Totally Tockington Edition 85 Team B

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Edition 85 October 2nd 2015 Team B Founded by Ben Owen in 2011

Original Drawings by Ellie Parker (Sub-Editor)

The Bermuda Triangle

by Jonathan Baguley

You may have heard of the Bermuda Triangle. It is

a triangular shaped area in the Atlantic Ocean and

at the tips of the triangle are Florida, Bermuda and

Puerto Rico. The area of the triangle is roughly

500,000 km2. The reason this area is so famous is

because planes and ships go missing without a

trace and no-one knows why.

Here are two good examples. In December 1948

a Douglas DC3 airliner was flying from Puerto Rico

to Miami. They were 50 miles off Miami and

reported that they were getting ready for landing.

Miami sent a transmission but the plane never

replied. It didnt arrive and there was no SOS. In

1945 five Navy Bombers flew out from Florida for

training over the sea. Their compasses started

malfunctioning and they got lost. Eventually they

ran out of fuel and had to ditch into the sea. A

rescue plane with a crew of 13 people went out but

never returned either.

There are legends of monsters that hide in the

oceans and eat up passing ships and planes.

Some people also think that you get problems with

compass readings because it is one of the few

places on earth where true north and magnetic

north line up. But nobody really knows.

Editorial

Hello and welcome to another brilliant issue of

Totally Tockington. The paper written BY students

FOR students! In this paper the theme is

underground or under the sea and what a paper it

is! We have some amazing articles this week,

including: Lily Edwards on the Channel Tunnel,

Toby Gaultons top 10 biggest fish ever, Carmens

article on mermaids, Jonathans on The Bermuda

Triangle and much more!

Enjoy!

Tabitha Huby

Editor Team B

Mermaids

by Carmen Rey-Jones

As the theme is under the sea/under the ground, I

thought it would be a good idea to tell you about

Mermaids. So are Mermaids real?

No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been

found, so it is very unlikely that they are.

What do people think mermaids are?

People think that mermaids are half human and

half fish and when they step on land they turn in

to full human.

Many films have been made on mermaids. My

personal favourite is The Little Mermaid which

many of you have probably heard of.

If you want to find out more about mermaids ask

Anya- she knows pretty much anything you want

to know about mermaids.

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The Channel Tunnel

by Lily Edwards

In this paper we are reporting on underwater and underground. So in this article I am going to tell you

some facts about something which is underwater AND underground!

The Channel Tunnel is a tunnel which goes from Folkestone in Kent (which is in our country) to

Coquelles which is near Calais in Northern France. It is 31.4 miles and goes right underneath the

English Channel (under the sea basically). At the deepest part of the tunnel , it is 250 feet under water.

It is pretty amazing to think that people actually made that!

The digging for the tunnel started in 1988 and they used special boring machines (not boring as in

boring boring as in tunnelling!!!) at the French end of the tunnel and also at the English end. The plan

was to meet in the middle and this happened on 1st December 1990. An English man called Graham

Fagg and a Frenchman called Phillipe Cozette were the two workers who bored through on that day to

meet up. I think it is amazing that it didnt take very long to tunnel all that way.It cost 4.65 billion

pounds to make the tunnel which is A LOT of money.

Now you can drive your car onto a special train called a Eurotunnel Shuttle and then it goes across to

France so you can then drive off the train and straight onto your holiday! I did this when I was 2 but I

slept all the way so I dont remember it at all. The tunnel also has the very high speed Eurostar trains

going through it which get people to France very quickly.

It is very safe to travel to France in this train and tunnel, but at the moment there are lots of people

called refugees who are trying to get to our country because they want to get away from war in their

country and have a happy life here. It is very sad because some of them arent allowed to come to our

country without passports and proper checks so they have started to try and walk through the tunnel to

get across the English Channel and come to England. This must be very dangerous for them and I feel

worried that they might get hurt.

But on the whole the Channel Tunnel is a brilliant invention and I would love to know if you have been

on it. I would love to go again one day and this time I WILL stay awake.

I used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel to help with this article.

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Swimming the Channel

by Henry Packham

The first person to swim the Channel was Captain Matthew Webb, who swam from England to France on the 24th to

25th August 1875. It took him 21 hours and 45 minutes.

The oldest person to swim the channel was Cyril Balldock at the age of 70 years and the youngest was Thomas Gregory

who was 11 years old.

The Channel is 23.69 miles across between Shakespeare Beach near Dover and Cap-Gris Nez in France. Because the

tides push you from side to side you swim a curvy route and would normally end up swimming 30-40 miles.

You are only allowed to use the same equipment as Captain Webb, a swimsuit and a rubber cap.

.

To prepare for the swim you will need to do a lot of swimming in very cold water. The water is really cold, about 50

degrees. Most swimming pools are about 80 degrees. You will need to swim 25 miles per week as training.

You will also need to eat like a pig. You will need to eat lots of fatty and high-energy foods, which would normally be

bad for you, but you need to gain at least 11kg of fat. This will help to insulate your body. You will need about 1 kilo of

lard smeared over you to help you keep warm.

It normally takes about 10 to 12 hours to swim across the Channel. Although you will need a boat and a team to look

after you while you swim you are not allowed to touch anyone else or the boat. You will need to be regularly fed lots of

hot drinks and food on the end of a long pole while you are swimming.

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The Lost City of Atlantis

by Tabitha Huby

Picture the scene; you live on an island

called Atlantis in the middle of the Atlantic

Ocean. You have everything you would ever

want because of goods on the island. You

have power and wealth, life couldnt be

better. But all of a sudden everything

changes; the people on your island start to

become greedy and selfish which makes the

gods angry. Then Zeus, King of the gods

decides to punish the Atlanteans by sinking

the island and in one big wave Atlantis is

gone forever. That is what happened to

Atlantis.

The reason we know about Atlantis is

because a Greek mathematician called Plato

wrote about it in a book in about 360 BC.

Before then people had thought that Atlantis

was all a story, until 1881 when people

started to believe that Atlantis might actually

be some kind of lost place. But some people

think that Plato made Atlantis up because

there is no record of it anywhere else.

What do you think?

Shipwrecks by Harry Huby

Titanic: The Titanic was a passenger ship built by

the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast with

Thomas Andrews as her naval architect. It had

2223 passengers on board and only 1517 survived.

The ship was sailing from Southampton in the UK

to New York in the USA, it was her first ever

voyage. Everyone thought she would never sink so

they only had 20 life boats available. This was

nowhere near enough to fit all the passengers in.

Women and children were encouraged to board

the lifeboats first. In the end, the Titanic sinking

took the lives of 1,347 men and 103 women. Most

of the crew also died during the sinking of the

Titanic.

Deepest: In 1996 the Blue Water Recoveries from

the UK discovered the shipwreck of the Rio

Grande, a German war ship which was sunk by

American war ships in 1944. The depth was 5762

meters.

Largest: In 1979 the Dead Weight Crude Oil

carrier weighing 321,186 tonnes, broke in two in

the Straits of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf.

Oldest: A single mast sailing ship was discovered

in 1912, it sunk near the south of Turkey in the 14th

Century BC

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TOP TEN BIGGEST FISH EVER.

by Toby Gaulton

Fishing is one of the hardest sports ever known to

man. Im going to tell you the top ten biggest fish ever

hooked.

1.BLACK MARLIN

The black Marlin is truly the biggest fish ever. It is the

fastest as well. It has a top speed of 130 kilometres

per hour. The biggest one ever caught was 707.61

KG.

2.BLUEFIN TUNA

The blue fin tuna is a hard fighter so you are lucky if

you can catch one. The biggest one ever was 678.58

KG.

3.ATLANTIC BLUE MARLIN

Atlantic Blue Marlin are the second biggest Marlin.

They can grow up to 14 feet long and the heaviest

one ever was 636 KG.

4.PACIFIC BLUE MARLIN

To take fourth is the Pacific Blue Marlin. The biggest

one was 624.14 KG.

5.SWORDFISH

The Swordfish is a highly rated fish. They leap high in

the air to try and shake the hook off. The biggest one

was 536.15 KG.

6.YELLOWFIN TUNA

The Yellow Fin is the most popular fish in the top ten.

The biggest one was 193.68 KG.

7.TARPON

The Tarpon is the oldest fish on the list. The biggest

one was 129.98 KG.

8.SAILFISH

Sailfish are very big. The biggest one was 100.24 KG.

9.WAHOO

The wahoo is like a torpedo. It is very fast. The

biggest one was 83.46 KG.

10.DORADO

The Dorado is also known as the Mahi-Mahi. They are

good fighters. The biggest one was 39.46 KG.

A beautiful drawing of a lighthouse by Harry Bloomfield

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The London

Underground by Otis Walker

The London Underground is just over 150 years old. It is also known as The Tube. It is a network

of tunnels that carry trains under London.

Here are some interesting facts that I found out about the tube:

The journey of the first Tube train took place on 9 January 1863.

Queen Elizabeth II was the first reigning monarch to take the Tube, when she took the

first ride on the Victoria line from Green Park.

The Tube became a proper name for the first time in the early 1900s, after the Central

London Railway (now the Central Line) was nicknamed the Twopenny Tube.

Police reports of German bomb raids on London in 1917 estimated that 300,000 people

were taking shelter in Tube stations.

Each year, every Tube train travels 114,500miles/184,269km.

The average speed of a train is 33km/20.5 miles per hour.

There are 426 escalators. Waterloo has the most: 23.

The total number of staff on the Underground is approximately 19,000.

The total length of the Tube network is 402km/249 miles.

Currently 1,107 million passengers are carried every year.

(Source: All these facts are taken from Underground: How the Tube Shaped London by David

Bownes, Oliver Green and Sam Mullins (London Underground by Design by Mark Ovenden and

Underground Overground: A Passengers History of the Tube.)

I have been to London many times and used the Tube to get around. I think it is exciting when you

are in the tunnel and you can hear the clacking noise of the track. When I travel in rush hour, it is

horrible because there are lots of people pushing and squashing and its uncomfortable.

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Quiz Time

Which one of us has never been found in the English Channel?

Answer:____________________________________________

Your Name: _________________________________________

Return your answers to Ms Case or Tabitha or Ellie and win some

sweets!