They all need to control Korea, a kingdom frozen in time and reluctant to emerge from centuries of isolation. He must take account of a weak Korean king and his shrewd queen, of murderous palace intrigue, of a powerbroker who seems more American than Chinese and a Japanese naval captain whom he will come to despise and admire in equal measure.
Published on December 18, In sea battles from the s to the end of the Napoleonic Wars a decisive factor was often the use of the carronade. It took its name from the original manufacturer, the Carron Company, which had an ironworks in Falkirk, in Scotland. The short barrel indicated that it was a short-range weapon, powerful against ships but even more so against personnel in close actions. A carronade weighed a quarter as much and used a quarter to a third of the gunpowder-charge for a long gun firing the same size of roundshot.
The lower recoil forces meant that slider mountings, rather trucks, could be employed. They could also provide a very powerful punch for a small vessel such as a gunboat or sloop. Though the basic concept remained unchanged, carronades were manufactured for a huge range, from 6 to pounders, and pounder weapons not unknown. Antoine Vanner with pdr Carronade When introduced into the Royal Navy for trial in , many captains had reported most unfavourably upon it, owing to its short range and tendency to overheat when fired rapidly. The comment on short range was justified for, devastating as a carronade could be in action, its weakness was its short range.
The analogy may be a sub-machine gun which, if used at close quarters, can be murderous, but is useless against an enemy armed with a sniper rifle who prefers to stay out of its range and count on his accuracy. Only by luring the sniper closer can the man armed with the sub-machine gun make use of its ability to unleash a devastating volume of fire.
In the case of sailing warships encountering each other at sea the presence of carronades might not be immediately obvious and in many cases were to provide a very unpleasant surprise as the ships closed. He was to be one of the officers whose entire life spanned the classic Age of Fighting Sail and who lived on to see the dawn of steam-power. She was a new ship, commissioned in and her performance in action later that year indicates that Peere Williams was relentless in training his crew to a high standard of gunnery.
On the afternoon of 10 August she was patrolling off Brest, a monotonous but war-winning duty that was familiar to the crews of hundreds of Royal Navy vessels for seven decades from the s. The weather was hazy but two vessels were sighted some four miles distant. The smaller vessel made off but the larger stood her ground, obviously willing to accept battle.
She nominally superior to the Flora in everything but armament. She was the bigger ship by about 70 tons to , important as regards enduring damage , sailed faster, and had the larger crew. Made sail and stood for them, at which they tacked and stood towards the shore for some minutes, and then brought to, having French colours flying. We made the private signal to them, which we found they did not understand by the ship hoisting a blue flag at the ensign staff. We cleared for action, hauled down the signals of recognisance and hoisted our St George's ensign, hauled up the fore-sail, bunted the main-sail and top-gallant-sai1, still running down on her to windward.
We ran within one cable's length of her and then began the action, which continued very hot on both sides till 6. They then attempted to board us, but were repulsed with great loss, we still keeping up a warm fire of great guns and musketry. The total French loss was 60 killed and 71 severely wounded. Many of these casualties resulted from the ineffectual attempt to board and the havoc unleashed on them by six pounder carronades mounted on the poop and quarter-deck of the Flora.
In the heat of the action one of these weapons was manned only the boatswain and a single boy. The French captain was killed by a musket ball just before the two ships touched, the second-in-command fell on the deck of the Flora at the head of his boarders and the first lieutenant fell between the two hulls and was crushed to death. Almost every other French officer was wounded. The report by the Nymphe's dangerously wounded second lieutenant, the Sieur de Taillard — written in Falmouth, to where the captured frigate was taken — stated that "I do not think it possible to speak too highly of the cool and collected courage shown by all the officers.
The Flora lost fewer dead — nine in total — but sustained the same number of wounded as the Nymphe and her total casualties amounted to approximately one third of her crew. She was wrecked in Published on December 15, He all but acknowledged this by his remark during his exile of St. In this article we look at an example of what was perhaps the most difficult — and all but suicidal — action of the period, the capture of an enemy vessel anchored under the protection of powerful shore batteries. Vincent — who was then flying his flag in HMS Victory. Her officers might well have regarded her position as invulnerable.
She had a crew of some He was not prepared however to give a direct order in writing and was prepared to allow McNamara a high degree of discretion. Lydiard found it and severed it by repeated blows of his sword. By one-thirty in the morning of July 10thboth ships had emerged from the treacherous waters of the Grand Pass and had joined the blockading squadron.
He was to win further praise by his participation in the capture of the Dutch base of Curacao. Anson returned to Britain thereafter and was assigned to blockade duty off the French Atlantic coast. During a gale in December she was driven towards the Cornish coast. Attempts to anchor failed and Lydiard attempted to beach her to save his crew.
Many were able to get to shore along the fallen mainmast but Lydiard was among the 60 dead, remaining on board to get as many away as possible and at last being washed off and drowned when he tried to leave. He seems to have been a Jack Aubrey type, and his colourful record included killing an army colonel in a duel. The owners took sides and unacceptable language appears to have been used — in his subsequent trail for manslaughter McNamara claimed that he had no option but to fight if he was to maintain his dignity as a naval officer.
He was acquitted and was to have an active career that culminated in promotion to rear-admiral. Audiobook available as part of a Day Free Trial Britannia's Wolf, the first in the Dawlish Chronicles series of naval adventure novels set in the Victorian period, is now available as an audio-book. It's been read by the distinguished American actor David Doersch.
If you haven't previously ordered an audio-book from audible. And if you haven't yet read, it this may be your introduction to a resolute but often self-doubting Royal Navy Captain and the woman he hesitates to recognise as the love of his life. Published on December 11, Fireships were for many centuries to be some of the most dramatic and devastating of all naval weapons, albeit that they were difficult to deploy and dangerous to their crews. The most effective and history-changing use ever of such ships was when they were used to attack the Spanish Armada at anchor off Gravelines in The effect was out of all proportion to the damage they did — or could do — as they panicked the Spanish captains into cutting their cables and running out into the North Sea.
Adverse weather made a return impossible, ending hopes of landing a Spanish army on British soil and driving the majority of the ships to destruction on the Scottish and Irish coasts. Close inshore action against French shipping by aggressive British naval officers was to be a constant feature of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and this attack, on the heavily defended French base at Dunkirk, was to be one of the most daring.
They lay under the protection of powerful coastal gun-batteries, the anchorage was patrolled by rowed gunboats and treacherous shoals and shallows made approach treacherous. Fireships were to be a key feature of the operation and four obsolete brigs were prepared for such duty — Wasp , Falcon , Comet and Rosario. There was in addition a most unusual vessel, HMS Dart , classed as a sloop since nobody knew what else to call her.
They were the brain-child of Sir Samuel Bentham — — brother of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. At this stage in his remarkable career as an engineer and naval architect, in Britain, Russia and China, Bentham held the position of Inspector General of Naval Works. Designed to operate in coastal waters these two vessels were virtually double-ended and featured a large breadth-to-length ratio, structural bulkheads, and sliding keels. Of tons and a mere 80 feet long overall, they packed an enormous punch for their size, all guns being carronades, twenty-four pounders on the upper deck, two 32 pounders on the forecastle and another two on the quarterdeck.
Bad weather delayed the start of the operation but it was finally launched on the night of 7th July, the vessels in line-ahead with Campbell and the Dart — and her massive fire-power — leading. His objective was to attack the innermost French frigate while the fireships were to grapple the other three and so destroy them. Dart drew ahead of the other British vessels and, as the night was dark, managed to come close enough by midnight for the nearest French vessel to challenge her.
Campbell answered that his ship was French, from Bordeaux, and this appears to have been accepted.
Antoine Vanner's Blog, page 12
Dart , unsuspected, moved on unhindered past the first two frigates until another French challenge asked what convoy was coming in her wake. Suspicions were however aroused on the third French ship, which now opened fire. As she ran past her, Dart unleashed a smashing broadside. Her carronades had been double-shotted with round and grapeshot — almost pounds of metal per broadside — and the effect was devastating. Campbell managed to drag the Dart fully alongside so as to allow a second boarding party to get across. This decided the issue and the French were subdued, and struck.
Dart , by comparison, suffered one man killed and eleven wounded — surprise had paid off The fireships had meanwhile launched their attack. Packed with combustible material and gunpowder, set ablaze by their volunteer crews, they were steered towards the remaining three French frigates while the Dart and the two brigs, Boxer and Biter, provided covering fire. Pulling boats accompanied them to take off the crews — the officers commanding the fireships remained on board until they were all but enveloped by flames.
The French reacted as the Spanish had done over two centuries previously — they cut their cables and sailed under fire past Dart, Boxer and Biter into shoal-waters familiar to them where the British could not follow. Unmanned now, the fireships drifted until they exploded without doing any damage to the enemy. Rowed gunboats came out from Dunkirk to join in the fray but were repulsed by the hired cutters. Incorruptible , sister of the Desiree , of the same Romaine -class She was one of the three French frigates to escape capture at Dunkirk Recognising that the three surviving French frigates were now unreachable, Inman ordered withdrawal.
With no room for prisoners and with large numbers of French wounded, he sent his captives back into Dunkirk. Success had been partial, and the moral effect of the attack must have been considerable. Campbell of the Dart was deservedly promoted to post captain and given command of the sixth-rate Ariadne. She was to see much active service thereafter, including participation in the Battle of Copenhagen in Both were to have further active careers and deserve separate blogs in the future. Watch out for them! Click here for details. If you have already read it you may like to hear a world of battle by land and sea, palace intrigue and refugee flight during a savage winter brought to life.
General Fiction
Published on December 08, This 6,ton, feet cargo and passenger liner was a relatively new ship, built in Scotland and entering service in At the time of her loss to a torpedo fired by the German submarine U she was carrying a cargo of sodium nitrate from Chile to Egypt. Two seamen lost their lives — a tragedy for their direct families, but small in scale compared with that occasioned by so many other sinkings in the period.
It also played by comparison with a much more dreadful tragedy — if not to say scandal — in which the Orteric had been involved shortly after entering service four years previously. SS Orteric in peacetime An earlier blog on this site dealt with the conditions in which steerage-class passengers were carried on board ship in the last decades of the 19th Century click here for link.
It is however somewhat of a shock to read of conditions as bad, or worse, prevailing on a newly-built, modern ship, just before the outbreak of World War 1. The Portuguese boarded at Lisbon and the Spanish — apparently Andalusians — boarded at Gibraltar scene of another emigrant shiptragedy — click here for blog link. As this was a year before the Titanic disaster was to expose the scandal of even luxurious passenger liners carrying insufficient numbers of life boats, one can only question how many of these people could have been saved in the event of collision, fire or wrecking.
It is hard to imagine what the accommodation provisions must have been — one presumes temporary bunks in the cargo spaces — and one wonders also how the catering and sanitation needs could have been met. The conditions these emigrants were fleeing from in their homelands must have been dreadful if a voyage of this nature was accepted by so many as the price of deliverance. Portuguese immigration to Hawaii had been underway since , mostly coming from Madeira and the Azores, but it was only from that Spaniards were recruited to work on the plantations and given free passage.
The voyage to Hawaii lasted 48 days and rough conditions in the Atlantic, and rougher ones still when rounding Cape Horn at the tip of South America, made it an uncomfortable one. This might have been tolerable — just — had it not been for an outbreak of measles. This resulted in 58 deaths, the majority of them of children.
The overcrowding, and the necessarily poor ventilation during stormy conditions, must have made rapid cross-infection unavoidable. The fact also that many of these people were from rural communities meant that they had little chance of having built up immunity to common childhood diseases. In this respect the child growing up in an urban slum might have been better protected than one from a remote rural village. It would be interesting to know how — or if at all — the directors and shareholders of the company owning that Orteric reacted to the news.
Forstmann was to be one of the most successful U-boat commanders of the war, scoring the highest tonnage loss — , tons — and sinking ships. On sighting the U-boat on the surface the Orteric tried to escape but when this proved impossible the decision was taken to surrender. The ship was torpedoed anyway but the occupants, other than two seamen, got away in three boats. They were picked up by a British hospital ship three hours later. Surviving the war, he was to qualify as a lawyer thereafter and to work — most appropriately — for the Thyssen coal company.
He was an active member of the conservative-liberal German People's Party until its dissolution after the Nazis came to power in He returned to the navy during World War 2 and assigned to administrative positions.
[Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin] On Record Rock, Pop(Book Fi org) | Marián Andričík - theranchhands.com
His subsequent peacetime career was concerned with housing management and in was involved with the design of Pestalozzi villages, a charity set up after the war for accommodation and education of children from all sides in the conflict. It is still active, sponsoring study by students from developing countries. It is strange to think of such admirable work having remote links to the tragedies involving the SS Orteric and that a man who had been responsible for so much destruction should have played a such a role in reconciliation.
- Simply Apple: Lossessione di Steve Jobs per la semplicità (Saggi) (Italian Edition).
- Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy (Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur).
- Follow the Author?
- December 22, 2015.
- Navigating Safety: Necessary Compromises and Trade-Offs - Theory and Practice (SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology).
And the owners of the Orteric? One presumes that they were compensated for their loss. And, even if it was paid, no compensation could ever have made up for the deaths of the 58 peacetime deaths in her holds. It was due to an unfortunate incident involving a keyboard and a cup of coffee. Be warned my experience - the two don't go well together! Watch out for announcements about both next week. Published on December 04, Hazards of suppressing the Slave Trade, The penalty for so doing was initially only a fine but as the trade was so profitable that this had relatively little impact.
In however the penalty was increased to transportation four fourteen years. This involved being sent to Australia as a convict and set to work there either directly for the government or in indentured service to a settler. Return to Britain during this term was punishable by death. Increasing scarcity value tended to make trading even more profitable for successful operators and so this penalty did not prove fully effective.
The decision was then taken in to treat slave-trading as piracy and therefore punishable by death. Thirteen years later this was reduced, once more back to transportation, but now for life, not just fourteen years. In , however, the punishment inflicted on British subjects for trading in slaves was changed to transportation for life. Slaves being shipped out to a vessel offshore - a Royal Navy cruiser has been spotted on the horizon left - a quick getaway is desirable!
During these years however other nations also abolished the trade — the United States in but at sea only , Portugal in , Sweden in , the Netherlands in and France in It should be noted that slavery per se continued to exist where it was already established. Britain was the first in implementing full emancipation, in , while Spain was to be the last, in Several of these nations were however notably unenthusiastic — to say the least — about enforcement. When this declined, British efforts, up to around , were shifted to combatting the Indian Ocean slave trade between East Africa and Arabia.
December 18, 2015
An earlier blog see reference at the end of this article pointed out just how dangerous such service could be — an annual mortality rate of 55 per 1, men for Royal Navy crews operating off West Africa, compared with 10 for fleets in British waters or in the Mediterranean. Disease, particularly malaria, was a killer, but so too were the ruthless masters and crews of the slave ships they were chasing. These vessels were usually small, fast and often armed, and the condition in which their human cargos were confined shamed Humanity.
There were cases of some people in a single hold and decks being battened down during storms. Stories were told of more than a third of the slaves being found dead from suffocation when the hatches were opened after a hurricane and that rather than have the trouble of hauling up the dead bodies, the hatches were battened down again. A third more might die during the remainder of the voyage. The previous blog mentioned told of one instance that typified the dangers to the Anti-Slavery Squadron and events in , as described below, were to provide another.
The procedure, once the slaves had been released, was for the fate of the ship — usually resale by the government — was to be decided by a court established for the purpose. Mansfield and four seamen. The four Brazilian slavers who had manned the vessel before capture were kept on board as prisoners but — unwisely — were allowed the freedom of the ship during daytime. Unfavourable winds caused Mansfield to decide to abandon the attempt to reach St. Helena and to head instead for the nearer British base in Sierra Leone.
Around midday on 11th August Mansfield was on deck, presumably at the helm, two of the British seamen were aloft and the two others were sleeping in their bunks in the same space as the small-arms were stowed. Why Mansfield and his men had not carried their weapons at all times is unclear — it would seem to have been a wide precaution in the circumstances. One of the prisoners now moved up behind the unsuspecting Mansfield and attacked him with an axe used for chopping firewood. The other three prisoners simultaneously attacked the seamen in their bunks, wounding both. They managed somehow managed to get on deck and here one of the two died of his injuries.
Lieutenant Mansfield, meanwhile, had survived the initial attack and had grabbed a piece of firewood to defend himself. A prisoner armed with a cutlass now attacked him and inflicted nine separate wounds, their severity mitigated only by the fact that Mansfield was wearing a greatcoat. The two sailors — both of them unarmed — who had been aloft now arrived on deck and Mansfield, weak from profuse bleeding, struggled towards them.
The surviving man who had been sleeping below had also reached them. None were armed and there was nothing for it but to attack their attackers with their bare hands. It says much for the strength of the seamen of the era that this proved successful. One of the prisoners was thrown overboard in the scuffle and the others were overpowered. The seamen were about to send the three remaining after him when Mansfield, who was all but unconscious, revived enough to order them to be kept alive so as to face trial at Sierra Leone.
Freetown in this period - a dangerous station, due to malaria It took some three weeks — until 1st of September — for the Romeo Primero to reach Freetown. Taylor Brynleith Rising by D. Mayes Buddha, Christ, and the Eagle by Dr.
- Generalized Linear Mixed Models: Modern Concepts, Methods and Applications (Chapman & Hall/CRC Texts in Statistical Science)!
- A Happy Death (Penguin Modern Classics)!
- Angel in the Shadows (Mystery, Murder, and Magic Book 3).
- Quantum: Greg Mandel, T2 (SCIENCE-FICTION) (French Edition);
- 4 customer reviews!
- Product details;
Hersom Captive Bride by Marjorie J. Davis Cost of Truth by Julie K. Parrott Cottonwood, an Observation by J. Todd, The by Howard E. Mupanduki Diary of a Philanderer by Anthony M. Wilson Did You See the Monkeys? Jackson Do the Math by Philip B. Klein Frankie Ravan by F. Dorsey Future Prometheus by J. Comstock Ignorance by Sally A. Jocic Journey to Virginland: Young Karamba by O. Bowden Magellan's Cross by Richard J.