Guernsey hydrofoil completes sea trials
Aurigny pilot Ray Bowyer spotted a UFO while flying his Trislander to Alderney this week in 2007. His sighting was backed up by official technical records and by direct sightings from passengers on the aircraft. The enormous unexplained object was estimated to be a mile long, and hovering at an elevation of around 2000ft. The sighting is particularly interesting as it came a little over two months after 20 to 25 unexplained lights were spotted flying in formation over Alderney’s north coast at 6.15am on 14 February 2007.
Condor's hydrofoil service to Guernsey completed its final sea trials this week in 1964, and the company soon built up one of the largest fleets of hydrofoils working on the channel. The first craft, built in Sicily, entered service on 1 May 1964, less than a week after it had been put through its paces in a series of rigorous sea trials. The craft was uncapsizable, because of its skids, and unsinkable on account of the amount of polystyrene in the hull. With a top speed of 45mph, it cut the Guernsey to Jersey crossing to 35 minutes, and Jersey to St Malo to around an hour.
The first ever Muratti football match was played this week in 1905 at Springfield Stadium in Jersey. Guernsey beat Alderney 6-0 in the semi, and went on to beat Jersey 1-0 in the final. The competition has taken place every year since during peacetime, with breaks between 1915 and 1919, and again from 1940 until 1946, because of the First and Second World Wars.
The Muratti is an annual football competition played between Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney. The teams play for the Muratti Vase, which was named after the Muratti cigarette brand produced by Philip Morris. Although Muratti cigarettes were the tournament’s first sponsor, the brand is no longer sold in the Channel Islands.
Guernsey ferry passengers staged a sit-in this week in 1976, refusing to leave Sealink’s Earl Godwin, which was stranded at Weymouth. The Channel Islands had been cut off from the outside world by a ship stewards’ strike, and the 700 passengers were protesting the inconvenience, one month after an engine failure had left the same ferry stuck in the very same port.
Meanwhile, over in Jersey…
Guernsey-set film The Sea Devils, starring Rock Hudson, opened in cinemas this week in 1953. Based loosely on the plot of Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, it was set at a time when England and France were at war, and a Guernsey fisherman rescued a beautiful woman, who turned out to be a secret agent.
The States of Guernsey registered its gov.gg domain this week in 1997. In doing so, it snapped up one of the earliest .gg domains in existence. The .gg top-level domain had only been opened up for registration the previous autumn, under the administration of Alderney based Island Networks Limited. Founded by Nigel Roberts, Island Networks also administers the .je domain for Jersey. Perhaps more surprisingly, it’s the registration authority for the .as (American Samoa) domain, too.
Herbert Stanton would have been celebrating his wedding anniversary this week in 1916, if he hadn’t been found out as a bigamist. He was still married to his first wife in Guernsey when he tied the knot for a second time on the mainland. He was caught, tried and convicted, and sentenced to three months' hard labour, in part because he'd lied to his second wife.
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