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I will copy below a short extract from a piece that took my fancy in the
recent edition of The Journal of Navigation (vol 63 No1, January 2010), in
case it appeals to other navlist members.
It explains itself pretty well. Lowestoft is the most Easterly port on the
North Sea coast of England. An "armed lead", has a tallow or lard smeared
into a dimple under the lead so that it picks up a sample of the bottom.

George.

contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.

==============================

Heaving The Lead

Lt Cdr R W Cooper RN

2. BOYHOOD BACKGROUND. My experience of the practice of heaving the lead and
navigation goes back to 1937. My father was a North Sea fishing skipper and
I was the eight year old son who was obsessed with navigation. My bedtime
reading was Tait's Home Trade Guide, and I knew the Colregs, Morse code and
flag meanings off by heart. That year I was allowed for the first time to go
on a trawling trip with my father.

Navigation at that time consisted almost entirely of sounding by armed lead.
The ship would be stopped and the 16-pound lead cast. The depth was noted,
and the state of bottom examined closely, and tasted by the skipper and
mate. I tasted it too. It was foul. This was done several times at hourly
intervals until suddenly, and for no good reason that I could discern, the
trawl was shot with the traditional order " Shoot the nets in the name of
the
Lord. "

Soundings were taken at half-hourly intervals while trawling. And then after
hauling, the whole ritual was repeated. We had been trawling on a NNW
course, and before shooting again, we had moved some six miles to the
westward. This procedure was repeated several times until my father decided
to return to the home port of Lowestoft. No attempt had been made to fix the
position during the 72 hours. It seems that the bottom of the North Sea has
a fan-shaped pattern of low ridges which do not appear on navigational
charts. It is in the valleys between these ridges that the best flat-fish
are found. It is the fan-shaped nature of the ridges that make them ideal
for navigation, for the distance between the ridges gives the latitude
accurately enough.

As the trawl was hove in on the derrick out at sea, my father himself cast
the lead, tasted it, and then ordered something like west-south-west and a
half west and off we steamed. The lead was cast at hourly intervals without
stopping the ship. It was swung overhead three times before being slipped
and only the depth noticed. Perhaps the course would have been corrected by
half a point. Otherwise we went straight at the Holm buoy.

Note that the chart was never consulted. My father's collection of blue-back
charts was kept tightly rolled in black japanned-cases closed with a
padlock. Only he (and I) looked at them. They had originally been his
grandfather's and were never used for navigation. Certain sea areas were
covered with minute marks and symbols entered at the end of each trip by
mapping pen. They represented details of catches and abnormalities of the
seabed.

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