#Naval Dockyard | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fatehbaz · 10 months ago

Text

[The British imperial imaginary conceives] of Bermuda as a tiny paradise in the North Atlantic. But long before cruise ships moored up, prison ships carried hundreds of convicts to the island, first docking in 1824 and remaining there for decades. [...] [T]he use of Bermuda as a prison destination is less well known. For 40 years, British prisoners worked backbreaking days labouring in Bermuda’s dockyards and died in their thousands. [...]

[T]he notorious floating prisons known as hulks. [...] [I]n addition to locations across the Thames Estuary, Portsmouth and Plymouth, the British government used these ships as emergency detention centres in colonial outposts across the 19th century, detaining convicts in Bermuda between 1824 and 1863 and Gibraltar between 1842 and 1875. England has a long history of banishing its criminal population. In the 18th century, criminals were typically sentenced to seven years overseas in America. Many worked as plantation labourers in Maryland and Virginia [...]. Britain [...] turned to hulks to cope with rising [prison housing] numbers. Each could hold between 300 and 500 men, and they were nicknamed “floating hells” for their unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

---

[T]he government felt that convict labour could be put to use in other colonies [in addition to Australia], and so began an experiment in 1824 to send men to Bermuda. [...] Though only 20 miles long, the island was already extremely important to naval strategy. It was used as a refuelling station for British ships travelling to colonial outposts such as Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Caribbean. But the naval dockyard needed modernisation, and rather than employ local workers, convicts - a cheap and easily mobilised workforce - filled the labour gap. [...]

[M]en lived on board the ships they had sailed on (seven in total). [...] Many were injured in the dockyards, others went blind from the reflected glare of the sun as they quarried white limestone. [...] They were burnt by scorching temperatures and suffered sunstroke [...]. Bermuda also received people convicted in other British colonies, including Canada and the Caribbean. During the years of the great famine in Ireland (1845 to 1852), thousands of Irish convicts arrived on the island, many suffering from malnourishment. [...] The experiment ended after 40 years, in 1863, when dockyard repairs were completed. The remaining hulks were scuttled or broken up for scrap, and convicts were transported to Australia and Tasmania, or home to England [...].

---

Bermuda’s history as a prison island has been largely forgotten, but this story shares parallels with today. Prisons are suffering from overcrowding, and governments still detain prisoners and others on islands and modified ships. In Dorset, the Bibby Stockholm ship is housing asylum seekers [...].

The convicts who lived, worked and died in Bermuda are part of a larger global story of coercion and empire.

The product of their labour was imperial strength, but for those sent thousands of miles from home and buried in unmarked graves, the brutalities of their experience should also be remembered.

---

All text above by: Anna McKay. "Britain's forgotten prison island: remembering the thousands of convicts who died working in Bermuda's dockyards". The Conversation. 27 March 2024. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

#abolition #ecology #landscape #colonial #imperial #multispecies #tidalectics #caribbean #archipelagic thinking #indigenous #carceral geography #ecologies

66 notes · View notes

ginandoldlace · 7 days ago

Text

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the TRUCULENT disaster.

The loss of HMS TRUCULENT, on 12 January 1950, was the first Royal Naval peace-time submarine loss since HMS THETIS in 1939.

On 11 January 1950, TRUCULENT sailed from Chatham Dockyard, for a series of post-refit sea trials. In addition to her complement of 61 men, 18 Chatham Dockyard employees were onboard.

After completing the trials, TRUCULENT headed for Sheerness Dockyard the following day.

While in the Thames Estuary TRUCULENT sighted a small Danish coastal tanker, the DIVINA (643 tons) at 19.00 in the navigation channel. The Officer of The Watch called the Captain to the Bridge, as unfortunately the DIVINA was mistakenly identified as being stationary.

Due to shallow water, TRUCULENT was unable to pass DIVINA to the starboard side, so the order was given to turn to Port. As TRUCULENT manoeuvred it was immediately realised that the DIVINA was moving down-channel and that both vessels were now on a collision course.

Only 10 men were picked up by a boat lowered from the DIVINA, the rest were swept away by the tide with very few of the bodies were ever recovered. Of the 79 men onboard, 64 were lost; most of the crew survived the initial collision but died in the freezing cold water.

Several news reports about the incident can be viewed on British Pathé. https://bit.ly/CHDT_TRUCULENT-75

10 notes · View notes

bomberqueen17 · 4 months ago

Text

Liveblogging the Aubreyad: Book 4, The Mauritius Command (pt 1)

So at the end of the last book, Jack closes things out by looking forward to the paradise he will finally reach when he gets home with his financial solvency and his soon-to-be wife, and in typical unromantic fashion, the next book opens with a lovingly detailed description of just how not-paradise the situation actually is.

Some time has elapsed. Jack is married, owns a romantical little cottage with a not very thriving kitchen garden, and has twin daughters. His mother-in-law has also bankrupted herself and now lives with them, as does his niece Cecelia, since his wife's sister (also Cecelia) cannot actually look after her child, since she was hastily married to a soldier who had, it is implied, knocked her up, and is off camp-following said soldier. Mrs. Williams in her greed also gambled away Sophie's dowry on the investment scheme that broke her, so Sophie is also broke. They are living on Jack's half-pay and have to be very frugal. Jack has not been able to get a ship and has been assigned instead to the unglamorous, not particularly remunerative Sea Fencibles, a kind of militia in fishing boats.

But, he is not under threat of arrest for debt, so at least technically he is doing better than he has been for the last two books.

And he is in tolerably cheerful spirits despite all of it, because after all, he does have his wife and his cottage, and his new habit of mathematics has extended to becoming quite a keen hand at astronomy, including grinding his own telescopes, and he has a little observatory in the yard that he built himself from copper salvaged from old ship hulls (which the dockyard let him have from pity).

He mostly uses this observatory to look at the ships in the harbor, as Stephen finds out when he shows up to visit.

But better things are coming, as Stephen's visit presages. Their first inkling is when a message arrives from Lady Clonfert, the wife of a fellow Naval captain, asking Jack if he can give her a lift to the Cape. Stephen is incredibly annoyed at this for some reason, while everyone else is baffled.

Stephen drags Jack outside to talk in private and goes off on a tirade about lack of discretion and how terrible it is from an intelligence perspective, and through this Jack gradually comes to understand that Stephen has managed, for intelligence reasons, to get Jack a ship in fact, and this fact makes Jack so irrepressibly happy despite the fact that he understands just why Stephen is angry and that Stephen is justified to be angry that Stephen eventually has to stop his tirade and be like.... now we have to wait out here until the official messenger arrives, and Jack is like why and Stephen is like because you are so obviously delighted that there is no way you can keep a secret about this, and jack is like... i can be quiet and stephen is like no. you cannot.

Sophie does not know about Stephen's role in intelligence, and cannot know. No one in the family can know. So they stay outside, huddled in Jack's observatory as it rains, until the messenger shows up with Jack's orders.

It's a complicated mission and Jack doesn't get to take any of his people. (He has had to dismiss Killick and Bonden; he couldn't afford to pay them as servants.) But he has command of HMS Boadicea, a 38-gun frigate, to repair to the Indian Ocean, there to command a squadron to resist four new French frigates that have been despatched to the Ile de France (Mauritius), and have been playing havoc with British commercial shipping in the area. It involves playing the role of a commodore, which is not a promotion for Jack but is a great deal of prestige and in fact should not come to one of his seniority except by Stephen's intervention-- because Stephen has learned that if he is to do intelligence work, he is much better off with Jack nearby, and intelligence work he has to do, and delicate stuff at that: they aim to take Mauritius and La Reunion away from the French, no small undertaking.

Jack needs to borrow money from Stephen to outfit himself for this voyage, which gives us this fantastic, extremely-typical line as he brings up the topic:

“Money, is it?" said Stephen, who had been thinking about lemurs.

Jack resolves to leave that very afternoon, and sail that night. Sophie is glad he has a ship but dismayed at the suddenness, and contrives to convince him to stay at home one more night. This becomes plot-significant later but as this is Stephen's POV it is glossed-over because he does not care what they get up to.

He gets to sea, and contrives to avoid giving Lady Clonfert a ride; she is very pretty, and he had noticed Sophie seemed a little jealous and uneasy, and besides it eventually comes out that he does not like Lord Clonfert for extremely good reasons, and he is uneasy about the whole thing.

He does not contrive to avoid the politico they must bring on board to be ready to become the governor of Mauritus if they succeed in taking it. He seems okayish, and Stephen likes him fine; his name is Farquhar and he has a background in law.

On the voyage down the Boadicea manages to take a prize, a French corvette that turns out to be the former British frigate Hyaena, and to also get salvage on the merchantman she had recently taken, a Guineaman, which Jack managed to delay long enough that 24h had elapsed so she was salvage instead of a rescue. So there's some money, but better still, he manages to send away the incompetent First Lieutenant he'd been saddled with as prize commander, and all the awkward buggers and hard cases as prize crews, and a really shitty midshipman to prize-command the recaptured merchant, and then on top of it he presses a bunch of right seamen out of the recaptured merchantman to replace them all with. So off he goes with a much, much better crew in his ship, for a very long voyage; right away he promotes the most deserving of his master's mates to acting lieutenant, another fellow like Tom Pullings with no powerful friends, who would never have got a step otherwise, thereby ensuring the man's lasting devotion and good service for life.

With his crew squared away, they spend the long voyage getting up to snuff on their sailing and gunnery. Jack also takes his newfound love of mathematics to the midshipmen's berth, educating them himself, and discovers that one of them, Dick Richardson (Spotted Dick because of his pimples, alas) is very mathematically gifted. This means Aubrey has to study even harder to stay ahead of him.

They finally arrive at Cape Town: he is under the authority of Admiral Bertie, and is to command, as a commodore, a squadron of assorted ships. Sirius, under a Captain Pym; Nereide under a Captain Corbett; the sloop Otter under Captain (master and commander, not a psot captain) Lord Clonfert; and finally an ancient and barely-seaworthy Raisonable as a flagship, a 64-gunner that can't actually do much.

(The subsequent plot of the novel takes a great deal from the real historical events of the Mauritius Campaign of 1809-11, so if one were inclined to look at maps it would likely be useful to start there.)

Ashore, Stephen meets the surgeon of the Otter, who passes out drunk into his arms. (The man, McAdam, is an old acquaintance, a specialist in diseases of the mind.) Trying to find any Otters to take him home, he runs into none other than Bonden. Bonden and Killick came down in the Nereide to try to catch up with Aubrey, hearing he was afloat again. But Stephen notices Bonden is moving stiffly, and is astonished to learn he was recently given the stunningly harsh punishment of fifty lashes, because a piece of brasswork wasn't shiny enough. Bonden, a steady and sober lifelong seaman, has never been flogged before in his life. He won't complain, but he does ask Stephen to ensure that Jack gets him and Killick as transfers, concerned that Corbett won't let them go as he's so short-handed. Nereide is on the brink of mutiny and everyone aboard who can do so deserts given any opportunity.

“What I mean is, that in the first place me and Killick and the rest want to get back to our own captain: and in the second, we want to get out before things turn nasty. And at the gait they are going now--well, I shouldn't give much for Captain Corbett's life, nor some of his officers, come an action, or even maybe a dirty night with no moon; and we want no part in it.”

As for the others-- Clonfert resents that Jack didn't bring his wife. Clonfert also is apparently aware that he behaved very, very shabbily to Jack when they were both in the Andromeda, letting Jack do all the hard dangerous work of a cutting-out expedition and then taking credit afterwards himself; Jack remembers the incident but does not hold a grudge and assumes he simply didn't know what really happened, but Clonfert, it is clear, very much knows he behaved badly and expects Jack to resent it, having underestimated just how good-natured Jack really is. And he resents that Jack has since that time advanced more in his career, Clonfert having lost seniority in a disciplinary situation of some kind. But at least Clonfert's ship is a reasonably happy one and his people like him and will work for him.

Pym is good-natured but not very bright and his ship is in poor condition through sheer age and use; he is willing, but there's not a lot Sirius can do.

They put to sea, under orders to find and destroy the French frigates. Meanwhile Stephen goes to La Reunion to liase with agents there. From Stephen's intelligence they discern that if they collaborate with the British soldiers stationed on Rodriguez, they could assault La Reunion and take its batteries, and then take the ships in its harbor St. Paul, which include two recently-captured British Indiamen. So they go to Rodriguez to persuade the Lt. Col. commanding the soldiers of the possiblity of executing this plan. Lt. Col. Keating is in fact admirably keen to join in with this daring plan, and they immediately begin to make arrangements.

Clonfert and Corbett have an ugly public disagreement over where the best landing-place on La Reunion is, both of them having extensive local knowledge. Jack checks Clonfert over it-- it's unprofessional to argue like that and Corbett is the senior officer-- and shortly thereafter Stephen is called in to consult with Otter's eccentric surgeon McAdam. Clonfert has an inexplicable, painful recurring condition where he has fits, possibly psychosomatic but severe regardless, and he is taken by one after having been checked by Aubrey. McAdam mentions that Clonfert is mildly obsessed with Aubrey and very frequently discusses him.

In the end it is decided to use Corbett's landing place for the soldiers, so all the soldiers crowd onto Nereiad and the squadron sets off. They arrive in two days. Clonfert volunteers to lead the detachment of seamen, collected from all the ships to pad out the numbers of soldiers and Marines.

The Nereiad goes alone, while the rest of the squadron goes around to the island's main harbor slowly. Jack finds it very hard to give orders but not participate. It is his first taste of admiral-like responsibility and he does not care for it.

Stephen was already up, sitting there clean, shaven and respectably dressed under the swinging lamp. He said, "There is the strange look about you, brother?" "A strange feeling, too," said Jack. "Do you know, Stephen, that in about one hour's time the dust will begin to fly, and what I shall do is just lie there in the road and give orders while the other men do the work? It has never happened to me before, and I don't relish it, I find. Though to be sure, Sophie would approve." "She would also beg you to drink your coffee while it is hot: and she would be in the right of it. There are few things more discouraging to the mind that likes to believe it is master in its own house, than the unquestionable effect of a full belly. Allow me to pour you a cup.”

The landing parties do their work, take first one battery, then the next, then the French ships in the harbor (including two captured British Indiamen) begin to fire on the Englishmen ashore, but the English turn one of the batteries they have taken on them, and then the second, the Union Jack running up above the taken batteries. The British ships at sea cannot fire at the French, for fear of hitting their own people, so the squadron takes fire to which it cannot reply.

But the landing parties ashore have largely taken the town, and now it is only the French ships still firing. The British squadron stand in and engage them, and the ships surrender. Success: they have taken the harbor. They don't expect to hold it, not for long anyway, but the ships in the harbor are all theirs now, and they can destroy all the military stores and government records at their leisure.

Clonfert has done well but Jack is slightly worried that the man's motives are to one-up Corbett rather than get the job done in the most effective way. They secure the town, and Clonfert overzealously burns some things that turn out to have been valuable cargo from the Indiamen, which upsets him horribly.

But the French column enroute to retake the harbor does not arrive. The French commander has committed suicide, the rest do not wish to fight. St. Paul is safe for now.

Jack rewards Corbett, giving him the French frigate they captured to sail back to the Cape with their despatches, and then in turn promotes Clonfert to post captain from commander, and gives him Nereide, and gives Clonfert's first lieutenant the Otter. Clonfert is weirdly conflicted at having been made post by Aubrey, since he was once senior to him and still has this apparent one-sided rivalry going in his mind, of which Jack remains completely unaware.

“He is an odd fish, Clonfert," said Jack to Stephen, between two peaceful duets. "You might almost think I had done him an injury, giving him his step." "You did so advisedly, not from any sudden whim? It is the real expression of your sense of his deserts, and not an alms? He should in fact be made a post-captain?" "Why," said Jack, "it is rather a case of faute de mieux, as you would say. I should not like to have to rely upon him at all times; but one of them had to go, and he is a better captain than Corbett.”

Corbett's disaffected crew is reorganized into other ships, and Jack now no longer has to worry about a mutiny in his squadron; the entire thing was just to both do the right thing by his subordinates and also get Corbett out of the unhappy Nereiad.

Now what is needed is more soldiers for another decisive stroke to secure the whole island, but back at the Cape the higher command of soldiers will not stir without orders from on high, and there are no communications from on high. So they will not be able to make good their advantages.

I'll pause here, somehow this has gotten long. Well, I'm trying to write it while traveling and it turns out this takes concentration. But part 2 is coming and it has the arrival of a beloved recurring character so brace yourself.

#liveblogging the aubreyad #jack aubrey #stephen maturin #patrick o'brian #the mauritius command

13 notes · View notes

radioactive-metal · 3 months ago

Text

AL Warship classes

ok I reckon this will be my last long pure conjecture post for the AL. But here we go! Ship classes (Tyler isn’t even a real person and I can tell he is salivating over reading this list lol)

Struck through vessel classes indicate they are out of service.

Terran Cutter Class picket ship: the original 6 man AL vessel. Huge amounts of these were mothballed after the end of the Terra-Trask war due to a radical shift in TDF doctrine away from Quantity over quality. The AL were effectively given the ships, as the mothball maintenance costs on the TDF were huge. These ships were taken to shipyards orbiting Trask, and given full refits to A: better accommodate their beretreskan crews, and B: receive modernization packages. This vessels had a prodigious service history, with the last one only being removed from frontline service in AL:75. Further Aurora labs upgrade packages means that some hulls still see use as specialist SIGINT, Reconnaissance, and repair craft. 2 base models still in service with the Aurora Legion Memorial Flight.

Kysshakk Class frigate: One of two classes of non AL frigates to serve with the legion, these ships hailed from Trask’s Orbital dockyards, where they had been sitting due to the end of naval conscription. These ships would operate in pairs, and would very rarely not fly with Cutter class vessels, or even later Longbow MK.1s. One remains in service with the ALMF, one is a parts hulk, and the other 4 vessels were lost in the line of duty.

Terran Indomitable Class Destroyer: These were the heavy weapons of the early legion. They exclusively operated Anti-Piracy missions, and even after the introduction of the Stream System, did not carry brains or faces aboard. These were warships, and were the spearpoint of the legion. Multiple times, pirate fleets were noticed fleeing immediately upon the appearance of an Indomitable class in AL colors, due to the reputation these vessels carried. Last vessel retired in AL:90 after a policy ship away from military might.

Terran Dreadnaught Class light Cruiser: These were the weapons of last resort for the legion, only being deployed to combat upstart pirate kings or large scale terrorist organizations. These were officially the only vessels to ever use nuclear warheads while flying under AL colors, during the Centarian succession crisis of AL:80. These vessels remained in service until the Battle of Orion, where the last vessel was destroyed by a Warbreed vessel ID’d as the Andarael.

Titan Class Battleship: The Original flagship of the legion, the Titan class, known as the Indefatigable, was 1.2km of weapons and fighters, but also of Medbays and machine shops and refugee accommodation. She was retrofitted through AL:10, retaining her punching power but also adding facilities for humanitarian aid. She became a Hospital Ship, a Refugee Transport, A battleship, and a Symbol. She was lost in Black ‘63 along with admiral Nari Kim while responding to a Terran colony distress call. Later review of the data after The battle of Orion ID’d the fleet she fought as a Syldrathi Hunter killer fleet.

Long Bow MK.1: The first internally produced AL vessel, the Long Bow MK.1 took all the lessons learn from the Cutter Class and made them into a truely formidable foe. Widely considered to be one of the greatest Naval craft of its Era, the longbow MK.1 was versatile, easy to repair, cheap to produce, punchy, and survivable. In the few outright wars the AL participated in, 9 times out of ten, a total loss of a longbow would have 0 casualties. Quite often downed squads would be issued a new vessel within the week, and the shortest turnaround was Squad 926, who were downed, and flew their next combat sortie 1.5 hours later, a record that stands to this day. Depending on the mission, Longbows were fitted with extra medical equipment, extra armor, more weapons, external cargo pods, and even on rare occasions, a Orbital drop pod for Spec ops. Multiple serving with the ALMF, Aurora Labs as test beds, and Several serving with [DATA REDACTED].

Longbow MK.2: If the MK.1 was one of the best of its time, the MK.2 was THE best. The already famous ease of repair was augmented by auto repair systems, the reactor was uprated, and engine output was increased by 25%. A Longbow MK.2 currently holds the all time speed record (with out gravity assists) of a production vessel at 16% the speed of light. Currently still in active frontline service, though being phased out for the MK.3

Polearm MK.1: the first Frigate to come out of Aurora Yards, the Polearms are designed to fill the roles of the Kysshakk class Frigates, the Indomitable Class destroyers, and Mercy class Hospital ships (not discussed here). Manned by 6 squads, they are stuffed to the gills with the finest tech Aurora Yards could “Borrow” from Aurora Labs. Most of the ship is designed to be swapped out depending on the mission, so everything from fleet defense to hauling is possible. One vessel during the Terra-Syldra War scored a total of 50 victories against Other vessels, and was officially bestowed the honor of the Flagship of AL Group 4.

Blockhouse MK.1 Carrier: Aurora Yards first foray into Capital class ships, The Blockhouse is designed to remain at the back of fleets and provide overwhelming fighter support. Capable of carrying no less than 50 Wraith class Fleet defense fighters, it is the spaceborne equivalent of a wasp nest. And Like any good wasps nest, it has a Queen. Generally a heavily modified cutter class, though recently some have been deployed with Longbow MK.3s with Speical equipment packages, the queen acts as a traffic controller, shuttle, and SWACS (Spaceborne warning and control ship) all in one. On more peaceful missions, the phantom bays are swapped out for launch tube for Hospitaller class aid shuttles and Kindness class orbital supply pods.

Longbow MK.3: the Pinnacle of Aurora yards shipbuilding, the MK.3 is stronger, faster, and hardier than the MK.2. Most electronics have been hardened against electromagnetic interference, hauling capacity has been increased, and fuel burn has been reduced. The auto repair systems have been upgraded to the level where anything besides the reactor can be repaired given enough time. Most functions can be swapped by mission modules, allowing for extra hauling capacity, increased firepower, or even extra speed. Production halted after AL:150 due to resource constraints. Next vessel expected AL:156.

Iron Cannon Class cruisers: a much rarer ship, built from the same basic design as the Blockhouses, but with the fighter wings and control craft replaced with anti vessel railguns and torpedo launchers. These craft are mean lean killing machines, and do not carry faces or brains aboard. They are the spiritual successor to the Dreadnaughts, and inherit the same naming scheme of their ancestors. First three were the Dreadnaught, the Inflexible, and the Formidable. Having seen service at the tail end of the Terra-Syldra war, they maintained a kill ratio of 5:1. Notably, no one of these vessels was seized by the Rahaam, though 3 were lost when their captains overloaded their reactors rather than risk capture and assimilation.

Gladius Class Gunboat: Built from the stripped down hulls of Longbow MK.1s, the Gladius class is the first new class of vessel commissioned by the legion since AL:150. Due to manpower shortages across the legion, these vessels are designed to operate with only 4 crew, with empty positions filled with advanced automated systems. Due to these limitations, these vessels only serve humanitarian missions, and are never used on the front lines unless desperately needed. Due to glaring shortfalls in overall effectiveness, the class is slated for retirement by AL:160.

[Admin Credentials Accepted, Welcome Founder_03]

Longbow MK.4: Equipped with experimental AL manufacture Pulse Cannons, Beretreskan plasma drives, and the finest ballistic grade titanium composite plating the Legion can build, the MK.4 is the crème de la crème of legion ship building. In simulated combat, 3 MK.4s can defeat Iron cannon class Cruisers, 50x their displacement. When these vessels reach mass production and issue, it will represent the largest jump in AL fleet capabilities since the introduction of the MK.1. Current low rate production estimates suggest it will be AL:158 before non spec ops squads are issued the MK.4.

Special Project 274, Codename “Brannock”: The Hulk of TDF carrier Kusanagi was recovered in exceptional condition after it was found in late AL:181. The hulk was then towed to site 00 and gutted. It was decided in AL:183 that the ship was to be converted into the newest flagship for the legion, the Brannock. Currently under development, most hangar bays are being replaced with railgun mounts, torpedo tubes, and in one case, the largest pulse cannon ever manufactured. She will be the red right hand of the legion, and instill a warning into the pirate fleets that ravage the galaxy: “We are coming. Run”

Special Project 275, Codename “Madran”: much like project 274, The Madran is built from a recovered ship hulk, this time the wreck of the original Indefatigable, recovered from an Unbroken salvage fleet circa AL:154. Currently undergoing extensive repair and upgrade, the Madran with be the kind smile of the legion. Almost all weaponry is being stripped, and replaced with further humanitarian facilities, to in effect become the single largest aid vessel in the galaxy. She is designed to be the sister ship to the Brannock, and will, when deployed alongside her, act as a huge Signal jamming and targeting vessel. Giving free rain for rail guns and pulse cannons to shred renegade syldrathi and pirate fleets

#aurora burning #aurora rising #aurora cycle #auroras end #the aurora cycle

10 notes · View notes

ltwilliammowett · 9 months ago

Text

Portsmouth Dockyard, by James Tissot 1877

#naval art #portsmouth dockyard #19th century #age of steam #art

123 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 4 months ago

Text

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu made headlines in April after coasting to a second term in office by nearly 12 percentage points. Imamoglu, who has served at the city’s helm since 2019, is seen as a major political threat to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). The latest win in Istanbul cemented Imamoglu’s continued popularity among the Turkish public.

But Imamoglu is only the most prominent face of a broader opposition, led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP). In March’s municipal elections, the CHP secured its most crushing victory over the AKP in decades. Possibly more notable than Imamoglu’s reelection was the newly elected class of women executives of provinces and districts across the country.

One of these women—Sinem Dedetas—may hold the keys to the future of Turkey’s opposition. Imamoglu is currently battling slander charges in the country’s high court, in addition to a slew of other cases that could eventually ban him from politics, even as he is the favorite to run for the CHP in Turkey’s 2028 presidential election. No matter how those fortunes play out, Dedetas promises to be central to the party’s strategy in a post-Erdogan Turkey.

Istanbul is the only city in the world to straddle two continents. Uskudar, a seaside constituency on the Anatolian side, lacks many of the bars and clubs across the water in the European districts. Instead, the conservative area is known for its historical mosques. It is also one of Istanbul’s key transportation hubs, home to a confluence of ferries, rail, metro, and bus lines. Millions of people from all over the city—and world—pass through Uskudar every day.

In April’s elections, Dedetas, a 43-year-old engineer, made history as the first woman to ever win the Uskudar municipality mayorship, a position similar to that of a New York borough president. She also flipped the district from the AKP to CHP rule.

Dedetas moved to Uskudar from her native Eskisehir, a city in northwest Turkey, for college in 1999. After receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in naval engineering from Istanbul Technical University, she got her first job in the district as an engineer. In 2014, she went on to work as a marine engineer at the Halic Shipyards, the oldest continuously operating dockyard in the world. Over the centuries, the facility has produced vessels from sail boats to steamships and submarines to electrical passenger taxis.

Dedetas’s career has featured many firsts. In 2014, she became the first chairwoman of the Turkish Chamber of Naval Engineers. While she was in that position, Istanbul’s AKP mayor tried to privatize the public harbor and turn it into a terminal full of restaurants and shops. Dedetas protested the project and was barred by the government from entering the shipyard.

She continued to oppose the new real estate development, concerned that the city’s ferries—an indelible part of Istanbul’s social history, skyline, and soundscape—would grind to a halt without the vital maintenance work done at the docks. “We fought to keep [it] from being lost,” Dedetas later said after her success in blocking the project.

Then Imamoglu became mayor of the city, bringing Istanbul back under CHP rule. “The privatization processes of the shipyard were being carried out,” Dedetas told Turkish media. “If [the mayorship] had not changed hands in the 2019 elections, there would be no shipyard left.”

One of the new mayor’s first orders of business was to appoint Dedetas as manager of Istanbul’s maritime public transportation system; she was the first woman in the role. Over the last quarter century, the city’s water transport fell into disarray as Istanbul’s population swelled and moved further inland, contributing to congestion and gridlock on road and rail. Yet municipal-run ferries predate the first Bosporus bridge and remain one of the city’s fastest options to cross continents.

Dedetas proved herself to be a masterful administrator, overhauling the entire water transit system. She opened 11 new ferry lines and launched a 24-hour weekend ferry that connected the European and Asian sides of the city. She also doubled the patronage of public water transport, in part by restoring the iconic white and orange vapur ferry ships. And she launched an electric sea taxi service, providing a personal, environmentally friendly option to traverse the Bosporus Strait and the Marmara Sea.

Through the effective management of maritime transportation, Dedetas gained national attention. She set her eyes on her home district, Uskudar—the Istanbul neighborhood with the longest Bosporus shoreline—ahead of the 2024 municipal elections. “Uskudar is the first gate for people who arrive from Anatolia, and for Istanbul, it is the gate to the rest of the country,” said Onur Cingil, an Uskudar native and CHP member.

The borough had been an AKP stronghold for as long as Cingil and most others could remember. It is even home to Erdogan’s private villa. Cingil said he saw local government officials claim eminent domain and exaggerate concerns about earthquake vulnerability to demolish buildings and hand over lucrative sites to construction companies, religious associations, and other party loyalists. “This happened … to my own student dormitory, and many other places,” Cingil said.

Cingil was one of the many CHP candidates vying to be the nominee for Uskudar’s mayorship in March’s elections, but the CHP leadership eventually selected Dedetas to run due to her reputation for being a technocratic consensus builder.

“Normally, I wouldn’t expect such a profile to be nominated for Uskudar,” said Burak Bilgehan Ozpek, a professor of political science at TOBB University of Economics and Technology. He described Dedetas’s young, professional, and secular profile as going against the grain in the district. The CHP typically nominated old-school, male party insiders for such roles, Ozpek said, adding with a laugh that they always lost the race. “This was a radical change,” he added.

Dedetas took a pro-people approach to her campaign against the AKP incumbent Hilmi Turkmen, who had been a mainstay in Uskudar’s politics for decades. She canvassed the district neighborhood by neighborhood, underlining her accomplishments governing the city’s maritime transit system, which has a budget the same size as Uskudar’s.

Dedetas vowed to redress the AKP’s neglect of women’s issues on both the district and federal levels. She promised to prioritize women’s employment and noted that, during her time helming Istanbul’s maritime transit system, she nearly tripled the number of women working there. She also proposed the creation of a free HPV vaccine program to protect against some forms of cervical cancer. (The cost of the vaccine has become nearly equivalent to Turkey’s monthly minimum wage.)

The candidate pledged to create child nurseries in every neighborhood in Uskudar. “This will enable women to work,” especially residents with low incomes, said Rumeysa Camdereli, an activist and member of Havle Women’s Association, the first Muslim feminist organization in Turkey.

Dedetas promised to expand welfare initiatives, and called for additional municipally subsidized cafeterias in Uskudar. Imamoglu created these during his first term for residents to get a healthy meal for just over a dollar, and his AKP competitor Murat Kurum mocked them on the campaign trail. “We are tired and bored of the rhetoric that tries to deceive the people by … giving half a tea glass of water or milk as if it is a service,” said Kurum. He also made fun of Imamoglu’s background as a kofte vendor.

Kurum’s gaffe turned off blue collar voters. Istanbul’s public eateries fill up every day for lunch and are vital in a country enduring a cost-of-living crisis amid annual inflation of nearly 70 percent.

“Local elections are less ideological and always more focused on services,” said Emine Ucak, the program director for social policy at the Reform Institute, an Istanbul-based policy center, who researches women in Turkish politics. “Women always think about their children, and they had stopped seeing a future for them.”

The campaign also focused on securing areas most vulnerable to earthquakes, a national concern after the devastating February 2023 earthquakes in Turkey’s southeast. Many locals fear that the slate block flats populating the hills above Uskudar’s wharf are in imminent danger in case of an earthquake. In response to their concerns, Dedetas is establishing a natural disaster directorate to help the district become prepared for earthquakes and other catastrophes.

On election night, Dedetas triumphed, beating Turkmen by more than seven percentage points. In doing so, she tore apart the long-held myth that Uskudar was an AKP stronghold.

“It’s a district with a lot of conservative families,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution. “For an uncovered woman to win is a real testament to her political appeal.” Unlike past CHP candidates, Dedetas shied away from the hardline, sometimes alienating secularism her party is known for. Pragmatism and empathy won the day.

Dedetas was not the only victorious woman on election day. Altogether, voters tripled the number of women mayors across Turkey. While only four female mayors had been elected in the previous municipal elections in 2019, 11 provinces and 64 municipalities are now governed by women, the vast majority of them representing opposition parties. Together, they won, on average, 53 percent of votes.

Female political representation is a welcome change after what many in the country see as backsliding on women’s rights under Erdogan. In 2021, Turkey exited the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty to combat gender-based violence that was drafted in the city a decade earlier. The Turkish president had urged women to have at least three children, claiming that those who reject motherhood are “deficient” and “incomplete.”

Although Turkey has a highly centralized political system, mayors remain key to managing districts and municipalities. They are where citizens first access the country’s welfare systems, and where businesses are registered, among other duties.

Following March’s elections, Dedetas and other mayors in the Turkish opposition now have their best chance in decades to govern with less interference from Ankara. She has wasted no time in initiating programs that address locals’ needs, such as grocery subsidies of up to $150 for retired residents. The district also plans to provide elderly residents free shuttle services to food markets. (Pensioners, who compose more than 10 percent of Turkey’s national population, receive roughly $293 per month from the state, an impossible wage to live on in Istanbul.)

Uskudar’s new mayor is also working to counteract the AKP’s neoliberal strategies, which many accuse of benefiting political patrons through shady backroom dealings all while poverty has deepened. To help promote transparency, Dedetas has begun to broadcast all municipal council meetings live online.

Figen Kucuksezer, an optometrist and Uskudar resident, is very excited by these changes. They’ve already helped preserve Uskudar’s Validebag Grove, one of the last wild green spaces in Istanbul. The area, which Kucuksezer volunteers to protect, is home to 400-year-old trees and migratory birds.

“The former mayor always wanted to make changes to the grove,” she said, referring to the AKP’s plans to develop the area by adding parking lots and food stalls and removing some native flora. But Kucuksezer and other local activists filed a lawsuit and have fought for years for Validebag to be left alone. “We had to block the Caterpillar [equipment] from entering in,” she said.

Since being elected, Dedetas has promised to protect it as a green space for all residents. In May, the local court annulled the previous government’s construction plan. “It is a breath of fresh air,” Kucuksezer added.

There is a saying in Turkish politics that whoever wins Istanbul will one day win Turkey. It was the case for Erdogan, who previously served as mayor of Istanbul before leading the country for the past two decades.

After years in the political wilderness, the CHP is now trying to repeat its success in the next national election, which should be the first without Erdogan in nearly 30 years. The challenge for Dedetas is to help Imamoglu triumph so that she can be his successor in Istanbul as he runs for the presidency.

So far, her stances have mirrored those of Imamoglu; Dedetas regularly highlights their work together on social media. But she has also bolstered her own profile by engaging in key culture war debates—including by opposing controversial legislation that will kill beloved stray dogs on the streets to rooting for the women’s national volleyball team at the Paris 2024 Olympics, a squad that has been vilified by the conservative right. Imamoglu’s and Dedetas’s fortunes are now intertwined.

“And this is just the start of her office,” said Cingil, Dedetas’s one-time party rival. “There are already rumors that she will be the next candidate for Istanbul mayor.” That would be another first.

16 notes · View notes