Our Own Roll of Honour

A distant relative of mine, Commodore Henry Eagle, US Navy, whose father fought in the 1812 American War of Independence.

Tomorrow marks the centenary of that day when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) made their fateful landing at Gallipoli in Turkey. From 1916 onwards, the anniversary has been marked each year by Anzac Day, a day of remembrance that broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders "who served and died in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations" and "the contribution and suffering of all those who have served". Sadly, while this embraces Iraq and Afghanistan, it does not include the "Frontier Wars" in either country.

A Kiwi Messenger, but not one of us

Mount Messenger in New Zealand, for example, is named after Māori Wars veteran Colonel William Bazire Messenger of the Taranaki Militia, who commanded the 10th New Zealand Contingent to the Boer War and pulled out his own teeth. But he doesn't get to be considered tomorrow. Anyway, he's not one of us. How can I be so sure? Read on, McDuff.
Anzac Day is also unofficially recognised and observed in Newfoundland, as this was an independent dominion and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was the only North American unit to fight at Gallipoli.

Didn't realise it was a competition?: The New Zealand Herald, Auckland, May 4, 1915

Like most New Zealanders and Australians tomorrow, I will be thinking of those close relatives who fought in the two World Wars. One in particular is my uncle Walter Gerald Messenger, who was at Gallipoli in 1915. He survived that slaughter and was awarded a Military Medal for his bravery at Messines, but died on the Western Front in 1917. However, as the day salutes all those who served in "all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations", we should perhaps be acknowledging all ancestors and relatives, close or otherwise, who have taken part in any military action, anywhere at any time.

Noeleen Mulholland

Happily, I am in a position to be able to do that. I have a cousin, Noeleen Mulholland, in Wellington, New Zealand, who has devoted many years of her life to growing to an incredibly healthy size our family tree, taking its roots and branches all the way back to the late 17th century, to my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Symon Messenger. Noeleen is the daughter of the late Noel Cedric Messenger MBE, a World War II veteran.

Walter Gerald Messenger

Apart from Walter Messenger, Noel was one of five other uncles who served in World Wars. Noel was awarded the Africa Star after serving in North Africa in 1940-43. Geoffrey Walter Messenger, and, for various services in the Pacific Theatre, John Thomas Webber, James William Webber, Cyril Adam Webber and Russell Aicken Webber all enlisted.

Noel Cedric Messenger MBE

Then there are two great-uncles, Rifleman Ernest Nelson Boddington, who died of a war-related illness in England in 1917, and Lieutenant William George Boddington, who was killed in action in Papua New Guinea in 1942 while serving with the Australian Army. The Boddingtons belonged to my grandmother's family.
On my grandfather's side, Lieutenant William Geoffrey Messenger, born in 1885 in Hambledon, Surrey, received a Bar to the Distinguished Service Cross before he died in 1919. Jack Stephenson Messenger, born in 1899 in Kingston, Surrey, became an air raid warden and died in 1944 at Muntok, Banka Island, Sumatra, as a result of enemy (Japanese) action. 

Noeleen's 279-A4 page long tree gives us the opportunity to salute not just Anzacs, but also our forebears in the United States and Britain who took part in conflicts - reaching back to the 1812 American War of Independence. In all, six members of the extended family served in World War I and another 15 in World War II.
The start of our family's military links can be traced to Dublin-born Henry Eagle, a major of an Irish brigade in the War of 1812, stationed on Long Island. Two of his brothers were in the British military, one a surgeon, the other a major in the East Indies. His son, also Henry, was a commodore in the US Navy and the uncle and father-in-law of Thomas Henry Messenger, born in New York in 1840. Thomas' mother was Christiana Eagle Messenger, Henry Eagle II's sister.

The mortar schooner flotilla commanded by David Dixon Porter during the April 1862 attack on the forts below New Orleans.Vessels shown, from left: Westfield, Adolph Hugel, Para, William Bacon, Oliver H. Lee, C.P. Williams, Henry Janes, George Mangham, Racer, Horace Beals, Sarah Bruen, Samuel Rotan, John Griffith, Rachel Seaman, Maria J. Carlton, Sidney C. Jones, T.A. Ward, Sea Foam, Maria A. Wood, Octorara (Porter's flagship) and Matthew Vassar.

Another member of the US branch of our family, Emma, the daughter of Harry Messenger, married Edward G. Furber, acting master of the USS Para, a schooner acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. She was used by the Navy to patrol navigable waterways of the Confederacy to prevent the South from trading with other countries.

Wilfred Chaundler Messenger

One of my favourite relatives is Rifle Brigade Captain Wilfred Chaundler Messenger, born in 1891 in Hampshire, England, who died in 1917 in Rouen, France, from wounds received in action at Langemarck. His commanding officer wrote, "He was a splendid soldier" and the battalion chaplain said of him, "I can say with absolute truth that I have never met an officer whom I respected more, or one whom his men loved better." In 1916 he was buried for three hours in a mine explosion in the Ypres Salient, and was so well loved by his men that he was rescued "by the devotion of his servant".  

In early 1944, the US 5th Marines liberated Tiny Messenger's Iboki Plantation in New Guinea from the Japanese occupiers.

But for colourful characters, the pick of the bunch must be Harry Trimble Messenger, born in 1901 in Guildford, England. A fearless aviator, "Tiny" Messenger drank himself to death at his Iboki plantation in New Guinea in 1941. Described as "a bit of a lad", he was nicknamed "Tiny" because he was 6ft 7in tall and weighed 280lb. He enlisted in the Australian Army in Rabaul in 1940. Malcolm Wright's The Gentle Savage says, "Messenger, another planter on the coast [he was manager at Iboki] belonged to another age. A massive man with a red Van Dyke beard, Tiny had been a pilot in the early days of the Royal Air Force ... he told of the scores of well-known women that he seduced. He was fat, boozy, riddled with malaria, and on his leg he had a large tropical ulcer that would never heal. When war was declared he disappeared.  He went to Australia, had medical treatment and volunteered for the Australian Imperial Force. He was accepted and became the most enthusiastic private in the army. It would not be long before he got sergeant's stripes. But his old enemies were at work. He got malaria and was put into hospital; the ulcer broke out again and Tiny was discharged medically unfit. He returned to Rabaul, where he did not remain long; he picked up a cargo of liquor [mostly rum] and returned to his plantation where, in a few months, he drank himself to death. When the Japanese occupied his plantation a short time afterwards, Tiny's ghost must have been very angry."

'Arsy-Glassy' Higgins

Perhaps slightly less colourful (at least according to Gertrude Bell) was Air Marshall Sir John Frederick Andrews Higgins, another aviator and ladies man. At least he had a funnier nickname: "Bum and Eyeglass" (or "Arsy-Glassy" for short). Higgins was born in Farnham, Surrey, in 1875, attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was seriously wounded while serving with the Royal Artillery in the Boer War. In 1912 he was one of the first students of the Royal Aero Club's Central Flying School, was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing) as a flight commander, and assisted in carrying out some of the earliest experiments into firing guns from an aircraft. He was wounded in France in 1914 but returned there in 1916 in command of No 3 Brigade in the Battle of the Somme. Promoted to Major-General in the Royal Air Force on its formation in 1918, he later had command in Iraq. Knighted in 1925, from 1930 he worked for an aircraft company in India, but with the outbreak of World War II War he was recalled and appointed Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief. 

A painting depicting the Battle of Jutland

Engineer Commander Edward Hinkman Tucker Meeson was killed on the HMS Defence in the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Previously, in the HMS Laurel, he took part at the Battle of Heligoland Bight so satisfactorily that he was promoted to commander and was made a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. He was present at the sinking of the Blücher and at the evacuation of both Anzac Cove and Cape Helles.  

Albert Clay Messenger, was born in 1927 in Port Washington, New York, the grandson of Albert Ayers Messenger, one of the early property owners in Sands Point and for whom Messenger Lane (above) was named. Al Messenger served with the 88th Division (Blue Devils) in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations Infantry Company as a field medic. A source of family pride was that he could claim the distinction of having two great-grandfathers who fought for the Confederacy, one with the Army of Northern Virginia and the other with Company E 23rd Division North Carolina Infantry Regiment. What's more, he married into the Kurtz family!
Regis Gignoux, born in 1923 in Le Pin, Champtoce, France, and a graduate of the Groton School and Yale University, was a US Army Air Forces pilot with the rank of lieutenant in World War II.  His daughter Peg was designer in the display department of Shillito's, a department store in Typewriter City Cincinnati. Her great-great-great-great-grandfather, John Jay, was the first Chief Justice of the United States.

Margaret Langrish, born in 1922 in Croydon, Surrey, spent her formative years in Sydney but returned to England to serve as a radio operator in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during World War II. Harold Keith Langrish, a Flying Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force, died in Germany in 1944. He is buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, Nordrhein-Westfalen. Anne Seaber Harris was an officer in the Women's Royal Naval Service during World War II.
Thus, all told, I've got plenty of "family" to honour tomorrow.

End of The Canberra Times as we know it

Cool typewriting Jack left, computer-using Jack right

The end of The Canberra Times as we know it (and have done for more than 40 years) arrived on Wednesday afternoon when editor-at-large Jack Waterford announced he will leave the newspaper on April 30. Waterford, one of the Southern Hemisphere's most outstanding print newspaper editors, is also one of the last to have enjoyed a career which embraced manual typewriters (Olivetti 82s) at its concupiscent start and computers at its flaccid end.

Yesterday's Canberra Times declared in a large page one headline that this would be the "end of an era". It's more than that, much more. As Australasia's remaining print newspapers continue to be allowed to go to the dogs, The Canberra Times has been able to hold its own in revenue. Its owners, Fairfax, actually don't like to admit that, because they are so totally besotted with "new media platforms" that they think online newspapers are the only way to go. Their on-going efforts to run this print newspaper into the ground have thus far failed - for one main reason: Waterford still writes for it. And Canberrans have shown they want to read Waterford in print, not online. Waterford on the Web is just not the same thing. It's like eating Vegemite without the toast.

Waterford said, "Having recently acquired a few fresh grandchildren, I have decided to step back and enjoy some of the other things life has to offer while still maintaining an interest in politics and the people of Canberra." Waterford will continue to write a weekly column as a freelance contributor, but massive gaps will be left in The Canberra Times editions on the other five days of the week.

Waterford joined The Canberra Times as a copyboy in February 1972. In 1985 he won the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award for his pioneering work on accessing government documents through Freedom of Information legislation. He became deputy editor in 1987, editor in 1995, editor-in-chief in 2001 and editor-at-large in 2006. In 2007 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours "For service to journalism, particularly as a commentator on national politics, the law, to raising debate on ethical issues and public sector accountability, and to the community in the area of Indigenous affairs." He was also Canberra Citizen of the Year. 

Coonamble

John Edward O'Brien Waterford was born in the small country town of Coonamble, New South Wales (population 2998, plus several thousand more sheep) on February 12, 1952, and educated at St Joseph's College, Hunter's Hill, Sydney. He graduated in law from the Australian National University (where he used a VariTyper). He was appointed to a Jefferson Fellowship at the East-West Center in Honolulu in 1987 and is a board member of the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre.

I am proud to list Waterford among the 12 great print newspaper editors for whom I worked:

Russell William Nelson (1923-1983;

Greymouth Evening Star)

Sir Orton Sutherland Hintz (1907-1985;

The New Zealand Herald, Auckland)

Adrian Milford Deamer (1922-2000;

The Australian, Sydney)

Owen Mackay Thomson (1932-1998;

The Australian, Sydney, and The Sunday Independent, Western Australia)

Timothy Patrick "Tim Pat" Coogan (1935- ;

The Irish Press, Dublin, Ireland)

Sir Harold Matthew Evans (1928 -;

The Sunday Times, London)

Ian Leonard Hummerston (1931-2006;
The Daily News, Western Australia)

John Kenneth Hartigan (1947 -;

Sun Newspapers, Brisbane)

Robert Edward Cronin (1944 -;
The West Australian)

Warwick Bryce Wockner (1947 -;
The Townsville Bulletin)

Peter James Fray (1962- ;
The Canberra Times)

Ngaio Marsh's Google Doodle Typing GIF

Today's Google Doodle is a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) celebrating the 120th anniversary of the birth of New Zealand writer Dame Ngaio Marsh. Ironically, while this is a "first" for a typing Google Doodle, Marsh didn't in fact type her own works.

Ngaio (pronounced Ni-O) is a Māori word which comes from the Mousehole tree.
Marsh's typescripts were all typed on an Imperial 50 standard manual typewriter, seen here in Marsh's house in the Cashmere Hills outside Christchurch in New Zealand, which is now a Marsh museum:

Marsh's long-time secretary, Rosemary Greene, typed from the author's handwritten manuscripts.
Edith Ngaio Marsh was born in Christchurch on April 23, 1895. She died there on February 18, 1982, aged 86. A crime writer and theatre director, she was internationally known for her creation Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective who works for the Metropolitan Police in London. She had 32 detective novels published between 1934 and 1982.

Thus Marsh was one of the four original "Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham.

Marsh, right, meets Agatha Christie at the Savoy Hotel in London in June 1960. 

Finishing the Smith-Corona 88 Restoration Job

I'm afraid I got sidetracked a week ago and didn't complete the series of posts on the restoration of the Smith-Corona Model 88 standard manual typewriter. By the way, Alan Seaver has a PDF of a manual for this model here.

If only owners would read and follow this section of the manual, massive restoration jobs such as this one might not be necessary.

I notice the manual shows how the machine can be fitted for a carbon ribbon. Of course, it's always handy to have a manual like this available when reassembling a typewriter - especially if you've temporarily forgotten what goes where!

Among the comments on the previous post in this series were some very pertinent questions from Donald Lampert, who asked, "Was it worth it, as a practical typing unit - is it a quality typer, and how does it 'feel'? Awaiting the final chapter - does it live happily ever after, or should it have been given a quiet burial?"

1. It was a costly exercise, well over $100 to restore. So no, it wasn't really worth it. It is a practical typing unit and a quality typer which feels great to use. But I doubt I will get a lot of use out of it. I'm primarily a portable man. Nonetheless, I just hate to see any typewriter looking the way this one did.

2. Happy ever after? Well, it's looking pretty happy with itself at the moment, having been brought back to life. Who wouldn't be happy to be revived, to be restored to as-new? I simply couldn't bring myself to envisage a quiet burial, even when it was in the shocking state it arrived here in. I felt positive it could be made to look great again. But what now? I don't know, maybe some nice person will come along and give it a good home, where it will get plenty of use. It's a heavy working machine, after all. Then again, maybe not ...

Another comment asked about the keytops. "It seems common for them to get hazed over, as if it's mildew." Yes, very true! But this is the easy part. Start with a spray of light lubricant, hold one hand over the typebars to keep them down and firmly rub all the tops. Repeat until the keytops start to sparkle again. Where the haze remains, use a small dab of a light, non-scratching cleaning cream, then quickly spray with the lube again and wipe off. Remember to clean the cream off the edges and underneath the keytops. If removing liquid paper or the like, use Shellite so as not to leave a smear. Finally, rub the keytops with a tiny amount of oil or Silicone lube.

On to the "reintegration" ...

The final day of the project started with the clean-up jobs on things I had taken off the typewriter while I went through the process of getting rid of the inner mess - the deeply encrusted rust, the filth, the leaves, twigs, spider's webs and wasp nests. Having primed and repainted the parts, it was time to address the corrosion on the ends of the platen and the bird faeces and liquid paper on the platen rubber. The metal between the platen knobs and the platen always seems to attract rust and muck. The knobs often get drops of liquid paper on them. This is the opportunity to get rid of it all.

A small pad of fine-fibre steelwool dipped in Meths is good for getting the platen nice and smooth and clean.

Before reassembly, the parts that are hard to get at when the mask is back on should be given one last polish up and lube. This is especially so with the typebasket - it's all very well for a typewriter to outwardly look as if it's in great nick, but the machine is useless if the typebars remain covered in rust and are gunked up. All the keys should be thoroughly tested to ensure they are all working smoothly. It's amazing what crap can get down inside the slots on the segment. Remember to run a wire brush over the slugs themselves. A liquid like Shellite cleans and quickly dries, so it won't make the typebars stick. 
At the same time as attending to the typebasket, check the linkages between the key levers and the gearing under the segment, as well as the gearing connections. It is usually the top typebars on each side and the exposed levers and gearing (at the sides of the typebasket) which cop most of the corrosion. But with the mask off, remember to turn the typewriter on its back and clean and lube the exposed underneath rods and linkages too. 

With the platen and the parts that cover the margin rack and magic margin mechanism off the machine, it is opportune to make sure this whole normally enclosed area is thoroughly clean. It's a prime catchment area for massive amounts of dirt and gunk. Use brushes and cotton buds dipped in spirits to get down into small, narrow areas to clean them up. At the same time, clean up the feed rollers and their tray. Tool cleaner and compressed air spray cans are handy.

There was a shift key missing from my machine. I gently removed the inner core of the keytop, which remained on the lever. I had spare keytops from the removed tabulation mechanism, but the slots on the inner cores needed to be widened and lengthened in order for them to fit on to the larger shift key lever. Once I had done that, I glued the core back into the keytop and used a dab of Vaseline to ease the keytop back on to the lever.

The reassembly starts with the paper plate, guides and gauges, the top back cover and the carriage end pieces. I then work down the back end before starting on the side panels. When putting the side panels back on, put the machine on its back to ensure the tabs on the bottom of the panels slot correctly under the back sections and the boots.

With this machine, the side "chrome" trimmings were missing but the holes for them remained. So I used pin stripping from a car detailing shop to cover the holes, cutting it in such a way as to create an angled rather than straight end. The pin stripping can also be used across the bottom back section to join up with the side panels.

With the side panels back in, it was time to start on the front sections. Ribbon direction and colour selector switches have to be properly reattached once the frontispiece is replaced, ensuring they work as they should. One thing to watch for is that the spacebar grips fit under the front section properly, so that the spacebar sits down and the grips bounce off the front section as they should. It's all too easy to forget them!

Happy restoring!