{"id":1572,"date":"2016-04-01T18:57:38","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T18:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/?p=1572"},"modified":"2016-04-02T23:27:33","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T23:27:33","slug":"william-hope-hodgson-and-the-sea-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/william-hope-hodgson-and-the-sea-dogs\/","title":{"rendered":"William Hope Hodgson and the Sea-Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, the plus side of your village being dragged inexorably into the North Sea (for lurcher walkers, anyway), and the nautical horror of William Hope Hodgson<\/strong><\/span>. So, something for everyone, if everyone likes lurchers and Hope Hodgson. Which they should. We thought we’d post some fun stuff while we were editing our Michael Hutter<\/strong> weird art feature for the weekend, so here’s Stranger Seas Ten<\/em>. They grow up so quickly, don’t they?<\/p>\n

\"strangerseas10\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lurchers at Sea<\/h2>\n

Lurchers like the sea. However, being the dark, dour children of Yorkshire that the greydog<\/em> family are, instead of pleasant sun-trap beaches and palms, we have a coastline scoured by the icy North Sea and covered in sea frets (dense, cold mist from the sea).<\/p>\n

You can choose between towering, lethal cliffs and long stretches of yesterday’s dining room being washed away as you speak. There’s a rather nice upside to the second option, though. Miles of empty sand, interrupted only by the occasional World War Two pill-box and someone’s collapsed outhouse (there’s more about this coast in whale-road, widow-maker<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Thus we oil the hovercraft and grind determinedly eastwards a few times a year to release the hounds. Between Flamborough Head and the mouth of the mighty Humber, basically all you have is this:<\/p>\n

\"horses<\/a>
horses on the holderness coast<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And then you add dogs – when the horses have gone, of course. Sea-going lurchers come in two varieties: alpha brain-boxes (eg. Chilli<\/strong>) who know what the sea is, and good-natured bumblers (eg. Django<\/strong>) who keep trying to drink it and then spit out salt. Do they swim, you ask? In fact can lurchers swim at all?<\/p>\n

\"pups3a\"<\/a>
it’s my pool. no. it’s my pool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They usually don’t, but they usually can. They like water, when it’s doing what it’s told, and ours head for it without hesitation. Lurchers typically paddle, run and splash up to tummy level, whereas juggernauts like our old labrador plough straight in.<\/p>\n

\"twigsea\"<\/a>
the dog that ate the yorkshire coast<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a curious aside, Chilli has an incredible ability to find the wet stuff, which we’ve seen repeatedly. We were once on a long moors walk where Django became wobbly from the heat and had trouble going on. Our alpha wonder shot forward ahead of us, and in five minutes had found the only ditch\/stream with water in it on the whole moor. A good dunking, and all was well. This is the very moment, in fact:<\/p>\n

\"rehydrate\"<\/a>
django rehydrates to his normal self<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every so often you do meet a swimming champion among lurchers, but we’ve never had one. Word on the street is that some saluki crosses have webbed feet (from all that swimming on sand as they pull down antelopes), and that they make good swimmers. But saluki crosses often don’t do what you ask them anyway, so you might never know.<\/p>\n

\"pups4\"<\/a>
wheeeeeee!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What longdogs do is charge. Those miles of sand (and a 40mph velocity) mean that the loyal companion by your feet is suddenly somewhere near the next county, a tiny dot which might be anything, frankly. You might be going red in the face and whistling for a seal which dropped its sunglasses the day before. We’re fortunate in that our two run in huge circles, which means that they do pass by every so often. \u201cOh look, there are the\u2026 no, they’ve gone again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"sandpups2\"<\/a>
just loonies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chilli, who gets bored on the flat eventually, also delights in heading for rock-pools we can’t reach, or trying to climb the most dangerous, most crumbling bit of cliff she can find. Meanwhile, Django stands panting and drinks sea-water for the tenth time, having totally forgotten once more that he doesn’t like it.<\/p>\n

\"seawater\"<\/a>
if you drink that, you’ll be sorry…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A day by the sea with longdogs is, basically, a joy. But take your own fresh water supply, especially if you have a Django.<\/p>\n

####<\/p>\n

Now, the next section is less lurchery. Before we interviewed nautical fantasy author Matt Willis<\/strong> a few weeks ago (see\u00a0sea serpents, saltwater and ship’s biscuits<\/a>), he mentioned coming across a talk given on William Hope Hodgson and maritime horror a couple of years ago. So we dug around for more details.<\/p>\n

The paper in question was delivered by Dr Alexander Hay<\/strong> at the Sea Lines of Communication Conference Proceedings, <\/em>Southampton, University of Southampton in 2014. The University said it was fine for us to use it, but could we link directly to the original paper held in their e-archives, so we’ve compromised. The paper covers Hope Hodgson’s nautical work and focusses especially on three pieces:<\/p>\n