# Come back Sparkie, We Need You......



## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

I saw this letter and reply in the computer section of the Telegraph at the weekend. I can't think of anything to say really !

David
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## Gareth Jones (Jul 13, 2007)

Ah! if only !


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

I phoned home from a ship in 65 - took a week to arrange, God knows what it cost.


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## Cisco (Jan 29, 2007)

Probably a UK pound a minute.... thats what the landline cost from Oz to UK was then.

I have a little book somewhere about the history of the submarine cables between the mainland and Tasmania... ( OK I know... anorak man ) ... seems the first 'phone cable was laid in about 1939.... 8 lines.

I recall in 65 or 66 we were one day out of Cape Town bound north... I was hanging around the pursers' bureau as was my habit ... old chook comes along wanting to buy some stamps... 'Sorry missus... we don't sell stamps until a day before Las Palmas'

'But I want to post my letter today!!!!!!!!!'


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## Vital Sparks (Sep 19, 2007)

In the late 1970s, a few hours after sailing from port I answered the phone in the shack only to be asked by a first trip deck cadet for the dialing code required for an outside line, because she wanted to call home. At the time laughably impossible but now, how times have changed.


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## BarnacleGrim (Aug 7, 2010)

I'm browsing and posting this from the middle of the Atlantic. Pretty fast connection too, impressive stuff.


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## richardwakeley (Jan 4, 2010)

Yes, even the big (F77) Inmarsat radomes are obsolete now. Many ships now installing Fleet Broad Band (FBB). Crew can phone and text from their own cabins with their own sim card if the owners pay for the system.


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## LaFlamme (Feb 1, 2011)

Oh, I miss the days when you had to go to the post office to make a call to Canada from Europe (true, I was staying in cheap hotels, more often than not without even local phone access), and also went to get my mail at the "Poste Restante" at the main post office of any town (had to tell my correspondents approximately where I would be, approximately when). (Thumb)

Tried to explain how convenient that system was, to my 16-year old niece, but she rolled her eyes and thought I was talking about a Jules Verne's book!! :sweat:


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## BarnacleGrim (Aug 7, 2010)

richardwakeley said:


> Yes, even the big (F77) Inmarsat radomes are obsolete now. Many ships now installing Fleet Broad Band (FBB). Crew can phone and text from their own cabins with their own sim card if the owners pay for the system.


I read somewhere that you can drop your normal SIM card into an Iridium handset, but I'd rather not try, I bet the roaming charges are astronomical.


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## Naytikos (Oct 20, 2008)

_Posted by LaFlamme:_


> Oh, I miss the days when you had to go to the post office to make a call to Canada from Europe (true, I was staying in cheap hotels, more often than not without even local phone access), and also went to get my mail at the "Poste Restante" at the main post office of any town (had to tell my correspondents approximately where I would be, approximately when).


Yes, it always struck me as strange that every decent-sized town in most countries around the world had a 'telephone office' where one could go and sit in a booth to make a telephone call anywhere one wished, and yet in the UK there was nothing like it at all.


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## John Dryden (Sep 26, 2009)

The ships I was on no one ever went ashore to make a phone call.


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## Moulder (Aug 19, 2006)

Naytikos said:


> _Posted by LaFlamme:_
> 
> Yes, it always struck me as strange that every decent-sized town in most countries around the world had a 'telephone office' where one could go and sit in a booth to make a telephone call anywhere one wished, and yet in the UK there was nothing like it at all.


I seem to recall there was a couple of such booths in the Seamans Club in Tilbury in the early 80s. 

Steve.
(Thumb)


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## Baulkham Hills (Jul 11, 2008)

This is off tread, but the Iberic had a phone booth in the cross alleyway for connection to a landline in Kiwi. On the MANZ run it was connected to a U.S.
landline in the states, this resulted in the crew making a large number of long distance calls on the company account. Resulting in some having to stay onboard for another trip because they owned SS&A so much.


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## Nelson (May 11, 2006)

Anyone around from Colwyn Bay Wireless College, Easter 1960-Dec 1961?


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