Scarborough (2 of 2)

 I periodically post about the frustrating parts of the job: dealing with entitled rude people; repeating the same answers to very basic questions over and over again, or worse, the times that we're so crowded that all we get to do is "crowd control" and not converse with the visitors at all; the people that aren't interested in the history at all and just want to grab a few selfies. Some visitors ask weird questions, like the one who absolutely could not comprehend that our masts were lighter made of metal than wood for the same strength. “But metal is heavier than wood,” she kept insisting. (But because metal is stronger than wood ours can be built hollow. Besides, if there really was a single perfectly straight tree 30 meters tall, the government wouldn't have let us cut it down for our project.) 

Our main mast, 37 meters/120 feet tall -- so big I can't fit the whole thing in a single photo.

Others were more thoughtful, like, “Did the Spanish build ships in Spain and then sail them to the Pacific to make up the Philippines fleet, or build them from the wood there?” (Answer, they built them from the wood there, which was actually superior quality to the (scarce!) wood in Spain at the time.) The most fraught, though, are questions about the slave trade. (None of the European powers come off well here through the lens of hindsight. Spain in particular didn’t “import” people from Africa so much as enslave the ones the found in the Americas originally.) But I love being able to tell the story of Fort Mose, and how the Underground Railroad ran south, not north, from Georgia and South Carolina, to Spanish territory, and legal freedom. Especially this side of the Atlantic that seems the coolest story rarely told. 

Spain deliberately tried to lure enslaved people in the English colonies away, to chip away at England’s “economic interests.” The runaways were promised their freedom if they swore allegiance to Spain and converted to Catholicism. In any case Spanish slavery was a legal state that people of any race could transition into and out of, more like our concept of indentured servitude, and not an inherent characteristic of people of African descent. (Photo is a modern reenactment of a battle at Fort Mose.)

Here's another walk we did around town on a day off:

"Lest We Forget." Memories of the two World Wars are very prominent all over the country.

The beginning of the hike was quite enticing starting from the beach...

...and looking back the way we'd come.

A rather posh neighbourhood at the top

Formal gardens

 

This absolutely pitch-perfect retro diner. One of the benefits of the extremely physical lifestyle aboard the ship is that we lose weight without even trying. On our days off ice cream was a must; I thought a chocolate malted would be the right fit for this decor.

  

If you zoom waaaaay in you can see where the ship is docked.

There’s a seaweed-farming operation where we’re docked also. At the end of our hike we had some beer brewed with farmed sugar kelp seaweed and chips spiced with seaweed instead of salt (the beer just tasted like … beer, the chips were nice. We were sharing a table with some random people and the guy told us that he had blood pressure issues and was hopeful the seaweed salt substitute would be a good alternative for his diet.) The seaweed farmers also use seaweed to make some alternatives to single use plastic packaging that degrades into the seaweed-based molecules it came from, something far more sea-friendly than microplastics. They also use the farmed seaweed to make skin care products. In Iceland they use a similar process to make a seaweed/wool fibre to knit sweaters. Lots of new possibilities!

Smuggling seems to have been a common practice anywhere there is a decent harbour

It was a seafood festival weekend, after all, so I couldn't pass up my chance to grab a photo with the RNLI (lifesaving service) mascot.

Goodnight, Scarborough. (View of the lighthouse guarding/guiding the harbour entry.)