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Banana Boat (ship)
Banana boat is a descriptive nickname that was given to fast ships, also called banana carriers, engaged in the banana trade. They were designed to transport easily spoiled bananas rapidly from tropical growing areas to North America and Europe. They often carried passengers as well as fruit. History During the first half of the twentieth century, the refrigerated ships, such as and , engaged in the Central America to United States trade also operated as luxurious passenger vessels. Surplus naval vessels were converted in some cases in the search for speed with Standard Fruit converting four U.S. Navy destroyer hulls, without machinery, to the banana carriers USS Dale (DD-290), ''Masaya'', USS Osborne (DD-295), ''Matagalpa'', USS Worden (DD-288), ''Tabasco'' and USS Putnam (DD-287), ''Teapa'' in 1932. Transfers to naval service served as transports and particularly chilled stores ships such as , the United Fruit passenger and banana carrier ''Quirigua'', and the lead ship of ...
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USS Merak (AF-21)
USS ''Merak'' (AF-21), the second Navy ship of the name, was the United Fruit Company cargo and passenger liner ''Veragua'' that served as a United States Navy in World War II. ''Veragua'' was built for United Fruit's subsidiary United Mail Steamship Company by Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, Fore River Plant, Quincy, Massachusetts. The ship was one of six nearly identical ships with three each built by Newport News Shipbuilding, Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company and Bethlehem Shipbuilding. The ships were designed to take advantage of U.S. subsidies, including mail contracts, and designated by the line as its "Mail class" vessels to meet the company's primary purpose of refrigerated banana transport with passenger and mail being important sources of revenue. ''Veragua'', launched 23 April 1932 and delivered 5 August was one of three ships assigned to the company's Atlantic routes to Panama allowing an intercoastal connection with the three ships assigned to t ...
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Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and conducting covert operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia, and is sometimes metonymously called "Langley". A major member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA has reported to the director of national intelligence since 2004, and is focused on providing intelligence for the president and the Cabinet. The CIA is headed by a director and is divided into various directorates, including a Directorate of Analysis and Directorate of Operations. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the CIA has no law enforcement function and focuses on intelligence gathering overseas, with only limited domestic intelligence collection. The CIA is responsibl ...
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Nautical Terminology
Seamanship is the skill, art, competence (human resources), competence, and knowledge of operating a ship, boat or other craft on water. The'' Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford Dictionary'' states that seamanship is "The skill, techniques, or practice of handling a ship or boat at sea." It involves topics and development of specialised skills, including navigation and international Admiralty law, maritime law and regulatory knowledge; weather, meteorology and forecasting; watchkeeping; ship-handling and small boat handling; operation of deck equipment, anchors and cables; ropework and line handling; communications; sailing; engines; execution of evolutions such as towing; cargo handling equipment, dangerous cargoes and cargo storage; dealing with emergencies; survival at sea and search and rescue; and fire fighting. The degree of knowledge needed within these areas is dependent upon the nature of the work and the type of vessel employed by a sailor, seafarer. History Shi ...
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Banana Republic
In political science, the term ''banana republic'' describes a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resource.A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, where the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by exploiting labor. Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favored economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property. At the same time, the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury. Therefore, the term ''banana republic'' is a pejorative ...
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HMS Palomares
HMS ''Palomares'' was a British anti-aircraft ship of the Second World War. Originally MV ''Palomares'', built by William Doxford & Sons, Sunderland yard in 1937, it operated as a merchant fruit carrier ship (a 13.5 knot banana boat) for service on the MacAndrews Line in January 1938 with their Spanish service. Service She was purchased by the British Admiralty in 1940, as these fruit ships were considered to be fast and manoeuvrable. In 1941 the Admiralty converted her to an anti-aircraft artillery ship and subsequently to a fighter direction ship ("seagoing anti-aircraft auxiliaries"). Most likely the conversion took place at Fairfields yard in Govan on the River Clyde with her sister ship . In March 1942, she sailed with ''Pozarica'', and the corvettes , , and for the port of Seyðisfjörður in Iceland In June 1942, she sailed as an escort in Convoy PQ 17, where 25 out 36 ships were lost to the enemy, while working around Murmansk and Archangel. In November 1942, H ...
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Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)
"Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" is a traditional Jamaican folk song. The song has mento influences, but it is commonly classified as an example of the better known calypso music. It is a call and response work song, from the point of view of dock workers working the night shift loading bananas onto ships. The lyrics describe how daylight has come, their shift is over, and they want their work to be counted up so that they can go home. The best-known version was released by American singer Harry Belafonte in 1956 (originally titled "Banana Boat (Day-O)") and later became one of his signature songs. That same year the Tarriers released an alternative version that incorporated the chorus of another Jamaican call and response folk song, "Hill and Gully Rider". This version was played during an interview with Bob Carey (formerly of The Tarriers) on Folk Music Worldwide in January 1964. Both versions became simultaneously popular the following year, placing 5th and 6th on the 2 ...
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Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte ( ; born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023) was an American singer, actor, and civil rights activist who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Belafonte's career breakthrough album ''Calypso (album), Calypso'' (1956) was the first million-selling LP album, LP by a single artist. Belafonte was best known for his recordings of "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)", "Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)", "Jamaica Farewell", and "Mary's Boy Child". He recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk music, folk, gospel music, gospel, show tunes, and Great American Songbook, American standards. He also starred in films such as ''Carmen Jones (film), Carmen Jones'' (1954), ''Island in the Sun (film), Island in the Sun'' (1957), ''Odds Against Tomorrow'' (1959), ''Buck and the Preacher'' (1972), and ''Uptown Saturday Night'' (1974). He made his final feature film appearance in Spike Lee's ''Bl ...
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British African-Caribbean Community
British African-Caribbean people or British Afro-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens or residents of recent Caribbean heritage who further trace much of their ancestry to West and Central Africa. This includes multi-racial Afro-Caribbean people. The earliest generations of Afro-Caribbean people to migrate to Britain trace their ancestry to a wide range of Afro-Caribbean ethnic groups, who themselves descend from the disparate African ethnic groups transported to the colonial Caribbean as part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. British African Caribbeans may also have ancestry from European and Asian settlers, as well as from various Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. The population includes those with origins in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, Anguill ...
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Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European islands by area, largest European island, and the List of islands by area, ninth-largest island in the world. It is dominated by a maritime climate with narrow temperature differences between seasons. The island of Ireland, with an area 40 per cent that of Great Britain, is to the west – these islands, along with over List of islands of the British Isles, 1,000 smaller surrounding islands and named substantial rocks, comprise the British Isles archipelago. Connected to mainland Europe until 9,000 years ago by a land bridge now known as Doggerland, Great Britain has been inhabited by modern humans for around 30,000 years. In 2011, it had a population of about , making it the world's List of islands by population, third-most-populous islan ...
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English Cricket Team In The West Indies In 1959–60
The English cricket team in the West Indies in 1959–60 played five Test matches, eight other first-class matches and two minor games. England won the Test series by one match to nil, with the other four matches being drawn. England touring party * Peter May (captain) (played in 3 of the 5 Tests) * David Allen (5) * Keith Andrew (wicket-keeper) (0) * Ken Barrington (5) *Colin Cowdrey (5) * Ted Dexter (5) * Tommy Greenhough (0) *Ray Illingworth (5) * Alan Moss (2) * Jim Parks (wicket-keeper) (1) * Geoff Pullar (5) * Mike Smith (5) *Brian Statham (3) * Raman Subba Row (2) * Roy Swetman (wicket-keeper) (4) *Fred Trueman (5) *Manager: Walter Robins Following the unsuccessful tour of Australia a year earlier, the selectors opted for youth, with only May, Cowdrey, Trueman and Statham having had substantial Test experience. Players who represented West Indies : Gerry Alexander (captain) (wicket-keeper) (played in all 5 Tests) : Basil Butcher (2) :Charlie Griffith (1) :Wes ...
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West Indies
The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in three archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago. The subregion includes all the islands in the Antilles, in addition to The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The term is often interchangeable with "Caribbean", although the latter may also include coastal regions of Central America, Central and South American mainland nations, including Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic island nation of Bermuda, all of which are geographically distinct from the three main island groups, but culturally related. Terminology The English term ''Indie'' is deri ...
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Bay Of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF), consisting of Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, Clandestine operation, clandestinely and directly financed by the U.S. government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union. In 1952, the pro-American dictator General Fulgencio Batista led a 1952 Cuban coup d'état, coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás, Carlos Prío and forced Prío into exile in Miami, Florida. Prío's exile inspired Castro's 26th of July Movement against Batista. The movement succeeded in overthrowing Batista during the Cuban Revolution in January 1959. Castro nationalization, nationalized American businesses, including banks, oi ...
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