Quotulatiousness

November 1, 2014

November 1, 1914 – The Battle of Coronel

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Germany, Military, Pacific, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:20

A hundred years ago today, the Royal Navy lost the Battle of Coronel to Vice Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee’s squadron of armoured and light cruisers off the coast of Chile. Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock was killed along with 1,570 men when HMS Monmouth and HMS Good Hope were sunk. Public reaction was furious: blame was cast on the Admiralty and especially on the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. The British public fiercely believed that any British ship was more than a match for any foreign vessel, and losing two ships while inflicting no serious damage on the enemy was scandalous.

In the Plymouth Herald, Tristan Nichols explains why Plymouth in particular took the news so badly:

TODAY the figure is hard to comprehend. On November 1, 1914, just months after the start of World War One, the Royal Navy lost two warships and nearly 1,600 lives in the South Atlantic.

The outcome of ‘The Battle of Coronel’, as it would become known, sent shockwaves across Britain, not least Plymouth.

HMS Monmouth was one of the two British cruisers involved in the battle 40 nautical miles off the coast of Chile.

She was Devonport-based and Plymouth-manned.

And every one of the 735 men on board the cruiser died on the cold and stormy seas.

Hundreds more were lost on the other Royal Navy vessel, the Portsmouth-based HMS Good Hope.

The German squadron saw just three men injured during the battle.

The build-up, battle, and ultimate demise of the 4th Cruiser Squadron during that fateful day reads like a film script.

Rear Admiral Sir Christopher (Kit) Cradock led the Royal Navy squadron to hunt down and destroy the feared German East Asia Squadron.

Both sides had reportedly only been expecting to meet a solitary cruiser – but fate would play its hand.

Rear Admiral Cradock, leading two British armoured cruisers, was up against two German armoured cruisers, and a further three light cruisers.

He was reportedly given orders to engage with the enemy, despite outlining his concerns at being outnumbered and outgunned.

According to the history books the two British armoured cruisers were inferior in every respect.

Follow orders he did, and it led to a devastating outcome for the proud British squadron.

It’s not quite as clear that Cradock followed all of his orders, as Churchill had specifically instructed him to keep the old battleship HMS Canopus with his squadron at all times until a modern armoured cruiser, HMS Defence, was able to join him (Defence, however, had been recalled part-way to the Falklands). Instead, Cradock had detached Canopus to defend the coaling station in the Falkland Islands before crossing into the Pacific, headed toward Valparaiso. Without Canopus, Cradock was totally out-gunned by von Spee’s ships.

Wikipedia reports a Canadian connection with the battle:

The Coronel Memorial Library at Royal Roads Military College, now Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada was named in honour of the four Canadian midshipmen who perished in HMS Good Hope at the Battle of Coronel.

Update: The Royal Canadian Navy is marking the anniversary.

The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) will mark the Battle of Coronel on November 1st. This battle saw the first Canadian military casualties of the First World War, and the first ever casualties in the history of the RCN. RCN personnel serving today salute the following shipmates from the past:

  • Midshipman Malcolm Cann, 19, of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia;
  • Midshipman John V. W. Hatheway, 19, of Fredericton, New Brunswick;
  • Midshipman William Archibald Palmer, 20, of Halifax, Nova Scotia; and
  • Midshipman Arthur Wiltshire Silver, 20, of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

All four RCN midshipmen died in the Battle of Coronel, which took place on November 1, 1914 off the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel.

Let’s ditch that outdated relic called Daylight Saving Time

Filed under: Government, USA, WW1 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 11:42

In the Wall Street Journal, Jo Craven McGinty examines the pro and con equation for Daylight Saving Time. The US government, of course, says it saves electricity by their measurement:

The historic reason for observing daylight-saving time — which ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday when clocks revert to standard time — is to conserve energy, by pushing sunlight forward into the evening, reducing the need for electric lights.

The U.S. government has found the strategy works. But two academic studies published in peer-reviewed journals rebut the idea, and one even concludes the policy increases demand for electricity.

The most recent government study, by the Department of Energy, tested whether expanding daylight-saving time by four weeks in 2007 reduced the use of electricity, as intended.

The study examined the additional weeks of daylight-saving time using data provided by 67 utilities accounting for two-thirds of U.S. electricity consumption. It compared average daily use in 2006, when there was no daylight saving, with the same period in 2007 when the extension took effect and found a reduction in electricity use of 0.5% in the spring and 0.38% in the fall.

However, non-government studies don’t agree:

The study, which was published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, examined residential data only, but the researchers didn’t believe commercial use would alter their findings.

“Big-box stores don’t turn on or off lights based on whether it’s light outside or dark,” Mr. Kotchen said. “In a commercial building, the lights are on when people are working no matter what.”

Rather than conserving electricity, the study found that daylight-saving time increased demand for electricity. Conditions may vary in other parts of the country, but the study concluded that Indiana is representative of much of the country.

That doesn’t mean daylight-saving time has never worked since its introduction during World War I. But, said Mr. Kotchen, “the world has changed. Lighting is a small amount of energy and electricity use in households. The big things are heating and cooling, particularly as air conditioning has become more prevalent. We’re fooling ourselves to continue calling it an energy policy given the studies that show it doesn’t save energy.”

H/T to Terence Corcoran for the link.

World of Warships previews aircraft carriers

Filed under: Gaming, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:36

While I probably won’t have enough spare time to add World of Warships to my gaming habits, I’ve been interested in watching the development of the game. Here’s their latest reveal, the aircraft carrier class:

Published on 30 Oct 2014

Wargaming gladly announces the release of the third episode of World of Warships developer diaries series. This video is dedicated to aircraft carriers, the most unique type of vessels in World of Warships. Enjoy!

3D printing today is at the same stage as photography before Kodak

Filed under: Business, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:17

Virginia Postrel looks at the current state of adoption for 3D printing:

Contrary to what the names suggest, a desktop 3-D printer today isn’t analogous to a 2-D desktop printer in the 1980s. When computer printers spread, after all, they didn’t replace printing plants. They replaced typewriters. As costs dropped and graphics software became easy to use, people found all sorts of new uses for desktop printing. But the technology originally caught on by offering a better way to do something familiar.

Instead of thinking of 3-D printers as printers, it makes more sense to think of them as cameras: a way for non-artists to create images. Before it went digital, photography too required a whole ecosystem, with cameras, film, developing and so on. George Eastman created a vast amateur market by making the part of photography people cared about — capturing pictures — easy, while hiding the technically demanding steps. Kodak handled the film and development, proclaiming, “You Press the Button, We Do the Rest.”

The critical insight is that the image is what’s exciting, not the machine that generates it.

“What 3-D printers are really producing, is demand for design. These machines, this industry, signal a huge, growing appetite for access to 3-D design,” said Cosmo Wenman, who’s been creating 3-D scans of classical sculptures and releasing the files on sites like Makerbot’s Thingiverse. (Wenman, whose early efforts I wrote about here in 2011, has received backing from Autodesk.) Thanks to his scans, you can now make your own “Venus de Milo” or “Winged Victory.”

QotD: The politician

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:01

The politician … is the courtier of democracy … it was of the essence of the courtier’s art and mystery that he flattered his employer in order to victimize him, yielded to him in order to rule him. The politician under democracy does precisely the same thing.

H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926.

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