Comments by "Dave Sisson" (@Dave_Sisson) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. But as a Greek he would have been Orthodox, which is even more different from Anglicanism than the Catholics are. But perhaps the law may have been more about fending off 'Popish Plots' than ensuring religious conformity?
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  2. Boing is the sound that French cannon balls made when they bounced off the ships walls of oak.
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  3. As I am just a commoner who lives in Australia where we don't have any nobility, I tend to be impressed when I see a title like Freiherr.
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  4. Many years ago the British made a lot of naval warfare films, The Battle of the River Plate was a good one, The Cruel Sea was another and there were plenty of submarine films as well. But withe the exception of the one about sinking the Bismark, they didn't do well in America, (although the German Das Boot did okay there as well). Today the market for movies is even more international, so anyone providing money to make big budget films is more likely to pay for one that will appeal to American audiences. The United States is more inward looking than most other countries so they tend to be more interested in films that cover their own nation. Look at the film where they changed the story of how the Britsih captured a naval enigma machine from a sinking submarine to make it look like that was done by Americans. So my thoughts are that appealing to the American market is essential to getting finance for a big budget film and as the Americans were not at Jutland, no one will provide the money for a film about it. However I hope my thoughts are wrong and we do get a film about Jutland in the future.
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  5. That was fascinating to me as I write mountain history at the other end of the world. The connection is that in remote locations, away from the main ski resorts in Australia and New Zealand, they have still have arcane ski lifts called "nutcracker tows" and these things require natural fibre rope, wire rope or even nylon rope can't be used. Anyway the clubs that run nutcracker tows often have a lot of trouble finding 500+ metre lengths of hemp rope in this modern world. So I was curious how it was made, I wonder if they get their ropes from Chatham?
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  6. That sounds like a wonderful legend. But these men did not speak the language and were penniless without any possessions. They were also fugitives wanted by the government. So what family would want a penniless fugitive who can't communicate, marrying their daughter? Almost any other man in the country would be a better marriage prospect.
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  7. With an even more colourful background than Lord Cochrane, the Abney-Hastings are the Plantagenet pretenders to the English throne. The head of the family, Simon Abney-Hastings, 15th Earl of Loudoun lives on a modest farm in Victoria, Australia.
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  8.  @briancox2721  The poor thing would starve, it would be better to get a White Breasted Sea Eagle as they have a diet of mostly fish.
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  9. You must be from the north eastern states where they play rugby. Down here we play Australian football, so we have no trouble with NZ and wish them the best. :)
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  10. Oh yes it was. Actually it was worse.
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  11. Oars so the crew can row when they run out of coal... or perhaps not. Actually they are poles that fold out to hold torpedo nets away from ships at anchor. However they didn't stop all torpedoes and as torpedoes got bigger and more powerful they stopped even less of them, so later on they were removed.
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  12. As a quick and easy solution, Wikipedia has entries for almost every ship ever built, so I type in the name of a ship and a 'disambiguation' page appears listing all ships of that name and the years each of them was operational. Then click the link to the particular ship that is of interest. Wikipedia is far from perfect, but it does give a useful basic background to a subject.
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  13. Is Admiral King one of your ancestors? I'm not British, but wow, it appears you really don't like them.
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  14.  @dusting1391  Good points, perhaps I should have said the USA can't export or even operate ships outside its own waters due to "a raft of protectionist measures, of which the Jones Act is the best known". But the passenger ships and ferries that Europe exports recieve very low subsidies and the big fast catamarans that come out of Australia get zero subsidies. So it is possible to export ships from high income companies if there is less red tape and less excessive regulation.
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  15.  @dusting1391  That's rather interesting, but I'd have to question your conclusions about Euro shipyards, as yards in Finland and Germany are outside the possible merger and all of the five biggest cruise ship and ferry ship builders in Europe have plenty of work at the moment. Anyway, forget the damn Jones Act, I mostly cited it because it is the only relevant one that most people know. I wasn't expecting to encounter someone able to write a thesis on it. So my revised statement is now... Other continents specialize in building particular types of ships, but North America has bureaucratic obstacles that mean it is effectively impossible for them to build any civilian ships except those entirely used on internal waters.
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  16. How does the song go? ... "I like big bulges and I cannot lie."
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  17. I'm watching this in a city of 5 million people which was founded by settlers disembarked from a small schooner named Enterprize (with a z). Melbourne has grown a lot since then.
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  18.  @bkjeong4302  It seems that all of the many, many comments you make are devoted to putting down battleships. They are long extinct, so the pros and cons are largely irrelevant. Perhaps you could take up a new hobby or just go for a walk somewhere to get your mind off the subject?
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  19. So in 1940, Britain had 17 battleships and 3 battlecruisers either commissioned or nearly finished building, for a total of 20 capital ships. At that time Germany had 1 battleship and 2 battlecruisers for a total of 3. Yep, I can see Germany winning that fight... or perhaps not.
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  20. Because the Americans decided to name their carriers after politicians instead. Which is a shame because an evocative name for a carrier is always better than a dodgy politicians name.
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  21. Well tens of thousands of Royal Navy sailors who survived service in the Mediterranean theatre were very grateful that Italian ammunition was dodgy.
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  22. A country that has spent all its money on a war and is in danger of running out of cash. That describes the UK in 1917, they were Broke.
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  23.  @RippPryde  Umm... Catherine of Aragon was never executed, she died of entirely natural causes.
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  24. It's closest to the British title of Baron, so perhaps he should be called Lord?
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  25. They were just too big, even mounted on very heavy railway wagons, it would be difficult to move them with a restricted loading gauge. Perhaps they could be moved to coastal defence forts?
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  26. As someone who writes non military history, I see that comment as the highest praise. It's hard enough to track down relevant information, arrange it in a sensible way, write it up and present it. But to make it highly readable, to make it a "page turner" is the goal of most writers who aim to produce popular histories rather than dull "dry read" academic papers.
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  27. If you go to the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea and taste the water, it is just a bit brackish. There's probably more fresh water from rivers than salt water from the sea in the mix.
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  28. I think it was Drach who discussed the exchange of American ice cream for British rum and beer in the Pacific Theatre.
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  29. In addition to medals awarded to members of all armed services such as the Victoria Cross, DSO, etc., the British Army and RAF had medals specific to their service such as Military Cross, Military Medal, Air Force Cross, Distinguished Flying Cross, etc. Were there any navy specific awards and if not, was it because bravery was usually attributed to a whole ship or unit, rather than individual crew members or did sailors miss out on medals when they would have been awarded for equivalent actions in the army of RAF?
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  30. Trimarans turn well, but they are not as stable as big catamarans. Have a look at the big 110 to 130 metre cat ferries built by companies like Incat. Scale them up a bit and put on guns wherever you like as stability is not an issue on a large cat. They travel at 40 to 55 knots and are powered by water jets which are not as vulnerable to being shorn off in shallow water as azapods.
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  31. Well the Australians were exporting chilled meat for the last few decades of the 19th century, so refrigerated ships were not exactly a new thing. But they were expensive to build and operate until well into the first part of the 20th century, thus the fast banana boats like Pongo that were converted into semi-naval vessels.
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  32. HMS Fifi, HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou
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  33. But not Yankee imperialism. The Americans are still in Guam, they occupy a third of Samoa as well as various smaller islands.
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  34. Well the French had an empire even bigger than the Americans, the Portuguese had one almost as big as the Americans, the Dutch had most of the East Indies and some of the West Indies and, in addition to Libya, the Italians had Somalia, Eritrea and briefly Ethiopia.
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  35. Excellent video, but shorter than I was hoping for. Fortunately Big Car and Count Binface have uploaded new videos, so I can watch them as well in the time I allocated to watch Drach.
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  36. For obvious reasons, they usually selected smaller people to go into machines with confined spaces like fighter planes, tanks and even submarines.
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  37. I suspect that Drach rather admires Jacky Fisher, but Matthew Wright leaves us in no doubt that he is NOT a fan.
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  38. You are a very nasty person to insult him at a time like this. Of course you have the right to be a Bolshevik or a republican or whatever. BUT it's only decent to allow a little time for mourning before attacking someone who has recently died.
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  39. They did explore having the nukes delivered by RAF Avro Lancasters based in Burma if the B-29s weren't ready in time. The distance would be further, but the Brits had developed in air refuelling,. Lancasters and B-29s were the only long range aircraft big enough to carry a nuke, so if the Americans hadn't island hoped close enough to Japan, there was an alternative.
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  40. Was the SS Ohio, of Operation Pedestal, Malta Convoy fame, a T2?
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  41. In English, the correct pronunciation is your second one. Drach is not quite perfect, he pronounced it incorrectly.
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  42. Looking at the list of upcoming ships I see a few of my favourites, the raider Pinguin and the oldest partially intact ironclad monitor HMVS Cerberus of 1868, although it's more of a rusty breakwater than a proper ship these days
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  43. Battle cruisers were a proven deterrent for small navies. The mere existence of HMAS Australia in 1914 caused the German Pacific squadron to avoid that part of the world and instead they tried to get home the long way via Cape Horn where it was destroyed off the Falkland Islands. As Drach said, the Dutch knew they couldn't defeat the Japanese, but the presence of a couple of battle cruisers might make them look elsewhere for oil and rubber.
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  44. Even on small ships it made a difference, vetran destoyer commanders v. someone who had only been in the navy for a couple of years and found themself in charge of a ship. Then there's the motivation to be fierce. The British executed Admiral Byng for cowardice nearly 200 years before the Second World War and while that sort of punishment was no longer applied, it still motivated ship captains like the famous case of the captain of the destroyer HMS Gloworm when he rammed a much bigger German cruiser.
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  45. And of course the Hedgehog was an English invention that they gave to the Americans. Which makes the ship appropriately named.
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  46. That is my favourite political comedy sketch. So the front falls off Australian oil tankers, but the back falls off German heavy cruisers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
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  47. Thanks for that, I have a fairly fuzzy recall of Scott's expeditions, I've read more about Shackleton and Mawson, so your post helped me fit Evans into the larger scheme of things.
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  48. Most of those quick and cheap wartime propaganda films were so awful that no one ever watched them after the war ended. That must be one of the few that was actually a good film if it was released on DVD.
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  49. It would be nice if you told us about the astonishing story of HMS Diamond Rock please.
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  50. There is also a Diamantina River down in Victoria that flows from the snow clad Mt Feathertop and Mt Hotham, so a rather non Queensland environment. No one is quite sure how it got its name.
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