Peter Rhodes: The other Mary Rose
PETER RHODES on a forgotten naval disaster, the threat of automation, and the worst name for starting a family tree.
SCIENTISTS are excited about a newly discovered clutch of distant planets which could support life. The planets are said to be the right distance from the nearest star, making them neither too cold for life, nor too hot. Astronomers call this the Goldilocks zone.
I REFERRED a few days ago to my great-grandfather who, as far as I am aware, is the only person ever to have been named Bright Laycock. This makes ancestry research very easy. Things get much harder tracing my mother's line. Her father was John Smith and if you type that into Google you get 17 million references. There is probably no worse place to try to begin your family tree. In genealogy, as in life itself, some you win and some you lose.
ECONOMICS for excitable young reporters. If the pound drops to its lowest level since 1985, that is a 31-year low. If, after a brief recovery it slumps a week later to the same 1985 level, that is not a 31-year low. It is a one-week low.
STRANGE where a little research leads. This next yarn began with a reader complaining that England's Glory matches are not as good as they used to be and tend to snap easily. I dare say the safest option is to blame it on Brexit.
NAVAL trivia. Google tells us that the famous ship represented on the England's Glory box is HMS Devastation which, despite her ferocious name, never devastated anything. She was in service from 1873-1907, serving peacefully as a guard ship in Gibraltar and later as a tender. The fascinating bit is to discover that Devastation was a successor to the fatally-unstable HMS Captain which turned turtle and sank off Spain in 1870, only five months after being launched, with the loss of 500 lives. Only 18 of Captain's crew survived in a naval catastrophe which has passed out of public memory.
THIS month sees the unveiling of the restored Mary Rose which capsized in 1545 with about the same number of sailors killed. How ironic that we are more aware of her loss 471 years ago than of the sinking of HMS Captain barely 150 years ago.
I REPORTED how some NHS doctors are taking their talents online, using the internet to diagnose and treat symptoms. Will other professions fall victim to cyberspace? Maybe so. It is reported this week that some British airports are considering scrapping the traditional air-traffic control towers. They are following the example of Ornskoldsvik Airport in Sweden where air movements are controlled from a base more than 100 miles away. Some experts say just a couple of humans will do the work currently done by teams of controllers.
KIDS, here's a useful question to ask your school's careers-advice teacher: "This job you're suggesting. Is it internet-proof?" A useful guide was published a couple of years ago by Oxford University researchers. They examined 700 occupations to see how many might be replaced by computers. Among those least at risk were choreographers while one of the professions most at risk was watch repairing.
AND after last week's figures showing that the use of smartphone apps for online banking has outstripped visits to bank branches, who'd choose a career in banking? I can't help worrying how many redundant bankers have optimistically retrained as watch repairers...
