Mariner

• Eight Mariners Training Centers Now Open with Expansion to Port Orchard, WA; Spokane, WA; and Meridian, ID
  SEATTLE, Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Seattle Mariners and EL1 Sports (EL1), a leading national youth sports training company, today announced the expansion of the Mariners Training Centers (MTC) with the launch of three new training facilities in Port Orchard, WA; Spokane, WA; and Meridian, ID.
• The Mariners Training Centers are part of a multi-year partnership between the organizations aimed at fostering equitable access and increasing youth participation in baseball and softball.
• The Mariners Training Centers support team training and offer new camps, clinics and one-on-one lesson programming to support increased accessibility for area athletes from beginners through the elite level.
• Mariners Training Centers aim to double the number of athletes served in 2024, reaching over 10,000 across the Mariners' five-state market.

• This past Saturday, the teams celebrated the formation of the group with a KCPEC Youth Play Day & Fundraiser event in Tukwila.
• The study highlighted stark inequities across the region and inspired the creation of the coalition, which is currently fiscally sponsored by the Seattle Parks Foundation.
• "Having the full support of our region's professional sports teams will reinforce our combined efforts to make it safer and easier for kids to play."
• "The Mariners are committed to supporting the important work of KCPEC as we advance the team's mission of serving our communities.

• Geospace Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: GEOS) today announced a rental contract with Walker Marine Geophysical , a high resolution land and marine seismographic surveyor provider who will rent 3,000 of the new product, Mariner ®, shallow water seabed wireless seismic data acquisition nodes.
• Based on current contract terms, the minimum value of the agreement is $3.2 million.
• “We appreciate longtime customers such as Walker Marine who continue to recognize the value of gathering high quality data for their customers,” said Walter R. Wheeler, President and CEO, Geospace Technologies.
• “In today’s competitive ocean bottom node market, companies with staying power are choosing to protect their reputation and future business by selecting top quality seismic survey tools like Mariner.

• That night in 2008, my trepidation rose quickly when I heard it was my Uncle Gerry from Sydney who was on the line.
• I’ve just been on the phone with a Bostock woman, a “white” Bostock woman from A.J.’s side of the family.
• I’ve just been on the phone with a Bostock woman, a “white” Bostock woman from A.J.’s side of the family.
• He told me Thelma was an avid genealogist who had been researching the Bostock family tree for over 30 years.

‘They were slave traders!’

• In their long conversation, Thelma told him she had traced the Bostock family line back to the 1600s in England.
• “Guess who our white ancestors were?” Chuckling to himself, Uncle deliberately paused for dramatic effect before he blurted out: “They were slave traders!
• A couple of generations of slave traders!
• And by the end of the call, she kindly invited me to come and visit her next time I was up that way.
• The two “Roberts” were the slave traders.
• Thelma explained that after slave trading was abolished, the British government arrested Robert Bostock Jnr and his business partner John McQueen, and sentenced them to “transportation” to the colony for 14 years.

Befriending a slave-trade historian

• But before we lost touch, she introduced me to the slave-trade historian Emma Christopher.
• Emma’s field of expertise is the transatlantic slave trade, Pacific Islander labour, West African and historical slavery, and modern slavery.
• When a fellow historian told her that a mansion built by a convict transported for slave trading still existed in Tasmania, Emma was astonished.
• Read more:
  From the Caribbean to Queensland: re-examining Australia's 'blackbirding' past and its roots in the global slave trade

‘I feel numb about it’

• Emma was surprised when Thelma told her about the Aboriginal branches of the Bostock family.
• So, it turned out that my family are not the only Indigenous descendants of Robert Bostock.
• In 2018, Emma’s book Freedom in Black and White: A lost story of the illegal slave trade and its global legacy was published.
• Frowning, I lamely said, “I don’t know what to say … I feel numb about it – I just wish I had better words to say.” That was over 12 years ago.

Our ‘mob of blackfellas’

• Her name, this record and other archival documents (which name her), as well as confirmation from Bundjalung Elders, indicate that she was a traditional Aboriginal woman from the Wollumbin/Mount Warning people.
• We always knew we were Bundjalung, and my father had frequently told us, “Our mob are from the Tweed”, but he didn’t know much else.
• This is an edited extract from Reaching Through Time by Shauna Bostock (Allen & Unwin, $34.99).