Story Notes: What Lies Beneath · 8:33pm Aug 2nd, 2020
Written for the 100th Quills and Sofas speedwriting event!
I didn’t even make it in the top three, but I don’t feel bad about that. There was a lot of strong competition.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again--there are a lot of talented writers on the site, and a lot of writers who can crank out a damn good story in only an hour.
We all know who Sea Swirl is, and those of you who read my stuff know that she has a passion for diving. Y’all also know that she never did wind up moving out to the coast, and instead sticks around Ponyville with Coco Crusoe.
Even with flippers, snorkeling can only get you so deep; if you really want to explore the depths, you’ve got to have something better. A diving bell is one option; they’ve been around for centuries. In fact, Aristotle described them in the 4th century BCE. Nowadays, they’ve usually got an air hose to the surface; back in the day, they were sometimes filled with air brought down in barrels.
Diving bells have their limits, and for freer exploration, a diving suit of some sort is required. The first known suits were invented in the 1400s; the more modern designs came about in the 1800s and interestingly weren’t originally intended to be used for diving; instead, they were meant for firefighters to get in smoke-filled buildings.
The helmet was traditionally made of copper, and the rest of the outfit was waterproof canvas. When telephones were invented, they were adapted to diving suits so the diver could communicate with the surface. The view-ports in diving helmets are traditionally known as ‘lights’, and helmets are described by the number of lights and the number of studs (to attach to the rest of the outfit).
Assuming a proper gas mixture is used, they’re good to about 600’ down (183 meters).
The study of dolphins (and whales) is cetology.
Dolphins do like to play in the wake of ships.
Dolphins are also rumored to push mariners to shore, which I guess makes them the Newfies of the sea.
Historically, sailing ships that were beyond their prime were often converted to barges--they’d have their rigging removed, and be towed along by another ship. In the Great Lakes, groundings and sinkings in shallow water were not uncommon, and in fact historically there were any number of ships which had ground and/or sunk multiple times, were refloated, and continued in use. (In fact, the General Slocum, which infamously burned in 1904, got converted to a barge [the hull was still okay] and served another seven years before sinking again, this time for good.)
Sailing ships especially were often easy to find after they sank; the masts stuck above the water. Near the coast, climbing up the rigging was a decently safe place to be as the ship was sinking . . . in fact, a few years ago, somebody survived a crane barge sinking in a hurricane by climbing up the crane and riding the storm out.
If the ship (or barge) wasn’t salvageable, often everything that could be recovered was.
I’m often bad at coming up with names for things, and thus it was with the name of the ship that had sunk with its masts still above the water. Especially with time pressure . . . Luckily, I knew of a ship that had sank named the Truxtun, which I remembered because in the same disaster, the Pollux also sank, and those names had stuck in my mind because obviously it should have been the Castor and Pollux.
Also, to publicly answer a question that came up in the comments on the story--how long is a ponylength?
One pony, from nose to tail.
Regarding the boom (and having to duck to avoid being hit by it)--a sailor once explained to me that it was called the boom because that was the noise it made when it hit you in the head.
That Derpibooru link sent me on an adventure.
Docked or undocked?
Ah... another boaty story. And yes, I know that was terrible grammar. The point being, I love ship tales. Heck, I rather enjoy shanties. I look forward to reading this on break tomorrow at work.
Ummm... The dog, or the resident of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador?
I wonder if that's related to calling the panes of glass in a window or door 'lites.'
Cute story, and a blog post full of cute pictures!
Yay!
Reminds me of someone complaining about the Tirpitz.
But is it really sunk, if the deck is still above water?
Timely ... I had some werid dream about captives (of various species, even ones I never saw in my life), and now on refresh I see some pony/dolphin connection story! Cute, even if for me whole thing is colored by sadness and loss ....
What I found especially wonderful about dolphin/whale stories ... how different their idea of norm/safe from ours. So, for successfully pushing humans in safe _for humans_ direction they must put quite a lot of thinking.. because near land (esp. in storm) is not safe for swim area, AND humans have their nostrils on the wrong side of face/head (if you put us in water horizontally).
Some lesser known dolphins:
Thank you, as usual. :)
5327620
Well there is only one standard pony they could have used over the centuries, one standard pony length = Celestia and she's not docked, although keeping her tail from flying about is a bit tricky, although maybe she's got an off switch somewhere.
Interestingly the only feature which differentiates between dolphins and other toothed whales is size, if it's small it's a dolphin, big a whale.
As a sailing fan (and previous owner of a sailboat) I never got hit by the boom but can confirm, that's how it was taught to me by several sailors.
5327593
The one under the pic where she’s booping the dolphin while getting her cutie mark?
I was going to put on the Tabun link, but didn’t find that picture on the first page that loaded, can’t read Russian, and didn’t want to inadvertently break some site rule. . .
5327620
Undocked, but it’s only to the curve of the rump, rather than having the tail held out straight or anything like that. These days, it’s probably standardized anyway.
5327652
And it’s okay, you can call it a boaty story if you want to. Hope you enjoyed reading it on break!
5327779
Can’t it be both?
5327874
I’m sure that’s where it comes from. Traditionally (according to the internet) any opening to let light in was a light/lite. I would guess, without going in depth, ‘window’ is the whole assembly, and individual panes are lights/lites.
Most of the window diagrams call the glass ‘panes’, but this one uses both terms:
houseplanshelper.com/images/parts_of_a_window.jpg
I haven’t done a lot of construction shopping, but I can only recall seeing them called ‘lights/lites’ in doors, and panes when they’re in windows. Because I was curious, I looked up the history of pane, and the first known use was in 1819 (in the form of windowpane). I thought it might have come about around the time that float glass was invented, but it didn’t . . . apparently, in the 1800s they already knew they could make flat glass by floating it on molten tin, but didn’t have the tech to actually do it until the 50s, when Pilkington figured it out (and I think that Pilkington makes glass for some cars in the US).
I also just learned that the dividers in windows are mullions if they’re load-bearing, and muntins if they aren’t.
Window facts!
5327987
Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
5328016
Your question prompted me to do research!
I don’t have a definitive answer, but a commercial marine insurance company considered a vessel ‘grounded’ if it bumped onto an underwater obstruction. If it was stuck there for a period of time, it was stranded.
In terms of sinking, if the vessel can settle no further (i.e., the entire vessel is on the seabottom), it’s considered sunk (in their terms), and there’s no consideration for how much of it remains above water. They mentioned the case of a lumber ship which was fully awash but not technically ‘sunk,’ because the cargo was keeping it afloat.
I guess at a layman’s term, if some (but not all) the ship is on the ground, and some of the ship is still floating, it’s grounded; if the entire ship is resting on the bottom and the water level inside the ship is the same as the water level outside the ship, it’s sunk.
(also, usually with groundings, you can offload cargo and the ship will float off with little to no damage, whereas with shallow-water sinkings you typically have to pump out water before you can move the ship again.)
5328031
I have heard that the stories of dolphins pushing mariners to shore are embellished, and that they don’t do that deliberately, but I don’t know for sure. I suppose if a dolphin pushed a sailor even somewhat close to land, he’d have a better chance of swimming there than if they didn’t.
Some dolphins are absolute bastards to sharks, and I assume that sharks know this, so if nothing else, being surrounded by a pod of curious dolphins might help keep the sharks away.
Neat, thank you!
5328075
You’re welcome!
5328140
I would assume that that measurement predates Princess Celestia and unification, and I further assume that the last pony where it was a physical measurement was Princess Platinum.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/6/27/358654.png
Not actual Princess Platinum
I would further assume that the measurement was standardized after unification, either keeping Princess Platinum’s measurements, or as a compromise unit between the three tribes. I would imagine that earth ponies might also use a ponylength measurement; pegasi probably used wingspan.
I did not know that.
5328388
I’ve been hit more than once by the boom on more than one sailboat that we owned or used over the years.
5328692 Ouch
5328713
Yeah, I don’t recommend it.
Although, I did make up for it one time in coolness; I ducked enough to miss the boom, but the line on the bottom caught my ballcap and flung it out over the side . . . I caught it before it could hit the water, put it back on, and kept on sailing.
So what would you consider this to be in human measurement terms? i keep thinking of it as equivalent to about a yard/meter, and ponies about the size of a large dog, probably on the upper end of the size range.
5328635
Yep. I clicked on that, and more than an hour later I realised what had happened.
5328729
That's the way to do it alright n_n
5328741
Make me do math on my birthday
It probably is about a yard. I have a number of ways of figuring out pony scaling (that works for me); one is a plush that’s reasonably flexible so I can bend it around and get rough calculations from that. The other is offical Hasbro action figures, which I already did some scaling experiments with.
Based on that, I measured my Applejack Action Figure--
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/10/16/123985.jpg
--she’s an honest pony, and won’t lie about her height or weight.
My original height calculations included ‘at the withers,’ since that’s where you measure a real equine from. The action figure has a neck joint which can reasonably stand in for ‘withers.’ With a tape measure and eyeball, ‘cause I don’t remember where my calipers are, I got two inches*. Likewise eyeballing nose to tail, I got two inches, which means that if she’s 28” at the withers, she’s also 28” overall, so a ponylength is 28”.
______________________________
*In my original measurement from the prior blog post, I got 1.75” for her withers, which suggests that I might have measured at the notch in her back, just behind the action figure’s neck joint. Luckily, that still works out well with the math, and would give us a ponylength of 32”
The reasonably flexible plush works out to a length of almost exactly 36” from nose to tail, and has a slightly more realistic barrel length than MLP ponies.
Based on what size I think MLP ponies are (about 28” and the withers/48” at the tips of the ears), I would put a standard ponylength at right around 32 inches.
Ponies probably have some measurements for longer distances, and they’re probably a weird amalgamation of old tribal units . . . maybe if they decide to standardize after meeting humans, they’ll settle on metric prefixes, and then they can have kiloponylengths (probably shortened to kiloponies), centiponies, and so forth.
5328870
Ah, the dangers of the internet. I, too, have fallen down rabbit holes before and wondered hours later how I got to where I was, suddenly reading (for example) the history of public bus service in Cleveland, OH.
5328016
A further, more concise answer from my dad: