Jennifer and Laurence perform a small set to help Len Wilson (Laurence's father) celebrate his new book as part of the Orkney International Science Festival events.
With a long seagoing tradition in his family and the island of Graemsay where they came from, it’s not surprising that by the time that Len Wilson reached the age of three he was sitting at the tiller of his father’s boat. And by the time he was sixteen he was at nautical college learning about radio, radar and Morse code, on the way to becoming a radio officer. His first ship was the passenger liner Orion, where duties included dining with the passengers in cummerbund and dinner jacket; and also typing up radio reports on the day’s news, according to the passengers’ priorities – “the cricket scores, football results and the stock market, in that order.”
Then came a varied mix of ships and events – on steamers with cargoes for Iran and Venezuela and West Africa, tankers with oil for the East, a Greek ship loading coal in Communist Poland for Karachi; and a stand-off on a journey to Murmansk when the Cold War was at its height.
He’s now set it down in a book, and shares this evening some of the stories of people and places and adventures along the way. He has stories too of seafaring ancestors, among them his great-grandfather James Wilson who made his first trip to the Davis Straits in 1867 on the famous old whaler Truelove of Hull.
With the family tradition also including music, his son Laurence joins for a tune or two, accompanying the fiddle music of Jennifer Wrigley.
