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Flag of Japan
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National flag
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[
"1870 establishments in Japan",
"1999 establishments in Japan",
"Empire of Japan",
"Flags introduced in 1870",
"Flags introduced in 1999",
"Flags of Japan",
"National flags",
"National symbols of Japan",
"Postwar Japan",
"Red and white flags"
] |
The national flag of Japan is a rectangular white banner bearing a crimson-red circle at its center. This flag is officially called the Nisshōki (日章旗, 'flag of the sun'), but is more commonly known in Japan as the Hinomaru (日の丸, 'Ball of the sun'). It embodies the country's sobriquet: the Land of the Rising Sun.
The Nisshoki flag is designated as the national flag in the Act on National Flag and Anthem, which was promulgated and became effective on 13 August 1999. Although no earlier legislation had specified a national flag, the sun-disc flag had already become the de facto national flag of Japan. Two proclamations issued in 1870 by the Daijō-kan, the governmental body of the early Meiji period, each had a provision for a design of the national flag. A sun-disc flag was adopted as the national flag for merchant ships under Proclamation No. 57 of Meiji 3 (issued on 27 February 1870), and as the national flag used by the Navy under Proclamation No. 651 of Meiji 3 (issued on 27 October 1870). Use of the Hinomaru was severely restricted during the early years of the Allied occupation of Japan after World War II; these restrictions were later relaxed.
The sun plays an important role in Japanese mythology and religion, as the Emperor is said to be the direct descendant of the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu, and the legitimacy of the ruling house rested on this divine appointment. The name of the country as well as the design of the flag reflect this central importance of the sun. The ancient history Shoku Nihongi says that Emperor Monmu used a flag representing the sun in his court in 701, the first recorded use of a sun-motif flag in Japan. The oldest existing flag is preserved in Unpō-ji temple, Kōshū, Yamanashi, which is older than the 16th century, and an ancient legend says that the flag was given to the temple by Emperor Go-Reizei in the 11th century. During the Meiji Restoration, the sun disc and the Rising Sun Ensign of the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army became major symbols in the emerging Japanese Empire. Propaganda posters, textbooks, and films depicted the flag as a source of pride and patriotism. In Japanese homes, citizens were required to display the flag during national holidays, celebrations and other occasions as decreed by the government. Different tokens of devotion to Japan and its Emperor featuring the Hinomaru motif became popular among the public during the Second Sino-Japanese War and other conflicts. These tokens ranged from slogans written on the flag to clothing items and dishes that resembled the flag.
Public perception of the national flag varies. Historically, both Western and Japanese sources claimed the flag was a powerful and enduring symbol to the Japanese. Since the end of World War II (the Pacific War), the use of the flag and the national anthem Kimigayo has been a contentious issue for Japan's public schools, and disputes about their use have led to protests and lawsuits. In China and Korea, the flag is a symbol of aggression and imperialism. Several military banners of Japan are based on the Hinomaru, including the sunrayed naval ensign. The Hinomaru also serves as a template for other Japanese flags in public and private use.
## History
### Ancient to medieval
The exact origin of the Hinomaru is unknown, but the rising sun has carried symbolic meaning since the early 7th century (the Japanese archipelago is east of the Asian mainland, and is thus where the sun "rises"). In 607, an official correspondence that began with "from the Emperor of the rising sun" was sent to Chinese Emperor Yang of Sui. Japan is often referred to as "the land of the rising sun".
The sun is closely related to the Imperial family, as legend states the imperial throne was descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu. The religion, which is categorized as the ancient Ko-Shintō religion of the Japanese people, includes nature worship and animism, and the faith has been worshiping the sun, especially in agriculture and fishing. The Imperial God, Amaterasu-ōmikami, is the sun goddess. From the Yayoi period (300 BCE) to the Kofun period (250 CE) (Yamato period), the Naiko Kamonkyo (内行花文鏡<sup> [ja]</sup>, a large bronze mirror with patterns like a flower-petal manufactured in Japan) was used as a celebration of the shape of the shining sun and there is a theory that one of the Three Sacred Treasures, Yata no Kagami, is used like this mirror.
During the eastern expedition (Jinmu tosei), Emperor Jimmu's brother Itsuse no Mikoto was killed in a battle against the local chieftain Nagasunehiko ("the long-legged man") in Naniwa (modern-day Osaka). Emperor Jimmu realized, as descendants of the sun, that he did not want to fight towards the sun (to the east), but to fight from the sun (to the west). So his clan went to the east side of Kii Peninsula to battle westward. They reached Kumano (or Ise) and went towards Yamato. They were victorious at the second battle with Nagasunehiko and conquered the Kinki region.
The use of the sun-shaped flag was thought to have taken place since the emperor's direct imperial rule (親政) was established after the Isshi Incident in 645 (first year of the Taika (era)).
The Japanese history text Shoku Nihongi, completed in 797, has the first recorded use of the sun-motif flag by Emperor Monmu's Chōga (朝賀, 'new year's greetings ceremony') in 701 (the first year of the Taihō era). For the decoration of the ceremony hall on New Year's Day the Nissho (日像, 'the flag with the golden sun') was raised.
One prominent theory is influenced by the results of the Genpei War (1180–1185). Until the Heian period, the Nishiki flag (Nishiki no mihata 錦の御旗), a symbol of the Imperial Court, had a golden sun circle and a silver moon circle on a red background. At the end of the Heian era, the Taira clan called themselves a government army and used the red flag with a gold circle (赤地金丸) as per the Imperial Court. The Genji (Minamoto clan) were in opposition so they used a white flag with a red circle (白地赤丸) when they fought the Genpei War (1180–1185). When the Taira clan was defeated, the samurai government (bakufu, 幕府) was formed by the Genji. The warlords who came after such as Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu realized they were successors of Genji so they raised the Hinomaru flag in battle.
In the 12th-century work, The Tale of the Heike, it was written that different samurai carried drawings of the sun on their fans. One legend related to the national flag is attributed to the Buddhist priest Nichiren. Supposedly, during a 13th-century Mongolian invasion of Japan, Nichiren gave a sun banner to the shōgun to carry into battle.
During the Battle of Nagashino (28 June 1575), Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu's allied forces fought Takeda Katsuyori. Both Nobunaga and Ieyasu had their own flags with family crests, but they also held the Hinomaru. On the other hand, the Takeda clan side also raised the Hinomaru. So the Hinomaru was used as a national symbol.
One of Japan's oldest flags is housed at the Unpo-ji temple in Kōshū city, Yamanashi Prefecture. Legend states it was given by Emperor Go-Reizei to Minamoto no Yoshimitsu and has been treated as a family treasure by the Takeda clan for the past 1,000 years, and at least it is older than 16th century.
In the 16th century unification period, each daimyō had flags that were used primarily in battle. Most of the flags were long banners usually charged with the mon (family crest) of the daimyō lord. Members of the same family, such as a son, father, and brother, had different flags to carry into battle. The flags served as identification and were displayed by soldiers on their backs and horses. Generals also had their own flags, most of which differed from soldiers' flags due to their square shape.
In 1854, during the Tokugawa shogunate, Japanese ships were ordered to hoist the Hinomaru to distinguish themselves from foreign ships. Before then, different types of Hinomaru flags were used on vessels that were trading with the U.S. and Russia. The Hinomaru was decreed the merchant flag of Japan in 1870 and was the legal national flag from 1870 to 1885, making it the first national flag Japan adopted.
While the idea of national symbols was strange to the Japanese, the Meiji Government needed them to communicate with the outside world. This became especially important after the landing of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry in Yokohama Bay. Further Meiji Government implementations gave more identifications to Japan, including the anthem Kimigayo and the imperial seal. In 1885, all previous laws not published in the Official Gazette of Japan were abolished. Because of this ruling by the new cabinet of Japan, the Hinomaru was the de facto national flag since no law was in place after the Meiji Restoration.
### Early conflicts and the Pacific War
The use of the national flag grew as Japan sought to develop an empire, and the Hinomaru was present at celebrations after victories in the First Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. The flag was also used in war efforts throughout the country. A Japanese propaganda film in 1934 portrayed foreign national flags as incomplete or defective with their designs, while the Japanese flag is perfect in all forms. In 1937, a group of girls from Hiroshima Prefecture showed solidarity with Japanese soldiers fighting in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, by eating "flag meals" that consisted of an umeboshi in the middle of a bed of rice. The Hinomaru bento became the main symbol of Japan's war mobilization and solidarity with its soldiers until the 1940s.
Japan's early victories in the Sino-Japanese War resulted in the Hinomaru again being used for celebrations. It was seen in the hands of every Japanese during parades.
Textbooks during this period also had the Hinomaru printed with various slogans expressing devotion to the Emperor and the country. Patriotism was taught as a virtue to Japanese children. Expressions of patriotism, such as displaying the flag or worshiping the Emperor daily, were all part of being a "good Japanese".
The flag was a tool of Japanese imperialism in the occupied Southeast Asian areas during the Second World War: people had to use the flag, and schoolchildren sang Kimigayo in morning flag raising ceremonies. Local flags were allowed for some areas such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Manchukuo. In Korea which was part of the Empire of Japan, the Hinomaru and other symbols were used to declare that the Koreans were subjects of the empire.
During the Pacific War, Americans coined the derogatory term "meatballs" for the Hinomaru and Japanese military aircraft insignia. To the Japanese, the Hinomaru was the "Rising Sun flag that would light the darkness of the entire world". To Westerners, it was one of the Japanese military's most powerful symbols.
### U.S. occupation
The Hinomaru was the de facto flag of Japan throughout World War II and the occupation period. During the occupation of Japan after World War II, permission from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAPJ) was needed to fly the Hinomaru. Sources differ on the degree to which the use of the Hinomaru flag was restricted; some use the term "banned;" however, while the original restrictions were severe, they did not amount to an outright ban.
After World War II, an ensign was used by Japanese civil ships of the United States Naval Shipping Control Authority for Japanese Merchant Marines. Modified from the "E" signal code, the ensign was used from September 1945 until the U.S. occupation of Japan ceased. U.S. ships operating in Japanese waters used a modified "O" signal flag as their ensign.
On 2 May 1947, General Douglas MacArthur lifted the restrictions on displaying the Hinomaru in the grounds of the National Diet Building, on the Imperial Palace, on the Prime Minister's residence and on the Supreme Court building with the ratification of the new Constitution of Japan. Those restrictions were further relaxed in 1948, when people were allowed to fly the flag on national holidays. In January 1949, the restrictions were abolished and anyone could fly the Hinomaru at any time without permission. As a result, schools and homes were encouraged to fly the Hinomaru until the early 1950s.
### Postwar to 1999
Since World War II, Japan's flag has been criticized for its association with the country's militaristic past. Similar objections have also been raised to the current national anthem of Japan, Kimigayo. The feelings about the Hinomaru and Kimigayo represented a general shift from a patriotic feeling about "Dai Nippon" – Great Japan – to the pacifist and anti-militarist "Nihon". Because of this ideological shift, the flag was used less often in Japan directly after the war even though restrictions were lifted by the SCAPJ in 1949.
As Japan began to re-establish itself diplomatically, the Hinomaru was used as a political weapon overseas. In a visit by Emperor Shōwa and Empress Kōjun to the Netherlands, the Hinomaru was burned by Dutch citizens who demanded that he either be sent home to Japan or tried for the deaths of Dutch prisoners of war during the Second World War. Domestically, the flag was not even used in protests against a new Status of Forces Agreement being negotiated between the U.S. and Japan. The most common flag used by the trade unions and other protesters was the red flag of revolt.
An issue with the Hinomaru and national anthem was raised once again when Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympic Games. Before the Olympic Games, the size of the sun disc of the national flag was changed partly because the sun disc was not considered striking when it was being flown with other national flags. Tadamasa Fukiura, a color specialist, chose to set the sun disc at two-thirds of the flag's length. Fukiura also chose the flag colors for the 1964 games as well as for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.
In 1989, the death of Emperor Shōwa once again raised moral issues about the national flag. Conservatives felt that if the flag could be used during the ceremonies without reopening old wounds, they might have a chance to propose that the Hinomaru become the national flag without being challenged about its meaning. During an official six-day mourning period, flags were flown at half staff or draped in black bunting all across Japan. Despite reports of protesters vandalizing the Hinomaru on the day of the Emperor's funeral, schools' right to fly the Japanese flag at half-staff without reservations brought success to the conservatives.
### Since 1999
The Law Regarding the National Flag and National Anthem was passed in 1999, choosing both the Hinomaru and Kimigayo as Japan's national symbols. The passage of the law stemmed from the suicide of the principal of Sera High School [ja] in Sera, Hiroshima, Toshihiro Ishikawa, who could not resolve a dispute between his school board and his teachers over the use of the Hinomaru and Kimigayo. The Act is one of the most controversial laws passed by the Diet since the 1992 "Law Concerning Cooperation for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Other Operations", also known as the "International Peace Cooperation Law".
Prime Minister Keizō Obuchi of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) decided to draft legislation to make the Hinomaru and Kimigayo official symbols of Japan in 2000. His Chief Cabinet Secretary, Hiromu Nonaka, wanted the legislation to be completed by the 10th anniversary of Emperor Akihito's enthronement. This is not the first time legislation was considered for establishing both symbols as official. In 1974, with the backdrop of the 1972 return of Okinawa to Japan and the 1973 oil crisis, Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka hinted at a law being passed enshrining both symbols in the law of Japan. In addition to instructing the schools to teach and play Kimigayo, Tanaka wanted students to raise the Hinomaru flag in a ceremony every morning, and to adopt a moral curriculum based on certain elements of the Imperial Rescript on Education pronounced by the Meiji Emperor in 1890. Tanaka was unsuccessful in passing the law through the Diet that year.
The main supporters of the bill were the LDP and the Komeito (CGP), while the opposition included the Social Democratic Party (SDPJ) and Communist Party (JCP), who cited the connotations both symbols had with the war era. The CPJ was further opposed for not allowing the issue to be decided by the public. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) could not develop party consensus on it. DPJ President and future prime minister Naoto Kan stated that the DPJ must support the bill because the party already recognized both symbols as the symbols of Japan. Deputy Secretary General and future prime minister Yukio Hatoyama thought that this bill would cause further divisions among society and the public schools. Hatoyama voted for the bill while Kan voted against it.
Before the vote, there were calls for the bills to be separated at the Diet. Waseda University professor Norihiro Kato stated that Kimigayo is a separate issue more complex than the Hinomaru flag. Attempts to designate only the Hinomaru as the national flag by the DPJ and other parties during the vote of the bill were rejected by the Diet. The House of Representatives passed the bill on 22 July 1999, by a 403 to 86 vote. The legislation was sent to the House of Councilors on 28 July and was passed on 9 August. It was enacted into law on 13 August.
On 8 August 2009, a photograph was taken at a DPJ rally for the House of Representatives election showing a banner that was hanging from a ceiling. The banner was made of two Hinomaru flags cut and sewn together to form the shape of the DPJ logo. This infuriated the LDP and Prime Minister Tarō Asō, saying this act was unforgivable. In response, DPJ President Yukio Hatoyama (who voted for the Law Regarding the National Flag and National Anthem) said that the banner was not the Hinomaru and should not be regarded as such.
## Flag design
Passed in 1870, the Prime Minister's Proclamation No. 57 had two provisions related to the national flag. The first provision specified who flew the flag and how it was flown; the second specified how the flag was made. The ratio was seven units width and ten units length (7:10). The red disc, which represents the sun, was calculated to be three-fifths of the hoist width. The law decreed the disc to be in the center, but it was usually placed one-hundredth (1⁄100) towards the hoist. (this makes the disc appear centered when the flag is flying; this technique is used in other flags, such as the Flag of Bangladesh). On 3 October of the same year, regulations about the design of the merchant ensign and other naval flags were passed. For the merchant flag, the ratio was two units width and three units length (2:3). The size of the disc remained the same, but the sun disc was placed one-twentieth (1⁄20) towards the hoist.
When the Law Regarding the National Flag and National Anthem passed, the dimensions of the flag were slightly altered. The overall ratio of the flag was changed to two units width by three units length (2:3). The red disc was shifted towards the center, but the overall size of the disc stayed the same. The background of the flag is white and the center is a red circle (紅色, beni iro), but the exact color shades were not defined in the 1999 law. The only hint given about the red colour is that it is a "deep" shade.
Issued by the Japan Defense Agency (now the Ministry of Defense) in 1973 (Shōwa 48), specifications list the red color of the flag as 5R 4/12 and the white as N9 in the Munsell color chart. The document was changed on 21 March 2008 (Heisei 20) to match the flag's construction with current legislation and updated the Munsell colours. The document lists acrylic fiber and nylon as fibers that could be used in construction of flags used by the military. For acrylic, the red color is 5.7R 3.7/15.5 and white is N9.4; nylon has 6.2R 4/15.2 for red and N9.2 for white. In a document issued by the Official Development Assistance (ODA), the red color for the Hinomaru and the ODA logo is listed as DIC 156 and CMYK 0-100-90-0. During deliberations about the Law Regarding the National Flag and National Anthem, there was a suggestion to either use a bright red (赤色, aka iro) shade or use one from the color pool of the Japanese Industrial Standards.
### Colour chart
## Use and customs
When the Hinomaru was first introduced, the government required citizens to greet the Emperor with the flag. There was some resentment among the Japanese over the flag, resulting in some protests. It took some time for the flag to gain acceptance among the people.
Before World War II, all homes were required to display Hinomaru on national holidays. Since the war, the display of the flag of Japan is mostly limited to buildings attached to national and local governments such as city halls; it is rarely seen at private homes or commercial buildings, but some people and companies have advocated displaying the flag on holidays. Although the government of Japan encourages citizens and residents to fly the Hinomaru during national holidays, they are not legally required to do so. Since the Emperor's 80th Birthday on 23 December 2002, the Kyushu Railway Company has displayed the Hinomaru at 330 stations.
Starting in 1995, the ODA has used the Hinomaru motif in their official logo. The design itself was not created by the government (the logo was chosen from 5,000 designs submitted by the public) but the government was trying to increase the visualization of the Hinomaru through their aid packages and development programs. According to the ODA, the use of the flag is the most effective way to symbolise aid provided by the Japanese people.
### Hinomaru Yosegaki
During World War II in Japanese culture, it was a popular custom for friends, classmates, and relatives of a deploying soldier to sign a Hinomaru and present it to him. The flag was also used as a good luck charm and a prayer to wish the soldier back safely from battle. One term for this kind of charm is Hinomaru Yosegaki (日の丸寄せ書き). One tradition is that no writing should touch the sun disc. After battles, these flags were often captured or later found on deceased Japanese soldiers. Some of these flags have become souvenirs, and some are being returned to Japan and the descendants of the deceased.
In modern times, the "Hinomaru Yosegaki" is still being used. The tradition of signing the Hinomaru as a good luck charm still continues, though in a limited fashion. The Hinomaru Yosegaki is shown at sporting events to give support to the Japanese national team. The Yosegaki (group effort flag, 寄せ書き) is used for campaigning soldiers, athletes, retirees, transfer students in a community and for friends. The colored paper and flag has writing with a message. In modern Japan, it is given as a present to a person at a send-off party, for athletes, a farewell party for colleagues or transfer students, for graduation and retirement. After natural disasters such as the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and tsunami people write notes on a Hinomaru Yosegaki to show support.
### Hachimaki
The hachimaki (鉢巻, "helmet-scarf") is a white headband (bandana) with the red sun in the middle. Phrases are usually written on it. It is worn as a symbol of perseverance, effort, and/or courage by the wearer. These are worn on many occasions by for example sports spectators, women giving birth, students in cram school, office workers, tradesmen taking pride in their work etc. During World War II, the phrases "Certain Victory" (必勝, Hisshō) or "Seven Lives" was written on the hachimaki and worn by kamikaze pilots. This denoted that the pilot was willing to die for his country.
### Hinomaru Bentō
A bentō and makunouchi are types of Japanese lunch boxes. It can have Hinomaru rice (日の丸ご飯, Hinomaru gohan). It consists of gohan (steamed white rice) with a red umeboshi (dried ume) in the center which represents the sun and the flag of Japan. A Hinomaru lunch box (日の丸弁当, Hinomaru bentō) only has white rice and a red umeboshi in the center. The salty, vinegar soaked umeboshi acts as a preservative for the rice. There are also hinomaru rice bowls which are less common.
## Culture and perception
According to polls conducted by mainstream media, most Japanese people had perceived the flag of Japan as the national flag even before the passage of the Law Regarding the National Flag and National Anthem in 1999. Despite this, controversies surrounding the use of the flag in school events or media still remain. For example, liberal newspapers such as Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun often feature articles critical of the flag of Japan, reflecting their readerships' political spectrum. To other Japanese, the flag represents the time where democracy was suppressed when Japan was an empire.
The display of the national flag at homes and businesses is also debated in Japanese society. Because of its association with uyoku dantai (right wing) activists, reactionary politics, or hooliganism, most homes and businesses do not fly the flag. There is no requirement to fly the flag on any national holiday or special events. The town of Kanazawa, Ishikawa, has proposed plans in September 2012 to use government funds to buy flags with the purpose of encouraging citizens to fly the flag on national holidays. The Japanese Communist Party is vocally against the flag.
Negative perceptions of the national flag exist in former colonies of Japan as well as within Japan itself, such as in Okinawa. In one notable example of this, on 26 October 1987, an Okinawan supermarket owner burned the flag before the start of the National Sports Festival of Japan. The flag burner, Shōichi Chibana, burned the Hinomaru not only to show opposition to atrocities committed by the Japanese army and the continued presence of U.S. forces but also to prevent it from being displayed in public. Other incidents in Okinawa included the flag being torn down during school ceremonies and students refusing to honor the flag as it was being raised to the sounds of "Kimigayo". In the capital city of Naha, Okinawa, the Hinomaru was raised for the first time since the return of Okinawa to Japan to celebrate the city's 80th anniversary in 2001. In the People's Republic of China and Republic of Korea, both of which had been occupied by the Empire of Japan, the 1999 formal adoption of the Hinomaru was met with reactions of Japan moving towards the right and also a step towards re-militarization. The passage of the 1999 law also coincided with the debates about the status of the Yasukuni Shrine, U.S.-Japan military cooperation, and the creation of a missile defense program. In other nations that Japan occupied, the 1999 law was met with mixed reactions or glossed over. In Singapore, the older generation still harbors ill feelings toward the flag while the younger generation does not hold similar views. The Philippine government not only believed that Japan was not going to revert to militarism, but the goal of the 1999 law was to formally establish two symbols (the flag and anthem) in law and every state has a right to create national symbols. Japan has no law criminalizing the burning of the Hinomaru, but foreign flags cannot be burned in Japan.
## Protocol
According to protocol, the flag may fly from sunrise until sunset; businesses and schools are permitted to fly the flag from opening to closing. When flying the flags of Japan and another country at the same time in Japan, the Japanese flag takes the position of honor and the flag of the guest country flies to its right. Both flags must be at the same height and of equal size. When more than one foreign flag is displayed, Japan's flag is arranged in the alphabetical order prescribed by the United Nations. When the flag becomes unsuitable to use, it is customarily burned in private. The Law Regarding the National Flag and Anthem does not specify on how the flag should be used, but different prefectures came up with their own regulations to use the Hinomaru and other prefectural flags.
### Mourning
The Hinomaru flag has at least two mourning styles. One is to display the flag at half-staff (半旗, Han-ki), as is common in many countries. The offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also hoist the flag at half-staff when a funeral is performed for a foreign nation's head of state.
An alternative mourning style is to wrap the spherical finial with black cloth and place a black ribbon, known as a mourning flag (弔旗<sup> [ja]</sup>, Chō-ki), above the flag. This style dates back to the death of Emperor Meiji on 30 July 1912, and the Cabinet issued an ordinance stipulating that the national flag should be raised in mourning when the Emperor dies. The Cabinet has the authority to announce the half-staffing of the national flag.
### Public schools
Since the end of World War II, the Ministry of Education has issued statements and regulations to promote the usage of both the Hinomaru and Kimigayo (national anthem) at schools under their jurisdiction. The first of these statements was released in 1950, stating that it was desirable, but not required, to use both symbols. This desire was later expanded to include both symbols on national holidays and during ceremonial events to encourage students on what national holidays are and to promote defense education. In a 1989 reform of the education guidelines, the LDP-controlled government first demanded that the flag must be used in school ceremonies and that proper respect must be given to it and to Kimigayo. Punishments for school officials who did not follow this order were also enacted with the 1989 reforms.
The 1999 curriculum guideline issued by the Ministry of Education after the passage of the Law Regarding the National Flag and Anthem decrees that "on entrance and graduation ceremonies, schools must raise the flag of Japan and instruct students to sing the Kimigayo, given the significance of the flag and the song." Additionally, the ministry's commentary on the 1999 curriculum guideline for elementary schools note that "given the advance of internationalization, along with fostering patriotism and awareness of being Japanese, it is important to nurture school children's respectful attitude toward the flag of Japan and Kimigayo as they grow up to be respected Japanese citizens in an internationalized society." The ministry also stated that if Japanese students cannot respect their own symbols, then they will not be able to respect the symbols of other nations.
Schools have been the center of controversy over both the anthem and the national flag. The Tokyo Board of Education requires the use of both the anthem and flag at events under their jurisdiction. The order requires school teachers to respect both symbols or risk losing their jobs. Some have protested that such rules violate the Constitution of Japan, but the Board has argued that since schools are government agencies, their employees have an obligation to teach their students how to be good Japanese citizens. As a sign of protest, schools refused to display the Hinomaru at school graduations and some parents ripped down the flag. Teachers have unsuccessfully brought criminal complaints against Tokyo Governor Shintarō Ishihara and senior officials for ordering teachers to honor the Hinomaru and Kimigayo. After earlier opposition, the Japan Teachers Union accepts the use of both the flag and anthem; the smaller All Japan Teachers and Staffs Union still opposes both symbols and their use inside the school system.
## Related flags
### Military flags
The Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force use the Rising Sun Flag with eight red rays extending outward, called Hachijō-Kyokujitsuki (八条旭日旗). A gold border is situated partially around the edge.
A well-known variant of the sun disc design is the sun disc with 16 red rays in a Siemens star formation, which was also historically used by Japan's military, particularly the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The ensign, known in Japanese as the Jyūrokujō-Kyokujitsu-ki (十六条旭日旗), was first adopted as the war flag on 15 May 1870, and was used until the end of World War II in 1945. It was re-adopted on 30 June 1954, and is now used as the war flag and naval ensign of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). JSDF Chief of Staff Katsutoshi Kawano said the Rising Sun Flag is the Maritime Self-Defense Force sailors' "pride". Due to its continued use by the Imperial Japanese Army, this flag carries the negative connotation similar to the Nazi flag in China and Korea. These formerly colonised countries state that this flag is a symbol of Japanese imperialism during World War II, and was an ongoing conflict event for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The JMSDF also employs the use of a masthead pennant. First adopted in 1914 and readopted in 1965, the masthead pennant contains a simplified version of the naval ensign at the hoist end, with the rest of the pennant colored white. The ratio of the pennant is between 1:40 and 1:90.
The Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), established independently in 1952, has only the plain sun disc as its emblem. This is the only branch of service with an emblem that does not invoke the rayed Imperial Standard. However, the branch does have an ensign to fly on bases and during parades. The Japan Air Self-Defense Force flag was first adopted in 1955 after the JASDF was created in 1954. The flag is cobalt blue with a gold winged eagle on top of a combined star, the moon, the Hinomaru sun disc and clouds. The latest version of the JASDF flag was re-adopted on 19 March 2001.
Although not an official national flag, the Z signal flag played a major role in Japanese naval history. On 27 May 1905, Admiral Heihachirō Tōgō of the Mikasa was preparing to engage the Russian Baltic Fleet. Before the Battle of Tsushima began, Togo raised the Z flag on the Mikasa and engaged the Russian fleet, winning the battle for Japan. The raising of the flag said to the crew the following: "The fate of Imperial Japan hangs on this one battle; all hands will exert themselves and do their best." The Z flag was also raised on the aircraft carrier Akagi on the eve of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941.
### Imperial flags
Starting in 1870, flags were created for the Japanese Emperor (then Emperor Meiji), the Empress, and other members of the imperial family. At first, the Emperor's flag was ornate, with a sun resting in the center of an artistic pattern. He had flags that were used on land, at sea, and when he was in a carriage. The imperial family was also granted flags to be used at sea and while on land (one for use on foot and one carriage flag). The carriage flags were a monocolored chrysanthemum, with 16 petals, placed in the center of a monocolored background. These flags were discarded in 1889 when the Emperor decided to use the chrysanthemum on a red background as his flag. With minor changes in the color shades and proportions, the flags adopted in 1889 are still in use by the imperial family.
The current Emperor's flag is a 16-petal chrysanthemum (called Kikkamon, Japanese:菊花紋), colored in gold, centered on a red background with a 2:3 ratio. The Empress uses the same flag, except the shape is that of a swallow tail. The crown prince and the crown princess use the same flags, except with a smaller chrysanthemum and a white border in the middle of the flags. The chrysanthemum has been associated with the Imperial throne since the rule of Emperor Go-Toba in the 12th century, but it did not become the exclusive symbol of the Imperial throne until 1868.
### Subnational flags
Each of the 47 prefectures of Japan has its own flag which, like the national flag, consists of a symbol – called a mon – charged upon a monocolored field (except for Ehime Prefecture, where the background is bicolored). There are several prefecture flags, such as Hiroshima's, that match their specifications to the national flag (2:3 ratio, mon placed in the center and is 3⁄5 the length of the flag). Some of the mon display the name of the prefecture in Japanese characters; others are stylized depictions of the location or another special feature of the prefecture. An example of a prefectural flag is that of Nagano, where the orange katakana character ナ (na) appears in the center of a white disc. One interpretation of the mon is that the na symbol represents a mountain and the white disc, a lake. The orange color represents the sun while the white color represents the snow of the region.
Municipalities can also adopt flags of their own. The designs of the city flags are similar to the prefectural flags: a mon on a monocolored background. An example is the flag of Amakusa in Kumamoto Prefecture: the city symbol is composed of the Katakana character ア (a) and surrounded by waves. This symbol is centered on a white flag, with a ratio of 2:3. Both the city emblem and the flag were adopted in 2006.
### Derivatives
In addition to the flags used by the military, several other flag designs were inspired by the national flag. The former Japan Post flag consisted of the Hinomaru with a red horizontal bar placed in the center of the flag. There was also a thin white ring around the red sun. It was later replaced by a flag that consisted of the 〒 postal mark in red on a white background.
Two recently designed national flags resemble the Japanese flag. In 1971, Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan, and it adopted a national flag that had a green background, charged with an off-centered red disc that contained a golden map of Bangladesh. The current flag, adopted in 1972, dropped the golden map and kept everything else. The Government of Bangladesh officially calls the red disc a circle; the red color symbolizes the blood that was shed to create their country. The island nation of Palau uses a flag of similar design, but the color scheme is completely different. While the Government of Palau does not cite the Japanese flag as an influence on their national flag, Japan did administer Palau from 1914 until 1944. The flag of Palau is an off-centered golden-yellow full moon on a sky blue background. The moon stands for peace and a young nation while the blue background represents Palau's transition to self-government from 1981 to 1994, when it achieved full independence.
The Japanese naval ensign also influenced other flag designs. One such flag design is used by the Asahi Shimbun. At the bottom hoist of the flag, one quarter of the sun is displayed. The kanji character 朝 is displayed on the flag, colored white, covering most of the sun. The rays extend from the sun, occurring in a red and white alternating order, culminating in 13 total stripes. The flag is commonly seen at the National High School Baseball Championship, as the Asahi Shimbun is a main sponsor of the tournament. The rank flags and ensigns of the Imperial Japanese Navy also based their designs on the naval ensign.
## Gallery
## See also
- List of Japanese flags
- National symbols of Japan
- Nobori
- Sashimono
- Uma-jirushi
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585,705 |
Wally Hammond
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English cricketer (1903–1965)
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"1965 deaths",
"Bristol Rovers F.C. players",
"Cricketers from Dover, Kent",
"Cricketers from Gloucestershire",
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"England Test cricket captains",
"England Test cricketers",
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"English cricketers of 1919 to 1945",
"English men's footballers",
"Gentlemen cricketers",
"Gentlemen of England cricketers",
"Gloucestershire cricket captains",
"Gloucestershire cricketers",
"L. H. Tennyson's XI cricket team",
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"Marylebone Cricket Club South African Touring Team cricketers",
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Walter Reginald Hammond (19 June 1903 – 1 July 1965) was an English first-class cricketer who played for Gloucestershire in a career that lasted from 1920 to 1951. Beginning as a professional, he later became an amateur and was appointed captain of England. Primarily a middle-order batsman, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack described him in his obituary as one of the four best batsmen in the history of cricket. He was considered to be the best English batsman of the 1930s by commentators and those with whom he played; they also said that he was one of the best slip fielders ever. Hammond was an effective fast-medium pace bowler and contemporaries believed that if he had been less reluctant to bowl, he could have achieved even more with the ball than he did.
In a Test career spanning 85 matches, he scored 7,249 runs and took 83 wickets. Hammond captained England in 20 of those Tests, winning four, losing three, and drawing 13. His career aggregate of runs was the highest in Test cricket until surpassed by Colin Cowdrey in 1970; his total of 22 Test centuries remained an English record until Alastair Cook surpassed it in December 2012. In 1933, he set a record for the highest individual Test innings of 336 not out, surpassed by Len Hutton in 1938. In all first-class cricket, he scored 50,551 runs and 167 centuries, respectively the seventh and third highest totals by a first-class cricketer.
Although Hammond began his career in 1920, he was required to wait until 1923 before he could play full-time, after his qualification to play for Gloucestershire was challenged. His potential was spotted immediately and after three full seasons, he was chosen to visit the West Indies in 1925–26 as a member of a Marylebone Cricket Club touring party, but contracted a serious illness on the tour. He began to score heavily after his recovery in 1927 and was selected for England. In the 1928–29 series against Australia he scored 905 runs, then a record aggregate for a Test series. He dominated county cricket in the 1930s and, despite a mid-decade slump in Test form, was made captain of England in 1938. He continued as captain after the Second World War, but his health had deteriorated and he retired from first-class cricket after an unsuccessful tour of Australia in 1946–47. He appeared in two more first-class matches in the early 1950s.
Hammond was married twice, divorcing his first wife in acrimonious circumstances, and had a reputation for infidelity. His relationships with other players were difficult; teammates and opponents alike found him hard to get along with. He was unsuccessful in business dealings and failed to establish a successful career once he retired from cricket. He moved to South Africa in the 1950s in an attempt to start a business, but this came to nothing. As a result, he and his family struggled financially. Shortly after beginning a career as a sports administrator, he was involved in a serious car crash in 1960 which left him frail. He died of a heart attack in 1965.
## Early life and career
### Childhood and school life
Hammond was born on 19 June 1903 in Dover in Kent. His parents, William—a bombardier in the Royal Garrison Artillery—and Marion Hammond (née Crisp), lived in the married quarters at Dover Castle where Walter was born. They had wed the previous December. Hammond spent his early years in Dover, often playing cricket. When he was five years old, his father was posted to Hong Kong to serve on the China Station and promoted to sergeant. The family remained there until 1911, followed by a posting to Malta until 1914. Hammond later recalled playing cricket in Malta using improvised equipment, including a soldier's old bat which he believed taught him to strike the ball powerfully.
When the First World War broke out, the Hammonds returned to England with the rest of the 46th Company of the Royal Garrison Artillery. William was subsequently posted to France where, promoted to major, he was killed near Amiens in 1918. Marion settled in Southsea and sent Walter to The Portsmouth Grammar School, before moving him in 1918 to board at Cirencester Grammar School, believing that he would benefit from living away from home and hoping to encourage a career in farming. He did not enjoy an easy relationship with his mother, often staying with friends during holidays in preference to returning home.
At both Portsmouth and Cirencester, Hammond excelled at sports including cricket (playing for the Portsmouth Grammar School second eleven), football and fives. At Cirencester, he played football for the school first eleven in his first term. He quickly reached the school cricket first eleven, where he outperformed the other players and became captain in his second season; his headmaster, quickly spotting his potential, encouraged him. His first century was scored in a match against a parents' team from the school. In an inter-house match, he scored 365 not out, albeit against very weak bowling. These achievements brought him some local acclaim. Hammond enjoyed less success in the classroom; his marks were usually low, and he preferred to be out playing cricket.
Leaving Cirencester in July 1920, Hammond planned to go to Winchester Agricultural College, following the path into farming mapped out by his mother. However, his plans changed when his headmaster wrote to the captain of Gloucestershire, Foster Robinson, reporting Hammond's school cricket record and suggesting that they take a look at him. Hammond, who scored a century in his first appearance in adult cricket days after leaving school, played in a trial match for the Gloucestershire Club and Ground, scoring 60 runs, taking two wickets and impressing the local press. Subsequently, two members of Gloucestershire's committee visited Hammond's mother in an attempt to sign him for the club. Hammond's mother was initially reluctant, but his eagerness finally convinced her and he signed a professional contract.
### First years with Gloucestershire
Hammond made his first-class debut for Gloucestershire in August 1920. Although his first four innings yielded only 27 runs, the local press saw enough to predict a great future for him. He spent the winter working on a farm on the Isle of Wight, then moved to Bristol for the start of the 1921 English cricket season. Playing only two first-class matches in 1921, both against the powerful Australian tourists, Hammond scored two runs in three innings, overwhelmed by fast bowler Jack Gregory. In between these games, Gloucestershire arranged his appointment as assistant coach at Clifton College, Bristol, where he worked on his batting technique with former county cricketers John Tunnicliffe and George Dennett.
Gloucestershire gave Hammond an extended run at the start of the 1922 season. He played five matches without passing 32 runs in an innings at a batting average of under ten. He did not have the opportunity to improve his record as Lord Harris, the Marylebone Cricket Club (M.C.C.) treasurer, noticed that Hammond was born in Kent. He had not resided in Gloucestershire long enough to be eligible to play for the team under County Championship rules, and was barred for the rest of the season. The press criticised the ruling for interrupting the career of a player seen as very promising, despite his lack of success thus far. Hammond spent the rest of the summer, which he later described as the most miserable of his life, watching county games, although Gloucestershire continued to pay him in full.
### Football career
In the winter of 1921–22, Hammond, needing work, signed to play professional football for Bristol Rovers F.C. in Division Three South, following his success at school and in the Bristol Downs Football League. After some time in the reserves, he made four appearances for the first team that season. He played in ten games the following season, and four times in 1923–24. His usual position was on the right wing. Despite scoring twice in his career, he never showed much enthusiasm for the game and was cautious around tackles, mindful that his main career was cricket. He was criticised in the local press for his role in two defeats shortly before his final appearance. After he was left out of the team, he never played again and left the club, deciding that he could not play two sports professionally. Even so, the Rovers' trainer, Bert Williams, and manager, Andy Wilson, believed that Hammond, one of the fastest players they had seen at the club, would have had the potential to play international football.
### Making an impression
Conscious of the need to improve after his uncertain start to first-class cricket, Hammond scored his maiden first-class century in the first match of the 1923 season, making 110 and 92 opening the batting against Surrey. He did not reach three figures again that season, but his performances and batting technique impressed several critics, such as cricket correspondent Neville Cardus, former England and Middlesex captain Plum Warner, and The Times correspondent; Cardus described him as a future England player. In all first-class matches that season, Hammond scored 1,421 runs at an average of 27.86. With the ball, he took 18 first-class wickets at an average of 41.22, including figures of six for 59 against Hampshire. Reviewing the season, Wisden's correspondent declared that Hammond "has all the world before him and there is no telling how far he may go".
Hammond reached 1,239 runs in 1924, scoring a century against Somerset and reaching fifty against Oxford, Essex and Hampshire. In the final County Championship match of the season, against Middlesex, he scored 174 not out after Gloucestershire had been bowled out for 31 in their first innings. He finished the season with an average of 30.21 and supplemented his batting with 29 wickets. He improved on this record in 1925 with 1,818 runs at an average of 34.30 and 68 wickets at an average of just under 30, more than doubling his career aggregate of wickets. His bowling performances led critics to describe him as a potentially good all-rounder. Hammond was not satisfied with his batting form in 1925, but against Lancashire at Old Trafford, he scored 250 not out, repeatedly hooking the short-pitched bowling of Australian Test bowler Ted McDonald. Cardus described it as "one of the finest innings that can ever have been accomplished by a boy of his age". Over these two seasons, Hammond increasingly batted in the middle order, where he remained for most of his career.
### Serious illness
Hammond's performances earned him selection for the M.C.C. winter tour of the West Indies in the 1925–26 season. At that time, such tours were popular with amateur cricketers, who were often chosen for social rather than cricketing reasons. The touring party contained only eight professionals, who were expected to do most of the bowling and provide the cricketing quality. The West Indies team did not have Test status, so no official internationals were scheduled, but a series of representative matches against a West Indian team were played. Rain disrupted much of the cricket, but Hammond enjoyed the experience. In first-class matches, he scored 732 runs at an average of 48.80, with two hundreds and two fifties, and took 20 wickets at an average of 28.65. He scored 238 not out in the first representative game against a West Indies side. Following the tour, he won praise from Warner and the captain of the M.C.C. team, Freddie Calthorpe, and was believed to be close to the full England side.
Towards the end of the tour, Hammond fell seriously ill; according to him, a mosquito stung him in the groin area, close to a strain he had suffered, causing blood poisoning. Playing against Jamaica, he moved awkwardly and his teammates observed him to be in pain. He missed the remaining matches of the tour, and none of the doctors he saw were able to help. On the journey home, during which no doctor was available, his condition worsened, confining him to his cabin with a severe fever for most of the trip. The day after his arrival home, in April 1926, Hammond had the first of 12 operations at the nursing home to which he was taken. His condition worsened to the point where the doctors believed he would die; they considered amputating his leg, a suggestion vetoed by his mother out of concern for his career. Hammond later claimed that his illness remained a mystery to those treating him. A visit from Warner encouraged Hammond to believe recovery was possible, and he began a slow return to health about a month after his return to England. By July, he could watch Gloucestershire playing in Bristol, though he missed the entire 1926 season. No official announcement about Hammond's illness was made, other than to say he was in a nursing home. Although the cause of the illness was never made clear, David Foot has argued that it was syphilis or a related sexually transmitted disease. He has also suggested that its treatment, which in the days before antibiotics probably involved mercury, adversely affected Hammond's subsequent character and personality, leading to moody and depressive behaviour. Rumours of this nature circulated among his contemporaries for many years before Foot published his theory. That winter, Hammond coached in South Africa, where it was felt the climate might aid his recovery.
## Test cricketer
### Test debut
On his return to first-class cricket in the 1927 season, Hammond made an immediate impact, becoming only the second man, after W. G. Grace, to score 1,000 runs in May, traditionally the first month of the English cricket season. This sequence included another effective performance against Lancashire, regarded by some observers as one of the best innings ever played. He scored 99 in the first innings and 187 in the second to ensure the match was drawn. He again hooked McDonald effectively, at one point hitting five consecutive fours. Hammond played in the prestigious Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's for the first time, although he neither batted nor bowled, as well as two Test trials. Coming close to scoring 1,000 runs in June as well, he finished the season with 2,969 runs, including 12 centuries. His average of 69.04 was the fifth highest in first-class cricket. He won selection for the M.C.C. team that would tour South Africa in the winter and the accolade of being named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year.
While on tour in South Africa in 1927–28, Hammond did not dominate as expected. Still recovering from his illness, he was worn out from the strain of a long season. He showed good batting form, but once George Geary was injured, a strong but not fully representative side found itself short of bowling, forcing Hammond to play as an all-rounder. In all first-class matches on the tour, he scored 908 runs at an average of 47.78, and took 27 wickets at an average of 23.85. His Test debut came in the first match of the series, as he scored a quick 51 in his only innings and took five wickets for 36 runs in the South African second innings. At one point, he took three wickets for no runs and his bowling was described by Wisden as a key factor in an England victory. His best innings came in the third Test as he reached 90. He had some good bowling spells, and in the fourth Test he removed both South African openers. An innings of 66 in the fifth and final Test left him with 321 runs at an average of 40.12 in his debut series, while his 15 wickets cost 26.60 runs each. All of Hammond's batting appearances were at number four in the order; of his 140 career Test innings, 118 were at number three or four. The series was drawn 2–2.
In the following season of 1928, Hammond scored 2,825 runs (average 65.69) with three double centuries, took 84 wickets (average 23.10), his highest total in a season, and held 79 catches, a single season record. These performances helped Gloucestershire to mount a rare but unsuccessful challenge for the County Championship. At the Cheltenham festival, in six days, Hammond scored 362 runs, took 11 wickets and held 11 catches. Against Surrey, he scored a century in both innings and held ten catches, including six in the second innings, which remains a first-class record as of 2015. In the following match, against Worcestershire, Hammond scored 80. Bowling off-spin on a testing pitch, he then took nine wickets for 23, the best bowling figures of his career. He followed up with six for 105 as Worcestershire followed on. He played in a Test trial and in the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's for the second time, before participating in the three Test matches against the West Indies cricket team. While England won the series 3–0, Hammond had mixed success. Despite scores of 45 in the first Test and a careful 63 in the second, he made just 111 runs in the series at an average of 37.
### 1928–29 tour of Australia
In the winter of 1928–29, Hammond toured Australia with the M.C.C. The side was a strong one which overpowered Australia, winning the five-match series 4–1. Hammond was remarkably successful in his first campaign for The Ashes. Wisden described his batting as a "series of triumphs". He scored 779 runs in five consecutive Test innings, totalling 905 runs at an average of 113.12 in the series, a record passed only by Don Bradman since. In all first-class matches, he scored 1,553 runs (average 91.35). However, except for one inspired spell in the final Test, in which he bowled the first three batsmen, Wisden described his bowling as disappointing. He began the tour with a century and a double century before the Test series. He scored 251 in a seven-hour innings in the second Test. This was his maiden Test century and the second highest Test score between England and Australia. In the next Test, Hammond scored 200 against an accurate attack, again taking around seven hours. In the fourth Test he scored 119 not out and then 177, in what Wisden judged his best innings of the tour due to his mastery of the bowlers and the difficult match situation when he came in to bat. Hammond had altered his usual batting style, playing more carefully and avoiding risk as runs were certain to come in the easy Australian batting conditions if a batsman did not get out. He eliminated the hook shot entirely from his repertoire and rarely played the cut shot. Unless the bowler bowled a bad ball, he limited his scoring between extra cover and midwicket, as the Australians unsuccessfully tried to block his shots in that area. Wisden stated that, even with his more cautious play, his batting on tour had shown skill and beauty.
Hammond married Dorothy Lister almost immediately after returning home, just before the 1929 season began. Gloucestershire's inspirational new captain, Bev Lyon, led another Gloucestershire challenge for the County Championship. He used Hammond's bowling less due to the emergence of Tom Goddard, but Hammond was less dominant with the bat than was expected. In first-class cricket, he scored 2,456 runs at an average of 64.63. He played in four of the five Tests against South Africa, missing the fourth due to injury; he also suffered an injury in the second Test which required him to use a runner. Adopting tactics similar to those with which he had success in Australia, he scored two centuries—an unbeaten 138 in the first Test, and a match-saving 101 not out in the final Test which gave England a 2–0 series victory. His only other innings over fifty was played in the third Test. He ended the series with 352 runs at an average of 58.66. At the time, critics considered him the best batsman in the world.
### Career in the early 1930s
The 1930 season saw the Australians tour England, Bradman's first tour. Over five Tests, the young Australian scored 974 runs in an excellent batting display to break Hammond's record run aggregate and average set in the 1928–29 series. While Bradman dominated, Hammond found it very difficult to play the leg spin bowling of Clarrie Grimmett, who dismissed him five times. Hammond scored 306 runs at an average of 34.00, passing fifty just twice. He batted over five hours for a match-saving 113 in the third Test. On a difficult pitch and with little support, he made a hard-hitting 60 in the final Test in a losing cause. The visitors took the series 2–1, and the newspapers unfavourably compared Hammond's scoring with Bradman's. Later in the season, Hammond scored 89 for Gloucestershire in a tied match against the Australians which he described as the most exciting of his career. One player said that he had never seen Hammond as excited as he was at the conclusion of the game. In all first-class cricket that season, he scored 2,032 runs (average 53.47) and for Gloucestershire, he came top of the batting averages as the club finished second in the Championship. He took 30 wickets, including match figures of 12 for 74 against Glamorgan.
Hammond toured South Africa in the winter of 1930–31, in a weak M.C.C. side without some of the best English players. The tourists were short of opening batsmen, frequently forcing Hammond into the role. Although successful, he brought a more wary approach than usual to his unaccustomed position. In all first-class cricket, he scored 1,045 runs (average 61.47). In the five-Test series, which South Africa won 1–0, he scored 517 runs (average 64.62), passing fifty five times in nine innings. A very cautious approach batting at number three saw Hammond score 49 and 63 in the first Test. Opening the batting in the second Test, he scored two fifties to save the game; he also kept wicket for a time following an injury to the regular wicketkeeper. Hammond continued to open in the third Test, playing more aggressively for 136 not out, before returning to number three and making 75 in the fourth Test. In the final Test, he opened both the batting and the bowling.
In 1931, Hammond increased his first-class wicket total to 47, and scored 1,781 runs at an average of 42.40. Although he remained a key batsman for Gloucestershire, both his aggregate and average fell, at least partly due to wet weather that often led to difficult batting conditions. In the three Tests against New Zealand, their first in England, he made an attacking century in the second Test, England's only victory. He did not pass fifty in the rest of the series, ending the victorious campaign with 169 runs at an average of 56.33. In 1932, Hammond was appointed vice-captain of Gloucestershire, but it was noted in Wisden that he sometimes failed to inspire his team. Hammond himself felt unable, as a new captain, to take the same risks that Lyon had done. He scored 2,528 runs (average 56.17), including his then highest score of 264, and his first hundred for the Players against the Gentlemen. He also took 53 wickets.
### Bodyline tour
Hammond was selected for the M.C.C. tour of Australia in 1932–33. Known as the Bodyline series, it became notorious for the controversial English tactic of bowling short on the line of leg stump, making the ball rise towards the batsman's body to create deflections that could be caught by leg-side fielders. Hammond, one of the first players selected, was part of the selection committee on tour, and the M.C.C. captain, Douglas Jardine, may have discussed tactics with him on the outward journey. Hammond disapproved of Bodyline bowling, believing it to be dangerous, although he understood some of the reasons for its use. He kept his feelings hidden during the tour, preferring to go along with his captain and the rest of the team. It was not until 1946 that he openly voiced his opinion.
Wisden described Hammond's campaign as successful, although he failed to reach the heights of his previous tour. In the Tests, Hammond scored 440 runs (average 55.00) and took nine wickets (average 32.33), while scoring 948 runs (average 55.76) and taking 20 wickets (average 28.90) in all first-class matches. Although Wisden said that Hammond accomplished little with the ball, team manager Plum Warner praised his bowling, claiming that during the first Test it was comparable to that of revered former England bowler Sydney Barnes. His best performance was in a match against New South Wales, where he took six for 43, including the wicket of Bradman. In an early game on tour against Victoria, Hammond was instructed by Jardine to attack the bowling of Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, who was on the verge of making his Test debut. Hammond scored 203, freely punishing Fleetwood-Smith's bowling and in effect delaying his Test debut for several years.
In England's victory in the first Test, Hammond scored 112, playing powerfully through the off side. He took two wickets in two balls in the second Australian innings, making the ball move around. In the second Test, he bowled spin, as England left out Hedley Verity, their specialist spinner; his bowling impressed Jardine and the Wisden correspondent. His bowling against Bradman, who scored an unbeaten century, produced a personal duel that struck observers as particularly tense. Hammond took three for 23 in the second innings but achieved little with the bat as England lost the match. In the third Test, he appeared uncomfortable facing Tim Wall's fast, short bowling, and was heard to say, "If that's what the bloody game's coming to, I've had enough of it!" He scored 85 in the second innings before being bowled by a full toss from Bradman, to his annoyance. Hammond did not pass 20 runs in England's Ashes-securing victory in the fourth Test, attracting criticism from Wisden and others for overcautious batting. He returned to form in the final Test at Sydney, a ground on which he was often successful, scoring 101 and 75 not out. Wisden praised his style and brilliant play, and he ended the match with a six, securing England's third successive victory and a 4–1 series win.
A short tour of New Zealand followed; Hammond scored 621 runs in three first-class innings. In the first Test, he scored 227, and in the second and final Test, he broke the world record for a Test innings on 1 April by scoring 336 not out. His record innings began cautiously, but against a weak bowling side, he increased his scoring rate after making his century and again after reaching 200. As he passed Bradman's record of 334, he shouted "Yes!" He hit ten sixes, then a Test record, including three from consecutive balls. However, the weakness of the bowling compared to that faced by Bradman and the importance of Ashes matches meant that Hammond's record was not as prestigious as the Australian's. When Len Hutton broke the record in 1938, he considered Bradman's 334 the score to beat.
### Loss of Test form
The Bodyline controversy continued into the 1933 season. Bodyline tactics were used in several matches, including by the West Indian tourists in the second Test. In all first-class cricket, Hammond, no longer vice-captain of Gloucestershire, scored 3,323 runs, passing 3,000 in a season for the first time. With an average of 67.81, he topped the first-class tables for what would be the first of eight successive seasons. He also took 38 wickets. However, his highest score in three Test innings was 34. In the second Test, unsettled by Bodyline, Hammond was cut on the chin by a short ball, causing him to retire hurt. He again commented that he would quit rather than face such bowling; soon after his return, he was out. Les Ames, who played in the three-match series, won by England 2–0, believed that the West Indian pacemen worried Hammond, who showed a weakness against short, fast bowling.
Hammond spent much of the 1934 season troubled by sore throats and back problems which restricted his appearances for Gloucestershire. His form for his county was good and in all first-class matches, he scored 2,366 runs (average 76.32), although he took fewer wickets at a higher average than the previous season. Awarded a benefit match, which raised just over £2,600, Hammond was idolised by the press and public for his achievements. In Tests, it was a different story; according to Wisden, he failed badly. England lost the Ashes, 2–1, in a series overshadowed at times by the Bodyline controversy. Hammond played in all five Tests against Australia but his top score was 43; he scored 162 runs at an average of 20.25, and took five wickets at an average of 72.80. Although the press and selectors supported him, there were some suggestions he should be left out of the side, and Hammond felt under great pressure.
The pattern of failure in Test matches but success elsewhere continued during the 1934–35 tour of the West Indies. In all first-class cricket he scored 789 runs, averaging 56.35, with an innings of 281 not out the highest of his three centuries. The four-Test series, which England lost 2–1, was another matter. Wisden noted that the West Indian pace attack, considered the best in the world by Bob Wyatt, unsettled the English batsmen; the home bowlers were accused of intimidation by some of the England side. Hammond had a top score of 47 and scored 175 runs at an average of 25.00. He played well in difficult batting conditions, which he believed were among the worst he ever faced, in the first Test. In the first innings he scored 43, before dominating the bowlers at a critical time in his unbeaten 29 in the second innings, winning the match with a six.
Hammond's health remained poor at the start of the 1935 season. He developed septic tonsillitis which made it difficult for him to breathe, eat and sleep, and ultimately required an operation to remove his tonsils in early 1936. Hammond's form was indifferent and he believed it was his worst season. In first-class matches, he scored 2,616 runs (average 49.35) and took 60 wickets (average 27.26). He became the ninth player to reach 100 first-class centuries, emerging from a run of bad form against Somerset. Long a regular in the side, for the first time he captained the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord's. In the five-Test series against South Africa, a run of low scores again brought press speculation about his place in the national side. He did not pass fifty until the third Test, when he scored 63 and 87 not out, ending a run of 22 innings without a fifty, in which time he averaged 23.47 over 14 Tests. Hammond made two more fifties in the last two Tests, although they were insufficient to prevent England from losing 1–0, their third successive series defeat. He finished the series with 389 runs at an average of 64.83, but remained unsatisfied with his form.
### Return to form
As the 1936 season began, Hammond remained weak from the recent removal of his tonsils. Returning to cricket too soon, he was in poor form; he took a longer rest, which caused him to miss the first of three Tests against India. It was July before he felt fully well. In all first-class cricket that season, Hammond scored 2,107 runs, averaging 56.94, and took 41 wickets. In county cricket, Gloucestershire appointed a new captain, Dallas Page. Hammond had been offered the joint captaincy with Bev Lyon, conditional on his becoming assistant secretary at the club to enable him to play as an amateur, but declined for financial reasons. Hammond returned to the England side for the second Test, making 167, his first century in 28 innings, scoring quickly throughout. He was praised by Wisden for his control. Hammond continued to score heavily in the third Test, making 217 after being dropped twice early on. His highest score came in the last county match of the season, at Gloucestershire, which was Tom Goddard's benefit match. A difficult pitch meant that wickets tumbled on the first day, prompting fears of an early finish which would possibly lose money for Goddard. Hammond batted all of the second day, ensuring the match lasted the full three days, to score 317 out of a total of 485.
Selected for the M.C.C. tour of Australia in 1936–37 under the captaincy of Gubby Allen, Hammond was again part of the tour selection committee. He was successful with bat and ball, scoring 1,206 runs (average 67.00) and taking 21 wickets (average 24.57) in all first-class matches in Australia (he played two more in New Zealand at the conclusion of the tour). In Tests, Hammond scored 468 runs at an average of 58.50 and took 12 wickets at an average of 25.08. His tour began with four consecutive first-class hundreds against the state teams, but Wisden reported that he never recaptured this form during the remainder of the tour, owing to the bowling of Bill O'Reilly. Hammond could not overcome O'Reilly's use of slow leg theory in the later Tests which restricted scoring. England won the first two Tests, although Hammond did not contribute in the first, making a first ball duck. In the second he scored an unbeaten 231, then took three for 29 with the ball in Australia's second innings, during a period when the other bowlers lost control. From this point, his contributions fell away, although he believed that the best innings of his life, on one of the most difficult pitches he ever confronted, was his 32 in the third Test. Neville Cardus, who saw it, described it as remarkable. However, his free-scoring 51 in the second innings was not enough to prevent defeat in the face of an unrealistic target. In the fourth Test, Hammond took five for 57 in Australia's second innings, but his dismissal on the final morning by Fleetwood-Smith ensured that Australia won the match to level the series. One of Hammond's teammates opined that Bradman would not have been dismissed as easily in a similar situation. In the decisive final Test, he was restricted by O'Reilly's leg theory attack and failed in the first innings. His 56 in the second innings was not enough to prevent Australia's third win in succession to take the Ashes 3–2.
In the 1937 season, Hammond scored 3,252 runs at an average of 65.04, passing 3,000 runs a second time, and taking 48 wickets. In the three Tests against New Zealand, he passed the previous record number of England appearances, overtaking Frank Woolley's 64 Tests. While scoring 140 in the first Test, he passed the total number of runs scored by Jack Hobbs to become the leading run scorer in Tests, a record he held until it was broken by Colin Cowdrey in December 1970. This innings was his only score above fifty in the series, in which he scored 204 runs (average 51). At the end of the season, in November 1937, it was announced that he had accepted a job, joining the Marsham Tyres board of directors, meaning he would play as an amateur in the future. This led to immediate speculation that he would be made captain of England in the 1938 Ashes series. The chairman of selectors, Plum Warner, later wrote that there was never any doubt from then that Hammond would be captain.
## Amateur cricketer
### England captain
In the 1938 season, his first as an amateur, Hammond scored 3,011 runs at an average of 75.27. During the season, he was elected to life membership of Gloucestershire and membership of the M.C.C., which barred professionals. He captained the Gentlemen against the Players at Lord's—having previously led the Players, he is the only person to skipper both teams. Early in the season, he led England in a Test trial before, as expected, being given the role full-time against Australia. His leadership during the series, which was drawn 1–1, won him praise. He was criticised, however, for his handling of bowlers, specifically for not giving enough work to spinners Hedley Verity in the first Test or Doug Wright in the fourth. In the second Test, he scored 240, briefly a record for an England batsman playing at home, to rescue the side from a poor start. This innings was lauded by observers including Warner, Bradman and Cardus, and The Times correspondent pronounced it one of the best ever. The match, like the first, was drawn and with the third Test completely washed out by rain, the crucial match proved to be the fourth. In a low-scoring game, Hammond scored 76, holding England's first innings together. In the second innings, however, he made a first-ball duck; an English batting collapse allowed Australia to win the match and retain the Ashes. England had some consolation with a massive victory in the final Test; following Hammond's instructions to be cautious, the side slowly amassed a record total of 903 for seven, with Hutton beating Hammond's Test record innings by scoring 364. Hammond scored 59, giving him 403 runs at an average of 67.16 in the series.
In the 1938–39 season, Hammond captained the M.C.C. tour of South Africa in a five-match series. Wisden criticised both sides for slow play, and the almanack's correspondent felt Hammond was reluctant to try to force a win. In general, though, judgements on his captaincy were positive; his teammates and opponents believed he had firm control of the side and E. W. Swanton complimented his tactics. In the Tests, he used the cautious batting method which had been successful in Australia. He scored three Test centuries, making 181 after a shaky start in the second Test, a quick 120 in the third and 140 in the fifth. England won the third match, the only one in the series with a result, and Hammond was praised for his use of bowlers. The final match, in which Hammond lost the toss, having previously won it eight consecutive times, was drawn after ten days' play. In the fourth innings, England faced a victory target of 696. Hammond was credited with nearly forcing a remarkable win, first by promoting Bill Edrich, who had failed thus far in the series but scored 219, and then by playing himself what Wisden described as "one of the finest innings of his career" before rain forced the match to be abandoned. Hammond also tallied two fifties in the series to score 609 runs in total, at an average of 87.00. In all first-class tour matches, he scored 1,025 runs (average 60.29). While on tour, he met Sybil Ness-Harvey, who was to become his second wife.
Appointed as Gloucestershire captain for the 1939 season, Hammond led the team to third in the County Championship and recorded a rare double victory over Yorkshire. While Wisden commended his adventurous style of leadership, others such as Basil Allen, his predecessor as captain, did not approve; their main criticism was his failure to encourage his players. In first-class cricket, he scored 2,479 runs at an average of 63.56. He placed at the top of the first-class averages for the seventh successive season, although some critics detected a decline in his abilities. While he led England to a 1–0 series victory over West Indies in three Tests, Wisden reported some criticism of his captaincy. R. C. Robertson-Glasgow said that "Hammond does not rank among the more imaginative England captains", although he concluded by defending Hammond as "experienced and sound". In the second match, he took his 100th catch in Tests, and in the third, he scored 138, his final Test century. In the series, Hammond scored 279 runs (average 55.80). The impending war overshadowed much of the season; throughout the Tests, Hammond made public appeals for citizens to join the armed forces. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the services and was commissioned as a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) in October 1939.
### Career in the war
Hammond was posted to a training wing of the Royal Air Force (RAF) at Hastings in Sussex before he moved with his unit to Torquay. He had mainly administrative duties, including instructing recruits, for whom he made life hard. He played some games of cricket in 1940 for various teams before being posted to Cairo in December. His responsibilities in Egypt included organising, promoting and playing in cricket matches. Posted there until 1943, he was promoted to flight lieutenant and then to squadron leader. While Hammond may have helped to raise morale, Cairo was an easy posting during the war and he was not involved directly in combat. He also spent much time in South Africa, where he played cricket and was reunited with Sybil Ness-Harvey. At the beginning of 1944, Hammond was posted back to England, where he lectured and drilled cadets. Playing as captain in many one-day cricket matches, he was praised by Wisden for encouraging exciting contests. Others applauded his batting, including his hitting of many sixes, fitting the games' relaxed atmosphere. In December 1944, Hammond, suffering from fibrositis, was discharged from the RAFVR on health grounds and returned to work at Marsham Tyres. Once the war ended in Europe in May 1945, several first-class matches were organised. Hammond played in six, scoring 592 runs at an average of 59.20 with two centuries. In a match for an England team against the Dominions at Lord's, he made a century in each innings, becoming the first man to do this seven times.
### End of career
During 1946, the first full season after the war, Hammond played only 26 innings but scored 1,783 runs at an average of 84.90, topping the first-class averages for the eighth time in succession—still an English record as of 2015. At times, he began to show technical weaknesses. Captaining England to a 1–0 victory in a three-Test series against India, he scored one fifty, making 119 runs at an average of 39.66. He batted fifth in the order in the final match, as he would in four of his five remaining Tests. Gloucestershire fell to fifth in the County Championship, and Hammond, after enthusiastically making the team very competitive at the start of the season, became increasingly affected by pain, particularly in damp weather. As captain, he could be irritable and consciously created remoteness and division.
Remaining captain of England, Hammond led the M.C.C. side which toured Australia in 1946–47. The visit was unsuccessful as England lost the five-match Test series 3–0. According to Wisden, Hammond's inability to make large scores was one of the reasons for the failure. Nor was he a success as captain. He was criticised for his field placement and people at home wondered if he had lost control of the team. While he suffered some ill luck, Wisden said that he "was not the same inspiring leader as at home against Australia in 1938". Other journalists noted that he did not consult his players, one of whom later commented that he showed little imagination in his use of bowlers. Hammond approached the tour as an exercise in goodwill, promising his men an enjoyable time. It was noted that Bradman, the Australian captain, took a more competitive attitude towards the series. Team spirit was good on the outward journey, but Hammond's forthcoming divorce and other domestic concerns caused him to become isolated from the players and increasingly moody. He had poor relations with the press, who were very critical of his captaincy and reporting details of the dissolution of his marriage. As the tour progressed, he lost his dynamism as a leader, gave poor advice to the batsmen and made poor selections for the team.
As a batsman, Hammond started the tour well, scoring 208 in an early game, but lost form once the Tests began. One of the turning points of the series was a disputed catch in the first Test. Bradman, who looked in poor form and uncertain to continue his cricket career for much longer, had reached 28 when the English team believed he had edged the ball to Jack Ikin at slip. Bradman, as was his entitlement, waited for the umpire's decision instead of leaving the field. The fielders were certain that he was out, but the umpire said he was not, believing the ball had bounced before it was caught; opinion among other participants and spectators was divided. However, Hammond was extremely angry, saying loudly, either to Bradman or the umpires, "a fine fucking way to start a series". Afterwards, relations between Hammond and Bradman deteriorated and there was a coldness between them. Bradman went on to score 187 and Australia won the match and, ultimately, the series. In that first Test, Hammond played two good innings on a very difficult wicket, but in the series, he did not pass fifty, scoring 168 runs at an average of 21.00 before missing the final Test. In all first-class cricket, he scored 633 runs (average 45.21). He suffered increasing pain from fibrositis throughout the series, and later admitted that he felt close to a breakdown. Hammond played his last Test in New Zealand at the end of the tour, scoring 79 in his final innings. He ended his career with 7,249 Test runs at an average of 58.46. His 22 centuries remained an English record until surpassed by Alastair Cook in December 2012.
Hammond decided to retire from all cricket after the tour, not returning for Gloucestershire in 1947. Within 24 hours of his arrival back in England, he married Sybil Ness-Harvey. He played only two more first-class games. He scored an unbeaten 92 for the M.C.C. against Ireland in 1950. To help boost a Gloucestershire membership drive, he joined his former side for a match the following year. Although given an excellent reception by the crowd, his tired appearance and struggle to score seven runs before being dismissed embarrassed many of those present. In all first-class cricket, Hammond scored 50,551 runs at an average of 56.10 with 167 centuries. He remains seventh on the list of highest run scorers in first-class cricket and has the third highest number of centuries, as of 2015.
## Style and technique
Wisden's obituary described Hammond as one of the top four batsmen who had ever played, calling him "a most exciting cricketer. ... The instant he walked out of a pavilion, white-spotted blue handkerchief showing from his right pocket, bat tucked underarm, cap at a hint of an angle, he was identifiable as a thoroughbred." Throughout the 1930s, the public and critics regarded Hammond as England's best batsman, succeeding Jack Hobbs, and next to Bradman, the best in the world (although George Headley also had a claim). Among English batsmen, only Herbert Sutcliffe, with a higher Test average, was similarly successful. According to Alan Gibson, however, although Sutcliffe was dependable in a crisis, "his batting never gave quite the same sense of majesty and excitement that Hammond's did". More recently, Hammond was one of the inaugural inductees into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame, launched in January 2009, and was selected by a jury of cricket journalists as a member of England's all-time XI in August 2009.
Balanced and still at the crease, Hammond was known for the power and beauty of his driving through the off side, although he could play any shot. A very attacking player early in his career, he later became more defensive, playing more frequently off the back foot and abandoning the hook shot as too risky. He was particularly effective on difficult wickets, scoring runs where others struggled to survive. Many of his contemporaries believed that he was the finest off-side player in the history of cricket. In the words of Patrick Murphy, fellow players considered him "on a different plane—majestic, assured, poised, a devastating amalgam of the physical and mental attributes that make up a great batsman." County bowlers who played against him considered it an achievement merely to prevent him scoring runs.
However, Australian bowlers such as O'Reilly and Grimmett troubled him by bowling at his leg stump, restricting his scoring as he had fewer effective leg-side shots. Occasionally, he displayed discomfort against the fastest bowlers. His teammate Charlie Barnett said that he did not relish fast bowling, although he was capable of playing it well in the initial stages of his career. Other colleagues, such as Les Ames, Bob Wyatt and Reg Sinfield, believed that he did not like to face the new ball, and he was occasionally happy for the other batsmen to face the difficult bowling.
His bowling was smooth and effortless, with a classical action. He could bowl fast, but more often bowled at fast-medium pace. He could make the ball swing in humid weather, and deliver off-spin when conditions were suitable. However, Hammond was reluctant to bowl, particularly for Gloucestershire. Bill Bowes believed that he was a very good bowler who would not take it seriously. In his obituary, Wisden said that "at slip he had no superior. He stood all but motionless, moved late but with uncanny speed, never needing to stretch or strain but plucking the ball from the air like an apple from a tree." He was also able to field further away from the batsmen than was the norm, particularly in his younger days, as he could chase the ball quickly and had a very good throwing arm.
## Personal life
### Personality
Hammond struck his contemporaries as a sad figure, a loner with few friends in cricket. He rarely encouraged young players or gave out praise. He liked to mix with middle-class people, spending money he did not really have, leading to accusations of snobbery. Teammates regarded him as moody, private and uncommunicative. Often silent in the company of others, he could be arrogant and unfriendly. Charlie Barnett and Charles Dacre, two of his Gloucestershire teammates, came almost to hate him. Dacre often played in a reckless way of which Hammond disapproved; Hammond, in turn, may have been jealous of him. Hammond once tried hard to injure Dacre by bowling fast at him while he was wicketkeeper. Barnett began as a close friend but fell out over Hammond's treatment of his first wife and later his refusal to play in Barnett's benefit match. Other players who were involved in disputes with Hammond included Denis Compton, whose cavalier approach Hammond disliked, and Learie Constantine, who believed Hammond insulted him in the West Indies in 1925, although the two later made peace. Hammond's ultimate rivalry was with Bradman, who overshadowed him throughout his career, and with whom he developed an increasing obsession. It was not enough for Hammond to be the second-best batsman in the world, and he disliked the constant comparisons made between them in Bradman's favour. He felt not only that he had to do well, but also that he had to score more than Bradman.
### Marriage
David Foot quotes an unnamed cricketer saying that the two ruling passions of Hammond's life "were his cricket bat and his genitals". His strong desire for women was noticed by teammates from early in his career. Foot believes that Hammond had sexual relationships with many women, sometimes several contemporaneously, before and during his first marriage, some of which led to marriage proposals. This was widely known in cricket circles, prompting disapproval from figures such as Barnett.
In 1929, Hammond married Dorothy Lister, the daughter of a Yorkshire textile merchant, in a highly publicised ceremony at a parish church in Bingley. They met at a cricket match in 1927 but spent little time together before the wedding, having little in common. When married, they rarely communicated or got on well. Acquaintances believed Hammond treated her badly, particularly once her father lost nearly everything in the Depression, causing them financial worry. She remained loyal, but their relations gradually broke down, even after she sailed to South Africa, joining Hammond on tour in 1939 in an attempt to save the marriage. By that time, he was already seeing his future second wife, Sybil Ness-Harvey, a former beauty queen whom he had met while on tour.
During the war, Hammond spent much of his leave with Ness-Harvey in South Africa. In 1945, she followed him back to England, but did not like it. When Hammond left to tour Australia in 1946–47, Ness-Harvey remained behind with his mother, with whom she did not get along. This was one of the factors which led to Hammond's problems on the tour. His divorce went through, and on his return, he and Sybil married at Kingston Register Office. She had already changed her name to Hammond by deed poll. Their first child, Roger, was born in 1948. Carolyn was born in 1950 and Valerie was born in 1952.
### Business
Hammond was involved with several businesses. In 1933, to ease his financial concerns, he took a job with the Cater Motor Company. He was used as a sales promotions manager, which mainly involved publicity and meeting customers, although he also test-drove cars. Taking a job with Marsham Tyres in 1937 enabled him to become an amateur cricketer. He joined the board of directors and was again used for publicity, but he was never a hard worker or determined salesman. Returning to Marsham's after he was discharged from the RAF in 1944, he supplemented his income by working as a journalist. He wrote for The Star during the 1948 Test series and penned three books with the assistance of a ghostwriter.
In 1951, Hammond resigned from Marsham's; his wife was homesick, leading Hammond to plan a business in South Africa with a partner. However, after moving to Durban, they realised they had insufficient money. He took a job with Denham Motors in Durban, where he was forced to work much harder than in England. He lost his job in 1959 when the firm went out of business, and the Hammond family again found themselves in financial trouble.
### Final years
At the end of 1959, Hammond was offered a job as a sports administrator at University of Natal with the aim of developing its sports facilities. In February 1960, he was involved in a serious car crash. It was uncertain whether he would survive, but he pulled through. Three months after the accident, he returned to work and became involved with coaching. In 1962, Hammond visited England as part of a drive to recruit new members for Gloucestershire. He showed some interest in taking over a pub, but nothing came of it. On the M.C.C. tour of South Africa in 1964–65, he joined the England dressing room, becoming popular with the players. On 1 July 1965, he had a heart attack and died after a few hours' illness.
## International statistics
Hammond made 22 centuries in international cricket. As of May 2021 he sits joint 62nd in the list of century-makers in international cricket. After making his Test debut against South Africa in December 1927, he scored his first Test century against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 14 December 1928, scoring 251 runs. He scored his final Test century against the West Indies at The Oval in London on 19 August 1939, making a score of 138, and his final Test match was against New Zealand at Lancaster Park in Christchurch on 21 March 1947.
He played in a total of 85 Test matches, and held the record for the most runs in Test cricket at the time, with 7,249 runs. Hammond's highest score in Test cricket was 336 not out, scored against New Zealand at Eden Park, Auckland on 31 March 1933, at the time the highest score in an innings by a batsman until it was surpassed by Len Hutton's 364 in 1938. All but one of his Test centuries was made batting at number three or four in the batting order; the exception being his 136 not out opening the innings against South Africa at Durban in 1931.
### Test centuries
|
1,046,206 |
Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territory
| 1,173,387,896 | null |
[
"Diplomatic districts",
"Suburbs of Canberra"
] |
Yarralumla (/jærəlʌmlə/) is a large inner south suburb of Canberra, the capital city of Australia. Located approximately 3.5 km (2.2 mi) south-west of the city, Yarralumla extends along the south-west bank of Lake Burley Griffin from Scrivener Dam to Commonwealth Avenue.
In 1828, Henry Donnison, a Sydney merchant, was granted a lease on the western side of West Ridge part of which is now Western Park. In 1832 he named his property Yarralumla adopted from the name for an area some 35km to the west surrounding the Goodradigbee River. It is thought the area, spelt 'Yarrowlumla', was so named by local Aboriginal people, translated to English as "echo mountain". In 1881, the estate was bought by Frederick Campbell, grandson of Robert Campbell who had built a house at nearby Duntroon. Frederick completed the construction of a large, gabled, brick house on his property in 1891 that now serves as the site of Government House, the official residence of the Governor-General of Australia. Campbell's house replaced an elegant, Georgian-style homestead, the main portions of which were erected from local stone in the 1830s. Among the old Yarralumla homestead's most notable occupants were Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, who owned Yarralumla sheep station from 1837 to 1859, Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes, who owned the property from 1859 to 1881, and Augustus' father Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787–1873).
The modern suburb of Yarralumla was gazetted by the government in 1928 and as of 2021 was home to approximately 3,120 people and many diplomatic missions. Notable locations include Lennox Gardens, the Albert Hall and the Hotel Canberra. Parliament House and The Lodge lie just outside its boundary.
## Geography
Yarralumla is located in the central Canberra district of South Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, a federal territory. It is bordered by Lake Burley Griffin to the north, Commonwealth Avenue and Capital Hill to the east, Adelaide Avenue and the Cotter Road to the south, and Scrivener Dam, Lady Denman Drive and part of the Molonglo River to the west. Its southeast corner abuts Capital Hill, the location of Parliament House. The Lodge lies across Adelaide Avenue near its eastern end.
The streets in Yarralumla are named after Australian governors and botanists. Most of the older streets in the suburb are laid out on an approximately rectangular grid with some curved sections, while the more hilly eastern end of the suburb, including the embassy district, is set out with contour-guided roads. Major roads in Yarralumla include Banks Street, Novar Street and Hopetoun Circuit in a north–south direction and Schlich Street, Loftus Street and Weston Street running east–west. Being a dormitory suburb, there are no major through roads. Access to the rest of the city can be made from Adelaide Avenue, Commonwealth Avenue, Lady Denman Drive and Cotter Road, all of which run along the borders of the suburb. From these roads, entry to the suburb can be gained by turning into roads such as Coronation Drive, Hopetoun Circuit and Novar Street. Yarralumla has wide, tree-lined streets, most of which have been planted with exotic trees such as atlas cedars and cherry plums on Banks Street, claret ashes on Loch Street, pin oaks on Schlich Street and English oaks and hawthorns on Weston Street, along with the indigenous white brittle gums on Empire Circuit and river oaks on Solander Place.
Much of the area of Yarralumla consists of open space or non-residential development, including Weston and Stirling Parks, the Royal Canberra Golf Club, and the grounds of Government House. Many houses are occupied by diplomatic missions. The embassy area of Yarralumla is located towards the eastern end of the suburb next to Stirling Park. It is the hilliest area of Yarralumla. The Parliamentary Triangle is located to its east.
The residential areas of Yarralumla are located in the central and western areas of the suburb. The Yarralumla shops at the corner of Novar and Bentham Streets are in the centre of the western residential area, which has typically flat terrain and streets laid out in a rectangular grid, typically lined by exotic trees. This area has a blend of original weatherboard, monocrete and brick dwellings as well as some recently rebuilt detached houses, dual occupancies and units. Minimbah Court at the corner of Banks and Schlicht Streets is an example of Canberra’s earlier medium-density unit buildings. It was constructed in the 1950s and originally named Solander Court in line with nearby streets named after First Fleet botanists. There is an elongated reserve with a walking and bicycle path running in a southwards direction of the Yarralumla Oval, and to the east of this is the central area of the suburb, where the blocks are larger and the streets are more contoured due to the hilly terrain. There is a mixture of housing types in this region, with some larger two-storey houses, and more expansive gardens. The streets in this part of the suburb are typically lined with native trees.
Yarralumla is located on the Yarralumla Formation which is a mudstone/siltstone formation that was formed around 425 million years ago during the Silurian Period. The formation extends from Red Hill and Woden in the South to Lake Burley Griffin in to the north, passing under the suburb of Yarralumla. The formation is evidence of the last major marine sedimentary period when eastern Australia was still covered by shallow seas. It shows fossil evidence of trilobites, coral and primitive crinoids. The Yarralumla brickworks quarry and the Deakin anticline are places where the formation is exposed and easily studied.
## History
### European settlement
Like the rest of Canberra, Yarralumla forms part of the traditional lands of the Nymuddy people. The area now called Yarralumla is part of two original land grants made to free settlers for the establishment of farms. In 1828 Henry Donnison, a Sydney merchant who had arrived on the brig Ellen with his wife and family on 29–30 July 1828, was granted an allotment on the western side of West Ridge. He gave it the name Yarralumla which was taken from the Aboriginal name for a steep-sided valley of the Murrumbidgee River near Mount Stromlo. Sometimes spelled Yarrowlumla, the name 'Yarralumla' was first used on a map by the surveyor Robert Dixon in 1829. Donnison's land was named Yarralumla in a survey of the area conducted in 1834, and was a name used by the local people for the Mount Stromlo ridge, which lies to the west of the current suburb, and is said to mean "echo mountain". An area to the west of what is now the suburb was the Yarrolumla parish. A second grant was made to William Klensendorlffe (a German who had served in the British Navy and arrived free in the Colony in 1818), who bought the land from John Stephen on 7 March 1839.
The prominent New South Wales parliamentarian Sir Terence Aubrey Murray (1810–1873) purchased Yarralumla in 1837. He lived there with his wife Mary (née Gibbes, 1817–1858), the second daughter of the Collector of Customs for New South Wales, Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787–1873), MLC. Murray settled Yarralumla and part of Winderradeen (near Collector) on his wife in trust so that they would have some property if he became bankrupt. On his wife's death in 1858 Yarralumla passed in trust to her father and her brother Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes (1828–1897). In May 1859, Augustus' parents came to live with him at Yarralumla homestead.
Augustus Gibbes improved the estate and acquired additional land by purchase and lease. In 1881, he sold Yarralumla for 40,000 pounds to Frederick Campbell, a descendant of Robert Campbell, to travel overseas. Frederick Campbell erected a new, three-storey, brick house on the site of the former Yarralumla homestead at the beginning of the 1890s. Campbell's house would later form the basis of what is now the Governor-General of Australia's official Canberra residence, known colloquially as "Yarralumla" or "Government House". Campbell also built the large wooden Yarralumla Woolshed nearby in 1904.
In 1908, the Limestone Plains area, including Yarralumla, was selected as the site for the capital city of the newly established Commonwealth of Australia and in 1913 the Commonwealth Government purchased the property. Tenant farmers were allowed to stay on the land on annual leases, some remaining until 1963 when the Molonglo River was dammed to form Lake Burley Griffin.
### Development
With the construction of Australia's capital city underway, the Yarralumla brickworks were established in 1913 to supply building material. The bricks were used for many of Canberra's buildings, including the provisional Parliament House. The Brickworks tramway, a 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) goods railway, was constructed for the transportation of bricks to some of the major building sites in central Canberra. This linked the brickworks to places such as Parliament House, and the Kingston Power House.
Construction on the Commonwealth nursery and Westbourne Woods arboretum was started in 1914, and a temporary camp was built near the brickworks to accommodate the workers. Thomas Charles Weston was Officer-in-Charge (Afforestation Branch) in the years 1913 to 1926, and later became Director of City Planting and the Superintendent of Parks and Gardens. Weston was responsible for testing and selecting plant species at the arboretum for their suitability to Canberra's environment; from 1913 through to 1924 Weston oversaw the propagation of more than two million trees which were then planted in the Canberra area. Most of the original Westbourne Woods arboretum is now leased to the Royal Canberra Golf Club, with the remainder forming part of Weston Park. The Yarralumla nursery is still active, albeit on a smaller scale and functioning as a retail nursery selling both wholesale and direct to the public.
In 1917, the designer of Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin, named the area surrounding the brickworks "Westridge". It was part of the original Griffin plan, and the objective was to provide a 'horticultural suburb' and a 'society suburb'. In Griffin's 1918 document Canberra: Plan of City and Environs, the suburb is shown as an isosceles triangle with two equal length roads leading from Capital Hill to Yarralumla Bay and Clianthus Centre respectively. The latter road is now to location of the arterial Adelaide Avenue, and Yarralumla Bay and Clianthus Centre was to be joined along a north-south axis by Novar Avenue (originally to be named Mountain Way), extending all the way to the future lake bearing Griffin's name. Griffin's vision was for Westridge to become a business centre with an urban waterfront and promenade, complemented by the bush surroundings. Griffin's design was based on a strict hierarchy with core services such as housing, communal space and facilities such health and education, and commercial space. These would be connected outward by boulevards linking to transport routes and trams. By 1928, there were over 130 people on the electoral roll for Westridge. The majority of the population consisted of men working at the brickworks and nursery. The suburb was gazetted as Yarralumla on 20 September 1928.
In 1922, a workers' tent camp was erected on the eastern side of Stirling Ridge to house the men working on the main intercepting sewer. The following year saw the start of the construction of 62 small, four-room, unlined timber cottages, to be used as housing for the married tradesmen involved in the construction of the provisional Parliament House. Other camps were established at the eastern end of Stirling Park on the hills opposite modern Lotus Bay. The first of these was contractor John Howie's settlement (1922–1930), consisting of 25 timber cottages for his married men and timber barracks (Hostel Camp) for his single men. Two other single men's tent camps were established nearby—Old Tradesmen's Camp (1923–1927) and No 1 Labourers Camp (1924–1927). The men from Howie's worked on the Hotel Canberra and the others on the construction of the provisional Parliament House and nearby administrative buildings. The Stirling Park camps were known as Westlake to their new inhabitants, and previously "Gura Bung Dhaura" (stony ground) to the local Aboriginal people. In 1925, the population of this temporary suburb was 700. This represented roughly one-fifth of the total population of the Federal Capital Territory at the time. In 1956, the Department of Interior decided to clear the settlement so that embassies could be built. In 1960, the member of parliament for the ACT, Jim Fraser, described Westlake as one of two "hidden valleys of disgrace, which are never shown to tourists and are seen by visitors only by chance".
The Commonwealth and the states agreed in 1911 that Australia needed adequately-trained foresters, although they did not agree to establish a forestry school until 1920. Prime minister Stanley Bruce promised to fund it during the 1925 election campaign and construction of the Commonwealth Forestry School commenced in 1926 at Westridge near the brickworks and Westbourne Woods. The now heritage-listed Forestry School and the associated principal's residence Westridge House are located on Banks Street, Yarralumla. The school was initially established in March 1926 at the University of Adelaide under the leadership of Charles Lane Poole. After the move to Canberra Lane-Poole acted as principal until 1944. Its permanent building in Yarralumla was designed by Federal Capital Commission architects J.H. Kirkpatrick, and H.M. Rolland. It is built in the Inter-War Stripped Classical style as a single storey rendered brick building with a parapet and a hipped tiled roof. Various Australian woods, including Queensland maple and walnut (Cryptocarya palmerstonii), red cedar, red mahogany, hoop pine and mountain ash, were used throughout the building. It opened in April 1927 and it was completed in June. Due to financial stringency during the Great Depression and other priorities during the Second World War, it had few students in its first years. The Forestry School was absorbed by the Australian National University in 1965 and forestry courses are now carried out at its main campus in Acton. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Forestry and Forestry Products subsumed the school in 1975. Westridge House, an impressive Tudor-style structure, was completed in January 1928. It underwent a A\$500,000 refurbishment and was later used as a residence for the chief officer of the CSIRO. The former Forestry School and Westridge House are now leased out by the CSIRO.
### After World War II
The current geographical boundary of Yarralumla was finalised in the early 1960s with the construction of Scrivener Dam, over which Lady Denman Drive passes, allowing for the Molonglo River to be dammed, creating Lake Burley Griffin. Construction began in September 1960 and the dam was locked on 20 September 1963. The lake reached the planned level on 29 April 1964. On 17 October 1964, Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies commemorated the filling of the lake. Yarralumla was expanded to include Westlake, which had up until then been part of Acton.
After the Second World War, the suburb began to expand rapidly with the construction of many private homes. Yarralumla's image as a lower-class suburb would persist into the 1960s and 1970s. This general perception began to alter once Lake Burley Griffin had been created and its surrounds landscaped into parklands; the area soon gained a reputation for its attractive lakeside location. During the 1980s, house prices began to rise coincident with a rejuvenation of the suburb. Many of the original government-built monocrete, brick, and weatherboard houses have been demolished and replaced by larger dwellings of a variety of more modern styles and materials, although this process was more advanced in the central part of the suburb than in its east in 2004.
## Demographics
The population of the Westridge area on the 1928 electoral roll numbered over 130. At the , Yarralumla had a population of 3,120 people. Of these 47.9% were male. The suburb had only 0.9% indigenous Australians, below the national average of 3.2%. The percentage of married people in the suburb was 12 points higher than the national average, and the proportion of residents who had never married was 10 points lower. The higher level of marriage did not translate into a higher level of children; 49.6% of families consisted of a couple without children in the household, compared to the national average of 38.8%. Yarralumla residents had a median age of 50, compared to a Canberra average of 35. The suburb had an older population for a city of young people; the median national age is 38 and 43.5% of Yarralumla residents were 55 or over, compared to the national figure of 29.1%.
Yarralumla is a comparatively wealthy suburb with a 2021 median weekly personal income of \$1,591; this compares to the figure of \$1,203 for the entire Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and \$805 for all of Australia. The public service or defence force employed around 20.8% of the workforce, somewhat less than the ACT average of 22.9%. This compared to 1.8% for Australia as a whole. The higher incomes were derived from the suburb's white-collar base; 68.0% of Yarralumla's workforce was employed as professionals or in managerial posts, compared to 37.7% nationally. In contrast, only 2.9% were engaged in blue-collar occupations, compared with 15.3% for the nation as a whole. The proportion of the population working as tradesmen and technicians was almost four times lower than average across Australia. The proportion of people with a university degree, 57.0%, is higher than the ACT and national averages of 42.9% and 26.3% respectively.
The median monthly housing loan repayments in Yarralumla in 2021 were \$3,425, compared to the ACT figure of \$2,080 and a federal average of \$1,863. At \$547, the weekly rent was more than 40% higher than the national average. Yarralumla's median house price was about \$1.5m in 2020 versus \$1.2m for the inner south and \$720,000 for the whole of the ACT. The rate of home ownership in the suburb was 47.8%—much higher than the national average of 31.0%. 23.0% of the households rented. Accommodation was mostly separate houses (65.1%), although the number of residences in the suburb has been increasing through conversion of blocks to dual occupancy and other medium-density-type developments. Despite this, only 7.5% of residences were apartments or units, slightly more than half of the national average.
The population of Yarralumla in 2021 was predominantly Australian-born, with some 67.8% of its residents being born in Australia. The second most prevalent birthplace was England at 5.1%, followed by India and the United States with 2.2% and 2.1% respectively. The suburb was more oriented towards the Anglo-Celtic majority than the rest of Australia; English was spoken at home by 79.3% of the population, compared to the national average of 72.0%. Every other language was spoken by less than 3% of the population. Mandarin, Italian, Hindi, Spanish and Vietnamese were all spoken by at least 0.8% of the population. The most popular religious affiliations in descending order were no religion, Roman Catholic, Anglican and Hindu. The proportion of the population professing to having no religion was 42.5%, higher than the national average of 38.4%, but below the ACT average of 43.5%.
## Suburb amenities
The Yarralumla local shopping centre is located on the corner of Bentham and Novar Streets. It contains a supermarket, dry-cleaners, chemist, gift shop, restaurants and speciality shops.
Weston Park is situated on a peninsula near the western end of Lake Burley Griffin. The park includes swimming areas, children's play equipment and wading pools, and a miniature railway, and is a popular barbecue spot on weekends. Weston Park forms part of a string of parks that line the southern shore of Lake Burley Griffin; other parks include Yarralumla Bay, Lennox Gardens (incorporating a Japanese garden named Canberra Nara Park) and Stirling Park. With its waterfront location on Lake Burley Griffin, Yarralumla Bay is the base of the Canberra Rowing Club, ANU Sailing Club, the Australian Institute of Sport Rowing Centre and the YMCA Sailing Club, while the Southern Cross Yacht Club is based at Lotus Bay opposite Lennox Gardens. Yarralumla Neighbourhood Oval is adjacent to the suburb's primary school as well as a community hall and some tennis courts.
Yarralumla's only scheduled public transport is provided by ACTION buses. Route 57 from Woden Interchange to City Interchange operates along Novar Street, Schlich Street and Hopetoun Circuit. The business case for the proposed second stage of the Capital Metro light rail system that was released in 2019 included stops at Albert Hall on Commonwealth Avenue on the eastern edge of Yarralumla and at the intersections of Adelaide Avenue with Hopetoun Circuit and with Novar and Kent streets on the southern edge.
Yarralumla is home to three places of worship: St Peter Chanel's on the corner of Weston and Loch Streets, Yarralumla Uniting Church on Denman Street, and the Canberra Mosque on Empire Circuit.
## Education
Yarralumla's first school, the Catholic St Peter Chanel's Primary School, opened in 1956; it closed in the 1990s. Yarralumla Primary School, a public school, opened in 1957. The Montessori preschool on Loftus Street is a preschool and Little Lodge on Macgillivray Street is a day care facility. There are no secondary schools in Yarralumla. The zoned government high school (Years 7–10) is Alfred Deakin High School in the adjoining suburb of Deakin to the south and the zoned senior secondary college (Years 11–12) is Narrabundah College, several kilometres to the southeast. Nearby private schools are Canberra Girls Grammar School and Canberra Grammar School in Deakin and Red Hill respectively.
The Canberra Japanese Supplementary School Inc., a Japanese weekend educational programme established in 1988, has its school office in the Japanese Embassy Consular Section in Yarralumla, and holds classes at Alfred Deakin High School.
## Politics
Yarralumla is located within the federal electorate of Canberra, which has been represented by Alicia Payne of the Labor Party in the House of Representatives since the 2019 election. In the ACT Legislative Assembly, Yarralumla is part of the electorate of Murrumbidgee, which elects five members on the basis of proportional representation; as of 2020, the members are two Labor, two Liberal and one Greens. Polling place statistics are shown to the right for the Yarralumla polling place at Yarralumla Primary School at the 2022 federal election and 2020 ACT elections. Only 655 votes were cast at the Yarralumla polling place in 2020 due to early voting at centralised polling places to avoid crowding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
## Notable places
Yarralumla has a large number of landmarks and places of historical interest. The Governor-General's residence Government House, which shares the name Yarralumla, is located at the western end of the suburb in 53 ha (130 acres) of parkland. It sits alongside Lake Burley Griffin, next to the Royal Canberra Golf Club and Scrivener Dam. The house was built in 1891 as the headquarters for the Yarralumla property. Also located alongside Scrivener Dam is the National Zoo & Aquarium. The nearby Yarralumla woolshed is available for event hire, often playing host to parties and bush dances. The land surrounding the woolshed has been developed as an equestrian park, including areas for showjumping, eventing and endurance riding.
The Yarralumla brickworks were the first industrial manufacturing facility in the ACT; they were closed temporarily several times due to the Great Depression and both World Wars. Proposals to modernise the brickworks were rejected by the National Capital Development Commission in the early 1970s and they closed permanently in 1976; the site is closed to the public and is in a state of disrepair. The unfenced parkland around the brickworks is a popular recreation area for Yarralumla residents. As of 2020, residential development is proposed for the site, which is 42 ha (100 acres), to initially include 1,800 new dwellings, although the project has been scaled down.
The eastern end of Yarralumla is home to many of the diplomatic missions in Canberra, many of which are built in a traditional style reflecting that of their respective home countries. Examples of regionally styled chanceries include the embassies of Saudi Arabia and Thailand, and the High Commissions of India and Papua New Guinea. The United States embassy was the first embassy built in Canberra, with the foundation stone laid on the Fourth of July, 1942. The embassy compound was built in a "typically American" Georgian style, using Australian materials, and was inspired by several buildings designed by Christopher Wren for Virginia at the beginning of the 18th century. The French embassy includes the French-Australian War Memorial opened in 1961, which has a sculpture by André Bizette-Lindet called Winged Victory. Canberra tourist drives take tourists on a car-based tour past many of Canberra's embassies including those located in Yarralumla, zig-zagging through the eastern side of Yarralumla past many of the missions.
The Lennox Gardens, Yarralumla Yacht Club, Albert Hall and the Hotel Canberra are located in the eastern end of the suburb. Located on Commonwealth Avenue, the Hotel Canberra opened in 1924 to accommodate politicians when Parliament was in session; Prime Minister James Scullin stayed there to avoid the running costs of the official residence, The Lodge during the Great Depression. It has been heritage listed as an example of the distinctive Garden-Pavilion style of architect John Smith Murdoch in line with the garden city design of Burley Griffin. The hotel was closed in 1974 and the buildings served as an annexe for Parliament House between 1976 and 1984. The Hyatt Hotel Group re-opened the hotel in 1987. Adjacent to the Canberra Hotel is the Canberra Croquet Club. The only croquet club in Canberra, it was opened in 1928 and was restricted to females until 1975. As with the hotel, the clubhouse was built in federation-style architecture and has been heritage-listed along with the croquet lawns. Immediately to the north of Canberra Hotel on Commonwealth Avenue is Albert Hall, built in 1927, which was in the early years of Canberra, one of the main centres of social, musical, theatrical, ceremonial and artistic activity in the capital. It was opened by Prime Minister Stanley Bruce and the subject of royal visits. Although its functionality has been superseded by more specialised entertainment and cultural institutions built in modern times, it is still frequently used for community events. It has been heritage listed for its social and historical value, and as an example of early Canberra architecture.
## See also
- History of Canberra
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2,548,353 |
Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick
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[
"1250 deaths",
"12th-century births",
"12th-century mormaers",
"13th-century mormaers",
"Mormaers of Carrick",
"People from Dumfries and Galloway",
"People from South Ayrshire",
"Recipients of Scottish royal pardons"
] |
Donnchadh (; Latin: Duncanus; English: Duncan) was a Gall-Gaidhil prince and Scottish magnate in what is now south-western Scotland, whose career stretched from the last quarter of the 12th century until his death in 1250. His father, Gille-Brighde of Galloway, and his uncle, Uhtred of Galloway, were the two rival sons of Fergus, Prince or Lord of Galloway. As a result of Gille-Brighde's conflict with Uhtred and the Scottish monarch William the Lion, Donnchadh became a hostage of King Henry II of England. He probably remained in England for almost a decade before returning north on the death of his father. Although denied succession to all the lands of Galloway, he was granted lordship over Carrick in the north.
Allied to John de Courcy, Donnchadh fought battles in Ireland and acquired land there that he subsequently lost. A patron of religious houses, particularly Melrose Abbey and North Berwick priory nunnery, he attempted to establish a monastery in his own territory, at Crossraguel. He married the daughter of Alan fitz Walter, a leading member of the family later known as the House of Stewart—future monarchs of Scotland and England. Donnchadh was the first mormaer or earl of Carrick, a region he ruled for more than six decades, making him one of the longest serving magnates in medieval Scotland. His descendants include the Bruce and Stewart Kings of Scotland, and probably the Campbell Dukes of Argyll.
## Geographic and cultural background
Donnchadh's territory lay in what is now Scotland south of the River Forth, a multi-ethnic region during the late 12th century. North of the Forth was the Gaelic kingdom of Scotland (Alba), which under its partially Normanised kings exercised direct or indirect control over most of the region to the south as far as the borders of Northumberland and Cumberland. Lothian and the Merse were the heartlands of the northern part of the old English Earldom of Northumbria, and in the late 12th century the people of these regions, as well as the people of Lauderdale, Eskdale, Liddesdale, and most of Teviotdale and Annandale, were English in language and regarded themselves as English by ethnicity, despite having been under the control of the king of the Scots for at least a century.
Clydesdale (or Strathclyde) was the heartland of the old Kingdom of Strathclyde; by Donnchadh's day the Scots had settled many English and Continental Europeans (principally Flemings) in the region, and administered it through the sheriffdom of Lanark. Gaelic too had penetrated much of the old Northumbrian and Strathclyde territory, coming from the west, south-west and the north, a situation that led historian Alex Woolf to compare the region to the Balkans. The British language of the area, as a result of such developments, was probably either dead or almost dead, perhaps surviving only in the uplands of Clydesdale, Tweeddale and Annandale.
The rest of the region was settled by the people called Gall-Gaidhil (modern Scottish Gaelic: Gall-Ghàidheil) in their own language, variations of Gallwedienses in Latin, and normally Galwegians or Gallovidians in modern English. References in the 11th century to the kingdom of the Gall-Gaidhil centre it far to the north of what is now Galloway. Kingarth (Cenn Garadh) and Eigg (Eic) were described as "in Galloway" (Gallgaidelaib) by the Martyrology of Óengus, in contrast to Whithorn —part of modern Galloway—which was named as lying within another kingdom, The Rhinns (Na Renna). These areas had been part of the Kingdom of Northumbria until the 9th century, and afterward were transformed by a process very poorly documented, but probably carried out by numerous small bands of culturally Scandinavian but linguistically Gaelic warrior-settlers moving in from Ireland and southern Argyll. "Galloway" today only refers to the lands of Rhinns, Farines, Glenken, Desnes Mór and Desnes Ioan (that is, Wigtownshire and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright), but this is due to the territorial changes that took place in and around Donnchadh's lifetime rather than being the contemporary definition. For instance, a 12th-century piece of marginalia located the island of Ailsa Craig "lying between Gallgaedelu [Galloway] and Cend Tiri [Kintyre]", while a charter of Máel Coluim IV ("Malcolm IV") describes Strathgryfe, Cunningham, Kyle and Carrick as the four cadrez (probably from ceathramh, "quarter"s) of Galloway; an Irish annal entry for the year 1154 designated galleys from Arran, Kintyre, the Isle of Man as Gallghaoidhel, "Galwegian".
By the middle of the 12th century, the former territory of the kingdom of the Rhinns was part of Galloway kingdom, but the area to the north was not. Strathgryfe, Kyle and Cunningham had come under the control of the Scottish king in the early 12th century, much of it given over to soldiers of French or Anglo-French origin. Strathgryfe and most of Kyle had been given to Walter fitz Alan under King David I, with Hugh de Morville taking Cunningham. Strathnith still had a Gaelic ruler (ancestor of the famous Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray), but he was not part of the kingdom of Galloway. The rest of the region—the Rhinns, Farines, Carrick, Desnes Mór and Desnes Ioan, and the sparsely settled uplands of Glenken—was probably under the control of the sons of Fergus, King of Galloway, in the years before Donnchadh's career in the region.
## Origins and family
Donnchadh was the son of Gille-Brighde, son of Fergus, king of the Gall-Gaidhil. Donnchadh's ancestry cannot be traced further; no patronymic is known for Fergus from contemporary sources, and when Fergus' successors enumerate their ancestors in documents, they never go earlier than he does. The name Gille-Brighde, used by Donnchadh's father (Fergus' son), was also the name of the father of Somhairle, petty king of Argyll in the third quarter of the 12th century. As the original territory of the Gall-Gaidhil kingdom probably adjoined or included Argyll, Alex Woolf has suggested that Fergus and Somhairle were brothers or cousins.
There is a "body of circumstantial evidence" that suggests Donnchadh's mother was a daughter or sister of Donnchadh II, Earl of Fife. This includes Donnchadh's association with the Cistercian nunnery of North Berwick, founded by Donnchadh II of Fife's father, Donnchadh I of Fife; close ties seem to have existed between the two families, while Donnchadh's own name is further evidence. The historian who suggested this in 2000, Richard Oram, came to regard this conjecture as certain by 2004.
Roger of Hoveden described Uhtred of Galloway as a consanguinus ("cousin") of King Henry II of England, an assertion that has given rise to the theory that, since Gille-Brighde is never described as such, they must have been from different mothers. Fergus must therefore, according to the theory, have had two wives, one of whom was a bastard daughter of Henry I; that is, Uhtred and his descendants were related to the English royal family, while Gille-Brighde and his descendants were not. According to historian G.W.S. Barrow, the theory is disproved by one English royal document, written in the name of King John of England, which likewise asserts that Donnchadh was John's cousin.
It is unclear how many siblings Donnchadh had, but two at least are known. The first, Máel Coluim, led the forces that besieged Gille-Brighde's brother Uhtred on "Dee island" (probably Threave) in Galloway in 1174. This Máel Coluim captured Uhtred, who subsequently, in addition to being blinded and castrated, had his tongue cut out. Nothing more is known of Máel Coluim's life; there is speculation by some modern historians that he was illegitimate. Another brother appears in the records of Paisley Abbey. In 1233, one Gille-Chonaill Manntach, "the Stammerer" (recorded Gillokonel Manthac), gave evidence regarding a land dispute in Strathclyde; the document described him as the brother of the Earl of Carrick, who at that time was Donnchadh.
## Exile and return
In 1160, Máel Coluim mac Eanric (Malcolm IV), king of the Scots, forced Fergus into retirement and brought Galloway under his overlordship. It is likely that from 1161 until 1174, Fergus' sons Gille-Brighde and Uhtred shared the lordship of the Gall-Gaidhil under the Scottish king's authority, with Gille-Brighde in the west and Uhtred in the east. When in 1174 the Scottish king William the Lion was captured during an invasion of England, the brothers responded by rebelling against the Scottish monarch. Subsequently, they fought each other, with Donnchadh's father ultimately prevailing.
Having defeated his brother, Gille-Brighde unsuccessfully sought to become a direct vassal of Henry II, king of England. An agreement was obtained with Henry in 1176, Gille-Brighde promising to pay him 1000 marks of silver and handing over his son Donnchadh as a hostage. Donnchadh was taken into the care of Hugh de Morwic, sheriff of Cumberland. The agreement seems to have included recognising Donnchadh's right to inherit Gille-Brighde's lands, for nine years later, in the aftermath of Gille-Brighde's death, when Uhtred's son Lochlann (Roland) invaded western Galloway, Roger of Hoveden described the action as "contrary to [Henry's] prohibition".
The activities of Donnchadh's father Gille-Brighde after 1176 are unclear, but some time before 1184 King William raised an army to punish Gille-Brighde "and the other Galwegians who had wasted his land and slain his vassals"; he held off the endeavour, probably because he was worried about the response of Gille-Brighde's protector Henry II. There were raids on William's territory until Gille-Brighde's death in 1185. The death of Gille-Brighde prompted Donnchadh's cousin Lochlann, supported by the Scottish king, to attempt a takeover, thus threatening Donnchadh's inheritance. At that time Donnchadh was still a hostage in the care of Hugh de Morwic.
The Gesta Annalia I claimed that Donnchadh's patrimony was defended by chieftains called Somhairle ("Samuel"), Gille-Patraic, and Eanric Mac Cennetig ("Henry Mac Kennedy"). Lochlann and his army met these men in battle on 4 July 1185 and, according to the Chronicle of Melrose, killed Gille-Patraic and a substantial number of his warriors. Another battle took place on 30 September, and although Lochlann's forces were probably victorious, killing opponent leader Gille-Coluim, the encounter led to the death of Lochlann's unnamed brother. Lochlann's activities provoked a response from King Henry who, according to historian Richard Oram, "was not prepared to accept a fait accompli that disinherited the son of a useful vassal, flew in the face of the settlement which he had imposed ... and deprived him of influence over a vitally strategic zone on the north-west periphery of his realm".
According to Hoveden, in May 1186 Henry ordered the king and magnates of Scotland to subdue Lochlann; in response, Lochlann "collected numerous horse and foot and obstructed the entrances to Galloway and its roads to what extent he could". Richard Oram did not believe that the Scots really intended to do this, as Lochlann was their dependent and probably acted with their consent; this, Oram argued, explains why Henry himself raised an army and marched north to Carlisle. When Henry arrived he instructed King William and his brother David, Earl of Huntingdon, to come to Carlisle, and to bring Lochlann with them.
Lochlann ignored Henry's summons until an embassy consisting of Hugh de Puiset, Bishop of Durham and Justiciar Ranulf de Glanville provided him with hostages as a guarantee of his safety; when he agreed to travel to Carlisle with the king's ambassadors. Hoveden wrote that Lochlann was allowed to keep the land that his father Uhtred had held "on the day he was alive and dead", but that the land of Gille-Brighde that was claimed by Donnchadh, son of Gille-Brighde, would be settled in Henry's court, to which Lochlann would be summoned. Lochlann agreed to these terms. King William and Earl David swore an oath to enforce the agreement, with Jocelin, Bishop of Glasgow, instructed to excommunicate any party that should breach their oath.
## Ruler of Carrick
There is no record of any subsequent court hearing, but the Gesta Annalia I relates that Donnchadh was granted Carrick on condition of peace with Lochlann, and emphasises the role of King William (as opposed to Henry) in resolving the conflict. Richard Oram has pointed out that Donnchadh's grant to Melrose Abbey between 1189 and 1198 was witnessed by his cousin Lochlann, evidence perhaps that relations between the two had become more cordial. Although no details are given any contemporary source, Donnchadh gained possession of some of his father's land in the west of the kingdom of Gall-Gaidhil, namely the "earldom" of Carrick.
When Donnchadh adopted or was given the title of earl (Latin: comes), or in his own language mormaer, is a debated question. Historian Alan Orr Anderson argued that he began using the title of comes between 1214 and 1216, based on Donnchadh's appearance as a witness to two charters issued by Thomas de Colville; the first, known as Melrose 193 (this being its number in Cosmo Innes's printed version of the cartulary), was dated by Anderson to 1214. In this charter, Donnchadh has no title. By contrast Donnchadh was styled comes in a charter dated by Anderson to 1216, Melrose 192.
Oram pointed out that Donnchadh was styled comes in a grant to Melrose Abbey witnessed by Richard de Morville (Melrose 32), who died in 1196. If the wording in this charter is accurate, then Donnchadh was using the title before Richard's death: that is, in or before 1196. Furthermore, while Anderson dated Melrose 192 with reference to Abbot William III de Courcy (abbot of Melrose from 1215 to 1216), Oram identified Abbot William as Abbot William II (abbot from 1202 to 1206). Whenever Donnchadh adopted the title, he is the first known "earl" of the region.
Carrick was located in the Firth of Clyde, in the Irish Sea region far from the main centres of Scottish and Anglo-Norman influence lying to its east and south-east. Carrick was separated from Kyle in the north and north-east by the River Doon, and from Galloway proper by Glenapp and by the adjacent hills and forests. There were three main rivers, the Doon, the Girvan and the Stinchar, though most of the province was hilly, meaning that most wealth came from animal husbandry rather than arable farming. The population of Carrick, like that in neighbouring Galloway, consisted of kin groups governed by a "chief" or "captain" (cenn, Latin capitaneus). Above these captains was the Cenn Cineoil ("kenkynolle"), the "kin-captain" of Carrick, a position held by the mormaer; it was not until after Donnchadh's death that these two positions were separated. The best-recorded groups are Donnchadh's own group (known only as de Carrick, "of Carrick") and the Mac Cennétig (Kennedy) family, who seem to have provided the earldom's hereditary stewards.
The population was governed under these leaders by a customary law that remained distinct from the common law of Scotland for the remainder of the Middle Ages. One documented aspect of Carrick and Galloway law was the power of sergeants (an original Gaelic word Latinised as Kethres), officials of the earl or of other captains, to claim one night of free hospitality (a privilege called sorryn et frithalos), and to accuse and arrest with little restriction. The personal demesne, or lands, of the earl was probably extensive in Donnchadh's time; in 1260, during the minority of Donnchadh's descendant Countess Marjory of Carrick, an assessment made by the Scottish king showed that the earls had estates throughout the province, in upland locations like Straiton, Glengennet and Bennan, as well as in the east in locations such as Turnberry and Dalquharran.
## Relations with the church
Records exist for Donnchadh's religious patronage, and these records provide evidence for Donnchadh's associates as well as the earl himself. Around 1200 Earl Donnchadh allowed the monks of Melrose Abbey use of saltpans from his land at Turnberry. Between 1189 and 1198 he had granted the church of Maybothelbeg ("Little Maybole") and the lands of Beath (Bethóc) to this Cistercian house. The grant is mentioned by the Chronicle of Melrose, under the year 1193:
> Donnchadh, son of Gille-Brighde, of Galloway, gave to God and St Mary and the monks of Melrose a certain part of their land in Carrick that is called Maybole, in perpetual alms, for the salvation of his soul, and the souls of all his relatives; in presence of bishop Jocelin, and many other witnesses.
These estates were very rich, and became attached to Melrose's "super-grange" at Mauchline in Kyle. In 1285 Melrose Abbey was able to persuade the earl of the time to force its tenants in Carrick to use the lex Anglicana (the "English law").
Witness to both grants were some prominent churchman connected with Melrose: magnates like Earl Donnchadh II of Fife, the latter's son Máel Coluim, Gille Brigte, Earl of Strathearn, as well as probable members of Donnchadh's retinue, like Gille-Osald mac Gille-Anndrais, Gille-nan-Náemh mac Cholmain, Gille-Chríst Bretnach ("the Briton"), and Donnchadh's chamberlain Étgar mac Muireadhaich. Áedh son of the mormaer of Lennox also witnessed these grants, and sometime between 1208 and 1214 Donnchadh (as "Lord Donnchadh") subscribed (i.e. his name was written at the bottom, as a "witness" to) a charter of Maol Domhnaich, Earl of Lennox, son and heir of Mormaer Ailean II, to the bishopric of Glasgow regarding the church of Campsie.
There are records of patronage towards the nunnery of North Berwick, a house founded by Donnchadh's probable maternal grandfather or great-grandfather Donnchadh I of Fife. He gave that house the rectorship of the church of St Cuthbert of Maybole sometime between 1189 and 1250. In addition to Maybole, he gave the church of St Brigit at Kirkbride to the nuns, as well as a grant of three marks from a place called Barrebeth. Relations with the bishop of Glasgow, within whose diocese Carrick lay, are also attested. For instance, on 21 July 1225, at Ayr in Kyle, Donnchadh made a promise of tithes to Walter, Bishop of Glasgow.
Donnchadh's most important long-term patronage was a series of gifts to the Cluniac Abbey of Paisley that led to the foundation of a monastery at Crossraguel (Crois Riaghail). At some date before 1227 he granted Crossraguel and a place called Suthblan to Paisley, a grant confirmed by Pope Honorius III on 23 January 1227. A royal confirmation by King Alexander III of Scotland dated to 25 August 1236 shows that Donnchadh granted the monastery the churches of Kirkoswald (Turnberry), Straiton and Dalquharran (Old Dailly). He may also have given the churches of Girvan and Kirkcudbright-Innertig (Ballantrae).
It is clear from several sources that Donnchadh made these grants on the condition that the Abbey of Paisley established a Cluniac house in Carrick, but that the Abbey did not fulfil this condition, arguing that it was not obliged to do so. The Bishop of Glasgow intervened in 1244 and determined that a house of Cluniac monks from Paisley should indeed be founded there, that the house should be exempt from the jurisdiction of Paisley save recognition of the common Cluniac Order, but that the Abbot of Paisley could visit the house annually. After the foundation, Paisley was to hand over its Carrick properties to the newly established monastery.
A papal bull of 11 July 1265 reveals that Paisley Abbey built only a small oratory served by Paisley monks. Twenty years after the bishop's ruling Paisley complained to the papacy, which led Pope Clement IV to issue two bulls, dated 11 June 1265 and 6 February 1266, appointing mandatories to settle the dispute; the results of their deliberations are unknown. Crossraguel was not finally founded until about two decades after Donnchadh's death, probably by 1270; its first abbot, Abbot Patrick, is attested between 1274 and 1292.
## Anglo-French world
In secular affairs one of the few important facts recorded about Donnchadh was his marriage to Avelina, daughter of Alan fitz Walter, lord of Strathgryfe and [northern] Kyle, and High Steward of Scotland. The marriage is known from Roger of Hoveden's Chronica, which recorded that in 1200 Donnchadh:
> Carried off (rapuit) Avelina, daughter of Alan fitz Walter, lord of Renfrew, before William king of Scotland returned from England to his own land. And hence that king was exceeding wroth; and he took from Alan fitz Walter twenty-four pledges that he would preserve the peace with his and with his land, and take the law about his law.
The marriage bound Donnchadh closer to the Anglo-French circles of the northern part of the region south of the Forth, while from Alan's point of view it was part of a series of moves to expand his territory further into former Gall-Gaidhil lands, moves that had included an alliance a few years earlier with another Firth of Clyde Gaelic prince, Raghnall mac Somhairle (Rǫgnvaldr, son of Sumarliði or Somerled).
Charter evidence reveals two Anglo-Normans present in Donnchadh's territory. Some of Donnchadh's charters to Melrose were subscribed by an Anglo-Norman knight named Roger de Skelbrooke, who appears to have been Lord of Greenan. De Skelbrooke himself made grants to Melrose regarding the land of Drumeceisuiene (i.e. Drumshang), grants confirmed by "his lord" Donnchadh. This knight gave Melrose fishing rights in the River Doon, rights confirmed by Donnchadh too and later by Roger's son-in-law and successor Ruaidhri mac Gille-Escoib (Raderic mac Gillescop).
The other known Anglo-French knight was Thomas de Colville. Thomas (nicknamed "the Scot") was the younger son of the lord of Castle Bytham, a significant landowner in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Around 1190 he was constable of Dumfries, the royal castle which had been planted in Strathnith by the Scottish king, probably overrun by the Gall-Gaidhil in the revolt of 1174 before being restored afterwards. Evidence that he possessed land in the region under Donnchadh's overlordship comes from the opening years of the 13th century when he made a grant of land around Dalmellington to the Cistercians of Vaudey Abbey. Historians G.W.S. Barrow and Hector MacQueen both thought that Thomas' nickname "the Scot" (which then could mean "a Gael" as well as someone from north of the Forth), is a reflection of Thomas' exposure to the culture of the south-west during his career there.
It is not known how these two men acquired the patronage of Donnchadh or his family. Writing in 1980, Barrow could find no cause for their presence in the area, and declared that they were "for the present impossible to account for". As Richard Oram pointed out, in one of his charters Roger de Skelbrooke called Donnchadh's father Gille-Brighde "my lord", indicating that Donnchadh probably inherited them in his territory. Neither of them left traceable offspring in the region, and even if they did represent for Carrick what could have been the embryonic stages of the kind of Normanisation that was taking place further east, the process was halted during Donnchadh's period as ruler. Vaudey Abbey transferred the land granted to it by Donnchadh to Melrose Abbey in 1223, because it was "useless and dangerous to them, both on account of the absence of law and order, and by reason of the insidious attacks of a barbarous people".
## Ireland
The Anglo-Norman John de Courcy, whose early life was probably spent just across the Irish Sea in Cumbria, invaded the over-kingdom of Ulaid in north-eastern Ireland in 1177 with the aim of conquest. After defeating the region's king Ruaidhrí Mac Duinn Shléibhe, de Courcy was able to take control of a large amount of territory, though not without encountering further resistance among the native Irish. Cumbria was only a short distance too from the lands of the Gall-Gaidhil, and around 1180 John de Courcy married Donnchadh's cousin Affrica, whose father Guðrøðr (Gofraidh), King of the Isles, was son of Donnchadh's aunt. Guðrøðr, who was thus Donnchadh's cousin, had in turn married a daughter of the Meic Lochlainn ruler of Tir Eoghain, another Irish kingdom. Marriage thus connected Donnchadh and the other Gall-Gaidhil princes to several players in Ulster affairs.
The earliest information on Donnchadh's and indeed Gall-Gaidhil involvement in Ulster comes from Roger of Hoveden's entry about the death of Jordan de Courcy, John's brother. It related that in 1197, after Jordan's death, John sought vengeance and
> Fought a battle with the petty-kings of Ireland, of whom he put some to flight, slew others, and subjugated their territories; of which he gave no small part to Donnchadh, son of Gille-Brighde, the son of Fergus, who, at the time that the said John was about to engage with the Irish, came to assist him with no small body of troops.
Donnchadh's interests in the area were damaged when de Courcy lost his territory in eastern Ulster to his rival Hugh de Lacy in 1203. John de Courcy, with help from his wife's brother King Rǫgnvaldr Guðrøðarson (Raghnall mac Gofraidh) and perhaps from Donnchadh, tried to regain his principality, but was initially unsuccessful. De Courcy's fortunes were boosted when Hugh de Lacy (then Earl of Ulster) and his associate William III de Briouze, themselves fell foul of John; the king campaigned in Ireland against them in 1210, a campaign that forced de Briouze to return to Wales and de Lacy to flee to St Andrews in Scotland.
English records attest to Donnchadh's continued involvement in Ireland. One document, after describing how William de Briouze became the king's enemy in England and Ireland, records that after John arrived in Ireland in July 1210:
> [William de Briouze's] wife [Matilda] fled to Scotland with William and Reinald her sons, and her private retinue, in the company of Hugh de Lacy, and when the king was at Carrickfergus Castle, a certain friend and cousin of his of Galloway, namely Donnchadh of Carrick, reported to the king that he had taken her and her daughter the wife of Roger de Mortimer, and William junior, with his wife and two sons, but Hugh de Lacy and Reinald escaped.
The Histoire des Ducs de Normandie recorded that William and Matilda had voyaged to the Isle of Man, en route from Ireland to Galloway, where they were captured. Matilda was imprisoned by the king, and died of starvation.
Another document, this one preserved in an Irish memoranda roll dating to the reign of King Henry VI (reigned 1422–1461), records that after John's Irish expedition of 1210, Donnchadh controlled extensive territory in County Antrim, namely the settlements of Larne and Glenarm with 50 carucates of land in between, a territory similar to the later barony of Glenarm Upper. King John had given or recognised Donnchadh's possession of this territory, and that of Donnchadh's nephew Alaxandair (Alexander), as a reward for his help; similarly, John had given Donnchadh's cousins Ailean and Tómas, sons of Lochlann, a huge lordship equivalent to 140 knight's fees that included most of northern County Antrim and County Londonderry, the reward for use of their soldiers and galleys.
By 1219 Donnchadh and his nephew appear to have lost all or most of his Irish land; a document of that year related that the Justiciar of Ireland, Geoffrey de Marisco, had dispossessed ("disseised") them believing they had conspired against the king in the rebellion of 1215–6. The king, John's successor Henry III, found that this was not true and ordered the Justiciar to restore Donnchadh and his nephew to their lands. By 1224, Donnchadh had still not regained these lands and de Lacy's adherents were gaining more ground in the region. King Henry III repeated his earlier but ineffective instructions: he ordered Henry de Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin and new Justiciar of Ireland, to restore to Donnchadh "the remaining part of the land given to him by King John in Ireland, unless anyone held it by his father's own precept".
Later in the same year Donnchadh wrote to King Henry. His letter was as follows:
> [Donnchadh] Thanks him for the mandate which he directed by him to the Justiciar of Ireland, to restore his land there, of which he had been disseized on account of the English war; but as the land has not yet been restored, he asks the King to give by him a more effectual command to the Justiciar.
Henry's response was a writ to his Justiciar:
> King John granted to Donnchadh of Carrick, land in Ulster called Balgeithelauche [probably Ballygalley, county Antrim]. He says Hugh de Lacy disseized him and gave it to another. The King commands the Earl to inquire who has it, and its tenure; and if his right is insufficient, to give Donnchadh the land during the king's pleasure. At Bedford.
It is unlikely that Donnchadh ever regained his territory; after Hugh was formally restored to the Earldom of Ulster in 1227, Donnchadh's land was probably controlled by the Bisset family. Historian Séan Duffy argues that the Bissets (later known as the "Bissets of the Glens") helped Hugh de Lacy, and probably ended up with Donnchadh's territory as a reward.
## Death and legacy
Donnchadh was said by the Martyrology of Glasgow to have died on 13 June 1250.[^1] He was succeeded in the earldom by Niall. The traditional view, going back to the 19th century, is that Niall was Donnchadh's son. This view has been undermined with more recent research by genealogist Andrew MacEwen, who has argued that Niall was not the son of Donnchadh, but rather his grandson, a view embraced by leading Scottish medievalist Professor G.W.S. Barrow. According to this argument, Donnchadh's son and intended heir was Cailean mac Donnchaidh (alias Nicholaus), who as his son and heir, issued a charter in Donnchadh's lifetime, but seemingly predeceased him. It was further suggested that Cailean's wife, Earl Niall's mother, was a daughter of the Tir Eoghain king Niall Ruadh Ó Neill, tying in with Donnchadh's Irish activities, accounting for the use of the name Niall, and explaining the strong alliance with the Ó Neill held by Niall's grandsons.
Another of Donnchadh's sons, Eóin (John), owned the land of Straiton. He was involved in the Galwegian revolt of Gille Ruadh in 1235, during which he attacked some churches in the diocese of Glasgow. He received a pardon by granting patronage of the church of Straiton and the land of Hachinclohyn to William de Bondington, Bishop of Glasgow, which was confirmed by Alexander II in 1244. Two other sons, Ailean (Alan) and Alaxandair (Alexander), are attested subscribing to Donnchadh and Cailean's charters to North Berwick. A Melrose charter mentions that Ailean was parson of Kirchemanen. Cailean, and presumably Donnchadh's other legitimate sons, died before their father.
Donnchadh's probable grandson, Niall, was earl for only six years and died leaving no son but four daughters, one of whom is known by name. The last, presumably the eldest, was his successor Marjorie, who married in turn Adam of Kilconquhar (died 1271), a member of the Mac Duibh family of Fife, and Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale. Marjorie's son Robert the Bruce, through military success and ancestral kinship with the Dunkeld dynasty, became King of Scots. King Robert's brother, Edward Bruce, became for a short time High King of Ireland.
Under the Bruces and their successors to the Scottish throne, the title Earl of Carrick became a prestigious honorific title usually given to a son of the king or intended heir; at some time between 1250 and 1256 Earl Niall, anticipating that the earldom would be taken over by a man from another family, issued a charter to Lochlann (Roland) of Carrick, a son or grandson of one of Donnchadh's brothers. The charter granted Lochlann the title Cenn Cineoil, "head of the kindred", a position which brought the right to lead the men of Carrick in war. The charter also conferred possession of the office of baillie of Carrick under whoever was earl. Precedent had been established here by other native families of Scotland, something similar having already taken place in Fife; it was a way of ensuring that the kin-group retained strong locally based male leadership even when the newly imposed common law of Scotland forced the comital title to pass into the hands of another family. By 1372 the office had passed—probably by marriage—to the Kennedy family of Dunure.
The 17th-century genealogical compilation known as Ane Accompt of the Genealogie of the Campbells by Robert Duncanson, minister of Campbeltown, claimed that "Efferic" (i.e. Affraic or Afraig), wife of Gilleasbaig of Menstrie (fl. 1263–6) and mother of Campbell progenitor Cailean Mór, was the daughter of one Cailean (anglicised Colin), "Lord of Carrick". Partly because Ane Accompt'' is a credible witness to much earlier material, the claim is thought probable. Thus Donnchadh was likely the great-grandfather of Cailean Mór, a lineage that explains the popularity of the names Donnchadh (Duncan) and Cailean (Colin) among later Campbells, as well as their close alliance to King Robert I during the Scottish Wars of Independence.
[^1]: Balfour Paul, Scots Peerage, vol. ii, p. 423; Innes (ed.), Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis, vol. ii, p. 616
|
207,068 |
Mu'awiya I
| 1,172,983,493 |
Founder and first caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 680
|
[
"600s births",
"680 deaths",
"7th-century Umayyad caliphs",
"Companions of the Prophet",
"Generals of the Rashidun Caliphate",
"One Thousand and One Nights characters",
"People from Mecca",
"People of the First Fitna",
"Rashidun governors of Jordan",
"Rashidun governors of Syria"
] |
Mu'awiya I (Arabic: معاوية بن أبي سفيان, romanized: Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān; c. 597, 603 or 605–April 680) was the founder and first caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate, ruling from 661 until his death. He became caliph less than thirty years after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and immediately after the four Rashidun ('rightly-guided') caliphs. Unlike his predecessors, who had been close, early companions of Muhammad, Mu'awiya was a relatively late follower of the Islamic prophet.
Mu'awiya and his father Abu Sufyan had opposed Muhammad, their distant Qurayshite kinsman and later Mu'awiya's brother-in-law, until Muhammad captured Mecca in 630. Afterward, Mu'awiya became one of Muhammad's scribes. He was appointed by Caliph Abu Bakr (r. 632–634) as a deputy commander in the conquest of Syria. He was appointed governor of Damascus by caliph Umar (r. 634–644) and later, governor of Syria during the reign of his Umayyad kinsman, Caliph Uthman (r. 644–656). He allied with the province's powerful Banu Kalb tribe, developed the defenses of its coastal cities, and directed the war effort against the Byzantine Empire, including the first Muslim naval campaigns. In response to Uthman's assassination in 656, Mu'awiya took up the cause of avenging the murdered caliph and opposed the election of Ali. During the First Muslim Civil War, the two led their armies to a stalemate at the Battle of Siffin in 657, prompting an abortive series of arbitration talks to settle the dispute. Afterward, Mu'awiya gained recognition as caliph by his Syrian supporters and his ally Amr ibn al-As, who conquered Egypt from Ali's governor in 658. Following the assassination of Ali in 661, Mu'awiya compelled Ali's son and successor Hasan to abdicate and Mu'awiya's suzerainty was acknowledged throughout the Caliphate.
Domestically, Mu'awiya relied on loyalist Syrian Arab tribes and Syria's Christian-dominated bureaucracy. He is credited with establishing government departments responsible for the postal route, correspondence, and chancellery. He was the first caliph whose name appeared on coins, inscriptions, or documents of the nascent Islamic empire. Externally, he engaged his troops in almost yearly land and sea raids against the Byzantines, including a failed siege of Constantinople. In Iraq and the eastern provinces, he delegated authority to the powerful governors al-Mughira and Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan, the latter of whom he controversially adopted as his brother. Under Mu'awiya's direction, the Muslim conquest of Ifriqiya (central North Africa) was launched by the commander Uqba ibn Nafi in 670, while the conquests in Khurasan and Sijistan on the eastern frontier were resumed.
Although Mu'awiya confined the influence of his Umayyad clan to the governorship of Medina, he nominated his own son, Yazid I, as his successor. It was an unprecedented move in Islamic politics and opposition to it by prominent Muslim leaders, including Ali's son Husayn, and Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, persisted after Mu'awiya's death, culminating with the outbreak of the Second Muslim Civil War. While there is considerable admiration for Mu'awiya in the contemporary sources, he has been criticized for lacking the justice and piety of the Rashidun and transforming the office of the caliphate into a kingship. Besides these criticisms, Sunni Muslim tradition views him as a companion of Muhammad and a scribe of Qur'anic revelation. In Shia Islam, Mu'awiya is reviled for opposing Ali, accused of poisoning his son Hasan, and held to have accepted Islam without conviction.
## Origins and early life
Mu'awiya's year of birth is uncertain, with 597, 603 or 605 cited by early Islamic sources. His father Abu Sufyan ibn Harb was a prominent Meccan merchant who led trade caravans to Syria, then part of the Byzantine Empire. He emerged as the leader of the Banu Abd Shams clan of the polytheistic Quraysh, the dominant tribe of Mecca, during the early stages of the Quraysh's conflict with the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The latter also hailed from the Quraysh and was distantly related to Mu'awiya via their common paternal ancestor, Abd Manaf ibn Qusayy. Mu'awiya's mother, Hind bint Utba, was also a member of the Banu Abd Shams.
In 624, Muhammad and his followers attempted to intercept a Meccan caravan led by Mu'awiya's father on its return from Syria, prompting Abu Sufyan to call for reinforcements. The Qurayshite relief army was routed in the ensuing Battle of Badr, in which Mu'awiya's elder brother Hanzala and their maternal grandfather, Utba ibn Rabi'a, were killed. Abu Sufyan replaced the slain leader of the Meccan army, Abu Jahl, and led the Meccans to victory against the Muslims at the Battle of Uhud in 625. After his abortive siege of Muhammad in Medina at the Battle of the Trench in 627, he lost his leadership position among the Quraysh.
Mu'awiya's father was not a participant in the truce negotiations at Hudaybiyya between the Quraysh and Muhammad in 628. The following year, Muhammad married Mu'awiya's widowed sister Umm Habiba, who had embraced Islam fifteen years earlier. The marriage may have reduced Abu Sufyan's hostility toward Muhammad and Abu Sufyan negotiated with him in Medina in 630 after confederates of the Quraysh violated the Hudaybiyya truce. When Muhammad captured Mecca in 630, Mu'awiya, his father, and his elder brother Yazid embraced Islam. According to accounts cited by the early Muslim historians al-Baladhuri and Ibn Hajar, Mu'awiya had secretly become a Muslim from the time of the Hudaybiyya negotiations. By 632 Muslim authority extended across Arabia with Medina as the seat of the Muslim government. As part of Muhammad's efforts to reconcile with the Quraysh, Mu'awiya was made one of his kātibs (scribes), being one of seventeen literate members of the Quraysh at that time. Abu Sufyan moved to Medina to maintain his newfound influence in the nascent Muslim community.
## Governorship of Syria
### Early military career and administrative promotions
After Muhammad died in 632, Abu Bakr became caliph (leader of the Muslim community). He and his successors Umar, Uthman, and Ali are often known as the Rashidun ('rightly-guided') caliphs to distinguish them from Mu'awiya and his Umayyad dynastic successors. Having to contend with challenges to his leadership from the Ansar, the natives of Medina who had provided Muhammad safe haven from his erstwhile Meccan opponents, and the mass defections of several Arab tribes, Abu Bakr reached out to the Quraysh, particularly its two strongest clans, the Banu Makhzum and Banu Abd Shams, to shore up support for the Caliphate. Among those Qurayshites whom he appointed to suppress the rebel Arab tribes during the Ridda wars (632–633) was Mu'awiya's brother Yazid. Afterward, he was dispatched as one of four commanders in charge of the Muslim conquest of Byzantine Syria in c. 634. The caliph appointed Mu'awiya commander of Yazid's vanguard. Through these appointments Abu Bakr gave the family of Abu Sufyan a stake in the conquest of Syria, where Abu Sufyan already owned property in the vicinity of Damascus.
Abu Bakr's successor Umar (r. 634–644) appointed a leading companion of Muhammad, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, as the general commander of the Muslim army in Syria in 636 after the rout of the Byzantines at the Battle of Yarmouk, which paved the way for the conquest of the rest of Syria. Mu'awiya was among the Arab troops that entered Jerusalem with Caliph Umar in 637. Afterward, Mu'awiya and Yazid were dispatched by Abu Ubayda to conquer the coastal towns of Sidon, Beirut and Byblos. Following the death of Abu Ubayda in the plague of Amwas in 639, Umar split the command of Syria, appointing Yazid as governor of the military districts of Damascus, Jordan and Palestine, and the veteran commander Iyad ibn Ghanm governor of Homs and the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia). When Yazid succumbed to the plague later that year, Umar appointed Mu'awiya the military and fiscal governor of Damascus, and possibly Jordan as well. In 640 or 641, Mu'awiya captured Caesarea, the district capital of Byzantine Palestine, and then captured Ascalon, completing the Muslim conquest of Palestine. As early as 640 or 641, Mu'awiya may have led a campaign against Cilicia and proceeded to Euchaita, deep in Byzantine Anatolia. In 644, he led a foray against the Anatolian city of Amorium.
The successive promotions of Abu Sufyan's sons contradicted Umar's efforts to otherwise curtail the influence of the Qurayshite aristocracy in the Muslim state in favor of the earliest Muslim converts (i.e. the Muhajirun and Ansar groups). According to the historian Leone Caetani, this exceptional treatment stemmed from Umar's personal respect for the Umayyads, the branch of the Banu Abd Shams to which Mu'awiya belonged. This is doubted by the historian Wilferd Madelung, who surmises that Umar had little choice, due to the lack of a suitable alternative to Mu'awiya in Syria and the ongoing plague in the region, which precluded the deployment of commanders more preferable to Umar from Medina.
Upon the accession of Caliph Uthman (r. 644–656), Mu'awiya's governorship was enlarged to include Palestine, while a companion of Muhammad, Umayr ibn Sa'd al-Ansari, was confirmed as governor of the Homs-Jazira district. In late 646 or early 647, Uthman attached the Homs-Jazira district to Mu'awiya's Syrian governorship, greatly increasing the military manpower at his disposal.
### Consolidation of local power
During the reign of Uthman, Mu'awiya allied with the Banu Kalb, the predominant tribe in the Syrian steppe extending from the oasis of Dumat al-Jandal in the south to the approaches of Palmyra and the chief component of the Quda'a confederation present throughout Syria. Medina consistently courted the Kalb, which had remained mostly neutral during the Arab–Byzantine wars, particularly after the central government's entreaties to the Byzantines' principal Arab allies, the Christian Ghassanids, were rebuffed. Before the advent of Islam in Syria, the Kalb and the Quda'a, long under the influence of Greco-Aramaic culture and the Monophysite church, had served Byzantium as subordinates of its Ghassanid client kings to guard the Syrian frontier against invasions by the Sasanian Persians and the latter's Arab clients, the Lakhmids. By the time the Muslims entered Syria, the Kalb and the Quda'a had accumulated significant military experience and were accustomed to hierarchical order and military obedience. To harness their strength and thereby secure his foothold in Syria, Mu'awiya consolidated ties to the Kalb's ruling house, the clan of Bahdal ibn Unayf, by wedding the latter's daughter Maysun in c. 650. He also married Maysun's paternal cousin, Na'ila bint Umara, for a short period.
Mu'awiya's reliance on the native Syrian Arab tribes was compounded by the heavy toll inflicted on the Muslim troops in Syria by the plague of Amwas, which caused troop numbers to dwindle from 24,000 in 637 to 4,000 in 639. Moreover, the focus of Arabian tribal migration was toward the Sasanian front in Iraq. Mu'awiya oversaw a liberal recruitment policy that resulted in considerable numbers of Christian tribesmen and frontier peasants filling the ranks of his regular and auxiliary forces. Indeed, the Christian Tanukhids and the mixed Muslim–Christian Banu Tayy formed part of Mu'awiya's army in northern Syria. To help pay for his troops, Mu'awiya requested and was granted ownership by Uthman of the abundant, income-producing, Byzantine crown lands in Syria, which were previously designated by Umar as communal property for the Muslim army.
Although Syria's rural, Aramaic-speaking Christian population remained largely intact, the Muslim conquest had caused a mass flight of Greek Christian urbanites from Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia and Tripoli to Byzantine territory, while those who remained held pro-Byzantine sympathies. In contrast to the other conquered regions of the Caliphate, where new garrison cities were established to house Muslim troops and their administration, in Syria the troops settled in existing cities, including Damascus, Homs, Jerusalem, Tiberias, Aleppo and Qinnasrin. Mu'awiya restored, repopulated and garrisoned the coastal cities of Antioch, Balda, Tartus, Maraclea and Baniyas. In Tripoli he settled significant numbers of Jews, while sending to Homs, Antioch and Baalbek Persian holdovers from the Sasanian occupation of Byzantine Syria in the early 7th century. Upon Uthman's direction, Mu'awiya settled groups of the nomadic Tamim, Asad and Qays tribes to areas north of the Euphrates in the vicinity of Raqqa.
### Naval campaigns against Byzantium and conquest of Armenia
Mu'awiya initiated the Arab naval campaigns against the Byzantines in the eastern Mediterranean, requisitioning the harbors of Tripoli, Beirut, Tyre, Acre, and Jaffa. Umar had rejected Mu'awiya's request to launch a naval invasion of Cyprus, citing concerns about the Muslim forces' safety at sea, but Uthman allowed him to commence the campaign in 647, after refusing an earlier entreaty. Mu'awiya's rationale was that the Byzantine-held island posed a threat to Arab positions along the Syrian coast, and that it could be easily neutralized. The exact year of the raid is unclear, with the early Arabic sources providing a range between 647 and 650, while two Greek inscriptions in the Cypriot village of Solois cite two raids launched between 648 and 650.
According to the 9th-century historians al-Baladhuri and Khalifa ibn Khayyat, Mu'awiya led the raid in person accompanied by his wife, Katwa bint Qaraza ibn Abd Amr of the Qurayshite Banu Nawfal, alongside the commander Ubada ibn al-Samit. Katwa died on the island and at some point Mu'awiya married her sister Fakhita. In a different narrative by the early Muslim sources, the raid was instead conducted by Mu'awiya's admiral Abd Allah ibn Qays, who landed at Salamis before occupying the island. In either case, the Cypriots were forced to pay a tribute equal to that which they had paid the Byzantines. Mu'awiya established a garrison and a mosque to maintain the Caliphate's influence on the island, which became a staging ground for the Arabs and the Byzantines to launch raids against each other's territories. The inhabitants of Cyprus were largely left to their own devices and archaeological evidence indicates uninterrupted prosperity during this period.
Dominance of the eastern Mediterranean enabled Mu'awiya's naval forces to raid Crete and Rhodes in 653. From the raid on Rhodes, Mu'awiya remitted significant war spoils to Uthman. In 654 or 655, a joint naval expedition launched from Alexandria, Egypt and the harbors of Syria routed a Byzantine fleet commanded by the Byzantine Emperor Constans II (r. 641–668) off the Lycian coast at the Battle of the Masts. Constans II was forced to sail to Sicily, opening the way for an ultimately unsuccessful Arab naval attack on Constantinople. The Arabs were commanded by either the governor of Egypt, Abd Allah ibn Abi Sarh, or Mu'awiya's lieutenant Abu'l-A'war.
Meanwhile, after two previous attempts by the Arabs to conquer Armenia, the third attempt in 650 ended with a three-year truce reached between Mu'awiya and the Byzantine envoy Procopios in Damascus. In 653, Mu'awiya received the submission of the Armenian leader Theodore Rshtuni, which the Byzantine emperor practically conceded when he withdrew from Armenia that year. In 655, Mu'awiya's lieutenant commander Habib ibn Maslama al-Fihri captured Theodosiopolis and deported Rshtuni to Syria, solidifying Arab rule over Armenia.
## First Fitna
Mu'awiya's domain was generally immune to the growing discontent prevailing in Medina, Egypt and Kufa against Uthman's policies in the 650s. The exception was Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, who had been sent to Damascus for openly condemning Uthman's enrichment of his kinsmen. He criticized the lavish sums that Mu'awiya invested in building his Damascus residence, the Khadra Palace, prompting Mu'awiya to expel him. Uthman's confiscation of crown lands in Iraq and his alleged nepotism drove the Quraysh and the dispossessed elites of Kufa and Egypt to oppose the caliph.
Uthman sent for assistance from Mu'awiya when rebels from Egypt besieged his home in June 656. Mu'awiya dispatched a relief army toward Medina, but it withdrew at Wadi al-Qura when word reached them of Uthman's killing. Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, was recognized as caliph in Medina. Mu'awiya withheld allegiance to Ali and, according to some reports, the latter deposed him by sending his own governor to Syria, who was denied entry into the province by Mu'awiya. This is rejected by Madelung, according to whom no formal relations existed between the caliph and the governor of Syria for seven months from the date of Ali's election.
Soon after becoming caliph, Ali was opposed by much of the Quraysh led by al-Zubayr and Talha, both prominent companions of Muhammad, and Muhammad's wife A'isha, who feared the loss of their own influence under Ali. The ensuing civil war became known as the First Fitna. Ali defeated the triumvirate near Basra at the Battle of the Camel, which ended in the deaths of al-Zubayr and Talha, both potential contenders for the caliphate, and the retirement of A'isha to Medina. With his position in Iraq, Egypt and Arabia secure, Ali turned his attention toward Mu'awiya. Unlike the other provincial governors, Mu'awiya had a strong and loyal power base, demanded revenge for the slaying of his Umayyad kinsman Uthman, and could not be easily replaced. At this point, Mu'awiya did not yet claim the caliphate and his principal aim was keeping power in Syria.
### Preparations for war
Ali's victory in Basra left Mu'awiya vulnerable, his territory wedged between Ali's forces in Iraq and Egypt, while the war with the Byzantines was ongoing in the north. In 657 or 658 Mu'awiya secured his northern frontier with Byzantium by making a truce with the emperor, enabling him to focus the bulk of his troops on the impending battle with the caliph. After failing to gain the defection of Egypt's governor, Qays ibn Sa'd, he resolved to end the Umayyad family's hostility to Amr ibn al-As, the conqueror and former governor of Egypt, whom they accused of involvement in Uthman's death. Mu'awiya and Amr, who was popular with the Arab troops of Egypt, made a pact whereby the latter joined the coalition against Ali and Mu'awiya publicly agreed to install Amr as Egypt's lifetime governor should they oust Ali's appointee.
Although he had the firm backing of the Kalb, to shore up the rest of his base in Syria, Mu'awiya was advised by his kinsman al-Walid ibn Uqba to secure an alliance with the Yemenite tribes of Himyar, Kinda and Hamdan, who collectively dominated the Homs garrison. He employed the veteran commander and Kindite nobleman Shurahbil ibn Simt, who was widely respected in Syria, to rally the Yemenites to his side. He then enlisted support from the dominant tribal leader of Palestine, the Judham chief Natil ibn Qays, by allowing the latter's confiscation of the district's treasury to go unpunished. The efforts bore fruit and demands for war against Ali grew throughout Mu'awiya's domain. When Ali sent his envoy, the veteran commander and chieftain of the Bajila, Jarir ibn Abd Allah, to Mu'awiya, the latter responded with a letter that amounted to a declaration of war against the caliph, whose legitimacy he refused to recognize.
### Battle of Siffin and arbitration
In the first week of June 657, the armies of Mu'awiya and Ali met at Siffin near Raqqa and engaged in days of skirmishes interrupted by a month-long truce on 19 June. During the truce, Mu'awiya dispatched an embassy led by Habib ibn Maslama, who presented Ali with an ultimatum to hand over Uthman's alleged killers, abdicate and allow a shura (consultative council) to decide the caliphate. Ali rebuffed Mu'awiya's envoys and on 18 July declared that the Syrians remained obstinate in their refusal to recognize his sovereignty. On the following day, a week of duels between Ali's and Mu'awiya's top commanders ensued. The main battle between the two armies commenced on 26 July. As Ali's troops advanced toward Mu'awiya's tent, the governor of Syria ordered his elite troops forward and they bested the Iraqis before the tide turned against the Syrians the next day with the deaths of two of Mu'awiya's leading commanders, Ubayd Allah, a son of Caliph Umar, and Dhu'l-Kala Samayfa, the so-called 'king of Himyar'.
Mu'awiya rejected suggestions from his advisers to engage Ali in a duel and definitively end hostilities. The battle climaxed on the so-called 'Night of Clamor' on 28 July, which saw Ali's forces take the advantage in a melée as the death toll mounted on both sides. According to the account of the scholar al-Zuhri (d. 742), this prompted Amr ibn al-As to counsel Mu'awiya the following morning to have a number of his men tie leaves of the Qur'an on their lances in an appeal to the Iraqis to settle the conflict through consultation. According to the scholar al-Sha'bi (d. 723), al-Ash'ath ibn Qays, who was in Ali's army, expressed his fears of Byzantine and Persian attacks were the Muslims to exhaust themselves in the civil war. Upon receiving intelligence of this, Mu'awiya ordered the raising of the Qur'an leaves. Though this act represented a surrender of sorts as Mu'awiya abandoned, at least temporarily, his previous insistence on settling the dispute with Ali militarily and pursuing Uthman's killers into Iraq, it had the effect of sowing discord and uncertainty in Ali's ranks.
The caliph adhered to the will of the majority in his army and accepted the proposal to arbitrate. Moreover, Ali agreed to Amr's, or Mu'awiya's, demand to omit his formal title, amir al-mu'minin (commander of the faithful, the traditional title of a caliph), from the initial arbitration document. According to the historian Hugh N. Kennedy, the agreement forced Ali "to deal with Mu'awiya on equal terms and abandon his unchallenged right to lead the community". Madelung asserts it "handed Mu'awiya a moral victory" before inducing a "disastrous split in the ranks of Ali's men". Indeed, upon Ali's return to his capital Kufa in September 658, a large segment of his troops who had opposed the arbitration defected, inaugurating the Kharijite movement.
The initial agreement postponed the arbitration to a later date. Information in the early Muslim sources about the time, place and outcome of the arbitration is contradictory, but there were likely two meetings between Mu'awiya's and Ali's respective representatives, Amr and Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, the first in Dumat al-Jandal and the last in Adhruh. Ali abandoned the arbitration after the first meeting in which Abu Musa—who, unlike Amr, was not particularly attached to his principal's cause— accepted the Syrian side's claim that Uthman was wrongfully killed, a verdict that Ali opposed. The final meeting in Adhruh, which had been convened at Mu'awiya's request, collapsed, but by then Mu'awiya had emerged as a major contender for the caliphate.
### Claim to the caliphate and resumption of hostilities
Following the breakdown of the arbitration talks, Amr and the Syrian delegates returned to Damascus, where they greeted Mu'awiya as amir al-mu'minin, signaling their recognition of him as caliph. In April or May 658, Mu'awiya received a general pledge of allegiance from the Syrians. In response, Ali broke off communications with Mu'awiya, mobilized for war and invoked a curse against Mu'awiya and his close retinue as a ritual in the morning prayers. Mu'awiya reciprocated in kind against Ali and his closest supporters in his own domain.
In July, Mu'awiya dispatched an army under Amr to Egypt after a request for intervention from pro-Uthman mutineers in the province who were being suppressed by the governor, Caliph Abu Bakr's son and Ali's stepson, Muhammad. The latter's troops were defeated by Amr's forces, the provincial capital Fustat was captured and Muhammad was executed on the orders of Mu'awiya ibn Hudayj, leader of the pro-Uthman rebels. The loss of Egypt was a major blow to the authority of Ali, who was bogged down battling Kharijite defectors in Iraq and whose grip in Basra and Iraq's eastern and southern dependencies was eroding. Though his hand was strengthened, Mu'awiya refrained from launching a direct assault against Ali. Instead, his strategy was to bribe the tribal chieftains in Ali's army to his side and harry the inhabitants along Iraq's western frontier. The first raid was conducted by al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri against nomads and Muslim pilgrims in the desert west of Kufa. This was followed by Nu'man ibn Bashir al-Ansari's abortive attack on Ayn al-Tamr then, in the summer of 660, Sufyan ibn Awf's successful raids against Hit and Anbar.
In 659 or 660, Mu'awiya expanded the operations to the Hejaz (western Arabia, where Mecca and Medina are located), sending Abd Allah ibn Mas'ada al-Fazari to collect the alms tax and oaths of allegiance to Mu'awiya from the inhabitants of the Tayma oasis. This initial foray was defeated by the Kufans, while an attempt to extract oaths of allegiance from the Quraysh of Mecca in April 660 also failed.
In the summer, Mu'awiya dispatched a large army under Busr ibn Abi Artat to conquer the Hejaz and Yemen. He directed Busr to intimidate Medina's inhabitants without harming them, spare the Meccans and kill anyone in Yemen who refused to pledge their allegiance. Busr advanced through Medina, Mecca and Ta'if, encountering no resistance and gaining those cities' recognition of Mu'awiya. In Yemen, Busr executed several notables in Najran and its vicinity on account of past criticism of Uthman or ties to Ali, massacred numerous tribesmen of the Hamdan and townspeople from Sana'a and Ma'rib. Before he could continue his campaign in Hadhramawt, he withdrew upon the approach of a Kufan relief force. News of Busr's actions in Arabia spurred Ali's troops to rally behind his planned campaign against Mu'awiya, but the expedition was aborted as a result of Ali's assassination by a Kharijite in January 661.
## Caliphate
### Accession
After Ali was killed, Mu'awiya left al-Dahhak ibn Qays in charge of Syria and led his army toward Kufa, where Ali's son Hasan had been nominated as his successor. He successfully bribed Ubayd Allah ibn Abbas, the commander of Hasan's vanguard, to desert his post and sent envoys to negotiate with Hasan. In return for a financial settlement, Hasan abdicated and Mu'awiya entered Kufa in July or September 661 and was recognized as caliph. This year is considered by a number of the early Muslim sources as 'the year of unity' and is generally regarded as the start of Mu'awiya's caliphate.
Before and/or after Ali's death, Mu'awiya received oaths of allegiance in one or two formal ceremonies in Jerusalem, the first in late 660 or early 661 and the second in July 661. The 10th-century Jerusalemite geographer al-Maqdisi holds that Mu'awiya had further developed a mosque originally built by Caliph Umar on the Temple Mount, the precursor of the Jami Al-Aqsa, and received his formal oaths of allegiance there. According to the earliest extant source about Mu'awiya's accession in Jerusalem, the near-contemporaneous Maronite Chronicles, composed by an anonymous Syriac author, Mu'awiya received the pledges of the tribal chieftains and then prayed at Golgotha and the Tomb of the Virgin Mary in Gethsemane, both adjacent to the Temple Mount. The Maronite Chronicles also maintain that Mu'awiya "did not wear a crown like other kings in the world".
### Domestic rule and administration
There is little information in the early Muslim sources about Mu'awiya's rule in Syria, the center of his caliphate. He established his court in Damascus and moved the caliphal treasury there from Kufa. He relied on his Syrian tribal soldiery, numbering about 100,000 men, increasing their pay at the expense of the Iraqi garrisons, also about 100,000 soldiers combined. The highest stipends were paid on an inheritable basis to 2,000 nobles of the Quda'a and Kinda tribes, the core components of his support base, who were further awarded the privilege of consultation for all major decisions and the rights to veto or propose measures. The respective leaders of the Quda'a and the Kinda, the Kalbite chief Ibn Bahdal and the Homs-based Shurahbil, formed part of his Syrian inner circle along with the Qurayshites Abd al-Rahman ibn Khalid, son of the distinguished commander Khalid ibn al-Walid, and al-Dahhak ibn Qays.
Mu'awiya is credited by the early Muslim sources for establishing diwans (government departments) for correspondences (rasa'il), chancellery (khatam) and the postal route (barid). According to al-Tabari, following an assassination attempt by the Kharijite al-Burak ibn Abd Allah on Mu'awiya while he was praying in the mosque of Damascus in 661, Mu'awiya established a caliphal haras (personal guard) and shurta (select troops) and the maqsura (reserved area) within mosques. The caliph's treasury was largely dependent on the tax revenues of Syria and income from the crown lands that he confiscated in Iraq and Arabia. He also received the customary fifth of the war booty acquired by his commanders during expeditions. In the Jazira, Mu'awiya coped with the tribal influx, which spanned previously established groups such as the Sulaym, newcomers from the Mudar and Rabi'a confederations and civil war refugees from Kufa and Basra, by administratively detaching the military district of Qinnasrin–Jazira from Homs, according to the 8th-century historian Sayf ibn Umar. However, al-Baladhuri attributes this change to Mu'awiya's successor Yazid I (r. 680–683).
Syria retained its Byzantine-era bureaucracy, which was staffed by Christians including the head of the tax administration, Sarjun ibn Mansur. The latter had served Mu'awiya in the same capacity before his attainment of the caliphate, and Sarjun's father was the likely holder of the office under Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641). Mu'awiya was tolerant toward Syria's native Christian majority. In turn, the community was generally satisfied with his rule, under which their conditions were at least as favorable as under the Byzantines. Mu'awiya attempted to mint his own coins, but the new currency was rejected by the Syrians as it omitted the symbol of the cross. The sole epigraphic attestation to Mu'awiya's rule in Syria, a Greek inscription dated to 663 discovered at the hot springs of Hamat Gader near the Sea of Galilee, refers to the caliph as Abd Allah Mu'awiya, amir al-mu'minin ("God's Servant Mu'awiya, commander of the faithful"; the caliph's name is preceded by a cross) and credits him for restoring Roman-era bath facilities for the benefit of the sick. According to the historian Yizhar Hirschfeld, "by this deed, the new caliph sought to please" his Christian subjects. The caliph often spent his winters at his Sinnabra palace near the Sea of Galilee. Mu'awiya was also credited with ordering the restoration of Edessa's church after it was ruined in an earthquake in 679. He demonstrated a keen interest in Jerusalem. Although archaeological evidence is lacking, there are indications in medieval literary sources that a rudimentary mosque on the Temple Mount existed as early as Mu'awiya's time or was built by him.
### Governance in the provinces
Mu'awiya's primary internal challenge was overseeing a Syria-based government that could reunite the politically and socially fractured Caliphate and assert authority over the tribes which formed its armies. He applied indirect rule to the Caliphate's provinces, appointing governors with full civil and military authority. Although in principle governors were obliged to forward surplus tax revenues to the caliph, in practice most of the surplus was distributed among the provincial garrisons and Damascus received a negligible share. During Mu'awiya's caliphate, the governors relied on the ashraf (tribal chieftains), who served as intermediaries between the authorities and the tribesmen in the garrisons. Mu'awiya's statecraft was likely inspired by his father, who utilized his wealth to establish political alliances. The caliph generally preferred bribing his opponents over direct confrontation. In the summation of Kennedy, Mu'awiya ruled by "making agreements with those who held power in the provinces, by building up the power of those who were prepared to co-operate with him and by attaching as many important and influential figures to his cause as possible".
#### Iraq and the east
Challenges to central authority in general, and to Mu'awiya's rule in particular, were most acute in Iraq, where divisions were rife between the ashraf upstarts and the nascent Muslim elite, the latter of which was further divided between Ali's partisans and the Kharijites. Mu'awiya's ascent signaled the rise of the Kufan ashraf represented by Ali's erstwhile backers al-Ash'ath ibn Qays and Jarir ibn Abd Allah, at the expense of Ali's old guard represented by Hujr ibn Adi and Ibrahim, the son of Ali's leading aide Malik al-Ashtar. Mu'awiya's initial choice to govern Kufa in 661 was al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba, who possessed considerable administrative and military experience in Iraq and was highly familiar with the region's inhabitants and issues. Under his nearly decade-long administration, al-Mughira maintained peace in the city, overlooked transgressions that did not threaten his rule, allowed the Kufans to keep possession of the lucrative Sasanian crown lands in the Jibal district and, unlike under past administrations, consistently and timely paid the garrison's stipends.
In Basra, Mu'awiya reappointed his Abd Shams kinsman Abd Allah ibn Amir, who had served in the office under Uthman. During Mu'awiya's reign, Ibn Amir recommenced expeditions into Sistan, reaching as far as Kabul. He was unable to maintain order in Basra, where there was growing resentment toward the distant campaigns. Consequently, Mu'awiya replaced Ibn Amir with Ziyad ibn Abihi in 664 or 665. The latter had been the longest of Ali's loyalists to withhold recognition of Mu'awiya's caliphate and had barricaded himself in the Istakhr fortress in Fars. Busr had threatened to execute three of Ziyad's young sons in Basra to force his surrender, but Ziyad was ultimately persuaded by al-Mughira, his mentor, to submit to Mu'awiya's authority in 663. In a controversial step that secured the loyalty of the fatherless Ziyad, whom the caliph viewed as the most capable candidate to govern Basra, Mu'awiya adopted him as his paternal half-brother, to the protests of his own son Yazid, Ibn Amir and his Umayyad kinsmen in the Hejaz.
Following al-Mughira's death in 670, Mu'awiya attached Kufa and its dependencies to Ziyad's Basran governorship, making him the caliph's virtual viceroy over the eastern half of the Caliphate. Ziyad tackled Iraq's core economic problem of overpopulation in the garrison cities and the consequent scarcity of resources by reducing the number of troops on the payrolls and dispatching 50,000 Iraqi soldiers and their families to settle Khurasan. This also consolidated the previously weak and unstable Arab position in the Caliphate's easternmost province and enabled conquests toward Transoxiana. As part of his reorganization efforts in Kufa, Ziyad confiscated its garrison's crown lands, which thenceforth became the possession of the caliph. Opposition to the confiscations raised by Hujr ibn Adi, whose pro-Alid advocacy had been tolerated by al-Mughira, was violently suppressed by Ziyad. Hujr and his retinue were sent to Mu'awiya for punishment and were executed on the caliph's orders, marking the first political execution in Islamic history and serving as a harbinger for future pro-Alid uprisings in Kufa. Ziyad died in 673 and his son Ubayd Allah was appointed gradually by Mu'awiya to all of his father's former offices. In effect, by relying on al-Mughira and Ziyad and his sons, Mu'awiya franchised the administration of Iraq and the eastern Caliphate to members of the elite Thaqif clan, which had long-established ties to the Quraysh and were instrumental in the conquest of Iraq.
#### Egypt
In Egypt Amr governed more as a partner of Mu'awiya than a subordinate until his death in 664. He was permitted to retain the surplus revenues of the province. The caliph ordered the resumption of Egyptian grain and oil shipments to Medina, ending the hiatus caused by the First Fitna. After Amr's death, Mu'awiya's brother Utba (r. 664–665) and an early companion of Muhammad, Uqba ibn Amir (r. 665–667), successively served as governors before Mu'awiya appointed Maslama ibn Mukhallad al-Ansari in 667. Maslama remained governor for the duration of Mu'awiya's reign, significantly expanding Fustat and its mosque and boosting the city's importance in 674 by relocating Egypt's main shipyard to the nearby Roda Island from Alexandria due to the latter's vulnerability to Byzantine naval raids.
The Arab presence in Egypt was mostly limited to the central garrison at Fustat and the smaller garrison at Alexandria. The influx of Syrian troops brought by Amr in 658 and the Basran troops sent by Ziyad in 673 swelled Fustat's 15,000-strong garrison to 40,000 during Mu'awiya's reign. Utba increased the Alexandria garrison to 12,000 men and built a governor's residence in the city, whose Greek Christian population was generally hostile to Arab rule. When Utba's deputy in Alexandria complained that his troops were unable to control the city, Mu'awiya deployed a further 15,000 soldiers from Syria and Medina. The troops in Egypt were far less rebellious than their Iraqi counterparts, though elements in the Fustat garrison occasionally raised opposition to Mu'awiya's policies, culminating during Maslama's term with the widespread protest at Mu'awiya's seizure and allotment of crown lands in Fayyum to his son Yazid, which compelled the caliph to reverse his order.
#### Arabia
Although revenge for Uthman's assassination had been the basis upon which Mu'awiya claimed the right to the caliphate, he neither emulated Uthman's empowerment of the Umayyad clan nor used them to assert his own power. With minor exceptions, members of the clan were not appointed to the wealthy provinces nor the caliph's court, Mu'awiya largely limiting their influence to Medina, the old capital of the Caliphate where most of the Umayyads and the wider Qurayshite former aristocracy remained headquartered. The loss of political power left the Umayyads of Medina resentful toward Mu'awiya, who may have become wary of the political ambitions of the much larger Abu al-As branch of the clan—to which Uthman had belonged—under the leadership of Marwan ibn al-Hakam. The caliph attempted to weaken the clan by provoking internal divisions. Among the measures taken was the replacement of Marwan from the governorship of Medina in 668 with another leading Umayyad, Sa'id ibn al-As. The latter was instructed to demolish Marwan's house, but refused and when Marwan was restored in 674, he also refused Mu'awiya's order to demolish Sa'id's house. Mu'awiya dismissed Marwan once more in 678, replacing him with his own nephew, al-Walid ibn Utba. Besides his own clan, Mu'awiya's relations with the Banu Hashim (the clan of Muhammad and Caliph Ali), the families of Muhammad's closest companions, the once-prominent Banu Makhzum, and the Ansar was generally characterized by suspicion or outright hostility.
Despite his relocation to Damascus, Mu'awiya remained fond of his original homeland and made known his longing for "the spring in Juddah [sic], the summer in Ta'if, [and] the winter in Mecca". He purchased several large tracts throughout Arabia and invested considerable sums to develop the lands for agricultural use. According to the Muslim literary tradition, in the plain of Arafat and the barren valley of Mecca he dug numerous wells and canals, constructed dams and dikes to protect the soil from seasonal floods, and built fountains and reservoirs. His efforts saw extensive grain fields and date palm groves spring up across Mecca's suburbs, which remained in this state until deteriorating during the Abbasid era, which began in 750. In the Yamama region in central Arabia, Mu'awiya confiscated from the Banu Hanifa the lands of Hadarim, where he employed 4,000 slaves, likely to cultivate its fields. The caliph gained possession of estates in and near Ta'if which, together with the lands of his brothers Anbasa and Utba, formed a considerable cluster of properties.
One of the earliest known Arabic inscriptions from Mu'awiya's reign was found at a soil-conservation dam called Sayisad 32 kilometers (20 mi) east of Ta'if, which credits Mu'awiya for the dam's construction in 677 or 678 and asks God to give him victory and strength. Mu'awiya is also credited as the patron of a second dam called al-Khanaq 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) east of Medina, according to an inscription found at the site. This is possibly the dam between Medina and the gold mines of the Banu Sulaym tribe attributed to Mu'awiya by the historians al-Harbi (d. 898) and al-Samhudi (d. 1533).
### War with Byzantium
Mu'awiya possessed more personal experience than any other caliph fighting the Byzantines, the principal external threat to the Caliphate, and pursued the war against the Empire more energetically and continuously than his successors. The First Fitna caused the Arabs to lose control over Armenia to native, pro-Byzantine princes, but in 661 Habib ibn Maslama re-invaded the region. The following year, Armenia became a tributary of the Caliphate and Mu'awiya recognized the Armenian prince Grigor Mamikonian as its commander. Not long after the civil war, Mu'awiya broke the truce with Byzantium, and on a near-annual or bi-annual basis the caliph engaged his Syrian troops in raids across the mountainous Anatolian frontier, the buffer zone between the Empire and the Caliphate. At least until Abd al-Rahman ibn Khalid's death in 666, Homs served as the principal marshaling point for the offensives, and afterward Antioch served this purpose as well. The bulk of the troops fighting on the Anatolian and Armenian fronts hailed from the tribal groups that arrived from Arabia during and after the conquest. During his caliphate, Mu'awiya continued his past efforts to resettle and fortify the Syrian port cities. Due to the reticence of Arab tribesmen to inhabit the coastlands, in 663 Mu'awiya moved Persian civilians and personnel that he had previously settled in the Syrian interior into Acre and Tyre, and transferred Asawira, elite Persian soldiers, from Kufa and Basra to the garrison at Antioch. A few years later, Mu'awiya settled Apamea with 5,000 Slavs who had defected from the Byzantines during one of his forces' Anatolian campaigns.
Based on the histories of al-Tabari (d. 923) and Agapius of Hierapolis (d. 941), the first raid of Mu'awiya's caliphate occurred in 662 or 663, during which his forces inflicted a heavy defeat on a Byzantine army with numerous patricians slain. In the next year a raid led by Busr reached Constantinople and in 664 or 665, Abd al-Rahman ibn Khalid raided Koloneia in northeastern Anatolia. In the late 660s, Mu'awiya's forces attacked Antioch of Pisidia or Antioch of Isauria. Following the death of Constans II in July 668, Mu'awiya oversaw an increasingly aggressive policy of naval warfare against the Byzantines. According to the early Muslim sources, raids against the Byzantines peaked between 668 and 669. In each of those years there occurred six ground campaigns and a major naval campaign, the first by an Egyptian and Medinese fleet and the second by an Egyptian and Syrian fleet. The culmination of the campaigns was an assault on Constantinople, but the chronologies of the Arabic, Syriac, and Byzantine sources are contradictory. The traditional view by modern historians is of a great series of naval-borne assaults against Constantinople in c. 674–678, based on the history of the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes the Confessor (d. 818).
However, the dating and the very historicity of this view has been challenged; the Oxford scholar James Howard-Johnston considers that no siege of Constantinople took place, and that the story was inspired by the actual siege a generation later. The historian Marek Jankowiak on the other hand, in a revisionist reconstruction of the events reliant on the Arabic and Syriac sources, asserts that the assault came earlier than what is reported by Theophanes, and that the multitude of campaigns that were reported during 668–669 represented the coordinated efforts by Mu'awiya to conquer the Byzantine capital. Al-Tabari reports that Mu'awiya's son Yazid led a campaign against Constantinople in 669 and Ibn Abd al-Hakam reports that the Egyptian and Syrian navies joined the assault, led by Uqba ibn Amir and Fadala ibn Ubayd respectively. According to Jankowiak, Mu'awiya likely ordered the invasion during an opportunity presented by the rebellion of the Byzantine Armenian general Saborios, who formed a pact with the caliph, in spring 667. The caliph dispatched an army under Fadala, but before it could be joined by the Armenians, Saborios died. Mu'awiya then sent reinforcements led by Yazid who led the Arab army's invasion in the summer. An Arab fleet reached the Sea of Marmara by autumn, while Yazid and Fadala, having raided Chalcedon through the winter, besieged Constantinople in spring 668, but due to famine and disease, lifted the siege in late June. The Arabs continued their campaigns in Constantinople's vicinity before withdrawing to Syria most likely in late 669.
In 669, Mu'awiya's navy raided as far as Sicily. The following year, the wide-scale fortification of Alexandria was completed. While the histories of al-Tabari and al-Baladhuri report that Mu'awiya's forces captured Rhodes in 672–674 and colonized the island for seven years before withdrawing during the reign of Yazid I, the modern historian Clifford Edmund Bosworth casts doubt on these events and holds that the island was only raided by Mu'awiya's lieutenant Junada ibn Abi Umayya al-Azdi in 679 or 680. Under Emperor Constantine IV (r. 668–685), the Byzantines began a counteroffensive against the Caliphate, first raiding Egypt in 672 or 673, while in winter 673, Mu'awiya's admiral Abd Allah ibn Qays led a large fleet that raided Smyrna and the coasts of Cilicia and Lycia. The Byzantines landed a major victory against an Arab army and fleet led by Sufyan ibn Awf, possibly at Sillyon, in 673 or 674. The next year, Abd Allah ibn Qays and Fadala landed in Crete and in 675 or 676, a Byzantine fleet assaulted Maraclea, killing the governor of Homs.
In 677, 678 or 679, according to Theophanes, Mu'awiya sued for peace with Constantine IV, possibly as a result of the destruction of his fleet or the Byzantines' deployment of the Mardaites in the Syrian littoral during that time. A thirty-year treaty was concluded, obliging the Caliphate to pay an annual tribute of 3,000 gold coins, 50 horses and 30 slaves, and withdraw their troops from the forward bases they had occupied on the Byzantine coast. But other Byzantine and Islamic sources make no mention of this treaty. Although the Muslims did not achieve any permanent territorial gains in Anatolia during Mu'awiya's career, the frequent raids provided Mu'awiya's Syrian troops with war spoils and tribute, which helped ensure their continued allegiance, and sharpened their combat skills. Moreover, Mu'awiya's prestige was boosted and the Byzantines were precluded from any concerted campaigns against Syria.
#### Conquest of central North Africa
Although the Arabs had not advanced beyond Cyrenaica since the 640s other than periodic raids, the expeditions against Byzantine North Africa were renewed during Mu'awiya's reign. In 665 or 666 Ibn Hudayj led an army which raided Byzacena (southern district of Byzantine Africa) and Gabes and temporarily captured Bizerte before withdrawing to Egypt. The following year Mu'awiya dispatched Fadala and Ruwayfi ibn Thabit to raid the commercially valuable island of Djerba. Meanwhile, in 662 or 667, Uqba ibn Nafi, a Qurayshite commander who had played a key role in the Arabs' capture of Cyrenaica in 641, reasserted Muslim influence in the Fezzan region, capturing the Zawila oasis and the Garamantes capital of Germa. He may have raided as far south as Kawar in modern-day Niger.
The struggle over the succession of Constantine IV drew Byzantine focus away from the African front. In 670, Mu'awiya appointed Uqba as Egypt's deputy governor over the North African lands under Arab control west of Egypt. At the head of a 10,000-strong force, Uqba commenced his expedition against the territories west of Cyrenaica. As he advanced, his army was joined by Islamized Luwata Berbers and their combined forces conquered Ghadamis, Gafsa and the Jarid. In the last region he established a permanent Arab garrison town called Kairouan, at a relatively safe distance from Carthage and the coastal areas, which had remained under Byzantine control, to serve as a base for further expeditions. It also aided Muslim conversion efforts among the Berber tribes that dominated the surrounding countryside.
Mu'awiya dismissed Uqba in 673, probably out of concern that he would form an independent power base in the lucrative regions that he had conquered. The new Arab province, Ifriqiya (modern-day Tunisia), remained subordinate to the governor of Egypt, who sent his mawla (non-Arab, Muslim freedman) Abu al-Muhajir Dinar to replace Uqba, who was arrested and transferred to Mu'awiya's custody in Damascus. Abu al-Muhajir continued the westward campaigns as far as Tlemcen and defeated the Awraba Berber chief Kasila, who subsequently embraced Islam and joined his forces. In 678, a treaty between the Arabs and the Byzantines ceded Byzacena to the Caliphate, while forcing the Arabs to withdraw from the northern parts of the province. After Mu'awiya's death, his successor Yazid reappointed Uqba, Kasila defected and a Byzantine–Berber alliance ended Arab control over Ifriqiya, which was not reestablished until the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (r. 685–705).
### Nomination of Yazid as successor
In a move unprecedented in Islamic politics, Mu'awiya nominated his own son, Yazid, as his successor. The caliph likely held ambitions for his son's succession over a considerable period. In 666, he allegedly had his governor in Homs, Abd al-Rahman ibn Khalid, poisoned to remove him as a potential rival to Yazid. The Syrian Arabs, with whom Abd al-Rahman ibn Khalid was popular, had viewed the governor as the caliph's most suitable successor by dint of his military record and descent from Khalid ibn al-Walid.
It was not until the latter half of his reign that Mu'awiya publicly declared Yazid heir apparent, though the early Muslim sources offer divergent details about the timing and location of the events relating to the decision. The accounts of al-Mada'ini (752–843) and Ibn al-Athir (1160–1232) agree that al-Mughira was the first to suggest that Yazid be acknowledged as Mu'awiya's successor and that Ziyad supported the nomination with the caveat that Yazid abandon impious activities which could arouse opposition from the Muslim polity. According to al-Tabari, Mu'awiya publicly announced his decision in 675 or 676 and demanded oaths of allegiance be given to Yazid. Ibn al-Athir alone relates that delegations from all the provinces were summoned to Damascus where Mu'awiya lectured them on his rights as ruler, their duties as subjects and Yazid's worthy qualities, which was followed by the calls of al-Dahhak ibn Qays and other courtiers that Yazid be recognized as the caliph's successor. The delegates lent their support, with the exception of the senior Basran nobleman al-Ahnaf ibn Qays, who was ultimately bribed into compliance. Al-Mas'udi (896–956) and al-Tabari do not mention provincial delegations other than a Basran embassy led by Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad in 678–679 or 679–680, respectively, which recognized Yazid.
According to Hinds, in addition to Yazid's nobility, age and sound judgement, "most important of all" was his connection to the Kalb. The Kalb-led Quda'a confederation was the foundation of Sufyanid rule and Yazid's succession signaled the continuation of this alliance. In nominating Yazid, the son of the Kalbite Maysun, Mu'awiya bypassed his older son Abd Allah from his Qurayshite wife Fakhita. Although support from the Kalb and the Quda'a was guaranteed, Mu'awiya exhorted Yazid to widen his tribal support base in Syria. As the Qaysites were the predominant element in the northern frontier armies, Mu'awiya's appointment of Yazid to lead the war efforts with Byzantium may have served to foster Qaysite support for his nomination. Mu'awiya's efforts to that end were not entirely successful as reflected in a line by a Qaysite poet: "we will never pay allegiance to the son of a Kalbi woman [i.e. Yazid]".
In Medina, Mu'awiya's distant kinsmen Marwan ibn al-Hakam, Sa'id ibn al-As and Ibn Amir accepted Mu'awiya's succession order, albeit disapprovingly. Most opponents of Mu'awiya's order in Iraq and among the Umayyads and Quraysh of the Hejaz were ultimately threatened or bribed into acceptance. The remaining principle opposition emanated from Husayn ibn Ali, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Abd Allah ibn Umar and Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, all prominent Medina-based sons of earlier caliphs or close companions of Muhammad. As they possessed the nearest claims to the caliphate, Mu'awiya was determined to obtain their recognition. According to the historian Awana ibn al-Hakam (d. 764), before his death, Mu'awiya ordered certain measures to be taken against them, entrusting these tasks to his loyalists al-Dahhak ibn Qays and Muslim ibn Uqba.
## Death
Mu'awiya died from an illness in Damascus in Rajab 60 AH (April or May 680 CE), at around the age of 80. The medieval accounts vary regarding the specific date of his death, with Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (d. 819) placing it on 7 April, al-Waqidi on 21 April and al-Mada'ini on 29 April. Yazid, who was away from Damascus at the time of his father's death, is held by Abu Mikhnaf (d. 774) to have succeeded him on 7 April, while the Nestorian chronicler Elias of Nisibis (d. 1046) says it occurred on 21 April. In his last testament, Mu'awiya told his family "Fear God, Almighty and Great, for God, praise Him, protects whoever fears Him, and there is no protector for one who does not fear God". He was buried next to the Bab al-Saghir gate of the city and the funeral prayers were led by al-Dahhak ibn Qays, who mourned Mu'awiya as the "stick of the Arabs and the blade of the Arabs, by means of whom God, Almighty and Great, cut off strife, whom He made sovereign over mankind, by means of whom he conquered countries, but now he has died".
Mu'awiya's grave was a visitation site as late as the 10th century. Al-Mas'udi holds that a mausoleum was built over the grave and was open to visitors on Mondays and Thursdays. Ibn Taghribirdi asserts that Ahmad ibn Tulun, the autonomous 9th-century ruler of Egypt and Syria, erected a structure on the grave in 883 or 884 and employed members of the public to regularly recite the Qur'an and light candles around the tomb.
## Assessment and legacy
Like Uthman, Mu'awiya adopted the title khalifat Allah ('deputy of God'), instead of khalifat rasul Allah ('deputy of the messenger of God'), the title used by the other caliphs who preceded him. The title may have implied political as well as religious authority and divine sanctioning. He is reported by al-Baladhuri to have said "The earth belongs to God and I am the deputy of God". Nevertheless, whatever the absolutist connotations the title may have had, Mu'awiya evidently did not impose this religious authority. Instead, he governed indirectly like a supra-tribal chief using alliances with provincial ashraf, his personal skills, persuasive power, and wit.
Apart from his war with Ali, he did not deploy his Syrian troops domestically, and often used monetary gifts as a tool to avoid conflict. In Julius Wellhausen's assessment, Mu'awiya was an accomplished diplomat "allowing matters to ripen of themselves, and only now and then assisting their progress". He further states that Mu'awiya had the ability to identify and employ the most talented men at his service and made even those whom he distrusted work for him.
In the view of the historian Patricia Crone, Mu'awiya's successful rule was facilitated by the tribal composition of Syria. There, the Arabs who formed his support base were distributed throughout the countryside and were dominated by a single confederation, the Quda'a. This was in contrast to Iraq and Egypt, where the diverse tribal composition of the garrison towns meant that the government had no cohesive support base and had to create a delicate balance between the opposing tribal groups. As evidenced by the disintegration of Ali's Iraqi alliance, maintaining this balance was untenable. In her view, Mu'awiya's taking advantage of the tribal circumstances in Syria prevented the dissolution of the Caliphate in the civil war. In the words of the orientalist Martin Hinds, the success of Mu'awiya's style of governance is "attested by the fact that he managed to hold his kingdom together without ever having to resort to using his Syrian troops".
In the long-term, Mu'awiya's system proved precarious and unviable. Reliance on personal relations meant his government was dependent on paying and pleasing its agents instead of commanding them. This created a "system of indulgence", according to Crone. The governors became increasingly unaccountable and amassed personal wealth. The tribal balance on which he relied was insecure and a slight fluctuation would lead to factionalism and infighting. When Yazid became caliph, he continued his father's model. Controversial as his nomination had been, he had to face the rebellions of Husayn and Ibn al-Zubayr. Although he was able to defeat them with the help of his governors and the Syrian army, the system fractured as soon as he died in November 683. The provincial ashraf defected to Ibn al-Zubayr, as did the Qaysite tribes, who had migrated to Syria during Mu'awiya's reign and were opposed to the Quda'a confederation on whom Sufyanid power rested. In a matter of months the authority of Yazid's successor, Mu'awiya II, was restricted to Damascus and its environs. Although the Umayyads, backed by the Quda'a, were able to reconquer the Caliphate after the decade-long second civil war, it was under the leadership of Marwan, founder of the new ruling Umayyad house, the Marwanids, and his son Abd al-Malik. Having realized the weakness of Mu'awiya's model and lacking in his political skill, the Marwanids abandoned his system in favor of a more traditional form of governance where the caliph was the central authority. Nonetheless, the hereditary succession introduced by Mu'awiya became a permanent feature of many of the Muslim governments that followed.
Kennedy views the preservation of the Caliphate's unity as Mu'awiya's greatest achievement. Expressing a similar viewpoint, Mu'awiya's biographer R. Stephen Humphreys states that although maintaining the integrity of the Caliphate would have been an achievement on its own, Mu'awiya was intent on vigorously continuing the conquests that had been initiated by Abu Bakr and Umar. By creating a formidable navy, he made the Caliphate the dominant force in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean. Control of northeastern Iran was secured and the Caliphate's frontier was expanded in North Africa. Madelung deems Mu'awiya a corruptor of the caliphal office, under whom the precedence in Islam (sabiqa), which was the determining factor in the choice of earlier caliphs, gave way to the might of the sword, the people became his subjects and he became the "absolute lord over their life and death". He strangled the communal spirit of Islam and used the religion as a tool of "social control, exploitation and military terrorization".
Mu'awiya was the first caliph whose name appeared on coins, inscriptions, or documents of the nascent Islamic empire. The inscriptions from his reign lacked any explicit reference to Islam or Muhammad and the only titles that appear are 'servant of God' and 'commander of the faithful'. This has led some modern historians to question Mu'awiya's commitment to Islam. They have proposed that he adhered to a non-confessional or indeterminate form of monotheism, or may have been a Christian. Asserting that the earliest Muslims did not see their faith as different from other monotheistic faiths, these historians see the earlier Medina-based caliphs in the same vein, but no public proclamations from their period exist. On the other hand, the historian Robert Hoyland notes that Mu'awiya gave a very Islamic challenge to the Byzantine emperor Constans to "deny [the divinity of] Jesus and turn to the Great God who I worship, the God of our father Abraham" and speculates that Mu'awiya's tour of Christian sites in Jerusalem was done to demonstrate "the fact that he, and not the Byzantine emperor, was now God's representative on earth".
### Early historical tradition
The surviving Muslim histories originated in Abbasid-era Iraq. The compilers, the narrators from whom the stories were collected, and the overall public sentiment in Iraq were hostile to the Syria-based Umayyads, under whom Syria was a privileged province and Iraq was locally perceived as a Syrian colony. Moreover, the Abbasids, having overthrown the Umayyads in 750, saw them as illegitimate rulers and further tarnished their memory to enhance their own legitimacy. Abbasid caliphs like al-Saffah, al-Ma'mun, and al-Mu'tadid publicly condemned Mu'awiya and other Umayyad caliphs. As such, the Muslim historical tradition is by and large anti-Umayyad. Nonetheless, in the case of Mu'awiya it portrays him in a relatively balanced manner.
On the one hand, it portrays him as a successful ruler who implemented his will with persuasion instead of force. It stresses his quality of hilm, which in his case meant mildness, slowness to anger, subtlety, and management of people by perceiving their needs and desires. The historical tradition is rife with anecdotes of his political acumen and self-control. In one such anecdote, when inquired about allowing one of his courtiers to address him with arrogance, he remarked:
> I do not insert myself between the people and their tongue, so long as they do not insert themselves between us and our sovereignty.
The tradition presents him operating in the way of a traditional tribal sheikh who lacks absolute authority; summoning delegations (wufud) of tribal chiefs, and persuading them with flattery, arguments, and presents. This is exemplified in a saying attributed to him: "I never use my voice if I can use my money, never my whip if I can use my voice, never my sword if I can use my whip; but, if I have to use my sword, I will."
On the other hand, the tradition also portrays him as a despot who perverted the caliphate into kingship. In the words of al-Ya'qubi (d. 898):
> [Mu'awiya] was the first to have a bodyguard, police-force and chamberlains ... He had somebody walk in front of him with a spear, took alms out of the stipends and sat on a throne with the people below him ... He used forced labour for his building projects ... He was the first to turn this matter [the caliphate] into mere kingship.
Al-Baladhuri calls him the 'Khosrow of the Arabs' (kisra l-'arab). 'Khosrow' was used by the Arabs as a reference to Sasanian Persian monarchs in general, who the Arabs associated with worldly splendor and authoritarianism, as opposed to the humility of Muhammad. Mu'awiya was compared to these monarchs mainly because he appointed his son Yazid as the next caliph, which was viewed as a violation of the Islamic principle of shura and an introduction of dynastic rule on par with the Byzantines and Sasanians. The civil war that erupted after Mu'awiya's death is asserted to have been the direct consequence of Yazid's nomination. In the Islamic tradition, Mu'awiya and the Umayyads are given the title of malik (king) instead of khalifa (caliph), though the succeeding Abbasids are recognized as caliphs.
The contemporary non-Muslim sources generally present a benign image of Mu'awiya. The Greek historian Theophanes calls him a protosymboulos, 'first among equals'. According to Kennedy, the Nestorian Christian chronicler John bar Penkaye writing in the 690s "has nothing but praise for the first Umayyad caliph ... of whose reign he says 'the peace throughout the world was such that we have never heard, either from our fathers or from our grandparents, or seen that there had ever been any like it'".
### Muslim view
In contrast to the four earlier caliphs, who are considered as models of piety and having governed with justice, Mu'awiya is not recognized as a rightly-guided caliph (khalifa al-rashid) by the Sunnis. He is seen as transforming the caliphate into a worldly and despotic kingship. His acquisition of the caliphate through the civil war and his institution of the hereditary succession by appointing his son Yazid as heir apparent are the principal charges made against him. Although Uthman and Ali had been highly controversial during the early period, religious scholars in the 8th and 9th centuries compromised in order to appease and absorb the Uthmanid and pro-Alid factions. Uthman and Ali were thus regarded along with the first two caliphs as divinely guided, whereas Mu'awiya and those who came after him were viewed as oppressive tyrants. Nevertheless, the Sunnis accord him the status of a companion of Muhammad and consider him a scribe of the Qur'anic revelation (katib al-wahi). On these accounts, he is also respected. Some Sunnis defend his war against Ali holding that although he was in error, he acted according to his best judgment and had no evil intentions.
Mu'awiya's war with Ali, whom the Shia hold as the true successor of Muhammad, has made him a reviled figure in Shia Islam. According to the Shia, based on this alone Mu'awiya qualifies as an unbeliever, if he was a believer to begin with. In addition, he is held responsible for the killing of a number of Muhammad's companions at Siffin, having ordered the cursing of Ali from the pulpit, appointing Yazid as his successor, who went on to kill Husayn at Karbala, executing the pro-Alid Kufan nobleman Hujr ibn Adi, and assassinating Hasan by poisoning. As such, he has been a particular target of Shia traditions. Some traditions hold him to have been born of an illegitimate relationship between Abu Sufyan's wife Hind and Muhammad's uncle al-Abbas. His conversion to Islam is held to be devoid of any conviction and to have been motivated by convenience after Muhammad conquered Mecca. On this basis he is given the title of taliq (freed slave of Muhammad). A number of hadiths are ascribed to Muhammad condemning Mu'awiya and his father Abu Sufyan in which he is called "an accursed man (la'in) son of an accursed man" and prophesying that he will die as an unbeliever. Unlike the Sunnis, the Shia deny him the status of a companion and also refute the Sunni claims that he was a scribe of the Qur'anic revelation. Like other opponents of Ali, Mu'awiya is cursed in a ritual called tabarra, which is held by many Shia to be an obligation.
Amid rising religious sectarianism among Muslims in the 10th century, while the Abbasid Caliphate was dominated by the Shia emirs of the Buyid dynasty, the figure of Mu'awiya became a propaganda tool used by the Shia and the Sunnis opposed to them. Strong pro-Mu'awiya sentiments were voiced by Sunnis in several Abbasid cities, including Baghdad, Wasit, Raqqa and Isfahan. At about the same time, the Shia were permitted by the Buyids and the Sunni Abbasid caliphs to perform the ritual cursing of Mu'awiya in mosques. In 10th–11th-century Egypt, the figure of Mu'awiya occasionally played a similar role, with the Ismaili Shia Fatimid caliphs introducing measures opposed to Mu'awiya's memory and opponents of the government using him as a tool to berate the Shia.
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1991 Atlantic hurricane season
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Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean
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The 1991 Atlantic hurricane season was the first season since 1984 in which no hurricanes developed from tropical waves, which are the source for most North Atlantic tropical cyclones. The hurricane season officially began on June 1, and ended on November 30. It was the least active in four years due to higher than usual wind shear across the Atlantic Ocean. The first storm, Ana, developed on July 2 off the southeast United States and dissipated without causing significant effects. Two other tropical storms in the season – Danny and Erika – did not significantly affect land. Danny dissipated east of the Lesser Antilles, and Erika passed through the Azores before becoming extratropical. In addition, there were four non-developing tropical depressions. The second depression of the season struck Mexico with significant accompanying rains.
The most significant storm of the season was Hurricane Bob, which at the time was among the ten costliest United States hurricanes. After brushing the Outer Banks of North Carolina and Long Island in New York, the hurricane made landfall on Rhode Island. It caused \$1.5 billion in damage (1991 USD), mostly in Massachusetts, and 17 fatalities. The strongest hurricane of the season was Claudette, which reached peak winds of 130 mph (210 km/h) near Bermuda. It passed near the island but did not cause any damage. Fabian was the only tropical storm to move over or near Cuba or Florida, producing heavy rainfall but no damage. Hurricane Grace, the final named storm of the season, provided the energy that led to the development of a powerful nor'easter known as the Perfect Storm. Originating from an extratropical storm, the Perfect Storm intensified while moving westward toward New England, leaving \$200 million in damage and causing coastal damage from Puerto Rico to Florida and northward through Canada. It later transitioned into a hurricane over the Gulf Stream, finally dissipating over Nova Scotia on November 2.
## Seasonal forecasts
Before the start of the season, hurricane expert William M. Gray released his forecast for the year's activity, a yearly practice that he began in 1984. In early April, Gray anticipated a "mild" season with fewer than ten tropical storms, of which less than six would become hurricanes. Later that month, the Weather Research Center forecast ten named storms and six hurricanes, of which five would become major hurricanes while three would hit the United States. In early June, Gray released an updated report that predicted the formation of eight tropical storms, four hurricanes, and one major hurricane. The revised June total was very close to the actual season activity, with the exception of forecasting one fewer major hurricane. However, a later revision in August incorrectly anticipated less activity, when Gray predicted seven storms and three hurricanes.
## Seasonal summary
Overall activity in 1991 was below normal. This was partially due to decreased tropical cyclogenesis from African tropical waves, which are troughs that move across the ocean with associated convection. In most seasons, the majority of storms develop from tropical waves. Of the season's twelve tropical cyclones, only five originated from tropical waves; in addition, only three of the eight tropical storms were from tropical waves, and none had the characteristics of a Cape Verde-type hurricane. From late April to late November, there were 73 tropical waves that exited the west coast of Africa. The total was higher than average, although many of them were poorly defined and had little thunderstorm activity. The waves traversed the Atlantic Ocean further south than normal, typically not becoming convectively active until moving across northern South America. Cyclogenesis was also suppressed by higher than normal wind shear, as well as low rainfall amounts across the Sahel. There were also no tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico for only the third time in the 20th century, after 1927 and 1962. The season produced twelve tropical depressions, which was the lowest in five years. The eight tropical storms was the lowest amount in four years. Four of the storms developed into hurricanes, although for the first time in over 24 years, none of the hurricanes originated from tropical waves.
The season's activity was reflected with a low cumulative accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) rating of 36. ACE is, broadly speaking, a measure of the power of the hurricane multiplied by the length of time it existed, so storms that last a long time, as well as particularly strong hurricanes, have high ACEs. ACE is only calculated for full advisories on tropical systems at or exceeding 34 knots (39 mph; 63 km/h) or tropical storm strength. Although officially, subtropical cyclones are excluded from the total, the figure above includes periods when storms were in a subtropical phase.
July 2
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression One developed from a low pressure centered about 85 miles (137 km) south of Charleston, South Carolina.
July 4
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT July 3) - Tropical Depression One strengthened into Tropical Storm Ana.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Ana attained its peak intensity with winds of 50 mph (80 km/h) and a barometric pressure of 1000 mbar (hPa; 29.53 inHg).
July 5
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Ana became extratropical 680 miles (1,090 km) to the south of Cape Race.
- 2200 UTC (5:00 p.m. CDT) - Tropical Depression Two formed in the western Gulf of Mexico.
July 6
- 2200 UTC (5:00 p.m. CDT) - Tropical Depression Two attained its peak intensity with winds of 35 mph (56 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1,007 mbar (1,007 hPa; 29.7 inHg). Simultaneously, Tropical Depression Two made landfall near La Pesca, Mexico with winds of 35 mph (56 km/h).
July 7
- 0230 UTC (9:30 p.m. CDT) - Tropical Depression Two dissipated over Mexico.
August 16
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Three formed just northeast of the Bahamas.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Three strengthened into Tropical Storm Bob.
August 17
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Bob had strengthened into Category 1 hurricane.
August 18
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Hurricane Bob strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane.
August 19
- 0600 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT) - Hurricane Bob strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane. Simultaneously, Hurricane Bob attained its peak intensity with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 950 mbar (950 hPa; 28 inHg).
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Hurricane Bob weakened back to a Category 2 hurricane.
- 1720 UTC (1:20 p.m. EDT) - Hurricane Bob made landfall on Block Island, Rhode Island with winds of 105 mph (169 km/h).
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Hurricane Bob made landfall in Newport, Rhode Island with winds of 100 mph (160 km/h).
August 20
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT August 19) - Hurricane Bob rapidly weakened to a tropical storm after entering the Gulf of Maine.
- 0130 UTC (9:30 p.m. EDT August 19) - Tropical Storm Bob made a rare landfall in Maine; near Rockport, Maine with winds of 70 mph (110 km/h).
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Bob transitioned into an extratropical storm in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
August 24
- 0600 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Four formed in the vicinity of Cape Verde.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Four attained its peak intensity with winds of 35 mph (56 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1,009 mbar (1,009 hPa; 29.8 inHg).
August 26
- 0600 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Four dissipated.
August 28
- 1600 UTC (12:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Five formed 560 miles (900 km) southwest of Cape Verde. Simultaneously, Tropical Depression Five attained its peak intensity with winds of 35 mph (56 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1,007 mbar (1,007 hPa; 29.7 inHg).
August 31
- 1600 UTC (12:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Five dissipated.
September 4
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Six formed 650 miles (1,050 km) southeast of Bermuda.
September 5
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Six strengthened into Tropical Storm Claudette.
September 6
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Claudette strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Hurricane Claudette strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane.
September 7
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT September 6) - Hurricane Claudette strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane.
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT September 6) - Tropical Depression Seven formed 300 miles (480 km) south-southwest of Cape Verde.
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Hurricane Claudette briefly strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane, which was not operationally known. Simultaneously, Hurricane Claudette attained its peak intensity with winds of 135 mph (217 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 943 mbar (943 hPa; 27.8 inHg) making it the most intense hurricane of the 1991 season. Since it was not operationally known that Claudette became a Category 4 hurricane, winds were pegged at 125 mph (201 km/h) before post-analysis revealed winds at 135 mph (217 km/h).
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Hurricane Claudette weakened back to a Category 3 hurricane.
September 8
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT) - Hurricane Claudette weakened back to a Category 2 hurricane.
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Seven strengthened into Tropical Storm Danny.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Hurricane Claudette weakened back to a Category 1 hurricane.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Eight formed several hundred miles south-southwest of Cape Verde.
September 9
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT September 8) - Tropical Storm Danny attained its peak intensity with winds of 50 mph (80 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 998 mbar (998 hPa; 29.5 inHg).
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Eight strengthened into Tropical Storm Erika.
September 10
- 0600 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT) - Hurricane Claudette weakened back to a tropical storm.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Erika attained its peak intensity with winds of 60 mph (97 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 997 mbar (997 hPa; 29.4 inHg).
September 11
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Danny was downgraded back to a tropical depression.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Claudette was downgraded to a tropical depression.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Danny dissipated.
September 12
- 0300 UTC (11:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Erika made landfall on São Miguel in the Azores with winds of 40 mph (64 km/h).
- 0600 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Erika transitioned into an extratropical storm in the vicinity of the Azores.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Claudette transitioned into an extratropical storm.
October 15
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Nine formed a few hundred miles west of Belize City, Belize.
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Nine strengthened into Tropical Storm Fabian.
- 2100 UTC (5:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Fabian made landfall on Isle of Youth, Cuba with winds of 45 mph (72 km/h).
October 16
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT October 15) - Tropical Storm Fabian made landfall on Peninsula de Zapata, Cuba with winds of 45 mph (72 km/h).
- 0834 UTC (4:34 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Fabian attained its peak intensity with winds of 45 mph (72 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1,002 mbar (1,002 hPa; 29.6 inHg) while centered in the Florida Straits.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Storm Fabian transitioned into an extratropical storm near Grand Bahama Island.
October 24
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Ten formed about midway between Lesser Antilles to Africa. Simultaneously, Tropical Depression Ten attained its peak intensity with winds of 35 mph (56 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1,009 mbar (1,009 hPa; 29.8 inHg).
October 25
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Tropical Depression Ten dissipated.
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - A subtropical depression formed to the south of Bermuda.
October 26
- 0600 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT) - The subtropical depression strengthened into a subtropical storm.
October 27
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - The subtropical storm acquires tropical characteristics and was reclassified as Tropical Storm Grace.
October 28
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT October 27) - Tropical Storm Grace strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane.
October 29
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT October 28) - Hurricane Grace attained its minimum pressure of 980 mbar (980 hPa; 29 inHg) while just south of Bermuda.
- 1200 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT) - Hurricane Grace strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane.
- 1400 UTC (10:00 a.m. EDT) - Hurricane Grace attained its maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (160 km/h).
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Hurricane Grace transitioned into extratropical storm.
October 31
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - Another subtropical storm formed as the "Perfect Storm" was becoming tropical.
November 1
- 0600 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT) - The subtropical storm acquired tropical characteristics and was unofficially reclassified as "Tropical Storm Eight".
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - "Tropical Storm Eight" strengthened into "Hurricane Eight". Simultaneously, "Hurricane Eight" attained its peak intensity with winds of 75 mph (121 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 980 mbar (980 hPa; 29 inHg).
November 2
- 0600 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT) - "Hurricane Eight" weakened back to a tropical storm.
- 1400 UTC (10:00 a.m. EDT) - "Tropical Storm Eight" made landfall near Halifax, Nova Scotia with winds of 45 mph (72 km/h).
- 1800 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT) - "Tropical Storm Eight" was downgraded back to a tropical depression.
November 3
- 0000 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT November 2) - The tropical depression dissipated shortly after emerging into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
## Systems
### Tropical Storm Ana
The first storm of the season was Ana, which originated from a cold-core low that persisted east of Jacksonville, Florida, by June 25. The system moved in a clockwise motion around an anticyclone located over Florida. The cold-core low gradually developed to the surface, and on June 29, a low pressure area formed within a surface trough over the Bahamas. It moved westward across southern Florida, dropping heavy rainfall along its path. Punta Gorda recorded a statewide peak of 7.86 in (200 mm) of precipitation. The low moved northwestward and later curved northeastward, exiting into the Atlantic Ocean near Saint Augustine by early on July 2. Although it was initially disorganized as it moved offshore, the convection quickly developed in organization, and by 1800 UTC that day it had developed into Tropical Depression One about 85 mi (137 km) south of Charleston, South Carolina.
As the depression moved northeastward parallel to the southeast United States coastline, it dropped light rainfall, although portions of Virginia recorded more than 5 inches (130 mm). Late on July 3, a buoy reported sustained winds of 38 mph (61 km/h) over a period of eight and a half minutes. As a result, the National Hurricane Center upgraded the depression to Tropical Storm Ana. The storm accelerated east-northeastward toward a stalled frontal zone, entering an area of increased wind shear. Despite these hostile conditions, Ana strengthened slightly, reaching peak winds of 50 mph (80 km/h). Moving over cooler waters and interacting with the frontal zone, the circulation became broad as the thunderstorms diminished. On July 5, Ana became extratropical in the northern Atlantic Ocean about 680 mi (1,090 km) to the south of Cape Race.
### Tropical Depression Two
A tropical wave emerged off the coast of Africa on June 20, and no significant development occurred until it became Tropical Depression Two in the western Gulf of Mexico on July 5. On its first advisory, a tropical storm watch was issued for from Baffin Bay, Texas, southward to Tampico, Tamaulipas. Nearing the coast of Mexico, the depression attained its peak intensity with winds of 35 mph (56 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1,007 mbar (29.7 inHg). Failing to intensify further, Tropical Depression Two made landfall near La Pesca, Tamaulipas, on July 6. The National Hurricane Center issued the final advisory on July 7, although the circulation persisted until July 9 southwest of Texas. The depression had only minor impacts in Mexico and Texas, other than rainfall. Precipitation was heaviest in the state of San Luis Potosí, where the rainfall peaked at 17.47 in (444 mm) in Tamazunchale.
### Hurricane Bob
Hurricane Bob originated from a decaying cold front, developing into a tropical depression early on August 16 near the Bahamas. It produced an area of organized convection, and the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Bob roughly 18 hours after forming. It gradually organized over the Gulf Stream, and based on reports from the Hurricane Hunters, Bob attained hurricane status on August 17. Shortly thereafter, the hurricane began to turn towards the north-northeast in response to a subtropical ridge over the Atlantic and the trough over the southeastern United States. After further intensification off the Carolinas, Bob reached peak winds of 115 mph (185 km/h) to the east of Virginia on August 19, making it a major hurricane. Significantly cooler sea surface temperatures resulted in weakening. After brushing Long Island, the center of Bob moved over Block Island, Rhode Island. About 40 minutes later it struck Newport, Rhode Island, with winds of 100 mph (160 km/h), making it a Category 2 hurricane. It rapidly weakened to tropical storm intensity while moving through the remainder of New England, hitting Rockport, Maine, early on August 20. After crossing New Brunswick, Bob became extratropical in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and lasted another nine days before dissipating west of Portugal.
The hurricane first affected the Carolinas, spawning four confirmed and nine unconfirmed tornadoes in North Carolina. One person each died in North and South Carolina, and about 10% of houses in the Outer Banks sustained minor roof damage. As the storm moved up the coast, heavy rain fell on the western side of the center. High winds left 300,000 people without power on Long Island. In neighboring Connecticut, strong winds downed trees across the region, with damage heaviest in the southeastern portion near the coast. Damage was heaviest as Bob made its final landfall, with wind gusts of 105 mph (169 km/h) reported on Block Island, Rhode Island. The hurricane produced extensive beach erosion which destroyed coastal roads in the state. Monetary damage was greatest in Massachusetts, and along Bob's path through southeastern New England more than 60% of people were left without power. High tides and strong winds destroyed boats and houses along the Massachusetts coastline. The heaviest rainfall from the hurricane fell at the Portland International Jetport in Maine, where 8.24 in (209 mm) fell during its passage. Across the United States, damage totaled \$1.5 billion (1991 USD), including over \$1 billion in Massachusetts. The high damage total made Bob among the ten costliest U.S. hurricanes at the time. In addition, there were 15 fatalities in the country. In Canada, high waves killed two people. In Fredericton, New Brunswick, tropical storm-force winds downed trees and power lines.
### Tropical Depression Four
One of the few vigorous tropical waves of the season emerged from the western coast of Africa with a large area of convection in late August. On August 24 it developed into a tropical depression near Cape Verde. Upon first forming, the depression had a circular area of convection near the center. It was initially well-organized, but the depression was not expected to intensify due to marginal water temperatures; tropical cyclones generally require warm waters to develop. By August 25, the system lost much of its deep convection, and on August 26 the depression dissipated to the west-southwest of the Cape Verde islands.
### Tropical Depression Five
Around the same time as the previous system dissipated, another tropical wave moved off the coast of Africa on August 26. On August 28 it formed into a tropical depression about 560 mi (900 km) southwest of Cape Verde. Upon developing, the depression had a small area of convection with a spiral rainband, and the NHC anticipated slow strengthening to tropical storm status. With a ridge to the north, the depression maintained a general westward track. Ultimately, the depression failed to organize significantly. By August 29, it had a broad and poorly organized circulation with only scattered convection. Due to cool water temperatures, the system was unable to maintain deep convection, and on August 31 the depression degenerated into a tropical wave about 400 miles (640 km) east of the Lesser Antilles.
### Hurricane Claudette
The origins of Claudette were non-tropical, developing on September 4 about 650 mi (1,050 km) southeast of Bermuda from an upper-level disturbance. Following its formation, it developed slowly while moving southwestward, and on September 5 it intensified into Tropical Storm Claudette. Conditions were favorable for development, with low wind shear and a large anticyclone providing outflow, or the outward wind flow from a storm. On September 6 at 0600 UTC, Claudette attained hurricane status. It underwent rapid intensification, and early on September 7 a reconnaissance flight reported that Claudette attained major hurricane status with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). Based on satellite estimates, Hurricane Claudette attained its peak intensity with winds of 130 mph (210 km/h) and a minimum pressure 944 mbar (27.9 inHg).
After peaking, Claudette began steady weakening. Around that time, a hurricane watch was issued for the island of Bermuda, which was later upgraded to a warning. The hurricane turned to the northwest, passing 136 miles (219 km) east of Bermuda as a Category 1 hurricane on September 8. Winds on the island peaked at 23 mph (37 km/h), with gusts to 32 mph (51 km/h), and waves reached up to 8 ft (2.4 m) in height. By September 10, Claudette weakened to tropical storm status as it accelerated eastward. The next day it deteriorated further to tropical depression status, and the next day Claudette became extratropical to the southwest of the Azores. It persisted two more days until dissipating over the Azores.
### Tropical Storm Danny
One of the most vigorous tropical waves of the season (which also led to the formation of Hurricane Jimena in the eastern Pacific) was first observed in western Africa on September 2. Three days later it emerged from the coast at Dakar, moving into the tropical Atlantic Ocean with rainbands around its convection. By early on September 7, the system organized into Tropical Depression Seven about 300 mi (480 km) south-southwest of Cape Verde. Upon developing, the depression had a broad circulation, located in an environment generally favorable for intensification. With a strong ridge to the north, the depression tracked steadily westward. After remaining a tropical depression for about 36 hours, the system became better organized and developed well-defined banding features. Based on satellite intensity estimates, the NHC upgraded it to Tropical Storm Danny on September 8.
Upon becoming a tropical storm, only slow strengthening was forecast, due to the presence of an upper-level trough to its west. The storm ultimately reached peak winds of 50 mph (80 km/h), which it maintained for about 36 hours. On September 10 it attained its organizational maximum after developing a central dense overcast. Later that day, an upper-level low increased wind shear over the storm, which exposed the circulation from the deep convection. As Danny approached the Lesser Antilles, it weakened to tropical depression status on September 11. Later that day, a Hurricane Hunters flight was unable to locate a closed circulation, which indicated that Danny degenerated into a tropical wave about 150 mi (240 km) east of the Lesser Antilles. The remnants tracked to the northwest and later to the north before being absorbed by a frontal system.
### Tropical Storm Erika
The origins of Tropical Storm Erika were from a tropical wave that exited the coast of Africa on September 2. It moved northwestward, passing through Cape Verde the following day. The system had most of the thunderstorms along the southern portion of the wave as it maintained a very large low-level circulation. Thunderstorms began developing on September 7, and the system organized into Tropical Depression Eight the following day about 920 mi (1,480 km) northeast of the Lesser Antilles; at the same time, it was located about midway between Hurricane Claudette and Tropical Storm Danny. Initially the center was difficult to locate on satellite imagery, but despite the proximity with Claudette, conditions were generally favorable for intensification. By late on September 9, the depression had become much better organized, and based on satellite estimates the NHC upgraded it to Tropical Storm Erika.
Upon becoming a tropical storm, Erika began a motion to the northeast. There was initial uncertainty whether Erika or nearby Claudette would become the dominant system through their interaction. On September 10, the storm developed a central dense overcast as it attained its peak winds of 60 mph (97 km/h). It accelerated east-northeastward toward the Azores along the northern periphery of a ridge, briefly interacting with Claudette. By September 11, the convection had diminished, leaving the center exposed as Erika underwent extratropical transition. Shortly thereafter it passed through the Azores, striking São Miguel Island. Nearby Santa Maria Island reported tropical storm force winds with gusts to 67 mph (108 km/h), prompting the closure of the airfield for several hours. On September 12, Erika weakened to a tropical depression before completing the transition into an extratropical cyclone. It dissipated later that day.
### Tropical Storm Fabian
The origins of Fabian were from a tropical wave and a cold front that entered the northwestern Caribbean Sea on October 12, which produced an area of thunderstorms in the Gulf of Honduras. At 1300 UTC on October 15, a Hurricane Hunters flight observed sustained winds of 40 mph (64 km/h) to the southwest of the Isle of Youth. Based on the report, the NHC designated the system as Tropical Storm Fabian. although the NHC later assessed that the system developed as a tropical depression earlier that day. With a high pressure area to the north, there was already a large pressure gradient that had produced tropical storm force winds over the area. Initially the storm was disorganized, with its strongest winds located primarily east of the center. An eastward-moving upper-level trough imparted a northeast motion as well as unfavorable wind shear. After reaching peak winds of 45 mph (72 km/h), Fabian crossed the Isle of Youth before crossing western Cuba. By early on October 16, the center was becoming difficult to locate as Fabian moved through the Florida Straits. The storm later moved through the Bahamas and became extratropical as it interacted with an approaching front.
When Fabian first formed, the government of Cuba issued a tropical storm warning from Havana to Ciego de Ávila Province, as well as the Isle of Youth. There was also a tropical storm watch for the Florida Keys, as well as a tropical storm warning for the Bahamas. Before the storm hit the Cuban mainland, it produced wind gusts to 40 mph (64 km/h) in Cayo Largo del Sur. Its primary form of impact was from heavy rainfall in a 24‐hour period, peaking at 6.2 inches (160 mm) in Caonao on the south coast of Cuba. In a six-hour period, Punta del Este recorded 5 in (130 mm). Prior to the storm's passage, two state parks were closed in the Florida Keys, and a few storm shelters were opened in Dade County. As it passed east of the state, it dropped rainfall near the coast that peaked at 4.19 in (106 mm) in Conch Key. In the Florida Keys, the National Weather Service Office in Key West recorded sustained winds of 28 mph (45 km/h) with gusts to 32 mph (51 km/h). Only isolated flooding happened from the precursor system to Fabian. In South Florida, Homestead Air Force Base reported rainfall of 3.68 inches (93 mm), but this too was attributed to the precursor frontal system, rather than Fabian itself.
### Tropical Depression Ten
A tropical wave moved off the coast of Africa on October 19. Moving westward, it developed a weak circulation on October 23. Despite the presence of strong shear, the system was upgraded to a tropical depression at 2200 UTC on October 24 about 1,100 miles (1,800 km) east of the Lesser Antilles. This was based on a rating of 1.5 on the Dvorak technique, which is a method of estimating the intensity of tropical cyclones via satellite. At the time of development, the depression had a small area of convection near and east of the center, and due to the wind shear it was never expected to intensify. By October 25, the circulation had become dissociated from the convection. The depression dissipated soon after without affecting land.
### Hurricane Grace
On October 23 a mid-level low formed south of Bermuda. By two days later it had become a surface low, and on October 26 it developed into a subtropical storm. The system was labeled as such due to the initial lack of deep convection over the center, although following an increase in thunderstorms the NHC reclassified it as Tropical Storm Grace late on October 27. By that time, the storm had executed a path generally to the northwest. Grace continued to intensify and organize, and based on Hurricane Hunter reports the storm was upgraded to a hurricane early on October 28. Shortly thereafter, Grace turned sharply to the east due to the influence of a rapidly intensifying extratropical cyclone off the New England coast. An eye developed in the center of Grace, despite shallow convection.
As the hurricane accelerated eastward, it attained a peak intensity of 100 mph (160 km/h) on October 29. The rapid motion caused an asymmetry in the wind field, and the center passed approximately 50 mi (80 km) south of Bermuda without significantly affecting the island. A rapidly approaching cold front absorbed Grace on October 29, contributing moisture to the developing extratropical storm that was eventually known as the Perfect Storm. As a tropical cyclone, Grace produced squally conditions across Bermuda, but no damage was reported. The hurricane generated large swells along the East Coast of the United States, causing minor beach erosion.
### Hurricane Twelve (The Perfect Storm)
The origins of the Perfect Storm were from an area of low pressure that developed off Atlantic Canada on October 28. It moved southward and westward as an extratropical cyclone due to a ridge to its north, and reached its peak intensity. The storm lashed the East Coast of the United States with high waves and coastal flooding, before turning to the southwest and weakening. Moving over warmer waters, the system transitioned into a subtropical cyclone before becoming a tropical storm. It executed a loop off the Mid-Atlantic states and turned toward the northeast. On November 1 the system evolved into a full-fledged hurricane with peak winds of 75 mph (120 km/h). The tropical system weakened, striking Nova Scotia as a tropical storm before dissipating.
Damage totaled over \$200 million (1991 USD) and the death toll was thirteen. Most of the damage occurred while the storm was extratropical, after waves up to 30 ft (9.1 m) struck the coastline from Canada to Florida and southeastward to Puerto Rico. In Massachusetts, where damage was heaviest, over 100 homes were destroyed or severely damaged. To the north, more than 100 homes were affected in Maine, including the vacation home of George H. W. Bush, the president at the time. More than 38,000 people were left without power, and along the coast high waves inundated roads and buildings. In portions of New England, damage was worse than had occurred from Hurricane Bob two months prior. However, aside from tidal flooding along rivers, the storm's effects were primarily along the coastline. A buoy off the coast of Nova Scotia reported a wave height of 100.7 ft (30.7 m), the highest ever recorded in the province's offshore waters. In the middle of the storm, the Andrea Gail sunk, claiming the lives of its crew of six, which later inspired the book as well as the movie The Perfect Storm. Off the coast of New York, a Coast Guard helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed, and although four members of its crew were rescued, one was killed. Two people died after their boat sank off Staten Island. High waves swept a person to their death in both Rhode Island and Puerto Rico, and another person was blown off a bridge in New York. The tropical cyclone that formed late in the storm's duration caused little impact, limited to power outages and slick roads; one person was killed in Newfoundland from a traffic accident related to the storm.
## Storm names
The list below shows the names that appeared on the tropical cyclone naming list in the Atlantic basin in 1991. Although the Perfect Storm later evolved into a hurricane, which could have been named "Henri", the National Hurricane Center left it unnamed due to the heavy damage and media interest in the predecessor extratropical storm. It later received the name the Perfect Storm after a conversation between Boston National Weather Service forecaster Robert Case and author Sebastian Junger. The names not retired from this list in 1991 appeared again on the naming list for the 1997 season. This is the same list used for the 1985 season, with the exception of the names Erika and Grace, which replaced the names Elena and Gloria after the 1985 season, and were used for the first time in 1991.
### Retirement
At their meeting in the spring of 1992, the World Meteorological Organization retired the name Bob from the list above due to its high impact. The name that replaced it on the naming list for the 1997 season was Bill.
## Season effects
This is a table of all of the storms that have formed in the 1991 Atlantic hurricane season. It includes their duration, names, landfall(s) – denoted by bold location names – damages, and death totals. Deaths in parentheses are additional and indirect (an example of an indirect death would be a traffic accident), but were still related to that storm. Damage and deaths include totals while the storm was extratropical, a wave, or a low, and all of the damage figures are in 1991 USD.
## See also
- Tropical cyclones in 1991
- 1991 Pacific hurricane season
- 1991 Pacific typhoon season
- 1991 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
- South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season: 1990–91, 1991–92
- Australian region cyclone season: 1990–91, 1991–92
- South Pacific cyclone season: 1990–91, 1991–92
- South Atlantic tropical cyclone
- Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone
|
560,061 |
Psilocybe semilanceata
| 1,168,483,922 |
Species of fungus in the family Hymenogastraceae, native to Europe
|
[
"Entheogens",
"Fungi described in 1838",
"Fungi of Asia",
"Fungi of Australia",
"Fungi of Europe",
"Fungi of Finland",
"Fungi of Iceland",
"Fungi of New Zealand",
"Fungi of North America",
"Fungi of South America",
"Fungi of Sweden",
"Psilocybe",
"Psychedelic tryptamine carriers",
"Psychoactive fungi",
"Taxa named by Elias Magnus Fries"
] |
Psilocybe semilanceata, commonly known as the liberty cap, is a species of fungus which produces the psychoactive compounds psilocybin, psilocin and baeocystin. It is both one of the most widely distributed psilocybin mushrooms in nature, and one of the most potent. The mushrooms have a distinctive conical to bell-shaped cap, up to 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter, with a small nipple-like protrusion on the top. They are yellow to brown, covered with radial grooves when moist, and fade to a lighter color as they mature. Their stipes tend to be slender and long, and the same color or slightly lighter than the cap. The gill attachment to the stipe is adnexed (narrowly attached), and they are initially cream-colored before tinting purple to black as the spores mature. The spores are dark purplish-brown in mass, ellipsoid in shape, and measure 10.5–15 by 6.5–8.5 micrometres.
The mushroom grows in grassland habitats, especially wetter areas. But unlike P. cubensis, the fungus does not grow directly on dung; rather, it is a saprobic species that feeds off decaying grass roots. It is widely distributed in the temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe, and has been reported occasionally in temperate areas of the Southern Hemisphere as well. The earliest reliable history of P. semilanceata intoxication dates back to 1799 in London, and in the 1960s the mushroom was the first European species confirmed to contain psilocybin.
The possession or sale of psilocybin mushrooms is illegal in many countries.
## Taxonomy and naming
The species was first described by Elias Magnus Fries as Agaricus semilanceatus in his 1838 work Epicrisis Systematis Mycologici. Paul Kummer transferred it to Psilocybe in 1871 when he raised many of Fries's sub-groupings of Agaricus to the level of genus. Panaeolus semilanceatus, named by Jakob Emanuel Lange in both 1936 and 1939 publications, is a synonym. According to the taxonomical database MycoBank, several taxa once considered varieties of P. semilanceata are synonymous with the species now known as Psilocybe strictipes: the caerulescens variety described by Pier Andrea Saccardo in 1887 (originally named Agaricus semilanceatus var. coerulescens by Mordecai Cubitt Cooke in 1881), the microspora variety described by Rolf Singer in 1969, and the obtusata variety described by Marcel Bon in 1985.
Several molecular studies published in the 2000s demonstrated that Psilocybe, as it was defined then, was polyphyletic. The studies supported the idea of dividing the genus into two clades, one consisting of the bluing, hallucinogenic species in the family Hymenogastraceae, and the other the non-bluing, non-hallucinogenic species in the family Strophariaceae. However, the generally accepted lectotype (a specimen later selected when the original author of a taxon name did not designate a type) of the genus as a whole was Psilocybe montana, which is a non-bluing, non-hallucinogenic species. If the non-bluing, non-hallucinogenic species in the study were to be segregated, it would have left the hallucinogenic clade without a valid name. To resolve this dilemma, several mycologists proposed in a 2005 publication to conserve the name Psilocybe, with P. semilanceata as the type. As they explained, conserving the name Psilocybe in this way would prevent nomenclatural changes to a well-known group of fungi, many species of which are "linked to archaeology, anthropology, religion, alternate life styles, forensic science, law enforcement, laws and regulation". Further, the name P. semilanceata had historically been accepted as the lectotype by many authors in the period 1938–68. The proposal to conserve the name Psilocybe, with P. semilanceata as the type was accepted unanimously by the Nomenclature Committee for Fungi in 2009.
The mushroom takes its common name from the Phrygian cap, also known as the "liberty cap", which it resembles; P. semilanceata shares its common name with P. pelliculosa, a species from which it is more or less indistinguishable in appearance. The Latin word for Phrygian cap is pileus, nowadays the technical name for what is commonly known as the "cap" of a fungal fruit body. In the 18th century, Phrygian caps were placed on Liberty poles, which resemble the stipe of the mushroom. The generic name is derived from Ancient Greek psilos (ψιλός) 'smooth, bare' and Byzantine Greek kubê (κύβη) 'head'. The specific epithet comes from Latin semi 'half, somewhat' and lanceata, from lanceolatus 'spear-shaped'.
## Description
- Pileus: The cap of P. semilanceata is 5–30 mm (0.2–1.2 in) in diameter and 6–22 mm (0.24–0.87 in) tall. It varies in shape from sharply conical to bell-shaped, often with a prominent papilla (a nipple-shaped structure), and does not change shape considerably as it ages. The cap margin is initially rolled inward but unrolls to become straight or even curled upwards in maturity. The cap is hygrophanous, meaning it assumes different colors depending on its state of hydration. When it is moist, the cap is ochraceous to pale brown to dark chestnut brown, but darker in the center, often with a greenish-blue tinge. When moist, radial lines can be seen through the cap that correspond to the positions of the gills underneath. When the cap is dry, it becomes much paler, a light yellow-brown color. Moist mushrooms have sticky surfaces that result from a thin gelatinous film called a pellicle. This film becomes apparent if a piece of the cap is broken by bending it back and peeling away the piece. When the cap dries from exposure to the sun, the film turns whitish and is no longer peelable.
- Gills: On the underside of the mushroom's cap, there are between 15 and 27 individual narrow gills that are moderately crowded together, and they have a narrowly adnexed to almost free attachment to the stipe. Their color is initially pale brown, but becomes dark gray to purple-brown with a lighter edge as the spores mature.
- Spore print: deep reddish purple-brown color
- Stipe: The slender yellowish-brown stipe is 4–15 cm (1.5–6 in) long by 1–3.5 mm thick, and usually slightly thicker towards the base.
- Veil: The mushroom has a thin cobweb-like partial veil that does not last long before disappearing; sometimes, the partial veil leaves an annular zone on the stipe that may be darkened by spores. The flesh is thin and membrane-like, and roughly the same color as the surface tissue.
- Taste and odor: farinaceous
- Stain: All parts of the mushroom will stain a bluish color if handled or bruised, and it may naturally turn blue with age.
### Microscopic characteristics
In deposit, the spores are a deep reddish purple-brown color. The use of an optical microscope can reveal further details: the spores are oblong when seen in side view, and oblong to oval in frontal view, with dimensions of 10.5–15 by 6.5–8.5 μm. The basidia (spore bearing cells of the hymenium), are 20–31 by 5–9 μm, four-spored, and have clamps at their bases; there are no basidia found on the sterile gill edge. The cheilocystidia (cystidia on the gill edge) measure 15–30 by 4–7 μm, and are flask-shaped with long thin necks that are 1–3.5 μm wide. P. semilanceata does not have pleurocystidia (cystidia on the gill face). The cap cuticle is up to 90 μm thick, and is made of a tissue layer called an ixocutis—a gelatinized layer of hyphae lying parallel to the cap surface. The hyphae comprising the ixocutis are cylindrical, hyaline, and 1–3.5 μm wide. Immediately under the cap cuticle is the subpellis, made of hyphae that are 4–12 μm wide with yellowish-brown encrusted walls. There are clamp connections present in the hyphae of all tissues.
### Other forms
The anamorphic form of P. semilanceata is an asexual stage in the fungus's life cycle involved in the development of mitotic diaspores (conidia). In culture, grown in a petri dish, the fungus forms a white to pale orange cottony or felt-like mat of mycelia. The conidia formed are straight to curved, measuring 2.0–8.0 by 1.1–2.0 μm, and may contain one to several small intracellular droplets. Although little is known of the anamorphic stage of P. semilanceata beyond the confines of laboratory culture, in general, the morphology of the asexual structures may be used as classical characters in phylogenetic analyses to help understand the evolutionary relationships between related groups of fungi.
Scottish mycologist Roy Watling described sequestrate (truffle-like) or secotioid versions of P. semilanceata he found growing in association with regular fruit bodies. These versions had elongated caps, 20–22 cm (7.9–8.7 in) long and 0.8–1 cm (0.3–0.4 in) wide at the base, with the inward curved margins closely hugging the stipe from the development of membranous flanges. Their gills were narrow, closely crowded together, and anastomosed (fused together in a vein-like network). The color of the gills was sepia with a brownish vinaceous (red wine-colored) cast, and a white margin. The stipes of the fruit bodies were 5–6 cm (2.0–2.4 in) long by 0.1–0.3 cm (0.04–0.12 in) thick, with about 2 cm (0.8 in) of stipe length covered by the extended cap. The thick-walled ellipsoid spores were 12.5–13.5 by 6.5–7 μm. Despite the significant differences in morphology, molecular analysis showed the secotioid version to be the same species as the typical morphotype.
## Similar species
There are several other Psilocybe species that may be confused with P. semilanceata due to similarities in physical appearance. P. strictipes is a slender grassland species that is differentiated macroscopically from P. semilanceata by the lack of a prominent papilla. P. mexicana, commonly known as the "Mexican liberty cap", is also similar in appearance, but is found in manure-rich soil in subtropical grasslands in Mexico. It has somewhat smaller spores than P. semilanceata, typically 8–9.9 by 5.5–7.7 μm. Another lookalike species is P. samuiensis, found in Thailand, where it grows in well-manured clay-like soils or among paddy fields. This mushroom can be distinguished from P. semilanceata by its smaller cap, up to 1.5 cm (0.6 in) in diameter, and its rhomboid-shaped spores. P. pelliculosa is physically similar to such a degree that it may be indistinguishable in the field. It differs from P. semilanceata by virtue of its smaller spores, measuring 9–13 by 5–7 μm.
P. semilanceata has also been confused with the toxic muscarine-containing species Inocybe geophylla, a whitish mushroom with a silky cap, yellowish-brown to pale grayish gills, and a dull yellowish-brown spore print. Other similar species include P. cubensis, P. cyanescens, and Deconica coprophila.
## Ecology and habitat
Psilocybe semilanceata fruits solitarily or in groups on rich and acidic soil, typically in grasslands, such as meadows, pastures, or lawns. It is often found in pastures that have been fertilized with sheep or cow dung, although it does not typically grow directly on the dung.
P. semilanceata, like all others species of the genus Psilocybe, is a saprobic fungus, meaning it obtains nutrients by breaking down organic matter. The mushroom is also associated with sedges in moist areas of fields, and it is thought to live on the decaying root remains.
Like some other grassland psilocybin mushroom species such as P. mexicana, P. tampanensis and Conocybe cyanopus, P. semilanceata may form sclerotia, a dormant form of the fungus, which affords it some protection from wildfires and other natural disasters.
Laboratory tests have shown P. semilanceata to suppress the growth of the soil-borne water mold Phytophthora cinnamomi, a virulent plant pathogen that causes the disease root rot. When grown in dual culture with other saprobic fungi isolated from the rhizosphere of grasses from its habitat, P. semilanceata significantly suppresses their growth. This antifungal activity, which can be traced at least partly to two phenolic compounds it secretes, helps it compete successfully with other fungal species in the intense competition for nutrients provided by decaying plant matter. Using standard antimicrobial susceptibility tests, Psilocybe semilanceata was shown to strongly inhibit the growth of the human pathogen methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The source of the antimicrobial activity is unknown.
## Distribution
Psilocybe authority Gastón Guzmán, in his 1983 monograph on psilocybin mushrooms, considered Psilocybe semilanceata the world's most widespread psilocybin mushroom species, as it has been reported on 18 countries. In Europe, P. semilanceata has a widespread distribution, and is found in Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Channel Islands, Czech republic, Denmark, Estonia, the Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. It is generally agreed that the species is native to Europe; Watling has demonstrated that there exists little difference between specimens collected from Spain and Scotland, at both the morphological and genetic level.
The mushroom also has a widespread distribution in North America. In Canada it has been collected from British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Ontario and Quebec. In the United States, it is most common in the Pacific Northwest, west of the Cascade Mountains, where it fruits abundantly in autumn and early winter; fruiting has also been reported to occur infrequently during spring months. Charles Horton Peck reported the mushroom to occur in New York in the early 20th century, and consequently, much literature published since then has reported the species to be present in the eastern United States. Guzmán later examined Peck's herbarium specimen, and in his comprehensive 1983 monograph on Psilocybe, concluded that Peck had misidentified it with the species now known as Panaeolina foenisecii. P. semilanceata is much less common in South America, where it has been recorded in Chile. It is also known in Australia (where it may be an introduced species) and New Zealand, where it grows in high-altitude grasslands. In 2000, it was reported from Golaghat, in the Indian state of Assam. In 2017, it was reported from Charsadda, in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
## Psychoactive use
The first reliably documented report of Psilocybe semilanceata intoxication involved a British family in 1799, who prepared a meal with mushrooms they had picked in London's Green Park. According to the chemist Augustus Everard Brande, the father and his four children experienced typical symptoms associated with ingestion, including pupil dilation, spontaneous laughter and delirium. The identification of the species responsible was made possible by James Sowerby's 1803 book Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms, which included a description of the fungus, then known as Agaricus glutinosus (originally described by Moses Ashley Curtis in 1780). According to German mycologist Jochen Gartz, the description of the species is "fully compatible with current knowledge about Psilocybe semilanceata."
In the early 1960s, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann—known for the synthesis of the psychedelic drug LSD—chemically analyzed P. semilanceata fruit bodies collected in Switzerland and France by the botanist Roger Heim. Using the technique of paper chromatography, Hofmann confirmed the presence of 0.25% (by weight) psilocybin in dried samples. Their 1963 publication was the first report of psilocybin in a European mushroom species; previously, it had been known only in Psilocybe species native to Mexico, Asia and North America. This finding was confirmed in the late 1960s with specimens from Scotland and England, Czechoslovakia (1973), Germany (1977), Norway (1978), and Belgium and Finland (1984). In 1965, forensic characterization of psilocybin-containing mushrooms seized from college students in British Columbia identified P. semilanceata—the first recorded case of intentional recreational use of the mushroom in Canada. The presence of the psilocybin analog baeocystin was confirmed in 1977. Several studies published since then support the idea that the variability of psilocybin content in P. semilanceata is low, regardless of country of origin.
### Properties
Several studies have quantified the amounts of hallucinogenic compounds found in the fruit bodies of Psilocybe semilanceata. In 1993, Gartz reported an average of 1% psilocybin (expressed as a percentage of the dry weight of the fruit bodies), ranging from a minimum of 0.2% to a maximum of 2.37% making it one of the most potent species (but significantly less potent than panaeolus cyanescens). In an earlier analysis, Tjakko Stijve and Thom Kuyper (1985) found a high concentration in a single specimen (1.7%) in addition to a relatively high concentration of baeocystin (0.36%). Smaller specimens tend to have the highest percent concentrations of psilocybin, but the absolute amount is highest in larger mushrooms. A Finnish study assayed psilocybin concentrations in old herbarium specimens, and concluded that although psilocybin concentration decreased linearly over time, it was relatively stable. They were able to detect the chemical in specimens that were 115 years old. Michael Beug and Jeremy Bigwood, analyzing specimens from the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, reported psilocybin concentrations ranging from 0.62% to 1.28%, averaging 1.0 ±0.2%. They concluded that the species was one of the most potent, as well as the most constant in psilocybin levels. In a 1996 publication, Paul Stamets defined a "potency rating scale" based on the total content of psychoactive compounds (including psilocybin, psilocin, and baeocystin) in 12 species of Psilocybe mushrooms. Although there are certain caveats with this technique—such as the erroneous assumption that these compounds contribute equally to psychoactive properties—it serves as a rough comparison of potency between species. Despite its small size, Psilocybe semilanceata is considered a "moderately active to extremely potent" hallucinogenic mushroom (meaning the combined percentage of psychoactive compounds is typically between 0.25% to greater than 2%), and of the 12 mushrooms they compared, only 3 were more potent: P. azurescens, P. baeocystis, and P. bohemica. however this data has become obsolete over the years as more potent cultivars have been discovered for numerous species, especially panaeolus cyanescens which holds the current world record for most potent mushrooms described in published research. According to Gartz (1995), P. semilanceata is Europe's most popular psychoactive species.
Several reports have been published in the literature documenting the effects of consumption of P. semilanceata. Typical symptoms include visual distortions of color, depth and form, progressing to visual hallucinations. The effects are similar to the experience following consumption of LSD, although milder. Common side effects of mushroom ingestion include pupil dilation, increased heart rate, unpleasant mood, and overresponsive reflexes. As is typical of the symptoms associated with psilocybin mushroom ingestion, "the effect on mood in particular is dependent on the subject's pre-exposure personality traits", and "identical doses of psilocybin may have widely differing effects in different individuals." Although most cases of intoxication resolve without incident, there have been isolated cases with severe consequences, especially after higher dosages or persistent use. In one case reported in Poland in 1998, an 18-year-old man developed Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome, arrhythmia, and suffered myocardial infarction after ingesting P. semilanceata frequently over the period of a month. The cardiac damage and myocardial infarction was suggested to be a result of either coronary vasoconstriction, or because of platelet hyperaggregation and occlusion of small coronary arteries.
#### Danger of misidentification
One danger of attempting to consume hallucinogenic or other wild mushrooms, especially for novice mushroom hunters, is the possibility of misidentification with toxic species. In one noted case, an otherwise healthy young Austrian man mistook the poisonous Cortinarius rubellus for P. semilanceata. As a result, he suffered end-stage kidney failure, and required a kidney transplant. In another instance, a young man developed cardiac abnormalities similar to those seen in Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, characterized by a sudden temporary weakening of the myocardium. A polymerase chain reaction-based test to specifically identity P. semilanceata was reported by Polish scientists in 2007. Poisonous Psathyrella species can easily be misidentified as liberty caps.
## Legal status
The legal status of psilocybin mushrooms varies worldwide. Psilocybin and psilocin are listed as Class A (United Kingdom) or Schedule I (US) drugs under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The possession and use of psilocybin mushrooms, including P. semilanceata, is therefore prohibited by extension. Although many European countries remained open to the use and possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms after the US ban, starting in the 2000s (decade) there has been a tightening of laws and enforcements. In the Netherlands, where the drug was once routinely sold in licensed cannabis coffee shops and smart shops, laws were instituted in October 2008 to prohibit the possession or sale of psychedelic mushrooms—the final European country to do so. They are legal in Jamaica and Brazil and decriminalised in Portugal. In the United States, the city of Denver, Colorado, voted in May 2019 to decriminalize the use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms. In November 2020, voters passed Oregon Ballot Measure 109, making Oregon the first state to both decriminalize psilocybin and also legalize it for therapeutic use. Ann Arbor Michigan, and the county it resides in have decriminalized magic mushrooms, possession, sale and use are now legal within the county. In 2021, the City Councils of Somerville, Northampton, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Seattle, Washington, voted for decriminalization.
### Sweden
The Riksdag added Psilocybe semilanceata to Narcotic Drugs Punishments Act under Swedish schedule I ("substances, plant materials and fungi which normally do not have medical use") as of 1 October 1997, published by Medical Products Agency (MPA) in regulation LVFS 1997:12 listed as Psilocybe semilanceata (toppslätskivling).
## See also
- List of Psilocybe species
- Mushroom hunting
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Drakengard (video game)
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2003 action role-playing video game
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Drakengard, known in Japan as is a 2003 action role-playing video game developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2. The game is the first installment of the Drakengard series and features a mixture of ground-based hack-and-slash, aerial combat, and role-playing elements which have become a staple of the series. The story is set during a religious war between two factions—the Union and the Empire—with the war tipping in favor of the Empire. The player controls Caim, a deposed prince of the Union, in his quest for vengeance against the Empire. Wounded in battle while protecting his sister Furiae, he is forced to make a pact with a red dragon named Angelus as they journey together on a quest to prevent the Empire from destroying magical seals that keep the world in balance.
Takamasa Shiba and Takuya Iwasaki conceived the game as a hybrid between the popular Dynasty Warriors series and Namco's aerial combat game Ace Combat. It was Shiba's first project as a producer. The dark story was created by director Yoko Taro and Sawako Natori, who wrote the majority of the script. The music was written by Nobuyoshi Sano and Takayuki Aihara. A Europe-exclusive mobile adaptation was developed by Macrospace and published by Square Enix for Vodafone devices in August 2004. Drakengard sold well in Japan and received mixed to positive reviews in the west: reviewers praised the game's story and music, but were mixed about the graphics and criticized the gameplay for being repetitive.
## Gameplay
Drakengard is an action role-playing video game featuring three types of gameplay: ground missions, aerial missions, and Free Expedition Mode. The gameplay modes are called Ground Mode, Strafe Mode, and Air Mode. In some levels, players can switch between ground-based and aerial combat. Ground-based gameplay primarily has the player controlling the main protagonist, Caim. He has access to three types of attack: a standard sword-slash, a magic attack and a dash attack that throws enemies to the ground. Additional weapons can be accessed and swapped via the menu. Weapons gain experience levels through use, dealing more damage as a result. Each has a four-level cap. The player can access up to eight weapons during a mission. Pressing the attack button repeatedly while in combat with enemy units triggers combos, and pressing another button mid-combo will trigger a special attack which will temporarily incapacitate enemy units in the immediate area. The player can also temporarily switch between Caim and an assigned ally, who shares similar attacks but deals more damage. These allies are gained in optional levels and can only be summoned a limited number of times.
In aerial combat missions, players control Caim's dragon partner Angelus. During these moments, players are directed against multiple aerial targets that must be destroyed in order to win. As Angelus gains experience points through combat, she levels up and is able to do more damage – similar to the weapons used in ground-based combat. Boss battles are all located in these aerial stages. Angelus has access to two types of standard fire attacks: a free-aim blast that causes high damage, and homing bolts that can hit multiple targets but do less damage. Homing shots can be dodged or countered by some enemy types later in the game. Angelus can also perform a special area-affecting magical attack that damages or kills multiple enemy units. She can be used to quickly traverse battle areas during primarily ground-based missions. Players can summon Angelus during certain ground-based missions and play her in Strafe Mode. Controls are identical to ground-based combat. Pressing the select button causes Caim to dismount Angelus. Caim and Angelus level up during combat in different ways: as Caim levels up, their shared health meter grows, while Angelus' leveling increases the damage her attacks do to enemy units.
Players can navigate the game world and select missions via a world map accessed between levels. While playing, a mini-map allows the player to see enemy locations, and a full-screen map can be switched to that covers the entire area and shows mission objectives. Drakengard's levels are called verses, and the verses are grouped across thirteen chapters. Each level has a time limit of one hour for players to complete them. Normal levels are numbered, while additional levels are marked by Roman numerals. The game features five endings: the normal ending and four additional endings which are unlocked when certain conditions are met, such as completing optional chapters or obtaining powerful weapons.
## Synopsis
### Setting and characters
Drakengard takes place in a medieval dark fantasy world called Midgard. The world is protected from falling into chaos by the Seals, objects magically linked to a woman chosen as the Goddess of the Seal. If the seals and the Goddess were destroyed, malevolent beings known as the Watchers would enter the world to destroy humanity. A key element of the world is the ability for a human and a beast to form a pact, a ritual that ties their souls together and grants great power. Their lives become bound by the pact, and the human pays a price for it in the form of some attribute (e.g. their voice, their eyesight or their ability to age). During the events of Drakengard, the Union, which protects the Seals, is in the midst of a religious war with the Empire, a power led by a cult who believe that destroying the seals will bring them good fortune.
The main characters are Caim (カイム, Kaimu), a deposed prince of the Union, and , a red dragon. Joining Caim and Angelus in optional sections of the story are Leonard (レオナール, Reonāru), a hermit who loses his brothers in an attack by the Empire; Arioch (アリオーシュ, Ariōshu), an elf woman driven mad by the murder of her family; and Seere (セエレ, Sēre), a young boy from the Empire whose village was destroyed by the cult's devotees. Other prominent characters are Furiae (フリアエ, Furiae), Caim's sister and the current Goddess of the Seal; Inuart (イウヴァルト, Iuvaruto), Furiae's former fiancé; Verdelet (ヴェルドレ, Verudore), a priest in charge of protecting the Goddess Seal; and Manah (マナ, Mana), Seere's sister, leader of the enemy cult and the game's main antagonist.
### Plot
Drakengard opens with Caim in the midst of a battle to protect his sister from the Empire. During the battle, Caim is mortally injured, but continues to fight his way into Furiae's castle, where he finds Angelus severely wounded from torture. Despite their mutual mistrust, Caim and Angelus agree to make a pact and save each other. With the attack repelled, Caim is joined by Furiae and Inuart to find safety, encountering Verdelet on their travels. Inuart is captured, tortured and brainwashed by Manah, eventually kidnapping Furiae in the belief that he can save her from her fate as the Goddess and earn her love. Verdelet and Caim travel to each of the three Seals, but each time arrive too late to stop them being destroyed. Eventually, the Union and the Empire engage in battle, and the Union emerge victorious. After the battle, however, the Union's surviving troops are decimated by an unknown force from above, and the Empire's troops return to life. Caim and Angelus travel to an Imperial fortress that has appeared in the sky, where they find that Furiae has killed herself, breaking the final seal. Inuart, seeing her body, is released from his brainwashing and takes her away.
Optional missions allow Caim to find and recruit Leonard and Seere, and take along Arioch to protect others from her madness. Subsequent playthroughs and extra chapters reveal further details about the characters. Leonard's self-imposed seclusion is because he was trying to suppress his pedophilia, and the guilt at his brothers' deaths stems from the fact that he gave in to his cravings and left them unprotected. Arioch's madness takes the form of cannibalism of children, in the belief that they would be safe from harm within her. Furiae is revealed to love Caim romantically, which led to Inuart becoming jealous and vulnerable to Manah's influence. During the events leading to the third ending, Manah reveals Furiae's feelings for Caim, who shows revulsion at the revelation: due to this and the Watchers' influence, Furiae stabs herself. Manah was abused by her and Seere's mother, but Seere was never subjected to the abuse, leading him to feel guilty. The abuse Manah received and her longing for love eventually drove her insane, and she was chosen to become the Watchers' agent.
There are five possible endings, four of which are unlocked after fulfilling certain conditions. In the first ending, Caim and Angelus confront Manah and defeat her. Manah asks them to kill her, but Angelus declares that she must live with her crimes. Angelus then offers herself as the new Goddess of the Seal for Caim's sake. As Verdelet performs the ritual, Angelus tells Caim her name before fading away. In the second ending Inuart uses a magical object called a "Seed of Resurrection" to resurrect Furiae: while successful, the Seed turns her into a monster, and she kills Inuart. Caim is forced to kill her, but not before clones of her are produced from other Seeds to destroy humanity. In the third ending, after Furiae's suicide, Caim and Angelus stop Inuart's attempt to resurrect her and confront Manah, who is killed by another dragon. With the dragons now being driven to destroy mankind, Angelus breaks her pact with Caim and fights him to the death. Caim then prepares to die fighting the other dragons. In the fourth ending, Seere has his Golem pact partner kill the deranged Manah, causing the fortress to collapse. Caim, Seere, Leonard and Arioch escape, while Inuart and Furiae are killed inside. With Manah dead, the Watchers descend on the Imperial capital, with Leonard and Arioch dying at their hands. Caim and Angelus then sacrifice themselves to allow Seere to use his powers to seal the city and the Watchers in a timeless zone, nullifying their threat. In the fifth ending, instead of using Seere's power, Caim and Angelus instead attack the queen and the three disappear through a portal. After engaging the queen monster in a rhythm game in modern-day Tokyo, the two destroy it, and are then shot down by a fighter jet.
## Development
The original idea for Drakengard originated between Takamasa Shiba and Takuya Iwasaki when they were working at Cavia. It was conceived as an aerial battle game similar to Ace Combat. The four-year development was Shiba's first project as a producer. The team developing the game went under the moniker of "Project Dragonsphere". As development progressed, ground-based battles were also incorporated after the success in Japan of Dynasty Warriors 2. Creating the change from ground to aerial gameplay was exceptionally difficult for the team as they encountered problems with the PlayStation 2 hardware. Speaking in 2013, Shiba commented that Cavia had been inexperienced in creating action games, and as such it was not up to the standards of its contemporaries. The game's battle scenes were inspired by films such as the 1999 version of The Mummy and its spin-off The Scorpion King, as well as films like Dragonheart and epic films from Asia. Iwasaki was unable to take up the position of director because of other projects he was involved with: the position instead went to Yoko Taro, who was primarily responsible for the game's tone. The lead programmers were Toshiyuki Koike and Takeshi Katayama. The CGI cutscenes were created by Studio Anima. During production, the team were asked to make multiple adjustments and changes to its content by Drakengard's advisory board. It was annoying enough for Yoko that he decided at the time not to make another Drakengard. Yoko was worried that the dark tone would cause the game to go unreleased, so one of the game's external producers Yosuke Saito went to Sony with a pitch; Sony were so tired of reviewing pitches at the time that they approved the project without looking at it.
The game was originally announced in December 2002, then set to be published by Enix. Its date was announced the following year by Square Enix. It released in Japan on September 11, 2003. Drakengard was first shown off to the western public at E3 2003. Its title was changed for the Western release. The original Drag-On Dragoon title was chosen for its sound, but was not considered right for the western market. Because of this, it was changed to Drakengard. In addition, some of the more mature themes, such as references to incest and sexual taboos, were censored in the western localization. In North America, the game released on March 2, 2004. While Square Enix published the title in Japan and North America, Take-Two Interactive was chosen to publish it in European territories, releasing it on May 21. For this version, the game underwent major debugging and an alteration in the angle of the in-game camera. The mobile port was part of Square Enix's plans to branch out into the European mobile game market. It was co-developed with London-based mobile developer Macrospace as part of a collaboration between Square Enix and Vodafone, designed to function on the Vodafone live! service. It was first released in Germany, then made available in the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.
### World design
The setting, mythos and landscape were primarily inspired by the folklore of Northern Europe, while other elements drew from Japanese-style revisionism. According to Shiba, multiple elements of the story and world were created to be dark, sad and serious in tone, in contrast to the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. One of the core narrative threads, involving romantic feelings between siblings, was inspired in Yoko's mind by the anime series Sister Princess. Another series that inspired the team was Neon Genesis Evangelion, with a comparison being drawn between them due to a shared trait: while having standard premises, darker narrative elements were hidden in its content. The central narrative theme was "Immorality", which was mostly demonstrated by writer Sawako Natori through the characters. Multiple endings were made because Yoko was told that the game would not have a sequel. The characters' stories were created by Yoko and Iwasaki, who independently created the character backgrounds: Yoko took charge of Seere, Leonard and Arioch, while Iwasaki was involved in developing Verdelet, Inuart and Caim. In an interview concerning her role in the game, Natori admitted to feeling embarrassed by her writing when hearing Sota Murakami and Natsuki Yamashita, who voiced Seere and Manah, speak their lines.
Caim, the main protagonist, was meant to be an examination of the typical action game hero, which Yoko felt should not have a happy ending in a story focused on violence. The nature of Caim and Angelus' relationship underwent changes during development: Yoko had conceived their relationship as a parasitic one, but Iwasaki wanted to create a different type of romance, and so wrote the love story for the two of them. The actor who portrayed the two was Shinnosuke Ikehata: though originally cast for the role of Caim, his versatility also got him the role of Angelus. Furiae was designed by Yoko as both an explanation for Caim and Inuart's rivalry, and as a representation of his distaste for the kind of forgettable character she represented. The relationship between Caim and Furiae, as well as their ultimate fates, was Yoko's response to the standard happy ending found in most role-playing games at the time, which he felt did not fit in with a protagonist who had killed hundreds during their quest. The second ending was principally inspired by this and his dislike for Sister Princess. Caim and Furiae were respectively based around Guts from Berserk and Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion, with Caim being codenamed "Guts" during development.
Inuart was originally designed as the main protagonist of Drakengard, with him being a "useless hero". A pivotal scene in the game, where he first clashes with Caim, became one of the ways Yoko was able to properly project his vision of the game's world. Verdelet was portrayed as the "despicable elder", who cared for no-one except himself: his personality was intended to be both ineffectual and bossy, even in the face of catastrophe. Manah's role in Drakengard was designed to represent unloved children. The fifth ending, a boss battle in modern-day Tokyo, was created as a joke ending in the same vein as the Silent Hill series and an unexpected twist for players who were expecting an upbeat tone after the previous endings. Titled the End of dragon sphere, this ending served as a tribute to The End of Evangelion.
Character designs were done by Kimihiko Fujisaka. Drakengard was his first job as a character designer: his designs were firmly seated within the Medieval European aesthetic. To achieve this, he imagined that he had been sent back to that historical period. His designs were inspired by the character designs of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Caim was one of the earliest characters created for Drakengard. In Inuart's design, Fujisaka incorporated heavy armor into his design to give a more forceful impression for players. His ultimate role and final design were based around the idea of him being Caim's rival. The design of the black dragon, which acted as Inuart's pact beast, did not impress Shiba, who considered cutting it from the final product. Manah's red clothing was designed to evoke both its status as the game's key color, and her status as the leader of the Cult of the Watchers. Shiba approved of the design, feeling that it contrasted nicely with Furiae's predominantly white design. Fujisaka also helped design Furiae's monster form for the game's second ending. In hindsight, Fujisaka was dissatisfied with his work on Drakengard, particularly his work on Caim. The game's monsters were designed by Taro Hasegawa.
### Music
The music was composed by Nobuyoshi Sano and Takayuki Aihara: the two used excerpts from pieces of classical music (selected by Aihara), then rearranged, remixed and layered them. Their main objective was to create music that emulated the gameplay, as well as the story and general narrative theme of "madness". The music was intended to be "experimental" and "expressionistic" rather than "commercial". The theme song, "Exhausted" (尽きる, Tsukiru), was composed by Sano, written by Natori and sung by Eriko Hatsune. The soundtrack was originally released in two volumes under the names Drag-On Dragoon Original Soundtrack Vol.1 and Drag-On Dragoon Original Soundtrack Vol.2, released on October 22 and November 21, 2003, respectively. The soundtrack was re-released on April 20, 2011, as a two-disc set under the title Drag-On Dragoon Original Soundtrack.
## Reception
Drakengard sold more than 122,000 units in its first week of release in Japan, taking Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Space's place at the top of the sales charts. By the end of 2003, it had sold 241,014 copies. Gaming magazine Famitsu ranked it as the 50th best-selling title of 2003, and sold well enough that it was made part of Square Enix's Ultimate Hits series, re-releases of popular titles. Its strong sales were attributed by the team to its cinematic story and similarity to the popular Dynasty Warriors series. In Europe, the game sold 110,000 units by September 2004.
According to GameSpot, Drakengard received favorable reviews in Japan. Famitsu gave it an overall score of 29/40. After the game's reveal at E3, multiple video game publications, including Official PlayStation Magazine, IGN and Game Informer, praised its promising story and mixture of gameplay genres. The game received "average" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.
The story received the highest amount of praise. IGN's Jeremy Dunham called it the game's "biggest strength", praising the edgy themes explored and the balance between fantasy and realism. He also praised the multiple parallels with Neon Genesis Evangelion. The reviewer for Computer and Video Games (CVG) praised "the maturity and wit of the dialogue and unfolding plot", noting that they stood alongside other Square Enix RPGs of the time. VideoGamer.com's Adam Jarvis praised the game's storytelling style, saying that while it became "a little bogged down at various points, it is deep enough to keep your interest throughout the game." GameSpot's Greg Kasavin said that "though the story itself is awkwardly paced and is sometimes difficult to keep up with, it becomes one of the main motivating factors for wanting to get all the way through to the end of the game."
The graphics received mixed responses. Kasavin said the game "looks decent but, ultimately, not all that good". He criticized the bland environments and awkward movements for enemy units and the playable character, but praised the design of the dragon. Game Informer was more positive, praising the graphical detail and cutscenes and the look of enemy units, despite finding pop-up issues and framerate dips. Jarvis praised the design of the main cast, but cited the repetitive enemy design and dark environments as detracting elements. Dunham praised the character and monster designs as well as the full-motion cutscenes, but was less impressed by the repetitive human enemy designs, bland environments and low draw distance. The full-motion videos were also praised by the CVG reviewer.
Reaction to the sound design was mixed to positive. Dunham praised the majority of the British-style voice acting, but called the music "disappointing". Game Informer cited the low number of background tracks and voice acting "straight out of a renaissance festival" as poorer parts of the game. Kasavin praised the voice acting and called the music "the most nerve-racking and most intense aspect of the game." Jarvis was also positive, praising the sound design for battles, most of the voice acting and the music, which "[helped] create a suitably dark atmosphere."
Reception of the gameplay was mixed to negative, with Dunham saying it suffered the same problems as its derivative games despite its easy entertainment value, while Jarvis called the options in gameplay "fairly limited". The CVG reviewer praised the aerial segments of gameplay, calling them the most entertaining, and found that the standard combat served to embellish the protagonist's "kick-ass persona, making him more than just another anonymous dragon rider". The main criticism was repetition in the gameplay. Kasavin was exceptionally critical, saying that the gameplay both made the process of playing laborious and detracted from the main story. Game Informer called the gameplay "fun, but [lacking] any semblance of depth."
## Legacy
Drakengard received two novelizations by Emi Nagashima (writing as Jun Eishima) and Takashi Aizawa. The game's events were retold again in a special story titled Drakengard 1.3, which followed on from the spin-off manga Drag-On Dragoon: Shi ni Itaru Aka. In March 2014, Hardcore Gamer's Jahanzeb Khan favorably referred to the game as a precursor to the TV adaptation of the book series A Song of Ice and Fire in its handling of taboo themes and violence. The game was considered successful enough in Japan by Square Enix that a sequel was commissioned. Drakengard 2 was again produced by Shiba, but Yoko was replaced as director by Akira Yasui, resulting in numerous thematic changes. Originally set following the first ending of Drakengard, it was later retconned into an isolated timeline. A prequel, Drakengard 3, was released in 2013, with multiple staff members returning to their original roles.
An attempt to create another title in the series resulted in the spin-off Nier, which retains links and themes from the main series. Nier takes place over a thousand years after the events of Drakengard's fifth ending. When Cavia was absorbed by AQ Interactive after Nier's release, a future attempt by Shiba to continue the series was unsuccessful. A sequel, Nier: Automata, was developed by PlatinumGames in collaboration with previous Nier staff and released in 2017, taking place after Nier's fourth ending.
|
20,995,033 |
Clathrus ruber
| 1,159,281,423 |
Species of fungus in the stinkhorn family
|
[
"Fungi described in 1801",
"Fungi of Africa",
"Fungi of Asia",
"Fungi of Australia",
"Fungi of Europe",
"Fungi of Macaronesia",
"Fungi of North America",
"Fungi of South America",
"Inedible fungi",
"Phallales"
] |
Clathrus ruber is a species of fungus in the family Phallaceae, and the type species of the genus Clathrus. It is commonly known as the latticed stinkhorn, the basket stinkhorn, or the red cage, alluding to the striking fruit bodies that are shaped somewhat like a round or oval hollow sphere with interlaced or latticed branches. The fungus is saprobic, feeding off decaying woody plant material, and is often found alone or in groups in leaf litter on garden soil, grassy places, or on woodchip garden mulches. Although considered primarily a European species, C. ruber has been introduced to other areas, and now has a wide distribution that includes all continents except Antarctica. The species was illustrated in the scientific literature during the 16th century, but was not officially described until 1729.
The fruit body initially appears like a whitish "egg" attached to the ground at the base by cords called rhizomorphs. The egg has a delicate, leathery outer membrane enclosing the compressed lattice that surrounds a layer of olive-green spore-bearing slime called the gleba, which contains high levels of calcium that help protect the fruit body during development. As the egg ruptures and the fruit body expands, the gleba is carried upward on the inner surfaces of the spongy lattice, and the egg membrane remains as a volva around the base of the structure. The fruit body can reach heights of up to 20 cm (7.9 in). The color of the fruit body, which can range from pink to orange to red, results primarily from the carotenoid pigments lycopene and beta-carotene. The gleba has a fetid odor, somewhat like rotting meat, which attracts flies and other insects to help disperse its spores. Although the edibility of the fungus is not known with certainty, its odor would deter most from consuming it. C. ruber was not regarded highly in tales in southern European folklore, which suggested that those who handled the mushroom risked contracting various ailments.
## Taxonomy, phylogeny, and naming
Clathrus ruber was illustrated in 1560 by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner in his Nomenclator Aquatilium Animantium—Gesner mistook the mushroom for a marine organism. It appeared in a woodcut in John Gerard's 1597 Great Herball, shortly thereafter in Carolus Clusius' 1601 Fungorum in Pannoniis Observatorum Brevis Historia, and was one of the species featured in Cassiano dal Pozzo's museo cartaceo ("paper museum") that consisted of thousands of illustrations of the natural world.
The fungus was first described scientifically in 1729, by the Italian Pier Antonio Micheli in his Nova plantarum genera iuxta Tournefortii methodum disposita, who gave it its current scientific name. The species was once referred to by American authors as Clathrus cancellatus L., as they used a system of nomenclature based on the former American Code of Botanical Nomenclature, in which the starting point for naming species was Linnaeus's 1753 Species Plantarum. The International Code for Botanical Nomenclature now uses the same starting date, but names of Gasteromycetes used by Christian Hendrik Persoon in his Synopsis Methodica Fungorum (1801) are sanctioned and automatically replace earlier names. Since Persoon used the specific epithet ruber, the correct name for the species is Clathrus ruber. Several historical names of the fungus are now synonyms: Clathrus flavescens, named by Persoon in 1801; Clathrus cancellatus by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and published by Elias Fries in 1823; Clathrus nicaeensis, published by Jean-Baptiste Barla in 1879; and Clathrus ruber var. flavescens, published by Livio Quadraccia and Dario Lunghini in 1990.
Clathrus ruber is the type species of the genus Clathrus, and is part of the group of Clathrus species known as the Laternoid series. Common features uniting this group include the vertical arms of the receptacle (fruit body) that are not joined together at the base, and the spongy structure of the receptacle. According to a molecular analysis published in 2006, out of the about 40 Phallales species used in the study, C. ruber is most closely related to Aseroe rubra, Clathrus archeri, Laternea triscapa, and Clathrus chrysomycelinus.
The generic name Clathrus is derived from Ancient Greek κλειθρον or "lattice", and the specific epithet is Latin ruber, meaning "red". The mushroom is commonly known as the "basket stinkhorn", the "lattice stinkhorn", or the "red cage". It was known to the locals of the Adriatic hinterland in the former Yugoslavia as veštičije srce or vještičino srce, meaning "witch's heart". This is still the case in parts of rural France, where it is known as cœur de sorcière.
## Description
Before the volva opens, the fruiting body is egg-shaped to roughly spherical, up to 6 cm (2.4 in) in diameter, with a gelatinous interior up to 3 mm (0.1 in) thick. White to grayish in color, it is initially smooth, but develops a network of polygonal marks on the surface prior to opening as the internal structures expand and stretch the peridium taut. The fruit body, or receptacle, bursts the egg open as it expands (a process that can take as little as a few hours), and leaves the remains of the peridium as a cup or volva surrounding the base. The receptacle ranges in color from red to pale orange, and it is often lighter in color approaching the base. The color appears to be dependent upon the temperature and humidity of the environment. The receptacle consists of a spongy network of "arms" interlaced to make meshes of unequal size. At the top of the receptacle, the arms are up to 1.5 cm (0.6 in) thick, but they taper down to smaller widths near the base. A cross-section of the arm reveals it to be spongy, and made up of one wide inner tube and two indistinct rows of tubes towards the outside. The outer surface of the receptacle is ribbed or wrinkled. There are between 80 and 120 mesh holes in the receptacle. The unusual shape of the receptacle has inspired some creative comparisons: David Arora likened it to a whiffleball, while the German Mycological Society—who named C. ruber the 2011 "Mushroom of the Year"—described it as "like an alien from a science fiction horror film".
A considerable variation in height has been reported for the receptacle, ranging from 8 to 20 cm (3.1 to 7.9 in) tall. The base of the fruit bodies are attached to the substrate by rhizomorphs (thickened cords of mycelia). The dark olive-green to olive-brown, foul-smelling sticky gleba covers the inner surface of the receptacle, except near the base. The odor—described as resembling rotting meat—attracts flies, other insects, and, in one report, a scarab beetle (Scarabaeus sacer) that help disperse the spores. The putrid odor—and people's reaction to it—have been well documented. In 1862 Mordecai Cubitt Cooke wrote "it is recorded of a botanist who gathered one for the purpose of drying it for his herbarium, that he was compelled by the stench to rise during the night and cast the offender out the window." American mycologist David Arora called the odor "the vilest of any stinkhorn". The receptacle collapses about 24 hours after its initial eruption from the egg.
The spores are elongated, smooth, and have dimensions of 4–6 by 1.5–2 μm. Scanning electron microscopy has revealed that C. ruber (in addition to several other Phallales species) has a hilar scar—a small indentation in the surface of the spore where it was previously connected to the basidium via the sterigma. The basidia (spore-bearing cells) are six-spored.
### Similar species
Clathrus ruber may be distinguished from the closely related tropical species C. crispus by the absence of the corrugated rims which surround each mesh of the C. crispus fruit body. The phylogenetically close species C. chrysomycelinus has a yellow receptacle with arms that are structurally simpler, and its gleba is concentrated on specialized "glebifers" located at the lattice intersections. It is known only from Venezuela to southern Brazil. Clathrus columnatus has a fruit body with two to five long vertical orange or red spongy columns, joined together at the apex.
### Edibility and folklore
Although edibility for C. ruber has not been officially documented, its foul smell would dissuade most people from eating it. In general, stinkhorn mushrooms are considered edible when still in the egg stage, and are even considered delicacies in some parts of Europe and Asia, where they are pickled raw and sold in markets as "devil's eggs". An 1854 report provides a cautionary tale to those considering consuming the mature fruit body. Dr. F. Peyre Porcher, of Charleston, South Carolina, described an account of poisoning caused by the mushroom:
> A young person having eaten a bit of it, after six hours suffered from a painful tension of the lower stomach, and violent convulsions. He lost the use of his speech, and fell into a state of stupor, which lasted for forty-eight hours. After taking an emetic he threw up a fragment of the mushroom, with two worms, and mucus, tinged with blood. Milk, oil, and emollient fomentations, were then employed with success.
C. ruber is generally listed as inedible or poisonous in many British mushroom publications from 1974 to 2008.
British mycologist Donald Dring, in his 1980 monograph on the family Clathraceae, wrote that C. ruber was not regarded highly in southern European folklore. He mentions a case of poisoning following its ingestion, reported by Barla in 1858, and notes that Ciro Pollini reported finding it growing on a human skull in a tomb in a deserted church. According to John Ramsbottom, Gascons consider the mushroom a cause of cancer; they will usually bury specimens they find. In other parts of France it has been reputed to produce skin rashes or cause convulsions.
## Ecology, habitat, and distribution
Like most of the species of the order Phallales, Clathrus ruber is saprobic—a decomposer of wood and plant matter—and is commonly found fruiting in mulch beds. The fungus grows alone or clustered together near woody debris, in lawns, gardens, and cultivated soil.
Clathrus ruber was originally described by Micheli from Italy. It is considered native to southern and central continental Europe, as well as Macaronesia (the Azores and the Canary Islands), western Turkey, North Africa (Algeria), and western Asia (Iran). The fungus is rare in central Europe, and is listed in the Red data book of Ukraine.
The fungus has probably been introduced elsewhere, often because of the use of imported mulch used in gardening and landscaping. It may have extended its range northwards into the British Isles or been introduced in the nineteenth century. It now has a mainly southerly distribution in England and has been recorded from Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, the Isle of Wight, Hampshire, Berkshire, Sussex, Surrey, and Middlesex. In Scotland, it has been recorded from Argyll. It is also known from Wales, the Channel Islands, and Ireland. The fungus also occurs in the United States (California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, and New York), Canada, Mexico, and Australasia. The species was also reported from South America (Argentina). In China, it has been collected from Guangdong, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Tibet. Records from Japan are referable to Clathrus kusanoi; records from the Caribbean are probably of C. crispus.
## Biochemistry
Like other stinkhorn fungi, C. ruber bioaccumulates the element manganese. It has been postulated that this element plays a role in the enzymatic breakdown of the gleba with simultaneous formation of odorous compounds. Compounds like dimethyl sulfide, aldehydes, and amines—which contribute to the disagreeable odor of the gleba—are produced by the enzymatic decarboxylation of keto acids and amino acids, but the enzymes will only work in the presence of manganese. A chemical analysis of the elemental composition of the gelatinous outer layer, the embryonic receptacle and the gleba showed the gelatinous layer to be richest in potassium, calcium, manganese, and iron ions. Calcium ion stabilizes the polysaccharide gel, protecting the embryonic receptacle from drying out during the growth of the egg. Potassium is required for the gelatinous layer to retain its osmotic pressure and retain water; high concentrations of the element are needed to support the rapid growth of the receptacle. The high concentration of elements suggests that the gelatinous layer has a "placenta-like" function—serving as a reservoir from which the receptacle may draw upon as it rapidly expands.
Pigments responsible for the orange to red colors of the mature fruit bodies have been identified as carotenes, predominantly lycopene and beta-carotene—the same compounds responsible for the red and orange colors of tomatoes and carrots, respectively. Lycopene is also the main pigment in the closely related fungus Clathrus archeri, while beta-carotene is the predominant pigment in the Phallaceae species Mutinus caninus, M. ravenelii, and M. elegans.
|
56,750,388 |
SS Choctaw
| 1,171,109,520 |
Unique steamship wrecked in Lake Huron in 1915
|
[
"1892 ships",
"2017 archaeological discoveries",
"Great Lakes freighters",
"Maritime incidents in 1893",
"Maritime incidents in 1896",
"Maritime incidents in 1900",
"Maritime incidents in 1902",
"Maritime incidents in 1915",
"Merchant ships of the United States",
"National Register of Historic Places in Presque Isle County, Michigan",
"Ships built in Cleveland",
"Ships sunk in collisions",
"Ships sunk with no fatalities",
"Shipwreck discoveries by Jerry Eliason, Ken Merryman and Kraig Smith",
"Shipwrecks of Lake Huron",
"Shipwrecks of the Michigan coast",
"Shipwrecks on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan",
"Steamships of the United States",
"Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary",
"Whaleback ships",
"Wreck diving sites in the United States"
] |
SS Choctaw was a steel-hulled American freighter in service between 1892 and 1915, on the Great Lakes of North America. She was a so-called monitor vessel, containing elements of traditional lake freighters and the whaleback ships designed by Alexander McDougall. Choctaw was built in 1892 by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and was originally owned by the Lake Superior Iron Company. She was sold to the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company in 1894 and spent the rest of her working life with it. On her regular route between Detroit, Escanaba, Marquette (all in Michigan), and Cleveland, she carried iron ore downbound, and coal upbound.
On July 11, 1915, in foggy conditions, Choctaw was upbound for Marquette on Lake Huron with a cargo of coal from Cleveland. East of Presque Isle Light, the freighter was rammed by the downbound Canadian canaller Wahcondah. Although Choctaw sank in only 17 minutes, her crew of 22 escaped, and was picked up by Wahcondah.
For a long time, shipwreck hunters searched for the wreck of Choctaw due to her unique design. The wreck was located by a team from the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary on May 23, 2017, almost 102 years after she sank. She was discovered resting under 300 feet (90 meters) of water, lying on her starboard side with the bow partially buried in the lake bottom. The wreck was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 10, 2018.
## History
### Background
In 1843, the gunship USS Michigan, built in Erie, Pennsylvania, became the first iron-hulled vessel built on the Great Lakes. In the mid-1840s, Canadian companies began importing iron vessels prefabricated by shipyards in the United Kingdom. However, it would not be until 1862 that the first iron-hulled merchant ship, Merchant, was built on the Great Lakes. Despite the success of Merchant, wooden vessels remained preferable to iron ones until the 1880s, due to their inexpensiveness, and the abundance of timber. In the early 1880s, shipyards around the Great Lakes began to construct iron ships on a relatively large scale; in 1882, Onoko, an iron freighter, temporarily became the largest ship on the lakes. In 1884, the first steel freighters were built on the Great Lakes, and by the 1890s, the majority of ships constructed on the lakes were made of steel.
Throughout the 1880s, the iron ore trade on the Great Lakes grew exponentially, primarily due to the increasing size of the lake freighters, and the rise in the number of trips made by ore boats to the ore docks of Lake Superior. As the railways were unable to keep up with the rapid production of iron ore (which was normally destined for foundries in Ohio and Pennsylvania), most of it was transported by bulk freighters. The quantity of iron ore mined from around Lake Superior rose from around 3,500,000 long tons (3,556,164 t) in 1886, to over 9,000,000 long tons (9,144,422 t) in 1890.
### Design and construction
Named after the Choctaw Indian tribe from the southern United States, Choctaw was built in 1892, on the banks of the Cuyahoga River by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company for the Lake Superior Iron Company of Ishpeming, Michigan. Her hull was 266.9 feet (81.4 m) in length with a 38.1-foot (11.6 m) beam, and had a 17.9-foot-deep (5.5 m) hold and water bottom. She had a gross register tonnage of 1573.61 tons and a net register tonnage of 1256.28 tons.
The vessel had a cutaway stern and seven cargo hatches, and there were no interior bulkheads between the forward collision bulkhead and the engine bulkhead in her stern. Choctaw could carry 2,800 short tons (2,500 t) of cargo; when she was fully loaded, she had a 16-foot (4.9 m) draught. She was powered by a 900 hp (670 kW) triple expansion steam engine, steam for which was provided by two coal-fired Scotch marine boilers.
Designed by Swedish naval architect Arendt Ångström, Choctaw had an unusual design. She was a steel freighter similar to the iconic whaleback design invented by Captain Alexander McDougall, but unlike a whaleback, she had straight sides and a conventional bow. This combination meant from the waterline upward, her sides sloped inward in a "tumblehome" configuration. Ships with this hybrid design were known as "monitors", "semi-whalebacks" or "straight-backs", and like the true whalebacks, they were vulnerable to getting a wet deck in stormy conditions. Choctaw was one of only three semi-whaleback ships ever built; she had an identical sister ship named Andaste and a "near-sister" ship named Yuma.
### Service history
Choctaw was launched on May 25, 1892, as hull number 17 and entered service later in 1892, with the official number 126874. Her regular route was between Detroit, Escanaba, Marquette (all in Michigan), and Cleveland, Ohio. She carried iron ore while downbound from Escanaba and Marquette for foundries in Detroit and Cleveland, and carried coal upbound, which fueled the mining equipment. Choctaw made her maiden voyage to Marquette in June 1892. In 1894, she was sold to the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company.
When Choctaw was travelling on Lake St. Clair on April 19, 1893, one of her cylinder heads exploded, scalding two firemen to death, and severely injuring another. On May 20, 1896, Choctaw collided with the larger steel freighter L.C. Waldo, which tore a 10-foot (3.0 m) hole in Choctaw's starboard side; she sank onto a shoal at the Soo Locks. On June 1, 1896, temporary repairs were made to Choctaw in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, before she sailed to Cleveland, Ohio.
At around 12:00 p.m. (EST) on May 26, 1900, Choctaw ran aground near Pointe aux Pins on Lake Superior, near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. On April 26, 1902, Choctaw struck a rock or hit the bottom after being lifted by waves near Marquette, and partially sank after reaching the shelter of Marquette Harbour.
Choctaw was in Marquette Harbour on November 9, 1913, during that year's Great Lakes Storm when her Captain Charles A. Fox saw the 545-foot-long (166 m) steel freighter Henry B. Smith leave the shelter of the harbour. This was the last time Henry B. Smith was seen afloat; she was one of the twelve ships that were lost during the storm.
### Final voyage and collision
On July 11, 1915, the weather conditions on Lake Huron were very foggy. Choctaw, under the command of Captain Fox, was upbound from Cleveland for Marquette with a cargo of coal. At around 4:30 a.m. (EST), the Canadian canaller Wahcondah, which was downbound with a cargo of wheat from Fort William, Ontario to Montreal, sighted Choctaw. The captain of Wahcondah ordered the engines of his ship to be reversed but this did not stop Wahcondah from slicing into the port side of Choctaw between her first and second cargo hatches. After the collision, the captain of Wahcondah lost sight of Choctaw. The crew of Wahcondah relocated Choctaw after sighting her tall funnel through the heavy fog. Eventually, Captain Fox ordered Choctaw's lifeboats to be lowered but the vessel sank so quickly some of her crew could not make it to her lifeboats in time and had to jump overboard. The crew of Choctaw reached Wahcondah in their own lifeboats. Although Choctaw sank in only 17 minutes, her entire crew of 22 escaped. Despite her bow sustaining significant damage, Wahcondah stayed afloat and took the crew of Choctaw to Sarnia, Ontario. The approximate location of Choctaw's sinking was given as five–six miles (8.0–9.7 km) east of Presque Isle Light. According to Fox:
> We did not see the Wahcondah until she was within ten feet [3.0 m] of us. She caught us on the port side and struck beams or else she would have cut us in two. We put off in the lifeboats as quickly as possible after we knew the ship could not float. The Choctaw listed to port and began to go down at the head. Then she righted and began to list to the starboard. As she shifted to starboard her stern rose out of the water and she rolled over, going down bottom side up. We were in the yawl boats about 400 feet [120 m] away when she rolled. It sounded as if a million dishes and hundreds of sticks were being broken as the ship rolled over.
The day after she sank, Captain Nelson Brown of the steamer James H. Reed spotted Choctaw's upper cabins floating off Presque Isle, Michigan, and was able to read the ship's name as he approached them. Nine days after Choctaw sank, 40 feet (12 m) of her cabin and several timbers were discovered one mile (1.6 km) north of Middle Island by the coast guard, and a lighthouse keeper.
#### Investigation
After Choctaw sank, Cleveland-Cliffs libeled Wahcondah, alleging that she was travelling at an excessive speed for the conditions, and should be held responsible for the collision. Choctaw's crew corroborated her owner's claims. Captain Cornelius Dineen accepted the accusation against his vessel, but claimed that Choctaw was also running at full speed, did not maintain a lookout, and accepted Wahcondah's passing signal instead of sounding her alarm and reversing. An examination of Choctaw's logbook revealed that despite the fog, she had travelled at full speed throughout the entire year, including at the time of the collision. The judge presiding over the case ruled that Choctaw and Wahcondah were both at fault. Cleveland-Cliffs appealed the decision, claiming that the judge had no right to disregard the testimony of Choctaw's crew based on the logbook details, and argued that not checking a vessel's speed in fog was not a punishable offence. They further argued that the lookout was not needed at the Choctaw's bow because of the monitor ship's high-visibility design, and that even a properly positioned lookout would have had difficulty communicating with the helmsman 200 feet (61.0 m) feet away. The court did not accept this argument, stating that:
> His absence from the ordinary and proper location at the bow cannot be justified for these reasons. We find no evidence of such custom; nor is the ship’s type a sufficient excuse. The sea was smooth, and there would have been no difficulty in standing on the bow turret, and that location, seemingly, would not have been beyond calling distance for making reports.
The court eventually determined that:
> There is fair probability that they might have avoided this mistake. This view leads to the conclusion that the Choctaw should be condemned for the lack of lookout, and that the damages should be divided.
Choctaw was insured for \$80,200 (equivalent to \$ in ), while her cargo was valued at \$80,000 (equivalent to \$ in ).
## Wreck
### Searches
Choctaw was a highly sought-after shipwreck due to her unique design. Several unsuccessful attempts to locate the ship were made; several of them resulted in the discovery of one or more other wrecks. Shipwreck hunter Stan Stock conducted an independent search for Choctaw in 2003; he located the wreck of the schooner Kyle Spangler but failed to find Choctaw. Shipwreck hunters from the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary collaborated with Stock in 2008 to map the wreck of Kyle Spangler. In August 2008, they partnered with the University of Rhode Island but rather than finding Choctaw, they located the wreck of the passenger steamer Messenger.
In 2011, a group consisting of expert shipwreck hunters and high school students tried to locate Choctaw. Their search effort was charted in a documentary named "Project Shiphunt". Although they failed to locate Choctaw, they found the wrecks of the steel hulled freighter Etruria, which sank on the lake after a collision with the steamer Amasa Stone, and the schooner M.F. Merrick, which sank in 1889 after a collision with the steamer Rufus P. Ranney.
### Discovery
Between April and July 2017, Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary collaborated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research to test new equipment including unmanned aircraft systems and autonomous underwater vehicles that were designed to search for missing shipwrecks. On May 23, 2017, researchers from Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary discovered two shipwrecks in the deep waters of Lake Huron, off the coast of Presque Isle. The researchers carried out several investigations between June and August; these investigations confirmed the identities of Choctaw and the early wooden-hulled freighter Ohio. Both wrecks are in a place known as "Shipwreck Alley", which is a 448-square-mile (1,160 km<sup>2</sup>) area of the Lake Huron shoreline that holds an estimated 200 shipwrecks. The US federal government named the area the nation's first National Freshwater Marine Sanctuary in 2000.
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary did not announce their discovery until September 1, 2017, and avocational shipwreck hunters continued to search for Choctaw. On August 13, 2017, independent researcher Dan Fountain found Choctaw using a modified fishfinder. On August 20, he returned to the site with veteran shipwreck hunters Ken Merryman and Jerry Eliason to survey the wreck with Eliason's homemade high definition drop video system, positively identifying the wreck as Choctaw.
### Choctaw today
The remains of Choctaw rest under 300 feet (91 m) of cold, fresh water. The wreck rests on her starboard side, nearly upside down, with the exposed section of her hull rising at an angle from the lake bottom. The upper level of her stern cabins broke away when she sank, leaving only the weather deck level cabins intact. The wreckage of her pilothouse lies beside her hull. The entire bow, including the section between the first and the second hatch where the collision occurred, is completely buried and only the last three of her seven cargo hatches remain exposed. There is a sizeable debris field surrounding her wreck, with most of the visible artefacts located near her stern.
The wreck of Choctaw was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 10, 2018, for its state-level significance in engineering and maritime history.
|
1,044,456 |
John Bull (locomotive)
| 1,172,466,858 |
British-built railroad steam locomotive
|
[
"0-4-0 locomotives",
"1831 works",
"2-4-0 locomotives",
"Artifacts in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution",
"Early steam locomotives",
"Individual locomotives of the United States",
"Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives",
"Preserved steam locomotives of Great Britain",
"Preserved steam locomotives of Pennsylvania",
"Preserved steam locomotives of Washington, D.C.",
"Standard gauge locomotives of the United States",
"Unique locomotives"
] |
John Bull is a historic British-built railroad steam locomotive that operated in the United States. It was operated for the first time on September 15, 1831, and became the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution ran it under its own steam in 1981. Built by Robert Stephenson and Company, it was initially purchased by and operated for the Camden and Amboy Railroad, the first railroad in New Jersey, which gave it the number 1 and its first name, "Stevens". (Robert L. Stevens was president of the Camden and Amboy Railroad at the time.) The C&A used it heavily from 1833 until 1866, when it was removed from active service and placed in storage.
After the C&A's assets were acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in 1871, the PRR refurbished and operated the locomotive a few times for public displays: it was fired up for the Centennial Exposition in 1876 and again for the National Railway Appliance Exhibition in 1883. In 1884 it was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution as the museum's first major industrial exhibit.
In 1939 the employees of the PRR's Altoona, Pennsylvania workshops built an operable replica of the locomotive for further exhibition duties, as the Smithsonian wanted to keep the original locomotive in a more controlled environment. After being on static display for 42 years, the Smithsonian commemorated the locomotive's 150th birthday in 1981 by firing it up; it was then the world's oldest surviving operable steam locomotive.
As of 2021, the original John Bull is on static display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and the replica is preserved at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, Pennsylvania.
## Construction and initial use
The John Bull was built in Newcastle, England, by Robert Stephenson and Company for the Camden and Amboy Railroad (C&A), the first railroad built in New Jersey. It was dismantled and then shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in crates aboard the Allegheny. C&A engineer Isaac Dripps reconstructed the locomotive to the best of his ability (the shipment did not include any drawings or instructions to assemble the locomotive) and ran it for the first time in September 1831. On November 12, 1831, Robert Stevens (then president of the C&A) repaid some political debts by inviting several members of the New Jersey legislature and some local dignitaries, including Napoleon's nephew Prince Murat, for rides behind the newly delivered locomotive over a short test track. The prince's wife, Catherine Willis Gray, made a point of hurrying onto the train so she could be declared the first woman to ride a steam-powered train in America, though unknown to her, men and women had already ridden behind the steam powered maiden runs on the Baltimore and Ohio, South Carolina Railroad, and the Mohawk and Hudson by this point in 1831.
Until the railroad was completed, the locomotive was placed in storage; horse-drawn cars served the construction efforts until 1833. The C&A applied both numbers and names to their first locomotives, giving this engine the number 1 and officially naming it Stevens after Robert L. Stevens. However, through regular use of the engine, crews began calling it the old John Bull, a reference to the cartoon personification of England, John Bull. Eventually the informal name was shortened to John Bull and this name was so much more widely used that Stevens fell out of use.
In September 1836 the John Bull and two coaches were shipped by canal to Harrisburg, and became the first locomotive to operate there.
## Mechanical modifications and early exhibitions
Stephenson built the locomotive originally as an 0-4-0. Power was transmitted to the driving axles from pistons that were mounted under the boiler between the two front wheels and in front of the front axle. The main rods of the inside cylinders were connected to a rear crank axle, with a connecting rod between the two axles providing power to the front axle.
Due to poorer quality track than was the norm in its native England, the locomotive tended to derail, so the C&A's engineers added a leading truck to help guide the engine into curves. The leading truck's mechanism necessitated the removal of the coupling rod between the two main axles, leaving only the rear axle powered. Effectively, the John Bull became a 4-2-0. Later, the C&A also added a pilot ("cowcatcher") to the lead truck. The cowcatcher is an angled assembly designed to deflect animals and debris off of the railroad track in front of the locomotive. To protect the locomotive's crew from the weather, the C&A added a cab to the locomotive, and C&A workshop crews added safety features such as a bell and headlight.
After several years serving as a switching engine and stationary boiler, the John Bull was retired in 1866 and stored in Bordentown, New Jersey. Toward the end of its life in revenue service, the locomotive worked as a pump engine and as the power for a sawmill.
The C&A was soon absorbed into the United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company (1869), which, in turn, was merged into the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in 1871. The PRR saw the potential publicity to be gained by exhibiting such an old engine, showing it at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia; PRR workshop staff then retrofitted the engine to look more as it originally had. The wide funnel was replaced with a straight metal tube and the cab walls and roof were removed. The PRR then exhibited the engine in 1883 at the National Railway Appliance Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois. In 1885, the Smithsonian Institution accepted the donation of the John Bull from the PRR as the Institution's first large engineering artifact.
## Smithsonian Institution and locomotive restoration
At the exhibition in 1883, the Pennsylvania Railroad ended up resolving two problems at once. In the Smithsonian Institution, the railroad was able to find a home for the historic locomotive, as well as a suitable new employer for a young civil engineer named J. Elfreth Watkins. Watkins had been involved in an accident on the railroad in New Jersey a few years before the exhibition. He had lost a leg in the accident, so he was no longer suited to the physical demands of railroad work, although the railroad did employ him as a clerk for a while after his accident. The PRR employed his engineering experience as an expert curator for the Smithsonian's new Arts and Industries Building, which was opened in 1880. The locomotive's first public exhibition at the Smithsonian occurred on December 22, 1884, where it was displayed in the East Hall of the Arts and Industries building.
The locomotive remained on display in this location for nearly 80 years, but it was transported for display outside the museum on certain rare occasions. The most significant display in this time occurred in 1893 when the locomotive traveled to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition. The Pennsylvania Railroad, like many other railroads of the time, put on grand displays of their progress; the PRR arranged for the locomotive and a couple of coaches to be delivered to the railroad's Jersey City, New Jersey, workshops where it would undergo a partial restoration to operating condition. The PRR was planning an event worthy of the locomotive's significance to American railroad history — the railroad actually planned to operate the locomotive for the entire distance between New Jersey and Chicago.
The restoration was supervised by the PRR's chief mechanical officer, Theodore N. Ely. Ely was confident enough in its 50-mile (80.5 km) test run to Perth Amboy, New Jersey (which took two hours and fifteen minutes), that the governors of all the states that the locomotive was to pass through and the then President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, were invited to ride behind the engine on its first leg toward Chicago. The John Bull was to pull a few passenger cars in a train that would carry dignitaries and representatives of the press. The train traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the charge of one locomotive crew. From Philadelphia, local engineers (train drivers) were employed to ride on the locomotive's footplate as pilots to advise the operators for the trip over the local engineers' territories for the rest of the journey to Chicago. Traveling at 25 to 30 miles per hour (40 to 48 km/h), the train departed from the Pennsylvania Railroad's Jersey City station at 10:16 a.m. on April 17 and reached Chicago on April 22. The locomotive operated during the exhibition giving rides to the exhibition's attendees, and then the train left Chicago on December 6 for the return trip to Washington. The locomotive arrived back in Washington on December 13.
In 1927 the John Bull again traveled outside the museum. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was celebrating its centenary that year in its Fair of the Iron Horse in Baltimore, Maryland. Since the locomotive's original tender (fuel and water car) had deteriorated beyond repair and was dismantled in 1910, the PRR built a replica of the tender at its Altoona, Pennsylvania, workshops. The locomotive was also refurbished in Altoona for operation during the fair. This fair was the last steam up for the locomotive until 1980.
## (Mostly) static display
After the locomotive returned to the Smithsonian, it remained on static display. In 1930 the museum commissioned the Altoona Works to build a second replica of the locomotive's tender for display with the locomotive in the museum. This replica tender integrated some of the fittings of the original that the museum had retained when it had been dismantled twenty years earlier.
The Smithsonian recognized the locomotive's age in 1931, but, since the museum didn't have the funds to refurbish the locomotive for full operation again, it was decided to run the locomotive in place (with the driving wheels lifted off the rails using jacks) with compressed air. The museum borrowed an 1836 coach from the Pennsylvania Railroad to display on the track behind the newly rebuilt tender, and the locomotive's 100th birthday was officially celebrated on November 12, 1931. The locomotive's semi-operation was broadcast over the CBS radio network with Stanley Bell narrating the ceremonies for the radio audience.
The PRR again borrowed the locomotive and rebuilt tender from 1933 to 1934 for the Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago. Unlike its earlier round-trip to Chicago under its own steam, the engine was hauled and displayed as a static exhibit. During the exhibit the Altoona Works built a operable replica, which was operated in 1940 at the New York World's Fair, while the original locomotive returned to the Smithsonian.
The John Bull was displayed outside the museum one more time in 1939 at the New York World's Fair, but the museum's curators decided that the locomotive was becoming too fragile for repeated outside exhibits. It was then placed in somewhat permanent display back in the East Hall where it remained for the next 25 years. In 1964 the locomotive was moved to its current home, the National Museum of American History, then called the Museum of History and Technology.
The John Bull had remained on static display for another 15 years, but the locomotive's significance as one of the oldest in existence, or its use on the first railroad in New Jersey, was not very plainly noted in the display's literature. As 1981 and the locomotive's 150th birthday approached, the Smithsonian started discussions on how best to commemorate the John Bull's age and significance. There was very little question that special publications and exhibits would be prepared, but museum officials were left with the thought that the exhibit could still be so much more than that.
Many superficial inspections were performed on the locomotive in 1980 and it was found to be in relatively sound mechanical condition. There wasn't a significant amount of deterioration noted in these early inspections, and when the wheels were jacked off the rails, as they had been 50 years earlier, the axles were found to be freely operable. One morning in January 1980, before the museum opened to the public, museum officials used compressed air to power the cylinders and move the wheels through the connecting rods for the first time since its last semi-operation. After the compressed air blew some dirt and debris out of the locomotive's exhaust stack, it was soon running smoothly.
The running gear seemed to be in good order, but it was still not known whether the boiler could still handle the pressure of steam and a live fire again. The museum asked the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company to inspect the locomotive's boiler for operation. The inspections were conducted after hours at the museum (from 6:30 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.) over three days and included electromagnetic, ultrasonic, and radiographic tests. The tests did reveal a few flaws, but it was projected that the engine could operate at a reduced boiler pressure of 50 psi (340 kPa); as delivered to the Camden & Amboy, the boiler was rated for 70 psi (480 kPa). The Smithsonian's staff, after a few further hydrostatic tests, were confident that the locomotive could again operate under its own power. The items that needed repair were serviced, and on October 14, 1980, the locomotive was successfully field-tested on the Warrenton Branch Line in Fauquier County between Calverton and Casanova, Virginia. The site was selected because at the time only one freight train per week used the branch line. On September 15, 1981, the locomotive operated under steam on a few miles of branch line near the Potomac River within Washington, D.C. With this exhibition, the locomotive became the oldest operable steam locomotive (and oldest self-propelled vehicle) in the world.
As of 2021, the original John Bull was on static display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the replica was preserved at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
## Timeline
- June 18, 1831: The John Bull is built by Stephenson and Company in Britain.
- July 14, 1831: The John Bull departs Liverpool aboard the ship Allegheny bound for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- September 4, 1831: The John Bull arrives in Philadelphia.
- September 15, 1831: The John Bull makes its first runs in New Jersey under its own power.
- November 12, 1831: Robert Stevens hosts a group of New Jersey politicians on a series of trial runs pulled by the John Bull.
- 1833: The John Bull is one of a few locomotives operating on the newly completed Camden and Amboy Railroad.
- 1866: The John Bull is retired from regular service.
- 1876: The John Bull is displayed at the United States Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
- 1883: The Pennsylvania Railroad displays John Bull at the National Railway Appliance Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois.
- 1884: The Smithsonian Institution acquires the John Bull from the Pennsylvania Railroad
- 1893: The John Bull operates at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
- 1910: The original tender, now deteriorated beyond repair, is dismantled by Smithsonian staff. Usable fittings from the tender are placed in storage.
- 1927: The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad borrows the John Bull to operate at the Fair of the Iron Horse in Baltimore, Maryland.
- 1930: A replica tender is commissioned by the Smithsonian and built by the Pennsylvania Railroad using the fittings previously salvaged from the original tender; the new tender is displayed with the locomotive at the museum.
- November 12, 1931: The Smithsonian celebrates the locomotive's 100th "birthday," using compressed air to operate the stationary engine (stabilized on jacks) within the museum's exhibit hall.
- 1933–1934: The Pennsylvania Railroad borrows the John Bull to display it at the Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago.
- 1939: The original John Bull is displayed in the opening of the New York World's Fair.
- 1940: A replica of the John Bull, built by engineers at the Pennsylvania Railroad's Juniata Shops in Altoona, Pennsylvania, is displayed at the New York World's Fair, and the original is returned to the Smithsonian.
- October 14, 1980: The John Bull is restored to operating condition, and tested on the Warrenton Branch Line in Fauquier County, Virginia.
- September 15, 1981: The John Bull operates in Washington, D.C., on the 150th anniversary of its first use, becoming the oldest operable steam locomotive (and oldest self-propelled vehicle) in the world.
- 1985: The John Bull is carried aboard an airplane for an exhibition in Dallas, Texas, making it the oldest locomotive in the world to travel by air.
## See also
- LMR 57 Lion
- Stourbridge Lion
- Tom Thumb
|
206,199 |
Sonic Adventure
| 1,173,272,894 |
1998 video game
|
[
"1998 video games",
"3D platform games",
"Cancelled Sega Saturn games",
"Dreamcast games",
"Now Production games",
"PlayStation 3 games",
"PlayStation Network games",
"Sega video games",
"Single-player video games",
"Sonic Team games",
"Sonic the Hedgehog video games",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games produced by Yuji Naka",
"Video games scored by Fumie Kumatani",
"Video games scored by Jun Senoue",
"Video games scored by Kenichi Tokoi",
"Video games scored by Masaru Setsumaru",
"Video games set on fictional islands",
"Video games with alternative versions",
"Windows games",
"Xbox 360 Live Arcade games",
"Xbox 360 games"
] |
is a 1998 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Dreamcast. It was the first main Sonic the Hedgehog game to feature 3D gameplay. It follows Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose, Big the Cat, and E-102 Gamma in their quests to collect the Chaos Emeralds and stop Doctor Robotnik from unleashing Chaos, an ancient evil. Controlling one of the six characters—each with their own abilities—players complete levels to progress the story. Sonic Adventure retains many elements from prior Sonic games, such as power-ups and the ring-based health system. Players can play minigames such as racing and interact with Chao, a virtual pet.
Sonic Team began developing Sonic Adventure in 1997, after the cancellation of the Sega Saturn game Sonic X-treme. Led by director Takashi Iizuka and producer Yuji Naka, the team strove to reinvent Sonic for the 3D era of video games. Adventure features a stronger emphasis on storytelling and role-playing elements in contrast to previous Sonic games, while Yuji Uekawa redesigned the series's characters for their transition to 3D. Sonic Team attempted to demonstrate the technical process of the Dreamcast with realistic graphics and drew inspiration from locations in Peru and Guatemala. The soundtrack was primarily composed by Jun Senoue, who preferred rock music over the electropop of previous Sonic games.
Following its reveal at the Tokyo International Forum in August 1998, Sonic Adventure was highly anticipated and was released in Japan in December 1998, North America in September 1999, and Europe in October 1999. It received critical acclaim and became the Dreamcast's bestseller, with 2.5 million copies sold by August 2006. Reviewers considered Adventure a major technical advancement and praised the visuals and gameplay. Though critics noted glitches and camera problems, and reactions to the audio were mixed, they considered Sonic Adventure an exceptional game; some speculated that it could help re-establish Sega as the dominant console manufacturer after the unsuccessful Saturn.
Journalists have retrospectively ranked Sonic Adventure among the best Sonic games, and it is recognized as an important release in both the series and the platform genre. Many characters and concepts introduced in Adventure recur in later Sonic games. A sequel, Sonic Adventure 2, was released in 2001. Adventure was ported to the GameCube and Windows in 2003 with altered graphics and more challenges, while a high-definition version was released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2010 and for Windows in 2011. Reviews for these releases were less positive; critics felt the game had not aged well and ran at an inconsistent frame rate.
## Gameplay
Sonic Adventure is a 3D platform game with action and role-playing elements. Players control one of six anthropomorphic protagonists as they venture to defeat Doctor Robotnik and his robot army, who seek the seven magical Chaos Emeralds and the evil entity Chaos. Six player characters are unlocked as the game progresses, each with their own story and attributes. Sonic the Hedgehog performs a spin dash, homing attack, and light-speed dash; Miles "Tails" Prower flies, swims, and attacks robots using his tails; Knuckles the Echidna glides, climbs walls, and punches; Amy Rose can defeat enemies using her hammer; Big the Cat is slow and carries a fishing rod he can cast; and E-102 Gamma can shoot laser beams.
At the start of the game, the player is placed in one of three Adventure Fields, open-ended hub worlds inhabited by advice-giving non-player characters. The player character is guided and instructed by the voice of Tikal the Echidna. Through exploration, the player discovers entrances to levels called Action Stages, some of which must be opened using keys hidden in the Adventure Field. Once the player accesses an Action Stage, they are tasked with a specific objective, which is different for each character. Sonic must reach the level's end like in prior Sonic the Hedgehog games; Tails must reach the end before Sonic; Knuckles must find three hidden shards of the Master Emerald; Amy must solve puzzles and avoid being caught by a robot; Big must fish for his pet frog; and Gamma must fight his way through stages using projectiles as a defense.
Some levels include minigames separate from the main story. These feature different styles of gameplay, among them rail shooting, racing, and sandboarding. Some minigames can only be accessed with particular characters. Fulfilling certain objectives allows the player to obtain bonus items. Unlocked minigames and stages the player has completed can be accessed from a Trial Mode on the title screen.
Like previous Sonic the Hedgehog games, players collect golden rings as a form of health: if the player character is in possession of rings when they are hit by an enemy or other hazard, they will survive, but their rings will scatter and blink before disappearing. Canisters containing power-ups, such as speed shoes, additional rings, invincibility, and protective shields, are also hidden in levels. In several stages, the player engages Robotnik or Chaos in a boss fight and must deplete the boss's health meter to proceed. Each character starts with a limited number of lives, and the player loses a life if the character drowns, gets crushed, or is hit without any rings in their possession. The game ends when the player runs out of lives. Lives can be replenished by collecting 100 rings or a 1-up.
Players may also discover Chao Gardens, hidden, protective environments inhabited by Chao, a virtual pet. Players can hatch, name, and interact with multiple Chao, and they can raise the status of their Chao by giving them small animals, which can be collected by defeating enemies within the Action Stages. The Dreamcast's handheld Visual Memory Unit (VMU) allows the player to download the minigame Chao Adventure, in which their Chao walks through a course to evolve and improve its skills. Evolving one's Chao improves its performance in competitions called Chao Races. Eggs that can produce special types of Chao are hidden throughout the Adventure Fields. Players can earn emblems by playing through Action Stages, searching through the Adventure Fields, or winning Chao Races. Each Action Stage has three emblems that can be earned by replaying the stages and fulfilling objectives, such as beating the level within a time limit.
## Plot
Doctor Robotnik seeks a new way to defeat his longtime nemesis Sonic and conquer the world. During his research, he learns about an entity called Chaos—a creature that, thousands of years ago, helped to protect the Chao and the all-powerful Master Emerald, which balances the power of the seven Chaos Emeralds. When a tribe of echidnas sought to steal the power of the Emeralds, breaking the harmony they had with the Chao, Chaos retaliated by using the Emeralds' power to transform into a monstrous beast, Perfect Chaos, and wipe them out. Tikal, a young echidna who befriended Chaos, imprisoned it in the Master Emerald along with herself. Robotnik shatters the Master Emerald to release Chaos and tests the creature's natural form on the city of Station Square.
When Sonic sees local police fail to defeat Chaos, he and Tails work to stop Robotnik from empowering it with the Chaos Emeralds. Knuckles, the only remaining echidna, sets out to find the shards of the Master Emerald and repair it. Robotnik activates a new series of robots, including one named Gamma, and orders them to find Froggy, an amphibian who ate a Chaos Emerald. Froggy's owner, Big, seeks to find him as well. In Station Square, Sonic's friend Amy finds a Flicky being pursued for a Chaos Emerald in its possession and decides to protect it. When both are captured, Amy convinces Gamma not to work for Robotnik; Gamma helps her to escape before seeking out and destroying the other robots in his series, sacrificing himself in the process. Tails, meanwhile, foils Robotnik's contingency plan to destroy Station Square via a missile strike.
Although Sonic disrupts Robotnik's plans, Chaos manages to absorb all the Chaos Emeralds and transforms into Perfect Chaos; it rebels against Robotnik and destroys Station Square. Through flashbacks from Tikal (who was also released from the Master Emerald), Sonic realizes that Chaos has been in constant torment and sorrow and that imprisoning it again will not stop it. He uses the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Sonic and defeats Perfect Chaos. Chaos calms down when it sees the Chao living peacefully in Station Square, and Tikal takes it somewhere safe to live in peace. Afterward, Sonic pursues a fleeing Robotnik.
## Development
### Background
During the early 1990s, Sega was one of the most successful video game companies due to the rise of its Genesis console. Genesis sales were driven by the popularity of Sega's flagship franchise of 2D platform games, Sonic the Hedgehog. During this time, series co-creator Yuji Naka worked with Sega Technical Institute (STI) in the United States to develop Sonic games. After the completion of Sonic & Knuckles in 1994, Naka returned to Japan to work with Sonic Team. STI began developing Sonic X-treme for the Sega Saturn, planned as the first Sonic the Hedgehog game to feature full 3D gameplay. X-treme suffered a series of setbacks and was canceled in 1996. The cancellation is an important factor in the Saturn's commercial failure, leaving it with no original Sonic platform game. Meanwhile, Naka and Sonic Team developed original Saturn games, such as Nights into Dreams (1996).
Naka wanted a 3D Sonic game, but felt that only Sonic Team should undertake the endeavor; his refusal to let STI use the Nights game engine was instrumental in X-treme's cancellation. Due to the lack of Sonic games on the Saturn, according to Retro Gamer, Sonic became part of the "background" by mid-1997, so "it was astonishing to see that, just six years after his debut, Sonic was already retro." Nights into Dreams designer Takashi Iizuka felt that Sonic fans had been let down because Sonic Team was not focusing on the series. Additionally, Kazuyuki Hoshino, who would serve as art director on Sonic Adventure, said he thought during the Saturn era Sonic had become outdated.
### Conception
In August 1996, shortly after the completion of Nights into Dreams, Iizuka proposed Sonic Adventure as a role-playing-style Sonic game with a greater emphasis on storytelling. Sonic Team started to work on it in April 1997 on the Saturn with a 20-strong team. Sonic Team created the first prototype using the Nights engine, but the Saturn's limited capabilities made development difficult. Sega president Hayao Nakayama informed Naka of the Saturn's successor, the Dreamcast, and he believed the new console would allow Sonic Team to create the ultimate Sonic game. When the team learned the Dreamcast was nearing completion, they moved development to take advantage of its greater quantity of RAM, stronger CPU, and the VMU. Not wanting to waste their completed work, they placed it as a bonus in the compilation game Sonic Jam, the final Sonic game for the Saturn. Development on the Dreamcast began in July 1997.
Iizuka served as director on Sonic Adventure, while Naka produced. One of the largest video games created at the time, the team had grown to 60 after 10 months, and over 100 developers worked on the game in total. Sonic Team undertook development in conjunction with the Dreamcast, aiming to release the game in December 1998, even if it meant making improvements after release. Developing Sonic Adventure at the same time as the system, which was not completed until two months before the game's release, gave Iizuka influence over the console's development; for example, he was able to request more RAM for the console specifically for Sonic Adventure. According to former Sega of America producer Mark Subotnick, Naka canceled Geist Force, an on-rails shooter that was planned as a Dreamcast launch game, so he could use its proprietary software for Sonic Adventure.
### Characters and art
Sonic Team felt challenged by the new hardware to recreate Sonic and his world in a new way. They began development using the character designs from the Genesis games, but quickly discovered the characters' bodies were too short and their heads too big, making them difficult to see. Retro game characters, such as Pac-Man, were also being reborn in a more "urban" fashion around the same time, something that made Sonic Team jealous and feel the original character designs were dated. As such, Yuji Uekawa redesigned each character to suit the transition to 3D and to give them "new, edgy, more Western" design. Looking to the animation of Walt Disney and Looney Tunes for inspiration, he made Sonic more mature, taller and slimmer, and gave him longer quills. He darkened his blue color and gave him green irises in reference to Green Hill Zone. Uekawa tried to make Sonic look like a comic book character and compared the style to graffiti. After redesigning Sonic, he made the other characters fit this new art style. Hoshino noted that the characters' longer limbs made it easier to recreate their 2D poses in 3D.
Sonic Adventure features two new playable characters, Big and Gamma. Sonic Team had already implemented an in-game fishing rod with no context or use, leading to the creation of Big. Big was designed to be giant and relaxed so the player would not expect something more intense. Gamma and his playstyle were created in response to fans who wanted elements of a shoot 'em up in Sonic and because of Iizuka's desire to include "some type of satisfying gameplay that couldn't be done with Sonic". Neither Big nor Gamma were intended to play a large role, thus both of their campaigns were short. Iizuka also wanted to create a villain who would have been impossible to make on older hardware. He settled on something liquid and transparent and created Chaos. Iizuka presented the concept to Naka, who was impressed. Chaos was originally intended to have realistic blue scales in his final form, but this was abandoned because of the technological constraints of the Dreamcast.
While some Sonic games, such as 1993's Sonic CD, contained limited voice work, Sonic Adventure was the first Sonic game to feature extensive voice acting. The decision was made early in development as the game was more story-focused than previous Sonic games. Sonic Team's staff had differing opinions about how Sonic should sound. Iizuka recalled that the only element they agreed on was to avoid using an anime voice actor, favoring a film actor with an "over-the-top" voice. Sonic Team cast Jun'ichi Kanemaru as Sonic. In an interview celebrating his 30th anniversary as a voice actor, Kanemaru said one reason he was cast was because of his ability to speak English. After Sonic Team USA was formed, they hired American actors to translate the Japanese script. The English-language voice cast consists of Ryan Drummond as Sonic, Corey Bringas as Tails, Michael McGaharn as Knuckles, Jennifer Douillard as Amy, Jon St. John as Big and E-102 Gamma, and Deem Bristow as Robotnik. Iizuka used Sonic Adventure to introduce Robotnik's Japanese name, "Dr. Eggman", to western audiences; he accomplished this by having Sonic insult Robotnik when they meet for the first time in-game. Similarly, he avoided referring to Tails as "Miles", which he was commonly called in Japan.
Because Sonic Adventure was a Dreamcast launch game, the team strove to demonstrate the console's capabilities with realistic graphics. To achieve a more realistic feel for the environments, the core members of Sonic Team visited temples, jungles, and ancient ruins in Mesoamerican landscapes, including Cancún, Guatemala, and Peru. While Sonic Team members had to draw artwork by hand for games in the past, for Sonic Adventure they were able to use photographs taken during their visits as textures. The greatest influences were the Tikal ruin in Guatemala and Machu Picchu in Peru. The character Tikal was inspired by Peru and took her name from the Guatemalan ruins. The 3D visuals were created using a Voodoo2 graphics chip.
### Design
The levels were designed to feature gameplay similar to the original Genesis games and to take at least five minutes to complete. One of the biggest challenges the Adventure designers faced was transitioning Sonic's 2D style to 3D. In the Genesis Sonic games, the player simply had to go right to reach the end of a level, but in Sonic Adventure they could move in every direction. The designers created models for the stages before testing it as the player character, resulting in trial and error. This made Iizuka realize the importance of the game's camera. Some levels, such as the Lost World, were rebuilt dozens of times. Sonic Team split levels into parts to save memory. One particular difficulty was defeating enemies; in the 2D games, enemies were beaten simply by jumping on them, but this was harder to achieve in a 3D game. Therefore, Sonic was given the ability to target enemies in mid-air.
Iizuka said the cinematic sequences were conceived to take advantage of the environments, "giving the player an element of discovery in addition to the platforming". The team also wanted to add elements unexpected in a platform game; for example, the level in which Tails sandboards was inspired by a group of sandboarders in Ica, Peru. Some levels reference past Sega games, such as Ice Cap (1994's Sonic the Hedgehog 3) and the Tornado levels (1995's Panzer Dragoon). When seeing the completed level designs, Iizuka and Naka decided to repurpose them for other player characters. Iizuka said they felt it would be "a waste if Sonic just quickly ran through the levels that we spent so much time creating". The first characters besides Sonic added to the game were Tails and Knuckles; Tails's stages turned portions of Sonic's levels into races, while Knuckles's treasure-hunting missions were designed as a contrast to the others' straightforward ones. Sonic Adventure was the first time Amy was playable in a Sonic platformer, and Iizuka aimed to use her to add tension, such as hiding from pursuers, that Sonic's gameplay could not offer.
Because Sonic Adventure had a stronger emphasis on storytelling than previous games in the series, the team implemented hub worlds to "draw the players deeper into the world." The hub worlds' emphasis on exploring to find new areas and power-ups was inspired by The Legend of Zelda. When seeing the completed level designs, Iizuka and Naka decided to repurpose them for other player characters. According to Iizuka, the team tried to include as much content as possible. One addition was the Chao-raising system, which Iizuka conceived to take advantage of the VMU. Sonic Team had used a similar virtual pet system, the "A-Life", in Nights into Dreams; Iizuka used the A-Life as a base, while improving it with the VMU and the option to improve its skills. Iizuka hoped it would be made into a character players could touch and raise. It was also designed to appeal to casual gamers not familiar with games like Sonic, and to add replay value. The design took considerable time to finalize and had to be made as simple as possible because the virtual pet's look changes form as it evolves.
### Music
Sonic Adventure's score was primarily composed by Jun Senoue, with additional music by Fumie Kumatani, Kenichi Tokoi, and Masaru Setsumaru. Adventure was Senoue's first project as sound director and its scope meant he had many more responsibilities, including schedule management, compared to his previous games. Despite this, Senoue said he did not feel much pressure, as he was a Sonic fan and had contributed to previous games' soundtracks.
In contrast to previous Sonic games, which featured electropop soundtracks, the Adventure sound team preferred "hot, funky, and rock 'n' roll" music. Iizuka noted that Sonic Team's primary goal with Adventure was "to evoke the essence of Sonic by going from 2D to 3D", and felt the music needed to exceed fan expectations due to previous Sonic soundtracks' popularity. He stated a new style was adopted because the Dreamcast's sound was a significant advance from that of the Genesis; Senoue added he felt more comfortable composing rock music and wanted to create music everyone could enjoy. Despite the different styles, Senoue did retain some music from the Genesis Sonic games: the music for the Windy Valley and Twinkle Park levels were rearranged from Sonic 3D Blast (1996), while the level clear jingle was taken from Sonic 3. He chose to reuse his 3D Blast tracks because he felt they were strong enough to be more widely heard, as they were only used the Genesis version (which was not released in Japan).
Senoue composed several songs with English lyrics to highlight the various characters' personalities, and collaborated with Tokoi and Kumatani to polish them. The main theme, "Open Your Heart", was performed by Hardline's Johnny Gioeli; other songs were performed by Gioeli, Marlon Saunders, Dred Foxx, Ted Poley, Nikki Gregoroff, and Tony Harnell. Sonic Adventure marked Senoue's first collaboration with Gioeli; the two later formed the band Crush 40 (originally known as Sons of Angels), and continue to make music together. Iizuka was inspired to use "Open Your Heart" as the final boss music by films, which he noted often use main themes during dramatic events. Iizuka also felt that the songs helped define Knuckles and Amy's personalities, as they had not received much character development in Sonic games until Adventure.
A two-disc soundtrack, Sonic Adventure "Digi-LOG Conversation" Original Sound Track, was released in Japan in January 1999. In May 2011, the soundtrack was rereleased to commemorate the Sonic franchise's 20th anniversary. A two-volume digital soundtrack was also released on iTunes and Spotify in September 2014 and January 2017, respectively. Brave Wave Productions released a vinyl LP version of the soundtrack including interviews with Senoue and Iizuka in 2018.
## Release
Sonic Adventure was kept a secret during production, though screenshots were leaked in mid-1998 and plans for a 3D Sonic game had long been rumored. It was unveiled by Naka and the rest of Sonic Team on August 22, 1998, at the Tokyo International Forum. The team showed off several dynamic elements, such as a chase sequence from the first level and Tails's sandboarding sequence. The presentation ended with a live performance of "Open Your Heart" alongside a RealVideo clip montage. Naka described the debut as intense, having "[given his] all" to make it fit for release.
On December 23, 1998, Sonic Adventure was released in Japan. The Japanese version shipped with many glitches; according to Iizuka, this was because the game was produced on a tight schedule, so Sonic Team did not have time to fix them. Several members of Sonic Team flew to Sega of America to establish Sonic Team USA and patch and translate the game. Prior to the launch of the Dreamcast in the United States, Sega made an exclusive deal with Hollywood Video to allow customers to rent the Dreamcast console along with a non-retail version of the game, Sonic Adventure: Limited Edition. The promotion began on July 15, 1999, and took place at 1,055 Hollywood Video stores across the country.
The localized version was released in North America on September 9, 1999, as a launch title, and in Europe on October 14, 1999. It includes Japanese and English-language audio tracks, as well as Japanese, English, Spanish, French and German subtitles. Online features—including Chao daycare and downloadable content (DLC) such as minigames and new level assets—were also added. The American release of Studio Pierrot's Sonic the Hedgehog (1996) original video animation coincided with the Western release of Sonic Adventure, while DIC Entertainment's Sonic Underground (1999) was commissioned to help promote the game. The localized version was later released in Japan as Sonic Adventure International.
Before release, Sega projected to sell a million copies of Sonic Adventure. Sonic Adventure is the bestselling Dreamcast game; by August 4, 2006, it had sold 2.5 million copies, including 440,000 in Japan and 1.27 million in the US. In Europe, it sold 86,000 copies during its first five days on sale. In the UK, it was the top selling Dreamcast launch game. After the North American release, there were complaints of a number of Sonic Adventure discs failing to load. Sega of America determined that this was a software problem due to errors at one manufacturing facility and tracked the faulty software. Most copies were unaffected, and customers with defective copies could trade for working ones at retailers.
## Reception
As the first fully 3D Sonic platform game, Sonic Adventure was highly anticipated. It received critical acclaim, and Computer and Video Games (CVG) called it one of the greatest video games of all time. Sonic Adventure won a Blockbuster Entertainment Award in the "Favorite Sega Dreamcast Game" category, and it was a runner-up for GameSpot's annual "Best Console Platform Game" award, which went to Rayman 2: The Great Escape (1999). The game was a finalist for "Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering" for the 3rd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, which went to Unreal Tournament.
The visuals and presentation attracted wide acclaim. Arcade magazine described it as a "quantum leap forward" in aesthetics and visual detail in video games, and Hyper estimated they even exceeded what was possible on high-end personal computers. IGN called it the most graphically impressive platform game released up to that date, praising its cinematic sequences and describing it as "engrossing, demanding, and utterly awe-inspiring". GameSpot agreed and said only Soulcalibur's graphical quality surpassed that of Sonic Adventure. Edge felt the graphical features showed off the Dreamcast's potential to the fullest and that the game was "perfect" as a showcase for the system.
The audio received mixed responses. GameSpot and Game Revolution called the full-motion video (FMV) cutscenes and voice acting well-produced and fitting, though GameSpot noted poor lip-synching. IGN thought the cutscenes were repetitive and voiced strong disapproval of the voice acting, declaring it "a complete joke" and "downright awful". IGN had a particular distaste for Tails's voice, and retrospectively called it among the most annoying to feature in a video game. AllGame was conflicted; they appreciated Tails's portrayal but found Sonic's and Knuckles's voices unfitting. GameSpot and AllGame praised the rock-style music, but Game Revolution described the score as "absolutely horrible".
The gameplay was generally praised. GameSpot admired the straightforward, linear approach to the 3D platform genre and particularly praised it for keeping the basic gameplay of the original Genesis games. IGN said the game would keep players busy even after completion, noting its internet connectivity and other extras. On the other hand, Game Revolution said apart from being quicker, it did not advance the platform genre's design. Retrospectively, 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die called its environments vast and twisted, stating it "brilliantly" captured traditional Sonic elements. The Chao minigame was noted as a major departure from the gameplay of the series. GameSpot wrote that "while really just a diversion", the Chao were an interesting, fun addition, singling out their internet functions as a highlight. AllGame said the Chao helped increase the replay value, although it was "strange", required patience, and did not provide bonuses in the main game. Game Revolution called the Chao "a neat addition" and praised its use of the VMU.
Some critics compared Sonic Adventure to Super Mario 64—Nintendo's "groundbreaking" 1996 game that propelled the Nintendo 64 and the 3D platform genre. Edge said Sonic Adventure was a worthy rival to Super Mario 64, but AllGame wrote that Sonic Adventure was not as ambitious and that those looking for exploration would be disappointed with its linear gameplay. They compared it to the similarly linear Crash Bandicoot but felt Sonic Adventure was more confined. Still, they praised the gameplay as varied and said its replay value was strong. Game journalists Rusel DeMaria and Johnny L. Wilson retrospectively wrote Sonic Adventure was not as strong as Super Mario 64 and "failed to catch on with players in nearly the way that [Mario] had done", though it had fascinating features, such as "the use of the Tamagotchi-like memory card to incubate eggs for little pet creatures" and "some good action segments".
The camera system and glitches were criticized by many reviewers. IGN called the camera "incredibly" frustrating and inconsistent, and GameSpot noted it caused problems with collision detection. Edge complained the camera sometimes goes behind walls. Authors from GamesRadar retrospectively wrote that Sonic Adventure was "horrendously buggy", singling out falling through floors and getting stuck, but also said the sheer amount of content made up for this.
GameSpot thought Sonic Adventure redefined the possibilities of the platform genre, and according to CVG, "many things you thought were impossible to see and experience in computer games are now here". According to Next Generation, "Expert gamers may beat the game in only a day or two but, even then, the ride is worth the price of admission." AllGame wrote that the game was an impressive showing of the Dreamcast's potential and that it was among the best of the series. Edge said its criticisms such as scenery pop-up and instances of poor collision detection are "minor flaws in an otherwise very fine piece of work". Arcade and CVG speculated the game could save the Dreamcast, which had not sold well by the end of 1998. CVG also thought it could re-establish Sega as the dominant console manufacturer after the relatively unsuccessful Saturn.
## Rereleases
### Sonic Adventure DX
In 2001, Sega announced it would transition from a first-party to a third-party software publisher, in response to the international failures of the Saturn and Dreamcast. Wanting to reach new players by creating an enhanced version of one of its older games, in June 2003 Sega released Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut, a port of Sonic Adventure for the GameCube and Windows. While mostly identical to the original release, Sonic Adventure DX features updated graphics, including updated textures and more detailed character models, aims for a frame rate of 60 instead of 30, and sports a redesigned Chao-raising system that uses connectivity with the Game Boy Advance (GBA). It includes 60 new missions and the option to unlock emulations of all 12 Sonic games released for the Game Gear. Additionally, Metal Sonic can be unlocked as a playable character if all 130 emblems are collected. These features were added to appeal to players of the original game.
Sonic Adventure DX received mixed reviews. GameSpot was disappointed the rerelease did not address the problems of the original version, irritated the graphics were only marginally different, and dissatisfied with its collision detection. GameSpot offered some praise for the extra features, such as the missions, but concluded players were better off playing the Dreamcast version. IGN agreed, calling it "a sloppy port of a game that has long been undeserving of its high praise." IGN noted its frequent frame rate drops and described its camera one of the worst in a video game. IGN said the connectivity to the GBA Sonic games added depth but concluded this was not enough to compensate for the port's problems. Nintendo World Report was more positive, praising the Game Gear games for retaining their multiplayer support and finding Sonic and Tails’ gameplay enjoyable.
### HD version
In September 2010, Sega rereleased Sonic Adventure as a downloadable game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, followed by a Windows release in March 2011 via Steam. This version is based on Sonic Adventure DX and supports high-definition visuals at a 4:3 aspect ratio. Sonic Adventure DX's additional content was removed, but the mission mode and Metal Sonic can be reimplemented by purchasing additional DLC. The game was also included in the Dreamcast Collection compilation in 2011 and is backwards-compatible with the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
Reviews of the 2010 rerelease were generally unfavorable, with criticism directed at the perceived lack of effort put into the port. IGN called it "so fundamentally flawed that it borders on unplayable", observing that the sections that worked best required the least input from the player. IGN criticized the lack of widescreen support but offered minor praise for its steady frame rate. 1UP.com lambasted the port for what they called its slapdash quality, criticizing its display, controls, and dated design, and saying that it "feels like it wasn't even tuned for the Xbox 360 controller and its analog sticks." Destructoid was less harsh, writing that fans of the franchise would be able to enjoy the game but warning casual players that "all you'll find is a relic that was once considered greatness."
## Legacy
With most contemporary 3D platform games focusing on exploration and collecting items, Sonic Adventure stood out with its linear gameplay. According to GamesRadar, as one of the first sixth-generation console games, it changed the industry "forever". Joystiq wrote that both Adventure and the original Sonic the Hedgehog had innovated—in 3D and 2D games, respectively—through effective linear level design and by feeling "good to play". In 2009, GamePro listed Sonic Adventure as the seventh-best platform game of all time, saying that it had not aged well in certain aspects but that its core gameplay remained among the best of the Sonic series. Several journalists ranked the game among the series's best, but Kotaku argued the addition of voice acting and greater focus on plot changed Sonic into "a flat, lifeless husk of a character, who spits out slogans and generally has only one personality mode, the radical attitude dude, the sad recycled image of vague '90s cultural concept".
Many of Sonic Adventure's designs and concepts were reused in later Sonic games. The direction, basic gameplay, and Uekawa's modernized character designs became series staples. The first level in the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog reboot heavily references Sonic Adventure's Emerald Coast stage. To celebrate the Sonic series's 20th anniversary in 2011, Sega released Sonic Generations, which reused aspects from past games in the franchise. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows versions contain reimagined versions of the Speed Highway level and the Perfect Chaos boss fight, and the Nintendo 3DS version contains a remake of Emerald Coast.
Several characters that first appeared in Sonic Adventure appeared in later games. As well as appearing in Sonic Generations, Chaos is an antagonist in the 2017 entry Sonic Forces; it and Gamma are playable characters in the 2004 fighting game Sonic Battle; and a recreation of its boss fight appears in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. The Chao creatures also feature predominantly in later games. One of the characters introduced in Adventure, Big the Cat, became infamous for his negative reception. Game Informer considered his gameplay painful and boring, while Destructoid decried his portrayal as a "mentally handicapped imbecile" and his voice actor's incoherent performance. Big is widely considered by video game journalists the worst character in the Sonic franchise, and was named one of the worst game characters in a poll conducted by 1UP.com.
On October 4, 1999, Sega announced that a sequel to Sonic Adventure was in development. Sonic Adventure 2 made its debut at E3 2000 and was released in June 2001. The sequel was designed to be more action-oriented than the slower-paced, story-centric Adventure and to give all the characters equal playtime. Like its predecessor, Sonic Adventure 2 received positive reviews. A concept for Sonic Adventure 3 was reworked into the 2008 game Sonic Unleashed. In 2017, Iizuka stated there were no plans for a third Sonic Adventure game, saying it would not advance the series's design. He did not rule out the idea, saying "If we can get the gameplay to evolve and get to a place where Adventure 3 makes sense, then you might see an Adventure 3 come out". In December 2018, Iizuka expressed interest in remaking Sonic Adventure.
The plot of Sonic Adventure was adapted in the second season of the 2003 Sonic the Hedgehog anime series Sonic X. American licensing corporation 4Kids Entertainment hired a new voice cast for the English-language dub but the Japanese cast from the games reprised their roles in the original version of the show. Archie Comics also adapted the game in its Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series. The comic offered an explanation for the altered character designs and established that Station Square was hidden beneath Sonic's planet, Mobius.
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10,664,882 |
Through the Looking Glass (Lost)
| 1,161,302,773 | null |
[
"2007 American television episodes",
"Lost (season 3) episodes",
"Television episodes directed by Jack Bender",
"Television episodes written by Damon Lindelof"
] |
"Through the Looking Glass" is the third-season finale of the ABC television series Lost, consisting of the 22nd and 23rd episodes of the third season. It is also the 71st and 72nd episodes overall. It was written by co-creator/executive producer Damon Lindelof and executive producer Carlton Cuse, and directed by executive producer Jack Bender. When first aired on May 23, 2007, in the United States and Canada, it was watched by an average of 14 million American viewers. Like the previous two season finales, it was two hours long with advertisements, twice the length of a normal episode. It was edited into two individual episodes when released on DVD. The season finale is considered by some to be one of the best episodes of television ever broadcast. The episode garnered a number of awards and nominations, including three Primetime Emmy Awards nominations and a Directors Guild of America Award nomination.
## Plot
The episode begins its narrative in late December 2004, over ninety days after the crash of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815. The battle between the crash survivors and the dangerous and mysterious island inhabitants referred to as the "Others" comes to a head as ten of the Others attack and are then ambushed at the survivors' camp and are subsequently killed. Meanwhile, Jack Shephard (played by Matthew Fox) leads most of the survivors to the island's radio tower to communicate with a nearby ship. Intercut with this story are off-island scenes spotlighting Jack, who has become suicidally depressed and addicted to painkillers.
### Flash sequences
Jack is shown to be depressed, bearded, heavily drinking and addicted to oxycodone. After reading about the death of someone he knew, Jack appears to be ready to commit suicide by jumping off the Sixth Street Viaduct bridge. However, a fiery car crash occurs on the bridge before he jumps and he goes to the victims; it is eventually revealed that the driver crashed after being distracted by Jack. Later, Jack visits the memorial service for the person he read about and finds himself to be the only attendee. In the last of the flashes, Kate appears and Jack discusses the island with her. In a twist ending, it becomes clear that the sequences are actually flashforwards rather than flashbacks. Jack tells Kate about the memorial service but Kate, acting distant toward him, coldly retorts that she would not have gone had she known. Jack also talks about using the "golden pass" they had received from Oceanic Airlines to fly back and forth across the Pacific Ocean every Friday, hoping that he will crash in the island. Jack laments about having to lie and that they should never have left. However, Kate disagrees and leaves while Jack cries out that they have to go back.
### On the island
The Others intend to attack the camp and kidnap pregnant women for scientific research. The survivors are tipped off by the "Other" Karl (Blake Bashoff) and plan to kill the Others with dynamite-rigged tents. Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), Jin Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim), and Bernard Nadler (Sam Anderson) remain at the beach, tasked with shooting the tents while the rest of the survivors journey with Danielle Rousseau (Mira Furlan) to the radio tower to communicate with Naomi Dorrit's (Marsha Thomason) nearby ship.
The Others arrive, and while Sayid and Bernard detonate their tents, Jin misses his target, which results in their capture. After hearing only two explosions, James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) and Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) turn back to see if they can help. Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia), who was not allowed to accompany Sawyer and Juliet because of his weight, drives the van he found onto the beach, and the captives gain the upper hand, killing the remaining Others with the help of Sawyer and Juliet. Tom (M.C. Gainey) surrenders but Sawyer shoots him anyway.
In The Looking Glass, a research station of the Dharma Initiative, Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan) is captured by the resident Others Greta (Lana Parrilla) and Bonnie (Tracy Middendorf). Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) learns of Charlie's infiltration and sends Mikhail Bakunin (Andrew Divoff) to the station to kill the three to preserve the signal jamming. Mikhail arrives and kills Greta and Bonnie, only to be shot through the chest with a spear gun by Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick) who emerges from a closet where he had hidden after diving down a short time after Charlie. Getting the code from Bonnie before she dies (the notes to the middle eight of "Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys), Charlie disables the jammer, and is contacted by Penny Widmore (Sonya Walger) via video transmission. Penny informs Charlie that she does not know Naomi, and did not send the boat that Naomi claims to be from. Despite his injury, Mikhail manages to swim out of the station and blasts the window of the jamming room with a grenade, killing himself and flooding the communications room. Charlie locks the door to save Desmond from drowning with him, but before he drowns, Charlie writes on his hand so Desmond can read: "NOT PENNY'S BOAT".
John Locke (Terry O'Quinn), one of the survivors, has been shot by Ben. Finding his legs paralyzed again, Locke is about to commit suicide, when he is stopped by what appears to be Walt Lloyd (Malcolm David Kelley). Walt tells John that he has the use of his legs and that he has "work to do". Meanwhile, Ben tells Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) to lead the rest of the Others to the "Temple" and then leaves the Others, with his adopted daughter Alex (Tania Raymonde) – Rousseau's daughter and Karl's girlfriend – to meet up with the survivors to persuade Jack not to call Naomi's ship for rescue.
Kate is upset about Sawyer not wanting her to come back to the beach with him to rescue Sayid, Jin and Bernard. Jack tells her it is because Sawyer was trying to protect her. When she asks why Jack is defending Sawyer, Jack informs Kate that it is because he loves her. Kate also witnessed a kiss between him and Juliet. Ben and Alex intercept Jack's group; Ben informs Jack that Naomi is not who she says she is, and making contact with her boat will be disastrous for everyone. Ben orders the shooting of Sayid, Jin, and Bernard, and when Jack hears three shots, he attacks Ben and punches him in the face repeatedly. Unknown to Jack, the shots were fired into the sand, following earlier orders from Ben. Rousseau meets her sixteen-year-old daughter Alex, who was kidnapped by the Others shortly after her birth, and they tie Ben up. The trek party, now able to get a signal, arrives at the radio tower. Rousseau disables her distress signal, freeing the frequency for Naomi. However, Naomi is knifed in the back by Locke, who threatens to kill Jack if he calls Naomi's boat. Locke cannot bring himself to kill Jack, who communicates with George Minkowski (Fisher Stevens) on Naomi's boat. Minkowski tells the survivors they will be sending rescue.
## Production
The episode's title is an allusion to Lewis Carroll's novel Through the Looking-Glass and a reference to the fictitious Dharma Initiative station featured in the previous episode. Shooting began on April 13, 2007 and ended on May 7, 2007. The writers were so far behind schedule that parts of the episode were shot while later parts were still being written. Filming mostly took place on Oahu, Hawaii, with additional scenes shot in Los Angeles. The hospital scenes were filmed on the same sets used for the ABC show Grey's Anatomy.
Despite not being mentioned in the official press release, then-15-year-old Malcolm David Kelley, who was a main cast member in Season 1, returned to reprise his role as 10-year-old Walt Lloyd, and received credit as a "special guest star". Kelley's character had left the island in the second-season finale, only 26 days prior to the events of "Through the Looking Glass"; however, Kelley had not filmed an episode in over a year. In his single scene, Walt has visibly aged, appears taller and has a deeper voice. The producers had hoped that Harold Perrineau, who plays Walt's father Michael Dawson, would return in this episode, but he was busy filming the pilot for CBS' Demons. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse lent their voices for the unseen roles of the flight captain and newscaster, respectively.
This episode concluded the story arc about Charlie's death, which began earlier in the season when Desmond prophesied Charlie's death. Throughout the season, Charlie escaped death; however, Desmond told Charlie that he had to die in order for his girlfriend, Claire Littleton, to get rescued from the island. The storyline of Charlie's death was conceived while producing the latter part of the second season, after the storyline of Charlie's drug addiction finished. The news of his character's death was broken to Monaghan two episodes in advance, to which Monaghan felt "relief" for knowing the future of his job on the show. On the night of Monaghan's second-to-last day on set, he was presented with a canoe paddle that had been made by the cast and crew. Monaghan hoped to return to Lost as a guest star in flashbacks or dreams.
Jack Bender stated that Matthew Fox "really commits body and soul into the story he's telling" and Fox questioned whether he had ever been more tired than while shooting the double episode. Like the other Lost season finales, the final cliffhanger scene was given a codename—"The Rattlesnake in the Mailbox"—and kept top secret. After Lindelof and Cuse wrote the scene, only Fox, Lilly, Bender, and co-executive producer Jean Higgins were given copies of the script. The scene was shot with a green screen in an abandoned Honolulu parking lot with the airport edited in. Despite the security measures, a complete and detailed episode synopsis was uploaded online over a week before the episode aired. Disney investigated the leak. The leak prompted Lindelof and Cuse to enter "radio silence", which was temporarily broken at Comic-Con International 2007. The funeral parlor that Jack visits is called "Hoffs/Drawlar", which is an anagram of "flashforward". The idea of flashforwards was conceived by creators Lindelof and Abrams during the show's conception. However, Cuse and Lindelof only started fleshing out the idea at the end of the first season, after they realized that flashbacks would eventually stop being revelatory and knew that they would eventually have to switch to flashforwards. With the announcement that the series would conclude 48 episodes after "Through the Looking Glass", they felt comfortable playing flashforwards as early as the third-season finale.
Post-production wrapped on May 21, 2007, only two days before it aired on television. The score was composed by series musician Michael Giacchino, while popular music was also featured throughout the episode. Charlie also sings a song in the episode that was written by Dominic Monaghan, who plays him. A Lost season finale is approximately twice as long as the average Lost episode. Due to the episode's length, it was split into two parts in some countries and when released on DVD. Unlike most episodes, this episode did not feature a "previously on Lost..." recap at the start of the episode when it first aired; however, it was originally preceded by a clip-show titled "Lost: The Answers", which recapped the third season. Cuse said that he and Lindelof think the finale is "very cool [and] we're very proud of it." Stephen McPherson, the president of ABC Entertainment, called "Through the Looking Glass" "one of the best episodes" of the series. Buena Vista Home Entertainment released "Through the Looking Glass" on the season's DVD and Blu-ray Disc sets on December 11, 2007, in Region 1. A featurette called "Lost: On Location" features cast and crew discussing production of select episodes, including "Through the Looking Glass". The episode was rerun for the first time on January 30, 2008, with on-screen text in the lower third of the screen, similar to VH1's Pop-up Video. These pop-ups were not written by Lost's writers due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike; they were written by the marketing company Met/Hodder. This enhanced edition was viewed by almost 9 million Americans.
## Reception
### Ratings
In the U.S., the episode brought in the best ratings for Lost in fifteen episodes. The two-hour Wednesday broadcast on ABC made Lost the fourth most watched series of the week with an average of 13.86 million American viewers, below the third season average of 14.6 million. The first hour was viewed by 12.67 million, and the audience increased to 15.04 million in the second hour. The episode received a 5.9/15 in the key adults 18–49 demographic. In the United Kingdom, the episode attracted 1.21 million viewers, and was the second most watched program of the week on the non-terrestrial channels, beaten only by Katie & Peter: The Next Chapter. In Australia, Lost was the thirty-seventh most viewed show of the week, bringing in 1.17 million viewers. In Canada, the episode placed sixteenth for the first half, with 911,000 viewers and fifteenth for the second half, with 938,000 viewers. The episodes were broadcast before and after American Idol.
### Critical response
The episode garnered universal critical acclaim. The Los Angeles Times wrote that the episode was "an unusually action-packed and sanguinary spring cleaning that... left a host of... characters... dead", Access Atlanta said "it was deeply satisfying. The first hour started a bit slow but the second hour had great twists, wonderfully emotional moments, both happy and sad", and the Associated Press said that "the powerful season-ending episode redeemed the series with the shrewdness and intrigue that made it so addictive in the first place." The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that "not only was the pace fast, the teases taut, and the answers plenty, the writers took a compelling gamble... [by telling] viewers that in the future... maybe all... of the people on the Lost island get off. They get their wish. But in Jack, our guide through this series, the writers definitively say, 'Be careful what you wish for.'" The San Jose Mercury News called the finale a "jaw-dropping exercise in good storytelling." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette commented that the flashforward "twist gave the saga renewed momentum as it begins its march toward a 2010 finish." The season finale was summed up as "a mind-blower, for sure, a radical two hours that gave us major fake-outs, an army of dead bodies, the possibility of rescue [and] diverse portraits of heroism" by The Boston Globe, who added that the death of Charlie was "the most touching loss of the series so far." The Palm Beach Post and Wizard named it the "Best Cliffhanger" of 2007. The Chicago Tribune called it "a qualified success" with excellent pacing and action, however, the flashforward scenes were thought to be uninteresting and "clumsy". Time ranked the episode as the best of 2007 and the "Rattlesnake in the Mailbox" as one of the ten best scenes of 2007 television.
The Futon Critic placed the episode first in the site's annual "50 Best Episodes" list. E! said that "Through the Looking Glass" was possibly "the best episode ever of the entire series." TV Guide described "Through the Looking Glass" as "a dizzying exercise in adventure, sustained tension and time-shifting rug pulling [that was] spectacularly produced, amazingly directed and gloriously acted." IGN gave the double episode a perfect 10/10 – the best review of the season – saying it was "nothing short of a masterpiece of storytelling with a brilliantly paced narrative." IGN would conclude that the flashforward was the "Biggest Shock" in 2007 television. Both IGN and The Los Angeles Times would later declare "Through the Looking Glass" as the second best Lost episode, behind "The Constant". BuddyTV praised the unpredictability, saying that "no other show can even attempt to do what Lost does." BuddyTV would later call "Through the Looking Glass" the best finale of 2007 and Charlie's death the saddest TV death of 2007. "Through the Looking Glass" was TV.com's "Editor's Choice" for "Best Episode" of 2007. AOL's TV Squad gave the episode a 7/7, noting that "the writers followed through on Desmond's premonitions and successfully delivered the highly anticipated game-changer." Television Without Pity gave the third-season finale an "A". The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that Lost "may have unjumped [the shark] with [the] flashforward." Entertainment Weekly ranked it as one of the top ten episodes of 2007, saying that the cliffhanger "[revealed] new dimensions to [Lost's] creative world." Zap2It questioned "whether to be deeply frustrated (again), really, really confused (a distinct possibility) or just in awe of the incredible mind-(ahem) show runners... have pulled off." The writing for Locke was criticized, and one IGN writer said that "it seems irrational that he would go and [stab Naomi] in the back without explaining himself." Lindelof stated "that we might be willing to give [Locke] the benefit of the doubt for any action he took in response to [lying, gutshot, in a pit of Dharma corpses for two days and on the verge of taking his own life], even if considered slightly 'out of character'." Film and television director and writer Kevin Smith said that "to do [3] seasons and then suddenly throw a massive curveball is just so dramatically satisfying, you just take your hats off to the writers in a big, bad way."
### Awards
This episode was nominated for Outstanding Directing, Outstanding Writing, and Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series for the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards, but failed to win in any of the categories. This episode was also submitted for consideration for Outstanding Drama Series; however, it was not nominated. For his work on this episode, Jack Bender was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Drama Series.
|
263,101 |
Shunzhi Emperor
| 1,173,829,999 |
Emperor of China from 1644 to 1661
|
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"17th-century Chinese monarchs",
"Bannermen",
"Child monarchs from Asia",
"Chinese Buddhist monarchs",
"Deaths from smallpox",
"Hong Taiji's sons",
"Infectious disease deaths in China",
"People from Shenyang",
"Qing dynasty Buddhists",
"Qing dynasty emperors"
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The Shunzhi Emperor (Fulin; 15 March 1638 – 5 February 1661) was the second emperor of the Qing dynasty of China, and the first Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1644 to 1661. A committee of Manchu princes chose him to succeed his father, Hong Taiji (1592–1643), in September 1643, when he was five years old. The princes also appointed two co-regents: Dorgon (1612–1650), the 14th son of the Qing dynasty's founder Nurhaci (1559–1626), and Jirgalang (1599–1655), one of Nurhaci's nephews, both of whom were members of the Qing imperial clan.
From 1643 to 1650, political power lay mostly in the hands of Dorgon. Under his leadership, the Qing Empire conquered most of the territory of the fallen Ming dynasty (1368–1644), chased Ming loyalist regimes deep into the southwestern provinces, and established the basis of Qing rule over China proper despite highly unpopular policies such as the "hair cutting command" of 1645, which forced Qing subjects to shave their forehead and braid their remaining hair into a queue resembling that of the Manchus. After Dorgon's death on the last day of 1650, the young Shunzhi Emperor started to rule personally. He tried, with mixed success, to fight corruption and to reduce the political influence of the Manchu nobility. In the 1650s, he faced a resurgence of Ming loyalist resistance, but by 1661 his armies had defeated the Qing Empire's last enemies, seafarer Koxinga (1624–1662) and the Prince of Gui (1623–1662) of the Southern Ming dynasty, both of whom would succumb the following year. The Shunzhi Emperor died at the age of 22 of smallpox, a highly contagious disease that was endemic in China, but against which the Manchus had no immunity. He was succeeded by his third son Xuanye, who had already survived smallpox, and who reigned for sixty years under the era name "Kangxi" (hence he was known as the Kangxi Emperor). Because fewer documents have survived from the Shunzhi era than from later eras of the Qing dynasty, the Shunzhi era is a relatively little-known period of Qing history.
"Shunzhi" was the name of this ruler's reign period in Chinese. This title had equivalents in Manchu and Mongolian because the Qing imperial family was Manchu and ruled over many Mongol tribes that helped the Qing to conquer the Ming dynasty. The emperor's personal name was Fulin, and the posthumous name by which he was worshipped at the Imperial Ancestral Temple was Shizu (Wade–Giles: Shih-tsu; Chinese: 世祖).
## Historical background
In the 1580s, when China was ruled by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), a number of Jurchen tribes lived in Manchuria. In a series of campaigns from the 1580s to the 1610s, Nurhaci (1559–1626), the leader of the Jianzhou Jurchens, unified most Jurchen tribes under his rule. One of his most important reforms was to integrate Jurchen clans under flags of four different colors—yellow, white, red, and blue—each further subdivided into two to form an encompassing social and military system known as the Eight Banners. Nurhaci gave control of these Banners to his sons and grandsons. Around 1612, Nurhaci renamed his clan Aisin Gioro ("golden Gioro" in the Manchu language), both to distinguish his family from other Gioro lines and to allude to an earlier dynasty that had been founded by Jurchens, the Jin ("golden") dynasty that had ruled northern China from 1115 to 1234. In 1616 Nurhaci formally announced the foundation of the "Later Jin" dynasty, effectively declaring his independence from the Ming. Over the next few years he wrested most major cities in Liaodong from Ming control. His string of victories ended in February 1626 at the siege of Ningyuan, where Ming commander Yuan Chonghuan defeated him with the help of recently acquired Portuguese cannon. Probably wounded during the battle, Nurhaci died a few months later.
Nurhaci's son and successor Hong Taiji (1592–1643) continued his father's state-building efforts: he concentrated power into his own hands, modeled the Later Jin's government institutions on Chinese ones, and integrated Mongol allies and surrendered Chinese troops into the Eight Banners. In 1629 he led an incursion to the outskirts of Beijing, during which he captured Chinese craftsmen who knew how to cast Portuguese cannon. In 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchens the "Manchus", and in 1636 changed the name of his polity from "Later Jin" to "Qing". After capturing the last remaining Ming cities in Liaodong, by 1643 the Qing were preparing to attack the struggling Ming dynasty, which was crumbling under the combined weight of financial bankruptcy, devastating epidemics, and large-scale bandit uprisings fed by widespread starvation.
## Becoming emperor
When Hong Taiji died on 21 September 1643 without having named a successor, the fledgling Qing state faced a possibly serious crisis. Several contenders—namely Nurhaci's second and eldest surviving son Daišan, Nurhaci's fourteenth and fifteenth sons Dorgon and Dodo (both born to the same mother), and Hong Taiji's eldest son Hooge—started to vie for the throne. With his brothers Dodo and Ajige, Dorgon (31 years old) controlled the Plain and Bordered White Banners, Daišan (60) was in charge of the two Red Banners, whereas Hooge (34) had the loyalty of his father's two Yellow Banners.
The decision about who would become the new Qing emperor fell to the Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers, which was the Manchus' main policymaking body until the emergence of the Grand Council in the 1720s. Many Manchu princes argued that Dorgon, a proven military leader, should become the new emperor, but Dorgon refused and insisted that one of Hong Taiji's sons should succeed his father. To recognize Dorgon's authority while keeping the throne in Hong Taiji's descent line, the members of the council named Hong Taiji's ninth son, Fulin, as the new emperor, but decided that Dorgon and Jirgalang (a nephew of Nurhaci who controlled the Bordered Blue Banner) would act as the five-year-old child's regents. Fulin was officially crowned emperor of the Qing dynasty on 8 October 1643; it was decided that he would reign under the era name "Shunzhi." Because the Shunzhi reign is not well documented, it constitutes a relatively little-known period of Qing history.
## Dorgon's regency (1643–1650)
### A quasi emperor
On 17 February 1644, Jirgalang, who was a capable military leader but looked uninterested in managing state affairs, willingly yielded control of all official matters to Dorgon. After an alleged plot by Hooge to undermine the regency was exposed on 6 May of that year, Hooge was stripped of his title of Imperial Prince and his co-conspirators were executed. Dorgon soon replaced Hooge's supporters (mostly from the Yellow Banners) with his own, thus gaining closer control of two more Banners. By early June 1644, he was in firm control of the Qing government and its military.
In early 1644, just as Dorgon and his advisors were pondering how to attack the Ming, peasant rebellions were dangerously approaching Beijing. On 24 April of that year, rebel leader Li Zicheng breached the walls of the Ming capital, pushing the Chongzhen Emperor to hang himself on a hill behind the Forbidden City. Hearing the news, Dorgon's Chinese advisors Hong Chengchou and Fan Wencheng (范文程; 1597–1666) urged the Manchu prince to seize this opportunity to present themselves as avengers of the fallen Ming and to claim the Mandate of Heaven for the Qing. The last obstacle between Dorgon and Beijing was Ming general Wu Sangui, who was garrisoned at Shanhai Pass at the eastern end of the Great Wall. Himself caught between the Manchus and Li Zicheng's forces, Wu requested Dorgon's help in ousting the bandits and restoring the Ming. When Dorgon asked Wu to work for the Qing instead, Wu had little choice but to accept. Aided by Wu Sangui's elite soldiers, who fought the rebel army for hours before Dorgon finally chose to intervene with his cavalry, the Qing won a decisive victory against Li Zicheng at the Battle of Shanhai Pass on 27 May. Li's defeated troops looted Beijing for several days until Li left the capital on 4 June with all the wealth he could carry.
### Settling in the capital
After six weeks of mistreatment at the hands of rebel troops, the Beijing population sent a party of elders and officials to greet their liberators on 5 June. They were startled when, instead of meeting Wu Sangui and the Ming heir apparent, they saw Dorgon, a horseriding Manchu with his shaved forehead, present himself as the Prince Regent. In the midst of this upheaval, Dorgon installed himself in the Wuying Palace (武英殿), the only building that remained more or less intact after Li Zicheng had set fire to the palace complex on 3 June. Banner troops were ordered not to loot; their discipline made the transition to Qing rule "remarkably smooth." Yet at the same time as he claimed to have come to avenge the Ming, Dorgon ordered that all claimants to the Ming throne (including descendants of the last Ming emperor) should be executed along with their supporters.
On 7 June, just two days after entering the city, Dorgon issued special proclamations to officials around the capital, assuring them that if the local population accepted to shave their forehead, wear a queue, and surrender, the officials would be allowed to stay at their post. He had to repeal this command three weeks later after several peasant rebellions erupted around Beijing, threatening Qing control over the capital region.
Dorgon greeted the Shunzhi Emperor at the gates of Beijing on 19 October 1644. On 30 October the six-year-old monarch performed sacrifices to Heaven and Earth at the Altar of Heaven. The southern cadet branch of Confucius' descendants who held the title Wujing boshi 五經博士 and the sixty-fifth generation descendant of Confucius to hold the title Duke Yansheng in the northern branch both had their titles reconfirmed on 31 October. A formal ritual of enthronement for Fulin was held on 8 November, during which the young emperor compared Dorgon's achievements to those of the Duke of Zhou, a revered regent from antiquity. During the ceremony, Dorgon's official title was raised from "Prince Regent" to "Uncle Prince Regent" (Shufu shezheng wang 叔父攝政王), in which the Manchu term for "Uncle" (ecike) represented a rank higher than that of imperial prince. Three days later Dorgon's co-regent Jirgalang was demoted from "Prince Regent" to "Assistant Uncle Prince Regent" (Fu zheng shuwang 輔政叔王). In June 1645, Dorgon eventually decreed that all official documents should refer to him as "Imperial Uncle Prince Regent" (Huang shufu shezheng wang 皇叔父攝政王), which left him one step short of claiming the throne for himself.
One of Dorgon's first orders in the new Qing capital was to vacate the entire northern part of Beijing to give it to Bannermen, including Han Chinese Bannermen. The Yellow Banners were given the place of honor north of the palace, followed by the White Banners east, the Red Banners west, and the Blue Banners south. This distribution accorded with the order established in the Manchu homeland before the conquest and under which "each of the banners was given a fixed geographical location according to the points of the compass." Despite tax remissions and large-scale building programs designed to facilitate the transition, in 1648 many Chinese civilians still lived among the newly arrived Banner population and there was still animosity between the two groups. Agricultural land outside the capital was also marked off (quan 圈) and given to Qing troops. Former landowners now became tenants who had to pay rent to their absentee Bannermen landlords. This transition in land use caused "several decades of disruption and hardship."
In 1646, Dorgon also ordered that the civil examinations for selecting government officials be reestablished. From then on they were held regularly every three years as under the Ming. In the very first palace examination held under Qing rule in 1646, candidates, most of whom were northern Chinese, were asked how the Manchus and Han Chinese could be made to work together for a common purpose. The 1649 examination inquired about "how Manchus and Han Chinese could be unified so that their hearts were the same and they worked together without division." Under the Shunzhi Emperor's reign, the average number of graduates per session of the metropolitan examination was the highest of the Qing dynasty ("to win more Chinese support"), until 1660 when lower quotas were established.
To promote ethnic harmony, in 1648 an imperial decree formulated by Dorgon allowed Han Chinese civilians to marry women from the Manchu Banners, with the permission of the Board of Revenue if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners, or the permission of their banner company captain if they were unregistered commoners. Only later in the dynasty were these policies allowing intermarriage rescinded.
### Conquest of China proper
Under the reign of Dorgon—whom historians have variously called "the mastermind of the Qing conquest" and "the principal architect of the great Manchu enterprise"—the Qing subdued almost all of China and pushed loyalist "Southern Ming" resistance into the far southwestern reaches of China. After repressing anti-Qing revolts in Hebei and Shandong in the Summer and Fall of 1644, Dorgon sent armies to root out Li Zicheng from the important city of Xi'an (Shaanxi province), where Li had reestablished his headquarters after fleeing Beijing in early June 1644. Under the pressure of Qing armies, Li was forced to leave Xi'an in February 1645, and he was killed—either by his own hand or by a peasant group that had organized for self-defense in this time of rampant banditry—in September 1645 after fleeing though several provinces.
From newly captured Xi'an, in early April 1645 the Qing mounted a campaign against the rich commercial and agricultural region of Jiangnan south of the lower Yangtze River, where in June 1644 a Ming imperial prince had established a regime loyal to the Ming. Factional bickering and numerous defections prevented the Southern Ming from mounting an efficient resistance. Several Qing armies swept south, taking the key city of Xuzhou north of the Huai River in early May 1645 and soon converging on Yangzhou, the main city on the Southern Ming's northern line of defense. Bravely defended by Shi Kefa, who refused to surrender, Yangzhou fell to Manchu artillery on 20 May after a one-week siege. Dorgon's brother Prince Dodo then ordered the slaughter of Yangzhou's entire population. As intended, this massacre terrorized other Jiangnan cities into surrendering to the Qing. Indeed, Nanjing surrendered without a fight on 16 June after its last defenders had made Dodo promise he would not hurt the population. The Qing soon captured the Ming emperor (who died in Beijing the following year) and seized Jiangnan's main cities, including Suzhou and Hangzhou; by early July 1645, the frontier between the Qing and the Southern Ming had been pushed south to the Qiantang River.
On 21 July 1645, after Jiangnan had been superficially pacified, Dorgon issued a most inopportune edict ordering all Chinese men to shave their forehead and to braid the rest of their hair into a queue identical to those of the Manchus. The punishment for non-compliance was death. This policy of symbolic submission helped the Manchus in telling friend from foe. For Han officials and literati, however, the new hairstyle was shameful and demeaning (because it breached a common Confucian directive to preserve one's body intact), whereas for common folk cutting their hair was the same as losing their virility. Because it united Chinese of all social backgrounds into resistance against Qing rule, the hair cutting command greatly hindered the Qing conquest. The defiant population of Jiading and Songjiang was massacred by former Ming general Li Chengdong (李成東; d. 1649), respectively on 24 August and 22 September. Jiangyin also held out against about 10,000 Qing troops for 83 days. When the city wall was finally breached on 9 October 1645, the Qing army led by Ming defector Liu Liangzuo (劉良佐; d. 1667) massacred the entire population, killing between 74,000 and 100,000 people. These massacres ended armed resistance against the Qing in the Lower Yangtze. A few committed loyalists became hermits, hoping that for lack of military success, their withdrawal from the world would at least symbolize their continued defiance against foreign rule.
After the fall of Nanjing, two more members of the Ming imperial household created new Southern Ming regimes: one centered in coastal Fujian around the "Longwu Emperor" Zhu Yujian, Prince of Tang—a ninth-generation descendant of Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang—and one in Zhejiang around "Regent" Zhu Yihai, Prince of Lu. But the two loyalist groups failed to cooperate, making their chances of success even lower than they already were. In July 1646, a new Southern Campaign led by Prince Bolo sent Prince Lu's Zhejiang court into disarray and proceeded to attack the Longwu regime in Fujian. Zhu Yujian was caught and summarily executed in Tingzhou (western Fujian) on 6 October. His adoptive son Koxinga fled to the island of Taiwan with his fleet. Finally in November, the remaining centers of Ming resistance in Jiangxi province fell to the Qing.
In late 1646 two more Southern Ming monarchs emerged in the southern province of Guangzhou, reigning under the era names of Shaowu (紹武) and Yongli. Short of official costumes, the Shaowu court had to purchase robes from local theater troops. The two Ming regimes fought each other until 20 January 1647, when a small Qing force led by Li Chengdong captured Guangzhou, killed the Shaowu Emperor, and sent the Yongli court fleeing to Nanning in Guangxi. In May 1648, however, Li mutinied against the Qing, and the concurrent rebellion of another former Ming general in Jiangxi helped Yongli to retake most of south China. This resurgence of loyalist hopes was short-lived. New Qing armies managed to reconquer the central provinces of Huguang (present-day Hubei and Hunan), Jiangxi, and Guangdong in 1649 and 1650. The Yongli emperor had to flee again. Finally on 24 November 1650, Qing forces led by Shang Kexi captured Guangzhou and massacred the city's population, killing as many as 70,000 people.
Meanwhile, in October 1646, Qing armies led by Hooge (the son of Hong Taiji who had lost the succession struggle of 1643) reached Sichuan, where their mission was to destroy the kingdom of bandit leader Zhang Xianzhong. Zhang was killed in a battle against Qing forces near Xichong in central Sichuan on 1 February 1647. Also late in 1646 but further north, forces assembled by a Muslim leader known in Chinese sources as Milayin (米喇印) revolted against Qing rule in Ganzhou (Gansu). He was soon joined by another Muslim named Ding Guodong (丁國棟). Proclaiming that they wanted to restore the Ming, they occupied a number of towns in Gansu, including the provincial capital Lanzhou. These rebels' willingness to collaborate with non-Muslim Chinese suggests that they were not only driven by religion. Both Milayin and Ding Guodong were captured and killed by Meng Qiaofang (孟喬芳; 1595–1654) in 1648, and by 1650 the Muslim rebels had been crushed in campaigns that inflicted heavy casualties.
## Transition and personal rule (1651–1661)
### Purging Dorgon's clique
Dorgon's unexpected death on 31 December 1650 during a hunting trip triggered a period of fierce factional struggles and opened the way for deep political reforms. Because Dorgon's supporters were still influential at court, Dorgon was given an imperial funeral and was posthumously elevated to imperial status as the "Righteous Emperor" (yi huangdi 義皇帝). On the same day of mid-January 1651, however, several officers of the White Banners led by former Dorgon supporter Ubai arrested Dorgon's brother Ajige for fear he would proclaim himself as the new regent; Ubai and his officers then named themselves presidents of several Ministries and prepared to take charge of the government.
Meanwhile, Jirgalang, who had been stripped of his title of regent in 1647, gathered support among Banner officers who had been disgruntled during Dorgon's rule. In order to consolidate support for the emperor in the two Yellow Banners (which had belonged to the Qing monarch since Hong Taiji) and to gain followers in Dorgon's Plain White Banner, Jirgalang named them the "Upper Three Banners" (shang san qi 上三旗; Manchu: dergi ilan gūsa), which from then on were owned and controlled by the emperor. Oboi and Suksaha, who would become regents for the Kangxi Emperor in 1661, were among the Banner officers who gave Jirgalang their support, and Jirgalang appointed them to the Council of Deliberative Princes to reward them.
On 1 February, Jirgalang announced that the Shunzhi Emperor, who was about to turn thirteen, would now assume full imperial authority. The regency was thus officially abolished. Jirgalang then moved to the attack. In late February or early March 1651 he accused Dorgon of usurping imperial prerogatives: Dorgon was found guilty and all his posthumous honors were removed. Jirgalang continued to purge former members of Dorgon's clique and to bestow high ranks and nobility titles upon a growing number of followers in the Three Imperial Banners, so that by 1652 all of Dorgon's former supporters had been either killed or effectively removed from government.
### Factional politics and the fight against corruption
On 7 April 1651, barely two months after he seized the reins of government, the Shunzhi Emperor issued an edict announcing that he would purge corruption from officialdom. This edict triggered factional conflicts among literati that would frustrate him until his death. One of his first gestures was to dismiss grand academician Feng Quan (馮銓; 1595–1672), a northern Chinese who had been impeached in 1645 but was allowed to remain in his post by Prince Regent Dorgon. The Shunzhi Emperor replaced Feng with Chen Mingxia (ca. 1601–1654), an influential southern Chinese with good connections in Jiangnan literary societies. Though later in 1651 Chen was also dismissed on charges of influence peddling, he was reinstated in his post in 1653 and soon became a close personal advisor to the sovereign. He was even allowed to draft imperial edicts just as Ming Grand Secretaries used to. Still in 1653, the Shunzhi Emperor decided to recall the disgraced Feng Quan, but instead of balancing the influence of northern and southern Chinese officials at court as the emperor had intended, Feng Quan's return only intensified factional strife. In several controversies at court in 1653 and 1654, the southerners formed one bloc opposed to the northerners and the Manchus. In April 1654, when Chen Mingxia spoke to northern official Ning Wanwo (寧完我; d. 1665) about restoring the style of dress of the Ming court, Ning immediately denounced Chen to the emperor and accused him of various crimes including bribe-taking, nepotism, factionalism, and usurping imperial prerogatives. Chen was executed by strangulation on 27 April 1654.
In November 1657, a major cheating scandal erupted during the Shuntian provincial-level examinations in Beijing. Eight candidates from Jiangnan who were also relatives of Beijing officials had bribed examiners in the hope of being ranked higher in the contest. Seven examination supervisors found guilty of receiving bribes were executed, and several hundred people were sentenced to punishments ranging from demotion to exile and confiscation of property. The scandal, which soon spread to Nanjing examination circles, uncovered the corruption and influence-peddling that was rife in the bureaucracy, and that many moralistic officials from the north attributed to the existence of southern literary clubs and to the decline of classical scholarship.
### Chinese style of rule
During his short reign, the Shunzhi Emperor encouraged Han Chinese to participate in government activities and revived many Chinese-style institutions that had been either abolished or marginalized during Dorgon's regency. He discussed history, classics, and politics with grand academicians such as Chen Mingxia (see previous section) and surrounded himself with new men such as Wang Xi (王熙; 1628–1703), a young northern Chinese who was fluent in Manchu. The "Six Edicts" (Liu yu 六諭) that the Shunzhi Emperor promulgated in 1652 were the predecessors to the Kangxi Emperor's "Sacred Edicts" (1670): "bare bones of Confucian orthodoxy" that instructed the population to behave in a filial and law-abiding fashion. In another move toward Chinese-style government, the sovereign reestablished the Hanlin Academy and the Grand Secretariat in 1658. These two institutions based on Ming models further eroded the power of the Manchu elite and threatened to revive the extremes of literati politics that had plagued the late Ming, when factions coalesced around rival grand secretaries.
To counteract the power of the Imperial Household Department and the Manchu nobility, in July 1653 the Shunzhi Emperor established the Thirteen Offices (十三衙門), or Thirteen Eunuch Bureaus, which were supervised by Manchus, but manned by Chinese eunuchs rather than Manchu bondservants. Eunuchs had been kept under tight control during Dorgon's regency, but the young emperor used them to counter the influence of other power centers such as his mother the Empress Dowager and former regent Jirgalang. By the late 1650s eunuch power became formidable again: they handled key financial and political matters, offered advice on official appointments, and even composed edicts. Because eunuchs isolated the monarch from the bureaucracy, Manchu and Chinese officials feared a return to the abuses of eunuch power that had plagued the late Ming. Despite the emperor's attempt to impose strictures on eunuch activities, the Shunzhi Emperor's favorite eunuch Wu Liangfu (吳良輔; d. 1661), who had helped him defeat the Dorgon faction in the early 1650s, was caught in a corruption scandal in 1658. The fact that Wu only received a reprimand for his accepting bribes did not reassure the Manchu elite, which saw eunuch power as a degradation of Manchu power. The Thirteen Offices would be eliminated (and Wu Liangfu executed) by Oboi and the other regents of the Kangxi Emperor in March 1661 soon after the Shunzhi Emperor's death.
### Frontiers, tributaries, and foreign relations
In 1646, when Qing armies led by Bolo had entered the city of Fuzhou, they had found envoys from the Ryūkyū Kingdom, Annam, and the Spanish in Manila. These tributary embassies that had come to see the now fallen Longwu Emperor of the Southern Ming were forwarded to Beijing, and eventually sent home with instructions about submitting to the Qing. The King of the Ryūkyū Islands sent his first tribute mission to the Qing in 1649, Siam in 1652, and Annam in 1661, after the last remnants of Ming resistance had been removed from Yunnan, which bordered Annam.
Also in 1646 sultan Abu al-Muhammad Haiji Khan, a Moghul prince who ruled Turfan, had sent an embassy requesting the resumption of trade with China, which had been interrupted by the fall of the Ming dynasty. The mission was sent without solicitation, but the Qing agreed to receive it, allowing it to conduct tribute trade in Beijing and Lanzhou (Gansu). But this agreement was interrupted by a Muslim rebellion that engulfed the northwest in 1646 (see the last paragraph of the "Conquest of China" section above). Tribute and trade with Hami and Turfan, which had aided the rebels, were eventually resumed in 1656. In 1655, however, the Qing court announced that tributary missions from Turfan would be accepted only once every five years.
In 1651 the young emperor invited to Beijing the Fifth Dalai Lama, the leader of the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who, with the military help of Khoshot Mongol Gushri Khan, had recently unified religious and secular rule in Tibet. Qing emperors had been patrons of Tibetan Buddhism since at least 1621 under the reign of Nurhaci, but there were also political reasons behind the invitation. Namely, Tibet was becoming a powerful polity west of the Qing, and the Dalai Lama held influence over Mongol tribes, many of which had not submitted to the Qing. To prepare for the arrival of this "living Buddha," the Shunzhi Emperor ordered the building of the White Dagoba (baita 白塔) on an island on one of the imperial lakes northwest of the Forbidden City, at the former site of Qubilai Khan's palace. After more invitations and diplomatic exchanges to decide where the Tibetan leader would meet the Qing emperor, the Dalai Lama arrived in Beijing in January 1653. The Dalai Lama later had a scene of this visit carved in the Potala Palace in Lhasa, which he had started building in 1645.
Meanwhile, north of the Manchu homeland, adventurers Vassili Poyarkov (1643–1646) and Yerofei Khabarov (1649–1653) had started to explore the Amur River valley for Tzarist Russia. In 1653 Khabarov was recalled to Moscow and replaced by Onufriy Stepanov, who assumed command of Khabarov's Cossack troops. Stepanov went south into the Sungari River, along which he exacted "yasak" (fur tribute) from native populations such as the Daur and the Duchers, but these groups resisted because they were already paying tribute to the Shunzhi Emperor ("Shamshakan" in Russian sources). In 1654 Stepanov defeated a small Manchu force that had been despatched from Ningguta to investigate Russian advances. In 1655 another Qing commander, the Mongol Minggadari (d. 1669), defeated Stepanov's forces at fort Kumarsk on the Amur, but this was not enough to chase the Russians. In 1658, however, Manchu general Šarhūda (1599–1659) attacked Stepanov with a fleet of 40 or more ships that managed to kill or capture most Russians. This Qing victory temporarily cleared the Amur valley of Cossack bands, but Sino-Russian border conflicts would continue until 1689, when the signature of the Treaty of Nerchinsk fixed the borders between Russia and the Qing.
### Continuous campaigns against the Southern Ming
Though the Qing under Dorgon's leadership had successfully pushed the Southern Ming deep into southern China, Ming loyalism was not dead yet. In early August 1652, Li Dingguo, who had served as general in Sichuan under bandit king Zhang Xianzhong (d. 1647) and was now protecting the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming, retook Guilin (Guangxi province) from the Qing. Within a month, most of the commanders who had been supporting the Qing in Guangxi reverted to the Ming side. Despite occasionally successful military campaigns in Huguang and Guangdong in the next two years, Li failed to retake important cities. In 1653, the Qing court put Hong Chengchou in charge of retaking the southwest. Headquartered in Changsha (in what is now Hunan province), he patiently built up his forces; only in late 1658 did well-fed and well-supplied Qing troops mount a multipronged campaign to take Guizhou and Yunnan. In late January 1659, a Qing army led by Manchu prince Doni took the capital of Yunnan, sending the Yongli Emperor fleeing into nearby Burma, which was then ruled by King Pindale Min of the Toungoo dynasty. The last sovereign of the Southern Ming stayed there until 1662, when he was captured and executed by Wu Sangui, the former Ming general whose surrender to the Manchus in April 1644 had allowed Dorgon to start the Qing conquest of China.
Zheng Chenggong ("Koxinga"), who had been adopted by the Longwu Emperor in 1646 and ennobled by Yongli in 1655, also continued to defend the cause of the Southern Ming. In 1659, just as the Shunzhi Emperor was preparing to hold a special examination to celebrate the glories of his reign and the success of the southwestern campaigns, Zheng sailed up the Yangtze River with a well-armed fleet, took several cities from Qing hands, and went so far as to threaten Nanjing. When the emperor heard of this sudden attack he is said to have slashed his throne with a sword in anger. But the siege of Nanjing was relieved and Zheng Chenggong repelled, forcing Zheng to take refuge in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian. Pressured by Qing fleets, Zheng fled to Taiwan in April 1661 but died that same summer. His descendants resisted Qing rule until 1683, when the Kangxi Emperor successfully took the island.
### Personality and relationships
After Fulin came to rule on his own in 1651, his mother the Empress Dowager Zhaosheng arranged for him to marry her niece, but the young monarch deposed his new Empress in 1653. The following year Xiaozhuang arranged another imperial marriage with her Khorchin Mongol clan, this time matching her son with her own grand-niece. Though Fulin also disliked his second empress (known posthumously as Empress Xiaohuizhang), he was not allowed to demote her. She never bore him children. Starting in 1656, the Shunzhi Emperor lavished his affection on Consort Donggo, who, according to Jesuit accounts from the time, had first been the wife of another Manchu noble. She gave birth to a son (the Shunzhi Emperor's fourth) in November 1657. The emperor would have made him his heir apparent, but he died early in 1658 before he was given a name.
The Shunzhi Emperor was an open-minded emperor and relied on the advice of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, a Jesuit missionary from Cologne in the Germanic parts of the Holy Roman Empire, for guidance on matters ranging from astronomy and technology to religion and government. In late 1644, Dorgon had put Schall in charge of preparing a new calendar because his eclipse predictions had proven more reliable than those of the official astronomer. After Dorgon's death Schall developed a personal relationship with the young emperor, who called him "grandfather" (mafa in Manchu). At the height of his influence in 1656 and 1657, Schall reports that the Shunzhi Emperor often visited his house and talked to him late into the night. He was excused from prostrating himself in the presence of the emperor, was granted land to build a church in Beijing, and was even given imperial permission to adopt a son (because Fulin worried that Schall did not have an heir), but the Jesuits' hope of converting the Qing sovereign to Christianity was crushed when the Shunzhi Emperor became a devout follower of Chan Buddhism in 1657.
The emperor developed a good command of Chinese that allowed him to manage matters of state and to appreciate Chinese arts such as calligraphy and drama. One of his favorite texts was "Rhapsody of a Myriad Sorrows" (Wan chou qu 萬愁曲), by Gui Zhuang (歸莊; 1613–1673), who was a close friend of anti-Qing intellectuals Gu Yanwu and Wan Shouqi (萬壽祺; 1603–1652). "Quite passionate and attach[ing] great importance to qing (love)," he could also recite by heart long passages of the popular Romance of the Western Chamber.
## Death and succession
### Smallpox
In September 1660, Consort Donggo, the Shunzhi Emperor's favourite consort, suddenly died as a result of grief over the loss of a child. Overwhelmed with grief, the emperor fell into dejection for months, until he contracted smallpox on 2 February 1661. On 4 February 1661, officials Wang Xi (王熙, 1628–1703; the emperor's confidant) and Margi (a Manchu) were called to the emperor's bedside to record his last will. On the same day, his seven-year-old third son Xuanye was chosen to be his successor, probably because he had already survived smallpox. The emperor died on 5 February 1661 in the Forbidden City at the age of twenty-two.
The Manchus feared smallpox more than any other disease because they had no immunity to it and almost always died when they contracted it. By 1622 at the latest, they had already established an agency to investigate smallpox cases and isolate sufferers to avoid contagion. During outbreaks, royal family members were routinely sent to "smallpox avoidance centers" (bidousuo 避痘所) to protect themselves from infection. The Shunzhi Emperor was particularly fearful of the disease, because he was young and lived in a large city, near sources of contagion. Indeed, during his reign at least nine outbreaks of smallpox were recorded in Beijing, each time forcing the emperor to move to a protected area such as the "Southern Park" (Nanyuan 南苑), a hunting ground south of Beijing where Dorgon had built a "smallpox avoidance center" in the 1640s. Despite this and other precautions—such as rules forcing Chinese residents to move out of the city when they contracted smallpox—the young monarch still succumbed to that illness.
### Forged last will
The emperor's last will, which was made public on the evening of 5 February, appointed four regents for his young son: Oboi, Soni, Suksaha, and Ebilun, who had all helped Jirgalang to purge the court of Dorgon's supporters after Dorgon's death on the last day of 1650. It is difficult to determine whether the Shunzhi Emperor had really named these four Manchu nobles as regents, because they and Empress Dowager Zhaosheng clearly tampered with the emperor's testament before promulgating it. The emperor's will expressed his regret about his Chinese-style ruling (his reliance on eunuchs and his favoritism toward Chinese officials), his neglect of Manchu nobles and traditions, and his headstrong devotion to his consort rather than to his mother. Though the emperor had often issued self-deprecating edicts during his reign, the policies his will rejected had been central to his government since he had assumed personal rule in the early 1650s. The will as it was formulated gave "the mantle of imperial authority" to the four regents, and served to support their pro-Manchu policies during the period known as the Oboi regency, which lasted from 1661 to 1669.
### After death
Because court statements did not clearly announce the cause of the emperor's death, rumors soon started to circulate that he had not died but in fact retired to a Buddhist monastery to live anonymously as a monk, either out of grief for the death of his beloved consort, or because of a coup by the Manchu nobles his will had named as regents. These rumors seemed not so incredible because the emperor had become a fervent follower of Chan Buddhism in the late 1650s, even letting monks move into the imperial palace. Modern Chinese historians have considered the Shunzhi Emperor's possible retirement as one of the three mysterious cases of the early Qing. But much circumstantial evidence—including an account by one of these monks that the emperor's health greatly deteriorated in early February 1661 because of smallpox, and the fact that a concubine and an Imperial Bodyguard committed suicide to accompany the emperor in burial—suggests that the Shunzhi Emperor's death was not staged.
After being kept in the Forbidden City for 27 days of mourning, on 3 March 1661 the emperor's corpse was transported in a lavish procession to Jingshan 景山 (a hillock just north of the Forbidden City), after which a large amount of precious goods were burned as funeral offerings. Only two years later, in 1663, was the body transported to its final resting place. Contrary to Manchu customs at the time, which usually dictated that a deceased person should be cremated, the Shunzhi Emperor was buried. He was interred in what later came to be known as the Eastern Qing Tombs, 125 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Beijing, one of two Qing imperial cemeteries. His tomb is part of the Xiao (孝) mausoleum complex (known in Manchu as the Hiyoošungga Munggan), which was the first mausoleum to be erected on that site.
## Legacy
The fake will in which the Shunzhi Emperor had supposedly expressed regret for abandoning Manchu traditions gave authority to the nativist policies of the Kangxi Emperor's four regents. Citing the testament, Oboi and the other regents quickly abolished the Thirteen Eunuch Bureaus. Over the next few years, they enhanced the power of the Imperial Household Department, which was run by Manchus and their bondservants, eliminated the Hanlin Academy, and limited membership in the Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers to Manchus and Mongols. The regents also adopted aggressive policies toward the Qing's Chinese subjects: they executed dozens of people and punished thousands of others in the wealthy Jiangnan region for literary dissent and tax arrears, and forced the coastal population of southeast China to move inland in order to starve the Taiwan-based Kingdom of Tungning run by descendants of Koxinga.
After the Kangxi Emperor managed to imprison Oboi in 1669, he reverted many of the regents' policies. He restored institutions his father had favored, including the Grand Secretariat, through which Chinese officials gained an important voice in government. He also defeated the rebellion of the Three Feudatories, three Chinese military commanders who had played key military roles in the Qing conquest, but had now become entrenched rulers of enormous domains in southern China. The civil war (1673–1681) tested the loyalty of the new Qing subjects, but Qing armies eventually prevailed. Once victory had become certain, a special examination for "eminent scholars of broad learning" (Boxue hongru 博學鴻儒) was held in 1679 to attract Chinese literati who had refused to serve the new dynasty. The successful candidates were assigned to compile the official history of the fallen Ming dynasty. The rebellion was defeated in 1681, the same year the Kangxi Emperor initiated the use of variolation to inoculate children of the imperial family against smallpox. When the Kingdom of Tungning finally fell in 1683, the military consolidation of the Qing regime was complete. The institutional foundation laid by Dorgon, and the Shunzhi and Kangxi emperors allowed the Qing to erect an imperial edifice of awesome proportion and to turn it into "one of the most successful imperial states the world has known." Ironically, however, the prolonged Pax Manchurica that followed the Kangxi consolidation made the Qing unprepared to face aggressive European powers with modern weaponry in the nineteenth century.
## Family
Although only nineteen empresses and consorts are recorded for the Shunzhi Emperor in the Aisin Gioro genealogy made by the Imperial Clan Court, burial records show that he had at least thirty-two of them. Twelve bore him children. There were two empresses in his reign, both relatives of his mother the empress dowager. After the 1644 conquest, imperial consorts and empresses were usually known by their titles and by the name of their patrilineal clan.
Eleven of the Shunzhi Emperor's 32 spouses bore him a total of fourteen children, but only four sons (Fuquan, Xuanye, Changning, and Longxi) and one daughter (Princess Gongque) lived to be old enough to marry. Unlike later Qing emperors, the names of the Shunzhi Emperor's sons did not include a generational character.
Before the Qing court moved to Beijing in 1644, Manchu women used to have personal names, but after 1644 these names "disappear from the genealogical and archival records." Only after their betrothal were imperial daughters given a title and rank, by which they then became known. Although five of the Shunzhi Emperor's six daughters died in infancy or childhood, they all appear in the Aisin Gioro genealogy.
Empress
- Consort Jing, of the Khorchin Borjigit clan (靜妃 博爾濟吉特氏), first cousin, personal name Erdeni Bumba (額爾德尼布木巴)
- Empress Xiaohuizhang, of the Khorchin Borjigit clan (孝惠章皇后 博爾濟吉特氏; 5 November 1641 – 7 January 1718), personal name Altantsetseg (阿拉坦琪琪格)
- Empress Xiaoxian, of the Donggo clan (孝獻皇后 董鄂氏; 1639 – 23 September 1660)
- Prince Rong of the First Rank (榮親王; 12 November 1657 – 25 February 1658), fourth son
- Empress Xiaokangzhang, of the Tunggiya clan (孝康章皇后 佟佳氏; 1638 – 20 March 1663)
- Xuanye, the Kangxi Emperor (聖祖 玄燁; 4 May 1654 – 20 December 1722), third son
Consort
- Consort Dao, of the Khorchin Borjigit clan (悼妃 博爾濟吉特氏; d. 7 April 1658), first cousin
- Consort Zhen, of the Donggo clan (貞妃 董鄂氏; d. 5 February 1661)
- Consort Ke, of the Shi clan (恪妃 石氏; d. 13 January 1668)
- Consort Gongjing, of the Hotsit Borjigit clan (恭靖妃 博爾濟吉特氏; d. 20 May 1689)
- Consort Shuhui, of the Khorchin Borjigit clan (淑惠妃 博爾濟吉特氏; 1642 – 17 December 1713), first cousin once removed
- Consort Duanshun, of the Abaga Borjigit clan (端順妃 博爾濟吉特氏; d. 1 August 1709)
- Consort Ningque, of the Donggo clan (寧愨妃 董鄂氏; d. 11 August 1694)
- Fuquan, Prince Yuxian of the First Rank (裕憲親王 福全; 8 September 1653 – 10 August 1703), second son
Concubine
- Mistress, of the Ba clan (巴氏)
- Niuniu (牛鈕; 13 December 1651 – 9 March 1652), first son
- Third daughter (30 January 1654 – April/May 1658)
- Fifth daughter (6 February 1655 – January 1661)
- Mistress, of the Chen clan (陳氏; d. 1690)
- First daughter (22 April 1652 – November/December 1653)
- Changning, Prince Gong of the First Rank (恭親王 常寧; 8 December 1657 – 20 July 1703), fifth son
- Mistress, of the Yang clan (楊氏)
- Princess Gongque of the Second Rank (和碩恭愨公主; 19 January 1654 – 26 November 1685), second daughter
- Married Na'erdu (訥爾杜; d. 1676) of the Manchu Gūwalgiya clan in February/March 1667
- Fourth daughter (9 January 1655 – March/April 1661)
- Mistress, of the Nara clan (那拉氏)
- Sixth daughter (11 November 1657 – March 1661)
- Mistress, of the Tang clan (唐氏)
- Qishou (奇授; 3 January 1660 – 12 December 1665), sixth son
- Mistress, of the Niu clan (鈕氏)
- Longxi, Prince Chunjing of the First Rank (純靖親王 隆禧; 30 May 1660 – 20 August 1679), seventh son
- Mistress, of the Muktu clan (穆克圖氏)
- Yonggan (永幹; 23 January 1661 – 15 January 1668), eighth son
## Ancestry
## In popular culture
- Portrayed by Jung Yoon-seok in the 2013 TV series Blooded Palace: The War of Flowers.
- Portrayed by an unknown voice actor in The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show episode "Sherman Exchange Program".
## See also
- Chinese emperors family tree (late)
- Chronology of the Shunzhi reign
- List of emperors of the Qing dynasty
## Explanatory notes
|
41,083,944 |
How Brown Saw the Baseball Game
| 1,162,356,508 |
1907 silent short film
|
[
"1900s American films",
"1900s English-language films",
"1900s sports comedy films",
"1907 films",
"1907 short films",
"American baseball films",
"American black-and-white films",
"American silent short films",
"American sports comedy films",
"Films set in the United States",
"Lubin Manufacturing Company films",
"Silent American comedy films",
"Silent sports comedy films"
] |
How Brown Saw the Baseball Game is an American short silent comedy film produced in 1907 and distributed by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The film follows a baseball fan named Mr. Brown who drinks large quantities of alcohol before a baseball game and becomes so intoxicated that the game appears to him in reverse motion. During production, trick photography was used to achieve this effect.
The film was released in November 1907. It received a positive review in a 1908 issue of The Courier-Journal that reported the film was successful and "truly funny". As of 2021, it is unclear whether a print of the film has survived. The identities of the film's cast and production crew are unknown. Film historians have noted similarities between the plot of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game and the Edwin S. Porter-directed comedy film How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game released the previous year.
## Plot
Before heading out to a baseball game at a nearby ballpark, sports fan Mr. Brown drinks several highball cocktails. He arrives at the ballpark to watch the game, but has become so inebriated that the game appears to him in reverse, with the players running the bases backwards and the baseball flying back into the pitcher's hand. After the game is over, Mr. Brown is escorted home by one of his friends. When they arrive at Brown's house, they encounter his wife who becomes furious with the friend and proceeds to physically assault him, believing he is responsible for her husband's severe intoxication.
## Production
How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, a company founded by German-American film pioneer Siegmund Lubin. At the time How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was made, the company was creating and distributing up to three films a week. The identities of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game's director and cast are not known.
It is a silent film shot in black and white, and the finished product comprised 350 feet (110 m) of film. For the scenes which took place at the ballpark, the filmmakers used a form of trick photography to show the baseball players running backwards. Siegmund Lubin filed a copyright for the film on October 26, 1907, under the title How Jones Saw the Baseball Game.
## Release and reception
How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was released to theaters by Lubin Manufacturing Company on November 16, 1907, and was still being shown as late as January 1910. During this time, the film was sometimes presented as part of a double feature with the 1907 film Neighbors Who Borrow, a short comedy film about a man who lends nearly everything he owns to his neighbors until his wife returns home and berates him for doing so.
Advertisements for the film touted it as "such fun", and Lubin himself promoted the film as a "screamingly funny farce". It received a positive review in a June 1908 issue of The Courier-Journal which described the film as "truly funny" and that it proved to be "a veritable hit".
Modern writings have often suggested that How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was produced as Lubin Manufacturing Company's alternative to the Edwin S. Porter-directed comedy How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game, a film released by Edison Studios in 1906 about an office employee sneaking out of his workplace to watch a baseball game only to discover his employer in a nearby seat. Lubin Manufacturing Company was known for creating films similar to competing motion pictures made by other studios. Lubin had previously created films resembling Edison Studios' releases Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Great Train Robbery. Author Jack Spears wrote in his book Hollywood: The Golden Era that How Brown Saw the Baseball Game and How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game "used practically the same plot"; Rob Elderman's article "The Baseball Film: to 1920" in the journal Base Ball likewise notes the similarities of their plotlines.
As of February 2021, it is unclear whether there is a surviving print of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game; it has likely become a lost film. If rediscovered, the film would be in the public domain.
|
1,977,969 |
Abishabis
| 1,173,191,368 |
Cree religious leader in Canada (died 1843)
|
[
"1843 deaths",
"Canadian animists",
"Canadian religious leaders",
"Cree people",
"Indigenous leaders in Manitoba",
"Religious figures of the indigenous peoples of North America",
"Year of birth unknown"
] |
Abishabis (died August 30, 1843) was a Cree religious leader. He became the prophet of a religious movement that spread among the Cree communities of northern Manitoba and Ontario during the 1840s. His preaching caused some Cree people to stop hunting furs, angering employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and reducing the company's profits. After losing much of his influence in 1843, Abishabis was suspected of murdering a First Nations family living near York Factory, in present-day Manitoba. He was arrested and imprisoned at Fort Severn, where a group of people forcibly removed him from his jail cell, murdered him, and burned his body. His followers slowly disavowed his teachings and destroyed their relics from the movement or practiced their religion in secret.
The religious philosophy of his teachings was an admixture of Christianity and Cree beliefs. Abishabis preached that he had visited heaven and that followers could use a Cree writing system to create religious relics, the purpose of which is disputed among academics. His followers did not worship him as a deity but believed his teachings were a revelation from their god. In 1930, John Montgomery Cooper reported that stories about Abishabis were passed down by the Cree people, who claimed that Abishabis had introduced Christianity to them.
## Early life and background
Abishabis was Omushkego Cree, referred to as "Home Guard Indians" by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). The Cree were one of several groups of Indigenous people who served as intermediaries between the HBC and Indigenous fur trappers. The company became dependent upon the Indigenous workforce to provide goods (such as fur) that they sold in Europe and provide skilled and unskilled labour to sustain the trading posts the HBC established. Abishabis was from a district that contained York Factory, a HBC trading post. His group traded with the company since the trading post was established. An 1832 list of Cree in the York Factory area lists an unmarried man as Abesshabis, son of Secappenesew. The Omushkego Cree relied upon guns to hunt animals, and the furs from these animals were traded to the HBC. In the years preceding Abishabis's religious pursuits, the group believed something was wrong with their hunting grounds, as they struggled to hunt caribou. James Hargrave, an officer with the HBC, wrote that there was nothing remarkable about Abishabis before the arrival of Methodist missionaries to the area.
## Religious activity
Religious activity associated with Abishabis was first recorded in 1842. In late 1842 and early 1843, his movement spread to the Cree in the area between Fort Churchill (in what is now Manitoba) and Moose River (in what is now Ontario). His movement would later be known as "Track to Heaven". Abishabis's movement was supported by tithes from his followers; as his following grew, he accumulated goods and more wives, a traditional sign of success among the Cree. His followers expected Abishabis to provide gifts that equaled the resources that were provided by Methodist missionaries and the HBC. Meanwhile, colonists and businessmen from Europe were concerned about Abishabis's preaching, as his followers were less likely to hunt for furs, hurting their profits. They also reported that followers relied upon wooden carvings for salvation and neglected the consumption of food or drink, causing some of them to starve to death. The HBC and the Methodist missionaries were united in refusing to recognise Abishabis's authority amongst his group.
Abishabis's influence decreased in mid-1843, partially because employees of the HBC advocated against his movement. On June 8, 1843, an HBC official named George Barnston condemned Abishabis's teachings as false and manipulation from the Devil, then destroyed an artifact from the leader's group that depicted a "track to heaven" by burning it. One day after prayers, Abishabis approached Hargrave to shake his hand; the Cree considered a handshake as a ritualistic action, and Abishabis intended for this to signal the HBC's support of his group. Hargrave refused, indicating to the Cree people that the Cree leader could not obtain resources from the company. Support further weakened when Abishabis asked for more wives (some of which were already married to other followers) and demanded larger quantities of food and clothing. Hargrave reported that by July 1843, Abishabis was begging for food and supplies to survive. As his following and influence waned, he was unable to support his wives, many of whom returned to their families.
## Arrest and death
In July 1843, Abishabis gathered supplies to travel to Severn House. He was accused of murdering an Indigenous family in the York Factory area and taking some of their possessions. Researcher Norman James Williamson stated that it was difficult to corroborate this story, as this version of events was reported to the HBC by the Cree and elaborated upon by Hargrave's wife, Letitia. Abishabis arrived in Severn House several days after the murder and spent a couple of days there, bothering the population and refusing to leave. Hargrave sent an interpreter named John Cromartie to Severn House with orders to incite the Cree population to kill Abishabis by accusing him of being a windigo. After analysing Hargrave's actions and reports, Norman Williamson stated that this order was given because Hargrave feared an uprising from the Cree against the HBC, led by Abishabis.
Cromartie disobeyed Hargrave's orders and arrested Abishabis on August 9. Norman Williamson attributes this to Cromartie's anxiety about the upcoming winter: the Cree participated in a fall goose hunt so that the HBC employees would have enough food to survive the winter. If Abishabis convinced the Cree to boycott the event, the outpost would struggle to survive. Cromartie wrote of Indigenous people's claims that Abishabis was threatening them if they did not give him resources. Abishabis was questioned about the murders in York Factory by Cromartie and denied involvement. Cromartie allowed Abishabis to escape, believing he would leave the area. Abishabis did leave for a time, but he returned shortly afterwards and was arrested again on August 28. On August 30, three men took him from his cell and killed him with axe-blows to the head. Letitia, in a letter to her mother, reported that the man who struck the final blow was named Towers. The men brought Abishabis's body to a nearby island and burned it, declaring that he might have been a windigo and that they wanted to prevent him from haunting them.
## Religious views
It is difficult to establish Abishabis's religious beliefs before his preaching because the Cree were not forthcoming about their beliefs when speaking to Europeans. The ultimate goal in the Cree religion was to journey to the afterlife, located in the remote west. This differed from the Christian concept of heaven as a place in the sky for morally good people, and thus the Cree struggled to understand the Christian concept when it was explained to them by missionaries.
Before beginning his ministry, Abishabis separated himself from the Cree and the HBC employees. Upon his return, he stated that he had traveled to the sky to a place where he received blessings and information, including the deity's physical features. Using a syllabic writing system, introduced to the Cree people by Methodist missionary James Evans, Abishabis and his associates created texts, charts, and pictographs with lines drawn upon wood or paper. Academics have given several explanations for what these lines depicted. Lee Irwin writes that they were seen as paths to heaven and hell; Philip H. Round said they were used to determine the will of spirits, allowing the Cree to purify themselves. Norman Williamson writes that the role of Abishabis's revelations was to determine possible futures for the Cree people; Timothy E. Williamson said the writings included warnings against adopting European customs and promises of meat on Earth and rewards in heaven for following these teachings. Abishabis taught his followers his technique so that they could create their own paths. He also claimed to have received a book from God called "Tracks to Heaven".
Abishabis's group was probably monotheistic, believing in a self-existing creator of the world. Their deity was distant from the group and difficult to approach. Methodists described Jesus to the Cree as an intermediary between humans and God, allowing humans to make requests to their deity. Abishabis used the Methodist teachings as a foundation for the Cree to communicate with their own deity. His followers observed the Sabbath, sang psalms, and painted books.
Some sources state that Abishabis referred to himself as Jesus. Norman Williamson states that this was probably rhetoric from the Methodists, and that instead Abishabis claimed that Jesus had led his spiritual journey. Abishabis's followers did not deify him and considered his teachings to be revelations of God's will. They believed that the spirits called upon the Cree to recognise the leader as a prophet, replace the Methodist missionaries' books with religious texts created by Abishabis and his associates, and return to their pre-colonisation customs. Abishabis claimed that he was the "High Priest of the Tribe"; Norman Williamson stated that Abishabis's ministry was successful because he was the first person to declare himself a Christian leader among his Cree community. This allowed them to open themselves up to the possibility of a Cree person leading their Christian theological teachings. Round said that the religion's success stemmed from merging Christian ideas with the familiarity of the Cree writing system, which promised Cree empowerment.
## Legacy
Followers continued to adhere to Abishabis's teachings in the winter following his death, particularly among Indigenous people who were inland and unaware that he died. The HBC and the Methodist church persecuted Abishabis's followers to eliminate this religious practice. A woman and a boy spread Abishabis's teachings to the Albany Cree community; upon their discovery by the Methodists, they were forced to put their relics of Abishabis's teachings into a bonfire that was attended by Cree people and HBC employees.
Hargrave sent a report to the British government in London; their response praised Hargrave's efforts to have Abishabis killed. In February 1844, a Methodist missionary named George Barnley reported that the Cree people in Moose Factory were still under the influence of the religious teachings, which had also spread to Cree people in Eastmain. In May 1844, Governor George Simpson stated that enthusiasm for the teachings in the northern parts of his territory ended with Abishabis's death. Followers began to conceal their faith when the influence of the HBC increased and as its workers showed disapproval of this interpretation of Christianity. Other followers slowly disavowed Abishabis's teachings and destroyed materials that were inspired by him.
In 1930, anthropologist John Montgomery Cooper reported that Cree people in Moose Factory had passed down oral stories about the movement. The Cree in Moose Factory stated that Abishabis had introduced Christianity to them.
|
31,950,058 |
Nyon Conference
| 1,158,662,225 |
1937 diplomatic conference in Switzerland
|
[
"1937 conferences",
"1937 in Switzerland",
"1937 in international relations",
"Anti-piracy",
"Diplomatic conferences in Switzerland",
"Naval conferences",
"Nyon",
"Piracy in the Mediterranean",
"September 1937 events",
"Spanish Civil War",
"Submarine warfare"
] |
The Nyon Conference was a diplomatic conference held in Nyon, Switzerland, in September 1937 to address attacks on international shipping in the Mediterranean Sea during the Spanish Civil War. The conference was convened in part because Italy had been carrying out unrestricted submarine warfare, although the final conference agreement did not accuse Italy directly; instead, the attacks were referred to as "piracy" by an unidentified body. Italy was not officially at war, nor did any submarine identify itself. The conference was designed to strengthen non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War. The United Kingdom and France led the conference, which was also attended by Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Romania, Turkey, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
The first agreement, signed on 14 September 1937, included plans to counterattack aggressive submarines. Naval patrols were established; the United Kingdom and France were to patrol most of the western Mediterranean and parts of the east, and the other signatories were to patrol their own waters. Italy was to be allowed to join the agreement and patrol the Tyrrhenian Sea if it wished. A second agreement followed three days later, applying similar provisions to surface ships. Italy and Germany did not attend, although the former took up naval patrols in November. In marked contrast to the actions of the Non-Intervention Committee and the League of Nations, this conference succeeded in preventing attacks by submarines.
Nyon has been characterised as "an appeasers paradise. The fiction that attacks on merchant shipping in the Mediterranean was the fault of 'pirates unknown' was fully indulged. [It] preserved the naval status quo in the Mediterranean until the end of the Spanish Civil War: the Francoists received whatever they wanted, the Republicans got very little."
## Context and organisation
The Non-Intervention Committee, a group of twenty-four nations set up in 1936 and based in London, had attempted to restrict the flow of weapons to the parties of the Spanish Civil War. For the United Kingdom, it formed part of the policy of appeasement towards Germany and Italy and aimed at preventing a proxy war – with Italy and Germany supporting Franco's Nationalist Coalition on one side and the Soviet Union supporting the Republican faction on the other – from escalating into a major pan-European conflict. An Anglo-Italian "Gentleman's Agreement" had been signed on 2 January 1937, with each party respecting the rights of the other in the Mediterranean and aimed at improving Anglo-Italian relations. In May 1937, Neville Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as British Prime Minister, and adopted a new policy of dealing directly with Germany and Italy. The British believed they could convince Italy to abandon Germany through appeasement.
Under a Non-Intervention Committee plan, neutral observers were posted to Spanish ports and borders. The plan also assigned zones of patrol to the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, and patrols began in April. Following attacks on the German cruiser Leipzig on 15 and 18 June, Germany and Italy withdrew from the patrols. The United Kingdom and France offered to replace Germany and Italy in patrols of their sections, but the latter powers believed these patrols would be too partial. The British Admiralty proposed four plans in response to attacks on British shipping, favouring sending significant naval resources to the Mediterranean as the best solution; previous control measures had been widely evaded. As suspected by the other powers, Italy was behind some of these attacks. Whilst officially being at peace, the Italian leadership had ordered the commencement of unrestricted submarine warfare, referred to in discussion as a campaign of piracy without mention of Italy. These plans would be the basis for a Mediterranean meeting, suggested by French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos. Meanwhile, on the night of 31 August to 1 September, the Italian submarine Iride unsuccessfully attacked the British destroyer Havock with torpedoes, between the Gulf of Valencia and the Balearic Islands, strengthening British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden's sceptical stance towards Italy. The attack led the British representative in Rome to protest to the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, but without response.
Up to 60,000 Italian volunteers were then operating in Spain, and the removal of foreign nationals was discussed by the Non-Intervention Committee. Italy had made a declaration that it would stop Italian volunteers from fighting in Spain on 7 January 1937, and put a moratorium on volunteers on 20 January, also agreeing to support limitations on the number of volunteers on the 25th. Italy continued to request that belligerent rights be given to the Nationalists and Republicans, so both would gain the right to search vessels for contraband, thus removing the need for naval patrols. This request was opposed by the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. British recognition of Italian sovereignty over Abyssinia following the Second Italo-Abyssinian War was an important issue during Anglo-Italian discussions in August 1937. Following Eden's disagreement with Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, Leader of the House of Lords and influential politician, over the issue, any agreement recognising Italian sovereignty was postponed until after the planned shipping conference had taken place.
On 5 or 6 September, the British arranged a conference for all parties with a Mediterranean coastline, along with Germany. The conference was to be held at Nyon, Switzerland – Geneva was avoided because Italians associated it with the actions of the League of Nations over the Abyssinian Crisis. The United Kingdom agreed to France's request to extend an invitation to the Soviet Union, but blocked France's attempt to invite a representative from Republican Spain. Portugal expressed surprise at not being invited. Camille Chautemps, the new French Prime Minister, opposed direct intervention on the Spanish question. The Soviet Union accepted the invitation, indicating that it would use the opportunity to blame Italy for the attacks on shipping. The Soviet government formally accused the Italians of sinking two Soviet merchant vessels, the Timiryazev and the Blagoev, an accusation the Italians described as "aggressive and offensive". This was perhaps an attempt by the Soviet Union to push Italy and Germany away from the conference. Germany rejected the invitation, stating that piracy and other issues the conference was to discuss should be handled only by normal meetings of the Non-Intervention Committee, not a conference like Nyon. The United Kingdom and France rejected this suggestion, and continued to prepare for the conference. Soon after, the Italians similarly declined. The Non-Intervention Committee, it said, also had the advantage of including other European powers, notably Poland and Portugal.
## Provisions
`British and French naval staffs rejected the idea of a convoy system in draft proposals. The British wanted to curb submarine activity, on the theory that focusing on covert submarine attacks would help avoid confrontation, whereas the French considered surface vessels and aircraft just as important. The French protested at a plan to create multi-nation squadrons, unhappy at the prospect of French ships coming under foreign command. On 8 September, plans were discussed in the British Cabinet, including the setting up of eight groups of three destroyers for the western Mediterranean. Preliminary talks with the French were held on 9 September, and the conference began on the 10th. Proceedings took two forms: discussions between the British and French, and formal meetings of all attending parties. Many of the other nations opposed the participation of the Soviet Navy in the Mediterranean, so the United Kingdom and France agreed to handle Aegean patrols. This was, perhaps surprisingly, accepted by the Soviet Union.`
The conference ended on 14 September with the signing of the "Mediterranean Agreement". Signatories were the countries of Bulgaria, Egypt, France, Greece, Romania, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the USSR and Yugoslavia. The agreement noted attacks on neutral shipping by submarines, in contravention of the London Naval Treaty (signed in 1930) and the Submarine Protocol, part of the Second London Naval Treaty (signed in 1936).
The agreement provided that any submarine that attacked neutral shipping was to be sunk if possible, including submarines in the vicinity of a recent attack that were determined to be responsible for the attack. French and British fleets would patrol the seas west of Malta and attack any suspicious submarines, with the division of patrols between the United Kingdom and France to be decided by their governments. Both countries would patrol the high seas and territorial waters of signatory countries in the Mediterranean. The British would provide slightly more than half the 60 destroyers needed, with the French providing the remainder and most of the accompanying aircraft. It was agreed that Italy could participate in patrols of the Tyrrhenian Sea if it wished to do so. In the Eastern Mediterranean, British and French ships would patrol up to the Dardanelles, but not in the Adriatic Sea. In this area, signatory countries would patrol their own territorial waters, and would provide any reasonable assistance to the French and British patrols. The future revision of these provisions, including the way the area had been divided into zones, was specifically allowed. Submarine activity would be banned, subject to two exemptions: travel on the surface accompanied by a surface ship, and activity in certain areas for training purposes. Governments would only allow foreign submarines into each of their territorial waters in extreme situations, such as immediate distress. Merchant shipping would also be advised to stick to particular shipping routes. The agreement repeated the suggestion that Italy join in the proposal. Delbos announced that similar proposals about surface craft would be prepared. The provisions of the agreement would come into force on 20 September. The British and French knew that the secret Italian submarine operations had already been paused, but actions to enforce the conference agreement started at midnight on 19/20 September. The delegates to the agreement were happy; The Times likened them to cricketers, "reviewing their innings, over by over".
The French and British naval staffs moved to Geneva, where a second agreement was signed on 17 September 1937. It extended the rules governing submarine warfare to surface vessels, and had the same signatories. Official versions of both agreements were published in French and English. Several proposals were not implemented: for instance, the British Admiral Ernle Chatfield wanted the Spanish parties to be able to verify that the flag a ship was displaying was correct, thereby preventing attacks on British shipping if Republican ships continued to use the British flag as a means of escape. This would have benefited the Nationalists, and the French insisted that this provision be dropped. Greece and Turkey wanted ships with a clear identifying mark to be excluded, so as to avoid being forced to fire on a German or Italian warship. This was rejected, but an amendment was made allowing nations to issue their preferred orders in their own territorial waters. A suggestion to fire at any attacking aircraft was easily passed. Another suggestion on surface ships (which incorrectly stated no attack had yet been proven) was eventually toughened with the addition of a clause stating aggressors would be attacked, at the request of the French. A Soviet proposal strengthening the effect of the agreement was made.
## Aftermath
Meanwhile, on 13 September, Italy was invited to join in the agreement. Italy unequivocally rejected it, refusing to patrol the Tyrrhenian Sea. It demanded "absolute parity" with the United Kingdom and France, meaning the same right of patrol in the Mediterranean. Italy subsequently indicated that its refusal would be reversed if such parity was granted. Meanwhile, on the 15th, Benito Mussolini's government sent two submarines to Francisco Franco's National Faction. The Soviet Union refused to use routes patrolled by the Italians; the Turks, Greeks and Yugoslavs refused to let the Italians use their ports. A compromise was signed on 30 September, and Italian patrols started on 10 November. The British government, and in particular Neville Chamberlain, desired better relations with Italy and these were achieved with the signing of the Anglo-Italian Agreements of 1938.
The patrols were a strain on the Royal Navy and the provisions were relaxed with French agreement, effective from January. Submarine activity soon returned and full patrols were resumed in early February. On the whole, submarine activity during this period did not amount to much; patrols were again relaxed in May, and the agreement suspended in August. The success of the conference was in marked contrast to the failure of the Non-Intervention Committee. The Nationalists and Italians switched to using air power against shipping; at least one ship was sunk off the Spanish coast by aircraft in the final months of 1937.
In the United Kingdom, Eden described the submarine attacks as savage. He also noted that attacks on submarines would be restricted to suitably extreme circumstances and that the two parties in the war would still not be able to engage neutral vessels. He was keen to avoid an "Anglo-Franco-Soviet bloc". The British press was in favour of the agreement, although The Times and The Guardian expressed some concerns. British historians have tended to see the Nyon Conference as an important stand against aggression, with some reservations. Christopher Seton-Watson describes it as a "diplomatic victory", but Jill Edwards points out that it failed to achieve a change in Italian policy. The agreement created further divisions between Eden as foreign minister and Neville Chamberlain as prime minister.
Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet representative, was pleased with the outcome. The agreement also allowed for greater military resources to be deployed to the Mediterranean as needed. Litvinov, in particular, stressed the Soviet Union's "indisputable right" to commit naval forces to the Mediterranean (something Germany and Italy had opposed in meetings of the Non-Intervention Committee). He also said he regretted that Spanish merchant shipping had been left out – the other nations believed this would have amounted to formal intervention into the civil war. Aretas Akers-Bouglas, Viscount Chilston and British Ambassador to the Soviet Union, reported that the Soviets considered the conference with "tempered satisfaction", and that they claimed credit for their delegation's role.
Elsewhere, French public opinion was strongly in favour of the outcome of the conference, the only criticism coming from the far left that Republican ships would not receive direct protection. The German mood was restrained, where the press were satisfied by the Soviet exclusion from patrols. In Spain, the Republicans – on the verge of disaster – were largely in favour, and the Nationalists strongly against. The Republicans praised the improved safety of the shipping routes, but were somewhat unhappy that belligerent rights had not been granted to both sides. The Nationalists made several complaints, including one over the route recommended to shipping, but none of these resulted in changes to the agreement. The agreement was welcomed by other members of the League of Nations. Italian historians tend to downplay the importance of the Nyon Conference, often seeing it as a mere extension of the Non-Intervention Committee.
|
626,586 |
HMS Vanguard (23)
| 1,153,780,535 |
Fast British battleship
|
[
"1944 ships",
"Battleships of the Royal Navy",
"Cold War battleships of the United Kingdom",
"Maritime incidents in 1960",
"Ships built on the River Clyde"
] |
HMS Vanguard was a British fast battleship built during the Second World War and commissioned after the war ended. She was the largest and fastest of the Royal Navy's battleships, the only ship of her class, and the last battleship to be built.
The Royal Navy anticipated being outnumbered by the combined German and Japanese battleships in the early 1940s, and had therefore started building the Lion-class battleships. However, the time-consuming construction of the triple-16-inch (406 mm) turrets for the Lion class would delay their completion until 1943 at the earliest. The British had enough 15-inch (381 mm) guns and turrets in storage to allow one ship of a modified Lion-class design with four twin-15-inch turrets to be completed faster than the Lion-class vessels that had already been laid down. Work on Vanguard was started and stopped several times during the war, and her design was revised several times during her construction to reflect war experience. These stoppages and changes prevented her from being completed before the end of the war.
Vanguard's first task after completing her sea trial at the end of 1946 was, early the next year, to convey King George VI and his family on the first Royal Tour of South Africa by a reigning monarch. While refitting after her return, she was selected for another Royal Tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1948. This was cancelled due to King George's declining health and Vanguard briefly became flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet in early 1949. After her return home in mid-1949, she became flagship of the Home Fleet Training Squadron. Throughout her career, the battleship usually served as the flagship of any unit to which she was assigned. During the early 1950s, Vanguard was involved in a number of training exercises with NATO forces. In 1953 she participated in Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation Review. While she was refitting in 1955, the Admiralty announced that the ship was going to be put into reserve upon completion of the work. Vanguard was sold for scrap and was broken up beginning in 1960.
## Design and description
By early 1939 it was clear that the first two Lion-class battleships could not be delivered before 1943 at the earliest and that further battleship construction would be necessary to match the German and Japanese battleships already under construction. The main constraint on the construction of any new battleships was the limited available capacity and the time required to build large-calibre guns and their gun turrets. Using four existing twin 15-inch mountings offered the possibility of bypassing this bottleneck and allowed the construction of a single fast battleship more quickly than building more Lion-class ships. The turrets were originally built for the battlecruisers Courageous and Glorious during the First World War, and were removed during the conversions of these ships to aircraft carriers in the 1920s. To save time, the Lion design was modified to accommodate the four turrets, and preliminary design work began in July 1939. The square or transom stern was retained as it was estimated to improve speed at full power by 0.33 knots (0.61 km/h; 0.38 mph). This made Vanguard the only British battleship built with a transom stern, as the Lions were never finished.
Design work was suspended on 11 September 1939, after the start of the Second World War, but resumed in February 1940 after the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, expressed an interest in the ship. The design was modified to increase protection against shell splinters on the unprotected sides of the ship's hull, the armour of the secondary armament was increased to resist 500-pound (230 kg) semi-armour-piercing bombs, and the splinter belt's thickness fore and aft of the main armour belt was reduced by 0.5 inches (12.7 mm) in compensation. A small conning tower was added aft, and four Unrotated Projectile mounts were added to supplement the six octuple-barrel 2-pounder anti-aircraft mounts already planned.
More pressing commitments forced the preliminary design work to be suspended again in June; when it resumed in October the design was modified again in light of recent war experience. Greater fuel capacity was added and the armour protection improved, but these changes deepened the design's draught to beyond the 34-foot (10.4 m) limit of the Suez Canal. The thickness of the main belt was reduced by 1 inch (25 mm) to save weight, but the primary method chosen to reduce the draught was to increase the beam by 2.5 feet (0.76 m). This exceeded the width of the docks at Rosyth and Plymouth, which severely limited the number of docks that could handle the ship, but the changes were approved by the Board of Admiralty on 17 April 1941. The ship had already been ordered on 14 March under the 1940 Emergency War Programme, although the drawings were not turned over to John Brown & Company until ten days later.
Vanguard's design was revised again, while the ship was under construction in 1942, to reflect lessons learned from the loss of the King George V-class battleship Prince of Wales and operations with the other battleships. The longitudinal distance between the inboard and outboard propellers was increased from 33.5 to 51.5 feet (10.2 to 15.7 m) to reduce the chance of a single torpedo wrecking both propeller shafts on one side and watertight access trunks were added to all spaces below the deep waterline to prevent the progressive flooding through open watertight doors and hatches that had happened to Prince of Wales. This change and the relocation of some of the 5.25-inch (133 mm) ammunition handling rooms from the lower deck to the middle deck seriously delayed the ship's completion. The design requirement that the guns of 'A' turret be capable of firing straight ahead at 0° of elevation was sacrificed to allow her freeboard forward to be increased, and her bow was reshaped to make it less prone to shipping water and throwing sea spray in head seas. The ship's fuel supply was increased from 4,400 long tons (4,500 t) to 4,850 long tons (4,930 t) to prevent the fuel shortage problems suffered by King George V and Rodney during their pursuit of the German battleship Bismarck. The Unrotated Projectile mounts were deleted from the design and the light anti-aircraft armament was increased to a total of 76 two-pounders in one quadruple, and nine octuple mounts and 24 Oerlikon 20 mm cannon were also added in 12 twin mounts. Space for these was made available by removing the two floatplanes, the catapult and their associated facilities.
A proposal was made in 1942 to convert Vanguard to an aircraft carrier. The Director of Naval Construction stated that doing so along the lines of the Audacious class would present no major difficulties but would require six months to redesign the ship. The proposal was formally rejected on 17 July.
### General characteristics
Vanguard had an overall length of 814 feet 4 inches (248.2 m), a beam of 107 feet 6 inches (32.8 m) and a draught of 36 feet (11 m) at deep load. She displaced 44,500 long tons (45,200 t) at standard load and 51,420 long tons (52,250 t) at deep load. The ship was significantly larger than her predecessors of the class, almost 50 feet (15.2 m) longer and displaced about 6,000 long tons (6,100 t) more than the older ships at deep load. Vanguard was overweight by some 2,200 long tons (2,200 t), which magnified the difference. The ship had a complete double bottom 5 feet (1.5 m) deep and she was divided into 27 main compartments by watertight bulkheads.
The King George V-class ships had been built with almost no sheer to the main deck forwards to allow 'A' turret to fire straight forward at zero elevation, resulting in those ships being wet forward. Vanguard was redesigned as a result of this experience, significant sheer and flare being added to the bow. The ship's seaworthiness was well regarded, and the ship was able to keep an even keel in rough seas. At full load Vanguard had a metacentric height of 8.2 feet (2.5 m).
As a fleet flagship, her complement was 115 officers and 1,860 men in 1947. Air conditioning was provided for many of the ship's control spaces, and asbestos insulation was provided on exposed areas of the ship's sides, decks and bulkheads. Steam heating was provided for her armament, instruments, look-out positions and other equipment to make Vanguard suitable for operations in the Arctic. An Action Information Centre was fitted below the main armour deck with facilities to track aircraft and ships around Vanguard.
### Propulsion
To save design time, the four-shaft unit machinery from the Lion-class battleship was duplicated with alternating boiler and engine rooms. Vanguard had four sets of single-reduction geared Parsons steam turbines housed in separate engine rooms. Each set consisted of one high-pressure and one low-pressure turbine, driving a propeller 14 feet 9 inches (4.5 m) in diameter. The turbines were powered by eight Admiralty 3-drum boilers in four boiler rooms at a working pressure of 350 psi (2,413 kPa; 25 kgf/cm<sup>2</sup>) and temperature of 700 °F (371 °C). The engines were designed to produce a total of 130,000 shaft horsepower (97,000 kW) and a speed of 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph), but achieved more than 136,000 shp (101,000 kW) during the ship's sea trials in July 1946, when she reached a speed of 31.57 knots (58.47 km/h; 36.33 mph). After trials, the three-bladed propellers on the inboard shafts were replaced by five-bladed propellers to reduce vibrations of the inboard propeller shafts, but this was a failure.
Vanguard was designed to carry 4,850 long tons of fuel oil and 427 long tons (434 t) of diesel fuel. With a clean bottom she could steam at a speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) for 8,250 nautical miles (15,280 km; 9,490 mi). The ship had four 480-kilowatt (640 hp) turbogenerators and four 450-kilowatt (600 hp) diesel generators that supplied electricity via the common ring main at 220 volts. Their total output of 3,720 kilowatts (4,990 hp) was the largest of any British battleship.
### Armament
The ship's main armament consisted of eight 42-calibre BL 15-inch Mk I guns in four twin hydraulically powered gun turrets, 'A', 'B', 'X' and 'Y' from bow to stern. The guns were loaded at +5°; when the turrets were modernised to the Mk I(N) RP12 design, their maximum elevation was increased from 20° to +30°. They fired 1,938-pound (879 kg) projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 2,458 ft/s (749 m/s), for a maximum normal range of 33,550 yards (30,680 m). The guns could use supercharges, which gave a maximum range of 37,870 yards (34,630 m) with the same shells. Their rate of fire was two rounds per minute. Vanguard carried 100 shells per gun.
The old 15-inch turrets had been designed when the customary practice was to place the magazine above the shell room, and it was not cost-effective to modify the ammunition hoists to accommodate the opposite arrangement, which had been adopted after the Battle of Jutland demonstrated the dangers of exposing the magazines to long-range gunfire. The ship was provided with a powder-handling room above the shell room to mimic the arrangement that the turrets' hoists were designed to handle, and another set of hoists moved the propellant charges from the magazines to the powder-handling room. The charges were stowed in cases to reduce their exposure to fire.
The secondary armament consisted of sixteen 50-calibre QF 5.25-inch Mk I\* dual-purpose guns in eight twin gun mounts. They had a maximum depression of −5° and a maximum elevation of 70°. They fired an 80-pound (36.3 kg) high-explosive shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,672 ft/s (814 m/s). The improved RP10 spec 5.25 turrets on Vanguard were claimed to be fully automatic, with a power-rammed breech and automatic tracking and elevation under radar control enabling a rate of fire of about 18 rounds per minute. At maximum elevation, the guns had a maximum range of 24,070 yards (22,010 m). 391 rounds were provided for each gun.
Short-range air defence was provided by 73 Bofors 40 mm AA guns in a variety of mountings. Vanguard had ten sextuple-barrel power-operated mounts concentrated in the superstructure and stern, a twin-barrel mount on 'B' turret and 11 power-operated single mounts on the upper deck and rear superstructure. All mounts could depress to −10° and elevate to +90°. The 40-millimetre (1.6 in) gun fired a 1.97-pound (0.89 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,890 ft/s (880 m/s) to a distance of 10,750 yards (9,830 m). The guns' rate of fire was approximately 120 rounds per minute. Space was not available to stow the standard allowance of 1,564 rounds per gun, and Vanguard carried only 1,269 rounds per gun. Two of the single guns on the quarterdeck were removed in 1949, and five others during a major refit in 1954. All of her multiple Bofors mounts were removed at this same time.
### Fire control
Vanguard was unique among British battleships in having remote power control (RPC) for her main, secondary and tertiary guns along with the Admiralty Fire Control Table Mk X for surface fire control of the main armament. There were two director control towers (DCT) for the 15-inch guns, each carrying a "double cheese" Type 274 fire-control radar for range finding and spotting the fall of shot. Each DCT could control all four turrets, 'B' turret could control 'A' and 'X' turrets, and 'X' turret could control 'Y' turret. There were four American Mark 37 DCTs for the 5.25-inch guns, each carrying the twin domes of Type 275 gunnery radar. Each Mark VI sextuple 40 mm Bofors mounting was provided with a separate CRBF ("close range blind fire") director fitted with a Type 262 radar, although the ship never mounted her complete outfit of those directors. The STAAG Mk II 40 mm Bofors mounting carried its own Type 262 on the mounting itself. Other radar sets carried were Type 960 air and surface search, Type 293 target indication and Type 277 radar height finding.
When the 15-inch gun turrets were modernised, their 15-foot (4.6 m) rangefinders were replaced by 30-foot (9.1 m) ones in all turrets except 'A', and they were fitted for RPC in azimuth only. The turrets were also provided with de-humidifying equipment and insulation to improve their habitability.
### Protection
The ship's armour scheme was based on that of the King George V class with a thinner waterline belt and additional splinter protection. Originally the belt armour was equal to that of the older ships, but it had to be reduced to offset weight increases when the design was modified to reflect wartime experience. The waterline 460-foot (140.2 m) main belt was composed of Krupp cemented armour (KCA) 13 inches (330 mm) thick but increased to 14 inches (356 mm) abreast the magazines. It was 24 feet (7.3 m) high and tapered to a thickness of 4.5 inches (114 mm) at the bottom edge of the belt. Fore and aft of the 12-inch (305 mm) transverse bulkheads that closed off the central citadel, the belt continued almost to the ends of the ship. Forward it tapered to a thickness of 2 inches (51 mm) and a height of 8 feet (2.4 m), and aft to the same thickness but a height of 11 feet (3.4 m). At the aft end of the steering gear compartment was a 4-inch (102 mm) transverse bulkhead. After the Battle of the Denmark Strait in 1941, 1.5-inch (38 mm) non-cemented armour bulkheads were added on the sides of the magazines, to protect them from splinters from any hits from plunging shells that might have penetrated the ship's side beneath her belt.
When the gun turrets from the First World War-era battlecruisers were modernised, their KCA faceplates were replaced by new ones 13 inches thick, and their roofs were replaced by 6-inch (152 mm) non-cemented armour plates. Their sides remained 7–9 inches (180–230 mm) in thickness. The barbettes for the 15-inch guns were 13 inches thick on the sides but tapered to 11–12 inches (279–305 mm) closer to the centreline of the ship. The side and roof armour of the 5.25-inch turrets was 2.5 inches (64 mm) thick. Their ammunition hoists were protected by armour 2–6 inches (51–152 mm) thick.
Intended to resist the impact of a 1,000-pound (450 kg) armour-piercing bomb dropped from a height of 14,000 feet (4,300 m), Vanguard's deck protection was identical to that of the King George V class, six-inch non-cemented armour over the magazines that reduced to 5 inches (127 mm) over the machinery spaces. The armour continued forward and aft of the citadel at the lower-deck level. Forward it tapered in steps from five inches down to 2.5 inches near the bow. Aft, it protected the steering gear and propeller shafts with 4.5 inches of armour before tapering to a thickness of 2.5 inches near the stern. Unlike the Germans, French and Americans, the British no longer believed that heavy armour for the conning tower served any real purpose given that the chance of hitting it was very small; Vanguard's conning tower was therefore protected with 3 inches (76 mm) of armour on the face and 2.5 inches on the sides and rear. The secondary conning tower aft had 2 inches (51 mm) of armour on its sides.
Vanguard's underwater protection was enhanced when she was redesigned in 1942 to reflect the lessons learned when Prince of Wales was sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers. It still consisted of a three-layer system of voids and liquid-filled compartments meant to absorb the energy of an underwater explosion. It was bounded on the inside by the 1.75–1.5-inch (44–38 mm) torpedo bulkhead. Her enlarged oil tanks reduced the empty spaces that could flood and cause the ship to list, and greater provision was made to pump these spaces out. The longitudinal bulkheads of the side protection system were raised one deck higher to further subdivide the spaces behind the waterline armour belt. The side protection system had a maximum depth of 15 feet (4.6 m), but this decreased significantly as the ship narrowed at its ends. Over the length of the citadel, this system was found during full-scale trials to be proof against 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of TNT.
## Construction and career
Vanguard was laid down on 2 October 1941 by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland, with the yard number of 567. After the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December, the ship was given an A1 priority in the hope of finishing her by the end of 1944, and construction of the light cruiser HMS Bellerophon, as well as some merchant shipping, was halted to expedite the ship's completion. This was unsuccessful, however, due to a shortage of skilled labour. As a result, it was not until 30 November 1944 that the ship was launched. Princess Elizabeth presided over this ceremony, the first ship she ever launched, and was presented with a diamond rose brooch to commemorate the event. Two yard workers were killed and six others injured when a "blinding explosion ripped" the ship in a fitting-out basin at Clydebank on 16 September 1945. Captain William Gladstone Agnew assumed command on 15 October 1945. The end of hostilities following Japan's surrender reduced the need for new warships, and consequently the ship was not commissioned until 12 May 1946. By this time, a total of £11,530,503, including £3,186,868 for the modernisation of the main armament, had been spent on producing Vanguard.
After commissioning, the ship spent several months conducting sea trials and training until August, when she began the necessary modifications to serve as a royal yacht for the forthcoming royal tour of South Africa. The Admiral's suite was reworked into accommodations for the Royal Family and their staff while the anti-aircraft mount on top of 'B' turret was replaced by a saluting platform. Agnew was promoted to rear-admiral with effect from 8 January 1947. The alterations were complete by December, and Vanguard made a shakedown cruise into the Central Atlantic and made a port visit to Gibraltar on the return voyage. Initially escorted by the destroyers Orwell, Obedient, Offa, Opportune, and Rotherham, the ship rendezvoused with the Home Fleet on 1 February 1947 to receive a 21-gun salute led by the battleships Nelson and Duke of York, and the aircraft carrier Implacable. Later that morning, a Sikorsky R-4 helicopter landed aboard to pick up mail and photographic film.
Vanguard arrived in Cape Town on 17 February, escorted by the South African frigates Good Hope, Transvaal and Natal on the last leg of her voyage. While the Royal Family toured the country on the first visit by a reigning monarch to South Africa, the ship exercised with ships of the South African and Royal Navies stationed there and made port visits to a number of South African cities. She sailed for home on 22 April and made brief visits to Saint Helena and Ascension Island en route. Vanguard arrived in Portsmouth on 11 May, and Captain F. R. Parham relieved the newly promoted Agnew on 29 May. In July, the ship began an overhaul in Devonport, which lasted until August 1948. While she was refitting, Vanguard was tasked to carry the Royal Family on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, planned for January 1949. On 31 August, she began a shakedown cruise to the Mediterranean and returned to Devonport on 12 November. Around this time, Vanguard was considered, along with a number of other large warships, for conversion to carry anti-aircraft missiles, but nothing further was done along these lines.
George VI was now too ill for travel, and the Royal Tour was indefinitely postponed later that month. Vanguard became the flagship of Admiral Sir Arthur Power, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, on 1 March 1949, and the ship made port visits to Algeria, France, Italy, Cyprus, Libya, Lebanon, Greece and Egypt before she arrived back at Devonport on 21 July. The newly promoted Rear Admiral Parham was relieved by Captain G. V. Gladstone a week later. The ship then became the flagship of the Home Fleet Training Squadron under Rear Admiral Edward Evans-Lombe on 12 November. While returning from a brief training sortie to Gibraltar, Vanguard went to the aid of a small French merchantman whose cargo had shifted in a severe storm on 13 February 1950. The merchantman, SS Boffa, was taken under tow and the cargo was redistributed. Once the storm had abated, Boffa was able to resume her voyage under her own power. Vanguard reached Weymouth Bay the following day. Later, in March, she fired the salute to Vincent Auriol, the President of France, during his state visit to Great Britain.
On 13 September 1950 Admiral Sir Philip Vian hoisted his flag as Commander in Chief, Home Fleet, on Vanguard and the ship joined the rest of Home Fleet on exercises with the Royal Canadian Navy and the Mediterranean Fleet. On 19 December, Vian transferred his flag to Indomitable. Nearly two months later, on 10 February 1951, the aircraft carrier collided with Vanguard as the carrier docked at Gibraltar. The hole in the battleship's stern was not serious, and Vian re-hoisted his flag in Vanguard shortly afterwards. After manoeuvres with Indomitable, during which her aircraft "sank" the battleship, the ship made port visits in Genoa and Villefranche-sur-Mer before returning for a brief refit in Devonport on 14 March. After completing her refit in May, she became flagship of the Home Fleet Training Squadron under Rear Admiral R. M. Dick at the Isle of Portland. Four months later the admiral transferred his flag to the carrier Indefatigable as Vanguard began another refit in preparation to again become the flagship of Home Fleet.
Buckingham Palace announced in November that King George VI was planning to take a short cruise for his health aboard Vanguard, which meant that her Admiral's suite again had to be modified to accommodate him and his staff. Captain John Litchfield assumed command on 21 December while the ship was still refitting, but the King died on 6 February 1952 before he could make his cruise. A detachment from the ship participated in his funeral procession before she departed for her post-refit shakedown cruise on 22 February. After exercising with Implacable, Indomitable and the fast minelayer Apollo, Vanguard returned home on 29 March. She became flagship of Home Fleet again on 13 May when Admiral Sir George Creasy hoisted his flag. Due to manning and weight problems, Vanguard operated with many of her turrets unmanned and with ammunition carried for only two of the 15-inch turrets and only starshell ammunition for the 5.25-inch guns. She participated in exercises with the Dutch and American navies, before returning to Portsmouth for the holidays. Litchfield was relieved by Captain R. A. Ewing on 19 January 1953; the ship departed the next day for a brief refit at Gibraltar. After its completion on 2 March, the ship trained with several of the Royal Navy's carriers before arriving back at Portsmouth on 25 March. Vanguard participated in Queen Elizabeth's Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead on 15 June 1953. The following September, she participated in NATO's Exercise Mariner in the Denmark Strait.
Admiral Sir Michael Denny replaced Creasy as Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet, on 5 January 1954 and Vanguard participated in Exercise Medflex A with Dutch and French ships in March. During the rest of the year she participated in anti-submarine and anti-aircraft exercises as well as making port visits to Oslo and Kristiansand in Norway and Helsingborg in Sweden. She was inspected on 11 July by King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden before returning home later that month. Denny struck his flag on 15 September, and Vanguard sailed to Devonport for a £220,000 refit 10 days later. The February 1955 Defence Estimates had intended her as the Home Fleet flagship with a role as a Sverdlov-class cruiser killer, but after the appointment of Earl Mountbatten in April 1955 and with Antony Eden replacing Churchill as prime minister, the government decided instead to maintain two extra cruisers in the fleet, and Vanguard was placed in reserve when it completed its 1955 refit. She subsequently became the flagship of the Reserve Fleet when Vice Admiral Richard Onslow hoisted his flag on 28 November. While moored in Fareham Creek, during her time in the reserve fleet, waterline shots of Vanguard in Portsmouth Harbour were filmed for the title sequence of the 1957 comedy film Carry on Admiral. Just before decommissioning, scenes for the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck! were filmed aboard, with Vanguard being used to depict interiors of the bridges, Admiral's Quarters and gun turrets for Hood, Bismarck and King George V.
### Decommissioning and fate
On 9 October 1959 the Admiralty announced that Vanguard would be scrapped, as she was considered obsolete and too expensive to maintain. She was decommissioned on 7 June 1960 and sold to BISCO for £560,000. On 4 August 1960, when the ship was scheduled to be towed from Portsmouth to the breaker's yard at Faslane, Scotland, the whole of the Southsea sea front was packed with people who came to see her off. As Vanguard was being towed towards the harbour entrance, she slewed across the harbour and ran aground near the Still & West pub. She was pulled off by five tugboats an hour later, and after nearly running aground again near the Moving & East pub on the opposite shore, made her final exit from Portsmouth. Five days later she arrived at Faslane, and by mid-1962 the demolition process was complete. She was the last British battleship to be scrapped.
As a part of the scrapping process, sections of 150-millimetre-thick (5.9 in) pre-atomic steel plate uncontaminated with radionuclides were recovered from Vanguard and used for the shielding of the whole body monitor at the Radiobiological Research Laboratory (now DSTL) at Alverstoke, Gosport in Hampshire, England.
The process of decommissioning was filmed by the Rank Organisation for their Look at Life film series in an episode entitled The Last Battleship.
|
4,593,332 |
Project Excalibur
| 1,167,622,757 |
Anti-missile system using an X-ray laser powered by a nuclear bomb
|
[
"Anti-ballistic weapons",
"Cold War weapons of the United States",
"Directed-energy weapons",
"Nuclear weapons program of the United States",
"Strategic Defense Initiative"
] |
Project Excalibur was a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Cold War–era research program to develop an X-ray laser system as a ballistic missile defense (BMD) for the United States. The concept involved packing large numbers of expendable X-ray lasers around a nuclear device, which would orbit in space. During an attack, the device would be detonated, with the X-rays released focused by each laser to destroy multiple incoming target missiles. Because the system would be deployed above the Earth's atmosphere, the X-rays could reach missiles thousands of kilometers away, providing protection over a wide area.
Anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems of the time only attacked the enemy nuclear warheads after they were released by ICBMs. A single ICBM could carry as many as a dozen warheads, so dozens of defense missiles were required per attacking missile. A single Excalibur device contained up to fifty lasers and could potentially destroy a corresponding number of missiles, with all of the warheads still on board. A single Excalibur could thus destroy dozens of ICBMs and hundreds of warheads for the cost of a single nuclear bomb, dramatically reversing the cost-exchange ratio that had previously doomed ABM systems.
The basic concept behind Excalibur was conceived in the 1970s by George Chapline Jr. and further developed by Peter L. Hagelstein, both part of Edward Teller's "O-Group" in LLNL. After a successful test in 1980, in 1981 Teller and Lowell Wood began talks with US president Ronald Reagan about the concept. These talks, combined with strong support from The Heritage Foundation, helped Reagan ultimately to announce the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983. Further underground nuclear tests through the early 1980s suggested progress was being made, and this influenced the 1986 Reykjavík Summit, where Reagan refused to give up the possibility of proof-testing SDI technology with nuclear testing in space.
Researchers at Livermore and Los Alamos began to raise concerns about the test results. Teller and Wood continued to state the program was proceeding well, even after a critical test in 1985 demonstrated it was not working as expected. This led to significant criticism within the US weapons laboratories. In 1987, the infighting became public, leading to an investigation on whether LLNL had misled the government about the Excalibur concept. In a 60 Minutes interview in 1988, Teller attempted to walk out rather than answer questions about the lab's treatment of a fellow worker who questioned the results. Further tests revealed additional problems, and in 1988 the budget was cut dramatically. The project officially continued until 1992 when its last planned test, Greenwater of Operation Julin, was cancelled.
## History
### Conceptual development
The conceptual basis of short-wavelength lasers, using X-rays and gamma rays, is the same as that of their visible-light counterparts. There were discussions of such devices as early as 1960, the year the first ruby laser was demonstrated.
The first announcement of a successful X-ray laser was made in 1972 by the University of Utah. Researchers spread thin layers of copper atoms on microscope slides and then heated them with pulses from a neodymium glass laser. This caused spots to appear on X-ray film in the direction of the layers and none in other directions. The announcement caused great excitement, but it was soon overshadowed by the fact that no other labs could reproduce the results, and the announcement was soon forgotten. In 1974, the University of Paris-Sud announced lasing in an aluminum plasma created by a pulse of laser light, but, once again, the results were regarded skeptically by other labs.
DARPA had been funding low-level research into high-frequency lasers since the 1960s. By late 1976 they had all but given up on them. They commissioned a report by Physical Dynamics, which outlined possible uses of such a laser, including space-based weapons. None of these seemed promising, and DARPA dropped funding for X-ray laser research in favor of the more promising free electron laser.
In June 1977, two well-known Soviet researchers, Igor Sobel'man, and Vladilen Letokhov, displayed a film exposed to the output of plasmas of chlorine, calcium and titanium, similar to the Utah results. They were careful to point out that the results were very preliminary and further study was required. Over the next few years, a small number of additional papers on the topic were presented. The most direct of these was Sobel'man's statements at a 1979 conference in Novosibirsk when he said he was observing lasing in a calcium plasma. As with earlier announcements, these results were met with skepticism.
### First attempts at Livermore
George Chapline had been studying the X-ray laser concept through the 1970s. Chapline was a member of Teller's speculative-project "O-Group" and began to discuss the concept with fellow O-Group member Lowell Wood, Teller's protégé. The two collaborated on a major review of the X-ray laser field in 1975. They suggested such a device would be a powerful tool in materials science, for making holograms of viruses where a conventional laser's longer wavelength did not provide the required optical resolution, and as a sort of flashbulb for taking images of the nuclear fusion process in their inertial confinement fusion devices. This review contained the calculations that demonstrated both the rapid reaction times needed in such a device and the extremely high energies required for pumping.
Chapline attended a meeting where Sobel'man's work on X-ray lasers was presented. He had learned of the unique underground nuclear tests made on behalf of the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), where the burst of X-rays produced by the nuclear reactions were allowed to travel down a long tunnel while the blast itself was cut off by large doors that slammed shut as the explosion approached. These tests were used to investigate the effects of X-rays from exoatmospheric nuclear explosions on reentry vehicles. He realized this was a perfect way to pump an X-ray laser.
After a few weeks of work, he came up with a testable concept. At this time the DNA was making plans for another of its X-ray effects tests, and Chapline's device could easily be tested in the same "shot". The test shot, Diablo Hawk, was carried out on 13 September 1978 as part of the Operation Cresset series. However, the instrumentation on Chapline's device failed, and there was no way to know if the system had worked.
Congress directed that \$10 million be given to both Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for weapons tests on entirely new concepts. Chapline was given the go-ahead to plan for a new test dedicated to the X-ray laser concept. In the DNA tests, the reentry vehicle had to be retrieved for study after the test, which demanded the complex system of protective doors and other techniques that made these tests very expensive. For the X-ray laser test, all of this could be ignored, as the laser was designed to be destroyed in the explosion. This allowed the laser to be placed at the top of the vertical access shaft, which greatly lowered the cost of the test from the typical \$40 million needed in a DNA shot. Given the schedule at the Nevada Test Site, their test would have to wait until 1980.
### Dauphin success
Peter Hagelstein was in an undergraduate physics program at MIT in 1974 when he applied for a Hertz Foundation scholarship. Teller was on the Hertz board, and Hagelstein soon had an interview with Lowell Wood. Hagelstein won the scholarship, and Wood then went on to offer him a summer position at LLNL. He had never heard of the lab, and Wood explained they were working on lasers, fusion, and similar concepts. Hagelstein arrived in May 1975, but nearly left when he found the area to be "disgusting" and immediately surmised they were working on weapons research when he saw the barbed wire and armed guards. He stayed on only because he met interesting people.
Hagelstein was given the task of simulating the X-ray laser process on LLNL's supercomputers. His program, known as XRASER for "X-Ray laser", eventually grew to about 40,000 lines of code. He received his master's degree in 1976 and took a full-time job at the lab, intending to lead the development of a working laser. The idea was to use the lab's powerful fusion lasers as an energy source, as Hagelstein and Wood had suggested in their review paper. Hagelstein used XRASER to simulate about 45 such concepts before he found one that appeared to work. These used the lasers to heat metal foils and give off X-rays, but by the late 1970s, none of these experiments had been successful.
After the Diablo Hawk failure, Hagelstein reviewed Chapline's idea and came up with a new concept that should be much more efficient. Chapline had used a lightweight material, a fiber taken from a local weed, but Hagelstein suggested using a metal rod instead. Although initially skeptical, Wood came to support the idea and successfully argued that both concepts be tested in Chapline's shot. The critical test was carried out on 14 November 1980 as Dauphin, part of Operation Guardian. Both lasers worked, but Hagelstein's design was much more powerful. The lab soon decided to move forward with Hagelstein's version, forming the "R Program", led by another O-Group member, Tom Weaver.
### Renewed interest
Hagelstein published his PhD thesis in January 1981 on the "Physics of Short-wavelength-laser Design". In contrast to Chapline and Wood's earlier work which focused on civilian applications, the thesis' introduction mentions several potential uses, even weapons taken from science fiction works.
Hagelstein soon returned to the civilian side of the X-ray laser development, initially developing a concept in which the lab's fusion lasers would produce a plasma whose photons would pump another material. This was initially based on fluorine gas confined inside a chromium foil film. This proved to be too difficult to manufacture, so a system more like the earlier Soviet concepts was developed. The laser would deposit enough energy in a selenium wire to cause 24 of the electrons to be ionized, leaving behind 10 electrons that would be pumped by collisions with the free electrons in the plasma.
After several attempts using the Novette laser as an energy source, on 13 July 1984 the system worked for the first time. The team calculated that the system produced laser amplification of about 700, which they considered to be strong evidence of lasing. Dennis Matthews presented the success at the October 1984 American Physical Society Plasma Physics Meeting in Boston, where Szymon Suckewer of Princeton University presented their evidence of lasing in carbon using a much smaller laser and confined the plasma using magnets.
### Teller in Washington, AvWeek "leaks"
The success of the Dauphin test presented a potential new solution to the BMD problem. The X-ray laser offered the possibility that many laser beams could be generated from a single nuclear weapon in orbit, meaning a single weapon would destroy many ICBMs. This would so blunt the attack that any US response would be overwhelming in comparison. Even if the Soviets launched a full-scale attack, it would limit US casualties to 30 million. In February 1981, Teller and Wood traveled to Washington to present the technology to the policy makers and request greater financial support to pursue the development.
This presented a problem. As fellow LLNL physicist Hugh DeWitt put it, "It has long been known that Teller and Wood are extreme technological optimists and super salesmen for hypothetical new weapons systems," or as Robert Park puts it, "Anyone who knows Teller's record recognizes that he is invariably optimistic about even the most improbable technological schemes." Although this salesmanship had little effect in US military circles, it proved to be a continual annoyance in Congress, having a negative effect on the lab's credibility when these concepts failed to pan out. To avoid this, Roy Woodruff, the associate director of the weapons section, went with them to ensure the two did not oversell the concept. In meetings with various congressional groups, Teller and Wood explained the technology but refused to give dates on when it might be available.
Only days later, the 23 February 1981 edition of Aviation Week and Space Technology carried an article on the ongoing work. It described the Dauphin shot in some detail, going on to mention the earlier 1978 test, but incorrectly ascribing that to a krypton fluoride laser (KrF). It went on to describe the battle-station concept in which a single bomb would be surrounded by laser rods that could destroy as many as fifty missiles, and stated that "X-Ray lasers based on the successful Dauphin test are so small that a single payload bay on the Space Shuttle could carry to orbit a number sufficient to stop a Soviet nuclear weapons attack." This was the first in a series of such articles in this and other sources based on a "steady leak of top secret information".
### High Frontier
By this time, LLNL was not the only group lobbying the government about space-based weapons. In 1979, Daniel O. Graham had been asked by Ronald Reagan to begin exploring the idea of missile defense, and in the years since had become a strong advocate of what was earlier known as Project BAMBI (Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept), but now updated as "Smart Rocks". This required dozens of large satellites carrying many small, relatively simple missiles which would be launched at the ICBMs and track them like a conventional heat seeking missile.
That same year, Malcolm Wallop and his aide Angelo Codevilla wrote an article on "Opportunities and Imperatives in Ballistic Missile Defense", which was to be published later that year in Strategic Review. They were later joined by Harrison Schmidt and Teller in forming what became known as the "laser lobby", advocating the building of laser-based BMD systems. Their concept, known simply as the Space Based Laser, used large chemical lasers placed in orbit.
Graham was able to garner interest from other Republican supporters, and formed a group who would help advocate for his concept. The group was chaired by Karl Bendetsen and was provided space at The Heritage Foundation. The group invited the laser lobby to join them to plan a strategy to introduce these concepts to the incoming president.
At one of the Heritage Foudation meetings, Graham said there was a serious problem with the Excalibur concept, noting that if the Soviets launched a missile at the satellite, the US had only two choices – they could allow the missile to hit Excalibur and destroy it, or it could defend itself by shooting down the missile, which would also destroy Excalibur. In either case, a single missile would destroy the station, which invalidated the entire concept of the system in terms of having a single weapon that would destroy a large portion of the Soviet fleet.
At the time, Teller was stumped. At the next meeting, he and Wood had an answer, apparently Teller's own concept. Instead of being based on satellites, Excalibur would be placed in submarines and "pop-up" when the Soviets launched their missiles. This would also bypass another serious concern, that nuclear weapons in space were outlawed and it was unlikely the government or public would allow these.
The group first met with the president on 8 January 1982. Planned to last 15 minutes, the meeting went on for an hour. Present were Teller, Bendetsen, William Wilson and Joseph Coors of the "Kitchen Cabinet". Graham and Wallop were not represented and the group apparently dismissed their concepts. The same group met with the president another three times.
Meanwhile, Teller continued to attack Graham's interceptor-based concept, as did other members of the group. There had been extensive studies on BAMBI in the 1960s and every few years since. These invariably reported the concept was simply too grandiose to work. Graham, seeing the others outmaneuver him after the first meetings, left the group and formed "High Frontier Inc.", publishing a glossy book on the topic in March 1982. Before publication, he had sent a copy to the US Air Force for comment. They responded with another report stating the concept "had no technical merit and should be rejected". In spite of this review, the High Frontier book was widely distributed and quickly found followers. This led to a curious situation in early 1982, later known as the "laser wars", with the House supporting Teller and the Senate supporting Wallop's group.
Later that summer, Teller complained to William F. Buckley on Firing Line that he did not have access to the president. This led to a 4 September meeting with the president without the rest of the High Frontier group. Teller said recent advances in Soviet weapons would soon put them in a position to threaten the US and they needed to build Excalibur without delay. Without Woodruff to temper his comments, Teller told the president the system would be ready for deployment in five years and that it was time to talk about "assured survival" instead of "assured destruction". Aviation Week reported that Teller had asked for \$200 million a year "over the next several years" to develop it.
### Early skepticism
George A. Keyworth, II had been appointed to the position as Reagan's science advisor at the suggestion of Teller. He was present at the first meeting with the Heritage group, and a few days later at a White House staff meeting he was quoted expressing his concerns that the concepts had "very difficult technical aspects".
Shortly thereafter, Edwin Meese suggested Keyworth form an independent group to study the feasibility of such a system. The work was passed to Victor H. Reis, formerly of the Lincoln Laboratory and now the assistant director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. He formed a panel including Charles Townes, Nobel winner as the co-inventor of the maser and laser, Harold Agnew, former director of LANL, and chaired by Edward Frieman, vice president of military science contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Keyworth gave them a year to study the issues, and did not interfere with their process.
The formation of this panel apparently worried Teller, who suspected they would not agree with his assessments of Excalibur's viability. In response, he stepped up his fundraising efforts, spending a considerable time in 1982 in Washington lobbying for a Manhattan Project-level effort to bring the system to production as soon as possible. While he was not part of the Frieman panel, he was part of the White House Science Council, and appeared at their meetings to continue pressuring for further development.
In June 1982, the Frieman panel asked LLNL to review their own progress. Led by Woodruff, the lab returned a fairly conservative review. They suggested that if they were provided \$150–\$200 million a year over six years they could decide whether the concept was feasible. They said a weapon could not possibly be ready before the mid-1990s, at the very earliest. In its final report, the panel concluded that the system simply could not be thought of as a military technology.
Teller was apoplectic, and threatened to resign from the Science Council. He ultimately agreed to a second review by LLNL. This review was even more critical of the concept, stating that, due to energy limits, the system would be useful only against missiles at short range and that would limit it to those missiles launched from locations close to the United States, like submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
In the meantime, while Keyworth continued to support the concepts publicly, he was careful not to make statements that sounded like outright support. He spoke of the promise of the systems and their potential. But when asked about Excalibur after receiving the Frieman report, he was much more blunt and told reporters the concept was probably unusable. In 1985, he quit the position and returned to private industry.
Teller's continual presence in Washington soon came to the attention of his former friend, Hans Bethe. Bethe had worked with Teller on the H-bomb but had since gone on to become a major critic of the bomb industry, and especially ABM systems. He wrote several seminal articles in the 1960s highly critical of the US Army's efforts to build an ABM system, demonstrating that any such system was relatively inexpensive to defeat and would simply prompt the Soviets to build more ICBMs.
Bethe remained an opponent of ABM systems, and when he heard of the Excalibur effort he arranged a trip to LLNL to grill them on the concept. In a two-day series of meetings in February 1983, Hagelstein managed to convince Bethe the physics was sound. Bethe remained convinced the idea was unlikely to be able to stop a Soviet attack, especially if they designed their systems knowing such a system existed. He soon co-authored a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists outlining objections to the concept, the simplest being that the Soviets could simply overwhelm it.
### SDI
Reagan had long been deeply critical of current nuclear doctrine, which he and his aides derided as a "mutual suicide pact". He was extremely interested in the Heritage group's proposals. While he made no overt moves at the time, he spent a significant amount of time in 1982 gathering information from various sources on whether or not the system was possible. Reports by both the Department of Defense and the White House's own Science Council would feed into this process.
In early 1983, before many of these reports had been returned, Reagan decided to announce what would become SDI. Few people were told of this decision and even Keyworth learned of it only a few weeks before it was going to be announced. When he showed a draft of the speech to Reis, Reis said it was "Laetrile", referring to the quack cure for cancer. He suggested Keyworth demand a review by the Joint Chiefs of Staff or resign. Keyworth did neither, prompting Reis to resign a short time later, taking a position at SAIC.
After a year of presentations from The Heritage Foundation and others, on 23 March 1983 Reagan went on television and announced that he was calling "upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." Many historical overviews place much of the impetus for this speech directly on Teller and Wood's presentations, and thus indirectly on Hagelstein's work.
On the same day the president was giving his speech, the Department of Defense was presenting its report to the Senate on the progress of DARPA's ongoing beam weapon research. The director of the Directed Energy Program said that while they offered promise, their "relative immaturity" made it difficult to know if they would ever be used, and in any event would be unlikely to have any effect until the "1990s or beyond". The Undersecretary of Defense, Richard DeLauer, later said these weapons were at least two decades away and development would have "staggering" costs.
The Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger formed the Strategic Defense Initiative Office in April 1984, appointing General James Abrahamson as its head. Early estimates were for a budget of \$26 billion over the first five years.
### Further tests, instrumentation issues
Only a few days after Reagan's speech, on 26 March 1983, the second test of Hagelstein's design was carried out as part of the Cabra shot in the Operation Phalanx test series. Instrumentation again proved to be a problem and no good results were obtained. The identical experiment was carried out on 16 December 1983 in the Romano shot of the following Operation Fusileer series. This test showed gain and lasing.
On 22 December 1983, Teller wrote a letter on LLNL letterhead to Keyworth saying the system had concluded its scientific phase and was now "entering engineering phase". When Woodruff learned of the letter he stormed into Teller's office and demanded a retraction. Teller refused, so Woodruff wrote his own, only to be ordered not to send it by Roger Batzel, the lab's director. Batzel rebuffed Woodruff's complaints, saying Teller was meeting the president as a private citizen, not on behalf of Livermore.
Shortly after, LLNL scientist George Maenchen circulated a memo noting that the instrument used to measure the laser output was subject to interactions with the explosion. The system worked by measuring the brightness of a series of beryllium reflectors when they were illuminated by the lasers. Maenchen noted that the reflectors themselves could give off their own signals when heated by the bomb, and unless they were separately calibrated, there was no way to know if the signal was from the laser or the bomb. This calibration had not been carried out, rendering the results of all of these tests effectively useless.
By this time, Los Alamos had begun developing nuclear anti-missile weapons of its own, updated versions of the 1960s Casaba/Howitzer concepts. Given the constant stream of news about Excalibur, they added a laser to one of their own underground tests, shot Correo, also part of the Fusileer series. The 2 August 1984 test used different methods to measure the laser output, and these suggested that little or no lasing was taking place. George Miller received a "caustic" letter from Paul Robinson of Los Alamos, which stated they "doubted the existence of the X-ray laser had been demonstrated and that Livermore managers were losing their credibility because of their failure to stand up to Teller and Wood."
### Concerned Scientists present concerns
The Union of Concerned Scientists presented a criticism of Excalibur in 1984 as part of a major report on the entire SDI concept. They noted that a key problem for all the directed energy weapons is that they work only in space, as the atmosphere quickly disperses the beams. This meant the systems had to intercept the missiles when they were above the majority of the atmosphere. Additionally, all of the systems relied on using infrared tracking of the missiles, as radar tracking could be easily rendered unreliable using a wide variety of countermeasures. Thus, the interception had to take place in the period where the missile motor was still firing. This left only a brief period in which the directed energy weapons could be used.
The report said this could be countered by simply increasing the thrust of the missile. Existing missiles fired for about three to four minutes, with at least half of that taking place outside the atmosphere. They showed it was possible to reduce this to about a minute, timing things so the motor was burning out just as the missile was reaching the upper atmosphere. If the warheads were quickly separated at that point, the defense would have to shoot at the individual warheads, thus facing the same poor cost-exchange ratios that had made the earlier ABM systems effectively useless. And once the rocket had stopped firing, tracking would be far more difficult.
One of the key claims for the Excalibur concept was that a small number of weapons would be enough to counter a large Soviet fleet, whereas the other space-based systems would require huge fleets of satellites. The report singled out Excalibur as particularly vulnerable to the problem of quick-firing missiles because the only way to address this would be to build many more weapons so more would be available in the remaining short time window. At that point, it no longer had any advantage over the other systems, while still having all of the technical risks. The report concluded that the X-ray laser would "offer no prospect of being a useful component" of a BMD system.
### Excalibur+ and Super-Excalibur
Faced with the twin problems of the original experiments apparently failing and the publication of a report showing that it could be easily defeated even if it worked, Teller and Wood responded by announcing the Excalibur Plus concept, which would be a thousand times more powerful than the original Excalibur. Soon after, they added Super-Excalibur, which was another thousand times more powerful than Excalibur Plus, making it a trillion times as bright as the bomb itself.
Super-Excalibur would be so powerful it would be able to burn through the atmosphere, thereby countering the concerns about fast-firing missiles. The extra power also meant it could be divided up into more beams, making a single weapon able to be directed into as many as a hundred thousand beams. Instead of dozens of Excalibur weapons in pop-up launchers, Teller suggested that a single weapon in geostationary orbit "the size of an executive desk which applied this technology could potentially shoot down the entire Soviet land-based missile force if it were to be launched into the module's field of view."
At this point, no detailed theoretical work on the concepts had been carried out, let alone any practical tests. In spite of this, Teller once again used LLNL letterhead to write to several politicians telling them of the great advance. This time Teller copied Batzel, but not Woodruff. Once again Woodruff asked to send a counterpoint letter, only to have Batzel refuse to let him send it.
### Cottage test
Super-Excalibur was tested on the 23 March 1985 Cottage shot of Operation Grenadier, exactly two years after Reagan's speech. Once again the test appeared to be successful, and unnamed researchers at the lab were reported to have said the brightness of the beam had been increased six orders of magnitude (i.e. between one and ten million times), a huge advance that would pave the way for a weapon.
Teller immediately wrote another letter touting the success of the concept. This time he wrote to Paul Nitze, the head negotiator of START, and Robert McFarlane, head of the US National Security Council. Nitze was about to begin negotiations on the START arms limitations talks. Teller said Super-Excalibur would be so powerful the US should not seriously negotiate on any sort of even footing and that the talks should be delayed because they included limits or outright bans on underground testing, which would make further work on Super-Excalibur almost impossible.
Commenting on the results, Wood set an optimistic tone saying, "Where we stand between inception and production I can't tell you ... [but] I am much more optimistic now about the utility of X-ray lasers in strategic defense than when we started." In contrast, George H. Miller, LLNL's new deputy associate director, set a much more cautious tone, stating that while the lasing action had been demonstrated, "what we have not proven is whether you can make a militarily useful X-ray laser. It's a research program where a lot of the physics and engineering issues are still being examined ..."
Several months later, physicists at Los Alamos reviewed the Cottage results and noted the same problem Maenchen had mentioned earlier. They added such calibration to a test they were already carrying out and found that the results were indeed as bad as Maenchen has suggested. The targets contained oxygen that glowed when heated and produced spurious results. On top of this, Livermore scientists studying the results noted that the explosion created sound waves in the rod before the lasing was complete, ruining the focus of the laser. A new lasing medium would be required.
Livermore ordered an independent review of the program by Joseph Nilsen, who delivered a report on 27 June 1985 agreeing the system was not working. Given the gravity of the situation, a further review by the JASONs was carried out on 26 and 27 September and came to the same conclusion. It now appeared there was no conclusive evidence that any lasing had been seen in any of the tests, and if it had, it was simply not powerful enough.
In July, Miller went to Washington to brief the SDI Office (SDIO) on their progress. While the instrumentation concerns had been publicly reported on multiple occasions by this point, he failed to mention these issues. Several sources noted this, one saying they "were furious because Miller used the old view graphs on the experiment, which did not take into account the new disturbing findings".
### Woodruff leaves
Shortly after the Cottage test, Teller once again met with Reagan. He petitioned the President for an additional \$100 million in order to carry out additional underground testing the next year, which would roughly double the Excalibur budget for 1986. He said this was needed because the Soviets were stepping up their own research.
Later that year, Abrahamson, head of SDIO, called a 6 September 1985 meeting to review the status of the programs. Roy Woodruff was there to present LLNL's status. Teller arrived in the middle of the meeting and said Reagan had agreed that \$100 million should be turned over to Excalibur. Without questioning this, Abrahamson then assigned \$100 million to him, taking it from other programs. As one official noted, "Do you really want to challenge someone who says he's talked to the President? Do you really want to risk your status by asking Reagan if that's what he really said?"
At this point Woodruff, who had attempted to rein in Teller and Wood's continual overselling of the project, finally had enough. He filed a grievance with LLNL management, complaining that Teller and Wood "undercut my management responsibility for the X-ray laser program" and had repeatedly made "optimistic, technically incorrect statements regarding this research to the nation's highest policy-makers".
When he learned that Teller and Wood had made another presentation to Abrahamson, on 19 October 1985 he resigned his position and asked to be moved. At the time he said little about it, although there was widespread speculation in the press over why he had quit the program. The lab dismissed press speculation that it was punishment due to a critical review in the influential journal Science which appeared the same day. Teller refused to talk about the matter, while Woodruff simply pointed reporters to a statement put out by the lab.
Woodruff found himself banished to a windowless room he called "Gorky West", referring to the Russian city of Gorky where Soviet dissidents were sent on internal exile. Miller replaced him as associate director. A few months later, Woodruff began receiving condolences from other members of the lab. When he asked why, he was told that Batzel had said he resigned his position due to stress and a midlife crisis.
Woodruff went to Harold Weaver, head of the Berkeley-based lab oversight committee, to tell his side of the story. He learned that the group had already investigated, by sending a liaison to meet with Batzel, but had not bothered to talk to Woodruff. He attempted to explain his concerns about the overselling of the technology, but as Weaver later put it, "we were bamboozled by the laboratory."
### Increased scrutiny
Starting in late 1985 and through 1986, a series of events turned opinion against Excalibur. One of the many arguments used to support Excalibur, and SDI as a whole, was the suggestion that the Soviets were working on the same ideas. In particular, they said the Soviets published numerous papers on X-ray lasers until 1977 when they suddenly stopped. They argued this was because they had also begun a military X-ray laser program, and were now classifying their reports.
Wood used this line of argument during congressional meetings on SDI as an argument to keep funding Excalibur. He was then asked to expand on the possibility of a Soviet version of Excalibur and what a US response might be. Wood said X-ray lasers could be used against any object in space, including Soviet Excaliburs, referring to this use as a "counter-defensive" role.
This statement was quickly turned against him; if Excalibur could destroy a Soviet SDI system, then a Soviet Excalibur could do the same to theirs. Instead of ending the threat of nuclear weapons, Excalibur appeared to end the threat of SDI. More worryingly, when one considered such scenarios, it appeared the best use of such a system would be to launch a first strike; Soviet Excaliburs would destroy US defenses while their ICBMs attacked the US missile fleet in their missile silos, the remaining Soviet Excaliburs would then blunt the enfeebled response. Miller immediately sent a letter countering Wood's statements, but the damage was done.
Shortly thereafter, Hugh DeWitt wrote a letter to The New York Times about Excalibur. He explained the actual state of the program, saying it was "still in its infancy" and that developing it completely "might require 100 to 1200 more nuclear tests and could easily require ten to twenty more years". DeWitt and Ray Kidder then wrote to Edward Kennedy and Ed Markey to complain that LLNL's objection to ongoing talks of a nuclear test ban rested solely on the X-ray program.
### Focusing failures
While this was taking place in the press, LLNL was preparing for another test shot, Goldstone, a part of Operation Charioteer scheduled for December 1985. After the problems with the earlier tests were noted, Los Alamos had suggested LLNL design a new sensor for this shot. LLNL refused, saying this would delay the test about six months and would have "unfavorable political repercussions for the program". Instead, Goldstone used a new reflector consisting of hydrogen gas which would address the calibration concerns. The new instruments demonstrated that the output of the lasers was at best ten percent of what the theoretical predictions required, and at worst, had produced no laser output at all.
Focusing was the primary concern of the next test, Labquark, carried out on 20 September 1986. This was apparently successful, suggesting the major problems with focusing had been addressed. A follow-up focusing test, Delamar, was carried out on 18 April 1987. This test demonstrated that the focusing in both this test and Labquark appeared to be an illusion; the beam had not narrowed and was not focused enough for long-range interceptions.
When the news broke, Teller blamed Woodruff, saying he had not been "a constructive member of the team". Teller continued to say the tests were actually a success, but that he was prevented from telling the real story due to government secrecy.
### APS report on directed energy weapons
In 1984 the American Physical Society (APS) approached Keyworth with the idea of setting up a blue-ribbon panel to study the various weapons concepts independent of the labs. Keyworth and Abrahamson both agreed with this idea, giving the team complete access to classified materials as required. The APS panel took almost a year to form, and was co-chaired by Nicolaas Bloembergen, who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on lasers, and Kumar Patel, who had invented the CO<sub>2</sub> laser. The sixteen other members of the panel were similarly distinguished.
The report was completed in eighteen months, but due to the classified contents, it required about another seven months to clear the censors before the redacted version was released to the public in June 1987. The report, "The Science and Technology of Directed Energy Weapons", stated that the technologies in question were at least a decade away from the stage where it could be clearly stated whether or not they would even work.
Some of the systems appeared to be theoretically possible but needed more development. This was the case for the free electron laser, for instance, where the panel was able to offer specific information on the required improvements, calling for two or more orders of magnitude in energy (100 times). In contrast, the report's section on Excalibur suggested it was not clear it could ever work even in theory and was summarized thus:
> Nuclear explosion pumped X-ray lasers require validation of many of the physical concepts before their application to strategic defense can be evaluated.
The report also noted that the energy requirements for a directed energy weapon used as a BMD asset was much higher than the energy needed for the same weapon to be used against those assets. This meant even if the SDI weapons could be successfully developed, they could be attacked by similar weapons that would be easier to develop. The movement of space-based assets in well-known orbital paths also made them much easier to attack and exposed to attack for longer times compared to the same systems being used to attack ICBMs, whose initial positions were unknown and disappeared in minutes.
The report noted this was particularly true of pop-up X-ray lasers. They noted that:
> The high energy-to-weight ratio of nuclear explosive devices driving the directed energy beam weapons permits their use as "pop-up" devices. For this reason, the X-ray laser, if successfully developed, would constitute a particularly serious threat against space-based assets of a BMD.
A specific concern, in this case, was the susceptibility of the optics, and especially their optical coatings, of the various space-based weapons. Even relatively low-intensity laser light could damage these devices, blinding their optics and rendering the weapons unable to track their targets. Given the light weight of the Excalibur-type weapons, the Soviets could rapidly pop-up such a device just prior to launching an attack, and blind all the SDI assets in the region even with a low-powered weapon.
### Woodruff affair, GAO report
During the later half of 1987, Woodruff found that no work was being assigned to him. With little to do, the lab threatened to cut his salary. On 2 February 1987, Batzel gave him a memo saying any problems he had were his own making. His final appeal, to the university president David Gardner, was likewise turned down.
In response, in April 1987 Woodruff filed two official grievances. This prompted a private review by John S. Foster Jr. and George Dacey at the urging of the Department of Energy. This report apparently had no effect. The story became known within the labs, and the way Batzel retaliated against Woodruff became a major point of concern among the employees. A number of scientists in the lab were so upset at his treatment they wrote an April 1987 letter about it to Gardner. When they asked for people to sign the cover letter, they were "practically stampeded" by volunteers. This was one of many signs of growing turmoil in the labs.
In October 1987, someone sent a copy of Woodruff's grievance to the Federation of American Scientists, who then turned it over to the newspapers. Woodruff was visiting Los Alamos when the first stories came in over the Associated Press wire, which resulted in a standing ovation by the other scientists. The press, now largely turned against SDI, made it a major issue they came to refer to as the "Woodruff Affair".
The press articles on the topic, which were generally more widespread in California newspapers, came to the attention of California Congressman George Brown Jr. Brown triggered an investigation by the General Accounting Office (GAO). Brown later said Teller's version of events was "politically motivated exaggerations aimed at distorting national policy and funding decisions".
The GAO report stated that they found a wide variety of opinions on the X-ray laser project, but Teller and Wood were "essentially off the scale on the optimistic side". They noted that Woodruff's attempts to correct these statements were blocked and that his complaints about the lab's behavior resulted in him becoming what the lab insider called a "nonperson" in which longtime colleagues stopped talking to him. But the report also generally agreed with the lab on most other points, and then went on to accuse Woodruff of falsely stating he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
It was later revealed that a letter submitted by Ray Kidder for inclusion in the report had been removed. Kidder strongly agreed with Woodruff's version of events and said Woodruff's attempt to send letters "provided a frank, objective and balanced description of the Program as it existed at the time".
Batzel had already decided to retire by this time, and his position was filled by John Nuckolls. Nuckolls gave Woodruff the position as an assistant associate director for treaty verification efforts, a position of some importance as SDI began to wind down while at the same time new treaties made such verification efforts important. Nevertheless, in 1990 Woodruff left to take a position at Los Alamos.
As Woodruff had feared, the result was to seriously erode the reputation of LLNL in the government. John Harvey, LLNL's director for advanced strategic systems, found that when he visited Washington he was asked: "what's the next lie that's going to come out?" Brown later commented: "I'm not inclined to call it an earthshattering report, but what has happened has created a lot of questions about the objectivity and reliability of the laboratory."
### Excalibur ends
In 1986, it was reported that the SDIO saw Excalibur primarily as an anti-satellite weapon, and perhaps useful as a discrimination tool to tell warheads from decoys. This, along with the results from the most recent tests, made it clear it was no longer considered to be useful as a BMD weapon on its own. By the late 1980s, the entire concept was being derided in the press and by other members of the lab; The New York Times quoted George Maenchen as stating "All these claims are totally false. They lie in the realm of pure fantasy." The stories prompted a 60 Minutes interview with Teller, but when they began to question him on Woodruff, Teller attempted to rip off the microphone.
Funding for Excalibur peaked in 1987 at \$349 million and then began to rapidly reverse. The March 1988 budget ended development as a weapon system, and the original R group was shut down. In the 1990 budget, Congress eliminated it as a separate item. X-ray laser research continued at LLNL, but as a purely scientific project, not as a weapons program. Another test, Greenwater, had already been planned but was ultimately canceled. In total, ten underground tests were used in the development program.
### Brilliant Pebbles begins
With Excalibur effectively dead, in 1987 Teller and Wood began pitching Wood's new concept, Brilliant Pebbles. They first presented this to Abrahamson in October and followed up with a March 1988 meeting with Reagan and his aides. The new concept used a fleet of about a hundred thousand small independent rockets weighing about 5 pounds (2.3 kg) each to destroy the missiles or warheads by colliding with them, no explosive required. Because they were independent, attacking them would require an equally huge number of interceptors. Better yet, the entire system could be developed in a few years and would cost \$10 billion for a complete fleet.
Brilliant Pebbles was essentially an updated version of the Project BAMBI concepts Graham had been suggesting in 1981. At that time, Teller had continually derided the idea as "outlandish" and used his influence to ensure the concept did not receive serious attention. Ignoring his previous concerns with the concept, Teller went on to promote Brilliant Pebbles using arguments he had previously dismissed when raised about Excalibur; among them, he now stressed that the system did not place or explode nuclear weapons in space. When critics said the idea fell prey to the issues raised by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Teller simply ignored them.
In spite of all of these red flag issues, and the decades-long string of Air Force and DARPA reports suggesting the concept just would not work, Reagan once again enthusiastically embraced their latest concept. By 1989 the weight of each pebble had grown to 100 pounds (45 kg) and the cost of a small fleet of 4,600 of them had ballooned to \$55 billion. It remained the centerpiece of the US BMD efforts into 1991 when the numbers were further cut to somewhere between 750 and 1,000. President Clinton indirectly canceled the project on 13 May 1993 when the SDI office was reorganized as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and focused their efforts on theater ballistic missiles.
### Teller, SDI and Reykjavík
Throughout SDI's history, journalist William Broad of The New York Times was highly critical of the program and Teller's role within it. His works have generally ascribed the entire basis for SDI to Teller's overselling of the Excalibur concept, convincing Reagan a credible defensive system was only a few years away. According to Broad, "Over the protests of colleagues, Teller misled the highest officials of the United States Government into the deadly folly known as Star Wars [the nickname for SDI]."
In particular, Broad points to the meeting between Teller and Reagan in September 1982 as the key moment in SDI's creation. Years later, Broad described the meeting this way: "For half an hour, Teller deployed X-ray lasers all over the Oval Office, reducing hundreds of incoming Soviet missiles to radioactive chaff, while Reagan, gazing up ecstatically, saw a crystal shield, covering the Last Hope of Man."
This basic telling of the story is recounted in other contemporary sources; in their biography, Edward Teller: Giant of The Golden Age of Physics, Blumberg and Panos essentially make the same statement, as does Robert Park in his Voodoo Science.
Others give less credence to Teller's persuasive capabilities; Ray Pollock, who was present at the meeting, described in a 1986 letter that "I sat in on the mid-September 1982 meeting Teller had in the Oval Office ... Teller got a warm reception but that is all. I had the feeling he confused the president." In particular, he notes Teller's opening comment about "Third generation, third generation!" as being a point of confusion. Keyworth was later quoted as calling the meeting "a disaster". Others report that Teller's bypassing of official channels to arrange the meeting angered Caspar Weinberger and other members of the Department of Defense.
Others debate Excalibur's role in SDI from the start. Park suggests that Reagan's "kitchen cabinet" was pushing for some sort of action on BMD even before this period. Charles Townes suggested the key impetus to move forward was not Teller, but a presentation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff made only a few weeks before his speech that suggested shifting some development funding to defensive systems. Reagan mentioned this during the speech introducing SDI. Nigel Hey points to Robert McFarlane and the United States National Security Council as a whole. In a 1999 interview with Hey, Teller himself would suggest that he had little to do with the president's decision to announce SDI. He also did not want to talk about the X-ray laser and said he did not even recognize the name "Excalibur".
There is considerable debate on whether or not Excalibur had a direct effect on the failure of the Reykjavík Summit. During the October 1986 meeting, Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev initially considered the issue of the destabilizing effect of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. As both proposed various ideas to eliminate them, they quickly began to ratchet up the numbers and types of weapons being considered. Gorbachev started with his acceptance of Reagan's 1981 "double zero option" for intermediate-range missiles but then countered with an additional offer to eliminate fifty percent of all nuclear-armed missiles. Reagan then countered with an offer to eliminate all such missiles within ten years, as long as the US was free to deploy defensive systems after that period. At that point, Gorbachev offered to eliminate all nuclear weapons of any sort within that same time period.
At this point SDI came into the negotiations. Gorbachev would consider such a move only if the US limited their SDI efforts to the laboratory for ten years. Excalibur, which Teller's letter of only a few days earlier once again said was ready to enter engineering, would need to be tested in space before that point. Reagan refused to back down on this issue, as did Gorbachev. Reagan attempted one last time to break the logjam, asking if he would really "turn down a historic opportunity because of a single word" ("laboratory"). Gorbachev said it was a matter of principle; if the US continued real-world testing while the Soviets agreed to dismantle their weapons, he would return to Moscow to be considered a fool.
## Physics
### Lasers
Lasers rely on two physical phenomena to work, stimulated emission and population inversion.
An atom is made of a nucleus and a number of electrons orbiting in shells around it. Electrons can be found in many discrete energy states, defined by quantum mechanics. The energy levels depend on the structure of the nucleus, so they vary from element to element. Electrons can gain or lose energy by absorbing or emitting a photon with the same energy as the difference between two allowable energy states. This is why different elements have unique spectrums and gives rise to the science of spectroscopy.
Electrons will naturally release photons if there is an unoccupied lower energy state. An isolated atom would normally be found in the ground state, with all of its electrons in their lowest possible state. But due to the surrounding environment adding energy, the electrons will be found in a range of energies at any given instant. Electrons that are not in the lowest possible energy state are known as "excited", as are the atoms that contain them.
Stimulated emission occurs when an excited electron can drop by the same amount of energy as a passing photon. This causes a second photon to be emitted, closely matching the original's energy, momentum, and phase. Now there are two photons, doubling the chance that they will cause the same reaction in other atoms. As long as there is a large population of atoms with electrons in the matching energy state, the result is a chain reaction that releases a burst of single-frequency, highly collimated light.
The process of gaining and losing energy is normally random, so under typical conditions, a large group of atoms is unlikely to be in a suitable state for this reaction. Lasers depend on some sort of setup that results in many electrons being in the desired states, a condition known as a population inversion. An easy to understand example is the ruby laser, where there is a metastable state where electrons will remain for a slightly longer period if they are first excited to even higher energy. This is accomplished through optical pumping, using the white light of a flash lamp to increase the electron energy to a blue-green or ultraviolet frequency. The electrons then rapidly lose energy until they reach the metastable energy level in the deep red. This results in a brief period where a large number of electrons lie at this medium energy level, resulting in a population inversion. At that point any one of the atoms can emit a photon at that energy, starting the chain reaction.
### X-ray lasers
An X-ray laser works in the same general fashion as a ruby laser, but at much higher energy levels. The main problem in producing such a device is that the probability of any given transition between energy states depends on the cube of the energy. Comparing a ruby laser that operates at 694.3 nm to a hypothetical soft X-ray laser that might operate at 1 nm, this means the X-ray transition is 694<sup>3</sup>, or a little over 334 million times less likely. To provide the same total output energy, one needs a similar increase in input energy.
Another problem is that the excited states are extremely short-lived: for a 1 nm transition, the electron will remain in the state for about 10<sup>-14</sup> seconds. Without a metastable state to extend this time, this means there is only this fleeting time, much less than a shake, to carry out the reaction. A suitable substance with a metastable state in the X-ray region is unknown in the open literature.
Instead, X-ray lasers rely on the speed of various reactions to create the population inversion. When heated beyond a certain energy level, electrons dissociate from their atoms entirely, producing a gas of nuclei and electrons known as a plasma. Plasma is a gas, and its energy causes it to adiabatically expand according to the ideal gas law. As it does, its temperature drops, eventually reaching a point where the electrons can reconnect to nuclei. The cooling process causes the bulk of the plasma to reach this temperature at roughly the same time. Once reconnected to nuclei, the electrons lose energy through the normal process of releasing photons. Although rapid, this release process is slower than the reconnection process. This results in a brief period where there are a large number of atoms with the electrons in the high-energy just-reconnected state, causing a population inversion.
To produce the required conditions, a huge amount of energy needs to be delivered extremely rapidly. It has been demonstrated that something on the order of 1 watt per atom is needed to provide the energy required to produce an X-ray laser. Delivering so much energy to the lasing medium invariably means it will be vaporized, but the entire reaction occurs so rapidly this is not necessarily a problem. It does imply such systems will be inherently one-shot devices.
Finally, another complication is that there is no effective mirror for X-ray frequency light. In a common laser, the lasing medium is normally placed between two partial mirrors that reflect some of the output back into the medium. This greatly increases the number of photons in the medium and increases the chance that any given atom will be stimulated. More importantly, as the mirrors reflect only those photons traveling in a particular direction, and the stimulated photons will be released in the same direction, this causes the output to be highly focused.
Lacking either of these effects, the X-ray laser has to rely entirely on stimulation as the photons travel through the medium only once. To increase the odds that any given photon causes stimulation, and to focus the output, X-ray lasers are designed to be very long and skinny. In this arrangement, most of the photons being released naturally through conventional emissions in random directions will simply exit the medium. Only those photons that happen to be released traveling down the long axis of the medium have a reasonable chance of stimulating another release. A suitable lasing medium would have an aspect ratio on the order of 10,000.
### Excalibur
Although most details of the Excalibur concept remain classified, articles in Nature and Reviews of Modern Physics, along with those in optics-related journals, contain broad outlines of the underlying concepts and outline possible ways to build an Excalibur system.
The basic concept would require one or more lasing rods arranged into a module along with a tracking camera. These would be arranged on a framework surrounding the nuclear weapon in the center. Nature'''s description shows multiple lasing rods embedded in a plastic matrix forming a cylinder around the bomb and tracking device, meaning each device would be able to attack a single target. The accompanying text, however, describes it as having several aimable modules, perhaps four. Most other descriptions show multiple modules arranged around the bomb that can be separately aimed, which more closely follows the suggestions of there being several dozen such lasers per device.
In order to damage the airframe of an ICBM, an estimated 3 kJ/cm<sup>2</sup> would need to hit it. The laser is essentially a focusing device, taking the radiation falling along the length of the rod and turning some small amount of it into a beam traveling out the end. One can consider the effect as increasing the brightness of the X-rays falling on the target compared to the X-rays released by the bomb itself. The enhancement of the brightness compared to the unfocused output from the bomb is $\eta/d\theta$, where $\eta$ is the efficiency of conversion from bomb X-rays to laser X-rays, and $d\theta$ is the dispersion angle.
If a typical ICBM is 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) in diameter, at a distance of 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) represents a solid angle of 10<sup>−12</sup> steradian (sr). Estimates of the dispersion angles from the Excalibur lasers were from 10<sup>−12</sup> to 10<sup>−9</sup>. Estimates of $\eta$ vary from about 10<sup>−5</sup> to 10<sup>−2</sup>; that is, they have laser gain less than one. In the worst-case scenario, with the widest dispersion angle and the lowest enhancement, the pump weapon would have to be approximately 1 MT for a single laser to deposit enough energy on the booster to be sure to destroy it at that range. Using best-case scenarios for both values, about 10 kT are required.
The exact material of the lasing medium has not been specified. The only direct statement from one of the researchers was by Chapline, who described the medium on the original Diablo Hawk test being "an organic pith material" from a weed growing on a vacant lot in Walnut Creek, a town a short distance away from Livermore. Various sources describe the later tests using metals; selenium, zinc and aluminum have been mentioned specifically.
## BMD
### Missile-based systems
The US Army ran an ongoing BMD program dating from the 1940s. This was initially concerned with shooting down V-2-like targets, but an early study on the topic by Bell Labs suggested their short flight times would make it difficult to arrange an interception. The same report noted that the longer flight times of long-range missiles made this task simpler, in spite of various technical difficulties due to higher speeds and altitudes.
This led to a series of systems starting with Nike Zeus, then Nike-X, Sentinel and finally the Safeguard Program. These systems used short and medium-range missiles equipped with nuclear warheads to attack incoming enemy ICBM warheads. The constantly changing concepts reflect their creation during a period of rapid changes in the opposing force as the Soviet ICBM fleet was expanded. The interceptor missiles had a limited range, less than 500 miles (800 km), so interceptor bases had to be spread across the United States. Since the Soviet warheads could be aimed at any target, adding a single ICBM, which were becoming increasingly inexpensive in the 1960s, would (theoretically) require another interceptor at every base to counter it.
This led to the concept of the cost-exchange ratio, the amount of money one had to spend on additional defenses to counter a dollar of new offensive capability. Early estimates were around 20, meaning every dollar the Soviets spent on new ICBMs would require the US to spend \$20 to counter it. This implied the Soviets could afford to overwhelm the US's ability to build more interceptors. With MIRV, the cost-exchange ratio was so one-sided there was no effective defense that could not be overwhelmed for little cost, as mentioned in a famous 1968 article by Bethe and Garwin. This is precisely what the US did when the Soviets installed their A-35 anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow; by adding MIRV to the Minuteman missile fleet, they could overwhelm the A-35 without adding a single new missile.
### X-ray based attacks
During high-altitude tests in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was noticed that the burst of X-rays from a nuclear explosion were free to travel long distances, unlike low altitude bursts where the air interacted with the X-rays within a few tens of meters. This led to new and unexpected effects. It also led to the possibility of designing a bomb specifically to increase the X-ray release, which could be made so powerful the rapid deposit of energy on a metal surface would cause it to explosively vaporize. At ranges on the order of 10 miles (16 km), this would have enough energy to destroy a warhead.
This concept formed the basis of the LIM-49 Spartan missile and its W71 warhead. Due to the large volume in which the system was effective, it could be used against warheads hidden among radar decoys. When decoys are deployed along with the warhead they form a threat tube about a 1 mile (1.6 km) wide and as much as ten miles long. Previous missiles had to get within a few hundred yards (meters) to be effective, but with Spartan, one or two missiles could be used to attack a warhead anywhere within this cloud of material. This also greatly reduced the accuracy needed for the missile's guidance system; the earlier Zeus had a maximum effective range of about 75 miles (121 km) due to the limits of the resolution of the radar systems, beyond this it did not have enough accuracy to stay within its lethal radius.
The use of X-ray based attacks in earlier generation BMD systems had led to work to counter these attacks. In the US, these were carried out by placing a warhead (or parts of it) in a cavern connected by a long tunnel to a second cavern where an active warhead was placed. Before firing, the entire site was pumped into a vacuum. When the active warhead fired, the X-rays traveled down the tunnel to hit the target warhead. To protect the target from the blast itself, huge metal doors slammed shut in the tunnel in the short time between the X-rays arriving and the blast wave behind it. Such tests had been carried out continuously since the 1970s.
### Boost-phase attacks
A potential solution to the problem of MIRV is to attack the ICBMs during the boost phase before the warheads have separated. This destroys all the warheads with a single attack, rendering MIRV superfluous. Additionally, attacking during this phase allows the interceptors to track their targets using the large heat signature of the booster motor. These can be seen at distances on the order thousands of miles, given that they would be below the horizon for a ground-based sensor and thus require sensors being located in orbit.
DARPA had considered this concept starting in the late 1950s, and by the early 1960s had settled on the Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept concept, Project BAMBI. BAMBI used small heat-seeking missiles launched from orbiting platforms to attack Soviet ICBMs as they launched. In order to keep enough BAMBI interceptors within the range of the Soviet missiles while the interceptor's launch platforms continued to move in orbit, an enormous number of platforms and missiles would be required.
The basic concept continued to be studied through the 1960s and 1970s. A serious problem was that the interceptor missiles had to be very fast to reach the ICBM before its motor stopped firing, which required a larger motor on the interceptor, meaning higher weight to launch into orbit. As the difficulties of this problem became clear, the concept evolved into the "ascent phase" attack, which used more sensitive seekers which allowed the attack to continue after the ICBM's motor had stopped firing and the warhead bus was still ascending. In all of these studies, the system would require an enormous amount of weight to be lifted into orbit, typically hundreds of millions of pounds, well beyond any reasonable projections of US capability. The US Air Force repeatedly studied these various plans and rejected them all as essentially impossible.
### Excalibur's promise and development issues
The Excalibur concept appeared to represent an enormous leap in BMD capability. By focusing the output of a nuclear explosion's X-rays, the range and effective power of BMD were greatly enhanced. A single Excalibur could attack multiple targets across hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. Because the system was both small and relatively lightweight, the Space Shuttle could carry multiple Excaliburs into orbit in a single sortie. Super Excalibur, a later design, would theoretically be able to shoot down the entire Soviet missile fleet singlehandedly.
When first proposed, the plan was to place enough Excaliburs in orbit so at least one would be over the Soviet Union at all times. But it was soon noted that this allowed the Excalibur platforms to be directly attacked; in this situation, the Excalibur would either have to allow itself to absorb the attack or sacrifice itself to shoot down the attacker. In either case, the Excalibur platform would likely be destroyed, allowing a subsequent and larger attack to occur unhindered.
This led Teller to suggest a "pop-up" mode where an Excalibur would be placed on SLBM platforms on submarines patrolling off the Soviet coastline. When a launch was detected, the missiles would be launched upward and then fire as they left the atmosphere. This plan also suffered from several problems. Most notable was the issue of timing; the Soviet missiles would be firing for only a few minutes, during which time the US had to detect the launch, order a counter-launch, and then wait for the missiles to climb to altitude.
For practical reasons, submarines could salvo their missiles only over a period of minutes, which meant each one could launch only perhaps one or two Excaliburs before Soviet missiles were already on their way. Additionally, the launch would reveal the location of the submarine, leaving it a "sitting duck". These issues led the Office of Technology Assessment to conclude that "the practicality of a global scheme involving pop-up X-ray lasers of this type is doubtful."
Another challenge was geometric in nature. For missiles launched close to the submarines, the laser would be shining through only the uppermost atmosphere. For ICBMs launched from Kazakhstan, some 3,000 kilometers (1,900 mi) from the Arctic Ocean, the curvature of the Earth meant an Excalibur's laser beam would have a long path-length through the atmosphere. To obtain a shorter atmospheric path-length, Excalibur would have to climb much higher, during which time the target missile would be able to release its warheads.
There was the possibility that a powerful enough laser could reach further into the atmosphere, perhaps as deep as 30 kilometers (19 mi) altitude if it was bright enough. In this case, there would be so many X-ray photons all the air between the battle station and the target missiles would be completely ionized and there would still be enough X-rays left over to destroy the missile. This process, known as "bleaching", would require an extremely bright laser, more than ten billion times brighter than the original Excalibur system.
Finally, another problem was aiming the lasing rods before firing. For maximum performance, the laser rods needed to be long and skinny, but this would make them less robust mechanically. Moving them to point at their targets would cause them to bend, and some time would be required to allow this deformation to disappear. Complicating the issue was that the rods needed to be as skinny as possible to focus the output, a concept known as geometric broadening, but doing so caused the diffraction limit to decrease, offsetting this improvement. Whether it was possible to meet the performance requirements within these competing limitations was never demonstrated.
### Countermeasures
Excalibur worked during the boost phase and aimed at the booster itself. This meant the X-ray hardening techniques developed for warheads did not protect them. While many of the other SDI weapons had simple countermeasures based on the weapon's required dwell time, like spinning the booster and polishing it mirror-bright, Excalibur's zero dwell time rendered these ineffective. Thus the primary way to defeat an Excalibur weapon is to use the atmosphere to block the progress of the beams. This can be accomplished using a missile that burns out while still in the atmosphere, thereby denying Excalibur the tracking system information needed for targeting.
The Soviets conceived of a wide array of responses during the SDI era. In 1997 Russia deployed the Topol-M ICBM which utilized a higher-thrust engine burn following take-off, and flew a relatively flat ballistic trajectory, both characteristics intended to complicate space-based sensor acquisition and interception. The Topol fires its engine for only 150 seconds, about half the time of the SS-18, and has no bus, the warhead is released seconds after the engine stops. This makes it far more difficult to attack.
In 1976, the organization now known as NPO Energia began development of two space-based platforms not unlike the SDI concepts; Skif was armed with a CO<sub>2</sub> laser while Kaskad used missiles. These were abandoned, but with the announcement of SDI they were repurposed as anti-satellite weapons, with Skif being used against low-orbit objects and Kaskad against higher altitude and geostationary targets.
Some of these systems were tested in 1987 on the Polyus spacecraft. What was mounted on this spacecraft remains unclear, but either a prototype Skif-DF or a mockup was part of the system. According to interviews conducted years later, mounting the Skif laser on the Polyus was more for propaganda purposes than as an effective defense technology, as the phrase "space based laser" carried political capital. One of the statements is that Polyus would be the basis for deployment of nuclear "mines" which might be fired from outside the range of the SDI components and reach the United States within six minutes.
## In popular culture
A similar laser weapon, also named Excalibur, appears in the video games Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War and Ace Combat Infinity''. In both of its appearances, Excalibur is presented as a gigantic, ground-based laser system that utilises mirror satellites to direct its laser beam; the device was originally designed to counter ICBMs, but was repurposed into an anti-aircraft weapon.
## See also
- Directed-energy weapon
## Explanatory notes
|
25,662 |
Robert Falcon Scott
| 1,173,612,607 |
British Antarctic explorer (1868–1912)
|
[
"1868 births",
"1912 deaths",
"Antarctic expedition deaths",
"Collections of the Scott Polar Research Institute",
"Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order",
"Deaths by starvation",
"Deaths from hypothermia",
"English explorers",
"Explorers of Antarctica",
"Military personnel from Plymouth, Devon",
"Officers of the Legion of Honour",
"People educated at Stubbington House School",
"People of the Victorian era",
"Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal",
"Recipients of the Polar Medal",
"Robert Falcon Scott",
"Royal Navy officers",
"Scott family (conservationists)",
"Terra Nova expedition"
] |
Captain Robert Falcon Scott, , (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery expedition of 1901–04 and the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition of 1910–13.
On the first expedition, he set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S and discovered the Antarctic Plateau, on which the South Pole is located. On the second venture, Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, less than five weeks after Amundsen's South Pole expedition.
A planned meeting with supporting dog teams from the base camp failed, despite Scott's written instructions, and at a distance of 162 miles (261 km) from their base camp at Hut Point and approximately 12.5 miles (20.1 km) from the next depot, Scott and his companions died. When Scott and his party's bodies were discovered, they had in their possession the first Antarctic fossils ever discovered. The fossils were determined to be from the Glossopteris tree and proved that Antarctica was once forested and joined to other continents.
Before his appointment to lead the Discovery expedition, Scott had a career as a naval officer in the Royal Navy. In 1899, he had a chance encounter with Sir Clements Markham, the president of the Royal Geographical Society, and thus learned of a planned Antarctic expedition, which he soon volunteered to lead. Having taken this step, his name became inseparably associated with the Antarctic, the field of work to which he remained committed during the final 12 years of his life.
Following the news of his death, Scott became a celebrated hero, a status reflected by memorials erected across the UK. However, in the last decades of the 20th century, questions were raised about his competence and character. Commentators in the 21st century have regarded Scott more positively after assessing the temperature drop below −40 °C (−40 °F) in March 1912, and after re-discovering Scott's written orders of October 1911, in which he had instructed the dog teams to meet and assist him on the return trip.
## Early life
### Family
Scott was born on 6 June 1868, the third of six children and elder son of John Edward, a brewer and magistrate, and Hannah (née Cuming) Scott of Stoke Damerel, near Devonport. There were also naval and military traditions in the family, Scott's grandfather and four uncles all having served in the army or navy. John Scott's prosperity came from the ownership of a small Plymouth brewery which he had inherited from his father and subsequently sold. Scott's early childhood years were spent in comfort, but some years later, when he was establishing his naval career, the family suffered serious financial misfortune.
In accordance with the family's tradition, Scott and his younger brother Archie were predestined for careers in the armed services. Scott spent four years at a local day school before being sent to Stubbington House School in Hampshire, a cramming establishment that prepared candidates for the entrance examinations to the naval training ship HMS Britannia at Dartmouth. Having passed these exams Scott began his naval career in 1881, as a 13-year-old cadet.
### Early naval career
In July 1883, Scott passed out of Britannia as a midshipman, seventh overall in a class of 26. By October, he was en route to South Africa to join HMS Boadicea, the flagship of the Cape squadron, the first of several ships on which he served during his midshipman years. While stationed in St Kitts, West Indies, on HMS Rover, he had his first encounter with Clements Markham, then Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, who would loom large in Scott's later career. On this occasion, 1 March 1887, Markham observed Midshipman Scott's cutter winning that morning's race across the bay. Markham's habit was to "collect" likely young naval officers with a view to their undertaking polar exploration work in the future. He was impressed by Scott's intelligence, enthusiasm and charm, and the 18-year-old midshipman was duly noted.
In March 1888 Scott passed his examinations for sub-lieutenant, with four first class certificates out of five. His career progressed smoothly, with service on various ships and promotion to lieutenant in 1889. In 1891, after a long spell in foreign waters, he applied for the two-year torpedo training course on HMS Vernon, an important career step. He graduated with first class certificates in both the theory and practical examinations. A small blot occurred in the summer of 1893 when, while commanding a torpedo boat, Scott ran it aground, a mishap which earned him a mild rebuke.
During the research for his dual biography of Scott and Roald Amundsen, polar historian Roland Huntford investigated a possible scandal in Scott's early naval career, related to the period 1889–1890 when Scott was a lieutenant on HMS Amphion. According to Huntford, Scott "disappears from naval records" for eight months, from mid-August 1889 until 26 March 1890. Huntford hints at involvement with a married American woman, a cover-up, and protection by senior officers. Biographer David Crane reduces the missing period to eleven weeks, but is unable to clarify further. He rejects the notion of protection by senior officers on the grounds that Scott was not important or well-connected enough to warrant this. Documents that may have offered explanations are missing from Admiralty records.
In 1894, while serving as torpedo officer on the depot ship HMS Vulcan, Scott learned of the financial calamity that had overtaken his family. John Scott, having sold the brewery and invested the proceeds unwisely, had lost all his capital and was now virtually bankrupt. At the age of 63, and in poor health, he was forced to take a job as a brewery manager and move his family to Shepton Mallet, Somerset. Three years later, while Robert was serving with the Channel squadron flagship HMS Majestic, John Scott died of heart disease, creating a fresh family crisis. Hannah Scott and her two unmarried daughters now relied entirely on the service pay of Scott and the salary of younger brother Archie, who had left the army for a higher-paid post in the colonial service. Archie's own death in the autumn of 1898, after contracting typhoid fever, meant that the whole financial responsibility for the family rested on Scott.
Promotion, and the extra income this would bring, now became a matter of considerable concern to Scott. In the Royal Navy however, opportunities for career advancement were both limited and keenly sought after by ambitious officers. Early in June 1899, while home on leave, he had a chance encounter in a London street with Clements Markham, who was now knighted and President of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), and learned for the first time of an impending Antarctic expedition with , under the auspices of the RGS. It was the opportunity for early command and a chance to distinguish himself, rather than any predilection for polar exploration which motivated Scott, according to Crane. What passed between them on this occasion is not recorded, but a few days later, on 11 June, Scott appeared at the Markham residence and volunteered to lead the expedition.
## Discovery expedition, 1901–1904
The British National Antarctic Expedition, later known as the Discovery Expedition, was a joint enterprise of the RGS and the Royal Society. A long-cherished dream of Markham's, it required all of his skills and cunning to bring the expedition to fruition, under naval command and largely staffed by naval personnel. Scott may not have been Markham's first choice as leader but, having decided on him, the older man remained a constant supporter. There were committee battles over the scope of Scott's responsibilities, with the Royal Society pressing to put a scientist in charge of the expedition's programme while Scott merely commanded the ship. Eventually, however, Markham's view prevailed; Scott was given overall command, and was promoted to the rank of commander before sailed for the Antarctic on 6 August 1901. King Edward VII, who showed a keen interest in the expedition, visited the Discovery the day before the ship left British shores in August 1901, and during the visit appointed Scott a Member Fourth Class of the Royal Victorian Order, his personal gift.
Experience of Antarctic or Arctic waters was almost entirely lacking within the 50-strong party and there was very little special training in equipment or techniques before the ship set sail. Dogs were taken, as were skis, but the dogs succumbed to disease in the first season. Nevertheless, the dogs' performance impressed Scott, and, despite moral qualms, he implemented the principle of slaughtering dogs for dog food to increase the others' range. During an early attempt at ice travel, a blizzard trapped expedition members in their tent and their decision to leave it resulted in the death of George Vince, who slipped over a precipice on 11 March 1902. The expedition also experienced problems with scurvy, which affected Scott's domestic reputation.
The expedition had both scientific and exploration objectives; the latter included a long journey south, in the direction of the South Pole. This march, undertaken by Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson, took them to a latitude of 82°17′S, about 530 miles (850 km) from the pole. A harrowing return journey brought about Shackleton's physical collapse and his early departure from the expedition. The second year showed improvements in technique and achievement, culminating in Scott's western journey which led to the discovery of the Polar Plateau. This has been described by one writer as "one of the great polar journeys". The scientific results of the expedition included important biological, zoological and geological findings. Some of the meteorological and magnetic readings, however, were later criticised as amateurish and inaccurate.
At the end of the expedition it took the combined efforts of two relief ships and the use of explosives to free Discovery from the ice. Scott's insistence during the expedition on Royal Navy formalities had made for uneasy relations with the merchant navy contingent, many of whom departed for home with the first relief ship in March 1903. Second-in-command Albert Armitage, a merchant officer, was offered the chance to go home on compassionate grounds, but interpreted the offer as a personal slight, and refused. Armitage also promoted the idea that the decision to send Shackleton home on the relief ship arose from Scott's animosity rather than Shackleton's physical breakdown. Although there was later tension between Scott and Shackleton, when their polar ambitions directly clashed, mutual civilities were preserved in public; Scott joined in the official receptions that greeted Shackleton on his return in 1909 after the Nimrod Expedition, and the two exchanged polite letters about their respective ambitions in 1909–1910.
## Between expeditions
### Popular hero
Discovery returned to Britain in September 1904. The expedition had caught the public imagination, and Scott became a popular hero. He was awarded a cluster of honours and medals, including many from overseas, and was promoted to the rank of captain. He was invited to Balmoral Castle, and King Edward VII promoted him to Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.
Scott's next few years were crowded. For more than a year he was occupied with public receptions, lectures and the writing of the expedition record, The Voyage of the Discovery. In January 1906, he resumed his full-time naval career, first as an assistant director of Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty and, in August, as flag-captain to Rear-Admiral Sir George Egerton on HMS Victorious. He was now moving in ever more exalted social circles—a telegram to Markham in February 1907 refers to meetings with Queen Amélie of Orléans and Luis Filipe, Prince Royal of Portugal, and a later letter home reports lunching with the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet and Prince Heinrich of Prussia. The telegram related to a collision involving Scott's ship, HMS Albemarle. Scott was cleared of blame. HMS Albemarle, a battleship commanded by Scott, collided with the battleship HMS Commonwealth on 11 February 1907, suffering minor bow damage.
### Dispute with Shackleton
By early 1906, Scott queried the RGS about the possible funding of a future Antarctic expedition. It was therefore unwelcome news to him that Ernest Shackleton had announced his own plans to travel to Discovery's old McMurdo Sound base and launch a bid for the South Pole from there. Scott claimed, in the first of a series of letters to Shackleton, that the area around McMurdo was his own "field of work" to which he had prior rights until he chose to give them up, and that Shackleton should therefore work from an entirely different area. In this, he was strongly supported by Discovery's former zoologist, Edward Wilson, who asserted that Scott's rights extended to the entire Ross Sea sector. Shackleton refused to concede.
According to a letter written to Stanfords bookshop owner Edward Stanford, Scott seemed to take offence with a map that was published that had shown how far south Scott and Shackleton had travelled during the Discovery Expedition. Scott implied in this letter, dated in 1907 and discovered in the shop archives in 2018, that having the two men's names together on this map indicated that there was "dual leadership" between Scott and Shackleton which was "not in accordance with fact." After the owner replied with an apology over the issue, Scott expressed his regret at the nature of the previous letter and stated, "I tried to be impartial in giving credit to my companions who one and all laboured honestly and well as I have endeavoured to record....I understand now of course that you had no personal knowledge of the wording and I must express regret that I failed to realise your identity when I first wrote."
Finally, to end the impasse, Shackleton agreed, in a letter to Scott dated 17 May 1907, to work to the east of the 170°W meridian and therefore to avoid all the familiar Discovery ground. In the end it was a promise that he was unable to keep after his search for alternative landing grounds proved fruitless. With his only other option being to return home, he set up his headquarters at Cape Royds, close to the old Discovery base. For this he was roundly condemned by the British polar establishment at the time.
Among modern polar writers, Ranulph Fiennes regards Shackleton's actions as a technical breach of honour, but adds: "My personal belief is that Shackleton was basically honest but circumstances forced his McMurdo landing, much to his distress." The polar historian Beau Riffenburgh states that the promise to Scott "should never ethically have been demanded," and compares Scott's intransigence on this matter unfavourably with the generous attitudes of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who gave freely of his advice and expertise to all, whether they were potential rivals or not.
### Marriage
Scott, who because of his Discovery fame had entered Edwardian society, first met Kathleen Bruce early in 1907 at a private luncheon party. She was a sculptor, socialite and cosmopolitan who had studied under Auguste Rodin and whose circle included Isadora Duncan, Pablo Picasso and Aleister Crowley. Her initial meeting with Scott was brief, but when they met again later that year, the mutual attraction was obvious. A stormy courtship followed; Scott was not her only suitor—his main rival was would-be novelist Gilbert Cannan—and his absences at sea did not assist his cause. However, Scott's persistence was rewarded and, on 2 September 1908, at the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, the wedding took place. Their only child, Peter Markham Scott, born 14 September 1909, was to found the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
## Terra Nova expedition, 1910–1913
### Preparation
Shackleton returned from the Antarctic having narrowly failed to reach the Pole, and this gave Scott the impetus to proceed with plans for his second Antarctic expedition. On 24 March 1909, he took the Admiralty-based appointment of naval assistant to the Second Sea Lord which placed him conveniently in London. In December, he was released on half-pay, to take up the full-time command of the British Antarctic Expedition 1910, to be known as the Terra Nova expedition from its ship, Terra Nova.
It was the expressed hope of the RGS that this expedition would be "scientific primarily, with exploration and the Pole as secondary objects" but, unlike the Discovery expedition, neither they nor the Royal Society were in charge this time. In his expedition prospectus, Scott stated that its main objective was "to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement". Scott had, as Markham observed, been "bitten by the Pole mania".
In a memorandum of 1908, Scott presented his view that man-hauling to the South Pole was impossible and that motor traction was needed. Snow vehicles did not yet exist however, and so his engineer Reginald Skelton developed the idea of a caterpillar track for snow surfaces. In the middle of 1909 Scott realised that motors were unlikely to get him all the way to the Pole, and decided additionally to take horses (based on Shackleton's near success in attaining the Pole, using ponies), and dogs and skis after consultation with Nansen during trials of the motors in Norway in March 1910. Man-hauling would still be needed on the Polar Plateau, on the assumption that motors and animals could not ascend the crevassed Beardmore Glacier.
Dog expert Cecil Meares was going to Siberia to select the dogs, and Scott ordered that, while he was there, he should deal with the purchase of Manchurian ponies. Meares was not an experienced horse-dealer, and the ponies he chose proved mostly of poor quality, and ill-suited to prolonged Antarctic work. Meanwhile, Scott also recruited Bernard Day, from Shackleton's expedition, as his motor expert.
### First season
On 15 June 1910, Scott's ship, Terra Nova, an old converted whaler, set sail from Cardiff, South Wales. Scott meanwhile was fundraising in Britain and joined the ship later in South Africa. Arriving in Melbourne, Australia in October 1910, Scott received a telegram from Amundsen stating: "Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic Amundsen," possibly indicating that Scott faced a race to the pole.
The expedition suffered a series of early misfortunes which hampered the first season's work and impaired preparations for the main polar march. On its journey from New Zealand to the Antarctic, Terra Nova nearly sank in a storm and was then trapped in pack ice for 20 days, far longer than other ships had experienced, which meant a late-season arrival and less time for preparatory work before the Antarctic winter. At Cape Evans, Antarctica, one of the motor sledges was lost during its unloading from the ship, breaking through the sea ice and sinking.
Deteriorating weather conditions and weak, unacclimatised ponies affected the initial depot-laying journey, so that the expedition's main supply point, One Ton Depot, was laid 35 miles (56 km) north of its planned location at 80°S. Lawrence Oates, in charge of the ponies, advised Scott to kill ponies for food and advance the depot to 80°S, which Scott refused to do. Oates is reported as saying to Scott, "Sir, I'm afraid you'll come to regret not taking my advice." Four ponies died during this journey either from the cold or because they slowed the team down and were shot.
On its return to base, the expedition learned of the presence of Amundsen, camped with his crew and a large contingent of dogs in the Bay of Whales, 200 miles (320 km) to their east. Scott conceded that his ponies would not be able to start early enough in the season to compete with Amundsen's cold-tolerant dog teams for the pole, and also acknowledged that the Norwegian's base was closer to the pole by 69 miles (111 km). Wilson was more hopeful, whereas Gran shared Scott's concern. Shortly afterwards, the death toll among the ponies increased to six, three drowning when sea-ice unexpectedly disintegrated, casting in doubt the possibility of reaching the pole at all. However, during the 1911 winter Scott's confidence increased; on 2 August, after the return of a three-man party from their winter journey to Cape Crozier, Scott wrote, "I feel sure we are as near perfection as experience can direct".
### Journey to the Pole
Scott outlined his plans for the southern journey to the entire shore party, leaving open who would form the final polar team, according to their performance during the polar travel. Eleven days before Scott's teams set off towards the pole, Scott gave the dog driver Meares the following written orders at Cape Evans dated 20 October 1911 to secure Scott's speedy return from the pole using dogs:
> About the first week of February I should like you to start your third journey to the South, the object being to hasten the return of the third Southern unit [the polar party] and give it a chance to catch the ship. The date of your departure must depend on news received from returning units, the extent of the depot of dog food you have been able to leave at One Ton Camp, the state of the dogs, etc ... It looks at present as though you should aim at meeting the returning party about March 1 in Latitude 82 or 82.30
The march south began on 1 November 1911, a caravan of mixed transport groups (motors, dogs, horses), with loaded sledges, travelling at different rates, all designed to support a final group of four men who would make a dash for the Pole. The southbound party steadily reduced in size as successive support teams turned back. Scott reminded the returning Surgeon-Lieutenant Atkinson of the order "to take the two dog-teams south in the event of Meares having to return home, as seemed likely". By 4 January 1912, the last two four-man groups had reached 87°34′S. Scott announced his decision: five men—himself, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and E. Evans—would go forward, the other three (Teddy Evans, William Lashly and Tom Crean) would return. The chosen group marched on, reaching the Pole on 17 January, only to find a tent left in place by Amundsen, in it containing a letter dated 18 December. Scott's anguish is indicated in his diary: "The worst has happened [...] All the day dreams must go [...] Great God! This is an awful place".
### Last march
The deflated party began the 862 miles (1,387 km) return journey on 19 January. "I'm afraid the return journey is going to be dreadfully tiring and monotonous", wrote Scott on that day. The party made good progress despite poor weather, and had completed the Polar Plateau stage of their journey, approximately 300 miles (480 km), by 7 February. In the following days, as the party made the 100 miles (160 km) descent of the Beardmore Glacier, the physical condition of Edgar Evans, which Scott had noted with concern as early as 23 January, declined sharply. A fall on 4 February had left Evans "dull and incapable," and on 17 February, after another fall, he died near the glacier foot. With 400 miles (640 km) still to travel across the Ross Ice Shelf, Scott's party's prospects steadily worsened as, with deteriorating weather, a puzzling lack of fuel in the depots, hunger and exhaustion, they struggled northward.
Meanwhile, back at Cape Evans, the Terra Nova arrived at the beginning of February, and Atkinson decided to unload the supplies from the ship with his own men rather than set out south with the dogs to meet Scott as ordered. When Atkinson finally did leave south for the planned rendezvous with Scott, he encountered the scurvy-ridden Edward ("Teddy") Evans who needed urgent medical attention. Atkinson therefore tried to send the experienced navigator Wright south to meet Scott, but chief meteorologist Simpson declared he needed Wright for scientific work. Atkinson then decided to send the short-sighted Cherry-Garrard on 25 February, who was not able to navigate, only as far as One Ton depot (which is within sight of Mount Erebus), effectively cancelling Scott's orders for meeting him at latitude 82 or 82.30 on 1 March.
On the return journey from the Pole, Scott reached the 82°S meeting point for the dog teams, 300 miles (480 km) from Hut Point, three days ahead of schedule, noting in his diary for 27 February 1912, "We are naturally always discussing possibility of meeting dogs, where and when, etc. It is a critical position. We may find ourselves in safety at the next depot, but there is a horrid element of doubt." On 2 March, Oates began to suffer from the effects of frostbite and the party's progress slowed as he was increasingly unable to assist in the workload, eventually only able to drag himself alongside the men pulling the sledge. By 10 March the temperature had dropped unexpectedly to below −40 °C (−40 °F).
In a farewell letter to Sir Edgar Speyer, dated 16 March, Scott wondered whether he had overshot the meeting point and fought the growing suspicion that he had in fact been abandoned by the dog teams: "We very nearly came through, and it's a pity to have missed it, but lately I have felt that we have overshot our mark. No-one is to blame and I hope no attempt will be made to suggest that we had lacked support." On the same day, Oates, whose toes had become frostbitten, voluntarily left the tent and walked to his death. Scott wrote that Oates' last words were "I am just going outside and may be some time".
After walking 20 miles (32 km) farther despite Scott's toes now becoming frostbitten, the three remaining men made their final camp on 19 March, approximately 12.5 miles (20.1 km) short of One Ton Depot. The next day a fierce blizzard prevented their making any progress. During the next nine days, as their supplies ran out, and with storms still raging outside the tent, Scott and his companions wrote their farewell letters. Scott gave up his diary after 23 March, save for a final entry on 29 March, with its concluding words: "Last entry. For God's sake look after our people". He left letters to Wilson's mother, Bowers' mother, a string of notables including his former commander, Sir George Egerton, his own mother and his wife.
He also wrote his "Message to the Public", primarily a vindication of the expedition's organisation and conduct in which the party's failure is attributed to weather and other misfortunes, but ending on an inspirational note, with these words:
> We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last ... Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.
Scott is presumed to have died on 29 March 1912, or possibly one day later. The positions of the bodies in the tent when it was discovered eight months later suggested that Scott was the last of the three to die.
The bodies of Scott and his companions were discovered by a search party on 12 November 1912 and their records retrieved. Tryggve Gran, who was part of the search party, described the scene as, "snowcovered til up above the door, with Scott in the middle, half out of his bagg [sic] ... the frost had made the skin yellow & transparent & I’ve never seen anything worse in my life." Their final camp became their tomb; the tent roof was lowered over the bodies and a high cairn of snow was erected over it, topped by a roughly fashioned cross, erected using Gran's skis. Next to their bodies lay 35 pounds (16 kg) of Glossopteris tree fossils which they had dragged on hand sledges. These were the first ever discovered Antarctic fossils and proved that Antarctica had once been warm and connected to other continents.
In January 1913, before Terra Nova left for home, a large wooden cross was made by the ship's carpenters, inscribed with the names of the lost party and Tennyson's line from his poem Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield", and was erected as a permanent memorial on Observation Hill, overlooking Hut Point.
## Reputation
### Recognition
The world was informed of the tragedy when Terra Nova reached Oamaru, New Zealand, on 10 February 1913. Within days, Scott became a national icon. A nationalistic spirit was aroused; the London Evening News called for the story to be read to schoolchildren throughout the land, to coincide with the memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral on 14 February. Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts Association, asked: "Are Britons going downhill? No! ... There is plenty of pluck and spirit left in the British after all. Captain Scott and Captain Oates have shown us that".
The expedition's survivors were suitably honoured on their return, with polar medals and promotions for the naval personnel. In place of the knighthood that might have been her husband's had he survived, Kathleen Scott was granted the rank and precedence of a widow of a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. In 1922, she married Edward Hilton Young, later Lord Kennet, and remained a doughty defender of Scott's reputation until her death, aged 69, in 1947.
An article in The Times, reporting on the glowing tributes paid to Scott in the New York press, claimed that both Amundsen and Shackleton were "[amazed] to hear that such a disaster could overtake a well-organized expedition". On learning the details of Scott's death, Amundsen is reported to have said, "I would gladly forgo any honour or money if thereby I could have saved Scott his terrible death". Scott was the better wordsmith of the two, and the story that spread throughout the world was largely that told by him, with Amundsen's victory reduced in the eyes of many to an unsporting stratagem.
The response to Scott's final plea on behalf of the dependents of the dead was enormous by the standards of the day. The Mansion House Scott Memorial Fund closed at . This was not equally distributed; Scott's widow, son, mother and sisters received a total of . Wilson's widow received and Bowers's mother received . Edgar Evans's widow, children, and mother received between them.
In the dozen years following the tragedy, more than 30 monuments and memorials were set up in Britain alone. These ranged from simple relics—e.g. Scott's sledging flag in Exeter Cathedral—to the foundation of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge. Many more were established in other parts of the world, including a statue sculpted by Scott's widow for his New Zealand base in Christchurch.
The Museum of Oxford contains some of his personal belongings on display, including a marmalade tin gifted to him by an Oxford businessman which was recovered from the site of his death.
### Modern reactions
Scott's reputation survived the period after World War II, beyond the 50th anniversary of his death. In 1948, the film Scott of the Antarctic was released in cinemas and was the third most popular film in Britain the following year. It portrays the team spirit of the expedition and the harsh Antarctic environment, but also includes critical scenes such as Scott regarding his broken down motors and ruefully remembering Nansen's advice to take only dogs. Evans and Cherry-Garrard were the only surviving expedition members to refuse participation in the film, but both re-published their respective books in its wake.
In 1966, Reginald Pound, the first biographer given access to Scott's original sledging journal, revealed personal failings which cast a new light on Scott, although Pound continued to endorse his heroism, writing of "a splendid sanity that would not be subdued". Another book critical of Scott, David Thomson's Scott's Men, was released in 1977. In Thomson's view, Scott was not a great man, "at least, not until near the end"; his planning is described as "haphazard" and "flawed", his leadership characterised by lack of foresight. Thus by the late 1970s, biographer Max Jones stated, "Scott's complex personality had been revealed and his methods questioned".
In 1979 came the first extreme attack on Scott, from Roland Huntford's dual biography Scott and Amundsen in which Scott is depicted as a "heroic bungler". Huntford's thesis had an immediate impact, becoming the contemporary orthodoxy. After Huntford's book, several other mostly negative books about Captain Scott were published; Francis Spufford, in a 1996 history not wholly antagonistic to Scott, refers to "devastating evidence of bungling", concluding that "Scott doomed his companions, then covered his tracks with rhetoric". Travel writer Paul Theroux summarised Scott as "confused and demoralised ... an enigma to his men, unprepared and a bungler". This decline in Scott's reputation was accompanied by a corresponding rise in that of his erstwhile rival Shackleton, at first in the United States but eventually in Britain as well. A 2002 nationwide poll in the United Kingdom to discover the "100 Greatest Britons" showed Shackleton in eleventh place, Scott well down the list at 54th.
The 21st century has seen a shift of opinion in Scott's favour, in what cultural historian Stephanie Barczewski calls "a revision of the revisionist view". Meteorologist Susan Solomon's 2001 account The Coldest March ties the fate of Scott's party to the extraordinarily adverse Barrier weather conditions of February and March 1912 rather than to personal or organisational failings and, while not entirely questioning any criticism of Scott, Solomon principally characterises the criticism as the "Myth of Scott as a bungler".
In 2005 David Crane published a new Scott biography in which he comes to the conclusion that Scott is possibly the only figure in polar history except Lawrence Oates "so wholly obscured by legend". According to Barczewski, he goes some way towards an assessment of Scott "free from the baggage of earlier interpretations". What has happened to Scott's reputation, Crane argues, derives from the way the world has changed since the "hopeless heroism and obscene waste" of the First World War. At the time of Scott's death, people clutched at the proof he gave that the qualities that made Britain, indeed the British Empire, great were not extinct. Future generations mindful of the carnage that started 2+1⁄2 years later, the ideals of unquestionable duty, self-sacrifice, discipline, patriotism and hierarchy associated with his tragedy take on a different and more sinister colouring.
Crane's main achievement, according to Barczewski, is the restoration of Scott's humanity, "far more effectively than either Fiennes's stridency or Solomon's scientific data." Daily Telegraph columnist Jasper Rees, likening the changes in explorers' reputations to climatic variations, suggests that "in the current Antarctic weather report, Scott is enjoying his first spell in the sun for twenty-five years". The New York Times Book Review was more critical, pointing out Crane's support for Scott's account regarding the circumstances of the freeing of the Discovery from the pack ice, and concluded that "For all the many attractions of his book, David Crane offers no answers that convincingly exonerate Scott from a significant share of responsibility for his own demise."
In 2012, Karen May published her discovery that Scott had issued written orders, before his march to the Pole, for Meares to meet the returning party with dog-teams, in contrast to Huntford's assertion in 1979 that Scott issued those vital instructions only as a casual oral order to Evans during the march to the Pole. According to May, "Huntford's scenario was pure invention based on an error; it has led a number of polar historians down a regrettable false trail".
The expedition was the subject of Terra Nova, a 1977 play by Ted Tally (who later wrote the screenplay for The Silence of the Lambs). Beryl Bainbridge's 1991 novel The Birthday Boys also gives a fictionalised account of the expedition, with monologues from the five men who died on the return from the pole.
## See also
- Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, permanent base at the pole
- Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration
- List of solved missing person cases: pre-2000
|
6,327,803 |
General Motors companion make program
| 1,172,038,746 |
Automotive marques
|
[
"General Motors marques"
] |
In the late 1920s, American automotive company General Motors (GM) launched four companion makes to supplement its existing lineup of five-passenger car brands, or makes. The companion makes were LaSalle, introduced for the 1927 model year to supplement Cadillac; Marquette, introduced in 1929 for 1930 to supplement Buick; Pontiac, introduced for 1926 to supplement Oakland; and Viking, introduced for 1929 to supplement Oldsmobile. GM's fifth existing brand, Chevrolet, did not receive a companion make. With the exception of Viking, each of the companion makes were slotted below their "parent make" in GM's pricing hierarchy.
GM had pioneered the idea of having a ladder of brands, arranged in order by price, to appeal to consumers with different incomes. This contributed to GM's rise to automotive dominance in the 1920s at the expense of Ford. By the late 1920s, GM felt that there were excessive gaps in this ladder. President Alfred P. Sloan devised the companion makes in order to fill those gaps. The companion makes were also intended to increase the sales of their respective divisions by selling cars that cost less to produce.
The program is generally considered a failure. Sales of Vikings and Marquettes were low during the Great Depression and the brands were discontinued by 1931. LaSalle lasted longer, weathering the Depression until it too ceased production after 1940. Pontiac had a different fate; its popularity led to the discontinuation of Oakland after 1931. Pontiac was the only GM marque produced for a significant amount of time that was not an outside acquisition; it was discontinued in 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
## Background and Concept
General Motors (GM) was founded in 1908 by William C. Durant as a holding company for Buick, which had been founded by David Dunbar Buick in 1903 and controlled by Durant since 1904. Durant intended for GM to replicate his business model as a horse-drawn coachbuilder, where he had found success by quickly acquiring outside companies in order to produce various coaches at different price points.
The three companies Durant initially purchased for General Motors were Oldsmobile, Oakland, and Cadillac, all of which he had bought more or less arbitrarily. That, combined with his having over-leveraged the fledgling company in making these acquisitions, saw Durant expelled from GM in 1910 at the behest of its creditors, who were reeling from the Panic of 1910–1911. Durant created Chevrolet shortly thereafter; he ultimately used the new company to regain control of GM in 1918.
Finding himself president of GM once more, Durant fell back into old patterns; by 1920 he had grown the number of GM divisions from five to seven. GM stock, meanwhile, had fallen precipitously during Durant's second stint as president, and by 1920 the GM board decided they had had enough. In November of that year Durant was forced out of GM for the last time, at which point the company was almost bankrupt. He was replaced as GM president by Pierre du Pont of DuPont.
One of du Pont's main assistants was GM vice president Alfred P. Sloan. Sloan recognized that GM was ineffectively utilizing its various brands to fight against Ford, which at the time commanded more than half of the automobile market. Of all the GM vehicles available at the time, none were a competitive alternative to the immensely popular Ford Model T; the GM marques themselves also lacked a coherent framework that would make it easy for buyers of entry-level models to upgrade to a more premium car within the GM fold. Instead of complementing each other, different GM brands found themselves competing for the same customers, ultimately cannibalizing sales for GM as a whole.
While du Pont believed that direct competition with the Model T would be GM's best opportunity to gain market share, Sloan instead decided to pursue Durant's idea, albeit without crediting Durant, of a "car for every purse and purpose". Sloan discontinued Scripps-Booth and sold the Sheridan brand, then reorganized the remaining five marques into a price hierarchy that positioned Chevrolet as the most entry-level line, Oakland, Buick, and Oldsmobile as the mid-tier brands, and Cadillac as the flagship marque. However, the order of the marques' pricing was fluid, and by 1929 Oldsmobiles were cheaper than Buicks and Oaklands.
The idea of pricing cars on a ladder – in concert with other innovations by GM at the time, including providing credit to prospective car buyers – was tremendously successful in expanding GM's market share during the 1920s. The company surpassed Ford in market share in 1927, the same year that the Model T was discontinued in favor of the updated Model A.
## Launch
Sloan, who had replaced du Pont as GM president in 1923, decided to create various "companion makes" to fill the variety of gaps that had developed in the original pricing hierarchy. These companion makes, introduced within GM's existing divisions as opposed to being treated as independent marques, were intended to increase sales of the parent division while costing less to produce.
Oakland introduced Pontiac at the 1926 New York Auto Show as a low-priced model for the 1926 model year, followed by a sales meeting at the Commodore Hotel. The name dated to 1893 as a coachbuilding business that had been the predecessor of Oakland's automotive ventures, and was an homage to both its factory in Pontiac, Michigan, and the Native American chief of the same name. Touted as "the Chief of the Sixes" for its six-cylinder inline engine, it was designed from scratch by Ben H. Anibal, who had previously been Cadillac's chief engineer, to the order of Oakland's general manager Al R. Glancy. By the 1929 model year, its flathead engine was able to make 60 brake horsepower (bhp) (45 kW). The chassis had a wheelbase of 110 inches (2,800 mm), and the car was available in such body styles as a roadster, phaeton, coupe, convertible, two- or four-door sedan, or landaulet.
In early 1926, Lawrence P. Fisher, the general manager of the Cadillac division, visited a Los Angeles Cadillac dealership run by Don Lee that also made custom cars for Hollywood actors and producers. The director of the custom car operation, Harley Earl, would turn boxy factory automobiles into sleek low-riding roadsters, something that thrilled Fisher. Fisher hired Earl in spring 1926 to design a sleek low-priced vehicle to be introduced by Cadillac in 1927 known as the LaSalle. Sloan was sufficiently impressed by the result that he made Earl head of a special design division of GM, established in June 1927. The LaSalle itself was introduced in March 1927 for the 1927 model year. By the 1929 model year it had a V8 engine with a newly-introduced synchromesh transmission. It came with a wheelbase of either 128 in (3,300 mm) or 134 in (3,400 mm); the former was available as a roadster and various forms of phaeton, while the latter was available in various forms of convertible, various forms of coupe, or various forms of sedan.
Oldsmobile introduced the Viking in March 1929 for the 1929 model year. The Viking served as the upscale counterpart of Oldsmobile's F-29 model, which had a 62 bhp (46 kW) six-cylinder inline engine. The Viking, by contrast, had an 81 hp (60 kW) V8 engine. Its logo, a stylized "V", stood for both "Viking" and "V8". It resembled the LaSalle in appearance, had a 125 in (3,200 mm) wheelbase, and was available as a convertible, a close-coupled sedan, or standard sedan. It was initially priced at \$1,595, but by the end of 1929 had become worth \$1,695. During his 1930 visit to the United States to attempt a land speed record in the Silver Bullet, British racer Kaye Don used a Viking for casual driving and to test the terrain of his record attempt. A retrospective noted it as a "fine car" that "doubtless...would have survived" but for the Great Depression.
After Buick sales had declined in the previous several years and following the successes of Pontiac and LaSalle, Buick introduced Marquette to showrooms on June 1, 1929, for the 1930 model year. Unlike Buick, which was noted for its overhead valve engine, the Marquette had a flathead six-cylinder engine based on Oldsmobile's. A prominent selling point was its fine engineering and craftsmanship; its engineers remarked that one could drive it at 60 mph (97 km/h) without damaging the engine, and one was driven from Death Valley to Pikes Peak without any issues. Other standard features included an air cleaner and a large muffler. Having a 114 in (2,900 mm) wheelbase with its engine making 67 hp (50 kW), it was offered as a roadster, phaeton, one of two styles of coupe, or one of two styles of sedan. It possessed distinctive styling, with a portly shape that led to its sobriquet of "the pregnant Buick" and a herringbone radiator, to distinguish it from other GM makes.
## Demise and legacy
The beginning of the Great Depression made the Viking unprofitable for Oldsmobile, which had enough trouble selling its own models that were just under half the price, and it was discontinued at the end of 1930. Existing parts were assembled into the final Vikings for the 1931 model year. The Depression was similarly unkind to Marquette, which, having failed to resuscitate Buick's sales, was discontinued at the end of the 1930 model year, after about 35,000 units were made and mere months after dealerships had been mailed signs to put up advertising their presence. Two factors working against the Marquette were its flathead engine, which irked fans of Buick's overhead valve philosophy, and its six-cylinder engine, which was incompatible with Buick's decision to offer only eight-cylinder cars for 1931. After its discontinuation, the Marquette's body design was used in Buicks. The production tools for the engine were exported to Germany and used by Opel, GM's European subsidiary, for their Blitz truck.
LaSalle fared better; initially selling a quarter of the Cadillac division's output, it narrowly outsold the Cadillac brand in 1929 and its sales contributed to the survival of the division during the Depression. Nevertheless, as the economy improved throughout the 1930s, LaSalle's niche dried up as the gap between Buick and Cadillac narrowed. In its final model year of 1940, LaSalles comprised about 65 percent of Cadillac's total output, but it was replaced in 1941 by the Cadillac Series 61. The LaSalle name has been occasionally floated for revival; a 1955 concept car was titled the "LaSalle II", and the name reappeared in 1963 and 1975 as proposals for what eventually became the Buick Riviera and Cadillac Seville, respectively. Earl, having gotten his start with the 1927 LaSalle, was later acclaimed as the "dean of design" of automobiles.
Pontiac had the opposite destiny. Selling more than 75,000 units in 1926, Pontiac saw a rise to 140,000 units in 1927 and more than 200,000 in 1928. Oakland was discontinued in 1931, a victim of the Depression; its final model, which had been based on the Viking V8, became the Pontiac V8 for 1932. Pontiac earned the distinction of being the only GM make that was not an outside acquisition that survived for a significant amount of time. The marque remained in production until 2010, when it was discontinued in the aftermath of the Great Recession as part of GM's reorganization from recession-caused bankruptcy.
The companion make program as a whole was described by automotive historian Bill Vance as a "short-lived experiment" in a retrospective of the Marquette. Vance unfavorably compared the program to Sloan's earlier paring down of GM's line after the Durant ouster. A report on the Viking referred to the program as "several 'in-between' cars introduced by General Motors while the Twenties still roared and the stock market hadn't crashed."
## See also
- List of GM factories
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12,954,525 |
Pyramid of Sahure
| 1,171,583,560 |
Fifth Dynasty Egyptian pyramid complex
|
[
"19th-century archaeological discoveries",
"3rd-millennium BC establishments in Egypt",
"Abusir",
"Buildings and structures completed in the 25th century BC",
"Limestone buildings",
"Pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt"
] |
The pyramid of Sahure (Ancient Egyptian: Ḫꜥỉ-bꜣ Sꜣḥw-Rꜥ, lit. 'Rising of the ba of Sahure') is a pyramid complex built in the late 26th to 25th century BC for the Egyptian pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty. It introduced a period of pyramid building by Sahure's successors in Abusir, on a location earlier used by Userkaf for his sun temple. The site was first thoroughly excavated by Ludwig Borchardt between March 1907 and 1908, who wrote the standard work Das Grabdenkmal des Königs Sahu-Re (English: The Funerary Monument of King Sahure) between 1910 and 1913.
The pyramid complex's layout was adopted by succeeding kings of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, marking a milestone in pyramid complex construction. Compared to the preceding Fourth Dynasty, the immensity of the constructions was dramatically reduced but, in tandem, the decorative programme proliferated and temples were augmented by enlarged storeroom complexes. The complex is estimated to have had 10,000 m<sup>2</sup> (110,000 sq ft) of finely carved relief adorning its walls, of which 150 m<sup>2</sup> (1,600 sq ft) has been preserved. Some of these reliefs are considered unparalleled in Egyptian art, such as the 8 m (26 ft) by 3 m (9.8 ft) (4.2 × 1.6 royal cubits) hunting scene from the mortuary temple. For comparison, Sahure's temple contained 370 running metres (1,214 running feet) of such relief decoration, while the temple of Khufu's Great Pyramid contained 100 running metres (328 running feet). The complex is also remarkable for the array of valuable materials – such as granite, alabaster and basalt – used extensively in its construction.
The main pyramid was built from roughly hewn limestone blocks bound with mud mortar and encased with fine white Tura limestone. It had a base of about 78.5 m (258 ft; 149.8 cu) to 78.75 m (258.4 ft; 150.29 cu) long converging at either 50°11′40′′ or 50°30′ towards the apex between 47 m (154 ft; 90 cu) and 48 m (157 ft; 92 cu) high. The architects made an error in demarcating the pyramid base, extending it too far east. The pyramid's internal chambers were devastated by stone thieves, rendering an accurate reconstruction impossible. Stone fragments believed to belong to the king's basalt sarcophagus are the only remains of the burial that have been found. The mortuary temple adjacent to the pyramid's east face comprises an entrance hall, an open courtyard, a five-niche statue chapel, an offering hall, and storerooms. These elements had appeared in mortuary temples since the reign of Khafre. South of the temple is the enclosure with the cult pyramid, employing the same construction method used in the main pyramid but on a reduced scale, with a base length of 15.7 m (52 ft; 30.0 cu) converging at 56° to a peak 11.6 m (38 ft; 22.1 cu) high. The complex's two temples are linked by a 235 m (771 ft; 448 cu) long intricately decorated and well-illuminated causeway. The valley temple is situated on Abusir lake and is unusual for having two entrances: the main on its east side, and a secondary one on its south. It remains unclear why a second entry point was built, though it may have been connected to a pyramid town to its south.
Sahure's mortuary temple became the object of a cult of Sekhmet around the Eighteenth Dynasty. The cult was active through to the Ptolemaic Kingdom, though its influence began to wane following the reign of Ramesses II. This period heralded the first wave of destruction on the Abusir monuments, whilst Sahure's escaped the dismantlement, possibly as a result of the cult's presence. The monuments stirred interest again in the Twenty-Fifth to Twenty-Sixth Dynasties, which is shown by the copying of reliefs from the mortuary temples of Sahure, Nyuserre and Pepi II by the pharaoh Taharqa for the temple of Kawa in Nubia. A second wave of destruction of the Abusir monuments took place in the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty, but Sahure's temple was spared again, the cult still being present. With the onset of the Roman period, the Abusir monuments, including Sahure's, were subjected to a third wave of destruction. At the beginning of the Christian era, Sahure's temple became the site of a Coptic shrine, as evidenced by the recovery of pottery and graffiti dating to between the 4th and 7th century AD. Thereafter, until the late 19th century, the monuments were periodically quarried for limestone.
## Location and excavation
Sahure chose a site near Abusir for his funerary monument, thus constructing the first pyramid in the region. Earlier, Userkaf, founder of the Fifth Dynasty, chose Abusir for his sun temple. It is unclear why Userkaf sought such a remote site. It may have been significant for the nearby cult of Ra, or, in the opinion of the Egyptologist Werner Kaiser, the southernmost point from which the gilded pyramidion of the pillar-like structure in the temple of Ra in Heliopolis could be seen. It is clear, however, that his decision influenced the history of Abusir, including Sahure's decision to build his monument there. Three of the Abusir pyramids–Sahure, Neferirkare and Neferefre– are linked at the northwest corners by an imaginary line running to Heliopolis (Iunu). The diagonal was broken by Nyuserre, who positioned his complex between those of Neferirkare and Sahure.
Early excavators did not perform thorough investigations of Sahure's monument, perhaps discouraged by its ruined state. In 1838, John Shae Perring, an engineer working under Colonel Howard Vyse, cleared the entrances to the Sahure, Neferirkare and Nyuserre pyramids. Perring was the first to enter the substructure of Sahure's pyramid in modern times. Five years later, Karl Richard Lepsius, sponsored by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, explored the Abusir necropolis and catalogued Sahure's pyramid as XVIII. The pyramid was also re-entered by Jacques de Morgan, but he too did not explore further. No further investigations were performed for the next fifty years until the Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt visited the site.
From 1902 to 1908, Borchardt, working for the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society), had the Abusir pyramids resurveyed and their adjoining temples and causeways excavated. From March 1907 to March 1908, Borchardt had Sahure's pyramid thoroughly investigated, and had trial digs conducted at nearby sites, including Neferefre's unfinished pyramid. He published his findings in the two-volume study Das Grabdenkmal des Königs Sahu-re (1910–13), which remains the standard work on the complex.
In 1994, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities opened the Abusir necropolis to tourism. In preparation, restorative works were conducted at Sahure's pyramid. The archeologist Zahi Hawass had a segment of Sahure's causeway cleaned and reconstructed, during which large relief-decorated limestone blocks that had been buried in the sand were uncovered. The reliefs found on these blocks were thematically and artistically unique and shed new light on the decorative programme of the complex.
## Mortuary complex
### Layout
Old Kingdom mortuary complexes typically consist of five main components: (1) a valley temple; (2) a causeway; (3) a mortuary temple; (4) a cult pyramid; and (5) the main pyramid. Sahure's east–west oriented complex contains all of these elements. Its 47 m (154 ft; 90 cu) tall main pyramid comprised six ascending steps of stone encased in fine white limestone, with a cult pyramid located at the south-east corner, and a mortuary temple, the standard-bearer for future variants, adjacent to its east face. These connected to the valley temple, situated on Abusir lake, by a 235 m (771 ft; 448 cu) long limestone causeway. From the outset of the Fifth Dynasty, the main pyramids were dramatically reduced in size and adopted simplified construction techniques. Meanwhile, relief decoration advanced in wealth of subject matter and quality of workmanship, and temples were outfitted with expansive storeroom complexes. Except for minor deviations, the complex built by Sahure became the model for the remainder of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties and the arrangement of the apartments of his mortuary temple became the standard for subsequent temples of the type in the Old Kingdom. Thereby it marked a milestone in the development of pyramid complex construction.
The complex is well-decorated, containing thematically diverse relief-work identified by the Egyptologist Miroslav Verner as "the highest level of the genre" found in the Old Kingdom. Across its entirety, it is estimated that 10,000 m<sup>2</sup> (110,000 sq ft) of finely carved relief adorned the walls. His mortuary temple alone contained 370 running metres (1,214 running feet) of relief decorations. By contrast, Sneferu's mortuary temple contained 64 running metres (210 running feet) of relief decoration, Khufu's contained 100 running metres (328 running feet), and the temple of Sahure's direct predecessor Userkaf contained 120 running metres (394 running feet). The mortuary temple of Pepi II, the last king of the Old Kingdom, contained 200 running metres (656 running feet) of relief decoration, indicating a decline after Sahure too. No more than 150 m<sup>2</sup> (1,600 sq ft) of fragmentary relief has been preserved from Sahure's temple, but this is considered well-preserved. Additionally, Sahure reserved 916 m<sup>2</sup> (9,860 sq ft) of the mortuary temple's 4,246 m<sup>2</sup> (45,700 sq ft) floorplan for storerooms, accounting for 21.6% of its total area. By comparison, the 800 m<sup>2</sup> (8,600 sq ft) temple of Sneferu's Red Pyramid at Dahshur, and 2,000 m<sup>2</sup> (22,000 sq ft) temple of Khufu's Great Pyramid had no storerooms, while the 1,265 m<sup>2</sup> (13,620 sq ft) temple of Khafre's pyramid reserved less than 200 m<sup>2</sup> (2,200 sq ft) of space for storerooms, accounting for 15.8% of its total area. This change represents a shift in priority towards the daily activities of the mortuary cult.
### Main pyramid
Sahure's pyramid is situated upon a hill elevated 20 m (66 ft) above the Nile valley. Although the subsoil of the area has never been investigated, evidence from the nearby mastaba of Ptahshepses suggests that the pyramid was not embedded into bedrock, but on a platform constructed from at least two layers of limestone. The pyramid had a core comprising six ascending steps, five of which remain. The steps were probably built from horizontally laid courses of limestone. The core consisted of low-grade roughly cut limestone bound with mud mortar, and was encased by fine white limestone.
The pyramid was constructed in a drastically different manner to those of the preceding dynasty. Its outer faces were framed using massive, roughly dressed grey limestone blocks well joined with mortar. The inner chambers were similarly framed, but using considerably smaller blocks. The core of the pyramid, between the two frames, was then packed with a rubble fill of limestone chips, pottery shards, and sand, with clay mortaring. This method, while less time- and resource-consuming, was careless and unstable, and meant that only the outer casing was constructed using high-quality limestone.
Owing to the poor condition of the monument, information about its dimensions and appearance contains a degree of imprecision. The pyramid had a base length of about 78.5 m (258 ft; 149.8 cu) to 78.75 m (258.4 ft; 150.29 cu) converging at either 50° 11′ 40′′ or 50°30′ towards the apex between 47 m (154 ft; 90 cu) and 48 m (157 ft; 92 cu) high. The architects made a notable error in demarcating the base, causing the southeast corner to extend 1.58 m (5.2 ft) too far east. Consequently, it is not square. A ditch was left in the pyramid's north face during construction, which allowed workers to build the inner corridor and chambers while the core was being erected around it, before filling it in with rubble.
The pyramid is surrounded by a limestone paved courtyard, except where the mortuary temple sits, and is accessed from the temple's north and south wings. Enclosing the courtyard is a tall, rounded enclosure wall 3.15 m (10.3 ft; 6.01 cu) at its thickest.
### Substructure
The substructure access is located slightly above ground on the pyramid's north face. A short descending corridor – lined with granite – leads into a vestibule, beyond which the route is guarded by a pink granite portcullis, with granite-lined walls on either side. The corridor is 4.25 m (14 ft) long sloped at 24° 48′, with a passage 1.27 m (4.2 ft) wide and 1.87 m (6.1 ft) high. The corridor following – lined with limestone – begins with a slight ascent becoming horizontal – lined with granite – just before its terminus. The ascending portion is 22.3 m (73 ft) long with a slope of 5°, while the horizontal section is 3.1 m (10 ft) long.
Precise reconstruction of the substructure plan has been rendered impossible by the extensive damage that stone thieves wrought on the chambers. Until 2019, sources differed as to whether the funerary apartment – estimated to be 12.6 m (41 ft) east-west by 3.15 m (10.3 ft) north-south – consisted of a single or twin chambers. Clearance of the substructure in 2019 confirmed that the funerary apartment consisted of two rooms, with the burial chamber still to be investigated.
The antechamber lies on the vertical axis of the pyramid, occupying 14.9 m<sup>2</sup> (160 sq ft) of space, with the burial chamber to its west. The chambers had a ceiling constructed from three gabled layers of limestone blocks, which dispersed the weight from the superstructure onto either side of the passageway preventing collapse. Perring estimated the largest blocks to be 10.6 m (35 ft; 20.2 cu) long, 3 m (9.8 ft; 5.7 cu) wide and 4 m (13 ft; 7.6 cu) thick. Despite their size and weight, all but two have been broken. Inside the apartment's ruins, Perring found stone fragments – the only discovered remains of the burial – which he believed belonged to the king's basalt sarcophagus.
### Valley temple
Sahure's now-ruined valley temple was situated on the shore of Abusir lake, on the edge of the desert. It had a rectangular ground plan 32 m (105 ft; 61 cu) long by 24 m (79 ft; 46 cu) wide and oriented on the north–south axis. Its base is now around 5 m (16 ft) below ground level, which has risen over the millennia due to the accumulation of silt deposits during the annual Nile flood. The temple's walls slope inwards as they rise, their corners are formed into a convex torus mould up to a cavetto cornice with its own horizontal torus mould.
The temple had two entrances. Its main entrance, in the east, consisted of a landing ramp leading to a column-adorned portico. Its floor was paved with polished basalt, its walls had a red granite dado above which was limestone decorated with bas-relief, and it had a limestone ceiling that had been painted blue and decorated with relief-carved golden stars – representing the entrance into the Duat. The columns were formed into date palms, with leaves tied vertically to form capitals, and each column bore the king's titulary and name carved into the stone and painted green. An alternative entrance was built on the south side, accessed by a canal leading to a ramp up to another columned portico, this time containing four red granite columns. The columns, in contrast, were cylindrical in form and lacked any crown. This portico was also less deep and was paved with limestone. It remains unclear why this entrance was built. The wall may belong to Sahure's pyramid town, named "The soul of Sahure comes forth in glory".
The entrances were connected by passages to a T-shaped hall equipped with two columns. Borchardt describes the room as "two-tiered" (doppelt gestaffelt). It has a transverse space with a narrowed recess in its rear wall containing the two columns (the top steps of the two tiers), then an even narrower recess in the first's rear wall (the bottom steps of the two tiers). The room was originally adorned with polychromatic relief, and contained a scene depicting the king, as a sphinx or griffin, trampling captive Near Eastern and Libyan enemies led to him by the gods. The room connects to two more rooms: a room with a staircase up to the roof terrace at the south end, and causeway at its rearmost recess.
A relief depiction of troops from Sahure's valley temple can be contrasted with similar imagery in Userkaf's complex. In Sahure's scene, the soldiers are carved with near identical postures, a stark contrast to Userkaf's confused arrangement of overlapping figures. The latter has greater dynamism inducing more interest, whilst the former is more readily understood. The monotony of Sahure's scene was balanced by craftsmen introducing detail in the musculature and facial features of the figures.
### Causeway
A 235 m (771 ft; 448 cu) long, slightly inclined limestone causeway connected the valley temple to the mortuary temple. The causeway was roofed, with narrow slits left in the ceiling slabs allowing light to enter, illuminating its walls covered in polychromatic bas-relief. These included scenes with seemingly apotropaic functions, such as a scene of the king represented as a sphinx crushing Egypt's enemies under his paw. Other scenes presented include offering bearers, animal slaughter, and the transport of the gilded pyramidion to the construction site. Only the base of the causeway, made of large limestone blocks, has been preserved.
The scene depicting emaciated nomads, reduced through starvation, to skin and bone – had important historical implications. The scene was thought only to exist in Unas' causeway, and was thus believed to be unique eyewitness testimony to the declining living standards of Saharan nomads brought about by the end of the Sahara wet phase in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. The discovery of an identical scene in Sahure's causeway casts doubt onto this hypothesis. Instead, Miroslav Verner suggests that the nomads might have been brought into the pyramid town to demonstrate the hardships faced by builders bringing higher-quality stone from remote mountain areas.
A second discovered scene has implications for Fifth Dynasty genealogy. In this scene, Sahure is surrounded by his family in the palace garden Extolled is Sahure's beauty (Wtỉs-nfrw-Sꜣhw-rꜥ). The image confirms the identity of Sahure's consort, Meretnebty, and his twin sons, Ranefer and Netjerirenre. Ranefer, who is depicted closer to Sahure and bears the titles "king's son" and "chief lector-priest", may have been Sahure's eldest son, ascending to the throne as Neferirkare Kakai. Netjerirenre may be the ephemeral ruler Shepseskare, who took the throne after Neferefre's early death.
Another important relief discovered depicts a procession of ships, led by the king, being moored at an unidentified location. The relief originated on the causeway south wall, and although the location depicted cannot be identified, a corresponding relief on the same wall depicts the king, his mother and wife, awaiting the arrival of ships carrying myriad goods from the land of Punt – particular emphasis was placed on the Commiphora myrrha trees (nht n ꜥntw). Sahure's is the earliest recorded voyage taken by the Egyptians to Punt acquiring myrrh, electrum and wood from there.
Sahure is further depicted extracting myrrh with an adze from the tree in one scene, and banqueting with his family, including his sons, and officials near the tree in another. The trees depicted may not be Commiphora myrrha, as the use of an adze to extract resin was typically reserved for the Boswellia tree, and moreover the colour of the resin in Sahure's scene was identified by the Egyptologist Tarek El-Awady as yellowish brown, like Boswellia frankincense, and not red, like myrrh.
### Mortuary temple
The mortuary temple was an expansive, rectangular building positioned along the east–west axis, and situated on a level surface built from two layers of limestone blocks in front of the main pyramid's east face. The outer façade was inclined at 82° up to a cavetto cornice with torus mould. In its layout, Sahure's mortuary temple represented the "conceptual beginning" of all subsequent such temples of the Old Kingdom. It contained five basic elements, exemplified in the temple of Khafre: an entrance hall, an open courtyard, a five-niche statue chapel, an offering hall, and storerooms. The dominant building material used in its construction, here as elsewhere, was limestone, but substantial valuable materials such as red and black granite, alabaster and basalt were also incorporated.
#### Entrance hall
The transition between causeway and temple was marked by a large granite gate leading into the mortuary temple's entrance hall. In the Fifth Dynasty, it was of the standard size of 21 m (69 ft; 40 cu) long, 5.25 m (17.2 ft; 10.02 cu) wide, and 6.8 m (22 ft; 13.0 cu) tall. The hall has suffered considerably, rendering a precise reconstruction impracticable. It had a limestone floor, its walls had red granite dado above which was, probably, limestone decorated with painted bas-relief scenes, and it was covered by a stone barrel vault ceiling which had slits in its tympanum allowing the enclosure to be dimly lit. Contemporary sources identify this room as the pr-wrw meaning "House of the Great Ones", and it may be a replica of the hall of the royal palace, where nobles were received and certain rituals performed. At its end, a granite doorway led to a closed corridor surrounding an open courtyard.
#### Corridor and courtyard
The corridor was paved with basalt, and its walls had a 1.57 m (5.2 ft; 3.00 cu) granite dado, above which they were decorated with colourful relief. On its north wall, scenes depict the king fishing and hunting wildfowl, while on the south wall the king is depicted hunting – antelopes, gazelles, deer and other horned animals are shepherded into an enclosure for the king to shoot with his bow and arrow, after which hound dogs seize and kill the animals, elsewhere hyenas are observed poaching, and hedgehogs and jerboa scatter into their holes – whilst his courtiers observe. A masterful depth of detail has been incorporated into the latter scene, which measured 8 m (26 ft) long by 3 m (9.8 ft) high. The sedate posture of the king's courtiers, representing order, is juxtaposed against the mass of wounded and frightened animals depicted in a variety of postures and facing various directions, representing chaos. The imposing figure that is Sahure is unrivalled in any other example, and the gruesome detail of the injured animals is unreplicated. The figure of a hyena, pawing at an arrow in its jaw, reappears frequently in the Middle and New Kingdom, an homage to the relief from Sahure's temple. Ptahhotep's tomb in Saqqara contains an abridged, and slightly less skilfully executed, copy of this hunting scene.
The Egyptologist Mark Lehner suggests that the corridor represented the untamed wilderness, surrounding a clearing – the open courtyard – of which the king was guarantor. From the reliefs depicting ships on the east-corridor west-wall and west-corridor (transverse corridor) east-wall, the Egyptologist Dorothea Arnold contends that the courtyard and corridor form an architectural unit analogous to the Egyptian benben myth. The other reliefs present symbolize the king's role as guarantor of order and prosperity on the sacred island. Among the reliefs of this room an important discovery was made. One of the individuals present has been modified to include a brief inscription identifying them as "Neferirkare King of Upper and Lower Egypt" (nsw-bỉt Nfr-ỉrỉ-kꜣ-rꜥ). From this detail, Kurt Sethe, who was responsible for compiling and preparing the scenes for publication, developed the hypothesis that Neferirkare Kakai and Sahure were brothers, and that Neferirkare had had the relief corrected after ascending to the throne.
The open courtyard was paved with polished basalt and lined with sixteen red granite columns, supporting the roof of an ambulatory. Aside from an alabaster altar in the north-west corner decorated with scenes of sacrifice, the open courtyard is bare, though it originally had statues of the pharaoh placed between the columns, and may once also have contained statues of kneeling captives. Eleven of the original sixteen granite columns were found in the temple. Each was 6.4 m (21 ft) tall, and carved into the form of date palms, symbolising fertility and immortality, upon which the king's name and titulary was inscribed and painted in green. The Two Ladies appear on these columns as well: Nekhbet, the vulture goddess, in the south half representing Upper Egypt, and Wadjet, the cobra goddess, in the north half representing Lower Egypt. Above, a red granite architrave bore the royal titulary, and further supported the limestone ceiling. The ambulatory's blue painted ceiling was decorated with yellow stars, whilst its limestone walls were decorated with polychrome bas-reliefs, fragments of which have been preserved, depicting the king's victory over his enemies – on the north wall Near Eastern peoples, on the south Libyans – and the acquired spoils. In a particular scene, showing the capture of animals, supplementary inscriptions identify the quantities seized: "123,440 head of cattle, 223,400 asses, 232,413 deer, and 243,688 sheep". In another scene, the family of a Libyan chief beg for his life to be spared whilst the king prepares to execute him. Under the northern ambulatory, a relief of exemplary craftsmanship depicting precious oil vases and Syrian brown bears was found. The figures were given rounded edges so that they simultaneously blend in with the background and stand out clearly. Much of the paint used has been preserved: a dark red-brown colour was used for the vase and a yellow-brown for the bear's fur. Up to a further eleven scenes remain too fragmentary to be reconstructed.
#### Transverse corridor and storage galleries
Beyond the courtyard is a transverse (north-south) corridor which separates the public outer from the private inner temple, which only priests were allowed to access. The corridor further served as an intersection connecting the outer and inner temples, the courtyard surrounding the pyramid, and the cult pyramid. At its northern end was a staircase up to the roof terrace. Its floor was paved with basalt, as the courtyard was, and its walls had a granite dado, above which was limestone decorated with bas-relief. On the north half of the corridor's east wall is a relief, considered by the Egyptologist Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards to be amongst the most interesting in the temple, that depicts the king and his court observing the departure of twelve sea-going vessels, probably on expedition to Syria or Palestine. In the south-half, a similar scene depicts the king and his court awaiting the arrival of ships laden with cargo and several Near Eastern peoples, who do not appear to be prisoners, indicating either a commercial or, perhaps, diplomatic mission. In the centre of the west wall of the corridor was an alabaster staircase that led into the five-niche statue chapel.
Flanking the staircase were two deep niches, each containing two granite papyriform columns 3.65 m (12 ft) high. The columns supported an architrave, a fragment of which has been found in the oil press of St. Jeremiah monastery in Saqqara. The niche's walls were decorated with reliefs depicting processions of offering bearers, and they had recessed side doors leading to two-story storage galleries. The northern gallery consisted of ten rooms arranged in two rows, each outfitted with its own staircase – cut directly into the limestone walls – leading to the second story. These held cult objects used for the temple rituals. The southern gallery consisted of sixteen or seventeen rooms, also arranged in two rows and outfitted with staircases, that probably held sacrificial offerings. Reliefs in the corridors leading to the galleries even included ritual instructions, such as "presentation of gold" or "sealing a box containing incense" found in the north and south corridors respectively.
#### Statue chapel
The transverse corridor staircase leads into the five-niche statue chapel, a room with considerable religious importance. Accessed through a double-door, it had a floor paved with white alabaster, red granite sheathing in the niches and dado, fine white limestone sheathed walls elsewhere which was lavishly decorated in relief, and a limestone ceiling decorated with stars evoking the night sky of the Duat. A small staircase stood before each niche, which was once occupied by a statue, none of which have been preserved. It was originally assumed that each statue represented one of the king's five names, but the Abusir Papyri, discovered in the nearby pyramid of Neferirkare, indicate otherwise. The papyri identify that the central statue represented the king as Osiris, while the two outermost ones represented him as the king of Upper Egypt, and the king of Lower Egypt. The remaining two are not identified. Exiting the chapel to the south is a path leading through two rooms – including a rectangular vestibule that appears to be a predecessor of the antichambre carrée, first found in Nyuserre's mortuary temple – passing around a great stone massif and into the westernmost room of the temple, the offering hall.
#### Offering hall and auxiliary rooms
The offering hall of the temple held the most significance for the royal mortuary cult. The sanctuary was 13.7 m (45 ft; 26 cu) in length and 4.6 m (15 ft; 9 cu) wide. It was entered through a black granite door that opened up to a white alabaster paved floor, and walls with dado of black granite above which was fine white limestone decorated with polychromatic bas-relief depicting divinities bringing offerings to the king, and covered along its length by a vaulted ceiling with painted stars. A low alabaster altar stood at the west wall, at the foot of a granite false door, possibly covered in copper or gold, through which the spirit of the king would enter the room to receive his meal, before returning to his tomb. Unusually, the false door has been crudely fashioned, and bears none of the names, titles, or sacrificial formulas that are expected to be found. This led Borchardt to speculate that the door may have originally been sheathed with metal that was eventually stolen by thieves. The room also originally contained a black granite statue and an offering basin, located in a recessed niche in its south-west corner, with an outflow of copper piping. In the north wall, a granite doorway gives access to five auxiliary rooms, which served the offering hall.
#### Drainage system
Sahure's temple had an elaborate drainage system including more than 380 m (1,247 ft) of copper piping. Rainfall captured on the roof was funnelled out through stone lion-head spouts fit onto the tops of the outer walls. The choice of the lion-head may relate to the ancient Egyptian belief that Set and other inimical deities could manifest themselves in rain. The lion, a symbolic protector of sacred ground, consumed the harmful spirits and ejected harmless water. Where no roof existed, gaps around the base of the outer walls collected the water, conducting it out using channels cut into the paving. Water and other liquids used in rituals and ceremonies, which had become impure and thus dangerous to touch, were removed using the drainage system. Five stone and copper-plated basins, each with a lead plug to fit the vent, were placed around the inner temple. The first was found in the offering hall, two more were in the auxiliary rooms beyond it, a fourth in the corridor leading up to the offering hall, and the fifth in the northern magazine gallery. These were connected via an intricate network of copper pipes laid beneath the temple, which led down the length of the causeway before terminating at an outlet on its southern side.
### Cult pyramid
By the main pyramid's south-east corner, confined to a separate enclosure, lies a cult pyramid. The enclosure is accessed from either the southern end of the transverse corridor, or through a portico – the side entrance to Sahure's mortuary temple – flanked by two granite columns bearing Sahure's royal titulary. The portico floor was paved with basalt, as were the dado of its walls, above which the walls were built of limestone and decorated with polychromatic relief. The reliefs portrayed rows of deities, nome and estate personifications, and fertility figures – all clutching was-sceptres and ankh signs – marching into the temple. An accompanying inscription bears their message to the king: "We give you all life, stability, and dominion, all joy, all offerings, all perfect things that are in Upper Egypt, since you have appeared as king of Upper and Lower Egypt alive forever". Beyond the portico, a room with two exits gives access to the transverse corridor in the north or to an oblong room preceding the cult pyramid in the south.
The cult pyramid had a core ascending in two or three steps, composed primarily of limestone block debris framed by yellow limestone blocks, and then encased with white limestone blocks – the same method of construction as used in the main pyramid. It had a base length of 15.7 m (52 ft; 30.0 cu) converging at 56° towards the apex 11.6 m (38 ft; 22.1 cu) high. From the north face, a bent corridor – initially descending, then switching to an ascent – leads into the miniature pyramid's sole chamber: an east–west oriented burial room slightly below ground level. The chamber was found void of any content, and its walls had been severely damaged by stone thieves.
The purpose of the cult pyramid remains unclear. Its burial chamber was not used for burials, but instead appears to have been a purely symbolic structure. It may have hosted the pharaoh's ka (spirit), or a miniature statue of the king. It may have been used for ritual performances centring on the burial and resurrection of the ka spirit during the Sed festival.
### Necropolis
There is a largely unexplored necropolis found through the side-entrance on the transverse corridor's southern end. It is thought to be the burial ground of Sahure's consort, Meretnebty, and son, Netjerirenre.
## Later history
### Funerary cult
The funerary cults at Abusir remained active through the reign of Pepi II at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, but their continuation beyond this time is a matter of dispute. Daily services, including offerings made before the false door of the offering hall and at the statues of the chapel, were held in the mortuary temple. Reliefs on the temple's side entrance walls depict processions of individuals with offerings entering into the temple, accompanied by detailed instructions for the butchers and porters. Sahure's funerary domains were also depicted on the reliefs of the causeway. Portrayed are processions of offering bearers bringing foodstuffs and leading animals into the temple. More than 200 funerary domains of Lower Egypt are shown on these blocks accounting for the most extensive record of such funerary domains yet discovered.
Priests who served Sahure's funerary cult include Tepemankh II, who also served numerous other kings from Sneferu to Userkaf; Nikare, priest of the cult of Sahure and of the sun temple of Nyuserre; Senuankh and Nenkheftka, priests of the cults of Userkaf and Sahure; Kaemnefret, priest in Sahure's pyramid and in Neferirkare's pyramid and sun temple; Kuyemsnewy and Kamesenu, priests of the cults of Sahure, Neferirkare and Nyuserre.
### Cult of Sekhmet
From at least the reign of Thutmose III of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the south corridor of Sahure's mortuary temple became home to a cult of Sekhmet. The cult's early history is unknown. Borchardt suggested that it originated in the Middle Kingdom, but there is no evidence to support this conjecture. The earliest attested royal connection to the cult is Thutmose IV of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Further attestations include Ay and Horemheb, Amenhotep III through a faience object with his name, and Seti I and Ramesses II through restoration inscriptions bearing their names. The renewed attention had a negative consequence as it brought on the first wave of dismantlement of the Abusir monuments, particularly for the acquisition of valuable Tura limestone. Sahure's mortuary temple may have been spared at this time due to the presence of the cult. Its influence probably waned after the end of Ramesses II's reign, becoming a site of local worship only.
The Abusir necropolis and Sahure's cult garnered attention again in the Twenty-Fifth to Twenty–Sixth Dynasties. Taharqa had various reliefs replicated – such as images of the king in the form of a sphinx crushing his enemies – from the mortuary temples of Sahure, Nyuserre, and Pepi II for the restoration of the temple of Kawa in Nubia. The cult of Sekhmet is also mentioned in a graffito found in the temple from Ahmose II's reign. In the late Twenty-Sixth to the early Twenty-Seventh Dynasty, another period of dismantlement appears to have been visited on the monuments. Sahure's was again spared, protected by the cult into the Ptolemaic Kingdom, though it had very reduced influence at this time.
A third wave of dismantlement of the Abusir monuments is attested in the Roman period by the abundant remains of mill-stones, lime production facilities, and worker shelters. At the beginning of the Christian era, Copts founded a shrine in the temple, as shown by pottery and Coptic graffiti dating to between the 4th and 7th centuries AD. Periodic farming of the monuments for limestone continued at least until the end of the 19th century.
## See also
- List of Egyptian pyramids
|
4,868,637 |
William T. Stearn
| 1,168,173,976 |
British botanist (1911–2001)
|
[
"1911 births",
"2001 deaths",
"British botanists",
"British taxonomists",
"Commanders of the Order of the British Empire",
"Commanders of the Order of the Polar Star",
"Deaths from pneumonia in England",
"Employees of the Natural History Museum, London",
"Linnean Medallists",
"Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences",
"People associated with the University of Cambridge",
"People from Chesterton, Cambridge",
"Presidents of the Linnean Society of London",
"Veitch Memorial Medal recipients",
"Victoria Medal of Honour recipients"
] |
William Thomas Stearn CBE FLS VMH (/stɜːrn/; 16 April 1911 – 9 May 2001) was a British botanist. Born in Cambridge in 1911, he was largely self-educated and developed an early interest in books and natural history. His initial work experience was at a Cambridge bookshop, but he also had a position as an assistant in the university botany department. At the age of 29 he married Eldwyth Ruth Alford, who later became his collaborator, and he died in London in 2001.
While at the bookshop, he was offered a position as a librarian at the Royal Horticultural Society in London (1933–1952). From there he moved to the Natural History Museum as a scientific officer in the botany department (1952–1976). After his retirement, he continued working there, writing, and serving on a number of professional bodies related to his work, including the Linnean Society, of which he became president. He also taught botany at Cambridge University as a visiting professor (1977–1983).
Stearn is known for his work in botanical taxonomy and botanical history, particularly classical botanical literature, botanical illustration and for his studies of the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus. His best known books are his Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners, a popular guide to the scientific names of plants, and his Botanical Latin for scientists.
Stearn received many honours for his work, at home and abroad, and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1997. Considered one of the most eminent British botanists of his time, he is remembered by an essay prize in his name from the Society for the History of Natural History, and a named cultivar of Epimedium, one of many genera he produced monographs on. He is the botanical authority for over 400 plants that he named and described.
## Life
### Childhood
William Thomas Stearn was born at 37 Springfield Road, Chesterton, Cambridge, England, on 16 April 1911, the eldest of four sons, to Thomas Stearn (1871 or 1872–1922) and Ellen ("Nellie") Kiddy (1886–1986) of West Suffolk. His father worked as a coachman to a Cambridge doctor. Chesterton was then a village on the north bank of the River Cam, about two miles north of Cambridge's city centre, where Springfield Road ran parallel to Milton Road to the west. William Stearn's early education was at the nearby Milton Road Junior Council School (see image). Despite not having any family background in science (though he recalled that his grandfather was the university rat-catcher) he developed a keen interest in natural history and books at an early age. He spent his school holidays on his uncle's Suffolk farm, tending cows grazing by the roadside where he would observe the wild flowers of the hedgerows and fields. Stearn's father died suddenly in 1922 when Stearn was only eleven, leaving his working-class family in financial difficulties as his widow (Stearn's mother) had no pension.
That year, William Stearn succeeded in obtaining a scholarship to the local Cambridge High School for Boys on Hills Road, close to the Cambridge Botanic Garden, which he attended for eight years till he was 18. The school had an excellent reputation for biology education, and while he was there, he was encouraged by Mr Eastwood, a biology teacher who recognised his talents. The school also provided him with a thorough education in both Latin and Greek. He became secretary of the school's Natural History Society, won an essay prize from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and spent much of his time at the Botanic Garden. Stearn also gained horticultural experience by working as a gardener's boy during his school holidays, to supplement the family income.
Stearn attended evening lectures on paleobotany given by Albert Seward (chair of botany at Cambridge University 1906–1936), and Harry Godwin. Seward was impressed by the young Stearn, giving him access to the herbarium of the Botany School (now Department of Plant Sciences—see 1904 photograph) and allowing him to work there as a part-time research assistant. Later, Seward also gave Stearn access to the Cambridge University Library to pursue his research.
### Later life
Stearn was largely self-educated and his widowed mother worked hard to support him while at school but could not afford a university education for him, there being no grants available then. When not at the Botany School, he attended evening classes to develop linguistic and bibliographic skills. His classes there included German and the classics. He obtained his first employment at the age of 18 in 1929, a time of high unemployment, to support himself and his family. He worked as an apprentice antiquarian bookseller and cataloguer in the second-hand section at Bowes & Bowes bookshop, 1 Trinity Street (now Cambridge University Press), between 1929 and 1933 where he was able to pursue his passion for bibliography. During his employment there, he spent much of his lunchtimes, evenings and weekends, at the Botany School and Botanic Garden. This was at a time when botany was thriving at Cambridge under the leadership of Seward and Humphrey Gilbert-Carter.
On 3 August 1940, he married Eldwyth Ruth Alford (1910–2013), by whom he had a son and two daughters, and who collaborated with him in much of his work. Ruth Alford was a secondary school teacher from Tavistock, Devon, the daughter of Roger Rice Alford a Methodist preacher and mayor of Tavistock. When their engagement was announced in The Times, Stearn was vastly amused to see that he was described as a "Fellow of the Linen Society", a typographical error for Linnean Society. Stearn was brought up an Anglican, but was a conscientious objector and after the Second World War he became a Quaker. In his later years, following official retirement in 1976 he continued to live in Kew, Richmond. His entry in Who's Who lists his interests as "gardening and talking". He died on 9 May 2001 of pneumonia at Kingston Hospital, Kingston upon Thames, at the age of 90. His funeral took place on 18 May at Mortlake crematorium. He left three children (Roger Thomas Stearn, Margaret Ruth Stearn and Helen Elizabeth Stearn) and an estate of £461,240. His wife, whose 100th birthday was celebrated at the Linnean Society in 2010, lived to the age of 103.
Professor Stearn had a reputation for his encyclopedic knowledge, geniality, wit and generosity with his time and knowledge, being always willing to contribute to the work of others. He had a mischievous sense of fun and was famous for his anecdotes while lecturing, while his colleagues recalled that "he had a happy genius for friendship". He was described as having a striking figure, "a small man, his pink face topped with a thatch of white hair", and earned the nickname of "Wumpty" after his signature of "Wm. T. Stearn".
## Career
### Cambridge years (1929–1933)
Stearn began his career as a gardener at Sidney Sussex College after leaving school at 13. He then became a bookseller at Bowes & Bowes. While working at the bookshop he made many friends among the Cambridge botanists and participated in their activities, including botanical excursions. In addition to Professor Seward, those influencing him included the morphologist Agnes Arber, Humphrey Gilbert-Carter the first scientific director of the Botanic Garden, John Gilmour then curator of the university herbarium and later director of the Garden (1951–1973), the horticulturalist E. A. Bowles (1865–1954), who became his patron, Harry Godwin, then a research fellow and later professor and Tom Tutin who was working with Seward at that time. Seward gave him full research facilities in the herbarium. He continued his research, visiting the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, in 1930, at the age of 19, and also spent two weeks at the herbarium of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, with the aid of a £15 grant from the Royal Society to study Epimedium. Also in 1930, the Fifth International Botanical Congress was held at Cambridge, and Stearn was able to attend. During this time he commuted between the bookshop, the Botany School, Botanic Garden and home by bicycle, his preferred means of transportation throughout his life.
### Lindley Library, Royal Horticultural Society (1933–1952)
In 1933, H. R. Hutchinson, who was the Librarian at the Lindley Library, Royal Horticultural Society's (RHS) in London, was due to retire. John Gilmour, now assistant director at the Kew Gardens, put forward Stearn's name, together with Bowles, a vice-president of the Society, who had discovered Stearn at the bookshop. Stearn was 22 when he began work at the library, initially as assistant librarian, before taking over Hutchinson's position after six months. He later explained his appointment at such a young age as being the result of World War I: "All the people who should have had those jobs were dead." There he collaborated with Bowles on a number of plant monographs, such as Bowles' Handbook of Crocus and their work on Anemone japonica (Anemone hupehensis var. japonica). Written in 1947, it is still considered one of the most comprehensive accounts of the origins and nomenclature of fall-blooming anemones. Stearn was one of the last people to see Bowles alive, and when Bowles died, Stearn wrote an appreciation of him, and later contributed the entry on Bowles to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Much of his spare time was spent studying at the Kew Gardens.
The Lindley Library, the largest horticultural library in the world and named after the British botanist John Lindley (1799–1865), was established in 1868 by the acquisition of Lindley's 1,300 volumes upon his death. It had recently undergone considerable change. In 1930, the library had been rehoused in a new floor added to the society's Vincent Square headquarters, but the role of the library was somewhat downgraded. Frederick Chittenden had been appointed as Keeper of the Library (1930–1939), and Hutchinson reported directly to him. Stearn related that when he reported for duty, Hutchinson was completely unaware of the appointment of his new assistant.
Lindley was one of Stearn's inspirations, also being a librarian who had a long association with the RHS. Lindley also bequeathed his herbarium to the Cambridge University Herbarium, where it now forms the Lindley Collection. As Stearn remarked "I came to know his numerous publications and to admire the industry, tenacity and ability with which he undertook successfully so many different things". Later Stearn would publish a major work on Lindley's life and work. Lindley's contributions to horticultural taxonomy were matched only by those of Stearn himself. Stearn soon set about using his antiquarian knowledge to reorganise the library, forming a pre-Linnean section. Not long after his arrival the library acquired one of its largest collections, the Reginald Cory Bequest (1934), which Stearn set about cataloguing on its arrival two years later, resulting in at least fifteen publications.
While at the library he continued his self-education through evening classes, learning Swedish, and travelling widely. Stearn used his three-week annual leaves in the pre-war years to visit other European botanical libraries, botanic gardens, museums, herbaria and collections, as well as collecting plants, with special emphasis on Epimedium and Allium. His travels took him to Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, and Sweden.
#### War years (1941–1946)
The only break from this employment was the war years 1941–1946, leaving his assistant Ms. Cardew as acting librarian. Initially Stearn served as an air raid warden, before enlisting. As a conscientious objector, he could not serve in a combatant role, but was accepted into the Royal Air Force (RAF) Medical Services, as he had previously worked with the St John Ambulance Brigade. He served in the RAF in both England, and Asia (India and Burma, where he worked in intelligence, and was awarded the Burma Star). While there he undertook studies of Indo-Malayan and Sikkim-Himalayan tropical vegetation, carried out botanical explorations, taught biology to troops and began work on his Botanical Latin. His wartime observations led to collaborative publications such as An enumeration of the flowering plants of Nepal (1978–1982), Beautiful Indian Trees (2nd ed. 1954), as well as works on Himalayan species of Allium. On returning from the war, Stearn and his new wife, Eldwyth Ruth Stearn, were obliged to live in the Lindley Library for a while till they found a more permanent home, due to the acute housing shortage in London.
### Natural History Museum (1952–1976)
From the Lindley Library, Stearn (see 1950 Photograph) moved to the Botany Department at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington in 1952, and by the time he retired in 1976, he was the Senior Principal Scientific Officer there. He had now achieved his aim of becoming a research scientist, despite lack of formal qualifications, enabling him to spend more of his time collecting and studying plants. During this time the museum was undergoing steady expansion, with new staff and programmes. At the museum he was put in charge of Section 3 of the General Herbarium (the last third of the Dicotyledons in the Bentham & Hooker system, i.e., Monochlamydae) and floristic treatment of the regions of Europe, Jamaica, the United States, Australia and Nepal, including work on the museum's Flora of Jamaica and the Nepal flora he started work on during the war. Seven volumes of the Flora of Jamaica had appeared prior to the Second World War. Although the project was revived after the war, and Stearn carried out six months of field work in Jamaica, it never came to fruition; no further volumes appeared. In Jamaica, Stearn followed in the footsteps of Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), whose collection had been left to the Natural History Museum. Stearn's generic work at the museum concentrated on Allium, Lilium and Paeonia. He continued to travel widely, with field work in Europe (particularly Greece), Australia, and the United States, and published 200 papers during his twenty-four years at the museum, and although the library was not his responsibility, he spent much time there adding written notes to many of the critical texts.
While at the museum, Stearn became increasingly involved in the work of the Linnean Society during his Kensington years. He was also offered the George A. Miller professorship of botany at the University of Illinois (1966), but felt he would be unable to leave his commitments in London. At the time of his retirement in 1976, he was still using a fountain pen as his only means of communication and scholarship, a fact commemorated by his retirement present of a Mont Blanc pen capable of writing for long periods without refills.
### Retirement (1976–2001)
Following his retirement on 30 November 1976 he continued to work, both at the museum and at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, where his home at 17 High Park Road, Kew Gardens, Richmond (see image), gave him access to the herbarium and library, a short bicycle trip away. Indeed, 35 percent of his total publications appeared in the quarter century of his retirement. He was commissioned to write a history of the museum for its centenary (1981), although he did so with some difficulty, due to deadlines and budget constraints. The task, which took three years, was made more difficult for him by the museum's decision to censor his critical comments. He continued his association with the Lindley Library all his life, being an active committee member and regularly attended RHS flower shows even after he was barely able to walk.
#### Sojourn in Greece
As a student of the classics he was passionate about Greece, its mountains and plants (such as Paeonia) and all things Greek, both ancient and modern. The Stearns had formed a friendship with Constantine Goulimis and Niki and Angelos Goulandris, founders of the Goulandris Museum of Natural History in Kifissia, Athens. Stearn first met the Goulandris' in 1967, and offered practical help with their museum. He also stayed with them when he and his wife visited Greece. Niki Goulandris illustrated both Wild Flowers of Greece that Goulimis and Stearn wrote in 1968, as well as his Peonies of Greece (1984). The latter work typified Stearn's encyclopedic approach, including topics such as mythology and herbalism in addition to taxonomy. Stearn then took on the editorship of Annales Musei Goulandris, the scientific journal of the museum (1976–1999), succeeding Werner Greuter, the first editor, having been instrumental in getting the journal launched in 1973. Eldwyth Ruth Stearn took on the job of compiling the indexes. When he retired from this position he was 88, and was succeeded by John Akeroyd. He was a liberal contributor to the journal, and during this time he and Eldwyth Ruth Stearn undertook their translation of The Greek Plant World in Myth, Art, and Literature (1993).
### Societies and appointments
Stearn was a member of the Linnean Society for many years, becoming a fellow as early as 1934. He served as botanical curator 1959–1985, council member 1959–1963 and as vice-president 1961–1962 and president 1979–1982, producing a revised and updated history of the society in 1988. He also served as president of the Garden History Society and the Ray Society (1975–1977). The Royal Horticultural Society had made him an honorary fellow in 1946 and in 1986 he became a vice-president. Stearn became a member of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) in 1954, joining the Maps Committee the following year to prepare their Atlas of the British Flora (1962). He remained on that committee till 1968, when it became the Records Committee. For 40 years he was the BSBI referee for Allium. While at the Lindley Library, he became a founding member of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History (later, the Society for the History of Natural History) in 1936, was one of its most active publishing members based on his cataloguing work at the library, and published a history of the society for their 50th anniversary in 1986. Other societies on which he served include the British Society for the History of Science (vice-president), the British Society for the History of Medicine (Council), the Garden History Society (president 1977–1982) and was a corresponding member of the Botanical Society of America.
Stearn was appointed Sandars Reader in Bibliography, University of Cambridge in 1965 and from 1977 to 1983 he was visiting professor at Cambridge University's Department of Botany, and also visiting professor in botany at Reading University 1977–1983, and then Honorary Research Fellow (1983–). He was also a fellow of the Institute of Biology (1967) and was elected an Honorary Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1968.
## Work
William Stearn was the author of nearly 500 publications, including his autobiography. These included monographs, partial floras, books on botanical illustration, scholarly editions of historical botanical texts, dictionaries, bibliographies and botanical histories.
### Early years
During Stearn's initial four years in Cambridge (1929–1933), he published twenty-four papers, predominantly in the Gardeners' Chronicle and Gardening Illustrated and the Journal of Botany, his first in 1929. While working as a gardener's boy during school holidays he had observed a specimen of Campanula pusilla (Campanula cochleariifolia) with a distorted corolla. He then described and published the first appearance of the causative agent, the mould Peronospora corollaea, in Britain, using the facilities of the Botany library.
At the Botanic Garden he developed a special interest in Vinca, Epimedium, Hosta and Symphytum, all of which he published monographs on. A series of botanical publications followed, starting with a new species of Allium (A. farreri Stearn, 1930). Stearn repeatedly returned to the genus Allium, and was considered a world expert on it; many species bear his name. 1930 would also see his first bibliographic work, on the botanist Reginald Farrer, whom he named Allium farreri after, and also described Rosa farreri (1933) and other species named after Farrer. It was while he was compiling Farrer's works in 1930 that he came across the latter's work, The English Rock-Garden (1919) and its account of Barren-worts (Epimedium), and kindled a lifetime interest in the genus. From 1932, he produced a series of papers on this genus, studying it at Cambridge, Kew and Paris. It became one of the genera which he was best known, and many species of which now bear his name. Epimedium and the related woodland perennial Vancouveria (Berberidaceae) would be the subject of his first monograph (1938) and were genera to which he would return at the end of his life. At the time the taxonomy of this genus was very confused, and with the help of the Cambridge Herbarium he obtained specimens from all over Europe to produce a comprehensive monograph. The work was so thorough that it was mistakenly considered a doctoral thesis by other botanists. He also began a series of contributions to the catalogue of the Herbarium, together with Gilmour and Tutin.
### Later work
After moving to London, Stearn produced a steady output of publications during his years at the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library (1933–1952). These covered a wide range of topics from bibliography to plant nomenclature, taxonomy and garden plants, with a particular emphasis on Vinca, Epimedium and Lilium. Within two years of joining the library in 1933, he had produced his first major monograph, Lilies (1935), in collaboration with Drysdale Woodcock and John Coutts. This text, in an expanded and revised edition, as Woodcock and Stearn's Lilies of the World (1950) became a standard work on the Liliaceae sensu lato. While at the library he also continued his collaboration with his Cambridge colleagues, publishing catalogues of the Herbarium collections, including the Catalogue of the Collections of the Herbarium of the University Botany School, Cambridge (1935). The second task imposed on him at this time involved the RHS role in maintaining revision of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (see Botanical taxonomy).
After his return to London in 1946, at the end of the Second World War, a number of major publications ensued, including Lilies of the World in 1950. The RHS also imposed two major tasks on their librarian. In 1950, Frederick Chittenden, a previous director of RHS Wisley and Keeper of the Library, died leaving unfinished the four volume RHS Dictionary of Gardening that the society had commissioned from him before the war. The war had interrupted the work as many of the expected contributors were unavailable. Stearn, together with Patrick Synge, the RHS Publications Editor, undertook to complete the work, particularly volume IV (R–Z), a task he completed within six months, with 50 new articles. The finished work was published in 1951 and not only did he undertake the role of editing this large work but his contributions covered 50 genera, 600 species and complex identification keys such as Solidago and Viola. Since Stearn's entries in volume IV extended from Soldanella to Zygotritonia, he would jest that he was but "a peculiar authority on plants from 'So-' onwards". He issued a revised version in 1956 with Synge in which he added a further 86 articles. His recollection of this task was that he acquired "that occupational hazard of compilers of encyclopaedias", encyclopedic knowledge.
Many of Stearn's collaborative works used his bibliographic skills. While his genus monographs largely concentrated on Mediterranean flora, notably Epimedium, Allium and Paeonia, he was also the author of species articles both popular and technical as well as a number of classical treatises. In addition he produced floristic treatments of a number of regions such as Jamaica and Nepal. He also contributed to many national Florae as diverse as Bhutan and Greece, as well as major regional florae including the Flora Europaea and European Garden Flora.
While his output covered a wide range of topics, he is best known for his contributions to botanical history, taxonomy, botanical bibliography, and botanical illustration. Botanical Latin (four editions 1966–1992), is his best known work, having become a standard reference and described as both the bible of plant taxonomists and a philological masterwork. It was begun during the war years and the first edition was basically a guide to Latin for botanists with no or limited knowledge of the language, which he described as a "do-it-yourself Latin kit" for taxonomists. Later, the work evolved into an etymological dictionary, but then Stearn learned that such a work had already been published in the Netherlands before the war. He then continued to expand it with the assistance of his wife and son, systematically collecting botanical terms from botanical texts. It is said that only he could have written this work, which explains not just the derivation of plant names but also the philological principles involved in forming those names. The work is considered responsible for the continued survival of Latin as the lingua franca of botany. In addition to this seminal text, he frequently delighted in the illumination that the classics could add to understanding plants and plant lore, such as his Five Brethren of the Rose (1965).
His best known popular work is his Dictionary of Plant Names, which found its way into the libraries of most horticulturalists. One of the focuses of his work at the Natural History Museum was the flora of the Caribbean, where he carried out field work. Stearn continued to return to the Cambridge Botanic Garden, cared for his own garden and worked with the RHS to become an authority on horticulture as well as botany. William Stearn collaborated with his wife, Eldwyth Ruth Stearn, on a number of his most important works, including Botanical Latin and Dictionary of Plant Names and translating German botanical history into English. Just before his death he completed a revision of his original Epimedium monograph.
#### Botanical history
William Stearn wrote extensively on the history of botany and horticulture, from Ancient Greece to his own times. He collected together J. E. Raven's 1976 J. H. Gray Lectures, editing and annotating them as Plants and Plant Lore in Ancient Greece (1990). In 1993, he and Eldwyth Ruth Stearn translated and expanded Baumann's Die griechische Pflanzenwelt in Mythos, Kunst und Literatur (1986) as The Greek Plant World in Myth, Art, and Literature.
Stearn compiled a major work on the life of John Lindley and produced an edited version of the classic book on herbals by Agnes Arber, one of the influences of his Cambridge years, and whose obituary he would later write for The Times. He also wrote a number of histories of the organisations he worked with as well as a number of introductions and commentaries on classic botanical texts such as John Ray's Synopsis methodica stirpium Britannicarum (1691), together with historical introductions to reference books, including Desmond's Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists (1994).
In his Botanical Gardens and Botanical Literature in the Eighteenth Century (1961), Stearn provides some insight into his interpretation of botanical history:
> The progress of botany, as of other sciences, comes from the interaction of so many factors that undue emphasis on any one can give a very distorted impression of the whole, but certainly among the most important of these for any given period are the prevailing ideas and intellectual attitudes, the assumptions and stimuli of the time, for often upon them depends the extent to which a particular study attracts an unbroken succession of men of industry and originality intent on building a system of knowledge and communicating it successfully to others of like mind.
##### Linnaeus
Stearn's historical research is best known for his work on Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), which he began while at the Natural History Museum, and which won him a number of awards at home and abroad. Between 1953 and 1994 he produced more than 20 works describing Linnaeus' life and work.
Of Stearn's writings on Linnaeus, the most well known is his edition of the 1753 Species plantarum, published in facsimile by the Ray Society in 1957, for which he wrote both a 176-page introduction and an appendix. Concerned that Linnaeus' methods were imperfectly understood by his contemporaries, Stearn wrote that his introduction "provided concisely all the information about his Linnaeus' life, herbaria, publications, methodology etc. which a botanical taxonomist needs to know". The Times stated that no other botanist possessed the historical knowledge and linguistic skills to write, what is considered one of the classic studies of the Swedish naturalist and a highpoint of 20th century botanical scholarship. Subsequently, Stearn became a recognised authority on Linnaeus. Stearn produced similar introductions to a number of other editions of Linnaeus' works, including Genera Plantarum, Mantissa plantarum and ''. Later, he would produce a bicentenary guide to Linnaeus (1978) for the Linnean Society.
Although Stearn spent much of his life studying and writing about Linnaeus, he did not admire the man's character, describing him as mean—"a jealous egoist, with a driving ambition". When asked which botanists in history he did admire, he cited John Lindley, Carolus Clusius (1526–1609) and Olof Swartz (1760–1818).
#### Botanical taxonomy
Stearn made major contributions to plant taxonomy and its history. In 1950 the Seventh International Botanical Congress was held in Stockholm, and the RHS would have been represented by Chittenden, but he had been taken ill. Bowles then arranged for Stearn and Gilmour to represent the society in his stead. The congress appointed a special committee to consider nomenclatural issues related to cultivated plants, which became known as the Committee for the Nomenclature of Cultivated Plants (the "Stockholm Committee"), with Stearn as secretary (1950–1953). Stearn then proposed an International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (the "Cultivated Code"), producing the first draft that day. The code was accepted in principle by the committee, conditional on its approval by a parallel committee of the International Horticultural Congress (the Horticultural Nomenclature Committee), which would next meet in London in 1952 (the "London Committee"). Later that year Stearn was also appointed secretary of the London Committee so that he now represented both organisations. The two committees then met jointly on 22–24 November 1951 at the RHS building in London to draft a final joint proposal that was published by Stearn as secretary of an editorial committee and adopted by the 13th International Horticultural Congress the following year.
The resulting code was formulated as a supplement to the existing International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. Stearn introduced two important concepts, the terms "cultivar" and "grex". Cultivar, a term first proposed by L. H. Bailey in 1923, refers to a distinctive genus or species variety raised or maintained in cultivation, such as Euphorbia dulcis "Chameleon". Grex (Latin for "flock" or "herd") refers to a group of hybrids of common parentage, such as Lilium Pink Perfection Group. These concepts contributed a similar clarity to the nomenclature of garden or agricultural plants that Linnaeus had brought to the naming of native plants two centuries earlier. Stearn continued to play an active part in the International Botanical Congresses over many years, where he was remembered for his rhetorical persuasion on nomenclatural matters. He was also a pioneer in the application of computer-aided technology to (numerical taxonomy), as in his work on Columnea (1969).
#### Botanical bibliography
Motivated by his interest in botanical history and taxonomy, Stearn devoted a considerable part of his output to botanical bibliography, including numerous papers and catalogues establishing the exact publication dates of books on natural history, particularly from the early nineteenth century, including William Herbert's work on Amaryllidaceae (1821, 1837) and complete bibliographies of botanists such as John Gilmour (1989). At the RHS library he transformed the minimalist card indexing by introducing British Museum rules and adding extensive bibliographic information. He quickly realised that one of the major deficits in contemporary taxonomic nomenclature was a lack of precise dates of all the names, and set about rectifying this over a fifteen-year period, resulting in 86 publications, which was a major step in stabilising nomenclature. The importance of this lay in the rules of botanical nomenclature, which gives botanical names priority based on dates of publication. He considered his most important contribution in this regard to be his elucidation of the dating of the early 19th century collection of studies of Canary Islands flora by Webb and Berthelot (1836–1850). Another important work from this period was on Ventenat's Jardin de la Malmaison (1803–1804), also published in the new Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History. In a number of instances his contributions to others' work went unacknowledged, particularly when he was younger, even though his introductions (often with the title "Revised and enlarged by W. T. Stearn") could be as lengthy as the texts they preceded. His contributions to botanical bibliography and in particular the correct interpretation of historical texts from Linnaeus to Arber are considered of central importance to the field of taxonomy.
#### Botanical illustration
Within a few years after Stearn returned from the war, his Art of Botanical Illustration (1950) was published, remaining the standard work on the subject to this day. There was, however, some bibliographic confusion – Collins, the publisher, had planned a book on botanical art for its New Naturalist series, but mistakenly commissioned both Stearn and the art historian Wilfred Blunt independently to produce the work. After the error was discovered the two decided to collaborate; Blunt wrote the work while Stearn edited and revised it. When it was published, Blunt's name was on the title page, while Stearn was only acknowledged in the preface. The omission was not rectified till he prepared the second edition in 1994, although the preface reveals Stearn's extensive contribution.
His continuing interest in botanical illustration led him to produce work on both historical and contemporary artists, including the Florilegium of Captain Cook and Joseph Banks from their first voyage (1768–1771) to the Pacific on the Endeavour, the similar account of Ferdinand Bauer's later botanical expedition to Australia with Matthew Flinders on the Investigator (1801–1803), and the work of illustrator Franz Bauer (the brother of Ferdinand). Stearn's studies of Ferdinand Bauer's Flora Graeca (1806–1840) enabled him to combine his passion for Greece with that of illustration. Other illustrators of this period that he wrote about included William Hooker.
## Awards
William Stearn received three honorary doctorates during his lifetime, from Leiden (D.Sc. 1960), Cambridge (Sc.D. 1967), and Uppsala (Fil.Dr. 1972). He was the Masters Memorial Lecturer, Royal Horticultural Society in 1964. In 1976 the Linnean Society awarded him their Gold Medal for his contributions to Linnean scholarship and taxonomic botany. In 1985 he was the Wilkins Lecturer of the Royal Society, entitled Wilkins, John Ray, and Carl Linnaeus. In 1986 he received the Founder's Medal of the Society for the History of Natural History and in 1993 he received the Engler Gold Medal from the International Association for Plant Taxonomy. The Royal Horticultural Society awarded him both their Veitch Memorial Medal (1964) and Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH, 1965). In 2000 he received the Asa Gray Award, the highest honour of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. Stearn was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1997 Birthday Honours for services to horticulture and botany.
He was well regarded in Sweden for his studies on Linnaeus, and possessed a good grasp of the language. In addition to his honorary doctorate from Uppsala, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded him their Linnaeus Medal in 1972, he was granted the title of Commander of the Swedish Order of the Star of the North (Polar Star) in 1980 and admitted to membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1983. Stearn was also elected to membership of the Swedish Linnaeus Society.
## Legacy
Stearn is considered a preeminent British botanist, and was once likened to botanical scholars such as Robert Brown, Darwin, the Hookers (William and Joseph) and Frans Stafleu. He has been variously described as a Renaissance man, a polymath, "the modern Linnaeus", "the great Linnaean scholar of our day", "one of the world's greatest botanists" and a giant among botanists and horticulturalists. On his death, The Times noted his encyclopedic grasp of his field, stating that he was "acknowledged as the greatest botanical authority of the twentieth century". One description that Stearn rejected, however, was "the complete naturalist" – an allusion to the title of his biography of Linnaeus. His contribution to his field was far greater than his extensive bibliography suggests, since he was known for his input into many of his colleagues' work, leading Professor P. B. Tomlinson to observe "he left no tome unstearned". The Society for the History of Natural History of which he was a founding member has created the William T. Stearn Student Essay Prize in his honour.
### Eponymy
Stearn is the botanical authority for over 400 taxa that bear his name, such as Allium chrysonemum Stearn. Many plants have been named (eponymy) after him, including the orchid nothogenus hybrid ×Stearnara J. M. H. Shaw. A number of species have been designated stearnii after William Stearn, including:
- Allium stearnii Pastor & Valdés
- Berberis stearnii Ahrendt
- Epimedium stearnii Ogisu & Rix
- Justicia stearnii V.A.W. Graham
- Schefflera stearnii R.A.Howard & Proctor
In light of his work on Epimedium, a cultivar was named in his honour in 1988, Epimedium 'William Stearn'.
## Selected publications
see and ''
## See also
- History of botany
- Cambridge Botanic Garden
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American Beauty (1999 film)
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1999 American film by Sam Mendes
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American Beauty is a 1999 American black comedy-drama film written by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes in his feature directorial debut. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, an advertising executive who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, played by Mena Suvari. Annette Bening stars as Lester's materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane. Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, and Allison Janney co-star. Academics have described the film as satirizing how beauty and personal satisfaction are perceived by the American middle class; further analysis has focused on the film's explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, materialism, self-liberation, and redemption.
After being filmed in California from December 1998 to February 1999, American Beauty was released in North America on September 17, 1999, receiving widespread critical and popular acclaim. It was the second-best-reviewed American film of the year behind Being John Malkovich and grossed over \$350 million worldwide against its \$15-million budget. Reviewers praised most aspects of the production, with particular emphasis on Mendes, Spacey and Ball; criticism tended to focus on the familiarity of the characters and setting. DreamWorks launched a major campaign to increase American Beauty's chances of Oscar success following its controversial Best Picture snubs for Saving Private Ryan (1998) the previous year.
At the 72nd Academy Awards, the film won five Oscars, including Best Picture, along with Best Director for Mendes, Best Actor for Spacey, Best Original Screenplay for Ball, and Best Cinematography for Hall. The film was nominated for and won many other awards and honors, mainly for directing, writing, and acting.
## Plot
Middle-aged media executive Lester Burnham hates his job and is unhappily married to neurotic and ambitious real estate broker Carolyn. Their 16-year-old daughter, Jane, abhors her parents and has low self-esteem. Retired US Marine colonel Frank Fitts, his near-catatonic wife Barbara, and their teenage son Ricky move in next door. Ricky documents the world around him with a camcorder, collecting recordings on videotape in his bedroom, while using his part-time catering jobs as a front for dealing marijuana. A strict but abusive disciplinarian, Frank has previously had Ricky committed to a psychiatric hospital and sent to a military academy. Gay couple Jim Olmeyer and Jim Berkley, also neighbors to the Burnhams, welcome the Fitts family. Frank later reveals his homophobia when angrily discussing the encounter with Ricky.
During a dance routine at a school basketball game, Lester becomes infatuated with Jane's friend, Angela. He starts having sexual fantasies about her, in which red rose petals are a recurring motif. Carolyn begins an affair with married business rival Buddy Kane. Lester is informed by his supervisor that he is to be laid off; Lester blackmails him into giving him an indulgent severance package and starts working at a drive-through restaurant. He buys his dream car, a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, and starts working out after overhearing Angela teasing Jane that she would have sex with him if he improved his physique. He begins smoking marijuana supplied by Ricky and flirts with Angela. The girls' friendship wanes when Jane starts a relationship with Ricky, whom Angela scoffs at.
Lester discovers Carolyn's infidelity when she and Kane order a meal at Lester's restaurant but reacts with smug satisfaction. Buddy fears a costly divorce and ends the affair, while Carolyn is humiliated and simultaneously frustrated by her lack of professional success. Frank, suspicious of Lester and Ricky's friendship, finds footage Ricky captured by chance of Lester lifting weights while naked and wrongly concludes they are sexually involved. He viciously accuses Ricky of prostitution, which Ricky falsely admits to in order to goad his father into throwing him out. Carolyn, sitting distraught in her car, withdraws a handgun from the glove box. At home, Jane is arguing with Angela over her flirtation with Lester when Ricky interrupts to ask Jane to leave with him for New York City. He calls Angela ugly, boring, and ordinary.
Frank tentatively approaches Lester, then breaks down and tearfully embraces him. Lester begins to comfort Frank until Frank attempts to kiss him. Lester gently rebuffs him, saying he has misunderstood, and Frank walks back out into the rain. Lester finds Angela sitting alone in the dark. He consoles her, saying she is beautiful and anything but ordinary. He asks what she wants, and she says she does not know. She asks him what he wants, and he says he has always wanted her. He takes her to the couch and as he begins to undress her, Angela admits her virginity. Lester is taken aback to realize her apparent experience was a veil for her innocence, and he cannot continue. He comforts her as they share their frustrations. Angela goes to the bathroom as Lester smiles at a family photograph, when an unseen figure shoots Lester in the back of the head at point-blank range. Ricky and Jane find Lester's body. Carolyn is in her closet, discarding her gun and crying hysterically as she hugs Lester's clothing. A bloodied Frank, wearing surgical gloves, returns home: a gun is missing from his collection.
Lester's closing narration describes meaningful experiences during his life. He says that, despite his death, he is happy there is still so much beauty in the world.
## Cast
- Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham
- Annette Bening as Carolyn Burnham
- Thora Birch as Jane Burnham
- Wes Bentley as Ricky Fitts
- Mena Suvari as Angela Hayes
- Peter Gallagher as Buddy Kane
- Allison Janney as Barbara Fitts
- Chris Cooper as Col. Frank Fitts
- Scott Bakula as Jim Olmeyer
- Sam Robards as Jim Berkley
- Amber Smith as Christy Kane
## Themes and analysis
### Multiple interpretations
Scholars and academics have offered many possible readings of American Beauty; film critics are similarly divided, not so much about the quality of the film, as their interpretations of it. Described by many as about "the meaning of life" or "the hollow existence of the American suburbs", the film has defied categorization by even the filmmakers. Mendes is indecisive, saying the script seemed to be about something different each time he read it: "a mystery story, a kaleidoscopic journey through American suburbia, a series of love stories; ... it was about imprisonment, ... loneliness, [and] beauty. It was funny; it was angry, sad." The literary critic and author Wayne C. Booth concludes that the film resists any one interpretation: "[American Beauty] cannot be adequately summarized as 'here is a satire on what's wrong with American life'; that plays down the celebration of beauty. It is more tempting to summarize it as 'a portrait of the beauty underlying American miseries and misdeeds', but that plays down the scenes of cruelty and horror, and Ball's disgust with mores. It cannot be summarized with either Lester or Ricky's philosophical statements about what life is or how one should live." He argues that the problem of interpreting the film is tied with that of finding its center—a controlling voice who "[unites] all of the choices". He contends that in American Beauty's case, it is neither Mendes nor Ball. Mendes considers the voice to be Ball's, but even while the writer was "strongly influential" on set, he often had to accept deviations from his vision, particularly ones that transformed the cynical tone of his script into something more optimistic. With "innumerable voices intruding on the original author's," Booth says, those who interpret American Beauty "have forgotten to probe for the elusive center". According to Booth, the film's true controller is the creative energy "that hundreds of people put into its production, agreeing and disagreeing, inserting and cutting".
### Imprisonment and redemption
Mendes called American Beauty a rite of passage film about imprisonment and escape from imprisonment. The monotony of Lester's existence is established through his gray, nondescript workplace and characterless clothing. In these scenes, he is often framed as if trapped, "reiterating rituals that hardly please him". He masturbates in the confines of his shower; the shower stall evokes a jail cell and the shot is the first of many where Lester is confined behind bars or within frames, such as when he is reflected behind columns of numbers on a computer monitor, "confined [and] nearly crossed out". The academic and author Jody W. Pennington argues that Lester's journey is the story's center. His sexual reawakening through meeting Angela is the first of several turning points as he begins to "[throw] off the responsibilities of the comfortable life he has come to despise". After Lester shares a joint with Ricky, his spirit is released and he begins to rebel against Carolyn. Changed by Ricky's "attractive, profound confidence", he is convinced that Angela is attainable and sees that he must question his "banal, numbingly materialist suburban existence"; he takes a job at a fast-food outlet, which allows him to regress to a point when he could "see his whole life ahead of him".
When Lester is caught masturbating by Carolyn, his angry retort about their lack of intimacy is the first time he says aloud what he thinks about her. By confronting the issue and Carolyn's "superficial investments in others", he is trying to "regain a voice in a home that [only respects] the voices of mother and daughter". His final turning point comes when he and Angela almost have sex; after she confesses her virginity, he no longer thinks of her as a sex object, but as a daughter. He holds her close and "wraps her up". Mendes called it "the most satisfying end to [Lester's] journey there could possibly have been". With these final scenes, Mendes intended to show him at the conclusion of a "mythical quest". After Lester gets a beer from the refrigerator, the camera pushes toward him, then stops facing a hallway down which he walks "to meet his fate". Having begun to act his age again, Lester achieves closure. As he smiles at a family photo, the camera pans slowly from Lester to the kitchen wall, onto which blood spatters as a gunshot rings out; the slow pan reflects the peace of his death. His body is discovered by Jane and Ricky. Mendes said that Ricky's staring into Lester's dead eyes is "the culmination of the theme" of the film: that beauty is found where it is least expected.
### Conformity and beauty
Like other American films of 1999—such as Fight Club, Bringing Out the Dead and Magnolia, American Beauty instructs its audience to "[lead] more meaningful lives". The film argues the case against conformity, but does not deny that people need and want it; even the gay characters just want to fit in. Jim and Jim, the Burnhams' other neighbors, are a satire of "gay bourgeois coupledom", who "[invest] in the numbing sameness" that the film criticizes in heterosexual couples. The feminist academic and author Sally R. Munt argues that American Beauty uses its "art house" trappings to direct its message of nonconformity primarily to the middle classes, and that this approach is a "cliché of bourgeois preoccupation; ... the underlying premise being that the luxury of finding an individual 'self' through denial and renunciation is always open to those wealthy enough to choose, and sly enough to present themselves sympathetically as a rebel."
Professor Roy M. Anker argues that the film's thematic center is its direction to the audience to "look closer". The opening combines an unfamiliar viewpoint of the Burnhams' neighborhood with Lester's narrated admission that this is the last year of his life, forcing audiences to consider their own mortality and the beauty around them. It also sets a series of mysteries; Anker asks, "from what place exactly, and from what state of being, is he telling this story? If he's already dead, why bother with whatever it is he wishes to tell about his last year of being alive? There is also the question of how Lester has died—or will die." Anker believes the preceding scene—Jane's discussion with Ricky about the possibility of his killing her father—adds further mystery. Professor Ann C. Hall disagrees; she says by presenting an early resolution to the mystery, the film allows the audience to put it aside "to view the film and its philosophical issues". Through this examination of Lester's life, rebirth and death, American Beauty satirizes American middle class notions of meaning, beauty and satisfaction. Even Lester's transformation only comes about because of the possibility of sex with Angela; he therefore remains a "willing devotee of the popular media's exaltation of pubescent male sexuality as a sensible route to personal wholeness". Carolyn is similarly driven by conventional views of happiness; from her belief in "house beautiful" domestic bliss to her car and gardening outfit, Carolyn's domain is a "fetching American millennial vision of Pleasantville, or Eden". The Burnhams are unaware that they are "materialists philosophically, and devout consumers ethically" who expect the "rudiments of American beauty" to give them happiness. Anker argues that "they are helpless in the face of the prettified economic and sexual stereotypes ... that they and their culture have designated for their salvation."
The film presents Ricky as its "visionary, ... spiritual and mystical center". He sees beauty in the minutiae of everyday life, videoing as much as he can for fear of missing it. He shows Jane what he considers the most beautiful thing he has filmed: a plastic bag, tossing in the wind in front of a wall. He says capturing the moment was when he realized that there was "an entire life behind things"; he feels that "sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it... and my heart is going to cave in." Anker argues that Ricky, in looking past the "cultural dross", has "[grasped] the radiant splendor of the created world" to see God. As the film progresses, the Burnhams move closer to Ricky's view of the world. Lester only forswears personal satisfaction at the film's end. On the cusp of having sex with Angela, he returns to himself after she admits her virginity. Suddenly confronted with a child, he begins to treat her as a daughter; in doing so, Lester sees himself, Angela, and his family "for the poor and fragile but wondrous creatures they are". He looks at a picture of his family in happier times, and dies having had an epiphany that infuses him with "wonder, joy, and soul-shaking gratitude"—he has finally seen the world as it is.
According to Patti Bellantoni, colors are used symbolically throughout the film, none more so than red, which is an important thematic signature that drives the story and "[defines] Lester's arc". First seen in drab colors that reflect his passivity, Lester surrounds himself with red as he regains his individuality. The American Beauty rose is repeatedly used as symbol; when Lester fantasizes about Angela, she is usually naked and surrounded by rose petals. In these scenes, the rose symbolizes Lester's desire for her. When associated with Carolyn, the rose represents a "façade for suburban success". Roses are included in almost every shot inside the Burnhams' home, where they signify "a mask covering a bleak, unbeautiful reality". Carolyn feels that "as long as there can be roses, all is well". She cuts the roses and puts them in vases, where they adorn her "meretricious vision of what makes for beauty" and begin to die. The roses in the vase in the Angela–Lester seduction scene symbolize Lester's previous life and Carolyn; the camera pushes in as Lester and Angela get closer, finally taking the roses—and thus Carolyn—out of the shot. Lester's epiphany at the end of the film is expressed by rain and the use of red, building to a crescendo that is a deliberate contrast to the release Lester feels. The constant use of red "lulls [the audience] subliminally" into becoming used to it; consequently, it leaves the audience unprepared when Lester is shot and his blood spatters on the wall.
### Sexuality and repression
Pennington argues that American Beauty defines its characters through their sexuality. Lester's attempts to relive his youth are a direct result of his lust for Angela, and the state of his relationship with Carolyn is in part shown through their lack of sexual contact. Also sexually frustrated, Carolyn has an affair that takes her from "cold perfectionist" to more of a carefree soul who "[sings] happily along with" the music in her car. Jane and Angela constantly reference sex, through Angela's descriptions of her supposed sexual encounters and the way the girls address each other. Their nude scenes are used to communicate their vulnerability. By the end of the film, Angela's hold on Jane has weakened until the only power she has over her friend is Lester's attraction to her. Col. Fitts reacts with disgust to meeting Jim and Jim; he asks, "How come these faggots always have to rub it in your face? How can they be so shameless?" To which Ricky replies, "That's the thing, Dad—they don't feel like it's anything to be ashamed of." Pennington argues that Col. Fitts' reaction is not homophobic, but an "anguished self-interrogation".
With other turn-of-the-millennium films such as Fight Club (1999), In the Company of Men (1997), American Psycho (2000), and Boys Don't Cry (1999), American Beauty "raises the broader, widely explored issue of masculinity in crisis". Professor Vincent Hausmann charges that in their reinforcement of masculinity "against threats posed by war, by consumerism, and by feminist and queer challenges", these films present a need to "focus on, and even to privilege" aspects of maleness "deemed 'deviant'". Lester's transformation conveys "that he, and not the woman, has borne the brunt of [lack of being]" and he will not stand for being emasculated. Lester's attempts to "strengthen traditional masculinity" conflict with his responsibilities as a father. Although the film portrays the way Lester returns to that role positively, he does not become "the hypermasculine figure implicitly celebrated in films like Fight Club". Hausmann concludes that Lester's behavior toward Angela is "a misguided but nearly necessary step toward his becoming a father again".
Hausmann says the film "explicitly affirms the importance of upholding the prohibition against incest"; a recurring theme of Ball's work is his comparison of the taboos against incest and homosexuality. Instead of making an overt distinction, American Beauty looks at how their repression can lead to violence. Col. Fitts is so ashamed of his homosexuality that it drives him to murder Lester. Ball said, "The movie is in part about how homophobia is based in fear and repression and about what [they] can do." The film implies two unfulfilled incestuous desires: Lester's pursuit of Angela is a manifestation of his lust for his own daughter, while Col. Fitts' repression is exhibited through the almost sexualized discipline with which he controls Ricky. Consequently, Ricky realizes that he can only hurt his father by falsely telling him he is homosexual, while Angela's vulnerability and submission to Lester reminds him of his responsibilities and the limits of his fantasy. Col. Fitts represents Ball's father, whose repressed homosexual desires led to his own unhappiness. Ball rewrote Col. Fitts to delay revealing him as homosexual.
### Temporality and music
American Beauty follows a traditional narrative structure, only deviating with the displaced opening scene of Jane and Ricky from the middle of the story. Although the plot spans one year, the film is narrated by Lester at the moment of his death. Jacqueline Furby says that the plot "occupies ... no time [or] all time", citing Lester's claim that life did not flash before his eyes, but that it "stretches on forever like an ocean of time". Furby argues that a "rhythm of repetition" forms the core of the film's structure. For example, two scenes have the Burnhams sitting down to an evening meal, shot from the same angle. Each image is broadly similar, with minor differences in object placement and body language that reflect the changed dynamic brought on by Lester's new-found assertiveness. Another example is the pair of scenes in which Jane and Ricky film each other. Ricky films Jane from his bedroom window as she removes her bra, and the image is reversed later for a similarly "voyeuristic and exhibitionist" scene in which Jane films Ricky at a vulnerable moment.
Lester's fantasies are emphasized by slow- and repetitive-motion shots; Mendes uses double-and-triple cutbacks in several sequences, and the score alters to make the audience aware that it is entering a fantasy. One example is the gymnasium scene—Lester's first encounter with Angela. While the cheerleaders perform their half-time routine to "On Broadway", Lester becomes increasingly fixated on Angela. Time slows to represent his "voyeuristic hypnosis" and Lester begins to fantasize that Angela's performance is for him alone. "On Broadway"—which provides a conventional underscore to the onscreen action—is replaced by discordant, percussive music that lacks melody or progression. This nondiegetic score is important to creating the narrative stasis in the sequence; it conveys a moment for Lester that is stretched to an indeterminate length. The effect is one that Stan Link likens to "vertical time", described by the composer and music theorist Jonathan Kramer as music that imparts "a single present stretched out into an enormous duration, a potentially infinite 'now' that nonetheless feels like an instant". The music is used like a visual cue, so that Lester and the score are staring at Angela. The sequence ends with the sudden reintroduction of "On Broadway" and teleological time.
According to Drew Miller of Stylus, the soundtrack "[gives] unconscious voice" to the characters' psyches and complements the subtext. The most obvious use of pop music "accompanies and gives context to" Lester's attempts to recapture his youth; reminiscent of how the counterculture of the 1960s combated American repression through music and drugs, Lester begins to smoke cannabis and listen to rock music. Mendes' song choices "progress through the history of American popular music". Miller argues that although some may be over familiar, there is a parodic element at work, "making good on [the film's] encouragement that viewers look closer". Toward the end of the film, Thomas Newman's score features more prominently, creating "a disturbing tempo" that matches the tension of the visuals. The exception is "Don't Let It Bring You Down", which plays during Angela's seduction of Lester. At first appropriate, its tone clashes as the seduction stops. The lyrics, which speak of "castles burning", can be seen as a metaphor for Lester's view of Angela—"the rosy, fantasy-driven exterior of the 'American Beauty'"—as it burns away to reveal "the timid, small-breasted girl who, like his wife, has willfully developed a false public self".
## Production
### Development
Ball began writing American Beauty as a play in the early 1990s, partly inspired by the media circus that accompanied the Amy Fisher trial in 1992. He shelved the play after deciding that the story would not work on stage. After spending the next few years writing for television, Ball revived the idea in 1997 when attempting to break into the film industry after several frustrating years writing for the television sitcoms Grace Under Fire and Cybill. He joined the United Talent Agency, where his representative, Andrew Cannava, suggested he write a spec script to "reintroduce [himself] to the town as a screenwriter". Ball pitched three ideas to Cannava: two conventional romantic comedies and American Beauty. Despite the story's lack of an easily marketable concept, Cannava selected American Beauty because he felt it was the one for which Ball had the most passion. While developing the script, Ball created another television sitcom, Oh, Grow Up. He channeled his anger and frustration at having to accede to network demands on that show—and during his tenures on Grace Under Fire and Cybill—into writing American Beauty.
Ball did not expect to sell the script, believing it would act as more of a calling card, but American Beauty drew interest from several production bodies. Cannava passed the script to several producers, including Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, who took it to DreamWorks. With the help of executives Glenn Williamson and Bob Cooper, and Steven Spielberg in his capacity as studio partner, Ball was convinced to develop the project at DreamWorks; he received assurances from the studio—known at the time for its more conventional fare—that it would not "iron the [edges] out". In an unusual move, DreamWorks decided not to option the script; instead, in April 1998, the studio bought it outright for \$250,000, outbidding Fox Searchlight Pictures, October Films, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Lakeshore Entertainment. DreamWorks planned to make the film for \$6–8 million.
Jinks and Cohen involved Ball throughout the film's development, including casting and director selection. The producers met with about twenty interested directors, several of whom were considered A-list at the time. Ball was not keen on the more well-known directors because he believed their involvement would increase the budget and lead DreamWorks to become "nervous about the content". Nevertheless, the studio offered the film to Mike Nichols and Robert Zemeckis; neither accepted. In the same year, Mendes (then a theater director) revived the musical Cabaret in New York with fellow director Rob Marshall. Beth Swofford of the Creative Artists Agency arranged meetings for Mendes with studio figures in Los Angeles to see if film direction was a possibility. Mendes came across American Beauty in a pile of eight scripts at Swofford's house, and knew immediately that it was the one he wanted to make; early in his career, he had been inspired by how the film Paris, Texas (1984) presented contemporary America as a mythic landscape and he saw the same theme in American Beauty, as well as parallels with his own childhood. Mendes later met with Spielberg; impressed by Mendes' productions of Oliver! and Cabaret, Spielberg encouraged him to consider American Beauty.
Mendes found that he still had to convince DreamWorks' production executives to let him direct. He had already discussed the film with Jinks and Cohen, and felt they supported him. Ball was also keen; having seen Cabaret, he was impressed with Mendes' "keen visual sense" and thought he did not make obvious choices. Ball felt that Mendes liked to look under the story's surface, a talent he felt would be a good fit with the themes of American Beauty. Mendes' background also reassured him, because of the prominent role the playwright usually has in a theater production. Over two meetings—the first with Cooper, Walter Parkes, and Laurie MacDonald, the second with Cooper alone—Mendes pitched himself to the studio. The studio soon approached Mendes with a deal to direct for the minimum salary allowed under Directors Guild of America rules—\$150,000. Mendes accepted, and later recalled that after taxes and his agent's commission, he only earned \$38,000. In June 1998, DreamWorks confirmed that it had contracted Mendes to direct the film.
### Writing
Ball was partly inspired by two encounters he had in the early 1990s. In about 1991–92, Ball saw a plastic bag blowing in the wind outside the World Trade Center. He watched the bag for ten minutes, saying later that it provoked an "unexpected emotional response". In 1992, Ball became preoccupied with the media circus that accompanied the Amy Fisher trial. Discovering a comic book telling of the scandal, he was struck by how quickly it had become commercialized. He said he "felt like there was a real story underneath [that was] more fascinating and way more tragic" than the story presented to the public, and attempted to turn the idea into a play. Ball produced around 40 pages, but stopped when he realized it would work better as a film. He felt that because of the visual themes, and because each character's story was "intensely personal", it could not be done on a stage. All the main characters appeared in this version, but Carolyn did not feature strongly; Jim and Jim instead had much larger roles.
Ball based Lester's story on aspects of his own life. Lester's re-examination of his life parallels feelings Ball had in his mid-30s; like Lester, Ball put aside his passions to work in jobs he hated for people he did not respect. Scenes in Ricky's household reflect Ball's own childhood experiences. Ball suspected his father was homosexual and used the idea to create Col. Fitts, a man who "gave up his chance to be himself". Ball said the script's mix of comedy and drama was not intentional, but that it came unconsciously from his own outlook on life. He said the juxtaposition produced a starker contrast, giving each trait more impact than if they appeared alone.
In the script that was sent to prospective actors and directors, Lester and Angela had sex; by the time of shooting, Ball had rewritten the scene to the final version. Ball initially rebuffed counsel from others that he change the script, feeling they were being puritanical; the final impetus to alter the scene came from DreamWorks' then-president Walter Parkes. He convinced Ball by indicating that in Greek mythology, the hero "has a moment of epiphany before ... tragedy occurs". Ball later said his anger when writing the first draft had blinded him to the idea that Lester needed to refuse sex with Angela to complete his emotional journey—to achieve redemption. Jinks and Cohen asked Ball not to alter the scene right away, as they felt it would be inappropriate to make changes to the script before a director had been hired. Early drafts also included a flashback to Col. Fitts' service in the Marines, a sequence that unequivocally established his homosexual leanings. In love with another Marine, Col. Fitts sees the man die and comes to believe that he is being punished for the "sin" of being gay. Ball removed the sequence because it did not fit the structure of the rest of the film—Col. Fitts was the only character to have a flashback—and because it removed the element of surprise from Col. Fitts' later pass at Lester. Ball said he had to write it for his own benefit to know what happened to Col. Fitts, though all that remained in later drafts was subtext.
Ball remained involved throughout production; he had signed a television show development deal, so had to get permission from his producers to take a year off to be close to American Beauty. Ball was on-set for rewrites and to help interpret his script for all but two days of filming. His original bookend scenes—in which Ricky and Jane are prosecuted for Lester's murder after being framed by Col. Fitts—were excised in post-production; the writer later felt the scenes were unnecessary, saying they were a reflection of his "anger and cynicism" at the time of writing (see "Editing"). Ball and Mendes revised the script twice before it was sent to the actors, and twice more before the first read-through. The script was written between June 1997 and February 1998.
The shooting script features a scene in Angela's car in which Ricky and Jane talk about death and beauty; the scene differed from earlier versions, which set it as a "big scene on a freeway" in which the three witness a car crash and see a dead body. The change was a practical decision, as the production was behind schedule and they needed to cut costs. The schedule called for two days to be spent filming the crash, but only half a day was available. Ball agreed, but only if the scene could retain a line of Ricky's where he reflects on having once seen a dead homeless woman: "When you see something like that, it's like God is looking right at you, just for a second. And if you're careful, you can look right back." Jane asks: "And what do you see?" Ricky: "Beauty." Ball said, "They wanted to cut that scene. They said it's not important. I said, 'You're out of your fucking mind. It's one of the most important scenes in the movie!' ... If any one line is the heart and soul of this movie, that is the line." Another scene was rewritten to accommodate the loss of the freeway sequence; set in a schoolyard, it presents a "turning point" for Jane in that she chooses to walk home with Ricky instead of going with Angela. By the end of filming, the script had been through ten drafts.
### Casting
Mendes had Spacey and Bening in mind for the leads from the beginning, but DreamWorks executives were unenthusiastic. The studio suggested several alternatives, including Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, and John Travolta to play Lester (the role was also offered to Chevy Chase, but he turned it down), while Helen Hunt or Holly Hunter were proposed to play Carolyn. Mendes did not want a big star "weighing the film down"; he felt Spacey was the right choice based on his performances in the 1995 films The Usual Suspects and Seven, and 1992's Glengarry Glen Ross. Spacey was surprised; he said, "I usually play characters who are very quick, very manipulative and smart. ... I usually wade in dark, sort of treacherous waters. This is a man living one step at a time, playing by his instincts. This is actually much closer to me, to what I am, than those other parts." Mendes offered Bening the role of Carolyn without the studio's consent; although executives were upset at Mendes, by September 1998, DreamWorks had entered negotiations with Spacey and Bening.
Spacey loosely based Lester's early "schlubby" deportment on Walter Matthau. During the film, Lester's physique improves from flabby to toned; Spacey worked out during filming to improve his body, but because Mendes shot the scenes out of chronological order, Spacey varied postures to portray the stages. Before filming, Mendes and Spacey analyzed Jack Lemmon's performance in The Apartment (1960), because Mendes wanted Spacey to emulate "the way [Lemmon] moved, the way he looked, the way he was in that office and the way he was an ordinary man and yet a special man". Spacey's voiceover is a throwback to Sunset Boulevard (1950), which is also narrated in retrospect by a dead character. Mendes felt it evoked Lester's—and the film's—loneliness. Bening recalled women from her youth to inform her performance: "I used to babysit constantly. You'd go to church and see how people present themselves on the outside, and then be inside their house and see the difference." Bening and a hair stylist collaborated to create a "PTA president coif" hairstyle, and Mendes and production designer Naomi Shohan researched mail-order catalogs to better establish Carolyn's environment of a "spotless suburban manor". To help Bening get into Carolyn's mindset, Mendes gave her music that he believed Carolyn would like. He lent Bening the Bobby Darin version of the song "Don't Rain on My Parade", which she enjoyed and persuaded the director to include it for a scene in which Carolyn sings in her car.
Kirsten Dunst was offered the role of Angela Hayes but she turned it down.
For the roles of Jane, Ricky, and Angela, DreamWorks gave Mendes carte blanche. By November 1998, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, and Mena Suvari had been cast in the parts—in Birch's case, despite the fact she was 16 years old and was deemed underage for a brief nude scene, which her parents had to approve. Child labor representatives accompanied Birch's parents on set during the filming of the nude scene. Bentley overcame competition from top actors under the age of 25 to be cast. The 2009 documentary My Big Break followed Bentley, and several other young actors, before and after he landed the part. To prepare, Mendes provided Bentley with a video camera, telling the actor to film what Ricky would. Peter Gallagher and Allison Janney were cast (as Buddy Kane and Barbara Fitts) after filming began in December 1998. Mendes gave Janney a book of paintings by Edvard Munch. He told her, "Your character is in there somewhere." Mendes cut much of Barbara's dialogue, including conversations between Colonel Frank Fitts and her, as he felt that what needed to be said about the pair—their humanity and vulnerability—was conveyed successfully through their shared moments of silence. Chris Cooper plays Colonel Frank Fitts, Scott Bakula plays Jim Olmeyer, and Sam Robards plays Jim Berkley. Jim and Jim were deliberately depicted as the most normal, happy—and boring—couple in the film. Ball's inspiration for the characters came from a thought he had after seeing a "bland, boring, heterosexual couple" who wore matching clothes: "I can't wait for the time when a gay couple can be just as boring." Ball also included aspects of a gay couple he knew who had the same forename.
Mendes insisted on two weeks of cast rehearsals, although the sessions were not as formal as he was used to in the theater, and the actors could not be present at every one. Several improvisations and suggestions by the actors were incorporated into the script. An early scene showing the Burnhams leaving home for work was inserted later on to show the low point that Carolyn and Lester's relationship had reached. Spacey and Bening worked to create a sense of the love that Lester and Carolyn once had for one another; for example, the scene in which Lester almost seduces Carolyn after the pair argues over Lester's buying a car was originally "strictly contentious".
### Filming
Principal photography lasted about 50 days, from December 14, 1998 to February 1999. American Beauty was filmed on soundstages at the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, California, and at Hancock Park and Brentwood in Los Angeles. The aerial shots at the beginning and end of the film were captured in Sacramento, California, and many of the school scenes were shot at South High School in Torrance, California; several extras in the gym crowd were South High students. The film is set in an upper middle-class neighborhood in an unidentified American town. Production designer Naomi Shohan likened the locale to Evanston, Illinois, but said, "it's not about a place, it's about an archetype... The milieu was pretty much Anywhere, USA—upwardly mobile suburbia." The intent was for the setting to reflect the characters, who are also archetypes. Shohan said, "All of them are very strained, and their lives are constructs." The Burnhams' household was designed as the reverse of the Fitts'—the former a pristine ideal, but graceless and lacking in "inner balance", leading to Carolyn's desire to at least give it the appearance of a "perfect all-American household"; the Fitts' home is depicted in "exaggerated darkness [and] symmetry".
The production selected two adjacent properties on the Warner backlot's "Blondie Street" for the Burnham and Fitts' homes. The crew rebuilt the houses to incorporate false rooms that established lines of sight—between Ricky and Jane's bedroom windows, and between Ricky's bedroom and Lester's garage. The garage windows were designed specifically to obtain the crucial shot toward the end of the film in which Col. Fitts—watching from Ricky's bedroom—mistakenly assumes that Lester is paying Ricky for sex. Mendes made sure to establish the line of sight early on in the film to make the audience feel a sense of familiarity with the shot. The house interiors were filmed on the backlot, on location, and on soundstages when overhead shots were needed. The inside of the Burnhams' home was shot at a house close to Interstate 405 and Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles; the inside of the Fitts' home was shot in the city's Hancock Park neighborhood. Ricky's bedroom was designed to be cell-like to suggest his "monkish" personality, while at the same time blending with the high-tech equipment to reflect his voyeuristic side. The production deliberately minimized the use of red, as it was an important thematic signature elsewhere. The Burnhams' home uses cool blues, while the Fitts' is kept in a "depressed military palette".
Mendes' dominating visual style was deliberate and composed, with a minimalist design that provided "a sparse, almost surreal feeling—a bright, crisp, hard edged, near Magritte-like take on American suburbia"; Mendes constantly directed his set dressers to empty the frame. He made Lester's fantasy scenes "more fluid and graceful", and Mendes made minimal use of steadicams, feeling that stable shots generated more tension. For example, when Mendes used a slow push in to the Burnhams' dinner table, he held the shot because his training as a theater director taught him the importance of putting distance between the characters. He wanted to keep the tension in the scene, so he only cut away when Jane left the table. Mendes used a hand-held camera for the scene in which Col. Fitts beats Ricky. Mendes said the camera provided the scene with a "kinetic ... off-balance energy". He also went hand-held for the excerpts of Ricky's camcorder footage. Mendes took a long time to get the quality of Ricky's footage to the level he wanted. For the plastic-bag footage, Mendes used wind machines to move the bag in the air. The scene took four takes; two by the second unit did not satisfy Mendes, so he shot the scene himself. He felt his first take lacked grace, but for the last attempt, he changed the location to the front of a brick wall and added leaves on the ground. Mendes was satisfied by the way the wall gave definition to the outline of the bag.
Mendes avoided using close-ups, believing the technique was overused. He also mentioned Spielberg's advice to imagine an audience silhouetted at the bottom of the camera monitor, to keep in mind that it was being shot for display on a 40-foot (10 m) screen. Spielberg—who visited the set a few times—also advised Mendes not to worry about costs if he had a "great idea" toward the end of a long working day. Mendes said, "That happened three or four times, and they are all in the movie." Despite Spielberg's support, DreamWorks and Mendes fought constantly over the schedule and budget, although the studio interfered little with the film's content. Spacey, Bening and Hall worked for significantly less than their usual rates. American Beauty cost DreamWorks \$15 million to produce, slightly above their projected sum. Mendes was so dissatisfied with his first three days' filming that he obtained permission from DreamWorks to reshoot the scenes. He said, "I started with a wrong scene, actually, a comedy scene. And the actors played it way too big: ... it was badly shot, my fault, badly composed, my fault, bad costumes, my fault ...; and everybody was doing what I was asking. It was all my fault." Aware that he was a novice, Mendes drew on the experience of Hall: "I made a very conscious decision early on, if I didn't understand something technically, to say, without embarrassment, 'I don't understand what you're talking about, please explain it.'"
Mendes encouraged some improvisation; for example, when Lester masturbates in bed beside Carolyn, the director asked Spacey to improvise several euphemisms for the act in each take. Mendes said, "I wanted that not just because it was funny ... but because I didn't want it to seem rehearsed. I wanted it to seem like he was blurting it out of his mouth without thinking. [Spacey] is so in control—I wanted him to break through." Spacey obliged, eventually coming up with 35 phrases, but Bening could not always keep a straight face, which meant the scene had to be shot ten times. The production used small amounts of computer-generated imagery. Most of the rose petals in Lester's fantasies were added in post-production, although some were real and had the wires holding them digitally removed. When Lester fantasizes about Angela in a rose-petal bath, the steam was real, save for in the overhead shot. To position the camera, a hole had to be cut in the ceiling, through which the steam escaped; it was instead added digitally.
### Editing
American Beauty was edited through Christopher Greenbury and Tariq Anwar; Greenbury began in the position, but had to leave halfway through post-production because of a scheduling conflict with Me, Myself & Irene (2000). Mendes and an assistant edited the film for ten days between the appointments. Mendes realized during editing that the film was different from the one he had envisioned. He believed he had been making a "much more whimsical, ... kaleidoscopic" film than what came together in the edit suite. Instead, Mendes was drawn to the emotion and darkness; he began to use the score and shots he had intended to discard to craft the film along these lines. In total, he cut about 30 minutes from his original edit. The opening included a dream in which Lester imagines himself flying above the town. Mendes spent two days filming Spacey against bluescreen, but removed the sequence as he believed it to be too whimsical—"like a Coen brothers movie"—and therefore inappropriate for the tone he was trying to set. The opening in the final cut reused a scene from the middle of the film where Jane tells Ricky to kill her father. This scene was to be the revelation to the audience that the pair was not responsible for Lester's death, as the way it was scored and acted made it clear that Jane's request was not serious. However, in the portion he used in the opening—and when the full scene plays out later—Mendes used the score and a reaction shot of Ricky to leave a lingering ambiguity as to his guilt. The subsequent shot—an aerial view of the neighborhood—was originally intended as the plate shot for the bluescreen effects in the dream sequence.
Mendes spent more time recutting the first ten minutes than the rest of the film taken together. He trialed several versions of the opening; the first edit included bookend scenes in which Jane and Ricky are convicted of Lester's murder, but Mendes excised these in the last week of editing because he felt they made the film lose its mystery, and because they did not fit with the theme of redemption that had emerged during production. Mendes believed the trial drew focus away from the characters and turned the film "into an episode of NYPD Blue". Instead, he wanted the ending to be "a poetic mixture of dream and memory and narrative resolution". When Ball first saw a completed edit, it was a version with truncated versions of these scenes. He felt that they were so short that they "didn't really register". Mendes and he argued, but Ball was more accepting after Mendes cut the sequences completely; Ball felt that without the scenes, the film was more optimistic and had evolved into something that "for all its darkness had a really romantic heart".
### Cinematography
Conrad Hall was not the first choice for director of photography; Mendes believed he was "too old and too experienced" to want the job, and he had been told that Hall was difficult to work with. Instead, Mendes asked Frederick Elmes, who turned the job down because he did not like the script. Hall was recommended to Mendes by Tom Cruise, because of Hall's work on Without Limits (1998), which Cruise had executive produced. Mendes was directing Cruise's then-wife Nicole Kidman in the play The Blue Room during preproduction on American Beauty, and had already storyboarded the whole film. Hall was involved for one month during preproduction; his ideas for lighting the film began with his first reading of the script, and further passes allowed him to refine his approach before meeting Mendes. Hall was initially concerned that audiences would not like the characters; he only felt able to identify with them during cast rehearsals, which gave him fresh ideas on his approach to the visuals.
Hall's approach was to create peaceful compositions that evoked classicism, to contrast with the turbulent on-screen events and allow audiences to take in the action. Hall and Mendes first discussed the intended mood of a scene, but he was allowed to light the shot in any way he felt necessary. In most cases, Hall first lit the scene's subject by "painting in" the blacks and whites, before adding fill light, which he reflected from beadboard or white card on the ceiling. This approach gave Hall more control over the shadows while keeping the fill light unobtrusive and the dark areas free of spill. Hall shot American Beauty in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio in the Super 35 format, primarily using Kodak Vision 500T 5279 35 mm film stock. He used Super 35 partly because its larger scope allowed him to capture elements such as the corners of the petal-filled pool in its overhead shot, creating a frame around Angela within. He shot the whole film at the same T-stop (T1.9); given his preference for shooting that wide, Hall favored high-speed stocks to allow for more subtle lighting effects.
Hall used Panavision Platinum cameras with the company's Primo series of prime and zoom lenses. Hall employed Kodak Vision 200T 5274 and EXR 100T 5248 stock for scenes with daylight effects. He had difficulty adjusting to Kodak's newly introduced Vision release print stock, which, combined with his contrast-heavy lighting style, created a look with too much contrast. Hall contacted Kodak, who sent him a batch of 5279 that was five percent lower in contrast. Hall used a 1/8th strength Tiffen Black ProMist filter for almost every scene, which he said in retrospect may not have been the best choice, as the optical steps required to blow Super 35 up for its anamorphic release print led to a slight amount of degradation; therefore, the diffusion from the filter was not required. When he saw the film in a theater, Hall felt that the image was slightly unclear and that had he not used the filter, the diffusion from the Super 35–anamorphic conversion would have generated an image closer to what he originally intended.
A shot where Lester and Ricky share a cannabis joint behind a building came from a misunderstanding between Hall and Mendes. Mendes asked Hall to prepare the shot in his absence; Hall assumed the characters would look for privacy, so he placed them in a narrow passage between a truck and the building, intending to light from the top of the truck. When Mendes returned, he explained that the characters did not care if they were seen. He removed the truck and Hall had to rethink the lighting; he lit it from the left, with a large light crossing the actors, and with a soft light behind the camera. Hall felt the consequent wide shot "worked perfectly for the tone of the scene". Hall made sure to keep rain, or the suggestion of it, in every shot near the end of the film. In one shot during Lester's encounter with Angela at the Burnhams' home, Hall created rain effects on the foreground cross lights; in another, he partly lit the pair through French windows to which he had added material to make the rain run slower, intensifying the light (although the strength of the outside light was unrealistic for a night scene, Hall felt it justified because of the strong contrasts it produced). For the close-ups when Lester and Angela move to the couch, Hall tried to keep rain in the frame, lighting through the window onto the ceiling behind Lester. He also used rain boxes to produce rain patterns where he wanted without lighting the entire room.
### Music
Thomas Newman's score was recorded in Santa Monica, California. He used mainly percussion instruments to create the mood and rhythm, the inspiration for which was provided by Mendes. Newman "favored pulse, rhythm, and color over melody", making for a more minimalist score than he had previously created. He built each cue around "small, endlessly repeating phrases"—often, the only variety through a "thinning of the texture for eight bars". The percussion instruments included tablas, bongos, cymbals, piano, xylophones, and marimbas; also featured were guitars, flute, and world music instruments. Newman also used electronic music and on "quirkier" tracks employed more unorthodox methods, such as tapping metal mixing bowls with a finger and using a detuned mandolin. Newman believed the score helped move the film along without disturbing the "moral ambiguity" of the script: "It was a real delicate balancing act in terms of what music worked to preserve [that]."
The soundtrack features songs by Newman, Bobby Darin, The Who, Free, Eels, The Guess Who, Bill Withers, Betty Carter, Peggy Lee, The Folk Implosion, Gomez, and Bob Dylan, as well as two cover versions—The Beatles' "Because", performed by Elliott Smith, and Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down", performed by Annie Lennox. Produced by the film's music supervisor Chris Douridas, an abridged soundtrack album was released on October 5, 1999, and went on to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album. An album featuring 19 tracks from Newman's score was released on January 11, 2000 and won the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album. Filmmaker considered the score to be one of Newman's best, saying it "[enabled] the film's transcendentalist aspirations". In 2006, the magazine chose the score as one of twenty essential soundtracks it believed spoke to the "complex and innovative relationships between music and screen storytelling".
## Release
### Publicity
DreamWorks contracted Amazon.com to create the official website, marking the first time that Amazon had created a special section devoted to a feature film. The website included an overview, a photo gallery, cast and crew filmographies, and exclusive interviews with Spacey and Bening. The film's tagline—"look closer"—originally came from a cutting pasted on Lester's workplace cubicle by the set dresser. DreamWorks ran parallel marketing campaigns and trailers—one aimed at adults, the other at teenagers. Both trailers ended with the poster image of a girl holding a rose.
Reviewing the posters of several films of the year, David Hochman of Entertainment Weekly rated American Beauty's highly, saying it evoked the tagline; he said, "You return to the poster again and again, thinking, this time you're gonna find something." DreamWorks did not want to test screen the film; according to Mendes, the studio was pleased with it, but he insisted on one where he could question the audience afterward. The studio reluctantly agreed and showed the film to a young audience in San Jose, California. Mendes claimed the screening went very well.
### Theatrical run
The film had its world premiere on September 8, 1999, at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. Three days later, the film appeared at the Toronto International Film Festival. With the filmmakers and cast in attendance, it screened at several American universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, New York University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Northwestern University.
On September 15, 1999, American Beauty opened to the public in limited release at three theaters in Los Angeles and three in New York. More theaters were added during the limited run, and on October 1, the film officially entered wide release by screening in 706 theaters across North America. The film grossed \$8,188,587 over the weekend, ranking third at the box office. Audiences polled by the market research firm CinemaScore gave American Beauty a "B+" grade on average. The theater count hit a high of 1,528 at the end of the month, before a gradual decline. Following American Beauty's wins at the 57th Golden Globe Awards, DreamWorks re-expanded the theater presence from a low of 7 in mid-February, to a high of 1,990 in March. The film ended its North American theatrical run on June 4, 2000, having grossed \$130.1 million.
American Beauty had its European premiere at the London Film Festival on November 18, 1999; in January 2000, it began to screen in various territories outside North America. It debuted in Israel to "potent" returns, and limited releases in Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Finland followed on January 21. After January 28 opening weekends in Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain and Norway, American Beauty had earned \$7 million in 12 countries for a total of \$12.1 million outside North America. On February 4, American Beauty debuted in France and Belgium. Expanding to 303 theaters in the United Kingdom, the film ranked first at the box office with \$1.7 million. On the weekend of February 18—following American Beauty's eight nominations for the 72nd Academy Awards—the film grossed \$11.7 million from 21 territories, for a total of \$65.4 million outside North America. The film had "dazzling" debuts in Hungary, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and New Zealand.
As of February 18, the most successful territories were the United Kingdom (\$15.2 million), Italy (\$10.8 million), Germany (\$10.5 million), Australia (\$6 million), and France (\$5.3 million). The Academy Award nominations meant strong performances continued across the board; the following weekend, American Beauty grossed \$10.9 million in 27 countries, with strong debuts in Brazil, Mexico, and South Korea. Other high spots included robust returns in Argentina, Greece, and Turkey. On the weekend of March 3, 2000, American Beauty debuted strongly in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, markets traditionally "not receptive to this kind of upscale fare". The impressive South Korean performance continued, with a return of \$1.2 million after nine days. In total, American Beauty grossed \$130.1 million in North America and \$226.2 million internationally, for \$356.3 million worldwide.
### Home media
American Beauty was released on VHS on May 9, 2000, and on DVD with the DTS format on October 24, 2000. Before the North American rental release on May 9, Blockbuster Video wanted to purchase hundreds of thousands of extra copies for its "guaranteed title" range, whereby anyone who wanted to rent the film would be guaranteed a copy. Blockbuster and DreamWorks could not agree on a profit-sharing deal, so Blockbuster ordered two-thirds the number of copies it originally intended. DreamWorks made around one million copies available for rental; Blockbuster's share would usually have been about 400,000 of these. Some Blockbuster stores only displayed 60 copies, and others did not display the film at all, forcing customers to ask for it. The strategy required staff to read a statement to customers explaining the situation; Blockbuster claimed it was only "[monitoring] customer demand" due to the reduced availability. Blockbuster's strategy leaked before May 9, leading to a 30 percent order increase from other retailers. In its first week of rental release, American Beauty made \$6.8 million. This return was lower than would have been expected had DreamWorks and Blockbuster reached an agreement. In the same year, The Sixth Sense made \$22 million, while Fight Club made \$8.1 million, though the latter's North American theatrical performance was just 29 percent that of American Beauty. Blockbuster's strategy also affected rental fees; American Beauty averaged \$3.12, compared with \$3.40 for films that Blockbuster fully promoted. Only 53 percent of the film's rentals were from large outlets in the first week, compared with the usual 65 percent.
The DVD release included a behind-the-scenes featurette, film audio commentary from Mendes and Ball, and a storyboard presentation with discussion from Mendes and Hall. In the film commentary, Mendes refers to deleted scenes he intended to include in the release. However, these scenes are not on the DVD, as he changed his mind after recording the commentary; Mendes felt that to show scenes he previously chose not to use would detract from the film's integrity.
On September 21, 2010, Paramount Home Entertainment released American Beauty on Blu-ray, as part of Paramount's Sapphire Series. All the extras from the DVD release were present, with the theatrical trailers upgraded to HD.
## Reception and legacy
### Initial
It received overwhelming praise, chiefly for Spacey, Mendes and Ball. Variety reported that "no other 1999 movie has benefited from such universal raves." It was the best-received title at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where it won the People's Choice award after a ballot of the festival's audiences. TIFF's director, Piers Handling, said, "American Beauty was the buzz of the festival, the film most talked-about."
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 87% of 190 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critics' consensus reads: "Flawlessly cast and brimming with dark, acid wit, American Beauty is a smart, provocative high point of late '90s mainstream Hollywood film." According to Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average score of 84 out of 100 based on 34 critics, the film received "universal acclaim".
Writing in Variety, Todd McCarthy said the cast ensemble "could not be better"; he praised Spacey's "handling of innuendo, subtle sarcasm, and blunt talk" and the way he imbued Lester with "genuine feeling". Janet Maslin in The New York Times said Spacey was at his "wittiest and most agile" to date. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who awarded the film four out of four stars, singled Spacey out for successfully portraying a man who "does reckless and foolish things [but who] doesn't deceive himself". Kevin Jackson of Sight & Sound said Spacey impressed in ways distinct from his previous performances, the most satisfying aspect being his portrayal of "both sap and hero".
Writing in Film Quarterly, Gary Hentzi praised the actors, but said that characters such as Carolyn and Col. Fitts were stereotypes. Hentzi accused Mendes and Ball of identifying too readily with Jane and Ricky, saying the latter was their "fantasy figure"—a teenaged boy who's an absurdly wealthy artist able to "finance [his] own projects". Hentzi said Angela was the most believable teenager, in particular with her "painfully familiar" attempts to "live up to an unworthy image of herself". Maslin agreed that some characters were unoriginal, but said their detailed characterizations made them memorable.
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said the actors coped "faultlessly" with what were difficult roles; he called Spacey's performance "the energy that drives the film", saying the actor commanded audience involvement despite Lester not always being sympathetic. "Against considerable odds, we do like [these characters]," Turan concluded. He stated that the film was layered, subversive, complex, and surprising, concluding it was "a hell of a picture".
Maslin felt that Mendes directed with "terrific visual flair", saying his minimalist style balanced "the mordant and bright" and that he evoked the "delicate, eroticized power-playing vignettes" of his theater work. Jackson said Mendes' theatrical roots rarely showed, and that the "most remarkable" aspect was that Spacey's performance did not overshadow the film. He said that Mendes worked the script's intricacies smoothly, to the ensemble's strengths, and staged the tonal shifts skillfully. McCarthy believed American Beauty a "stunning card of introduction" for film débutantes Mendes and Ball. He said Mendes' "sure hand" was "as precise and controlled" as his theater work. McCarthy described Hall's involvement as fortunate for Mendes, as the cinematographer was "unsurpassed" at conveying the themes of a work. Turan agreed that Mendes' choice of collaborators was "shrewd", naming Hall and Newman in particular. Turan suggested that American Beauty may have benefited from Mendes' inexperience, as his "anything's possible daring" made him attempt beats that more seasoned directors might have avoided. Turan felt that Mendes' accomplishment was to "capture and enhance [the] duality" of Ball's script—the simultaneously "caricatured ... and painfully real" characters. Hentzi, while critical of many of Mendes and Ball's choices, admitted the film showed off their "considerable talents".
Turan felt Ball's lack of constraint when writing the film was the reason for its uniqueness, in particular the script's subtle changes in tone. McCarthy said the script was "as fresh and distinctive" as any of its American film contemporaries, and praised how it analyzed the characters while not compromising narrative pace. He called Ball's dialogue "tart" and said the characters—Carolyn excepted—were "deeply drawn". One other flaw, McCarthy said, was the revelation of Col. Fitts' homosexuality, which he said evoked "hoary Freudianism". Jackson said the film transcended its clichéd setup to become a "wonderfully resourceful and sombre comedy". He said that even when the film played for sitcom laughs, it did so with "unexpected nuance". Hentzi criticized how the film made a mystery of Lester's murder, believing it manipulative and simply a way of generating suspense.
McCarthy praised the production and costume design, and said the soundtrack was good at creating "ironic counterpoint[s]" to the story. Hentzi concluded that American Beauty was "vital but uneven"; he felt the film's examination of "the ways which teenagers and adults imagine each other's lives" was its best point, and that although Lester and Angela's dynamic was familiar, its romantic irony stood beside "the most enduring literary treatments" of the theme, such as Lolita. Nevertheless, Hentzi believed that the film's themes of materialism and conformity in American suburbia were "hackneyed". McCarthy conceded that the setting was familiar, but said it merely provided the film with a "starting point" from which to tell its "subtle and acutely judged tale". Maslin agreed; she said that while it "takes aim at targets that are none too fresh", and that the theme of nonconformity did not surprise, the film had its own "corrosive novelty".
### Retrospective
A few months after the release of American Beauty, reports of a backlash appeared in the American press. In the years since the film's release, its critical regard has waned. A significant factor was its themes being seen as trivial after 9/11 and the Great Recession of late 2007 to 2009.
In 2005, Premiere named American Beauty as one of 20 "most overrated movies of all time." Mendes accepted the inevitability of the critical reappraisal, saying in 2008, "I thought some of it was entirely justified—it was a little overpraised at the time."
In 2017, allegations of sexual assault against actor Kevin Spacey surfaced at the height of the MeToo movement, including by victims who were underage at the time of the allegations. This led many critics and one of Spacey's accusers, actor Anthony Rapp, to find uncomfortable parallels between Spacey and Lester Burnham, his character in American Beauty.
In 2019, on the twentieth anniversary of the film's release, The Huffington Post's Matthew Jacobs wrote that "the film's reputation has tumbled precipitously," adding, "Plenty of classics undergo cultural reappraisals [...] but few have turned into such a widespread punchline."
In The Guardian, critic Guy Lodge wrote "the pushback against American Beauty in the intervening two decades has been swift and merciless – taking root well before Spacey's personal and professional downfall, though that certainly hasn't helped. Ask film critics of various ages about it now and you will tend to meet with a uniform sneer, along with a blanket dismissal of its cheap-shot picket-fence satire, its broad characterisation, its purportedly misogynistic view of career women, or its awestruck command of metaphor as flimsy and floaty as, well, a plastic bag dancing in the breeze." Lodge also stated, "You might hear grudging acknowledgement of its formal artistry, including the satin tactility of the late Conrad L Hall's cinematography, or the eerie, echo-y, endlessly imitated percussion of Thomas Newman's once-ubiquitous score. But that, too, is tempered with dismissiveness toward its makers."
Similar to Matthew Jacob's assessment, Stephanie Zacharek for Time wrote, "In 2019, beating up on Sam Mendes' multi-Oscar-winning American Beauty [...] is so painfully easy that it seems unfair. The Best Picture winner has fallen largely out of fashion; it rarely appears on critics' lists of favorite movies, and its memory seems to have faded for most moviegoers, too." Zacharek concluded, "American Beauty is a movie about a privileged white guy who feels bad about himself and tries to rectify that by exploding his life—only to lose it all in the end. It's about a man who thought he had control, but didn't—and who can't, at the very least, relate to that? In the context of his own crisis of self-absorption, Lester Burnham couldn't see the real collision course looming ahead, a future of lost jobs and foreclosures, of madhouse doublespeak issuing from the mouths of people whose job it is to lead us, of wars that can't be won and thus keep being fought. Maybe it takes a look back at a ridiculous movie to show us how much we've really lost. Whatever Ball's 'authentic life' really is, you can bet it's not being lived on Instagram."
Nonetheless, other critics still defend the artistic value of the film. In 2014, on the occasion of the fifteen anniversary of the movie, Entertainment Weekly's Ashley Fetters stated that American Beauty stands as "a classic, if not a masterpiece." Guy Lodge acknowledged the film's flaws but admitted it still "turns out to be an exquisitely presented time capsule, a snapshot of middle-class, notionally liberal white society entering a spasm of panic at the turn of both the century and the Clinton era. Its satire isn't sophisticated, but it's pointed, identifiable, and still often cuttingly funny, emblematic of a tone of withering pre-millennial snark that has since been earnestly outmoded, and not for the wittier. It was never intended as straightforward drama, but as garish suburban burlesque: a distorted funhouse mirror reflection of America already at its ugliest, with its performances and petal-strewn visuals expertly heightened to match." Lodge concluded, "Twenty years on, American Beauty isn't as clever as we thought it was, though it's inadvertently aged into a kind of wounded, embattled wisdom. Perhaps it's worth looking closer".
### In popular culture
The film was spoofed by the animated sitcom Family Guy, the 2001 Todd Solondz film Storytelling, the teen movie spoof Not Another Teen Movie, and in the 2005 DreamWorks animated film Madagascar.
## Accolades
American Beauty was not considered an immediate favorite to dominate the American awards season. Several other contenders opened at the end of 1999, and US critics spread their honors among them when compiling their end-of-year lists. The Chicago Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Film Critics Association named the film the best of 1999, but while the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association recognized American Beauty, they gave their top awards to other films. By the end of the year, reports of a critical backlash suggested American Beauty was the underdog in the race for Best Picture; however, at the Golden Globe Awards in January 2000, American Beauty won Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
As the nominations for the 72nd Academy Awards approached, a frontrunner had not emerged. DreamWorks had launched a major campaign for American Beauty five weeks before ballots were due to be sent to the 5,600 Academy Award voters. Its campaign combined traditional advertising and publicity with more focused strategies. Although direct mail campaigning was prohibited, DreamWorks reached voters by promoting the film in "casual, comfortable settings" in voters' communities. The studio's candidate for Best Picture the previous year, Saving Private Ryan, lost to Shakespeare in Love, so the studio took a new approach by hiring outsiders to provide input for the campaign. It hired three veteran consultants, who told the studio to "think small".
Nancy Willen encouraged DreamWorks to produce a special about the making of American Beauty, to set up displays of the film in the communities' bookstores, and to arrange a question-and-answer session with Mendes for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Dale Olson advised the studio to advertise in free publications that circulated in Beverly Hills—home to many voters—in addition to major newspapers. Olson arranged to screen American Beauty to about 1,000 members of the Actors Fund of America, as many participating actors were also voters. Bruce Feldman took writer Alan Ball to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where Ball attended a private dinner in honor of Anthony Hopkins, meeting several voters who were in attendance.
In February 2000, American Beauty was nominated for eight Academy Awards; its closest rivals, The Cider House Rules and The Insider, received seven nominations each. In March 2000, the major industry labor organizations all awarded their top honors to American Beauty; perceptions had shifted—the film was now the favorite to dominate the Academy Awards. American Beauty's closest rival for Best Picture was still The Cider House Rules, from Miramax. Both studios mounted aggressive campaigns; DreamWorks bought 38 percent more advertising space in Variety than Miramax. On March 26, 2000, American Beauty won five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Spacey), Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
At the 53rd British Academy Film Awards, American Beauty won six of the 14 awards for which it was nominated: Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress (Bening), Best Cinematography, Best Film Music and Best Editing.
In March 2000, the Publicists Guild of America recognized DreamWorks for the best film publicity campaign.
### MTV Movie Awards controversy
In April 2000, controversy arose when the 2000 MTV Movie Awards initially nominated American Beauty for their annual award for Best Kiss between Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham and Mena Suvari as Angela Hayes. DreamWorks rejected MTV's request for a clip, stating that they did not want to glorify the "inappropriate" kiss between the characters, a 40-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl. MTV rescinded the film's nomination afterward.
### Retrospective accolades
In 2006, the Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay number 38 on its list of the 101 greatest screenplays.
|
1,195,226 |
William McGregor (football)
| 1,172,852,336 |
Scottish football administrator
|
[
"1846 births",
"1911 deaths",
"19th-century English businesspeople",
"19th-century Scottish businesspeople",
"Anglo-Scots",
"Aston Villa F.C. directors and chairmen",
"Baseball in the United Kingdom",
"English Football Hall of Fame inductees",
"English football chairmen and investors",
"Founders of association football institutions",
"Presidents of the English Football League",
"Sportspeople from Perth and Kinross"
] |
William McGregor (13 April 1846 – 20 December 1911) was a Scottish association football administrator in the Victorian era who is regarded as the founder of the Football League (now English Football League), the first organised association football league in the world.
After moving from Perthshire to Birmingham to set up business as a draper, McGregor became involved with local football club Aston Villa, which he helped to establish as one of the leading teams in England. He served the club for over 20 years in various capacities, including president, director and chairman. In 1888, frustrated by the regular cancellation of Villa's matches, McGregor organised a meeting of representatives of England's leading clubs, which led to the formation of the Football League, giving member clubs a guaranteed fixture list each season. This was instrumental in the transition of football from an amateur pastime to a professional business.
McGregor served as both chairman and president of the Football League and was also chairman of The Football Association (the FA). He was recognised by the FA for his service to the game shortly before his death in 1911, and was posthumously honoured by the local football authorities and Aston Villa.
## Personal life
Born in Braco in Perthshire, Scotland, McGregor first became interested in football after watching a match between locals and visiting artisans at Ardoch. He served an apprenticeship as a draper in Perth, and in 1870, following the example of his brother Peter, moved to Birmingham, and opened his own drapery business in Aston, an area then just outside the city. Upon his arrival in the English Midlands he became involved with a local football club, Calthorpe, which had been formed by a fellow Scot, Campbell Orr. McGregor was enthusiastic enough about the game to arrange for his shop to close early on Saturdays to allow him to watch matches, and he later sold football kits at the shop, which became a popular meeting place for football enthusiasts.
McGregor was married to Jessie, and the couple had a daughter and a son, also named Jessie and William. A teetotaller, McGregor was a supporter of the Temperance movement, and was active in the local branch of the Liberal Party until his membership lapsed in 1882 due to the increasing amount of time he devoted to football. He was involved in the early attempts to establish a baseball league in the United Kingdom, and served as the honorary treasurer of the Baseball Association of Great Britain and Ireland. Despite his commitment to sport, he held desperately on to his drapery business throughout his life.
McGregor was a committed Christian who was widely respected for his honesty and integrity. He worshipped for forty years at the Congregational church in Wheeler Street, Aston. His pastor, the Revd. W.G. Percival said that the best thing about him "was not so much the genial, kindly, honest sportsman, but the Christian behind it all". He described him as "a man of absolutely unblemished personal character".
## Association with Aston Villa
In 1877, McGregor was invited to become a committee member of Aston Villa, a football club formed three years earlier. He also umpired matches for the club. At the time the club played at Aston Park, close to the premises of McGregor's business. He became interested in joining Villa due to the strong Scottish contingent in the club's ranks, the team's exciting style of play, and the club's connection to a Wesleyan Chapel. He quickly assumed the post of club administrator, helping the impecunious club to survive its financial troubles. After some of Aston Villa's possessions were seized by bailiffs, McGregor allowed the club to use his shop as a store to prevent further seizures. Under McGregor's leadership, Aston Villa won their first trophy, the Birmingham Senior Cup, in 1880, shortly after which McGregor became the club's president.
The following year McGregor became a member of the club's board of directors. Villa's standing within the game continued to grow, and, in 1887, the club became the first from the Midlands to win the FA Cup, defeating local rivals West Bromwich Albion in the final. In 1895, McGregor became vice-chairman, and went on to become the club's chairman in 1897. During his time at the club he was noted for his organisational skills and ambition, and was responsible for adopting the lion rampant depicted on the Royal Standard of Scotland, as the club's crest.
## Founder of the Football League
As the 1880s progressed, the balance of power within English football began to change. The first national competition, the FA Cup, had previously been dominated by amateur clubs from privileged backgrounds, such as Wanderers and Old Etonians. However the 1883 FA Cup Final saw the first victory by a working-class team, Blackburn Olympic. At this time professionalism was not permitted. Clubs from urban areas in the north were strong advocates of the practice, but the southern amateur teams and the FA authorities were firmly opposed. Though not initially an advocate of professionalism, McGregor came to favour its introduction. By 1885 the issue threatened to split the FA when a group of clubs, predominantly from Lancashire, announced their intention to leave and form a rival British Football Association if professionalism was not accepted. An emergency FA conference was called in response. Representing Aston Villa, McGregor spoke in favour of professionalism, the only delegate from the Midlands to do so, and was one of the few delegates to admit that his club had been paying players. Though not as outspoken as stronger proponents, such as Preston North End's William Sudell, McGregor was well respected. The conference ended with the FA accepting professionalism, although each club was permitted only to pay players who had been born or lived for at least two years within six miles of its home stadium.
Professionalism brought fresh complications for club administrators. Many friendlies were cancelled due to opponents' FA Cup or county cup matches taking precedence or clubs simply failing to honour a fixture in favour of a more lucrative match elsewhere. This made it hard for the clubs to pay players' wages on a regular basis. McGregor took action after seeing Villa matches cancelled, to the increasing frustration of the club's fans, on five consecutive Saturdays. On 2 March 1888, he wrote to the committee of his own club, Aston Villa, as well as to those of Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Preston North End and West Bromwich Albion, suggesting the creation of a league competition that would provide a number of guaranteed fixtures for its member clubs each season. Corinthian F.C. founder Nicholas Lane Jackson, writing in 1899, stated that McGregor took his inspiration from the existing league set-up used in American baseball, although McGregor himself cited the County Cricket Championship as his inspiration. McGregor's letter to the clubs read:
> Every year it is becoming more and more difficult for football clubs of any standing to meet their friendly engagements and even arrange friendly matches. The consequence is that at the last moment, through cup-tie interference, clubs are compelled to take on teams who will not attract the public.
> I beg to tender the following suggestion as a means of getting over the difficulty: that ten or twelve of the most prominent clubs in England combine to arrange home-and-away fixtures each season, the said fixtures to be arranged at a friendly conference about the same time as the International Conference.
> This combination might be known as the Association Football Union, and could be managed by representative from each club. Of course, this is in no way to interfere with the National Association; even the suggested matches might be played under cup-tie rules. However, this is a detail.
> My object in writing to you at present is merely to draw your attention to the subject, and to suggest a friendly conference to discuss the matter more fully. I would take it as a favour if you would kindly think the matter over, and make whatever suggestions you deem necessary. I am only writing to the following – Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Preston North End, West Bromwich Albion, and Aston Villa, and would like to hear what other clubs you would suggest.
> I am, yours very truly, William McGregor (Aston Villa F.C.)
> P.S. How would Friday, 23 March 1888, suit for the friendly conference at Anderton's Hotel, London?
McGregor chose 23 March as the date of his proposed meeting because it was the day before the FA Cup final and representatives of the country's top clubs would be in London. Representatives from ten clubs attended, including the FA Cup finalists West Bromwich Albion and Preston North End, but it quickly became clear that clubs from the South of England were not interested in McGregor's proposal and none attended. A second meeting was held in Manchester on 17 April, and details concerning the new competition were finalised. McGregor's suggested name for the competition, "The Association Football Union" was rejected as too similar to that of the Rugby Football Union and "The Football League" was chosen, despite McGregor's opposition on the grounds that he felt it might invoke associations with the unpopular Irish Land League. The term English League was avoided, to leave the possibility of future applications from Scottish clubs. McGregor also proposed a rule that only one club from each town should be included. The other founders agreed to this rule, which caused controversy, as it meant Birmingham team Mitchell St. George's were denied membership in favour of McGregor's Aston Villa. Twelve clubs kicked off the first season of League football in September 1888.
McGregor served as the first chairman of the League's Management Committee. One of the committee's main jobs was handling issues of discipline, but committee members were not barred from involvement in decisions involving their own clubs. In fact, the first disciplinary meeting saw fines issued to three of the four clubs with representatives on the committee. McGregor was re-elected unopposed in 1891. Earlier he had spoken of his pleasure that "of the 132 matches in which the League clubs have taken part and in which about 300 players have taken the field, not a single fatal accident has to be recorded". A year later he oversaw the expansion of the Football League into two divisions when the rival Football Alliance was merged into the competition, but he relinquished his post later that year due to ill health, which caused him to miss meetings.
After stepping down as chairman, he was unanimously elected to an honorary position of president, a role he kept until 1894, and was named the first-ever life member of the League in 1895. The role was that of a figurehead with little actual authority, but he was used as a mediator to resolve league disagreements. In the second half of the decade McGregor's failure to attend many committee meetings led to criticism from John Bentley, his successor as president. Bentley's criticism achieved the desired effect; from 1899 until his health deteriorated in 1910, McGregor seldom missed a meeting. During this period McGregor was noted for his reserved nature. He was silent for large parts of committee meetings, but would contribute enthusiastically on the occasions he felt his input was necessary.
## Other football activities
Between 1888 and 1894 McGregor also served as chairman of The Football Association (the FA), English football's overall governing body, which had existed since 1863. He became known as a football celebrity, writing a weekly column for the Birmingham Gazette and endorsing products such as footballs, and a type of football boot which the manufacturer billed as the "McGregor lace-to-toe boot". Though he held many different administrative posts in his lifetime, McGregor never played the sport competitively; his only on-pitch involvement was occasional goalkeeping during Aston Villa practices in the 1870s.
## Baseball
In 1890 McGregor was appointed President of the Aston Villa baseball club, for the upcoming professional 1890 National League of Baseball of Great Britain.
## Death and legacy
Although McGregor envisaged the League as a friendly union, within which clubs would share ticket revenues and work together in their mutual best interests, the immediate effect of its creation was that football came to be treated as a business for the first time, as opposed to something that players and officials simply regarded as a pastime. All the clubs involved experienced significant increases in their turnover, which at Aston Villa, McGregor's own club, increased more than sixfold between 1889 and 1899. The wages paid to players, however, remained low due to restrictions imposed by the FA, so clubs were able to use their increased profitability to build larger stadiums and accommodate ever larger crowds of spectators. Although the League initially contained a small number of clubs, all of which were based in the northern half of the country, by the early years of the twentieth century it included clubs from all parts of England. At its peak nearly 100 clubs played in the Football League, and it remained the pre-eminent competition in English football until the 1990s, when the top clubs broke away to form the Premier League. In keeping with McGregor's views on mutual support and co-operation, gate receipts were shared amongst the clubs until the 1980s, which helped to ensure that a select few wealthy clubs were not able to dominate the competition. McGregor himself had little interest in the business aspect of football, and was adamant that the Football League should not challenge the longstanding authority of the FA. The success of the Football League directly inspired the creation of similar competitions in other countries, beginning with Scotland, where the Scottish Football League was formed in 1890.
In May 1910, McGregor was taken ill and later confined to a nursing home. His condition worsened towards the end of 1911. His last public appearance was a committee meeting on 4 December, and he underwent an operation on 19 December. However, after a brief improvement in his condition he relapsed and died the following day. Although a devout Congregationalist, he is buried in the grounds of a Church of England church, St. Mary's, in the Handsworth district of Birmingham, alongside his wife, who died in 1908. McGregor is remembered as the "father of The Football League", an Aston Villa legend, and a legend of football in general.
Shortly before his death, the FA presented McGregor, who was at that time a vice-president of the association, with a long service medal. After his death, Aston Villa dedicated a bed in the children's ward of one of Birmingham's hospitals in his honour, and the Birmingham County Football Association unveiled a commemorative drinking fountain, which is now preserved at Villa Park, current home of his former club. In the modern era, Aston Villa selected him as one of the twelve inaugural members of its Hall of Fame, and named a hospitality suite at Villa Park after him. In 2008, the Aston Villa Supporters' Trust announced plans to further honour him with a bronze statue outside the stadium. The statue, by sculptor Sam Holland, is displayed outside the Directors' Entrance of the Trinity Road Stand, and was unveiled on 28 November 2009. The Trust also raised £1,000 to restore and rededicate McGregor's grave in 2011.
|
29,079,065 |
Armed Forces Special Weapons Project
| 1,169,008,470 |
U.S. nuclear weapons agency until 1947
|
[
"1947 establishments in the United States",
"1959 disestablishments in the United States",
"Defunct organizations based in Washington, D.C.",
"Government agencies established in 1947",
"Nuclear history of the United States",
"Nuclear weapons program of the United States"
] |
The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) was a United States military agency responsible for those aspects of nuclear weapons remaining under military control after the Manhattan Project was succeeded by the Atomic Energy Commission on 1 January 1947. These responsibilities included the maintenance, storage, surveillance, security and handling of nuclear weapons, as well as supporting nuclear testing. The AFSWP was a joint organization, staffed by the United States Army, United States Navy and United States Air Force; its chief was supported by deputies from the other two services. Major General Leslie R. Groves, the former head of the Manhattan Project, was its first chief.
The early nuclear weapons were large, complex, and cumbersome. They were stored as components rather than complete devices and required expert knowledge to assemble. The short life of their lead-acid batteries and modulated neutron initiators, and the heat generated by the fissile cores, precluded storing them assembled. The large quantity of conventional explosive in each weapon demanded special care be taken in handling. Groves hand-picked a team of regular Army officers, who were trained in the assembly and handling of the weapons. They in turn trained the enlisted soldiers, and the Army teams then trained teams from the Navy and Air Force.
As nuclear weapons development proceeded, the weapons became mass-produced, smaller, lighter, and easier to store, handle, and maintain. They also required less effort to assemble. The AFSWP gradually shifted its emphasis away from training assembly teams, and became more involved in stockpile management and providing administrative, technical, and logistical support. It supported nuclear weapons testing, although after Operation Sandstone in 1948, this was increasingly in a planning and training capacity rather than a field role. In 1959, the AFSWP became the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA), a field agency of the Department of Defense.
## Origins
Nuclear weapons were developed during World War II by the Manhattan Project, a major research and development effort led by the United States, with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, it was under the direction of Major General Leslie R. Groves Jr., of the US Army Corps of Engineers. It created a network of production facilities, most notably for uranium enrichment at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plutonium production at Hanford, Washington, and weapons research and design at the Los Alamos Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The nuclear weapons that were developed were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
After the war ended, the Manhattan Project supported the nuclear weapons testing at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads in 1946. One of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal's aides, Lewis Strauss, proposed this series of tests to refute "loose talk to the effect that the fleet is obsolete in the face of this new weapon". The nuclear weapons were handmade devices, and a great deal of work remained to improve their ease of assembly, safety, reliability and storage before they were ready for production. There were also many improvements to their performance that had been suggested or recommended, but not possible under the pressure of wartime development.
Groves's biggest concern was about people. Soldiers and scientists wanted to return to their peacetime pursuits, and there was a danger that wartime knowledge would be lost, leaving no one who knew how to handle and maintain nuclear weapons, much less how to improve the weapons and processes. The military side of the Manhattan Project had relied heavily on reservists, as the policy of the Corps of Engineers was to assign regular officers to field commands. The reservists were now eligible for separation. To replace them, Groves asked for fifty West Point graduates from the top ten percent of their classes to man bomb-assembly teams at Sandia Base, where the assembly staff and facilities had been moved from Los Alamos and Wendover Field in September and October 1945. He felt that only such high-quality personnel would be able to work with the scientists who were currently doing the job. They were also urgently required for many other jobs in the postwar Army. When General Thomas T. Handy turned down his request, Groves raised the matter with the Chief of Staff of the Army, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, who similarly did not approve it. Groves then went over his head too, and took the issue to the Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson, who agreed with Groves. The personnel manned the 2761st Engineer Battalion (Special), which became a field unit under the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP).
Groves hoped a new, permanent agency would be created to take over the responsibilities of the wartime Manhattan Project in 1945, but passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 through Congress took much longer than expected, and involved considerable debate about the proper role of the military with respect to the development, production and control of nuclear weapons. The act that was signed by President Harry S. Truman on 1 August 1946 created a civilian agency, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), to take over the functions and assets of the Manhattan Project, but the commissioners were not appointed until October, and AEC did not assume its role until 1 January 1947. In the meantime, the Military Appropriation Act of 1946 gave the Manhattan Project \$72.4 million for research and development, and \$19 million for housing and utilities at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.
The Atomic Energy Act provided for a Military Liaison Committee to advise the AEC on military matters, so Patterson appointed Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton, who became chairman, along with Major General Lunsford E. Oliver and Colonel John H. Hinds as Army members of the Military Liaison Committee; Forrestal appointed Rear Admirals Thorvald A. Solberg, Ralph A. Ofstie and William S. Parsons as its naval members.
## Organization
Patterson asked Groves to create a new agency to take over responsibility for the aspects of nuclear weapons that still remained under the military. It was to be jointly staffed by the Army and Navy, and on 29 January 1947, Patterson and Forrestal issued a memorandum that formally established the AFSWP. Its chief would be appointed jointly by the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chief of Naval Operations, along with a deputy from the opposite service. Both would be members of the Military Liaison Committee, because the Atomic Energy Act stipulated that the Military Liaison Committee was the sole military body that dealt with the AEC. In February 1947, Eisenhower and Chief of Naval Operations Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz appointed Groves as head of the AFSWP, with Parsons as his deputy. Accordingly, Groves was appointed to the Military Liaison Committee, although the newly appointed AEC chairman, David E. Lilienthal, told Patterson he did not think it was a good idea, because Groves had run the Manhattan Project by himself for four years, and was not used to having to compromise.
Groves and Parsons drafted a proposed organization and charter for the AFSWP, which they sent to Eisenhower and Nimitz for approval in July 1947. Groves did not get everything he asked for; he wanted a status equal to that of a deputy to the Chief of Staff and Chief of Naval Operations, but the most Eisenhower and Nimitz would allow was a status equal to that of the heads of a technical service, although Groves still reported directly to them. They also characterized his role as a staff post rather than a command, although Groves was already exercising the functions of a commander at Sandia. After the National Security Act of 1947 created an independent Air Force, Groves reported to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force as well, and was given a second deputy chief from the Air Force, Major General Roscoe C. Wilson, who had worked on the Silverplate project during the war.
Groves initially established the headquarters of the AFSWP in the old offices of the Manhattan Project on the fifth floor of the New War Department Building in Washington, DC, but on 15 April 1947 it moved to the Pentagon. As AFSWP headquarters expanded, it filled up its original accommodation, and began using office space in other parts of the building, which was not satisfactory from a security point of view. In August 1949, it moved to 18,000 square feet (1,700 m<sup>2</sup>) of new offices inside the Pentagon. This included space for a soundproof conference room, a darkroom, and vaults where its records and films were stored.
The 2761st Engineer Battalion (Special) at Sandia was commanded by Colonel Gilbert M. Dorland, and consisted of a headquarters company, a security company (Company A), a bomb assembly company (Company B) and a radiological monitoring company (Company C), although Company C was never fully formed. For training purposes, Company B was initially divided into command, electrical, mechanical and nuclear groups, but the intention was to create three integrated 36-man bomb assembly teams.
To free the bomb assembly teams from having to train newcomers, a Technical Training Group (TTG) was created under Lieutenant Colonel John A. Ord, a Signal Corps officer with a Doctor of Science degree from Carnegie Institute of Technology who had directed the training of thousands of radar technicians at the Southern Signal Corps School during the war. The battalion was redesignated the 38th Engineer Battalion (Special) in April 1947, and in July it became part of the newly created AFSWP Field Command, under the command of Brigadier General Robert M. Montague. The TTG was soon reporting directly to Montague as well.
The first bomb assembly team was formed in August 1947, followed by a second in December and a third in March 1948. Experience with assembling the bombs convincingly demonstrated the requirement, in Sandia if not in Washington, for a much larger unit. Groves reluctantly approved a 109-man special weapons unit, and Montague converted the three lettered companies of the 38th Engineer Battalion into special weapons units. In 1948, they began training a Navy special weapons unit, as the Navy foresaw delivery of nuclear weapons with its new North American AJ Savage bombers from its Midway-class aircraft carriers. This unit became the 471st Naval Special Weapons Unit on its certification in August 1948. Two Air Force units were created in September and December 1948, which became the 502d and 508th Aviation Squadrons. An additional Army special weapons unit was created in May 1948, and in December, the 38th Engineer Battalion (Special) became the 8460th Special Weapons Group, with all seven special weapons units under its command. The four Army units were then renamed the 111th, 122d, 133d and 144th Special Weapons Units. During the late 1940s the Air Force gradually became the major user of nuclear weapons, and by the end of 1949 it had twelve assembly units and another three in training. The Army had only four and the Navy three, one for each of the Midway-class aircraft carriers.
In March 1948, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Carl Spaatz, proposed that the Air Force take over the AFSWP, on the grounds that the Key West Agreement had given it responsibility for strategic bombing. This would have simplified command of the AFSWP, as it would have been answerable to only one service chief instead of three. The Army cautiously supported the proposal, but the Navy was strongly opposed, fearing that the Air Force's confusion of atomic bombing and strategic bombing would impede or even prevent the Navy from having access to nuclear weapons, which it felt was necessary to accomplish its primary maritime mission. Another series of talks was held at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, from 20 to 22 August 1948, which resulted in the Newport Agreement, under which the Navy agreed to drop its opposition to the AFSWP being placed under the Air Force temporarily, in return for the Air Force recognizing the Navy's requirement for nuclear weapons. When the Air Force moved to make the temporary arrangement permanent in September 1948, the Army and Navy objected, and the Military Liaison Committee directed that the AFSWP should remain a tri-service organization answerable to the three service chiefs.
## Field operations
Groves and the wartime director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Robert Oppenheimer, had begun the move of ordnance functions to Sandia in late 1945. The laboratory's ordnance-engineering division, known as Z Division, after its first director, Jerrold R. Zacharias, was split between Los Alamos and Sandia. Between March and July 1946, Z Division relocated to Sandia, except for its mechanical engineering (Z-4) section, which followed in February 1947. Z Division worked on improving the mechanical and electrical reliability of the Mark 3 Fat Man bomb, but this work was disrupted by the Crossroads tests.
The 1947 nuclear stockpile consisted of nuclear weapons components, not weapons. Meeting with Truman in April 1947, Lilienthal informed him that not only were there no assembled weapons, there were only a few sets of components and no fully trained bomb-assembly teams. By August 1946, Sandia Base held electrical and mechanical assemblies for about 50 Fat Man bombs, but there were only nine fissile cores in storage. The stockpile of cores grew to 13 in 1947, and 53 in 1948. Oppenheimer noted that the bombs were "still largely the haywire contraptions that were slapped together in 1945". With a half-life of only 140 days, the polonium-beryllium modulated neutron initiators had to be periodically removed from the plutonium pits, tested, and, if necessary, replaced. The cores had to be stored separately from the high-explosive blocks that would surround them in the bomb because they generated enough heat to melt the plastic explosive over time. The heat could also affect the cores themselves, provoking a phase transition to a different allotrope of plutonium. They had to be periodically inspected by technicians wearing gloves and respirators. The bomb's electrical power for its radar fuzes and detonators came from a pair of lead-acid batteries similar to those used in cars. These had to be charged 24 hours before use. After a few days the bomb had to be partially disassembled so they could be re-charged (and, only three days after that, replaced).
The 38th Engineer Battalion's electrical group studied the batteries, the electrical firing systems and the radar fuzes which detonated the bomb at the required altitude. The mechanical group dealt with the exploding-bridgewire detonators and the explosive lenses. The nuclear group moved to Los Alamos to study the cores and initiators. As part of their training, they attended lectures by Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Lise Meitner and Enrico Fermi. The electrical and mechanical groups at Sandia, although not the nuclear group, completed their training around the end of October 1946 and spent the next month devising the best methods of assembling a Fat Man, drawing up detailed checklists so later bomb assembly teams could be trained. They also drew up a proposed table of organization and equipment for an assembly team. It took two weeks for them to assemble their first bomb in December 1946.
Most of 1947 was spent planning for a field exercise in which a bomb team would deploy to a base and assemble weapons under field conditions. A 20-foot (6.1 m) by 100-foot (30 m) portable building was acquired and outfitted as field workshops that could be loaded onto a C-54 or C-97 transport aircraft. In November 1947, the 38th Engineer Battalion carried out its first major field exercise, Operation Ajax. It drew bomb components, except for fissile cores, from the AEC, and deployed by air to Wendover Field, Utah. This was the home of the 509th Bombardment Group, which was the only unit operating Silverplate B-29 bombers, and therefore the only B-29 group capable of delivering nuclear weapons. To simulate operational conditions, they took a roundabout route via New England and Seattle. Over the following ten days, they assembled bombs and flew training missions with them, including a live drop at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at Inyokern, California.
This was followed by other exercises. In one exercise in March 1948, the base personnel successfully fought off an "attack" by 250 paratroopers from Fort Hood, Texas. In another exercise in November 1948, the 471st Special Weapons Unit flew to Norfolk, Virginia, and practiced bomb assembly on board the Midway-class aircraft carriers.
## Nuclear testing
In addition to assembly of weapons, the AFSWP supported nuclear weapons testing. For Operation Sandstone in 1948, Groves ordered Dorland to fill every possible job with his men. He did this so well that Strauss, now an AEC commissioner, became disturbed at the number of AFSWP personnel who were participating, and feared that the Soviet Union might launch a sneak attack on Enewetak to wipe out the nation's ability to assemble nuclear weapons. The successful testing in Operation Sandstone was a major leap forward. The new Mark 4 nuclear bomb the AEC began delivering in 1949 was a production design that was much easier to assemble and maintain, and enabled a bomb-assembly team to be reduced to just 46 men. Kenneth D. Nichols, the wartime commander of the Manhattan District, now "recommended that we should be thinking in terms of thousands of weapons rather than hundreds".
After Operation Sandstone, only relatively small numbers of AFSWP personnel were involved in nuclear testing. The AFSWP was heavily involved in the planning, preparation and coordination of tests, but it had limited participation in the tests themselves, where the bomb-assembly function was usually undertaken by scientists. During Operation Buster-Jangle, AFSWP personnel showed films and gave lectures to 2,800 military personnel who had been selected to witness the test, explaining what would occur and the procedures to be followed. This was expanded to cater for the more than 7,000 personnel who were involved in Operation Upshot–Knothole in 1953.
## Custody of nuclear weapons
When the AEC was formed in 1947 it acquired custody of nuclear components from the Manhattan Project on the understanding that the matter would be reviewed. In November 1947, the Military Liaison Committee requested that custody of the nuclear stockpile be transferred to the military, but Lilienthal believed AEC custody of the stockpile was an important aspect of civilian control of nuclear weapons. He was disturbed that the AFSWP had not informed the AEC in advance of Operation Ajax. For his part, Groves suspected the AEC was not keeping bomb components in the condition in which the military wanted to receive them, and Operation Ajax only confirmed his suspicions. Reviewing the exercise, Montague reported that "under the existing law, with the AEC charged with procurement and custody of all atomic weapons, there was no adequate logistic support for the weapon." He recommended a larger role for the military, a recommendation with which Groves concurred, but was powerless to implement.
Groves retired at the end of February 1948, and Nichols was designated as his successor with the rank of major general. At the same time, Forrestal, now the Secretary of Defense, reorganized the Military Liaison Committee. A civilian, Donald F. Carpenter, replaced Brereton as chairman, and there were now two members from each of the three services. On 11 March, Truman summoned Lilienthal, Nichols and Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall to his office, and told them he expected the AFSWP and the AEC to cooperate.
Nichols's position was the same as Groves's and Montague's: that nuclear weapons needed to be available in an emergency, and the men who had to use them in battle needed to have experience with their maintenance, storage and handling. Norris Bradbury, who had replaced Oppenheimer as the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in December 1945, argued that rapid transfer could be accomplished by improved procedures and that the other difficulties could best be resolved by further development, mostly from the scientists. Forrestal and Carpenter took the matter up with Truman, who issued his decision on 21 July 1948: "I regard the continued control of all aspects of the atomic energy program, including research, development and the custody of atomic weapons as the proper functions of the civil authorities."
With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, air transport resources were put under great strain, and it was decided to reduce the requirement for it by pre-positioning non-nuclear components at locations in Europe and the Pacific. That way, in an emergency, only the nuclear components would have to be flown out. In June, Truman ordered the transfer of 90 sets of non-nuclear Mark 4 components to the AFSWP for training purposes. In December, he authorized the carriage of non-nuclear components on board the Midway-class carriers. In April 1951, the AEC released nine Mark 4 weapons to the Air Force in case the Soviet Union intervened in the war in Korea. These were flown to Guam, where they were maintained by the Air Force special weapons unit there. Thus, at the end of 1951, there were 429 weapons in AEC custody and nine held by the Department of Defense.
In the light of this, a new AEC-AFSWP agreement on "Responsibilities of Stockpile Operations" was drawn up in August 1951, but in December, the Joint Chiefs of Staff began a new push for weapons to be permanently assigned to the armed forces, so as to ensure a greater degree of flexibility and a higher state of readiness. On 20 June 1953, Eisenhower, now as president, approved the deployment of nuclear components in equal numbers to non-nuclear components, and the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 amended the sections of the old act that gave exclusive custody to the AEC. By 1959, the nuclear stockpile had grown to 12,305 weapons of which 3,968 were in AEC custody and the remaining 8,337 were held by the Department of Defense. The total yield of the stockpile was now in excess of 19,000 megatons of TNT (79,000 PJ).
As Bradbury had promised, with research and development, nuclear weapons became smaller, simpler and lighter. They also became easier to store, assemble, test and maintain. Thus, while under Eisenhower's New Look policy the Armed Forces became more heavily involved with aspects of nuclear weapons than ever, the role of the AFSWP diminished. It began moving away from training assembly teams, which were increasingly not required, as its primary mission, and became more involved in the management of the rapidly growing nuclear stockpile, and providing technical advice and logistical support. In 1953, the AFSWP Field Command had 10,250 personnel. On 16 October 1953, the Secretary of Defense charged the AFSWP with responsibility for "a centralized system of reporting and accounting to ensure that the current status and location" of all nuclear weapons "will be known at all times". The Atomic Warfare Status Center was created within the AFSWP to handle this mission.
## Conversion to Defense Atomic Support Agency
In April 1958, Eisenhower asked Congress for legislation to overhaul the Department of Defense. Over a decade had passed since the legislation which had established it, and he was concerned about the degree of inter-service rivalry, duplication and mismanagement that was evident in many programs. In ballistic missile development, the Soviet Sputnik program had demonstrated that country's technological lead over the United States. The Army and Air Force had rival programs, PGM-19 Jupiter and PGM-17 Thor respectively, and the additional cost to the taxpayers of developing two systems instead of one was estimated at \$500 million.
The Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 was signed by Eisenhower in August 1958. It increased the authority of the Secretary of Defense, who was authorized to establish such defense agencies as he thought necessary "to provide for more effective, efficient and economical administration and operation". The first field agency established under the act was the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA). The new agency reported to the Secretary of Defense through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was given responsibility for the supervision of all Department of Defense nuclear sites. Otherwise, Top Secret military expeditionary installations such as Sandia Base, Manzano Base, Bossier Base Clarksville Base, Killeen Base and Lake Mead Base to name a few, its role and organization remained much the same, and its commander, Rear Admiral Edward N. Parker, remained as its first director. Eisenhower's proposed nuclear testing moratorium ultimately fundamentally changed DASA's mission, as nuclear testing was phased out, Cold War tensions eased, and nuclear disarmament became a prospect.
|
17,908,134 |
1894–95 New Brompton F.C. season
| 1,165,013,406 | null |
[
"English football clubs 1894–95 season",
"Gillingham F.C. seasons"
] |
During the 1894–95 English football season, New Brompton F.C. (since 1912 called Gillingham F.C.) competed in the Southern Football League Division Two. It was the first season in which the team took part in a league competition. The club had been formed a year earlier but in its inaugural season played only friendly matches and games in the qualifying rounds of the FA Cup and FA Amateur Cup. In 1894, New Brompton turned professional and joined the newly-formed Southern League. The team dominated Division Two of the new league, winning all but one of their matches, and gained promotion to Division One by winning an end-of-season "test match" against Swindon Town, who had finished bottom of the higher division.
New Brompton also entered the FA Cup, reaching the third qualifying round. The team played 15 competitive matches, winning 13, drawing none, and losing two. Arthur Rule was the team's top goalscorer; he scored 18 goals in the regular league season and 4 in the test match. Harry Buckland and Alf Meager made the most appearances, playing in every match. The highest attendance recorded at the club's home, the Athletic Ground, was approximately 8,000 for the visit of near-neighbours Chatham in the FA Cup.
## Background and pre-season
The New Brompton club was formed in May 1893 by local businessmen keen to organise a club which could compete in national competitions. During the 1893–94 season, New Brompton entered the FA Cup and FA Amateur Cup, being eliminated in the qualifying rounds of both competitions, and played many friendly matches.
The Southern League was formed in 1894 by many leading clubs in the south of England, at a time when the ostensibly national Football League included only one club outside of the midlands and north. Keen to secure a regular schedule of high-quality matches, the New Brompton committee, led by chairman H.G. Croneen, applied to join the new league. The club was invited to join and allocated a place in Division Two, the lower of the league's two divisions, because near-neighbours Chatham had already been placed in Division One. Days earlier, New Brompton had switched from amateur to professional status, with the players to be paid 12 shillings per match (equivalent to £73 in 2021).
Many players from the previous season agreed to professional terms and remained. The club also signed Joe Dickenson, a player born in Chatham, who had last played for Bolton Wanderers of the Football League First Division and been in the Bolton team which lost to Notts County in the 1894 FA Cup final. The concept of a manager did not yet exist; significant team decisions were made by the committee or by David Hutcheson, the team captain, and the club employed a trainer called Murray. The players wore black and white striped shirts and black shorts. Ahead of the new season, New Brompton played a friendly against Barking Swifts and won 17–0; more than a century later this remained the highest score ever achieved in any match by the club. New Brompton were seen as strong contenders for the championship of the division: a writer for the Middlesex and Buckinghamshire Advertiser stated that "according to some who profess to speak with authority, the Bromptonians are likely to be at the head of the Leagueists."
## Southern League
New Brompton's first Southern League game was away to Sheppey United on 15 September 1894. In front of approximately 3,000 spectators, New Brompton were forced to begin with only ten players as goalkeeper A. Russell failed to arrive. The team played with no goalkeeper for around ten minutes until the forward Alf Jenner assumed the position and a reserve player took to the field. New Brompton emerged victorious by a score of 6–0, Hutcheson scoring a hat-trick. The first game at New Brompton's home, the Athletic Ground, took place a week later and resulted in a 4–0 victory over Uxbridge, who played the whole game with only ten men.
League play did not resume until 1 December, when New Brompton played Old St Stephen's; Fred Manning and Arthur Rule each scored twice in a 5–2 win described by the Chesham Examiner as "easy". In the team's final game of the calendar year, they won 7–2 away to Chesham. A. Webb made his only competitive appearance for the team and scored a hat-trick. On 19 January, half-back L. Watson made his debut in the game at home to Maidenhead, having been signed by the club after he impressed them with his performance in an inter-county match between teams representing Kent and Sussex. W. Thomas also made his debut and scored one of the goals. A week later, New Brompton defeated Sheppey 3–1 at home to maintain their record of having won every league game. The Athletic News reported that Sheppey had their goalkeeper to thank for keeping the margin of the defeat down. The writer noted that Russell, New Brompton's goalkeeper, was "almost a spectator".
New Brompton's run of victories continued with wins away to Maidenhead and Uxbridge, both without conceding a goal. The team scored two goals in the latter game, the fewest they had yet achieved in a Southern League match, and an Uxbridge newspaper reporter wrote that he had heard that the New Brompton players "admitted that it was the toughest fight they have had in the League tournament". New Brompton's only league defeat of the season came on 9 March when they lost 3–1 at home to Bromley. Athletic News columnist "Grasshopper" attributed the defeat to "the deplorable state of the ground". Dickenson was absent from the team for the only time during the season. Two weeks later the teams met again at Bromley's ground and New Brompton won 3–2 in what the East Kent Gazette described as a "keen struggle".
The team's final two games of the regular league season took place on consecutive days. On 12 April, they beat Old St Stephen's 6–0 away from home; Rule scored three of the goals, the team's third Southern League hat-trick of the season. The following day New Brompton played Chesham at home and won 9–0; Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper reported that the team "simply made rings round their opposition". Rule scored five goals to take his total for the league season to 18. New Brompton finished the season with 11 wins in 12 games; their total of 57 goals was more than twice that achieved by any other team in the division. Rule alone scored more goals than the entire team of fourth-placed Uxbridge.
### League match details
Key
- In result column, New Brompton's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- o.g. = Own goal
### Partial league table
### Test match
Although New Brompton finished top of Division Two, this did not guarantee promotion to Division One. Instead, the team were required to play a "test match" against Swindon Town, who had finished bottom of Division One, the winners of which would play in the higher division in the subsequent season. The match was played at a neutral venue in Caversham, near Reading, two weeks after the regular season's final game. Rule scored four times as New Brompton won 5–1 to gain promotion. The Southern League ultimately expanded Division One from nine teams to ten for the subsequent season, so Swindon retained their place despite losing the match.
#### Test match details
Key
- In result column, New Brompton's score shown first
- N = Match played at neutral venue
## FA Cup
Having received a bye in the first qualifying round, New Brompton entered the 1894–95 FA Cup at the second qualifying round stage and were paired with Chatham of the Southern League Division One. The match drew approximately 8,000 fans, the largest recorded attendance to date at the Athletic Ground. Dickenson scored a hat-trick in a 3–0 win for the home team; as New Brompton had been eliminated at the earliest stage in the previous season's FA Cup, this was the club's first victory in the competition. In the third qualifying round, New Brompton faced another Southern League Division One team, Millwall Athletic. Although New Brompton had beaten Millwall in a friendly earlier in the year, they lost the cup game 2–0 and were eliminated from the competition.
### FA Cup match details
Key
- In result column, New Brompton's score shown first
- H = Home match
## Players
During the season, 18 players made at least one competitive appearance for New Brompton. Harry Buckland and Alf Meager made the most, playing in all 15 games. Dickenson, Hutcheson, Dan Pellatt and A. Ashdown each missed one game. Webb and R. Read made the fewest appearances; each played his only match for New Brompton's first team during the season. Rule's 22 goals made him the team's top scorer; Hutcheson had the second highest total, with 13.
## Aftermath
Leading goalscorer Rule did not play for New Brompton again after the 1894–95 season; Dickenson also left, although he would briefly return in 1903. In their first season in Division One, the team finished 6th out of 10 clubs. The club, which changed its name to Gillingham in 1912, remained in this division until 1920, when the Southern League Division One was incorporated in its entirety into the Football League to form its new Third Division.
|
30,236,272 |
Rochester Castle
| 1,168,287,914 |
Well preserved 12th century castle in Rochester, Kent, South East England
|
[
"Buildings and structures completed in 1127",
"Castles in Kent",
"English Heritage sites in Kent",
"Grade I listed buildings in Kent",
"Grade I listed castles",
"Reportedly haunted locations in South East England",
"Rochester, Kent",
"Ruins in Kent",
"Scheduled monuments in Kent"
] |
Rochester Castle stands on the east bank of the River Medway in Rochester, Kent, South East England. The 12th-century keep or stone tower, which is the castle's most prominent feature, is one of the best preserved in England or France.
Situated on the River Medway and Watling Street, Rochester was a strategically important royal castle. During the late medieval period it helped protect England's south-east coast from invasion. The first castle at Rochester was founded in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. It was given to Bishop Odo, probably by his half-brother William the Conqueror. During the Rebellion of 1088 over the succession to the English throne, Odo supported Robert Curthose, the Conqueror's eldest son, against William Rufus. It was during this conflict that the castle first saw military action; the city and castle were besieged after Odo made Rochester a headquarters for the rebellion. After the garrison capitulated, this first castle was abandoned.
Between 1087 and 1089, Rufus asked Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, to build a new stone castle at Rochester. He established the current extent of the castle. Though much altered through the centuries, some parts of Gundulf's work survive. In 1127 King Henry I granted the castle to the Archbishop of Canterbury in perpetuity. William de Corbeil built the massive keep that still dominates the castle today. Throughout the 12th century the castle remained in the custody of the archbishops.
During the First Barons' War (1215–1217) in King John's reign, baronial forces captured the castle from Archbishop Stephen Langton and held it against the king, who then besieged it. The Barnwell chronicler remarked "Our age has not known a siege so hard pressed nor so strongly resisted". After resisting for just over seven weeks, the garrison surrendered. The castle had been greatly damaged, with breaches in the outer walls and one corner of the keep collapsed, and hunger eventually forced the defenders' hand. The castle did not stay under John's control for long: in 1216 it was captured by the French Prince Louis, who was the new leader of the baronial faction. John died and was succeeded by his son King Henry III in 1216; the next year, the war ended and the castle was taken under direct royal control.
Rochester was besieged for the third time in 1264 during the Second Barons' War (1264–1267). The castle's royal constable, Roger de Leybourne, held Rochester in support of Henry III. Rebel armies led by Simon de Montfort and Gilbert de Clare entered the city and set about trying to capture the castle. Again the castle's defenders resisted, this time with a different outcome. After a week, the rebel armies raised the siege in the face of relief from Henry himself. The garrison did not surrender, and the castle suffered extensive damage that was not repaired until the following century. The castle saw military action for the last time in 1381 when it was captured and ransacked during the Peasants' Revolt. As Rochester Castle fell out of use its materials were reused elsewhere and custodianship relinquished by the Crown. The castle and its grounds were opened to the public in the 1870s as a park. At various points during the 19th and 20th centuries repairs were carried out. The castle is protected as a Grade I listed building and Scheduled Monument. Today the ruins are in the guardianship of English Heritage and open to the public.
## Early history
Castles were introduced to England by the Normans in the 11th century and their construction, in the wake of the conquest of 1066, helped the Normans secure their new territory. Rochester was an important city, built on the site of a Roman town at the junction of the River Medway and Watling Street, a Roman road. It has long been assumed that the first castle was located next to the river, just outside the south-west corner of the town walls. The conjectural site of the early castle later became known as "Boley Hill". Archaeologist Tom McNeill has suggested that these earliest castles in England may have been purely military in character, built to contain a large number of troops in hostile territory.
According to the Domesday Book of 1086, the Bishop of Rochester was given land valued at 17s 4d in Aylesford, Kent, in compensation for land that became the site of Rochester Castle. Of the 48 castles mentioned in the survey, Rochester is the only one for which property-owners were reimbursed when their land was taken to build the castle. From the 11th century the castle-guard was a feudal obligation in England. This often took the form of knights garrisoning castles for their lords for a set period. There is no comprehensive list of which castles were owed service in this form, but military historian Cathcart King notes that they seem to have been predominantly high-status castles. Rochester's castle-guard consisted of 60 knights' fees, marking it as a particularly important fortification.
It was probably William the Conqueror who gave the city and its castle to Bishop Odo of Bayeux, the king's half brother. On William's death in September 1087 his territories were divided between his two sons. Robert, the elder, inherited the title of Duke of Normandy and William Rufus became King of England. A significant number of Norman barons objected to dividing Normandy and England, and Bishop Odo supported Robert's claim to the English throne. Several others, including the earls of Northumberland and Shrewsbury and the Bishop of Coutances came out in support of Robert. Odo prepared Rochester Castle for war and it became one of the headquarters of the rebellion. Its position in Kent made it a suitable base for raids on London and its garrison could harry William's forces in the county. William set off from London and marched towards Rochester to deal with the threat. Before he arrived, news reached the king that Odo had gone to Pevensey Castle, which was under the control of Robert, Count of Mortain. William turned away from Rochester and seized Pevensey. The captured Odo was forced to swear to hand over Rochester to William's men. The king despatched a force with Odo in tow to demand Rochester's surrender. Instead of yielding, the garrison sallied and captured the entire party. In response William laid siege to the city and castle. Contemporary chronicler Orderic Vitalis recorded that the siege began in May 1088. Two siege-castles were built to cut off the city's supply lines and to protect the besiegers from sorties. Conditions within the city were dire: disease was rampant, exacerbated by the heat and flies. The garrison ultimately capitulated and terms were agreed. Odo, Eustace, Count of Boulogne, and Robert de Belleme, son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, were allowed to march away with their weapons and horses but their estates in England were confiscated. This marked the end of the castle's role in the rebellion, and the fortification was probably abandoned shortly afterwards. The siege-castles were abandoned after the conclusion of the siege and have since vanished.
After the abandonment of Rochester's first castle it was replaced by another on the current site, in the south-west corner of the town walls. Founded between 1087 and 1089, some parts of the castle survive, much altered by use and reuse in subsequent centuries. William the Conqueror had granted Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, the manor of Haddenham in Buckinghamshire – which as of the Domesday Survey had an annual income of £40 – for the duration of his life. In turn, the archbishop had granted the manor to Rochester's monks, so on the Conqueror's death Lanfranc and Gundulf, who was appointed Bishop of Rochester in 1077, had to appeal for reconfirmation of the original grant from the new king. William Rufus demanded £100 in exchange for confirmation of the grant. The two bishops felt such a sum was beyond their means and sought a compromise. Instead it was agreed that Gundulf would build a new stone castle at Rochester. Initially the two bishops were concerned that the cost would exceed the king's original request and that they would be responsible for the castle's upkeep. Henry, Earl of Warwick convinced them that a castle suitable for the king could be constructed for £40, and that following its completion the castle would be handed over to someone else. The actual cost to Gundulf was £60. The bishop was a skilled architect and supervised the construction of the Tower of London's eponymous White Tower on behalf of William the Conqueror. Gundulf's castle was adjacent to Rochester Cathedral. According to archaeologist Oliver Creighton, when castles were positioned close to churches or cathedrals it suggested a link between the two, and in this case both were owned by the Bishop of Rochester. Often the same craftsmen and architects would work on these closely related buildings, leading to similarities in some of their features. Along with Durham and Old Sarum, Rochester is one of the best examples of a closely linked castle and religious building.
In 1127 King Henry I granted Rochester Castle to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William de Corbeil, and his successors in perpetuity. He was given permission to build "a fortification or tower within the castle and keep and hold it forever". Corbeil is responsible for building the great tower or keep that still stands today, albeit in an altered state. The 12th century saw many castles in England rebuilt in stone, an advancement in sophistication of design and technology. Rochester had already been given a stone curtain wall by Bishop Gundulf, and the keep dates from this period. It visually dominated the rest of the castle, towering above its outer walls, and acted as a residence containing the castle's best accommodation. A sturdy fortification, it could also serve as a stronghold in the event of military action. Such was the importance of the keep as a symbol of Rochester it was depicted on the town's seal in the 13th century.
Construction progressed at a rate of about 10 feet (3.0 m) per year. It was probably finished before Corbeil died in 1138 and definitely before 1141, when Robert, Earl of Gloucester, was imprisoned there during the Anarchy of King Stephen's reign. It is likely that after the keep was built there was no further building activity in the 12th century, only maintenance. The castle was held by the Archbishops of Canterbury under the king, but the monarch was still responsible for financially supporting it. Continuous records of royal expenditures known as "Pipe Rolls" began in the reign of Henry II, and included in the rolls are details of expenditure on Rochester Castle's upkeep. During the 12th century, these were generally small figures, but in 1172–1173 more than £100 was spent on the castle, coinciding with the rebellion of Henry II's sons. Following the fall of Normandy in 1204 to the French forces of King Philip II, King John increased his expenditure on the castles in south-east England in preparation for a possible invasion. Amongst these was Rochester and in 1206 John spent £115 on the castle's ditches, keep, and other structures. Under England's Angevin kings royal castles in south-east England were invested in to protect the country from invasion; Rochester was one of the most important.
## King John
Custody of Rochester Castle remained with the Archbishops of Canterbury until the end of the 12th century. Despite ascending to the throne in 1199 King John did not confirm Hubert Walter as the castle's custodian until July 1202. John may have wished to regain direct control of what was an important castle. The crisis of John's rule began in 1212 with the discovery of a plot to overthrow him. Defeat at the Battle of Bouvines in July 1214 marked the end of John's ambitions to retake Normandy and exacerbated the situation in England. He returned to England in October and a few months later barons in the north of England rose against him. A group of barons renounced their feudal ties to John in May 1215 and captured London, Lincoln, and Exeter. John persuaded Stephen Langton, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, to give control of Rochester Castle to a royal constable, Reginald de Cornhill. Under the terms of the agreement, the castle was to revert to the control of the archbishop at Easter 1215. This period was later extended to Easter 1216. Letters Patent dated 25 May 1215 requested that other royal constables would take over from Cornhill. The castle would still be returned to the archbishop when the agreement expired or if peace was restored to the kingdom before Easter 1216. In the meantime, control reverted to Langton whom John had asked to hold the castle "in such a way that by it no ill or harm shall come to us or our kingdom".
John met the rebel barons at Runnymede, and on 19 June 1215 they renewed their vows of fealty. A peace treaty, which later became known as Magna Carta, was sealed. Shortly after the treaty the agreement between John and Langton to appoint a royal constable in charge of Rochester Castle was dissolved, returning control to the archbishop. The peace did not last and the First Barons' War broke out. A group of rebels headed to Rochester to hold the city against John. The events of the rebel takeover of the castle are unclear but the contemporary chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall recorded that the king demanded Langton hand over the castle to royal control and the archbishop refused. Langton held out against the king's demands but the rebels feared he would eventually succumb to pressure from the king and seized control of the castle. According to Ralph of Coggeshall, this was done with the consent of the castle's constable, Reginald de Cornhill, who seems to have switched allegiance from the king to the archbishop after John appointed him as royal constable of the castle. Langton left the country that same month, leaving the castle in the hands of the king's enemies. In a letter that year to justiciar Hubert de Burgh John expressed his frustration towards Langton, calling him "a notorious traitor to us, since he did not render our castle of Rochester to us in our so great need". After this point, Rochester Castle was no longer considered to be in the perpetual custody of the archbishops of Canterbury.
At the time, John was in south-east England recruiting mercenaries in preparation for his war with the barons. Rochester blocked the direct route to London, which was also held by the rebels. According to Roger of Wendover, the rebels at Rochester were led by William d'Aubigny, lord of Belvoir. Estimates of the size of Rochester's garrison vary, with the chroniclers' figures ranging from 95 to 140 knights, supported by crossbowmen, sergeants and others. Hearing the news that the city was in enemy hands, John immediately rode to Rochester and arrived on 13 October. Royal forces had arrived ahead of John and entered the city on 11 October, taking it by surprise and laying siege to the castle. Rochester bridge was pulled down to prevent the arrival of a relief force from London. The siege that followed was the largest in England up to that point and took nearly two months.
Boley Hill to the south of the castle may have been used as John's headquarters during the siege. According to the Barnwell chronicler, five siege engines hurled a barrage of stones at the castle's wall day and night. These were supported by missiles from smaller bows and crossbows. The Barnwell chronicler claimed they smashed a hole in the castle's outer walls; Roger of Wendover asserted they were ineffective and that John turned to other methods to breach the defences. A letter dated 14 October indicates John was preparing to undermine the castle's walls. He wrote to Canterbury, asking for the production "by day and night of as many picks as you are able" and that they be sent to Rochester. On 26 October a relief force of 700 horse was sent from London. They turned back before arriving, perhaps because they heard the king was advancing to meet them.
When the castle's outer walls were breached, the defenders retreated to the relative safety of the keep. It too withstood the efforts of the siege engines and once again John turned to mining to bring down the walls. The mine was dug beneath the south-east corner of the keep. A letter sent from Rochester on 25 November offers insight into the methods of medieval siege craft. John ordered Hugh de Burgh to "send to us with all speed by day and night forty of the fattest pigs of the sort least good for eating to bring fire beneath the tower". The wooden props supporting the tunnel dug beneath the keep were set alight to collapse the mine, bringing down one corner of the keep. Still the garrison held out and sought safety behind the stone partition or cross-wall in the keep, abandoning half the building. The Barnwell chronicler remarked that "for such was the structure of the stronghold that a very strong wall separated the half that had fallen from the other".
Conditions within the keep worsened by the day and the garrison were reduced to eating horse flesh. To reduce the demand on limited provisions, some members were sent out of the keep, beginning with those least capable of fighting. Some sources record that they had their hands and feet amputated by the besiegers. On 30 November the garrison eventually surrendered and were taken captive. Initially John wanted to execute them all as was the custom of the time when a garrison had forced a long and bloody conflict. Savaric de Mauléon, one of John's captains, persuaded the king otherwise, concerned that similar treatment would be shown to royal garrisons by the rebels. Only one person was executed: a crossbowman who had previously been in the service of the king since childhood was hanged. Many of the rebels were imprisoned, sent to royal castles such as Corfe for safe-keeping. Of the siege the Barnwell chronicler wrote, "Our age has not known a siege so hard pressed nor so strongly resisted ... Afterwards few cared to put their trust in castles". Prince Louis of France, son of Philip II, was invited by the barons to become the new leader of the rebellion and become king in the event of their victory. In 1216 he arrived in England and captured Rochester Castle; it is not known how, as no documentary evidence recording the event survives.
## Henry III
John died in 1216 and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Henry, with the support of the barons. With no prospect of becoming King of England, Louis returned to France. Rochester Castle was returned to royal control in 1217. Given the damage incurred during John's siege, the castle was in dire need of repairs. Between 1217 and 1237 around £680 were spent on repairs, of which £530 were taken up by work on the keep. In 1225 and 1226 the town walls were enhanced by the addition of a ditch at the cost of £300. The new ditch enclosed Boley Hill, possibly to deny the position to future aggressors who might attack the castle. Repairs began with the castle's outer curtain wall. At the same time a chapel was built within the castle. In 1226 the hall, buttery, and dispensary were repaired. Work probably did not begin on the keep until 1226. It was mostly repaired by 1227, but work continued on it until 1232. During 1230 and 1231 a stone wall dividing the castle's enclosure into two parts was built which no longer survives. While attention was paid to making the castle a working fortification, Henry III also funded construction of residential and other buildings. In 1244, £132 was spent on building a second chapel next to the royal apartments. Stables and an almonry were added in 1248. The main gatehouse was rebuilt between 1249 and 1250 at a cost of over £120. Further repairs were carried out on the keep in 1256, this time costing more than £120. Later in the decade further attention was paid to the castle's defences, possibly in response to Henry III's worsening relations with his barons.
Henry III's reign was in crisis in 1258. He had recently suffered defeat in Wales, there were agricultural problems leading to a famine, and relations with the pope were worsening. Discontent amongst England's magnates led Henry to promise reform, but under continued pressure his authority disintegrated. A royal council of fifteen magnates was formed in June that year, and the rule of the country transferred from the king to the council. With foreign help Henry's reign was restored in 1261 as the council were reluctant to start a civil war. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, raised a rebellion. In 1264 civil war broke out between those loyal to the king and the baronial forces led by de Montfort.
Rochester's constable in 1264, Roger de Leybourne, held the castle in support of Henry. John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, was the garrison's co-commander. A baronial army led by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford, laid siege to the castle on 17 April that year. Having marched from the earl's castle to Tonbridge the army attacked from the Rochester side of the river, either the south or west. While the army advanced towards the city the royalist garrison set alight the suburbs. The king's hall within the castle was also burned down. An army under Simon de Montfort marched from London with the intention of attacking the city from another direction. The earl's first two attempts to cross the Medway were fought back, but he was successful on 18 April, Good Friday using a fire-ship. The smoke may have been used as cover for the rebels, or the ship may have been used to burn the bridge while the army travelled by water. In a co-ordinated attack that had been pre-arranged, the armies of de Montfort and de Clare attacked the city. They entered Rochester in the evening and that night the cathedral was raided. The following day the rebels captured the castle's outer enclosure and the royal garrison retreated to the keep. Because the next day was Easter Sunday there was no fighting; hostilities resumed on the Monday. Siege engines were set up and targeted the keep. As in 1215 the keep proved resistant to missiles, and after a week had not succumbed. According to one contemporary source, the besiegers were about to dig a mine beneath the tower, but the siege was abandoned on 26 April when the earls received news of a relief force led by Henry III and his son, Prince Edward.
## Later history
Though the garrison had held out within the keep, the rest of the castle had incurred severe damage, but no attempt was made to carry out repairs until the reign of Edward III (1327–1377). It was noted in 1275 that the castle's constables had not only failed to make any effort to repair the structure but had caused further damage: they stole stone from the castle for reuse elsewhere. In 1281 John of Cobham, the constable, was granted permission to pull down the castle's hall and chambers which had been left as burnt-out ruins after the 1264 siege. Numerous surveys in the following century bear testament to the castle's sorry state and follow its steady decline. A survey from 1340 estimated that repairs would cost around £600; another conducted 23 years later stated that it would cost £3,333 6s 8d. Natural weathering worsened the condition of the castle, and in 1362 a "great wind" damaged the structure. By 1369 few of the castle's buildings still stood: the keep, gatehouses, a hall, kitchen, and stable were all that survived, and even then in a state of ruin. The keep was in desperate need of repair, but it was still in use and was the centre of the domestic life at the castle.
Elizabeth de Burgh Queen of Scots, captured by English in 1306, was confined in the castle in 1314 from March to June.
Between May 1367 and September 1370 repairs costing £2,262 were carried out. Records show that sections of the curtain wall were repaired and two mural towers built, one of them replacing a tower on the same site. The towers were positioned north-east of the keep and still stand. More work was undertaken between 1370 and 1377, the year of Edward's death. The royal apartments built during Henry III's reign were never repaired; it has been suggested this was because by the 14th century, when considerable sums were being spent on repairs elsewhere in the castle, Rochester had fallen out of favour as a royal residence. As the castle's importance as a high-status residence waned, its role as a barracks and administrative centre came to the fore. The reign of Richard II (1377–1400) saw the investment of £500 in repairing the castle. This was in part in response to French raids on England's southern coast during the Hundred Years' War as England's fortunes in the conflict worsened. The most significant of these works was the construction of a tower at the north end of the castle, overlooking the bridge over the Medway. Records document the sum of £350 spent on a new tower between 1378 and 1383, and it mostly likely refers to the one guarding the bridge. Rochester Castle saw fighting for the final time during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. It was besieged and captured by a group of rebels who plundered the castle and released a prisoner. It has been suggested that the £66 10s spent in 1384–1388 and the £91 13s spent in 1395–1397 may have been partially in response to damage incurred during the revolt.
During the reigns of Henry IV (1399–1413) and his successor Henry V (1413–1422), Rochester Castle was in the guardianship of William, Earl of Arundel and his brother Richard. The castle was given to Henry V's widow, Catherine of Valois, in 1423 as part of her dower to support her financially. She died in 1437, at which point the castle came under the custodianship of the clerk of the King's works. Despite this, there are no records of building work during the 15th century and almost nothing is known about Rochester Castle between then and the second half of the 16th century. The decline of the castle's military significance is marked by the leasing of the surrounding ditch, beginning in 1564 at the latest. Between 1599 and 1601 stone from Rochester Castle was reused to build nearby Upnor Castle, an artillery fort.
In 1610 James I granted Sir Anthony Weldon control of the castle. Anne of Denmark and her daughter Princess Elizabeth came to the castle and had dinner on 14 April 1613 before Elizabeth sailed from Margate on her journey to Heidelberg. Diarist Samuel Pepys commented on the condition of Rochester Castle, and as early as the 17th century the castle may have acted as a tourist attraction. By this time many castles were in a state of ruin, and Rochester was amongst those in need of repair, although still in use. During the English Civil War, Anthony Weldon declared for the Parliamentarian cause. The castle did not see fighting during the war, even when the city was captured by Royalists in 1648; this may indicate that the castle was not a serviceable fortification by this point. Weldon's support for the Parliamentarians may have spared the castle from slighting (demolition) in the aftermath, a fate suffered by many other castles. Walker Weldon inherited the castle and carried out the destruction of part of the outer wall in the 18th century to sell off the building material; he had originally intended to dismantle more of the castle, but the plans were abandoned. A drawing from around this time suggests that the cross wall had been removed by this point. While other parts of the castle were dismantled, the two towers in the south-east wall were still being used for accommodation. In 1743 prisoners were held at the castle, probably in huts. Rochester Castle descended through the Weldon family until it was bequeathed to Thomas Blechynden in the 18th century. By 1774 Robert Child was in possession of the castle, and it remained in the possession of his family until 1884. There were unsuccessful plans in 1780 to reuse Rochester Castle as an army barracks, after the commander of the Royal Engineers for Chatham, Colonel Hugh Debbieg, asked the Child family for permission. The castle ruins inspired a painting by artist J. M. W. Turner in the late 18th century, one of his first oil paintings. Turner was renowned for his love of nature and was at the forefront of the picturesque movement, during which such ruins became fashionable.
By the 19th century, gardens were created within the castle's enclosure. Charles Dickens lived in Rochester and included the castle ruins in The Pickwick Papers and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Through the words of one of his characters, Dickens described the castle as a "glorious pile – frowning wall – tottering arches – dark nooks – crumbling stones". Many of England's historic buildings, particularly ruins, have acquired myths and legends, and some are rumoured to be haunted. Rochester is no exception, and is reportedly haunted by a white lady. Dickens is also said to haunt the moat on Christmas Eve.
The 19th century saw efforts to preserve the castle. In 1826 repairs were made to the well in the keep. At the same time a survey was carried out by A. W. N. Pugin and he excavated around the keep, investigating how it was built. He descended into the well in a bucket in an unsuccessful search for treasure. Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey, leased the castle to the Corporation of Rochester in 1870 for use as a public park; when it opened to the public in 1872, Rochester Castle was presented as a picturesque ruin, with trees planted in the enclosure and the walls overgrown with ivy. In 1884 the Corporation bought the castle for £6,572 (equivalent to £3.4 million in 2009 terms). Between 1896 and 1904, George Payne carried out repairs. In the first quarter of the century the gardens acquired a German field gun, a tank from the First World War, and a bandstand; these were removed by 1961. Ivy was removed from the keep between 1919 and 1931 and the planting in the castles scaled back. In 1960 the origin of Boley Hill was investigated archaeologically, but the excavations failed to provide firm dating evidence.
The castle's state was assessed in 1961, and the cost of repairs estimated at £30,000 (equivalent to £1.1 million in 2009 terms). The Ministry of Public Building and Works took over care of the castle from the Corporation of Rochester in 1965. Records of the Ministry's conservation work have gone missing, so precisely what was done is unclear. Between 1962 and 1965 the council removed buildings from the castle's ditch. Guardianship transferred to English Heritage in 1984. Since 1995 the City of Rochester has been responsible for daily management of the castle. Descaling at the start of the 21st century contributed to the decay of the keep, and one of the mural towers was in need of maintenance. Due to the decayed state of the keep, public access is restricted and netting has been erected to protect visitors. The possibility of adding floors and a roof to the keep was discussed in the 1970s and 1990s, but there were concerns that a roof would change the climate within the building. The castle is a Scheduled Monument, a "nationally important" historic building and archaeological site which has been given protection against unauthorised change. It is also a Grade I listed building, and recognised as an internationally important structure. The castle is open to the public.
## Architecture
Little is known about the design of the first castle at Rochester as it has since vanished, and even the exact site is uncertain. It most likely took the form of a motte-and-bailey castle, with a mound and an outer enclosure defended by a timber palisade and earthen banks. Boley Hill has been suggested as the site of the first castle, an outwork reinforcing the castle's defences, or an abandoned siege castle like those documented in the 1088 siege. Boley Hill is a natural outcrop of rock, and could have acted as a motte.
The castle built by Bishop Gundulf in the late 12th century was enclosed by a stone wall. Situated in the south-west corner of the city, the castle used the remains of the Roman town walls as foundations. The circuit had at least one tower; it was replaced in the 14th century. The original gateway was radically altered in the 13th or 14th century. From across the River Medway, the twin landmarks of Rochester's castle and cathedral would have dominated the medieval landscape, symbolic of the authority of the church and nobility in the period. Most castles were built by secular nobles, but the work by Gundulf and his successor Corbeil provide examples of the role of the church in castle building.
According to military historian Allen Brown Rochester's keep is "among the finest and oldest in all England". Since its construction it has undergone limited alteration, aside from the rebuilding of one corner, and although now in a state of ruin it remains significantly intact and is considered one of the most important surviving 12th-century keeps in England and France. The keep was richly decorated with hangings and furnishings. Dating from the second quarter of the 12th century, it is Rochester Castle's dominant feature. It had a square plan, and measures 70 by 70 feet (21 by 21 m) externally with pilaster buttresses at each corner. The keep was built in the castle's southern corner, close to the curtain wall. The primary building material was local Kentish Ragstone; Caen stone used to face the keep was imported from Normandy. The same material was imported for the Tower of London's White Tower in the 11th century. The tops of the turrets rise 125 feet (38 m) above the ground, 12 ft above the battlements. Below the latter are rectangular holes, marking where wooden hoarding would have been attached. The walls of the keep are 12 ft thick at the base, and taper to 10 ft at the top. It is the tallest keep in England, and only those at Dover, the Tower of London, Colchester, and Norwich are larger. During John's siege of Rochester in 1215, the south-east corner collapsed; during Henry III's reign it was rebuilt as a cylinder. The windows increase in size higher up the walls; those in the uppermost were decorated. A spiral staircase in the north-east corner provided access to all floors, and another in the south-west corner went from the first floor to the top floor. The north-west corner tower contains small chambers, and the south-east probably had a similar layout before it was rebuilt.
Keeps were traditionally built with an entrance at first-floor level, and Rochester's follows this pattern. A forebuilding attached to the north side guarded the entrance. A stone staircase began on the west side of the keep before turning and meeting the forebuilding, which could be entered by crossing a drawbridge across a gap 9 feet (2.7 m) wide. There was another entrance in the west of the forebuilding, and at some point a new doorway was knocked through to the keep at the bottom of the drawbridge pit. The original door from the forebuilding into the keep was protected by a portcullis.
The stone-built keeps of the 11th century generally had simple plans, with few rooms and an uncomplicated layout. Rochester's keep bears testament to a developing complexity, and provides an early example of a keep divided into separate areas for the lord and his retinue. The thickness of the walls allowed rooms to be built into them, as can also be seen at the Hedingham Castle's contemporaneous keep, or the slightly later one at Dover. The keep's interior is divided for its entire height by a cross wall running east–west. The ground floor was used for storage, with the three storeys above providing accommodation. The first floor probably contained a hall and great chamber, divided by the cross wall. This level may have been the accommodation of the castle's constable who looked after it during the owner's absence. There is a room called "Gundulf's Chamber" built into the thickness of the wall in the north-west corner; it may well have been the constable's private chamber. The second floor contained the keep's best accommodation and some of its most elaborate decoration. It is 27 feet (8.2 m) high and surrounded by a gallery in its upper half built into the thickness of the walls. The floor also had a chapel measuring about 28 by 15 feet (8.5 by 4.6 m). At some unknown point in the post-medieval period, a fire gutted the keep, leaving it in its present state without floors or a roof. On the second floor, there are openings in the cross wall, broken by a series of Romanesque columns between round-headed arches. The cross wall carried a well shaft, with a well-head at each floor. The third floor had a second chapel and access to the roof, and may have held additional accommodation.
The current entrance in the north-east occupies the approximate location of the main gatehouse constructed by Gundulf and then rebuilt during 1249–1250. It was pulled down in the 1870s when the enclosure was converted into a municipal garden. An engraving from 1735 by the Buck brothers gives some indication of the gatehouse's form: the gate was an archway between two towers projecting from the curtain wall. It was reached by a stone causeway across a ditch, rather than a drawbridge. A tower containing a postern gate was located in the north-west corner of the enclosure, built at the close of the 14th century to guard the bridge over the Medway. The tower and postern no longer stands, but 19th-century antiquary and engineer G. T. Clark made some notes on the structure while it was still standing and commented that it had mechanisms to lift supplies for the castle from the river. The western part of the stone outer wall, a stretch facing the river, dates from when Gundulf built the first wall enclosing the castle. In the 19th century a revetment was added to strengthen the decaying wall. Like the keep, it was constructed using Kentish Ragstone. This part of Gundulf's wall was 4.5 feet (1.4 m) thick at the base, narrowing to 2 feet (0.61 m) at the top; it rose to a height of around 22 feet (6.7 m). Four embrasures were added to this part of the wall in the 13th century; the builders imitated Norman design. At the northern end of the 12th-century stretch of western wall are the remains of a building, probably a hall, dating from the 13th century. Its vaulted undercroft is no longer standing.
In the south Gundulf's wall survived into the modern period, but has now been dismantled. The current wall is a 19th-century replacement. At the eastern end of this wall, near the southern corner of the castle, is a two-storey rounded tower 30 feet (9.1 m) in diameter dating from the early 13th century. It was built to fill the breach in the curtain wall caused when John's army besieged the castle and to reinforce a weak point in the defences. The section from the tower to the location of the former main gatehouse in the north-east dates from about 1367 to 1370. Two towers were built along the wall, each two storeys high and again using Kentish Ragstone. The one nearest the keep is relatively plain and the northernmost one more elaborate. The latter was intended for use as a residence and in the modern period was converted into a cottage. The wall between these two towers was reduced in the modern period, possibly to give a better view of the cathedral. Apart from the west side, the castle was surrounded by a ditch, much of which has since been filled in.
## See also
- Governor of Rochester Castle - including list of governors or constables
- Castles in Great Britain and Ireland
- List of castles in England
- Ironclad
|
5,689,882 |
Banksia sphaerocarpa
| 1,140,733,575 |
Shrub or tree in the family Proteaceae widely distributed across the southwest of Western Australia
|
[
"Banksia taxa by scientific name",
"Endemic flora of Southwest Australia",
"Eudicots of Western Australia",
"Plants described in 1810",
"Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)"
] |
</ref>
\|subdivision_ranks = Varieties \|subdivision =
- B. sphaerocarpa var. caesia
- B. sphaerocarpa var. dolichostyla
- B. sphaerocarpa var. latifolia
- B. sphaerocarpa var. pumilio
- B. sphaerocarpa var. sphaerocarpa
}}
Banksia sphaerocarpa, commonly known as the fox banksia or round-fruit banksia, is a species of shrub or tree in the plant genus Banksia (family Proteaceae). It is generally encountered as a 1–2 m (3.3–6.6 ft) high shrub, and is usually smaller in the north of its range. This species has narrow green leaves, and brownish, orange or yellow round flower spikes which may be seen from January to July. It is widely distributed across the southwest of Western Australia, growing exclusively in sandy soils. It is usually the dominant plant in scrubland or low woodland. It is pollinated by, and is a food source for, birds, mammals, and insects.
First described in 1810 by botanist Robert Brown, B. sphaerocarpa has a complicated taxonomic history, and several taxa once classified as part of a broadly defined B. sphaerocarpa have since been named as species in their own right. At present, most authorities recognise five varieties; the largest variety, B. sphaerocarpa var. dolichostyla (ironcap banksia), is sometimes given species rank as B. dolichostyla. B. sphaerocarpa is classified as Not Threatened under the Wildlife Conservation Act of Western Australia, although two varieties have been placed on the Declared Rare and Priority Flora List—var. latifolia has been designated a Priority Two – Poorly Known taxon, and var. dolichostyla falls under Declared Rare Flora. None of the varieties are commonly seen in cultivation.
## Description
Banksia sphaerocarpa is a variable species that differs in plant size, flower size and leaf size across its range. The variability is marked enough that five varieties are recognised. This species is generally a shrub 0.4–2 m (1.3–6.6 ft) tall. Plants are smaller in northern parts of the range, and grow larger in the southeast, with var. dolichostyla and rarely var. caesia reaching 4 m (13 ft) in height. All varieties bear a lignotuber, a swollen starchy root crown from which the plant resprouts after bushfire. The new stems are finely hairy but become smooth with maturity. The leaves are stiff, narrow and linear, and measure 2.5–10 cm (1.0–3.9 in) in length, on a petiole 2–3 mm (0.08–0.12 in) long. Leaves of most varieties are 1–1.5 mm (0.04–0.06 in) in width, and have a pointed tip, but var. latifolia has wider leaves, 2–2.5 mm (0.08–0.10 in), and a blunter tip. The foliage is green, or a more pale blue-grey in the case of caesia and dolichostyla.
The inflorescences are generally globular and measure 5 to 8 cm (2.0 to 3.1 in) in diameter, although larger forms, such as var. dolichostyla, are more oval in shape. Flowering from January to July, the blooms are yellow, orange or brownish in colour. They take five to eight weeks to develop from bud to the finish of flowering. Anthesis takes place over two weeks, as the individual flowers open in a wave across the inflorescence. Three weeks before the flowers open, the spikes develop a strong musky smell. The flowers produce unusually large quantities of nectar; indeed some flowers produce so much that it drips to the ground. The old flowers fade to brownish and grey hues and remain curled around the flower spike. Up to 60 follicles develop on the globular spikes. The follicles are finely furred at first before becoming smooth and golden brown in colour, measuring 1.5–3 cm (0.6–1.2 in) long, 0.5–0.8 cm (0.2–0.3 in) high, and 1–2.5 cm (0.4–1.0 in) wide. The follicles are flat with pronounced 'shoulders', giving a rectangular appearance in cross section. Specimens of var. sphaerocarpa in the Whicher Range, Jarrah Forest and the vicinity of Nannup have larger follicles. The seeds are wedge-shaped (cuneate), and measure 2.0–2.6 cm (0.8–1.0 in) in length, containing a smaller cuneate seed body measuring 1–1.4 cm (0.4–0.6 in) long by 0.5–1.3 cm (0.2–0.5 in) wide.
Northern specimens can be quite small shrubs and may be hard to distinguish from B. micrantha, which has smaller inflorescences and large flattened follicles.
## Taxonomy
The earliest known botanical collection of B. sphaerocarpa occurred in December 1801, during the visit of HMS Investigator to King George Sound. The specimen was collected from "A single plant observed between Princess Royal Harbour & Oyster Harbour on a heath", and is credited to English botanist Robert Brown, though it is not possible to be certain on this point, as Brown incorporated the collections of junior expedition members into his herbarium without attribution. Neither Brown nor expedition horticulturist Peter Good mentions the collection in his diary.
Brown published a formal description and name for the species in his 1810 On the Proteaceae of Jussieu. He did not designate a type specimen (a specimen to be representative of the species) for the species, but the one specimen in his collection has since been formally declared the lectotype for the species. He also did not state the etymology of the specific epithet, but it is accepted that the name derives from the Ancient Greek sphaera- ("round"), and carpos ("fruit"), in reference to the shape of its infructescences.
In Brown's arrangement of the genus, B. sphaerocarpa was placed between B. pulchella and B. nutans in taxonomic sequence; that is, an order that places related taxa next to each other. No subdivision of the genus was given, other than to separate a single distinctive species into a subgenus of its own. Swiss botanist Carl Meissner published a more detailed arrangement in 1856, placing B. sphaerocarpa in section Eubanksia because its inflorescence is a spike rather than a domed head, and in series Abietinae, whose members have inrolled leaf margins with no, or only very fine, serrations. Meissner also published a variety, B. sphaerocarpa var. glabrescens, based on specimens collected by James Drummond; this is now considered a synonym of B. incana.
George Bentham's revision of Banksia for his 1870 Flora Australiensis overturned Meissner's series; instead, B. sphaerocarpa was placed in a new section, Oncostylis, because of its hooked styles. Two varieties were recognised: Meissner's var. glabrescens was retained, and var. latifolia was newly described by Bentham. Bentham noted further variation amongst his specimens not accounted for by his varieties, stating "It is possible therefore that two species may be here confounded, but the specimens are insufficient for their distinction."
For many years following Bentham's arrangement, the circumscription of B. sphaerocarpa was widely recognised as unacceptably broad. William Blackall informally published two varieties, var. pinifolia and var. violacea (properly Banksia violacea) in his 1954 How to Know Western Australian Wildflowers; and in 1966 the nurseryman Fred Lullfitz predicted that there were as many as eight taxa within the species. Several of these were recognised in George's revision of the genus for 1981 "The genus Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae)": B. micrantha, B. grossa, B. lanata, B. scabrella, B. telmatiaea, B. leptophylla and B. incana. George placed B. sphaerocarpa in subgenus Banksia because of its flower spike, section Oncostylis because its styles are hooked, and the resurrected series Abietinae, which he constrained to contain only round-fruited species. He reduced variety latifolia to synonymy with variety sphaerocarpa, but conceded the species needed further review. Alex George reported that he thought Banksia sphaerocarpas closest relatives to be Banksia micrantha and B. grossa.
George's arrangement remained current until 1996, when Kevin Thiele and Pauline Ladiges published an arrangement informed by a cladistic analysis of morphological characteristics. They retained George's subgenera and many of his series, but discarded his sections. Banksia ser. Abietinae was found to be very nearly monophyletic, and so retained. It further resolved into four subclades, so Thiele and Ladiges split it into four subseries. Banksia sphaerocarpa appeared in the second of these, initially called the ' grossa clade' for its most basal member. As with George's classification, B. grossa and B. micrantha emerged as close relatives of B. sphaerocarpa.
This clade became the basis for new subseries Sphaerocarpae, which Thiele defined as containing those species with lignotubers, styles loosely curling around the infructescence (although this trait was reversed in micrantha), and "transversely aligned cells of the seed wing inner face". Other than the most basal B. grossa, these species also have shouldered follicles. Having found B. micrantha to be more closely related than B. sphaerocarpa var. dolichostyla to the other varieties of B. sphaerocarpa, they promoted var. dolichostyla to species rank as Banksia dolichostyla. Morphological support for this was given by the fact that the old styles of var. dolichostyla are quite different from those of other varieties, being stouter, and tending not to curl around the infructescence as the others do.
Questioning the emphasis on cladistics in Thiele and Ladiges' arrangement, George published a slightly modified version of his 1981 arrangement in his 1999 treatment of Banksia for the Flora of Australia series of monographs. He added that he did not feel the characters of dolichostyla alone justified specific rank, being essentially merely larger in all parts than, but otherwise essentially similar to, var. caesia. Therefore, he retained it as a variety of B. sphaerocarpa. To date, George's 1999 arrangement remains the most recent comprehensive classification. The placement of B. sphaerocarpa in George's 1999 arrangement may be summarised as follows:
Banksia
: B. subg. Banksia
: : B. sect. Banksia (9 series, 50 species, 9 subspecies, 3 varieties)
: : B. sect. Coccinea (1 species)
: : B. sect. Oncostylis
: : : B. ser. Spicigerae (7 species, 2 subspecies, 4 varieties)
: : : B. ser. Tricuspidae (1 species)
: : : B. ser. Dryandroideae (1 species)
: : : B. ser. Abietinae
: : : : B. sphaerocarpa'''
: : : : : B. sphaerocarpa var. caesia
: : : : : B. sphaerocarpa var. dolichostyla
: : : : : B. sphaerocarpa var. latifolia
: : : : : B. sphaerocarpa var. pumilio
: : : : : B. sphaerocarpa var. sphaerocarpa
: : : : B. micrantha
: : : : B. grossa
: : : : B. telmatiaea
: : : : B. leptophylla (2 varieties)
: : : : B. lanata
: : : : B. scabrella
: : : : B. violacea
: : : : B. incana
: : : : B. laricina
: : : : B. pulchella
: : : : B. meisneri (2 subspecies)
: : : : B. nutans (2 varieties)
: B. subg. Isostylis (3 species)
A 2002 study by American botanists Austin Mast and Tom Givnish yielded a surprise when molecular analysis mapped out dolichostyla as a sister taxon to its geographical neighbour B. violacea, in a clade with B. laricina and B. incana. B. micrantha and the other two varieties of B. sphaerocarpa form a separate clade nearby.
Early in 2007, Mast and Thiele initiated a rearrangement of Banksia by merging Dryandra into it, and publishing B. subg. Spathulatae for the taxa having spoon-shaped cotyledons. They foreshadowed publishing a full arrangement once DNA sampling of Dryandra was complete; in the meantime, if Mast and Thiele's nomenclatural changes are taken as an interim arrangement, then B. sphaerocarpa is placed in B. subg. Spathulatae.
In 2008, George reinstated B. sphaerocarpa var. latifolia, and published the new variety B. sphaerocarpa var. pumilio.
### Varieties
Banksia sphaerocarpa is a widely distributed Western Australian species with four (or five if one includes var. dolichostyla) varieties:
- B. sphaerocarpa var. caesia, first described by Alex George in his 1981 revision of the genus, grows larger than most other varieties, reaching 2 m (6.6 ft), or occasionally 4 m (13 ft), in height. It has yellow blooms and bluish grey foliage and is found in the central and southern Wheatbelt between the towns of Piawaning, Kojonup, Newdegate and Corrigin.
- B. sphaerocarpa var. dolichostyla (Ironcap Banksia) was first described by Alex George in his 1981 revision of the genus. It is the largest of the varieties, encountered as a large shrub or small tree to 4 m (13 ft) high. It is larger in all parts than the other varieties, and has been considered a separate species. It is restricted to a small area from South Ironcap, east of Hyden, south to Mt Holland in the eastern Wheatbelt.
- B. sphaerocarpa var. latifolia was originally described in a manuscript by Mueller and published by Bentham in 1870. It grows as a small rounded shrub to 50 cm (1.6 ft) in height, and is restricted to the vicinity of the south coast between Denmark and the Porongorup Range, where it is found in low, open forest of Eucalyptus marginata and E. calophylla.
- B. sphaerocarpa var. pumilio, first described by Alex George in 2008, is a small shrub less than a metre high. It is found from Tathra National Park east of Eneabba south to the Chittering valley. Its subspecific name is derived from the Latin pumilio "small", relating to the flowers.
- B. sphaerocarpa var. sphaerocarpa is widely distributed from the Darling Plateau east of Perth to the Whicher Range in the southwest, and southeast to the Stirling Range. Populations north of Perth once referable to it are now classified as var. pumilio.
## Distribution and habitat
Banksia sphaerocarpa is distributed widely across southwestern Western Australia—from Eneabba in the north, south to the Whicher Range, Nannup, Albany and Jerramungup, and eastwards to the vicinity of Hyden. It is mainly found on sandy soils in flat or gently sloped areas in shrubland, mallee or open woodland.
## Conservation
As a species, B. sphaerocarpa is not considered to be under threat, but two of the five varieties have been placed on the Declared Rare and Priority Flora List. B sphaerocarpa var. dolichostyla has been gazetted as "Declared Rare Flora – Extant" under the Wildlife Conservation Act 1950. Banksia sphaerocarpa var. latifolia, though not afforded legislative protection, has been identified as a "Priority Two – Poorly Known" taxon, because so few populations are known.
## Ecology
Various animals, including mammals, birds, and insects such as bees, wasps, ants and beetles, have been recorded visiting Banksia sphaerocarpa inflorescences, including the colletid bee species Hylaeus sanguinipictus. Botanist Stephen Hopper found pollen of B. sphaerocarpa on New Holland honeyeaters (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae) and honey possums (Tarsipes rostratus) at Cheyne Beach in a field study published in 1980.
Knowledge of the breeding system of B. sphaerocarpa comes from a 2009 study of genetic structure within and across fragmented plant populations, which made a case study of B. sphaerocarpa var. caesia populations in the vicinity of Dongolocking, where the landscape has been severely fragmented by land clearing. Very little self-pollination was observed. Most mating was between plants in the same population, but inter-population mating accounted for 15–33% of seed, a "very significant contribution... to overall reproductive dynamics". This figure was lowest in the smallest populations, which also exhibited lower rates of germination, smaller plants, and less genetic diversity than larger populations. One possible interpretation of this is that interpopulation mating confers a fitness advantage. There was also evidence of fine-scale genetic structure, with plants tending to be more closely related to nearby plants than to more distant plants. The authors suggest that gene flow was probably always limited in these populations, even before they were fragmented.
Banksia sphaerocarpa is one of five closely related Banksia species that have highly unusual flower nectar. Whereas other Banksia species produce nectar that is clear and watery, the nectar of these species is pale yellow initially, but gradually becomes darker and thicker, changing to a thick, olive-green mucilage within one to two days of secretion, and eventually becoming "an almost black, gelatinous lump adhering to the base of the flowers". It was first noted by Byron Lamont in 1980; he attributed it to cyanobacteria that feed off the nectar sugars. Noting that many of these cyanobacteria had heterocysts, he speculated that they aid the plant by fixing atmospheric nitrogen, which is then washed off the flower heads by rain, and absorbed by the proteoid root mat. This purported symbiosis was investigated by Barrett and Lamont in 1985, but no evidence of nitrogen fixing was found. Further investigation by Markey and Lamont in 1996 suggested that the discolouration is not caused by cyanobacteria or other microorganisms in the nectar, but is rather "a chemical phenomenon of plant origin". Their analyses indicated that the nectar had unusually high levels of sugar and free amino acids, but three of these species, including B. sphaerocarpa, have since been shown to have normal nectar sugar compositions.
Like most Western Australian Banksia species, B. sphaerocarpa is susceptible to dieback from the soil-borne water mould Phytophthora cinnamomi. In one experiment, 43% of plants were dead within three months of inoculation, and the species was therefore rated as "moderately susceptible". In another experiment, 37% of plants were dead within three months, and 85% within a year; yet this study rated the species' susceptibility as "high". In the latter study, it took 35 to 40 days for the death rate to reach its maximum, and thereafter the death rate continued at that level throughout the year, only dipping slightly in the dry summer months.
## Cultivation
None of the varieties of Banksia sphaerocarpa'' are commonly seen in cultivation. They are difficult to grow in the wetter conditions of Australia's east coast. Trials with grafting have been very limited and results have been poor. Otherwise, they adapt well to gardens with good drainage, sandy soils and sunny aspects in drier and Mediterranean (winter moisture) climates, and are also frost tolerant. They are good bird-attracting plants, and flower when not much else is in flower. Seeds do not require any treatment prior to sowing, and take 20 to 48 days to germinate.
|
41,075,825 |
Nine Stones, Winterbourne Abbas
| 1,170,363,524 |
Stone circle in Dorset, England
|
[
"Archaeological sites in Dorset",
"Buildings and structures in Dorset",
"English Heritage sites in Dorset",
"History of Dorset",
"Megalithic monuments in England",
"Neo-druidism in Britain",
"Religion in Dorset",
"Scheduled monuments in Dorset",
"Stone circles in Dorset"
] |
The Nine Stones, also known as the Devil's Nine Stones, the Nine Ladies, or Lady Williams and her Dog, is a stone circle located near to the village of Winterbourne Abbas in the southwestern English county of Dorset. Archaeologists believe that it was likely erected during the Bronze Age.
The Nine Stones is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread through much of Great Britain, Ireland, and Brittany between 3,300 and 900 BCE, during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The stone circle tradition was accompanied by the construction of timber circles and earthen henges, reflecting a growing emphasis on circular monuments. The purpose of such rings is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders. At least nine of these stone circles are known to have been constructed near modern Dorset. They are smaller than those found elsewhere in Great Britain and are typically built from sarsen stone.
Located in the bottom of a narrow valley, the Nine Stones circle has a diameter of 9.1 by 7.8 metres (29 feet 10 inches by 25 feet 7 inches). It consists of nine irregularly spaced sarsen megaliths, with a small opening on its northern side. Two of the stones on the northwestern side of the monument are considerably larger than the other seven. This architectural feature has parallels with various stone circles in southwestern Scotland, and was potentially a deliberate choice of the circle's builders, to whom it may have had symbolic meaning.
Antiquarians like John Aubrey and William Stukeley first took an interest in the site during the eighteenth century. It later received archaeological attention, although it has not been excavated. Local folklore has grown up around the circle, associating it with the Devil and with children petrified into rock. The Nine Stones are regarded as a sacred site by local Druids, who perform religious ceremonies there. The circle is adjacent to the A35 road and encircled by trees. The site is owned by English Heritage and is open without charge to visitors.
## Location
The Nine Stones circle is positioned at the national grid reference 36100904, on the western edge of the village of Winterbourne Abbas in Dorset, South West England . Enclosed within iron railings, it is surrounded on three sides by trees and on the northern side by the A35 road. The roots of a beech tree have engulfed two of the megaliths in the circle. The archaeologist Aubrey Burl noted that while "this petite ring should be a delight to see", it was instead a "frustration" as a result of its restricted location. He noted that it was difficult to take clear photographs of the site because of the surrounding trees.
## Context
While the transition from the Early Neolithic to the Late Neolithic—which took place with the transition from the fourth to the third millennium BCE—witnessed much economic and technological continuity, it also saw a considerable change in the style of monuments erected, particularly in southern and eastern England. By 3,000 BCE, the long barrows, causewayed enclosures, and cursuses which had predominated in the Early Neolithic had ceased being built, and were instead replaced by circular monuments of various kinds. These include earthen henges, timber circles, and stone circles. These stone rings are found in most areas of Britain where stone is available, with the exception of the island's southeastern corner. Stone circles are most densely concentrated in southwestern Britain and on the northeastern horn of Scotland, near Aberdeen. The tradition of their construction may have lasted for 2,400 years, from 3300 to 900 BCE, with the major phase of building taking place between 3000 and 1,300 BCE.
These stone circles typically show very little evidence of human visitation during the period immediately following their creation. This suggests that they were not sites used for rituals that left archaeologically visible evidence, and may have been deliberately created to serve as what the historian Ronald Hutton describes as "silent and empty monuments". The archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson suggested that in Neolithic Britain, stone was associated with the dead and wood with the living. Other archaeologists have suggested that the stone might not represent ancestors, but rather other supernatural entities, such as deities.
Burl described modern Dorset as having a "thin scatter" of stone circles, with nine possible examples known within the county's boundaries. The archaeologist John Gale described these as "a small but significant group" of such monuments, and all are located within five miles of the sea. All but one—Rempstone Stone Circle on the Isle of Purbeck—are located on the chalk hills west of Dorchester. The Dorset circles have a simplistic typology and are of a comparatively small size in comparison to other British stone circles, with none exceeding 28 metres (92 feet) in diameter. All are oval in shape, although they perhaps have been altered from their original form. With the exception of the Rempstone circle, all consist of sarsen stone. Much of this may have been obtained from the Valley of Stones, a location at the foot of Crow Hill near to Littlebredy, which is located within the vicinity of many of these circles. With the exception of the circle at Litton Cheney, none display evidence of any outlying stones or earthworks around the stone circle.
The archaeologists Stuart and Cecily Piggott believed that the circles of Dorset were probably of Bronze Age origin, a view endorsed by Burl, who noted that their distribution did not match that of any known Neolithic sites. It is possible that they were not all constructed around the same date, and the Piggotts suggested that while they may well be Early Bronze Age in date, it is also possible that "their use and possibly their construction may last into the Middle and even into the Late Bronze Age". Their nearest analogies are the circles found on Dartmoor and Exmoor to the west, and the Stanton Drew stone circles to the north. It is also possible that the stone circles were linked to a number of earthen henges erected in Dorset around the same period.
## Description and design
The Nine Stones circle has been described by Gale as "probably the most well documented of all those surviving in the county". It measures 9.1 by 7.9 metres (29 feet 10 inches by 25 feet 11 inches) in diameter, as measured from a north-to-south direction. The stones are of sarsen or conglomerate. A gap between two stones on the side of the circle adjacent to the road may suggest that there was once a tenth stone in the monument. Given its dimensions, the circle could only accommodate a small number of individuals assembling within it.
Seven of the nine surviving stones are under 90 centimetres (3.0 feet) tall, but two of the northwestern stones are considerably larger. Located opposite the circle's two shortest stones, one is thin and pointed, reaching 2.1 metres (6.9 feet) high, while the other is broader, measuring 1.8 metres square (6 feet by 6 feet). The largest of the stones weighs approximately 7.3 tonnes (8 tons) and would have required the efforts of many people to move and erect it.
This disparity between the sizes of the megaliths is unparalleled among the other surviving stone circles in the Dorset area, and may have been a deliberate choice by the circle's builders, perhaps reflecting sexual symbolism. There are a number of similar circles in southwestern Scotland, for example the Loupin' Stones, Ninestane Rig, and Burgh Hill, all of which share the architectural feature of having two taller stones on their perimeters. Potentially supporting this link between Dorset and southwestern Scotland is the fact that the Grey Mare and her Colts—a chambered long barrow located two and a half miles southwest of the Nine Stones—displays architectural similarities with the Clyde-Solway tradition of chambered long barrows.
### Landscape context and related monuments
The circle is located at the bottom of a narrow valley. Though this is unusual for a monument of this type, the Dorset Rempstone stone circle was also erected within a valley.
The antiquarian John Aubrey recorded a further stone circle, located about a kilometre (half a mile) to the west of the Nine Stones, which was of similar dimensions to it. It was later destroyed, although as of the 1930s three stones were recorded as remaining at the site. Gale later suggested that this site may not have even been a stone circle at all, but might instead have been the remains of an Early Neolithic chambered tomb. He noted, however, that "as nothing remains it is at the moment impossible to resolve".
There is also a fallen standing stone known as the Broad Stone which measures 2 metres (6.6 feet) in length and which lies beside the road about 1.5 kilometres (0.93 miles) to the west of the Nine Stones. As it was recorded in the nineteenth century it measured 3 metres (9.8 feet) in length, 2 metres (6 and a half feet) in breadth, and 0.6 metres (2.0 feet) in thickness. The monument was protected from passing cars by several bollards which were later removed by the highways authority, prompting statements of concern that the stone was unprotected in 2008.
## Later history
### Antiquarian and archaeological research
The circle was recorded by Aubrey in the seventeenth century, and then by William Stukeley in the eighteenth century. Aubrey recorded the presence of nine megaliths at the site, as did Stukeley's 1723 drawing of it. In the nineteenth century the site was visited by the antiquarian Charles Warne, who wrote about it in his 1872 book Ancient Dorset. He claimed that he could discern the existence of a tenth stone, although on visiting the site in 1936, the Piggotts noted that they could find no evidence of this. Gale later stated that this claim "has never been substantiated". Warne had consulted Aubrey's manuscript, but confused Aubrey's illustration of the Devil's Quoits at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, for a monument that he believed had once been located near to the Nine Stones.
In 1888, the local council decreed that—along with the Grey Mare and her Colts and the Tenant Hill stone circle—the site would be registered as an "ancient monument" under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882. In August 1916, the site was then designated as a scheduled monument. The circle was included in the archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford's Map of Neolithic Wessex, printed by the Ordnance Survey in 1932. As of 2003, the site had not been excavated.
### Folklore
In 1908, the stone circle was known as the "Nine Ladies" and the "Devil's Nine Stones", and in 1941 they were associated with both the Devil and human sacrifice in local folklore. As of 1968, the stone circle was still known as the "Devil's Nine Stones". In 1966, a man from Winterborne St Martin claimed that the stones were the Devil, his wife, and his children. There are many ancient sites across Britain with names that associate them with the Devil. Examining such place-names, the folklorist Jeremy Harte argued that they did not develop during the Christianisation of England in the early Middle Ages, but rather they were applied to such sites in later centuries, often supplanting the name of an earlier folkloric or legendary figure.
In 1965 a woman from the Isle of Portland stated that her own father had always raised his cap when passing the circle. At the same time local folklore was recorded as holding that the stones in the ring could not be counted. This "countless stones" motif is not unique to this particular site, and can be found at various other megalithic monuments in Britain. The earliest textual evidence for it is found in an early sixteenth-century document, where it applies to the stone circle of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, although in an early seventeenth-century document it was being applied to The Hurlers, a set of three stone circles in Cornwall. Later records reveal that it had gained widespread distribution in England, as well as a single occurrence each in Wales and Ireland. The folklorist S. P. Menefee suggested that it could be attributed to an animistic understanding that these megaliths had lives of their own.
The archaeologist Leslie Grinsell reported that in the mid-1970s, he learned of a folk tale that the stones had once been children who were turned to stones as punishment for playing Five-Stones on a Sunday. This folk motif of humans turned to stone for revelling on a Sunday had been attached to a range of prehistoric monuments across southwestern Britain by the early eighteenth century, although it had been first recorded in Cornwall in 1602. It is likely connected to Sabbatarianism, and may have been spread by Protestant preachers.
In 1984, Harte talked to various individuals who lived in the local area, finding that the monument was also known as "Lady Williams and her Dog" or "Lady Williams and her Little Dog Fido", a reference to a family who lived at Bridehead House, Littlebredy. He also related a story that on 23 January 1985, a breakdown van was towing a car past the Nine Stones when, at 9:15pm, its engine cut out and the lights on both vehicles failed. Press coverage speculated that the event was linked to both a ley line passing through the site and to unidentified flying objects that have been reported above the nearby Eggardon Hill.
### Recent developments
The site is in the care of English Heritage, and can be visited at any time. The circle is considered a place of religious importance to a modern Druidic group called the Dolmen Grove Druids. They have described having to confront individuals shouting abuse at them while they have performed their rituals at the stone circle.
In October 2007, the sides of the stones facing the road were daubed in white paint with the slogans "Read family court hell" and "F4J". "F4J" was also painted on to the side of Dorset's Hardy Monument. The activist group Fathers4Justice—whose acronym is "F4J"—denied any responsibility, condemned the action, and suggested that the slogans had been painted on by unknown individuals in an attempt to discredit the group. Concern about the vandalism was expressed by the National Trust, the local landowner, and the Dolmen Grove Druids.
|
73,441 |
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
| 1,173,461,939 |
1982 film directed by Steven Spielberg
|
[
"1980s American films",
"1980s English-language films",
"1980s coming-of-age films",
"1980s science fiction films",
"1982 films",
"Alien visitations in films",
"Amblin Entertainment films",
"American children's adventure films",
"American coming-of-age films",
"American science fiction adventure films",
"Best Drama Picture Golden Globe winners",
"Children's science fiction films",
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"Films about dysfunctional families",
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"Films about telepathy",
"Films directed by Steven Spielberg",
"Films involved in plagiarism controversies",
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"Films set in 1982",
"Films set in the San Fernando Valley",
"Films shot in Los Angeles",
"Films shot in chronological order",
"Films that won the Best Original Score Academy Award",
"Films that won the Best Sound Editing Academy Award",
"Films that won the Best Sound Mixing Academy Award",
"Films that won the Best Visual Effects Academy Award",
"Films with screenplays by Melissa Mathison",
"IMAX films",
"United States National Film Registry films",
"Universal Pictures films"
] |
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (or simply E.T.) is a 1982 American science fiction film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison. It tells the story of Elliott, a boy who befriends an extraterrestrial, dubbed E.T., who is left behind on Earth. Along with his friends and family, Elliott must find a way to help E.T. find his way home. The film stars Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore.
The film's concept was based on an imaginary friend that Spielberg created after his parents' divorce. In 1980, Spielberg met Mathison and developed a new story from the unrealized project Night Skies. In less than two months, Mathison wrote the first draft of the script, titled E.T. and Me, which went through two rewrites. The project was rejected by Columbia Pictures, who doubted its commercial potential. Universal Pictures eventually purchased the script for \$1 million. Filming took place from September to December 1981 on a budget of \$10.5 million. Unlike most films, E.T. was shot in rough chronological order to facilitate convincing emotional performances from the young cast. The animatronics for the film were designed by Carlo Rambaldi.
E.T. premiered as the closing film of the Cannes Film Festival on May 26, 1982, and was released in the United States on June 11, 1982. The film was an immediate blockbuster, surpassing Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all time, a record it held for eleven years until Spielberg's own Jurassic Park surpassed it in 1993. E.T. was widely acclaimed by critics, and is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. It received nine nominations at the 55th Academy Awards, winning Best Original Score, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing, and also won five Saturn Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. The film was re-released in 1985 and again in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, with altered shots, visual effects, and additional scenes. It was also re-released in IMAX on August 12, 2022, to celebrate its 40th anniversary. In 1994, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, who deemed it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
## Plot
Aliens secretly visit Earth at night to gather plant specimens in a California forest. One of them separates from the group, fascinated by the distant city lights. U.S. government vehicles arrive and chase the startled creature. The other aliens depart, abandoning him on Earth. In a nearby neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, ten-year-old Elliott Taylor's suspicions are roused when he pitches a baseball into a tool shed, and the ball is rolled back. Later that night, Elliott returns with a flashlight, discovering the creature among the cornstalks. He shrieks and flees the scene.
Despite his family's disbelief, Elliott leaves a trail of candy to lure the alien into his house. Before bed, he realizes the alien is imitating his movements. The next morning, Elliott feigns sickness to stay home from school and play with him. He can "feel" the alien's thoughts and emotions, shown when the alien accidentally opens an umbrella, startling him and simultaneously Elliott several rooms away.
Later that day, Elliott introduces his older brother Michael and seven-year-old sister Gertie to the alien, deciding to keep him hidden from their mother, Mary. When the children ask the alien about his origins, he shows them by levitating several balls, representing his planetary system, and demonstrates his powers by reviving dead chrysanthemums. He demonstrates his healing power, through his glowing fingertip, on a minor cut on Elliott's finger.
At school the next day, Elliott begins to experience a much stronger empathic connection with the alien, including exhibiting signs of intoxication (because the alien is at Elliott's home, drinking beer and watching television) and freeing the frogs in his biology class. As the alien watches John Wayne kiss Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man on television, Elliott kisses a girl he likes similarly and is sent to the principal's office.
The alien dubs himself "E.T.", reading a comic strip where Buck Rogers, stranded, calls for help by building a makeshift communication device, and is inspired to try it himself. E.T. gets Elliott's help to build a device to "phone home" by using a Speak & Spell. Michael notices that E.T.'s health is declining and that Elliott is referring to himself as "we". Throughout this, the boys are unaware that E.T. is being tracked by government agents and that all three of them are being spied on.
On Halloween night, Michael and Elliott dress E.T. as a ghost to sneak him out. Elliott and E.T. head through the forest, where they successfully call home. The next day, Elliott wakes up in the field, finding E.T. gone. Elliott returns home to his worried family. Michael discovers E.T. dying next to a culvert and takes him home to an also-dying Elliott. Mary becomes horrified upon discovering her son's illness and the dying alien, just as a group of government agents dressed in biohazard suits led by "Keys" invades the house.
Scientists set up a lab at the house, asking Michael, Mary, and Gertie what they know about E.T. While the scientists are treating Elliott and E.T., the mental connection between Elliott and E.T. disappears. E.T. appears to die while Elliott recovers. Elliott is carried away, screaming that the doctors are killing E.T. as they try to revive him. When the doctors pronounce E.T. dead, Michael discovers that the chrysanthemums that E.T. previously revived are dying again. As Elliott recovers, the scientists first return him to his family, but then Keys leaves him alone with E.T. Elliott says a tearful goodbye, telling E.T. that he loves him before closing the case. Before long, E.T.'s heart light begins to glow, and Elliott notices that the chrysanthemum is once again coming back to life and opens the case. E.T. reanimates and tells Elliott that his people are returning.
Elliott and Michael steal the van that E.T. had been loaded into and a chase ensues, with Michael's friends joining them on bicycles, evading the authorities. Suddenly facing a police roadblock, E.T. helps them escape by using his telekinesis to lift them into the air just in time and towards the forest like he had done for Elliott before.
Standing near the spaceship, E.T.'s heart glows as he prepares to return home, while Mary, Gertie, and Keys show up. E.T. says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, as she presents him with the flower he had revived. Before boarding the spaceship, he embraces Elliott and tells him "I'll be right here", pointing his glowing finger to Elliott's forehead. He picks up the chrysanthemum and boards the spaceship. As the others watch it take off, the spaceship leaves a rainbow in the sky.
## Cast
- Henry Thomas as Elliott Taylor, a 10-year-old boy who befriends E.T.
- Pat Welsh, Steven Spielberg, and Kayden Green as E.T. (voiceover; uncredited)
- Dee Wallace as Mary Taylor, a single mother to Elliott, Michael and Gertie
- Peter Coyote as Keys, a government agent bent on capturing E.T.
- Robert MacNaughton as Michael Taylor, Elliott and Gertie's older brother
- Drew Barrymore as Gertie Taylor, Elliott and Michael's younger sister
- K.C. Martel as Greg
- C. Thomas Howell as Tyler
- Sean Frye as Steve
- Erika Eleniak as Pretty Girl
- David O'Dell as Schoolboy
- Richard Swingler as Science Teacher
- Frank Toth as Policeman
- Robert Barton as Ultra Sound Man
- Michael Darrell as Van Man
- Anne Lockhart as Nurse
## Production
### Development
After his parents' divorce in 1960, Spielberg filled the void with an imaginary alien companion that he later recalled as "a friend who could be the brother [he] never had and a father that [he] didn't feel [he] had anymore". In 1978, he announced that he would shoot a film entitled Growing Up, which he would film in four weeks. However, the project was set aside due to delays on 1941, but the concept of making a small autobiographical film about childhood would stay with him. He also thought about a follow-up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and began to develop a darker project he had planned with John Sayles called Night Skies, in which malevolent aliens terrorize a family.
Filming Raiders of the Lost Ark in Tunisia caused a sense of loneliness in Spielberg, far from his family and friends, and made memories of his childhood creation resurface. He told screenwriter Melissa Mathison about Night Skies, and developed a subplot from the failed project in which Buddy, the only friendly alien, befriends an autistic child. Buddy's abandonment on Earth in the script's final scene inspired the concept of E.T. Mathison wrote a first draft titled E.T. and Me in eight weeks, which Spielberg considered perfect. The script went through two more drafts, one by Matthew Robbins which deleted an "Eddie Haskell"–esque friend of Elliott's, named Lance. The chase sequence was also created, and he also suggested having the scene where E.T. got drunk.
In early summer 1981, while Raiders of the Lost Ark was being promoted, Columbia Pictures met with Spielberg to discuss the script, after having to develop Night Skies with the director as the intended sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, Marvin Atonowsky, the head of Columbia Pictures' marketing and research development, concluded that it had a limited commercial potential, believing that it would appeal to mostly young children. John Veitch, president of the studio's worldwide productions, also felt that the script was not good or scary enough to draw enough crowd. On the advice of Atonowsky and Veitch, Columbia CEO Frank Price passed on the project, thus putting it in a turnaround, and Spielberg approached the more receptive Sid Sheinberg, president of MCA, then the parent of Universal Studios. Spielberg told Sheinberg to acquire the E.T. script from Columbia Pictures, which he did for \$1 million and struck a deal with Price in which Columbia would retain 5% of the film's net profits. Veitch later recalled that "I think [in 1982] we made more on that picture than we did on any of our films."
### Pre-production
Carlo Rambaldi, who designed the aliens for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was hired to design the animatronics for E.T. Rambaldi's own painting Women of Delta led him to give the creature a unique, extendable neck. Its face was inspired by those of Carl Sandburg, Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway. Producer Kathleen Kennedy visited the Jules Stein Eye Institute to study real and glass eyes. She hired Institute staffers to create E.T.'s eyes, which she felt were particularly important in engaging the audience. Four heads were created for filming, one as the main animatronic and the others for facial expressions, as well as a costume. A team of puppeteers controlled E.T.'s face with animatronics. Two little people, Tamara De Treaux and Pat Bilon, as well as 12-year-old Matthew DeMeritt, who was born without legs, took turns wearing the costume, depending on what scene was being filmed. DeMeritt actually walked on his hands and played all scenes where he walked awkwardly or fell over. The head was placed above that of the actors, and the actors could see through slits in its chest. Caprice Roth, a professional mime, filled prosthetics to play E.T.'s hands. The puppet was created in three months at the cost of \$1.5 million. Spielberg declared that it was "something that only a mother could love".
Mars, Incorporated refused to allow M&M's to be used in the film, believing that E.T. would frighten children. The Hershey Company was asked if Reese's Pieces could be used, and it agreed. This product placement resulted in a large increase in Reese's Pieces sales. Science and technology educator Henry Feinberg created E.T.'s communicator device.
### Casting
Having worked with Cary Guffey on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg felt confident in working with a cast composed mostly of child actors. For the role of Elliott, he auditioned hundreds of boys, including Keith Coogan; before Jack Fisk suggested Henry Thomas for the role because Henry had played the part of Harry in the film Raggedy Man, which Fisk had directed. Thomas, who auditioned in an Indiana Jones costume, did not perform well in the formal testing, but got the filmmakers' attention in an improvised scene. Thoughts of his dead dog inspired his convincing tears. Robert MacNaughton auditioned eight times to play Michael, sometimes with boys auditioning for Elliott. Spielberg felt that Drew Barrymore had the right imagination for mischievous Gertie after she impressed him with a story that she led a punk rock band. He enjoyed working with the children, and he later said that the experience made him feel ready to be a father. Ralph Macchio was considered for the role of Tyler, before it went to his eventual The Outsiders co-star C. Thomas Howell.
The major voice work of E.T. for the film was performed by Pat Welsh. She smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, which gave her voice a quality that sound effects creator Ben Burtt liked. She spent nine-and-a-half hours recording her part, and was paid \$380 by Burtt for her services. He also recorded 16 other people and various animals to create E.T.'s "voice". These included Spielberg, actress Debra Winger, his sleeping wife sick with a cold, a burp from his USC film professor, raccoons, otters, and horses.
Doctors working at the USC Medical Center were recruited to play the ones who try to save E.T. after government agents take over Elliott's house. Spielberg felt that actors in the roles, performing lines of technical medical dialogue, would come across as unnatural. During post-production, he decided to cut a scene featuring Harrison Ford as the principal at Elliott's school. It featured his character reprimanding Elliott for his behavior in biology class and warning of the dangers of underage drinking. He is then taken aback as Elliott's chair rises from the floor, while E.T. is levitating his "phone" equipment up the stairs with Gertie. Ford's face is never seen. The footage of this scene has survived and was included on the film's 1996 laserdisc release as a bonus feature. It was not included on the DVD and Blu-ray releases that followed.
### Filming
Principal photography began in neighborhoods in Los Angeles County and in the San Fernando Valley on September 8, 1981. The project was filmed under the cover name A Boy's Life, as Spielberg did not want anyone to discover and plagiarize the plot. The actors had to read the script behind closed doors, and everyone on set had to wear an ID card. The shoot began with two days at Culver City High School, and the crew spent the next 11 days moving between locations at Northridge and Tujunga. The next 42 days were spent at Laird International Studios in Culver City for the interiors of Elliott's home. The crew shot at a redwood forest near Crescent City in Northern California for the production's last six days. The exterior Halloween scene and the "flying bicycle" chase scenes were filmed in Porter Ranch.
Spielberg shot the film in roughly chronological order to achieve convincingly emotional performances from his cast; it was also done to help the child actors with the workload. Spielberg calculated that the film would hit home harder if the children were really saying goodbye to E.T. at the end. In the scene in which Michael first encounters E.T., his appearance caused MacNaughton to jump back and knock down the shelves behind him. The chronological shoot gave the young actors an emotional experience as they bonded with E.T., making the quarantine sequences more moving. Spielberg ensured that the puppeteers were kept away from the set to maintain the illusion of a real alien. For the first time in his career, Spielberg did not storyboard most of the film, in order to facilitate spontaneity in the performances. The film was shot so adults, except for Dee Wallace, are never seen from the waist up in its first half, as a tribute to the cartoons of Tex Avery. According to Spielberg, the scene in which E.T. disguises himself as a stuffed toy in Elliott's closet was suggested by fellow director Robert Zemeckis after he read a draft of the screenplay that Spielberg had sent him. In between takes, the young actors spent time doing activities such as riding bicycles around the sound stages, playing Dungeons & Dragons, the game that Elliott, Michael, Steve, Tyler and Greg play in a scene early in the film, and attending school lessons. The shoot was completed in 61 days, four ahead of schedule.
In a 2022 interview, Sean Frye, who played Steve, revealed how the visual effect close-up shots for the climax of the "flying bicycle" chase scene were filmed and reflected on the experience, saying "We were on these rigs ... They're pulling the trees backwards, past us on tracks, so it looks like we're going through and up and through and over to create this illusion that we're going forward when we're going nowhere. Then the pushing and pulling of the things so that the bike is up and down, and we can get the 'Whoaaaa' effects. That was great." BMX riders Robert Cardoza, Greg Maes, and David Lee served as stunt doubles for the scene.
### Music
Spielberg's regular collaborator John Williams, who composed the film's musical score, described the challenge of creating one that would generate sympathy for such an odd-looking creature. As with their previous collaborations, Spielberg liked every theme Williams composed and had it included. Spielberg loved the music for the final chase so much that he edited the sequence to suit it. Williams took a modernist approach, especially with his use of polytonality, which refers to the sound of two different keys played simultaneously. The Lydian mode can also be used in a polytonal way. Williams combined polytonality and the Lydian mode to express a mystic, dreamlike and heroic quality. His theme, emphasizing coloristic instruments such as the harp, piano, celesta, and other keyboards, as well as percussion, suggests E.T.'s childlike nature and his "machine". The soundtrack album was first released on June 11, 1982, the same day as the film. An audiobook companion album featuring Williams' score, produced by Quincy Jones and narrated by Michael Jackson, was released on November 15, 1982, exactly two weeks prior to Jackson's acclaimed sixth studio album Thriller.
## Allegations of plagiarism
There were allegations that the film was plagiarized from The Alien, a 1967 script by Indian director Satyajit Ray, who stated, "E.T. would not have been possible without my script of The Alien being available throughout the United States in mimeographed copies." Spielberg denied this, stating "I was a kid in high school when his script was circulating in Hollywood." Star Weekend Magazine disputed Spielberg's claim, pointing out that he had graduated from high school in 1965 and began his career as a director in Hollywood in 1969. The Times of India noted that E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) had "remarkable parallels" with The Alien, including the physical nature of the alien. In his screenplay, which Ray wrote entirely in English, he described the alien as "a cross between a gnome and a famished refugee child: large head, spindly limbs, a lean torso. Is it male or female or neuter? We don't know. What its form basically conveys is a kind of ethereal innocence, and it is difficult to associate either great evil or great power with it; yet a feeling of eeriness is there because of the resemblance to a sickly human child."
Ray first found out about E.T. from his friend, British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who was familiar with The Alien and believed it was plagiarized by E.T. Clarke called Ray and encouraged him to take legal action against E.T. No such legal action was taken, as Ray did not want to show himself as having a "vindictive" mindset against Spielberg, and acknowledged that he "has made good films and he is a good director".
In 1984, a federal appeals court ruled against playwright Lisa Litchfield, who sued Spielberg for \$750 million, claiming he used her one-act musical play Lokey from Maldemar as the basis for E.T. She lost the case, with the court stating "No reasonable jury could conclude that Lokey and E.T. were substantially similar in their ideas and expression. Any similarities in plot exist only at the general level for which [Ms. Litchfield] cannot claim copyright protection."
## Themes
Spielberg drew the story of the film from his parents' divorce. Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "essentially a spiritual autobiography, a portrait of the filmmaker as a typical suburban kid set apart by an uncommonly fervent, mystical imagination." References to Spielberg's childhood occur throughout: Elliott fakes illness by holding a thermometer to the bulb in his lamp while covering his face with a heating pad, a trick frequently employed by the young Spielberg. Michael picking on Elliott echoes Spielberg's teasing of his younger sisters, and Michael's evolution from tormentor to protector reflects how Spielberg had to take care of his sisters after their father left.
Critics have focused on the parallels between E.T.'s life and Elliott, who is "alienated" by the loss of his father. A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that while E.T. "is the more obvious and desperate foundling," Elliott "suffers in his own way from the want of a home." E.T. is the first and last letter of Elliott's name. At the film's heart is the theme of growing up. Critic Henry Sheehan described the film as a retelling of Peter Pan from the perspective of a Lost Boy (Elliott): E.T. cannot survive physically on Earth, as Pan could not survive emotionally in Neverland; government scientists take the place of Neverland's pirates. Furthering the parallels, there is a scene in the film where Mary reads Peter Pan to Gertie. Vincent Canby of The New York Times similarly observed that the film "freely recycles elements from" Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz. Some critics have suggested that Spielberg's portrayal of suburbia is very dark, contrary to popular belief. According to A.O. Scott, "the suburban milieu, with its unsupervised children and unhappy parents, its broken toys and brand-name junk food, could have come out of a Raymond Carver story." Charles Taylor of Salon.com wrote that "Spielberg's movies, despite the way they're often characterized, are not Hollywood idealizations of families and the suburbs. The homes here bear what the cultural critic Karal Ann Marling called 'the marks of hard use'."
Other critics found religious parallels between E.T. and Jesus. Andrew Nigels described E.T.'s story as "crucifixion by military science" and "resurrection by love and faith." According to Spielberg biographer Joseph McBride, Universal Pictures appealed directly to the Christian market, with a poster reminiscent of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam (more specifically the "fingers touching" detail) and a logo reading "Peace". Spielberg answered that he did not intend the film to be a religious parable, joking, "If I ever went to my mother and said, 'Mom, I've made this movie that's a Christian parable,' what do you think she'd say? She has a Kosher restaurant on Pico and Doheny in Los Angeles."
As a substantial body of criticism has built up around the film, numerous writers have analyzed it in other ways as well, interpreting it as a modern fairy tale and in psychoanalytic terms. Producer Kathleen Kennedy noted that an important theme of the film is tolerance, which would be central to future Spielberg films such as Schindler's List. Having been a loner as a teenager, Spielberg described it as "a minority story". Spielberg's characteristic theme of communication is partnered with the ideal of mutual understanding; he has suggested that the story's central alien-human friendship is an analogy for how real-world adversaries can learn to overcome their differences.
## Reception
### Release and sales
E.T. was previewed in Houston, Texas, where it received high marks from viewers. The film premiered at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival's closing gala on May 26, 1982, and was released in the United States on June 11, 1982. It opened at number one at the US box office with a gross of \$11 million, and stayed at the top of the box office for six weeks; it then fluctuated between the first and second positions until October, before returning to the top spot for the final time in December during a brief holiday season re-release. In its second weekend, it recorded the highest-grossing second weekend of all time, surpassing the record of \$10,765,687 set by Superman II in 1981. In its fourth weekend, it recorded the highest-grossing weekend of all time, surpassing the record of \$16,706,592 set earlier that year by Rocky III. It had a record eight weekends with a gross of over \$10 million, a feat not matched until Home Alone (1990), and set a modern era record for being at number one for 16 weeks in total.
The film began its international rollout in Australia on November 26, 1982, and grossed \$839,992 in its first 10 days from nine theatres, setting five weekly house records and 43 daily records. In South Africa, it opened in late November and grossed \$724,340 in eight days from 14 screens, setting 13 weekly highs. In France, it opened on December 1, and had 930,000 admission in its first five days on 250 screens, setting an all-time record in Paris for most daily admissions (Saturday, December 4). In Japan, it opened on December 4, and grossed \$1,757,527 in two days from 35 theatres in 11 cities, setting 10 house records on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. In the United Kingdom, it opened on December 9 after a charity performance in London and grossed a record £1 million in its opening weekend. The film added another 138 screens in Japan on December 11, with advance sales of 1.3 million tickets. It later opened in the Philippines in January 1983. In Finland, Norway, and Sweden, the film had minimum age ratings of 8, 12, and 11, respectively, while Denmark had no minimum age limit. There were Swedish people who were opposed to the age limit.
In 1983, E.T. surpassed Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all-time; by the end of its theatrical run, it had grossed \$359 million in the United States and Canada and \$619 million worldwide. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 120 million tickets in its initial U.S. theatrical run. Spielberg earned \$500,000 a day from his share of the profits, while The Hershey Company's profits rose 65% due to the film's prominent placement of Reese's Pieces. The "Official E.T. Fan Club" offered photographs, a newsletter that let readers "relive the film's unforgettable moments [and] favorite scenes", and a vinyl record with "phone home" and other sound clips.
The film was also a merchandising success, with dolls selling 15 million units by September 1982 and becoming the best-selling toy that Christmas season. E.T. went on to generate over \$1 billion in merchandise sales by 1998. Following the success of the film, Kuwahara, the company that created the BMX bikes featured in the film, began producing red and white "E.T." models in three price and quality levels. Kuwahara reissued the E.T. model in 2002, as part of the film's 20th anniversary, and again in 2022 as part of the film's 40th anniversary.
The film was re-released in 1985 and 2002, earning another \$60 million and \$68 million respectively, for a worldwide total of \$792 million with \$435 million from the United States and Canada. It held the global record until it was surpassed by Jurassic Park, another Spielberg-directed film, in 1993, although it managed to hold on to the United States and Canada record for a further four years, until the release of the Special Edition of Star Wars.
It was re-released in IMAX on August 12, 2022, in the United States and Canada, to commemorate the film's 40th anniversary, alongside an IMAX and RealD 3D reissue of another Spielberg film Jaws scheduled for September 2. Jim Orr, Universal's president of distribution remarked "No filmmaker, it's fair to say, has had a greater or more enduring impact on American cinema or has created more indelible cinematic memories for tens of billions of people worldwide. We couldn't think of a more perfect way to celebrate the anniversary of E.T. and the first Universal-Spielberg summer blockbuster, Jaws, than to allow audiences to experience these films in a way they've never been able to before." The IMAX release grossed \$490,000 on its first day from 389 theaters, for a three-day total of \$1.07 million and a \$438 million running total.
### Home media
E.T. was eventually released on VHS and laserdisc on October 27, 1988. The videos were priced with a recommended retail price of \$24.95, the lowest initial price at the time for a major movie compared to the normal price of \$89.95. To combat piracy, the tapeguards and tape hubs on the videocassettes were colored green, and the tape itself was affixed with a small, holographic sticker of the 1963 Universal logo (much like the holograms on a credit card), and encoded with Macrovision. The film doubled the record pre-orders of Cinderella released the same month and went on to sell over 15 million VHS units in the United States, and grossed over \$250 million in video sales revenue. The VHS cassette was also rented over six million times during its first two weeks in 1988, a record it held until the VHS release of Batman the following year. Initial orders internationally exceeded \$30 million despite the film often being sold at full price, setting records in the United Kingdom with over 81,000 units and Australia with 35,500 units. It initially shipped 152,000 units in Japan and 87,000 in Germany. In 1991, Sears began selling E.T. videocassettes exclusively at their stores as part of a holiday promotion. It was reissued on VHS and Laserdisc again in 1996, with the latter including a 90-minute documentary produced and directed by Laurent Bouzereau; it included interviews with Spielberg, producer Kathleen Kennedy, composer John Williams, and other cast and crew members, as well as two theatrical trailers, an isolated music score, deleted scenes, and still galleries. The VHS included a 10-minute version of the same documentary from the Laserdisc. The 2012 release of E.T. on DVD and Blu-ray grossed \$24.4 million in sales revenue as of 2017 in the United States.
### Critical response
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial received universal acclaim. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "This is not simply a good movie. It is one of those movies that brush away our cautions and win our hearts." He later added it to his "Great Movies" list, structuring the essay as a letter to his grandchildren about the first time they watched it. Michael Sragow of Rolling Stone called Spielberg "a space age Jean Renoir. ... for the first time, [he] has put his breathtaking technical skills at the service of his deepest feelings". Derek Malcolm of The Guardian wrote that "E.T. is a superlative piece of popular cinema [...] a dream of childhood, brilliantly orchestrated to involve not only children but anyone able to remember being one". Leonard Maltin included it in his list of "100 Must-See Films of the 20th Century" as one of only two movies from the 1980s. Political commentator George Will was one of few to pan the film, feeling it spread subversive notions about childhood and science.
The film holds a 99% "Certified Fresh" approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 136 reviews, and an average rating of 9.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Playing as both an exciting sci-fi adventure and a remarkable portrait of childhood, Steven Spielberg's touching tale of a homesick alien remains a piece of movie magic for young and old." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 91/100 based on 30 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". In addition to the film's wide acclaim, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan were moved by it after a screening at the White House on June 27, 1982. Princess Diana was in tears after watching it. On September 17, 1982, it was screened at the United Nations, and Spielberg received a UN Peace Medal. CinemaScore reported that audiences polled during the opening weekend gave the film a rare "A+" grade, the first known film to earn that grade.
## Accolades
The film was nominated for nine Oscars at the 55th Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Gandhi won that award, but its director, Richard Attenborough, said, "I was certain that not only would E.T. win, but that it should win. It was inventive, powerful, wonderful. I make more mundane movies." E.T. won four Academy Awards: Best Original Score, Best Sound (Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don Digirolamo, and Gene Cantamessa), Best Sound Effects Editing (Charles L. Campbell and Ben Burtt), and Best Visual Effects (Carlo Rambaldi, Dennis Muren, and Kenneth F. Smith). At the 40th Golden Globe Awards, the film won Best Picture in the Drama category and Best Original Score; it was also nominated for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best New Male Star for Henry Thomas. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded the film Best Picture, Best Director, and a "New Generation Award" for Melissa Mathison. The film won Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Writing, Best Special Effects, Best Music, and Best Poster Art, while Henry Thomas, Robert McNaughton, and Drew Barrymore won Young Artist Awards. In addition to his Academy, Golden Globe and Saturn, composer John Williams won two Grammy Awards and a BAFTA for the score. The film's audiobook album also won the Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards in 1984.
## Legacy
In American Film Institute polls, the film has been voted the 24th greatest film of all time, the 44th most heart-pounding, and the sixth most inspiring. Other AFI polls rated it as having the 14th greatest music score and as the third greatest science-fiction one. The line "E.T. phone home" was ranked 15th on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes list, and 48th on Premiere's top movie quote list. In 2005, it topped a Channel 4 poll in the UK of the 100 greatest family films, and was listed by Time as one of the 100 best movies ever made.
In 2003, Entertainment Weekly called the film the eighth most "tear-jerking"; in 2007, in a survey of both films and television series, the magazine declared it the seventh greatest work of science-fiction media in the past 25 years. The Times also named it as their ninth favorite alien in a film, calling it "one of the best-loved non-humans in popular culture". It is among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14. In 1994, it was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2011, ABC aired Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time, revealing the results of a poll of fans conducted by ABC and People magazine: It was selected as the fifth best film of all time and the second best science fiction film. On October 22, 2012, Madame Tussauds unveiled wax likenesses of E.T. at six of its international locations.
A species of sponge, Advhena magnifica, was given the common name "E.T. sponge" due to its resemblance of the creature.
### 20th anniversary version
An extended version of the film, dubbed the "Special Edition" (currently out of circulation), including altered dialogue and visual effects, premiered at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on March 16, 2002; it was released on home media six days later. Certain shots of E.T. had bothered Spielberg since 1982, as he did not have enough time to perfect the animatronics. Computer-generated imagery (CGI), provided by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), was used to modify several shots, including ones of E.T. running in the opening sequence and being spotted in the cornfield. The spaceship's design was also altered to include more lights. The first flying sequence where Elliott and E.T. fly on their bicycle through the forest now had the cape of Elliott's Halloween costume flap in the wind as it appeared to have originally been intended to be, a change done to have the sequence, particularly the iconic shot of them flying past the Moon, match the film's poster and the logo of Spielberg's production company Amblin Entertainment.
Scenes shot for but not included in the original version were introduced. These included E.T. taking a bath and Gertie telling Mary that Elliott went to the forest on Halloween. Mary's dialogue, during the offscreen argument with Michael about his Halloween costume, was altered to replace the word "terrorist" with "hippie". Spielberg did not add the scene featuring Harrison Ford, feeling that would reshape the film too drastically. He became more sensitive about the scene where gun-wielding federal agents confront Elliott and his escaping friends and had them digitally replaced with walkie-talkies. Spielberg later admitted that he regrets making these changes to the film.
At the premiere, John Williams conducted a live performance of the score. The new release grossed \$68 million in total, with \$35 million coming from Canada and the United States. The changes to it, particularly the escape scene, were criticized as political correctness. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wondered "Remember those guns the feds carried? Thanks to the miracle of digital, they're now brandishing walkie-talkies. ... Is this what two decades have done to free speech?" Chris Hewitt of Empire wrote, "The changes are surprisingly low-key ... while ILM's CGI E.T. is used sparingly as a complement to Carlo Rambaldi's extraordinary puppet." South Park ridiculed many of the changes in the 2002 episode "Free Hat".
The two-disc DVD release which followed on October 22, 2002, contained the original theatrical and 20th Anniversary extended versions of the film. The features on disc one included deleted scenes, an introduction with Steven Spielberg, a "Reunion" featurette and a "Look Back" featurette. Disc two included a 24-minute documentary about the 20th Anniversary edition changes, a 20th Anniversary premiere featurette, John Williams' performance at the 2002 premiere, a Space Exploration game, a trailer, cast and filmmaker bios, production notes, and the still galleries ported from the 1996 LaserDisc set. The two-disc edition, as well as a three-disc collector's edition containing a "making of" book, a certificate of authenticity, a film cell, and special features that were unavailable on the two-disc edition, were placed in moratorium on December 31, 2002. Later, it was re-released on DVD as a single-disc re-issue in 2005, featuring only the 20th Anniversary version.
In a June 2011, interview, Spielberg said
> [In the future,] ... There's going to be no more digital enhancements or digital additions to anything based on any film I direct. ... When people ask me which E.T. they should look at, I always tell them to look at the original 1982 E.T. If you notice, when we did put out E.T. we put out two E.T.s. We put out the digitally enhanced version with the additional scenes and for no extra money, in the same package, we put out the original '82 version. I always tell people to go back to the '82 version.
For the film's 30th anniversary release on Blu-ray in 2012, and for its 35th anniversary release on Ultra HD Blu-ray in 2017, as well as its corresponding digital releases; only the original theatrical edition was released, with the 20th anniversary edition now out of circulation.
## Other portrayals
Atari, Inc. produced a video game based on the film for the Atari 2600 and hired Howard Scott Warshaw to program the game. The game was rushed in five weeks to release within the 1982 holiday season. Released in Christmas 1982, the game was critically panned, with nearly every aspect of the game facing heavy criticism. It has since been considered to be one of the worst video games ever made. It was also a commercial failure. It has been cited as a major contributing factor to the video game industry crash of 1983, and has been frequently referenced and mocked in popular culture as a cautionary tale about the dangers of rushed game development and studio interference. In what was initially deemed an urban legend, reports from 1983 stated that as a result of overproduction and returns, millions of unsold cartridges were secretly buried in an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill and covered with a layer of concrete. In April 2014, diggers hired to investigate the claim confirmed that the Alamogordo landfill contained many E.T. cartridges, among other games.
William Kotzwinkle, author of the film's novelization, wrote a sequel, E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet, which was published in 1985. In the novel, E.T. returns home to the planet Brodo Asogi, but is subsequently demoted and sent into exile. He attempts to return to Earth by effectively breaking all of Brodo Asogi's laws.
In the 1982 painting Yalta Conference, Soviet conceptual artists Komar and Melamid depict E.T. in FDR's outfit along with Stalin in a military uniform and Hitler looming from behind their backs. Boris Groys links this image to a "post-utopian" sentiment of the Sots Art, as opposed to anti-utopian message of the pop art, which also makes use of totalitarian images and pop culture icons in an interchangeable way, but robs them of the transformational utopian message.
E.T. Adventure, a theme park ride based on the film and drawing inspiration from The Book of the Green Planet, debuted at Universal Studios Florida on June 7, 1990. The \$40 million attraction features the title character saying goodbye to visitors by name, along with his home planet. In 1998, E.T. was licensed to appear in television public service announcements produced by the Progressive Corporation. The announcements featured his voice reminding drivers to "buckle up" their seat belts. Traffic signs depicting a stylized E.T. wearing one were installed on selected roads around the United States. The following year, British Telecommunications launched the "Stay in Touch" campaign, with him as the star of various advertisements. The campaign's slogan was "B.T. has E.T.", with "E.T." also taken to mean "extra technology".
At Spielberg's suggestion, George Lucas included members of E.T.'s species as background characters in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. E.T. was one of the franchises featured in the 2015 crossover game Lego Dimensions. E.T. appears as one of the playable characters, and a world based on the film where players can receive side quests from the characters is available. During E.T.'s trailer in the sketch for the series known as Meet that Hero!, Supergirl explains his backstory and how they have many things in common, including being aliens that crashed down to Earth and how they both have superpowers that they use to help other people. In 2017, video game developer Zen Studios released a pinball adaptation as part of the Universal Classics add-on pack for the virtual pinball game Pinball FX 3. It features 3-D animated figures of Elliot, E.T. and his spacecraft.
In the 2022 film Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a character is shown watching a film called Batman vs. E.T., in which E.T. is shown meeting and fighting Batman. A billboard for Batman vs. E.T. was also shown in the film.
## Sequels
### Cancelled sequel
In July 1982, during the film's first theatrical run, Spielberg and Mathison wrote a treatment for a sequel to be titled E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears. It would have shown Elliott and his friends getting kidnapped by evil aliens, and attempting to contact E.T. for help. Spielberg decided against pursuing it, feeling it "would do nothing but rob the original of its virginity. E.T. is not about going back to the planet". However, on June 28, 2022, Henry Thomas said that he hopes a feature-length sequel never gets made, but added "I guarantee you, there are a few men in a very big room now salivating and using their Abacus and slide rules to come up with some really, really big numbers."
### Short film sequel
On November 28, 2019, during NBC's broadcast of the 93rd Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Xfinity released a four-minute commercial directed by Lance Acord, calling it a "short film sequel" to the original film, titled A Holiday Reunion. The commercial stars Henry Thomas, reprising his role as Elliott, now an adult with a family of his own. Julianne Hoyak played his wife, Grace, while Zebastin Borjeau and Alivia Drews played their children, Elliott Jr. and Maggie. The story follows E.T. as he returns to Earth for the holiday season, and focuses on the importance of bringing family together. References and nods to the original film are featured, such as a photo of the Taylors' family dog Harvey on the kitchen fridge and a replica of the makeshift Speak & Spell communication device.
The commercial utilizes a practical puppet for E.T. himself. In an interview with Deadline, Accord said that he went this route in order to elicit more realistic performances from the actors, the same way Spielberg did on the original film. John Williams' score from the original film is mixed into the commercial. Spielberg was consulted by Comcast (parent company of NBCUniversal, which itself owns Universal Pictures) before production on the commercial began.
Peter Intermaggio, SVP for Marketing Communications for Comcast remarked on the making of the commercial: "Our goal is to show how Xfinity and Sky technology connects family, friends and loved ones, which is so important during the holidays ... The classic friendship between E.T. and Elliott resonates around the world." Before the commercial was released, Thomas assured that viewers would "get everything they want out of a sequel without the messy bits that could destroy the beauty of the original and the special place it has in people's minds and hearts ... Looking at the storyboards, I could see exactly why Steven was really behind it, because the integrity of the story isn't lost in this retelling."
The full commercial also played on Syfy and theatrically during cinema pre-shows through January 5, 2020, and a two–minute version was edited for Comcast's British subsidiary, Sky UK.
## See also
- The Alien (unproduced film)
|
1,769,148 |
Tom Crean (explorer)
| 1,168,743,601 |
Irish Antarctic explorer (1877–1938)
|
[
"1877 births",
"1938 deaths",
"20th-century Irish explorers",
"Explorers of Antarctica",
"Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition",
"Irish Antarctic explorers",
"People from the Dingle Peninsula",
"Recipients of the Albert Medal (lifesaving)",
"Recipients of the Polar Medal",
"Royal Navy officers of World War I",
"Royal Navy sailors",
"Terra Nova expedition"
] |
Thomas Crean (Irish: Tomás Ó Cuirín; c. 16 February 1877 – 27 July 1938) was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer who was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving (AM).
Crean was a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott's 1911–1913 Terra Nova Expedition. This saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ended in the deaths of Scott and his party. During the expedition, Crean's 35-statute-mile (56 km) solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal.
Crean left the family farm near Annascaul, in County Kerry, to enlist in the Royal Navy at age 16. In 1901, while serving on Ringarooma in New Zealand, he volunteered to join Scott's 1901–1904 Discovery Expedition to Antarctica, thus beginning his exploring career.
After his experience on the Terra Nova, Crean's third and final Antarctic venture was as second officer on Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. After the ship Endurance became beset in the pack ice and sank, Crean and the ship's company spent 492 days drifting on the ice before undertaking a journey in the ship's lifeboats to Elephant Island. He was a member of the crew which made a small-boat journey of 800 nautical miles (1,500 km) from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island to seek aid for the stranded party.
After retiring from the navy on health grounds in 1920, Crean ran his pub the South Pole Inn in County Kerry with his wife and daughters. He died in 1938.
## Early life and career
Crean was born around 16 February 1877 in the farming area of Gurtuchrane near the village of Annascaul on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland, to Patrick and Catherine (née Courtney) Crean. One of 11 siblings with 7 brothers and 3 sisters. He attended the local Catholic school (at nearby Brackluin), leaving at the age of 12 to help on the family farm. Many sources, including Smith, give Crean's date of birth as 20 July 1877, but more recent scholarship demonstrates this is unlikely given parish records.
At the age of 16, he enlisted in the Royal Navy at the naval station in nearby Minard Inlet, possibly after an argument with his father. His enlistment as a boy second class is recorded in Royal Navy records on 10 July 1893.
Crean's initial naval apprenticeship was aboard the training ship Impregnable at Devonport. In November 1894, he was transferred to Devastation. In December 1894, Crean was posted to HMS Wild Swan a screw sloop as the ship headed to South America to join the Pacific Station. In 1895, Crean was serving in the Americas aboard Royal Arthur, the flagship assigned to the Pacific squadron's base at Esquimalt in Canada. He was by this time, rated an ordinary seaman. Less than a year later, while serving a second term of service aboard Wild Swan he was rated an able seaman. He later joined the Navy's torpedo school ship, Defiance. By 1899, Crean had advanced to the rate of petty officer, second class and was serving in Vivid. In 1900, Crean was ledgered to the cruiser HMS Ringarooma, which was part of the Royal Navy's Australian Squadron based in Sydney. On 18 December 1901, he was demoted from petty officer to able seaman for an unspecified misdemeanour. In December 1901, the Ringarooma was ordered to assist Robert Falcon Scott's ship Discovery when it was docked at Lyttelton Harbour awaiting to departure to Antarctica. When an able seaman of Scott's ship deserted after striking a petty officer, a replacement was required; Crean volunteered, and was accepted.
## Discovery Expedition and aftermath, 1901–1910
Discovery sailed to the Antarctic on 21 December 1901, and seven weeks later, on 8 February 1902, arrived in McMurdo Sound, where she anchored at a spot which was later designated "Hut Point". Here the men established the base from which they would launch scientific and exploratory sledging journeys. Crean proved to be one of the most efficient man-haulers in the party; over the expedition as a whole, only seven of the 48-member party logged more time in harness than Crean's 149 days. Crean had a good sense of humour and was well liked by his companions. Scott's second-in-command, Albert Armitage, wrote in his book Two Years in the Antarctic that "Crean was an Irishman with a fund of wit and an even temper which nothing disturbed."
Crean accompanied Lieutenant Michael Barne on three sledging trips across the Ross Ice Shelf, then known as the "Great Ice Barrier". These included the 12-man party led by Barne which set out on 30 October 1902 to lay depots in support of the main southern journey undertaken by Scott, Shackleton and Edward Wilson. On 11 November the Barne party passed the previous furthest south mark, set by Carsten Borchgrevink in 1900 at 78°50'S, a record which they held briefly until the southern party itself passed it on its way to an eventual 82°17'S.
During the Antarctic winter of 1902 Discovery became locked in the ice. Efforts to free her during the summer of 1902–03 failed, and although some of the expedition's members (including Ernest Shackleton) left in a relief ship, Crean and the majority of the party remained in the Antarctic until the ship was finally freed in February 1904. After returning to regular naval duty, Crean was promoted to petty officer, first class, on Scott's recommendation.
Crean came back to regular duty at the naval base at Chatham, Kent, serving first in Pembroke in 1904 and later transferring to the torpedo school on Vernon. Crean had caught Captain Scott's attention with his attitude and work ethic on the Discovery Expedition, and in 1906 Scott requested that Crean join him on Victorious. Over the next few years, Crean followed Scott successively to Albemarle, Essex and Bulwark. By 1907, Scott was planning his second expedition to the Antarctic. Meanwhile, Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, 1907–09, despite reaching a new furthest south record of 88°23'S, had failed to reach the South Pole. Scott was with Crean when the news of Shackleton's near miss became public; it is recorded that Scott observed to Crean: "I think we'd better have a shot next."
## Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–1913
Scott held Crean in high regard, so he was among the first people recruited for the Terra Nova Expedition, which set out for the Antarctic in June 1910, and one of the few men in the party with previous polar experience. After the expedition's arrival in McMurdo Sound in January 1911, Crean was part of the 13-man team who established "One Ton Depot", 130 statute miles (210 km) from Hut Point, so named because of the large amount of food and equipment cached there on the projected route to the South Pole. Returning from the depot to base camp at Cape Evans, Crean, accompanied by Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Henry "Birdie" Bowers, experienced near-disaster when camping on unstable sea ice. During the night the ice broke up, leaving the men adrift on an ice floe and separated from their sledges. Crean probably saved the group's lives, by leaping from floe to floe until he reached the Barrier edge and was able to summon help.
Crean departed with Scott in November 1911, for the attempt at the South Pole. This journey had three stages: 400 statute miles (640 km) across the Barrier, 120 statute miles (190 km) up the heavily crevassed Beardmore Glacier to an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above sea level, and then another 350 statute miles (560 km) to the Pole. At regular intervals, supporting parties returned to base; Crean was in the final group of eight men that marched on to the polar plateau and reached 87°32'S, 168 statute miles (270 km) from the pole. Here, on 4 January 1912, Scott selected his final polar party: Crean, William Lashly and Edward Evans were ordered to return to base, while Scott, Edgar Evans, Edward Wilson, Bowers and Lawrence Oates continued to the pole.
One of Crean's biographers, Michael Smith, suggests that Crean would have been a better choice for the polar party than Edgar Evans, who was weakened by a recent hand injury (of which Scott was unaware). Crean, considered one of the toughest men in the expedition, had led a pony across the Barrier and had thus been saved much of the hard labour of man-hauling. Scott's critical biographer Roland Huntford records that the surgeon Edward L Atkinson, who had accompanied the southern party to the top of the Beardmore, had recommended either Lashly or Crean for the polar party rather than Edgar Evans. Scott in his diary recorded that Crean wept with disappointment at the prospect of having to turn back, so close to the goal.
Soon after heading north on the 700-statute-mile (1,100 km) journey back to base camp, Crean's party lost the trail back to the Beardmore Glacier, and were faced with a long detour around a large icefall. With food supplies short, and needing to reach their next supply depot, the group made the decision to slide on their sledge, uncontrolled, down the icefall. The three men slid 2,000 feet (600 m), dodging crevasses up to 200 feet (61 m) wide, and ending their descent by overturning on an ice ridge. Evans later wrote: "How we ever escaped entirely uninjured is beyond me to explain".
The gamble at the icefall succeeded, and the men reached their depot two days later. However, they had great difficulty navigating down the glacier. Lashly wrote: "I cannot describe the maze we got into and the hairbreadth escapes we have had to pass through." In his attempts to find the way down, Evans removed his goggles and subsequently suffered agonies of snow blindness that made him into a passenger.
When the party was finally free of the glacier and on the level surface of the Barrier, Evans began to display the first symptoms of scurvy. By early February he was in great pain, his joints were swollen and discoloured, and he was passing blood. Through the efforts of Crean and Lashly the group struggled towards One Ton Depot, which they reached on 11 February. At this point Evans collapsed; Crean thought he had died and, according to Evans's account, "his hot tears fell on my face".
With over 100 statute miles (160 km) still to travel before the relative safety of Hut Point, Crean and Lashly began hauling Evans on the sledge, "eking out his life with the last few drops of brandy that they still had with them". On 18 February they arrived at Corner Camp, still 35 statute miles (56 km) from Hut Point, with only one or two days' food rations left and still four or five days' man-hauling to do. They then decided that Crean should go on alone, to fetch help. With only a little chocolate and three biscuits to sustain him, without a tent or survival equipment, Crean walked the distance to Hut Point in 18 hours, arriving in a state of collapse to find Atkinson there, with the dog driver Dmtri Gerov. Crean reached safety just ahead of a fierce blizzard, which probably would have killed him, and which delayed the rescue party by a day and a half. Atkinson led a successful rescue, and Lashly and Evans were both brought to base camp alive. Crean modestly played down the significance of his feat of endurance. In a rare written account, he wrote in a letter: "So it fell to my lot to do the 30 miles for help, and only a couple of biscuits and a stick of chocolate to do it. Well, sir, I was very weak when I reached the hut."
Scott's party failed to return. The winter of 1912 at Cape Evans was a sombre one, with the knowledge that the polar party had undoubtedly perished. Frank Debenham wrote that "in the winter it was once again Crean who was the mainstay for cheerfulness in the now depleted mess deck part of the hut." In November 1912, Crean was one of the 11-man search party that found the remains of the polar party. On 12 November they spotted a cairn of snow, which proved to be a tent against which the drift had piled up. It contained the bodies of Scott, Wilson, and Bowers. Crean later wrote, referring to Scott in understated fashion, that he had "lost a good friend".
On 12 February 1913 Crean and the remaining crew of the Terra Nova arrived in Lyttelton, New Zealand, and in June the ship returned to Cardiff. At Buckingham Palace the surviving members of the expedition were awarded Polar Medals by King George and Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord. Crean and Lashly were both awarded the Albert Medal, 2nd Class for saving Evans's life, these were presented by the King at Buckingham Palace on 26 July 1913. Crean was promoted to the rank of chief petty officer, retroactive to 9 September 1910.
## Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Endurance Expedition), 1914–1917
In October 1913, a close friend of Captain Scott, Joseph Foster Stackhouse, announced plans for a British Antarctic Expedition to explore the uncharted coastlines between King Edward VII Land and Graham Land. The expedition was due to depart England in August 1914 aboard RRS Discovery, the ship of Crean's first mission to Antarctica. In February 1914, Stackhouse confirmed that Crean was to join the expedition as Boatswain, however, in April 1914, Stackhouse's plans were postponed. This left Shackleton free to recruit Crean to his expedition which was also scheduled to depart in August 1914.
Shackleton knew Crean well from the Discovery Expedition, and also knew of his exploits on Scott's last expedition. Like Scott, Shackleton trusted Crean: he was worth, in Shackleton's own word, "trumps". Crean joined Shackleton's Imperial Transantarctic Expedition on 25 May 1914, as second officer, with a varied range of duties. In the absence of a Canadian dog-handling expert who was hired but never appeared, Crean took charge of one of the dog-handling teams, and was later involved in the care and nurture of the pups born to one of his dogs, Sally, early in the expedition.
On 19 January 1915 the expedition's ship, the Endurance, was beset in the Weddell Sea pack ice. In the early efforts to free her, Crean narrowly escaped being crushed by a sudden movement in the ice. The ship drifted in the ice for months, eventually sinking on 21 November. Shackleton informed the men that they would drag the food, gear, and three lifeboats across the pack ice, to Snow Hill or Robertson Island, 200 statute miles (320 km) away. Because of uneven ice conditions, pressure ridges, and the danger of ice breakup which could separate the men, they soon abandoned this plan: the men pitched camp and decided to wait. They hoped that the clockwise drift of the pack would carry them 400 statute miles (640 km) to Paulet Island where they knew there was a hut with emergency supplies. But the pack ice held firm as it carried the men well past Paulet Island, and did not break up until 9 April. The crew then had to sail and row the three ill-equipped lifeboats through the pack ice to Elephant Island, a trip which lasted five days. Crean and Hubert Hudson, the navigating officer of the Endurance, piloted their lifeboat with Crean effectively in charge as Hudson appeared to have suffered a breakdown.
Upon reaching Elephant Island, Crean was one of the "four fittest men" detailed by Shackleton to find a safe camping-ground. Shackleton decided that, rather than waiting for a rescue ship that would probably never arrive, one of the lifeboats should be strengthened so that a crew could sail it to South Georgia and arrange a rescue. After the party was settled on a penguin rookery above the high-water mark, a group of men led by ship's carpenter Harry McNish began modifying one of the lifeboats—the James Caird—in preparation for this journey, which Shackleton would lead. Frank Wild, who would be in command of the party remaining on Elephant Island, wanted the dependable Crean to stay with him; Shackleton initially agreed, but changed his mind after Crean begged to be included in the boat's crew of six.
The 800-nautical-mile (1,500 km) boat journey to South Georgia, described by polar historian Caroline Alexander as one of the most extraordinary feats of seamanship and navigation in recorded history, took 17 days through gales and snow squalls, in seas which the navigator, Frank Worsley, described as a "mountainous westerly swell". After setting off on 24 April 1916 with just the barest navigational equipment, they reached South Georgia on 10 May 1916. Shackleton, in his later account of the journey, recalled Crean's tuneless singing at the tiller: "He always sang when he was steering, and nobody ever discovered what the song was ... but somehow it was cheerful".
The party made its South Georgia landfall on the uninhabited southern coast, having decided that the risk of aiming directly for the whaling stations on the north side was too great; if they missed the island to the north they would be swept out into the Atlantic Ocean. The original plan was to work the James Caird around the coast, but the boat's rudder had broken off after their initial landing, and some of the party were, in Shackleton's view, unfit for further travel. The three fittest men—Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley—were decided to trek 30 statute miles (48 km) across the island's glaciated surface, in a hazardous 36-hour journey to the nearest manned whaling station.
This trek was the first recorded crossing of the mountainous island, completed without tents, sleeping bags, or map—their only mountaineering equipment was a carpenter's adze, a length of alpine rope, and screws from the James Caird hammered through their boots to serve as crampons. They arrived at the whaling station at Stromness, tired and dirty, hair long and matted, faces blackened by months of cooking by blubber stoves—"the world's dirtiest men", according to Worsley. They quickly organized a boat to pick up the three on the other side of South Georgia, but thereafter it took Shackleton three months and four attempts by ship to rescue the other 22 men still on Elephant Island.
## Later life
After returning to Britain in November 1916, Crean resumed naval duties. On 15 December 1916 he was promoted to the rank of warrant officer (as a boatswain), in recognition of his service on the Endurance, and was awarded his third Polar Medal. A month later, in April, he was granted a licence for the sale and consumption of alcohol from his dwelling house, a premises he had purchased in 1916. The business was left in the care of family while he served out his time in the Royal Navy.
On 5 September 1917, Crean married Eileen Herlihy of Annascaul. In early 1920, Shackleton was organising another Antarctic expedition, later to be known as the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition. He invited Crean to join him, along with other officers from the Endurance. By this time, however, Crean's second daughter had arrived, and he had plans to open a business following his naval career. He turned down Shackleton's invitation. On his last naval assignment, with HMS Hecla, Crean suffered a bad fall which caused lasting effects to his vision. As a result, he was retired on medical grounds on 24 March 1920. He and Eileen opened a small public house in Annascaul, which he called the South Pole Inn. The couple had three daughters, Mary, Kate, and Eileen, although Kate died when she was three years old.
Throughout his life, Crean remained an extremely modest man. When he returned to Kerry, he put all of his medals away and never again spoke about his experiences in the Antarctic. There is no reliable evidence of Crean giving any interviews to the press. Smith speculates that this may have been because Kerry was a hotbed of Irish nationalism and later Irish republicanism, and, along with County Cork, a centre of violence. The Crean family were once subject to a Black and Tan raid during the Irish War of Independence. Their inn was ransacked until the raiders happened across Crean's framed photo in Royal Navy dress uniform and medals. They then left his inn. On 13 April 1920, Tom Crean was present among crowds gathered in Tralee to protest against the treatment of republican prisoners who had gone on a hunger strike in Mountjoy jail.
Crean's older brother was Cornelius Crean, a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Cornelius was based in County Cork, where he served with the RIC during the War of Independence. Sgt. Crean was killed during an IRA ambush near Upton on 25 April 1920.
In 1938, Crean became ill with a burst appendix. He was taken to the nearest hospital in Tralee, but as no surgeon was available, he was transferred to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork, where his appendix was removed. Because the operation had been delayed, an infection developed, and after a week in the hospital he died on 27 July 1938. He was buried in his family's tomb at the cemetery in Ballynacourty, Annascaul, County Kerry.
## Legacy
Geological features named after the explorer include Mount Crean, a 8,630-foot (2,630 m) peak in Victoria Land, Antarctica and 2,300-foot (700 m) Mount Crean in Greenland, and two places on South Georgia, Crean Glacier and Crean Lake He was portrayed in the 1985 television series The Last Place on Earth by Daragh O'Malley, and by Aidan Dooley in the one-man play, Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer. In July 2003, a bronze statue of Crean was unveiled across from his pub in Annascaul. It depicts him leaning against a crate whilst holding a pair of hiking poles in one hand and two sled dog pups in the other. In February 2021 it was announced that a new research vessel being commissioned by the Irish government's Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine would be named 'RV Tom Crean'.
|
331,550 |
St Cuthbert Gospel
| 1,161,344,509 |
Early 8th-century Anglo-Saxon pocket gospel book
|
[
"8th-century biblical manuscripts",
"Bookbinding",
"British Library additional manuscripts",
"Durham University",
"Gospel Books",
"Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts",
"Stonyhurst College"
] |
The St Cuthbert Gospel, also known as the Stonyhurst Gospel or the St Cuthbert Gospel of St John, is an early 8th-century pocket gospel book, written in Latin. Its finely decorated leather binding is the earliest known Western bookbinding to survive, and both the 94 vellum folios and the binding are in outstanding condition for a book of this age. With a page size of only 138 by 92 millimetres (5.4 in × 3.6 in), the St Cuthbert Gospel is one of the smallest surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The essentially undecorated text is the Gospel of John in Latin, written in a script that has been regarded as a model of elegant simplicity.
The book takes its name from Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, North East England, in whose tomb it was placed, probably a few years after his death in 687. Although it was long regarded as Cuthbert's personal copy of the Gospel, to which there are early references, and so a relic of the saint, the book is now thought to date from shortly after Cuthbert's death. It was probably a gift from Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, where it was written, intended to be placed in St Cuthbert's coffin in the few decades after this was placed behind the altar at Lindisfarne in 698. It presumably remained in the coffin through its long travels after 875, forced by Viking invasions, ending at Durham Cathedral. The book was found inside the coffin and removed in 1104 when the burial was once again moved within the cathedral. It was kept there with other relics, and important visitors were able to wear the book in a leather bag around their necks. It is thought that after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, the book passed to collectors. It was eventually given to Stonyhurst College, the Jesuit school in Lancashire.
From 1979 it was on long-term loan from the British province of the Jesuit order to the British Library, catalogued as Loan 74. On 14 July 2011 the British Library launched a fundraising campaign to buy the book for £9 million, and on 17 April 2012 announced that the purchase had been completed and the book was now British Library Add MS 89000.
The library plans to display the Gospel for equal amounts of time in London and Durham. It describes the manuscript as "the earliest surviving intact European book and one of the world's most significant books". The Cuthbert Gospel returned to Durham to feature in exhibitions in 2013 and 2014, and was in the British Library's Anglo-Saxon exhibition in 2018/19; it also spends periods "resting" off display. A new book on the gospel was published in 2015, incorporating the results of research since the purchase; among other things this pushed the likely date from the late 7th century to between around 700 and 730.
## Description
The St Cuthbert Gospel is a pocket-sized book, 138 by 92 millimetres (5.4 × 3.6 in), of the Gospel of St John written in uncial script on 94 vellum folios. It is bound in wooden cover boards, covered with tooled red leather.
### Context
The St Cuthbert Gospel is significant both intrinsically as the earliest surviving European book complete with its original binding and by association with the 7th-century Anglo-Saxon saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. A miniature in the Codex Amiatinus, of the Prophet Ezra writing in his library, shows several books similarly bound in red decorated with geometric designs. This miniature was probably based on an original in the Codex Grandior, a lost imported Italian Bible at Jarrow, which showed Cassiodorus and the nine volumes he wrote of commentary on the Bible. Whether the bindings depicted, which were presumably of leather, included raised elements cannot be detected, but the books are stored singly flat in a cupboard, which would reduce the wear on any raised patterns.
Early medieval treasure bindings with a structure in precious metal, and often containing gems, carved ivory panels or metal reliefs, are perhaps better known today than leather bindings, but these were for books used in church services or as "book-icons" rather than for use in libraries. Of treasure bindings from this period, only the lower cover of the Lindau Gospels (750–800, Morgan Library) now survives complete, though there are several references to them, most famously to that of the Book of Kells, which was lost after a theft in 1007. Various metal fragments of what were probably book-mounts have survived, usually adapted as jewellery by Vikings. In the context of the cult of Cuthbert, the lavishly illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels were made at Lindisfarne, probably shortly after the St Cuthbert Gospel, with covers involving metalwork, perhaps entirely made in it, which are also now lost. Plainer, very early bindings in leather are almost as rare as treasure bindings, as the bindings of books in libraries usually wore out and needed to be renewed, and earlier collectors did not consider most historical bindings worth retaining.
### Text
The text is a very good and careful copy of the single Gospel of John from what has been called the "Italo-Northumbrian" family of texts, other well-known examples of which are several manuscripts from Wearmouth–Jarrow, including the Codex Amiatinus, and in the British Library the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Gospel Book MS Royal 1. B. VII. This family is presumed to have derived from a hypothetical "Neapolitan Gospelbook" brought to England by Adrian of Canterbury, a companion of Theodore of Tarsus who Bede says had been abbot of Nisida, an equally hypothetical monastery near Naples. In the rubrics of the Lindisfarne Gospels are several that are "specifically Neapolitan", including festivals which were celebrated only in Naples such as The Nativity of St. Januarius and the Dedication of the Basilica of Stephen. The Neapolitan manuscript was probably at Wearmouth–Jarrow.
Apart from enlarged and sometimes slightly elaborated initials opening the Ammonian Sections (the contemporary equivalent of the modern division into verses), and others in red at the start of chapters, the text has no illumination or decoration, but Sir David Wilson, historian of Anglo-Saxon art and Director of the British Museum, used it as his example in writing "some manuscripts are so beautifully written that illumination would seem only to spoil them". Julian Brown wrote that "the capitular uncial of the Stonyhurst Gospel owes its beauty to simple design and perfect execution. The decorative elements in the script never interfere with the basic structure of the letter-forms; they arise naturally from the slanted angle at which the pen was held".
The pages with the text have been ruled with a blind stylus or similar tool, leaving just an impression in the vellum. It can be shown that this was done for each gathering with just two sets of lines, ruled on the outermost and innermost pages, requiring a very firm impression to carry the marks through to the sheets behind. Impressed lines mark the vertical edges of the text area, and there is an outer pair of lines. Each line of text is ruled, only as far as the inner vertical lines, and there are prick marks where the horizontal lines meet the verticals. The book begins with 19 lines on a page, but at folio 42 changes to 20 lines per page, requiring the re-ruling of some pages. This change was evidently a departure from the original plan, and may have been caused by a shortage of the very fine vellum, as two different sorts are used, though the change does not coincide exactly with the change in the number of lines.
Four passages are marked in the margin, which correspond to those used as readings in Masses for the Dead in the Roman lectionary of the mid-7th century. This seems to have been done hastily, as most left offset marks on the opposite pages from the book being closed before the ink was dry. This seems to indicate that the book was used at least once as the gospel book for a Mass for the Dead, perhaps on the occasion of Cuthbert's elevation in 698. In the example illustrated at left, the start of the reading at line 10 is marked with a cross, and de mortuorum ("for the dead") written beside. The reading ends on the next page, which is also marked.
### Binding
The original tooled red goatskin binding is the earliest surviving intact Western binding, and the virtually unique survivor of decorated Insular leatherwork. The decoration of the front cover includes colour, and the main motif is raised, which is unique among the few surviving Early Medieval bindings. The panels of geometrical decoration with two-stranded interlace closely relate to Insular illuminated manuscripts, and can be compared to the carpet pages found in these. Elements of the design also relate to Anglo-Saxon metalwork in the case of the general origin of interlace in manuscripts, and Coptic and other East Mediterranean designs.
The decoration of the covers includes three pigments filling lines engraved with a sharp pointed instrument, which now appear as two shades of yellow, one bright and the other pale, and a dark colour that now appears as blue-grey, but was recorded as blue in the earliest descriptions. The front cover includes all three colours, but the pale yellow is not used on the back cover. The pigments have been analysed for the first time, as one benefit of the purchase of the manuscript by the British Library, and identified by Raman spectroscopy as orpiment (yellow) and indigo (grey-blue). The balance of the designs on both covers is now affected by what appears to be the greater fading of the dark blue-grey pigment. The bookbinder Roger Powell speculated that the "pale lemon-yellow ... may once have been green", giving an original colour scheme of blue, green and yellow on the red background, although the recent testing suggests this was not the case.
Given the lack of surviving objects, we cannot know how common the techniques employed were, but the quality of the execution suggests that the binder was experienced in them. At the same time, an analysis by Robert Stevick suggests that the designs for both covers were intended to follow a sophisticated geometric scheme of compass and straightedge constructions using the "two true measures of geometry", the ratio between Pythagoras' constant and one, and the golden section. However slips in the complicated process of production, some detailed below, mean that the finished covers do not quite exhibit the intended proportions, and are both slightly out of true in some respects.
Although it seems clear from the style of the script that the text was written at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, it is possible that the binding was then added at Lindisfarne; the form of the plant scrolls can be compared to those on the portable altar also found in Cuthbert's coffin, presumed to have been made there, though also to other works of the period, such as the shaft of an Anglo-Saxon cross from Penrith and the Vespasian Psalter. Small holes in the folds of each gathering seem to represent a "temporary sewing" together of the pages, one explanation of which is a journey made by the unbound pages.
#### Front cover
The decoration of the front cover is divided into fields bordered by raised lines. The central field contains a plant motif representing a stylised chalice in the centre with a bud and scrolling vine stems leading from it, fruit and several small leaves. Above and below the central motif are fields containing interlace ornament in finely incised lines. The three motifs are enclosed within a border containing further interlacing.
Continuous vine scrolls in a great variety of designs of the same general type as the central motif, with few leaves and round fruits, were very common in slightly later religious Anglo-Saxon art, and are often combined with interlace in the same work, especially on Anglo-Saxon crosses, for example the Bewcastle Cross and the Easby Cross now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. One face of the fragmentary silver cover of the portable altar also recovered from Cuthbert's coffin has a similar combination of elements, with both areas of interlace and, in the four corners, a simple plant motif with a central bud or leaf and a spiral shoot on either side. The combination of different types of ornament within a panelled framework is highly typical of Northumbrian art, above all the Lindisfarne Gospels. Interlace may well have still been believed to have some quasi-magical protective power, which seems to have been its function in pre-Christian Germanic art. The vine motif here differs from the common continuous scroll type in that the stems cross over each other twice on each side, but crossing stems are also seen on the upper north face of the Bewcastle Cross and a cross in the church at Hexham. Meyer Schapiro compares the motif with one in an initial in the later Book of Kells. It was suggested by Berthe van Regemorter that in the St Cuthbert Gospel this design represents Christ (as the central bud) and the Four Evangelists as the grapes, following John 15:5, "I am the vine, ye are the branches", but this idea has been treated with caution by other scholars.
The two panels of interlace use the same design, of what David H. Wright describes as the "alternating pair thin-line type" which he calls "perhaps the most sophisticated of Insular interlace types". The panels are symmetrical about a vertical axis, except for the left end of the upper panel, which is different. Whereas the other ends of the pattern finish in a flat line parallel with the vertical framing line, part of a shape like an incomplete D, the top left finishes in two ellipses pointing into the corners. The lines forming the interlace patterns are coloured in the dark blue/black and the bright yellow, but differently. In the lower panel the yellow colours the left half of the design, but the upper panel begins at the (deviant) left in the dark colour, then switches to yellow once the pattern changes to that used for the rest of the panels. It continues in yellow until the central point, then changes to the dark colour for the right hand side of the design.
The transition between the top left, perhaps where the artist began, and the standard pattern, is somewhat awkward, leaving a rather bald spot (for an interlace pattern) to the left of the first curving yellow vertical. The change in pattern pushes the halfway point of the upper panel rather off-centre to the right, whereas in the lower panel it falls slightly to the left of dead centre. These vagaries in the design suggest that it was done freehand, without marking-out the pattern using compasses for example. The lowest horizontal raised line is not straight, being higher at the left, probably because of an error in the marking or drilling of the holes in the cover board through which the ends of the cord run. The simple twist or chain border in yellow between the two raised frames resembles an element in an initial in the Durham Gospel Book Fragment, an important earlier manuscript from Lindisfarne.
#### Back cover
The back cover is decorated more simply, with no raised elements and purely geometric decoration of engraved lines, which are filled in with two pigments which now appear as the bright yellow and the dark colour, once apparently blue. Within several framing lines making rectangles of similar proportions to the cover itself, a central rectangular panel is marked with pricks to make a grid of 3mm squares, 21 tall and 10 wide. Lines on the grid are engraved and coloured in yellow to form two stepped "crosses", or squares standing on one corner, with additional stepped elements in the four corners and halfway up the vertical sides, between the two "crosses". The vertical axial line down the grid and the two horizontal axes through the crosses are also coloured in the yellow pigment right to the edges of the grid. The remaining lines on the grid and all the lines along the edges of the grid are coloured in the dark colour. This is a simple version of the sort of design found on Insular carpet pages, as well as in Coptic manuscript decoration and textiles, and small stepped crosses decorate the main panels of the famous Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps. The alignment of the various outer framing lines with the innermost frame and the panel with the grid is noticeably imperfect, as the top framing line was extended too far to the left. Traces of an uncoloured first attempt at this line can be seen on the right hand side, above the coloured line.
#### Construction
Although the binding had never been taken apart for examination before it was bought by the British Library, a considerable amount can be said about its construction. A combination of looseness through wear and tear, damage in certain places, and the failure of the paste that glued the pages to the inside of the covers, now allow non-intrusive inspection of much of the binding construction, including the rear of the actual wooden front cover board, and some of the holes made through it.
The raised framing lines can be seen from the rear of the front cover to have been produced by gluing cord to the board and tooling the leather over it, in a technique of Coptic origin, of which few early examples survive – one of the closest is a 9th- or 10th-century Islamic binding found in the Mosque of Uqba in Kairouan, Tunisia. There are holes in the board in which the cut-off ends can be seen from behind.
The chalice and plant motif on the front, of which there is no trace from behind, has been built up using some clay-like material underneath the leather, as shown by CT-scans since the purchase. In the 2015 book, Nicholas Pickwoad suggests that this raised decoration was formed using a matrix which was pressed into the damp leather over the clay-like substance and the wooden board. Previous authors had suggested that the material under the relief decoration might have been built up in gesso as well as cord and leather scraps before applying the cover leather. A broadly similar plant motif in similar technique is found on a later Middle Eastern pouch in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
The boards of the covers, previously assumed to be limewood, are now thought to be birch, an unusual wood in later bindings, but one easily available in northern England. Both have four holes where the binding threads were laced through; the two threads were run round the inner edges of the cover and knotted back at the holes. The front cover has an additional 12 holes where the ends of the cords for the raised framing lines went through, at the four corners of the two main frames, and the ends of the horizontal bars between the interlace panels and the central vine motif.
The stitching of the binding uses "Coptic sewing", that is "flexible unsupported sewing (produced by two needles and thread looping round one another in a figure-of-eight sewing pattern)" Coptic sewing uses small threads both to attach the leaves together and, knotted together, to attach the pages to the cover boards. Normal Western binding uses thread for the former and thicker cord running across the spine of the book for the latter, with the thread knotted onto the cords. Coptic sewing is also found in the earliest surviving leather bookbindings, which are from Coptic libraries in Egypt from the 7th and 8th centuries; in particular the design of the cover of one in the Morgan Library (MS M.569) has been compared to the St Cuthbert Gospel. In the techniques used in the binding, apart from the raised decoration, the closest resemblance is to an even smaller Irish pocket gospel book from some 50 years later, the Cadmug Gospels at Fulda, which is believed to have belonged to Saint Boniface. This is also in red goatskin, with coloured incised lines, and uses a similar unsupported or cordless stitching technique. The first appearance of the cords or supports that these "unsupported" bindings lack is found in two other books at Fulda, and they soon became universal in, and characteristic of, Western bookbinding until the arrival of modern machine techniques. The cords run horizontally across the spine, and are thicker than the threads that hold the pages together. They are attached, typically by lacing through holes or glue, to the two boards of the cover, and the threads holding the gatherings are knotted to them, resulting in a stronger binding.
## Dating
The manuscript itself carries no date but a rather precise dating has been given to it, based mainly on its palaeography or handwriting, and also the known facts of Cuthbert's burial. The dating was revised after the acquisition by the British Library, who added to their online catalogue entry:
> Previously dated to the end of the 7th century (The Stonyhurst Gospel, ed. T. J. Brown (1969), pp. 12–13), R. Gameson dates the script to c. 710–c. 730 and L. Webster dates the decoration on the covers to c. 700–c. 730 (The St Cuthbert Gospel, eds C. Breay and B. Meehan (2015), pp. 33, 80).
The script is the "capitular" form of uncial, with just a few emphasized letters at the start of sections in "text" uncial. Close analysis of the changing style of details of the forms of letters allows the manuscript to be placed with some confidence within a chronological sequence of the few other manuscripts thought to have been produced at Wearmouth-Jarrow. The Northumbrian scribes "imitate very closely the best Italian manuscripts of about the sixth century", but introduced small elements that gave their script a distinct style, which has always been greatly admired. However, there were several scribes, seven different ones working on the Codex Amiatinus, whose scripts may not all have developed at the same pace.
Key to this sequence is the Codex Amiatinus, an almost complete Bible for which we have a very precise terminus ante quem, and within which, because of its size, developments in style can be seen in a single manuscript. The Codex Amiatinus can be precisely located as leaving Wearmouth-Jarrow with a party led by Abbot Ceolfrith on 4 June 716, bound for Rome. The codex was to be presented to Pope Gregory II, a decision only announced by Ceolfrith very shortly before the departure, allowing the dedication page to be dated with confidence to around May 716, though the rest of the manuscript was probably already some years old, but only begun after Ceolfrith succeeded as abbot in 689. The script of the dedication page differs slightly from that of the main text, but is by the same hand and in the same "elaborated text uncial" style as some pages at Durham (MS A II 17, part ii, ff 103-11). At the end of the sequence, it may be possible to date the Saint Petersburg Bede to 746 at the earliest, from references in memoranda in the text, although this remains a matter of controversy.
There survive parts of a gospel book, by coincidence now bound up with the famous Utrecht Psalter, which are identifiable as by the same scribe as the Cuthbert Gospel, and where "the capitular uncial of the two manuscripts is indistinguishable in style or quality, so they may well be very close to each other in date". Since the Utrecht pages also use Rustic capital script, which the Cuthbert Gospel does not, it allows another basis for comparison with further manuscripts in the sequence.
From the palaeographical evidence, T. Julian Brown concluded that the Cuthbert manuscript was written after the main text of the Codex Amiatinus, which was finished after 688, perhaps by 695, though it might be later. Turning to the historical evidence for Cuthbert's burial, this placed it after his original burial in 687 but possibly before his elevation to the high altar in 698. If this is correct, the book was never a personal possession of Cuthbert, as has sometimes been thought, but was possibly created specifically to be placed in his coffin, whether for the occasion of his elevation in 698 or at another date. The less precise hints about dating that can be derived from the style of the binding compared to other works did not conflict with these conclusions, though in the new 2015 study, Leslie Webster now dates the cover to "c. 700–c. 730", and Richard Gameson "dates the script to c. 710–c. 730", as quoted above.
## History
### Background
Cuthbert was an Anglo-Saxon, perhaps of a noble family, born in the Kingdom of Northumbria in the mid-630s, some ten years after the conversion of King Edwin to Christianity in 627, which was slowly followed by that of the rest of his people. The politics of the kingdom were violent, and there were later episodes of pagan rule, while spreading understanding of Christianity through the kingdom was a task that lasted throughout Cuthbert's lifetime. Edwin had been baptised by Paulinus of York, an Italian who had come with the Gregorian mission from Rome, but his successor Oswald also invited Irish monks from Iona to found the monastery at Lindisfarne where Cuthbert was to spend much of his life. This was around 635, about the time Cuthbert was born.
The tension between the Roman and Irish traditions, often exacerbated by Cuthbert's near-contemporary Saint Wilfrid, an intransigent and quarrelsome supporter of Roman ways, was to be a major feature of Cuthbert's lifetime. Cuthbert himself, though educated in the Irish tradition, followed his mentor Eata in accepting the Roman forms without apparent difficulty after the Synod of Whitby in 664. The earliest biographies concentrate on the many miracles that accompanied even his early life, but he was evidently indefatigable as a travelling priest spreading the Christian message to remote villages, and also well able to impress royalty and nobility. Unlike Wilfrid, his style of life was austere, and when he was able he lived the life of a hermit, though still receiving many visitors.
He grew up near the new Melrose Abbey, an offshoot from Lindisfarne which is today in Scotland, but was then in Northumbria. He had decided to become a monk after seeing a vision on the night in 651 that St Aidan, the founder of Lindisfarne, died, but seems to have seen some military service first. He was quickly made guest-master at the new monastery at Ripon, soon after 655, but had to return with Eata to Melrose when Wilfrid was given the monastery instead. About 662 he was made prior at Melrose, and around 665 went as prior to Lindisfarne. In 684 he was made Bishop of Lindisfarne, but by late 686 he resigned and returned to his hermitage as he felt he was about to die, although he was probably still only in his early 50s. After a few weeks of illness he died on the island on 20 March 687, and his body was carried back to Lindisfarne and buried there the same day.
### Lindisfarne
Although first documented in 1104, the book is presumed to have been buried with Cuthbert at Lindisfarne, and to have stayed with the body during the wanderings forced by the Viking invasions two centuries later. Bede's Life recounts that Cuthbert was initially buried in a stone sarcophagus to the right of the altar in the church at Lindisfarne; he had wanted to be buried at the hermitage on Inner Farne Island where he died, but before his death was persuaded to allow his burial at the main monastery. His burial was first disturbed eleven years after his death, when his remains were moved to behind the altar to reflect his recognition, in the days before a formal process of canonisation, as a saint. The sarcophagus was opened and his body was said to have been found perfectly preserved or incorrupt. This apparent miracle led to the steady growth of Cuthbert's posthumous cult, to the point where he became the most popular saint of Northern England.
Numerous miracles were attributed to his intercession and to intercessory prayer near his remains. In particular, Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, was inspired and encouraged in his struggle against the Danes by a vision or dream he had of Cuthbert. Thereafter, the royal house of Wessex, who became the kings of England, made a point of devotion to Cuthbert, which also had a useful political message, as they came from opposite ends of the united English kingdom. Cuthbert was "a figure of reconciliation and a rallying point for the reformed identity of Northumbria and England" after the absorption of the Danish populations into Anglo-Saxon society, according to Michelle Brown. The 8th-century historian Bede wrote both a verse and a prose life of St Cuthbert around 720. He has been described as "perhaps the most popular saint in England prior to the death of Thomas Becket in 1170." In 698, Cuthbert was reburied in the decorated oak coffin now usually meant by St Cuthbert's coffin, though he was to have many more coffins. The book was believed to have been produced for this occasion and perhaps placed in his coffin at this time, but according to the new dating it was only created up to 30 years after 698.
### Fleeing the Danes
In 793 Lindisfarne was devastated by the first serious Viking raid in England, but Cuthbert's shrine seems to have escaped damage. In 875 the Danish leader Halfdene (Halfdan Ragnarsson), who shared with his brother Ivar the Boneless the leadership of the Great Heathen Army that had conquered much of the south of England, moved north to spend the winter there, as a prelude to settlement and further conquest. Eardulf, the Bishop of Lindisfarne, decided the monastery must be abandoned, and orderly preparations were made for the whole community, including lay people and children, to evacuate.
It was possibly at this point that a shelf or inner cover was inserted some way under the lid of Cuthbert's coffin, supported on three wooden bars across the width, and probably with two iron rings fixed to it for lifting it off. Eardulf had decided to take the most important remains and possessions of the community with them, and whether new or old, the shelf in Cuthbert's coffin was probably loaded with the St Cuthbert Gospel, which was found there in 1104. It may also have held the Lindisfarne Gospels, now also in the British Library, and other books from Lindisfarne that were, and in several cases still are, at Durham Cathedral. Other bones taken by the party were those remains of St Aidan (d. 651), the founder of the community, that had not been sent to Melrose, and the head of the king and saint Oswald of Northumbria, who had converted the kingdom and encouraged the founding of Lindisfarne. These and other relics were reverently packaged in cloth and labelled, as more recent relics are. The community also took a stone Anglo-Saxon cross, and although they had a vehiculum of some sort, probably a cart or simple wagon, Cuthbert's coffin was carried by seven young men who had grown up in the community.
They set off inland and spent the first months at an unknown location in west Cumberland, near the River Derwent, probably in the modern Lake District, and according to Symeon of Durham's Libellus de exordio, the main source for this period, Eardulf tried to hire a ship on the west coast to take them to Ireland. Then they left the more remote west side of the country and returned to the east, finding a resting-place at Craike near Easingwold, close to the coast, well south of Lindisfarne, but also sufficiently far north of the new Viking kingdom being established at York.
Over the next century the Vikings of York and the north became gradually Christianized, and Cuthbert's shrine became a focus of devotion among them also. The community established close relations with Guthred (d. 895), Halfdene's successor as king, and received land from him at Chester-le-Street. In 883 they moved the few miles there, where they stayed over a century, building St Cuthbert's Church, where Cuthbert's shrine was placed. In 995 a new Danish invasion led the community to flee some 50 miles south to Ripon, again taking the coffin with them. After three or four months it was felt safe to return, and the party had nearly reached Chester-le-Street when their wagon became definitively stuck close to Durham, then a place with cultivated fields, but hardly a settlement, perhaps just an isolated farm. It was thought that Cuthbert was expressing a wish to settle where he was, and the community obeyed. A new stone church—the so-called White Church—was built, the predecessor of the present Durham Cathedral.
### Durham Cathedral
In 1104, early in the bishopric of Ranulf Flambard, Cuthbert's tomb was opened again and his relics translated to a new shrine behind the main altar of the half-built Norman cathedral. According to the earlier of the two accounts of the event that survive, known as "Miracles 18–20" or the "anonymous account", written by a monk of the cathedral, when the monks opened the decorated inner coffin, which was for the first time in living memory, they saw "a book of the Gospels lying at the head of the board", that is on the shelf or inner lid. The account in "Miracle 20" adds that Bishop Flambard, during his sermon on the day the new shrine received Cuthbert's body, showed the congregation "a Gospel of Saint John in miraculously perfect condition, which had a satchel-like container of red leather with a badly frayed sling made of silken threads". In addition the book itself has an inscription on folio 1r "written in a modest book-hand apparently of the later twelfth century" recording that it was found in the translation.
As far as is known the book remained at Durham for the remainder of the Middle Ages, until the Dissolution, kept as a relic in three bags of red leather, normally resting in a reliquary, and there are various records of it being shown to visitors, the more distinguished of which were allowed to hang it round their neck for a while. According to Reginald of Durham (d. c 1190) "anyone approaching it should wash, fast and dress in an alb before touching it", and he recorded that a scribe called John who failed to do this during a visit by the Archbishop of York in 1153–54, and "held it with unwashed hands after eating was struck down with a chill". Books treated as relics are especially characteristic of Celtic Christianity; several of the surviving Irish book-shrines were worn in this way.
Another recorded copy of the Gospel of John has also been associated with Cuthbert, and sometimes thought to be the St Cuthbert Gospel. Saint Boisil (d. 664) of Melrose Abbey was Cuthbert's teacher. Bede's prose life of Cuthbert records that during Boisil's last illness, he and Cuthbert read daily one of the seven gatherings or quaternions of Boisil's manuscript of the Gospel of John. The sermon in Miracle 20 identifies this manuscript with the one at Durham, and says that both saints had worn it round their necks, ignoring that it has twelve gatherings rather than seven. There are further references from Durham to Boisil's book, such as a list of relics in the cathedral in 1389, and some modern scholars were attracted to the idea that they were the same, but Brown's palaeographical evidence seems to remove the possibility of Boisil's book being the St Cuthbert Gospel. In the 11th century Boisil's remains had also been brought to Durham, and enshrined next to those of Cuthbert. Around the same time Bede's own remains were stolen from Monkwearmouth–Jarrow for Durham, by a "notably underhand trick", and placed in Cuthbert's coffin, where they remained until 1104.
### After the Reformation
It is thought likely that the book remained at Durham until the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, although the various late medieval records of books and relics held there do not allow it to be identified with certainty. Durham Cathedral Priory closed in 1540, and some decades later the book was recorded by Archbishop Ussher in the library of the Oxford scholar, antiquary and astrologer Thomas Allen (1542–1632) of Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College, Oxford). However it is not in a catalogue of Allen's library of 1622, and was not in the collection of Allen's manuscripts that was presented to the Bodleian Library by Sir Kenelm Digby in 1634. Nothing is then known of its whereabouts for a century or so.
According to an 18th-century Latin inscription pasted to the inside cover of the manuscript, the St Cuthbert Gospel was given by the 3rd Earl of Lichfield (1718–1772) to the Jesuit priest Thomas Phillips S.J. (1708–1774) who donated it to the English Jesuit College at Liège on 20 June 1769. Lichfield was an Anglican, but knew Phillips as the latter was chaplain to his neighbour in Oxfordshire, the recusant George Talbot, 14th Earl of Shrewsbury (1719–1787). The manuscript was owned between 1769 and 2012 by the British Province of the Society of Jesus, and for most of this period was in the library of Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, successor to the Liège college.
The manuscript was first published when in 1806 it was taken to London and displayed when a letter on it by the Rev. J. Milner, presumably Bishop John Milner, Catholic Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District, was read to a meeting of the London Society of Antiquaries, which was subsequently printed in their journal Archaeologia. Milner followed the medieval note in relating the book to Cuthbert, and compared its script to that of the Lindisfarne Gospels, by then in the British Museum, examining the two side by side. However he thought that "the binding seems to be of the time of Queen Elizabeth"! After the lecture it took some years to return to Stonyhurst as an intermediary forgot to forward it. That the binding was original, and the earliest European example, was realised during the 19th century, and when exhibited in 1862 it was described in the catalogue as "In unique coeval (?) binding". The whole appearance and feel of the book, and the accuracy of the text and beauty of the script was highly praised by scholars such as Bishop Christopher Wordsworth (1807–1885), nephew of the poet and an important New Testament textual scholar, who described the book as "surpassing in delicate simplicity of neatness every manuscript that I have seen".
### From 1950
From 1950 onwards the binding was examined several times, but not altered, at Stonyhurst and the British Museum by Roger Powell, "the leading bookbinder of his day", who had rebound both the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, and also fully photographed by Peter Walters. Powell contributed chapters on the binding to the two major works covering the book, the first being The Relics of St Cuthbert in 1956, a large work with chapters on Cuthbert's coffin and each of the objects recovered from it. The main chapter on the St Cuthbert Gospel was by Sir Roger Mynors, and Powell's chapter incorporated unpublished observations by the leading bindings expert Geoffrey Hobson. The second came in 1969, when T.J. (Julian) Brown, Professor of Palaeography at King's College, London, published a monograph on the St Cuthbert Gospel with another chapter by Powell, who had altered his views in minor respects. Brown set out arguments for the dating of the manuscript to close to 698, which has been generally accepted. The book was placed on loan to the British Library in 1979 where it was very regularly on display, first in the British Museum building, and from 1999 in the Ritblat Gallery at the new St Pancras site of the Library, usually displaying the front cover. Despite minor damages, some of which appear to have occurred during the 20th century, the book is in extremely good condition for its age.
In 2011 an agreement was reached with the Jesuit British Province for the British Library to buy the book for £9 million. This required the purchase money to be raised by 31 March 2012, and a public appeal was launched. In the early stages the emphasis was on raising large individual donations, which included £4,500,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, which distributes some of the money from the profits of the National Lottery, £250,000 pledged by the Art Fund, and "a similar sum" by The Garfield Weston Foundation, and a large gift from the Foyle Foundation. By early March 2012 the British Library reported that there was "only £1.5M left to raise", and on 17 April announced that the purchase had been completed, after their largest ever public appeal. The purchase "involved a formal partnership between the Library, Durham University and Durham Cathedral and an agreement that the book will be displayed to the public equally in London and the North East." There was a special display at the British Library until June 2012, and after coming off display for detailed investigation the book went on display in Durham in July 2013 in Durham University's Palace Green Library. Subsequently it has been on display in both London and Durham, but with periods "resting" off display. All the pages are accessible on the British Library website.
## The Gospel of John as an amulet
There was a long and somewhat controversial tradition of using manuscripts of the Gospel of John, or extracts such as the opening verse, as a protective or healing amulet or charm, which was especially strong in early medieval Britain and Ireland. Manuscripts containing the text of one gospel only are very rare, except for those with lengthy explanatory glosses, and all the examples known to Julian Brown were of John. Disapproving references to such uses can be found in the writings of Saints Jerome and Eligius, and Alcuin, but they are accepted by John Chrysostom, Augustine, who "expresses qualified approval" of using manuscripts as a cure for headaches, and Gregory the Great, who sent one to Queen Theodelinda for her son. Bede's prose Life mentions that Cuthbert combated the use of amulets and charms in the villages around Melrose. However, like many other leading figures of the church, he may have distinguished between amulets based on Christian texts and symbols and other types.
The size of the Cuthbert Gospel places it within the Insular tradition of the "pocket gospels", of which eight Irish examples survive, including the Book of Dimma, Book of Mulling, and Book of Deer, although all the others are or were originally texts of all four gospels, with the possible exception of a few pages from the Gospel of John enshrined with the Stowe Missal in its cumdach or book-reliquary. There was a tradition of even smaller books, whose use seems to have been often amuletic, and a manuscript of John alone, with a page size of 72 x 56 mm, was found in a reliquary at Chartres Cathedral in 1712. It is probably Italian from the 5th or 6th century, and the label it carried in 1712 saying it was a relic of St Leobinus, a bishop of Chartes who died in about 556, may be correct. The other examples are mostly in Greek or the Coptic language and contain a variety of biblical texts, especially psalters. Julian Brown concludes that the three Latin manuscripts of John "seem to attest an early medieval practice of placing a complete Gospel of St. John in a shrine, as a protective amulet; and it seems reasonable to conclude that our manuscript was placed in St. Cuthbert's coffin to protect it".
## Exhibitions
Apart from being usually on display at the British Museum and British Library (see above), the book has been in the following exhibitions ( \* denotes that there was a detailed published catalogue):
- 1862, Victoria & Albert Museum, Loan Exhibition
- 1930, Victoria & Albert Museum, Medieval English Art \*
- 1987, Durham Cathedral Treasury, An exhibition of manuscripts brought together at Durham to celebrate the saint's 1300th anniversary and the work of his early community
- 1991, British Museum, The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600–900 \*
- 1996, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, Treasures from the Lost Kingdom of Northumbria
- 1997, British Museum, The Heirs of Rome: The Shaping of Britain AD 400–900, part of the series The Transformation of the Roman World Ad 400–900 \*
- 2003, British Library, Painted Labyrinth: The World of the Lindisfarne Gospels \*
- 2007, British Library, Sacred: Discover What We Share
- 2013 Palace Green Library, Durham University, in an exhibition which also included the Lindisfarne Gospels, items from the Staffordshire Hoard, the Yates Thompson 26 Life of Cuthbert (from which several illustrations here are taken), and the gold Taplow belt buckle.
- 2014, Palace Green Library, Durham, Book binding from the Middle Ages to the modern day.
- 2018/19 British Library, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War \*
- 2022, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, The Lindisfarne Gospels
A digital version of the manuscript was produced to run on an Apple iPad, which was exhibited in April 2012 at the British Library.
## See also
- List of most expensive books and manuscripts
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Emmeline Pankhurst
| 1,173,858,300 |
English suffragette (1858–1928)
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"Emmeline Pankhurst",
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Emmeline Pankhurst (née Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist who organised the UK suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Born in the Moss Side district of Manchester to politically active parents, Pankhurst was introduced at the age of 14 to the women's suffrage movement. She founded and became involved with the Women's Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for both married and unmarried women. When that organisation broke apart, she tried to join the left-leaning Independent Labour Party through her friendship with socialist Keir Hardie but was initially refused membership by the local branch on account of her sex. While working as a Poor Law Guardian, she was shocked at the harsh conditions she encountered in Manchester's workhouses.
In 1903, Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words". The group identified as independent from – and often in opposition to – political parties. It became known for physical confrontations: its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists received repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions, and were often force-fed. As Pankhurst's eldest daughter Christabel took leadership of the WSPU, antagonism between the group and the government grew. Eventually, the group adopted arson as a tactic, and more moderate organisations spoke out against the Pankhurst family. In 1913, several prominent individuals left the WSPU, among them Pankhurst's younger daughters, Adela and Sylvia. Emmeline was so furious that she "gave [Adela] a ticket, £20, and a letter of introduction to a suffragette in Australia, and firmly insisted that she emigrate". Adela complied and the family rift was never healed. Sylvia became a socialist.
With the advent of the First World War, Emmeline and Christabel called an immediate halt to the militant terrorism in support of the British government's stand against the "German Peril". Emmeline organised and led a massive procession called the Women's Right to Serve demonstration to illustrate women's contribution to the war effort. Emmeline and Christabel urged women to aid industrial production and encouraged young men to fight, becoming prominent figures in the white feather movement.
In 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted votes to all men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30. This discrepancy was intended to ensure that men did not become minority voters as a consequence of the huge number of deaths suffered during the First World War.
She transformed the WSPU machinery into the Women's Party, which was dedicated to promoting women's equality in public life. In her later years, she became concerned with what she perceived as the menace posed by Bolshevism and joined the Conservative Party. She was selected as the Conservative candidate for Whitechapel and St Georges in 1927. She died on 14 June 1928, only weeks before the Conservative government's Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 extended the vote to all women over 21 years of age on 2 July 1928. She was commemorated two years later with a statue in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament.
## Early life
Emmeline Goulden was born on Sloan Street in the Moss Side district of Manchester on 15 July 1858. At school, her teachers called her Emily, a name she preferred. Although her birth certificate says otherwise, she believed and later claimed her birthday was a day earlier, on Bastille Day (14 July). Most biographies, including those written by her daughters, repeat this claim. Feeling a kinship with the female revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille, she said in 1908: "I have always thought that the fact that I was born on that day had some kind of influence over my life." The family into which she was born had been steeped in political agitation for generations; her mother, Sophia, was a Manx woman from the Isle of Man who was descended from men who were charged with social unrest and slander.
In 1881, the Isle of Man became the first place in the British Isles to grant women the right to vote in Manx national elections (the Isle does not return members to the UK Parliament). Her father, Robert Goulden, was a self-made man – working his way from errand boy to manufacturer – from a humble Manchester family with its own background of political activity. Robert's mother, a fustian cutter, worked with the Anti-Corn Law League, and his father was press-ganged into the Royal Navy and present at the Peterloo massacre, when cavalry charged and broke up a crowd demanding parliamentary reform.
The Gouldens' first son died at the age of three, but they had 10 other children; Emmeline was the eldest of five daughters. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Seedley, where her father had co-founded a small business. He was also active in local politics, serving for several years on the Salford town council. He was an enthusiastic supporter of dramatic organisations including the Manchester Athenaeum and the Dramatic Reading Society. He owned a theatre in Salford for several years, where he played the leads in several Shakespeare plays. Goulden absorbed an appreciation of drama and theatrics from her father, which she used later in social activism. The Gouldens included their children in social activism. As part of the movement to end U.S. slavery, Robert welcomed American abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher when he visited Manchester. Sophia used the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Beecher's sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, as a regular source of bedtime stories for her sons and daughters. In her 1914 autobiography My Own Story, Goulden recalls visiting a bazaar at a young age to collect money for newly freed slaves in the U.S.
Emmeline began to read books when she was very young, with one source claiming that she was reading as early as the age of three. She read the Odyssey at the age of nine and enjoyed the works of John Bunyan, especially his 1678 story The Pilgrim's Progress. Another of her favourite books was Thomas Carlyle's three-volume treatise The French Revolution: A History, and she later said the work "remained all [her] life a source of inspiration". Despite her avid consumption of books, however, she was not given the educational advantages enjoyed by her brothers. Their parents believed that the girls needed most to learn the art of "making home attractive" and other skills desired by potential husbands. The Gouldens deliberated carefully about future plans for their sons' education, but they expected their daughters to marry young and avoid paid work. Although they supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, the Gouldens believed their daughters incapable of the goals of their male peers. Feigning sleep one evening as her father came into her bedroom, Goulden heard him pause and say to himself, "What a pity she wasn't born a lad."
It was through her parents' interest in women's suffrage that Goulden was first introduced to the subject. Her mother received and read the Women's Suffrage Journal, and Goulden grew fond of its editor Lydia Becker. At the age of 14, she returned home from school one day to find her mother on her way to a public meeting about women's voting rights. After learning that Becker would be speaking, she insisted on attending. Goulden was enthralled by Becker's address and later wrote, "I left the meeting a conscious and confirmed suffragist." A year later, she arrived in Paris to attend the École Normale de Neuilly. The school provided its female pupils with classes in chemistry and bookkeeping, in addition to traditionally feminine arts such as embroidery. Her roommate was Noémie, the daughter of Victor Henri Rochefort, who had been imprisoned in New Caledonia for his support of the Paris Commune. The girls shared tales of their parents' political exploits and remained good friends for years. Goulden was so fond of Noémie and the school that she returned with her sister Mary Jane as a parlour boarder after graduating. Noémie had married a Swiss painter and quickly found a suitable French husband for her English friend. When Robert refused to provide a dowry for his daughter, the man withdrew his offer of marriage and Goulden returned, miserable, to Manchester.
## Marriage and family
In the autumn of 1878, at the age of 20, Goulden met and began a relationship with Richard Pankhurst, a barrister who had advocated women's suffrage – and other causes, including freedom of speech and education reform – for years. Richard, 44 years old when they met, had earlier resolved to remain a bachelor to better serve the public. Their mutual affection was powerful, but the couple's happiness was diminished by the death of his mother the following year. Sophia Jane Goulden chastised her daughter for "throwing herself" at Richard and advised her without success to exhibit more aloofness. Emmeline suggested to Richard that they avoid the legal formalities of marriage by entering into a free union; he objected on the grounds that she would be excluded from political life as an unmarried woman. He noted that his colleague Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy had faced social condemnation before she formalised her marriage to Ben Elmy. Emmeline Goulden agreed, and they had their wedding in St Luke's Church, Pendleton on 18 December 1879.
During the 1880s, living at the Goulden cottage with her parents in Seedley, then at 1 Drayton Terrace Chester Rd Old Trafford (1881 census Stretford) opposite Richards parents home, Emmeline Pankhurst tended to her husband and children, but still devoted time to political activities. Although she gave birth to five children in ten years, both she and Richard believed that she should not be "a household machine". Thus a butler was hired to help with the children as Pankhurst involved herself with the Women's Suffrage Society. Their daughter Christabel was born on 22 September 1880, less than a year after the wedding. Pankhurst gave birth to another daughter, Estelle Sylvia, in 1882, and their son Henry Francis Robert, nicknamed Frank, in 1884. Soon afterwards Richard Pankhurst left the Liberal Party. He began expressing more radical socialist views and argued a case in court against several wealthy businessmen. These actions roused Robert Goulden's ire and the mood in the house became tense. In 1885, the Pankhursts moved to Chorlton-on-Medlock, and their daughter Adela was born. They moved to London the following year, where Richard ran unsuccessfully for election as a Member of Parliament and Pankhurst opened a small fabric shop called Emerson and Company, together with her sister Mary Jane.
In 1888, Pankhurst's son Frank developed diphtheria. He died on 11 September. Overwhelmed with grief, Pankhurst commissioned two portraits of the dead boy but was unable to look at them and hid them in a bedroom cupboard. The family concluded that a faulty drainage system at the back of their house had caused their son's illness. Pankhurst blamed the poor conditions of the neighbourhood, and the family moved to a more affluent middle class district at Russell Square. She was soon pregnant once more and declared that the child was "Frank coming again". She gave birth to a son on 7 July 1889 and named him Henry Francis in honour of his deceased brother.
Pankhurst made their Russell Square home into a centre for political intellectuals and activists, including, "Socialists, Protesters, Anarchists, Suffragists, Free Thinkers, Radicals and Humanitarians of all schools." She took pleasure in decorating the house – especially with furnishings from Asia – and clothing the family in tasteful apparel. Her daughter Sylvia later wrote: "Beauty and appropriateness in her dress and household appointments seemed to her at all times an indispensable setting to public work."
The Pankhursts hosted a variety of guests including Indian MP Dadabhai Naoroji, socialist activists Herbert Burrows and Annie Besant, and French anarchist Louise Michel.
## Women's Franchise League
In 1888, Britain's first nationwide coalition of groups advocating women's right to vote, the National Society for Women's Suffrage (NSWS), split after a majority of members decided to accept organisations affiliated with political parties. Angry at this decision, some of the group's leaders, including Lydia Becker and Millicent Fawcett, stormed out of the meeting and created an alternative organisation committed to the "old rules," called the Great College Street Society after the location of its headquarters. Pankhurst aligned herself with the "new rules" group, which became known as the Parliament Street Society (PSS). Some members of the PSS favoured a piecemeal approach to gaining the vote. Because it was often assumed that married women did not need the vote since their husbands "voted for them," some PSS members felt that the vote for single women and widows was a practical step along the path to full suffrage. When the reluctance within the PSS to advocate on behalf of married women became clear, Pankhurst and her husband helped organise another new group dedicated to voting rights for all women – married and unmarried.
The inaugural meeting of the Women's Franchise League (WFL) was held on 25 July 1889, at the Pankhurst home in Russell Square. Early members of the WFL included Josephine Butler, leader of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts; the Pankhursts' friend Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme-Elmy; and Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch, daughter of US suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
The WFL was considered a radical organisation, since in addition to women's suffrage it supported equal rights for women in the areas of divorce and inheritance. It also advocated trade unionism and sought alliances with socialist organisations. The more conservative group that emerged from the NSWS split spoke out against what they called the "extreme left" wing of the movement. The WFL reacted by ridiculing the "Spinster Suffrage party" and insisting that a wider assault on social inequity was required. The group's radicalism caused some members to leave; both Blatch and Elmy resigned from the WFL. The group fell apart one year later.
## Independent Labour Party
Pankhurst's shop never succeeded and he had trouble attracting business in London. With the family's finances in jeopardy, Richard travelled regularly to northwest England, where most of his clients were. In 1893 the Pankhursts closed the store and returned to Manchester. They stayed for several months in the seaside town of Southport, then moved briefly to the village of Disley and finally settled into a house in Manchester's Victoria Park. The girls were enrolled in Manchester Girls' High School, where they felt confined by the large student population and strictly regimented schedule.
Pankhurst began to work with several political organisations, distinguishing herself for the first time as an activist in her own right and gaining respect in the community. One biographer describes this period as her "emergence from Richard's shadow." In addition to her work on behalf of women's suffrage, she became active with the Women's Liberal Federation (WLF), an auxiliary of the Liberal Party. She quickly grew disenchanted with the group's moderate positions, however, especially its unwillingness to support Irish Home Rule and the aristocratic leadership of Archibald Primrose.
In 1888 Pankhurst had met and befriended Keir Hardie, a socialist from Scotland. He was elected to parliament in 1891 and two years later helped to create the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Excited about the range of issues which the ILP pledged to confront, Pankhurst resigned from the WFL and applied to join the ILP. The local branch refused her admission on the grounds of her sex, but she eventually joined the ILP nationally. Christabel later wrote of her mother's enthusiasm for the party and its organising efforts: "In this movement she hoped there might be the means of righting every political and social wrong."
One of her first activities with the ILP found Pankhurst distributing food to poor men and women through the Committee for the Relief of the Unemployed. In December 1894 she was elected to the position of Poor Law Guardian in Chorlton-on-Medlock. She was appalled by the conditions she witnessed first-hand in the Manchester workhouse:
> The first time I went into the place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors ... bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time ... I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world ... Of course the babies are very badly protected ... These poor, unprotected mothers and their babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant.
Pankhurst immediately began to change these conditions, and established herself as a successful voice of reform on the Board of Guardians. Her chief opponent was a passionate man named Mainwaring, known for his rudeness. Recognising that his loud anger was hurting his chances of persuading those aligned with Pankhurst, he kept a note nearby during meetings: "Keep your temper!"
After helping her husband with another unsuccessful parliamentary campaign, Pankhurst faced legal troubles in 1896 when she and two men violated a court order against ILP meetings at Boggart Hole Clough. With Richard's volunteering his time as legal counsel, they refused to pay fines, and the two men spent a month in prison. The punishment was never ordered for Pankhurst, however, possibly because the magistrate feared public backlash against the imprisonment of a woman so respected in the community. Asked by an ILP reporter if she were prepared to spend time in prison, Pankhurst replied: "Oh, yes, quite. It wouldn't be so very dreadful, you know, and it would be a valuable experience." Although ILP meetings were eventually permitted, the episode was a strain on Pankhurst's health and caused loss of income for their family.
### Richard's death
During the struggle at Boggart Hole Clough, Richard Pankhurst began to experience severe stomach pains. He had developed a gastric ulcer, and his health deteriorated in 1897. The family moved briefly to Mobberley, with the hope that country air would help his condition. He soon felt well again, and the family returned to Manchester in the autumn. In the summer of 1898, he suffered a sudden relapse. Emmeline Pankhurst had taken their oldest daughter Christabel to Corsier, Switzerland, to visit her old friend Noémie. A telegram arrived from Richard, reading: "I am not well. Please come home, my love." Leaving Christabel with Noémie, Pankhurst returned immediately to England. On 5 July, while on a train from London to Manchester, she noticed a newspaper announcing the death of Richard Pankhurst.
The loss of her husband left Pankhurst with new responsibilities and a significant amount of debt. She moved the family to a smaller house at 62 Nelson Street, resigned from the Board of Guardians, and was given a paid position as Registrar of Births and Deaths in Chorlton. This work gave her more insight into the conditions of women in the region. She wrote in her autobiography: "They used to tell me their stories, dreadful stories some of them, and all of them pathetic with that patient and uncomplaining pathos of poverty." Her observations of the differences between the lives of men and women, for example in relation to illegitimacy, reinforced her conviction that women needed the right to vote before their conditions could improve. In 1900 she was elected to the Manchester School Board and saw new examples of women suffering unequal treatment and limited opportunities. During this time she also re-opened her store, with the hope that it would provide additional income for the family.
The individual identities of the Pankhurst children began to emerge around the time of their father's death. Before long they were all involved in the struggle for women's suffrage. Christabel enjoyed a privileged status among the daughters, as Sylvia noted in 1931: "She was our mother's favourite; we all knew it, and I, for one, never resented the fact." Christabel did not share her mother's fervour for political work, however, until she befriended the suffrage activists Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth. She soon became involved with the suffrage movement and joined her mother at speaking events. Sylvia took lessons from a respected local artist and soon received a scholarship to the Manchester School of Art. She went on to study art in Florence and Venice. The younger children, Adela and Harry, had difficulty finding a path for their studies. Adela was sent to a local boarding school, where she was cut off from her friends and contracted head lice. Harry also had difficulty at school; he suffered from measles and vision problems.
## Women's Social and Political Union/WSPU
By 1903, Pankhurst believed that years of moderate speeches and promises about women's suffrage from members of parliament (MPs) had yielded no progress. Although suffrage bills in 1870, 1886, and 1897 had shown promise, each was defeated. She doubted that political parties, with their many agenda items, would ever make women's suffrage a priority. She even broke with the ILP when it refused to focus on Votes for Women. It was necessary to abandon the patient tactics of existing advocacy groups, she believed, in favour of more militant actions. Thus on 10 October 1903 Pankhurst and several colleagues founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organisation open only to women and focused on direct action to win the vote. "Deeds," she wrote later, "not words, was to be our permanent motto."
The group's early militancy took non-violent forms. In addition to making speeches and gathering petition signatures, the WSPU organised rallies and published a newsletter called Votes for Women. The group also convened a series of "Women's Parliaments" for example, in Caxton Hall, to coincide with official government sessions. When a bill for women's suffrage was filibustered on 12 May 1905, Pankhurst and other WSPU members began a loud protest outside the Parliament building. Police immediately forced them away from the building, where they regrouped and demanded passage of the bill. Although the bill was never resurrected, Pankhurst considered it a successful demonstration of militancy's power to capture attention. Pankhurst declared in 1906: "We are at last recognized as a political party; we are now in the swim of politics, and are a political force."
Before long, all three of her daughters became active with the WSPU. Christabel was arrested after spitting at a policeman during a meeting of the Liberal Party in October 1905; Adela and Sylvia were arrested a year later during a protest outside Parliament. Pankhurst was arrested for the first time in February 1908, when she tried to enter Parliament to deliver a protest resolution to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. She was charged with obstruction and sentenced to six weeks in prison. She spoke out against the conditions of her confinement, including vermin, meagre food, and the "civilised torture of solitary confinement and absolute silence" to which she and others were ordered. Pankhurst saw imprisonment as a means to publicise the urgency of women's suffrage; in June 1909 she struck a police officer twice in the face to ensure she would be arrested. Pankhurst was arrested seven times before women's suffrage was approved. During her trial on 21 October 1908 she told the court: "We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers."
The exclusive focus of the WSPU on votes for women was another hallmark of its militancy. While other organisations agreed to work with individual political parties, the WSPU insisted on separating itself from – and in many cases opposing – parties which did not make women's suffrage a priority. The group protested against all candidates belonging to the party of the ruling government since it refused to pass women's suffrage legislation. This brought them into immediate conflict with Liberal Party organisers, particularly since many Liberal candidates supported women's suffrage. (One early target of WSPU opposition was future Prime Minister Winston Churchill; his opponent attributed Churchill's defeat in part to "those ladies who are sometimes laughed at.")
Members of the WSPU were sometimes heckled and derided for spoiling elections for Liberal candidates. On 18 January 1908, Pankhurst and her associate Nellie Martel were attacked by an all-male crowd of Liberal supporters who blamed the WSPU for costing them a recent by-election to the Conservative candidate. The men threw clay, rotten eggs, and stones packed in snow; the women were beaten and Pankhurst's ankle was severely bruised. Similar tensions later formed with Labour. Until party leaders made the vote for women a priority, however, the WSPU vowed to continue its militant activism. Pankhurst and others in the union saw party politics as distracting to the goal of women's suffrage and criticised other organisations for putting party loyalty ahead of women's votes.
As the WSPU gained recognition and notoriety for its actions, Pankhurst resisted efforts to democratise the organisation itself. In 1907 a small group of members led by Teresa Billington-Greig called for more involvement from the rank-and-file suffragettes at the union's annual meetings. In response, Pankhurst announced at a WSPU meeting that elements of the organisation's constitution relating to decision-making were void and cancelled the annual meetings. She also insisted that a small committee chosen by the members in attendance be allowed to co-ordinate WSPU activities. Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel were chosen (along with Mabel Tuke and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence) as members of the new committee. Frustrated, several members including Billington-Greig and Charlotte Despard quit to form their own organisation, the Women's Freedom League. In her 1914 autobiography Pankhurst dismissed criticism of the WSPU's leadership structure:
> if at any time a member, or a group of members, loses faith in our policy; if any one begins to suggest that some other policy ought to be substituted, or if she tries to confuse the issue by adding other policies, she ceases at once to be a member. Autocratic? Quite so. But, you may object, a suffrage organisation ought to be democratic. Well the members of the W.S.P.U. do not agree with you. We do not believe in the effectiveness of the ordinary suffrage organisation. The W.S.P.U. is not hampered by a complexity of rules. We have no constitution and by-laws; nothing to be amended or tinkered with or quarrelled over at an annual meeting ... The W.S.P.U. is simply a suffrage army in the field.
### Tactical intensification
On 21 June 1908, 500,000 activists rallied in Hyde Park to demand votes for women. This day is the beginning of "Women' s Sunday". It was organised by the WSPN, the massive demonstration for women’s suffrage saw thousands march in seven processions all over London, gathering for a day of peaceful protest.
Asquith and leading MPs responded with indifference. Angered by this intransigence and abusive police activity, some WSPU members increased the severity of their actions. Soon after the rally, twelve women gathered in Parliament Square and tried to deliver speeches for women's suffrage. Police officers seized several of the speakers and pushed them into a crowd of opponents who had gathered nearby. Frustrated, two WSPU members – Edith New and Mary Leigh – went to 10 Downing Street and hurled rocks at the windows of the Prime Minister's home. They insisted their act was independent of the WSPU command, but Pankhurst expressed her approval of the action. When a magistrate sentenced New and Leigh to two months' imprisonment, Pankhurst reminded the court of how various male political agitators had broken windows to win legal and civil rights throughout Britain's history.
In 1909 the hunger strike was added to the WSPU's repertoire of resistance. On 24 June Marion Wallace Dunlop was arrested for writing an excerpt from the Bill of Rights (1688 or 1689) on a wall in the House of Commons. Angered by the conditions of the jail, Dunlop went on a hunger strike. When it proved effective, fourteen women imprisoned for smashing windows began to fast. WSPU members soon became known around the country for holding prolonged hunger strikes to protest their incarceration. Prison authorities frequently force-fed the women, using tubes inserted through the nose or mouth. The painful techniques (which, in the case of mouth-feeding, required the use of steel gags to force the mouth open) brought condemnation from suffragists and medical professionals.
These tactics caused some tension between the WSPU and more moderate organisations, which had coalesced into the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). That group's leader, Millicent Fawcett, originally hailed WSPU members for their courage and dedication to the cause. By 1912, however, she declared that hunger strikes were mere publicity stunts and that militant activists were "the chief obstacles in the way of the success of the suffrage movement in the House of Commons." The NUWSS refused to join a march of women's suffrage groups after demanding without success that the WSPU end its support of property destruction. Fawcett's sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson later resigned from the WSPU for similar reasons.
Press coverage was mixed; many journalists noted that crowds of women responded positively to speeches by Pankhurst, while others condemned her radical approach to the issue. The Daily News urged her to endorse a more moderate approach, and other press outlets condemned the breaking of windows by WSPU members. In 1906 Daily Mail journalist Charles Hands referred to militant women using the diminutive term "suffragette" (rather than the standard "suffragist"). Pankhurst and her allies seized the term as their own and used it to differentiate themselves from moderate groups.
The last half of the century's first decade was a time of sorrow, loneliness, and constant work for Pankhurst. In 1907 she sold her home in Manchester and began an itinerant lifestyle, moving from place to place as she spoke and marched for women's suffrage. She stayed with friends and in hotels, carrying her few possessions in suitcases. Although she was energized by the struggle–and found joy in giving energy to others– her constant travelling meant separation from her children, especially Christabel, who had become the national coordinator of the WSPU. In 1909, as Pankhurst planned a speaking tour of the United States, Henry was paralyzed after his spinal cord became inflamed. She hesitated to leave the country while he was ill, but she needed money to pay for his treatment and the tour promised to be lucrative. On her return from a successful tour, she sat by Henry's bedside as he died on 5 January 1910. Five days later she buried him beside his brother Frank in Highgate Cemetery, then spoke before 5,000 people in Manchester. Liberal Party supporters who had come to heckle her remained quiet as she addressed the crowd.
### Conciliation, force-feeding attempt, and arson
After the Liberal losses in the 1910 elections, ILP member and journalist Henry Brailsford helped organise a Conciliation Committee for Women's Suffrage, which gathered 54 MPs from various parties. The group's Conciliation Bill looked to be a narrowly defined but still significant possibility to achieve the vote for some women. Thus the WSPU agreed to suspend its support for window-breaking and hunger strikes while it was being negotiated. When it became clear that the bill would not pass, Pankhurst declared: "If the Bill, in spite of our efforts, is killed by the Government, then ... I have to say there is an end to the truce." When it was defeated, Pankhurst led a protest march of 300 women to Parliament Square on 18 November. They were met with aggressive police response, directed by Home Secretary Winston Churchill: officers punched the marchers, twisted arms, and pulled on women's breasts. Although Pankhurst was allowed to enter Parliament, Prime Minister Asquith refused to meet her. The incident became known as Black Friday. Her sister Mary Jane, who had attended the protest, too, was arrested for the third time, a few days later. She was sentenced to a month of imprisonment. On Christmas Day she died at the home of their brother Herbert Goulden, two days after her release.
As subsequent Conciliation Bills were introduced, WSPU leaders advocated a halt to militant tactics. Aileen Preston was appointed as Pankhurst's driver in April 1911, to drive her around the country to help spread the suffrage message.
In March 1912, the second bill was in jeopardy and Pankhurst joined a fresh outbreak of window-smashing. Extensive property damage led police to raid the WSPU offices. Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence were tried at the Old Bailey and convicted of conspiracy to commit property damage. Christabel, who by 1912 was the chief coordinator for the organisation, was also wanted by police. She fled to Paris, where she directed WSPU strategy in exile. Inside Holloway Prison, Emmeline Pankhurst staged her first hunger strike to improve conditions for other suffragettes in nearby cells; she was quickly joined by Pethick-Lawrence and other WSPU members. She described in her autobiography the trauma caused by force-feeding during the strike: "Holloway became a place of horror and torment. Sickening scenes of violence took place almost every hour of the day, as the doctors went from cell to cell performing their hideous office." When prison officials tried to enter her cell, Pankhurst raised a clay jug over her head and announced: "If any of you dares so much as to take one step inside this cell I shall defend myself."
Pankhurst was spared further force-feeding attempts after this incident, but she continued to violate the law and – when imprisoned – starve herself in protest. During the following two years she was arrested numerous times but was frequently released after several days because of her ill health. Later, the Asquith government enacted the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed similar releases for other suffragettes facing ill-health due to hunger strikes. Prison officials recognised the potential public relations disaster that would erupt if the popular WSPU leader were force-fed or allowed to suffer extensively in jail. Still, police officers arrested her during talks and as she marched. She tried to evade police harassment by wearing disguises and eventually the WSPU established a jujutsu-trained female bodyguard squad to physically protect her against the police. She and other escorts were targeted by police, resulting in violent scuffles as officers tried to detain Pankhurst.
In 1912, WSPU members adopted arson as another tactic to win the vote. After Prime Minister Asquith had visited the Theatre Royal in Dublin, suffragette activists Gladys Evans, Lizzie Baker, Mary Leigh, and Mabel Capper attempted to cause an explosion using gunpowder and benzine, which resulted in minimal damage. During the same evening, Mary Leigh threw an axe at the carriage containing John Redmond (leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party), the Lord Mayor, and Asquith.
Over the next two years women set fire to a refreshments building in Regent's Park, an orchid house at Kew Gardens, pillar boxes, and a railway carriage. Emily Davison threw herself under the Kings Horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913. Her funeral drew 55,000 attendees along the streets and at the funeral. This gave significant publicity to the movement. Although Pankhurst confirmed that these women had not been commanded by her or Christabel, they both assured the public that they supported the arsonist suffragettes. There were similar incidents around the country. One WSPU member, for example, put a small hatchet into the Prime Minister's carriage inscribed with the words: "Votes for Women," and other suffragettes used acid to burn the same slogan into golf courses used by MPs. In 1914, Mary Richardson slashed the Velasquez painting Rokeby Venus to protest against Pankhurst's imprisonment.
### Defection and dismissal
The WSPU's approval of property destruction led to the departure of several important members. The first were Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and her husband Frederick. They had long been integral members of the group's leadership but found themselves in conflict with Christabel about the wisdom of such volatile tactics. After returning from a vacation in Canada they found that Pankhurst had expelled them from the WSPU. The pair found the decision appalling, but to avoid a schism in the movement they continued to praise Pankhurst and the organisation in public. Around the same time, Emmeline's daughter Adela left the group. She disapproved of WSPU endorsement of property destruction and felt that a heavier emphasis on socialism was necessary. Adela's relationship with her family – especially Christabel – was also strained as a result.
The deepest rift in the Pankhurst family came in November 1913 when Sylvia spoke at a meeting of socialists and trade unionists in support of trade union organiser Jim Larkin. She had been working with the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), a local branch of the WSPU which had a close relationship with socialists and organised labour. The close connection to labour groups and Sylvia's appearance on stage with Frederick Pethick-Lawrence – who also addressed the crowd – convinced Christabel that her sister was organising a group that might challenge the WSPU in the suffrage movement. The dispute became public, and members of groups including the WSPU, ILP, and ELFS braced themselves for a showdown. After being dismissed from the WSPU, Sylvia felt "bruised, as one does, when fighting the foe without, one is struck by the friend within."
In January Sylvia was summoned to Paris, where Emmeline and Christabel were waiting. Their mother had just returned from another tour of the US, and Sylvia had just been released from prison. All three women were exhausted and stressed, which added considerably to the tension. In her 1931 book The Suffrage Movement Sylvia describes Christabel as an unreasonable figure, haranguing her for refusing to toe the WSPU line:
> She turned to me. "You have your own ideas. We do not want that; we want all our women to take their instructions and walk in step like an army!" Too tired, too ill to argue, I made no reply. I was oppressed by a sense of tragedy, grieved by her ruthlessness. Her glorification of autocracy seemed to me remote indeed from the struggle we were waging, the grim fight even now proceeding in the cells. I thought of many others who had been thrust aside for some minor difference.
With their mother's blessing, Christabel ordered Sylvia's group to dissociate from the WSPU. Pankhurst tried to persuade the ELFS to remove the word "suffragettes" from its name, since it was inextricably linked to the WSPU. When Sylvia refused, her mother switched to fierce anger in a letter:
> You are unreasonable, always have been & I fear always will be. I suppose you were made so! ... Had you chosen a name which we could approve we could have done much to launch you & advertise your society by name. Now you must take your own way of doing so. I am sorry but you make your own difficulties by an incapacity to look at situations from other people's point of view as well as your own. Perhaps in time you will learn the lessons that we all have to learn in life.
Adela, unemployed and unsure of her future, had become a worry for Pankhurst as well. She decided that Adela should move to Australia, and paid for her relocation. They never saw one another again.
### The Women's Party
In November 1917 the WSPU's weekly newspaper announced that the WSPU was to become the Women's Party. Twelve months later on Tuesday 19 November at the Queen's Hall in London Emmeline Pankhurst said that her daughter Christabel would be their candidate at the forthcoming General Election, the first at which women could stand as candidates. They didn't say which constituency they would fight but a few days later Westbury in Wiltshire was identified. Emmeline lobbied Prime Minister David Lloyd George to ensure Christabel would have coalition backing. However, as these discussions were taking place the Pankhurst's switched their attention to Smethwick in Staffordshire. The Coalition had already settled on a local candidate, Major Samuel Nock Thompson, but Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, was persuaded to ask Thompson to withdraw. Significantly, Christabel was not issued with a formal letter of support from the two leaders, the Coalition Coupon. Christabel then had a straight fight with the Labour candidate John Davison and lost by 775 votes. The Women's Party fought no other elections and closed soon after.
## First World War
When the First World War began in August 1914, Emmeline and Christabel considered that the threat posed by Germany was a danger to all humanity, and that the British government needed the support of all men. They persuaded the WSPU to halt all militant suffrage activities until fighting on the European mainland ended. It was no time for dissent or agitation; Christabel wrote later: "This was national militancy. As Suffragists we could not be pacifists at any price." A truce with the government was established, all WSPU prisoners were released, and Christabel returned to London. Emmeline and Christabel set the WSPU into motion on behalf of the war effort. In her first speech after returning to Britain, Christabel warned of the "German Peril". She urged the gathered women to follow the example of their French sisters, who – while the men fought – "are able to keep the country going, to get in the harvest, to carry on the industries". Emmeline tried to shame men in to volunteering for the front lines.
Sylvia and Adela, meanwhile, did not share their mother's enthusiasm for the war. As committed pacifists, they rejected the WSPU's support for the government. Sylvia's socialist perspective convinced her that the war was another example of capitalist oligarchs exploiting poor soldiers and workers. Adela, meanwhile, spoke against the war in Australia and made public her opposition to conscription. In a short letter, Emmeline told Sylvia: "I am ashamed to know where you and Adela stand." She had a similar impatience for dissent within the WSPU; when long-time member Mary Leigh asked a question during a meeting in October 1915, Pankhurst replied: "That woman is a pro German and should leave the hall. ... I denounce you as a pro German and wish to forget that such a person ever existed." Some WSPU members were outraged by this sudden rigid devotion to the government, the leadership's perceived abandonment of efforts to win the vote for women, and questions about how funds collected on behalf of suffrage were being managed with regard to the organisation's new focus. Two groups split from the WSPU: The Suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union (SWSPU) and the Independent Women's Social and Political Union (IWSPU), each dedicated to maintaining pressure toward women's suffrage.
Pankhurst put the same energy and determination she had previously applied to women's suffrage into patriotic advocacy of the war effort. She organised rallies, toured constantly delivering speeches, and lobbied the government to help women enter the work force while men were overseas fighting. Another issue which concerned her greatly at the time was the plight of so-called war babies, children born to single mothers whose fathers were on the front lines. Pankhurst established an adoption home at Campden Hill designed to employ the Montessori method of childhood education. Some women criticised Pankhurst for offering relief to parents of children born out of wedlock, but she declared indignantly that the welfare of children–whose suffering she had seen firsthand as a Poor Law Guardian–was her only concern. Due to lack of funds, however, the home was soon turned over to Princess Alice. Pankhurst herself adopted four children, whom she renamed Kathleen King, Flora Mary Gordon, Joan Pembridge and Elizabeth Tudor. They lived in London, where–for the first time in many years–she had a permanent home, at Holland Park. Asked how, at the age of 57 and with no steady income, she could take on the burden of bringing up four more children, Pankhurst replied: "My dear, I wonder I didn't take forty."
### Russian delegation
Pankhurst visited North America in 1916 together with the former Secretary of State for Serbia, Čedomilj Mijatović, whose nation had been at the centre of fighting at the start of the war. They toured the United States and Canada, raising money and urging the US government to support Britain and its Canadian and other allies. Two years later, after the US entered the war, Pankhurst returned to the United States, encouraging suffragettes there – who had not suspended their militancy – to support the war effort by sidelining activities related to the vote. She also spoke about her fears of communist insurgency, which she considered a grave threat to Russian democracy.
By June 1917 the Russian Revolution had strengthened the Bolsheviks, who urged an end to the war. Pankhurst's translated autobiography had been read widely in Russia, and she saw an opportunity to put pressure on the Russian people. She hoped to convince them not to accept Germany's conditions for peace, which she saw as a potential defeat for Britain and Russia. UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George agreed to sponsor her trip to Russia, which she took in June. She told one crowd: "I came to Petrograd with a prayer from the English nation to the Russian nation, that you may continue the war on which depends the face of civilisation and freedom." Press response was divided between left and right wings; the former depicted her as a tool of capitalism, while the latter praised her devout patriotism.
In August she met with Alexander Kerensky, the Russian Prime Minister. Although she had been active with the socialist-leaning ILP in years past, Pankhurst had begun to see leftist politics as disagreeable, an attitude which intensified while she was in Russia. The meeting was uncomfortable for both parties; he felt that she was unable to appreciate the class-based conflict driving Russian policy at the time. He concluded by telling her that English women had nothing to teach women in Russia. She later told the New York Times that he was the "biggest fraud of modern times" and that his government could "destroy civilisation."
## Accomplishment of suffrage (1918)
When she returned from Russia, Pankhurst was delighted to find that women's right to vote was finally on its way to becoming a reality. The 1918 Representation of the People Act removed property restrictions on men's suffrage and granted the vote to women over the age of 30 (with several restrictions). As suffragists and suffragettes celebrated and prepared for its imminent passage, a new schism erupted: should women's political organisations join forces with those established by men? Many socialists and moderates supported unity of the sexes in politics, but Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst saw the best hope in remaining separate. They reinvented the WSPU as the Women's Party, still open only to women. Women, they said, "can best serve the nation by keeping clear of men's party political machinery and traditions, which, by universal consent, leave so much to be desired." The party favoured equal marriage laws, equal pay for equal work, and equal job opportunities for women. These were matters for the post-war era, however. While the fighting continued the Women's Party demanded no compromise in the defeat of Germany; the removal from government of anyone with family ties to Germany or pacifist attitudes; and shorter work hours to forestall labour strikes. This last plank in the party's platform was meant to discourage potential interest in Bolshevism, about which Pankhurst was increasingly anxious.
## Post-war activities
In the years after the 1918 Armistice, Pankhurst continued to promote her nationalist vision of British unity. She maintained a focus on women's empowerment, but her days of fighting with government officialdom were over. She defended the presence and reach of the British Empire: "Some talk about the Empire and Imperialism as if it were something to decry and something to be ashamed of. [I]t is a great thing to be the inheritors of an Empire like ours ... great in territory, great in potential wealth. ... If we can only realise and use that potential wealth we can destroy thereby poverty, we can remove and destroy ignorance." For years she travelled around England and North America, rallying support for the British Empire and warning audiences about the dangers of Bolshevism. After the war she lived in Bermuda and America for a couple of years.
Emmeline Pankhurst also became active in political campaigning again when a bill was passed allowing women to run for the House of Commons. Many Women's Party members urged Pankhurst to stand for election, but she insisted that Christabel was a better choice. She campaigned tirelessly for her daughter, lobbying Prime Minister Lloyd George for his support and at one point delivering a passionate speech in the rain. Christabel lost by a very slim margin to the Labour Party candidate, and the recount showed a difference of 775 votes. One biographer called it "the bitterest disappointment of Emmeline's life." The Women's Party withered from existence soon afterward.
As a result of her many trips to North America, Pankhurst became fond of Canada, stating in an interview that "there seems to be more equality between men and women [there] than in any other country I know." In 1922 she applied for Canadian "permission to land" (a prerequisite to status as a "British Subject with Canadian Domicile") and rented a house in Toronto, where she moved with her four adopted children. She became active with the Canadian National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases (CNCCVD), which worked against the sexual double standard which Pankhurst considered particularly harmful to women. In many of her public lectures across Canada, she also promoted eugenic feminist notions of "race betterment" and often gave speeches together with Emily Murphy, a prominent proponent compulsory sterilization for the "feeble-minded." During a tour of Bathurst, the mayor showed her a new building which would become the Home for Fallen Women. Pankhurst replied: "Ah! Where is your Home for Fallen Men?" Before long, however, she grew tired of long Canadian winters, and she ran out of money. She returned to England in late 1925.
Back in London Emmeline was visited by Sylvia, who had not seen her mother in years. Their politics were by now very different, and Sylvia was living, unmarried, with an Italian anarchist. Sylvia described a moment of familial affection when they met, followed by a sad distance between them. Emmeline's adopted daughter Mary, however, remembered the meeting differently. According to her version, Emmeline set her teacup down and walked silently out of the room, leaving Sylvia in tears. Christabel, meanwhile, had become a convert to Adventism and devoted much of her time to the church. The British press sometimes made light of the varied paths followed by the once indivisible family.
In 1926 Pankhurst joined the Conservative Party and two years later ran as a candidate for Parliament in Whitechapel and St George's. Her transformation from a fiery supporter of the ILP and window-smashing radical to an official Conservative Party member surprised many people. She replied succinctly: "My war experience and my experience on the other side of the Atlantic have changed my views considerably." Her biographers insist that the move was more complex; she was devoted to a programme of women's empowerment and anti-communism. Both the Liberal and Labour parties bore grudges for her work against them in the WSPU, and the Conservative Party had a victorious record after the war and a significant majority. Pankhurst may have joined the Conservative Party as much to secure the vote for women as from ideological affinity.
## Illness and death
Pankhurst's campaign for Parliament was preempted by her ill health and a final scandal involving Sylvia. The years of touring, lectures, imprisonment and hunger strikes had taken their toll; fatigue and illness became a regular part of Pankhurst's life. Even more painful, however, was the news in April 1928 that Sylvia had given birth out of wedlock. She had named the child Richard Keir Pethick Pankhurst, in memory of her father, her ILP comrade, and her colleagues from the WSPU respectively. Emmeline was further shocked to see a report from a newspaper in the US that declared that "Miss Pankhurst" – a title usually reserved for Christabel – boasted of her child being a triumph of "eugenics", since both parents were healthy and intelligent. In the article, Sylvia also spoke of her belief that "marriage without legal union" was the most sensible option for liberated women. These offences against the social dignity which Pankhurst had always valued devastated the elderly woman; to make matters worse, many people believed the "Miss Pankhurst" in newspaper headlines referred to Christabel. After hearing the news, Emmeline spent an entire day crying; her campaign for Parliament ended with the scandal.
As her health deteriorated, Pankhurst moved into a nursing home in Hampstead. She requested that she be treated by the doctor who attended to her during her hunger strikes. His use of the stomach pump had helped her feel better while in prison; her nurses were sure that the shock of such treatment would severely wound her, but Christabel felt obliged to carry out her mother's request. Before the procedure could be carried out, however, she fell into a critical condition from which none expected her to recover. On Thursday, 14 June 1928, Pankhurst died at the age of 69. She was interred in Brompton Cemetery in London.
## Legacy
News of Emmeline Pankhurst's death was announced around the country, and extensively in North America. Her funeral service on 18 June 1928 was filled with her former WSPU colleagues and those who had worked beside her in various capacities. The Daily Mail described the procession as "like a dead general in the midst of a mourning army". Women wore WSPU sashes and ribbons, and the organisation's flag was carried alongside the Union Flag. Christabel and Sylvia appeared together at the service, the latter with her child. Adela did not attend. Press coverage around the world recognised her tireless work on behalf of women's right to vote – even if they did not agree on the value of her contributions. The New York Herald Tribune called her "the most remarkable political and social agitator of the early part of the twentieth century and the supreme protagonist of the campaign for the electoral enfranchisement of women."
Shortly after the funeral, one of Pankhurst's bodyguards from her WSPU days, Catherine Marshall, began raising funds for a memorial statue. In spring 1930 her efforts bore fruit, and on 6 March her statue in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to and gesturing towards the Houses of Parliament, was unveiled. A crowd of radicals, former suffragettes, and national dignitaries gathered as former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin presented the memorial to the public. In his address, Baldwin declared: "I say with no fear of contradiction, that whatever view posterity may take, Mrs. Pankhurst has won for herself a niche in the Temple of Fame which will last for all time." Sylvia was the only Pankhurst daughter in attendance; Christabel, touring North America, sent a telegram which was read aloud. While planning the agenda for the day, Marshall had intentionally excluded Sylvia, who in her opinion had hastened Pankhurst's death. Historic England listed the statue as Grade II on 5 February 1970.
A proposal to move the statue of Pankhurst away from the Houses of Parliament to the private Regent's University London in Regent's Park was submitted to Westminster City Council planning department in July 2018 by former Conservative MP Sir Neil Thorne. This proposal was withdrawn in September 2018 after widespread anger and a public campaign against it. The planning application received 896 comments, 887 of them objections. A 38 Degrees petition against the removal of the statue attracted 180,839 signatures. The Curator's Office at the Palace of Westminster commissioned a report into the plan to remove the statue. Published on 22 August 2018, it concluded 'The Memorial to Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst is of high significance, which is not fully recognised through its listing at Grade II. An application has been made to Historic England to upgrade the memorial to Grade II\*. This is based on it having 'more than special interest', in terms of its unique history, its artistic quality and the importance of its setting next to the Houses of Parliament. This proposal to move the memorial from Victoria Tower Gardens to Regent's Park would cause substantial harm to the significance of the memorial, as well has harm to the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square Conservation Area...The proposal to move the memorial, therefore, should not be granted planning permission or listed building consent.
During the twentieth century Emmeline Pankhurst's value to the movement for women's suffrage was debated passionately, and no consensus was achieved. Her daughters Sylvia and Christabel weighed in with books, scornful and laudatory respectively, about their time in the struggle. Sylvia's 1931 book The Suffrage Movement describes her mother's political shift at the start of the First World War as the beginning of a betrayal of her family (especially her father) and the movement. It set the tone for much of the socialist and activist history written about the WSPU and particularly solidified Emmeline Pankhurst's reputation as an unreasonable autocrat. Christabel's "Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote," released in 1959, paints her mother as generous and selfless to a fault, offering herself completely to the most noble causes. It provided a sympathetic counterpart to Sylvia's attacks and continued the polarised discussion; detached and objective assessment has rarely been a part of Pankhurst scholarship.
Recent biographies show that historians differ about whether Emmeline Pankhurst's militancy helped or hurt the movement; however, there is general agreement that the WSPU raised public awareness of the movement in ways that proved essential. Baldwin compared her to Martin Luther and Jean-Jacques Rousseau: individuals who were not the sum total of the movements in which they took part, but who nevertheless played crucial roles in struggles of social and political reform. In the case of Pankhurst, this reform took place in both intentional and unintentional ways. By defying the roles of wife and mother as the docile companion, Pankhurst helped to pave the way for many future feminists, though some would later decry her support for empire and endorsement of the idea of "race betterment."
In 1987 one of her homes in Manchester was opened as the Pankhurst Centre, an all-women gathering space and museum. In 2002, Pankhurst was placed at number 27 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. In 2006, a blue plaque for Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel was placed by English Heritage at 50 Clarendon Road, Notting Hill, London W11 3AD, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where they had lived.
In January 2016, following a public vote, it was announced that a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst by Hazel Reeves would be unveiled in Manchester in 2019, making her the first woman to be honoured with a statue in the city since Queen Victoria more than 100 years ago. This, in fact, happened on 14 December 2018, one hundred years after British women were first able to vote in the 1918 United Kingdom general election. Her name and image and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters including her daughters are etched on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London that was unveiled in 2018. One of the 'houses' at Wellacre Academy in Manchester is named after her.
Helen Pankhurst, the great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and the granddaughter of Sylvia Pankhurst, works for women's rights. Along with her daughter, she founded Olympic Suffragettes, which campaigns on a number of women's rights issues.
Pankhurst has appeared in several works of popular culture. In the 1974 BBC television miniseries Shoulder to Shoulder, Pankhurst is played by Siân Phillips. In the 2015 film Suffragette, Pankhurst is played by Meryl Streep.
## Works
## See also
- History of feminism
- List of civil rights leaders
- Suffragette bombing and arson campaign
- List of suffragists and suffragettes
- List of women's rights activists
- Timeline of women's suffrage
- Women's suffrage organisations
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Grant Memorial coinage
| 1,150,253,103 |
US 1922 gold dollar and silver half dollar
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[
"Cultural depictions of Ulysses S. Grant",
"Currencies introduced in 1922",
"Early United States commemorative coins",
"Fifty-cent coins",
"History of Ohio",
"United States gold coins",
"United States silver coins"
] |
The Grant Memorial coinage are a gold dollar and silver half dollar struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1922 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ulysses S. Grant, a leading Union general during the American Civil War and later the 18th president of the United States. The two coins, identical in design and sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser, portrayed Grant on the obverse and his birthplace in Ohio on the reverse.
The Ulysses S. Grant Centenary Memorial Association, also called the Grant Commission, wanted to sell 200,000 gold dollars to be able to finance multiple projects in the areas of Grant's birthplace and boyhood home. Congress authorized only 10,000 gold coins, but also authorized 250,000 half dollars. Hoping to boost sales, the Grant Commission asked for 5,000 of the gold dollars to bear a special mark, an incuse star; the Mint did the same for the half dollars as well, unasked for.
All the gold dollars and most of the half dollars were sold, although some half dollars were returned to the Mint for melting. The half dollar with star has long been priced higher than most commemoratives; its rarity has also caused it to be counterfeited. Money from the coins was used to help preserve Grant's birthplace, but other planned projects were not completed.
## Background
Hiram Ulysses Grant was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio on April 27, 1822; his family moved to Georgetown, Ohio the following year. His father was able to get him an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1839; his name was entered as Ulysses S. Grant by mistake, and he chose to keep this name. Grant fought in the Mexican–American War. He resigned from the Army in 1854 and attempted several civilian trades with limited success. He was more successful once the Civil War began and he re-entered the military; after a series of victories, President Lincoln appointed him General in chief of Union Armies in late 1863. In April 1865, Grant effectively ended the war by capturing Richmond, Virginia and soon after forcing the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In 1868, Grant was elected the 18th president of the United States, serving two terms.
The Ulysses S. Grant Centenary Memorial Association was incorporated in 1921 to conduct the celebrations in Clermont County, Ohio, where Point Pleasant is. They sought to have a commemorative coin issued to help defray the costs. In 1922, commemorative coins were not sold by the government—Congress, in authorizing legislation, usually designated an organization that had the exclusive right to purchase them at face value and vend them to the public at a premium. In the case of the Grant Memorial coins, the responsible group was the Association, sometimes called the Grant Commission, of which Hugh L. Nichols was the chairman.
## Legislation
A bill for a Grant Memorial gold dollar to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth was introduced into the House of Representatives by Charles C. Kearns of Ohio on May 11, 1921. It called for the striking of 200,000 gold dollars to help finance community buildings as memorials to Grant in Georgetown and in Bethel, Ohio, and to help finance a road 5 miles (8.0 km) in length to be known as the General Grant Memorial Highway, leading from New Richmond, Ohio to Point Pleasant. The bill was referred to the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures. On August 13, it was reported back to the House by the committee chairman, Albert Vestal of Indiana. The written report recommended a number of amendments—such as that the Grant Commission pay for the preparations for the coinage—and that the bill pass. It noted that Grant had lived in both Bethel and Georgetown, and there was at present only an impassible road between New Richmond and Point Pleasant. The report also said the Grant Commission had been established in May 1921, and that it was prepared to purchase all the coins and resell them through the hundreds of banks in Ohio eager to vend them. The profits would go to pay the cost of the centennial celebrations, to build the road, and if possible, to construct the community buildings.
The bill was called up on the House's unanimous consent calendar on October 17, 1921. After the committee amendments were agreed to, Richard W. Parker of New Jersey had a number of questions, querying whether the bill's language meant that the Grant Commission would get the coins for free. He was told by Kearns that the government would be paid for the face value of the coins, and Thomas L. Blanton of Texas added that the U.S. government would charge no premium, but the Grant Commission could. Otis Wingo of Arkansas asked several questions in a colloquy with Kearns, resulting in the House being informed that since the gold coins would be struck from bullion already on hand, and as the bill obliged the Commission to pay for the coinage dies used, there would be no expense to the government. After this exchange, the bill passed without opposition.
Upon reaching the Senate, the House-passed bill was referred to the Committee on Banking and Finance. That committee reported back through Connecticut's George P. McLean on January 23, 1922, reducing the number of gold dollars to 10,000 and authorizing 250,000 silver Grant Memorial half dollars. The same day, McLean called up the bill before the Senate. Ohio's Frank Willis spoke in favor, explaining that the coins were to be used as a fundraiser by the Grant Commission, and that there would be no expense to the government. Reed Smoot of Utah noticed from the report that the entire bill—except the enacting clause—had been re-written, and questioned this; in response, Willis asked that the chairman of the Banking Committee, McLean, explain this. McLean said the House-passed bill had called for 200,000 gold dollars and the committee felt it unwise to tie up so much gold in a coin that would not circulate. This satisfied Smoot, after which the presiding officer, Vice President Calvin Coolidge, asked whether there was objection to the bill being considered. William H. King of Utah inquired whether the coin would set a bad precedent, and whether there would not be some expense involved; Willis assured him the Grant Commission would bear all costs, and that the proposal was similar to previous commemorative coin bills. Willis warned that if King objected to the bill, it would be postponed to such a degree as to defeat its purpose. Atlee Pomerene of Ohio took the floor to assure King of the importance of the bill to Ohio, and noted that the Commission was chaired by a former state chief justice, Nichols. Coolidge asked again whether there was any objection to the bill being considered; there being none, the Senate amended the bill as the committee had recommended, and passed the bill without objection.
As the two chambers had passed different versions, the bill returned to the House of Representatives, where on January 26, Vestal brought the bill up for consideration. With no objection, the House agreed to the Senate amendments, passing the bill. It became law with the signature of President Warren G. Harding on February 2, 1922.
## Preparation
The Commission of Fine Arts was charged by a 1921 executive order by President Harding with rendering advisory opinions on public artworks, including coins. The passage of the Grant bill found most CFA members busy with other projects, and according to numismatic historian Don Taxay, the choosing of an artist to design the coin fell upon its sculptor-member, James Earle Fraser, designer of the Buffalo nickel. He selected his wife, Laura Gardin Fraser, who had in 1921 designed the Alabama Centennial half dollar.
On February 12, 1922, Laura Fraser wrote to the Director of the Mint, Raymond T. Baker, expressing her gratitude at being selected and stating that she was already at work and hoped to have the plaster models of the new coins in time for the next CFA meeting. She asked for assistance in obtaining an official letter of appointment to design the pieces, as she had experienced difficulty in getting paid for her work on the Alabama coin. At the CFA meeting on February 24, members viewed the model for the obverse of the gold dollar and approved it. Laura Fraser completed her work soon thereafter. On March 3, James Fraser wrote to CFA chairman Charles S. Moore, stating that he had inspected the models and gave his approval. The full CFA ratified the decision in time for the production of gold coins to take place during March.
## Design
The designs for the two coins are identical except for the denomination. Laura Fraser worked from a photograph of Grant, by the studio of Mathew Brady, for the obverse; Taxay described Fraser's version as "remarkable for its strength and character". On the coin, Grant wears a military coat, as he did during the Civil War, but the closely cropped beard suggests he is meant to look as he did in the years after the conflict. Beneath the bust of Grant, facing right, is Fraser's initial G, for her birth last name, Gardin. Arlie L. Slabaugh, in his volume on commemorative coins, noted that Fraser had signed the Alabama coin LGF, and suggested that the single initial was to make less obvious the designer, lest there be charges of nepotism due to her husband's status as a CFA member. Elsewhere on the obverse may be found Grant's name, the centennial dates, the denomination of the coin, and the issuing nation.
The reverse depicts Grant's birthplace in Point Pleasant; Fraser again worked from a photograph, one showing the frame house before it was restored—the trees do not appear on the medal issued for the Grant birth centennial. The type of house was misidentified by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon in his annual report for 1922 as a log cabin, confusing it with one Grant built in his thirties on his wife's farm near St. Louis. At the time of issue, Frank Duffield, editor of The Numismatist (the journal of the American Numismatic Association) stated that on the coin the house and its surroundings may be intended to look like they did when Grant was born, the building seems dwarfed by the trees, and "for the sake of better effect a little of the realism might have been sacrificed without detracting from historic interest". He opined though that "in design and execution they are the equal of any of our recent commemorative issues, all of which have proved exceedingly popular with collectors." Slabaugh stated of Laura Fraser's design, "there is no question of the fine quality of her work". While the legends IN GOD WE TRUST and E PLURIBUS UNUM appear on the reverse, there is no inscription explaining what is pictured; as commemorative coin expert Anthony Swiatek explained, "the design itself tells the story".
Art historian Cornelius Vermeule, in his volume on the U.S. Mint's coins and medals, admired Laura Fraser's design: "The only possible criticism, that the larger lettering is too large, fades when the curvatures of actual flans are studied. What seems potentially large and flat in photographs falls into harmonious beauty in actuality." He stated of the obverse, "Grant is his gruff self, and in sum it can be said that a superlative beginning was made to the iconography of the Civil War in United States commemorative coinage. Of the reverse, he noted, "Her trees, her little wooden house, and her rail fence are modeled and carved with a gem-cutter's precision. The texture of the leaves is one of the most subtle yet lively experiences on any surface of an American coin."
## Distribution and collecting
Both the Alabama and the Missouri Centennial half dollar (both 1921) had included a special mark on some of the issued coins, so that collectors would have to buy two coins for a complete set. The Grant Commission sought to do the same for its issues, and instructed the Mint to include a star on half (5,000) of the gold dollars. The star was intended only for the dollar, and the inclusion of the star on some half dollars was "a bonus that greatly surprised the committee". A letter from Philadelphia Mint Superintendent Freas Styer to the Director of the Mint dated March 14, 1922, confirms their telephone conversation that there were to be 5,000 of each denomination coined with a star. As late as May 1922, The Numismatist printed that there was only one variety of half dollar. The star had no relevance to the subject matter of the coin; its sole purpose was to sell more coins. David Bullowa, in his 1938 work on commemoratives, suggested that had they used four stars, it would have denoted Grant's Civil War rank, but the single star was without apparent meaning. In July 1922, Duffield wrote that there were two varieties of the half dollar, stating: "it is said that 5,000 of this variety were received unexpectedly by the committee, and that they are being sold at a higher price than the variety without the star."
The Philadelphia Mint struck 5,006 half dollars with the star and 95,055 without. It also struck 5,016 gold dollars with the star and 5,000 without. All strikings took place in March 1922 with the excess coins over the even thousands reserved for inspection and testing at the 1923 meeting of the annual Assay Commission. The star coins were struck first, and then the star was removed from the dies. On April 15, Nichols wrote to the new Mint Director, Frank E. Scobey, stating that his commission had put the coins on sale, with the gold selling for \$3.50 with star and \$3 without, and the silver for \$1.50 with star and \$1 without. Because there were so many more silver coins than gold, the Commission had decided to require that banks and coin dealers buy 15 silver for every gold coin, a ratio lowered to 5:1 for individuals. Nichols offered to waive the requirement if Scobey wanted to buy some.
In the December 1922 issue of The Numismatist, Nichols placed an advertisement warning that sales would close on January 1, 1923, and offering the no-star half dollar at \$.75 each in lots of ten. The half dollar with star could be acquired for \$1.50 and the gold dollar with star for \$3.50. By then, there was no longer a requirement that silver pieces be purchased to obtain the gold. The Grant Commission sold the entire issue of gold pieces, but returned 750 of the half dollars with stars and 27,650 of those without to the Mint for redemption and melting. Few of the coins went to non-collectors; many of the half dollars and most of the gold pieces went to dealers and coin collectors.
The Grant Commission also sought 150 of each denomination to be struck in proof condition; this was rejected by the Mint on the ground that it had not struck proof coins in several years. Nevertheless, some proofs of each variety may exist; numismatist Anthony Swiatek estimates there may be four of each.
Some of the Grant half dollars without stars were spent, and are worn from the effects of circulation. As the coins entered the secondary market, the half dollar with star especially appreciated in value; by 1935 it sold for \$65, the highest value of any U.S. silver commemorative coin. In that year, a dentist from the Bronx, New York purchased several hundred of the half dollars without stars and proceeded to punch stars into them. Other counterfeiting has been done as well.
By 1940, the half dollar without star sold for \$1.50 and with star for \$37; by 1950 \$2.50 and \$55, by 1970 \$25 and \$135. The deluxe edition of R. S. Yeoman's A Guide Book of United States Coins (also known as the Red Book), published in 2018, lists the starred coins for between \$900 and \$9,750, and the ones without stars for between \$110 and \$1,000. The gold dollars with stars sold for about \$12 in 1940, with the ones without stars bringing \$8. In 1950, these figures were \$25 and \$21 and in 1970, \$265 and \$250. The Red Book lists the ones with stars for between \$1,500 and \$2,250, depending on condition, and the no-star pieces for between \$1,200 and \$2,500.
Money from the coins was used to renovate Grant's birthplace, and to acquire land around it. President Harding spoke at the ceremony there. In 1989, numismatist Ric Leichtung visited the municipalities where the money was to be used. He found Grant's birthplace in Point Pleasant and Grant's old schoolhouse in Georgetown. "There is no highway, no memorial buildings—just the two original structures moldering in Ohio's harsh winters and fierce summers." The Red Book noted, "the buildings and highway never came to fruition".
|
39,771,154 |
Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned
| 1,168,188,024 |
Cancelled action-adventure video game
|
[
"Action role-playing video games",
"Cancelled PlayStation 3 games",
"Cancelled Windows games",
"Cancelled Xbox 360 games",
"Disney video games",
"Open-world video games",
"Pirates of the Caribbean video games",
"Single-player video games",
"Video games developed in Canada",
"Video games set in the Bahamas",
"Video games set in the Caribbean"
] |
Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned is a cancelled action-adventure role-playing video game that was being developed by Propaganda Games for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows platforms. Originally set to be published by Disney Interactive Studios, it was the first attempt to create an open world game based on the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. The project was cancelled in October 2010, soon before the closure of Propaganda Games.
Set before events of The Curse of the Black Pearl, the game was to follow James Sterling, a pirate captain whose main mission was to travel across the Caribbean Sea to make a reputation for himself. Although little was unveiled about the story, it was intended to be independent from the films' main arc and include new characters. Gameplay was to have emphasized role-playing elements, including real-time combat and weapon customization.
After its announcement at 2009's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the game received positive responses from most video game journalists. Daemon Hatfield from IGN thought it "a promising action RPG", while GamesRadar praised the gameplay, comparing it to the Assassin's Creed franchise. Journalists were disappointed when Disney cancelled the game several months before its planned release date. Ubisoft, the publisher of Assassin's Creed, later released a similar game called Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
## Gameplay
Armada of the Damned was conceived as an action-adventure role-playing video game played from a third-person perspective and set in an open world environment based on the Pirates of the Caribbean universe. The player was to take the role of James Sterling, a pirate captain whose main mission was to travel across the Caribbean Sea and make a reputation for himself. Some of Sterling's features could be directly customized by the player, although Armada of the Damned was centered on a choice system that would affect the character's appearance, personality, weapons, attacks, quests, and story developments.
Although most of the character's specifications could be customized, some elements were to be determined by the game's two character types, Legendary and Dreaded. Choosing a type at the beginning of the game affected several gameplay and story elements. Each character type had unique features that shaped the way the game was experienced, including how the environment and non-playable characters interacted with the player.
Combat in Armada of the Damned was split between land and sea. Sterling had a light and a heavy attack, which could be combined to create combos that increased the damage he inflicted. Correct timing lead to a bonus attack at the end of the combo that improved its strength. Sterling could also curse his opponents. The curse was a spell that weakened all surrounding enemies when it was used as a finishing move. All attacks, special moves, and combinations varied depending on the pirate type chosen and could be upgraded at will.
In the game, the player was given a customizable ship named the Nemesis, commanded by Sterling and his crew. The player's choices in the game would determine the crew they could hire, which in turn affected the ship's attributes. The vessel could be used to explore the Caribbean Sea and battle other crafts. During combat, the player could maneuver the ship, fire the cannons, or board the enemy vessel for hand-to-hand combat. If the enemy craft was boarded and the enemy crew was eliminated, the player received more loot than if it was destroyed. Loot salvaged in these battles could be sold in markets.
## Plot
Little information was revealed about Armada of the Damned's plot. Sterling had no connection with the film series' characters and story arcs. The game and the films shared the same universe, but the former was to take place before the events of the latter. Sterling, raised in a poor family, was a young adventurer with dreams of fame and fortune who decided to become a pirate. Although he was killed on his first voyage, Sterling was revived by supernatural forces which gave him a second chance. After these events, the player had the option to follow two paths: become either a Legendary or a Dreaded pirate. On the Legendary path, the player would be a well-respected pirate who acted in good faith. On the Dreaded path, the player would be mysterious and feared.
## Development
Propaganda Games, a studio founded in 2005 and owned by Disney Interactive Studios, developed Armada of the Damned. The studio was established by former employees of EA Canada and focused on the development of action-adventure games for Disney. Propaganda's first game, Turok (2008), became a commercial success, selling more than one million copies. After Turok's release, the studio began working on a project for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Propaganda's vice president and general manager Dan Tudge said that this was because "it is a universe fans will be dying to explore". The studio revealed that they worked on several scripts to improve the gameplay focus. Armada of the Damned included an interactive choice system to shape the game, making choices an important feature.
According to game director Alex Peters, Armada of the Damned's characters were developed unattached from those that appear in the film series. "We were very clear that we didn't want to be associated with being a movie game", he commented. This desire led to the creation of James Sterling, a character that would fit the studio's needs and feel familiar to the characters featured in the films. An original music score was written for Armada of the Damned, while the musical themes from the films were "treated tastefully and only used on occasion." After the game's cancellation, the score was used in Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game, which was released in 2011.
## Cancellation
During Armada of the Damned's development, Propaganda Games also worked on Tron: Evolution, which was released in December 2010. In October 2010, Disney Interactive Studios announced that Armada of the Damned's development team would be laid off as part of a restructuring program. However, Propaganda would finish development of Tron: Evolution and its post-launch downloadable content.
The restructuring reduced the studio's staff by more than 100 people and led to the cancellation of Armada of the Damned. The remaining development team worked to finish Tron: Evolution, whose team was also affected by the lay offs. However, after the game failed to attain critical or commercial success, Disney cancelled its planned downloadable content and closed Propaganda Games.
## Reception
After its announcement at 2009's Electronic Entertainment Expo, Armada of the Damned was met with positive reactions from most video game journalists. Daemon Hatfield from IGN named it "a promising action RPG," elaborating that "even though Armada of the Damned uses the Pirates of the Caribbean license ... [it] is its own game, an adventure that lets players create their own pirate and wander the seas of the Caribbean seeking fame and fortune." Chris Antista from GamesRadar praised its gameplay, comparing it with Assassin’s Creed. He stated that "the game has spectacularly preserved the spirit of the films, and they’ve done it without parasitically clinging to moments you’ve already seen on the big screen."
An editor from the Official Xbox Magazine speculated that since the first Pirates of the Caribbean film was "followed by a progressive descent into mediocrity and Krakens with twirly tentacles in the sequels, any game that's set before the first movie is likely to be amazing." Matt Miller from Game Informer was impressed with the game, praising its Mass Effect-like speech and combat systems. He commented that "we didn't go into our meeting for Pirates with great expectations, but came out pleasantly amazed at the potential of the game." Joystiq's Mike Schramm compared the game to Fable, noting that "what is there looks good – the combat was solid, if a little shallow, and the graphics and polish are well on their way."
Journalists expressed disappointment when Disney reduced the staff at Propaganda Games and cancelled development of the game several months before its planned release date. IGN's Ryan Clements stated that "it's a shame that [Armada of the Damned's] potential won't be realized at this point in time." Justin Towell, writing for GamesRadar, was frustrated by Disney's decision: "It makes no sense to completely abandon work on a game that's clearly not that far off completion." Game Informer's Jeff Marchiafava also expressed sadness about the cancellation, saying "What kind of noise does a depressed pirate make? Because we would totally be making that noise right now."
|
31,453,852 |
Science Fiction Adventures (1956 magazine)
| 1,160,184,578 |
American digest-size science fiction magazine (1956–58)
|
[
"Defunct science fiction magazines published in the United States",
"Magazines disestablished in 1958",
"Magazines established in 1956",
"Science fiction digests",
"Science fiction magazines established in the 1950s"
] |
Science Fiction Adventures was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1956 to 1958 by Irwin Stein's Royal Publications as a companion to Infinity Science Fiction, which had been launched in 1955. Larry Shaw was the editor for all 12 issues. Science Fiction Adventures focused on longer fiction than appeared in Infinity; these were often labeled as novels, though they were rarely longer than 20,000 words. Shaw declared in his first editorial that he wanted to bring back a "sense of wonder", and he printed straightforward action-adventure stories. Two other magazines of the period, Imagination and Imaginative Tales, had similar editorial approaches, but science fiction historian Mike Ashley considers that Science Fiction Adventures contained the best fiction of the three. Robert Silverberg was a prolific contributor, under his own name and under the pseudonym "Calvin M. Knox", and he also collaborated with Randall Garrett on two stories in the first issue, under two different pseudonyms. Other well-known writers occasionally appeared, including Harlan Ellison, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Algis Budrys, and Harry Harrison. Ed Emshwiller contributed cover art for nine of the twelve issues, and one of the other three was among John Schoenherr's earliest sales.
The magazine was canceled because of disappointing sales; the final issue was dated June 1958, and Infinity only lasted a few months longer. A British reprint edition commenced in early 1958, edited by John Carnell; after the American original ceased publication, Carnell kept the magazine going for 32 issues by using reprints from other sources and by printing original material.
## Publication history
In 1955, Irwin Stein, the owner of Royal Publications, launched two magazines: Infinity Science Fiction and Suspect Detective Stories. Both were edited by Larry Shaw, and the first issue of each was dated November 1955. Shaw was knowledgeable about science fiction (sf), and put more of his efforts into Infinity, which established itself sufficiently for Stein to continue publication for several years. Suspect, which published action-adventure crime fiction, was less successful. Sf historian Mike Ashley describes it as having "no personality or individuality", and crime fiction historian Michael Cook finds it "adequate but not outstanding ... these were not poor stories. Just more of the same". Suspect's schedule was intended to be bimonthly, but this began to slip with the third issue, and after five issues Stein decided to scrap Suspect and start another science fiction title instead. To avoid applying for another second-class mailing permit, which would delay the launch of the new magazine, he simply retitled Suspect to Science Fiction Adventures and continued the volume numbering scheme, so that the first issue was volume 1, number 6. This led some readers to believe that the magazine was a revival of the Science Fiction Adventures edited by Lester del Rey and Harry Harrison for nine issues between 1952 and 1954, but there was no connection. The US Post Office decided that this was a new magazine, and not just a title change, and forced Stein to obtain a new mailing permit for Science Fiction Adventures, so Stein abandoned the pretence that it was the same magazine as Suspect Detective Stories, and the second issue became volume 1, number 2.
SF Adventures and Infinity both began on a bimonthly schedule, which meant that they stayed on newsstands for two months at a time, helping sales. Stein was unwilling to give up this benefit completely so, in 1957, when he decided to increase the magazines' frequency, he put them both on a six-week schedule, but kept the cover date showing a single month. This led to some reader complaints: one wrote in to Infinity to say "My confusion is hopeless! Go monthly!" In 1958 Stein returned both magazines to a bimonthly schedule.
At the World Science Fiction Convention in 1956, when Stein announced the launch of SF Adventures, John Carnell, the British editor of New Worlds, approached Stein to ask if he could set up a British reprint edition of Stein's magazine. Stein agreed, but it took a year to make the arrangements, so the first issue of the British Science Fiction Adventures appeared in early 1958. Towards the end of the US Science Fiction Adventure's run, Stein took two of the long stories that had been bought for SF Adventures and published them in Infinity instead, hoping to boost its sales, but Stein gave up on both magazines by the end of 1958. He had decided instead to launch two magazines, Monster Parade and Monsters and Things, to take advantage of the new interest in horror and science fiction movies. Carnell continued publication of the British version, using reprints from other titles as well as new stories, and eventually produced 32 issues.
## Contents
In Shaw's editorial in the first issue, he lamented that science fiction was losing a sense of wonder, and "[was not] as much fun to read as it used to be". He claimed that by focusing on adventure fiction "carried by a good story", Science Fiction Adventures would "be an antidote for that situation". Ashley considers that Shaw intended to attract younger readers than Infinity was aimed at. Shaw's policy of printing longer stories was highlighted on the first issue's cover by a banner proclaiming "3 Complete New Action Novels", though this was misleading as the stories rarely exceeded 20,000 words. The first issue's lead story, "Starcombers", by Edmond Hamilton, was only 15,000 words, and the other two stories, both pseudonymous collaborations by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett, were shorter still. Ashley describes Shaw's editorial policy as "no different to that of Imagination or Imaginative Tales", two sf magazines of the day that focused on action stories, but adds that "SF Adventures contained stronger material". Ashley considers Silverberg's contributions to be among the best work of his early career; it included the "Chalice of Death" series, three stories written as by Calvin M. Knox that appeared in book form as Lest We Forget Thee, Earth in 1958. Silverberg was by far the most prolific contributor, providing over a quarter of the magazine's contents, often in collaboration with Garrett. Six of Silverberg's early novels first saw print in SF Adventures. Harlan Ellison appeared regularly, and Shaw also obtained stories from Algis Budrys, Cyril Kornbluth, Harry Harrison, and John Brunner. Most of the cover art was supplied by Ed Emshwiller; of the three covers he did not paint, one was an early effort by John Schoenherr.
## Bibliographical details
The editor for all twelve issues was Larry Shaw, and the publisher was Royal Publications of New York. There were two volumes, each of six numbers; the first issue, dated December 1956, was numbered volume 1 number 6 because of Stein's attempt to make the magazine a continuation of Suspect Detective Stories, but thereafter the numbering was completely regular. The last issue was dated June 1958. Each issue was 128 pages and was priced at 35 cents.
|
63,276,352 |
The Longing
| 1,171,486,042 |
2020 video game
|
[
"2020 video games",
"Application Systems Heidelberg games",
"Art games",
"Incremental games",
"Indie games",
"Linux games",
"MacOS games",
"Nintendo Switch games",
"Point-and-click adventure games",
"Postmodern works",
"Single-player video games",
"Video games developed in Germany",
"Walking simulators",
"Windows games"
] |
The Longing is a 2020 point-and-click adventure game created by independent developer Studio Seufz. Set in an underground kingdom, the player controls the Shade, a creature tasked with watching over a sleeping king for 400 days. The Shade performs recreational activities, including reading and exploring, as it waits out the 400 days in real time. The in-game timer continues regardless of the player's actions but moves faster if the Shade performs certain actions inside its home, such as decorating the walls with drawings.
Developer Anselm Pyta conceived of The Longing after hearing the Kyffhäuser legend while visiting the Barbarossa Cave. Pyta sought to explore emotional themes in a narrative-driven story and used time as a game mechanism. The developer was inspired by dungeon synth music, which helped him define the subterranean atmosphere and theme of loneliness. Pyta acted as the primary developer for most of the game's six-year production, having to rely upon personal intuition to design the pacing due to playtesting difficulties.
The Longing was released for Windows, macOS, and Linux on March 5, 2020, and for Nintendo Switch on April 14, 2021. It gained praise for its soundtrack, visuals, and experimental nature, but the slow-paced gameplay divided critics. The game was released during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many commentators compared it to life under quarantine. The Longing was a finalist for the Nuovo Award at the 2020 Independent Games Festival and won the "Best Debut" award at the 2020 Deutscher Computerspielpreis.
## Gameplay
The Longing is a point-and-click adventure game that takes place in an underground kingdom. The player controls the Shade, a lonely creature serving an elderly king. After the king falls asleep to regain his diminished powers, the Shade is tasked with awakening its master after 400 days in real time. The Shade can explore caves, gather resources to furnish its home, or perform other activities such as reading classical literature and drawing.
Interaction with the world is slow-paced, with the Shade's walking speed being particularly slow. Many aspects of gameplay depend upon the passage of time, including puzzles that require the player to wait for a certain period to progress. Performing actions inside the Shade's home causes time to pass at an increased rate. For example, reading books and decorating the walls with drawings results in the in-game timer advancing more rapidly.
Other mechanics are reminiscent of idle games, which share a common theme of progressing despite little or no interaction, including when the game is closed. The player can cause the Shade to perform several tasks without outside input, such as reading books. Another mechanism called the "bookmark system" can be accessed through a menu, and the player can use it to instruct the Shade to automatically walk to a previously saved location, return to its home, or randomly wander around. The player is provided a to-do list of things to improve the Shade's life, but no interaction is required to advance the timer, and it continues even if the game is not open. Resultingly, it is possible to finish The Longing by simply starting the game, closing it, and returning after the timer has elapsed. To prevent cheating, players are sent to a dungeon if they attempt to circumvent the time limit by changing their computer's system clock. The Longing features several endings, and not all require the player to wait out the 400 days.
## Plot
The Longing begins with an old king informing the Shade that he will sleep for 400 days to recover his powers. After that time has passed, the Shade may awaken its master, and will be rewarded with "a world without longing". The king permits the Shade to wander inside his underground kingdom but warns it against leaving. While waiting to awaken the king, the Shade contemplates its own loneliness and muses over the nature of the king's reward. It considers leaving the kingdom for the outside world and recalls that an exit from the caves exists far above where the king sleeps.
If the Shade waits all 400 days and awakens its master, the stirring of the king causes a cave-in. Once the event subsides, the king explains that he has given the Shade exactly what he promised and created a world without longing "by destroying everything inside of it". The world ceases to exist, and the king and Shade rule over the endless void of the universe for eternity. Alternatively, if the Shade explores enough of the caves close to the surface world, it discovers a dark cavern at the edge of a bottomless pit. The Shade can either commit suicide by throwing itself into the pit, or continue onward to face the Darkness, a mysterious creature that resembles the Shade in appearance. Depending on how the player previously interacted with the Shade, it will either hide itself from the Darkness by closing its eyes, or be caught by the creature and sent back to its home.
If the Shade hides from the Darkness and continues walking, it arrives at a cave just below the surface. There, the Shade is given the option of abandoning the kingdom by leaving through a well. If the Shade decides to leave, it is taken out of the well by either a young child, who drops the Shade back down the well to its death, or an elderly man. If the Shade is taken out by the man, the creature follows him to his home and is served dinner by his family. A post-credits scene shows that the Shade's departure has caused the king to die.
## Development and release
Development of The Longing began in 2014 and lasted six years. Developer Anselm Pyta had a background creating flash animations that were released on Newgrounds, until he co-founded Studio Seufz in 2017. The concept for The Longing came from Pyta's experience hiking in the Barbarossa Cave. According to the Kyffhäuser legend, the cave was home to an old king who slept inside for hundreds of years; a related poem mentioned a dwarf checking on the king once per century to see if he would awaken. Perplexed about how the dwarf lived its life with so much waiting, the character stuck with Pyta. He created most of the game alone, including its art, sound design, and mechanics, but received some help with the coding. He used Photoshop to draw the backgrounds, and Adobe Flash to animate the characters; both elements were coded and merged in Unity.
The Longing was influenced by idle games such as Clicker Heroes. Although he was impressed with their ability to progress when not in use, Pyta disliked their lack of endings. He sought to create a story-focused idle game containing elements of adventure games with emotional stakes. Pyta was especially interested in exploring time-based and waiting mechanics, believing that video games are the only medium that could uniquely use extended time to tell a story. Though waiting is often seen as a negative by players, he believed that it could cultivate user investment if combined with a strong story.
Pyta defined The Longing's theme of loneliness while he was studying, and the lonely and subterranean atmosphere was inspired by dungeon synth music. He imagined three possible routes that the player could take: waiting idly for the timer to advance, trying to make the Shade's life comfortable during the 400 days, or abandoning the king and leaving the caves. Waiting offered a stress-free way of playing the game; leaving forced the player to solve puzzles and navigate increasingly dangerous caves. He described the greatest development challenge as coming up with novel ways to use the waiting mechanic without too much repetition.
The Shade was purposefully designed with a cryptic appearance and motivation, so the audience could project their own feelings onto the character. Due to the game's long duration, Pyta had difficulty with playtesting, and had to use personal intuition to pace The Longing and ensure that players would not give up. He realized that empathy between the player and the protagonist would be essential to retaining user interest. To show players that progress was being made, he implemented behaviors for the Shade that changed as time passed, such as self-talking and sleeping. Rocks falling in the cave were added to record the passing of time, in lieu of a day-night cycle.
Prior to launch, the game was featured at PAX West in 2019. The Longing was published by Application Systems Heidelberg and released on March 5, 2020, to Steam for Windows, macOS, and Linux, followed by a version for Nintendo Switch on April 14, 2021. The launch amid the COVID-19 pandemic caused audience reactions that surprised Pyta, and he thought that the pandemic allowed the player to better connect with the Shade.
## Reception
Reception of the game was largely positive. On the review aggregate website Metacritic, the PC and Switch versions received generally favorable reviews. Some critics praised The Longing's experimental premise. Adventure Gamers recommended it to players who liked unusual gameplay, or enjoyed video games as an art form. PC Gamer in Swedish called it a "fascinating experiment" with plenty of atmosphere. The Washington Post said that it demonstrated the potential of what video games could do.
The slow-paced gameplay divided reviewers. The Washington Post praised the slowness for allowing the player's mind to wander, comparing it to the works of filmmaker Béla Tarr. Similarly, Hardcore Gamer said that the appeal of the Shade helped pass the time, and eased the player into the pacing naturally. On the other hand, many critics thought that players would become impatient while playing, and the sedate pacing would not be for everyone. Nintendo Life shared this opinion, and although the reviewer liked its reflection on loneliness, he criticized the wait times as tedious. Other critics enjoyed caring for the Shade, and positively compared the protagonist to the Tamagotchi virtual pet.
The Longing's artistic direction was subject to significant commentary. Journalists variously described the game's atmosphere as "gloomy", "lonely" and "eerie". The visuals were highlighted as a strength. Nintendo World Report felt that the caves were well-drawn and distinct. 4Players and Der Spiegel compared the art to that of German cartoonist Walter Moers. In a more critical review, Nintendo Life commended the art and sounds for their boldness, but found the atmosphere to be dull and uninteresting. The soundtrack also received praise from critics. Adventure Gamers appreciated the music for representing a medley of emotions, feeling that the songs expressed the Shade's small size in such a large subterranean kingdom. The Games Machine similarly felt that the sound effectively blended the movement of the Shade with the overall atmosphere.
Due to the release during the COVID-19 pandemic, commentators frequently compared the game experience to life under quarantine. GamesRadar+ likened The Longing to experiencing a COVID-19 lockdown, saying it "best sums up life in the 2020 pandemic". Adventure Gamers suggested that the game's release during the lockdown made the theme of loneliness more relevant, thus enhancing the game's appeal. Wired wrote that the Shade felt alive in a magical way, and that The Longing best captured "2020's sad and surreal lockdown energy". The reviewer also felt that the game acted as a refuge from the attention economy that commercial games orient themselves around.
The Longing won the "Best Debut" award at the 2020 Deutscher Computerspielpreis and was a finalist for the Nuovo Award at the 2020 Independent Games Festival.
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28,617 |
Statue of Liberty
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Colossal sculpture in New York Harbor
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The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the United States. The copper statue, a gift from the people of France, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886.
The statue is a figure of Libertas, the Roman Goddess of Liberty. She holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776 in Roman numerals), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. A broken chain and shackle lie at her feet as she walks forward, commemorating the national abolition of slavery following the American Civil War. After its dedication, the statue became an icon of freedom and of the United States, seen as a symbol of welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.
The idea for the statue was born in 1865, when the French historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye proposed a monument to commemorate the upcoming centennial of U.S. independence (1876), the perseverance of American democracy and the liberation of the nation's slaves. The Franco-Prussian War delayed progress until 1875, when Laboulaye proposed that the people of France finance the statue and the United States provide the site and build the pedestal. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions.
The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Madison Square Park in Manhattan from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened by lack of funds. Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar (). The statue was built in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island. The statue's completion was marked by New York's first ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland.
The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933, it has been maintained by the National Park Service as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, and is a major tourist attraction. Limited numbers of visitors can access the rim of the pedestal and the interior of the statue's crown from within; public access to the torch has been barred since 1916.
## Design and construction process
### Origin
According to the National Park Service, the idea of a monument presented by the French people to the United States was first proposed by Édouard René de Laboulaye, president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time. The project is traced to a mid-1865 conversation between Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist, and Frédéric Bartholdi, a sculptor. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, is supposed to have said: "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations." The National Park Service, in a 2000 report, however, deemed this a legend traced to an 1885 fundraising pamphlet, and that the statue was most likely conceived in 1870. In another essay on their website, the Park Service suggested that Laboulaye was minded to honor the Union victory and its consequences, "With the abolition of slavery and the Union's victory in the Civil War in 1865, Laboulaye's wishes of freedom and democracy were turning into a reality in the United States. In order to honor these achievements, Laboulaye proposed that a gift be built for the United States on behalf of France. Laboulaye hoped that by calling attention to the recent achievements of the United States, the French people would be inspired to call for their own democracy in the face of a repressive monarchy."
According to sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who later recounted the story, Laboulaye's alleged comment was not intended as a proposal, but it inspired Bartholdi. Given the repressive nature of the regime of Napoleon III, Bartholdi took no immediate action on the idea except to discuss it with Laboulaye. Bartholdi was in any event busy with other possible projects; in the late 1860s, he approached Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, with a plan to build Progress or Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal in Port Said. Sketches and models were made of the proposed work, though it was never erected. There was a classical precedent for the Suez proposal, the Colossus of Rhodes: an ancient bronze statue of the Greek god of the sun, Helios. This statue is believed to have been over 100 feet (30 m) high, and it similarly stood at a harbor entrance and carried a light to guide ships. Both the khedive and Lesseps declined the proposed statue from Bartholdi, citing the expensive cost. The Port Said Lighthouse was built instead, by François Coignet in 1869.
Any large project was further delayed by the Franco-Prussian War, in which Bartholdi served as a major of militia. In the war, Napoleon III was captured and deposed. Bartholdi's home province of Alsace was lost to the Prussians, and a more liberal republic was installed in France. As Bartholdi had been planning a trip to the United States, he and Laboulaye decided the time was right to discuss the idea with influential Americans. In June 1871, Bartholdi crossed the Atlantic, with letters of introduction signed by Laboulaye.
Arriving at New York Harbor, Bartholdi focused on Bedloe's Island (now named Liberty Island) as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York had to sail past it. He was delighted to learn that the island was owned by the United States government—it had been ceded by the New York State Legislature in 1800 for harbor defense. It was thus, as he put it in a letter to Laboulaye: "land common to all the states." As well as meeting many influential New Yorkers, Bartholdi visited President Ulysses S. Grant, who assured him that it would not be difficult to obtain the site for the statue. Bartholdi crossed the United States twice by rail, and met many Americans who he thought would be sympathetic to the project. But he remained concerned that popular opinion on both sides of the Atlantic was insufficiently supportive of the proposal, and he and Laboulaye decided to wait before mounting a public campaign.
Bartholdi had made a first model of his concept in 1870. The son of a friend of Bartholdi's, artist John LaFarge, later maintained that Bartholdi made the first sketches for the statue during his visit to La Farge's Rhode Island studio. Bartholdi continued to develop the concept following his return to France. He also worked on a number of sculptures designed to bolster French patriotism after the defeat by the Prussians. One of these was the Lion of Belfort, a monumental sculpture carved in sandstone below the fortress of Belfort, which during the war had resisted a Prussian siege for over three months. The defiant lion, 73 feet (22 m) long and half that in height, displays an emotional quality characteristic of Romanticism, which Bartholdi would later bring to the Statue of Liberty.
### Design, style, and symbolism
Bartholdi and Laboulaye considered how best to express the idea of American liberty. In early American history, two female figures were frequently used as cultural symbols of the nation. One of these symbols, the personified Columbia, was seen as an embodiment of the United States in the manner that Britannia was identified with the United Kingdom, and Marianne came to represent France. Columbia had supplanted the traditional European Personification of the Americas as an "Indian princess", which had come to be regarded as uncivilized and derogatory toward Americans. The other significant female icon in American culture was a representation of Liberty, derived from Libertas, the goddess of freedom widely worshipped in ancient Rome, especially among emancipated slaves. A Liberty figure adorned most American coins of the time, and representations of Liberty appeared in popular and civic art, including Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom (1863) atop the dome of the United States Capitol Building.
The statue's design evokes iconography evident in ancient history including the Egyptian goddess Isis, the ancient Greek deity of the same name, the Roman Columbia and the Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary.
Artists of the 18th and 19th centuries striving to evoke republican ideals commonly used representations of Libertas as an allegorical symbol. A figure of Liberty was also depicted on the Great Seal of France. However, Bartholdi and Laboulaye avoided an image of revolutionary liberty such as that depicted in Eugène Delacroix's famed Liberty Leading the People (1830). In this painting, which commemorates France's July Revolution, a half-clothed Liberty leads an armed mob over the bodies of the fallen. Laboulaye had no sympathy for revolution, and so Bartholdi's figure would be fully dressed in flowing robes. Instead of the impression of violence in the Delacroix work, Bartholdi wished to give the statue a peaceful appearance and chose a torch, representing progress, for the figure to hold. Its second toe on both feet is longer than its big toe, a condition known as Morton's toe or 'Greek foot'. This was an aesthetic staple of ancient Greek art and reflects the classical influences on the statue.
Crawford's statue was designed in the early 1850s. It was originally to be crowned with a pileus, the cap given to emancipated slaves in ancient Rome. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, a Southerner who would later serve as President of the Confederate States of America, was concerned that the pileus would be taken as an abolitionist symbol. He ordered that it be changed to a helmet. Delacroix's figure wears a pileus, and Bartholdi at first considered placing one on his figure as well. Instead, he used a radiate diadem, or crown, to top its head. In so doing, he avoided a reference to Marianne, who invariably wears a pileus. The seven rays form a halo or aureole. They evoke the sun, the seven seas, and the seven continents, and represent another means, besides the torch, whereby Liberty enlightens the world.
Bartholdi's early models were all similar in concept: a female figure in neoclassical style representing liberty, wearing a stola and pella (gown and cloak, common in depictions of Roman goddesses) and holding a torch aloft. According to popular accounts, the face was modeled after that of Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi, the sculptor's mother, but Regis Huber, the curator of the Bartholdi Museum is on record as saying that this, as well as other similar speculations, have no basis in fact. He designed the figure with a strong, uncomplicated silhouette, which would be set off well by its dramatic harbor placement and allow passengers on vessels entering New York Bay to experience a changing perspective on the statue as they proceeded toward Manhattan. He gave it bold classical contours and applied simplified modeling, reflecting the huge scale of the project and its solemn purpose. Bartholdi wrote of his technique:
> The surfaces should be broad and simple, defined by a bold and clear design, accentuated in the important places. The enlargement of the details or their multiplicity is to be feared. By exaggerating the forms, in order to render them more clearly visible, or by enriching them with details, we would destroy the proportion of the work. Finally, the model, like the design, should have a summarized character, such as one would give to a rapid sketch. Only it is necessary that this character should be the product of volition and study, and that the artist, concentrating his knowledge, should find the form and the line in its greatest simplicity.
Bartholdi made alterations in the design as the project evolved. Bartholdi considered having Liberty hold a broken chain, but decided this would be too divisive in the days after the Civil War. The erected statue does stride over a broken chain, half-hidden by her robes and difficult to see from the ground. Bartholdi was initially uncertain of what to place in Liberty's left hand; he settled on a tabula ansata, used to evoke the concept of law. Though Bartholdi greatly admired the United States Constitution, he chose to inscribe JULY IV MDCCLXXVI on the tablet, thus associating the date of the country's Declaration of Independence with the concept of liberty.
Bartholdi interested his friend and mentor, architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, in the project. As chief engineer, Viollet-le-Duc designed a brick pier within the statue, to which the skin would be anchored. After consultations with the metalwork foundry Gaget, Gauthier & Co., Viollet-le-Duc chose the metal which would be used for the skin, copper sheets, and the method used to shape it, repoussé, in which the sheets were heated and then struck with wooden hammers. An advantage of this choice was that the entire statue would be light for its volume, as the copper need be only 0.094 inches (2.4 mm) thick. Bartholdi had decided on a height of just over 151 feet (46 m) for the statue, double that of Italy's Sancarlone and the German statue of Arminius, both made with the same method.
### Announcement and early work
By 1875, France was enjoying improved political stability and a recovering postwar economy. Growing interest in the upcoming Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia led Laboulaye to decide it was time to seek public support. In September 1875, he announced the project and the formation of the Franco-American Union as its fundraising arm. With the announcement, the statue was given a name, Liberty Enlightening the World. The French would finance the statue; Americans would be expected to pay for the pedestal. The announcement provoked a generally favorable reaction in France, though many Frenchmen resented the United States for not coming to their aid during the war with Prussia. French monarchists opposed the statue, if for no other reason than it was proposed by the liberal Laboulaye, who had recently been elected a senator for life. Laboulaye arranged events designed to appeal to the rich and powerful, including a special performance at the Paris Opera on April 25, 1876, that featured a new cantata by composer Charles Gounod. The piece was titled La Liberté éclairant le monde, the French version of the statue's announced name.
Initially focused on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society. Schoolchildren and ordinary citizens gave, as did 181 French municipalities. Laboulaye's political allies supported the call, as did descendants of the French contingent in the American Revolutionary War. Less idealistically, contributions came from those who hoped for American support in the French attempt to build the Panama Canal. The copper may have come from multiple sources and some of it is said to have come from a mine in Visnes, Norway, though this has not been conclusively determined after testing samples. According to Cara Sutherland in her book on the statue for the Museum of the City of New York, 200,000 pounds (91,000 kg) was needed to build the statue, and the French copper industrialist Eugène Secrétan donated 128,000 pounds (58,000 kg) of copper.
Although plans for the statue had not been finalized, Bartholdi moved forward with fabrication of the right arm, bearing the torch, and the head. Work began at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop. In May 1876, Bartholdi traveled to the United States as a member of a French delegation to the Centennial Exhibition, and arranged for a huge painting of the statue to be shown in New York as part of the Centennial festivities. The arm did not arrive in Philadelphia until August; because of its late arrival, it was not listed in the exhibition catalogue, and while some reports correctly identified the work, others called it the "Colossal Arm" or "Bartholdi Electric Light". The exhibition grounds contained a number of monumental artworks to compete for fairgoers' interest, including an outsized fountain designed by Bartholdi. Nevertheless, the arm proved popular in the exhibition's waning days, and visitors would climb up to the balcony of the torch to view the fairgrounds. After the exhibition closed, the arm was transported to New York, where it remained on display in Madison Square Park for several years before it was returned to France to join the rest of the statue.
During his second trip to the United States, Bartholdi addressed a number of groups about the project, and urged the formation of American committees of the Franco-American Union. Committees to raise money to pay for the foundation and pedestal were formed in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The New York group eventually took on most of the responsibility for American fundraising and is often referred to as the "American Committee". One of its members was 19-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, the future governor of New York and president of the United States. On March 3, 1877, on his final full day in office, President Grant signed a joint resolution that authorized the President to accept the statue when it was presented by France and to select a site for it. President Rutherford B. Hayes, who took office the following day, selected the Bedloe's Island site that Bartholdi had proposed.
### Construction in France
On his return to Paris in 1877, Bartholdi concentrated on completing the head, which was exhibited at the 1878 Paris World's Fair. Fundraising continued, with models of the statue put on sale. Tickets to view the construction activity at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop were also offered. The French government authorized a lottery; among the prizes were valuable silver plate and a terracotta model of the statue. By the end of 1879, about 250,000 francs had been raised.
The head and arm had been built with assistance from Viollet-le-Duc, who fell ill in 1879. He soon died, leaving no indication of how he intended to transition from the copper skin to his proposed masonry pier. The following year, Bartholdi was able to obtain the services of the innovative designer and builder Gustave Eiffel. Eiffel and his structural engineer, Maurice Koechlin, decided to abandon the pier and instead build an iron truss tower. Eiffel opted not to use a completely rigid structure, which would force stresses to accumulate in the skin and lead eventually to cracking. A secondary skeleton was attached to the center pylon, then, to enable the statue to move slightly in the winds of New York Harbor and as the metal expanded on hot summer days, he loosely connected the support structure to the skin using flat iron bars which culminated in a mesh of metal straps, known as "saddles", that were riveted to the skin, providing firm support. In a labor-intensive process, each saddle had to be crafted individually. To prevent galvanic corrosion between the copper skin and the iron support structure, Eiffel insulated the skin with asbestos impregnated with shellac.
Eiffel's design made the statue one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction, in which the exterior of the structure is not load bearing, but is instead supported by an interior framework. He included two interior spiral staircases, to make it easier for visitors to reach the observation point in the crown. Access to an observation platform surrounding the torch was also provided, but the narrowness of the arm allowed for only a single ladder, 40 feet (12 m) long. As the pylon tower arose, Eiffel and Bartholdi coordinated their work carefully so that completed segments of skin would fit exactly on the support structure. The components of the pylon tower were built in the Eiffel factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret.
The change in structural material from masonry to iron allowed Bartholdi to change his plans for the statue's assembly. He had originally expected to assemble the skin on-site as the masonry pier was built; instead, he decided to build the statue in France and have it disassembled and transported to the United States for reassembly in place on Bedloe's Island.
In a symbolic act, the first rivet placed into the skin, fixing a copper plate onto the statue's big toe, was driven by United States Ambassador to France Levi P. Morton. The skin was not, however, crafted in exact sequence from low to high; work proceeded on a number of segments simultaneously in a manner often confusing to visitors. Some work was performed by contractors—one of the fingers was made to Bartholdi's exacting specifications by a coppersmith in the southern French town of Montauban. By 1882, the statue was complete up to the waist, an event Barthodi celebrated by inviting reporters to lunch on a platform built within the statue. Laboulaye died in 1883. He was succeeded as chairman of the French committee by Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal. The completed statue was formally presented to Ambassador Morton at a ceremony in Paris on July 4, 1884, and de Lesseps announced that the French government had agreed to pay for its transport to New York. The statue remained intact in Paris pending sufficient progress on the pedestal; by January 1885, this had occurred and the statue was disassembled and crated for its ocean voyage.
The committees in the United States faced great difficulties in obtaining funds for the construction of the pedestal. The Panic of 1873 had led to an economic depression that persisted through much of the decade. The Liberty statue project was not the only such undertaking that had difficulty raising money: construction of the obelisk later known as the Washington Monument sometimes stalled for years; it would ultimately take over three-and-a-half decades to complete. There was criticism both of Bartholdi's statue and of the fact that the gift required Americans to foot the bill for the pedestal. In the years following the Civil War, most Americans preferred realistic artworks depicting heroes and events from the nation's history, rather than allegorical works like the Liberty statue. There was also a feeling that Americans should design American public works—the selection of Italian-born Constantino Brumidi to decorate the Capitol had provoked intense criticism, even though he was a naturalized U.S. citizen. Harper's Weekly declared its wish that "M. Bartholdi and our French cousins had 'gone the whole figure' while they were about it, and given us statue and pedestal at once." The New York Times stated that "no true patriot can countenance any such expenditures for bronze females in the present state of our finances." Faced with these criticisms, the American committees took little action for several years.
#### Design
The foundation of Bartholdi's statue was to be laid inside Fort Wood, a disused army base on Bedloe's Island constructed between 1807 and 1811. Since 1823, it had rarely been used, though during the Civil War, it had served as a recruiting station. The fortifications of the structure were in the shape of an eleven-point star. The statue's foundation and pedestal were aligned so that it would face southeast, greeting ships entering the harbor from the Atlantic Ocean. In 1881, the New York committee commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design the pedestal. Within months, Hunt submitted a detailed plan, indicating that he expected construction to take about nine months. He proposed a pedestal 114 feet (35 m) in height; faced with money problems, the committee reduced that to 89 feet (27 m).
Hunt's pedestal design contains elements of classical architecture, including Doric portals, as well as some elements influenced by Aztec architecture. The large mass is fragmented with architectural detail, in order to focus attention on the statue. In form, it is a truncated pyramid, 62 feet (19 m) square at the base and 39.4 feet (12.0 m) at the top. The four sides are identical in appearance. Above the door on each side, there are ten disks upon which Bartholdi proposed to place the coats of arms of the states (between 1876 and 1889, there were 38 of them), although this was not done. Above that, a balcony was placed on each side, framed by pillars. Bartholdi placed an observation platform near the top of the pedestal, above which the statue itself rises. According to author Louis Auchincloss, the pedestal "craggily evokes the power of an ancient Europe over which rises the dominating figure of the Statue of Liberty". The committee hired former army General Charles Pomeroy Stone to oversee the construction work. Construction on the 15-foot-deep (4.6 m) foundation began in 1883, and the pedestal's cornerstone was laid in 1884. In Hunt's original conception, the pedestal was to have been made of solid granite. Financial concerns again forced him to revise his plans; the final design called for poured concrete walls, up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick, faced with granite blocks. This Stony Creek granite came from the Beattie Quarry in Branford, Connecticut. The concrete mass was the largest poured to that time.
Norwegian immigrant civil engineer Joachim Goschen Giæver designed the structural framework for the Statue of Liberty. His work involved design computations, detailed fabrication and construction drawings, and oversight of construction. In completing his engineering for the statue's frame, Giæver worked from drawings and sketches produced by Gustave Eiffel.
#### Fundraising
Fundraising in the US for the pedestal had begun in 1882. The committee organized a large number of money-raising events. As part of one such effort, an auction of art and manuscripts, poet Emma Lazarus was asked to donate an original work. She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue. At the time, she was also involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe. These refugees were forced to live in conditions that the wealthy Lazarus had never experienced. She saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue. The resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", including the lines "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", is uniquely identified with the Statue of Liberty in American culture and is inscribed on a plaque in its museum.
Even with these efforts, fundraising lagged. Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide \$50,000 for the statue project in 1884. An attempt the next year to have Congress provide \$100,000, sufficient to complete the project, also failed. The New York committee, with only \$3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal. With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it.
Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, announced a drive to raise \$100,000 (). Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors. "A young girl alone in the world" donated "60 cents, the result of self denial." One donor gave "five cents as a poor office boy's mite toward the Pedestal Fund." A group of children sent a dollar as "the money we saved to go to the circus with." Another dollar was given by a "lonely and very aged woman." Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York's rival city of Brooklyn—the cities would not merge until 1898—donated \$15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons. A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of \$1.35. As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal. France raised about \$250,000 to build the statue, while the United States had to raise up to \$300,000 to build the pedestal.
#### Construction
On June 17, 1885, the French steamer Isère [fr] arrived in New York with the crates holding the disassembled statue on board. New Yorkers displayed their newfound enthusiasm for the statue. Two hundred thousand people lined the docks and hundreds of boats put to sea to welcome the ship. After five months of daily calls to donate to the statue fund, on August 11, 1885, the World announced that \$102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and that 80 percent of the total had been received in sums of less than one dollar ().
Even with the success of the fund drive, the pedestal was not completed until April 1886. Immediately thereafter, reassembly of the statue began. Eiffel's iron framework was anchored to steel I-beams within the concrete pedestal and assembled. Once this was done, the sections of skin were carefully attached. Due to the width of the pedestal, it was not possible to erect scaffolding, and workers dangled from ropes while installing the skin sections. Bartholdi had planned to put floodlights on the torch's balcony to illuminate it; a week before the dedication, the Army Corps of Engineers vetoed the proposal, fearing that ships' pilots passing the statue would be blinded. Instead, Bartholdi cut portholes in the torch—which was covered with gold leaf—and placed the lights inside them. A power plant was installed on the island to light the torch and for other electrical needs. After the skin was completed, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, co-designer of Manhattan's Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park, supervised a cleanup of Bedloe's Island in anticipation of the dedication. General Charles Stone claimed on the day of dedication that no man had died during the construction of the statue. This was not true, however, as Francis Longo, a thirty-nine-year-old Italian laborer, had been killed when an old wall fell on him.
### Dedication
A ceremony of dedication was held on the afternoon of October 28, 1886. President Grover Cleveland, the former New York governor, presided over the event. On the morning of the dedication, a parade was held in New York City; estimates of the number of people who watched it ranged from several hundred thousand to a million. President Cleveland headed the procession, then stood in the reviewing stand to see bands and marchers from across America. General Stone was the grand marshal of the parade. The route began at Madison Square, once the venue for the arm, and proceeded to the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan by way of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, with a slight detour so the parade could pass in front of the World building on Park Row. As the parade passed the New York Stock Exchange, traders threw ticker tape from the windows, beginning the New York tradition of the ticker-tape parade.
A nautical parade began at 12:45 p.m., and President Cleveland embarked on a yacht that took him across the harbor to Bedloe's Island for the dedication. De Lesseps made the first speech, on behalf of the French committee, followed by the chairman of the New York committee, Senator William M. Evarts. A French flag draped across the statue's face was to be lowered to unveil the statue at the close of Evarts's speech, but Bartholdi mistook a pause as the conclusion and let the flag fall prematurely. The ensuing cheers put an end to Evarts's address. President Cleveland spoke next, stating that the statue's "stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression until Liberty enlightens the world". Bartholdi, observed near the dais, was called upon to speak, but he declined. Orator Chauncey M. Depew concluded the speechmaking with a lengthy address.
No members of the general public were permitted on the island during the ceremonies, which were reserved entirely for dignitaries. The only women granted access were Bartholdi's wife and de Lesseps's granddaughter; officials stated that they feared women might be injured in the crush of people. The restriction offended area suffragists, who chartered a boat and got as close as they could to the island. The group's leaders made speeches applauding the embodiment of Liberty as a woman and advocating women's right to vote. A scheduled fireworks display was postponed until November 1 because of poor weather.
Shortly after the dedication, The Cleveland Gazette, an African American newspaper, suggested that the statue's torch not be lit until the United States became a free nation "in reality":
> "Liberty enlightening the world," indeed! The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It can not or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders. Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the "liberty" of this country is such as to make it possible for an inoffensive and industrious colored man to earn a respectable living for himself and family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and wife outraged, and his property destroyed. The idea of the "liberty" of this country "enlightening the world," or even Patagonia, is ridiculous in the extreme.
## After dedication
### Lighthouse Board and War Department (1886–1933)
When the torch was illuminated on the evening of the statue's dedication, it produced only a faint gleam, barely visible from Manhattan. The World characterized it as "more like a glowworm than a beacon." Bartholdi suggested gilding the statue to increase its ability to reflect light, but this proved too expensive. The United States Lighthouse Board took over the Statue of Liberty in 1887 and pledged to install equipment to enhance the torch's effect; in spite of its efforts, the statue remained virtually invisible at night. When Bartholdi returned to the United States in 1893, he made additional suggestions, all of which proved ineffective. He did successfully lobby for improved lighting within the statue, allowing visitors to better appreciate Eiffel's design. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt, once a member of the New York committee, ordered the statue's transfer to the War Department, as it had proved useless as a lighthouse. A unit of the Army Signal Corps was stationed on Bedloe's Island until 1923, after which military police remained there while the island was under military jurisdiction.
Wars and other upheavals in Europe prompted large-scale emigration to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century; many entered through New York and saw the statue not as a symbol of enlightenment, as Bartholdi had intended, but as a sign of welcome to their new home. The association with immigration only became stronger when an immigrant processing station was opened on nearby Ellis Island. This view was consistent with Lazarus's vision in her sonnet—she described the statue as "Mother of Exiles"—but her work had become obscure. In 1903, the sonnet was engraved on a plaque that was affixed to the base of the statue.
Oral histories of immigrants record their feelings of exhilaration on first viewing the Statue of Liberty. One immigrant who arrived from Greece recalled:
> I saw the Statue of Liberty. And I said to myself, "Lady, you're such a beautiful! [sic] You opened your arms and you get all the foreigners here. Give me a chance to prove that I am worth it, to do something, to be someone in America." And always that statue was on my mind.
The statue rapidly became a landmark. Originally, it was a dull copper color, but shortly after 1900 a green patina, also called verdigris, caused by the oxidation of the copper skin, began to spread. As early as 1902 it was mentioned in the press; by 1906 it had entirely covered the statue. Believing that the patina was evidence of corrosion, Congress authorized US\$62,800 (equivalent to \$2,045,000 in 2022) for various repairs, and to paint the statue both inside and out. There was considerable public protest against the proposed exterior painting. The Army Corps of Engineers studied the patina for any ill effects to the statue and concluded that it protected the skin, "softened the outlines of the Statue and made it beautiful." The statue was painted only on the inside. The Corps of Engineers also installed an elevator to take visitors from the base to the top of the pedestal.
On July 30, 1916, during World War I, German saboteurs set off a disastrous explosion on the Black Tom peninsula in Jersey City, New Jersey, in what is now part of Liberty State Park, close to Bedloe's Island. Carloads of dynamite and other explosives that were being sent to Britain and France for their war efforts were detonated. The statue sustained minor damage, mostly to the torch-bearing right arm, and was closed for ten days. The cost to repair the statue and buildings on the island was about \$100,000 (equivalent to about \$2,690,000 in 2022). The narrow ascent to the torch was closed for public-safety reasons, and it has remained closed ever since.
That same year, Ralph Pulitzer, who had succeeded his father Joseph as publisher of the World, began a drive to raise \$30,000 (equivalent to \$807,000 in 2022) for an exterior lighting system to illuminate the statue at night. He claimed over 80,000 contributors, but failed to reach the goal. The difference was quietly made up by a gift from a wealthy donor—a fact that was not revealed until 1936. An underwater power cable brought electricity from the mainland and floodlights were placed along the walls of Fort Wood. Gutzon Borglum, who later sculpted Mount Rushmore, redesigned the torch, replacing much of the original copper with stained glass. On December 2, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson pressed the telegraph key that turned on the lights, successfully illuminating the statue.
After the United States entered World War I in 1917, images of the statue were heavily used in both recruitment posters and the Liberty bond drives that urged American citizens to support the war financially. This impressed upon the public the war's stated purpose—to secure liberty—and served as a reminder that embattled France had given the United States the statue.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge used his authority under the Antiquities Act to declare the statue a national monument. A suicide occurred five years later when a man climbed out of one of the windows in the crown and jumped to his death.
### Early National Park Service years (1933–1982)
In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the statue to be transferred to the National Park Service (NPS). In 1937, the NPS gained jurisdiction over the rest of Bedloe's Island. With the Army's departure, the NPS began to transform the island into a park. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) demolished most of the old buildings, regraded and reseeded the eastern end of the island, and built granite steps for a new public entrance to the statue from its rear. The WPA also carried out restoration work within the statue, temporarily removing the rays from the statue's halo so their rusted supports could be replaced. Rusted cast-iron steps in the pedestal were replaced with new ones made of reinforced concrete; the upper parts of the stairways within the statue were replaced, as well. Copper sheathing was installed to prevent further damage from rainwater that had been seeping into the pedestal. The statue was closed to the public from May until December 1938.
During World War II, the statue remained open to visitors, although it was not illuminated at night due to wartime blackouts. It was lit briefly on December 31, 1943, and on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when its lights flashed "dot-dot-dot-dash", the Morse code for V, for victory. New, powerful lighting was installed in 1944–1945, and beginning on V-E Day, the statue was once again illuminated after sunset. The lighting was for only a few hours each evening, and it was not until 1957 that the statue was illuminated every night, all night. In 1946, the interior of the statue within reach of visitors was coated with a special plastic so that graffiti could be washed away.
In 1956, an Act of Congress officially renamed Bedloe's Island as Liberty Island, a change advocated by Bartholdi generations earlier. The act also mentioned the efforts to found an American Museum of Immigration on the island, which backers took as federal approval of the project, though the government was slow to grant funds for it. Nearby Ellis Island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument by proclamation of President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. In 1972, the immigration museum, in the statue's base, was finally opened in a ceremony led by President Richard Nixon. The museum's backers never provided it with an endowment to secure its future and it closed in 1991 after the opening of an immigration museum on Ellis Island.
In 1970, Ivy Bottini led a demonstration at the statue where she and others from the National Organization for Women's New York chapter draped an enormous banner over a railing which read "WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE!"
Beginning December 26, 1971, 15 anti-Vietnam War veterans occupied the statue, flying a US flag upside down from her crown. They left December 28 following a federal court order. The statue was also several times taken over briefly by demonstrators publicizing causes such as Puerto Rican independence, opposition to abortion, and opposition to US intervention in Grenada. Demonstrations with the permission of the Park Service included a Gay Pride Parade rally and the annual Captive Baltic Nations rally.
A powerful new lighting system was installed in advance of the American Bicentennial in 1976. The statue was the focal point for Operation Sail, a regatta of tall ships from all over the world that entered New York Harbor on July 4, 1976, and sailed around Liberty Island. The day concluded with a spectacular display of fireworks near the statue.
### Renovation and rededication (1982–2000)
The statue was examined in great detail by French and American engineers as part of the planning for its centennial in 1986. In 1982, it was announced that the statue was in need of considerable restoration. Careful study had revealed that the right arm had been improperly attached to the main structure. It was swaying more and more when strong winds blew and there was a significant risk of structural failure. In addition, the head had been installed 2 feet (0.61 m) off center, and one of the rays was wearing a hole in the right arm when the statue moved in the wind. The armature structure was badly corroded, and about two percent of the exterior plates needed to be replaced. Although problems with the armature had been recognized as early as 1936, when cast iron replacements for some of the bars had been installed, much of the corrosion had been hidden by layers of paint applied over the years.
In May 1982, President Ronald Reagan announced the formation of the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Centennial Commission, led by Chrysler Corporation chair Lee Iacocca, to raise the funds needed to complete the work. Through its fundraising arm, the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., the group raised more than \$350 million in donations for the renovations of both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The Statue of Liberty was one of the earliest beneficiaries of a cause marketing campaign. A 1983 promotion advertised that for each purchase made with an American Express card, the company would contribute one cent to the renovation of the statue. The campaign generated contributions of \$1.7 million to the restoration project.
In 1984, the statue was closed to the public for the duration of the renovation. Workers erected the world's largest free-standing scaffold, which obscured the statue from view. Liquid nitrogen was used to remove layers of paint that had been applied to the interior of the copper skin over decades, leaving two layers of coal tar, originally applied to plug leaks and prevent corrosion. Blasting with baking soda powder removed the tar without further damaging the copper. The restorers' work was hampered by the asbestos-based substance that Bartholdi had used—ineffectively, as inspections showed—to prevent galvanic corrosion. Workers within the statue had to wear protective gear, dubbed "Moon suits", with self-contained breathing circuits. Larger holes in the copper skin were repaired, and new copper was added where necessary. The replacement skin was taken from a copper rooftop at Bell Labs, which had a patina that closely resembled the statue's; in exchange, the laboratory was provided some of the old copper skin for testing. The torch, found to have been leaking water since the 1916 alterations, was replaced with an exact replica of Bartholdi's unaltered torch. Consideration was given to replacing the arm and shoulder; the National Park Service insisted that they be repaired instead. The original torch was removed and replaced in 1986 with the current one, whose flame is covered in 24-karat gold. The torch reflects the Sun's rays in daytime and is lighted by floodlights at night.
The entire puddled iron armature designed by Gustave Eiffel was replaced. Low-carbon corrosion-resistant stainless steel bars that now hold the staples next to the skin are made of Ferralium, an alloy that bends slightly and returns to its original shape as the statue moves. To prevent the ray and arm making contact, the ray was realigned by several degrees. The lighting was again replaced—night-time illumination subsequently came from metal-halide lamps that send beams of light to particular parts of the pedestal or statue, showing off various details. Access to the pedestal, which had been through a nondescript entrance built in the 1960s, was renovated to create a wide opening framed by a set of monumental bronze doors with designs symbolic of the renovation. A modern elevator was installed, allowing handicapped access to the observation area of the pedestal. An emergency elevator was installed within the statue, reaching up to the level of the shoulder.
July 3–6, 1986, was designated "Liberty Weekend", marking the centennial of the statue and its reopening. President Reagan presided over the rededication, with French President François Mitterrand in attendance. July 4 saw a reprise of Operation Sail, and the statue was reopened to the public on July 5. In Reagan's dedication speech, he stated, "We are the keepers of the flame of liberty; we hold it high for the world to see."
### Closures and reopenings (2001–present)
Immediately following the September 11 attacks, the statue and Liberty Island were closed to the public. The island reopened at the end of 2001, while the pedestal and statue remained off-limits. The pedestal reopened in August 2004, but the National Park Service announced that visitors could not safely be given access to the statue due to the difficulty of evacuation in an emergency. The Park Service adhered to that position through the remainder of the Bush administration. New York Congressman Anthony Weiner made the statue's reopening a personal crusade. On May 17, 2009, President Barack Obama's Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, announced that as a "special gift" to America, the statue would be reopened to the public as of July 4, but that only a limited number of people would be permitted to ascend to the crown each day.
The statue, including the pedestal and base, closed on October 29, 2011, for installation of new elevators and staircases and to bring other facilities, such as restrooms, up to code. The statue was reopened on October 28, 2012, but then closed again a day later in advance of Hurricane Sandy. Although the storm did not harm the statue, it destroyed some of the infrastructure on both Liberty and Ellis Islands, including the dock used by the ferries that ran to Liberty and Ellis Islands. On November 8, 2012, a Park Service spokesperson announced that both islands would remain closed for an indefinite period for repairs to be done. Since Liberty Island had no electricity, a generator was installed to power temporary floodlights to illuminate the statue at night. The superintendent of Statue of Liberty National Monument, David Luchsinger—whose home on the island was severely damaged—stated that it would be "optimistically ... months" before the island was reopened to the public. The statue and Liberty Island reopened to the public on July 4, 2013. Ellis Island remained closed for repairs for several more months but reopened in late October 2013.
The Statue of Liberty has also been closed due to government shutdowns and protests, as well as for disease pandemics. During the October 2013 United States federal government shutdown, Liberty Island and other federally funded sites were closed. In addition, Liberty Island was briefly closed on July 4, 2018, after a woman protesting against American immigration policy climbed onto the statue. However, the island remained open during the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown because the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation had donated funds. It closed beginning on March 16, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On July 20, 2020, the Statue of Liberty reopened partially under New York City's Phase IV guidelines, with Ellis Island remaining closed. The crown did not reopen until October 2022.
On October 7, 2016, construction started on the new Statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island. The new \$70 million, 26,000-square-foot (2,400 m<sup>2</sup>) museum may be visited by all who come to the island, as opposed to the museum in the pedestal, which only 20% of the island's visitors had access to. The new museum, designed by FXFOWLE Architects, is integrated with the surrounding parkland. Diane von Fürstenberg headed the fundraising for the museum, and the project received over \$40 million in fundraising by groundbreaking. The museum opened on May 16, 2019.
## Access and attributes
### Location and access
The statue is situated in Upper New York Bay on Liberty Island south of Ellis Island, which together comprise the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Both islands were ceded by New York to the federal government in 1800. As agreed in an 1834 compact between New York and New Jersey that set the state border at the bay's midpoint, the original islands remain New York territory though located on the New Jersey side of the state line. Liberty Island is one of the islands that are part of the borough of Manhattan in New York. Land created by reclamation added to the 2.3-acre (0.93 ha) original island at Ellis Island is New Jersey territory.
No charge is made for entrance to the national monument, but there is a cost for the ferry service that all visitors must use, as private boats may not dock at the island. A concession was granted in 2007 to Statue Cruises to operate the transportation and ticketing facilities, replacing Circle Line, which had operated the service since 1953. The ferries, which depart from Liberty State Park in Jersey City and the Battery in Lower Manhattan, also stop at Ellis Island when it is open to the public, making a combined trip possible. All ferry riders are subject to security screening, similar to airport procedures, prior to boarding.
Visitors intending to enter the statue's base and pedestal must obtain pedestal access for a nominal fee when purchasing their ferry ticket. Those wishing to climb the staircase within the statue to the crown must purchase a special ticket, which may be reserved up to a year in advance. A total of 240 people per day can ascend: ten per group, three groups per hour. Climbers may bring only medication and cameras—lockers are provided for other items—and must undergo a second security screening. The balcony around the torch was closed to the public following the munitions explosion on Black Tom Island in 1916. The balcony can however be seen live via webcam.
### Inscriptions, plaques, and dedications
There are several plaques and dedicatory tablets on or near the Statue of Liberty.
- A plaque on the copper just under the figure in front declares that it is a colossal statue representing Liberty, designed by Bartholdi and built by the Paris firm of Gaget, Gauthier et Cie (Cie is the French abbreviation analogous to Co.).
- A presentation tablet, also bearing Bartholdi's name, declares the statue is a gift from the people of the Republic of France that honors "the Alliance of the two Nations in achieving the Independence of the United States of America and attests their abiding friendship."
- A tablet placed by the American Committee commemorates the fundraising done to build the pedestal.
- The cornerstone bears a plaque placed by the Freemasons.
- In 1903, a bronze tablet that bears the text of Emma Lazarus's sonnet, "The New Colossus" (1883), was presented by friends of the poet. Until the 1986 renovation, it was mounted inside the pedestal; later, it resided in the Statue of Liberty Museum, in the base.
- "The New Colossus" tablet is accompanied by a tablet given by the Emma Lazarus Commemorative Committee in 1977, celebrating the poet's life.
A group of statues stands at the western end of the island, honoring those closely associated with the Statue of Liberty. Two Americans—Pulitzer and Lazarus—and three Frenchmen—Bartholdi, Eiffel, and Laboulaye—are depicted. They are the work of Maryland sculptor Phillip Ratner.
## Historical designations
President Calvin Coolidge officially designated the Statue of Liberty as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1924. The monument was expanded to also include Ellis Island in 1965. The following year, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were jointly added to the National Register of Historic Places, and the statue individually in 2017. On the sub-national level, the Statue of Liberty National Monument was added to the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1971, and was made a New York City designated landmark in 1976.
In 1984, the Statue of Liberty was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The UNESCO "Statement of Significance" describes the statue as a "masterpiece of the human spirit" that "endures as a highly potent symbol—inspiring contemplation, debate and protest—of ideals such as liberty, peace, human rights, abolition of slavery, democracy and opportunity."
## Measurements
## Depictions
Hundreds of replicas of the Statue of Liberty are displayed worldwide. A smaller version of the statue, one-fourth the height of the original, was given by the American community in Paris to that city. It now stands on the Île aux Cygnes, facing west toward her larger sister. A replica 30 feet (9.1 m) tall stood atop the Liberty Warehouse on West 64th Street in Manhattan for many years; it now resides at the Brooklyn Museum. In a patriotic tribute, the Boy Scouts of America, as part of their Strengthen the Arm of Liberty campaign in 1949–1952, donated about two hundred replicas of the statue, made of stamped copper and 100 inches (2.5 m) in height, to states and municipalities across the United States. Though not a true replica, the statue known as the Goddess of Democracy temporarily erected during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 was similarly inspired by French democratic traditions—the sculptors took care to avoid a direct imitation of the Statue of Liberty. Among other recreations of New York City structures, a replica of the statue is part of the exterior of the New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
As an American icon, the Statue of Liberty has been depicted on the country's coinage and stamps. It appeared on commemorative coins issued to mark its 1986 centennial, and on New York's 2001 entry in the state quarters series. An image of the statue was chosen for the American Eagle platinum bullion coins in 1997, and it was placed on the reverse, or tails, side of the Presidential Dollar series of circulating coins. Two images of the statue's torch appear on the current ten-dollar bill. The statue's intended photographic depiction on a 2010 forever stamp proved instead to be of the replica at the Las Vegas casino.
Depictions of the statue have been used by many regional institutions. Between 1986 and 2000, New York State issued license plates with an outline of the statue. The Women's National Basketball Association's New York Liberty use both the statue's name and its image in their logo, in which the torch's flame doubles as a basketball. The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League depicted the statue's head on their third jersey, beginning in 1997. The National Collegiate Athletic Association's 1996 Men's Basketball Final Four, played at New Jersey's Meadowlands Sports Complex, featured the statue in its logo. The Libertarian Party of the United States uses the statue in its emblem.
The statue is a frequent subject in popular culture. In music, it has been evoked to indicate support for American policies, as in Toby Keith's 2002 song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)", and in opposition, appearing on the cover of the Dead Kennedys' album Bedtime for Democracy, which protested the Reagan administration. In film, the torch is the setting for the climax of director Alfred Hitchcock's 1942 movie Saboteur. The statue makes one of its most famous cinematic appearances in the 1968 picture Planet of the Apes, in which it is seen half-buried in sand. It is knocked over in the science-fiction film Independence Day and in Cloverfield the head is ripped off. In Jack Finney's 1970 time-travel novel Time and Again, the right arm of the statue, on display in the early 1880s in Madison Square Park, plays a crucial role. Robert Holdstock, consulting editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, wondered in 1979:
> Where would science fiction be without the Statue of Liberty? For decades it has towered or crumbled above the wastelands of deserted Earth—giants have uprooted it, aliens have found it curious ... the symbol of Liberty, of optimism, has become a symbol of science fiction's pessimistic view of the future.
## See also
- Goddess of Liberty, 1888 statue by Elijah E. Myers atop the Texas State Capitol dome in Austin, Texas
- List of tallest statues
- List of the tallest statues in the United States
- Miss Freedom, 1889 statue on the dome of the Georgia State Capitol (US)
- Place des États-Unis, in Paris, France
- Statue of Freedom, 1863 sculpture by Thomas Crawford atop the dome of the US Capitol
- The Statue of Liberty (film), a 1985 Ken Burns documentary film
- Statues and sculptures in New York City
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Harriet Tubman
| 1,170,849,896 |
African-American abolitionist (1822–1913)
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Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.
Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by various enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.
In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.
When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.
## Birth and family
Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross. Rit was enslaved by Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.
As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. Tubman reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820. Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. Based on Larson's work, more recent biographies have accepted March 1822 as the most likely timing of Tubman's birth.
Tubman's maternal grandmother, Modesty, arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship from Africa; no information is available about her other ancestors. As a child, Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character traits, though no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother, Rit (who may have had a white father), was a cook for the Brodess family. Her father, Ben, was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation. They married around 1808 and, according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.
Rit struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters (Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community. At one point she confronted Brodess about the sale. Finally, Brodess and "the Georgia man" came toward the slave quarters to seize the child, where Rit told them, "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." Brodess backed away and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.
## Childhood
Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had scarce time for her own family; consequently, as a child Tubman took care of a younger brother and baby, as was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodess hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock the cradle as it slept; when the baby woke up and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.
Also in her childhood, Tubman was sent to work for a planter named James Cook. She had to check his muskrat traps in nearby marshes, even after contracting measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess, where her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to "the boy on the Swanee River", an allusion to Stephen Foster's song "Old Folks at Home". As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.
As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee. The weight struck Tubman instead, which she said: "broke my skull". Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. After this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. Larson suggests she may have had temporal lobe epilepsy, possibly as a result of brain injury; Clinton suggests her condition may have been narcolepsy or cataplexy. A definitive diagnosis is not possible due to lack of contemporary medical evidence, but this condition remained with her for the rest of her life.
After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. These spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God. Although Tubman was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her family. She rejected the teachings of white preachers who urged enslaved people to be passive and obedient victims to those who trafficked and enslaved them; instead she found guidance in the Old Testament tales of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.
## Family and marriage
Anthony Thompson promised to manumit Tubman's father at age 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 1840. Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family. Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars () to investigate the legal status of her mother, Rit. The lawyer discovered that Atthow Pattison, the grandfather of Mary Brodess, indicated in his will that Rit and any of her children would be manumitted at age 45, and that any children born after she reached age 45 would be freeborn. The Pattison and Brodess families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved family, but taking legal action to enforce it was an impossible task for Tubman.
Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her enslaved status. The mother's status dictated that of children, and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages – free people of color marrying enslaved people – were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.
Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.
## Escape from slavery
In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for God to make Brodess change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman changed her prayer: "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way'." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.
As in many estate settlements, Brodess's death increased the likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart. His widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate, despite her husband's efforts to dissuade her. "[T]here was one of two things I had a right to", she explained later, "liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other".
Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been hired out to Anthony Thompson (the son of her father's former owner), who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar Neck in neighboring Caroline County; it is likely her brothers labored for Thompson as well. Because they were hired out, Eliza Brodess probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt for some time. Two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to US\$100 each () for their capture and return to slavery. Once they had left, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. Ben may have regretted leaving his wife and children. The two men went back, forcing Tubman to return with them.
Sometime in October or November, Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land." While her exact route is unknown, Tubman made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal system was composed of free and enslaved black people, white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends). The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a substantial Quaker community and was probably an important first stop during Tubman's escape. From there, she probably took a common route for people fleeing slavery – northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) by foot would have taken between five days and three weeks.
Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. The "conductors" in the Underground Railroad used deceptions for protection. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard so as to seem to be working for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Given her familiarity with the woods and marshes of the region, Tubman likely hid in these locales during the day. The particulars of her first journey are unknown; because other escapees from slavery used the routes, Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled the experience years later:
> When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.
## Nicknamed "Moses"
After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman thought of her family. "I was a stranger in a strange land," she said later. "[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free." While Tubman saved money from working odd jobs in Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced law enforcement officials to assist in the capture of escaped slaves – even in states that had outlawed slavery – and heavily punished abetting escape. The law increased risks for those who had escaped slavery, more of whom therefore sought refuge in Southern Ontario, where slavery had been abolished. Racial tensions were also increasing in Philadelphia as poor Irish immigrants competed with free blacks for work.
In December 1850, Tubman was warned that her niece Kessiah and Kessiah's children would soon be sold in Cambridge. Tubman went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law Tom Tubman hid her until the sale. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. While the auctioneer stepped away to have lunch, John, Kessiah and their children escaped to a nearby safe house. When night fell, Bowley sailed the family on a log canoe 60 miles (97 kilometres) to Baltimore, where they met with Tubman, who brought the family to Philadelphia.
Early next year she returned to Maryland to guide away other family members. During her second trip, she recovered her youngest brother, Moses, along with two other men. Word of her exploits had encouraged her family, and she became more confident with each trip to Maryland.
In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband John. When she arrived there, she learned that John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she found some enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.
Because the Fugitive Slave Law had made the northern United States a more dangerous place for those escaping slavery to remain, many escapees began migrating to Southern Ontario. In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 escapees, possibly including the Bowleys and several others she had helped rescue earlier, northward. There is evidence to suggest that Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass and Tubman admired one another greatly as they both struggled against slavery. Years later he contrasted his efforts with hers, writing:
> Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the night. ... The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting John Brown – of sacred memory – I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have.
From 1851 to 1862, Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions, including her other brothers, Henry, Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children. She also provided specific instructions to 50 to 60 additional enslaved people who escaped. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses", alluding to the biblical prophet who led the Hebrews to freedom from Egypt. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. Her father purchased her mother from Eliza Brodess in 1855, but even when they were both free, the area was hostile. In 1857, Tubman received word that her father was at risk of arrest for harboring a group of eight people escaping slavery. She led her parents north to St. Catharines, Canada, where a community of formerly enslaved people, including other relatives and friends of Tubman, had gathered.
### Routes and methods
Tubman's dangerous work required ingenuity. She usually worked during winter, when long nights and cold weather minimized the chance of being seen. She would start the escapes on Saturday evenings, since newspapers would not print runaway notices until Monday morning. She used subterfuges to avoid detection. Tubman once disguised herself with a bonnet and carried two live chickens to give the appearance of running errands. Suddenly finding herself walking toward a former enslaver, she yanked the strings holding the birds' legs, and their agitation allowed her to avoid eye contact. Later she recognized a fellow train passenger as a former enslaver; she snatched a nearby newspaper and pretended to read. Tubman was known to be illiterate, and the man ignored her.
In an 1897 interview with historian Wilbur Siebert, Tubman named some people who helped her and places she stayed along the Underground Railroad. She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents' home at Poplar Neck. She would travel from there northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and to the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington. In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still's office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area. Still is credited with helping hundreds escape to safer places in New York, New England, and Southern Ontario.
Tubman's faith was another important resource as she ventured repeatedly into Maryland. The visions from her childhood head injury continued, and she saw them as divine premonitions. She spoke of "consulting with God", and trusted that He would keep her safe. Garrett once said of her, "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul." Her faith also provided immediate assistance. She used spirituals as coded messages, warning fellow travelers of danger or to signal a clear path. She sang versions of "Go Down Moses" and changed the lyrics to indicate that it was either safe or too dangerous to proceed. As she led escapees across the border, she would call out, "Glory to God and Jesus, too. One more soul is safe!"
She carried a revolver as protection from slave catchers and their dogs. Tubman also threatened to shoot anyone who tried to turn back since that would risk the safety of the remaining group, as well as anyone who helped them on the way. Tubman spoke of one man who insisted he was going to go back to the plantation. She pointed the gun at his head and said, "Go on or die." Several days later, the man who wavered crossed into Canada with the rest of the group.
By the late 1850s, Eastern Shore slaveholders were holding public meetings about the large number of escapes in the area; they cast suspicion on free blacks and white abolitionists. They did not know that "Minty", the petite, disabled woman who had run away years before, was responsible for freeing so many enslaved people. Though a popular legend persists about a reward of \$40,000 () for Tubman's capture, this is a manufactured figure: In 1867, in support of Tubman's claim for a military pension, an abolitionist named Sallie Holley wrote that \$40,000 "was not too great a reward for Maryland slaveholders to offer for her". If it were real, such a high reward would have garnered national attention. A reward of \$12,000 has also been claimed, though no documentation has been found for either figure.
Tubman and the fugitives she assisted were never captured. Years later, she told an audience: "I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
## John Brown and Harpers Ferry
In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an insurgent who advocated the use of violence to destroy slavery in the United States. Although she was not previously involved in armed insurrection, she agreed with his course of direct action and supported his goals. Like Tubman, he spoke of being called by God, and trusted the divine to protect him from the wrath of slavers. She, meanwhile, claimed to have had a prophetic vision of meeting Brown before their encounter.
Thus, as he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined by "General Tubman", as he called her. Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his planners. Although other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for those freed from slavery, and made preparations for military action. He believed that after he began the first battle, the enslaved would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the slave states. He asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did.
On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Canada, where he unveiled his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When word of the plan was leaked to the government, Brown put the scheme on hold and began raising funds for its eventual resumption. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.
Tubman was busy during this time, giving talks to abolitionist audiences and tending to her relatives. In early October 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman was ill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is not known whether she still intended to join Brown's raid or if she had become skeptical of the plan, but when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman had recovered from her illness and was in New York City.
The raid failed; Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting a rebellion, and he was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr. Tubman herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: "[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."
## Auburn and Margaret
In early 1859, Frances Adeline Seward, the wife of abolitionist Republican U.S. Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre (2.8 ha) farm in Fleming, New York, for \$1,200 (). The adjacent city of Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and Tubman took the opportunity to move her parents from Canada back to the U.S. Her farmstead became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. For years, she took in relatives and boarders, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life in the north.
Shortly after acquiring the farm, Tubman went back to Maryland and returned with an eight-year-old light-skinned black girl named Margaret, who Tubman said was her niece. She also indicated the girl's parents were free blacks. According to Margaret's daughter Alice, Margaret later described her childhood home as prosperous and said that she left behind a twin brother. These descriptions conflict with what is known about the families of Tubman's siblings, which created uncertainty among historians about the relationship and Tubman's motivations. Alice called Tubman's actions a "kidnapping", saying, "she had taken the child from a sheltered good home to a place where there was nobody to care for her". After speculating in her 2004 biography of Tubman that Margaret might have been Tubman's own secret daughter, Kate Larson found evidence that Margaret was the daughter of Isaac and Mary Woolford, a free black couple who were neighbors of Tubman's parents in Maryland and who had twins named James and Margaret.
In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission. Throughout the 1850s, Tubman had been unable to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. Upon returning to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of \$30 (). She did not have the money, so the children remained enslaved. Their fates remain unknown. Never one to waste a trip, Tubman gathered another group, including the Ennalls family, ready and willing to take the risks of the journey north. It took them weeks to get away safely because of slave catchers forcing them to hide out longer than expected. The weather was unseasonably cold and they had little food. The Ennalls' infant child was quieted with paregoric while slave patrols rode by. They safely reached the home of David and Martha Wright in Auburn on December 28, 1860.
## American Civil War
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would soon lead to the abolition of slavery. More immediately, enslaved people near Union positions began began escaping in large numbers. General Benjamin Butler declared these escapees to be "contraband" – property seized by northern forces – and put them to work, initially without pay, at Fort Monroe in Virginia. The number of "contrabands" encamped at Fort Monroe and other Union positions rapidly increased. In January 1862, Tubman volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.
In South Carolina, Tubman met General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. He declared all of the "contrabands" in the Port Royal district free, and began gathering formerly enslaved people for a regiment of black soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was not yet prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states and reprimanded Hunter for his actions. Tubman condemned Lincoln's response and his general unwillingness to consider ending slavery in the U.S., for both moral and practical reasons:
> God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free.
Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery and infectious diseases. At first, she received government rations for her work, but to dispel a perception that she was getting special treatment, she gave up her right to these supplies and made money selling pies and root beer, which she made in the evenings.
### Scouting and the Combahee River Raid
When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it a positive but incomplete step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. She turned her own efforts towards more direct actions to defeat the Confederacy. In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal. Her group, working under the orders of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, mapped the unfamiliar terrain and reconnoitered its inhabitants. She later worked alongside Colonel James Montgomery, and provided him with key intelligence that aided in the capture of Jacksonville, Florida.
Later that year, Tubman's intelligence gathering played a key role in the raid at Combahee Ferry. She guided three steamboats with black soldiers under Montgomery's command past mines on the Combahee River to assault several plantations. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Forewarned of the raid by Tubman's spy network, enslaved people throughout the area heard steamboats' whistles and understood that they were being liberated. Tubman watched as those fleeing slavery stampeded toward the boats; she later described a scene of chaos with women carrying still-steaming pots of rice, pigs squealing in bags slung over shoulders, and babies hanging around their parents' necks. Armed overseers tried to stop the mass escape, but their efforts were nearly useless in the tumult. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, the steamboats took off toward Beaufort with more than 750 formerly enslaved people.
Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid, and she was praised for her recruiting efforts – more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army. Reports about her involvement in the raid led to a revival of the "General Tubman" appellation previously given to her by John Brown. Although her contributions have sometimes been exaggerated, her role in the raid led to her being widely credited as the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.
In July 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal. She later described the battle to historian Albert Bushnell Hart:
> And then we saw the lightning, and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder, and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling, and that was the drops of blood falling; and when we came to get the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.
For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, a task she continued for several months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865.
## Later life
Tubman had received little pay for her Union military service. She was not a regular soldier and was only occasionally compensated for her work as a spy and scout; her work as a nurse was entirely unpaid. For over three years of service, she received a total of \$200 (). Her unofficial status caused great difficulty in documenting her service, and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Meanwhile, her humanitarian work for her family and the formerly enslaved kept her in a state of constant poverty.
When a promised appointment to an official military nursing position fell through in July 1865, Tubman decided to return to her home in New York. During a train ride to New York in October 1865, Tubman traveled on a half-fare ticket provided to her because of her service. A conductor told her to move from a regular passenger car into the less-desirable smoking car. When she refused, he cursed at her and grabbed her. She resisted, and he summoned additional men for help. They muscled her into the smoking car, injuring her in the process. As these events transpired, white passengers cursed Tubman and told the conductor to kick her off the train.
Tubman spent her remaining years in Auburn, tending to her family and other people in need. In addition to managing her farm, she took in boarders and worked various jobs to pay the bills and support her elderly parents. One of the people Tubman took in was a farmer named Nelson Davis. Born enslaved in North Carolina, he had served as a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. He began working in Auburn as a bricklayer, and they soon fell in love. Though he was 22 years younger than she was, on March 18, 1869, they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874.
Tubman's friends and supporters from the days of abolition, meanwhile, raised funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. The 132-page volume was published in 1869 and brought Tubman some \$1,200 in income (). Even with this assistance, paying off the mortgage on her farm in May 1873 exhausted Tubman's savings. That October, she fell prey to swindlers. Two black men claimed to know a former slave who had a trunk of gold coins smuggled out of South Carolina, which they would sell for cash at less than half the coins' value. She knew white people in the South had buried valuables when Union forces threatened the region, and black men were frequently assigned to digging duties, so the claim seemed plausible to her. She borrowed money from a wealthy friend and arranged to receive the gold late one night. Once the men had lured her into the woods, they knocked her out with chloroform and stole her purse. Tubman was found dazed and injured; the trunk was filled with rocks.
The crime brought new attention from local leaders to Tubman's precarious financial state and spurred renewed efforts to get compensation for her Civil War service. In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a \$2,000 lump sum "for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy", but it was defeated in the Senate. In February 1880, Tubman's wood-framed house burned down, but with the help of her supporters it was quickly replaced with a new brick home.
Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 made Tubman eligible for a pension as his widow. After she documented her marriage and her husband's service record to the satisfaction of the Bureau of Pensions, in 1895 Tubman was granted a monthly widow's pension of \$8 (), plus a lump sum of \$500 to cover the five-year delay in approval. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension of \$25. Although Congress received documents and letters to support Tubman's claims, some members objected to a woman being paid a full soldier's pension. In February 1899, Congress approved a compromise amount of \$20 per month (the \$8 from her widow's pension plus \$12 for her service as a nurse), but did not acknowledge her as a scout and spy.
### Suffragist activism
In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. A white woman once asked Tubman whether she believed women ought to have the vote, and received the reply: "I suffered enough to believe it." Tubman began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and was soon working alongside women such as Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland.
Tubman traveled to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. to speak in favor of women's voting rights. She described her actions during and after the Civil War, and used the sacrifices of countless women throughout modern history as evidence of women's equality to men. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting.
This wave of activism kindled a new wave of admiration for Tubman among the press in the United States. A publication called The Woman's Era launched a series of articles on "Eminent Women" with a profile of Tubman. An 1897 suffragist newspaper reported a series of receptions in Boston honoring Tubman and her lifetime of service to the nation. However, her endless contributions to others had left her in poverty, and she had to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these celebrations.
### Church, illness, and death
In the 1870s, Tubman became active in the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Auburn. In 1895, she began discussions with AME Zion leaders and others to create a Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged that would care for "indigent colored people". Despite her financial limitations, in 1896 Tubman bid \$1215 at auction for a 25-acre (10 ha) farm adjacent to the one she already owned, to use for the new facility. She designated one of the farm's buildings as its primary residence and named it "John Brown Hall" to honor her late abolitionist ally. However, raising funds for the project was difficult, and attempts to donate the property were complicated by the multiple mortgage loans used to pay for it. After Tubman almost lost the property due her financial difficulties, AME Zion agreed to take it over in 1903.
The home did not open for another five years, and Tubman was dismayed when the church ordered residents to pay a \$100 entrance fee (). She said: "[T]hey make a rule that nobody should come in without they have a hundred dollars. Now I wanted to make a rule that nobody should come in unless they didn't have no money at all." She was frustrated by the new rule but was the guest of honor nonetheless when the home celebrated its opening on June 23, 1908.
As Tubman aged, her childhood head trauma continued to trouble her. Unable to sleep because of pain and "buzzing" in her head, in the late 1890s she asked a doctor at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to operate. In her words, he "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable". She reportedly received no anesthesia and instead bit down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.
By 1911, Tubman's body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as "ill and penniless", prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she quoted the Gospel of John to those in the room: "I go away to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.
## Legacy
Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. By the 1980s, Tubman was one of American history's most famous figures. She inspired generations of African Americans struggling for equality and civil rights; she was praised by leaders across the political spectrum.
### Parks, monuments and historical sites
National parks and national monuments related to Tubman in the United States are the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, both in Maryland, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn. The Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, where Tubman worshipped, is a National Historic Site of Canada.
The city of Auburn has several historical sites related to Tubman, including her gravesite. Other state and local historical sites about Tubman include a state park and memorial garden in Maryland, and a museum in New Jersey.
### Artistic portrayals
Tubman is the subject of many works of art. Musicians including Woody Guthrie, Wynton Marsalis, and Walter Robinson have written songs celebrating her. She is the subject of operas by Thea Musgrave, Nkeiru Okoye, and Hilda Paredes, as well as plays by Carolyn Gage and a collaboration of May Miller and Willis Richardson. Tubman is the focus of novels by Elizabeth Cobbs, Marcy Heidish, and Anne Parrish, and is a character in novels by Terry Bisson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and James McBride.
Since Tubman's life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of the series The Great Adventure, she has been portrayed in TV productions such as The Good Lord Bird, Timeless, Underground, and A Woman Called Moses. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for portraying Tubman in the 2019 theatrical film Harriet.
Artists including Fern Cunningham, Jane DeDecker, Nina Cooke John, and Alison Saar have presented Tubman in sculptures. She has been drawn or painted by numerous artists, including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold.
### Other honors and commemorations
Tubman was the first African-American woman honored on a U.S. postage stamp in 1978; she appeared on a second stamp in 1995. Beginning in 2016, there have been plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder, to the back of the bill.
Dozens of schools, streets and highways, church groups, social organizations, and government agencies have been named after Tubman. In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship named for a black woman.
## Historiography
Tubman hoped to become literate and write her own memoirs, but she never did. Instead, Sarah Hopkins Bradford combined Tubman's personal recollections, journalistic accounts, and letters from Tubman's friends and supporters to create Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1868. Criticized by modern biographers for its artistic license and highly subjective point of view, the book nevertheless provides insight into Tubman's own view of her experiences. In 1886, Bradford released a re-written volume called Harriet, the Moses of her People. In both volumes Harriet Tubman is hailed as a latter-day Joan of Arc. The revision took a more moralistic and literary tone than the prior work, including changes of many event descriptions from first to third person. A final revision in 1901 added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life.
The first full biography of Tubman to be published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943). Conrad experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher – the search took four years – and endured disdain and contempt for his efforts to construct a more objective, detailed account of Tubman's life for adults. Several highly dramatized versions of Tubman's life had been written for children, and many more came later, but Conrad wrote in an academic style. Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years, when Jean Humez published a close reading of Tubman's life stories in 2003. Larson and Clinton both published their biographies soon after in 2004. Historian Milton Sernett's 2007 book Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History discusses the major biographies of Tubman up to that time.
## See also
- Ida B. Wells
- List of slaves
- List of suffragists and suffragettes
- Richard Amos Ball
- Tilly Escape
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Pauline Fowler
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Fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders
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"Beale family (EastEnders)",
"British female characters in television",
"EastEnders characters",
"Fictional murdered people",
"Fictional twins",
"Television characters introduced in 1985"
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Pauline Fowler is a fictional character from the BBC One soap opera EastEnders. She was played by actress Wendy Richard between the first episode on 19 February 1985 and 25 December 2006. Pauline was created by scriptwriter Tony Holland and producer Julia Smith as one of EastEnders' original characters. She made her debut in the soap's first episode on 19 February 1985, and remained for twenty-one years and ten months, making her the second-longest-running original character to appear continuously, surpassed only by her nephew, Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt). Since then, she has been surpassed by Letitia Dean who plays Sharon Watts.
Pauline is a member of the Beale family. Her storylines focus on drudgery, money worries, and family troubles. The matriarchal stalwart of the fictional London community of Albert Square, she is at first portrayed as a loving, doting, very family-oriented mother. In later years, however, she becomes a more stoic, opinionated battle-axe who alienates her relatives through overbearing interference. Pauline is married to the downtrodden Arthur Fowler (Bill Treacher); when she finds out he had a one-night stand with Christine Hewitt (Elizabeth Power), she hits him with a frying pan. Their marriage remains rocky until his death in 1996. She is used for comedic purposes in scenes with her launderette colleague Dot Cotton (June Brown), and scriptwriters included many feuds in her narrative, most notably with her daughter-in-law, Sonia Fowler (Natalie Cassidy), and Den Watts (Leslie Grantham), a family friend who got her daughter Michelle Fowler (Susan Tully) pregnant at 16. A famous episode in 1986 which includes Pauline discovering that Den is the father of Michelle's baby, drew over 30 million viewers, and was listed at number 36 in The Times 1998 list of "Top 100 cult moments in Film". Richard announced Pauline's retirement from the serial in July 2006, and the character was killed off in a "whodunnit?" murder storyline, with Richard making her final appearance on 25 December 2006.
Pauline was a staple in the UK press during her time in EastEnders, representative of the symbiosis between Britain's soaps and tabloid newspapers. Widely-read tabloids such as The Sun and Daily Mirror, would routinely publish articles about forthcoming developments in Pauline's storylines. Critical opinion on the character differs. She has been described as a "legend" and a television icon, but was also voted the 35th "most annoying person of 2006" (being the only fictional character to appear on the list). The character is well-known even outside of the show's viewer-base, and away from the on-screen serial, Pauline has been the subject of television documentaries, behind-the-scenes books, tie-in novels, and comedy sketch shows.
## Character creation
### Background
Pauline Fowler is one of the original 23 characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland (1940–2007) and Julia Smith (1927–1997). Holland had drawn on his own London background for inspiration, naming three of the original characters after his own relatives, specifically his aunt Lou and her children, Holland's cousins, fraternal twins Pete and Pauline. This family setup of a woman named Lou Beale, with twin children Pete and Pauline, was recreated on-screen as the first family of EastEnders, the Beales and Fowlers.
Pauline's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appears in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story.
> Pete's twin sister. Forty, and a chip off the Lou Beale block. Plucky, and determined to battle through whatever the odds. A warm, practical, unsophisticated woman: you stand by your man, do your duty, fight for your kids and have a roast for Sunday dinner ... She's also pregnant ... She actually remembers her dad [Albert] saying "Two things we don't discuss in this house are religion and politics". She also remembers her dad smoked a pipe, and wishes her husband did too. She loved her dad very much ... Maybe she didn't go into her marriage with quite the right spirit? She was due to be chief bridesmaid at her sister's wedding but she'd got the flu and was confined to bed. Arthur, someone she'd known from school, was given permission to visit the invalid upstairs. He found himself proposing to her. Years later he said "It was to cheer her up really." And Pauline found herself accepting too ... She's very fond of her twin brother, Pete (and knows that he's mum's favourite). She's very conventional, and the salt of the earth. Jolly, rounded, someone you can get your arms round. She doesn't trust skinny people.
### Casting
From the beginning, Smith considered the role ideal for Wendy Richard, with whom she had worked on the 1960s BBC soap, The Newcomers; Holland and Smith decided to approach her about the role, even though their casting policy was not to use "stars"—Richard was already well known in the UK for playing glamorous roles, such as Shirley Brahms in the successful sitcom Are You Being Served? At their first meeting, Tony Holland informed Richard that they were planning a programme that would not "duck social issues but would be a hard-hitting drama including teenage pregnancy, drugs, racial conflict, prostitution, rape, mental illness, homosexuality, alcoholism, and muggings among its subjects." In order to carry such controversial storylines, Richard was told that "powerful characters to whom things just naturally happened" had been invented, and two families, the Fowlers and the Beales, were to form the core of the soap's narrative. In her autobiography, Richard states, "If I accepted, my character was to be Pauline Fowler. A middle-aged mother of two teenagers, with a late baby on the way, Pauline worked part-time at the launderette, voted Labour and supported Arsenal. She was married to Arthur, who was out of work and was really a bit of a failure, not much good at anything in life." Richard thought it sounded like a challenging role.
There were initial fears that Richard's glamorous image would not work for the character and Smith also feared that Richard would be apprehensive about playing Pauline, who would be anything but glamorous, but these fears were swept aside when Richard announced that she was sick of glamour and wanted to play her own age. Richard has commented, "although it would be such a huge transformation of my screen image, it was after all my twenty-fifth year in showbusiness, and I'd realised that I couldn't go on playing dolly birds forever ... I knew right away I would be mad to turn down the part of Pauline."
After she accepted the role, Richard was told by Julia Smith that she would have to change her appearance, to make it more in keeping with Pauline's unglamorous lifestyle. This included having her hair cut. Richard commented on this: "I was very proud of my long hair, which had taken me years to grow. I hadn't had it cut short for nineteen years but reluctantly, I agreed ... I cried my eyes out for the rest of the day after that traumatic hair cut." From September 1984, Richard was involved in pre-production of the series, covering every angle, from hair, costume design and make-up to organising the set interior of her character's screen house. Richard has said that Pauline had been given extensive biographical detail, including minute specifics, such as her fictional time of her birth: "It was vital that we should get to know our own characters intimately and so the cast initially sat together in family groups to learn our lines and bond with our 'relations' ... it was essential to develop the rapport that families, who'd been together for years, would naturally have." Richard's casting was considered to be "a giant leap of faith" by co-creators Holland and Smith, but one that ultimately "landed on its feet", because Pauline went on to be one of the longest running characters in EastEnders history, remaining with the show for nearly twenty-two years.
## Character development and impact
### Lineage and personality
The character of Pauline was a cornerstone of EastEnders; the lynchpin of the Fowler/Beale family around whom the soap was originally structured. At the beginning of the serial in 1985, Pauline was a 40-year-old married mother with two teenage children, Mark and Michelle, and another child on the way. The fictional history of her younger years has been told via behind-the-scenes books such as EastEnders: The Inside Story, and the second tie-in novel by Hugh Miller, Swings and Roundabouts, which explains that Pauline was born and raised at 45 Albert Square, where she lived for her entire life. She married Arthur Fowler in 1965, raising her own children in the same house where she grew up.
Whereas most of the other female characters in EastEnders were portrayed in a somewhat more glamorous working-class way, Pauline Fowler was the exception to the rule, being the sole character to represent the "homely and domestic" side of the Beale family. As the serial progressed, the character altered from her original outline. Instead of being the jolly, warm character she was during the show's early years, she became a sombre battle-axe, hardened by a life of misery in Albert Square. Other characters refer to her as "Fowler the growler", and in the Evening Gazette she was described as "the Boadicea of battle-axes." The initial change in her demeanour is traced back to the death of her mother, Lou Beale (Anna Wing), a fierce dowager, who ruled over her family with a "rod of iron". Following Lou's screen funeral in July 1988, Pauline retorts, "Shut up Arthur Fowler, no one interrupts Pauline Beale when she's in full flow", a line that was used similarly by Lou in the episode that preceded her own death. This parallel symbolised the transference of the family's matriarchal role from Lou to Pauline. Wendy Richard indicated that both she and show creator Julia Smith had always intended for Pauline to become like her mother, and former EastEnders executive producer John Yorke has commented on the importance of the lineage between the two characters: "[Pauline] endures, stoically and heroically, whatever life may throw at her, just as her mother did before her. This sense of lineage is vitally important, too. Pauline has been in the show since its start and was handed the role of matriarch on Lou Beale's death."
### Early storylines
In the first episode, it is revealed that Pauline, aged 40, is pregnant with her third child. The character's pregnancy quickly became a prominent storyline within the series. Pauline, against her mother's opposition, is determined to keep the baby. The storyline was used to spread a public message on the increased risk of genetic defects in late pregnancies, with Pauline undergoing amniocentesis tests. The storyline culminates with the birth of the serial's first baby, Martin, in July 1985.
Pauline's early storylines concentrate on family and money troubles: coping with her husband Arthur's redundancy, mental breakdown and imprisonment; eldest son Mark's delinquency; and daughter Michelle's teenage pregnancy.
In 1989, the character was used to highlight another important gynaecological health issue, fibroids. The storyline sees Pauline ignoring health problems, such as chronic fatigue, and using homoeopathic preparations rather than seeking medical assistance. Her fibroids are discovered by chance, when the character Ricky Butcher (Sid Owen) knocks her down in his Austin Mini. In the 1989 Boxing Day episode, Pauline spends time in hospital, recovering from a necessary hysterectomy. Wendy Richard has since revealed that the storyline had originally been scripted differently. Before the outcome of Pauline's illness was screened, producers had decided that the character was to be killed off with cancer. This was a decision that had been made by the show's boss, Mike Gibbon, to refresh the format by replacing some of the serial's older characters. The scriptwriters went as far as giving Pauline a mystery illness. The newly appointed executive producer, Michael Ferguson, decided to scrap the original storyline, believing that Pauline, as one of the soap's original characters, was too valuable an asset to lose. The storyline was rewritten and the character was given a different gynaecological ailment that was treatable.
### Marriage to Arthur Fowler
Pauline's marriage to the luckless Arthur is central to her character, remaining one of her defining traits even after his death in 1996. The dynamics of the relationship were clear from the beginning of the programme, with Pauline depicted as the matriarchal force that holds the Fowler family together, while Arthur is depicted as weak, emotionally unstable and easily dominated by the stronger females of his family. Writer Jacquetta May, who once played Rachel Kominski in the programme, has commented that "[Pauline and Arthur] represented the matriarchal relationship of strong woman/weak man ... Arthur, only sporadically employed and disabled by a breakdown, often behaved like a little boy, while Pauline had to make the decisions and keep the family functioning in the face of poverty and unemployment, teenage pregnancy and depression." Pauline and Arthur were generally seen as the most stable couple in the show, so Arthur's affair with Christine Hewitt (Lizzie Power) came as a shock to viewers. The storyline was long-running, beginning early in 1992 with the introduction of lonely divorcee Christine, who employs Arthur to tend to her garden. A romance between Arthur and Christine steadily develops throughout the year, facilitated by Pauline's lengthy absence; she is called abroad to tend to her crippled brother Kenny in early June, and she does not return until late September (in reality, Wendy Richard had to be temporarily written out of EastEnders to allow her to act in Grace and Favour). The build-up to the affair contains many twists and turns, starting with Arthur's rebuff of Christine's advances, then a confrontation between Pauline and Christine, which convinces Pauline of Arthur's innocence and leaves her feeling "strangely sorry for the pathetic, lonely figure, who obviously drank too much". The episode in which Arthur finally gives into temptation and sleeps with Christine aired on Christmas Eve 1992.
The storyline continued throughout 1993 as Christine makes greater demands on Arthur, threatening to tell Pauline about their affair unless he does so himself. In September 1993, the situation finally reaches a climax on-screen. The scriptwriters had many conferences about ways in which Pauline would find out about the affair; "should she work it out herself or should some third party tell her the truth?" In the end it was felt that Arthur should tell her himself, and when he does, Pauline becomes violent, throwing an ashtray and a television at Arthur during the revelation - and, most memorably, hitting him in the face with a frying pan. Although the audience had witnessed Pauline and Arthur rowing many times, this was something different, "an act of betrayal on a massive scale." Series production manager Rona McKendrick commented: "It was one of the few times when you saw Pauline really, really let rip ... you really felt the anger, understood the anger and realised why she went as far as she did." This episode (written by Tony McHale and directed by Keith Boak) was chosen by writer Colin Brake as the episode of the year in EastEnders: The First Ten Years and is described by Wendy Richard as "Pauline's crowning moment."
For a while it seems that EastEnders''' "most solid" marriage is over, but Arthur spends the rest of 1993 trying to convince Pauline that it is worth saving and they eventually reconcile. However, more tragedy follows, when Arthur is framed by a conman, Willy Roper (dubbed "Wicked Willy" by the British press), and wrongfully imprisoned for embezzlement in 1995. The storyline captured the public's imagination and a nationwide "Free Arthur Fowler" campaign was launched. "Arthur Fowler Is Innocent" T-shirts were produced and a single was even released in the UK Singles Chart promoting the campaign.
Arthur's imprisonment was a precursor to the final exit of actor Bill Treacher, who decided to leave EastEnders after 11 years playing Arthur. While Arthur goes to pieces in prison, Pauline is heavily embroiled in the storyline pertaining to his eventual release. For several months viewers witnessed Willy attempt to woo Pauline, but she eventually uncovers his deception and then resorts to uncharacteristic seduction to gain his confession. A critic for the Sunday Mirror commented, "Pauline Fowler deserves a Golden Cardie Award for her performance in EastEnders. The way which she extracted a confession from Willy Roper over the money he stole was nothing short of brilliant." Arthur is exonerated, but his joyful reunion with Pauline is cut short when he dies of a brain haemorrhage shortly after his release. His death ends an 11-year screen marriage, the longest run of any marriage in the serial.
### Importance of family
Pauline remains a family-oriented character throughout the course of the show. A "fiercely loyal, but overbearing mother"; sheltering and taking on the major responsibilities of her children and frequently stressing the importance of family. She is portrayed as a traditionalist, with strict rules and beliefs—the first to criticise, but also the first to defend her children, often interfering in their issues and causing rifts in their relationships. The quintessential matriarch, she has also been compared with Queen Elizabeth, with the storylines in the fictional Albert Square, mirroring the troubles of England as a whole. In Monarchies: What Are Kings and Queens For, the author points out similarities between the matriarchal nature of Pauline's character, and that of the Queen. "Both exhibit a rich mix of suffering and duty. Pauline has tried to bring up her family as best she can, even though it hasn't always been easy. Her offspring have caused her nothing but trials and tribulations; her husband has been wayward at times and caused her several eyebrow-raising moments. But Pauline has steadfastly carried on ..."
Early storylines between Pauline and her two teenage children, Mark and Michelle, show her to be a doting mother, forgiving of Mark's wayward behaviour, and supportive when Michelle decides to become a teenage mum. Pauline is devoted to her twin brother Pete, dutiful to her mother Lou, allegiant to her husband Arthur, and a shoulder for her nephew, Ian, to cry on. Wendy Richard commented in 1990, "It's important for her to keep the family together. That's why when her problem son Mark suddenly came home [in 1990], it was like her winning the pools ... She had to take a lot of shocks from Michelle and I think she coped remarkably well."
As the serial progressed, Pauline contends with a plethora of family upsets, which include many deaths—her mother Lou in 1988, brother Pete in 1993 and husband Arthur in 1996—as well as her elder son Mark's fatal battle with HIV. After a year long build-up, Mark is shown to reveal his HIV status to his stunned and devastated parents in an episode that aired on Boxing Day 1991, attracting 19 million viewers. Wendy Richard has given her interpretation of Pauline's reaction to Mark's news: "To say she was shell-shocked was an understatement and, not knowing enough about HIV, she and Arthur were worrying that their eldest son might die from AIDS at any moment." The HIV plot had many ramifications for the character of Pauline, as she struggles to come to terms with her son's condition. It was also instrumental in raising public awareness about the illness, which was still the subject of much ignorance when EastEnders tackled it in 1991. When the storyline initially aired, more people went for a HIV test in Britain than at any other time. Wendy Richard commented: "The storyline with Mark Fowler, when he announced he was HIV positive, was really well done. People have to be aware that HIV and AIDS are not exactly the same thing. The Minister of Health who was in power at that time wrote a letter complimenting us for the way that we had put the information across."
The HIV storyline came to an end on-screen in 2003, when executive producer Louise Berridge decided to axe Mark Fowler. In the serial, Mark discovers his HIV medication is failing, but instead of allowing Pauline to witness his deterioration, he leaves to spend the remainder of his life travelling. Richard has classed Mark's exit as her most difficult storyline, commenting: "I was so genuinely upset that Todd Carty, who played Mark, was going I could barely get my lines out for want of crying—but everybody said I acted it well. It was, I think, ten per cent acting and 90 per cent me crying my eyes out because I was being selfish and didn't want Todd to go." Mark, who had appeared intermittently for 18 years, was eventually killed off-screen in 2004, dying of an AIDS-related illness.
In the latter years of her time in the soap, Pauline changes from a caring mother into a more inflexible battle-axe. Pauline's relationship with Martin is often shown to be strained by Pauline's refusal to release control over his life. Though initially a teenage delinquent, following Mark's death in 2004, Martin becomes Pauline's "dutiful son", forced to put his mother's wishes above those of his wife—a recurring theme within the serial. Eventually, this causes a rift between the two characters. When Martin goes against his mother's wishes in 2006 and rekindles a romance with his adulterous ex-wife Sonia, Pauline cuts him out of her life. Television personality Paul O'Grady addressed Pauline's refusal to "share her son like a normal mother", commenting, "she's suspicious of anybody that comes into the family who wants to take her son away from her. She has already lost one son; she has lost her husband, so she's hanging onto the last [son] like a mother tiger with her cub."
### Friends and enemies
The character's narrative also included various feuds, most notably with the soap's lothario Den Watts, a family-friend who gets Pauline's daughter Michelle pregnant at the age of 16. EastEnders pulled in the biggest television audience of the 1980s when over 30 million people watched the 1986 Christmas Day episode in which Pauline discovers that Den is the father of her granddaughter, Vicki. Wendy Richard has commented on the hostility between the characters "once Pauline realised that Dennis was Vicki's father, she was out to get him one way or another" and actor Leslie Grantham, who played Den, added "from then on it was out and out war, which was great!" An array of confrontations between Den and Pauline occur, as she tries to force him to leave Walford and keep him away from her family. The feud appears to end in 1989 when the character Den is shot and presumed dead, but it is ignited once again in 2003 when Den is re-introduced, 14 years after he supposedly died. 2005 saw Den killed off for the final time, and although Pauline is not directly responsible for killing him, the item used to bludgeon him to death turns out to be her dog-shaped iron doorstop, which has been described as "a nice touch of pathos".
A large proportion of the character's scenes take place on the set of Walford's launderette, where Pauline works as an assistant for almost the entire duration of her time in EastEnders. Here, Pauline is frequently featured with another long-running protagonist, fellow launderette colleague, Dot Cotton. The two characters share one of the soap's most enduring screen friendships and their scenes together are often used to provide humour. Particular emphasis is placed on their differences, which lead to numerous petty squabbles and in 2004 sees them "buried alive" underneath a collapsed fairground ride, in the midst of a cake-selling war. However, Pauline and Dot are most frequently shown gossiping, reminiscing about the past, or sharing their woes in the launderette. The duo has been described by television personality Paul O'Grady as a "fabulous double-act": "Dot's probably Pauline's one and only confidant. Pauline eventually will break down and tell Dot things that she'd never tell anybody else."
Pauline is shown to be particularly hostile to the various female characters that feature in her sons' lives, and she epitomises the archetypal "mother-in-law from hell". One of Pauline's most notable feuds is with her youngest son Martin's wife, Sonia. Animosity between the characters begins in 2000, when Sonia gives birth to Pauline's grandchild and decides to give the baby Chloe (later renamed Rebecca) up for adoption. In the storyline, Pauline tries unsuccessfully to fight for custody, leading Sonia to retort "YOU want to bring up Chloe? You couldn't bring up phlegm!" The feuding over Chloe is revisited in storylines throughout 2005 and 2006, when first Pauline is shown to visit her adopted granddaughter against Sonia and Martin's wishes, and then, following Sonia's affair with Naomi Julien, Pauline refuses to give Sonia access to the child after Martin regains custody. Critic for The Guardian, Grace Dent, commented "At one point, you couldn't move around Walford for hitmen and gangsters, but now they've all been written out ... leaving Pauline Fowler to reign the square like sodding Pablo Escobar in a sky-blue tabard and ski-pants, decreeing who can see their own kids, who can drink where and what everyone's eating in the cafe so as they won't spoil their teas. If I was Sonia, I'd have ransacked the hospital's dangerous drugs box by now and given that old crone a renal meltdown." Various rows, slaps and insults were featured between the characters, caused by Pauline's continuous interference in Sonia's relationships with Martin and Rebecca. As Martin began to cede, allowing Sonia access to their daughter, Pauline was shown to concoct ever more elaborate ways to obstruct Sonia's involvement.
During her latter years in EastEnders, Pauline is rarely without her Cairn Terrier, Betty. The dog is a stray taken in by the Fowler family in 2004, who quickly becomes Pauline's inseparable sidekick. Wendy Richard has since revealed that it was her decision for Pauline to own a Cairn: "When EastEnders asked if Pauline should have a dog I said it had to be a Cairn Terrier—and Betty joined us! She's wonderful, she loves me and I love her." In the on-screen story, the dog is named after Pauline's aunt Betty, but in reality, Wendy Richard named her after Mollie Sugden's fictional character Betty Slocombe, who appeared along with Richard's Shirley Brahms in the sitcom, Are You Being Served?
### Second marriage
Several eligible bachelors are shown to express their interest in Pauline over the years, including the characters Derek Taylor in 1987, Danny Taurus in 1993, Jeff Healy (who proposes) in 1999, Eddie Skinner in 2000, and Terry Raymond, with whom she goes on a blind date in 2001. However, the character remains staunchly faithful to her late husband's memory, refusing to let the relationships progress beyond companionship. In 2001 Derek Harkinson (Ian Lavender) is introduced, an old school friend of Pauline's. Initial scripts indicated that Derek was being groomed as a romantic interest for Pauline, which she is shown to welcome. However, the storyline takes a twist when he reveals, to her shock, that he is gay. 2002 sees Derek move in with the Fowler family, unconventionally settling into the show as a replacement father figure for Mark and Martin and as Pauline's best friend.
In 2005, Pauline embarks on a romance with a new character, Joe Macer (Ray Brooks), whom she meets at salsa classes. A relationship develops, and despite her initial trepidation, Pauline remarries in 2006, after almost a decade alone. Pauline's marriage to Joe was an attempt to give the character a "new lease of life", and her wedding day was screened to coincide with EastEnders 21st anniversary. Richard was openly opposed to her character remarrying, but she was eventually convinced by the executive producer and battled, successfully, for Pauline to keep the "Fowler" surname. However, in July 2006, Wendy Richard announced that she was leaving EastEnders. Richard felt that she did not have the same chemistry with Ray Brooks, who played Joe, as she did with Bill Treacher, who played Arthur. She refuted producers' opinions that Pauline and Joe "looked good together" and felt that she and Brooks had to work very hard to turn them into a "realistic-looking couple."
Within the storyline, just two months after the wedding, Pauline's marriage is shown to sour after she discovers Joe's criminal past. Their relationship steadily deteriorates throughout the year, and in December 2006 Pauline ends the marriage—removing her wedding ring and informing Joe that he "was half the man that Arthur had been, that she had never really loved him and that their sex life was a sham." The resulting row sees Joe insult Pauline's family—suggesting that her "perfect marriage" with Arthur was "nothing but a fantasy" and branding Mark "diseased", Michelle a "scrubber" and Arthur a "con"—to which Pauline responds by smashing a plate over his head. Wendy Richard commented, "It was not just the memory of Arthur that stopped the marriage to Joe being a success. He was proven to be a weak and untruthful man. That is what caused the marriage to be a non-starter. Pauline was not mean to Joe, he used her ... and lied to her."
### Deception, reclusiveness and death
Viewers saw the slow build-up to Pauline's climactic exit throughout the latter part of 2006. The character's bitter decline involves depression, pretending to have a brain tumour to scupper the revived relationship between her son Martin and his ex-wife Sonia, marital breakdown, and finally ostracism after Martin and the rest of Albert Square discover her lie. Having successfully alienated everyone around her, Pauline plans to go to America to join her daughter. Wendy Richard commented on the reasons behind Pauline's actions: "she cannot forgive. For anyone to hurt a member of her family so badly is incomprehensible to Pauline. She is a good, but unforgiving woman. Sonia is more than just a thorn in Pauline's side. She is angry because she feels Martin has let her down in returning to Sonia. She feels he could have discussed it with her more and talked her round for the sake of Rebecca. Pauline will blame her decision to leave on Sonia—another way of punishing Martin. Even though she is really hurting over leaving Rebecca, Pauline is determined to go. She realised she never really loved Joe, he has lied to her too many times ... Although I know Pauline better than anyone, even I cannot fathom out why she made up the brain tumour story."
The character was killed off in a dramatic storyline, which aired on Christmas Day 2006 and was watched by an estimated 10.7 million viewers. The episode sees Sonia denouncing Pauline as "sick" for not wanting to share her son with the woman he loved, to which Pauline retorts, "I'll tell you what's sick. You. Daughter of a scrubber, lesbian, under-age mother who gave away her own baby." The row culminates with Sonia slapping Pauline, causing her to fall to the floor and break the Fowler fruit bowl—"the enduring symbol of her family, which smashed, significantly, into smithereens." Though Pauline resolves to stay and reunite with her family in the end, she does not get the chance, as she collapses and dies in the middle of Albert Square, seemingly due to her fall.
The Christmas Day episodes, written by Simon Ashdown, drew on the show's early history to mark the occasion of Pauline's exit, which was particularly emphasised by the use of flashback vocal snippets of several members of Pauline's deceased family. The critic for The Times, Tim Teeman, commented that "Wendy Richard as Pauline had the air of the departing diva, queen of all she had loved, lost and laid waste to, her face set in a silent snarl." In addition, her parting scene with the other EastEnders long-serving "grand dame" Dot Cotton (played by June Brown) has also been praised, with Teeman commenting: "The really choking scene came in the launderette between Pauline and Dot ... Here the two grand dames had worked, bitched and consoled for years. Richard and the wonderful June Brown played their final encounter as intensely as the characters deserved."
Richard herself has been less complimentary about her alter ego's departure. She has spoken of her disappointment regarding Pauline's "changing character" and "depressing final storyline". In an interview with the Biography Channel she explained: "I did say, promise me you won't make Pauline nasty before she goes, and unfortunately they did ... I wasn't too happy with the way it was done. They were changing Pauline's character ... Pauline would never have remarried. She would have remained a widow, sitting in that chair in the corner. That's what [show creator] Julia Smith wanted, and that's what I felt was right, so I resigned ... I think it's a shame because the Fowlers have gone completely now ... There was so much history with that family."
As a final tribute to Pauline and Wendy Richard, the BBC aired a special television programme, EastEnders Revealed: Goodbye Pauline, which provided an emotional look back at Pauline's pivotal storylines during her time in Walford. It also reunited Wendy Richard with prior cast-mates Todd Carty and James Alexandrou (Mark and Martin respectively), and featured character commentary and tributes from television critics and EastEnders actors such as Anna Wing and Pam St. Clement (Lou and Pat). During the programme—which aired on New Year's Day, 2007—Wendy Richard reflected upon how "proud" she was of her character, commenting: "Pauline had everything in life thrown at her and I think she coped with it very well. It showed how people deal with their problems ... She wasn't always grumpy ... she did have lots of laughs, but sadly people don't seem to remember that, which is a shame ... they still harp on about her wearing her cardigans and Pauline stopped wearing cardigans three years after EastEnders started. She is a good woman, she's a kind woman, a loving woman and all she ever thought about was her family. That was the most important thing in her life."
The storyline continued into 2007, as first Pauline's funeral is interrupted by the police in order to perform an autopsy on her body, and then Pauline's nemesis Sonia is arrested for the murder. It is later revealed that the killing blow had actually come from Pauline's husband Joe, who breaks down and confesses to Dot that he had rowed with Pauline on Christmas Day (off-screen) and, in a fury, struck her across the head with a frying pan, causing a brain haemorrhage that claimed her life. The plot's eventual climax in February 2007 led to the exits of several established characters connected with Pauline. This included Martin, Sonia, and Joe, who is dramatically killed off after confessing to Pauline's murder, by falling out of the Fowlers' first floor window while trying to apprehend a hysterical Dot. Pauline is cremated, and her ashes buried at Arthur's graveside, by Dot, in an episode that aired in June 2007.
## Reception
At the time of her departure from the serial, Pauline was the second-longest running character to feature in EastEnders and one of only two original characters to remain in the show for almost 22 years. Her baggy woolly cardigan and long-suffering nature have led to her being labelled as a soap institution, a "soap legend" and a "television icon". Actress Wendy Richard was awarded an Order of the British Empire MBE medal in 2000 by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, and when the Queen visited the set of EastEnders in 2001, Wendy Richard was the first actress introduced, who then accompanied her and Prince Philip on their tour of the set.
Despite being popular with many, the character of Pauline has also garnered much criticism over the years. Persistent criticism has been given to the character's dowdy attire, particularly the perception that she rarely wears anything but a baggy cardigan; a claim that Wendy Richard herself categorically disputes. In addition, Pauline has also received much criticism for her miserable demeanour—"a face like a month of wet weekends" and "a voice that could curdle milk." She has been described as the "Wicked Witch of Walford" and "a character who became a byword for downtrodden haggery."
Lucy Mangan, the culture critic from The Guardian newspaper, summed up the character: "Pauline Fowler is surely one of the oddest soap creations ever. She is a character without humour, charisma or indeed any redeeming features who became progressively, unrelentingly miserable ... She was presumably intended to be the anchoring force for EastEnders, but because of the writers' unprecedented decision to break with traditional narrative rules and give her not a single redeeming feature, she became more of a sucking chest wound than the heart of the show." This opinion is perhaps shared by a proportion of viewers, as Pauline was voted the 35th most annoying person of 2006 in a BBC Three poll, being the only fictional character to appear on the list. In a Radio Times poll of over 5,000 people in 2004, 13% chose Pauline Fowler as the soap character they would most like to see retired. She came third in the poll, behind EastEnders Den Watts (17%) and Coronation Street's Ken Barlow (15%).
Although it had been suggested that Pauline's presence in EastEnders was largely peripheral for some time, the news of her departure in 2006 was met with dismay by fans and soap journalists alike. In a report for BBC News, one viewer commented "it's so sad, because I've watched her for 20 years. She's such a large character", and another said "If she goes then I think EastEnders is finished." BBC controller of continuing drama, John Yorke, commented Richard "occupies a huge place in people's hearts", and executive producer Kate Harwood said, "For many years Wendy simply was EastEnders for the audience and Pauline's indomitable nature typified the grit and fight that embodies the EastEnders' spirit ... We thank her for everything she has done for the show."
Inside Soap editor, Steven Murphy, said that the fact Pauline has been such an "enduring staple" will make it hard for fans to cope with her departure. "It's huge in soap terms ... She's a character people love to hate—you just assumed she would be there forever." When addressing the repercussions that Pauline's exit would have on the soap, Murphy had this to say: "characters like Pauline are like glue, because they're connected to so many other characters and they can help hold stories together. In terms of that [EastEnders] has very few of those now." Jonathan Hughes, editor of All About Soap magazine, added "[Pauline's] an absolute legend ... You can't imagine the show without her ... People will miss her because she's been such an important part of EastEnders for so many years." However, not all viewers were sorry to hear of the character's retirement, with one commenting "How can you have someone like Pauline Fowler on the television for 21 years? It's the best thing that's ever happened to television [getting rid of her]. Kill her off? I would have blown her up years ago".
Pauline's exit in December 2006 was described by The Times critic, Tim Teeman, as a landmark episode and a "significant sayonara". He described scenes between Pauline and Dot as "the most moving in a soap this year" and added that "it was a delight to finally alight on an episode ... that was so satisfying." Conversely, Pauline's exit was described as a "mess" by Kevin O'Sullivan, critic of the Sunday Mirror newspaper. He branded the character's final scene unconvincing and badly acted, commenting: "the appropriately feeble scene brought down the curtain on 20 terrible years of Wendy Richard's low-quality performances. We shall not see her like again. If we're lucky! ... I'm certain millions didn't tune in to say farewell to sour-faced Pauline. No, they were just checking to make sure she was really dead."
To mark Pauline's 22-year reign in EastEnders, Wendy Richard was awarded with a 'Lifetime Achievement' award at the British Soap Awards in May 2007. The award was presented by Todd Carty, who played her on-screen son Mark. Carty described Richard as the "heart and soul of EastEnders" and hailed her as an inspiration to everyone in the EastEnders cast. Richard was moved to tears when she collected the award.
## In popular culture and other media
When the series was launching in 1985, since Wendy Richard was the most recognisable actor from the original cast, she and her character Pauline were used heavily to promote EastEnders in the media. Wendy Richard, in character as Pauline, was chosen to narrate a special "dial-a-soap" service for EastEnders. Run by British Telecom, the facility allowed people who had missed an episode to ring a number and get an instant update, up to 88 seconds long. It was the first television show to provide such a service. Between 1985 and 2006, Pauline was featured in much EastEnders-related merchandise and promotional material, including calendars, cast-cards, annuals, novels, a knitting pattern book and a greeting card.
The well-known character of Pauline Fowler has also been referenced in various television programmes, unrelated to the EastEnders universe. In 1997 she was mentioned in an episode of the successful BBC drama This Life. Two key characters, Anna and Ferdy, watch an episode of EastEnders on television and mock Pauline's hysterics and her well-documented tendency to wear cardigans. The character was also regularly spoofed in the BBC comedy sketch show, The Real McCoy (1991–1995). One of the show's recurring sketches featured a spoof version of EastEnders, with black comedians taking over roles of well known EastEnders characters, who frequent a pub called Rub-a-Dub. The comedian Llewella Gideon played the role of Pauline. The sketches placed considerable emphasis on the character's high-pitched voice and her tendency to whine. The character's fashion sense has also been referred to in BBC Two sitcom Beautiful People'' (2008).
## See also
- Fowlers in Ireland
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5,464,960 |
Enzyme inhibitor
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Molecule that blocks enzyme activity
|
[
"Enzyme inhibitors",
"Medicinal chemistry",
"Metabolism"
] |
An enzyme inhibitor is a molecule that binds to an enzyme and blocks its activity. Enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions necessary for life, in which substrate molecules are converted into products. An enzyme facilitates a specific chemical reaction by binding the substrate to its active site, a specialized area on the enzyme that accelerates the most difficult step of the reaction.
An enzyme inhibitor stops ("inhibits") this process, either by binding to the enzyme's active site (thus preventing the substrate itself from binding) or by binding to another site on the enzyme such that the enzyme's catalysis of the reaction is blocked. Enzyme inhibitors may bind reversibly or irreversibly. Irreversible inhibitors form a chemical bond with the enzyme such that the enzyme is inhibited until the chemical bond is broken. By contrast, reversible inhibitors bind non-covalently and may spontaneously leave the enzyme, allowing the enzyme to resume its function. Reversible inhibitors produce different types of inhibition depending on whether they bind to the enzyme, the enzyme-substrate complex, or both.
Enzyme inhibitors play an important role in all cells, since they are generally specific to one enzyme each and serve to control that enzyme's activity. For example, enzymes in a metabolic pathway may be inhibited by molecules produced later in the pathway, thus curtailing the production of molecules that are no longer needed. This type of negative feedback is an important way to maintain balance in a cell. Enzyme inhibitors also control essential enzymes such as proteases or nucleases that, if left unchecked, may damage a cell. Many poisons produced by animals or plants are enzyme inhibitors that block the activity of crucial enzymes in prey or predators.
Many drug molecules are enzyme inhibitors that inhibit an aberrant human enzyme or an enzyme critical for the survival of a pathogen such as a virus, bacterium or parasite. Examples include methotrexate (used in chemotherapy and in treating rheumatic arthritis) and the protease inhibitors used to treat HIV/AIDS. Since anti-pathogen inhibitors generally target only one enzyme, such drugs are highly specific and generally produce few side effects in humans, provided that no analogous enzyme is found in humans. (This is often the case, since such pathogens and humans are genetically distant.) Medicinal enzyme inhibitors often have low dissociation constants, meaning that only a minute amount of the inhibitor is required to inhibit the enzyme. A low concentration of the enzyme inhibitor reduces the risk for liver and kidney damage and other adverse drug reactions in humans. Hence the discovery and refinement of enzyme inhibitors is an active area of research in biochemistry and pharmacology.
## Structural classes
Enzyme inhibitors are a chemically diverse set of substances that range in size from organic small molecules to macromolecular proteins.
Small molecule inhibitors include essential primary metabolites that inhibit upstream enzymes that produce those metabolites. This provides a negative feedback loop that prevents over production of metabolites and thus maintains cellular homeostasis (steady internal conditions). Small molecule enzyme inhibitors also include secondary metabolites, which are not essential to the organism that produces them, but provide the organism with a evolutionary advantage, in that they can be used to repel predators or competing organisms or immobilize prey. In addition, many drugs are small molecule enzyme inhibitors that target either disease-modifying enzymes in the patient or enzymes in pathogens which are required for the growth and reproduction of the pathogen.
In addition to small molecules, some proteins act as enzyme inhibitors. The most prominent example are serpins (serine protease inhibitors) which are produced by animals to protect against inappropriate enzyme activation and by plants to prevent predation. Another class of inhibitor proteins is the ribonuclease inhibitors, which bind to ribonucleases in one of the tightest known protein–protein interactions. A special case of protein enzyme inhibitors are zymogens that contain an autoinhibitory N-terminal peptide that binds to the active site of enzyme that intramolecularly blocks its activity as a protective mechanism against uncontrolled catalysis. The Nterminal peptide is cleaved (split) from the zymogen enzyme precursor by another enzyme to release an active enzyme.
The binding site of inhibitors on enzymes is most commonly the same site that binds the substrate of the enzyme. These active site inhibitors are known as orthosteric ("regular" orientation) inhibitors. The mechanism of orthosteric inhibition is simply to prevent substrate binding to the enzyme through direct competition which in turn prevents the enzyme from catalysing the conversion of substrates into products. Alternatively, the inhibitor can bind to a site remote from the enzyme active site. These are known as allosteric ("alternative" orientation) inhibitors. The mechanisms of allosteric inhibition are varied and include changing the conformation (shape) of the enzyme such that it can no longer bind substrate (kinetically indistinguishable from competitive orthosteric inhibition) or alternatively stabilise binding of substrate to the enzyme but lock the enzyme in a conformation which is no longer catalytically active.
## Reversible inhibitors
Reversible inhibitors attach to enzymes with non-covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic interactions and ionic bonds. Multiple weak bonds between the inhibitor and the enzyme active site combine to produce strong and specific binding.
In contrast to irreversible inhibitors, reversible inhibitors generally do not undergo chemical reactions when bound to the enzyme and can be easily removed by dilution or dialysis. A special case is covalent reversible inhibitors that form a chemical bond with the enzyme, but the bond can be cleaved so the inhibition is fully reversible.
Reversible inhibitors are generally categorized into four types, as introduced by Cleland in 1963. They are classified according to the effect of the inhibitor on the V<sub>max</sub> (maximum reaction rate catalysed by the enzyme) and K<sub>m</sub> (the concentration of substrate resulting in half maximal enzyme activity) as the concentration of the enzyme's substrate is varied.
### Competitive
In competitive inhibition the substrate and inhibitor cannot bind to the enzyme at the same time. This usually results from the inhibitor having an affinity for the active site of an enzyme where the substrate also binds; the substrate and inhibitor compete for access to the enzyme's active site. This type of inhibition can be overcome by sufficiently high concentrations of substrate (V<sub>max</sub> remains constant), i.e., by out-competing the inhibitor. However, the apparent K<sub>m</sub> will increase as it takes a higher concentration of the substrate to reach the K<sub>m</sub> point, or half the V<sub>max</sub>. Competitive inhibitors are often similar in structure to the real substrate (see for example the "methotrexate versus folate" figure in the "Drugs" section).
### Uncompetitive
In uncompetitive inhibition the inhibitor binds only to the enzyme-substrate complex. This type of inhibition causes V<sub>max</sub> to decrease (maximum velocity decreases as a result of removing activated complex) and K<sub>m</sub> to decrease (due to better binding efficiency as a result of Le Chatelier's principle and the effective elimination of the ES complex thus decreasing the K<sub>m</sub> which indicates a higher binding affinity). Uncompetitive inhibition is rare.
### Non-competitive
In non-competitive inhibition the binding of the inhibitor to the enzyme reduces its activity but does not affect the binding of substrate. As a result, the extent of inhibition depends only on the concentration of the inhibitor. V<sub>max</sub> will decrease due to the inability for the reaction to proceed as efficiently, but K<sub>m</sub> will remain the same as the actual binding of the substrate, by definition, will still function properly.
### Mixed
In mixed inhibition the inhibitor may bind to the enzyme whether or not the substrate has already bound. Hence mixed inhibition is a combination of competitive and noncompetitive inhibition. Furthermore, the affinity of the inhibitor for the free enzyme and the enzyme-substrate complex may differ. By increasing concentrations of substrate [S], this type of inhibition can be reduced (due to the competitive contribution), but not entirely overcome (due to the noncompetitive component). Although it is possible for mixed-type inhibitors to bind in the active site, this type of inhibition generally results from an allosteric effect where the inhibitor binds to a different site on an enzyme. Inhibitor binding to this allosteric site changes the conformation (that is, the tertiary structure or three-dimensional shape) of the enzyme so that the affinity of the substrate for the active site is reduced.
These four types of inhibition can also be distinguished by the effect of increasing the substrate concentration [S] on the degree of inhibition caused by a given amount of inhibitor. For competitive inhibition the degree of inhibition is reduced by increasing [S], for noncompetitive inhibition the degree of inhibition is unchanged, and for uncompetitive (also called anticompetitive) inhibition the degree of inhibition increases with [S].
### Quantitative description
Reversible inhibition can be described quantitatively in terms of the inhibitor's binding to the enzyme and to the enzyme-substrate complex, and its effects on the kinetic constants of the enzyme. In the classic Michaelis-Menten scheme (shown in the "inhibition mechanism schematic" diagram), an enzyme (E) binds to its substrate (S) to form the enzyme–substrate complex ES. Upon catalysis, this complex breaks down to release product P and free enzyme. The inhibitor (I) can bind to either E or ES with the dissociation constants K<sub>i</sub> or K<sub>i</sub>', respectively.
- Competitive inhibitors can bind to E, but not to ES. Competitive inhibition increases K<sub>m</sub> (i.e., the inhibitor interferes with substrate binding), but does not affect V<sub>max</sub> (the inhibitor does not hamper catalysis in ES because it cannot bind to ES).
- Uncompetitive inhibitors bind to ES. Uncompetitive inhibition decreases both K<sub>m</sub> and V<sub>max</sub>. The inhibitor affects substrate binding by increasing the enzyme's affinity for the substrate (decreasing K<sub>m</sub>) as well as hampering catalysis (decreases V<sub>max</sub>).
- Non-competitive inhibitors have identical affinities for E and ES (K<sub>i</sub> = K<sub>i</sub>'). Non-competitive inhibition does not change K<sub>m</sub> (i.e., it does not affect substrate binding) but decreases V<sub>max</sub> (i.e., inhibitor binding hampers catalysis).
- Mixed-type inhibitors bind to both E and ES, but their affinities for these two forms of the enzyme are different (K<sub>i</sub> ≠ K<sub>i</sub>'). Thus, mixed-type inhibitors affect substrate binding (increase or decrease K<sub>m</sub>) and hamper catalysis in the ES complex (decrease V<sub>max</sub>).
When an enzyme has multiple substrates, inhibitors can show different types of inhibition depending on which substrate is considered. This results from the active site containing two different binding sites within the active site, one for each substrate. For example, an inhibitor might compete with substrate A for the first binding site, but be a non-competitive inhibitor with respect to substrate B in the second binding site.
Traditionally reversible enzyme inhibitors have been classified as competitive, uncompetitive, or non-competitive, according to their effects on K<sub>m</sub> and V<sub>max</sub>. These three types of inhibition result respectively from the inhibitor binding only to the enzyme E in the absence of substrate S, to the enzyme–substrate complex ES, or to both. The division of these classes arises from a problem in their derivation and results in the need to use two different binding constants for one binding event. It is further assumed that binding of the inhibitor to the enzyme results in 100% inhibition and fails to consider the possibility of partial inhibition. The common form of the inhibitory term also obscures the relationship between the inhibitor binding to the enzyme and its relationship to any other binding term be it the Michaelis–Menten equation or a dose response curve associated with ligand receptor binding. To demonstrate the relationship the following rearrangement can be made:
<math chem>\begin{align}\cfrac{V\_\max}{1 + \cfrac\ce{[I]}{K_i}} &={V\_\max}\left(\cfrac{K_i}{K_i+[\ce I]}\right)&&\text{multiply by } \cfrac{K_i}{K_i}=1\\\\
&={V\_\max}\left(\cfrac{K_i+[\ce I]-[\ce I]}{K_i+[\ce I]}\right)&&\text{add }[\ce I]-[\ce I]=0\text{ to numerator}\\\\ &={V\_\max}\left(1-\cfrac{[\ce I]}{K_i+[\ce I]}\right)&&\text{simplify }\cfrac{K_i+[\ce I]}{K_i+[\ce I]}=1\\\\ &=V\_\max - V\_\max \cfrac\ce{[I]}{K_i+[\ce I]}&&\text{multiply out by }V\_\max \end{align}</math>
This rearrangement demonstrates that similar to the Michaelis–Menten equation, the maximal rate of reaction depends on the proportion of the enzyme population interacting with its substrate.
fraction of the enzyme population bound by substrate
$\cfrac\ce{[S]}{[\ce S]+K_m}$
fraction of the enzyme population bound by inhibitor
$\cfrac\ce{[I]}{[\ce I]+K_i}$
the effect of the inhibitor is a result of the percent of the enzyme population interacting with inhibitor. The only problem with this equation in its present form is that it assumes absolute inhibition of the enzyme with inhibitor binding, when in fact there can be a wide range of effects anywhere from 100% inhibition of substrate turn over to no inhibition. To account for this the equation can be easily modified to allow for different degrees of inhibition by including a delta V<sub>max</sub> term.
$V_\max - \Delta V_\max \cfrac\ce{[I]}{[\ce I]+K_i}$
or
$V_{\max1} - (V_{\max1} - V_{\max2} ) \cfrac\ce{[I]}{[\ce I]+K_i}$
This term can then define the residual enzymatic activity present when the inhibitor is interacting with individual enzymes in the population. However the inclusion of this term has the added value of allowing for the possibility of activation if the secondary V<sub>max</sub> term turns out to be higher than the initial term. To account for the possibly of activation as well the notation can then be rewritten replacing the inhibitor "I" with a modifier term (stimulator or inhibitor) denoted here as "X".
$V_{\max1} - (V_{\max1} - V_{\max2} ) \cfrac\ce{[X]}{[\ce X]+K_x}$
While this terminology results in a simplified way of dealing with kinetic effects relating to the maximum velocity of the Michaelis–Menten equation, it highlights potential problems with the term used to describe effects relating to the K<sub>m</sub>. The K<sub>m</sub> relating to the affinity of the enzyme for the substrate should in most cases relate to potential changes in the binding site of the enzyme which would directly result from enzyme inhibitor interactions. As such a term similar to the delta V<sub>max</sub> term proposed above to modulate V<sub>max</sub> should be appropriate in most situations:
$K_{m1} - (K_{m1} - K_{m2}) \cfrac\ce{[X]}{[\ce X]+K_x}$
### Dissociation constants
An enzyme inhibitor is characterised by its dissociation constant K<sub>i</sub>, the concentration at which the inhibitor half occupies the enzyme. In non-competitive inhibition the inhibitor can also bind to the enzyme-substrate complex, and the presence of bound substrate can change the affinity of the inhibitor for the enzyme, resulting in a second dissociation constant K<sub>i</sub>'. Hence K<sub>i</sub> and K<sub>i</sub>' are the dissociation constants of the inhibitor for the enzyme and to the enzyme-substrate complex, respectively. The enzyme-inhibitor constant K<sub>i</sub> can be measured directly by various methods; one especially accurate method is isothermal titration calorimetry, in which the inhibitor is titrated into a solution of enzyme and the heat released or absorbed is measured. However, the other dissociation constant K<sub>i</sub>' is difficult to measure directly, since the enzyme-substrate complex is short-lived and undergoing a chemical reaction to form the product. Hence, K<sub>i</sub>' is usually measured indirectly, by observing the enzyme activity under various substrate and inhibitor concentrations, and fitting the data via nonlinear regression to a modified Michaelis–Menten equation.
<math>
V = \frac{V\_{max}[S]}{\alpha K\_{m} + \alpha^{\prime}[S]} = \frac{(1/\alpha^{\prime})V\_{max}[S]}{(\alpha/\alpha^{\prime}) K\_{m} + [S]} </math>
where the modifying factors α and α' are defined by the inhibitor concentration and its two dissociation constants
<math>
\alpha = 1 + \frac{[I]}{K\_{i}} </math>
<math>
\alpha^{\prime} = 1 + \frac{[I]}{K\_{i}^{\prime}}. </math>
Thus, in the presence of the inhibitor, the enzyme's effective K<sub>m</sub> and V<sub>max</sub> become (α/α')K<sub>m</sub> and (1/α')V<sub>max</sub>, respectively. However, the modified Michaelis-Menten equation assumes that binding of the inhibitor to the enzyme has reached equilibrium, which may be a very slow process for inhibitors with sub-nanomolar dissociation constants. In these cases the inhibition becomes effectively irreversible, hence it is more practical to treat such tight-binding inhibitors as irreversible (see below).
The effects of different types of reversible enzyme inhibitors on enzymatic activity can be visualised using graphical representations of the Michaelis–Menten equation, such as Lineweaver–Burk, Eadie-Hofstee or Hanes-Woolf plots. An illustration is provided by the three Lineweaver–Burk plots depicted in the Lineweaver–Burk diagrams figure. In the top diagram the competitive inhibition lines intersect on the y-axis, illustrating that such inhibitors do not affect V<sub>max</sub>. In the bottom diagram the non-competitive inhibition lines intersect on the x-axis, showing these inhibitors do not affect K<sub>m</sub>. However, since it can be difficult to estimate K<sub>i</sub> and K<sub>i</sub>' accurately from such plots, it is advisable to estimate these constants using more reliable nonlinear regression methods.
### Special cases
#### Partially competitive
The mechanism of partially competitive inhibition is similar to that of non-competitive, except that the EIS complex has catalytic activity, which may be lower or even higher (partially competitive activation) than that of the enzyme–substrate (ES) complex. This inhibition typically displays a lower V<sub>max</sub>, but an unaffected K<sub>m</sub> value.
#### Substrate or product
Substrate or product inhibition is where either an enzymes substrate or product also act as an inhibitor. This inhibition may follow the competitive, uncompetitive or mixed patterns. In substrate inhibition there is a progressive decrease in activity at high substrate concentrations, potentially from an enzyme having two competing substrate-binding sites. At low substrate, the high-affinity site is occupied and normal kinetics are followed. However, at higher concentrations, the second inhibitory site becomes occupied, inhibiting the enzyme. Product inhibition (either the enzyme's own product, or a product to an enzyme downstream in its metabolic pathway) is often a regulatory feature in metabolism and can be a form of negative feedback.
#### Slow-tight
Slow-tight inhibition occurs when the initial enzyme–inhibitor complex EI undergoes conformational isomerism (a change in shape) to a second more tightly held complex, EI\*, but the overall inhibition process is reversible. This manifests itself as slowly increasing enzyme inhibition. Under these conditions, traditional Michaelis–Menten kinetics give a false value for K<sub>i</sub>, which is time–dependent. The true value of K<sub>i</sub> can be obtained through more complex analysis of the on (k<sub>on</sub>) and off (k<sub>off</sub>) rate constants for inhibitor association with kinetics similar to irreversible inhibition.
#### Multi-substrate analogues
Multi-substrate analogue inhibitors are high affinity selective inhibitors that can be prepared for enzymes that catalyse reactions with more than one substrate by capturing the binding energy of each of those substrate into one molecule. For example, in the formyl transfer reactions of purine biosynthesis, a potent Multi-substrate Adduct Inhibitor (MAI) to glycinamide ribonucleotide (GAR) TFase was prepared synthetically by linking analogues of the GAR substrate and the N-10-formyl tetrahydrofolate cofactor together to produce thioglycinamide ribonucleotide dideazafolate (TGDDF), or enzymatically from the natural GAR substrate to yield GDDF. Here the subnanomolar dissociation constant (KD) of TGDDF was greater than predicted presumably due to entropic advantages gained and/or positive interactions acquired through the atoms linking the components. MAIs have also been observed to be produced in cells by reactions of pro-drugs such as isoniazid or enzyme inhibitor ligands (for example, PTC124) with cellular cofactors such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) respectively.
### Examples
As enzymes have evolved to bind their substrates tightly, and most reversible inhibitors bind in the active site of enzymes, it is unsurprising that some of these inhibitors are strikingly similar in structure to the substrates of their targets. Inhibitors of dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) are prominent examples. Other examples of these substrate mimics are the protease inhibitors, a therapeutically effective class of antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS. The structure of ritonavir, a peptidomimetic (peptide mimic) protease inhibitor containing three peptide bonds, as shown in the "competitive inhibition" figure above. As this drug resembles the peptide that is the substrate of the HIV protease, it competes with the substrate in the enzyme's active site.
Enzyme inhibitors are often designed to mimic the transition state or intermediate of an enzyme-catalysed reaction. This ensures that the inhibitor exploits the transition state stabilising effect of the enzyme, resulting in a better binding affinity (lower K<sub>i</sub>) than substrate-based designs. An example of such a transition state inhibitor is the antiviral drug oseltamivir; this drug mimics the planar nature of the ring oxonium ion in the reaction of the viral enzyme neuraminidase.
However, not all inhibitors are based on the structures of substrates. For example, the structure of another HIV protease inhibitor tipranavir is not based on a peptide and has no obvious structural similarity to a protein substrate. These non-peptide inhibitors can be more stable than inhibitors containing peptide bonds, because they will not be substrates for peptidases and are less likely to be degraded.
In drug design it is important to consider the concentrations of substrates to which the target enzymes are exposed. For example, some protein kinase inhibitors have chemical structures that are similar to ATP, one of the substrates of these enzymes. However, drugs that are simple competitive inhibitors will have to compete with the high concentrations of ATP in the cell. Protein kinases can also be inhibited by competition at the binding sites where the kinases interact with their substrate proteins, and most proteins are present inside cells at concentrations much lower than the concentration of ATP. As a consequence, if two protein kinase inhibitors both bind in the active site with similar affinity, but only one has to compete with ATP, then the competitive inhibitor at the protein-binding site will inhibit the enzyme more effectively.
## Irreversible inhibitors
### Types
Irreversible inhibitors covalently bind to an enzyme, and this type of inhibition can therefore not be readily reversed. Irreversible inhibitors often contain reactive functional groups such as nitrogen mustards, aldehydes, haloalkanes, alkenes, Michael acceptors, phenyl sulfonates, or fluorophosphonates. These electrophilic groups react with amino acid side chains to form covalent adducts. The residues modified are those with side chains containing nucleophiles such as hydroxyl or sulfhydryl groups; these include the amino acids serine (that reacts with DFP, see the "DFP reaction" diagram), and also cysteine, threonine, or tyrosine.
Irreversible inhibition is different from irreversible enzyme inactivation. Irreversible inhibitors are generally specific for one class of enzyme and do not inactivate all proteins; they do not function by destroying protein structure but by specifically altering the active site of their target. For example, extremes of pH or temperature usually cause denaturation of all protein structure, but this is a non-specific effect. Similarly, some non-specific chemical treatments destroy protein structure: for example, heating in concentrated hydrochloric acid will hydrolyse the peptide bonds holding proteins together, releasing free amino acids.
Irreversible inhibitors display time-dependent inhibition and their potency therefore cannot be characterised by an IC<sub>50</sub> value. This is because the amount of active enzyme at a given concentration of irreversible inhibitor will be different depending on how long the inhibitor is pre-incubated with the enzyme. Instead, k<sub>obs</sub>/[I] values are used, where k<sub>obs</sub> is the observed pseudo-first order rate of inactivation (obtained by plotting the log of % activity versus time) and [I] is the concentration of inhibitor. The k<sub>obs</sub>/[I] parameter is valid as long as the inhibitor does not saturate binding with the enzyme (in which case k<sub>obs</sub> = k<sub>inact</sub>) where k<sub>inact</sub> is the rate of inactivation.
### Measuring
Irreversible inhibitors first form a reversible non-covalent complex with the enzyme (EI or ESI). Subsequently a chemical reaction occurs between the enzyme and inhibitor to produce the covalently modified "dead-end complex" EI\* (an irreversible covalent complex). The rate at which EI\* is formed is called the inactivation rate or k<sub>inact</sub>. Since formation of EI may compete with ES, binding of irreversible inhibitors can be prevented by competition either with substrate or with a second, reversible inhibitor. This protection effect is good evidence of a specific reaction of the irreversible inhibitor with the active site.
The binding and inactivation steps of this reaction are investigated by incubating the enzyme with inhibitor and assaying the amount of activity remaining over time. The activity will be decreased in a time-dependent manner, usually following exponential decay. Fitting these data to a rate equation gives the rate of inactivation at this concentration of inhibitor. This is done at several different concentrations of inhibitor. If a reversible EI complex is involved the inactivation rate will be saturable and fitting this curve will give k<sub>inact</sub> and K<sub>i</sub>.
Another method that is widely used in these analyses is mass spectrometry. Here, accurate measurement of the mass of the unmodified native enzyme and the inactivated enzyme gives the increase in mass caused by reaction with the inhibitor and shows the stoichiometry of the reaction. This is usually done using a MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer. In a complementary technique, peptide mass fingerprinting involves digestion of the native and modified protein with a protease such as trypsin. This will produce a set of peptides that can be analysed using a mass spectrometer. The peptide that changes in mass after reaction with the inhibitor will be the one that contains the site of modification.
### Slow binding
Not all irreversible inhibitors form covalent adducts with their enzyme targets. Some reversible inhibitors bind so tightly to their target enzyme that they are essentially irreversible. These tight-binding inhibitors may show kinetics similar to covalent irreversible inhibitors. In these cases some of these inhibitors rapidly bind to the enzyme in a low-affinity EI complex and this then undergoes a slower rearrangement to a very tightly bound EI\* complex (see the "irreversible inhibition mechanism" diagram). This kinetic behaviour is called slow-binding. This slow rearrangement after binding often involves a conformational change as the enzyme "clamps down" around the inhibitor molecule. Examples of slow-binding inhibitors include some important drugs, such methotrexate, allopurinol, and the activated form of acyclovir.
### Some examples
Diisopropylfluorophosphate (DFP) is an example of an irreversible protease inhibitor (see the "DFP reaction" diagram). The enzyme hydrolyses the phosphorus–fluorine bond, but the phosphate residue remains bound to the serine in the active site, deactivating it. Similarly, DFP also reacts with the active site of acetylcholine esterase in the synapses of neurons, and consequently is a potent neurotoxin, with a lethal dose of less than 100mg.
Suicide inhibition is an unusual type of irreversible inhibition where the enzyme converts the inhibitor into a reactive form in its active site. An example is the inhibitor of polyamine biosynthesis, α-difluoromethylornithine (DFMO), which is an analogue of the amino acid ornithine, and is used to treat African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). Ornithine decarboxylase can catalyse the decarboxylation of DFMO instead of ornithine (see the "DFMO inhibitor mechanism" diagram). However, this decarboxylation reaction is followed by the elimination of a fluorine atom, which converts this catalytic intermediate into a conjugated imine, a highly electrophilic species. This reactive form of DFMO then reacts with either a cysteine or lysine residue in the active site to irreversibly inactivate the enzyme.
Since irreversible inhibition often involves the initial formation of a non-covalent enzyme inhibitor (EI) complex, it is sometimes possible for an inhibitor to bind to an enzyme in more than one way. For example, in the figure showing trypanothione reductase from the human protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, two molecules of an inhibitor called quinacrine mustard are bound in its active site. The top molecule is bound reversibly, but the lower one is bound covalently as it has reacted with an amino acid residue through its nitrogen mustard group.
## Applications
Enzyme inhibitors are found in nature and also produced artificially in the laboratory. Naturally occurring enzyme inhibitors regulate many metabolic processes and are essential for life. In addition, naturally produced poisons are often enzyme inhibitors that have evolved for use as toxic agents against predators, prey, and competing organisms. These natural toxins include some of the most poisonous substances known. Artificial inhibitors are often used as drugs, but can also be insecticides such as malathion, herbicides such as glyphosate, or disinfectants such as triclosan. Other artificial enzyme inhibitors block acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme which breaks down acetylcholine, and are used as nerve agents in chemical warfare.
### Metabolic regulation
Enzyme inhibition is a common feature of metabolic pathway control in cells. Metabolic flux through a pathway is often regulated by a pathway's metabolites acting as inhibitors and enhancers for the enzymes in that same pathway. The glycolytic pathway is a classic example. This catabolic pathway consumes glucose and produces ATP, NADH and pyruvate. A key step for the regulation of glycolysis is an early reaction in the pathway catalysed by phosphofructokinase1 (PFK1). When ATP levels rise, ATP binds an allosteric site in PFK1 to decrease the rate of the enzyme reaction; glycolysis is inhibited and ATP production falls. This negative feedback control helps maintain a steady concentration of ATP in the cell. However, metabolic pathways are not just regulated through inhibition since enzyme activation is equally important. With respect to PFK1, fructose 2,6-bisphosphate and ADP are examples of metabolites that are allosteric activators.
Physiological enzyme inhibition can also be produced by specific protein inhibitors. This mechanism occurs in the pancreas, which synthesises many digestive precursor enzymes known as zymogens. Many of these are activated by the trypsin protease, so it is important to inhibit the activity of trypsin in the pancreas to prevent the organ from digesting itself. One way in which the activity of trypsin is controlled is the production of a specific and potent trypsin inhibitor protein in the pancreas. This inhibitor binds tightly to trypsin, preventing the trypsin activity that would otherwise be detrimental to the organ. Although the trypsin inhibitor is a protein, it avoids being hydrolysed as a substrate by the protease by excluding water from trypsin's active site and destabilising the transition state. Other examples of physiological enzyme inhibitor proteins include the barstar inhibitor of the bacterial ribonuclease barnase.
### Natural poisons
Animals and plants have evolved to synthesise a vast array of poisonous products including secondary metabolites, peptides and proteins that can act as inhibitors. Natural toxins are usually small organic molecules and are so diverse that there are probably natural inhibitors for most metabolic processes. The metabolic processes targeted by natural poisons encompass more than enzymes in metabolic pathways and can also include the inhibition of receptor, channel and structural protein functions in a cell. For example, paclitaxel (taxol), an organic molecule found in the Pacific yew tree, binds tightly to tubulin dimers and inhibits their assembly into microtubules in the cytoskeleton.
Many natural poisons act as neurotoxins that can cause paralysis leading to death and function for defence against predators or in hunting and capturing prey. Some of these natural inhibitors, despite their toxic attributes, are valuable for therapeutic uses at lower doses. An example of a neurotoxin are the glycoalkaloids, from the plant species in the family Solanaceae (includes potato, tomato and eggplant), that are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. Inhibition of this enzyme causes an uncontrolled increase in the acetylcholine neurotransmitter, muscular paralysis and then death. Neurotoxicity can also result from the inhibition of receptors; for example, atropine from deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) that functions as a competitive antagonist of the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors.
Although many natural toxins are secondary metabolites, these poisons also include peptides and proteins. An example of a toxic peptide is alpha-amanitin, which is found in relatives of the death cap mushroom. This is a potent enzyme inhibitor, in this case preventing the RNA polymerase II enzyme from transcribing DNA. The algal toxin microcystin is also a peptide and is an inhibitor of protein phosphatases. This toxin can contaminate water supplies after algal blooms and is a known carcinogen that can also cause acute liver haemorrhage and death at higher doses.
Proteins can also be natural poisons or antinutrients, such as the trypsin inhibitors (discussed in the "metabolic regulation" section above) that are found in some legumes. A less common class of toxins are toxic enzymes: these act as irreversible inhibitors of their target enzymes and work by chemically modifying their substrate enzymes. An example is ricin, an extremely potent protein toxin found in castor oil beans. This enzyme is a glycosidase that inactivates ribosomes. Since ricin is a catalytic irreversible inhibitor, this allows just a single molecule of ricin to kill a cell.
### Drugs
The most common uses for enzyme inhibitors are as drugs to treat disease. Many of these inhibitors target a human enzyme and aim to correct a pathological condition. For instance, aspirin is a widely used drug that acts as a suicide inhibitor of the cyclooxygenase enzyme. This inhibition in turn suppresses the production of proinflammatory prostaglandins and thus aspirin may be used to reduce pain, fever, and inflammation.
As of 2017, an estimated 29% of approved drugs are enzyme inhibitors of which approximately one-fifth are kinase inhibitors. A notable class of kinase drug targets is the receptor tyrosine kinases which are essential enzymes that regulate cell growth; their over-activation may result in cancer. Hence kinase inhibitors such as imatinib are frequently used to treat malignancies. Janus kinases are another notable example of drug enzyme targets. Inhibitors of Janus kinases block the production of inflammatory cytokines and hence these inhibitors are used to treat a variety of inflammatory diseases in including arthritis, asthma, and Crohn's disease.
An example of the structural similarity of some inhibitors to the substrates of the enzymes they target is seen in the figure comparing the drug methotrexate to folic acid. Folic acid is the oxidised form of the substrate of dihydrofolate reductase, an enzyme that is potently inhibited by methotrexate. Methotrexate blocks the action of dihydrofolate reductase and thereby halts thymidine biosynthesis. This block of nucleotide biosynthesis is selectively toxic to rapidly growing cells, therefore methotrexate is often used in cancer chemotherapy.
A common treatment for erectile dysfunction is sildenafil (Viagra). This compound is a potent inhibitor of cGMP specific phosphodiesterase type 5, the enzyme that degrades the signalling molecule cyclic guanosine monophosphate. This signalling molecule triggers smooth muscle relaxation and allows blood flow into the corpus cavernosum, which causes an erection. Since the drug decreases the activity of the enzyme that halts the signal, it makes this signal last for a longer period of time.
#### Antibiotics
Drugs are also used to inhibit enzymes needed for the survival of pathogens. For example, bacteria are surrounded by a thick cell wall made of a net-like polymer called peptidoglycan. Many antibiotics such as penicillin and vancomycin inhibit the enzymes that produce and then cross-link the strands of this polymer together. This causes the cell wall to lose strength and the bacteria to burst. In the figure, a molecule of penicillin (shown in a ball-and-stick form) is shown bound to its target, the transpeptidase from the bacteria Streptomyces R61 (the protein is shown as a ribbon diagram).
Antibiotic drug design is facilitated when an enzyme that is essential to the pathogen's survival is absent or very different in humans. Humans do not make peptidoglycan, therefore antibiotics that inhibit this process are selectively toxic to bacteria. Selective toxicity is also produced in antibiotics by exploiting differences in the structure of the ribosomes in bacteria, or how they make fatty acids.
#### Antivirals
Drugs that inhibit enzymes needed for the replication of viruses are effective in treating viral infections. Antiviral drugs include protease inhibitors used to treat HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C, reverse-transcriptase inhibitors targeting HIV/AIDS, neuraminidase inhibitors targeting influenza, and terminase inhibitors targeting human cytomegalovirus.
### Pesticides
Many pesticides are enzyme inhibitors. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is an enzyme found in animals, from insects to humans. It is essential to nerve cell function through its mechanism of breaking down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine into its constituents, acetate and choline. This is somewhat unusual among neurotransmitters as most, including serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, are absorbed from the synaptic cleft rather than cleaved. A large number of AChE inhibitors are used in both medicine and agriculture. Reversible competitive inhibitors, such as edrophonium, physostigmine, and neostigmine, are used in the treatment of myasthenia gravis and in anaesthesia to reverse muscle blockade. The carbamate pesticides are also examples of reversible AChE inhibitors. The organophosphate pesticides such as malathion, parathion, and chlorpyrifos irreversibly inhibit acetylcholinesterase.
### Herbicides
The herbicide glyphosate is an inhibitor of 3-phosphoshikimate 1-carboxyvinyltransferase, other herbicides, such as the sulfonylureas inhibit the enzyme acetolactate synthase. Both enzymes are needed for plants to make branched-chain amino acids. Many other enzymes are inhibited by herbicides, including enzymes needed for the biosynthesis of lipids and carotenoids and the processes of photosynthesis and oxidative phosphorylation.
## Discovery and design
New drugs are the products of a long drug development process, the first step of which is often the discovery of a new enzyme inhibitor. There are two principle approaches of discovering these inhibitors.
The first general method is rational drug design based on mimicking the transition state of the chemical reaction catalysed by the enzyme. The designed inhibitor often closely resembles the substrate, except that the portion of the substrate that undergoes chemical reaction is replaced by a chemically stable functional group that resembles the transition state. Since the enzyme has evolved to stabilise the transition state, transition state analogues generally possess higher affinity for the enzyme compared to the substrate, and therefore are effective inhibitors.
The second way of discovering new enzyme inhibitors is high-throughput screening of large libraries of structurally diverse compounds to identify hit molecules that bind to the enzyme. This method has been extended to include virtual screening of databases of diverse molecules using computers, which are then followed by experimental confirmation of binding of the virtual screening hits. Complementary approaches that can provide new starting points for inhibitors include fragment-based lead discovery and DNA Encoded Chemical Libraries (DEL).
Hits from any of the above approaches can be optimised to high affinity binders that efficiently inhibit the enzyme. Computer-based methods for predicting the binding orientation and affinity of an inhibitor for an enzyme such as molecular docking and molecular mechanics can be used to assist in the optimisation process. New inhibitors are used to obtain crystallographic structures of the enzyme in an inhibitor/enzyme complex to show how the molecule is binding to the active site, allowing changes to be made to the inhibitor to optimise binding in a process known as structure-based drug design. This test and improve cycle is repeated until a sufficiently potent inhibitor is produced.
## See also
- Activity-based proteomics – a branch of proteomics that uses covalent enzyme inhibitors as reporters to monitor enzyme activity.
- Antimetabolite – an enzyme inhibitor that is used to interfere with cell growth and division
- Transition state analogue – a type of enzyme inhibitor that mimics the transition state of the chemical reaction catalysed by the enzyme
|
20,831,018 |
Typhoon Nabi
| 1,171,458,970 |
Pacific typhoon in 2005
|
[
"2005 Pacific typhoon season",
"Retired Pacific typhoons",
"Tropical cyclones in 2005",
"Typhoons",
"Typhoons in Japan",
"Typhoons in Taiwan",
"Typhoons in the Northern Mariana Islands",
"Typhoons in the Philippines"
] |
Typhoon Nabi (), known in the Philippines as Typhoon Jolina, was a powerful typhoon that struck southwestern Japan in September 2005. The 14th named storm of the 2005 Pacific typhoon season, Nabi formed on August 29 to the east of the Northern Mariana Islands. It moved westward and passed about 55 km (34 mi) north of Saipan on August 31 as an intensifying typhoon. On the next day, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center upgraded the storm to super typhoon status, with winds equivalent to that of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale. The Japan Meteorological Agency estimated peak ten-minute winds of 175 km/h (109 mph) on September 2. Nabi weakened while curving to the north, striking the Japanese island of Kyushu on September 6. After brushing South Korea, the storm turned to the northeast, passing over Hokkaido before becoming extratropical on September 8, before dissipating on September 12.
The typhoon first affected the Northern Mariana Islands, where it left US\$2.5 million in damage, while damaging or destroying 114 homes. The damage was enough to warrant a disaster declaration from the United States government. While passing near Okinawa, Nabi produced gusty winds and caused minor damage. Later, the western fringe of the storm caused several traffic accidents in Busan, South Korea, and throughout the country Nabi killed six people and caused US\$115.4 million in damage. About 250,000 people evacuated along the Japanese island of Kyushu ahead of the storm, and there were disruptions to train, ferry, and airline services. In Kyushu, the storm left ¥4.08 billion (US\$36.9 million) in crop damage after dropping 1,322 mm (52.0 in) of rain over three days. During the storm's passage, there were 61 daily rainfall records broken by Nabi's precipitation. The rains caused flooding and landslides, forcing people to evacuate their homes and for businesses to close. Across Japan, Nabi killed 29 people and caused ¥94.9 billion (US\$854 million) in damage. Soldiers, local governments, and insurance companies helped residents recover from the storm damage. After affecting Japan, the typhoon affected the Kuril Islands of Russia, where it dropped the equivalent of the monthly precipitation, while also causing road damage due to high waves. Overall, Nabi killed 35 people.
## Meteorological history
On August 28, a large area of convection persisted about 1,035 km (643 mi) east of Guam. Located within an area of moderate wind shear, the system quickly organized while moving westward, its track influenced by a ridge to the north. At 00:00 UTC on August 29, a tropical depression formed from the system, classified by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) as Tropical Depression 14W. In initial forecasts, the agency anticipated steady strengthening, due to warm sea surface temperatures in the area. At 12:00 UTC on August 29, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) upgraded it to a tropical storm. As such, the JMA named the storm Nabi. About 12 hours later, the JMA upgraded Nabi further to a severe tropical storm, after the convection organized into spiral rainbands. At 18:00 UTC, Nabi intensified to typhoon status, reaching ten-minute sustained winds of 120 km/h (75 mph).
On August 31, Nabi passed about 55 km (34 mi) north-northeast of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands during its closest approach. The typhoon continued to intensify quickly as it moved to the west-northwest. On September 1, the JTWC upgraded the storm to a super typhoon and later estimated peak one-minute winds of 260 km/h (160 mph); this is the equivalent of a Category 5 on the Saffir–Simpson scale. By contrast, the JMA estimated peak ten-minute winds of 175 km/h (109 mph) on September 2, with a barometric pressure of 925 mbar (27.3 inHg). While at peak intensity, the typhoon developed a large 95 km (59 mi) wide eye. For about 36 hours, Nabi maintained its peak winds, during which it crossed into the area of responsibility of PAGASA; the Philippine-based agency gave it the local name "Jolina", although the storm remained away from the country.
On September 3, Nabi began weakening as it turned more to the north, the result of an approaching trough weakening the ridge. Later that day, the winds leveled off at 155 km/h (96 mph), according to the JMA. On September 5, Nabi passed near Kitadaitōjima and Yakushima, part of the Daitō and Ōsumi island groups offshore southern Japan. Around that time, the JTWC estimated that the typhoon reintensified slightly to a secondary peak of 215 km/h (134 mph). After turning due north, Nabi made landfall near Isahaya, Nagasaki around 05:00 UTC on September 6, after passing through the Amakusa of Kumamoto. Shortly thereafter, the storm entered the Sea of Japan. The typhoon turned to the northeast into the mid-latitude flow, influenced by a low over the Kamchatka Peninsula. At 18:00 UTC on September 6, the JTWC discontinued advisories on Nabi, declaring it extratropical, although the JMA continued tracking the storm. On the next day, Nabi moved across northern Hokkaido into the Sea of Okhotsk. The JMA declared the storm as extratropical on September 8, which continued eastward until the JMA ceased monitoring the storm's remnants on September 10, while situated south of the Aleutian Islands. The remnants of Nabi weakened and later moved into southwestern Alaska on September 12, dissipating soon afterward.
## Preparations
After Nabi formed as a tropical depression on August 29, the local National Weather Service office on Guam issued a tropical storm watch for the islands Tinian, Rota, Sapian, and Agrihan. On August 30, the watch was upgraded to a tropical storm warning for Rota and Agrihan, while a typhoon warning was issued for Tinian and Saipan. On all four islands, a Condition of Readiness 1 was declared. The government of the Northern Mariana Islands advised Tinian and Saipan residents along the coast and in poorly-built buildings to evacuate, and several schools operated as shelters. About 700 people evacuated on Saipan, and the airport was closed, stranding about 1,000 travelers. As a precaution, schools were closed on Guam on August 31, after a tropical storm warning was issued for the island the night prior. The island's governor, Felix Perez Camacho, also declared a condition of readiness 2, as well as a state of emergency. Due to the typhoon, several flights were canceled or delayed at Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport on Guam.
Ahead of the storm, United States Forces Japan evacuated planes from Okinawa to either Guam or mainland Japan to prevent damage. Officials at the military bases on Okinawa advised residents to remain inside during the storm's passage. While Nabi was turning to the north, the island was placed under a Condition of Readiness 2. At the military base in Sasebo, ships also evacuated, and several buildings were closed after a Condition of Readiness 1 was declared.
In Kyushu, officials evacuated over a quarter of a million people in fear of Typhoon Nabi affecting Japan. These continued after the storm made landfall to protect residents from flood waters and landslides. The first order during the storm took place in the Arita district. In Miyazaki City, 21,483 households were evacuated following reports of significant overflow on the nearby river. Another 10,000 residences were vacated in Nobeoka following similar reports. The entirety of the West Japan Railway Company was shut down. Canceled train services affected 77,800 people on Shikoku. Ferry service was also shut down, cutting off transportation for tens of thousands of people. In addition, at least 723 flights were cancelled because of the storm. Japan's second-largest refinery, Idemitsu Kosan, stopped shipments to other refineries across the area, and Japan's largest refinery, Nippon Oil, stopped all sea shipments. The Cosmo Oil Company, Japan's fourth largest refinery, stopped all shipments to Yokkaichi and Sakaide refineries. About 700 schools in the country were closed. Approximately 1,500 soldiers were dispatched to Tokyo to help coastal areas prepare for Typhoon Nabi's arrival, and to clean up after the storm. Officials in the Miyazaki Prefecture issued a flood warning for expected heavy rains in the area.
In South Korea, the government issued a typhoon warning for the southern portion of the country along the coast, prompting the airport at Pohang to close, and forcing 162 flights to be canceled. Ferry service was also disrupted, and thousands of boats returned to port. The storm also prompted 138 schools to close in the region. Earlier, the storm spurred fears of a possible repeat of either typhoon Rusa in 2002 or Maemi in 2003, both of which were devastating storms in South Korea. Officials in the Russian Far East issued a storm warning for Vladivostok, advising boats to remain at port.
## Impact
While passing between Saipan and the volcanic island of Anatahan, Nabi brought tropical storm force winds to several islands in the Northern Mariana Islands. Saipan International Airport reported sustained winds of 95 km/h (59 mph), with gusts to 120 km/h (75 mph). Also on the island, Nabi produced 173 mm (6.8 in) of rainfall. The storm destroyed two houses and left 26 others uninhabitable, while 77 homes sustained minor damage, largely from flooding or roof damage. Nabi damaged 70–80% of the crops on Saipan and also knocked down many trees, leaving behind 544 tonnes (600 tons) of debris. The entire island was left without power, some without water, after the storm. On Tinian to the south, Nabi damaged or destroyed nine homes, with heavy crop damage. On Rota, there was minor flooding and scattered power outages. Farther south, the outer reaches of the storm produced sustained winds of 69 km/h (43 mph) at Apra Harbor on Guam, while gusts peaked at 101 km/h (63 mph) at Mangilao. Gusts reached 72 km/h (45 mph) at the international airport on Guam, the highest during 2005. The storm dropped 115 mm (4.5 in) of rainfall in 24 hours on the island. Flooding covered roads for several hours and entered classrooms at Untalan Middle School, forcing hundreds of students to evacuate. Damage in the region was estimated US\$2.5 million. After Nabi exited the region, it produced high surf for several days on Guam and Saipan.
Later in its duration, Nabi brushed southeastern South Korea with rainbands. Ulsan recorded a 24‐hour rainfall total of 319 mm (12.6 in), while Pohang recorded a record 24‐hour total of 540.5 mm (21.28 in). The highest total was 622.5 mm (24.51 in) of rainfall. The periphery of the storm produced gusts of 121 km/h (75 mph) in the port city of Busan, strong enough to damage eight billboards and knock trees over. Heavy rains caused several traffic accidents and injuries in Busan, while strong waves washed a cargo ship ashore in Pohang. Throughout South Korea, the storm led to six fatalities and caused US\$115.4 million in damages.
In the Kuril Islands of Russia, Nabi dropped about 75 mm (3.0 in) of rain, equivalent to the monthly average. Gusts reached 83 km/h (52 mph), weak enough not to cause major damage. During the storm's passage, high waves washed away unpaved roads in Severo-Kurilsk.
### Japan
The outer rainbands of Nabi began affecting Okinawa on September 3. The storm's strongest winds ended up bypassing the island, and wind gusts peaked at 85 km/h (53 mph). Two elderly women were injured from the wind gusts. There were minor power outages and some houses were damaged. In the Amami Islands between Okinawa and mainland Japan, Nabi produced gusts of 122 km/h (76 mph) in Kikaijima. Waves of 9 m (30 ft) in height affected Amami Ōshima.
While moving through western Japan, Nabi dropped heavy rainfall that totaled 1,322 mm (52.0 in) over a three-day period in Miyazaki Prefecture, the equivalent to nearly three times the average annual precipitation. The same station in Miyazaki reported a 24‐hour rainfall total of 932 mm (36.7 in), as well as an hourly total of 66 mm (2.6 in). Within the main islands of Japan, Nabi dropped 228.6 mm (9.00 in) of rainfall per hour in the capital Tokyo.
During the storm's passage, there were 61 daily rainfall records broken by Nabi's precipitation across Japan. The rains from Nabi caused significant slope failures and large accumulations of driftwood. The amount of sediment displaced by the rains was estimated at 4,456 m<sup>3</sup>/km<sup>2</sup>, over four times the yearly average. A total of 630 m<sup>3</sup> (22,000 cu ft) of driftwood was recorded. However, the rainfall also helped to end water restrictions in Kagawa and Tokushima prefectures. In addition to the heavy rainfall, Nabi produced gusty winds on the Japan mainland, peaking at 115 km/h (71 mph) in Muroto. A station on Tobishima in the Sea of Japan recorded a gust of 119 km/h (74 mph). The typhoon spawned a F1 tornado in Miyazaki, which damaged several buildings. In Wajima, Ishikawa, Nabi produced a Foehn wind, causing temperatures to rise quickly.
Throughout Japan, Nabi caused damage in 31 of the 47 prefectures, leaving over 270,000 residences without power. Torrential rains caused flooding and landslides throughout the country. The storm destroyed 7,452 houses and flooded 21,160 others. Several car assembly plants were damaged in southwestern Japan, while others were closed due to power outages, such as Toyota, Mazda, and Mitsubishi. In addition, the storm wrecked about 81 ships along the coast. On the island of Kyushu, damage in Ōita Prefecture on Kyushu reached ¥11.7 billion (US\$106 million), the fifth highest of any typhoon in the preceding 10 years; about 20% of the total there was related to road damages. In nearby Saga Prefecture, crop damage totaled about ¥1.06 billion (US\$9.6 million), mostly to rice but also to soybeans and various other vegetables. Crop damage as a whole on Kyushu totaled ¥4.08 billion (US\$36.9 million).
In the capital city of Tokyo, heavy rainfall increased levels along several rivers, which inundated several houses. Strong winds damaged ¥28.8 million (US\$259,000) in crop damage in Gifu Prefecture, and ¥27.1 million (US\$244,000) in crop damage in Osaka. In Yamaguchi Prefecture on western Honshu, Nabi damaged a portion of the historical Kintai Bridge, originally built in 1674. In Yamagata Prefecture, the winds damaged a window in a school, injuring several boys from the debris. One person was seriously injured in Kitakata, Fukushima after strong winds blew a worker from scaffolding of a building under construction. Effects from Nabi spread as far north as Hokkaido, where heavy rainfall damaged roads and caused hundreds of schools to close. In Ashoro, an overflown river flooded a hotel, and a minor power outage occurred in Teshikaga.
Ahead of the storm, high waves and gusty winds led to one drowning when a woman was knocked off a ferry in Takamatsu, Kagawa. A landslide in Miyazaki destroyed five homes, killing three people. A man who was listed as missing was found dead in a flooded rice field. In Tarumi, a landslide buried a home in mud, killing two people. Nabi caused a portion of the San'yō Expressway to collapse in Yamaguchi Prefecture, killing three people. In Fukui Prefecture, the winds knocked an elderly man off a bicycle, killing him. Overall, Nabi killed 29 people in Japan and injured 179 others, 45 of them severely. Damage was estimated at ¥94.9 billion (US\$854 million).
## Aftermath
After the storm, members of Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni provided \$2,500 to the town of Iwakuni toward cleanup and disaster relief. Soldiers also helped nearby residents and farmers to complete the rice harvest, after floods from the typhoon damaged harvesting machines. The local government of Iwakunda distributed disinfectant chemicals to flooded houses. Closed markets and decreased supplies caused the price of beef to reach record levels in the country. Following the storm, the General Insurance Association of Japan reported that insurance claims from the typhoon totaled ¥58.8 billion (US\$53 million), the tenth-highest for any natural disaster in the country. Miyazaki Prefecture reported the highest claims with ¥12.6 billion (US\$11.4 million). The total was split between ¥49 billion (US\$44 million) in housing claims and ¥7.9 billion (US\$71 million) in car claims. The Japanese government provided food, water, and rescue workers to the affected areas in the days after the storm, along with Japan Post, the local post system; trucks were mobilized to affected towns, accompanied by a mobile bank and insurance agent.
On November 8, nearly two months after the dissipation of Typhoon Nabi, President George W. Bush declared a major disaster declaration for the Northern Mariana islands. The declaration allocated aid from the United States to help restore damaged buildings, pay for debris removal, and other emergency services. Federal funding was also made available on a cost-sharing basis for the islands to mitigate against future disasters. The government ultimately provided \$1,046,074.03 to the commonwealth.
Due to the similar pronunciation to the word "prophets" in Arabic, and the conflict of religious views, the Typhoon Committee of the World Meteorological Organization agreed to retire the name Nabi. The agency replaced it with the name Doksuri, effective January 1, 2007, and was first used during the 2012 Pacific typhoon season.
## See also
- Other tropical cyclones named Jolina
- List of wettest tropical cyclones
- Typhoon Mireille – costliest typhoon in Japan history that struck southwestern Japan in 1991
- Typhoon Songda (2004) – similarly destructive typhoon that took a similar path to Nabi in 2004
- Typhoon Haishen (2020)
|
22,586,423 |
ARA Moreno
| 1,169,926,952 |
Argentine Rivadavia-class battleship
|
[
"1911 ships",
"Rivadavia-class battleships",
"Ships built by New York Shipbuilding Corporation"
] |
ARA Moreno was a dreadnought battleship designed by the American Fore River Shipbuilding Company for the Argentine Navy. Named after Mariano Moreno, a key member of the first independent government of Argentina, the First Assembly (Primera Junta), Moreno was the second dreadnought of the Rivadavia class, and the fourth built during the South American dreadnought race.
Argentina placed orders for Moreno and its only sister ship, Rivadavia, in reply to a Brazilian naval building program. During their construction, the two dreadnoughts were subject to numerous rumors involving Argentina selling the two battleships to a country engaged in the First World War, but these proved to be false. After Moreno was completed in March 1915, a series of engine problems occurred during the sea trials which delayed its delivery to Argentina to May 1915. The next decade saw the ship based in Puerto Belgrano as part of the Argentine Navy's First Division before sailing to the United States for an extensive refit in 1924 and 1925. During the 1930s the ship was occupied with diplomatic cruises to Brazil, Uruguay, and Europe until the Second World War broke out. During this time, Moreno was employed little as Argentina was neutral. Decommissioned in 1949, Moreno was scrapped in Japan beginning in 1957.
## Background
Moreno's genesis can be traced to the numerous naval arms races between Chile and Argentina, which in turn were spawned by territorial disputes over their mutual borders in Patagonia and Puna de Atacama along with control of the Beagle Channel. Naval races flared up in the 1890s and in 1902; the latter was eventually settled via British mediation. Provisions in the dispute-ending treaty imposed restrictions on both countries' navies. The United Kingdom's Royal Navy bought the two Constitución-class pre-dreadnought battleships that were being built for Chile, and Argentina sold its two Rivadavia-class armored cruisers under construction in Italy to Japan.
After HMS Dreadnought was commissioned, Brazil decided in early 1907 to halt three obsolescent pre-dreadnoughts which were under construction in favor of two or three dreadnoughts. These ships, which were designed to carry the heaviest battleship armament in the world at the time, came as an abrupt shock to the navies of South America, and Argentina and Chile quickly canceled the 1902 armament-limiting pact. Argentina in particular was alarmed at the possible power of the ships. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manuel Augusto Montes de Oca, remarked that even one Minas Geraes-class ship could destroy the entire Argentine and Chilean fleets. While this may have been hyperbole, either one was much more powerful than any single vessel in the Argentine fleet. Although debates raged in Argentina over whether it would be prudent to counter Brazil's purchase by acquiring their own dreadnoughts, which would cost upwards of two million pounds sterling, further border disputes—particularly near the River Plate with Brazil—decided the matter, and they ordered Rivadavia and Moreno from the Fore River Shipbuilding Company in the United States.
## Construction and trials
After the two new dreadnoughts were awarded to Fore River, Moreno was subcontracted out to the New York Shipbuilding Corporation of Camden, New Jersey as called for in the final contract. Moreno's keel was laid on 9 July 1910, and construction was overseen by the Argentine Naval Commission. After the completion of the hull, it was launched on 23 September 1911. Isabel Betbeder, wife to the chief of the Argentine Naval Commission, sponsored Moreno. The ship was then moored to a dock to commence fitting-out. It was reported in January 1913 that apart from the usual naval requirements for Moreno and her sister ship ARA Rivadavia, two Victrola phonographs apiece were included as part of the official specifications. Moreno was finished on 15 February 1915, and commissioned into the Argentine Navy nine days later.
Over the course of their construction, Rivadavia and Moreno were the subject of various rumors insinuating that Argentina would accept the ships and then sell them to a European country or Japan, a fast-growing rival to the United States. The rumors were partially true; Argentina was looking to get rid of the battleships and devote the proceeds to opening more schools. This angered the American government, which did not want its warship technology offered to the highest bidder—yet they did not want to exercise a contract-specified option that gave the United States first choice if the Argentines decided to sell, as naval technology had already progressed past the Rivadavias, particularly in the adoption of the "all-or-nothing" armor scheme. Instead, the United States and its State Department and Navy Department put diplomatic pressure on the Argentine government.
The Argentine government, bolstered by socialist additions in the legislature, introduced several bills in May 1914 which would have put the battleships up for sale, but the bills were all defeated by late June. Following the commencement of the First World War, the German and British ambassadors to the United States both complained to the US State Department; the former believed that the British were going to be given the ships as soon as they reached Argentina, and the latter charged the United States with ensuring that the ships fell into Argentina's possession only. International armament companies attempted to influence Argentina into selling them to one of the smaller Balkan countries, from which they would find their way into the war.
In October 1914, Moreno sailed the New York Naval Shipyard to be painted, then conducted its sea trials starting on the 25th. Reporters for several newspapers, including The New York Times, and American naval officers were allowed on board during this time; the Times reporters gave a glowing account of the alcohol-serving café on the ship, calling it "the cutest little bar on any of the seven seas"—alcohol was banned on U.S. Navy ships.
The trials were plagued with serious engine trouble, culminating in the failure of an entire turbine on 2 November. Moreno was forced to put in at Rockland, Maine—where many of the observers on board were left to be brought back by train to Camden—before proceeding for repairs to the Fore River Shipyard, which had built the ship's engines.
In early 1915, nearly five years after construction had begun, the shipbuilding contractors demanded payment from the Argentine government for additional work, but the Argentines did not believe this was warranted, as Moreno had been scheduled to be completed more than a year prior. After mediation offered by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time, Moreno was released on 20 February to Argentine sailors who had been staying in American battleships moored in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Even Moreno's departure was marked by mishaps. On the night of 26 March, Moreno accidentally rammed and sank the barge Enterprise in the Delaware River, 30 miles (48 km) south of Philadelphia near the city of New Castle. No one was hurt, but the battleship accidentally ran aground immediately after. Efforts to refloat it succeeded, and Moreno continued on its way at around 7:30 the next morning without damage. On the 29th, President Woodrow Wilson was hosted for lunch on board the warship, accompanied by the Argentine ambassador to the United States, Romulo S. Naon. On 15 April, Moreno ran aground in the river again, this time near Reedy Island. Like the previous time, the ship was not damaged and tugs were able to refloat the ship the next day.
## Service
Moreno docked in Argentina for the first time on 26 May 1915. The ship was immediately assigned to the Argentine Navy's First Division, based out of the major naval base of Puerto Belgrano, and remained there until 1923 when it was put into the reserve fleet. In 1924, Moreno was sent to the United States for modernization. The opportunity to show the flag was not missed; Moreno made stops in Valparaiso and Callao before transiting the Panama Canal and sailing north.
Most of the work was done in Philadelphia, though armament changes were made in Boston. Moreno was converted to use fuel oil instead of coal, was fitted with a new fire-control system, rangefinders were added to the fore and aft superfiring turrets, and the aft mast was replaced by a tripod. To reduce exhaust interference when spotting ships in a battle, a funnel cap was installed. The main armament's range was increased from 13,120 yards (12,000 m) to 20,800 yards (19,000 m), and the turrets were modified to double the firing rate. The 6-inch secondary armament was retained, but the smaller 4-inch guns were taken off in favor of four 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft guns and four 3-pounders.
When Moreno returned to Argentina in August 1926, it was initially assigned to the training division of the Navy before being reassigned to the First Division. In 1932, Moreno was moved into a new Battleship Division with Rivadavia. The remainder of the 1930s was filled with diplomatic cruises. Moreno, escorted by the three Mendoza-class destroyers, brought Argentine president Agustín Pedro Justo to Brazil in 1933 for a major diplomatic visit. Departing in the afternoon of 2 October, he arrived in Rio de Janeiro on the morning of 7 October to huge celebrations. Brazilian ships of the first and second squadrons, along with three squadrons worth of warplanes, met Moreno at sea and escorted it to the harbor. When Justo landed and traveled by car to Guanabra Palace, the road was flanked by a plethora of army and naval forces along with thousands of citizens. Rio was described as "ablaze with light", and a 95-foot (29 m) high imitation of France's Arc de Triomphe was erected, onto which various colors were projected. Justo then took a royal train, originally designed for Albert I of Belgium's use during Brazil's 1922 centennial celebrations, to Sao Paulo. After three days, he traveled to Santos, where he boarded Moreno to travel first to Uruguay, then back to Argentina; he arrived in the latter on 22 October.
In 1934, Moreno was sent as one of Argentina's representatives for the anniversary of Brazil's independence. In 1937, Rivadavia and Moreno were sent on a diplomatic cruise to Europe. Departing Argentina on 6 April, they split up when they reached the English Channel. Moreno participated in the British Spithead Naval Review, where The New York Times described it as "a strange vestigial sea monster in this company of more modern fighting ships." Afterward, Moreno met up with Rivadavia at Brest, France and cruised together to Wilhelmshaven before splitting up again; Moreno went to Bremen, while Rivadavia put in at Hamburg. They then sailed for home and arrived in Puerto Belgrano on 29 June.
In September 1939, Moreno and Rivadavia traveled together to Brazil with naval cadets. However, before they could return, four Buenos Aires-class destroyers had to be sent to escort the ships back, as the Second World War had erupted in Europe. Since Argentina remained neutral in the war, Moreno saw little active service. By 1949, the venerable dreadnought had been decommissioned into reserve and was used as a barracks. In 1955, Moreno was used as a prison ship during the Liberating Revolution (Revolución Libertadora). The ship was stricken from the navy list on 1 October 1956; on 11 January 1957, Argentina sold Moreno for scrap for \$2,468,660 to the Japanese Yawata Iron and Steel Company. On 12 May, the Argentine fleet assembled to salute the battleship one last time as it was towed out by the Dutch-owned ocean tugs Clyde and Ocean. Moreno was taken through the Panama Canal to the scrappers, arriving on 17 August.
## Endnotes
## See also
- List of battleships
- List of ships of the Argentine Navy
|
908,752 |
Alexis Bachelot
| 1,068,015,957 |
19th century French missionary Roman Catholic priest
|
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Alexis Bachelot, SS.CC., (born Jean-Augustin Bachelot; 22 February 1796 – 5 December 1837) was a Catholic priest best known for his tenure as the first Prefect Apostolic of the Sandwich Islands. In that role, he led the first permanent Catholic mission to the Kingdom of Hawaii. Bachelot was raised in France, where he attended the Irish College in Paris, and was ordained a priest in 1820. He led the first Catholic mission to Hawaii, arriving in 1827. Although he had expected the approval of then Hawaiian King Kamehameha II, he learned upon arrival that Kamehameha II had died and a new government that was hostile towards Catholic missionaries had been installed. Bachelot, however, was able to convert a small group of Hawaiians and quietly minister to them for four years before being deported in 1831 on the orders of Kaʻahumanu, the Kuhina Nui (a position similar to queen regent) of Hawaii.
Bachelot then traveled to California, where he served as an assistant minister while pastoring and teaching. In 1837, having learned of Queen Kaʻahumanu's death and King Kamehameha III's willingness to allow Catholic priests on the island, Bachelot returned to Hawaii, intending to continue his missionary work. However, by Bachelot's arrival, Kamehameha III had again changed his mind and Bachelot was removed from the island and confined to a ship for several months. He was freed only after the French and British navies imposed a naval blockade on the Honolulu harbor. Although he was later able to secure passage on a ship to Micronesia, he died en route and was buried on an islet near Pohnpei. His treatment in Hawaii prompted the government of France to dispatch a frigate to the island; the resulting intervention is known as the French Incident and led to the emancipation of Catholics in Hawaii.
## Early life
Bachelot was born in Saint-Cyr-la-Rosière, Orne, France on 22 February 1796. In 1806, he left home for Paris, where he enrolled in the Preparatory Seminary of Picpus to pursue priesthood. In 1813, he professed at the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, taking the name Alexis. He studied at the Irish College in Paris before being ordained as a priest in 1820. As a priest, he initially served as the College's rector and later led the preparatory seminary at Tours.
## Hawaiian mission
In the early 1820s, Jean Baptiste Rives, a French adviser to the Hawaiian king Kamehameha II, traveled to Europe to attempt to convince European Catholics to organize a mission to Hawaii. Members of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary were receptive to his idea, and in 1825, Pope Leo XII assigned them the task of evangelizing Hawaii. Bachelot was appointed the Prefect Apostolic of the Sandwich Islands, and in this role led the first permanent mission to Hawaii.
The expedition was organized by the influential Monneron family and funded by the government of France. Bachelot was assisted in his new position by fellow priests Patrick Short and Abraham Armand, as well as several lay brothers. The mission sailed from Bordeaux on La Comète in November 1826. The missionaries were initially accompanied by a group that planned to explore commercial trading opportunities but returned to France after reaching Mexico.
Unbeknownst to Bachelot, political changes occurred in Hawaii prior to the mission's arrival. King Kamehameha II died in 1824 and his younger brother Kamehameha III became king. Because Kamehameha III was young at the time of his ascension, Queen Kaʻahumanu (their stepmother) ruled as Kuhina Nui. On the advice of Hiram Bingham I—a Protestant missionary who had converted the Hawaiian royalty four years previously—Queen Kaʻahumanu took a hard stance against Catholicism. Rives' influence on the Hawaiian government had faded, and he never returned to Hawaii.
La Comète arrived in Honolulu on 7 July 1827. The priests were faced with a situation of dire poverty owing to the absence of Rives' patronage. Furthermore, they had promised La Comète's captain that Rives would pay for their passage after they arrived in Hawaii, but by the time of their arrival, Rives had already left. Queen Kaʻahumanu refused to allow the missionaries to stay, suspecting them to be covert agents of the government of France. She instructed La Comète's captain to take the mission with him when he departed. The captain, however, refused to do so because he did not receive payment for their passage, so the party was able to remain.
The priests began their missionary work, but encountered suspicion from most chiefs. The members of the party had great difficulty defending themselves, as none of them was fluent in English or Hawaiian. But, the group were favorably received by the high chief Boki, the royal governor of Oahu, and his wife Kuini Liliha. (The couple were Catholic converts and rivals of Queen Kaʻahumanu.) Boki welcomed the party and gave its members permission to stay.
For several months, Bachelot and his fellow missionaries lived in three small rented structures, saying their first mass on the island in a grass hut. They later built a chapel on a small plot of land they purchased, where the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace was dedicated in 1843. After settling on the island, the group avoided drawing attention to themselves and studied the Hawaiian language. During their mission's first two years, the group converted 65 Hawaiians and ministered to Hawaiians who had already been converted. They often held surreptitious night-time meetings with converts who feared persecution. The priests' vestments and rituals made their evangelism efforts more effective because they reminded Hawaiians of native religious customs.
Bachelot introduced two plant species to Hawaii: Prosopis humilis and Bougainvillea. Prosopis humilis trees later covered thousands of acres there. He had obtained the seeds, which were originally gathered by Catholic missionaries in California, from the Royal Conservatory in Paris. Bachelot translated a prayer book into Hawaiian (O Ke A'o Ana Kristiano, "Christian Doctrine", c. 1831), authored a catechism in Hawaiian (He Ōlelo Ho'ona'auao, "A Word of Instruction", 1831), and wrote an introduction to Hawaiian grammar in French (Notes Grammaticales, "Grammatical Notes", 1834).
## Persecution
By 1827, Protestant Christianity, and in particular Bingham's teachings, had become the de facto state religion of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Queen Kaʻahumanu persecuted Catholics from 1829 until her death in 1832, by, for example, forbidding Hawaiians from attending masses and instructing Bachelot not to proselytize. In December 1831, Bachelot and Short were deported and forced to leave on a ship, the Waverly, bound for North America. Though Queen Kaʻahumanu steadfastly opposed his work, Bachelot viewed her as a good person who had been deceived by Protestant missionaries.
The news of Bachelot and Short's expulsion caused controversy in the United States, where it was viewed as a violation of the rights appertaining to foreigners in the 1826 treaty signed by Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones of the United States Navy and King Kamehameha III. U.S. Navy Commodore John Downes protested the expulsions while in discussion with chiefs during his 1832 visit to the kingdom.
## California
The Waverly landed at a vacant area near San Pedro, Los Angeles, in January 1832. Bachelot and Short traveled to the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, where they were welcomed by the Franciscans who staffed the mission. Bachelot later became the pastor of a church in Los Angeles, served as an assistant minister for the mission, and led the mission on an interim basis after its priest was reassigned in 1834. He also taught in Los Angeles schools during a teacher shortage. He ministered in California until 1837 and became popular with Angelenos.
In 1833, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith reorganized the jurisdiction of Oceania. Hawaii became part of the newly created Apostolic Vicariate of Eastern Oceania, which was split into northern and southern divisions. Bachelot remained as the Prefect Apostolic for the northern division. Etienne Jerome Rouchouze served as the Vicar Apostolic of Eastern Oceania and oversaw Bachelot's assignment in Hawaii.
In 1835 and 1836, two representatives of the Catholic Church traveled to Hawaii in an attempt to ascertain whether Bachelot could return. Queen Kaʻahumanu had died in 1832, and the following year King Kamehameha III began making radical changes to Hawaiian law. Columban Murphy, a Catholic lay brother from the United Kingdom, visited King Kamehameha III in 1835 and discussed the possibility of Bachelot's return. Finding King Kamehameha III amenable to the idea, Murphy traveled to California to relay the news. He was unable, however, to locate Bachelot, who was absent from the area at the time. After Bachelot received Murphy's message, Bachelot and Short decided to return to Hawaii. The Ayuntamiento in Los Angeles, a municipal council, attempted to dissuade Bachelot and asked the Catholic leadership in Santa Barbara to prevent him from leaving, but he insisted on departing and the Catholic leadership did not prevent him.
## Final years
When Bachelot and Short arrived in Honolulu in May 1837, they spent only 13 days on the island. Notwithstanding the agreement he had signed with French Naval Captain Abel Aubert du Petit-Thouars that allowed French citizens to live on the island, King Kamehameha III sought to deport the priests. Bachelot and Short were confined to the ship on which they had arrived, the Clémentine, on 22 May. However, the Clémentine'''s captain, Jules Dudoit, refused to transport them from Hawaii. Dudoit, a British citizen of French descent, met with Charlton, the British consul, and they publicly protested the priests' confinement. Their efforts to secure freedom for the priests to live on the island were unsuccessful until the British naval vessel HMS Sulphur and the French frigate the La Vénus arrived in Honolulu on 8 July. The ships were commanded respectively by Edward Belcher and Dupetit Thouars, who each tried to convince the authorities to allow the priests to return to the island. After negotiations proved futile, they blockaded the harbor, boarded the Clémentine, and brought Bachelot and Short ashore. The La Vénus sent 300 sailors to escort them from the harbor to the French mission. King Kamehameha III agreed to allow the priests to stay in Honolulu until they could find a ship to transport them elsewhere, under the condition that they refrain from proselytizing.
That year, Bachelot, who suffered from a form of rheumatism, became very sick. By November 1837, he had recovered sufficiently to leave Hawaii. He purchased a ship and sailed toward Micronesia, intending to work on a mission. Bachelot's health significantly worsened after leaving Hawaii and he died at sea on 5 December 1837. He was buried on an islet off the coast of Pohnpei. In 1838, a small chapel was built near his grave.
Owing to the persecution of Bachelot and his fellow priests, the government of France sent the frigate L'Artémise'' to Hawaii in 1839. Its captain, Cyrille Pierre Théodore Laplace, had been instructed to force the government to stop persecuting Catholics. In response to this show of force, King Kamehameha III granted Catholics freedom of religion.
|
4,349,420 |
Marian Rejewski
| 1,162,487,146 |
Polish mathematician and cryptologist (1905–1980)
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Marian Adam Rejewski (; 16 August 1905 – 13 February 1980) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen Nazi German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French military intelligence. Over the next nearly seven years, Rejewski and fellow mathematician-cryptologists Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski developed and used techniques and equipment to decrypt the German machine ciphers, even as the Germans introduced modifications to their equipment and encryption procedures. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the Poles shared their technological achievements with the French and British at a conference in Warsaw, thus enabling Britain to begin reading German Enigma-encrypted messages, seven years after Rejewski's original reconstruction of the machine. The intelligence that was gained by the British from Enigma decrypts formed part of what was code-named Ultra and contributed—perhaps decisively—to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
In 1929, while studying mathematics at Poznań University, Rejewski attended a secret cryptology course conducted by the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau (Biuro Szyfrów), which he joined in September 1932. The Bureau had had no success in reading Enigma-enciphered messages and set Rejewski to work on the problem in late 1932; he deduced the machine's secret internal wiring after only a few weeks. Rejewski and his two colleagues then developed successive techniques for the regular decryption of Enigma messages. His own contributions included the cryptologic card catalog, derived using the cyclometer that he had invented, and the cryptologic bomb.
Five weeks before the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939, Rejewski and colleagues presented their achievements to French and British intelligence representatives summoned to Warsaw. Shortly after the outbreak of war, the Polish cryptologists were evacuated to France, where they continued breaking Enigma-enciphered messages. They and their support staff were again compelled to evacuate after the fall of France in June 1940, and they resumed work undercover a few months later in Vichy France. After the French "Free Zone" was occupied by Nazi Germany in November 1942, Rejewski and Zygalski fled via Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar to Britain. There they enlisted in the Polish Armed Forces and were put to work solving low-grade German ciphers.
In the aftermath of World War II, Rejewski reunited with his family in Poland and worked as an accountant. For two decades, he remained silent about his prewar and wartime cryptologic work to avoid adverse attention from the country's Soviet-dominated government; he broke his silence in 1967 when he provided to the Polish Military Historical Institute his memoirs of his work in the Cipher Bureau. He died at age 74 of a heart attack and was interred with military honors at Warsaw's Powązki Military Cemetery.
## Early life
Marian Rejewski was born 16 August 1905 in Bromberg in the Prussian Province of Posen (now Bydgoszcz, Poland) to Józef and Matylda, née Thoms. After completing secondary school, he studied mathematics at Poznań University's Mathematics Institute, housed in Poznań Castle.
In 1929, shortly before graduating from university, Rejewski began attending a secret cryptology course which opened on 15 January, organized for select German-speaking mathematics students by the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau with the help of the Mathematics Institute's Professor Zdzisław Krygowski. The course was conducted off-campus at a military facility and, as Rejewski would discover in France in 1939, "was entirely and literally based" on a 1925 book by French colonel Marcel Givierge [fr], Cours de cryptographie (Cryptography Course). Rejewski and fellow students Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki were among the few who could keep up with the course while balancing the demands of their normal studies.
On 1 March 1929 Rejewski graduated with a Master of Philosophy degree in mathematics. A few weeks after graduating, and without having completed the Cipher Bureau's cryptology course, he began the first year of a two-year actuarial statistics course at Göttingen, Germany. He did not complete the statistics course, because while home for the summer of 1930, he accepted an offer, from Professor Krygowski, of a mathematics teaching assistantship at Poznań University. He also began working part-time for the Cipher Bureau, which by then had set up an outpost at Poznań to decrypt intercepted German radio messages. Rejewski worked some twelve hours a week near the Mathematics Institute in an underground vault referred to puckishly as the "Black Chamber".
The Poznań branch of the Cipher Bureau was disbanded in the summer of 1932. In Warsaw, on 1 September 1932, Rejewski, Zygalski, and Różycki joined the Cipher Bureau as civilian employees working at the General Staff building (the Saxon Palace). Their first assignment was to solve a four-letter code used by the Kriegsmarine (German Navy). Progress was initially slow, but sped up after a test exchange—consisting of a six-group signal, followed by a four-group response—was intercepted. The cryptologists guessed correctly that the first signal was the question, "When was Frederick the Great born?" followed by the response, "1712."
On 20 June 1934 Rejewski married Irena Maria Lewandowska, daughter of a prosperous dentist. The couple eventually had two children: a son, Andrzej (Andrew), born in 1936; and a daughter, Janina (Joan), born in 1939. Janina would later become a mathematician like her father.
## Enigma machine
The Enigma machine was an electromechanical device, equipped with a 26-letter keyboard and 26 lamps, corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. Inside was a set of wired drums (rotors and a reflector) that scrambled the input. The machine used a plugboard to swap pairs of letters, and the encipherment varied from one key press to the next. For two operators to communicate, both Enigma machines had to be set up in the same way. The large number of possibilities for setting the rotors and the plugboard combined to form an astronomical number of configurations, and the settings were changed daily, so the machine code had to be "broken" anew each day.
Before 1932, the Cipher Bureau had succeeded in solving an earlier Enigma machine that functioned without a plugboard, but had been unsuccessful with the Enigma I, a new standard German cipher machine that was coming into widespread use. In late October or early November 1932, the head of the Cipher Bureau's German section, Captain Maksymilian Ciężki, tasked Rejewski to work alone on the German Enigma I machine for a couple of hours per day; Rejewski was not to tell his colleagues what he was doing.
## Solving the wiring
To decrypt Enigma messages, three pieces of information were needed: (1) a general understanding of how Enigma functioned; (2) the wiring of the rotors; and (3) the daily settings (the sequence and orientations of the rotors, and the plug connections on the plugboard). Rejewski had only the first at his disposal, based on information already acquired by the Cipher Bureau.
First Rejewski tackled the problem of discovering the wiring of the rotors. To do this, according to historian David Kahn, he pioneered the use of pure mathematics in cryptanalysis. Previous methods had largely exploited linguistic patterns and the statistics of natural-language texts—letter-frequency analysis. Rejewski applied techniques from group theory—theorems about permutations—in his attack on Enigma. These mathematical techniques, combined with material supplied by Gustave Bertrand, chief of French radio intelligence, enabled him to reconstruct the internal wirings of the machine's rotors and nonrotating reflector. "The solution", writes Kahn, "was Rejewski's own stunning achievement, one that elevates him to the pantheon of the greatest cryptanalysts of all time." Rejewski used a mathematical theorem—that two permutations are conjugate if and only if they have the same cycle structure—that mathematics professor and Cryptologia co-editor Cipher A. Deavours describes as "the theorem that won World War II".
Before receiving the French intelligence material, Rejewski had made a careful study of Enigma messages, particularly of the first six letters of messages intercepted on a single day. For security, each message was encrypted using different starting positions of the rotors, as selected by the operator. This message setting was three letters long. To convey it to the receiving operator, the sending operator began the message by sending the message setting in a disguised form—a six-letter indicator. The indicator was formed using the Enigma with its rotors set to a common global setting for that day, termed the ground setting, which was shared by all operators. The particular way that the indicator was constructed introduced a weakness into the cipher.
For example, suppose the operator chose the message setting KYG for a message. The operator would first set the Enigma's rotors to the ground setting, which might be GBL on that particular day, and then encrypt the message setting on the Enigma twice; that is, the operator would enter KYGKYG (which might come out to something like QZKBLX). The operator would then reposition the rotors at KYG, and encrypt the actual message. A receiving operator could reverse the process to recover first the message setting, then the message itself. The repetition of the message setting was apparently meant as an error check to detect garbles, but it had the unforeseen effect of greatly weakening the cipher. Due to the indicator's repetition of the message setting, Rejewski knew that, in the plaintext of the indicator, the first and fourth letters were the same, the second and fifth were the same, and the third and sixth were the same. These relations could be exploited to break into the cipher.
Rejewski studied these related pairs of letters. For example, if there were four messages that had the following indicators on the same day: BJGTDN, LIFBAB, ETULZR, TFREII, then by looking at the first and fourth letters of each set, he knew that certain pairs of letters were related. B was related to T, L was related to B, E was related to L, and T was related to E: (B,T), (L,B), (E,L), and (T,E). If he had enough different messages to work with, he could build entire sequences of relationships: the letter B was related to T, which was related to E, which was related to L, which was related to B (see diagram). This was a "cycle of 4", since it took four jumps until it got back to the start letter. Another cycle on the same day might be A$\rightarrow$F$\rightarrow$W$\rightarrow$A, or a "cycle of 3". If there were enough messages on a given day, all the letters of the alphabet might be covered by a number of different cycles of various sizes. The cycles would be consistent for one day, and then would change to a different set of cycles the next day. Similar analysis could be done on the 2nd and 5th letters, and the 3rd and 6th, identifying the cycles in each case and the number of steps in each cycle.
Enigma operators also had a tendency to choose predictable letter combinations as indicators, such as girlfriends' initials or a pattern of keys that they saw on the Enigma keyboard. These became known to the allies as "Cillies" ("Sillies" misspelled). Using the data thus gained from the study of cycles and the use of predictable indicators, Rejewski was able to deduce six permutations corresponding to the encipherment at six consecutive positions of the Enigma machine. These permutations could be described by six equations with various unknowns, representing the wiring within the entry drum, rotors, reflector, and plugboard.
### French help
At this point, Rejewski ran into difficulties due to the large number of unknowns in the set of equations that he had developed. He would later comment in 1980 that it was still not known whether such a set of six equations was solvable without further data. But he was assisted by cryptographic documents that Section D of French military intelligence (the Deuxième Bureau), under future General Gustave Bertrand, had obtained and passed on to the Polish Cipher Bureau. The documents, procured from a spy in the German Cryptographic Service, Hans-Thilo Schmidt, included the Enigma settings for the months of September and October 1932. About 9 or 10 December 1932, the documents were given to Rejewski. They enabled him to reduce the number of unknowns and solve the wirings of the rotors and reflector.
There was another obstacle to overcome, however. The military Enigma had been modified from the commercial Enigma, of which Rejewski had had an actual example to study. In the commercial machine, the keys were connected to the entry drum in German keyboard order ("QWERTZU..."). However, in the military Enigma, the connections had instead been wired in alphabetical order: "ABCDEF..." This new wiring sequence foiled British cryptologists working on Enigma, who dismissed the "ABCDEF..." wiring as too obvious. Rejewski, perhaps guided by an intuition about a German fondness for order, simply guessed that the wiring was the normal alphabetic ordering. He later recalled that, after he had made this assumption, "from my pencil, as by magic, began to issue numbers designating the connections in rotor N. Thus the connections in one rotor, the right-hand rotor, were finally known."
The settings provided by French Intelligence covered two months that straddled a changeover period for the rotor ordering. A different rotor happened to be in the right-hand position for the second month, and so the wirings of two rotors could be recovered by the same method. Rejewski later recalled: "Finding the [wiring] in the third [rotor], and especially... in the [reflector], now presented no great difficulties. Likewise there were no difficulties with determining the correct torsion of the [rotors'] side walls with respect to each other, or the moments when the left and middle drums turned." By year's end 1932, the wirings of all three rotors and the reflector had been recovered. A sample message in an Enigma instruction manual, providing a plaintext and its corresponding ciphertext produced using a stated daily key and message key, helped clarify some remaining details.
There has been speculation as to whether the rotor wirings could have been solved without the documents supplied by French Intelligence. Rejewski recalled in 1980 that another way had been found that could have been used to solve the wirings, but that the method was "imperfect and tedious" and relied on chance. In 2005, mathematician John Lawrence claimed that it would have taken four years for this method to have had a reasonable likelihood of success. Rejewski had earlier written that "the conclusion is that the intelligence material furnished to us should be regarded as having been decisive to solution of the machine."
## Solving daily settings
After Rejewski had determined the wiring in the remaining rotors, he was joined in early 1933 by Różycki and Zygalski in devising methods and equipment to break Enigma ciphers routinely. Rejewski later recalled:
> Now we had the machine, but we didn't have the keys and we couldn't very well require Bertrand to keep on supplying us with the keys every month ... The situation had reversed itself: before, we'd had the keys but we hadn't had the machine—we solved the machine; now we had the machine but we didn't have the keys. We had to work out methods to find the daily keys.
### Early methods
A number of methods and devices had to be invented in response to continual improvements in German operating procedure and to the Enigma machine itself. The earliest method for reconstructing daily keys was the "grill", based on the fact that the plugboard's connections exchanged only six pairs of letters, leaving fourteen letters unchanged. Next was Różycki's "clock" method, which sometimes made it possible to determine which rotor was at the right-hand side of the Enigma machine on a given day.
After 1 October 1936, German procedure changed, and the number of plugboard connections became variable, ranging between five and eight. As a result, the grill method became considerably less effective. However, a method using a card catalog had been devised around 1934 or 1935, and was independent of the number of plug connections. The catalog was constructed using Rejewski's "cyclometer", a special-purpose device for creating a catalog of permutations. Once the catalog was complete, the permutation could be looked up in the catalog, yielding the Enigma rotor settings for that day.
The cyclometer comprised two sets of Enigma rotors, and was used to determine the length and number of cycles of the permutations that could be generated by the Enigma machine. Even with the cyclometer, preparing the catalog was a long and difficult task. Each position of the Enigma machine (there were 17,576 positions) had to be examined for each possible sequence of rotors (there were 6 possible sequences); therefore, the catalog comprised 105,456 entries. Preparation of the catalog took over a year, but when it was ready about 1935, it made obtaining daily keys a matter of 12–20 minutes. However, on 1 or 2 November 1937, the Germans replaced the reflector in their Enigma machines, which meant that the entire catalog had to be recalculated from scratch. Nonetheless, by January 1938 the Cipher Bureau's German section was reading a remarkable 75% of Enigma intercepts, and according to Rejewski, with a minimal increase in personnel this could have been increased to 90%.
### Bomba and sheets
In 1937 Rejewski, along with the German section of the Cipher Bureau, transferred to a secret facility near Pyry in the Kabaty Woods south of Warsaw. On 15 September 1938, the Germans introduced new rules for enciphering message keys (a new "indicator procedure"), making the Poles' earlier techniques obsolete. The Polish cryptanalysts rapidly responded with new techniques. One was Rejewski's bomba, an electrically powered aggregate of six Enigmas, which solved the daily keys within about two hours. Six bombas were built and were ready for use by mid-November 1938. The bomba exploited the fact that the plugboard connections did not affect all the letters; therefore, when another change to German operating procedure occurred on 1 January 1939, increasing the number of plugboard connections, the usefulness of the bombas was greatly reduced. The British bombe, the main tool that would be used to break Enigma messages during World War II, would be named after, and likely inspired by, the Polish bomba, though the cryptologic methods embodied in the two machines were different.
Around the same time as Rejewski's bomba, a manual method was invented by Henryk Zygalski, that of "perforated sheets" ("Zygalski sheets"), which was independent of the number of plugboard connections. Rejewski describes the construction of the Zygalski mechanism and its manipulation:
> Fairly thick paper sheets, lettered "a" through "z", were prepared for all twenty-six possible positions of rotor L [the left-hand Enigma rotor] and a square was drawn on each sheet, divided into 51 by 51 smaller squares. The sides, top, and bottom of each large square (it could as well be a rectangle) were lettered "a" through "z" and then again "a" through "y". This was, as it were, a system of coordinates in which the abscissas and ordinates marked successive possible positions of rotors M [the middle Enigma rotor] and N [the right-hand Enigma rotor], and each little square marked permutations, with or without constant points, corresponding to those positions. Cases with constant points were perforated.
>
> [E]ach constant point had to be perforated as many as four times. [...] When the sheets were superposed and moved in the proper sequence and the proper manner with respect to each other, in accordance with a [precisely] defined program, the number of visible apertures gradually decreased. And, if a sufficient quantity of data was available, there finally remained a single aperture, probably corresponding to the right case, that is, to the solution. From the position of the aperture one could calculate the order of the rotors, the setting of their rings, and, by comparing the letters of the cipher keys with the letters in the machine, likewise permutation S; in other words, the entire cipher key.
However, application of both the bomba and Zygalski sheets was complicated by yet another change to the Enigma machine on 15 December 1938. The Germans had supplied Enigma operators with an additional two rotors to supplement the original three, and this increased the complexity of decryption tenfold. Building ten times as many bombas (60 would now be needed) was beyond the Cipher Bureau's ability—that many bombas would have cost fifteen times its entire annual equipment budget.
Two and a half weeks later, effective 1 January 1939, the Germans increased the number of plug connections to 7–10, which, writes Rejewski, "to a great degree, decreased the usefulness of the bombs." Zygalski's perforated ("Zygalski") sheets, writes Rejewski, "like the card-catalog method, was independent of the number of plug connections. But the manufacture of these sheets, [...] in our [...] circumstances, was very time-consuming, so that by 15 December 1938, only one-third of the whole job had been done. [T]he Germans' [introduction of rotors] IV and V [...] increased the labor of making the sheets tenfold [since 60, or ten times as many, sets of sheets were now needed], considerably exceeding our [...] capacities."
### Allies informed
As it became clear that war was imminent and that Polish financial resources were insufficient to keep pace with the evolution of Enigma encryption (e.g., due to the prohibitive expense of an additional 54 bombas and due to the Poles' difficulty in producing in timely fashion the full 60 series of 26 "Zygalski sheets"), the Polish General Staff and government decided to initiate their Western allies into the secrets of Enigma decryption. The Polish methods were revealed to French and British intelligence representatives in a meeting at Pyry, south of Warsaw, on 25 July 1939. France was represented by Gustave Bertrand and Air Force cryptologist Captain Henri Braquenié; Britain, by Government Code and Cypher School chief Alastair Denniston, veteran cryptologist Alfred Dillwyn Knox, and Commander Humphrey Sandwith, head of the section that had developed and controlled the Royal Navy's intercept and direction-finding stations. The Polish hosts included Cipher Bureau chief Gwido Langer, the Bureau's German-Section chief Maksymilian Ciężki, the Bureau's General-Staff-Intelligence supervisor Stefan Mayer, and the three cryptologists Rejewski, Różycki and Zygalski.
The Poles' gift of Enigma decryption to their Western allies, five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, came not a moment too soon. Knowledge that the cipher was crackable was a morale boost to Allied cryptologists. The British were able to manufacture at least two complete sets of perforated sheets—they sent one to PC Bruno, outside Paris, in mid-December 1939—and began reading Enigma within months of the outbreak of war.
Without the Polish assistance, British cryptologists would, at the very least, have been considerably delayed in reading Enigma. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore concludes that substantial breaks into German Army and Air Force Enigma ciphers by the British would have occurred only after November 1941 at the earliest, after an Enigma machine and key lists had been captured, and similarly into Naval Enigma only after late 1942.
Intelligence gained from solving high-level German ciphers—intelligence codenamed Ultra by the British and Americans—came chiefly from Enigma decrypts. While the exact contribution of Ultra intelligence to Allied victory is disputed, Kozaczuk and Straszak note that "it is widely believed that Ultra saved the world at least two years of war and possibly prevented Hitler from winning." The English historian Sir Harry Hinsley, who worked at Bletchley Park, similarly assessed it as having "shortened the war by not less than two years and probably by four years". The availability of Ultra was due to the earlier Polish breaking of Enigma; Gordon Welchman, head of Bletchley Park's Hut 6 (which solved German Army and Air Force Enigma ciphers), writes: "Hut 6 Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use."
## In France and Britain
### PC Bruno
On 5 September 1939 the Cipher Bureau began preparations to evacuate key personnel and equipment from Warsaw. Soon a special evacuation train, the Echelon F, transported them eastward, then south. By the time the Cipher Bureau was ordered to cross the border into allied Romania on 17 September, they had destroyed all sensitive documents and equipment and were down to a single very crowded truck. The vehicle was confiscated at the border by a Romanian officer, who separated the military from the civilian personnel. Taking advantage of the confusion, the three mathematicians ignored the Romanian's instructions. They anticipated that in an internment camp they might be identified by the Romanian security police, in which the German Abwehr and SD had informers. The mathematicians went to the nearest railroad station, exchanged money, bought tickets, and boarded the first train headed south. After a dozen or so hours, they reached Bucharest, at the other end of Romania. There they went to the British embassy. Told by the British to "come back in a few days", they next tried the French embassy, introducing themselves as "friends of Bolek" (Bertrand's Polish code name) and asking to speak with a French military officer. A French Army colonel telephoned Paris and then issued instructions for the three Poles to be assisted in evacuating to Paris.
On 20 October 1939 the three Polish cryptologists resumed work on German ciphers at a joint French–Polish–(anti-fascist) Spanish radio-intelligence unit stationed at Gretz-Armainvilliers, forty kilometers northeast of Paris, and housed in the Château de Vignolles (code-named PC Bruno).
As late as 3–7 December 1939, when Lt. Col. Langer and French Air Force Capt. Henri Braquenié visited London and Bletchley Park, the British asked that the Polish cryptologists be made available to them in Britain. Langer, however, took the position that they must remain where the Polish Army in exile was forming—on French soil.
On 17 January 1940 the Poles found the first Enigma key to be solved in France, one for 28 October 1939. The PC Bruno staff collaborated by teleprinter with counterparts at Bletchley Park in England. For their mutual communications security, the Polish, French, and British cryptologic agencies used the Enigma machine itself. Bruno closed its Enigma-encrypted messages to Britain with an ironic "Heil Hitler!"
In the first months of 1940, Alan Turing—principal designer of the British cryptological Bombe, elaborated from the Polish bomba—would visit Bruno to confer about Enigma decryption with the three Polish cryptologists.
On 24 June 1940, after Germany's victory in the Battle of France, Gustave Bertrand flew Bruno'''s international personnel—including fifteen Poles, and seven Spaniards who worked on Italian ciphers—in three planes to Algeria.
### Cadix
Some three months later, in September 1940, they returned to work covertly in unoccupied southern, Vichy France. Rejewski's cover was as Pierre Ranaud, a lycée professor from Nantes. A radio-intelligence station was set up at the Château des Fouzes, code-named Cadix, near Uzès. Cadix began operations on 1 October. Rejewski and his colleagues solved German telegraph ciphers, and also the Swiss version of the Enigma machine (which had no plugboard). Rejewski may have had little or no involvement in working on German Enigma at Cadix.
In early July 1941, Rejewski and Zygalski were asked to try solving messages enciphered on the secret Polish Lacida cipher machine, which was used for secure communications between Cadix and the Polish General Staff in London. Lacida was a rotor machine based on the same cryptographic principle as Enigma, yet had never been subjected to rigorous security analysis. The two cryptologists created consternation by breaking the first message within a couple of hours; further messages were solved in a similar way.
The youngest of the three Polish mathematicians who had worked together since 1929—Jerzy Różycki—died in the sinking of a French passenger ship on 9 January 1942, as he was returning to Cadix from a stint in Algeria. By summer 1942 work at Cadix was becoming dangerous, and plans for evacuation were drawn up. Vichy France was liable to be occupied by German troops, and Cadix's radio transmissions were increasingly at risk of detection by the German Funkabwehr, a unit tasked with locating enemy radio transmitters. Indeed, on 6 November a pickup truck equipped with a circular antenna arrived at the gate of the Château des Fouzes where the cryptologists were operating. The visitors, however, did not enter, and merely investigated nearby farms, badly frightening their occupants. Nonetheless, at Bertrand's suggestion French intelligence ordered the evacuation of Cadix. The order was carried out on 9 November, the day after the Allied "Operation Torch" landings in North Africa. Three days later, on 12 November, the Germans occupied the chateau.
### Escaping France
The Poles were split into groups of two and three. On 11 November 1942 Rejewski and Zygalski were sent to Nice, in the Italian-occupied zone. After coming under suspicion there, they had to flee again, moving or hiding constantly. Their trek took them to Cannes, Antibes, back to Nice, then on to Marseilles, Toulouse, Narbonne, Perpignan, and Ax-les-Thermes, near the Spanish border. On 29 January 1943, accompanied by a local guide, Rejewski, and Zygalski, bound for Spain, began a climb over the Pyrenees, avoiding German and Vichy patrols. Near midnight, close to the Spanish border, the guide pulled out a pistol and demanded that they hand over their remaining money.
After being robbed, Rejewski and Zygalski succeeded in reaching the Spanish side of the border, only to be arrested within hours by security police. They were sent first to a prison in La Seu d'Urgell, then on 24 March transferred to a prison at Lerida. On 4 May 1943, after having spent over three months in Spanish prisons, on intervention by the Polish Red Cross the pair were released and sent to Madrid. Leaving there on 21 July, they made it to Portugal; from there, aboard HMS Scottish, to Gibraltar; and then by air to RAF Hendon in north London, arriving on 3 August 1943.
### Britain
Rejewski and Zygalski were inducted as privates into the Polish Armed Forces on 16 August 1943 and were posted to a Polish Army facility in Boxmoor, cracking German SS and SD hand ciphers. The ciphers were usually based on the Doppelkassettenverfahren ("double Playfair") system, which the two cryptologists had already worked on in France. British cryptologist Alan Stripp suggests that "Setting them to work on the Doppelkassetten system was like using racehorses to pull wagons." On 10 October 1943, Rejewski and Zygalski were commissioned second lieutenants; on 1 January 1945 Rejewski, and presumably also Zygalski, were promoted to lieutenant. When Gustave Bertrand fled to England in June 1944, he and his wife were provided with a house in Boxmoor, a short walk from the Polish radio station and cryptology office, where it seems likely that his collaboration with Rejewski and Zygalski continued.
Enigma decryption, however, had become an exclusively British and American domain; the Polish mathematicians who had laid the foundations for Allied Enigma decryption were now excluded from making further contributions in this area. By that time, at Bletchley Park, "very few even knew about the Polish contribution" because of the strict secrecy and the "need-to-know" principle.
## Back in Poland
After the Germans suppressed the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, they sent Rejewski's wife and children west, along with other Warsaw survivors; the family eventually found refuge with her parents in Bydgoszcz. Rejewski was discharged from the Polish Army in Britain on 15 November 1946. Six days later, he returned to Poland to be reunited with his wife and family. On his return, he was urged by his old Poznań University professor, Zdzisław Krygowski, to take a university mathematics post at Poznań or Szczecin, in western Poland. Rejewski could have looked forward to rapid advancement because of personnel shortages as a result of the war. However, he was still recovering from rheumatism, which he had contracted in the Spanish prisons. Soon after his return to Poland, in the summer of 1947, his 11-year-old son Andrzej died of polio after only five days' illness. After his son's death, Rejewski did not want to part, even briefly, with his wife and daughter, so they lived in Bydgoszcz with his in-laws. He took a position in Bydgoszcz as director of the sales department at a cable-manufacturing company, Kabel Polski (Polish Cable).
Between 1949 and 1958 Rejewski was repeatedly investigated by the Polish Office of Public Security, who suspected he was a former member of the Polish Armed Forces in the West. He retired in 1967, and moved with his family back to Warsaw in 1969, to an apartment he had acquired 30 years earlier with financial help from his father-in-law.
Rejewski had written a "Report of Cryptologic Work on the German Enigma Machine Cipher" in 1942. Before his 1967 retirement, he began writing his "Memoirs of My Work in the Cipher Bureau of Section II of the [Polish] General Staff", which were purchased by the Polish Military Historical Institute [pl], in Warsaw. Rejewski had often wondered what use Alan Turing (who in early 1940 had visited the Polish cryptologists at PC Bruno outside Paris) and the British at Bletchley Park had ultimately made of the Polish discoveries and inventions. For nearly three decades after the war, little was publicly known due to a ban imposed in 1945 by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In a 1967 book Władysław Kozaczuk, associated with the Military Historical Institute, disclosed Poland's breaking of the German Enigma ciphers.
Until 1974, the scant information published concerning Enigma decryption attracted little attention. Ladislas Farago's 1971 best-seller The Game of the Foxes presented a garbled account of Ultra's origins: "Commander Denniston went clandestinely to a secluded Polish castle [sic] on the eve of the war [to pick up an Enigma, 'the Wehrmacht's top system' during World War II]. Dilly Knox later solved its keying [sic]..." Still, this was marginally closer to the truth than many British and American best-seller accounts that would follow after 1974. Their authors were at a disadvantage: they did not know that the founder of Enigma decryption, Rejewski, was still alive and alert, and that it was reckless to fabricate stories out of whole cloth.
With Gustave Bertrand's 1973 publication of his Enigma, substantial information about the origins of Ultra began to seep out; and with F. W. Winterbotham's 1974 best-seller, The Ultra Secret, the dam began to burst. Still, many aspiring authors were not averse to filling gaps in their information with whole-cloth fabrications. Rejewski fought a gallant (if, into the 21st century, not entirely successful) fight to get the truth before the public. He published a number of papers on his cryptologic work and contributed generously to articles, books, and television programs. He was interviewed by scholars, journalists, and television crews from Poland, East Germany, the United States, Britain, Sweden, Belgium, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Brazil.
Rejewski maintained a lively correspondence with his wartime French host, General Gustave Bertrand, and at the General's bidding he began translating Bertrand's Enigma into Polish. In 1976, at the request of the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America, Rejewski broke enciphered correspondence of Józef Piłsudski and his fellow Polish Socialist conspirators from 1904. On 12 August 1978 he received from a grateful Polish people the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
Rejewski, who had been suffering from heart disease, died of a heart attack on 13 February 1980, aged 74, after returning home from a shopping trip. He was buried with military honors at Warsaw's Powązki Military Cemetery.
## Recognition
On 21 July 2000, Poland's President Aleksander Kwaśniewski posthumously awarded Poland's second-highest civilian decoration, the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, to Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski. In July 2005 Rejewski's daughter, Janina Sylwestrzak, received on his behalf the War Medal 1939–1945 from the British Chief of the Defence Staff. On 1 August 2012 Marian Rejewski posthumously received the Knowlton Award of the U.S. Military Intelligence Corps Association; his daughter Janina accepted the award at his home town, Bydgoszcz, on 4 September 2012. Rejewski had been nominated for the Award by NATO Allied Command Counterintelligence.
In 2009, the Polish Post issued a series of four commemorative stamps, one of which pictured Rejewski and fellow mathematician-cryptologists Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski.
On 5 August 2014 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) honored Rejewski, Różycki, and Zygalski with its prestigious Milestone Award, which recognizes achievements that have changed the world.
A three-sided bronze monument was dedicated in 2007 in front of the Imperial Castle in Poznań. Each side bears the name of one of the three Polish mathematicians who broke the Enigma cipher.
Rejewski and colleagues were the heroes of Sekret Enigmy (The Enigma Secret), a thriller movie about the Poles' solution of the German Enigma cipher. Late 1980 also saw a Polish TV series with a similar theme, Tajemnice Enigmy'' ("The Secrets of Enigma").
In 2021 the Enigma Cipher Centre, an educational and scientific institution dedicated to the Polish mathematicians who broke the Enigma cipher, including Marian Rejewski, opened in Poznań.
## See also
- List of cryptographers
- List of Poles
- Polish contribution to World War II
- Timeline of Polish science and technology
|
3,790,252 |
SMS Preussen (1903)
| 1,158,733,522 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1903 ships",
"Braunschweig-class battleships",
"Ships built in Stettin",
"World War I battleships of Germany"
] |
SMS Preussen was the fourth of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the Braunschweig class, built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy). She was laid down in April 1902, was launched in October 1903, and was commissioned in July 1905. Named for the state of Prussia, the ship was armed with a battery of four 28 cm (11 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Like all pre-dreadnoughts built at the turn of the century, Preussen was quickly made obsolete by the launching of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought in 1906; as a result, she saw only limited service with the German fleet.
Preussen's peacetime career centered on squadron and fleet exercises and training cruises to foreign ports. The ship served as the flagship of II Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career. During World War I, she served as a guard ship in the German Bight and later in the Danish straits. She participated in a fleet sortie in December 1914 in support of the Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby during which the German fleet briefly clashed with a detachment of the British Grand Fleet. Preussen had been temporarily assigned to guard ship duties in the Baltic in May 1916, and so missed the Battle of Jutland. Due to her age, she did not rejoin the fleet, and instead continued to serve as a guard ship until 1917, when she became a tender for U-boats based in Wilhelmshaven.
After the war, Preussen was retained by the re-formed Reichsmarine and converted into a depot ship for F-type minesweepers. She was stricken from the naval register in April 1929 and sold to ship breakers in 1931. A 63-meter (207 ft) section of her hull was retained as a target; it was bombed and sunk in 1945 by Allied bombers at the end of World War II, and was scrapped in 1954.
## Design
With the passage of the Second Naval Law under the direction of Vizeadmiral (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Alfred von Tirpitz in 1900, funding was allocated for a new class of battleships, to succeed the Wittelsbach-class ships authorized under the 1898 Naval Law. By this time, Krupp, the supplier of naval artillery to the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) had developed quick-firing, 28-centimeter (11 in) guns; the largest guns that had previously incorporated the technology were the 24 cm (9.4 in) guns mounted on the Wittelsbachs. The Design Department of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office) adopted these guns for the new battleships, along with an increase from 15 cm (5.9 in) to 17 cm (6.7 in) for the secondary battery, owing to the increased threat from torpedo boats as torpedoes became more effective.
Though the Braunschweig class marked a significant improvement over earlier German battleships, its design fell victim to the rapid pace of technological development in the early 1900s. The British battleship HMS Dreadnought—armed with ten 12-inch (30.5 cm) guns—was commissioned in December 1906, less than a year and a half after Preussen entered service. Dreadnought's revolutionary design rendered every capital ship of the German navy obsolete, including Preussen.
Preussen was 127.7 m (419 ft) long overall and had a beam of 22.2 m (72 ft 10 in) and a draft of 8.1 m (26 ft 7 in) forward. She displaced 13,208 t (12,999 long tons) as designed and 14,394 t (14,167 long tons) at Full load. Her crew consisted of 35 officers and 708 enlisted men. The ship was powered by three 3-cylinder vertical triple expansion engines that drove three screws. Steam was provided by eight naval and six cylindrical boilers, all of which burned coal. Preussen's powerplant was rated at 16,000 metric horsepower (15,781 ihp; 11,768 kW), which generated a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). She could steam 5,200 nautical miles (9,600 km; 6,000 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).
Preussen's armament consisted of a main battery of four 28 cm (11 in) SK L/40 guns in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the central superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of fourteen 17 cm (6.7 inch) SK L/40 guns and eighteen 8.8 cm (3.45 in) SK L/35 quick-firing guns. The armament suite was rounded out with six 45 cm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, all mounted submerged in the hull. One tube was in the bow, two were on each broadside, and the final tube was in the stern. Preussen was protected with Krupp armor. Her armored belt was 110 to 250 millimeters (4.3 to 9.8 in) thick, the heavier armor in the central citadel that protected her magazines and propulsion machinery spaces, and the thinner plating at either end of the hull. Her deck was 40 mm (1.6 in) thick. The main battery turrets had 250 mm of armor plating.
## Service history
### Construction through 1907
Preussen was laid down in April 1902 at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin under construction number 256. The fourth unit of her class, she had been ordered under the contract name "K" as a new unit for the fleet. Preussen was launched on 30 October 1903, with a speech given by Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow and the christening performed by Empress Augusta Victoria. The ship was commissioned into the fleet on 12 July 1905. Sea trials lasted until September, when she formally joined II Squadron, where she replaced the battleship Kaiser Friedrich III as the squadron flagship. VAdm Max von Fischel was the squadron commander at the time.
The German fleet was occupied with extensive training exercises during the early 1900s. The ships were occupied with individual, division and squadron exercises throughout April 1906, the only interruption being in February, when Preussen carried Kaiser Wilhelm II to Copenhagen in company with the light cruiser Ariadne and the torpedo boats S121 and G111. Wilhelm II attended the burial of the Danish King Christian IX, who had died the previous month. Starting on 13 May, major fleet exercises took place in the North Sea and lasted until 8 June with a cruise around the Skagen into the Baltic. During Kiel Week on 21 June, Preussen received a gift from the provinces of West Prussia and East Prussia, in the form of a Prussian war flag. The fleet began its usual summer cruise to Norway in mid-July, and the fleet was present for the birthday of Norwegian King Haakon VII on 3 August. The German ships departed the following day for Helgoland, to join exercises being conducted there.
The fleet was back in Kiel by 15 August, where preparations for the autumn maneuvers began. On 22–24 August, the fleet took part in landing exercises in Eckernförde Bay outside Kiel. The maneuvers were paused from 31 August to 3 September when the fleet hosted vessels from Denmark and Sweden, along with a Russian squadron from 3 to 9 September in Kiel. The maneuvers resumed on 8 September and lasted five more days. The ship participated in the uneventful winter cruise into the Kattegat and Skagerrak from 8 to 16 December. The first quarter of 1907 followed the previous pattern and, on 16 February, the Active Battle Fleet was re-designated the High Seas Fleet. From the end of May to early June the fleet went on its summer cruise in the North Sea, returning to the Baltic via the Kattegat. This was followed by the regular cruise to Norway from 12 July to 10 August, after which the fleet conducted the annual autumn maneuvers, which lasted from 26 August to 6 September. The exercises included landing exercises in northern Schleswig with IX Corps. On 1 October 1907, Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Ludwig von Schröder came aboard Preussen, taking command of the squadron, as Fischel had become the chief of the Marinestation der Nordsee (Naval Station of the North Sea). The winter training cruise went into the Kattegat from 22 to 30 November.
### 1908–1914
The fleet conducted training exercises in the Baltic in February 1908. Prince Heinrich, then the commander of the High Seas Fleet, had pressed for such a cruise the previous year, arguing that it would prepare the fleet for overseas operations and would break up the monotony of training in German waters, though tensions with Britain over the developing Anglo-German naval arms race were high. The fleet departed Kiel on 17 July, passed through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to the North Sea, and continued to the Atlantic. During the cruise, Preussen visited Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. The fleet returned to Germany on 13 August. The autumn maneuvers followed from 27 August to 12 September. Later that year, the fleet toured coastal German cities as part of an effort to increase public support for naval expenditures.
In early 1909, Preussen and the battleships Pommern and Schleswig-Holstein were sent to break paths in the sea ice off the coast of Holstein for merchant shipping. Another cruise into the Atlantic was conducted from 7 July to 1 August, during which Preussen stopped in El Ferrol, Spain. On the way back to Germany, the High Seas Fleet was received by the British Royal Navy in Spithead. Later that year, Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff became the fleet commander. Holtzendorff's tenure as fleet commander was marked by strategic experimentation, owing to the increased threat the latest underwater weapons posed and the fact that the new Nassau-class battleships were too wide to pass through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. Accordingly, the fleet was transferred from the Baltic Sea port of Kiel to the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven on 1 April 1910.
In May 1910, the fleet conducted training maneuvers in the Kattegat. These were in accordance with Holtzendorff's strategy, which envisioned drawing the Royal Navy into the narrow waters there. The annual summer cruise was to Norway, and was followed by fleet training, during which another fleet review was held in Danzig on 29 August. After the conclusion of the maneuvers, Schröder was promoted to chief of the Marinestation der Ostsee (Naval Station of the Baltic Sea), his place aboard Preussen being taken by VAdm Friedrich von Ingenohl. A training cruise into the Baltic followed at the end of the year. In March 1911, the fleet held exercises in the Skagerrak and Kattegat, and the year's autumn maneuvers were confined to the Baltic and the Kattegat. Another fleet review was held during the exercises for a visiting Austro-Hungarian delegation that included Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Admiral Rudolf Montecuccoli.
In mid-1912, due to the Agadir Crisis, the summer cruise was confined to the Baltic, to avoid exposing the fleet during the period of heightened tension with Britain and France. On 30 January 1913, Holtzendorff was relieved as the fleet commander, owing in large part due to Wilhelm II's displeasure with his strategic vision; Ingenohl took Holtzendorff's place, and KAdm Reinhard Scheer in turn replaced Ingenohl as II Squadron commander on 4 February. In late August, the squadron steamed through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal at the start of the autumn maneuvers to reach the island of Helgoland; the voyage through the canal was notable, because the canal had been closed for over a year while it was enlarged to allow the passage of larger dreadnought battleships. Preussen went into dry dock in November for periodic maintenance, and as a result, missed training exercises conducted that month.
Preussen participated in ceremonies at Sonderburg on 2 May to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Dybbøl of the Second Schleswig War; she was joined by her sister ships Hessen and Lothringen, the battleship Schlesien, and the armored cruiser Blücher. The ship was present during the fleet cruise to Norway in July 1914, which was cut short by the July Crisis following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand the month before and subsequent rise in international tensions. On 25 July the ship's crew was made aware of Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia; Preussen left Norway to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet the following day. Preussen had been slated to be decommissioned at the end of the year, her place as the squadron flagship to be taken by the dreadnought Westfalen. Preussen was to then replace Wittelsbach in the Reserve Division of the Baltic Sea, but the outbreak of World War I cancelled those plans.
### World War I
After the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German command deployed II Squadron in the German Bight to defend Germany's coast from a major attack from the Royal Navy that the Germans presumed was imminent. Preussen and her squadron mates were stationed in the mouth of the Elbe to support the vessels on patrol duty in the Bight. Once it became clear that the British would not attack the High Seas Fleet, the Germans began a series of operations designed to lure out a portion of the numerically superior British Grand Fleet and destroy it. By achieving a rough equality of forces, the German navy could then force a decisive battle in the southern portion of the North Sea.
The first such operation in which the High Seas Fleet participated was the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on 15–16 December 1914. The main fleet acted as distant support for KAdm Franz von Hipper's battlecruiser squadron while it raided the coastal towns. On the evening of 15 December, the fleet came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. However, skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced Ingenohl, who was now the German fleet commander, that the entire Grand Fleet was deployed before him. Under orders from Wilhelm II to avoid battle if victory was not certain, Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned the battlefleet back towards Germany. At the end of the month, Scheer was replaced by KAdm Felix Funke, Scheer going on to command III Battle Squadron.
On 14 March 1915, Preussen went to Kiel for periodic maintenance, and she was replaced as the squadron flagship by the battleship Deutschland. The latter vessel held the position for the remainder of the squadron's existence, with the exceptions of 19 September to 16 October 1915, 25 February to 7 April 1916, in September that year, and from 22 January to 10 February 1917; during each of these periods, Preussen temporarily resumed the flagship role. Starting in April 1916, the ships of II Squadron were tasked with patrolling the Danish straits; each ship of the squadron was to rotate through the duty, the others remaining in the Elbe or serving with the main fleet. Preussen began her first stint on 21 April, replacing Hessen; she was accordingly absent during the bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft three days later. On 4 May, Preussen was relieved and she returned to the Elbe, though she was transferred back to the straits on 21 May, remaining there until 8 June. As a result, she missed the Battle of Jutland, fought on 31 May – 1 June in the North Sea. Her sister ship Lothringen also missed the battle, as she had been deemed to be in too poor a condition to participate in the fleet sortie.
Jutland proved to Scheer, who was now the fleet commander, that the pre-dreadnought battleships were too vulnerable to take part in a major fleet action, and so he detached II Squadron from the High Seas Fleet. As a result, Preussen remained in service only as a guard ship. She saw further stints in the Danish straits from 30 June to 23 July and from 15 to 31 August. On 13 March 1917, Preussen left the Elbe and steamed to the Baltic, where she was temporarily used as an icebreaker to clear a path to Swinemünde. She was decommissioned on 5 August, and most of her crew were transferred to the new battlecruiser Hindenburg. From then to the end of the war, she served as a tender for III U-boat Flotilla based in Wilhelmshaven. Preussen briefly held Edouard Izac, a US Navy sailor captured after his ship was sunk by U-90, in June 1918; Izac would go on to escape from a German prisoner of war camp and win the Medal of Honor.
### Post-war career
Following the German defeat in World War I, the German navy was reorganized as the Reichsmarine according to the Treaty of Versailles. The new navy was permitted to retain eight pre-dreadnought battleships under Article 181—two of which would be in reserve—for coastal defense. Preussen was among those ships chosen to remain on active service with the Reichsmarine. The ship was converted into a parent ship for F-type minesweepers at the Kriegsmarinewerft in Wilhelmshaven in 1919; the ship was disarmed and platforms for holding the minesweepers were installed.
Preussen was commissioned with the Reichsmarine to support the minesweeping effort, though she proved to be too top-heavy to serve as an effective mothership, and she was soon replaced by the old light cruiser Arcona. Preussen was placed in reserve and was left out of service until 1929, when she was stricken from the naval register on 5 April. The Reichsmarine sold her to ship breakers on 25 February 1931 for 216,800 Reichsmarks. Preussen was subsequently broken up for scrap in Wilhelmshaven, though a 63 m (207 ft) length of her hull was retained as a testing target for underwater weapons, including torpedoes and mines. The section of hull was nicknamed "SMS Vierkant ("SMS Rectangle"). Allied bombers attacked and sank the section of Preussen's hull in April 1945. It was eventually raised and scrapped in late 1954.
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Battleship
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Large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns
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[
"Battleships",
"Ship types"
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A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The term battleship came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship, now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships. In 1906, the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought into the United Kingdom's Royal Navy heralded a revolution in the field of battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought, were referred to as "dreadnoughts", though the term eventually became obsolete as dreadnoughts became the only type of battleship in common use.
Battleships were a symbol of naval dominance and national might, and for decades the battleship was a major factor in both diplomacy and military strategy. A global arms race in battleship construction began in Europe in the 1890s and culminated at the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the outcome of which significantly influenced the design of HMS Dreadnought. The launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced a new naval arms race. Three major fleet actions between steel battleships took place: the long-range gunnery duel at the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904, the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905 (both during the Russo-Japanese War) and the inconclusive Battle of Jutland in 1916, during the First World War. Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of dreadnoughts of the war, and it was the last major battle in naval history fought primarily by battleships.
The Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. Both the Allied and Axis powers built battleships during World War II, though the increasing importance of the aircraft carrier meant that the battleship played a less important role than had been expected in that conflict.
The value of the battleship has been questioned, even during their heyday. There were few of the decisive fleet battles that battleship proponents expected and used to justify the vast resources spent on building battlefleets. Even in spite of their huge firepower and protection, battleships were increasingly vulnerable to much smaller and relatively inexpensive weapons: initially the torpedo and the naval mine, and later aircraft and the guided missile. The growing range of naval engagements led to the aircraft carrier replacing the battleship as the leading capital ship during World War II, with the last battleship to be launched being HMS Vanguard in 1944. Four battleships were retained by the United States Navy until the end of the Cold War for fire support purposes and were last used in combat during the Gulf War in 1991. The last battleships were struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. Many World War II-era battleships remain in use today as museum ships.
## History
### Ships of the line
A ship of the line was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns and carronades, which came to prominence with the adoption of line of battle tactics in the early 17th century and the end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. From 1794, the alternative term 'line of battle ship' was contracted (informally at first) to 'battle ship' or 'battleship'.
The sheer number of guns fired broadside meant a ship of the line could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull, knocking down masts, wrecking her rigging, and killing her crew. However, the effective range of the guns was as little as a few hundred yards, so the battle tactics of sailing ships depended in part on the wind.
Over time, ships of the line gradually became larger and carried more guns, but otherwise remained quite similar. The first major change to the ship of the line concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system. Steam power was gradually introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft and later for frigates. The French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850—the first true steam battleship. Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h), regardless of the wind. This was a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the United Kingdom were the only countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including Russia (9), the Ottoman Empire (3), Sweden (2), Naples (1), Denmark (1) and Austria (1).
### Ironclads
The adoption of steam power was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of the line was overtaken by the ironclad: powered by steam, protected by metal armor, and armed with guns firing high-explosive shells.
#### Explosive shells
Guns that fired explosive or incendiary shells were a major threat to wooden ships, and these weapons quickly became widespread after the introduction of 8-inch shell guns as part of the standard armament of French and American line-of-battle ships in 1841. In the Crimean War, six line-of-battle ships and two frigates of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853. Later in the war, French ironclad floating batteries used similar weapons against the defenses at the Battle of Kinburn.
Nevertheless, wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to shells, as shown in the 1866 Battle of Lissa, where the modern Austrian steam two-decker SMS Kaiser ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an Italian ironclad and took 80 hits from Italian ironclads, many of which were shells, but including at least one 300-pound shot at point-blank range. Despite losing her bowsprit and her foremast, and being set on fire, she was ready for action again the very next day.
#### Iron armor and construction
The development of high-explosive shells made the use of iron armor plate on warships necessary. In 1859 France launched Gloire, the first ocean-going ironclad warship. She had the profile of a ship of the line, cut to one deck due to weight considerations. Although made of wood and reliant on sail for most journeys, Gloire was fitted with a propeller, and her wooden hull was protected by a layer of thick iron armor. Gloire prompted further innovation from the Royal Navy, anxious to prevent France from gaining a technological lead.
The superior armored frigate Warrior followed Gloire by only 14 months, and both nations embarked on a program of building new ironclads and converting existing screw ships of the line to armored frigates. Within two years, Italy, Austria, Spain and Russia had all ordered ironclad warships, and by the time of the famous clash of the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia at the Battle of Hampton Roads at least eight navies possessed ironclad ships.
Navies experimented with the positioning of guns, in turrets (like the USS Monitor), central-batteries or barbettes, or with the ram as the principal weapon. As steam technology developed, masts were gradually removed from battleship designs. By the mid-1870s steel was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. The French Navy's Redoutable, laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876, was a central battery and barbette warship which became the first battleship in the world to use steel as the principal building material.
### Pre-dreadnought battleship
The term "battleship" was officially adopted by the Royal Navy in the re-classification of 1892. By the 1890s, there was an increasing similarity between battleship designs, and the type that later became known as the 'pre-dreadnought battleship' emerged. These were heavily armored ships, mounting a mixed battery of guns in turrets, and without sails. The typical first-class battleship of the pre-dreadnought era displaced 15,000 to 17,000 tons, had a speed of 16 knots (30 km/h), and an armament of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns in two turrets fore and aft with a mixed-caliber secondary battery amidships around the superstructure. An early design with superficial similarity to the pre-dreadnought is the British Devastation class of 1871.
The slow-firing 12-inch (305 mm) main guns were the principal weapons for battleship-to-battleship combat. The intermediate and secondary batteries had two roles. Against major ships, it was thought a 'hail of fire' from quick-firing secondary weapons could distract enemy gun crews by inflicting damage to the superstructure, and they would be more effective against smaller ships such as cruisers. Smaller guns (12-pounders and smaller) were reserved for protecting the battleship against the threat of torpedo attack from destroyers and torpedo boats.
The beginning of the pre-dreadnought era coincided with Britain reasserting her naval dominance. For many years previously, Britain had taken naval supremacy for granted. Expensive naval projects were criticized by political leaders of all inclinations. However, in 1888 a war scare with France and the build-up of the Russian navy gave added impetus to naval construction, and the British Naval Defence Act of 1889 laid down a new fleet including eight new battleships. The principle that Britain's navy should be more powerful than the two next most powerful fleets combined was established. This policy was designed to deter France and Russia from building more battleships, but both nations nevertheless expanded their fleets with more and better pre-dreadnoughts in the 1890s.
In the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, the escalation in the building of battleships became an arms race between Britain and Germany. The German naval laws of 1890 and 1898 authorized a fleet of 38 battleships, a vital threat to the balance of naval power. Britain answered with further shipbuilding, but by the end of the pre-dreadnought era, British supremacy at sea had markedly weakened. In 1883, the United Kingdom had 38 battleships, twice as many as France and almost as many as the rest of the world put together. In 1897, Britain's lead was far smaller due to competition from France, Germany, and Russia, as well as the development of pre-dreadnought fleets in Italy, the United States and Japan. The Ottoman Empire, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Chile and Brazil all had second-rate fleets led by armored cruisers, coastal defence ships or monitors.
Pre-dreadnoughts continued the technical innovations of the ironclad. Turrets, armor plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were also introduced. A small number of designs, including the American Kearsarge and Virginia classes, experimented with all or part of the 8-inch intermediate battery superimposed over the 12-inch primary. Results were poor: recoil factors and blast effects resulted in the 8-inch battery being completely unusable, and the inability to train the primary and intermediate armaments on different targets led to significant tactical limitations. Even though such innovative designs saved weight (a key reason for their inception), they proved too cumbersome in practice.
### Dreadnought era
In 1906, the British Royal Navy launched the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought. Created as a result of pressure from Admiral Sir John ("Jackie") Fisher, HMS Dreadnought rendered existing battleships obsolete. Combining an "all-big-gun" armament of ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns with unprecedented speed (from steam turbine engines) and protection, she prompted navies worldwide to re-evaluate their battleship building programs. While the Japanese had laid down an all-big-gun battleship, Satsuma, in 1904 and the concept of an all-big-gun ship had been in circulation for several years, it had yet to be validated in combat. Dreadnought sparked a new arms race, principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial element of national power.
Technical development continued rapidly through the dreadnought era, with steep changes in armament, armor and propulsion. Ten years after Dreadnought's commissioning, much more powerful ships, the super-dreadnoughts, were being built.
#### Origin
In the first years of the 20th century, several navies worldwide experimented with the idea of a new type of battleship with a uniform armament of very heavy guns.
Admiral Vittorio Cuniberti, the Italian Navy's chief naval architect, articulated the concept of an all-big-gun battleship in 1903. When the Regia Marina did not pursue his ideas, Cuniberti wrote an article in Jane's proposing an "ideal" future British battleship, a large armored warship of 17,000 tons, armed solely with a single calibre main battery (twelve 12-inch [305 mm] guns), carrying 300-millimetre (12 in) belt armor, and capable of 24 knots (44 km/h).
The Russo-Japanese War provided operational experience to validate the "all-big-gun" concept. During the Battle of the Yellow Sea on August 10, 1904, Admiral Togo of the Imperial Japanese Navy commenced deliberate 12-inch gun fire at the Russian flagship Tzesarevich at 14,200 yards (13,000 meters). At the Battle of Tsushima on May 27, 1905, Russian Admiral Rozhestvensky's flagship fired the first 12-inch guns at the Japanese flagship Mikasa at 7,000 meters. It is often held that these engagements demonstrated the importance of the 12-inch (305 mm) gun over its smaller counterparts, though some historians take the view that secondary batteries were just as important as the larger weapons when dealing with smaller fast moving torpedo craft. Such was the case, albeit unsuccessfully, when the Russian battleship Knyaz Suvorov at Tsushima had been sent to the bottom by destroyer launched torpedoes. The 1903–04 design also retained traditional triple-expansion steam engines.
As early as 1904, Jackie Fisher had been convinced of the need for fast, powerful ships with an all-big-gun armament. If Tsushima influenced his thinking, it was to persuade him of the need to standardise on 12-inch (305 mm) guns. Fisher's concerns were submarines and destroyers equipped with torpedoes, then threatening to outrange battleship guns, making speed imperative for capital ships. Fisher's preferred option was his brainchild, the battlecruiser: lightly armored but heavily armed with eight 12-inch guns and propelled to 25 knots (46 km/h) by steam turbines.
It was to prove this revolutionary technology that Dreadnought was designed in January 1905, laid down in October 1905 and sped to completion by 1906. She carried ten 12-inch guns, had an 11-inch armor belt, and was the first large ship powered by turbines. She mounted her guns in five turrets; three on the centerline (one forward, two aft) and two on the wings, giving her at her launch twice the broadside of any other warship. She retained a number of 12-pound (3-inch, 76 mm) quick-firing guns for use against destroyers and torpedo-boats. Her armor was heavy enough for her to go head-to-head with any other ship in a gun battle, and conceivably win.
Dreadnought was to have been followed by three Invincible-class battlecruisers, their construction delayed to allow lessons from Dreadnought to be used in their design. While Fisher may have intended Dreadnought to be the last Royal Navy battleship, the design was so successful he found little support for his plan to switch to a battlecruiser navy. Although there were some problems with the ship (the wing turrets had limited arcs of fire and strained the hull when firing a full broadside, and the top of the thickest armor belt lay below the waterline at full load), the Royal Navy promptly commissioned another six ships to a similar design in the Bellerophon and St. Vincent classes.
An American design, South Carolina, authorized in 1905 and laid down in December 1906, was another of the first dreadnoughts, but she and her sister, Michigan, were not launched until 1908. Both used triple-expansion engines and had a superior layout of the main battery, dispensing with Dreadnought's wing turrets. They thus retained the same broadside, despite having two fewer guns.
#### Arms race
In 1897, before the revolution in design brought about by HMS Dreadnought, the Royal Navy had 62 battleships in commission or building, a lead of 26 over France and 50 over Germany. From the 1906 launching of Dreadnought, an arms race with major strategic consequences was prompted. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts. Possession of modern battleships was not only seen as vital to naval power, but also, as with nuclear weapons after World War II, represented a nation's standing in the world. Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Austria, and the United States all began dreadnought programmes; while the Ottoman Empire, Argentina, Russia, Brazil, and Chile commissioned dreadnoughts to be built in British and American yards.
### World War I
By virtue of geography, the Royal Navy was able to use her imposing battleship and battlecruiser fleet to impose a strict and successful naval blockade of Germany and kept Germany's smaller battleship fleet bottled up in the North Sea: only narrow channels led to the Atlantic Ocean and these were guarded by British forces. Both sides were aware that, because of the greater number of British dreadnoughts, a full fleet engagement would be likely to result in a British victory. The German strategy was therefore to try to provoke an engagement on their terms: either to induce a part of the Grand Fleet to enter battle alone, or to fight a pitched battle near the German coastline, where friendly minefields, torpedo-boats and submarines could be used to even the odds. This did not happen however, due in large part to the necessity to keep submarines for the Atlantic campaign. Submarines were the only vessels in the Imperial German Navy able to break out and raid British commerce in force, but even though they sank many merchant ships, they could not successfully counter-blockade the United Kingdom; the Royal Navy successfully adopted convoy tactics to combat Germany's submarine counter-blockade and eventually defeated it. This was in stark contrast to Britain's successful blockade of Germany.
The first two years of war saw the Royal Navy's battleships and battlecruisers regularly "sweep" the North Sea making sure that no German ships could get in or out. Only a few German surface ships that were already at sea, such as the famous light cruiser SMS Emden, were able to raid commerce. Even some of those that did manage to get out were hunted down by battlecruisers, as in the Battle of the Falklands, December 7, 1914. The results of sweeping actions in the North Sea were battles including the Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank and German raids on the English coast, all of which were attempts by the Germans to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet in an attempt to defeat the Royal Navy in detail. On May 31, 1916, a further attempt to draw British ships into battle on German terms resulted in a clash of the battlefleets in the Battle of Jutland. The German fleet withdrew to port after two short encounters with the British fleet. Less than two months later, the Germans once again attempted to draw portions of the Grand Fleet into battle. The resulting Action of 19 August 1916 proved inconclusive. This reinforced German determination not to engage in a fleet to fleet battle.
In the other naval theatres there were no decisive pitched battles. In the Black Sea, engagement between Russian and Ottoman battleships was restricted to skirmishes. In the Baltic Sea, action was largely limited to the raiding of convoys, and the laying of defensive minefields; the only significant clash of battleship squadrons there was the Battle of Moon Sound at which one Russian pre-dreadnought was lost. The Adriatic was in a sense the mirror of the North Sea: the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought fleet remained bottled up by the British and French blockade. And in the Mediterranean, the most important use of battleships was in support of the amphibious assault on Gallipoli.
In September 1914, the threat posed to surface ships by German U-boats was confirmed by successful attacks on British cruisers, including the sinking of three British armored cruisers by the German submarine SM U-9 in less than an hour. The British Super-dreadnought HMS Audacious soon followed suit as she struck a mine laid by a German U-boat in October 1914 and sank. The threat that German U-boats posed to British dreadnoughts was enough to cause the Royal Navy to change their strategy and tactics in the North Sea to reduce the risk of U-boat attack. Further near-misses from submarine attacks on battleships and casualties amongst cruisers led to growing concern in the Royal Navy about the vulnerability of battleships.
As the war wore on however, it turned out that whilst submarines did prove to be a very dangerous threat to older pre-dreadnought battleships, as shown by examples such as the sinking of Mesûdiye, which was caught in the Dardanelles by a British submarine and HMS Majestic and HMS Triumph were torpedoed by U-21 as well as HMS Formidable, HMS Cornwallis, HMS Britannia etc., the threat posed to dreadnought battleships proved to have been largely a false alarm. HMS Audacious turned out to be the only dreadnought sunk by a submarine in World War I. While battleships were never intended for anti-submarine warfare, there was one instance of a submarine being sunk by a dreadnought battleship. HMS Dreadnought rammed and sank the German submarine U-29 on March 18, 1915, off the Moray Firth.
Whilst the escape of the German fleet from the superior British firepower at Jutland was effected by the German cruisers and destroyers successfully turning away the British battleships, the German attempt to rely on U-boat attacks on the British fleet failed.
Torpedo boats did have some successes against battleships in World War I, as demonstrated by the sinking of the British pre-dreadnought HMS Goliath by Muâvenet-i Millîye during the Dardanelles Campaign and the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought SMS Szent István by Italian motor torpedo boats in June 1918. In large fleet actions, however, destroyers and torpedo boats were usually unable to get close enough to the battleships to damage them. The only battleship sunk in a fleet action by either torpedo boats or destroyers was the obsolescent German pre-dreadnought SMS Pommern. She was sunk by destroyers during the night phase of the Battle of Jutland.
The German High Seas Fleet, for their part, were determined not to engage the British without the assistance of submarines; and since the submarines were needed more for raiding commercial traffic, the fleet stayed in port for much of the war.
### Inter-war period
For many years, Germany simply had no battleships. The Armistice with Germany required that most of the High Seas Fleet be disarmed and interned in a neutral port; largely because no neutral port could be found, the ships remained in British custody in Scapa Flow, Scotland. The Treaty of Versailles specified that the ships should be handed over to the British. Instead, most of them were scuttled by their German crews on June 21, 1919, just before the signature of the peace treaty. The treaty also limited the German Navy, and prevented Germany from building or possessing any capital ships.
The inter-war period saw the battleship subjected to strict international limitations to prevent a costly arms race breaking out.
While the victors were not limited by the Treaty of Versailles, many of the major naval powers were crippled after the war. Faced with the prospect of a naval arms race against the United Kingdom and Japan, which would in turn have led to a possible Pacific war, the United States was keen to conclude the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess, and required Britain to accept parity with the U.S. and to abandon the British alliance with Japan. The Washington treaty was followed by a series of other naval treaties, including the First Geneva Naval Conference (1927), the First London Naval Treaty (1930), the Second Geneva Naval Conference (1932), and finally the Second London Naval Treaty (1936), which all set limits on major warships. These treaties became effectively obsolete on September 1, 1939, at the beginning of World War II, but the ship classifications that had been agreed upon still apply. The treaty limitations meant that fewer new battleships were launched in 1919–1939 than in 1905–1914. The treaties also inhibited development by imposing upper limits on the weights of ships. Designs like the projected British N3-class battleship, the first American South Dakota class, and the Japanese Kii class—all of which continued the trend to larger ships with bigger guns and thicker armor—never got off the drawing board. Those designs which were commissioned during this period were referred to as treaty battleships.
#### Rise of air power
As early as 1914, the British Admiral Percy Scott predicted that battleships would soon be made irrelevant by aircraft. By the end of World War I, aircraft had successfully adopted the torpedo as a weapon. In 1921 the Italian general and air theorist Giulio Douhet completed a hugely influential treatise on strategic bombing titled The Command of the Air, which foresaw the dominance of air power over naval units.
In the 1920s, General Billy Mitchell of the United States Army Air Corps, believing that air forces had rendered navies around the world obsolete, testified in front of Congress that "1,000 bombardment airplanes can be built and operated for about the price of one battleship" and that a squadron of these bombers could sink a battleship, making for more efficient use of government funds. This infuriated the U.S. Navy, but Mitchell was nevertheless allowed to conduct a careful series of bombing tests alongside Navy and Marine bombers. In 1921, he bombed and sank numerous ships, including the "unsinkable" German World War I battleship SMS Ostfriesland and the American pre-dreadnought Alabama.
Although Mitchell had required "war-time conditions", the ships sunk were obsolete, stationary, defenseless and had no damage control. The sinking of Ostfriesland was accomplished by violating an agreement that would have allowed Navy engineers to examine the effects of various munitions: Mitchell's airmen disregarded the rules, and sank the ship within minutes in a coordinated attack. The stunt made headlines, and Mitchell declared, "No surface vessels can exist wherever air forces acting from land bases are able to attack them." While far from conclusive, Mitchell's test was significant because it put proponents of the battleship against naval aviation on the defensive. Rear Admiral William A. Moffett used public relations against Mitchell to make headway toward expansion of the U.S. Navy's nascent aircraft carrier program.
#### Rearmament
The Royal Navy, United States Navy, and Imperial Japanese Navy extensively upgraded and modernized their World War I–era battleships during the 1930s. Among the new features were an increased tower height and stability for the optical rangefinder equipment (for gunnery control), more armor (especially around turrets) to protect against plunging fire and aerial bombing, and additional anti-aircraft weapons. Some British ships received a large block superstructure nicknamed the "Queen Anne's castle", such as in Queen Elizabeth and Warspite, which would be used in the new conning towers of the King George V-class fast battleships. External bulges were added to improve both buoyancy to counteract weight increase and provide underwater protection against mines and torpedoes. The Japanese rebuilt all of their battleships, plus their battlecruisers, with distinctive "pagoda" structures, though the Hiei received a more modern bridge tower that would influence the new Yamato class. Bulges were fitted, including steel tube arrays to improve both underwater and vertical protection along the waterline. The U.S. experimented with cage masts and later tripod masts, though after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor some of the most severely damaged ships (such as West Virginia and California) were rebuilt with tower masts, for an appearance similar to their Iowa-class contemporaries. Radar, which was effective beyond visual range and effective in complete darkness or adverse weather, was introduced to supplement optical fire control.
Even when war threatened again in the late 1930s, battleship construction did not regain the level of importance it had held in the years before World War I. The "building holiday" imposed by the naval treaties meant the capacity of dockyards worldwide had shrunk, and the strategic position had changed.
In Germany, the ambitious Plan Z for naval rearmament was abandoned in favor of a strategy of submarine warfare supplemented by the use of battlecruisers and commerce raiding (in particular by Bismarck-class battleships). In Britain, the most pressing need was for air defenses and convoy escorts to safeguard the civilian population from bombing or starvation, and re-armament construction plans consisted of five ships of the King George V class. It was in the Mediterranean that navies remained most committed to battleship warfare. France intended to build six battleships of the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes, and the Italians four Littorio-class ships. Neither navy built significant aircraft carriers. The U.S. preferred to spend limited funds on aircraft carriers until the South Dakota class. Japan, also prioritising aircraft carriers, nevertheless began work on three mammoth Yamatos (although the third, Shinano, was later completed as a carrier) and a planned fourth was cancelled.
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish navy included only two small dreadnought battleships, España and Jaime I. España (originally named Alfonso XIII), by then in reserve at the northwestern naval base of El Ferrol, fell into Nationalist hands in July 1936. The crew aboard Jaime I remained loyal to the Republic, killed their officers, who apparently supported Franco's attempted coup, and joined the Republican Navy. Thus each side had one battleship; however, the Republican Navy generally lacked experienced officers. The Spanish battleships mainly restricted themselves to mutual blockades, convoy escort duties, and shore bombardment, rarely in direct fighting against other surface units. In April 1937, España ran into a mine laid by friendly forces, and sank with little loss of life. In May 1937, Jaime I was damaged by Nationalist air attacks and a grounding incident. The ship was forced to go back to port to be repaired. There she was again hit by several aerial bombs. It was then decided to tow the battleship to a more secure port, but during the transport she suffered an internal explosion that caused 300 deaths and her total loss. Several Italian and German capital ships participated in the non-intervention blockade. On May 29, 1937, two Republican aircraft managed to bomb the German pocket battleship Deutschland outside Ibiza, causing severe damage and loss of life. Admiral Scheer retaliated two days later by bombarding Almería, causing much destruction, and the resulting Deutschland incident meant the end of German and Italian participation in non-intervention.
### World War II
The German battleship Schleswig-Holstein—an obsolete pre-dreadnought—fired the first shots of World War II with the bombardment of the Polish garrison at Westerplatte; and the final surrender of the Japanese Empire took place aboard a United States Navy battleship, USS Missouri. Between those two events, it had become clear that aircraft carriers were the new principal ships of the fleet and that battleships now performed a secondary role.
Battleships played a part in major engagements in Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean theaters; in the Atlantic, the Germans used their battleships as independent commerce raiders. However, clashes between battleships were of little strategic importance. The Battle of the Atlantic was fought between destroyers and submarines, and most of the decisive fleet clashes of the Pacific war were determined by aircraft carriers.
In the first year of the war, armored warships defied predictions that aircraft would dominate naval warfare. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau surprised and sank the aircraft carrier Glorious off western Norway in June 1940. This engagement marked the only time a fleet carrier was sunk by surface gunnery. In the attack on Mers-el-Kébir, British battleships opened fire on the French battleships in the harbor near Oran in Algeria with their heavy guns. The fleeing French ships were then pursued by planes from aircraft carriers.
The subsequent years of the war saw many demonstrations of the maturity of the aircraft carrier as a strategic naval weapon and its effectiveness against battleships. The British air attack on the Italian naval base at Taranto sank one Italian battleship and damaged two more. The same Swordfish torpedo bombers played a crucial role in sinking the German battleship Bismarck.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Within a short time, five of eight U.S. battleships were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. All three American aircraft carriers were out to sea, however, and evaded destruction. The sinking of the British battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse, demonstrated the vulnerability of a battleship to air attack while at sea without sufficient air cover, settling the argument begun by Mitchell in 1921. Both warships were under way and en route to attack the Japanese amphibious force that had invaded Malaya when they were caught by Japanese land-based bombers and torpedo bombers on December 10, 1941.
At many of the early crucial battles of the Pacific, for instance Coral Sea and Midway, battleships were either absent or overshadowed as carriers launched wave after wave of planes into the attack at a range of hundreds of miles. In later battles in the Pacific, battleships primarily performed shore bombardment in support of amphibious landings and provided anti-aircraft defense as escort for the carriers. Even the largest battleships ever constructed, Japan's Yamato class, which carried a main battery of nine 18-inch (46 cm) guns and were designed as a principal strategic weapon, were never given a chance to show their potential in the decisive battleship action that figured in Japanese pre-war planning.
The last battleship confrontation in history was the Battle of Surigao Strait, on October 25, 1944, in which a numerically and technically superior American battleship group destroyed a lesser Japanese battleship group by gunfire after it had already been devastated by destroyer torpedo attacks. All but one of the American battleships in this confrontation had previously been sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequently raised and repaired. Mississippi fired the last major-caliber salvo of this battle. In April 1945, during the battle for Okinawa, the world's most powerful battleship, the Yamato, was sent out on a suicide mission against a massive U.S. force and sunk by overwhelming pressure from carrier aircraft with nearly all hands lost. After that, Japanese fleet remaining in the mainland was also destroyed by the US naval air force.
### Cold War
After World War II, several navies retained their existing battleships, but they were no longer strategically dominant military assets. It soon became apparent that they were no longer worth the considerable cost of construction and maintenance and only one new battleship was commissioned after the war, HMS Vanguard. During the war it had been demonstrated that battleship-on-battleship engagements like Leyte Gulf or the sinking of HMS Hood were the exception and not the rule, and with the growing role of aircraft engagement ranges were becoming longer and longer, making heavy gun armament irrelevant. The armor of a battleship was equally irrelevant in the face of a nuclear attack as tactical missiles with a range of 100 kilometres (60 mi) or more could be mounted on the Soviet Kildin-class destroyer and Whiskey-class submarines. By the end of the 1950s, smaller vessel classes such as destroyers, which formerly offered no noteworthy opposition to battleships, now were capable of eliminating battleships from outside the range of the ship's heavy guns.
The remaining battleships met a variety of ends. USS Arkansas and Nagato were sunk during the testing of nuclear weapons in Operation Crossroads in 1946. Both battleships proved resistant to nuclear air burst but vulnerable to underwater nuclear explosions. The Italian battleship Giulio Cesare was taken by the Soviets as reparations and renamed Novorossiysk; she was sunk by a leftover German mine in the Black Sea on October 29, 1955. The two Andrea Doria-class ships were scrapped in 1956. The French Lorraine was scrapped in 1954, Richelieu in 1968, and Jean Bart in 1970.
The United Kingdom's four surviving King George V-class ships were scrapped in 1957, and Vanguard followed in 1960. All other surviving British battleships had been sold or broken up by 1949. The Soviet Union's Marat was scrapped in 1953, Parizhskaya Kommuna in 1957 and Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya (back under her original name, Gangut, since 1942) in 1956–57. Brazil's Minas Geraes was scrapped in Genoa in 1953, and her sister ship São Paulo sank during a storm in the Atlantic en route to the breakers in Italy in 1951.
Argentina kept its two Rivadavia-class ships until 1956 and Chile kept Almirante Latorre (formerly HMS Canada) until 1959. The Turkish battlecruiser (formerly SMS Goeben, launched in 1911) was scrapped in 1976 after an offer to sell her back to Germany was refused. Sweden had several small coastal-defense battleships, one of which, , survived until 1970. The Soviets scrapped four large incomplete cruisers in the late 1950s, whilst plans to build a number of new Stalingrad-class battlecruisers were abandoned following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. The three old German battleships Schleswig-Holstein, Schlesien, and Hessen all met similar ends. Hessen was taken over by the Soviet Union and renamed Tsel. She was scrapped in 1960. Schleswig-Holstein was renamed Borodino, and was used as a target ship until 1960. Schlesien, too, was used as a target ship. She was broken up between 1952 and 1957.
The Iowa-class battleships gained a new lease of life in the U.S. Navy as fire support ships. Radar and computer-controlled gunfire could be aimed with pinpoint accuracy to target. The U.S. recommissioned all four Iowa-class battleships for the Korean War and the New Jersey for the Vietnam War. These were primarily used for shore bombardment, New Jersey firing nearly 6,000 rounds of 16 inch shells and over 14,000 rounds of 5 inch projectiles during her tour on the gunline, seven times more rounds against shore targets in Vietnam than she had fired in the Second World War.
As part of Navy Secretary John F. Lehman's effort to build a 600-ship Navy in the 1980s, and in response to the commissioning of Kirov by the Soviet Union, the United States recommissioned all four Iowa-class battleships. On several occasions, battleships were support ships in carrier battle groups, or led their own battleship battle group. These were modernized to carry Tomahawk (TLAM) missiles, with New Jersey seeing action bombarding Lebanon in 1983 and 1984, while Missouri and Wisconsin fired their 16-inch (406 mm) guns at land targets and launched missiles during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Wisconsin served as the TLAM strike commander for the Persian Gulf, directing the sequence of launches that marked the opening of Desert Storm, firing a total of 24 TLAMs during the first two days of the campaign. The primary threat to the battleships were Iraqi shore-based surface-to-surface missiles; Missouri was targeted by two Iraqi Silkworm missiles, with one missing and another being intercepted by the British destroyer HMS Gloucester.
### End of the battleship era
After Indiana was stricken in 1962, the four Iowa-class ships were the only battleships in commission or reserve anywhere in the world. There was an extended debate when the four Iowa ships were finally decommissioned in the early 1990s. USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin were maintained to a standard whereby they could be rapidly returned to service as fire support vessels, pending the development of a superior fire support vessel. These last two battleships were finally stricken from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in 2006. The Military Balance and Russian Foreign Military Review states the U.S. Navy listed one battleship in the reserve (Naval Inactive Fleet/Reserve 2nd Turn) in 2010. The Military Balance states the U.S. Navy listed no battleships in the reserve in 2014.
When the last Iowa-class ship was finally stricken from the Naval Vessel Registry, no battleships remained in service or in reserve with any navy worldwide. A number are preserved as museum ships, either afloat or in drydock. The U.S. has eight battleships on display: Massachusetts, North Carolina, Alabama, Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Texas. Missouri and New Jersey are museums at Pearl Harbor and Camden, New Jersey, respectively. Iowa is on display as an educational attraction at the Los Angeles Waterfront in San Pedro, California. Wisconsin now serves as a museum ship in Norfolk, Virginia. Massachusetts, which has the distinction of never having lost a man during service, is on display at the Battleship Cove naval museum in Fall River, Massachusetts. Texas, the first battleship turned into a museum, is normally on display at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site, near Houston, but as of 2021 is closed for repairs. North Carolina is on display in Wilmington, North Carolina. Alabama is on display in Mobile, Alabama. The wreck of Arizona, sunk during the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, is designated a historical landmark and national gravesite. The wreck of Utah, also sunk during the attack, is a historic landmark.
The only other 20th-century battleship on display is the Japanese pre-dreadnought Mikasa. A replica of the ironclad battleship Dingyuan was built by the Weihai Port Bureau in 2003 and is on display in Weihai, China.
Former battleships that were previously used as museum ships included USS Oregon (BB-3), SMS Tegetthoff, and SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand.
## Strategy and doctrine
### Doctrine
Battleships were the embodiment of sea power. For American naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan and his followers, a strong navy was vital to the success of a nation, and control of the seas was vital for the projection of force on land and overseas. Mahan's theory, proposed in The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 of 1890, dictated the role of the battleship was to sweep the enemy from the seas. While the work of escorting, blockading, and raiding might be done by cruisers or smaller vessels, the presence of the battleship was a potential threat to any convoy escorted by any vessels other than capital ships. This concept of "potential threat" can be further generalized to the mere existence (as opposed to presence) of a powerful fleet tying the opposing fleet down. This concept came to be known as a "fleet in being"—an idle yet mighty fleet forcing others to spend time, resource and effort to actively guard against it.
Mahan went on to say victory could only be achieved by engagements between battleships, which came to be known as the decisive battle doctrine in some navies, while targeting merchant ships (commerce raiding or guerre de course, as posited by the Jeune École) could never succeed.
Mahan was highly influential in naval and political circles throughout the age of the battleship, calling for a large fleet of the most powerful battleships possible. Mahan's work developed in the late 1880s, and by the end of the 1890s it had acquired much international influence on naval strategy; in the end, it was adopted by many major navies (notably the British, American, German, and Japanese). The strength of Mahanian opinion was important in the development of the battleships arms races, and equally important in the agreement of the Powers to limit battleship numbers in the interwar era.
The "fleet in being" suggested battleships could simply by their existence tie down superior enemy resources. This in turn was believed to be able to tip the balance of a conflict even without a battle. This suggested even for inferior naval powers a battleship fleet could have important strategic effect.
### Tactics
While the role of battleships in both World Wars reflected Mahanian doctrine, the details of battleship deployment were more complex. Unlike ships of the line, the battleships of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had significant vulnerability to torpedoes and mines—because efficient mines and torpedoes did not exist before that—which could be used by relatively small and inexpensive craft. The Jeune École doctrine of the 1870s and 1880s recommended placing torpedo boats alongside battleships; these would hide behind the larger ships until gun-smoke obscured visibility enough for them to dart out and fire their torpedoes. While this tactic was made less effective by the development of smokeless propellant, the threat from more capable torpedo craft (later including submarines) remained. By the 1890s, the Royal Navy had developed the first destroyers, which were initially designed to intercept and drive off any attacking torpedo boats. During the First World War and subsequently, battleships were rarely deployed without a protective screen of destroyers.
Battleship doctrine emphasized the concentration of the battlegroup. In order for this concentrated force to be able to bring its power to bear on a reluctant opponent (or to avoid an encounter with a stronger enemy fleet), battlefleets needed some means of locating enemy ships beyond horizon range. This was provided by scouting forces; at various stages battlecruisers, cruisers, destroyers, airships, submarines and aircraft were all used. (With the development of radio, direction finding and traffic analysis would come into play, as well, so even shore stations, broadly speaking, joined the battlegroup.) So for most of their history, battleships operated surrounded by squadrons of destroyers and cruisers. The North Sea campaign of the First World War illustrates how, despite this support, the threat of mine and torpedo attack, and the failure to integrate or appreciate the capabilities of new techniques, seriously inhibited the operations of the Royal Navy Grand Fleet, the greatest battleship fleet of its time.
### Strategic and diplomatic impact
The presence of battleships had a great psychological and diplomatic impact. Similar to possessing nuclear weapons today, the ownership of battleships served to enhance a nation's force projection.
Even during the Cold War, the psychological impact of a battleship was significant. In 1946, USS Missouri was dispatched to deliver the remains of the ambassador from Turkey, and her presence in Turkish and Greek waters staved off a possible Soviet thrust into the Balkan region. In September 1983, when Druze militia in Lebanon's Shouf Mountains fired upon U.S. Marine peacekeepers, the arrival of USS New Jersey stopped the firing. Gunfire from New Jersey later killed militia leaders.
### Value for money
Battleships were the largest and most complex, and hence the most expensive warships of their time; as a result, the value of investment in battleships has always been contested. As the French politician Etienne Lamy wrote in 1879, "The construction of battleships is so costly, their effectiveness so uncertain and of such short duration, that the enterprise of creating an armored fleet seems to leave fruitless the perseverance of a people". The Jeune École school of thought of the 1870s and 1880s sought alternatives to the crippling expense and debatable utility of a conventional battlefleet. It proposed what would nowadays be termed a sea denial strategy, based on fast, long-ranged cruisers for commerce raiding and torpedo boat flotillas to attack enemy ships attempting to blockade French ports. The ideas of the Jeune École were ahead of their time; it was not until the 20th century that efficient mines, torpedoes, submarines, and aircraft were available that allowed similar ideas to be effectively implemented. The determination of powers such as Germany to build battlefleets with which to confront much stronger rivals has been criticized by historians, who emphasise the futility of investment in a battlefleet that has no chance of matching its opponent in an actual battle.
## Former operators
- Imperial Chinese Navy: lost its two Dingyuan-class battleships Dingyuan and Zhenyuan during the Battle of Weihaiwei in 1895.
- Austro-Hungarian Navy: lost its entire navy following the collapse of the Empire at the end of World War I.
- Royal Yugoslav Navy: its only battleship, KB Jugoslavija, was sunk by Italian frogmen during the 1918 Raid on Pula.
- Navy of the Ukrainian People's Republic: lost its entire navy upon its conquest by the Bolsheviks in 1921.
- : sole surviving battleship TCG Turgut Reis was decommissioned in 1933.
- Spanish Navy: lost its two surviving España-class battleships during the Spanish Civil War, both in 1937.
- Royal Hellenic Navy: lost its two Mississippi-class battleships during the German bombing of Salamis in 1941.
- Kriegsmarine: scuttled its two surviving Deutschland-class battleships in 1945, during the closing months of World War II.
- Imperial Japanese Navy: surrendered its sole surviving battleship, Nagato to the United States following World War II.
- : decommissioned its last battleship Minas Geraes in 1952.
- Italian Navy: decommissioned its two Andrea Doria-class battleships in 1953.
- Soviet Navy: decommissioned its last two Gangut-class battleships in 1956.
- Argentine Navy: decommissioned its last battleship ARA Rivadavia in 1957.
- Chilean Navy: decommissioned its last battleship, Almirante Latorre in 1958.
- Royal Navy: decommissioned its last battleship, HMS Vanguard in 1960.
- French Navy: decommissioned its last battleship, Jean Bart in 1970.
- : decommissioned its last battleship USS Missouri in 1992. She was the last active battleship of any navy.
## See also
- Arsenal ship
- List of battleships
- List of sunken battleships
- List of ships of World War II
- List of battleships of World War I
- List of battleships of World War II
|
38,192,075 |
Marcus Ward Lyon Jr.
| 1,139,756,146 |
U.S. mammalogist, bacteriologist, and pathologist (1875–1942)
|
[
"1875 births",
"1942 deaths",
"American bacteriologists",
"American mammalogists",
"American pathologists",
"Brown University alumni",
"George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences alumni",
"People from Rock Island County, Illinois",
"Physicians from Illinois"
] |
Marcus Ward Lyon Jr. (February 5, 1875 – May 19, 1942) was an American mammalogist, bacteriologist, and pathologist. He was born into a military family, and demonstrated an early interest in zoology by collecting local wildlife around his father's army posts. He graduated from Brown University in 1897, and continued his studies at George Washington University while working part-time at the United States National Museum (USNM). At the same time, he taught at Howard University Medical School and later George Washington University Medical School. He received his Ph.D. from George Washington University in 1913. In 1919, he and his wife, Martha, moved to South Bend, Indiana to join a newly opened clinic. Prior to moving, Lyon had published many papers on mammalogy, both during and after his tenure at the USNM. In these papers, he had formally described six species, three genera, and one family. Once in South Bend, he began to publish medical studies, too, but continued his work in mammalogy, with a particular focus on the local fauna of Indiana. He published more than 160 papers during his career.
Lyon acquired the rank of major in the Medical Reserve Corps during World War I, and was appointed president of the American Society of Mammalogists from 1931 to 1932. He was a member of Sigma Xi, the Society of American Bacteriologists, the Indiana Academy of Science, and the Biological Society of Washington. Lyon became a conservationist later in life.
## Early life and education
Lyon was born on February 5, 1875, in Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois. His family included his father, Captain Marcus Ward Lyon Sr.; his mother, Lydia Anna Lyon; and his two brothers, Henry S. Lyon and James W. Lyon. Because of his father's military career, Lyon's family moved across the United States throughout his childhood and adolescence. The first hint of the young Lyon's future scientific interests came while they were stationed at Watertown Arsenal, near Boston, Massachusetts, where he began collecting insects and animals from the local area. No other details of his early life were documented until 1893, when he graduated from Rock Island High School—his father had evidently been re-stationed at Rock Island Arsenal at about this time. He attended Brown University and completed his Ph.B. in 1897, which included training in biology. In 1898, he began his graduate studies at George Washington University, obtaining his M.S. in 1900, his M.D. in 1902, and his Ph.D. in 1913.
## Career
Upon completion of his first degree, Lyon spent a year (1897–1898) at North Carolina Medical College, where he taught bacteriology. In conjunction with his graduate studies, he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1898 to become a part-time Aid in the Division of Mammals at the United States National Museum (USNM). Lyon was later promoted to Assistant Curator for Mammals. The USNM sent him to Venezuela with Lieutenant Wirt Robinson of the United States Army in 1899 to collect mammal specimens, and later appointed him as its Chief Special Agent for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon. He retained his post at the USNM until 1912. Lyon taught physiology (1903–04 and 1907–09) and bacteriology (1909–15) at Howard University Medical School.
In the latter half of 1915, Lyon began teaching at George Washington University Medical School, handling courses in bacteriology and pathology until 1917, and veterinary zoology and parasitology from 1917 until 1918. In 1917, he joined the U.S. Army, serving as a pathologist at the Walter Reed Army Hospital during World War I. In September 1919, he transferred to the Medical Reserve Corps as a major. By the end of that year, Lyon's 18 years of medical teaching and practice resulted in a job offer in pathology at the South Bend Clinic in South Bend, Indiana. His wife, Martha, was also extended a job offer at the same clinic, and joined as an ophthalmologist. Lyon maintained his offices at the clinic until his death in 1942.
Because of his work as a mammalogist, Lyon is considered the taxonomic authority for the family Ptilocercidae (pen-tailed treeshrews), as well as the genus Anathana (the Madras treeshrew) and two genera of leporids (rabbits and hares), Pentalagus (the Amami rabbit) and Pronolagus (red rock hares). Lyon was the first to describe the Bornean white-bearded gibbon (Hylobates albibarbis), the Gansu pika (Ochotona cansus), the Sumatran porcupine (Hystrix sumatrae), the shadowy broad-nosed bat (Platyrrhinus umbratus), and two species of slow loris from Borneo, Nycticebus bancanus and Nycticebus borneanus.
His private zoological collections were incorporated into the collections at the USNM. Lyon created two herbariums, the first containing plant specimens from Oregon and the second from the Indiana Dunes and lower Michigan. The former was included in the United States National Herbarium, now the United States Botanic Garden, and the latter at the University of Michigan Herbarium.
## Publications
During his career, Lyon published more than 160 papers, roughly 80 of which were in the field of zoology and 55 more in pathology. Other publications included four articles in botany, numerous book reviews, technical reports, and newspaper articles. Until the move to Indiana, Lyon wrote many papers in mammalogy, focusing primarily on morphology, systematics, and zoogeography. In addition to his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Treeshrews: An account of the mammalian family Tupaiidae", he authored papers about other mammals of the Far East, with which he had become very familiar through his study of the collections that were sent to the USNM. Following the end of his relationship with the USNM in 1912, Lyon continued to write mammalogy material and began publishing basic medical studies.
After moving to Indiana, the focus of his publications shifted primarily to medical issues and mammalogy within his new home state. Despite his interest in and occupation with medical science, his passion was for the study of living and extinct mammals. He became a regular contributor to the American Midland Naturalist, publishing a list of plant species native to the Indiana Dunes and notes on ground squirrels and badgers prior to his work "Mammals of Indiana", which spanned all 365 pages of the first issue in 1936. In 1935, he had been invited to join the editorial staff, becoming an associate editor for mammalogy. Near the end of his life, Lyon began to write about wildlife conservation.
A private collection of Lyon's papers, along with those of his wife, is held at the University of Notre Dame Archives. It comprises correspondence, papers, notes, manuscripts, letters, articles, and speeches, as well as articles collected by Lyon and a scrapbook of his wife's college life and more.
### Selected publications
## Honors
Lyon held honorary memberships in Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. A member of the organization committee that founded the District of Columbia Chapter of Sigma Xi in 1914, Lyon became the Secretary of both the Organization Committee and Chapter, which held its first annual meeting in 1915. He was appointed secretary of the Biological Society of Washington in 1904 and from 1915 through 1919. In 1917, he was elected for membership to the Washington Biologists' Field Club. Lyon was president of the St. Joseph County Medical Society in 1931, as well as the treasurer (1927–1932) and president (1933) of the Indiana Academy of Science. He was also a member of the Society of American Bacteriologists. Lyon was the 7th president of the American Society of Mammalogists from 1931 to 1932, and received honorary membership a month before he died.
## Personal life
Lyon married Martha Marie Brewer (b. 1871) of Lanham, Maryland, in 1902, and together they had one daughter, Charlotte Lyon. Lyon and his wife attended scientific meetings together; in 1911, they traveled to Europe to see museums and to visit famous zoologists. Martha Brewer Lyon obtained her M.S. at Columbian College in 1901 and M.D. from Brown University in 1907. She later worked as an ophthalmologist at the South Bend Clinic with her husband until she opened her own office in 1931. She maintained her office until her death on January 18, 1942. Lyon died on May 19, 1942, at his home in South Bend and was buried on May 27 at Arlington National Cemetery.
While living in South Bend, Lyon became close friends with Reverend Julius A. Nieuwland, CSC, a botanist and chemist at the University of Notre Dame. They went on field trips and collected plant specimens that were incorporated into Lyon's second herbarium, which he made in his spare time with the help of his wife, Nieuwland, and Austrian botanist Theodor Just. Lyon was known for his love of nature, and in an obituary written by Just, he was noted as being an "ardent conservationist" later in his life. Lyon criticized poorly managed conservation programs in his paper "Conservation from the Naturalist's Point of View" (1939), and in his final paper, "The Kankakee Area—Its Past and Present", he envisioned life around the Kankakee Outwash Plain before human activities had changed it. Lyon also gave up his cottage in the Indiana Dunes after the wildlife refuge was converted into a vacation destination.
|
11,926,402 |
Rupert Downes
| 1,142,949,621 |
Australian general, surgeon and historian
|
[
"1885 births",
"1945 deaths",
"20th-century Australian historians",
"Accidental deaths in Queensland",
"Australian Army personnel of World War II",
"Australian Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George",
"Australian generals",
"Australian military doctors",
"Australian military historians",
"Australian military personnel killed in World War II",
"Australian military personnel of World War I",
"Australian people of English descent",
"Australian surgeons",
"Burials in Queensland",
"Fellows of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons",
"Knights of Grace of the Order of St John",
"Melbourne Medical School alumni",
"Military personnel from South Australia",
"People educated at Haileybury (Melbourne)",
"Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1945",
"Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Australia"
] |
Major General Rupert Major Downes, (10 February 1885 – 5 March 1945) was an Australian soldier, surgeon and historian.
The son of British Army officer Major Francis Downes, Downes joined the Army as a trumpeter while he was still at school. He attended the University of Melbourne, graduating with his medical degrees in 1907 and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1911. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1908, and after the outbreak of the First World War he joined the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1914 as its youngest lieutenant colonel. He served in the Gallipoli campaign, and was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed Anzac Mounted Division in 1916, which he combined with the post of ADMS AIF Egypt. In 1917, he became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps. After the war, he wrote articles on medical aspects of the Sinai and Palestine campaign, and the section on the campaign for the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918.
Returning to Australia, Downes became an honorary consulting surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, and Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, and honorary surgeon at Prince Henry's Hospital. He became a foundation fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia in 1927, and president of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association in 1935. He lectured on medical ethics at the University of Melbourne, writing the course textbook. He was also Victorian state commissioner of the St John Ambulance Brigade, which he led for 25 years, and president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years.
In 1934 Downes became Director General of Medical Services, the Australian Army's most senior medical officer, with the rank of major general. He oversaw the construction of major military hospitals in the capital cities. In 1944 he accepted a commission to edit the medical series volumes of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1939–1945 but he was killed in a plane crash in March 1945, before he could begin the work.
## Education and early life
Rupert Major Downes was born on 10 February 1885 in Mitcham, South Australia. He was the youngest of fifteen children of Colonel Major Francis Downes—a British Army officer—and his wife Helen Maria, née Chamberlin, only five of whom survived to adulthood. After service in the Crimean War, Colonel Francis Downes served as commandant of the Colonial forces of South Australia and Victoria and retired with the rank of major general in the Australian Army in 1902.
Rupert was educated at Haileybury in Melbourne as a boarding school student. In March 1901, at the age of 16, he joined the Victorian Horse Artillery (St Kilda Battery), a part-time volunteer militia unit, as a trumpeter. In May 1901 he served in this capacity at the opening of the inaugural Parliament of Australia by The Duke of Cornwall and York at the Royal Exhibition Building. He left the Army in 1903. That year he became a medical student at the University of Melbourne. A good result in his first year examinations earned him a residential scholarship to Ormond College, and he graduated with the double degree of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1907.
Soon after graduation, Downes re-enlisted in the Army. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 1 July 1908 and promoted to major on 26 March 1913. He served his residency at Melbourne Hospital and became a general practitioner in Malvern, Victoria, but soon returned to the university to pursue a doctorate. His Doctor of Medicine (MD) thesis, entitled "The anatomical relations of the thymus, especially considered in regard to thymic death with an account of cases of abnormality", was accepted in 1911. He also did the coursework for a Master of Surgery (MS), and this degree was conferred in 1912.
Downes married Doris Mary Robb on 20 November 1913 at St John's Church, Toorak, Victoria. They had three children, all given the same middle name as Rupert: Rosemary Major, born in 1914; Valerie Major, born in March 1918; and John Rupert Major, born in 1922.
## First World War
Downes joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 2 October 1914, assuming command of the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance with the rank of lieutenant colonel; this made him the youngest officer of that rank in the AIF at the time. Soon after his taking command, the unit was renamed the 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance. After training at the Broadmeadows Army Camp near Melbourne, the unit embarked for Egypt on the transport SS Chilka on 2 February 1915.
After the early fighting in the Gallipoli campaign, the need for reinforcements became acute, and the commander of British Troops in Egypt, Lieutenant General Sir John Maxwell, decided to ship the light horse brigades to the Anzac Cove lodgement without their horses. The 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance departed Alexandria for Anzac on 17 May 1915. It moved to Lemnos in June, where it operated a hospital, but returned to Anzac for the August offensive. Downes missed this operation, as he remained on Lemnos supervising the hospital until he returned to Anzac on 11 August. He remained with his unit until 13 November, when he departed for Lemnos and then Egypt.
After the evacuation of Gallipoli, Downes was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed Anzac Mounted Division on 15 March 1916. He was given the temporary rank of colonel. Downes combined this post with that of ADMS AIF Egypt from 6 September. Downes therefore had to travel back and forth to Cairo. In November 1916, a Deputy ADMS was appointed to assist him.
Medically speaking, the health of the Anzac Mounted Division was remarkably good, but the Sinai Peninsula still had its challenges—especially for medical officers unfamiliar with conditions in the Middle East. The Battle of Romani revealed the importance of transportation in an area with few roads. A poorly organised casualty evacuation effort caused preventable hardship and suffering for the wounded, and resulted in several avoidable deaths. An inquiry into the matter was held after the battle, at which Downes was called to testify. The Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), General Sir Archibald Murray, declined to assign blame to any individual, but implemented the inquiry's recommendations for improving the casualty evacuation process.
There was also the heat, and the problem of supplying adequate quantities of potable water. Diseases included cholera, typhus and bilharzia. To combat these, Downes obtained the services of Lieutenant Colonel Charles James Martin, and created the Anzac Field Laboratory to investigate these diseases. As a result of aggressively tackling the problem, Downes reduced rates of disease among Australian and New Zealand troops well below those of British troops serving alongside them. Martin advanced the notion that heat exhaustion and heat stroke were not the result of defective evaporation, as had previously been believed, but simply a matter of failing to drink enough water. He in turn converted Downes to the belief that "provided water is available in adequate amount the heat mechanism of the body can defy all ordinary climatic ranges of temperature even under conditions of hard work."
With so many people and horses, sanitation was a challenge, and discipline in this area was initially slack, as it had been with disastrous results at Gallipoli. Downes took measures to improve the situation. Although not normally one to engage in disputes, Downes repeatedly clashed with the British medical officers of the EEF, especially the Director of Medical Services (DMS) EEF, Colonel Alfred Keble, whose attitudes Downes regarded as endangering his troops. Downes's rank of colonel became substantive on 20 February 1917. Doris travelled to Egypt to visit her husband in March 1917. By June, Rupert was becoming increasingly immersed in preparations for the Third Battle of Gaza and Doris, who had become pregnant during her visit, decided to return home. On her return journey to Australia in June 1917, her ship, the P&O liner RMS Mongolia struck a mine and sank in the Indian Ocean with the loss of 23 lives. Doris spent 11 hours in a crowded lifeboat, before being rescued by a passing steamer, which took her to Bombay. From there she eventually made her way back to Australia via Singapore and Batavia. In 1918 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her volunteer work among soldiers' families as secretary of the Friendly Union of Soldiers' Wives and Mothers.
On 10 August 1917, Downes became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps, while still retaining the post of ADMS AIF Egypt. He was therefore answerable to three superiors—to Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel, the commander of the Desert Mounted Corps and AIF Egypt; to Major General Neville Howse, the DMS AIF in London; and to the new British DMS EEF, Major General William Travers Swan. As the EEF advanced into Palestine, the major medical problem remained transportation. During the operations in the Es Salt area, Downes experimented with the delivery of drugs and medical supplies by air. In the Jordan valley in 1918, Downes was confronted with an epidemic of malaria and vigorous preventative and prophylactic efforts were required to bring it under control.
In October 1918, with victory near, Downes was confronted by his most serious medical crisis. Damascus contained over 3,000 sick and wounded Turkish soldiers, many of them in appalling condition, who were now prisoners of war. He appointed the DADMS of the Australian Mounted Division, Major W. Evans, as Principal Medical Officer of Damascus, and gave him orders to organise the medical arrangements, bury the dead and provide care for the living. The task was made more difficult by the poor communications and transport shortages, which hampered the delivery of supplies and evacuation of the hospitals; by shortages of medical units; and by the actions of Lieutenant Colonel T. E. Lawrence, who was more concerned with establishing the political authority of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca over Damascus. At this point the Desert Mounted Corps itself began to experience epidemic diseases, particularly of bronchopneumonia, cholera and malaria, putting the medical services under great strain. Through extraordinary measures, including the diversion of lighthorsemen and motor vehicles to medical units, Downes managed to evacuate the sick to Beirut, and the crisis abated.
For his service in the Sinai and Palestine campaign, Downes was mentioned in despatches four times, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George on 1 January 1918. His citation read:
> In addition to his duties as ADMS Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division, Colonel Downes has carried out those of A.D.M.S., Australian Imperial Force in Egypt for many months. He has shown considerable administrative ability and has placed Australian A.M.C. matters on a much better footing than they were when he took over the appointment.
## Interwar years
Returning to Australia, Downes was discharged from the AIF, but remained in the Army as a reservist. He became an honorary consulting surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, and Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, and honorary surgeon at Prince Henry's Hospital. He was a founding fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia in 1927, and became president of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association in 1935. He established a reputation as one of Melbourne's leading paediatric surgeons, but found himself in disagreement with certain medical practices then in vogue. In a 1922 paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia, he examined 100 cases of tonsillectomy in children, and concluded that the majority of them were unnecessary. It would be another four decades before the medical profession in Australia accepted this. He lectured on medical ethics at the University of Melbourne from the late 1930s until his death in 1945, and wrote a course textbook on the subject, entitled Medical Ethics, which was published in 1942.
Along with his medical writings, Downes wrote a book-length section on the Sinai and Palestine campaign for Volume I of the Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914–1918, in the late 1920s under the direction of Medical Series editor Graham Butler. The two men had discussed writing a medical history of the campaign during a visit Butler made to Egypt in 1918 to inspect the medical records of the AIF, and again in France in 1919. Downes published an article in the Journal of the British Army Medical Corps entitled "The Tactical Employment of the Medical Services in a Cavalry Corps" in 1926, which he expanded into one of the chapters of the Official History. His manuscript proved too long for the proposed book, and was extensively edited by Butler before it was published in 1930. Downes was instrumental in supporting Butler's Medical Series and helped obtain the funding necessary to complete the project.
Downes was chairman of the Masseurs' Registration Board, a councillor of the Victorian division of the Australian Red Cross, and chairman of the Red Cross National Council. He was Victorian State Commissioner of the St. John Ambulance Brigade for 25 years. He was also president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years, and chairman of the Victorian Civil Ambulance Service from 1937 to 1938. In 1930, he was appointed a Commander of the Venerable Order of Saint John, and became a Knight of Grace of the order in 1937. At the same time, Doris became an Officer of the Order of Saint John, in recognition of her fundraising efforts for the Victorian branch. She later served as a member of its council from 1942 to 1953. Downes was instrumental in persuading the state branches to come together as a national organisation, arguing that without a national body, the organisation would be eclipsed by the Red Cross.
Downes remained in the Army throughout the inter-war period. He became a colonel in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 8 January 1920. He was DDMS of the 3rd Military District (Victoria) from 1 July 1921 to 26 June 1933, and Officer in Charge of Voluntary Aid Detachments from 1 July 1921 to 15 March 1940. He also served as head of the medical services of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Although the RAAF had become a separate service in 1921, the Minister for Defence decided in 1927 that the Army's Director General of Medical Services (DGMS) should be responsible for the administration of the RAAF's medical services. In this capacity, Downes was answerable to the Air Board. He was also honorary surgeon to the Governor General of Australia from 1 July 1927 to 30 June 1931. In 1930, Downes's son John, then in his first year as a boarder at Geelong Grammar School, fell seriously ill with meningitis. Despite the best efforts of two eminent medical practitioners, Keith Fairley and Reginald Webster, John succumbed to toxaemia and died in 1933, at the age of 10. The failure of modern medicine to save his son affected Downes deeply, and led him to abandon his medical career in favour of a military one. On 20 August 1934 Downes became DGMS, a full-time post and the Army's most senior medical officer. His priority was a recruiting campaign to increase the number of medical professionals in the Army.
The 1938 Munich Crisis caused people to believe that another war was imminent, and an Army-wide recruiting campaign led by Major General Sir Thomas Blamey doubled the size of the Army from 35,000 in 1938 to 70,000 in 1939. Downes's efforts at recruiting were far more modest. In 1934, there were 299 part-time officers in the AAMC; by 1939 there were 394, an increase of only 32 per cent. This included 320 medical practitioners, 37 dentists and 13 pharmacists. Downes was acutely aware that a large Army would require mobilisation of the country's doctors, and pushed for all doctors to be prepared for either military service or direction by civil authorities. He presided over a major effort to stockpile drugs and medical equipment required for a mobilisation. With the help of the Department of Health and the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, most of this was delivered by July 1939. In 1939, Downes began a tour of military and other medical centres in India, the Middle East, the United Kingdom, France, the United States and Canada. While in London, he arranged for Doris and Valerie to be formally presented to the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace by Ethel Bruce, the wife of Stanley Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Downes foresaw a major war, fought in the islands to the north of Australia. Still in London, he took steps to obtain the services as consultants of two eminent Australian doctors: the surgeon Sir Thomas Dunhill and Neil Hamilton Fairley, an expert on tropical diseases. The outbreak of the Second World War caused Downes to curtail the North American leg of his tour and return to Australia in October 1939.
## Second World War
Downes, in his role as DGMS, pressed for the construction of major military hospitals in the state capital cities. He argued that, after the war, they should be handed over to the Repatriation Department for the care of sick and disabled ex-service personnel. Despite strong opposition on the grounds of cost, Downes won his case in October 1940. The major military hospitals in the state capital cities, the Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney, the Austin Hospital in Melbourne and Greenslopes Private Hospital in Brisbane remain part of his legacy. In late 1940, medical units in the Middle East were experiencing "precarious and at times acute" shortages of medicals stores. Units were sent to the Middle East as fully equipped as was possible, with the expectation that the British Army would make up the difference, but British policy was that all possible sources had to be exploited before any demands could be made on the United Kingdom's sources. General Sir Thomas Blamey, the Commander in Chief of the AIF, recognised this as something that had to be negotiated between the two governments, but medical officers in the Middle East blamed the Medical Services in Australia—and therefore Downes—for the situation. The Minister for the Army, Percy Spender decided to pay a visit to the Middle East to see the situation for himself but before he did so, he resolved that Downes should become Director of Medical Services, AIF (Middle East). On arrival in the Middle East with the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Vernon Sturdee, Spender found that Blamey had already appointed Major General Samuel Burston to that post. This came as a surprise to them as they had not realised that Blamey had the authority to make such an appointment; but on seeing the situation for himself, Spender confirmed Burston's appointment.
On returning to Australia, Spender appointed Major General Frederick Maguire as DGMS and Downes was appointed to the newly created post of Inspector General of Medical Services (IGMS). As IGMS, Downes toured extensively—he visited all the Australian states and overseas locations where Australian troops had been sent, including Papua and New Guinea, Malaya, the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), India and East Africa. When Blamey reorganised the Army on his return to Australia in 1942, he appointed Burston as Director General of Medical Services. Downes became the DMS of the Second Army on 6 April 1942. He joined the Second AIF as a major general on 27 June 1942, receiving the AIF serial number VX57673.
## Death and legacy
Downes was the DMS of the Second Army until 22 August 1944. Due to the run-down of the Army in the latter stages of the war, the Second Army, always mainly a paper organisation, increasingly had less to do. Now nearly sixty, Downes accepted an invitation to write the medical history series of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1939–1945. As part of this, in March 1945, he decided to accompany Major General George Alan Vasey to New Guinea, where Vasey's 6th Division had encountered an atabrine-resistant strain of malaria in the Aitape-Wewak campaign.
On 5 March 1945, the RAAF Lockheed Hudson aircraft they were travelling in crashed into the sea about 400 yards (370 m) off Machans Beach, just north of the mouth of the Barron River near Cairns in Queensland. Downes and Vasey were killed along with all nine other Australian service personnel on board. Downes became the third most senior Australian officer to die in the Second World War, after General Sir Brudenell White, who died in the Canberra air disaster in 1940, and Lieutenant General Henry Wynter, who died from natural causes on 7 February 1945. The bodies were recovered and buried in the Cairns War Cemetery with full military honours. A memorial service was held at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, on 9 March 1945.
Gavin Long, the editor in chief of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1939–1945, prevailed on Allan S. Walker to write the medical series volumes. Walker discarded Downes's plans to have specialists write different sections, and ultimately wrote three volumes himself, starting with Clinical Problems of War (1952). He was working on the fourth and final volume, on the Medical Services of the RAN and RAAF, when he was compelled to quit in November 1956 due to ill-health, and he died in January 1958. The final volume was finished by others and appeared in 1961. Downes's papers are in the Australian War Memorial. The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons established the triennial Rupert Downes Memorial Lecture in his honour. The subject of the lecture is "related to some aspect or aspects of military surgery, medical equipment (military and civil), the surgery of children, neurosurgery, general surgery, medical ethics or medical history; these being subjects in which Downes was particularly interested".
## Rupert Downes Memorial Lectures
- 1950 Major General Samuel Burston Some Medical Aspects of Atomic Warfare
- 1954 A.S. Walker The Following Wind of History
- 1957 Major General Frank Kingsley Norris Be Strong and of Good Courage
- 1961 Sir Albert Coates The Doctor in the Services
- 1965 D. Waterson Œsophageal Replacement in Pædiatric Surgery
- 1970 J.H. Louw The Scientific Method in Surgery
- 1972 H.E. Beardmore Pædiatric Surgery – Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
- 1976 P.P. Rickham Nephroblastoma – a New Look at an Old Problem
- 1978 C.M. Gurner Military Medical Preparedness
- 1980 D.G. Hamilton One Hundred Years of Pædiatric Surgery in Sydney
- 1983 G.B. Ong The Trifacetted Nature of Surgery in Hong Kong
- 1988 B.A. Smithurst Distinguished Australian Military Surgeons
- 1990 Patricia K. Donahoe The Development of Tumour Inhibitors
- 1994 General Sir Phillip Bennett Medical Aspects of Australia's Defence
- 1996 Professor Averil Mansfield Arterio-Venous Malformations and their Treatment
- 1998 Donald Trunkey I am Giddy, Expectation Whirls me Round
- 2000 A. Wyn Beasley Of Scurvy and Shipwreck – the Dutch Discovery of Australasia
- 2002 Colonel D. Beard The Music of Warfare
- 2005 Robert Pearce Trust me, Claudius
- 2008 Professor Arthur Li Ethics and standards
- 2011 Major General John Pearn Pro patria et spe gentis
- 2014 Air Vice Marshal Hugh Bartholomeusz Tissue reconstruction in war and peace
- 2017 Professor Michael Besser The anatomical enlightenment
- 2021 Andrew Connolly Striving for excellence- Enhancing recovery in the Great War
Source:
|
7,152,068 |
French battleship Bretagne
| 1,147,721,212 |
Dreadnought battleships built in the 1910s for the French Navy
|
[
"1913 ships",
"Bretagne-class battleships",
"Maritime incidents in July 1940",
"Naval magazine explosions",
"Ships built in France",
"Shipwrecks of Algeria",
"World War I battleships of France",
"World War II battleships of France",
"World War II shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea"
] |
Bretagne was the lead ship of her class of three dreadnought battleships built in the 1910s for the French Navy. Bretagne entered service in February 1916, after the start of World War I. She spent the bulk of her nearly 25-year-long career with the Mediterranean Squadron and sometimes served as its flagship. During World War I she provided cover for the Otranto Barrage that blockaded the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea, but saw no action.
The ship was significantly modernised in the interwar period, and when she was on active duty, conducted normal peacetime cruises and training manoeuvres in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. After World War II broke out in September 1939, Bretagne escorted troop convoys and was briefly deployed to the Atlantic in search of German blockade runners and commerce raiders. Germany invaded France on 10 May 1940 and the French surrendered only six weeks later, at which time the battleship was stationed in Mers-el-Kébir, French Algeria. Fearful that the Germans would seize the French Navy, the British attacked the ships there on 3 July 1940 after the French refused to surrender or demilitarise the fleet; Bretagne was hit four times and exploded, killing the majority of her crew. Her wreck was salvaged in 1952 and broken up for scrap.
## Background and description
The Bretagne class of dreadnought battleships was designed as an improved version of the preceding Courbet class with a more powerful armament, but the limited size of French drydocks forced the turrets to be closer to the ends of the ships, adversely affecting their seakeeping abilities. The ships were 166 metres (544 ft 7 in) long overall, had a beam of 27 m (88 ft 7 in) and a mean draught of 9.1 m (29 ft 10 in). They displaced 23,936 tonnes (23,558 long tons) at normal load and 26,600 tonnes (26,200 long tons) at deep load. Their crew numbered 34 officers and 1,159 men as a private ship and increased to 42 officers and 1,208 crewmen when serving as a flagship.
The ships were powered by two licence-built Parsons steam turbine sets, each driving two propeller shafts, using steam provided by twenty-four Niclausse boilers. The turbines were rated at a total of 28,000 metric horsepower (20,594 kW; 27,617 shp) and were designed for a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph), but none of the ships exceeded 20.6 knots (38.2 km/h; 23.7 mph) during their sea trials. They carried enough coal and fuel oil to give them a range of 4,700 nautical miles (8,700 km; 5,400 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).
The Bretagne class's main battery consisted of ten Canon de 34 cm (13.4 in) modèle 1912 guns mounted in five twin-gun turrets, numbered one to five from front to rear. Two were in a superfiring pair forward, one amidships, and the last two in a superfiring pair aft. The secondary armament consisted of twenty-two Canon de 138 mm (5.4 in) modèle 1910 guns mounted individually in casemates along the length of the hull. She also carried a pair of Canon de 47 mm (1.9 in) modèle 1902 guns mounted in the forward superstructure in single mounts. Five older 47 mm weapons were installed for sub-calibre training, one on each turret roof, before they entered service. The Bretagnes were also armed with a pair of submerged 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes on each broadside and could stow 20–28 mines below decks. Their waterline belt ranged in thickness from 140 to 250 mm (5.5 to 9.8 in) and was thickest amidships. Armour plate that was 300 mm (11.8 in) thick protected the gun turrets and 160 mm (6.3 in) plates protected the casemates. The curved armoured deck was 40 mm (1.6 in) thick on the flat and 70 mm (2.8 in) on the outer slopes. The armour of the conning tower was 266 mm (10.5 in) thick.
## Construction and career
### 1912–1923
The ship was ordered on 1 May 1912 and named in honour of the province of Brittany. Bretagne was laid down on 22 July 1912 at the Brest Arsenal, launched on 21 April 1913, completed on 29 November 1915, and commissioned into the fleet on 10 February 1916. After entering service, she was assigned to the 1st Division (1ère Division) of the 1st Battle Squadron (1ère Escadre de ligne) and became the flagship of Vice-Admiral (Vice-amiral) Dominique-Marie Gauchet, commander of the squadron, on 10 May. They spent the majority of their time at Corfu to prevent the Austro-Hungarian fleet from attempting to break out of the Adriatic. They also supported the Otranto Barrage, a barrier erected to block German and Austro-Hungarian U-boats operating in the Mediterranean. The fleet's presence was also intended to intimidate Greece, which had become increasingly hostile to the Triple Entente. Later in the war, men were drawn from her crew for anti-submarine warfare vessels. As the Austro-Hungarians largely remained in port for the duration of the war, Bretagne saw no action during the conflict. In fact, she did not leave port at all for the entirety of 1917, due to a severe shortage of coal at Corfu. The 47 mm modèle 1902 guns were replaced by a pair of Canon de 75 mm (3 in) modèle 1897 guns on anti-aircraft (AA) mounts in 1918. Bretagne returned to Toulon after the war's end in November.
The ship received a lengthy refit there from 12 June 1919 to 18 October 1920. This included modifications to her gun turrets which increased the elevation of her main armament from 12° to 18° and thus their maximum range. The four forward 138 mm guns were removed and their casemates plated over, because they could only be worked in good weather—in rough seas, water would frequently rush over the guns. The 75 mm AA guns were replaced by four 75 mm modèle 1918 AA guns mounted amidships. The ship's foremast was replaced by a tripod mast and her mainmast was shortened to allow the ship to fly a captive kite balloon. A Vickers fire-control director that was equipped with a 3.66-metre (12 ft) rangefinder was installed atop the tripod mast; two other 2-metre (6 ft 7 in) rangefinders were added, one on each side of the superstructure for the 138 mm guns. Flying-off platforms were fitted to the roofs of Turrets 2 and 4, but these were unsuccessful.
Bretagne became flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron again on 6 June 1921 when Vice-Admiral Henri Salaun hoisted his flag aboard her. The ship accompanied her sister ship Provence to Le Havre for a naval review that month, and they were back in Toulon in September. During this period, Lieutenant de vaisseau Paul Teste used Bretagne in a series of dive-bombing experiments. Bretagne and the battleship France hosted the British battleship Queen Elizabeth and the light cruiser Coventry during a port visit to Villefranche from 18 February to 1 March 1922. The two French battleships had a gunnery exercise on 28 June using the former Austro-Hungarian battleship Prinz Eugen as a target and sank her. On 18 July, Bretagne, France and the battleship Paris began a cruise visiting French ports in the Bay of Biscay and English Channel. On the evening of 25/26 August, France struck an uncharted rock while entering Quiberon and sank several hours later. Bretagne and Paris were able to rescue all but three of her crew. During a training exercise, Bretagne briefly ran aground in the Bizerte canal in Tunisia on 22 June 1923, but was not damaged. Provence relieved Bretagne as the fleet flagship on 1 September.
### 1924–1939
She received a major refit at Toulon from 1 May 1924 to 28 September 1925, during which the elevation of her main armament was increased to 23°, giving her guns a maximum range of 23,700 metres (25,900 yd), and two 1.5-metre (4 ft 11 in) high-angle rangefinders were added for the AA guns. Part of her forward hull armour was removed to lighten the bow and increase her forward freeboard, one group of boilers was converted to oil-firing and the flying-off platforms were removed. The ship resumed her position as flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron when her refit was completed. Bretagne transported the Navy Minister, Georges Leygues, to Malta for an official visit over the period 27 April – 1 May 1926. Provence reassumed the role of fleet flagship on 1 October 1927 when Bretagne prepared to begin a refit to overhaul her boilers that began on 15 November and lasted until 12 May 1928. The navy took the opportunity to upgrade her fire-control systems, replacing her Vickers model with a French Saint Chamond-Granat system in a director-control tower (DCT), and replaced all of her original rangefinders with the exception of the 2-metre (6 ft 7 in) rangefinders in each turret. A pair of 4.57-metre (15 ft) rangefinders were added on the conning tower roof, another one in the DCT at the top of the foremast and another at the base of the mainmast. A 3-metre (9 ft 10 in) rangefinder was added to the DCT to measure the distance between the target and shell splashes, and a traversable 8.2-metre (26 ft 11 in) rangefinder was fitted to the roof of No. 2 turret. Directors with 2-metre rangefinders were also added to control the secondary guns.
On 3 July 1928, Bretagne, Provence and their sister Lorraine participated in a fleet review by the President of France, Gaston Doumergue, at Le Havre and they spent the following year in the Mediterranean. Bretagne, Provence and Paris participated in another fleet review by Doumergue on 10 May 1930 that commemorated the centennial of the conquest of Algeria. On 1 October 1930, Bretagne was decommissioned in anticipation of a modernisation that began on 1 July 1932. Her original coal-fired boilers were replaced by new and smaller oil-burning ones, which allowed the No. 2 boiler room to be converted into an oil tank. This increased her fuel capacity to 2,500 tonnes (2,500 long tons). Geared Parsons cruise turbines were fitted to the inboard propeller shafts and the outer high-pressure turbines were replaced. The four aft 138 mm guns were removed and their casemates plated over. The four 75 mm mle 1918 AA guns were replaced by eight Canon de 75 mm modèle 1922 AA guns and the torpedo tubes were removed. A new DCT was installed as were a pair of anti-aircraft directors fitted with 2-metre rangefinders.
After the modernisation was completed on 12 November 1934, Bretagne remained in Toulon for working up until 11 May 1935, when she left to join her sisters in the 2nd Division (2e Division) of the 2nd Battle Squadron (2e Escadre de ligne) for manoevres off the Azores. The ships also made port visits in the islands and French Morocco before sailing to Brest where they arrived on 16 June. As tensions with Nazi Germany rose, the French naval command decided that the squadron based in Brest should be strengthened to deter Germany, so Bretagne and her sisters were stationed there for most of the rest of the decade. Later in June 1934, Bretagne participated in exercises with the combined fleet. She was briefly refitted from 29 October to 3 December. Together with Provence, Bretagne had gunnery practice off Groix, Brittany, on 7–11 July. On 15 August, the 2nd Squadron was renamed the Atlantic Squadron (Escadre de l'Atlantique). Beginning in 1936, all three sisters had their 4.57-metre rangefinders replaced by 5-metre (16 ft 5 in) ones. The 2nd Battle Division visited ports in the Azores, Madeira, Portuguese Cape Verde, and French Morocco, returning to Brest on 26 February 1937. Later that year Navy Minister Alphonse Gasnier-Duparc reviewed the combined Atlantic and Mediterranean Squadrons on 27 May after that year's fleet manoevres. Beginning in 1938, the sisters had the rangefinder in the DCT replaced by a 8-metre (26 ft 3 in) model. Bretagne finished a refit on 1 October 1938 and was then working up until May 1939. The 2nd Battle Division was transferred to the Mediterranean Squadron on 10 June 1939.
### World War II
At the start of World War II in September 1939, the division was based in Toulon. At the time, Italy was neutral, so there was no immediate threat in the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, the sisters escorted troop convoys between France and French North Africa from 1 September to 5 October. On 4 December, Bretagne and Provence, along with the cruisers Colbert, Dupleix, and Primauguet and several destroyers and submarines operated out of Dakar, French West Africa in search of German commerce raiders and blockade runners without success. Around the middle of the month, the task force began to return to the Mediterranean. After returning to Toulon, Bretagne underwent an extensive overhaul, which lasted until 3 March 1940, during which her 8-metre rangefinder was replaced by a 12-metre (39 ft 4 in) rangefinder.
On 11 March, she left France carrying 1,820 boxes of gold bars from the French treasury together with the heavy cruiser Algérie, which carried another 1,179 boxes. These two ships were designated Force X. They arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 22 March. On the return voyage, they escorted two American merchant ships carrying 82 aircraft bought by France and arrived at Toulon on 10 April. Five days later, Bretagne sailed to Oran, French Algeria, together with Lorraine, arriving on the 18th where they joined Provence. On 27 April, the 2nd Battle Division was transferred to Algiers and then to Alexandria, Egypt. Bretagne and her sisters passed through the Strait of Sicily on 30 April, covered by the French 3rd Cruiser Division on their way to Alexandria. While still en route, they met the British battleships HMS Royal Sovereign and Malaya, after which the cruisers departed, leaving the battleships to continue on to their destination, where they were assigned to a new Force X.
As war with Italy became increasingly likely following Germany's invasion of France on 10 May, the Anglo-French naval command decided to concentrate naval forces in the western Mediterranean. Bretagne and Provence were accordingly recalled from Force X; they left Alexandria on 20 May, their place in Force X being taken by a pair of cruisers. Bretagne and Provence steamed together with two destroyers and reached Bizerte on 23 May. Admiral François Darlan, Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy, decided that all capital ships should be concentrated in Mers El Kébir, so he instructed them to steam there. Bretagne and Provence arrived there on 27 May, where they rendezvoused with the Force de Raid, France's most modern ships, in an unsuccessful effort to deter Italy from joining the war.
#### Loss
Following the French surrender on 22 June 1940, the French fleet was to be disarmed under German and Italian supervision. The British high command was concerned that the French ships would be seized by the Axis powers and placed in service. The Axis navies would then overmatch the Royal Navy. Prime Minister Winston Churchill therefore ordered Vice-Admiral James Somerville, the commander of Force H, to neutralise the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir. He was instructed to order the French vessels to either join the British with the Free French, surrender for internment, to scuttle themselves, or be sunk. On 3 July, Somerville arrived and delivered the ultimatum; the French rejected it, and so the British ships opened fire.
Bretagne, having remained in Mers El Kébir since being stationed there one month earlier, was hit by four 15-inch (381 mm) projectiles from Hood, Resolution, and Valiant (no ship is individually credited). The first two shells struck simultaneously at 16:59 in the third salvo. The first hit the ship near turret No. 4, causing a large explosion that sent flames as high as the masthead and blew a hole in the side of the hull. The resulting flooding limited the explosion's effect on the ship. The second shell struck above the waterline, and detonated in the centre engine room, killing all but one of the sailors inside. It knocked out all power and damaged the internal communication system of the ship. Seven minutes later, two other large shells struck Bretagne. One detonated near Turret No. 3 and ignited some ready-use projectiles which were stored in lockers next to the anti-aircraft mounts. At 17:09 a large explosion occurred in the ship and she rolled over and capsized with the loss of 36 officers, 151 petty officers and 825 seamen. The Société de matérial naval du Midi attempted to salvage the wreck in late 1942, but it was called off after a diver was seriously injured by an explosion when attempting to cut through the hull with an oxy-acetylene torch. The Serra Frères company salvaged Bretagne's wreck, breaking up the vessel for scrap beginning in 1952 and completing the job on 21 December 1954.
|
30,270,385 |
SMS Thüringen
| 1,159,185,078 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1911 ships",
"Helgoland-class battleships",
"Ships built in Bremen (state)",
"World War I battleships of Germany"
] |
SMS Thüringen was the third vessel of the Helgoland class of dreadnought battleships of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy}. Thüringen's keel was laid in November 1908 at the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen. She was launched on 27 November 1909 and commissioned into the fleet on 1 July 1911. The ship was equipped with twelve 30.5 cm (12 in) guns in six twin turrets, and had a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). Thüringen was assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career, including World War I.
Along with her three sister ships, Helgoland, Ostfriesland, and Oldenburg, Thüringen participated in all of the major fleet operations of World War I in the North Sea against the British Grand Fleet. This included the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916, the largest naval battle of the war. Thüringen was involved in the heavy night fighting at Jutland, including the destruction of the armored cruiser HMS Black Prince. The ship also saw action against the Imperial Russian Navy in the Baltic Sea, where she participated in the unsuccessful first incursion into the Gulf of Riga in August 1915.
After the German collapse in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow during the peace negotiations. The four Helgoland-class ships were allowed to remain in Germany and were therefore spared the destruction of the fleet in Scapa Flow. Thüringen and her sisters were eventually ceded to the victorious Allied powers as war reparations; Thüringen was transferred to France in April 1920 and used as a target ship for the French Navy. She was sunk off Gavres and broken up in situ in 1923–1933, though some sections of the ship remain.
## Design
The ship was 167.2 m (548 ft 7 in) long overall, had a beam of 28.5 m (93 ft 6 in) and a draft of 8.94 m (29 ft 4 in), and displaced 24,700 metric tons (24,310 long tons) at full load. She was powered by three triple-expansion steam engines and fifteen water-tube boilers. The engines were rated at 27,617 ihp (20,594 kW) and were capable of producing a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). Thüringen stored up to 3,200 metric tons (3,100 long tons) of coal, which allowed her to steam for 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). After 1915, the boilers were modified to spray oil on the coal to increase its burn rate; the ship could carry up to 197 metric tons (194 long tons) of fuel oil. She had a crew of 42 officers and 1,071 enlisted men.
Thüringen was armed with a main battery of twelve 30.5 cm (12 in) SK L/50 guns in six twin gun turrets, with one turret fore, one aft, and two on each flank of the ship. The ship's secondary battery consisted of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 guns, all of which were mounted in casemates in the side of the upper deck. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried fourteen 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 guns. After 1914, two of the 8.8 cm guns were removed and replaced by 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns. Thüringen was also armed with six 50 cm (19.7 in) submerged torpedo tubes; one was in the bow, one in the stern, and two on each broadside.
Her main armored belt was 300 mm (11.8 in) thick in the central citadel, and was composed of Krupp cemented armor (KCA). Her main battery gun turrets were protected by the same thickness of KCA on the sides and faces, as well as the barbettes that supported the turrets. Thüringen's deck was 63.5 mm (2.5 in) thick.
## Service history
Thüringen was ordered by the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) under the provisional name Ersatz Beowulf, as a replacement for the old coastal defense ship Beowulf. The contract for the ship was awarded to the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen under construction number 166. Work began on 2 November 1908 with the laying of her keel, and the ship was launched a year later on 27 November 1909. She was christened by Duchess Adelheid von Sachsen-Altenburg, and Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst gave the speech. Fitting-out, including completion of the superstructure and the installation of armament, lasted until June 1911. Following her completion, six pontoon barges were attached to the new battleship to reduce her draft to allow her to be towed down the Weser River to the North Sea. Thüringen, named for Thuringia, a state in central Germany, was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 1 June 1911, less than three years after work commenced.
After her commissioning on 1 July 1911, Thüringen conducted sea trials, which were completed by 10 September. On 19 September, she was assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, alongside her sisters. She then went on to conduct individual ship training exercises, which were followed by I Squadron exercises and then fleet maneuvers in November. The annual summer cruise in July and August, which typically went to Norway, was interrupted by the Agadir Crisis. As a result, the cruise only went into the Baltic. Thüringen and the rest of the fleet then fell into a pattern of individual ship, squadron, and full fleet exercises over the next two years. In October 1913, William Michaelis became the ship's commanding officer; he held the post until February 1915.
On 14 July 1914, the annual summer cruise to Norway began. During the last peacetime cruise of the Imperial Navy, the fleet conducted drills off Skagen before proceeding to the Norwegian fjords on 25 July. The following day the fleet began to steam back to Germany, as a result of Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia. On 27 July, the entire fleet assembled off Cape Skudenes before returning to port, where they remained at a heightened state of readiness. War between Austria-Hungary and Serbia broke out the following day, and within a week all the major European powers had joined the conflict. By 29 July Thüringen and the rest of I Squadron were back in Wilhelmshaven. During the first year of the war, the future anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller served aboard the ship as an officer.
### World War I
Thüringen was present during the first sortie by the German fleet into the North Sea, which took place on 2–3 November 1914. No British forces were encountered during the operation. A second operation followed on 15–16 December. This sortie was the initiation of a strategy adopted by Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander of the High Seas Fleet. Admiral von Ingenohl intended to use the battlecruisers of Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Franz von Hipper's I Scouting Group to raid British coastal towns to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet where they could be destroyed by the High Seas Fleet. Early on 15 December the fleet left port to raid the towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby on the English coast. That evening, the German battle fleet of some twelve dreadnoughts—including Thüringen and her three sisters—and eight pre-dreadnoughts came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. Skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced von Ingenohl that he was faced with the entire Grand Fleet. Under orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to avoid risking the fleet unnecessarily, von Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned the battle fleet back toward Germany.
The Battle of Dogger Bank, in which Vice Admiral David Beatty's 1st and 2nd Battlecruiser Squadrons ambushed the I Scouting Group battlecruisers, occurred on 24 January 1915. Thüringen and the rest of I Squadron were sortied to reinforce the outnumbered German battlecruisers; I Squadron left port at 12:33 CET, along with the pre-dreadnoughts of II Squadron. The High Seas Fleet was too late, so it failed to locate any British forces. By 19:05, the fleet had returned to the Schillig Roads outside Wilhelmshaven. In the meantime, the armored cruiser Blücher had been overwhelmed by concentrated British fire and sunk, while the battlecruiser Seydlitz was severely damaged by an ammunition fire. As a result, Wilhelm II removed von Ingenohl from his post and replaced him with Admiral Hugo von Pohl on 2 February.
The eight I Squadron ships went into the Baltic on 22 February 1915 for unit training, which lasted until 13 March. Following their return to the North Sea, the ships participated in a series of uneventful fleet sorties on 29–30 March, 17–18 April, 21–22 April, 17–18 May, and 29–30 May. Thüringen and the rest of the fleet then remained in port until 4 August, when I Squadron returned to the Baltic for another round of training maneuvers. From there, the squadron was attached to the naval force that attempted to sweep the Gulf of Riga of Russian naval forces in August 1915. The assault force included the eight I Squadron battleships, the battlecruisers Von der Tann, Moltke, and Seydlitz, several light cruisers, 32 destroyers and 13 minesweepers. The plan called for channels to be swept in Russian minefields so that the Russian naval presence, which included the pre-dreadnought Slava, could be eliminated. The Germans would then lay minefields of their own to prevent Russian ships from returning to the Gulf. Thüringen and the majority of the other big ships of the High Seas Fleet remained outside the Gulf for the entirety of the operation. The dreadnoughts Nassau and Posen were detached on 16 August to escort the minesweepers and to destroy Slava, though they failed to sink the old battleship. After three days, the Russian minefields had been cleared, and the flotilla entered the Gulf on 19 August; reports of Allied submarines in the area prompted a German withdrawal from the Gulf the following day. By 26 August, I Squadron had returned to Wilhelmshaven.
On 23–24 October, the High Seas Fleet undertook its last major offensive operation under the command of von Pohl, though it ended without contact with British forces. By January 1916 hepatic cancer had weakened von Pohl to the point where he was no longer able to carry out his duties, and he was replaced by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer in January. Scheer proposed a more aggressive policy designed to force a confrontation with the British Grand Fleet; he received approval from the Kaiser in February. Scheer's first operation was a sweep into the North Sea on 5–7 March, followed by two more on 21–22 March and 25–26 March. During Scheer's next operation, Thüringen supported a raid on the English coast on 24 April 1916 conducted by the German battlecruiser force. The battlecruisers left the Jade Estuary at 10:55 and the rest of the High Seas Fleet followed at 13:40. The battlecruiser Seydlitz struck a mine while en route to the target, and had to withdraw. The other battlecruisers bombarded the town of Lowestoft unopposed, but during the approach to Yarmouth, they encountered the British cruisers of the Harwich Force. A short gun duel ensued before the Harwich Force withdrew. Reports of British submarines in the area prompted the retreat of I Scouting Group. At this point, Scheer, who had been warned of the sortie of the Grand Fleet from its base in Scapa Flow, also withdrew to safer German waters.
#### Battle of Jutland
Thüringen was present during the fleet operation that resulted in the battle of Jutland which took place on 31 May and 1 June 1916. The German fleet again sought to draw out and isolate a portion of the Grand Fleet and destroy it before the main British fleet could retaliate. During the operation, Thüringen was the second ship in I Division of I Squadron and the tenth ship in the line, directly astern of the squadron flagship Ostfriesland and ahead of another sister Helgoland. I Squadron was the center of the German line, behind the eight König- and Kaiser-class battleships of III Squadron. The six elderly pre-dreadnoughts of III and IV Divisions, II Battle Squadron, formed the rear of the formation.
Shortly before 16:00, the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group encountered the British 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under the command of David Beatty. The opposing ships began an artillery duel that saw the destruction of Indefatigable, shortly after 17:00, and Queen Mary, less than half an hour later. By this time, the German battlecruisers were steaming south to draw the British ships toward the main body of the High Seas Fleet. At 17:30, the crew of the leading German battleship, König, spotted both I Scouting Group and the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron approaching. The German battlecruisers were steaming to starboard, while the British ships steamed to port. At 17:45, Scheer ordered a two-point turn to port to bring his ships closer to the British battlecruisers, and a minute later, the order to open fire was given.
While the leading battleships engaged the British battlecruiser squadron, Thüringen and ten other battleships, too far out of range to attack the British battlecruisers, fired on the British 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron. Thüringen and Kronprinz engaged the cruiser Dublin, though both ships failed to score a hit. Thüringen fired for eight minutes at ranges of 18,600 to 20,800 yd (17,000 to 19,000 m), expending twenty-nine 30.5 cm shells. The British destroyers Nestor and Nomad, which had been disabled earlier in the engagement, laid directly in the path of the advancing High Seas Fleet. Thüringen and three other battleships destroyed Nestor with their primary and secondary guns while several III Squadron battleships sank Nomad. Shortly after 19:15, the British dreadnought Warspite came into range; Thüringen opened fire at 19:25 with her main and secondary battery guns, at ranges of 10,600 to 11,800 yd (9,700 to 10,800 m). The ship fired twenty-one 30.5 cm and thirty-seven 15 cm shells in the span of five or six minutes, after which Thüringen's gunners lost sight of Warspite, without scoring any hits. They then shifted fire to Malaya. Thüringen fired twenty main battery rounds at Malaya, also unsuccessfully, over seven minutes at a range of 14,100 yd (12,900 m) before conforming to a 180-degree turn ordered by Scheer to disengage from the British fleet.
At around 23:30, the German fleet reorganized into the night-cruising formation. Thüringen was the seventh ship, stationed toward the front of the 24-ship line. An hour later, the leading units of the German line encountered British light forces and a violent firefight at close range ensued. Sometime around 01:10, the armored cruiser Black Prince stumbled into the German line. Thüringen illuminated the vessel with her spotlights and poured salvos of 30.5 cm rounds into the ship at point-blank range. The first salvo struck near Black Prince's rear gun turret, which appears to have been blown overboard. Thüringen fired a total of ten 30.5 cm, twenty-seven 15 cm, and twenty-four 8.8 cm shells. She was joined by three other battleships, and Black Prince was soon destroyed by a huge ammunition explosion. Around a half an hour later, Thüringen spotted what appeared to be a Birkenhead-class cruiser. She fired a star shell to illuminate the British cruiser and opened fire with her secondary guns. The ship was actually the destroyer Turbulent. Thüringen fired eighteen 15 cm and six 8.8 cm shells before launching another star shell. Turbulent appeared to be capsized to starboard, though she remained afloat and was dispatched later by the cruiser Regensburg and the destroyers V71 and V73.
Despite the ferocity of the night fighting, the High Seas Fleet punched through the British destroyer forces and reached Horns Reef by 04:00 on 1 June. A few hours later, the fleet arrived in the Jade; Thüringen, Helgoland, Nassau, and Westfalen took up defensive positions in the outer roadstead and four undamaged III Squadron ships anchored just outside the entrance locks to Wilhelmshaven. The remaining eight dreadnoughts entered port, where those that were still in fighting condition restocked ammunition and fuel. In the course of the engagement, Thüringen had fired one-hundred and seven 30.5 cm, one-hundred and fifteen 15 cm, and twenty-two 8.8 cm shells, while she and her crew emerged from the battle unscathed.
#### Subsequent operations
On 18 August, Admiral Scheer attempted to repeat the 31 May operation. The two serviceable German battlecruisers (Moltke and Von der Tann), supported by three dreadnoughts, would bombard Sunderland in an attempt to draw out and destroy Beatty's battlecruisers. The rest of the fleet, including Thüringen, would trail behind and provide cover. British signals intelligence informed Jellicoe of the German departure later in the day, and he sent the Grand Fleet out to intercept the Germans. On the approach to the English coast during the action of 19 August 1916, Scheer turned north after receiving a false report from a zeppelin about a British unit in the area. As a result, the bombardment was not carried out, and by 14:35 on 19 August, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and so turned his forces around and retreated to German ports.
On 25–26 September, Thüringen and the rest of I Squadron covered an advance conducted by the second commander of the torpedo-boat flotillas (II Führer der Torpedoboote) to the Terschelling Bank. Scheer conducted another fleet operation on 18–20 October in the direction of the Dogger Bank, though rudder damage prevented Thüringen from participating. For the majority of 1917, Thüringen was assigned to guard duty in the German Bight. During Operation Albion, the amphibious assault on the Russian-held islands in the Gulf of Riga, Thüringen and her three sisters were moved to the Danish straits to block any possible British attempt to intervene. On 28 October the four ships arrived in Putzig Wiek, and from there steamed to Arensburg on the 29th. On 2 November the operation was completed and Thüringen and her sisters began the voyage back to the North Sea. A final abortive fleet sortie took place on 23–24 April 1918. Thüringen, Ostfriesland, and Nassau were formed into a special unit for Operation Schlußstein, a planned occupation of St. Petersburg. The three ships reached the Baltic on 10 August, but the operation was postponed and eventually canceled. The special unit was dissolved on 21 August and the battleships were back in Wilhelmshaven on the 23rd.
### Fate
Thüringen and her three sisters were to have taken part in a final fleet action at the end of October 1918, days before the Armistice was to take effect. The bulk of the High Seas Fleet was to have sortied from their base in Wilhelmshaven to engage the British Grand Fleet; Scheer—by now the Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) of the fleet—intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy, to improve Germany's bargaining position, despite the expected casualties. But many of the war-weary sailors felt that the operation would disrupt the peace process and prolong the war. On the morning of 29 October 1918, the order was given to sail from Wilhelmshaven the following day. Starting on the night of 29 October, sailors on Thüringen and then on several other battleships mutinied. Stokers turned off the boilers and refused to work. The following day, the torpedo boats B110 and B112 came alongside and the U-boat U-135 pointed her guns at the ship. A significant portion of the crew, 314 sailors and 124 stokers, were arrested and taken off the ship. This was not enough to stop the mutiny, which quickly spread throughout the fleet. The unrest ultimately forced Hipper and Scheer to cancel the operation. Informed of the situation, the Kaiser stated "I no longer have a navy".
Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, was interned in the British naval base in Scapa Flow. Thüringen and her three sisters, along with the four Nassau-class battleships, were permitted to remain in Germany during the peace negotiations. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and in their absence Reuter ordered the crews to scuttle the ten battleships and five battlecruisers interned at Scapa Flow. Thüringen was decommissioned on 16 December 1918 and used as a barracks ship while she remained in Germany. She was stricken from the naval register on 5 November 1919 and placed out of commission. The fate of the eight remaining German battleships was determined in the Treaty of Versailles, which stated that the ships were to be disarmed and surrendered to the governments of the principal Allied powers. Thüringen was surrendered to the French Navy on 29 April 1920 under the name "L". A skeleton crew took the ship to Cherbourg for the official transfer. Thüringen was briefly used as a target ship by the French Navy before sinking off Gavres. The ship was partially broken up in situ in 1923–1933, though significant portions of the ship remain off the French coast.
|
296,154 |
Vagrant Story
| 1,170,995,462 |
2000 video game
|
[
"2000 video games",
"Action role-playing video games",
"Fantasy video games",
"Hitoshi Sakimoto albums",
"PlayStation (console) games",
"PlayStation Network games",
"Role-playing video games",
"Single-player video games",
"Square (video game company) games",
"Video game soundtracks",
"Video games about cults",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games scored by Hitoshi Sakimoto"
] |
Vagrant Story (ベイグラントストーリー, Beiguranto Sutōrī) is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) for the PlayStation video game console. The game was released in 2000, and has been re-released through the PlayStation Network for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita consoles. Vagrant Story was primarily developed by the team responsible for Final Fantasy Tactics, with Yasumi Matsuno serving as producer, writer and director.
The game takes place in the kingdom of Valendia and the ruined city of Leá Monde. The story centers on Ashley Riot, an elite agent known as a Riskbreaker, who must travel to Leá Monde to investigate the link between a cult leader and a senior Valendian Parliament member, Duke Bardorba. In the prologue, Ashley is blamed for murdering the duke, and the game discloses the events that happen one week before the murder.
Vagrant Story is unique as a console action-adventure role-playing game in that it features no shops and no player interaction with other characters; instead, the game focuses on weapon creation and modification, as well as elements of puzzle-solving and strategy. The game received critical acclaim from gaming magazines and websites.
## Gameplay
Vagrant Story is a solo action role-playing game, in which the player controls Ashley Riot from a third-person perspective while exploring Leá Monde and the catacombs underneath. The player may also switch into first-person perspective to allow for a 360° view using the START button or right analog stick on the game controller. Characters and sprites are proportionate with each other, and the player navigates Ashley on a three-dimensional field map. Navigation is in real-time, and areas accessed by the player are stored in an in-game map menu.
Ashley can run, jump, and push crates and cubes to navigate around obstacles, adding puzzle and platforming elements to gameplay. During the game, the player must sometimes solve block puzzles to advance the story. When the player returns to a completed block puzzle room, a time-attack mode called "Evolve, or Die!!" begins. Players must reach the end of the room in the shortest time possible, after which they are ranked. This stage is optional and can be turned off from the menu.
In the field map, players may engage the enemy as soon as they enter Battle Mode, which uses a pausable real-time combat system, much like Square's Parasite Eve (1998). In Battle Mode, when the player taps the attack button, a spherical grid appears around Ashley. Individual body parts within this sphere can be targeted. The battle system involves the player chaining different attacks known as Chain Abilities to achieve large combos and deal damage to the enemy. This is done by pressing buttons in timely succession, making combat resemble a rhythm game. In addition to Chain Abilities, Defensive Abilities allow Ashley to reduce or reflect damage or avoid status ailments. Ashley also gains Break Arts, which exchange his hit points (HP) for increased damage.
Magic in Vagrant Story is learned later in the game using Grimoires that are dropped by enemies. Once a Grimoire is used, the magic spell associated with the Grimoire will remain in the menu, and players only need to spend magic points (MP) to cast a learned spell. Magic spells can be used to attack, heal, create status effects, and manipulate Ashley's elemental and enemy affinities. Certain magic spells allow the player to affect multiple targets by using a small sphere positioned within the Battle Mode wire frame. Unlike physical attacks however, magic attacks cannot be chained.
Risk is an essential element in the battle system. A Risk bar is placed below the HP and MP bar, representing the Risk Points the player has accumulated. Risk Points affect Ashley's concentration; the longer Ashley attacks a target, the more his Risk Point accumulates, lowering his accuracy and defenses. Chain and Defensive Abilities increase Risk faster than regular attacks, while Break Arts do not increase Risk at all. Enemy attacks and spells deal more damage if the player has high Risk. The advantage, however, is the higher chances for the player to score critical hits and restore higher HP.
Vagrant Story's crafting system allows the player to create and customize weapons and armor in designated "workshop" areas, inputting various ranges, strengths, and statistics. Weapons fall into one of three main damage types: blunt, piercing, and edged. Equipment are influenced by their material and affinity to enemy classes and elements. Affinities influence the effectiveness of weapons and armor, but equipment might lose one form of affinity when it gains another type. Weapons and armor can be combined, merging their affinities and sometimes creating a new type of blade or armor in the process. Different weapon types have different ranges, such as a crossbow having a longer range than melee weapons such as a mace.
Like several Square titles, the New Game Plus option is made available to the player upon first completing the game. In Vagrant Story, selecting "New Game+" enables the player to replay the story using their end-game weapons, items, and statistics instead of the defaults. This option allows players to access a hidden level, which features more intimidating enemies and more powerful equipment. The story does not change, and original enemy statistics will remain at default.
## Plot
### Setting
Vagrant Story is set in the fictitious city of Leá Monde, while the kingdom of Valendia is engulfed in civil war. Leá Monde is an old town with a history spanning more than two millennia. Located on an island surrounded by reefs, the walls have been the "witness of many battles" and are "stronger than the mightiest forts of Valendia". In its golden years, Leá Monde was a thriving community until an earthquake struck the town 25 years before the game, destroying the city and leaving the ground unstable.
The Grand Cathedral and the Temple of Kiltia are at the center of the city. This area is surrounded by the west and east districts, both in fairly good shape, as well as the massive, fortress-like City Walls. Beneath the ground are an abandoned mineshaft and limestone quarry, the shadowy labyrinths of an "Undercity", and the dark Iron Maiden dungeon. The maze-like Snowfly Forest, named for the so-called snowflies that can be found within, covers part of the city. Other locations include the Graylands, the setting for the prologue event; and Valnain, the city where the Valendia Knights of Peace's Headquarters is located. While Valendia and Leá Monde are fictitious, the game's scenery is inspired by real-life landscapes of the southwest of France, including the city of Saint-Émilion.
### Characters
The protagonist is Ashley Riot, a male member of the Valendia Knights of the Peace (VKP) in pursuit of a cult leader named Sydney Losstarot. Sydney, leader of the religious cult Müllenkamp, laid siege to Duke Bardorba's manor in search of a key and kidnapped Bardorba's son, Joshua. Ashley's partner is Callo Merlose, an agent of the VKP Inquisitors. Also attempting to capture Sydney is Romeo Guildenstern of the Crimson Blades, whose mission was undertaken without the approval of the VKP.
Ashley is a Riskbreaker, a militant division of the VKP responsible for upholding state security and law. Although Callo accompanies him, Ashley does not accept her as a combat partner due to her lack of combat experience. Callo ends up being Sydney's hostage and discovers the truth of Müllenkamp's activities. Another Riskbreaker, Rosencrantz, appears during Ashley's battles in Leá Monde, briefing him on the plans of the VKP, Sydney and the Cardinal, and subsequently his take on Ashley's past. This casts suspicion on Ashley's behalf, as Riskbreakers always work alone.
The Crimson Blades, under direct orders of Cardinal Batistum, are a group that is part of the Cardinal's Knights of the Cross, in charge of seeking heretics and quelling cults. Romeo Guildenstern, their leader, is a pious man, deeply faithful to his belief and consequently immune to the Dark's powers. Under orders of the Cardinal, he pursues Sydney with a small army in his command and his captains: Samantha, Duane, Grissom, Tieger and Neesa.
Müllenkamp is a cult based in Leá Monde. The city suffered a catastrophe when the population was killed in an earthquake. The city, filled with corpses controlled by Darkness, is the cult's stronghold. Sydney and his accomplice, Hardin, survive the pursuit of the Crimson Blade, though Hardin sometimes doubts Sydney's intentions.
### Story
The plot of Vagrant Story, titled "The Phantom Pain", is presented as the prelude to the "story of the wanderer". Beginning in the Graylands, Ashley and Callo are sent by the VKP to Duke Bardorba's manor to investigate the Duke's involvement with Müllenkamp and the Cardinal's interest in Sydney Losstarot. Ashley infiltrates the manor and encounters Sydney, witnessing his powers first hand. Sydney escapes with his accomplice Hardin and the Duke's son Joshua, leaving Ashley with a clue to his whereabouts. This event was dubbed the "Graylands Incident".
Ashley and Callo arrive in Leá Monde and a lone Ashley infiltrates the city through the underground wine cellars. Along the way, he learns of objects holding magical power known as Grimoires and the city's power to spawn the undead and mythological creatures. He encounters Guildenstern and his lover Samantha, and learns of the condition known as incomplete death and the Cardinal's true intention for his pursuit of Sydney: immortality. The Crimson Blades confront Ashley and reveals his presence to Guildenstern.
Escaping unharmed, Ashley encounters Rosencrantz who intends to join him, though Ashley declines. Rosencrantz tells him of the VKP and the Parliaments' knowledge of the dark powers of Leá Monde, and that the hidden powers deep within a person can be unleashed with the help of the Dark. In his encounters with Sydney, Ashley is shown visions of his past, where his wife Tia and his son Marco are killed by rogues. Meeting Rosencrantz again, Ashley is told that they were not his family, but mistaken targets he killed during a mission of theirs. Ashley's guilt over their deaths was manipulated by the VKP to turn Ashley into a loyal Riskbreaker. Ashley recalls his hidden battle skills and experiences "clairvoyance", seeing the progress of the Crimson Blades, which leads him to the Great Cathedral.
Sydney had captured Callo earlier and brought her with them. Callo learned that Hardin was skeptical of Sydney's plans. She begins to develop the powers of "heart-seeing", a form of telepathy, as they continue their escape deeper into Leá Monde. With her powers, she learned of Sydney's intentions and Hardin's reason to join Müllenkamp and his closeness to Joshua. Sydney left them to stop the others from advancing; taunting Guildenstern and Samantha, and provoking Ashley to follow him as he intends to bestow his powers upon Ashley. Ashley was not interested in inheriting the powers of Darkness; seeing that Callo had been captured, his only intention is to rescue her.
While discussing the Gran Grimoire, a powerful source of magic, Guildenstern and Samantha discover ancient Kildean letterings carved throughout the city walls. Rosencrantz reveals that the city is the Gran Grimoire and its power lies at the city center: the Grand Cathedral. As Guildenstern leaves for the Grand Cathedral, Rosencrantz searches for Ashley and Sydney. Finding them, Rosencrantz, confident in his immunity against Darkness, tries to force Sydney to surrender his powers. Rosencrantz also assaults Ashley to prove that he is not a suitable candidate for the powers of Darkness. Sydney refuses to listen and kills Rosencrantz by using a possessed statue, leaving Ashley to once again prove himself as his chosen successor.
Guildenstern continues on to the Great Cathedral in the center of the city, leading him to Callo, Hardin and Joshua. Interrogating Hardin about a certain "key" known as the Blood-Sin, Guildenstern reveals his intentions in acquiring the Dark's powers. Sydney arrives to teleport Hardin and the rest away, leaving him to Guildenstern. Guildenstern acquires the "key" from him and murders Samantha as his sacrifice for the powers of darkness. Ashley arrives later and listens as Sydney reveals his true intentions. Ashley then confronts Guildenstern and manages to defeat him.
Upon Guildenstern's defeat, Ashley, now bearing the "key", carries Sydney out of the collapsing city. The creatures spawned within the city begin to disappear. Callo, Hardin and Joshua escape the city, though Hardin dies and the fate of Callo and Joshua remains unknown. In the epilogue, Ashley goes to visit the ailing Duke Bardorba in his manor, although once they were alone, it was Sydney who was in the room. Sydney tells the duke that he had found a suitable heir to the Darkness in Ashley, and that their plan to inherit the powers of Darkness was successful. The duke then proceeds to kill Sydney, and he himself died soon after of unknown causes. In a report received by the VKP a week after the Graylands Incident, the duke was believed to be murdered, and Ashley became the prime suspect, though he was never found again.
## Development
Yasumi Matsuno, the game's producer and director, preferred to create a new game title from scratch and use design ideas from staff collaborations, rather than reusing popular characters and designs that are found in sequels. Vagrant Story is regarded as a mixture of genres, as it contains elements of role-playing in its battles and platform games when in the field map. Matsuno explained that the development team was not eager to place Vagrant Story into a specific genre, preferring to create the game with a genre of its own.
During the design phase, Matsuno was shown photographs from France, particularly Saint-Émilion in the region of Bordeaux. This region was visited by one of Matsuno's colleagues, who was a wine enthusiast and favored Saint-Émilion, one of the largest vineyards of Bordeaux. Captivated by this small town's architecture, the design team went on a trip to France to adopt these styles into the game. A team of five people was formed in September 1998, including Matsuno and the principal persons in charge of graphics and decorations, to realize the game's setting.
Development of the game began in January 1998, spanning two years with manpower that steadily increased from 20 to 50 at peak development phase. The storyline conceived for the game follows Ashley Riot's origins as a dedicated government agent prior to being the titular "vagrant" who is "involved in many incidents" after the events in Leá Monde. Inspiration for the plot is derived from Hollywood "classic and blockbuster" films as well as European and Asian films. The gameplay was conceived to cater to hardcore gamers who do not "ask for hints and read through strategy guides". However, Matsuno revealed that over half of the game's story was cut due to capacity and development time constraints. Memory issues was considered the most challenging aspect of the game development, with the team forced to adjust the game's interface, texture mapping and polygon mesh in maps, as well as removing gaming elements such as AI-controlled supporting non-player characters that would have joined Ashley in the middle of the game.
Vagrant Story was conceived during a time when most games had made the transition into three-dimensional graphics. Games with real-time polygons were the mainstream, and it was decided for Vagrant Story to follow this trend. Murata, the main programmer, expressed his concerns in working towards a large-scale three-dimensional game for the first time. To avoid discrepancies in the frame rate caused by the large number of polygon models, the modeling team had to select an aspect of each character to focus their attention. Art director Minagawa mentioned that painstaking detail were given to each individual model, even to characters that only appear for a few seconds in the game. The same character models were used throughout the game to create a seamless transition between event cutscenes and actual gameplay. The sound effects of Vagrant Story are credited to Minoru Akao, the game's sound programmer; and Tomohiro Yajima, the sound editor and engineer.
### Releases
A demo disc of Vagrant Story was included in the packaging of Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana in Japan. During the Square Millennium Event held by Square in Tokyo, movies of Vagrant Story such as the opening sequence and the weapon crafting system were presented to onlookers. Matsuno said that a normal playthrough would take the player five to six hours to complete.
In Japan, the game was released on February 10, 2000. In North America, Vagrant Story was released as part of Square's "Summer of Adventure" that lasted from May to September 2000. Vagrant Story was released with two discs; the first disc is the game itself, while the second disc is a demo disc released by Square to give the player a preview of seven titles. The seven titles include three interactive demos and four non-interactive demos; the former being Chocobo Racing, Front Mission 3 and Threads of Fate, and the latter Chrono Cross, SaGa Frontier 2, Chocobo's Dungeon 2 and Legend of Mana. Both discs were included in the North American release on May 16, 2000. Due to a ruling by the Quebec government that video game titles in Canada should be sold with both French and English-language instructions, Vagrant Story'''s release was delayed in Canada. In the European PAL release, the game did not feature the additional demo disc.
### Merchandise
On April 13, 2000, DigiCube published the Vagrant Story Ultimania, the official 496-page strategy guide for the game with the . The contents include staff interviews, a detailed background story, and information on monsters and items. The book was republished by Studio BentStuff and Square Enix in July 2006. Other merchandise include jewellery, T-shirts, cigarette lighters and posters featuring character artwork and CG renders. For the North American release, a 16-page comic-book tie-in with art by Steve Firchow, Clarence Lansang and Michael Turner of Witchblade fame was published by Eruptor Entertainment and Squaresoft. The comic was freely distributed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2000 and included an interview between Matsuno and Square Electronic Arts assistant product manager Andrew Shiozaki.
### Music
The original score for Vagrant Story was composed, arranged, and produced by Hitoshi Sakimoto, whose previous video game works included the soundtracks to Radiant Silvergun and Final Fantasy Tactics, with additional arrangement by Takeharu Ishimoto for Track 2–30 and Hirosato Noda for Track 2–31. A Japanese orchestra ensemble, Shinozuka Group, performed for the orchestral piece of Track 2–29. All synthesizing operations are led by Takeharu Ishimoto with assistance from Hidenori Iwasaki for Track 1–1 and Hirosato Noda for Track 2–18.
Sakimoto noted that during the initial phase, he composed "bright and cheerful" tunes similar to Final Fantasy Tactics, but Matsuno emphasized music that was "more deep and heavy". Matsuno also advised him to listen to music from The X-Files for ideas on ambient scores, and Sakimoto pointed out influences of James Horner and Hans Zimmer in his compositions. Sakimoto was impressed with the dedication of the development team to the game, and expressed uneasiness trying to come up with music during the game previews. Sakimoto created themes for each character and monster, and made several changes in their melody to reflect their relationships, feelings as well as antagonistic views. The soundtrack for Vagrant Story remains to be one of Sakimoto's favorite compositions.
The album was first released on two Compact Discs by DigiCube on March 8, 2000 bearing the catalog number SSCX-10042. It was subsequently re-released by Square Enix on March 24, 2006 with the catalog number SQEX-10068/9; the re-release removed some of the original PlayStation synth reverb, yielding a slightly different version of the audio. The CDs contain 57 tracks, including two remixes and tracks that were not used in the game. Packaged with it is a small booklet featuring interviews with the composer and character artworks.
## Reception
In May 2000, Vagrant Story was the fifth best-selling PlayStation title of the month. 100,000 units were sold in the first 20 days of the game's release, despite being overshadowed by other Square titles like Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross. Vagrant Story was the third of twenty-nine games to date, and the only game on the PlayStation, to receive a perfect score of 40 from Famitsu magazine.
Reviews were generally positive—multimedia news websites IGN and GameSpot praised the gameplay and story. IGN described the story as "so deep and intuitive that it'll likely please fans", and said the battle system maintains "a needed element of strategy and balance". The graphics were seen as a breakaway from the clichés of Square's contemporary titles. Extensive detail was given to the background settings and character expressions. The game's sound effects have been praised as "well done and impressive, straying from Square's synthed noise", as details such as the background audio help create a believable world for the player.
The battle system, however, was described by GameSpot as too complex for beginner players, as even hard-core players require a "comprehensive understanding" of the weapon customization system. IGN pointed out that enemy encounters can be more difficult than boss battles. 1UP.com noted that the game's inventory was too limited for the vast number of customizations possible; this was considered particularly troublesome because some boss enemies are only vulnerable to certain types of weapons.
Eric Bratcher for Next Generation gave the game four stars out of five, praising the game's story, graphics and combat system.
Alexander O. Smith is responsible for the English localization of Vagrant Story, using archaic English as compared to its straightforward Japanese version. His effort on translating Vagrant Story was described by Andrew Vestal as an "unparalleled—and unprecedented—work" of Japanese to English video game translation, "in spite of the occasional typo or grammatical hiccup", as quoted by IGN. Vagrant Story was awarded "Best PlayStation Game" in the E3 2000 IGN Awards and was nominated for "Console Action/Adventure" during the 4th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards held by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. It was a runner-up for GameSpot's annual "Best Game Story", "Best Role-Playing Game" and "Best Graphics, Artistic" awards among console games.
### Legacy
Three years after its 2000 release, Vagrant Story was selected as one of Sony's Greatest Hits. Games released as Greatest Hits were sold at a lower price, often increasing units sold. Vagrant Story is also part of Ultimate Hits, Square Enix's main budget range. The game was later made playable on Sony's PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3 consoles on the PlayStation Stores in Japan, Europe and North America.
The 2006 role-playing video game Final Fantasy XII contains several references to Vagrant Story. Terms such as Riskbreaker, Leámonde and Kildea (albeit with different spellings in the localizations), are commonly used in both games. According to an interview with Joypad, a French gaming magazine, in 2004, Yasumi Matsuno claimed during its development that Ivalice, the game world he created when he joined Square in 1995, is a complex world with a very long history and the stories of Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy XII are said to unfold quite close on the Ivalice map. The original plan, however, was not to place Vagrant Story in the Ivalice universe. Matsuno commented in 2011 that the plot elements of Final Fantasy Tactics found in Vagrant Story were meant to be intertextual reference to the Ivalice title as a form of "fan service". Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood referenced the game further in 2017 through the Return to Ivalice raid series, most notably by including an alternate version of the city of Valnain and Leá Monde as existing locations in its own world. The follow-up story in Shadowbringers titled Save the Queen further referenced the game, including using concepts from an unused sequel.
Vagrant Story is acknowledged as a game with an "extreme popularity" outside Japan eight years after it was first released. In October 2007, during an interview with the development team responsible for the enhanced port of Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation Portable, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, executive producer Akitoshi Kawazu was asked about the possibility of a remake or port of the title to the PSP. Kawazu mentioned that it is "the next natural candidate for such an update", although there would be difficulty in porting the game, because it was a title that already pushed the original PlayStation to its technical limits. Kawazu also remarked that bringing the character Ashley Riot into other Ivalice titles would be difficult since, even in Vagrant Story'', "there's really not that much learn(ed) about Ashley Riot".
|
1,120,332 |
Walter de Coutances
| 1,158,069,376 |
12th century English Justiciar and Archbishop of Rouen
|
[
"1207 deaths",
"12th-century English Roman Catholic bishops",
"12th-century Roman Catholic archbishops in France",
"12th-century births",
"13th-century Roman Catholic archbishops in France",
"Anglo-Normans",
"Archbishops of Rouen",
"Archdeacons of Oxford",
"Bishops of Lincoln",
"Christians of the Third Crusade",
"Justiciars of England",
"Medieval Cornish people"
] |
Walter de Coutances (died 16 November 1207) was a medieval Anglo-Norman bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of Rouen. He began his royal service in the government of Henry II, serving as a vice-chancellor. He also accumulated a number of ecclesiastical offices, becoming successively canon of Rouen Cathedral, treasurer of Rouen, and archdeacon of Oxford. King Henry sent him on a number of diplomatic missions and finally rewarded him with the bishopric of Lincoln in 1183. He did not remain there long, for he was translated to Rouen in late 1184.
When Richard I, King Henry's son, became king in 1189, Coutances absolved Richard for his rebellion against his father and invested him as Duke of Normandy. He then accompanied Richard to Sicily as the king began the Third Crusade, but events in England prompted Richard to send the archbishop back to England to mediate between William Longchamp, the justiciar whom Richard had left in charge of the kingdom, and Prince John, Richard's younger brother. Coutances succeeded in securing a peace between Longchamp and John, but further actions by Longchamp led to the justiciar's expulsion from England, replaced in his role by Coutances, even though he never formally used the title. He remained in the office until late 1193, when he was summoned to Germany by the king, who was being held in captivity there. Coutances became a hostage for the final payment of Richard's ransom on the king's release in February 1194.
Coutances took no further part in English government after returning from Germany. Instead he became involved in Norman affairs, including a dispute with Richard over the ownership of Andely manor, an archiepiscopal property that Richard desired as a fortress. Eventually the archbishop surrendered it to the king in return for two other manors and the seaport of Dieppe. Richard went on to build the castle of Gaillard on the former archiepiscopal manor. After Richard's death, Coutances invested Prince John as Duke of Normandy, but was forced to pay 2,100 Angevin pounds to secure contested rights from the new king. After John lost control of Normandy in 1204, the archbishop did not resist the new government of King Philip II of France. Coutances died in November 1207 and was buried in his cathedral.
## Early life
Coutances was born in Cornwall, to Reinfrid and Gonilla. His brother was Roger fitzReinfrid, a layman and royal justice during the reign of King Henry II of England. Although the medieval chronicler and churchman Gerald of Wales related that his friend was descended from Trojan heroes who escaped the Sack of Troy and ended up in Cornwall, that was a flattering invention on Gerald's part. Coutances' family was of the knightly class, and probably from Normandy originally.
Coutances was usually given the title of magister, which signified that he had received an education in a school; most likely he attended the schools of Paris. Gerald of Wales said that Coutances was dedicated to learning, and considered him to be a talented courtier.
## Service to King Henry
Coutances started his career as a clerk to King Henry II of England in the royal chamber. He probably owed the position to his brother, who was already in royal service. Coutances may have been associated with the Beaumont family faction at court before beginning work for the king, but this is not certain.
By 1169 Coutances held a canonry in Rouen Cathedral. During the 1170s a group of royal clerks rose to prominence, among them Coutances, Walter Map, Ralph Diceto, John of Oxford, Richard of Ilchester, and Geoffrey Ridel. Coutances was the chaplain to Henry the Young King, eldest living son of King Henry, but when the younger Henry rebelled against his father in 1173, Coutances returned to King Henry's service. He became Archdeacon of Oxford, perhaps by 1173, certainly by 14 March 1176. He was named vice-chancellor when Ralph de Warneville became Chancellor of England, which occurred in 1173. In 1176 and 1177, King Henry sent Coutances on diplomatic missions to Flanders and the French royal court. Arnulf, the Bishop of Lisieux, alleged that Henry allowed Coutances to use all the administrative machinery of Normandy to drive Arnulf from his diocese, so that Coutances might become bishop there. This happened in early 1178, but the only real evidence for this effort on Coutances' part comes from Arnulf's correspondence, and as Coutances was back in England by July 1178, it does not appear that the attempt was a sustained one.
On his return to England, Coutances was given custody of the abbeys of Wilton and Ramsey, which were being held by King Henry pending the election of new abbots. He thus acquired the right to collect the abbeys' revenues in the name of the king, who had the regalian rights to that income. In 1180 Henry sent Coutances to France on another diplomatic mission. In February 1182 Coutances witnessed King Henry II's will, made before the king travelled to Normandy.
## Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Rouen
Coutances was elected to the see of Lincoln on 8 May 1183, selected by King Henry over three other candidates. He was ordained a priest on 11 June 1183 and consecrated bishop on 3 July 1183 at Angers by Richard of Dover, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was enthroned at Lincoln Cathedral on 11 December 1183. While at Lincoln, Coutances took part in the election of Baldwin of Forde as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, which took place at a council held in Westminster in 1184. Writing about Coutances' time at Lincoln, Gerald of Wales accused the bishop of increasing the debt of the diocese of Lincoln and of squandering its resources. Coutances helped the schools in the city of Lincoln, acting as the patron for scholars such as John of Tynemouth and Simon of Southwell.
On 17 November 1184 Coutances was translated to the diocese of Rouen, becoming Archbishop of Rouen. The original election to Rouen had taken place in the summer. King Henry had initially rejected the Rouen cathedral chapter's nominees and put forward three English bishops as the royal candidates. The king also indicated his preference that Coutances be elected, a choice that was confirmed by the pope in November. Coutances hesitated about the translation to Rouen, as the see there was poorer than Lincoln, but as an archbishopric rather than a bishopric it was of a higher status. The medieval chronicler William of Newburgh wrote that eventually Coutances' ambition overcame his greed, and he agreed to the translation. He was received at Rouen on 3 March 1185. Coutances remained in Henry's service however, and continued attend the royal court frequently. During the final 10 years of Henry's reign, only Ranulf de Glanville witnessed more royal charters, and only William de Humez, the constable, equalled the 16 charters that Coutances witnessed.
In the later part of 1186, after the death of King Henry's son Geoffrey—who was Duke of Brittany—King Philip II of France demanded that Geoffrey's daughters be placed in the French king's custody, and that the duchy of Brittany, which Geoffrey had ruled in right of his wife, be surrendered into French royal custody. Coutances was one of the negotiators sent by King Henry to secure a settlement, but they had to settle for a temporary truce. In January 1188 Coutances took the cross when he pledged to go on Crusade along with King Henry and King Philip of France.
At Whitsun in 1189, Coutances was a member of a commission appointed by the papal legate John of Anagni to arbitrate the dispute between King Henry II of England and his son, Richard, who was supported by King Philip II of France. Henry and Richard's conflict stemmed from Richard's desire to secure his inheritance to the throne of England, which he believed his father was trying to give to his youngest brother, John. The commission met near Le Mans. Richard and Philip insisted that Richard should be married to Philip's sister Alice, that Henry name Richard as Henry's heir, and that Richard's youngest brother John should go on crusade with Richard. Henry rejected those terms, and neither Philip nor Richard would negotiate, even under the legate's threat of an interdict on France.
## Service to King Richard
Shortly after Richard took the throne he sought absolution for his sins in rebelling against his father, from Baldwin of Forde and Coutances. The two archbishops absolved Richard in a ceremony in Sées. Coutances also invested Richard as Duke of Normandy in a ceremony held in Rouen, before accompanying Richard to England, where he participated in the new king's coronation, on 3 September 1189.
In 1189 Coutances held an ecclesiastical synod which legislated, among other things, that the clergy should not hold secular offices, even though Coutances himself had held and continued to hold such offices. On 9 November 1189 Richard appointed Coutances to a commission tasked with deciding the dispute between Baldwin of Forde and the monks of his cathedral chapter over Baldwin's plan to create a church dedicated to Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury, and to staff this church not with monks, but with canons. The monks of Canterbury Cathedral objected to Baldwin's plan, fearing that it was part of a plot to transfer the right of election from the monastic cathedral chapter to the new church's canons. Sitting on the commission with Coutances were Hugh de Puiset, the Bishop of Durham, Godfrey de Lucy, the Bishop of Winchester, Hubert Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, Peter de Leia, the Bishop of St David's, Richard fitzNigel, the Bishop-elect of London, William Longchamp, the Bishop-elect of Ely, and some abbots. The commission travelled to Canterbury, and on 29 November 1189, managed to secure a compromise between the parties, which lasted until Hubert Walter, by then Archbishop of Canterbury, revived the plan. In the compromise, Baldwin agreed to give up the idea of a new monastic foundation around Canterbury and the monks agreed to submit to the archbishop's authority.
When Richard left England in late 1189, the archbishop accompanied him to Normandy and then to Sicily, where Richard began the Third Crusade. In October 1190, Coutances was one of the negotiators between the city of Messina and the crusaders, and later was a guarantor of the peace treaty between King Richard and Tancred, the King of Sicily. The archbishop was also appointed one of the treasurers of the crusading army.
While Richard was still in Sicily, word reached the king of the disputes between William Longchamp, whom Richard had left in England, and John, Richard's younger brother. On 2 April 1191 Richard sent Coutances back from Sicily to England. The archbishop landed in England on 27 June, after a short detour to Rome. Coutances received a release from his crusading vow, and returned to England in the company of Richard's mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. He had a number of royal documents authorising him to settle the disputes, and on 28 July a settlement was reached that left Longchamp in control, although John still retained sufficient power to make Longchamp's grip on the government somewhat insecure. In September, however, Longchamp imprisoned Richard's bastard half-brother, Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, who was attempting to return to England after having been banished by the king. The imprisonment renewed memories of the murder of Thomas Becket almost 20 years earlier, and Geoffrey was quickly released. Longchamp was brought to a council, headed by Coutances and a number of the clerical and lay lords of England, which took place on 5 October 1191 at Loddon Bridge on the River Thames. Longchamp was deposed and exiled, largely because Coutances had a royal document ordering the magnates to obey Coutances' if the archbishop's advice was resisted by Longchamp, which it had been. Although the medieval chronicler Richard of Devizes accused Coutances of duplicity, and of trying to play both sides against the other, the evidence suggests that Coutances was genuinely trying to solve the dispute in the king's interest. Longchamp fled to Normandy, and he was excommunicated by Coutances.
## Acting Justiciar
After Longchamp's exile Coutances was named head of a council of regency, which is sometimes equated to the post of Chief Justiciar, although he never referred to himself as such nor is he titled that in any official document. Most modern historians, however, name him as justiciar. He held that power until about 25 December 1193, when Hubert Walter was appointed Justiciar.
Coutances had long experience in the chancery, but little experience with judicial matters. Most of his efforts while in the justiciarship were centred on raising Richard's ransom. As evidence of this emphasis on raising money, Coutances sent out few itinerant justices during his time in power. Six groups of justices were sent out in 1192, but in 1193 none were sent out, and even the justices based in Westminster held few sessions. Of those justices appointed, like his predecessor in the justiciarship, Coutances used justices from a wide range of backgrounds, and many of those sent out on itinerant rounds were local to the area, rather than the increasingly professional justices used under Coutances' successor Hubert Walter. The justiciarship during this period was less connected to justice and was more closely tied to the Exchequer, or treasury of England, and most of the power in the office derived from its control of the Exchequer.
A new note in Coutances' administration was his custom of issuing writs not in his own name, as had previously been the practice, but in the king's name. The archbishop also stressed that his decisions were made with the advice and consent of many of the leading nobles of the realm, as well as the barons of the Exchequer. This was a reaction against Longchamp's authoritarian method of government.
The archbishop supervised the election of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, as Baldwin of Forde had died while on Crusade in 1190. Although both Longchamp and Coutances were considered as possible candidates and rivals for the see, the cathedral chapter of Canterbury elected the Bishop of Bath, Reginald fitzJocelin, in November 1191. Reginald died a month later and the see remained vacant until March 1193, when the king's candidate, Hubert Walter, was elected.
During 1191 the citizens of the city of London managed to acquire from Coutances and Prince John the recognition that the city was self-governing, something they had been attempting to secure for a number of years. This however, was not the grant of a complete charter of liberties, which did not occur until 1199. In February 1193 Coutances summoned a council to Oxford, to address problems of administration and defence after the recently received news of Richard's captivity in Germany. The council also took oaths of fealty to Richard. Prince John, however, hearing that Richard was in captivity, immediately went to France and swore homage to King Philip for Richard's lands, and then returned to England and raised a rebellion. Coutances proceeded to besiege Windsor Castle, which was held by Prince John's men. When John heard that Richard was going to be freed, he left England and went to France.
In February 1194 Coutances was in Germany, at the court of the German emperor, along with Longchamp, who brought letters to Richard, still in captivity. On 4 February, Coutances became a hostage to the German emperor as surety for the payment of the outstanding portion of Richard's ransom, and the king was released. The king never paid the final instalment of his ransom, and the archbishop had to pay 10,000 marks for his own release. From that point onwards Coutances was no longer involved with English politics or government, and spent the rest of his career on Norman affairs. His record of charter witnessing bears this out; between 1189 and 1194 Coutances was among the most prolific of the witnesses to the king's English charters, but not after 1194.
## Return to Normandy
Coutances returned to Normandy, and in December 1195 attempted to secure compensation for the losses his archdiocese had sustained in the warfare between King Richard and King Phillip. He sought compensation from both kings but obtained no satisfaction, and felt so ill-treated by the kings that he abandoned his see. The English and the French kings had required clergymen to guarantee the January 1196 Treaty of Louviers that the two kings arranged for themselves, with Richard nominating Coutances as his surety, or guarantor that the conditions of the treaty would be fulfilled. Part of the treaty laid out that if the archbishop laid an interdict or excommunicated anyone in the lands of King Philip or any subject of King Richard in the archdiocese of Rouen, then the archiepiscopal manor of Andeli should be forfeit to either king until after a special tribunal had determined if the archbishop's punishment was valid.
When Coutances returned to his diocese in July 1196, he found that the king had seized the manor of Andely independently of the treaty provisions, and when the archbishop refused to relinquish it to the king, Richard began to fortify the manor. He also built a castle there, now Château Gaillard. On 7 November 1196, Coutances set off for Rome, to protest the seizure to the pope. Richard sent a royal embassy, and eventually a settlement was reached. The archbishop was ordered to remove the interdict he had placed on the duchy, and in return for the manor received two others and the seaport of Dieppe. The various lands that Coutances' received in exchange for Andely were worth £1,405 a year. This episode marked the end of Coutances' service to the Angevin kings; for the rest of his life the archbishop focused on protecting and guarding the archiepiscopal properties and rights.
## Service to King John
When Richard died on 6 April 1199, the archbishop invested Richard's youngest brother John as duke of Normandy on 25 April 1199. At the ceremony, John pledged to protect the Norman church, and soon afterwards confirmed the grant of Dieppe and the other manors to the archdiocese. John contested the right of the archbishop to some jurisdictional rights however, as well as forest rights, forcing Coutances to pay 2,100 Angevin pounds to secure most of the contested rights. In May 1200, Coutances was involved in the peace treaty of Le Goulet between King John and King Philip of France, but took no active part in the Angevin defence of Normandy.
In September 1201 one of Coutances' suffragan bishops, Lisiard, the Bishop of Sées died. King John objected when the cathedral chapter attempted to elect one of their own members as his successor. Coutances refused to recognise the result of the election, and the chapter divided into two parties, one favouring the elected chapter member, the other party another choice. Both parties appealed to the papacy, who eventually approved of the election of the Archdeacon of Sées, Silvester. Coutances had the right to consecrate the bishop however, and he refused to do so, arguing that the king's choice had been disregarded. Pope Innocent III then ordered another Norman archbishop to consecrate Silvester, but the king refused to allow Silvester to take possession of his see. This led Innocent to order Normandy laid under an interdict, but eventually Silvester was allowed to take possession of Sées.
In May 1202, Pope Innocent III wrote to Coutances, urging him to impose religious punishments on any rebels against King John's rule in the duchy of Normandy. When John lost the duchy in 1204, Coutances did not resist the government of King Philip II, although he did not make his complete peace with Philip until March 1207. In 1206/07, Coutances, along with his suffragan bishops, petitioned Philip for special legal procedures relating to patronage, which Philip granted.
## As archbishop
Although Coutances was absent from Rouen for most of the period between 1190 and 1194, he remained an active archbishop. He secured the continued immunity of clergy from secular jurisdiction, and supervised the administration of the archdiocese. He began the custom of keeping records in registers of episcopal judgements from about 1200, and he appointed the first officials of Rouen. He also oversaw the rebuilding of Rouen Cathedral, which had begun in 1155, and restarted the work after a fire in 1200. His relations with his cathedral chapter were evidently excellent, as they remembered him as "a magnificent benefactor of the church of Rouen".
## Death and legacy
Coutances died on 16 November 1207 and was buried at Rouen Cathedral, in the chapel of Saints Peter and Paul. The inventory of his personal possessions made after his death included a large number of jewels and vestments. He also owned a large library, which contained not only religious works but also legal texts on canon law and works of classical authors such as Juvenal and Ovid.
Coutances' nephew, John of Coutances, became Archdeacon of Oxford and Dean of Rouen under Walter's influence, and later Bishop of Worcester. Other nephews were William, successively a canon at Lincoln Cathedral and an archdeacon at Rouen, and Richard, also an archdeacon at Rouen.
The historian John Gillingham called Coutances "one of the great fixers" of his time. Two other historians have argued that it was probably Coutances' judgement and stability that persuaded the king to trust him. The medieval poet John of Hauville dedicated a satirical poem in 1184 to Coutances called Architrenius. It was on the tribulations of a poor scholar.
|
2,136,352 |
Toa Payoh MRT station
| 1,171,110,756 |
Mass Rapid Transit station in Singapore
|
[
"Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore) stations",
"Railway stations in Singapore opened in 1987",
"Toa Payoh"
] |
Toa Payoh MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station on the North South line (NSL) in Toa Payoh, Singapore. Located in the town centre of Toa Payoh, it is integrated with the Toa Payoh Bus Interchange and the HDB Hub, headquarters of the Housing and Development Board. The station is underneath the intersection of three roads: Lorong1 Toa Payoh, Lorong2 Toa Payoh and Lorong6 Toa Payoh.
First announced in May 1982, construction of the station began in 1983 as part of PhaseI of the MRT system. In August 1985, it became the first Mass Rapid Transit station in Singapore to have its concrete structure completed. It opened on 7 November 1987 and was one of the first MRT stations to operate in revenue service. It has a bright yellow scheme with a set of coloured tiles at the concourse level.
## History
Toa Payoh station was included in the early plans of the MRT network published in May 1982. The first confirmation that the station would be among the Phase I stations (from Ang Mo Kio to Marina Bay) came in November that year. This segment was given priority as it passed through areas that had a higher demand for public transport, such as the densely populated housing estates of Toa Payoh and Ang Mo Kio and the Central Area. The line aimed to relieve the traffic congestion on the Thomson–Sembawang road corridor.
Contract 104 for the construction of the Toa Payoh and Novena stations was awarded to Tobishima–Takenaka Joint Venture in September 1983. The S\$96.8million (US\$million in ) contract included the construction of 2.329 kilometres (1.447 mi) of tunnels. Construction of the tunnels between Toa Payoh and Novena began with a groundbreaking ceremony at Shan Road on 22 October 1983. This ceremony also marked the beginning of the MRT network construction. The tunnels and the station had an expected completion date of early 1988.
The station was constructed on the site of the Toa Payoh Central bus terminal, which was relocated to an adjacent site. At Shan Road, the initial shaft was dug into a layer of sandstone. Tunnels were driven in either direction from that shaft. The composition of the ground was of either sandstone, granite, marine clay, or decomposed rocks. The sandstone sections had to be driven using a shield (with temporary shotcrete/mesh reinforcement). The granite sections had to be driven and also mined using explosives. The marine clay sections were constructed using cut-and-cover, and the decomposed rock sections used the New Austrian tunneling method (NATM).
On 6 August 1985 Toa Payoh was the first MRT station to have its structural works completed, with the final bucket of cement poured into the station as part of the topping out ceremony. Due to various soil conditions, in November 1985 the contractor requested an extension of eight months and additional monetary claims to construct the tunnels between the Novena and Toa Payoh stations.
In January 1986 it was announced that the first section of the MRT system, from the Yio Chu Kang to Toa Payoh stations, would be opened in early 1988; this was rescheduled to 7 November 1987 in an announcement in 16 September that year. In an effort to familiarise people with the system, the station hosted a preview from 10 to 11 October 1987. During the preview, about 44,000 people visited the station. However, no train services ran, much to the disappointment of many visitors. Many expressed excitement and curiosity, and many visitors bought tickets to take the MRT ride on the system's debut.
On the opening day Toa Payoh was the most visited station on the newly completed line, with long lines outside the station by 11:00am. At the opening ceremony, second deputy prime minister Ong Teng Cheong, who advocated for and commissioned the planning of the MRT system, attended the ceremony as a special Guest of Honour. Yeo Ning Hong, the Minister For Communications and Information, formally started MRT operations and announced it to be the "beginning" of the MRT system. On the day, the emergency button was activated at Toa Payoh station just before 8:30pm, which halted trains for about half an hour along one of the two tracks leading to the station.
On 8 January 2006 Toa Payoh station was one of four MRT stations which participated in Exercise NorthstarV, a mock counterterrorism exercise. In July 2012, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) called for a tender to enhance the flood prevention measures (such as new flood barriers) at Toa Payoh station, along with eleven other MRT stations. From July 2012 to 2014, the escalator at ExitD (the pedestrian underpass linking to Lorong2 Toa Payoh) was replaced and upgraded.
## Station details
Toa Payoh serves the North South line (NSL) and is between the Braddell and Novena stations. The official station code is NS19. Like all the stations of the NSL, the station is operated by SMRT Trains. The station operates between 5:41am and 12:25am daily. Train frequencies vary from 2.5 to 5.0 minutes.
The station has four entrances serving the Toa Payoh area. (Toa Payoh means "big swamp" in the Hokkien dialect. The name is a reference to the large swampy area which existed prior to the development of Chinese market gardens there.) Surrounding landmarks include the Toa Payoh Bus Interchange, HDB Hub, Toa Payoh Public Library, Toa Payoh Stadium, Toa Payoh Swimming complex and the CHIJ Primary and Secondary Schools. The station is also next to two churches: the Church of The Risen Christ and Toa Payoh Methodist Church.
The station is underground, with a concourse on the upper level and the platforms on the lower level. Like many stations on the initial MRT network, Toa Payoh has an island platform. Toa Payoh is also one of the few stations on the initial network to have a double-height ceiling. The wide platforms and entrances were designed to accommodate huge crowds.
Toa Payoh station has a bright yellow colour scheme for the pillars and canopies. Along the 50-metre (160 ft) concourse, the station features a "rainbow dressing" mural consisting of 15,000 tiles in various colours. The rainbow mural was intended to reflect the masses of people of various racial backgrounds moving together in harmony.
As part of SMRT's Comic Connect, a public art showcase of heritage-themed murals, the station displays The Toa Payoh Story by James Suresh, Sayed Ismail and Suki Chong. The artwork depicts various landmarks of the Toa Payoh area, including the dragon playground, Shuang Lin Monastery and the Toa Payoh Public library. The mural includes the depiction of Seah Eu Chin, a businessman and landowner of the area. As Toa Payoh was the first town developed by the Housing and Development Board, the artists intended for the mural to tie the area's significance to major milestones in Singapore's history.
|
5,028,853 |
Parachute Jump
| 1,168,310,335 |
Defunct amusement ride in Brooklyn, New York
|
[
"1939 New York World's Fair",
"1939 establishments in New York City",
"Amusement rides introduced in 1939",
"Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in New York City",
"Coney Island",
"Cultural history of New York City",
"Historic American Engineering Record in New York City",
"National Register of Historic Places in Brooklyn",
"New York City Designated Landmarks in Brooklyn",
"Parachute towers",
"Relocated buildings and structures in New York City",
"Removed amusement attractions",
"World's fair architecture in New York City"
] |
The Parachute Jump is a defunct amusement ride and a landmark in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, along the Riegelmann Boardwalk at Coney Island. Situated in Steeplechase Plaza near the B&B Carousell, the structure consists of a 250-foot-tall (76 m), 170-short-ton (150 t) open-frame, steel parachute tower. Twelve cantilever steel arms radiate from the top of the tower; when the ride was in operation, each arm supported a parachute attached to a lift rope and a set of guide cables. Riders were belted into a two-person canvas seat, lifted to the top, and dropped. The parachute and shock absorbers at the bottom would slow their descent.
The ride was built for the 1939 New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, also in New York City. Capped by a 12-foot (3.7 m) flagpole, it was the tallest structure at the Fair. In 1941, after the World's Fair, it was moved to its current location in the Steeplechase amusement park on Coney Island. It ceased operations in the 1960s following the park's closure, and the frame fell into disrepair.
Despite proposals to either demolish or restore the ride, disputes over its use caused it to remain unused through the 1980s. The Parachute Jump has been renovated several times since the 1990s, both for stability and for aesthetic reasons. In the 2000s, it was restored and fitted with a lighting system. The lights were activated in 2006 and replaced in a subsequent project in 2013. It has been lit up in commemoration of events such as the death of Kobe Bryant. The ride, the only remaining portion of Steeplechase Park, is a New York City designated landmark and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
## Description
The Parachute Jump is on the Riegelmann Boardwalk at Coney Island between West 16th and West 19th Streets. It consists of a hexagonal base, upon which stands a six-sided steel structure. Each of the tower's legs consists of a 12-inch-wide (30 cm) flange column braced with horizontal ribs at 7-foot (2.1 m) intervals and diagonal ribs between the horizontal beams. The legs are grounded on concrete foundations, each of which contains twelve timber piles. The diagonal and horizontal ribs intersect at gusset plates, which contain splices at 30-foot (9.1 m) intervals and are riveted to the base. A ladder is on the north side of the structure, extending from the top of the base. There are anti-climbing devices on the frame. The frame has about 8,000 lighting fixtures, which are used for night-time light shows. The tower's wide base gives it stability, while the top is tapered off.
The Parachute Jump is 250 feet (76 m) tall, as compared to the 1939 New York World's Fair Parachute Jump at 262 feet (80 m) tall, having been topped by a 12-foot (3.7 m) flagpole. Twelve drop points are at the top, marked by structural steel arms, which extend outward 45 feet (14 m) from the tower's center, and support octagonal subframes at the far end of each arm. Eight parachute guidelines were suspended from each subframe, which helped keep the parachute open. A circular structure runs atop the subframes, connecting them to each other. Walkways were above the top of the tower, as well as along each arm.
Functional parachutes dangled from each of the twelve sub-frames and were held open by metal rings. Each parachute required three cable operators. Riders were belted into two-person canvas seats hanging below the closed parachutes. The parachutes would open as the riders were hoisted to the top of the ride, where release mechanisms would drop them. The parachutes could be stopped at any time during the ascent, but not once they had been released from the top of the tower. The parachutes slowed the rider's descent and the seats would be stopped by a brake after they had fallen to 4 feet (1.2 m) above ground level. Shock absorbers at the bottom, consisting of pole-mounted springs, cushioned the landing.
The base consists of a two-story pavilion. The upper floor housed mechanical structures and hoisting machinery, while the ground floor contained ticket booths and a waiting room. The pavilion has six sides divided by fluted piers which slope upward toward the corrugated galvanized-iron roof. The upper floor of the pavilion has red, yellow, and blue walls. The lower floor, below the height of the boardwalk, contained fenced-off open space. The 4-inch-thick (10 cm) concrete platform surrounding the pavilion is several steps beneath the boardwalk level. It was originally intended as a landing pad for riders and has a radius of 68 feet (21 m). An access ramp was at the northeast corner of the platform.
Because of its shape, the Parachute Jump has been nicknamed the "Eiffel Tower of Brooklyn". The New York Daily News compared the structure to an Erector Set toy, while a writer for City Journal said it resembled a mushroom. Several works of media, such as Little Fugitive (1953), have also been filmed at the Parachute Jump.
## Precursors
By the 1930s, parachutists could be trained by jumping from parachute towers rather than from aircraft. Accordingly, Stanley Switlik and George P. Putnam built a 115-foot-tall (35 m) tower on Switlik's farm in Ocean County, New Jersey. The tower, which was designed to train airmen in parachute jumping, was first publicly used on June 2, 1935, when Amelia Earhart jumped from it.
The "parachute device" was patented by retired U.S. Naval Commander James H. Strong along with Switlik, inspired by early practice towers Strong had seen in the Soviet Union, where simple wooden towers had been used to train paratroopers since the 1920s. Strong designed a safer version of the tower, which included eight guide wires in a circle surrounding the parachute. Strong filed a patent in 1935 and built several test platforms at his home in Hightstown, New Jersey, in 1936 and 1937. The military platforms suspended a single rider in a harness and offered a few seconds of free fall after the release at the top before the chutes opened to slow the fall. In response to high civilian interest in trying out the ride, Strong modified his invention for non-military use, making some design changes. These included a seat that could hold two people, a larger parachute for a slower drop, a metal ring to hold it open, and shock-absorbing springs to ease the final landing. The modified amusement-ride version was marketed by Miranda Brothers Inc. as a 150-foot-tall (46 m), two-armed parachute jump.
Strong sold military versions of the tower to the Romanian and U.S. armies, as well as installed towers in New Jersey and Fort Benning, Georgia. He converted an existing observation tower in Chicago's Riverview Park into a six-chute amusement ride. This enterprise, the "Pair-O-Chutes", performed well enough that Strong applied to build and operate a jump at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Another jump, also reportedly designed by Strong, was installed at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris in 1937.
## Operation
### 1939 World's Fair
Construction officially began at the 1939 World's Fair in December 1938; it was to be in the Fair's "Amusement Zone", along the eastern shore of Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens. Life Savers sponsored the ride, investing \$15,000 () and decorated its tower with brightly lit, candy-shaped rings. Elwyn E. Seelye & Co. designed the steelwork, Bethlehem Steel manufactured the tower pieces, and Skinner, Cook & Babcock assembled the pieces onsite. Construction cost about \$99,000 ().
The Jump opened on May 27, 1939 (1939-05-27), a month after the Fair's official opening. It had twelve 32-foot (9.8 m) parachute bays; while five parachutes were operational upon opening, eleven would eventually be used at the Fair. A 12-foot (3.7 m) flagpole was added atop the original 250-foot-tall (76 m) tower to surpass the height of a statue within the Soviet Pavilion. The flagpole had been installed because members of the public had objected to the Soviet statue being placed higher than the United States' flag. Each ride cost \$0.40 (equivalent to \$8.42 in 2022) for adults and \$0.25 (equivalent to \$5.26 in 2022) for children. The trip to the top took about a minute and the drop took between 10 and 20 seconds. The official 1939 Fair guidebook described the Parachute Jump as "one of the most spectacular features of the Amusement Area", calling the attraction "similar to that which the armies of the world use in early stages of training for actual parachute jumping". The Parachute Jump ultimately became the Fair's second-most popular attraction, behind the Billy Rose's Aquacade stage show.
Several incidents occurred within the first few months of the Parachute Jump's opening. On July 12, 1939, entangled cables left a married couple aloft for five hours in the middle of the night. The couple returned to ride again the next day, having been congratulated for their courage by New York City mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, who had been at the World's Fair when they got stuck. At least two other groups of people became stuck on the Parachute Jump in its first year: a deputy sheriff and his sister-in-law later in July 1939, and two female friends that September.
The Parachute Jump's popularity was negatively affected by its secluded location away from the World's Fair's main entrance. After the Life Savers sponsorship ended at the conclusion of the 1939 season, the ride was relocated closer to the entrance of the New York City Subway's World's Fair station, near the Children's World section of the Fair, at a cost of \$88,500 (). An additional chute and new foundations were added. The relocation was announced in December 1939 and was scheduled to take about three months. The movement of the Parachute Jump and the consolidation of concessions at that location helped improve business for the World's Fair's 1940 season. The reopening was delayed by disagreements between operator International Parachuting Inc. and James Strong. These disagreements included a lawsuit filed by International Parachuting against Strong to prevent him from selling the rights to the ride to third parties.
The Parachute Jump reopened in June 1940, over a month after the Fair's reopening. During the Fair's second operating season, a couple were married on the Parachute Jump in what was described as the first-ever "parachute ceremony". A half-million guests had jumped from the tower before the end of the World's Fair. The Parachute Jump was slated to be sent to either Coney Island in Brooklyn or Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey following the conclusion of the Fair. Relocation to Coney Island was considered as early as August 1940; both Luna Park and Steeplechase Park were interested in purchasing the ride during this time. After the Fair closed in October 1940, its operators announced that the Parachute Jump would be sent to Coney Island.
### Steeplechase Park
Frank Tilyou and George Tilyou Jr., the owners of Steeplechase Park, acquired the Jump for \$150,000 (equivalent to \$2,984,389 in 2022). The park was recovering from a September 1939 fire, which had caused \$200,000 (equivalent to \$4,207,656 in 2022) damage and injured 18 people. The fire had destroyed many of the larger attractions, including a Flying Turns roller coaster, whose site stood empty a year after the blaze. The Parachute Jump was disassembled and moved to the site of the Flying Turns coaster, adjacent to the boardwalk. The ride required some modifications in its new, windier, shore-side location, including the addition of 30-foot-deep (9.1 m) foundations. The relocation was supervised by the engineer Edwin W. Kleinert and architect Michael Marlo. Its installation was part of a larger reconstruction of an 800-foot-long (240 m) section of the boardwalk.
The Jump reopened in May 1941. Unlimited rides on the Parachute Jump were initially included within Steeplechase Park's single admission fee, which cost \$0.25 (equivalent to \$4.97 in 2022) at the time of the ride's relocation. Later, the brothers introduced "combination tickets", which included the park admission fee and a predetermined number of ride experiences on any of the attractions in the park. During World War II, when much of the city was subject to a military blackout, the ride stayed lit to serve as a navigational beacon. The Parachute Jump originally used the multicolored chutes from the World's Fair; by the mid-1940s, these had been replaced with white chutes. According to Jim McCollough, a business partner and nephew of the Tilyou brothers, the frame was repainted every year.
The Parachute Jump attracted up to half a million riders during each annual operating season. Most riders reached the tower's pinnacle in just under a minute and descended within 11–15 seconds. The experience was described as similar to "flying in a free fall". The Parachute Jump was popular among off-duty military personnel, who took their friends and loved ones to the ride. Occasionally, riders became stuck mid-jump or were tangled within the cables. The ride was subject to shutdowns on windy days, especially when breezes exceeded 45 miles per hour (72 km/h). Furthermore, at least fifteen people were required to operate the Parachute Jump, making it unprofitable.
Coney Island's popularity receded during the 1960s as it underwent increased crime, insufficient parking facilities, and patterns of bad weather. These difficulties were exacerbated by competition from the 1964 New York World's Fair, also in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, which led to a record low patronage at Steeplechase Park. On September 20, 1964, Steeplechase Park closed for the last time, and the next year, the property was sold to developer Fred Trump. On the site of Steeplechase Park, Trump proposed building a 160-foot-high (49 m) enclosed dome with recreational facilities and a convention center.
### Closure
The Parachute Jump stopped operating as part of Steeplechase Park upon the latter's closure in 1964. Sources disagree on whether the ride closed permanently or continued to operate until 1968. Local Coney Island historian Charles Denson explained that the Jump closed in 1964 but that many publications give an erroneous date of 1968. The nonprofit Coney Island History Project maintains that the attraction closed in 1964 and the 1968 date was based on an inaccurate newspaper article. The Guide to New York City Landmarks also mentions that the ride closed in 1964, while the Brooklyn Paper says the Jump was shuttered in 1965. A New York Daily News article in 1965 said the Parachute Jump was nonoperational and had "been stripped of its wires and chutes". A New York World-Telegram article the following year described a plan to restore Steeplechase Park, which included turning the Parachute Jump into the "world's largest bird feeding station".
Several sources state the Jump operated until 1968. According to a press release in 1965, when the Parachute Jump was ostensibly still operating, it attracted half a million visitors per year. A Daily News article from 1973 states the ride closed in 1968. Consulting engineer Helen Harrison and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation's website also cite a closure date of 1968, saying it was one of several small rides that were operated by concessionaires on the site of Steeplechase Park. According to Harrison, the last documented incident on the ride was on May 30, 1968, when a young girl was reported to have gotten stuck halfway through the drop.
## Post-closure
### Acquisition of site
In 1966, the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce petitioned New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to make the Parachute Jump an official city landmark. Trump, however, wanted to sell it as scrap and did not think it was old enough to warrant landmark status. For a time Trump rented out the base area as a concession and it was encircled by a small go-kart track. That October, the city announced a plan to acquire the 125 acres (51 ha) of the former Steeplechase Park so the land could be reserved for recreational use. The city voted in 1968 to acquire the site for \$4 million (equivalent to \$ million in ).
Control of the Jump passed to NYC Parks, the municipal government agency tasked with maintaining recreational facilities in New York City. The agency attempted to sell the Jump at auction in 1971 but received no bids. NYC Parks had planned to demolish the Parachute Jump if no one was willing to buy it. A study conducted in 1972 found the Jump was structurally sound. At the time, there were proposals to give the tower landmark status and install a light show on it.
The city unsuccessfully attempted to redevelop the Steeplechase site as a state park. By the late 1970s, the city government wanted to build an amusement park on the land. Norman Kaufman, who had run a small collection of fairground amusements on the Steeplechase site since the 1960s, was interested in reopening the Parachute Jump. Kaufman was evicted from the site in 1981, ending discussion of that plan.
### Landmark status
After it was abandoned, the Jump became a haunt for teenagers and young adults to climb, while the base became covered with graffiti. Despite its deterioration, it remained a focal point of the community; according to local legend, the tower could be seen from up to 30 miles (48 km) away. Organizations such as the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce and the Gravesend Historical Society decided to save the structure, though the LPC could not consider such a designation unless NYC Parks indicated it was not interested in developing the Parachute Jump site as a park. On July 12, 1977, the LPC designated the tower as a city landmark. When the designation was presented to the New York City Board of Estimate three months later, the board declined to certify the landmark designation. NYC Parks had said the structure would cost \$10,000 a year to maintain. Despite the city's reluctance to designate the structure as a landmark, the Parachute Jump was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The city government questioned the tower's safety. A 1982 survey concluded the tower would need a \$500,000 renovation to stabilize the ground underneath (equivalent to \$ million in ) and another \$1 million to restore it to operating condition (about \$ million in ). The survey estimated it would cost at least \$300,000 to demolish the structure (), making demolition too costly an option. The cheapest option, simply maintaining the structure, would have cost \$10,000 a year (). The local community board recommended that the Parachute Jump be demolished if it could not be fixed, but NYC Parks commissioner Henry Stern said in January 1984 that his department had "decided to let it stand".
Stern dismissed the possibility of making the Parachute Jump operational again, calling it a "totally useless structure" and saying that even the Eiffel Tower had a restaurant. Stern said he welcomed the community's proposals for reusing the Parachute Jump but other agency officials said the plans presented thus far, which included turning the Jump into a giant windmill, were "quixotic, at best". In the mid-1980s, restaurant mogul Horace Bullard proposed rebuilding Steeplechase Park; his plans included making the Parachute Jump operational again. At the time, the Parachute Jump was described as a "symbol of despair" because no real effort had been made to restore or clean up the structure.
In 1987, the LPC hosted meetings to determine the feasibility of granting landmark status to the Parachute Jump, Wonder Wheel, and Coney Island Cyclone. Two years later, on May 23, 1989, the LPC restored city landmark status to the Parachute Jump. Following this, the Board of Estimate granted permission for Bullard to develop his amusement park on the Steeplechase site, including reopening the Parachute Jump. These plans were delayed because of a lack of funds.
### Restorations and lighting
In 1991, the city government announced an \$800,000 (equivalent to \$1,718,800 in 2022) expenditure to prevent the Jump from collapsing, though there was insufficient funding in the city budget. The city government stabilized the structure in 1993 and painted it in its original colors, although the structure still suffered from rust in the salt air. The thrill-ride company Intamin was enlisted to determine whether the Parachute Jump could again be made operational. Bullard's redevelopment plan clashed with another proposal that would build a sports arena, such as a minor-league baseball stadium, on the site. The Bullard deal was negated in 1994, and the site directly north of the Parachute Jump was developed into a sports stadium, KeySpan Park, which opened in 2000.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) assumed responsibility for the tower in 2000. Originally, the city government wanted to reopen it as a functioning ride. This plan was abandoned since the cost of bringing the Jump to safety standards would have been excessively high. The planned renovation would have cost \$20,000,000 (equivalent to \$33,986,500 in 2022), excluding the high insurance premiums that would need to be paid on the attraction.
#### 2002 restoration and first lighting project
In 2002, the EDC started renovating the Parachute Jump for \$5 million. The NYCEDC contracted engineering firm STV to rehabilitate the structure. The upper part of the tower was dismantled, about two-thirds of the original structure was taken down, some of it replaced, and the structure was painted red. The restoration was completed around July 2003. Upon the completion of the project, Brooklyn Borough president Marty Markowitz started studying proposals to reuse or reopen the structure. In 2004, STV subcontracted Leni Schwendinger Light Projects to develop a night-time lighting concept for the Parachute Jump. Schwendinger contracted Phoster Industries for the LED portion of the lighting project. Markowitz's office, NYC Parks, the NYCEDC, Schwendinger, and STV collaborated for two years on the project, which cost \$1.45 million.
The Coney Island Development Corporation and the Van Alen Institute held an architecture contest in 2004 to determine future uses for the 7,800-square-foot (720 m<sup>2</sup>) pavilion at the Jump's base. More than 800 competitors from 46 countries participated. The results were announced the following year; there were one winning team, two runners-up with cash prizes, and nine honorable mentions. The winning design outlined a bowtie-shaped pavilion with lighting and an all-season activity center, which included a souvenir shop, restaurant, bar, and exhibition space.
The first night-time light show was held on July 7, 2006. The installation contained six animations and used most colors except for green, which would not have been visible on the tower's red frame. The animations were based on events in the local calendar, including the boardwalk's operating and non-operating seasons, the lunar cycle, the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, and national holidays such as Memorial Day and Labor Day. There is also a sequence called "Kaleidoscope" for other holidays. Officials said the lights were to be left on from dusk to midnight during summer and from dusk to 11:00 p.m. the rest of the year. In observance of the "Lights Out New York" initiative, which sought to reduce bird deaths from light pollution, the tower lighting went dark at 11:00 p.m. during the bird migratory seasons.
#### 2013 restoration and second lighting project
Although Markowitz was initially satisfied with Schwendinger's light installation, by 2007 he was referring to her installation as "Phase I" of a multi-portion lighting upgrade. In February 2008, the city began planning a second phase of lights. Anti-climbing devices were installed on the Parachute Jump in 2010 after several instances of people scaling the structure, and the lights were temporarily turned off in 2011 because of a lack of maintenance. Concurrently, starting in 2011, the 2.2-acre (0.89 ha) site around the tower was redeveloped as Steeplechase Plaza.
A \$2 million renovation was completed in 2013, after which it contained 8,000 LED lights, in comparison with the 450 total after the first installation. The B&B Carousell, an early-20th-century carousel that had become part of Luna Park, was relocated to Steeplechase Plaza east of the Parachute Jump in 2013. The tower was lit up for its first New Year's Eve Ball drop at the end of 2014, and since then, the Parachute Jump has been lit for New Year's Eve each year. The Parachute Jump has also been lit up in recognition of special causes, such as World Autism Awareness Day and Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, as well as to commemorate notable personalities, such as happened after the 2020 death of retired NBA basketball player Kobe Bryant.
## See also
- Great Gasp
- Jumpin' Jellyfish
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Brooklyn
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Brooklyn
- Texas Chute Out
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Benjamin Harrison
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23rd President of the United States
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Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901) was an American politician who served as the 23rd president of the United States from 1889 to 1893. He was a member of the Harrison family of Virginia—a grandson of the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Founding Father.
Harrison was born on a farm by the Ohio River and graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After moving to Indianapolis, he established himself as a prominent local attorney, Presbyterian church leader, and politician in Indiana. During the American Civil War, he served in the Union Army as a colonel, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in 1865. Harrison unsuccessfully ran for governor of Indiana in 1876. The Indiana General Assembly elected Harrison to a six-year term in the Senate, where he served from 1881 to 1887.
A Republican, Harrison was elected to the presidency in 1888, defeating the Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. Hallmarks of Harrison's administration were unprecedented economic legislation, including the McKinley Tariff, which imposed historic protective trade rates, and the Sherman Antitrust Act. Harrison also facilitated the creation of the national forest reserves through an amendment to the Land Revision Act of 1891. During his administration six western states were admitted to the Union. In addition, Harrison substantially strengthened and modernized the U.S. Navy and conducted an active foreign policy, but his proposals to secure federal education funding as well as voting rights enforcement for African Americans were unsuccessful.
Due in large part to surplus revenues from the tariffs, federal spending reached one billion dollars for the first time during his term. The spending issue in part led to the defeat of the Republicans in the 1890 midterm elections. Cleveland defeated Harrison for reelection in 1892, due to the growing unpopularity of high tariffs and high federal spending. He returned to private life and his law practice in Indianapolis. In 1899 he represented Venezuela in its British Guiana boundary dispute with Great Britain. Harrison traveled to the court in Paris as part of the case and after a brief stay returned to Indianapolis. He died at his home in Indianapolis in 1901 of complications from influenza. Many have praised Harrison's commitment to African Americans' voting rights, and his work ethic and integrity, but scholars and historians generally rank him in the bottom half among U.S. presidents.
## Family and education
Harrison was born on August 20, 1833, in North Bend, Ohio, the second of Elizabeth Ramsey (Irwin) and John Scott Harrison's ten children. His ancestors included immigrant Benjamin Harrison, who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, circa 1630 from England. Harrison was of entirely English ancestry, all of his ancestors having emigrated to America during the early colonial period.
Harrison was a grandson of U.S. President William Henry Harrison and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration of Independence and succeeded Thomas Nelson Jr. as governor of Virginia.
Harrison was seven years old when his grandfather was elected U.S. president, but he did not attend the inauguration. His family was distinguished, but his parents were not wealthy. John Scott Harrison, a two-term U.S. congressman from Ohio, spent much of his farm income on his children's education. Despite the family's modest resources, Harrison's boyhood was enjoyable, much of it spent outdoors fishing or hunting.
Harrison's early schooling took place in a log cabin near his home, but his parents later arranged for a tutor to help him with college preparatory studies. Fourteen-year-old Benjamin and his older brother, Irwin, enrolled in Farmer's College near Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1847. He attended the college for two years and while there met his future wife, Caroline "Carrie" Lavinia Scott, a daughter of John Witherspoon Scott, the school's science professor, who was also a Presbyterian minister.
Harrison transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1850, and graduated in 1852. He joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which he used as a network for much of his life. He was also a member of Delta Chi, a law fraternity that permitted dual membership. Classmates included John Alexander Anderson, who became a six-term U.S. congressman, and Whitelaw Reid, Harrison's vice presidential running mate in 1892. At Miami, Harrison was strongly influenced by history and political economy professor Robert Hamilton Bishop. He also joined a Presbyterian church at college and, like his mother, became a lifelong Presbyterian.
## Marriage and early career
After his college graduation in 1852, Harrison studied law with Judge Bellamy Storer of Cincinnati, but before he completed his studies, he returned to Oxford, Ohio, to marry Caroline Scott on October 20, 1853. Caroline's father, a Presbyterian minister, performed the ceremony. The Harrisons had two children, Russell Benjamin Harrison (August 12, 1854 – December 13, 1936) and Mary "Mamie" Scott Harrison (April 3, 1858 – October 28, 1930).
Harrison and his wife returned to live at The Point, his father's farm in southwestern Ohio, while he finished his law studies. Harrison was admitted to the Ohio bar in early 1854, the same year he sold property that he had inherited after the death of an aunt for \$800 (), and used the funds to move with Caroline to Indianapolis, Indiana. Harrison began practicing law in the office of John H. Ray in 1854 and became a crier for the federal court in Indianapolis, for which he was paid \$2.50 per day. He also served as a Commissioner for the U.S. Court of Claims. Harrison became a founding member and first president of both the University Club, a private gentlemen's club in Indianapolis, and the Phi Delta Theta Alumni Club. Harrison and his wife became members and assumed leadership positions at Indianapolis's First Presbyterian Church.
Having grown up in a Whig household, Harrison initially favored that party's politics, but joined the Republican Party shortly after its formation in 1856 and campaigned on behalf of Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. In 1857 Harrison was elected Indianapolis city attorney, a position that paid an annual salary of \$400 ().
In 1858, Harrison entered into a law partnership with William Wallace to form the law office of Wallace and Harrison. In 1860, he was elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court. Harrison was an active supporter of the Republican Party's platform and served as Republican State Committee's secretary. After Wallace, his law partner, was elected county clerk in 1860, Harrison established a new firm with William Fishback, Fishback and Harrison. The new partners worked together until Harrison entered the Union Army after the start of the American Civil War.
## Civil War
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for more recruits for the Union Army; Harrison wanted to enlist, but worried about how to support his young family. While visiting Governor Oliver Morton, Harrison found him distressed over the shortage of men answering the latest call. Harrison told the governor, "If I can be of any service, I will go."
Morton asked Harrison if he could help recruit a regiment, although he would not ask him to serve. Harrison recruited throughout northern Indiana to raise a regiment. Morton offered him the command, but Harrison declined, as he had no military experience. He was initially commissioned as a captain and company commander on July 22, 1862. Morton commissioned Harrison as a colonel on August 7, 1862, and the newly formed 70th Indiana was mustered into federal service on August 12, 1862. Once mustered, the regiment left Indiana to join the Union Army at Louisville, Kentucky.
### Atlanta campaign
For much of its first two years, the 70th Indiana performed reconnaissance duty and guarded railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee. In May 1864, Harrison and his regiment joined General William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign in the Army of the Cumberland and moved to the front lines. On January 2, 1864, Harrison was promoted to command the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the XX Corps. He commanded the brigade at the battles of Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Lost Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Marietta, Peachtree Creek, and Atlanta. When Sherman's main force began its March to the Sea, Harrison's brigade was transferred to the District of Etowah and participated in the Battle of Nashville. While encamped near Nashville, during a particularly cold winter, Harrison prepared coffee and brought it to his freezing men at night; his constant catchphrase as he took lead of his men was: "Come on, boys!" Harrison earned a reputation as a strong leader and as an officer who did not abandon his soldiers in battle.
#### Resaca
At the Battle of Resaca on May 15, 1864, Harrison faced Confederate Captain Max Van Den Corput’s artillery battery, which occupied a position "some eighty yards in front of the main Confederate lines". Sherman, renewing his assault on the center of the Confederate lines begun the previous day, was halted by Corput's four-gun, parapet-protected artillery battery; the battery was well placed to bedevil the Union ranks, and became "the center of a furious struggle". Corput's artillery redoubt was highly fortified "with three infantry regiments in...rifle pits and four more regiments in the main trenches". Harrison, leading the 70th Indiana Infantry Regiment, massed his troops in a ravine opposite Corput's position, along with the rest of Brigadier General Ward’s brigade. Harrison and his regiment, leading the assault, then emerged from the ravine, advanced over the artillery parapet, overcame the Confederate gunners, and eliminated the threat. The battery was captured by hand-to-hand combat, and intense combat continued throughout the afternoon. Harrison's unit, now exposed, found itself immediately subjected to intense gunfire from the main Confederate ranks and was forced to take cover. Although no longer in Confederate hands, Corput's four 121-pound Napoleon Cannons sat in a "no man's land" for the rest of the day until nightfall, when Union soldiers "dug through the parapet, slipped ropes around the four cannons, and dragged them back to [their] lines".
#### Peachtree Creek
During the Battle of Peachtree Creek, on July 20, 1864, Harrison commanded his brigade against General W. S. Featherston's Mississippi Brigade, stopping the latter's "fierce assault" over Collier Road. At Peachtree Creek, Harrison's brigade comprised the 102nd, 105th, and 129th Illinois Infantry Regiments, the 79th Ohio Infantry Regiment, and his 70th Indiana Regiment; his brigade deployed in about the center of the Union line, engaging Maj. Gen. William Wing Loring’s Mississippi division and Alabama troops from General Alexander Stewart's corps. In his report after the battle Harrison wrote how "at one time during the fight," after his ammunition was dangerously depleted, he sent his acting assistant inspector-general Captain Scott and others to cut "cartridge-boxes from the rebel dead within our lines" and distribute them to his soldiers. According to Harrison's report, the losses from his brigade were "very slight" compared with those of Confederate forces; he thought this was because of battlefield topography, writing: "I believe, that the enemy, having the higher ground, fired too high." Harrison later supported the creation of an Atlanta National Military Park which would have included "substantial portions" of the Peachtree battlefield, writing in 1900: "The military incidents connected with the investment and ultimate capture of Atlanta are certainly worthy of commemoration and I should be glad to see the project succeed."
#### Surrender of Atlanta and promotion
After the conclusion of the Atlanta Campaign on September 2, 1864, Harrison was among the initial Union forces to enter the surrendered city of Atlanta; General Sherman opined that Harrison served with "foresight, discipline and a fighting spirit". Following the Atlanta Campaign, Harrison reported to Governor Morton in Indiana for special duty, and while there he campaigned for the position of Indiana’s Supreme Court Reporter and for President Lincoln's reelection; after the election he left for Georgia to join Sherman's March to the Sea, but instead was "given command of the 1st Brigade at Nashville." Harrison led the brigade at the Battle of Nashville in December, in a "decisive" action against the forces of General John Bell Hood. Notwithstanding his memorable military achievements and the praise he received for them, Harrison held a dim view of war; according to historian Allan B. Spetter he thought "war was a dirty business that no decent man would find pleasurable." Later in 1888, the year he won the presidency, Harrison declared: "We Americans have no commission from God to police the world."
Several weeks after the Battle of Nashville, Harrison "received orders to rejoin the 70th Indiana at Savannah, Georgia, after a brief furlough in Indianapolis"; however he caught scarlet fever and was delayed for a month, and then spent "several months training replacement troops in South Carolina."
On January 23, 1865, Lincoln nominated Harrison to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers, to rank from that date, and the Senate confirmed the nomination on February 14, 1865. Harrison was promoted because of his success at the battles of Resaca and Peachtree Creek. Harrison finally returned to his old regiment the same day that news of President Lincoln’s assassination was received. He rode in the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. before mustering out with the 70th Indiana on June 8, 1865.
## Post-war career
### Indiana politics
While serving in the Union Army in October 1864, Harrison was once again elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court, although he did not seek the position, and served as the Court's reporter for four more years. The position was not a politically powerful one, but it provided Harrison with a steady income for his work preparing and publishing court opinions, which he sold to the legal profession. Harrison also resumed his law practice in Indianapolis. He became a skilled orator and known as "one of the state's leading lawyers".
In 1869 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Harrison to represent the federal government in a civil suit filed by Lambdin P. Milligan, whose controversial wartime conviction for treason in 1864 led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Ex parte Milligan. The civil case was referred to the U.S. Circuit Court for Indiana at Indianapolis, where it evolved into Milligan v. Hovey. Although the jury found in Milligan's favor and he had sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, state and federal statutes limited the amount the federal government had to award to Milligan to five dollars plus court costs.
With his increasing reputation, local Republicans urged Harrison to run for Congress. He initially confined his political activities to speaking on behalf of other Republican candidates, a task for which he received high praise from his colleagues. In 1872, Harrison campaigned for the Republican nomination for governor of Indiana. Former governor Oliver Morton favored his opponent, Thomas M. Browne, and Harrison lost his bid for statewide office. He returned to his law practice and, despite the Panic of 1873, was financially successful enough to build a grand new home in Indianapolis in 1874. He continued to make speeches on behalf of Republican candidates and policies.
In 1876, when a scandal forced the original Republican nominee, Godlove Stein Orth, to drop out of the gubernatorial race, Harrison accepted the party's invitation to take his place on the ticket. Harrison centered his campaign on economic policy and favored deflating the national currency. He was defeated in a plurality by James D. Williams, losing by 5,084 votes out 434,457 cast, but Harrison built on his new prominence in state politics. When the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 reached Indianapolis, he gathered a citizen militia to make a show of support for owners and management, and helped to mediate an agreement between the workers and management and to prevent the strike from widening.
When United States Senator Morton died in 1877, the Republicans nominated Harrison to run for the seat, but the party failed to gain a majority in the state legislature, which at that time elected senators; the Democratic majority elected Daniel W. Voorhees instead. In 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Harrison to the Mississippi River Commission, which worked to develop internal improvements on the river. As a delegate to the 1880 Republican National Convention the following year, he was instrumental in breaking a deadlock on candidates, and James A. Garfield won the nomination.
### U.S. Senator from Indiana
After Harrison led Indiana's Republican delegation at the 1880 Republican National Convention, he was considered the state's presumptive candidate for the U.S. Senate. He gave speeches in favor of Garfield in Indiana and New York, further raising his profile in the party. When the Republicans retook the majority in the state legislature, Harrison's election to a six-year term in the U.S. Senate was threatened by Judge Walter Q. Gresham, his intraparty rival, but Harrison was ultimately chosen. After Garfield's election as president in 1880, his administration offered Harrison a cabinet position, but Harrison declined in favor of continuing his service in the U.S. Senate.
Harrison served in the Senate from March 4, 1881, to March 3, 1887, and chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (47th Congress) and the U.S. Senate Committee on Territories (48th and 49th Congresses).
In 1881, the major issue confronting Senator Harrison was the budget surplus. Democrats wanted to reduce the tariff and limit the amount of money the government took in; Republicans instead wanted to spend the money on internal improvements and pensions for Civil War veterans. Harrison took his party's side and advocated for generous pensions for veterans and their widows. He also unsuccessfully supported aid for the education of Southerners, especially children of the freedmen; he believed that education was necessary to help the black population rise to political and economic equality with whites. Harrison opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which his party supported, because he thought it violated existing treaties with China.
In 1884, Harrison and Gresham competed for influence at the 1884 Republican National Convention; the delegation ended up supporting Senator James G. Blaine, the eventual nominee. During the Mugwump rebellion led by reform Republicans against Blaine's candidacy, Harrison at first stood aloof, "refusing to put his hat in the presidential ring," but after walking the middle ground he eventually supported Blaine "with energy and enthusiasm." In the Senate, Harrison achieved passage of his Dependent Pension Bill, only to see it vetoed by President Grover Cleveland. His efforts to further the admission of new western states were stymied by Democrats, who feared that the new states would elect Republicans to Congress.
In 1885 the Democrats redistricted the Indiana state legislature, which resulted in an increased Democratic majority in 1886, despite an overall Republican majority statewide. In 1887, largely as a result of the Democratic gerrymandering of Indiana's legislative districts, Harrison was defeated in his bid for reelection. Following a deadlock in the state senate, the state legislature eventually chose Democrat David Turpie as Harrison's successor in the Senate. Harrison returned to Indianapolis and resumed his law practice, but stayed active in state and national politics. A year after his senatorial defeat, Harrison declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination; he dubbed himself a "living and rejuvenated Republican," a reference to his lack of a power base. Thereafter, the phrase "'Rejuvenated Republicanism' became the slogan of his presidential campaign."
## Election of 1888
### Nomination for president
The initial favorite for the Republican nomination was the previous nominee, James G. Blaine of Maine. After his narrow defeat against Cleveland in 1884 Blaine became the front-runner for 1888, but decided to remove his name from contention. After Blaine wrote several letters denying any interest in the nomination, his supporters divided among other candidates, with Senator John Sherman of Ohio as the leader among them. Others, including Chauncey Depew of New York, Russell Alger of Michigan, and Harrison's old nemesis Walter Q. Gresham—now a federal appellate court judge in Chicago—also sought the delegates' support at the 1888 Republican National Convention. Harrison "marshaled his troops" to stop Gresham from gaining control of the Indiana delegation while simultaneously presenting himself "as an attractive alternative to Blaine." Blaine did not publicly endorse any of the candidates, but on March 1, 1888, he privately wrote that "the one man remaining who in my judgment can make the best one is Benjamin Harrison." Later at the National Convention, which took place in June, Blaine "threw his support to Harrison in the hope of uniting the party" against President Cleveland; nonetheless, the nomination fight that followed was "hotly contested."
The convention opened on June 19 at the Auditorium Building in Chicago, Illinois. Proceedings began with an announcement of the party platform; Lincoln was extolled as the "first great leader" of the Republican Party and an "immortal champion of liberty and the rights of the people." Republican presidents Grant, Garfield, and Arthur were likewise acknowledged with "remembrance and gratitude." The "fundamental idea of the Republican party" was declared to be "hostility to all forms of despotism and oppression," and the Brazilian people were congratulated for their recent abolition of slavery. The convention alleged that the "present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot by a criminal nullification of the Constitution." Anticipating a principal part of Harrison's campaign, the convention also declared itself "uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of protection," and protested "against its destruction as proposed by the President and his party." The tariff was later to become the "main issue of the campaign" in 1888. The admission of six new states during Harrison's term, between 1889 and 1890, was anticipated with the declaration: "whenever the conditions of population, material resources...and morality are such as to insure a stable local government," the people "should be permitted...to form for themselves constitutions and State government, and be admitted into the Union." The convention insisted that "The pending bills in the Senate to enable the people of Washington, North Dakota and Montana Territories to...establish State governments, should be passed without unnecessary delay." The convention began with seventeen candidates for the nomination.
Harrison placed fifth on the first ballot, with Senator Sherman in the lead, and the next few ballots showed little change. As the convention moved forward, Harrison became "everyone's second choice in a field of seven candidates." Then, after Sherman "faltered in the balloting," Harrison gained support. Blaine supporters shifted their support among candidates they found acceptable, and when they shifted to Harrison, they found a candidate who could attract the votes of many other delegations. Intending to make it undeniably clear he would not be a candidate, Blaine left the country and was staying with Andrew Carnegie in Scotland when the National Convention began, and did not return to the United States until August; the delegates finally accepted Blaine's refusal to be nominated. After New York switched to Harrison's column, he gained the needed momentum for victory. Harrison was nominated as the party's presidential candidate on the eighth ballot, by a count of 544 to 108 votes. Levi P. Morton of New York—a banker, former U.S. Minister to France, and former U.S. congressman—was chosen as his running mate. At their National Convention in St. Louis, Democrats rallied behind President Cleveland and his running-mate, Senator Allen G. Thurman from Ohio; Vice President Hendricks had died in office on November 25, 1885. After returning to America, Blaine visited Harrison at his home in October.
### Campaign against Cleveland
Harrison's opponent in the general election was incumbent President Grover Cleveland. Harrison reprised a more traditional front-porch campaign, abandoned by his immediate predecessors; he received visiting delegations to Indianapolis and made over 90 pronouncements from his hometown. The Republicans campaigned heavily in favor of protective tariffs, turning out protectionist voters in the important industrial states of the North. The election took place on Tuesday, November 6, 1888; it focused on the swing states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Harrison's home state of Indiana. Harrison and Cleveland split the four, with Harrison winning New York and Indiana. Voter turnout was 79.3%, reflecting large interest in the campaign; nearly eleven million votes were cast. Harrison received 90,000 fewer popular votes than Cleveland, but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Allegations were made against Republicans for engaging in irregular ballot practices; an example was described as Blocks of Five. On October 31 the Indiana Sentinel published a letter allegedly by Harrison's friend and supporter, William Wade Dudley, offering to bribe voters in "blocks of five" to ensure Harrison's election. Harrison neither defended nor repudiated Dudley, but allowed him to remain on the campaign for the remaining few days. After the election, Harrison never spoke to Dudley again.
Harrison had made no political bargains, but his supporters had made many pledges on his behalf. When Boss Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, who was rebuffed for a Cabinet position for his political support during the convention, heard that Harrison ascribed his narrow victory to Providence, Quay exclaimed that Harrison would never know "how close a number of men were compelled to approach...the penitentiary to make him president". Harrison was known as the Centennial President because his inauguration celebrated the centenary of the first inauguration of George Washington in 1789. In the congressional elections, Republicans increased their membership in the House of Representatives by 19 seats.
## Presidency (1889–1893)
### Inauguration and cabinet
Harrison was sworn into office on Monday, March 4, 1889, by Chief Justice Melville Fuller. His speech was brief—half as long as that of his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, whose speech remains the longest inaugural address of a U.S. president. In his speech, Benjamin Harrison credited the nation's growth to the influences of education and religion, urged the cotton states and mining territories to attain the industrial proportions of the eastern states and promised a protective tariff. Of commerce, he said, "If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal obligations and duties, they would have less call to complain of the limitations of their rights or of interference with their operations." Harrison also urged early statehood for the territories and advocated pensions for veterans, a call that met with enthusiastic applause. In foreign affairs, Harrison reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine as a mainstay of foreign policy, while urging modernization of the Navy and a merchant marine force. He gave his commitment to international peace through noninterference in the affairs of foreign governments.
John Philip Sousa's Marine Corps band played at the Inaugural Ball inside the Pension Building with a large crowd attending. After moving into the White House, Harrison noted, quite prophetically, "There is only a door—one that is never locked—between the president's office and what are not very accurately called his private apartments. There should be an executive office building, not too far away, but wholly distinct from the dwelling house. For everyone else in the public service, there is an unroofed space between the bedroom and the desk."
Harrison acted quite independently in selecting his cabinet, much to the Republican bosses' dismay. He began by delaying the presumed nomination of James G. Blaine as Secretary of State so as to preclude Blaine's involvement in the formation of the administration, as had occurred in President Garfield's term. In fact, other than Blaine, the only Republican boss initially nominated was Redfield Proctor, as Secretary of War. Senator Shelby Cullom's comment symbolizes Harrison's steadfast aversion to use federal positions for patronage: "I suppose Harrison treated me as well as he did any other Senator; but whenever he did anything for me, it was done so ungraciously that the concession tended to anger rather than please." Harrison's selections shared particular alliances, such as their service in the Civil War, Indiana citizenship and membership in the Presbyterian Church. Nevertheless, Harrison had alienated pivotal Republican operatives from New York to Pennsylvania to Iowa with these choices and prematurely compromised his political power and future. His normal schedule provided for two full cabinet meetings per week, as well as separate weekly one-on-one meetings with each cabinet member.
In June 1890, Harrison's Postmaster General John Wanamaker and several Philadelphia friends purchased a large new cottage at Cape May Point for Harrison's wife, Caroline. Many believed the cottage gift appeared improper and amounted to a bribe for a cabinet position. Harrison made no comment on the matter for two weeks, then said he had always intended to purchase the cottage once Caroline approved. On July 2, perhaps a little tardily to avoid suspicion, Harrison gave Wanamaker a check for \$10,000 () for the cottage.
### Civil service reform and pensions
Civil service reform was a prominent issue following Harrison's election. Harrison had campaigned as a supporter of the merit system, as opposed to the spoils system. Although some of the civil service had been classified under the Pendleton Act by previous administrations, Harrison spent much of his first months in office deciding on political appointments. Congress was widely divided on the issue and Harrison was reluctant to address the issue in hope of preventing the alienation of either side. The issue became a political football of the time and was immortalized in a cartoon captioned "What can I do when both parties insist on kicking?" Harrison appointed Theodore Roosevelt and Hugh Smith Thompson, both reformers, to the Civil Service Commission, but otherwise did little to further the reform cause.
Harrison quickly saw the enactment of the Dependent and Disability Pension Act in 1890, a cause he had championed while in Congress. In addition to providing pensions to disabled Civil War veterans (regardless of the cause of their disability), the Act depleted some of the troublesome federal budget surplus. Pension expenditures reached \$135 million under Harrison (equivalent to \$ billion in ), the largest expenditure of its kind to that point in American history, a problem exacerbated by Pension Bureau commissioner James R. Tanner's expansive interpretation of the pension laws. An investigation into the Pension Bureau by Harrison's Secretary of Interior John Willock Noble found evidence of lavish and illegal handouts under Tanner. Harrison, who privately believed that appointing Tanner had been a mistake, due to his apparent loose management style and tongue, asked Tanner to resign and replaced him with Green B. Raum. Raum was also accused of accepting loan payments in return for expediting pension cases. Harrison, having accepted a dissenting congressional Republican investigation report that exonerated Raum, kept him in office for the rest of his administration.
One of the first appointments Harrison was forced to reverse was that of James S. Clarkson as an assistant postmaster. Clarkson, who had expected a full cabinet position, began sabotaging the appointment from the outset, gaining the reputation for "decapitating a fourth class postmaster every three minutes". Clarkson himself stated, "I am simply on detail from the Republican Committee ... I am most anxious to get through this task and leave." He resigned in September 1890.
### Tariff
The tariff levels had been a major political issue since before the Civil War, and they became the most dominant matter of the 1888 election. The high tariff rates had created a surplus of money in the Treasury, which led many Democrats (as well as the growing Populist movement) to call for lowering them. Most Republicans preferred to maintain the rates, spend the surplus on internal improvements and eliminate some internal taxes.
Representative William McKinley and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich framed the McKinley Tariff that would raise the tariff even higher, including making some rates intentionally prohibitive. At Secretary of State James Blaine's urging, Harrison attempted to make the tariff more acceptable by urging Congress to add reciprocity provisions, which would allow the president to reduce rates when other countries reduced their rates on American exports. The tariff was removed from imported raw sugar, and sugar growers in the United States were given a two cent per pound subsidy on their production. Even with the reductions and reciprocity, the McKinley Tariff enacted the highest average rate in American history, and the spending associated with it contributed to the reputation of the Billion-Dollar Congress.
### Antitrust laws and the currency
Members of both parties were concerned with the growth of the power of trusts and monopolies, and one of the first acts of the 51st Congress was to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act, sponsored by Senator John Sherman of Ohio. The Act passed by wide margins in both houses, and Harrison signed it into law. The Sherman Act was the first Federal act of its kind, and marked a new use of federal government power. While Harrison approved of the law and its intent, his administration was not particularly vigorous in enforcing it. However, the government successfully concluded a case during Harrison's time in office (against a Tennessee coal company), and had initiated several other cases against trusts.
One of the most volatile questions of the 1880s was whether the currency should be backed by gold and silver, or by gold alone. The issue cut across party lines, with western Republicans and southern Democrats joining together in the call for the free coinage of silver, and both parties' representatives in the northeast holding firm for the gold standard. Because silver was worth less than its legal equivalent in gold, taxpayers paid their government bills in silver, while international creditors demanded payment in gold, resulting in a depletion of the nation's gold supply. Owing to worldwide deflation in the late 19th century, however, a strict gold standard had resulted in reduction of incomes without the equivalent reduction in debts, pushing debtors and the poor to call for silver coinage as an inflationary measure.
The silver coinage issue had not been much discussed in the 1888 campaign and Harrison is said to have favored a bimetallist position. However, his appointment of a silverite Treasury Secretary, William Windom, encouraged the free silver supporters. Harrison attempted to steer a middle course between the two positions, advocating a free coinage of silver, but at its own value, not at a fixed ratio to gold. This failed to facilitate a compromise between the factions. In July 1890, Senator Sherman achieved passage of a bill, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, in both houses. Harrison thought that the bill would end the controversy, and he signed it into law. The effect of the bill, however, was the increased depletion of the nation's gold supply, a problem that would persist until the second Cleveland administration resolved it.
### Civil rights
After regaining the majority in both Houses of Congress, some Republicans, led by Harrison, attempted to pass legislation to protect black Americans' civil rights. Harrison's Attorney General, William H. H. Miller, through the Justice Department, ordered the prosecutions for violation of voting rights in the South; however, white juries often failed to convict or indict violators. This prompted Harrison to urge Congress to pass legislation that would "secure all our people a free exercise of the right of suffrage and every other civil right under the Constitution and laws". Harrison endorsed the proposed Federal Elections Bill written by Representative Henry Cabot Lodge and Senator George Frisbie Hoar in 1890, but the bill was defeated in the Senate. Following the failure to pass the bill, Harrison continued to speak in favor of African American civil rights in addresses to Congress. Most notably, on December 3, 1889, Harrison had gone before Congress and stated:
> The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us; they were brought here in chains and held in communities where they are now chiefly bound by a cruel slave code...when and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law? When is that quality of influence which our form of government was intended to secure to the electors to be restored? ... in many parts of our country where the colored population is large the people of that race are by various devices deprived of any effective exercise of their political rights and of many of their civil rights. The wrong does not expend itself upon those whose votes are suppressed. Every constituency in the Union is wronged.
He severely questioned the states' civil rights records, arguing that if states have the authority over civil rights, then "we have a right to ask whether they are at work upon it." Harrison also supported a bill proposed by Senator Henry W. Blair, which would have granted federal funding to schools regardless of the students' races. He also endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) that declared much of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. None of these measures gained congressional approval.
### National forests
In March 1891 Congress enacted, and Harrison signed, the Land Revision Act of 1891. This legislation resulted from a bipartisan desire to initiate reclamation of surplus lands that had been, up to that point, granted from the public domain, for potential settlement or use by railroad syndicates. As the law's drafting was finalized, Section 24 was added at the behest of Harrison by his Secretary of the Interior John Noble, which read as follows:
> That the President of the United States may, from time to time, set apart and reserve, in any State or Territory having public land bearing forests, in any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations, and the president shall, by public proclamation, declare the establishment of such reservations and the limits thereof.
Within a month of the enactment of this law Harrison authorized the first forest reserve, to be located on public domain adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming. Other areas were so designated by Harrison, bringing the first forest reservations total to 22 million acres in his term. Harrison was also the first to give a prehistoric Indian Ruin, Casa Grande in Arizona, federal protection.
### Native American policy
During Harrison's administration, the Lakota, who had been forcibly confined to reservations in South Dakota, grew restive under the influence of Wovoka, a medicine man, who encouraged them to participate in a spiritual movement known as the Ghost Dance. Though the movement called for the removal of white Americans from indigenous lands, it was primarily religious in nature, a fact which many in Washington did not understand; assuming that the Ghost Dance would increase Lakota resistance to U.S. government, they ordered the American military to increase their presence on the reservations. On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment perpetrated a massacre of over 250 Lakota at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Wounded Knee Creek after a botched attempt to disarm the reservation's inhabitants. The massacre's victims, many of whom were women and children, were buried in mass graves by American soldiers.
In response to the massacre, Harrison directed Major-General Nelson A. Miles to investigate and ordered 3,500 U.S. troops to be deployed to South Dakota, which suppressed the Ghost Dance movement. The massacre has been widely considered as the last major engagement of the American Indian Wars. Harrison's general policy on Native Americans in the United States was to encourage their assimilation into white society and, despite the massacre, he believed the policy to have been generally successful. This policy, known as the allotment system and embodied in the Dawes Act, was favored by liberal reformers at the time, but eventually proved detrimental to Native Americans as they sold most of their land at low prices to white speculators.
### Technology and naval modernization
During Harrison's time in office, the United States was continuing to experience advances in science and technology. A recording of his voice is the earliest extant recording of a president while he was in office. That was originally made on a wax phonograph cylinder in 1889 by Gianni Bettini. Harrison also had electricity installed in the White House for the first time by Edison General Electric Company, but he and his wife would not touch the light switches for fear of electrocution and would often go to sleep with the lights on.
Over the course of his administration, Harrison marshaled the country's technology to clothe the nation with a credible naval power. When he took office there were only two commissioned warships in the Navy. In his inaugural address he said, "construction of a sufficient number of warships and their necessary armaments should progress as rapidly as is consistent with care and perfection." Harrison's Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy spearheaded the rapid construction of vessels, and within a year congressional approval was obtained for building of the warships Indiana, Texas, Oregon, and Columbia. By 1898, with the help of the Carnegie Corporation, no less than ten modern warships, including steel hulls and greater displacements and armaments, had transformed the United States into a legitimate naval power. Seven of these had begun during the Harrison term.
### Foreign policy
#### Latin America and Samoa
Harrison and Secretary of State Blaine were often not the most cordial of friends, but harmonized in an aggressive foreign policy and commercial reciprocity with other nations. Blaine's persistent medical problems warranted more of a hands-on effort by Harrison in the conduct of foreign policy. In San Francisco, while on tour of the United States in 1891, Harrison proclaimed that the United States was in a "new epoch" of trade and that the expanding navy would protect oceanic shipping and increase American influence and prestige abroad. The First International Conference of American States met in Washington in 1889; Harrison set an aggressive agenda including customs and currency integration and named a bipartisan delegation to the conference, led by John B. Henderson and Andrew Carnegie. The conference failed to achieve any diplomatic breakthrough, due in large part to an atmosphere of suspicion fostered by the Argentinian delegation. It did succeed in establishing an information center that became the Pan American Union. In response to the diplomatic bust, Harrison and Blaine pivoted diplomatically and initiated a crusade for tariff reciprocity with Latin American nations; the Harrison administration concluded eight reciprocity treaties among these countries. On another front, Harrison sent Frederick Douglass as ambassador to Haiti, but failed in his attempts to establish a naval base there.
In 1889, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the German Empire were locked in a dispute over control of the Samoan Islands. Historian George H. Ryden's research indicates Harrison played a key role in determining the status of this Pacific outpost by taking a firm stand on every aspect of Samoa conference negotiations; this included selection of the local ruler, refusal to allow an indemnity for Germany, as well as the establishment of a three power protectorate, a first for the U.S.. These arrangements facilitated the future dominant power of the U.S. in the Pacific; Secretary of State Blaine was absent due to complication of lumbago.
#### European embargo of U.S. pork
Throughout the 1880s various European countries had imposed a ban on importation of United States pork out of an unconfirmed concern of trichinosis; at issue was over one billion pounds of pork products with a value of \$80 million annually (equivalent to \$ billion in ). Harrison engaged Whitelaw Reid, minister to France, and William Walter Phelps, minister to Germany, to restore these exports for the country without delay. Harrison also successfully asked the congress to enact the Meat Inspection Act to eliminate the accusations of product compromise. The president also partnered with Agriculture Secretary Rusk to threaten Germany with retaliation – by initiating an embargo in the U.S. against Germany's highly demanded beet sugar. By September 1891 Germany relented, and was soon followed by Denmark, France and Austria-Hungary.
#### Crises in Aleutian Islands and Chile
The first international crisis Harrison faced arose from disputed fishing rights on the Alaskan coast. Canada claimed fishing and sealing rights around many of the Aleutian Islands, in violation of U.S. law. As a result, the United States Navy seized several Canadian ships. In 1891, the administration began negotiations with the British that would eventually lead to a compromise over fishing rights after international arbitration, with the British government paying compensation in 1898.
In 1891, a diplomatic crisis emerged in Chile, otherwise known as the Baltimore Crisis. The American minister to Chile, Patrick Egan, granted asylum to Chileans who were seeking refuge during the 1891 Chilean Civil War. Egan, previously a militant Irish immigrant to the U.S., was motivated by a personal desire to thwart Great Britain's influence in Chile; his action increased tensions between Chile and the United States, which began in the early 1880s when Secretary Blaine had alienated the Chileans in the War of the Pacific.
The crisis began in earnest when sailors from USS Baltimore took shore leave in Valparaiso and a fight ensued, resulting in the deaths of two American sailors and the arrest of three dozen others. Baltimore's captain, Winfield Schley, based on the nature of the sailors' wounds, insisted the sailors had been bayonet-attacked by Chilean police without provocation. With Blaine incapacitated, Harrison drafted a demand for reparations. The Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs Manuel Matta replied that Harrison's message was "erroneous or deliberately incorrect," and said that the Chilean government was treating the affair the same as any other criminal matter.
Tensions increased to the brink of war – Harrison threatened to break off diplomatic relations unless the United States received a suitable apology, and said the situation required, "grave and patriotic consideration". The president also remarked, "If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who in foreign ports display the flag or wear the colors." The Navy was also placed on a high level of preparedness. A recuperated Blaine made brief conciliatory overtures to the Chilean government which had no support in the administration; he then reversed course, joined the chorus for unconditional concessions and apology by the Chileans, who ultimately obliged, and war was averted. Theodore Roosevelt later applauded Harrison for his use of the "big stick" in the matter.
#### Annexation of Hawaii
In the last days of his administration, Harrison dealt with the issue of Hawaiian annexation. Following a coup d'état against Queen Liliuokalani, the new government of Hawaii led by Sanford Dole petitioned for annexation by the United States. Harrison was interested in expanding American influence in Hawaii and in establishing a naval base at Pearl Harbor but had not previously expressed an opinion on annexing the islands. The United States consul in Hawaii, John L. Stevens, recognized the new government on February 1, 1893, and forwarded their proposals to Washington. With just one month left before leaving office, the administration signed a treaty on February 14 and submitted it to the Senate the next day with Harrison's recommendation. The Senate failed to act, and President Cleveland withdrew the treaty shortly after taking office.
### Cabinet
### Judicial appointments
Harrison appointed four justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. The first was David Josiah Brewer, a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Brewer, the nephew of Justice Field, had previously been considered for a cabinet position. Shortly after Brewer's nomination, Justice Matthews died, creating another vacancy. Harrison had considered Henry Billings Brown, a Michigan judge and admiralty law expert, for the first vacancy and now nominated him for the second. For the third vacancy, which arose in 1892, Harrison nominated George Shiras. Shiras's appointment was somewhat controversial because his age—sixty—was older than usual for a newly appointed Justice. Shiras also drew the opposition of Senator Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania because they were in different factions of the Pennsylvania Republican party, but his nomination was nonetheless approved. Finally, at the end of his term, Harrison nominated Howell Edmunds Jackson to replace Justice Lamar, who died in January 1893. Harrison knew the incoming Senate would be controlled by Democrats, so he selected Jackson, a respected Tennessee Democrat with whom he was friendly to ensure his nominee would not be rejected. Jackson's nomination was indeed successful, but he died after only two years on the Court.
In addition to his Supreme Court appointments, Harrison appointed ten judges to the courts of appeals, two judges to the circuit courts, and 26 judges to the district courts.
### States admitted to the Union
Six new states were admitted to the Union while Harrison was in office:
- North Dakota – November 2, 1889
- South Dakota – November 2, 1889
- Montana – November 8, 1889
- Washington – November 11, 1889
- Idaho – July 3, 1890
- Wyoming – July 10, 1890,
More states were admitted during Harrison's presidency than any other.
### Vacations and travel
Harrison attended a grand, three-day centennial celebration of George Washington's inauguration in New York City on April 30, 1889, and made the following remarks "We have come into the serious but always inspiring presence of Washington. He was the incarnation of duty and he teaches us today this great lesson: that those who would associate their names with events that shall outlive a century can only do so by high consecration to duty. Self-seeking has no public observance or anniversary."
The Harrisons made many trips out of the capital, which included speeches at most stops – including Philadelphia, New England, Indianapolis and Chicago. The President typically made his best impression speaking before large audiences, as opposed to more intimate settings. The most notable of his presidential trips, theretofore unequaled, was a five-week tour of the west in the spring of 1891, aboard a lavishly outfitted train. Harrison enjoyed a number of short trips out of the capital—usually for hunting—to nearby Virginia or Maryland.
During the hot Washington summers, the Harrisons took refuge in Deer Park, Maryland and Cape May Point, New Jersey. In 1890, John Wanamaker joined with other Philadelphia devotees of the Harrisons and made a gift to them of a summer cottage at Cape May. Harrison, though appreciative, was uncomfortable with the appearance of impropriety; a month later, he paid Wanamaker \$10,000 () as reimbursement to the donors. Nevertheless, Harrison's opponents made the gift the subject of national ridicule, and Mrs. Harrison and the president were vigorously criticized.
### Reelection campaign in 1892
The treasury surplus had evaporated and the nation's economic health was worsening – precursors to the eventual Panic of 1893. Congressional elections in 1890 had gone against the Republicans; and although Harrison had cooperated with congressional Republicans on legislation, several party leaders withdrew their support for him because of his adamant refusal to give party members the nod in the course of his executive appointments. Specifically, Thomas C. Platt, Matthew S. Quay, Thomas B. Reed and James Clarkson quietly organized the Grievance Committee, the ambition of which was to initiate a dump-Harrison offensive. They solicited the support of Blaine, without effect however, and Harrison in reaction resolved to run for re-election – seemingly forced to choose one of two options – "become a candidate or forever wear the name of a political coward".
It was clear that Harrison would not be re-nominated unanimously. Many of Harrison's detractors persisted in pushing for an incapacitated Blaine, though he announced that he was not a candidate in February 1892. Some party leaders still hoped to draft Blaine into running, and speculation increased when he resigned at the 11th hour as Secretary of State in June. At the convention in Minneapolis, Harrison prevailed on the first ballot, but encountered significant opposition.
The Democrats renominated former President Cleveland, making the 1892 election a rematch of the one four years earlier. The tariff revisions of the past four years had made imported goods so expensive that now many voters shifted to the reform position. Many westerners, traditionally Republican voters, defected to the new Populist Party candidate, James Weaver, who promised free silver, generous veterans' pensions, and an eight-hour work day. The effects of the suppression of the Homestead Strike rebounded against the Republicans as well, although the federal government did not take action.
Harrison's wife Caroline began a critical struggle with tuberculosis earlier in 1892, and two weeks before the election, on October 25, she died from the disease. Their daughter Mary Harrison McKee assumed the role of First Lady after her mother's death. Mrs. Harrison's terminal illness and the fact that both candidates had served in the White House called for a low key campaign, and resulted in neither of the candidates actively campaigning personally.
Cleveland ultimately won the election by 277 electoral votes to Harrison's 145, and also won the popular vote by 5,556,918 to 5,176,108; this was the most decisive presidential election in 20 years. It gave Harrison the distinction of being the only president whose predecessor and successor were the same man.
## Post-presidency (1893–1901)
After he left office, Harrison visited the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in June 1893. After the Expo, Harrison returned to his home in Indianapolis. Harrison had been elected a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in 1882, and was elected as commander (president) of the Ohio Commandery on May 3, 1893. For a few months in 1894, Harrison lived in San Francisco, California, where he gave law lectures at Stanford University. In 1896, some of Harrison's friends in the Republican party tried to convince him to seek the presidency again, but he declined. He traveled around the nation making appearances and speeches in support of William McKinley's candidacy for president.
From June 1895 to March 1901 Harrison served on the Board of Trustees of Purdue University, where Harrison Hall, a dormitory, was named in his honor. He wrote a series of articles about the federal government and the presidency which were republished in 1897 as a book titled This Country of Ours. In 1896, Harrison at age 62 remarried, to Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, the widowed 37-year-old niece and former secretary of his deceased wife. Harrison's two adult children, Russell, 41 years old at the time, and Mary (Mamie) McKee, 38, disapproved of the marriage and did not attend the wedding. Benjamin and Mary had one child together, Elizabeth (February 21, 1897 – December 26, 1955).
In 1898, Harrison served as an attorney for the Republic of Venezuela in their British Guiana boundary dispute with the United Kingdom. An international trial was agreed upon; he filed an 800-page brief and traveled to Paris where he spent more than 25 hours in court on Venezuela's behalf. Although he lost the case, his legal arguments won him international renown. In 1899 Harrison attended the First Peace Conference at The Hague.
Harrison was an active Presbyterian and served as an Elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis and on a special committee on creed revision in the national Presbyterian General Assembly. However, he died before he could cast his vote at the meeting.
### Death
Harrison developed what was thought to be influenza (then referred to as grippe), which later proved to be pneumonia, in February 1901. He was treated with steam vapor inhalation and oxygen, but his condition worsened. Harrison died from pneumonia at his home in Indianapolis on March 13, 1901, at the age of 67. His last words were reported to be, "Are the doctors here? Doctor, my lungs...". Harrison's remains are interred in Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery, next to the remains of his first wife, Caroline. After her death in 1948, Mary Dimmick Harrison, his second wife, was buried beside him.
## Historical reputation and memorials
Historian Charles Calhoun gives Harrison major credit for innovative legislation in antitrust, monetary policy and tariffs. Historians have often given Secretary of State Blaine credit for foreign-policy initiatives. However, Calhoun argues that Harrison was even more responsible for the success of trade negotiations, the buildup of the steel Navy, overseas expansion, and emphasis on the American role in dominating the Western Hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine. The major weakness which Calhoun sees was that the public and indeed the grassroots Republican Party was not fully prepared for this onslaught of major activity. The Democrats scored a sweeping landslide in 1890 by attacking the flagship legislation, especially the McKinley tariff, because it would raise the cost of living of the average American family. McKinley himself was defeated for reelection.
According to historian R. Hal Williams, Harrison had a "widespread reputation for personal and official integrity". Closely scrutinized by Democrats, Harrison's reputation was largely intact when he left the White House. Having an advantage few 19th-century presidents had, Harrison's own party, the Republicans, controlled Congress, while his administration actively advanced a Republican program of a higher tariff, moderate control of corporations, protecting African American voting rights, a generous Civil War pension, and compromising over the controversial silver issue. Historians have not raised "serious questions about Harrison's own integrity or the integrity of his administration".
Following the Panic of 1893, Harrison became more popular in retirement. Scholars have argued that Harrison's economic policies contributed to the Panic of 1893. His legacy among historians is scant, and "general accounts of his period inaccurately treat Harrison as a cipher". More recently,
> historians have recognized the importance of the Harrison administration—and Harrison himself—in the new foreign policy of the late nineteenth century. The administration faced challenges throughout the hemisphere, in the Pacific, and in relations with the European powers, involvements that would be taken for granted in the twenty first century.
Harrison's presidency belongs properly to the 19th century, but he "clearly pointed the way" to the modern presidency that would emerge under William McKinley. The bipartisan Sherman Anti-Trust Act signed into law by Harrison remains in effect over 120 years later and was the most important legislation passed by the Fifty-first Congress. Harrison's support for African American voting rights and education would be the last significant attempts to protect civil rights until the 1930s. Harrison's tenacity at foreign policy was emulated by politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt.
Harrison was memorialized on several postage stamps. The first was a 13-cent stamp issued on November 18, 1902, with the engraved likeness of Harrison modeled after a photo provided by his widow. In all Harrison has been honored on six U.S. Postage stamps, more than most other U.S. Presidents. Harrison also was featured on the five-dollar National Bank Notes from the third charter period, beginning in 1902. In 2012, a dollar coin with his image, part of the Presidential \$1 Coin Program, was issued.
In 1908, the people of Indianapolis erected the Benjamin Harrison memorial statue, created by Charles Niehaus and Henry Bacon, in honor of Harrison's lifetime achievements as military leader, U.S. Senator, and President of the United States. The statue occupies a site on the south edge of University Park, facing the Birch Bayh Federal Building and United States Courthouse across New York Avenue.
In 1951, Harrison's home was opened to the public as a library and museum. It had been used as a dormitory for a music school from 1937 to 1950. The house was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
Theodore Roosevelt dedicated Fort Benjamin Harrison in the former president's honor in 1906. It is located in Lawrence, Indiana, a northeastern suburb of Indianapolis. The federal government decommissioned Fort Harrison in 1991 and transferred 1,700 of its 2,500 acres to Indiana's state government in 1995 to establish Fort Harrison State Park. The site has been redeveloped to include residential neighborhoods and a golf course.
In 1931, Franklin Hall at Miami University, Harrison's alma mater, was renamed Harrison Hall. It was replaced by a new building of the same name in 1960 and houses the college's political science department. In 1966, Purdue University opened Harrison Hall, an eight-floor, 400-room residence hall. Harrison served as a Purdue University Trustee for the last six years of his life.
## See also
- List of presidents of the United States
- List of presidents of the United States by previous experience
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Triangle (The X-Files)
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[
"1998 American television episodes",
"Articles containing video clips",
"Fiction set in 1939",
"Television episodes about Nazis",
"Television episodes about World War II",
"Television episodes about time travel",
"Television episodes directed by Chris Carter (screenwriter)",
"Television episodes set in Germany",
"Television episodes set in the Bermuda Triangle",
"Television episodes written by Chris Carter (screenwriter)",
"The X-Files (season 6) episodes"
] |
"Triangle" is the third episode of the sixth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on November 22, 1998. Written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, "Triangle" is a "Monster-of-the-Week" episode, a stand-alone plot which is unconnected to the overarching mythology of The X-Files. "Triangle" earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.8, being watched by 18.20 million viewers in its initial broadcast. The episode generally received positive reviews with many critics commenting on the episode's directing style.
The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work and the two have developed a close friendship. In this episode, Mulder races to a luxury passenger liner which has mysteriously appeared in the Bermuda Triangle. Once there, he realizes he has traveled back in time to September 3, 1939—the outbreak of World War II. German soldiers have boarded the ship in search of "Thor's Hammer", something that could ensure victory in the coming conflict. Scully, after being informed of Mulder's disappearance by The Lone Gunmen, rushes through the J. Edgar Hoover Building, looking for someone who can help find her missing partner.
"Triangle" is filmed in a style inspired by the 1948 Alfred Hitchcock film Rope, with many scenes edited to appear as single takes. In addition, "Triangle" features the main and recurring cast members such as Anderson, William B. Davis, Chris Owens, James Pickens Jr. and Mitch Pileggi, who played their contemporary characters as well as distinctly different characters from 1939 on board the luxury liner. Several of the episode's themes have been critically examined, such as the concept of "dream-nazis", the appearance of modern characters portraying those from the past, and the ramification that the entire episode was a dream.
## Plot
Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) lies unconscious in the sea after wrecking his raft. He is taken aboard a passenger ship, the Queen Anne, by its British crew members. When he is sent to meet the captain, Mulder tries to explain that Queen Anne vanished in the Bermuda Triangle in 1939, and claims that it has reappeared in 1998. The crew dismisses Mulder's story and suspect he is a Nazi spy. At that moment, Queen Anne is boarded by SS troops under the control of an Oberführer resembling the Smoking Man (William B. Davis), who sets the ship's course for Germany. The crew of Queen Anne lock Mulder in the captain's quarters, where he listens to a radio broadcast announcing the start of World War II. Mulder realizes that Queen Anne did not travel to 1998; he has traveled back to 1939.
In the present, the Lone Gunmen inform Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) that they have lost contact with Mulder, who had set out in search of Queen Anne. Scully first turns to Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), unsuccessfully, then attempts to confront Assistant Director Alvin Kersh (James Pickens Jr.) who is seen with the Smoking Man. She finally threatens Agent Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens) before Skinner shows up and provides her with the information from the Pentagon. Scully leaves with the Gunmen to find Mulder. Meanwhile, on the Queen Anne, a British sailor tells Mulder that the Germans are looking for what they believe is a weapon called "Thor's Hammer". Mulder tells him that Thor's Hammer is not a weapon, but a scientist that will build a weapon. The sailor turns out to be a German spy and locks Mulder in the engine room with the ship's crew. One of the sailors, who strongly resembles Kersh, decides to steer the boat towards Jamaica, but Mulder tells them to sail back where they came from, in order to pass through the time warp and re-appear in 1998.
Eventually, Mulder is taken to the ballroom by the Nazis. Once there, he is ordered to identify the scientist, or the Nazis will begin shooting passengers. After they have killed two men, a woman who resembles Scully tells the Nazis that they are killing innocent people for nothing, and that Mulder knows nothing. Mulder tells the Nazis that one of the men they shot was the scientist, but the true scientist steps forward. The Nazis prepare to execute Mulder and "Scully", but before they are able, the engine is shut down. British sailors descend upon the ballroom and begin fighting the Nazis. In the midst of the chaos, Mulder and "Scully" escape, at one time aided by a Nazi officer who resembles Agent Skinner and appears to be an Allied sympathizer. Meanwhile, Scully and the Lone Gunmen find Queen Anne and board it, only to find that it is an empty ghost ship, unaware that the dimension in which Mulder and the passengers of the Queen Anne is running parallel to their own.
Back in 1939, Mulder tells "Scully" that she has to turn the ship around and return to the Bermuda Triangle in order to get the ship out of the rift in space. Mulder grabs "Scully" and kisses her, "in case we never meet again". "Scully" punches him, and he jumps overboard. Mulder wakes up in 1998 in a hospital, surrounded by Scully, the Lone Gunmen and Skinner. Mulder attempts to tell them about his experiences in 1939, and that Scully was there with him, but they all think he is delirious. After Skinner and the Gunmen leave, Mulder calls Scully back and tells her that he loves her. Scully thinks his declaration is an effect of the drugs he has been given, rolls her eyes and leaves. As he lies down, Mulder winces as his cheek touches the pillow; the spot where "Scully" punched him in 1939 is still sore and visibly bruised. Mulder breaks into a knowing smile.
## Production
### Conception, writing, and filming
The X-Files creator Chris Carter developed the idea for "Triangle" while working on the fifth-season episode "The Red and the Black". While filming the episode, Carter used so much film that the crew made him a mock trophy. This, in turn, inspired him to write an episode that featured continuous action, thereby using as little film as possible. Carter designed "Triangle" in a style similar to Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film Rope. Initially, Fox executives were hesitant to green-light production for "Triangle" because it was expected to exceed the \$2.5 million episode budget. To persuade them, Carter told the executives that the episode would feature elements of Hitchcock's directing style, a move he later called "an easy hook". Carter also cited the 1964 Twilight Zone adaptation of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" as inspiration.
The scenes taking place on the Queen Anne were filmed aboard the retired British ocean liner RMS Queen Mary, which is moored at Long Beach, California and currently serves as a hotel. Filming on board the ship took place over eleven days. To block out the lights of nearby Long Beach, The X-Files crew erected wrap-around scaffolding on the ship's bridge. To give the effect of rain during the scenes on the bridge, the crew installed large sprinkler systems that provided a constant supply of water. Unhappy with the remodeled style of the ship's corridors and ballroom, Carter had whole portions of the ship redesigned so that the finished episode would have a late-1930s feel.
For authenticity, several British and German actors portrayed the British sailors and Nazi soldiers, whose dialogue was mostly in German. Trevor Goddard, who portrayed the First British Crewman, is English, while Madison Mason, who played Captain Yip Harburg, is American; he affected an English accent for the part. William B. Davis' dialogue was entirely in German, a language which he did not speak. He later explained, "I certainly didn't realize I was going to be speaking a lot of German until I got the script, which just said 'CSM (in German)'." To successfully learn his lines, one of the German cast members recorded all of Davis' dialogue onto a cassette. Davis was given the cassette two weeks before shooting and phonetically memorized his lines; he noted that the method "seemed to work pretty well—at least to non-German-speaking people! It was a little more challenging because there were some real German speakers on the show, which I thought was a little unfair." Tom Braidwood, who played Lone Gunman Melvin Frohike and was an assistant director on the show, called Davis' role "brutal" and noted that "It was really tough for William because he had to learn all this German." Davis later joked that "Maybe we shouldn't try to do two clever things at once. I think it worked fine, but it was a struggle to do it." The only main cast member of The X-Files who already spoke German was Mitch Pileggi. Pileggi had studied in Germany; he had to re-write many of his lines as they made no sense in the context of the scenes. The tagline that usually appears after the opening credits of every episode, "The Truth is Out There", was translated into German: "Die Wahrheit ist irgendwo da draußen".
### Directing style
Filmed in real time, the episode is designed to look like it was recorded in four uninterrupted eleven-minute takes. Carter explained, "I said [to the cast and crew] 'Wouldn't it be great since we have 44 minutes of programming time if we just did an episode where we did four 11-minute takes and put it all together?' And everyone looked at me like I was nuts." To film the episode, camera operator Dave Luckenbach wore a steadicam. The steadicam used could only hold a maximum of four minutes of film, so discreet edits and cuts were necessary. Luckenbach later likened the physical aftermath of filming to playing football, "You'd have a game on Friday, and you'd wake up Saturday and really feel it." The cuts were usually made during whip pans or in scenes when the screen would go dark. With the exception of Mulder jumping off the Queen Anne, the only noticeable editing occurs between scenes, when a side swipe shifts between the two different time periods. Many of the takes needed to be nearly perfect; for example, of the takes made on the eighth day of filming, only two of ten were deemed satisfactory. Both the cast and crew admitted that filming an episode of The X-Files in real time was physically and mentally exhausting. Duchovny later joked that, after filming concluded, he "could win an Emmy for most bruises." Gillian Anderson described the real time directing style as "challenging." She said, "I'm realizing how comfortable and connected I am to the rhythm we're used to."
In an interview before the episode was finished, Gillian Anderson said she was most looking forward to the scene in which Scully takes an elevator through FBI headquarters in her quest to locate Mulder. She later compared the episode to live theater, which she had worked in previously. During the filming of this scene, when the actors entered the stage elevator, the set that they would next move onto had to be constructed behind the closed doors. Many times during filming, these doors would open before the set behind had been completed, which ruined the shot. The final two acts of the episode feature a sophisticated split-screen mise en scène: Rather than displaying two different events, each side of the screen features the same setting, but with each side set during a different time period. When Scully runs around the corner in the present day, she does so at the same time as Mulder and the 1939 version of Scully. This was filmed in such a way that as the actors pass each other in the hallway, they also pass into the opposite frame of the split screen. This effect was inspired by the music video for Semisonic's hit 1998 single "Closing Time."
Editor Louise Innes, who was working on her first X-Files episode, said the post-production editing process was "not as easy as it sounds." Innes was tasked with connecting roughly forty shots and creating the illusion of one, uniform scene. After the reels of film were combined, several pending issues had to be tweaked in post-production. For instance, during the scene in which Scully runs into an elevator, two shots were spliced together, but the color did not completely match. The images and their colors were later corrected by the series' "postproduction [sic] troubleshooters" using digital manipulation. When the episode was filmed, it was shot in 2.35:1 widescreen. When the episode aired, it was shown letterboxed to fit in a 1.33:1 television screen; this was the first X-Files episode to receive this treatment. Carter reasoned that this method would allow for more action to be viewable in each frame.
### Music and cultural references
To get a feel for the era, X-Files composer Mark Snow listened to the big band music of Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Gene Krupa, and Glenn Miller. The "bouncy instrumental" that plays during the ballroom fight scene was inspired by a similar swing tune, written by John Williams, from the 1979 Steven Spielberg film 1941. Snow later joked that his composition was "the third generation of the same inspiration." Carter had significant musical input when it came to scene transitions, saying, "I got a chance to use some of my favorite '40s music here, too, or '30s and '40s music to transition scenes." Producer Paul Rabwin also supervised "a special arrangement" of the 1938 jazz standard "Jeepers Creepers", which was also included in the ballroom scene.
The episode contains many intentional references to the 1939 musical film The Wizard of Oz. The ship's captain is named after the film's lyricist Yip Harburg, and the ballroom singer, Almira Gulch, after The Wizard of Oz character who is the analog for the Wicked Witch of the West. Her band is The Lollipop Guild, a reference to a section of the song "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead", while Mulder's wrecked ship is called the Lady Garland, after Judy Garland. The final scene of "Triangle", which features Mulder in bed telling his friends and co-workers that he saw them in his reverie, bears a striking resemblance to the closing scene of Oz. Because of this, the scene was called "obviously derivative" by one reviewer. Further, when Mulder mentions that Skinner was with him in 1939, which is the year The Wizard of Oz was released, Skinner replies "with my dog Toto", and Scully tells him "there's no place like home".
The episode features several historical errors. Anderson's 1939 character is said to work for the Office of Strategic Services, which was not established until 1942. The code name "Thor's Hammer" is an invention of the writers. Lee Smith, the official researcher for the show, was tasked with finding the name for the secret pre-World War II atomic research project. Unfortunately for the show, the actual code name, Development of Substitute Materials, was considered "uninspiring", so the name "Thor's Hammer" was created instead.
## Themes
Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, examined the characterization of the villains in the episode and the meta-references to the series. Shearman and Pearson note that the episode makes a distinct difference when portraying the Nazis on-screen. Instead of showing them as "real Nazis"—like those featured in the third-season episode "Paper Clip", among others—this episode portrays them as deliberately exaggerated "dream-nazis". The two argue that the villains are played as "comic book nasties" and are similar in style to the villains from the Indiana Jones movie franchise.
Shearman and Pearson analyzed the portrayals of several of the series' regular characters as 1930s villains, noting several meta-references to the wider series. The two noted that, in his portrayal of a Nazi, Jeffrey Spender was allowed to "cut loose and rant like a proper villain rather than a sulky boy hiding in the basement." In contrast, Walter Skinner's 1939 character behaved more like his character in the wider series, his role "charmingly parodying the ambiguity he's been playing all these years and turning out to be an American-loving ally who tells our heroes to get their 'asses out of here'."
Tom Kessenich, in his book Examinations: An Unauthorized Look at Season 6–9 of The X-Files, critically examined the ideas that the entire episode was either a dream or existed in some sort of "parallel universe". Kessenich reasons that, because the episode contains several overt references to The Wizard of Oz and the fact that Chris Carter noted that the episode was based on the idea of Mulder's subconscious mind at work, much of "Triangle" was simply a dream. Furthermore, Kessenich backs up his argument by pointing out that many of the characters on the ship were played by familiar faces—The Smoking Man as the Nazi leader, Spender as a Nazi "lap dog", Skinner as a double agent, Kersh as an "unfamiliar friend or foe", and Scully as Mulder's ultimate ally. This would suggest, according to Kessenich, that the entire episode was acted out in Mulder's mind while he was unconscious in the Bermuda Triangle.
## Reception
### Ratings
Promoted with the tagline "Tonight, they get carried away... On a doomed voyage, the passion between Mulder and Scully is finally unstoppable", "Triangle" premiered on the Fox network in the United States on November 22, 1998. The episode earned a Nielsen rating of 10.8, with a 16 share, meaning that roughly 10.8 percent of all television-equipped households and 16 percent of households watching television were tuned in. It was viewed by 18.2 million viewers. "Triangle" was the 18th most watched television program for the week ending November 22. The episode aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1 on March 21, 1999, and received 0.74 million viewers, making it the fourth most watched program that week.
### Initial reception
When the finished program was shown to the cast and crew, their response was very positive. Gillian Anderson said, "I never quite understood whether it was going to work or not. When we finally saw 'Triangle' after this new way of filming everything, a style that we'd never attempted before, as well as trying new scenes ... trying this, trying that ... that was terrific." Chris Owens, who portrayed the Agent Spender Nazi lookalike, said, "One thing I really like about The X-Files was that they were always challenging themselves. Chris [Carter] would write an episode in which we're going to do Rope without any cuts, seemingly. A great challenge for a cast and crew."
The episode received generally positive critical reviews from the press. Matt Zoller Seitz from The Star-Ledger gave an overwhelmingly positive review of "Triangle". Applauding Carter's risky and audacious direction, he noted that "there has never been an hour of TV that looks or moves like 'Triangle'". He argued that the 1939 scene where Mulder and "Scully" cross paths with present-Scully was "the greatest minute of TV this year". Seitz also compared the episode to three-dimensional video games, like Doom, Quake, and Castle Wolfenstein, citing the episode's "gloomy corridors" and "nightmarish cartoon Nazis". Michael Liedtke and George Avalos from The Charlotte Observer predicted that "'Triangle' seems destined to take its rightful place in the pantheon of greatest 'X-Files' episodes". Enjoying the plethora of Wizard of Oz references, the two parodied a portion of "Over the Rainbow" in their column. Not all reviewers were so positive; for Alan Sepinwall, "Triangle" was the episode "that turned out to be a dream", making it "technically impressive but dramatically murky".
### Later reception
Years after its initial broadcast, "Triangle" has continued to receive positive reviews, with many critics calling it one of the show's best episodes. Jessica Morgan from Television Without Pity gave the episode an A−. Earl Cressey from DVD Talk called it one of the highlights of season six. Shearman and Pearson rated the episode five stars out of five and called it a "shining gem of an episode."
Carter's helmsmanship of "Triangle" received mostly favorable critical attention. Shearman and Pearson praised his directing, pointing to the scene where Scully dashes through the FBI building as "the best scene of all". Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club, in an "A" grade review, appreciated the style of filming, and wrote that the long scenes give "the whole thing a sense of urgency that propels scenes that shouldn't work". In addition, she called the split-screen shot "darn near perfect"; VanDerWerff later labeled it "one of my favorite moments in the whole show". Andrew Payne from Starpulse applauded the acting and directing, saying, "Chris Carter rarely directed his creation, leaving that mostly to Kim Manners, but when he did he showed a brilliant eye not usually seen on broadcast TV. This is the best example—a breathlessly-paced episode in which each act appears as one continuous shot. ... This episode is a lot of fun, particularly in the act that finds Scully blitzing through the FBI building in order to get some information on Mulder's whereabouts. The acting is superb and nothing can beat those no-cut acts." Payne ultimately named it the fourth best X-Files episode. David Boston from Made Man wrote that "we know whenever [Chris Carter] directs an episode it is always among the best." Timothy Sexton from Yahoo! Voices praised the split-screen scene and the scene featuring Scully running through the FBI building, comparing it favorably to Orson Welles' 1958 film Touch of Evil. Jonathan Dunn, writing for What Culture, described "Triangle" as "great" and included it in the "5 episodes [of The X-Files] That Could Be Made Into Movies" list. In the 1999 FX Thanksgiving Marathon, containing fan-selected episodes, "Triangle" was presented as the "Best Chris Carter-Directed Episode". Not all reviews were as glowing; Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique wrote that "everyone certainly deserves an A for effort", she was unimpressed by the "vertiginous camerawork" and "endless, monotonous tracking shots up and down hallways". She ultimately awarded it one-and-a-half stars out of four.
In addition, many reviewers were pleased with the style and concept of "Triangle". Tom Kessenich lauded the atmosphere of the entry, calling it "60 minutes of The X-Files at its finest". Kessenich noted that, despite the "gloom and doom" talk that the series was heading in the wrong direction, stylistically, the episode proved "just how exciting this show can be". He ultimately concluded that it was "a wonderful blend of fantasy and reality" that allowed the viewer "to try and ascertain what is real and what is not." He later named "Triangle" one of the "Top 25 Episode of All Time" of The X-Files, and ranked it in second place. VanDerWerff noted that she thoroughly enjoyed the concept, pointing out that the "sheer level of crazy stuff that goes on in this episode makes it fun to watch". She wrote that "[n]othing else had ever been this skillfully done on television before", which resulted in a "terrific episode of television". Furthermore, she opined that "[e]verything comes together in the episode's fantastically entertaining final act", due to the presence of the dramatic fight scene, among others.
"Triangle" features the first kiss between Mulder and Scully. Kessenich opined that the kiss built off "the seeds that were planted in the movie ... Scully clearly believes this is a man lost in delirium, but Mulder ... is finally beginning to deal with some pretty powerful feelings he has for his partner." Paula Vitaris, on the other hand, was frustrated; she complained "[w]hen are these kisses that are not kisses going to end?"
### Awards
The episode received a 1999 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series.
## Explanatory notes
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Snooker
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Cue sport
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Snooker (pronounced UK: /ˈsnuːkər/ SNOO-kər, US: /ˈsnʊkər/ SNUUK-ər) is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a white , fifteen red balls, and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black—collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the to other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a . An individual of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.
Snooker gained its identity in 1875 when army officer Neville Chamberlain, stationed in Ootacamund, Madras, and Jabalpur, devised a set of rules that combined black pool and pyramids. The word snooker was a well-established derogatory term used to describe inexperienced or first-year military personnel. In the early 20th century, snooker was predominantly played in the United Kingdom where it was considered a "gentleman's sport" until the early 1960s, before growing in popularity as a national pastime and eventually spreading overseas. The standard rules of the game were first established in 1919 when the Billiards Association and Control Club was formed. As a professional sport, snooker is now governed by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association.
The World Snooker Championship first took place in 1927. Joe Davis, a key figure and pioneer in the early growth of the sport, won fifteen successive world championships between 1927 and 1946. The "modern era" of snooker began in 1969 after the broadcaster BBC commissioned the television series Pot Black, later airing daily coverage of the World Championship, which was first televised in 1978. Key figures in the game were Ray Reardon in the 1970s, Steve Davis in the 1980s, and Stephen Hendry in the 1990s, each winning the World Championship at least six times. Since 2000, Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the most world titles.
Top professional players compete in regular tournaments around the world, earning millions of pounds on the World Snooker Tour, a circuit of international events featuring competitors of many different nationalities. The World Championship, the UK Championship, and the Masters together make up the Triple Crown Series, considered by many players to be the most highly valued titles. Although the main professional tour is open to women, female players also compete on a separate women's tour organised by World Women's Snooker. Competitive snooker is also available to non-professional players, including seniors and people with disabilities. The popularity of snooker has led to the creation of many variations based on the standard game, but using different rules or equipment, including six-red snooker, the short-lived "snooker plus", and the more recent Snooker Shoot Out version.
## History
Snooker originated in the second half of the 19th century. In the 1870s, billiards was popular among British Army officers stationed in Jubbulpore, India, and several variations of the game were devised during this time. A similar game, which originated at the Officers' Mess of the 11th Devonshire Regiment in 1875, combined the rules of two pool games: pyramid pool, played with fifteen red balls positioned in a triangle; and black pool, which involved the potting of designated balls. Snooker was further developed in 1882 when its first set of rules was finalised by British Army officer Sir Neville Chamberlain, who helped devise and popularise the game at Stone House in Ootacamund on a table built by Burroughes & Watts that had been brought to India by boat. The word snooker was, at the time, a slang term used in the British Army to describe new recruits and inexperienced military personnel; Chamberlain used it to deride the inferior performance of a young fellow officer at the table.
Snooker featured in an 1887 issue of the Sporting Life newspaper in England, which led to a growth in popularity. Chamberlain was revealed as the game's inventor, 63 years after the fact, in a letter to The Field magazine published on 19 March 1938. Snooker became increasingly popular across the Indian colonies of the British Raj, and in the United Kingdom, but it remained a game mainly for military officers and the gentry; many gentlemen's clubs that had a snooker table would not allow non-members inside to play. (Reflecting the game's aristocratic origins, the majority of tournaments on the professional circuit still require players to wear waistcoats and bow ties, although the necessity for this attire has been questioned.) To cater for the growing interest, smaller and more open snooker clubs were formed. The Billiards Association (formed 1885) and the Billiards Control Club (formed 1908) merged to form the Billiards Association and Control Club (BA&CC) and a new, standardised set of rules for snooker was first established in 1919. The possibility of a drawn game was abolished by the use of a as a tiebreaker. These rules are similar to the ones used today, although rules for a minimal point penalty were imposed later.
Played in 1926 and 1927, the first World Snooker Championship—then known as the Professional Championship of Snooker—was won by Joe Davis. A Women's Professional Snooker Championship (now the World Women's Snooker Championship) was created in 1934 for top female players. As a professional English billiards and snooker player himself, Davis raised the game from a recreational pastime to a professional sporting activity. Davis won all fifteen tournaments held until 1946, when he retired from the championships. However, snooker declined in popularity in the post-war era; the 1952 World Snooker Championship was contested by only two players and was replaced by the World Professional Match-play Championship, which was also discontinued in 1957. In an effort to boost popularity of snooker, Davis introduced a variation known as "snooker plus" in 1959, which added two extra colours, but this version of the game was short-lived. A world championship for top amateur players, now known as the IBSF World Snooker Championship, was founded in 1963, and the official world championship was revived on a challenge basis in 1964.
The BBC first launched its colour television service in July 1967. In 1969, David Attenborough, then the controller of BBC2, commissioned the snooker tournament television series Pot Black, primarily to showcase the potential of the BBC's new colour television service, as the green table and multi-coloured balls provided an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the advantages of the new broadcasting technology. The series became a ratings success and was, for a time, the second-most popular show on BBC2 behind Morecambe and Wise. In the same year, the 1969 World Snooker Championship reverted to a knockout tournament format, with eight players competing. Due to these developments, the year 1969 is taken to mark the beginning of snooker's modern era. The World Snooker Championship moved in 1977 to the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, where it has been staged ever since, and the 1978 World Snooker Championship was the first to receive daily television coverage. Snooker quickly became a mainstream sport in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and much of the Commonwealth, and has remained consistently popular since the late 1970s, with most of the major tournaments being televised. In 1985, an estimated 18.5 million viewers stayed up until the early hours of the morning to watch the conclusion of the World Championship final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis, a record viewership in the UK for any broadcast on BBC Two or any broadcast after midnight.
As professional snooker grew as a mainstream sport, it became heavily dependent on tobacco advertising. Cigarette brand Embassy sponsored the World Snooker Championship for 30 consecutive years from 1976 to 2005, one of the longest-running deals in British sports sponsorship. In the early 2000s, a ban on tobacco advertising led to a reduction in the number of professional tournaments, which decreased from twenty-two events in 1999 to fifteen in 2003. The sport had become more popular in Asia with the emergence of players such as Ding Junhui and Marco Fu, and still received significant television coverage in the UK—the BBC dedicated 400 hours to snooker in 2007, compared to just 14 minutes 40 years earlier. However, the British public's interest in snooker had waned significantly by the late 2000s. Warning that the sport was "lurching into terminal crisis", The Guardian newspaper predicted in 2010 that snooker would cease to exist as a professional sport within ten years. In the same year, promoter Barry Hearn gained a controlling interest in the World Snooker Tour, pledging to revitalise the "moribund" professional game.
Over the following decade, the number of professional tournaments increased, with 44 events held in the 2019–20 season. Snooker tournaments were adapted to make them more suitable for television audiences, with some tournaments being played over a shortened duration, or the Snooker Shoot Out, which is a timed, one- competition. The prize money for professional events increased, with the top players earning several million pounds over the course of their careers. However, lower-ranked professional players struggled to make a living from the sport, especially after paying tournament entry fees, travel, and other expenses. Players including 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy have claimed that a 128-player professional tour is financially unsustainable. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the professional tour was confined to events played within the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the 2022–23 season, only two professional ranking tournaments were played outside the UK, the European Masters in Fürth and the German Masters in Berlin, while lucrative Chinese events remained off the calendar. Stephen Maguire in 2023 criticised the World Snooker Tour and World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, claiming that "the game is dying right in front of our eyes", and stating that some players ranked within the world's top 30 were seeking jobs outside the sport due to lack of earning potential from tournaments.
Snooker referees are an integral part of the sport, and some have become well-known personalities in their own right. Len Ganley, John Street, and John Williams together refereed 17 of the first 20 World Snooker finals held at the Crucible Theatre. Since 2000, non-British and female referees have become more prominent in the sport. Dutch referee Jan Verhaas became the first non-Briton to referee a World Championship final in 2003, while Michaela Tabb became the first woman to do so in 2009. Tabb was the only woman refereeing on the professional tour when she joined it in 2002, but tournaments now routinely feature female referees such as Desislava Bozhilova, Maike Kesseler, and Tatiana Woollaston.
## Gameplay
### Equipment
A standard full-size snooker table measures 12 ft × 6 ft (365.8 cm × 182.9 cm), with a rectangular measuring 11 ft 8.5 in × 5 ft 10.0 in (356.9 cm × 177.8 cm). The playing surface is surrounded by small along each side of the table. The height of the table from the floor to the top of the cushions is 2 ft 10.0 in (86.4 cm). The table has six , one at each corner and one at the centre of each of the two longer side cushions. One drawback of using a full-size table is the amount of space required to accommodate it, which limits the locations where the game can easily be played. The minimum room size that allows space on all sides for comfortable cueing is 22 ft × 16 ft (6.7 m × 4.9 m). While pool tables are common to many pubs, snooker tends to be played either in private settings or in public snooker halls. The game can also be played on smaller tables, with variant table sizes including 10 ft × 5 ft (305 cm × 152 cm), 9 ft × 4.5 ft (274 cm × 137 cm), 8 ft × 4 ft (244 cm × 122 cm), and 6 ft × 3 ft (183 cm × 91 cm)
The cloth on a snooker table is usually a form of tightly woven woollen green baize, with a directional nap that runs lengthwise from the end of the table to the far end near the . The nap affects the speed and trajectory of the balls, depending on the direction of the shot and whether any is placed on the ball. Even if the is struck in precisely the same manner, the effect of the nap will differ according to whether the ball is directed towards the baulk line or towards the opposite end of the table. A snooker ball set consists of twenty-two unmarked balls: fifteen , six , and one white cue ball. The six colours are one each of yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black, although the brown and blue balls were not a part of the original rules. Each ball has a diameter of 2+1⁄16 inches (52.5 mm). At the start of the game, the red balls are racked into a tightly packed equilateral triangle and the six colours are positioned at designated on the table. The cue ball is placed inside the "D" ready for the shot. Each player has a cue stick (or simply a "cue"), not less than 3 ft (91.4 cm) in length, which is used to strike the cue ball. The of the cue must only make contact with the cue ball and is never used for striking any of the reds or colours directly.
Snooker accessories include: for the tip of the cue, used to help apply on the cue ball; various sorts of , such as the or for playing shots that are difficult to play by hand; for lengthening the cue stick; a for the reds; and a which is typically attached to a wall near the snooker table. A traditional snooker scoreboard resembles an abacus and records the scored by each player for the current frame in units and twenties, as well as the frame scores. A simple scoring bead is sometimes used, called a "scoring string" or "scoring wire". Each segment of the string (bead) represents one point as the players can move one or several beads along the string.
### Rules
#### Objective
A player wins a frame by scoring more points than their opponent. At the start of a frame, the are positioned on the table as shown in illustration A. Starting with the cue ball in the "D", the first player executes a break-off shot by striking the cue ball with the tip of their cue, aiming to hit any of the red balls in the triangular . The players then take alternating at playing shots, with the aim of a red ball into a pocket and thereby scoring one point. Failure to make contact with a red ball constitutes a , which results in penalty points being awarded to the opponent. At the end of each shot, the cue ball remains in the position where it has come to rest (unless it has entered a pocket, where it is returned to the "D") ready for the next shot. If the cue ball finishes in contact with an object ball, or a ball that could be an object ball, a is called. The player must then play away from that ball without moving it, or else the player will concede penalty points. When playing away from a touching ball, the player is not required to strike another object ball.
When a red ball enters a pocket, the striker must then pot a coloured ball (or "colour") of their choice. If successful, the value of the potted colour is added to the player's score, and the ball is returned to its designated spot on the table. (If a designated spot is unavailable, the colour is respotted on the spot of the highest available colour; if no spots are available, the colour is respotted as close as possible to its own spot without touching the obstructing ball towards the top cushion.) The player must then pot another red ball followed by another colour. The process of alternately potting reds and colours continues until the striker fails to pot the desired object ball or commits a foul—at which point the opponent comes to the table to start the next turn—or when there are no red balls remaining. Points accumulated by potting successive object balls are called a "" (see Scoring below). At the start of each player's turn, the objective is to first pot a red ball, unless all reds are off the table, or the player has been awarded a , which allows them to nominate another object ball instead of a red. The cue ball may contact an object ball directly or it can be made to bounce off one or more cushions before hitting the required object ball.
The game continues until every red ball has been potted and only the six colours and the cue ball are left on the table. The colours must next be potted in the ascending order of their values, from lowest to highest, i.e. first (worth two points), then (three points), (four points), (five points), (six points), and finally (seven points); each colour remains in the pocket after being potted. When the final ball is potted, the player with the most points wins the frame. If there are not enough points remaining on the table for a player to win the frame, that player may offer to concede the frame while at the table (but not while their opponent is still at the table); a frame concession is a common occurrence in professional snooker. Players will often play on even when there are not enough points available for them to win, hoping to force their opponent into playing foul shots by laying . These are shots that are designed to make playing a legal shot harder, such as leaving another ball between the cue ball and the object ball.
If the scores are equal when all of the object balls have been potted, the black is used as a tiebreaker. In this situation, called a "", the black ball is returned to its designated spot and the cue ball is played , meaning that it may be placed anywhere on or within the lines of the "D" to start the tiebreak. The referee then tosses a coin and the winner of the toss decides who takes the first strike. The game continues until one of the players either pots the black ball to win the frame, or commits a foul (losing the frame).
Professional and competitive amateur matches are officiated by a referee, who is charged with ensuring the proper conduct of players and making decisions "in the interests of fair play". The responsibilities of the referee include announcing the points scored during a break, determining when a foul has been committed and awarding penalty points and free balls accordingly, replacing colours onto their designated spots after they are potted, restoring the balls to their previous positions after the "miss" rule has been invoked (see Scoring), and cleaning the cue ball or any object ball upon request by the striker. Another duty of the referee is to recognise and declare a stalemate when neither player is able to make any progress in the frame. If both players agree, the balls are returned to their starting positions and the frame is restarted (known as a ""), with the same player taking the break-off shot as before. Professional players usually play the game in a sporting manner, declaring fouls they have committed which the referee has not noticed, acknowledging good shots from their opponent, and holding up a hand to apologise for a fortunate shot, known as a "fluke".
#### Scoring
Points in snooker are gained from potting the object balls in the correct sequence. The total number of consecutive points (excluding fouls) that a player amasses during one to the table is known as a "break". A player could achieve a break of 15, for example, by first potting a red followed by a black, then another red followed by a pink, before failing to pot the next red. Breaks of 100 points or more are referred to as a century break, and are recorded over the career of a professional player. A maximum break in snooker is achieved by potting all reds with blacks, then potting all six colours, yielding 147 points; this is often known as a "147" or a "maximum". As of 25 September 2022, there have been 178 officially confirmed maximum breaks achieved in professional competition.
Penalty points are awarded to a player when a foul is committed by the opponent. A foul can occur for various reasons, such as sending the cue ball into a pocket, or failing to hit the object ball. The latter is a common foul committed when a player fails to escape from a "", where the previous player has left the cue ball positioned such that no legal ball can be struck directly in a straight line without being wholly or partially obstructed by an illegal ball. Fouls incur a minimum of four penalty points unless a higher-value object ball is involved in the foul, up to a maximum of seven penalty points where the black ball is concerned. When a foul is committed, the offender's turn ends and the referee announces the penalty. All points scored in the break before the foul was committed are awarded to the striker, but no points are scored for any ball pocketed during the foul shot.
If dissatisfied with the position left after a foul, the next player may nominate the opponent who committed the foul to play again from where the balls have come to rest. If the referee has also called a "miss"—meaning that the referee has deemed the opponent not to have made their best possible attempt to hit the object ball—the player has the option of having the balls replaced to their original positions and forcing the opponent to play the shot again. If, after a foul, the next player cannot cleanly strike both sides of the object ball, the referee may call a free ball, allowing the player to nominate any other ball in place of the object ball they might normally have played. If a player is awarded a free ball with all 15 red balls still in play, they can potentially make a break exceeding 147, with the highest possible being a 155 break, achieved by nominating the free ball as an extra red, then potting the black as the additional colour after potting the free-ball red, followed by the 15 reds with blacks, and finally the colours. Jamie Cope was the first player to achieve a verified 155 break during a practice frame in 2005, with other players such as Alex Higgins claiming to have made a similar break.
One of snooker is called a "frame". A snooker generally consists of a predetermined number of frames. Most matches in current professional tournaments are played as the best of 7, 9, or 11 frames, with finals usually the best of 17 or 19 frames. The World Championship uses a longer format, with matches ranging from the best of 19 frames in the first round to best of 35 for the final, which is played over four of play held over two days. Some early world finals had much longer matches, such as the 1947 World Snooker Championship, which was played over the best of 145 frames.
## Governance and tournaments
### Professional
Professional snooker players compete on the World Snooker Tour, which is a circuit of world ranking tournaments and invitational events held throughout the snooker season. All competitions are open to professional players who have qualified for the tour, and selected amateur players, but most events include a separate qualification stage. Players can qualify for the tour by virtue of their position in the world rankings from prior seasons, by winning continental championships, or through the Challenge Tour or Q School events. Players on the World Snooker Tour generally gain a two-year "tour card" for participation in the events. Beginning in the 2014–15 season, some players have also received invitational tour cards in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the sport; these cards are issued at the discretion of the World Snooker Board, and have been awarded to players including Steve Davis, James Wattana, Jimmy White, and Stephen Hendry. Some additional secondary tours have been contested over the years. A two-tier structure was adopted for the 1997–98 snooker season; comprising six tournaments known as the WPBSA Minor Tour was open to all professionals, but only ran for one season. A similar secondary UK Tour was first played from the 1997–98 season, which was renamed the Challenge Tour in 2000, Players Tour Championship in 2010 and returned as the Challenge Tour in 2018.
The global governing body for professional snooker is the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), founded as the Professional Billiard Players' Association. The WPBSA owns and publishes the official rules of snooker, and has overall responsibility for policy-making in the professional sport of snooker. World Snooker Ltd is responsible for the professional tour which is owned by both the WPBSA and Matchroom Sport.
#### World rankings
Every player on the World Snooker Tour is assigned a position on the WPBSA's official world ranking list, which is used to determine the seedings and the level of qualification each player requires for the tournaments on the professional circuit. The current world rankings are determined using a two-year rolling points system, where points are allocated to the players according to the prize money earned at designated tournaments. This "rolling" list is maintained and updated throughout the season, with points from tournaments played in the current season replacing points earned from the corresponding tournaments of two seasons ago. Additionally, "one-year" and "two-year" ranking lists are compiled at the end of every season, after the World Championship; these year-end lists are used for pre-qualification at certain tournaments and for tour-card guarantees.
The top 16 players in the world ranking list, generally regarded as the "elite" of the professional snooker circuit, are not required to pre-qualify for some of the tournaments, such as the Shanghai Masters, the Masters and the World Snooker Championship. Certain other events, such as those in the Players Series, use the one-year ranking list to qualify; these use the results of the current season to denote participants. As of the 2020–21 season, there are 128 places available on the World Snooker Tour, with players either in the top 64 on the official ranking list, or finishing as one of the top eight prize money earners during the most recent season, guaranteed a tour place for the next season, this being assessed after the World Championship.
#### Tournaments
The oldest current professional snooker tournament is the World Snooker Championship, which has taken place as an annual event most years since 1927. Hosted since 1977 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, the championship was sponsored by tobacco company Embassy from 1976 to 2005, and has since been sponsored by various betting companies after the introduction of an EU-wide ban on advertising tobacco products. The Triple Crown tournaments are televised in the UK by the BBC, while most other tournaments are broadcast on the Eurosport network, or ITV Sport, as well as numerous other broadcasters internationally.
The World Championship is the most highly valued title in professional snooker, both in terms of financial reward (the tournament has carried a £500,000 winner's prize since 2019), ranking points, and prestige. The UK Championship, held annually since 1977, is considered to be the second most important ranking tournament, after the World Championship. These two events, and the annual non-ranking Masters tournament, make up the Triple Crown Series; being some of the oldest competitions on the professional circuit, the Triple Crown events are valued by many players as the most prestigious. Only eleven players have won all three Triple Crown events, as of 2022.
Snooker has faced criticism for matches taking too long. In response, Matchroom Sport chairman Barry Hearn introduced a series of timed tournaments. The shot-timed Premier League Snooker was held between 1987 and 2012, with seven players invited to compete at regular United Kingdom venues, and was televised on Sky Sports. Players had twenty-five seconds to take each shot, with five time-outs per player per match. Although some success was achieved with this format, it did not receive the same amount of press attention or status as the regular ranking tournaments. This event has been taken out of the tour since 2013, when the Champion of Champions was established. The event saw players qualify by virtue of winning other events in the season, with 16 champions competing.
In 2015, the WPBSA submitted an unsuccessful bid for snooker to be played at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Another bid has been put forward for the 2024 Summer Olympics through the World Snooker Federation, founded in 2017. A trial for the format for cue sports to be played at the 2024 games was put forward at the 2019 World Team Trophy, also featuring nine-ball and carom billiards. Snooker has been contested at the World Games since 2001, and was included as an event at the 2019 African Games.
### Amateur
Non-professional snooker (including youth competition) is governed by the International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF). Events held specifically for seniors are handled by the WPBSA under the World Seniors Tour. World Disability Billiards and Snooker (WDBS) is a WPBSA subsidiary that organises events and playing aids in snooker and other cue sports for people with disabilities. Snooker is a mixed gender sport that affords men and women the same opportunities to progress at all levels of the game. While the main professional tour is open to female players, there is also a separate women's tour organised by World Women's Snooker (formerly the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association) that encourages female players to participate in the sport. The winner of the World Women's Snooker Championship now receives a two-year tour card to the main professional tour.
The highest competition in the amateur sport is the IBSF World Snooker Championship, while the highest level of the senior sport is the World Seniors Championship. On the women's tour, the leading tournament is the World Women's Snooker Championship. The reigning champion is Reanne Evans who has held the women's world title twelve times since first winning the championship in 2005. Evans has also participated on the World Snooker Tour and has taken part in the qualifying rounds of the main world championship on five occasions, reaching the second round in 2017. The most prestigious amateur event in England is the English Amateur Championship; first held in 1916, this is the oldest snooker competition still being played in the world.
### Criticism
Several players, including Ronnie O'Sullivan, Mark Allen and Steve Davis, have claimed that there are too many tournaments in the season, causing burnout of players. O'Sullivan played only a subset of tournaments in 2012, so he could spend more time with his children; as a result he ended the 2012–13 season ranked 19th in the world despite being the world champion. O'Sullivan played only one tournament in 2013, the World Championship, which he won. He suggested that a "breakaway tour" with fewer events would be beneficial to the sport, but none was organised. The number of ranking events on the World Snooker Tour has continued to increase, from eight in 2002-3, to 11 in 2012-13, and 15 in 2022-23.
Some leagues have allowed clubs to exclude female players from tournaments. A committee member of the Keighley league defended allowing such teams in the league as necessity: "If we lose two of these clubs [with the men-only policies] we would lose four teams and we can't afford to lose four teams otherwise we would have no league." A World Women's Snooker spokesperson commented, "It is disappointing and unacceptable that in 2019 that [sic] players such as Rebecca Kenna have been the victim of antiquated discriminatory practices." The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Snooker said, "The group believes that being prevented from playing in a club because of gender is archaic."
## Important players
After the creation of the World Snooker Championship, snooker overcame billiards as the most popular cue sport in the United Kingdom. Joe Davis was world champion for twenty years, retiring unbeaten from the event after claiming his fifteenth world title in 1946 when the tournament was reinstated after the Second World War. He was only beaten on level terms by his brother Fred Davis, all coming after his retirement from the game. He did lose matches in handicapped tournaments, but on level terms these defeats were the only losses of his entire career.
By 1947, Fred Davis was deemed ready by his brother to become world champion, but lost the world final to Walter Donaldson. Fred Davis and Donaldson would contest the next four finals. After the abandonment of the World Championship in 1953, with the 1952 event boycotted by British professionals, the World Professional Match-play Championship became the unofficial world championship. Fred Davis won the tournament every year from 1952 to 1956, but did not enter the 1957 event. John Pulman won the 1957 event and was the most successful player of the 1960s, won the event seven times between April 1964 and March 1968 when the World Championship was contested on a challenge basis. This winning streak ended when the tournament reverted to a knockout format in 1969. Ray Reardon was the dominant force in the 1970s, winning six world titles (1970, 1973–1976, and 1978), and John Spencer won three (1969, 1971 and 1977).
Steve Davis (no relation to Joe or Fred) won his first World Championship in 1981, becoming the 11th world champion since 1927. He won six world titles (1981, 1983, 1984, and 1987–1989) and competed in the most-watched snooker match, the 1985 World Snooker Championship final, which he lost to Dennis Taylor. Stephen Hendry became the 14th world champion in 1990, aged 21 years and 106 days; he is the youngest player ever to have lifted the world title. Hendry dominated the sport through the 1990s, winning the World Championship seven times (1990, 1992–1996, and 1999).
Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the most world titles since 2000, having done so on seven occasions (2001, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2020 and 2022), while John Higgins and Selby have both won four times (Higgins in 1998, 2007, 2009, and 2011; Selby in 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2021), and Mark Williams three times (2000, 2003, and 2018). O'Sullivan is the only player to have made 1,000 career century breaks, and holds the record for the most maximum breaks compiled in professional competition, having achieved his 15th in October 2018. O'Sullivan also holds the record for the most ranking titles (39) and most Triple Crown titles (21) achieved in the sport.
## Variants
Some versions of snooker, such as six-red or ten-red snooker, are played with almost identical rules but with fewer object balls, reducing the time taken to play each frame. The Six-red World Championship, contested annually in Bangkok, Thailand, has been a regular fixture on the World Snooker Tour since 2012. The ten-red game has had a World Women's 10-Red Championship held annually in Leeds, England, from 2017 to 2019.
Geographic variations exist in the United States and Brazil, while speed versions of the standard game have been developed in the United Kingdom. American snooker is an amateur version of the game played almost exclusively in the United States. With simplified rules and generally played on smaller tables, this variant dates back to 1925. Sinuca brasileira (or "Brazilian snooker") is a variant of snooker played exclusively in Brazil, with fully divergent rules from the standard game, and using only one red ball instead of fifteen. At the start of the game, the single red is positioned halfway between the pink ball and the side cushion and the break-off shot cannot be used to pot the red or place the opponent in a snooker. The Snooker Shoot Out is a variant snooker tournament, first staged in 1990, featuring single-frame matches for an accelerated format. The idea was resurrected in 2011 with a modified version that was added to the professional tour in the 2010–11 season and upgraded to a ranking event in 2017.
Other games were designed with an increased number of object balls in play. One example is "snooker plus", which included two additional colours: an orange ball worth eight points positioned between pink and blue, and a purple ball worth 10 points positioned between brown and blue, increasing the maximum possible break to 210. Introduced at the 1959 News of the World Snooker Plus Tournament, this variant failed to gain popularity and is no longer played. Power Snooker was a short-lived cue sport based on aspects of snooker and pool, which was first played competitively as the 2010 Power Snooker Masters Trophy and again in 2011, but the format failed to gain widespread appeal and was discontinued. Using nine red balls racked in a diamond-shaped pack at the start of the game, the matches were limited to a fixed game-play period of 30 minutes. Tenball was a snooker variant designed specifically for the television show of the same name, presented by Phillip Schofield, which lasted for one series. A yellow and black ball worth ten points was added between the blue and pink, and the game had a slightly revised set of rules. Snookerpool is a variant of snooker that is played with traditional snooker balls on an American pool table with the larger pockets (11ft x 5.5ft).
## See also
|
28,426 |
Starship Troopers
| 1,169,566,799 |
1959 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein
|
[
"1959 American novels",
"1959 science fiction novels",
"Alien invasions in novels",
"American novels adapted into films",
"American philosophical novels",
"American science fiction novels",
"G. P. Putnam's Sons books",
"Hugo Award for Best Novel-winning works",
"Literature controversies",
"Military science fiction novels",
"Novels about extraterrestrial life",
"Novels by Robert A. Heinlein",
"Novels first published in serial form",
"Novels set on fictional planets",
"Starship Troopers",
"Works originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction"
] |
Starship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. Written in a few weeks in reaction to the US suspending nuclear tests, the story was first published as a two-part serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as Starship Soldier, and published as a book by G. P. Putnam's Sons on November 5, 1959.
The story is set in a future society ruled by a human interstellar government dominated by a military elite called the Terran Federation. Under this system, only veterans of the military enjoy full citizenship, including the right to vote. The first-person narrative follows Juan "Johnny" Rico, a young man of Filipino descent, through his military service in the Mobile Infantry. He progresses from recruit to officer against the backdrop of an interstellar war between humans and an alien species known as "Arachnids" or "Bugs". Interspersed with the primary plot are classroom scenes in which Rico and others discuss philosophical and moral issues, including aspects of suffrage, civic virtue, juvenile delinquency, and war; these discussions have been described as expounding Heinlein's own political views. Starship Troopers has been identified with a tradition of militarism in US science fiction, and draws parallels between the conflict between humans and the Bugs, and the Cold War. A coming-of-age novel, Starship Troopers also criticizes the US society of the 1950s, arguing that a lack of discipline had led to a moral decline, and advocates corporal and capital punishment.
Starship Troopers brought to an end Heinlein's series of juvenile novels. It became one of his best-selling books, and is considered his most widely known work. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960, and was praised by reviewers for its scenes of training and combat and its visualization of a future military. It also became enormously controversial because of the political views it seemed to support. Reviewers were strongly critical of the book's intentional glorification of the military, an aspect described as propaganda and likened to recruitment. The novel's militarism, and the fact that government service – most often military service – was a prerequisite to the right to vote in the novel's fictional society, led to it being frequently described as fascist. Others disagree, arguing that Heinlein was only exploring the idea of limiting the right to vote to a certain group of people. Heinlein's depiction of gender has also been questioned, while reviewers have said that the terms used to describe the aliens were akin to racial epithets.
Despite the controversy, Starship Troopers had wide influence both within and outside science fiction. Ken MacLeod stated that "the political strand in [science fiction] can be described as a dialogue with Heinlein". Science fiction critic Darko Suvin wrote that Starship Troopers is the "ancestral text of US science fiction militarism" and that it shaped the debate about the role of the military in society for many years. The novel has been credited with popularizing the idea of powered armor, which has since become a recurring feature in science fiction books and films, as well as an object of scientific research. Heinlein's depiction of a futuristic military was also influential. Later science fiction books, such as Joe Haldeman's 1974 anti-war novel The Forever War, have been described as reactions to Starship Troopers. The story has been adapted several times, including in a 1997 film version directed by Paul Verhoeven with screenplay by Edward Neumeier that sought to satirize what the director saw as the fascist aspects of the novel.
## Writing and publication
Robert Heinlein was among the best-selling science fiction authors of the 1940s and 1950s, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke; they were known as the "big three" that dominated US science fiction. In contrast to the others, Heinlein firmly endorsed the anti-communist sentiment of the Cold War era in his writing. Heinlein served in the US Navy for five years after graduating from the United States Naval Academy in 1929. His experience in the military profoundly influenced his fiction. At some point between 1958 and 1959, Heinlein put aside the novel that would become Stranger in a Strange Land and wrote Starship Troopers. His motivation arose partially from his anger at US President Dwight Eisenhower's decision to suspend US nuclear tests, and the Soviet tests that occurred soon afterward. Writing in his 1980 volume Expanded Universe, Heinlein would say that the publication of a newspaper advertisement placed by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy on April 5, 1958, calling for a unilateral suspension of nuclear weapons testing by the United States sparked his desire to write Starship Troopers. Heinlein and his wife Virginia created the "Patrick Henry League" in an attempt to create support for the US nuclear testing program. Heinlein stated that he used the novel to clarify his military and political views.
Like many of Heinlein's books, Starship Troopers was completed in a few weeks. It was originally written as a juvenile novel for New York publishing house Scribner; Heinlein had previously had success with this format, having written several such novels published by Scribner. The manuscript was rejected, prompting Heinlein to end his association with the publisher completely, and resume writing books with adult themes. Scholars have suggested that Scribner's rejection was based on ideological objections to the content of the novel, particularly its treatment of military conflict.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction first published Starship Troopers in October and November 1959 as a two-part serial titled Starship Soldier. A senior editor at Putnam's, Peter Israel, purchased the manuscript and approved revisions that made it more marketable to adults. Asked whether it was aimed at children or adults, he said at a sales conference "Let's let the readers decide who likes it." The novel was eventually published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.
## Setting
Set approximately 700 years from the time of writing, the human society in Starship Troopers is ruled by the Terran Federation, a world government managed by military veterans. The society is depicted as affluent, and futuristic technology shown as coexisting with educational methods from the 20th century. The rights of a full citizen, to vote and hold public office, are not universally guaranteed, but must be earned through Federal Service. Those who do not perform this service, which usually takes the form of military service, retain the rights of free speech and assembly, but cannot vote or hold public office. People of either sex above the age of 18 are permitted to enlist. Those who leave before completing their service do not receive the right to vote. Important government jobs are reserved for federal service veterans. This structure arose ad hoc after the collapse of the "20th century Western democracies", driven in part by an inability to control crime and juvenile delinquency, particularly in North America, and a war between an alliance of the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia against the "Chinese Hegemony".
Two extraterrestrial civilizations are also depicted: the "Pseudo-Arachnids" or "Bugs", and the "Skinnies". The "Bugs" are shown as communal beings originating from the planet of Klendathu. They have multiple castes; workers, warriors, brains, and queens, similar to ants and termites. The warriors are the only ones who fight, and are unable to surrender in battle. It is also implied that the Bugs are technologically advanced, possessing technologies like spaceships. The "Skinnies" are depicted as less communal than the Arachnids but more so than human beings. The events of the novel take place during an interstellar war between the Terran Federation and the Arachnids. At the beginning of the story, Earth is not at war, but war has been declared by the time Rico has completed his training. The Skinnies are initially allies of the Pseudo-Arachnids, but switch to being allies of the humans midway through the novel. Faster-than-light travel exists in this future: spacecraft operate under the "Cherenkov drive", and can travel "Sol to Capella, forty-six lightyears, in under six weeks".
Starship Troopers is narrated by the main protagonist Juan "Johnny" Rico, a member of the "Mobile Infantry". It is one of the few Heinlein novels which intersperses his typical linear narrative structure with a series of flashbacks. These flashbacks are frequently to Rico's History and Moral Philosophy course in school, in which the teacher discusses the history of the structure of their society. Rico is depicted as a man of Filipino ancestry. He is from a wealthy family, whose members had never served in the military. Rico's ancestry is depicted to be inconsequential, society having finally abandoned racial and gender-based prejudice.
## Plot
The novel opens with Rico aboard the corvette transport Rodger Young (named after Medal of Honor recipient Rodger Wilton Young), serving with the platoon known as "Rasczak's Roughnecks". The platoon carries out a raid against a planetary colony held by Skinnies. The raid is relatively brief: the platoon lands on the planet, destroys its targets, and retreats, suffering two casualties in the process. One of them, Dizzy Flores, is rescued by Rico but dies while returning to orbit. The narrative then flashes back to Rico's graduation from high school. Rico and his best friend Carl are considering joining the Federal Service after graduation; Rico is hesitant, partly due to his father's attitude towards the military. Rico makes his decision after discovering that his classmate Carmen Ibañez also intends to enlist.
Rico's choice is taken poorly by his parents, and he leaves with a sense of estrangement. He is assigned to the Mobile Infantry, and moves to Camp Arthur Currie (named for Arthur Currie who rose through the ranks to general in World War I) on the Canadian prairie for his training under Sergeant Charles Zim. The training is extremely demanding. Rico receives combat training of all types, including simulated fights in armored suits. A fellow recruit is court-martialed, flogged, and dismissed for striking a drill instructor who was also his company commander. Jean V. Dubois, who taught Rico's History and Moral Philosophy class in school, sends Rico a letter, revealing that he is a Mobile Infantry veteran himself. The letter helps Rico stay motivated enough not to resign. Rico himself is given five lashes for firing a rocket during a drill with armored suits and simulated nuclear weapons without ensuring that no friendlies were within the blast zone, which in combat would have resulted in the death of a fellow soldier. Another recruit, who murdered a baby girl after deserting the army, is hanged by his battalion after his arrest by civilian police. Eventually, after further training at another camp near Vancouver, Rico graduates with 187 others, of the 2,009 who had begun training in that regiment.
The "Bug War" has changed from minor incidents to a full-scale war during Rico's training. An Arachnid attack that annihilates the city of Buenos Aires alerts civilians to the situation; Rico's mother is killed in the attack. Rico participates in the Battle of Klendathu, an attack on the Arachnid's home world, which turns into a disastrous defeat for the Terran Federation. Rico's ship, the Valley Forge, is destroyed, and his unit is decimated; he is reassigned to the Roughnecks on board the Rodger Young, led by Lieutenant Rasczak and Sergeant Jelal. The unit carries out several raids, and Rico is promoted to corporal by Jelal, after Rasczak dies in combat.
One of his comrades in the Roughnecks suggests that Rico go to officer training school and try to become an officer. Rico ends up going to see Jelal, and finds that Jelal already had the paperwork ready. Rico enters Officer Candidate School for a second course of training, including further courses in "History and Moral Philosophy". En route from the Roughnecks to the school, Rico encounters his father, who has also enlisted and is now a corporal, and the two reconcile. He is also visited in school by Carmen, now an ensign and ship's pilot officer in the Navy, and the two discuss their friend Carl, who had been killed earlier in the war.
Rico is commissioned a temporary third lieutenant for his final test: a posting to a combat unit. Under the tutelage of his company commander, Captain Blackstone, and with the aid of his platoon sergeant, his boot camp drill instructor Fleet Sergeant Zim, who was reassigned from Mobile Infantry boot camp, Rico commands a platoon during "Operation Royalty" a raid to capture members of the Arachnid brain caste and queens. Rico then returns to the officer school to graduate.
The novel ends with him holding the rank of second lieutenant, in command of his old platoon in the Rodger Young, with his father as his platoon sergeant. The platoon has been renamed "Rico's Roughnecks", and is about to participate in an attack on Klendathu.
## Themes
Commentators have written that Starship Troopers is not driven by its plot, though it contains scenes of military combat. Instead, much of the novel is given over to a discussion of ideas. In particular, the discussion of political views is a recurring feature of what scholar Jeffrey Cass described as an "ideologically intense" book. A 1997 review in Salon categorized it as a "philosophical novel". Critics have debated to what extent the novel promotes Heinlein's own political views. Some contend that the novel maintains a sense of irony that allows readers to draw their own conclusions; others argue that Heinlein is sermonizing throughout the book, and that its purpose is to expound Heinlein's militaristic philosophy.
### Militarism
Starship Troopers has been identified as being a part of a tradition in US science fiction that assumes that violent conflict and the militarization of society are inevitable and necessary. Although the Mobile Infantry, the unit to which Rico is assigned, is seen as a lowly post by the characters in the story, the novel itself suggests that it is the heart of the army and the most honorable unit in it. In a commentary written in 1980, Heinlein agreed that Starship Troopers "glorifies the military ... Specifically the P.B.I., the Poor Bloody Infantry, the mudfoot who places his frail body between his loved home and the war's desolation – but is rarely appreciated ... he has the toughest job of all and should be honored." The story is based on the social Darwinist idea of society as a struggle for survival based on military strength. It suggests that some conflicts must be resolved by force: one of the lessons Rico is repeatedly taught is that violence can be an effective method of settling conflict. These suggestions derive in part from Heinlein's view that in the 1950s the US government was being too conciliatory in its dealings with communist China and the Soviet Union.
Heinlein draws an analogy between the human society in the novel, which is well-to-do but needs to be vigilant against the imperialist threat of the Arachnids, and US society of the 1950s. Reviewers have suggested that the Arachnids are Heinlein's analogue for communists. Traits used to support this include the communal nature of the Arachnids, which makes them capable of a much higher degree of coordination than the humans. Bug society is once explicitly described as communist, and is moreover depicted as communist by nature; this has been read as implying that those with a different political ideology are analogous to alien beings. The related motifs of alien invasion, patriotism, and personal sacrifice during war, are present, as are other aspects of US popular culture of the 1950s. Commentators have argued that Heinlein's portrayal of aliens, as well as being a reference to people in communist countries, invokes the trope of a return to the frontier. The concept of the frontier includes a social-Darwinist argument of constantly fighting for survival, even at the expense of indigenous people or, in the case of Starship Troopers, of aliens. Heinlein suggests that without territorial expansion involving violent conquest of other races, humans would be destroyed. Scholar Jamie King has stated that Heinlein does not address the question of what the military government and Federal Service would do in peacetime, and argues that Heinlein has set up a society designed to be continuously at war, and to keep expanding its territory.
### Coming of age
Starship Troopers has been referred to as a bildungsroman or "coming-of-age" story for Rico, as he matures through his tenure in the infantry. His training, both at boot camp and at officer candidate school, involves learning the value of militarism, thus inviting the reader to learn it as well. This is especially true of the parts of his training that involve indoctrination, such as the claim by one of his instructors that rule by military veterans is the ideal form of government, because only they understand how to put collective well-being above the individual. The story traces Rico's transformation from a boy into a soldier, while exploring issues of identity and motivation, and traces his overall moral and social development, in a manner identified by commentators as similar to many stories about German soldiers in World War I. Rico's transformation has been likened to the common narrative within stories with military themes by scholar H. Bruce Franklin. This typical narrative is that of a sloppy and unfit civilian being knocked into shape by tough officers, whose training is "calculated sadism" but is depicted as fundamentally being on the right side. The letter Rico receives from Dubois, partly responsible for Rico "crossing the hump" with his training, is shown as a turning point in his development. The classroom scenes embedded in the story serve to explain Rico's adventures, and highlight his reactions to events around. A notable example is the execution Rico is forced to witness after a deserter from his unit murders a young girl; Rico is uncertain of his own reaction until he remembers a lecture by Dubois in which the latter argues that "moral sense" derives entirely from the will to survive. The concept of the American frontier is also related to the coming-of-age theme. Young protagonists across Heinlein's novels attain manhood by confronting a hostile "wilderness" in space; coming-of-age in a military, alien context is a common theme in Heinlein's earlier works as well. Rico's coming-of-age has also been described as being related to his relationship with his father; the journey "outward" through the novel also contains a search for Rico's childhood and a reunion with his estranged parent.
### Moral decline
Starship Troopers also critiques US society of the 1950s, suggesting that it led young people to be spoiled and undisciplined. These beliefs are expressed through the classroom lectures of Dubois, Rico's teacher for History and Moral Philosophy. Dubois praises flogging and other types of corporal punishment as a means of addressing juvenile crimes. It has been suggested that Heinlein endorsed this view, although the fact that Dubois also compares raising children to training a puppy has been used to argue that Heinlein was making use of irony. The story is strongly in favor of corporal punishment and capital punishment, as a means of correcting juvenile delinquents, part of a trend in science fiction which examines technology and outer space in an innovative manner, but is reactionary with respect to human relationships. As with other books by Heinlein, traditional schools are denigrated, while learning "on the spot" is extolled: Rico is able to master the things required of him in military training without undue difficulty.
Dubois also ridicules the idea of inalienable rights, such as "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", arguing that people have only the rights that they are willing to fight and die for to protect. The novel appeals to scientific authority to justify this position; Dubois repeatedly states that his argument is mathematically demonstrable, statements which have led scholars to label the novel "hard science fiction", despite its social and political themes. The "moral decline" caused by this situation is depicted as having caused a global war between an alliance of the US, Britain, and Russia against the "Chinese Hegemony" in the year 1987. Despite the alliance between the US and Russia, this war has been described as demonstrating Heinlein's anti-communist beliefs, which saw "swarming hordes" of Chinese as a bigger threat. The novel draws some comparisons between the Chinese and the Arachnids, and suggests that the lessons of one war could be applied to the other.
## Reception
To Heinlein's surprise, Starship Troopers won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960. It has been acknowledged as one of the best-known and most influential works of science fiction. The novel is considered a landmark for the genre, having been described by a 1960 review as one of the ten best genre books of 1959, in a 2009 review as a key science fiction novel of the 1950s, and as the best-known example of military science fiction. It was also a personal landmark for Heinlein; it was one of his best-selling books, and is one of his most widely known novels. The novel has been described as marking Heinlein's transition from writing juvenile fiction to a "more mature phase" as an author. Reviewing the book with others written for children, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction wrote in 1960 that "Heinlein has penned a juvenile that really is not. This is a new and bitter and disillusioned Heinlein". Rating it 2.5 stars out of five for children, 4.5 stars for adults, and "?" for civilians, he believed that the novel would be "of exceptional interest to veterans with battle experience ... but youngsters will find it melancholy and verbose". Conversely, Michael Moorcock described it as Heinlein's last "straight" science fiction, before he turned to more serious writing such as Stranger in a Strange Land.
By 1980, twenty years after its release, Starship Troopers had been translated into eleven languages and was still selling strongly. Heinlein nevertheless complained that, despite this success, almost all the mail he received about it was negative and he only heard about it "when someone wants to chew me out". The novel is highly contentious. Controversy surrounded its praise of the military and approval of violence, to the extent that it has frequently been described as fascist, and its implication that militarism is superior to traditional democracy. Heinlein's peers were among those who argued over the book; a comparison between a quote in Starship Troopers that "the noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and war's desolation" and the anti-war poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen began a two-year discussion in the Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies from 1959 to 1961, with James Blish, Poul Anderson, Philip José Farmer, Anthony Boucher, John Brunner, Brian Aldiss, among those debating Starship Troopers's quality of writing, philosophy, and morality.
The writing in Starship Troopers has received varied responses, with the scenes of military training and combat receiving praise. In a 2009 retrospective, science-fiction writer Jo Walton wrote that Starship Troopers was "military SF done extremely well". She went on to argue that "Heinlein was absolutely at his peak when he wrote this in 1959. He had so much technical stylistic mastery of the craft of writing science fiction that he could [tell the story] 'backwards and in high heels' and get away with it." Others referred to it as very readable, and found the military scenes compelling. Heinlein's descriptions of training and boot camp in the novel, based on his own experiences in the military, have been described as being rendered with remarkable skill. A 1960 review in the New York Herald Tribune praised the "brilliantly written" passages describing infantry combat, and also called attention to the discussion of weapons and armor, which, according to other reviewers, demonstrated Heinlein's "undiminished talent for invention". Scholar George Slusser described the book in 1986 as the "ultimately convincing space-war epic", praising in particular the "precisely imagined" weapons and tactics, while a 1979 science fiction encyclopedia referred to it as the "slickest" of Heinlein's juvenile books.
Criticism of the style of the book has centered on its political aspects. Heinlein's discussions of his political beliefs were criticized as "didactic", and the novel was derided for "exposition [that was] inserted in large indigestible chunks". Author Ken MacLeod's 2003 analysis of the political nature of Starship Troopers stated that it was "a book where civics infodumps and accounts of brutal boot-camp training far outweigh the thin and tensionless combat scenes". Scientist and author Brunner compared it to a "Victorian children's book", while the Science Fiction Handbook published in 2009 said that the novel provided "compelling images of a futuristic military" and that it raised important questions, even for those who disagree with its political ideology. However, it stated that the story was weak as a tale of an alien encounter, as it did not explore alien society in any detail, but presented the Arachnids as nameless and faceless creatures that wished to destroy humanity. Boucher, founder of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, remarked in 1960 that Heinlein had "forgotten to insert a story". A 1979 summary said that though Heinlein's vision might verge on fascism, his tightly controlled narrative made his ideology seem "vibrantly appealing".
### Criticism of militarism
Starship Troopers is generally considered to promote militarism, the glorification of war and of the military. Scholar Bruce Franklin referred to it in 1980 as a "bugle-blowing, drum-beating glorification" of military service, and wrote that militarism and imperialism were the explicit message of the book. Science fiction writer Dean McLaughlin called it "a book-length recruiting poster". In 1968 science fiction critic Alexei Panshin called Starship Troopers a militaristic polemic and compared it to a recruiting film, stating that it "purports to show the life of a typical soldier, with a soundtrack commentary by earnest sincere Private Jones who interprets what we see for us." Panshin stated that there was no "sustained human conflict" in the book: instead, "All the soldiers we see are tough, smart, competent, cleancut, clean-shaven, and noble." Panshin, a veteran of the peacetime military, argued that Heinlein glossed over the reality of military life, and that the Terran Federation-Arachnid conflict existed simply because, "Starship troopers are not half so glorious sitting on their butts polishing their weapons for the tenth time for lack of anything else to do." Literature scholar George Slusser, in describing the novel as "wrong-headed and retrogressive", argued that calling its ideology militarism or imperialism was inadequate, as these descriptions suggested an economic motive. Slusser instead says that Heinlein advocates for a complete "technological subjugation of nature", of which the Arachnids are a symbol, and that this subjugation itself is depicted as a sign of human advancement.
A 1997 review of the film in Salon stated that the novel could almost be described as propaganda, and was terrifying as a result, particularly in its belief that the boot camp had to be an ingredient of any civilization. This was described as a highly unusual utopian vision. Moorcock stated that the lessons Rico learns in boot camp: "wars are inevitable, [and] that the army is always right". In discussing the book's utility in classroom discussions of the form of government, Alan Myers stated that its depiction of the military was of an "unashamedly Earth-chauvinist nature". In the words of science fiction scholar Darko Suvin, Starship Troopers was an "unsubtle but powerful black-and-white paean to combat life", and an example of agitprop in favor of military values.
Other writers defended Heinlein. George Price argued that "[Heinlein] implies, first, that war is something endured, not enjoyed, and second, that war is so unpleasant, so desolate, that it must at all costs be kept away from one's home." Poul Anderson also defended some of the novel's positions, arguing "Heinlein has recognized the problem of selective versus nonselective franchise, and his proposed solution does merit discussion." Complaints were made against Heinlein for the lack of conscription in Starship Troopers. When he wrote the novel, the military draft was still in effect in the US.
### Allegations of fascism
The society within the book has frequently been described as fascist. According to the 2009 Science Fiction Handbook, it had the effect of giving Heinlein a reputation as a "fanatical warmongering fascist". Scholar Jeffrey Cass has referred to the setting of the book as "unremittingly grim fascism". He has stated that the novel made an analogy between its military conflict and those of the US after World War II, and that it justified American imperialism in the name of fighting another form of imperialism. Jasper Goss has referred to it as "crypto-fascist". Suvin compares Heinlein's suggestion that "all wars arise from population pressure" to the Nazi concept of Lebensraum or "living space" for a superior society that was used to justify territorial expansion.
Some reviewers have suggested that Heinlein was simply discussing the merits of a selective versus a nonselective franchise. Heinlein made a similar claim, over two decades after Starship Troopers'''s publication, in his Expanded Universe and further claimed that 95 percent of "veterans" were not military personnel but members of the civil service. Heinlein's own description has been disputed, even among the book's defenders. Heinlein scholar James Gifford has argued that a number of quotes within the novel suggest that the characters within the book assume that the Federal Service is largely military. For instance, when Rico tells his father that he is interested in Federal Service, his father immediately explains his belief that Federal Service is a bad idea because there is no war in progress, indicating that he sees Federal Service as military in nature. Gifford states that although Heinlein's intentions may have been that Federal Service be 95 percent non-military, in relation to the actual contents of the book, Heinlein "is wrong on this point. Flatly so."
Dennis Showalter, writing in 1975, defended Starship Troopers, stating that the society depicted in it did not contain many elements of fascism. He argues that the novel does not include outright opposition to Bolshevism and liberalism that would be expected in a fascist society. Others have responded by saying Showalter's argument is based on a literal reading of the novel, and that the story glorifies militarism to a large extent. Ken Macleod argues that the book does not actually advocate fascism because anybody capable of understanding the oath of Federal Service is able to enlist and thereby obtain political power. Macleod states that Heinlein's books are consistently liberal, but cover a spectrum from democratic to elitist forms of liberalism, Starship Troopers being on the latter end of the spectrum. It has been argued that Heinlein's militarism is more libertarian than fascist, and that this trend is also present in Heinlein's other popular books of the period, such as Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966). This period of Heinlein's writing has received more critical attention than any other, although he continued to write into the 1980s.
### Apparent utopianism
The setting of the book is presented by Heinlein as utopian; its leaders are shown as good and wise, and the population as free and prosperous. Slusser wrote in 1987 that Starship Troopers depicts a world that is "hell for human beings", but nonetheless celebrates the ideology of its fictional society. The rulers are claimed to be the best in history, because they understand that human nature is to fight for power through the use of force. The suggestion of utopia is not explored in depth, as the lives of those outside the military are not shown in any detail. The novel suggests that the militarist philosophy espoused by many of the characters has a mathematical backing, though reviewers have commented that Heinlein does not present any basis for this.
Writers such as Farmer, Robert A. W. Lowndes, and Michael Moorcock have criticized the novel for being a hypothetical utopia, in the sense that while Heinlein's ideas sound plausible, they have never been put to the test. Moorcock wrote an essay entitled "Starship Stormtroopers" in which he attacked Heinlein and other writers over similar "Utopian fiction". Lowndes accused Heinlein of using straw man arguments, "countering ingenuous half-truths with brilliant half-truths". Lowndes further argued that the Terran Federation could never be as idealistic as Heinlein portrays it to be because he never properly addressed "whether or not [non-citizens] have at least as full a measure of civil redress against official injustice as we have today". Farmer agreed, arguing that a "world ruled by veterans would be as mismanaged, graft-ridden, and insane as one ruled by men who had never gotten near the odor of blood and guts".
### Race and gender
Authors and commentators have stated that the manner in which the extraterrestrial beings are portrayed in Starship Troopers has racist aspects, arguing that the nicknames "Bugs" and "Skinnies" carry racial overtones. John Brunner compared them to calling Koreans "gooks". Slusser argued that the term "Bugs" was an "abusive and biologically inaccurate" word that justified the violence against alien beings, a tendency which, according to Slusser, the book shared with other commercially successful science fiction.
Some of Heinlein's other works have also been described as racist, though Franklin argues that this was not unique to Heinlein, and that he was less racist than the US government of the time. Heinlein's early novel Sixth Column was called a "racist paean" to a white resistance movement against an Asian horde derived from the Yellow Peril. In 1978, Moorcock wrote that Starship Troopers "set the pattern for Heinlein's more ambitious paternalistic, xenophobic" stories. Robert Lowndes argues that the war between the Terrans and the Arachnids is not about a quest for racial purity, but rather an extension of Heinlein's belief that man is a wild animal. According to this theory, if man lacks a moral compass beyond the will to survive, and he was confronted by another species with a similar lack of morality, then the only possible moral result would be warfare.
The fact that all pilots in the novel are women (in contrast to the infantry, which is entirely male) has been cited as evidence of progressive gender politics within the story, although the idea expressed by Rico that women are the motivation for men to fight in the military is a counter-example to this. A 1996 science fiction encyclopedia said that like much of Heinlein's fiction, Starship Troopers exemplified "macho male culture". The prosthetically enhanced soldiers in the novel, all of whom are men, have been described as an example of the "hyper-masculinity" brought on by the proximity of these men to technology. The story portrays the Arachnids as so alien that the only response to them can be war. Feminist scholars have described this reaction as a "conventionally masculinist" one. Steffen Hantke has described the mechanized suits in the novel, which make the wearer resemble a "steel gorilla," as defining masculinity as "something intensely physical, based on animal power, instinct, and aggression". He calls this form of masculinity "all body, so to speak, and no brain". Thus, in Hantke's reading, Starship Troopers expresses fears of how masculinity may be preserved in an environment of high technology. This fear is exacerbated by the motifs of pregnancy and birth that Heinlein uses when describing how the soldiers in suits are dropped from spaceships piloted by women. Though Rico says he finds women "marvelous", he shows no desire for sexual activity; the war seems to have subsumed sex in this respect. A 1979 summary argued that despite the gestures towards women's equality, women in the story were still objects, to be protected, and to fight wars over.
## Influence
Heinlein's books, and Starship Troopers in particular, had an enormous impact on political science fiction, to the extent that author Ken MacLeod has stated that "the political strand in [science fiction] can be described as a dialogue with Heinlein," although many participants in this dialogue disagree with Heinlein. Science fiction critic Darko Suvin states that Starship Troopers is the "ancestral text of US science fiction militarism" and that it shaped the debate about the role of the military in society for many years.
In addition to his political views, Heinlein's ideas about a futuristic military as depicted in the novel were deeply influential among films, books, and television shows in later years. Roger Beaumont has suggested that Starship Troopers may some day be considered a manual for extraterrestrial warfare. Suvin refers to Juan Rico as the "archetypal Space Soldier". Starship Troopers included concepts in military engineering which have since been widely used in other fiction, and which have occasionally been paralleled by scientific research. The novel has been cited as the source of the idea of powered armor exoskeletons, which Heinlein describes in great detail. Such suits became a staple of military science fiction. Franchises that have employed this technology include Iron Man, Exo Squad, Halo, District 9, Elysium, and Edge of Tomorrow. During the shooting of the classic science fiction film Aliens, director James Cameron required the actors playing space marines to read Starship Troopers to understand their parts, and also cited it as an influence for the space drop, terms like "bug hunt", and the cargo-loader exoskeleton.
Starship Troopers had a direct influence on many later science fiction stories. John Steakley's 1984 novel Armor was, according to the author, born out of frustration with the small amount of actual combat in Starship Troopers and because he wanted this aspect developed further. The 1988 Gainax OVA series Gunbuster has plot elements similar to Heinlein's novel, depicting humanity arrayed against an alien military. Scholars have identified elements of Heinlein's influence in Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, as well. Hantke, in particular, compares the battle room in Ender's Game to Heinlein's prosthetic suits, stating that they both regulate but also enhance human agency. Suvin suggests parallels between the plots of the two novels, with human society in both stories at war against insect-like aliens, but states that the story of Ender Wiggin takes a very different direction, as Ender regrets his genocidal actions and dedicates his efforts to protecting his erstwhile targets.
Conversely, Joe Haldeman's 1974 anti-war, Hugo- and Nebula-winning science fiction novel The Forever War is popularly thought to be a direct reply to Starship Troopers, and though Haldeman has stated that it is actually a result of his personal experiences in the Vietnam War, he has admitted to being influenced by Starship Troopers. Haldeman said that he disagreed with Starship Troopers because it "glorifies war", but added that "it's a very well-crafted novel, and I believe Heinlein was honest with it". The Forever War contains several parallels to Starship Troopers, including its setting. Commentators have described it as a reaction to Heinlein's novel, a suggestion Haldeman denies; the two novels are very different in terms of their attitude towards the military. The Forever War does not depict war as a noble pursuit, with the sides clearly defined as good and evil; instead, the novel explores the dehumanizing effect of war, influenced by the real world context of the Vietnam War. Haldeman received a letter from Heinlein, congratulating him on his Nebula Award, which "meant more than the award itself". According to author Spider Robinson, Heinlein approached Haldeman at the awards banquet and said the book "may be the best future war story I've ever read!"
Harry Harrison's 1965 novel Bill, the Galactic Hero has also been described as a reaction to Starship Troopers, while Gordon R. Dickson's 1961 novel Naked to the Stars has been called "an obvious rejoinder" to Starship Troopers. Ring of Swords, written by Eleanor Arnason in 1993, also depicts a war between two highly aggressive species, of which humans are one. The story deliberately inverts several aspects of Starship Troopers: the story is told from the point of view of diplomats seeking to prevent war, rather than soldiers fighting it, and the conflict is the result of the two species being extremely similar, rather than different.
## Adaptations
### 1997 film
The film rights to the novel were licensed in the 1990s, several years after Heinlein's death. The project was originally entitled Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine, and had been in production before the producers bought the rights to Starship Troopers. The film was directed by Paul Verhoeven (who found the book too boring to finish), and released in 1997. The screenplay, by Ed Neumeier, shared character names and some plot details with the novel. The film contained several elements that differed from the book, including a military that is completely integrated with respect to sex. It had the stated intention of treating its material in an ironic or sarcastic manner, to undermine the political ideology of the novel. The mechanized suits that featured prominently in the novel were absent from the film, due to budget constraints.
The film utilized fascist imagery throughout, including portraying the Terran Federation's personnel wearing uniforms strongly reminiscent of those worn by the SS, the Nazi paramilitary. Verhoeven stated in 1997 that the first scene of the film – an advertisement for the Mobile Infantry – was adapted shot-for-shot from a scene in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935), specifically an outdoor rally for the Reichsarbeitsdienst. Other references to Nazism include the Albert Speer-style architecture and the propagandistic dialogue ("Violence is the supreme authority!"). According to Verhoeven, the references to Nazism reflected his own experience in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II.
The film reignited the debate over the nature of the Terran society in Heinlein's world, and several critics accused Verhoeven of creating a fascist universe. Others, and Verhoeven himself, have stated that the film was intended to be ironic, and to critique fascism. The film has also been described as criticizing the jingoism of US foreign policy, the military industrial complex, and the society in the film, which elevates violence over sensitivity. It received several negative critical reviews, reviewers suggesting that it was unsophisticated and targeted a juvenile audience, although some scholars and critics have also supported its description as satirical. The absence of the powered armor technology drew criticism from fans. The success of the film's endeavor to critique the ideology of the novel has been disputed.
Four sequels, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004), Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008), Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017) were released as straight-to-DVD films. In December 2011, Neal H. Moritz, producer of films such as the Fast & Furious series and I Am Legend, announced plans for a remake of the film that he claims will be more faithful to the source material. In 2016 Mark Swift and Damian Shannon were reported to be writing the film. Commentators have suggested that a reboot would be as controversial as the original book.
### Other media
From October to December 1988, Sunrise and Bandai Visual produced a six-episode Japanese original video animation locally titled Uchū no Senshi with mobile infantry power armor designs by Kazutaka Miyatake, based on Starship Troopers. Dark Horse Comics, Mongoose Publishing and Markosia hold the license to produce comic books based on Starship Troopers, written by authors including Warren Ellis, Gordon Rennie and Tony Lee. Avalon Hill published Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers in 1976, a map-and-counter board wargame featuring a number of scenarios as written in the novel. In 1998, Mythic Entertainment released Starship Troopers: Battlespace. The web-based interactive game, in which players battled each other in overhead space combat, allowed players to assume either Klendathu or Federation roles, was developed alongside the film adaptation. Starship Troopers: The Miniatures Game was released by Mongoose Publishing in 2005, a miniature wargame which used material from the novel, film, and animated TV series. Spectre Media released Starship Troopers: Invasion Mobile Infantry'', a game for PCs, in 2012.
|
17,932,255 |
Manchester Mummy
| 1,128,917,798 |
Body of woman who had a fear of premature burial
|
[
"1688 births",
"1758 deaths",
"Folklore of Greater Manchester",
"Mummies",
"People from Oldham",
"University of Manchester"
] |
Hannah Beswick (1688 – February 1758), of Birchin Bower, Hollinwood, Oldham, Greater Manchester, was a wealthy woman who had a pathological fear of premature burial. Following her death in 1758, her body was embalmed and kept above ground, to be periodically checked for signs of life.
The method of embalming was not recorded, but it probably involved replacing the blood with a mixture of turpentine and vermilion. The body was then put in an old clock case and stored in the house of Beswick's family physician, Dr Charles White. Beswick's apparently eccentric will made her a local celebrity, and visitors were allowed to view her at White's house.
Beswick's mummified body was eventually bequeathed to the Museum of the Manchester Natural History Society, where she was put on display and acquired the soubriquet of the Manchester Mummy, or the Mummy of Birchin Bower. The museum's collection was later transferred to Manchester University when it was decided, with the permission of the Bishop of Manchester, that Beswick should finally be buried. The ceremony took place at Harpurhey Cemetery on 22 July 1868, more than 110 years after her death; the grave is unmarked.
## Background
The mid-18th century saw an upsurge in the public's fear of being mistakenly buried alive, and much debate about the uncertainty of the signs of death. Various suggestions were made to test for signs of life before burial, ranging from pouring vinegar and pepper into the corpse's mouth to applying red hot pokers to the feet, or even into the rectum. Writing in 1895, the physician J. C. Ouseley claimed that as many as 2,700 people were buried prematurely each year in England and Wales; J. Stenson Hooker estimated the figure to be closer to 800.
Hannah Beswick was born in 1688, the daughter of John and Patience Beswick, of Cheetwood Old Hall, Manchester. She inherited considerable wealth from her father who died in 1706. Some years before her own death, one of Hannah's brothers, John, had shown signs of life just as his coffin lid had been about to be closed. A mourner noticed that John's eyelids appeared to be flickering, and on examination the family physician, Dr Charles White, confirmed that he was still alive. John regained consciousness a few days later, and lived for many more years.
Jessie Dobson, Recorder of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, has said that there appear to be many "inaccuracies and contradictions" in accounts of the events following Beswick's death in 1758. Many suggest that she left £25,000 (equivalent to about £ as of ) to White, a pioneer of obstetrics and one of the founders of the Manchester Royal Infirmary, on the condition that her body was kept above ground, and that periodically she was to be checked for signs of life. Beswick's will, however, dated 25 July 1757 (less than a year before her death), states only that White was to receive £100 (£ as of ), and that £400 (£ as of ) was to be allocated for funeral expenses. Some accounts have suggested that White was an executor of Beswick's will and that he received the £400 himself, from which he was permitted to keep any surplus after the funeral expenses had been paid. Having Beswick embalmed, therefore, allowed him to keep the whole amount. Alternatively, it has been suggested that White was considerably in debt to Beswick, a debt that would have to be repaid after the funeral, which was avoided by her embalming, but Beswick's will names Mary Graeme and Esther Robinson as her executors, not White. In 1866, more than 100 years after her death, the details of Beswick's will were still being disputed.
## Embalming
There is no mention in Beswick's 1757 will of her desire to be embalmed. It has been suggested that White had been asked to keep Beswick above ground only until it became obvious that she was actually dead, but that he was unable to resist the temptation to add a mummy to his collection of "wet and dry" exhibits, and so made the decision to embalm her. White had developed a particular interest in anatomy while studying medicine in London and was building up a collection of "curiosities", which by the time of his death included the skeleton of Thomas Higgins, a highwayman and sheep-stealer hanged for burglary, as well as Hannah Beswick's mummy.
The method of embalming used by White is unrecorded, but in 1748 he had studied under the anatomist William Hunter, who had developed an early system of arterial embalming; therefore, it is likely that White used the same method. The veins and arteries would have been injected with a mixture of turpentine and vermilion, after which the organs would have been removed from the chest and then the abdomen placed in water, to clean them and to reduce their bulk. As much blood as possible would then have been squeezed out of the corpse, and the whole body washed with alcohol. The next stage would have been to replace the organs and to repeat the injection of turpentine and vermilion. The body cavities would then have been filled with a mixture of camphor, nitre and resin, before the body was sewn up and all openings filled with camphor. After a final washing, the body would have been packed into a box containing plaster of Paris, to absorb any moisture, and then probably coated with tar, to preserve it.
## Display
Beswick's mummified body was initially kept at Ancoats Hall, the home of another Beswick family member, but it was soon moved to a room in Dr White's home in Sale, Manchester, where it was stored in an old clock case. Beswick's apparently eccentric will made her a celebrity; the author Thomas de Quincey was one of those who went to view her at White's house. Following White's death in 1813, Beswick's body was bequeathed to a Dr Ollier, on whose death in 1828 it was donated to the Museum of the Manchester Natural History Society, where she became known as the Manchester Mummy, or the Mummy of Birchin Bower. She was displayed in the museum's entrance hall, next to a Peruvian and an Egyptian mummy, and her relatives were allowed free access to visit her as they wished. She was described by a visitor in 1844 as "one of the most remarkable objects in the museum". The "cold dark shadow of her mummy hung over Manchester in the middle of the eighteenth century", according to writer Edith Sitwell.
There are no pictures of Hannah Beswick. One of the few contemporary accounts of her is provided by Philip Wentworth, a local historian:
> The body was well preserved but the face was shrivelled and black. The legs and trunks were tightly bound in a strong cloth such as is used for bed ticks [a stiff kind of mattress cover material] and the body, which was that of a little old woman, was in a glass coffin-shaped case.
Shortly after the museum's transfer to Manchester University in 1867, it was decided that as Beswick was "irrevocably and unmistakably dead", the time had come for her to be buried. However, since 1837, UK law had required that a medical examiner issue a certificate of death before a burial could take place; as Beswick had died in 1758, an appeal had to be made to the Secretary of State, who issued an order for her burial. With the permission of the Bishop of Manchester, Hannah Beswick was interred in an unmarked grave in Harpurhey Cemetery on 22 July 1868, more than 110 years after her death.
## Treasure and alleged apparitions
Bonnie Prince Charlie entered Manchester at the head of his invading army in 1745, causing Beswick some apprehension over the safety of her money, which she therefore decided to bury. Shortly before her death, she promised to show her relatives where the treasure was hidden, but she did not survive long enough to do so. Her home, Birchin Bower, was converted into workers' tenements following her death. Several of those living there claimed to have seen a figure dressed in a black silk gown and a white cap, and described it as Hannah Beswick. After gliding across the house's parlour, the apparition would vanish at one particular flagstone. It is claimed that while digging to fit a new loom soon after Beswick's death, a weaver living there discovered Beswick's hoard of gold, hidden underneath that same flagstone. Oliphant's, a Manchester gold dealer, paid the weaver £3 10s for each gold piece, the equivalent of almost £ in .
Birchin Bower was eventually demolished to make way for a Ferranti factory, but sightings of the apparition were still reported.
When Beswick's family home, Cheetwood Old Hall, was demolished in 1890 to make way for a brickyard, contractors discovered a double coffin buried underneath the drawing room; the mystery of the burial was never solved, but at the time it was thought to be connected to the Beswick family and Dr White, who had resided at the hall after Hannah Beswick removed to Oldham.
|
843,918 |
Barthélemy Boganda
| 1,169,794,280 |
Premier of the Central African Republic from 1958 to 1959
|
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"1910 births",
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"20th-century Roman Catholic priests",
"Central African Republic Roman Catholics",
"Central African Republic independence activists",
"Central African Republic pan-Africanists",
"Civil rights activists",
"Deputies of the 1st National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic",
"Deputies of the 1st National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic",
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"Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa politicians",
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"People of French Equatorial Africa",
"Prime Ministers of the Central African Republic",
"State leaders killed in aviation accidents or incidents",
"Unsolved deaths",
"Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1959",
"Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the Central African Republic"
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Barthélemy Boganda ( – 29 March 1959) was a Central African politician and independence activist. Boganda was active prior to his country's independence, during the period when the area, part of French Equatorial Africa, was administered by France under the name of Oubangui-Chari. He served as the first Premier of the Central African Republic as an autonomous territory.
Boganda was born into a family of farmers, and was adopted and educated by Roman Catholic missionaries after the deaths of his parents. In 1938, he was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. During World War II, Boganda served in a number of missions and afterwards was persuaded by the Bishop of Bangui to enter politics. In 1946, he became the first Oubanguian elected to the National Assembly of France, where he spoke out against racism and the abuses of the colonial regime. He then returned to Oubangui-Chari to form a political organisation, culminating in the 1949 foundation of the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (MESAN), which became popular among villagers and the peasantry. Boganda was laicized from the priesthood after developing a relationship with and eventually marrying Michelle Jourdain, a parliamentary secretary. Nonetheless, he continued to advocate for equal treatment and fundamental rights for blacks in the territory well into the 1950s. As France conceded measures of representation to its colonies, MESAN won local elections and he gained influence in Oubangui-Chari's government, though his reputation suffered when he backed an unsuccessful economic scheme.
In 1958 French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle proposed the creation of a French Community through which France's colonies could associate with the metropole. After being assured that Oubangui-Chari's membership in the community would not preclude it from securing independence at a later time, Boganda supported joining it. He sought to do so as part of a federation with other territories in French Equatorial Africa as a "Central African Republic", which he believed would bolster the financial situation of the member states. He hoped this would serve as a basis for a United States of Latin Africa, a conglomeration including other countries in central Africa. This never came to fruition, and on 1 December, Boganda declared the establishment of the Central African Republic for only Oubangui-Chari. He became the autonomous territory's first premier as the President of the Council of Government, and began drawing up administrative reforms and preparing for the next election. He was killed in a plane crash on 29 March 1959, while en route to Bangui. Experts found a trace of explosives in the plane's wreckage, but a full report on the incident was never published, and the possibility of an assassination remains unresolved. The Central African Republic attained formal independence from France in 1960. His death is annually commemorated in the country, and his presence in the national collective memory remains politically potent.
## Early life
Little is known about Boganda's early life. He was born around the year 1910 to a family of farmers in Bobangui, a large M'Baka village in the Lobaye basin located at the edge of the equatorial forest some 80 kilometres (50 mi) southwest of Bangui. His father, Swalakpé, was a village head and the wealthy owner of several palm plantations who had taken numerous wives. Boganda's mother, Siribé, was Swalakpé's third wife. French commercial exploitation of Central Africa had reached an apogee around the time of Boganda's birth, and although interrupted by World War I, activity resumed in the 1920s. The French consortia used what was essentially a form of slavery—the corvée—and one of the most notorious was the Compagnie Forestière de la Haute Sangha-Oubangui (CFSO), involved in rubber gathering in the Lobaye district. Coercive labour practices, violence, and disease had severely disrupted traditional society by the time Boganda was born. Bobangui was particularly affected by these elements. His uncle, whose son, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, would later crown himself as the Emperor of the Central African Empire, was beaten to death at a colonial police station as a result of his alleged resistance to work.
Both of Boganda's parents died when he was young; his father was reportedly killed in a punitive campaign conducted by colonial forces shortly after his birth. His mother died before 1915, probably having been murdered by a CFSO militiaman for not having met a rubber collection quota. Boganda was then given to the care of a guardian who joined the French Army during World War I and was killed at the Battle of Verdun. He was subsequently placed in the tutelage of other relatives, and in 1920 he contracted smallpox. In June his brother was instructed to take him to an uncle, and along the way they encountered a French patrol led by a Lieutenant Mayer. His brother fled out of fear. Left alone, Boganda said, "Gboganda". This was probably a Ngbaka phrase meaning "I am [from] elsewhere", and he was probably hoping to explain that he was lost. The soldiers believed this was his name, rendering it "Boganda", and the name was used for the rest of his life. Mayer took him to the orphanage in the nearby town of Mbaïki. Once there, a Spiritan missionary touring the area decided to take him to the mission station of Saint Jean Baptiste in Bétou, a town further south on the Ubangi River which was home to a school.
At Bétou, Boganda was instructed in reading and writing in Lingala. Most accounts concur that he was an excellent student. In December 1921 he was taken to the main Spiritan mission of Saint Paul des Rapides in Bangui, the capital of Oubangui-Chari. He was baptised there under the name Barthélemy in late 1922. He later wrote, "To be a Christian meant for me to free myself from ancestral customs, to become a brother of humanity". At Saint Paul he learned French, the catechism, and agricultural labour. By mid-1924 Boganda had completed his primary education and had indicated his desire to become a priest. In November he was sent to the Jesuit petit séminaire in Lemfu, Belgian Congo. The school's curriculum included Latin, French, mathematics, history, and philosophy and was scheduled to take six years to complete, though Boganda had left by 1928/1929. After failing to enroll in a school in France due to lack of money, he entered the Spiritian petit séminaire in Brazzaville. He spent his final year of studies in Bangui, where he was tutored by Monsignor Marcel Grandin, the head of the Catholic Church in Oubangui-Chari. Once this was completed, Grandin enrolled Boganda in the Saint Laurent grand séminaire in Mvolyé, Yaoundé, French Cameroon, in 1931. The first African student at the school, he learned history, Latin, philosophy, theology, and other subjects.
On 17 March 1938 Boganda was ordained. He was subsequently posted to the new Saint Marcel petit séminaire in Bangui as a teacher. In 1939 his bishop denied his request to join the French Army, deeming it necessary for him to remain, as many persons involved with the church had been recalled to the metropole to fight in World War II. He was posted in the Grimari region from 1941 to 1946 to evangelize the resident Banda population. Boganda was enthusiastic about his work and was angered by local resistance to some of his teachings and practices. This especially included his efforts which contravened local cultural norms, such as his encouragement to abandon polygamy and fetishism and work to enroll girls in school. His response to such hesitation sometimes included violence, and he was accused of beating people and once suggesting a recalcitrant chief be shot with a cartridge of salt. Despite this, he showed a measure of appreciation for some indigenous culture, and was particularly proud that some locals fearfully dubbed him mourou, or leopard, a traditional symbol of power and violence. Boganda believed that the church was providing him with insufficient support and, by the mid-1940s, was in conflict with the local government administrator and felt he was facing racial discrimination from colonial officials, settlers, and some missionaries. Further strain on his position was incurred when he fathered a child in the Bakala region, an action his missionary colleagues saw as scandalous. As a result of these tensions, in 1946 Boganda was transferred to a mission at Bangassou.
## Political career
### National Assembly of France
After World War II, Boganda was urged by Grandin to involve himself in politics. In particular, Grandin hoped he would seek election to the National Assembly of France. Some Oubanguians had already indicated that they would support Boganda if he contested a seat in the assembly, and Grandin hoped that Boganda could preserve the interests of the Catholic Church from the local growth of Protestantism and increasing leftist and anti-colonial thought in both France and its colonies. Boganda decided to compete, and on 10 November 1946, he was elected deputy for Oubangui-Chari, becoming the first native Oubanguian to join the assembly after winning 10,846 votes—almost half of the total votes cast—and defeating three other candidates, including the incumbent, François Joseph Reste, who had formerly served as the Governor-General of French Equatorial Africa. Formally, Boganda identified with the Popular Republican Movement (MRP). His election was confirmed on 20 December and he was made a member of the Assembly's Overseas Territories Commission and the Supply Commission. He arrived in Paris attired in his clerical garb and introduced himself to his fellow legislators as the son of a polygamous cannibal, probably in a deliberate attempt to project a personal aura of omnipotence. Grandin sought to maintain influence over his former pupil and had requested that the Spiritans in France welcome him, provide lodging, and introduce him to Catholic politicians and keep him away from left-leaning groups. They did not do this, and Boganda expressed disappointment at the lack of a reception upon his arrival and the weak support from French deputies for his proposals to help his constituents in Oubangui-Chari.
Boganda left the MRP in 1950 and served as an independent thereafter. He was reelected to the National Assembly in 1951 and 1956. He made only two parliamentary interventions during his tenure, in August 1947 on the abuses of colonialism and in June 1950 on the lack of social justice in French Equatorial Africa. After 1956, he largely stopped attending the Paris parliament, though he remained a deputy until 1958. Frustrated by the faults of colonial rule in Oubangui-Chari and an unwillingness on the part of local officials to accept reforms, he quickly resorted to vocal criticism of French administration in the colony. He paid particular attention to racism and highlighted incidents of settler violence against black Africans to boost his own political following. Among his complaints were instances of arbitrary arrest, low wages, compulsory cotton cultivation, and the barring of blacks from restaurants and cinemas. In April 1947, Grandin complained to the governor of Oubangui-Chari that Boganda had "escaped from his cage" and was "flying like an idiot". While his rhetoric was anti-colonial, Boganda nominally supported French political ideals and did not oppose continuing connections between France and Oubangui-Chari. He also identified as a staunch anti-communist and accused colonial administrators of being "anti-French" and "worthy sons of Stalin", making it difficult for them to criticise him. He proposed several measures aimed at reforming communal land ownership and ensuring the prohibition of forced labour, but his serious attacks on French colonial policy upset the other deputies and as a result his ideas were never incorporated into the parliamentary agenda.
### Political organising in Oubangui-Chari
Feeling as though his actions in the National Assembly were engendering little substantive change in Oubangui-Chari, Boganda grew disenchanted with parliamentary politics and decided to seek direct political action within the territory. In an attempt to improve Oubanguian farmers' incomes, spur colonial reform, and form a political organisation for himself, in 1948 he launched a co-operative project, the Société Coopérative Oubangui, Lobaye, Lesse (SOCOULOLE), which aimed to provide food, clothing, lodging, medical care, and education. Boganda hastily established the organization without regard for the competence of its staff or the standards of trading goods, though he made sure to include communal healers in its management. Initially operating with a French subsidy, over time the co-operative became embroiled with allegations of financial improprieties and ran low on money. Boganda attempted to fund it with his parliamentary salary, but its deficits rapidly increased.
On 28 September 1949, at Bangui, Boganda established the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (MESAN), a mass political party. He wrote its founding code, which stipulated that the organisation sought "to develop and liberate the black race by progressive and pacific evolution, achieved by the combined efforts of all negroes throughout the world". Politically, the party supported liberty and equality for Africans, while economically it endorsed the use of co-operative ventures. Framing his political programme as a matter of fundamental rights, Boganda coined the Sango phrase zo kwe zo, which translated to "every human being is a person". He praised "peasant virtues" and the rustic life before colonialism, and these messages resonated with rural farmers. Furthermore, Oubanguians appreciated his willingness to angrily confront colonial officials. Boganda deliberately strived to instill his rhetoric with a sense of religiosity and mysticism, and he frequently used Latin in his speeches. Rumours began to circulate of his supposed invulnerability and supernatural powers, and at one point later in his career a large crowd waited on the shore of the Ubangi River to see him walk over the water (he did not appear).
MESAN's activities angered the French administration and the companies trading in cotton, coffee, diamonds, and other commodities. The Bangui Chamber of Commerce was controlled by these companies, and its members resented the end of forced labour and the resultant rise of black nationalism. They despised Boganda, viewing him as a dangerous revolutionary demagogue and a threat to their "free enterprise", and they resolved to get rid of him. French colonists and administrators established local Gaullist Rally of the French People (RPF) branches to counter MESAN. Drawing on the support of government workers, clerks, and Free French veterans of World War II, the party sought to take credit for colonial reforms, but failed to generate popular traction. The presence of the African Democratic Rally (RDA) in the other three territories of French Equatorial Africa posed some threat to MESAN, but they were eventually reduced to minor groups.
Boganda was not particularly concerned with his religious mission once he entered politics, but he used the enormous popular respect for the Catholic Church to his advantage, manipulating religious symbols for political purposes. Boganda's attachment to the clergy weakened when he met and fell in love with a young Frenchwoman, Michelle Jourdain, who was employed as a parliamentary secretary. By 1949 they were cohabitating and Boganda wrote a letter to his Catholic superiors, pointing out that clerical celibacy was a rule created by the Catholic Church and had no biblical basis. On 25 November he was expelled from the priesthood. Despite this, Boganda remained a devout Catholic and sympathetic to missionary interests. The couple was married on 13 June 1950, and would later have two daughters and a son.
On 10 January 1951, SOCOULOLE agents in the village of Bokanga became involved in a heated dispute with local Portuguese merchants, with the former objecting to the latter's practice of forming a coalition amongst themselves. The co-operative agents insisted that the village market be closed until Boganda could arrive to represent their case. By the time he arrived, SOCOULOLE members had blocked the roads leading out of the locale with trees to prevent the merchants' trucks from leaving. Fearing a loss of law and order, the head of the district of Mbaïki arrested Boganda (along with his accompanying wife) and held him in detention for two days. He was charged with "endangering the peace" and on 29 March the local court sentenced him to two months in prison (his wife was condemned to two weeks incarceration for aiding him). Since he was arrested in flagrante delicto, his parliamentary immunity offered him no protection. Boganda terminated SOCOULOLE later that year due to financial difficulties. Boganda's arrest occurred five months before the next round of French National Assembly elections, and he framed it as a campaign issue. He ultimately won re-election, defeating challengers from the RPF and RDA, and the colonial administration acceded to his return to office.
### Co-operation with the French
In 1952, the French government appointed more reform-oriented officials in French Equatorial Africa, allowing for a relaxation in tensions between Boganda and the local administration. In March 1953 RPF leader Charles de Gaulle visited Bangui. Boganda refused to see him due to his leadership of the party, but de Gaulle refrained from taking a public stance on the politics in Oubangui-Chari, a move which was interpreted as an expression of disapproval of the local RPF's tactics.
On 30 April 1954, disorder erupted in Berbérati when news emerged that two Africans who worked for a European—who was known for his abusive treatment of the locals—had died. The families of the deceased demanded the European's arrest, and a crowd gathered in the town and began rioting and assaulting public officials. Once word reached Brazzaville, the colonial authorities began mobilising troops to march on Berbérati, and Oubangui-Chari Governor Louis Sanmarco pleaded with Boganda to accompany him to the locale and intervene. The following day Boganda appeared before the crowd and told them that "the same justice would be administered to white as to black". Thus assured, the crowd dispersed and order was restored. The riot deeply worried the administration, which acknowledged in its own reports that Europeans' racism towards Africans was pervasive in the territory.
No substantial violence succeeded the Berbérati riot, and in the following months the RPF increasingly struggled as MESAN continued to grow. Boganda praised the educational and health work done by the colonial administration before the French National Assembly, saying "doctors, administrators, and colonists are our friends [...] We are not as ungrateful as we are black. We know how much has been done for our country". Addressing the Grand Council of French Equatorial Africa, he complimented Sanmarco and declared, "Oubangui-Chari has embarked on a positive undertaking at last, after years of negative grievances and sterile struggles, and a better future is ahead". With the assistance of the colonial administration, Boganda established his own coffee plantation and encouraged rural residents to follow suit if possible. Meanwhile, district councils were established, and he attended their meetings in Boda and Mbaïki, urging the MESAN members to collaborate with the European district heads.
### Internal autonomy and MESAN government
In June 1956 the French National Assembly passed the Loi-cadre Defferre, an act which conceded a measure of internal autonomy to French colonies. The Europeans in Oubangui-Chari politically organised themselves to seize control of the new local institutions, particularly the office of Mayor of Bangui. René Naud—the European president of the Bangui Chamber of Commerce—and other white merchants offered themselves as candidates in the November election, but Boganda entered the race and quickly became the favourite to win. On 18 November he won the election and became the first Mayor of Bangui.
On 4 February 1957, in accordance with the loi-cadre, the French government formally decreed the semi-autonomous status of each of the four territories of French Equatorial Africa, including Oubangui-Chari. Collectively, the four territories constituted a federation led by a General High Commissioner with the assistance of a Grand Council. Within Oubangui-Chari, the former French governor became the High Commissioner, who was to preside over a Council of Government, with its members to be chosen by the newly-created Territorial Assembly. On 31 March, MESAN won all seats in the Assembly and, at Boganda's request, Hector Rivierez was elected its presiding officer. He also arranged for Abel Goumba, the territory's only African doctor and a former catechism student of his, to become Vice President of the Council of Government. The council was installed on 17 May without Boganda as a member, since he did not want to participate in a government presided over by a French commissioner, and was also increasingly concerned with political organising at a federal level. Instead, he became President of the Grand Council.
The only European minister in the Council of Government was Roger Guérillot, who had previously secured the confidence of Boganda and worked as MESAN's treasurer. He was given charge of the portfolio for economic and administrative affairs. Guérillot sought to increase Africanisation of the administration, since there was a lack of trained Oubanguians and such a change would weaken the government and strengthen the position of the French colonists. He encouraged Boganda to go on a rhetorical offensive against French officials, whom he dubbed "the saboteurs of the loi-cadre". In a speech before the Territorial Assembly, Boganda suggested that the French administrators should leave and Oubanguians could "curse their shameful memory for ever", but also noted that it would take several years to train African personnel to replace them. He softened his stance a few days later while addressing the Grand Council, suggesting the colonies needed "a new form of administration" and proposing the transformation of districts into "rural communities" with trusted officials from the existing bureaucracy serving as directors of each.
In the mid-1950s a Bangui study group had proposed the construction of a rail line from Bangui to Chad. This was both to secure Oubangui-Chari's commercial relations with southern Chad—which was facing strain due to competition from Cameroon—and to satisfy private firms that sought a large state contract to make up for the decline in foreign investment driven by uncertainties in the territory's political future. Boganda believed that it would only be reasonable to embark on the railway project if Oubanguian economic output was greatly increased, so he requested that Guérillot draw up a programme for improving production and raising the standard of living.
Guérillot proposed a large scheme totaling four billion Central African CFA francs in expenditures to greatly increase the cultivation of coffee trees, cotton, and ground-nuts. As a part of this, he conceived a Committee of Economic Safety, which would consist of more regional bodies of European merchants and MESAN officials who would oversee peasants' production efforts. On 30 December, Boganda praised the committee as "the union of capital and Oubanguian labour" and convinced the Territorial Assembly to allow Guérillot to proceed. French colonists found the project risky and did not invest in it, and were followed in their abstention by banks and French economic aid organizations. Goumba also thought the proposal demanded too much of peasants and began formulating his own economic platform. Meanwhile, Guérillot recruited unemployed whites in Bangui as "inspectors" with African auxiliaries to directly manage cultivation. Peasants regarded the scheme as a return to the concessionary system and began publicly protesting it. Facing skepticism in the press and a measure of isolation for earlier excluding Antoine Darlan—Oubangui-Chari's representative to the French Union—from MESAN, Boganda traveled throughout the territory to try to allay peasants' fears and exhort them to work. He stressed that increased agricultural production was the only way for Oubangui-Chari to become economically viable without French aid. Angered by public criticism, he proposed banning all political activity. The economic scheme ultimately failed to achieve its goals and damaged Boganda's reputation, as well as tarnishing the view of the Council of Government both domestically and in the French and Belgian governments.
### De Gaulle and the French Community
Following the failure of the Algiers putsch in May 1958, de Gaulle reassumed power in France as Prime Minister and prepared to draft a new French constitution, stressing the importance of re-examining a federal relationship between France and its colonies. Boganda was not included in the new constitutional commission, to his dismay. De Gaulle hosted him in Paris in July, and upon his return to Oubangui-Chari he expressed to the Territorial Assembly that the loi-cadre was insufficient for the territory and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. He told the body he wanted assurance of "the people's right to self-determination and a voluntary freely-consented independence. The ways of introducing it are to be examined". The Assembly passed a motion repeating Boganda's demands.
De Gaulle proposed the creation of a new federal French Community that would encompass the African colonies. Boganda opposed Oubangui-Chari joining the community, fearing it would forestall independence. In August a meeting was held in Brazzaville between de Gaulle and political leaders in French Equatorial Africa. Boganda presented a petition signed by the leaders which requested that the new French constitution recognise the right of its colonies to declare independence. De Gaulle assured him that Oubangui-Chari's membership in the community would not preclude it from securing independence at a later time. A referendum was to be held in each colony in order to determine its support for the new constitution and joining the community; de Gaulle warned that while a negative vote would grant a territory immediate independence, it would also lead to the termination of all French aid. On 30 August Boganda told MESAN leaders he supported an affirmative vote in favour of the constitution, and he subsequently traveled around Oubangui-Chari to tell the people that the French would remain slightly longer "to set right the ravages of colonisation". The referendum was held on 28 September and 98% of voters chose to support the new constitution.
### Regional unity and the United States of Latin Africa
While the French constitution had placed political responsibility upon each territorial assembly in Africa and expected them to ratify the results of their referendums, it left open the possibility of federations. Boganda had been worried about balkanisation in Africa for some time, and believed that independence of Oubangui-Chari as a single state would be disastrous. He used his position as President of the Grand Council to encourage the formation of a united state in Central Africa. He wrote a tract which stated, "A united state with a united government and united parliament would reduce our expenses considerably. We could restrict the administrative budget and devote more of our resources to developing the welfare of our countries, so that all citizens would benefit, not just one privileged category. It is obvious that such an arrangement would encourage investment".
Boganda articulated a new framework for the states of French Equatorial Africa whereby there would be a central government and legislature. There would be an annually rotating presidency in which each former territory would take turns supplying the officeholder. The territories would become departments under the supervision of ministers of state and be divided into urban sections and rural communes. Due to the geographic span of such a federation—which would include Oubangui-Chari, Congo, Gabon, and Chad—he proposed that the state would be known as the "Central African Republic". He stressed the urgency of accomplishing this as quickly as possible, saying, "The Central African Republic must be built today, for tomorrow it will be too late [...] Chad and Oubangui-Chari will surely be solicited by other voices and other means". In a speech, Boganda revealed he envisioned the Central African Republic as a step in creating a larger United States of Latin Africa:
> Next we have to examine the question of the right bank of the Congo [river]. Since the official historical frontier is the Congo and not the Oubangui [river], we must regard that area from now on as belonging to the Central African Republic. Thirdly, we must work towards re-uniting the two Congos. The fourth stage will be to create the United States of Latin Africa, including the Central African Republic, the so-called Belgian Congo, Ruanda-Urundi, Angola, and Cameroon.
Boganda dispatched Rivierez and David Dacko to Gabon, Chad, and the Congo to explore their interest in a united state. The two were unable to secure a meeting with authorities in Gabon, while Chadian leaders rejected the idea. Jacques Opangault, the leader of the government in the Congo, was enthusiastic about the proposal, but his majority in the Congolese legislature was slim and his position weak. Gabon was the richest of the states, and its refusal to engage with the proposal made the French hesitant to sanction the federation. In late November the French High Commissioner convened a meeting of the equatorial leaders in Brazzaville and told them that each territorial assembly was to independently ratify its referendums and finalise its decision to adhere to the new constitution. By 28 November, all the other territories had decided to join the French Community as separate entities. Disheartened, Boganda resigned himself to proclaiming only Oubangui-Chari as the Central African Republic on 1 December.
### Central African Republic
The Central African Republic adopted a design drawn up by Boganda for its flag, including a star, the French tricolour, and colors of other African flags. He also penned the lyrics for the national anthem, "La Renaissance". On 6 December, the CAR's first government was established with Boganda as President of the Council of Government (premier), though a French High Commissioner was retained. Frustrated with Guérillot's economic failures and political maneuverings to be elected to the French Senate, he sent Guérillot to France as a diplomat and replaced him at the Ministry of Interior and Economic Affairs with Dacko. He made several other changes to the composition of the original council, but retained Goumba as Minister of State and de facto vice president of the council.
The new government's first action was to adopt a law banning nudity and vagrancy. Its main objective, however, was to draw up a constitution. Democratic in nature, the document provided for a unicameral parliament with a five-year term and a prime minister for the same period. The text was largely borrowed from the French constitution, though Boganda had some influence over the wording of the preamble and pushed for the inclusion of a provision that allowed the country to cede its sovereignty to a wider union. The draft was approved by the assembly on 16 February 1959. Boganda then set about creating extensive administrative reforms, including the establishment of rural and urban municipalities, the creation of district councils with broad authority, and the institution of mutual development societies. The government also drafted new electoral constituencies and scheduled elections for the Legislative Assembly on 5 April. Boganda personally oversaw the selection of MESAN's candidates and agreed to include five Frenchmen on its lists. The government also created a new electoral law which stipulated that civil servants could not run for office unless they had been on leave of absence for at least six months prior to the polling date. Furthermore, the law required all parties to nominate their candidates in lists instead of individually, and if one candidate was disqualified, the whole list would be dismissed. As a result, all opposition lists were thrown out by the courts, leaving MESAN unopposed. Opposition politicians were infuriated, and when asked about the impending lack of a parliamentary opposition, Boganda told the press, "We will create our own opposition within our party".
## Death
### Plane crash
On 29 March 1959 Boganda boarded a Nord Noratlas plane at Berbérati, where he had been campaigning, for a flight to Bangui. The plane was owned by Union Aéromaritime de Transport, which transported the mail between the two cities. The plane went missing, and its wreckage was discovered the following day in the district of Boda. All four crew and five passengers, including the government's information chief and a member of the Assembly, were found dead. Boganda's body was recovered from the pilot's cabin.
The French General Secretariat of Civil Aviation ordered an inquiry and sent a team to investigate the crash site. A report was never published, but shortly afterwards the Paris weekly L'Express revealed that investigators had identified traces of explosive in the wreckage. The French High Commissioner ordered all copies of the reporting edition suppressed in the Central African Republic. No cause for the crash has ever been definitively determined. Many Central Africans believed that the crash was an assassination; in particular, many suspected that expatriate businessmen from the Bangui Chamber of Commerce, possibly aided by the French secret service, played a role. Michelle Jourdain was also suspected of being involved; by 1959, relations between Boganda and his wife had deteriorated, and he thought of leaving her and returning to the priesthood. She had a large insurance policy on his life, taken out just days before the accident. Historian Gérard Prunier wrote that "the probability of foul play was very high", noting, "The whites who worked for what was left of the Grandes Compagnies Concessionaires hated Boganda, who had been instrumental in finally getting compulsory labor outlawed in 1946. They also hated his intelligence, which was unsettling to their view of black inferiority".
### Political consequences
Aside from some minor disorder in Mbaïki, the country received Boganda's death in relative calm. Some of his followers suggested that he had not died and would return to the public in the future. His funeral was held on 3 April outside of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Bangui and attended by thousands, with Robert Lecourt representing the French government and Raymond Janot representing the French Community. Charles Féraille, a priest who had been personally acquainted with Boganda, declared that he had been "chosen by God" to lead the country. Goumba replaced him as interim President of the Council of Government, while Étienne Ngounio took over the office of Mayor of Bangui and the MESAN party presidency. Boganda's parliamentary constituency was declared vacant in the elections held on 5 April, which were handily won by MESAN, though with a sharp drop in voter turnout. With its founder gone, MESAN substantively ceased to exist aside as a label.
Dacko, with the backing of the French High Commissioner, the Bangui Chamber of Commerce, and Jourdain, offered himself as a candidate to lead the Council of Government. Goumba was hesitant to divide the populace, and after a month in power conceded the presidency to Dacko. Dacko became consumed with administrative work and, though he had initially retained Goumba as Minister of State, dismissed him after several months. In 1960 Goumba founded a new political party, the Democratic Evolution Movement of Central Africa (MEDAC), and claimed it carried the ideals of Boganda and MESAN. Frightened by its rapid growth, Dacko declared his intent to revive MESAN. Under his government, political focus moved away from the peasantry and was drawn to the creation of a new moneyed elite, mostly favouring officials who received large salaries. The Central African Republic received its full independence from France on 13 August 1960. Dacko pushed several measures through the Assembly which invested him as President of the Republic and head of state, and gave the government wide authority to suppress political opposition. By 1962 he had arrested Goumba and declared MESAN the sole party of the state.
## Legacy
### Commemoration and political legacy
The Legislative Assembly declared Boganda the "Father of the Nation" in June 1959. He was posthumously awarded Knight of the Legion of Honour, Grand Cross of the Order of Central African Merit, and Commander of the Order of Agricultural Merit. The Boganda National Museum, named for the former premier and hosted in his former Bangui residence, was opened in 1966. A secondary school and an avenue were also named in his honour, while a statue of him was erected at an independence memorial in the capital. Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic between 1966 and 1979, promoted a cult of personality for Boganda as the founder of MESAN and the republic. Boganda Day is observed annually on 29 March to commemorate his death.
Mythical perceptions of Boganda's invulnerability persisted after his death, and his presence in Central African collective memory remains politically potent, serving as a unifying element among both the country's elite and the general populace. His phrase, zo kwe zo, was incorporated into the state's coat of arms. The preamble of the republic's 2004 constitution read, in part: "Animated by the wish of assuring to man his dignity with respect to the principle of 'ZO KWE ZO' enunciated by the Founder of the Central African Republic Barthélemy BOGANDA". Despite this, his political ideas have generally not been studied by successive Central African leaders. Historian Klaas van Walraven wrote, "his contemporary significance may lie precisely in the memory of his comportment and the widespread ignorance of his ideas".
### Historiography
Historian Georges Chaffard described Boganda as "the most prestigious and the most capable of Equatorial political men", while Prunier called him "probably the most gifted and most inventive of French Africa's decolonization generation of politicians". Historian Brian Titley suggested that Boganda's death "robbed the country of a charismatic leader" able to maintain legitimacy and in the long term facilitated General Bokassa's overthrow of Dacko and subsequent military takeover in 1966.
Boganda's life has some presence in French language histography, but much of what has been written about his biographical details, especially by Central African authors, is hagiographic in nature. His ideas and speeches have been more thoroughly incorporated into general analyses of political philosophies. Boganda is rarely mentioned in English historiography, and where he is included it is generally within the context of his Pan-African project of the United States of Latin Africa.
|
167,964 |
South Pacific (musical)
| 1,173,028,513 |
1949 Broadway musical
|
[
"1949 musicals",
"Adaptations of works by James A. Michener",
"Broadway musicals",
"Drama Desk Award-winning musicals",
"Musicals about World War II",
"Musicals based on short fiction",
"Musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein",
"Musicals set in Oceania",
"Musicals set on beaches",
"Pacific theatre of World War II",
"Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winning musicals",
"Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winning works",
"Race-related controversies in theatre",
"Tales of the South Pacific",
"Tony Award for Best Musical",
"Tony Award-winning musicals",
"United States National Recording Registry recordings"
] |
South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, running for 1,925 performances. The plot is based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize–winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific and combines elements of several of those stories. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Michener's work that would be financially successful and, at the same time, send a strong progressive message on racism.
The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. Marine lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenant's song, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". Supporting characters, including a comic petty officer and the Tonkinese girl's mother, help to tie the stories together. Because he lacked military knowledge, Hammerstein had difficulty writing that part of the script. The director of the original production, Logan, assisted him and received credit as co-writer of the book.
The original Broadway production enjoyed immense critical and box-office success, became the second-longest running Broadway musical to that point (behind Rodgers and Hammerstein's earlier Oklahoma! (1943)), and has remained popular ever since. After they signed Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin as the leads, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote several of the songs with the particular talents of their stars in mind. The piece won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950. Especially in the Southern U.S., its racial theme provoked controversy, for which its authors were unapologetic. Several of its songs, including "Bali Ha'i", "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair", "Some Enchanted Evening", "There Is Nothing Like a Dame", "Happy Talk", "Younger Than Springtime", and "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy", have become popular standards.
The production won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Libretto, and it is the only musical production to win Tony Awards in all four acting categories. Its original cast album was the bestselling record of the 1940s, and other recordings of the show have also been popular. The show has enjoyed many successful revivals and tours, spawning a 1958 film and television adaptations. The 2008 Broadway revival, a critical success, ran for 996 performances and won seven Tonys, including Best Musical Revival.
## Background
Although book editor and university instructor James Michener could have avoided military service in World War II as a birthright Quaker, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in October 1942. He was not sent to the South Pacific theater until April 1944, when he was assigned to write a history of the Navy in the Pacific and was allowed to travel widely. He survived a plane crash in New Caledonia; the near-death experience motivated him to write fiction, and he began listening to the stories told by soldiers. One journey took him to the Treasury Islands, where he discovered an unpleasant village, called Bali-ha'i, populated by "scrawny residents and only one pig". Struck by the name, Michener wrote it down and soon began to record, on a battered typewriter, his version of the tales. On a plantation on the island of Espiritu Santo, he met a woman named Bloody Mary; she was small, almost toothless, her face stained with red betel juice. Punctuated with profanity learned from GIs, she complained endlessly to Michener about the French colonial government, which refused to allow her and other Tonkinese to return to their native Vietnam, lest the plantations be depopulated. She told him also of her plans to oppose colonialism in French Indochina. These stories, collected into Tales of the South Pacific, won Michener the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Tales of the South Pacific comprises nineteen stories. Each stands independently but revolves around the preparation for an American military operation to dislodge the Japanese from a nearby island. This operation, dubbed Alligator, occurs in the penultimate story, "The Landing at Kuralei". Many of the characters die in that battle, and the last story is titled "The Cemetery at Huga Point". The stories are thematically linked in pairs: the first and final stories are reflective, the second and eighteenth involve battle, the third and seventeenth involve preparation for battle, and so on. The tenth story, at the center, is not paired with any other. This story, "Fo' Dolla' ", was one of only four of his many works that Michener later admitted to holding in high regard. It was the one that attracted Rodgers and Hammerstein's attention for its potential to be converted into a stage work.
"Fo' Dolla' ", set in part on the island of Bali-ha'i, focuses on the romance between a young Tonkinese woman, Liat, and one of the Americans, Marine Lieutenant Joe Cable, a Princeton graduate and scion of a wealthy Philadelphia Main Line family. Pressed to marry Liat by her mother, Bloody Mary, Cable reluctantly declines, realizing that the Asian girl would never be accepted by his family or Philadelphia society. He leaves for battle (where he will die) as Bloody Mary proceeds with her backup plan, to affiance Liat to a wealthy French planter on the islands. Cable struggles, during the story, with his own racism: he is able to overcome it sufficiently to love Liat, but not enough to take her home.
Another source of the musical is the eighth story, "Our Heroine", which is thematically paired with the 12th, "A Boar's Tooth", as both involve American encounters with local cultures. "Our Heroine" tells of the romance between Navy nurse Nellie Forbush, from rural Arkansas, and a wealthy, sophisticated planter, Frenchman Emile De Becque. After falling in love with Emile, Nellie (who is introduced briefly in story No. 4, "An Officer and a Gentleman") learns that Emile has eight daughters, out of wedlock, with several local women. Michener tells us that "any person ... who was not white or yellow was a nigger" to Nellie, and while she is willing to accept two of the children (of French-Asian descent) who remain in Emile's household, she is taken aback by the other two girls who live there, evidence that the planter had cohabited with a darker Polynesian woman. To her great relief, she learns that this woman is dead, but Nellie endangers her relationship with Emile when she is initially unable to accept Emile's "nigger children". Nellie overcomes her feelings and returns to spend her life with her plantation owner.
Additional elements of South Pacific had their genesis in others of Michener's 19 tales. One introduces the character of Bloody Mary; another tells of a British spy hidden on the Japanese-controlled island who relays information about Japanese movements to Allied forces by radio. Michener based the spy, dubbed "the Remittance Man", on Captain Martin Clemens, a Scot, who unlike his fictional counterpart, survived the war. The stories also tell of the seemingly endless waiting that precedes battle, and the efforts of the Americans to repel boredom, which would inspire the song "There Is Nothing Like a Dame". Several of the stories involve the Seabee, Luther Billis, who in the musical would be used both for comic relief and to tie together episodes involving otherwise unconnected characters. A 2001 article in Islands Magazine states that Michener renamed Aoba Island Bali-ha'i. The author interviewed the proprietor of a resort on Espiritu Santo, who claimed that Emile was modeled on his father and that the "real Bloody Mary" lived on Espiritu Santo for many years after the war and lived to the age of 102.
## Creation
### Inception
In the early 1940s, composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, each a longtime Broadway veteran, joined forces and began their collaboration by writing two musicals that became massive hits, Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945). An innovation for its time in integrating song, dialogue and dance, Oklahoma! would serve as "the model for Broadway shows for decades". In 1999, Time magazine named Carousel the best musical of the century, writing that Rodgers and Hammerstein "set the standards for the 20th-century musical". Their next effort, Allegro (1947), was a comparative disappointment, running for less than a year, although it turned a small profit. After this, the two were determined to achieve another hit.
According to director Joshua Logan, a friend of both theatre men, he and Leland Hayward mentioned Michener's best-selling book to Rodgers as a possible basis for the duo's next play, but the composer took no action. Logan recalled that he then pointed it out to Hammerstein, who read Michener's book and spoke to Rodgers; the two agreed to do the project so long as they had majority control, to which Hayward grudgingly agreed. Michener, in his 1992 memoirs, however, wrote that the stories were first pitched as a movie concept to MGM by Kenneth MacKenna, head of the studio's literary department. MacKenna's half brother was Jo Mielziner, who had designed the sets for Carousel and Allegro. Michener states that Mielziner learned of the work from MacKenna and brought it to the attention of Hammerstein and Rodgers, pledging to create the sets if they took on the project.
Hayward attempted to buy the rights from Michener outright, offering \$500; Michener declined. Although playwright Lynn Riggs had received 1.5% of the box office grosses for the right to adapt Green Grow the Lilacs into Oklahoma!, Michener never regretted accepting one percent of the gross receipts from South Pacific. As Rodgers and Hammerstein began their work on the adaptation, Michener worked mostly with the lyricist, but Rodgers was concerned about the implications of the setting, fearing that he would have to include ukuleles and guitars, which he disliked. Michener assured him that the only instrument he had ever heard the natives play was an emptied barrel of gasoline, drummed upon with clubs.
### Composition
Soon after their purchase of the rights, Rodgers and Hammerstein decided not to include a ballet, as in their earlier works, feeling that the realism of the setting would not support one. Concerned that an adaptation too focused on "Fo' Dolla' ", the story of the encounter between Cable and Liat, would be too similar to Madama Butterfly, Hammerstein spent months studying the other stories and focused his attention on "Our Heroine", the tale of the romance between Nellie and Emile. The team decided to include both romances in the musical play. It was conventional at the time that if one love story in a musical was serious, the other would be more comedic, but in this case both were serious and focused on racial prejudice. They decided to increase the role played by Luther Billis in the stories, merging experiences and elements of several other characters into him. Billis's wheeling and dealing would provide comic relief. They also shortened the title to South Pacific – Rodgers related that the producers tired of people making risqué puns on the word "tales".
In early drafts of the musical, Hammerstein gave significant parts to two characters who eventually came to have only minor roles, Bill Harbison and Dinah Culbert. Harbison is one of the major characters in Tales of the South Pacific; a model officer at the start, he gradually degenerates to the point where, with battle imminent, he requests his influential father-in-law to procure for him a transfer to a post in the United States. Hammerstein conceived of him as a rival to Emile for Nellie's affections, and gave him a song, "The Bright Young Executive of Today". As redrafts focused the play on the two couples, Harbison became less essential, and he was relegated to a small role as the executive officer to the commander of the island, Captain Brackett. Dinah, a nurse and friend of Nellie, is also a major character in Michener's work, and was seen as a possible love interest for Billis, though any actual romance was limited by Navy regulations forbidding fraternization between officers (all American nurses in World War II were commissioned officers) and enlisted men. "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" originated as a duet for Dinah and Nellie, with Dinah beginning the song and developing its theme. According to Lovensheimer, Nellie's and Dinah's "friendship became increasingly incidental to the plot as the writing continued. Hammerstein eventually realized that the decision to wash Emile out of her hair had to be Nellie's. Only then did the scene have the dramatic potential for Nellie's emotional transition" as she realizes her love for Emile. In the final version, Dinah retains one solo line in the song.
Joshua Logan, in his memoirs, stated that after months of effort in the first half of 1948, Hammerstein had written only the first scene, an outline, and some lyrics. Hammerstein was having trouble due to lack of knowledge of the military, a matter with which Logan, a veteran of the armed forces, was able to help. The dialogue was written in consultation between the two of them, and eventually Logan asked to be credited for his work. Rodgers and Hammerstein decided that while Logan would receive co-writing credit on the book, he would receive no author's royalties. Logan stated that a contract putting these changes into force was sent over to his lawyer with instructions that unless it was signed within two hours, Logan need not show up for rehearsals as director. Logan signed, although his lawyer did not then tell him about the ultimatum. Through the decades that followed, Logan brought the matter up from time to time, demanding compensation, but when he included his version of the events in his 1976 memoirs, it was disputed by Rodgers (Hammerstein had died in 1960). Rodgers biographer Meryle Secrest suggests that Logan was compensated when South Pacific was filmed in 1958, as Logan received a substantial share of the profits as director. According to Michener biographer Stephen J. May, "it is difficult to assess just how much of the final book Josh Logan was responsible for. Some estimates say 30 to 40 percent. But that percentage is not as critical perhaps as his knowledge of military lore and directing for the theatre, without which the creation of South Pacific would have collapsed during that summer of 1948."
Rodgers composed the music once he received the lyrics from Hammerstein. A number of stories are told of the speed with which he wrote the music for South Pacific 's numbers. "Happy Talk" was said to have been composed in about twenty minutes; when Hammerstein, who had sent the lyrics by messenger, called to check whether Rodgers had received them, his partner informed him that he had both lyrics and music. Legend has it he composed "Bali Ha'i" in ten minutes over coffee in Logan's apartment; what he did create in that time frame was the three-note motif which begins both song and musical. Hammerstein's lyrics for "Bali Ha'i" were inspired by the stage backdrop which designer Jo Mielziner had painted. Feeling that the island of Bali Ha'i did not appear mysterious enough, Mielziner painted some mist near the summit of its volcano. When Hammerstein saw this he immediately thought of the lyric, "my head sticking up from a low-flying cloud" and the rest of the song followed easily from that.
### Casting and out-of-town previews
In May 1948, Rodgers received a telephone call from Edwin Lester of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. Lester had signed former Metropolitan Opera star Ezio Pinza for \$25,000 to star in a new show, Mr. Ambassador. The show had not been written, and it never would be. Lester hoped that Rodgers would take over Pinza's contract. Pinza had become bored as the Met's leading lyric bass, and having played the great opera houses, sought other worlds to conquer. Rodgers immediately saw Pinza as perfect for the role of Emile. Lester carefully broached the subject to Pinza and his wife/business manager and provided them with a copy of Tales of the South Pacific. When Pinza read the book, he told Lester, "Sell me right away!" Pinza's contract for South Pacific included a clause limiting his singing to 15 minutes per performance. With Pinza's signing, Rodgers and Hammerstein decided to make his the lead male role, subordinating the story of the pair of young lovers. It was unusual on Broadway for the romantic lead to be an older male.
For the role of Nellie, Rodgers sought Mary Martin, who had nearly been cast to originate the role of Laurey in Oklahoma! Martin was playing the title role in the touring company of Annie Get Your Gun. After Hammerstein and Rodgers saw her play in Los Angeles in mid-1948, they asked her to consider the part. Martin was reluctant to sing opposite Pinza's powerful voice; Rodgers assured her he would see to it the two never sang at the same time, a promise he mostly kept. Rodgers and Martin lived near each other in Connecticut, and after her tour Rodgers invited Martin and her husband, Richard Halliday, to his home to hear the three songs for the musical that he had completed, none of them for Nellie. "Some Enchanted Evening" especially struck Martin, and although disappointed the song was not for her, she agreed to do the part. Although Nellie and Emile were already fully developed characters in Michener's stories, during the creation of South Pacific, Rodgers, Hammerstein and Logan began to adapt the roles specifically to the talents of Martin and Pinza and to tailor the music for their voices.
Martin influenced several of her songs. While showering one day during rehearsals, she came up with the idea for a scene in which she would shampoo her hair onstage. This gave rise to "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair". Built around a primitive shower that Logan remembered from his time in the military, the song became one of the most talked-about in South Pacific. To introduce another of Martin's numbers to her, Rodgers called her over to his apartment, where he and Hammerstein played "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" for her. When Martin essayed it for herself, she sang the final 26 words, as intended, with a single breath, and fell off her piano bench. Rodgers gazed down at her, "That's exactly what I want. Never do it differently. We must feel you couldn't squeeze out another sound."
The producers held extensive auditions to fill the other roles. Myron McCormick was cast as Billis; according to Logan, no one else was seriously considered. The two roles which gave the most trouble were those of Cable and Bloody Mary. They tried to get Harold Keel for the role of Cable (he had played Curly in the West End production of Oklahoma!) only to find that he had signed a contract with MGM under the name Howard Keel. William Tabbert was eventually cast as Cable, though Logan instructed him to lose 20 pounds (9.1 kg). African-American singer Juanita Hall was cast as Bloody Mary; Logan recalled that at her audition, she took a squatting pose which proclaimed, "I am Bloody Mary and don't you dare cast anyone else!" Betta St. John, who under the name Betty Striegler had replaced Bambi Linn as Louise in Carousel, took the role of Liat. Logan directed (he and Hayward co-produced with Rodgers and Hammerstein), Mielziner did the stage design, Trude Rittmann and Robert Russell Bennett prepared the orchestration, and Elizabeth Montgomery of Motley Theatre Design Group designed the costumes. Salvatore Dell'Isola served as music director.
### Original production
Rehearsals began at Broadway's Belasco Theatre on February 2, 1949. There was no formal chorus; each of the nurses and Seabees was given a name, and, in the case of the men, \$50 to equip themselves with what clothing they felt their characters would wear from the military surplus shops which lined West 42nd Street. Don Fellows, the first Lt. Buzz Adams, drew on his wartime experience as a Marine to purchase a non-regulation baseball cap and black ankle boots. Martin and Pinza had not known each other, but they soon formed a strong friendship. Of the mood backstage, "everyone agreed: throughout the rehearsals Logan was fiery, demanding, and brilliantly inventive." He implemented lap changes (pioneered by Rodgers and Hammerstein in Allegro), whereby the actors coming on next would already be on a darkened part of the stage as one scene concluded. This allowed the musical to continue without interruption by scene changes, making the action almost seamless. He soon had the Seabees pacing back and forth like caged animals during "There Is Nothing Like a Dame", a staging so effective it was never changed during the run of the show. One Logan innovation that Rodgers and Hammerstein reluctantly accepted was to have Cable remove his shirt during the blackout after he and Liat passionately embrace on first meeting, his partial nakedness symbolizing their lovemaking. As originally planned, Martin was supposed to conclude "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" with an exuberant cartwheel across the stage. This was eliminated after she vaulted into the orchestra pit, knocking out Rittman.
There were no major difficulties during the four weeks of rehearsal in New York; Martin later remembered that the "gypsy run-through" for friends and professional associates on a bare stage was met with some of the most enthusiastic applause she could remember. One of the few people having trouble was Pinza, who had difficulty adjusting to the constant alterations in the show – he was used to the operatic world, where a role rarely changed once learned. Pinza's mispronunciations of English exasperated Logan, and driving to New Haven, Connecticut for the first week of previews, Pinza discussed with his wife the possibility of a return to the Met, where he knew audiences would welcome him. She told him to let South Pacific's attendees decide for themselves. When the tryouts began in New Haven on March 7, the play was an immediate hit; the New Haven Register wrote, "South Pacific should make history".
Nevertheless, a number of changes were made in New Haven and in the subsequent two weeks of previews in Boston. The show was running long; Logan persuaded his friend, playwright Emlyn Williams, to go over the script and cut extraneous dialogue. There were wide expectations of a hit; producer Mike Todd came backstage and advised that the show not be taken to New York "because it's too damned good for them". The show moved to Boston, where it was so successful that playwright George S. Kaufman joked that people lining up there at the Shubert Theatre "don't actually want anything ... They just want to push money under the doors."
South Pacific opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949, at the Majestic Theatre. The advance sale was \$400,000, and an additional \$700,000 in sales was made soon after the opening. The first night audience was packed with important Broadway, business, and arts leaders. The audience repeatedly stopped the show with extended applause, which was sustained at length at the final curtain. Rodgers and Hammerstein had preferred, in the past, not to sponsor an afterparty, but they rented the St. Regis Hotel's roof and ordered 200 copies of The New York Times in the anticipation of a hit. Times critic Brooks Atkinson gave the show a rave review.
Three days after the opening, Pinza signed a contract with MGM to star in films once his obligation to appear in the show expired. He left the show June 1, 1950, replaced by Ray Middleton, though Pinza missed a number of shows due to illness before that. Martin recalled that, unused to performing eight shows a week, the former opera star would sing full out early in the week, leaving himself little voice towards the end, and would have his understudy go on. Nevertheless, during the year he was in the show, and although aged 58, he was acclaimed as a sex symbol; George Jean Nathan wrote that "Pinza has taken the place of Hot Springs, Saratoga, and hormone injections for all the other old boys".
A national tour began in Cleveland, Ohio, in April 1950; it ran for five years and starred Richard Eastham as Emile, Janet Blair as Nellie and Ray Walston as Billis, a role Walston would reprise in London and in the 1958 film. For the 48,000 tickets available in Cleveland, 250,000 requests were submitted, causing the box office to close for three weeks to process them. Jeanne Bal and Iva Withers were later Nellies on this tour. A scaled-down version toured military bases in Korea in 1951; by the request of Hammerstein and Rodgers, officers and enlisted soldiers sat together to view it.
Martin left the Broadway production in 1951 to appear in the original London West End production; Martha Wright replaced her. Despite the departure of both original stars, the show remained a huge attraction in New York. Cloris Leachman also played Nellie during the New York run; George Britton was among the later Emiles. The London production ran from November 1, 1951, for 802 performances at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Logan directed; Martin and Wilbur Evans starred, with Walston as Billis, Muriel Smith as Bloody Mary and Ivor Emmanuel in the small role of Sgt. Johnson. Sean Connery and Martin's son Larry Hagman, both at the start of their careers, played Seabees in the London production; Julie Wilson eventually replaced Martin. On January 30, 1952, King George VI attended the production with his daughter Princess Elizabeth and other members of the Royal Family. He died less than a week later.
The Broadway production transferred to the Broadway Theatre in June 1953 to accommodate Rodgers and Hammerstein's new show, Me and Juliet, although South Pacific had to be moved to Boston for five weeks because of schedule conflicts. When it closed on January 16, 1954, after 1,925 performances, it was the second-longest-running musical in Broadway history, after Oklahoma!. At the final performance, Myron McCormick, the only cast member remaining from the opening, led the performers and audience in "Auld Lang Syne"; the curtain did not fall but remained raised as the audience left the theatre.
## Synopsis
### Act I
On a South Pacific island during World War II, two half-Polynesian children, Ngana and Jerome, happily sing as they play together ("Dites-Moi"). Ensign Nellie Forbush, a naïve U.S. Navy nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas, has fallen in love with Emile de Becque, a middle-aged French plantation owner, though she has known him only briefly. Even though everyone else is worried about the outcome of the war, Nellie tells Emile that she is sure everything will turn out all right ("A Cockeyed Optimist"). Emile also loves Nellie, and each wonders if the other reciprocates those feelings ("Twin Soliloquies"). Emile expresses his love for Nellie, recalling how they met at the officers' club dance and instantly were attracted to each other ("Some Enchanted Evening"). Nellie, promising to think about their relationship, returns to the hospital. Emile calls Ngana and Jerome to him, revealing to the audience that they are his children, unbeknownst to Nellie.
Meanwhile, the restless American Seabees, led by crafty Luther Billis, lament the absence of available women – Navy nurses are commissioned officers and off-limits to enlisted men. There is one civilian woman on the island, nicknamed "Bloody Mary", a sassy middle-aged Tonkinese vendor of grass skirts, who engages the sailors in sarcastic, flirtatious banter as she tries to sell them her wares ("Bloody Mary"). Billis yearns to visit the nearby island of Bali Ha'i – which is off-limits to all but officers – supposedly to witness a Boar's Tooth Ceremony (at which he can get an unusual native artifact); the other sailors josh him, saying that his real motivation is to see the young French women there. Billis and the sailors further lament their lack of female companionship ("There Is Nothing Like a Dame").
U.S. Marine Lieutenant Cable arrives on the island from Guadalcanal, having been sent to take part in a dangerous spy mission whose success could turn the tide of the war against Japan. Bloody Mary tries to persuade Cable to visit "Bali Ha'i", mysteriously telling him that it is his special island. Billis, seeing an opportunity, urges Cable to go. Cable meets with his commanding officers, Captain George Brackett and Commander William Harbison, who plan to ask Emile to help with the mission because he used to live on the island where the mission will take place. They ask Nellie to help them find out more about Emile's background, for example, his politics and why he left France. They have heard, for instance, that Emile committed a murder, and this might make him less than desirable for such a mission.
After thinking a bit more about Emile and deciding she has become attracted on the basis of little knowledge of him, Nellie tells the other nurses that she intends to end her relationship with him ("I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair"). But when he arrives unexpectedly and invites Nellie to a party where he will introduce her to his friends, she accepts. Emile declares his love for Nellie and asks her to marry him. When she mentions politics, he speaks of universal freedom, and describes fleeing France after standing up against a bully, who died accidentally as the two fought. After hearing this, Nellie agrees to marry Emile. After he exits, Nellie joyously gives voice to her feelings ("I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy").
Cable's mission is to land on a Japanese-held island and report on Japanese ship movements. The Navy officers ask Emile to be Cable's guide, but he refuses their request because of his hopes for a new life with Nellie. Commander Harbison, the executive officer, tells Cable to go on leave until the mission can take place, and Billis obtains a boat and takes Cable to Bali Ha'i. There, Billis participates in the native ceremony, while Bloody Mary introduces Cable to her beautiful daughter, Liat, with whom he must communicate haltingly in French. Believing that Liat's only chance at a better life is to marry an American officer, Mary leaves Liat alone with Cable. The two are instantly attracted to each other and make love ("Younger Than Springtime"). Billis and the rest of the crew are ready to leave the island, yet must wait for Cable who, unbeknownst to them, is with Liat ("Bali Ha'i" (reprise)). Bloody Mary proudly tells Billis that Cable is going to be her son-in-law.
Meanwhile, after Emile's party, he and Nellie reflect on how happy they are to be in love (Reprises of "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy", "Twin Soliloquies", "Cockeyed Optimist" and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair"). Emile introduces Nellie to Jerome and Ngana. Though she finds them charming, she is shocked when Emile reveals that they are his children by his first wife, a dark-skinned Polynesian woman, now deceased. Nellie is unable to overcome her deep-seated racial prejudices and tearfully leaves Emile, after which he reflects sadly on what might have been ("Some Enchanted Evening" (reprise)).
### Act II
It is Thanksgiving Day. The GIs and nurses dance in a holiday revue titled "Thanksgiving Follies". In the past week, an epidemic of malaria has hit the island of Bali Ha'i. Having visited Bali Ha'i often to be with Liat, Cable is also ill, but escapes from the hospital to be with Liat. As Liat and Cable spend more time together, Bloody Mary is delighted. She encourages them to continue their carefree life on the island ("Happy Talk") and urges them to marry. Cable, aware of his family's prejudices, says he cannot marry a Tonkinese girl. Bloody Mary furiously drags her distraught daughter away, telling Cable that Liat must now marry a much older French plantation owner instead. Cable laments his loss. ("Younger Than Springtime" (reprise)).
For the final number of the Thanksgiving Follies, Nellie performs a comedy burlesque dressed as a sailor singing the praises of "his" sweetheart ("Honey Bun"). Billis plays Honey Bun, dressed in a blond wig, grass skirt and coconut-shell bra. After the show, Emile asks Nellie to reconsider. She insists that she cannot feel the same way about him since she knows about his children's Polynesian mother. Frustrated and uncomprehending, Emile asks Cable why he and Nellie have such prejudices. Cable, filled with self-loathing, replies that "it's not something you're born with", yet it is an ingrained part of their upbringing ("You've Got to Be Carefully Taught"). He also vows that if he gets out of the war alive, he won't go home to the United States; everything he wants is on these islands. Emile imagines what might have been ("This Nearly Was Mine"). Dejected and feeling that he has nothing to lose, he agrees to join Cable on his dangerous mission.
The mission begins with plenty of air support. Offstage, Billis stows away on the plane, falls out when the plane is hit by anti-aircraft fire, and ends up in the ocean waiting to be rescued; the massive rescue operation inadvertently becomes a diversion that allows Emile and Cable to land on the other side of the island undetected. The two send back reports on Japanese ships' movements in the "Slot", a strategic strait; American aircraft intercept and destroy the Japanese ships. When the Japanese Zeros strafe the Americans' position, Emile narrowly escapes, but Cable is killed.
Nellie learns of Cable's death and that Emile is missing. She realizes that she was foolish to reject Emile. Bloody Mary and Liat come to Nellie asking where Cable is; Mary explains that Liat refuses to marry anyone but him. Nellie comforts Liat. Cable and Emile's espionage work has made it possible for a major offensive, Operation Alligator, to begin. The previously idle fighting men, including Billis, go off to battle.
Nellie spends time with Jerome and Ngana and soon comes to love them. While the children are teaching her to sing "Dites-Moi", suddenly Emile's voice joins them. Emile has returned to discover that Nellie has overcome her prejudices and has fallen in love with his children. Emile, Nellie and the children rejoice ("Dites-Moi" (reprise)).
## Principal roles and notable performers
## Songs
Act I
- Overture – Orchestra
- "Dites-Moi" – Ngana and Jerome
- "A Cockeyed Optimist" – Nellie
- "Twin Soliloquies" – Nellie and Emile
- "Some Enchanted Evening" – Emile
- "Bloody Mary" – Sailors, Seabees and Marines
- "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" – Sailors, Seabees and Marines
- "Bali Ha'i" – Bloody Mary, Billis and Cable
- "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" – Nellie and Nurses
- "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" – Nellie and Nurses
- "Younger Than Springtime" – Cable
- Finale: Act I ("Some Enchanted Evening") – Emile
Act II
- Entr'acte – Orchestra
- Soft Shoe Dance – Nurses and Seabees
- "Happy Talk" – Bloody Mary
- "Honey Bun" – Nellie and Girls
- "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" – Cable
- "This Nearly Was Mine" – Emile
- "Some Enchanted Evening" (reprise) – Nellie
- Finale ("Dites-Moi") – Nellie, Ngana, Jerome and Emile
### Additional songs
A number of songs were extensively modified or omitted in the weeks leading up to the initial Broadway opening. They are listed in the order of their one-time placement within the show:
- "Bright Canary Yellow", a short song for Nellie and Emile, was placed just before "A Cockeyed Optimist", of which the opening line, "When the sky is a bright canary yellow" was intended to play off of the earlier song.
- "Now Is the Time" (Emile) was placed in the beach scene (Act I, Scene 7) just after Emile tells Nellie why he killed the man in France. It was to be reprised after "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught", but it was felt that for Emile to remain on stage while singing of immediate action was self-contradictory. It was replaced in Act I by a reprise of "Some Enchanted Evening"; in Act II it was initially replaced by "Will You Marry Me?" (later repurposed for Pipe Dream) on March 24, 1949, and then by "This Nearly Was Mine" on March 29, just over a week before the Broadway opening on April 7.
- "Loneliness of Evening" (Emile) was cut before the Broadway opening. It was to occur in the first backstage scene (Act II, Scene 2) prior to "Happy Talk" and was sung to the same melody as "Bright Canary Yellow". Its melody can be heard in the 1958 film as Emile reads aloud the card with the flowers he has brought backstage for Nellie to the Thanksgiving show; the second stanza was repurposed and sung by the Prince in the 1965 TV production of Cinderella.
- A reprise of "Younger Than Springtime" that follows Cable's rejection of Liat, was added after January 1949. It followed two separate attempts at songs for Cable. One song, designated as "My Friend" was a duet for Cable and Liat, included such lyrics as "My friend, my friend, is coming around the bend" and was rejected by Logan as one of the worst he'd ever heard. Rodgers and Hammerstein's second attempt to place a song there, "Suddenly Lovely", was considered by Logan too lightweight and was later repurposed for The King and I as "Getting to Know You". The melody for "Younger than Springtime" was from a song, "My Wife", intended for Allegro but not used.
- "Honey Bun" was not included in the January 1949 libretto (a note marks that the lyrics will be supplied later).
- "My Girl Back Home" (Cable) preceded "You've Got to be Carefully Taught" in the original score but was cut before the first Broadway production. It appears in the movie version as a duet for Nellie and Cable. It was reinstated for the 2002 London revival, for Cable.
- "You've Got to be Carefully Taught" originally had several singing lines for Emile following the conclusion of the lyrics for Cable.
## Subsequent productions
### 20th century
The first Australian production opened in September 1952 at His Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne, playing for 10 months and 333 performances. It then played seasons in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide until late 1954, before returning to Melbourne for a further season.
A limited run of South Pacific by the New York City Center Light Opera Company opened at New York City Center on May 4, 1955, closing on May 15, 1955. It was directed by Charles Atkin, and had costumes by Motley and sets by Mielziner. The cast included Richard Collett as Emile, Sandra Deel as Nellie, Carol Lawrence as Liat, Sylvia Syms as Bloody Mary and Gene Saks as the Professor. A second limited run of the same production with a different cast opened at City Center on April 24, 1957, closing on May 12, 1957. It was directed by Jean Dalrymple, and the cast included Robert Wright as Emile, Mindy Carson as Nellie and Hall reprising the role of Bloody Mary. That production was given again in 1961, this time with Ann McLerie and William Chapman in the lead roles.
There have been many stock or summer revivals of South Pacific. One, in 1957 at Long Island's Westbury Music Fair, occurred at the same time that Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus was resisting the integration of Central High School by the Little Rock Nine. Nellie's pronouncement that she was from Little Rock was initially met with boos. Logan refused to allow Nellie's hometown to be changed, so a speech was made before each performance asking for the audience's forbearance, which was forthcoming.
There were two revivals at Lincoln Center. Richard Rodgers produced the 1967 revival, which starred Florence Henderson and Giorgio Tozzi, who had been Rossano Brazzi's singing voice in the 1958 film. Joe Layton was the director; Eleanor Calbes's casting as Liat led to the addition of a reprise of "Bali Ha'i" for her. The cast album was issued on LP and later on CD. The musical toured North America from 1986 to 1988, headlined by Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden, with David Carroll as Cable, Armelia McQueen as Bloody Mary and Lia Chang as Liat, first directed by Geraldine Fitzgerald and then Ron Field. A New York City Opera production in 1987 featured alternating performers Justino Díaz and Stanley Wexler as Emile, and Susan Bigelow and Marcia Mitzman as Nellie.
A 1988 West End revival starred Gemma Craven and Emile Belcourt, supported by Bertice Reading, among others, and was directed by Roger Redfern. It ran at the Prince of Wales Theatre from January 20, 1988, to January 14, 1989.
### 21st century
A new production with slight revisions to the book and score was produced by the Royal National Theatre at the company's Olivier Theatre in London for a limited run from December 2001 through April 2002, timed to celebrate the centenary of Richard Rodgers' birth. Trevor Nunn directed, with musical staging by Matthew Bourne and designs by John Napier. Lauren Kennedy was Nellie, and Australian actor Philip Quast played Emile. Borrowing from the 1958 film, this production placed the first Emile-Nellie scene after the introduction of Cable, Billis and Bloody Mary.
A British touring production of South Pacific opened at the Blackpool Grand Theatre on August 28, 2007. The tour ended at the Cardiff New Theatre on July 19, 2008. It starred Helena Blackman as Nellie and Dave Willetts as Emile. Julian Woolford directed, with choreography by Chris Hocking. This production was most noted for its staging of the overture, which charted Nellie's journey from Little Rock, Arkansas, to the South Pacific. On entering the theatre, the audience first saw a map of the U.S., not the theater of war.
A Broadway revival of South Pacific opened on April 3, 2008, at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater. Bartlett Sher directed, with musical staging by Christopher Gattelli and associate choreographer Joe Langworth. The opening cast starred Kelli O'Hara as Nellie, Paulo Szot as Emile and Matthew Morrison as Lt. Cable, with Danny Burstein as Billis and Loretta Ables Sayre as Bloody Mary. Laura Osnes replaced O'Hara during her seven-month maternity leave, beginning in March 2009, and also between January and August 2010. Szot alternated with David Pittsinger as Emile. The production closed on August 22, 2010, after 37 previews and 996 regular performances. The production, with most of the original principals, was taped and broadcast live in HD on August 18, 2010, on the PBS television show Live from Lincoln Center. With a few exceptions, the production received rave reviews. Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times:
> I know we're not supposed to expect perfection in this imperfect world, but I'm darned if I can find one serious flaw in this production. (Yes, the second act remains weaker than the first, but Mr. Sher almost makes you forget that.) All of the supporting performances, including those of the ensemble, feel precisely individualized, right down to how they wear Catherine Zuber's carefully researched period costumes.
A U.S. national tour based on the 2008 revival began in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Theatre on September 18, 2009. Sher directed, and the cast starred Rod Gilfry (Emile) and Carmen Cusack (Nellie). A Sher production opened at the Barbican Theatre in London on August 15, 2011, and closed on October 1, 2011, with the same creative team from the Broadway revival. Szot and Welsh National Opera singer Jason Howard alternated in the role of Emile, with Samantha Womack as Nellie, Ables Sayre as Bloody Mary and Alex Ferns as Billis. The production received mostly positive reviews. A U.K tour followed, with Womack, Ables Sayre and Ferns. The Sher production was also produced by Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House from August to September 2012 and then at Princess Theatre, Melbourne through October 2012. It starred Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Emile, Lisa McCune as Nellie, Kate Ceberano as Bloody Mary and Eddie Perfect as Billis. It then played in Brisbane for the 2012 holiday season, with Christine Anu as Bloody Mary, and resumed touring in Australia in September 2013.
A Chichester Festival Theatre revival from July to September 2021 was directed by Daniel Evans and starred Gina Beck and Alex Young sharing the role of Nellie, Julian Ovenden as Emile and Joanna Ampil as Bloody Mary. Beck left the cast in August 2021 on maternity leave. The production began a UK and Ireland tour at the Manchester Opera House in July 2022 and Sadler's Wells Theatre in July and August 2022 with the same cast (minus Young) and received positive reviews. The tour is set to continue until at least November 2022. A U.S. national tour opened on February 7, 2022, at the RP Funding Center theater in Lakeland, Florida, starring Jared Bybee as Emile and Maris McCulley as Nellie. It closed on May 22, 2022 in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
## Reception and success
### Critical reception
Reviewers gave the original production uniformly glowing reviews; one critic called it "South Terrific". The New York Herald Tribune wrote:
> The new and much-heralded musical, South Pacific, is a show of rare enchantment. It is novel in texture and treatment, rich in dramatic substance, and eloquent in song, a musical play to be cherished. Under Logan's superb direction, the action shifts with constant fluency. ... [He] has kept the book cumulatively arresting and tremendously satisfying. The occasional dances appear to be magical improvisations. It is a long and prodigal entertainment, but it seems all too short. The Rodgers music is not his finest, but it fits the mood and pace of South Pacific so felicitously that one does not miss a series of hit tunes. In the same way the lyrics are part and parcel of a captivating musical unity.
The New York Daily Mirror critic wrote, "Programmed as a musical play, South Pacific is just that. It boasts no ballets and no hot hoofing. It has no chorus in the conventional sense. Every one in it plays a part. It is likely to establish a new trend in musicals." The review continued: "Every number is so outstanding that it is difficult to decide which will be the most popular." The review in New York World-Telegram found the show to be "the ultimate modern blending of music and popular theatre to date, with the finest kind of balance between story and song, and hilarity and heartbreak." Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times especially praised Pinza's performance: "Mr. Pinza's bass voice is the most beautiful that has been heard on a Broadway stage for an eon or two. He sings ... with infinite delicacy of feeling and loveliness of tone." He declared that "Some Enchanted Evening", sung by Pinza, "ought to become reasonably immortal." Richard Watts, Jr. of the New York Post focused on Mary Martin's performance, writing, "nothing I have ever seen her do prepared me for the loveliness, humor, gift for joyous characterization, and sheer lovableness of her portrayal of Nellie Forbush ... who is so shocked to find her early racial prejudices cropping up. Hers is a completely irresistible performance."
When South Pacific opened in London in November 1951, the reviews were mixed. London's Daily Express praised the music but disliked other elements of that show, writing, "We got a 42nd Street Madame Butterfly, the weakest of all the Hammerstein-Rodgers musicals. The Daily Mail suggested, "The play moved so slowly between its songs that it seemed more like South Soporific." The Times applauded the songs but indicated that "before the end the singing and the dancing have dwindled to almost nothing, while the rather sad little tale is slowly and conventionally wound up." The Manchester Guardian, however, noted the anticipation in advance of the opening and concluded that "there was no disappointment ... the show bounces the audience and well deserves the cheers." Drama critic Kenneth Tynan of The Spectator wrote that South Pacific was "the first musical romance which was seriously involved in an adult subject ... I have nothing to do but thank Logan, Rodgers and Hammerstein and climb up from my knees, a little cramped from the effort of typing in such an unusual position."
A 2006 review asserted: "Many are the knowledgeable and discriminating people for whom Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, brilliantly co-written and staged by Joshua Logan, was the greatest musical of all." In 1987, John Rockwell of The New York Times reviewed the City Opera production, commenting that while South Pacific had been innovative for 1949, "Sondheim has long since transcended its formal innovations, and the constant reprises of the big tunes sound mechanical. In 1949, South Pacific epitomized the concerns of the day – America's responsibilities in the world and the dangers of racism. ... At its 1967 State Theater revival, the show struck many as dated. It still seems that way, with M\*A\*S\*H having contemporized this same setting". A 2008 Huffington Post review criticized the play as having an Orientalist and Western-centric storyline in which stereotypical natives take on "exotic background roles" in relation to Americans, and it characterized the relationship between Cable and Liat as underage prostitution, charging that she "speaks not a word in the whole musical, only smiles and takes the Yankee to bed." South Pacific is the only major American musical set in World War II, but former Marine Robert Leckie wrote his memoir of that conflict, Helmet for My Pillow, after he walked out of a performance: "I have to tell the story of how it really was. I have to let people know the war wasn't a musical."
### Box office and awards
South Pacific opened on Broadway with \$400,000 in advance sales. People were so eager to obtain tickets that the press wrote about the lengths people had gone to in getting them. Because "house seats" were being sold by scalpers for \$200 or more, the attorney general's office threatened to close the show. The parties who provided the scalpers with the tickets were never identified, and the show ran without interference. The production had a \$50,600 weekly gross, and ran for 1,925 performances. The national tour began in 1950 and grossed \$3,000,000 in the first year, making \$1,500,000 in profit. The original cast album, priced at \$4.85, sold more than a million copies.
The original production of South Pacific won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Male Performer (Pinza), Best Female Performer (Martin), Best Supporting Male Performer (McCormick), Best Supporting Female Performer (Hall), Best Director (Logan), Best Book and Best Score. As of 2016, it is the only show to win Tonys in all four acting categories. In 1950, the musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the second musical to do so after Of Thee I Sing, which won in 1932. Rodgers became the first composer of musical comedy to win the Pulitzer, as composer George Gershwin had not been recognized for Of Thee I Sing. The Pulitzer Prize was initially given only to Rodgers and Hammerstein; Logan was later recognized in an amended announcement, much to his annoyance.
The 2001 London revival garnered a Laurence Olivier Award for Philip Quast (Emile). The 2008 revival won seven Tony Awards, including Best Revival (Sher and Szot also won, and the show won in all four design categories), and five Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Musical Revival. The late Robert Russell Bennett was also honored that season for "his historic contribution to American musical theatre in the field of orchestrations, as represented on Broadway this season by Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific." As of 2016, this was the musical revival with the most Tony Awards. The 2011 London production received three Olivier Award nominations, including Best Musical Revival, but won none.
## Themes and cultural effect
### Race
Part of the reason why South Pacific is considered a classic is its confrontation of racism. According to professor Philip Beidler, "Rodgers and Hammerstein's attempt to use the Broadway theater to make a courageous statement against racial bigotry in general and institutional racism in the postwar United States in particular" forms part of South Pacific's legend. Although Tales of the South Pacific treats the question of racism, it does not give it the central place that it takes in the musical. Andrea Most, writing on the "politics of race" in South Pacific, suggests that in the late 1940s, American liberals, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, turned to the fight for racial equality as a practical means of advancing their progressive views without risking being deemed communists. Trevor Nunn, director of the 2001 West End production, notes the importance of the fact that Nellie, a southerner, ends the play about to be the mother in an interracial family: "It's being performed in America in 1949. That's the resonance."
From the early drafts, Hammerstein and Logan made the issue of racial prejudice central to the story. Hammerstein repeatedly rewrote the Act II backstage scene where Emile, Nellie and Cable confront the question of the Americans' racism. As critic Robert Butler pointed out in his educational companion to the 2001 London production, "if one young person has a prejudice, it might be a character flaw; if two young people share a prejudice, it tells us something about the society in which they grew up". In one draft, Emile advises that the Americans are no better than the Axis Powers, in their prejudice, and suggests they go home to sing songs about how all are created free and equal. Lovensheimer states that a postwar American audience would have found such onstage sentiments to be offensive. In the staged version, Emile's expressions are limited to two lines arguing that prejudice is not inborn.
At the heart of this scene is Cable's song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught", in which Cable realizes the sources of his own racism. Its frank lyrics made it perhaps the most controversial element of the show. Michener recalled in his memoirs that a delegation of New Englanders had approached him after a New Haven tryout and urged him to recommend the song's removal to Rodgers and Hammerstein. When Michener told Hammerstein, he laughed and replied, "That's what the show is about!" Boston drama critic Elliot Norton, after seeing the show in tryouts, strongly recommended its removal, or at least that Cable sing it less "briskly", as there was much bigotry in Boston; Logan replied that this was all the more reason for leaving it unaltered. Several New York reviewers expressed discomfort with the song; Wolcott Gibbs wrote of "something called 'You've Got to Be Taught', a poem in praise of tolerance that somehow I found a little embarrassing" while John Mason Brown opined that he was "somewhat distressed by the dragged-in didacticism of such a plea for tolerance as 'You've Got to Be Taught'". After the Broadway opening, Hammerstein received a large number of letters concerning "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". Judging by the letters that remain among his papers in the Library of Congress, the reaction was mixed. One correspondent wrote "What can I say to a man who writes, 'You've got to be taught to hate and fear?' ... Now that I know you, I feel that my informants didn't praise you enough." Nevertheless, another wrote, "I feel the inclusion of the song particularly in the album and to some extent in the show itself is not helpful to the cause of brotherhood, your intent to the contrary notwithstanding".
When the tour of the show reached a racially segregated theatre in Wilmington, Delaware, Rodgers and Hammerstein threatened to cancel the performances there unless seating was integrated, which it was. In 1953, with the tour in Atlanta, there was controversy over "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". Two Georgia state legislators, Senator John D. Shepard and Representative David C. Jones, objected to the song, stating that though South Pacific was a fine piece of entertainment, that song "contained an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow", and explained, "Intermarriage produces half-breeds. And half-breeds are not conducive to the higher type of society. ... In the South, we have pure blood lines and we intend to keep it that way." They stated that they planned to introduce legislation to outlaw such communist-inspired works. The Northern press had a field day; Hammerstein, when asked for comment, responded that he did not think the legislators were representing their constituents very well, and that he was surprised at the suggestion that anything kind and decent must necessarily originate in Moscow. In part because of the song, touring companies of South Pacific had difficulty getting bookings in the Deep South.
In the final scene of Act I, Nellie rejects Emile because of his part-Polynesian children. In so doing, Nellie fails to live up to the American ideal that "all men are created equal", which Emile had earlier affirmed. This scene was also toned down by Hammerstein; in early drafts, Nellie, initially unable to force out a word to describe Emile's first wife, after he supplies the word "Polynesian", responds with "colored". This pronouncement, which makes Nellie less sympathetic as a character, was restored for the 2008 Lincoln Center production. As Frank Rich of The New York Times commented, "it's upsetting because Nellie isn't some cracker stereotype – she's lovable ... But how can we love a racist?" Most argues that even Emile is tainted by racism, as his lifestyle is dependent on the maintenance of a system whereby he benefits from underpaid native labor – Bloody Mary is able to attract workers to make grass skirts for sale to GIs because, as she puts it, "French planters stingy bastards!"
### Sex and gender roles
Nellie Forbush, in her journey from Little Rock, Arkansas, to serving as a Navy nurse and on to the domesticity of the final scene of South Pacific, parallels the experience of many American women of the period. They entered the workforce during the war, only to find afterwards a societal expectation that they give up their jobs to men, with their best route to financial security being marriage and becoming a housewife. One means of securing audience acceptance of Nellie's choices was the sanitization of her sexual past from her counterpart in the Michener work – that character had a 4-F boyfriend back in Arkansas and a liaison with Bill Harbison while on the island.
The male characters in South Pacific are intended to appear conventionally masculine. In the aftermath of World War II, the masculinity of the American soldier was beyond public question. Cable's virility with Liat is made evident to the audience. Although Billis operates a laundry – Nellie particularly praises his pleats – and appears in a grass skirt in the "Thanksgiving Follies", these acts are consistent with his desire for money and are clearly intended to be comic. His interest in the young women on Bali H'ai establishes his masculinity. Lovensheimer writes that Billis is more defined by class than by sexuality, evidenced by the Seabee's assumption, on learning that Cable went to college in New Jersey, that it was Rutgers (the state's flagship public university), rather than Ivy League Princeton, and by his delight on learning that the rescue operation for him had cost \$600,000 when his uncle had told him he would never be worth a dime.
Meryle Secrest, in her biography of Rodgers, theorizes that South Pacific marks a transition for the pair "between heroes and heroines who are more or less evenly matched in age and stories about powerful older men and the younger women who are attracted to them". Lovensheimer points out that this pattern only holds for two of their five subsequent musicals, The King and I and The Sound of Music, and in the former, the love between Anna and the King is not expressed in words. He believes a different transition took place: that their plots, beginning with South Pacific, involve a woman needing to enter and accept her love interest's world to be successful and accepted herself. He notes that both Oklahoma! and Carousel involve a man entering his wife's world, Curly in Oklahoma! about to become a farmer with expectations of success, whereas Billy Bigelow in Carousel fails to find work after leaving his place as a barker. Lovensheimer deems Allegro to be a transition, where the attempts of the lead female character to alter her husband Joe's world to suit her ambition lead to the breakup of their marriage. He argues that the nurse Emily, who goes with Joe in his return to the small town where he was happy, is a forerunner of Nellie, uprooting her life in Chicago for Joe.
Secrest notes that much is overlooked in the rush to have love conquer all in South Pacific, "questions of the long-term survival of a marriage between a sophisticate who read Proust at bedtime and a girl who liked Dinah Shore and did not read anything were raised by Nellie Forbush only to be brushed aside. As for the interracial complexities of raising two Polynesian children, all such issues were subsumed in the general euphoria of true love." Lovensheimer too wonders how Nellie will fare as the second Madame de Becque, "little Nellie Forbush from Arkansas ends up in a tropical paradise, far from her previous world, with a husband, a servant, and two children who speak a language she does not understand".
### Cultural effect
A mammoth hit, South Pacific sparked huge media and public attention. South Pacific was one of the first shows for which a variety of souvenirs were available: fans could buy South Pacific neckties, or for women, lipstick and scarves. Fake ticket stubs could be purchased for use as status symbols. There were South Pacific music boxes, dolls, fashion accessories, and even hairbrushes for use after washing men from hair. Martin's on-stage shower prompted an immediate fashion craze for short hair that could be managed through once-a-day washing at home, rather than in a beauty salon, and for the products which would allow for such care. The songs of South Pacific could be heard on the radio, and they were popular among dance bands and in piano lounges. Mordden comments that South Pacific contained nothing but hit songs; Rodgers and Hammerstein's other successful works always included at least one song which did not become popular.
The cast album, recorded ten days after the show's opening, was an immediate hit. Released by Columbia Records, it spent 69 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard and a total of 400 weeks on the charts, becoming the best-selling record of the 1940s. It was one of the early LP records, with a turntable speed of 331⁄3 rpm, and helped to popularize that technology – previously, show albums and operas had been issued on sets of 78 rpm records, with high prices and much less music on a single disc. In the years to come, the LP would become the medium of choice for the "longhair" music niche of show, opera and classical performances.
An indirect effect of the success of the show was the career of James Michener. His one percent of the show as author of the source material, plus the income from a share which the duo allowed him to buy on credit, made him financially independent and allowed him to quit his job as an editor at Macmillan and to become a full-time writer. Over the next five decades, his lengthy, detailed novels centering on different places would dominate the bestseller lists.
## Music and recordings
### Musical treatment
The role of Nellie Forbush was the first time with Hammerstein that Rodgers made the leading female role a belter, rather than a lyric soprano like Laurey in Oklahoma! and Julie in Carousel. According to Mordden, "Nellie was something new in R&H, carrying a goodly share of the score on a 'Broadway' voice".
Nellie does not sing together with Emile, because Rodgers promised Martin that she would not have to compete vocally with Pinza, but the composer sought to unite them in the underlying music. A tetrachord, heard before we see either lead, is played during the instrumental introduction to "Dites-Moi", the show's first song. Considered as pitch classes, that is, as pitches without characterization by octave or register, the motif is C-B-A-G. It will be heard repeatedly in Nellie's music, or in the music (such as "Twin Soliloquies") that she shares with Emile, and even in the bridge of "Some Enchanted Evening". Lovensheimer argues that this symbolizes what Nellie is trying to say with her Act II line "We're the same sort of people fundamentally – you and me".
Originally, "Twin Soliloquies" came to an end shortly after the vocal part finishes. Logan found this unsatisfying and worked with Trude Rittmann to find a better ending to the song. This piece of music, dubbed "Unspoken Thoughts", continues the music as Nellie and Emile sip brandy together, and is called by Lovensheimer "the one truly operatic moment of the score". "This Nearly Was Mine" is a big bass solo for Emile in waltz time, deemed by Rodgers biographer William G. Hyland as "one of his finest efforts". Only five notes are used in the first four bars, a phrase which is then repeated with a slight variation in the following four bars. The song ends an octave higher than where it began, making it perfect for Pinza's voice.
Two songs, "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" and "Honey Bun" are intended to imitate American popular songs of the 1940s. In the former, the triple recitation of the song title at intervals suggests a big band arrangement of the wartime era, while in the bridge, the final eight bars (repeating the lyrics from the bridge's first eight bars) gives a suggestion of swing. The sections beginning "If the man don't understand you" and "If you laugh at different comics" have a blues style. Lovensheimer deems the song "Nellie's spontaneous and improvisatory expression of her feelings through the vocabulary of popular song". Mordden suggests that "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" with its "take no prisoners bounce", might well be the center of the score, with the typical American girl defending her love by spouting clichés, many of which, such as "corny as Kansas in August" Hammerstein made up, and "sure enough, over the years they have become clichés".
### Recordings
Columbia Records recorded the overture and most of the songs from the original production in 1949, using members of the cast including Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin. Drawing from the original lacquer disc masters, Columbia released the album both on 78-rpm discs and the new LP record format in 1949. According to critic John Kenrick, the original cast recording "is the rare stuff that lasting legends are made of", an essential classic. The album was number one from mid-1949 and throughout most of 1950 for a record 63 weeks, selling more than one million copies. A CD was released by Sony in 1988 from the previously unused magnetic tape recording from the same 1949 sessions in New York City. The CD includes the bonus tracks "Loneliness of Evening" (recorded in 1949 by Mary Martin), "My Girl Back Home" (Martin), "Bali Ha'i" (Pinza) and Symphonic Scenario for Concert Orchestra (original orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett). The original cast album was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress on March 21, 2013, for long-term preservation. The film soundtrack was released on the RCA Victor label in March 1958. Kenrick calls the recording "mixed up" and does not recommend it.
Masterworks Broadway released a recording of the 1967 Lincoln Center production starring Florence Henderson as Nellie, Giorgio Tozzi as Emile, Justin McDonough as Cable and Irene Byatt as Bloody Mary. The recording includes a version of "Bali Ha'i", sung in French by Eleanor Calbes, the Liat. According to Kenrick, "Every track of this 1967 Lincoln Center cast recording is such a winner that you can't help wondering why it took so long for this winner to make its way to CD." Kenrick notes that the album is a more complete alternative to the original cast album.
In 1986 José Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa made a studio recording of South Pacific, the sessions of which were filmed as a documentary, similar in style to Leonard Bernstein's successful West Side Story documentary a year earlier that featured the same stars. Emile's music was transposed to fit Carreras's tenor voice. The recording also featured Sarah Vaughan as Bloody Mary and Mandy Patinkin as Cable. Stephen Holden reviewed the album in The New York Times, "the star of this South Pacific isn't any individual, but rather the score itself". Kenrick calls the recording badly miscast "pretentious trash". Kenrick gives mixed praise to the 1988 London revival cast album.
The 2001 Royal National Theatre's revival cast album was recorded in 2002 on First Night Records with Philip Quast as Emile, Lauren Kennedy as Nellie, Edward Baker-Duly as Cable, Sheila Francisco as Bloody Mary and Nick Holder as Billis. The album includes the cut song, "Now Is the Time". While Kenrick allows that most critics like the recording, he finds it a waste of money. The 2005 Carnegie Hall concert version was released on April 18, 2006, by Decca Broadway with Reba McEntire as Nellie, Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile, Lillias White as Bloody Mary, Jason Danieley as Cable and Alec Baldwin as Billis. Kenrick describes this recording as "one of the most ravishing that this glorious Rodgers & Hammerstein classic has ever received" and "a show tune lover's dream come true." The 2008 Broadway revival cast album was released on May 27, 2008, by Masterworks Broadway. Kenrick finds it "very satisfying".
## Film and television versions
South Pacific was made into a film of the same name in 1958, and it topped the box office that year. Joshua Logan directed the film, which starred Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr, Ray Walston, Juanita Hall and France Nuyen; all of their singing voices except Gaynor's and Walston's were dubbed. Thurl Ravenscroft, later television's Tony the Tiger, sang the basso profundo notes in "There Is Nothing Like a Dame". The film opened with Cable's flight to the island in a PBY, followed by the Seabees' beach scene, and added Billis' rescue and scenes from the mission to spy on the Japanese. The film won the Academy Award for Best Sound. It was also nominated for the Oscar for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture (Alfred Newman and Ken Darby), and the 65 mm Todd-AO cinematography by Leon Shamroy was also nominated. The film was widely criticized for its use of color to indicate mood, with actors changing color as they began to sing. The film includes the song "My Girl Back Home", sung by Cable, which was cut from the stage musical. The movie was the third-highest-grossing film in the U.S. of the 1950s; its UK revenues were the highest ever, a record it kept until Goldfinger in 1963. Although reviewers have criticized the film – Time magazine stated that it was "almost impossible to make a bad movie out of it – but the moviemakers appear to have tried" – it has added success on television, videotape and DVD to its box office laurels.
A made-for-television film, directed by Richard Pearce, was produced and televised in 2001, starring Glenn Close as Nellie, Harry Connick, Jr. as Cable and Rade Sherbedgia as Emile. This version changed the order of the musical's songs (the film opens with "There Is Nothing Like a Dame") and omits "Happy Talk". "My Girl Back Home" was filmed but not included in the broadcast due to time constraints; it was restored for the DVD, issued in 2001. The last half-hour of the film features scenes of war, including shots of segregated troops. Lovensheimer states that the film returned to the Michener original in one respect: "Harry Connick Jr.'s Joe Cable is a fascinating combination of sensitive leading man and believable Leatherneck".
The movie and Close were praised by The New York Times: "Ms. Close, lean and more mature, hints that a touch of desperation lies in Nellie's cockeyed optimism." The review also commented that the movie "is beautifully produced, better than the stagy 1958 film" and praised the singing. Kenrick, however, dislikes the adaptation: "You certainly won't ever want to put this disaster in your player, unless you want to hear the sound of Rodgers and Hammerstein whirling in their graves. Glenn Close is up to the material, but her supporting cast is uniformly disastrous. A pointless and offensive waste of money, time and talent."
A 2005 concert version of the musical, edited down to two hours, but including all of the songs and the full musical score, was presented at Carnegie Hall. It starred Reba McEntire as Nellie, Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile, Alec Baldwin as Billis and Lillias White as Bloody Mary. The production used Robert Russell Bennett's original orchestrations and the Orchestra of St. Luke's directed by Paul Gemignani. It was taped and telecast by PBS in 2006 and released the same year on DVD. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote, "Open-voiced and open-faced, Reba McEntire was born to play Nellie"; the production was received "in a state of nearly unconditional rapture. It was one of those nights when cynicism didn't stand a chance." Kenrick especially likes Mitchell's "This Nearly Was Mine", and praises the concert generally: "this excellent performance helped restore the reputation of this classic".
|
209,060 |
Florin (British coin)
| 1,172,523,651 |
Former coin of the United Kingdom and other territories
|
[
"1849 establishments in the United Kingdom",
"1970 disestablishments in the United Kingdom",
"Coins of the United Kingdom",
"Pre-decimalisation coins of the United Kingdom"
] |
The British florin, or two-shilling piece (2/– or 2s.), was a coin worth 1⁄10 of one pound, or 24 pence. It was issued from 1849 until 1967, with a final issue for collectors dated 1970. It was the last coin circulating immediately prior to decimalisation to be demonetised, in 1993, having for a quarter of a century circulated alongside the ten-pence piece, identical in specifications and value.
The florin was introduced as part of an experiment in decimalisation that went no further at the time. The original florins, dated 1849, attracted controversy for omitting a reference to God from Queen Victoria's titles; that type is accordingly known as the "Godless florin", and was in 1851 succeeded by the "Gothic florin", for its design and style of lettering. Throughout most of its existence, the florin bore some variation of either the shields of the United Kingdom, or the emblems of its constituent nations on the reverse, a tradition broken between 1902 and 1910, when the coin featured a windswept figure of a standing Britannia.
In 1911, following the accession of George V, the florin regained the shields and sceptres design it had in the late Victorian era, and it kept that motif until 1937, when the national emblems were placed on it. The florin retained such a theme for the remainder of its run, though a new design was used from 1953, following the accession of Elizabeth II. In 1968, prior to decimalisation, the Royal Mint began striking the ten-pence piece. The old two-shilling piece remained in circulation until the ten-pence piece was made smaller, and earlier coins, including the florin, were demonetised.
## History
### Background
The drive for decimalisation of the currency in Britain dates as far back as 1682. Although nothing was done about early proposals, the adoption of decimal currencies in the United States, France and other nations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries renewed the call, and commissions in 1841 and 1843 called for the adoption of decimal coinage. In 1847, a motion was introduced in Parliament by Sir John Bowring calling for the introduction of a decimal currency and the striking of coins of one-tenth and one-hundredth of a pound. Bowring obtained surprisingly strong support for his motion, and the Russell government promised that a coin valued at one-tenth of a pound (two shillings) would be produced to test public opinion, with consideration to be given in future to the introduction of other decimal coins.
There was much discussion about what the coin should be called – centum, decade, and dime were among the suggestions – before florin was eventually settled upon, not because of the old English coin of that name, but because the Netherlands had a florin, or gulden, about that size and value. The original florin, the fiorino d'oro of the Republic of Florence, was a gold coin struck from 1252 to 1533.
### Victorian issues (1849–1901)
The first florins were struck in 1849. They were in the Gothic style, and featured a portrait of Queen Victoria as a very young woman, with the crowned cruciform shields of the United Kingdom shown on the reverse, and the nations' emblems in the angles. The new florin closely resembles the Gothic crown of 1847; the obverse for both was designed by the Chief Engraver of the Royal Mint, William Wyon, while the reverse of both was designed by William Dyce. Unlike the crown's Gothic script, the 1849 florin has Roman lettering. The 1849 florin, issued in silver, weighed 11.3 grams (defined as 4⁄11 troy ounce) and had a diameter of 28 millimetres (1.10 in). The new coin made clear its value with the inscription ONE FLORIN ONE TENTH OF A POUND on the reverse. To aid in the decimal experiment, the half crown (two shillings and sixpence, or one-eighth of a pound), near to the florin in size and value, was not issued between 1850 and 1874, when it was struck again at the request of the banks, and surveys found that both coins played useful parts in commerce. Each would continue to be struck, and would circulate together, until decimalisation.
These first coins were probably a shock to the public, as for the first time in nearly 200 years a British coin featured a portrait of the monarch wearing a crown. Even more of a shock, including (allegedly) to Queen Victoria herself, was the inscription on the obverse, VICTORIA REGINA 1849, omitting the usual D G for Dei Gratia (By the Grace of God) from the coin's inscription. This resulted in it being known as the "Godless florin". Further controversy was caused by the omission of the usual abbreviation F D for Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith): the Master of the Mint, Richard Lalor Sheil, an Irishman and a Roman Catholic, was suspected by some of plotting to overthrow the Protestant regime. The inscription had in fact been suggested by Albert, Prince Consort, Victoria's husband. Sheil said in the House of Commons the inscription had been a mistake, and the florin was redesigned for its next issue in 1851.
The revised florin's diameter was increased to 30 millimetres (1.18 in) (the weight was unchanged), and all the lettering on the coin was in Gothic script, resulting in it being known as the Gothic florin. The coin was by the same designers; its date was rendered in Roman numerals. The bust of Victoria and the heraldry on the reverse were largely unchanged. The Latin inscription on the obverse read VICTORIA D G BRITT REG F D with the date, while the reverse read ONE FLORIN ONE TENTH OF A POUND. Despite a Royal Commission, the drive for decimalisation soon died out; there was only lukewarm support for an 1855 motion in the Commons applauding the issuance of the florin and seeking further decimal coins. The Gothic Florin was produced each year until 1887, excepting 1861 and 1882. From 1864 until 1879, many florins were struck with die numbers on the obverse (found to the right of Victoria's brooch, possibly part of a Mint investigation into how long it took coinage dies to wear out. Beginning with some 1867 issues, BRIT on the obverse was rendered BRITT, following the Latin practice in abbreviations of doubling a final consonant for a plural. Thus, Victoria's title changed from "Queen of Britain" to "Queen of the Britains", including the colonies and other territories.
In 1887, as part of a coinage redesign for Victoria's Golden Jubilee, a new obverse design, showing the queen as an older woman, debuted on the gold and silver coinage. This was dubbed the "Jubilee coinage" and was by Sir Joseph Boehm. The various flora were removed from the florin's reverse and were replaced by sceptres between the shields with a Garter Star in the centre. The Jubilee Head quickly proved unpopular, due in part to the crown worn by the Queen, which was deemed ridiculously small. The Jubilee florin shared its reverse with the short-lived double florin, which Gertrude Rawlings in 1898 described as "radiating kitchen pokers and tea trays". The reverse design was created and engraved by Leonard Charles Wyon (who also engraved the obverse), though it was probably influenced by the gold coinage of Charles II designed by John Roettier. The diameter was reduced to 29.5 millimetres (1.16 in). All the inscriptions were in Latin letters and Arabic numerals. The inscription on the obverse read VICTORIA DEI GRATIA, while the reverse read FID DEF BRITT REG, with no indication of the value. The Jubilee florin was struck each year between 1887 and 1892.
Given the unpopularity of the Jubilee bust, a committee was set up in February 1891 to recommend new designs. An obverse designed by Thomas Brock was selected, and the committee also recommended some new reverses. This advisory committee recommended a different bust (also by Brock) be used on the florin to distinguish it from the half crown. The recommendation was not accepted, and the florin used the same "Veiled Head" or "Old Head" obverse that was introduced to the silver and gold coinage in 1893. To better distinguish it from the half crown, the diameter was reduced from 29 to 28.5 millimetres (1.14 to 1.12 in). The obverse was inscribed VICTORIA DEI GRA BRITT REGINA FID DEF IND IMP, together with a new reverse showing three shields separated by a rose, shamrock, and thistle (symbolising England, Scotland and Ireland) under a crown, and the inscription ONE FLORIN TWO SHILLINGS. This reverse was created by Sir Edward Poynter, and was issued each year between 1893 and 1901, the year of Victoria's death.
### Edward VII (1901–1910)
Both sides of the florin were redesigned following the accession of Victoria's son, Edward VII, each design being created by the Chief Engraver of the Royal Mint, George William de Saulles. The florin of King Edward VII was minted every year from 1902 to 1910. Its specifications remained at 11.3 grams weight and 28.5 millimetres diameter. The obverse shows the right-facing head of the King, inscribed EDWARDVS VII DEI GRA BRITT OMN REX FD IND IMP, while the other side features what Coincraft's Standard Catalogue of English and UK Coins deems "a most unusual and original reverse". It shows a windswept figure of Britannia standing holding a shield with her left hand and a trident with her right, and inscribed ONE FLORIN TWO SHILLINGS, with the date below. Peter Seaby, in his history of British coinage, described the figure of Britannia as "standing on some mythical ancient ship which could hardly be sea-worthy under her weight", but "a pleasing composition".
De Saulles created the new florin in this manner to distinguish the coin from the half crown, as there had been complaints of confusion. He probably based the design on his British trade dollar (1895). The sitter for the design was Susan Hicks-Beach, the daughter of Michael Hicks-Beach, 1st Earl St Aldwyn who had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and ex officio Master of the Mint. The modern-day Britannia coinage, bullion pieces struck by the Royal Mint for investors and collectors, has a reverse that strongly resembles that of the Edwardian florin.
### George V (1910–1936)
Florins bearing a left-facing effigy of George V by Sir Bertram Mackennal were minted in each year of the King's reign (1910–1936) except 1910 and 1934. The initial reverse design (1911–1926) was developed internally at the Royal Mint, and is intended to be that of the 1887 double florin, to which the Jubilee florin is very similar. The weight and diameter of the coin were unchanged but, because of rises in the price of silver, the metallic composition was changed in 1920 from 0.925 silver to 50% silver, 40% copper, 10% nickel, then again in 1922 to 50% silver, 50% copper, and again in 1927 to 50% silver, 40% copper, 5% nickel, 5% zinc. The changes in alloy after 1920 were due to the Mint's trying to find a silver alloy that would remain attractive as it wore. The inscriptions on the obverse of the original version of the George V florin were GEORGIVS V D G BRITT OMN REX F D IND IMP and on the reverse were ONE FLORIN and the year of striking.
The modified florin, dated 1927 to 1936, was designed by George Kruger Gray and did not greatly alter the design of shields and sceptres, but removed the crowns from the shields and placed them on the sceptres. A "G", the King's initial, is at the centre of the design. The obverse inscription became GEORGIVS V DEI GRA BRITT OMN REX and the reverse one was FID DEF IND IMP with the date and denomination ONE FLORIN. The bust of the King on the obverse was slightly modified in 1927.
### Edward VIII (1936)
Throughout 1936, the year in which Edward VIII reigned, coins of all denominations continued to be struck using the designs of George V, pending preparation of the new monarch's coinage. No coins depicting Edward VIII were officially released to circulation. A pattern florin exists for King Edward, which would have been due to receive approval around the time the King abdicated in December 1936. Although there is a tradition of alternating the direction the monarch faces with each reign, and George V had faced left, Edward believed that side more flattering. Thus, the obverse depicts the left-facing effigy of the King by Thomas Humphrey Paget inscribed EDWARDVS VIII D G BR OMN REX. The reverse, by Kruger Gray, shows a crowned rose flanked by a thistle and shamrock, with E below the thistle and R below the shamrock, and the inscription FID DEF IND IMP and TWO SHILLINGS 1937.
### George VI (1936–1952)
King George VI's florin, produced each year between 1937 and 1951, looks very much like the one planned for his brother Edward VIII. Like on the patterns for King Edward, the words ONE FLORIN are omitted; they would remain absent for the coin's remaining existence. The obverse, by Thomas Humphrey Paget, shows the left-facing effigy of the King inscribed GEORGIVS VI D G BR OMN REX. The reverse, by Kruger Gray, depicts a crowned rose with a thistle and shamrock on either side. There is a G below the thistle and R below the shamrock, and the inscription FID DEF IND IMP TWO SHILLINGS date until 1948. From 1949, the coins were struck without the IND IMP, in acknowledgement of India's independence. From 1947, the metal content was changed, as for all British silver circulating coins, to 75% copper, 25% nickel. This was due to the need for Britain to return Lend-Lease silver to the United States. The florin's diameter and weight remained unchanged at 11.3 grams and 28.5 millimetres, despite the change of alloy.
### Elizabeth II (1953–1970)
Florins were produced for Queen Elizabeth II each year between 1953 and 1967, with proof coins dated 1970. The obverse shows the Mary Gillick head of Queen Elizabeth, inscribed ELIZABETH II DEI GRATIA BRITT OMN REGINA (1953 only) or ELIZABETH II DEI GRATIA REGINA (all other years). This change was made to acknowledge the evolving British Commonwealth, which by then contained some republics. The reverse, by Edgar Fuller and Cecil Thomas, depicts a Tudor rose in the centre surrounded by thistles, shamrocks and leeks, with the Latin phrase FID DEF, the denomination and the date. The designs were selected by the Royal Mint Advisory Committee following a public competition. The artists' initials appear either side of the Welsh leek at the bottom of the reverse. When the reverse of the new coin was illustrated in the press, there was no consensus as to which way was up; numismatist H.W.A. Linecar has noted that the second L in SHILLINGS marks the bottom of the coin.
In accordance with the plan for decimalisation of the currency (120 years after this denomination was first introduced in the initial plan to introduce a decimal currency), from 1968 the ten pence coin was introduced of the same size, weight and metal composition as the florin. Thus, the florin ceased to be struck for circulation after the 1967-dated pieces. The new and the old circulated side by side as florins prior to Decimal Day (15 February 1971) and as ten pence pieces after. Florins (usually dated 1947 or later) remained in circulation after Decimal Day. In 1987, following a study of the currency, the Thatcher government announced its intent to issue a new ten pence piece, reduced in size. A smaller ten pence piece was issued in 1992, after which the old florin was demonetised on 30 June 1993. The florin, the first decimal coin, was the last coin in general circulation just prior to decimalisation to be withdrawn.
## Mintages
Victoria
- 1849 - 413,320
- 1851 - 1,540
- 1852 - 1,014,552
- 1853 - 3,919,950
- 1854 - 550,413
- 1855 - 831,017
- 1856 - 2,201,760
- 1857 - 1,671,120
- 1858 - 2,239,380
- 1859 - 2,568,060
- 1860 - 1,475,100
- 1862 - 594,000
- 1863 - 938,520
- 1864 - 1,861,200
- 1865 - 1,580,040
- 1866 - 914,760
- 1867 - 423,720
- 1868 - 869,940
- 1869 - 297,000
- 1870 - 1,080,648
- 1871 - 3,425,605
- 1872 - 7,199,690
- 1873 - 5,921,839
- 1874 - 1,642,630
- 1875 - 1,117,030
- 1876 - 580,034
- 1877 - 682,292
- 1878 - 1,786,680
- 1879 - 1,512,247
- 1880 - 2,161,170
- 1881 - 2,376,337
- 1883 - 3,555,667
- 1884 - 1,447,379
- 1885 - 1,758,210
- 1886 - 591,773
- 1887 - 543,525 (Gothic)
- 1887 - 1,233,378 (Jubilee)
- 1888 - 1,647,540
- 1889 - 2,973,561
- 1890 - 1,684,737
- 1891 - 836,438
- 1892 - 283,401
- 1893 - 1,667,415
- 1894 - 1,952,842
- 1895 - 2,182,968
- 1896 - 2,944,416
- 1897 - 1,699,921
- 1898 - 3,061,343
- 1899 - 3,966,953
- 1900 - 5,528,630
- 1901 - 2,648,870
Edward VII
- 1902 - 2,204,698
- 1903 - 995,298
- 1904 - 2,769,932
- 1905 - 1,187,596
- 1906 - 6,910,128
- 1907 - 5,947,895
- 1908 - 3,280,010
- 1909 - 3,482,829
- 1910 - 5,650,713
George V
- 1911 - 5,957,291
- 1912 - 8,571,731
- 1913 - 4,545,278
- 1914 - 21,252,701
- 1915 - 12,357,939
- 1916 - 21,064,337
- 1917 - 11,181,617
- 1918 - 29,211,792
- 1919 - 9,469,292
- 1920 - 15,387,833
- 1921 - 34,863,895
- 1922 - 23,861,044
- 1923 - 21,546,533
- 1924 - 4,582,372
- 1925 - 1,404,136
- 1926 - 5,125,410
- 1927 - 15,000 (Proof Only)
- 1928 - 11,087,186
- 1929 - 16,397,279
- 1930 - 5,733,568
- 1931 - 6,566,331
- 1932 - 717,041
- 1933 - 8,685,303
- 1935 - 7,540,546
- 1936 - 9,897,448
George VI
- 1937 - 13,033,183
- 1938 - 7,909,388
- 1939 - 20,850,607
- 1940 - 18,700,338
- 1941 - 24,451,079
- 1942 - 39,895,245
- 1943 - 26,711,987
- 1944 - 27,560,005
- 1945 - 25,858,049
- 1946 - 22,300,254
- 1947 - 22,910,085
- 1948 - 67,553,838
- 1949 - 28,614,939
- 1950 - 24,375,003
- 1951 - 27,431,747
Elizabeth II
- 1953 - 11,998,710
- 1954 - 13,085,422
- 1955 - 25,887,253
- 1956 - 47,824,500
- 1957 - 33,071,282
- 1958 - 9,564,580
- 1959 - 14,080,319
- 1960 - 13,831,782
- 1961 - 37,735,315
- 1962 - 35,129,903
- 1963 - 25,580,000
- 1964 - 16,313,000
- 1965 - 48,723,000
- 1966 - 84,547,000
- 1967 - 22,000,000
- 1970 - 750,476 (Proof Only)
|
39,650,109 |
Falcon's Fury
| 1,153,728,446 |
Drop tower attraction at Busch Gardens Tampa amusement park
|
[
"2014 establishments in Florida",
"Amusement rides introduced in 2014",
"Amusement rides manufactured by Intamin",
"Busch Gardens Tampa Bay",
"Drop tower rides"
] |
Falcon's Fury is a free-standing Sky Jump drop tower attraction at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay amusement park in Tampa, Florida, United States. Manufactured by Intamin subsidiary Intaride, the ride reaches a maximum height of 335 feet (102 m), making it North America's tallest free-standing drop tower. Riders experience about five seconds of free fall, reaching a speed of 60 miles per hour (100 km/h). The ride's name was chosen to invoke a falcon's ability to dive steeply at high speed to capture prey.
The project was originally planned to begin in 2012 with the ride opening in 2013, but it was delayed by one year. Construction began in 2013 with a scheduled opening date of May 1, 2014; however, the opening was delayed due to mechanical and technical issues. Following a preview opening to park employees in early August and a soft opening on August 16, 2014, Falcon's Fury officially opened to the public on September 2, 2014. Public response to the ride has been positive, with reviewers praising the height of the tower and the drop experience.
## History
Planning for Falcon's Fury began around the time the park completed its Cheetah Hunt ride in 2011. Ground tests in the Timbuktu area (now known as Pantopia) revealed "interesting soil conditions", with steel beams and concrete required to reinforce the site.
Rumors that Busch Gardens Tampa might replace its Sandstorm ride with a 200-foot (61 m) drop tower surfaced in the fall of 2011 when Mäch Tower opened at its sister park, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, that August. Construction surveying was observed in January 2012. Two months later plans were filed with the city to build a drop tower, possibly for the 2013 season. Speculation about the new attraction's name began when SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, owners of Busch Gardens Tampa, filed trademark applications for "Desert Dive" and "Falcon's Fury" on May 2 and July 11, 2012, respectively, and bought the DesertDive.com domain name. When permits for the new ride differed from those for Mäch Tower in November 2012, rumors began that the seats would tilt forward. Due to the height of the attraction, approval from the Federal Aviation Administration was required. According to the FAA and the city of Tampa, the tower was supposed to be built in December 2012 and open to the public in 2013. For unknown reasons the project was delayed, with its construction pushed back to the second half of 2013.
On May 31, 2013, it was announced that Sandstorm would close on June 2 to make room for a new attraction. About two weeks later, on June 11, Busch Gardens Tampa announced plans for Falcon's Fury and construction began that month. During the fourth quarter of 2013, the park drove steel piles for the ride's foundation nightly for about a month.
On September 20, the tower for Falcon's Fury was shipped from Spain in nine sections, arriving at the park near the end of October; the ride's smaller parts had been delivered earlier from several European countries. Installation of one of the nine tower pieces was planned for every other night, with the last piece in place by New Year's Eve. Construction was done by the Adena Corporation, and on November 18 the first piece was installed. The ride's second piece was installed on December 2, and two more were installed by December 6. The fifth section was placed by December 21, and the sixth was erected by New Year's Day. The seventh tower piece was installed by January 3, 2014, and the eighth by January 5, reaching a height of about 300 feet (91 m), and Falcon's Fury's gondola was seen at the park on January 12. The ride's counterweight was installed on January 22, and the tower was capped during the weekend of February 1. Work on the ride's electrical components then began. Assembly of the gondola was completed by the end of March. Testing was originally scheduled to begin in February, but due to construction delays the first drop tests were not made until April 15. Tower painting began in June, with its sunset motif estimated to take 60 hours over a three-week period.
At the end of February, Busch Gardens Tampa announced that Falcon's Fury would open on May 1, and on April 3 the park began a sweepstakes contest for its "Falcon's Fury First-to-Ride Party". A second, similar contest began on April 11, with fifty winners from each contest being among the first riders. A week later, the park announced that the ride's opening would be delayed, and several media events scheduled for April and May (including the First-to-Ride party) were cancelled. It was later disclosed that the delay was due to manufacturing and technical issues with the cables which pull the gondola up the tower. During the week of August 10, Falcon's Fury opened for park employees. On August 16 the ride soft-opened to the public, and two-and-a-half weeks later Falcon's Fury officially opened.
Busch Gardens Tampa temporarily closed Falcon's Fury for inspection following the Orlando FreeFall accident at ICON Park in March 2022. The drop tower would later reopen but then shortly close thereafter for regular maintenance. After a year of closure due to supply chain delays, the park announced Falcon's Fury would reopen for the Spring 2023 season.
## Ride experience
Falcon's Fury has two shaded queue lines: a standby line which can hold guests for about 45 minutes, and a Quick Queue for guests with passes that allow them to bypass the standby line. Riders must be between 54 inches (137 cm) and 77 inches (196 cm).
When the riders are seated a catch car connects to the gondola and raises it to the top of the tower, which takes about one minute. Although the tower is 335 feet (102 m) high, the gondola stops 25 feet (7.6 m) lower. When it reaches the maximum height the seats tilt forward, with a computer-randomized wait time from one to five seconds. When the wait time ends, the gondola is released from the catch car into a five-second free fall reaching a maximum speed of 60 miles per hour (97 km/h). As the gondola passes through the pre-braking section, the seats rotate back into a vertical position. After the pre-brake the gondola enters the main magnetic-brake run, where riders experience approximately 3.5 g (34 m/s<sup>2</sup>) of deceleration as the gondola slows. When it comes to a full stop at the base of the tower, the riders disembark. One cycle of the ride lasts about one and a half minutes. Busch Gardens Tampa placed an Easter egg in the form of a painted Falcon's Fury logo on top of one of its buildings, which can be seen only from a certain side of the gondola.
## Characteristics
The tower and gondola were manufactured by Intaride, a subsidiary of Intamin. The ride covers an area of about 3,600 square feet (330 m<sup>2</sup>).
### Tower
The Falcon's Fury tower is 335 feet (102 m) tall, the third tallest free-standing drop tower in North America, and can bend 3 feet (0.9 m) in any direction from the top to withstand hurricane-force winds. The tower is composed of nine sections, including the machine house. Each piece of the tower weighs up to 105 tonnes (103 long tons; 116 short tons), and the entire structure weighs about 519 tonnes (511 long tons; 572 short tons). The 77 tonnes (76 long tons; 85 short tons) machine house at the top contains four DC motors used to lift the gondola. Inside the tower is a 68 tonnes (67 long tons; 75 short tons) counterweight, composed of hundreds of lead weights, to help raise the gondola. The tower's foundation is made up of 105 steel piles, varying in depth from 75 feet (23 m) to 205 feet (62 m). A 138-foot (42 m) eddy current brake system on the tower slows the gondola after its free fall. The structure is painted yellow, aqua and two shades of red.
### Gondola
The ride's single gondola has 32 seats, grouped octagonally around the tower. Each of the eight sides seats four riders, and each seat has an over-the-shoulder restraint and seat belt. Falcon's Fury can theoretically accommodate 800 riders per hour. Carbon-fiber wings buttress each end of a group of seats, protecting outside riders' arms and legs during the drop. The gondola reaches a height of 310 feet (94 m), 25 feet (7.6 m) below the top of the tower. When it reaches its maximum height the seats tilt 90 degrees forward, with the riders facing the ground (the first use of this feature on a drop tower).
## Records
When Falcon's Fury opened it became North America's tallest free-standing drop tower. Although taller drop towers exist on the continent—such as Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom at Six Flags Magic Mountain and Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom at Six Flags Great Adventure, which reach drop heights of 400 feet (120 m) and 415 feet (126 m) respectively—those attractions were added to existing structures. Despite its height, the ride's maximum speed of 60 miles per hour (97 km/h) does not set a speed record. Other drop towers—such as Drop Tower: Scream Zone at Kings Dominion, which reaches 72 miles per hour (116 km/h)—are faster. However, Falcon's Fury is the world's first drop tower whose seats tilt 90 degrees. Although tilting seats were first used by Intamin in 2001 on Acrophobia at Six Flags Over Georgia, their tilt angle is smaller.
## Reception
The initial reception after the ride's announcement was positive. According to Lance Hart, a theme park enthusiast from Screamscape, "Instead of selling your picture ... they should sell baby wipes and clean underwear at the exit" and the ride could be the most frightening drop tower in the world. Robb Alvey of Theme Park Review called the ride the world's best drop tower, later ranking it one of the top 14 new attractions for 2014; Dave Parfitt and Arthur Levine of USA Today ranked Falcon's Fury in their top ten. Brady MacDonald of the Los Angeles Times originally ranked Falcon's Fury his seventh-most-anticipated ride for 2014; on an updated list, he ranked it 17th.
For safety reasons, construction on Falcon's Fury was done primarily at night. Residents near the park complained about noise from the pile driver during the laying of the foundation, and complaints about the ride's operating noise continued into August 2014.
According to the park and Twitter posts selected by news media, public response during the soft opening was positive; Total Orlando gave the ride five stars for teenagers and four stars for adults. On Coaster101.com "Ashley" said that although the restraints were tight, they were comfortable and not as tight as those on other rides, adding: "The drop on Falcon's Fury is different from any ride I have ever ridden. The best way I can describe it is that instead of leaving your stomach at the top of the tower, you take it with you to the bottom." According to Florida Trip Guides, the ride was a good addition to the park's attraction lineup: "Falcon's Fury is not for the faint of heart. I have ridden dozens of drop towers but this one is different. Something about facing straight down and falling really makes you nervous." Robert Niles of Theme Park Insider said that Falcon's Fury and other recent attractions were nearing the extreme of human tolerance; as a result, "You're getting to the point where instead of making an attraction more popular by having it achieve some type of record, you're actually limiting the audience for that." Randi Nissenbaum of Bay News 9 called the view from the top of the tower incredible, and although she was nervous at first she wanted to ride again. Sue Carlton of the Tampa Bay Times said, "it was terrifying and thrilling and I held on as hard as I could and yelled and closed my eyes and afterward stepped off rubber-kneed and exhilarated."
For the 2014 season, Busch Gardens Tampa expected attendance to increase by three to eight percent. However, IBISWorld Research predicted in June 2014 that combined attendance for the second quarter of the year had increased by about 0.3 percent for SeaWorld Orlando, SeaWorld San Diego, SeaWorld San Antonio, Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Busch Gardens Tampa. Compared to the same period in 2013, combined attendance for the first half of the year dropped by just over four percent. Busch Gardens Tampa blamed the lack of anticipated attendance increase partially on the delays in Falcon's Fury's construction.
|
10,416,168 |
Tôn Thất Đính
| 1,129,090,849 |
South Vietnamese military commander (1926–2013)
|
[
"1926 births",
"2013 deaths",
"Army of the Republic of Vietnam generals",
"Converts to Roman Catholicism from Buddhism",
"Government ministers of Vietnam",
"Members of the Senate (South Vietnam)",
"Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party politicians",
"Vietnamese Roman Catholics"
] |
Lieutenant General Tôn Thất Đính (, tong tək din; November 20, 1926 – November 21, 2013) was an officer who served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). He is best known as one of the key figures in the November 1963 coup that led to the arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, the first president of the Republic of Vietnam, commonly known as South Vietnam.
A favorite of the ruling Ngô family, Đính received rapid promotions ahead of officers who were regarded as more capable. He converted to Roman Catholicism to curry favor with Diệm and headed the military wing of the Cần Lao party, a secret Catholic organization that maintained the Ngôs' grip on power. At the age of 32, Đính became the youngest ever ARVN general and the commander of the II Corps, but he was regarded as a dangerous, egotistical, and impetuous figure with a weakness for alcohol and partying.
In 1962, Đính, whom Diệm regarded as one of his most loyal officers, was appointed commander of the III Corps that oversaw the region surrounding the capital Saigon, making him important to the prospects of any coup. In late 1963, as Diệm became increasingly unpopular, Đính's colleagues recruited him into a coup plot by playing on his ego and pitting him against Diệm. Diệm and his brother and chief advisor Ngô Đình Nhu were aware of the plot but did not know of Đính's involvement. Nhu planned a fake coup of his own in an attempt to trap his opponents and strengthen the family's regime. Đính was placed in charge of the fake coup and sabotaged it. On November 1 the rebels' actual coup proceeded and the Ngô brothers were deposed and executed.
After the coup, Đính became one of the 12 members of the Military Revolutionary Council (MRC), but this lasted only three months before a bloodless coup by General Nguyễn Khánh. Đính and his colleagues were put under house arrest by Khánh and falsely accused of promoting a neutralist plot. The subsequent military trial collapsed. The generals were convicted of "lax morality", but were eventually allowed to resume their military service, albeit in meaningless desk jobs. Following Khánh's exile by another group of generals, Đính was appointed to command the I Corps in 1966 and ordered to put down the Buddhist Uprising, but Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ disapproved of his conciliatory policies. Kỳ launched a successful surprise attack against Đính, who fled, but was later captured and briefly imprisoned by Kỳ. After his release, Đính worked in the media and was elected to the Senate in 1967. He served in the upper house until the fall of Saigon in April 1975, when he fled Vietnam.
## Early years
Đính was born in the central highlands resort town of Da Lat on November 20, 1926, into the Tôn Thất family of Huế that were relatives of the Nguyễn dynasty. In 1943, he took a clerical job at Da Lat Court. He enlisted in the Vietnamese National Army (VNA) of the French-backed State of Vietnam at Phu Bai in 1949, and was first trained as a non-commissioned officer at Mang Cá, Huế, before being accepted into the first intake of the Huế Military Academy. After one year of training, he was commissioned as a lieutenant. He then trained as a paratrooper and attended Cavalry School in Saumur, France. As a captain, he was made the commanding officer of the VNA's Mobile Task Force (GM 2) in Ninh Giang in northern Vietnam, and after graduating at the top of a Military Staff Training Course in Hanoi, was promoted to the rank of major and put in command of the forces in Duyên Hải, in the northern coastal province of Thái Bình as a battalion commander. In 1952, he was made a lieutenant colonel as appointed to command the 31st Tactical Group (GM 31), based in the province of Hải Dương but also covered the adjoining provinces of Nam Định and Ninh Bình. He was the Deputy Commander of Operations for Colonel Paul Vanuxem when the VNA and French Far East Expeditionary Corps withdrew from Ninh Bình to Tuy Hòa on the South Central Coast as part of Operation Auvergn following the partition of Vietnam.
He became a protege of Ngô Đình Cẩn, a younger brother of Prime Minister Diệm. Cẩn, who unofficially controlled the region of central Vietnam near Huế, was impressed by what he considered to be an abundance of courage on the part of Đính. Within six years of enlisting in the military, Đính had risen to the rank of colonel and was made the inaugural commander of the newly formed 32nd Division based in Da Nang in the centre of the country on January 1, 1955. Đính led the unit until November 1956, during which time it was renamed the 2nd Division.
Diệm deposed head of state Bảo Đại in a fraudulent referendum in 1955 and proclaimed himself president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam, commonly known as South Vietnam. The VNA thus became the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Born into a nominally Buddhist family, Đính had converted to Catholicism in the hope of advancing his career. The change of religion was widely perceived to be a factor in his rapid promotion above more capable officers. A devout member of the Catholic minority, Diệm dedicated the country to the Virgin Mary and heavily disenfranchised and disadvantaged the Buddhist majority.
Đính once described himself as "fearless and arrogant" and Diệm's adopted son; the president was a lifelong bachelor. In August 1957, he was appointed commander of the 1st Division based in Huế, the old imperial capital and Cần's base. Đính served there for one year, until he became a one-star general and received a wider-reaching command in August 1958, making him the youngest ever ARVN general. Đính's favour among the Ngô family saw him appointed in 1958 to head the military wing of the Cần Lao, the secret organisation of Vietnamese Catholics loyal to the Ngô family that maintained the family's grip on power.
Despite the high regard in which the Ngô family held him, Đính had a poor reputation among his colleagues. Regarded by his peers as ambitious, vain and impulsive, he was known mainly for heavily drinking in Saigon's nightclubs, and the Central Intelligence Agency labelled him a "basic opportunist". He was known for always wearing a paratrooper's uniform with a red beret at a steep angle, and being accompanied by a tall, uncommunicative Cambodian bodyguard. Senior Australian Army officer Ted Serong, who worked with Đính, called him "a young punk with a gun – and dangerous".
## Xá Lợi Pagoda
In August 1958, Đính was made the commander of the II Corps, which oversaw the Central Highlands region mainly inhabited by indigenous tribes. He was based in the mountainous town of Pleiku and oversaw the surrounding region and the lowlands to the north of the capital of Saigon. This put him in control of the 5th, 22nd and 23rd Divisions, one third of the divisions in the country. At the time, the CIA had been training Montagnard tribesmen under the Village Defense Program (later to become the Civilian Irregular Defense Group) with the stated intention of resisting communist infiltration, but Đính regarded it was an attempt to divide and conquer and undermine him. He estimated that 18,000 tribesmen had been armed, and said to Ngô Đình Nhu – one of Diệm's younger brothers and his chief adviser – that "the Americans have put an army at my back". CIA officer Lucien Conein admitted years afterwards that Đính's claim was correct; that Nhu and Diệm had no previous idea of what the Americans had been doing. Đính wrote to Diệm to complain that his units were being weakened by the policy of promoting officers for political reasons, despite having been a beneficiary himself of this non-merit-based policy.
The reorganisation of the corps boundaries in December 1962 created a fourth region. The entire region surrounding the capital, Saigon, came under the purview of the III Corps, whereas the previous arrangement saw two corps controlling the regions to the north and south of the capital. As a key supporter of Diệm, Đính was named commander of the III Corps, because the Ngô family trusted him to defend them in the face of any coup attempts. Under the III Corps were the 5th and the 25th Divisions, which were located in Biên Hòa and Cu Chi, on the north-eastern and north-western outskirts of Saigon respectively.
In August 1963, Nhu, who controlled the special forces and secret police, allowed Đính to have a hand in planning raids against Buddhist dissidents who had been organising at the Xá Lợi pagoda, Saigon's largest. The raids involved the deployment of the 5th Division into the capital. Although the execution of the raids – which left hundreds dead – was primarily the responsibility of Colonel Lê Quang Tung, the special forces head, Đính privately took responsibility, stating to a journalist, "I have defeated Henry Cabot Lodge [the US ambassador to South Vietnam]. He came here to stage a coup d'etat, but I, Tôn Thất Đính, have conquered him and saved the country." In the aftermath of the raids, Foreign Minister Vũ Văn Mẫu resigned in protest, shaved his head like a monk and sought to leave on a pilgrimage to India; Nhu ordered Đính to jail him. At the urging of another general, Đính put Mẫu under house arrest instead.
During this period, Đính told a dinner guest that he had the pleasure of dining with a great national hero. When the guest asked Đính where the hero was, Đính said "it is me" and claimed to have defeated the Americans. Đính's ego had been played upon by the Ngô brothers, who had themselves reiterated this point and paid him a large cash bonus after the pagoda raids. In the heady times after the attacks, Đính had a "somewhat incoherent" debate with his American advisor, claiming "he [Đình] was without doubt the greatest general officer in the ARVN, the saviour of Saigon ... and soon he would be the top military man in the country." In a press conference after the raids, Đính claimed to have saved South Vietnam from Buddhists, communists and "foreign adventurers", a euphemism for the United States.
After being questioned sharply, Đính quickly became angry. Ray Herndon of United Press International asked him to name the country that he was referring to, but Đính dodged the question. Herndon lampooned him by saying that a national hero should be able to identify the national enemy, and asked him to call Madame Nhu, the de facto First Lady known for her anti-American comments, to get help in identifying the hostile country in question. After several reporters derisively laughed at these comments, Đính stormed out of the conference.
## Defection and coup
Embarrassed by the events at the press conference, Đính returned to the officers' mess at the Joint General Staff (JGS) headquarters. His colleagues, led by General Trần Văn Đôn, were plotting a coup against Diệm because of the Buddhist crisis, and attempted to play on Đính's ego to convince him to join them. They knew that without Đính's assistance, a coup would be difficult as his forces dominated the region surrounding the capital. In a series of meetings, the other generals assured Đính that he was a national hero worthy of political authority, and claimed that Nhu had not realised how important he was in the future of the country. Đính's colleagues even bribed his soothsayer to predict his elevation to political power. The other generals told him that the people were dissatisfied with Diệm's cabinet, that Vietnam needed dynamic young officers in politics, and that their presence would reverse the declining morale in the ARVN. They advised Đính to ask Diệm to promote him to interior minister, Dương Văn Minh to defence minister and Trần Văn Minh to education minister. The other generals hoped that would reject Đính and wound his pride. As a result, Đính and his fellow generals met Diệm at the palace, where Đính asked the president to promote him to the post of interior minister. Diệm bluntly chastised Đính in front of his colleagues and ordered him out of Saigon to the Central Highlands resort town of Đà Lạt to rest. Đính felt humiliated and embarrassed, having promised his colleagues that he would be successful. The Ngô brothers had been alarmed by Đính's request and put him under surveillance. Đính found out, further straining his relationship with the palace. Đính agreed to join the coup, although with his ambitious nature, the other officers were skeptical and planned to have him assassinated if he tried to switch sides.
With Đính and the Ngô family's increasing focus on the political usage of the army, the military situation in III Corps deteriorated badly in the second half of 1963, as personnel were redeployed into the cities. In August, he moved a unit away from Bến Tượng, which had been portrayed as a model settlement in the Strategic Hamlet Program that was supposed to isolate peasants into fortified villages to keep the Viet Cong out. While the unit was in Saigon cracking down on the Buddhists, the VC overran Bến Tượng. A year earlier, the American media contingent had been invited to the opening ceremony of the settlement, which was supposed to be the flagship of the hamlet program. As Đính spent most of October in the capital plotting instead of inspecting the countryside, the VC began to systematically dismantle the strategic hamlets.
### Plotting a fake coup
By mid-October, Diệm and Nhu knew of the coup plans, but did not know that Đính was firmly among them, although they were wary of him. Nhu then decided to outwit the generals with a counter-plot. The generals heard of this and decided to counteract him. The other generals were still suspicious of Đính, fearing he would betray them. Having discovered that Nhu was trying to use him to trap them and unsure of his true loyalties, they promised to make him interior minister and offered other rewards if he helped to overthrow the Ngô brothers.
As part of the generals' plot, Đính sent Colonel Nguyễn Hữu Có, his deputy corps commander, to Mỹ Tho to talk to the 7th Division commander, Colonel Bùi Đình Đạm, and two regimental commanders subordinate to Đạm, and the chief of Mỹ Tho province. Exhorting them to join the coup, Có stated that all the generals were in the plot except the strongly loyalist Huỳnh Văn Cao, and that Đính would soon join. According to one account, Đính had intended that loyalists would report Có's activities to Diệm and Nhu so that it would give him an opportunity to orchestrate a stunt to ingratiate himself with the palace.
Nhu's agents soon reported Có's activities to the palace. When the Ngô brothers confronted Đính with what occurred in Mỹ Tho, Đính feigned astonishment at his deputy's behavior, crying and vowing to have Có killed. Nhu opposed this and stated that he wanted to keep Có alive to catch the plotters and tried to use Đính to this end. Nhu ordered Đính and Tung, both of whom took their orders directly from the palace instead of the ARVN command, to plan a fake coup against the government. One objective was to trick dissidents into joining the false uprising so that they could be identified and eliminated. Another aim of the public relations stunt was to give a false impression of the strength of the regime.
Codenamed Operation Bravo, the first stage of the scheme would involve some of Đính and Tung's loyalist soldiers, disguised as insurgents led by apparently renegade junior officers, faking a coup and vandalizing the capital. Tung would then announce the formation of a "revolutionary government" consisting of opposition activists who had not consented to joining the new administration, while Diệm and Nhu would pretend to be on the run. During the orchestrated chaos of the first coup, the disguised loyalists would riot and in the ensuing mayhem, kill the leading coup plotters, such as Generals Minh, Đôn, Lê Văn Kim and junior officers that were helping them. The loyalists and some of Nhu's underworld connections would also kill some figures who were assisting the conspirators, such as the titular but relatively powerless Vice President Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ, CIA agent Lucien Conein (who was on assignment in Vietnam as a military adviser) and Ambassador Lodge. These would then be blamed on "neutralist and pro-communist elements". A fake "counter-coup" was to follow, whereupon Tung's special forces, having left Saigon on the pretext of fighting communists, as well as Đính's regulars, would triumphantly re-enter Saigon to reaffirm the Diệm regime. Nhu would then exploit the scare to round up dissidents.
Đính was put in charge of the fake coup and was allowed the additional control of the 7th Division based in Mỹ Tho, which was previously assigned to Diệm loyalist Cao, who commanded the IV Corps in the Mekong Delta. The reassignment of the 7th Division gave Đính and his III Corps complete encirclement of Saigon, and would prevent Cao from storming the capital to save Diệm as he had done during the coup attempt in 1960.
Nhu and Tung, however, were unaware that Đính was part of the real coup plot. Đính told Tung that the fake coup needed to employ an overwhelming amount of force. He said that tanks were required "because armour is dangerous". In an attempt to outwit Tung, Đính claimed fresh troops were needed, opining, "If we move reserves into the city, the Americans will be angry. They'll complain that we're not fighting the war. So we must camouflage our plan by sending the special forces out to the country. That will deceive them." The loyalists were unaware that Đính's real intention was to engulf Saigon with his rebel divisions and lock Tung's men in the countryside where they could not defend the president. Tung and the palace agreed to send all four Saigon-based special forces companies out of the capital on October 29.
Not trusting Có, Diệm put a Catholic loyalist, Colonel Lâm Văn Phát, in command of the 7th Division on October 31. According to tradition, Phát had to pay the corps commander a courtesy visit before assuming control. Đính refused to see Phát and told him to come back on Friday at 14:00, by which time the coup had already been scheduled to start. In the meantime, Đính had Đôn sign a counter-order transferring command of the 7th Division to Có. The next day, Có took the division's incumbent officers prisoner and used the unit to block loyalists from storming the capital from the south.
### Diệm's downfall
On November 1, 1963, the coup went ahead with Cao's troops isolated in the far south and Tung's forces outside Saigon, unable to rescue Diệm from the rebel encirclement. Tung was called to the JGS headquarters at Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base under the pretense of a routine meeting and was seized and executed. Attempts by Diệm and Nhu to make contact with Đính were blocked by other generals, who claimed that Đính was elsewhere. This led the Ngô brothers to think that Đính had been captured, still unaware that he had rebelled. The following morning, Đính was allowed to have the final word with Diệm before the brothers were arrested, allowing him to prove his loyalty to the rebel cause. Đính subsequently shouted obscenities at the Ngô brothers.
Đính alleged that Nhu's contacts with the communists and threats to make a peace deal with North Vietnam had motivated the coup. When Diệm and Nhu were shot dead by the arresting officers against the orders of the generals, Đính claimed he "couldn't sleep that night". He boasted to the media that he and his troops were responsible for seizing broadcasting studios, the police headquarters, Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base, and the release of hundreds of political prisoners such as monks and students. He also claimed that he led the successful siege on Gia Long Palace, although the 5th Division of Colonel Nguyễn Văn Thiệu had actually carried it out.
Đính saved the life of Colonel Cao Văn Viên, the commander of the Airborne Brigade, who was a Diệm loyalist. Viên's fate had been discussed during the planning phase. Đính, who played mahjong with Viên's wife, convinced Minh to spare the paratroop commander, saying that Viên would not oppose the coup. At the JGS meeting, Viên, who had not known of the plot, removed his insignia and resigned, and was arrested for refusing to join the coup. Viên was allowed to return to his command a month later, and later became the chief of JGS for eight years.
## Post-Diệm
Following the coup, a Military Revolutionary Council (MRC) was formed, comprising 12 generals including Đính, each of whom had equal voting power. They appointed a cabinet mainly consisting of civilians led by Prime Minister Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ, who had been the titular Vice President under Diệm. Đính was initially made interior minister, but Thơ was said to have personally opposed the appointment. Eventually Minh, the head of the military junta, struck a compromise whereby Đính was made Security Minister and Administrative Affairs, which partially covered the interior ministry. He was the 2nd Deputy Chairman of the MRC behind Minh and Đôn. However, tension persisted as Thơ's civilian government was plagued by infighting. According to Thơ's assistant, Nguyễn Ngọc Huy, the presence of Đôn and Đính in both the civilian cabinet and the MRC paralyzed the governance process. Đính and Đôn were subordinate to Thơ in the civilian government, but as members of the MRC they were superior to him. When Thơ gave a cabinet order with which the generals disagreed, they went to the MRC and gave a counter-order. Đính and the new national police chief, General Xuân, were accused of arresting people en masse, before releasing them in return for bribes and pledges of loyalty. The junta performed indecisively and was heavily criticised, especially Minh, who was viewed as being too apathetic towards his country's situation. During the MRC's tenure, South Vietnam suffered more and more losses to the Vietcong.
### Policies
Đính was reported to have celebrated his new positions by making conspicuous appearances at Saigon nightclubs and dancing, having lifted Madame Nhu's bans on such activities. He reportedly kissed the bar dancers and ordered champagne for all present. Đính's brash behavior caused public relations problems for the junta. In interviews with The Washington Post and The New York Times, he claimed that he took a leading role in the coup because "we would have lost the war under Diệm" and saying that he participated "not for personal ambition, but for the population, the people and to get rid of Nhu". He claimed to have been the "specialist ... [who] gave the orders in only thirty minutes", keeping the plans "all in his head". In an exclusive interview with Herndon, he said "You are the one who started it all, who drove me into making the coup. You are the hero of the revolution." This was a reference to Herndon's sarcastic reference to Đính as a "great national hero" after the general took credit for the pagoda raids. He also courted controversy with anti-American remarks, stating "On August 21, I was governor of Saigon and loyal to Diem; on November 1, I was governor of Saigon and fighting Diem; maybe in the future I'll be governor of Saigon and fighting against the Americans."
Đính and the leading generals in the MRC also had a secret plan to end the communist insurgency, which claimed to be independent of the government of North Vietnam. They claimed that most of them were first and foremost southern nationalists opposed to foreign military intervention and U.S. involvement and support of Diệm. The generals agreed with this viewpoint and thought that an agreement to end the war within South Vietnam was possible. The government also rebuffed American proposals to bomb North Vietnam on the grounds that such actions would cede the moral high ground, which they claimed on the basis of fighting in a purely defensive manner. However, the plans to bring the VC into the mainstream were never implemented to any degree before the government was deposed.
During his time on the MRC, Đính persistently raised eyebrows with his volatile behaviour. The Americans and his colleagues found him difficult to control. General Paul Harkins, the head of the US military presence in Vietnam, advised Đính to relinquish his control of III Corps on the grounds that he was already serving as the interior minister and that a corps needed a full-time leader, but Đính refused. As III Corps surrounded the capital, the most economically productive region in South Vietnam, it had the most scope for corruption and graft. Đính told U.S. embassy officials in December 1963 he was preparing to "accommodate himself to a neutralist solution for Vietnam". This reportedly perturbed the Americans and was interpreted as a threat to not cooperate with the anti-communist struggle if his power was wound back. US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara criticised the arrangement, and in early January 1964, Đính was relieved by General Khiệm, who had been the head of the armed forces until being demoted after the coup against Diệm, and he set about overthrowing the MRC.
## Deposed by Nguyễn Khánh
Đính's political stay was brief, as General Nguyễn Khánh, who was disgruntled at not receiving a high position after Diệm's removal, deposed the MRC with the support of Khiệm on January 30, 1964, without firing a shot. Khánh used the coup to exact retribution against Generals Đôn, Đính, Xuan and Lê Văn Kim. Khánh had them arrested, claiming that they were part of a neutralist plot with the French government of President Charles de Gaulle to make a peace deal with North Vietnam that would not end communism. Khánh noted they had all served in the French-backed VNA prior to 1955, although he had as well. He also accused the four generals of discussing such a plan with some visiting politicians from de Gaulle's party during a dinner, although Đính and his accused colleagues denied that the meeting was anything more than social. The generals were flown to Mỹ Khe beach, near Đà Nẵng.
Khánh presided over their trial of Đính and his colleagues on May 28, 1964. The generals were interrogated for five and a half hours, mostly about details of their coup against Diệm, rather than the original charge of promoting neutralism. As all of the officers were involved in Diệm's overthrow, the hearings did not reveal any new information. The court deliberated for over nine hours, and when it reconvened for the verdict, Khánh stated, "We ask that once you begin to serve again in the army, you do not take revenge on anybody". The tribunal then "congratulated" the generals, but found that they were of "lax morality" and unqualified to command due to a "lack of a clear political concept". They were chastised for being "inadequately aware of their heavy responsibility" and of letting "their subordinates take advantage of their positions". Đính's quartet were allowed to remain in Đà Lạt under surveillance.
The four generals were barred from commanding troops and offices were prepared so they could participate in "research and planning". Worried that the idle group would plot against him, Khánh made some preliminary arrangements to send them to the U.S. for military study, but this failed. When Khánh was himself deposed in 1965, he handed over dossiers proving that Đính and the other generals were innocent and that his charges were dishonest, before going into exile. Historian Robert Shaplen said that "the case ... continued to be one of Khánh's biggest embarrassments." During the period of house arrest, Khánh briefly released Đính and Kim when the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, known by its French acronym of FULRO, launched an uprising in the central highlands calling for autonomy for indigenous people. Đính and Kim were sent to Ban Mê Thuột in an attempt to end the standoff in September 1964, but after negotiations stalled, they conferred with Khánh and decided to order ARVN troops to crush the rebellion, which was carried out successfully.
## 1966 Buddhist protests and senate career
With the rise to power of Nguyễn Cao Kỳ – head of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force – following Khánh's departure, returned to a command role in the army. Đính was transferred from his post as Director General of Military Training, and in April 1966, he was appointed to lead I Corps, in northern South Vietnam. Đính was the third commander of the corps within five weeks. This upheaval came about after the dismissal of Lieutenant General Nguyễn Chánh Thi due to his sympathies towards Buddhist activists and because Kỳ viewed him as a personal threat. In response, Buddhist protesters brought the region to a standstill with anti-American and anti-war demonstrations, some of which descended into rioting. The protests were supported by groups of rebel I Corps soldiers and the mayor of Đà Nẵng, Nguyễn Văn Man, who had been appointed by Thi. These anti-Kỳ groups formed a coalition known as the Struggle Movement. Thi's replacement, General Nguyễn Văn Chuân, refused to confront the dissidents or shut them down. He was content to allow protests provided there was no insurrection.
Kỳ disapproved of Chuan's approach and replaced Chuan with Đính. Kỳ felt Đính's aggressive attitude following the Xá Lợi Pagoda raids in 1963 indicated a willingness to suppress Buddhist dissidents. Moreover, Đính was a native of central Vietnam and would have been popular with those who thought along parochial lines. Đính arrived in Huế on April 15 and, after a week, announced that he had restored Saigon's authority over the region. He proclaimed that he had regained control of the radio stations in Đà Nẵng and Huế from the dissidents, and that he had convinced the mayor of Đà Nẵng to remain loyal to Saigon. Đính announced a deal whereby the Buddhists would have regular air time in return for relinquishing control of the radio station. This move was interpreted in different ways. Some felt that Đính was attempting to gain favour with the Buddhists in anticipation of Kỳ's fall from power, while Frances FitzGerald felt it was the only sensible government action during the crisis. On April 19, clashes erupted in Quảng Ngãi between the Buddhists and the VNQDĐ (Vietnamese Nationalist Party), which supported the continuation of the anti-communist war, prompting Đính to forcibly restrain the two groups.
Soon after, Kỳ made a surprise attack to assert government control over central Vietnam. He flew out to Đà Nẵng with his own units, without consulting the Americans or officials in I Corps. At this time, Đính was pursuing a policy of reconciliation Đà Nẵng and negotiation with the dissident I Corps units, and making contact with the Struggle Movement. Kỳ decided to attack and sent his forces to overrun Đính's headquarters on May 15, forcing the latter to abandon his post and flee to the headquarters of U.S. General Lewis Walt. Fearing Kỳ's forces would kill him, Đính asked Walt for help and was flown to Huế, where the pro-Thi and pro-Buddhist elements were still in control. Đính was then formally replaced by General Cao. Walt's assistance to Đính provoked a reaction from General William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Walt and Westmoreland were often in conflict, and the latter responded to his subordinate's evacuation of Đính by imploring Kỳ to attack Huế.
Kỳ's surprise attack led to conflict between the ARVN rebels and loyalists, with the American ground forces caught in the middle, effectively creating a civil war within a civil war. Kỳ eventually quelled the rebellion and briefly jailed Đính, who claimed he was incarcerated for refusing to back up Kỳ's account of the conflict with the Buddhists. Đính left the army and upon the nominal restoration of civilian rule, won election to the newly created Senate in 1967, as part of the Hoa Sen (Lotus) ticket. He was the Chairman of Senate Defence Committee and served as a senator, later serving as the leader of the Xã Hội Dân Chủ (Social Democratic) bloc. In February 1968, while serving in the Senate, Đính and fellow senator and former junta colleague Đôn founded a newspaper, Công Luan, while also serving as head of the Vietnamese Publishers Association.
On April 29, a day before the fall of Saigon, Đính left for the US, initially settling in Virginia, before relocating to Garden Grove and then Westminster, in the Little Saigon area of Orange County, California. In 1998, Đính claimed he felt remorse for the deposal and assassinations of the Ngô brothers, and also claimed he had opposed their policies of religious discrimination against Buddhists, which had fomented national disunity and the eventual Communist victory. In 1998, his memoirs 20 Năm Binh Nghiệp – Hồi Ký của Tôn Thất Đính (Vietnamese: 20 Years in the Military – The Memoirs of Tôn Thất Đính) were published, but they were not launched for another 15 years until June 2013 at an event in Santa Ana that commemorated with the 50th anniversary of the self-immolation of Thích Quảng Đức during the Buddhist crisis. Đính gave the keynote address at the event, which was organized and attended by several senior members of the Vietnamese American Buddhist sangha.
He died at Kindred Hospital Santa Ana on November 21, 2013, where he had been treated for several weeks, and his funeral was conducted in accordance with Buddhist tradition.
|
334,532 |
Riven
| 1,167,471,716 |
1997 video game
|
[
"1997 video games",
"Acclaim Entertainment games",
"Android (operating system) games",
"Cancelled Atari Jaguar games",
"Classic Mac OS games",
"Cyan Worlds games",
"D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction winners",
"First-person adventure games",
"IOS games",
"Mean Hamster Software games",
"Myst games",
"Noodlecake Games games",
"PlayStation (console) games",
"Red Orb Entertainment games",
"ScummVM-supported games",
"Sega Saturn games",
"Sega video games",
"Single-player video games",
"Ubisoft games",
"Video game sequels",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games scored by Robyn Miller",
"Video games set on islands",
"Windows games"
] |
Riven: The Sequel to Myst is a puzzle adventure video game, the second in the Myst series of games. Developed by Cyan Worlds, it was initially published by Red Orb Entertainment, a division of Broderbund. Riven was distributed on five compact discs and released for Mac and Windows personal computers on October 31, 1997, in North America; it was later released on a single DVD-ROM in 1998. Riven was also ported to several other platforms. The story of Riven is set after the events of Myst. Having been rescued from the efforts of his sons, Atrus enlists the help of the player character to free his wife from his power-hungry father, Gehn. Riven takes place almost entirely on the Age of Riven, a world slowly falling apart due to Gehn's destructive rule.
Development of Riven began soon after Myst became a success, and spanned more than three years. In an effort to create a visual style distinct from that of Myst, director Robyn Miller and his brother, producer Rand Miller recruited former Aladdin production designer Richard Vander Wende as a co-director. Broderbund employed a US\$10 million advertising campaign to publicize the game's release.
Riven was praised by reviewers, with the magazine Salon proclaiming that the game approaches the level of art. Critics positively noted the puzzles and immersive experience of the gameplay, though publications such as Edge felt that the nature of point-and-click gameplay limited the title heavily. The best-selling game of 1997, Riven sold 1.5 million copies in one year. After the game's release, Robyn Miller left Cyan to form his own development studio, ending the professional partnership of the two brothers. Rand stayed at Cyan and continued to work on Myst-related products including The Myst Reader and the real-time rendered game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. The next entry in the Myst series, Myst III: Exile, was developed by Presto Studios and published by Ubisoft. A remake of the game is in development.
## Gameplay
Like its predecessor, Riven is a point and click adventure game played from a first-person perspective. The player explores immersive environments depicted through a large series of computer generated stills using mouse clicks for movement or to manipulate objects within reach. By operating mechanical contraptions and deciphering codes and symbols discovered in the surroundings, the vaguely explained goal can eventually be reached.
To navigate the world, the player clicks in the direction they want to walk or turn. The cursor changes in appearance, depending on its position on the screen and what it is hovering over, to show what effect clicking will have. For instance, if the player positions the cursor hand near the side of the screen, it may show a pointing finger, indicating that clicking will turn the view in that direction. The cursor changes in context to show when players can drag or toggle switches, or when certain items can be picked up and carried. Such items can then be examined at any time, and either reveal clues to puzzles or provide information on the game's setting and story. Like Myst, Riven has an optional method of navigation known as Zip Mode, which allows players to skip to areas already explored, but may cause them to miss important clues.
Riven has more complex and numerous puzzles than its forerunner and is set in a larger virtual world for players to explore. Whereas in Myst the objective of the game is to travel to different Ages to solve puzzles before returning to a "hub Age", Riven's gameplay takes place on the five islands of the Age of Riven. Much of it consists of solving puzzles to access new areas of the islands, though players are also able to explore without fulfilling objectives. The volcanic landscape depicted, with its steep cliffs and crater lakes, is bestrewn with mechanical, Victorian-style artifacts such as elevators, pipes, levers and roller coaster-like transports. To solve the game, players must consider the purpose and physical principles of these artifacts as well as their role in the fictional culture.
## Plot
Riven's story continues where Myst and its companion novel, The Book of Atrus, left off. The player assumes the role of the Stranger, the protagonist of the first game and friend of Atrus (Rand Miller). Atrus knows the ancient art of creating "linking books", specially written books that serve as portals to other worlds known as "Ages". Atrus needs the Stranger's help to free his wife, Catherine (Sheila Goold; voice by Rengin Altay), who is held hostage in her home Age of Riven, which is slowly collapsing. Her captor is Gehn (John Keston), Atrus' manipulative father and self-declared ruler of Riven. Thirty years earlier, Atrus and Catherine trapped Gehn on Riven by removing all of the linking books that led out of the Age; the last book to be removed, linking to the Age of Myst, was the one they held to escape Riven. In the belief that it would be destroyed, they let the book fall into the Star Fissure, a rift leading out of the damaged Age of Riven into a mysterious, space-like void. Catherine was later tricked into returning to Riven by her sons, Sirrus and Achenar, whereupon she was taken hostage by Gehn. Eventually, the player discovered the unharmed Myst book, leading to the events in Myst.
At the beginning of Riven, Atrus equips the player with a trap book—a snare that functions as a one-man prison, yet looks identical to a linking book—and his personal diary. This diary summarizes the history of events leading to the present situation; Atrus cannot explain in depth as he is engaged in rewriting the descriptive book of Riven, in an attempt to slow its deterioration. The player must enter the Age with no way of leaving, as Atrus cannot risk sending a real linking book to Riven until Gehn is safely imprisoned lest he use it to escape Riven. Instructing the player to capture Gehn in the trap book, find Catherine, and then signal him, Atrus holds out the link book that will transport the player to Riven.
Once there, the player explores the islands of Riven, eventually discovering Catherine's prison. The player also travels to Tay, the Age of the Moiety (rebellious Rivenese under the leadership of Catherine who are attempting to end Gehn's tyrannical rule), and the "233rd Age", Gehn's personal sanctuary, where the player meets Gehn himself. Gehn attempts to convince the player that his intentions to rebuild D'ni (the civilization responsible for originating the art of the link books) were honorable and that he seeks atonement for his past transgressions. Because of the decay of Riven's structure, the only way to clearly signal Atrus is to bring about a massive disturbance in the Age's stability—accomplished by reopening the Star Fissure, which Gehn had closed. When it opens, Atrus immediately links to Riven to investigate and meets the player at the brink of the Fissure. Depending on the player's actions, the ending to Riven varies. In the best ending, the player tricks Gehn into the prison book and releases Catherine. Atrus and Catherine thank the Stranger before linking back to the Age of Myst. The Stranger then falls into the Star Fissure to be taken on the path back to his world. The worst ending involves neither capturing Gehn nor releasing Catherine, which allows Gehn to kill Atrus (and then the player) and escape from his imprisonment. Other endings include capturing Gehn without saving Catherine, or being trapped in the prison book.
## Development
Cyan began work on Riven in 1993, after Myst's release. Before development began, when the name of the game was undecided, the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller said they wanted a "natural flow" from the first game to the sequel. As Myst proved to be a popular and commercial success, the two developers were able to expand their four-person team to a much larger crew of designers, artists, programmers, and sound designers. Development spanned more than four years, and was a much larger undertaking than for the first game; Riven had a budget of between US\$5 and \$10 million, more than ten times the cost of developing Myst.
The design for Riven stemmed from a desire to create something different and more dynamic than the romantic style of Myst. At an early point, the game's world was to be called Equiquay. The first stage of development was to create the puzzles, in an attempt to integrate them as smoothly as possible into the areas in the game. The Millers met their co-designer, Richard Vander Wende, at a demonstration of Myst for the Digital World Expo in Los Angeles. Vander Wende had previously worked for ILM, and at Disney as a designer for the animated feature Aladdin. As the third member of Riven's conceptual team, Vander Wende ended up contributing what Robyn Miller described as an "edgier" and complementary vision, that made the game dramatically different from its predecessor.
At the time of Riven's development, publisher Broderbund was facing falling revenues as development costs rose. Two years into the project, Cyan still had nothing they could show them. Broderbund's stock dropped from \$60 a share to \$22 in 1996, because of a delay in the publishing of Riven. The plan had been to ship the game in time for the 1996 holiday season; Riven was finally published on October 31, 1997. Even though Riven's sales were expected to be higher than any other game that holiday season, Broderbund launched a \$10 million marketing campaign and developed a retail marketing partnership with Toshiba America. Anticipation for the game was high even among non-gamers, helped by web-based word of mouth and well-placed media coverage.
### Graphics
As in Myst, the topography of the islands was originally created as grayscale images, where brightness corresponded to elevation. In Softimage, these maps were turned into the terrain models seen in the game. The large island objects were broken apart to facilitate efficient rendering, which required them to be created using polygonal geometry. All other objects were modeled using B-splines and NURBS.
Many of the textures were accumulated during a three-day trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The artists took hundreds of photos of wood, adobe, sand, stucco and other materials, which were treated in Photoshop before being mapped onto the 3D geometry. Whereas many computer-generated environments of the time ended up looking smooth, like plastic, the Millers and Vander Wende developed a more gritty and weathered design, with corroded and aged elements, to imply reality. The artists considered how objects would look and function if they were real, where and how they would be worn, and created corresponding details. While bump maps were occasionally used to simulate geometry, even small details such as screws were often individually modeled.
Rendering was executed in Mental Ray, using numerous custom-made shaders to produce lifelike lighting, water and landscapes. Wireframes also served as a guide to model the backgrounds. In total Riven has over three hours of video and almost five thousand images; rendering was a major bottleneck in production despite the use of 18 dedicated workstations. Some scenes consisted of tens of thousands of individual models and textures and more than a hundred virtual light sources. Loading a single island model could take two hours. Runtime animation effects were created by Mark DeForest, to add flying insects and simple water ripples.
Riven combined the pre-rendered backgrounds with live action footage, in order to increase the player's immersion level. Riven was the first game in which any of its designers had directed live actors, and Vander Wende was apprehensive about their use. Rand Miller had to reprise his role of Atrus from Myst, even though he hated acting. All the actors were filmed with a blue screen as a backdrop, which was removed in post-production by chroma key, so that the actors would blend into the virtual environment. Real world stairs, doorways and studio lights had to be meticulously positioned on the live stage to match their CG equivalents. Some sequences were seamlessly cut together with morphing, to allow for partial variations due to the nonlinearity of the gameplay.
### Audio
Robyn Miller composed Riven's music, which was later packaged and released by Virgin Records as Riven: The Soundtrack. Miller designed the liner notes and packaging, which included English translations of the language found in the game. Whereas the music to Myst was, at first, only available by mail-order from Cyan, Virgin Records had bought the rights to release it initially, prompting Miller to make sure that it could stand alone in CD form. The compact disc was released on February 24, 1998, with 54 minutes of music.
Miller established three leitmotifs for the game's three central characters, Atrus, Catherine, and Gehn. Gehn's theme is only heard in its complete form near the end of the game, but portions of the melody can be heard throughout Riven, highlighting his control of the Age. Miller tried to let the environment dictate the resulting sound in order to make the music as immersive as possible. He blended live instrumentation with synthesizers: "By mixing and matching conventional instrumentation, you can create an odd, interesting mood," Miller said. Ultimately, he wanted the music of Riven to reflect the game itself, which he described as having "a familiar-yet-strange feel to it."
Miller described his biggest challenge in writing Riven's music as reconciling the linear, pleasing construction of music with the nonlinearity of the gameplay. As players can freely explore all areas, Miller explained in an interview, "the music can't say anything too specific. If it says something, if it builds in intensity and there starts to be a climax, and people are just standing in a room looking around, and they're thinking 'What's going on in here? Is something about to jump out from behind me?' You can't have the basic parts of music that you'd like to have, you can't have a basic structure. It's all got to be just flowing, and continue to flow." Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine argued that the soundtrack is "appealingly atmospheric", but "lacks definition", and that the music loses impact when separated from the game.
### Ports
Sunsoft, who previously published Myst for the Sega Saturn, were initially set to publish the Saturn version of Riven in PAL regions, but the rights were later picked up by Acclaim Entertainment. Atari Corporation were in talks with Sunsoft in regards for a potential conversion of Riven to the Atari Jaguar that never materialized. On December 17, 2017, ScummVM added support for Riven.
## Reception
Riven was generally positively received by critics, with the PC version garnering an average critic score of 83/100 at Metacritic. PC Data reported it as the best-selling computer game in the United States during 1997, despite its having only been on the market for less than three months. Myst or Riven held the number one and two spots on the PC Data sales charts from June 1997 until January 1998. By April, Riven had sold over 1 million units and earned \$46.2 million in revenue domestically, which led PC Data to declare it the fifth-best-selling computer game in the United States between January 1993 and April 1998. Sales surpassed 1.5 million units within a year of its release. By 2001, over 4.5 million units had been sold.
Jeff Segstack of GameSpot gave the game high marks, explaining that it is "a leisurely paced, all-encompassing, mentally challenging experience. If you enjoyed Myst, you'll thoroughly enjoy Riven." Computer Gaming World stated that the graphics were the best they had seen in any adventure game. GamePro said that it "retains the ambiance of Myst, but new features, such as increased use of animation and live action footage, create even more believable environments." The reviewer gave it a 4.5 out of 5 in graphics and a perfect 5.0 in every other category (sound, control, and funfactor), and predicted that it would both surpass the expectations of Myst fans and draw in many new enthusiasts to the series. Laura Miller of Salon declared that "Art [...] is what Riven approaches," and praised the gameplay as having "a graceful elegance that reminds [her] of a masterfully constructed novel." The game's sound and graphics were consistently praised. Macworld's Michael Gowan highlighted the game's "rich, engrossingly mysterious world", and he argued that the quality of its storytelling made Riven "more like a good novel than a computer game."
Nevertheless, several publications found fault with aspects of Riven. Computer Gaming World felt that the gameplay was too similar to the original Myst, making Riven the "same game with a new title"; the magazine also criticized the minimal character interaction. Gaming magazine Edge felt that although Riven was a good game, the solitary atmosphere and lack of mobility was steadily becoming outdated, as games like Super Mario 64 sacrificed graphical fidelity for an increase in freedom. They stated "the question is whether Cyan can incorporate its almost Tolkien-esque world-building skills into a more cutting-edge game vehicle next time." Even long-time players of the Myst games, such as Heidi Fournier of Adventure Gamers, felt that a few puzzles were too difficult; Computer and Video Games, meanwhile, believed that the story clues were too symbolic and scant, which made following the plot difficult. Next Generation commended Riven for being highly accessible to the general public rather than just experienced gamers, but also said the puzzles, while an improvement over those of Myst, were still not well-integrated into the story, making them feel like arbitrary obstacles to progress.
Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) and GamePro both positively reviewed the PlayStation port, remarking that Riven is very specific to the player's taste, with a slow pace, intricate plot, vast size, and often frustrating set of puzzles that would likely infuriate traditional action gamers but engross the more patient player. Kelly Rickards and Shawn Smith of EGM argued that while the game is superficially very similar to Myst, subtle elements such as the greater amount of interaction and better puzzle design make it more appealing, and that anyone with an open mind should give it a try. GamePro gave it the same scores as the PC version, excepting only that the graphics category dropped to a 4.0 out of 5. John Broady of GameSpot, however, said that while the developers had done the best they could with converting the game, the limitations of the PlayStation made it fall far short of the PC original, with dithered scenery, muddy video sequences, and long load times. He concluded that "Playing Riven on the PlayStation is sort of like watching Star Wars on a 13′′ TV; you'll get the point but you're definitely missing something."
Despite the success of the game, the Miller brothers eventually pursued other projects. Robyn Miller said: "I think it would be a detriment to always, for the rest of our lives, be creating Myst-like projects. [...] We're going to change, evolve and grow, just like any person does in any manner." Robyn would leave Cyan to form a new development company called Land of Point; Vander Wende would also leave to pursue other projects. The next video game entry in the Myst franchise would be 2001's Myst III: Exile, which was not developed by Cyan nor published by Broderbund. Presto Studios took over development; Ubisoft acquired Broderbund's entertainment library from The Learning Company (formerly SoftKey) and published the Myst sequels.
The reviewer from Pyramid \#29 (Jan./Feb., 1998) stated that "Myst, and now Riven, are worlds to be explored, with complex puzzles to be solved, and without time limitations or enemies to worry about. Take all the time you like; the basic problems of the game will still be there, waiting for you to solve them."
At the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' inaugural Interactive Achievement Awards, Riven won the award for "Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics" and received nominations for "Interactive Title of the Year", as well as console and personal computer genre awards for "Adventure Game of the Year".
## Remake
Cyan announced plans to release a remake of Riven on the game's 25th anniversary on October 31, 2022. Cyan said the game will feature fully explorable 3D environments, in a similar manner to the 3D remake of Myst. Cyan reached out to The Starry Expanse project, a fan-driven effort to recreate Riven, about a year prior to the announcement, working out a deal to work with members of that team to use their efforts within the remake of Riven.
|
38,371,899 |
Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team at the 2012 Summer Paralympics
| 1,173,740,776 |
Australian paralympics sports team
|
[
"2012 in Australian women's sport",
"2012–13 in Australian basketball",
"Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team",
"Wheelchair basketball at the 2012 Summer Paralympics"
] |
The Australian women's national wheelchair basketball team, known as the Gliders, played in the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London. The team of twelve included nine Paralympic veterans with fifteen Paralympic Games between them: Bridie Kean, Amanda Carter, Sarah Stewart, Tina McKenzie, Kylie Gauci, Katie Hill, Cobi Crispin, Clare Nott and Shelley Chaplin. There were three newcomers playing in their first Paralympics: Amber Merritt, Sarah Vinci and Leanne Del Toso. Carter returned to the Gliders' lineup after being sidelined by a crippling elbow injury at the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney. The Gliders had won silver in Sydney and the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens, but had never won gold.
The first stage of the Paralympic competition was the group stage, a round-robin tournament. The Gliders faced a formidable task just to make the finals, as their pool included Brazil, Great Britain, Canada and the Netherlands. Canada had beaten the Gliders in 2010, and the Netherlands was rated as one of the competition's best teams. After a narrow victory over Brazil, and an easier one against Great Britain, the Gliders were again defeated by Canada, but won their final match against the Netherlands to finish at the top of their pool. The Gliders went on to win the quarterfinal against Mexico and the semifinal against the United States, but lost to Germany in the final, winning silver.
## Background
Prior to the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, the Australian women's national wheelchair basketball team, known as the Gliders, had won silver at the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney and the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens, and bronze at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, but had never won gold. The announcement of the membership of the Paralympic team was made on 5 July 2012. The team of twelve included nine veterans with 15 Paralympic Games between them: Bridie Kean, Amanda Carter, Sarah Stewart, Tina McKenzie, Kylie Gauci, Katie Hill, Cobi Crispin, Clare Nott and Shelley Chaplin. Amber Merritt, Sarah Vinci and Leanne Del Toso were newcomers competing at their first Paralympics. Kean, aged 25, was selected as their captain.
The oldest team member was Amanda Carter, aged 48, who was coming back for a fourth Paralympic games having competed in the 1992 Summer Paralympics in Barcelona, the 1996 Summer Paralympics in Atlanta and the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney, at which she had been sidelined by a crippling elbow injury. She returned to the Gliders' lineup in 2009. The youngest, who had not even been born when Carter had played in Barcelona, was 19-year-old Amber Merritt. British-born Merritt was originally a swimmer, but had been recruited into basketball by Paralympic Hall of Fame coach Frank Ponta. Merritt had averaged 20 points and 8.4 rebounds per game in the Gliders' World Challenge series against Japan, Germany and China in Sydney in July 2012, including a game against Germany in which she scored 21 points and eight rebounds. Another young player from whom much was hoped was Cobi Crispin, who had been named Australian Women's Wheelchair Basketball International Player of the Year in 2011, and had since posted impressive performances in the May 2012 Paralympic World Cup in Manchester and the Gliders World Challenge.
Source: Basketball Australia; International Games as at 29 August 2012 from Official Results Book, p. 4152.
## Group stage
The first part of the competition was the group stage. The Gliders' pool included Brazil, Great Britain, Canada and the Netherlands. Canada had defeated them in the bronze medal game at the 2010 Wheelchair Basketball World Championship in Birmingham in July 2010. The Gliders' head coach, John Triscari, admitted Canada and the Netherlands would be hard to beat:
> Canada beat us at the World Championships in the bronze medal game and although we’ve since gotten back on top of them, they will be a tough side to beat, as will the Netherlands, who historically have beaten us by just a few points on a few occasions. We've worked really hard to improve the team's shooting percentage, we've had strength and conditioning coaches working with the girls to up their fitness and we’ve increased the volume of shooting during training. Hopefully all the hard work the girls are putting in now, will pay off in London.
### Brazil
Report:
The Gliders' first game was on 30 August in front of a crowd of 3,288 at the Basketball Arena in Olympic Park in Stratford, London; a venue also known as "The Marshmallow". The Gliders had not played Brazil in four years, and what little they knew about them came from watching videotapes.
The scores were tied fifteen times, and at no point were the Australians more than five points in front. With six minutes to go in the final quarter, the Gliders were up by only two points, with the score 45–43. Crispin was sent to the free-throw line where she extended her team's lead to 47–43. A technical foul saw her straight back to the free-throw line to make it 48–43, the Gliders' biggest lead of the game. Brazil then struck back, scoring five unanswered points to tie the score again at 48–48, but Merritt scored one from the paint to put the Gliders back in front. She followed by taking a defensive rebound and then another shot to make it 52–48. Brazil scored once more, but time ran out, and the Gliders won, 52–50. Leading scorers for the Gliders were Crispin with 18 points and Merritt with 16.
Source: Women's Wheelchair Basketball – Group A Preliminary – Australia vs Brazil – Statistics
### Great Britain
`Report:`
The Gliders' next match was against Great Britain, and was held at the North Greenwich Arena, which could accommodate a larger crowd than the Marshmallow. A crowd of 5,331 saw a low-scoring affair. The Gliders concentrated on defence, and led by only 11–5 at quarter time. By halftime, they had extended their lead to 25–11. The third quarter went badly for Team Great Britain, which only scored three more points to Australia's 14, making the score 39–14 at three-quarter time. The final quarter was Great Britain's best, but the score was still 51–24. Merritt and Crispin were again the Gliders' top scorers, with 10 and 8 points respectively, but they moved the ball around, and every Glider except McKenzie scored at least two points. Gary Peel, the British coach, "preparing to unleash his best impression of Sir Alex Ferguson's hairdryer on his beleaguered team", was scathing about their performance. "They know that's not the way we play", he said, "and I'm disappointed for the crowd and them because they are tons better than that. It was an absolutely disgraceful effort out there. It really was bad."
Source: Women's Wheelchair Basketball – Group A Preliminary – Australia vs Great Britain – Statistics
### Canada
`Report:`
The Gliders returned to the Marshmallow the next day for a match against Canada, another team considered a strong chance for a medal, in front of a capacity crowd of 7,200. The Gliders squandered early opportunities, and Canada won the first quarter 20–12. Strong defensive play by Nott and Gauci helped the Gliders reverse this in the second, and left Canada with only a one-point 33–32 lead at half time. The second half saw Canada slowly increase their lead, keeping tied with Australia 4–4 in the first half of third, 6–4 in the last half of the third, 6–4 in the first half of the fourth, and 8–6 in the last half of the fourth. Australia's top players were Crispin, who had 13 points and 15 rebounds; Merritt, who earned 16 points; and Chaplin, with eight points, five rebounds and seven assists. The loss raised the prospect that Australia might not make the finals at all, but Crispin remained confident that they could.
Triscari identified the Gliders' poor shooting as their critical problem. "That was a really tough game," he said, "and full credit to Canada, but we can't beat top teams in the world when we only shoot at 34%, that was the key statistic." Merritt said that she had "the utmost respect for Canada. They're a great team, but we'll refocus on the game tomorrow and go out and play like we know we can, the Australian way."
Source: Women's Wheelchair Basketball – Group A Preliminary – Australia vs Canada – Statistics
### Netherlands
`Report:`
The loss to Canada meant that the Gliders needed a win against the Netherlands, who were considered one of the competition's best teams, and who had beaten Canada. Crispin told the media that "We will go out like we have in every other game and stick to our game plan and hopefully we'll come out on top".
The Netherlands scored first, but Kean soon equalised, assisted by Stewart. The Dutch team responded, but Gauci took two points with a fast break, and then assisted Crispin in putting Australia in the lead, one which the Gliders would not relinquish. Stewart made the next two scores, from outside the paint, and assisted Crispin to bring the score to 6–16. The Dutch team fought back, but there was a 12–18 deficit at quarter time. The Australian defence shut down their opportunities in the second quarter, and the score was 20–30 in Australia's favour at half time, and 29–40 by the end of the third quarter. The Dutch team redoubled their efforts in the final quarter, and won the quarter 20–18, but the Gliders won the game, 49–58.
Once again Merritt led Australia's scoring, with 19 points and considerably improved accuracy of 9 shots from 14 attempts, while Crispin had ten points and seven rebounds. The rest of the team performed equally well. Stewart scored six points and five rebounds. Chaplin's reputation as a play-maker was burnished with four rebounds and seven assists. Gauci had eight points and six assists. Nott had played all 40 minutes of the game against Canada the night before, then over 32 minutes in this game, and was particularly active in the final quarter. Triscari praised both the Gliders and their opponents:
> We focused on stopping a lot of their big players, particularly Beijer, from getting into the keyway, and the girls did a sensational job. Gert [Gertjan van der Linden] is very hard to coach against because he throws a lot of stuff at you. Tonight, he was the one having to make the changes. Another day, it will probably be me.
Source: Women's Wheelchair Basketball – Group A Preliminary – Netherlands vs Australia – Statistics
## Finals
### Quarterfinal – Mexico
`Report:`
The loss to Canada meant that the Gliders had won three out of four games, the same number as Canada and the Netherlands. Since Australia had lost to Canada by 7 points and defeated the Netherlands by 9, and the Netherlands had defeated Canada by 11 points, a tiebreaker on points differential gave Australia 9 – 7 = +2, Netherlands 11 – 9 = +2, and Canada 7 – 11 = -4. Canada therefore finished third, while Australia, tied with the Netherlands, was placed ahead of them based on defeating them in their match. As a result, the Gliders topped their pool, and received a quarterfinal berth against Mexico, which had managed to qualify despite only winning one game. Triscari was confident, but was not taking the match lightly. He cautioned the media:
> No game's easy, you know. We finished on top, so the crossover with the other side is in our favour. But they are by no means easy. We only beat Brazil by two points and Brazil only beat Mexico by two in the PanAm (Parapan championships) play-offs for third and fourth, so it's going to be tough.
The Gliders planned to dominate Mexico early, playing as aggressively against them as they had played against the Netherlands. Australia's first shots at goal were taken by Kean from the free-throw line, but she missed both. Mexico's Lucia Vazquez Delgadillo then opened the scoring to give Mexico a two-point lead, which turned out to be their biggest of the game. Gauci then put points on the scoreboard for the Gliders. Mexico turned the ball over, and Crispin got her first from the paint, assisted by Gauci, which was repeated on the next play, with Stewart providing the assist this time. Mexico scored, but the Gliders responded with another shot from Crispin. On the next play, Gauci stole the ball and charged down the court, but failed to make the shot. Nott then took a defensive rebound, leading to Crispin scoring again. She was also fouled, but missed the resulting free throw. Shortly thereafter, Stewart drew another foul, and made both shots to bring the score to 14–4.
The Gliders put Mexico under intense defensive pressure. Mexico had six team turnovers to the Gliders' one, and wound up with 19 turnovers in total to Australia's 6. Australia scored 18 points from turnovers, compared to 6 for Mexico. Gauci, a two-point player, took a three-pointer to take the score to 17–8. Mexico was unable to recover from Australia's high scoring from Merritt, who ultimately scored 14 points with 70 per cent shooting, and Crispin, who scored twelve points with 67 per cent shooting. The teams went into the quarter-time break with the score 21 points to 10. Mexico fell further behind in the second quarter. Amanda Carter immediately stole the ball from Mexico, which let Merritt score two points. A few minutes later, Carter, assisted by Chaplin, scored a basket from the paint, and was fouled in the process. A successful free throw made the score 36–16. Another steal by Merritt led to a fast break, bringing her contribution to ten points, and the score to 38–16. At the halftime break, the score was 44–20.
In the third quarter, a team turnover and a series of missed shots by Hill, Kean and Crispin allowed Mexico to outscore Australia by one point, leaving the score at 50–27 at the end of the quarter. The final quarter saw Australia's Del Toso miss a shot at one end, and Mexico's Floralia Estrada Bernal miss one at the other. Stewart also missed, before a Mexican turnover led to the first score of the quarter, by Stewart. Mexico's Rocio Torres Lopez scored in response. Another shot by Stewart missed, but Carter took an offensive rebound, and scored. Turnovers by Kean and Del Toso allowed Mexico to put four points on the board, but successive fouls sent Kean to the free-throw line to score three points in response.
Merritt brought the score to 59–35 with her seventh scoring shot. As the game drew to a close, there were several missed shots by Sarah Vinci and Hill, but Mexico was unable to capitalise on the opportunities, continuing to miss shots and turn over the ball. With nineteen seconds of play remaining, Hill took a two-point shot from inside the paint; attracting a foul, she scored another point from a free throw. Although Mexico's Wendy Garcia Amador scored the last two points of the game, her team lost to Australia 62–37.
Source: Women's Wheelchair Basketball – Quarterfinal – Australia vs Mexico – Statistics
### Semifinal – United States
`Report:`
In the semifinal, the Gliders had to beat the reigning champions, Team USA, in front of a small crowd of 4,428 at the North Greenwich Arena. Team USA had first possession and earned the first points of the game, but both teams' shooting was poor, and the score was only 10–12 at quarter time. The second quarter started with Merritt scoring twice to give Australia the lead 14–12. Team USA turned the ball over to the Gliders several times, but they were unable to capitalise on their strong defence, leaving the score tied at 26–26 at half time. In the third quarter, an early goal by Gauci from outside the paint gave the Gliders the lead. A series of steals gave the Gliders additional shots, most of which they missed, but Team USA gave up a series of turnovers, and their shooting was worse than their rivals', resulting in a 10–0 run by the Gliders. Team USA were unable to score at all until the last minute of the quarter. A hurried goal with seconds to go by Hill saw the Gliders leading 38–28. Team USA would ultimately post 28 turnovers to Australia's 17, and the Gliders would score 12 points from turnovers to Team USA's three. Triscari warned his players, "They will come back! We have to stop them!"
In the final quarter, the Australian defence remained strong, but their shooting did not improve. For the entire game, Crispin made only 3 out of 10 attempts, and Merritt just 4 out of 16. Nott, who played the entire game, ended up being the team's most accurate player, with four out of five attempts. Meanwhile, Team USA fought back to 40–39. Three timeouts were taken in the last minute. The game went down to the last seconds. Trailing 40–37 with less than 30 seconds to play, America's Desi Miller scored to have the USA trail by a point. Deliberately fouling Merrit put Miller out of the game, and sent Merritt to the free-throw line. It was a risk, but it paid off; Merritt missed both shots. The second was rebounded by Team USA's Rebecca Murray, who took the ball down the court, in the face of the Gliders' relentless defence. The ball was passed to Rose Hollermann, at 16 the youngest of Team USA's players. Spectators saw Hollermann's shot from the paint hit the ring with a second to go, but the shot clock was not reset. Team USA's Alana Nichols rebounded, and put the ball in the bucket, but not before time ran out and a shot clock violation was called. This left Australia with possession. In another 1.9 seconds, it was all over, and Australia had a controversial one-point win.
Source: Women's Wheelchair Basketball – Semifinal – Australia vs United States – Statistics
### Gold medal match – Germany
`Report:`
The Gliders would have to defeat Germany in front of a capacity crowd of 12,985 at the North Greenwich Arena to win the gold medal. Australia had narrowly defeated the German team 48–46 in the Gliders World Challenge in Sydney a few months earlier, and at that point had beaten them three of the previous four times they had played.
Once again, Stewart took the opening tip. A defensive rebound by Kean after Germany missed two free throws resulted in the Gliders scoring first, with Gauci assisting Crispin. The Gliders used the same game plan that had defeated the United States, employing a strong defence against a normally high-scoring team. At first, they were successful; with three minutes to go in the quarter, despite several missed shots, Australia was ahead 10–4. In the last minutes, Germany scored ten points that gave them a 10–14 lead at quarter time.
In the second quarter, Germany extended their lead to ten points, but Kean scored a point from a free throw, and then, with seconds left on the clock, stole the ball, enabling Crispin to score, so the Gliders were only seven points behind at half time. The Gliders won the third quarter, but only by 9–8. They still had six points to make up, with strong defences from both teams. Gauci scored the most in this game, with 15 points, including a three-pointer, with five assists and four rebounds. In the end, the Gliders lost by fourteen points, 44–58.
Triscari felt that the Gliders did not put enough pressure on the Germans, and that their shooting was not accurate enough. In particular, they scored a dismal one point from twelve attempts from the free throw line. Basketball Australia CEO Kristina Keneally praised the Gliders' efforts. "The Gliders have been nothing short of brilliant at the Paralympic Games," she said, "and this Silver Medal is just reward for their outstanding performance. This is the Gliders' fourth consecutive Paralympic Medal – a remarkable achievement. All of the players, coaches and support staff have done a fantastic job and we can’t wait to greet them on their return home."
In 2013, Keneally announced a four-year development program for the Gliders that included the appointment of a full-time head coach for the first time, based at the National Wheelchair Centre of Excellence at the New South Wales Institute of Sport in Homebush, New South Wales. In May 2013, Tom Kyle was appointed the Gliders' new head coach.
"We have had the opportunity to play Germany a fair bit in our preparation so our game plan was to have strong defensive pressure and take it from there", Kean told the media. "It started off really good for us, unfortunately they just got a couple more runs than us and that's the way it goes sometimes. They played a great game. We stuck together 12 deep from the second the buzzer started, to that end buzzer and no one gave up. I think that we can hold our heads high because of that. I guess the plan is, next four years, Rio we go one more."
It was not to be. The Gliders did not qualify for the 2016 Rio Paralympics after finishing second to China at the 2015 Asia Oceania Qualifying Tournament.
Source: Women's Wheelchair Basketball – Gold Medal Game – Statistics
Source: Women's Wheelchair Basketball – Statistics
|
491,766 |
HMS Hood
| 1,173,636,191 |
Admiral-class battlecruiser
|
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"2001 archaeological discoveries",
"Admiral-class battlecruisers",
"Battlecruisers of the Royal Navy",
"Maritime incidents in 1935",
"Maritime incidents in May 1941",
"Naval magazine explosions",
"Protected Wrecks of the United Kingdom",
"Saint Helena and Dependencies in World War II",
"Ships built on the River Clyde",
"Spanish Civil War ships",
"World War II battlecruisers of the United Kingdom",
"World War II shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean"
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HMS Hood (pennant number 51) was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy (RN). Hood was the first of the planned four Admiral-class battlecruisers to be built during the First World War. Already under construction when the Battle of Jutland occurred in mid-1916, that battle revealed serious flaws in her design despite drastic revisions before she was completed four years later. For this reason, she was the only ship of her class to be completed, as the Admiralty decided it would be better to start with a clean design on succeeding battlecruisers, leading to the never-built G-3 class. Despite the appearance of newer and more modern ships, Hood remained the largest warship in the world for 20 years after her commissioning, and her prestige was reflected in her nickname, "The Mighty Hood".
Hood was involved in many showing-the-flag exercises between her commissioning in 1920 and the outbreak of war in 1939, including training exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and a circumnavigation of the globe with the Special Service Squadron in 1923 and 1924. She was attached to the Mediterranean Fleet following the outbreak of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935. When the Spanish Civil War broke out the following year, Hood was officially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet until she had to return to Britain in 1939 for an overhaul. By this time, advances in naval gunnery had reduced Hood's usefulness. She was scheduled to undergo a major rebuild in 1941 to correct these issues, but the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 kept the ship in service without the upgrades.
When war with Germany was declared, Hood was operating in the area around Iceland, and she spent the next several months hunting for German commerce raiders and blockade runners between Iceland and the Norwegian Sea. After a brief overhaul of her propulsion system, she sailed as the flagship of Force H, and participated in the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Transferred to the Home Fleet shortly afterwards, Hood was dispatched to Scapa Flow, and operated in the area as a convoy escort and later as a defence against a potential German invasion fleet.
In May 1941, Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales were ordered to intercept the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, which were en route to the Atlantic, where they were to attack convoys. On 24 May 1941, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank with the loss of all but 3 of her crew of 1,418. Due to her publicly perceived invincibility, the loss affected British morale.
The RN conducted two inquiries into the reasons for the ship's quick demise. The first, held soon after the ship's loss, concluded that Hood's aft magazine had exploded after one of Bismarck's shells penetrated the ship's armour. A second inquiry was held after complaints that the first board had failed to consider alternative explanations, such as an explosion of the ship's torpedoes. It was more thorough than the first board but concurred with the first board's conclusion. Despite the official explanation, some historians continued to believe that the torpedoes caused the ship's loss, while others proposed an accidental explosion inside one of the ship's gun turrets that reached down into the magazine. Other historians have concentrated on the cause of the magazine explosion. The discovery of the ship's wreck in 2001 confirmed the conclusion of both boards, although the exact reason the magazines detonated is likely to remain unknown, since that portion of the ship was obliterated in the explosion.
## Design and description
The Admiral-class battlecruisers were designed in response to the German Mackensen-class battlecruisers, which were reported to be more heavily armed and armoured than the latest British battlecruisers of the Renown and the Courageous classes. The design was revised after the Battle of Jutland to incorporate heavier armour and all four ships were laid down. Only Hood was completed, because the ships were very expensive and required labour and material that could be put to better use building merchant ships needed to replace those lost to the German U-boat campaign.
The Admirals were significantly larger than their predecessors of the Renown class. As completed, Hood had an overall length of 860 feet 7 inches (262.3 m), a maximum beam of 104 feet 2 inches (31.8 m), and a draught of 32 feet (9.8 m) at deep load. This was 66 feet (20.1 m) longer and 14 feet (4.3 m) wider than the older ships. She displaced 42,670 long tons (43,350 t) at load and 46,680 long tons (47,430 t) at deep load, over 13,000 long tons (13,210 t) more than the older ships. The ship had a metacentric height of 4.2 feet (1.3 m) at deep load, which minimised her roll and made her a steady gun platform.
The additional armour added during construction increased her draught by about 4 feet (1.2 m) at deep load, which reduced her freeboard and made her very wet. At full speed, or in heavy seas, water would flow over the ship's quarterdeck and often entered the messdecks and living quarters through ventilation shafts. This characteristic earned her the nickname of "the largest submarine in the Navy". The persistent dampness, coupled with the ship's poor ventilation, was blamed for the high incidence of tuberculosis aboard. The ship's complement varied widely over her career; in 1919, she was authorised 1,433 men as a squadron flagship; in 1934, she had 81 officers and 1,244 ratings aboard.
The Admirals were powered by four Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by 24 Yarrow boilers. The battlecruiser's turbines were designed to produce 144,000 shaft horsepower (107,000 kW), which would propel the ship at 31 knots (57 km/h; 36 mph), but during sea trials in 1920, Hood's turbines provided 151,280 shp (112,810 kW), which allowed her to reach 32.07 knots (59.39 km/h; 36.91 mph). She carried enough fuel oil to give her an estimated range of 7,500 nautical miles (13,900 km; 8,600 mi) at 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph).
### Armament
The main battery of the Admiral-class ships consisted of eight BL 15-inch (381 mm) Mk I guns in hydraulically powered twin gun turrets. The turrets were designated 'A', 'B', 'X', and 'Y' from bow to stern, and 120 shells were carried for each gun. The ship's secondary armament consisted of twelve BL 5.5-inch (140 mm) Mk I guns, each with 200 rounds. They were shipped on shielded single-pivot mounts fitted along the upper deck and the forward shelter deck. This high position allowed them to be worked during heavy weather, as they were less affected by waves and spray compared with the casemate mounts of earlier British capital ships. Two of these guns on the shelter deck were temporarily replaced by QF 4-inch (102 mm) Mk V anti-aircraft (AA) guns between 1938 and 1939. All the 5.5-inch guns were removed during another refit in 1940.
The ship's original anti-aircraft armament consisted of four QF 4-inch Mk V guns on single mounts. These were joined in early 1939 by four twin mounts for the QF 4-inch Mark XVI dual-purpose gun. The single guns were removed in mid-1939 and a further three twin Mark XIX mounts were added in early 1940. In 1931, a pair of octuple mountings for the 40-millimetre (1.6 in) QF 2-pounder Mk VIII gun "pom-pom" were added on the shelter deck, abreast of the funnels, and a third mount was added in 1937. Two quadruple mountings for the Vickers 0.5-inch (12.7 mm) Mk III machine gun were added in 1933 with two more mountings added in 1937. To these were added five unrotated projectile (UP) launchers in 1940, each launcher carrying 20 seven-inch (178 mm) rockets. When they detonated, the rockets shot out lengths of cable that were kept aloft by parachutes; the cable was intended to snag aircraft and draw up the small aerial mine that would destroy the aircraft.
The Admirals were fitted with six fixed 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes, three on each broadside. Two of these were submerged forward of 'A' turret's magazine and the other four were above water, abaft the rear funnel. About 28 torpedoes were carried.
### Fire control
The ship's main battery was controlled by two fire-control directors. One was mounted above the conning tower, protected by an armoured hood, and was fitted with a 30-foot (9.1 m) rangefinder. The other was fitted in the spotting top above the tripod foremast and equipped with a 15-foot (4.6 m) rangefinder. Each turret was also fitted with a 30-foot (9.1 m) rangefinder. The secondary armament was primarily controlled by directors mounted on each side of the bridge. They were supplemented by two additional control positions in the fore-top, which were provided with 9-foot (2.7 m) rangefinders, fitted in 1924–1925. The antiaircraft guns were controlled by a simple high-angle 2-metre (6 ft 7 in) rangefinder mounted on the aft control position, fitted in 1926–1927. Three torpedo-control towers were fitted, each with a 15-foot (4.6 m) rangefinder. One was on each side of the amidships control tower and the third was on the centreline abaft the aft control position.
During the 1929–1931 refit, a high-angle control system (HACS) Mark I director was added on the rear searchlight platform and two positions for 2-pounder "pom-pom" antiaircraft directors were added at the rear of the spotting top, although only one director was initially fitted. The 5.5-inch control positions and their rangefinders on the spotting top were removed during the 1932 refit. In 1934, the "pom-pom" directors were moved to the former locations of the 5.5-inch control positions on the spotting top and the 9-foot (2.7 m) rangefinders for the 5.5-inch control positions were reinstalled on the signal platform. Two years later, the "pom-pom" directors were moved to the rear corners of the bridge to get them out of the funnel gases. Another "pom-pom" director was added on the rear superstructure, abaft the HACS director in 1938. Two HACS Mark III directors were added to the aft end of the signal platform the following year, and the Mark I director aft was replaced by a Mark III.
During Hood's last refit in 1941, a Type 279 early-warning radar for aircraft and surface vessels and a Type 284 gunnery radar were installed, although the Type 279 radar lacked its receiving aerial and was inoperable according to Roberts. An Admiralty document indicates however that, following the 1941 refit at Rosyth, Hood's Type 279 radar was indeed functional. The early-warning radar was of a modified type, known as Type 279M, the difference between this and Type 279 being the number of aerials. While Type 279 used two aerials, a transmitter and a receiver, the Type 279M used only a single transceiver aerial. Hood reported an accuracy of 3 degrees with her 279M set.
### Protection
The armour scheme of the Admirals was originally based on that of the battlecruiser Tiger with an 8-inch (203 mm) waterline belt. Unlike Tiger, the armour was angled outwards 12° from the waterline to increase its relative thickness in relation to flat-trajectory shells. This change increased the ship's vulnerability to plunging (high-trajectory) shells, as it exposed more of the vulnerable deck armour. Some 5,000 long tons (5,100 t) of armour were added to the design in late 1916, based on British experiences at the Battle of Jutland, at the cost of deeper draught and slightly decreased speed. To save construction time, this was accomplished by thickening the existing armour, rather than redesigning the entire ship. Hood's protection accounted for 33% of her displacement, a high proportion by British standards, but less than was usual in contemporary German designs (for example, 36% for the battlecruiser SMS Hindenburg).
The armoured belt consisted of face-hardened Krupp cemented armour (KC), arranged in three strakes. The main waterline belt was 12 inches (305 mm) thick between 'A' and 'Y' barbettes and thinned to 5 to 6 inches (127 to 152 mm) towards the ship's ends, but did not reach either the bow or the stern. The middle armour belt had a maximum thickness of 7 inches over the same length as the thickest part of the waterline armour and thinned to five inches abreast 'A' barbette. The upper belt was 5 inches thick amidships and extended forward to 'A' barbette, with a short 4-inch extension aft.
The gun turrets and barbettes were protected by 11 to 15 inches (279 to 381 mm) of KC armour, except for the turret roofs, which were 5 inches thick. The decks were made of high-tensile steel. The forecastle deck ranged from 1.75 to 2 inches (44 to 51 millimetres) in thickness, while the upper deck was 2 inches (51 mm) thick over the magazines and 0.75 inches (19 mm) elsewhere. The main deck was 3 inches (76 mm) thick over the magazines and 1 inch (25 mm) elsewhere, except for the 2-inch-thick slope that met the bottom of the main belt. The lower deck was 3 inches thick over the propeller shafts, 2 inches thick over the magazines and 1 inch elsewhere.
Live-firing trials with the new 15-inch APC (armour-piercing, capped) shell against a mock-up of Hood showed that this shell could penetrate the ship's vitals via the 7-inch middle belt and the 2-inch slope of the main deck as a result 3-inch plating on the main deck over the slopes was added alongside the magazine spaces at a very late stage of construction and the four aftermost 5.5-inch guns and their ammunition hoists were removed in partial compensation.. A proposal was made to increase the armour over the forward magazines to 5 inches and 6 inches over the rear magazines in July 1919 in response to these trials. To compensate for the additional weight, the 4 midships above water torpedo tubes and the armour for the rear torpedo warheads were removed, and the armour for the aft torpedo-control tower was reduced in thickness from 6 to 1.5 inches (38 mm). However, the additional armour was never fitted pending further trials. As completed, Hood remained susceptible to plunging shells and bombs. The torpedo-warhead armour was reinstated during the ship's 1929–1931 refit.
For protection against torpedoes, she was given a 7.5-foot (2.3 m) deep torpedo bulge that ran the length of the ship between the fore and aft barbettes. It was divided into an empty outer compartment and an inner compartment filled with five rows of water-tight "crushing tubes" intended to absorb and distribute the force of an explosion. The bulge was backed by a 1.5-inch-thick torpedo bulkhead.
### Aircraft
Hood was initially fitted with flying-off platforms mounted on top of 'B' and 'X' turrets, from which Fairey Flycatchers could launch. During her 1929–1931 refit, the platform was removed from 'X' turret and a rotating, folding catapult was installed on her quarterdeck, along with a crane to recover a seaplane. She embarked a Fairey IIIF from No. 444 Flight of the Royal Air Force (RAF). During the 1932 West Indies cruise, the catapult proved to be difficult to operate in anything but a calm sea, as it was frequently awash in bad weather. The catapult and crane were removed in 1932, along with the flying-off platform on 'B' turret.
### Battlecruiser or fast battleship
Although the Royal Navy always designated Hood as a battlecruiser, some modern writers such as Anthony Preston have classified her as a fast battleship, since Hood appeared to have improvements over the fast Queen Elizabeth-class battleships. On paper, Hood retained the same armament and level of protection, while being significantly faster.
Around 1918, American commanders, including Vice Admiral William Sims, commander of US naval forces in Europe, and Admiral Henry T. Mayo, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, became extremely impressed by Hood, which they described as a "fast battleship", and they advocated that the US Navy develop a fast battleship of its own. However, the US continued with their established design direction, the slower, but well-protected, South Dakota-class battleship and the fast and lightly armoured Lexington-class battlecruiser, both of which were later cancelled in accordance with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.
Influences from Hood showed on subsequent Lexington designs, with the reduction of the main armour belt, the change to "sloped armour", and the addition of four above-water torpedo tubes to the four underwater tubes of the original design. To add to the confusion, Royal Navy documents of the period often describe any battleship with a maximum speed over 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph) as a battlecruiser, regardless of the amount of protective armour. For instance, the never-built G3 battlecruiser was classified as such, although it would have been more of a fast battleship than Hood.
The scale of Hood's protection, though adequate for the Jutland era, was at best marginal against the new generation of 16-inch (406 mm) gunned capital ships that emerged soon after her completion in 1920, typified by the American Colorado-class and the Japanese Nagato-class battleships. The Royal Navy were fully aware that the ship's protection flaws still remained, even in her revised design, so Hood was intended for the duties of a battlecruiser, and she served in the battlecruiser squadrons through most of her career. Late in her career, Hood was outclassed by the armour and protective arrangement of Second World War-era fast battleships, but few of the RN's available "big gun" vessels could match Bismarck's speed.
## Construction
Construction of Hood began at the John Brown shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland, as yard number 460 on 1 September 1916. Following the loss of three British battlecruisers at the Battle of Jutland, 5,000 tons of extra armour and bracing were added to Hood's design. Most seriously, the deck protection was flawed—spread over three decks, it was designed to detonate an incoming shell on impact with the top deck, with much of the energy being absorbed as the exploding shell had to penetrate the armour of the next two decks. The development of effective time-delay shells at the end of the First World War made this scheme much less effective, as the intact shell would penetrate layers of weak armour and explode deep inside the ship. In addition, she was grossly overweight compared to her original design, making her a wet ship with a highly stressed structure.
She was launched on 22 August 1918 by the widow of Rear Admiral Sir Horace Hood, a great-great-grandson of Admiral Samuel Hood, after whom the ship was named. Sir Horace Hood had been killed while commanding the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron and flying his flag on Invincible—one of the three battlecruisers which blew up at the Battle of Jutland. To make room in the shipyard for merchant construction, Hood sailed for Rosyth to complete her fitting-out on 9 January 1920. After her sea trials, she was commissioned on 15 May 1920, under Captain Wilfred Tompkinson. She had cost £6,025,000 to build.
With her conspicuous twin funnels and lean profile, Hood was widely regarded as one of the finest-looking warships ever built. She was also the largest warship afloat when she was commissioned, and retained that distinction for the next 20 years. Her size and powerful armament earned her the nickname of "Mighty Hood" and she came to symbolise the might of the British Empire itself.
## Interwar service
Shortly after commissioning on 15 May 1920, Hood became the flagship of the Battlecruiser Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. After a cruise to Scandinavian waters that year, Captain Geoffrey Mackworth assumed command. Hood visited the Mediterranean in 1921 and 1922 to show the flag and to train with the Mediterranean fleet, before sailing on a cruise to Brazil and the West Indies in company with the battlecruiser squadron.
Captain John Im Thurn was in command when Hood, accompanied by the battlecruiser Repulse and Danae-class cruisers of the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, set out on a world cruise from west to east via the Panama Canal in November 1923. The objective of the cruise was to remind the dominions of their dependence on British sea power and encourage them to support it with money, ships, and facilities. They returned home 10 months later in September 1924, having visited South Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and some smaller colonies and dependencies, and the United States.
While in Australia in April 1924, the squadron escorted the battlecruiser out to sea, where she was scuttled in compliance with the Washington Naval Treaty. The battlecruiser squadron visited Lisbon in January 1925 to participate in the Vasco da Gama celebrations before continuing on to the Mediterranean for exercises. Hood continued this pattern of a winter training visit to the Mediterranean for the rest of the decade. Captain Harold Reinold relieved Captain im Thurn on 30 April 1925 and was relieved in turn by Captain Wilfred French on 21 May 1927.
Hood was given a major refit from 1 May 1929 to 10 March 1931, and afterwards resumed her role as flagship of the battlecruiser squadron under the command of Captain Julian Patterson. Later that year, her crew participated in the Invergordon Mutiny over pay cuts for the sailors. It ended peacefully and Hood returned to her home port afterwards. The battlecruiser squadron made a Caribbean cruise in early 1932, and Hood was given another brief refit between 31 March and 10 May at Portsmouth. Captain Thomas Binney assumed command on 15 August 1932 and the ship resumed her previous practice of a winter cruise in the Mediterranean the next year. Captain Thomas Tower replaced Captain Binney on 30 August 1933. Her secondary and antiaircraft fire-control directors were rearranged during another quick refit between 1 August and 5 September 1934.
While en route to Gibraltar for a Mediterranean cruise, Hood was rammed in the port side quarterdeck by the battlecruiser Renown on 23 January 1935. The damage to Hood was limited to her left outer propeller and an 18-inch (460 mm) dent, although some hull plates were knocked loose from the impact. Temporary repairs were made at Gibraltar before the ship sailed to Portsmouth for permanent repairs between February and May 1935. The captains of both ships were court-martialled, as was the squadron commander, Rear Admiral Sidney Bailey. Tower and Bailey were acquitted, but Renown's Captain Sawbridge was relieved of command. The Admiralty dissented from the verdict, reinstated Sawbridge, and criticised Bailey for ambiguous signals during the manoeuvre.
The ship participated in King George V's Silver Jubilee Fleet Review at Spithead the following August. She was attached to the Mediterranean fleet shortly afterwards and stationed at Gibraltar at the outbreak of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in October. Captain Arthur Pridham assumed command on 1 February 1936 and Hood returned to Portsmouth for a brief refit between 26 June and 10 October 1936. She formally transferred to the Mediterranean fleet on 20 October, shortly after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. On 23 April 1937, the ship escorted three British merchantmen into Bilbao harbour despite the presence of the Nationalist cruiser Almirante Cervera that attempted to blockade the port. Hood was refitted at Malta in November and December 1937, and had her submerged torpedo tubes removed. Captain Pridham was relieved by Captain Harold Walker on 20 May 1938 and he, in turn, was relieved when the ship returned to Portsmouth in January 1939 for an overhaul that lasted until 12 August.
Hood was due to be modernised in 1941 to bring her up to a standard similar to that of other modernised First World War-era capital ships. She would have received new, lighter turbines and boilers, a secondary armament of eight twin 5.25-inch (133 mm) gun turrets, and six octuple 2-pounder "pom-poms". Her 5-inch upper-armour strake would have been removed and her deck armour reinforced. A catapult would have been fitted across the deck and the remaining torpedo tubes removed. In addition, the conning tower would have been removed and her bridge rebuilt. The ship's near-constant active service, resulting from her status as the Royal Navy's most battle-worthy fast capital ship, meant that her material condition gradually deteriorated, and by the mid-1930s, she was in need of a lengthy overhaul. The outbreak of the Second World War made removing her from service near impossible, and as a consequence, she never received the scheduled modernisation afforded to other capital ships such as Renown and several of the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships. The ship's condensers were in such bad condition by this time that much of the output from the fresh-water evaporators was required to replenish the boiler feedwater and could not be used by the crew to wash and bathe or even to heat the mess decks during cold weather, as the steam pipes were too leaky. These problems also reduced her steam output so that she was unable to attain her designed speed.
## Second World War
Captain Irvine Glennie assumed command in May 1939 and Hood was assigned to the Home Fleet's Battlecruiser Squadron while still refitting. When war broke out later that year, she was employed principally to patrol in the vicinity of Iceland and the Faroe Islands to protect convoys and intercept German merchant raiders and blockade runners attempting to break out into the Atlantic. On 25 September 1939, the Home Fleet sortied into the central North Sea to cover the return of the damaged submarine Spearfish. The fleet was spotted by the Germans and attacked by aircraft from the KG 26 and KG 30 bomber wings. Hood was hit by a 250 kg (550 lb) bomb from a Junkers Ju 88 bomber that damaged her port torpedo bulge and her condensers. By early 1940, Hood's machinery was in dire shape and limited her best speed to 26.5 knots (49.1 km/h; 30.5 mph); she was refitted between 4 April and 12 June.
### Operation Catapult
Hood and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal were ordered to Gibraltar to join Force H on 18 June where Hood became the flagship. Force H took part in the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in July 1940. Just eight days after the French surrender, the British Admiralty issued an ultimatum that the French fleet at Oran intern its ships in a British or neutral port to ensure they would not fall into Axis hands. The terms were rejected, and the Royal Navy opened fire on the French ships berthed there. The results of Hood's fire are not known exactly, but she damaged the French battleship Dunkerque, which was hit by four fifteen-inch shells and was forced to beach herself. Hood was straddled during the engagement by Dunkerque; shell splinters wounded two men. Dunkerque's sister ship, Strasbourg, managed to escape from the harbour. Hood and several light cruisers gave chase, but gave up after two hours; Hood had dodged a salvo of torpedoes from a French sloop and had damaged a turbine reaching 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph).
### Return to home waters
Hood was relieved as flagship of Force H by Renown on 10 August, after returning to Scapa Flow. On 13 September she was sent to Rosyth along with the battleships Nelson and Rodney and other ships, to be in a better position to intercept a German invasion fleet. When the threat of an invasion diminished, the ship resumed her previous roles in convoy escort and patrolling against German commerce raiders. Hood, Renown and Repulse were deployed to the Bay of Biscay on 5 November to prevent the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer from using French ports after she had attacked Convoy HX 84, but the German ship continued into the South Atlantic.
In January 1941, the ship began a refit that lasted until March; even after the refit she was still in poor condition, but the threat from the German capital ships was such that she could not be taken into dock for a major overhaul until more of the King George V-class battleships came into service. Captain Ralph Kerr assumed command during the refit, and Hood was ordered to sea in an attempt to intercept the German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst upon the refit's completion in mid-March. Unsuccessful, she was ordered to patrol the Bay of Biscay against any breakout attempt by the German ships from Brest, France. Hood was ordered to the Norwegian Sea on 19 April when the Admiralty received a false report that the German battleship Bismarck had sailed from Germany. Afterwards, she patrolled the North Atlantic before putting into Scapa Flow on 6 May.
### Battle of the Denmark Strait
When Bismarck sailed for the Atlantic in May 1941, Hood, flying the flag of Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland, together with the newly commissioned battleship Prince of Wales, was sent out in pursuit along with several other groups of British capital ships to intercept the German ships before they could break into the Atlantic and attack Allied convoys. The German ships were spotted by two British heavy cruisers (Norfolk and Suffolk) on 23 May, and Holland's ships intercepted Bismarck and her consort, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland on 24 May.
The British squadron spotted the Germans at 05:37 (ship's clocks were set four hours ahead of local time—the engagement commenced shortly after dawn), but the Germans were already aware of their presence, Prinz Eugen's hydrophones having previously detected the sounds of high-speed propellers to their southeast. The British opened fire at 05:52 with Hood engaging Prinz Eugen, the lead ship in the German formation, and the Germans returned fire at 05:55, both ships concentrating on Hood. Prinz Eugen was probably the first ship to score when a shell hit Hood's boat deck, between her funnels, and started a large fire among the ready-use ammunition for the anti-aircraft guns and rockets of the UP mounts.
Just before 06:00, while Hood was turning 20° to port to unmask her rear turrets, she was hit again on the boat deck by one or more shells from Bismarck's fifth salvo, fired from a range of approximately 16,650 metres (18,210 yd). A shell from this salvo appears to have hit the spotting top, as the boat deck was showered with body parts and debris. A huge jet of flame burst out of Hood from the vicinity of the mainmast, followed by a devastating magazine explosion that destroyed the aft part of the ship. This explosion broke the back of Hood, and the last sight of the ship, which sank in only three minutes, was her bow, nearly vertical in the water. A note on a survivor's sketch in the RN Historical Branch Archives gives as the position of the sinking. Hood sank stern first with 1418 men aboard. Only three survived: Ordinary Signalman Ted Briggs (1923–2008), Able Seaman Robert Tilburn (1921–1995), and Midshipman William John Dundas (1923–1965). The three were rescued about two hours after the sinking by the destroyer Electra, which spotted substantial debris but no bodies.
### Aftermath of the sinking
Prince of Wales was forced to disengage by a combination of damage from German hits and mechanical failures in her guns and turrets after Hood was sunk. Despite these problems, she had hit Bismarck three times. One of these hits contaminated a good portion of the ship's fuel supply and subsequently caused her to steer for safety in occupied France where she could be repaired. Bismarck was temporarily able to evade detection, but was later spotted and sunk on 27 May.
The official Admiralty communiqué on the loss, broadcast on the day of the sinking, reported that: "during the ... action, HMS Hood ... received an unlucky hit in a magazine and blew up." The first formal board of enquiry into the loss, presided over by Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake, reported on 2 June, less than a fortnight after the loss. It endorsed this opinion, stating that:
> \(c\) (The) probable cause of the loss of HMS Hood was direct penetration of the protection by one or more 15-inch shells at a range of 16,500 yards [15,100 m], resulting in the explosion of one or more of the aft magazines.
Admiral Tom Phillips and others criticised the conduct of the inquiry, largely because no verbatim record of witnesses' testimony had been kept. Moreover, Sir Stanley V. Goodall, Director of Naval Construction came forward with an alternative theory, that the Hood had been destroyed by the explosion of her own torpedoes. As a result, a second Board was convened under Rear Admiral Sir Harold Walker and reported in September 1941. This investigation was "much more thorough than was the first, taking evidence from a total of 176 eyewitnesses to the disaster", and examined both Goodall's theory and others (see below). The Board came to a conclusion almost identical to that of the first board, expressed as follows:
> That the sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck's 15-inch shell in or adjacent to Hood's 4-inch or 15-inch magazines, causing them all to explode and wreck the after part of the ship. The probability is that the 4-inch magazines exploded first.
Both boards of enquiry exonerated Vice-Admiral Holland from any blame regarding the loss of Hood.
Memorials to those who died are spread widely around the UK, and some of the crew are commemorated in different locations. One casualty, George David Spinner, is remembered on the Portsmouth Naval memorial, the Hood Chapel at the Church of St John the Baptist, in Boldre, Hampshire, and also on the gravestone of his brother, who died while serving in the Royal Air Force in 1942, in the Hamilton Road Cemetery, Deal, Kent.
## Modern theories on the sinking
The exact cause of the loss of Hood remains a subject of debate. The principal theories include the following causes:
- A direct hit from a shell penetrated to a magazine aft. Such a shell could only have come from Bismarck, since Prinz Eugen was no longer firing at Hood at the time of the explosion. As noted above, this version of events was almost taken for granted at the time of the sinking. Doubt first arose as a result of eyewitness testimony that the explosion that destroyed Hood originated near the mainmast, well forward of the aft magazines (for example, the sketch shown prepared for the second board of enquiry by Captain Leach of Prince of Wales).
At the second board, expert witnesses suggested that what was observed was the venting, through the engine-room ventilators, of a violent—but not instantaneous—explosion or deflagration in the 4-inch shell magazines. The same deflagration would have collapsed the bulkhead separating the 4-inch and 15-inch magazines, resulting very quickly in a catastrophic explosion similar to those previously witnessed at Jutland. This theory was ultimately adopted by the board.
- A shell, falling short and travelling underwater, struck below the armoured belt and penetrated a magazine. During the same action, Prince of Wales received a hit of this type from a 15-inch shell, which travelled underwater for about 80 feet (24 m), struck about 28 feet (8.5 m) below the waterline, penetrated several light bulkheads and fetched up, without exploding, against the torpedo bulkhead. The second board considered this theory improbable, arguing that the fuse, had it worked at all, would have detonated the shell before it reached the ship. According to Jurens's calculations, one of Bismarck's shells that fell approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) short of Hood could have penetrated the side of the ship beneath the armour belt and would have detonated in the vicinity of the ship's magazines if the fuse worked.
- The ship was destroyed by the explosion of her own torpedoes. According to Goodall's theory, the ship's torpedoes could have been detonated either by the fire raging on the boat deck or, more probably, by a direct hit from Bismarck. This would have blown out the side of the ship, destroying the girder strength of the hull; the force of water entering the hole, at a speed of nearly 30 knots (56 km/h), would then shear the stern section from the rest of the hull.
- The fire on the boat deck penetrated to a magazine. Evidence given to the second board indicated that the doors for the 4-inch ammunition supply trunks were closed throughout the action. It remains possible that a door or trunk could have been opened up by an enemy shell, admitting flames to the magazine. Alternative routes for admission of flame could have been the ventilation or venting arrangements of the magazines or, as Ted Briggs suggested, through the floor of a 15-inch gunhouse.
- The explosion was initiated by 4-inch ammunition stored outside the magazines. Writing in 1979, the naval historian Antony Preston claimed that the aft magazines of Hood were "surrounded by additional 4-inch (102 mm) anti-aircraft shells outside the armoured barbettes. Such unprotected stowage could have been detonated either by the boat-deck fire or by a shell from Bismarck."
- The ship was blown up by her own guns. At the second board, eyewitnesses reported unusual types of discharge from the 15-inch guns of Hood, suggesting that a shell could have detonated within the gun, causing an explosion within the gunhouse. It is possible that, under the stress of combat, the safety measures, introduced after the disasters at Jutland to prevent such an explosion reaching the magazines, could have failed.
An extensive review of these theories (excepting that of Preston) is given in Jurens's 1987 article. Its main conclusion is that the loss was almost certainly precipitated by the explosion of a 4-inch magazine, but that there are several ways this could have been initiated, although he rules out the boat deck fire or the detonation of her torpedoes as probable causes. In Jurens's opinion, the popular image of plunging shells penetrating Hood's deck armour is inaccurate, as by his estimation the angle of fall of Bismarck's 15-inch shells at the moment of the loss would not have exceeded about 14°, an angle so unfavourable to penetration of horizontal armour that it is actually off the scale of contemporaneous German penetration charts. Moreover, computer-generated profiles of Hood show that a shell falling at this angle could not have reached an aft magazine without first passing through some part of the belt armour. On the other hand, the 12-inch belt could have been penetrated if Hood had progressed sufficiently far into her final turn.
Inspection of the wreck has confirmed that the aft magazines did indeed explode. The stern of the Hood was located, with the rudder still in place, and it was found that this was set to port at the time of the explosion. Furthermore, a section of the bow immediately forward of 'A' turret is missing, which has led historian and former Dartmouth lecturer Eric J. Grove and expedition leader David Mearns to believe that "either just before or just after leaving the surface, the bow suffered massive internal damage from an internal explosion", possibly a partial detonation of the forward 15-inch magazines.
It has been suggested that the fatal fire spread from the aft end of the ship through the starboard fuel tanks, since the starboard side of Hood "appears to be missing most, if not all, of its torpedo bulge plating".
The evidence of the wreck refutes Goodall's theory of a torpedo explosion, while the eyewitness evidence of venting from the 4-inch magazine prior to the main explosion conflicts with the theory that the Hood was blown up by her own guns. The other theories listed above remain valid possibilities.
In their study of the battleship Bismarck's operational history released in 2019, including its engagement with Hood, Jurens, William Garzke, and Robert O. Dulin Jr. concluded that Hood'''s destruction was most likely caused by a 380-mm shell from Bismarck that penetrated the deck armour and exploded in the aft 4-inch magazine, igniting its cordite propellant, which in turn ignited the cordite in the adjacent aft 15-inch magazine. Rapid expansion of the resulting combustion gases from the conflagration then caused structural failure, passing out through the sides of the ship as well as forward and upwards via the engine room vents, expelling the aft main battery turrets and causing the stern to be detached from the rest of the hull at the aft armoured bulkhead.
## Wreck
In 2001, British broadcaster Channel 4 commissioned shipwreck hunter David Mearns and his company, Blue Water Recoveries, to locate the wreck of Hood, and if possible, produce underwater footage of both the battlecruiser and her attacker, Bismarck. This was to be used for a major event documentary to be aired on the 60th anniversary of the ships' battle. This was the first time anyone had attempted to locate Hood's resting place. Mearns had spent the previous six years privately researching the fate of Hood with the goal of finding the battlecruiser, and had acquired the support of the Royal Navy, the HMS Hood Association and other veterans groups, and the last living survivor, Ted Briggs.
The search team and equipment had to be organised within four months, to take advantage of a narrow window of calm conditions in the North Atlantic. Organisation of the search was complicated by the presence on board of a documentary team and their film equipment, along with a television journalist who made live news reports via satellite during the search. The search team also planned to stream video from the remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) directly to Channel 4's website.
After footage of Bismarck was collected, Mearns and the search team began scanning a 600-square-nautical-mile (2,100 km<sup>2</sup>) search box for Hood; completely covering the area was estimated to take six days. Areas that Mearns felt were more likely to hold the wreck were prioritised, and the side-scan sonar located the battlecruiser in the 39th hour of the search.
Hood's wreck lies on the seabed in pieces among two debris fields at a depth of about 2,800 metres (9,200 feet). The eastern field includes the small piece of the stern that survived the magazine explosion, as well as the surviving section of the bow and some smaller remains, such as the propellers. The 4-inch fire-control director lies in the western debris field. The heavily armoured conning tower is located by itself, a distance from the main wreck. The amidships section, the biggest part of the wreck to survive the explosions, lies inverted south of the eastern debris field in a large impact crater. The starboard side of the amidships section is missing down to the inner wall of the fuel tanks and the plates of the hull are curling outward; this has been interpreted as indicating the path of the explosion through the starboard fuel tanks.
It is further supposed that the small debris fields are the fragments from the aft hull where the magazines and turrets were located, since that section of the hull was totally destroyed in the explosion. The fact that the bow section separated just forward of 'A' turret is suggestive that a secondary explosion might have occurred in this area. Other researchers have claimed that the final salvo fired by Hood was not a salvo at all, but flame from the forward magazine explosion, which gave the illusion of Hood firing for the last time. This damage, ahead of the armoured bulkhead, could have been implosion damage suffered while Hood sank, as a torpedo room that had been removed during one of her last refits approximates the site of the break.
It was the opinion of Mearns and White who investigated the wreck that this was unlikely as the damage was far too limited in scale, nor could it account for the outwardly splayed plates also observed in that area. Bill Jurens points out that there was no magazine of any kind at the location of the break and that the location of the break just forward of the forward transverse armoured bulkhead suggests that the ship's structure failed there as a result of stresses inflicted when the bow was lifted into the vertical position by the sinking stern section. Furthermore, the current position of the plates at the edge of the break reflects only their last position, not the direction they had first moved.
The forward section lies on its port side, with the amidships section keel up. The stern section rises from the seabed at an angle. This position shows the rudder locked into a 20° port turn, confirming that orders had been given (just prior to the aft magazines detonating) to change the ship's heading and bring the aft turrets 'X' and 'Y' to bear on the German ships.
In 2002, the site was officially designated a war grave by the British government. As such, it remains a protected place under the Protection of Military Remains Act of 1986.
### Expeditions to retrieve ship's bell
In 2012, the British government gave permission for Mearns to return to the site of Hood's final resting place to retrieve one of her two ship's bells which were lying in a small open debris field some way from the wreck herself. With the backing of the HMS Hood Association, Mearns planned to return the bell to Portsmouth where it would form part of the first official and permanent memorial to the sacrifice of her last crew at the newly refitted National Museum of the Royal Navy.
The expedition also took the opportunity to re-film the wreck and survey her using techniques unavailable in 2001. As before, with the exception of the attempted retrieval of the ship's bell, a strict look-but-don't-touch policy was adhered to. The original attempt, sponsored by Paul Allen and using his yacht Octopus, was abandoned after ten days in September 2012 due to unfavourable weather conditions. In 2015, the same team attempted a second recovery operation and Hood's bell was finally retrieved on 7 August 2015. After conservation work, Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, unveiled the bell at the museum on 24 May 2016 – the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Denmark Strait. The bell was rung eight times in a commemorative service at midday attended by descendants of crew members who died in the battle before being placed in the museum's exhibit on the Battle of Jutland.
The recovered bell was originally carried on the pre-dreadnought battleship Hood. Before being installed on the battlecruiser, the bell was inscribed around its base with the words: "This bell was preserved from HMS Hood battleship 1891–1914 by the late Rear Admiral, The Honourable Sir Horace Hood KCB, DSO, MVO killed at Jutland on 31st May 1916." There is a second inscription on the side of the bell that reads "In accordance with the wishes of Lady Hood it was presented in memory of her husband to HMS Hood battle cruiser the ship she launched 22nd August 1918." In addition to the two inscriptions, the bell still wears vivid royal blue paint work on its crown as well as its interior.
### Surviving relics
Some relics from the time of Hood's sinking still exist. A large fragment of the wooden transom from one of Hood's boats was washed up in Norway after her loss and is preserved in the National Maritime Museum in London. A metal container holding administrative papers was discovered washed ashore on the Norwegian island of Senja in April 1942, almost a year after the Battle of the Denmark Strait. The container and its contents were subsequently lost, but its lid survived and was eventually presented to the Royal Navy shore establishment HMS Centurion in 1981.
Other surviving relics are items that were removed from the ship prior to her sinking:
#### 5.5-inch guns
Two of Hood's 5.5-inch guns were removed during a refit in 1935, and shipped to Ascension Island, where they were installed as a shore battery in 1941, sited on a hill above the port and main settlement, Georgetown, where they remain. The guns were restored by the RAF in 1984.
The Ascension Island guns saw action only once, on 9 December 1941, when they fired on the , as it approached Georgetown on the surface to shell the cable station or sink any ships at anchor. No hits were scored, but the submarine crash-dived and retreated.
#### Fragments of propeller
As a result of a collision off the coast of Spain on 23 January 1935, one of Hood's propellers struck the bow of Renown. While dry-docked for repairs, Renown had fragments of this propeller removed from her bilge section. The pieces of the propeller were kept by dockyard workers: "Hood" v "Renown" Jan. 23rd. 1935 was stamped on one surviving example, and "Hood V Renown off Arosa 23–1–35" on another. Of the known surviving pieces, one is privately held and another was given by the Hood family to the Hood Association in 2006. A third piece was found in Glasgow, where Hood was built. It is held by a private collector and stamped HMS HOOD v HMS RENOWN 23 1 35''.
|
25,471,166 |
Batman: Arkham City
| 1,172,985,812 |
2011 video game
|
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Batman: Arkham City is a 2011 action-adventure game developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Based on the DC Comics superhero Batman, it is the sequel to the 2009 video game Batman: Arkham Asylum and the second installment in the Batman: Arkham series. Written by veteran Batman writer Paul Dini with Paul Crocker and Sefton Hill, Arkham City was inspired by the long-running comic book mythos. In the game's main storyline, Batman is incarcerated in Arkham City, a super-prison enclosing the decaying urban slums of fictional Gotham City. He must uncover the secret behind a sinister scheme orchestrated by the facility's warden, Hugo Strange.
The game is presented from the third-person perspective with a primary focus on Batman's combat and stealth abilities, detective skills, and gadgets that can be used in both combat and exploration. Batman can freely move around the Arkham City prison, interacting with characters and undertaking missions, and unlocking new areas by progressing through the main story or obtaining new equipment. The player is able to complete side missions away from the main story to unlock additional content and collectible items. Batman's ally Catwoman is another playable character, featuring her own story campaign that runs parallel to the game's main plot.
Rocksteady conceived ideas for a sequel while developing Arkham Asylum, commencing serious development of Arkham City's story in February 2009. The layout of Arkham City has a virtual footprint five times that of Arkham Asylum, and the city design was modified to accommodate Batman's ability to swoop and glide. Over a year and \$10 million were spent on the game's marketing campaign, and its release was accompanied by two music albums; one containing the game's score, and the other featuring 11 original songs inspired by the game from various mainstream artists.
Arkham City was released worldwide for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles in October 2011, followed by a Microsoft Windows version a month later. The game received critical acclaim, particularly for its narrative, character and world designs, soundtrack, and Batman's combat and navigation abilities. It was tied with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the highest-rated video game of 2011 according to review aggregator Metacritic, and was the recipient of several awards from media outlets, including Game of the Year, Best Action Game, Best Action Adventure Game, Best Adventure Game, and Best Original Score. Like its predecessor, it is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. The game has sold over 12.5 million units and generated over \$600 million in revenue.
A spin-off mobile game, Batman: Arkham City Lockdown was released in December. Arkham City has received several re-releases, comprising: a Game of the Year edition in May 2012; Wii U and OS X versions in November and December 2012, respectively; and a remastered version for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in October 2016. A prequel to the series, Batman: Arkham Origins, was released in October 2013, and a narrative sequel, Batman: Arkham Knight, was released in June 2015.
## Gameplay
Batman: Arkham City is an open-world action-adventure game that incorporates tactics from stealth games. It is presented from the third-person perspective, showing the playable character on screen and allowing the camera to be freely rotated around it. The game is set within Arkham City, which is open to the player from the beginning of the game, allowing them to travel freely anywhere within its boundaries. The player can move silently throughout the game, using a combination of gadgets and stealth moves to sneak up on enemies and incapacitate them. Batman can use his cape to glide around the city, diving downwards and swooping upwards to extend his flight, and he can use the grapnel gun's retracting rope to attach to out-of-reach ledges. As Batman, the player is able to use "Detective Vision", a visual mode that highlights elements of interest on-screen, such as character status, collectables, and clues; the mode is also used to perform forensic activities such as tracking the source of a sniper rifle round. The player has access to an in-game criminal database which includes forensic puzzles, as well as a network for hacking communication frequencies.
Using an improved version of the "Freeflow" combat system from Arkham Asylum, the player can now counter multiple blows simultaneously, catch hurled projectiles, attack aerially, and administer a succession of consecutive strikes. Many of Batman's gadgets can now be used in combat. Enemies are armed with varying levels of armor and weapons; attacks from basic weapons like baseball bats and lead pipes inflict minor damage and can be countered, while guns inflict significant damage. Certain enemies must be disarmed in specific ways before they can be neutralized in combat: enemies with stun batons can only be attacked from behind; enemies with shields require aerial attacks to disarm; and enemies wearing body armor must be stunned with rapid successive strikes before they can be harmed. Larger enemies must be tackled with stuns and combo attacks, and can be manipulated to take out their allies. Disputes between gangs allied to rival villains often spark turf wars, which complicate the player's ability to move about Arkham City. Combat, among other actions, rewards the player with experience points that allow the player to periodically level Batman up and purchase upgrades to his Batsuit, gadgets, and combat and stealth skills. Each category contains approximately 15 different upgrades. For instance, an upgraded grapnel gun can be used to remotely disarm enemies, while a combat upgrade makes it easier to activate special attacks.
Some gadgets obtained in Batman: Arkham Asylum are present at the start of Arkham City, while others become available during play. Most of these have improved or new capabilities; for example, the Cryptographic Sequencer, used for hacking security consoles, can also monitor shortwave radio channels, and the line launcher can now be deployed as a tightrope or alter direction during flight. Other items returning from the first game include these: a remote-controlled batarang; Explosive Gel that can now be detonated to knock down enemies in combat; and the grapnel gun, which can now be used while gliding to facilitate transportation. New items in Batman's arsenal include: smoke bombs that disorient opponents and assist with stealth tactics; a Remote Electric Charge (REC) gun that can stun enemies and temporarily power motors; Freeze Blast grenades that encase targets in ice and can be thrown into water to create makeshift platforms; and the Disruptor, which can remotely disable guns and explosive mines.
The game has approximately 40 hours of gameplay, with the main campaign lasting 25 hours and side missions lasting 15 hours. The side missions, which can be attempted at any time, feature prominent characters from the Batman universe. One such character, the Riddler, provides 440 optional "Riddler challenges" to solve. Most of these challenges consist of collecting trophies hidden in the city through the use of gadgets to disable traps and barriers. The player can mark Riddler trophies on the in-game map once found if they do not initially have the necessary equipment to complete the puzzle. The player can also reveal the locations of Riddler trophies on the map by identifying the Riddler's henchmen with "Detective Vision" and interrogating them, which requires the player to save the henchmen for last when engaging in combat with a wave of enemies. There are also environmental challenges which require the player to solve riddles by locating a specific item or location (which are rewarded with stories relating to the answer), and to locate question marks painted around the city, some of which can only be viewed in whole from certain vantage points. After completing a select number of challenges, Batman must rescue a civilian hostage held in one of the Riddler's death traps.
After completing the story mode on "normal" or "hard" difficulties, a "New Game Plus" mode is unlocked, enabling the player to replay the game with all of the gadgets, experience, and abilities that they have attained; enemies are tougher and the on-screen icon that warns players of imminent attacks is disabled. Arkham City features a series of challenge maps separate from the game's story mode. The maps focus on the completion of specific goals, such as eliminating successive waves of enemies in combat, subduing patrolling enemies while employing stealth, or traveling to a specific location as efficiently as possible. The methods and variety of abilities used to achieve these goals earn an overall performance score that is ranked online against other players.
Catwoman is another playable character available via the Catwoman campaign, which was initially downloadable content (DLC) on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles but was later included with the PC version and Game of the Year editions. Catwoman's campaign features her own heist-focused storyline that intersects with the main story at specific points in the game. Her combat emphasizes agility and allows for the use of unique weapons such as clawed gauntlets, bolas, and her iconic whip. A portion of the Riddler challenges are specific to Catwoman and can only be completed by her. Batman's allies Robin (Tim Drake) and Nightwing (Dick Grayson) are also playable via optional DLC and feature their own combat abilities and gadgets. Both characters are available in the challenge maps; Robin has his own main story narrative.
The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Arkham City include a stereoscopic 3D (S3D) mode for 3D HDTVs and for 2D HDTVs via Inficolor 3D glasses, while the PC version supports Nvidia 3D Vision on compatible monitors. It uses TriOviz for Games Technology, which is integrated with Unreal Engine 3. The Wii U version uses the Wii U's touch screen controller to let the player manage Batman's equipment and upgrades, selectively detonate Explosive Gel placements, and view a map of the city. The Wii U version adds a Sonar mode which highlights points of interest nearby, and the Battle Armored Tech Mode (BAT Mode) that allows Batman to accrue energy during combat and, when activated, inflict increased damage.
## Synopsis
### Characters
Arkham City features a large ensemble cast of characters from the history of Batman comics. Returning characters from Arkham Asylum include Batman (Kevin Conroy), the Joker (Mark Hamill)—in what Hamill stated would be his final time voicing the character; (he subsequently reprised the role in Arkham City's successor Batman: Arkham Knight)—Warden-turned-Mayor Quincy Sharp (Tom Kane), police Commissioner James Gordon (David Kaye), and reporter Jack Ryder (James Horan). Returning villains include the Riddler (Wally Wingert), Victor Zsasz (Danny Jacobs), Bane (Fred Tatasciore), and Poison Ivy (Tasia Valenza). Joker's sidekick Harley Quinn also returns, voiced by Tara Strong, who replaces Arleen Sorkin. Batman's supporting cast introduces Catwoman (Grey DeLisle), Robin (Troy Baker), and Batman's butler Alfred Pennyworth (Martin Jarvis), who provides radio support alongside the returning Oracle (Kimberly Brooks). Nightwing appears as a playable character outside of the main story via challenge maps.
Other characters marking their debut in the series include the manipulative warden of Arkham City, Hugo Strange (Corey Burton), Two-Face (also voiced by Baker), and the Penguin (Nolan North). Stana Katic lends her voice as Talia al Ghul, and Maurice LaMarche voices both Mr. Freeze and Calendar Man. Other characters include the zombie Solomon Grundy (also voiced by Tatasciore), the shapeshifter Clayface (Rick D. Wasserman), the League of Assassins's leader, Ra's al Ghul (Dee Bradley Baker), the mind-controlling Mad Hatter (Peter MacNicol), and the assassin Deadshot (Chris Cox), who has infiltrated Arkham City to kill several high-profile character targets. The villain Hush (also voiced by Conroy), the mysterious Azrael (Khary Payton), and reporter Vicki Vale (also voiced by DeLisle) also appear. Black Mask (also voiced by North), Killer Croc (Steven Blum), and Freeze's wife, Nora Fries, make cameo appearances in the game.
### Setting
The events of Arkham City are set 18 months after Batman: Arkham Asylum. Quincy Sharp, the asylum's erstwhile director, has taken sole credit for halting the Joker's armed siege, using this distinction to become mayor of Gotham City. Declaring both the asylum and Blackgate Penitentiary no longer suitable to contain the city's detainees, Sharp's administration orders both facilities closed, and he purchases Gotham's most notorious slums, converting them into an immense prison enclosure known as Arkham City. This facility is subsequently placed in the care of psychiatrist Hugo Strange—who is secretly manipulating Sharp—and monitored by a rogue private military firm, TYGER Security. Strange permits the inmates to do as they please, so long as they do not attempt to escape. A wary Batman maintains his own vigil over the new project, concerned that the chaotic situation there will get out of hand. Meanwhile, the Joker is suffering from a potentially fatal disease caused by his previous consumption of the Titan formula, an unstable steroid serum that turns men into maddened monsters.
### Plot
At a press conference held by Bruce Wayne to declare his opposition to Arkham City, TYGER mercenaries arrest and imprison him in the City itself. Hugo Strange discloses his knowledge of Wayne's dual identity as Batman before releasing him into the prison's criminal populace. While Strange prepares to commence "Protocol 10", Wayne obtains his equipment via airdrop from Alfred Pennyworth, allowing him to become Batman. He first saves Catwoman from being executed by Two-Face, who hopes to gain respect by murdering her. After Joker attempts to assassinate Catwoman, Batman tracks him to his hideout in the Sionis Steelmill, believing Joker may know the truth behind Protocol 10.
There, Batman learns that the unstable properties of the Titan formula are mutating in Joker's blood, gradually killing him. Joker captures Batman and performs a blood transfusion on him, infecting him with the same fatal disease. Joker also reveals that Gotham hospitals have been poisoned with his infected blood. Desperate to save himself and innocent citizens, Batman seeks out Mr. Freeze, who has been developing a cure but has since been kidnapped by the Penguin. Tracking Penguin to his fortified museum, Batman defeats his forces, his imprisoned monster Solomon Grundy, and ultimately the Penguin himself, before liberating Mr. Freeze.
Freeze tells Batman that he has created a cure, but it is rendered useless via instability. Batman deduces that the therapeutic properties of Ra's al Ghul's blood can complete the cure and tracks one of his assassins to his underground lair, leading Batman into a confrontation with Ra's and his daughter Talia, Batman's former lover. With Ra's al Ghul's blood, Freeze is able to develop an antidote, but Harley Quinn steals it before Batman can use it. When Batman returns to the Joker, he finds his health has been restored.
While the two fight, Strange activates Protocol 10, which is revealed to be a scheme to wipe out the entire population of Arkham City and destroy the criminal element of Gotham. TYGER troops begin executing inmates as Strange launches missile strikes on Arkham's denizens from his base in Wonder Tower. A missile hits the steel mill, burying Batman under rubble. Before Joker can take advantage of the situation, Talia arrives and offers him immortality in exchange for sparing Batman's life. After escaping with the help of Catwoman, Batman is convinced by Alfred to end Protocol 10 before pursuing Talia and Joker.
Batman infiltrates Wonder Tower and disables Protocol 10. Ra's al Ghul is revealed to be the true mastermind behind Arkham City and mortally wounds Strange for failing to defeat Batman. With his dying breath, Strange activates "Protocol 11", the self-destruction of Wonder Tower. After Ra's commits suicide to avoid capture, Joker contacts Batman, threatening to kill Talia unless Batman meets him at the Monarch Theater. When Batman arrives, Joker demands the cure from Batman but is impaled and seemingly killed by Talia while distracted. Talia admits to stealing the antidote from Quinn, before a second Joker kills her, still stricken with the disease.
The healthy Joker that Talia impaled then reanimates into the shapeshifting Clayface, who is revealed to have been masquerading as a healthy Joker all along at the ailing villain's request. During Batman's battle with Clayface, Joker blows up the theatre floor, revealing that it is above the Lazarus Pit. After defeating Clayface, Batman drinks a portion of the antidote and destroys Ra's' rejuvenating Lazarus Pit before Joker can use it. As Batman debates curing his foe, Joker attacks him, inadvertently causing the antidote vial to smash. Batman admits that he would have saved him despite everything Joker had done. Joker finally succumbs to his illness and dies. Batman carries and places Joker's body on the hood of Commissioner Gordon's car before leaving Arkham City in silence.
## Development
### Concept
Rocksteady conceived the idea of a sequel before development of Arkham Asylum had concluded, developing ideas for both the story and setting so the games' narratives could be effectively connected; a secret room was hidden in the asylum warden's office in Arkham Asylum containing hints of how the sequel would progress, including blueprints for the Arkham City prison; the blueprints are quite similar to its final layout in Arkham City. The original idea was to take the game out of the asylum setting and onto the streets of Gotham City while retaining the level of design detail put into the asylum. To that end they wanted to include locations from the Batman mythos that were notable and meaningful to the character, instead of a series of generic streets; Rocksteady was initially unsure how technical considerations would limit the scope of this idea.
Serious development of the game's story and concept started in February 2009, as teams were moved from Arkham Asylum to Arkham City's development as they completed the work on that game. By the time they had programmed Batman to dive and glide between buildings of the asylum, the adaption of the gameplay to the city was considered natural. Rocksteady decided to not include the Batmobile, because it would be unable to travel on the city's broken terrain. Batman's gliding provided a sufficient means of transportation, and it was considered that putting Batman in any vehicle would make it a completely different game. Sefton Hill, Arkham City's director from Rocksteady Studios, stated that a key goal for the game was to deliver the Batman in Gotham' feeling." The sequel was described by Conroy as "really, really dark". While relating the game's dark nature to the animated movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Conroy also said, "It involves a lot of the villains and it goes to that area – it's that dark."
### Design
As part of the "Batman in Gotham" design philosophy, Batman's arsenal of moves and actions were expanded. Although the team developed several ideas for new moves, gadgets and abilities, they only went forward with those that they felt would be authentic to Batman. They also chose to have Batman start the game with access to the gadgets unlocked in Arkham Asylum, to convey the impression that Batman is fully prepared for the inevitability of things going wrong in Arkham City. The studio reviewed the play and combat systems used in Arkham Asylum, and built the new moves as natural extensions of the existing system as a means to "add even more depth and gameplay instead of changing them fundamentally". The number of animations were doubled to reflect the larger arsenal of moves at the player's disposal. The X-ray-like "Detective Vision" mode used to highlight certain objects in-game was redeveloped for Arkham City because it was considered to be too useful in Arkham Asylum, resulting in some players using it throughout almost the entire game; the visual effect also obscured the game's design aesthetic. One idea was to introduce a time limit on its use, but it was considered that Batman "wouldn't make a gadget like that". Instead, the mode was designed to be difficult to use in certain situations such as obscuring navigational information, and combat where enemy strikes will blur the screen when "Detective Vision" is active. Rocksteady art director David Hego described the new "Detective Vision" as an "augmented reality mode".
Another way the developers wished to enhance the player's Batman experience was through the larger game world. Arkham City has a virtual footprint five times larger than that of Arkham Asylum, and the navigational aspects were improved to offer the player "the freedom and exhilaration of gliding down alleyways and soaring above the skyline". Though the concepts were compared to an open world game, Hill notes that such freeform nature would not be appropriate for a Batman game because it would inhibit the atmosphere they wanted to create, and that Arkham City was designed to challenge the player to think like Batman to survive. To counterbalance the larger game world, the developers also sought to include more challenges and side missions while keeping the player alert as to the primary mission, such that the players constantly are aware of "extreme pressure of the challenges that they face". The Riddler Trophies were designed towards the end of the game's development and were incorporated into every area of the map without overpopulating it, resulting in 440 trophies. Rocksteady aimed to make the player think creatively when collecting trophies by requiring the use of gadgets to solve puzzles, rather than placing the trophies in obscure areas of the map as mere collection items.
With the open game world, Rocksteady included more villains to create challenges for Batman. Hugo Strange was selected as a primary antagonist, as his power and controlling manner help maintain the lockdown on Arkham City once Batman enters. Strange is aware of Batman's true identity, making Batman "vulnerable and exposed in a way that he has never been before", according to Hill. He noted that Strange is a character new to many players but that his backstory and character are detailed throughout the game. Catwoman was also included based on her long history with Batman, though she was given her own agenda running parallel to the events within Arkham City. Catwoman's missions initially ended with her coming to Batman's aide, but late in development, the developers decided to give the player an alternate choice, allowing them to have the morally grey Catwoman leave the city with her loot; the addition was implemented in two days. Batman's sidekick Robin also appears, featuring a shaved head and contemporary costume design that were intended to move away from his traditional "Boy Wonder" image. Senior concept artist Kan Muftic explained: "Our vision of Robin is the one of a troubled young individual that is calm and introverted at times, but very dangerous and aggressive if provoked. The shaved head is inspired by cage fighters, because we thought that Robin might be doing that in his spare time to keep him on his toes. Still, we kept all the classic trademarks of Robin's appearance, such as the red and yellow colors of his outfit, the cape and the mask." Rocksteady originally did not plan to include Robin in the main story but later decided to as an authentic means of delivering new gadgets to Batman, as well as to introduce their version of the character and his relationship with Batman.
Rocksteady intended for Batman, Catwoman, and Robin to offer three different playing experiences. Other villains from Batman's comic history were selected to show that the prison was a melting pot of people from Gotham. The developers believed that providing a small part of each villain's story rather than focusing on a select few allowed the player to meet many more characters and effectively conveyed the feeling of being in a superprison filled with supervillains. Rocksteady decided early on that the Joker would die in the story, and developed the idea of him poisoning Batman with the same affliction, in order to show how the two diametrically opposed characters would interact in pursuit of a shared goal. Warner Bros. and Dini did not oppose killing off the character as long as it was not done for shock value, and as long as they made it clear that Batman was not at fault, since he would not intentionally kill someone.
The developers had considered adding a multiplayer element to the game, but ultimately decided against it. About the agreement, Hill stated, "If we use all of the energy that is required to create multiplayer and instead focus this on the single player, would that deliver a better overall game?"
Variety was added to the city itself, as certain areas were designed around the villains that control that particular territory. Dax Ginn, marketing game manager at Rocksteady Games, said, "If you move into Joker's territory, you get a very Joker-ized experience, and all the artwork on the buildings – whether that's graffiti, signage, or whatever it might be – gives you a dense kind of Joker experience. So our art team has really put a lot of effort in making that sort of transition between one turf zone to another – really helping the player feel like they're making a physical transition into another emotional space." The architecture was imbued with 19th century Art Nouveau design, such as Strange's Wonder Tower which was inspired by the Eiffel Tower, while character designs employed a modern Hyperrealism style. To keep the environments interesting, base color schemes such as Mr Freeze's ice-themed area, Joker's fire-themed steel mill, and Poison Ivy's jungle-themed area were populated with contrasting elements: for example, the steel mill uses large, white clown faces to contrast the oranges and reds used throughout. To develop the expanded environment of Arkham City and build a "natural urban environment" for Batman, Rocksteady expanded its workforce from 75 to over 100 people. The crunch period for Arkham City lasted about eight months, with people working until 11 or 12 each night, with an 8am start.
### Music
The game's release was accompanied by two albums of music released by WaterTower Music. Batman: Arkham City – Original Video Game Score was released on October 18, 2011, and features 19 tracks written for the game by Arkham Asylum composers Nick Arundel and Ron Fish. Batman: Arkham City – The Album was released on October 4, 2011, via CD and digital download. The album contains 11 original songs inspired by the game from mainstream artists including Daughtry, Panic! at the Disco, and Coheed and Cambria. An extra song was made available via the Collector's edition of the album, and the Deluxe edition included a portion of Arundel's original score.
## Marketing
Arkham City's marketing campaign was designed to reach an audience outside of superhero fans and appeal to consumers who are attracted to games like the first-person shooter series Call of Duty. Warner Bros.'s marketing team decided that Batman's status as a cultural icon and superhero was unavoidable, so they decided to emphasize other elements of the character that could appeal to fans of first-person shooters and action games. Black-and-white photographs of iconic personalities like inventor Steve Jobs and actor James Dean served as inspiration and a basis for the final marketing campaign used in advertisements and the game's cover art. The imagery, highlighted with blood and bathed in light was considered to move away from the classic superhero image and refocus on Batman's humanity. The black and white campaign was featured on 120 magazine covers and was targeted towards approximately 15 million consumers across a variety of social media and Warner Bros. products, in addition to a series of viral marketing videos and stunts involving actors in costume attending press-related events. By April 2012, three gameplay trailers had gained approximately 6 million views. The viral segment of the campaign involved several audio recordings between characters from the game including Hugo Strange, Quincy Sharp, Riddler, and the Penguin; each recording could be found by solving a puzzle. The entire campaign spent more than a year in development, producing artwork, videos, DLC, printed advertisements, billboards, and events, and was estimated to have cost at least \$10 million.
A six-issue, limited monthly comic series, also titled Batman: Arkham City was released on May 11, 2011. The series bridges the plot between Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. It was written by Paul Dini with art by Carlos D'Anda. Warner Bros. also developed toys based on the characters through Mattel, Hallmark cards, batarang-shaped videogame controllers, and a variety of apparel by Converse, Eckō Complex, C Life, New Era, and Briefly Stated.
Toys "R" Us in Times Square New York City, released 500 copies of Batman: Arkham City on Monday, October 17, one day before the game officially hit shelves. The first 100 customers to pre-order a copy through the store's "Personal Shopping Department" had a chance to get their game autographed by DC Entertainment co-publisher Jim Lee, Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy, and Arkham City game director Sefton Hill. The remaining 400 copies of Arkham City could be purchased at the event, unautographed.
## Release
Batman: Arkham City was released in North America on October 18, 2011, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, followed on October 19 in Australia and October 21 in Europe. Australian retailers EB Games and Game broke the official release date two days early, selling the game on October 17. The Windows version had been scheduled for simultaneous release with other versions, but in September 2011, its release was pushed back to November 18 without explanation. Alongside its PC launch, the game was also released digitally on the OnLive, Origin, and Steam platforms. A Game of the Year edition was released on May 29, 2012, in the United States and Canada, and on September 7, 2012, in Europe, Australia, and other territories on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, except the United Kingdom where its scheduled release was pushed back to November 2, 2012.
A spin-off game titled Batman: Arkham City Lockdown was developed by NetherRealm Studios for iOS and was released on December 7, 2011. Taking place before Arkham City, the game sees players using touchscreen controls to fight enemies one-on-one, including villains such as Two-Face, Solomon Grundy, Joker, and the mercenary Deathstroke. Defeating enemies earns points that can be used to upgrade Batman's stats or unlock gadgets or costumes.
The Wii U version of Arkham City was released on November 18, 2012, alongside the console's launch in North America. Titled Batman: Arkham City – Armored Edition, the release contains all of the available content from previous releases — plus a Battle Armored Tech mode, GamePad support, and other additions. The Wii U version was developed by Warner Bros. Studios in Montréal and Burbank. The Game of the Year edition was developed for OS X by Feral Interactive and released on December 13, 2012.
Batman: Return to Arkham, developed by Virtuos, features remastered versions of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City using the Unreal Engine 4 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Additionally, both games include all previously released downloadable content, and feature improved graphics, upgraded models and environments, and improvements in the lighting, effects and shaders for both games. Originally intended for release in North America on July 26, 2016, and in Europe on July 29, 2016, the collection was delayed indefinitely in June 2016 in order to give the development team "additional time to deliver a polished Batman Arkham game experience." The collection was released on October 18, 2016.
Batman: Arkham Trilogy, ported by Turn Me Up, features ported versions of Arkham Asylum, Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Knight for the Nintendo Switch in 2023. These versions are not based on the Return to Arkham versions but instead the Unreal Engine 3 original versions.
### Pre-order bonuses
Warner Bros. partnered with several retailers and companies globally to provide bonus content as a reward for pre-ordering, including: Best Buy, Amazon.com, GameStop, Game, Gamestation, EB Games, Tesco, and Asda. The content was only made available by pre-ordering the game with a specific retailer or purchasing a product, such as a NOS beverage, to obtain an unlockable code.
A variety of alternate outfits for Batman were revealed in August 2011, including suit designs worn by the character in The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Earth One, the Bronze Age of Comics, Batman: The Animated Series, and Batman Beyond. The Batman: The Animated Series skin was initially only available to GameStop customers in the U.S. with a Power-Up Rewards Membership. A PlayStation 3-exclusive Sinestro Corps outfit was revealed in August 2011 that initially was only unlockable via a unique code obtained by purchasing the extended cut edition of the Warner Bros. film, Green Lantern on Blu-ray Disc.
Batman's sidekick Robin (Tim Drake) was made available as a playable character for use in challenge maps, with his own set of combat moves and gadgets. Additional Robin skins were also released, including his appearance from Batman: The Animated Series and the Red Robin outfit. The character came with two exclusive challenge maps: "Black Mask Hideout" and "Freight Train Escape". The "Joker's Carnival" challenge map was also made available; it set within the Joker's Sionis Steel Mill base where the player is faced with multiple waves of opponents. The pre-order content was considered an "early access opportunity" for customers, with Ginn confirming that all of the content would be made available for download after the game's release date. Pre-orders for Arkham City numbered more than 200% above those of Arkham Asylum.
### Retail editions
In the United Kingdom, the Robin Edition was announced, available exclusively through retailers Game and Gamestation, containing the game and all of the Robin pre-order content including the playable character, skins and challenge maps. A series of "Steelbook Edition" versions of the game were also made available, featuring the standard game with a metallic case. The Joker-themed Steelbook includes the "Joker's Carnival" challenge map, the animated film Batman: Under the Red Hood on DVD (Blu-ray for PlayStation 3), and the Bronze Age Batman skin DLC. Three other villain-themed steelbook cases were also offered, featuring the likenesses of Two-Face and the Penguin. A fourth steelbook featuring Catwoman was released, containing the Batman: Earth One alternative skin for Batman.
The Collector's Edition contains a Batman statue by Kotobukiya, a collectible art book, Batman: Arkham City – The Album from WaterTower Music, the animated film Batman: Gotham Knight, The Dark Knight Returns skin and the Penguin-themed "Iceberg Lounge" challenge map. In July 2011, the Microsoft Windows version of the game was revealed to use Games for Windows – Live (GFWL) to access online services. Confusion concerning the use of GFWL was raised when a distributor was told by Warner Bros. that the title did not use the Live system, but the use of GFWL was confirmed in late August. However, the game and its sequel has been removed from GFWL and SecuROM on October 17, 2013. The save game will not continue unless it is started from the beginning. Therefore, when buying a retail version, the system clock must changed before activating the game.
On October 25, 2011, a Batman themed Xbox 360 console bundle was released, containing the game, a DVD of Batman: Gotham Knight, a DVD of the Green Lantern film, the Green Lantern video game tie-in Rise of the Manhunters, and a 250GB Xbox 360 console. A bundle containing these items and a Kinect controller was also released.
A Game of the Year edition was announced on April 23, 2012, containing the game and all of the released downloadable content (DLC). A free download of the animated movie Batman: Year One was also included with versions released in the United States and Canada. The cover art was widely criticized for its large text of review scores and quotations, which dwarfed the actual name of the game. Some critics claimed it to be among the worst ever.
### Downloadable content
New purchases of the game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are provided with a unique code that unlocks the "Catwoman" DLC, enabling a series of missions for Catwoman, with unique weapons and moves. Although the missions were presented as part of the main game, on October 13, 2011, Warner Bros. announced that it would be restricted to new purchases. Users can also purchase the content separately. It was later announced that pre-owned copies purchased from GameStop would contain the necessary unlock code. A Warner Bros. rep confirmed that playing as Catwoman would not be required to complete the game. The Catwoman DLC also contains two alternate skins for the character: her appearances from The Animated Series and Batman: The Long Halloween. The PC version of the game includes the DLC, requiring no downloads or further installs to access.
Additional DLC packs were later released. The "Nightwing" pack, released on November 1, 2011, includes Batman's ally Nightwing as a playable character for the game's challenge maps, an Animated Series alternative skin for the character, and two more challenge maps: "Wayne Manor" and "Main Hall". The "Robin" pack was released on November 22, 2011, and contains the Robin pre-order content. A "Skins" pack containing all of the alternate Batman pre-order skins was released on December 6, 2011. Another pack was announced for release on December 20, 2011, containing the pre-order "Iceberg Lounge" and "Joker's Carnival" challenge maps, and a completely new challenge map: "Batcave". On December 19, 2011, a new Batman skin was released—based on the character's outfit from Batman Incorporated—to download for free on all platforms.
On October 23, 2011, an official map app was made available to purchase on the iOS App Store that contains maps for Arkham City, the locations of in-game collectibles, and the solutions to the Riddler's riddles.
"Harley Quinn's Revenge", a story-based campaign expansion, was released on May 29, 2012, for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, with a PC version coming out a week later. The campaign features a new story, new areas, new enemies, and both Batman and Robin as playable characters. The story takes place two weeks after the events of Arkham City. The mega prison has since been evacuated, but Quinn returns and sets up in Joker's former base. The game follows Robin's search for Batman, who has gone missing while hunting Quinn; Batman has been acting differently following the end of the main game story, concerning his allies. On the same day, it was announced that all of the released DLC, including "Harley Quinn's Revenge", would be made available as part of the Arkham City Game of the Year edition.
## Reception
Batman: Arkham City received critical acclaim. According to review aggregating website Metacritic, the PlayStation 3 version of the game had a weighted average review score of 96/100, the Xbox 360 version had 94/100, and the PC version had 91/100.
Game Informer's Andrew Reiner awarded the game a perfect 10 score, labeling it "the best licensed video game ever made". Reiner said that the game could be the biggest and "most enjoyable timesink" of 2011, and concluded that the game surpassed every standard set by Batman: Arkham Asylum "in every way and stands tall as one of Batman's greatest moments." Joystiq's Griffin McElroy praised the attention to detail, and mechanical excellence of the game environment, crediting Rocksteady for "breathing life into a staggeringly beautiful world; one which hums not only with opportunity, but ambition". McElroy criticized the game narrative as a series of excuses to encounter villains that were "one-dimensional punching [bags]", and that the character dialogue was clichéd. McElroy was also critical of the Riddler challenges, stating that they were "frustrating" when the player lacks the necessary items to complete them.
Eurogamer's Christian Donlan considered that the game lacked the same "surprise" as its predecessor, but praised the overall improvement of bosses, animations and the scope of activities available. Donlan said that the game environment was intricate and very detailed, and the abilities provided for its traversal made it "hard not to feel like the world's greatest detective, on patrol". IGN's Greg Miller said "the voice acting, the challenges, the amazing opening, the unbelievable ending and the feeling of being the Dark Knight—these are the things that standout". Miller said that the Catwoman missions were a fun change of pace from the main gameplay, and that he "adored" the option to replay the game with unlocked abilities and more difficult enemies.
The Daily Telegraph's Tom Hoggins praised the game's sense of progress in discovering and mastering the character abilities, and the "show-stopping brutality" of the improved combat system. Hoggins highlighted the Catwoman campaign as a "delight" and fitting lithe contrast to Batman's strength, but lamented the campaign's short length. The Guardian's Nick Cowen labeled it the best Batman game of all time, praising the variety of side missions and content, the large cast of iconic characters, and the satisfying challenge of the Riddler missions. The Australian Official PlayStation Magazine awarded a perfect score of 10 stating that the game "is not only the best superhero game ever made, it's one of the best games ever made ... it brings the Caped Crusader's world to life better than any comic, movie or television show before it". Play3 (Germany) awarded a score of 92%, calling it "the best superhero game ever made". GamesMaster awarded a score of 97%, saying it is "the gold standard by which all future videogames should be judged".
Batman: Arkham City – Armored Edition for Wii U received a positive reception. Metacritic provided a score of 85/100. Eurogamer's Richard Leadbetter was critical of technical performance including issues with visual quality and inconsistent framerate. EGM's Ray Carsillo said that the optional B.A.T. system made certain battles too easy. Carsillo also said it was the "clearly inferior version" of the game due to glitches and "tacked on gimmicks". Nintendo World Report's Patrick Barnett wrote that certain uses of the Wii U controller made it "the best way to experience Arkham City", but that some new features were a "nuisance". Barnett added that it was "on par, if not better, visually", than its counterparts. Joystiq's JC Fletcher opined that the persistent map screen and touch screen interface were appreciated, and complimented the use of augmented reality to explore crime scenes. Game Revolution's Blake Peterson praised the real-time management of information, upgrades and equipment that he considered made Batman more vulnerable, although Barnett included this as a point of criticism.
For the "Harley Quinn's Revenge" DLC, IGN's Greg Miller scored the content 9 out of 10 and gave it an Editor's Choice designation. Miller said that it "is what downloadable content should be", but criticized the lack of variety in the missions and the lack of conclusion to some plot threads. Eurogamer's Christian Donlan gave the DLC a score of 7 out of 10, and said that Harley Quinn worked as well as the Joker as a narrative focus. Donlan said that Robin was "enormous fun to play", but criticized the DLC for not offering anything not present in the main game. Kotaku's Stephen Totilo was critical of the DLC, saying that it diminished his desire to replay the main game and describing it as "delicious a dessert as a poison-filled Joker pie to the face". Totilo said it presented an emotionless, inconclusive journey, composed of unused material from the main game.
### Sales
Arkham City is one of the fastest selling games in history. Worldwide, two million units were sold in its first week from approximately 4.6 million shipped units, compared to Arkham Asylum's 4.3 million units sold in its entire release. On February 8, 2012, it was announced that more than six million units of the game had been shipped since release. In July 2020, it was reported that lifetime sales reached over 12.5 million units and over \$600 million in revenue was generated.
During the first week of sales in the United Kingdom, Batman: Arkham City became the number-one selling game on all available formats, replacing FIFA 12 atop the charts for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and all-format games. It became the fourth-biggest launch of 2011 after FIFA 12, Gears of War 3, and L.A. Noire. It became the biggest UK game launch in the history of Warner Bros., doubling the first week sales of Arkham Asylum. It was the tenth-best-selling game of 2011 with approximately ten weeks in release, and the 34th-best-selling game of 2012.
According to NPD Group, Batman: Arkham City was the second-best-selling game in the United States for October 2011, selling 1.5 million copies across available formats, the tenth-best-selling in November, and the seventh-best-selling game overall in 2011. Game-rental service GameFly announced that it was the most requested game of 2011, beating out Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
### Accolades
Batman: Arkham City won multiple awards at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards including: Character of the Year (Joker), Best Xbox 360 Game, Best Action Adventure Game, and Best Adapted Video Game; and received nominations for: Best Original Score, Best Graphics, Best Performance by a Human Female (Tara Strong), Best Performance by a Human Male (Mark Hamill), Trailer of the Year (Hugo Strange Reveal Trailer), Studio of the Year (Rocksteady), and Game of the Year. As part of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' (AIAS) 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards (now known as the D.I.C.E. Awards), the game was awarded Adventure Game of the Year, and also received nominations for: Outstanding Achievement in Animation; Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction; Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering; Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction; and Game of the Year.
The 2012 British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) awards saw the game win two awards for Performer (Mark Hamill) and Action game, and receive nominations for: Artistic Achievement; Audio Achievement; Best Game; Design; Original Music; Story; and the publicly voted GAME Award of 2011. Paul Crocker, Paul Dini, and Sefton Hill were nominated for the Video Game Writing award by the Writers Guild of America, and Crocker won the Best Videogame Script award from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. The National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers awarded the game in the categories Control Design and Lighting/Texturing. The game was also awarded as Outstanding Action / Adventure Game by the 16th Satellite Awards. At the 2012 Develop Awards the game won in the category Use of a License and the International 3D Society awarded the game in the category 3D Videogame – PC. At the 5th Annual Cody Awards the game won in the category Best Licensed Game and it was nominated in other categories (Game of the Year, Studio of the Year, Best Action-Adventure Game, Best Graphics).
The Daily Telegraph awarded the game Best Original Score (Nick Arundel) and Game of the Year, with a statement that said: "as a video game, it's a magnificent piece of work, but it also shines as a unique, lovingly-crafted slice of Batman fiction." The newspaper also nominated the game for: Best Director (Sefton Hill); Best Acting Performance (Mark Hamill and Nolan North); and Best Developer (Rocksteady Studios). The game was nominated for Game of the Year and Best Game Design at the Game Developers Choice Awards, and Game Audio Network Guild award's for Music of the Year, Best Soundtrack Album, Best Audio Mix, and Best Original Vocal – Choral for the track "Main Theme". The game was named the Best Action/Adventure Game and Best Overall Game of 2011 as part of the 2011 Yahoo! Games Game of the Year awards. Batman: Arkham City received several honors from GameTrailers, including Best Xbox 360 Game of the Year, Best PC Game of 2011, as well as Best Action/Adventure game. It also won the Best Action-Adventure Game award at the 2012 Golden Joystick Awards, and was nominated for Top Gaming Moment for the game's ending, Best DLC for "Harley Quinn's Revenge", and the overall Ultimate Game of the Year. It was nominated for Game of the Decade at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards.
According to Metacritic, the PlayStation 3 version of the game was the highest-rated game of 2011; and across all formats, the game was tied with the role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as the highest-rated game of 2011. This also tied Arkham City for the sixth-highest-rated game ever.
Batman: Arkham City appeared on several lists of the top video games of 2011, including these: number 1 by E! Online, and CNET; number 2 by Gamasutra; number 3 by Digital Spy, Joystiq, VentureBeat, and Wired; number 5 by the Associated Press, and Time; and number 10 by the Daily Mirror.
Several international video game websites and magazines labeled Arkham City as their favourite Game of the Year and as their favourite Action/Adventure Game.
GameSpot labeled it the Best Action/Adventure Game as part of its Best of 2011 series, Game Informer named it their Best Action/Adventure game of 2011 in their February 2012 issue, and highlighted specific points of the game including placing Batman number 1 on their list of the Top Ten Heroes, and the Mr. Freeze boss fight number 4 on their list of Top Ten Video Games Moments. Always Game Informer labeled the game as Best Adventure Game on its Best of E3 2011 Awards. PlayStation Official Magazine UK placed Batman: Arkham City as their number 2 Game Of the Year. IGN labeled it as Best PC Action Game and as Best Overall Action Game of 2011 and the game won the IGN's People's Choice Awards for Best Xbox 360 Action Game and Best Xbox 360 Story. At the Official Xbox Magazine Game of the Year 2011 Awards the game was awarded as Best Action-Adventure Game and became runner-up in the categories Best Story and Best Voice Acting. DieHard GameFan awarded the game as Best Action Game and Game of the Year. The BTVA Voice Acting Awards awarded the game in the categories Best Male Vocal Performance in a Video Game (Mark Hamill) and Best Vocal Ensemble in a Video Game. The game also won in the category Best Interactive Animation at the Pulcinella Awards. The game also won in two categories at the X-Play Awards 2011. 1UP.com placed the game's main theme song as number 6 on its "Top 10 Theme Songs of 2011".
In January 2012, Eurogamer listed it as the third-best game of 2012. In November 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time and said, "It's hard to imagine a better superhero game than Batman: Arkham City. It's also hard to imagine a better video game in general." Also in November, Entertainment Weekly named it one of the ten best games of the past decade (2002–2012) and said, "this is the definitive superhero adventure of the decade." In 2013, Game Informer named it the best superhero game of all time, and GamingBolt listing it at number 62 on its list of the 100 Greatest Video Games Ever Made. In 2014, Empire placed it at number 12 on its list of the 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time, ahead of Arkham Asylum at number 28. PC Gamer named it the 68th-best PC Game, and IGN named it the 24th-best PC game of the preceding decade, and the 16th-best game of the contemporary console generation. In 2019, IGN listed it as the 54th-best video game of all time. Metacritic, The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes and IGN put the game among the best video games of the decade 2010–2019.
### Technical issues
During launch week, issues were found to exist in the code-restricted content. Some customers discovered the code to be missing from their copy, preventing them from obtaining the Catwoman story missions. The problem was reported by customers in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Warner Bros. issued a statement claiming that the missing codes had affected less than 0.5% of customers. Upon release in the United Kingdom, a technical issue rendered the game unplayable for some players, booting them from the game with an error message that the "downloadable content is corrupt." Rocksteady European community manager Sarah Wellock claimed that the fault lay with the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live online systems.
In early November 2011, Rocksteady confirmed that it was investigating reports by numerous users that save files for the Xbox 360 version of the game were being erased without prompting, resulting in players losing their progress and being unable to complete the game. On launch, performance issues arose for the PC version when DirectX 11 features were enabled; the developer acknowledged the inconvenience and recommended running the game with DirectX 9 until a title update was released to address this matter.
## Legacy
Batman: Arkham Origins, the successor to Arkham City, was announced in April 2013. The game was developed by WB Games Montréal for PlayStation 3, Wii U, Windows, and Xbox 360, and was released on October 25, 2013. Set several years before the events of Arkham Asylum, Arkham Origins follows a younger and less experienced Batman on Christmas Eve on the streets of Gotham City as he faces off against eight deadly assassins. A separate title, Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, was developed for Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita by Armature Studios, and was released on the same day. Dini stated that he would not be involved in writing a sequel. He had not been included in writing for any of Arkham City's DLC, including the story-based "Harley Quinn's Revenge" DLC, and said that Warner Bros. and Rocksteady suggested that he take work elsewhere if offered.
Batman: Arkham Knight, the successor to Arkham Origins, was announced in March 2014. Developed by Rocksteady for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, the game was released on June 23, 2015. Arkham Knight is set nine months after the events of Arkham City and follows Batman as he confronts an assault on Gotham City by the Scarecrow, and his ally, the Arkham Knight.
|
827,595 |
Eisenhower dollar
| 1,165,255,003 |
United States dollar coin
|
[
"1970s in the United States",
"Apollo 11",
"Currencies introduced in 1971",
"Dwight D. Eisenhower",
"Eagles on coins",
"Maps on coins",
"Moon on coins",
"United States dollar coins"
] |
The Eisenhower dollar was a one-dollar coin issued by the United States Mint from 1971 to 1978; it was the first coin of that denomination issued by the Mint since the Peace dollar series ended in 1935. The coin depicts President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the obverse, and a stylized image honoring the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon mission on the reverse. Both sides were designed by Frank Gasparro, with the reverse based on the mission patch designed by astronaut Michael Collins. It is the only large-size U.S. dollar coin whose circulation strikes contained no silver.
In 1965, because of rises in bullion prices, the Mint began to strike copper-nickel clad coins instead of silver. No dollar coins had been issued in thirty years, but, beginning in 1969, legislators sought to reintroduce a dollar coin into commerce. After Eisenhower died that March, there were a number of proposals to honor him with the new coin. While these bills generally commanded wide support, enactment was delayed by a dispute over whether the new coin should be in base metal or 40% silver. In 1970, a compromise was reached to strike the Eisenhower dollar in base metal for circulation, and in 40% silver as a collectible. President Richard Nixon, who had served as vice president under Eisenhower, signed legislation authorizing mintage of the new coin on December 31, 1970.
Although the 40% silver collector's pieces sold well, the new base-metal dollars failed to circulate to any degree, except in and around Nevada casinos, where they took the place of privately issued tokens. There are no dollars dated 1975; coins from that year and from 1976 bear a double date 1776–1976, and a special reverse by Dennis R. Williams in honor of the bicentennial of American independence. Beginning in 1977, the Mint sought to replace the Eisenhower dollar with a smaller-sized piece. Congress authorized the Susan B. Anthony dollar, struck beginning in 1979, but that coin also failed to circulate. Given their modest cost and the short length of the series, complete sets of Eisenhower dollars are inexpensive to assemble and are becoming more popular among coin collectors.
## Background
The silver dollar had never been a popular coin, circulating little except in the West; it served as a means of monetizing metal and generally sat in bank vaults once struck. The Peace dollar, the last circulating dollar made of silver, was not struck after 1935, and in most years in the quarter century after that, the bullion value of a silver dollar did not exceed 70 cents. In the early 1960s, though, silver prices rose, and the huge stocks of silver dollars in the hands of banks and the government were obtained by the public through the redemption of silver certificates. This caused shortages of silver dollars in the western states where the pieces circulated, and interests there sought the issuance of more dollars.
On August 3, 1964, Congress passed legislation providing for the striking of 45 million silver dollars. This legislation was enacted when coins vanished from circulation as the price of silver rose past \$1.29 per ounce, making silver dollars worth more as bullion than as currency. The new pieces were intended to be used at Nevada casinos and elsewhere in the West where "hard money" was popular. Numismatic periodicals complained that striking the dollars was a waste of resources. The law had been passed at the urging of the Senate Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield (Democrat–Montana), who represented a state that heavily used silver dollars. Despite the efforts of Mint Director Eva Adams and her staff to persuade him, Senator Mansfield refused to consider any cancellation or delay, and on May 12, 1965, the Denver Mint began striking 1964-D Peace dollars—the Mint had obtained congressional authorization to continue striking 1964-dated coins into 1965.
A public announcement of the new pieces was made on May 15, 1965, only to be met with a storm of objections. Both the public and many congressmen saw the issue as a poor use of Mint resources at a time of severe coin shortages, which would only benefit coin dealers. On May 24, one day before a hastily called congressional hearing, Adams announced that the pieces were deemed trial strikes, never intended for circulation. The Mint later stated that 316,076 pieces had been struck; all were reported melted amid heavy security. To ensure that there would be no repetition, Congress inserted a provision in the Coinage Act of 1965 forbidding the coinage of silver dollars for five years. That act also removed silver from the dime and quarter, and reduced the silver content of the half dollar to 40%.
## Inception
In 1969, Nixon administration Mint Director Mary Brooks sought the reissuance of the dollar coin. By this time, rising bullion prices threatened the continued use of silver in the Kennedy half dollar, but Brooks hoped to maintain the dollar as a silver coin. Brooks's proposal for a new silver dollar was opposed by the chairman of the House Banking Committee, Wright Patman, who had been persuaded, against his better judgment, by Nixon's predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, to support the continued use of silver in the half dollar.
On March 28, 1969, former president and World War II general Dwight D. Eisenhower died. Soon after, New Jersey Representative Florence Dwyer, like Eisenhower, a Republican, suggested that the proposed dollar coin bear his likeness. She spoke to Democratic Missouri Representative Leonor Sullivan, who agreed that the dollar should bear a portrait of Eisenhower as "equal time" to the half dollar, which bore the likeness of Democratic president John F. Kennedy. A bill was filed by Connecticut Congressman Robert N. Giaimo to authorize an Eisenhower dollar, to be struck without silver content. The Joint Commission on the Coinage, drawing members from the administration and from Congress, including Giaimo, recommended the dollar in spring 1969. It also called for the elimination of silver from the half dollar, and for the transfer from the Treasury to the General Services Administration (GSA) of quantities of rare silver dollars, so they could be sold. Giaimo noted that the coin would be useful in casinos, which were striking their own tokens in the absence of circulating dollar coins, and in the vending industry, which was starting to sell higher-priced items.
On October 3, 1969, the House Banking Committee passed legislation for a base-metal Eisenhower dollar, with Patman stating that he hoped to have it approved by the full House in time for the late president's birthday on October 14. On October 6, the bill's sponsors lost a procedural vote which would have allowed for no amendments. While some representatives spoke against the manner in which the legislation was to be considered, Iowa Congressman H. R. Gross objected to the base-metal composition of the proposed coin: "You would be doing the memory of President Eisenhower no favor to mint a dollar made perhaps of scrap metal." Both houses voted on October 14, Eisenhower's birthday. Although the House passed the administration-backed bill for a base metal dollar, the Senate passed the bill as amended by Colorado Senator Peter Dominick, calling for the piece to be minted in 40% silver. Instrumental in the passage of the Senate amendment was a letter from Mamie Eisenhower, recalling that her husband had liked to give silver dollars as mementoes, and had gone to some effort to obtain coins struck in the year of his birth, 1890. Idaho Senator James McClure stated, "It is somehow beneath the dignity of a great president like General Eisenhower to withhold silver from the coin." On October 29, 1969, Texas Representative Robert R. Casey introduced legislation to honor both Eisenhower and the recent Apollo 11 Moon landing. These provisions would become part of the enacted bill authorizing the Eisenhower dollar. Casey originally wanted the mission theme of Apollo 11, "We came in peace for all mankind," to appear on the coin; when the Mint informed him that there was not room for that inscription, he settled for requiring that the reverse design be emblematic of that theme.
In March 1970, the two houses reached a compromise whereby 150 million dollars would be struck in the 40% silver alloy for collectors and others. The circulating dollar, though, would have no silver and would be struck in larger quantities. The 47.4 million troy ounces of silver needed to strike the collectors' pieces would come from bullion already held by the government. The compromise was worked out by McClure and other congressional Republicans, with the aid of Brooks, an Idahoan. McClure described the deal as "a lot less than the country deserves, but a lot more than it appeared we would get." The reason for having a collector's edition with silver was to avoid the hoarding which had driven the Kennedy half dollar from circulation.
Although the compromise passed the Senate in March 1970, it was blocked in the House by Representative Patman, who was determined to end silver in the coinage. The Senate passed the bill again in September, this time attaching it as a rider to a bank holding company bill sought by Patman. The bill, which also included provisions to eliminate silver from the half dollar and to transfer the rare silver dollars to the GSA, was approved by a conference committee and passed both houses. Nixon had intended to let the bill pass into law without his signature. When aides realized that as Congress had adjourned, not signing the bill would pocket veto it, on December 31, 1970, Nixon hastily signed it only minutes before the midnight deadline.
## Design
For Mint Chief Engraver Frank Gasparro, the opportunity to put Eisenhower on a coin was the fulfillment of a longtime dream. On June 19, 1945, Gasparro had been one of more than 4 million people who gathered in New York to watch a parade celebrating the Allied victory in Europe. Although Gasparro, then an assistant engraver at the Mint, only saw a glimpse of General Eisenhower, he stepped back from the crowd and drew the general's features. That sketch served as the basis of his design for the obverse. Gasparro consulted with the late president's widow, Mamie Eisenhower, as to the designs of both sides of the coin; the former First Lady was presented with a galvano (a metallic model used in the coin design process) by Brooks and Gasparro on January 1, 1971. Gasparro wrote in 1991 that he had six weeks to complete the work beginning in mid-November 1970, that his extensive research into eagles over the years was a great help in creating the reverse, and that his sketches were adopted without change. The chief engraver was not given full freedom of design; he was instructed to have the basic layout of the obverse resemble that of the Washington quarter.
Before the legislation passed, Gasparro had prepared two reverses, the one actually used, and a reverse with a more formal heraldic eagle, which numismatic historian and coin dealer Q. David Bowers finds reminiscent of pattern coins prepared in the 1870s. At Congress's insistence, the chief engraver created a design in commemoration of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, based on the mission patch conceived by astronaut Michael Collins and others. Bowers deems the choice of the lunar landing "a stroke of genius," allowing the dollar, which would be little-used in commerce, to be a commemorative both of Eisenhower and of the Moon mission. The reverse depicts an eagle (representing the Lunar Module Eagle) swooping low over the Moon's surface, holding an olive branch, token of peace, in its claws.
The use of Collins's mission patch design had initially been opposed by some government officials because of the fierce expression of the eagle; Gasparro's initial concept met similar objections. The Mint Director recalled that Gasparro had gone to the Philadelphia Zoo to look at eagles, and on his return had prepared a design which she felt emphasized the eagle's predatory nature. Brooks informed Gasparro that the eagle was "too fierce, too warlike, a little too aggressive" and asked that the expression be made friendlier. Gasparro, who reportedly was unhappy at having to change the eagle, described the final version as "pleasant looking." The State Department also feared that the eagle's expression might offend, and sought a neutral visage. The distant Earth may be seen above the bird, and there are 13 stars in honor of the original states.
Bowers deems the bust of Eisenhower "well modeled" by Gasparro, and notes that the fact that the eagle on the reverse holds only an olive branch, rather than arrows as well (token of war), "meant that the public would like the design." Nevertheless, he notes that Eisenhower's stern expression was widely criticized as not typical of a man noted for geniality. Numismatic author David Lange opines that "the Eisenhower dollar is one of the poorest products to emanate from the U.S. Mint." Lange writes that, although Gasparro had designed only one side of the coin for the Kennedy half dollar and Lincoln Memorial reverse for the cent, "the Eisenhower dollar was his design alone and should have served as a showcase for his talent. Sadly, it is a mediocre design that reveals his typically unnatural treatment of Ike's hair and the eagle's feathers." Some collectors complained after the release that the Earth was not fully shown, not realizing that Gasparro had carefully followed the mission badge. The chief engraver responded by clarifying the design.
## Release
Two prototype dollars were struck at the Philadelphia Mint on January 25, 1971; they were subsequently destroyed. However, collectors have found at least two 1971-S coins that have been certified as prototypes. Striking such large pieces of tough copper-nickel proved destructive to the Mint's dies, and Gasparro repeatedly used the Janvier reducing lathe to lower the relief to be used on the circulation strikes and the uncirculated silver clad coins. The chief engraver altered the resulting master die directly to restore at least some of the detail which was lost as the relief was lowered. The proof coins struck at San Francisco, nevertheless, remained in high relief. This meant that in 1971 and for much of 1972 (until better-quality steel was used in the dies), the uncirculated strikes had a lower relief, less detailed surface, compared with the proof coins. Proof coins are struck slowly, and generally multiple times, to bring out the full detail. Striking of Eisenhower dollars for circulation began at Denver on February 3, apparently without any ceremony; minting at Philadelphia also began early in the year, although Bowers, in his comprehensive encyclopedia of silver and clad dollar coins, does not record a specific date. The first Eisenhower dollars in 40% silver, with an uncirculated finish, were struck at the San Francisco Assay Office (today the San Francisco Mint) on March 31, 1971; Brooks ceremoniously operated the presses. The first coin struck was for presentation to Mamie Eisenhower; the second to David Eisenhower (grandson of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower) and the third to David Eisenhower's father-in-law, President Nixon.
On January 29, 1971, the Mint announced the prices for the 40% silver pieces which would be struck at San Francisco: \$3 for uncirculated specimens and \$10 for mirror-surfaced proof pieces, with orders to be taken by mail beginning on July 1, with a limit of five of each per customer. Order forms for the public were shipped to 44,000 post offices and 33,000 banks, with instructions not to hand them out until June 18. The Mint returned some orders for being sent in too early. Mint sets of the circulating coinage for 1971 did not include the Eisenhower dollar.
The first proof strikes, at San Francisco, took place in July. The proof pieces were sold in a plastic holder inside a brown box with a gold eagle seal; the uncirculated silver pieces were encased in pliofilm inside a blue envelope. These were dubbed "brown Ikes" and "blue Ikes" and are still known by those terms. On July 27, 1971, President Nixon presented the first piece to be struck to Mamie Eisenhower at a White House ceremony. Sales of the 40% silver pieces were ended on October 8; the first proof coins were mailed to collectors on October 14, President Eisenhower's birthday.
The clad circulation strikes of the Eisenhower dollar, the largest clad coin ever issued by the US Mint, were available to the general public through banks beginning on November 1, 1971. Many were hoarded by collectors; there was initially sufficient demand for the coins that many banks imposed a limit of one coin per customer. The clad pieces were struck from coinage strip purchased by the Mint from contractors. Many were not well-struck, causing collectors to purchase rolls in search of better specimens. An oily film was found on a large number of the coins; these coins were cleaned by collectors.
Though there was initially strong public interest in the new dollar, from the very start the coin still failed to circulate. In 1976, a Treasury study done in conjunction with a private-sector firm found that the Eisenhower dollar had a near-100 percent attrition rate, that is, almost always, a coin was used in only one transaction, and then stopped circulating (by comparison, the attrition rate of the quarter was close to zero). This was because of the coin's bulky size and weight, and the lack of potential uses for it. Even so, it was successful in quickly replacing private-issue tokens in Nevada casinos. According to numismatist Randy Camper, over 70% of "circulating" Eisenhower dollars were used in casinos. Although the vending machine industry lobbied for the Eisenhower dollar, few machines were modified to accept the coins. Lange recalled, "The fact is that these coins never circulated outside of casinos and nearby areas, and I don't recall ever seeing a vending machine that accepted them."
## Production
### Early years (1971–1974)
The Mint struck over 125 million of the Eisenhower dollars in 1971, more than doubling its largest annual production for a dollar coin. Despite an increased mintage in 1972 to over 170 million, and despite what COINage magazine termed "near-heroic measures on the part of the Mint", the piece did not circulate. In a 1974 article for COINage, numismatist Clement F. Bailey noted, "the circulation value of the coin has been nil". Many Eisenhower dollars were put aside as souvenirs by non-collectors. Nevertheless, the silver coins sold so well that in October 1971, Mint Director Brooks warned that orders for 1971-S proof dollars would not all be filled until well into 1972. She ascribed the delay to the large public demand and to production difficulties which she indicated had been corrected. More than 11 million of the 1971-S silver pieces were sold, in proof and uncirculated, with over 4 million in proof. In May 1972, Treasury Secretary John Connally, testifying before a Senate committee, described the profits the Mint had made on the silver version of the Eisenhower dollar as "just unconscionable", with the average profit on a silver coin at \$3.89, and expected to increase as production became more efficient. Mint officials felt that reducing the price would anger those who had already purchased the pieces.
The 1972 silver pieces were again struck at San Francisco. Sales dropped considerably, to just under 2.2 million specimens in uncirculated and 1.8 million in proof. The part-silver 1972-S Eisenhower dollars were available for sale by mail order, with the ordering period from May 1 to July 15 for the proof coins and August 1 to October 16 for the uncirculated version.
With ample supplies of Eisenhower dollars, the Federal Reserve had no need to order any in 1973, and none were struck for circulation. The 1973 and 1973-D were the first Eisenhower dollars struck for inclusion in mint sets, and were, in theory, only available that way. Over the years, many 1973 and 1973-D dollar coins have been found in circulation, leading to speculation that the 230,798 pieces which were reported melted, after the Mint failed to sell as many mint sets as anticipated, were released into circulation. John Wexler, Bill Crawford, and Kevin Flynn, in their volume on Eisenhower dollars, deny this, citing a 1974 letter from Assistant Director of the Mint for Public Services Roy C. Cahoon, which stated that all 1973 Eisenhower dollars from unsold mint sets were melted. The 1973-S was struck for inclusion in base-metal proof sets, as well as for the regular "blue Ikes" and "brown Ikes". Sales of the part-silver pieces dipped to a total of just under 2.9 million. The coin was struck again for circulation in 1974, was included in mint sets and proof sets, and was available in proof and uncirculated silver clad from San Francisco. Congress ordered that some of the money from the sale of 1974-S silver pieces be used to support Eisenhower College in Seneca Falls, New York. Coin collectors felt that this set a bad precedent, but about \$9 million was paid to the college between 1974 and 1978; yet, despite the infusion of money, the college closed its doors in 1982.
### Bicentennial issue (1975–1976)
The United States had issued commemorative coins between 1892 and 1954, as a means for fundraising for organizations deemed worthy of federal support. A sponsoring organization would be designated in the authorizing legislation, and was permitted to buy up the issue at face value, selling it to the public at a premium, and pocketing the difference. Various problems with the issues, including mishandling of distributions and complaints that public coins should not be used for private profit, resulted in firm Treasury Department opposition to such issues, and none were struck after 1954.
The American Revolutionary Bicentennial Commission (ARBC) was established by Congress in 1966 as an oversight body for the 1976 two-hundredth anniversary of American independence (the "Bicentennial"). In 1970, its coins and medals advisory committee recommended the issuance of a special half dollar, and subsequently the committee sought the temporary redesign of circulating American coins. Brooks and the Mint initially opposed legislation to effect these proposals, but eventually Brooks supported legislation to redesign the reverses of the quarter, half dollar and dollar coins, and to issue special collector's sets in silver clad. Legislation to authorize this was signed by President Nixon on October 18, 1973. By the terms of this legislation, coins of these denomination minted for delivery after July 4, 1975, and before December 31, 1976, would bear special reverses, and also be dated 1776–1976. A total of 15 million sets (45 million) coins in all would be struck in silver clad for sale to the public at a premium.
The reverse designs for the three Bicentennial coins were determined by a design competition open to the public. This competition closed in January 1974, and in March, a design submitted by 22-year-old art student Dennis R. Williams was selected for the dollar. Williams, the youngest person to that point to design a U.S. coin, had submitted a design depicting the Liberty Bell superimposed against the Moon. Gasparro slightly modified the design, simplifying the features visible on the lunar surface, and altering the lettering and the bell. Williams and the designers of the other denominations operated the presses to strike the first coins on August 12, 1974; a set of these prototypes was later given to the new president, Gerald Ford. Williams's design was liked by the public but attracted criticism from some numismatists as the Liberty Bell had been previously used on coinage (for example, on the Franklin half dollar). Fearing that a low-mintage 1975 piece would be hoarded, the Mint obtained legislation in December 1974 allowing it to continue coining 1974-dated pieces until it began coinage of Bicentennial pieces.
The Bicentennial dollars were the first of the three denominations to be struck for distribution to the public; these were coined beginning in February 1975. The silver pieces were struck at San Francisco beginning on April 23, 1975. The Mint found that the copper nickel dollar was striking indistinctly, a problem not seen with the silver pieces. Brooks called a halt in production to allow Gasparro to modify the dies; the most noticeable change is that the revised issue, or Type II as it came to be known, have narrower, sharper lettering on the reverse. All silver pieces (struck only at San Francisco) are Type I; all three mints struck both Type I and Type II copper nickel pieces. All dollars included in 1975 proof sets are Type I; all those included in 1976 proof sets are Type II. The first Bicentennial dollars were released into circulation on October 13, 1975. Over 220 million were struck. The Bicentennial design was not used after 1976; sets of silver clad Bicentennial coins were sold by the Mint until sales were finally closed at the end of 1986.
One proof Bicentennial coin in silver clad and lacking a mint mark, similar to the dollar in the prototype set given to President Ford, is known. This piece supposedly came from a cash register drawer at the Woodward & Lothrop department store in Washington, D.C. Thomas K. DeLorey, who was then a reporter for Coin World, spoke to the discoverer and was suspicious of the story, thinking it more likely the coin was surreptitiously obtained from the government. He declined to question the origin then, fearing it might be seized and, therefore, not available to numismatists. The piece brought almost \$30,000 by private sale in 1987.
### Final years and replacement (1977–1978)
By 1975, the Treasury was concerned about the drain on resources from striking the dollar, which did not circulate. It engaged a private firm to study the six current denominations of U.S. coinage, and make recommendations. The firm concluded in its report that the Eisenhower dollar was too large and heavy to circulate effectively, but if the diameter was reduced by about a third, and the weight by two-thirds, it might be used. That report found that "the Eisenhower dollar has not been widely accepted by the public because of its large size and weight". In January 1977, just prior to leaving office, Ford's Treasury Secretary, William E. Simon, proposed the elimination of the cent and half dollar, and a reduction in size of the dollar. According to Bowers, the Treasury had come to believe that a coin as large as the Eisenhower dollar simply would not circulate in the United States.
The Mint struck pattern pieces of the smaller size, with various shapes and compositions. An 11-sided coin was considered, which would have differentiated it from the quarter, but the patterns would not work in vending machines. Such exotic metals as titanium were considered before the Mint decided on the standard clad composition. Gasparro prepared, for the circulating pieces, a design showing Liberty with flowing hair, similar to early American coins.
As the Eisenhower dollar awaited its demise, approximately 50 million per year were struck, using the eagle design for the reverse. In both years, the majority coined were at Denver. No silver collector's edition was issued; the blue and brown Ikes ended with 1974.
The new Treasury Secretary, Michael Blumenthal, supported Gasparro's design in testimony before Congress; Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire dubbed Blumenthal's position a "cop-out". Proxmire refused to introduce the bill, which would have left the choice of design up to Blumenthal or his successor, instead introducing his own legislation to commemorate early women's rights leader Susan B. Anthony. Many in the new Congress and in the Carter Administration were social progressives, and supported women's lib. Ohio Representative Mary Rose Oakar also introduced legislation for a Susan B. Anthony dollar in October 1978; it proceeded rapidly through Congress and was signed by President Jimmy Carter. Gasparro was given photographs of Anthony and told to reproduce her appearance exactly on the coin. Anthony's stern expression caused some to dub it the "Susan B. Agony" dollar. The Eisenhower dollar's reverse was used for the Anthony dollar. Convinced that the public would hoard the new pieces, the Mint Bureau produced half a billion before its official release to the public on July 2, 1979. It need not have worried; the public quickly rejected the new coin as too close in size and weight to the quarter dollar, and production for circulation ceased after 1980. Mint Director Stella Hackel Sims stated, "people are accustomed to the Eisenhower dollar, but in time, they'll become accustomed to the Susan". Attempts were made to give the new smaller dollars out as change in postal transactions, and to force their use by U.S. military personnel in Europe; both failed.
The Eisenhower dollar is the final regular-issue dollar coin to have been minted in silver (collectors and proof issues were minted with a purity of 40% Ag), the final dollar coin to be minted in the original large size, and the only circulating "large dollar" (that is, of the same 38mm diameter as earlier 90 percent dollar coins) to have been minted in cupronickel.
## Collecting
Collected by date and mint mark, no Eisenhower dollar is rare; as a result, the coins are relatively inexpensive and a complete set may be acquired without difficulty. However, many were badly struck, without full detail, especially in 1971 and 1972, and most pieces acquired nicks, scratches or "bag marks" from contact with each other soon after striking. Although lower-grade silver coins can be melted, this is not practical for Eisenhower dollars due to the lack of precious metal content, and dealers often try to get any premium they can on face value. Completing a set of highest-grade specimens may be difficult and expensive, especially for the 1971 and 1972 from Philadelphia or Denver, which were not sold in mint sets, and thus only came to collectors through banks. A 1973-D piece, tied with ten other specimens for the finest known of that date and mint mark in near-pristine MS-67 condition sold in June 2013 for \$12,925. According to numismatic writer Steve Reach, "as more people submit modern-era coins like Eisenhower dollars for third-party certification, the true rarity of many issues in top-grades is becoming clear."
Some of the 1971-D pieces exhibit a variety in which (among several differences) the eagle lacks brow lines, these have been dubbed by Eisenhower dollar specialists the "Friendly Eagle Pattern". The 1972 dollar struck at Philadelphia is broken down into three varieties, which were made as Gasparro adjusted the design to take advantage of better steel being used in the Mint's dies. A midyear change in the design was announced by Brooks at the American Numismatic Association's 1972 convention in New Orleans, although she did not state exactly what was being changed. The three varieties may be differentiated by examining the depiction of the Earth on the reverse. Type I dollars show the Earth somewhat flattened, Florida pointing to the southeast, with the islands mostly to the southeast of the tip of the peninsula. The Earth is round and Florida points to the south on the Type II, with a single, large island to the southeast. The Type III is similar to the Type II, except that there are two islands directly to the south of the peninsula. The Type II is from a single reverse die, used in March 1972, and erroneously placed in service at Philadelphia—it is identical to and should have been used for the silver proof strikes at San Francisco. The Type III was placed in service, replacing the Type I, in September 1972. The Type I is most common; the Type III design was used in 1973 and after. The 1972 Type II is expensive in top grades, as is the 1776–1976 Type I from Philadelphia, which was only available in mint sets.
Some 1971-S proof pieces (and a few uncirculated 1971-S) have the serifs at the foot of the "R" in "LIBERTY" missing; this is dubbed the "peg leg" variety. The serifs are missing on all 1972-S, both uncirculated and proof. After the Mint obtained better steel for dies, the serifs returned for all of the remaining non-Bicentennial coinage, from all mints, though the leg of the R was shortened, and also for the Type II Bicentennial (the Type I lacks serifs on the R). Gasparro was often trying to improve the detail of Eisenhower's head during the coin's tenure, and as the R is the letter closest to it, these changes were most likely made in an effort to improve the flow of metal as the coins were struck.
In 1974 and again in 1977, the Denver Mint struck a small number of pieces on silver-clad planchets, or blanks. Both times, these came from planchets which had been shipped from the San Francisco Assay Office to Denver. The first ones in 1974 were found independently by two Las Vegas blackjack dealers. The 1974 planchets were initially intended to be used for "brown Ike" proof strikings; Mint policy then was that rejected silver proof planchets were to be used for uncirculated "blue Ikes", but these were placed in the bin for rejected copper-nickel proof planchets, intended to be shipped to be coined for circulation at Denver. The 1977 pieces resulted from pieces rejected for Bicentennial silver proof use, which were again placed in the wrong bin (they should have been melted, as the Mint was no longer striking silver uncirculated Eisenhower dollars). Between 10 and 20 of each date are known. Wexler, Crawford, and Flynn report an even rarer 1776–1976-D dollar in silver, but state that none have been offered at auction or submitted to the major coin grading services.
Bowers notes that the Morgan dollar (struck between 1878 and 1921) was not widely collected at the time, only to become very popular later, and suggests that one day, the turn of the Eisenhower dollar will come. Numismatist Charles Morgan said of the Eisenhower dollar in 2012,
> It stands today as the greatest achievement in clad coinage in U.S. history. It was the most technically challenging coin ever attempted ... Researching the Eisenhower Dollar is vital for numismatic historians who want to understand what the post-silver era was like. The Eisenhower Dollar was a noble failure. In this respect, it truly is a perfect collectible coin.
## Mintage figures
Circulation strikes:
- 1971 47,799,000
- 1971-D 68,587,424
- 1972 75,890,000
- 1972-D 92,548,511
- 1973 1,769,258
- 1973-D 1,769,258
- 1974 27,366,000
- 1974-D 45,517,000
(No dollars dated 1975)
- 1776–1976 Type I 4,019,000
- 1776–1976-D Type I 21,048,710
- 1776–1976 Type II 113,318,000
- 1776–1976-D Type II 82,179,564
- 1977 12,596,000
- 1977-D 32,983,006
- 1978 25,702,000
- 1978-D 33,102,890
Uncirculated silver:
- 1971-S 6,868,530 ("blue Ike")
- 1972-S 2,193,056 ("blue Ike")
- 1973-S 1,883,140 ("blue Ike")
- 1974-S 1,900,156 ("blue Ike")
- 1776–1976-S 4,908,319 (3-coin Bicentennial set)
Proof:
- 1971-S silver 4,265,234 ("brown Ike")
- 1972-S silver 1,811,631 ("brown Ike")
- 1973-S clad 2,760,339 (Regular annual set)
- 1973-S silver 1,013,646 ("brown Ike")
- 1974-S clad 2,612,568 (Regular annual set)
- 1974-S silver 1,306,579 ("brown Ike")
- 1776–1976-S clad Type I 2,845,450 (1975 regular annual set)
- 1776–1976-S clad Type II 4,149,730 (1976 regular annual set)
- 1976-S silver 3,998,621 (3-coin Bicentennial set)
- 1977-S 3,251,152 (Regular annual set)
- 1978-S 3,127,781 (Regular annual set)
## See also
- Apollo 11 in popular culture
|
1,461,470 |
Great Lakes Storm of 1913
| 1,170,510,004 |
Winter storm in 1913 in North America
|
[
"1913 disasters in Canada",
"1913 in Michigan",
"1913 in Ohio",
"1913 in Ontario",
"1913 meteorology",
"1913 natural disasters",
"1913 natural disasters in the United States",
"Blizzards in Canada",
"Blizzards in the United States",
"Great Lakes",
"History of Cleveland",
"Lake Huron",
"Natural disasters in Ontario",
"November 1913 events",
"Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes"
] |
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 (historically referred to as the "Big Blow", the "Freshwater Fury", and the "White Hurricane") was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that devastated the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and Southwestern Ontario, Canada, from November 7 to 10, 1913. The storm was most powerful on November 9, battering and overturning ships on four of the five Great Lakes, particularly Lake Huron.
The storm was the deadliest and most destructive natural disaster to hit the lakes in recorded history. More than 250 people were killed. Shipping was hard hit; 19 ships were destroyed, and 19 others were stranded. About \$1 million of cargo weighing about 68,300 tons—including coal, iron ore, and grain—was lost. The storm impacted many cities, including Duluth, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; and Cleveland, Ohio, which received 22 in (56 cm) of snow combined with winds up to 79 mph (127 km/h) and was paralyzed for days. The extratropical cyclone originated when two major storm fronts that were fueled by the lakes' relatively warm waters—a seasonal process called a "November gale"—converged. It produced wind gusts of 90 mph (140 km/h), waves estimated at over 35 feet (11 m) high, and whiteout snowsqualls. Winds exceeding hurricane force occurred over four of the Great Lakes for extended periods creating very large waves. The large size of the Great Lakes provides wind fetches (the length of water over which a given wind has blown without obstruction) of hundreds of miles, allowing huge waves to form. Rogue waves are known to occur on the Great Lakes, including waves reinforced by reflections from the vertical shores of some of the Great Lakes.
The U.S. Weather Bureau failed to predict the intensity of the storm, and the process of preparing and communicating predictions was slow. These factors contributed to the storm's destructiveness. The contemporaneous weather forecasters did not have enough data, communications, analysis capability, and understanding of atmospheric dynamics to predict the storm. They could not predict wind directions, which is key to the ability of ships to avoid or cope with the effects of storms.
## Background
The water in the five Great Lakes holds heat that allows them to remain relatively warm late into the year and postpones the cooling and first frosts in the region. During the autumn, two major weather tracks converge over the area. Cold, dry air moves south and southeast from Alberta and northern Canada as an Alberta clipper while warm, moist air moves north and northeast from the Gulf of Mexico along the lee of the central Rocky Mountains as a Colorado low. The collision of these air masses forms large storm systems in the middle of the North American continent, including the Great Lakes. When the cold air from these storms moves over the lakes, it is warmed by the waters below and picks up a spin. As the cyclonic system continues over the lakes, its power is intensified by the jet stream above and the warm waters below.
The resulting storm, which is commonly called a "November gale" or "November witch", can maintain hurricane-force wind gusts, produce waves over 50 feet (15 m) high, and dump significant falls of rain or snow. Fueled by the warm lake water, these powerful storms may remain over the Great Lakes for days. November gales have caused several large storms over the Great Lakes, with at least 25 killer storms affecting the region since 1847. During the Mataafa Storm in 1905, 27 wooden vessels were lost. During a November gale in 1975, the giant bulk carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank suddenly without sending a distress signal and with all crew still on board. The large size of the Great Lakes provides fetches of hundreds of miles allowing huge waves to be developed. Their large unobstructed spaces result in wind speeds higher than nearby inland areas. Rogue waves (including a phenomenon named the "Three Sisters") are known to occur on the Great Lakes, including waves reinforced by reflections from the vertical shores of some of the lakes. Waves on the Great Lakes (especially the shallower ones) can be steeper and closer together than on the ocean allowing less recovery time between waves. Compared to the ocean, the Great Lakes also have less maneuvering "sea room" and closer proximity to shores making it more difficult for ships to weather storms.
## Prelude
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 was first noticed on Thursday, November 6 on the western side of Lake Superior, moving rapidly toward northern Lake Michigan. The weather forecast in The Detroit News predicted "moderate to brisk" winds at the Great Lakes with occasional rain on Thursday night or Friday for the upper lakes (except southern Lake Huron) and fair-to-unsettled conditions for the lower lakes. Around midnight on November 6–7, the steamer Cornell, which was 50 miles (80 km) west of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior, ran into a sudden northerly gale and was severely damaged. This gale lasted until late November 10 and almost forced Cornell ashore.
## Storm
At the time, the U.S. Weather Bureau did not have enough data, communications, analysis capability, and understanding of atmospheric dynamics to predict or understand the storm. They also were unable to predict wind directions to allow ships to avoid or cope with the effects of the storm. More modern studies of the available information and data from the storm provide better descriptions of its weather mechanisms, and treat it as two storms.
By November 7 a string of low pressure centers in Canada had consolidated into a low pressure center southwest of Lake Superior which became "Storm \#1". At the same time warm air pushed into the central Great Lakes from the south. By November 8 this storm was moving east through northern Lake Huron while strong northerly winds developed behind it over Lake Superior. By November 9 Storm \#2 had formed over the Carolinas and Virginia. The northern portion of this storm began sweeping warm moist Atlantic air over colder air in the Ohio area producing heavy snows. The northwest portion of this extremely powerful storm began creating strong winds from the north along the long axis of Lake Huron, building large waves. By November 10, 24 hours of such building had created immense waves which ships were subjected to along with the high winds, as the center of the storm crossed north/northwest over Lake Erie near Toronto. Surface pressures went as low as 968.5 millibars, the lowest of the 1913 storm.
Winds exceeding hurricane force occurred over four of the Great Lakes for extended periods. Wave heights observed during the storm were estimated by observation rather than measurement; observations of regular waves exceeding 35 ft (11 m) were corroborated by modern day simulations which estimate these at 38 ft (12 m). Interaction between waves (such as those reflected from vertical shorelines) can nearly double wave heights; observations of such waves during the storm estimated some as high as 50 ft (15 m), including the one that crushed the bridge of the L. C. Waldo.
### November 7
On Friday, the weather forecast in the Port Huron Times-Herald of Port Huron, Michigan, described the storm as "moderately severe". The forecast predicted increased winds and falling temperatures over the next 24 hours. At 10:00 a.m., Coast Guard stations and all 112 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Weather Bureau signal stations on the Great Lakes received a directive to hoist a square, red, signal flag with a black center and a red, triangular, maritime pennant below it, indicating a storm with winds of 55 mph (89 km/h) that would blow from the southwest. After dark, a red lantern over a white one was displayed to warn of storm winds from the west. The winds on Lake Superior had already reached 60 mph (97 km/h) with gusts to 80 mph (130 km/h) and an accompanying blizzard was moving toward Lake Huron. Sustained wind speeds reached 62 mph (100 km/h) and gusts to 68 mph (109 km/h) at Duluth.
### November 8
By Saturday, the storm's status had been upgraded to "severe". At 10:00 a.m., Coast Guard stations and USDA Weather Bureau offices at Lake Superior ports raised white pennants above square red flags with black centers, indicating a storm warning with northwesterly winds. The storm was centered over eastern Lake Superior, covering the entire lake basin. The weather forecast of the Port Huron Times-Herald stated southerly winds had remained "moderate to brisk". Northwesterly winds had reached gale strength on northern Lake Michigan and western Lake Superior. Gale wind flags were raised at more than a hundred ports but many captains continued their journeys. Long ships traveled through the St. Marys River all that day, through the Straits of Mackinac all night, and up the Detroit and St. Clair rivers early the following morning.
The 472 foot steel bulk freighter L. C. Waldo, on Lake Superior, 18 hours out of Two Harbors was overrun by monster waves out of the northwest. Approximately 45 miles northeast of the Keweenaw Peninsula an estimated 50' rogue wave smashed the pilothouse, bent the steel floor of the compass room, swept the wheelsman out of the wheelhouse and tore three of the walls from the "texas", the level of the deck house below the pilothouse. The captain ordered that the ship be turned around to try to reach shelter behind the Keweenaw. As recounted by second mate Feeger "The wind sent on gigantic wave after another over parts of the ship...The snow was so blinding that none of us could see 50 feet ahead". Then the rudder failed; helpless without it, 70 MPH winds drove the ship aground on Gull Rock near Manitou Island. With the bow wedged in the rocks, the hull shredded and a crack forming in the deck, the captain ordered everyone to the bow and that the ship be flooded to prevent the ship from being washed back into the depths of the lake. The steward's wife and her mother were reluctant to leave the stern and the crew struggled to carry them over hundreds of feet of open deck in the 70 MPH blizzard, including traversing a now-widening crack in the deck. During the process the chief engineer and two stokers ran the ship at full power to try to wedge the bow further onto the shore. Then they abandoned the stern and took shelter with the others in the unheated windlass room.
### November 9
By noon on Sunday, weather conditions on lower Lake Huron were close to normal for a November gale. Barometric pressures in some areas began to rise, bringing hopes of an end to the storm. The low pressure area that had moved across Lake Superior was moving northeast, away from the lakes. The U.S. Weather Bureau issued the first of its twice-daily reports at approximately 8:00 a.m.; it did not send another report to Washington, D.C. until 8:00 p.m. This proved to be a serious problem; the storm would have most of the day to build up hurricane-force winds before the Bureau headquarters in Washington, D.C., would have detailed information.
Along southeastern Lake Erie near Erie, Pennsylvania, a southern low-pressure area was moving toward the lake. This low had formed overnight so was absent from Friday's weather map. It had been moving northward but turned northwestward after passing over Washington, D.C. The low's intense, counterclockwise rotation was made apparent by the changing wind directions around its center. In Buffalo, New York, morning northwest winds had shifted to the northeast by noon and to the southeast by 5:00 p.m., with gusts of up to 80 mph (130 km/h) occurring between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. In Cleveland, 180 miles (290 km) to the southwest, winds remained northwest during the day, shifting to the west by 5:00 p.m., and maintaining speeds of more than 50 mph (80 km/h). The fastest gust in Cleveland, 79 mph (127 km/h), occurred at 4:40 p.m. At Buffalo, barometric pressure dropped from 29.52 inHg (999.7 hPa) at 8:00 a.m. to 28.77 inHg (974.3 hPa) at 8:00 p.m.
The rotating low continued northward into the evening, bringing its counterclockwise winds in phase with the northwesterly winds already hitting Lakes Superior and Huron. This resulted in a dramatic increase in northerly wind speeds and swirling snow. Ships on Lake Huron that were south of Alpena, Michigan—especially around Harbor Beach and Port Huron in Michigan, and Goderich and Sarnia in Ontario—experienced massive waves moving southward toward St. Clair River. Some ships sought shelter along the Michigan shore or between Goderich and Point Edward. Three of the larger ships were found upside down, indicating extremely high winds and tall waves. From 8:00 p.m. to midnight, the storm became a "weather bomb" with sustained hurricane-speed winds of more than 70 mph (110 km/h) on the four western lakes. The worst damage was done on Lake Huron as ships sought shelter along its southern end. Gusts of 90 mph (140 km/h) were reported off Harbor Beach, Michigan. The lake's shape allowed northerly winds to increase unimpeded because water has less surface friction than land and because the wind followed the lake's length.
Weather forecasters of the time did not have enough data or understanding of atmospheric dynamics to predict or comprehend the events of Sunday November 9. Frontal mechanisms, which were then referred to as "squall lines", were not yet understood. Surface observations were only collected twice daily at stations around the country; by the time these data were collected and maps were hand-drawn, the information was no longer representative of the actual weather conditions.
### November 10 and 11
The storm had moved northeast of London, Ontario on the morning of Monday November 10, with lake effect blizzards behind it. An additional 17 inches (43 cm) of snow fell on Cleveland that day, filling the streets with snowdrifts 6 feet (1.8 m) high. Streetcar operators stayed with their stranded, powerless vehicles for two nights, eating food provided by local residents. Travelers were forced to take shelter and wait for the storm to pass.
By Tuesday, the storm was rapidly moving across eastern Canada. Without the warm lake waters, it quickly lost strength. the system carried less snowfall because of its speed and the lack of lake effect snow. All shipping along the St. Lawrence River around Montreal, Quebec, was halted on Monday and part of Tuesday.
## Aftermath
The storm was the deadliest, most destructive natural disaster in recorded history to hit the lakes. The Great Lakes Storm killed more than 250 people, destroyed 19 ships and stranded 19 others. About \$1 million of cargo—including coal, iron ore, and grain—weighing about 68,300 tons was lost.
### Surrounding shoreline
Along the shoreline, blizzards stopped traffic and communication, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Cleveland received 22 inches (56 cm) of heavy snow combined with sustained winds of 62 mph (100 km/h) with gusts to 79 mph (127 km/h) and ice formation. There were four-foot (120 cm) snowdrifts around Lake Huron. Electricity supply was disrupted for several days across Michigan and Ontario, cutting off telephone and telegraph communications. A recently completed US\$100,000 breakwater at Chicago, which was intended to protect the Lincoln Park basin from storms, was swept away in a few hours. The Milwaukee, Wisconsin, harbor lost its south breakwater and much of the surrounding South Park area that had been recently renovated.
After the final blizzards hit Cleveland, the city was paralyzed under feet of ice and snow, and was without power for days. Telephone poles were broken and power cables lay in tangled masses. Nearly all rail traffic was halted for days. The November 11 Plain Dealer described the aftermath: "Cleveland lay in white and mighty solitude, mute and deaf to the outside world, a city of lonesome snowiness, storm-swept from end to end, when the violence of the two-day blizzard lessened late yesterday afternoon." William H. Alexander, Cleveland's chief weather forecaster, commented:
> Take it all in all—the depth of the snowfall, the tremendous wind, the amount of damage done and the total unpreparedness of the people—I think it is safe to say that the present storm is the worst experienced in Cleveland during the whole forty-three years the U.S. Weather Bureau has been established in the city.
There was a small death toll in Cleveland considering the severity of the storm. Sources describe one freezing death, plus some deaths from accidents. One death and one near death were from downed power lines. Immediately following the blizzard in Cleveland, the city began a campaign to move all utility cables underground in tubes beneath major streets. The project took five years.
### On the lakes
The greatest damage was done on the lakes. Major shipwrecks occurred on all but Lake Ontario, with most happening on southern and southwestern Lake Huron. Captains said waves reached at least 35 ft (11 m) in height. These waves were shorter in length than waves usually formed by gales and occurred in rapid succession. Rocky shores prevalent on the Great Lakes reflect rather than absorb waves. Reflected waves can combine with incoming waves to create rogue waves of up to 50 ft (15 m).
In the late afternoon of November 10, an unknown vessel was spotted floating upside-down in about 60 feet (18 m) of water on the eastern coast of Michigan within sight of Huronia Beach and the mouth of the St. Clair River. Determining the identity of this "mystery ship" became a national interest, resulting in daily front-page newspaper articles. The ship eventually sank and was identified on November 15 as Charles S. Price. The front page of that day's Port Huron Times-Herald extra edition read: "BOAT IS PRICE —DIVER IS BAKER — SECRET KNOWN". Milton Smith, an assistant engineer who decided at the last moment not to join his crew on premonition of disaster, helped identify bodies from the wreck. Among the debris cast up by the storm was the wreckage of the fish tug Searchlight, which was lost in April 1907.
The final tally of financial loss included US\$2,332,000 for totally lost vessels, \$830,900 for vessels that became constructive total losses, \$620,000 for vessels stranded but returned to service, and approximately \$1,000,000 in lost cargoes. This figure excludes financial losses in coastal cities.
While the storm was the main cause of damage on the lakes, human factors, including measures that could have reduced the storm's effects but were not taken, also contributed. Post-storm conversations mostly focused on placing blame but served to highlight weaknesses. The U.S. Weather Bureau did not have the ability to predict the storm but hesitated to admit its limitations because it wanted to secure higher budgets. Instead, it focused on the terminology and nature of warnings. Another factor was the underpowering of large ships that affected their ability to travel, maneuver, and hold steady in severe storms. Even with both anchors dropped and steaming full power into the wind, several were unable to avoid being carried backward. For example, the 504-foot-long (154 m) Charles S. Price had a single 1,760 horsepower engine. Three years after the storm, the same shipyard built a 587-foot-long (179 m) freighter with only 1,800 horsepower.
The geometry of the lakes and locks combined with operational economics dictated the use of slimmer, shallower ships than comparable ocean-going vessels, reducing stability and structural strength. The "straight deck" ship design was becoming prevalent, requiring more and larger hatch covers, which increased vulnerability to storms. Insufficient strength of the large hatches and their fastenings was also noted, as well as the shortness of the 12 in (30 cm) hatch coamings. The limited compartmentalization of cargo holds meant the flooding of one compartment was sufficient to sink the ship. The practice of not "trimming" or leveling the pyramid-shape piles of bulk solid cargo made them more prone to shifting and causing a capsize. Many raised concern about the practice of shipping companies incentivizing or pressuring captains to sail during the dangerous November season and during dangerous weather. These concerns continued and were echoed 62 years later after the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Few of these factors were acted upon. One change was that the weather service clarified their previous ambiguity and said that they would post a higher-than-gale level warning for the most severe predicted storms.
## Ships foundered
The ships that sank during the storm with their entire crew killed are ordered in the table below by the number of victims. The table does not include the three victims from the freighter William Nottingham, who volunteered to leave the ship on a lifeboat in search of assistance. Most of the bodies were recovered on the Canadian shores of southern Lake Huron. The lost ships included some of the newest and largest ships on the Great Lakes.
## See also
- October 2010 North American storm complex
- List of storms on the Great Lakes
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Andrew Johnson
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17th President of the United States
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Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, as he was vice president at that time. Johnson was a Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket, coming to office as the Civil War concluded. He favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union without protection for the newly freed people who were formerly enslaved. This led to conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1868. He was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.
Johnson was born into poverty and never attended school. He was apprenticed as a tailor and worked in several frontier towns before settling in Greeneville, Tennessee. He served as alderman and mayor there before being elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835. After briefly serving in the Tennessee Senate, Johnson was elected to the House of Representatives in 1843, where he served five two-year terms. He became governor of Tennessee for four years, and was elected by the legislature to the Senate in 1857. During his congressional service, he sought passage of the Homestead Bill which was enacted soon after he left his Senate seat in 1862. Southern slave states seceded to form the Confederate States of America, including Tennessee, but Johnson remained firmly with the Union. He was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who did not resign his seat upon learning of his state's secession. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him as Military Governor of Tennessee after most of it had been retaken. In 1864, Johnson was a logical choice as running mate for Lincoln, who wished to send a message of national unity in his re-election campaign, and became vice president after a victorious election in 1864.
Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction, a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to reform their civil governments. Southern states returned many of their old leaders and passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties, but Congressional Republicans refused to seat legislators from those states and advanced legislation to overrule the Southern actions. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Congressional Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency. Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment which gave citizenship to former slaves. In 1866, he went on an unprecedented national tour promoting his executive policies, seeking to break Republican opposition. As the conflict grew between the branches of government, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act restricting Johnson's ability to fire Cabinet officials. He persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, but ended up being impeached by the House of Representatives and narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate. He did not win the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination and left office the following year.
Johnson returned to Tennessee after his presidency and gained some vindication when he was elected to the Senate in 1875, making him the only president to afterwards serve in the Senate. He died five months into his term. Johnson's strong opposition to federally guaranteed rights for black Americans is widely criticized. Historians have consistently ranked him one of the worst presidents in American history.
## Early life and career
### Childhood
Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808, to Jacob Johnson (1778–1812) and Mary ("Polly") McDonough (1783–1856), a laundress. He was of English, Scots-Irish, and Irish ancestry. He had a brother William, four years his senior, and an older sister Elizabeth, who died in childhood. Johnson's birth in a two-room shack was a political asset in the mid-19th century, and he would frequently remind voters of his humble origins. Jacob Johnson was a poor man, as had been his father, William Johnson, but he became town constable of Raleigh before marrying and starting a family. Jacob Johnson had been a porter for the State Bank of North Carolina, appointed by William Polk, a relative of President James K. Polk. Both Jacob and Mary were illiterate, and had worked as tavern servants, while Johnson never attended school and grew up in poverty. Jacob died of an apparent heart attack while ringing the town bell, shortly after rescuing three drowning men, when his son Andrew was three. Polly Johnson worked as a washerwoman and became the sole support of her family. Her occupation was then looked down on, as it often took her into other homes unaccompanied. Since Andrew did not resemble either of his siblings, there are rumors that he may have been fathered by another man. Polly Johnson eventually remarried to a man named Turner Doughtry, who was as poor as she was.
Johnson's mother apprenticed her son William to a tailor, James Selby. Andrew also became an apprentice in Selby's shop at age ten and was legally bound to serve until his 21st birthday. Johnson lived with his mother for part of his service, and one of Selby's employees taught him rudimentary literacy skills. His education was augmented by citizens who would come to Selby's shop to read to the tailors as they worked. Even before he became an apprentice, Johnson came to listen. The readings caused a lifelong love of learning, and one of his biographers, Annette Gordon-Reed, suggests that Johnson, later a gifted public speaker, learned the art as he threaded needles and cut cloth.
Johnson was not happy at James Selby's, and after about five years, both he and his brother ran away. Selby responded by placing a reward for their return: "Ten Dollars Reward. Ran away from the subscriber, two apprentice boys, legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson ... [payment] to any person who will deliver said apprentices to me in Raleigh, or I will give the above reward for Andrew Johnson alone." The brothers went to Carthage, North Carolina, where Andrew Johnson worked as a tailor for several months. Fearing he would be arrested and returned to Raleigh, Johnson moved to Laurens, South Carolina. He found work quickly, met his first love, Mary Wood, and made her a quilt as a gift. However, she rejected his marriage proposal. He returned to Raleigh, hoping to buy out his apprenticeship, but could not come to terms with Selby. Unable to stay in Raleigh, where he risked being apprehended for abandoning Selby, he decided to move west.
### Move to Tennessee
Johnson left North Carolina for Tennessee, traveling mostly on foot. After a brief period in Knoxville, he moved to Mooresville, Alabama. He then worked as a tailor in Columbia, Tennessee, but was called back to Raleigh by his mother and stepfather, who saw limited opportunities there and who wished to emigrate west. Johnson and his party traveled through the Blue Ridge Mountains to Greeneville, Tennessee. Andrew Johnson fell in love with the town at first sight, and when he became prosperous purchased the land where he had first camped and planted a tree in commemoration.
In Greeneville, Johnson established a successful tailoring business in the front of his home. In 1827, at the age of 18, he married 16-year-old Eliza McCardle, the daughter of a local shoemaker. The pair were married by Justice of the Peace Mordecai Lincoln, first cousin of Thomas Lincoln, whose son would become president. The Johnsons were married for almost 50 years and had five children: Martha (1828), Charles (1830), Mary (1832), Robert (1834), and Andrew Jr. (1852). Though she had tuberculosis, Eliza supported her husband's endeavors. She taught him mathematics skills and tutored him to improve his writing. Shy and retiring by nature, Eliza Johnson usually remained in Greeneville during Johnson's political rise. She was not often seen during her husband's presidency; their daughter Martha usually served as official hostess.
Johnson's tailoring business prospered during the early years of the marriage, enabling him to hire help and giving him the funds to invest profitably in real estate. He later boasted of his talents as a tailor, "my work never ripped or gave way". He was a voracious reader. Books about famous orators aroused his interest in political dialogue, and he had private debates on the issues of the day with customers who held opposing views. He also took part in debates at Greeneville College.
### Johnson's slaves
In 1843, Johnson purchased his first slave, Dolly, who was 14 years old at the time. Dolly had three children—Liz, Florence and William. Soon after his purchase of Dolly, he purchased Dolly's half-brother Sam. Sam Johnson and his wife Margaret had nine children. Sam became a commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau and was known for being a proud man who negotiated the nature of his work with the Johnson family. Notably, he received some monetary compensation for his labors and negotiated with Andrew Johnson to receive a tract of land which Andrew Johnson gave him for free in 1867.
In 1857, Andrew Johnson purchased Henry, who was 13 at the time and would later accompany the Johnson family to the White House. Ultimately, Johnson owned at least ten slaves.
Andrew Johnson freed his slaves on August 8, 1863; they remained with him as paid servants. A year later, Johnson, as military governor of Tennessee, proclaimed the freedom of Tennessee's slaves. Sam and Margaret, Johnson's former slaves, lived in his tailor shop while he was president, without rent. As a sign of appreciation for proclaiming freedom, Andrew Johnson was given a watch by newly emancipated people in Tennessee inscribed with "for his Untiring Energy in the Cause of Freedom".
## Political rise
### Tennessee politician
Johnson helped organize a mechanics' (working men's) ticket in the 1829 Greeneville municipal election. He was elected town alderman, along with his friends Blackston McDannel and Mordecai Lincoln. Following the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion, a state convention was called to pass a new constitution, including provisions to disenfranchise free people of color. The convention also wanted to reform real estate tax rates, and provide ways of funding improvements to Tennessee's infrastructure. The constitution was submitted for a public vote, and Johnson spoke widely for its adoption; the successful campaign provided him with statewide exposure. On January 4, 1834, his fellow aldermen elected him mayor of Greeneville.
In 1835, Johnson made a bid for election to the "floater" seat which Greene County shared with neighboring Washington County in the Tennessee House of Representatives. According to his biographer, Hans L. Trefousse, Johnson "demolished" the opposition in debate and won the election with almost a two to one margin. During his Greeneville days, Johnson joined the Tennessee Militia as a member of the 90th Regiment. He attained the rank of colonel, though while an enrolled member, Johnson was fined for an unknown offense. Afterwards, he was often addressed or referred to by his rank.
In his first term in the legislature, which met in the state capital of Nashville, Johnson did not consistently vote with either the Democratic or the newly formed Whig Party, though he revered President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat and fellow Tennessean. The major parties were still determining their core values and policy proposals, with the party system in a state of flux. The Whig Party had organized in opposition to Jackson, fearing the concentration of power in the Executive Branch of the government; Johnson differed from the Whigs as he opposed more than minimal government spending and spoke against aid for the railroads, while his constituents hoped for improvements in transportation. After Brookins Campbell and the Whigs defeated Johnson for reelection in 1837, Johnson would not lose another race for thirty years. In 1839, he sought to regain his seat, initially as a Whig, but when another candidate sought the Whig nomination, he ran as a Democrat and was elected. From that time he supported the Democratic party and built a powerful political machine in Greene County. Johnson became a strong advocate of the Democratic Party, noted for his oratory, and in an era when public speaking both informed the public and entertained it, people flocked to hear him.
In 1840, Johnson was selected as a presidential elector for Tennessee, giving him more statewide publicity. Although Democratic President Martin Van Buren was defeated by former Ohio senator William Henry Harrison, Johnson was instrumental in keeping Greene County in the Democratic column. He was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1841, where he served a two-year term. He had achieved financial success in his tailoring business, but sold it to concentrate on politics. He had also acquired additional real estate, including a larger home and a farm (where his mother and stepfather took residence), and among his assets numbered eight or nine slaves.
### United States Representative (1843–1853)
Having served in both houses of the state legislature, Johnson saw election to Congress as the next step in his political career. He engaged in a number of political maneuvers to gain Democratic support, including the displacement of the Whig postmaster in Greeneville, and defeated Jonesborough lawyer John A. Aiken by 5,495 votes to 4,892. In Washington, he joined a new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Johnson advocated for the interests of the poor, maintained an anti-abolitionist stance, argued for only limited spending by the government and opposed protective tariffs. With Eliza remaining in Greeneville, Congressman Johnson shunned social functions in favor of study in the Library of Congress. Although a fellow Tennessee Democrat, James K. Polk, was elected president in 1844, and Johnson had campaigned for him, the two men had difficult relations, and President Polk refused some of his patronage suggestions.
Johnson believed, as did many Southern Democrats, that the Constitution protected private property, including slaves, and thus prohibited the federal and state governments from abolishing slavery. He won a second term in 1845 against William G. Brownlow, presenting himself as the defender of the poor against the aristocracy. In his second term, Johnson supported the Polk administration's decision to fight the Mexican War, seen by some Northerners as an attempt to gain territory to expand slavery westward, and opposed the Wilmot Proviso, a proposal to ban slavery in any territory gained from Mexico. He introduced for the first time his Homestead Bill, to grant 160 acres (65 ha) to people willing to settle the land and gain title to it. This issue was especially important to Johnson because of his own humble beginnings.
In the presidential election of 1848, the Democrats split over the slavery issue, and abolitionists formed the Free Soil Party, with former president Van Buren as their nominee. Johnson supported the Democratic candidate, former Michigan senator Lewis Cass. With the party split, Whig nominee General Zachary Taylor was easily victorious, and carried Tennessee. Johnson's relations with Polk remained poor; the President recorded of his final New Year's reception in 1849 that
> Among the visitors I observed in the crowd today was Hon. Andrew Johnson of the Ho. Repts. [House of Representatives] Though he represents a Democratic District in Tennessee (my own State) this is the first time I have seen him during the present session of Congress. Professing to be a Democrat, he has been politically, if not personally hostile to me during my whole term. He is very vindictive and perverse in his temper and conduct. If he had the manliness and independence to declare his opposition openly, he knows he could not be elected by his constituents. I am not aware that I have ever given him cause for offense.
Johnson, due to national interest in new railroad construction and in response to the need for better transportation in his own district, also supported government assistance for the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad.
During his campaign for a fourth term, Johnson concentrated on three issues: slavery, homesteads and judicial elections. He defeated his opponent, Nathaniel G. Taylor, in August 1849, with a greater margin of victory than in previous campaigns. When the House convened in December, the party division caused by the Free Soil Party precluded the formation of the majority needed to elect a Speaker. Johnson proposed adoption of a rule allowing election of a Speaker by a plurality; some weeks later others took up a similar proposal, and Democrat Howell Cobb was elected.
Once the Speaker election had concluded and Congress was ready to conduct legislative business, the issue of slavery took center stage. Northerners sought to admit California, a free state, to the Union. Kentucky's Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a series of resolutions, the Compromise of 1850, to admit California and pass legislation sought by each side. Johnson voted for all the provisions except for the abolition of slavery in the nation's capital. He pressed resolutions for constitutional amendments to provide for popular election of senators (then elected by state legislatures) and of the president (chosen by the Electoral College), and limiting the tenure of federal judges to 12 years. These were all defeated.
A group of Democrats nominated Landon Carter Haynes to oppose Johnson as he sought a fifth term; the Whigs were so pleased with the internecine battle among the Democrats in the general election that they did not nominate a candidate of their own. The campaign included fierce debates: Johnson's main issue was the passage of the Homestead Bill; Haynes contended it would facilitate abolition. Johnson won the election by more than 1600 votes. Though he was not enamored of the party's presidential nominee in 1852, former New Hampshire senator Franklin Pierce, Johnson campaigned for him. Pierce was elected, but he failed to carry Tennessee. In 1852, Johnson managed to get the House to pass his Homestead Bill, but it failed in the Senate. The Whigs had gained control of the Tennessee legislature, and, under the leadership of Gustavus Henry, redrew the boundaries of Johnson's First District to make it a safe seat for their party. The Nashville Union termed this "Henry-mandering"; lamented Johnson, "I have no political future."
### Governor of Tennessee (1853–1857)
If Johnson considered retiring from politics upon deciding not to seek reelection, he soon changed his mind. His political friends began to maneuver to get him the nomination for governor. The Democratic convention unanimously named him, though some party members were not happy at his selection. The Whigs had won the past two gubernatorial elections, and still controlled the legislature. That party nominated Henry, making the "Henry-mandering" of the First District an immediate issue. The two men debated in county seats the length of Tennessee before the meetings were called off two weeks before the August 1853 election due to illness in Henry's family. Johnson won the election by 63,413 votes to 61,163; some votes for him were cast in return for his promise to support Whig Nathaniel Taylor for his old seat in Congress.
Tennessee's governor had little power: Johnson could propose legislation but not veto it, and most appointments were made by the Whig-controlled legislature. Nevertheless, the office was a "bully pulpit" that allowed him to publicize himself and his political views. He succeeded in getting the appointments he wanted in return for his endorsement of John Bell, a Whig, for one of the state's U.S. Senate seats. In his first biennial speech, Johnson urged simplification of the state judicial system, abolition of the Bank of Tennessee, and establishment of an agency to provide uniformity in weights and measures; the last was passed. Johnson was critical of the Tennessee common school system and suggested funding be increased via taxes, either statewide or county by county—a mixture of the two was passed. Reforms carried out during Johnson's time as governor included the foundation of the State's public library (making books available to all) and its first public school system, and the initiation of regular state fairs to benefit craftsmen and farmers.
Although the Whig Party was on its final decline nationally, it remained strong in Tennessee, and the outlook for Democrats there in 1855 was poor. Feeling that reelection as governor was necessary to give him a chance at the higher offices he sought, Johnson agreed to make the run. Meredith P. Gentry received the Whig nomination. A series of more than a dozen vitriolic debates ensued. The issues in the campaign were slavery, the prohibition of alcohol, and the nativist positions of the Know Nothing Party. Johnson favored the first, but opposed the others. Gentry was more equivocal on the alcohol question, and had gained the support of the Know Nothings, a group Johnson portrayed as a secret society. Johnson was unexpectedly victorious, albeit with a narrower margin than in 1853.
When the presidential election of 1856 approached, Johnson hoped to be nominated; some Tennessee county conventions designated him a "favorite son". His position that the best interests of the Union were served by slavery in some areas made him a practical compromise candidate for president. He was never a major contender; the nomination fell to former Pennsylvania senator James Buchanan. Though he was not impressed by either, Johnson campaigned for Buchanan and his running mate, John C. Breckinridge, who were elected.
Johnson decided not to seek a third term as governor, with an eye towards election to the U.S. Senate. In 1857, while returning from Washington, his train derailed, causing serious damage to his right arm. This injury would trouble him in the years to come.
### United States Senator
#### Homestead Bill advocate
The victors in the 1857 state legislative campaign would, once they convened in October, elect a United States Senator. Former Whig governor William B. Campbell wrote to his uncle, "The great anxiety of the Whigs is to elect a majority in the legislature so as to defeat Andrew Johnson for senator. Should the Democrats have the majority, he will certainly be their choice, and there is no man living to whom the Americans and Whigs have as much antipathy as Johnson." The governor spoke widely in the campaign, and his party won the gubernatorial race and control of the legislature. Johnson's final address as governor gave him the chance to influence his electors, and he made proposals popular among Democrats. Two days later the legislature elected him to the Senate. The opposition was appalled, with the Richmond Whig newspaper referring to him as "the vilest radical and most unscrupulous demagogue in the Union".
Johnson gained high office due to his proven record as a man popular among the small farmers and self-employed tradesmen who made up much of Tennessee's electorate. He called them the "plebeians"; he was less popular among the planters and lawyers who led the state Democratic Party, but none could match him as a vote-getter. After his death, one Tennessee voter wrote of him, "Johnson was always the same to everyone ... the honors heaped upon him did not make him forget to be kind to the humblest citizen." Always seen in impeccably tailored clothing, he cut an impressive figure, and had the stamina to endure lengthy campaigns with daily travel over bad roads leading to another speech or debate. Mostly denied the party's machinery, he relied on a network of friends, advisers, and contacts. One friend, Hugh Douglas, stated in a letter to him, "you have been in the way of our would be great men for a long time. At heart many of us never wanted you to be Governor only none of the rest of us Could have been elected at the time and we only wanted to use you. Then we did not want you to go to the Senate but the people would send you."
The new senator took his seat when Congress convened in December 1857 (the term of his predecessor, James C. Jones, had expired in March). He came to Washington as usual without his wife and family; Eliza would visit Washington only once during Johnson's first time as senator, in 1860. Johnson immediately set about introducing the Homestead Bill in the Senate, but as most senators who supported it were Northern (many associated with the newly founded Republican Party), the matter became caught up in suspicions over the slavery issue. Southern senators felt that those who took advantage of the provisions of the Homestead Bill were more likely to be Northern non-slaveholders. The issue of slavery had been complicated by the Supreme Court's ruling earlier in the year in Dred Scott v. Sandford that slavery could not be prohibited in the territories. Johnson, a slaveholding senator from a Southern state, made a major speech in the Senate the following May in an attempt to convince his colleagues that the Homestead Bill and slavery were not incompatible. Nevertheless, Southern opposition was key to defeating the legislation, 30–22. In 1859, it failed on a procedural vote when Vice President Breckinridge broke a tie against the bill, and in 1860, a watered-down version passed both houses, only to be vetoed by Buchanan at the urging of Southerners. Johnson continued his opposition to spending, chairing a committee to control it.
He argued against funding to build infrastructure in Washington, D.C., stating that it was unfair to expect state citizens to pay for the city's streets, even if it was the seat of government. He opposed spending money for troops to put down the revolt by the Mormons in Utah Territory, arguing for temporary volunteers as the United States should not have a standing army.
#### Secession crisis
In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown and sympathizers raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (today West Virginia). Tensions in Washington between pro- and anti-slavery forces increased greatly. Johnson gave a major speech in the Senate in December, decrying Northerners who would endanger the Union by seeking to outlaw slavery. The Tennessee senator stated that "all men are created equal" from the Declaration of Independence did not apply to African Americans, since the Constitution of Illinois contained that phrase—and that document barred voting by African Americans. Johnson, by this time, was a wealthy man who owned 14 slaves.
Johnson hoped that he would be a compromise candidate for the presidential nomination as the Democratic Party tore itself apart over the slavery question. Busy with the Homestead Bill during the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, he sent two of his sons and his chief political adviser to represent his interests in the backroom deal-making. The convention deadlocked, with no candidate able to gain the required two-thirds vote, but the sides were too far apart to consider Johnson as a compromise. The party split, with Northerners backing Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas while Southerners, including Johnson, supported Vice President Breckinridge for president. With former Tennessee senator John Bell running a fourth-party candidacy and further dividing the vote, the Republican Party elected its first president, former Illinois representative Abraham Lincoln. The election of Lincoln, known to be against the spread of slavery, was unacceptable to many in the South. Although secession from the Union had not been an issue in the campaign, talk of it began in the Southern states.
Johnson took to the Senate floor after the election, giving a speech well received in the North, "I will not give up this government ... No; I intend to stand by it ... and I invite every man who is a patriot to ... rally around the altar of our common country ... and swear by our God, and all that is sacred and holy, that the Constitution shall be saved, and the Union preserved." As Southern senators announced they would resign if their states seceded, he reminded Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis that if Southerners would only hold to their seats, the Democrats would control the Senate, and could defend the South's interests against any infringement by Lincoln. Gordon-Reed points out that while Johnson's belief in an indissoluble Union was sincere, he had alienated Southern leaders, including Davis, who would soon be the president of the Confederate States of America, formed by the seceding states. If the Tennessean had backed the Confederacy, he would have had small influence in its government.
Johnson returned home when his state took up the issue of secession. His successor as governor, Isham G. Harris, and the legislature organized a referendum on whether to have a constitutional convention to authorize secession; when that failed, they put the question of leaving the Union to a popular vote. Despite threats on Johnson's life, and actual assaults, he campaigned against both questions, sometimes speaking with a gun on the lectern before him. Although Johnson's eastern region of Tennessee was largely against secession, the second referendum passed, and in June 1861, Tennessee joined the Confederacy. Believing he would be killed if he stayed, Johnson fled through the Cumberland Gap, where his party was in fact shot at. He left his wife and family in Greeneville.
As the only member from a seceded state to remain in the Senate and the most prominent Southern Unionist, Johnson had Lincoln's ear in the early months of the war. With most of Tennessee in Confederate hands, Johnson spent congressional recesses in Kentucky and Ohio, trying in vain to convince any Union commander who would listen to conduct an operation into East Tennessee.
### Military Governor of Tennessee
Johnson's first tenure in the Senate came to a conclusion in March 1862 when Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee. Much of the central and western portions of that seceded state had been recovered. Although some argued that civil government should simply resume once the Confederates were defeated in an area, Lincoln chose to use his power as commander in chief to appoint military governors over Union-controlled Southern regions. The Senate quickly confirmed Johnson's nomination along with the rank of brigadier general. In response, the Confederates confiscated his land and his slaves, and turned his home into a military hospital. Later in 1862, after his departure from the Senate and in the absence of most Southern legislators, the Homestead Bill was finally enacted. Along with legislation for land-grant colleges and for the transcontinental railroad, the Homestead Bill has been credited with opening the Western United States to settlement.
As military governor, Johnson sought to eliminate rebel influence in the state. He demanded loyalty oaths from public officials, and shut down all newspapers owned by Confederate sympathizers. Much of eastern Tennessee remained in Confederate hands, and the ebb and flow of war during 1862 sometimes brought Confederate control again close to Nashville. However, the Confederates allowed his wife and family to pass through the lines to join him. Johnson undertook the defense of Nashville as well as he could, though the city was continually harassed by cavalry raids led by General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Relief from Union regulars did not come until General William S. Rosecrans defeated the Confederates at Murfreesboro in early 1863. Much of eastern Tennessee was captured later that year.
When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, declaring freedom for all slaves in Confederate-held areas, he exempted Tennessee at Johnson's request. The proclamation increased the debate over what should become of the slaves after the war, as not all Unionists supported abolition. Johnson finally decided that slavery had to end. He wrote, "If the institution of slavery ... seeks to overthrow it [the Government], then the Government has a clear right to destroy it". He reluctantly supported efforts to enlist former slaves into the Union Army, feeling that African-Americans should perform menial tasks to release white Americans to do the fighting. Nevertheless, he succeeded in recruiting 20,000 black soldiers to serve the Union.
## Vice presidency (1865)
In 1860, Lincoln's running mate had been Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. Although Hamlin had served competently, was in good health, and was willing to run again, Johnson emerged as running mate for Lincoln's reelection bid in 1864.
Lincoln considered several War Democrats for the ticket in 1864, and sent an agent to sound out General Benjamin Butler as a possible running mate. In May 1864, the president dispatched General Daniel Sickles to Nashville on a fact-finding mission. Although Sickles denied that he was there either to investigate or interview the military governor, Johnson biographer Hans L. Trefousse believes that Sickles's trip was connected to Johnson's subsequent nomination for vice president. According to historian Albert Castel in his account of Johnson's presidency, Lincoln was impressed by Johnson's administration of Tennessee. Gordon-Reed points out that while the Lincoln-Hamlin ticket might have been considered geographically balanced in 1860, "having Johnson, the southern War Democrat, on the ticket sent the right message about the folly of secession and the continuing capacity for union within the country." Another factor was the desire of Secretary of State William Seward to frustrate the vice-presidential candidacy of fellow New Yorker and former senator Daniel S. Dickinson, a War Democrat, as Seward would probably have had to yield his place if another New Yorker became vice president. Johnson, once he was told by reporters the likely purpose of Sickles' visit, was active on his own behalf, delivering speeches and having his political friends work behind the scenes to boost his candidacy.
To sound a theme of unity in 1864, Lincoln ran under the banner of the National Union Party, rather than that of the Republicans. At the party's convention in Baltimore in June, Lincoln was easily nominated, although there had been some talk of replacing him with a cabinet officer or one of the more successful generals. After the convention backed Lincoln, former Secretary of War Simon Cameron offered a resolution to nominate Hamlin, but it was defeated. Johnson was nominated for vice president by C.M. Allen of Indiana with an Iowa delegate seconding it. On the first ballot, Johnson led with 200 votes to 150 for Hamlin and 108 for Dickinson. On the second ballot, Kentucky switched its vote for Johnson, beginning a stampede. Johnson was named on the second ballot with 491 votes to Hamlin's 17 and eight for Dickinson; the nomination was made unanimous. Lincoln expressed pleasure at the result, "Andy Johnson, I think, is a good man." When word reached Nashville, a crowd assembled and the military governor obliged with a speech contending his selection as a Southerner meant that the rebel states had not actually left the Union.
Although it was unusual at the time for a national candidate to actively campaign, Johnson gave a number of speeches in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. He also sought to boost his chances in Tennessee while reestablishing civil government by making the loyalty oath even more restrictive, in that voters would now have to swear that they opposed making a settlement with the Confederacy. The Democratic candidate for president, George McClellan, hoped to avoid additional bloodshed by negotiation, and so the stricter loyalty oath effectively disenfranchised his supporters. Lincoln declined to override Johnson, and their ticket took the state by 25,000 votes. Congress refused to count Tennessee's electoral votes, but Lincoln and Johnson did not need them, having won in most states that had voted, and easily secured the election.
Now Vice President-elect, Johnson was eager to complete the work of reestablishing civilian government in Tennessee, although the timetable for the election of a new governor did not allow it to take place until after Inauguration Day, March 4. He hoped to remain in Nashville to complete his task, but was told by Lincoln's advisers that he could not stay, but would be sworn in with Lincoln. In these months, Union troops finished the retaking of eastern Tennessee, including Greeneville. Just before his departure, the voters of Tennessee ratified a new constitution, which abolished slavery, on February 22, 1865. One of Johnson's final acts as military governor was to certify the results.
Johnson traveled to Washington to be sworn into office, although according to Gordon-Reed, "in light of what happened on March 4, 1865, it might have been better if Johnson had stayed in Nashville." Johnson may have been ill; Castel cited typhoid fever, though Gordon-Reed notes that there is no independent evidence for that diagnosis. On the evening of March 3, Johnson attended a party in his honor at which he drank heavily. Hung over the following morning at the Capitol, he asked Vice President Hamlin for some whiskey. Hamlin produced a bottle, and Johnson took two stiff drinks, stating "I need all the strength for the occasion I can have." In the Senate Chamber, Johnson delivered a rambling address as Lincoln, the Congress, and dignitaries looked on. Almost incoherent at times, he finally meandered to a halt, whereupon Hamlin hastily swore him in as vice president. Lincoln, who had watched sadly during the debacle, then went to his own swearing-in outside the Capitol, and delivered his acclaimed Second Inaugural Address.
In the weeks after the inauguration, Johnson only presided over the Senate briefly, and hid from public ridicule at the Maryland home of a friend, Francis Preston Blair. When he did return to Washington, it was with the intent of leaving for Tennessee to reestablish his family in Greeneville. Instead, he remained after word came that General Ulysses S. Grant had captured the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, presaging the end of the war. Lincoln stated, in response to criticism of Johnson's behavior, that "I have known Andy Johnson for many years; he made a bad slip the other day, but you need not be scared; Andy ain't a drunkard."
## Presidency (1865–1869)
### Accession
On the afternoon of April 14, 1865, Lincoln and Johnson met for the first time since the inauguration. Trefousse states that Johnson wanted to "induce Lincoln not to be too lenient with traitors"; Gordon-Reed agrees.
That night, President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded at Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. The shooting of the President was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward the same night. Seward barely survived his wounds, while Johnson escaped attack as his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, got drunk instead of killing the vice president. Leonard J. Farwell, a fellow boarder at the Kirkwood House, awoke Johnson with news of Lincoln's shooting. Johnson rushed to the President's deathbed, where he remained a short time, on his return promising, "They shall suffer for this. They shall suffer for this." Lincoln died at 7:22 am the next morning; Johnson's swearing-in occurred between 10 and 11 am with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding in the presence of most of the Cabinet. Johnson's demeanor was described by the newspapers as "solemn and dignified". Some Cabinet members had last seen Johnson, apparently drunk, at the inauguration. At noon, Johnson conducted his first Cabinet meeting in the Treasury Secretary's office, and asked all members to remain in their positions.
The events of the assassination resulted in speculation, then and subsequently, concerning Johnson and what the conspirators might have intended for him. In the vain hope of having his life spared after his capture, Atzerodt spoke much about the conspiracy, but did not say anything to indicate that the plotted assassination of Johnson was merely a ruse. Conspiracy theorists point to the fact that on the day of the assassination, Booth came to the Kirkwood House and left one of his cards with Johnson's private secretary, William A. Browning. The message on it was: "Don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth."
Johnson presided with dignity over Lincoln's funeral ceremonies in Washington, before his predecessor's body was sent home to Springfield, Illinois, for interment. Shortly after Lincoln's death, Union General William T. Sherman reported he had, without consulting Washington, reached an armistice agreement with Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston for the surrender of Confederate forces in North Carolina in exchange for the existing state government remaining in power, with private property rights (slaves) to be respected. This did not even grant freedom to those in slavery. This was not acceptable to Johnson or the Cabinet, who sent word for Sherman to secure the surrender without making political deals, which he did. Further, Johnson placed a \$100,000 bounty (equivalent to \$ in ) on Confederate President Davis, then a fugitive, which gave Johnson the reputation of a man who would be tough on the South. More controversially, he permitted the execution of Mary Surratt for her part in Lincoln's assassination. Surratt was executed with three others, including Atzerodt, on July 7, 1865.
### Reconstruction
#### Background
Upon taking office, Johnson faced the question of what to do with the former Confederacy. President Lincoln had authorized loyalist governments in Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee as the Union came to control large parts of those states and advocated a ten percent plan that would allow elections after ten percent of the voters in any state took an oath of future loyalty to the Union. Congress considered this too lenient; its own plan, requiring a majority of voters to take the loyalty oath, passed both houses in 1864, but Lincoln pocket vetoed it.
Johnson had three goals in Reconstruction. He sought a speedy restoration of the states, on the grounds that they had never truly left the Union, and thus should again be recognized once loyal citizens formed a government. To Johnson, African-American suffrage was a delay and a distraction; it had always been a state responsibility to decide who should vote. Second, political power in the Southern states should pass from the planter class to his beloved "plebeians". Johnson feared that the freedmen, many of whom were still economically bound to their former masters, might vote at their direction. Johnson's third priority was election in his own right in 1868, a feat no one who had succeeded a deceased president had managed to accomplish, attempting to secure a Democratic anti-Congressional Reconstruction coalition in the South.
The Republicans had formed a number of factions. The Radical Republicans sought voting and other civil rights for African Americans. They believed that the freedmen could be induced to vote Republican in gratitude for emancipation, and that black votes could keep the Republicans in power and Southern Democrats, including former rebels, out of influence. They believed that top Confederates should be punished. The Moderate Republicans sought to keep the Democrats out of power at a national level, and prevent former rebels from resuming power. They were not as enthusiastic about the idea of African-American suffrage as their Radical colleagues, either because of their own local political concerns, or because they believed that the freedman would be likely to cast his vote badly. Northern Democrats favored the unconditional restoration of the Southern states. They did not support African-American suffrage, which might threaten Democratic control in the South.
#### Presidential Reconstruction
Johnson was initially left to devise a Reconstruction policy without legislative intervention, as Congress was not due to meet again until December 1865. Radical Republicans told the President that the Southern states were economically in a state of chaos and urged him to use his leverage to insist on rights for freedmen as a condition of restoration to the Union. But Johnson, with the support of other officials including Seward, insisted that the franchise was a state, not a federal matter. The Cabinet was divided on the issue.
Johnson's first Reconstruction actions were two proclamations, with the unanimous backing of his Cabinet, on May 29. One recognized the Virginia government led by provisional Governor Francis Pierpont. The second provided amnesty for all ex-rebels except those holding property valued at \$20,000 or more; it also appointed a temporary governor for North Carolina and authorized elections. Neither of these proclamations included provisions regarding black suffrage or freedmen's rights. The President ordered constitutional conventions in other former rebel states.
As Southern states began the process of forming governments, Johnson's policies received considerable public support in the North, which he took as unconditional backing for quick reinstatement of the South. While he received such support from the white South, he underestimated the determination of Northerners to ensure that the war had not been fought for nothing. It was important, in Northern public opinion, that the South acknowledge its defeat, that slavery be ended, and that the lot of African Americans be improved. Voting rights were less important—after all, only a handful of Northern states (mostly in New England) gave African-American men the right to vote on the same basis as whites, and in late 1865, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Minnesota voted down African-American suffrage proposals by large margins. Northern public opinion tolerated Johnson's inaction on black suffrage as an experiment, to be allowed if it quickened Southern acceptance of defeat. Instead, white Southerners felt emboldened. A number of Southern states passed Black Codes, binding African-American laborers to farms on annual contracts they could not quit, and allowing law enforcement at whim to arrest them for vagrancy and rent out their labor. Most Southerners elected to Congress were former Confederates, with the most prominent being Georgia Senator-designate and former Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens. Congress assembled in early December 1865; Johnson's conciliatory annual message to them was well received. Nevertheless, Congress refused to seat the Southern legislators and established a committee to recommend appropriate Reconstruction legislation.
Northerners were outraged at the idea of unrepentant Confederate leaders, such as Stephens, rejoining the federal government at a time when emotional wounds from the war remained raw. They saw the Black Codes placing African Americans in a position barely above slavery. Republicans also feared that restoration of the Southern states would return the Democrats to power. In addition, according to David O. Stewart in his book on Johnson's impeachment, "the violence and poverty that oppressed the South would galvanize the opposition to Johnson".
#### Break with the Republicans: 1866
Congress was reluctant to confront the President, and initially only sought to fine-tune Johnson's policies towards the South. According to Trefousse, "If there was a time when Johnson could have come to an agreement with the moderates of the Republican Party, it was the period following the return of Congress." The President was unhappy about the provocative actions of the Southern states, and about the continued control by the antebellum elite there, but made no statement publicly, believing that Southerners had a right to act as they did, even if it was unwise to do so. By late January 1866, he was convinced that winning a showdown with the Radical Republicans was necessary to his political plans – both for the success of Reconstruction and for reelection in 1868. He would have preferred that the conflict arise over the legislative efforts to enfranchise African Americans in the District of Columbia, a proposal that had been defeated overwhelmingly in an all-white referendum. A bill to accomplish this passed the House of Representatives, but to Johnson's disappointment, stalled in the Senate before he could veto it.
Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, leader of the Moderate Republicans and Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was anxious to reach an understanding with the President. He ushered through Congress a bill extending the Freedmen's Bureau beyond its scheduled abolition in 1867, and the first Civil Rights Bill, to grant citizenship to the freedmen. Trumbull met several times with Johnson and was convinced the President would sign the measures (Johnson rarely contradicted visitors, often fooling those who met with him into thinking he was in accord). In fact, the President opposed both bills as infringements on state sovereignty. Additionally, both of Trumbull's bills were unpopular among white Southerners, whom Johnson hoped to include in his new party. Johnson vetoed the Freedman's Bureau bill on February 18, 1866, to the delight of white Southerners and the puzzled anger of Republican legislators. He considered himself vindicated when a move to override his veto failed in the Senate the following day. Johnson believed that the Radicals would now be isolated and defeated and that the moderate Republicans would form behind him; he did not understand that Moderates also wanted to see African Americans treated fairly.
On February 22, 1866, Washington's Birthday, Johnson gave an impromptu speech to supporters who had marched to the White House and called for an address in honor of the first president. In his hour-long speech, he instead referred to himself over 200 times. More damagingly, he also spoke of "men ... still opposed to the Union" to whom he could not extend the hand of friendship he gave to the South. When called upon by the crowd to say who they were, Johnson named Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, and abolitionist Wendell Phillips, and accused them of plotting his assassination. Republicans viewed the address as a declaration of war, while one Democratic ally estimated Johnson's speech cost the party 200,000 votes in the 1866 congressional midterm elections.
Although strongly urged by moderates to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27. In his veto message, he objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when 11 out of 36 states were unrepresented in the Congress, and that it discriminated in favor of African Americans and against whites. Within three weeks, Congress had overridden his veto, the first time that had been done on a major bill in American history. The veto, often seen as a key mistake of Johnson's presidency, convinced moderates there was no hope of working with him. Historian Eric Foner, in his volume on Reconstruction, views it as "the most disastrous miscalculation of his political career". According to Stewart, the veto was "for many his defining blunder, setting a tone of perpetual confrontation with Congress that prevailed for the rest of his presidency".
Congress also proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the states. Written by Trumbull and others, it was sent for ratification by state legislatures in a process in which the president plays no part, though Johnson opposed it. The amendment was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution, but also went further. The amendment extended citizenship to every person born in the United States (except Indians on reservations), penalized states that did not give the vote to freedmen, and most importantly, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. It also guaranteed that the federal debt would be paid and forbade repayment of Confederate war debts. Further, it disqualified many former Confederates from office, although the disability could be removed — by Congress, not the president. Both houses passed the Freedmen's Bureau Act a second time, and again the President vetoed it; this time, the veto was overridden. By the summer of 1866, when Congress finally adjourned, Johnson's method of restoring states to the Union by executive fiat, without safeguards for the freedmen, was in deep trouble. His home state of Tennessee ratified the Fourteenth Amendment despite the President's opposition. When Tennessee did so, Congress immediately seated its proposed delegation, embarrassing Johnson.
Efforts to compromise failed, and a political war ensued between the united Republicans on one side, and on the other, Johnson and his Northern and Southern allies in the Democratic Party. He called a convention of the National Union Party. Republicans had returned to using their previous identifier; Johnson intended to use the discarded name to unite his supporters and gain election to a full term, in 1868. The battleground was the election of 1866; Southern states were not allowed to vote. Johnson campaigned vigorously, undertaking a public speaking tour, known as the "Swing Around the Circle". The trip, including speeches in Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Columbus, proved politically disastrous, with the President making controversial comparisons between himself and Jesus, and engaging in arguments with hecklers. These exchanges were attacked as beneath the dignity of the presidency. The Republicans won by a landslide, increasing their two-thirds majority in Congress, and made plans to control Reconstruction. Johnson blamed the Democrats for giving only lukewarm support to the National Union movement.
#### Radical Reconstruction
Even with the Republican victory in November 1866, Johnson considered himself in a strong position. The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified by none of the Southern or border states except Tennessee, and had been rejected in Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland. As the amendment required ratification by three-quarters of the states to become part of the Constitution, he believed the deadlock would be broken in his favor, leading to his election in 1868. Once it reconvened in December 1866, an energized Congress began passing legislation, often over a presidential veto; this included the District of Columbia voting bill. Congress admitted Nebraska to the Union over a veto, and the Republicans gained two senators and a state that promptly ratified the amendment. Johnson's veto of a bill for statehood for Colorado Territory was sustained; enough senators agreed that a district with a population of 30,000 was not yet worthy of statehood to win the day.
In January 1867, Congressman Stevens introduced legislation to dissolve the Southern state governments and reconstitute them into five military districts, under martial law. The states would begin again by holding constitutional conventions. African Americans could vote for or become delegates; former Confederates could not. In the legislative process, Congress added to the bill that restoration to the Union would follow the state's ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and completion of the process of adding it to the Constitution. Johnson and the Southerners attempted a compromise, whereby the South would agree to a modified version of the amendment without the disqualification of former Confederates, and for limited black suffrage. The Republicans insisted on the full language of the amendment, and the deal fell through. Although Johnson could have pocket vetoed the First Reconstruction Act as it was presented to him less than ten days before the end of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, he chose to veto it directly on March 2, 1867; Congress overruled him the same day. Also on March 2, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act over the President's veto, in response to statements during the Swing Around the Circle that he planned to fire Cabinet secretaries who did not agree with him. This bill, requiring Senate approval for the firing of Cabinet members during the tenure of the president who appointed them and for one month afterwards, was immediately controversial, with some senators doubting that it was constitutional or that its terms applied to Johnson, whose key Cabinet officers were Lincoln holdovers.
### Impeachment
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was an able and hard-working man, but difficult to deal with. Johnson both admired and was exasperated by his War Secretary, who, in combination with General of the Army Grant, worked to undermine the president's Southern policy from within his own administration. Johnson considered firing Stanton, but respected him for his wartime service as secretary. Stanton, for his part, feared allowing Johnson to appoint his successor and refused to resign, despite his public disagreements with his president.
The new Congress met for a few weeks in March 1867, then adjourned, leaving the House Committee on the Judiciary behind, tasked in the first impeachment inquiry against Johnson with reporting back to the full House whether there were grounds for Johnson to be impeached. This committee duly met, examined the President's bank accounts, and summoned members of the Cabinet to testify. When a federal court released former Confederate president Davis on bail on May 13 (he had been captured shortly after the war), the committee investigated whether the President had impeded the prosecution. It learned that Johnson was eager to have Davis tried. A bipartisan majority of the committee voted down impeachment charges; the committee adjourned on June 3.
Later in June, Johnson and Stanton battled over the question of whether the military officers placed in command of the South could override the civil authorities. The President had Attorney General Henry Stanbery issue an opinion backing his position that they could not. Johnson sought to pin down Stanton either as for, and thus endorsing Johnson's position, or against, showing himself to be opposed to his president and the rest of the Cabinet. Stanton evaded the point in meetings and written communications. When Congress reconvened in July, it passed a Reconstruction Act against Johnson's position, waited for his veto, overrode it, and went home. In addition to clarifying the powers of the generals, the legislation also deprived the President of control over the Army in the South. With Congress in recess until November, Johnson decided to fire Stanton and relieve one of the military commanders, General Philip Sheridan, who had dismissed the governor of Texas and installed a replacement with little popular support. Johnson was initially deterred by a strong objection from Grant, but on August 5, the President demanded Stanton's resignation; the secretary refused to quit with Congress out of session. Johnson then suspended him pending the next meeting of Congress as permitted under the Tenure of Office Act; Grant agreed to serve as temporary replacement while continuing to lead the Army.
Grant, under protest, followed Johnson's order transferring Sheridan and another of the district commanders, Daniel Sickles, who had angered Johnson by firmly following Congress's plan. The President also issued a proclamation pardoning most Confederates, exempting those who held office under the Confederacy, or who had served in federal office before the war but had breached their oaths. Although Republicans expressed anger with his actions, the 1867 elections generally went Democratic. No seats in Congress were directly elected in the polling, but the Democrats took control of the Ohio General Assembly, allowing them to defeat for reelection one of Johnson's strongest opponents, Senator Benjamin Wade. Voters in Ohio, Connecticut, and Minnesota turned down propositions to grant African Americans the vote.
The adverse results momentarily put a stop to Republican calls to impeach Johnson, who was elated by the elections. Nevertheless, once Congress met in November, the Judiciary Committee reversed itself and passed a resolution of impeachment against Johnson. After much debate about whether anything the President had done was a high crime or misdemeanor, the standard under the Constitution, the resolution was defeated by the House of Representatives on December 7, 1867, by a vote of 57 in favor to 108 opposed.
Johnson notified Congress of Stanton's suspension and Grant's interim appointment. In January 1868, the Senate disapproved of his action, and reinstated Stanton, contending the President had violated the Tenure of Office Act. Grant stepped aside over Johnson's objection, causing a complete break between them. Johnson then dismissed Stanton and appointed Lorenzo Thomas to replace him. Stanton refused to leave his office, and on February 24, 1868, the House impeached the President for intentionally violating the Tenure of Office Act, by a vote of 128 to 47. The House subsequently adopted eleven articles of impeachment, for the most part alleging that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act, and had questioned the legitimacy of Congress.
On March 5, 1868, the impeachment trial began in the Senate and lasted almost three months; Congressmen George S. Boutwell, Benjamin Butler and Thaddeus Stevens acted as managers for the House, or prosecutors, and William M. Evarts, Benjamin R. Curtis and former Attorney General Stanbery were Johnson's counsel; Chief Justice Chase served as presiding judge.
The defense relied on the provision of the Tenure of Office Act that made it applicable only to appointees of the current administration. Since Lincoln had appointed Stanton, the defense maintained Johnson had not violated the act, and also argued that the President had the right to test the constitutionality of an act of Congress. Johnson's counsel insisted that he make no appearance at the trial, nor publicly comment about the proceedings, and except for a pair of interviews in April, he complied.
Johnson maneuvered to gain an acquittal; for example, he pledged to Iowa Senator James W. Grimes that he would not interfere with Congress's Reconstruction efforts. Grimes reported to a group of Moderates, many of whom voted for acquittal, that he believed the President would keep his word. Johnson also promised to install the respected John Schofield as War Secretary. Kansas Senator Edmund G. Ross received assurances that the new, Radical-influenced constitutions ratified in South Carolina and Arkansas would be transmitted to the Congress without delay, an action which would give him and other senators political cover to vote for acquittal.
One reason senators were reluctant to remove the President was that his successor would have been Ohio Senator Wade, the president pro tempore of the Senate. Wade, a lame duck who left office in early 1869, was a Radical who supported such measures as women's suffrage, placing him beyond the pale politically in much of the nation. Additionally, a President Wade was seen as an obstacle to Grant's ambitions.
With the dealmaking, Johnson was confident of the result in advance of the verdict, and in the days leading up to the ballot, newspapers reported that Stevens and his Radicals had given up. On May 16, the Senate voted on the 11th article of impeachment, accusing Johnson of firing Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office of Act once the Senate had overturned his suspension. Thirty-five senators voted "guilty" and 19 "not guilty", thus falling short by a single vote of the two-thirds majority required for conviction under the Constitution. Ten Republicans—Senators Grimes, Ross, Trumbull, James Dixon, James Rood Doolittle, Daniel Sheldon Norton, William Pitt Fessenden, Joseph S. Fowler, John B. Henderson, and Peter G. Van Winkle—voted to acquit the President. With Stevens bitterly disappointed at the result, the Senate then adjourned for the Republican National Convention; Grant was nominated for president. The Senate returned on May 26 and voted on the second and third articles, with identical 35–19 results. Faced with those results, Johnson's opponents gave up and dismissed proceedings. Stanton "relinquished" his office on May 26, and the Senate subsequently confirmed Schofield. When Johnson renominated Stanbery to return to his position as attorney general after his service as a defense manager, the Senate refused to confirm him.
Allegations were made at the time and again later that bribery dictated the outcome of the trial. Even when it was in progress, Representative Butler began an investigation, held contentious hearings, and issued a report, unendorsed by any other congressman. Butler focused on a New York–based "Astor House Group", supposedly led by political boss and editor Thurlow Weed. This organization was said to have raised large sums of money from whiskey interests through Cincinnati lawyer Charles Woolley to bribe senators to acquit Johnson. Butler went so far as to imprison Woolley in the Capitol building when he refused to answer questions, but failed to prove bribery.
### Foreign policy
Soon after taking office as president, Johnson reached an accord with Secretary of State William H. Seward that there would be no change in foreign policy. In practice, this meant that Seward would continue to run things as he had under Lincoln. Seward and Lincoln had been rivals for the nomination in 1860; the victor hoped that Seward would succeed him as president in 1869. At the time of Johnson's accession, the French had intervened in Mexico, sending troops there. While many politicians had indulged in saber rattling over the Mexican matter, Seward preferred quiet diplomacy, warning the French through diplomatic channels that their presence in Mexico was unacceptable. Although the President preferred a more aggressive approach, Seward persuaded him to follow his lead. In April 1866, the French government informed Seward that its troops would be brought home in stages, to conclude by November 1867. On August 14, 1866, Johnson and his cabinet gave a reception for Queen Emma of Hawaii who was returning to Hawaii after her trip to Britain and Europe.
Seward was an expansionist, and sought opportunities to gain territory for the United States. After the loss of the Crimean War in the 1850s, the Russian government saw its North American colony (today Alaska) as a financial liability, and feared losing control to Britain whose troops would easily swoop in and annex the territory from neighboring Canada in any future conflict. Negotiations between Russia and the U.S. over the sale of Alaska were halted due to the outbreak of the Civil War, but after the U.S. victory in the war, talks resumed. Russia instructed its minister in Washington, Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, to negotiate a sale. De Stoeckl did so deftly, getting Seward to raise his offer from \$5 million (coincidentally, the minimum that Russia had instructed de Stoeckl to accept) to \$7 million, and then getting \$200,000 added by raising various objections. This sum of \$7.2 million is equivalent to \$ in present-day terms. On March 30, 1867, de Stoeckl and Seward signed the treaty, working quickly as the Senate was about to adjourn. Johnson and Seward took the signed document to the President's Room in the Capitol, only to be told there was no time to deal with the matter before adjournment. The President summoned the Senate into session to meet on April 1; that body approved the treaty, 37–2. Emboldened by his success in Alaska, Seward sought acquisitions elsewhere. His only success was staking an American claim to uninhabited Wake Island in the Pacific, which would be officially claimed by the U.S. in 1898. He came close with the Danish West Indies as Denmark agreed to sell and the local population approved the transfer in a plebiscite, but the Senate never voted on the treaty and it expired.
Another treaty that fared badly was the Johnson-Clarendon convention, negotiated in settlement of the Alabama Claims, for damages to American shipping from British-built Confederate raiders. Negotiated by the United States Minister to Britain, former Maryland senator Reverdy Johnson, in late 1868, it was ignored by the Senate during the remainder of the President's term. The treaty was rejected after he left office, and the Grant administration later negotiated considerably better terms from Britain.
### Administration and Cabinet
#### Judicial appointments
Johnson appointed nine Article III federal judges during his presidency, all to United States district courts; he did not appoint a justice to serve on the Supreme Court. In April 1866, he nominated Henry Stanbery to fill the vacancy left with the death of John Catron, but Congress eliminated the seat to prevent the appointment, and to ensure that he did not get to make any appointments eliminated the next vacancy as well, providing that the court would shrink by one justice when one next departed from office. Johnson appointed his Greeneville crony, Samuel Milligan, to the United States Court of Claims, where he served from 1868 until his death in 1874.
### Reforms initiated
In June 1866, Johnson signed the Southern Homestead Act into law, believing that the legislation would assist poor whites. Around 28,000 land claims were successfully patented, although few former slaves benefitted from the law, fraud was rampant, and much of the best land was off-limits, reserved for grants to veterans or railroads. In June 1868, Johnson signed an eight-hour law passed by Congress that established an eight-hour workday for laborers and mechanics employed by the Federal Government. Although Johnson told members of a Workingmen's party delegation in Baltimore that he could not directly commit himself to an eight-hour day, he nevertheless told the same delegation that he greatly favoured the "shortest number of hours consistent with the interests of all". According to Richard F. Selcer, however, the good intentions behind the law were "immediately frustrated" as wages were cut by 20%.
### Completion of term
Johnson sought nomination by the 1868 Democratic National Convention in New York in July 1868. He remained very popular among Southern whites, and boosted that popularity by issuing, just before the convention, a pardon ending the possibility of criminal proceedings against any Confederate not already indicted, meaning that only Davis and a few others still might face trial. On the first ballot, Johnson was second to former Ohio representative George H. Pendleton, who had been his Democratic opponent for vice president in 1864. Johnson's support was mostly from the South, and fell away as the ballots passed. On the 22nd ballot, former New York governor Horatio Seymour was nominated, and the President received only four votes, all from Tennessee.
The conflict with Congress continued. Johnson sent Congress proposals for amendments to limit the president to a single six-year term and make the president and the Senate directly elected, and for term limits for judges. Congress took no action on them. When the President was slow to officially report ratifications of the Fourteenth Amendment by the new Southern legislatures, Congress passed a bill, again over his veto, requiring him to do so within ten days of receipt. He still delayed as much as he could, but was required, in July 1868, to report the ratifications making the amendment part of the Constitution.
Seymour's operatives sought Johnson's support, but he long remained silent on the presidential campaign. It was not until October, with the vote already having taken place in some states, that he mentioned Seymour at all, and he never endorsed him. Nevertheless, Johnson regretted Grant's victory, in part because of their animus from the Stanton affair. In his annual message to Congress in December, Johnson urged the repeal of the Tenure of Office Act and told legislators that had they admitted their Southern colleagues in 1865, all would have been well. He celebrated his 60th birthday in late December with a party for several hundred children, though not including those of President-elect Grant, who did not allow his to go.
On Christmas Day 1868, Johnson issued a final amnesty, this one covering everyone, including Davis. He also issued, in his final months in office, pardons for crimes, including one for Dr. Samuel Mudd, controversially convicted of involvement in the Lincoln assassination (he had set Booth's broken leg) and imprisoned in Fort Jefferson on Florida's Dry Tortugas.
On March 3, the President hosted a large public reception at the White House on his final full day in office. Grant had made it known that he was unwilling to ride in the same carriage as Johnson, as was customary, and Johnson refused to go to the inauguration at all. Despite an effort by Seward to prompt a change of mind, he spent the morning of March 4 finishing last-minute business, and then shortly after noon rode from the White House to the home of a friend.
## Post-presidency (1869–1875)
After leaving the presidency, Johnson remained for some weeks in Washington, then returned to Greeneville for the first time in eight years. He was honored with large public celebrations along the way, especially in Tennessee, where cities hostile to him during the war hung out welcome banners. He had arranged to purchase a large farm near Greeneville to live on after his presidency.
Some expected Johnson to run for Governor of Tennessee or for the Senate again, while others thought that he would become a railroad executive. Johnson found Greeneville boring, and his private life was embittered by the suicide of his son Robert in 1869. Seeking vindication for himself, and revenge against his political enemies, he launched a Senate bid soon after returning home. Tennessee had gone Republican, but court rulings restoring the vote to some whites and the violence of the Ku Klux Klan suppressing the African-American vote, leading to a Democratic victory in the legislative elections in August 1869. Johnson was seen as a likely victor in the Senate election, although hated by Radical Republicans, and by some Democrats because of his wartime activities. Although he was at one point within a single vote of victory in the legislature's balloting, the Republicans eventually elected Henry Cooper over Johnson, 54–51. In 1872, there was a special election for an at-large congressional seat for Tennessee; Johnson initially sought the Democratic nomination, but when he saw that it would go to former Confederate general Benjamin F. Cheatham, decided to run as an independent. The former president was defeated, finishing third, but the split in the Democratic Party defeated Cheatham in favor of an old Johnson Unionist ally, Horace Maynard.
In 1873, Johnson contracted cholera during an epidemic but recovered; that year he lost about \$73,000 when the First National Bank of Washington went under, though he was eventually repaid much of the sum.
### Return to the Senate
He began looking towards the next Senate election to take place in the legislature in early 1875. Johnson began to woo the farmers' Grange movement; with his Jeffersonian leanings, he easily gained their support. He spoke throughout the state in his final campaign tour. Few African Americans outside the large towns were now able to vote as Reconstruction faded in Tennessee, setting a pattern that would be repeated in the other Southern states; the white domination would last almost a century. In the Tennessee legislative elections in August, the Democrats elected 92 legislators to the Republicans' eight, and Johnson went to Nashville for the legislative session. When the balloting for the Senate seat began on January 20, 1875, he led with 30 votes, but did not have the required majority as three former Confederate generals, one former colonel, and a former Democratic congressman split the vote with him. Johnson's opponents tried to agree on a single candidate who might gain majority support and defeat him, but failed, and he was elected on January 26 on the 54th ballot, with a margin of a single vote. Nashville erupted in rejoicing; remarked Johnson, "Thank God for the vindication."
Johnson's comeback garnered national attention, with the St. Louis Republican calling it "the most magnificent personal triumph which the history of American politics can show". At his swearing-in in the Senate on March 5, 1875, he was greeted with flowers, and sworn in alongside Hamlin (his predecessor as vice president) by incumbent Vice President Henry Wilson (who as senator had voted for Johnson's ouster). Many Republicans ignored Senator Johnson, though some, such as Ohio's John Sherman (who had voted for conviction), shook his hand. Johnson remains the only former president to serve in the Senate. He spoke only once in the short session, on March 22 lambasting President Grant for his use of federal troops in support of Louisiana's Reconstruction government. The former president asked, "How far off is military despotism?" and concluded his speech, "may God bless this people and God save the Constitution".
### Death
Johnson returned home after the special session concluded. In late July 1875, convinced some of his opponents were defaming him in the Ohio gubernatorial race, he decided to travel there to give speeches. He began the trip on July 28, and broke the journey at his daughter Mary's farm near Elizabethton, where his daughter Martha was also staying. That evening he had a stroke, but refused medical treatment until the next day, when he did not improve and two doctors were sent for from Elizabethton. He seemed to respond to their ministrations, but had another stroke on the evening of July 30, and died early the following morning at the age of 66. President Grant had the "painful duty" of announcing the death of the only surviving past president. Northern newspapers, in their obituaries, tended to focus on Johnson's loyalty during the war, while Southern ones paid tribute to his actions as president. Johnson's funeral was held on August 3 in Greeneville. He was buried with his body wrapped in an American flag and a copy of the U.S. Constitution placed under his head, according to his wishes. The burial ground was dedicated as the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in 1906, and with his home and tailor's shop, is part of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site.
## Historical reputation and legacy
According to Castel, "historians [of Johnson's presidency] have tended to concentrate to the exclusion of practically everything else upon his role in that titanic event [Reconstruction]." Through the remainder of the 19th century, there were few historical evaluations of Johnson and his presidency. Memoirs from Northerners who had dealt with him, such as former vice president Henry Wilson and Maine Senator James G. Blaine, depicted him as an obstinate boor who tried to favor the South in Reconstruction but was frustrated by Congress. According to historian Howard K. Beale in his journal article about the historiography of Reconstruction, "Men of the postwar decades were more concerned with justifying their own position than they were with painstaking search for truth. Thus [Alabama congressman and historian] Hilary Herbert and his corroborators presented a Southern indictment of Northern policies, and Henry Wilson's history was a brief for the North."
The turn of the 20th century saw the first significant historical evaluations of Johnson. Leading the wave was Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James Ford Rhodes, who wrote of the former president:
> Johnson acted in accordance with his nature. He had intellectual force but it worked in a groove. Obstinate rather than firm it undoubtedly seemed to him that following counsel and making concessions were a display of weakness. At all events from his December message to the veto of the Civil Rights Bill he yielded not a jot to Congress. The moderate senators and representatives (who constituted a majority of the Union party) asked him for only a slight compromise; their action was really an entreaty that he would unite with them to preserve Congress and the country from the policy of the radicals ... His quarrel with Congress prevented the readmission into the Union on generous terms of the members of the late Confederacy ... His pride of opinion, his desire to beat, blinded him to the real welfare of the South and of the whole country.
Rhodes ascribed Johnson's faults to his personal weaknesses, and blamed him for the problems of the postbellum South. Other early 20th-century historians, such as John Burgess, future president Woodrow Wilson, and William Dunning, concurred with Rhodes, believing Johnson flawed and politically inept but concluding that he had tried to carry out Lincoln's plans for the South in good faith. Author and journalist Jay Tolson suggests that Wilson "depict[ed Reconstruction] as a vindictive program that hurt even repentant southerners while benefiting northern opportunists, the so-called Carpetbaggers, and cynical white southerners, or Scalawags, who exploited alliances with blacks for political gain."
Even as Rhodes and his school wrote, another group of historians (Dunning School) was setting out on the full rehabilitation of Johnson, using for the first time primary sources such as his papers, provided by his daughter Martha before her death in 1901, and the diaries of Johnson's Navy Secretary, Gideon Welles, first published in 1911. The resulting volumes, such as David Miller DeWitt's The Impeachment and Trial of President Andrew Johnson (1903), presented him far more favorably than they did those who had sought to oust him. In James Schouler's 1913 History of the Reconstruction Period, the author accused Rhodes of being "quite unfair to Johnson", though agreeing that the former president had created many of his own problems through inept political moves. These works had an effect; although historians continued to view Johnson as having deep flaws which sabotaged his presidency, they saw his Reconstruction policies as fundamentally correct.
Castel writes:
> at the end of the 1920s, an historiographical revolution took place. In the span of three years five widely read books appeared, all highly pro-Johnson. ...They differed in general approach and specific interpretations, but they all glorified Johnson and condemned his enemies. According to these writers, Johnson was a humane, enlightened, and liberal statesman who waged a courageous battle for the Constitution and democracy against scheming and unscrupulous Radicals, who were motivated by a vindictive hatred of the South, partisanship, and a desire to establish the supremacy of Northern "big business". In short, rather than a boor, Johnson was a martyr; instead of a villain, a hero.
Beale wondered in 1940, "is it not time that we studied the history of Reconstruction without first assuming, at least subconsciously, that carpetbaggers and Southern white Republicans were wicked, that Negroes were illiterate incompetents, and that the whole white South owes a debt of gratitude to the restorers of 'white supremacy'?" Despite these doubts, the favorable view of Johnson survived for a time. In 1942, Van Heflin portrayed the former president as a fighter for democracy in the Hollywood film Tennessee Johnson. In 1948, a poll of his colleagues by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger deemed Johnson among the average presidents; in 1956, one by Clinton L. Rossiter named him as one of the near-great chief executives. Foner notes that at the time of these surveys, "the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War was regarded as a time of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting black men the right to vote."
Earlier historians, including Beale, believed that money drove events, and had seen Reconstruction as an economic struggle. They also accepted, for the most part, that reconciliation between North and South should have been the top priority of Reconstruction. In the 1950s, historians began to focus on the African-American experience as central to Reconstruction. They rejected completely any claim of black inferiority, which had marked many earlier historical works, and saw the developing civil rights movement as a second Reconstruction; some neoabolitionist writers stated they hoped their work on the postbellum era would advance the cause of civil rights. These authors sympathized with the Radical Republicans for their desire to help the African American, and saw Johnson as callous towards the freedman. In a number of works from 1956 onwards by such historians as Fawn Brodie, the former president was depicted as a successful saboteur of efforts to better the freedman's lot. These volumes included major biographies of Stevens and Stanton. Reconstruction was increasingly seen as a noble effort to integrate the freed slaves into society.
In the early 21st century, Johnson is among those commonly mentioned as the worst presidents in U.S. history. According to historian Glenn W. Lafantasie, who believes James Buchanan the worst president, "Johnson is a particular favorite for the bottom of the pile because of his impeachment ... his complete mishandling of Reconstruction policy ... his bristling personality, and his enormous sense of self-importance." Tolson suggests that "Johnson is now scorned for having resisted Radical Republican policies aimed at securing the rights and well-being of the newly emancipated African-Americans." Gordon-Reed notes that Johnson, along with his contemporaries Pierce and Buchanan, is generally listed among the five worst presidents, but states "there have never been more difficult times in the life of this nation. The problems these men had to confront were enormous. It would have taken a succession of Lincolns to do them justice."
Trefousse considers Johnson's legacy to be "the maintenance of white supremacy. His boost to Southern conservatives by undermining Reconstruction was his legacy to the nation, one that would trouble the country for generations to come." Gordon-Reed states of Johnson:
> We know the results of Johnson's failures—that his preternatural stubbornness, his mean and crude racism, his primitive and instrumental understanding of the Constitution stunted his capacity for enlightened and forward-thinking leadership when those qualities were so desperately needed. At the same time, Johnson's story has a miraculous quality to it: the poor boy who systematically rose to the heights, fell from grace, and then fought his way back to a position of honor in the country. For good or ill, "only in America", as they say, could Johnson's story unfold in the way that it did.
## See also
- Efforts to impeach Andrew Johnson
- Lincoln–Johnson ledger-removal allegation
- Andrew Johnson alcoholism debate
- Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum – 1867 illustration
- Tennessee Johnson – 1942 film
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Death of Ms Dhu
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Australian Aboriginal woman
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[
"2010s in Western Australia",
"2014 deaths",
"2014 in Australia",
"2014 in women's history",
"August 2014 events in Australia",
"Deaths by person in Australia",
"Deaths in police custody in Australia",
"Prisoners who died in Western Australian detention",
"Women deaths",
"Women in Australia"
] |
Julieka Ivanna Dhu (commonly referred to as Ms Dhu) was a 22-year-old Aboriginal Australian woman who died in police custody in South Hedland, Western Australia, in 2014. On 2 August that year, police responded to a report that Dhu's partner had violated an apprehended violence order. Upon arriving at their address, the officers arrested both Dhu and her partner after realising there was also an outstanding arrest warrant for unpaid fines against Dhu. She was detained in police custody in South Hedland and was ordered to serve four days in custody in default of her debt.
While in custody, Dhu complained of pain and was twice taken to the Hedland Health Campus hospital. Medical staff judged that her complaints were exaggerated and associated with drug withdrawal. On 4 August, Dhu complained that she could no longer stand. Police officers, who accused her of faking her condition, handcuffed her, carried her to the back of their van and returned her to the hospital; she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival. The official cause of death was an infection due to her partner's breaking of her ribs three months earlier.
An internal police investigation found that 11 officers had failed to comply with regulations or were otherwise guilty of misconduct. They were given written and oral warnings. A coronial inquest found that she had suffered "unprofessional and inhumane" handling by police and "deficient" treatment from hospital staff. It also established that police and hospital staff had been influenced by preconceived ideas about Aboriginal people. The inquest recommended that the justice system should stop imprisoning people for unpaid fines and introduce a Custody Notification Scheme (CNS). After years of delays, a CNS was made operational in October 2019. Attorney-General of Western Australia John Quigley introduced legislative amendments to cease jailing people for unpaid fines in September 2019, which were implemented in June 2020.
## Background
### Ms Dhu
Julieka Ivanna Dhu was born on 26 December 1991 in Port Hedland, Western Australia (WA). She was Aboriginal and of the Yamatji people. She lived with her parents until they separated when she was three, after which she was mostly raised by her grandmother in Geraldton, though her parents remained in regular contact with her. She was described as a "cheerful" child whose only health issue was mild asthma. Dhu completed Year Eleven; according to her family, after leaving school, she seemed to associate "with a bad crowd" and was a "wild child".
In November 2009, when she was 17, police found Dhu sleeping near Cable Beach; when they woke her she appeared to be intoxicated, swore at them and said "I don't remember anything after taking that eccy". Police arrested her for disorderly conduct and failing to give her name and address, and she was detained in police custody overnight. She was released on bail the next day but failed to appear at her hearing at the Children's Court and was fined . The following year, Dhu was involved in two more minor incidents involving police after she moved back to Port Hedland. On one of the occasions, she kicked a female police officer while being arrested for disorderly conduct and was later also charged with obstructing and assaulting police. Dhu was again fined by the courts.
In 2013, at age 21, Dhu began a relationship with a 42-year-old man, Dion Ruffin, who had several children by previous partners and—unknown to Dhu—had criminal convictions for domestic violence. By late December that year, Dhu's mother said her daughter had become withdrawn and had lost weight. Dhu told her mother that she and Ruffin were using methamphetamines and their fortnightly Centrelink payments were always spent on the drug in a day or two. Around the Easter holidays in 2014, Dhu told her grandmother Ruffin had physically assaulted her. Her grandmother helped Dhu leave Ruffin and paid for the 1,100 km (683.5 mi) bus journey from Geraldton to Karratha, where they had relatives. Ruffin discovered where Dhu had sought refuge and after several weeks persuaded her to return to him. They lived together in a rented house in South Hedland. In July 2014, Dhu told her father Ruffin had broken her ribs. Ruffin subsequently admitted this, saying he struck her after she had stabbed him in the leg with a pair of scissors.
### Incarceration for unpaid fines in Western Australia
In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report was released. One of its 339 recommendations was an end to issuing arrest warrants for unpaid fines, and another was the implementation of Custody Notification Schemes (CNS) in all Australian states and territories. At the time of Dhu's death, New South Wales (NSW) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) were the only state and territory to have implemented a CNS. The CNS consists of a 24-hour legal advice and support telephone hotline for any Aboriginal person taken into custody, connecting them with lawyers from the Aboriginal Legal Service. As of 2014, no Aboriginal person had died in custody in NSW or the ACT since the scheme was implemented.
At the time of Dhu's death, Western Australia was the only Australian state still imprisoning people for unpaid fines; NSW was the first state to abandon the practice following a death in custody in 1987. Every year between 2010 and 2014, more than 1,000 people were sent to prison in Western Australia for unpaid fines, and one third of imprisoned women were there for that reason. As of 2014, one sixth of imprisoned Aboriginal people were there for unpaid fines; the number increased from 33 to 223 between 2008 and 2013. In 2015, then Premier of Western Australia Colin Barnett acknowledged that the number of people incarcerated for unpaid fines is unknown but higher than official records show, as government statistics only count people being sent to prisons, and not those sent to police lockup cells for shorter periods. Between mid-2006 and mid-2016, 73% of female fine defaulters in Western Australia were unemployed, and 64% were Indigenous. Being jailed for unpaid fines in Western Australia resulted in a criminal record, whereas all other Australian states and territories considered fines a civil matter. Western Australia police did not have the discretion to ignore arrest warrants for unpaid fines under any circumstances.
## Arrest
On 2 August 2014, police received a telephone call informing them Ruffin had violated the terms of an apprehended violence order; at the later inquest into her death, nobody gave evidence about the caller's identity. Three months earlier, a warrant for her arrest for the unpaid fines relating to her three arrests when she was a teenager had been issued. When police arrived at their home and spoke to the pair, they discovered the outstanding arrest warrant for Dhu. Both were arrested and placed in adjoining cells in the South Hedland police station. Dhu's fines totalled , and she was ordered to serve four days in custody to repay part of the debt at the standard rate of per day. As of March 2016, Ruffin was in prison for violating the apprehended violence order, burglary, assault and criminal damage. The Western Australia Prisoners' Review Board revoked his bail, saying he was "a lethal threat to the community".
## Deterioration and death
Dhu complained of pain soon after her arrest. When police asked Dhu why she was in pain, she was vague with her answers; Ruffin was sitting nearby when she was questioned. Police officers gave her two paracetemol tablets and took her to the Hedland Health Campus at 8 pm that night. After a brief examination, she was given a triage score of four; the second-lowest level of urgency. Dr. Annie Lang, who assessed Dhu, later told the inquest she believed Dhu's pain was genuine but that she was exaggerating her condition. She gave Dhu endone and diazepam, and declared her well enough to return to police custody. Dhu was returned to her cell shortly thereafter.
Over the next 20 hours, witnesses saw Dhu crying, calling for help, vomiting and asking to return to the hospital. CCTV footage shows Dhu being asked to rate her pain out of ten and replying "ten". When Sergeant Rick Bond went on duty as the senior officer on 3 August, he was told of Dhu's condition and telephoned her father to ask him whether he could pay Dhu's fines so she could be released. Dhu's father told Bond he did not have that much money and also told him Dhu was a user of methamphetamine. Bond later told the inquest he formed the opinion that Dhu was faking her condition so she would be removed from her cell; he informed other officers of his opinion. Late that afternoon, police took Dhu, who was handcuffed, back to the Health Campus. Medical staff notes said Dhu was "Crying in pain ... tachycardic, grunting, dehydrated and had a pulse rate of 126 beats a minute". They did not take her temperature because they had a shortage of thermometers. Triage nurse Alyce Heatherington told police "this could be withdrawal from drugs". Dr. Vafa Naderi, who had witnessed Dhu attending the Health Campus the previous night, performed an ultrasound examination on her chest then discharged her with a paracetamol tablet and declared her well enough to return to police custody. His notes from that night say "behavioural issues" and "drugs?". CCTV footage taken when police returned Dhu to the station showed a police officer saying, "Paracetamol? Paracetamol, after all that?". CCTV footage also showed Bond took another person held in police custody to Dhu's cell, told them to look at Dhu and said "This is what happens, you end up like this woman here. It's a good deterrent not to take drugs."
Dhu asked to go to the hospital again on the morning of 4 August, telling officers she was no longer able to stand. Officer Shelly Burgess, who had just arrived on shift, stated that Sgt. Bond told her Dhu was a "junkie" that was "full of shit" and "faking" her illness. Burgess said she accepted his assertion as "his word was law" and he had a reputation for "verbally attacking" people who questioned him. She testified that Bond whispered in Dhu's ear, "You're a fucking junkie and you've been to hospital twice before and this is not fucking on". Bond said he had not told Dhu she was a junkie, though said he may have used the term when talking about her to other officers. He said he had told her, "This is the last fucking time you're going to hospital" after agreeing for her to be returned there. CCTV footage showed Burgess forcing Dhu into a sitting position from the floor. After letting go of her arm, Dhu slumped back down and hit her head on the concrete. Burgess told the inquest that Dhu had slipped. At 12:30 pm, Bond sent Dhu to the hospital for the third time. Burgess and Constable Christopher Matier handcuffed Dhu and carried her to the back of a police van; CCTV footage captured her moaning in pain and Matier saying "Oh shut up". Upon arrival at the Health Campus, Matier told a nurse "She's just putting it on; she's faking it"; nursing staff responded by saying she had had a heart attack. A team of medical staff attempted to resuscitate Dhu; Matier continued to inform them that she was faking her condition while they were making their resuscitation attempt. Fifty-three minutes after arriving at the hospital, Dhu was declared dead. Her death marked roughly 340 Aboriginal deaths in custody since the conclusion of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
## Coroner's inquest
In October 2014, after more details of her time in custody had been made public, Dhu's family asked for a coroner's inquest into her death. They also called for the end of imprisonment for unpaid fines, the introduction of a CNS, 24-hour medical coverage and independent oversight at all police stations, "and justice reinvestment into communities, not prisons". These calls were supported by Greens party MP Robin Chapple. At that time, the government of Western Australia and WA police were still said to be investigating the matter; a report was being prepared for the coroner. Premier Barnett expressed his sympathy for Dhu's family at a Perth rally in late 2014, and promised to make sure that "the full truth will come out", but insisted the inquest they were calling for would not be necessary. In February 2016, an anonymous activist group called 'allies of Ms Dhu' began projecting images of Dhu and her family on buildings in Perth to raise awareness over her death and the upcoming inquest. On the first anniversary of her death, multiple protests were held around Australia demanding an investigation. Dhu's death and her family's activism attracted national media attention, something that is rare for Aboriginal deaths in custody.
The inquest began in November 2015. Members of the public were warned that anyone wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Justice for Julieka" would be denied entry. Two women wearing shirts that read "Indigenous Rights Defender" were not allowed to enter. On the first day, the inquest heard that Dhu's cause of death was pneumonia and sepsis resulting from broken ribs caused by Ruffin three months prior. CCTV footage of Dhu in police custody was also shown. Members of Dhu's family, medical staff involved in her treatments and 10 police officers were interviewed as part of the inquest. Dhu's mother testified that she twice telephoned the police station asking to speak to Dhu while she was in custody, but was refused permission. Human rights lawyer George Newhouse represented the Deaths In Custody Watch Committee (WA) Inc (DICWC WA) at the inquest. In the days after the inquest began, Dhu's family were subjected to a "flood" of online comments, suggesting that Dhu got what she deserved as she was a criminal.
Police and medical staff consistently testified they thought Dhu had been faking her illness; Burgess said she thought Dhu had pretended to faint to get quicker treatment. The inquest heard that 11 police officers had received disciplinary notices for failing to follow correct procedure and that an internal police investigation found four of them had "engaged in unprofessional conduct" and their handling of the situation was "without any sense of urgency ... [they] failed to comprehend and respond to the seriousness of the situation". Burgess received the severest disciplinary action of the eleven; a warning notice from the assistant commissioner for the "lack of urgency" she displayed after Dhu hit her head on the concrete. Three other officers were given written warnings and seven received verbal warnings. None of the warnings resulted in immediate disciplinary action; they only affected the officers' chance of promotion. Most of the police officers told the inquest that at the time they did not understand the notices or the reasons they had been given them. Two of the officers who received warnings had since been promoted; Sgt. Bond had quit the police force, telling the inquest he had done so for "family reasons". When asked if he treated Dhu inhumanely, Bond responded, "I wouldn't say inhumane. I would say unprofessional." A medical expert testified that if Dhu's condition had been correctly diagnosed on her second visit to hospital, her life could have been saved. Sandra Thompson, Professor of Rural Health at the University of Western Australia, told the inquest that if Dhu had been a white middle-class person, "there would have been much more effort made to understand what was going on with that person's pain. So that's what institutional racism represents." Senior medical officer Ganesan Sakarapani said the Hedland Health Campus did not have a culture of institutionalised racism and rejected a suggestion that if Dhu had been white, she would have been treated differently.
The inquest by State Coroner Rosalinda Fogliani was completed on 15 December 2016. Fogliani found that police had subjected Dhu to "unprofessional and inhumane" treatment that was "well below the standards that should ordinarily be expected". She stated Dhu's treatment at her second hospital visit was "deficient", that both police and hospital staff had been influenced by preconceived ideas about Aboriginals, and that the decision to handcuff Dhu when she was nearly unconscious was "shameful". While the inquest was still open, Fogliani declined requests to release the footage of Dhu in custody, saying that Dhu's privacy outweighed the public interest. The refusal resulted in a backlash from Dhu's family and Aboriginal rights groups, who argued the refusal amounted to a "cover up" of racism. A social media campaign, using the hashtag \#releasethecctv, called for the footage to be released. Upon delivering the inquest's findings, Fogliani ordered that the footage be made public, with the exception of her third hospital visit. Fogliani did not recommend any criminal prosecutions against police or hospital staff, though did recommend the cessation of the practice of jailing people for unpaid fines and the introduction of a mandatory CNS.
### Reaction
Dhu's family were unhappy with the result as the inquest did not hold any person accountable for her death, and told media they intended to pursue further legal action. WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said he accepted that the police force had failed to provide for Dhu's safety, welfare and dignity. Dennis Eggington, the chief executive of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia (ALSWA), said the coroner's recommendations were "fine" but they had come too late. Upon receiving a copy of the inquest, Premier Barnett indicated that he would not be implementing either of its recommendations.
Shortly after the release of the inquest, singer Felix Riebl composed a tribute song titled "Ms Dhu", and released an accompanying music video criticising the police and the government over her death. Images of Dhu and footage of her treatment by police has circulated online in association with the Black Lives Matter, SayHerName and Idle No More movements, which was credited with creating solidarity between Aboriginal campaigns for justice and North American and global movements.
An article in the journal Social & Legal Studies argued that Dhu's death was inherently linked to "gendered, institutional and structural racism" endemic to Australia, and that the coroner showed little consideration for this and instead attributed the death to a series of "individual failures". The article noted the inquest's finding that the only person who treated Dhu with dignity was the most inexperienced officer involved, and argued that this was because that officer had had the least amount of exposure to the culture of the WA police force. An article in the journal Settler Colonial Studies reached similar conclusions, arguing that the inquest was "a performative attempt in the maintenance of [Australia's colonial] conquest", which was "incapable of addressing the foundations of Ms. Dhu's suffering: colonial patriarchy and dispossession, in the form of the settler carceral state".
## Aftermath
### Recommendations
In June 2015, in direct response to Dhu's death, the WA state government announced that police detention would be made safer and that efforts would be made to keep some low-level offenders and youth offenders out of custody. It did not clarify whether this would include people who had unpaid fines. ALSWA welcomed the announcement but said it needed to be backed up with action. Dhu's grandmother said the proposed changes did not address all of her concerns, though they were a good start. Joe Francis, then Minister for Corrective Services, opposed any plans to end jailing people for unpaid fines; earlier that year he had called for even harsher penalties for fine defaulters, including longer prison sentences. Marc Newhouse, chairman of the DICWC WA, said Francis' proposal made government promises to reduce the incarceration rate for Aboriginals "look like a lie", and University of Western Australia criminologist Dr Hilde Tubex said such a proposal would negatively impact on Indigenous people, women and those affected by poverty.
In May 2016, a report by Neil Morgan, Inspector of Custodial Services, recommended that WA stop jailing people for unpaid fines. His report mentioned the Dhu case. In October 2016 Nigel Scullion, the federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, offered to fund the first three years of implementation for any state that legislated a CNS. The WA state government rejected the offer. In March 2017, just prior to the 2017 state election, Dhu's family criticised both of the major political parties in WA for not supporting such a scheme. The incumbent Liberal Party voiced their opposition to the program while the Labor Party said they would consider the scheme but made no commitments. The Labor Party voiced its support for the end of the jailing of people for unpaid fines.
### Compensation payment and apology
In September 2017, Dhu's family were awarded ex gratia and received a formal apology from the WA state government. The payment does not prevent Dhu's family from taking further legal action, and was separate from a civil suit lodged in the Supreme Court of Western Australia in July 2017 by them. Dhu's grandmother said she was surprised by the payment and apology, though she would have rather seen people held accountable for Dhu's death. Then Attorney-General of Western Australia John Quigley, who announced the payment, also reaffirmed his intention to implement a mandatory CNS. In October 2017, the Australian federal government was reported to be urging the other states and territories to implement a CNS. John Quigley supported such a program, saying if the Aboriginal Legal Service had been contacted about Ms Dhu's arrest "it would have been a very different outcome". An online petition calling for the scheme was signed by almost 20,000 people in less than one week.
In May 2018, Dhu's cousin Alira Kelly-Ryder was informed a warrant for her arrest had been issued for unpaid fines. Kelly-Ryder had been making regular repayments on the fines but was unable to continue doing so after she became unemployed when her work contract was not renewed. A crowdsourcing campaign raised the money to pay the fines, and Kelly-Ryder then offered to pay the debt, though was informed the warrant had been withdrawn. Kelly-Ryder believed the publicity surrounding her case caused the withdrawal, though she asked "what about everybody else in my position; are you going to withdraw their [arrest warrants]?" At the time, a reform proposal to end jailing people for unpaid fines was expected to be introduced in the WA state parliament later in 2018. In October 2018, John Quigley said he would introduce legislative amendments regarding unpaid fines in 2019.
### Custody Notification Service founded
In May 2018, it was announced that the WA state government had reconsidered the offer from the federal government to fund a CNS, and that the service would be operational by the end of 2018, and operated by ALSWA. The service was delayed multiple times due to issues over funding, though was launched in October 2019.
### Legislative amendments
In September 2019, an Aboriginal woman who had been violently assaulted was arrested and imprisoned by police for unpaid fines after she sought their assistance. After the incident, Quigley said the legislative amendments would be introduced "within weeks". Said legislation was introduced later that month, and received royal assent on 19 June 2020. On 20 June 2020, all outstanding warrants for fine defaulters were cancelled, and new warrants are no longer allowed to be issued.
### Doctor fined
In April 2021, Vafa Naderi, the doctor who assessed Dhu on August 3 and declared her fit to be detained, was fined \$30,000 by the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia. The Tribunal found Naderi's actions constituted professional misconduct, concluding he provided "inadequate and substantially below-standard care" to Dhu, though did not suspend him from practising medicine, noting his remorse, acknowledgement of his mistake and the fact he had no previous disciplinary charges.
## See also
- Aboriginal deaths in custody
- Sandra Bland - American woman who died in police custody
|
61,262,925 |
Electric eel
| 1,172,618,645 |
Genus of fishes in South America
|
[
"Articles containing video clips",
"Electrophoridae",
"Fish of the Amazon basin",
"Strongly electric fish",
"Taxa described in 1864",
"Taxa named by Theodore Gill"
] |
The electric eels are a genus, Electrophorus, of neotropical freshwater fish from South America in the family Gymnotidae. They are known for their ability to stun their prey by generating electricity, delivering shocks at up to 860 volts. Their electrical capabilities were first studied in 1775, contributing to the invention in 1800 of the electric battery.
Despite their name, electric eels are not closely related to the true eels (Anguilliformes) but are members of the electroreceptive knifefish order, Gymnotiformes. This order is more closely related to catfish. In 2019, electric eels were split into three species: for more than two centuries before that, the genus was believed to be monotypic, containing only Electrophorus electricus.
They are nocturnal, obligate air-breathing animals, with poor vision complemented by electrolocation; they mainly eat fish. Electric eels grow for as long as they live, adding more vertebrae to their spinal column. Males are larger than females. Some captive specimens have lived for over 20 years.
## Evolution
### Taxonomy
When the species now defined as Electrophorus electricus was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1766, based on early field research by Europeans in South America and specimens sent back to Europe for study, he used the name Gymnotus electricus, placing it in the same genus as Gymnotus carapo (the banded knifefish). He noted that the fish is from the rivers of Surinam, that it causes painful shocks, and that it had small pits around the head.
In 1864, Theodore Gill moved the electric eel to its own genus, Electrophorus. The name is from the Greek ήλεκτρον ("", amber, a substance able to hold static electricity), and φέρω ("", I carry), giving the meaning "electricity bearer". In 1872, Gill decided that the electric eel was sufficiently distinct to have its own family, Electrophoridae. In 1998, Albert and Campos-da-Paz lumped the Electrophorus genus with the family Gymnotidae, alongside Gymnotus, as did Ferraris and colleagues in 2017.
In 2019, C. David de Santana and colleagues divided E. electricus into three species based on DNA divergence, ecology and habitat, anatomy and physiology, and electrical ability. The three species are E. electricus (now in a narrower sense than before), and the two new species E. voltai and E. varii.
### Phylogeny
Electric eels form a clade of strongly electric fishes within the order Gymnotiformes, the South American knifefishes. Electric eels are thus not closely related to the true eels (Anguilliformes). The lineage of the Electrophorus genus is estimated to have split from its sister taxon Gymnotus sometime in the Cretaceous. Most knifefishes are weakly electric, capable of active electrolocation but not of delivering shocks. Their relationships, as shown in the cladogram, were analysed by sequencing their mitochondrial DNA in 2019. Actively electrolocating fish are marked with a small yellow lightning flash . Fish able to deliver electric shocks are marked with a red lightning flash .
### Species
There are three described species in the genus, not differing significantly in body shape or coloration:
- Electrophorus electricus (Linnaeus, 1766) This, the type species, has a U-shaped head, with a flattened skull and cleithrum.
- Electrophorus voltai de Santana, Wosiacki, Crampton, Mark H. Sabaj, Dillman, Castro e Castro, Bastos and Vari, 2019 This species is the strongest bioelectricity generator in nature, capable of generating 860 V. Like E. electricus, this species has a flattened skull and cleithrum but the head is more egg-shaped.
- Electrophorus varii de Santana, Wosiacki, Crampton, Mark H. Sabaj, Dillman, Mendes-Júnior and Castro e Castro, 2019 Compared to the other two species, this one has a thicker skull and cleithrum but the head shape is more variable.
E. varii appears to have diverged from the other species around 7.1 mya during the late Miocene, while E. electricus and E. voltai may have split around 3.6 mya during the Pliocene.
## Ecology
The three species have largely non-overlapping distributions in the northern part of South America. E. electricus is northern, confined to the Guiana Shield, while E. voltai is southern, ranging from the Brazilian shield northwards; both species live in upland waters. E. varii is central, largely in the lowlands. The lowland region of E. varii is a variable environment, with habitats ranging from streams through grassland and ravines to ponds, and large changes in water level between the wet and dry seasons. All live on muddy river bottoms and sometimes swamps, favouring areas in deep shade. They can tolerate water low in oxygen as they swim to the surface to breathe air.
Electric eels are mostly nocturnal. E. voltai mainly eats fish, in particular the armoured catfish Megalechis thoracata. A specimen of E. voltai had a caecilian (a legless amphibian), Typhlonectes compressicauda, in its stomach; it is possible that this means that the species is resistant to the caecilian's toxic skin secretions. E. voltai sometimes hunts in packs; and have been observed targeting a shoal of tetras, then herding them and launching joint strikes on the closely packed fish. The other species, E. varii, is also a fish predator; it preys especially on Callichthyidae (armoured catfishes) and Cichlidae (cichlids).
## Biology
### General biology
Electric eels have long, stout, eel-like bodies, being somewhat cylindrical at the front but more flattened towards the tail end. E. electricus can reach 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in length, and 20 kg (44 lb) in weight. The mouth is at the front of the snout, and opens upwards. They have smooth, thick, brown-to-black skin with a yellow or red underbelly and no scales. The pectoral fins each possess eight tiny radial bones at the tip. They have over 100 precaudal vertebrae (excluding the tail), whereas other gymnotids have up to 51 of these; there can be as many as 300 vertebrae in total. There is no clear boundary between the tail fin and the anal fin, which extends much of the length of the body on the underside and has over 400 bony rays. Electric eels rely on the wave-like movements of their elongated anal fin to propel themselves through the water.
Electric eels get most of their oxygen by breathing air using buccal pumping. This enables them to live in habitats with widely varying oxygen levels including streams, swamps, and pools. Uniquely among the gymnotids, the buccal cavity is lined with a frilled mucosa which has a rich blood supply, enabling gas exchange between the air and the blood. About every two minutes, the fish takes in air through the mouth, holds it in the buccal cavity, and expels it through the opercular openings at the sides of the head. Unlike in other air-breathing fish, the tiny gills of electric eels do not ventilate when taking in air. The majority of carbon dioxide produced is expelled through the skin. These fish can survive on land for some hours if their skin is wet enough.
Electric eels have small eyes and poor vision. They are capable of hearing via a Weberian apparatus, which consists of tiny bones connecting the inner ear to the swim bladder. All of the vital organs are packed in near the front of the animal, taking up only 20% of space and sequestered from the electric organs.
### Electrophysiology
Electric eels can locate their prey using electroreceptors derived from the lateral line organ in the head. The lateral line itself is mechanosensory, enabling them to sense water movements created by animals nearby. The lateral line canals are beneath the skin, but their position is visible as lines of pits on the head. Electric eels use their high frequency-sensitive tuberous receptors, distributed in patches over the body, for hunting other knifefish.
Electric eels have three pairs of electric organs, arranged longitudinally: the main organ, Hunter's organ, and Sachs' organ. These organs give electric eels the ability to generate two types of electric organ discharges: low voltage and high voltage. The organs are made of electrocytes, modified from muscle cells. Like muscle cells, the electric eel's electrocytes contain the proteins actin and desmin, but where muscle cell proteins form a dense structure of parallel fibrils, in electrocytes they form a loose network. Five different forms of desmin occur in electrocytes, compared to two or three in muscle, but its function in electrocytes remained unknown as of 2017.
Potassium channel proteins involved in electric organ discharge, including KCNA1, KCNH6, and KCNJ12, are distributed differently among the three electric organs: most such proteins are most abundant in the main organ and least abundant in Sachs's organ, but KCNH6 is most abundant in Sachs's organ. The main organ and Hunter's organ are rich in the protein calmodulin, involved in controlling calcium ion levels. Calmodulin and calcium help to regulate the voltage-gated sodium channels that create the electrical discharge. These organs are also rich in sodium potassium ATPase, an ion pump used to create a potential difference across cell membranes.
The maximum discharge from the main organ is at least 600 volts, making electric eels the most powerful of all electric fishes. Freshwater fishes like the electric eel require a high voltage to give a strong shock because freshwater has high resistance; powerful marine electric fishes like the torpedo ray give a shock at much lower voltage but a far higher current. The electric eel produces its strong discharge extremely rapidly, at a rate of as much as 500 Hertz, meaning that each shock lasts only about two milliseconds. To generate a high voltage, an electric eel stacks some 6,000 electrocytes in series (longitudinally) in its main organ; the organ contains some 35 such stacks in parallel, on each side of the body. The ability to produce high-voltage, high-frequency pulses in addition enables the electric eel to electrolocate rapidly moving prey. The total electric current delivered during each pulse can reach about 1 ampere.
It remains unclear why electric eels have three electric organs but basically produce two types of discharge, to electrolocate or to stun. In 2021, Jun Xu and colleagues stated that Hunter's organ produces a third type of discharge at a middle voltage of 38.5 to 56.5 volts. Their measurements indicate that this is produced just once, for less than 2 milliseconds, after the low-voltage discharge of Sachs's organ and before the high-voltage discharge of the main organ. They believed that this is insufficient to stimulate a response from the prey, so they suggested it may have the function of co-ordination within the electric eel's body, perhaps by balancing the electrical charge, but state that more research is needed.
When an electric eel identifies prey, its brain sends a nerve signal to the electric organ; the nerve cells involved release the neurotransmitter chemical acetylcholine to trigger an electric organ discharge. This opens ion channels, allowing sodium to flow into the electrocytes, reversing the polarity momentarily. The discharge is terminated by an outflow of potassium ions through a separate set of ion channels. By causing a sudden difference in electric potential, it generates an electric current in a manner similar to a battery, in which cells are stacked to produce a desired total voltage output. It has been suggested that Sachs' organ is used for electrolocation; its discharge is of nearly 10 volts at a frequency of around 25 Hz. The main organ, supported by Hunter's organ in some way, is used to stun prey or to deter predators; it can emit signals at rates of several hundred hertz. Electric eels can concentrate the discharge to stun prey more effectively by curling up and making contact with the prey at two points along the body. It has also been suggested that electric eels can control their prey's nervous systems and muscles via electrical pulses, keeping prey from escaping, or forcing it to move so they can locate it, but this has been disputed. In self-defence, electric eels have been observed to leap from the water to deliver electric shocks to animals that might pose a threat. The shocks from leaping electric eels are powerful enough to drive away animals as large as horses.
## Life cycle
Electric eels reproduce during the dry season, from September to December. During this time, male-female pairs are seen in small pools left behind after water levels drop. The male makes a nest using his saliva and the female deposits around 1,200 eggs for fertilisation. Spawn hatch seven days later and mothers keep depositing eggs periodically throughout the breeding season, making them fractional spawners. When they reach 15 mm (0.59 in), the hatched larvae consume any leftover eggs, and after they reach 9 cm (3.5 in) they begin to eat other foods. Electric eels are sexually dimorphic, males becoming reproductively active at 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) in length and growing larger than females; females start to reproduce at a body length of around 70 cm (2 ft 4 in). The adults provide prolonged parental care lasting four months. E. electricus and E. voltai, the two upland species which live in fast-flowing rivers, appear to make less use of parental care. The male provides protection for both the young and the nest. Captive specimens have sometimes lived for over 20 years.
As the fish grow, they continually add more vertebrae to their spinal column. The main organ is the first electric organ to develop, followed by Sachs' organ and then Hunter's organ. All the electric organs are differentiated by the time the body reaches a length of 23 cm (9.1 in). Electric eels are able to produce electrical discharges when they are as small as 7 cm (2.8 in).
## Interactions with humans
### Early research
The naturalists Bertrand Bajon, a French military surgeon in French Guiana, and the Jesuit Ramón M. Termeyer [pl] in the River Plate basin, conducted early experiments on the numbing discharges of electric eels in the 1760s. In 1775, the "torpedo" (the electric ray) was studied by John Walsh; both fish were dissected by the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter. Hunter informed the Royal Society that "Gymnotus Electricus [...] appears very much like an eel [...] but it has none of the specific properties of that fish." He observed that there were "two pair of these [electric] organs, a larger [the main organ] and a smaller [Hunter's organ]; one being placed on each side", and that they occupied "perhaps [...] more than one-third of the whole animal [by volume]". He described the structure of the organs (stacks of electrocytes) as "extremely simple and regular, consisting of two parts; viz. flat partitions or septa, and cross divisions between them." He measured the electrocytes as 1⁄17 inch (1.5 mm) thick in the main organ, and 1⁄56 inch (0.45 mm) thick in Hunter's organ.
Also in 1775, the American physician and politician Hugh Williamson, who had studied with Hunter, presented a paper "Experiments and observations on the Gymnotus Electricus, or electric eel" at the Royal Society. He reported a series of experiments, such as "7. In order to discover whether the eel killed those fish by an emission of the same [electrical] fluid with which he affected my hand when I had touched him, I put my hand into the water, at some distance from the eel; another cat-fish was thrown into the water; the eel swam up to it ... [and] gave it a shock, by which it instantly turned up its belly, and continued motionless; at that very instant I felt such a sensation in the joints of my fingers as in experiment 4." and "12. Instead of putting my hand into the water, at a distance from the eel, as in the last experiment, I touched its tail, so as not to offend it, while my assistant touched its head more roughly; we both received a severe shock."
The studies by Williamson, Walsh, and Hunter appear to have influenced the thinking of Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta. Galvani founded electrophysiology, with research into how electricity makes a frog's leg twitch; Volta began electrochemistry, with his invention of the electric battery.
In 1800, the explorer Alexander von Humboldt joined a group of indigenous people who went fishing with horses, some thirty of which they chased into the water. The pounding of the horses' hooves, he noted, drove the fish, up to 5 feet (1.5 m) long out of the mud and prompted them to attack, rising out of the water and using their electricity to shock the horses. He saw two horses stunned by the shocks and then drowned. The electric eels, having given many shocks, "now require long rest and plenty of nourishment to replace the loss of galvanic power they have suffered", "swam timidly to the bank of the pond", and were easily caught using small harpoons on ropes. Humboldt recorded that the people did not eat the electric organs, and that they feared the fish so much that they would not fish for them in the usual way.
In 1839, the chemist Michael Faraday extensively tested the electrical properties of an electric eel imported from Surinam. For a span of four months, he measured the electrical impulses produced by the animal by pressing shaped copper paddles and saddles against the specimen. Through this method, he determined and quantified the direction and magnitude of electric current, and proved that the animal's impulses were electrical by observing sparks and deflections on a galvanometer. He observed the electric eel increasing the shock by coiling about its prey, the prey fish "representing a diameter" across the coil. He likened the quantity of electric charge released by the fish to "the electricity of a Leyden battery of fifteen jars, containing 23,000 cm<sup>2</sup> (3,500 sq in) of glass coated on both sides, charged to its highest degree".
The German zoologist Carl Sachs was sent to Latin America by the physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond, to study the electric eel; he took with him a galvanometer and electrodes to measure the fish's electric organ discharge, and used rubber gloves to enable him to catch the fish without being shocked, to the surprise of the local people. He published his research on the fish, including his discovery of what is now called Sachs' organ, in 1877.
### Artificial electrocytes
The large quantity of electrocytes available in the electric eel enabled biologists to study the voltage-gated sodium channel in molecular detail. The channel is an important mechanism, as it serves to trigger muscle contraction in many species, but it is hard to study in muscle as it is found in extremely small amounts. In 2008, Jian Xu and David Lavan designed artificial cells that would be able to replicate the electrical behaviour of electric eel electrocytes. The artificial electrocytes would use a calculated selection of conductors at nanoscopic scale. Such cells would use ion transport as electrocytes do, with a greater output power density, and converting energy more efficiently. They suggest that such artificial electrocytes could be developed as a power source for medical implants such as retinal prostheses and other microscopic devices. They comment that the work "has mapped out changes in the system level design of the electrocyte" that could increase both energy density and energy conversion efficiency. In 2009, they made synthetic protocells which can provide about a twentieth of the energy density of a lead–acid battery, and an energy conversion efficiency of 10%.
In 2016, Hao Sun and colleagues described a family of electric eel-mimicking devices that serve as high output voltage electrochemical capacitors. These are fabricated as flexible fibres that can be woven into textiles. Sun and colleagues suggest that the storage devices could serve as power sources for products such as electric watches or light-emitting diodes.
|
1,087,434 |
Porbeagle
| 1,173,744,052 |
Species of shark (Lamna nasus)
|
[
"Extant Miocene first appearances",
"Fish described in 1788",
"Fish of the Atlantic Ocean",
"Fish of the Pacific Ocean",
"Lamna",
"Species endangered by use as food",
"Taxa named by Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre"
] |
The porbeagle or porbeagle shark (Lamna nasus) is a species of mackerel shark in the family Lamnidae, distributed widely in the cold and temperate marine waters of the North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere. In the North Pacific, its ecological equivalent is the closely related salmon shark (L. ditropis). It typically reaches 2.5 m (8.2 ft) in length and a weight of 135 kg (298 lb); North Atlantic sharks grow larger than Southern Hemisphere sharks and differ in coloration and aspects of life history. Gray above and white below, the porbeagle has a very stout midsection that tapers towards the long, pointed snout and the narrow base of the tail. It has large pectoral and first dorsal fins, tiny pelvic, second dorsal, and anal fins, and a crescent-shaped caudal fin. The most distinctive features of this species are its three-cusped teeth, the white blotch at the aft base of its first dorsal fin, and the two pairs of lateral keels on its tail.
The porbeagle is an opportunistic hunter that preys mainly on bony fishes and cephalopods throughout the water column, including the bottom. Most commonly found over food-rich banks on the outer continental shelf, it makes occasional forays both close to shore and into the open ocean to a depth of 1,360 m (4,460 ft). It also conducts long-distance seasonal migrations, generally shifting between shallower and deeper water. The porbeagle is fast and highly active, with physiological adaptations that enable it to maintain a higher body temperature than the surrounding water. It can be solitary or gregarious, and has been known to perform seemingly playful behavior. This shark is aplacental viviparous with oophagy, developing embryos being retained within the mother's uterus and subsisting on non-viable eggs. Females typically bear four pups every year.
Only a few shark attacks of uncertain provenance have been attributed to the porbeagle. It is well regarded as a game fish by recreational anglers. The meat and fins of the porbeagle are highly valued, which has led to a long history of intense human exploitation. However, this species cannot sustain heavy fishing pressure due to its low reproductive capacity. Direct commercial fishing for the porbeagle, principally by Norwegian longliners, led to stock collapses in the eastern North Atlantic in the 1950s, and the western North Atlantic in the 1960s. The porbeagle continues to be caught throughout its range, both intentionally and as bycatch, with varying degrees of monitoring and management. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed the porbeagle as vulnerable worldwide, and as either endangered or critically endangered in different parts of its northern range.
## Taxonomy
The etymology of the word "porbeagle" is obscure. A common suggestion is that it combines "porpoise" and "beagle", referencing this shark's shape and tenacious hunting habits. Another is that it is derived from the Cornish porth, meaning "harbor", and bugel, meaning "shepherd". The Oxford English Dictionary states that the word was either borrowed from Cornish or formed from a Cornish first element with the English "beagle". The Dictionary also notes that no evidence exists for a connection to the French porc, meaning "swine", or to porpoise, as has been proposed. Other common names for the porbeagle include Atlantic mackerel shark, Beaumaris shark, bottle-nosed shark, and blue dog.
The first scientific description of the porbeagle was authored by French naturalist Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre in the 1788 Tableau encyclopédique et methodique des trois règnes de la nature, and based on an earlier 1769 account by Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant. Bonnaterre named the shark Squalus nasus, the specific epithet nasus being Latin for "nose". In 1816, French naturalist Georges Cuvier placed the porbeagle into its own subgenus, Lamna, which later authors elevated to the rank of full genus.
## Phylogeny and evolution
Several phylogenetic studies, based on morphological characters and mitochondrial DNA sequences, have established the sister species relationship between the porbeagle and the salmon shark (L. ditropis), which occurs in place of it in the North Pacific. The genus Lamna evolved 65–45 Mya. When its two extant species diverged from each other is uncertain, though the precipitating event was likely the formation of the ice cap over the Arctic Ocean, which would have isolated sharks in the North Pacific from those in the North Atlantic.
Fossilized porbeagle remains are known from Late Miocene epoch (about 7.2 Mya) deposits in Belgium and the Netherlands, Pliocene epoch (5.3–2.6 Mya) deposits in Belgium, Spain, and Chile, and Pleistocene epoch (2.6 Mya to 12,000 BP) deposits in the Netherlands. However, Lamna teeth that closely resemble those of the porbeagle have been found in the La Meseta Formation on Seymour Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, which date to the middle to late Eocene epoch (50–34 Mya). Much taxonomic confusion remains regarding Lamna in the fossil record due to the high degree of variability in adult tooth morphology within species.
## Distribution and habitat
The porbeagle has an almost global amphitemperate distribution, i.e. it is absent from the tropics; in the North Pacific, its niche is assumed by the salmon shark. It is found mostly within 30–70°N and 30–50°S latitudes. In the North Atlantic, the northern limit of its range extends from the Newfoundland Grand Banks off Canada, through southern Greenland, to Scandinavia and Russia; the southern limit of its range extends from New Jersey and Bermuda, through the Azores and Madeira, to Morocco. It is found in the Mediterranean Sea, but not the Black Sea. Normally, North Atlantic sharks only stray as far south as South Carolina and the Gulf of Guinea, but pregnant females from the western North Atlantic population are known to range into the Sargasso Sea, almost as far as Hispaniola, to give birth. In the Southern Hemisphere, the porbeagle apparently occupies a continuous band bound in the south by the Antarctic Convergence, and extending as far north as Chile and Brazil, the Western Cape province of South Africa, Australia to southern Western Australia and southern Queensland, and New Zealand. In New Zealand it is most common south of the Cook Strait. The porbeagle is thought to have colonized the Southern Hemisphere during the Quaternary glaciation (beginning around 2.6 Mya), when the tropical climate zone was much narrower than it is today.
Offshore fishing banks are the favored habitat of the porbeagle, though it can be found from a depth of 1,360 m (4,460 ft) in oceanic basins to littoral (close to shore) waters less than 1 m (3.3 ft) deep, over the entire water column. A single, anomalous record was made of a juvenile in brackish water in Mar Chiquita in Argentina. A tracking study off the British Isles has found substantial variation in the short-term movements of this species, both between and within individuals. Vertical movements tended to increase with water depth and corresponding temperature stratification; in shallow, unstratified waters, sharks either showed no pattern in changing depth or made reverse diel movements, spending the day in shallow water and descending at night. In deeper, stratified waters, the sharks performed a regular diel migration, spending the day below the thermocline and rising towards the surface at night. The porbeagle has been reported across a temperature range of 1 to 23 °C (34 to 73 °F), with most records between 8 and 20 °C (46 and 68 °F). In a study that included 420 porbeagles caught in the northwest Atlantic off Canada, all were in water below 13 °C (55 °F) and the majority between 5 and 10 °C (41 and 50 °F).
Porbeagle populations in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres appear to be completely separate. Two stocks are in the North Atlantic, east and west, that seldom mix; only one individual is known to have crossed the Atlantic, covering 4,260 km (2,650 mi) from Ireland to Canada. Several discrete stocks are likely present in the Southern Hemisphere, as well. This species segregates by size and sex in the North Atlantic, and at least by size in the South Pacific. For example, males outnumber females 2:1 off Spain, females are 30% more numerous than males off Scotland, and immature males are predominant in the Bristol Channel. Older, larger sharks may frequent higher latitudes than younger individuals.
Seasonal migrations have been observed in porbeagles from both hemispheres. In the western North Atlantic, much of the population spends the spring in the deep waters of the Nova Scotia continental shelf, and migrates north a distance of 500–1,000 km (310–620 mi) to spend late summer and fall in the shallow waters of the Newfoundland Grand Banks and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In December, large, mature females migrate south over 2,000 km (1,200 mi) into the Sargasso Sea for pupping, keeping deeper than 600 m (2,000 ft) during the day and 200 m (660 ft) at night so as to stay in the cooler waters beneath the Gulf Stream. In the eastern North Atlantic, porbeagles are believed to spend spring and summer in shallow continental shelf waters, and disperse northwards to overwinter in deeper waters offshore. Migrating sharks may travel upwards of 2,300 km (1,400 mi), though once they reach their destination they tend to remain within a relatively localized area. In the South Pacific, the population shifts north past 30°S latitude into subtropical waters in winter and spring, and retreats south past 35°S latitude in summer, when sharks are frequently sighted off subantarctic islands.
## Description
The porbeagle is a very stout-bodied shark with a fusiform (spindle-like) shape. The long, conical snout tapers to a sharp point, and is supported by enlarged, highly calcified rostral cartilages. The eyes are large and black, without nictitating membranes (protective third eyelids). The small, S-shaped nostrils are positioned in front of and below the level of the eyes. The mouth is large and strongly curved, with moderately protrusible jaws. North Atlantic sharks have 28–29 upper tooth rows and 26–27 lower tooth rows, while Southern Hemisphere sharks have 30–31 upper tooth rows and 27–29 lower tooth rows. Each tooth has a strongly arched base and a nearly straight, awl-like central cusp, which is flanked by a pair of smaller cusplets in all but the smallest individuals. The five pairs of gill slits are long and precede the pectoral fin bases.
The pectoral fins are long and narrow. The first dorsal fin is large and high, with a rounded apex, and originating just behind the pectoral fin bases. The pelvic fins are much smaller than the first dorsal fin. The second dorsal and anal fins are smaller still, and placed about even with each other on narrow bases that allow pivoting from side to side. The sides of the caudal peduncle are expanded into prominent lateral keels. A second, shorter pair of keels are present below the main keels. The caudal fin is large and crescent-shaped, with the lower lobe almost as long as the upper; both dorsal and ventral depressions (precaudal pits) are at the caudal fin base, and a deep ventral notch is near the tip of the upper caudal fin lobe. The skin is soft and covered by tiny, flattened dermal denticles (scales), lending a velvety texture. Each denticle has three horizontal ridges that lead to teeth on the posterior margin.
The dorsal coloration is a medium to dark gray or slate, extending to the bases of the pectoral fins. The underside is white; adults in the Southern Hemisphere often have dark coloring under the head and dusky blotches scattered over the belly. The free rear tip of the first dorsal fin is abruptly light gray or white, a feature unique to this species. The porbeagle may attain a length of 3.7 m (12 ft), though this is uncertain and may have resulted from confusion with other mackerel shark species. A more typical length is 2.5 m (8.2 ft). Female sharks grow larger than males in the North Atlantic, with maximum confirmed fork lengths (snout tip to caudal fin fork) of 2.5 m (8.2 ft) for males and 3.0 m (9.8 ft) for females. Southern Hemisphere sharks are smaller and the two sexes are similar in size, with males and females attaining fork lengths of 2.0 m (6.6 ft) and 2.1 m (6.9 ft) respectively. Most porbeagles weigh no more than 135 kg (298 lb), with the record being a 230 kg (510 lb) individual caught off Caithness, Scotland, in 1993.
## Biology and ecology
Fast and energetic, the porbeagle can be found singly or in groups. Its fusiform body, narrow caudal peduncle with lateral keels, and crescent-shaped tail are adaptations for efficiently sustaining speed, which have also been independently evolved by tunas, billfishes, and several other groups of active fishes. The salmon shark and it are the thickest-bodied members of their family (length-depth ratio approaching 4.5), and consequently have the stiffest swimming style; they oscillate their tails while holding their bodies mostly rigid, which confers propulsive power with high energy efficiency, but at the cost of maneuverability. The large gill surface area of the porbeagle allows more oxygen to be delivered to its tissues. It also has a short band of aerobic "red muscle" along each side, which can contract independently of the regular "white muscle" at a lower energy cost, enhancing the shark's stamina.
Porbeagles are among the few fishes that exhibit apparent play behavior. Reports, principally off the Cornish coast, have this species rolling and repeatedly wrapping themselves in long kelp fronds near the surface; this activity may have an exploratory or self-stimulatory purpose, though alternately, the sharks may be attempting to feed on small kelp organisms or scrape off parasites. In addition, porbeagles within a group have been seen chasing each other, and they will reportedly "play with anything floating on the water"; individuals have been observed prodding, tossing, or biting natural and artificial objects, including pieces of driftwood and balloon floats used by anglers.
Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) and killer whales (Orcinus orca) are plausible, albeit undocumented, predators of the porbeagle. In one record, a small individual caught off Argentina bore bite marks from a copper shark (Carcharhinus brachyurus) or similar species, but whether the porbeagle was the target of attempted predation or if the two were simply involved in interspecific aggression is uncertain. Known parasites of this species include the tapeworms Dinobothrium septaria and Hepatoxylon trichiuri, and the copepods Dinemoura producta, Laminifera doello-juradoi, and Pandarus floridanus. Natural annual mortality is low, estimated to be 10% for juveniles, 15% for adult males, and 20% for adult females in the western North Atlantic.
### Feeding
The porbeagle is an active predator that predominantly ingests small to medium-sized bony fishes. It chases down pelagic fishes such as lancet fish, mackerel, pilchards, herring, and sauries, and forages near the bottom for groundfishes such as cusk, haddock, redfish (i.e., Sebastes, Lutjanus, Trachichthyidae, and Berycidae), cod, hake, icefish, dories, sand lances, lumpsuckers, and flatfish. Cephalopods, particularly squid, also form an important component of its diet, while smaller sharks such as spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) and tope sharks (Galeorhinus galeus) are rarely taken. Examinations of porbeagle stomach contents have also found small shelled molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms, and other invertebrates, which were likely ingested incidentally, as well as inedible debris such as small stones, feathers, and garbage fragments.
In the western North Atlantic, porbeagles feed mainly on pelagic fishes and squid in spring, and on groundfishes in the fall; this pattern corresponds to the spring-fall migration of these sharks from deeper to shallower waters, and the most available prey types in those respective habitats. Therefore, the porbeagle seems to be an opportunistic predator without strong diet specificity. During spring and summer in the Celtic Sea and on the outer Nova Scotian Shelf, porbeagles congregate at tidally induced thermal fronts to feed on fish that have been drawn by high concentrations of zooplankton. Hunting porbeagles regularly dive from the surface all the way to the bottom, cycling back every few hours; this vertical movement may aid in the detection of olfactory cues. A one-year-old porbeagle 1 m (3.3 ft) long, was reported to have had fed on krill and polychaete worms.
### Life history
The timing of the porbeagle's reproductive cycle is unusual in that it is largely similar in both hemispheres, rather than being offset by six months. This suggests that its reproduction is not significantly affected by temperature or day length, perhaps owing to its endothermic physiology. Mating takes place mainly between September and November, though females with fresh mating scars have been reported as late as January off the Shetland Islands. The male bites at the female's pectoral fins, gill region, and flanks while courting and to hold on for copulation. Two mating grounds are known for western North Atlantic porbeagles, one off Newfoundland and the other on Georges Bank in the Gulf of Maine. Adult females have a single functional ovary, on the right, and two functional uteri. They probably reproduce every year. The litter size is typically four, with two embryos oriented in opposing directions sharing each uterus; on rare occasions, a litter may contain as few as one or as many as five pups. The gestation period is 8–9 months.
Like other members of its family, the porbeagle is aplacental viviparous with oophagy, i.e. the main source of embryonic nutrition are unfertilized eggs. During the first half of pregnancy, the mother ovulates enormous numbers of tiny ova, packed into capsules up to 7.5 cm (3.0 in) long, into her uteri. A newly conceived embryo is sustained by a yolk sac and emerges from its egg capsule at 3.2–4.2 cm (1.3–1.7 in) long. At this time, the embryo has well-developed external gills and a spiral valve intestine. When the embryo is 4.2–9.2 cm (1.7–3.6 in) long, it has resorbed its external gills and most of its yolk sac, but cannot yet feed, as it lacks the means to open egg capsules. At a length of 10–12 cm (3.9–4.7 in), the embryo grows two massive, recurved "fangs" in the lower jaw for tearing open capsules, as well as two much smaller teeth in the upper jaw. It begins to feed voraciously on yolk, acquiring an enormously distended stomach; to accommodate this, the muscles on the belly split down the middle and the skin on the abdomen stretches greatly.
At 20–21 cm (7.9–8.3 in) long, the embryo appears pink because it lacks pigment except in its eyes, and its head and gill regions are laterally enlarged and gelatinous. The yolk stomach can comprise up to 81% of the embryo's total weight when it is 30–42 cm (12–17 in) long. The embryo gains pigment and sheds its fangs at a length of 34–38 cm (13–15 in). Around this time, the mother stops producing ova. From then on, the embryo relies mainly on the yolk stored in its stomach, though it may continue to feed on remaining eggs by squishing the capsules between its jaws or swallowing them whole. It begins to transfer its energy stores from its stomach to its liver, causing the former to shrink and the latter to grow exponentially. The embryo is essentially fully pigmented by a length of 40 cm (16 in), and has assumed its newborn appearance by a length of 58 cm (23 in). By then, its stomach has shrunk enough for the abdominal muscles to close, leaving what has been termed an "umbilical scar" or "yolk sac scar" (neither is accurate). Several series of single-cusped teeth grow in both jaws, though they lie flat and remain nonfunctional until birth.
Newborn porbeagles measure 58–67 cm (23–26 in) long and do not exceed 5 kg (11 lb). Up to a tenth of the weight is made up of the liver, though some yolk also remains in its stomach and continues to sustain the pup until it learns to feed. The overall embryonic growth rate is 7–8 cm (2.8–3.1 in) per month. Sometimes, one pup in a uterus is much smaller than the other, but otherwise normal. These "runts" may result from a dominant, forward-facing embryo eating most of the eggs as they arrive, and/or the mother being unable to provide an adequate egg supply for all her offspring. Birthing occurs from April to September, peaking in April and May (spring-summer) for North Atlantic sharks and June and July (winter) for Southern Hemisphere sharks. In the western North Atlantic, birth occurs well offshore in the Sargasso Sea at depths around 500 m (1,600 ft).
Both sexes grow at similar rates until the onset of maturation, with females maturing later and at a larger size than males. In the first four years of life, the annual growth rate is 16–20 cm (6.3–7.9 in) and similar in both hemispheres; thereafter, sharks from the western South Pacific begin to grow slower than those from the North Atlantic. In the North Atlantic, males mature at a fork length of 1.6–1.8 m (5.2–5.9 ft) and an age of 6–11 years, and females at a fork length of 2.0–2.2 m (6.6–7.2 ft) and an age of 12–18 years. In the Southwest Pacific, males mature at a fork length of 1.4–1.5 m (4.6–4.9 ft) and an age of 8–11 years, and females at a fork length of 1.7–1.8 m (5.6–5.9 ft) and an age of 15–18 years. The oldest porbeagle on record was 26 years of age and measured 2.5 m (8.2 ft) long. The maximum lifespan of this species appears to be 30–40 years in the Atlantic, but could be as much as 65 years in the South Pacific.
### Thermoregulation
Like other members of its family, the porbeagle is endothermic; metabolic heat generated by its red muscles is conserved within the body by specialized systems of blood vessels called retia mirabilia (Latin for "wonderful nets"; singular rete mirabile), that act as highly efficient countercurrent heat exchangers. The porbeagle has several rete mirabile systems: the orbital retia accessing its brain and eyes, the lateral cutaneous retia accessing its swimming muscles, the suprahepatic rete accessing its viscera, and the kidney rete.
Among sharks, the porbeagle's capacity for elevating body temperature is second only to the salmon shark's. Its red muscles are located deep within the body, adjacent to the spine, and its lateral rete is composed of over 4,000 small arteries arranged in bands. It has one of the highest core temperatures within its family, 8–10 °C (14–18 °F) warmer than that of the surrounding water. Being warm-bodied may allow this shark to maintain higher cruising speeds, hunt in deep water for extended periods of time, and/or enter higher latitudes during winter to exploit food resources not available to other sharks. The orbital retia of the porbeagle can raise the temperature of its brain and eyes by 3–6 °C (5–11 °F), and likely serve to buffer those sensitive organs against the large temperature shifts that accompany changes in depth; potential benefits of this include increased visual acuity and reduced response times.
## Human interactions
The porbeagle has very rarely, if ever, bitten swimmers or boats. As of 2009, the International Shark Attack File attributes three bites to this species, one provoked and none fatal, and two on boats. One older anecdote tells of a fisherman who provoked a porbeagle into leaping from the water and tearing his clothes. In another account of a swimmer bitten by a "mackerel shark", the species responsible could easily have been a misidentified shortfin mako or great white shark. Recently in the North Sea, adult porbeagles have been filmed charging at divers working on oil platforms, sometimes even brushing lightly against them without doing harm. These rushes do not appear to have predatory intent and may instead be motivated by curiosity or defense.
On 14 May 2018, a porbeagle shark was reported to have bitten a fisherman off the coast of Cornwall, United Kingdom, as it was being returned to the sea.
At one time, porbeagles were regarded as nuisances by some commercial fishers because they damaged lighter fishing gear intended for smaller species and took hooked fish from lines. This shark is highly valued as a game fish by sport fishers in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It fights strongly on hook-and-line, but does not usually jump into the air like the related shortfin mako shark. Novice anglers often mistake this shark for the mako, which has earned it the affectionate moniker "fako" in New England. The International Game Fish Association keeps records on the porbeagle.
### Commercial fishing
Prized for its meat and fins, the porbeagle has long been under heavy fishing pressure. The meat is sold fresh, frozen, or dried and salted, and ranks among the most valuable of any shark: in 1997 and 1998, it had a wholesale price of 5–7 eur/kg, four times that of the blue shark (Prionace glauca). Most of the demand comes from Europe, though the United States and Japan also import this species. The fins are shipped to East Asia for use in shark fin soup. The remainder of the shark may also be used for production of leather, liver oil, and fishmeal. International trade in the porbeagle appears to be significant, but remains unquantified, as shark products tend not to be reported to the species level, and many consist of a mix of various species. This shark is caught most readily on longlines, but is also susceptible to gillnets, driftnets, trawls, and handlines. It is valuable enough to be generally retained when caught as bycatch; if storage space cannot be spared, it may be finned and the carcass discarded.
Intensive fishing for the porbeagle dates back the 1930s, when Norway and to a lesser extent Denmark began operating longline vessels in the Northeast Atlantic. The Norwegian annual catch rose from 279 tons in 1926 to 3,884 tons in 1933, and peaked at around 6,000 tons in 1947, with the resumption of fishing after World War II. Soon after, the stock collapsed; Norwegian annual catches declined steadily to 1,200–1,900 tons from 1953 to 1960, 160–300 tons in the early 1970s, and 10–40 tons in the late 1980s to early 1990s. Similarly, Danish annual catches fell from 1,500 tons in the early 1950s to under 100 tons in the 1990s. France and Spain began to target porbeagles in the Northeast Atlantic in the 1970s. French fishers operate mainly in the Celtic Sea and the Bay of Biscay, and saw a decline from an annual catch over 1,000 tons in 1979 to 300–400 tons in the late 1990s. Catches by Spanish fishers were highly variable, ranging from negligible to over 4,000 tons per year, which may reflect shifts of fishing effort into historically less-exploited waters. Since 2011, all fishing for the porbeagle has been illegal in waters of the European Union, and EU-registered vessels are also prohibited from fishing for the species in international waters. In 2012, similar restriction came into effect in Norway.
As porbeagles had become scarce in the Northeast Atlantic, in the 1960s, the Norwegian fishing fleet moved west to the waters off New England and Newfoundland. A few years later, they were joined by longline vessels from the Faroe Islands. Norwegian annual catches rose from 1,900 tons in 1961 to over 9,000 tons in 1965; the catch was largely exported to Italy, where porbeagle (smeriglio) is an extremely popular food fish. Again, the stock collapsed, this time in only six years; by 1970, Norwegian catches had fallen under 1,000 tons per year, and Faroese catches observed a similar trend. With the population decimated, most fishers moved on or switched to other species. Porbeagle numbers gradually recovered in the ensuing 25 years, to about 30% of pre-exploitation levels. In 1995, Canada established an Exclusive Economic Zone and became the primary fisher of porbeagles in the region. Between 1994 and 1998, Canadian fishing vessels landed 1,000–2,000 tons per year, which depleted the population to 11–17% of pre-exploitation levels by 2000. Strict regulations and greatly reduced fishing quotas introduced in 2000 have since begun to reverse the stock decline, though recovery of the stock is projected to take decades due to the low productivity of the species. Some evidence shows that incidental artificial selection caused by heavy fishing has led to a compensatory growth response, i.e. faster growth and earlier maturation.
In the Southern Hemisphere, commercial fishing for the porbeagle is mostly undocumented. Substantial numbers are caught incidentally by pelagic longline fisheries targeting more valuable species such as southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii), swordfish (Xiphias gladius), and Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides), including vessels operated by Japan, Uruguay, Argentina, South Africa, and New Zealand. Porbeagle catches by the Uruguayan tuna pelagic longline fishery peaked in 1984 with 150 tons landed. Records of catch per unit effort for this fishery have shown a 90% decline in porbeagle landings from 1988 to 1998, though whether this reflects a real population decline or changing fishing habits is uncertain. New Zealand has reported annual catches of 150–300 tons, mostly of immature individuals, from 1998 to 2003.
## Conservation
The rapid collapse of porbeagle stocks on both sides of the North Atlantic is often cited as archetypal of the "boom and bust" pattern of most shark fisheries. Factors including a small litter size, long maturation time, and the capture of multiple age classes all contribute to this shark's susceptibility to overfishing. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed the porbeagle globally as vulnerable, endangered in the western North Atlantic (including the Baltic), and critically endangered in the eastern North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea.
The porbeagle is listed on Annex 1 (Highly Migratory Species) of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and on Annex 1 of the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS; also known as the Bonn Convention) Migratory Shark Memorandum of Understanding. This species benefits from bans on shark finning instituted by several nations and supranational entities, including Canada, the United States, Brazil, Australia, the European Union, and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. Although the Animals Committee of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) recommended additional conservation actions for the porbeagle, CITES rejected proposals to list the species in 2008 and again in 2010. In March 2013, the porbeagle was listed on Appendix II of CITES, allowing for increased regulation in the international trade of this species.
In March 2015, The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) responded to a court order to compile information as to whether the shark will be listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
### Southern Hemisphere
The only regulation of porbeagle catches in the Southern Hemisphere is New Zealand's total allowable catch of 249 tons per year, instituted in 2004. In June 2018 the New Zealand Department of Conservation classified the porbeagle as "Not Threatened" with the qualifier "Threatened Overseas" under the New Zealand Threat Classification System.
### Eastern North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea
In the eastern North Atlantic, porbeagle fishing has been illegal in waters of the European Union since 2011. From 1985 and until the EU ban, the Faroe Islands and Norway (which are not members of the EU) were allowed annual quotas of 200 tons and 125 tons, respectively, from European Community waters. Although these quotas were lower than the originals set in 1982 (500 tons for Norway and 300 tons for the Faroe Islands), they were still consistently higher than the yearly total porbeagle catch in the region, thus had no practical effect. The species is included on the red list of Norway and it has been protected in their national waters since 2012. Any porbeagle caught in EU or Norwegian waters by accident must be released.
In the Mediterranean Sea, the porbeagle is on the verge of extinction, with a population decline over 99.99% since the mid-20th century. Its range has contracted to the waters around the Italian Peninsula, where a nursery area may exist. Only a few dozen specimens have been recorded in the past few decades, from scientific surveys, swordfish fishery bycatch, and sport fishers. In 1995, it was included in Annex III ("species whose exploitation is regulated") of the Barcelona Convention Protocol on protected areas and biodiversity in the Mediterranean, which has not been ratified. In 1997, it was listed on Appendix III of the Bern Convention (the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats). However, these listings have yet to result in the implementation of new management plans, despite the recognized need for urgent action.
The European Union prohibits EU vessels from fishing for, retaining, boarding, transhipping, or landing porbeagle sharks in all waters since January 2011. It is subject to a zero total allowable catch in EU waters by any vessel.
### Western North Atlantic
The western North Atlantic porbeagle population has a more positive prospect than in the eastern North Atlantic. Fishing in Canadian waters was originally regulated by the 1995 Fisheries Management Plan for pelagic sharks in Atlantic Canada, which established an annual quota of 1,500 tons, restricted the time, place, and gear types allowed for commercial fishing, and set limits for bycatch and recreational fishing. In 2000–2001, Fisheries and Oceans Canada prepared a detailed population model and concluded that a quota of 200–250 tons would allow for population growth, resulting in a quota of 250 tons being adopted for the period of 2002–2007. The mating grounds off Newfoundland were also closed to shark fishing. In 2004, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada listed the porbeagle as endangered, largely on the basis of the low population abundance (\<25% of original numbers). Canada decided not to list the species under its Species At Risk Act, but further reduced the total fishing quota to 185 tons. In US waters, the 1993 Fishery Management Plan for Sharks of the Atlantic Ocean sets an annual quota of 92 tons (after processing) for the porbeagle. In 2006, this species was listed as a species of concern by the NMFS, meaning that it merits conservation concern, but data are insufficient for inclusion on the US Endangered Species Act.
|
40,598,189 |
7th Army (Kingdom of Yugoslavia)
| 1,153,745,169 |
WWII Royal Yugoslav Army formation
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[
"Field armies of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1941",
"Military units and formations established in 1941",
"Military units and formations of Yugoslavia in World War II"
] |
The 7th Army was a Royal Yugoslav Army formation raised prior to the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, during World War II. It consisted of two divisions, two brigade-strength mountain detachments, and a brigade-strength infantry detachment. It formed part of the 1st Army Group, and was responsible for the defence of Yugoslavia's north-western frontier with Italy and Germany. Like all Yugoslav formations at the time, the 7th Army had serious deficiencies in both mobility and firepower.
Despite concerns over a possible Axis invasion, orders for the general mobilisation of the Royal Yugoslav Army were not issued by the government until 3 April 1941, not to provoke Germany any further following the military coup d'état and precipitate war. When the invasion commenced on 6 April, the 7th Army was only partially mobilised, and on the first day the Germans seized several mountain passes and bridges over the Drava river. Slovene politicians formed a National Council of Slovenia with the intent of separating from Yugoslavia, and on the right flank of the 7th Army, the 4th Army was seriously weakened by Croat fifth column activities within its major units and higher headquarters from the outset. This alarmed the 7th Army commander, Divizijski đeneral Dušan Trifunović, but he was not permitted to withdraw from the border areas until the night of 7/8 April, and this was followed by the German capture of Maribor on 8 April as they continued to expand their bridgeheads, supported by the Luftwaffe.
On 10 April, the German 14th Panzer Division captured Zagreb. Italian offensive operations began the following day, with thrusts towards Ljubljana and down the Adriatic coast that resulted in the capture of more than 30,000 Yugoslav troops near Delnice. When fifth column supporters of the Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement arrested the headquarters staff of the 7th Army later that day, the formation effectively ceased to exist. On 12 April, the 14th Panzer Division linked up with the Italians near the Adriatic coast, encircling the remnants of the 7th Army, which offered no further resistance. Ceasefires were implemented from 15 April, and the Yugoslav Supreme Command surrendered unconditionally effective on 18 April.
## Background
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created with the merger of Serbia, Montenegro and the South Slav-inhabited areas of Austria-Hungary on 1 December 1918, in the immediate aftermath of World War I. The Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was established to defend the new state. It was formed around the nucleus of the victorious Royal Serbian Army, as well as armed formations raised in regions formerly controlled by Austria-Hungary. Many former Austro-Hungarian officers and soldiers became members of the new army. From the beginning, much like other aspects of public life in the new kingdom, the army was dominated by ethnic Serbs, who saw it as a means by which to secure Serb political hegemony.
The army's development was hampered by the kingdom's poor economy, and this continued during the 1920s. In 1929, King Alexander changed the name of the country to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, at which time the army was renamed the Royal Yugoslav Army (Serbo-Croatian Latin: Vojska Kraljevine Jugoslavije, VKJ). The army budget remained tight, and as tensions rose across Europe during the 1930s, it became difficult to secure weapons and munitions from other countries. Consequently, at the time World War II broke out in September 1939, the VKJ had several serious weaknesses, which included reliance on draught animals for transport, and the large size of its formations. Infantry divisions had a wartime strength of 26,000–27,000 men, as compared to contemporary British infantry divisions of half that strength. These characteristics resulted in slow, unwieldy formations, and the inadequate supply of arms and munitions meant that even the very large Yugoslav formations had low firepower. Generals better suited to the trench warfare of World War I were combined with an army that was neither equipped nor trained to resist the fast-moving combined arms approach used by the Germans in their invasions of Poland and France.
The weaknesses of the VKJ in strategy, structure, equipment, mobility and supply were exacerbated by serious ethnic disunity within Yugoslavia, resulting from two decades of Serb hegemony and the attendant lack of political legitimacy achieved by the central government. Attempts to address the disunity came too late to ensure that the VKJ was a cohesive force. Fifth column activity was also a serious concern, not only from the Croatian fascist Ustaše and the ethnic German minorities but also potentially from the pro-Bulgarian Macedonians and the Albanian population of Kosovo.
## Formation
Yugoslav war plans foresaw the headquarters of the 7th Army and its army-level supporting units being created at the time of mobilisation. Unlike the other six Yugoslav armies, the 7th Army did not have a corresponding army district during peacetime, and would be allocated divisions when it was formed. Zagreb, Karlovac, Trebnje and Velike Lašče were key centres for the mobilisation and concentration of the 7th Army due to their good rail infrastructure.
Prior to the invasion, significant fortifications known as the Rupnik Line were constructed along the Italian and German borders, within what became the 7th Army's area of operations. Along the frontier with Italy, mutually supporting bunkers were established on forward slopes of the mountain ranges behind a belt of obstacles. The main positions followed a line from Mount Blegoš south-south-east through Hlavče Njive, Žirovski Vrh, Vrh Svetih Treh Kraljev, Zaplana, Mount Slivnica, Grahovo, and Lož to Petičak. To the north of Mount Blegoš, positions ran behind the lines of the Selška Sora and Sava Bohinjka rivers. Fortifications were also established in the mountainous Gorski kotar region between Karlovac and Fiume on the upper Adriatic coast. Along the German border, the Yugoslavs concentrated on preparing to block the passes through the Karawank and Kamnik Alps, and built bunkers behind obstacles along the routes leading south from the border towards Dravograd, Maribor and Ptuj. Preparations were also made to block routes north of the Drava and along the southern banks of the Mura and Drava. These fortifications were to be manned by border guard units, and were not the responsibility of the 7th Army.
## Composition
The 7th Army was commanded by Divizijski đeneral Dušan Trifunović, and his chief of staff was Pukovnik Vladimir Petrović. The 7th Army consisted of:
- 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski
- 38th Infantry Division Dravska
- Mountain Detachment Triglavski (brigade-strength)
- Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski (brigade-strength)
- Detachment Lika (infantry, brigade-strength)
Army-level support was provided by the 71st Army Artillery Regiment, the 7th Anti-Aircraft Battalion, and the motorised 7th Army Anti-Aircraft Company. The 6th Air Reconnaissance Group comprising sixteen Breguet 19s was attached from the Royal Yugoslav Army Air Force (Serbo-Croatian Latin: Vazduhoplovstvo vojske Kraljevine Jugoslavije, VVKJ) and was based at Cerklje and Brege near Brežice.
## Deployment plan
The 7th Army was part of the 1st Army Group, which was responsible for the defence of north and north-western Yugoslavia, with the 7th Army along the Italian and German borders, and the 4th Army defending the eastern sector along the Hungarian border. The 1st Cavalry Division was to be held as the 1st Army Group reserve around Zagreb. On the left of the 7th Army was the Adriatic coast at Karlobag, and the boundary with the 4th Army on the right flank ran from Gornja Radgona on the Mura through Krapina and Karlovac to Otočac. The Yugoslav defence plan saw the 7th Army deployed in a cordon along the border region from the Adriatic in the west to Gornja Radgona in the east. Of the formations of the 7th Army, the mobilisation of the three detachments was largely complete, but the two divisions had only commenced mobilisation. All 7th Army formations were to be deployed in a cordon, although each formation was to create a second line of defence from its own troops. The headquarters of the 7th Army was to initially be located in Brežice. The planned deployment of the 7th Army from west to east was:
- Detachment Lika on the upper Adriatic coast from Karlobag through Otočac to Ogulin
- Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski (MD Rišnajaski) around Delnice in the mountainous Gorski kotar region, with responsibility for the defence of the Italian border from Sušak on the upper Adriatic coast to Mount Bička
- 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski (32nd ID) southwest of Ljubljana in the Julian Alps, allocated the western border with Italy from Mount Bička north to Mount Blegoš
- Mountain Detachment Triglavski (MD Triglavski) north-west of Ljubljana around Kranj, tasked to defend the Italian border from Mount Blegoš to the triple border, then the German border east into the Savinja Alps
- 38th Infantry Division Dravska (38th ID) in the Pohorje mountains around Maribor, responsible for the frontier from the Savinja Alps in the west to Radgon in the east, including the roads running south through Ptuj, Maribor and Dravograd, with its main positions on the southern bank of the Dravinja
Army-level and rear area troops were to be deployed in the area of Brežice, Zidani Most and Novo Mesto. Border guard units were to man fortifications along the Italian and German frontiers in the 7th Army area of responsibility, and consisted of:
- the 554th and 555th Independent Battalions, in the sector of Detachment Lika
- the 1st Border Regiment and an independent border battalion, supported by one border artillery battalion fielding three batteries, in the sector of Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski
- the 2nd and 3rd Border Regiments supported by two border artillery battalions fielding eight batteries, in the sector of the 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski
- the 4th and 5th Border Regiments supported by one border artillery battalion fielding three batteries, in the sector of Mountain Detachment Triglavski
- the 6th, 7th and 8th Border Regiments supported by three border artillery battalions fielding a total of eight batteries, in the sector of the 38th Infantry Division Dravska
## Mobilisation
After unrelenting pressure from Adolf Hitler, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. On 27 March, a military coup d'état overthrew the government that had signed the pact, and a new government was formed under the VVKJ commander, Armijski đeneral Dušan Simović. A general mobilisation was not called by the new government until 3 April, out of fear of offending Hitler and thus precipitating war. On the same day as the coup, Hitler issued Führer Directive 25 which called for Yugoslavia to be treated as a hostile state, and on 3 April, Führer Directive 26 was issued, detailing the plan of attack and command structure for the invasion, which was to commence on 6 April.
According to a post-war U.S. Army study, by the time the invasion began, the three brigade-sized detachments had mobilised, but the 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski and 38th Infantry Division Dravska had only commenced mobilising. The Yugoslav historian Velimir Terzić describes the mobilisation of the 7th Army as a whole on 6 April as "only partial", and states the headquarters of the 7th Army was mobilising in the Zagreb region.
### Detachment Lika
Detachment Lika was an ad hoc formation consisting of the 44th Infantry Regiment and one battery of the 17th Artillery Regiment. On 6 April, it was concentrating in the Otočac region, but the poor response of personnel of the 44th Infantry Regiment to the mobilisation orders meant that it was only at 35–40 percent of its strength.
### Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski
Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski was commanded by Pukovnik Stojadin Milenković. On 6 April, the detachment, consisting of a headquarters, the 2nd Mountain Regiment of three battalions, the 5th Mountain Artillery Battery and supporting units, was deployed between various towns and villages in the areas of Čabar, Delnice, Gornje Jelenje, Kamenjak and Lokve, as follows:
- the 11th Mountain Battalion, with about 90 percent of its troops, in forward positions near the village of Klana
- the 13th Mountain Battalion, with about 90 percent of its strength, in depth, between the villages of Kamenjak and Gornje Jelenje
- the 12th Mountain Battalion, with about 96 percent of its planned strength, in reserve in Delnice
- the 5th Mountain Artillery Battery, deployed in the villages of Gerovo, Mrzle Vodica and Lokve
- an engineer company near Lokve
### 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski
A significant part of the 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski was moving from its mobilisation areas to its concentration areas, while some elements were still mobilising. On 6 April, the division was located as follows:
- the divisional commander Divizijski đeneral Dragiša Pandurović and his staff were mobilising in Ljubljana, and arrived in their concentration area at Grosuplje, just south of Ljubljana around noon on 6 April
- the 32nd Divisional Infantry Regiment was moving from Celje to Ljubljana
- the 39th Infantry Regiment was marching from Celje to Lepoglava to join Detachment Ormozki of the 4th Army, and had reached Logatec
- the 40th Infantry Regiment, with about 80 percent of its troops and 50 percent of its vehicles and animals, was located at its mobilisation centre in Ljubljana
- the 110th Infantry Regiment, with about 60 percent of its troops and 50 percent of its animals, was on the move from Celje to Zagreb, where it was to join the 1st Army Group reserve, and had reached Zidani Most
- the 32nd Artillery Regiment was marching from Ljubljana to Grosuplje
- the 37th Infantry Regiment was moving from its mobilisation centres to divisional reserve positions around Ribnica, Sodražica, Bloke, Lašče and Novo Mesto
- other divisional units were mobilising in Ribnica, Ljubljana and Celje
### Mountain Detachment Triglavski
Mountain Detachment Triglavski was commanded by Brigadni đeneral Mihailo Lukić. It consisted of the 1st Mountain Infantry Regiment of three battalions, supported by one battery of mountain artillery and other units. About 80 percent of the formation had answered the mobilisation order, and it was deployed in the vicinity of the towns of Jezersko, Tržič, Radovljica, Škofja Loka and Kranj.
### 38th Infantry Division Dravska
The 38th Infantry Division Dravska had only commenced mobilisation, and was largely in its mobilisation centres or moving to concentration areas. On 6 April, the elements of the division were located as follows:
- the divisional commander Divizijski đeneral Čedomir Stanojlović and his headquarters staff were mobilising in Slovenska Bistrica
- the 38th Divisional Infantry and 45th Infantry Regiments were mobilising around Maribor
- the 112th Infantry Regiment (less its 1st Battalion) was marching north towards Slovenj Gradec from Slovenska Bistrica. The 1st Battalion of the 112th Infantry Regiment had already deployed near Dravograd, supporting the 6th Border Regiment
- the 128th Infantry Regiment was concentrating near Ptuj
- the 38th Artillery Regiment (less one battery) was near Ptuj, while one battery was marching from Maribor to its planned position at Slovenj Gradec
- the divisional machine-gun battalion, which had only 50 percent of its establishment of men and animals, was marching from Maribor to Ptuj
- the remainder of the divisional units were mobilising in Slovenska Bistrica, Maribor, Ptuj and Ljubljana
### Overall condition of the 7th Army
At the time of the invasion, both mountain detachments had completed mobilisation and concentration, and were in position. Detachment Lika was at its mobilisation centre, but the turn-out of men for its infantry component was low. The 38th Infantry Division Dravska was completing its concentration. A large proportion of the 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski was moving from its mobilisation centres to its concentration areas. Across the 7th Army, around 80 percent of troops had answered the mobilisation order, but only 45 to 50 percent of vehicles and animals were available.
## Operations
### 5–6 April
The border between Italy, Germany and Yugoslavia was largely unsuitable for motorised operations due to the mountainous terrain. Due to the short notice of the invasion, the elements of the invading German 2nd Army that would make up LI Infantry Corps and XXXXIX Mountain Corps had to be transported from Germany, German-occupied France and the Nazi puppet Slovak Republic, and nearly all encountered difficulties in reaching their assembly areas in time. In the interim, the Germans formed a special force under the code name Feuerzauber (Magic Fire). This force was initially intended to merely reinforce the 538th Frontier Guard Division, who were manning the border. On the evening of 5 April, a particularly aggressive Feuerzauber detachment commander, Hauptmann Palten, led his Kampfgruppe Palten across the Mura from Spielfeld and, having secured the bridge, began attacking bunkers and other Yugoslav positions on the high ground, and sent patrols deep into the Yugoslav border fortification system. Due to a lack of Yugoslav counter-attacks, many of these positions remained in German hands into 6 April.
On the morning of 6 April, German aircraft conducted surprise attacks on Yugoslav airfields in the 7th Army area, including Ljubljana and Cerklje, where the 6th Air Reconnaissance Group was based. At 07:00, Messerschmitt Bf 109E fighters of Jagdgeschwader 27 strafed Ljubljana airfield, attacking hangars and some Potez 25 biplanes.
LI Infantry Corps, commanded by General der Infanterie Hans-Wolfgang Reinhard, were tasked with attacking towards Maribor then driving towards Zagreb, while the XXXXIX Mountain Corps, under General der Infanterie Ludwig Kübler, was to capture Dravograd then force a crossing on the Sava. At 05:00 on 6 April, LI Infantry Corps captured the Mura bridges at Mureck and Radkersburg (opposite Gornja Radgona) undamaged. In the sector of the 38th Infantry Division Dravska, one German column pushed towards Maribor from Mureck, and the other pushed on from Gornja Radgona through Lenart towards Ptuj. Some time later, other elements of LI Infantry Corps attacked the area between Sveti Duh and Dravograd. The 7th and 8th Border Regiments met these attacks with fierce resistance, but were forced to withdraw due to German pressure. The 183rd Infantry Division, under Generalmajor Benignus Dippold, captured 300 prisoners, and a bicycle-mounted detachment of the division reached Murska Sobota without striking any resistance. The 132nd Infantry Division, commanded by Generalmajor Rudolf Sintzenich, also pushed south along the Sejanski valley towards Savci. By the end of the first day, LI Infantry Corps had occupied Gornja Radgona, Murska Sobota and Radenci, and had crossed the Drava near Sveti Duh. XXXXIX Mountain Corps captured border crossings on the approaches to Dravograd, but were held up by the 6th Border Regiment in mountain passes located further west at Ljubelj, Jezerski vrh and Korensko sedlo. Late that day, mountain pioneers destroyed some isolated Yugoslav bunkers in the area penetrated by Kampfgruppe Palten.
Later that day, German Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers of Sturzkampfgeschwader 77, escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109E fighters, caught the Breguet 19s of the 6th Air Reconnaissance Group on the ground at Cerklje and Brege, destroying most of them. This was followed by attacks by the Italian Air Force on Yugoslav troop concentrations of the 7th Army. The Yugoslav Air Force was unable to interdict the Axis air attacks because the Hawker Hurricanes and Ikarus IK-2 aircraft of its 4th Fighter Regiment were based 240 kilometres (150 mi) away at Bosanski Aleksandrovac. After having been grounded for most of the day by poor weather, in the afternoon Bristol Blenheim Mk I light bombers of the Yugoslav 68th Bomber Group flew missions against airfields and railway stations across the German frontier at Graz, Fürstenfeld, Steyr and Wiener Neustadt.
By the close of the first day, the 7th Army was still largely mobilising and concentrating, and fifth column actions meant that nearly all the fighting was conducted by border troops. The 38th Infantry Division Dravska was deployed along the southern bank of the Drava, with the 128th Infantry Regiment and an artillery battalion around Ptuj, the 45th Infantry Regiment and an artillery battalion around Maribor and the 112th Infantry Regiment and an artillery battalion were at Slovenj Gradec and marching east towards Dravograd. German and Italian air attacks interfered with the deployment of troops and command was hampered by reliance on civilian telegraph and telephone services.
On that day, Marko Natlačen—the governor of the Drava Banovina—met with representatives of the major Slovene political parties, and created the National Council of Slovenia (Slovene: Narodni svet za Slovenijo, NszS), whose aim was to establish a Slovenia independent of Yugoslavia. When he heard the news of fifth-column-led revolts within the 4th Army, Trifunović was alarmed, and proposed withdrawal from the border areas, but this was rejected by the commander of the 1st Army Group, Armijski đeneral Milorad Petrović. The front along the border with Italy was relatively quiet, with some patrol clashes occurring, some sporadic artillery bombardments of border fortifications, and an unsuccessful raid by the Italians directed at Mount Blegoš.
### 7 April
In the early hours of 7 April, three Blenheims of the Yugoslav 8th Bomber Regiment took off from Rovine to bomb the railway junction at Feldbach, but became disoriented in bad weather. Only one aircraft found a target in Austria, bombing a bridge and road near Steyr before continuing on to Wiener Neustadt where it was hit by anti-aircraft fire and made an emergency landing.
Over the period 7–9 April, LI Infantry Corps held the lead elements of its two divisions back to some extent while the rest of each division de-trained in Graz and made their way to the border. German forces along the front of the 7th Army continued to push towards Ptuj, Maribor and Dravograd on 7 April, against significant resistance from the 6th, 7th and 8th Border Regiments. The German thrusts towards Ptuj and Maribor broke through the Yugoslav defensive line Pesnica–Lenart–Sveta Trojica v Slovenskih Goricah–Kapelski Vrh, but those advancing towards Dravograd were held up by the 6th Border Regiment and a battalion of the 38th Infantry Division Dravska. Along the Italian border there were only skirmishes caused by Italian reconnaissance-in-force to a depth of 3 km (1.9 mi).
The Yugoslav Supreme Command ordered Petrović to use Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski to capture Fiume, across the Rječina river from Sušak, but the order was soon rescinded due to the deteriorating situation in the flanking 4th Army. In the afternoon of 7 April, Trifunović again pressed Petrović to order a withdrawal from the border. Petrović accepted that this might become necessary if the situation on the immediate right flank of the 7th Army deteriorated further, but the idea was opposed by the chief of staff of the headquarters of the 1st Army Group, Armijski đeneral Leon Rupnik, who suggested that Trifunović should personally lead night attacks to push the Germans back. At 19:30, the Yugoslav Supreme Command advised Petrović that he had approval to withdraw endangered units on the right wing of the 7th Army. Morale in the 7th Army had started to decline due to fifth column elements encouraging soldiers to stop resisting the enemy.
### 8 April
On the night of 7/8 April, Petrović ordered Trifunović to begin to withdraw, first to a line through the Dravinja river, Zidani Most bridge and the right bank of the Krka river. Later in the day this was moved back to the line of the Kupa river. This ended the successful defence of the 38th Infantry Division Dravska along the line of the Drava, and meant their withdrawal from Maribor. Disregarding orders from above, Palten exploited their withdrawal by leading his kampfgruppe south towards the town, and crossing the Pesnica river in inflatable boats, leaving his unit vehicles behind. In the evening, Palten and his force entered Maribor unopposed, taking 100 prisoners. For disregarding orders, Palten and his kampfgruppe were ordered to return to Spielfeld, and spent the rest of the invasion guarding the border. In the meantime, the forward elements of the two divisions consolidated their bridgeheads, with the 132nd Infantry Division securing Maribor, and the 183rd Infantry Division pushing past Murska Sobota, reaching Kapelski Vrh.
Some bridges over the Sava were blown before all elements of the 7th and 8th Border Regiments had withdrawn, but some soldiers were able to swim across, the rest being captured by the advancing Germans. German patrols reached the Drava at Ptuj, and further east at Ormož they found the bridge had been blown. Elements of the XXXXIX Mountain Corps had pushed forward to Poljana and Dravograd. The German troops received close air support from dive bombers and fighters during their advance, while medium bombers hit targets throughout the 7th Army area. The 4th Fighter Regiment clashed several times with German aircraft on 8 April without result. Three Blenheims of the Yugoslav 8th Bomber Regiment again flew a mission to attack a target in southern Austria, escorted by 4th Fighter Regiment Hurricanes, but the rest of the 8th Bomber Regiment was awaiting orders to bomb a rebelling Yugoslav regiment of the neighbouring 4th Army in Bjelovar; the orders were subsequently cancelled. During the day, the Italian 3rd Alpine Group captured Kranjska Gora at the headwaters of the Sava in the sector of Mountain Detachment Triglavski. The German orders for the following day were for LI Infantry Corps to force a crossing of the Drava near Varazdin and advance on Zagreb, while XXXXIX Mountain Corps were to drive towards Celje.
### 9 April
On 9 April, the Germans continued their advance, and all elements of both divisions of LI Infantry Corps had finally unloaded in Graz. In view of German success, the Italian 2nd Army in north-eastern Italy accelerated its preparations and issued orders for its V and XI Corps to conduct preliminary operations aimed at improving their starting positions for the planned attack on Yugoslavia. In the meantime, the 7th Army continued rapidly withdrawing its right wing, while withdrawing its centre and keeping the Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski in place on its left flank. The 38th Infantry Division Dravska continued to withdraw south from Ptuj through Krapina towards Zagreb, while the 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski and Mountain Detachment Triglavski fell back to the southern bank of the Krka river. Units of LI Infantry Corps crossed the Drava along the line Maribor—Ptuj and further east, and continued to expand their bridgehead south of Maribor. Elements of XXXXIX Mountain Corps secured the southern exit of the Karawanks railway tunnel near Jesenice and expanded their bridgehead at Dravograd. Italian units made several weak attacks on the sector of the 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski and against Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski, and Detachment Lika took up positions on the coast. On the same day, the 6th Air Reconnaissance Group airfield at Cerklje was again attacked by German aircraft.
As the activities of Natlačen and his NszS were continuing, the Yugoslav Supreme Command ordered their arrest. Rupnik and the head of the operations staff of the headquarters of the 1st Army Group, Pukovnik Franjo Nikolić, hid the orders from Petrović and did not carry them out.
### 10 April
On the evening of 9 April, the commander of the German 2nd Army, Generaloberst Maximilian von Weichs, ordered the XXXXVI Motorised Corps to break out of its bridgeheads in the 4th Army's sector the following day. The thrust from the Zákány bridgehead was to drive straight west to Zagreb then continue west to cut off the withdrawing 7th Army. This attack was led by the 14th Panzer Division, supported by dive bombers, and was a resounding success. By 19:30 on 10 April, lead elements of the 14th Panzer Division had reached the outskirts of Zagreb, having covered nearly 160 kilometres (99 miles) in a single day. Before it arrived, the Ustaše, supported by German agents, had proclaimed the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). By the time it entered Zagreb, the 14th Panzer Division was met by cheering crowds, and had captured 15,000 Yugoslav troops, including 22 generals.
In the 7th Army sector, about 09:45, the LI Infantry Corps began crossing the Drava, but construction of a bridge near Maribor was suspended because the river was in flood. Despite this, the 183rd Infantry Division managed to secure an alternative crossing point, and established a bridgehead. This crossing point was a partially destroyed bridge, guarded by a single platoon of the 1st Bicycle Battalion of Detachment Ormozki, the far left formation of the 4th Army. This crossing, combined with the withdrawal of the 38th Infantry Division Dravska from the line from Slovenska Bistrica to Ptuj, exposed the left flank of Detachment Ormozki. The Detachment attempted to withdraw south, but began to disintegrate during the night of 10/11 April.
That same night, the 1st Mountain Division, the most capable formation of XXXXIX Mountain Corps, had de-trained, crossed the border near Bleiburg, and advanced southeast towards Celje, reaching a point about 19 km (12 mi) from the town by evening. The rest of the XXXXIX Mountain Corps encountered little resistance, and by nightfall had reached the line Šoštanj–Mislinja. Luftwaffe reconnaissance sorties revealed that the main body of the 7th Army was withdrawing towards Zagreb, leaving behind light forces to maintain contact with the German bridgeheads. When it received this information, 2nd Army headquarters ordered LI Infantry Corps to form motorised columns to pursue the 7th Army south, but extreme weather conditions and flooding of the Drava at Maribor on 10 April slowed the German pursuit.
On 10 April, as the situation was becoming increasingly desperate throughout the country, Simović, who was both the Prime Minister and Chief of the General Staff, broadcast the following message:
> All troops must engage the enemy wherever encountered and with every means at their disposal. Don't wait for direct orders from above, but act on your own and be guided by your judgement, initiative, and conscience.
During the night of 10/11 April, XXXXIX Mountain Corps was ordered to bridge the Savinja river at Celje, then advance towards Brežice on the Sava, and LI Infantry Corps was directed to link up with the 14th Panzer Division which would then drive west to Karlovac. The Italians were expected to commence offensive action by attacking southwards to link up with the 14th Panzer Division in the vicinity of Karlovac.
### 11 April
On 11 April, Ustaše elements captured the staff of the 7th Army at Topusko and handed them over to the Germans shortly thereafter, and the 7th Army effectively ceased to exist as a formation. Petrović and the staff of 1st Army Group headquarters were also captured by Ustaše at Petrinja. Chaos ensued throughout the 7th Army, whose Croat and Slovene soldiers could hear fifth column radio broadcasts telling them of their pending encirclement by the Germans and encouraging them to return to their homes and not fight against the invaders. This was reinforced by Natlačen and his NszS, who had distributed leaflets on the night of 10/11 April urging soldiers not to resist the Italians or Germans. To maintain public order, the NszS also formed a "Slovenian Legion" on 11 April, and encouraged Slovene nationalists among the 7th Army to join it. This force, split into a dozen units and totalling 2,000–3,000 men, then began to assist the Germans in disarming units of the Yugoslav Army on Slovene territory. The NszS authorised Natlačen to negotiate with the Germans for the creation of a Slovene client state along the lines of the NDH and the Slovak Republic, and Natlačen appointed the Ljubljana police chief Lovro Hacin to make contact with the Germans.
Proxies for the NszS approached Generalmajor Hubert Lanz, the commander of the 1st Mountain Division, when his formation approached Celje, but Lanz was not empowered to negotiate with civilians, and sought direction from higher headquarters. All German commanders were authorised to negotiate with the commanders of Yugoslav military formations so long as they agreed to surrender all weapons. Later that day, Lanz was authorised to meet with Natlačen the following day, and XXXXIX Mountain Corps took Celje. Held up by freezing weather and snow storms, LI Infantry Corps was approaching Zagreb from the north, and broke through a hastily established defensive line between Pregrada and Krapina. Bicycle-mounted troops of the 183rd Infantry Division turned east to secure Ustaše-controlled Varaždin. In the evening, LI Infantry Corps entered Zagreb and relieved the 14th Panzer Division but lead elements of that division had already thrust west from Zagreb into the rear of the withdrawing 7th Army and captured Karlovac.
Around 12:00, the Italians went over to the offensive, with the 3rd Alpine Group tasked to advance to the line Selca–Radovljica, XI Corps to push via Logatec to Ljubljana, VI Corps to drive on Prezid, and V Corps to advance from Fiume towards Kraljevica then Lokve. While one Italian attack south of the Snežnik plateau was stopped by elements of the Mountain Detachment Rišnajaski and the Italian advance was held up by border troops in some areas, there was little significant resistance, and by the end of the day they had captured Sušak, Bakar, Delnice, Jesenice, Vrhnika, Logatec and Ljubljana. To assist the Italian advance, the Luftwaffe attacked Yugoslav troops in the Ljubljana region, and the 14th Panzer Division, which had captured Zagreb on 10 April, drove west to encircle the withdrawing 7th Army. The Italians faced little resistance, and captured about 30,000 troops of the 7th Army waiting to surrender near Delnice. When the Italian 14th Infantry Division Isonzo entered Ljubljana, a delegate of the NszS greeted its commander, Generale di Divisione Federico Romero, and symbolically handed him the keys to the city. An official reception was held for Romero that evening, attended by Natlačen and most of the members of the NszS, but because Natlačen and the council preferred that the Germans occupy Ljubljana, he asked Romero for permission to travel to Celje the following day to meet with Lanz.
## Fate
On 12 April, the 14th Panzer Division linked up with the Italians at Vrbovsko, closing the ring around the remnants of the 7th Army, which surrendered, and the 1st Mountain Division pushed through Novo Mesto and Črnomelj without facing resistance, reaching Vinice by the end of the day. At Celje, Lanz received a delegation led by Natlačen which included Andrej Gosar. The meeting was very formal and cold, as Lanz had already received orders regarding the break-up of Slovenia into Italian and German-controlled territories, and the council and its goal of an independent Slovenia were superfluous from a German perspective.
Remnants of the 4th Army conducted a fighting withdrawal through Bosnia towards Sarajevo over the following days, pursued by the 14th Panzer Division and elements of LI Infantry Corps but a ceasefire was declared at noon on 15 April. After a delay in locating appropriate signatories for the surrender document, the Yugoslav Supreme Command unconditionally surrendered in Belgrade effective at 12:00 on 18 April. Yugoslavia was then occupied and dismembered by the Axis powers, with Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania all annexing parts of its territory. Most of the Slovene members of the 7th Army taken as prisoners of war were soon released by the Axis powers, as 90 per cent of those held for the duration of the war were Serbs.
|
1,937,968 |
Nyuserre Ini
| 1,170,195,339 |
Ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty
|
[
"25th-century BC Pharaohs",
"Pharaohs of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt"
] |
<table class="infobox vcard nowraplinks" style="width:22.0em">
[frameless\|alt=Duo of''' statues representing the king as a young and old man, standing with a sword\|upright=1\|Double statue portraying Nyuserre as both a young man and an old man, Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich](File:Niuserre_Double_Statue.jpg "wikilink")
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Nyuserre Ini (also Niuserre Ini or Neuserre Ini'''; in Greek known as Rathurês, Ῥαθούρης) was an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the sixth ruler of the Fifth Dynasty during the Old Kingdom period. He is credited with a reign of 24 to 35 years depending on the scholar, and likely lived in the second half of the 25th century BCE. Nyuserre was the younger son of Neferirkare Kakai and queen Khentkaus II, and the brother of the short-lived king Neferefre. He may have succeeded his brother directly, as indicated by much later historical sources. Alternatively, Shepseskare may have reigned between the two as advocated by Miroslav Verner, albeit only for a few weeks or months at the most. The relation of Shepseskare with Neferefre and Nyuserre remains highly uncertain. Nyuserre was in turn succeeded by Menkauhor Kaiu, who could have been his nephew and a son of Neferefre.
Nyuserre was the most prolific builder of his dynasty, having built three pyramids for himself and his queens and completed a further three for his father, mother and brother, all in the necropolis of Abusir. He built the largest surviving temple to the sun god Ra constructed during the Old Kingdom, named Shesepibre or "Joy of the heart of Ra". He also completed the Nekhenre, the Sun temple of Userkaf in Abu Gorab, and the valley temple of Menkaure in Giza. In doing so, he was the first king since Shepseskaf, last ruler of the Fourth Dynasty, to pay attention to the Giza necropolis, a move which may have been an attempt to legitimise his rule following the troubled times surrounding the unexpected death of his brother Neferefre.
There is little evidence for military action during Nyuserre's reign; the Egyptian state continued to maintain trade relations with Byblos on the Levantine coast and to send mining and quarrying expeditions to Sinai and Lower Nubia. Nyuserre's reign saw the growth of the administration, and the effective birth of the nomarchs, provincial governors who, for the first time, were sent to live in the provinces they administered rather than at the pharaoh's court.
As with other Old Kingdom pharaohs, Nyuserre benefited from a funerary cult established at his death. In Nyuserre's case, this official state-sponsored cult existed for centuries, surviving the chaotic First Intermediate Period and lasting until the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. In parallel, a spontaneous popular cult appeared, with people venerating Nyuserre under his birth name "Iny". In this cult, Nyuserre played a role similar to that of a saint, being invoked as an intercessor between the believer and the gods. It left little archaeological evidence and seems to have continued until the New Kingdom, nearly 1000 years after his death.
## Reign
### Accession to the throne
Two competing hypotheses exist in Egyptology to describe the succession of events running from the death of Neferirkare Kakai, the third king of the Fifth Dynasty, to the coronation of Nyuserre Ini, the sixth ruler of the dynasty. Relying on historical sources, where Nyuserre is said to have directly succeeded Neferefre, many Egyptologists such as Jürgen von Beckerath and Hartwig Altenmüller have traditionally believed that the following succession took place: Neferirkare Kakai → Shepseskare → Neferefre → Nyuserre Ini. In this scenario, Neferefre is the father of Nyuserre, who would have become pharaoh after Neferefre's unexpected death. Neferefre would be the successor of Shepseskare, credited with seven years of reign, as indicated in Manetho's Aegyptiaca.
This view was challenged, most notably by Miroslav Verner in 2000 and 2001, following excavations of the Abusir necropolis, which indicated that Neferefre's purported predecessor Shepseskare most likely reigned for only a few months between Neferefre and Nyuserre Ini. Verner proposes that the royal succession was Neferirkare Kakai → Neferefre → Shepseskare → Nyuserre Ini. In support of this hypothesis is Verner's observation that Neferefre and Nyuserre were very likely full brothers, both sons of Neferirkare Kakai, There is also evidence that Neferefre was Neferirkare's eldest son and in his early twenties at the death of his father, and thus would have been likely to inherit the throne. These observations, in addition to further archaeological evidence such as the lack of a pyramid of Shepseskare and the position of Neferefre's own, convinced Verner that Neferefre directly succeeded his father, dying after a very short reign of about two years.
Nyuserre was then still a child and, in this hypothesis, his claim to the throne faced a serious challenge in the person of his possible uncle Shepseskare who might have been a son of Sahure. Alternatively, Shepseskare may have been a short-lived son of Neferefre or, less likely, an usurper from outside the royal family. In any case, Shepseskare apparently succeeded in holding the crown for a short time. Nyuserre ultimately prevailed however, either because of Shepseskare's own premature death or because he was backed by powerful high officials and members of the royal family, foremost among whom were his mother Khentkaus II and Ptahshepses. This latter hypothesis is motivated by the exalted positions that both individuals seem to have enjoyed. The mortuary temple of Khentkaus II was designed to imitate that of a king, for example by incorporating its own satellite pyramid and having an alignment on an east–west axis. These features, together with Khentkaus II peculiar title of Mwt Nisw bity Nisw bity, originally translated by "Mother of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt [exercising office as] the king of Upper and Lower Egypt" led some scholars, including Verner, to propose that she might even have reigned in her own right. This hypothesis is now deemed unlikely, and her title is rather translated as "Mother of two kings of Upper and Lower Egypt". Ptahshepses became vizier under Nyuserre, whose daughter he married; received the honorary title of "King's son"; and was buried in one of the largest private tombs in Egypt. According to Verner and Nigel Strudwick, the architectural elements of this tomb such as its lotus-bud columns similar to those used in Nyuserre's own temple, boat pits and layout of the burial chamber, demonstrate "the favor shown by that king to his son-in-law".
### Reign length
#### Historical and archaeological evidence
Manetho's Aegyptiaca related that Nyuserre reigned for 44 years, a figure which is rejected by Egyptologists, who rather credit him with about three decades of reign owing to the paucity of secure dates for his rule. The entry of the Turin canon pertaining to Nyuserre is damaged and the duration of his rule is difficult to read with certainty. Following Alan Gardiner's 1959 study of the canon, scholars such as Nigel Strudwick credited Nyuserre with 11 years of reign. Gardiner's reading of the canon was then reevaluated from facsimiles, yielding a 24 to 25 years figure for Nyuserre's reign. This duration is accepted by some scholars including Nicolas Grimal. More recent analyses of the original papyrus conducted by Kim Ryholt have shown that Nyuserre's reign length as reported on the document could equally be 11–14, 21–24, or 31–34 years. The later figure is now favoured by Egyptologists including Strudwick and Verner.
The view that Nyuserre reigned in excess of twenty years is furthermore supported by archaeological evidence, which points to a fairly long reign for him. Verner, who has been excavating the Abusir necropolis on behalf of the University of Prague since 1976, points in particular to Nyuserre's numerous constructions, amounting to no less than three new pyramids, the completion of a further three, the construction of the largest sun temple built during the Old Kingdom.
#### Nyuserre's Sed festival
The hypothesis of a reign more than three decades long for Nyuserre Ini is supported, albeit indirectly, by reliefs discovered in his solar temple showing him participating in a Sed festival. This festival was meant to rejuvenate the king and was normally (though not always) first celebrated after 30 years of rule. Representations of the festival were part of the typical decorations of temples associated to the king during the Old Kingdom and mere depictions of it do not necessarily imply a long reign. For example, a relief showing Sahure in the tunic of the Sed festival has been found in his mortuary temple, although both historical sources and archeological evidence agree that he ruled Egypt for less than 14 full years. Yet, in Nyuserre's case, these reliefs taken together with the archaeological evidence have convinced most Egyptologists that Nyuserre enjoyed over 30 years of reign and that "the sed-festival scenes from Abu Gurab [most probably reflect] the 30th jubilee of the king's accession to the throne".
The reliefs of Nyuserre's Sed festival offer a rare glimpse into the ritual acts carried out during this ceremony. In particular, the festival seems to have involved a procession in a barque over a body of water, a detail either not represented or lost in all subsequent representations of the festival until the reign of Amenhotep III (fl. c. 1390–1350 BCE), over 1000 years after Nyuserre's lifetime.
### Domestic activities
The reign of Nyuserre Ini witnessed the unabated growth of the priesthood and state bureaucracy, a phenomenon which had started in the early Fifth Dynasty in particular under Neferirkare Kakai. Changes in the Egyptian administration during this period are manifested by a multiplication in the number of titles, reflecting the creation of new administrative offices. These in turn, reflect a movement to better organise the administration of the state with the new titles corresponding to charges attached to very specific duties.
The king's power slowly weakened as the bureaucracy expanded, although he remained a living god in the eyes of his subjects.This situation went unchecked until the reign of Nyuserre's second successor Djedkare Isesi, who implemented the first comprehensive reforms of the system of ranking titles and thus of the administration.
There are two pieces of direct evidence of administrative activities during Nyuserre's reign. The first is that the Old Kingdom royal annals, of which only fragments survive, are believed to have been composed during his reign. The annals, which give details on the reigns of kings from the First Dynasty onwards on a year-by-year basis, are damaged and break off following the reign of Neferirkare Kakai. The second piece of evidence for administrative activity relates to the provincial administration. During the Old Kingdom, the Egyptian state was divided administratively into provinces, called nomes. These provinces were recognised as such since the time of Djoser, founder of the Third Dynasty, and probably harked back to the predynastic kingdoms of the Nile valley. The earliest topographical lists of the nomes of Upper and Lower Egypt date back to the reign of Nyuserre, a procession of personified nomes being depicted on reliefs from Nyuserre's sun temple. It is also around this time that the nomarchs started to reside in their province rather than at the royal residence.
### Activities outside Egypt
#### Trade and mining expeditions
To the north of Egypt, trade contacts with Byblos on the Levantine coast, which existed during much of the Fifth Dynasty, were seemingly active during Nyuserre's reign, as suggested by a fragment of cylindrical alabaster vase bearing his name uncovered in the city.
East of Egypt, Nyuserre commissioned at least one expedition to the Wadi Maghareh in Sinai, where mines of copper and turquoise were exploited during much of the Old Kingdom. This expedition left a large rock relief, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The relief shows Nyuserre "smiting the Bedouins of all foreign lands, the great god, lord of the two lands". At the right of Nyuserre is a dedication to "Thoth, lord of the foreign lands, who has made pure libations". This expedition departed Egypt from the port of Ain Sukhna, on the western shore of the Gulf of Suez, as revealed by seal impressions bearing Nyuserre's name found on the site. The port comprised large galleries carved into the sandstone serving as living quarters and storage places. The wall of one such gallery was inscribed with a text in ink mentioning the expedition to Sinai and dating it to the year of the second cattle count – possibly Nyuserre's fourth year on the throne.
To the south of Egypt, in Lower Nubia, Nyuserre exploited the gneiss quarries of Gebel el-Asr near Aswan, which provided material for buildings and statues, as shown by a fragmentary stone stela inscribed with Nyuserre's Horus name that was discovered in a settlement adjacent to the quarries.
#### Military activity
There is little evidence for military action during Nyuserre's reign. William C. Hayes proposed that a few fragmentary limestone statues of kneeling and bound prisoners of war discovered in his mortuary temple possibly attest to punitive raids in Libya to the west or the Sinai and Palestine to the east during his reign. The art historian William Stevenson Smith has pointed out, that such statues were customary elements of the decoration of royal temples and mastabas, suggesting that they may not be immediately related to actual military campaigns. Similar statues and small wooden figures of kneeling captives were discovered in the mortuary complexes of Neferefre, Djedkare Isesi, Unas, Teti, Pepi I and Pepi II as well as in the tomb of vizier Senedjemib Mehi.
## Main building activities
Assuming Verner's reconstruction of the Fifth Dynasty royal family, Nyuserre Ini faced an enormous task when he ascended the throne: his father, mother and brother had all left their pyramids unfinished, his father's and brother's sun temples were unfinished too and he had to construct his own pyramid as well as those of his queens. Nyuserre met this challenge by placing his pyramid in the immediate vicinity of the unfinished ones, on the north-eastern corner of that of Neferirkare Kakai and next to that of Sahure, thereby concentrating all pyramid building activities in South Abusir, in an area of 300 m × 300 m (980 ft × 980 ft). This meant that his pyramid was out of the alignment formed by the preceding ones, limited its size and constrained the layout of his mortuary complex. This would explain why, despite having enjoyed one of the longest reigns of the Fifth Dynasty, Nyuserre's pyramid was smaller than that of his father and closer in size to that of his grandfather Sahure. Builders and artisans who worked on Nyuserre's constructions projects lived in the pyramid town "Enduring-are-the-(cult)-places-of-Niuserre", which was very likely located in Abusir between the causeways of Sahure and Nyuserre.
### Pyramid of Nyuserre
Nyuserre built a pyramid for himself at Abusir named Mensut Nyuserre, meaning "Established are the places of Nyuserre" or "The places of Nyuserre endure".
The completed pyramid was entirely covered in fine limestone. It was about 52 m (171 ft) tall, with a base of 78.8 m (259 ft) along each side, a slope of 52 degrees and a total volume of stone of about 112,000 m<sup>3</sup> (4,000,000 cu ft). The burial chamber and antechamber were both lined with fine limestone as well and roofed with three tiers of gigantic limestone beams 10 m (33 ft) long weighing 90 tons each.
The pyramid complex is unusual as the outer sections of the mortuary temple are offset to the south of the eastern side of the complex. This allowed Nyuserre to intercept and complete his father's causeway, which led from the valley temple close to the Nile to the pyramid itself on the desert edge. The valley temple of Nyuserre was thus built on the foundations laid by his father for his own unfinished valley temple. Once completed, it consisted of a portico with eight papyriform columns, its floor was of black basalt and its walls were made of limestone with painted reliefs above a dado of red granite. The back of the portico led to the causeway, the base of which was entirely covered in basalt, while its upper portions were decorated with numerous reliefs, some showing the king as a sphinx trampling over his enemies. The causeway was roofed by limestone blocks painted in blue with golden stars. Arriving near the pyramid, the causeway led into a columned courtyard preceded by storage rooms and succeeded by the mortuary temple itself, which housed statues of the king and depictions of the royal family and Nyuserre in the presence of the gods. The wider pyramid complex was enclosed by a wall, with two large rectangular structures on its north-east and south-east corners. Both Lehner and Verner see these as the precursor of the pylon, characteristic of later Egyptian temples. Beyond the main pyramid was a smaller one for the Ka of the king.
### Pyramid Lepsius XXIV
South of the pyramid of his mother Khentkaus II, Nyuserre built a pyramid for a queen, either a consort of himself or of his brother Neferefre. The pyramid is known today as Lepsius XXIV, after its number in Karl Richard Lepsius' pioneering list of pyramids. It originally reached about 27 m (89 ft) high with a base of 31.5 m (103 ft), its core made of limestone and clay mortar organised in horizontal and accretion layers.
Today the pyramid is heavily ruined, its outer casing of fine white limestone long gone, and it stands only 5 m (16 ft) tall. While graffiti left by the builders indicate that the construction of this pyramid dates to the later part of Nyuserre's reign and took place under the direction of vizier Ptahshepses, the name of the queen for whom the pyramid was intended is lost. Reptynub has been cited as a likely candidate. In the burial chamber, which is reached via a straight north–south passageway, the broken up mummy of a young woman was discovered. She stood around 160 cm (5.2 ft) tall and died between 21 and 23 years of age. It is unclear whether the mummy is that of the original owner of the pyramid or dates to a later period as the mummification method employed could suggest. Excavations of the burial chamber yielded fragments of a pink granite sarcophagus as well as pieces of large calcite canopic jars and smaller funerary equipment.
On the eastern side of the pyramid, the ruins of a small satellite pyramid as well as of a mortuary temple have been discovered. Both were heavily affected by stone robbing, which started as early as the New Kingdom and reached a climax during the Saite (664–525 BCE) and Persian (525–402 BCE) periods, making a modern reconstruction of the temple layout impossible.
### Lepsius XXV
The ruins known today as Lepsius XXV constitute not one but two large adjacent tombs built as a single monument on the south-eastern edge of the Abusir necropolis. The peculiar construction, which Verner has called a "double pyramid", was known to ancient Egyptians as "The Two are Vigilant". The pyramids, both truncated, had rectangular bases of 27.7 m × 21.5 m (91 ft × 71 ft) for the eastern one and 21.7 m × 15.7 m (71 ft × 52 ft) for the western one, their walls reaching an inclination of about 78 degrees. This means that the construction resembled a pair of mastabas more than a couple of pyramids, in fact so much so that Dušan Magdolen proposed that Lepsius XXV is a mastaba.
A further peculiarity of the structure is the lack of associated mortuary temple. Instead, the eastern tomb boasts a small offering chapel built of undecorated white limestone and situated within the tomb superstructure. Its ceiling reached 5 m (16 ft) high. Excavations revealed small pieces of papyrus inscribed with a list of offerings as well as fragments of an alabaster statue of a woman clothed in a simple robe. The burial chamber revealed scant remains of the female owner and a few pieces of funerary equipment.
The western tomb was built subsequently to the eastern one and seems to have served to bury another woman. Builders graffiti uncovered during the Czech excavations demonstrate in all likelihood that the monument was built under Nyuserre, its owners possibly amongst the last members of the broader royal family to be buried in Abusir, the necropolis being abandoned by Nyuserre's successor Menkauhor.
### Sun Temple
Nyuserre was the penultimate Egyptian pharaoh to build a sun temple. In doing so, he was following a tradition established by Userkaf that reflects the paramount importance of the cult of Ra during the Fifth Dynasty. Sun temples built during this period were meant to play for Ra the same role that the pyramid played for the king: they were funerary temples for the sun god, where his renewal and rejuvenation necessary to maintain the order of the world could take place. Cults performed in the temple were thus primarily concerned with Ra's creator function as well as his role as father of the king. During his lifetime, the king would appoint his closest officials to the running of the temple, allowing them to benefit from the temple's income and thus ensuring their loyalty. After the pharaoh's death, the sun temple's income would be associated with the pyramid complex, supporting Nyuserre's funerary cult.
Located in Abu Ghurob, north of Abusir, Nyuserre's sun temple is the largest and best preserved of its kind, leading some Egyptologists such as von Beckerath to see Nyuserre's reign as the peak of the solar cult, an assertion which, according to Grimal, is exaggerated. The temple was known as the Shesepibre by the Ancient Egyptians, which has been variously translated as "Joy of the heart of Re", "Re's Favorite Place", "Delight of Ra", or "Place agreeable to Ra". Curiously, Nyuserre's sun temple was first built in mudbrick, only later to be reconstructed entirely in stone. It is the only such structure to receive this treatment, thanks to which much of the architectural elements and reliefs have survived to this day. While the reason for this renewal remains unclear, Lehner has proposed that it may be related to Nyuserre's Sed festival, or to some evolution in the ideology surrounding sun temples.
The temple was entered from the eastern side following a long causeway which departed from a valley temple located closer to the Nile. This temple mostly served as a gateway to the upper temple and housed a pillared portico of mudbrick encased in yellow limestone. The upper temple comprised a large rectangular courtyard entered via five granite doorways located on its eastern side. An altar was located in the center of the courtyard, which can still be seen today. It was constructed from five large blocks of alabaster, one shaped like the hieroglyph for Ra and the others shaped like the glyph for hotep. They were arranged so as to read Ra Hotep, that is "May Ra be satisfied", from the four cardinal points. The sign for Hotep also means "offering" or "offering table" in Ancient Egyptian, so that the altar was literally an offering table to Ra.
At the western end of the rectangular court was a giant obelisk, a symbol of the sun god Ra. It was built on a pedestal with sloping sides and a square top, like a truncated pyramid, which was 20 m (66 ft) high and was constructed of limestone and red granite around the base. The obelisk topping it was another 36 m (118 ft) high, built entirely of limestone.
The temple was adorned with numerous fine reliefs depicting Nyuserre's Sed festival as well as a "chapel of seasons" attached to the obelisk pedestal, decorated with representations of human activities throughout the seasons.
## Completion and restoration works
### Pyramid complex of Neferirkare
The pyramid of Neferirkare was planned to be significantly larger than that of Neferirkare's Fifth Dynasty predecessors, with a square base side of 105 m (344 ft) and a height of 72 m (236 ft). Although well underway at the death of the pharaoh, the pyramid was lacking its external limestone cladding and the accompanying mortuary temple still had to be built. Neferefre had begun covering the pyramid surface with limestone and had built the foundation of a stone temple on the pyramid eastern side; Nyuserre completed their father's pyramid complex, though he did so more parsimoniously than his brother. He abandoned the task of covering the pyramid altogether and finished the mortuary temple with cheaper materials than were normally used for such buildings. Its walls were made of mud-bricks rather than limestone and its floor was of beaten clay. The outer part of the temple was built to comprise a column portico and a pillared court, all columns being made of wood rather than the usual granite. The temple and pyramid were also surrounded by a brick wall. Likely for reasons of economy, the causeway leading to the mortuary temple at the foot of the pyramid was never built, no satellite pyramid was added to the mortuary complex, and the valley temple was left unfinished. Consequently, the priest of the mortuary cult of Neferirkare lived on the temple premises, in dwellings of mud-bricks and rushes, rather than in the pyramid town closer to the Nile valley.
### Pyramid of Neferefre
Construction works on the pyramid of Neferefre had just begun when Neferefre died unexpectedly in his early twenties. At the time of Nyuserre's ascension to the throne, only one step of the core of Neferefre's pyramid had been completed. The substructures, built in a large open pit at the center of the pyramid were possibly unfinished as well. Nyuserre hastily completed the pyramid by transforming it into a stylised primeval mound resembling a mastaba: the walls of the core layer already in place were covered with limestone and the top was filled with clay and stones drawn from the local desert.
The accompanying mortuary temple, which then comprised only a small stone chapel possibly built by the ephemeral Shepseskare, was finished by Nyuserre. Extending over the whole 65 m (213 ft) length of the pyramid side, the temple was built of mudbrick and comprised the earliest hypostyle hall of Ancient Egypt, its roof supported by wooden columns. The hall housed a large wooden statue of the deceased king. Nyuserre also built storage rooms to the north of the hall and, east of it, the "Sanctuary of the Knife" where animals were ritually slaughtered. A column courtyard completed the temple entrance, adorned with two stone columns and 24 wooden ones.
### Pyramid complex of Khentkaus II
Work on the pyramid and mortuary temple of Nyuserre's mother, Khentkaus II, had begun during her husband's rule but was stopped in the tenth year of his reign, at which point only the pyramid core was still uncased. After a delay of 12 years, Nyuserre Ini restarted the building work, and expended much effort in completing the majority of the construction. The motivation for this might have been to legitimise his rule following the premature death of Neferefre and the possible challenge by Shepseskare.
The pyramid is located in Abusir, next to that of Neferikare Kakai, who was Khentkaus' husband and under whose reign the construction of Khentkaus's complex had started. Once completed, the pyramid stood 17 m (56 ft) high, with a side of 25 m (82 ft) at the base and a slope of 52 degrees. Its sepulchral chamber likely housed a sarcophagus of red granite. Today, the pyramid is a 4 m (13 ft) high mound of rubble.
The mortuary temple of the queen, at the eastern foot of the pyramid, was the object of successive completion works during Nyuserre's reign, the earliest one used stone while the latest used only mudbrick. Completely ruined today, the temple seems to have been designed in imitation of the mortuary temples of kings incorporating, for example, a satellite pyramid, and being aligned on an east–west axis. The temple was administratively at least partially independent from the temple of Neferirkare Kakai with which it nonetheless shared some religious services, and it continued to function until the end of the Sixth Dynasty, some 300 years after Khentkaus' lifetime.
### Valley Temple of Menkaure
Archaeological excavations in 2012–2015 revealed that Nyuserre Ini undertook building works on the valley temple of Menkaure, as witnessed by numerous seal impressions bearing his serekh discovered on the site. These works ended a long period from the reign of Shepseskaf until his reign during which the Giza necropolis was not the object of royal attention. Beyond Menkaure's valley temple, Nyuserre apparently also took a wider interest in the administration of the pyramid town of Khafre and revived the cult of both Menkaure and queen Khentkaus I. According to Mark Lehner, this queen, who bore the same name as Nyuserre's mother and like his mother bore two pharaohs, provided Nyuserre with a genealogical link relating him to his Fourth Dynasty forebears. John Nolan believes that the mirroring position and names of both Khentkaus queens was emphasised so that Nyuserre could legimitise his rule after the troubled times surrounding Neferefre's death.
In the valley temple of Menkaure, Nyuserre extended the eastern annex, where he added two sets of alabaster columns, rebuilt the main entrance and refurbished the limestone causeway leading from the valley temple to the high temple. There, Mark Lehner suggested that Nyuserre expanded the inner part of the high temple, notably adding to it a square antechamber with a single central pillar.
### Sun Temple of Userkaf
Userkaf, founder of the Fifth Dynasty, was also the first pharaoh to build a temple to Ra in Abu Gurob. The temple was called Nekhenre by the Ancient Egyptian, which means "The Fortress of Ra", and built in four phases by three pharaohs. Userkaf first constructed a rectangular enclosure with a mound in its center. Sahure or Neferirkare Kakai then transformed this mound into a granite obelisk on a pedestal, adding two statue shrines near its base. The last two phases of construction were undertaken during Nyuserre's reign. Nyuserre first added an inner enclosure of limestone in the pre-existing court, extended the outside enclosure and either completed or built entirely the valley temple. In the last construction phase, Nyuserre encased the inner enclosure in mudbrick, added an altar and five stone benches to the central court, and built an annex to the temple.
### Temple of Satet
A temple dedicated to the goddess Satet, personification of the Nile floods, had stood on the island of Elephantine to the south of Egypt since at least the late Predynastic Period around 3200 BCE. The temple was enlarged and renovated several times from the Early Dynastic Period onwards and was again rebuilt in the course of the Fifth Dynasty, possibly during Nyuserre's reign. A faience plaque bearing Nyuserre's name was discovered in a deposit of votive offerings located under the floor of the sanctuary. Unfortunately, this deposit does not represent the original context of the plaque, which could have once adorned the walls of the temple or could equally have been deposed in a foundational offering made in anticipation of the temple reconstruction.
## Family
### Parents and siblings
The identity of the mother of Nyuserre is known with certainty: it was queen Khentkaus II, in whose mortuary temple a fragmentary relief showing her facing her son Nyuserre and his family has been uncovered. On this relief both Khentkaus and Nyuserre appear on the same scale.
As a corollary, Nyuserre was almost certainly a son of Neferirkare Kakai as Khentkaus II was Neferirkare's queen. This relationship is also indicated by the location of Nyuserre's pyramid in Abusir next to that of Neferirkare, as well as his reuse for his own valley temple of materials from Neferikare's unfinished constructions.
At least one sibling of Nyuserre is known with near-certainty: Neferefre, who was a son of Neferirkare and Khentkaus II, was Nyuserre's elder brother. Since the relation between Shepseskare and Nyuserre remains uncertain, it is possible that the two were brothers too, as suggested by Roth, although the dominant hypothesis is that Shepseskare was a son of Sahure and hence Nyuserre's uncle. Finally, yet another brother, possibly younger than Nyuserre has also been proposed: Iryenre, a prince Iry-pat whose relationship is suggested by the fact that his funerary cult was associated with that of his mother, both having taken place in the temple of Khentkaus II.
### Consorts and daughters
Nyuserre Ini seems to have had at least two wives, as witnessed by two small pyramids located at the southern end of the pyramid field of Abusir. Known today under the names of Lepsius XXIV and Lepsius XXV given to them by Lepsius in his list of pyramids, both monuments are heavily ruined and the names of their owners cannot be ascertained. One of these two queens might have been Reptynub, the only known consort of Nyuserre. Her existence and relation to Nyuserre are attested by a fragmentary alabaster statuette of her discovered in the valley temple of Nyuserre's pyramid complex. Pieces of relief from the tomb of vizier Ptahshepses give the titles of a queen and while her name is lost, these titles are the same as those that Reptynub bore, leading Egyptologists to propose that these refer to her.
Nyuserre and Reptynub likely had a daughter in the person of princess Khamerernebty, as suggested by her title of "King's daughter" as well as her marriage to the powerful vizier Ptahshepses. This remains conjectural until direct evidence of this relationship can be discovered. In particular, the only known connection between Reptynub and Khamerernebty are the reliefs from Ptahshepses's tomb, the presence of which would seem natural if Reptynub was Khamerernebty's mother. Hartwig Altenmüller goes further and hypothesises that Nyuserre had two more daughters, who he believes were buried close to Nyuserre's pyramid. In 2012, the tomb of Sheretnebty, an hitherto unknown daughter of Nyuserre, was excavated in Abusir south by a team under the direction of Miroslav Bárta. She was married to an important Egyptian official, whose name is lost. According to Bárta, this type of marriage reflects the growing nepotism in the Egyptian elite and the progressive dilution of the king's power.
### Sons
Nyuserre Ini is known to have had at least one son: his first born, whose name is lost, is represented on several relief fragments from the high temple of his pyramid complex. Beyond the title of Iry-pat and "eldest king's son", he likely held two priestly titles: "lector priest" and "priest of Min". Although the name of Nyuserre's eldest son is lost, Michel Baud observes that one relief fragment comprises a "r[e]", possibly part of the prince's name. If so then he would be distinct from Menkauhor Kaiu, Nyuserre's successor.
The precise relationship between Nyuserre and Menkauhor remains uncertain but indirect evidence from the mastaba of Khentkaus III, discovered in 2015, favors the hypothesis that Menkauhor was a son of Neferefre and thus a nephew of Nyuserre rather than his own son. Khentkaus is called "king's wife" and "king's mother" in inscriptions left by the tomb builders. Given the location of the mastaba, close to the pyramid of Neferefre, her husband was likely this pharaoh. Since she was also the mother of a king and since Nyuserre was a brother to Neferefre, the son in question is most probably the future Menkauhor Kaiu, who would thus have succeeded his uncle.
In any case, the succession of Nyuserre seems to have gone smoothly. A seal bearing both Nyuserre's and Menkauhor's names has been uncovered in the mortuary complex of Nyuserre's mother Khentkaus II. A further seal is believed to have both Nyuserre's and Djedkare's names on it, Djedkare Isesi being Nyuserre's second successor. Taken together these seals reveal that, at the very least, Menkauhor and Djedkare did not perceive Nyuserre as an antagonist.
## Legacy
As pharaoh, Nyuserre Ini benefited from a funerary cult established at his death. Under the umbrella of the term "funerary cult" are grouped various cultic activities of two different types. First, there was an official cult taking place in the king's mortuary complex and which was provided for by agricultural domains established during Nyuserre's reign. This cult was most active until the end of the Old Kingdom but lasted at least until the Twelfth Dynasty during the Middle Kingdom, at which point is the latest known mention of a priest serving in Nyuserre's funerary complex. In later times, the official cult of Nyuserre was essentially reduced to a cult of the royal ancestor figure, a "limited version of the cult of the divine" as Jaromir Malek writes, manifested by the dedication of statues and the compilation of lists of kings to be honoured.
In parallel to that official cult were the more private cults of pious individuals venerating Nyuserre as a kind of "saint", an intercessor between the believers and the gods. This popular cult, which developed spontaneously, perhaps because of the proximity of Nyuserre's pyramid to Memphis, referred to Nyuserre using his birth name Iny, and likely consisted of invocations and offerings to statues of the king or in his mortuary temple. Therefore, archaeological traces of this cult are difficult to discern, yet Nyuserre's special status is manifest in some religious formulae, where his name is invoked, as well as in the onomastics of individuals, notably during the Middle Kingdom, whose names included "Iny", such as Inhotep, Inemsaf, Inankhu and many more. Although the veneration of Nyuserre was originally a local phenomenon from Abusir, Saqqara and their surroundings, it may have ultimately reached even outside of Egypt proper, in Sinai, Byblos and Nubia, where fragments of statues, vessels and stelae bearing Nyuserre's name have been discovered in cultic contexts.
### Old Kingdom
During the Old Kingdom, provisions for the official funerary cult of Nyuserre Ini were produced in agricultural estates set up during his reign. The names of some of these estates have been found inscribed on the walls of tombs in Saqqara or in Nyuserre's mortuary temple, such as "The track of Ini" and "The offerings of Ini". Several Ḥwt domains of the king, which comprise the land holdings of the mortuary temple of Nyuserre, are known: "Hathor wishes that Nyuserre lives", "Horus wishes that Nyuserre lives", "Bastet wishes that Nyuserre lives", and "Ptah desires Nyuserre to live". Several priests serving in the pyramid complex and sun temple of Nyuserre are known from their tombs until the end of the Sixth Dynasty, showing that the official mortuary cult endured throughout the late Old Kingdom.
Nyuserre furthermore received special attention from at least two of his successors during this period: Djedkare Isesi either restored or completed his funerary temple, and Pepi II Neferkare erected a door jamb bearing an inscription mentioning both his first Sed'' festival and Nyuserre in the latter's valley temple, a close association meant to "evidence the pretended association of the king with his forefather".
## Notes, citations and sources
### Explanatory notes
### General sources
|
238,429 |
Surfer Rosa
| 1,168,807,895 |
1988 studio album by Pixies
|
[
"1988 debut albums",
"4AD albums",
"Albums produced by Steve Albini",
"Art punk albums",
"Elektra Records albums",
"Grunge albums",
"Pixies (band) albums",
"Rough Trade Records albums",
"Spanish-language albums"
] |
Surfer Rosa is the debut studio album by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released in March 1988 on the British label 4AD. It was produced by Steve Albini. Surfer Rosa contains many of the elements of Pixies' earlier output, including Spanish lyrics and references to Puerto Rico. It includes references to mutilation and voyeurism alongside experimental recording techniques and a distinctive drum sound.
As 4AD was an independent label, distribution in the United States was handled by British label Rough Trade Records; however, it failed to chart in either country. Only one single was released, a rerecorded version of "Gigantic", and reached number 93 on the UK Singles Chart. Surfer Rosa was rereleased in the US by Elektra Records in 1992, and in 2005 was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Surfer Rosa is often included on critics' lists of the best rock albums. Alternative rock artists including Billy Corgan and PJ Harvey have cited it as an inspiration; it was an influence on Nirvana's 1993 album In Utero.
## Background
Before the release of Pixies' debut mini-album Come On Pilgrim in October 1987, Ivo Watts-Russell, head of 4AD, suggested they return to the studio to record a full-length album. The original plan was to record new material at Fort Apache Studios, where the band had produced The Purple Tape and Come On Pilgrim. However, due to differences between the band's manager Ken Goes and The Purple Tape producer Gary Smith, Pixies ended up looking for a new producer and recording studio. On the advice of a 4AD colleague, Watts-Russell looked to hire Steve Albini, ex-frontman of Big Black, as the record's engineer and producer. Having sent a pre-release tape of Come On Pilgrim to Albini, Pixies' manager, Ken Goes, invited him to a Boston dinner party at drummer David Lovering's house a few weeks after Come On Pilgrim's release.
Albini met the band that evening, and they discussed how the next record should sound and be recorded. Albini said that, "[the band and I] were in the studio the next day." Paul Q. Kolderie, who had worked at Fort Apache Studios with Smith, recommended the Boston recording studio Q Division to Albini. This created tension between Smith and Kolderie, and Kolderie later remarked that "Gary almost killed me for the suggestion, he thought I was scheming to get the project."
## Recording and production
Pixies entered Q Division in December 1987, booking ten working days of studio time in which to record the album. 4AD allocated the band a budget of US\$10,000. Albini's producer's fee was US\$1,500, and he received no royalties; Albini has a practice of refusing royalties from records he produces, viewing it as "an insult to the band." Along with Albini in the studio, Q Division's Jon Lupfer acted as studio assistant. The recording process took the entire booked period of ten working days to complete, with extra vocal mixes subsequently added in the studio. Albini planned to mix the record "somewhere else", but according to Lupfer, "He was unhappy there with it."
### Albini's recording techniques
During Kim Deal's vocals takes during "Where Is My Mind?" and "Gigantic", he moved the equipment to record into a studio bathroom to achieve more "roomy" echo. John Murphy, Deal's then husband, said that "Albini didn't like the studio sound. Albini later said that the record could have been completed in a week, but "we ended up trying more experimental stuff basically to kill time and see if anything good materialized." An example was "Something Against You", where Albini filtered Black Francis' voice through a guitar amp for "a totally ragged, vicious texture."
### Studio banter
The recording of a conversation held between Francis and Albini can be heard at the end of "Oh My Golly!". Lupfer writes that "it was a concept he [Albini] was going for to get some studio banter." As Deal was leaving the studio to smoke a cigarette, she exclaimed "If anybody touches my stuff, I'll kill ya." Francis replied with "I'll kill you, you fucking die, if anybody touches my stuff". The track begins at this point, with Francis explaining the conversation to Albini, whose voice is not heard on the track. Lupfer later admitted that Albini knew "perfectly well what was going on."
"I'm Amazed" begins with Deal recounting a story in which one of her former teachers who was "into field hockey players" was discreetly fired. Francis finishes Deal's sentences, joking that her response to hearing of the teacher's activities was to try to join the team. Albini later observed the use of studio banter on Surfer Rosa: "It's on their record forever so I think now they are obliged to say that they're ok with it, but I honestly don't know that that idea would've ever come up if I hadn't done it. There are times when things like that are revealing and entertaining and I kind of felt it was a bit gimmicky on this record."
## Music
Like Come On Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa displays a mix of musical styles; pop guitar songs such as "Broken Face", "Break My Body", and "Brick Is Red" are featured alongside slower, more melodic tracks exemplified by "Where Is My Mind?". The album includes heavier material, and prominently features the band's trademark quiet-loud dynamic. Frontman and principal songwriter Black Francis wrote the material, the only exception being "Gigantic," which was co-written with Kim Deal. "Gigantic" is one of only two Pixies album tracks on which Deal sang lead vocals.
Surfer Rosa's lyrical content includes examinations of mutilation and incest in "Break My Body" and "Broken Face", while references to superheroes appear on "Tony's Theme". Voyeurism appears in "Gigantic", and surrealistic lyrics are featured on "Bone Machine" and "Where Is My Mind?". Puerto Rico references and Spanish lyrics are found on the tracks "Oh My Golly!" and "Vamos." The latter track was previously featured on Come On Pilgrim, and appears on Surfer Rosa as a rerecorded version of the original song. Many of the themes explored on previous recordings are revisited on Surfer Rosa; however, unlike on the band's later albums, the songs in Surfer Rosa are not preoccupied with one overarching topic.
Other unusual and offbeat subject matter is raised on the album. "Cactus" is narrated by a prison inmate who requests his girlfriend smear her dress with blood and mail it to him. "Gigantic" is about an illicit love affair and borrows from the 1986 film Crimes of the Heart, in which a married woman falls in love with a teenager. Francis was inspired to write "Where Is My Mind?" after scuba diving in the Caribbean. He later said he had "this very small fish trying to chase me. I don't know why—I don't know too much about fish behavior."
## Release
Surfer Rosa was released in the UK by 4AD on March 21, 1988, entering the UK Indie Chart the following week. It spent 60 weeks in the chart, peaking at number 2. Until August of that year it was only available in the U.S. as an import. Although the label held worldwide distribution rights to Pixies, they did not have access to a distributor outside the UK. When 4AD signed a distribution deal with Rough Trade's U.S. branch, the album was released on vinyl and cassette as part of the Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim release. While Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim has remained in print on CD in the UK, subsequent U.S. releases have seen the two released on separate CDs. These separate releases first appeared in January 1992, when Elektra Records first reissued the band's first two albums. After 4AD reacquired rights to the band's U.S. distribution, they released both as separate CDs. Surfer Rosa was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2005, 17 years after its original release.
"Gigantic" was the only single taken from Surfer Rosa. The track and its B-side, "River Euphrates", were rerecorded by Gil Norton at Blackwing Studios in London, early in May 1988. The remixed single was well met by critics. The single failed to sell, and spent just one week at number 93 on the UK Singles Chart. Despite the poor commercial performance of both Surfer Rosa and "Gigantic", Ivo Watts-Russell has said that the response to the album was "times five" compared with Come On Pilgrim.
## Packaging
Surfer Rosa's cover artwork features a photograph of a topless "friend of a friend" of the band, posing as a flamenco dancer, pitched against a wall which displays a crucifix and a torn poster. Simon Larbalestier, who contributed pictures to all Pixies album sleeves, decided to build the set because "we couldn't find the atmosphere we wanted naturally." According to Larbalestier, Black Francis came up with the idea for the cover as he wrote songs in his father's "topless Spanish bar"; Larbalestier added the crucifix and torn poster, and they "sort of loaded that with all the Catholicism." Commenting on the cover in 2005, Francis said, "I just hope people find it tasteful." The cover booklet expands on the theme, and features photographs of the flamenco dancer in several other poses; there are no song lyrics or written content, apart from album credits, in the booklet.
Albini's name does not appear on the original record sleeve. The booklet's photographs were taken in one day at a pub opposite the 4AD offices, because, according to Larbalestier, "it was one of the few places that had a raised stage". In a 1988 interview with Joy Press, Black Francis described the concept as referring to "a surfer girl," who "walks along the Beach of Piñones, has a surfboard, very beautiful." When questioned about the topless element, he replied, "For the first record, I told them I liked nudity. I like body lines—not necessarily something in bad taste, didn't even have to be female, just body lines ... like that Obsession ad, you know?" According to Melody Maker, the album was originally entitled "Gigantic" after Deal's song, but the band feared misinterpretation of the cover and changed it to "Surfer Rosa." The "name" of the cover woman, and the album title, comes from the "Oh My Golly!" lyric "Besando chichando con surfer rosa", which roughly translates to "Kissing, having sex with Surfer Rosa".
## Critical reception
UK music press reviews of Surfer Rosa were generally positive. Q's Ian Cranna wrote that "what sets the Pixies apart are their sudden bursts of memorable pop melody," and noted that "they could have a bright future ahead of them." NME's Mark Sinker, reviewing the album in March 1988, said "they force the past to sound like them", while Dave Henderson from Underground magazine found the songs "well crafted, well delivered sketches which embrace commercial ideals as well as bizarre left-field out of control moments". John Dougan of American music magazine Spin described it as "beautifully brutal", and the magazine later named Pixies their musicians of the year. In a less enthusiastic contemporary review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau found the band's guitar riffs recognizable and their strong rhythms unique, but felt they had been overrated by critics who hailed them as "the Amerindie find of the year". In a 2003 review of the Pixies' 2002 self-titled EP, Christgau wrote that while he initially found Francis' fey and philosophically limited lyrics somewhat annoying, Surfer Rosa now seemed "audaciously funny and musically prophetic".
At the end of 1988, Surfer Rosa was named one of the year's best albums on English critics' year-end lists. Independent music magazines Melody Maker and Sounds named Surfer Rosa as their album of the year; NME and Record Mirror placed the album 10th and 14th, respectively. However, Surfer Rosa failed to appear on The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics. It also did not appear on any end-of-year list in the United States. A number of music magazines have since positioned Surfer Rosa as one of the quintessential alternative rock records of the 1980s. The album has appeared on several all-time best album lists, and is consistently placed as one of the best albums of the 1980s in any genre.
As of 2015, sales in the United States have exceeded 705,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
## Legacy
Both Surfer Rosa and Steve Albini's production of the album have been influential on alternative rock, and on grunge in particular. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain cited Surfer Rosa as the basis for Nevermind's songwriting. When he first heard the album, Cobain discovered a template for the mix of heavy noise and pop he was aiming to achieve. He remarked in 1992 that he "heard songs off of Surfer Rosa that I'd written but threw out because I was too afraid to play them for anybody." Cobain hired Albini to produce Nirvana's 1993 album In Utero, primarily due to his contribution to Surfer Rosa. The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan described Surfer Rosa as "the one that made me go, 'holy shit'. It was so fresh. It rocked without being lame." Corgan was impressed by the album's drum sound, and acknowledged that The Smashing Pumpkins used to study the record for its technical elements. Musician PJ Harvey said that Surfer Rosa "blew my mind," and that she "immediately went to track down Steve Albini." Cobain listed Surfer Rosa as one of the top 50 albums he thought were most influential to Nirvana's sound in his journal in 1993.
People connected with the band were impressed by the record. Ivo Watts-Russell recalled: "I remember when I first heard Surfer Rosa thinking, 'I didn't know the Pixies could sound like The Fall.' That was my immediate reaction, in other words, incredibly raw." Gary Smith, who at the time was in a disagreement with the band, admitted he "was really happy that they had made such a forceful, aggressive, record." Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis, comparing the record to the later Pixies albums Bossanova and Trompe le Monde, said he thought that Steve Albini's production "sounded way better than the other ones."
In 1991, as Pixies were recording Trompe le Monde, Albini told the fan magazine Forced Exposure that Surfer Rosa was "a patchwork pinch loaf from a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock", and said of the band: "Their willingness to be 'guided' by their manager, their record company and their producers is unparalleled. Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings." In 2005, Albini apologized for the remarks, saying: "To this day I regret having done it. I don't think that I regarded the band as significantly as I should have."
### Accolades
The information regarding accolades attributed to Surfer Rosa is adapted from Acclaimedmusic.net.
(\*) designates unordered lists.
## Track listing
All tracks written by Black Francis, except where noted.
## Personnel
All information taken from the CD release of Surfer Rosa.
Pixies
- Black Francis – vocals, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar
- Kim Deal – bass, vocals, lead vocals on "Gigantic" (credited as Mrs. John Murphy)
- Joey Santiago – lead guitar
- David Lovering – drums
Technical
- Steve Albini – production, audio engineering
- Simon Larbalestier, Vaughan Oliver – cover image, album booklet imagery
- Published by Rice 'n' Beans Music BMI
## Certifications
|
149,131 |
Messiah (Handel)
| 1,173,884,489 |
1741 sacred oratorio by Handel
|
[
"1742 in Ireland",
"1742 oratorios",
"History of Dublin (city)",
"Messiah (Handel)",
"Oratorios based on the Bible",
"Oratorios by George Frideric Handel"
] |
Messiah (HWV 56) is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. The text was compiled from the King James Bible and the Coverdale Psalter by Charles Jennens. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.
Handel's reputation in England, where he had lived since 1712, had been established through his compositions of Italian opera. He turned to English oratorio in the 1730s in response to changes in public taste; Messiah was his sixth work in this genre. Although its structure resembles that of opera, it is not in dramatic form; there are no impersonations of characters and no direct speech. Instead, Jennens's text is an extended reflection on Jesus as the Messiah called Christ. The text begins in Part I with prophecies by Isaiah and others, and moves to the annunciation to the shepherds, the only "scene" taken from the Gospels. In Part II, Handel concentrates on the Passion of Jesus and ends with the Hallelujah chorus. In Part III he covers Paul's teachings on the resurrection of the dead and Christ's glorification in heaven.
Handel wrote Messiah for modest vocal and instrumental forces, with optional settings for many of the individual numbers. In the years after his death, the work was adapted for performance on a much larger scale, with giant orchestras and choirs. In other efforts to update it, its orchestration was revised and amplified, such as Mozart's Der Messias. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the trend has been towards reproducing a greater fidelity to Handel's original intentions, although "big Messiah" productions continue to be mounted. A near-complete version was issued on 78 rpm discs in 1928; since then the work has been recorded many times.
The autograph manuscript of the oratorio is preserved in the British Library.
## Background
The composer George Frideric Handel, born in Halle, Germany in 1685, took up permanent residence in London in 1712, and became a naturalised British subject in 1727. By 1741 his pre-eminence in British music was evident from the honours he had accumulated, including a pension from the court of King George II, the office of Composer of Musick for the Chapel Royal, and—most unusually for a living person—a statue erected in his honour in Vauxhall Gardens. Within a large and varied musical output, Handel was a vigorous champion of Italian opera, which he had introduced to London in 1711 with Rinaldo. He subsequently wrote and presented more than 40 such operas in London's theatres.
By the early 1730s public taste for Italian opera was beginning to fade. The popular success of John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch's The Beggar's Opera (first performed in 1728) had heralded a spate of English-language ballad-operas that mocked the pretensions of Italian opera. With box-office receipts falling, Handel's productions were increasingly reliant on private subsidies from the nobility. Such funding became harder to obtain after the launch in 1730 of the Opera of the Nobility, a rival company to his own. Handel overcame this challenge, but he spent large sums of his own money in doing so.
Although prospects for Italian opera were declining, Handel remained committed to the genre, but as alternatives to his staged works he began to introduce English-language oratorios. In Rome in 1707–08 he had written two Italian oratorios at a time when opera performances in the city were temporarily forbidden under papal decree. His first venture into English oratorio had been Esther, which was written and performed for a private patron in about 1718. In 1732 Handel brought a revised and expanded version of Esther to the King's Theatre, Haymarket, where members of the royal family attended a glittering premiere on 6 May. Its success encouraged Handel to write two more oratorios (Deborah and Athalia). All three oratorios were performed to large and appreciative audiences at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in mid-1733. Undergraduates reportedly sold their furniture to raise the money for the five-shilling tickets.
In 1735 Handel received the text for a new oratorio named Saul from its librettist Charles Jennens, a wealthy landowner with musical and literary interests. Because Handel's main creative concern was still with opera, he did not write the music for Saul until 1738, in preparation for his 1738–39 theatrical season. The work, after opening at the King's Theatre in January 1739 to a warm reception, was quickly followed by the less successful oratorio Israel in Egypt (which may also have come from Jennens). Although Handel continued to write operas, the trend towards English-language productions became irresistible as the decade ended. After three performances of his last Italian opera Deidamia in January and February 1741, he abandoned the genre. In July 1741 Jennens sent him a new libretto for an oratorio; in a letter dated 10 July to his friend Edward Holdsworth, Jennens wrote: "I hope [Handel] will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition may excell all his former Compositions, as the Subject excells every other subject. The Subject is Messiah".
## Synopsis
In Christian theology, the Messiah is the saviour of humankind. The Messiah (Māšîaḥ) is an Old Testament Hebrew word meaning "the Anointed One", which in New Testament Greek is Christ, a title given to Jesus of Nazareth, known by his followers as "Jesus Christ". Handel's Messiah has been described by the early-music scholar Richard Luckett as "a commentary on [Jesus Christ's] Nativity, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension", beginning with God's promises as spoken by the prophets and ending with Christ's glorification in heaven. In contrast with most of Handel's oratorios, the singers in Messiah do not assume dramatic roles; there is no single, dominant narrative voice; and very little use is made of quoted speech. In his libretto, Jennens's intention was not to dramatise the life and teachings of Jesus, but to acclaim the "Mystery of Godliness", using a compilation of extracts from the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible, and from the Psalms included in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
The three-part structure of the work approximates to that of Handel's three-act operas, with the "parts" subdivided by Jennens into "scenes". Each scene is a collection of individual numbers or "movements" which take the form of recitatives, arias and choruses. There are two instrumental numbers, the opening Sinfony in the style of a French overture, and the pastoral Pifa, often called the "pastoral symphony", at the mid-point of Part I.
In Part I, the Messiah's coming and the virgin birth are predicted by the Old Testament prophets. The annunciation to the shepherds of the birth of the Christ is represented in the words of Luke's gospel. Part II covers Christ's passion and his death, his resurrection and ascension, the first spreading of the gospel through the world, and a definitive statement of God's glory summarised in the Hallelujah. Part III begins with the promise of redemption, followed by a prediction of the day of judgment and the "general resurrection", ending with the final victory over sin and death and the acclamation of Christ. According to the musicologist Donald Burrows, much of the text is so allusive as to be largely incomprehensible to those ignorant of the biblical accounts. For the benefit of his audiences Jennens printed and issued a pamphlet explaining the reasons for his choices of scriptural selections.
## Writing history
### Libretto
Charles Jennens was born around 1700, into a prosperous landowning family whose lands and properties in Warwickshire and Leicestershire he eventually inherited. His religious and political views—he opposed the Act of Settlement of 1701 which secured the accession to the British throne for the House of Hanover—prevented him from receiving his degree from Balliol College, Oxford, or from pursuing any form of public career. His family's wealth enabled him to live a life of leisure while devoting himself to his literary and musical interests. Although musicologist Watkins Shaw dismisses Jennens as "a conceited figure of no special ability", Burrows has written: "of Jennens's musical literacy there can be no doubt". He was certainly devoted to Handel's music, having helped to finance the publication of every Handel score since Rodelinda in 1725. By 1741, after their collaboration on Saul, a warm friendship had developed between the two, and Handel was a frequent visitor to the Jennens family estate at Gopsall.
Jennens's letter to Holdsworth of 10 July 1741, in which he first mentions Messiah, suggests that the text was a recent work, probably assembled earlier that summer. As a devout Anglican and believer in scriptural authority, Jennens intended to challenge advocates of Deism, who rejected the doctrine of divine intervention in human affairs. Shaw describes the text as "a meditation of our Lord as Messiah in Christian thought and belief", and despite his reservations on Jennens's character, concedes that the finished wordbook "amounts to little short of a work of genius". There is no evidence that Handel played any active role in the selection or preparation of the text, such as he did in the case of Saul; it seems, rather, that he saw no need to make any significant amendment to Jennens's work.
### Composition
The music for Messiah was completed in 24 days of swift composition. Having received Jennens's text some time after 10 July 1741, Handel began work on it on 22 August. His records show that he had completed Part I in outline by 28 August, Part II by 6 September and Part III by 12 September, followed by two days of "filling up" to produce the finished work on 14 September. This rapid pace was seen by Jennens not as a sign of ecstatic energy but rather as "careless negligence", and the relations between the two men would remain strained, since Jennens "urged Handel to make improvements" while the composer stubbornly refused. The autograph score's 259 pages show some signs of haste such as blots, scratchings-out, unfilled bars and other uncorrected errors, but according to the music scholar Richard Luckett the number of errors is remarkably small in a document of this length. The original manuscript for Messiah is now held in the British Library's music collection. It is scored for two trumpets, timpani, two oboes, two violins, viola, and basso continuo.
At the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters "SDG"—Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone the glory". This inscription, taken with the speed of composition, has encouraged belief in the apocryphal story that Handel wrote the music in a fervour of divine inspiration in which, as he wrote the Hallelujah chorus, "He saw all heaven before him". Burrows points out that many of Handel's operas of comparable length and structure to Messiah were composed within similar timescales between theatrical seasons. The effort of writing so much music in so short a time was not unusual for Handel and his contemporaries; Handel commenced his next oratorio, Samson, within a week of finishing Messiah, and completed his draft of this new work in a month. In accordance with his practice when writing new works, Handel adapted existing compositions for use in Messiah, in this case drawing on two recently completed Italian duets and one written twenty years previously. Thus, Se tu non lasci amore HWV 193 from 1722 became the basis of "O Death, where is thy sting?"; "His yoke is easy" and "And he shall purify" were drawn from Quel fior che all'alba ride HWV 192 (July 1741), "Unto us a child is born" and "All we like sheep" from Nò, di voi non vo' fidarmi HWV 189 (July 1741). Handel's instrumentation in the score is often imprecise, again in line with contemporary convention, where the use of certain instruments and combinations was assumed and did not need to be written down by the composer; later copyists would fill in the details.
Before the first performance Handel made numerous revisions to his manuscript score, in part to match the forces available for the 1742 Dublin premiere; it is probable that his work was not performed as originally conceived in his lifetime. Between 1742 and 1754 he continued to revise and recompose individual movements, sometimes to suit the requirements of particular singers. The first published score of Messiah was issued in 1767, eight years after Handel's death, though this was based on relatively early manuscripts and included none of Handel's later revisions.
### Dublin, 1742
Handel's decision to give a season of concerts in Dublin in the winter of 1741–42 arose from an invitation from the Duke of Devonshire, then serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. A violinist friend of Handel's, Matthew Dubourg, was in Dublin as the Lord Lieutenant's bandmaster; he would look after the tour's orchestral requirements. Whether Handel originally intended to perform Messiah in Dublin is uncertain; he did not inform Jennens of any such plan, for the latter wrote to Holdsworth on 2 December 1741: "...it was some mortification to me to hear that instead of performing Messiah here he has gone into Ireland with it." After arriving in Dublin on 18 November 1741, Handel arranged a subscription series of six concerts, to be held between December 1741 and February 1742 at the Great Music Hall, Fishamble Street. The venue had been built in 1741 specifically to accommodate concerts for the benefit of The Charitable and Musical Society for the Release of Imprisoned Debtors, a charity for whom Handel had agreed to perform one benefit performance. These concerts were so popular that a second series was quickly arranged; Messiah figured in neither series.
In early March Handel began discussions with the appropriate committees for a charity concert, to be given in April, at which he intended to present Messiah. He sought and was given permission from St Patrick's and Christ Church cathedrals to use their choirs for this occasion. These forces amounted to sixteen men and sixteen boy choristers; several of the men were allocated solo parts. The women soloists were Christina Maria Avoglio, who had sung the main soprano roles in the two subscription series, and Susannah Cibber, an established stage actress and contralto who had sung in the second series. To accommodate Cibber's vocal range, the recitative "Then shall the eyes of the blind" and the aria "He shall feed his flock" were transposed down to F major. The performance, also in the Fishamble Street hall, was originally announced for 12 April, but was deferred for a day "at the request of persons of Distinction". The orchestra in Dublin comprised strings, two trumpets, and timpani; the number of players is unknown. Handel had his own organ shipped to Ireland for the performances; a harpsichord was probably also used.
The three charities that were to benefit were prisoners' debt relief, the Mercer's Hospital, and the Charitable Infirmary. In its report on a public rehearsal, the Dublin News-Letter described the oratorio as "...far surpass[ing] anything of that Nature which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom". Seven hundred people attended the premiere on 13 April. So that the largest possible audience could be admitted to the concert, gentlemen were requested to remove their swords, and ladies were asked not to wear hoops in their dresses. The performance earned unanimous praise from the assembled press: "Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring and crouded Audience". A Dublin clergyman, Rev. Delaney, was so overcome by Susanna Cibber's rendering of "He was despised" that reportedly he leapt to his feet and cried: "Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!" The takings amounted to around £400, providing about £127 to each of the three nominated charities and securing the release of 142 indebted prisoners.
Handel remained in Dublin for four months after the première. He organised a second performance of Messiah on 3 June, which was announced as "the last Performance of Mr Handel's during his Stay in this Kingdom". In this second Messiah, which was for Handel's private financial benefit, Cibber reprised her role from the first performance, though Avoglio may have been replaced by a Mrs Maclaine; details of other performers are not recorded.
### London, 1743–59
The warm reception accorded to Messiah in Dublin was not repeated in London. Indeed, even the announcement of the performance as a "new Sacred Oratorio" drew an anonymous commentator to ask if "the Playhouse is a fit Temple to perform it". Handel introduced the work at the Covent Garden theatre on 23 March 1743. Avoglio and Cibber were again the chief soloists; they were joined by the tenor John Beard, a veteran of Handel's operas, the bass Thomas Rheinhold and two other sopranos, Kitty Clive and Miss Edwards. The first performance was overshadowed by views expressed in the press that the work's subject matter was too exalted to be performed in a theatre, particularly by secular singer-actresses such as Cibber and Clive. In an attempt to deflect such sensibilities, in London Handel had avoided the name Messiah and presented the work as the "New Sacred Oratorio". As was his custom, Handel rearranged the music to suit his singers. He wrote a new setting of "And lo, the angel of the Lord" for Clive, never used subsequently. He added a tenor song for Beard: "Their sound is gone out", which had appeared in Jennens's original libretto but had not been in the Dublin performances.
The custom of standing for the Hallelujah chorus originates from a popular belief that, at the London premiere, King George II did so, which would have obliged all to stand. There is no convincing evidence that the king was present, or that he attended any subsequent performance of Messiah; the first reference to the practice of standing appears in a letter dated 1756, three years prior to Handel's death.
London's initially cool reception of Messiah led Handel to reduce the season's planned six performances to three, and not to present the work at all in 1744—to the considerable annoyance of Jennens, whose relations with the composer temporarily soured. At Jennens's request, Handel made several changes in the music for the 1745 revival: "Their sound is gone out" became a choral piece, the soprano song "Rejoice greatly" was recomposed in shortened form, and the transpositions for Cibber's voice were restored to their original soprano range. Jennens wrote to Holdsworth on 30 August 1745: "[Handel] has made a fine Entertainment of it, though not near so good as he might & ought to have done. I have with great difficulty made him correct some of the grosser faults in the composition..." Handel directed two performances at Covent Garden in 1745, on 9 and 11 April, and then set the work aside for four years.
The 1749 revival at Covent Garden, under the proper title of Messiah, saw the appearance of two female soloists who were henceforth closely associated with Handel's music: Giulia Frasi and Caterina Galli. In the following year these were joined by the male alto Gaetano Guadagni, for whom Handel composed new versions of "But who may abide" and "Thou art gone up on high". The year 1750 also saw the institution of the annual charity performances of Messiah at London's Foundling Hospital, which continued until Handel's death and beyond. The 1754 performance at the hospital is the first for which full details of the orchestral and vocal forces survive. The orchestra included fifteen violins, five violas, three cellos, two double basses, four bassoons, four oboes, two trumpets, two horns and drums. In the chorus of nineteen were six trebles from the Chapel Royal; the remainder, all men, were altos, tenors and basses. Frasi, Galli and Beard led the five soloists, who were required to assist the chorus. For this performance the transposed Guadagni arias were restored to the soprano voice. By 1754 Handel was severely afflicted by the onset of blindness, and in 1755 he turned over the direction of the Messiah hospital performance to his pupil, J. C. Smith. He apparently resumed his duties in 1757 and may have continued thereafter. The final performance of the work at which Handel was present was at Covent Garden on 6 April 1759, eight days before his death.
## Later performance history
### 18th century
During the 1750s Messiah was performed increasingly at festivals and cathedrals throughout the country. Individual choruses and arias were occasionally extracted for use as anthems or motets in church services, or as concert pieces, a practice that grew in the 19th century and has continued ever since. After Handel's death, performances were given in Florence (1768), New York (excerpts, 1770), Hamburg (1772), and Mannheim (1777), where Mozart first heard it. For the performances in Handel's lifetime and in the decades following his death, the musical forces used in the Foundling Hospital performance of 1754 are thought by Burrows to be typical. A fashion for large-scale performances began in 1784, in a series of commemorative concerts of Handel's music given in Westminster Abbey under the patronage of King George III. A plaque on the Abbey wall records that "The Band consisting of DXXV [525] vocal & instrumental performers was conducted by Joah Bates Esqr." In a 1955 article, Sir Malcolm Sargent, a proponent of large-scale performances, wrote, "Mr Bates ... had known Handel well and respected his wishes. The orchestra employed was two hundred and fifty strong, including twelve horns, twelve trumpets, six trombones and three pairs of timpani (some made especially large)." In 1787 further performances were given at the Abbey; advertisements promised, "The Band will consist of Eight Hundred Performers".
In continental Europe, performances of Messiah were departing from Handel's practices in a different way: his score was being drastically reorchestrated to suit contemporary tastes. In 1786, Johann Adam Hiller presented Messiah with updated scoring in Berlin Cathedral. In 1788 Hiller presented a performance of his revision with a choir of 259 and an orchestra of 87 strings, 10 bassoons, 11 oboes, 8 flutes, 8 horns, 4 clarinets, 4 trombones, 7 trumpets, timpani, harpsichord and organ. In 1789, Mozart was commissioned by Baron Gottfried van Swieten and the Gesellschaft der Associierten to re-orchestrate several works by Handel, including Messiah (Der Messias). Writing for a small-scale performance, he eliminated the organ continuo, added parts for flutes, clarinets, trombones and horns, recomposed some passages and rearranged others. The performance took place on 6 March 1789 in the rooms of Count Johann Esterházy, with four soloists and a choir of 12. Mozart's arrangement, with minor amendments from Hiller, was published in 1803, after his death. The musical scholar Moritz Hauptmann described the Mozart additions as "stucco ornaments on a marble temple". Mozart himself was reportedly circumspect about his changes, insisting that any alterations to Handel's score should not be interpreted as an effort to improve the music. Elements of this version later became familiar to British audiences, incorporated into editions of the score by editors including Ebenezer Prout.
### 19th century
In the 19th century, approaches to Handel in German- and English-speaking countries diverged further. In Leipzig in 1856, the musicologist Friedrich Chrysander and the literary historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus founded the Deutsche Händel-Gesellschaft with the aim of publishing authentic editions of all Handel's works. At the same time, performances in Britain and the United States moved away from Handel's performance practice with increasingly grandiose renditions. Messiah was presented in New York in 1853 with a chorus of 300 and in Boston in 1865 with more than 600. In Britain a "Great Handel Festival" was held at the Crystal Palace in 1857, performing Messiah and other Handel oratorios, with a chorus of 2,000 singers and an orchestra of 500.
In the 1860s and 1870s ever larger forces were assembled. Bernard Shaw, in his role as a music critic, commented, "The stale wonderment which the great chorus never fails to elicit has already been exhausted"; he later wrote, "Why, instead of wasting huge sums on the multitudinous dullness of a Handel Festival does not somebody set up a thoroughly rehearsed and exhaustively studied performance of the Messiah in St James's Hall with a chorus of twenty capable artists? Most of us would be glad to hear the work seriously performed once before we die." The employment of huge forces necessitated considerable augmentation of the orchestral parts. Many admirers of Handel believed that the composer would have made such additions, had the appropriate instruments been available in his day. Shaw argued, largely unheeded, that "the composer may be spared from his friends, and the function of writing or selecting 'additional orchestral accompaniments' exercised with due discretion."
One reason for the popularity of huge-scale performances was the ubiquity of amateur choral societies. The conductor Sir Thomas Beecham wrote that for 200 years the chorus was "the national medium of musical utterance" in Britain. However, after the heyday of Victorian choral societies, he noted a "rapid and violent reaction against monumental performances ... an appeal from several quarters that Handel should be played and heard as in the days between 1700 and 1750". At the end of the century, Sir Frederick Bridge and T. W. Bourne pioneered revivals of Messiah in Handel's orchestration, and Bourne's work was the basis for further scholarly versions in the early 20th century.
### 20th century and beyond
Although the huge-scale oratorio tradition was perpetuated by such large ensembles as the Royal Choral Society, the Tabernacle Choir and the Huddersfield Choral Society in the 20th century, there were increasing calls for performances more faithful to Handel's conception. At the turn of the century, The Musical Times wrote of the "additional accompaniments" of Mozart and others, "Is it not time that some of these 'hangers on' of Handel's score were sent about their business?" In 1902, Prout produced a new edition of the score, working from Handel's original manuscripts rather than from corrupt printed versions with errors accumulated from one edition to another. However, Prout started from the assumption that a faithful reproduction of Handel's original score would not be practical:
> [T]he attempts made from time to time by our musical societies to give Handel's music as he meant it to be given must, however earnest the intention, and however careful the preparation, be foredoomed to failure from the very nature of the case. With our large choral societies, additional accompaniments of some kind are a necessity for an effective performance; and the question is not so much whether, as how they are to be written.
Prout continued the practice of adding flutes, clarinets and trombones to Handel's orchestration, but he restored Handel's high trumpet parts, which Mozart had omitted (evidently because playing them was a lost art by 1789). There was little dissent from Prout's approach, and when Chrysander's scholarly edition was published in the same year, it was received respectfully as "a volume for the study" rather than a performing edition, being an edited reproduction of various of Handel's manuscript versions. An authentic performance was thought impossible: The Musical Times correspondent wrote, "Handel's orchestral instruments were all (excepting the trumpet) of a coarser quality than those at present in use; his harpsichords are gone for ever ... the places in which he performed the 'Messiah' were mere drawing-rooms when compared with the Albert Hall, the Queen's Hall and the Crystal Palace. In Australia, The Register protested at the prospect of performances by "trumpery little church choirs of 20 voices or so".
In Germany, Messiah was not so often performed as in Britain; when it was given, medium-sized forces were the norm. At the Handel Festival held in 1922 in Handel's native town, Halle, his choral works were given by a choir of 163 and an orchestra of 64. In Britain, innovative broadcasting and recording contributed to reconsideration of Handelian performance. For example, in 1928, Beecham conducted a recording of Messiah with modestly sized forces and controversially brisk tempi, although the orchestration remained far from authentic. In 1934 and 1935, the BBC broadcast performances of Messiah conducted by Adrian Boult with "a faithful adherence to Handel's clear scoring." A performance with authentic scoring was given in Worcester Cathedral as part of the Three Choirs Festival in 1935. In 1950 John Tobin conducted a performance of Messiah in St Paul's Cathedral with the orchestral forces specified by the composer, a choir of 60, a countertenor alto soloist, and modest attempts at vocal elaboration of the printed notes, in the manner of Handel's day. The Prout version sung with many voices remained popular with British choral societies, but at the same time increasingly frequent performances were given by small professional ensembles in suitably sized venues, using authentic scoring. Recordings on LP and CD were preponderantly of the latter type, and the large scale Messiah came to seem old-fashioned.
The cause of authentic performance was advanced in 1965 by the publication of a new edition of the score, edited by Watkins Shaw. In the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, David Scott writes, "the edition at first aroused suspicion on account of its attempts in several directions to break the crust of convention surrounding the work in the British Isles." By the time of Shaw's death in 1996, The Times described his edition as "now in universal use".
Messiah remains Handel's best-known work, with performances particularly popular during the Advent season; writing in December 1993, the music critic Alex Ross refers to that month's 21 performances in New York alone as "numbing repetition". Against the general trend towards authenticity, the work has been staged in opera houses, both in London (2009) and in Paris (2011). The Mozart score is revived from time to time, and in Anglophone countries "singalong" performances with many hundreds of performers are popular. Although performances striving for authenticity are now usual, it is generally agreed that there can never be a definitive version of Messiah; the surviving manuscripts contain radically different settings of many numbers, and vocal and instrumental ornamentation of the written notes is a matter of personal judgment, even for the most historically informed performers. The Handel scholar Winton Dean has written:
> [T]here is still plenty for scholars to fight over, and more than ever for conductors to decide for themselves. Indeed if they are not prepared to grapple with the problems presented by the score they ought not to conduct it. This applies not only to the choice of versions, but to every aspect of baroque practice, and of course there are often no final answers.
## Music
### Organisation and numbering of movements
The numbering of the movements shown here is in accordance with the Novello vocal score (1959), edited by Watkins Shaw, which adapts the numbering earlier devised by Ebenezer Prout. Other editions count the movements slightly differently; the Bärenreiter edition of 1965, for example, does not number all the recitatives and runs from 1 to 47. The division into parts and scenes is based upon the 1743 word-book prepared for the first London performance. The scene headings are given as Burrows summarised the scene headings by Jennens.
Part I
Scene 1: Isaiah's prophecy of salvation
1. Overture (instrumental)
2. Comfort ye my people (tenor)
3. Ev'ry valley shall be exalted (air for tenor)
4. And the glory of the Lord (anthem chorus)
Scene 2: The coming judgment
1. <li value=5>
Thus saith the Lord of hosts (accompanied recitative for bass)
2. But who may abide the day of His coming (soprano, alto or bass)
3. And he shall purify the sons of Levi (chorus)
Scene 3: The prophecy of Christ's birth
1. <li value=8>
Behold, a virgin shall conceive (alto)
2. O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion (air for alto and chorus)
3. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth (bass)
4. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light (bass)
5. For unto us a child is born (duet chorus)
Scene 4: The annunciation to the shepherds
1. <li value=13>
Pifa ("pastoral symphony": instrumental)
2. <li value=14a>
\(a\) There were shepherds abiding in the fields (secco recitative for soprano)
3. <li value=14>
\(b\) And lo, the angel of the Lord (accompanied recitative for soprano)
4. And the angel said unto them (secco recitative for soprano)
5. And suddenly there was with the angel (accompanied recitative for soprano)
6. Glory to God in the highest (chorus)
Scene 5: Christ's healing and redemption
1. <li value=18>
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion (soprano)
2. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened (secco recitative for soprano or alto)
3. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd (alto and/or soprano)
4. His yoke is easy (duet chorus)
Part II
Scene 1: Christ's Passion
1. <li value=22>
Behold the Lamb of God (chorus)
2. He was despised and rejected of men (alto)
3. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows (chorus)
4. And with his stripes we are healed (fugue chorus)
5. All we like sheep have gone astray (duet chorus)
6. All they that see him laugh him to scorn (secco recitative for tenor)
7. He trusted in God that he would deliver him (fugue chorus)
8. Thy rebuke hath broken his heart (tenor or soprano)
9. Behold and see if there be any sorrow (tenor or soprano)
Scene 2: Christ's Death and Resurrection
1. <li value=31>
He was cut off (tenor or soprano)
2. But thou didst not leave his soul in hell (tenor or soprano)
Scene 3: Christ's Ascension
1. <li value=33>
Lift up your heads, O ye gates (chorus)
Scene 4: Christ's reception in Heaven
1. <li value=34>
Unto which of the angels (tenor)
2. Let all the angels of God worship Him (chorus)
Scene 5: The beginnings of Gospel preaching
1. <li value=36>
Thou art gone up on high (soprano, alto, or bass)
2. The Lord gave the word (chorus)
3. How beautiful are the feet (soprano, alto, or chorus)
4. Their sound is gone out (tenor or chorus)
Scene 6: The world's rejection of the Gospel
1. <li value=40>
Why do the nations so furiously rage together (bass)
2. Let us break their bonds asunder (chorus)
3. He that dwelleth in heaven (tenor)
Scene 7: God's ultimate victory
1. <li value=43>
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron (tenor)
2. Hallelujah (anthem and fugue chorus)
Part III
Scene 1: The promise of eternal life
1. <li value=45>
I know that my Redeemer liveth (soprano)
2. Since by man came death (chorus)
Scene 2: The Day of Judgment
1. <li value=47>
Behold, I tell you a mystery (bass)
2. The trumpet shall sound (bass)
Scene 3: The final conquest of sin
1. <li value=49>
Then shall be brought to pass (alto)
2. O death, where is thy sting? (alto and tenor)
3. But thanks be to God (chorus)
4. If God be for us, who can be against us? (soprano)
Scene 4: The acclamation of the Messiah
1. <li value=53>
Worthy is the Lamb (anthem and fugue chorus)
: : Amen (anthem and fugue chorus)
### Overview
Handel's music for Messiah is distinguished from most of his other oratorios by an orchestral restraint—a quality which the musicologist Percy M. Young observes was not adopted by Mozart and other later arrangers of the music. The work begins quietly, with instrumental and solo movements preceding the first appearance of the chorus, whose entry in the low alto register is muted. A particular aspect of Handel's restraint is his limited use of trumpets throughout the work. After their introduction in the Part I chorus "Glory to God", apart from the solo in "The trumpet shall sound" they are heard only in Hallelujah and the final chorus "Worthy is the Lamb". It is this rarity, says Young, that makes these brass interpolations particularly effective: "Increase them and the thrill is diminished". In "Glory to God", Handel marked the entry of the trumpets as da lontano e un poco piano, meaning "quietly, from afar"; his original intention had been to place the brass offstage (in disparte) at this point, to highlight the effect of distance. In this initial appearance the trumpets lack the expected drum accompaniment, "a deliberate withholding of effect, leaving something in reserve for Parts II and III" according to Luckett.
Although Messiah is not in any particular key, Handel's tonal scheme has been summarised by the musicologist Anthony Hicks as "an aspiration towards D major", the key musically associated with light and glory. As the oratorio moves forward with various shifts in key to reflect changes in mood, D major emerges at significant points, primarily the "trumpet" movements with their uplifting messages. It is the key in which the work reaches its triumphant ending. In the absence of a predominant key, other integrating elements have been proposed. For example, the musicologist Rudolf Steglich has suggested that Handel used the device of the "ascending fourth" as a unifying motif; this device most noticeably occurs in the first two notes of "I know that my Redeemer liveth" and on numerous other occasions. Nevertheless, Luckett finds this thesis implausible, and asserts that "the unity of Messiah is a consequence of nothing more arcane than the quality of Handel's attention to his text, and the consistency of his musical imagination". Allan Kozinn, The New York Times music critic, finds "a model marriage of music and text ... From the gentle falling melody assigned to the opening words ("Comfort ye") to the sheer ebullience of the Hallelujah chorus and the ornate celebratory counterpoint that supports the closing "Amen", hardly a line of text goes by that Handel does not amplify".
### Part I
The opening Sinfony is composed in E minor for strings, and is Handel's first use in oratorio of the French overture form. Jennens commented that the Sinfony contains "passages far unworthy of Handel, but much more unworthy of the Messiah"; Handel's early biographer Charles Burney merely found it "dry and uninteresting". A change of key to E major leads to the first prophecy, delivered by the tenor whose vocal line in the opening recitative "Comfort ye" is entirely independent of the strings accompaniment. The music proceeds through various key changes as the prophecies unfold, culminating in the G major chorus "For unto us a child is born", in which the choral exclamations (which include an ascending fourth in "the Mighty God") are imposed on material drawn from Handel's Italian cantata Nò, di voi non-vo'fidarmi. Such passages, says the music historian Donald Jay Grout, "reveal Handel the dramatist, the unerring master of dramatic effect".
The pastoral interlude that follows begins with the short instrumental movement, the Pifa, which takes its name from the shepherd-bagpipers, or pifferari, who played their pipes in the streets of Rome at Christmas time. Handel wrote the movement in both 11-bar and extended 32-bar forms; according to Burrows, either will work in performance. The group of four short recitatives which follow it introduce the soprano soloist—although often the earlier aria "But who may abide" is sung by the soprano in its transposed G minor form. The final recitative of this section is in D major and heralds the affirmative chorus "Glory to God". The remainder of Part I is largely carried by the soprano in B-flat, in what Burrows terms a rare instance of tonal stability. The aria "He shall feed his flock" underwent several transformations by Handel, appearing at different times as a recitative, an alto aria and a duet for alto and soprano before the original soprano version was restored in 1754. The appropriateness of the Italian source material for the setting of the solemn concluding chorus "His yoke is easy" has been questioned by the music scholar Sedley Taylor, who calls it "a piece of word-painting ... grievously out of place", though he concedes that the four-part choral conclusion is a stroke of genius that combines beauty with dignity.
### Part II
The second Part begins in G minor, a key which, in Hogwood's phrase, brings a mood of "tragic presentiment" to the long sequence of Passion numbers which follows. The declamatory opening chorus "Behold the Lamb of God", in fugal form, is followed by the alto solo "He was despised" in E-flat major, the longest single item in the oratorio, in which some phrases are sung unaccompanied to emphasise Christ's abandonment. Luckett records Burney's description of this number as "the highest idea of excellence in pathetic expression of any English song". The subsequent series of mainly short choral movements cover Christ's Passion, Crucifixion, Death and Resurrection, at first in F minor, with a brief F major respite in "All we like sheep". Here, Handel's use of Nò, di voi non-vo'fidarmi has Sedley Taylor's unqualified approval: "[Handel] bids the voices enter in solemn canonical sequence, and his chorus ends with a combination of grandeur and depth of feeling such as is at the command of consummate genius only".
The sense of desolation returns, in what Hogwood calls the "remote and barbarous" key of B-flat minor, for the tenor recitative "All they that see him". The sombre sequence finally ends with the Ascension chorus "Lift up your heads", which Handel initially divides between two choral groups, the altos serving both as the bass line to a soprano choir and the treble line to the tenors and basses. For the 1754 Foundling Hospital performance Handel added two horns, which join in when the chorus unites towards the end of the number. After the celebratory tone of Christ's reception into heaven, marked by the choir's D major acclamation "Let all the angels of God worship him", the "Whitsun" section proceeds through a series of contrasting moods—serene and pastoral in "How beautiful are the feet", theatrically operatic in "Why do the nations so furiously rage"—towards the Part II culmination of Hallelujah.
The Hallelujah chorus, as Young points out, is not the climactic chorus of the work, although one cannot escape its "contagious enthusiasm". It builds from a deceptively light orchestral opening, through a short, unison cantus firmus passage on the words "For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth", to the reappearance of the long-silent trumpets at "And He shall reign for ever and ever". Commentators have noted that the musical line for this third subject is based on Wachet auf, Philipp Nicolai's popular Lutheran chorale.
### Part III
The opening soprano solo in E major, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" is one of the few numbers in the oratorio that has remained unrevised from its original form. Its simple unison violin accompaniment and its consoling rhythms apparently brought tears to Burney's eyes. It is followed by a quiet chorus that leads to the bass's declamation in D major: "Behold, I tell you a mystery", then the long aria "The trumpet shall sound", marked pomposo ma non-allegro ("dignified but not fast"). Handel originally wrote this in da capo form, but shortened it to dal segno, probably before the first performance. The extended, characteristic trumpet tune that precedes and accompanies the voice is the only significant instrumental solo in the entire oratorio. Handel's awkward, repeated stressing of the fourth syllable of "incorruptible" may have been the source of the 18th-century poet William Shenstone's comment that he "could observe some parts in Messiah wherein Handel's judgements failed him; where the music was not equal, or was even opposite, to what the words required". After a brief solo recitative, the alto is joined by the tenor for the only duet in Handel's final version of the music, "O death, where is thy sting?" The melody is adapted from Handel's 1722 cantata Se tu non-lasci amore, and is in Luckett's view the most successful of the Italian borrowings. The duet runs straight into the chorus "But thanks be to God".
The reflective soprano solo "If God be for us" (originally written for alto) quotes Luther's chorale Aus tiefer Not. It ushers in the D major choral finale: "Worthy is the Lamb", leading to the apocalyptic "Amen" in which, says Hogwood, "the entry of the trumpets marks the final storming of heaven". Handel's first biographer, John Mainwaring, wrote in 1760 that this conclusion revealed the composer "rising still higher" than in "that vast effort of genius, the Hallelujah chorus". Young writes that the "Amen" should, in the manner of Palestrina, "be delivered as though through the aisles and ambulatories of some great church".
## Recordings
Many early recordings of individual choruses and arias from Messiah reflect the performance styles then fashionable—large forces, slow tempi and liberal reorchestration. Typical examples are choruses conducted by Sir Henry Wood, recorded in 1926 for Columbia with the 3,500-strong choir and orchestra of the Crystal Palace Handel Festival, and a contemporary rival disc from HMV featuring the Royal Choral Society under Sargent, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall.
The first near-complete recording of the whole work (with the cuts then customary) was conducted by Beecham in 1928. It represented an effort by Beecham to "provide an interpretation which, in his opinion, was nearer the composer's intentions", with smaller forces and faster tempi than had become traditional. His contralto soloist, Muriel Brunskill, later commented, "His tempi, which are now taken for granted, were revolutionary; he entirely revitalised it". Nevertheless, Sargent retained the large-scale tradition in his four HMV recordings, the first in 1946 and three more in the 1950s and 1960s, all with the Huddersfield Choral Society and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Beecham's second recording of the work, in 1947, "led the way towards more truly Handelian rhythms and speeds", according to the critic Alan Blyth. In a 1991 study of all 76 complete Messiahs recorded by that date, the writer Teri Noel Towe called this version of Beecham's "one of a handful of truly stellar performances".
In 1954 the first recording based on Handel's original scoring was conducted by Hermann Scherchen for Nixa, quickly followed by a version, judged scholarly at the time, under Sir Adrian Boult for Decca. By the standards of 21st-century performance, however, Scherchen's and Boult's tempi were still slow, and there was no attempt at vocal ornamentation by the soloists. In 1966 and 1967 two new recordings were regarded as great advances in scholarship and performance practice, conducted respectively by Colin Davis for Philips and Charles Mackerras for HMV. They inaugurated a new tradition of brisk, small-scale performances, with vocal embellishments by the solo singers. A 1967 performance of Messiah by the Ambrosian Singers conducted by John McCarthy accompanying the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Charles Mackerras was nominated for a Grammy Award. Among recordings of older-style performances are Beecham's 1959 recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with orchestration commissioned from Sir Eugene Goossens and completed by the English composer Leonard Salzedo, Karl Richter's 1973 version for DG, and David Willcocks's 1995 performance based on Prout's 1902 edition of the score, with a 325-voice choir and 90-piece orchestra.
By the end of the 1970s the quest for authenticity had extended to the use of period instruments and historically correct styles of playing them. The first of such versions were conducted by the early music specialists Christopher Hogwood (1979) and John Eliot Gardiner (1982). The use of period instruments quickly became the norm on record, although some conductors, among them Sir Georg Solti (1985), continued to favour modern instruments. Gramophone magazine and The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music highlighted two versions, conducted respectively by Trevor Pinnock (1988) and Richard Hickox (1992). The latter employs a chorus of 24 singers and an orchestra of 31 players; Handel is known to have used a chorus of 19 and an orchestra of 37. Performances on an even smaller scale have followed.
Several reconstructions of early performances have been recorded: the 1742 Dublin version by Scherchen in 1954, and again in 1959, and by Jean-Claude Malgoire in 1980. In 1976, the London version of 1743 was recorded by Neville Marriner for Decca. It featured different music, alternative versions of numbers and different orchestration. There are several recordings of the 1754 Foundling Hospital version, including those under Hogwood (1979), Andrew Parrott (1989), and Paul McCreesh. In 1973 David Willcocks conducted a set for HMV in which all the soprano arias were sung in unison by the boys of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, and in 1974, for DG, Mackerras conducted a set of Mozart's reorchestrated version, sung in German.
## Editions
The first published score of 1767, together with Handel's documented adaptations and recompositions of various movements, has been the basis for many performing versions since the composer's lifetime. Modern performances which seek authenticity tend to be based on one of three 20th-century performing editions. These all use different methods of numbering movements:
- The Novello Edition, edited by Watkins Shaw, first published as a vocal score in 1959, revised and issued 1965. This uses the numbering first used in the Prout edition of 1902.
- The Bärenreiter Edition, edited by John Tobin, published in 1965, which forms the basis of the Messiah numbering in Bernd Baselt's catalogue (HWV) of Handel's works, published in 1984.
- The Peters Edition, edited by Donald Burrows, vocal score published 1972, which uses an adaptation of the numbering devised by Kurt Soldan.
- The Van Camp Edition, edited by Leonard Van Camp, published by Roger Dean Publishing, 1993 rev. 1995 (now Lorenz pub.).
- The Oxford University Press edition by Clifford Bartlett, 1998.
- The Carus-Verlag Edition, edited by Ton Koopman and Jan H. Siemons, published in 2009 (using the HWV numbering).
The edition edited by Chrysander and Max Seiffert for the Deutsche Händel-Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1902) is not a general performing edition, but has been used as a basis of scholarship and research.
In addition to Mozart's well-known reorchestration, arrangements for larger orchestral forces exist by Goossens and Andrew Davis; both have been recorded at least once, on the RCA and Chandos labels respectively.
## See also
- Letters and writings of George Frideric Handel
- Scratch Messiah
|
4,632,779 |
Bog turtle
| 1,154,045,391 |
Species of reptile
|
[
"Critically endangered fauna of the United States",
"ESA threatened species",
"Extant Pleistocene first appearances",
"Fauna of the Eastern United States",
"Fauna of the Southeastern United States",
"Glyptemys",
"Pleistocene United States",
"Pleistocene animals of North America",
"Pleistocene turtles",
"Reptiles as pets",
"Reptiles described in 1801",
"Reptiles of the United States",
"Species endangered by agricultural development",
"Species endangered by agricultural pollution",
"Species endangered by climate change",
"Species endangered by disease",
"Species endangered by habitat fragmentation",
"Species endangered by invasive species",
"Species endangered by roadkill",
"Species endangered by the pet trade",
"Species endangered by urbanization",
"Species endangered by wetland drainage",
"Taxa named by Johann David Schoepff",
"Turtles of North America"
] |
The bog turtle (Glyptemys muhlenbergii) is a critically endangered species of semiaquatic turtle in the family Emydidae. The species is endemic to the eastern United States. It was first scientifically described in 1801 after an 18th-century survey of Pennsylvania. The smallest North American turtle, its carapace measures about 10 centimeters (4 in) long when fully grown. Although the bog turtle is similar in appearance to the painted or spotted turtles, its closest relative is actually the somewhat larger wood turtle. The bog turtle can be found from Vermont in the north, south to Georgia, and west to Ohio. Diurnal and secretive, it spends most of its time buried in mud and – during the winter months – in hibernation. The bog turtle is omnivorous, feeding mainly on small invertebrates. The bog turtle is the state reptile of New Jersey.
An adult bog turtle weighs 110 grams (3.9 oz) on average. Its skin and shell are typically dark brown, with a distinctive orange spot on each side of the neck. Considered threatened at the federal level, the bog turtle is protected under the United States' Endangered Species Act. Invasive plants and urban development have eradicated much of the bog turtle's habitat, substantially reducing its numbers. Demand for the bog turtle is high in the black market pet trade, partly because of its small size and unique characteristics. Various private projects have been undertaken in an attempt to reverse the decline in the turtle's population.
The bog turtle has a low reproduction rate; females lay one clutch per year, with an average of three eggs each. The young tend to grow rapidly, reaching sexual maturity between the ages of 4 and 10 years. Bog turtles live for an average of 20 to 30 years in the wild. Since 1973, the Bronx Zoo has successfully bred the bog turtle in captivity.
## Taxonomy
The bog turtle was noted in the 18th century by Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Muhlenberg, a self-taught botanist and clergyman. Muhlenberg, who named more than 150 North American plant species, was conducting a survey of the flora of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when he discovered the small turtle. In 1801, Johann David Schoepff named Muhlenberg's discovery as Testudo muhlenbergii in Muhlenberg's honor.
In 1829, Richard Harlan renamed the turtle Emys muhlenbergii. The species was subsequently renamed to Calemys muhlenbergii by Louis Agassiz in 1857, and to Clemmys muhlenbergii by Henry Watson Fowler in 1906. Synonyms include Emys biguttata, named in 1824 by Thomas Say on the basis of a turtle from the vicinity of Philadelphia, and Clemmys nuchalis, described by Dunn in 1917 from near Linville, North Carolina. Today, there are various names for the bog turtle, including mud turtle, marsh turtle, yellowhead, and snapper.
The genus name was changed to Glyptemys in 2001. The bog turtle and the wood turtle, Glyptemys insculpta, had until then been included in the genus Clemmys, which also included spotted turtles (C. guttata) and western pond turtles (C. marmorata). Nucleotide sequencing and ribosomal DNA analyses suggested that bog turtles and wood turtles are closely related, but neither is directly related to spotted turtles, hence the separation of the genus Glyptemys.
## Description
The bog turtle is the smallest species of turtle in North America. The adults weigh approximately 110 grams (3.9 oz) when fully grown. It does not have a prominent snout. Its head is dark brown to black; however, it has a bright yellow, orange, or red spot on each side of its neck. The spot is often forked, facing posteriorly. The bog turtle has a dark skin color with an orange-red wash on the inside of the legs of some individuals. The carapace is domed and rectangular in shape, and it tends to be narrower toward the head and wider toward the tail. The carapace often has easily identifiable rings on the rough scales or scutes. The scutes may also have a radiating arrangement of lines. In some older individuals, and those that burrow frequently in coarse substrates, the shell may be smooth. Although generally black, a chestnut sunburst pattern in each scute is sometimes present on the carapace. The belly of the shell, the plastron, is also a dark brown to black color with light marks present.
The spotted turtle and painted turtle are similar in appearance to the bog turtle. The bog turtle is distinguishable from any other species of turtle by the distinctively colored blotch on its neck. A major difference between it and the spotted turtle is that the bog turtle has no coloration on the upper shell, unlike the latter species.
Mature male bog turtles have an average length of 9.4 centimeters (3.7 in) while the average female length is 8.9 centimeters (3.5 in) (straight carapace measurement). The males have a larger average body size than females, likely due to sexual selection for larger males in winning and performing the act of mating. The female has a wider and higher shell than the male, but the male's head is squared and larger than a female's of the same age. The plastron of the male looks slightly concave while the female's is flat. The male's tail is longer and thicker than the female's. The cloaca is further towards the end of the tail of the male bog turtle, while the female's cloaca is positioned inside the plastron. Juveniles are very difficult to sex.
## Distribution and habitat
The bog turtle is native only to the eastern United States, congregating in colonies that often consist of fewer than 20 individuals. They prefer calcareous wetlands (areas containing lime), including meadows, bogs, marshes, and spring seeps, that have both wet and dry regions. Their habitat is often on the edge of woods. Bog turtles have sometimes been seen in cow pastures and near beaver dams.
The bog turtles' preferred habitat, sometimes called a fen, is slightly acidic with a high water table year-round. The constant saturation leads to the depletion of oxygen, subsequently resulting in anaerobic conditions. The bog turtle uses soft, deep mud to shelter from predators and the weather. Spring seeps and groundwater springs provide optimum locations for hibernation during winter. Home range size is sex dependent, averaging about 0.17 to 1.33 hectares (0.42 to 3.29 acres) for males and 0.065 to 1.26 hectares (0.16 to 3.11 acres) for females. However, research has shown that densities can range from 5 to 125 individuals per 0.81 hectares (2.0 acres). The range of the bog turtle extensively overlaps that of its relative, the wood turtle.
Rushes, tussock sedge, cattails, jewelweed, sphagnum, and various native true grasses are found in the bog turtle's habitat, as well as some shrubs and trees such as willows, red maples, and alders. It is important for their habitat to have an open canopy, because bog turtles spend a considerable amount of time basking in the sunlight. An open canopy allows sufficient sunlight to reach the ground so that the bog turtles can manage their metabolic processes through thermoregulation. The incubation of eggs also requires levels of sunlight and humidity that shaded areas typically lack. The ideal bog turtle habitat is early successional. Late successional habitats contain taller trees that block the necessary sunlight. Erosion and runoff of nutrients into the wetlands accelerate succession. Changes caused by humans have begun to eliminate bog turtles from areas where they would normally survive.
### Northern and southern populations
The northern and southern bog turtle populations are separated by a 400-kilometer (250 mi) gap over much of Virginia, which lacks bog turtle colonies. In both areas, the bog turtle colonies tend to occupy widely scattered ranges.
The northern population is the larger of the two. These individuals make their home in states as far north as Connecticut and Massachusetts, and as far south as Maryland. These turtles are known to have fewer than 200 habitable sites left, a number that is decreasing.
The southern population is much smaller in number (only about 96 colonies have been located), living in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee. This area in particular has seen about 90 percent of its mountainous wetlands dry up. The turtles in this population are even more scattered than in the northern population and live at higher elevations, up to 1,373 meters (4,505 ft).
### Evolutionary history
There have been only two recorded discoveries of bog turtle fossils. The late J. Alan Holman, a paleontologist and herpetologist, first identified bog turtle plastral remains in Cumberland Cave, Maryland (near Corriganville), which are of Irvingtonian age (from 1.8 million to 300,000 years ago). The second discovery was of Rancholabrean (between 300,000 and 11,000 years ago) shell pieces in the Giant Cement Quarry in South Carolina (near Harleyville), by Bentely and Knight in 1998.
The bog turtle's karyotype is composed of 50 chromosomes. Studies of variations in mitochondrial DNA indicate low levels of genetic divergence among bog turtle colonies. This is unusual in species such as the bog turtle, which have fragmented distributions and exist in small isolated groups (fewer than 50 individuals in bog turtle colonies). These conditions limit gene flow, typically leading to divergence between isolated groups. Data indicate that the bog turtle suffered dramatic reductions in numbers – a population bottleneck – as colonies were forced south in the face of glaciation. Receding glaciers led to the relatively recent post-Pleistocene expansion, as the bog turtles moved back into their former northern range. This recent colonization from a relatively limited southern population may account for the reduction of genetic diversity. The northern and southern populations are at present genetically isolated, likely as a consequence of farming and habitat destruction in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War.
## Ecology and behavior
### Behavior
The bog turtle is primarily diurnal, active during the day and sleeping at night. It wakes in the early morning, basks until fully warm, then begins its search for food. It is a seclusive species, making it challenging to observe in its natural habitat. During colder days, the bog turtle will spend much of its time in dense underbrush, underwater, or buried in mud. Such behavior is indicative of the bog turtle's ability to survive without oxygen. On warmer days, the bog turtle's activities include scavenging, mating (during early spring), and basking in sunlight, the last of which it spends a great deal of the day doing. However, the bog turtle usually takes shelter from the sun during the hottest part of the day. Occasionally, during times of extreme heat, the turtle will either estivate, or become subterranean, sometimes occupying networks of tunnels filled with water. At night, the bog turtle buries itself in soft tunnels.
Late September to March or April is usually spent in hibernation, either alone or in small groups in spring seeps. These groups can contain up to 12 individuals, and sometimes can include other species of turtles. Bog turtles try to find an area of dense soil, such as a strong root system, for protection during the dormant period. However, they may hibernate in other places such as the bottom of a tree, animal burrows, or empty spaces in mud. The bog turtle emerges from hibernation when the air temperature is between 16 and 31 °C (61 and 88 °F).
The male bog turtle is territorial and will attack other males if they venture within 15 centimeters (5.9 in) of his position. An aggressive male will crawl toward an intruder with his neck extended. As he approaches his foe, he tilts his carapace by withdrawing his head and raising his hind limbs. If the other male does not retreat, a fight of pushing and biting can follow. The bouts typically last just a few minutes, with the larger and older male usually winning. The female is also aggressive when threatened. She will defend the area around her nest, usually up to a radius of 1.2 meters (3.9 ft), from encroaching females, but when a juvenile approaches, she ignores it, and when a male appears she surrenders her area (except during mating season).
### Diet
Bog turtles are omnivorous and eat aquatic plants (such as duckweed), seeds, berries, earthworms, snails, slugs, insects, other invertebrates, frogs, and other small vertebrates. They also occasionally eat carrion. Invertebrates such as insects are generally the most important food item. In captivity, a bog turtle can be fed a variety of fruits and vegetables, as well as meat such as liver, chicken hearts, and tinned dog food. Bog turtles feed only during the day, but rarely during the hottest hours, consuming their food on land or in the water.
### Predators, parasites, and diseases
A host of different animals, including snapping turtles, snake species such as Nerodia sipedon and Thamnophis sirtalis, muskrats, striped skunks, foxes, dogs, and raccoons prey upon the bog turtle. In addition, leeches (Placobdella multilineata and P. parasitica) and parasitic flies (Cistudinomyia cistudinis) plague some individuals, causing blood loss and weakness. Their shells offer little protection from predators. The bog turtle's main defense when threatened by an animal is to bury itself in soft mud. It rarely defends its territory or bites when approached.
Bog turtles may suffer from bacterial infections. Aeromonas and Pseudomonas are two genera of bacteria that cause pneumonia in individuals. Bacterial aggregates (sometimes known as biofilms) have also been found in the lungs of two deceased specimens discovered in 1982 and 1995 from colonies in the southern population.
### Movement
Day-to-day, the bog turtle moves very little, typically basking in the sun and waiting for prey. Though it is not especially lively on sunny days, the bog turtle is usually active after rainfall. Various studies have found different rates of daily movement in bog turtles, varying from 2.1 to 23 meters (6.9 to 75.5 ft) in males and 1.1 to 18 meters (3.6 to 59.1 ft) in females. Both sexes are capable of homing when released at distances up to 0.8 kilometers (0.50 mi) from their site of capture. The bog turtle will travel long distances to find a new habitat if its home becomes unsuitable. The species is most active during the spring, and males generally exhibit greater migration distance and seasonal activity than females as they defend their territory. Home-range migration distances have been recorded at 87 meters (285 ft) for males and 260 meters (850 ft) for females. Home-range sizes in Maryland vary from 0.0030 hectares (0.0074 acres) to 3.1 hectares (7.7 acres) with considerable amounts of variation between sites and years.
The bog turtle is semiaquatic and can move both on land and in the water. The distance and frequency of movements on land help herpetologists understand the behavior, ecology, gene flow, and the level of success of different bog turtle colonies. The vast majority of bog turtle movements are less than 21 meters (69 ft), and only 2 percent are of distances over 100 meters (330 ft); large, expansive trips (i.e., between neighboring wetlands), are rare.
The movement of bog turtles between colonies facilitates genetic diversity. If this movement were to be prevented, or limited in any significant way, the species would have a higher likelihood of becoming extinct because genetic diversity would fall. Some aspects of a bog turtle's movement that remain unresolved include: phenomena that motivate bog turtles to move outside their natural habitat; the distances an individual can be expected to travel each day, week, and year; and how separation of small groups affects the genetics of the species.
### Life cycle
Bog turtles are sexually mature when they reach between 8 and 11 years of age (both sexes). They mate in the spring after emerging from hibernation, in a copulation session that usually lasts for 5–20 minutes, typically during the afternoon, and may occur on land or in the water. It begins with the male recognizing the female's sex. During the courtship ritual, the male gently bites and nudges the female's head. Younger males tend to be more aggressive during copulation, and females sometimes try to avoid an over-aggressive male. However, as the female ages, she is more likely to accept the aggressiveness of a male, and may even take the role of initiator. If the female yields, she may withdraw her front limbs and head. After the entire process is over, which usually takes about 35 minutes, male and female go separate ways. In a single season, females may mate once, twice, or not at all, and males try to mate as many times as possible. It has been suggested that it is possible for the bog turtle to hybridize with Clemmys guttata during the mating season. However, it has not been genetically verified in wild populations.
Nesting takes place between April and July. The female digs a cavity in a dry, sunny area of a bog, and lays her eggs in a grass tussock or on sphagnum moss. The nest is typically 3.8 to 5.1 centimeters (1.5 to 2.0 in) deep and 5 centimeters (2.0 in) around. Like most species of turtle, the bog turtle constructs its nest using its hind feet and claws. Most bog turtle eggs are laid in June. Pregnant females lay one to six eggs per clutch (mean of 3), and produce one clutch per year. A healthy female bog turtle can lay between 30 and 45 eggs in her lifetime, but many of the offspring do not survive to reach sexual maturity. Typically, older females lay more eggs than younger ones. The eggs are white, elliptical, and on average 3.4 centimeters (1.3 in) long and 1.5 centimeters (0.59 in) wide. After the eggs are laid, they are left to undergo an incubation period that lasts for 42 to 80 days. In colder climates, the eggs are incubated through the winter and hatch in the spring. The eggs are vulnerable during the incubation period, and often fall prey to mammals and birds. In addition, eggs may be jeopardized by flooding, frost, or various developmental problems. It is unknown how gender is determined in bog turtles.
Baby bog turtles are about 2.5 centimeters (0.98 in) long when they emerge from their eggs, usually in late August or September. Females are slightly smaller at birth, and tend to grow more slowly than males. Both genders grow rapidly until they reach maturity. Juveniles almost double in size in their first four years, but do not become fully grown until five or six years old.
The bog turtle spends its life almost exclusively in the wetland where it hatched. In its natural environment, it has a maximum lifespan of perhaps 50 years or more, and the average lifespan is 20–30 years. The Bronx Zoo houses several turtles 35 years old or more, the oldest known bog turtles. The zoo's collection has successfully sustained itself for more than 35 years. The age of a bog turtle is determined by counting the number of rings in a scute, minus the first one (which develops before birth).
## Conservation
Protected under the United States Federal Endangered Species Act, the bog turtle is considered threatened in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania as of November 4, 1997. Due to a "similarity of appearance" to the northern population, the bog turtle is also threatened in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia (considered to be the southern population). In addition to the federal listing of threatened, states in the southern range list the bog turtle as either endangered or threatened. Changes to the bog turtle's habitat have resulted in the disappearance of 80 percent of the colonies that existed 30 years ago. Because of the turtle's rarity, it is also in danger of illegal collection, often for the worldwide pet trade. Despite regulations prohibiting their collection, barter, or export, bog turtles are commonly taken by poachers. Road traffic has also led to declines. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a plan for the recovery of the northern population. The bog turtle was listed as critically endangered in the 2011 IUCN Red List.
The invasion of non-native plants into its habitat is a large threat to the bog turtles' survival. Although several plants disrupt its ecosystem, the three primary culprits are purple loosestrife, reed canary grass, and reeds, which grow thick and tall and are believed to hinder the movement of the turtles. Such plants also out-compete the native species in the bog turtle's habitat, thus reducing the amount of food and protection available to the turtles.
The development of new neighborhoods and roadways obstructs the bog turtle's movement between wetlands, thus inhibiting the establishment of new bog turtle colonies. Pesticides, runoff, and industrial discharge are all harmful to the bog turtles' habitat and food supply. The bog turtle has been designated as a threatened species to "conserve the northern population of the bog turtle, which has seriously declined in the northeast United States."
Today, the rebounding of bog turtle colonies depends on private intervention. Population monitoring involves meticulous land surveys over vast countrysides. In addition to surveying land visually, remote sensing has been used to biologically classify a wetland as either suitable or unsuitable for a bog turtle colony. This allows for comparisons to be made between known areas of bog turtle success and potential areas of future habitation.
To help the existing colonies rebound, several private projects have been initiated in an attempt to limit the encroachment of overshadowing trees and bushes, the construction of new highways and neighborhoods, and other natural and man-made threats.
Methods used to recreate the bog turtle's habitat include: controlled burns to limit the growth of overshadowing trees and underbrush (thus bringing the habitat back to early successional); grazing livestock such as cows and goats in the desired habitat area (creating pockets of water and freshly churned mud); and promoting beaver activity, including dam construction in and around wetlands.
Captive breeding is another method of stabilizing the bog turtles' numbers. The technique involves mating bog turtles indoors in controlled environments, where nutrition and mates are provided. Fred Wustholz and Richard J. Holub were the first to do this independently, during the 1960s and 1970s. They were interested in educating others about the bog turtle and in increasing its population, and over several years they released many healthy bog turtles into the wild. Various organizations, such as the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, have been permitted to breed bog turtles in captivity.
The study of bog turtles in the wild is a significant aid to the development of a conservation strategy. Radio telemetry has been used to track the turtles' movements in their natural habitat. Blood samples, fecal samples, and cloacal swabs are also commonly collected from wild populations and tested for signs of disease.
|
30,873,232 |
Bone Wars
| 1,170,301,144 |
19th century period of competitive fossil hunting
|
[
"1870s in paleontology",
"1880s in paleontology",
"1890s in paleontology",
"19th century in paleontology",
"Discovery and invention controversies",
"Geology of the United States",
"History of paleontology",
"Ideological rivalry",
"Morrison Formation",
"Paleontology in the United States"
] |
The Bone Wars, also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush, was a period of intense and ruthlessly competitive fossil hunting and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia) and Othniel Charles Marsh (of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale). Each of the two paleontologists used underhanded methods to try to outdo the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and the destruction of bones. Each scientist also sought to ruin his rival's reputation and cut off his funding, using attacks in scientific publications.
Their search for fossils led them west to rich bone beds in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. From 1877 to 1892, both paleontologists used their wealth and influence to finance their own expeditions and to procure services and dinosaur bones from fossil hunters. By the end of the Bone Wars, both men had exhausted their funds in the pursuit of paleontological supremacy.
Cope and Marsh were financially and socially ruined by their attempts to outcompete and disgrace each other, but they made important contributions to science and the field of paleontology and provided substantial material for further work—both scientists left behind many unopened boxes of fossils after their deaths. The efforts of the two men led to more than 136 new species of dinosaurs being discovered and described. The products of the Bone Wars resulted in an increase in knowledge of prehistoric life, and sparked the public's interest in dinosaurs, leading to continued fossil excavation in North America in the decades to follow. Many historical books and fictional adaptations have been published about this period of intense fossil-hunting activity.
## History
### Background
At first, the relationship between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh was amicable. They met in Berlin in 1864 and spent several days together. They even named species after each other. Over time their relations soured, due in part to their strong personalities. Cope was known to be pugnacious and possessed a quick temper; Marsh was slower, more methodical, and introverted. Both were quarrelsome and distrustful. Their differences also extended into the scientific realm, as Cope was a firm supporter of Neo-Lamarckism while Marsh supported Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Even at the best of times, both men were inclined to look down on each other subtly. As one observer put it, "The patrician Edward may have considered Marsh not quite a gentleman. The academic Othniel probably regarded Cope as not quite a professional."
Cope and Marsh came from very different backgrounds. Cope was born into a wealthy and influential Quaker family based in Philadelphia. Although his father wanted his son to work as a farmer, Cope distinguished himself as a naturalist. In 1864, already a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Cope became a professor of zoology at Haverford College and joined Ferdinand Hayden on his expeditions west. In contrast, Marsh would have grown up poor, the son of a struggling family in Lockport, New York, had it not been for the benefaction of his uncle, philanthropist George Peabody. Marsh persuaded his uncle to build the Peabody Museum of Natural History, placing Marsh as head of the museum. Combined with the inheritance he received from Peabody upon his death in 1869, Marsh was financially comfortable (although, partly because of Peabody's stern views on marriage, Marsh would remain a lifelong bachelor).
On one occasion, the two scientists had gone on a fossil-collecting expedition to Cope's marl pits in New Jersey, where William Parker Foulke had discovered the holotype specimen of Hadrosaurus foulkii, described by the paleontologist Joseph Leidy (under whom Cope had studied comparative anatomy); this was one of the first American dinosaur finds, and the pits were still rich with fossils. Though the two parted amicably, Marsh secretly bribed the pit operators to divert future fossil finds to him, instead of Cope. The two began attacking each other in papers and publications, and their personal relations deteriorated. Marsh humiliated Cope by pointing out that his reconstruction of the plesiosaur Elasmosaurus was flawed, with the head placed where the tail should have been (or so he claimed, 20 years later; it was Leidy who published the correction shortly afterwards). Cope, in turn, began collecting in what Marsh considered his private bone-hunting turf in Kansas and Wyoming, further damaging their relationship.
### 1872–1877: Early expeditions
In the 1870s, Cope's and Marsh's professional attentions were directed to the American West by word of large fossil finds. Using his influence in Washington, D.C., Cope was granted a position on the U.S. Geological Survey under Ferdinand Hayden. While the position offered no salary, it afforded Cope a great opportunity to collect fossils in the West and publish his finds. Cope's flair for dramatic writing suited Hayden, who needed to make a popular impression with the official survey reports. In June 1872 Cope set off on his first trip, intending to observe the Eocene bone beds of Wyoming for himself. This caused a rift between Cope, Hayden, and Leidy. It was Leidy who had enjoyed receiving many of the fossils from Hayden's collection until Cope joined the survey, and now Cope was hunting for fossils in Leidy's staked territory—at the same time Leidy was to be collecting. Hayden attempted to smooth things over with Leidy in a letter:
> I asked him not to go into that field, that you were going there. He laughed at the idea of being restricted to any locality and said he intended to go whether I aided him or not. I was anxious to secure the cooperation of such a worker as an honor to my corps. I could not be responsible for the field he selected in as much as I pay him no salary and a portion of his expenses. You will see therefore that while it is not a pleasant thing to work in competition with others it seems almost a necessity. You can sympathize.
Cope took his family with him as far as Denver, while Hayden tried to keep Cope and Leidy from prospecting in the same area. Following a tip from geologist Fielding Bradford Meek, Cope also intended to investigate reports of bones Meek had found near Black Buttes Station and the railroad. Cope found the site and some skeletal remains of a dinosaur he dubbed Agathaumas sylvestris. Believing he had the full support of Hayden and the survey, Cope then traveled to Fort Bridger in June, only to find that the men, wagons, horses, and equipment he expected were not there. Cope cobbled together an outfit at his own expense, consisting of two teamsters, a cook, and a guide, along with three men from Chicago who were interested in studying with him. As it turned out, two of Cope's men were in fact in the employ of Marsh. When the rival paleontologist found out his own men were taking Cope's money, he was furious. While the men tried to assure Marsh they were still his men (one suggested he took the job in order to lead Cope away from good fossils), Marsh's laziness in soliciting firm agreements and payments may have caused them to seek other work. Cope's journey took the expedition through rugged country only Hayden had surveyed, and he discovered dozens of new species. Meanwhile, one of Marsh's men accidentally forwarded some of his material to Cope instead. On receiving the fossils, Cope sent them back to Marsh, but further damage had been done to their relationship.
Any pretense of cordiality between Cope and Marsh ended in 1872, and by spring 1873 open hostility ensued. At the same time, Leidy, Cope and Marsh were making great discoveries of ancient reptiles and mammals in the Western bone beds. The paleontologists had a habit of making hasty telegrams eastward describing their finds, only publishing fuller accounts after returning from trips. Among the new specimens described by the men were Uintatherium, Loxolophodon, Eobasileus, Dinoceras, and Tinoceras. The problem was that many of these finds were not uniquely different from each other; in fact, Cope and Marsh knew that some of the fossils they were collecting had already been found by the others. As it turned out, many of Marsh's names were valid, while none of Cope's were. Marsh also placed the new species into a new order of mammals, Cinocerea. Cope was humiliated and powerless to stop his rival's changes. Instead, he published a broad analytical study where he proposed a new plan of classification for the Eocene mammals, in which he discarded Marsh's genera in favor of his own. Marsh remained steadfast and continued to claim that all of Cope's names for Dinocerata were incorrect.
While the scientists argued over classifications and nomenclature, they also returned west for more fossils. Marsh made his last trip backed by Yale in 1873, with a large group of thirteen students accompanying him, protected by a group of soldiers who wanted to make a show of force to the Sioux tribe. Due to concerns over his more lavish and expensive expeditions in years past, Marsh had the students pay their own way, and the trip cost Yale only \$1857.50, far less than the \$15,000 (over \$200,000 in modern currency) that Marsh had claimed for the previous expedition. This excursion would prove to be Marsh's last: for the rest of the Bone Wars, Marsh preferred to enlist the services of local collectors. Though he had enough bones to study for years, the scientist's appetite for more would grow. Cope was even more prolific in his collecting that season than he was in 1872, although Marsh's penchant for cultivating collectors of his own meant that at Bridger his rival was persona non grata. Tired of working under Hayden, Cope found a paying job with the Army Corps of Engineers, but was limited by this federal association; while Cope had to tag along on surveys, Marsh could collect wherever he pleased.
The two scientists' attention turned to the Dakota Territory in the mid-1870s, where the discovery of gold in the Black Hills increased Native American tensions with the United States. Marsh, desiring the fossils found in that region, became embroiled in Army-Indian politics. In order to gain the support of Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux to prospect, Marsh promised Red Cloud payment for fossils collected and that he would return to Washington, D.C. and lobby on their behalf about their improper treatment. In the end, Marsh slipped out of camp and according to his own (possibly romanticized) accounts, amassed cartloads of fossils and retreated just before a hostile Miniconjou party arrived. Marsh, for his part, did lobby the Interior Department and President Ulysses S. Grant on behalf of Red Cloud, but his motives might have been to make a name for himself against the unpopular Grant administration. By 1875, both Cope and Marsh paused in their collecting, feeling financial strain and needing to catalogue their backlogged finds, but new discoveries would return them to the West before decade's end.
### 1877–1892: Como Bluff finds
In 1877, Marsh received a letter from Arthur Lakes, a schoolteacher in Golden, Colorado. Lakes reported that he had been hiking in the mountains near the town of Morrison, when he and his friend, H. C. Beckwith, discovered massive bones embedded in the rock. Lakes further advised that the bones were "apparently a vertebra and a humerus bone of some gigantic saurian." While awaiting Marsh's reply, Lakes dug up more "colossal" bones and sent them to New Haven. As Marsh was slow to respond, Lakes also sent a shipment of bones to Cope.
When Marsh responded to Lakes, he paid the prospector \$100, urging him to keep the finds a secret. Learning that Lakes had corresponded with Cope, Marsh sent his field collector Benjamin Mudge to Morrison to secure Lakes' services. Marsh published a description of Lakes' discoveries in the American Journal of Science on July 1, and before Cope could publish his own interpretation of the finds, Lakes wrote to him that the bones should be shipped to Marsh, a severe insult to Cope.
A second letter arrived from the west, this time addressed to Cope. The writer, O. W. Lucas, was a naturalist who had been collecting plants near Cañon City, Colorado when he came upon an assortment of fossil bones. After receiving more samples from Lucas, Cope concluded the dinosaurs were large herbivores, gleefully noting that the specimen was larger than any other previously described, including Lakes' discovery. Hearing of Lucas' finds, Marsh instructed Mudge and a former student, Samuel Wendell Williston, to set up a quarry on his behalf near Cañon. Unfortunately for Marsh, he learned from Williston that Lucas was finding the best bones and refused to quit Cope to come work for Marsh. Marsh ordered Williston back to Morrison, where Marsh's small quarry collapsed and nearly killed his assistants. This setback would have dried up Marsh's bone supply from the west, if not for receipt of a third letter.
At the time of Lakes' discoveries, the First transcontinental railroad was being built through a remote area of Wyoming. Marsh's letter was from two men identifying themselves as Harlow and Edwards, workers on the Union Pacific Railroad. Their real names were William Harlow Reed (1848–1915) and William Edwards Carlin. The two men claimed they had found large numbers of fossils in Como Bluff, and warned that there were others in the area "looking for such things", which Marsh took to mean Cope. Williston, who had just wearily arrived in Kansas after the collapse of the Morrison mine, was quickly dispatched to Como Bluff by Marsh. His former student sent back a message, confirming the large quantities of bones and that it was Cope's men snooping around the area. Wary of repeating the same mistakes he had made with Lakes, Marsh quickly sent money to the two new bone hunters and urged them to send additional fossils. Williston struck a preliminary bargain with Carlin and Reed (who had been unable to cash Marsh's check due to it being made out to their pseudonyms), but Carlin decided he would head to New Haven to deal with Marsh directly. Marsh drew up a contract calling for a set monthly fee, with additional cash bonuses to Carlin and Reed possible, depending on the importance of the finds. Marsh also reserved the right to send his own "superintendents" to supervise the digging if needed and advised the men to try to keep Cope out of the region. Despite a face-to-face meeting, Carlin failed to negotiate better terms from Marsh. The paleontologist procured Carlin's and Reed's services, but seeds of resentment were sown as the bone hunters felt Marsh had bullied them into the deal. Marsh's investment in the Como Bluff region soon produced rich results. While Marsh's own collectors headed east for the winter, Reed sent carloads of bones by rail to Marsh throughout 1877. Marsh described and named dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, and Apatosaurus in the December 1877 issue of the American Journal of Science.
Despite Marsh's precautions against alerting his rival to Como Bluff's rich bone beds, word of the discoveries rapidly spread. This was at least partly due to Carlin and Reed helping spread the rumors. They leaked information to the Laramie Daily Sentinel, which published an article about the finds in April 1878 that exaggerated the price Marsh had paid for the bones, possibly to raise prices and demand for more bones. Marsh, attempting to cover the leak, learned from Williston that Carlin and Reed had been visited by a man ostensibly working for Cope by the name of "Haines". After learning of the Como Bluff discoveries, Cope sent "dinosaur rustlers" to the area in an attempt to quietly steal fossils from under Marsh's nose. During the winter of 1878, Carlin's dissatisfaction with Marsh's sporadic sending of payment reached a head, and he began working for Cope instead.
Cope and Marsh used their personal wealth to fund expeditions each summer, then spent the winter publishing their discoveries. Small armies of fossil hunters in mule-drawn wagons or on trains were soon sending literally tons of fossils back east. The paleontological digs lasted fifteen years, from 1877 to 1892. The workers for both Cope and Marsh suffered hardships related to the weather, as well as sabotage and obstruction by the other scientist's workers. Reed was locked out of the Como train station by Carlin, and was forced to haul the bones down the bluff and crate the specimens on the train platform in the bitter cold. Cope directed Carlin to set up his own quarry in Como Bluff, while Marsh sent Reed to spy on his former friend. As Reed's Quarry \#4 dried up, Marsh ordered Reed to clear out the bone fragments from the other quarries. Reed reported he had destroyed all the remaining bones to keep them away from Cope. Concerned that strangers were encroaching on Reed's quarries, Marsh sent Lakes to Como to assist in excavations, and in June 1879 visited Como himself. Cope likewise toured his own quarries in August. Although Marsh's men continued to open new quarries and discover more fossils, relations between Lakes and Reed soured, with each offering his resignation in August. Marsh attempted to placate the two by sending each to opposite ends of the quarries, but after being forced to abandon one bone quarry in a freezing blizzard, Lakes submitted his resignation and returned to teaching in 1880. The departure of Lakes did not ease tensions among Marsh's men; Lake's replacement, a railroad man named Kennedy, felt he did not have to report to Reed, and the fighting between the two caused Marsh's other workers to quit. Marsh tried separating Kennedy and Reed, and sent Williston's brother Frank to Como in an effort to keep the peace. Frank Williston ended up leaving Marsh's employ and taking up residence with Carlin. Cope's own digging in Como began faltering, and Carlin's replacements soon quit work altogether.
As the 1880s progressed, Cope's and Marsh's men faced stiff competition from each other and from third parties interested in bones. Professor Alexander Emanuel Agassiz of Harvard sent his own representatives west, while Carlin and Frank Williston formed a bone company to sell fossils to the highest bidder. Reed left and became a sheep herder in 1884, and Marsh's Como quarries yielded little after his departure. Despite these setbacks, Marsh had more operational quarries than Cope at this point of time; Cope, who at the early 1880s had more bones than he could fit in a single house, had fallen behind in the race for dinosaurs.
Cope's and Marsh's discoveries were accompanied by sensational accusations of spying, stealing workers and fossils, and bribery. The two men were so protective of their digging sites that they would destroy smaller or damaged fossils to prevent them from falling into their rival's hands, or fill in their excavations with dirt and rock; while surveying his Como quarries in 1879, Marsh examined recent finds and marked several for destruction. On one occasion the scientists' rival teams fought each other by throwing stones.
### Personal disputes and later years
While Cope and Marsh dueled for fossils in the American West, they also tried their best to ruin each other's professional credibility. Humiliated by his error in reconstructing the plesiosaur Elasmosaurus, Cope tried to cover up his mistake by purchasing every copy he could find of the journal in which it was published. Marsh, meanwhile, made sure to publicize the story. Cope's own rapid and prodigious output of scientific papers meant that Marsh had no difficulty in finding occasional errors with which to lambast Cope. Marsh himself was not infallible; he put the skull of a Brachiosaurus on a skeleton of Brontosaurus.
By the late 1880s, public attention to the fighting between Cope and Marsh faded, drawn to international stories rather than the "Wild West". Thanks to John Wesley Powell, head of the U.S. Geological Survey, and Marsh's contacts with the rich and powerful in Washington, Marsh was placed at the head of the consolidated government survey and was happy to be out of the sensationalist spotlight. Cope was much less well-off, having spent most of his money purchasing The American Naturalist, and had a hard time finding employment thanks to Marsh's allies in higher education and his own temperament. Cope began investing in gold and silver prospects in the West, and braved malarial mosquitos and harsh weather to search for fossils himself. Due to mining setbacks and a lack of support from the federal government, Cope's financial situation deteriorated to the point that his fossil collection was his only significant asset. Marsh, meanwhile, alienated even his loyal assistants, including Williston, with his refusal to share his conclusions drawn from their findings, and his continually lax and infrequent payment schedule.
Cope's chance to exploit Marsh's vulnerabilities came in 1884, when Congress began to investigate the proceedings of the consolidated geological survey. Cope had become friends with Henry Fairfield Osborn, then a professor of anatomy at Princeton University. Osborn was like Marsh in many ways, slow and methodical, but would prove a damaging influence on Marsh. Cope searched for disgruntled workers who would speak out against Powell and the Survey. For the moment, Powell and Marsh were able to successfully refute Cope's charges, and his allegations did not reach the mainstream press. Osborn seemed reluctant to step up his campaign against Marsh, so Cope turned to another ally he had mentioned to Osborn—a "newspaper man from New York" named William Hosea Ballou. Despite setbacks in trying to oust Marsh from his presidency of the National Academy of Sciences, Cope received a tremendous financial boost after the University of Pennsylvania offered him a teaching job.
Cope's chance to strike a critical blow at Marsh appeared soon after. Over the years, Cope kept an elaborate journal of mistakes and misdeeds that Marsh and Powell had committed; the mistakes and errors of the men were put in writing and stored in the bottom drawer of Cope's desk. Ballou planned the first set of articles, in what would become a series of newspaper debates between Marsh, Powell and Cope. While the scientific community had long known of Marsh and Cope's rivalry, the public became aware of the shameful conduct of the two men when the New York Herald published a story with the headline "Scientists Wage Bitter Warfare." According to author Elizabeth Noble Shor, the scientific community was galvanized:
> Most scientists of the day recoiled to find that Cope's feud with Marsh had become front-page news. Those closest to the scientific fields under discussion, geology and vertebrate paleontology, certainly winced, particularly as they found themselves quoted, mentioned, or misspelled. The feud was not news to them, for it had lurked at their scientific meetings for two decades. Most of them had already taken sides.
In the newspaper articles, Cope attacked Marsh for plagiarism and financial mismanagement, and attacked Powell for his geological classification errors and misspending of government-allocated funds. Marsh and Powell were each able to publish their own side of the story, filing their own charges against Cope. Ballou's articles were poorly researched, written, and read, and Cope himself was smarting from a piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer which suggested the University of Pennsylvania trustees would ask Cope to step down unless he provided proof for his charges against Marsh and Powell. Marsh himself kept the Herald story alive with a fiery rebuttal, but by the end of January the story had faded from all the newspapers, and little changed between the bitter rivals.
No congressional hearing was convened to investigate the misallocation of funds by Powell, and neither Cope nor Marsh was held responsible for any of their mistakes, but some of Ballou's charges against Marsh came to be associated with the Survey. Facing anti-Survey sentiment inflamed by western drought and concerns about takeovers of abandoned western homesteads, Powell found himself the subject of larger scrutiny before the House Appropriations Committee. Galvanized to action by Marsh's perceived extravagance with Survey funds, the Appropriations Committee demanded the Survey's budget be itemized. When his appropriation was cut off in 1892, Powell sent a terse telegram to Marsh demanding his resignation, a personal slight as well as a financial one. At the same time, many of Marsh's allies were retiring or had died, lessening his scientific credence. Just as Marsh's extravagant lifestyle was catching up with him, Cope received a position on the Texas Geological Survey. Cope, still reeling from the personal attacks levied at him during the Herald affair, did not take advantage of the change in fortunes to press his personal attacks. Cope's fortunes continued to look up throughout the early 1890s, as he was promoted to Leidy's position as Professor of Zoology and was elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science the same year that Marsh stepped down as head of the Academy of Sciences. Towards the latter part of the decade, Cope's fortunes began to sour once more as Marsh regained some of his recognition, earning the Cuvier Medal, the highest paleontological award.
Cope and Marsh's rivalry lasted until Cope's death in 1897, by which time both men were financially ruined. Cope suffered from a debilitating illness in his later years and had to sell part of his fossil collection and rent out one of his houses to make ends meet. Marsh in turn had to mortgage his residence and ask Yale for a salary on which to live. The rivalry between the two remained strong if weary. Cope issued a final challenge before his death. He had his skull donated to science so that his brain could be measured, hoping that his brain would be larger than that of his adversary; at the time, brain size was believed to be a measure of intelligence. Marsh never accepted the challenge, and Cope's skull is reportedly still preserved at the University of Pennsylvania. (Whether the skull stored at the university is Cope's is disputed; the university stated that it believes the real skull was lost in the 1970s, although Robert Bakker has said that hairline fractures on the skull and coroner's reports verify the skull's authenticity.)
## Legacy
Judging by pure numbers, Marsh "won" the Bone Wars. Both scientists made finds of immense scientific value, but while Cope discovered a total of 56 new dinosaur species, Marsh discovered 80. In the later stages of the Bone Wars, Marsh simply had more men and money at his disposal than Cope. Cope also had a much broader set of paleontological interests, while Marsh almost exclusively pursued fossilized reptiles and mammals.
Several of Cope's and Marsh's discoveries are among the most well-known of dinosaurs, encompassing species of Triceratops, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus and Coelophysis. Their cumulative discoveries defined the then-nascent field of paleontology; before Cope's and Marsh's discoveries, there were only nine named species of dinosaur in North America. Some of their ideas—such as Marsh's argument that birds are descended from dinosaurs—have been upheld; while others are viewed as having little to no scientific merit. The Bone Wars also led to the discovery of the first complete skeletons, and the rise in popularity of dinosaurs with the public. As paleontologist Robert Bakker stated, "The dinosaurs that came from [Como Bluff] not only filled museums, they filled magazine articles, textbooks, they filled people's minds."
Despite their advances, the Bone Wars also had a negative effect not only on the two scientists but also on their peers and the entire field. The public animosity between Cope and Marsh harmed the reputation of American paleontology in Europe for decades. Furthermore, the reported use of dynamite and sabotage by employees of both men may have harmed fossil remains, though later excavation suggests that some of the damage was exaggerated in order to dissuade competition. Joseph Leidy abandoned his more methodical excavations in the West, finding he could not keep up with Cope's and Marsh's reckless searching for bones. Leidy also grew tired of the constant squabbling between the two men, with the result that his withdrawal from the field marginalized his own legacy; after his death, Osborn found not a single mention of the man in either of the rivals' works. In their haste to outdo each other, Cope and Marsh haphazardly assembled the bones of their own discoveries. Their descriptions of new species, based on their reconstructions, led to confusion and misconceptions that lasted for decades after their deaths.
### Adaptations
Literature
- Michael Crichton's novel Dragon Teeth (published posthumously in 2017) addresses the Bone Wars through the experiences of a fictional character, William Johnson, who becomes an apprentice to both Marsh and Cope, and makes his own historic discovery.
- Kenneth Oppel's young adult novel, Every Hidden Thing (2016), features the fictional children of two scientists based on Cope and Marsh as they live their own Romeo and Juliet style adventure in the midst of the Bone Wars.
- Besides being the focus of historical and paleontological books, the Bone Wars is the subject of Jim Ottaviani's graphic novel Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, and the Gilded Age of Paleontology (2005); Bone Sharps is a work of historical fiction, as Ottaviani introduces the character of Charles R. Knight to Cope for plot purposes, and other events have been restructured.
Television
- The Bone Wars is one of three stories retold in the "New Jersey" episode of the Comedy Central series Drunk History. Cope is portrayed by Tony Hale and Marsh by Christopher Meloni, with Mark Proksch as the drunk storyteller.
- The Bone Wars was a tangential part of Murdoch Mysteries; season two, episode three titled, "Dinosaur Fever" wherein the Bone Wars conflict between Cope and Marsh set the foundation for the theme of the cutthroat world of 19th century paleontology in setting the foundation for the story.
|
9,702,578 |
1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ⋯
| 1,151,293,174 |
Infinite series
|
[
"Divergent series",
"Mathematical paradoxes",
"Mathematical series"
] |
In mathematics, 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ··· is an infinite series whose terms are the successive positive integers, given alternating signs. Using sigma summation notation the sum of the first m terms of the series can be expressed as $\sum_{n=1}^m n(-1)^{n-1}.$
The infinite series diverges, meaning that its sequence of partial sums, (1, −1, 2, −2, 3, ...), does not tend towards any finite limit. Nonetheless, in the mid-18th century, Leonhard Euler wrote what he admitted to be a paradoxical equation: $1-2+3-4+\cdots=\frac{1}{4}.$
A rigorous explanation of this equation would not arrive until much later. Starting in 1890, Ernesto Cesàro, Émile Borel and others investigated well-defined methods to assign generalized sums to divergent series—including new interpretations of Euler's attempts. Many of these summability methods easily assign to 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... a "value" of 1/4. Cesàro summation is one of the few methods that do not sum 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ..., so the series is an example where a slightly stronger method, such as Abel summation, is required.
The series 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... is closely related to Grandi's series 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + .... Euler treated these two as special cases of the more general sequence 1 − 2<sup>n</sup> + 3<sup>n</sup> − 4<sup>n</sup> + ..., where n = 1 and n = 0 respectively. This line of research extended his work on the Basel problem and leading towards the functional equations of what are now known as the Dirichlet eta function and the Riemann zeta function.
## Divergence
The series' terms (1, −2, 3, −4, ...) do not approach 0; therefore 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... diverges by the term test. Divergence can also be shown directly from the definition: an infinite series converges if and only if the sequence of partial sums converges to limit, in which case that limit is the value of the infinite series. The partial sums of 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... are:
The sequence of partial sums shows that the series does not converge to a particular number: for any proposed limit x, there exists a point beyond which the subsequent partial sums are all outside the interval [x−1, x+1]), so 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... diverges.
The partial sums include every integer exactly once—even 0 if one counts the empty partial sum—and thereby establishes the countability of the set $\mathbb{Z}$ of integers.
## Heuristics for summation
### Stability and linearity
Since the terms 1, −2, 3, −4, 5, −6, ... follow a simple pattern, the series 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... can be manipulated by shifting and term-by-term addition to yield a numerical value. If it can make sense to write s = 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... for some ordinary number s, the following manipulations argue for s = 1⁄4: $\begin{array}{rclllll}
4s&=& &(1-2+3-4+\cdots) & {}+(1-2+3-4+\cdots) & {}+(1-2+3-4+\cdots) &{}+(1-2+3-4+\cdots) \\
&=& &(1-2+3-4+\cdots) & {}+1+(-2+3-4+5+\cdots) & {}+1+(-2+3-4+5+\cdots) &{}+(1-2)+(3-4+5-6\cdots) \\
&=& &(1-2+3-4+\cdots) & {}+1+(-2+3-4+5+\cdots) & {}+1+(-2+3-4+5+\cdots) &{}-1+(3-4+5-6\cdots) \\
&=&1+&(1-2+3-4+\cdots) & {}+(-2+3-4+5+\cdots) & {}+(-2+3-4+5+\cdots) &{}+(3-4+5-6\cdots) \\
&=&1+[&(1-2-2+3) & {}+(-2+3+3-4) & {}+(3-4-4+5) &{}+(-4+5+5-6)+\cdots] \\
&=&1+[&0+0+0+0+\cdots] \\
4s&=&1
\end{array}$
`So `$s=\frac{1}{4}$`.`
Although 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... does not have a sum in the usual sense, the equation s = 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... = 1⁄4 can be supported as the most natural answer if such a sum is to be defined. A generalized definition of the "sum" of a divergent series is called a summation method or summability method. There are many different methods and it is desirable that they share some properties of ordinary summation. What the above manipulations actually prove is the following: Given any summability method that is linear and stable and sums the series 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ..., the sum it produces is 1⁄4. Furthermore, since $\begin{array}{rcllll}
2s & = & &(1-2+3-4+\cdots) & + & (1-2+3-4+\cdots) \\
& = & 1 +{} &(-2+3-4+\cdots) & {} + 1 - 2 & {}+ (3-4+5\cdots) \\
& = & 0 +{} &(-2+3)+(3-4)+ (-4+5)+\cdots \\
2s & = & &1-1+1-1\cdots
\end{array}$ such a method must also sum Grandi's series as 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... = 1⁄2.
### Cauchy product
In 1891, Ernesto Cesàro expressed hope that divergent series would be rigorously brought into calculus, pointing out, "One already writes (1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ...)<sup>2</sup> = 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... and asserts that both the sides are equal to 1⁄4." For Cesàro, this equation was an application of a theorem he had published the previous year, which is the first theorem in the history of summable divergent series. The details on his summation method are below; the central idea is that 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... is the Cauchy product (discrete convolution) of 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... with 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ....
The Cauchy product of two infinite series is defined even when both of them are divergent. In the case where a<sub>n</sub> = b<sub>n</sub> = (−1)<sup>n</sup>, the terms of the Cauchy product are given by the finite diagonal sums $\begin{array}{rcl}
c_n & = &\displaystyle \sum_{k=0}^n a_k b_{n-k}=\sum_{k=0}^n (-1)^k (-1)^{n-k} \[1em]
& = &\displaystyle \sum_{k=0}^n (-1)^n = (-1)^n(n+1).
\end{array}$
The product series is then $\sum_{n=0}^\infty(-1)^n(n+1) = 1-2+3-4+\cdots.$
Thus a summation method that respects the Cauchy product of two series — and assigns to the series 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... the sum 1/2 — will also assign to the series 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... the sum 1/4. With the result of the previous section, this implies an equivalence between summability of 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... and 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... with methods that are linear, stable, and respect the Cauchy product.
Cesàro's theorem is a subtle example. The series 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... is Cesàro-summable in the weakest sense, called (C, 1)-summable, while 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... requires a stronger form of Cesàro's theorem, being (C, 2)-summable. Since all forms of Cesàro's theorem are linear and stable, the values of the sums are as calculated above.
## Specific methods
### Cesàro and Hölder
To find the (C, 1) Cesàro sum of 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ..., if it exists, one needs to compute the arithmetic means of the partial sums of the series. The partial sums are:
and the arithmetic means of these partial sums are:
This sequence of means does not converge, so 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... is not Cesàro summable.
There are two well-known generalizations of Cesàro summation: the conceptually simpler of these is the sequence of (H, n) methods for natural numbers n. The (H, 1) sum is Cesàro summation, and higher methods repeat the computation of means. Above, the even means converge to 1⁄2, while the odd means are all equal to 0, so the means of the means converge to the average of 0 and 1⁄2, namely 1⁄4. So 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... is (H, 2) summable to 1⁄4.
The "H" stands for Otto Hölder, who first proved in 1882 what mathematicians now think of as the connection between Abel summation and (H, n) summation; 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... was his first example. The fact that 1⁄4 is the (H, 2) sum of 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... guarantees that it is the Abel sum as well; this will also be proved directly below.
The other commonly formulated generalization of Cesàro summation is the sequence of (C, n) methods. It has been proven that (C, n) summation and (H, n) summation always give the same results, but they have different historical backgrounds. In 1887, Cesàro came close to stating the definition of (C, n) summation, but he gave only a few examples. In particular, he summed 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ..., to 1⁄4 by a method that may be rephrased as (C, n) but was not justified as such at the time. He formally defined the (C, n) methods in 1890 in order to state his theorem that the Cauchy product of a (C, n)-summable series and a (C, m)-summable series is (C, m + n + 1)-summable.
### Abel summation
In a 1749 report, Leonhard Euler admits that the series diverges but prepares to sum it anyway:
> ... when it is said that the sum of this series 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + 5 − 6 etc. is 1⁄4, that must appear paradoxical. For by adding 100 terms of this series, we get −50, however, the sum of 101 terms gives +51, which is quite different from 1⁄4 and becomes still greater when one increases the number of terms. But I have already noticed at a previous time, that it is necessary to give to the word sum a more extended meaning ...
Euler proposed a generalization of the word "sum" several times. In the case of 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ..., his ideas are similar to what is now known as Abel summation:
> ... it is no more doubtful that the sum of this series 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + 5 etc. is 1⁄4; since it arises from the expansion of the formula 1⁄(1+1)<sup>2</sup>, whose value is incontestably 1⁄4. The idea becomes clearer by considering the general series 1 − 2x + 3x<sup>2</sup> − 4x<sup>3</sup> + 5x<sup>4</sup> − 6x<sup>5</sup> + &c. that arises while expanding the expression 1⁄(1+x)<sup>2</sup>, which this series is indeed equal to after we set x = 1.
There are many ways to see that, at least for absolute values \|x\| \< 1, Euler is right in that $1-2x+3x^2-4x^3+\cdots = \frac{1}{(1+x)^2}.$ One can take the Taylor expansion of the right-hand side, or apply the formal long division process for polynomials. Starting from the left-hand side, one can follow the general heuristics above and try multiplying by (1 + x) twice or squaring the geometric series 1 − x + x<sup>2</sup> − .... Euler also seems to suggest differentiating the latter series term by term.
In the modern view, the generating function 1 − 2x + 3x<sup>2</sup> − 4x<sup>3</sup> + ... does not define a function at x = 1, so that value cannot simply be substituted into the resulting expression. Since the function is defined for all \|x\| \< 1, one can still take the limit as x approaches 1, and this is the definition of the Abel sum: $\lim_{x\rightarrow 1^{-}}\sum_{n=1}^\infty n(-x)^{n-1} = \lim_{x\rightarrow 1^{-}}\frac{1}{(1+x)^2} = \frac14.$
### Euler and Borel
Euler applied another technique to the series: the Euler transform, one of his own inventions. To compute the Euler transform, one begins with the sequence of positive terms that makes up the alternating series—in this case 1, 2, 3, 4, .... The first element of this sequence is labeled a<sub>0</sub>.
Next one needs the sequence of forward differences among 1, 2, 3, 4, ...; this is just 1, 1, 1, 1, .... The first element of this sequence is labeled Δa<sub>0</sub>. The Euler transform also depends on differences of differences, and higher iterations, but all the forward differences among 1, 1, 1, 1, ... are 0. The Euler transform of 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... is then defined as $\frac12 a_0-\frac14\Delta a_0 +\frac18\Delta^2 a_0 -\cdots = \frac12-\frac14.$
In modern terminology, one says that 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... is Euler summable to 1⁄4.
The Euler summability also implies Borel summability, with the same summation value, as it does in general.
### Separation of scales
Saichev and Woyczyński arrive at 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... = 1⁄4 by applying only two physical principles: infinitesimal relaxation and separation of scales. To be precise, these principles lead them to define a broad family of "-summation methods", all of which sum the series to 1⁄4:
- If (x) is a function whose first and second derivatives are continuous and integrable over (0, ∞), such that φ(0) = 1 and the limits of φ(x) and xφ(x) at +∞ are both 0, then $\lim_{\delta\rightarrow0}\sum_{m=0}^\infty (-1)^m(m+1)\varphi(\delta m) = \frac14.$
This result generalizes Abel summation, which is recovered by letting (x) = exp(−x). The general statement can be proved by pairing up the terms in the series over m and converting the expression into a Riemann integral. For the latter step, the corresponding proof for 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... applies the mean value theorem, but here one needs the stronger Lagrange form of Taylor's theorem.
## Generalization
The threefold Cauchy product of 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... is 1 − 3 + 6 − 10 + ..., the alternating series of triangular numbers; its Abel and Euler sum is 1⁄8. The fourfold Cauchy product of 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... is 1 − 4 + 10 − 20 + ..., the alternating series of tetrahedral numbers, whose Abel sum is 1⁄16.
Another generalization of 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... in a slightly different direction is the series 1 − 2<sup>n</sup> + 3<sup>n</sup> − 4<sup>n</sup> + ... for other values of n. For positive integers n, these series have the following Abel sums: $1-2^{n}+3^{n}-\cdots = \frac{2^{n+1}-1}{n+1}B_{n+1}$ where B<sub>n</sub> are the Bernoulli numbers. For even n, this reduces to $1-2^{2k}+3^{2k}-\cdots = 0,$ which can be interpreted as stating that negative even values of the Riemann zeta function are zero. This sum became an object of particular ridicule by Niels Henrik Abel in 1826:
> Divergent series are on the whole devil's work, and it is a shame that one dares to found any proof on them. One can get out of them what one wants if one uses them, and it is they which have made so much unhappiness and so many paradoxes. Can one think of anything more appalling than to say that
>
> where n is a positive number. Here's something to laugh at, friends.
Cesàro's teacher, Eugène Charles Catalan, also disparaged divergent series. Under Catalan's influence, Cesàro initially referred to the "conventional formulas" for 1 − 2<sup>n</sup> + 3<sup>n</sup> − 4<sup>n</sup> + ... as "absurd equalities", and in 1883 Cesàro expressed a typical view of the time that the formulas were false but still somehow formally useful. Finally, in his 1890 Sur la multiplication des séries, Cesàro took a modern approach starting from definitions.
The series are also studied for non-integer values of n; these make up the Dirichlet eta function. Part of Euler's motivation for studying series related to 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... was the functional equation of the eta function, which leads directly to the functional equation of the Riemann zeta function. Euler had already become famous for finding the values of these functions at positive even integers (including the Basel problem), and he was attempting to find the values at the positive odd integers (including Apéry's constant) as well, a problem that remains elusive today. The eta function in particular is easier to deal with by Euler's methods because its Dirichlet series is Abel summable everywhere; the zeta function's Dirichlet series is much harder to sum where it diverges. For example, the counterpart of 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... in the zeta function is the non-alternating series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ..., which has deep applications in modern physics but requires much stronger methods to sum.
## See also
- 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯
- 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ⋯
- 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + ·...
- 1 − 2 + 4 − 8 + ⋯
|
68,584,693 |
Dracophyllum fiordense
| 1,170,394,111 |
Species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae
|
[
"Dracophyllum",
"Endemic flora of New Zealand",
"Plants described in 1928",
"Taxa named by Walter Oliver"
] |
Dracophyllum fiordense, commonly known as the Fiordland grass tree, is a species of tree or shrub in the heath family, Ericaceae. It is endemic to the South Island of New Zealand. It reaches a height of 1.5–5.0 metres (5–16 feet) and has tufts of long green leaves at the ends of its branches. Each leaf has a distinctive curled spiral tip. D. fiordense has a pyramid-shaped inflorescence (flower spike) hidden under each clump of leaves, with between 113 and 120 pink flowers on each spike, and later reddish-brown dry fruit; both are around just 2 by 2 mm. It inhabits shrubland, lowland and subalpine forests, and tussock grassland of mountain slopes, gullies, and ridges. Its range covers two main areas: one in Fiordland National Park, and one in the Mount Cook and Westland National Parks.
D. fiordense was first described by the New Zealand naturalist Walter Oliver in 1928 and placed by him in the subgenus Dracophyllum. A cladistic analysis using genetic sequencing was published in 2010, which revealed that D. fiordense is closely related to D. menziesii as Oliver had hypothesised. Its conservation status was assessed in 2017 as "Declining". The kākāpō, a flightless bird, feeds on the bases of the leaves by making careful incisions in new shoots. D. fiordense is likely pollinated by insects and its seeds are later dispersed by the wind.
## Description
Dracophyllum fiordense is a tree or tall shrub that grows to heights of 1.5–5.0 metres (5–16 feet). Though the trunk is usually unbranched, upright-growing branches may sometimes form, particularly on plants in Westland. The bark on older sections is a greyish-brown colour; newer growth is a yellow-brown. It is often very flaky and fragmented near the base of old stems. The leaves of D. fiordense are concentrated at the ends of branches, similar to species in the family Bromeliaceae, and are leathery, deeply grooved, and shaped like a triangle. They are 40–70 by 4–5 centimetres (16–28 by 1.6–2.0 inches) and have finely-toothed edges with 10–15 teeth every 1 cm (0.4 in). The tip of each leaf is pointed and curls in a distinctive spiral.
Flowering occurs from January to March, producing an inflorescence (flower spike) that is an axillary panicle: one that is many-branched and arises between the branch and the leaf. It is pyramid-shaped and much shorter than the leaves, drooping downwards to a length between 10 and 15 cm (4 and 6 in). The basal branch of the inflorescence extends horizontally outwards and is between 2 and 5 cm (0.8 and 2.0 in) long, and is covered in light green inflorescence bracts (specialised leaves). These bracts are egg-shaped to triangular at their bases and eventually fall off.
There are between 113 and 120 flowers on each panicle, grouped in sets of ten near the base. They hang from hairless 0.8–1.5 mm pedicels which have 4.5–5.0 by 0.8–10 mm hairless bracteoles (smaller bracts) in the middle, that later fall off. The sepals (leafy part of flower that protects it) are egg-shaped, 2.0–2.5 by 2.0–3.0 mm, which is shorter than the corolla tube, and grooved. The petals are a pinkish colour and form a 2.0–2.5 by 2.0–2.5 mm bell-shaped tube that becomes wider towards the mouth of the flower, and have reflexed lobes. The stamens are hypogynous and made up of a light yellow oblong 1.5–2.0 mm anther (pollen containing part) atop a 2.3–2.5 mm long filament. The flower has an almost globe-shaped ovary which is 0.9–1.0 by 1.3–1.5 mm, while the nectary scales are rectangularly shaped 0.6–0.7 by 0.6–0.7 mm. The style projects outwards and is 1.8–2.0 mm (0.07–0.08 in) long, hairless and five-lobed.
Fruiting occurs throughout the year, producing an egg-shaped brown 0.55–0.60 mm long seed which is encased within a 2.0–2.8 by 2.5–4.0 mm red-brown fruit. The fruit is globe shaped but pressed in on itself. Dracophyllum fiordense is similar to D. menziesii and D. townsonii in that its inflorescences develop below the clusters of leaves, though they are more branched than that of D. menziesii. D. traversii is also similar, but D. fiordense has a mostly unbranched stem, spiralled ends to its leaves, and an inflorescence occurring below the leaves.
## Taxonomy
Dracophyllum fiordense was first described by the New Zealand naturalist and ornithologist Walter Oliver (1883–1957) in the 1928 issue of Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, published in 1929. He noted, in what was the first major monograph of the genus, that its leaves were "the largest of all the species of Dracophyllum," and concentrated in "an immense cluster at the top of the stem." Oliver claimed it had been known by others for some years before he collected it in March 1927 on Wilmot saddle and Mount Barber. The type specimen was collected on Wilmot saddle on the Wilmot pass, which Oliver designated in a 1952 supplement to his original article. It is, hence, a lectotype, since he did not provide a holotype in his original article.
### Etymology
The etymology of Dracophyllum is from its similarity to the unrelated and more widespread genus Dracaena, which stems from the Ancient Greek for "dragon-leaf". The specific epithet fiordense is the Latinisation of the word "Fiordland" for the Fiordland region, one of the species' two main distribution locations. It is commonly called the Fiordland grass tree.
### Classification and evolution
In 1928, Oliver published his first attempt to establish subgenera for Dracophyllum and placed D. fiordense in the subgenus Dracophyllum (then called Eudracophyllum) in the group of D. menziesii, together with D. menziesii and D. townsonii. He cited the way its panicles form below its terminal cluster of leaves as enough to move it into that group; this placement was unchanged in his 1952 supplement. Several studies have examined the relationships within Dracophyllum using genetic sequencing, though the largest of these was published in 2010, by several botanists in Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. In it, they performed a cladistic analysis and produced a phylogenetic tree of the tribe Richeeae, including many of the species in the genus Dracophyllum as well as other species, using genetic sequencing. The tree was established through the combination of rbcL and matK bases. They found that only Dracophyllum subg. Oreothamnus and the tribe Richeeae were monophyletic. The paraphyly of the genus Dracophyllum, as well as the polyphyly of the closely related genus Richea, they argued, suggested that a major taxonomic revision was required. The botanist Stephanus Venter revised the genus in 2021, merging the genus Richea into two subgenera named Dracophyllum subg. Cystanthe and D. subg. Dracophylloides. Because the 2010 study was based on plastid sequence data and did not attain some species with strong enough evidence, he instead based the subgenera on morphological characteristics. D. fiordense is kept in the subgenus Dracophyllum under his assessment. Dracophyllum fiordense is most closely related to D. menziesii, though is also part of a larger group (clade) that share a common ancestor, which includes D. traversii, D. townsonii and D. latifolium. Its placement can be summarised in the cladogram at right.
## Distribution and habitat
### Distribution
Dracophyllum fiordense is endemic to the Fiordland and western Otago regions on the South Island of New Zealand and occurs in two main populations. The first is in the Mount Cook and Westland National Parks and the second is in Fiordland National Park. Research by David A. Norton published in 2018 in New Zealand Journal of Botany found that it occurs much further north than previously recorded. Norton found the species occurring 60 to 75 kilometres (37 to 47 miles) further north (a 15% increase) than its previously known range, in the Waitaha and Hokitika River catchments. He hypothesised that this change in range was due either to: misidentification as D. traversii; simply not being found earlier; or more recent movement of the species further north. The third possibility, he suggested, may be a result of it evolving from glacial events from the south of the South Island; hence, it "may still be spreading northwards."
Venter recorded in his 2009 thesis and 2021 revision of the genus that plants from the southern population, found in Fiordland, tend to have few or no branches off the main stem, with longer leaves and larger fruit than those of the other population. He hypothesised that this may be due to the higher elevation, as, for example, plants from valleys on Mt. Alexander reach 5 m (16 ft), whereas others in more alpine regions reach just 50 cm (2 ft). The northern population, in Westland, typically has many-branched stems, much smaller fruit and shorter leaves. Norton claimed he had not seen individuals with as many branches as Venter had illustrated in his thesis in the northern population. The branches off the main stem, according to Norton, are only rarely present in southern plants, and when they are, they occur at the base of the plant.
### Habitat
Dracophyllum fiordense grows on 50 ̊–80 ̊ steep mountain slopes from 50 to 1,280 m (160 to 4,200 ft). It typically occurs on north, north-west, or north-eastern facing slopes in gullies, ravines, ridges, or bluffs. Vegetation in these areas is commonly made up of moist lowland and subalpine forest, shrubland, or tussock grassland. Tree cover comes from silver beech (Nothofagus menziesii), tūpare (Olearia colensoi), mountain flax (Phormium cookianum), or tussock grasses (from the genus Chionochloa). Soil content is principally a brown clay loam formed from schist and gneiss and is often rich in humus. D. fiordense usually prefers sunny areas, but sometimes it can be found in places with light shade. Despite these regions having high rainfall, the plant also can gain moisture from the mist. A 2017 assessment using the New Zealand Threat Classification System classified it as "Declining", with an estimated habitat area less than 100 km<sup>2</sup> (39 sq mi; 10,000 ha).
## Ecology
Dracophyllum fiordense is one of several species that the flightless bird kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus), feeds on. One 1977 thesis found "kakapo signs", or chew marks, caused by the lower mandible on the lateral buds (shoots) of D. fiordense. The technique they employ – specifically on D. fiordense – is an incision into the leaf buds with their beaks followed by eating the leaf bases through the incision. In the Fiordland region, which was where the kākāpō's last wild population was located (before subsequent conservation efforts), D. fiordense, along with other Fiordland Dracophyllum species such as D. menziesii, D. longifolium, and D. uniflorum, is an important source of food for the parrot.
The seeds of D. fiordense are small enough to be dispersed by the wind and one 2010 paper in New Zealand Journal of Ecology found pollination is likely achieved by insects. Species flammability within the Dracophyllum genus was analysed in a 2020 study published in New Phytologist. D. fiordense was found to be one of the least flammable plants across the genus, attaining the lowest burning time, mean maximum temperature, ignition score, and mean burnt biomass, and conversely having the greatest mean moisture content in its leaves. Since D. menziesii, its closest relative, grows in drier open areas and is more flammable than D. fiordense, which grows in high rainfall forests and shrubland and has low flammability, researchers suggested that this trait may have been determined by the species' environment. Deer were found to feed on D. fiordense in two studies, conducted in 1975 and 1982 respectively, on Secretary Island in Fiordland. The first study found its foliage was eaten the 17th most; the second found that its branches were the 10th most chewed, among other plants in the area.
|
3,099,417 |
Rashtrakuta dynasty
| 1,169,846,657 |
Early Medieval period Indian dynasty (r. mid 6th to 10th century)
|
[
"10th century in India",
"10th-century disestablishments in India",
"753 establishments",
"8th century in India",
"8th-century establishments in India",
"982 disestablishments",
"9th century in India",
"Dynasties of India",
"Empires and kingdoms of India",
"Former countries in South Asia",
"Hindu dynasties",
"History of Marathwada",
"Medieval Karnataka",
"Rashtrakuta dynasty",
"States and territories disestablished in the 980s",
"States and territories established in the 750s"
] |
Rashtrakuta (IAST: '') (r. 753 – 982 CE) was a royal Indian dynasty ruling large parts of the Indian subcontinent between the 6th and 10th centuries. The earliest known Rashtrakuta inscription is a 7th-century copper plate grant detailing their rule from manapur a city in Central or West India. Other ruling Rashtrakuta clans from the same period mentioned in inscriptions were the kings of Achalapur and the rulers of Kannauj. Several controversies exist regarding the origin of these early Rashtrakutas, their native homeland and their language.
The Elichpur clan was a feudatory of the Badami Chalukyas, and during the rule of Dantidurga, it overthrew Chalukya Kirtivarman II and went on to build an empire with the Gulbarga region in modern Karnataka as its base. This clan came to be known as the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta, rising to power in South India in 753 AD. At the same time the Pala dynasty of Bengal and the Prathihara dynasty of Malwa were gaining force in eastern and northwestern India respectively. An Arabic text, Silsilat al-Tawarikh (851), called the Rashtrakutas one of the four principal empires of the world.
This period, between the 8th and the 10th centuries, saw a tripartite struggle for the resources of the rich Gangetic plains, each of these three empires annexing the seat of power at Kannauj for short periods of time. At their peak the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta ruled a vast empire stretching from the Ganges River and Yamuna River doab in the north to Kanyakumari in the south, a fruitful time of political expansion, architectural achievements and famous literary contributions. The early kings of this dynasty were influenced by Hinduism and the later kings by Jainism.
During their rule, Jain mathematicians and scholars contributed important works in Kannada and Sanskrit. Amoghavarsha I, the most famous king of this dynasty wrote Kavirajamarga, a landmark literary work in the Kannada language. Architecture reached a milestone in the Dravidian style, the finest example of which is seen in the Kailasanatha Temple at Ellora in modern Maharashtra. Other important contributions are the Kashivishvanatha temple and the Jain Narayana temple at Pattadakal in modern Karnataka, both of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
## History
The origin of the Rashtrakuta dynasty has been a controversial topic of Indian history. These issues pertain to the origin of the earliest ancestors of the Rashtrakutas during the time of Emperor Ashoka in the 2nd century BCE, and the connection between the several Rashtrakuta dynasties that ruled small kingdoms in northern and central India and the Deccan between the 6th and 7th centuries. The relationship of these medieval Rashtrakutas to the most famous later dynasty, the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta (present-day Malkhed in the Kalaburagi district, Karnataka state), who ruled between the 8th and 10th centuries has also been debated.
The sources for Rashtrakuta history include medieval inscriptions, ancient literature in the Pali language, contemporaneous literature in Sanskrit and Kannada and the notes of the Arab travellers. Theories about the dynastic lineage (Surya Vamsa—Solar line and Chandra Vamsa—Lunar line), the native region and the ancestral home have been proposed, based on information gleaned from inscriptions, royal emblems, the ancient clan names such as "Rashtrika", epithets (Ratta, Rashtrakuta, Lattalura Puravaradhiswara), the names of princes and princesses of the dynasty, and clues from relics such as coins. Scholars debate over which ethnic/linguistic groups can claim the early Rashtrakutas. Possibilities include the Kannadiga, Reddi, the Maratha, the tribes from the Punjab region, or other north western ethnic groups of India.
Scholars however concur that the rulers of the imperial dynasty in the 8th to 10th century made the Kannada language as important as Sanskrit. Rashtrakuta inscriptions use both Kannada and Sanskrit (historians Sheldon Pollock and Jan Houben claim they are mostly in Kannada), and the rulers encouraged literature in both languages. The earliest existing Kannada literary writings are credited to their court poets and royalty. Though these Rashtrakutas were Kannadigas, they were conversant in a northern Deccan language as well.
The heart of the Rashtrakuta empire included nearly all of Karnataka, Maharashtra and parts of Andhra Pradesh, an area which the Rashtrakutas ruled for over two centuries. The Samangadh copper plate grant (753) confirms that the feudatory King Dantidurga, who probably ruled from Achalapura in Berar (modern Elichpur in Maharashtra), defeated the great Karnatic army (referring to the army of the Badami Chalukyas) of Kirtivarman II of Badami in 753 and took control of the northern regions of the Chalukya empire. He then helped his son-in-law, Pallava King Nandivarman II regain Kanchi from the Chalukyas and defeated the Gurjaras of Malwa, and the rulers of Kalinga, Kosala and Srisailam.
Dantidurga's successor Krishna I brought major portions of present-day Karnataka and Konkan under his control. During the rule of Dhruva Dharavarsha who took control in 780, the kingdom expanded into an empire that encompassed all of the territory between the Kaveri River and Central India. He led successful expeditions to Kannauj, the seat of northern Indian power where he defeated the Gurjara Pratiharas and the Palas of Bengal, gaining him fame and vast booty but not more territory. He also brought the Eastern Chalukyas and Gangas of Talakad under his control. According to Altekar and Sen, the Rashtrakutas became a pan-India power during his rule.
### Expansion
The ascent of Dhruva Dharavarsha's third son, Govinda III, to the throne heralded an era of success like never before. There is uncertainty about the location of the early capital of the Rashtrakutas at this time. During his rule there was a three way conflict between the Rashtrakutas, the Palas and the Pratiharas for control over the Gangetic plains. Describing his victories over the Pratihara Emperor Nagabhatta II and the Pala Emperor Dharmapala, the Sanjan inscription states the horses of Govinda III drank from the icy waters of the Himalayan streams and his war elephants tasted the sacred waters of the Ganges. His military exploits have been compared to those of Alexander the Great and Arjuna of Mahabharata. Having conquered Kannauj, he travelled south, took firm hold over Gujarat, Kosala (Kaushal), Gangavadi, humbled the Pallavas of Kanchi, installed a ruler of his choice in Vengi and received two statues as an act of submission from the king of Ceylon (one statue of the king and another of his minister). The Cholas, the Pandyas and the Kongu Cheras of Karur all paid him tribute. As one historian puts it, the drums of the Deccan were heard from the Himalayan caves to the shores of the Malabar Coast. The Rashtrakutas empire now spread over the areas from Cape Comorin to Kannauj and from Banaras to Bharuch.
The successor of Govinda III, Amoghavarsha I made Manyakheta his capital and ruled a large empire. Manyakheta remained the Rashtrakutas' regal capital until the end of the empire. He came to the throne in 814 but it was not until 821 that he had suppressed revolts from feudatories and ministers. Amoghavarsha I made peace with the Western Ganga dynasty by giving them his two daughters in marriage, and then defeated the invading Eastern Chalukyas at Vingavalli and assumed the title Viranarayana. His rule was not as militant as that of Govinda III as he preferred to maintain friendly relations with his neighbours, the Gangas, the Eastern Chalukyas and the Pallavas with whom he also cultivated marital ties. His era was an enriching one for the arts, literature and religion. Widely seen as the most famous of the Rashtrakuta Emperors, Amoghavarsha I was an accomplished scholar in Kannada and Sanskrit. His Kavirajamarga is considered an important landmark in Kannada poetics and Prashnottara Ratnamalika in Sanskrit is a writing of high merit and was later translated into the Tibetan language. Because of his religious temperament, his interest in the arts and literature and his peace-loving nature, he has been compared to the emperor Ashoka and called "Ashoka of the South".
During the rule of Krishna II, the empire faced a revolt from the Eastern Chalukyas and its size decreased to the area including most of the Western Deccan and Gujarat. Krishna II ended the independent status of the Gujarat branch and brought it under direct control from Manyakheta. Indra III recovered the dynasty's fortunes in central India by defeating the Paramara and then invaded the doab region of the Ganges and Jamuna rivers. He also defeated the dynasty's traditional enemies, the Pratiharas and the Palas, while maintaining his influence over Vengi. The effect of his victories in Kannauj lasted several years according to the 930 copper plate inscription of Emperor Govinda IV. After a succession of weak kings during whose reigns the empire lost control of territories in the north and east, Krishna III the last great ruler consolidated the empire so that it stretched from the Narmada River to Kaveri River and included the northern Tamil country (Tondaimandalam) while levying tribute on the king of Ceylon.
### Decline
In 972 A.D., during the rule of Khottiga Amoghavarsha, the Paramara King Siyaka Harsha attacked the empire and plundered Manyakheta, the capital of the Rashtrakutas. This seriously undermined the reputation of the Rastrakuta Empire and consequently led to its downfall. The final decline was sudden as Tailapa II, a feudatory of the Rashtrakuta ruling from Tardavadi province in modern Bijapur district, declared himself independent by taking advantage of this defeat. Indra IV, the last emperor, committed Sallekhana (fasting unto death practised by Jain monks) at Shravanabelagola. With the fall of the Rashtrakutas, their feudatories and related clans in the Deccan and northern India declared independence. The Western Chalukyas annexed Manyakheta and made it their capital until 1015 and built an impressive empire in the Rashtrakuta heartland during the 11th century. The focus of dominance shifted to the Krishna River – Godavari River doab called Vengi. The former feudatories of the Rashtrakutas in western Deccan were brought under control of the Chalukyas, and the hitherto-suppressed Cholas of Tanjore became their arch enemies in the south.
In conclusion, the rise of Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta had a great impact on India, even on India's north. Sulaiman (851), Al-Masudi (944) and Ibn Khurdadba (912) wrote that their empire was the largest in contemporary India and Sulaiman further called it one among the four great contemporary empires of the world. According to the travelogues of the Arabs Al Masudi and Ibn Khordidbih of the 10th century, "most of the kings of Hindustan turned their faces towards the Rashtrakuta king while they were praying, and they prostrated themselves before his ambassadors. The Rashtrakuta king was known as the "King of kings" (Rajadhiraja) who possessed the mightiest of armies and whose domains extended from Konkan to Sind." Some historians have called these times an "Age of Imperial Kannauj". Since the Rashtrakutas successfully captured Kannauj, levied tribute on its rulers and presented themselves as masters of North India, the era could also be called the "Age of Imperial Karnataka". During their political expansion into central and northern India in the 8th to the 10th centuries, the Rashtrakutas or their relatives created several kingdoms that either ruled during the reign of the parent empire or continued to rule for centuries after its fall or came to power much later. Well known among these were the Rashtrakutas of Gujarat (757–888), the Rattas of Saundatti (875–1230) in modern Karnataka, the Gahadavalas of Kannauj (1068–1223), the Rashtrakutas of Rajasthan (known as Rajputana) and ruling from Hastikundi or Hathundi (893–996), Dahal (near Jabalpur), Rathores of Mandore (near Jodhpur), the Rathores of Dhanop, Rashtraudha dynasty of Mayuragiri in modern Maharashtra and Rashtrakutas of Kannauj. Rajadhiraja Chola's conquest of the island of Ceylon in the early 11th century CE led to the fall of four kings there. According to historian K. Pillay, one of them, King Madavarajah of the Jaffna kingdom, was an usurper from the Rashtrakuta Dynasty.
## Administration
Inscriptions and other literary records indicate the Rashtrakutas selected the crown prince based on heredity. The crown did not always pass on to the eldest son. Abilities were considered more important than age and chronology of birth, as exemplified by the crowning of Govinda III who was the third son of king Dhruva Dharavarsha. The most important position under the king was the Chief Minister (Mahasandhivigrahi) whose position came with five insignia commensurate with his position namely, a flag, a conch, a fan, a white umbrella, a large drum and five musical instruments called Panchamahashabdas. Under him was the commander (Dandanayaka), the foreign minister (Mahakshapataladhikrita) and a prime minister (Mahamatya or Purnamathya), all of whom were usually associated with one of the feudatory kings and must have held a position in government equivalent to a premier. A Mahasamantha was a feudatory or higher ranking regal officer. All cabinet ministers were well versed in political science (Rajneeti) and possessed military training. There were cases where women supervised significant areas as when Revakanimaddi, daughter of Amoghavarsha I, administered Edathore Vishaya.
The kingdom was divided into Mandala or Rashtras (provinces). A Rashtra was ruled by a Rashtrapathi who on occasion was the emperor himself. Amoghavarsha I's empire had sixteen Rashtras. Under a Rashtra was a Vishaya (district) overseen by a Vishayapathi. Trusted ministers sometimes ruled more than a Rashtra. For example, Bankesha, a commander of Amoghavarsha I headed several Rashtras, besides ruling Banavasi which included 12,000 villages in that territory, lesser Rashtras included: Kunduru (500), Belvola (300), Puligere (300) and Kundarge (70). Below the Vishaya was the Nadu looked after by the Nadugowda (or Nadugavunda); sometimes there were two such officials, one assuming the position through heredity and another appointed centrally. The lowest division was a Grama or village administered by a Gramapathi or Prabhu Gavunda.
The Rashtrakuta army consisted of large contingents of infantry, horsemen, and elephants. A standing army was always ready for war in a cantonment (Sthirabhuta Kataka) in the regal capital of Manyakheta. Large armies were also maintained by the feudatory kings who were expected to contribute to the defense of the empire in case of war. Chieftains and all the officials also served as commanders whose postings were transferable if the need arose.
The Rashtrakutas issued coins (minted in an Akkashale) such as Suvarna, Drammas in silver and gold weighing 65 grains, Kalanju weighing 48 grains, Gadyanaka weighing 96 grains, Kasu weighing 15 grains, Manjati with 2.5 grains and Akkam of 1.25 grain.
## Economy
The Rashtrakuta economy was sustained by its natural and agricultural produce, its manufacturing revenues and moneys gained from its conquests. Cotton was the chief crop of the regions of southern Gujarat, Khandesh and Berar. Minnagar, Gujarat, Ujjain, Paithan and Tagara were important centres of textile industry. Muslin cloth were manufactured in Paithan and Warangal. The cotton yarn and cloth was exported from Bharoch. White calicos were manufactured in Burhanpur and Berar and exported to Persia, Byzantines, Khazaria, Arabia and Egypt. The Konkan region, ruled by the feudatory Silharas, produced large quantities of betel leaves, coconut and rice while the lush forests of Mysore, ruled by the feudatory Gangas, produced such woods as sandal, timber, teak and ebony. Incense and perfumes were exported from the ports of Thana and Saimur.
The Deccan was rich in minerals, though its soil was not as fertile as that of the Gangetic plains. The copper mines of Cudappah, Bellary, Chanda, Buldhana, Narsingpur, Ahmadnagar, Bijapur and Dharwar were an important source of income and played an important role in the economy. Diamonds were mined in Cudappah, Bellary, Kurnool and Golconda; the capital Manyakheta and Devagiri were important diamond and jewellery trading centres. The leather industry and tanning flourished in Gujarat and some regions of northern Maharashtra. Mysore with its vast elephant herds was important for the ivory industry.
The Rashtrakuta empire controlled most of the western sea board of the subcontinent which facilitated its maritime trade. The Gujarat branch of the empire earned a significant income from the port of Bharoch, one of the most prominent ports in the world at that time. The empire's chief exports were cotton yarn, cotton cloth, muslins, hides, mats, indigo, incense, perfumes, betel nuts, coconuts, sandal, teak, timber, sesame oil and ivory. Its major imports were pearls, gold, dates from Arabia, slaves, Italian wines, tin, lead, topaz, storax, sweet clover, flint glass, antimony, gold and silver coins, singing boys and girls (for the entertainment of the royalty) from other lands. Trading in horses was an important and profitable business, monopolised by the Arabs and some local merchants. The Rashtrakuta government levied a shipping tax of one golden Gadyanaka on all foreign vessels embarking to any other ports and a fee of one silver Ctharna ( a coin) on vessels travelling locally.
Artists and craftsman operated as corporations (guilds) rather than as individual business. Inscriptions mention guilds of weavers, oilmen, artisans, basket and mat makers and fruit sellers. A Saundatti inscription refers to an assemblage of all the people of a district headed by the guilds of the region. Some guilds were considered superior to others, just as some corporations were, and received royal charters determining their powers and privileges. Inscriptions suggest these guilds had their own militia to protect goods in transit and, like village assemblies, they operated banks that lent money to traders and businesses.
The government's income came from five principal sources: regular taxes, occasional taxes, fines, income taxes, miscellaneous taxes and tributes from feudatories. An emergency tax was imposed occasionally and were applicable when the kingdom was under duress, such as when it faced natural calamities, or was preparing for war or overcoming war's ravages. Income tax included taxes on crown land, wasteland, specific types of trees considered valuable to the economy, mines, salt, treasures unearthed by prospectors. Additionally, customary presents were given to the king or royal officers on such festive occasions as marriage or the birth of a son.
The king determined the tax levels based on need and circumstances in the kingdom while ensuring that an undue burden was not placed on the peasants. The land owner or tenant paid a variety of taxes, including land taxes, produce taxes and payment of the overhead for maintenance of the Gavunda (village head). Land taxes were varied, based on type of land, its produce and situation and ranged from 8% to 16%. A Banavasi inscription of 941 mentions reassessment of land tax due to the drying up of an old irrigation canal in the region. The land tax may have been as high as 20% to pay for expenses of a military frequently at war. In most of the kingdom, land taxes were paid in goods and services and rarely was cash accepted. A portion of all taxes earned by the government (usually 15%) was returned to the villages for maintenance.
Taxes were levied on artisans such as potters, sheep herders, weavers, oilmen, shopkeepers, stall owners, brewers and gardeners. Taxes on perishable items such as fish, meat, honey, medicine, fruits and essentials like fuel was as high as 16%. Taxes on salt and minerals were mandatory although the empire did not claim sole ownership of mines, implying that private mineral prospecting and the quarrying business may have been active. The state claimed all such properties whose deceased legal owner had no immediate family to make an inheritance claim. Other miscellaneous taxes included ferry and house taxes. Only Brahmins and their temple institutions were taxed at a lower rate.
## Culture
### Religion
The Rashtrakuta kings supported the popular religions of the day in the traditional spirit of religious tolerance. Scholars have offered various arguments regarding which specific religion the Rashtrakutas favoured, basing their evidence on inscriptions, coins and contemporary literature. Some claim the Rashtrakutas were inclined towards Jainism since many of the scholars who flourished in their courts and wrote in Sanskrit, Kannada and a few in Apabhramsha and Prakrit were Jains. The Rashtrakutas built well-known Jain temples at locations such as Lokapura in Bagalkot district and their loyal feudatory, the Western Ganga Dynasty, built Jain monuments at Shravanabelagola and Kambadahalli. Scholars have suggested that Jainism was a principal religion at the very heart of the empire, modern Karnataka, accounting for more than 30% of the population and dominating the culture of the region. King Amoghavarsha I was a disciple of the Jain acharya Jinasena and wrote in his religious writing, Prashnottara Ratnamalika, "having bowed to Varaddhamana (Mahavira), I write Prashnottara Ratnamalika". The mathematician Mahaviracharya wrote in his Ganita Sarasangraha, "The subjects under Amoghavarsha are happy and the land yields plenty of grain. May the kingdom of King Nripatunga Amoghavarsha, follower of Jainism ever increase far and wide." Amoghavarsha may have taken up Jainism in his old age.
However, the Rashtrakuta kings also patronized Hinduism's followers of the Shaiva, Vaishnava and Shakta faiths. Almost all of their inscriptions begin with an invocation to god Vishnu or god Shiva. The Sanjan inscriptions tell of King Amoghavarsha I sacrificing a finger from his left hand at the Lakshmi temple at Kolhapur to avert a calamity in his kingdom. King Dantidurga performed the Hiranyagarbha (horse sacrifice) and the Sanjan and Cambay plates of King Govinda IV mention Brahmins performing such rituals as Rajasuya, Vajapeya and Agnishtoma. An early copper plate grant of King Dantidurga (753) shows an image of god Shiva and the coins of his successor, King Krishna I (768), bear the legend Parama Maheshwara (another name for Shiva). The kings' titles such as Veeranarayana showed their Vaishnava leanings. Their flag had the sign of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, perhaps copied from the Badami Chalukyas. The famous Kailasnatha temple at Ellora and other rock-cut caves attributed to them show that the Hinduism was flourishing. Their family deity was a goddess by name Latana (also known as Rashtrashyena, Manasa Vindyavasini) who took the form of a falcon to save the kingdom. They built temples with icons and ornamentation that satisfied the needs of different faiths. The temple at Salotgi was meant for followers of Shiva and Vishnu and the temple at Kargudri was meant for worshipers of Shiva, Vishnu and Bhaskara (Surya, the sun god).
In short, the Rashtrakuta rule was tolerant to multiple popular religions, Jainism, Vaishnavaism and Shaivism. Buddhism too found support and was popular in places such as Dambal and Balligavi, although it had declined significantly by this time. The decline of Buddhism in South India began in the 8th century with the spread of Adi Shankara's Advaita philosophy. Islamic contact with South India began as early as the 7th century, a result of trade between the Southern kingdoms and Arab lands. Jumma Masjids existed in the Rashtrakuta empire by the 10th century and many Muslims lived and mosques flourished on the coasts, specifically in towns such as Kayalpattanam and Nagore. Muslim settlers married local women; their children were known as Mappilas (Moplahs) and were actively involved in horse trading and manning shipping fleets.
### Society
Chronicles mention more castes than the four commonly known castes in the Hindu social system, some as many as seven castes. Al-Biruni, the famed 10th century Persian / central Asian Indologist mentions sixteen castes including the four basic castes of Brahmins, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudras. The Zakaya or Lahud caste consisted of communities specialising in dance and acrobatics. People in the professions of sailing, hunting, weaving, cobblery, basket making and fishing belonged to specific castes or subcastes. The Antyajas caste provided many menial services to the wealthy. Brahmins enjoyed the highest status in Rashtrakuta society; only those Kshatriyas in the Sat-Kshatriya sub-caste (noble Kshatriyas) were higher in status.
The careers of Brahmins usually related to education, the judiciary, astrology, mathematics, poetry and philosophy or the occupation of hereditary administrative posts. Also Brahmins increasingly practiced non-Brahminical professions (agriculture, trade in betel nuts and martial posts). Capital punishment, although widespread, was not given to the royal Kshatriya sub-castes or to Brahmins found guilty of heinous crimes (as the killing of a Brahmin in medieval Hindu India was itself considered a heinous crime). As an alternate punishment to enforce the law a Brahmin's right hand and left foot was severed, leaving that person disabled.
By the 9th century, kings from all the four castes had occupied the highest seat in the monarchical system in Hindu India. Admitting Kshatriyas to Vedic schools along with Brahmins was customary, but the children of the Vaishya and Shudra castes were not allowed. Landownership by people of all castes is recorded in inscriptions Intercaste marriages in the higher castes were only between highly placed Kshatriya girls and Brahmin boys, but was relatively frequent among other castes. Intercaste functions were rare and dining together between people of various castes was avoided.
Joint families were the norm but legal separations between brothers and even father and son have been recorded in inscriptions. Women and daughters had rights over property and land as there are inscriptions recording the sale of land by women. The arranged marriage system followed a strict policy of early marriage for women. Among Brahmins, boys married at or below 16 years of age and the brides chosen for them were 12 or younger. This age policy was not strictly followed by other castes. Sati (a custom in which a dead man's widow would immolate herself on her husband's funeral pyre) was practiced but the few examples noted in inscriptions were mostly in the royal families. The system of shaving the heads of widows was infrequent as epigraphs note that widows were allowed to grow their hair but decorating it was discouraged. The remarriage of a widow was rare among the upper castes and more accepted among the lower castes.
In the general population men wore two simple pieces of cloth, a loose garment on top and a garment worn like a dhoti for the lower part of the body. Only kings could wear turbans, a practice that spread to the masses much later. Dancing was a popular entertainment and inscriptions speak of royal women being charmed by dancers, both male and female, in the king's palace. Devadasis (girls were "married" to a deity or temple) were often present in temples. Other recreational activities included attending animal fights of the same or different species. The Atakur inscription (hero stone, virgal) was made for the favourite hound of the feudatory Western Ganga King Butuga II that died fighting a wild boar in a hunt. There are records of game preserves for hunting by royalty. Astronomy and astrology were well developed as subjects of study, and there were many superstitious beliefs such as catching a snake alive proved a woman's chastity. Old persons suffering from incurable diseases preferred to end their lives by drowning in the sacred waters of a pilgrim site or by a ritual burning.
### Literature
Kannada became more prominent as a literary language during the Rashtrakuta rule with its script and literature showing remarkable growth, dignity and productivity. This period effectively marked the end of the classical Prakrit and Sanskrit era. Court poets and royalty created eminent works in Kannada and Sanskrit that spanned such literary forms as prose, poetry, rhetoric, the Hindu epics and the life history of Jain tirthankars. Bilingual writers such as Asaga gained fame, and noted scholars such as the Mahaviracharya wrote on pure mathematics in the court of King Amoghavarsha I.
Kavirajamarga (850) by King Amoghavarsha I is the earliest available book on rhetoric and poetics in Kannada, though it is evident from this book that native styles of Kannada composition had already existed in previous centuries. Kavirajamarga is a guide to poets (Kavishiksha) that aims to standardize these various styles. The book refers to early Kannada prose and poetry writers such as Durvinita, perhaps the 6th-century monarch of Western Ganga Dynasty.
The Jain writer Adikavi Pampa, widely regarded as one of the most influential Kannada writers, became famous for Adipurana (941). Written in champu (mixed prose-verse style) style, it is the life history of the first Jain tirthankara Rishabhadeva. Pampa's other notable work was Vikramarjuna Vijaya (941), the author's version of the Hindu epic, Mahabharata, with Arjuna as the hero. Also called Pampa Bharata, it is a eulogy of the writer's patron, King Chalukya Arikeseri of Vemulawada (a Rashtrakuta feudatory), comparing the king's virtues favorably to those of Arjuna. Pampa demonstrates such a command of classical Kannada that scholars over the centuries have written many interpretations of his work.
Another notable Jain writer in Kannada was Sri Ponna, patronised by King Krishna III and famed for Shantipurana, his account of the life of Shantinatha, the 16th Jain tirthankara. He earned the title Ubhaya Kavichakravathi (supreme poet in two languages) for his command over both Kannada and Sanskrit. His other writings in Kannada were Bhuvanaika-ramaabhyudaya, Jinaksharamale and Gatapratyagata. Adikavi Pampa and Sri Ponna are called "gems of Kannada literature".
Prose works in Sanskrit was prolific during this era as well. Important mathematical theories and axioms were postulated by Mahaviracharya, a native of Gulbarga, who belonged to the Karnataka mathematical tradition and was patronised by King Amoghavarsha I. His greatest contribution was Ganitasarasangraha, a writing in 9 chapters. Somadevasuri of 950 wrote in the court of Arikesari II, a feudatory of Rashtrakuta Krishna III in Vemulavada. He was the author of Yasastilaka champu, Nitivakyamrita and other writings. The main aim of the champu writing was to propagate Jain tenets and ethics. The second writing reviews the subject matter of Arthashastra from the standpoint of Jain morals in a clear and pithy manner. Ugraditya, a Jain ascetic from Hanasoge in the modern Mysore district wrote a medical treatise called Kalyanakaraka. He delivered a discourse in the court of Amoghavarsha I encouraging abstinence from animal products and alcohol in medicine.
Trivikrama was a noted scholar in the court of King Indra III. His classics were Nalachampu (915), the earliest in champu style in Sanskrit, Damayanti Katha, Madalasachampu and Begumra plates. Legend has it that Goddess Saraswati helped him in his effort to compete with a rival in the king's court. Jinasena was the spiritual preceptor and guru of Amoghavarsha I. A theologian, his contributions are Dhavala and Jayadhavala (written with another theologian Virasena). These writings are named after their patron king who was also called Athishayadhavala. Other contributions from Jinasena were Adipurana, later completed by his disciple Gunabhadra, Harivamsha and Parshvabhyudaya.
### Architecture
The Rashtrakutas contributed much to the architectural heritage of the Deccan. Art historian Adam Hardy categorizes their building activity into three schools: Ellora, around Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal, and at Sirval near Gulbarga. The Rashtrakuta contributions to art and architecture are reflected in the splendid rock-cut cave temples at Ellora and Elephanta, areas also occupied by Jain monks, located in present-day Maharashtra. The Ellora site was originally part of a complex of 34 Buddhist caves probably created in the first half of the 6th century whose structural details show Pandyan influence. Cave temples occupied by Hindus are from later periods.
The Rashtrakutas renovated these Buddhist caves and re-dedicated the rock-cut shrines. Amoghavarsha I espoused Jainism and there are five Jain cave temples at Ellora ascribed to his period. The most extensive and sumptuous of the Rashtrakuta works at Ellora is their creation of the monolithic Kailasanath Temple, a splendid achievement confirming the "Balhara" status as "one among the four principal Kings of the world". The walls of the temple have marvellous sculptures from Hindu mythology including Ravana, Shiva and Parvathi while the ceilings have paintings.
The Kailasanath Temple project was commissioned by King Krishna I after the Rashtrakuta rule had spread into South India from the Deccan. The architectural style used is Karnata Dravida according to Adam Hardy. It does not contain any of the Shikharas common to the Nagara style and was built on the same lines as the Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal in Karnataka. According to art historian Vincent Smith, the achievement at the Kailasanath temple is considered an architectural consummation of the monolithic rock-cut temple and deserves to be considered one of the wonders of the world. According to art historian Percy Brown, as an accomplishment of art, the Kailasanath temple is considered an unrivalled work of rock architecture, a monument that has always excited and astonished travellers.While some scholars have claimed the architecture at Elephanta is attributable to the Kalachuri, others claim that it was built during the Rashtrakuta period. Some of the sculptures such as Nataraja and Sadashiva excel in beauty and craftsmanship even that of the Ellora sculptures. Famous sculptures at Elephanta include Ardhanarishvara and Maheshamurthy. The latter, a three faced bust of Lord Shiva, is 25 feet (8 m) tall and considered one of the finest pieces of sculpture in India. It is said that, in the world of sculpture, few works of art depicting a divinity are as balanced.
In Karnataka their most famous temples are the Kashivishvanatha temple and the Jain Narayana temple at Pattadakal, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Other well-known temples are the Parameshwara temple at Konnur, Brahmadeva temple at Savadi, the Settavva, Kontigudi II, Jadaragudi and Ambigeragudi temples at Aihole, Mallikarjuna temple at Ron, Andhakeshwara temple at Huli (Hooli), Someshwara temple at Sogal, Jain temples at Lokapura, Navalinga temple at Kuknur, Kumaraswamy temple at Sandur, numerous temples at Shirival in Gulbarga, and the Trikuteshwara temple at Gadag which was later expanded by Kalyani Chalukyas. Archeological study of these temples show some have the stellar (multigonal) plan later to be used profusely by the Hoysalas at Belur and Halebidu. One of the richest traditions in Indian architecture took shape in the Deccan during this time which Adam Hardy calls Karnata dravida style as opposed to traditional Dravida style.
### Language
With the ending of the Gupta Dynasty in northern India in the early 6th century, major changes began taking place in the Deccan south of the Vindyas and in the southern regions of India. These changes were not only political but also linguistic and cultural. The royal courts of peninsular India (outside of Tamilakam) interfaced between the increasing use of the local Kannada language and the expanding Sanskritic culture. Inscriptions, including those that were bilingual, demonstrate the use of Kannada as the primary administrative language in conjunction with Sanskrit. Government archives used Kannada for recording pragmatic information relating to grants of land. The local language formed the desi (popular) literature while literature in Sanskrit was more marga (formal). Educational institutions and places of higher learning (ghatikas) taught in Sanskrit, the language of the learned Brahmins, while Kannada increasingly became the speech of personal expression of devotional closeness of a worshipper to a private deity. The patronage Kannada received from rich and literate Jains eventually led to its use in the devotional movements of later centuries.
Contemporaneous literature and inscriptions show that Kannada was not only popular in the modern Karnataka region but had spread further north into present day southern Maharashtra and to the northern Deccan by the 8th century. Kavirajamarga, the work on poetics, refers to the entire region between the Kaveri River and the Godavari River as "Kannada country". Higher education in Sanskrit included the subjects of Veda, Vyakarana (grammar), Jyotisha (astronomy and astrology), Sahitya (literature), Mimansa (Exegesis), Dharmashastra (law), Puranas (ritual), and Nyaya (logic). An examination of inscriptions from this period shows that the Kavya (classical) style of writing was popular. The awareness of the merits and defects in inscriptions by the archivists indicates that even they, though mediocre poets, had studied standard classical literature in Sanskrit. An inscription in Kannada by King Krishna III, written in a poetic Kanda metre, has been found as far away as Jabalpur in modern Madhya Pradesh. Kavirajamarga, a work on poetics in Kannada by Amoghavarsha I, shows that the study of poetry was popular in the Deccan during this time. Trivikrama's Sanskrit writing, Nalachampu, is perhaps the earliest in the champu'' style from the Deccan.
## See also
- Gadag
- Kalyani Chalukyas
- Kuknur
- Pattadakal
- Prithvi-vallabha
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Abdication of Edward VIII
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1936 constitutional crisis in Britain
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"1936 in British politics",
"Abdication of Edward VIII",
"Constitutional crises",
"Royal scandals in the United Kingdom"
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In early December 1936, a constitutional crisis in the British Empire arose when King Edward VIII proposed to marry Wallis Simpson, an American socialite who was divorced from her first husband and was in the process of divorcing her second.
The marriage was opposed by the governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth. Religious, legal, political, and moral objections were raised. As the British monarch, Edward was the nominal head of the Church of England, which at this time did not allow divorced people to remarry in church if their ex-spouses were still alive. For this reason, it was widely believed that Edward could not marry Simpson and remain on the throne. As a twice-divorced woman, Simpson was perceived to be politically, morally and socially unsuitable as a prospective queen consort. It was widely assumed by the Establishment that she was driven by love of money or position rather than love for the King. Despite the opposition, Edward declared that he loved Simpson and intended to marry her as soon as her second divorce was finalised.
The widespread unwillingness to accept Simpson as the King's consort and Edward's refusal to give her up led to his abdication in December 1936. He was succeeded by his brother Albert, who became George VI. Edward was given the title of Duke of Windsor, and styled Royal Highness, following his abdication, and he married Simpson the following year. They remained married until his death 35 years later.
## Prelude
Edward had been introduced to Wallis Simpson, an American citizen and wife of British shipping executive Ernest Aldrich Simpson, by Lady Furness on 10 January 1931, when Edward was Prince of Wales. Ernest Simpson was Wallis's second husband; her first marriage, to U.S. Navy pilot Win Spencer, had ended in divorce in 1927. It is generally accepted that Wallis Simpson and Edward became lovers in 1934, while Lady Furness (who was also in a relationship with the prince) was visiting relatives in the United States. However, Edward adamantly insisted to his father, King George V, that he was not physically intimate with Simpson and that it was inappropriate to describe her as his mistress. Edward's relationship with Simpson further weakened his poor relationship with his parents. Although King George and Queen Mary met Simpson at Buckingham Palace in 1935, they later refused to receive her. Edward and Simpson were secretly followed by members of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, who produced reports on the nature of their relationship and their investigations into Wallis Simpson's private life that included the "pursuit of vicious gossip" and the identification of a "secret lover". The prospect of having an American divorcee with a questionable past having such sway over the heir apparent led to anxiety among government and establishment figures.
Edward VIII succeeded his father on 20 January 1936, after which Simpson attended more official functions as the King's guest. Despite her name appearing regularly in the Court Circular, the name of her husband was conspicuously absent. In the summer of that year, the King eschewed the traditional prolonged stay at Balmoral in favour of a holiday with Simpson in the eastern Mediterranean that was widely covered in the American and continental European press, but not by the British press, which maintained a self-imposed silence. Nevertheless, Canadians and expatriate Britons, who had access to the foreign reports, were largely scandalised by the coverage.
By October, it was rumoured in high society and abroad that Edward intended to marry Simpson as soon as she was free to do so. At the end of that month, the crisis came to a head when she filed for divorce and the American press announced that marriage between her and the King was imminent. The King's private secretary, Alec Hardinge, wrote to him on 13 November, warning: "The silence in the British Press on the subject of Your Majesty's friendship with Mrs Simpson is not going to be maintained ... Judging by the letters from British subjects living in foreign countries where the Press has been outspoken, the effect will be calamitous." Senior British ministers knew that Hardinge had written to the King and may have helped him draft the letter.
The King invited Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Buckingham Palace the following Monday (16 November) and informed him that he intended to marry Simpson. Baldwin replied that such a marriage would not be acceptable to the people, stating: "... the Queen becomes the Queen of the country. Therefore in the choice of a Queen the voice of the people must be heard". Baldwin's view was shared by the Australian High Commissioner in London, Stanley Bruce, who was also a former prime minister of Australia. On the same day that Hardinge wrote to the King, Bruce met Hardinge and then wrote to Baldwin, expressing horror at the idea of a marriage between the King and Simpson.
Nevertheless, the British press remained quiet on the subject until Alfred Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, gave a speech to his diocesan conference on 1 December, which alluded to the King's need of divine grace: "We hope that he is aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his awareness." The press took this for the first public comment by a notable person on the crisis and it became front-page news on 3 December. When asked about it later, however, the bishop claimed he had not heard of Simpson at the time he wrote the speech, and that it was an expression of disappointment at the King's conspicuous failure to attend church services regularly. Acting on the advice of Edward's staff, Simpson left Britain for the south of France two days later in an attempt to escape intense press attention. Both she and the King were devastated by the separation. At a tearful departure, the King told her, "I shall never give you up."
## Opposition
Opposition to the King and his marriage came from several directions. Edward's desire to modernise the monarchy and make it more accessible, though appreciated by many of the public, was distrusted by the British Establishment. Edward upset the aristocracy by treating their traditions and ceremonies with disdain, and many were offended by his abandonment of accepted social norms and mores.
### Social and moral
Government ministers and the royal family found Wallis Simpson's background and behaviour unacceptable for a potential queen. Rumours and innuendo about her circulated in society. The King's mother, Queen Mary, was even told that Simpson might have held some sort of sexual control over Edward, as she had released him from an undefined sexual dysfunction through practices learnt in a Chinese brothel. This view was partially shared by Alan Don, Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote that he suspected the King "is sexually abnormal which may account for the hold Mrs S. has over him". Even Edward VIII's official biographer, Philip Ziegler, noted that: "There must have been some sort of sadomasochistic relationship ... [Edward] relished the contempt and bullying she bestowed on him."
Police detectives following Simpson reported back that, while involved with Edward, she was also involved with a married car mechanic and salesman named Guy Trundle. This may well have been passed on to senior figures in the establishment, including members of the royal family. Joseph Kennedy, the American ambassador, described her as a "tart", and his wife, Rose, refused to dine with her.
Wallis was perceived to be pursuing Edward for his money; his equerry wrote that she would eventually leave him, "having secured the cash". The future prime minister Neville Chamberlain (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) wrote in his diary that she was "an entirely unscrupulous woman who is not in love with the King but is exploiting him for her own purposes. She has already ruined him in money and jewels ..."
Relations between the United Kingdom and the United States were strained during the inter-war years and the majority of Britons were reluctant to accept an American as queen consort. At the time, some members of the British upper class looked down on Americans with disdain and considered them socially inferior. In contrast, the American public was clearly in favour of the marriage, as was most of the American press.
### Religious and legal
In Edward's lifetime, the Church of England forbade the remarriage of divorced people in church while a former spouse was still living. The monarch was required by law to be in communion with the Church of England, and was its nominal head or Supreme Governor. In 1935 the Church of England reaffirmed that, "in no circumstances can Christian men or women re-marry during the lifetime of a wife or a husband". The archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, held that the king, as the head of the Church of England, could not marry a divorcée. If Edward married Wallis Simpson, a divorcée who would soon have two living ex-husbands, in a civil ceremony, it would directly conflict with Church teaching and his role as the Church's ex officio head.
Wallis's first divorce (in the United States on the grounds of "emotional incompatibility") was not recognised by the Church of England and, if challenged in the English courts, might not have been recognised under English law. At that time, the Church and English law considered adultery to be the only grounds for divorce. Consequently, under this argument, her second marriage, as well as her marriage to Edward, would be considered bigamous and invalid. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1937, which was passed shortly after Edward and Wallis's marriage, would allow for numerous other divorce justifications at the legal level.
### Political
When Edward visited depressed mining villages in Wales, his comment that "something must be done" led to concerns among elected politicians that he would interfere in political matters, traditionally avoided by constitutional monarchs. Ramsay MacDonald, Lord President of the Council, wrote of the King's comments: "These escapades should be limited. They are an invasion into the field of politics and should be watched constitutionally." Although Edward's comments had made him popular in Wales, he became extremely unpopular with the public in Scotland following his refusal to open a new wing of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, saying he could not do so because he was in mourning for his father. The day after the opening, he was pictured in newspapers on holiday: he had turned down the public event in favour of meeting Simpson.
As Prince of Wales, Edward had publicly referred to Labour county councillors as "cranks" and made speeches counter to government policy. During his reign as king, his refusal to accept the advice of ministers continued: he opposed the imposition of sanctions on Italy after its invasion of Ethiopia, refused to receive the deposed Emperor of Ethiopia, and would not support a strengthening of the League of Nations.
Members of the British government became further dismayed by the proposed marriage after being told that Wallis Simpson was an agent of Nazi Germany. The Foreign Office obtained leaked dispatches from the German Reich's Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Joachim von Ribbentrop, which revealed his strong view that opposition to the marriage was motivated by the wish "to defeat those Germanophile forces which had been working through Mrs Simpson". It was rumoured that Simpson had access to confidential government papers sent to Edward, which he left unguarded at his Fort Belvedere residence. While Edward was abdicating, the personal protection officers guarding Simpson in exile in France sent reports to Downing Street suggesting that she might "flit to Germany".
## Options considered
As a result of these rumours and arguments, the belief strengthened among the British establishment that Simpson could not become a royal consort. British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin explicitly advised Edward that the majority of people would be opposed to his marrying Simpson, indicating that if he did, in direct contravention of his ministers' advice, the government would resign en masse. The King responded, according to his own account later: "I intend to marry Mrs Simpson as soon as she is free to marry ... if the Government opposed the marriage, as the Prime Minister had given me reason to believe it would, then I was prepared to go." Under pressure from the King, and "startled" at the suggested abdication, Baldwin agreed to take further soundings on three options:
1. Edward and Simpson marry and she become queen (a royal marriage);
2. Edward and Simpson marry, but she not become queen, instead receiving some courtesy title (a morganatic marriage); or
3. Abdication for Edward and any potential heirs he might father, allowing him to make any marital decisions without further constitutional implications.
The second option had European precedents, including Edward's own great-grandfather, Duke Alexander of Württemberg, but it had no parallel in British constitutional history. The prime ministers of the five Dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Irish Free State) were consulted, and the majority agreed that there was "no alternative to course (3)". William Lyon Mackenzie King (Prime Minister of Canada), Joseph Lyons (Prime Minister of Australia), and J. B. M. Hertzog (Prime Minister of South Africa) opposed options 1 and 2. Mackenzie King told Edward to do "what he believed in his own heart was right" and the Canadian government appealed to the King to put his duty before his feelings for Simpson. Governor General of Canada Lord Tweedsmuir told Buckingham Palace and Baldwin that Canadians held deep affection for the King, but also that Canadian public opinion would be outraged if Edward married a divorcée. Michael Joseph Savage (Prime Minister of New Zealand) rejected option 1 and thought that option 2 "might be possible ... if some solution along these lines were found to be practicable", but "would be guided by the decision of the Home government". In communications with the British government, Éamon de Valera (President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State) remarked that as a Roman Catholic country, the Irish Free State did not recognise divorce. He supposed that if the British people would not accept Wallis Simpson then abdication was the only possible solution. On 24 November, Baldwin consulted the three leading opposition politicians in Britain: Leader of the Opposition Clement Attlee, Liberal leader Sir Archibald Sinclair, and Winston Churchill. Sinclair and Attlee agreed that options 1 and 2 were unacceptable, and Churchill pledged to support the government.
Churchill did not support the government, however. In July, he had advised the King's legal counsel, Walter Monckton, against the divorce, but his advice was ignored. As soon as the affair became public knowledge, Churchill started to pressure Baldwin and the King to delay any decisions until parliament and the people had been consulted. In a private letter to Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of The Times newspaper, Churchill suggested that a delay would be beneficial because, given time, the King might fall out of love with Simpson. Baldwin rejected the request for delay, presumably because he preferred to resolve the crisis quickly. Supporters of the King alleged a conspiracy between Baldwin, Geoffrey Dawson, and Cosmo Gordon Lang, the archbishop of Canterbury. The royal physician Bertrand Dawson was possibly involved in a plan to force the prime minister to retire on the grounds of heart disease, but he eventually accepted, on the evidence of an early electrocardiograph, that Baldwin's heart was sound.
Political support for the King was scattered and comprised politicians alienated from the mainstream parties such as Churchill, Oswald Mosley (leader of the British Union of Fascists), and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Former Prime Minister David Lloyd George also supported the King despite disliking Simpson. He was, however, unable to take any active role in the crisis because he was on holiday in Jamaica with his mistress Frances Stevenson. In early December, rumours circulated that the King's supporters would join in a "King's Party", led by Churchill. However, there was no concerted effort to form an organised movement and Churchill had no intention of leading one. Nevertheless, the rumours damaged the King and Churchill severely, as members of parliament were horrified at the idea of the King interfering in politics.
The letters and diaries of working-class people and ex-servicemen generally demonstrate support for the King, while those from the middle and upper classes tend to express indignation and distaste. The Times, The Morning Post, Daily Herald, and newspapers owned by Lord Kemsley, such as The Daily Telegraph, opposed the marriage. On the other hand, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, owned by Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere, respectively, appeared to support a morganatic marriage. The King estimated that the newspapers in favour had a circulation of 12.5 million, and those against had 8.5 million.
On 3 December, Edward had a "tense" meeting with Baldwin. Backed by Churchill and Beaverbrook, Edward proposed to broadcast a speech via the BBC. The proposed text invoked the "ancient custom" for a King to "address his public utterances to his people". Edward proposed to remind his listeners: "I am still the same man whose motto was 'Ich Dien', I serve." In the proposed speech, Edward indicated his desire to remain on the throne or to be recalled to it if forced to abdicate, while marrying Simpson morganatically. In one section, Edward proposed to say:
> Neither Mrs Simpson nor I have ever sought to insist that she should be queen. All we desired was that our married happiness should carry with it a proper title and dignity for her, befitting my wife. Now that I have at last been able to take you into my confidence, I feel it is best to go away for a while, so that you may reflect calmly and quietly, but without undue delay, on what I have said.
Baldwin blocked the speech, saying that it would shock many people and would be a grave breach of constitutional principles. By modern convention, the sovereign could only act with the advice and counsel of ministers. In seeking the people's support against the government, Edward was opting to oppose binding ministerial advice and instead act as a private individual. Edward's British ministers felt that, in proposing the speech, Edward had revealed his disdainful attitude towards constitutional conventions and threatened the political neutrality of the Crown.
Cabinet Office files released in 2013 show that on or before 5 December 1936, the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, had ordered the General Post Office (which controlled British telephone services) to intercept "telephone communications between Fort Belvedere and Buckingham Palace on the one hand and the continent of Europe on the other".
On 5 December, having in effect been told that he could not keep the throne and marry Simpson, and having had his request to broadcast to the Empire to explain "his side of the story" blocked on constitutional grounds, Edward chose the third option.
## Legal manoeuvres
Following Simpson's divorce hearing on 27 October 1936, her solicitor, John Theodore Goddard, became concerned that there would be a "patriotic" citizen's intervention (a legal device to block the divorce), and that such an intervention would be successful. The courts could not grant a collaborative divorce (a dissolution of marriage consented to by both parties), and so the case was being handled as if it were an undefended at-fault divorce brought against Ernest Simpson, with Wallis Simpson as the innocent, injured party. The divorce action would fail if the citizen's intervention showed that the Simpsons had colluded by, for example, conniving in or staging the appearance of his adultery so that she could marry someone else. On Monday 7 December 1936, the King heard that Goddard planned to fly to the south of France to see Wallis Simpson. The King summoned him and expressly forbade him to make the journey, fearing that the visit might put doubts in Simpson's mind. Goddard went straight to Downing Street to see Baldwin, as a result of which he was provided with an aeroplane to take him directly to Cannes.
Upon his arrival, Goddard warned his client that a citizen's intervention, should it arise, was likely to succeed. It was, according to Goddard, his duty to advise her to withdraw her divorce petition. Simpson refused, but they both telephoned the King to inform him that she was willing to give him up so that he could remain king. It was, however, too late; the King had already made up his mind to go, even if he could not marry Simpson. Indeed, as the belief that the abdication was inevitable gathered strength, Goddard stated that: "[his] client was ready to do anything to ease the situation but the other end of the wicket [Edward VIII] was determined".
Goddard had a weak heart and had never flown before, so he asked his doctor, William Kirkwood, to accompany him on the trip. As Kirkwood was a resident at a maternity hospital, his presence led to false speculation that Simpson was pregnant, and even that she was having an abortion. The press excitedly reported that the solicitor had flown to Simpson accompanied by a gynaecologist and an anaesthetist (who was actually the lawyer's clerk).
## Abdication
At Fort Belvedere, on 10 December, Edward signed his written abdication notices, witnessed by his three younger brothers: Prince Albert, Duke of York (who succeeded Edward as George VI); Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; and Prince George, Duke of Kent. The following day, it was given effect by Act of Parliament: His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936.
Under changes introduced by the Statute of Westminster in 1931, a single Crown for the entire empire had been replaced by multiple crowns, one for each Dominion, worn by a single monarch in an organisation then-known as the British Commonwealth. Though the British government, hoping for expediency and to avoid embarrassment, wished the Dominions to accept the actions of the "home" government, the Dominions held that Edward's abdication required the consent of each Commonwealth state. According to the Statute of Westminster, the act passed by the UK parliament could become law in other Dominions at their request. This was duly given by the Parliament of Australia, which was at the time in session, and by the governments of Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand, whose parliaments were in recess.
Before the crisis had become public, Sir Maurice Gwyer, the British parliamentary counsel and one of the principal framers of the Statute of Westminster, expressed to Attorney-General Donald Somervell on 23 November 1936 the concern that the Irish Free State might refuse to either give its request and consent to British legislation or to pass its own. Legal experts discussed whether an abdication would have force in the Irish Free State, regardless, or if Edward VIII might remain king of that country while George VI reigned elsewhere. In the end, it was the possibility of the latter, and, consequently, Simpson becoming Queen of the Irish Free State, that was used to push the Oireachtas to legislate. The government of the Irish Free State, taking the opportunity presented by the crisis and in a major step towards its eventual transition to a republic, passed an amendment to its constitution on 11 December to remove references to the Crown and abolish the office of Governor-General of the Irish Free State; the King's abdication was recognised a day later in the External Relations Act, leading to a 24 hour period wherein Edward was king in the Irish Free State and his brother was king of the UK and other Dominions. In Canada, the Succession to the Throne Act 1937 symbolically confirmed the abdication. South Africa passed His Majesty King Edward the Eighth's Abdication Act 1937, which declared that the abdication took effect there on 10 December, meaning abdications took place on three separate dates across the Commonwealth.
Edward's supporters felt that he had "been hounded from the throne by that arch humbug Baldwin", but many members of the establishment were relieved by Edward's departure. Mackenzie King wrote in his diary on 8 December 1936 that Edward's "sense of right or wrong has been largely obliterated by the jazz of life he has led for years" and, upon receiving news of Edward's final decision to abdicate, "if that is the kind of man he is it is better he should not be longer on the Throne." Edward's own Assistant Private Secretary, Alan Lascelles, had told Baldwin as early as 1927: "I can't help thinking that the best thing that could happen to him, and to the country, would be for him to break his neck."
On 11 December 1936, Edward made a BBC radio broadcast from Windsor Castle; having abdicated, he was introduced by Sir John Reith as "His Royal Highness Prince Edward". The official address had been polished by Churchill and was moderate in tone, speaking about Edward's inability to do his job "as I would have wished to do" without the support of "the woman I love". Edward's reign had lasted 327 days, the shortest of any monarch in Britain since the disputed reign of Lady Jane Grey over 380 years earlier. The day following the broadcast he left Britain for Austria.
## Post-abdication
George VI granted his elder brother the title of Duke of Windsor with the style His Royal Highness on 12 December 1936. On 3 May the following year, the Simpsons' divorce was made final. The case was handled quietly and it barely featured in some newspapers. The Times printed a single sentence below a separate, and seemingly unconnected, report announcing the Duke's departure from Austria.
Edward married Wallis in France on 3 June 1937. She became the Duchess of Windsor, but, much to Edward's disgust, George VI issued letters patent that denied her the style of Her Royal Highness. The couple settled in France, and the Duke received a tax-free allowance from his brother, which Edward supplemented by writing his memoirs and by illegal currency trading. He also profited from the sale of Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House to George VI. Both estates are private property and not part of the Royal Estate, and were therefore inherited and owned by Edward, regardless of the abdication.
In October 1937, the Duke and Duchess visited Germany, against the advice of the British government, and met Hitler at his Obersalzberg retreat. The visit was much publicised by the German media. During the visit the Duke gave full Nazi salutes. In an article for the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune of 13 December 1966 the Duke wrote that in 1937 Hitler persuaded him "it was in Britain's interest and in Europe's too, that Germany be encouraged to strike east and smash Communism forever ... I thought the rest of us could be fence-sitters while the Nazis and the Reds slogged it out."
After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Edward was assigned to the British Military Mission in France. In February 1940, the German ambassador in The Hague, Count Julius von Zech-Burkersroda, claimed that Edward had leaked the Allied war plans for the defence of Belgium. When Germany invaded the north of France in May 1940, the Duke and Duchess fled to Lisbon.
Under the code name Operation Willi, Nazi agents, principally Walter Schellenberg, plotted unsuccessfully to persuade the Duke to leave Portugal, and contemplated kidnapping him. Lord Caldecote warned Churchill that the Duke "is well-known to be pro-Nazi and he may become a centre of intrigue". Churchill threatened the Duke with a court-martial if he did not return to British soil.
In July 1940, Edward was appointed Governor of the Bahamas. Edward reportedly told an acquaintance, "After the war is over and Hitler will crush the Americans ... we'll take over ... They [the British] don't want me as their king, but I'll be back as their leader." He was reported as saying that "it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrown". Comments like these reinforced the belief that the Duke and Duchess held Nazi sympathies and the effect of the abdication crisis of 1936 was to force off the throne a man with extreme political opinions. Claims that Edward would have been a threat or that he was removed by a political conspiracy to dethrone him remain speculative and "persist largely because since 1936 the contemporary public considerations have lost most of their force and so seem, wrongly, to provide insufficient explanation for the King's departure".
## See also
- Abandoned coronation of Edward VIII
## Explanatory notes
|
36,652,231 |
Andjar Asmara
| 1,161,255,364 |
Indonesian dramatist and filmmaker
|
[
"1902 births",
"1961 deaths",
"20th-century dramatists and playwrights",
"20th-century journalists",
"20th-century screenwriters",
"Film directors of the Dutch East Indies",
"Indonesian dramatists and playwrights",
"Indonesian film directors",
"Indonesian journalists",
"Indonesian screenwriters",
"Journalists from the Dutch East Indies",
"Minangkabau people",
"People from West Sumatra",
"Screenwriters of the Dutch East Indies"
] |
Abisin Abbas (; 26 February 1902 – 20 October 1961), better known by his pseudonym Andjar Asmara (), was a dramatist and filmmaker active in the cinema of the Dutch East Indies. Born in Alahan Panjang, West Sumatra, he first worked as a reporter in Batavia (modern-day Jakarta). He became a writer for the Padangsche Opera in Padang, where he developed a new, dialogue-centric style, which later spread throughout the region. After returning to Batavia in 1929, he spent over a year as a theatre and film critic. In 1930 he joined the Dardanella touring troupe as a writer. He went to India in an unsuccessful bid to film his stage play Dr Samsi.
After leaving Dardanella in 1936, Andjar established his own troupe. He also worked at a publishers, writing serials based on successful films. In 1940 he was asked to join The Teng Chun's company, Java Industrial Film, helping with marketing and working as a director for two productions. After the Japanese occupation, during which time he stayed in theatre, Andjar made a brief return to cinema. He directed three films in the late 1940s and wrote four screenplays, which were produced as films in the early 1950s. He published a novel, Noesa Penida (1950). Afterward he worked for the remainder of his life writing serials based on local films and publishing film criticism. Historians recognise him as a pioneer of theatre and one of the first native Indonesian film directors, although he had little creative control of his productions.
## Early life and theatre
Andjar was born Abisin Abbas in Alahan Panjang, West Sumatra, on 26 February 1902. He gravitated toward traditional theatre at a young age after visits from the wandering Wayang Kassim and Juliana Opera stambul troupes; he pretended to act with his friends in stage plays which they had seen. After completing his formal education up to the Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs (junior high school) level – first in Malay-language schools then Dutch ones – he moved to Batavia (modern-day Jakarta). He worked as a reporter for two daily newspapers, Bintang Timur and Bintang Hindia; he may have also worked on a farm.
Around 1925, having had little success in Batavia, Andjar moved to Padang, where he was a reporter for the daily Sinar Sumatra. At the same time, he worked with the city's Padangsche Opera, writing stage plays. In contrast to the standard musical theatre of the time, bangsawan, he promoted a more natural style, using dialogue instead of song to convey the story; he referred to this as toneel, based on the Dutch word for theatre. Among the works he wrote for the Padangsche Opera were adaptations of Melati van Agam, a 1923 work by Swan Pen, and Sitti Nurbaya, a 1922 novel by Marah Roesli. These works were well received.
In the late 1920s, after spending some two years in Medan with the daily Sinar Soematra, Andjar returned to Batavia and in 1929 helped establish the magazine Doenia Film, a Malay adaptation of the Dutch-language magazine Filmland; although an adaptation, Doenia Film also contained original coverage of the domestic theatre and film industry. At the time, the cinema of the Indies was becoming established: the first domestic film, Loetoeng Kasaroeng (The Lost Lutung), was released in 1926, and four additional films were released in 1927 and 1928. Andjar wrote extensively regarding local cinematic and theatrical productions; for example, the Indonesian film critic Salim Said writes Andjar inspired the marketing for 1929's Njai Dasima, which emphasised the exclusively native cast. In 1930 Andjar left Doenia Film and was replaced by Bachtiar Effendi.
Andjar became a writer for the theatrical troupe Dardanella in November 1930, working under the group's founder Willy A. Piedro. Andjar believed the troupe to be dedicated to the betterment of the toneel as an art form and not only motivated by financial interests, as were the earlier stambul troupes. He wrote and published many plays with the group's backing, including Dr Samsi and Singa Minangkabau (The Lion of Minangkabau). Andjar also worked as a theatre critic, writing several pieces on the history of local theatre, sometimes using his birth name and sometimes his pseudonym. In 1936 Andjar went with Dardanella to India to record a film adaptation of his drama Dr Samsi, which followed a doctor who was blackmailed after an unscrupulous Indo discovered he had an illegitimate child. The deal fell through, however, and Andjar left India with his wife Ratna.
## Film career and death
Upon his return to the Indies, Andjar formed another theatrical troupe, Bolero, with Effendi, but left the troupe around 1940 to work at Kolf Publishers in Surabaya. Effendi was left as the head of Bolero, which then became more politicised. At Kolf Andjar edited the publisher's magazine Poestaka Timoer. As his work entailed writing synopses and serials based on popular films for Kolf's magazine, he became increasingly involved in the film industry. He was soon asked by The Teng Chun, with whom he had maintained a business relationship, to direct a film for his company Java Industrial Film (JIF); with this Andjar became one of several noted theatrical personnel who migrated to film following Albert Balink's 1937 hit Terang Boelan (Full Moon).
After handling the marketing for Rentjong Atjeh (Rencong of Aceh, 1940), Andjar made his directorial debut in 1940 with Kartinah, a war-time romance starring Ratna Asmara. Academia was critical of the film, believing it to lack educational value. In 1941 he directed Noesa Penida, a tragedy based in Bali, for JIF; the film was remade in 1988. In these films, he had little creative control, and performed as what the Indonesian entertainment journalist Eddie Karsito describes as a dialogue coach. Camera angles and locations were chosen by the cinematographer, who was generally also the producer.
During the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, the nation's film industry nearly ceased to exist: all but one studio were closed, and all films released were propaganda pieces to assist the Japanese war effort and promote the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Andjar was not involved in these but was excited by the artistic merits of Japanese films. Although he wrote several short stories during this time, three of which were published in the pro-Japanese newspaper Asia Raja in 1942, Andjar focused on theatre, forming the troupe Tjahaya Timoer. He often visited the Cultural Centre (Keimin Bunka Sidosho) in Jakarta, where two employees, D. Djajakusuma and Usmar Ismail, discussed filmmaking with him. Both became influential film directors during the 1950s.
After Indonesia's independence, Andjar moved to Purwokerto to lead the daily Perdjoeangan Rakjat. After the paper collapsed, he returned to film, film a piece entitled Djaoeh Dimata for the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration in 1948. This was followed by two additional films, Anggrek Bulan (Moon Orchid; 1948) and Gadis Desa (Maiden from the Village; 1949), both based on plays he wrote several years earlier. In 1950, Andjar published his only novel, Noesa Penida, a critique of the Balinese caste system, which followed lovers from different levels of the social hierarchy. Meanwhile, he continued to write and publish paperback serials adapted from local films.
Andjar's screenplay Dr Samsi was finally adapted as a film in 1952 by Ratna Asmara, who had become Indonesia's first female film director with her 1950 film Sedap Malam (Sweetness of the Night). The adaptation starred Ratna and Raden Ismail. It would prove Andjar's last screenwriting credit during his lifetime. Although no longer writing films, Andjar remained active in the country's film industry. In 1955 he headed the inaugural Indonesian Film Festival, which was criticized when it gave the Best Picture Award to two films, Usmar Ismail's Lewat Djam Malam (After the Curfew) and Lilik Sudjio's Tarmina. Critics wrote that Lewat Djam Malam was easily the stronger of the two and suggested that Djamaluddin Malik, Tarmina's producer, had influenced the jury's decision.
In 1958 Asmara became the head of the entertainment magazine Varia, where the fellow director Raden Ariffien served as his deputy. Asmara held the position until his death; among other roles, he wrote a series of memoires on the history of theatre in the country. He died on 20 October 1961 in Cipanas, West Java, during a trip to Bandung and was buried in Jakarta.
## Legacy
Andjar's toneels were generally based on day-to-day experiences, rather than the tales of princes and ancient wars which were standard at the time. Regarding Andjar's toneels, the Indonesian literary critic Bakri Siregar writes that Andjar's stage plays, as well as those of fellow dramatist Njoo Cheong Seng, revitalised the genre and made the works more realistic. However, he considered the conflict in these works to have been poorly developed. Andjar believed that the Padangsche Opera's performances influenced other troupes in West Sumatra to adapt the toneel format, which later spread throughout the Indies.
Matthew Isaac Cohen, a scholar of Indonesian performing arts, describes Andjar as "Indonesia's foremost theater critic during the colonial period", noting that he wrote extensively on the history of theatre in the Indies. Cohen also believes that Andjar also worked to justify the toneel style and distance it from the earlier stambul. Even after entering the film industry, Andjar considered the theatre more culturally significant than cinema. However, the Indonesian journalist Soebagijo I.N. writes that Andjar remains best known for his film work.
Andjar was one of the first native Indonesian film directors, with Bachtiar Effendi, Soeska, and Inoe Perbatasari. Said writes that Andjar was forced to follow the whims of the ethnic Chinese film moguls, which resulted in the films' shift toward commercial orientation, rather than the prioritisation of artistic merit. The film historian Misbach Yusa Biran writes that Andjar and his fellow journalists, upon joining JIF, brought with them new ideas that helped the company flourish until it closed after the arrival of the Japanese; the company and its subsidiaries released fifteen films in two years.
## Filmography
- Kartinah (1940) – as director, scriptwriter, and story writer
- Noesa Penida (1941) – as director and story writer
- Djaoeh Dimata (Out of Sight; 1948) – as director and story writer
- Anggrek Bulan (Moon Orchid; 1948) – as director
- Gadis Desa (Maiden from the Village; 1949) – as director and story writer
- Sedap Malam (Sweetness of the Night; 1950) – as story writer
- Pelarian dari Pagar Besi (Escape from the Iron Fence; 1951) – as story writer
- Musim Bunga di Selabintana (Flowers in Selabintana; 1951) – as story writer
- Dr Samsi (1952) – as story writer
- Noesa Penida (Pelangi Kasih Pandansari) (Noesa Penida [Pandansari's Rainbow of Love]; 1988) – as story writer (posthumous credit)
|
7,726,657 |
Eyes of the Insane
| 1,142,228,984 |
2006 single by Slayer
|
[
"2006 singles",
"Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance",
"Music videos directed by Tony Petrossian",
"Slayer songs",
"Song recordings produced by Josh Abraham",
"Song recordings produced by Rick Rubin",
"Songs about the military",
"Songs of the Iraq War"
] |
"Eyes of the Insane" is a 2006 song by the American thrash metal band Slayer, taken from their 2006 album Christ Illusion. The lyrics explore an American soldier's mental anguish following his return home from the second Gulf War, and are based on an article entitled "Casualty of War" in Texas Monthly magazine. "Eyes of the Insane" was written by vocalist Tom Araya during pre-production for the album. The song was generally well received by critics, and also peaked \#15 on the Danish singles charts.
The accompanying music video by the Tehran-born Armenian director Tony Petrossian was recorded in the Los Angeles area in August 2006. The film is presented as a close-up of the soldier's pupil and iris, which reflect disconcerting images of war-themed horrors, flashbacks of his home, wife and children, and ultimately images of his death. "Eyes of the Insane" was used on the soundtrack to Saw III, and won an award for the Best Metal Performance at the 49th Grammy Awards.
## Origins
While walking through an airport, vocalist Tom Araya picked up a March 2006 issue of Texas Monthly with a soldier's helmet on the front cover. Seeing the article "Casualty of War", he was interested enough to purchase a copy. The issue explored the involvement of military personnel from Texas in the Iraq War, and included a list of Texan soldiers who had died in the conflict. The feature was accompanied by photographs of some of the dead, while a further article dealt with the anguish of surviving soldiers on their return home. Araya later said the article "blew his mind".
Araya read the article during his flight back to Los Angeles. Pre-production for Slayer's tenth studio album Christ Illusion had just begun, and the band was about to undertake a three-day rehearsal with producer Josh Abraham. Araya left his baggage at the hotel to attend the rehearsals, then returned to re-read the article. Finding it to be "very profound", he woke up in the middle of the night and wrote down the lyrics. He said that his treatment of the topic is "sincere", and that he believes it to be "one that the military doesn't want you to know. They sweep it under the rug, but it's a story that needs to be told." The band's guitarist, Kerry King, has said that "these new songs [from the Christ Illusion album] aren't political at all: 'Jihad', 'Eyes of the Insane' — it's what's spewing out at us from the TV."
## Musical structure
"Eyes of the Insane" is 3 minutes 23 seconds long. A slow drum pattern played by Dave Lombardo opens the track, over which Hanneman and King play angular and descending scales on guitar. These guitar riffs evolve from verse to verse, and have been described by Allmusic as "intensely harrowing". The song gradually builds over the course of the verses, refrain and bridge, before resolving with a "towering" chorus.
Some reviewers paid particular attention to Araya's vocal contribution. Zach Hothorn of Prefix magazine said the song "allows Araya to show his vocal range, deepening to build up tension and creating a wonderfully chilling 3 and a half minutes", while Ian Robinson of musicOMH felt the track "is a distinct but welcome change of pace, Dave Lombardo's machine-gun rhythms forming the backbone for Tom Araya's impressively intact scream."
## Music video
By the time Slayer decided a music video should be filmed, touring commitments prevented their involvement in the actual shoot. Instead, others were contacted to produce the film. Director Tony Petrossian presented Slayer with the first draft, and the group made a few suggestions for improvement. Never having met him, King recalled Petrossian "had a treatment, and we all dug the treatment so we just turned him loose." "Eyes of the Insane"'s war-themed music video was filmed on August 13, 2006, in the Los Angeles area. Casting company Tolley Casparis Casting sought a male Caucasian between the ages of 18 and 26 to appear in the clip, with auditions held on August 10, 2006. The official project notes deemed that "This guy must be a serious actor, capable of emoting everything through his eyes. He was innocent a few months ago, now he is scarred by seeing so much fighting. Strong eyebrows that do not overpower the face. Scars or large veins actually a plus." The video was shot as a "first-person narrative about the horrors leading up to the final moments of a soldier at war", and was described as "a single, long and tight close-up of the soldier's eye with images clearly reflected within his pupil and iris and perfectly choreographed with the rhythm of the music. Reflected are disconcerting images of para trooping into enemy territory, gunfire, helicopters and tanks, explosions, poignant flashbacks of his wife and child and home, and the images of his death." Two endings were shot; one in which the soldier is killed as the result of sustained combat wounds, and another in which the soldier commits suicide by hanging - the latter one was used. Jeff Hanneman confirmed that the band "loved" the eye concept, and personally felt that the video was "pretty amazing" when he first viewed it. King admitted the film is "pretty cool — I thought it was neat idea — very different, especially for us, because we usually do performance based videos." The video was exclusively posted on mp3.com late in October 2006. In 2007, the video earned a Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards nomination for Best Video, but eventually lost to Avenged Sevenfold's "Seize The Day."
## Critical reception
Critics were generally positive when reviewing "Eyes of the Insane". Stylus magazine's Cosmo Lee described the track as "a dark, midpaced exploration of a soldier's psyche", and remarked that "it's memorable and would be a good breather between the usual barnburners". Peter Atkinson of KNAC.com felt that "'Eyes of the Insane' offers a post-traumatic sequel to 'Mandatory Suicide', again with a soundtrack that recalls the original, but boasting a couple truly mammoth hooks that do shake things up." Don Kaye of Blabbermouth made a comparison to a different Slayer track than Atkinson, and commented that "'Eyes of the Insane' and 'Catatonic' both have that slow, grinding feeling of doom that the band has done so well before on classics like 'Dead Skin Mask'."
## Awards
The song was nominated for Best Metal Performance at the 49th annual Grammy Awards. When asked for his thoughts on the nomination, King revealed that he did not "even care", and noted that Slayer fans "don't give a shit and that's the most important thing to me". The interviewer expressed his surprise at the nomination given Slayer's "inflammatory" lyrics, to which King replied, "That would be the coolest thing, you know? To win with the shit we write about." The ceremony was held on February 11, 2007, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, with Slayer competing against Mastodon, Lamb of God, Ministry and Stone Sour. Slayer won the Best Metal Performance Grammy award, although the band was unable to attend because of a conflicting North American headlining tour. Araya commented about the win from a hotel room in Columbus, Ohio: "Jeff [Hanneman] and I put a lot into 'Eyes of the Insane' so we're thrilled that the Grammy voters took the time to listen to it, and then vote for it. We're out here on the road and we're all really, really happy." King disagreed, deeming the song "one of the poorest representations of us [Slayer] on the record [Christ Illusion]". He further said that, if given the decision, he would have chosen the controversial track "Jihad" to represent Slayer from their ninth album Christ Illusion. Critical of the Recording Academy, King said, "Realistically, I think people on the academy who vote pick the household name ... And that's what we are."
## Other media
The soundtrack to the 2006 horror film Saw III included "Eyes of the Insane", and was released on October 24, 2006, by Warcon Enterprises. The track was one of six songs performed by Slayer during their first US network television appearance on ABC-TV's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (January 19, 2007), and was the only song broadcast in its entirety. However, King dislikes playing "Eyes of the Insane" live, commenting, "It's just dull to play, good song just dull to play on guitar."
## Track listing
## Charts
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Andromeda (constellation)
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Constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere
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Andromeda is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century Greco-Roman astronomer Ptolemy, and one of the 88 modern constellations. Located in the northern celestial hemisphere, it is named for Andromeda, daughter of Cassiopeia, in the Greek myth, who was chained to a rock to be eaten by the sea monster Cetus. Andromeda is most prominent during autumn evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, along with several other constellations named for characters in the Perseus myth. Because of its northern declination, Andromeda is visible only north of 40° south latitude; for observers farther south, it lies below the horizon. It is one of the largest constellations, with an area of 722 square degrees. This is over 1,400 times the size of the full moon, 55% of the size of the largest constellation, Hydra, and over 10 times the size of the smallest constellation, Crux.
Its brightest star, Alpha Andromedae, is a binary star that has also been counted as a part of Pegasus, while Gamma Andromedae is a colorful binary and a popular target for amateur astronomers. Only marginally dimmer than Alpha, Beta Andromedae is a red giant, its color visible to the naked eye. The constellation's most obvious deep-sky object is the naked-eye Andromeda Galaxy (M31, also called the Great Galaxy of Andromeda), the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and one of the brightest Messier objects. Several fainter galaxies, including M31's companions M110 and M32, as well as the more distant NGC 891, lie within Andromeda. The Blue Snowball Nebula, a planetary nebula, is visible in a telescope as a blue circular object.
In Chinese astronomy, the stars that make up Andromeda were members of four different constellations that had astrological and mythological significance; a constellation related to Andromeda also exists in Hindu mythology. Andromeda is the location of the radiant for the Andromedids, a weak meteor shower that occurs in November.
## History and mythology
The uranography of Andromeda has its roots most firmly in the Greek tradition, though a female figure in Andromeda's location had appeared earlier in Babylonian astronomy. The stars that make up Pisces and the middle portion of modern Andromeda formed a constellation representing a fertility goddess, sometimes named as Anunitum or the Lady of the Heavens.
Andromeda is known as "the Chained Lady" or "the Chained Woman" in English. It was known as Mulier Catenata ("chained woman") in Latin and al-Mar'at al Musalsalah in Arabic. It has also been called Persea ("Perseus's wife") or Cepheis ("Cepheus's daughter"), all names that refer to Andromeda's role in the Greco-Roman myth of Perseus, in which Cassiopeia, the queen of Ethiopia, bragged that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids, sea nymphs blessed with incredible beauty. Offended at her remark, the nymphs petitioned Poseidon to punish Cassiopeia for her insolence, which he did by commanding the sea monster Cetus to attack Ethiopia. Andromeda's panicked father, Cepheus, was told by the Oracle of Ammon that the only way to save his kingdom was to sacrifice his daughter to Cetus. She was chained to a rock by the sea but was saved by the hero Perseus, who in one version of the story used the head of Medusa to turn the monster into stone; in another version, by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, Perseus slew the monster with his diamond sword. Perseus and Andromeda then married; the myth recounts that the couple had nine children together – seven sons and two daughters – and founded Mycenae and its Persideae dynasty. After Andromeda's death Athena placed her in the sky as a constellation, to honour her. Three of the neighbouring constellations (Perseus, Cassiopeia and Cepheus) represent characters in the Perseus myth, while Cetus retreats to beyond Pisces. It is connected with the constellation Pegasus.
Andromeda was one of the original 48 constellations formulated by Ptolemy in his 2nd-century Almagest, in which it was defined as a specific pattern of stars. She is typically depicted with α Andromedae as her head, ο and λ Andromedae as her chains, and δ, π, μ, β, and γ her body and legs. However, there is no universal depiction of Andromeda and the stars used to represent her body, head, and chains. Arab astronomers were aware of Ptolemy's constellations, but they included a second constellation representing a fish overlapping Andromeda's body; the nose of this fish was marked by a hazy patch that we now know as the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. Several stars from Andromeda and most of the stars in Lacerta were combined in 1787 by German astronomer Johann Bode to form Honores Friderici (also called Friedrichs Ehre). It was designed to honour King Frederick II of Prussia, but quickly fell into disuse. Since the time of Ptolemy, Andromeda has remained a constellation and is officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union. Like all those that date back to a pattern known to Ptolemy, it is attributed to a wider zone and thus many surrounding stars. In 1922, the IAU defined its recommended three-letter abbreviation, "And". The official boundaries of Andromeda were defined in 1930 by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte as a polygon of 36 segments. Its right ascension is between 22<sup>h</sup> 57.5<sup>m</sup> and 2<sup>h</sup> 39.3<sup>m</sup> and its declination is between 53.19° and 21.68° in the equatorial coordinate system.
### In non-Western astronomy
In traditional Chinese astronomy, nine stars from Andromeda (including Beta Andromedae, Mu Andromedae, and Nu Andromedae), along with seven stars from Pisces, formed an elliptical constellation called "Legs" (奎宿). This constellation either represented the foot of a walking person or a wild boar. Gamma Andromedae and its neighbours were called "Teen Ta Tseang Keun" (天大将军, heaven's great general), representing honour in astrology and a great general in mythology. Alpha Andromedae and Gamma Pegasi together made "Wall" (壁宿), representing the eastern wall of the imperial palace and/or the emperor's personal library. For the Chinese, the northern swath of Andromeda formed a stable for changing horses (tianjiu, 天厩, stable on sky) and the far western part, along with most of Lacerta, became Tengshe, a flying snake.
An Arab constellation called "al-Hut" (the fish) was composed of several stars in Andromeda, M31, and several stars in Pisces. ν And, μ And, β And, η And, ζ And, ε And, δ And, π And, and 32 And were all included from Andromeda; ν Psc, φ Psc, χ Psc, and ψ Psc were included from Pisces.
As per Hindu astronomy, Andromeda is known as Devyani Constellation while Cassiopeia is Sharmishta Constellation. Devyani and Sharmishta are wives of King Yayati (Perseus Constellation) who is the earliest patriarch of the Kuru and Yadu Clans that are mentioned frequently in epic Mahabharat. There is an interesting story of these three characters mentioned in Mahabharat. Devyani is the daughter of Guru Shukracharya while Shar.
Hindu legends surrounding Andromeda are similar to the Greek myths. Ancient Sanskrit texts depict Antarmada chained to a rock, as in the Greek myth. Scholars believe that the Hindu and Greek astrological myths were closely linked; one piece of evidence cited is the similarity between the names "Antarmada" and "Andromeda".
Andromeda is also associated with the Mesopotamian creation story of Tiamat, the goddess of Chaos. She bore many demons for her husband, Apsu, but eventually decided to destroy them in a war that ended when Marduk killed her. He used her body to create the constellations as markers of time for humans.
In the Marshall Islands, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Triangulum, and Aries are incorporated into a constellation representing a porpoise. Andromeda's bright stars are mostly in the body of the porpoise; Cassiopeia represents its tail and Aries its head. In the Tuamotu islands, Alpha Andromedae was called Takurua-e-te-tuki-hanga-ruki, meaning "Star of the wearisome toil", and Beta Andromedae was called Piringa-o-Tautu.
## Features
### Stars
- α And (Alpheratz, Sirrah) is the brightest star in this constellation. It is an A0p class binary star with an overall apparent visual magnitude of 2.1 and a luminosity of . It is 97 light-years from Earth. It represents Andromeda's head in Western mythology, however, the star's traditional Arabic names – Alpheratz and Sirrah, from the phrase surrat al-faras – sometimes translated as "navel of the steed". The Arabic names are a reference to the fact that α And forms an asterism known as the "Great Square of Pegasus" with 3 stars in Pegasus: α, β, and γ Peg. As such, the star was formerly considered to belong to both Andromeda and Pegasus, and was co-designated as "Delta Pegasi (δ Peg)", although this name is no longer formally used.
- β And (Mirach) is a red-hued giant star of type M0 located in an asterism known as the "girdle". It is 198 light-years away, has a magnitude of 2.06, and a luminosity of . Its name comes from the Arabic phrase al-Maraqq meaning "the loins" or "the loincloth", a phrase translated from Ptolemy's writing. However, β And was mostly considered by the Arabs to be a part of al-Hut, a constellation representing a larger fish than Pisces at Andromeda's feet.
- γ And (Almach) is an orange-hued bright giant star of type K3 found at the southern tip of the constellation with an overall magnitude of 2.14. Almach is a multiple star with a yellow primary of magnitude 2.3 and a blue-green secondary of magnitude 5, separated by 9.7 arcseconds. British astronomer William Herschel said of the star: "[the] striking difference in the colour of the 2 stars, suggests the idea of a sun and its planet, to which the contrast of their unequal size contributes not a little." The secondary, described by Herschel as a "fine light sky-blue, inclining to green", is itself a double star, with a secondary of magnitude 6.3 and a period of 61 years. The system is 358 light-years away. Almach was named for the Arabic phrase ʿAnaq al-Ard, which means "the earth-kid", an obtuse reference to an animal that aids a lion in finding prey.
- δ And is an orange-hued giant star of type K3 orange giant of magnitude 3.3. It is 105 light-years from Earth.
- ι And, κ, λ, ο, and ψ And form an asterism known as "Frederick's Glory", a name derived from a former constellation (Frederici Honores). ι And is a blue-white hued main-sequence star of type B8, 502 light-years from Earth; κ And is a white-hued main-sequence star of type B9 IVn, 168 light-years from Earth; λ And is a yellow-hued giant star of type G8, 86 light-years from Earth; ο And is a blue-white hued giant star of type B6, 679 light-years from Earth; and ψ And is a blue-white hued main-sequence star of type B7, 988 light-years from Earth.
- μ And is a white-hued main-sequence star of type A5 and magnitude 3.9. It is 130 light-years away.
- υ And (Titawin) is a magnitude 4.1 binary system that consists of one F-type dwarf and an M-type dwarf. The primary star has a planetary system with 4 confirmed planets, 0.96 times, 14.57 times, 10.19 times and 1.06 the mass of Jupiter. The system is 44 light-years from Earth.
- ξ And (Adhil) is a binary star 217 light-years away. The primary is an orange-hued giant star of type K0.
- π And is a blue-white hued binary star of magnitude 4.3 that is 598 light-years away. The primary is a main-sequence star of type B5. Its companion star is of magnitude 8.9.
- 51 And (Nembus) was assigned by Johann Bayer to Perseus, where he designated it "Upsilon Persei (υ Per)", but it was moved to Andromeda by the International Astronomical Union. It is 177 light-years from Earth and is an orange-hued giant star of type K3.
- 54 And was a former designation for φ Per.
- 56 And is an optical binary star. The primary is a yellow-hued giant star of type K0 with an apparent magnitude of 5.7 that is 316 light-years away. The secondary is an orange-hued giant star of type K0 and magnitude 5.9 that is 990 light-years from Earth.
- R And is a Mira-type variable star with a period of 409 days. Its maximum magnitude is 5.8 and its minimum magnitude is 14.8, and it is at a distance of 1,250 light-years. There are 6 other Mira variables in Andromeda.
- Z And is the M-type prototype for its class of variable stars. It ranges in magnitude from a minimum of 12.4 to a maximum of 8. It is 2,720 light-years away.
- Ross 248 (HH Andromedae) is the ninth-closest star to Earth at a distance of 10.3 light-years. It is a red-hued main-sequence BY Draconis variable star of type M6.
- 14 And (Veritate) is a yellow-hued giant star of type G8 that is 251 light-years away. It has a mass of and a radius of . It has one planet, 14 Andromedae b, discovered in 2008. It orbits at a distance of 0.83 astronomical units from its parent star every 186 days and has a mass of .
Of the stars brighter than 4th magnitude (and those with measured luminosity), Andromeda has a relatively even distribution of evolved and main-sequence stars.
### Deep-sky objects
The constellation of Andromeda lies well away from the galactic plane, so it does not contain any of the open clusters or bright nebulae of the Milky Way. Because of its distance in the sky from the band of obscuring dust, gas, and abundant stars of our home galaxy, Andromeda's borders contain many visible distant galaxies. The most famous deep-sky object in Andromeda is the spiral galaxy cataloged as Messier 31 (M31) or NGC 224 but known colloquially as the Andromeda Galaxy for the constellation. M31 is one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye, 2.2 million light-years from Earth (estimates range up to 2.5 million light-years). It is seen under a dark, transparent sky as a hazy patch in the north of the constellation. M31 is the largest neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way and the largest member of the Local Group of galaxies. In absolute terms, M31 is approximately 200,000 light-years in diameter, twice the size of the Milky Way. It is an enormous – 192.4 by 62.2 arcminutes in apparent size – barred spiral galaxy similar in form to the Milky Way and at an approximate magnitude of 3.5, is one of the brightest deep-sky objects in the northern sky. Despite being visible to the naked eye, the "little cloud" near Andromeda's figure was not recorded until AD 964, when the Arab astronomer al-Sufi wrote his Book of Fixed Stars. M31 was first observed telescopically shortly after its invention, by Simon Marius in 1612.
The future of the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies may be interlinked: in about five billion years, the two could potentially begin an Andromeda–Milky Way collision that would spark extensive new star formation.
American astronomer Edwin Hubble included M31 (then known as the Andromeda Nebula) in his groundbreaking 1923 research on galaxies. Using the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in California, he observed Cepheid variable stars in M31 during a search for novae, allowing him to determine their distance by using the stars as standard candles. The distance he found was far greater than the size of the Milky Way, which led him to the conclusion that many similar objects were "island universes" on their own. Hubble originally estimated that the Andromeda Galaxy was 900,000 light-years away, but Ernst Öpik's estimate in 1925 put the distance closer to 1.5 million light-years.
The Andromeda Galaxy's two main companions, M32 and M110 (also known as NGC 221 and NGC 205, respectively) are faint elliptical galaxies that lie near it. M32, visible with a far smaller size of 8.7 by 6.4 arcminutes, compared to M110, appears superimposed on the larger galaxy in a telescopic view as a hazy smudge, M110 also appears slightly larger and distinct from the larger galaxy; M32 is 0.5° south of the core, M110 is 1° northwest of the core. M32 was discovered in 1749 by French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil and has since been found to lie closer to Earth than the Andromeda Galaxy itself. It is viewable in binoculars from a dark site owing to its high surface brightness of 10.1 and overall magnitude of 9.0. M110 is classified as either a dwarf spheroidal galaxy or simply a generic elliptical galaxy. It is far fainter than M31 and M32, but larger than M32 with a surface brightness of 13.2, magnitude of 8.9, and size of 21.9 by 10.9 arcminutes.
The Andromeda Galaxy has a total of 15 satellite galaxies, including M32 and M110. Nine of these lie in a plane, which has caused astronomers to infer that they have a common origin. These satellite galaxies, like the satellites of the Milky Way, tend to be older, gas-poor dwarf elliptical and dwarf spheroidal galaxies.
Along with the Andromeda Galaxy and its companions, the constellation also features NGC 891 (Caldwell 23), a smaller galaxy just east of Almach. It is a barred spiral galaxy seen edge-on, with a dark dust lane visible down the middle. NGC 891 is incredibly faint and small despite its magnitude of 9.9, as its surface brightness of 14.6 indicates; it is 13.5 by 2.8 arcminutes in size. NGC 891 was discovered by the brother-and-sister team of William and Caroline Herschel in August 1783. This galaxy is at an approximate distance of 30 million light-years from Earth, calculated from its redshift of 0.002.
Andromeda's most celebrated open cluster is NGC 752 (Caldwell 28) at an overall magnitude of 5.7. It is a loosely scattered cluster in the Milky Way that measures 49 arcminutes across and features approximately twelve bright stars, although more than 60 stars of approximately 9th magnitude become visible at low magnifications in a telescope. It is considered to be one of the more inconspicuous open clusters. The other open cluster in Andromeda is NGC 7686, which has a similar magnitude of 5.6 and is also a part of the Milky Way. It contains approximately 20 stars in a diameter of 15 arcminutes, making it a tighter cluster than NGC 752.
There is one prominent planetary nebula in Andromeda: NGC 7662 (Caldwell 22). Lying approximately 3 degrees southwest of Iota Andromedae at a distance of about 4,000 light-years from Earth, the "Blue Snowball Nebula" is a popular target for amateur astronomers. It earned its popular name because it appears as a faint, round, blue-green object in a telescope, with an overall magnitude of 9.2. Upon further magnification, it is visible as a slightly elliptical annular disk that gets darker towards the center, with a magnitude 13.2 central star. The nebula has an overall magnitude of 9.2 and is 20 by 130 arcseconds in size.
### Meteor showers
Each November, the Andromedids meteor shower appears to radiate from Andromeda. The shower peaks in mid-to-late November every year, but has a low peak rate of fewer than 2 meteors per hour. Astronomers have often associated the Andromedids with Biela's Comet, which was destroyed in the 19th century, but that connection is disputed. Andromedid meteors are known for being very slow and the shower itself is considered to be diffuse, as meteors can be seen coming from nearby constellations as well as from Andromeda itself. Andromedid meteors sometimes appear as red fireballs. The Andromedids were associated with the most spectacular meteor showers of the 19th century; the storms of 1872 and 1885 were estimated to have a peak rate of 2 meteors per second (a zenithal hourly rate of 10,000), prompting a Chinese astronomer to compare the meteors to falling rain. The Andromedids had another outburst on December 3–5, 2011, the most active shower since 1885, with a maximum zenithal hourly rate of 50 meteors per hour. The 2011 outburst was linked to ejecta from Comet Biela, which passed close to the Sun in 1649. None of the meteoroids observed were associated with material from the comet's 1846 disintegration. The observers of the 2011 outburst predicted outbursts in 2018, 2023, and 2036.
## See also
- Andromeda (Chinese astronomy)
- Qatar-3
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James Rowland (RAAF officer)
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Royal Australian Air Force chief and New South Wales governor
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"1922 births",
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"Australian aviators",
"Australian prisoners of war",
"Australian recipients of the Air Force Cross (United Kingdom)",
"Australian recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United Kingdom)",
"Chancellors of the University of Sydney",
"Companions of the Order of Australia",
"Governors of New South Wales",
"Graduates of the Royal College of Defence Studies",
"Honorary air commodores of the Royal Australian Air Force",
"Knights of the Order of St John",
"Military personnel from New South Wales",
"People educated at Cranbrook School, Sydney",
"Royal Australian Air Force air marshals",
"Royal Australian Air Force personnel of World War II",
"University of Sydney alumni",
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Air Marshal Sir James Anthony Rowland, (1 November 1922 – 27 May 1999) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), serving as Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) from 1975 to 1979. He held office as Governor of New South Wales from 1981 to 1989, and was Chancellor of the University of Sydney from 1990 to 1991.
Born in rural New South Wales, Rowland cut short his aeronautical engineering studies at the University of Sydney to join the RAAF in 1942. He was posted to Britain and served as a bomber pilot with the Pathfinders in the air war over Europe, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1944. The following year he was forced to bail out over Germany following a collision with another Allied aircraft, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.
After repatriation and demobilisation, Rowland gained his engineering degree and rejoined the RAAF. He became a test pilot, serving with and later commanding the Aircraft Research and Development Unit in the 1950s, and also a senior engineering officer, being closely involved in preparations for delivery to Australia of the Dassault Mirage III supersonic fighter in the 1960s. In 1972, he was promoted to air vice marshal and became Air Member for Technical Services, holding this post until his elevation to air marshal and appointment as CAS in March 1975. He was the first engineering officer to lead the RAAF, and the first man to personally command it in a legal sense, following abolition of the Australian Air Board in 1976. Knighted in 1977, Rowland retired from the Air Force in 1979 and became Governor of New South Wales in January 1981. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1987. Retiring from the Governorship in 1989, he held a place on several boards as well as the Chancellorship of the University of Sydney.
## Early life and World War II
Rowland was born in Armidale, New South Wales, on 1 November 1922. He was the son of Louis Rowland, a commander in the Royal Australian Navy, and his wife Elsie. Jim evinced a fascination with aviation from an early age, carving model aeroplanes out of wood. Growing up with his three brothers on the family's 3,000-acre (1,200 ha) rural property, he was schooled via correspondence before completing his secondary education at Cranbrook, Sydney. Rowland entered the University of Sydney to study aeronautical engineering, but left in May 1942 to enlist in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as a pilot under the Empire Air Training Scheme. In early 1943 he underwent service flying training in Canada. He was commissioned as a pilot officer in July and posted to Britain, where he converted to Handley Page Halifax and Avro Lancaster heavy bombers.
Rowland was assigned to the Pathfinder Force that marked targets for other aircraft on strategic bombing missions over Europe. Considered an exceptional pilot, he became a master bomber with No. 635 Squadron RAF in 1944. As a master bomber, his role was to arrive ahead of the main Allied force, check that flares marking the target were in place, and warn his fellows if they were bombing inaccurately. No. 635 Squadron operated Lancasters, a type that, Rowland recalled, "would forgive sprog pilots doing the most outrageous things to it, and would even bring them home with quite large bits shot off it".
Having been promoted to acting flight lieutenant, Rowland was on a sortie to attack Düsseldorf in December 1944 when he lost one of his engines. He nevertheless continued on to the target where, owing to his lower-than-normal altitude, his aircraft was seriously damaged by anti-aircraft fire before and after he dropped his bombs. Nursing his plane back to base, he was recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross in recognition of his "great determination and devotion to duty"; the award was promulgated in the London Gazette on 16 February 1945. In January 1945, Rowland's Lancaster collided with a Canadian bomber over Frankfurt, and he had to bail out with his surviving crew. Captured and held by the Gestapo in solitary confinement, he was scheduled to be executed but was saved by two Luftwaffe officers who had learned of his situation. They took him to a prisoner-of-war camp, where he remained until being repatriated at the end of hostilities. None of Rowland's crew survived the war and, though he believed he had done all he could to save them, he suffered survivor guilt.
## Post-war RAAF career
Rowland's commission was terminated in November 1945. Returning to Australia, he resumed his studies at the University of Sydney and completed his degree, before rejoining the RAAF as a member of its newly formed Technical Branch in 1947. He was posted to Britain in 1949 to attend the Empire Test Pilots' School. In 1952, he was appointed chief test pilot with the Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU) at RAAF Base Laverton, Victoria. Rowland led trial programs that involved many of the Air Force's early jets such as the Gloster Meteor, de Havilland Vampire, English Electric Canberra, and CAC Sabre. Promoted to squadron leader, he earned the Air Force Cross for his test flying achievements; the award was gazetted on 1 January 1955. He married Faye Doughton on 20 April 1955; the couple had a daughter, Anni.
Rowland attended RAAF Staff College, Point Cook, in 1956. Promoted to wing commander, he took charge of ARDU from November 1956 until June 1959. In 1957, he raised concerns that the supersonic Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, touted as a multi-role replacement for the Sabre, was ill-suited for any purpose except interception. The Defence Minister, Sir Philip McBride, had reached a similar conclusion and kept the Sabre in frontline service until a more suitable aircraft could be chosen, namely the Dassault Mirage III delta-wing fighter. From 1961 to 1964 Rowland was based in Paris, as Technical Staff Officer on the RAAF team preparing for the Mirage's acceptance into Australian service. In contrast to most of the team members, he displayed a talent for language and by his second year was chairing meetings in French with Dassault engineers. After returning to Australia, he was posted to the Directorate of Aircraft Engineering at the Department of Air, Canberra, responsible for ongoing technical oversight of the Mirage.
In December 1966, Rowland became commanding officer of No. 3 Aircraft Depot (No. 3 AD) at RAAF Base Amberley, Queensland, with the acting rank of group captain; his promotion was made substantive in November 1967. After completing his tenure at No. 3 AD in January 1969, Rowland was appointed Senior Engineering Staff Officer at Headquarters Operational Command in Glenbrook, New South Wales. In 1971 he was posted to Britain to attend the Royal College of Defence Studies, London. Returning to Australia, he was Director-General of Aircraft Engineering before being promoted to air vice marshal to serve as Air Member for Technical Services (AMTS), the RAAF's senior engineering position, in November 1972. The AMTS occupied a seat on the Australian Air Board, the service's controlling body that was chaired by the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS).
In March 1975, Rowland was raised to air marshal and took over from Air Marshal Charles Read as CAS, becoming the first appointee to the position who had joined the RAAF after the commencement of World War II. He was also the first engineering officer to lead the RAAF, and was selected over a more senior air vice marshal through the personal influence of the Defence Secretary, Sir Arthur Tange. The CAS was required to be a member of the Air Force's aircrew stream so Rowland, still a qualified pilot, had to transfer from the Technical Branch to the General Duties Branch. Soon afterwards, the stipulation for the CAS to be a member of the General Duties Branch was removed.
In 1976, Rowland became the first CAS to personally command the RAAF in a legal sense, following dissolution of the Air Board, a consequence of defence reorganisation in the wake of the 1973 "Tange report" that recommended departmental rationalisation. A new Chief of the Air Staff Advisory Committee (CASAC) was set up, but there was no requirement for the CAS to accept its advice. According to historian Alan Stephens, Rowland considered that the "collective wisdom" engendered by the Air Board had been generally beneficial to the RAAF, and believed the new arrangements led to paralysis and arrogation of decision making', and empire building in the Public Service component". Though known as a strong committee member who enjoyed a good argument, he "found that the sheer time involved in attending meetings made it very difficult for him to run the Air Force 'the way [he] wanted to'". To facilitate the cross-fertilisation of ideas on air power between senior officers, he inaugurated an annual CAS Symposium. During his term as CAS, Rowland reoriented the RAAF's priorities in line with the Defence of Australia policy, which had been adopted by the government in the early 1970s. As a result, he placed the strongest emphasis on protecting Australia from air attack, followed by conducting air strikes on targets in other countries, and supporting the Army and Navy.
On 11 June 1977, Rowland was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the military division. In July the same year, he was awarded the National Medal with First Clasp, given "for diligent long service to the community". Rowland's original three-year tenure as CAS was extended by a year. He retired from the Air Force in March 1979, and was succeeded by his deputy and former classmate at RAAF Staff College, Air Vice Marshal Neville McNamara.
## Governorship and later life
After leaving the Air Force, Rowland continued to live in Canberra, consulting part-time for French arms concern Ofema. In late 1980 he was recommended by the government of Premier Neville Wran to serve as the next Governor of New South Wales, replacing Sir Roden Cutler. Rowland admitted that he did not have "the faintest idea" why he was chosen, and thought that "there must be a lot of people who could do it a lot better than I could". He saw the role as the monarch's representative in New South Wales as helping to provide "a valuable link with an older part of the world". Wran, for his part, was understood to have chosen Rowland largely on the basis of his engaging personality; it was also said that the Premier preferred military men for vice-regal office because "they knew how to take orders". Rowland was duly appointed by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 January 1981. Upon taking office, he declared that he wished to be seen as a "man of the people". To this end, he opened Government House to the public on a more frequent basis, and also extended invitations for official functions to a broader range of society than was previously the case.
As Governor of New South Wales and therefore the senior state governor, Rowland held a dormant commission to serve as Administrator of the Commonwealth and Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Defence Force during absences by the Governor General, and did so six times while in office. On one such occasion he was required to dismiss an old colleague, Air Vice Marshal James Flemming, from his position as director of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, after the Government lost faith in Flemming's ability to properly manage the Memorial. Rowland had served as one of Flemming's referees when he applied to head the Memorial in 1982. Journalist and public servant Evan Williams also credited Rowland with being "the first Viceregal whistleblower" for alerting the Wran government to an unusual number of early release requests for prisoners that he was being asked to sign by Corrective Services Minister Rex Jackson. The inquiries set in motion by Rowland's queries revealed that Jackson was receiving money from criminals for misusing the early release scheme. Forced to resign, Jackson was later charged with corruption and imprisoned.
Rowland was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Engineering by the University of Sydney in 1983, and also appointed a Knight of the Order of St John. He was Honorary Air Commodore of No. 22 Squadron from 1981 to 1989, and Honorary Colonel of the Royal New South Wales Regiment from 1985 to 1989. On 26 January 1987, he was invested as a Companion of the Order of Australia for "service to the Crown and to the people of New South Wales". At Sydney Town Hall on 3 October that year, he took the salute of Vietnam veterans during their official "Welcome Home March". His governorship coincided with Australian Bicentenary celebrations in 1988. A popular Governor, Rowland was considered by his Labor premiers to be "a safe pair of hands". His original four-year term was extended twice, each time for two years, by the Wran and Unsworth administrations. On 27 April 1988, Rowland opened the Forty-Ninth New South Wales Parliament with a new premier, Nick Greiner, whose Liberal Party had defeated Labor in the March elections. That November, he took a turn at flying one of the RAAF's recently acquired F/A-18 Hornets piloted by Wing Commander (later Air Vice Marshal) John Kindler. He was succeeded on 20 January 1989 by Rear Admiral Sir David Martin.
After retiring from the Governorship, Rowland served as president of the Royal Humane Society, Chancellor of the University of Sydney from 1990 to 1991, and as a member of the Police Board from 1989 to 1992. He was also a member of the boards of several private companies, including Angus & Coote and Thomson-CSF Pacific Holdings, and Chairman of the Aerospace Foundation of Australia from 1992 until his death in Sydney on 27 May 1999. Sir James Rowland was survived by his wife and daughter, and accorded a state funeral.
In 2016, the RAAF Air Power Development Centre and the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at the University of New South Wales jointly established the Sir James Rowland Air Power Seminar to further "a broadened understanding of the origins, evolution, application and depiction of air power in the national interest".
|
1,196,101 |
Ontario Highway 403
| 1,167,797,690 |
Controlled-access highway in Ontario, Canada
|
[
"400-series highways",
"Roads in Hamilton, Ontario",
"Roads in Mississauga",
"Transport in Brantford",
"Transport in Burlington, Ontario",
"Transport in Oakville, Ontario"
] |
King's Highway 403 (pronounced "four-oh-three"), or simply Highway 403, is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario that travels between Woodstock and Mississauga, branching off from and reuniting with Highway 401 at both ends and travelling south of it through Hamilton (where it is also known as the Chedoke Expressway) and Mississauga. It is concurrent with the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) for 22 km (14 mi) from Burlington to Oakville. The Highway 403 designation was first applied in 1963 to a short stub of freeway branching off the QEW, and the entire route was completed on August 15, 1997, when the section from Brantford to the then-still independent Town of Ancaster was opened to traffic. The section of Highway 403 between Woodstock and Burlington was formally dedicated as the Alexander Graham Bell Parkway on April 27, 2016, in honour of Alexander Graham Bell.
The majority of Highway 403 is surrounded by suburban land use, except west of Hamilton, where it passes through agricultural land; Brantford is the only urban area through this section. In Hamilton, Highway 403 descends the Niagara Escarpment, then wraps around the northern side of Hamilton Harbour to encounter the QEW. From there, co-signed with the QEW, it travels straight through Burlington and Oakville, departing from the QEW to the north at the Mississauga–Oakville boundary. The freeway then crosses through the centre of Mississauga in an east–west direction, serving its city centre. Turning north, Highway 403 splits up into a collector-express system, with the express lanes defaulting to Highway 401 east of that interchange, while the collector lanes thereafter continues north as Highway 410 to Brampton.
## Route description
### Woodstock to Burlington
Highway 403 begins at a junction with Highway 401 on the outskirts of Woodstock. The eastbound lanes split from eastbound Highway 401, whereas the westbound lanes merge into westbound Highway 401. It travels along the back lot lines of the second concession south of former Highway 2. This first section of the highway is also the least travelled portion, with approximately 20,900 vehicles using it on an average day in 2016. The highway passes beneath Oxford County Road 55 (formerly Highway 53) and curves southeast. After crossing into the third concession, it curves back to the east. The highway travels straight for several kilometres, meeting with the southern leg of Highway 24, which travels south to Simcoe.
The highway crosses the Grand River to the south of Paris, then passes over former Highway 2 as it enters Brantford. As it passes through Brantford, the highway angles southeast and passes beneath the northern leg of Highway 24 and then the Wayne Gretzky Parkway. The route exits the small city to the east and curves northeast shortly thereafter. It travels between Jerseyville Road and former Highway 2 to Ancaster, jogging to avoid cutting through Dunmark Lake. As the freeway enters Ancaster, it once again crosses former Highway 2 and dips through the southern side of the town.
East of Ancaster, the freeway passes through a short greenbelt, with Hamilton Golf and Country Club lying to the north. A divided segment of Highway 6 meets the freeway and continues concurrently with it through Hamilton; to the south, Highway 6 travels to Hamilton International Airport, Caledonia, and Jarvis at Highway 3. Continuing east, Highway 403 and Highway 6 curve north into Hamilton and meet the Lincoln M. Alexander Parkway before abruptly turning to the east and descending the Niagara Escarpment. Scenic views of Hamilton, its harbour, port and Lower Princess Falls are along this steep descent. At the bottom of the escarpment the highway travels through a narrow, heavily developed corridor alongside former Highway 8. It passes beneath multiple bridges in a depressed trench, eventually curving north at a sharp corner and passing beneath more bridges. This section features a reduced speed limit of 90 km/h (56 mph) as opposed to 100 km/h (62 mph). The highway returns to ground level alongside the Chedoke Creek, a now-channelized river from which the freeway may take its name.
As the freeway continues north, it crosses an isthmus between Hamilton Harbour and Cootes Paradise alongside several roads which it has served to replace. It circles around the northern shore of Hamilton Harbour and returns to an eastward orientation. The concurrency with Highway 6 ends at an interchange where Highway 403 continues east and Highway 6 departs north towards Guelph. The freeway continues straight for several kilometres, passing by the Burlington Transmission Station, until it approaches the Freeman Interchange where the opposing carriageways split apart to accommodate the left-hand exit/entry of the flyover ramps marking the western terminus of Highway 407, then it merges with Queen Elizabeth Way.
### Burlington to Mississauga
Highway 403 travels concurrently with the QEW for 22.6 km (14.0 mi) between the Freeman Interchange and Oakville, a straight section surrounded almost entirely by commercial units and warehouses. At the Ford Assembly Plant near the Halton–Peel regional boundary, Highway 403 branches off from the QEW as it crosses Ford Drive (Halton Regional Road 13), with the eastbound lanes diving under the QEW and Upper Middle Road before reuniting with the westbound carriageway. After running north–south for 5 km (3.1 mi) along the western edge of Mississauga, Highway 403 meets with Highway 407 again at a combination interchange where the two freeways curve 90 degrees to avoid crossing each other. Approaching this junction Highway 403 westbound traffic defaults onto Highway 407 so motorists have to continue on Highway 403 via a semi-directional flyover that arcs from the west to the south. This north–south segment of Highway 403 was originally planned as a temporary routing to be bypassed by a new direct Oakville-Burlington link; but in 1995 this routing became permanently part of Highway 403 when the proposed link instead became part of Highway 407.
Highway 407 continues to the north and west, while Highway 403 turns east to follow alongside a hydro corridor through the centre of Mississauga. A portion of the Mississauga Transitway express bus service utilizes the freeway's right shoulders between Erin Mills Parkway and Mavis Road. Between Highway 407 and Highway 401, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are present in the left shoulder lanes for vehicles with at least one passenger. Sandwiched between residential subdivisions on both sides, the freeway soon thereafter crosses the Credit River. On the other side of the river, between the interchanges with Mavis Road and Hurontario Street (formerly Highway 10), Highway 403 skirts to the north of downtown Mississauga, as well as the Square One Shopping Centre.
After a split with Eastgate Parkway, the freeway abruptly curves to the north. As the curve straightens, Cawthra Road's lanes converge with the freeway to form a collector-express system as it approaches the interchange with Eglinton Avenue, while the eastbound express-to-collector transfer also marks the start of another HOV lane. The portion of the highway between Hurontario Street and Eglinton Avenue is the busiest along the route, with approximately 180,000 vehicles travelling it on an average day in 2016.
After crossing Matheson Boulevard, the freeway's central HOV lanes terminate and merge with the express lanes. The freeway then approaches a sprawling interchange, with the express lanes curving east and defaulting to Highway 401's express lanes east of that junction, while the collector lanes (including its HOV lane) pass under several sets of flyovers and thereafter continues north as Highway 410 to Brampton. The freeway's collector lanes also have connecting ramps to both directions of Highway 401's collector lanes.
## History
Though one of the first divided highways conceived for Ontario, Highway 403 is one of the most recently completed freeways in the province; the multiple segments of the route did not become continuous until 2002. Planning for the route was underway by 1958, with the completion of the Freeman Bypass along the QEW providing a three-legged junction for the new freeway. Sections of Highway 403 through Hamilton opened between December 1963 and September 1969. An isolated section known as the Brantford Bypass was opened in October 1966, and would remain unconnected to other freeways for over 20 years. Plans for a third segment through Mississauga were contemplated throughout the 1960s, but were not finalized until late 1977, after which construction began. Portions opened at both ends in 1980 and 1981, while the central gap, crossing the Credit River, was completed in December 1982.
Construction to bridge the gaps in Highway 403 between Ancaster and Woodstock was carried out over three major phases. The first phase was a short extension of the Brantford Bypass beginning in 1975. Later, work began to connect that extension with Highway 401 near Woodstock, opening in 1988. The last phase, between Ancaster and Brantford, was opened in 1997. The final discontinuity, between Burlington and Oakville, was signed as a concurrency with the QEW in 2002. Originally, this section was to have travelled along the corridor occupied by Highway 407, until budget shortfalls in 1995 resulted in a change of plans.
### Predecessors
The corridor that connects London and Hamilton has always been considered important to Ontario. In late October 1793, Captain Smith and 100 Queen's Rangers returned from carving The Governor's Road (Dundas Street) 32 km (20 mi) through the thick forests between Dundas and the present location of Paris. John Graves Simcoe was tasked with defending Upper Canada from the United States following the American Revolution and with opening the virgin territory to settlement. After establishing a "temporary" capital at York, Simcoe ordered an inland route constructed between Cootes Paradise at the tip of Lake Ontario and his proposed capital of London. By the spring of 1794, the road was extended as far as La Tranche, now the Thames River. Today, most of this route forms part of former Highway 2 and former Highway 5.
The paving of the divided four-lane Middle Road, with gentle curves, a grass median, and grade-separated interchanges, would set the stage for the freeway concept. It was the first intercity freeway in North America when it opened in June 1939. Thomas McQuesten, the new minister of the Department of Highways and the man most responsible for the Middle Road, decided to apply the concept to sections of Highway 2 plagued with congestion. A portion east of Woodstock was rebuilt in this fashion, but World War II would put an end to McQuesten's ambitions, at least temporarily.
### Initial construction
The end of the Korean War in 1953 heralded the resumption of freeway construction in Ontario; the advances in machinery more than made up for lost time. The construction of Highway 401 across the province took first priority. However, the opening of the section of Highway 401 from Highway 4 near London to Highway 2 east of Woodstock on May 31, 1957 would complete part of the route required between London and Hamilton. By 1958, planning on the Chedoke Expressway, or Controlled Access Highway 403, was well underway, though plans for a four-lane freeway between Woodstock and Hamilton existed as early as 1954. The opening of the Freeman Bypass of the QEW in August 1958 provided a connection point for a new freeway, and construction began the same day that the Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway opened: October 31, 1958. Highway 403 between Longwood Road (Highway 2) and the QEW was opened to traffic on December 1, 1963 at a length of 9.0 km (5.6 mi). Work was already underway on the next section of the route that would extend it to Aberdeen Avenue. That section opened on July 9, 1965, extending the freeway by 3.7 km (2.3 mi).
Meanwhile, to the west, work had begun on a bypass of Brantford. The new freeway passed north of the city between Paris Road in the west and the junction of Highway 2 and Highway 53 in the east, a distance of 10.3 km (6.4 mi); it opened October 31, 1966. A portion of the Brantford Bypass was itself bypassed in 1997 when the final section of Highway 403 was completed and is known as Garden Avenue. However, the Brantford Bypass would remain an isolated section of Highway 403 for over 20 years.
In Hamilton, work was underway on an extension of the Chedoke Expressway to Mohawk Road, crossing the Niagara Escarpment. This tedious project, which required extensive rock blasting, was soon accompanied by construction from Mohawk Road to Highway 2 near Ancaster. Both projects were completed together and originally scheduled to be opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on August 22, 1969. However, local residents complained the new section lacked any barriers preventing children from wandering onto the highway, postponing the ceremony until August 27 as temporary snow fencing was erected. This proved inadequate, and protests grew more vocal over the following week. Several petitions were presented to Deputy Highway Minister H. Howden on August 26, and the ceremonies were cancelled. Over the following week, Minister of Highways George Gomme met with residents and reached a compromise whereby a 24-hour patrol was established to watch for children until a proper fence could be constructed. The route was opened on September 3, without any ceremony. This completed the Hamilton section of Highway 403.
### Mississauga
Planning for the segment of Highway 403 through Mississauga dates to the late 1950s when the Hamilton Expressway appeared on the Metropolitan Toronto's regional transportation plan. It was to be a continuation of the Richview Expressway, which was ultimately never built, continuing from Toronto to Hamilton. The plan featured the expressway's eastern terminus at the Highway 401 and Highway 427 interchange. As Toronto's anti-expressway movement gained momentum, provincial plans shifted the Hamilton Expressway to the west near Etobicoke Creek. In 1962, the right-of-way alongside the hydro corridor between Burlington and Etobicoke Creek was protected after traffic studies indicated the need for a future freeway. On May 25, 1965, the Department of Highways unveiled the Toronto Region Western Section Highway Planning Study. The plan designated Highway 403 north from Burlington and then parallel with the QEW to Highway 401 near Highway 27.
By the time construction was actually underway, plans had been completely modified to connect the overburdened QEW at Oakville with Highway 401 at the new Highway 410 interchange. This interchange was a better connection point for Highway 403, but would also require the widening of Highway 401 from six lanes to twelve. Plans were submitted and approved in December 1977 by Mississauga city council, and construction began.
The new freeway opened in sections during the early 1980s. The first section between Cawthra Road and Highway 401 was opened August 18, 1980. This was followed by a short section from Highway 5 (Dundas Street) south to the QEW at Ford Drive, which opened in mid-1981, with a further extension to Erin Mills Parkway opening on November 17th of that year. The final section to be opened took the longest to complete, involving construction of two bridges over the Credit River valley; it opened on December 2, 1982. The cost of the entire 22 km (13.7 mi) Mississauga segment was \$87 million.
Around the same period, the Ministry of Transportation began to study upgrading Highway 401 to a collector–express system between Renforth Drive and Highway 403, and along Highway 403 between Highway 401 and Highway 10 (Hurontario Street). This took place between late 1982 and the summer of 1985; the existing outermost ramps from Highway 403 to Highway 401 eastbound were re-designated to serve collector traffic, as a pair of flyover ramps were added inside the interchange to serve motorists in the express lanes.
The right-of-way originally intended for Highway 403 between Cawthra Road and Etobicoke Creek was eventually used for a controlled-access arterial extension called Eastgate Parkway, which was planned beginning in 1982. The extension was built between 1988 and 1994, incorporating a portion of Fieldgate Drive at the eastern end. The first section, between Cawthra Road and Dixie Road, opened in early 1991. This was followed several years later by the section from Dixie Road to Eglinton Avenue that opened in late 1994.
In 1990 construction was underway on the planned but not-yet-built parts of the Highway 401-403-410 interchange, alongside the widening of Highway 410 into a full freeway, and the further expansion of Highway 401's collector-express system. At the time traffic from both freeways was forced onto eastbound Highway 401. Two semi-directional flyover ramps were built, for the Highway 401 eastbound to Highway 410 northbound movement, and the Highway 410 southbound to Highway 401 eastbound movement, the latter which replaced an existing loop ramp. The removal of that loop ramp, as well as completion of the new flyovers in the interchange, would free up space for connections between Highway 403 and Highway 410 whose construction started in December 1991. The 2.2 km (1.4 mi) link opened on November 2, 1992 at a cost of \$7.3 million.
### Bridging the gaps
In 1975, construction began on a westward extension of the Brantford Bypass, from Highway 2 (Paris Road) to Rest Acres Road, which would become Highway 24. This work consisted of the twin bridges over the Grand River and an interchange at Rest Acres Road. The Canadian National Railway underpass west of Highway 2 was built by the railway. By the beginning of 1978, this work was completed. Work resumed west of Highway 24 in early 1982 to connect with Highway 401 near Woodstock to relieve the high traffic volumes along Highway 2. This included interchanges at Brant County Road 25 and Highway 53. A section from Highway 24 to County Road 25 was opened in November 1984, followed by the section west of there to Highway 53 one year later. Construction of the gap between Highway 53 and Highway 401 began in late 1985, followed by the Highway 401 overpass for the westbound lanes, which began in 1987. Transportation minister Ed Fulton ceremoniously opened the new freeway connection on September 26, 1988, completing the Woodstock to Brantford link.
Highway 403 was briefly left with three discontinuous sections: Woodstock–Brantford, Ancaster–Burlington, and Oakville–Mississauga. Between Brantford and Ancaster, traffic was defaulted onto Highway 2, a four-lane road with numerous private driveways and at-grade intersections. On March 24, 1987, Chris Ward, MPP for Wentworth North announced that construction of the missing link between Brantford and Ancaster would begin in 1989. Construction began in mid-1990. It included interchanges at Garden Avenue, Highway 52 and Highway 2. A continuous construction program was carried out over the next seven years, with the link opening on August 15, 1997. Highway 2, which was the only parallel route before the completion of Highway 403, was subsequently downloaded to regional jurisdiction.
### Controversy
Though some officials considered Highway 403 to be a perfect example of a freeway construction process, it was not built without its share of controversy. In addition to the previously mentioned issues that occurred in 1969, portions of the freeway through Mississauga were built alongside established communities, leading to angry homeowners' associations pressuring the province for noise mitigation measures and compensation.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Mississauga section of Highway 403 was the site of more than two dozen fatal accidents over a five-year period, one of the highest rates in North America at the time, despite being up to modern road standards. This led Peel Regional Police and the media to nickname it the "Death Highway." In particular, the stretch from Mavis Road to Erin Mills Parkway has been the site of numerous accidents. In this section, Highway 403 features a downward slope as motorists head eastbound towards the Mavis Road interchange; drivers complain of having to slam on the brakes when traffic comes to a standstill, leading to rear-end collisions. There is also glare from the sun that causes vision problems throughout the day.
### Recent construction
The Hamilton-Brantford and Mississauga sections of Highway 403 were eventually planned to be linked up via an east–west extension that would run parallel to the QEW, as the current north–south routing of Highway 403 along the Mississauga-Oakville boundary to end at the QEW was intended to be temporary and eventually assumed by the proposed Highway 407. The interchange between Highway 403 and Highway 407 near Ninth Line was partially completed, allowing Highway 403 access to a temporary east–west connector to Trafalgar Road (Halton Regional Road 3). However, the Bob Rae government altered these plans in 1995 due to budgetary constraints. It was also announced the Mississauga section of Highway 403 would be renumbered as Highway 410, although this was not done. Instead, Highway 403 was signed concurrently along the Queen Elizabeth Way in 2002, remedying the discontinuity. On September 4, 1998, Highway 407 opened between Highway 401 and Highway 403, and by the middle of 2001 access was added to the Burlington–Oakville segment of Highway 407 previously intended to be part of Highway 403.
In early 2001, high-mast lighting added to the unlighted Mississauga section between Highway 407 and Eastgate Parkway. The lighting masts are placed between the westbound carriageway and hydro corridor, rather than in the median like most other provincial freeways. In 2003, the right shoulders between Erin Mills Parkway and Mavis Road were widened for GO Transit and Mississauga Transit to run express bus service. These projects preceded the widening of Highway 403 between Highway 407 and Highway 401/410, through which a high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane was added in each direction; the project started on September 29, 2003 and was completed and opened on December 13, 2005. The HOV lanes and the dividing Ontario Tall Wall concrete barrier were constructed using the existing right-of-way provided by the grass median. Metrolinx began construction of the Mississauga Transitway West between Winston Churchill Boulevard and Erin Mills Parkway in October 2013, including realignment of hydro towers and new bus-only lanes crossing the existing ramps on the north side of Highway 403's interchange with Winston Churchill Boulevard, which was completed on December 31, 2016.
Land was reserved at the Highway 401/403/410 junction for a loop ramp from Highway 403 eastbound to Highway 401 westbound, and a directional ramp for the opposite movement, however as a prerequisite Highway 401 first had to be widened west of this interchange. The existing underpasses for the Highway 403 to Highway 410 link have sufficient right-of-way to accommodate the addition of a new HOV lane to the Highway 403 eastbound collectors that would tie into the expanded Highway 410, as well as the approach to the loop ramp to Highway 401 westbound. Construction commenced on these ramps by 2017. The construction was completed in November 2018, allowing for full access in all directions between both freeways.
Highway 403 between Woodstock and Burlington was formally dedicated as the Alexander Graham Bell Parkway on April 27, 2016.
Improvements were made to the bottlenecked Highway 403/QEW/Ford Drive interchange in Oakville. Since 2017, traffic using the existing loop ramp in the NE corner to access Highway 403/QEW was directed onto a new overpass instead of sharing the existing overpass with westbound Highway 403 traffic. The existing bridges carrying QEW traffic across Ford Drive and the eastbound ramp to Highway 403 were demolished and replaced by new wider structures which can accommodate future HOV lanes and high-mast lighting. At the present Highway 403 only connects to the QEW west of the interchange, but a new set of flyover ramps are being proposed from Highway 403 to the QEW east of that junction using the existing right-of-way which would allow for a direct freeway connection from Milton to south Mississauga.
The 2017 initial design of the Hurontario LRT line had it occupying the centre median of Hurontario Street including the existing bridge crossing Highway 403. At the southern approach to the bridge, there would be a junction for an LRT branch to the Mississauga City Centre, and the junction would have crossed the southbound traffic lanes of Hurontario Street and a Highway 403 exit ramp at grade. However studies showed that this initial LRT route would seriously impact vehicular traffic at the Highway 403-Hurontario interchange. A revised 2021 route proposes that the LRT cross Highway 403 on its own elevated guideway to the west of Hurontario Street overpass.
There are preliminary proposals for adding HOV lanes to Highway 403 within Burlington, alongside a proposal to modify the Freeman Interchange.
## Exit list
|
31,342,635 |
A Song Flung Up to Heaven
| 1,150,492,716 |
Maya Angelou's sixth autobiography book
|
[
"2002 American novels",
"African-American autobiographies",
"Books by Maya Angelou",
"Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album"
] |
A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in author Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies. Set between 1965 and 1968, it begins where Angelou's previous book All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes ends, with Angelou's trip from Accra, Ghana, where she had lived for the past four years, back to the United States. Two "calamitous events" frame the beginning and end of the book—the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Angelou describes how she dealt with these events and the sweeping changes in both the country and in her personal life, and how she coped with her return home to the U.S. The book ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career", writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
As she had begun to do in Caged Bird, and continued throughout her series, Angelou upheld the long tradition of African-American autobiography. At the same time she made a deliberate attempt to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Most reviewers agreed that the book was made up of a series of vignettes. By the time Song was written in 2002, sixteen years after her previous autobiography, Angelou had experienced great fame and recognition as an author and poet. She recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's in 1961. She had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. Angelou was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". She had also become, as reviewer Richard Long stated, "a major autobiographical voice of the time".
The title of Song was based upon the same poem, by African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, the basis of her first autobiography. Like Angelou's other autobiographies, the book was greeted with both praise and disappointment, although reviews were generally positive. Reviewers praised Angelou for "the culmination of a unique autobiographical achievement", while others criticized her for coming across as "smug". The 2002 spoken word album by the same name, based on the book, received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003.
## Background
A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002) is the sixth of Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies, and at the time of its publication it was considered to be the final installment. It was completed 16 years after the publication of her previous autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) and over thirty years after the publication of her first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou wrote two collections of essays in the interim, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) and Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997), which writer Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts". She also continued her poetry with several volumes, including a collection of her poems, The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994). In 1993, Angelou recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. Her recitation resulted in more fame and recognition for her previous works, and broadened her appeal "across racial, economic, and educational boundaries".
By 2002, when Song was published, Angelou had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. She was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". She had also become "a major autobiographical voice of the time". Angelou was one of the first African-American female writers to publicly discuss her personal life, and one of the first to use herself as a central character in her books. Writer Julian Mayfield, who called her first autobiography "a work of art that eludes description", stated that Angelou's series set a precedent not only for other Black women writers, but for the genre of autobiography as a whole.
Als called Angelou one of the "pioneers of self-exposure", willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of her personality and choices. For example, while Angelou was composing her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name, she was concerned about how her readers would react to her disclosure that she had been a prostitute. Her husband Paul Du Feu talked her into publishing the book by encouraging her to "tell the truth as a writer" and to "be honest about it". Song took 16 years to write because it was painful to relive the events she described, including the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. She did not celebrate her birthday, April 4, for many years because it was also the anniversary of King's death, choosing instead to send his widow Coretta Scott King flowers. Although Song was considered the final installment in her series of autobiographies, Angelou continued writing about her life story through essays, and at the age of 85, published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom (2013), which focused on her relationship with her mother. The spoken word album based on Song and narrated by Angelou received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003.
### Title
Angelou returned to the same poem she based the title of Caged Bird upon for the title of A Song Flung Up to Heaven, from the third stanza of the Paul Laurence Dunbar poem "Sympathy". Along with Shakespeare, Angelou has credited Dunbar with forming her "writing ambition". The caged bird, a symbol for the chained slave, is an image Angelou uses throughout all her writings.
> I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
> When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
> When he beats his bars and would be free;
> It is not a carol of joy or glee,
> But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
> But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
> I know why the caged bird sings.
## Plot summary
A Song Flung Up to Heaven, which takes place between 1965 and 1968, picks up where Angelou's previous book, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, ends, with Angelou's airplane trip from Accra, Ghana, where she has spent the previous four years, back to the United States. Two "calamitous events" frame the beginning and end of the book—the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Her nineteen-year-old son Guy is attending college in Ghana, and she is leaving a controlling relationship—her "romantic other", whom she described as "a powerful West African man who had swept into my life with the urgency of a Southern hurricane". She had also been invited to return to the U.S. by Malcolm X, whom she had become friends with during his visit to Accra, to help her create the Organization of African Unity.
She postpones meeting with Malcolm X for a month and visits her mother and brother in San Francisco. Malcolm X is assassinated two days later. Devastated and grief-stricken, she moves to Hawaii to be near her brother and to resume her singing and performing career, which she had given up before leaving for Africa several years earlier. She realizes, after seeing Della Reese perform, that she lacks the desire, commitment, and talent to be a singer. She instead returns to her writing career, but this time in Los Angeles instead of in New York City as she had earlier in her life. To earn extra money, Angelou becomes a market researcher in Watts and gets to know the neighborhood and its people. She witnesses the 1965 Watts Riots, knowing that doing so could lead to her arrest, and she is genuinely disappointed that it does not.
At one point, Angelou's lover from Ghana, whom she calls "the African", arrives in Los Angeles to take her back to Accra. Angelou enlists the aid of her mother and brother; they come to her rescue once again by diverting the African first to Mexico and then back to Ghana. Guy, during a visit to his grandmother in San Francisco, gets into another car accident, similar to what happened before he began college in Ghana. His maturity is striking to his mother, and she leaves him in the care of his grandmother.
Angelou returns to New York, where she dedicates herself to her writing and renews many of the friendships made there in the past. She also describes her personal and professional relationships with Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Beah Richards, and Frank Silvera. Martin Luther King Jr. asks her to travel around the country promoting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She agrees, but "postpones again", and he is assassinated on her 40th birthday. Again devastated, she isolates herself until invited to a dinner party also attended by her friend James Baldwin and cartoonist Jules Feiffer and his wife Judy. Judy Feiffer, inspired by Angelou's tales about her childhood, contacts editor Robert Loomis, who challenges Angelou to write her autobiography as literature. She accepts his challenge, and Song ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career", writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings:
> "What are you looking at me for. I didn't come to stay".
## Style and genre
Starting with Caged Bird, Angelou made a deliberate attempt while writing all her autobiographies, including Song, to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and thematic development has often led reviewers to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction. Angelou stated in a 1989 interview that she was the only "serious" writer to choose the genre to express herself. As critic Susan Gilbert stated, Angelou was reporting not one person's story, but the collective's. Scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe agreed, and viewed Angelou as representative of the convention in African-American autobiography as a public gesture that spoke for an entire group of people. Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her into writing Caged Bird by challenging her to write an autobiography that could be considered "high art", which she continued throughout her series, including her final autobiography.
Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's standard structure: they were written by a single author, they were chronological, and they contained elements of character, technique, and theme. In a 1983 interview with African-American literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou called her books autobiographies. When speaking of her unique use of the genre, Angelou acknowledged that she has followed the slave narrative tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'". Reviewer Elsie B. Washington agreed, and stated that A Song Flung Up to Heaven "offers a glimpse into the life of a literary icon in the making" influenced by historical events and personalities such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and James Baldwin.
Angelou recognized that there were fictional aspects to all her books; she tended to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth". Her approach paralleled the conventions of many African-American autobiographies written during the abolitionist period in the U.S., when truth was often censored for purposes of self-protection. Author Lyman B. Hagen has placed Angelou in the long tradition of African-American autobiography, but insisted that she has created a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form. In a 1998 interview with journalist George Plimpton, Angelou discussed her writing process, and "the sometimes slippery notion of truth in nonfiction" and memoirs. When asked if she changed the truth to improve her story, she stated, "Sometimes I make a diameter from a composite of three or four people, because the essence in only one person is not sufficiently strong to be written about". Although Angelou has never admitted to changing the facts in her stories, she has used these facts to make an impact with the reader. As Hagen stated, "One can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work". Hagen also stated that Angelou "fictionalizes, to enhance interest". Angelou's long-time editor, Robert Loomis, agreed, stating that she could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different impact on the reader.
## Critical reception
Like Angelou's previous autobiographies, Song received mostly positive reviews, although as the Poetry Foundation has said: "Most critics have judged Angelou's subsequent autobiographies in light of her first, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings remains the most highly praised." Kim Hubbard of People, for example, found Song unsatisfying and "hastily assembled", but poetic like Caged Bird. Many reviewers appreciated what Kirkus Reviews called Angelou's "nice structural turn" of framing Song with two assassinations. Paula Friedman of The New York Times Book Review appreciated Angelou's "occasions of critical self-assessment and modesty" not present in many other autobiographies. Patricia Elam of The New Crisis agreed, stating that there is much to admire both about the book and about the "large life", full of tension, laughter, and love, it describes. Elam also called Song "a spirit-moving work that describes Angelou's journey through an authentic and artistic life".
Reviewer Margaret Busby, who saw this book "not so much an ending as a beginning", called Song "the culmination of a unique autobiographical achievement, a glorious celebration of indomitable spirit". Like other reviewers, Busby considered Song a series of "beautifully crafted vignettes" and found the book concise and readable. Scholar John McWhorter did not look at Angelou's use of vignettes as positively, and stated that all of her books were short, divided into "ever shorter" chapters as her series progressed, and "sometimes seem written for children rather than adults". McWhorter recognized, however, that Angelou's precise prose and "striking and even jarring simplicity" was due to Angelou's purposes of depicting African-American culture in a positive way. Busby also recognized Angelou's ability to find inspirational lessons from adversity, both nationally and personally, although the emphasis in this book was on the personal, especially her dilemmas as a mother and as a lover.
Amy Strong of The Library Journal, perhaps because Angelou's life during the time the book took place was full of more personal loss than conflict and struggle, considered Song less profound and intense than the previous books in Angelou's series. She predicted that Song′s direct and plainspoken style would be popular. Publishers Weekly, in its review of the book, agreed with Strong and saw "a certain resignation" in Song, instead of "the contentiousness" in Angelou's other autobiographies. The reviewer also stated that those who lived through the era Angelou described would appreciate her assessment of it, and that Song was "a story of tragedy and triumph, well stated and clearly stamped by her own unique blend of Afro-Americanism". The assassinations in Song provided the book with depth as Angelou described the events of her life, which would be "mere meanderings" if described by a less skilled writer. The reviewer was able to see Angelou's "gracious spirit" and found the book "satisfying", although he considered it a "sometimes flat account" that lacked "the spiritual tone of Angelou's essays, the openness of her poetry and the drama of her other autobiographies".
Both McWhorter and scholar Hilton Als found Angelou's writing throughout her series self-important. Although McWhorter has admitted to being charmed by Angelou's sense of authority she has inserted into her works, which he calls her "black-mother wit", he considered Angelou's autobiographies after Caged Bird "smug", and has stated that she "implicitly dares the reader to question her private line to God and Truth". Als agreed, stating what made Song different from her preceding volumes is her "ever-increasing unreliability". Als stated that Angelou, in her six autobiographies, "has given us ... the self-aggrandizing, homespun, and sometimes oddly prudish story of a black woman who, when faced with the trials of life, simply makes do". Als believed that Angelou's essays, written in the 1990s, were a better culmination of her work as an autobiographer.
|
5,612,337 |
Regine Velasquez
| 1,173,817,280 |
Filipino singer and actress (born 1970)
|
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"20th-century Filipino women singers",
"21st-century Filipino actresses",
"21st-century Filipino women singers",
"ABS-CBN personalities",
"Actresses from Manila",
"English-language singers from the Philippines",
"Filipino Protestants",
"Filipino dance musicians",
"Filipino film actresses",
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"Filipino television variety show hosts",
"Filipino women pop singers",
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"Living people",
"People from Tondo, Manila",
"Regine Velasquez",
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"Women record producers"
] |
Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez (/rɪˈdʒiːn vɛˈlæskɛz/ rij-EEN vel-ASK-ez; born April 22, 1970) is a Filipino singer and actress. She is considered one of the most influential figures in Philippine popular culture and is known for her vocal range and belting technique. She had unorthodox voice training during her childhood, where she was immersed neck-deep in the sea. Velasquez rose to prominence after winning the television talent show Ang Bagong Kampeon in 1984 and the Asia Pacific Singing Contest in 1989. Under the name Chona, she signed a recording contract with OctoArts International in 1986 and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. The following year, she adopted the stage name Regine Velasquez for her debut studio album, Regine (1987), under the guidance of Viva Records executive Vic del Rosario and producer Ronnie Henares. She explored Manila sound and kundiman genres on her second and third studio albums, Nineteen 90 (1990) and Tagala Talaga (1991).
After signing an international record deal with PolyGram Records, Velasquez achieved commercial success in some Asian territories with her fifth album Listen Without Prejudice (1994), which sold more than 700,000 copies and became her highest-selling album to date, aided by its lead single "In Love with You". She experimented further with jazz and adult contemporary genres on My Love Emotion (1995), while she recorded covers on Retro (1996). After she left PolyGram to sign with Mark J. Feist's MJF Company in 1998, she released the R&B-influenced album Drawn. Velasquez's follow-up record, R2K (1999), was supported by remakes of "On the Wings of Love", "I'll Never Love This Way Again", and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and was subsequently certified twelve-times platinum by the Philippine Association of the Record Industry (PARI).
Velasquez played leading roles in the romantic comedies Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) and Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), and received the Box Office Entertainment Award for Box Office Queen for the latter. Her performance as an intellectually disabled woman in an episode of the anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2001) earned her a Star Award for Best Actress. She later starred in the prime time television series Forever in My Heart (2004), Ako si Kim Samsoon (2008), Totoy Bato (2009), Diva (2010), I Heart You, Pare! (2011), and Poor Señorita (2016). Velasquez also won the Golden Screen Award for Best Actress for playing a document forger in the comedy film Of All the Things (2012). She expanded her career into reality television talent shows as a presenter on Star for a Night (2002), Pinoy Pop Superstar (2004), and The Clash (2018), and as a judge on StarStruck (2015) and Idol Philippines (2019).
Having sold more than seven million records domestically and 1.5 million in Asia, Velasquez is the best-selling Filipino music artist of all time. Her accolades include two Asian Television Awards, two MTV Asia Awards, 22 Awit Awards, 16 Aliw Awards (including 3 Entertainer of the Year wins), 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, and 14 Star Awards for Music. Referred to as "Asia's Songbird", she has consistently been credited with inspiring a generation of Filipino singers.
## Early life
Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez was born on April 22, 1970, in Tondo, Manila, to Teresita (née Ansong) and Gerardo Velasquez. She has three sisters—Cacai, Diane, and Deca—and a brother, Jojo. Her family moved to Hinundayan, Southern Leyte, where Velasquez spent the early years of her life. At age three, Velasquez became interested in music after listening to her father's lullabies. She would listen to her mother play guitar and piano while her father sang, and cited Sharon Cuneta's "Mr. DJ" as one of the first songs she learned.
Velasquez started singing at age six; she underwent intensive vocal training with her father, who immersed her neck-deep in the sea and had her go through vocal runs. She credits this unorthodox method for strengthening her core and stomach muscles, and developing her lung capacity. Velasquez placed third in her first singing competition on Betty Mendez Livioco's The Tita Betty's Children Show.
When Velasquez was nine, her family moved to Balagtas, Bulacan, where she attended St. Lawrence Academy and competed for her school at the annual Bulacan Private Schools Association singing competition. In 1984, at fourteen, Velasquez auditioned for the reality television series Ang Bagong Kampeon. She qualified and became the show's senior division winner, defending her spot for eight consecutive weeks. Velasquez won the competition and was signed to a record deal with OctoArts International.
## Music career
### 1986–1989: Career beginnings and Regine
In 1986, Velasquez initially used the stage name Chona and released the single "Love Me Again", which failed commercially. At the recommendation of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, she appeared on The Penthouse Live! While rehearsing for the show, Velasquez caught the attention of Ronnie Henares, a producer and talent manager who signed her to a management deal. Velasquez adopted the stage name Regine at the suggestion of Martin Nievera, Fernandez's husband and The Penthouse Live! co-host.
Velasquez signed with Viva Records and released her debut album Regine in 1987. Henares served as an executive producer and worked with songwriters Joaquin Francisco Sanchez and Vehnee Saturno. Three singles were released in 1987: "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang", " Urong Sulong", and "Isang Lahi". During this period, Velasquez appeared on the ABS-CBN television shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. Two years after Regine's release, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest in Hong Kong and won, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls.
### 1990–1993: Nineteen 90 and Reason Enough
Velasquez released her second studio album, Nineteen 90, in 1990. She worked with Louie Ocampo on the album's lead single "Narito Ako", which was originally recorded and performed by Maricris Bermont and written by Nonong Pedero for the 1978 Metro Manila Popular Music Festival. Later that year, she headlined her first major concert at the Folk Arts Theater. She recorded "Please Be Careful with My Heart" with Jose Mari Chan, who released the track on his album Constant Change; she also sang backing vocals on Gary Valenciano's "Each Passing Night", which appears on his album Faces of Love.
In 1991, Velasquez made her North American concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a first for an Asian solo artist. British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh later invited Velasquez to audition for the West End production of the musical Miss Saigon. She received a letter from the production offering to train her in London, which she declined: partly due to her lack of experience in musical theater, and also because she wished to remain with her family.
Velasquez's third studio album Tagala Talaga was released in October 1991. It includes cover versions of recordings by National Artist for Music recipients Ryan Cayabyab, Lucio San Pedro, and Levi Celerio. The album's lead single, titled "Buhay Ng Buhay Ko", was originally recorded by Leah Navarro and was written by Pedero, with whom Velasquez had worked on Nineteen 90. Other notable singles from the album include "Anak" and "Sa Ugoy Ng Duyan".
PolyGram Far East announced a joint-venture licensing deal in the Philippines in July 1993 with the formation of its subsidiary PolyCosmic Records. Velasquez recorded a duet titled "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" with Canadian singer Paul Anka, which became the new label's first release. The single was later included on her fourth studio album Reason Enough. David Gonzales of AllMusic described the album as "more attuned to international ears" and said Velasquez's vocals are "thin and unimpressive". One of its singles, "Sana Maulit Muli", won the Awit Award for Best Performance by a Female Recording Artist in 1994.
### 1994–1998: Listen Without Prejudice and My Love Emotion
Velasquez released her fifth studio album Listen Without Prejudice in 1994. She worked with songwriters, including Glenn Medeiros, Trina Belamide, and John Laudon. The album was released in several countries in Southeast and East Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The album's lead single "In Love with You" features Cantonese singer Jacky Cheung. Gonzales commended the record's themes and said, "Cheung's presence on the duet had much to do with the overseas success". The album had sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide, including 100,000 in the Philippines, making it Velasquez's best-selling album to date.
Velasquez's sixth studio album My Love Emotion was released in 1995. The title track, which was written by Southern Sons vocalist Phil Buckle, was described by Gonzales as a "triumph [and] an outstanding vehicle, containing a strong melody and hook in the chorus". The album made a combined regional and domestic sales of 250,000 copies.
For her seventh studio album Retro (1996), Velasquez recorded cover versions of popular music of the 1970s and 1980s from artists including Donna Summer, Foreigner, and The Carpenters. The album's only original track, "Fly", is credited to Earth, Wind & Fire members Maurice White, Al McKay, and Allee Willis because the song interpolates the melody of their single "September". Velasquez left PolyCosmic in 1998, and signed a six-album contract with the MJF Company. That year, her ninth studio album Drawn was released. MJF head Mark J. Feist wrote and produced most of the tracks, including the lead single "How Could You Leave". Drawn sold more than 40,000 copies and was awarded a platinum certification within two weeks of its release.
### 1999–2003: R2K and Reigne
Velasquez produced most of her next album R2K, which was released on November 27, 1999. She recorded remakes of Jeffrey Osborne's "On the Wings of Love", Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love This Way Again", Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and ABBA's "Dancing Queen", among others. Gonzales criticized the record's "infatuation with Western popular music" and called Velasquez's singing "self-assured [but] also unimpressive". Commercially, R2K sold more than 40,000 copies in its second week of release, earning a platinum certification, and was certified four times platinum a year later. R2K has since been certified twelve times platinum, becoming the highest-selling album by a female artist in the Philippines. On December 31, 1999, Velasquez was a featured musical act in 2000 Today, a BBC millennium television special that attracted a worldwide audience of more than 800 million viewers with its core program broadcast across the world's time zones, which began with Kiribati Line Islands and ended in American Samoa.
Velasquez headlined and directed the R2K Concert at the Araneta Coliseum in April 2000, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act at the 13th Aliw Awards. Ricky Lo from The Philippine Star was generally impressed with the production and complimented Velasquez's "boundless energy and creativity". She also performed a concert at the Westin Philippine Plaza that year, which spawned the release of her first live album Regine Live: Songbird Sings the Classics in December 2000. Although it was criticized for its audio mixing, the album was certified six times platinum. Velasquez worked with Filipino songwriters for material on her eleventh studio album Reigne. The album and its lead single "To Reach You" were released in December 2001. Other singles were Tats Faustino's "Dadalhin" and Janno Gibbs' "Sa Aking Pag-iisa". Gonzales called the album "an adventurous set" and praised the quality of the songwriting.
Velasquez won the inaugural MTV Asia Award for Favorite Artist Philippines in February 2002. She performed "Cry" with Mandy Moore to promote the theatrical release of Moore's film A Walk to Remember. In March, Velasquez hosted the first season of Star for a Night, which is based on the British talent show of the same name. In April, she headlined a benefit concert called One Night with Regine at the National Museum of the Philippines, which was a collaboration with ABS-CBN Foundation to benefit Bantay Bata Foundation's child abuse response fund. The show won Best Musical Program at the 7th Asian Television Awards.
At the 2003 MTV Asia Awards, Velasquez won her second consecutive award for Favorite Artist Philippines. In May 2003, she embarked on the Martin & Regine: World Concert Tour with Nievera. The following month, Velasquez returned to host the second season of Search for a Star. That November, she had a concert residency named Songbird Sings Streisand, a tribute to American singer and actor Barbra Streisand, at Makati's Onstage Theatre.
### 2004–2007: Covers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
In February 2004, Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid co-headlined a concert, The Songbird & The Songwriter, at the Araneta Coliseum, and they embarked on a North American tour that April. At the 17th Aliw Awards, she won Best Female Performance in a Concert and was nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the collaboration. Velasquez hosted the reality talent show Pinoy Pop Superstar, which began airing on GMA Network that July. In October 2004, she released "Forevermore", the lead single from her twelfth studio album Covers, Vol. 1. Its songs were originally recorded by Filipino male artists, and it was her most expensive cover album to produce due in part to the cost of securing licensing rights for songs by local songwriters, including Ariel Rivera's "Minsan Lang Kita Iibigan", Basil Valdez's "Say That You Love Me", and Nonoy Zuñiga's "Araw Gabi". The album has since been certified six times platinum.
Later in November and December 2005, Velasquez had an eight-day concert residency named Reflections at the Aliw Theater. The sequel album Covers, Vol. 2 was released in February 2006. Unlike its predecessor, it contains songs by foreign artists, including Alanis Morissette's "Head Over Feet", Blondie's "Call Me", and Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes". Manila Bulletin's Jojo Panaligan was generally impressed with Velasquez's "versatility" and the album tracks' "jazzy and blues-y interpretation". In October 2006, she performed a concert titled Twenty at the Araneta Coliseum, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act and Entertainer of the Year award at the 20th Aliw Awards. In 2007, she became co-host of the reality television show Celebrity Duets, an interactive music competition based on the eponymous original US show.
### 2008–2012: Low Key and professional hiatus
Velasquez developed other television projects in 2008. She appeared in Songbird, a weekly late-night musical television show that featured performances by musical guests. She also featured in the musical television special The Best of Me, which was filmed at her residence in Quezon City. Velasquez signed a deal with Universal Records and released an album titled Low Key in December 2008. The album consists of cover versions of international songs that she described as "more relaxed, laid-back and restrained". It includes tracks such as Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman", Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band", and Janis Ian's "At Seventeen". The Philippine Daily Inquirer praised the album's maturity and wrote, "[Velasquez] no longer shrieks and shouts as much as she used to". The album sold more than 25,000 copies within two months of its release and was certified platinum. In May 2009, she appeared on the television documentary Roots to Riches, which chronicles her personal and professional struggles, and includes musical performances filmed in her hometown of Malolos, Bulacan. Later that month, she hosted the television talent show Are You the Next Big Star?.
Velasquez's next album, a double CD set called Fantasy, was released in December 2010. The first disc is composed of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) recordings and the second includes covers of international singles such as Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach", Toronto's "What About Love", and the Eagles' "Love Will Keep Us Alive". The Philippine Daily Inquirer called the album "vocally sumptuous" and was generally impressed with Velasquez's vocals and range. Fantasy received a platinum certification and earned three nominations at the 3rd Star Awards for Music. After receiving the Magna Award at the Myx Music Awards 2011, and the confirmation of her pregnancy, Velasquez took a hiatus from public engagements. She returned to television on October 6, 2012, with Sarap Diva, a weekly lifestyle talk show. On November 16, Velasquez performed a concert titled Silver at the Mall of Asia Arena, which was cut short after she lost her voice due to a viral infection.
### 2013–2016: Silver Rewind and Hulog Ka Ng Langit
After Silver's cancellation, Velasquez restaged the concert on January 5, 2013. The concert received generally favorable reviews; Manila Bulletin's Jojo Panaligan called it a "redemption of reputation", while Dolly Anne Carvajal of the Philippine Daily Inquirer said Velasquez did not fail to make up for the initial cancellation of the show. The following month, she co-headlined in Foursome alongside Alcasid, Fernandez, and Nievera. For both shows, Velasquez received four nominations at the 5th Star Awards for Music, winning Best Female Major Concert Act for Silver and Concert of the Year for Foursome.
In November 2013, Velasquez's album Hulog Ka Ng Langit was released; it received a platinum certification for two-week sales of 15,000 copies. She won Best Inspirational Record for "Nathaniel (Gift of God)" and Best Christmas Recording for "Hele ni Inay" at the 27th Awit Awards, while Hulog Ka Ng Langit won Album Cover of the Year at the 6th Star Awards for Music. In 2014, she worked with Nievera in a one-night show titled Voices of Love, with Gloc-9 on "Takipsilim", and with Vice Ganda on "Push Mo Yan Teh".
In February 2015, Velasquez appeared alongside Nievera, Valenciano, and Lani Misalucha in a concert titled Ultimate at the Mall of Asia Arena. She received accolades at the 47th Box Office Entertainment Awards, 7th Star Awards for Music, and 5th Edukcircle Awards for the production. In the same year, Velasquez served as a judge on the sixth season of the reality talent television show StarStruck. In November 2015, Velasquez headlined a four-date concert residency called Regine at the Theater, which featured songs from musicals.
For a third consecutive year, Velasquez appeared in a co-headlining concert at the Mall of Asia Arena in February 2016. The two-night show, Royals, reunited her with Nievera and also features Angeline Quinto and Erik Santos. Due to the concert's positive critical reception, Velasquez won Best Female Concert Performer at the 48th Box Office Entertainment Awards and Most Influential Concert Performer of the Year at the 6th Edukcircle Awards. In December 2016, People Asia magazine included Velasquez on its annual People of the Year list.
### 2017–2020: R3.0 and television projects
Velasquez hosted Full House Tonight, which ran from February to May 2017. The following month, she announced that she had returned to Viva Records and that she had begun production of a new studio album called R3.0. In August 2017, a cover of Up Dharma Down's 2010 song "Tadhana" was released as a promotional single. An original track called "Hugot" was released as the album's lead single the following month. In November she headlined the R3.0 Concert at the Mall of Asia Arena, and two months later, with Alcasid, she played a four-date U.S. concert tour titled Mr. and Mrs. A.
Velasquez hosted the television talent show The Clash, which premiered on July 7, 2018. In October, she signed a network deal with ABS-CBN; her subsequent projects included serving as a judge on the Idol franchise series Idol Philippines, and hosting the musical variety show ASAP Natin' To. In partnership with the network, Velasquez staged a three-date concert series, titled Regine at the Movies, at the New Frontier Theater, which opened on November 17, 2018, to critical appraisal centering on Velasquez's vocals.
Sharon Cuneta and Velasquez co-headlined a concert, Iconic, at the Araneta Coliseum in October 2019. For the show, she received the awards for Best Collaboration in a Concert and Entertainer of the Year at the 32nd Aliw Awards, becoming one of the few performers to win the latter honor thrice. Velasquez and Moira Dela Torre released a single together, "Unbreakable", for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. She also contributed to the soundtracks of the spy-action thriller series The General's Daughter (2019) and the drama series Love Thy Woman (2020). Having signed with BYS Cosmetics, Velasquez became the Australian beauty brand's ambassador. She released the promotional single, "I Am Beautiful", for their print media advertising campaign. In February 2020, Velasquez worked with Sarah Geronimo on a joint concert titled Unified.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Velasquez organized virtual benefit concerts in support of relief efforts. She curated One Night with Regine on April 25, 2020, to benefit the Bantay Bata Foundation's COVID-19 response fund; the special raised million (US\$77,000). That June, she worked with Jollibee Foods Corporation and appeared in Joy From Home, which raised money in support of the brand's food aid program. In collaboration with Alcasid, Velasquez joined forces with PLDT, Inc. for its No Learner Left Behind fundraiser. The initiative raised more than million (US\$20,000) to help provide reliable internet access and distance learning tools to students in rural areas and from disadvantaged families.
### 2021–present: Freedom, Solo, and Reginified
Freedom was Velasquez's first livestream concert outside her benefit show ventures. Performed on February 28, 2021 at the ABS-CBN Studios, it was broadcast via four live streaming platforms. Velasquez said she crafted the virtual show because of her desire to perform material from a variety of music genres and step out of her comfort zone. Ticket sales grossed more than million (US\$20,000) within twelve hours after they were made available for purchase. Additional VIP tickets were sold because of high demand. Critics commended Freedom's intimate production and Velasquez's vocal performances. She featured on Davey Langit's single "Ipinagpanata Kita", released in August 2021. That year, she recorded the soundtrack themes for the drama series La Vida Lena and the action series Ang Probinsyano. At the 35th Awit Awards, Velasquez received the Best Song Written for Movie/TV/Stage Play award for her work on the latter.
Velasquez spent much of 2022 working on television projects. She returned as a judge for the second season of Idol Philippines, which premiered on June 25, 2022. After Karla Estrada's departure from the morning talk show Magandang Buhay, Velasquez was signed to the program as the former's replacement in August. That month, she appeared as a guest judge on the first season of Drag Race Philippines, a spin-off of RuPaul's Drag Race. At the 13th Star Awards for Music, Velasquez won Concert of the Year and was named Female Concert Performer of the Year for her work on Unified. Following its initial cancellation in May 2020, Velasquez and Cuneta embarked on a U.S. concert series for Iconic that year.
After a two-year hiatus from headlining a live event, Velasquez staged a four-date concert residency, entitled Solo, at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater from February 17–25, 2023. Playing mostly songs she has never performed before, Velasquez experimented with disco, funk, and chill-out music styles on it. Reviewers praised Velasquez's mature artistry and vocals. Two extra dates in April were added to the itinerary after the show concluded its initial run. Velasquez then reunited with Cuneta on a second U.S. leg of the Iconic tour in March 2023. On May 19, 2023, she released the single "Nag-iisa Lang", a ballad composed by Jonathan Manalo, and announced that it would be followed by her eighteenth studio album titled Reginified. A cover album, Velasquez previewed that it would feature songs she has performed live from previous concerts and televised appearances.
## Acting career
Velasquez made her cinema debut with a minor role in the 1988 comedy film The Untouchable Family. Its soundtrack includes her single "Urong Sulong". She continued to appear in a series of supporting roles in comedies, including Pik Pak Boom (1988) and Elvis and James 2 (1990).
Velasquez began working with composer Ryan Cayabyab in 1995 on the musical theater version of José Rizal's Noli Me Tángere, where she played the female lead, María Clara. Vic Del Rosario, head of Viva Entertainment's film production arm, saw Velasquez in one of her performances and offered her a starring role in a film. Her first leading role was a music teacher in the romantic comedy Wanted: Perfect Mother (1996). Nievera and Ocampo co-wrote the song "You Are My Song" for the film's soundtrack. Later in 1996, she starred alongside Donna Cruz and Mikee Cojuangco in the musical comedy Do Re Mi. Velasquez continued to play leading roles in romantic comedies, appearing in Honey Nasa Langit Na Ba Ako (1998) with Janno Gibbs and Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999) with Aga Muhlach. Her first television role came in 2000 in an episode of the IBC-13's weekly drama series Habang May Buhay as Piolo Pascual's cancer-stricken love interest.
A key point in Velasquez's film career came when she was cast in Joyce Bernal's Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) opposite Robin Padilla. Film critic Noel Vera criticized the film's formula as "the nth variation of Roman Holiday", but wrote that Velasquez "[brought] her own public persona and charisma and sense of humor to the role". Her next film role was in Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), which reunited her with Bernal and Muhlach. Vera was impressed with the film's direction and writing, and described Velasquez's performance as "sunny good nature [with a] light comic touch". Pangako Ikaw Lang became the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2001. Velasquez was awarded the Box Office Queen title at the 32nd Box Office Entertainment Awards due to the film's commercial performance.
Her next television appearance was in an episode of ABS-CBN's weekly drama series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2001), playing a woman with autism. The role won her the Best Actress award at the 16th Star Awards for Television. She portrayed a mundane and undesirable mail sorter in the drama Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002) opposite Richard Gomez, while Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003) reunited her with Christopher de Leon of Wanted: Perfect Mother, premiering at the Manila Film Festival in July 2003. In December, Velasquez next starred alongside Bong Revilla in the superhero film Captain Barbell.
Although Velasquez did not make any film appearances in 2004, she made her prime time television debut in the drama series Forever in My Heart, in which she was reunited with Gomez, and worked alongside Ariel Rivera. She next starred in romantic dramas, reuniting with Padilla in Till I Met You (2006) and with Pascual in Paano Kita Iibigin (2007). For the latter film, Velasquez received FAMAS and Luna nominations for Best Actress. In 2008 she returned to television, playing the titular character in the comedy series Ako si Kim Samsoon, an adaption of a South Korean television show. Velasquez also voiced the eponymous character in the animated film Urduja (2008).
During 2009, Velasquez made cameo appearances in the comedies Kimmy Dora, OMG (Oh, My Girl!), and Yaya and Angelina: The Spoiled Brat Movie. In March 2010, Velasquez appeared in the musical television series Diva as a facially disfigured ghost singer. The following year, she collaborated with Dingdong Dantes in the television series I Heart You, Pare! (2011). She left the show for health reasons and was replaced by Iza Calzado.
In the 2012 film Of All the Things, Velasquez worked with Bernal and Muhlach for the third time. Philbert Dy of ClickTheCity called the film a "tedious, unfocused mess that forces chemistry where none really exists". Despite the film's negative reviews, Velasquez's performance won the 10th Golden Screen award for Best Actress. She next starred in the independent film Mrs. Recto (2015), a comedy-drama set principally on Recto Avenue. She then portrayed a socialite who is stripped of her wealth in the television comedy series Poor Señorita (2016). Her only acting appearance in 2017 was a supporting role in Mulawin vs. Ravena, the sequel to the 2004 television series Mulawin.
Velasquez played a widow obsessed with a pop star in Nigel Santos' independent film Yours Truly, Shirley. The film premiered at the 2019 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. In January 2020, she briefly appeared in the iWant comedy series My Single Lady.
## Artistry
### Influences
As a child, Velasquez enjoyed listening to her father singing classic songs to lull her to sleep; she was drawn to traditional songs rather than nursery rhymes because of this routine. Since her childhood, Velasquez has considered Sharon Cuneta a role model and credits Cuneta as a key inspiration who led her to pursue a musical career.
Velasquez's music is influenced by artists such as Sheena Easton, Angela Bofill, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey in her early years. She admires Houston for her "style and R&B influence" and Carey's songwriting. On several occasions, Velasquez has cited Barbra Streisand as her main influence and musical inspiration, saying, "I look up to [Streisand] not just because of her enormous talent, but because of her fearlessness and dedication to excellence, her willingness to take risks and to be different." Streisand's music has frequently featured in Velasquez's repertoire throughout her career, including a series of concerts paying homage to Streisand, which Velasquez described as "a pleasure" to perform. Velasquez has also been influenced by many Filipino artists; early in her career, she cited Kuh Ledesma, Joey Albert, Gary Valenciano, Martin Nievera, and Pops Fernandez as her role models. She has also paid tribute to Filipino songwriters, including George Canseco, Rey Valera, Basil Valdez, Ryan Cayabyab, and Willy Cruz.
### Musical style and themes
Velasquez's early-career music includes elements of traditional OPM love songs. She described how she developed her musical style, saying, "I was only 16 and people didn't know what to do with me. When they want me to sing love songs, they had to explain to me what it meant because I didn't know the feeling yet." Her debut album Regine includes ballads and bubblegum pop love songs; its themes revolve around feelings of "excitement and uncertainty", as well as "missed chances and regrets". Elvin Luciano from CNN Philippines wrote: "During her [initial] phase, she proved that Filipino love songs don't have to come pre-packaged in the kundiman-rooted love ballad." Her later releases, including Nineteen 90 and Tagala Talaga, capitalized on her popularity; they are dominated by Filipino love songs. Velasquez began working with foreign songwriters while planning her first regional album Listen Without Prejudice, which according to AllMusic is "oriented towards easy-listening love songs with adventurous, contemporary touches". The album features tracks with syncopated backbeats and hip-hop influences.
During the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Velasquez's albums consisted primarily of cover versions of international material because of its commercial viability, and Filipinos' preference for American music. According to CNN Philippines, "Regine has a knack for choosing songs which at first, may not fit her, but eventually become her own." Many of her songs, particularly in Retro, Drawn, and R2K, contained R&B, soul, and hip-hop elements. Reigne is an OPM album that she described as "songs influenced by the music, artists, and genres that I enjoy listening to," and included tracks that are melancholic, sensual, and poetic. Her crossover to film saw significant use of contemporary love ballads in her catalog of soundtrack themes, describing the music as "straightforward, earnest, and lyrically simple".
### Voice and timbre
Velasquez is known for her use of vocal belting, and credits the vocal training she received from her father as a child:
> That was in Leyte. A long time ago. I must've been 7 years old. It didn't feel like training; [my father] didn't force me to do it. He just took us to the beach for a picnic. We lived near the ocean. While I was swimming, he would ask me to sing ... I think he got the idea from Rocky Marciano, the boxer. He read that Rocky practiced, shadow-boxed in the water. [In the ring] there's no pressure so it's easier ... but in the water, you have no choice but to punch harder. My Papa merely applied the same principle to singing.
Velasquez is a soprano and is often praised for her range and technical ability. Luciano of CNN Philippines complimented her "trademark and sometimes melismatic vocals" while Gonzales adds her singing is "strong, emotive, and confident". She has often been criticized, however, for the excessive use of belting and oversinging. Gonzales described Velasquez's timbre as "thin, unimpressive and unappealing at times", and said her singing is "aiming for a higher [note], [which] she did all too often". Velasquez said, "I don't mean to make any songs hard. It's just that when I'm on stage, with the adrenaline rush and all, you get excited. I do try to hold back [because] otherwise I'd be screaming the whole show, that's not good."
## Legacy and influence
Velasquez's vocal style and singing ability have significantly impacted Philippine popular and contemporary music. Critics have called her "Asia's songbird" and she is often cited as one of Filipino music's most influential artists. According to Allan Policarpio of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Regine needed only to open her mouth and that celebrated voice would come out. She could sing seated, lying down or hoisted up in the air with a harness—no problem. And even when she was so sick she couldn't speak, she could still sing." Velasquez has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in creating the "blue print" for becoming a "singing icon". Many critics complimented her work, often singling out Velasquez's influence. Luciano, writing for CNN Philippines, described her "legitimacy" as "enough to secure a space in pop culture" and said her musical career "continues to influence generations of OPM patrons and songbird wannabes up to this day", while according to The Philippine Star, "If one were to go by records and distinctions made, Regine Velasquez would win, hands down". She has often been regarded as a powerhouse for her performances and musical content.
Velasquez's use of vocal belting has been subject to scrutiny because young singers, including contestants on television talent shows, have imitated her singing technique. According to Nestor Torre Jr. of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "The popularity of 'birit' [belting] started here with the amateur singing contests ... Then came Regine Velasquez, who also launched her own singing career the 'birit' way ... Trouble is, Regine's belting became so popular that her successor[s] ... imitated her." Manila Bulletin said, "Most of our top selling new female singers are still and mere parrots of [Velasquez] in terms of vocal acrobatics and predilection to show off her high range". Media critic Boy Abunda wrote, "Most of the young female singers currently making waves in the industry are cut from the same biritera [belter] cloth as Regine Velasquez."
Filipino pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists Aicelle Santos, Charice, Erik Santos, Jona Viray, Julie Anne San Jose, KZ Tandingan, Kyla, Mark Bautista, Morissette, Toni Gonzaga, and Yeng Constantino—among others—have cited Velasquez as an influence.
Velasquez's music has broadly influenced a younger generation of performers from reality television talent shows; Sarah Geronimo has stated Velasquez made her realize the value of hard work while Rachelle Ann Go and Angeline Quinto have both said Velasquez inspired them during their early years as aspiring singers. American Idol finalists Ramiele Malubay, Thia Megia, and Jessica Sanchez have expressed a desire to emulate Velasquez.
Velasquez has also been credited for her work and performances with international artists, including 98 Degrees, Alicia Keys, Coco Lee, Peabo Bryson, and Stephen Bishop. French composer Michel Legrand described working with Velasquez, saying "It's tough to sing a song after Barbra Streisand, I will tell you. But to sing with Regine is, I'm in heaven. She sings so well, she has such an extraordinary technical voice ... sensitive voice and talented expression." American singer Brian McKnight who co-headlined a concert with Velasquez, has complimented her singing, stating; "I got to sing onstage with Regine and it was one of the best experiences ever because she's one of the best singers I've ever heard."
## Other activities
### Philanthropy
Velasquez has been involved with several charitable organizations. She became associated with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2001 and worked on a documentary titled Speak Your Mind, which is about homeless children in Payatas, Quezon City, one of the Philippines' largest open dumpsites. The program was nominated for the UNICEF Child Rights Award.
One of Velasquez's highest-profile benefit concert appearances was in One Night with Regine, which she performed at the National Museum of the Philippines in support of the Bantay Bata Foundation, a child welfare organization. In 2005, Velasquez appeared in an episode of the lifestyle talk show Mel and Joey, and donated proceeds from an auction of her gowns to the GMA Kapuso Foundation's Christmas Give-a-Gift project. In 2009, Velasquez headlined a benefit television special called After The Rain: A Hopeful Christmas in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy). In October 2010, she became an ambassador for Operation Smile, a nonprofit organization that provides cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children worldwide. She recorded the theme "S.M.I.L.E.", which was written for the project and appears on her studio album Fantasy. In November 2013, proceeds from the sales of her album Hulog Ka Ng Langit were donated to the Philippine Red Cross in support of the Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) relief.
### Product endorsements
Velasquez has worked on brand marketing initiatives for American fast food restaurant chains Wendy's and KFC. She has signed advertising deals with several other brands, including Digitel, Lux, Nestlé Philippines, Nokia, and Smart Communications. Throughout 2005, she appeared as the face of the Department of Tourism's travel promotion campaign. In August 2009, working with the clothing brand and retail network Bench, Velasquez released two perfumes for women, "Reigne" and "Songbird". In February 2020, she collaborated with beauty brand BYS and launched a line of makeup also called "Reigne". The perfume and makeup names are intentional plays on her name.
## Personal life
Velasquez announced her relationship with singer-songwriter Ogie Alcasid in an article published by Yes! magazine in June 2007. On August 8, 2010, the couple announced their engagement, and in December, they married in Nasugbu, Batangas. She gave birth to their son, Nathaniel James, via caesarean section on November 8, 2011.
Velasquez is a born-again Christian. In March 2016, she revealed she had suffered a miscarriage prior to her marriage to Alcasid and stated it was her reason for converting. Velasquez also said she had been attending Victory Christian Fellowship.
## Awards and recognition
Throughout her career, Velasquez has received many honors and awards, including MTV Asia's Favorite Artist Philippines in 2002 and 2003, and the Aliw Awards' Entertainer of the Year in 2007, 2009, and 2019. She has been the recipient of lifetime achievement awards, including the Awit Awards' Dangal ng Musikang Pilipino, the Star Awards for Music's Pilita Corrales Lifetime Achievement and Natatanging Alagad Ng Musika, FAMAS Awards' Golden Artist, and Myx Music's Magna Award.
Velasquez has sold more than seven million records in the Philippines and 1.5 million in Asia, making her the biggest-selling Filipino artist of all time. Eight of her albums have each sold over 200,000 copies. She was ranked first in Female Network's 2011 countdown of the "Top 25 Best Filipina Singers" and was included in Top 10 Asia magazine's list of "Ten Most Admired Female Singers in Asia". Velasquez has also received recognition for her work in television and film, such as the Box Office Queen award in 2002, the Star Awards for Television's Best Actress in 2002, and the Golden Screen Awards' Best Actress in 2013. She has received a total of 22 Awit Awards, 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, 16 Aliw Awards, and 14 Star Awards for Music. In December 2007, Velasquez was honored with a star on the Philippines' Walk of Fame.
## Discography
- Regine (1987)
- Nineteen '90 (1990)
- Tagala Talaga (1991)
- Reason Enough (1993)
- Listen Without Prejudice (1994)
- My Love Emotion (1995)
- Retro (1996)
- Drawn (1998)
- R2K (1999)
- Reigne (2001)
- Covers, Vol. 1 (2004)
- Covers, Vol. 2 (2006)
- Low Key (2008)
- Fantasy (2010)
- Hulog Ka Ng Langit (2013)
- R3.0 (2017)
## Filmography
- Wanted Perfect Mother (1996)
- Do Re Mi (1996)
- Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999)
- Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000)
- Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001)
- Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002)
- Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003)
- Till I Met You (2006)
- Paano Kita Iibigin (2007)
- Of All the Things (2012)
- Mrs. Recto (2015)
- Yours Truly, Shirley (2019)
## Concerts
Headlining concerts
- Narito Ako! (1990)
- In Season (1991)
- Music and Me (1993)
- Isang Pasasalamat (1996)
- Retro (1997)
- Drawn (1998)
- R2K: The Concert (2000)
- Songbird Sings the Classics (2001)
- R-15 (2001)
- One Night with Regine (2002)
- Reigning Still (2004)
- Twenty (2006)
- Silver (2013)
- R3.0 (2017)
- Freedom (2021)
Co-headlining concerts
- Power of Two (with Kuh Ledesma) (1996)
- Celebration of Love (with Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne) (2000)
- Independent Women (with Jaya) (2001)
- Two for the Knight (with Brian McKnight) (2002)
- Songbird Sings Legrand (with Michel Legrand) (2003)
- Martin & Regine: The World Concert Tour (with Martin Nievera) (2003)
- The Songbird & The Songwriter (with Ogie Alcasid) (2004)
- Queens on Fire (with Pops Fernandez) (2005)
- Iconic (with Sharon Cuneta) (2019)
- Unified (with Sarah Geronimo) (2020)
Concert residencies
- Regine at the Movies (2001; 2018)
- Songbird Sings (2002)
- Songbird Sings Streisand (2003)
- Reflections (2005)
- Ang Ating Musika (2007)
- Regine at the Theater (2015)
- Solo (2023)
## See also
- List of best-selling albums in the Philippines
- List of Filipino singers
- List of Filipino actresses
- Music of the Philippines
- Philippine Association of the Record Industry
|
240,989 |
Yao Ming
| 1,173,701,879 |
Chinese basketball player (born 1980)
|
[
"1980 births",
"2002 FIBA World Championship players",
"2006 FIBA World Championship players",
"Asian Games medalists in basketball",
"Asian Games silver medalists for China",
"Basketball players at the 2000 Summer Olympics",
"Basketball players at the 2002 Asian Games",
"Basketball players at the 2004 Summer Olympics",
"Basketball players at the 2008 Summer Olympics",
"Basketball players from Shanghai",
"Centers (basketball)",
"Chinese Basketball Association executives",
"Chinese expatriate basketball people in the United States",
"Chinese men's basketball players",
"Chinese philanthropists",
"Houston Rockets draft picks",
"Houston Rockets players",
"Laureus World Sports Awards winners",
"Living people",
"Medalists at the 2002 Asian Games",
"Members of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference",
"Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees",
"National Basketball Association All-Stars",
"National Basketball Association first-overall draft picks",
"National Basketball Association players from China",
"Olympic basketball players for China",
"Shanghai Jiao Tong University alumni",
"Shanghai Sharks players"
] |
Yao Ming (Chinese: 姚明; born September 12, 1980) is a Chinese basketball executive and former professional player. He played for the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) and the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Yao was selected to start for the Western Conference in the NBA All-Star Game eight times, and was named to the All-NBA Team five times. During his final season, he was the tallest active player in the NBA, at .
Yao, who was born in Shanghai, started playing for the Sharks as a teenager, and played on their senior team for five years in the CBA, winning a championship in his final year. After negotiating with the CBA and the Sharks to secure his release, Yao was selected by the Rockets as the first overall pick in the 2002 NBA draft. He reached the NBA playoffs four times, and the Rockets won the first-round series in the 2009 postseason, their first playoff series victory since 1997. In July 2011, Yao announced his retirement from professional basketball because of a series of foot and ankle injuries which forced him to miss 250 games in his last six seasons. In eight seasons with the Rockets, Yao ranks sixth among franchise leaders in total points and total rebounds, and second in total blocks.
Yao is one of China's best-known athletes, with sponsorships with several major companies. His rookie year in the NBA was the subject of a documentary film, The Year of the Yao, and he co-wrote, along with NBA analyst Ric Bucher, an autobiography titled Yao: A Life in Two Worlds. Known in China as the "Yao Ming Phenomenon" and in the United States as the "Ming Dynasty", Yao's success in the NBA, and his popularity among fans, made him a symbol of a new China that was both more modern and more confident.
In April 2016, Yao was elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame, alongside Shaquille O'Neal and Allen Iverson. In February 2017, Yao was unanimously elected as chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association.
## Early life
Yao is the only child of 6-foot-7-inch (2.01 m) Yao Zhiyuan and 6-foot-3-inch (1.91 m) Fang Fengdi, both of whom were former professional basketball players. At 11 pounds (5.0 kg), Yao weighed more than twice as much as the average Chinese newborn. When Yao was nine years old, he began playing basketball and attended a junior sports school. The following year, Yao measured 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) and was examined by sports doctors, who predicted he would grow to 7 feet 3 inches (2.21 m).
## Professional career
### Shanghai Sharks (1997–2002)
Yao first tried out for the Shanghai Sharks junior team of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) when he was 13 years old, and practiced ten hours a day for his acceptance. After playing with the junior team for four years, Yao joined the senior team of the Sharks, where he averaged 10 points and 8 rebounds a game in his rookie season. His next season was cut short when he broke his foot for the second time in his career, which Yao said decreased his jumping ability by four to six inches (10 to 15 cm). The Sharks made the finals of the CBA in Yao's third season and again the next year, but lost both times to the Bayi Rockets. When Wang Zhizhi left the Bayi Rockets to become the first NBA player from China the following year, the Sharks finally won their first CBA championship. During the playoffs in his final year with Shanghai, Yao averaged 38.9 points and 20.2 rebounds a game, while shooting 76.6% from the field, and made all 21 of his shots during one game in the finals.
### Houston Rockets (2002–2011)
Yao was pressured to enter the NBA draft in 1999 by Li Yaomin, the deputy general manager of the Shanghai Sharks. Li also influenced Yao to sign a contract for Evergreen Sports Inc. to serve as his agent. The agreement entitled Evergreen to 33% of Yao's earnings, but the contract was later determined to be invalid.
As American attention on Yao grew, Chinese authorities also took interest. In 2002, the Chinese government released new regulations that would require him and other Chinese players to turn over half of any NBA earnings to the government and China's national basketball association, including endorsements as well as salaries.
When Yao decided to enter the 2002 NBA draft, a group of advisers was formed that came to be known as "Team Yao". The team consisted of Yao's negotiator, Erik Zhang; his NBA agent, Bill Duffy; his Chinese agent, Lu Hao; University of Chicago economics professor John Huizinga; and the vice president for marketing at BDA Sports Management, Bill Sanders. Yao was widely predicted to be picked number one overall. However, some teams were concerned about Yao's NBA eligibility because of uncertainty over whether the CBA would let Yao play in the United States.
Shortly after Wang Zhizhi refused to return to China to play for the national team and was subsequently banned from playing for China, the CBA stipulated that Yao would have to return to play for the national team. They also said they would not let him go to the United States unless the Houston Rockets would take him first overall. After assurances from Team Yao that the Rockets would draft Yao with their number one pick, the CBA gave permission on the morning of the draft for Yao to play in the U.S. When the Rockets selected Yao with the first pick of the draft, he became the first international player ever to be selected first overall without having previously played U.S. college basketball.
#### Beginning years (2002–2005)
Yao did not participate in the Rockets' pre-season training camp, instead playing for China in the 2002 FIBA World Championships. Before the season, several commentators, including Bill Simmons and Dick Vitale, predicted that Yao would fail in the NBA, and Charles Barkley said he would "kiss Kenny Smith's ass" if Yao scored more than 19 points in one of his rookie-season games. Yao played his first NBA game against the Indiana Pacers, scoring no points and grabbing two rebounds, and scored his first NBA basket against the Denver Nuggets. In his first seven games, he averaged only 14 minutes and 4 points, but on November 17, he scored 20 points on a perfect 9-of-9 from the field and 2-of-2 from the free-throw line against the Lakers. Barkley made good on his bet by kissing the buttock of a donkey purchased by Smith for the occasion (Smith's "ass").
In Yao's first game in Miami on December 16, 2002, the Heat passed out 8,000 fortune cookies, an East Asian cultural stereotype. Yao was not angry with the promotion because he was not familiar with American stereotypes of Chinese. In an earlier interview in 2000, Yao said he had never seen a fortune cookie in China and guessed it must have been an American invention.
Before Yao's first meeting with Shaquille O'Neal on January 17, 2003, O'Neal said, "Tell Yao Ming, ching chong-yang-wah-ah-soh", prompting accusations of racism. O'Neal denied that his comments were racist, and said he was only joking. Yao also said he believed O'Neal was joking, but he said a lot of Asians would not see the humor. In the game, Yao scored the Rockets' first six points of the game and blocked O'Neal twice in the opening minutes as well as altering two other shots by O'Neal, all 4 of those attempts coming right at the rim, and made a game-sealing dunk with 10 seconds left in overtime. Yao finished with 10 points, 10 rebounds, and 6 blocks; O'Neal recorded 31 points, 13 rebounds, and 0 blocks. O'Neal later expressed regret for the way he treated Yao early in his career.
The NBA began offering All-Star ballots in three languages—English, Spanish and Chinese—for fan voting of the starters for the 2003 NBA All-Star Game. Yao was voted to start for the West over O'Neal, who was coming off three consecutive NBA Finals MVP Awards. Yao received nearly a quarter million more votes than O'Neal, and he became the first rookie to start in the All-Star Game since Grant Hill in 1995.
Yao finished his rookie season averaging 13.5 points and 8.2 rebounds per game, and was second in the NBA Rookie of the Year Award voting to Amar'e Stoudemire, and a unanimous pick for the NBA All-Rookie First Team selection. He was also voted the Sporting News Rookie of the Year, and won the Laureus Newcomer of the Year award.
Before the start of Yao's sophomore season, Rockets' head coach Rudy Tomjanovich resigned because of health issues, and long-time New York Knicks head coach Jeff Van Gundy was brought in. After Van Gundy began focusing the offense on Yao, Yao averaged career highs in points and rebounds for the season, and had a career-high 41 points and 7 assists in a triple-overtime win against the Atlanta Hawks in February 2004. He was also voted to be the starting center for the Western Conference in the 2004 NBA All-Star Game for the second straight year. Yao finished the season averaging 17.5 points and 9.0 rebounds a game. The Rockets made the playoffs for the first time in Yao's career, claiming the seventh seed in the Western Conference. In the first round, however, the Los Angeles Lakers eliminated Houston in five games. Yao averaged 15.0 points and 7.4 rebounds in his first playoff series.
In the summer of 2004, the Rockets acquired Tracy McGrady from the Orlando Magic in a seven-player trade that also sent Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley to Orlando. Although Yao said that Francis and Mobley had "helped [him] in every way [his] first two seasons", he added, "I'm excited about playing with Tracy McGrady. He can do some amazing things." After the trade, it was predicted that the Rockets would be title contenders. Both McGrady and Yao were voted to start in the 2005 NBA All-Star Game, and Yao broke the record previously held by Michael Jordan for most All-Star votes, with 2,558,278 total votes. The Rockets won 51 games and finished fifth in the West, and made the playoffs for the second consecutive year, where they faced the Dallas Mavericks. The Rockets won the first two games in Dallas, and Yao made 13 of 14 shots in the second game, the best shooting performance in the playoffs in Rockets history. However, the Rockets lost four of their last five games and lost Game 7 by 40 points, the largest Game 7 deficit in NBA history. Yao's final averages for the series were 21.4 points on 65% shooting and 7.7 rebounds.
#### Career highs and injury plagued seasons (2005–2011)
After missing only two games out of 246 in his first three years of NBA play, Yao endured an extended period on the inactive list in his fourth season after developing osteomyelitis in the big toe on his left foot, and surgery was performed on the toe on December 18, 2005. Despite missing 21 games while recovering, Yao again had the most fan votes to start the 2006 NBA All-Star Game.
In 25 games after the All-Star break, Yao averaged 25.7 points and 11.6 rebounds per game, while shooting 53.7% from the field and 87.8% at the free-throw line. His final averages in 57 games were 22.3 points and 10.2 rebounds per game. It was the first time that he ended the season with a so-called "20/10" average. However, Tracy McGrady played only 47 games in the season, missing time because of back spasms. Yao and McGrady played only 31 games together, and the Rockets did not make the playoffs, winning only 34 games. With only four games left in the season, Yao suffered another injury in a game against the Utah Jazz on April 10, 2006, which left him with a broken bone in his left foot. The injury required six months of rest.
Early into his fifth season, Yao was injured again, this time breaking his right knee on December 23, 2006, while attempting to block a shot. Up to that point he had been averaging 26.8 points, 9.7 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game, and had been mentioned as an MVP candidate. Yao was unable to play in what would have been his fifth All-Star game; he was medically cleared to play on March 4, 2007, after missing 32 games.
Despite Yao's absence, the Rockets made the playoffs with the home court advantage against the Utah Jazz in the first round. The Rockets won the first two games, but then lost four of five games and were eliminated in Game 7 at home; Yao scored 29 points—15 in the fourth quarter. Although he averaged 25.1 points and 10.3 rebounds for the series, Yao said afterwards "I didn't do my job". At the end of the season, Yao was selected to the All-NBA Second Team for the first time in his career, after being selected to the All-NBA Third Team twice.
On May 18, 2007, only weeks after the Rockets were eliminated from the playoffs, Jeff Van Gundy was dismissed as head coach. Three days later, the Rockets signed former Sacramento Kings coach Rick Adelman, who was thought to focus more on offense than the defensive-minded Van Gundy.
On November 9, 2007, Yao played against fellow Chinese NBA and Milwaukee Bucks player Yi Jianlian for the first time. The game, which the Rockets won 104–88, was broadcast on 19 networks in China, and was watched by over 200 million people in China alone, making it one of the most-watched NBA games in history. In the 2008 NBA All-Star Game, Yao was once again voted to start at center for the Western Conference. Before the All-Star weekend, the Rockets had won eight straight games, and after the break, they took their win streak to 12 games. On February 26, 2008, however, it was reported that Yao would miss the rest of the season with a stress fracture in his left foot. He missed the 2008 NBA playoffs, but he did not miss the 2008 Summer Olympics at Beijing, China in August. After Yao's injury, the Rockets stretched their winning streak to 22 games, at the time the second-longest such streak in NBA history. Yao underwent a successful operation on March 3, which placed screws in his foot to strengthen the bone, and recovery time was estimated at four months. Yao's final averages in 55 games were 22.0 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 2.0 blocks a game.
The next season, Yao played 77 games, his first full season since the 2004–05 season, and averaged 19.7 points and 9.9 rebounds, while shooting 54.8% from the field, and a career-high 86.6% from the free throw line. Despite McGrady suffering a season-ending injury in February, the Rockets finished with 53 wins and the fifth seed in the Western Conference. Facing the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round, Yao finished with 24 points on 9-of-9 shooting in the first game, and the Rockets won 108–81, in Portland. The Rockets won all their games in Houston, and advanced to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 1997, and the first time in Yao's career.
The Rockets faced the Lakers in the second round, and Yao scored 28 points, with 8 points in the final four minutes, to lead the Rockets to a 100–92 win in Los Angeles. However, the Rockets lost their next two games, and Yao was diagnosed with a sprained ankle after Game 3. A follow-up test revealed a hairline fracture in his left foot, and he was ruled out for the remainder of the playoffs. In reaction, Yao said the injury, which did not require surgery, was "better than last year". However, follow-up analysis indicated that the injury could be career threatening. The Yao-less Rockets went on to win Game 4 against the Lakers to even the series 2–2. The Rockets eventually lost the series in seven games.
In July 2009, Yao discussed the injury with his doctors, and the Rockets applied for a disabled player exception, an exception to the NBA salary cap which grants the injured player's team money to sign a free agent. The Rockets were granted the exception, and used approximately \$5.7 million on free agent Trevor Ariza. After weeks of consulting, it was decided that Yao would undergo surgery in order to repair the broken bone in his left foot. He did not play the entire 2009–10 season.
For the 2010–11 season, the Rockets said they would limit Yao to 24 minutes a game, with no plan to play him on back-to-back nights. Their goal was to keep Yao healthy in the long term. On December 16, 2010, it was announced that Yao had developed a stress fracture in his left ankle, related to an older injury, and would miss the rest of the season. In January 2011, he was voted as the Western Conference starting center for the 2011 All-Star Game for the eighth time in nine seasons. Injured All-Stars are usually required to attend the All-Star functions and to be introduced at the game, but Yao was not in Los Angeles because of his rehabilitation schedule after his surgery. Yao's contract with the Rockets expired at the end of the season, and he became a free agent.
### Retirement
On July 20, 2011, Yao announced his retirement from basketball in a press conference in Shanghai. He cited injuries to his foot and ankle, including the third fracture to his left foot sustained near the end of 2010. His retirement sparked over 1.2 million comments on the Chinese social-networking site Sina Weibo. Reacting to Yao's retirement, NBA commissioner David Stern said Yao was a "bridge between Chinese and American fans" and that he had "a wonderful mixture of talent, dedication, humanitarian aspirations and a sense of humor." Shaquille O'Neal said Yao "was very agile. He could play inside, he could play outside, and if he didn't have those injuries he could've been up there in the top five centers to ever play the game."
Yao was nominated by a member of the Chinese media for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor to the game. He would have been eligible for induction as early as 2012, but Yao felt it was too soon and requested that the Hall of Fame delay consideration of the nomination. The Hall granted Yao's request, and said it was Yao's decision when the process would be restarted.
On September 9, 2016, Yao was inducted into the Hall of Fame along with 4-time NBA champion Shaquille O'Neal and Allen Iverson. Continuing with the honors, on February 3, 2017, Yao's Number 11 jersey was retired by the Houston Rockets.
## National team career
### 2000 and 2004 Olympics
Yao first played for China in the 2000 Summer Olympics, and he was dubbed, together with 7 ft (2.1 m) teammates Wang Zhizhi and Mengke Bateer, "the Walking Great Wall". During the 2004 Athens Olympics, Yao carried the Chinese flag during the opening ceremony, which he said was a "long dream come true". He then vowed to abstain from shaving his beard for half a year unless the Chinese national team made it into the quarter-finals of the 2004 Olympics. After Yao scored 39 points in a win against New Zealand, China lost 58–83, 57–82, and 52–89 against Spain, Argentina and Italy respectively. In the final group game, however, a 67–66 win over the reigning 2002 FIBA World Champions Serbia and Montenegro moved them into the quarterfinals. Yao scored 27 points and had 13 rebounds, and he hit two free throws with 28 seconds left that proved to be the winning margin. He averaged 20.7 points and 9.3 rebounds per game while shooting 55.9% from the field.
### Asian Cup
Yao led the Chinese national team to three consecutive FIBA Asia Cup gold medals, winning the 2001 FIBA Asian Championship, the 2003 FIBA Asian Championship, and the 2005 FIBA Asian Championship. He was also named the MVP of all three tournaments.
### 2006 World Championship
Yao's injury at the end of the 2005–06 NBA season required a full six months of rest, threatening his participation in the 2006 FIBA World Championship. However, he recovered before the start of the tournament, and in the last game of the preliminary round, he had 36 points and 10 rebounds in a win against Slovenia to lead China into the Round of 16. In the first knockout round, however, China was defeated by eventual finalist Greece. Yao's final averages were 25.3 points, the most in the tournament, and 9.0 rebounds a game, which was fourth overall.
### 2008 Olympics
After having surgery to repair his fractured foot, Yao stated if he could not play in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, "It would be the biggest loss in my career to right now." He returned to play with the Chinese national team on July 17, 2008. On August 6, Yao carried the Olympic flame into Tiananmen Square, as part of the Olympic torch relay. He also carried the Chinese flag and led his country's delegation during the opening ceremony. Yao scored the first basket of the game, a three-pointer, in China's opening 2008 Olympics Basketball Tournament game against the eventual gold medal-winning United States.
"I was just really happy to make that shot", Yao said after the Americans' 101–70 victory. "It was the first score in our Olympic campaign here at home and I'll always remember it. It represents that we can keep our heads up in the face of really tough odds."
Following an overtime defeat to Spain, Yao scored 30 points in a win over Angola, and 25 points in a three-point win against Germany, which clinched China's place in the quarterfinals. However, China lost to Lithuania in the quarterfinals by 26 points, eliminating them from the tournament. Yao's 19 points a game were the second-highest in the Olympics, and his averages of 8.2 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game were third overall.
## Career statistics
### CBA statistics
### NBA statistics
#### Regular season
\|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2002–03 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \|82\|\|72\|\|29.0\|\|.498\|\|.500\|\|.811\|\|8.2\|\|1.7\|\|.4\|\|1.8\|\|13.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2003–04 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \|82\|\|82\|\|32.8\|\|.522\|\|.000\|\|.809\|\|9.0\|\|1.5\|\|.3\|\|1.9\|\|17.5 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2004–05 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 80\|\|80\|\|30.6\|\|.552\|\|.000\|\|.783\|\|8.4\|\|.8\|\|.4\|\|2.0\|\|18.3 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2005–06 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 57\|\|57\|\|34.2\|\|.519\|\|.000\|\|.853\|\|10.2\|\|1.5\|\|.5\|\|1.6\|\|22.3 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2006–07 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 48\|\|48\|\|33.8\|\|.516\|\|.000\|\|.862\|\|9.4\|\|2.0\|\|.4\|\|2.0\|\|25.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2007–08 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 55\|\|55\|\|37.2\|\|.507\|\|.000\|\|.850\|\|10.8\|\|2.3\|\|.5\|\|2.0\|\|22.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2008–09 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 77\|\|77\|\|33.6\|\|.548\|\|1.000\|\|.866\|\|9.9\|\|1.8\|\|.4\|\|1.9\|\|19.7 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2010–11 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 5\|\|5\|\|18.2\|\|.486\|\|.000\|\|.938\|\|5.4\|\|.8\|\|.0\|\|1.6\|\|10.2 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan=2\| Career \| 486\|\|476\|\|32.5\|\|.524\|\|.200\|\|.833\|\|9.2\|\|1.6\|\|.4\|\|1.9\|\|19.0 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan=2\| All-Star \| 6\|\|6\|\|17.0\|\|.500\|\|.000\|\|.667\|\|4.0\|\|1.3\|\|.2\|\|.3\|\|7.0
#### Playoffs
\|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2004 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 5\|\|5\|\|37.0\|\|.456\|\|.000\|\|.765\|\|7.4\|\|1.8\|\|.4\|\|1.4\|\|15.0 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2005 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 7\|\|7\|\|31.4\|\|.655\|\|.000\|\|.727\|\|7.7\|\|.7\|\|.3\|\|2.7\|\|21.4 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2007 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 7\|\|7\|\|37.1\|\|.440\|\|.000\|\|.880\|\|10.3\|\|.9\|\|.1\|\|.7\|\|25.1 \|- \| style="text-align:left;"\| 2009 \| style="text-align:left;"\| Houston \| 9\|\|9\|\|35.9\|\|.545\|\|.000\|\|.902\|\|10.9\|\|1.0\|\|.4\|\|1.2\|\|17.1 \|- class="sortbottom" \| style="text-align:center;" colspan=2\| Career \| 28\|\|28\|\|35.3\|\|.519\|\|.000\|\|.833\|\|9.3\|\|1.0\|\|.3\|\|1.5\|\|19.8
## Awards and achievements
- Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame: Class of 2016
- 8× NBA All-Star: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011
- 5× All-NBA Team:
\* Second Team: 2007, 2009
\* Third Team: 2004, 2006, 2008
- NBA All-Rookie First Team: 2003
- NBA Rookie All-Star Game: 2004
- Gold medal winner with Team China at the 2001, 2003, and 2005 FIBA Asia Cups
- MVP of the 2001, 2003, 2005 FIBA Asia Cups
- FIBA Diamond Ball Top Scorer: 2004
- All-Tournament Team, FIBA World Cup: 2002
- Chinese Basketball Association Champion: 2001–02
- Rebounding leader in CBA in 2001–02
- 2003 Sporting News Rookie of the Year
- 2003 Laureus Newcomer of the Year
- 2005 Proletarian Award, issued by the Chinese Communist Party
## Personal life
After Yao announced that he would enter the 2002 NBA draft, he told one American journalist that he had been studying English for two years, and that he liked the movie Star Wars but disliked hip hop. He was sometimes accompanied during interviews in Shanghai by one of his parents, whose basketball careers were derailed by the 1966–76 Cultural Revolution, and who came to his Shanghai Sharks games on bicycles.
Yao met Chinese female basketball player Ye Li when he was 17 years old. Ye was not fond of Yao at first, but finally accepted him after he gave her the team pins he had collected during the 2000 Summer Olympics. She is the only woman he has ever dated. Their relationship became public when they appeared together during the 2004 Olympics closing ceremony. On August 6, 2007, Yao and Ye married in a ceremony attended by close friends and family and closed to the media. On May 21, 2010, the couple's daughter Yao Qinlei (whose English name is Amy) was born in Houston, Texas.
In 2004, Yao co-wrote an autobiography with ESPN sportswriter Ric Bucher, entitled Yao: A Life in Two Worlds. In the same year, he was also the subject of a documentary film, The Year of the Yao, which focuses on his NBA rookie year. The film is narrated by his friend and interpreter, Colin Pine. In 2005, former Newsweek writer Brook Larmer published a book entitled Operation Yao Ming, in which he said that Yao's parents were convinced to marry each other so that they would produce a dominant athlete, and that during Yao's childhood, he was given special treatment to help him become a great basketball player. In a 2015 AMA post on Reddit, Yao stated that this was not true and that he started playing basketball for fun at age 9. In 2009, Yao provided the voice for a character of a Chinese animated film, The Magic Aster, released on June 19.
Yao enrolled at the Antai College of Economics & Management of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2011. He took a tailored degree program with mostly one-on-one lectures to avoid being a distraction on campus. Yao completed his studies in July 2018, graduating with a degree in economics after 7 years of study.
In 2016, Yao opened a winery called Yao Family Wines in Napa Valley, California, which serves Cabernet Sauvignon blends and "the kind of rich-but-balanced luxury reds he'd come to enjoy in Houston steakhouses." American wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr. of The Wine Advocate gave Yao's wine a ranking of 96 points and wrote: "I am aware of all the arguments that major celebrities lending their names to wines is generally a formula for mediocrity, but... the two Cabernets are actually brilliant, and the reserve bottling ranks alongside just about anything made in Napa."
## Other activities
### Commercial engagements
Yao is one of China's most recognizable athletes, along with Liu Xiang. As of 2009, he had led Forbes' Chinese celebrities list in income and popularity for six straight years, earning US\$51 million (CN¥357 million) in 2008. A major part of his income comes from his sponsorship deals, as he is under contract with several major companies to endorse their products. He was signed by Nike until the end of his rookie season. When Nike decided not to renew his contract, he signed with Reebok. He also had a deal with Pepsi, and he successfully sued Coca-Cola in 2003 when they used his image on their bottles while promoting the national team. He eventually signed with Coca-Cola for the 2008 Olympics. His other deals include partnerships with Visa, Apple, Garmin, and McDonald's.
On July 16, 2009, Yao bought his former club team, the Shanghai Sharks, which were on the verge of not being able to play the next season of the Chinese Basketball Association because of financial troubles.
### Philanthropy
Yao has also participated in many charity events during his career, including the NBA's Basketball Without Borders program. In the NBA's offseason in 2003, Yao hosted a telethon, which raised US\$300,000 to help stop the spread of SARS. In September 2007, he held an auction that raised US\$965,000 (CN¥6.75 million), and competed in a charity basketball match to raise money for underprivileged children in China. He was joined by fellow NBA stars Steve Nash, Carmelo Anthony, and Baron Davis, and Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan. After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Yao donated \$2 million to relief work and created the Yao Ming Foundation to help rebuild schools destroyed in the earthquake.
Yao has also been a dedicated supporter of Special Olympics. He serves as Global Ambassador and member of the International Board of Directors.
### Conservation work
Yao partnered with WildAid to appear in commercials and documentaries to educate citizens on the harmful effects of shark fin soup on shark species. From 2011 to 2018, consumption of shark fin soup dropped by 70% in China. In August 2012, Yao started filming a documentary about the northern white rhinoceros. He is also an ambassador for elephant conservation. In 2014, he was also part of the documentary The End of the Wild about elephant conservation. Yao has filmed a number of public service announcements for elephant and rhino conservation for the "Say No" campaign with partners African Wildlife Foundation and WildAid.
### Politics
On March 3, 2013, Yao attended the First Session of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference as one of its 2,200 members. He was a member of the CPPCC from 2013 to 2018. While he is involved in Chinese politics, he is not a member of the Chinese Communist Party, although he has been awarded the Proletarian Award by the party for his spreading of literacy and socialist ideologies.
## Internet meme
Yao Ming's cartoonized laughing face has been used as a reaction face since the end of August 2010. It's commonly called "bitch please." Based on a 2009 photograph of Yao laughing during a sport interview with another teammate, Ron Artest.
## See also
- List of celebrities who own wineries and vineyards
- List of tallest players in National Basketball Association history
|
26,869,583 |
Relief of Douglas MacArthur
| 1,171,912,764 |
U.S. President Truman's dismissal of Gen. MacArthur, 1951
|
[
"1951 in the United States",
"April 1951 events in the United States",
"Article Two of the United States Constitution",
"Civil–military relations",
"Douglas MacArthur",
"Military history of the United States during the Korean War",
"Presidency of Harry S. Truman",
"Terminations of public office by individual",
"United States in the Korean War"
] |
On 11 April 1951, U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements that contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who was then commander of United Nations Command forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil–military relations.
MacArthur led the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, and after the war was in charge of the occupation of Japan. In the latter role, MacArthur was able to accumulate considerable power over the civil administration of Japan. Eventually, he gained a level of political experience that was unprecedented and not to be repeated by anyone else actively serving as a flag officer in the U.S. military.
When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, starting the Korean War, MacArthur was designated commander of the United Nations forces defending South Korea. He conceived and executed the amphibious assault at Inchon on 15 September 1950, for which he was hailed as a military genius. However, when he followed up his victory with a full-scale invasion of North Korea on Truman's orders, China intervened in the war and inflicted a series of defeats, compelling him to withdraw from North Korea. By April 1951, the military situation had stabilized, but MacArthur continued to publicly criticize his superiors and attempt to escalate the conflict, leading Truman to relieve MacArthur of his commands. The Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate held a joint inquiry into the military situation and the circumstances surrounding MacArthur's relief, and concluded that "the removal of General MacArthur was within the constitutional powers of the President but the circumstances were a shock to national pride".
An apolitical military was an American tradition, but one that was difficult to uphold in an era when American forces were employed overseas in large numbers. The principle of civilian control of the military was also ingrained, but the rising complexity of military technology led to the creation of a professional military. This made civilian control increasingly problematic when coupled with the constitutional division of powers between the president as commander-in-chief, and Congress with its power to raise armies, maintain a navy, and declare war. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the president's role as preeminent.
## Background
### Harry Truman
Harry S. Truman became president of the United States on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, and won an unexpected victory in the 1948 presidential election. He was the only president who served after 1897 without a college degree. Although not highly educated, Truman was well read. When his high school friends went off to the state university in 1901, he enrolled in a local business school, but only lasted a semester. He later took night courses at the Kansas City Law School, but dropped out. Truman attempted to gain admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point, but was rejected for his poor eyesight. He was proud of his military service in the artillery during World War I, and continued to hold a reserve commission, eventually achieving the rank of colonel.
Instead of professional soldiers, Truman selected two National Guardsmen, Harry H. Vaughan and Louis H. Renfrow, as his military aides. Truman once remarked that he did not understand how the US Army could "produce men such as Robert E. Lee, John J. Pershing, Eisenhower, and Bradley and at the same time produce Custers, Pattons, and MacArthur".
During the 1949 Revolt of the Admirals, several naval officers publicly disagreed with the administration's policy over cuts to naval aviation and amphibious warfare capability, resulting in the relief of the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Louis Denfeld, and his replacement by Admiral Forrest Sherman. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee investigation into the affair in October 1949, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Bradley, doubted that there would ever be another large-scale amphibious operation.
### Douglas MacArthur
In stature and seniority, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was the Army's foremost general. The son of Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., a recipient of the Medal of Honor for action during the American Civil War, he had graduated at the top of his West Point class of 1903, but never attended an advanced service school except for the engineer course in 1908. He had a distinguished combat record in World War I, and had served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1930 to 1935, working closely with Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, despite occasional clashes over the military budget. He would later compare Roosevelt's "extraordinary self-control" with Truman's "violent temper and paroxysms of ungovernable rage".
Apart from his World War I-era service in Mexico and Europe, his overseas postings had been in Asia and the Pacific. During World War II, he had become a national hero and had been awarded the Medal of Honor for the unsuccessful defense of the Philippines in the Battle of Bataan. He had commanded the Allied armies in the New Guinea Campaign and Philippines Campaign, fulfilling his famous promise to return to the Philippines. In 1944 and 1948, he had been considered a possible Republican candidate for president. After the war, as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, he had overseen the occupation of Japan and played an important part in the post-war political and social transformation of that country.
By 1950, the occupation of Japan was winding down, but MacArthur remained in the country as Commander-in-Chief Far East, a post to which he had been appointed by Truman in 1945. MacArthur had to deal with deep cuts in the defense budget that saw his troop numbers decline from 300,000 in 1947 to 142,000 in 1948. Despite his protests, further reductions followed and, by June 1950, there were only 108,000 troops in his Far East Command. Cuts in funds and personnel produced shortages of serviceable equipment. Of the Far East Command's 18,000 jeeps, 10,000 were unserviceable; of its 13,780 2+1⁄2-ton 6x6 trucks, only 4,441 were serviceable. On the positive side, Far East Command initiated a program of reclaiming and refurbishing war materiel from abandoned stocks throughout the Pacific. This had not only recovered a great deal of valuable stores and equipment, it had also generated a useful repair and rebuilding industry in Japan. Meanwhile, the shift away from occupation duties had permitted a greater focus on training for combat.
## Events leading up to the relief
### Korean War
North Korea invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950, starting the Korean War. In response to an urgent request from the Korean Military Advisory Group for more ammunition, MacArthur, on his own initiative, ordered the transport ship MSTS Sgt. George D Keathley, then in harbor in Yokohama, to be loaded with ammunition and to sail for Pusan. President Truman met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other advisors that day at Blair House and approved the actions already taken by MacArthur and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. At another meeting at Blair House held on the evening of 26 June, amid reports of a rapidly deteriorating situation in South Korea, Truman approved the use of air and naval forces against military targets south of the 38th parallel north.
Subsequently, on 27 June, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 83, which recommended that "members of the United Nations furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in the area". The South Korean capital of Seoul fell on 28 June. The next day, Truman authorized air and naval operations north of the 38th parallel, which MacArthur had already ordered. However it was not until 30 June, following a sobering report on the military situation from MacArthur, that Truman finally authorized the use of ground forces.
On 8 July, on the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Truman appointed MacArthur as commander of United Nations Command in South Korea. He remained Commander-in-Chief Far East and Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. MacArthur was forced to commit his forces in Japan to what he later described as a "desperate rearguard action". In July, Truman sent the Chief of Staff of the Army, General J. Lawton Collins, and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, to report on the situation. They met with MacArthur and his chief of staff, Major General Edward Almond, in Tokyo on 13 July. MacArthur impressed on them the danger of underestimating the North Koreans, whom he characterized as "well-equipped, well-led, and battle-trained, and which have at times out-numbered our troops by as much as twenty to one". He proposed to first halt the North Korean advance and then counterattack, enveloping the North Koreans with an amphibious operation, but the timing was dependent on the arrival of reinforcements from the United States.
Bradley raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Korea at a Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting on 9 July 1950 at Eisenhower's instigation, but there was no support for the idea. The Army staff sent a cable to Collins in Tokyo suggesting that he seek out MacArthur's opinion. In a teleconference on 13 July, Major General Charles L. Bolte proposed sending nuclear weapons. MacArthur had already turned down Air Force proposals to fire bomb North Korean cities, and suggested that atomic bombs could be used to isolate North Korea by taking out bridges and tunnels. The Army staff considered this impractical. On 28 July, the Joint Chiefs decided to send ten nuclear-capable B-29 bombers of the 9th Bombardment Wing to Guam as a deterrent to Chinese action against Taiwan. Truman publicly denied that he was considering the use of nuclear weapons in Korea, but authorized the transfer to Guam of atomic bombs without their fissile cores. The deployment did not go well; one of the bombers crashed on takeoff from Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base in California on 5 August, killing the mission commander, Brigadier General Robert F. Travis, and 18 others. The remaining nine bombers remained in Guam until 13 September, when they returned to the United States. The bomb assemblies stayed behind.
At a press conference on 13 July, Truman was asked if United States forces would cross the 38th parallel into North Korea, and he replied that he would "make that decision when it becomes necessary to do it". Some of his advisors, including Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, Dean Rusk, and the Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs, John M. Allison, argued that Security Council Resolution 83 provided a legal basis for the invasion of North Korea. Others, such as George F. Kennan and Paul Nitze, disagreed. Along with the legality, the administration also had to consider the danger of intervention by the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China if United Nations forces approached their borders.
### Battle of Inchon
MacArthur's early ambitions for an amphibious operation against North Korea had to be shelved due to the deteriorating situation in the south, which compelled him to commit the formation earmarked for the assault, the 1st Cavalry Division, to the defence of the Pusan Perimeter, to which the Eighth Army retreated in August. MacArthur then resumed his planning for an amphibious operation, which he tentatively scheduled for 15 September 1950. Navy and Marine Corps officers like Rear Admiral James H. Doyle, the commander of Amphibious Group One, and Major General Oliver P. Smith, the commander of the 1st Marine Division, were appalled by the proposed landing beaches at Inchon, which featured huge tides, broad mudflats, narrow and treacherous channels, and high seawalls. Omar Bradley called it "the worst possible place ever selected for an amphibious landing". Although the Inchon-Seoul area was a key communications center, the risks of the landing were daunting. Collins and Sherman flew to Tokyo to be briefed on the plans by MacArthur, who declared: "We shall land at Inchon, and I shall crush them."
MacArthur was invited to speak at the 51st National Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Chicago on 26 August 1950. He declined the invitation, but instead sent a statement that could be read out aloud, in which he contradicted Truman's policy towards the island of Formosa, saying: "Nothing could be more fallacious than the threadbare argument by those who advocate appeasement and defeatism in the Pacific that if we defend Formosa we alienate continental Asia." Truman was infuriated by the word "appeasement," and discussed the possibility of relieving MacArthur with Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson. Johnson responded that MacArthur was "one of the greatest, if not the greatest generals of our generation". Truman told Johnson to send MacArthur an order withdrawing his statement, which he did; but it had already been read into Congressional Record. As it turned out, it was not MacArthur who was relieved, but Johnson. Truman had become irritated with Johnson's conflict with Secretary of State Acheson, and although he had said that Johnson would remain his Secretary of Defense for "as long as I am President," he asked Johnson for his resignation. Publicly, Johnson received much of the blame for the defense cuts that had led to the lack of preparedness and consequent early defeats in Korea. He was replaced by General of the Army George Marshall.
MacArthur held that his military objective was the destruction of the North Korean Army. That being the case, operations would be necessary north of the 38th parallel, although his Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, Major General Charles A. Willoughby, warned on 31 August that 37 Chinese divisions were grouping on the border between China and North Korea. The Joint Chiefs agreed with MacArthur on this issue. A National Security Council paper endorsed the legality of action north of the 38th parallel. The paper recommended that only South Korean troops be employed in the border regions with China and Russia. Should the Soviet Union intervene, MacArthur was to immediately retreat to the 38th parallel; but in the case of Chinese intervention, he was to keep fighting "as long as action by UN military forces offers a reasonable chance of successful resistance". Truman endorsed the report on 11 September, but MacArthur remained in the dark because of the changeover of Secretaries of Defense, and was not informed until 22 September. When Truman was asked at a press conference on 21 September whether he had concluded to conduct operations in North Korea, he replied that he had not.
In the meantime, MacArthur's amphibious assault at Inchon went ahead on 15 September. "The success of Inchon was so great and the subsequent prestige of General MacArthur was so overpowering," Collins later recalled, "that the Chiefs hesitated thereafter to question later plans and decisions of the general, which should have been challenged." In response to a rumor that the Eighth Army planned to halt at the 38th parallel and await United Nations authorization to cross, Marshall sent a message to MacArthur informing him that: "We want you to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of 38th parallel. Announcement above referred to may precipitate embarrassment in the UN where evident desire is not to be confronted with necessity of a vote on passage, rather to find you have found it militarily necessary to do so." A few days later, MacArthur was instructed not to issue an announcement that his forces had crossed the 38th parallel. On 7 October a United Nations General Assembly Resolution was passed that could be broadly construed as permitting the invasion of North Korea.
### Wake Island Conference
With the 1950 mid-term elections drawing near, and Truman abstaining from overt campaigning while the troops were fighting in Korea, members of Truman's staff, most notably George Elsey, came up with another way to garner votes for the Democratic Party. In July 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt had traveled to Hawaii to meet with MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. At this meeting, Roosevelt made the decision to attack the Philippines in the final year of the Pacific war. It was a political triumph in an election year, refuting Republican claims that Roosevelt fixated on Europe at the expense of the Pacific.
Truman emulated this by flying to the Pacific to meet MacArthur. Initially, Truman was unenthusiastic about the idea, as he disliked publicity stunts, but in October 1950, in the wake of the victories at Pusan and Inchon, MacArthur's star was burning bright. By meeting with him, Truman could emphasize his own part in the victories, as Commander-in-Chief. A message was sent to MacArthur suggesting a meeting on Hawaii or Wake Island. MacArthur replied that he "would be delighted to meet the President on the morning of the 15th at Wake Island". When MacArthur discovered that the President would be bringing the news media with him, MacArthur asked if he could bring correspondents from Tokyo. His request was denied.
Truman arrived at Wake Island on 15 October, where he was greeted on the tarmac by MacArthur, who had arrived the day before. MacArthur shook hands with the President rather than salute, and declined an offer to stay for lunch with the President, which Bradley considered "insulting". This did not bother Truman; what did annoy the President, a former haberdasher, was MacArthur's "greasy ham and eggs cap that evidently had been in use for twenty years". The meeting, which had no agenda and no structure, took the form of a free-wheeling discussion between the President and his advisors on one hand, and MacArthur and the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, Admiral Arthur Radford, on the other. Topics discussed included Formosa, the Philippines and the wars in Vietnam and Korea. MacArthur noted that "No new policies, no new strategy of war or international politics, were proposed or discussed." Robert Sherrod, who was present as a correspondent, felt that he "had witnessed nothing but a political grandstand play".
MacArthur did say things that would later be used against him. When asked by the President about the odds of Soviet or Chinese intervention in Korea, MacArthur replied:
> Very little. Had they interfered in the first or second months it would have been decisive. We are no longer fearful of their intervention. We no longer stand hat in hand. The Chinese have 300,000 men in Manchuria. Of these probably not more than 100–115,000 are distributed along the Yalu River. Only 50–60,000 could be gotten across the Yalu River. They have no Air Force. Now that we have bases for our Air Force in Korea if the Chinese tried to get down to Pyongyang there would be the greatest slaughter.
MacArthur expressed the hope that the Eighth Army could withdraw to Japan by the end of the year. When Bradley asked if a division could be sent to Europe, MacArthur replied that he could make one available in January. In fact, Chinese troops had already begun crossing the Yalu into North Korea, and by November 180,000 had done so.
### Chinese intervention
When he returned from Wake, MacArthur faced the challenge of turning his promises into reality. On 24 October, he ordered his principal subordinates, Lieutenant General Walton Walker, the commander of the Eighth Army, and Major General Edward Almond of X Corps, to "drive forward with all speed and full utilization of all their force". He also lifted the prohibition on troops other than South Koreans operating along the borders with China and the Soviet Union. Collins considered this a violation of the orders that the Joint Chiefs had issued on 27 September, but MacArthur pointed out that it was only, in the words of the original directive, "a matter of policy". He added that the matter had been raised at Wake Island, but no one else recalled this, particularly not Truman, who, unaware of these discussions, told reporters on 26 October that Koreans and not Americans would occupy the border areas. Within days, MacArthur's forces had encountered the Chinese in the Battle of Onjong and the Battle of Unsan.
Truman did not relieve MacArthur for the military reverses in Korea in November and December 1950. Truman later stated that he felt that MacArthur was no more to blame than General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower was for the military reverses he had suffered during the Battle of the Bulge. But this did not mean that it did not factor into his decision. "I considered him a great strategist," Truman later recalled, "until he made the march into North Korea without the knowledge that he should have had of the Chinese coming in."
In an attempt to slow the Chinese advance, MacArthur ordered the bridges across the Yalu to be bombed. After due consultation with his advisers, Truman declared that he would not approve of such an action, and the Joint Chiefs cancelled the order. When MacArthur protested, the President and the Joint Chiefs authorized the bombings, subject to the caveat that Chinese air space not be violated. Major General Emmett O'Donnell would later cite this to the Congressional inquiry into MacArthur's relief as an example of undue political interference in military operations. The Yalu River had many bends, and in some cases there were very restricted lines of approach without overflying the Yalu. This made life easier for the Communist antiaircraft gunners, but correspondingly less so for the aircrew. Within weeks, MacArthur was forced to retreat, and both Truman and MacArthur were forced to contemplate the prospect of abandoning Korea entirely.
### Nuclear weapons
At a press conference on 30 November 1950, Truman was asked about the use of nuclear weapons:
> Q. Mr. President, I wonder if we could retrace that reference to the atom bomb? Did we understand you clearly that the use of the atomic bomb is under active consideration?
> Truman: Always has been. It is one of our weapons.
> Q. Does that mean, Mr. President, use against military objectives, or civilian—
> Truman: It's a matter that the military people will have to decide. I'm not a military authority that passes on those things.
> Q. Mr. President, perhaps it would be better if we are allowed to quote your remarks on that directly?
> Truman: I don't think—I don't think that is necessary.
> Q. Mr. President, you said this depends on United Nations action. Does that mean that we wouldn't use the atomic bomb except on a United Nations authorization?
> Truman: No, it doesn't mean that at all. The action against Communist China depends on the action of the United Nations. The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has.
The implication was that the authority to use atomic weapons now rested in the hands of MacArthur. Truman's White House issued a clarification, noting that "only the President can authorize the use of the atom bomb, and no such authorization has been given," yet the comment still caused a domestic and international stir. Truman had touched upon one of the most sensitive issues in civil-military relations in the post-World War II period: civilian control of nuclear weapons, which was enshrined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.
On 9 December 1950, MacArthur requested field commander's discretion to employ nuclear weapons; he testified that such an employment would only be used to prevent an ultimate fallback, not to recover the situation in Korea. On 24 December 1950, while responding to a formal request from the Pentagon, specifically Major General Charles L. Bolte, about a hypothetical question regarding which targets should be bombed with atomic weapons if the Soviets got directly involved in the Korean War or if the Chinese military sent bombers to bomb UN forces in Korea and Japan from mainland China, MacArthur submitted a list of "retardation targets" in Korea, Manchuria and other parts of China, for which 34 atomic bombs would be required. In June 1950, Louis Johnson released a study on the potential uses of radioactive agents. According to Major General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur considered the possibility of using radioactive wastes to seal off North Korea in December 1950, but he never submitted this to the Joint Chiefs. After his dismissal, Congressman Albert Gore Sr. put a similar proposal to Truman. In January 1951, MacArthur refused to entertain proposals for the forward deployment of nuclear weapons. On a similar note, showing MacArthur directly rejecting the use of weapons of mass destruction when he had the power to answer a subordinate, in January 1951 he immediately rejected Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway's urgent request to use chemical weapons on Chinese and North Korean soldiers. Though MacArthur made many statements regarding nuclear weapons after 1951, there has never been evidence, like memos or transcriptions of meetings, provided by anyone that MacArthur ever requested to use nuclear weapons or tried to push Truman or other Pentagon officials to use them during the Korean War while he was the UN Commander.
In early April 1951, the Joint Chiefs became alarmed by the build up of Soviet forces in the Far East, particularly bombers and submarines. On 5 April 1951, they drafted orders for MacArthur authorizing attacks on Manchuria and the Shantung Peninsula if the Chinese launched airstrikes against his forces originating from there. The next day Truman met with the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Gordon Dean, and arranged for the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear bombs to military control. Dean was apprehensive about delegating the decision on how they should be used to MacArthur, who lacked expert technical knowledge of the weapons and their effects. The Joint Chiefs were not entirely comfortable about giving them to MacArthur either, for fear that he might prematurely carry out his orders. Instead, they decided that the nuclear strike force would report to the Strategic Air Command (SAC). This time the bombers deployed with the fissile cores. SAC did not intend to attack air bases and depots; the bombers would target industrial cities in North Korea and China. Deployments of SAC bombers to Guam continued until the end of the war.
There has been debate whether MacArthur advocated the employment of nuclear weapons, including over whether his submission to the Joint Chiefs of Staff was tantamount to a recommendation. In the 21st century, the U.S. government declassified the full December 1950 messages between Major General Charles L. Bolte and MacArthur that MacArthur was responding to. The first message by Bolte, a formal request which was classified for over fifty years, asked MacArthur which specific sites in China and Korea do UN forces need to use atomic bombs on to neutralize the threat if there was a major escalation of the war by the Soviets or Chinese. MacArthur's famous answer with the dozens of nuclear weapons was actually the second message and he was simply answering the Pentagon's hypothetical question with one of the pre-determined nuclear targets lists that was already studied and created by the War/Defense Department in the 1940s. In his testimony before the Senate Inquiry, he stated that he had not recommended their use. In 1960, MacArthur challenged a statement by Truman that he had wanted to use nuclear weapons, saying that "atomic bombing in the Korean War was never discussed either by my headquarters or in any communication to or from Washington"; Truman, admitting that he did not have documentation of any such claim, said that he was merely providing his personal opinion. In interview with Jim G. Lucas and Bob Considine on 25 January 1954, posthumously published in 1964, MacArthur said,
> Of all the campaigns of my life, 20 major ones to be exact, [Korea was] the one I felt most sure of was the one I was deprived of waging. I could have won the war in Korea in a maximum of 10 days.... I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs on his air bases and other depots strung across the neck of Manchuria.... It was my plan as our amphibious forces moved south to spread behind us—from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea—a belt of radioactive cobalt. It could have been spread from wagons, carts, trucks and planes.... For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the north. The enemy could not have marched across that radiated belt.
In 1985 Richard Nixon recalled discussing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with MacArthur:
> MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy the bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants... MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off, which I think speaks well of him.
### Foreign pressure
The British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, was particularly disturbed by Truman's gaffe about nuclear weapons, and sought to revive the wartime Quebec Agreement, under which the United States would not use nuclear weapons without Britain's consent. The British were concerned that the United States was drifting into a war with China. In a visit to the United States in December 1950, Attlee raised the fears of the British and other European governments that "General MacArthur was running the show". As MacArthur's views about the importance of Asia in world affairs were well known, it was feared that the United States would shift its focus away from Europe. In this instance, MacArthur was defended by Bradley, whose anglophobia dated back to World War II.
The British became alarmed in January 1951 when the Americans began talking of evacuating Korea. The British argued that to maintain European faith and unity it was vital to maintain some presence in Korea, even if it was nothing more than a toehold in the Pusan area. Once again, Bradley defended MacArthur, but it was clear that he had become an irritant in the relationship between the two countries. The alliance with Britain itself was unpopular in Congress. House Minority Leader Joseph William Martin, Jr. slammed Truman for following Attlee's Britain to "slavery to government and crippling debt".
### Public statements
On 1 December 1950, MacArthur was asked by a reporter if the restrictions on operations against Chinese forces on the far side of the Yalu River were "a handicap to effective military operations". He replied that they were indeed "an enormous handicap, unprecedented in military history". On 6 December, Truman issued a directive requiring all military officers and diplomatic officials to clear with the State Department all but routine statements before making them public, "and...refrain from direct communications on military or foreign policy with newspapers, magazines, and other publicity media". Major General Courtney Whitney gave MacArthur a legal opinion that this applied "solely to formal public statements and not to communiqués, correspondence or personal conversations". MacArthur made similar remarks in press statements on 13 February and 7 March 1951.
In February and March 1951, the tide of war began to turn again, and MacArthur's forces drove north. Seoul, which had fallen on 4 January, was recaptured on 17 March. This raised hopes in Washington that the Chinese and North Koreans might be amenable to a ceasefire agreement, and Truman prepared a statement to this effect. MacArthur was informed of it by the Joint Chiefs on 20 March, and he warned the new commander of the Eighth Army, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, that political constraints might soon impose limits on his proposed operations. On 23 March, MacArthur issued a communiqué about offering a ceasefire to the Chinese:
> Of even greater significance than our tactical successes has been the clear revelation that this new enemy, Red China, of such exaggerated and vaunted military power, lacks the industrial capability to provide adequately many critical items necessary to the conduct of modern war. He lacks the manufacturing base and those raw materials needed to produce, maintain and operate even moderate air and naval power, and he cannot provide the essentials for successful ground operations, such as tanks, heavy artillery and other refinements science has introduced into the conduct of military campaigns. Formerly his great numerical potential might well have filled this gap but with the development of existing methods of mass destruction numbers alone do not offset the vulnerability inherent in such deficiencies. Control of the seas and the air, which in turn means control over supplies, communications and transportation, are no less essential and decisive now than in the past. When this control exists, as in our case, and is coupled with an inferiority of ground firepower in the enemy's case, the resulting disparity is such that it cannot be overcome by bravery, however fanatical, or the most gross indifference to human loss.
>
> These military weaknesses have been clearly and definitely revealed since Red China entered upon its undeclared war in Korea. Even under the inhibitions which now restrict the activity of the United Nations forces and the corresponding military advantages which accrue to Red China, it has been shown its complete inability to accomplish by force of arms the conquest of Korea. The enemy, therefore must by now be painfully aware that a decision of the United Nations to depart from its tolerant effort to contain the war to the area of Korea, through an expansion of our military operations to its coastal areas and interior bases, would doom Red China to the risk of imminent military collapse. These basic facts being established, there should be no insuperable difficulty in arriving at decisions on the Korean problem if the issues are resolved on their own merits, without being burdened by extraneous matters not directly related to Korea, such as Formosa or China's seat in the United Nations.
The next day, MacArthur authorized Ridgway to advance up to 20 miles (32 km) north of the 38th Parallel. Truman would later report that "I was ready to kick him into the North China Sea...I was never so put out in my life." Truman felt that MacArthur's communiqué, which had not been cleared in accordance with the December directive, had pre-empted his own proposal. He later wrote:
> This was a most extraordinary statement for a military commander of the United Nations to issue on his own responsibility. It was an act totally disregarding all directives to abstain from any declarations on foreign policy. It was in open defiance of my orders as President and as Commander-in-Chief. This was a challenge to the authority of the President under the Constitution. It also flouted the policy of the United Nations. By this act MacArthur left me no choice—I could no longer tolerate his insubordination.
For the moment, however, he did. There had been dramatic confrontations over policy before, the most notable of which was between President Abraham Lincoln and Major General George McClellan, in 1862. Another example was President James Polk's recall of Major General Winfield Scott after the Mexican–American War. Before relieving MacArthur, Truman consulted history books on how Lincoln and Polk dealt with their generals. Truman later said that Polk was his favorite president because "he had the courage to tell Congress to go to Hell on foreign policy matters".
There were genuine differences of opinion over policy between MacArthur and the Truman administration. One was MacArthur's deep-seated belief that it was not possible to separate the struggle against Communism in Europe from that going on in Asia. This was seen as the result of being stationed for too many years in East Asia, and of his perspective as a theater commander responsible only for part of the Far East. Another important policy difference was MacArthur's belief that China was not, as Acheson maintained, "the Soviet Union's largest and most important satellite," but an independent state with its own agenda that, in MacArthur's words, "for its own purposes is [just temporarily] allied with Soviet Russia". If MacArthur's thesis was accepted, then it followed that expanding the war with China would not provoke a conflict with the Soviet Union. The Joint Chiefs emphatically disagreed, although this contradicted their position that it was Europe and not Asia that was the prime concern of the Soviet Union. Even among Republicans, there was little support for MacArthur's position.
On 5 April, Martin read the text of a letter he had received from MacArthur, dated 20 March, criticizing the Truman administration's priorities on the floor of the House. In it, MacArthur had written:
> It seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest, and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the battlefield; that here we fight Europe's war with arms while the diplomatic there still fight it with words; that if we lose the war to communism in Asia the fall of Europe is inevitable; win it and Europe most probably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom. As you pointed out, we must win. There is no substitute for victory.
MacArthur later wrote that Martin had released the letter "for some unexplained reason and without consulting me", but it had not been marked as being confidential or off the record.
### Diplomatic dispatch intercepts
The practice of intercepting and decrypting diplomatic messages of friend and foe alike was a closely held secret in the 1950s. In mid-March 1951, Truman learned through such intercepts that MacArthur had conversations with diplomats in Spain's and Portugal's Tokyo embassies. In these talks, MacArthur had expressed confidence that he would succeed in expanding the Korean War into a major conflict resulting in the permanent disposal of the "Chinese Communist question" and MacArthur did not want either country to be alarmed if this happened. The content of this particular intercept was known by only a very few of Truman's closest advisers, two being Paul Nitze, Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, and his associate, Charles Burton Marshall. Truman considered MacArthur's conversations outright treachery and concluded that MacArthur had to be relieved but was unable to act immediately because of MacArthur's political support and to avoid broader knowledge of the existence of the electronic intercepts of diplomatic messages. Several weeks earlier, MacArthur had recommended to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he be authorized to retaliate immediately against targets on the Chinese mainland in the event of Chinese Communist air or sea attacks against Formosa (now Taiwan) or United States forces outside Korea. The Joint Chiefs responded by granting qualified approval.
### Provoking China
Ridgway had prepared an offensive known as Operation Rugged, and pressed MacArthur for permission to launch it. On 15 March 1951, the day after Seoul had been recaptured a second time, Truman had responded to a reporter's question about whether UN forces would again be allowed to move north of the 38th Parallel by saying that it would be "a tactical matter for the field commander". MacArthur thereupon gave Ridgway permission to launch his attack, setting an objective line north of the 38th Parallel that would secure Seoul's water supply. He did so without consulting with Washington until after the attack began on 5 April 1951. It was making steady progress when MacArthur was relieved on 11 April.
Following the completion of flight operations the evening of 7 April 1951, Task Force 77, the Seventh Fleet's fast carrier task force, with the carriers USS Boxer and USS Philippine Sea, departed Korean waters in the Sea of Japan bound for the Straits of Formosa. At 11:00 on 11 April, Task Force 77 operating near the west coast of Taiwan, commenced an "aerial parade" along the east coast of mainland China. Concurrently, the destroyer USS John A. Bole arrived at its assigned station 3 miles (4.8 km) offshore from the Chinese seaport of Swatow (Shantou), provoking the Chinese to surround it with an armada of over 40 armed powered junks. Although Task Force 77 was conducting its aerial parade over the horizon to the west, nearly two hours passed before aircraft from the task force appeared over Swatow and made threatening passes at the Chinese vessels and the port city. MacArthur officially received notification of his dismissal shortly after 15:00 Tokyo time (14:00 on the China coast), although he had found out about it half an hour before. Two hours later, the Bole retired from its station without hostile action being initiated by either side. Author James Edwin Alexander expressed the opinion that the Bole and its crew were made "sitting ducks" by MacArthur trying to provoke the Chinese into attacking a U.S. warship in an attempt to expand the conflict. Rear Admiral Samuel J. Cox, director of the Naval History and Heritage Command, stated that although some historians like Alexander had circumstantial evidence that this was a provocation plot by MacArthur, there is no direct evidence to prove that claim. Cox said it was also possible that the ship was on an intelligence mission to directly observe the junk ships because for over a month the U.S. military was greatly worried about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan after witnessing an unusually large armada of junk boats, which would potentially be the invasion fleet, gathering together on the Chinese coast opposite of Taiwan.
## Relief
On the morning of 6 April 1951, Truman held a meeting in his office with Marshall, Bradley, Acheson, and Harriman to discuss what would be done about MacArthur. Harriman was emphatically in favor of MacArthur's relief, but Bradley opposed it. George Marshall asked for more time to consider the matter. Acheson was personally in favor of relieving MacArthur but did not disclose this. Instead, he warned Truman that it would be "the biggest fight of your administration". At a second meeting the next day, Marshall and Bradley continued to oppose relief. On 8 April, the Joint Chiefs met with Marshall in his office. Each of the chiefs in turn expressed the opinion that MacArthur's relief was desirable from a "military point of view," but they recognized that military considerations were not paramount. They were concerned that "if MacArthur were not relieved, a large segment of our people would charge that civil authorities no longer controlled the military". The four advisers met with Truman in his office again on 9 April. Bradley informed the president of the views of the Joint Chiefs, and Marshall added that he agreed with them. Truman wrote in his diary that "it is of unanimous opinion of all that MacArthur be relieved. All four so advise." Later, before Congress, the Joint Chiefs would insist that they had only "concurred" with the relief, not "recommended" it.
On 11 April 1951, President Truman drafted an order to MacArthur, which was issued under Bradley's signature:
> I deeply regret that it becomes my duty as President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States military forces to replace you as Supreme Commander, Allied Powers; Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command; Commander-in-Chief, Far East; and Commanding General, U.S. Army, Far East.
>
> You will turn over your commands, effective at once, to Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway. You are authorized to have issued such orders as are necessary to complete desired travel to such place as you select.
>
> My reasons for your replacement, will be made public concurrently with the delivery to you of the foregoing order, and are contained in the next following message.
In a 1973 article from Time magazine, Truman was quoted as saying in the early 1960s:
> I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.
Although Truman and Acheson accused MacArthur of insubordination, the Joint Chiefs avoided any suggestion of this. MacArthur was not, in fact, relieved for insubordination. Insubordination was a military offense, and MacArthur could have requested a public court martial similar to that of Billy Mitchell in the 1920s. The outcome of such a trial was uncertain, and it might well have found him not guilty and ordered his reinstatement. The Joint Chiefs agreed that there was "little evidence that General MacArthur had ever failed to carry out a direct order of the Joint Chiefs, or acted in opposition to an order". "In point of fact," Bradley insisted, "MacArthur had stretched but not legally violated any JCS directives. He had violated the President's 6 December directive, relayed to him by the JCS, but this did not constitute violation of a JCS order."
The intention was that MacArthur would be personally notified of his relief by Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, who was touring the front in Korea, at 20:00 on 11 April (Washington, D.C. time), which was 10:00 on 12 April (Tokyo time). However, Pace did not receive the message due to a signals failure in Korea. Meanwhile, reporters began asking if rumors of MacArthur's relief were true. Truman then "decided that we could not afford the courtesy of Secretary Pace's personal delivery of the order," and called a press conference at which he issued his statement to the press:
> With deep regret I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States Government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties. In view of the specific responsibilities imposed upon me by the Constitution of the United States and the added responsibility which has been entrusted to me by the United Nations, I have decided that I must make a change of command in the Far East. I have, therefore, relieved General MacArthur of his commands and have designated Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway as his successor.
>
> Full and vigorous debate on matters of national policy is a vital element in the constitutional system of our free democracy. It is fundamental, however, that military commanders must be governed by the policies and directives issued to them in the manner provided by our laws and Constitution. In time of crisis, this consideration is particularly compelling.
>
> General MacArthur's place in history as one of our greatest commanders is fully established. The Nation owes him a debt of gratitude for the distinguished and exceptional service which he has rendered his country in posts of great responsibility. For that reason I repeat my regret at the necessity for the action I feel compelled to take in his case.
In Tokyo, MacArthur and his wife were at a luncheon at the American embassy for Senator Warren Magnuson and William Stern, executive vice president of Northwest Airlines, when Colonel Sidney Huff, MacArthur's aide and one of the "Bataan gang" who had escaped from Corregidor with the general in 1942, heard about the relief from commercial radio broadcast. Huff promptly informed Mrs. MacArthur, who in turn told the general. Japanese radio stations soon picked up the story, but the official notice would not arrive for another half hour.
## Issues
### Civilian control of the military
Civilian control of the military is an American tradition dating back to the founding of the republic. In his 1965 memoirs, Truman wrote:
> If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military. Policies are to be made by the elected political officials, not by generals or admirals. Yet time and again General MacArthur had shown that he was unwilling to accept the policies of the administration. By his repeated public statements he was not only confusing our allies as to the true course of our policies but, in fact, was also setting his policy against the President's... If I allowed him to defy the civil authorities in this manner, I myself would be violating my oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Following the relief, most of the avalanche of mail and messages sent to the White House by the public supported MacArthur. On issues like character, integrity, honor and service, they rated MacArthur as the better man. What support Truman garnered was largely based on the principle of civilian control.
According to Samuel P. Huntington, "The United States Constitution... despite widespread belief to the contrary, does not provide for civilian control." He asserted that it draws no distinction between civil and military responsibilities, and provides for no subordination of the one to the other. By dividing responsibility for the military between the executive and the legislature, it makes control more difficult. Any attempt by one branch to assert control would likely involve a clash with the other. Debates nominally about civilian control were usually, in practice, about which branch would exercise control rather than how control would be exercised.
The framers of the constitution did not consider the issue of the management of a distinct and technically sophisticated military profession because no such thing existed at the time. It appeared in the 19th century as a result of social changes brought about by the French Revolution, and technological changes wrought by the industrial revolution. Nonetheless, the value of a regular military was still recognized. Although they acknowledged that the militia was essential to intercept escaped slaves and put down slave rebellions, they were aware that the American Revolutionary War had demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the militia as a military force.
### Apolitical military
Another American tradition is that of an apolitical military, although this custom was of more recent origin, dating back only to the period after the American Civil War. Few officers voted in the 19th century, but not so much from a lack of interest in politics as because frequently moving from state to state and living on Federal land effectively disenfranchised them under the laws of many states and/or made it impractical for them to vote at a time when casting a ballot in person on Election Day was the only way to vote. It was only under General of the Army William T. Sherman, the Commanding General of the United States Army from 1869 to 1883, who hated politics, that the custom of an apolitical military became firmly established.
Nor, unlike their European counterparts, did American generals and admirals have influence on or involvement in foreign policy; but mainly because in the frontier Army of MacArthur's youth, there was no requirement to do so. This began to change after the Spanish–American War, when American military forces started to be deployed overseas in the Pacific, Asia and the Caribbean for extended periods of time.
The concept of the theater of war developed during World War II. At such a senior level of command, military and political issues tended to merge. As theater commander in the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur had been accountable to the Australian government as well as his own, making him, in President Roosevelt's words to him, "an ambassador as well as Supreme Commander". MacArthur's less than wholehearted support for the "Europe first" strategy was apt to cause annoyance in Washington when the chain of command was bypassed by MacArthur through the Prime Minister of Australia, John Curtin.
General Marshall expressed this conflict in his testimony before the Senate:
> It arises from the inherent difference between the position of a commander whose mission is limited to a particular area and a particular antagonist, and the position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense and the President, who are responsible for the total security of the United States...and must weigh the interests and objectives in one part of the world with those in others to attain balance...There is nothing new in this divergence, in our military history... What is new and what brought about the necessity for General MacArthur's removal is the wholly unprecedented situation of a local Theater Commander publicly expressing his displeasure at, and his disagreement with, the foreign policy of the United States. [He]...had grown so far out of sympathy with the established policies of the United States that there is grave doubt as to whether he could any longer be permitted to exercise the authority in making decisions that normal command functions would assign to a Theater Commander.
### Powers of the President
In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton argued that:
> The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.
But on 26 June 1950, Truman sent the armed forces into Korea without any such Congressional mandate. The subsequent United Nations Security Council resolution authorized military assistance to South Korea, but the United Nations Participation Act laid down that:
> The President shall not be deemed to require the authorization of the Congress to make available to the Security Council on its call in order to take action under article 42 of said Charter and pursuant to such special agreement or agreements the armed forces, facilities, or assistance provided for therein: Provided, That ... nothing herein contained shall be construed as an authorization to the President by the Congress to make available to the Security Council for such purpose armed forces, facilities, or assistance in addition to the forces, facilities, and assistance provided for in such special agreement or agreements.
The Congressional inquiry triggered by MacArthur's relief ruled that Truman's actions violated both constitutional and statutory requirements. Although presidents had in the past used extra-legal military force, this was in "fights with pirates, landings of small naval contingents on barbarous or semi-barbarous coasts, the dispatch of small bodies of troops to chase bandits or cattle rustlers across the Mexican border, and the like". Congressman Vito Marcantonio, who opposed the war in Korea, argued that "when we agreed to the United Nations Charter we never agreed to supplant our Constitution with the United Nations Charter. The power to declare and make war is vested in the representatives of the people, in the Congress of the United States."
Senator William F. Knowland noted that:
> Article I of the Constitution gives the power to declare war to the Congress and not to the Executive. We are apparently now drifting into a twilight constitutional zone where the executive can put us into war, the fourth largest in our history, without a Congressional declaration or a Congressional resolution recognizing that a state of war started by others already exists. When Congress acts under its constitutional power, every statement for or against the resolution is part of the Congressional Record, and the press and the public are fully informed. The roll-call vote shows how each Member voted. This is responsible and accountable government.
>
> If five or seven men can meet in a closed session in the Blair House or the White House, and put this nation into the fourth largest war from a casualty standpoint, in our history without their statements and recommendations being recorded or available, and without their positions on this matter being known, we have the war-making power transferred from the Congress, operating in the open, to the Executive, operating en camera. That is not, I submit, either responsible or accountable government.
## Aftermath
### Responses to the relief
The news of MacArthur's relief was greeted with shock in Japan. The Diet of Japan passed a resolution of gratitude for MacArthur, and the Emperor Hirohito visited him at the embassy in person, the first time a Japanese Emperor had ever visited a foreigner with no standing. The Mainichi Shimbun said:
> MacArthur's dismissal is the greatest shock since the end of the war. He dealt with the Japanese people not as a conqueror but a great reformer. He was a noble political missionary. What he gave us was not material aid and democratic reform alone, but a new way of life, the freedom and dignity of the individual... We shall continue to love and trust him as one of the Americans who best understood Japan's position.
In the Chicago Tribune, Senator Robert A. Taft called for immediate impeachment proceedings against Truman:
> President Truman must be impeached and convicted. His hasty and vindictive removal of General MacArthur is the culmination of series of acts which have shown that he is unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office. The American nation has never been in greater danger. It is led by a fool who is surrounded by knaves.
Newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times opined that MacArthur's "hasty and vindictive" relief was due to foreign pressure, particularly from the United Kingdom and the British socialists in Attlee's government. The Republican Party whip, Senator Kenneth S. Wherry, charged that the relief was the result of pressure from "the Socialist Government of Great Britain".
On 17 April 1951, MacArthur flew back to the United States, a country he had not seen since 1937. When he reached San Francisco he was greeted by the commander of the Sixth United States Army, Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer. MacArthur received a parade there that was attended by 500,000 people. He was greeted on arrival at Washington National Airport on 19 April by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General Jonathan Wainwright. Truman sent Vaughan as his representative, which was seen as a slight, as Vaughan was despised by the public and professional soldiers alike as a corrupt crony. "It was a shameful thing to fire MacArthur, and even more shameful to send Vaughan," one member of the public wrote to Truman.
MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress where he delivered his famous "Old Soldiers Never Die" speech, in which he declared:
> Efforts have been made to distort my position. It has been said in effect that I was a warmonger. Nothing could be further from the truth. I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me—and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there can be no substitute for victory.
In response, the Pentagon issued a press release noting that "the action taken by the President in relieving General MacArthur was based upon the unanimous recommendations of the President's principal civilian and military advisers including the Joint Chiefs of Staff". Afterwards, MacArthur flew to New York City where he received the largest ticker-tape parade in history up to that time. He also visited Chicago and Milwaukee, where he addressed large rallies.
### Congressional inquiry
In May and June 1951, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held "an inquiry into the military situation in the Far East and the facts surrounding the relief of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur". The Senate thereby attempted to avoid a constitutional crisis. Because of the sensitive political and military topics being discussed, the inquiry was held in closed session, and only a heavily censored transcript was made public until 1973. The two committees were jointly chaired by Senator Richard Russell, Jr. Fourteen witnesses were called: MacArthur, Marshall, Bradley, Collins, Vandenberg, Sherman, Adrian S. Fisher, Acheson, Wedemeyer, Johnson, Oscar C. Badger II, Patrick J. Hurley, and David G. Barr and O'Donnell.
The testimony of Marshall and the Joint Chiefs rebutted many of MacArthur's arguments. Marshall emphatically declared that there had been no disagreement between himself, the President, and the Joint Chiefs. However, it also exposed their own timidity in dealing with MacArthur, and that they had not always kept him fully informed. Vandenberg questioned whether the Air Force could be effective against targets in Manchuria, and Bradley noted that the Communists were also waging limited war in Korea, having not attacked UN airbases or ports, or their own "privileged sanctuary" in Japan. Their judgment was that it was not worth it to expand the war, although they conceded that they were prepared to do so if the Communists escalated the conflict, or if no willingness to negotiate was forthcoming. They also disagreed with MacArthur's assessment of the effectiveness of the South Korean and Chinese Nationalist forces. Bradley said:
> Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world. Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.
The committees concluded that "the removal of General MacArthur was within the constitutional powers of the President but the circumstances were a shock to national pride". They also found that "there was no serious disagreement between General MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs of Staff as to military strategy." They recommended that "the United States should never again become involved in war without the consent of the Congress".
### Fallout
Polls showed that the majority of the public still disapproved of Truman's decision to relieve MacArthur, and were more inclined to agree with MacArthur than with Bradley or Marshall. Truman's approval rating fell to 23 percent in mid-1951, which was lower than Richard Nixon's low of 25 percent during the Watergate Scandal in 1974, and Lyndon Johnson's of 28 percent at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968. As of 2020, it is the lowest Gallup Poll approval rating recorded by any serving president.
The increasingly unpopular war in Korea dragged on, and the Truman administration was beset with a series of corruption scandals. He eventually decided not to run for re-election. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate in the 1952 presidential election, attempted to distance himself from the President as much as possible. The election was won by the Republican candidate, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose administration ramped up the pressure on the Chinese in Korea with conventional bombing and renewed threats of using nuclear weapons. Coupled with a more favorable international political climate in the wake of the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, this led the Chinese and North Koreans to agree to terms. The belief that the threat of nuclear weapons played an important part in the outcome would lead to their threatened use against China several times during the 1950s.
As a result of their support of Truman, the Joint Chiefs became viewed as politically tainted. Senator Taft regarded Bradley in particular with suspicion, due to Bradley's focus on Europe at the expense of Asia. Taft urged Eisenhower to replace the chiefs as soon as possible. First to go was Vandenberg, who had terminal cancer and had already announced plans to retire. On 7 May 1953, Eisenhower announced that he would be replaced by General Nathan Twining. Soon after it was announced that Bradley would be replaced by Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Command, Collins would be succeeded by Ridgway, and Admiral William Fechteler, who had become CNO on the death of Sherman in July 1951, by Admiral Robert B. Carney.
## Legacy
The relief of MacArthur cast a long shadow over American civil-military relations. When Lyndon Johnson met with General William Westmoreland in Honolulu in 1966, he told him: "General, I have a lot riding on you. I hope you don't pull a MacArthur on me." For his part, Westmoreland and his senior colleagues were eager to avoid any hint of dissent or challenge to presidential authority. This came at a high price. In his 1998 book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, then-Lieutenant Colonel H. R. McMaster argued that the Joint Chiefs failed in their duty to provide the President, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara or Congress with frank and fearless professional advice. This book was an influential one; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, General Hugh Shelton, gave copies to every four-star officer in the military.
On the one hand, the relief of MacArthur established a precedent that generals and admirals could be fired for any public or private disagreement with government policy. In 1977, Major General John K. Singlaub publicly criticized proposed cuts in the size of American forces in South Korea, and was summarily relieved by President Jimmy Carter for making statements "inconsistent with announced national security policy". During the Gulf War in 1990, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney relieved the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Michael Dugan, for showing "poor judgment at a very sensitive time" in making a series of statements to the media during a visit to Saudi Arabia. In 2010, President Barack Obama fired General Stanley A. McChrystal after McChrystal and his staff made disparaging remarks about senior civilian government officials in an article published in Rolling Stone magazine. This elicited comparisons with MacArthur, as the war in Afghanistan was not going well. On the other hand, Major General James N. Post III was relieved and issued a letter of reprimand in 2015 for discouraging personnel under his command from communicating with the Congress, which he described as "treason".
MacArthur's relief "left a lasting current of popular sentiment that in matters of war and peace, the military really knows best," a philosophy that became known as "MacArthurism". In February 2012, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis published a report entitled "Dereliction of Duty II" in which he criticized senior military commanders for misleading Congress about the war in Afghanistan, especially General David Petraeus, noting that:
> A message had been learned by the leading politicians of our country, by the vast majority of our uniformed Service Members, and the population at large: David Petraeus is a real war hero—maybe even on the same plane as Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower. But the most important lesson everyone learned: never, ever question General Petraeus or you'll be made to look a fool. In the years following, the "Legend of Petraeus" spread and expanded, as these things often do, and he was given increasing credit for the success.
During the 1992 presidential election, Bill Clinton used endorsements from the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William J. Crowe, and 21 other retired generals and flag officers to counter doubts about his ability to serve as Commander in Chief. This became a feature of later presidential election campaigns. During the 2004 presidential election, twelve retired generals and admirals endorsed Senator John Kerry, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe, and the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who also appeared in television advertisements defending Kerry against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. During this election campaign, one retired four-star General, Tommy Franks, spoke at the Republican National Convention and another, John Shalikashvili, addressed the Democratic National Convention.
In early 2006, in what was called the "Generals Revolt," six retired generals, Major General John Batiste, Major General Paul D. Eaton, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Major General John M. Riggs, Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr. and General Anthony C. Zinni, called for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, accusing him of "abysmal" military planning and lack of strategic competence. The ethics of a system under which serving generals felt compelled to publicly support policies that they privately believed were potentially ruinous for the country and cost the lives of military personnel, did not escape critical public comment, and was mocked by political satirist Stephen Colbert at a dinner attended by President George W. Bush and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace. Rumsfeld resigned in November 2006. By 2008, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, felt obliged to pen an open letter in which he reminded all servicemen that "The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times."
|
63,109,124 |
44th Chess Olympiad
| 1,170,285,172 |
2022 chess tournament in Chennai, India
|
[
"2020s in Tamil Nadu",
"2022 in Indian sport",
"2022 in chess",
"44th Chess Olympiad",
"August 2022 sports events in India",
"Chess Olympiads",
"Chess in India",
"International sports competitions hosted by India",
"July 2022 sports events in India",
"Sports competitions in Chennai",
"Sports events affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine",
"Sports events postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic"
] |
The 44th Chess Olympiad was an international team chess event organised by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) in Chennai, India from 28 July to 10 August 2022. It consisted of Open and Women's tournaments, as well as several events to promote chess. The Olympiad was initially supposed to take place in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, the host of the Chess World Cup 2019, in August 2020, but it was later moved to Moscow. However, it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and then relocated to Chennai following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This was the first Chess Olympiad to take place in India.
The total number of participants was 1,737: 937 in the Open and 800 in the Women's event. The number of registered teams was 188 from 186 nations in the Open section and 162 from 160 nations in the Women's section; being the host nation, India had three teams participating in each section. Both sections set team participation records. The main venue of the Chess Olympiad was the convention centre at the Four Points by Sheraton, while the opening and closing ceremonies were held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. The Chief Arbiter of the event was France's Laurent Freyd.
Uzbekistan won the gold medal in the Open event, which was their second medal at the Chess Olympiad after having previously won a silver medal at the 1992, while Ukraine claimed their second gold in the Women's event after having previously won the 2006. English player David Howell had the highest performance for an individual player in the Open event with a performance rating of 2898 (he scored 71⁄2 out of a possible 8 points). Polish player Oliwia Kiołbasa had the highest individual performance in the Women's event with a performance rating of 2565 (she scored 91⁄2 of a possible 11 points).
The 93rd FIDE Congress also took place during the Olympiad, at which Arkady Dvorkovich was re-elected as FIDE President and former World Champion Viswanathan Anand was elected as FIDE Deputy President.
## Background
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations compete in an Olympic-style event. The first unofficial edition, labelled as the "Chess Olympic Games", was held in Paris in 1924, and coincided with the Summer Olympic Games that took place in the city in the same year. Despite the fact that the event was not officially part of the Olympic Games and the winners were not awarded official Olympic medals, the rules of the Olympic Games applied. The organisers of the Summer Olympics defined chess as a sport, but demanded only amateurs to be allowed participation, which posed a serious problem because it was difficult to draw a line between amateurs and professionals. The first official edition of the Chess Olympiad was held in London in 1927. Up until 1950 the tournament was organised at irregular intervals. From then on it has been held biannually. The first Women's Chess Olympiad took place in Emmen in 1957; since 1976, the Women's tournament has been held simultaneously with an Open tournament at the Chess Olympiads. The former Soviet Union has historically been the most successful nation with 18 gold medals won.
The 44th Chess Olympiad was supposed to take place in 2020. Bidding for the Olympiad and the simultaneous FIDE Congress opened in December 2015; bids could be made in connection with those for the Chess World Cup 2019. Each city bid had to be submitted to the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) by 31 March 2016, including details of the organising committee, finances, provision of amenities and stipends. The city of Khanty-Mansiysk (Russia) submitted the only original bid for the event, although the national federations of Argentina and Slovakia had previously also expressed interest. The bid was approved at the 87th FIDE Congress in September 2016.
In November 2019, in the opening ceremony of the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich announced that the Chess Olympiad would be relocated from Khanty-Mansiysk to Moscow. The president of the Russian Chess Federation, Andrey Filatov, explained that the decision was driven by technical problems because of the enlarged number of participants due to the inaugural Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities, as well as the growing demands from amateur chess players following the 2018 FIFA World Cup who would like to attend the event. Ultimately, it was decided that Khanty-Mansiysk would host the Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities from 29 July to 4 August 2020, whereas Moscow was supposed to host the tournaments of the Chess Olympiad from 5 to 17 August 2020.
In February 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, FIDE decided to move the Chess Olympiad, FIDE Congress and Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities away from Russia. Shortly after this announcement, the All India Chess Federation (AICF) expressed interest in hosting the events, in either Delhi, Gujarat or Tamil Nadu. Politicians in Tamil Nadu agreed to host the Chess Olympiad and provided around ₹75 crore (US\$9.4 million). On 15 March 2022, FIDE announced that Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, would be the new host of the event. It meant that the Chess Olympiad would be hosted in India for the first time.
## Preparations
The total budget for the Olympiad was ₹92 crore (US\$12 million). The event was hosted and managed in India by the AICF. Sanjay Kapoor, who later became president of AICF, was the president of the organising committee for the 44th Chess Olympiad, and AICF's secretary, Bharat Singh Chauhan, was the tournament director. The coordinating committee was headed by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. K. Stalin and included A. Raja (MP from Nilgiris), Udhayanidhi Stalin (MLA from Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni) three representatives of the AICF, the president of the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association and other representatives of the local authorities. France's International Arbiter Laurent Freyd was named Chief Arbiter of the Olympiad.
### Venue and transport
The venue was the convention centre at the Four Points by Sheraton in Mahabalipuram near Chennai. This consisted of an existing banquet hall (Hall 1) and a newly constructed hall (Hall 2), which cost ₹5 crore (US\$630,000). Hall 1 had a usable area of 22,500 square feet (2,090 m<sup>2</sup>), while Hall 2 was double the size at 45,000 square feet (4,200 m<sup>2</sup>). Hall 1 hosted games played between the best-ranking teams in the standings on the top 28 boards in the Open section and the top board in the Women's section, while the rest of the boards were played in Hall 2. Exhibition space was also provided. The opening and closing ceremonies were held at the Nehru Indoor Stadium, part of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium complex. This was built in 1995 at a cost of ₹20 crore (equivalent to ₹119 crore or US\$15 million in 2023) and has a capacity of 8,000 spectators.
Around 125 buses, 100 SUVs and six luxury cars were used to transport players and dignitaries during the event. The road between Chennai International Airport and Mahabalipuram was widened and reconstructed to improve traffic flow, and one lane of the highway was reserved for Olympiad traffic during the event.
### Security and biosecurity
The Tamil Nadu Police deployed 4,000 police officers to provide security during the Olympiad, on special duty from 25 July to 10 August. The Greater Chennai Police deployed an additional 22,000 police officers during Modi's visit to the city on 28 July. Flying of drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles was banned in the city limits in the period 28–29 July.
Because the event was held during the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the Tamil Nadu Health Department deployed medical teams and 30 ambulances to perform COVID-19 screening at airports, hotels and venues. Nearly 1,000 doctors and other health personnel were engaged for the Olympiad. Thirteen hospitals in and around Old Mahabalipuram Road and East Coast Road were utilised. The Government of Tamil Nadu issued health insurance cards to all players, covering medical expenses up to ₹2 lakh (US\$2,500) per player.
COVID-19 PCR testing was performed on a randomly selected two per cent of all arriving flight passengers at the airport, including players, coaches, support staff and visitors. All passengers had to present a vaccine passport certifying they had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, or a certificate of a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours before arrival. Thermal screening was applied to all players on a daily basis and symptomatic cases were isolated, tested and treated. Due to the 2022 monkeypox outbreak, players from outside India were required to also be tested for monkeypox.
Food safety officials inspected food served every day in all hotels accommodating players. Due to the elevated risk of malaria and dengue fever, continuous fogging and spraying measures were deployed to prevent mosquito breeding. Additional hygiene training and inspection was arranged. Around 100 staff from other districts were used to monitor food safety measures in all hotels.
### Ticketing
The price of a full-day ticket for Hall 1 was ₹3,000 (US\$38) for domestic visitors and ₹8,000 (US\$100) for foreigners, while students under 19 years of age, women and Tamil Nadu government staff could get a two-hour ticket at discounted price of ₹300 (US\$3.80). A full-day ticket for Hall 2 was ₹2,000 (US\$25) for domestic visitors and ₹6,000 (US\$75) for foreigners, while the concession categories received a two-hour ticket for ₹200 (US\$2.50). The high pricing raised concerns that people would not be able to pay the amount to attend the event. An official of the AICF explained that the pricing had resulted mainly from the fact that the event was held at a hotel with limited capacity of spectators compared to stadiums, while an official of the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association stated that all tickets for the event had been entirely sold. To prevent cheating using chess engines, players had to leave their mobile phones and any other electronic devices outside the playing halls.
## The event
A torch relay was held prior to the event, the first for a Chess Olympiad. It started on 19 July at the Indira Gandhi Arena in New Delhi, where FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich handed the torch to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who passed it to former World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand. The torch was then taken to 75 cities in 40 days, finishing in Chennai where it passed through Shore Temple. Related events involved the Indian sport mallakhamba. The torch arrived at the venue in Mahabalipuram on the morning of 27 July, the day before the event.
### Opening ceremony
The opening ceremony was held on 28 July at 16:00 IST (UTC+5:30) at the Nehru Indoor Stadium with an audience of more than 20,000 players, coaches and spectators. The opening address was given by Tamil Nadu Minister for Youth Welfare and Sport Development Meyyanathan Siva V. A musical show, directed by Vignesh Shivan, was performed in which Kamal Haasan narrated the history of Tamil Nadu. Singers Dhee and Kidakuzhi Mariyammal performed the song "Enjoy Enjaami". A dance song, "Vanakkam Chennai, Vanakkam Chess", was also played. Pianist Lydian Nadhaswaram played classical and modern tunes, including a blindfold exhibition. There was also a flag parade that introduced the participating countries and their delegations.
The event was formally opened by Modi. In his speech, he discussed chess venues in Tamil Nadu and the Chathuranga Vallabhanathar Temple in Thiruvarur, where myth states God played chess with a princess. Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. K. Stalin also spoke, praising the organisation of the event in less than four months. He noted that the Olympiad would be held near the coastal town Sadurangapattinam, thought to be the home of chaturanga, a predecessor game to chess. FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich also welcomed participants.
Anand passed the Olympic LED illuminated torch to Modi, who passed it to Indian chess players R Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh D who "lit" the virtual Olympic cauldron.
### Participating teams
The event was contested by a total of 188 teams, representing 186 national federations, both records for a Chess Olympiad. India, as host country, was permitted to field three teams. The Women's tournament featured 162 teams, also a record, representing 160 federations. Russia and Belarus were banned from taking part by FIDE as a result of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. China declined to send a team. Pakistan boycotted the event and a team from Rwanda were prevented from attending by their own government. A team representing the Netherlands Antilles was permitted to compete, despite having dissolved itself in 2010, because the Curaçao Chess Federation remains officially registered as representing the dissolved country in the FIDE Directory.
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<th><p>Participating teams in the 44th Chess Olympiad</p></th>
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Notes
### Competition format and calendar
The tournament was played in a Swiss system format. The time control for all games was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, after which an additional 30 minutes were granted and increment of 30 seconds per move was applied from the first move. Players were permitted to offer a draw at any time. A total of 11 rounds were played, and all teams were paired in every round.
In each round, four players from each team faced four players from another team; teams were permitted one reserve player who could be substituted between rounds. The four games were played simultaneously on four boards with alternating colours, scoring 1 game point for a win and 1⁄2 game point for a draw. The scores from each game were summed together to determine which team won the round. Winning a round was worth two match points, regardless of the game point margin, while drawing a round was worth one match point. Teams were ranked in a table based on match points. Tie-breakers for the table were i) the Sonneborn–Berger system; ii) total game points scored; iii) the sum of the match points of the opponents, excluding the lowest one.
The event took place from 28 July to 10 August 2022. Tournament rounds started on 29 July and ended with the final round on 9 August. All rounds began at 15:00 IST (UTC+5:30), except for the final round which began at 10:00 IST (UTC+5:30). There was one rest day on 4 August, after the sixth round.
All dates are IST (UTC+5:30)
### Open event
The Open tournament was contested by a total of 937 players from 188 teams.
`It featured five out of the top ten players from the FIDE rating list published in July 2022. World Champion Magnus Carlsen played for Norway. Former World Champion Viswanathan Anand decided not to play for India, acting as team mentor instead. Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren, who contested the World Chess Championship 2023, both missed the tournament due to Russia's suspension and China's withdrawal, respectively. Other top players who skipped the Olympiad include France's Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, with the latter citing the unfavourable weather conditions; Teimour Radjabov withdrew from playing for Azerbaijan shortly before the start of the tournament, due to suffering after-effects of a COVID-19 infection that he contracted following the Candidates Tournament 2022. Lê Quang Liêm also did not play, because Vietnam only entered the Women's event. Richárd Rapport could not compete, as he was in the process of switching federation from Hungary to Romania. Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian and Wesley So, all top ten in the FIDE rankings, played for the United States.`
In the absence of Russia and China, the United States were regarded as favourites due to their average rating of 2771, higher than any other team. Anand described the team as "breathtaking", and top-board Dutch player Anish Giri said that the US team "not dominating the Olympiad would be a shocker". The host nation India had the second strongest team with an average pre-tournament rating of 2696, while Norway had the third highest average rating of 2692. Other pre-tournament favourites included Spain and Poland. The young squads of Germany, Uzbekistan and India's second team were also expected to be competitive.
#### Open summary
Uzbekistan won the gold medal in the open event, with a total of 19 match points. Their eight wins and three draws made them the only undefeated team in the tournament. Following the tie with the United States in the fourth round, the Uzbek team was lagging a point behind Armenia until their head-to-head victory in the ninth round, which put them on top of the table, and the draw against the second team of India in the tenth round, which was enough to retain the lead. Armenia defied expectations to win the silver medal with equal number of match points as the winning Uzbek team but worse tie-breaker largely because of their head-to-head loss. The second Indian team won the bronze medal following a strong performance by 16-year-old Gukesh D, who won eight consecutive games in the first eight rounds. Three teams scored 17 match points (seven wins, three draws and one loss each): the first Indian team came fourth, the United States fifth, and Moldova sixth. The heavily favoured US team failed to win a medal due to lacklustre performances from Caruana, who suffered three losses, and Aronian, who won only one game in the tournament.
The highest scoring individual player in the Open event was David Howell, playing for England on board three, who scored 71⁄2 out of a possible 8 points (seven wins and one draw) with a performance rating of 2898. Individual gold medals were also awarded to Gukesh D of India-2 who scored 9/11 with a performance rating of 2867 on board one, Nihal Sarin also of India-2 who scored 71⁄2/10 with a performance rating of 2774 on board two, Jahongir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan who scored 61⁄2/8 with a performance rating of 2813 on board four, and Mateusz Bartel of Poland who played the tournament as a reserve player and scored 81⁄2/10 points with a performance rating of 2778.
Notes
All board medals were given out according to performance ratings for players who played at least eight games at the tournament. David Howell on the third board had the best performance of all players in the tournament with a rating of 2898.
### Women's event
The Women's tournament was contested by a total of 800 players representing 162 teams. It featured three of the ten top players according to the FIDE rating list published in July 2022: sisters Mariya Muzychuk and Anna Muzychuk plus Nana Dzagnidze. Since China withdrew and Russia was suspended, the other six players of the top ten were missing: Hou Yifan, highest rated woman player in the world; Ju Wenjun, current Women's World Champion and Tan Zhongyi from China, and Alexandra Kosteniuk, Aleksandra Goryachkina and Kateryna Lagno from Russia. The absence of Russia and China, which had together won the gold medal at nine of the eleven previous Olympiads, made India the first seed, with an average rating of 2486. Ukraine, with former Women's World Champion Anna Ushenina, were the second highest rated team averaging 2478, while Georgia were seeded third with 2475. Other medal contenders were expected to be Poland, France, Azerbaijan, the United States and Germany.
#### Women's summary
Ukraine won the gold medal with 18 match points from seven wins and four draws, making them the only unbeaten team. It was their second title, having previously won in 2006. The Ukrainians opened the tournament with a perfect score after four rounds before two consecutive draws against Azerbaijan and Romania in the fifth and sixth rounds set them back with a two-point deficit. However, following India's loss to Poland in the ninth round, they narrowed the gap to one point before the final round in which they beat Poland and benefited from India's loss against the United States to finish on top. Silver medallists Georgia also finished with 18 match points but had a worse tie-breaker. The bronze medal went to the first Indian team, who were leading the tournament by two points after seven rounds, before losing to Poland in the ninth round and the United States in the eleventh round, finishing on 17 match points. The United States and Kazakhstan had the same score as India but due to weaker tie-breakers finished in fourth and fifth place, respectively.
Oliwia Kiołbasa had the highest individual score in the Women's event, playing for Poland on board three, who scored 91⁄2/11 (nine wins, one draw and one loss) and a performance rating of 2565 after she had opened the tournament with a perfect score of 9/9. Individual gold medals were also won by Pia Cramling of Sweden with 91⁄2/11 and a rating performance of 2532 on board one, Nino Batsiashvili of Georgia with 71⁄2/10 and a rating performance of 2504 on board two, Bat-Erdene Mungunzul of Mongolia who scored 71⁄2/10 with a rating performance of 2460 on board four, and Jana Schneider of Germany who played as a reserve player and scored 9/10 points with a rating performance of 2414.
Notes
All board medals were given out according to performance ratings for players who played at least eight games at the tournament. Oliwia Kiołbasa on the third board had the best performance of all players in the tournament with a rating of 2565.
### Gaprindashvili Trophy
The Nona Gaprindashvili Trophy, created by FIDE in 1997 and named after former Women's World Champion Nona Gaprindashvili, is given to the teams with the best combined performance in the Open and Women's tournaments (sum of their positions in both standings). It was won by the first team of India, ahead of the United States in second place and the second Indian team in third place.
## FIDE Congress
The 93rd FIDE Congress was held during the Olympiad, from 31 July to 9 August, with its General Assembly on 7 and 8 August. The FIDE presidential election took place on 7 August. Four sets of candidates were approved by the FIDE Electoral Commission, each consisting of a joint ticket for president and deputy president:
- Arkady Dvorkovich (president, incumbent) and Viswanathan Anand (deputy president)
- Andrey Baryshpolets (president) and Peter Heine Nielsen (deputy president)
- Inalbek Cheripov (president) and Lewis Ncube (deputy president)
- Bachar Kouatly (president) and Ian Wilkinson (deputy president)
Each ticket had to meet several requirements in order to be approved: it had to be submitted two months before the General Assembly; the candidates for president and deputy president could not be from the same member federation; and the ticket required endorsements from five member federations including one from each of the four FIDE continents, but no more than eight federations in total, and each federation was entitled to endorse only one ticket. A candidate ticket of Enyonam Sewa Fumey (president) and Stuart Fancy (deputy president) was rejected by FIDE because it had received support from member federations of Africa (Burkina Faso, Egypt, Togo and Senegal), Asia (Papua New Guinea) and America (Haiti) but not from Europe.
Inalbek Cheripov withdrew a few days before the election. On election day, each of the remaining candidates was allowed to speak to delegates for 15 minutes before the voting, in an order determined by drawing lots. Kouatly withdrew during his speech. Dvorkovich and Anand won in a landslide, winning 157 of the 179 federations who voted. Baryshpolets and Nielsen came in second with 16 votes.
Apart from the re-election of Dvorkovich as FIDE President, other notable decisions were made at the Congress. Uzbekistan was elected to host the 46th Chess Olympiad in either Tashkent or Samarkand. They were the only valid bid submitted by the 31 May 2022 deadline. Xie Jun of China, Sheikh Saud bin Adulaziz Al Mualla of the United Arab Emirates, Georgios Makropoulos of Greece and Michael Khodarkovsky of the United States were elected as FIDE Vice Presidents. The Mitropa Chess Association, a Central European chess organisation, was admitted, and the ASEAN Chess Confederation, a Southeast Asian chess organisation, was re-admitted as an affiliate member of FIDE.
## Year of the Woman in Chess
In January 2022, FIDE declared 2022 the "Year of the Woman in Chess". In that context, seven initiatives were planned to organise events and extend collaborations, including annual awards for women in various categories and a "Queen Pavilion" during the Chess Olympiad. On the first day of the Olympiad, the Queen's and Social Pavilion was opened by FIDE President Dvorkovich and Managing Director Dana Reizniece-Ozola. The winners of the Year of the Woman in Chess Awards were announced at a special ceremony which took place on 5 August. In the period preceding the ceremony, national chess federations were encouraged to submit nominations in different categories that covered almost all aspects of chess. Awards in each category were presented to overall winners, as well as to continental winners. The overall winners across award categories were:
- Spirit of FIDE: Dana Riezniece-Ozola (Latvia)
- FIDE ICON: Judit Polgár (Hungary)
- Outstanding chess player of 2021: Alexandra Kosteniuk (Russia)
- Outstanding chess administrator: Sonja Johnson (Trinidad and Tobago)
- Outstanding chess arbiter: Anastasia Sorokina (Belarus)
- Outstanding photographer: Anastasiya Karlovich (Ukraine)
- Outstanding 'game changer': Jennifer Shahade (United States)
- Outstanding chess educator: Alshaeby Razan (Jordan)
- Outstanding chess organiser: Cristina Pernici Rigo (Italy)
- Outstanding chess trainer: Shadi Paridar (Iran)
- Outstanding influencer/commentator/social media star: Tania Sachdev (India)
- Outstanding politician: Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen (Lithuania)
- Outstanding representation of 'He-For-She': Jean-Michel Rapaire (Monaco)
- Woman with disability for outstanding fighting spirit: Svetlana Gerasimova (Russia)
- Federation with the highest percentage of female rated players: Vietnam
The awards were provided by Alwahshi Abdullah Salem of the Saudi Arabian Chess Federation, which fielded a women's team at the Olympiad for the first time.
## Marketing
### Mascot
The official mascot was named "Thambi" (), a chess knight wearing a vēṭṭi (the ethnic Tamil male attire) and a white shirt. He was depicted with folded hands, extending the Tamil greeting "Vanakkam". The mascot appeared on billboards, statues and posters. Commentators compared Thambi to 'Appu', the mascot for the 1982 Asian Games.
### Promotional activities
Buses in Chennai were branded with the promotional slogan "Namma Chess, Namma Pride" (trans. Our Chess, Our Pride''). Buses in Coimbatore and Tiruchirappalli also carried marketing for the event. The mascot Thambi was put at the "Namma Chennai" selfie point on the East Coast Road; a contest was held for images with the mascot posted on social media, with prizes of free tickets to the opening ceremony. Billboards were installed at major bus stops, and the event was also promoted at Chennai Metro stations. A private school in Perambur erected a 6,400-square-foot (590 m<sup>2</sup>) giant chessboard, opened by P. K. Sekar Babu, Tamil Nadu's minister of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, on which students played the pieces. The space around the chessboard was decorated with eight 14-foot (4.3 m) cut-outs of the Thambi mascot. India Post issued a postage stamp featuring the Olympiad. It was unveiled during a ceremony on International Chess Day. Sponsors for the tournament included Tech Mahindra, Smartwater, Indian Oil, Titan and Chessable.
Chennai's Napier Bridge was painted with a chessboard pattern, which divided opinion. While some commentators liked the artwork, others raised concerns that the pattern was disorienting, especially for people with anxiety disorder. The chessboard pattern also led to traffic congestion as people thronged to the bridge to take selfies and record videos for social media.
### Side tournaments
FIDE held an online event in May 2020 titled 'Checkmate Coronavirus'. This consisted of 2,762 tournaments held simultaneously over a 30-day period, played by 120,000 unique participants from over 140 countries. The various winners of the event were awarded masterclasses with grandmasters, free tickets to the Olympiad, and/or souvenirs and memorabilia. Immediately prior to the Olympiad, on 24 July, a rapid chess tournament was held in Hall 1 and Hall 2, with 1,414 participants. Games from all 707 boards were broadcast live online. The winner of the event was Indian grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna, who scored a perfect 9 out of 9 possible points. First prize was ₹35,000 (US\$440) and the total prize fund was ₹500,000 (US\$6,300).
## Broadcasting
The Olympiad was broadcast live on FIDE's official YouTube channel, with commentary by grandmasters Judit Polgár and Mihail Marin. In India, television broadcast was on the Doordarshan channel. Chess24 provided online streaming commentary by grandmasters Peter Leko and Peter Svidler. Chess.com streamed the event through their ChessTV, Twitch and YouTube channels. ChessBase India also streamed the event live on their YouTube channel.
## Concerns and controversies
### Doping restrictions
Russia's initial right to host the event raised concerns because of World Anti-Doping Agency's recommendation from November 2019 that the country should be banned from hosting all major events for a period of four years. Namely, Russian international teams engaged in widespread doping (illegal use of performance enhancing drugs) in multiple sports, with the complicit inaction of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, which led the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to launch an investigation. As part of their position that chess is a sport, FIDE is affiliated with WADA and implements drug testing at Chess Olympiads following WADA guidelines.
The Russian Chess Federation denied that WADA's recommendations applied to the Chess Olympiad, as its president Andrey Filatov stated in an interview that the decision to host the Olympiad was made long before WADA's decision. FIDE officially responded to WADA that the contracts for the two affected tournaments—Candidates Tournament 2020–2021 and the 44th Chess Olympiad—had already been signed and therefore they could not be moved. FIDE also argued that the events qualified for an exemption specified by WADA because they were the only valid bids to organise each event.
### COVID-19 pandemic
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world in early 2020, FIDE announced in March 2020 that the Chess Olympiad would be postponed. They planned to reschedule it in the summer of 2021 with the same host. In December 2020, when the pandemic was still ongoing, FIDE formally cancelled the event and planned to reorganise it for 2022.
Even after a two-year delay, the pandemic still affected participation in the Olympiad. The Chinese team, which won gold medals in both events at the 2018 Chess Olympiad, withdrew due to the pandemic. Azerbaijan's Teimour Radjabov, the winner of the Chess World Cup 2019, did not play, due to the after-effects of a COVID-19 infection that he contracted after competing in the Candidates Tournament 2022.
### Russian invasion of Ukraine
Amid the international sanctions against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, FIDE announced that the Olympiad would no longer take place in Russia. This has resulted from a recommendation by the International Olympic Committee made in March 2022 to suspend Russia and Belarus from participation in international tournaments, including the Olympiad, that FIDE followed. Although their teams were not allowed to compete, the Russian and Belarusian national federations were permitted to take part in the FIDE Congress, submit candidates and vote in the FIDE presidential election held during the Olympiad.
Many Russian chess players disapproved of the invasion. Some decided to leave the country, switch federations, or play under the FIDE flag instead of the Russian flag. Forty-four top Russian players signed an open letter addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, stating their opposition to the war. Signatories included Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Peter Svidler, Andrey Esipenko and Daniil Dubov. Dmitry Andreikin, Alexandr Predke and Vladimir Fedoseev, who all played in the FIDE Grand Prix 2022 held in February and March, did not return to Russia and moved to North Macedonia, Uzbekistan and Spain, respectively. Daniil Yuffa, Kirill Alekseenko and Nikita Vitiugov also moved to Spain, while Alexey Sarana stayed in Belgrade after participating in a tournament there. Alina Kashlinskaya transferred her affiliation to Poland and played for them at the Olympiad.
### Team flags
Competitors representing Afghanistan used the flag of the Taliban militant group, which took control of the country in 2021, instead of the flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan which was still officially recognised by FIDE. Images of the Taliban flag at the Olympiad were widely circulated by Taliban officials and supporters on social media.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and the Kosovo Chess Federation has been a full member of FIDE since 2016. However, India does not recognise the nation, so the hosts banned the flag of Kosovo at the Olympiad. The Kosovo team were therefore forced to play under the FIDE flag.
### Other incidents
The torch relay passed through parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, in the disputed region of Kashmir. The route stuck to locations administered by India as union territories, but those locations are also claimed by Pakistan (see Kashmir conflict). The Pakistan team had already arrived in India for the Olympiad. Nevertheless, the Pakistani federation withdrew from the event in protest, describing the torch route as "provocative".
A dispute over the financial management and governance at the Rwandan Chess Federation led to Rwanda's Ministry of Sport blocking the Rwandan team's participation in the Olympiad. The ministry and the country's Olympic committee had refused to recognise the federation since December 2021.
## See also
- Chess Olympiad
- Chess World Cup 2019
- FIDE Online Chess Olympiad 2020
- FIDE Online Chess Olympiad 2021
|
36,803,795 |
Jovan Vladimir
| 1,165,368,100 | null |
[
"1016 deaths",
"10th-century Serbian monarchs",
"11th-century Christian saints",
"11th-century Serbian monarchs",
"Angelic visionaries",
"Cephalophores",
"Christian monarchs",
"Christian royal saints",
"Executed Serbian people",
"Miracle workers",
"Monarchs of Duklja",
"People executed by Bulgaria by decapitation",
"People of the Bulgarian–Serbian Wars",
"Royal reburials",
"Serbian saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church",
"Year of birth uncertain"
] |
Jovan Vladimir or John Vladimir (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Владимир; c. 990 – 22 May 1016) was the ruler of Duklja, the most powerful Serbian principality of the time, from around 1000 to 1016. He ruled during the protracted war between the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgarian Empire. Vladimir was acknowledged as a pious, just, and peaceful ruler. He is recognized as a martyr and saint, with his feast day being celebrated on 22 May.
Jovan Vladimir had a close relationship with Byzantium but this did not save Duklja from the expansionist Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria, who conquered the principality around 1010 and took Vladimir prisoner. A medieval chronicle asserts that Samuel's daughter, Theodora Kosara, fell in love with Vladimir and begged her father for his hand. The tsar allowed the marriage and returned Duklja to Vladimir, who ruled as his vassal. Vladimir took no part in his father-in-law's war efforts. The warfare culminated with Tsar Samuel's defeat by the Byzantines in 1014 and death soon after. In 1016, Vladimir fell victim to a plot by Ivan Vladislav, the last ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire. He was beheaded in front of a church in Prespa, the empire's capital, and was buried there. He was soon recognized as a martyr and saint. His widow, Kosara, reburied him in the Prečista Krajinska Church, near his court in southeastern Duklja. In 1381, his remains were preserved in the Church of St Jovan Vladimir near Elbasan, and since 1995 they have been kept in the Orthodox cathedral of Tirana, Albania. The saint's remains are considered Christian relics, and attract many believers, especially on his feast day, when the relics are taken to the church near Elbasan for a celebration.
The cross Vladimir held when he was beheaded is also regarded as a relic. Traditionally under the care of the Andrović family from the village of Velji Mikulići in southeastern Montenegro, the cross is only shown to believers on the Feast of Pentecost, when it is carried in a procession to the summit of Mount Rumija. Jovan Vladimir is regarded as the first Serbian saint and the patron saint of the town of Bar in Montenegro. His earliest, lost hagiography was probably written sometime between 1075 and 1089; a shortened version, written in Latin, is preserved in the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja. His hagiographies in Greek and Church Slavonic were first published, respectively, in 1690 and 1802. The saint is classically depicted in icons as a monarch wearing a crown and regal clothes, with a cross in his right hand and his own head in his left hand. He is fabled to have carried his severed head to his place of burial.
## Life
Duklja was an early medieval Serbian principality whose borders coincided for the most part with those of present-day Montenegro. The state rose greatly in power after the disintegration of the early medieval Principality of Serbia that followed the death of its ruler, Prince Časlav, around 943. Though the extent of Časlav's Serbia is uncertain, it is known that it included at least Raška (now part of Central Serbia) and Bosnia. Raška had subsequently come under Duklja's political dominance, along with the neighboring Serbian principalities of Travunia and Zachlumia (in present-day Herzegovina and south Dalmatia). The Byzantines often referred to Duklja as Serbia.
Around 1000, Vladimir, still a boy, succeeded his father Petrislav as the ruler of Duklja. Petrislav is regarded as the earliest ruler of Duklja whose existence can be confirmed by primary sources, which also indicate that he was in close relations with Byzantium.
The principality consisted of two provinces: Zenta in the south and Podgoria in the north. A local tradition has it that Vladimir's court was situated on the hillock called Kraljič, at the village of Koštanjica near Lake Skadar, in the Krajina region of southeastern Montenegro. Near Kraljič lie the ruins of the Prečista Krajinska Church (dedicated to Theotokos), which already existed in Vladimir's time. According to Daniele Farlati, an 18th-century ecclesiastical historian, the court and residence of Serbian rulers once stood in Krajina.
Vladimir's reign is recounted in Chapter 36 of the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, completed between 1299 and 1301; Chapters 34 and 35 deal with his father and uncles. These three chapters of the chronicle are most likely based on a lost biography of Vladimir written in Duklja sometime between 1075 and 1089. Both the chronicle and the 11th-century Byzantine historian John Skylitzes described Vladimir as a wise, pious, just, and peaceful ruler.
Vladimir's reign coincided with a protracted war between the Byzantine Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) and the ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire, Tsar Samuel (r. 980–1014). Basil II might have sought the support of other Balkan rulers for his fight against Samuel, and he intensified diplomatic contacts with Duklja for this purpose. A Serbian diplomatic mission, most likely sent from Duklja, arrived in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 992 and was recorded in a charter of the Great Lavra Monastery, written in 993.
In 1004 or 1005, Basil recovered from Samuel the city of Dyrrhachium, a major stronghold on the Adriatic coast, south of Duklja. Since 1005, Basil had also controlled the coastal lands north and south of that city, parts of the Byzantine Theme of Dyrrhachium. Byzantium thus established a territorial contact with Prince Vladimir's Duklja, which was in turn connected to the Byzantine Theme of Dalmatia, consisting of Adriatic towns northwest of Duklja. The Republic of Venice, an ally of Byzantium, militarily intervened in Dalmatia in 1000 to protect the towns from attacks by Croats and Narentines. Venetian rule over Dalmatia on behalf of Basil was confirmed by the emperor in 1004 or 1005. Svetoslav Suronja, a Venetian ally, was crowned Croatian king. Venice, the Dalmatian towns, Croatia, and Vladimir's Duklja, were thus aligned in a compact pro-Byzantine bloc connected to Byzantium via Dyrrhachium.
The close relations with Byzantium, however, did not help Prince Vladimir. Samuel attacked Duklja in 1009 or 1010, as part of his campaign aimed at breaking up that pro-Byzantine bloc, which could have threatened him. Vladimir retreated with his army and many of his people to his fortress on a hill named Oblik, close to the southeastern tip of Lake Skadar. According to the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, he performed a miracle there: the hill was infested with venomous snakes, but when he offered up a prayer to the Lord, their bites became harmless.
Part of Samuel's army lay siege to the hill, and the remainder attacked the nearby coastal town of Ulcinj, which was part of the fortification system of the Theme of Dyrrhachium. Vladimir eventually surrendered, a decision the chronicle attributed to his wish to deliver his people from famine and the sword. He was sent to a prison in Samuel's capital of Prespa, located in western Macedonia. Having failed to conquer Ulcinj, which received men and supplies by sea from Dalmatian towns, the tsar directed his forces towards Dalmatia. There, he burned the towns of Kotor and Dubrovnik, and ravaged the region as far northwest as Zadar. He then returned to Bulgaria via Bosnia and Raška. A consequence of this campaign was the Bulgarian occupation of Duklja, Travunia, Zachlumia, Bosnia, and Raška. Venetian, and indirectly Byzantine power in Dalmatia was weakened. Samuel had succeeded in breaking up the pro-Byzantine bloc.
The chronicle states that while Vladimir languished in the Prespa prison, praying day and night, an angel of the Lord appeared to him and foretold that he would shortly be freed, but that he would die a martyr's death. His fate in captivity was described in a romantic story involving him and Theodora Kosara, Tsar Samuel's daughter. This is the chronicle's description of how they met:
> It came to pass that Samuel's daughter, Cossara, was animated and inspired by a beatific soul. She approached her father and begged that she might go down with her maids and wash the head and feet of the chained captives. Her father granted her wish, so she descended and carried out her good work. Noticing Vladimir among the prisoners, she was struck by his handsome appearance, his humility, gentleness and modesty, and the fact that he was full of wisdom and knowledge of the Lord. She stopped to talk to him, and to her his speech seemed sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.
Kosara then begged her father for Vladimir's hand, and the tsar granted her request. He restored his new son-in-law to the throne of Duklja. In reality, the marriage was probably a result of Samuel's political assessment: he may have decided that Vladimir would be a more loyal vassal if he was married to his daughter. Resolving thus the question of Duklja, Samuel could concentrate more troops in Macedonia and Thessaly, the main site of his conflict with Byzantium. The chronicle claims that the tsar also gave Vladimir the whole territory of Dyrrachium. The prince could in fact have been given a northern part of that territory, which was partially under Samuel's rule. A brief note on Vladimir by John Skylitzes may indicate that the prince also received some territory in Raška. His paternal uncle Dragimir, ruler of Travunia and Zachlumia, who had retreated before Samuel's army, was given back his lands to rule, also as the tsar's vassal.
Thereafter, as recorded in the chronicle, "Vladimir lived with his wife Cossara in all sanctity and chastity, worshipping God and serving him night and day, and he ruled the people entrusted to him in a Godfearing and just manner." There are no indications that Vladimir took any part in his father-in-law's war efforts. The warfare culminated in Samuel's disastrous defeat by the Byzantines in 1014, and on 6 October that same year, the tsar died of a heart attack. He was succeeded by his son, Gavril Radomir, whose reign was short: his cousin Ivan Vladislav killed him in 1015 and ruled in his stead. Vladislav sent messengers to Vladimir demanding his attendance at the court in Prespa, but Kosara advised him not to go and went there herself instead. Vladislav received her with honor and urged Vladimir to come as well, sending him a golden cross as a token of safe conduct. The chronicle relates the prince's reply:
> We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, was suspended not on a golden cross, but on a wooden one. Therefore, if both your faith and your words are true, send me a wooden cross in the hands of religious men, then in accordance with the belief and conviction of the Lord Jesus Christ, I will have faith in the life-giving cross and holy wood. I will come.
Two bishops and a hermit came to Vladimir, gave him a wooden cross, and confirmed that the tsar had made a pledge of faith on it. Vladimir kissed the cross and clutched it to his chest, collected a few followers, and set off for Prespa. As he arrived, on 22 May 1016, he went into a church to pray. When he exited the church, he was struck down by Vladislav's soldiers and beheaded. According to Skylitzes, Vladimir believed Vladislav's pledge, told to him by the Bulgarian archbishop David. He then allowed himself to fall into Vladislav's hands, and was executed. The motivation behind the murder is unclear. Since Samuel's defeat in 1014, the Bulgarians had been losing battle after battle, and Vladislav probably suspected or was informed that Vladimir planned to restore Duklja's alliance with Byzantium. This alliance would be particularly disturbing for Tsar Vladislav because of the proximity of Duklja to Dyrrhachium, which was a target of the tsar's war efforts.
In early 1018, Vladislav led an unsuccessful attack against Dyrrhachium, outside whose walls he found his death. The chronicle asserts that Vladimir appeared before Vladislav when he dined in his camp outside Dyrrhachium, and slew him while he cried for help. The same year, the Byzantine army—led by the victorious Basil—terminated the First Bulgarian Empire. As Vladimir and Kosara had no children, his successor was his uncle Dragimir, the ruler of Travunia and Zachlumia. Accompanied by soldiers, he set off for Duklja to establish himself as its ruler, probably in the first half of 1018. When he came to Kotor, the town's inhabitants ambushed and killed him after inviting him to a banquet, and his soldiers returned to Travunia. Duklja was not mentioned again in the sources until the 1030s. Some scholars believe that it was placed under direct Byzantine rule around 1018, while others believe it remained a Byzantine vassal state under an unknown native ruler.
## Sainthood
Jovan Vladimir was buried in Prespa, in the same church in front of which he was martyred. His relics soon became famous as miraculously healing, attracting many people to his tomb. Shortly after his death he was recognized as a martyr and saint, being commemorated on 22 May, his feast day. At that time, saints were recognized without any formal rite of canonization. Vladimir was the first ruler of a Serbian state who was elevated to sainthood. The rulers from the Nemanjić dynasty, who reigned over the Serbian state which grew around Raška, would almost all be canonized—starting with Nemanja, the saintly founder of the dynasty.
Several years after his burial, Kosara transported the remains to Duklja. She interred him in the Prečista Krajinska Church, near his court, in the region of Skadarska Krajina. The relics drew many devotees to the church, which became a center of pilgrimage. Kosara did not remarry; at her request, she was interred in Prečista Krajinska, at the feet of her husband. In around 1215—when Krajina was under the rule of Serbian Grand Prince Stefan Nemanjić—the relics were presumably removed from this church and transported to Dyrrhachium by the troops of Michael I, the despot of Epirus. At that time Despot Michael had briefly captured from Serbia the city of Skadar, which is only about 20 km (12 mi) east of the church. Jovan Vladimir was mentioned as the patron saint of Dyrrhachium in a Greek liturgical text.
In 1368 Dyrrhachium was taken from the Angevins by Karlo Thopia, an Albanian lord. In 1381 he rebuilt, in Byzantine style, a church ruined in an earthquake in the narrow valley of the stream Kusha, a tributary of the Shkumbin River—near the site of the town of Elbasan in central Albania (built in the 15th century). The church was dedicated to Saint Jovan Vladimir, as the inscription which Thopia placed above its south entrance declared in Greek, Latin, and Serbian. The saint's relics were kept in a reliquary, a wooden casket, which was enclosed in a shrine, 3 m (9.8 ft) in height, within the church.
Serbian scholar Stojan Novaković theorized that Vladimir was buried near Elbasan immediately after his death. Novaković conjectured that the earthquake which ruined the old church happened during Thopia's rule, and that Thopia reinstated the relics in the rebuilt church. If Vladimir was previously buried in Duklja, Novaković reasoned, he would not be absent, as he was, from Serbian sources written during the reign of the Nemanjić dynasty, who ruled over Duklja (later named Zeta) from 1186 to 1371. Novaković did not consider the idea that the relics might have been removed from Duklja to Dyrrhachium in around 1215. He commented on the chronicle's account that Kosara transported Vladimir's body "to a place known as Krajina, where his court was": While his court was possibly in the region of Krajina before his captivity, after he married Kosara it could have been near Elbasan, in the territory of Dyrrachium he received from Tsar Samuel. He was interred near the latter court, which was replaced in the chronicle with the former.
An Orthodox monastery grew around the church near Elbasan, and became the center of veneration of Saint Jovan Vladimir, which was limited to an area around the monastery. In the latter half of the 15th century, the territory of present-day Albania was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, in which Islam was the privileged religion. After losing the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Ottomans went on the defensive in Europe. In the climate of revival of Christianity in the Ottoman Empire, a hagiography of the saint and a service to him were written in Greek in 1690 at the monastery. It stood under the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Ohrid, which became a notable spiritual and artistic force during the leadership of Archbishop Joasaph from 1719 to 1745. In this period, the veneration of Saint Jovan Vladimir was promoted in southern Albania and western Macedonia, as well as beyond the archbishopric, in Bulgaria and among the Serbs in the Kingdom of Hungary.
The monastery became the see of the newly founded Archbishopric of Dyrrhachium in the second half of the 18th century. In more recent times the monastery fell into disrepair, and in the 1960s it was closed by Albania's Communist authorities; in 1967 the reliquary with the saint's relics was moved to St Mary's Church in Elbasan. The dilapidated monastery was returned to the Church in the 1990s. The restoration of its church and other buildings was completed in 2005. Since around 1995 the relics have been kept in the Orthodox cathedral of Tirana, the capital of Albania, and are brought back to the monastery only for the saint's feast day.
Each year on the Feast of Saint Jovan Vladimir, a great number of devotees come to the monastery, popularly known as Shingjon among Albanians. In the morning, the reliquary is placed at the center of the church under a canopy, before being opened. After the morning liturgy has been celebrated, chanting priests carry the reliquary three times around the church, followed by the devotees, who hold lit candles. The reliquary is then placed in front of the church, to be kissed by the believers. The priests give them pieces of cotton that have been kept inside the reliquary since the previous feast. There are numerous stories about people, both Christians and Muslims, who were healed after they prayed before the saint's relics.
On the eve of the Feast of Saint Jovan Vladimir, an all-night vigil is celebrated in the churches dedicated to the saint, as is celebrated in other Orthodox churches on the eves of their patron saints' feasts. The liturgical celebration of Vladimir's feast day begins on the evening of 21 May, because, in the Orthodox Church, the liturgical day is reckoned from one evening to the next. Despite the name of the service, the all-night vigil is usually not held throughout the entire night, and may last only for two hours. In the Church of St Jovan Vladimir near Elbasan, it lasts from 9:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. Hymns either to Jovan Vladimir or to another saint whose commemoration falls on 22 May, are chanted, on that liturgical day, at set points during services in all Orthodox churches.
Saint Jovan Vladimir is the patron saint of the modern-day town of Bar in south Montenegro, built at its present location in 1976 about 4 km (2.5 mi) from the site of the old town of Bar, which was destroyed in a war and abandoned in 1878. A religious procession celebrating the saint passes on his feast day through the town's streets with church banners and icons. The procession is usually led by the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral. The bronze sculpture King Jovan Vladimir, 4 m (13 ft) in height, was installed at the central square of Bar in 2001; it is a work by sculptor Nenad Šoškić. Although Vladimir was only a prince, he is referred to as "king" in the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja. He is called the Holy King in southeastern Montenegro, and hence the hillock thought to be the site of his court is named Kraljič (kralj means "king").
### Cross of Vladimir
A cross, held by tradition to be the one that Jovan Vladimir received from Ivan Vladislav, and had in his hands when he was martyred, is a highly valued relic. It is under the care of the Andrović family from the village of Velji Mikulići near Bar and, according to the Androvićs, has been for centuries. The cross is made of yew wood plated with silver, with a brass ball attached to its lower arm, into which a stick is inserted when the cross is carried. The cross is 45 cm (18 in) high, 38 cm (15 in) wide, and 2.5 cm (1.0 in) thick.
According to Russian scholars Ivan Yastrebov and Pavel Rovinsky, the cross was originally kept in the Prečista Krajinska Church, in which Kosara had interred Vladimir. The peak of Islamization of the Krajina region was reached at the end of the 18th century. The church was torn down, though it is uncertain when and by whom, but the cross was preserved by the people of the region. They believed that it could protect against evil and ensure a rich harvest, and kept it as sacred, although they had converted to Islam. The cross was later taken from them by the neighboring clan of Mrkojevići. As they too converted to Islam, they entrusted the cross to the Andrović family—their Orthodox Christian neighbors. The Mrkojevići considered it more appropriate for the cross to be kept in a Christian home, rather than in a Muslim one.
The cross, followed by a religious procession, is carried each year on the Feast of Pentecost from Velji Mikulići to the summit of Mount Rumija. The procession is preceded by a midnight liturgy in the village's Church of St Nicholas. After the liturgy, the ascent begins up a steep path to the 1,593 m (5,226 ft) summit of Rumija. The cross, carried by a member of the Andrović family, leads the procession, followed by an Orthodox priest and the other participants. Catholics and Muslims of the region have traditionally participated in the procession. It is carefully observed that no one precedes the cross; to do so is considered a bad omen. The ascending devotees sing:
In the past, the standard-bearer of the Mrkojevići clan, a Muslim, walked next to the cross with a flag in his left and a knife in his right hand, ready to use it if anyone attempted to take the cross. The clan especially feared that the participants from Krajina might try to recover the sacred object. At the end of the 19th century the number of Muslims in the procession dropped as their religious and political leaders disapproved of their participation in it. After World War II, Yugoslavia's socialist government discouraged public religious celebrations, and the procession was not held between 1959 and 1984.
Tradition has it that a church dedicated to the Holy Trinity stood at the summit until it was razed by the Ottomans; in another version, the church crumbled after a boy and a girl sinned within. Before 2005, there was a custom to pick up a stone at a certain distance from the peak and carry it to the supposed site of the church in the belief that when a sufficient quantity of stones were collected, the church would rebuild itself. A new church dedicated to the Holy Trinity was consecrated on the site by the Serbian Orthodox Church on 31 July 2005.
The procession arrives at the peak before dawn, and at sunrise the morning liturgy begins. After prayers have been offered, the procession goes back to Velji Mikulići, again following the cross. The participants would formerly gather on a flat area 300 m (980 ft) from the peak, where they would spend some five or six hours in a joyous celebration and sports, and have a communal meal. On the way back, some people pick the so-called herb of Rumija (Onosma visianii), whose root is reputed for its medicinal properties. The procession ends at the Church of St Nicholas, and folk festivities at Velji Mikulići continue into the night. Until the next Feast of Pentecost, the cross is kept at a secret location. It was formerly known only to two oldest male members of the Andrović family, and since around 2000 the Androvićs have appointed a committee to keep the cross.
### Hagiography and iconography
The oldest preserved hagiography of Saint Jovan Vladimir is contained in Chapter 36 of the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja. This chronicle, written in Latin, was completed between 1299 and 1301 in the town of Bar, then part of the Serbian Kingdom. Its author was Rudger, the Catholic Archbishop of Bar, who was probably of Czech origin. He wrote Chapter 36 as a summary of an older hagiography of Vladimir, written in Duklja most likely sometime between 1075 and 1089. This is the period when Duklja's rulers from the Vojislavljević dynasty endeavored to obtain the royal insignia from the Pope, and to elevate the Bishopric of Bar to an archbishopric. They represented Prince Vladimir as the saintly founder of their dynasty; they were, according to the chronicle, descendants of his uncle Dragimir. The Vojislavljevićs succeeded in those endeavors, though Vladimir was not recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church. Despite its hagiographic nature, Chapter 36 contains a lot of reliable historical data. Chapters 34 and 35, which deal with Vladimir's father and uncles, are probably based on the prologue of the 11th-century hagiography. Chapters 1–33 of the chronicle are based on oral traditions and its author's constructions, and are for the most part dismissed by historians.
The hagiography in the chronicle is the source for the "Poem of King Vladimir" composed in the 18th century by a Franciscan friar from Dalmatia, Andrija Kačić Miošić. The poem is part of Miošić's history of the South Slavs in prose and verse, written in the Croatian vernacular of Dalmatia. This book was first printed in Venice in 1756 and was soon read beyond Dalmatia, including Serbia and Bulgaria (then under Ottoman rule, as was most of the Balkans). The "Poem of King Vladimir" is composed in a manner derived from the style of the South Slavic oral epics. It describes Vladimir's captivity in Bulgaria, the love between Kosara and him, Tsar Samuel's blessing of their marriage, and their wedding. It concludes with the newlyweds setting off for Vladimir's court, which Miošić places in the Herzegovinian city of Trebinje.
The Greek akolouthia on Saint Jovan Vladimir, containing his hagiography, prayers to him, and hymns to be chanted in church services on his feast day, was printed in Venice in 1690. The book was reprinted with small changes in 1774 and 1858. It was written from oral traditions by the deputy of the Orthodox Archbishop of Ohrid, Cosmas, who resided at the Monastery of St Jovan Vladimir, near Elbasan. Copies of the book were distributed to other Orthodox churches and individuals. The akolouthia was also published in 1741 in Moscopole, an Aromanian center in southeastern Albania, as part of a compilation dedicated to saints popular in that region. A shorter hagiography of the saint, based on his life contained in this akolouthia, was included in the Synaxarium composed by Nicodemus the Hagiorite, printed in Venice (1819) and Athens (1868). Cosmas's text was the basis for the Church Slavonic akolouthias on the saint, which appeared in Venice (1802) and Belgrade (1861). The latter was printed as part of the third edition of Srbljak, a compendium of akolouthias on Serb saints, published by the Serbian Orthodox Church. The saint's life in English, translated from Church Slavonic, appeared in the book Lives of the Serbian Saints, published in London in 1921 by the Anglican Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
In Cosmas's writing, the saint was named "Jovan from Vladimir"; his father was Nemanja (historically, Grand Prince of Raška from 1166 to 1196), and his grandfather was Simeon (Bulgarian Tsar from 893 to 927). He married a daughter of Samuel, the tsar of Bulgaria and Ohrid. He succeeded his father as emperor of Albania, Illyria, and Dalmatia. After Byzantine Emperor Basil defeated Tsar Samuel, Emperor Jovan defeated Basil. He also fought against the Bogomil and Messalian heretics. From his early youth, Jovan Vladimir longed for the Kingdom of God. After he was married, he prayed day and night, and abstained from intercourse with his wife. She was a heretic like her brother, whom she incited to kill Jovan. When the two brothers-in-law rode together, accompanied by soldiers, the heretic suddenly struck Jovan with a sword at a mountain pass named Derven, but could not cut him. Only when Jovan gave him his own sword was the murderer able to cut off his head. Jovan caught it in the air and rode on to the church he had built near Elbasan. There he put his head down, saying, "Lord Jesus Christ, in your hands I place my spirit," and died; it was AD 899. He was buried in the church, which then became the scene of many miracles. The saint's beneficent power is described in the hagiography:
According to Vladimir's life in Church Slavonic, he succeeded his father Petrislav as the ruler of Serbian lands; he ruled from the town of Alba. He was captured and imprisoned by the Bulgarian ruler Samuel. After marrying Samuel's daughter Kosara, he returned to his country. Emperor Basil, having overcome Bulgaria, attacked the Serbian lands, but Vladimir repulsed him. Basil advised the new Bulgarian ruler, Vladislav, to kill Vladimir by trickery. Vladislav invited Vladimir to visit him, as if to discuss the needs of their peoples. When Kosara came to him instead, Vladislav received her with apparent kindness; therefore Vladimir came as well. Vladislav was able to cut off his head only after Vladimir gave him his own sword. The saint then carried his severed head to the church he had built near Alba, and died there; it was AD 1015. He was buried in the church. During Vladislav's siege of Dyrrachium, Vladimir appeared before his murderer when he dined, and slew him while he cried for help. The saint's relics then gushed myrrh, curing various illnesses. The kontakion which is contained, among other hymns, in the Church Slavonic akolouthia published as part of Srbljak, praises the saint:
In a Bulgarian liturgical book written in 1211, Vladimir was included in a list of tsars of the First Bulgarian Empire: "To Boris, . . . Samuel, Gavril Radomir, Vladimir, and Vladislav, ancient Bulgarian tsars, who inherited both the earthly and the heavenly empires, Memory Eternal." According to the earliest work of Bulgarian historiography composed in 1762 by Paisius of Hilendar, Vladimir, also named Vladislav, was a Bulgarian tsar and saint. His father was Aron, Tsar Samuel's brother. His wife and her brother murdered him because of his pure life and Orthodox faith. Paisius combined Ivan Vladislav and Jovan Vladimir into one character attributed with Vladislav's parentage and Vladimir's sainthood.
An important model for the iconography of Saint Jovan Vladimir is an engraving in the 1690 edition of the Greek akolouthia. It is a work by Venetian engraver Isabella Piccini. She depicted the saint with a mustache and short beard, wearing a cloak and a crown inscribed with lilies, holding a cross in his right hand, and his severed head in his left hand. A portable icon in Saint Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, dated around 1700, shows the saint mounted on horseback.
An icon of Saints Marina and Jovan Vladimir, dated 1711, is part of the iconostasis of the Monastery of St Naum near Ohrid in western Macedonia. The icon's position on the iconostasis indicates that Vladimir was an important figure of local veneration. He was often depicted in the company of Saints Clement and Naum in Macedonian churches. A number of 18th-century painters from central and southern Albania painted the saint in churches of the region, especially in the area of Moscopole. A portable icon of the saint was created in 1739 at the Ardenica Monastery in southwestern Albania. It depicts him seated on a throne, surrounded by twelve panels showing scenes of his life and miracles. Saint Jovan Vladimir is represented on frescos in three monasteries of Mount Athos: Hilandar, Zograf, and Philotheou; and three Bulgarian monasteries: Rila, Troyan, and Lozen.
Hristofor Žefarović, an artist from Macedonia, painted the frescos in the rebuilt church of the Serbian Monastery of Bođani, in the Bačka region (then part of the Kingdom of Hungary) in 1737. There, he depicted Jovan Vladimir in a row of six Serb saints, wearing a crown and sceptre, clad in a full-length tunic, loros (a type of stole), and chlamys. In the same row stands another Serb saint from present-day Montenegro, Stefan Štiljanović. Žefarović's frescos in Bođani are regarded as the earliest work showing Baroque traits in the Serbian art. Žefarović created in 1742 in Vienna a copperplate with scenes of the saint's life and miracles. Its printed impressions were disseminated to many Orthodox Christian homes in the Balkans. The same author included him among the rulers and saints whom he illustrated in his Stemmatographia.
A lithography in the 1858 edition of the Greek akolouthia shows the saint wearing a crown with a double lily wreath, his right foot on a sword. He holds a cross, a sceptre, and an olive branch in his right hand, while his crowned severed head is in his left hand. He wears an ermine cloak and a robe with floral designs, adorned with large gems surrounded by pearls. The Greek text beneath the illustration names the saint as Jovan Vladimir, the pious Emperor of all Albania and Bulgaria, the graceful Wonderworker and Great Martyr, and true Myrrh-gusher. In his hagiography included in the Synaxarium of Nicodemus the Hagiorite, the saint is referred to as Emperor of the Serbs (τῶν Σέρβων βασιλεύς).
### Legends
Several legends about Jovan Vladimir have been recorded in western Macedonia. One has it that, after he was beheaded, he brought his head to the Monastery of St John of Bigor. On a hill above the village of Pesočani in the Municipality of Debarca, there is a locality called Vladimirovo, where some ruins can be seen. The locals claim that it is where Vladimir was born and later brought his severed head. The Church of St Athanasius near Pesočani, now ruined, is reputed to have been built by Vladimir. People from the region gathered there each year on the eve of his feast day. They lit candles on the remains of the church's walls and prayed to the saint. Tradition has it that the Monastery of St Naum had a bell tower named after the saint, in the foundation of which a portion of his relics was placed.
In the western fringe of Macedonia, which is now part of Albania, Jovan Vladimir was remembered as a saintly ruler, cut down by his father-in-law, an emperor, who believed the slanderous accusation that he was a womanizer. The enraged emperor, accompanied by soldiers, found Vladimir on a mountain pass named Qafë Thanë (also known as Derven), on the road between the Macedonian town of Struga and Elbasan. He struck his son-in-law with a sword, but could not cut him. Only when Vladimir gave him his own sword was the emperor able to cut off his head. Vladimir took his severed head and went towards the site of his future church. There stood an oak, under which he fell after the tree bowed down before him. The saint was interred in the church which was subsequently built at that place and dedicated to him.
According to a legend recorded in the Greek hagiography, Jovan Vladimir built the church near Elbasan. Its location, deep in a dense forest, was chosen by God, and an eagle with a shining cross on its head showed it to Vladimir. After the saint was decapitated, he brought his head to the church, and was buried inside. A group of Franks once stole the casket with his miraculous relics. The casket turned out to be extremely heavy, breaking the backs of the hinnies on which the Franks carried it. They eventually placed it in the Shkumbin River to take it to sea, but the river flooded, and the casket—radiating light—went back upstream towards the church. The local inhabitants took it out of the water and returned it to the church in a festive procession.
A group of thieves stole, on a summer day, horses that belonged to the Monastery of St Jovan Vladimir. When they came to the nearby stream of Kusha to take the horses across, it appeared to them like an enormous river. They moved away from it in fear, but when they looked back from a distance, the stream appeared small. As they approached it again, the Kusha again became huge and impassable. After several such attempts to cross the stream, the thieves realized that this was a miracle of the saint, so they released the monastery's horses and ran away in horror.
In the 19th century, a possible legend about Prince Vladimir was recorded by Branislav Nušić in the city of Korçë, in southeastern Albania. Ruins on a hilltop above Korçë were said to be the remnants of the court of a Latin (Catholic) king, whose kingdom neighbored the state of an Orthodox emperor. The king asked for the hand of the emperor's daughter, who agreed to become the king's wife only if he constructed an Orthodox church. The king did so, and she married him, but on the first night of their marriage, she killed him. She then became a nun, and the king's body was taken somewhere—he was not buried near his court. Macedonian Slavs inhabiting Saint Achillius Island in the Small Prespa Lake in Greece told of an emperor named Mirče. He lived on their island, where he was killed by a cousin of his out of jealousy, and his body was taken via Ohrid to Albania.
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Charles Stewart (premier)
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Canadian politician (1868–1946)
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Charles Stewart, PC (August 26, 1868 – December 6, 1946) was a Canadian politician who served as the third premier of Alberta from 1917 until 1921. Born in Strabane, Ontario, in then Wentworth County (now part of Hamilton), Stewart was a farmer who moved west to Alberta after his farm was destroyed by a storm. There he became active in politics and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in the 1909 election. He served as Minister of Public Works and Minister of Municipal Affairs—the first person to hold the latter position in Alberta—in the government of Arthur Sifton. When Sifton left provincial politics in 1917 to join the federal cabinet, Stewart was named his replacement.
As premier, Stewart tried to hold together his Liberal Party, which was divided by the Conscription Crisis of 1917. He endeavoured to enforce prohibition of alcoholic beverages, which had been enshrined in law by a referendum during Sifton's premiership, but found that the law was not widely enough supported to be effectively policed. His government took over several of the province's financially troubled railroads, and guaranteed bonds sold to fund irrigation projects. Several of these policies were the result of lobbying by the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), with which Stewart enjoyed good relations; even so, the UFA was politicized during Stewart's premiership and ran candidates in the 1921 election. Unable to match the UFA's appeal to rural voters, Stewart's government was defeated at the polls and he was succeeded as premier by Herbert Greenfield.
After leaving provincial politics, Stewart was invited to join the federal cabinet of William Lyon Mackenzie King, in which he served as Minister of the Interior and Mines. In this capacity he signed, on behalf of the federal government, an agreement that transferred control of Alberta's natural resources from Ottawa to the provincial government—a concession he had been criticized for being unable to negotiate as Premier. He served in King's cabinet until 1930, when the King government was defeated, but remained a member of Parliament until he lost his seat in 1935. He died in December 1946 in Ottawa.
## Early life
Charles Stewart was born on August 26, 1868, in Strabane, Ontario, on Wentworth County, to Charles and Catherine Stewart. Charles Sr. was a stonemason and farmer. As a child, Charles Jr. accompanied his father to Carlisle to hear Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. According to family lore, Macdonald noticed the young future Premier and told him that he was a fine boy who would make a good politician someday. When Charles Jr. was 16, he moved with his family to a farm near Barrie. Seven years later, on December 17, 1891, he married Jane Russell Sneath; the pair had eight children. After marrying Sneath, he converted to her Church of England faith.
In 1892, Charles Sr. died, leaving his son in charge of the family farm. In 1905, on July 8, this farm was destroyed by a tornado, and Stewart decided to move west, settling near Killam, Alberta in 1906. His family endured a cold winter—the warmest place in their shack was on the kitchen table, so they kept the baby there—and in the spring their crops were destroyed by hail. As he was unsuccessful at farming, he supplemented his income using the stonemason's skills he had learned from his father: he laid foundations for the Canadian Pacific Railway, worked on the High Level Bridge in Edmonton, and dug Killam's town well. He later worked in real estate and as a farm implement dealer, earning enough to buy a new and larger homestead in 1912.
Stewart was active in his local community: he was the first chair of the Killam School District, attended the first meeting of Killam ratepayers on January 19, 1907, and was involved in the incorporation of Killam in January 1908. In 1909, the Alberta Liberal Party, which had dominated provincial politics throughout Alberta's short history, came seeking a candidate to run in the new riding of Sedgewick. Stewart agreed to run and was elected by acclamation in the 1909 election.
### Early political career
At the time of Stewart's acclamation, Premier Alexander Cameron Rutherford seemed unassailable: he controlled 36 of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta's 41 seats (Stewart's being one), and his Liberals had just won nearly sixty percent of the vote in their re-election bid. Months later, however, Rutherford and his government were embroiled in the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal, and the Liberal Party was split. Initially, Stewart remained loyal to Rutherford, and went so far as to allege in the legislature that insurgent Liberal John R. Boyle had offered two members of the legislative assembly (MLAs), who were also hotel keepers, immunity from prosecution for liquor violations if they would support a new government in which Boyle was Attorney-General. As additional details of the scandal emerged, however, Stewart himself became an insurgent, and was pleased when Arthur Sifton replaced Rutherford as Premier.
In May 1912, Sifton expanded his cabinet, and Stewart was made the province's first Minister of Municipal Affairs. As was required by the custom of the day when an MLA was appointed to cabinet, he resigned his seat to run in a by-election, in which he easily defeated Conservative William John Blair. In cabinet, he became known as an advocate of public ownership of utilities, which placed him more in sympathy with the Conservative opposition than with Sifton. Despite this position, he backed Sifton's 1913 resolution to the Alberta and Great Waterways problem, which involved partnering with the private sector; this vote marked the first time that the Liberal caucus was united on the railways question since before the scandal broke in 1910.
In December 1913, Sifton moved Stewart from Municipal Affairs into the Public Works portfolio; in this capacity, Stewart played a major role in the incorporation of the Alberta Farmers' Co-operative Elevator Company, which was a farmer-run co-operative with a charter to own and operate grain elevators.
## Premier
Shortly after the 1917 provincial election (in which Stewart and the Liberals were both soundly re-elected), Canada found itself embroiled in a conscription crisis. The federal Conservative government, led by Robert Borden, supported implementing conscription. The opposition Liberals, led by Wilfrid Laurier, nominally opposed conscription, but many English-speaking Liberals in fact supported it. The crisis was resolved when Borden formed a Union government composed of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals. Sifton, falling into the latter group, was chosen as Alberta's representative in that government, and resigned as Premier in October 1917. Lieutenant-Governor Robert Brett, accepting Sifton's choice of successor, asked Stewart to form a government. His only serious rival for the position of premier was Charles Wilson Cross, who opposed conscription and was therefore not a palatable choice for much of the Liberal establishment.
### Party division
The Alberta and Great Waterways scandal had opened up a rift in the provincial Liberal Party, between those who remained loyal to Cross and Rutherford and those who did not, with the latter group being led by William Henry Cushing and Frank Oliver. Sifton had papered over, if not in fact healed, this rift, and it did not burst open again until the conscription crisis. This time, however, the fault lines were different: Cross and Oliver had put aside their longtime enmity to join in opposing conscription, and Sifton, who had been selected Premier in part because he was not identified with either faction in the old feud, was Alberta's most prominent pro-conscription Liberal.
Stewart was a supporter of conscription and of the Union government, but did not take any active part in the acrimonious 1917 federal election, which was fought on the issue. Several of his ministers were not so circumspect: Attorney-General Cross, Education Minister Boyle, and Municipal Affairs Minister Wilfrid Gariépy campaigned for the Laurier Liberals; Public Works Minister Archibald J. McLean and Treasurer Charles R. Mitchell stayed out of the fray while leaving no doubt of their support for Union. During the first legislative session after this election, Stewart came under attack from members of his own party. Alexander Grant MacKay criticized his failure to take advantage of the recent conference of premiers to press for the transfer of rights over Alberta's natural resources from the federal to the provincial government (Sifton had made this a priority during the pre-war years, but had largely ceased his advocacy on the breakout of hostilities), and James Gray Turgeon attacked the government's policy of levying taxes for the support of soldiers' dependants on the grounds that he considered it a federal responsibility.
Divisions within the provincial Liberals came to a head in August 1918, when Stewart dismissed Cross as Attorney-General. It later emerged that Cross had refused to fire two detectives in his department after Stewart had concluded that their work would be better done by the provincial police, and that Stewart had found Cross's work to be generally poor. He had asked for Cross's resignation, received no response, and rescinded the Order in Council appointing him. In an effort to secure Cross's departure from politics, Stewart offered him the position of Alberta's provincial agent in London, England; Cross refused it, and Stewart was criticized for using appointments for political advantage.
### Prohibition and democratic reform
Alberta had implemented prohibition in 1916 as the result of a referendum supported by the powerful United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) lobby group. By the time Stewart took office, it was becoming apparent that the policy was not being universally complied with: Conservative MLA George Douglas Stanley alleged that judges were often hungover when they sat in judgment of those accused of violating liquor laws, and Cross's replacement as Attorney-General, John Boyle, admitted that in his estimation 65% of the province's male population broke the Prohibition Act. In 1921 the government realized profits of \$800,000 on alcohol legally sold for "medicinal" purposes, and Boyle estimated bootleggers' profits at nine times that figure. Stewart blamed the problems on insufficient public support for the law, but even as he did so it was clear that there was not enough support to repeal it.
Prohibition was not the only UFA-endorsed policy to have been passed by Sifton's government: indeed, the legislation that allowed for citizen-initiated referendums of the sort that had led to prohibition was itself the result of UFA advocacy. Once Stewart became Premier, he committed to the introduction of another UFA-favoured democratic reform—proportional representation. However, a committee formed to examine the possibility disintegrated over what historian Carrol Jaques calls "battles within the group and a general dislike of the concept".
### Public works
Railway development had dominated the premierships of Stewart's predecessors and, while losing political potency as an issue, it was still a matter that demanded his attention. Though Sifton had established a railway policy in 1913 that was satisfactory to all wings of the Liberal Party, the outbreak of the First World War the following year had all but put an end to railway construction across Canada. Once peace came, Albertans living near promised but as yet unbuilt lines began to clamour for their completion. The private companies with whom the government had partnered, however, were in no position to undertake the construction. The Edmonton, Dunvegan and British Columbia Railway was taken over by the Canadian Pacific Railway, with a clause in the agreement requiring the provincial government to spend \$1 million to improve the route, and the Alberta and Great Waterways was taken over by Stewart's government directly (J. D. McArthur, the line's previous owner, retained an option to repurchase it, but it was never exercised).
Irrigation projects also occupied much of Stewart's attention as Premier. As with railways, the First World War had disrupted planned irrigation projects, and Albertan farmers, especially those from the arid south, were eager to see them resumed. Specifically popular was a project to irrigate 500,000 acres (200,000 ha) in Lethbridge County, but when bonds were issued to finance the project, they did not sell. Stewart sought federal backing of the bonds, but Prime Minister Arthur Meighen declined. Stewart reluctantly agreed to offer a provincial guarantee, but to avoid negative reaction from northern Alberta he linked the enabling legislation to one allowing for drainage in northern areas.
### Stewart and the United Farmers of Alberta
The United Farmers of Alberta had its beginnings as a farmers' advocacy organization; Stewart, a farmer, had joined it. The UFA had achieved several successes in dealing with the Sifton government, and Stewart also endeavoured to cooperate with it. The irrigation project was strongly supported by the UFA, as was Stewart's action on proportional representation. When Peace River MLA William Archibald Rae introduced legislation to allow Imperial Oil to build a pipeline in the province, UFA President Henry Wise Wood sent Stewart a telegram of protest, as he believed that pipelines should be common carriers; Stewart read it in the legislature, and Rae's bill was withdrawn. Even given the victories, the UFA was not satisfied with the government's record: in 1918, the government took action on only three of the many resolutions the UFA had sent to it.
Some in the UFA had long favoured contesting elections directly as a political party instead of remaining on the sidelines as a pressure group, but Wood and other UFA leaders were implacably opposed to the idea. During the war, however, the political wing began to gain momentum, and at the 1919 UFA convention, it was decided that UFA candidates would contest the next provincial election. In fact, it ended up doing so somewhat sooner: in 1919, Charles W. Fisher, Liberal MLA for Cochrane, died as a result of that year's influenza epidemic, and a by-election was necessitated to replace him. The UFA's Alex Moore defeated his only opponent, Liberal Edward V. Thomson, by 835 votes to 708.
Stewart felt betrayed: "It has been my fight ever since I became a minister to see that the farmers of the province were having a square deal," he remarked, "and I think I have done this with some success." Despite his general sympathy with the aims of the UFA, he could not support their transition into a political party. For one, he disagreed with the UFA's belief that politics should be conducted along class, rather than ideological, lines. Stewart believed that "the more strongly armed the classes become the harder will it be to get the things we really need in our government" and asserted that "I never did and never will have any desire to form a coalition with anybody except with men who think the same as I do."
Given the UFA's formal adoption of the goal of replacing Stewart's Liberal government with a Farmer government, it remained surprisingly friendly towards the Premier. While campaigning for Moore during the Cochrane by-election, Wood called Stewart "an honourable, upright citizen, doing the best he could under difficult circumstances" and boasted that "if I have got to tear down the character of an honourable man to build up something that I want, I am not going to build it up." When at last the general election came, in 1921, the UFA declined to run a candidate in Stewart's Sedgewick riding as a sign of respect to the Premier. After the UFA swept to victory, there was even speculation that Stewart, still a UFA member, would stay on as Premier of a new Farmer's government (as part of its opposition to "old style politics," the UFA had contested the election without designating a leader), but he announced otherwise.
### Defeat and legacy
The last provincial election had been held in June 1917, and four years was the normal life of a legislature in Canada. Stewart called an election for July 19. Though the Liberals' fortunes had been sagging in the post-war years, there remained no doubt that they could again defeat the Conservatives; their real challenge was evidently from the newly politicized UFA. Bolstering this challenge by increasing farmers' discontent was a collapse of agricultural prices. The UFA had no leader, no fixed platform, and no inclination to attack Stewart or his government. What it did have was superior organization, and on election day this organization made itself felt in the form of thirty-nine UFA members elected to fourteen Liberals. Stewart, who has been acclaimed in his own riding of Sedgewick, announced that he would resign as Premier as soon as the UFA had selected somebody to replace him. Once it selected Herbert Greenfield, Stewart made good on his pledge, and Greenfield replaced him August 13.
In Jaques' view, Stewart was defined by what he was not:
> he was not involved in any of the railway scandals, current or past; he was not conspicuously involved in any of the personal battles that had consumed Alexander Rutherford, Frank Oliver, the brothers Arthur and Clifford Sifton, Charles Cross, or any of their followers; he was not a high-powered flamboyant Liberal partisan; he did not let himself get involved in federal Liberal Party machinations over issues such as the conscription crisis; nor did he seem to be high-handed or dictatorial—a criticism levelled at his predecessor, Arthur Sifton.
She argues that he was a "decent family man" whose career was a product of the circumstances in which he found himself.
Historian L. G. Thomas recognized Stewart's admirable qualities, but criticized him for lacking Sifton's "ruthless and forceful leadership" and claimed that "few provincial premiers have been more universally praised by their opponents and more unanimously deplored by their supporters." Even so, he acknowledged that the decisive factor in Stewart's downfall was not anything that he did, but the decision by the UFA to run candidates in 1921; in Thomas's view, Sifton would have been defeated in 1917 if he had had to contend with a politicized UFA.
Mount Charles Stewart is located in the Bow Valley just north of Canmore. The peak was named for him in 1928.
## Federal politics
Following the 1921 federal election, William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberals came to power in Ottawa. They had not won any seats in Alberta, and Stewart was invited to join King's cabinet as Minister of the Interior and Mines (which included responsibility as Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs). He won a 1922 by-election in the Quebec seat of Argenteuil, before shifting to the more familiar territory of Edmonton West in the 1925 election; he was re-elected there in 1926 and 1930. In the 1935 election, he ran in the new riding of Jasper—Edson, where he was defeated by Social Crediter Walter Frederick Kuhl.
`As a cabinet minister, Stewart aggressively marketed Canada's coal both domestically and internationally, for which he was honoured by Alberta's coal producers at a banquet and later awarded the Randolph Bruce Gold Medal in Science by the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He took a great interest in water power, and advised the government on jurisdictional issues surrounding the Niagara, St. Mary, and Milk Rivers. In 1927, he served as Canada's representative at the League of Nations. As Minister of the Interior, he oversaw the 1927 creation of Prince Albert National Park. Ironically, given the attacks he had sustained as Premier from Alexander Grant MacKay, he was part of the federal delegation that finally negotiated the transfer of resource control from the federal to the Alberta provincial government in December 1929. The same agreement transferred resource rights to Saskatchewan and Manitoba. After it was signed but before it took effect, Manitoba Premier John Bracken concluded an agreement with the Winnipeg Electric Company, a private concern, to develop a hydroelectric dam at Seven Sisters' Reach. Because resource rights were still controlled by the federal government, the deal required federal approval. Stewart advocated withholding this approval in deference to Manitoba public opinion, which favoured public ownership of such projects, but King honoured a provision of the resource transfer agreement that required the wishes of provincial governments to be respected until the transfer was complete and granted approval. Stewart's preference for public over private ownership extended to King's planned creation of the Bank of Canada; Stewart wanted the new institution entirely under the control of the government, but King preferred an arrangement whereby half of its directors would be appointed by the government and half by private shareholders and suggested that advocates of public ownership might find themselves more at home in the socialist Cooperative Commonwealth Federation than in his Liberal caucus.`
Despite Stewart's involvement in transferring resource rights to Alberta, his relationship with the UFA government that had defeated him in 1921 was frosty: Lakeland College historian Franklin Foster, in his biography of UFA Premier John Edward Brownlee, alleges that this antipathy influenced Stewart's preference for private corporations over the Alberta government in granting hydroelectric power permits. He also feuded with then-Premier Brownlee over development in Alberta's national parks (Stewart favouring large-scale private development and Brownlee opposing it), causing King to record in his diary "Brownlee strikes me as...being superior to Mr. Stewart, who is handicapped in his dislike of [Brownlee]." When King sought to absorb Progressives into his Liberal Party to form a stronger coalition against the Conservatives, Stewart opposed cooperation with the UFA leaders who made up a large part of the Progressives' Albertan base. While King was inclined to view UFA politicians, like Progressives elsewhere, as "Liberals in a hurry" who were fundamentally comfortable with his government and preferred it to the Conservatives, Stewart understood that the UFA was a distinct group whose members were in many respect more conservative than liberal. King dismissed his minister's views as being the result of Stewart's acrimonious history with the UFA.
In fact, Stewart did not enjoy King's confidence. Though he brought him into his cabinet in 1921 in part at the urging of Progressive leader Thomas Crerar, King found Stewart to be an inadequate protector of western interests—especially in his advocacy of tariff reduction, which King found lacklustre—and did not trust his political advice on the west. By 1925 he was considering appointing Stewart to the Senate, to remove him from active political involvement, but was handicapped by the absence of any other Alberta representation in his cabinet. In 1926 Stewart served as an emissary from King to recruit Saskatchewan Premier Charles Avery Dunning to the federal cabinet; the mission fulfilled, King kept Stewart in cabinet but wrote in his diary that all matters pertaining to Alberta were to be "left to Dunning to do as he thinks best". By 1927, King complained that Stewart had "no grip" on the province of which he had once been Premier, and in 1930 he wrote "Organization in Alberta is terrible. Stewart is worse than useless, is like an old woman, with no real control of situation." In the 1930 federal election Dunning and Crerar were both defeated; King complained that it was "perfectly terrible to have Stewart alone representing the West." When Stewart too went down to defeat in 1935, King was pleased "not to have to consider him" in assembling his new cabinet, and opted instead to leave Alberta unrepresented to punish it for failing to elect any Liberals.
## Post-political life
After Stewart's defeat in 1935, he was appointed by George V to chair the Canadian section of the International Joint Commission, in recognition of his expertise on international water boundary issues. In 1938, he was appointed chair of the Canadian section of the British Columbia – Yukon – Alaska Highway Commission. In these capacities, he travelled across Canada, visiting his son George at the family homestead near Killam at every opportunity. He died December 6, 1946, leaving an estate of \$21,961.
Born in one of Canada's original provinces, Stewart moved west as part of a vast migration to the prairies, and settled in Alberta the year it became a province. As Alberta grew, Stewart played an increasingly important political role in it, until he joined the federal government to become Alberta's voice there, ultimately helping it achieve constitutional equality with the older provinces by transferring to its government control of its resources. As Mackenzie King eulogized him, "in more respects than one, Mr. Stewart's career mirrored the development of Canada itself."
## Electoral record
### As party leader
### As MLA
### As MP
|
18,593,322 |
Baker Street robbery
| 1,169,864,234 |
1971 burglary of safety deposit boxes in London
|
[
"1970s crimes in London",
"1970s in the City of Westminster",
"1971 crimes in the United Kingdom",
"1971 in London",
"Bank robberies",
"Lloyds Banking Group",
"Robberies in England",
"September 1971 events in the United Kingdom"
] |
The Baker Street robbery was the burglary of safety deposit boxes at the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank in London, on the night of 11 September 1971. A gang tunnelled 40 feet (12 m) from a rented shop two doors away to come up through the floor of the vault. The value of the property stolen is unknown, but is likely to have been between £1.25 and £3 million; only £231,000 was recovered by the police.
The burglary was planned by Anthony Gavin, a career criminal, who was inspired by "The Red-Headed League", a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle in which Sherlock Holmes waits in a bank vault to arrest a gang who have tunnelled in through the floor. Gavin and his colleagues rented Le Sac, a leather goods shop two doors from the bank, and tunnelled during weekends. The interior of the vault was mapped out by one gang member using an umbrella and the span of his arms to measure the dimensions and location of the furniture. The gang initially tried to use a jack to force a hole in the vault floor and when this failed they used a thermal lance. When this also failed to work, they used gelignite to blast a way through. Once inside, they emptied 268 safety deposit boxes. The gang had posted a lookout on a nearby roof, who was in contact via walkie-talkie, and their broadcasts were accidentally overheard by Robert Rowlands, an amateur radio enthusiast. He called the police, who initially did not take him seriously, so he used a small cassette recorder to make a recording of the burglars' conversations. The second time he contacted the police they accepted what he was saying, and began hunting for the burglars while the break-in was in progress. They searched 750 banks in an 8-mile (13 km) radius, but failed to locate the gang.
Police found the members of the gang soon after the break-in; one of the burglars, Benjamin Wolfe, had signed the lease for Le Sac in his own name and informers provided information that led to Gavin. At the end of October 1971 police arrested Wolfe, Gavin, Reg Tucker and Thomas Stephens. They continued to search for other members of the gang, including one woman, for five years, but no further arrests were made. Gavin, Tucker and Stephens were sentenced to twelve years in prison; Wolfe received a sentence of eight years, less than the others as he was in his 60s.
There have been several rumours connected with the burglary, including one that the government issued a D-Notice to censor the press; that one of the safety deposit boxes contained compromising photographs of Princess Margaret and the actor and criminal John Bindon; and that photographs of a Conservative cabinet minister abusing children were found. There is no evidence to support these claims and they have been widely dismissed. Some of the rumours inspired the story for the 2008 film The Bank Job. Many of the papers relating to the burglary remain under embargo at The National Archives until January 2071.
## Background
In 1970 Anthony Gavin, a 38-year-old photographer from North London, began planning the burglary of the branch of Lloyds Bank at 187 Baker Street, in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster, London. He decided to use a nearby premises and tunnel up into the floor of the bank; the plan was inspired by "The Red-Headed League", an 1891 short story by Arthur Conan Doyle. In the story, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson pre-empt the burglars and are in the vault when they break-in. A former army physical training instructor with connections to several career criminals, Gavin is described by the journalists Tom Pettifor and Nick Sommerlad as "a forceful personality ... [who] had the propensity to be physically threatening". According to Paul Lashmar, the head of journalism at the University of Sussex, Gavin was a member of a gang headed by Brian Reader, who was also involved in the burglary, although Reader firmly denies that he had any involvement in the events at Baker Street.
## Prelude
Gavin asked Reg Tucker, a second-hand car salesman, who had no criminal record, to reconnoitre the bank. Tucker opened an account with £500 in December 1970 and two months later he rented a safety deposit box in the branch; over the next few months he visited his box thirteen times. Bank practice of the time was for staff to leave customers in private while visiting the vault. As soon as Tucker was alone, he would measure the room using the span of his arms and an umbrella he brought with him; he was aided in getting exact measurements by the regularly sized floor tiles, each of which was nine inches (23 cm) square. He drew a map of the room, plotting where the cabinets were and the position of the furniture. Thomas Stephens, another second-hand car salesman with no criminal record, was used to acquire the tools needed for the break-in, including a thermal lance and a 100-ton jack; one of Reader's friends, Bobby Mills, was employed to be the lookout man. Two others were brought in for the job, one of whom was an explosives expert. Another of Gavin's friends, Mickey "Skinny" Gervaise, a burglar-alarm expert, was brought on board, as were two men who have never been identified: "Little Legs" and "TH". Lashmar reports that TH was a contact of Detective Inspector Alec Eist, whom he describes as "by reputation the most corrupt Yard officer of the 1950s to mid-1970s". The journalist Duncan Campbell describes Eist as "One of the most active bent officers from the 1950s to the 1970s".
In May 1971 the owners of the leather goods shop Le Sac at 189 Baker Street—two doors down from the bank—sold the lease of the property for £10,000 to Benjamin Wolfe, a 64-year-old seller of ornaments and knick-knacks, and a contact of several gang members. The property had a basement that, the group calculated, was at the same level as the bank vault.
## Burglary
Road works nearby meant the trembler alarms in the vault floor were turned off after several false alarms. A member of the local security company alerted the gang of the timing of the digging and when the alarms were off. Work began on the tunnel on the Friday evening of the August bank holiday 1971 and continued until 10 September 1971. To avoid being overheard, they dug only during the weekends. Gavin led the digging of the tunnel from Le Sac to under the vault floor. He later said that he lost 2 stone (28 lb; 13 kg) in the process. The entry hole he, Tucker and a third gang member created in Le Sac was 15 inches (38 cm) wide and through 6 inches (15 cm) of concrete. Gavin dug until he reached the walls of the Chicken Inn's basement, then dug down and continued under the building, using their basement floor as the roof of the tunnel. The tunnel was 40 feet (12 m) long when finished, and at the end, under the vault, the gang created a cavity 7 by 4 by 5 feet (2.1 by 1.2 by 1.5 m). The digging created 8 long tons (8.1 t) of waste, which was hauled back into Le Sac and dumped towards the rear of the premises. The tunnel, which needed no supports, was later described in court as "a magnificent piece of engineering".
The gang began their entry into the vault on Friday 10 September, after the bank closed for the weekend. The gang placed a lookout man on a rooftop overlooking the bank, and kept in contact by using walkie-talkies. Their intention was to use the 100-ton jack to force a hole in the 3-foot-thick (0.91 m) reinforced concrete floor, and railway sleepers were laid on the floor to support it. What they did not know was that there was an old well under where the tunnel ended, and the pressure of the jack pushed the bottom of their tunnel down into the well, rather than raising the vault's floor upwards. The gang then used the thermic lance in an attempt to cut through the floor; when this failed they drilled holes in the underside of the vault floor and packed them with gelignite. On Saturday the gang co-ordinated the blast of the explosives with the movement of traffic in the area to mask the noise. A 12-inch-wide (30 cm) hole was blasted through the floor and into the vault. The tunnel was cleared of the debris created, and the hole was widened with a hammer and chisel. By the time they had finished, the exit of the tunnel measured 12 by 14 inches (30 by 36 cm).
At around 11:00 pm on Saturday 11 September Robert Rowlands, an amateur radio enthusiast living in a flat in Wimpole Street, half a mile (800 m) away from the Lloyds branch, picked up the walkie-talkie conversations of the gang in error. He heard comments over the radio that made him think a local cigarette shop was being burgled. At 11:30 pm, he phoned the police; the local police officer thought it was a prank call, and told Rowlands that he should record the conversation if anything interesting was overheard. Rowlands thought it was a good idea, so used a small cassette recorder to make a record of the conversations. At around midnight he recorded dialogue between the gang inside the shop and the nearby lookout about their need to take a break:
> First voice: Right, well listen carefully. We want you to mind for one hour from now until approximately one o'clock and then to go off the air, get some sleep and come on the air with both radios at six o'clock in the morning.
> Second voice: I suggest we carry on tonight, mate, and get it done with.
> First voice: Look, the place is filled with fumes where we was cutting. And if the Security come in and smell the fumes we are all going to take stoppo and none of us have got nothing. Whereas this way we have all got 300 grand to cut up when we come back in the morning. And if Security have naused it for us, well at least we have got something.
The disagreement between the lookout and gang continued for a while, and the lookout said "Money may be your God, but it's not mine, and I'm fucking off!" Eventually, after input from a woman's voice and a fourth person who seemed to carry more sway than the others, the lookout agreed to remain on the roof overnight. The lookout man was also given an update on the progress they had made in opening the safety deposit boxes: "We have done 90 per cent of the easy ones and we now face the hard ones."
At 2:00 am Rowlands decided he had enough material recorded to call the police again; he did not recontact his local station, but phoned Scotland Yard directly. Scotland Yard sent members of the Flying Squad to listen to the tapes, and they confirmed that they thought a burglary was taking place. The officers stayed with Rowlands until 8:30 am on Sunday 12 September when the gang returned to the shop and radioed the lookout. One of the gang members in the shop thanked him for staying on the roof all night and informed him that they planned to finish the job early that afternoon. At one stage in the morning a waiter from the Chicken Inn restaurant heard noises from within the bank and peered through the windows of the building to see if anything could be seen. Shortly afterwards Rowlands and listening policemen heard the final radio broadcast "Would you like to change to the other channel, over". Rowlands thinks this was the code for leaving the bank.
Police contacted bank staff and local security firms to open up their branches as they began to check 750 banks in an 8-mile (13 km) radius. Each branch was visited by both bank staff and police. They visited the Baker Street branch of Lloyds at 3:30 pm on 12 September. They found the vault secure; they were unable to open the vault to check as it was time locked. It is not known if the gang were still in the vault at the time, although police suspect that they were, but keeping quiet following a warning from the lookout.
During the burglary 268 safety deposit boxes were opened, about a quarter of the boxes present; the gang did not try to crack the bank's safe. Lord Hailsham owned one of the boxes in the bank; at the time of the robbery he was Lord Chancellor, the most senior member of the judiciary. Estimates of the amounts stolen vary between £150,000 and nearly £4 million. Because of the way the gang communicated the burglary was soon nicknamed "the walkie-talkie job". Although the common name for the events is the "Baker Street Robbery", it is legally defined as a burglary. A Dictionary of Law by the Oxford University Press defines robbery as "The offence of using force against any person, or putting them in fear of being subjected to force, in order to commit a theft"; burglary is defined as "The offence, under the Theft Act 1968, of ... entering a building ... with the intention of committing one of three specified crimes in it ... [including] theft."
## Aftermath
### Investigation
Initially a news blackout was imposed on the radio messages to avoid letting the burglars know their conversations had been overheard by the police, but this was lifted by Monday 13 September. On that morning bank staff opened the vault and found that they had been burgled. Police found the thermal lance, walkie-talkies and other tools, including an oxyacetylene torch, in the shop. Eight hundred pieces of evidence were logged and forensically examined. Police announced that they were searching for four men and a woman. They thought that during the burglary the woman was acting as a controller, based in a different location to the lookout and the gang. The police later widened their search to include five others. The bank provided the police with the names of 260 box owners; eight others refused to allow their names to be passed on.
Up to 120 detectives worked on the case, organised into four teams: one examining the scene, one contacting the known safety box owners, one covering the co-ordination from the control centre and one team dealing with all external enquiries. Police soon identified Wolfe from the lease documents, and within four days the police had a list of likely suspects that they were investigating. Informers provided the first names of two of the gang members and incomplete details of a pub that had been taken over by another member. Police made the connection between a newly acquired pub and Gavin. After several weeks of surveillance and investigation police had identified Wolfe, Gavin, Stephens and Tucker as the key individuals to arrest, but they also wanted to speak to three of four other people who they thought were involved. One of those they were interested in had been living in France and Italy since October 1971; there were no extradition agreements in place to request overseas police arrange for his return to Britain.
Towards the end of October 1971 police surveillance teams saw Tucker hand over a bag to two men, Abdullah Hashan Gangji and his nephew Ackbar Mohammad Ali Gangji. The two were arrested and £32,000 of notes were seized. Wolfe, Gavin, Stephens and Tucker were also picked up within the next two days. Police recovered £231,000 they identified as stolen from the vault.
After the end of the investigation Scotland Yard considered prosecuting Rowlands under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1967 for listening to unlicensed transmissions, but no charges were laid against him. Shortly after the court case, Lloyds Bank sent him a cheque for £2,500 to thank him for his actions.
### Court case
The two Gangjis were remanded in custody until 16 November, when bail was set at £75,000. Tucker, Gavin and Stephens were all remanded on bail of £30,000 each on charges relating to the break-in. Shortly afterwards the bank's insurers offered a £30,000 reward for information that would lead to more arrests.
The trial of the four gang members and the two Gangjis opened on 2 January 1973. Stephens, Tucker, Wolfe and Gavin were charged with breaking into the bank and stealing the contents of the security boxes—valued at a minimum of £1.5 million—and of possessing explosives; the two Gangjis were charged with handling stolen goods. Stephens, Tucker and Gavin pleaded guilty, Wolfe and the two Gangjis pleaded not guilty. The two Gangjis stated that they were acting as couriers for a Swiss-based finance house involved in purchasing sterling. Wolfe claimed that after he signed the lease for Le Sac, he had only returned to the shop once, to pick up the post, and that he was shocked to hear the news about the break-in. The trial ended on 23 January 1973 and sentences were handed down three days later. The two Gangjis were found not guilty, Stephens, Tucker and Gavin were each given sentences of twelve years; Wolfe received eight years—shorter than the others on account of his age.
### Lloyds
In March 1973, 64 of those whose safety deposit boxes had been broken into sued Lloyds for £500,000. The case opened in the High Court in 1977, by which time there were 138 plaintiffs seeking damages of £660,000. One witness, a retired jeweller, recounted how he identified some of his property by walking around tables on which several items were placed; he and twenty other people were unsupervised while they did this. He noticed a single diamond that could easily have been stolen, which he estimated was worth between £3,000 and £4,000 at the 1971 price. Another customer complained that he saw a ring in a wastepaper bin, that it was too easy to steal some of the smaller items, if one wished, and that one of the bank assistants had told him that two people had tried to claim the same pair of candlesticks. Four days into the trial, the judge visited the bank and the rooms where the property had been on show. The following day he adjourned the case; no reason was given and no date to resume proceedings was set.
## Rumours
There have been several rumours circulating about the burglary. One is that the government issued a D-Notice—a formal request that the media not publish a story on a specific subject for reasons of national security—to stop any news being released. The claim is dismissed by Duncan Campbell who writes "no D-Notice was even requested, far less granted"; the journalist Graeme McLagen observes that there was a news embargo on the Sunday—while the burglary was still in progress—but that the events were widely reported over the following days. Another rumour is that one of the safety deposit boxes contained compromising photographs of Princess Margaret and the actor and criminal John Bindon. Campbell describes the story as "cheerful nonsense". A third rumour is that photographs of a Conservative cabinet minister abusing children were discovered by the gang and left behind for the police to find, but no action was taken.
## Legacy
In 1976 James Humphreys, a Soho-based pornographer and strip club owner, alleged that police officers had stolen £1 million worth of gems "as their share" of the burglary. The following year Commander Bert Wickstead, a senior officer at Scotland Yard, was appointed to head an inquiry into the allegations.
In 2011 The Baker Street Robbery, a documentary on the burglary, was broadcast on The History Channel; the programme included an interview with Robert Rowlands and the recordings he made of the robbery. In 2023 the History channel series History's Greatest Heists used dramatised re-enactments in a documentary of the robbery.A fictionalised version of the burglary is the subject of the 2008 film The Bank Job, which uses the storyline that the crime was either set up—or later covered up—by MI5 to secure the compromising photographs of Princess Margaret, that were being kept in a deposit box at the bank by Trinidadian radical Michael X. The advertising for the film played up many of the rumours, both fuelling and reinforcing them:
> [the gang] ... looted safe deposit boxes of cash and jewellery worth millions and millions of pounds. None of it was recovered. Nobody was ever arrested. The robbery made headlines for a few days and then disappeared – the result of a UK Government 'D' Notice, gagging the press. This film reveals what was hidden in those boxes. The story involves murder, corruption and a sex scandal with links to the Royal Family – a story in which the thieves were the most innocent people involved.
The 2015 Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary bears a close resemblance to the break-in at Baker Street. It was headed by Brian Reader, was carried out over a weekend and involved breaking into a vault containing safety deposit boxes, although in this case the burglars used a heavy-duty drill to enter through a wall.
Although many of the records relating to the burglary at the bank were released by The National Archives in 2013, approximately 800 pages of information remain closed; they will be available for viewing in January 2071.
## See also
- List of missing treasures
- List of heists in the United Kingdom
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Apollo 4
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First test flight of the Apollo Saturn V rocket
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[
"1967 in the United States",
"Apollo program missions",
"November 1967 events",
"Spacecraft launched by Saturn rockets",
"Spacecraft launched in 1967"
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Apollo 4 (November 9, 1967), also known as SA-501, was the uncrewed first test flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the rocket that eventually took astronauts to the Moon. The space vehicle was assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building, and was the first to be launched from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, ascending from Launch Complex 39, where facilities built specially for the Saturn V had been constructed.
Apollo 4 was an "all-up" test, meaning all rocket stages and spacecraft were fully functional on the initial flight, a first for NASA. It was the first time the S-IC first stage and S-II second stage flew. It also demonstrated the S-IVB third stage's first in-flight restart. The mission used a Block I command and service module modified to test several key Block II revisions, including its heat shield at simulated lunar-return velocity and angle.
The launch was planned for early 1967, but delayed to November 9 because of problems with various elements of the spacecraft and difficulties during pre-flight testing. Additional inspections were also required after a fire killed the Apollo 1 crew in January 1967.
The mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean slightly less than nine hours after launch, having achieved its objectives. NASA considered the mission a complete success, proving that the Saturn V worked, an important step towards achieving the main objective of landing astronauts on the Moon, and bringing them back safely, before the end of the 1960s.
## Background
In 1961 U.S. President John F. Kennedy proposed that his nation land an astronaut on the Moon by the end of the decade, with a safe return to Earth. One of the early choices that had to be made to accomplish this goal was what launch vehicle to use. NASA decided on the Saturn C-5 rocket, a three-stage launch vehicle based on rockets already in development. In 1962 this was approved by NASA, which contemplated an initial test launch in 1965 and a first crewed flight by 1967, leaving plenty of time to accomplish Kennedy's goal. In early 1963, NASA redesignated the C-5 as the Saturn V.
After considerable debate within NASA, it was decided in late 1962 that lunar missions would have a "lunar orbit rendezvous" mode whereby the complete Apollo spacecraft would be propelled towards lunar orbit by the third stage of the launch vehicle, the S-IVB. Once in lunar orbit, the astronauts who would land would enter what was then known as the Lunar Excursion Module, which would separate from the rest of the spacecraft, land, and after taking off again be discarded once the crew had transferred back. The remainder of the vehicle would then return to Earth. The launch facilities under development would not be sufficient for the new launch vehicle, and in 1962, NASA announced plans for a new complex on the Florida coast from which the Apollo lunar missions could be launched. This was dubbed the Launch Operations Center, but after Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 was renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Apollo 4 was the first flight from KSC, and the first using Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) there, built to accommodate the Saturn V.
The first three flights carrying Apollo equipment were launched using Saturn IBs. This smaller launch vehicle did not use the facilities at KSC, but issues resolved by Saturn IB flights would be valid for those to be launched by the Saturn V. Both the Saturn IB and the Saturn V would use a S-IVB, though the IB would use it as its second, final stage, rather than the third stage as on the Saturn V. Thus, many of the flight qualifications for the payload the Saturn V would carry could be resolved without having to expend one of the large launch vehicles. In addition to flight-qualifying the hardware, it was necessary to prove that the ground systems at KSC could successfully launch a Saturn V before risking the lives of astronauts on one.
Three Saturn IB launches (in order of launch, AS-201, AS-203 and AS-202) took place in 1966; all were successful. According to Charles D. Benson and William B. Flaherty in their history of KSC, "The Apollo-Saturn IB launches of 1966 represented important gains for NASA's launch team. LC-34 and LC-37, testbeds for automated checkout, were found wanting. In the twenty months between AS-201 and SA-501 [Apollo 4], KSC corrected the major automation problems. Without these trial and error advances, SA-501, the toughest launch in Apollo's history, would have been far more difficult."
## Delays
In January 1965 Major General Samuel C. Phillips, the Apollo Program Director, scheduled SA-501, the first test flight of the Saturn V, for January 1967. This left little spare time for delay, especially since two additional Saturn V launches were planned to follow in 1967. Many Apollo officials lacked confidence in the proposed launch date, and these misgivings proved accurate. After an explosion involving a liquid oxygen line flowing to LC-39, from which SA-501 was to be launched, there was a potential for a delay of several weeks.
North American Aviation was the contractor for both the S-II Saturn V second stage, and the Apollo command and service module (CSM) spacecraft. NASA had been experiencing problems with North American's schedule, cost, and quality performance on both programs, severe enough that Phillips led a team to North American's facility in California in November and December 1965 to investigate matters, and recommend solutions to the program management problems. He published his findings in a report to his supervisor, George Mueller. Technicians found cracks in the S-II, delaying its test firings prior to acceptance by NASA. As North American worked to fix the S-II, parts of the rocket began to arrive at KSC, beginning with the S-IVB on August 14, 1966, (by Pregnant Guppy aircraft) and followed closely by the first stage S-IC on September 12 (by barge). A spool-shaped "spacer" that took the place of the S-II allowed NASA to stack the vehicle as its checkout proceeded in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). With the S-II still not arrived by November 1966 (it had originally been planned for July), NASA planned January 1967 for its arrival, with launch three months later. The CSM arrived on December 24, 1966, with the S-II arriving on January 21, 1967. Last to arrive was the aft interstage (the structure between the first and second stages), on January 31.
The Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967, which killed three astronauts during a launch pad test, threw NASA's schedules into further question – even though SA-501 was uncrewed, NASA officials wanted to closely examine its CSM. NASA had planned to restack the vehicle once this was done, but instead the inspections that took place found a total of 1,407 errors in the spacecraft. Inspectors found many haphazardly routed and skinned wires, prime material for short circuits.
Other problems were discovered, such as an extra, out-of-place bolt in one of the J-2 engines; NASA was concerned not only with retrieving the surplus hardware, but also with discovering how it got there. A meeting in March 1967, with Phillips in attendance, disclosed twelve hundred problems with the Saturn V, which the technicians proposed to deal with at the rate of eighty per day. While the CSM was undergoing repairs, the spacer was removed from the vehicle stack, and the S-II positioned. On May 24 it was announced that the S-II would be removed for inspection following the discovery of hairline cracks in another S-II then being constructed, this work being completed by mid-June, after which the CSM was also returned to the stack, the first time the launch vehicle and spacecraft had been fully assembled. It was rolled out to LC-39 on August 26, 1967, where it was joined by the Mobile Servicing Structure that allowed access to the launch vehicle and spacecraft two days later, also transported by crawler. This was the first time a NASA spacecraft had been assembled away from its launch site, something allowing protection from Florida's hot and humid climate for equipment and personnel.
The countdown demonstration test had been scheduled for September 20 but was soon rescheduled for the 25th and did not begin until the evening of the 27th. By October 2 another two days had been lost to delays, but by October 4 it reached launch minus 45 minutes. Then a computer failed, and the count, reset to minus 13 hours before launch, resumed on October 9. More computer and equipment problems appeared. By then, the launch team was exhausted and a two-day break was declared. The test was completed on October 13, meaning that it took three weeks rather than the expectation of a week or slightly over. With world attention on the launch, NASA public relations head Julian Scheer brought the skeptical questions from the media as to whether Apollo 4 would ever fly to the attention of NASA Administrator James E. Webb, leading to a heated meeting in which Webb said he would announce the launch date when he wanted to.
These difficulties provided the launch crew with valuable experience, but meant that Apollo 4 could not be launched at the earliest until November 7. A flight readiness review on October 19 cleared Apollo 4 for launch, assuming the remaining tests and modifications were satisfactorily completed. Concerned about the potential for leaks in the Teflon seal rings and drain valves of the liquid oxygen tanks on board the vehicle due to the long time it had been sitting on the launch pad in the Florida sun, on November 2 Phillips postponed the launch until November 9.
## Objectives
The purpose of Apollo 4 (together with the Saturn V's other uncrewed test flight, Apollo 6) was to qualify the launch vehicle, the Apollo spacecraft, and the ground systems, for the crewed lunar landing missions that would follow. In addition to being the first flight of the Saturn V, Apollo 4 marked the first flight for two of its stages: the S-IC first stage and the S-II second stage (the S-IVB had flown as part of the Saturn IB).
Objectives for the Apollo 4 mission were to gain flight data on the Saturn V and spacecraft structural integrity and mutual compatibility, including on flight loads and during the separations as each Saturn V stage was exhausted and was discarded. NASA also wanted data on subsystem operations, including the emergency detection subsystem, and sought to evaluate the Apollo CM's heat shield under conditions simulating a return from a lunar mission. NASA was also seeking to test the restart capability of the S-IVB in space. These objectives would all be achieved.
## Equipment
Apollo 4 carried CSM-017, a Block I design of the command and service modules meant for testing and for Apollo's early Earth orbit flights. Unlike the Block II spacecraft which would go to the Moon, it lacked the capability to dock with a lunar module (LM). CSM-017 was made up of command module CM-017 and service module SM-020. CM-017 was the second fully-functional CM to be delivered to NASA; the first, CM-012, was designated for Apollo 1, and was severely damaged in the fire. SM-020 was originally to be used in CSM-020, slated for the second Saturn V test, but this changed after SM-017, which was intended to be part of CSM-017, was damaged in an explosion and was scrapped.
Several significant Block II modifications were made to CSM-017 for certification purposes, since no Block II spacecraft would fly without a crew. These included upgrading the heat shield to Block II standards, using a Block II CM-to-SM umbilical connector, and installing Block II-style VHF and S-band antennae. Additionally, there were modifications to the CM's hatch. The fact that the spacecraft hatch could not be readily opened in case of emergency had trapped the Apollo 1 astronauts in the fire that took their lives, and led to a redesign of the hatch. The new hatch was not scheduled to fly until the second Saturn V test (Apollo 6), but its seals were to be flight-qualified on Apollo 4 – the hatch window was replaced with a test panel simulating the seals and exterior heat shield. The heat shield was upgraded to Block II standards since Apollo 4's high-speed re-entry into Earth's atmosphere was intended to simulate a return from the Moon. Special equipment had been installed to allow Mission Control to operate the CSM's systems remotely, and there was a camera that would automatically take pictures out of one of the CM's windows on its final orbit. Since Apollo 4 carried no crew the CM lacked couches, controls and displays.
A Lunar Module Test Article, LTA-10R, was carried, and remained inside the Spacecraft–LM Adapter, numbered as SLA-8, on the third stage of the Saturn V throughout its flight. The LTA consisted of a flight-type descent stage lacking landing gear, with its fuel and oxidizer tanks containing a mixture of water, glycol, and freon. There was an ascent stage mockup atop it, made of aluminum with ballast, and having no flight systems. The SLA and LTA were instrumented to measure stress on them as the Saturn V made its way to orbit. LTA-10R would be destroyed when the S-IVB re-entered the atmosphere.
Apollo 4 was the first flight of a Saturn V. At the time, it was the largest launch vehicle to ever attempt a flight. This mission was the first time NASA used "all-up" testing, requiring that each stage of the launch vehicle work and that the vehicle carry a working spacecraft; a decision that goes back to late 1963. Mueller, the head of the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight at that time, was a systems engineer who previously worked on military missile projects. He had recognized that all-up testing was successfully used to rapidly develop the Air Force's Minuteman ICBM program, and thought it could be used to meet Apollo's schedule. In a 1963 memo he ordered that both the first Saturn IB flight and the first Saturn V flight be uncrewed, that each stage be fully functional, and that each carry a working spacecraft. The second flight of each type of rocket would also be an uncrewed test flight, and the third flight would be crewed. Previously, the way Wernher von Braun's team at the Marshall Space Flight Center tested new rockets was by testing each stage incrementally. The Saturn V would be tested all at once, with all stages live and fully flight-worthy, including an Apollo CSM. This decision dramatically streamlined the program's test flight phase, eliminating four missions, but it required everything to work properly the first time. Apollo program managers had misgivings about all-up testing but agreed to it with some reluctance since incremental component tests would inevitably push the lunar landing mission past the 1970 goal.
## Mission numbering
Apollo 4 was the first mission to fly under the official Apollo mission numbering scheme approved by Mueller on April 24, 1967; the planned first crewed flight, in preparation for which three astronauts had died, was retroactively designated Apollo 1 as the widows of the crew members had requested. Although three uncrewed Saturn IB flights had already occurred, only two had contained an Apollo spacecraft (AS-203 carried only the aerodynamic nose cone). Mueller resumed the numbering sequence at Apollo 4, without designating an Apollo 2 or 3.
## Public interest and media coverage
VIPs swarmed to KSC in the days before the launch. Von Braun arrived on November 6, scheduled for an exclusive executive dinner and conference that evening. NASA executives, figures from industry, Congressional leaders and diplomats also came for the launch. Each NASA center involved had a list of VIP guests, as did NASA headquarters in Washington, and duplications were sorted out so each center's director could invite guests personally. They watched the launch from uncovered bleachers near the VAB. NASA set up press headquarters in Cocoa Beach, where media representatives were accredited, and offered tours of KSC to visiting journalists, as well as a half-hourly shuttle service. NASA provided extensive telephone facilities for the media at the press site near LC-39, at their expense. KSC workers and their dependents watched the launch from near their work assignments. In addition, 43 employees of contractors who had performed in an exemplary manner were selected as "Manned Flight Awareness" honorees, given a VIP tour of KSC, a social evening in which six astronauts participated, and a view of the launch.
Apollo 4, being the first flight of the Saturn V, gained intense media coverage, and writers struggled to convey to the public the size of the launch vehicle, stating that it would tower well over the Statue of Liberty and be thirteen times as heavy. North American, in a handout to the media, noted that the 3000-ton Saturn V comfortably outweighed a "good-sized navy destroyer". On the day before launch, Mueller, Phillips, von Braun, Deputy Administrator Robert C. Seamans and Kennedy Space Center Director Kurt Debus held an outdoor press conference for more than a thousand journalists, including some from the Soviet Union, with the Saturn V in the background.
## Launch and flight
On November 6, 1967, at 10:30 pm EST (03:30 November 7 UTC), the 56+1⁄2-hour countdown sequence began with propellant loading. In total there were 89 trailer-truck loads of liquid oxygen, 28 trailer loads of LH2 (liquid hydrogen), and 27 rail cars of RP-1 (highly refined kerosene). This time the problems encountered were few and minor, and did not delay the launch due to the use of built-in holds in the countdown, during which time accumulated delays were made good.
Apollo 4 launched on November 9 at 7:00 am EST (noon UTC). Eight seconds before liftoff, the five F-1 engines ignited, sending tremendous amounts of noise across Kennedy Space Center. Even though the launch pads at LC-39 were more than five kilometers (three miles) from the Vehicle Assembly Building, the sound pressure was much stronger than expected and buffeted the VAB, Launch Control Center and press buildings. Dust was dislodged from the ceiling of the Launch Control Center and formed a layer on the consoles of mission controllers. Dr. William Donn of Columbia University described the blast as one of the loudest noises, natural or artificial, in human history, excepting nuclear explosions. CBS's commentator, Walter Cronkite, and producer Jeff Gralnick put their hands on their trailer's observation window to stop it from shattering as ceiling tiles fell from above. Cronkite found Apollo 4 to be the most frightening space mission he covered.
The launch placed the S-IVB and CSM into a nearly circular 190-kilometer (100 nmi) orbit, a nominal parking orbit that would be used on the lunar missions. After two orbits, in a simulation of the trans-lunar injection burn that would take later Apollo missions towards the Moon, the S-IVB's first in-space re-ignition put the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 17,218 kilometers (9,297 nmi) and a perigee deliberately aimed 84.6 kilometers (45.7 nmi) below the Earth's surface; this would ensure both a high-speed atmospheric re-entry of the command module, and destruction after re-entry of the S-IVB. Shortly after this burn, the CSM separated from the S-IVB and fired its service module engine to adjust the apogee to 18,092 kilometers (9,769 nmi). After passing apogee, the service module engine fired again for 281 seconds to increase re-entry speed to 11,168 meters per second (36,639 ft/s), at an altitude of 120 kilometers (400,000 ft) and a flight path angle of −6.93 degrees, simulating conditions on a return from the Moon.
The CM landed approximately 8.6 nautical miles (16 km) from the target landing site northwest of Midway Island in the North Pacific Ocean. Its descent was visible from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Bennington, the prime recovery ship, which within two hours had recovered it and one of its parachutes, the first time an Apollo parachute had been recovered for inspection. The spacecraft was brought to Hawaii for deactivation, after which it was taken to North American's facility in Downey, California, for post-flight analysis.
## Onboard cameras
Two motion-picture cameras were aboard Apollo 4. These were mounted on the Saturn V so as to capture the separation of the first stage and interstage from the launch vehicle. They would then be ejected, descend to the Atlantic Ocean in pods with parachutes and radio beacons, and be recovered about 870 kilometers (470 nmi) downrange of KSC.
The command module contained an automatic 70 mm film camera which captured photographs of almost the entire Earth. For a period of two hours and thirteen minutes as the craft approached and passed its apogee, a total of 755 color images were taken through the Command Pilot's (left-hand) forward-looking window, at altitudes ranging from 13,510 to 18,092 kilometers (7,295 to 9,769 nmi). These were the color images taken from the highest altitude at that time. The photographs were not of sufficient resolution to obtain detailed scientific data, but were still of interest to those involved in the Earth sciences.
## Aftermath, assessment and spacecraft location
All Apollo 4 launch vehicle and spacecraft systems performed satisfactorily. On the climb to orbit, each of the Saturn V's three stages burned for slightly longer than expected. This left the craft in an orbit roughly one kilometer higher than expected, something well within tolerance. A burn eleven seconds longer than planned meant that the CM entered the Earth's atmosphere slightly faster and at a shallower angle than planned, but still within tolerance. This discrepancy happened not because of the performance of the guidance system (which was exemplary), but because the burn had been controlled from Earth. The CM's environmental control system kept the ship's cabin within acceptable temperatures and pressures throughout the mission, increasing by only 5.6 °C (10 °F) during atmospheric entry.
President Lyndon Johnson described the launch, "The whole world could see the awesome sight of the first launch of what is now the largest rocket ever flown. This launching symbolizes the power this nation is harnessing for the peaceful exploration of space." Von Braun spoke of the mission as "an expert launching all the way through, from lift-off exactly on time to performance of every single stage". In his history of the Saturn V, Roger E. Bilstein wrote that "the flawless mission of Apollo 4 elated the entire NASA organization; everyone looked ahead with buoyant spirits." Mueller stated that Apollo 4 dramatically increased the confidence of many and showed it should be possible for astronauts to land on the Moon by mid-1969.
Apollo 6, the second flight of the Saturn V, was launched on April 4, 1968. Although the Saturn V's stages gave more trouble than on Apollo 4 (the mission experienced pogo oscillation during its first stage and had an early second-stage engine shutdown), it was decided that a third uncrewed flight was unnecessary. The Saturn V flew with a crew for the first time on Apollo 8. A Saturn V launched astronauts into space, and (except for Apollo 9) towards the Moon, on each of the Apollo missions that followed.
In January 1969 CM-017 was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution. As of 1978, it was on display at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science. The CM was subsequently put on public display at NASA's Stennis Space Center, where it remained until 2017. It is currently on display at Stennis Space Center's visitor center, the Infinity Science Center, in Pearlington, Mississippi.
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