much the same . . . except the Baltimore Clippers, which have essentially the same sail plan, but the masts are raked back.
wezlo.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/philly-tall-ships-1.jpg
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More properly, St. Stephen's Day.
Also the first day of Kwanzaa if you follow holidays created from a mishmash of pan-African traditions by Black Nationalists in the '60s as an alternative to White People holidays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maulana_Karenga#Criminal_convictions_and_imprisonment
https://twitter.com/tariqnasheed/status/945710852086292480
https://www.theroot.com/trump-issued-a-3-sentence-happy-kwanzaa-statement-and-1821585490
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/26/us/kwanzaa-explainer-trnd/index.html
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Naturally, it's pronounced "weskit".
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I first learned that from Old Gaffer Gamgee in LOTR.
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Yes of course Boxing Day was yesterday the day my dog, Cougar passed away 3 years ago.
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I prefer St. Swithen's Day, whenever that is.
Give it a thousand years or so, and it'll be as traditional as Christmas.
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That sounds like something the Australians would have come up with.
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I'm sorry to hear that.
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That’s ok I had a great day this Boxing Day!
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Yay!
Oh I love this story
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Especially when twilight tells it to starlight