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Alternative History

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Mel
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Alternative History

Post by Mel » Thu Oct 20, 2016 8:09 pm

Dave mentioned earlier in one of our topics here the Alternative History topic we had on Lowestoftonline. That topic came about because I was guilty of writing some stories which weren’t entirely true about Lowestoft history and after a slight misunderstanding we decided to have an ‘Alternative History’ topic so as not to upset the history scholars who frequented that site.

This is one of the stories that appeared there:-

The letter I print below is a copy from a friend of a friends friend, and thanks to the Metropolitan Police the original is now back with its rightful owner in Windsor (God Bless you Ma’am) and my friends friends friend is now staying in one of the owner’s hotels called Wormwood Scrubs. I shouldn’t really have a copy of this letter as it is supposed to be a bit hush hush. But as this is just a local forum for Lowestoft people I don’t suppose it will do any harm, and as Mel is not my real name and my avatar picture was taken a few years back I think I might get away with reproducing it here. And as it is to do with how a Lowestoft man could have changed the course of the history of our country I thought it might be of interest to local people.
The letter is from Queen Elizabeth the First to the Earl of Suffolk and was written on the evening of the Thirteenth of July 1568, I have changed a few of the spellings and some of the grammar to make it easier to read but have not changed the letter per se.

My loyal and trusted Suffolk I write to you in matters of great importance to myself as the Queen, and of great importance to our nation. Tonight I have held council with the steadfast and heroic Drake, and we have talked of many things as we supped our wine and smoked our pipes. Yes my Suffolk it is true, Drake has introduced me to the pipe, with which we smoke the leaf that Raleigh brought back from the colonies. Raleigh discovered the native tribe the Wacquiest smoking this herb and saw how much goodeth it done them, so now we all smoke it, Raleigh calls it Wacquiest Bacquiest…it doth much for our appetite and makes us laugh merrily; so much did we laugh this last evening that Drake doth pee his britches and this made us laugh all the more and made our eyes redder than the reddest sunset.

But let me get back to why I write to you my loyal Suffolk. Drake has told me of his heroic crews on his many travels across the seas, and he says there are none braver in this land than the strong and hearty Lowestoffe men; loyal, strong and trustworthy; that if our armies and navies were made up of just Lowestoffe men the French, the Spanish and the Indian tribes of the world would quake at the news and lay down their weapons in front of them.

So we get now to the crux of this letter Suffolk; as you know in some circles I am known as the Virgin Queen; I have no husband and I wanteth not of one…but I want a child, a son or daughter, I want an heir to this great throne of ours, an heir to this great land this England. So I ask of you Suffolk to travel to Lowestoffe and choose a courageous and loyal trustworthy Lowestoftian (of fair and pleasant face would not come amiss) and bring him straight to London, for a strong heir will need a strong father and if all what Drake sayeth of the Lowestoffe man is true, the man you pick may be the father of the next King or Queen of this great land.

Needless to say Suffolk my trust in you is explicit, but this letter must be destroyed once you have read it, as I am sure you can imagine the damage to the Royal House if this letter were to fall into the wrong hands.

Your Faithful Queen, Elizabeth.

Wow…what do you make of that then, Elizabeth the first wanted an heir to the throne and she wanted the father to be a Lowestoftian…if it had come about we might have had a Royal Palace in Lowestoft today. The reason it didn’t is in the date it was written; because on the morning of the Fourteenth of July 1568 news came to Elizabeth of the death of the Earl of Suffolk in a hunting accident, so the letter never got sent. But luckily for us she didn’t destroy it and it has been in the Royal Archives ever since…until that is a friend of a friend’s friend happen to accidently remove it.
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Re: Alternative History

Post by Dave » Sat Oct 22, 2016 9:47 am

I remember this one, Mel, but there were so many more I can't remember. I wish I'd copied and pasted them so I could read them again.
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Re: Alternative History

Post by Mel » Sun Oct 23, 2016 3:37 pm

Dave wrote:I remember this one, Mel, but there were so many more I can't remember.
What about this one Dave....

Lowestoft and the surrounding area in the 1950’s was the birthplace of quite a few modern day inventions. Christopher Cockerell developed the Hovercraft at Somerleyton and tested it on Fritton Lake. At the Pye Television factory in School Road the first CCTV cameras were being built, called then the P.I.T.S (Pye In The Sky) but the most famous of all local inventions was the iconic food item the ‘Fish Finger’. A Lowestoft Latin speaking fish filleter, the Bank Stores public house in Commercial Road and a late train were all involved in its conception.

Clarence Birdseye developed a Quick Freeze Machine in 1925, and since then the freezing of food became a popular way of preserving it and by the 1950’s a factory in Lowestoft was freezing fish and vegetables for the home market.

Clarence’s son William known as Billy Birdseye was running the firm in 1954 and often used to pay unexpected visits to his factories to keep an eye on things. He visited the Lowestoft factory in October of that year and after a successful tour of the factory decided to catch the 1215 train from Lowestoft Station to Liverpool Street. On arriving at the station he found his train had run out of steam at Halesworth and was going to be an hour late. Billy was in no rush and having a taste for the local Lacon’s beer he decided to go for a pint in the Bank Stores.

The pub was packed with fishermen, lumpers and filleters from the fish market and although Billy was a bit of a ‘toff’ he got on well with the working men and was soon having a laugh and joke with them. As one of the filleters , Henry ‘Baldy’ Bauldry went to leave he handed over a package to the barmaid and said with a wink “Here’s your digits darling”; watching this transaction Billy was intrigued, what on earth were her digits.

Billy who was not slow in going forward said to Henry “I say old chap, may one ask what is in the package”
“It's the appendages of the codlius digitis “ Henry was proud of his education and liked to show off when he had the chance, he was the only Latin speaking worker on the fish market, in fact except for old Father O’Dearymee at the RC Church in Gordon Road he was the only Latin speaking person In Lowestoft.

“Codlius digitis” Henry went on “are caught by the thousands in the North Sea, the local fishermen call them North Sea cod, which is the only place in the world where they are found, they have five appendages hanging down from their underside like a five fingered fin. When these fish are landed and ready to be sold we have to cut the appendages off as the fish merchants don’t like them. We don’t like to throw them away as they are full of meat and very tasty, so we take them home or give them away, the kid’s love them, they call them the fishes fingers”.

Billy Birdseye could see there was money to be made, forgot all about his train and went straight to the fish market and ordered all the codlius digitis or North Sea Cod he could lay his hands on, and told the fish merchants the appendages must not be thrown away. The Fish Finger was born and is still going strong today over sixty years later.
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Re: Alternative History

Post by Dave » Sun Oct 23, 2016 8:54 pm

Mel wrote:What about this one Dave....
I do remember that one, Mel, but not until 'Codlius Digitis' appeared, then bells rang. I'll have to email boatbuilder about the spell check, for some reason it doesn't recognise 'Codlius Digitis'. I can't think why. :huh:
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Re: Alternative History

Post by boatbuilder » Sun Oct 23, 2016 9:16 pm

Sorry, but you'll have to have a word with Google, Microsoft, Apple, or whoever else supports your browser Dave as the spell checker is not part of the forum's software but the browser's. :D
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Re: Alternative History

Post by Mel » Sun Nov 06, 2016 7:00 pm

Frederick Hamilton

Lifting up the seat of a piano stool at my Great Aunt’s (I was searching for her dentures, why look there you ask …my Aunt is a bit scatty, the last time she lost her false teeth we found them in the potting shed in a tub of John Innes No.3) anyway, getting back to what I found in the seat of the piano stool; it was a piece of sheet music the title “Lowestoft Lassies, Lowestoft Lassies, Sweeter Than Jamaican Mollasies”, the music and the lyrics were by a Frederick Hamilton and the publishing date was 1889.

So I Googled him and lo and behold he was a local lad from the village of Mutford, where his father was the local vicar. In fact he was quite a superstar in the Victorian Music Halls, singing and performing his own songs plus writing lot’s of songs for others. One of his most famous he wrote was for the well known ‘Bearded Lady of Birmingham’, she used to travel with a freak show and she used to perform in the Music Halls. The song he wrote for her was ‘I Am An Angel in a Crinoline Suit’, the second line of the song went ‘…but a Gorilla in my birthday one’.

The famous twenty stone Parisian singer Pierre Terris owes his Music Hall fame to Frederick Hamilton after Frederick wrote for him the romantic ‘Ou Et Allofa le Pize’ (a song which is still sung on the football terraces of England every week to this day).

So not only do we have the musical genius Benjamin Britten to be proud of, also Frederick Hamilton who put Mutford on the map when he wrote ‘Mutford Millie’ (a favourite of Queen Victoria’s), the chorus went:

Milkmaid Millie,
Milkmaid Millie,
The cows go Moooo
Cause her hands are chilly.

Slightly off topic, never did find my Aunt’s dentures…it is just as well she enjoys soup.
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Re: Alternative History

Post by Mel » Wed Feb 15, 2017 6:29 pm

Tobias Hawke

What is the connection between a City in Canada, a famous fictional character and Lowestoft? The answer is Tobias Hawke, who was born in Lowestoft in the mid 18th century. Not much is known about his family except they were landowners and quite wealthy.
At the age of 12 Tobias joined the Royal Navy and by the age of 21 due to his bravery and his leadership of men in battle he was made a Captain and given his own ship. He had a very successful naval career, sinking a great many French and Spanish ships; even when we were not at war with them.

He left the Navy and became the owner and Captain of his own merchantman the ‘Venus’. He was a generous and kind Captain and his crew were loyal to him (he also made them quite rich as he was partial to little piracy as well) and the ship the ‘Venus’ became quite famous in the dockside taverns where songs and verse were sung in her praise. But all good things come to an end.
After being caught at sea in a tremendous storm of the west coast of Canada he was shipwrecked, his crew and himself losing all their possessions. But the ever resourceful Tobias Hawke and what was left of his crew criss-crossed Canada for ten years, hunting, prospecting and trading with the English, French and local tribesmen. Eventually tiring of travel he opened his own trading station around which a small community grew. He named this hamlet Winnipeg after the small estate he was brought up on in Lowestoft, the estate which was situated very close to where Winnipeg Road is today.

Winnipeg prospered and grew but Tobias moved away, no one knows where but it is thought he went back to a life of living as a frontiersman. One person who met him was James Fennimore Cooper; Cooper had heard of Tobias and his adventures and sought him out when he was researching his novel ‘The Last of the Mohicans’. After their meeting Fennimore said he was going to give the hero of his book a nickname (he needed one as his hero was called Natty Bumppo) and the name he choose was Hawkeye…in the memory of Tobias Hawke a Lowestoftian.
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Re: Alternative History

Post by Dave » Wed Feb 15, 2017 11:01 pm

Reading your old Alternative History stories, Mel, I wish I'd copied and saved them to my laptop. Perhaps Darren has them tucked away somewhere, but not in the potting shed in a tub of John Innes No.3 I hope. :o :shock:
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