#lord chatham

[lordcastaway]

some pitts!!! and canning but he is practically family after all that gay shit so

[diver5ion]

[fitrahgolden]

When does Newton demand satisfaction from Anthony @newtonsheffield ?

[ltwilliammowett]

The final door is no. 24 and that means today is Christmas Eve and so let's see who greets us today and it's the old lady herself. HMS Victory is here to wish you a Merry Christmas.

HMS Victory in Snow

More about her here:

Our famous lady was designed by Sir Thomas Slade, Senior Surveyor of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1765 and used around 6000 trees of which 90% were oak, the remainder being elm, pine and fir. She was not commissioned until 1778 and this long period of weathering resulted in her timbers being well seasoned which was a major reason for her long life. She was a First Rate Ship of the Line with an outfit of 100 guns on 3 decks.

She was in active service for 34 years. She served as the flagship to a number of distinguished Admirals and fought at the first Battle of Ushant in 1778 (Keppel), the Second Battle of Ushant in 1781 (Kempenfelt) and the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797 (Jervis). In 1797, she was pronounced unfit for further active service and was due to be converted to a hospital ship. However, when HMS Impregnable was lost in October 1797 leaving the Admiralty short of a First Rate, the decision was taken to refit Victory which took place at Chatham between 1800-1803.

As part of an extensive reconstruction, extra gun ports were added, increasing her guns from 100 to 104, the magazine was lined with copper, the masts were replaced and the paint scheme changed from red to the black and yellow seen today. She sailed for Portsmouth in April 1803 and Nelson hoisted his Flag onboard in May 1803 as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. Admiral Lord Nelson was Victory’s most famous Admiral.

On 21 October 1805, she led the British Fleet under his command into battle against a Franco-Spanish force off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson was shot at the height of the battle and died at 16.30 when victory was assured. SHe suffered a lot of punishment, 57 men were killed and 102 wounded, and the ship was so badly damaged that she had to be towed to Gibraltar for emergency repairs before returning home with Nelson’s body onboard.

After further service in the Baltic and off the coast of Spain, she was placed in reserve in 1812 and was moored off Gosport as a depot ship. Flagship of the Port Admiral, Portsmouth from 1824, she became flagship of the Commander-in-Chief in 1899. She then slowly deteriorated at her moorings until a campaign to save her was started in 1921 by the Society of Nautical Research (SNR).

In 1922 she was moved into No 2 dock Portsmouth, the oldest drydock in the world, for restoration. The work was completed in 1924 and preservation continued under the supervision of the Society for Nautical Research. The ship subsequently underwent another extensive restoration programme to make her appearance as close as possible to that at Trafalgar, for the bicentenary of the battle in October 2005. She is still in commission as the flagship of the Second Sea Lord/Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command.

[catofaurora]

got tired of looking at tables for the sunset quest so made this

works for MOST but sorry if you're in...

French Polynesia: Marquesas Islands Canada: Newfoundland, Labrador (southeast) Iran Afghanistan India Sri Lanka Nepal * Cocos (Keeling) Islands Myanmar Australia: Eucla * Australia: Northern Territory Australia: South Australia, Yancowinna County[5] Australia: Lord Howe Island New Zealand: Chatham Islands *

Here's one for you (* except you with these sorry sorry!)

[mariacallous]

Despite an ongoing eleventh-hour attempt to secure a cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Monday that Israel’s war cabinet had unanimously decided to proceed with its military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which Israeli officials say is Hamas’s last major holdout. 

Even as top United Nations officials have warned that a Rafah invasion could push the 1.5 million Palestinians who have encamped there over the border into Egypt—essentially making resolving the conflict impossible—Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops on Sunday that an invasion is imminent. 

And early Monday, the Israeli military began preparing the battlefield with airstrikes on Rafah, signaling a possible imminent ground operation; it also ordered 100,000 Palestinians—just a fraction of those sheltering in Rafah—to evacuate to an Israeli-established humanitarian zone along the Mediterranean coast. 

If Israeli troops do advance into Rafah in an attempt to eradicate the four Hamas battalions believed to be there, experts say they will face a battle-hardened enemy that has the ability to fight and resupply through a vast network of tunnels, all while Israeli troops try to get tens of thousands—if not millions—of civilians out of the way. 

In other cities where the IDF has fought since this war began, such as Khan Younis, troops were able to move neighborhood by neighborhood, sector by sector, clearing out people as they needed to. But larger masses of people will likely be forced out this time as the IDF moves in. “Rafah is going to fundamentally look a bit different,” said Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow and the director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. It “isn’t quite as clean, necessarily.” 

The Hamas battalions fighting in Rafah are “fairly indigenous” to the area, Lord said. They rely on the Philadelphi Corridor, a dense network of tunnels. The Israelis have tried to put in a subterranean wall to block Hamas’s use of the corridor but haven’t been successful.  

“Hamas is most likely dug in and prepared to fight from emplaced positions where they have access to tunnels and resupply and the ability to exfiltrate and escape and move around,” Lord said. “That becomes a little bit harder in some of the improvised humanitarian areas.” 

Michael Mulroy, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense now working with Fogbow, a group helping to set up the aid pier in Gaza, said the Israelis have told NGOs that the evacuation will take about 10 days, though aid groups believe it could take substantially longer. Mulroy said the operation could shut down border crossings into Gaza for up to three to four weeks. Rafah, which borders Egypt, is home to the only border crossing into Gaza that Israel does not directly control.

And it’s not clear that the Israelis have set up enough temporary housing, hospitals, and security to make the evacuation workable. The Israeli government has begun setting up 40,000 tents in Mawasi, a beachside area where there are less likely to be Hamas tunnels, but humanitarian groups say that number is far short of what is needed. 

“The immediate conclusion is going to be, what are you going to do with all of these people?” said Bilal Y. Saab, an associate fellow with Chatham House in London and a former U.S. defense official.

Hamas might also want civilians in the way, analysts said, and could even potentially impede their exit. Some former military officials are even worried that the militant group could take human shields.

“You need to reduce the number of civilians in there,” said Kenneth McKenzie, a retired Marine general and the head of U.S. Central Command until 2022. “The fact of the matter is, Hamas will try to make that not happen. Hamas has no interest in evacuating civilians, regardless of what they say.” 

Mulroy said the Israelis will need at least two divisions, a paratrooper and an armored element, alongside smaller detachments of artillery and special operations forces. But there are still high-level tactical arguments taking place between the Netanyahu and Biden administrations about how the campaign would be conducted. 

“It’s going to be a multidimensional fight,” McKenzie said. “They’re going to have to fight underground, they’re going to have to fight on the surface of the Earth, they’re going to have to fight in the low-Earth atmosphere, because Hamas will probably fly lots of drones. Israel will certainly fly drones. It’s going to be another tough, bloody, ugly fight, which Israel will have lessons learned from their fights [in northern Gaza]. Hamas will have lessons learned from the fights up north. Both sides will apply them.”

In a phone call with Netanyahu on Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden reiterated his opposition to a Rafah ground operation, and White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Israel had not yet provided the United States with a comprehensive plan for its operations in Rafah. 

“The U.S. would like to see [Rafah] as more of a surgical, intel-driven probe with reconnaissance [to] find the mass of Hamas fighting militants and then streamline your combat power directly to it,” Mulroy said. “The Israelis—at least from what I know—are [planning for] more like a Fallujah-type, mass movement, block-to-block fight,” he added, referencing the pitched urban battles that U.S. troops fought in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. 

Whether Netanyahu and his war cabinet will end up being receptive to Washington’s wishes or instead choose to forge ahead and do things their own way remains to be seen. But experts aren’t holding out much hope.

“Have they actually decided to further alienate the Americans?” Saab said. “We keep telling them, don’t do it, and [Netanyahu] is about to do it.”

[radiojamming]

Considering we're kinda still on the topic of Jartnell, what do you think his relationship was like with his parents? Just putting it out there.

I live in a constant state of being on the topic of Jartnell. o7

Ohhh man, I really wish I knew how his relationship was with his dad. He was only thirteen when his dad died, and very, very little is known about Thomas Hartnell Senior. The only things I've been able to find about him were a very tiny obituary after his death, a mention in Sarah's will bequeathing his pocket watch to Charles, and an apprenticeship record when he still lived near Portsmouth. Other than that, I don't know what he was like, how much he worked, how he treated his children, or any of it. I do know Sarah never got remarried after his death, but I never found a reason as to why.

Also, here's his and Sarah's epitaph:

IN MEMORY OF THOMAS HARTNELL LATE SHIPWRIGHT IN H. M. YARD CHATHAM WHO DIED APRIL 23rd 1832 AGED 43 YEARS AND OF SARAH HIS WIFE WHO DIED MARCH 30th 1854 AGED 61 YEARS "It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in Man"

Yikes about that quote. :'|

I do think John probably felt a lot of pressure to fill his dad's role after he was gone. He had a family to look after, and he took up his own apprenticeship almost immediately after his dad's death.

As to his relationship with his mom, I think he loved her, and she clearly loved him and his brother per her letter to them. She wanted so badly to her see her children again and was scared and miserable at the prospect that she might not live that long, or that something terrible had happened to them. She told them how much she missed them, and gave them gossip about their family and friends because she knew they'd want to know about it. I think she really was the 'affectionate Mother', and I'm hoping their relationship was good even as hard as their lives were.

The only hiccup I've ever seen between them (and it might not even be a big deal) was that John didn't assign his Volage ship's pay to Sarah, but instead to his younger sister Mary Ann. I have no idea why this was; maybe he and his mom went through a rough patch when he gave up shoemaking and went on to be a sailor, or maybe Mary Ann needed the money, orrrr maybe he trusted Mary Ann with it for some reason. I can't say, because I haven't seen any letters exchanged between them during this period in his life.

So, I really can't say for sure how he felt about his parents, aside from what evidence we have documented already. People in the past are always complex creatures, but they're also just human. I think John, like any oldest son, had up-and-down feelings over the years and per situations. But I also think when it came down to it, he loved his parents and they loved him.

[alice-makes-things]

The library I work in used to be the village rectory, built in the 18th century. I've been doing some digging into local history books to try and put together a little display of the building's history. I've learned some cool stuff—including that one of the more eccentric Victorian rectors built a massive observatory extension to the rectory (sadly demolished when it became the library) and that Charles Darwin's children used to visit for Sunday school lessons.

(I also learned that the rector who commissioned the building has a name that sounds ridiculously similar to Lord Farquad, which is just plain funny.) But one story I found out today broke my heart. It's about a nine-year-old First Nations boy who died of smallpox in a tiny village in Kent, at least 3000 miles away from his homeland, as the slave of William Pitt the Elder. This is the story of John Panis.

Let me make it very clear: this boy was not named John Panis. We do not know his true name, or how it was stolen from him, or even for certain how he came to be in this tiny corner of England. While his gravestone describes him as "of the Tribe of Panis", "Panis" is not a Native American or First Nations term. It was an 18th-century French term used to describe slaves of First Nations descent in the colony of Canada, then part of New France. Most "Panis" were from the Pawnee Nation, but we don't know for sure that John was Pawnee. What we do know is that it is nearly certain that nine-year-old John was a slave, and it is nearly certain that William Pitt was his enslaver.

To be given a tombstone was a rarity in 18th-century villager life: only the wealthy could afford one. Only 10 grave markers of the 600 or so 18th-century burials recorded in the churchyard survive. So it's significant that, firstly, nine-year-old John had one, and, secondly, that it survived to this day. The wealthiest 18th-century local at the time? William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham.

Pitt supported the American position in the run-up to the American War of Independence. The text I read today suggested that little John was gifted to Pitt by an American to thank him for this, as a "playmate" or "pageboy" for his young children. But with no surviving contemporary records, we simply don't know how he came to be here.

Again, John was not a "playmate" or a "pageboy". He was nine years old. He was a child slave. His name was not John. We do not know his original tribe, name, or language.

I spent my lunch hour today thinking about John, sold into slavery at such a young age, torn from his family, and stripped of his name, language, and people. Sent across an ocean simply to entertain white children. Contracting smallpox, suffering, and dying in agony in a small village in Kent, without the comfort of a mother or father. He was likely put to rest by the very rector who commissioned the building I now work in. I went to find him in the churchyard. His resting place is only a few metres from the library.

I wonder if he is the ghost I sometimes speak to.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The first public reference to Klan activity in Canada appeared in the Montreal Daily Star, which announced the organization of a branch of ‘the famous Ku Klux Klan’ in Montreal in 1921, and reported that ‘a band of masked, hooded and silent men’ had gathered in the northwest part of the city behind the Mountain. In 1921, the Klan set up an office in West Vancouver, and British Columbia newspapers began to publish solicitations for Klan membership. KKK crosses were sighted burning across New Brunswick: in Fredericton, Saint John, Marysville, York, Carleton, Sunbury, Kings, Woodstock, and Albert. James S. Lord, the sitting member of the New Brunswick legislature for Charlotte County, becamea highly publicized convert. Later the Klan would infiltrate Nova Scotia, burning ‘fiery crosses’ on the lawn of the Mount Saint Vincent Convent, and in front of St John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church at Melville Cove near Halifax’s North-West Arm.

Reports of Klan activities surfaced in Ontario as well, where white American organizer W.L. Higgitt began a tour in Toronto in 1923. In the summer of 1924, a huge Klan gathering took place in a large wooded area near Dorchester. Cross-burning, designed to intimidate the village’s few Black residents, was carried out with great pomp and ceremony. In Hamilton in 1924, police arrested a white American named Almond Charles Monteith in the act of administering initiation rites to two would-be Klanswomen. Monteith was later charged with carrying a loaded revolver. Along with the revolver, police confiscated a list of thirty-two new members (‘some of them prominent citizens’), correspondence regarding thirty-six white robes and hoods, and a $200 invoice for expenses for ‘two fiery crosses.’ Monteith denied any involvement in recent cross-burnings on Hamilton Mountain, and was convicted on the weapons charge. The day after Monteith’s conviction, the arresting officer received a letter bearing a terse message: ‘Beware. Your days are numbered. KKK.’ Monteith’s conviction did nothing to put a crimp in the Klan’s membership drive. Between four hundred and five hundred members paraded through Hamilton in a KKK demonstration in the fall of 1929.

By June 1925 there were estimates of eight thousand Klan members in Toronto; headquarters were installed in Toronto’s Excelsior Life Building. The summer of 1925 witnessed hundreds of crosses burned across Chatham, Dresden, Wallaceburg, Woodstock, St Thomas, Ingersoll, London, and Dorchester. A group of hooded Klansmen tried to proceed en masse through the chapel of a London church to show their appreciation of the anti-Catholic address that had been delivered to the congregation. At a rally of more than two hundred people at Federal Square in London, J.H. Hawkins, claiming to be the Klan’s ‘Imperial Klailiff,’ proclaimed:

‘We are a white man’s organization and we do not admit Jews and colored people to our ranks. [ … ] God did not intend to create any new race by the mingling of white and colored blood, and so we do not accept the colored races.’

More than one thousand showed up at a similar rally in Woodstock.

At what was billed as the ‘first open-air ceremony of the Klan’ in Canada, two hundred new members were initiated at the Dorchester Fairgrounds in October 1925, in front of more than one thousand avid participants. The ‘first Canadian Ku Klux burial’ took place in London the next year, as robed and hooded Klansmen, swords at their sides and fiery crosses at hand, showed up to perform a ritual at the graveside of one of the Drumbo Klan. Ontario chapters sprang up in Niagara Falls, Barrie, Sault Ste Marie, Belleville, Kingston, and Ottawa. New headquarters appeared in a Vancouver mansion in 1925, and local chapters called ‘Klaverns’ sprang into existence in New Westminster, Victoria, Nanaimo, Ladysmith, and Duncan. Klan bonfires lit up Kitsilano Point. By 1928, the Vancouver Klan was soliciting signatures for a petition to demand that Asian Canadians be banned from employment on government steamships. A ‘Great Konklave’ was held in June 1927 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where an estimated ten thousand people stood by as hooded Klansmen burned a sixty-foot cross and lectured to them on the risks of racial intermarriage. Demanding an immediate ban on marriage between white women and ‘Negroes, Chinese or Japanese,’ the Klan proclaimed: ‘one flag, one language, one race, one religion, race purity and moral rectitude.’ The Saskatchewan group would later disaffiliate from Eastern Canada, to create an entirely separate western wing that was credited with signing up 25,000 members. In Alberta, ‘Klaverns’ came into existence in Hanna, Stettler, Camrose, Forestburg, Jarrow, Erskine, Milo, Vulcan, Wetaskiwin, Red Deer, Ponoka, Irma, and Rosebud. Alberta membership peaked between 5,000 and 7,000, but the Klan newspaper, The Liberator, produced out of Edmonton, purported to maintain a circulation of 250,000. Nor were the activities of the Klan restricted to rallies and cross-burnings. In 1922, the Klan was linked to a rash of torchings that wreaked more than $100,000 damage upon three Roman Catholic institutions: the Quebec Cathedral, the rest-house of the Sulpician order at Oka, Quebec, and the junior seminary of the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament in Terrebonne. In 1922, threatening letters signed by the Klan were delivered to St Boniface College in Winnipeg. Before the year was out, the college burned to the ground, causing the death of ten students. In 1923, similar letters, signed by the Klan, were sent to local police and Roman Catholic authorities in Calgary. In Thorold, Ontario, the KKK intervened in a local murder investigation in 1922, issuing a warning to the town mayor to arrest an Italian man suspected of the crime by a specified date or face the fury of the Klan. The letter continued: ’The clansmen of the Fiery Cross will take the initiative in the Thorold Italian section. Eighteen hundred armed men of the Scarlet Division are now secretly scouring this district and await the word to exterminate these rats.’ In 1922, the Mother Superior of a Roman Catholic orphanage in Fort William received a letter signed ‘K.K.K.’ threatening to ‘burn the orphanage.’ The mayor of Ottawa was mailed a vitriolic letter, demanding he pay more attention ‘to Protestant taxpayers’ or the Klan would take ‘concerted action.’ Two Klansmen stole and destroyed religious paraphernalia from the tabernacle of the St James Roman Catholic church near Sarnia. The Ancaster Klan attempted to intimidate the African Brotherhood of America from erecting a home for ‘colored children and aged colored folk.’

The Belleville Klan visited the office of the Belleville Intelligencer, demanding that the manager dismiss a Catholic printer employed by the paper. The Sault Ste Marie Klan launched a concerted campaign to force the big steel mills to fire their Italian workers. A rifle bullet was fired at George Devlin during a wedding reception in Sault Ste Marie, with a blazing cross left behind to claim responsibility for the act. In 1924, local Klansmen surrounded the Dorchester home of a white man believed to be married to a Black woman. Threats were made to burn a cross outside the house of a white Bryanstown resident reputed to be involved with a Black woman. In 1927, several crosses were burned on the lawn of a white family believed to be running a brothel in Sault Ste Marie. The family was forced to flee their home.

Klan activities were also responsible for the removal of a francophone Roman Catholic postmaster in Lafleche, Alberta. The Alberta Klan promoted boycotts of Catholic businesses. The Drumheller KKK, which boasted a membership embracing forty of the town’s most prominent businessmen and mine owners, burned a cross on the lawn of a local newspaper columnist after he wrote a satirical comment about the Klan. Alberta Klansmen used bullets and flaming crosses to try to intimidate members of the Mine Workers Union of Canada during their bitter labour dispute in the Crow’s Nest Pass. Lacombe Klansmen wrote to the editor of the Alberta Western Globe after he opposed the Klan, threatening ‘severe punishment including the burning of his house and business to the ground.’ The same group kidnapped, and tarred and feathered a local blacksmith.

Throughout these activities, white police and fire marshals stood by, often present at the incendiary meetings and cross-burnings, content to reassure themselves there was ‘no danger.’ Despite the widespread evidence of lawlessness, Klan authorities tended to claim official disengagement whenever there was property damage or personal injury. Eschewing responsibility, they insisted that their organization had nothing to do with such events. Remarkably, the authorities largely respected these assertions of innocence, concluding that, without definitive proof that would tie named Klan officials to specific threatening letters or violent deeds, nothing further could be ascertained. Apart from the arrest and conviction of Almond Charles Monteith for possessing an unauthorized revolver, the only Klan event that attracted legal attention was the dynamiting of St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Barrie, Ontario, in 1926. On the evening of 10 June 1926, a stick of dynamite shattered the stained-glass windows and blasted a four-foot hole through the brick wall of Barrie’s St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church. Buffeted about by the explosion, Ku Klux Klan flyers were scattered throughout the street, strewn among the brick, glass, and wooden debris. Barrie was a major stronghold of Ku Klux Klan activity, and organizers had drawn a crowd of two thousand to watch hooded Klansmen conduct a ritual cross-burning on a hill outside of Barrie several weeks earlier. At that ceremony, thirty-year-old William Skelly, a shoemaker who had emigrated one year earlier from Ireland, swore fealty to the tenets of the Klan, to uphold Protestant Christianity and white supremacy. He was initiated as a member in good standing. It was Skelly whom the police arrested for the bombing days later.

Skelly voluntarily admitted his Klan membership to the police, and confessed that, the night before the bombing, Klan members met to discuss ‘a job to be pulled off.’ There was a drawing of lots, and when Skelly drew the ‘Fiery Cross,’ he realized he was the designated man. Skelly claimed that he was intimidated by fellow Klansmen, who ‘made [him] drunk with dandelion wine and alcohol,’ and forced him to carry out the deed under threat of bodily harm. In fact, he told the police, he had joined the Klan in the first place only because he ‘had had considerable difficulty in securing steady work,’ and was told that, if he joined, the Klan ‘would look after him,’ finding him employment. Skelly also implicated two other Barrie Klan officials, Klan ‘Kleagle’ William Butler and Klan Secretary Clare Lee. Criminal charges of causing a dangerous explosion, attempting to destroy property with explosives, and possession of explosives were laid against all three white Klansmen.

This time the Ontario attorney general’s office issued an official statement that ‘no group can take into its own hands the administration of the law.’ The white deputy attorney general, Edward J. Bayly, became involved personally when he made arrangements for a leading white Toronto barrister, Peter White, KC, to prosecute the trio on behalf of the Crown. Skelly, Butler, and Lee were all found guilty at a jury trial in October, and sentenced to five, four, and three years, respectively. Officials from the Toronto headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan denied all responsibility, claiming throughout that Skelly ‘acted on his own initiative,’ despite all the evidence to the contrary." - Constance Backhouse, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. pg. 183-193.

[thethirdromana]

Shooting accidents seem to happen a lot in Victorian novels. I had a bit of a look to see whether this reflected reality or if a shooting accident was just a convenient way to get a character out of the way.

I couldn't find any actual stats, but there are around 2,500 recorded articles in English newspapers about shooting accidents from 1885 to 1895. Quite a few of them describe the exact scenario that happens in Dorian Gray:

Mr Lionel Gisborne, of Allestree, near Derby, accidentally shot Leonard Fearne, a gamekeeper, who was in attendance upon a shooting party on Tuesday afternoon. The keeper was beating a hedge, and received the charge in his face.

(from the Northern Guardian, Thursday 19 September 1895)

While the Duke of Cambridge, his son, Colonel FitzGeorge, and other gentlemen were shooting [unreadable] Wednesday. Colonel unfortunately mistook two beaters for pheasants...

(from the Worcestershire Chronicle, Saturday 6 October 1894)

Whilst out partridge shooting on Thursday, on the grounds Major Templer, Abbey Court Farm, Lidding, near Chatham, one of the party, of the garrison, accidentally shot one of the keepers named Ackhurst.

(from the Derby Daily Telegraph, Friday 9 September 1887)

Gentlemen out shooting didn't just kill or injure their beaters and gamekeepers, but frequently also each other:

At Bramingbam, near Luton, five gentlemen went out rabbit shooting, yesterday, when, in passing through a hedge, Mr. W. Webdale's gun went off, the charge entering the back of Mr. Crook, of High Wycombe, who now lies seriously injured...

(from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, Wednesday 26 December 1888)

Mr. Robert Harvey, the Conservative candidate for Devonport, has had narrow escape from serious injury. While shooting on the moors in Scotland with Colonel North's party, some stray shots from overloaded gun struck him in the face...

(from the Nottingham Evening Post, Monday 24 August 1891)

LORD BEAUMONT KILLED. The tenantry on the Carlton Towers estate, near Selby, have lost a kindly landlord by the lamentable shooting accident which took place yesterday, almost within sight of the Towers.

(from the Manchester Evening News, Tuesday 17 September 1895)

And every so often the keepers shot the gentlemen too:

Mr. J. Wootton Isaacson, eldest son of Mr. F. Wootton Isaacson, M.P., was accidentally shot by a keeper on Thursday while out shooting at Carlton Towers, Yorkshire, the residence his sister, Lady Beaumont.

(from the Derby Daily Telegraph, Saturday 3 September 1892)

[tuulikki]

Did everyone know about this motherfucker or did I have to find out while googling stuff about Nelson

George Henry "Taters" Chatham (3 April 1912 – 5 June 1997) was a British thief and burglar. Born to a middle-class family, he aspired to become a professional footballer but despite a trial at Queen's Park Rangers, nothing came of it. Chatham turned to crime and was first convicted of theft in 1931. By the end of that decade he was burgling the houses of wealthy Londoners, carefully selecting his targets from society magazines. His calm-headedness led to his nickname from the Cockney rhyming slang for cold. After the Second World War Chatham became more prolific. His crimes included the theft of two jewelled swords, awarded to the Duke of Wellington, from the Victoria & Albert Museum and a jewelled chelengk, awarded to Lord Nelson, from the National Maritime Museum. Chatham gambled away most of the proceeds from his crimes, often in the casino of London gangster Billy Hill. He was part of Hill's gang that carried out the 1952 Eastcastle Street robbery on a Post Office van. In 1957 he began a 30-year association with fellow thief Peter Scott. Chatham's gambling led him to become increasingly reckless later in his career, though he was a famous cat burglar by the late 1950s and his raids on art galleries were attributed to a sophisticated international gang of art thieves. Chatham remained active late in life carrying out thefts and burglaries well into his 70s; his last crime was an attempted theft from an art gallery at the age of 81.

I hate people stealing historical artifacts, but this is also... wild

[beattoquarters2]

A bronze portrait bust of George V by Sydney March, 1911.

The King Emperor is portrayed in his coronation year of 1911 and is shown wearing the robes and insignia of the Order of the Garter, the insignia of the Royal Victorian Order and of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. Signed and dated 1911.Sydney March (1876–1968) was the second of nine children, eight of whom became artists. The March family established their own sculpture studio at Goddendene, Kent, in 1901. Sydney also worked with the art founders Elkington, and was responsible for royal portraits, including Queen Victoria, Queen Alexandra and George V, and for producing figures, busts and statues of leading figures of the day.  In the early 1920‘s the March studio was honoured with a visit by members of the Royal Family. Sydney’s public works include statues of Colonel Bevington (Tooley Street, London Bridge, 1911) and Lord Kitchener (Calcutta, 1914; Khartoum, 1921, removed to Royal School of Military Engineering, Chatham, 1958). Among his portrait busts were Cecil Rhodes, Sir John French. March also executed a number of war memorials including Bromley Parish Church (1921) and the United Empire Loyalists Memorial (Hamilton, Ontario, 1929). Following the death of Vernon March in 1930, Sydney and his siblings completed the Canadian National War Memorial at Ottawa.

[cyanidetooth]

Rob Mazurek - Exploding Star Orchestra! Horse Lords! Cuntroaches! Parsnip! Knowso! Choncy! Tractorman! Coins Parallèles! Pal! Grazia! DRILL! Cartoon! Pissed Jeans! Uranium Club! Gold Dime! Drunk Driving! Ike Yard! Wharton Tiers Ensemble! Stand By! Systeme D! Eject! Flash Gordon! Shames! Marlons! Classe X! Insecticide! Le Chaps! J Lesser! Squarepusher! Allen Ravenstine! Bipolar Explorer! Rhys Chatham & Z'ev!

[jloisse]

La « Déclaration Balfour ».

Cette « Déclaration Balfour » du 2 novembre 1917 proclame la reconnaissance, par le gouvernement britannique, de l'existence d'un foyer national Juif en Palestine, ce qui fut une étape décisive permettant de poser la première pierre conduisant à la création de l'État d'Israël en 1948.

Elle fut adressée à Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild.

Il est essentiel de rappeler que la « Déclaration Balfour » ne devrait pas afficher ce nom, car le véritable auteur de cette Déclaration ne fut pas Lord Arthur James Balfour, mais Alfred Milner.

Alfred Milner appartenait au groupe de Cecil Rhodes. Il était le bras droit au sein du Cabinet de Guerre, du Premier Ministre Lloyd George. Il était également membre de la Round Table, du RIIA (ou Chatham House) et de la Société Fabienne.

Lord Balfour ne fut qu'un « prête-nom ». La Déclaration aurait dû s'appeler la « Déclaration Milner ».

Et ceci a été prouvé par Caroll Quigley dans son livre "Histoire secrète de l'Oligarchie anglo-américaine" :

« La Palestine, cependant, occupait une position particulière parmi les mandats en raison de la déclaration Balfour de 1917, qui disposait que la Grande-Bretagne verrait favorablement établissement d'un foyer national pour les Juifs en Palestine. Cette déclaration, toujours connue sous le nom de déclaration Balfour, devrait plutôt s'appeler "Déclaration Milner", tant ce dernier en fut le concepteur réel et, apparemment, son soutien majeur dans le Cabinet de Guerre. Il fallut attendre le 21 juillet 1937 pour que ce fait soit rendu public.

À ce moment Ormsby-Gore, s'exprimant pour le gouvernement à la Chambre des Communes, déclara "Le projet initialement affiché par Lord Balfour n'était pas le projet final approuvé par le Cabinet de Guerre. Le projet exact auquel consentit le Cabinet de Guerre et par la suite les gouvernements alliés ainsi que les États-Unis (...) et en fin de compte incarné dans le mandat, fut élaboré par Lord Milner. Le projet final doit être publié au nom du ministre des Affaires étrangères, mais le véritable rédacteur fut Lord Milner. »

- Caroll Quigley "Histoire secrète de l'Oligarchie anglo-américaine" page 263.

[ltwilliammowett]

Sailor Nicknames

Part 1 is here

Wart - Midshipman

Snotty nurse - Lieutenant

Mistress Roper - Marine

Bullock - Marine

Grabby - Marine

Turkey - Marine

Killick- a leading sailor

Buntings- signalman

Up and at em - Chatham

Pompey- Portsmouth

Guzz- Devonport

Jonathan- an American Sailor

Spithead Nightingale - Bosun

Jossman - Master at Arms

Crushers- Master at Arms mates

Butterboxes- Dutch Sailors

Charly Noble- galley funnel of a ship

Bloody Flag- old action flag

Duster- Red Ensign

Butcher- Admiral

Foul Weather Jack- Admiral Byron

Sea Wolf- Admiral Lord Cochrane

Sailor King- King William IV

Mr. Whip - Admiral Cornwallis

Black Dick- Admiral Lord Howe

Squid- Sailor name from the Marines

Scratcher- Clerk

Jack Shaloloo- braggart

Slops- ready made clothes

Sticks- Drummer

[francostrider]

The Experience and Timing of Media

My group of friends had a tradition for every February called “Eat Like Hobbits���. Basically, our one friend would invite us all to her home, and she would have the excuse to cook several meals over the course of a day (which she loves doing), all the while the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy play in the background. Well, we would watch it, but we are also chatting and just be glad January was over. We would have a good time, eat, well, like a hobbit, and embrace our nerdy selves.

So, I will confess one thing: The Lord of the Rings are not in my top five or top ten films of all time. But I have a lot of respect for the trilogy, and the amount of craft that went into every detail. And I do like them to a point. I treasure them as part of my introduction to western fantasy, as they were released around the same time as Champions of Norrath and I was coming to identify the DnD culture a lot more. The timing of the films coincided with the experience of discovering a favorite genre. And with the Hobbit day, it became a part of our shared experience.

As a fan of older media, like Robert E. Howard’s Conan books, I have been thinking a lot of the experience around the consumption of media. This involves more than the strict text of a given work. For instance, I started reading through Howard’s work via the volumes offered by Del Rey. It came in three volumes, the first of which I remember picking up after I graduated High School and in the ours before I saw X-Men 3. The volumes would follow me through our trip to Chatham, NY that year, into college and the smell of those old class buildings. They are synonymous with my experience in Rutgers and beyond.

The scents around us as we turned the page, the friends we would bring it up with, the chapter we try to squeeze in before class starts. These are all included with the actual consumption of the tale and make up our experience. We do not live in a bubble. The video games we play will either be affected by the outside world, or will be part of our relief from it. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was played after a particularly rough time (and winter) of my life and it became part of spring. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon came out during 8th grade, a particularly joyful year of my life. And, of course, the ending of Majora’s Mask hit hard when I was a lonely kid outside of my household.

Going back to Conan, those were my own experiences, sure. But that was not the original context that the stories came out in. Those were published by Weird Tales back in the 1930s, usually one (or maybe even just a chapter) at any given publication. And these were published along side other authors, including HP Lovecraft. These would be on low quality paper (hence the “pulp” in pulp fiction), at 10 cents at a magazine stand. These would not be pre collected in a higher quality volume in a clean and orderly book store.

This was likely picked up by someone on their way to work, either to the local factory or grocery store. These were in the 1930s, so the Great Depression was either affecting the reader directly or at least seeing the damage it has caused. I imagine someone going “At least I got my Howard and Lovecraft for the month!” as they see another store close. Perhaps, like in Grapes of Wrath, copies were likely carried by migrant workers trying to make ends meet. “The Phoenix on the Sword”, “The Scarlet Citadel”, “Hour of the Dragon” and “People of the Black Circle” were just as much part of the life of a migrant worker as their tools, factories, current events and crops. Perhaps they held onto these copies and looked back on them with a mix of nostalgia and strain.

And the rabbit hole does not end there. I wonder what actors they were thinking of when they thought of Conan at the time. A mix of the movies from the 80s and artwork have long since codified Conan’s overall look and feel, but much of that was decades later. What music accompanied their reading in their heads? Did they find a friend or fellow worker and think “Oh, that could be Conan!” Did they try writing the Howard? Or at least to the publication house? And this isn’t even mentioning the human rights advocacies, protests and bloodshed at this era. Before Conan’s overall look was codified, did readers conjure a Conan of different races, imposing their own preferences?

My point is that the whole experience of reading Conan when it first came out will be eternally lost to me. I will likely never find some of the original volumes, which are either preserved in a museum or just dissolved into nothing. And even if I did, I will not know the desperation and attitudes of the time, or the actors of the time, what counted for “fantasy music” at the time, if that was even a concept.

But that does not invalidate my experience. The Experience that I bring up is always going to be unique to each of us. One 1930s reader is going to have a different experience from another 1930s reader, even if they are coworkers of similar backgrounds. I do not say this out of jealousy or some foolish self deprecating of our generation. This is more to illustrate why we love media, why we are nostaligic and why we more than enjoy, but cherish, our favorite works. The tricky thing is it is impossible to recreate. That version of you ended at the end of the experience. We have memories, but we have lost access to it at the same time. 

It is also one of several reasons why I have disdain for any claim of “Best X of all time”. Like much about the entertainment we consume, this is going to be subjective, and unique to every consumer. Awards try to find an objective truth, but they can’t dictate on a personal, subjective level. Bad timing and harsh experiences can also explain why we bounce off of works that we, in theory, “should” enjoy. I imagineThe Last of Us Part II would have been better received by audiences in a year that wasn’t 2020. These Experiences put the text to light. You never consume media without it. Despite everyone trying to talk me into it, I’m just not in the right mindset to go through Final Fantasy VII Remake or the new God of War games. They are something I currently do not want, and when I spend my entertainment hours on something I do not wish to do, I’m constantly looking forward to the thing I do wish to do.

The last “Eat Like Hobbits” we had before the pandemic was February of 2020, before the pandemic started. A lot changed since. Several people moved and found new homes. Job situations changed. But finally, in this year 2023, we got the invite we were waiting for. Our friend got her cooking going and we watched through the whole trilogy. This time, my wife and I watched through the whole thing, a first for herself. It was wonderful to have everyone over, but the trilogy changed in light of the pandemic.

First, there is what it meant: After three long years, we were able to do this again. Covid has not completely gone away, but something special had returned to us. Secondly, the scene where Frodo can no longer see home, but the fiery eye, really hit home. Leaving the house in 2020 could mean bringing back a deadly virus that has claimed over a million lives in this country alone and had filled hospitals to bursting. There was no escaping it, just the constant fiery watch of this disease and no catharsis or friends in person to comfort us. We were all trapped in our own personal Mordor, away from the lives we once had and the people we love.

And, thirdly, I am completely unashamed to admit that I thought of my own wedding last year during Aragorn’s Coronation (yeah, yeah, fuck off). But it is part of the experience I was going through. Our wedding was planned for 2021, but was postpone until late summer of 2022 for several reasons. Unfortunately, the pandemic was part of the drama leading up to it. But when all was said and done, everyone was there, hail and hardy, after three years of pain. My wife and I sat through the pains of moving, pandemics and grief together, and finally, FINALLY, we would have this day, Our day. It was not just a wedding, but also victory in its own way. All of that and everything that led to our wedding went into my recent viewing of Aragorn’s Coronation.

And let’s be honest, you should feel like a king on your wedding day.

We do not live in vacuums. It’s our real life that gives the fiction we consume meaning. As fantastical as a story or setting is, it is still a reflection of what we are. “All works are political” or so I’ve heard the phrase. We carry not only our preferences and likes, but also our life into everything we consume and create. Fiction makes little sense otherwise.