Lockdown Diaries II, Day 2: Written Like A Ship’s Log

Today’s lockdown diary entry takes a ship’s log as inspiration. (We’ve got to have some variety!)

Date: Fri, 6 November 2020
Location: 51°30’35” N, 0°7’5” W
Course: Uncertain, subject to wind direction
Speed: Drifting without power
Weather Conditions: Major depression over the British Isles

0900 Underway. Visiting heads. 0915 Crew exercise (daily walk on deck). 0940 Changing course to galley. 1000 Changing course to captain’s cabin, attending to paperwork. 1120 Taking call from friendly ship, anchored in nearby waters under a quarantine flag (epidemic on board). Offered to help with logistics and distance training, which was gratefully accepted. 1300 working lunch, followed by galley duty in the absence of lower ranked crew (participating in training off ship).

Empty shelves in Sainsbury’s 6 November 2020 (London)

1400 Underway to the nearby island of Sainsbury’s to procure some luxury provisions (Coke) which was not delivered by our supply ship this morning.  1425 Landed at Sainsbury’s. Island already stripped of most things edible or useful. 1430 Suffered a surprise physical attack by an uncivilised and hostile native; escaped without injuries but with a bruised spirit. 1435 Successfully evacuated Sainsbury’s in the company of one 6-pack Coke cans without further incidents. Arriving on board ship at 1500, informing crew that local natives are now on the war path.

1530 Contacting admiralty to investigate whether Admiral B. Johnson has the slightest idea where we’re supposed to be heading. All information classified; much gossip from the admiralty offices but no facts. Suspect admiral hasn’t got the slightest f***ing clue. The admiralty is not aware of any supply  shortages, nor that this has resulted in local middle class tribes becoming aggressive…  

And now we’re handing over to Christopher Columbus whose encounter with the natives on this day in 1492 was much more peaceful…

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)

Tuesday 6 November [1492]

Yesterday evening, says the Admiral, the two men he had sent out to investigate the interior returned and described how they had walked the 12 leagues to a village of 50 houses, where he says that there must have been 1000 people because many live together in one house. These houses are like very large tents. They said that they had been received with great solemnity after their custom, and they all, men and women alike, came to see them and put them up in the best houses. The people touched them and kissed their hands and feet and marvelled at them, believing that they had come from heaven and that is what they gave them to understand. They gave them things to eat from what they had. They said that when they arrived, the most honourable men of the village carried them on their shoulders to the main house and gave them two seats on which to sit, and they all sat on the floor around them. The Indian who accompanied them told them how the Christians lived and how they were good people. Then the men went out and the women came in and sat around them in the same way, kissing their hands and feet, touching them to see if they were of flesh and blood like them. They asked them to stay there with them for at least five days.

They showed them the cinnamon and the pepper and other spices which the Admiral had given them, and the people said in sign language that there was a lot of it nearby to the SE, but that they did not know if there was any thereabouts. When they found no indication of any city, they returned, and if they had allowed all those who wanted to do so, more than 500 men and women would have come with them, because they thought that they were returning to heaven. However, one of the elders of the village came with them with his son and a manservant.

The Admiral spoke with them, paid them many courtesies, and he pointed out many lands and islands which there were in that region. The Admiral thought about bringing him back to the Monarchs, and says that he did not know what came over him but apparently out of fear and the dark night he wanted to go ashore. And the Admiral says that because the flagship was on dry land, not wishing to upset him he let him go. The Indian said that in the morning he would return; but he never came back.

The two Christians found many people, men and women, on their journey who were on their way to their villages carrying a smouldering brand of herbs which they are accustomed to smoke. They found no village on the way with more than five houses, and all treated them with the same respect. They saw many kinds of trees and plants and fragrant flowers. They saw birds of many kinds, different from those of Spain, except partridges and nightingales which sang, and geese, of which there are a great many. They saw no four-legged animals except dogs which did not bark. The land was very fertile and cultivated with those ‘niames’ and kidney beans and broad beans all very unlike our own; likewise, Indian corn and a great quantity of cotton, picked and spun and woven; in a single house they had seen more than 500 arrobas, and 4000 quintales a year could be obtained there.

The Admiral says that it seemed to him that they did not cultivate it and that it fruits all year round. It is very fine and produces large bolls. He says that everything those people had they gave for a very low price, and that they would give a great basket of cotton for the end of a leather thong or whatever else they are given. They are people, says the Admiral, completely without evil or aggression, naked every one of them, men and women, as the day they were born. It is true that the women wear only a cotton garment, large enough to cover their genitals, but no more. They are very good looking, not very black, rather less so than the Canary Islanders.

Most Serene Princes (says the Admiral at this point), I hold that once dedicated and religious people knew their language and put it to use, they would all become Christians. And so I hope in Our Lord that Your Highnesses will determine with all speed to bring such great peoples to the Church and convert them, just as you have destroyed those who refused to confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; and at the end of your days, for we are all mortal, you will leave your kingdoms in tranquillity, free from heresy and evil, and will be well received before the Eternal Creator, whom it may please to grant you long life and great increase of your many kingdoms and possessions, and the will and the inclination to spread the holy Christian religion as you have done hitherto. Amen.

Today I will refloat the flagship and I am readying myself to set out on Thursday in the name of God to go SE and seek the gold and spices and discover land. These are all the words of the Admiral, who planned to leave on Thursday, but because the wind was against him, could not depart until the twelfth day of November.

(Diary of Christopher Columbus, First Voyage)

Further Reading / Lectura recomendada:
⇒ Diary of Christopher Columbus (First Voyage)
⇒ Los cuatro viajes del almirante y su testamento (Cristóbal Colón) 
⇒ More about ships' watches!

Lockdown Diaries: Day 60 (Running Away to Sea)

Virtual Escape: Running Away to Sea

It’s such a beautiful day today where I am – blue skies, glorious sunshine… we’re only missing the sea, the sand and the palm trees to make everything perfect.

So I thought today we’re escaping to the sea with a few books…  The first of which absolutely has to be:

Lockdown Diaries: Day 52 (Francis Drake Captures the Cacafuego)

Locked Down in London, Day 52: We’ve Got an Exit Strategy!

Well… sort of.

We’re going to live the rest of our lives like this:

Submarine!

Visits to Chatham Historic Dockyard, home among others to the diesel-electric submarine HMS Ocelot, and to the Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth, home to HMS Alliance, a submarine built at the end of World War II, means I’ve got some photos of the outside and inside of the submarines to share. (Click on the gallery to enlarge photos.)

This being primarily a book blog, the photos are accompanied by a book list – half a dozen books set on submarines. Not a definite list, by any means; I have heard of several others well spoken off (but I haven’t got round to reading them yet). If you’d like to recommend a book on submarines that you enjoyed, please leave a comment below.

Mary Rose

Guess the Picture

A week ago I shared this photo with you:

Adivina la imagen

Hace una semana compartí esta foto con vosotros:

Any idea what it is? No need to guess any more, just read on.

Alguna idea ¿de qué es? Pues no tenéis que hacer más conjeturas – solo tenéis que seguir leyendo.

Implacabile (The Corvette that Never Was)

The Impacabile!

Monostory’s heart sank a little, just a little. The old memory returned: his first ship, the Implacabile, was also a warship… and if she still existed… if she could have taken up her station in Fiume to guard the port… if… and again, if…

(András Dékány: The Black Prince)

I wanted to start this post with the adrenaline-rush of a heroic fight of the Hungarian frigate Implacabile against overwhelming odds during the 1848-49 War of Independence on the Adriatic – as told by András Dékány in his novel The Black Prince…

Unfortunately, Dékány didn’t go into sufficient detail.

The legend of the Implacabile lives in the consciousness of the sea-loving minority of the Hungarian public because of András Dékány’s novel. He seduced generations of Hungarian children with it; it forms the background of the protagonist Balázs Monostory. Yet Dékány never fully developed the story of the Implacabile. He contented himself with a handful of suggestive and emotive fragments, like the moment when the Taitsing crosses with Chinese pirates:

The Taitsing surged ahead, running before the wind. She was a wonderful ship, with a wonderful crew.
“The Implacabile!” the joyful memory bubbled up in Monostory.
Yes; the lost, sunk Hungarian frigate sped like this as she charged into battle against the Austrian emperor’s corvette.
“The Implacabile!”

In a novel that runs to more than 400 pages, Dékány only mentioned the ship’s name 13 times. This, however, didn’t prevent him to play expertly with his readers’ imagination and emotions. From the emotive half-sentences he scattered throughout the novel we created an entirely fictitious, glorious fight between the first Hungarian frigate and untold scores of Austrian warships on the bluest of all seas, the Adriatic. And so the legend of the Implacabile was born, thanks to a children’s book.

On the north wall of the cabin, there was, however, one thing to arrest a visitor’s attention: you could see a ship’s flag here, spread out. The flag was rather faded with time but it was a ship’s flag – a rare object. The flag of the Implacabile, the first Hungarian Navy frigate, sunk ten years earlier and commanded by Balázs Monostory, was the only decoration in the cabin of the captain of the Taitsing.

The flag, saved when the frigate sank, had accompanied Balázs Monostory for ten years. But so far he failed to realise his plan of handing it over to his leader, Lajos Kossuth, a man in exile just like the owner of the cabin himself.

Gabriela Malatesta’s eyes clouded over as she looked at the flag. Red-white-green. Those same colours formed the flag of the Italian patriots.

The fragments of information actually shared by Dékány in The Black Prince add up to this:

• The Implacabile was a Hungarian frigate, intended to defend the harbour of Fiume but has never taken up her station to do so
• Her captain was Balázs Monostory
• She fought the Austrian corvette Condor – incidentally also commanded by a Hungarian officer – off the coast of Istria on the Adriatic during the 1848-49 War of Independence
• During the battle, the sailors of the Implacabile used hand bombs fabricated on board in the manner of the Italian carbonaris 
• She sunk after the battle and her shipwrecked sailors were rescued by a passing Turkish warship

But what’s the truth – if any – behind the legend? Did the Implacabile even exist? And if she did, did she ever fight a warship of the Emperor of Austria on the Adriatic?

Anomaly (Or The Navy of a Landlocked Country)

There was once a kingdom without a king, a country without a sea – ruled by an admiral without a navy.

Do you think I’m joking?!

“Historia narrativa de una forma cautivadora”: Entrevista a Roger Crowley

Leer esto en inglés (texto original de la entrevista)

Hoy vamos a hablar de – y con – uno de mis autores favoritos.

Empecemos con un extracto:

View from the Doge’s prison, Venice / Vista de la prisión del Doge, Venecia

…Pisani podía oír la bulla desde el calabozo ducal. Puso la cabeza contra de las barras y gritó: «¡Viva San Marcos!» La multitud le respondió con un clamor ronco. Arriba, en la sala de los senadores, seguía el debate nervioso. La multitud puso escaleras frente de las ventanas y golpeó la puerta de la sala con una llamada rítmico: ¡Vettor Pisani! ¡Vettor Pisani!

(Perdóname por los errores de traducción,
es que sólo tengo el libro en inglés.)

¿Eso te parece un extracto de una novela?

No lo es.

Es historia – en la forma que la escribió el historiador británico Roger Crowley.

El extracto arriba es de Venecia: Ciudad de Fortuna, el libro de Roger Crowley sobre el auge y la caída del poder naval veneciano. Si quieres enterar por qué el almirante Pisani (1324-1380) – obviamente muy popular – se halló en la prisión del Doge y qué le pasó después, pues ya sabes qué hacer.

(¡No, eso no significa que lo buscas en Wikipedia!)

“Narrative History at its Most Enthralling”: Interview with Roger Crowley

Leer esto en castellano

Today we’re going to talk about – and talk with – one of my favourite authors.

Let’s start with an excerpt:

View from the Doge’s prison, Venice

..Pisani could hear the cries from the ducal prison. Putting his head to the bars, he called out ‘Long live St Mark!’ The crowd responded with a throaty roar. Upstairs in the senatorial chamber a panicky debate was underway. The crowd put ladders to the windows. They hammered the chamber door with a rhythmic refrain: ‘Vettor Pisani! Vettor Pisani!’

Reads like a novel?

It isn’t.

It’s history – as written by the British historian, Roger Crowley.

The excerpt above is from City of Fortune, Roger Crowley’s book on the rise and decline of Venetian naval power. If you’d like to find out why – the clearly popular – Admiral Pisani (1324-1380) was languishing in the Doge’s prison and what happened next, you know what to do.

(No, I did not mean look it up on Wikipedia!)

Los lusiadas o como Portugal se ganó un imperio

Read this in English ⇒ The Lusiads or How Portugal Won an Empire

Fui a Portugal para una semana con un libro, y volví con dos; lo nuevo está en portugués.

I felt this might be the closest I’d ever get to reading The Lusiads in the original… / Me pareció que esto sería lo mejor que puedo hacer para leer Los lusiadas en su idioma original…

Eso suena muy bien pero no tengas que envidiarme: no logré aprender portugués en una sola semana (echo la culpa a los portugueses, ya que insistieron en hablar conmigo en inglés). Sin embargo, he comprado un libro en portugués, y no cualquier libro, sino la más famosa obra de literatura portuguesa: el poema épico, Los lusiadas, escrito por el poeta nacional de Portugal, Luís Vaz de Camões.

Aunque sólo en la forma de un libro de historietas.

Todos aquí pueden confirmar que el español y el portugués son suficientemente similares para ser posible leer portugués un poquito sin aprenderlo, ¿no? Por esta razón me parece que tengo posibilidad de comprender Los lusiadas cuando el texto va acompañado con MUCHAS ilustraciones. Y un poco mejor: cuando el texto va acompañado con MUCHAS ilustraciones y ya conozco el argumento.

Porque la historia que Luís de Camões narra en Los lusiadas es de la era héroica de la navegación portuguesa: el viaje de Vasco da Gama en 1497-98, cuando él se convirtió en el primer europeo en llegar a India doblando el Cabo de Buena Esperanza. Y el libro con el que fui a Portugal, Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire (Conquistadores: Como Portugal creó el primer imperio global) por Roger Crowley, se trata del mismo viaje – y un poco más. (Conquerors es el último libro de Crowley, y desgraciadamente todavía no está traducido al español, pero espero que no tardaría mucho.)

Caravels (Carabelas)

Caravels were the preferred ships for discovery of the Portuguese and the Spanish in the 15th and 16th century on account of their seaworthiness, speed and manoeuvrability, not to mention their shallow draught which allowed the close exploration of unknown coasts. Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama and Columbus all sailed in caravels; one of Magellan’s ships was a caravel too. Having recently read a book about Portuguese explorers and visited Portugal, I noticed these famous ships (perhaps understandably) were just about depicted everywhere…

Carabelas fueron los naves preferidos de los navegantes portugueses y españoles en la era de los descubrimientos en los siglos XV y XVI, debido a su navegabilidad y velocidad, por no mencionar que por ser barcos de poco calado los navegantes pudieron acercarse más a las costas desconocidas. Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama y Cristóbal Colón navegaban en carabelas; uno de los naves de Magallanes también fue una carabela. Como acabo de leer un libro sobre los navegantes portugueses, en mi viaje reciente a Lisboa me fijaba en como esos barcos famosos eran representados en todas partes (tal vez con razón)…

The Lusiads or How Portugal Won an Empire

Leer esto en castellano

I went to Portugal for a week with a book and came back with two; the new one is in Portuguese.

I felt this might be the closest I’d ever get to reading The Lusiads in the original…

This sounds grandiloquent but you needn’t turn yellow with envy: I did not manage to learn Portuguese merely in one week (I blame the Portuguese who insisted on speaking to me in English). Nevertheless, I acquired a book in Portuguese, and not just any book but the most famous piece of Portuguese literature: the epic poem The Lusiads by Portugal’s national poet, Luís Vaz de Camōes.

Although only in the form of a comics book.

Any Spanish speaker will testify to the fact that if you can read Spanish, you can read Portuguese to a very decent degree. Consequently I fancy my chances of making sense of The Lusiads when accompanied by LOTS of pictures. Better still: I fancy my chances of making sense of The Lusiads when accompanied by LOTS of pictures and when I already know the plot.

Because the story Luís de Camões tells in The Lusiads is from the heroic age of Portuguese navigation: the journey of Vasco da Gama in 1497-98, when he became the first European to reach India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. And the book I went to Portugal with, Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire by Roger Crowley, treats the same journey – and a bit more.

Hero Under the Death Sentence (The Unwritten Biography of Cayetano Valdés II)

Continued from Save the Trinidad (The Unwritten Biography of Cayetano Valdés)

Sometimes people have the misfortune to live in ‘interesting’ times. Exciting, even. In the case of Spain, in fact, it’s difficult to find a period of history when the times were not ‘exciting’ – so it shouldn’t come as surprise that the excitement in Cayetano Valdés’s life not ended with Trafalgar, but rather, it began.

I mean you’d think there he was, sitting ashore in the naval ports of Cádiz and Cartagena, figuratively licking his wounds… having been promoted to senior officer, safely behind a desk in an office, pushing paper in the grand Spanish fashion, into quiet old age – since there wasn’t much of a navy left for him to command, right?

Wrong.

Save the Trinidad (The Unwritten Biography of Cayetano Valdés)

Date: 14 February 1797 
Place: The Atlantic, off Cape St Vincent (Portugal)

If you’re English and into naval history, you will recognise the time and place as the Battle of Cape St Vincent – one of nine, that is. (Clearly it was a popular place for enemy fleet rendezvous.) This particular Battle of Cape St Vincent was the one which became famous for Nelson’s Patent Bridge for Boarding First Rates¹ so you’re now settling in for a nice read about Horatio Nelson and various associated heroics of the Royal Navy, right? Let’s go:

It was a cold and foggy day…

Er, no. It was a cold and foggy day but you should have taken a look at the title perhaps.

Rather than detailing Nelson’s heroics of which you can read on plenty of other websites, I’m going to write about a Spanish naval officer: Cayetano Valdés, who had been cast in the role of having to save the Santísima Trinidad, the pride of the Spanish navy, the largest warship of its time.

Twice.

A topic that you won’t find much discussed in English elsewhere (for entirely understandable reasons).

Salamis (According to Herodotus)

Salamis – an island in the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea, opposite Mount Aigaleo, 16 kilometres west of Athens.

Salamis – a battle that defined history for centuries to come.

The Warriors of Salamis by Achilles Vasileiou, on the island of Salamis. Photo by Sculptureholic via Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 4.0]

The Secret of the Greek Galley

The Antikythera Shipwreck

In 1900, sponge divers discovered the wreck of an ancient Greek galley off the Aegean island of Antikythera more than fifty metres deep under the surface. As usual, the find threw up a load of questions: Where did the galley come from? Where was it going to? Why did it sink? Who were the passengers? And what is that mysterious, complex mechanism found in the wreck?

The Gruesome News from Famagusta

The two hundred galleys of the Holy League – Venice, the Spanish Empire, Genoa, the Papacy, the Knights of St John and sundry smaller states on the Mediterranean seaboard – were sailing south on the Ionian Sea in battle order when a small brigantine passed them: a Venetian ship from Crete carrying the news that the town of Famagusta, the last stronghold of the Republic of Venice on Cyprus, fell to the Turks.

The date was 4 October 1571, three days before the Battle of Lepanto.

The Pirates of the Adriatic

View of the Adriatic from Fortress Nehaj, Senj. Photo by: Joadl CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Countless films have been made about the pirates of the Caribbean, not to mention the countless books written, both fictitious and factual. But how many of you knew that there used to be pirates on the Adriatic too? Or who they were or where was their lair? (Anybody who doesn’t know where the Adriatic is is probably reading the wrong blog by the way.)

Francis Drake and the North-West Passage

Franklin’s Lost Expedition

A few years ago, in one of the galleries of the National Maritime Museum of Greenwich there was exhibited a life-size model of a boat trapped in pack ice, with a suitably gruesome frozen hand protruding from under frozen canvas: a striking illustration of the fate of Captain Sir John Franklin and his crew for the younger visitors. Franklin’s expedition set out in 1845 with 129 men on board of two ships to search for the North-West Passage – a route from the Atlantic into the Pacific through the islands of Northern Canada – and was never heard of again. Despite repeated search missions in the following years and decades, the exact fate of the lost expedition remained unknown until 2014 when a Canadian research team finally located one of Franklin’s ships, the HMS Erebus.

On Monday morning, when I started to write this post, of course I couldn’t have imagined the news that broke in the media that same afternoon: that Franklin’s second ship, HMS Terror, has now also been found – the last piece of the puzzle falling into place? But although Franklin’s expedition is without doubt the most famous among all the attempts to navigate the North-West Passage, I wanted to write about another sailor who searched for the passage nearly three hundred years earlier and from the opposite direction: Francis Drake on the Golden Hind in 1579.

The Novel Life of Britain’s Greatest Frigate Captain

For me, a good non-fiction book is not one that simply gets its facts right; it also has to read well, like a novel. (Showing my lack of sophistication here.) It helps of course if the author of the non-fiction book has a good subject to work with; and the Royal Navy in the time of the Napoleonic wars certainly makes for a good subject.