Disappearing posts on Academia.edu grr...

I'm really a bit pissed at the moment. I was intending to post something (not naval or wargame related) on my academia.edu page only to find the mini-blog and its content  have disappeared. I hope this is only temporary (they seem to have lost some of my papers as well, I suspect that is not deliberate since there was nothing controversial in those, unlike the blog ;( If this is not sorted in the next few days that account will be deleted.

Something similar appears to have happened to my wordpress blog...grrr... I can't delete this account as its content already appears to have been purged. - maybe only on work computers, seems OK from home.

Just goes to show you cannot trust any third party on the internet to host your stuff. Not sure I can rely on blogger to not purge me so will have to look into some other solution - probably just taking all my material off of the internet and keeping it in big manuscript ledgers.

Irony?

Box of Matches, Purchased in Portsmouth

"England's Glory", made in Sweden ...

The Wikipedia page on HMS Devastation (and on that of England's Glory matches) claims that the ship depicted on England's Glory Match Boxes is Devastation, which appears to be the best fit for the image (the other possible candidate, other than Devastation's sister Thunderer, would be HMS Dreadnought of 1875 but that is not as good a fit).

It always aggravates/amuses/annoys me to read technical journals where claims are made that are not true. Not only not true but well known to be not true within the community concerned.

The latest example of ignorance of this sort that I have come accross (it dates from 2006, so not that recent, except to me) is in this article in  Undersea Warfare, The Official Magazine of the US Submarine Force (maybe it should be considered for publication of the week on Have I Got News For You). There it is asserted that the sinking of the Belgrano by Conqueror in 1982 was the first torpedo fired in anger against a warship since 1945. The problem with this is that Pakistan Navy Daphné-class submarine Hangor, on 9 December 1971, fired three torpedoes (probably French L5's) at the ships of the Indian Navy's 14th Frigate Squadron sinking the Khukri (a type 14 frigate).

The further significance of the Hangor/14th Frigate Squadron incident is that it is the first, and so far only, known use in anger of homing torpedoes post WW2.

Midway Article in Spring 2015 issue of Naval War College Review

There is an interesting paper on Nagumo's intelligence estimates at Midway by Antony Tully and Lu Yu and its impact on the battle. It can be found here: Midway Paper

Guerre de Course

Introduction

In a recent post on the History Stack Exchange a question was asked which may be paraphrased as

Why were cruisers (in the pre-missile age) used for anything other than commerce raiding.

I provided an answer there where I used the term Guerre de Course and added after its first use the parenthetical suggestion that the reader should Google the term. Now along comes someone with sufficient privilege to edit my post and removes my parenthetical remark and makes Guerre de Course itself into a link to the Wikipedia page on Commerce Raiding. What I take exception to is that if I wanted to provide a link I would have done so, Why did I not do so? Because I want to encourage readers to do at least some of the work themselves, and learn to do research, after all it is not difficult in the age of the interwebs. Well I am disinclined to remove the edit, but the affair has prompted me to write something anout the topic here, and if I like what I write perhaps to publish it elsewhere.

Definition and Etymology

I expect that most readers know that Guerre de Course is a French term meaning a naval war or campaign against merchant shipping or trade. Now Wikipedia and other sources rather than give a proper etymology of the expression just tell us that it is translated literally as  "war of race" or something equivalent and uninformative.

Now what I observe is that a better translation would be "war of the corsairs". Where corsair is a term meaning pirate or a pirate ship (often specifically a Barbary Pirate). This of course now explains the meaning of the term Guerre de Course = War of Piracy which is descriptive of the actual practice (with only a modicum of hyperbole as pre-20th Century it was often conducted with/by Privateers - you may note that on that link a privateer is also described as a corsair).

We might also note in passing that the word Course is derived from the Latin cursus which among its other meanings has run rather than chase. Which reminds me of the Byzantine warship type: Dromon (from Greek for running). While the ships used by the Barbary Pirates may not them selves have been descended from the Dromon at least the Latinate term to describe them may well be. Doing an image search however does indicate a possible evolutionary connection between the galleys used by the Barbary pirates and the dromon.

Reconstruction of an early 10thcentury Byzantine bireme dromon,
based on the Tactica of Emperor Leo VI the Wise.

Illustration of a galley running before the wind, found in The Story of the Barbary Corsairs' by Stanley Lane-Poole, published in 1890 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

More to Follow ... ?