Anteros

Can I just get this in under the wire for Halloween? Maybe if I'm quick :} Here's G.M. Woodward and Isaac Cruikshanks The Dance of Death Modernised which features, among other topical characters of the early 1800s, a one legged Jack Tar with whom Death is on very familiar terms...



"Why D____ me I'm one of your apprentices"

Full image below the cut and catalogue record from the Lewis Walpole Library here.

( Dance of Death Modernised )

Not AoS, but I love this photograph from The National WWII Museum, New Orleans.



I think the cataloguer was rather fond of it too...

146. Photograph. “File No: SAC-R-7-205343. January 18, 1944. Carrier ‘concert’—Romance and thoughts of home intermingle in the minds of crewmen listening to a musical shipmate’s selections (on an accordion) on the forward turret of a five inch gun aboard the USS Saratoga – en route to battle.” 18 January 1944

I wonder how many of them returned from battle?

Hello. Remember me? I haven't quite fallen off the edge of the internet :}

Work has been all encompassing for the last few months; I'm currently working on four different contacts so evenings and weekends have kinda gone to the wall. Hopefully I'll be able to off load some of the work soon though.

Anyway, enough of that, those of you who follow nodbear might have seen that our big news is that finally, after three years and many interruptions, our book on the midshipmen of HMS Indefatigable is finally finished. nodbear came up to Glasgow last week so we could finish off the manuscript and on Sunday we sent it off to the publishers. Hurray! I can't believe we finally did it. It'll be next year before the book sees the light of day, but we'll keep you posted and let you know how things progress. Thank you all for your interest and support over the years, it wouldn't have been half as much fun without you :)



Huzzah!

Some of you may remember the delightful Admiral Nelson Duck that the National Museum of the Royal Navy launched (can you launch a duck?!) last year to predictable howls of protest. Personally I thought he was very cute and was delighted to procure one to send to dear esteven.

However I recently stumbled across this remarkable piece of object d'tat that puts even the Nelson ducky in the shade. Allow me to introduce the Cherish Teddies Nelson bear.


Personally I'm rather disappointed not to have come across an Admiral Lord Nelson bear yet ;)

I’ve just started reading rather charming little miscellany called A Sea Chest: An Anthology of Ships and Sailormen, written by Miss C. Fox Smith in 1927. I haven't previously come across Miss Fox Smith but she appears to be the original AoS fangirl. And she certainly knows what she likes and what she doesn’t! Here’s her assessment of Marryat and Melville:

To the latter part of the period under consideration belong Marryat’s novels, which it is rather the fashion nowadays to despise. No doubt the Captain was not what we should now term a “highbrow”; but he had a wonderful faculty of observation, coupled with a sense of humour a modicum of which, I can not help thinking, Herman Melville would have been none the worse for. Melville has enjoyed an immense vogue since someone “discovered” him not long ago. I read him years since in his pre-discovery days; and thought then, as I still think, that he could be appallingly turgid at times, and that the glorious plums his books contain are sometimes buried in a sorry deal of indigestible transcendental pudding.

That’s you told Herman!

A very belated fly-by post for International Women's Day. In lieu of having something more original to post, here's a rather striking artwork from the current display at the Keepers Gallery at The National Archives which highlights women in original artwork from the Second World War.



Ditty Box WRNS ratings, 1939-1946, Artist Olga Lehmann
Blurb as follows:

These artworks are being shown in the gallery to mark the 70th anniversary this year of Victory in Europe Day on 8 May 1945, and as part of Women’s History Month in March. During the First World War women volunteered to undertake various roles to help the war effort. As the Second World War approached, it was clear the demand for labour would increase. From 1941, every woman in Britain aged 18-60 had to be registered to work and later that year conscription of women was introduced. In 1943, almost 90% of single women and 80% of married women were employed as part of the war effort. Women worked in numerous areas during the Second World War, in paid as well as voluntary positions. This display of original artwork from the INF 3 record series highlights just a few.

Just in case you missed this in the tv listings....Nelson in His Own Words, tonight on BBC2 at 21.00 in England and Ireland, and tomorrow at 21.00 in Scotland and Wales. Blurb as follows

Horatio Nelson was Britain's greatest naval hero. He was famed for his dash-and-glory heroics. He was also a prolific letter writer. The letters reveal that Nelson was a very different and more complex man than the hero that Britain created after his death. Using Nelson's letters this drama documentary exposes Nelson's skilful and manipulative use of PR to advance his career, and shows how he was careful in his praise of his rivals - in case they threatened his own prospects. And the letters reveal how his passionate love affair with Emma Hamilton changed his life forever. Highly regarded RSC actor Jonathan Slinger portrays Nelson.

There's a clip of the programme on the BBC website here. I'd be interested to know if that sounds even vaguely like a Norfolk accent. I suspect not. God knows, I'm no authority on Nelson, but I'll be curious to see if this is any good as Sam Willis, who features in the programme, has just tweeted "Tonight 9pm bbc2. Nelson. He would be turning in his grave if he knew I was involved."!

Sir Francis Beaufort

About 2000 piastres in 1812 apparently!

I'm reading a biography of Francis Beaufort by Nicholas Courtney and he relates an anecdote that while Beaufort was surveying the coast of Asiatic Turkey in 1812 a local aga offerred him 2000 piastres for one of his midshipmen. Beaufort was too coy to record the incident in his own log, but it was noted by the architect and archaeologist Charles Robert Cockerell who accompanied Beaufort on his survey.

Beaufort may have been unwilling to sell his midshipmen, but he wasn't averse to making good use of his handsome seamen. While trying to persuade the Pasha of Antalya to allow him to explore the inner city, Beaufort sent a gift of

...a cask of gunpowder, a hundred quail, some beer and some trinkets, wrapped in green cloth (the sacred colour of Turkey) borne ashore on pole by 'ten of the most athletic and handsome men of the crew calculated to enhance the vale of the present'.

Both Beaufort and Cockerell were noted draftsmen and water colourists, but alas, as far as I know, they neglected to record the charming midshipman and athletic and handsome crewmen :}

Courtney, N., (2002), Gale Force 10 - The life and legacy of Admiral Beaufort 1774 - 1857, Headline Book Publishing, London.

I was surprised and very moved to come across this Remembrance Day article about my home town of Stornoway in The Guardian this weekend. The article briefly tells the story of the tragic loss of the HMY Iolaire, the ship that was wrecked within sight of Stornoway harbour on Hogmanay 1919, resulting in the death of 205 sailors and service men returning home from the war. (I've written about the Iolaire here before.) This is one of the very few times I have ever read about the disaster in the national press. It's only recently that the tragedy has been commemorated on the islands, when I was a child people only mentioned the Iolaire in hushed tones before turning their faces away.

The article also refers to the sheer scale of loss that the Hebrides suffered during the war, and the impact this had on island communities.

More men enlisted in Lewis, as a proportion of the population, than in any other part of the UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand: just over 19% left to fight.

For a community built on agriculture and fishing, it was an extraordinary commitment from the young male labour on which the island’s life depended. The casualty rate was also proportionately the highest of any part of the UK and dominions. Every sixth man died, a total of 1,797.

My grandfather was one of the young Lewismen who enlisted at the age of seventeen, just a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday. He served with the Tank Corps on the Somme, but unlike so many, he was one of the lucky ones who returned to the islands.



Stornoway War Memorial