New open access article by @fabiodeninno.bsky.social and I available here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
It focuses on the impacts of blockade on Sicily and Sardinia, 1940-43. It links 3 themes that, in our view, have too often been siloed in the historiography of the SWW (esp Italy). 1/
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Nothing is completely predictable at sea, which is why designers ideally not only produce a GZ maximum point somewhat beyond 45 degrees, but also create a high downflooding angle so that even if it all starts to go wrong the boat will bob up again when the gust or whatever is past.
I have ... questions ... about the designer who thought that 14 degrees was OK, and the yard that built it. Not least, wind and wind gusts can have suddenly more effect if the yacht for example broaches, besides which there is the heeling motion of individual large waves.
Yes, indeed. It seems that it was the amazingly small downflooding angle (the angle at which the water can pour in) as much as the limited righting capability and excessive windage of the mast that was the issue. All the boats I've owned, and the ships I've served in, could go to 30 degrees plus.
I am not convinced about several of the statements below, but they are an excellent list nonetheless.
Having depleted fish stocks in its own coastal waters in the early 2000s, Chinese fishing boats are now destroying fishing stock all across the world.
The destruction in South America by the Chinese fishing vessels is unimaginable.
I had not been aware of this development. For renewable energy this is doubtless useful; from a military perspective it, and the doubtless further examples that follow, is another piece of energy infrastructure to attack and defend.
The RN: slow to adopt automation, except for pilotless planes in the 1920s, leading on automated information exchange in the 1950s, automated help for carrier landings in the same period, besides work on sea mines, combat systems, gun turrets, torpedoes, missiles and much else.
It was a pleasure to review Peter Hore's excellent biography of Jock Slater, First Sea Lord 1995-8, which also reveals much hitherto unexplored about the Royal Navy of the 1990s. I do though query whether Slater kept himself almost too busy.
www.naval-review.com/book-reviews...
Both for members only, I fear, but there is much good though at The Naval Review besides my witterings.
I've had two articles out in The Naval Review recently:
www.naval-review.com/news-views/a...
Just attended this. Very interesting, lots to think about!
To be fair, he does also make some good points about the Hundred Year's War that I was not aware of, and which are often missed.
The UK depends on the sea for imports of both food and energy. Literally, without the sea we would starve in the dark. It is also by undersea cables that we get ~99% of our international data flows. His second sentence is flawed also; I'll get to that later.
The learned judge is wrong in his very first sentence. He writes that "until the development of air transport [England] was dependent on the sea for both trade and war." Of course the UK is still dependent on the sea for both: 80% of trade and in every major war most kit goes by sea.
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I'm delighted that I'll be speaking at KCL at 1715 on Thursday 2 October about sea power thought in the Cold War. There is much from what our predecessors worked out that has relevance today. Do join in person or on-line:
www.kcl.ac.uk/events/sea-p...
There is much talk of AI in warfare, but rather less progress in applying it usefully to naval tactics. In this short piece for The Naval Review I reviewed a recent German effort. There is some way to go yet...
www.naval-review.com/book-reviews...
If you want to know more about what historians actually do, I've covered that in two posts, one on what the job of a research historian actually is (acoup.blog/2025/03/07/c...) and another on how that research moves through other kinds of historians to reach the public (acoup.blog/2020/07/09/c...)
OK, I think we'll end the conversation here. I wish you well.
If you're so sure of your points then you'll be happy to give me your name and address.
I'd be grateful for your name and address, or are you going to hide behind anonymity? I have plenty of blind spots, some of which I'm aware of, but you're made a very serious allegation which I reject profoundly.
And you get pretty close to calling me racist, which is something I despise. Granted I was sumarising slightly, but your response is not worthy of the reasonable person I am sure you are.
So you've accused me of at least two things I didn't say: I didn't say it was solely the fault of POC, as you allege in your last sentence above, or make any reference to race, and nor did I say that Churchill was blameless, iaw your next message. I'd say that Churchill had more faults than most.
I am sorry, but blaming Winston Churchill for the Bengal Famine is nonsense, and has been demonstrated as such repeatedly. The weather, the Japanese invading Burma, the Axis sinking merchant vessels and (Indian controlled) local government are all in the frame, but not Churchill.
⚓No More Napoleons: How did Britain manage Europe from Waterloo to WWI?
Join Prof Andrew Lambert for the launch of the Corbett Sea Power Centre + the 2025 Peter N. Davies Lecture
🗓️18 June |17:15 | Strand Campus & Online
🎟️Free & open to all – Register: bit.ly/4kGshce
Had great fun recording this podcast on Economic Warfare with my friend and colleague @andrewlivsey.bsky.social for the Marriner’s Mirror and @rnssc.bsky.social series: Seapower Past and Present. Have a listen!
open.spotify.com/episode/1Za0...
Excellent. My children know it word for word because it was the lullaby I sang to them when they were babies.
