China¹ has long fascinated the West. The source of tea, silk, porcelain, and other valuable commodities drew traders, but the Chinese were suspicious of the barbarians. By the time of large-scale European involvement in the Far East, they demanded payment in silver, and restricted trade to Canton. Due to the demand for tea, British silver reserves were dangerously low by the early 1800s, and the East India Company began to search for a new trade good. They quickly latched onto opium, extracted from poppies in Bengal, as an ideal choice. There was one slight hitch, though. Opium was illegal in China.

That didn't actually stop anyone, and by the 1830s, the opium trade was roaring, and addicts were becoming an increasing problem in China,² as was silver being drained from the economy to pay for all of the opium. In 1838, a Commissioner by the name of Lin Zexu ordered 1,000 tons of opium destroyed, infuriating British merchants, who petitioned their government for compensation. Parliament refused to pay for the opium, but after a successfully lobbying campaign, declared war on China instead.³ Read more...

It's our usual open thread. Talk about whatever you want.

Interesting thing this time is related to this blog's occasional sideline in commercial aviation. The NYT Magazine has an interesting article on the piloting problems involved in the MAX crashes. Fully endorsed, except for the characterization of Boeing as a generally awful company. Weapons are important, and if you don't like who they're selling arms to, take it up with the State Department.

Overhauled posts include my reviews of Nautilus and the Submarine Force Museum and Mystic Seaport, the Nimrod Saga, Auxiliaries Part 3, the first part of my series on secondary armament, and the Wartime Battlecruisers.

It was my third weekend in LA. The new job was going OK, although it was pretty much what I'd expected, and I knew I'd never love it. LA itself was still confusing, even baffling. But I was starting to get a handle on things. My apartment and general business was in good enough shape that I could take some time to go do something fun. And there was one thing that had topped my list since well before I'd moved. Iowa.

My first look at Iowa

So it was after church and lunch with new friends that I set off, heading for San Pedro and silently screaming the whole time I was on the freeway. The directions were baffling. Apparently, there was some construction that forced an alternate route to the ship.⁴ But I made it, despite the huge trucks, and realized that the online ticket I'd bought needed to be printed out, so I'd have to buy a second one. Oh, well. I'd probably use it eventually. After all, this was a battleship! I'd become increasingly interested in naval architecture and old warships since discovering Norman Friedman in college. I hadn't been on a museum ship since Blueback four years earlier. Read more...

I've previously covered the origins and structure of naval officer ranks. Now, it's time to turn our attention to those who lack commissions, the warrant officers, petty officers, and enlisted men. But first, we need to understand the organization of a late sailing warship, as the influence of said structure is still visible today.

A Boatswain

In the very early days, sailing warships had two sets of officers: the commissioned officers, the captain and his lieutenants, who were usually entirely ignorant of the sea and primarily there to command the troops the ships used to board each other; and the warrant officers,⁵ who were nautical specialists responsible for sailing the ship. These were usually former enlisted men who had worked their way up to their positions of Boatswain,⁶ Gunner, and Carpenter. All were required to be literate, as they had to keep an account of the stores under their control. Read more...

One of the less obvious problems of operating a warship (or any sort of ship, really) is fouling. The marine environment is an excellent one for all sorts of organisms to grow, and many of them find the outer hull of a ship a very congenial environment indeed. This is tremendously annoying to the operators of said ships, who would rather not haul around tens or hundreds of tons of barnacles, mussels, worms, plants, algae and various other organisms. They increase fuel consumption, reduce top speed, aid corrosion, and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

HMS Formidable is careened

Because fouling has been a problem for as long as men have sailed the seas, it's not surprising that attempts to control it also date back thousands of years. So far as we can tell, none of these methods were particularly effective against fouling per se, although many of them, like fitting the ship with lead sheeting, were probably intended to control shipworms instead, and worked reasonably well for that purpose. After all, fouling merely slows you down, while shipworms actually destroy the wood of the hull. Fouling was dealt with by somehow gaining access to the ship's hull and simply scraping it off. Today, drydocks are used for this work, but in the past, ships were often careened, beached at high tide and then tilted over to give access to the lower hull. Read more...

Gentlemen,

While Europe remains at peace, international tensions have begun to rise. We recently commissioned Devastation, and two of her sisters will join her in service before the end of the year. This gives us the single most powerful warship in the world, and the only fleet we need really fear is Britain's. Meanwhile, Italy grows suspicious of us, and our budget has begun to increase. We've also begun work on a successor class, with the first ship to be laid down in only a month.

The new Bouvet class battleship design

At least one more ship is planned to follow her. The decision for a third will need to be taken by this council. If we don't, it will free up budget for more construction of some sort. Options from the staff include new destroyers or light cruisers or a new battlecruiser to overmatch the ships inspired by the Duquesne. Read more...

South America has the world's greatest river, the Amazon, as well as a number of other large rivers. As a result, despite the rather quiet military history of the region, it has seen extensive deployment and use of riverine forces.⁷ In fact, the largest ever naval battle between two South American nations took place on a river, about 400 nautical miles inland.

The Battle of Riachuelo

It was the decisive battle of the War of the Triple Alliance, probably the most brutal in South American history. It was triggered in part by tensions over Brazilian access to the Paraguay River, and began when Paraguay invaded first Brazil and then Argentina, using the rivers of the Plate basin for mobility. However, while both countries (and Uruguay, the third partner in the Triple Alliance) were outnumbered on land, the Brazilian Navy was by far the best in the region, particularly when they were able to pick up several ironclads that Paraguay had ordered and then defaulted on payments to the foreign shipyards that were building them. On July 11th, 1865, the Paraguayans attempted to sneak up on the anchored Brazilian fleet and board the ships, apparently hoping to capture them and run off. The plan failed, and the Brazilians sunk four gunboats and all of the Parguayan's towed gun barges, at a cost of only one gunboat stranded and burned. This secured control of the Plate for Brazil, ultimately leading to Paraguay's defeat. Read more...

Most military forces use approximately the same set of ranks, traditionally with enlisted men running from private through variations of sergeant while officers run from lieutenant through general.⁸ But navies depart from this, using their own ranks which overlap some with the more traditional terrestrial lists, but usually mean different things.⁹

An Admiral

We'll start at the top. Most English terms come from either Romance or Germanic languages, including military ranks. But Admiral is an Arabic word, derived from the Arabic term "amīr al-baḥr", meaning "Commander of the Seas". This passed through Sicily in the 11th century, eventually Latinized as Amiral, to which English added a "d" later on.

Initially, admirals operated alone, but as fleets grew, so did a need for a deputy, who usually commanded the fleet's van (leading portion) while the Admiral stayed in the middle with the main body. He was known as the Vice Admiral (as in Vice President). Later on, as fleets grew even more, they needed a third admiral, to command the rear portion of the fleet, hence Rear Admiral. All Admiral ranks are known as "Flag Officers" because they were officers that had a specific flag that they would fly to designate what ship they were commanding from (hence flagship). In the US, at least, the term Flag Officer has become generic across the services, and is used to include Generals as well as Admirals, but this isn't the case everywhere, and some countries restrict its use to Admirals. Read more...

One of the problems of creating a fire-control system is transmitting data between its various elements. Directors, mounted high up, need to be able to talk to the plotting rooms, and the plotting room needs to be able to issue orders to the turrets. Many different methods have been devised to solve this problem over the years, and they deserve some attention of their own.

The fire-control transmission paths in a late-war US system

At first, all data had to go between the various bits of fire-control apparatus by voice. While shouting was traditional, it was also easily covered by the din of battle. Instead, voice pipes were used. A voice pipe is a simple tube with a cone on each end, the cones shaped to match the impedance of the room so that sound is transmitted well through the pipe. A device of this type can be found on playgrounds worldwide,¹⁰ and while it's primitive, it's light, simple, and not reliant on electrical power. The only potential drawback is that it provides a path for fire and flood to spread, but this is easily handled with a plug. Over longer distances, telephones were used. Read more...

It's time for another open thread. Talk about anything you want, culture war excepted.

Posts overhauled this time include my reviews of Battleship Cove and Salem, Understanding Hull Symbols, Lushunkou and Weihaiwei, SYWTBAMN - Strategy Part 3 and Falklands Part 6.

We just got our pictures back from the wedding photographer, and there were some that might be of interest to you guys.

¹¹

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