Not just another article on Ocean Weather Ships, this delightful insight into life at sea on Weather Surveyor (attached hereto in Adobe pdf format) has been written by Howard Cox, an engineering officer, and is generously laced with photographs from his own collection.

We are introduced to the machinery spaces of the ship in 1969 - unaltered from the day they were built in 1944!

Between weather balloon releases, when the ship had to be powered up and turned to wind, boredom seems to have been the biggest problem.  As a result the engineer's ears became finely tuned to detecting subtle changes in the sounds of normal day-to-day activity which might indicate something exciting was about to happen - then the trick was to find a plausible excuse to escape the confines of the engine-room ...

Another heartily recommended read!