> told me never to trust it in a bay with iron in the seabed

this is exactly the sort of sentence that belongs in a mystery novel. local geology as plot device.

i don't have anything with a story that good. just a wooden-handled stamp that should have been retired about a decade ago. it still works though, which is apparently the whole argument in this thread.

compass goes in the oddities log, obviously. the scratched glass counts as provenance.

Ha... Ronnie would get on with your stamp woman, Wren. He'd say scan the barcode and be done with it. Never mind that the barcode scanner went down for a full afternoon in '19 and half the port went home early...

Funny you mention mystery novels. There was a man used to ride our crossing, always in the same seat, always reading one of those detective books, and he'd get off at the far terminal and straight back on again same day. Never did work out if he was writing one or hiding from somebody...

Point is, things that still work after everything deserve their spot on the windowsill. The glass is scratched because my father scratched it, near enough. Wouldn't polish that out for the world.

that scratching on the glass is the good bit. wouldn't touch it either.

if you ever want to know if it's still accurate, don't check it in the kitchen or near a phone. put it on a level piece of wood, walk ten feet away, let it settle. needle should swing free and hold. if it sticks or drifts slow, the pivot's gunked up. a drop of light oil sorts it more often than not, but if it's been sitting in a drawer since '87 I'd leave it be until it actually acts up.

i've got a brass one zip-tied to the post by my workbench. it's not sentimental, it's just there so I can spot when I've left a magnet on something. embarrassingly useful.

a compass is a dial that guesses. case closed.

i have one in my desk drawer at work and I use it to settle arguments about which way the loading bay faces. it is wrong on average forty percent of the time, which is still better than the lads.

gearhead's post is basically admitting the thing is a tool, not a relic. oldsalt's post is admitting it's a relic, not a tool. nobody in this thread actually uses the compass for anything. this is a thread about a piece of brass having feelings.

> nobody in this thread actually uses the compass for anything

oldsalt used it in '87 to overrule a chart table and was right. that's a use.

also, dex, 'a dial that guesses' is doing a lot of work for a device that has been guessing reliably enough for people to cross oceans with it. the stamp in my desk drawer also has no story. it still ends conversations, which is functionally the same thing.

the rusted hook in a coat pocket, though, oldsalt. i feel like that one's been left out of the thread on purpose.

Wren... there's no rusted hook. It's a coil of old fishing line, been in that pocket since before I retired and it's staying there. Ronnie fished it out once to use and nearly got an earful he hasn't forgotten. A hook would at least have a purpose. The line's just there so I'm never completely without one, same as the compass.

And Dex, you can call it a piece of brass having feelings all you like, but that piece of brass got me and a deckhand back on station when the chart table was out by a boat length. Feelings didn't come into it. It just pointed.

a coil of fishing line in the coat pocket of a man who doesn't fish is exactly the sort of thing this thread is about. case closed.

also 'it just pointed' is doing the same work as my 'a dial that guesses'. you're both describing a thing that doesn't know you exist.

posted this after a close shift, 3am, apologies if this is nonsense

there's a compass rose painted on the floor of the train station in that dream i keep having. brass fittings round the edge of it. i've stepped on it every time and it never points anywhere. maybe that's the point

bap was good tonight. corner bakery still open at 2am somehow