And had to be contented.

 Here's today's Royal Museums Greenwich Live, hosted by Helen Czerski (who gives her own great sea-borne insights into isolation here) with a couple of readings from me. Victorian sailor, Henry Ralph Harvey's discovery of the recuperative powers of ship-bound box-building remind me a bit of Dan Harmon's Minecraft mania. Sue Prichard's question "but then what do you put in the box?" also struck a chord: I've been given some beautiful little boxes in my life, but I have no jewellery, so I use them for hoarding my frayed dongles. Speaking of which: not mentioned above (thankfully – I'm thinking mainly of Captain Graham Westgarth's feelings here) is something the Museum shared with Helen when she first emailed them on the topic of what seafarers did to stay sane: "and it is really grim... but there are accounts of specific species of fish being nailed to a piece of wood and used as a communal masturbation tool."
 Specific species.

A little skrimshaw. Far more here.

 I also liked Sue's observation that the increase in sales of crafting materials during this "lockdown" period doesn't point to our turning away from a life online, but in fact goes hand in hand with it, because it's only now online we're learning how to use these materials. I can't boast of any improvements in the output of my own hobby, but here's today's Defoe, in which I misidentify a mass-grave at Moorfields as one currently being exhumed outside Liverpool Steet Station. I muddled my Bedlams, in other words.