Quotulatiousness

June 25, 2018

The oddly variable careers of Royal Navy ships named HMS Lion

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Every now and again, a random question leads me to odd results … in this case I wondered about the Royal Navy ships named HMS Lion, which I remembered as being used for a First World War battlecruiser (Vice-Admiral Beatty’s flagship through the actions at Heligoland Bight and Jutland) and a Cold War light cruiser (whose sister ships were converted into hybrid light cruiser/amphibious assault ships). Earlier ships of that name had even more interesting careers (from the Wikipedia disambiguation page):

HMS Lion, lead ship of the Lion-class of Royal Navy battlecruisers.
Photo from the Imperial War Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.

  • English ship Lion (1511) was a 36-gun ship of the Royal Scottish Navy captured in 1511 and sold in 1513.
  • English ship Lion (1536) was a 50-gun ship built in 1536 and on the navy list until 1559.
  • English ship Lion (1547) was a Scottish ship captured in 1547 and later lost off Harwich.
  • English ship Lion (1557) was a 40-gun ship, also known as Golden Lion. She was rebuilt four times, in 1582, 1609, 1640 and 1658. After her 1609 rebuild she was renamed Red Lion, but this was reverted to Lion after the 1640 rebuild. She was sold in 1698.

Modern naval ships are considered long-in-the-tooth after 25-30 years of service. HMS Lion (the HMS was not consistently applied to royal ships until the eighteenth century, but let’s just let that slide here) of 1557 was only undergoing her first rebuild/life extension at the point a modern ship would already be under consideration for dismantling. She was still in royal service for three more rebuildings, and was sold (not scrapped) after 141 years of active service. But the Royal Navy was far from done with using this name:

  • HMS Lion (1665) was a 6-gun ketch, also known as Young Lion. She was captured from the Dutch in 1665, sold in 1667, repurchased in 1668 and sunk as a foundation at Sheerness in 1673.
  • HMS Lion (1683) was a fifth rate captured from the Algerians in 1683 and sold the same year.
  • HMS Lion (1702) was a 4-gun stores hoy of 99 tons burthen purchased in 1702. A French privateer captured her off Beachy Head in 1708, but she was recaptured in 1709.[1]
  • HMS Lion (1709 hoy) was a 4-gun hoy launched in 1709. She was wrecked in 1752.[2]
  • HMS Lion (1709) was a 60-gun third rate launched in 1709, rebuilt in 1738 and sold in 1765.

Another longer-service veteran than the vast majority of modern naval ships.

  • HMS Lion (1753) was a transport launched in 1753, hulked in 1775, and sold in 1786.
  • HMS Lion (1763) was a cutter purchased in 1763 and sold in 1771.
  • HMS Lion (1774) was a discovery vessel in service from 1774 to 1785.
  • HMS Lion (1777) was a 64-gun third rate launched in 1777. She was used as a sheer hulk from 1816 and was sold for breaking up in 1837.

One assumes the name was changed before 1781, even though the hull was still in use for long after other ships named HMS Lion were respectively in commission and then out of service with the Royal Navy:

  • HMS Lion (1781) was a schooner purchased around 1781 and sold in 1785.
  • HMS Lion (1794) was a 4-gun vessel, originally a Dutch hoy. She was purchased in 1794 and sold in 1795.
  • HMS Lion (1823) was a schooner in service from 1823 and sold in 1826.
  • HMS Lion (1847) was an 80-gun second rate launched in 1847. She was converted to screw propulsion in 1859 and became a training ship after 1871. She was sold for breaking up in 1905.
  • HMS Lion (1910) was a Lion-class battlecruiser launched in 1910 and sold in 1924.
  • HMS Lion (1939) was to have been a Lion-class battleship. She was laid down in 1939, but work was suspended later that year, and again in 1942. The order was finally cancelled in 1945 and she was broken up on the slipway.
  • HMS Lion (C34) was a Tiger-class cruiser launched in 1944 as the Minotaur-class HMS Defence. She was finally completed to a revised design in 1960. She was placed in reserve in 1964 and was scrapped in 1975.

The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – The World We Know – Extra History – #5

Filed under: History, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 23 Jun 2018

Up until the 20th century, people assumed light behaved like a wave, passing through the “aether wind” — a fluid with incomprehensible properties. When the Michelson-Morley experiment disproved the aether’s existence, Einstein put out the theory of relativity — that space and time were part of the same package.

It’s 1887. Physics is almost complete. We almost know enough to see the clockwork of the universe. Only one last great question remains: how does light travel?

Differences between the United States and the “idealized” United States of Europe

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tim Worstall, in the Continental Telegraph:

There are those who think – urge, wish for perhaps – the European Union is or should become the United States of Europe. Lots of central bureaucratic control, the nation states left as just the remnants of once independent countries like the US states are these days. In some ways the two systems are very much the same already. No US state has any control at all over trade across its own border. Nor does any EU one. Trade is an issue solely the competence of the central organisations, respectively Washington DC and Brussels. Equally, both systems use this central control of trade and trade only to expand that central control.

In the US there was a case that Federal control of trade meant that the Feds got to decide who could grow wheat where and when. The usual sort of planning idiocy led to the Feds telling farmers who could grow how much and when. One farmer claimed he was only growing for his own consumption and this shouldn’t be limited. The centre (the Supreme Court) disagreed, the crux being that if he didn’t grow for his own consumption he would buy, this affected inter-state commerce, he had to obey the Feds. The EU takes this a step further. The Single Market rules are nominally about trade. Anything legal to be buying and selling in one place is such in all is a reasonable explanation of the nub of the matter. Sure, exceptions and all that. But this then smuggles into all law that continental (Roman Law really) idea that what is legal to do is something that the legislation defines. Instead of that Common Law idea that legislation, the law even, defines what it is illegal to do all other things being legal.

Once this is accepted then of course the next step is that there must be regulation of all things so as to tell people what it is legal to do. In this manner all sorts of things get smuggled in. Vacuum cleaner motors must be limited to a certain size or power. Because those whose lives are unfortunate enough that they’ve time to spare to be concerned about legislation on such matters note that they can be and thus incorporate their trivialities into legislation. The extent of this reach is larger than you think. The underlying legal, not political, justification for recycling targets is that some countries – Holland, where digging a hole gains nothing but wet boots – don’t have space for landfill. This would put them at a disadvantage if other countries do have the space, therefore all must recycle.

Giving the centre power always, but always, means an extension of the centre’s power. The two systems aren’t so different then.

What’s inside Ikea’s “wood” ?

Filed under: Business, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Rag ‘n’ Bone Brown
Published on 12 May 2018

In this video I cut open one of Ikea’s Linnmon shelves to find out what’s inside.

QotD: Gandhi and the British army

Filed under: Africa, History, India, Media, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The film, moreover, does not give the slightest hint as to Gandhi’s attitude toward blacks, and the viewers of Gandhi would naturally suppose that, since the future Great Soul opposed South African discrimination against Indians, he would also oppose South African discrimination against black people. But this is not so. While Gandhi, in South Africa, fought furiously to have Indians recognized as loyal subjects of the British empire, and to have them enjoy the full rights of Englishmen, he had no concern for blacks whatever. In fact, during one of the “Kaffir Wars” he volunteered to organize a brigade of Indians to put down a Zulu rising, and was decorated himself for valor under fire.

For, yes, Gandhi (Sergeant-Major Gandhi) was awarded Victoria’s coveted War Medal. Throughout most of his life Gandhi had the most inordinate admiration for British soldiers, their sense of duty, their discipline and stoicism in defeat (a trait he emulated himself). He marveled that they retreated with heads high, like victors. There was even a time in his life when Gandhi, hardly to be distinguished from Kipling’s Gunga Din, wanted nothing so much as to be a Soldier of the Queen. Since this is not in keeping with the “spirit” of Gandhi, as decided by Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi, it is naturally omitted from the movie.

Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.

Powered by WordPress