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Michael Brady

@mcrbrady

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History enthusiast šŸ“š
Producer/Presenter for Oceanliner Designs šŸš¢
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This has been a really hard one to process. Itā€™s amazing how you just kind of assume the people who you care about will be there forever and then suddenly they arenā€™t. Annie taught us all a lot - she was a fierce and keen reader who devoured books and always gave them as gifts, choosing exactly the right one at Christmas. Her Christmas lunches, by the way, are the stuff of legends - the length of an entire table topped off at the end with her legendary raspberry ice cream. She was probably the sweetest person Iā€™ve ever met but Annie was absolutely no pushover - she cared deeply for human rights and forged a strong community of people recently arrived in Australia who she made to feel welcome and regularly invited around for dinners and lunches. She lobbied local government hard to fix problems in the community. She is genuinely a person that will leave behind a hole in the fabric of the community she helped so selflessly. The fact that good people like this are the ones who seem to leave us so early is baffling to me. To quote a favourite song; ā€œHow can the light that burned so brightly Suddenly burn so pale?ā€ Rest easy Annie, you made a difference to all of us that knew you and you set an incredible example. If you read this far - go out and hug someone you love! by @mcrbrady
Had an absolutely INSANE weekend at the Aus Armourfest hosted by @ausarmour . Now yes - I am a ship guy but you all know I secretly have an affinity for all old machines. Highlights included charging around in a Sherman Firefly (my all time fave), watching Old Mate cop a face full of exhaust when the Panther started up and screaming ā€œSCHNELL SCHNELL!ā€ from the back of the Schwimmwagen. If you like your war history stuff you simply MUST go - 10/10! by @mcrbrady
In what can only be described as the greatest side quest of my career Iā€™d like to announce (or rather own up to the fact) that a few months ago I bought a 1920 Buick to fully rebuild and drive around. For reasons unknown I also turned my garage into a 1950s diner type thing. No I will not be taking questions at this time šŸ¤“ Betty the Buick is a 1920 Kx49 model in a bit of a sad way and Iā€™ve been working hard on doing her up. You guys know I love old machines and getting to actually use my hands again to work on something NOT on a computer has been a huge deal. If anything please take this post as a sign to go out and do something you love today! If youā€™d like to follow my quest to get Betty back on the road please follow our shenanigans at @betty.the.buick by @mcrbrady
Flashback to this wonderful day with Tom & my Titanic friend @mcrbrady visiting all the way from Australia! Of course we went to Oā€™Haras. No height difference between Mike & I. šŸ„² #Titanic by @mcrbrady
Joined by a little friend this week in Fifi the B29 šŸ˜Ž @caf1957 #aviation #aircraft #vintage #planes #history #militaryhistory #avgeeks #avgeek by @mcrbrady
London is one of my absolute favourite cities and sprinkled throughout are some exceptionally interesting places and historical nuggets. For a nerd like me itā€™s a kind of paradise šŸ¤“ No trip to London could be complete without a stop at HMS Belfast, the legendary light cruiser which exists in such a state of preservation that it seems the crew are simply away on shore leave for a while and youā€™ve snuck in illegally! At the dockside is the Horniman at Hayā€™s, a pub positioned right at the waterā€™s edge and so conveniently that it was one of the first to employ cold storage landing goods directly from ships as they came in. The dĆ©cor is pure Victorian splendour - and the pies are superb. Then, the Ritz. It almost doesnā€™t need an introduction - but stopping by for a drink and soaking up the atmosphere is a must. This is the exact interior that served as inspiration for many great ocean liners, especially the German Imperator and her sister ships which directly emulated the tea room at the entrance with its raised platform. Then around the corner on Savile Row youā€™ll find Gieves & Hawkes. Established in the 1770s this menswear icon has made uniforms for Britainā€™s armed forces and kitted out generals, admirals and RAF fighter pilots alike. In the middle of the shop today is a Spitfire, a photographic reconnaissance Spit shot down and now under reconstruction. Quite the conversation piece for a shop! by @mcrbrady
I was so thrilled to be invited by @royalmuseumsgreenwich to visit the incredible archive of ship plans looked after by @andrewchoongrmg and his team. The collection holds a staggering amount of historic documents - over ONE MILLION drawings and plans of shipping dating back hundreds of years. These magnificent pieces of design work are at the intersection of engineering and pure art. The second photo shows details of Cunardā€™s ā€˜Persiaā€™ from 1856 - all of this was done by hand with inks and washes and by oil lamp at night. Individual tiles are coloured, chesterfield sofas have buttons marked in, bunkers have individual pieces of coal shaded and highlighted. This kind of artistry is mind-boggling to us today where professional engineers rely on CAD software to create plans with millimetre precision. The star attraction of the day were plans of the SS Great Eastern and a rare book of images showing her later career as a cable-layer - this was the absolute pinnacle of Victorian engineering and we cannot wait to show them to you! Many thanks to RMG and Andrew for showing me around! by @mcrbrady
Back from Queen Mary 2, and what an incredible sailing it was. šŸš¢ This sailing felt extra special thanks to the incredible people we shared it with, and the many faces we met along the way to Belgium and the Netherlands. To everyone who stopped us onboard to say hello, thank you. It was brilliant to meet all of you, swap stories, and hear your thoughts on Queen Mary 2, @cunardline, and cruising in general. Cruising is always about the ship, but itā€™s the people that you share it with that make it special. šŸ–¤ #cunard #cunardline #queenmary2 #oceanliners by @mcrbrady
Had the privilege of visiting the impressive, undeniably steampunk steam crane Hiritaki of 1926! This beast is about to turn 100 years old - built to service Wellington, New Zealand. There are a few Titanic connections: the crane itself was made by Arrol, the famous firm that constructed the gantry that built Titanic. Beyond that the ship is filled with steel from Dalzell marked with the same stamp found aboard the great liner. Hiritaki has had her own incredible career and everything aboard still works. Vessels like this were crucial for helping develop the waterfront of cities like Wellington. In 1943 the ship helped save the city from destruction after a fire broke out aboard an ammunition carrier: Hiritaki raced to unload cargo so firefighters could put it out. Itā€™s thought that the resultant explosion could have flattened the city with the power of a small nuclear bomb! At full speed Hiritaki could steam at around 9 knots and it took over 80 days to sail her out here from Scotland back in 1926, no mean feat. The passionate volunteers preserving her fire up the boilers regularly and still operate the crane - in fact her last commercial loft job was as recent as 2013! by @mcrbrady
Liverpool boasts a fine maritime museum and an archive of some of the most unique and rare plans of famous ships anywhere in the world! The museum is closed for renovation - but in 2024 I got to visit and see some pretty awesome things. These original plans for ships like Carpathia, Olympic, Ivernia and more are up to 125 years old and getting to actually handle them and see them in stunning detail was weirdly moving. These are the same plans that were used to build machines that changes millions of lives. Liverpool suffered badly under the bombs of the Luftwaffe during the blitz so we are incredibly lucky these delicate rolls of parchment survived at all! Thanks so much to the archives at the Merseyside maritime museum for allowing me to go over these incredible plans and use their hidden secrets for the development of our video games and virtual experiences :) by @mcrbrady
What a massive highlight it was last year getting to film with the brilliant @thegooddeath Caitlin Doughty! We visited Asbury Park where just over 90 years earlier the liner Morro Castle had burned and washed ashore. Itā€™s a fun and exciting holiday spot and itā€™s hard to imagine that it was the site of a such a bizarre scene! Asbury Park and the Jersey shore have played host to a lot of historical vessels including zeppelins like Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg seen here flying over ā€˜Nagelā€™sā€™, a drug store still standing today at Ocean Grove. The folks at Asbury Park, Ocean Grove and Beach Haven were insanely kind and generous with their time to this globetrotting Aussie and Iā€™d just like to thank all of the people who helped from the NJ Maritime Museum to the staff of the Majestic and Beach Club hotels šŸ˜Ž by @mcrbrady
I am really excited to announce that Iā€™ll be working with Dr Howard Fuller and the university of Wolverhampton to help find the long-lost wreck of the battleship HMS Captain. Very much like Titanic, HMS Captain was the technological marvel of her day - yet, marred by construction problems and internal bickering, the ship failed in utterly spectacular and tragic fashion when she disappeared in a storm. That was in 1870... and in 2025 we hope she will be seen again! Next year there will be an effort to find this ship and the nearly 500 men lost with her. Iā€™m excited to say that, working directly with Dr Fullerā€™s team we will be taking up a role in finding the Captainā€™s wreck! by @mcrbrady

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