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The Notorious B.I.G.
| 1,173,315,584 |
American rapper (1972–1997)
|
[
"1972 births",
"1997 deaths",
"1997 murders in the United States",
"20th-century American male musicians",
"20th-century American rappers",
"African-American male rappers",
"American drug traffickers",
"American male rappers",
"American murder victims",
"American rappers of Jamaican descent",
"Arista Records artists",
"Atlantic Records artists",
"Bad Boy Records artists",
"Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School alumni",
"Deaths by firearm in California",
"East Coast hip hop musicians",
"Faith Evans",
"Gangsta rappers",
"Hardcore hip hop artists",
"Male murder victims",
"Musicians from Teaneck, New Jersey",
"People from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn",
"People murdered in Los Angeles",
"Rappers from Brooklyn",
"The Notorious B.I.G.",
"Unsolved murders in the United States"
] |
Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), better known by his stage names the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or simply Biggie, was an American rapper. Rooted in East Coast hip hop and particularly gangsta rap, he is cited in various media lists as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Wallace became known for his distinctive laid-back lyrical delivery, offsetting the lyrics' often grim content. His music was often semi-autobiographical, telling of hardship and criminality, but also of debauchery and celebration.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, Wallace signed to Sean "Puffy" Combs' label Bad Boy Records as it launched in 1993, and gained exposure through features on several other artists' singles that year. His debut album Ready to Die (1994) was met with widespread critical acclaim, and included his signature songs "Juicy" and "Big Poppa". The album made him the central figure in East Coast hip hop, and restored New York's visibility at a time when the West Coast hip hop scene was dominating hip hop music. Wallace was awarded the 1995 Billboard Music Awards' Rapper of the Year. The following year, he led his protégé group Junior M.A.F.I.A., a team of himself and longtime friends, including Lil' Kim, to chart success.
During 1996, while recording his second album, Wallace became ensnarled in the escalating East Coast–West Coast hip hop feud. Following Tupac Shakur's murder in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September 1996, speculations of involvement in Shakur's murder by criminal elements orbiting the Bad Boy circle circulated as a result of Wallace's public feud with Shakur. On March 9, 1997, six months after Shakur's murder, Wallace was murdered by an unidentified assailant in a drive-by shooting while visiting Los Angeles. Wallace's second album Life After Death, a double album, was released two weeks later. It reached number one on the Billboard 200, spawned two singles that peaked on the Billboard Hot 100: "Hypnotize" and "Mo Money Mo Problems" (featuring Puff Daddy and Mase), and eventually achieved a diamond certification in the United States.
With two more posthumous albums released, Wallace has certified sales of over 28 million copies in the United States, including 21 million albums. Rolling Stone has called him the "greatest rapper that ever lived", and Billboard named him the greatest rapper of all time. The Source magazine named him the greatest rapper of all time in its 150th issue. In 2006, MTV ranked him at No. 3 on their list of The Greatest MCs of All Time, calling him possibly "the most skillful ever on the mic". In 2020, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
## Life and career
### 1972–1991: Early life
Christopher George Latore Wallace was born at St. Mary's Hospital in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on May 21, 1972, the only child of Jamaican immigrant parents. His mother, Voletta Wallace, was a preschool teacher, while his father, Selwyn George Latore, was a welder and politician. His father left the family when Wallace was two years old, and his mother worked two jobs while raising him. Wallace grew up at 226 St. James Place in Brooklyn's Clinton Hill, near the border with Bedford-Stuyvesant. Raised Catholic, Wallace excelled at Queen of All Saints Middle School, winning several awards as an English student. He attended St Peter Claver Church in the borough. He was nicknamed "Big" because he was overweight by the age of 10. Wallace claimed to have begun dealing drugs at about age 12. His mother, often at work, first learned of this during his adulthood.
He began rapping as a teenager, entertaining people on the streets, and performed with local groups, the Old Gold Brothers as well as the Techniques. His earliest stage name was MC CWest. He also received tutelage in jazz from saxophonist Donald Harrison, who lived nearby. Wallace requested to transfer from Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Fort Greene to George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School in Downtown Brooklyn, which future rappers Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes were also attending. According to his mother, Wallace was still a good student but developed a "smart-ass" attitude at the new school. At age 17 in 1989, Wallace dropped out of high school and became more involved in crime. That same year in 1989, he was arrested on weapons charges in Brooklyn and sentenced to five years' probation. In 1990, he was arrested on a violation of his probation. A year later, Wallace was arrested in North Carolina for dealing crack cocaine. He spent nine months in jail before making bail.
### 1991–1994: Early career and first child
After release from jail, Wallace made a demo tape, Microphone Murderer, while calling himself Biggie Smalls, alluding both to Calvin Lockhart's character in the 1975 film Let's Do It Again and to his own stature and obesity, 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) and 300 to 380 pounds (140 to 170 kg). Although Wallace reportedly lacked real ambition for the tape, local DJ Mister Cee, of Big Daddy Kane and Juice Crew association, discovered and promoted it, thus it was heard by The Source rap magazine's editor in 1992.
In March, The Source column "Unsigned Hype", dedicated to airing promising rappers, featured Wallace. He then spun the attention into a recording. Upon hearing the demo tape, Sean "Puffy" Combs, still with the A&R department of Uptown Records, arranged to meet Wallace. Promptly signed to Uptown, Wallace appeared on labelmates Heavy D & the Boyz's 1993 song "A Buncha Niggas". Mid-year, or a year after Wallace's signing, Uptown fired Combs, who, a week later, launched Bad Boy Records, instantly Wallace's new label.
On August 8, 1993, Jan Jackson, Wallace's long-time girlfriend, gave birth to his first child, T'yanna, although the couple had parted by then. Himself a high-school dropout, Wallace promised his daughter "everything she wanted", reasoning that if only he had that in childhood, he would have graduated at the top of his class. Wallace continued dealing drugs, but Combs discovered this, and obliged him to stop. Later that year, Wallace gained exposure on a remix of Mary J. Blige's single "Real Love". Having found his moniker Biggie Smalls already claimed, he took a new one, holding for good, The Notorious B.I.G.
Around this time, Wallace became friends with fellow rapper Tupac Shakur. Lil' Cease recalled the pair as close, often traveling together whenever they were not working. According to him, Wallace was a frequent guest at Shakur's home and they spent time together when Shakur was in California or Washington, D.C. Yukmouth, an Oakland emcee, claimed that Wallace's style was inspired by Shakur.
The "Real Love" remix single was followed by another remix of a Mary J. Blige song, "What's the 411?" Wallace's successes continued, if to a lesser extent, on remixes of Neneh Cherry's song "Buddy X" and of reggae artist Super Cat's song "Dolly My Baby", also featuring Combs, all in 1993. In April, Wallace's solo track "Party and Bullshit" was released on the Who's the Man? soundtrack. In July 1994, he appeared alongside LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes on a remix of his own labelmate Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear", the remix reaching No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.
### 1994: Ready to Die and marriage to Faith Evans
On August 4, 1994, Wallace married R&B singer Faith Evans, whom he had met eight days prior at a Bad Boy photoshoot. Five days later, Wallace had his first pop chart success as a solo artist with double A-side, "Juicy / Unbelievable", which reached No. 27 as the lead single to his debut album.
Ready to Die was released on September 13, 1994. It reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart and was eventually certified four times platinum. The album shifted attention back to East Coast hip hop at a time when West Coast hip hop dominated US charts. It gained strong reviews and has received much praise in retrospect. In addition to "Juicy", the record produced two hit singles: the platinum-selling "Big Poppa", which reached No. 1 on the U.S. rap chart, and "One More Chance", which sold 1.1 million copies in 1995. Busta Rhymes claimed to have seen Wallace giving out free copies of Ready to Die from his home, which Rhymes reasoned as "his way of marketing himself".
Wallace also befriended basketball player Shaquille O'Neal. O'Neal said they were introduced during a listening session for "Gimme the Loot"; Wallace mentioned him in the lyrics and thereby attracted O'Neal to his music. O'Neal requested a collaboration with Wallace, which resulted in the song "You Can't Stop the Reign". According to Combs, Wallace would not collaborate with "anybody he didn't really respect" and that Wallace paid O'Neal his respect by "shouting him out". Wallace later met with O'Neal on Sunset Boulevard in 1997. In 2015, Daz Dillinger, a frequent Shakur collaborator, said that he and Wallace were "cool", with Wallace traveling to meet him to smoke cannabis and record two songs.
### 1995: Collaboration with Michael Jackson, Junior M.A.F.I.A., success and coastal feud
Wallace worked with pop singer Michael Jackson on the song "This Time Around", featured on Jackson's 1995 album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. Lil' Cease later claimed that while Wallace met Jackson, he was forced to stay behind, with Wallace citing that he did not "trust Michael with kids" following the 1993 child sexual abuse allegations against Jackson. Engineer John Van Nest and producer Dallas Austin recalled the sessions differently, saying that Wallace was eager to meet Jackson and nearly burst into tears upon doing so.
In the summer, Wallace met Charli Baltimore and they became involved in a romantic relationship. Several months into their relationship, she left him a voicemail of a rap verse that she had written and he began encouraging her to pursue a career in rap music.
Wallace was booked to perform in Sacramento. When his group arrived at the venue there weren't many people there, and when they started performing they were getting coins tossed at them. When they left they were held at gunpoint in the venue's parking lot, allegedly set up by E-40's goons, who were angry about an interview Wallace did with a Canadian magazine. When asked to rank a handful of artists on a scale from one to 10, Wallace gave E-40 a zero. One of Wallace's entourage said to get E-40 on the phone, Wallace explained how they had "got him drunk" and had got him "to say anything", E-40 told his men to stand down and safely escorted them to the airport.
In August 1995, Wallace's protégé group, Junior M.A.F.I.A. ("Junior Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes"), released their debut album Conspiracy. The group consisted of his friends from childhood and included rappers such as Lil' Kim and Lil' Cease, who went on to have solo careers. The record went gold and its singles, "Player's Anthem" and "Get Money", both featuring Wallace, went gold and platinum. Wallace continued to work with R&B artists, collaborating with R&B groups 112 (on "Only You") and Total (on "Can't You See"), with both reaching the top 20 of the Hot 100. By the end of the year, Wallace was the top-selling male solo artist and rapper on the U.S. pop and R&B charts. In July 1995, he appeared on the cover of The Source with the caption "The King of New York Takes Over", a reference to his alias Frank White, based on a character from the 1990 film King of New York. At the Source Awards in August 1995, he was named Best New Artist (Solo), Lyricist of the Year, Live Performer of the Year, and his debut Album of the Year. At the Billboard Awards, he was Rap Artist of the Year.
In his year of success, Wallace became involved in a rivalry between the East and West Coast hip hop scenes with Shakur, now his former friend. In an interview with Vibe in April 1995, while serving time in Clinton Correctional Facility, Shakur accused Uptown Records' founder Andre Harrell, Sean Combs, and Wallace of having prior knowledge of a robbery that resulted in him being shot five times and losing thousands of dollars worth of jewelry on the night of November 30, 1994. Though Wallace and his entourage were in the same Manhattan-based recording studio at the time of the shooting, they denied the accusation.
Wallace said: "It just happened to be a coincidence that he [Shakur] was in the studio. He just, he couldn't really say who really had something to do with it at the time. So he just kinda' leaned the blame on me." In 2012, a man named Dexter Isaac, serving a life sentence for unrelated crimes, claimed that he attacked Shakur that night and that the robbery was orchestrated by entertainment industry executive and former drug trafficker, Jimmy Henchman.
Following his release from prison, Shakur signed to Death Row Records on October 15, 1995. This made Bad Boy Records and Death Row business rivals, and thus intensified the quarrel.
### 1996: More arrests, accusations regarding Shakur's death, car accident and second child
On March 23, 1996, Wallace was arrested outside a Manhattan nightclub for chasing and threatening to kill two fans seeking autographs, smashing the windows of their taxicab, and punching one of them. He pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service. In mid-1996, he was arrested at his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, for drug and weapons possession charges.
During the recording for his second album, Wallace was confronted by Shakur for the first time since "the rumors started" at the Soul Train Awards and a gun was pulled.
In June 1996, Shakur released "Hit 'Em Up", a diss track in which he claimed to have had sex with Faith Evans, who was estranged from Wallace at the time, and that Wallace had copied his style and image. Wallace referenced the first claim on Jay-Z's "Brooklyn's Finest", in which he raps: "If Faye have twins, she'd probably have two 'Pacs. Get it? 2Pac's?" However, he did not directly respond to the track, stating in a 1997 radio interview that it was "not [his] style" to respond.
On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas and died six days later. Rumors of Wallace's involvement with Shakur's murder spread. In a 2002 Los Angeles Times series titled "Who Killed Tupac Shakur?", based on police reports and multiple sources, Chuck Philips reported that the shooting was carried out by a Compton gang, the Southside Crips, to avenge a beating by Shakur hours earlier, and that Wallace had paid for the gun.
Los Angeles Times editor Mark Duvoisin wrote that "Philips' story has withstood all challenges to its accuracy, ... [and] remains the definitive account of the Shakur slaying." Wallace's family denied the report, producing documents purporting to show that he was in New York and New Jersey at the time. However, The New York Times called the documents inconclusive, stating:
> The pages purport to be three computer printouts from Daddy's House, indicating that Wallace was in the studio recording a song called Nasty Boy on the night Shakur was shot. They indicate that Wallace wrote half the session, was in and out/sat around and laid down a ref, shorthand for a reference vocal, the equivalent of a first take. But nothing indicates when the documents were created. And Louis Alfred, the recording engineer listed on the sheets, said in an interview that he remembered recording the song with Wallace in a late-night session, not during the day. He could not recall the date of the session but said it was likely not the night Shakur was shot. We would have heard about it, Mr. Alfred said."
Evans remembered her husband calling her on the night of Shakur's death and crying from shock. She said: "I think it's fair to say he was probably afraid, given everything that was going on at that time and all the hype that was put on this so-called beef that he didn't really have in his heart against anyone." Wayne Barrow, Wallace's co-manager at the time, said Wallace was recording the track "Nasty Boy" the night Shakur was shot. Shortly after Shakur's death, he met with Snoop Dogg, who claimed that Wallace declared he never hated Shakur.
Two days after the death of Shakur, Wallace and Lil' Cease were arrested for smoking marijuana in public and had their car repossessed. The next day, the dealership chose them a Chevrolet Lumina rental SUV as a substitute, despite Lil' Cease's objections. The vehicle had brake problems but Wallace dismissed them. The car collided with a rail in New Jersey, shattering Wallace's left leg, Lil' Cease's jaw and leaving Charli Baltimore with numerous injuries.
Wallace spent months in a hospital following the accident. He was temporarily confined to a wheelchair, forced to use a cane, and had to complete physiotherapy. Despite his hospitalization, he continued to work on the album. The accident was referred to in the lyrics of "Long Kiss Goodnight": "Ya still tickle me, I used to be as strong as Ripple be / Til Lil' Cease crippled me."
On October 29, 1996, Evans gave birth to Wallace's son, Christopher "C.J." Wallace Jr. The following month, Junior M.A.F.I.A. member Lil' Kim released her debut album, Hard Core, under Wallace's direction while the two were having a "love affair". Lil' Kim recalled being Wallace's "biggest fan" and "his pride and joy". In a 2012 interview, Lil' Kim said Wallace had prevented her from making a remix of the Jodeci single "Love U 4 Life" by locking her in a room. According to her, Wallace said that she was not "gonna go do no song with them", likely because of the group's affiliation with Tupac and Death Row Records.
### 1997: Life After Death
On January 27, 1997, Wallace was ordered to pay US\$41,000 in damages following an incident involving a friend of a concert promoter who claimed Wallace and his entourage beat him following a dispute in May 1995. He faced criminal assault charges for the incident, which remains unresolved, but all robbery charges were dropped. Following the events, Wallace spoke of a desire to focus on his "peace of mind" and his family and friends.
In February 1997, Wallace traveled to California to promote his album Life After Death and to record a music video for its lead single, "Hypnotize". That month Wallace was involved in a domestic dispute with girlfriend Charli Baltimore at the Four Seasons hotel, over pictures of Wallace and other girls. Wallace had told Lil' Cease the night prior to take the bag with the photos out of the room, but he had not. Charli Baltimore ended up throwing Wallace's ring and watch from the hotel window. They later found the watch but did not recover the ring.
## Death
On March 8, 1997, Wallace attended a Soul Train Awards after-party hosted by Vibe and Qwest Records at the Petersen Automotive Museum. Guests included Evans, Aaliyah and members of the Bloods and Crips gangs. Later that night at 12:30 a.m. PST, after the fire department closed the party early due to overcrowding, Wallace left with his entourage in two GMC Suburbans to return to his hotel. He traveled in the front passenger seat alongside associates Damion "D-Roc" Butler, Lil' Cease, and driver Gregory "G-Money" Young. Combs traveled in the other vehicle with two bodyguards. The two trucks were trailed by a Chevrolet Blazer carrying Bad Boy director of security Paul Offord.
By 12:45 a.m., the streets were crowded with people leaving the party. Wallace's SUV stopped at a red light 50 yards (46 m) from the Petersen Automotive Museum, and a black Chevy Impala pulled up alongside it. The Impala's driver, an unidentified African-American man dressed in a blue suit and bow tie, rolled down his window, drew a 9 mm blue-steel pistol, and fired at Wallace's car. Four bullets hit Wallace, and his entourage subsequently rushed him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where doctors performed an emergency thoracotomy, but he was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m. He was 24 years old. His autopsy, which was released 15 years after his death, showed that only the final shot was fatal; it entered through his right hip and struck his colon, liver, heart, and left lung before stopping in his left shoulder.
Wallace's funeral was held at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan on March 18. There were around 350 mourners at the funeral, including Lil' Cease, Queen Latifah, Mase, Faith Evans, SWV, Jay-Z, Damon Dash, DJ Premier, Charli Baltimore, Da Brat, Flavor Flav, Mary J. Blige, Lil' Kim, Run-D.M.C., DJ Kool Herc, Treach, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, DJ Spinderella, Foxy Brown, and Sister Souljah. David Dinkins and Clive Davis also attended the funeral. After the funeral, his body was cremated and the ashes were given to his family.
## Posthumous releases
Sixteen days after his death, Wallace's double-disc second album was released as planned. Originally titled Life After Death...'Til Death Do Us Part and later shortened to Life After Death, the album hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts after making a premature appearance at No. 176 due to street-date violations. The record album featured a much wider range of guests and producers than its predecessor. It gained strong reviews and in 2000 was certified Diamond by the RIAA.
Its lead single, "Hypnotize", was the last music video recording in which Wallace would participate. His biggest chart success was with its follow-up "Mo Money Mo Problems", featuring Sean Combs (under the rap alias "Puff Daddy") and Mase. Both singles reached No. 1 on the Hot 100, making Wallace the first artist to achieve this feat posthumously. The third single, "Sky's the Limit", featuring the band 112, was noted for its use of children in the music video, directed by Spike Jonze, who were used to portray Wallace and his contemporaries, including Combs, Lil' Kim, and Busta Rhymes. Wallace was named Artist of the Year and "Hypnotize" Single of the Year by Spin magazine in December 1997.
In mid-1997, Combs released his debut album, No Way Out, which featured Wallace on five songs, notably on the fifth single "Victory". The most prominent single from the record album was "I'll Be Missing You", featuring Combs, Faith Evans and 112, which was dedicated to Wallace's memory. At the 1998 Grammy Awards, Life After Death and its first two singles received nominations in the rap category. The album award was won by Combs's No Way Out and "I'll Be Missing You" won the award in the category of Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in which "Mo Money Mo Problems" was nominated.
In 1996, Wallace started putting together a hip hop supergroup, The Commission, which consisted of himself, Jay-Z, Lil' Cease, Combs, and Charli Baltimore. The Commission was mentioned by Wallace in the lyrics of "What's Beef" on Life After Death and "Victory" from No Way Out, but a Commission album was never completed. A track on Duets: The Final Chapter, "Whatchu Want (The Commission)", featuring Jay-Z, was based on the group.
In December 1999, Bad Boy released Born Again. The album consisted of previously unreleased material mixed with new guest appearances, including many artists Wallace had never collaborated with in his lifetime. It gained some positive reviews, but received criticism for its unlikely pairings; The Source describing it as "compiling some of the most awkward collaborations of his career". Nevertheless, the album sold 2 million copies. Wallace also appeared on Michael Jackson's 2001 album, Invincible.
Over the course of time, his vocals were heard on hit songs such as "Foolish" and "Realest Niggas" by Ashanti in 2002, and the song "Runnin' (Dying to Live)" with Shakur the following year. In 2005, Duets: The Final Chapter continued the pattern started on Born Again, which was criticized for the lack of significant vocals by Wallace on some of its songs. Its lead single "Nasty Girl" became Wallace's first UK No. 1 single. Combs and Voletta Wallace have stated the album will be the last release primarily featuring new material.
A duet album, The King & I, featuring Evans and Notorious B.I.G., was released on May 19, 2017, which largely contained previously unreleased music.
## Musical style
### Vocals
Wallace mostly rapped in a deep tone described by Rolling Stone as a "thick, jaunty grumble", which went even deeper on Life After Death. He was often accompanied on songs with ad libs from Sean "Puffy" Combs. In The Source's "Unsigned Hype" column, his style was described as "cool, nasal, and filtered, to bless his own material". AllMusic described Wallace as having "a talent for piling multiple rhymes on top of one another in quick succession".
Time magazine wrote that he rapped with an ability to "make multi-syllabic rhymes sound smooth", while Krims described his rhythmic style as "effusive". Before starting a verse, Wallace sometimes used onomatopoeic vocables to warm up his voice, for example "uhhh" at the beginning of "Hypnotize" and "Big Poppa", and "what" after certain rhymes in songs such as "My Downfall".
Lateef of Latyrx notes that Wallace had "intense and complex flows". Fredro Starr of Onyx said that he was "a master of the flow", and Bishop Lamont stated that he mastered "all the hemispheres of the music". Wallace also often used the single-line rhyme scheme to add variety and interest to his flow. Big Daddy Kane suggested that Wallace did not need a large vocabulary to impress listeners, stating that he "just put his words together a slick way and it worked real good for him".
Wallace was known to compose lyrics in his head rather than write them down on paper, in a similar way to Jay-Z. He would occasionally vary from his usual style. On "Playa Hater", he sang in a slow falsetto. On "Notorious Thugs", his collaboration with Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, he modified his style to match the rapid rhyme flow of the group.
### Themes and lyrics
Wallace's lyrical topics and themes included mafioso tales ("Niggas Bleed"), his drug-dealing past ("Ten Crack Commandments"), materialistic bragging ("Hypnotize"), humor ("Just Playing (Dreams)"), and romance ("Me & My Bitch"). In 2004, Rolling Stone named him as "one of the few young male songwriters in any pop style writing credible love songs". In the book How to Rap, rapper Guerilla Black described how Wallace was able to both "glorify the upper echelon" and "[make] you feel his struggle".
The New York Times journalist Touré wrote in 1994 that Wallace's lyrics "[mixed] autobiographical details about crime and violence with emotional honesty". Marriott of The New York Times wrote in 1997 that Wallace's lyrics were not strictly autobiographical and that he "had a knack for exaggeration that increased sales". Wallace wrote that his debut album was "a big pie, with each slice indicating a different point in [his] life involving bitches and niggaz... from the beginning to the end".
Rolling Stone described Ready to Die as a contrast of "bleak" street visions and being "full of high-spirited fun, bringing the pleasure principle back to hip-hop". AllMusic wrote of "a sense of doom" in some of his songs, and the New York Times noted some songs being "laced with paranoia". Wallace described himself as feeling "broke and depressed" when he made his debut. The final song on Wallace's debut album, "Suicidal Thoughts", featured his "character" contemplating suicide and concluded with him doing it.
On Life After Death, Wallace's lyrics went "deeper". Krims explained how upbeat, dance-oriented tracks (which featured less heavily on his debut) alternate with "reality rap" songs on the record and suggested that he was "going pimp" through some of the lyrical topics of the former. XXL magazine wrote that Wallace "revamped his image" through the portrayal of himself between the albums, going from "mid-level hustler" on his debut to "drug lord" on his second album.
AllMusic wrote that the success of Ready to Die is "mostly due to Wallace's skill as a storyteller". In 1994, Rolling Stone described his ability in this technique as painting "a sonic picture so vibrant that you're transported right to the scene". On Life After Death, he notably demonstrated this skill on the song "I Got a Story to Tell", creating a story as a rap for the first half of the song and then retelling the same story "for his boys" in conversation form.
## Legacy
Considered one of the greatest rappers of all time, Wallace was described by AllMusic as "the savior of East Coast hip-hop". The Source magazine named him the greatest rapper of all time in its 150th issue in 2002. In 2003, when XXL magazine asked several hip hop artists to list their five favorite MCs, Wallace appeared on more rappers' lists than anyone else. In 2006, MTV ranked him at No. 3 on their list of The Greatest MCs of All Time, calling him possibly "the most skillful ever on the mic".
Editors of About.com ranked him at No. 3 on their list of the Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987–2007). In 2012, The Source ranked him No. 3 on their list of the Top 50 Lyrical Leaders of all time. Rolling Stone has referred to him as the "greatest rapper that ever lived". In 2015, Billboard named Wallace as the greatest rapper of all time.
Wallace's lyrics have been sampled and quoted by a variety of artists, including Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Alicia Keys, Fat Joe, Nelly, Ja Rule, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Game, Clinton Sparks, Michael Jackson, and Usher. At the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards, Combs and Snoop Dogg paid tribute to Wallace by hiring an orchestra to play while the vocals from "Juicy" and "Warning" played on the arena speakers. At the 2005 VH1 Hip Hop Honors, a tribute to Wallace headlined the show.
Wallace had begun to promote a clothing line called Brooklyn Mint, which was to produce plus-sized clothing, but it fell dormant after he died. In 2004, his managers Mark Pitts and Wayne Barrow launched the clothing line with help from Jay-Z, selling T-shirts with images of Wallace on them. A portion of the proceeds go to the Christopher Wallace Foundation and to Jay-Z's Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation. In 2005, Voletta Wallace hired branding and licensing agency Wicked Cow Entertainment to guide the estate's licensing efforts. Wallace-branded products on the market include action figures, blankets, and cell phone content.
The Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation holds an annual black-tie dinner ("B.I.G. Night Out") to raise funds for children's school equipment and to honor Wallace's memory. For this particular event, because it is a children's schools' charity, "B.I.G." is also said to stand for "Books Instead of Guns".
There is a large portrait mural of Wallace as Mao Zedong on Fulton Street in Brooklyn a half-mile west from Wallace's old block. A fan petitioned to have the corner of Fulton Street and St. James Place, near Wallace's childhood home renamed in his honor, garnering support from local businesses and attracting more than 560 signatures.
A large portrait of Wallace features prominently in the Netflix series Luke Cage, due to the fact that he served as muse for the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of Marvel Comics character Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes.
In 2018, a movie chronicling LAPD detective Russell Poole's investigation of Wallace's murder was released. City of Lies is based on journalist Randall Sullivan's book "LAbrynith" and explores the corruption and cover-ups within LAPD that surround Wallace's case. Voletta Wallace believed that Poole was honest and wasn't given the chance to do his job. She supported the movie by appearing as herself.
In August 2020, Wallace's son, C.J., released a house remix of his father's hit "Big Poppa".
A March 2021 Netflix documentary Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell, executive-produced by Voletta Wallace and Combs, focuses on B.I.G.'s life before he rose to fame as "The King of New York", and features "unprecedented access granted by the Wallace estate".
### Biopic
Notorious is a 2009 biographical film about Wallace and his life that stars rapper Jamal Woolard as Wallace. The film was directed by George Tillman Jr. and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Producers included Sean Combs, Wallace's former managers Wayne Barrow and Mark Pitts, as well as Voletta Wallace. On January 16, 2009, the movie's debut at the Grand 18 theater in Greensboro, North Carolina was postponed after a man was shot in the parking lot before the show. The film received mixed reviews and grossed over \$44 million worldwide.
In early October 2007, open casting calls for the role of Wallace began. Actors, rappers and unknowns all tried out. Beanie Sigel auditioned for the role, but was not picked. Sean Kingston claimed that he would play the role of Wallace, but producers denied it. Eventually, it was announced that rapper Jamal Woolard was chosen to play Wallace while Wallace's son, Christopher Wallace Jr. was cast to play Wallace as a child.
Other cast members include Angela Bassett as Voletta Wallace, Derek Luke as Sean Combs, Antonique Smith as Faith Evans, Naturi Naughton as Lil' Kim, and Anthony Mackie as Tupac Shakur. Bad Boy also released a soundtrack album to the film on January 13, 2009; it contains many of Wallace's hit singles, including "Hypnotize" and "Juicy", as well as rarities.
Woolard would reprise his role as Biggie Smalls in the 2017 Tupac Shakur biopic, All Eyez on Me.
## Discography
Studio albums
- Ready to Die (1994)
- Life After Death (1997)
Collaboration album
- Conspiracy with Junior M.A.F.I.A. (1995)
Posthumous collaboration album
- The King & I with Faith Evans (2017)
Posthumous compilation albums
- Born Again (1999)
- Duets: The Final Chapter (2005)
## Media
### Filmography
- The Show (1995) as himself
- Rhyme & Reason (1997 documentary) as himself
- Biggie & Tupac (2002 documentary) archive footage
- Tupac Resurrection (2004 documentary) archive footage
- Notorious B.I.G. Bigger Than Life (2007 documentary) archive footage
- 'Notorious' (2009) archive footage
- All Eyez on Me (2017) archive footage
- Quincy (2018 documentary) archive footage
- Biggie: The Life of Notorious B.I.G. (2017 documentary) archive footage
- Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell (2021 documentary) archive footage
- Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023) archive footage
### Television appearances
- New York Undercover (1995) as himself
- Martin (1995) as himself
- Who Shot Biggie & Tupac? (2017) archive footage
- Unsolved (2018) archive footage
## Awards and nominations
## See also
- List of murdered hip hop musicians
|
1,937,992 |
Shepseskare
| 1,140,338,973 |
Egyptian pharaoh
|
[
"25th-century BC Pharaohs",
"Pharaohs of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt"
] |
Shepseskare or Shepseskara (Egyptian for "Noble is the Soul of Ra") was an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the fourth or fifth ruler of the Fifth Dynasty (2494–2345 BC) during the Old Kingdom period. Shepseskare lived in the mid-25th century BC and was probably the owner of an unfinished pyramid in Abusir, which was abandoned after a few weeks of work in the earliest stages of its construction.
Following historical sources, Shepseskare was traditionally believed to have reigned for seven years, succeeding Neferirkare Kakai and preceding Neferefre on the throne, making him the fourth ruler of the dynasty. He is the most obscure ruler of this dynasty and the Egyptologist Miroslav Verner has strongly argued that Shepseskare's reign lasted only a few months at the most, after that of Neferefre. This conclusion is based upon the state and location of Shepseskare's unfinished pyramid in Abusir as well as the very small number of artefacts attributable to this king. Verner's arguments have now convinced several Egyptologists such as Darrell Baker and Erik Hornung.
Shepseskare's relations to his predecessor and successor are not known for certain. Verner has proposed that he was a son of Sahure and a brother to Neferirkare Kakai, who briefly seized the throne following the premature death of his predecessor and probable nephew, Neferefre. Shepseskare may himself have died unexpectedly or he may have lost the throne to another of his nephews, the future pharaoh Nyuserre Ini. The possibility that Shepseskare was a short-lived usurper from outside the royal family cannot be totally excluded.
## Attestations
### Contemporaneous sources
Shepseskare was a king of Ancient Egypt, the fourth or fifth ruler of the Fifth Dynasty. Egypt was unified at the time, with its capital located at Memphis. Shepseskare is the least-known king of the Fifth Dynasty as very few artefacts dating to his reign have survived to this day. Only two cylinder seals of Shepseskare are known: one, made of bronze, bears Shepseskare's Horus name and was uncovered in the ruins of Memphis in the early 20th century. The second seal, of unknown provenance, is made of black serpentine and reads "Shepseskare beloved of the gods, Shepseskare beloved of Hathor". Beyond these two seals the only surviving artefacts attributable to Shepseskare are five fragments of seal impressions on clay from Abusir and six further fragments discovered in the mortuary temple and Sanctuary of the Knife of the Pyramid of Neferefre, also in Abusir. These fragments probably come from three different seals and were most likely placed on the doors of magazine rooms in the temple. In 2022, a further clay seal impression of Shepseskare was uncovered in the immediate vicinity of Nyuserre's Abusir sun temple.
Finally, there is a single scarab seal reading "Shepeskare" [sic] that the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie attributed to Shepseskare at the end of the 19th century. Modern scholars doubt this attribution and rather believe the scarab to be a work of the much later Saite period (685–525 BC) executed in archaic style. Equally, the scarab could belong to Gemenefkhonsbak Shepeskare, an obscure kinglet of Tanis during the 25th Dynasty (760–656 BC).
### Historical sources
The only ancient Egyptian king list mentioning Shepseskare is the Saqqara Tablet (on the 28th entry). The tablet was inscribed during the reign of Ramesses II (1279–1213 BC), around 1200 years after Shepseskare's lifetime, and records the dynastic succession Neferikare → Shepseskare → Neferkhare (a variant name of Neferefre). Shepseskare is completely absent from another king list dating to the same period: the Abydos king list, written during the reign of Seti I (1294–1279 BC). He is also absent from the Turin canon (reign of Ramses II), although in this case a lacuna affects the papyrus on which the list is written at the place where Shepseskare and Neferefre's names should have been. Of the two entries concerning Shepseskare and Neferefre on the king list, only one reign length is still legible and it has been variously read as one year, eleven years or one to four months. The damaged state of the papyrus also makes it impossible to decide safely whose reign length this is.
Shepseskare was also likely mentioned in the Aegyptiaca, a history of Egypt written in the third century BC during the reign of Ptolemy II (283–246 BC) by the Egyptian priest Manetho. No copies of the Aegyptiaca have survived to this day and it is now known only through later writings by Sextus Julius Africanus and Eusebius. Africanus relates that the Aegyptiaca mentioned the succession "Nefercheres → Sisires → Cheres" for the mid Fifth Dynasty. Nefercheres and Cheres are believed to be the hellenized forms for Neferirkare and Neferkhare (that is Neferefre), respectively. Thus, "Sisires" is traditionally believed to be the Greek name of Shepseskare, making Manetho's reconstruction of the Fifth Dynasty in good agreement with the Saqqara tablet. Furthermore, according to Africanus, Manetho credits Sisires with seven years of reign while other sources report Manetho's figure as nine years.
## Reign
### Chronological position
Both the relative chronological position and absolute dates of Shepseskare's reign are uncertain. The Saqqara Tablet records Shepseskare as the successor of Neferirkare Kakai and the predecessor of Neferefre, which became the traditional opinion among Egyptologists. Following discoveries in the early 1980s, the Czech Egyptologist Miroslav Verner advocates the hypothesis that Shepseskare succeeded, rather than preceded, Neferefre.
In support of this hypothesis, Verner first emphasizes the presence of several clay seal impressions bearing Shepseskare's Horus name "Sekhemkaw" (meaning "He whose apparitions are powerful") in the oldest part of Neferere's mortuary temple, which was not built "until Neferefre's death". This appears to suggest that Shepseskare ruled after—rather than before—Neferefre. Verner's second argument concerns the alignment of pyramids of Sahure, Neferirkare Kakai and Neferefre: they form a line pointing to Heliopolis, just as the three pyramids of Giza do. In contrast, Shepseskare's unfinished pyramid does not fall on the line to Heliopolis, which strongly suggests that Neferefre's pyramid had already been in place when Shepseskare started his. Finally, Verner observes that Neferefre is known to have been Neferirkare's eldest son and around 20 years old when his father died so that he was in optimal position to inherit the throne. Shepseskare thus most likely took the throne after Neferefre. As Verner notes, while Shepseskare is noted as the immediate predecessor of Neferefre in the Saqqara tablet, "this slight discrepancy can ... be attributed to the [political] disorders of the time and its dynastic disputes."
### Duration
In two articles published in 2000 and 2001 Verner argues that, contrary to what Manetho indicates, Shepseskare must have reigned for a couple of months at the most, a hypothesis already proposed by the French Egyptologist Nicolas Grimal in 1988. Verner's conclusion is based on the archeological record, in particular Shepseskare's intended pyramid at Abusir. Verner emphasizes that the progress of the pyramid, which is unfinished,
> was interrupted [and] corresponds to the work of several weeks, perhaps no more than one or two months. In fact, the place was merely leveled and the excavation of the pit for the construction of the underground funerary apartment had only commenced. Moreover, the owner of the building obviously wanted to demonstrate by his choice of place (half-way between Sahure's pyramid and the sun temple of Userkaf) his relationship to either Sahure or Userkaf. Theoretically, only two kings of the Fifth Dynasty whose pyramids had not yet been identified can be taken into consideration – Shepseskara or Menkauhor. However, according to a number of contemporaneous documents, Menkauhor ... probably completed [his] pyramid elsewhere, in North Saqqara or Dahshur. Shepseskara, therefore, seems to be the likelier owner of the unfinished platform for a pyramid in North Abusir. Anyway, the builder of the platform [viz., Shepseskare] must have reigned for a very short time.
The rediscovery in 2008 of the Headless Pyramid in Saqqara and its subsequent attribution to Menkauhor Kaiu by the excavators under the direction of Zahi Hawass confirms Verner's attribution of the unfinished pyramid of Abusir to Shepseskare.
Unlike the other kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Shepseskare's name appears neither in the personal names of people of the time nor in the names of funerary estates. He is also absent from the titles and biographies of state officials. For example, the stela of the Fifth Dynasty official Khau-Ptah lists an uninterrupted sequence of kings whom he served under, namely Sahure, Neferirkare, Neferefre and Nyuserre. The omission of Shepseskare, be it between Neferirkare and Neferefre or between Neferefre and Nyuserre, indicates that his reign must have been very short. Since Manetho's Aegyptiaca dates to the third century BC, Khau-Ptah's contemporary account can be regarded as a more accurate indication of the political situation during the Fifth Dynasty.
Verner's arguments together with the scarcity of artefacts attributable to Shepseskare have now convinced many Egyptologists, such as Darrell Baker and Erik Hornung, that Shepseskare's reign was indeed ephemeral.
## Family
In view of the scarcity of sources concerning Shepseskare, nothing is known for certain about his relation to his predecessors. He was most likely a member of the royal family, although the possibility that he was a usurper unrelated to his predecessors cannot be totally excluded.
Silke Roth has proposed that Shepseskare was a son of Neferirkare Kakai and a brother of both Neferefre and Nyuserre Ini. Instead, Verner has proposed that Shepseskare was a son of Sahure who managed to briefly seize power after the premature death of Neferefre. This would explain the proximity of Shepseskare's unfinished pyramid to that of Sahure. Lending credence to this theory is the discovery by Verner and Tarek El Awady in 2005 of reliefs from the causeway of Sahure's pyramid complex showing him, his wife Meretnebty and their two sons Ranefer and Netjerirenre. The relief gives both sons the title of "king's eldest son", indicating that they were possibly twins. The relief further indicates that Ranefer took the throne as "Neferirkare king of Upper and Lower Egypt". Verner and Awady thus speculate that while Ranefer and his son Neferefre became kings, Netjerirenre could have attempted to seize the throne at the death of the latter. In this hypothesis Shepseskare would be the throne name of Netjerirenre. Verner had however himself written in 1997 that Shepseskare could equally be a son of Shepseskaf, last pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, or of Userkaf or Neferirkare Kakai as Roth suggested: so few are the actual evidences pertaining to the problem that all possibilities are just speculations. In yet another hypothesis, Jaromír Krejčí believes that Shepseskare was Neferefre's son.
Shepseskare's reign may have been cut short by his unexpected death or his claim to the throne could have been thwarted by Nyuserre Ini, Neferefre's younger brother and the younger son of King Neferirkare and Queen Khentkaus II. Khentkaus II's pivotal role in Nyuserre's eventual accession to the throne might explain her high esteem in Egyptian folklore and "the additional enlargement and upgrading of her mortuary temple" by Nyuserre. Nyuserre also seemed to have been favored by powerful courtiers and officials, foremost among whom was Ptahshepses, who would become Nyuserre's son-in-law and vizier.
## Building activities
### Pyramid
An unfinished pyramid located in north Abusir, between the sun temple of Userkaf and the Pyramid of Sahure, is believed to belong to Shepseskare. The structure was discovered in 1980 by a Czechoslovakian archaeological team led by Miroslav Verner and seems to have been abandoned after no more than a few weeks or months of work. A square area of roughly 100 m<sup>2</sup> (1,100 sq ft) was leveled and the digging of a T-shaped ditch was just started in its center. This ditch was to be left open during the pyramid construction to allow for simultaneous works on the pyramid filling and its substructures. This construction technique is common to all pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty and can directly be seen in the case of the Pyramid of Neferefre, which was also left unfinished. This technique as well as the location of the unfinished pyramid in the royal necropolis of the Fifth Dynasty indicates that it belonged in all likeliness to Shepseskare, the pyramids of the other kings of the dynasty being already known. If finished according to the established pattern, the pyramid would have reached 73 m (240 ft) high, similar to the Pyramid of Neferirkare.
Analyzing the fragments of clay seals bearing Shepeseskare's name, the Swiss Egyptologist Peter Kaplony has proposed that the ancient name of Shepseskare's pyramid could be reconstructed as Rsj-Špss-k3-Rˁ, reading "Resj-Shespeskare" and meaning "The awakening of Shepseskare". Verner rejects this hypothesis, and he contests the reading of certain signs and their interpretation as the name of a pyramid.
### Sun temple
Kaplony has proposed that Shepseskare started to build a sun temple named Ḥtp-jb-Rˁ, reading "Hotepibre" and meaning "Satisfied is the heart of Ra". Although all the kings of the early to mid-Fifth Dynasty, from Userkaf to Menkauhor Kaiu, did build sun temples, Verner regards Kaplony's hypothesis as "sheer speculation" since it is based on the tentative reconstruction of a single clay seal. Verner first argues that this seal is not inscribed with Shepseskare's name but rather bears traces of a Horus name which could equally well be that of Djedkare Isesi. Second, Verner notes that the name of a sun temple is rarely found with that of the king who built it: more often it is found with the name of another king during whose reign the seal was made. Finally, he doubts that the sign reading Ḥtp, "Hotep", is really part of the name of a sun temple. Instead, he believes it is more probable that the seal either refers to the sun temple of Neferirkare, named St-jb-Rˁ.w, that is "Setibraw"; or to that of Nyuserre, which was called Šsp-jb-Rˁ, "Shesepibre".
### Mortuary temple of Neferefre
It is possible that Shepseskare continued the construction of the funerary complex of his predecessor. As Neferefre had died after a short reign, his pyramid complex was far from finished and neither the burial chamber nor the mortuary temple had been built. The planned pyramid was thus hastily changed into a square mastaba representing a stylized primeval hill and the accompanying mortuary temple was completed during the reign of Nyuserre. The presence of seals of Shepseskare in the oldest part of Neferefre's mortuary temple could indicate that the former also undertook construction works there. The evidence for such works is uncertain: these seals could have been placed on boxes which were later moved into the magazine rooms of the temple. For example, seals of Userkaf, Sahure and Neferirkare Kakai were also found in the temple, while these three pharaohs died before Neferefre's reign.
|
81,114 |
Super Mario World
| 1,171,557,037 |
1990 video game
|
[
"1990 video games",
"Game Boy Advance games",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"New Nintendo 3DS games",
"Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development games",
"Nintendo Switch Online games",
"Pack-in video games",
"Side-scrolling platform games",
"Super Mario",
"Super Nintendo Entertainment System games",
"Video games about dinosaurs",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games directed by Takashi Tezuka",
"Video games produced by Shigeru Miyamoto",
"Video games scored by Koji Kondo",
"Video games set on fictional islands",
"Virtual Console games for Nintendo 3DS",
"Virtual Console games for Wii",
"Virtual Console games for Wii U",
"Works about vacationing"
] |
Super Mario World, known in Japan as is a platform video game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was released in Japan in 1990, North America in 1991 and Europe and Australia in 1992. The player controls Mario on his quest to save Princess Peach and Dinosaur Land from the series' antagonist Bowser and the Koopalings. The gameplay is similar to that of earlier Super Mario games: players control Mario through a series of levels in which the goal is to reach the goalpost at the end.
Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development developed the game, led by director Takashi Tezuka and producer and series creator Shigeru Miyamoto. It is the first Mario game for the SNES and was designed to make the most of the console's technical features. The development team had more freedom compared to the series installments for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Yoshi was conceptualised during the development of the NES games but was not used until Super Mario World due to hardware limitations.
Super Mario World is often considered one of the best games in the series and is cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. It sold more than twenty million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling SNES game. It also led to an animated television series of the same name. The game has been re-released on multiple occasions: It was part of the 1994 compilation Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World for the SNES and was re-released for the Game Boy Advance as Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 in 2001, on the Virtual Console for the Wii, Wii U, and New Nintendo 3DS consoles, and as part of the Super NES Classic Edition. In 2019, it was released for Nintendo Switch Online as part of the classic games service.
## Gameplay
Super Mario World is a 2D side-scrolling platform game in which the player controls Mario or Luigi, the protagonists of the game. The game has similar gameplay to earlier games in the Super Mario series – Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, and Super Mario Bros. 3 – but introduces new elements. As well as dashing and jumping, the player can also fly or float with the aid of the Cape Feather and P-Balloon and can execute the new Spin Jump move. The game has 96 level exits in total.
The player navigates through the game via two game screens: an overworld map and a side-scrolling course. The overworld map displays an overhead representation of the current world and has several paths leading from the world's entrance to a castle. Paths connect to action panels, fortresses, ghost houses, castles, and other map icons, and allow players to take different routes to reach the world's goal. Moving the on-screen character to an action panel or castle allows access to that course. The majority of the game takes place in these linear levels, populated with obstacles and enemies, which involves the player traversing the stage by dashing, jumping, and dodging or defeating enemies. The player is given a number of lives, which are lost if Mario comes into contact with an enemy while Small Mario, falls into a bottomless pit, gets crushed, touches lava, or runs out of time. The game ends when the player runs out of lives, although the player can continue from the most recent save point (a successfully completed castle, fortress or haunted house) by selecting "Continue". Each world features a final stage with a boss to defeat; each of the seven worlds features fortresses controlled by one of the Koopalings, and the player also battles Bowser in his castle in the seventh and final world. Super Mario World includes a multiplayer option which allows two players to play the game by alternating turns at navigating the overworld map and accessing stage levels; the first player controls Mario, while the second player controls his brother, Luigi.
In addition to the power-ups from previous games, such as the Super Mushroom and Fire Flower, Super Mario World has a new power-up named the Cape Feather, which gives Mario a cape and the ability to fly, glide in the air, and use the cape as a sail. The game also introduces the ability to "store" an extra power-up in a box at the top centre of the screen. For example, if the player obtains a Fire Flower or a Cape Feather, then a Super Mushroom will appear in the box. If the player collects a star, the player will become invincible and cannot be hurt by enemies. However, it don't protect the player from falling into lava or a bottomless pit nor if the player runs out of time. If Mario gets hit by an enemy, the stored item in the box will automatically drop. Alternatively, the player can manually release the stored item at any time.
The game introduces Yoshi, a dinosaur companion Mario can ride who is able to eat most enemies. If Yoshi attempts to eat a Koopa or its shell, he can spit it out and fire it at enemies. If the player fails to spit the shell out within a certain amount of time, Yoshi will swallow it, rendering it useless. When holding any Koopa shell in his mouth, Yoshi gains the ability that corresponds to its color: a blue shell enables Yoshi to fly, a yellow shell causes him to emit dust clouds that defeat nearby enemies, and a red shell allows him to produce three fireballs that defeat enemies. Flashing Koopa shells produce all three abilities, while green shells produce none. The default Yoshi is green, but the game also has hidden blue, yellow, and red Yoshis; the player can obtain each colored Yoshi by finding its egg in hidden areas and feeding it five enemies or one star, Super Mushroom, Fire Flower or Cape Feather, causing the baby Yoshi to mature.
Although the main objective is to navigate through seven worlds to reach the end of the game, the player can beat the game much faster by using secret Star Road routes. To access a hidden world, the player needs to find keys scattered throughout the game's levels. When a key is found, it must be brought to a keyhole to unlock either a new level or a Star Road. Exploring these secret stages can lead to other stages, such as the Special World. Completion of the Special World permanently changes some of the enemies' sprites and alters the overworld map's color scheme.
## Plot
The plot of Super Mario World is detailed in the instruction booklet. After bringing peace to the Mushroom World in Super Mario Bros.3, the brothers Mario and Luigi decide to go on vacation with Princess Toadstool to a place called Dinosaur Land, a prehistoric-themed world swarming with dinosaurs and other enemies. While resting on the beach, Princess Toadstool is captured by Bowser. When Mario and Luigi wake up, they try to find her and, after hours of searching, come across a giant egg in the forest. It suddenly hatches and out of it comes a young dinosaur named Yoshi, who tells them his dinosaur friends have also been imprisoned in eggs by Bowser's kids, the evil Koopalings. Mario and Luigi soon realise that Bowser's forces must have captured Toadstool as well. Mario, Luigi and Yoshi set out to save Toadstool and Yoshi's dinosaur friends, traversing through Dinosaur Land for Bowser and his Koopalings. To aid him, Yoshi gives Mario a cape as they begin their journey.
Mario and Luigi continue to follow Bowser, defeating the Koopalings in the process, and save Yoshi's Yoshi friends. They eventually arrive at Bowser's Castle, where they fight him in a final battle. They send Bowser flying into the sky and save Princess Toadstool, restoring peace to Dinosaur Land.
## Development
The game was directed by Takashi Tezuka, while Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of both Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, served as producer. Shigefumi Hino took the role of graphics designer. Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development handled development with a team of ten people, including three main programmers and a character designer, most of whom had worked on past Super Mario titles. In a retrospective interview, the core team said Miyamoto wielded the most authority during development.
Super Mario World was the first Mario series game developed for the then-upcoming Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). As such, the team anticipated some difficulty in working with new and more advanced hardware. According to Tezuka, the software tools were not yet fully developed, and the team had to "go along with starting something new". Miyamoto acknowledged the team no longer had restrictions on certain mechanics such as scrolling and the number of colours they could implement. As a hardware experiment, the team ported Super Mario Bros.3 to the SNES. However, it felt like the same game to them, despite the improved colours and sprites. After that, Miyamoto realised the team's goal would be to use the new hardware to create something "totally new".
Miyamoto said he had wanted Mario to have a dinosaur companion ever since Super Mario Bros., but Nintendo engineers could not add such a character into the game due to the limitations of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The inspiration for Yoshi can be traced back even further; Miyamoto designed a green dragon for the 1984 game Devil World which shared many similarities with Yoshi. During the development of Super Mario Bros.3, Miyamoto had a number of sketches around his desk, including an image of Mario riding a horse. As development of Super Mario World progressed, the team opted to set the game in a "dinosaur land", so Tezuka asked designer Shigefumi Hino to draw a reptile-like creature based on Miyamoto's sketches. Hino originally produced a design that Tezuka deemed too reptilian, and "didn't really fit into the Mario world", so he encouraged the designer to create a "cuter" character. Tezuka speculated that Miyamoto's love of horse riding, as well as country and western themes, influenced Yoshi's creation.
Reflecting on how he had created different melodies for Super Mario Bros.3, composer Koji Kondo decided to reuse the same themes for Super Mario World, albeit in a rearranged form. By doing this, he assumed players would be able to recognise the same melodies, while exposing them to new variations of music as they progressed through the game. As Super Mario World was the first game developed for the SNES, Kondo felt "overjoyed" at being able to compose music by using eight sounds at once. To express the technological novelty of the new console, he used several different instruments, implementing them all one after the other in the game's title song. As development progressed, Kondo grew concerned over how people would react to his unusual combinations of instruments as he noted the use of more traditional square waves and triangle waves had "gained acceptance" with consumers. For the game's sound effects, Kondo decided to use a variety of musical instruments, as opposed to square waves, to emphasise that the game used traditional technology with a hybrid of new materials. It took Kondo around a year and a half to write all the music for the game.
Super Mario World was produced during the console wars – a result of the rivalry between Nintendo's SNES and Sega's two-year-old Mega Drive system – which outsold the console and led to intense competition between the two, being the first time since December 1985 Nintendo did not lead the market though it eventually overtook Sega. Sega's mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, was seen by many as a faster and "cooler" alternative to Mario. After the game's release, Miyamoto admitted publicly he felt it was incomplete and development was rushed toward the end.
## Release
Super Mario World was first released in Japan on 21 November 1990 under the name of Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 4. It was one of two launch games for the SNES in Japan, along with F-Zero. The game was released in North America in August 1991. Nintendo also issued a version for arcade cabinets so players could try the game before buying it.
### Re-releases
The game was re-released in a special version of Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, as a pack-in game for the SNES in December 1994. All-Stars contains enhanced remakes of the first four Super Mario games released for the NES: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros.2, Super Mario Bros.3 and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. In contrast to the other games in the collection, Super Mario World is largely identical to the original version, but Luigi's sprites were updated to make him a distinctive character rather than a palette swap of Mario.
Super Mario World was ported to the Game Boy Advance as Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 between 2001 and 2002. It features the same number of levels as the original (albeit with a toned down difficulty), Luigi as a playable character in single player with his characteristic behaviour from Super Mario Bros. 2, Game Link Cable support for four players in the Mario Bros. Classic mode, and the ability to save. It received positive reviews; critics enjoyed its new inclusions and retention of the SNES original's "feel". GameSpot named it the best video game of February 2002.
The SNES version was released on the Wii's Virtual Console in Japan on 2December 2006, in the United States on 5February 2007, and in Europe on 9February 2007. It was released for the Wii U in North America and Japan on 26 April 2013, and in Europe on 27 April 2013, along with the full launch of the Wii U Virtual Console. On March 3, 2016, the game was released for the Virtual Console service of the New Nintendo 3DS. Super Mario World was also one of the 21 SNES games included in the Super NES Classic Edition released in September 2017. On 5September 2019, Nintendo released Super Mario World on their Nintendo Switch Online service as a launch title.
## Reception
Nintendo has sold 20.61 million copies of the game worldwide, making it the best-selling game for the SNES. In the United States, Super Mario Advance2 for the Game Boy Advance sold 2.5 million copies and earned \$74million in revenue by August 2006. During the period between January 2000 and August 2006, it became the second highest-selling portable game in the United States.
Super Mario World received critical and commercial acclaim. In December 2019, review aggregator GameRankings ranked Super Mario World as the 78th highest-rated game of all time, with an aggregate score of 94% based on nine reviews.
The visuals and presentation were two of the most praised aspects of the game. After its release, Rob Swan of Computer and Video Games noted that the graphics were an excellent example of what the then-new SNES was capable of, while in the same review, Paul Glancey similarly remarked that the visuals were stunning, and he was grateful the game came free with the console. Four reviewers echoed this in Electronic Gaming Monthly, but commented that the game took little advantage of the SNES's capabilities compared to other games available for the system. Retrospective reviewers agreed the game's visuals were still of a high quality. Karn Bianco from Cubed3 enjoyed the game's relaxed visual style, and praised Nintendo for keeping everything "nice and simple" designing a game perfect for children. IGN'''s Lucas Thomas heralded the game as a significant leap over the visuals of the 8-bit era, but in retrospect felt it did not distinguish itself from being a graphically-upgraded continuation of its predecessor, Super Mario Bros.3. In contrast, Frédéric Goyon of Jeuxvideo.com thought the game brought out the full potential of the SNES (albeit less so than Donkey Kong Country), and Nadia Oxford from USGamer also felt the game was a less rigid version of its predecessor. AllGame's Skyler Miller and Alex Navarro of GameSpot both praised the game's well-drawn characters, colourful visuals and pleasing animation. Morgan Sleeper of Nintendo Life said Super Mario World was the "graphical holy grail" that retro-styled games aspire to, and he insisted that its design holds up well today.
Critics commended the game's replay value and unique gameplay in comparison to older Super Mario games. Four reviewers in Electronic Gaming Monthly praised the game's number of secrets and diversity among its levels, expressing appreciation that Nintendo did not recycle assets from Super Mario Bros.3. Swan and Glancey enjoyed the addictive gameplay and the vast number of levels, while Dan Whitehead of Eurogamer lauded the game's divergence from linear platforming and asserted that Super Mario World was an evolutionary leap for gaming in general. Likewise, Goyon appreciated the option of being able to finish the game by using alternative routes. Bianco opined that the game was "one of the smoothest platformers in existence" while Thomas thought its "masterful" and innovative level design enhanced the overall experience. Navarro similarly felt the game featured some of the best and most challenging levels the series has offered thus far, saying "nothing about the game feels out of place or superfluous". Miller considered the game's overall length to be its strongest aspect, while Oxford thought Super Mario World's gameplay could be both straightforward and complex, owing to the myriad of secrets the game contained. In retrospect, Sleeper believed the game's biggest achievement was its level design, calling it an "unrivalled master class" with a constant sense of momentum.
The game's audio was also well received by critics. Swan believed the game utilised the SNES' PCM chip to its fullest potential, and both he and Glancey agreed that the game's sound effects were "mindblowing". Thomas labelled the soundtrack "another one of Koji Kondo's classics," but in hindsight remarked that it was not as memorable as his earlier work. Goyon praised the originality of the game's soundtrack, and thought the technical contribution of the SNES allowed players to enjoy a "globally magnificent" composition. Both Goyon and Jason Schreier of Kotaku felt its rhythmic sound effects were important and helped to reinforce the game's atmosphere. Miller liked Super Mario World's upbeat music, and particularly enjoyed the echoing sound effects heard when Mario was underground – a sentiment shared by other reviewers. Both Sleeper and Navarro wrote that the game featured the best music in the entire Super Mario series, with Sleeper praising Kondo's "timeless" soundtrack and memorable melodies.
### Awards
The game received 1991 Game of the Year awards from Nintendo Power and Power Play. Many retrospective critics declared Super Mario World one of the greatest video games of all time. In 2009, a poll conducted by Empire voted it "the greatest game of all time". In 2009, Official Nintendo Magazine placed the game 7th in a list of the greatest Nintendo games of all time. In its final issue in October 2014, Official Nintendo Magazine ranked Super Mario World the third-greatest Nintendo game of all time, behind The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Mario Galaxy. In 2012, Nintendo Power similarly named Super Mario World the fifth greatest game of all time, a step up from its eighth best ranking in their 2006 poll. The game has appeared on several "best video games of all time" lists such as those from Electronic Gaming Monthly, Game Informer, Retro Gamer and GameSpot. In 2007, Retro Gamer ranked it as the best platform game of all time, while USgamer listed it as the best Super Mario platform game ever in 2015. In 1996, GamesMaster ranked Super Mario World 3rd on their "The GamesMaster SNES Top 10." In 1995, Total! listed the game 11th on its Top 100 SNES Games, at the time they opined Super Mario World is "a contender for the best game ever."
## Legacy
As a pack-in game for the SNES, Super Mario World helped popularise the console, and became the best-selling game of its generation. Shigeru Miyamoto has said that Super Mario World is his favourite Mario game.
Yoshi became one of the most important characters in the Mario franchise, re-appearing in later Super Mario games and in nearly all Mario sports and spin-off games. Yoshi appears as the main playable character in Super Mario World's 1995 prequel Super Mario World2: Yoshi's Island, which helped lead to multiple video games focused on the character. A Super Mario World clone, Super Mario's Wacky Worlds, was in development for the Philips CD-i device by NovaLogic from 1992 to 1993, but was cancelled because of the console's commercial failure. In a poll conducted in 2008, Yoshi was voted as the third-favourite video game character in Japan, with Cloud Strife and Mario placing second and first.
DIC Entertainment produced an animated series of the same name, consisting of thirteen episodes, which ran on NBC from September to December 1991. Super Mario World has a large ROM hacking scene, with fans using applications such as Lunar Magic to create levels and insert new graphics, music, and mechanics; Kaizo Mario World is notable for being featured in many Let's Play videos and popularizing the word Kaizo to signify hacks of extreme difficulty. In a similar way, Super Mario World is one of the four games whose assets are available in Super Mario Maker, a custom level creator released for the Wii U in 2015, in its port to Nintendo 3DS in 2016, and its 2019 sequel. The latter adds new snow and nighttime themes for Super Mario World'' levels accompanied by new music composed by Kondo.
|
17,637,041 |
Fantasy Black Channel
| 1,127,175,007 | null |
[
"2008 debut albums",
"Albums produced by Erol Alkan",
"Late of the Pier albums",
"Parlophone albums"
] |
Fantasy Black Channel is the only studio album by British dance-punk band Late of the Pier. It was released on 30 July 2008 in Japan through Toshiba EMI and on 4 August 2008 in the British Isles on Parlophone, the band's primary label. Five tracks had already been released as singles in the United Kingdom: "Bathroom Gurgle", "The Bears Are Coming", "Space and the Woods" and "Focker" as a double A-side, and "Heartbeat". The record peaked at number 28 on the UK Albums Chart, but failed to chart in the United States.
The album was recorded in lead vocalist Sam Eastgate's bedroom in Castle Donington, England, and at several locations in London. It went through a fractured creative process that lasted more than two years. It was eventually produced by Eastgate and DJ Erol Alkan between 2007 and 2008. Fantasy Black Channel does not contain a unifying musical or lyrical theme; rather, it is a collage of all the ideas, genres, and studio effects that fascinated the band members and Alkan, especially during live recording sessions. The record was very well received by critics. It was often treated as one of the best British albums of 2008 because of its eclecticism and spirit of invention. Late of the Pier did not record any further albums following the death of drummer Ross Dawson in 2015.
## Origins and recording
Having officially formed a band under the name Late of the Pier in 2004, childhood friends Sam Eastgate, Andrew Faley, Sam Potter, and the late Ross Dawson initially developed the sound of their first album by listening to the alternative dance music of British ensemble The Prodigy and the grunge music of American band Nirvana. They soon branched out into listening to diverse genres from the last 40 years of music, including Motown and soul. Potter has treated their conception of Fantasy Black Channel as a reaction to "mediocre, complacent indie-schmindie bands who find a sound and stick to it; whose songs sound exactly the same", while lead writer and composer Eastgate has pointed out that they wanted to "take people past their own limits". The nascent recording stages took place in Eastgate's bedroom, where unconventional time signatures and experimental chords were performed because, at the time, no band member could play an instrument properly.
Late of the Pier started using the album working title Interesting Adventure in 2006 after practising in Eastgate's bedroom for about a year and previewed their new material at the Liars Club in Nottingham. After receiving contract offers from Parlophone and Atlantic Records, the band members signed to Parlophone because the label gave them total autonomy over the recording process without pressuring them to be commercially successful immediately. The record deal was followed by the recording of an EP titled Zarcorp Demo, from which a demo single, "Space and the Woods", was released in March 2007. Eastgate has claimed that the band members were influenced by the music of the 1980s during these formative stages of Fantasy Black Channel even though none of them were born before 1986.
In late 2007, Late of the Pier formally met renowned DJ Erol Alkan after seeing him play a set at the Liars Club. Alkan called them "THE most exciting band around" and offered the band members help in the recording process of Fantasy Black Channel. They accepted and made him producer for the album because of the immediate rapport that developed between the two parties. Dawson has explained the choice of producer by suggesting that Alkan is famous for playing broad genres of music and that he understands the properties and crossover of dance and guitar music. Alkan fully embraced the band members' ideas and immediately understood what they were trying to achieve. "Bathroom Gurgle" was recorded by the new collaboration and was released as a limited edition single in September 2007.
The production process for Fantasy Black Channel gathered pace around December 2007. Late of the Pier usually proceeded by taking bedroom recordings into the studio, where they were refined by Alkan into "a more presentable package". They tried unconventional techniques in the style of avant-garde producer Joe Meek during the live studio recording sessions, including stamping in baths and re-amping guitars through air vents. When tracks were mixed after being recorded, the band members, Alkan, and engineer Jimmy Robertson worked in tandem and unanimously decided when a track had finished undergoing the studio effects process. No songs changed after this point, even when one of the parties had further ideas. At the time, in an interview with the band, Stuart Turnbull of the BBC Collective indicated that Alkan managed to "channel Late of the Pier's sonic attack into something more focused yet still undeniably different".
## Promotion and release
The record was nearly completed by end January 2008. Late of the Pier stopped recording to embark on a headlining UK tour during February, in which they previewed new material. "The Bears Are Coming" was released as a vinyl single in March 2008. The band toured until the end of April 2008 to promote another single—a double A-side containing a reworked "Space and the Woods" and "Focker"—from the as-yet-unreleased Fantasy Black Channel. Studio work with Alkan restarted in May 2008 to put the finishing touches on the album; the final version was christened as "a compilation of hits" and "anti-pop pop". The album was recorded during six months in different studios and the band members have admitted that the variety in venues partially explains why it sounds disjointed. The idea of having a single 45-minute track instead of a track list of songs was mooted at the end of May 2008, but was not followed through.
Fantasy Black Channels track listing and UK CD release date of 11 August 2008 were confirmed on 11 June. Faley has claimed that "the album fell into place itself, like the songs basically told us where they wanted to go on the album". Late of the Pier picked the record's name at random after first contemplating using Peggy Patch and Her Sequenced Dress. The cover art was designed by a friend of the band members from Brighton, Jon Bergman. A final EP containing material already released in 2007 and 2008, Echoclistel Lambietroy, was released in July 2008 as part of the marketing campaign for the forthcoming album. Potter has summed the record's conception by concluding, "I think in the three years to build up to the album, we never actually thought of a track list, and we never really kind of considered the fact that it should sound like an album. I think we recorded all the songs and then they were there and it was like, 'Oh, we have to kind of stitch this together and make it sound like one piece.'"
## Content
### Lyrics
The writing process for Fantasy Black Channel was largely unplanned. The verses of "Broken" were conceived late at night and are inspired by insomnia. It took Eastgate a long time to describe how he was feeling "in a way that sounded original" for such a common theme in pop music. The lyrics in the chorus are about the first time Late of the Pier drove to London and got lost. "Space and the Woods" tries to weigh up what is more important: a person or an inanimate object, or an absence of anything, while "The Bears Are Coming" concerns "a silent threat". The idea for the lyric "A heartbeat, a flicker, a line" in "Heartbeat" came to Eastgate while recording the song and hearing its time signature always changing.
The lyricist cannot remember writing "White Snake" and did not know there was a band of the same name in existence. "Focker" evolved out of a demo, called "6/8 Focker", Eastgate sang through a guitar amp with initially indecipherable lyrics. "The Enemy Are the Future" gets its name from a sentence in a promotional leaflet for the indie rock band The Enemy. Eastgate has explained that for "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" he randomly "shouted lots of short phrases" and then tried to make sense of what he said. The process led to stylised lines like "Falling over aeroplanes and wanting to be a derelict".
### Composition
Fantasy Black Channel is largely built on sonic experiments and the use of studio and computer techniques. The opening track, "Hot Tent Blues", is an instrumental short which contains seven layers of electric guitar run through a Zoom 506 bass guitar pedal. "Broken" was conceived during a jam session between Eastgate's guitar riffs and Dawson's drumming, while a demo of "Space and the Woods" similar to the Nirvana song "All Apologies" was reworked and remixed in the studio. Eastgate credits Storm Mortimer, who used to drive Late of the Pier around London, as the muse for "The Bears Are Coming". She often sang impromptu and the frontman eventually borrowed a page of her songs and added an afrobeat-inspired rhythm to it. Eastgate and Dawson wanted to create a track that evoked the idea of "coming out of the jungle" and credit varied musical acts like Slagsmålsklubben, Prince, The Beatles, Mr Flash, FrYars, and Lutricia McNeal as inspiration.
"Random Firl" was one of Alkan's favourites and he persuaded Late of the Pier to re-record it like a classical piece of music rather than in a rock-oriented way. The vocal harmonies at the end of the song were added during one of the last days of recording when the pressure to complete the album was high. "Heartbeat" is based on an old acid house demo track that Eastgate created during his childhood using a Roland TB-303 electronic synthesiser-sequencer. The track features complex time signature progressions and a guitar solo played by Potter on the sampler at the end. "Whitesnake" was inspired by the music of Devo, Roxy Music, and Dandi Wind, while "VW" is based on a 2001 demo recorded in Eastgate's attic. In the studio, Late of the Pier hired brass players to perform the horn sections and create new scales. Once the instrumentals were recorded, the band members purposefully decided to mix their own playing lower in certain sections of the song so listeners could hear the horns more clearly.
"Focker" was created using a looped riff from "6/8 Focker". Eastgate then conceived a drum solo and remixed and rearranged the last twenty seconds of the song. "The Enemy Are the Future" was created during a hungover jam session, where all band members played individually and not in tandem. Dawson performed around 40 different beats one after another all in different timings. The session was recorded using a tape player and a track was moulded in the studio. Four different endings were recorded and three were spliced together at the end. "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", whose riff is based on an old French samba song, was borne out of an interplay between Eastgate on the guitar and Faley on the bass. The last track on the album, "Bathroom Gurgle", includes "a squelchy grind of the riff" purpose-built for the Liars Club audience during the band's first ever gigs. Eastgate has explained, "I had these two themes, which looped round on each other which I sang very exasperated Annie Lennox style vocals over." The fast tempo of the first half of the song was juxtaposed against a section of "slow drama".
## Critical reception
Media response to Fantasy Black Channel was highly favourable; aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalised rating of 81% based on 18 critical reviews. AllMusic's K. Ross Hoffman described the album as "glorious and galvanising" and labelled it "a convoluted construction crammed with so many immediately gratifying moments that it takes multiple listens to extricate them all". John Burgess of The Guardian explained that a new favourite song, riff, or wayward moment can be found every time the album is listened to. Tim Chester of NME concluded, "It takes a certain kind of mind to make this. While others whinge about living and dying in cul-de-sac towns shackled by cul-de-sac imaginations, LOTP's vision is housed on Dubai's 'The World' island-creation project."
Some reviewers classified Fantasy Black Channel into the British new rave genre and musical scene. Others claimed that they could hear impressions of Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry and musician Gary Numan in the recording. Pitchfork's Adam Moerder commented that it contains several new rave compositions which are aesthetically dubious. Chris Baynes of PopMatters claimed that the band members "wear their influences pretty much inked onto their sleeves", but concluded that the album is exciting and excitable in equal measure. According to Late of the Pier, comparisons to Klaxons and new rave are the results of lazy journalism, especially for a scene the band has never been in. Eastgate has explained that musical influences are often subconscious, even though the band members tried not to listen to anything but their own work while recording the album. Nick Mitchell of The Skinny pointed out that the record is "an unrestrained, unclassifiable, unexpectedly triumphant romp through blaring influences and genres, from the 70s camp rock of Queen and Bowie to the primitive electronics of Gary Numan, with echoes of 90s computer games and snatches of modern house".
Fantasy Black Channel figured in several publications' end-of-year best album lists for 2008, notably, at number three by Clash, at number five by FACT, and at number 18 by NME. It was ranked at number 16 in HMV's Poll of Polls for 2008, which aggregates the votes of prominent British critics to decide the commercial group's Album Of The Year. Earlier in 2008, Rory Carroll of Artrocker claimed that the record would have been a late entrant for the Mercury Music Prize, and would have probably won the award, if nominations had been made in August rather than July 2008. Because of their work on the album, Late of the Pier received a nomination for Best New Band at the 2009 NME Awards. Two tracks were also nominated: "Bathroom Gurgle" and "Heartbeat", in the Best Dancefloor Filler and Best Video categories respectively. In 2009, Clash placed Fantasy Black Channel at number 40 in its list of the 50 Greatest Albums, 2004–2009, while FACT included it at number 99 in its editorial staff list of the 100 Best: Albums of the Decade.
## Track listing
All songs written and arranged by Sam Eastgate, unless otherwise stated.
- A hidden track, "No Time", begins at 4:50 of "Bathroom Gurgle".
### Bonus tracks
- "Dose A" – 1:47 – track 13 on the iTunes version
- "Very Wav" – 4:44 – track 13 on the Japanese and U.S. editions
- "Focker (Rolmops Remix)" – 3:15 – track 14 on the Japanese edition
- "The Bears Are Coming (Emperor Machine Remix)" – 9:22 – track 14 on U.S. edition and track 15 on the Japanese edition
### Vinyl
The 2008 UK LP version of Fantasy Black Channel comprised a standard black vinyl copy in a gatefold picture sleeve. It was released a week earlier than the CD version and had the following track changes:
- "Space and the Woods (Cenzo Townshend Mix)" instead of "Space and the Woods"
- "The Bears Are Coming (Original Version)" instead of "The Bears Are Coming"
- "Heartbeat (Cenzo Townsend Version)" instead of "Heartbeat"
The 2009 U.S. LP version was released concurrently with the CD version.
## Personnel
Band
- Sam Eastgate – lead vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drum sequencing, synthesiser
- Andrew Faley – bass guitar, backing vocals, bass synthesiser
- Sam Potter – sampler, synthesiser, backing vocals
- Ross Dawson – drums
Additional musicians
- Giselle Kennedy – backing vocals (track 2)
- Erol Alkan – backing vocals (track 5)
- Nik Carter – tenor vocals, baritone vocals (track 8)
- Jack Birchwood – trumpet, flugelhorn (track 8)
Production
- Erol Alkan – producer; mixing (except tracks 1, 2, 3)
- Sam Eastgate – producer (tracks 1, 2, 4, 9, 12); arrangements
- Jimmy Robertson – engineering; mixing (except tracks 1, 2, 3)
- Mark Alloway – assistant engineer (tracks 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11)
- Al Lawson – assistant engineer (track 1)
- Ben Jackson – assistant engineer (track 7)
- Oli Wright – assistant engineer (track 12)
- Cenzo Townshend – mixing (tracks 1, 2, 3)
- Neil Comber – assistant mixer (track 1, 2, 3)
- Darren Simpson – assistant mixer (track 4)
- Daniel Rejmer – assistant mixer (tracks 5, 11)
- Lee Slaney – assistant mixer (tracks 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12)
- Mike Marsh – mastering (except track 4)
- Nilesh Patel – mastering (track 4)
Artwork
- Jon Bergman – cover art
- Late of the Pier – design
- Traffic – design
## Recording and release details
Fantasy Black Channel was recorded between 2006 and 2008 in Sam Eastgate's bedroom in Castle Donington and at the following studios in London.
The album's release history is as follows:
## Chart positions
Album
Singles'
"—" denotes releases that did not chart.
|
39,623,744 |
Si Tjonat
| 1,097,295,776 |
1929 film by Nelson Wong
|
[
"Dutch East Indies films",
"Dutch black-and-white films",
"Dutch silent feature films",
"Films based on Indonesian novels",
"Films directed by the Wong brothers",
"Indonesian black-and-white films",
"Lost Indonesian films"
] |
Si Tjonat (Perfected Spelling: Si Conat) is a likely lost 1929 bandit film from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) directed by Nelson Wong and produced by Wong and Jo Eng Sek. Based on the novel by F.D.J. Pangemanann, the silent film followed an indigenous man who, having killed his fellow villager, flees to Batavia (today Jakarta) and becomes a bandit. After kidnapping an ethnic Chinese woman, he is defeated and brought to justice.
A commercially oriented work aimed at ethnic Chinese audiences, Si Tjonat received mixed reviews; box office proceeds are unclear. Although intended as a serial, no sequel was ever made; the production house, Batavia Motion Picture, closed soon afterwards. Several works in the same genre were released soon afterwards, including Si Pitoeng, which used the same director and star.
## Plot
Tjonat, a Sundanese youth, kills his friend and escapes to Batavia (now Jakarta), the capital of the Dutch East Indies, where he finds work with a Dutch man. Tjonat soon robs the man of his wealth and seduces his mistress (njai), then leaves the household to live the life of a bandit. When he asks Lie Gouw Nio (Ku Fung May), the daughter of a peranakan Chinese farmer named Lie A Tjip, to be his lover, she refuses. Enraged, Tjonat kidnaps her, but Lie is rescued by her fiancé, Thio Sing Sang (Herman Sim), who is well-trained in martial arts.
## Production
Si Tjonat was directed by Nelson Wong, who produced the film in conjunction with his business partner Jo Eng Sek. The two had established Batavia Motion Picture in 1929. Wong had previously directed a single fiction film, the commercial flop Lily van Java (1928), with funding from a high-ranking General Motors employee in Batavia named David Wong. Jo Eng Sek, a shop owner, had never produced a film.
The story for Si Tjonat was based on the novel Tjerita Si Tjonat, written by reporter F.D.J. Pangemanann and first published in 1900. The story had proved popular with ethnic Chinese readers. It was often adapted to the stage by Betawi stage troupes as a lenong stage performance. The story was selected by Jo Eng Sek. Several changes were introduced to the story. For instance, in the novel Lie A Tjip was a poor farmer, whereas in the film he was wealthy. Lie Gouw Nio, meanwhile, was not depicted as a poor Chinese woman, but the "a modern girl, dressed in a skirt, shoes, socks, and bobbed hair".
The silent film was shot in black-and-white and starred Ku Fung May and Herman Sim. Sim, of peranakan Chinese descent, had previously acted in Shanghai, while Ku Fung May had no film experience. The martial arts sequences used in the film were inspired by Hollywood Westerns, then popular in the Indies.
## Release and reception
Si Tjonat was released in 1929. Although a work of fiction, it was advertised as based on a true story; this had been common in works of Malay literature at the turn of the 20th century, including Tjerita Si Tjonat. The film was one in a line of domestic productions targeted primarily at ethnic Chinese audiences, following Lily van Java and Setangan Berloemoer Darah (both 1928); film historian Misbach Yusa Biran writes that this was evident from the predominantly Chinese production team and cast. Native audiences also enjoyed the film, particularly its action sequences. Indonesian film critic Salim Said writes that it was of distinctly commercial orientation, meant only to turn a profit.
Sales figures are unclear. Said writes that it was a commercial success, while Biran – noting that Batavia Motion Picture was dissolved not long after Si Tjonat's release – suggests that returns were poor. Reviews were mixed. In general the press criticised the emphasis on murder and crime, while in Panorama magazine, Kwee Tek Hoay wrote that the film had been "fairly well produced", emphasising Sim's acting – particularly his martial arts skills. Kwee concluded that what few mistakes were found in the film were, ultimately, insignificant.
Although Si Tjonat was initially intended to be a serial, production of the second instalment halted after the closure of Batavia Motion Picture. Jo Eng Sek left the industry completely, only returning in 1935 to produce Poei Sie Giok Pa Loei Tay. Wong, meanwhile, remained active in the cinema together with his brothers Joshua and Othniel. Using the banner Halimoen Film they later cast Sim in their 1931 film Si Pitoeng. Ku Fung May did not act in another film. Several films centred on bandits, including Lie Tek Swie's Si Ronda (1930) and the Wongs' Rampok Preanger (1929) and Si Pitoeng (1931), followed soon after Si Tjonat.
Si Tjonat is likely a lost film. The American visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider writes that all Indonesian films from before 1950 are lost. However, J.B. Kristanto's Katalog Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Catalogue) records several as having survived at Sinematek Indonesia's archives, and Biran writes that several Japanese propaganda films have survived at the Netherlands Government Information Service.
## Explanatory notes
|
23,079,518 |
Melanie Barnett
| 1,170,133,225 |
Fictional character in the American sitcom The Game
|
[
"American sitcom television characters",
"Female characters in television",
"Fictional African-American people",
"Fictional college students",
"Television characters introduced in 2006"
] |
Melanie Barnett-Davis is a fictional character, portrayed by actress Tia Mowry, who appears in the American sitcom The Game, which aired on the CW Television Network and BET from 2006 to 2015. Introduced in a backdoor pilot on the sitcom Girlfriends as Joan Clayton's cousin, Melanie chooses to support her boyfriend Derwin Davis' career with the San Diego Sabres, a fictional National Football League (NFL) team, rather than attend medical school at Johns Hopkins University. The series focuses primarily on Melanie and Derwin's complicated relationship, with her fears of his infidelity at the center of many of the episodes' storylines. Mowry left the series in 2012 upon learning that her role would be reduced as a result of co-star Pooch Hall's decision to reduce his role on The Game to appear in the crime drama series Ray Donovan. Both actors reprised their roles in the series finale, in which Melanie gives birth to twins.
Melanie was created by producer Mara Brock Akil. While casting the character, Brock Akil had doubts about whether Mowry would be the best choice, given her wholesome image from starring as Tia Landry on the sitcom Sister, Sister, but hired the actress based on her strong work ethic and her desire to be part of the series. Mowry considered the character to be her first adult role and felt it emphasized her individuality and maturity. She identified closely with the part, observing parallels between Melanie's relationship with Derwin and her own marriage to actor Cory Hardrict. She cited The Game as an example of women receiving more lead roles on television.
Reaction to Melanie was primarily negative; critics expressed disapproval of her decision to support her boyfriend instead of enrolling in medical school. Media commentators also panned the character's representation as a mother, such as her inability to properly care for her stepson. On the other hand, fans responded positively to Melanie and felt drawn to her relationship with Derwin. Mowry's performance received positive feedback from critics, who agreed that the role displayed her maturity as an actress. She received nominations for two NAACP Image Awards and a Teen Choice Award for the role.
## Role
The Game, which aired on The CW Television Network and BET, explores the lives of a group of women romantically involved with professional football players. Introduced as the cousin of Joan Clayton in a backdoor pilot on Girlfriends, Melanie Barnett aspires to be a doctor and is admitted to the medical school at Johns Hopkins University. Against Joan's objections, Melanie decides against attending Johns Hopkins in favor of moving to San Diego to support her boyfriend Derwin Davis' career with the San Diego Sabers, a fictional National Football League (NFL) team. Melanie enrolls at a local college and becomes a close friend of Tasha Mack, a single mother and manager of quarterback Malik Wright, and Kelly Pitts, the trophy wife of the team's captain, Jason Pitts. She struggles to be accepted by the wives and girlfriends of the San Diego Sabers, who have formed a group named "The Saber Sunbeams". Storylines frequently address her fears that Derwin will cheat on her. She turns to Tasha and Kelly for help in handling the stress of being in a relationship with a professional football player; Tasha and Kelly's advice includes the idea of using an ultraviolet light to check for fluids on hotel bed sheets. Halfway through the show's first season, Derwin proposes marriage to Melanie on live television, during the halftime of a Sabres game. Even though she has concerns, she accepts.
The couple end their engagement after Melanie discovers that Derwin had sex with a singer. She considers returning to her hometown rather than continue "life as a football girlfriend". Following their break-up, Melanie has sex with several men, and Derwin impregnates another woman. Melanie struggles to balance her career with her personal life. Even though Melanie and Derwin have relationships with other people, they still have feelings for each other. Melanie eventually reconciles with Derwin, and the couple marry. She has a strained relationship with her stepson, as she views him as a reminder of Derwin's past infidelity. As a result, Derwin considers her to be an unfit parent and allows her only limited contact with the child. During this time, Melanie reveals to Derwin that she had an abortion, suffering from complications that greatly reduced her chances of conceiving children naturally. She made the decision as she felt that having a child by another man would permanently ruin her relationship with Derwin. At the end of the show's fifth season, Melanie and Derwin move to Baltimore after he is traded to play for a team based in the city, and she finally enrolls at Johns Hopkins University. Melanie returns for the series finale, in which she nears the end of a high-risk pregnancy and gives birth to twins.
## Development
### Creation and casting
Producers Mara Brock Akil and Kelsey Grammer developed The Game as a spin-off of the sitcom Girlfriends. Brock Akil originally conceived the show and the characters of Melanie and Derwin to give viewers access to the world of professional football, a sport she and her husband appreciate. From the series' inception, she intended to include story arcs relating to themes of race and celebrity. The New York Times Virginia Heffernan wrote that one of the show's objectives was "to relieve ideological tensions instead of creating or ignoring them", citing its multi-ethnic female cast of characters as one of the means of achieving this goal. Melanie, and the rest of main cast of The Game, were first introduced in the Girlfriends episode "The Game". She later made a cameo appearance alongside Derwin in Girlfriends' Season 7 finale "It's Been Determined" as guests at Joan's engagement party.
Cynthia Addai-Robinson was originally cast to play Melanie, but was replaced by Tia Mowry prior to development of the backdoor pilot. The CW Television Network did not provide a reason for the casting change. Critics frequently billed Mowry as The Game's lead actress, and Brock Akil referred to Melanie and Derwin as "the heart" of the series.
Mowry's twin sister Tamera Mowry accompanied her to her audition. Tamera had tried out for the role previously; she said it was common for them to read for the same part, but emphasized that "[they're] very different actors." When she saw the two women together, Brock Akil initially debated whether they would be appropriate for the show's tone. She was concerned about the sisters' wholesome image gained from their years as child actors on the sitcom Sister, Sister, explaining, "I had a certain image of them. I didn't know if they wanted to go where I wanted the character to go."
On hearing of the twins' interest in the show, Brock Akil asked them if their management was aware of her writing style. When questioned by Brock Akil, Tia responded: "I'm a woman, Mara. I can do this." Though Tia was chosen for the part, Tamera later appeared as a guest star during the show's fifth season. Brock Akil said Tia won the role over Tamera because she had a more "serious personality" and "made all the necessary adjustments to get this part". The producer explained that she appreciated Tia's work ethic and her strong desire to be a part of the series; she described Tia's audition as "fighting everybody's preconceived notions of her" by playing the more mature Melanie.
### Portrayal and characterization
Prior to hearing about The Game, Mowry had changed her appearance in order to be perceived as more mature and to emphasize the differences between herself and her twin sister. During this process, she lost 10 pounds (4.5 kg) and straightened her hair for auditions. To prepare for the role, she frequently consulted her cousin, retired NFL fullback Jameel Cook, and other professional athletes. Mowry felt playing the role of Melanie would enable her to be perceived as more mature following her appearances as Tia Landry on Sister, Sister. When discussing her reasons for auditioning, she said she wanted to take on a more difficult role. She also described The Game as an opportunity to showcase her individuality. Mowry identified Melanie as the closest match to her personality in comparison to her previous roles. She cited her character's relationship with Derwin as reminiscent of her own romance and subsequent marriage to actor Cory Hardrict.
Describing Melanie as a "vixen", Mowry believes the character's imperfections allowed her to grow as an actor. She felt the show was evidence, alongside Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, that women had more leading roles on television, and said this "allows women to be women and to show their different emotions and what we deal with in life – period". Melanie's intellect, one of her defining characteristics, earned her the nickname "Med School". ''Vibe Vixens Jennifer Hickman referred to Melanie as "bookwormy", and Virginia Heffernan characterized her as "wholesome and a good student" in the pilot. Heffernan called the character a "kind of Cosby Show figure" due to her initial reluctance to join the Sabre Sunbeams.
### Departure and return
After The Game aired for three seasons on the CW, the network canceled the series, having decided to stop developing sitcoms. Picked up by BET, the show aired for six more seasons. Mowry and Hall left The Game in 2012 after Hall accepted a lead role in the crime drama television series Ray Donovan. Mowry left the show when Melanie's role was slated to become "less important" in comparison to previous seasons. Announcing her departure on Twitter, she emphasized that it was a mutual decision with the network. Brock Akil said she provided closure to Melanie and Derwin's story arc through their exit, explaining: "They're together, and we were able to put a period on their story."
Following Melanie and Derwin's exit, two characters, draft pick Bryce "The Blueprint" Westbrook and child star Keira Whitaker, portrayed by Jay Ellis and Lauren London, respectively, were introduced on the series. Media outlets viewed Keira and London as replacing Melanie and Mowry, but Ellis and London objected to comparisons made between Melanie and Derwin and Bryce and Lauren, believing the two pairs were separate characters. Following Mowry's exit, actress Keke Palmer was offered a lead role in the series but turned it down due to scheduling conflicts with the development of her daytime talk show Just Keke. Brock Akil described the changes made to The Game as a "true resurrection", with Wendy Raquel Robinson (Tasha Mack) saying future episodes would be "completely different, crisper and edgier and sexier".
For the series finale, Mowry and Hall reprised their roles as Melanie and Derwin even though Mowry had written on her Facebook page that she would not reappear on the show. Hall announced their return during the 2015 BET Awards, where the show's cast had attended to say "their final goodbyes". Discussing the direction intended for Melanie and Derwin's final appearance, Brock Akil said: "To bring these characters back to shore is such a blessing. They get an ending. They get closure." She added that their storyline would appeal to the show's fans, explaining: "I feel creatively we've been able to answer those who have been loyal to us. It's truly a tip of the hat to the fans who will get to see if Melanie and Derwin get their happily-ever-after."
In 2021, Paramount+ premiered a revival of The Game, which takes place in Las Vegas and addresses social issues such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy in sports. Mowry chose to not return for the revival as she believed Melanie's storyline was complete and she wanted to focus on new projects.
## Critical reception
### Response to Melanie
Melanie Barnett has been negatively received by television critics. Melanie McFarland of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer panned the character along with the show's main premise ("A woman on a professional track kicks it all aside to chase a football player"), feeling they were contradictory to the message of the parent show Girlfriends. Echoing McFarland's assessment, The San Francisco Chronicle's Tim Goodman found Melanie's decision to be "a bleak little life lesson". When discussing the transition to BET, Britney Wilson of Clutch was critical of the deterioration of female friendships on the show, citing "the disintegration of the female identity" as signs of The Game's declining quality.
The character's representation as a mother also received criticism. Wilson viewed negatively Melanie's decision to have an abortion in an attempt to reconcile with Derwin, and criticized the show's depiction of an abortion causing Melanie to become barren as based on "a link that is not medically solid". In her 2015 book Representations of Black Women in the Media: The Damnation of Black Womanhood, California State University associate professor Marquita Marie Gammage felt the character was perpetuating negative images of black motherhood on television. Gammage criticized the series for showing Melanie becoming a wife "at the expanse of her career and possibility of bear[ing] her own children" and portraying her as unable to care for her stepson. She contrasted Melanie to white characters on television, writing that "white women seem to achieve it all and control their realities on their own terms."
Mowry received positive feedback from fans, who "were fairly obsessed with Melanie and Derwin's journey early on". Fans reacted positively to the characters' relationship, and dubbed the couple the portmanteau "Merwin", which BET adopted and used to promote Mowry and Hall's appearances in the series finale. Jaime Lee of Soap Opera Network wrote that, in relating to their struggles, viewers connected with the fictional couple. A writer from HuffPost cited the pairing as a "big part of the winning formula for the series", and Mowry attributed the positive fan response to her chemistry with Hall. She said the following about the character's reception in The Washington Post:
> Through the course of playing Melanie, some people would love her, some would hate her, some would judge her[.] But I think they connected with her – they enjoyed her vulnerability, they enjoyed relating to her. ... It's refreshing to see a couple that's not perfect on television, a couple that works through trials and tribulations.
### Response to Mowry
Mowry's performance received positive feedback from critics. While discussing her career in his 2010 book Encyclopedia of African American Actresses in Film and Television, author Bob McCann wrote that Mowry demonstrated maturity through her more dramatic role in the series. Though critical of the overall show, the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan was pleased with Mowry's charismatic performance. Melody K. Hoffman of Jet wrote that, through her performance in the show, Mowry had demonstrated her love for acting and her capacity to portray a woman. In a negative review, USA Today'''s Robert Bianco was uncertain of Mowry's capabilities as a comedic actress, saying she frequently relied on child acting techniques that were inappropriate for an adult character.
Mowry received two nominations for NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series at the 39th and 43rd NAACP Image Awards. She was also nominated for the Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Actress Comedy in the 2007 Teen Choice Awards.
|
28,018,225 |
R. V. C. Bodley
| 1,112,757,711 |
British Army officer (1892–1970)
|
[
"1892 births",
"1970 deaths",
"20th-century English male writers",
"20th-century English screenwriters",
"Bodley family",
"British Army personnel of World War I",
"British Army personnel of World War II",
"British emigrants to the United States",
"British expatriates in Algeria",
"British expatriates in France",
"Converts to Islam",
"English male non-fiction writers",
"English male screenwriters",
"English travel writers",
"Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst",
"King's Royal Rifle Corps officers",
"Officers of the Order of the Crown (Romania)",
"People educated at Eton College",
"People of the United States Office of War Information",
"Recipients of the Military Cross"
] |
Ronald Victor Courtenay Bodley, MC (3 March 1892 – 26 May 1970) was a British Army officer, author and journalist. Born to English parents in Paris, he lived in France until he was nine, before attending Eton College and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned in the King's Royal Rifle Corps and served with them during the First World War. After the war he spent seven years in the Sahara desert, and then travelled through Asia. Bodley wrote several books about his travels. He was considered among the most distinguished British writers on the Sahara, as well as one of the main western sources of information on the South Seas Mandate.
Bodley moved to the United States in 1935, where he worked as a screenwriter. He rejoined the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World War and was sent to Paris to work for the Ministry of Information. He later immigrated to the United States, where he continued to work as a writer and also as an advisor to the United States Office of War Information.
## Early life and First World War
Bodley was born in Paris on 3 March 1892 to civil servant and writer John Edward Courtenay Bodley and Evelyn Frances Bodley (née Bell). He was the oldest of three children; his brother Josselin and sister Ava were born in 1893 and 1896 respectively. His parents divorced in 1908. Bodley was a descendant of diplomat and scholar Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library, and was, through his mother, a cousin of Gertrude Bell, a writer and archaeologist who helped establish the Hashemite dynasties. He lived in France with his parents until he was nine. His grandfather owned a Turkish palace in Algiers, which Bodley often visited as a child.
Bodley was educated at a Lycée in Paris before he was sent to Eton College and then to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Bodley showed interest as a writer; he wrote poetry at Eton and for a cadet magazine at Sandhurst. From Sandhurst he was commissioned in the King's Royal Rifle Corps as a second lieutenant in September 1911. He spent three years serving in a regiment in British India where he began to write and stage plays. His commanding officer once remarked "The plays are amusing. You're a credit to the regiment and all that, but did you join the army to become a soldier or a comedian?" Shortly thereafter the First World War broke out, and Bodley was sent to the Western Front for four years. He was wounded several times, including by poison gas. At the age of 26 he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel and command of a battalion. He was appointed assistant military attaché to Paris on 15 August 1918, and attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. What he heard there reportedly made him feel that he and the millions of other soldiers had fought for nothing; he wrote later that "selfish politicians [were] laying the groundwork for the Second World War – each country grabbing all it could for itself, creating national antagonisms, and reviving the intrigues of secret." Disillusioned with the military, Bodley considered a career in politics on the advice of the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George.
Gertrude Bell introduced Bodley to T. E. Lawrence. Bodley met Lawrence one day outside the Paris Peace Conference and told him of his intent to move into politics. Lawrence responded furiously, calling him a moron and a traitor. When he replied that he had no other prospects now that the war was over and asked what he should do, Lawrence suggested "Go live with the Arabs." Bodley said his conversation with Lawrence, which lasted "less than 200 seconds", proved to be life-changing. He promptly sorted his affairs, and with a total of £300 and no prospects of further income, went to live in the Sahara. His bemused friends held him a farewell party. They all agreed he would be back in six weeks; he stayed in the Sahara for seven years.
## Travels through the Sahara and Asia
Bodley spent his seven years in the Sahara desert living with a nomad Bedouin tribe. He purchased a herd of sheep and goats and used them as a source of income, hiring 10 shepherds to care for his flock. He wore Arab dress, spoke Arabic, practised the Muslim faith and abstained from alcohol; Bodley continued to be a non-drinker after leaving the Sahara. He left the tribe on the advice of its chief, who told him there was no use in continuing to pretend to be an Arab. In 1927 he wrote Algeria from Within, after being encouraged to do so by publisher Michael Joseph. The book is based on his experiences living in French Algeria. The book's success greatly exceeded his expectations, prompting him to continue writing. His first novel, Yasmina, was published later that year; it sold well and was reprinted. His next novel, Opal Fire, published the following year, was a commercial failure, but this did not discourage him from continuing to write. Bodley regarded his time in the Sahara as "the most peaceful and contented years" of his life. He was considered among the most distinguished British writers on the Sahara.
After leaving the Sahara, Bodley spent three months in Java working on a tea plantation, before travelling to China and Japan. The success of Algeria from Within made it easy for him to obtain work as a journalist in Asia. He became a foreign correspondent for The Sphere in London and The Advertiser in Australia. Bodley was one of several westerners to be granted access to the South Seas Mandate by Japan in the 1930s, and he has been cited as one of the main sources of information on the area at the time. The South Seas Mandate consisted of islands in the north Pacific Ocean that had been within the German colonial empire until occupied by Japan during World War I; Japan governed the islands under a League of Nations mandate. Like other westerners allowed to visit the region, he reported that there was no evidence that Japan was militarising the area. Bodley's movements were "carefully choreographed" by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. He wrote about his experiences and findings in his 1934 book The Drama in the Pacific, saying that "having visited practically every island ... I am convinced that nothing has been done to convert any place into a naval base". In his 1998 book Nan'yo: the Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945, Mark Peattie stated that while it is easy to accuse Bodley and the other writers of naivety, the militarisation of the area was complex and occurred in several stages. Bodley was a passenger aboard the ship Shizuoka Maru when it was wrecked on a reef north of Yap in April 1933. The vessel was lost, though there were no injuries. Bodley was offered a job teaching English at Keio University, and did so for nine months; he wrote about the experience in his 1933 book A Japanese Omelette. Bodley and Keio professor Eishiro Hori provided voluminous notes in the 1934 Japanese textbook version of Round the Red Lamp by Arthur Conan Doyle, and in 1935 Bodley published a biography of Tōgō Heihachirō.
## Later life
In 1935 Bodley moved to the United States to work as a screenwriter, leaving Japan aboard the Chichibu Maru. In October 1936 Bodley was hired by Charlie Chaplin to adapt the D. L. Murray novel Regency into a feature film. It was the first time Chaplin had hired someone to write a script; he had previously written his own scripts. Bodley had a rough draft ready by January 1937, and completed his work in March, but Chaplin abandoned the script in late May, in favour of another project he was working on. Bodley also worked on the script for the 1938 film A Yank at Oxford. In the United States, Bodley was known to his friends as "Ronnie" and was often referred to in the press as Bodley of Arabia.
When the Second World War commenced, Bodley immediately rejoined the King's Royal Rifle Corps and was given the rank of major. Regarded as too old for active service in the infantry, he was sent to work for the Ministry of Information in Paris. He was in Paris when the German army invaded in May 1940. According to the back cover of his book The Soundless Sahara, after the fall of Paris he went to work behind the German lines until he came under suspicion of the Gestapo, then escaped across the Pyrenees on foot. A 2013 biographical journal article on Bodley by William Snell of Keio University made no mention of this work or escape, instead saying that Bodley stayed with his mother and stepfather near Bayonne after the invasion. According to Snell, after his mother and stepfather refused to leave, Bodley and three other Britons entered Spain via car, with the aid of a friend of Bodley's who worked at the British embassy in Madrid. Snell concluded his article by saying that while Bodley's life was adventurous, he did tend to dramatise it at times. Bodley returned to the United States via Portugal. Upon his return he focused on a career in writing and lecturing. Bodley would go into complete isolation in order to write a book, spending about ten weeks to complete his work. He wrote several of his books in York Harbor, Maine. Bodley frequently gave lectures while travelling the United States, speaking in almost every state and referring to himself as "Colonel" or "Major". Having reached the mandatory age for retirement, he ceased to be a member of the British Army on 3 March 1943. By 1944 he had become a US citizen and was an advisor to the Arabic desk of the US Office of War Information.
In 1944 Bodley published Wind in the Sahara. By 1949 the book was in its seventh edition and had been translated into eight different languages. In 1945 he wrote the satirical novel The Gay Deserters, which was inspired by his flight from the German army. It was not well received; Robert Pick from the Saturday Review wrote "it isn't even humorous at all". Bodley later said that his talents as a writer lay in non-fiction, adding that of "the many novels (...) and several plays [he] had written, four were published and two produced, and all failed to arouse any interest." He wrote an essay entitled I Lived in the Garden of Allah, which was included in Dale Carnegie's 1948 self-help book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. In 1953 he wrote The Warrior Saint, a biography on Charles de Foucauld. John Cogley from The New York Times said Bodley had "written a clean, poetic and frankly admiring account" of Foucauld's life. In 1955 he wrote the partly-autobiographical self-help book In Search of Serenity. Elsie Robinson from The Index-Journal and Phyllis Battle from the Tipton Tribune gave favourable reviews, with Robinson calling it "a must for every rasped spirit". His next and final book, The Soundless Sahara, was published in 1968; according to the book's back cover he spent part of his years living in Massachusetts, and the rest in either England or France. He provided information for the book The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia, by Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson, which was published by Thomas Nelson in 1969. He died on 26 May 1970 in a nursing home in Bramley, Surrey.
## Personal life
Bodley married Ruth Mary Elizabeth Stapleton-Bretherton on 30 April 1917 while on extended leave. They had one son, Mark Courtenay Bodley, born 22 May 1918. His wife filed for divorce on the grounds that Bodley was adulterous and drank excessively. He did not contest the petition and the divorce was finalised on 8 June 1926. In his 1931 memoir Indiscretions of a Young Man, Bodley said the marriage was an "unfortunate action" which "proved the folly of very young people ignoring the advice of their parents." In 1927 he married Australian Beatrice Claire Lamb, whom he met while travelling in North Africa. She filed for divorce around 1939. Bodley's son, who became a lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps, was killed in action in Libya in 1942; Wind in the Sahara is dedicated to him. In November 1949 Bodley married American divorcee Harriet Moseley; according to The Soundless Sahara, published in 1968, they were still married. According to William Snell, there is very little information on his last years, but he believed that Bodley's marriage to Moseley ended in divorce no later than 1969.
## Awards
Bodley was awarded the Military Cross in the 1916 Birthday Honours. He was awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the President of France in 1919, and appointed Officer of the Ordre de l'Étoile Noire in 1920, Knight Officer of The Order of the Crown by Ferdinand of Romania in 1920, and the Order of Wen-Hu (4th Class) by the Republic of China in 1921.
## Publications
Bodley published 18 books during his career:
- Algeria from Within (1927)
- Yasmina: A Story of Algeria (1927)
- Opal Fire (1928)
- Indiscretions of a Young Man (1931)
- The Lilac Troll (1932)
- A Japanese Omelette (1933)
- Indiscreet travels East (Java, China and Japan) (1934)
- The Drama of the Pacific (1934)
- Admiral Togo (1935)
- Gertrude Bell (1940) with Lorna Hearst
- Flight into Portugal (1941)
- Wind in the Sahara (1944)
- The Gay Deserters (1945)
- The Messenger (1946)
- The Quest (1947)
- The Warrior Saint (1953)
- In Search of Serenity (1955)
- The Soundless Sahara (1968)
|
1,243,619 |
Ontario Highway 402
| 1,162,280,519 |
Controlled-access highway in Ontario
|
[
"400-series highways",
"Roads in London, Ontario",
"Transport in Sarnia"
] |
King's Highway 402, commonly referred to as Highway 402 and historically as the Blue Water Bridge Approach, is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario that connects the Blue Water Bridge international crossing near Sarnia to Highway 401 in London. It is one of multiple trade links between Ontario and the Midwestern United States. It is four lanes for much of its length, though the approach to the Blue Water Bridge is six lanes.
Although Highway 402 was one of the original 400-series highways when it was designated in 1953, the freeway originally merged into Highway 7 near the present Highway 40 interchange in what was, at the time, Sarnia Township. In 1972, construction began to extend Highway 402 from Sarnia to Highway 401 near London thus creating a bypass to Highway 7; construction took over a decade. The final section of the extension, between Highway 81 and Highway 2, opened to traffic in 1982. The removal of an intersection at Front Street in Sarnia made the entire route a controlled-access highway.
Motorists crossing into Michigan at the western end have direct access to Interstate 69 (I-69) and Interstate 94 (I-94) into Port Huron; motorists crossing onto the Canadian side from the east end of I-69 and I-94 have access to Toronto via Highway 401, and onwards to Montreal via A-20 in Quebec. The only town along Highway 402 between Sarnia and London is Strathroy.
## Route description
Highway 402 begins on the Canadian side of the Blue Water Bridge. Across the St. Clair River, Highway 402 continues in Michigan as I-69 and I-94. The twin bridge crossing has six lanes of traffic and non-stop freeway access. This provides a quicker route than the busier Ambassador Bridge crossing in Windsor, which features over ten traffic lights leading to the four-lane bridge, although that situation is expected to be rectified after the planned Gordie Howe International Bridge is constructed. Although Highway 402 passes through Sarnia, it is not intended to operate as a commuter highway; at Highway 40 and westward all ramps leading to the westbound lanes of the freeway were originally signed as "Bridge To U.S.A." without reference to Highway 402, though these have been replaced in the early 2000s with signs saying "402 West Bridge To U.S.A.".
After descending over the village of Point Edward and passing through a customs plaza, the freeway curves as it crosses Front Street (former Highway 40B) and a former railway line. Running north of the former Holmes Foundry (closed in 1988 by owner Chrysler), the route then becomes parallel to and north of Exmouth Street as it dives under the Christina Street overpass and enters the City of Sarnia.
East of the Murphy Road underpass, the freeway curves to the northeast to bypass its original alignment. It crosses the Howard Watson Nature Trail, a mixed-use recreational trail that was converted from a Canadian National Railway (CNR) line in 1988. The highway curves back to its east–west orientation at an interchange with Highway 40 (Modeland Road). It passes south of Sarnia Chris Hadfield Airport before exiting the city limits at Mandaumin Road (Lambton Road 26).
Now parallel and north of London Line, the former route of Highway 7 (the predecessor route between Sarnia and London), the freeway jogs north to travel along the back lot line of farmland fronting London Line and the concession road north of Highway 402. The highway split at least one farm in half during its construction, with the family’s barn being burned down to make way for the construction. The freeway passes by a truck inspection station (eastbound traffic only) and truck rest area (westbound traffic only, formerly a truck inspection station) before being crossed by Camlachie Road. It meets Lambton County Road 21 (Oil Heritage Road), the northern terminus of the Oil Heritage Route, north of the town of Wyoming. The county road is also a former southern extension of Highway 21, which itself begins as Forest Road 9.3 kilometres (5.8 mi) to the east. Highway 21 is also known as the Bluewater Route, as most of its length is parallel to the shore of Lake Huron.
After passing an interchange with Forest Road, the freeway is crossed by London Line and momentarily diverges from its straight alignment to dip south of Warwick. It continues 25 kilometres (16 mi) east through large patches of farmland, then meets with Middlesex County Road 81 (Victoria Street) at an interchange as it passes north of Strathroy. Shortly thereafter it curves to the southeast and zig-zags towards London, bisecting farms and dividing woodlands. The freeway passes to the west of the town of Delaware and curves east. It enters London and meets interchanges with Highway 4 south of Lambeth, as well as with Wonderland Road before merging into Highway 401. Access to westbound and from eastbound Highway 401 is provided via Highway 4 or Wonderland Road.
The freeway generally uses Parclo A2 and Parclo B2 designs for interchanges. Exceptions include the Front Street interchange in Sarnia, which is a hybrid of a diamond and Parclo B2 interchange (previously a Parclo AB2 until the mid-2000s), and the Highway 40 interchange which is a Parclo B-4. There is presently no interchange using the full six ramp Parclo A4 layout (a common design on other Ontario freeways) on the entirety of Highway 402; although several interchanges do have five ramps, while the junction with Indian Road was previously a Parclo A4 until the directional ramp in the NW quadrant was removed and replaced with a signalized left turn in the late 1990s.
## History
Planning for the route that would become Highway 402 began following the completion of the Blue Water Bridge in 1938. A divided highway was constructed through Sarnia following World War II; it was completed and designated in 1953. The Department of Highways announced its intent to extend the route to Highway 401 in 1957. However, while some preliminary work began in the early 1960s, it would take until 1968 for a preferred route to be announced, and until 1972 for construction to begin. Work was carried out through the remainder of the 1970s, and the freeway was completed and ceremonially opened in late 1982. Since completion as a four-lane route, expansion work has been concentrated on the portion of the freeway in Sarnia approaching the border crossing.
### Construction
Highway 402 is one of the original 400-series highways. It was numbered in 1953, a year after Highway 400 and Highway 401. The short 6.1-kilometre (3.8 mi) dual highway was built as an approach to the Blue Water Bridge, which itself opened to traffic October 10, 1938. As such, the highway was named the Blue Water Bridge Approach. Construction began in 1939. However, like many other road projects, World War II halted construction. In 1947 a new survey was undertaken; construction resumed by 1952. The approach road was opened in 1953, at which point the route was designated Highway 402. It featured an interchange with Christina Street and at-grade intersections with Front Street, Indian Road and Modeland Road (the Highway 40 Sarnia bypass); after Modeland Road the route continued to London as Highway 7.
Ultimately, Highway 402 was designated with the intent of extending it to Highway 401. This was formally announced by the Department of Highways in late 1957. Construction on a new grade-separated intersection with Modeland Road began in 1963 and opened in 1964, although as before Highway 402 still continued eastward as Highway 7. On February 28, 1968, a 98-kilometre (61 mi) extension towards London was officially announced by Minister of Highways George Gomme. It was decided to construct the extension on a new right-of-way, as had been done with most freeways constructed after Highway 400. East of the Murphy Road overpass, Highway 402 was re-aligned to bypass the interchange with Highway 40 constructed in 1964; Exmouth Street was redirected to connect with Highway 7 (London Line) at that junction, and Quinn Street now follows the former routing of Highway 402. For the new Highway 402, an overpass crossing was required with the then-CNR line (now the Howard Watson Nature Trail) and a Parclo B4 interchange with the newly twinned Highway 40 just north of the 1964 interchange. Construction east of Highway 40 began in 1972.
Under two construction contracts, construction of 23.2 kilometres (14.4 mi) of Highway 402 began near Highway 7 in 1974. A third contract to bridge the gap between that project and Sarnia was awarded in 1975. On October 13, 1978, Highway 402 was opened to traffic between Highway 40 and Highway 21. By the end of that year, construction was progressing on the section between Highway 21 and Highway 81 near Strathroy, as well as on the section connecting Highway 2 with Highway 401. The section between Highway 21 and Highway 81 north of Strathroy was the next to be completed; it was opened to traffic on November 26, 1979. On November 17, 1981, the section between London and Delaware was completed, including the interchange at Highway 401. It forced westbound drivers to exit at Longwoods Road (Highway 2). Construction was already underway on the final section between Strathroy and Delaware at this point.
The opening of the section between Highways 2 and 81 completed Highway 402 from London to the Blue Water Bridge. In addition, the removal of the Front Street intersection in Sarnia made the entire route a controlled-access highway. Both were completed in time for the official opening in Sarnia on November 10, 1982.
### Since completion
In 1997, noise barriers were erected upon both sides of the highway between Colborne Road to just east of the Howard Watson Trail. At the Indian Road interchange, the directional ramp in the NW quadrant was removed and replaced with a signalized left turn for the NE quadrant loop ramp, enabling a continuous noise barrier to be placed in place of the former directional ramp. However, the Sarnia-Lambton Chamber of Commerce was concerned that the new noise barriers would cause travelers to overlook the city. A partnership was formed between the municipality and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation to make additional aesthetic improvements to the highway corridor within the city that would be funded by the community, including a "City of Sarnia" landscaped sign that was completed in 2001.
In 2007, the southern part of the Front Street interchange was realigned. It was originally a parclo AB2 (folded diamond) configuration when it opened in 1982, since Highway 402 needed to cross a railway as well as Front Street; however the railway has since been removed by the 1990s allowing a new on-ramp to Highway 402 eastbound to be built in the SE quadrant. For the overpass carrying eastbound highway traffic, the acceleration lane which previously served the now-removed loop ramp in the SW quadrant was instead allocated to a new on-ramp from the Canada Border Services Agency secondary inspection; previously transport trucks exiting the customs plaza had to make a right-turn from Marina Road to the highway which caused considerable congestion.
On Monday, December 13, 2010, a whiteout caused by lake-effect snow squalls left an 80-kilometre (50 mi) stretch of Highway 402 closed for several days. Lambton County officials declared a state of emergency. Although the entire distance between Sarnia and London is subject to occasional snow squalls and whiteout conditions, they usually dissipate or move in less than a day. The exceptional conditions at that time were caused by a snow squall which remained stationary over several days, dropping up to two metres (6 ft) of snow in some parts of the area. Defence Minister Peter MacKay sent two Canadian Forces Griffon helicopters and a C-130 Hercules to Sarnia to aid in the search-and-rescue efforts. The hospitality of locals in providing shelter for stranded motorists was the primary focus of local media coverage. The highway was reopened to traffic on the morning of December 16. A single death was reported; a man succumbed to hypothermia on a nearby county road.
Highway 402 was widened in the Sarnia area from four to six lanes due to extensive traffic backups from the bridge crossing towards the USA; the westbound lanes were widened by two lanes, while eastbound capacity remains unchanged. The new four-lane roadway is divided into specific lanes for cars, trucks, local traffic, and NEXUS card holders. The new lanes begin just before the Murphy Road overpass with a local lane breaking away for interchange access; all travellers wishing to exit the highway from this point must be travelling in this lane. Construction began August 4, 2009, between the Blue Water Bridge and Lambton County Road 26 (Mandaumin Road) and included the reconstruction of several bridges, as well as completely rebuilding the Christina Street exit to accommodate southbound access. Work was completed by the end of 2012. Between 2004 and 2013, the speed limit along the westbound lanes from Airport Road westward was reduced from the standard 100 kilometres per hour (60 mph). However, following the reconstruction, the speed limit was raised between Indian Road and Airport Road on June 20, 2013.
On January 5, 2013, a temporary vehicular roadblock was created at the Blue Water Bridge as part of the "Idle No More" protests by First Nations groups. The blockade was known in advance and was planned to occur during the noon hour. Lambton OPP monitored the protest by walking alongside the protesters. Traffic resumed flowing normally by 1:30 p.m. While Highway 402 itself was not closed, the protest did back up traffic onto the highway causing congestion in the areas of Front Street and Christina Street. Later that year, another protest was held west of Strathroy on October 19, advocating against wind turbine construction due to the health effects experienced by those living near them. The rolling protest of about 150 vehicles, including farm equipment, was monitored by the OPP and required intermittent ramp closures to the westbound lanes.
On November 23, 2015, the Indian Road overpass was damaged by an flatbed trailer carrying an over-height load. The eastbound lanes of the highway were closed for 60 hours, while the girders damaged in the impact had to be removed, while the overpass reopened for Indian Road traffic which was reduced to two lanes for the next few months. The overpass was repaired by May 2016 at a cost of \$554,000 (overall damage of \$3 million). The trucking company, under the Highway Traffic Act, was held liable and had to compensate the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario for the repair costs.
## Exit list
|
27,690,808 |
The Temple at Thatch
| 1,115,073,497 |
Unpublished novel by Evelyn Waugh
|
[
"1925 British novels",
"Lost books",
"Novels by Evelyn Waugh",
"Unfinished novels",
"Unpublished novels"
] |
The Temple at Thatch was an unpublished novel by the British author Evelyn Waugh, his first adult attempt at full-length fiction. He began writing it in 1924 at the end of his final year as an undergraduate at Hertford College, Oxford, and continued to work on it intermittently in the following 12 months. After his friend Harold Acton commented unfavourably on the draft in June 1925, Waugh burned the manuscript. In a fit of despondency from this and other personal disappointments he began a suicide attempt before experiencing what he termed "a sharp return to good sense".
In the absence of a manuscript or printed text, most information on the novel's subject comes from Waugh's diary entries and later reminiscences. The story was evidently semi-autobiographical, based on Waugh's Oxford experiences. The protagonist was an undergraduate and the work's main themes were madness and black magic. Some of the novel's ideas may have been incorporated into Waugh's first commercially published work of fiction, his 1925 short story "The Balance", which includes several references to a country house called "Thatch" and is partly structured as a film script, as apparently was the lost novel. "The Balance" contains characters, perhaps carried over from The Temple at Thatch, who appear by name in Waugh's later fiction.
Acton's severe judgement did not deter Waugh from his intention to be a writer, but it affected his belief that he could succeed as a novelist. For a time he turned his attention away from fiction, but with the gradual recovery of his self-confidence he was able to complete his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was published with great success in 1928.
## Background
Evelyn Waugh's literary pedigree was strong. His father, the publisher Arthur Waugh (1866–1943), was a respected literary critic for The Daily Telegraph; his elder brother Alec (1899–1981) was a successful novelist whose first book The Loom of Youth became a controversial best seller in 1917. Evelyn wrote his first extant story "The Curse of the Horse Race" in 1910, when he was seven years old. In the years before the First World War he helped to edit and produce a handwritten publication called The Pistol Troop Magazine, and also wrote poems. Later, as a schoolboy at Lancing College, he wrote a parody of Katherine Mansfield's style, entitled "The Twilight of Language". He also tried to write a novel, but soon gave this up to concentrate on a school-themed play, Conversion, which was performed before the school in the summer of 1921.
At Hertford College, Oxford, where Waugh arrived in January 1922 to study history, he became part of a circle that included a number of future writers and critics of eminence—Harold Acton, Christopher Hollis, Anthony Powell and Cyril Connolly, among others. He also formed close personal friendships with aristocratic and near-aristocratic contemporaries such as Hugh Lygon and Alastair Graham, either of whom may have been models for Sebastian Flyte in Waugh's later novel Brideshead Revisited. From such companions Waugh acquired the fascination with the aristocracy and country houses that would embellish much of his fiction. At Oxford Waugh did little work and dedicated himself largely to social pleasures: "The record of my life there is essentially a catalogue of friendships". However, he developed a reputation as a skilful graphic artist, and contributed articles, reviews and short stories to both the main university magazines, Isis and Cherwell.
One of the Isis stories, "Unacademic Exercise: A Nature Story", describes the performance of a magical ceremony by which an undergraduate is transformed by his fellows into a werewolf. Waugh's interest in the occult is further demonstrated by his involvement, in the summer of 1924, in an amateur film entitled 666, in which he certainly appeared and which he may have written. He appears to have been in a state of some mental confusion or turmoil; the writer Simon Whitechapel cites a letter from Waugh to a friend, written at this time: "I have been living very intensely the last three weeks. For the past fortnight I have been nearly insane. I am a little saner now." However, most scholars take this as a referring to Waugh's homosexuality rather than black magic.
## Composition
The earliest record of Waugh's intention to attempt a novel appears in a letter dated May 1924, to his schoolfriend Dudley Carew. Waugh writes: "Quite soon I am going to write a little book. It is going to be called The Temple at Thatch and will be all about magic and madness". This writing project may have been a reaction to Waugh's immediate circumstances; he was in the last weeks of his Oxford career, contemplating failure in his examinations and irritated by the fact that most of his contemporaries appeared to be on the verge of brilliant careers. On 22 June 1924 he spent time working out the plot, a continuation of the supernatural theme explored in "Unacademic Exercise". The basic premise was an undergraduate inheriting a country house of which nothing was left except an 18th-century folly, where he set up house and practised black magic.
Waugh's diary indicates that he began writing the story on 21 July, when he completed a dozen pages of the first chapter; he thought it was "quite good". He appears to have done no more work on the project until early September, when he confides to his diary that it is "in serious danger of becoming dull", and expresses doubts that it will ever be finished. However, Waugh apparently found fresh inspiration after reading A Cypress Grove, an essay by the 17th-century Scots poet William Drummond of Hawthornden, and considered retitling his story The Fabulous Paladins after a passage in the essay.
The autumn of 1924 was spent largely in the pursuit of pleasure until, shortly before Christmas, the pressing need to earn money led Waugh to apply for teaching jobs in private schools. His diary entry for 17 December 1924 records: "Still writing out letters in praise of myself to obscure private schools, and still attempting to rewrite The Temple". He eventually secured a job as assistant master at Arnold House Preparatory School in Denbighshire, North Wales, at a salary of £160 a year, and left London on 22 January to take up his post, carrying with him the manuscript of The Temple.
During his first term at Arnold House Waugh found few opportunities to continue his writing. He was tired by the end of the day, his interest in The Temple flagged, and from time to time his attention wandered to other subjects; he contemplated a book on Silenus, but he admitted that it "may or may not ... be written". After the Easter holidays he felt more positively about The Temple: "I am making the first chapter a cinema film, and have been writing furiously ever since. I honestly think that it is going to be rather good". He sometimes worked on the book during classes, telling any boys who dared to ask what he was doing that he was writing a history of the Eskimos. By June he felt confident enough to send the first few chapters to his Oxford friend Harold Acton, "asking for criticism and hoping for praise". Earlier that year Waugh had commented warmly on Acton's book of poems, An Indian Ass, "which brought back memories of a life [at Oxford] infinitely remote".
## Rejection
While waiting for Acton's reply, Waugh heard that his brother Alec had arranged a job for him based in Pisa, Italy, as secretary to the Scottish writer Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff who was working on the first English translation of Marcel Proust's novel sequence À la recherche du temps perdu. Waugh promptly resigned his position at Arnold House, in anticipation of "a year abroad drinking Chianti under olive trees." Then came Acton's "polite but chilling" response to The Temple at Thatch. This letter has not survived; its wording was recalled by Waugh 40 years later, in his biography A Little Learning. Acton wrote that the story was "too English for my exotic taste ... too much nid-nodding over port." He recommended, facetiously, that the book be printed "in a few elegant copies for the friends who love you", and gave a list of the least elegant of their mutual acquaintances. Many years later Acton wrote of the story: "It was an airy Firbankian trifle, totally unworthy of Evelyn, and I brutally told him so. It was a misfired jeu d'esprit.
Waugh did not query his friend's judgement, but took his manuscript to the school's furnaces and unceremoniously burnt it. Immediately afterwards he received the news that the job with Scott Moncrieff had fallen through. The double blow affected Waugh severely; he wrote in his diary in July: "The phrase 'the end of the tether' besets me with unshakeable persistence". In his biography Waugh writes: "I went down alone to the beach with my thoughts full of death. I took off my clothes and began swimming out to sea. Did I really intend to drown myself? That was certainly in my mind". He left a note with his clothes, a quotation from Euripides about the sea washing away all human ills. A short way out, after being stung by jellyfish, he abandoned the attempt, turned round and swam back to the shore. He did not, however, withdraw his resignation from the school, returning instead to London.
## "The Balance"
Although he had destroyed his novel, Waugh still intended to be a writer, and in the late summer of 1925 completed a short story, called "The Balance". This became his first commercially published work when Chapman and Hall, where his father was managing director, included it in a short stories collection the following year. "The Balance" has no magical themes, but in other respects has clear references to The Temple at Thatch. Both works have Oxford settings, and the short story is written in the film script format that Waugh devised for the first chapter of the novel.
There are several references in "The Balance" to a country house called "Thatch", though this is a fully functioning establishment in the manner of Brideshead rather than a ruined folly. Imogen Quest, the protagonist Adam's girlfriend, lives at Thatch; a watercolour of the house is displayed in Adam's undergraduate's rooms; the end of the story describes a house party at Thatch, during which the guests gossip maliciously about Adam. The names "Imogen Quest" and "Adam" were used by Waugh several years later in his novel Vile Bodies, leading to speculation as to whether these names, like that of the house, originated in The Temple at Thatch.
## Afterwards
Acton's dismissal of The Temple at Thatch had made Waugh nervous of his potential as an imaginative writer—he deferred to Acton's judgement on all literary issues—and he did not for the time being attempt to write another novel. After "The Balance" he wrote a humorous article, "Noah, or the Future of Intoxication", which was first accepted and then rejected by the publishers Kegan Paul. However, a short story called "A House of Gentle Folks", was published in The New Decameron: The Fifth Day, edited by Hugh Chesterman (Oxford: Basil. Blackwell, 1927). Thereafter, for a time, Waugh devoted himself to non-fictional work. An essay on the Pre-Raphaelites was published in a limited edition by Waugh's friend Alastair Graham; this led to the production of a full-length book, Rossetti, His Life and Works, published in 1928.
The desire to write fiction persisted, however, and in the autumn of 1927 Waugh began a comic novel which he entitled Picaresque: or the Making of an Englishman. The first pages were read to another friend, the future novelist Anthony Powell, who found them very amusing, and was surprised when Waugh told him, just before Christmas, that the manuscript had been burned. This was not in fact the case; Waugh had merely put the work aside. Early in 1928 he wrote to Harold Acton, asking whether or not he should finish it. On this occasion Acton was full of praise; Waugh resumed work, and completed the novel by April 1928. It was published later that year under a new title, Decline and Fall.
According to his recent biographer Paula Byrne, Waugh had "found his vocation as a writer, and over the next few years his career would rise spectacularly." The Temple of Thatch was quickly forgotten, and as Whitechapel points out, has failed to arouse much subsequent interest from scholars. Whitechapel, however, considers it a loss to literature, and adds: "Whether or not it matched the quality of his second novel, Decline and Fall, if it were still extant it could not fail to be of interest to both scholars and general readers."
|
32,447,292 |
Dermotherium
| 1,113,657,009 |
Extinct genus of mammals related to the living colugos
|
[
"Chattian genus extinctions",
"Colugos",
"Eocene genus first appearances",
"Eocene mammals",
"Eocene mammals of Asia",
"Fossil taxa described in 1992",
"Oligocene mammals",
"Prehistoric placental genera"
] |
Dermotherium is a genus of fossil mammals closely related to the living colugos, a small group of gliding mammals from Southeast Asia. Two species are recognized: D. major from the Late Eocene of Thailand, based on a single fragment of the lower jaw, and D. chimaera from the Late Oligocene of Thailand, known from three fragments of the lower jaw and two isolated upper molars. In addition, a single isolated upper molar from the Early Oligocene of Pakistan has been tentatively assigned to D. chimaera. All sites where fossils of Dermotherium have been found were probably forested environments and the fossil species were probably forest dwellers like living colugos, but whether they had the gliding adaptations of the living species is unknown.
Some features of the teeth differentiate Dermotherium from both living colugo species, but other features are shared with only one of the two. The third lower incisor, lower canine, and third lower premolar at least are pectinate or comblike, bearing longitudinal rows of tines or cusps, an unusual feature of colugos (the first two lower incisors are unknown in Dermotherium). The fourth lower premolar instead resembles the lower molars. The front part of these teeth, the trigonid, is broader in D. chimaera than in D. major, which is known only from the second and third lower molars. The two species also differ in the configuration of the inner back corner of the lower molars. The upper molars are triangular teeth bearing several distinct small cusps, particularly on the second upper molar, and with wrinkled enamel.
## Taxonomy
Colugos are a small group of Southeast Asian gliding mammals closely related to the primates. Their fossil record is exceptionally poor. Although Paleogene groups such as the Plagiomenidae are considered by some to be closely related to colugos, no fossils undoubtedly referable to the living colugo family, Cynocephalidae, had been reported until 1992. In that year, Stéphane Ducrocq and colleagues described a jaw fragment from the Eocene of Thailand as a new genus and species of colugo, Dermotherium major. In 2000, however, Brian Stafford and Frederick Szalay argued that Dermotherium might not be a colugo, since the fossil is so poorly preserved that few traits can be unambiguously recognized and some purported dermopteran features of the fossil are also seen in other placental groups. Mary Silcox and colleagues reaffirmed the colugo affinities of Dermotherium in 2005 on the basis of detailed similarities in molar morphology.
In 2006, Laurent Marivaux and colleagues described a second species of Dermotherium, D. chimaera, from material from the Oligocene of Thailand. They gave it the specific name chimaera (Latin for "chimera") because it shares characters with both the Philippine colugo (Cynocephalus volans) and Sunda colugo (Galeopterus variegatus), the two living colugo species. In addition, they tentatively identified a fossil from the Oligocene of Pakistan as Dermotherium chimaera and regarded some fossils from the Eocene of Myanmar as indeterminate dermopterans. According to a phylogenetic analysis carried out by Marivaux and colleagues, D. chimaera, D. major, and the Myanmar dermopteran are successive sister groups of the two living colugos.
## Description
Known material of Dermotherium includes a handful of jaw fragments and isolated teeth. Dermotherium major is known only from a fragment of the left lower jaw bearing the third lower molar (m3) and a poorly preserved second lower molar (m2). The holotype of Dermotherium chimaera is a lower jaw fragment in which remnants of the deciduous third lower premolar are visible. X-ray microtomography reveals the unerupted lower third incisor (i3), canine (c1), third premolar (p3), and fourth premolar (p4) still inside the jaw. In addition, this species is known from two other jaw fragments, one bearing m1 and m2 and the other bearing m2 and m3, and two isolated molars, an upper first and second molar (M1 and M2). The tentatively referred material of this species from Pakistan includes a single M2.
The two species of Dermotherium were about as large as the Philippine colugo and larger than the Sunda colugo and differed from both in several characteristics of the dentition. Not enough is known of the skeleton of Dermotherium to assess whether the animal already possessed the gliding adaptations of living colugos. The two species are similar in size, but again differ in details of the dentition. In two specimens of D. chimaera, the length and width of the m2 are 5 and 4.3 mm (0.20 and 0.17 in) and 5.4 and 4.8 mm (0.21 and 0.19 in) respectively; this tooth is 5.4 mm (0.21 in) long and 4.9 mm (0.19 in) wide in the only known specimen of Dermotherium major. The Pakistani M2 of Dermotherium is 4.3 mm (0.17 in) long and 6 mm (0.24 in) wide, compared to 4.7 and 6.6 mm (0.19 and 0.26 in) in the only known M2 of D. chimaera from Thailand.
The lower jaw of Dermotherium major resembles that of living colugos in the presence of a strong angular process (a projecting piece of bone at the lower side of the back of the jawbone) and a retromolar space (a flat space behind the last molars). The coronoid process (a projecting piece of bone directly behind the molars) rises steeply, with its front wall virtually vertical.
### Lower dentition
The i3 of Dermotherium chimaera is an elongate tooth bearing six tines (narrow, high "fingers" as in a comb) arranged from front to back. The frontmost is larger, the next four are about equal in size, and the sixth is smaller. The number of tines resembles that seen in the Sunda colugo, which has four to seven; the Philippine colugo has three to five. The c1 is also an elongate, narrow tooth; at the front, it is slightly curved towards the midline of the jaw. On the buccal (outer) side of this tooth are six cusps, of which the third (counting from the front) is the largest. The p3 is similarly elongate and rounded at the front, but it is broader at the back, forming a talonid (a "heel" of cusps at the back of a tribosphenic tooth). There are six cusps on the narrow anterior part of the tooth, and the fifth (identified as the protoconid) is by far the largest. On the buccal side of the talonid is a strong cusp, the hypoconid, with a crest, the cristid obliqua, descending from it towards the front. A second, smaller cusp, the hypoconulid, is present on the lingual side of the talonid, connected to the hypoconid by a postcristid. The pectinate (comb-like) shape of the anterior teeth is a shared characteristic of the colugos and highly unusual among mammals. Dermotherium chimaera resembles the Sunda colugo in that the c1 and p3 are also pectinate; in the Philippine colugo, these teeth are not pectinate.
In Dermotherium chimaera, the p4 and m1 through m3 are similar to each other (and unlike the i3, canine, and p3) and appear to form a series of decreasing size from front to back. In D. major, only m2 and m3 are known, but they are similar in morphology and m3 is smaller than m2. In the Sunda colugo, however, the teeth get larger from p4 to m3. The p4 and molars have a distinct trigonid (a triangular group of cusps at the front of a tribosphenic tooth) and talonid. The trigonid contains strong protoconid and metaconid cusps. The metaconid is stronger than the protoconid in the molars, but it is not clear whether this is the case in the p4. In the living colugos, the protoconid is higher than the metaconid in both p4 and m1. The trigonid is longer in the p4 than in the molars. In D. chimaera, the trigonid is broader than in D. major. A low crest, the paracristid, descends from the protoconid lingually and towards the front, forming the front margin of the trigonid; there is no distinct cusp (a paraconid) at the front of the trigonid on the p4, but this cusp is present in the molars.
The talonid contains a hypoconid, hypoconulid, and entoconid and is much wider than the trigonid because the hypoconid is displaced buccally. A cristid obliqua descends from the hypoconid and reaches the protoconid. Although a crest, the postmetacristid, descends from the back side of the metaconid, ending in a small cusp, the metastylid, it is separated from the entoconid by a notch. The living colugos lack such a strong postmetacristid. The hypoconulid is near the back lingual margin of the tooth, behind the entoconid. In D. major, this cusp is further to the back than in both D. chimaera and the Sunda colugo, while the two cusps are merged in the Philippine colugo. In D. chimaera, a low crest, the post-hypoconulid cristid, reaches from the hypoconulid to the back lingual corner of the tooth, where a small cuspule, the distocuspid, is located. A long crest, the postcristid, connects the distocuspid to the hypoconid along the posterior side of the tooth. The Philippine colugo is similar, but in D. major, both the distocuspid and the post-hypoconulid cristid are absent, and the Sunda colugo has a weaker distocuspid and a postcristid that does not reach further lingually than the hypoconulid.
### Upper dentition
The upper molars of Dermotherium chimaera are triangular in overall shape and much broader than long, with the narrow end of the triangle pointing lingually. The M2 from Pakistan that was tentatively placed in D. chimaera is slightly smaller than Thai fossils of the species, but otherwise very similar. The crest in front of and behind the major cusps on the buccal side of the tooth, the paracone and metacone, are well-developed, together forming a long W-shaped ridge. D. chimaera resembles the Philippine colugo in that the crests behind the paracone and in front of the metacone form an acute angle with each other, so that together they form a V; their shape rather resembles a U in the Sunda colugo. A cingulum (shelf) is present on the buccal margin of the tooth, but this cingulum is rather weak in the Pakistani fossil. On the M2, smaller cusps, the paraconule and metaconule, are present on the lingual sides of the paracone and metacone, but on the M1 the paraconule is missing and the metaconule is small and ridgelike. The small cusps are better developed in the Pakistani M2. A third major cusp, the protocone, is present on the lingual side of both upper molars. This crest is displaced towards the front in the living colugos, but less so in D. chimaera. Two strong crests descend from the front and back faces of the protocone in a buccal direction. These crests end in small cusps (protoconules) that are directly lingual to the paracone and metacone. The living colugos lack these protoconules. The enamel is wrinkled on the flanks of the paracone and metacone and, in the Thai but not the Pakistani specimens, on the lingual side of the protocone. Enamel wrinkling is also seen in some Philippine colugos.
## Range and ecology
Dermotherium major was found in a lignite pit known as Wai Lek in Krabi Province, southwestern Thailand. It is part of the Krabi Basin fauna, which contains at least 40 mammalian genera, mostly artiodactyls but also including some primates, such as Siamopithecus, Wailekia, and Muangthanhinius. This fauna has been dated to about 33 to 35 million years ago, during the Late Eocene.
Fossils of Dermotherium chimaera come from Phetchaburi Province, further to the north in Thailand. The fossil deposits, located in the Cha Prong pit in a coal mine called Nong Ya Plong, are dated to the Late Oligocene. Other mammals found here include the rodent Fallomus ladakhensis, the rhinoceros Diceratherium sp. cf. D. lamilloquense, the carnivoran Chaprongictis phetchaburiensis, the lipotyphlan Siamosorex debonisi, and a pteropodid bat.
Paali Nala, where the M2 tentatively assigned to Dermotherium chimaera was found, is in the Bugti Hills of Balochistan, western Pakistan. The fossil locality, placed stratigraphically in the Bugti Member of the Chitarwata Formation, is thought to be Early Oligocene in age. The Paali Nala fauna also contains a diverse array of mammals, including many rodents, some primates, and rhinos.
The specializations of dermopterans are such that they are dependent on a forested habitat, and reconstructions of the paleoenvironments at Krabi, Nong Ya Plong, and Paali Nala suggest that all three fossil deposits developed in a humid, tropical forest environment. Their extinction in the Indian subcontinent may have been caused by the development of a drier climate there during the Late Oligocene.
|
17,259,004 |
Marojejy National Park
| 1,154,659,281 |
National park in the Sava region of northeastern Madagascar
|
[
"Articles containing video clips",
"Important Bird Areas of Madagascar",
"Madagascar ericoid thickets",
"Madagascar lowland forests",
"Madagascar subhumid forests",
"National parks of Madagascar",
"Protected areas established in 1952",
"Sava Region"
] |
Marojejy National Park (/məˈroʊdʒɛdʒiː/) is a national park in the Sava region of northeastern Madagascar. It covers 55,500 ha (214 sq mi) and is centered on the Marojejy Massif, a mountain chain that rises to an elevation of 2,132 m (6,995 ft). Access to the area around the massif was restricted to research scientists when the site was set aside as a strict nature reserve in 1952. In 1998, it was opened to the public when it was converted into a national park. It became part of the World Heritage Site known as the Rainforests of the Atsinanana in 2007. "Unique in the world, a place of dense, jungly rainforests, sheer high cliffs, and plants and animals found nowhere else on earth", Marojejy National Park has received plaudits in the New York Times and Smithsonian Magazine for its natural beauty and rich biodiversity that encompasses critically endangered members of the silky sifaka. To that end, a global consortium of conservation organizations, including the Lemur Conservation Foundation, Duke Lemur Center and Madagascar National Parks, have sought to promote research and conservation programs in Marojejy National Park, neighboring Anjanaharibe-Sud Reserve and Antanetiambo Private Reserve, to protect the endemic flora and fauna that reside in northeastern Madagascar. In addition, these organizations have implemented a variety of community-based initiatives to mitigate human encroachment on the park, such as poaching and selective logging, by encouraging local communities to engage in afforestation and silvicultural initiatives to promote a sustainable alternative to mining, slash-and-burn agriculture, and wood collection.
The wide range of elevations and rugged topography of the massif create diverse habitats that transition quickly with changes in altitude. Warm, dense rainforest can be found at lower elevations, followed by shorter forests at higher elevations, followed still by cloud forest, and topped near the peaks with the only remaining undisturbed mountain scrub in Madagascar. Better growing conditions for plants can be found on the eastern side of the mountains, which receives more rain than the western side. This habitat diversity lends itself to high levels of biodiversity. At least 118 species of bird, 148 species of reptile and amphibian, and 11 species of lemur are known to occur within Marojejy National Park. One of the lemurs, the silky sifaka (Propithecus candidus) is listed among "The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates". The helmet vanga (Euryceros prevostii) is considered the iconic bird species of the park.
One path leads from the entrance of the park to the summit. There are three camps along the route: Camp Mantella at 450 m (1,480 ft) in elevation in lowland rainforest, Camp Marojejia at 775 m (2,543 ft) at the transition between lowland and montane rain forest, and Camp Simpona at 1,250 m (4,100 ft) in the middle of the montane rainforest. Camp Simpona acts as a base camp for the trek to the summit, a route that stretches 2 km (1.2 mi) and can take up to four or five hours to traverse.
## History
Marojejy National Park is located in the northeast of Madagascar between the towns of Andapa and Sambava and extends approximately 32 km (20 mi) from east to west and 22 km (14 mi) from north to south. It is centered on the chain of mountains known as Marojejy Massif. Despite a scientific survey of some of the other mountains in the region by the 1929 Mission Zoologique Franco-Anglo-Américaine, Marojejy was not surveyed until 1937 when L.-J. Arragon of the Service Géographique de Madagascar ascended Marojejy Est. Arragon did not conduct any field research during his visit. The massif was not geologically described until after the French botanist Jean-Henri Humbert from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris explored the mountains in 1948. Humbert had previously explored numerous mountain ranges in continental Africa before going to Marojejy. Between November 1948 and November 1950, he spent five months collecting 4,039 dried plant (herbarium) specimens for study. After several expeditions, he published the book "A Marvel of Nature" in 1955, in which he claimed the massif was the most impressive range in all of Madagascar because of its size, floral diversity, and pristine natural state.
Marojejy was set aside as one of Madagascar's strict nature reserves in 1952 largely due to Humbert's enthusiasm and support. Under this protection, only research scientists were permitted to visit the site. In 1998, Marojejy was converted into a national park and thus became open to visitors.
Originally seen as a transition zone between the eastern rainforests and the central highlands, Marojejy is now recognized as having its own unique features, with some of the richest biodiversity on the island. Several studies from the early 1970s through the 1990s surveyed the mountain ecosystems and inventoried the flora and fauna. In 2007, Marojejy was listed as a World Heritage Site as part of the Rainforests of the Atsinanana. Due to illegal logging and trafficking of valuable hardwoods, and especially after the 2009 political crisis in Madagascar, the Rainforests of the Atsinanana was added to the list of World Heritage in Danger in 2010.
### Park boundaries and size
The boundaries of Marojejy National Park were originally established by approximation when the park was established in 1952. With a second decree (no. 66-242) from the government of Madagascar in 1966, the park's status as a strict nature reserve was reaffirmed, and its boundaries were marked by 89 points. From these markers, the size of the park was estimated at 60,150 ha (232.2 sq mi). At the time, two families were living 450 m (1,480 ft) within the park boundaries, which initially was permitted under the conditions that they did not extend their cultivated land into the park or allow others to join them. The families were later expelled for violating these conditions. Many families from the local communities did not understand why such a large area so rich in resources and necessary for their survival was forbidden to them, and between the late 1980s and 1993, they stopped honoring the status of the park. They began clearing the outer edges of the reserve to start plantations of vanilla and coffee. In 1993, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Service des Eaux et Forêts renewed conservation efforts in the area, evicted the people living inside the reserve, and renegotiated the borders with the local community, based on the 1966 decree. Trails and posts were then used to clearly mark the edges of the reserve. In the years following these events, many communities living near the borders of the park have become more involved in forest surveillance, and deforestation has fallen off sharply to only a few hectares a year.
In 1998, the WWF requested that the government of Madagascar relax the restrictions on the reserve to allow for ecotourism, the revenue from which could benefit the people living in the periphery of the park. With a decree (no. 98-375) in May 1998, the reserve became a national park. The boundaries were renegotiated, particularly in the western and northwestern regions of the park, and this time using clear natural landmarks, such as ridge crests, as markers. The size of the park was adjusted to 60,050 ha (231.9 sq mi), with some western communities gaining access to untouched forest zones while communities in the northwest lost agricultural land. Approximately 5,000 ha (19 sq mi) had been illegally cleared within the park and are still part of the park. There are now 91 boundary markers and the boundaries are georeferenced. Intermediate boundary markers are placed between existing markers to demarcate the edges of the park during disputes with the local community.
During October 2005, reports surfaced showing that boundary markers were being moved with the approval of park employees and that areas within the park were being cleared for agriculture. In January 2006, the Park Logistics Coordinator was fired for moving boundary markers while employed as the Park Conservation Agent and selling the 9 ha (0.035 sq mi) of park land to a local farmer for 2 million Malagasy francs (\~US\$200). In 2010, a new demarcation adjusted the size the park down to 55,500 ha (214 sq mi).
## Topography and habitat
Marojejy National Park covers 55,500 ha (214 sq mi) and protects almost the entire massif, which ranges in elevation from 75 to 2,132 m (246 to 6,995 ft) at the summit. The massif is part of a mountain chain that stretches from Tsaratanana in the northwest to the Masoala Peninsula in the south. The crests of the massif form an east–west line with a series of distinct peaks along its irregular structure, which consists of parallel or divergent crest lines broken apart by steep and irregular slopes. Rising 2,000 m (6,600 ft) over as little as 8 km (5.0 mi), the Marojejy Massif has some of the most precipitous terrain in Madagascar. As a result of this sharp rise in elevation and rugged topography, it has a variety of microclimates and a visible change in habitat, making it one of the few places in the world where cloud-covered rainforest rapidly transitions to high mountain shrubland over a distance that can be covered on foot. Also due to the rugged topography, the vegetative mosaic varies between the crests and slopes of the massif, even at the same elevations. For example, crests and adjoining slopes often have less than 20% of their flowering plant species in common.
Temperatures in the region are fairly constant, with both the daily temperature range and the seasonal range varying only slightly. February is the hottest month, averaging 25 °C (77 °F), while August is the coolest, averaging 19 °C (66 °F). Climbing the peaks, temperature decreases by 1 °C per 200 m of increased altitude (1 °F per 360 ft), and temperatures on the summit decline to 1.5 °C (34.7 °F) in July. The relative humidity for the region hovers around 87% throughout most of the year, although it rises to 97% between March and April. Rain falls every month on the southern side of the mountain, with the region receiving at least 2,300 mm (91 in) of rain annually, making it one of the wettest areas in Madagascar. The northern side of the mountain is more tropical, with a 6-month dry season, and receives about 1,500 mm (59 in) of rain per year. The general region receives the most rainfall during the warm season, from November through April, when heavy rain and occasional cyclones are delivered from the northwest by monsoons. During the cooler season, between May and October, lighter rains are delivered by winds from the southeast.
Both temperature and rainfall vary significantly by location within the park. Lower temperatures are found at higher elevations, and the eastern slopes of the massif receive the most of the rainfall, since the western slopes lie in the rain shadow of the mountain and consequently experience a prolonged dry period. The tops of the ridges experience strong winds and offer poor soil conditions. The effect can be seen in the plant life and their growth rates. The wide range in elevations and the rugged topography also play a crucial role in creation of the varied habitats distributed across the mountain slopes by affecting air temperature, fluctuations in temperature, and humidity levels. The interplay between these factors impacts the growth and development of plants, which form the foundation of the ecosystem. The result is an extremely varied and unevenly distributed forest that covers 90% of the park.
The mountains of both Marojejy and nearby Anjanaharibe-Sud Special Reserve feed several drainage basins, including the Lokoho River, which is sourced from the western and southern slopes of Marojejy, and the Androranga River, which originates from the northern slopes of Marojejy. Both rivers travel towards Sambava and drain into the Indian Ocean. Marojejy is connected to the Anjanaharibe-Sud Special Reserve by the Betaolana corridor, a narrow mid-elevation strip of forest extending west and slightly south.
### Geology
As with the rest of Madagascar, the rocks of Marojejy National Park were once part of the supercontinent of Gondwana, which began to break up 160 million years ago to form the southern continents. However, the bedrock of Marojejy formed over 500 million years ago during the Precambrian beneath an ancient mountain range that has since eroded away completely. The bedrock is composed mostly of granitic rocks, although it also contains a significant amount of gneiss, a high-grade metamorphic rock that formed under high pressure and temperature deep beneath the ancient mountain range. In places where heat and pressure were highest, the rock melted completely and eventually recrystallized at depth as granite, an igneous rock. Later, veins of quartz formed in cracks in the bedrock; these are the source of the quartz and amethyst crystals mined in the region today. In more recent geological times, the area's abundant quartzite formed when quartz-rich sands were deposited on the bedrock, and were then buried and recrystallized (metamorphosed). The soil pH is expected to be acidic to neutral.
The highest, most rugged peaks of Marojejy owe their form to the gneiss from which they are made. The gneiss consists of alternating bands of light and dark colored minerals. The light minerals, consisting mostly of quartz and feldspar, are the hardest and most resistant, whereas the dark minerals, which are mostly biotite mica and hornblende, are softer and weather out faster. This layered composition, in combination with the north-facing 45-degree angle at which the rocks are tilted, accounts for the asymmetric character of the peaks. The northern slopes dip moderately, while the southern faces are typically near-vertical cliffs where the rocks fractured counter to the layered grain. The cliff named Ambatotsondrona, with its sheer, south-facing rock wall, is an example.
## Biodiversity
Marojejy National Park is noted for its rich biodiversity, which can appeal to both scientist and ecotourist. There are a wide range of habitats within the park, and many of its plants and animals are endemic to the area. Scientific expeditions regularly discover species that are either not previously documented in Marojejy, or in some cases, completely new to science. Some new species are highly endangered. In the case of many large groups, such as invertebrates, very little is known and much remains to be discovered.
### Flora
The vegetation of Marojejy National Park is extremely diverse due to the various microclimates. The microclimates also affect plant growth rates, with the wet eastern slopes showing faster plant growth, the dry western slopes exhibiting slower plant growth, and the plants on the ridge tops hindered by high winds and poor soils. More than 2,000 species of flowering plants (angiosperms) have been discovered at the park so far. At least four plant families are found at all elevations: Clusiaceae and Poaceae are generally common, while Myrsinaceae and Elaeocarpaceae are rare.
There are four basic types of forest found at Marojejy:
- Lowland rainforest: Below 800 m (2,600 ft), species diversity is the highest due to abundant rainfall, consistently warm weather, and protection from strong winds. The canopy of the primary forests is dense with tall trees reaching heights of 25–35 m (82–115 ft). Many tree trunks measure over 30 cm (12 in) in diameter. A great variety of palms, epiphytes, and ferns are also present, with 130 species of fern known from this zone. Secondary growth, which primarily includes bamboo, wild ginger or longoza (genus Aframomum), and traveller's palm (Ravenala madagascariensis), is found in disturbed areas. The most common families of flowering plant are Sapotaceae, Rubiaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and Myrsinaceae. The most common families of plants in the light groundcover are Poaceae, Labiaceae, Acanthaceae, Gesneriaceae, Melastomataceae, and Balsaminaceae. The lowland rainforest region covers 38% of the surface area of the park.
- Moist montane rainforest: Between 800 and 1,400 m (2,600 and 4,600 ft) and also covering 38% of the surface area of the park, trees and shrubs become increasingly smaller due to lower temperatures and poorer soils, and tree ferns become more abundant as elevation increases. The lower temperatures cause moisture to condense onto surfaces without forming mist. The transition between the lowland rainforests and the mid-altitude rainforest is gradual. The canopy reaches heights of 18–25 m (59–82 ft), and sun-loving epiphytes, shrubs, and other forest floor species take advantage of the elevated light levels. The increased humidity also favors mosses and ferns. The families Rubiaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Myrtaceae, Arecaceae, Pandanaceae, and Burseraceae are the most common in this zone.
- Sclerophyllous montane cloudforest: At 1,400 to 1,800 m (4,600 to 5,900 ft) and covering 11.5% of the surface area of the park, the trees are significantly shorter, gnarled and stunted, with the canopy extending to a maximum height of only 10 or 15 m (33 or 49 ft). The most common plant families are Lauraceae, Rubiaceae, Clusiaceae, and Araliaceae. The ground layer in the cloud forest is rich, and moss and lichen drape the branches of the trees. At least 122 species of fern are found in this zone. Temperatures are lower, and heavy clouds brought in by eastern winds blanket the forest. Endemism is very high at this altitude, particularly between the various peaks due to long isolation. The area is also highly susceptible to fire due to its thick layer of humus.
- Montane scrub: Above 1,800 m (5,900 ft) on only 1.5% of the surface area of the park, the last remaining mountain scrub in Madagascar can be found. Unlike all other high mountain scrub on the island, it has not been altered by fire. The region has an open, tundra-like cover, over thin, rocky soils. Soil conditions, along with the cool temperatures, windy conditions, and low rainfall limits the vegetation, which reaches a maximum height of 2 m (6.6 ft). Low, dense thickets of shrubs dominate, although terrestrial orchids and miniature palms and bamboos are also present. The dominant families of plant are Poaceae, Ericaceae, Asteraceae, Balsaminaceae, Cunoniaceae, and Clusiaceae.
Of the many plant species found in Marojejy, 35 are palms, several of which are critically endangered and have extremely low populations. Only three of these palm species can be found outside of Madagascar, and seven can only be found at Marojejy. More than 275 fern species are present in the rainforests of the massif, 18 of which are tree ferns and seven are found only at Marojejy. Many of these fern species are very rare and have highly restricted distributions.
Marojejy also contains several types of rare rosewood and palisandre (genus Dalbergia), all of which are endemic to Madagascar. Rosewood, or andramena in Malagasy, is a type of hardwood with a lustrous deep red color, while palisandre, such as Dalbergia madagascariensis, lacks the red color. Of the three species of Dalbergia found in Marojejy, D. madagascariensis and D. baronii are listed as "vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List, while D. louvelii is listed as "endangered." The park has few large specimens of the former two due to overexploitation, and specimens are rarely found in the surrounding 5 km (3.1 mi) surrounding the park. The latter, D. louvelii, is not found outside of the park.
### Fauna
Marojejy National Park is best known for its two iconic species, the helmet vanga (Euryceros prevostii) and the critically endangered silky sifaka or simpona (Propithecus candidus). The silky sifaka has been listed as one of "The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates" since the inception of the list in 2000. According to estimates, fewer than 1,000 individuals of this species remain, and none exist in captivity.
The wealth of species of well-known groups of animals demonstrates the depth of the biodiversity found at Marojejy National Park. For example, 75 of the 118 species of birds (64%) found in or around Marojejy are forest-dwelling birds, a total that surpasses any other mountain site in Madagascar. All of these forest-dependent bird species are endemic to Madagascar and utilize the forest for some portion of their life-cycle. One of these birds is the Madagascar serpent-eagle (Eutriorchis astur), which prior to being reported in 1990, had not been seen by ornithologists since 1932.
In addition to the silky sifaka, Marojejy is home to 10 other species of lemur, several of which are also endangered due mainly to habitat loss. The nocturnal aye-aye has only been seen once at the park, although one old nest and traces of its feeding have been found at various elevations. Other mammals include at least 15 species of tenrec, seven species of native rodent, the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox), and the Madagascar sucker-footed bat (Myzopoda aurita)
The reptile and amphibian diversity at Marojejy is also rich, higher than any other protected area in Madagascar. A total of 148 species have been inventoried, and 17 of these are found only in Marojejy, including Brookesia karchei and Chamaeleo peyrieresi, two species of several chameleons found there. The panther chameleon (Furcifer pardalis), leaf-tailed geckos (genus Uroplatus), and many species of frogs are also reported from this locality. Invertebrates include large millipedes, spiders, and an abundance of small leeches.
## Camps and accommodations
Marojejy National Park is open all year, with Bradt Travel Guides recommending April to May and September to December as the best times to visit due to less rainfall. The park is one of the only national parks in Madagascar offering wooden chalets or bungalows, in addition to having a kitchen and toilet facilities at each of its three main camps inside a primary rainforest. The housing provides beds and basic bedding, while the kitchen and eating areas are covered and offer basic cooking utensils. These three camps have basic tent sites for campers. Tent campsites are also offered outside the park, while the only other overnight accommodations outside the park are in Andapa and Sambava.
` The park is unable to accommodate large groups. Because of the rugged terrain and variable temperatures, the Bradt Travel Guide also recommended advanced planning for visiting the park.`
Payment of the entrance fees, renting of the facilities, and hiring of guides, cooks, and porters are handled at either the park headquarters in Andapa or the Park Visitor Center in Manantenina, which is along the main Andapa-Sambava road, 66 km (41 mi) from Sambava and 40 km (25 mi) from Andapa. The park has a single trail that leads from the information center in Manantenina to the highest peak. The path into the rain forest is divided into three treks that vary in length and lead to each of the three main camps, each of which is situated at different altitudes and offer views of their own distinctive flora and fauna.
The first section of the path, known as the Mantella Trek, takes visitors just inside the park entrance, and leads to a picnic area after the first 2.5 km (1.6 mi). The first camp, Camp Mantella, is 4.5 km (2.8 mi) further along the path. The camp is in the lowland rain forest above the Manantenina River at an elevation of 450 m (1,480 ft). The camp is 800 m (2,600 ft) from the Humbert waterfalls, and offers opportunities to see lemurs, such as the northern bamboo lemur (Hapalemur occidentalis); many species of bird, such as the helmet vanga; as well as a variety of amphibians and reptiles, such as leaf-tailed geckos, leaf chameleons (genus Brookesia), and many types of frogs.
The next 2 km (1.2 mi) along the path is known as the Simpona Trek; the name comes from the Malagasy name for the silky sifaka, which is found in the area. The trail leads to Camp Marojejia, located at an elevation of 775 m (2,543 ft) at the transition between lowland and montane rain forest. The camp sits on a mountainside, and its dining area overlooks a forested outcrop of rock, which includes the peak named Ambatotsondrona, or "Leaning Rock". This camp is reported to be the best location for spotting the silky sifaka, although the staff recommend that visitors hire a specialist tracker to aid in the search.
The Marojejy Summit Trek continues up the mountain for another 2 km (1.2 mi) to Camp Simpona, which is in the middle of the moist montane forest at an elevation of 1,250 m (4,100 ft). There is a ridge with a viewing platform built on it near the camp. Despite the stunted height of the trees in this high-altitude region, silky sifakas can occasionally be spotted from the bungalows. The rufous-headed ground-roller (Atelornis crossleyi) and yellow-bellied sunbird-asity (Neodrepanis hypoxantha) can be seen here, and a nearby stream teems with a diverse collection of frog species. Camp Simpona also serves as a basecamp for the steep climb to the summit of Marojejy Massif, one of Madagascar's highest but most accessible peaks. The climb to the peak stretches 2 km (1.2 mi) and takes four to five hours.
## Local people
The Andapa Basin, surrounded by the high, rugged mountains of Marojejy and Anjanaharibe-Sud, was extremely remote and difficult to access until relatively recently. As a consequence, the area was not permanently settled until the mid-1800s, when refugees fled the Merina Kingdom. Nearly half a century later, another wave of refugees settled in the area, this time fleeing from French colonists. The population in the region, however, remained relatively small, despite a last small wave of immigration following World War I when people from Réunion came to the region to grow vanilla. The population did not increase noticeably until the early 1970s when construction of the Andapa–Sambava road was completed, connecting the region to the coast. This improved transportation route encouraged agricultural development and spawned another wave of immigration. Over the next 30 years, it was estimated that the population tripled, with more than 100,000 people living in the region by 2003. With 37 villages surrounding Marojejy, the population density is one of the highest in Madagascar and it continues to grow. The dominant ethnic groups in the region are the Tsimihety (the first settlers) and the Betsimisaraka, although other groups from the southern part of the island have also established themselves.
The local people have traditionally utilized material from the forest, whether for use in their architecture, to make pirogues (dugout canoes), to provide fiber for weaving, to provide firewood, to gather leaves for traditional medicine, or to flavor their drinks. Most of the residents are subsistence rice farmers who cultivate irrigated paddies in valleys or who plant on hillsides that have been cleared and burned (slash and burn agriculture, known locally as tavy). The swamps which formerly covered vast areas of Andapa Basin have been converted to rice paddies which are intensively cultivated; however the Tsimihety traditionally practice slash and burn techniques on the hillsides in preference to irrigated rice fields. Coffee was an important cash crop before market prices fell in the 1970s, but vanilla remains an important crop for the area. Until the mid-2000s, vanilla prices were high, but they have since fallen off significantly. The crash of vanilla prices, along with a rapidly growing population and steady decrease in cultivatable land, has resulted in widespread and extreme poverty. Between January and April, before the main rice harvest, many people in the region do not receive enough food to eat. The Sava Region, which includes Marojejy, is the poorest region in Madagascar, and in 2011, continued rises in global food prices—particularly that of imported rice—has made obtaining food more difficult for rural families.
Not only have international environmental organizations (such as Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society, World Wide Fund for Nature, and Care International) established programs to help local residents, many local people work to improve their situation through environmental and health education programs. An increase in sustainable agriculture, silviculture, conservation awareness, and improved education and health care have also furthered the goal of protecting the environment and promoting livelihoods centered on the remaining forest. Limited and responsible ecotourism is also seen as a long-term alternative to continued deforestation.
## Conservation concerns
The protections normally afforded to national parks have not halted the degradations of Marojejy National Park. The hunting of lemurs, including the silky sifaka, is a persistent problem, as is the harvesting of precious hardwoods, such as rosewood and palissandre. Semi-precious gemstones, such as amethyst, are still mined within the boundaries of the park, while slash and burn agriculture and wood collection for firewood and construction continue to cause the periphery to recede. These pressures are growing strong as the population in the region continues to increase. In 2003, approximately 200,000 people lived within 40 km (25 mi) of the park, 80% of whom were farmers that were still dependent upon the forest for agricultural land and various products, such as honey, firewood, and plant fibers, as well as tree bark from plants of the family Rutaceae (primarily genus Evodia) used to ferment betsabetsa, a local sugarcane spirit. Additionally, inappropriate use of the park or excessive visitation by guests could also pose a threat to the fragile high-altitude scrub.
### Illegal logging
Madagascar's northeastern rain forests are severely threatened by illegal logging of precious hardwood, which not only dries out the forest (making it susceptible to fire), introduces invasive species, degrades habitat, and reduces genetic diversity, but also violates local taboos and traditions. Additional species, such as species of Dombeya, are typically cut to make rafts for floating the heavier hardwoods down rivers and out of the parks. Rosewood trees are cut into multiple logs for easier transport, and five or more high-buoyancy trees are cut per hardwood log. To tie the rafts together, the loggers cut thousands of lianas or vines, which are used by 75% of the forest fauna as avenues for moving around in the canopy. The logging activities are labor-intensive and dangerous. The labor employs the impoverished local population, but the officials who facilitate the process primarily benefit.
In 2005, illegal logging of rosewood was reported to have occurred more than 20 times. In 2007 at the port cities of Vohémar, Antalaha, and Toamasina, authorities confiscated thousands of logs valued at millions of dollars (US\$). Some of this material was reportedly logged from eastern and northeastern parts of the park. At the start of the Malagasy political crisis in March 2009, thousands of woodcutters intensely logged precious hardwoods for six to eight weeks in the SAVA Region. An estimated 52,000 tons of rosewood lumber, or nearly 100,000 trees, were logged that year, with one-third of the total coming from Marojejy National Park and the remainder from nearby Masoala National Park. As a result, the park was closed briefly, but reopened in May 2009. In 2010, the situation improved in Marojejy, but illegal logging intensified in Masoala and the Makira Protected Area.
Illegal logging has been facilitated by insufficient governance, unclear forest regulation, and undermined judicial control while the exportation of the acquired logs (in 1992, 2006, and 2009–2010) has been permitted by government decrees that either precede elections or are issued during periods of political instability. The trade is organized and operated by high-ranking officials and influential businessmen. Additionally, the trade in Malagasy rosewood is not regulated under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
|
205,716 |
Secretarybird
| 1,172,471,043 |
Large, mostly terrestrial bird of prey
|
[
"Accipitriformes",
"Birds described in 1779",
"Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa",
"Birds of prey",
"Birds of prey of Africa",
"Falconiformes (sensu lato)",
"Higher-level bird taxa restricted to the Afrotropics",
"National symbols of South Africa",
"National symbols of Sudan",
"Taxa named by John Frederick Miller"
] |
The secretarybird or secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) is a large, mostly terrestrial bird of prey. Endemic to Africa, it is usually found in the open grasslands and savanna of the sub-Saharan region. John Frederick Miller described the species in 1779. Although a member of the order Accipitriformes, which also includes many other diurnal birds of prey such as hawks, kites, vultures, and harriers, it is placed in its own family, Sagittariidae.
The secretarybird is instantly recognizable as a very large bird with an eagle-like body on crane-like legs that give the bird a height of as much as 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in). The sexes are similar in appearance. Adults have a featherless red-orange face and predominantly grey plumage, with a flattened dark crest and black flight feathers and thighs.
Breeding can take place at any time of year, but tends to be late in the dry season. The nest is built at the top of a thorny tree, and a clutch of one to three eggs is laid. In years with plentiful food all three young can survive to fledgling. The secretarybird hunts and catches prey on the ground, often stomping on victims to kill them. Insects and small vertebrates make up its diet.
Although the secretarybird occurs over a large range, the results of localised surveys suggest that the total population is experiencing a rapid decline, probably as a result of habitat degradation. The species is therefore classed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It appears on the coats of arms of Sudan and South Africa.
## Taxonomy
The Dutch naturalist Arnout Vosmaer described the secretarybird in 1769 on the basis of a live specimen that had been sent to Holland from the Cape of Good Hope two years earlier by an official of the Dutch East India Company. Vosmaer suggested that the species was called "sagittarius" by the Dutch settlers because its gait was thought to resemble an archer's. He also mentioned that it was known as the "secretarius" by farmers who had domesticated the bird to combat pests around their homesteads, and proposed that the word "secretarius" might be a corruption of "sagittarius". Ian Glenn of the University of the Free State suggests that Vosmaer's "sagittarius" is a misheard or mis-transcribed form of "secretarius", rather than the other way around.
In 1779 the English illustrator John Frederick Miller included a coloured plate of the secretarybird in his Icones animalium et plantarum and coined the binomial name Falco serpentarius. As the oldest published specific name, serpentarius has priority over later scientific names. The species was assigned to its own genus Sagittarius in 1783 by the French naturalist Johann Hermann in his Tabula affinitatum animalium. The generic name Sagittarius is Latin for "archer", and the specific epithet serpentarius is from Latin serpens meaning "serpent" or "snake". A second edition of Miller's plates was published in 1796 as Cimelia physica, with added text by English naturalist George Shaw, who named it Vultur serpentarius. The French naturalist Georges Cuvier erected the genus Serpentarius in 1798, and the German naturalist Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger erected the (now synonymous) genus Gypogeranus from the Ancient Greek words gyps "vulture" and geranos "crane" in 1811.
In 1835 the Irish naturalist William Ogilby spoke at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London and proposed three species of secretarybird, distinguishing those from Senegambia as having broader crest feathers than those from South Africa, and reporting a distinct species from the Philippines based on the writings of Pierre Sonnerat in his Voyage à la Nouvelle-Guinée. There is no other evidence this taxon existed. Despite its large range, the secretarybird is considered monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
The evolutionary relationship of the secretarybird to other raptors had long puzzled ornithologists. The species was usually placed in its own family Sagittariidae within the order Falconiformes. A large molecular phylogenetic study published in 2008 found that the secretarybird was sister to a clade containing the ospreys in the family Pandionidae and the kites, hawks and eagles in the family Accipitridae. The same study found that the falcons in the order Falconiformes were only distantly related to the other diurnal birds of prey. The families Cathartidae, Sagittariidae, Pandionidae and Accipitridae were therefore moved from Falconiformes to the resurrected Accipitriformes. A later molecular phylogenetic study published in 2015 confirmed these relationships.
The earliest fossils associated with the family are two species from the genus Pelargopappus. The two species, from the Oligocene and Miocene respectively, were discovered in France. The feet in these fossils are more like those of the Accipitridae; it is suggested that these characteristics are primitive features within the family. In spite of their age, the two species are not thought to be ancestral to the secretarybird. Though strongly convergent with the modern secretarybird, the extinct raptor Apatosagittarius is thought to be an accipitrid.
The International Ornithologists' Union has designated "secretarybird" the official common name for the species. In 1780 the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon suggested that the name secretary/secrétaire had been chosen because of the long quill-like feathers at the top of the bird's neck, reminiscent of a quill pen behind the ear of an ancient scribe. In 1977, C. Hilary Fry of Aberdeen University suggested that "secretary" is from the French secrétaire, a corruption of the Arabic صقر الطير saqr et-tair meaning either "hawk of the semi-desert" or "hawk that flies". Glenn has dismissed this etymology on the grounds that there is no evidence that the name came through French, instead supporting Buffon's etymology; namely, that the word comes from the Dutch secretaris "secretary", used by settlers in South Africa.
## Description
The secretarybird is instantly recognisable as a very large terrestrial bird with an eagle-like head and body on crane-like legs. It stands about 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in) tall. It has a length of between 1.1 and 1.5 m (3 ft 7 in and 4 ft 11 in) and a wingspan of between 1.9 and 2.1 m (6 ft 3 in and 6 ft 11 in). The weight ranges from 3.74 to 4.27 kg (8.2 to 9.4 lb), with a mean of 4.05 kg (8.9 lb). The averages 31 cm (12 in) and the tail is 57–85 cm (22–33 in): both factor into making it both taller and longer than any other species of raptor. The neck is not especially long, and can only be lowered down to the intertarsal joint, so birds must stoop to reach down to the ground.
During flight, two elongated central feathers of the tail extend beyond the feet, and the neck stretches out like a stork. The plumage of the crown, upperparts, and lesser and median wing coverts is blue-grey, and the underparts and underwing coverts are lighter grey to grey-white. The crest is made up of long black feathers arising from the nape. The scapulars, primary and secondary flight feathers, rump and thighs are black, while the uppertail coverts are white, though barred with black in some individuals. The tail is wedge-shaped with white tipping, marbled grey and black colouring at the base, and two broad black bands, one at the base and the other at the end.
Sexes resemble one another, although the male tends to have longer tail feathers, more head plumes, a shorter head and more blue-grey plumage. Adults have a featherless red-orange face with pale brown irises and a yellow cere. The legs and feet are pinkish grey, the upper legs clad in black feathers. The toes are short—around 20% of the length of those of an eagle of the same size—and stout, so that the bird is unable to grasp objects with its feet. The rear toe is small and the three forward facing toes are connected at the base by a small web. Immature birds have yellow rather than orange bare skin on their faces, more brownish plumage, shorter tail feathers and greyish rather than brown irises.
Adults are normally silent but can utter a deep guttural croaking noise in nuptial displays or at nests. Secretarybirds make this sound when greeting their mates or in a threat display or fight against other birds, sometimes throwing their head backwards at the same time. When alarmed, the secretarybird may emit a high-pitched croak. Mated pairs at the nest make soft clucking or whistling calls. Chicks make a sharp sound heard as "chee-uk-chee-uk-chee-uk" for their first 30 days.
## Distribution and habitat
The secretarybird is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa and is generally non-migratory, though it may be locally nomadic as it follows rainfall and the resulting abundance of prey. Its range extends from Senegal to Somalia and south to Western Cape, South Africa.
The species is also found at a variety of elevations, from the coastal plains to the highlands. The secretarybird prefers open grasslands, savannas and shrubland (Karoo) rather than forests and dense shrubbery that may impede its cursorial existence. More specifically, it prefers areas with grass under 0.5 m (1 ft 8 in) high and avoids those with grass over 1 m (3 ft 3 in) high. It is rarer in grasslands in northern parts of its range that otherwise appear similar to areas in southern Africa where it is abundant, suggesting it may avoid hotter regions. It also avoids deserts.
## Behaviour and ecology
Secretarybirds are not generally gregarious aside from pairs and their offspring. They usually roost in trees of the genus Acacia or Balanites, or even introduced pine trees in South Africa. They set off 1–2 hours after dawn, generally after spending some time preening. Mated pairs roost together but may forage separately, though often remaining in sight of one another. They pace around at a speed of 2.5–3 km/h (1.6–1.9 mph), taking 120 steps per minute on average. After spending much of the day on the ground, secretarybirds return at dusk, moving downwind before flying in upwind. Birds encountered singly are often unattached males, their territories generally in less suitable areas. Conversely, larger groups of up to 50 individuals may be present at an area with a localised resource such as a waterhole in a dry area or an irruption of rodents or locusts fleeing a fire.
Secretarybirds soar with their primary feathers splayed to manage turbulence. Their wings can flap, though in a slow laborious manner and requiring uplift to be sustained; otherwise they may become exhausted. In the heat of the day, they use thermals to rise up to 3,800 m (12,500 ft) above the ground.
The lifespan is thought to be 10 to 15 years in the wild, with the oldest confirmed by banding to be 5 years from a nestling banded on 23 July 2011 in Bloemfontein and recovered 440 km (270 mi) away in Mpumalanga on 7 June 2016, and up to 19 years in captivity. Secretarybirds, like all birds, have haematozoan blood parasites that include Leucocytozoon beaurepairei Dias 1954 recorded from Mozambique. Wild birds from Tanzania have been found to have Hepatozoon ellisgreineri, a genus that is unique among avian haematozoa in maturing within granulocytes, mainly neutrophils. Ectoparasites include the lice Neocolpocephalum cucullare (Giebel) and Falcolipeurus secretarius (Giebel).
### Breeding
Secretarybirds form monogamous pairs and defend a large territory of around 50 km<sup>2</sup> (19 sq mi). They can breed at any time of the year, more frequently in the late dry season. During courtship, they exhibit a nuptial display by soaring high with undulating flight patterns and calling with guttural croaking. Males and females can also perform a ground display by chasing each other with their wings up and back, which is also the way they defend their territory. They mate either on the ground or in trees.
The nest is built by both sexes at the top of a dense thorny tree, often an Acacia, at a height of between 2.5 and 13 m (8 and 40 ft) above the ground. The nest is constructed as a relatively flat platform of sticks 1.0–1.5 m (3–5 ft) across with a depth 30–50 cm (12–20 in). The shallow depression is lined with grass and the occasional piece of dung.
Eggs are laid at 2- to 3-day intervals until the clutch of 1–3 eggs is complete. The elongated chalky bluish green or white eggs average 78 mm × 57 mm (3.1 in × 2.2 in) and weigh 130 g (4.6 oz). Both parents incubate the eggs, starting as soon as the first egg is laid, but it is usually the female that remains on the nest overnight. The incubating parent greets its partner when it returns with a display of bowing and bobbing its head with neck extended. The tail is held upright with feathers fanned out, and the chest feathers are puffed out.
The eggs hatch after around 45 days at intervals of 2–3 days. Both parents feed the young. The adults regurgitate food onto the floor of the nest and then pick up items and pass them to the chicks. For the first 2 or 3 weeks after the eggs hatch the parents take turns to stay at the nest with the young. Despite the difference in nestling size due to the asynchronous hatching, little sibling aggression has been observed. Under favourable conditions all chicks from a clutch of three eggs fledge, but if food is scarce one or more of the chicks will die from starvation. The young may be preyed upon by crows, ravens, hornbills, and large owls.
The young are born covered in grey-white down that becomes darker grey after two weeks. Their bare facial skin and legs are yellow. Crest feathers appear at 21 days, and flight feathers by 28 days. They can stand up and feed autonomously after 40 days, although the parents still feed the nestlings after that time. At 60 days, the now fully-feathered young start to flap their wings. Their weight gain over this period changes from 56 g (2.0 oz) at hatching, to 500 g (18 oz) at 20 days, 1.1 kg (2.4 lb) at 30 days, 1.7 kg (3.7 lb) at 40 days, 2 kg (4.4 lb) at 50 days, 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) at 60 days, and 3 kg (6.6 lb) at 70 days. The time they leave the nest can be anywhere between 65 and 106 days of age, although it most typically occurs between 75 and 80 days of age. Fledging is accomplished by jumping out of the nest or using a semi-controlled glide to the ground.
Juveniles remain in their natal range before dispersing when they are between 4 and 7 months of age. The usual age at which they first breed is uncertain but there is a record of a male bird breeding successfully at an age of 2 years and 9 months, which is young for a large raptor.
### Food and feeding
Unlike most birds of prey, the secretarybird is largely terrestrial, hunting its prey on foot. Adults hunt in pairs and sometimes as loose familial flocks, stalking through the habitat with long strides. Prey may consist of insects such as locusts, other grasshoppers, wasps, and beetles, but small vertebrates often form main biomass. Secretarybirds are known to hunt rodents, frogs, lizards, small tortoises, and birds such as warblers, larks, doves, small hornbills, and domestic chickens. They occasionally prey on larger mammals such as hedgehogs, mongooses, small felids such as cheetah cubs, striped polecats, young gazelles, and both young and full-grown hares. The importance of snakes in the diet has been exaggerated in the past, although they can be locally important, and venomous species such as adders and cobras are regularly among the types of snakes preyed upon. Secretarybirds do not eat carrion, though they occasionally eat dead animals killed in grass or bushfires.
The birds often flush prey from tall grass by stomping on the surrounding vegetation. Their crest feathers may raise during a hunt, which may serve to help scare the target and provide shade for the face. A bird will chase after prey with the wings spread and kill by striking with swift blows of the feet. Only with small prey items such as wasps will the bird use its bill to pick them directly. There are some reports that, when capturing snakes, a secretarybird will take flight with their prey and then drop them to their death, although this has not been verified. Even with larger prey, food is generally swallowed whole through the birds' considerable gape. Occasionally, like other raptors, they will hold down a food item with their feet while tearing it apart with their bill.
Food that cannot be digested is regurgitated as pellets 40–45 mm (1.6–1.8 in) in diameter and 30–100 mm (1.2–3.9 in) in length. These are dropped on the ground usually near the roost or nest trees. The secretarybird has a relatively short digestive tract in comparison to large African birds with more mixed diets, such as the kori bustard. The foregut is specialised for the consumption of large amounts of meat and there is little need for the mechanical breakdown of food. The crop is dilated and the gizzard is nonmuscular, as in other carnivorous birds. The large intestine has a pair of vestigial ceca as there is no requirement for the fermentative digestion of plant material.
Secretarybirds specialise in stomping their prey until it is killed or immobilised. This method of hunting is commonly applied to lizards or snakes. An adult male trained to strike at a rubber snake on a force plate was found to hit with a force equal to five times its own body weight, with a contact period of only 10–15 milliseconds. This short time of contact suggests that the secretarybird relies on superior visual targeting to determine the precise location of the prey's head. Although little is known about its visual field, it is assumed that it is large, frontal and binocular. Secretarybirds have unusually long legs (nearly twice as long as other ground birds of the same body mass), which is thought to be an adaptation for the bird's unique stomping and striking hunting method. However, these long limbs appear to also lower its running efficiency. Ecophysiologist Steve Portugal and colleagues have hypothesised that the extinct Phorusrhacidae (terror birds) may have employed a similar hunting technique to secretarybirds because they are anatomically similar, although they are not closely related.
Secretarybirds rarely encounter other predators, except in the case of tawny eagles, which will steal their kills. Eagles mainly steal larger prey and will attack secretarybirds both singly or in pairs. Secretarybird pairs are sometimes successful in driving the eagles away and may even knock them down and pin them to the ground.
## Relationship with humans
### Cultural significance
The secretarybird is depicted on an ivory knife handle recovered from Abu Zaidan in Upper Egypt, dating to the Naqada III culture (c. 3,200 BC). This and other knife handles indicate the secretarybird most likely occurred historically further north along the Nile.
The secretarybird has traditionally been admired in Africa for its striking appearance and ability to deal with pests and snakes. As such it has often not been disturbed, although this is changing as traditional observances have declined. It is a prominent feature on the coat of arms of South Africa, which was adopted in 2000. With its wings outstretched, it represents growth, and its penchant for killing snakes is symbolic as the protector of the South African state against enemies. It is on the emblem of Sudan, adopted in 1969. It is featured on the Sudanese presidential flag and presidential seal. The secretarybird has been a common motif for African countries on postage stamps: over a hundred stamps from 37 issuers are known, including some from stamp-issuing entities such as Ajman, Manama, and the Maldives, regions where the bird does not exist, as well as the United Nations.
The Maasai people call it ol-enbai nabo, or "one arrow", referring to its crest feathers. They have used parts of the bird in traditional medicine: its feathers could be burnt and the resulting smoke inhaled to treat epilepsy, its egg could be consumed with tea twice daily to treat headaches, and its fat could be boiled and drunk for child growth or livestock health. The Xhosa people call the bird inxhanxhosi and attribute great intelligence to it in folklore. The Zulus call it intungunono.
The German biologist Ragnar Kinzelbach proposed in 2008 that the secretarybird was recorded in the 13th-century work De arte venandi cum avibus by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Described as bistarda deserti, it was mistaken for a bustard. Frederick most likely gained knowledge of the bird from sources in Egypt. The 16th-century French priest and traveller André Thevet also wrote a description of a mysterious bird in 1558 that has been likened by Kinzelbach to this species.
### Threats and conservation
In 1968 the species became protected under the African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the secretarybird in 2016 as a vulnerable species and as Endangered in 2020, due to a recent rapid decline across its entire range. Although widespread, the species is thinly distributed across its range; its population has been estimated in 2016 to be anywhere between 6,700 and 67,000 individuals. Long term monitoring across South Africa between 1987 and 2013 has shown that populations have declined across the country, even in protected areas such as Kruger National Park due to bush encroachment, an increase in the tall vegetation cover, resulting in loss of open habitat that the species prefers.
As a population, the secretarybird is mainly threatened by loss of habitat due to fragmentation by roads and development and overgrazing of grasslands by livestock. Some adaptation to altered areas has been recorded but the trend is for decline.
### In captivity
The first successful rearing of a secretarybird in captivity occurred in 1986 at the Oklahoma City Zoo. Although secretarybirds normally build their nests in the trees in the wild, the captive birds at the zoo built theirs on the ground, which left them open to depredation by local wild mammals. Therefore, the zoo staff removed the eggs from the nest each time they were laid so that they could be incubated and hatched at a safer location. The species has also been bred and reared in captivity at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
|
3,048,594 |
Hannah Glasse
| 1,144,055,228 |
British cookery writer (1708–1770)
|
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"1708 births",
"1770 deaths",
"18th-century English women writers",
"English food writers",
"English non-fiction writers",
"History of British cuisine",
"Inmates of Fleet Prison",
"Inmates of the Marshalsea",
"People imprisoned for debt",
"Women cookbook writers",
"Writers from Hexham",
"Writers from London"
] |
Hannah Glasse (née Allgood; March 1708 – 1 September 1770) was an English cookery writer of the 18th century. Her first cookery book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, published in 1747, became the best-selling recipe book that century. It was reprinted within its first year of publication, appeared in 20 editions in the 18th century, and continued to be published until well into the 19th century. She later wrote The Servants' Directory (1760) and The Compleat Confectioner, which was probably published in 1760; neither book was as commercially successful as her first.
Glasse was born in London to a Northumberland landowner and his mistress. After the relationship ended, Glasse was brought up in her father's family. When she was 16 she eloped with a 30-year-old Irish subaltern then on half-pay and lived in Essex, working on the estate of the Earls of Donegall. The couple struggled financially and, with the aim of raising money, Glasse wrote The Art of Cookery. She copied extensively from other cookery books, around a third of the recipes having been published elsewhere. Among her original recipes are the first known curry recipe written in English, as well as three recipes for pilau, an early reference to vanilla in English cuisine, the first recorded use of jelly in trifle, and an early recipe for ice cream. She was also the first to use the term "Yorkshire pudding" in print.
Glasse became a dressmaker in Covent Garden—where her clients included Princess Augusta, the Princess of Wales—but she ran up excessive debts. She was imprisoned for bankruptcy and was forced to sell the copyright of The Art of Cookery. Much of Glasse's later life is unrecorded; information about her identity was lost until uncovered in 1938 by the historian Madeleine Hope Dodds. Other authors plagiarised Glasse's writing and pirated copies became common, particularly in the United States. The Art of Cookery has been admired by English cooks in the second part of the 20th century, and influenced many of them, including Elizabeth David, Fanny Cradock and Clarissa Dickson Wright.
## Biography
### Early life
Glasse was born Hannah Allgood at Greville Street, Hatton Garden, London, to Isaac Allgood and his mistress, Hannah Reynolds. Isaac, a landowner and coal-mine owner, was from a well-known, respected family from Nunwick Hall, Hexham, Northumberland; he was married to Hannah née Clark, the daughter of Isaac of London, a vintner. Glasse was christened on 24 March 1708 at St Andrews, Holborn, London. Allgood and Reynolds had two other children, both of whom died young. Allgood and his wife also had a child, Lancelot, born three years after Glasse.
Allgood took Reynolds and the young Hannah back to Hexham to live, and she was brought up with his other children, but according to A. H. T. Robb-Smith in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Reynolds was "banished from Hexham"; no reason is recorded. By 1713 Allgood and Reynolds were again living together back in London. The following year, while drunk, Allgood signed papers transferring all his property to Reynolds. Once he realised the magnitude of his mistake, the couple separated. The Allgood family tried to have the property returned, which they managed in 1740, providing Glasse with an annual income and a sum of capital. She did not have a good relationship with her mother, who had little input into her daughter's upbringing; Glasse described her in correspondence as a "wicked wretch!"
Soon after the death of his wife in 1724, Allgood fell ill and Glasse was sent to live with her grandmother. Although Glasse was banned from attending social events by her grandmother, she began a relationship with an older man: John Glasse. He was a 30-year-old Irish subaltern, then on half-pay, who had previously been employed by Lord Polwarth; John was a widower. On 4 August 1724 the couple were secretly married by special licence. Her family found out about the marriage a month later, when she moved out of her grandmother's house and in with her husband in Piccadilly. Although her family were angered by the relationship, they soon resumed cordial dealings, and continued a warm and friendly correspondence. Hannah's first letter to her grandmother apologised for the secrecy surrounding her elopement, but did not express regret for getting married. "I am sorry at what I have done, but only the manner of it".
By 1728 the Glasses were living in New Hall, Broomfield, Essex, the home of the 4th Earl of Donegall; John Glasse was probably working as an estate steward. They had their first child while living at New Hall. The Glasses moved back to London in November 1734 where they lodged for four years before moving to Greville Street, near Hatton Garden. Over the coming years Glasse gave birth to ten children, five of whom died young. She considered education important, and sent her daughters to good local schools and her sons to Eton and Westminster. The couple struggled constantly with finances, and in 1744 Glasse tried to sell Daffy's Elixir, a patent medicine; the project did not take off. She then decided to write a cookery book.
### The Art of Cookery
In a letter dated January 1746 Glasse wrote "My book goes on very well and everybody is pleased with it, it is now in the press". The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy was printed the following year and sold at "Mrs. Ashburn's, a China Shop, the corner of Fleet-Ditch", according to the title page. The book was available bound for 5 shillings, or plainly stitched for 3 shillings. As was the practice for publishers at the time, Glasse provided the names of subscribers—those who had pre-paid for a copy—who were listed inside the work. The first edition listed 202 subscribers; that number increased for the second and third editions. On the title page Glasse writes that the book "far exceeds any Thing of the Kind ever yet published". In the introduction she states "I believe I have attempted a Branch of Cookery which Nobody has yet thought worth their while to write upon", which, she explains, is to write a book aimed at the domestic staff of a household. As such, she apologises to readers, "If I have not wrote in the high, polite Stile, I hope I shall be forgiven; for my Intention is to instruct the lower Sort, and therefore must treat them in their own Way".
Glasse extensively used other sources during the writing: of the 972 recipes in the first edition, 342 of them had been copied or adapted from other works. This plagiarism was typical of the time as, under the Statute of Anne—the 1709 act of parliament dealing with copyright protection—recipes were not safeguarded against copyright infringement. The chapter on cream was taken in full from Eliza Smith's 1727 work, The Compleat Housewife, and, in the meat section, 17 consecutive recipes were copied from The Whole Duty of a Woman, although Glasse had rewritten the scant instructions intended for experienced cooks into more complete instructions for the less proficient.
A second edition of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy appeared before the year was out, and nine further versions were published by 1765. The early editions of the book did not reveal its authorship, using the vague cover "By a Lady"; it was not until the fourth imprint, published in 1751, that Glasse's name appeared on the title page. The absence of an author's name permitted the erroneous claim that it was written by John Hill; in James Boswell's Life of Johnson, Boswell recounts a dinner with Samuel Johnson and the publisher, Charles Dilly. Dilly stated that "Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, which is the best, was written by Dr Hill. Half the trade know this." Johnson was doubtful of the connection because of confusion in the book between saltpetre and sal prunella, a mistake Hill would not have made. Despite this, Johnson thought it was a male writer, and said "Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of cookery".
### Later years
The same year in which the first edition was published, John Glasse died. He was buried at St Mary's church, Broomfield, on 21 June 1747. That year, Glasse set herself up as a "habit maker" or dressmaker in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, in partnership with her eldest daughter, Margaret. The fourth edition of her book included a full-page advertisement for her shop, which said she was the "habit maker to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales", Princess Augusta. When her half-brother Lancelot came to stay with her, he wrote:
> Hannah has so many coaches at her door that, to judge from appearances, she must succeed in her business ... she has great visitors with her, no less than the Prince and Princess of Wales, to see her masquerade dresses.
Glasse was not successful in her line of business and, after borrowing heavily, she was declared bankrupt in May 1754 with debts of £10,000. Among the assets sold off to pay her debts was the copyright of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy to Andrew Miller and a conger of booksellers, and 3,000 copies of the fifth edition; the syndicate held the rights for the next fifty years. It is not clear what subsequent involvement Glasse had in any of the printings after the fifth. She was issued with a certificate of conformity, which marked the end of her bankruptcy, in January 1755.
In 1754 the cookery book Professed Cookery: containing boiling, roasting, pastry, preserving, potting, pickling, made-wines, gellies, and part of confectionaries was published by Ann Cook. The book contained what was titled "an essay upon the lady's Art of Cookery", which was an attack on Glasse and The Art of Cookery, described by the historian Madeleine Hope Dodds as a "violent onslaught", and by the historian Gilly Lehman as "appalling doggerel". Dodds established that Cook had been in a feud with Lancelot Allgood and used the book to gain a measure of revenge against him.
Glasse continued to live at her Tavistock Street home until 1757, but her financial troubles continued and she was imprisoned as a debtor at Marshalsea gaol in June that year before being transferred to Fleet Prison a month later. By December she had been released and registered three shares in The Servants' Directory, a work she was writing on how to manage a household; it included several blank pages at the end for recording kitchen accounts. The work was published in 1760, but was not commercially successful. Glasse also wrote The Compleat Confectioner, which was published undated, but probably in 1760. As she had with her first book, Glasse plagiarised the work of others for this new work, particularly from Edwards Lambert's 1744 work The Art of Confectionery, but also from Smith's Compleat Housewife and The Family Magazine (1741). Glasse's work contained the essentials of sweet-, cake- and ices-making, including how to boil sugar to the required stages, making custards and syllabubs, preserving and distilled drinks.
There are no records that relate to Glasse's final ten years. In 1770 The Newcastle Courant announced "Last week died in London, Mrs Glasse, only sister to Sir Lancelot Allgood, of Nunwick, in Northumberland", referring to her death on 1 September.
## Books
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy consists mainly of English recipes, and is aimed at providing good, affordable food, and the television cook Clarissa Dickson Wright saw the work as "a masterly summary" of English cuisine of well-to-do households in the mid-18th century. Glasse saw that household education for young ladies no longer included confectionery and grand desserts, and many of the recipes in The Compleat Confectioner move away from the banqueting dishes of the 17th century to new style desserts of the 18th and 19th. In The Art of Cookery she shows signs of a modern approach to cooking with more focus on savoury dishes—which had a French influence—rather than the more prestigious but dated sweet dishes that had been favoured in the 17th century. In The Compleat Confectioner she writes:
> every young lady ought to know both how to make all kind of confectionary, and dress out a desert; in former days, it was look'd on as a great perfection in a young lady to understand all these things, if it was only to give directions to her servants[.]
Glasse was not averse to criticising the French or their cooking, and her introduction states:
> A Frenchman in his own country will dress a fine dinner of twenty dishes, and all genteel and pretty, for the expence he will put an English lord to for dressing one dish. ... I have heard of a cook that used six pounds of butter to fry twelve eggs; when every body knows ... that half a pound is full enough, or more than need be used: but then it would not be French. So much is the blind folly of this age, that they would rather be imposed on by a French booby, than give encouragement to a good English cook!
Despite Glasse's overtly hostile approach to French cuisine, there is, Stead detects, a "love-hate relationship with French cookery, scorn coupled with sneaking admiration". In The Art of Cookery, Glasse introduced a chapter of eight recipes—all detailed and intricate, and all French in origin—with the advice "Read this chapter and you will find how expensive a French cook's sauce is". The first recipe, "The French way of dressing partridges" ends with her comment "This dish I do not recommend; for I think it an odd jumble of trash ... but such receipts as this, is what you have in most books of cookery yet printed." Henry Notaker, in his history of cookery books, observes that Glasse has included what she sees to be a poor recipe, only because her readers would miss it otherwise. Throughout the book she introduced recipes that were French in origin, although these were often anglicised to remove the heavily flavoured sauces from meat dishes. With each new publication of the book, the number of non-English recipes rose, with additions from German, Dutch, Indian, Italian, West Indian and American cuisines.
The first edition introduced the first known English-written curry recipe, as well as three recipes for pilau; later versions included additional curry recipes and an Indian pickle. These—like most of her recipes—contained no measurements or weights of ingredients, although there are some practical directions, including "about as much thyme as will lie on a sixpence".
Glasse added not just a recipe for "Welch rabbit" (later sometimes called Welsh rarebit), but also "English Rabbit" and "Scotch Rabbit". The book includes a chapter "For Captains of the Sea"—containing recipes for curing and pickling food—and recipes for "A Certain Cure for the Bite of a Mad Dog" (copied from Richard Mead) and a "Receipt [recipe] against the Plague". The 1756 edition also contained an early reference to vanilla in English cuisine and the first recorded use of jelly in trifle; she called the trifle a "floating island". Later printings added hamburgers ("hamburgh sausages"), piccalilli ("Paco-Lilla" or "India Pickle") and an early recipe for ice cream. Glasse was the first to use the term "Yorkshire pudding" in print; the recipe had first appeared in the anonymously written 1737 work The Whole Duty of a Woman under the name "dripping pudding".
Anne Willan, in her examination of historical cooks and cookery books, suggests that although it is written in an easy style, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy "can never have been an easy book to use", as there was no alphabetical index in the early editions, and the organisation was erratic in places. Although the early versions did not contain an index at the end of the book, they have what Wendy Hall describes in her study "Literacy and the Domestic Arts" as a "jaw-droppingly extensive table of contents that categorized the subject matter over the course of twenty-two pages".
According to the historian Caroline Lieffers, Glasse was part of an increased rationalisation in cookery; although she did not give timings for all her recipes there were more than authors of earlier cookery books had printed. She was also ahead of her time in other respects: she gave a recipe for "pocket soop" years before the introduction of branded stock cube; over a century before Louis Pasteur examined microbiology and sterilisation, Glasse advised cooks, when finishing pickles and jams, to "tye them close with a bladder and a leather" to aid preservation. She went to great lengths in her books to stress the need for cleanliness in the house, particularly in the kitchen, where dirty equipment will either mar the flavour or cause illness. Her advice reflects the trend of increasing hygiene in England at the time, with piped water more widely available. The food historian Jennifer Stead writes that many visitors to England reported that the servants were clean and well turned out.
In The Art of Cookery, Glasse departs from many of her predecessors and does not provide a section of medical advice—a pattern followed in 1769 by Elizabeth Raffald in The Experienced English Housekeeper—although chapter ten of The Art of Cookery is titled "Directions for the sick", and contains recipes for broth, dishes from boiled and minced meats, caudles, gruel and various drinks, including "artificial asses milk". Glasse also did not give instructions on how to run the household. In her preface, she writes:
> I shall not take upon me to meddle in the physical Way farther than two Receipts which will be of Use to the Publick in general: One is for the Bite of a mad Dog; and the other, if a Man shoud be near where the Plague is, he shall be in no Danger; which, if made Use of, would be found of very great Service to those who go Abroad. Nor shall I take it upon me to direct a Lady in the Oeconomy of her Family, for every Mistress does, or at least ought to know what is most proper to be done there; therefore I shall not fill my Book with a deal of Nonsense of that Kind, which I am very well assur'd none will have Regard to.
Glasse aimed The Art of Cookery at a city-dwelling readership and, unlike many predecessors, there was no reference to "country gentlewomen" or the tradition of the hospitality of the gentry. The Servants' Directory was aimed solely at female members of staff, and each role undertaken by the female staff was examined and explained fully. The historian Una Robertson observes that "the torrent of instructions addressed to 'my little House-maid' must have severely confused that individual, had she been able to read".
## Legacy
Information about Glasse's identity was lost for years. In 1938 Dodds confirmed the connection between her and the Allgood family in an article in Archaeologia Aeliana.
The Art of Cookery was the most popular cookery book of the 18th century and went through several reprints after Glasse's death. With over twenty reprints over a hundred years, the last edition was well into the 19th century. Glasse's work was plagiarised heavily throughout the rest of the 18th and 19th century, including in Isabella Beeton's bestselling Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861). The words "plain and easy" from the title were also used by several others. Copies of The Art of Cookery were taken to America by travellers, and it became one of the most popular cookery books in colonial America; it was printed in the US in 1805. It is possible that Benjamin Franklin had some of the recipes translated to French for his trip to Paris. Copies of The Servants' Directory were also extensively pirated in America.
The instruction "First catch your hare" is sometimes wrongly attributed to Glasse. The Oxford English Dictionary observes that the use is "(i.e. as the first step to cooking him): a direction jestingly ascribed to Mrs. Glasse's Cookery Book, but of much more recent origin". The mis-provenance is from the recipe for roast hare in The Art of Cookery, which begins "Take your hare when it be cas'd", meaning simply to take a skinned hare. The saying is one of around 400 of her quotations used in the Oxford English Dictionary.
In 1983 Prospect Books published a facsimile of the 1747 edition of The Art of Cookery under the title First Catch Your Hare, with introductory essays by Stead and the food historian Priscilla Bain, and a glossary by the food writer Alan Davidson; it has been reissued several times. When Stead was asked to contribute to the 1983 printing, she examined the 1747 publication and made what Davidson and the food writer Helen Saberi described as a "truly pioneering work", studying each recipe and tracing which of them were original or had been copied from other writers. It was Stead who established that Glasse had copied 342 of them from others. In 2006 Glasse was the subject of a BBC drama-documentary presented by the television cook Clarissa Dickson Wright; Dickson Wright described her subject as the "mother of the modern dinner party" and "the first domestic goddess". The 310th anniversary of Glasse's birth was the subject of a Google Doodle on 28 March 2018.
Glasse has been admired by several modern cooks and food writers. The 20th century cookery writer Elizabeth David considers that "it is plain to me that she is reporting at first hand, and sometimes with an original and charming turn of phrase"; the television cook Fanny Cradock provided a foreword to a reprint of The Art of Cookery in 1971, in which she praised Glasse and her approach. Craddock found the writing easy to follow and thought Glasse an honest cook, who seemed to have tried most of the recipes in the book. The food writer Jane Grigson admired Glasse's work, and in her 1974 book she included many of Glasse's recipes. Dickson Wright affirms that she has "a strong affinity for Hannah Glasse. I admire her straightforward, unpretentious approach to cookery." For Dickson Wright, "she is one of the greats of English food history."
|
47,038,799 |
Mary van Kleeck
| 1,160,247,145 |
American social scientist and feminist
|
[
"1883 births",
"1972 deaths",
"Activists from New York (state)",
"American Labor Party politicians",
"American feminists",
"American people of Dutch descent",
"American social scientists",
"American socialists",
"American women in World War I",
"American women's rights activists",
"Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science",
"Fellows of the American Statistical Association",
"Flushing High School alumni",
"Mathematicians from New York (state)",
"Mayer family",
"People from Dutchess County, New York",
"People from Flushing, Queens",
"People from Kingston, New York",
"Russell Sage Foundation",
"Smith College alumni",
"Socialist feminists",
"Women statisticians",
"YWCA leaders"
] |
Mary Abby van Kleeck (June 26, 1883 – June 8, 1972) was an American social scientist of the 20th century. She was a notable figure in the American labor movement as well as a proponent of scientific management and a planned economy.
An American of Dutch descent, van Kleeck was a lifelong New Yorker, with the exception of her undergraduate studies at Smith College in Massachusetts. She began her career as part of the settlement movement, investigating women's labor in New York City. Van Kleeck rose to prominence as director of the Russell Sage Foundation's Department of Industrial Studies, which she led for over 30 years, beginning in 1916. During World War I, van Kleeck was appointed by US President Woodrow Wilson to lead the development of workplace standards for women entering the workforce, becoming the first woman appointed to a position of authority in the American federal government during the war.
After the war, she led the creation of a federal agency to advocate for women in the workforce (the Women's Bureau), before returning to the Sage Foundation and continuing her determined research into labor issues. By the 1930s, van Kleeck had become a socialist, arguing that central planning of economies was the most effective way to protect labor rights. During the Great Depression, she became a prominent left-wing critic of the New Deal and American capitalism, advocating a radical agenda for social reformers and workers. Retiring from the Sage Foundation in 1948, van Kleeck ran for New York State Senate as a member of the American Labor Party, but lost the election and turned her focus to peace activism and nuclear disarmament. As a long-time advocate of planned economies, she became a defender of Soviet-American friendship, leading to suspicion from the powerful anti-communist movement. She died aged 88 in 1972.
## Early life
Van Kleeck was born June 26, 1883, in Glenham, New York. She was the child of Eliza Mayer of Baltimore and Robert Boyd van Kleeck, an Episcopal minister of Dutch origin. On her father's side, she was descended from the Schenck family of Brooklyn. On her mother's side, her grandfather was Charles F. Mayer, a prominent Baltimore lawyer and politician. The youngest of five siblings, including a brother who died in infancy, Van Kleeck was close to her mother, but had a distant relationship with her father, who was often sick when she was young. He died in 1892, when she was only nine. With a strong reputation for intelligence and force of personality among her classmates, Van Kleeck was the valedictorian of her class at Flushing High School in New York City. She wrote in her valedictory address:
> We are living in an age of disputes, and by no means the least among them is the question of woman and her rights ... [those who defend women] make one great mistake—they bravely defend woman, but they forget that she needs no defense, they eloquently plead her release from the bonds of slavery, but they forget that she is not a slave.
Van Kleeck studied at Smith College from 1900 to 1904, where she flourished—studying calculus, writing poetry, and enjoying popularity among her fellow students. The Smith College Association for Christian Work (SCACW) was the main student organization on campus, and van Kleeck rapidly became involved. She served as president of the SCACW in 1903. Through this organization, she encountered the YWCA, which she remained affiliated with for the remainder of her life. At a YWCA summer retreat in Silver Bay, New York, van Kleeck was drawn to the ideas of Florence Simms, the YWCA's industrial secretary. Van Kleeck became determined to dedicate her career to public service, an ideal to which she dedicated a poem in Smith's yearbook.
## Beginning of career
A year after graduating from Smith with an A.B., van Kleeck received a joint postgraduate fellowship from the College Settlement Association and the Smith College Alumnae Association which enabled her to perform research in New York City. As part of this work, van Kleeck carried out investigations of the enforcement of the labor law governing the workweek (limited to 60 hours at the time, though this provision was frequently ignored by employers).
She also worked for the New York Child Labor Committee and the Consumers League. Van Kleeck's work with the College Settlement Association, along with her role as industrial secretary of the Alliance Employment Bureau (AEB), represented the beginning of her research on women in industry and child labor. For the AEB, she conducted a study on the irregular working conditions of milliners and makers of artificial flowers, both major sources of employment for women at the time. Van Kleeck also undertook graduate work in social economy at Columbia University during this time. She studied under the experienced labor economist Henry Rogers Seager and sociologists Franklin Giddings and Samuel McCune Lindsay, but never completed a doctoral degree.
### Russell Sage Foundation
Van Kleeck gained support from the Russell Sage Foundation in 1907, shortly after its establishment, the start of a professional relationship which would last for forty years. The organization had been founded by Margaret Olivia Sage to support social activism and Progressive reforms through dedicated scientific research. Mentored and trained by Florence Kelley and Lilian Brandt, prominent older labor activists and social reformers, van Kleeck was hired directly by the Foundation in 1910 to lead its Committee on Women's Work. Her initial salary was \$1500 annually. She was instrumental in the passage of New York laws prohibiting long working hours in 1910 and 1915. Van Kleeck and the Sage Foundation published a series of books based on her research: Artificial Flower Makers (1913), Women in the Bookbinding Trade (1913), and Wages in the Millinery Trade (1914).
In 1916, van Kleeck persuaded the Foundation to create the Division of Industrial Studies with her as its head. As director of the division, soon renamed and expanded to become the Department of Industrial Studies, she became a well-known figure in the study of industrial labor conditions and women's employment in industry. Van Kleeck's department became an organization known for expertise on industry and labor, for training graduate students and for developing new methods of investigation. Its work was characterized by "careful empiricism, collegial review, and cooperation with state and private agencies," according to the historian Guy Alchon.
Van Kleeck's department frequently recommended labor reforms, such as the establishment of cooperative wage boards. More than once, the Sage Foundation was required to protect the Department of Industrial Studies from reprisals from aggrieved corporations which had been investigated by the department. The Remington Arms manufacturing company, criticized by van Kleeck's department in 1916 for providing substandard conditions for its workers, attempted to suppress the resulting report, but was rebuffed by Robert DeForest, the foundation's vice president.
Alongside Eleanor Roosevelt, van Kleeck was also co-vice president of the Women's City Club of New York, which was founded in 1915. During this period, van Kleeck's output of labor studies and other articles was prodigious, and she often worked closely with the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL). For instance, she authored an article in the Journal of Political Economy arguing that working girls should be able to access evening school courses without financial barriers, published in May 1915. Van Kleeck also found the time to serve on New York Mayor John P. Mitchel's Committee on Unemployment. In addition, she taught a series of courses on industrial issues at Columbia University's New York School of Philanthropy from 1914 to 1917. At Columbia, Van Kleeck encountered the ideas of Taylorism (also known as scientific management) and rapidly became a proponent, viewing it as a "social science of utopian potential." She was a prominent member of the Taylor Society for several decades.
## World War I and the Women's Bureau
In 1917, the United States entered World War I. By this point, van Kleeck enjoyed "a well-deserved reputation as one of the nation's leading experts on women's employment." At the behest of the War Industries Board and Herman Schneider, van Kleeck investigated the possibility of employing women in U.S. Army warehouses. She recommended the creation of a Women's Bureau in the War Department, and as a result President Woodrow Wilson appointed van Kleeck to lead a new Women in Industry Service group, a sub-agency of the Department of Labor. As such, she became the first woman in the United States appointed to a position of authority in the federal government since the beginning of the country's involvement in World War I. Van Kleeck wrote that the great numbers of women brought into the workforce by the war represented a "new freedom" for women: "freedom to serve their country through their industry not as women but as workers judged by the same standards and rewarded by the same recompense as men".
The Women in Industry Service group produced a series of reports documenting wage disparities, unsafe working conditions, and discrimination against female workers, conducting investigations in 31 states. Their recommendations were often ignored, and at an October 1918 conference to discuss women's labor organized by van Kleeck, Secretary of Labor William Wilson declined to take action to address wage inequality. Van Kleeck made it a priority to appoint a black woman to the staff of the Women in Industry Service group, working with George Haynes to find a suitable candidate. Eventually, an experienced researcher named Helen Irvin, a graduate of Howard University, was hired from the Red Cross.
In December 1918, the group published a wide-ranging report entitled Standards for the Employment of Women in Industry. The report was later used as the basis for the groundbreaking Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which applied standards to workplaces throughout the country. After the war, van Kleeck's group became the United States Women's Bureau. Van Kleeck wrote the law enabling this transition in June 1920. On July 14, van Kleeck was appointed as the head of the new agency within the Department of Labor. Although she was expected to lead the Bureau permanently, van Kleeck was called away to help care for her dying mother and resigned after a few weeks. Mary Anderson, her close friend and colleague, became its first long-term director instead.
## Interwar career
Van Kleeck resumed her work and research with the Russell Sage Foundation after World War I, once more becoming director of the Department of Industrial Studies. The foundation continued to perform in-depth studies of conditions for workers at workplaces such as the Rockefeller coal and steel works (in cooperation with Ben Selekman), the Dutchess Bleachery, and Filene's Department Store. These studies collectively represented "one of the decade's most searching examinations of the dramatic changes underway in the relationship between capital, labor, stockholders, and management," according to the economic historian Mark Hendrickson. During the 1920s, van Kleeck also served on several government committees in Harding's, Coolidge's, and Hoover's administrations, including the President's Conference on Unemployment in 1921. Chaired by Hoover, who was then Secretary of Commerce, the unemployment committee developed a plan for the uniform calculation of employment statistics across the United States, work in which van Kleeck played a key role. An indefatigable worker, van Kleeck additionally was a trustee of Smith College from 1922 to 1930 and headed up the National Interracial Conference in 1928.
In 1924, Will H. Hays, the powerful head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, asked van Kleeck to undertake a study of the casting industry in Hollywood, which he believed was rife with exploitation. Van Kleeck conducted the study, and, among other findings, recommended the creation of a centralized organization for casting extras and other small parts. Hays adopted this suggestion and the Central Casting Corporation was born the next year.
A 1926 profile of van Kleeck in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, focusing on her prodigy with mathematics and statistics, described her as "an unassuming woman who goes about her work in a quiet manner, who does it primarily because she loves it, and who thoroughly enjoys every minute of her existence." In response to the interviewer's description of her statistical reports as "endless labor", van Kleeck replied "Really, I don't feel I've worked an hour in my whole life ... It is something I just love to do." Some years later, a young contemporary of van Kleeck's, Jacob Fisher, would describe her as having "the patrician carriage and speech, the imperious presence and the grande dame manner of the mistress of a nineteenth-century salon."
From 1928, she was also active in the International Industrial Relations Institute, which she co-led with Mary (Mikie) Fleddérus. Prominent members of the Institute included Adelaide Anderson and Lillian Moller Gilbreth. Gilbreth, a friend, described van Kleeck as "the best research woman I know." Fleddérus, a Dutch social reformer, became van Kleeck's lifelong partner and the two women lived together for most of their later life, splitting their time evenly between the Netherlands and New York City each year and exchanging daily letters when apart. The historian Jacqueline Castledine characterizes their relationship as romantic, describing van Kleeck and Fleddérus as "women-committed women" in a time before lesbianism was acceptable in mainstream society. Such relationships, not unknown in urban communities of college-educated women, were called Boston marriages.
In 1932, as a longtime advocate of social-economic planning, van Kleeck visited the Soviet Union, which she viewed as being at the forefront of scientific management and labor rights. The next year, she was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Van Kleeck also led the formation of the American Association of Social Workers, which later merged into the National Association of Social Workers.
## Socialism and opposition to the New Deal
Although several fellow social scientists and activists advocated for van Kleeck to receive a cabinet position in the new Roosevelt administration in 1933, her increasingly radical views made this unlikely. By the early 1930s, van Kleeck had become a socialist, and she opposed the Roosevelt administration's New Deal initiatives. Van Kleeck favored Soviet-style economic planning, which she was convinced would be effective in solving the USA's continuing economic issues. Her views were widely publicized, such as in a 1931 New York Times article subtitled "Mary van Kleeck Says Social Effects of World Plans Should Be Test." Although appointed to the Federal Advisory Council of the New Deal U.S. Employment Service, she resigned in protest after one day due to her belief that the National Recovery Administration was not sufficiently supportive of unions. Van Kleeck continued to conduct labor studies and write in favor of socialist policies. Her book Miners and Management, published in 1934, was based on a study of the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, and argued that all industry should be socialized. Her next book, Creative America, was published in 1936 and opposed continued private control of the means of production, as well as supporting a "moderate form of collectivism." Alchon writes that "for van Kleeck, Christian and Communist idealism were complementary, if not interchangeable."During the early years of the New Deal, van Kleeck was considered a leading figure of the American left, with considerable influence over the national social work movement, which advocated for progressive improvements in society. Her influence was showcased by a rapturous reception at the National Conference of Social Work (NCSW) meeting in 1934. There, she presented her paper "Our Illusions Regarding Government", arguing that social reformers must not allow themselves to be corrupted by a government controlled by capital and big business, which would "tend to protect property rights rather than human rights".
Van Kleeck's speech, delivered to a packed crowd of 1500 in a room designed for 500, was so well-received that she received the conference's top award for an outstanding paper, and was asked to present the paper again to meet the high demand from attendees to hear her work. One journalist wrote:
> Never in a long experience of conferences has this observer witnessed such a prolonged ovation... to her wearied and discouraged colleagues in social work she brought a new hope and dream when they had ceased to hope and dream, and she came in the person of an undeniable leader, clothed with the courage for a good fight. The effect on her hearers was electric.
This reaction alarmed more conservative members of the NCSW and led its president, William Hodson, to criticize van Kleeck's radicalism and opposition to the New Deal at the organization's annual banquet. In response, nearly 1,000 conference attendees organized to unofficially censure Hodson.
Van Kleeck was also a member of the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), heading up the Subcommittee on Labor Policy. She was affiliated with the ACLU from 1935 until 1940, when she resigned in protest after the ACLU expelled Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, one of its own founders, for belonging to the Communist Party.
Van Kleeck was initially opposed to American entry into World War II, viewing it as an imperialist misadventure. During the war, she continued to argue for the inclusion of women in government and the labor force. In 1944, van Kleeck co-wrote a book with Mary Fleddérus, entitled Technology and Livelihood. The book argued that increased technological innovation and efficiency inevitably lead to increased unemployment and underemployment, and suggested a strong welfare state and labor movement as the necessary remedy to this problem. Known for her prewar contributions to labor statistics, van Kleeck became a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1945.
## Retirement
Van Kleeck retired from the Sage Foundation at the age of 63 in 1948, having earned a salary of \$8,808 in her final year with the organization. She ran for New York State Senate the same year as a member of the far-left American Labor Party in Manhattan's 20th District, against incumbent Republican MacNeil Mitchell and Democrat Evelyn B. Richman. In the last year of prominence for the American Labor Party, van Kleeck won 14,284 votes (10.01%), compared to Mitchell's 76,519 and Richman's 51,916. After the loss, she turned her focus to anti-nuclear activism and disarmament work. Van Kleeck also assisted in the founding of the Congress of American Women, an important organization in the post-war peace movement. Arguing that the organization should focus on women not just as homemakers but as workers, van Kleeck invited Mary McLeod Bethune to present to the organization on discrimination against African-American women.
Although she never publicly joined the Communist Party, van Kleeck became a defender of the Soviet Union, believing it to represent the world's only viable alternative to capitalism. As a result, she came under government suspicion and sustained FBI surveillance as a 'fellow traveler' and possible secret member of the Communist Party, although no evidence of membership was ever presented. Congressional committees investigating communism listed her as a member of up to 60 different "subversive" organizations that they considered possible fronts for communism. Several times, van Kleeck was denied a visa to travel abroad. As an openly dedicated socialist, van Kleeck was called before Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953, where she was represented by civil rights lawyer Leonard Boudin and questioned by Roy Cohn. An excerpt from that questioning follows:
> Mr. COHN: Are you a believer in our form of government today?
>
> Miss VAN KLEECK: Emphatically. I am an American with a long family background going back to the early days, and my whole work is devoted to the United States of America.
>
> Mr. COHN: My question was: You are a believer in the capitalist form of government?
>
> Miss VAN KLEECK: Is the United States essentially and forever capitalist? It has changed its form of organization through the years. I am a believer in political democracy, which is the essence of the United States of America.
In 1956, on the recommendation of Eleanor Flexner, van Kleeck began organizing her papers and turning them over to the Sophia Smith Collection at her alma mater, with the assistance of Margaret Storrs Grierson. Van Kleeck had been uncertain whether her documents were of value, saying that "to write about [national issues] with merely me as the unifying element would belittle them to the vanishing point," but came around to believe that "the collection, if properly arranged, would be the most useful biography."
Throughout her retirement, she lived with her longtime romantic companion Mary "Mikie" Fleddérus in a "shambling old house" in Woodstock, New York. Described by contemporaries as a serious, brilliant, and quiet person, van Kleeck played tennis and bridge and was a fan of theater and comedy sketches. A lifelong Christian, she was a member of the Episcopal League for Social Action and served as a "leading light" in the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, an Episcopal women's organization, in the words of Alchon. Van Kleeck died of heart failure on June 8, 1972, in Kingston, New York. She was 88.
|
42,683,819 |
Beringian wolf
| 1,172,375,660 |
Extinct type of wolf that lived during the Ice Age in Alaska, Yukon, and northern British Columbia
|
[
"Extinct animals of Canada",
"Extinct animals of the United States",
"Pleistocene carnivorans",
"Prehistoric canines",
"Prehistoric mammals of North America",
"Wolves"
] |
The Beringian wolf is an extinct population of wolf (Canis lupus) that lived during the Ice Age. It inhabited what is now modern-day Alaska, Yukon, and northern British Columbia. Some of these wolves survived well into the Holocene. The Beringian wolf is an ecomorph of the gray wolf and has been comprehensively studied using a range of scientific techniques, yielding new information on the prey species and feeding behavior of prehistoric wolves. It has been determined that these wolves are morphologically distinct from modern North American wolves and genetically basal to most modern and extinct wolves. The Beringian wolf has not been assigned a subspecies classification and its relationship with the extinct European cave wolf (Canis lupus spelaeus) is not clear.
The Beringian wolf was similar in size to the modern Alaskan Interior wolf (Canis lupus pambasileus) and other Late Pleistocene gray wolves but more robust and with stronger jaws and teeth, a broader palate, and larger carnassial teeth relative to its skull size. In comparison with the Beringian wolf, the more southerly occurring dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) was the same size but heavier and with a more robust skull and dentition. The unique adaptation of the skull and dentition of the Beringian wolf allowed it to produce relatively large bite forces, grapple with large struggling prey, and therefore made predation and scavenging on Pleistocene megafauna possible. The Beringian wolf preyed most often on horse and steppe bison, and also on caribou, mammoth, and woodland muskox.
At the close of the Ice Age, with the loss of cold and dry conditions and the extinction of much of its prey, the Beringian wolf became extinct. The extinction of its prey has been attributed to the impact of climate change, competition with other species, including humans, or a combination of both factors. Local genetic populations were replaced by others from within the same species or of the same genus. Of the North American wolves, only the ancestor of the modern North American gray wolf survived. The remains of ancient wolves with similar skulls and dentition have been found in western Beringia (northeastern Siberia). In 2016, a study showed that some of the wolves now living in remote corners of China and Mongolia share a common maternal ancestor with one 28,000-year-old eastern Beringian wolf specimen.
## Taxonomy
From the 1930s representatives of the American Museum of Natural History worked with the Alaska College and the Fairbanks Exploration Company to collect specimens uncovered by hydraulic gold dredging near Fairbanks, Alaska. Childs Frick was a research associate in paleontology with the American Museum who had been working in the Fairbanks region. In 1930, he published an article which contained a list of "extinct Pleistocene mammals of Alaska-Yukon". This list included one specimen of what he believed to be a new subspecies which he named Aenocyon dirus alaskensis – the Alaskan dire wolf. The American museum referred to these as a typical Pleistocene species in Fairbanks. However, no type specimen, description nor exact location was provided, and because dire wolves had not been found this far north this name was later proposed as nomen nudum (invalid) by the paleontologist Ronald M. Nowak. Between 1932 and 1953 twenty-eight wolf skulls were recovered from the Ester, Cripple, Engineer, and Little Eldorado creeks located north and west of Fairbanks. The skulls were thought to be 10,000 years old. The geologist and paleontologist Theodore Galusha, who helped amass the Frick collections of fossil mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, worked on the wolf skulls over a number of years and noted that, compared with modern wolves, they were "short-faced". The paleontologist Stanley John Olsen continued Galusha's work with the short-faced wolf skulls, and in 1985, based on their morphology, he classified them as Canis lupus (gray wolf).
Gray wolves were widely distributed across North American during both the Pleistocene and historic period. In 2007 Jennifer Leonard undertook a study based on the genetic, morphology, and stable isotope analyses of seventy-four Beringian wolf specimens from Alaska and the Yukon that revealed the genetic relationships, prey species, and feeding behavior of prehistoric wolves, and supported the classification of this wolf as C. lupus. The specimens were not assigned a subspecies classification by Leonard, who referred to these as "eastern Beringian wolves". A subspecies was possibly not assigned because the relationship between the Beringian wolf and the extinct European cave wolf (C. l. spelaeus) is not clear. Beringia was once an area of land that spanned the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Sea, joining Eurasia to North America. Eastern Beringia included what is today Alaska and the Yukon.
## Lineage
### Basal wolf
DNA sequences can be mapped to reveal a phylogenetic tree that represents evolutionary relationships, with each branch point representing the divergence of two lineages from a common ancestor. On this tree the term basal is used to describe a lineage that forms a branch diverging nearest to the common ancestor. Wolf genetic sequencing has found the Beringian wolf to be basal to all other gray wolves except for the modern Indian gray wolf and Himalayan wolf.
As of 2020, the oldest known intact wolf remains belongs to a mummified pup dated 56,000 YBP that was recovered from the permafrost along a small tributary of Last Chance Creek near Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. A DNA analysis showed that it belonged to the Beringian wolf clade, that the most recent common ancestor of this clade dates to 86,700–67,500 YBP, and that this clade was basal to all other wolves except for the Himalayan wolf.
### Different genetic types of gray wolf
A haplotype is a group of genes found in an organism that are inherited together from one of their parents. A haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a single mutation inherited from their common ancestor. Mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) passes along the maternal line and can date back thousands of years. A 2005 study compared the mitochondrial DNA sequences of modern wolves with those from thirty-four specimens dated between 1856 and 1915. The historic population was found to possess twice the genetic diversity of modern wolves, which suggests that the mDNA diversity of the wolves eradicated from the western US was more than twice that of the modern population. A 2007 study compared mDNA sequences of modern wolves with those from Beringian wolves. The twenty Beringian wolves yielded sixteen haplotypes that could not be found in modern wolves, compared with seven haplotypes that were found in thirty-two modern Alaskan and Yukon wolves. This finding indicates that Beringian wolves were genetically distinct from modern wolves and possessed greater genetic diversity, and that there once existed in North America a larger wolf population than today. Modern Alaskan wolves have not descended from the Beringian wolves but from Eurasian wolves which migrated into North America during the Holocene.
A 2010 study compared mDNA sequences of modern wolves with those from 24 ancient wolf specimens from western Europe dated between 44,000 and 1,200 years before present (YBP). The study found that the sequences could be allocated into two haplogroups. Haplogroups 1 and 2 could be found among wolves across Eurasia but only haplogroup 1 could be found in North America. The ancient wolf samples from western Europe differed from modern wolves by 1 to 10 mutations, and all belonged to haplogroup 2, indicating its predominance in this region for over 40,000 years, both before and after the Last Glacial Maximum. A comparison of current and past frequencies indicates that in Europe haplogroup 2 became outnumbered by haplogroup 1 over the past several thousand years, but in North America haplogroup 2 – including the Beringian wolf – became extinct and was replaced by haplogroup 1 after the Last Glacial Maximum. However, a 2016 study did not support the existence of two wolf haplogroups.
A scenario consistent with the phylogenetic, ice sheet size, and sea-level depth data is that during the Late Pleistocene the sea levels were at their lowest. A single wave of wolf colonization into North America commenced with the opening of the Bering land bridge 70,000 YBP. It ended with the closing of the Yukon corridor that ran along the division between the Laurentide Ice Sheet and the Cordilleran Ice Sheet 23,000 YBP during the Late Glacial Maximum. As wolves had been in the fossil record of North America but the genetic ancestry of modern wolves could be traced back only 80,000 years, the wolf haplotypes that were already in North America were replaced by these invaders, either through competitive displacement or through genetic admixture. The replacement in North America of a basal population of wolves by a more recent one is consistent with the findings of earlier studies.
The Beringian wolves are morphologically and genetically comparable to Late Pleistocene European wolves. One study found that ancient wolves across Eurasia had a mDNA sequence identical to six Beringian wolves (indicating a common maternal ancestor). These wolves included a wolf from the Nerubajskoe-4 Paleolithic site, near Odesa, Ukraine, dated 30,000 YBP, a wolf from the Zaskalnaya-9 Paleolithic site, in Zaskalnaya on the Crimean Peninsula, dated 28,000 YBP, and the "Altai dog" from the Altai Mountains of Central Asia dated 33,000 YBP. Another wolf from the Vypustek cave, Czech Republic, dated 44,000 YBP had a mDNA sequence identical to two Beringian wolves (indicating another common maternal ancestor). The Beringian wolves are phylogenetically associated with a distinct group of four modern European mDNA haplotypes, which indicates that both ancient and extant North American wolves originated in Eurasia. Of these four modern haplotypes, one was only found in the Italian wolf and one only found among wolves in Romania. These four haplotypes fall, along with those of the Beringian wolves, under mDNA haplogroup 2. Ancient specimens of wolves with similar skull and dentition have been found in western Beringia (northeast Siberia), the Taimyr Peninsula, the Ukraine, and Germany, where the European specimens are classified as Canis lupus spelaeus – the cave wolf. The Beringian wolves, and perhaps wolves across the mammoth steppe, were adapted to preying on now-extinct species through their unique skull and tooth morphology. This type of gray wolf that is adapted for preying on megafauna has been referred to as the Megafaunal wolf.
It is possible that a panmictic (random mating) wolf population, with gene flow spanning Eurasia and North America, existed until the closing of the ice sheets, after which the southern wolves became isolated, and only the Beringian wolf existed north of the sheets. The land bridge became inundated by the sea 10,000 YBP, and the ice sheets receded 12,000–6,000 YBP. The Beringian wolf became extinct, and the southern wolves expanded through the shrinking ice sheets to recolonize the northern part of North America. All North American wolves are descended from those that were once isolated south of the ice sheets. However, much of their diversity was later lost during the twentieth century due to eradication.
## Description
Olsen described the short-faced wolf skulls as follows:
> The proportions of the skulls of these wolves that vary do so in the rostral area. The area of the skull that is anterior to the infraorbital foramen is noticeably foreshortened and constricted laterally in several of the skulls...Dishing of the rostrum, when viewed laterally, is evident in all of the short-faced skulls identified as Canis lupus from the Fairbanks gold fields. The occipital and supraoccipital crests are noticeably diminished compared to those found in average specimens of C. lupus. The occipital overhang of these crests, a wolf characteristic, is about equal in both groups of C. lupus...Examination of a large series of recent wolf skulls from the Alaskan area did not produce individuals with the same variations as those from the Fairbanks gold fields.
The Beringian wolf was similar in size to the modern Alaskan Interior wolf (C. l. pambasileus). The largest northern wolves today have a shoulder height not exceeding 97 cm (38 in) and a body length not exceeding 180 cm (71 in). The average weight of the Yukon wolf is 43 kg (95 lb) for males and 37 kg (82 lb) for females. Individual weights for Yukon wolves can vary from 21 kg (46 lb) to 55 kg (121 lb), with one Yukon wolf weighing 79.4 kg (175 lb). The Beringian wolves were also similar in size to the Late Pleistocene wolves whose remains have been found in the La Brea Tar Pits at Los Angeles, California. These wolves, referred to as Rancho La Brea wolves (Canis lupus), were not physically different from modern gray wolves, the only differences being a broader femur bone and a longer tibial tuberosity – the insertion for the quadriceps and hamstring muscles – indicating that they had comparatively more powerful leg muscles for a fast take-off before a chase. The Beringian wolf was more robust, and possessed stronger jaws and teeth, than either Rancho La Brea or modern wolves.
During the Late Pleistocene, the more southerly occurring dire wolf (Canis dirus) had the same shape and proportions as the Yukon wolf, but the dire wolf subspecies C. dirus guildayi is estimated to have weighed on average 60 kg (130 lb), and the subspecies C. dirus dirus on average 68 kg (150 lb), with some specimens being larger. The dire wolf was heavier than the Beringian wolf and possessed a more robust skull and dentition.
## Adaptation
Adaptation is the evolutionary process by which an organism becomes better able to live in its environment. The genetic differences between wolf populations is tightly associated with their type of habitat, and wolves disperse primarily within the type of habitat that they were born into. Ecological factors such as habitat type, climate, prey specialization, and predatory competition have been shown to greatly influence gray wolf craniodental plasticity, which is an adaptation of the cranium and teeth due to the influences of the environment. In the Late Pleistocene the variations between local environments would have encouraged a range of wolf ecotypes that were genetically, morphologically, and ecologically distinct from each another. The term ecomorph is used to describes a recognizable association of the morphology of an organism or a species with their use of the environment. The Beringian wolf ecomorph shows evolutionary craniodental plasticity not seen in past nor present North American gray wolves, and was well-adapted to the megafauna-rich environment of the Late Pleistocene.
### Paleoecology
The last glacial period, commonly referred to as the "Ice Age", spanned 125,000–14,500 YBP and was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age, which occurred during the last years of the Pleistocene era. The Ice Age reached its peak during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets began advancing 33,000 YBP and reached their maximum limits 26,500 YBP. Deglaciation commenced in the Northern Hemisphere approximately 19,000 YBP and in Antarctica approximately 14,500 YBP, which is consistent with evidence that glacial meltwater was the primary source for an abrupt rise in sea level 14,500 YBP and the Bering land bridge was finally inundated around 11,000 YBP. The fossil evidence from many continents points to the extinction of large animals, termed Pleistocene megafauna, near the end of the last glaciation.
During the Ice Age a vast, cold and dry mammoth steppe stretched from the Arctic islands southwards to China, and from Spain eastwards across Eurasia and over the Bering land bridge into Alaska and the Yukon, where it was blocked by the Wisconsin glaciation. The land bridge existed because sea levels were lower due to more of the planet's water being locked up in glaciers compared with today. Therefore, the flora and fauna of Beringia were more related to those of Eurasia rather than to those of North America. In eastern Beringia from 35,000 YBP the northern Arctic areas experienced temperatures 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) warmer than today, but the southern sub-Arctic regions were 2 °C (3.5 °F) cooler. In 22,000 YBP, during the Last Glacial Maximum, the average summer temperature was 3–5 °C (5.4–9 °F) cooler than today, with variations of 2.9 °C (5.2 °F) cooler on the Seward Peninsula to 7.5 °C (13.5 °F) cooler in the Yukon.
Beringia received more moisture and intermittent maritime cloud cover from the north Pacific Ocean than the rest of the Mammoth steppe, including the dry environments on either side of it. Moisture occurred along a north–south gradient with the south receiving the most cloud cover and moisture due to the airflow from the North Pacific. This moisture supported a shrub-tundra habitat that provided an ecological refugium for plants and animals. In this Beringian refugium, eastern Beringia's vegetation included isolated pockets of larch and spruce forests with birch and alder trees. This environment supported large herbivores that were prey for Beringian wolves and their competitors. Steppe bison (Bison priscus), Yukon horse (Equus lambei), woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), and Wild yak (Bos mutus) consumed grasses, sedges, and herbaceous plants. Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and woodland muskox (Symbos cavifrons) consumed tundra plants, including lichen, fungi, and mosses.
### Prey
Isotope analysis can be used to allow researchers to make inferences about the diet of the species being studied. Two isotope analyses of bone collagen extracted from the remains of Late Pleistocene wolves found in Beringia and Belgium indicate that wolves from both areas preyed mainly on Pleistocene megafauna, which became rare at the beginning of the Holocene 12,000 years ago. The Beringian wolf preyed most often on horse and steppe bison. In the period leading up to the Last Glacial Maximum (50,000 YBP–23,000 YBP), they also ate woodland muskox, and after this time they also ate mammoth. The analysis supports the conclusion that these wolves were capable of killing and dismembering large prey.
In another stable isotope analysis, half of the Beringian wolves were found to be musk ox and caribou specialists, and the other half were either horse and bison specialists or generalists. Two wolves from the full-glacial period (23,000–18,000 YBP) were found to be mammoth specialists, but it is not clear if this was due to scavenging or predation. The analysis of other carnivore fossils from the Fairbanks region of Alaska found that mammoth was rare in the diets of the other Beringian carnivores.
A stable isotope analysis of a mummified Beringian wolf pup dated 56,000 YBP that was recovered near the Klondike river revealed that most of its diet - and therefore its mother's diet - was based on aquatic rather than animal resources. The aquatic resources was proposed to be salmon.
### Dentition
A 2007 study of Canis dentition shows that in comparison with the modern gray wolf and the Pleistocene La Brea wolf, the Beringian wolf possessed large carnassial teeth and a short, broad palate relative to the size of its skull. The row length of the Beringian wolf's premolars was longer, the P4 premolar (the upper carnassial) longer and wider, and the M1, M2, and m1 (the lower carnassial) molars longer than those found in the other two types of wolves. The Beringian wolf's short, broad rostrum increased the force of a bite made with the canine teeth while strengthening the skull against the stresses caused by struggling prey. Today, the relatively deep jaws similar to those of the Beringian wolf can be found in the bone-cracking spotted hyena and in those canids that are adapted for taking large prey. Beringian wolves possessed a craniodental morphology that was more specialized than modern gray wolves and Rancho La Brea wolves for capturing, dismembering, and consuming the bones of very large megaherbivores, having evolved this way due to the presence of megafauna. Their stronger jaws and teeth indicate a hypercarnivorous lifestyle.
An accepted sign of domestication is the presence of tooth crowding, in which the orientation and alignment of the teeth are described as touching, overlapping or being rotated. However, a 2017 study found that 18% of Beringian wolf specimens exhibit tooth crowding compared with 9% for modern wolves and 5% for domestic dogs. These specimens predate the arrival of humans and therefore there is no possibility of cross-breeding with dogs. The study indicates that tooth crowding can be a natural occurrence in some wolf ecomorphs and cannot be used to differentiate ancient wolves from early dogs.
### Tooth breakage
Tooth breakage is related to a carnivore's behavior. The mandibles of canids are buttressed behind the carnassial teeth to enable them to crack bones with their post-carnassial teeth (molars M2 and M3). A study found that the modern gray wolf possesses greater buttressing when compared to all other extant canids and the extinct dire wolf. This indicates that the gray wolf is better adapted for cracking bone than other canids. In comparison to extant North American gray wolves, Beringian wolves included many more individuals with moderately to heavily worn teeth and with a significantly greater number of broken teeth. The frequencies of fracture in wolves ranged from a minimum of 2% found in the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf (Canis lupus irremotus) up to a maximum of 11% found in Beringian wolves. The distribution of fractures across the tooth row also differs, with Beringian wolves having much higher frequencies of fracture for incisors, carnassials, and molars. A similar pattern was observed in spotted hyenas, suggesting that increased incisor and carnassial fracture reflects habitual bone consumption because bones are gnawed with the incisors and then cracked with the carnassials and molars. The risk of tooth fracture is also higher when taking and consuming large prey.
### Competitors
In addition to the Beringian wolf, other Beringian carnivores included the Eurasian cave lion (Panthera spelaea), scimitar-toothed cat (Homotherium serum), giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), and the omnivorous brown bear (Ursus arctos). Beringian wolves would have faced competition for the carcasses of large herbivores from the formidable giant short-faced bear, a scavenger. Additionally, humans had reached the Bluefish Caves in the Yukon Territory by 24,000 YBP, with cutmarks being found there on specimens of Yukon horse, steppe bison, caribou (Rangifer tarandus), wapiti (Cervus canadensis), and Dall sheep (Ovis dalli).
A 1993 study proposed that the higher frequency of tooth breakage among Pleistocene carnivores compared with living carnivores was not the result of hunting larger game, something that might be assumed from the larger size of the former. When there is low prey availability, the competition between carnivores increases, causing them to eat faster and consume more bone, leading to tooth breakage. Compared to modern wolves, the high frequency of tooth fracture in Beringian wolves indicates higher carcass consumption due to higher carnivore density and increased competition. This proposal was challenged in 2019, when a survey of modern wolf behavior over the past 30 years showed that when there was less prey available, the rates of tooth fracture more than doubled. This suggests that large Pleistocene carnivores experienced more periods of limited food availability when compared with their modern counterparts.
## Range
The remains of Beringian wolves have been found in Alaska and as far eastward as the Yukon in Canada. Specimens that have been identified by their skull morphology and limb morphology to be Beringian wolves have been found in the Natural Trap Cave at the base of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, United States. These were radiocarbon dated to between 25,800 and 14,300 YBP, and this location is directly south of what would at that time have been the division between the Laurentide Ice Sheet and the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. This suggests that a temporary channel existed between the glaciers from 25,800 YBP until the advance of the ice sheets 16,000–13,000 YBP. The migration of the Beringian wolf southwards is assumed to have been the result of pursuing prey species, as this cave also contained specimens of steppe bison that had migrated from Beringia and would have been prey for wolves, and musk ox that is known to be an important prey species of the Beringian wolf. Dire wolves were absent north of 42°N latitude in the Late Pleistocene; therefore, this region would have been available for Beringian wolves to expand southwards. There is no evidence of expansion beyond this region.
## Extinction
Extinction is the result of the elimination of the geographic range of a species with a reduction of its population size down to zero. The factors that affect biogeographic range and population size include competition, predator-prey interactions, variables of the physical environment, and chance events.
### Phenotype is extinct
A phenotype is any observable and measurable characteristic of an organism and includes any morphological, behavioral, and physiological traits, with these characteristics being influenced by genes and the environment. The mammoth steppe lasted for 100,000 years without change until it came to an end around 12,000 years ago. The American megafaunal extinction event occurred 12,700 YBP when 90 genera of mammals weighing over 44 kilograms (97 lb) became extinct. The extinction of the large carnivores and scavengers is thought to have been caused by the extinction of the megaherbivore prey upon which they depended. The cause of the extinction of this megafauna is debated but has been attributed to the impact of climate change, competition with other species, including humans, or a combination of both factors. For those mammals with modern representatives, ancient DNA and radiocarbon data indicate that the local genetic populations were replaced by others from within the same species or by others of the same genus.
Postglacial environmental change throughout eastern Beringia brought about wholesale changes in vegetation, the regional extinction of much of the megafauna, and the entrance of Homo sapiens. The large Late Pleistocene carnivores that were more carnivorous than their competitors faced greater vulnerability to extinction. The Beringian cave lion, saber-toothed cat, and short-faced bear went extinct at the same time as their large megafaunal prey. The omnivorous coyote, American black bear, brown bear, puma and bobcat survived. Both the Beringian wolf and the dire wolf went extinct in North America, leaving only the less carnivorous and more gracile form of the wolf to thrive. One extinction theory holds that the Beringian wolf was outcompeted and replaced by the ancestor of the modern gray wolf.
The radiocarbon dating of the skeletal remains from 56 Beringian wolves showed a continuous population from over 50,800 YBP until 12,500 YBP, followed by one wolf dated at 7,600 YBP. This indicates that their population was in decline after 12,500 YBP, although megafaunal prey was still available in this region until 10,500 YBP. The timing of this latter specimen is supported by the recovery of mammoth and horse DNA from sediments dated 10,500 YBP–7,600 YBP from the interior of Alaska, and steppe bison dated 5,400 YBP from the Yukon. The timing for the extinction of horses in North America and the minimum population size for North American bison coincide with the extinction of an entire wolf haplogroup in North America, indicating that the disappearance of their prey caused the extinction of this wolf ecomorph. This resulted in a significant loss of phenotypic and genetic diversity within the species.
### Haplotype is not extinct
There are parts of Central Eurasia where the environment is considered to be stable over the past 40,000 years. In 2016 a study compared mDNA sequences of ancient wolf specimens with those from modern wolves, including specimens from the remote regions of North America, Russia, and China. One ancient haplotype that had once existed in both Alaska (Eastern Beringia 28,000 YBP) and Russia (Medvezya "Bear" Cave, Pechora area, Northern Urals 18,000 YBP) was shared by modern wolves found living in Mongolia and China (indicating a common maternal ancestor). The study found that the genetic diversity of past wolves was lost at the beginning of the Holocene in Alaska, Siberia, and Europe, and that there is limited overlap with modern wolves. The study did not support two wolf haplogroups that had been proposed by earlier studies. For the ancient wolves of North America, instead of an extinction/replacement model indicated by other studies, this study found substantial evidence of a population bottleneck (reduction) in which the ancient wolf diversity was almost lost at the beginning of the Holocene. In Eurasia, the loss of many ancient lineages cannot be simply explained and appears to have been slow across time with reasons unclear.
### Descendants
In 2021, an mDNA analysis of modern and extinct North American wolf-like canines indicates that the Beringian wolf was the ancestor of the southern wolf clade, which includes the Mexican wolf and the extinct Great Plains wolf. The Mexican wolf is the most ancestral of the gray wolves that live in North America today. The modern coyote appeared around 10,000 years ago. The most genetically basal coyote mDNA clade pre-dates the Late Glacial Maximum and is a haplotype that can only be found in the Eastern wolf. This implies that the large, wolf-like Pleistocene coyote was the ancestor of the Eastern wolf. Further, another ancient haplotype detected in the Eastern wolf can be found only in the Mexican wolf. The study proposes that Pleistocene coyote and Beringian wolf admixture led to the Eastern wolf long before the arrival of the modern coyote and the modern wolf.
|
2,677,123 |
Echo parakeet
| 1,164,959,667 |
Species of parrot endemic to Mauritius
|
[
"Birds described in 1783",
"Birds of Mauritius",
"Birds of Réunion",
"Endemic fauna of Mauritius",
"Parrots of Africa",
"Psittacula",
"Taxa named by Pieter Boddaert",
"Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN"
] |
The echo parakeet (Psittacula eques) is a species of parrot endemic to the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and formerly Réunion. It is the only living native parrot of the Mascarene Islands; all others have become extinct due to human activity. Two subspecies have been recognised, the extinct Réunion parakeet (for a long time known only from descriptions and illustrations) and the living echo parakeet, sometimes known as the Mauritius parakeet. The relationship between the two populations was historically unclear, but a 2015 DNA study determined them to be subspecies of the same species by comparing the DNA of echo parakeets with a single skin thought to be from a Réunion parakeet, but it has also been suggested they did not constitute different subspecies. As it was named first, the binomial name of the Réunion parakeet is used for the species; the Réunion subspecies thereby became P. eques eques, while the Mauritius subspecies became P. eques echo. Their closest relative was the extinct Newton's parakeet of Rodrigues, and the three are grouped among the subspecies of the rose-ringed parakeet (from which they diverged) of Asia and Africa.
The echo parakeet is 34–42 cm (13–17 in) long, weighs 167–193 g (5.9–6.8 oz), and its wingspan is 49–54 cm (19–21 in). It is generally green (the female is darker overall) and has two collars on the neck; the male has one black and one pink collar, and the female has one green and one indistinct black collar. The upper bill of the male is red and the lower blackish brown; the female's upper bill is black. The skin around the eyes is orange and the feet are grey. Juveniles have a red-orange bill, which turns black after they fledge, and immature birds are similar to the female. The Réunion parakeet had a complete pink collar around the neck, whereas it tapers out at the back in the Mauritius subspecies. The related rose-ringed parakeet which has been introduced to Mauritius is similar, though slightly different in colouration and smaller. The echo parakeet has a wide range of vocalisations, the most common sounding like "chaa-chaa, chaa-chaa".
As the species is limited to forests with native vegetation, it is largely restricted to the Black River Gorges National Park in the southwest of Mauritius. It is arboreal and keeps to the canopy, where it feeds and rests. It nests in natural cavities in old trees, and clutches usually consist of two to four white eggs. The female incubates the eggs, while the male feeds her, and the young are brooded by the female. Not all pairs are strictly monogamous, as breeding between females and "auxiliary males" is known to occur. The echo parakeet mainly feeds on the fruits and leaves of native plants, though it has been observed to feed on introduced plants. The Réunion parakeet probably went extinct due to hunting and deforestation, and was last reported in 1732. The echo parakeet was also hunted by early visitors to Mauritius and due to destruction and alteration of its native habitat, its numbers declined throughout the 20th century, reaching as few as eight to 12 in the 1980s, when it was referred to as "the world's rarest parrot". An intensive effort of captive breeding beginning in the 1990s saved the bird from extinction; the species was downgraded from critically endangered to endangered in 2007, and the population had reached 750 birds by 2019, whereafter it was classified as vulnerable.
## Taxonomy
Green parakeets were mentioned in the accounts of early travelers to the Mascarene Islands of Réunion and Mauritius. They were first recorded on Réunion in 1674 by the French traveler Sieur Dubois, and on Mauritius in 1732 by the French engineer Jean-François Charpentier de Cossigny. The green parakeets of Réunion were referred to as perruche à double collier ("double-collared parakeet") by the French naturalists Mathurin Jacques Brisson, in 1760, Comte de Buffon, in 1770–1783, and François Levaillant, in 1801–1805, who described them from specimens that reached France. In 1783, the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the scientific name Psittacus eques, based on a plate by the French artist François-Nicolas Martinet, which accompanied Buffon's account of the Réunion bird in his work Histoire Naturelle. The specific name eques is Latin for "horseman", and refers to the military colours of a French cavalryman. Martinet's plate was drawn after a specimen that was part of the collection in the Cabinet Aubry in Paris, and the plate is the type illustration. Whether the contemporary illustrations were based on live or stuffed specimens is unknown; though as all show different poses, this suggests several specimens existed if they were mounted. Neither is it clear if the descriptions from France were based on different or the same imported specimens nor how many reached Europe. Levaillant knew of two specimens, and as many as five may have existed.
The green parakeets of Mauritius and Réunion were usually treated together in historical literature, and their histories have consequently been muddled. In 1822, the British ornithologist John Latham listed the parakeet of Réunion (and "other parts of the same latitude") as a variety of the rose-ringed parakeet, which he referred to as Psittica torquata, based on a name coined by Brisson. In 1876, the British ornithologists and brothers Alfred and Edward Newton pointed out that the avifauna of Réunion and Mauritius were generally distinct from each other, and that this might, therefore, also be true of the parakeets. They suggested the new name Palaeornis echo for the Mauritian species (referring to Echo, a nymph in Greek mythology), while noting that it was very similar to the by-then extinct Réunion species (which retained the name Palaeornis eques). The Italian ornithologist Tommaso Salvadori united the two again in 1891, while giving only Mauritius as the habitat. In 1907, British zoologist Walter Rothschild supported the separation of the two species on account of the other birds of Réunion and Mauritius being distinct, while noting that how they differed was unknown. The American ornithologist James L. Peters listed the parakeet of Mauritius as a subspecies of the rose-ringed parakeet (Psittacula krameri) in 1937; P. k. echo. He thereby replaced the genus name Palaeornis with Psittacula, wherein he also classified other extant parakeets of Asia and Africa. In 1967, the American ornithologist James Greenway considered the parakeets of both Mauritius and Réunion to be subspecies of the rose-ringed parakeet, and found it probable that they differed from each other, unless the birds on Réunion had simply been introduced, though how was unknown.
In a 1987 book about Mascarene birds, the British ecologist Anthony S. Cheke stated that the parakeets of Mauritius and Réunion apparently belonged to the same species. In the same publication (a chapter which was one of the few studies of echo parakeet biology), British conservation biologist Carl G. Jones noted that the parakeets of the western Indian Ocean were probably derived from Indian Alexandrine parakeets (P. eupatria), losing the characteristics of that bird the farther they dispersed. Jones also reported an old parakeet skin, possibly from Réunion, in the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (a study skin catalogued as specimen NMS.Z 1929.186.2). Originally part of the collection of the French taxidermist Louis Dufresne, it was bought by the University Museum of Edinburgh (which later became the Royal Museum) in 1819, along with the rest of his natural-history collection. The specimen's original label referred specifically to Levaillant's plate of the "perruche a double collier", illustrated by the French artist Jacques Barraband, which was meant to depict the parakeet of Réunion. Jones cautioned that the collection data of such early specimens may not always be reliable, and that the skin could possibly have come from Mauritius, instead. Whether the Edinburgh skin was the basis of Martinet's type illustration is unknown. Jones did not find the skin particularly different from those of living echo parakeets (or the old French descriptions), based on examination of photographs. He agreed with previous authors that the parakeets of Mauritius and Réunion belonged to the same species (P. eques, the oldest name), but that they should be kept separate at the subspecific level (as P. eques eques and P. eques echo), due to lack of further information about the extinct bird.
The living parakeet of Mauritius has been referred to by the English common name "echo parakeet" since the 1970s, based on the scientific name, and has also been called the Mauritius parakeet. The local Mauritian name is cateau vert, kato, or katover (derived from French). The Réunion population has been referred to as the Réunion parakeet and the Réunion ring-necked parakeet, but has also been subsumed under the common name of the echo parakeet.
### Evolution
In 2004, British geneticist Jim J. Groombridge and colleagues examined the DNA of Psittacula parakeets to determine their evolutionary relationships, and found that the echo parakeet had diverged from the Indian subspecies of rose-ringed parakeet (P. k. borealis) rather than the African subspecies (P. k. krameri). They found that the echo parakeet diverged relatively recently compared to other Psittacula species, between 0.7 and 2.0 million years ago, which appears to coincide with volcanic inactivity on Mauritius between 0.6 and 2.1 million years ago. The ancestors of the echo parakeet may, therefore, have migrated southwards from India across the Indian Ocean, and arrived at the time the island was formed. The authors cautioned that their interpretations were limited by the absence of DNA from the extinct Seychelles parakeet (P. wardi) and Newton's parakeet (P. exsul) from other Indian Ocean islands.
In 2007, based on morphological evidence, British palaeontologist Julian P. Hume found the echo parakeet to be more closely related to the Alexandrine parakeet than to the rose-ringed parakeet. He noted that the skeletal anatomy of the echo parakeet was mainly known from fossil bones, as it was the Mauritian parrot most commonly found in cave deposits, and that skeletons are rare in museum collections. Hume pointed out that many birds endemic to the Mascarene Islands are derived from South Asian ancestors, and that a South Asian provenance was probable for the parrots, as well. Sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene, so species island hopping to the isolated islands was possible. In spite of most mascarene parrots being poorly known, fossil remains show that they shared features such as enlarged heads and jaws, reduced pectoral elements, and robust leg elements. Hume suggested they shared a common origin within the Psittaculini radiation, based on morphological features and the fact that Psittacula parrots have managed to colonise many isolated islands in the Indian Ocean. In 2008, Cheke and Hume suggested that this group may have invaded the area several times, as many of the species were so specialised that they may have diverged on hot spot islands before the Mascarenes emerged from the sea.
A 2011 DNA study by British biologist Samit Kundu and colleagues found the echo parakeet samples grouped between two subspecies of the rose-ringed parakeet, P. k. krameri and P. k. borealis. They suggested that since some of the Indian Ocean island species had diverged early within their clades, including the echo parakeet within P. krameri, Africa and Asia may have been colonised from there rather than the other way around. They found the echo parakeet to have diverged between 3.7 and 6.8 million years ago, which, if correct, could imply that speciation had occurred before the formation of Mauritius. These researchers were unable to extract DNA from the Edinburgh specimen.
In 2015, British geneticist Hazel Jackson and colleagues managed to obtain DNA from a toe pad of the Edinburgh specimen and compare it with specimens from Mauritius. They found that within the P. krameri clade, Newton's parakeet from Rodrigues was ancestral to the Mauritius and Réunion parakeets, diverging from them 3.82 million years ago and that the latter two had diverged just 0.61 million years ago, differing by 0.2% from each other. The researchers concluded that the low level of divergence between the Mauritius and Réunion populations was consistent with them being distinct at the subspecific level. The following cladogram shows the phylogenetic position of the Mauritius and Réunion subspecies, according to Jackson and colleagues, 2015:
Cheke and the Dutch ornithologist Justin J. F. J. Jansen stated in 2016 that the Edinburgh specimen has no clear provenance information, and that it may have been collected from Mauritius (only one of Dufresne's other bird specimens was from Réunion, while several were from Mauritius). They noted that, unlike modern Mauritian specimens, the pink neck ring of the Edinburgh specimen continued uninterrupted around the back of the neck, similar to what Buffon and Levaillant described, but that from where the specimen Levaillant described was, was unclear. They stated that the genetic differences between the specimens were not necessarily subspecific, but because the Mauritian specimens were much more recent than the Edinburgh specimen, the similarity of the former specimens could have been due to a genetic bottleneck, resulting from a severe decline of the Mauritian population in the 19th century. They concluded that the default assumption should be that it came from Réunion. They also called attention to a usually overlooked, unlabelled sketch from around 1770 by French artist Paul Philippe Sanguin de Jossigny of a ring-necked parakeet with a collar encircling the neck, which they thought could have been from either island. In 2017, Hume agreed that the Edinburgh specimen could have come from Mauritius. He stated that the genetic differences could be due to variation within the population there, and pointed out that some other bird species migrate between Mauritius and Réunion.
Also in 2017, Australian ornithologist Joseph M. Forshaw agreed that the Mauritius and Réunion populations were subspecifically distinct and that the Edinburgh specimen was from Réunion, and should be designated the neotype of P. eques. The following year, Jones and colleagues, including authors of the DNA studies, Hume, and Forshaw, supported the identification of the Edinburgh specimen as a Réunion parakeet and the subspecific differentiation between the populations. They found that the specimen differed from all examined Mauritius specimens in having a complete pink collar, instead of having a gap at the back of the neck, a feature emphasised by Brisson, Buffon, and Levaillant in their descriptions of the Réunion parakeet, but not obvious in the photographs seen by Jones in the 1980s. Since populations on islands usually have lower genetic diversity than those on continents, they stated that the low level of differentiation between the Mauritius and Réunion specimens would be expected. They found it possible that Jossigny's drawing showed a Réunion parakeet.
In 2018, the American ornithologist Kaiya L. Provost and colleagues found the Mascarene parrot (Mascarinus mascarinus) and Tanygnathus species to group within Psittacula, making that genus paraphyletic (an unnatural grouping), and stated this argued for breaking up the latter genus. To solve the issue, the German ornithologist Michael P. Braun and colleagues proposed in 2019 that Psittacula should be split into multiple genera. They placed the echo parakeet in the new genus Alexandrinus, along with its closest relatives, Newton's parakeet and the rose-ringed parakeet.
In 2020, Jansen and Cheke pointed out that Marinet's plate that serves as the type illustration of P. eques differs considerably in colouration between copies (some have yellow on the upper breast while others do not, for example). They concluded that these were hand-coloured by different people after an unidentified master plate by Martinet, but since it cannot be established which of the copies that accurately represents the specimen they depicted, Jansen and Cheke found it safer to rely on the description by Brisson. In 2021, Jansen and Cheke found that the variation in plumage seen in males in Mauritius is wide enough to encompass that known from the descriptions, illustrations and skin from Réunion. They therefore concluded that the two populations belonged to a single species with no subspecies. They also found that there was no evidence to reliably confirm what island the Edinburgh skin was collected from, and that since it was unknown to the French encyclopaedists that echo parakeets also lived on Mauritius, birds matching their descriptions were assigned to Réunion by default.
## Description
The echo parakeet is 34–42 cm (13–17 in) long and weighs 167–193 g (5.9–6.8 oz), which makes it smaller than the other, now extinct, Mauritian parrots. The wingspan is 49–54 cm (19–21 in), each wing is 177–190 mm (7.0–7.5 in) long, the tail is 164–200 mm (6.5–7.9 in), the culmen is 21–23 mm (0.83–0.91 in), and the tarsus is 20–22 mm (0.79–0.87 in). The female is somewhat smaller than the male on average. It is generally green, with a darker back and yellowish underside. The male is lighter and the female darker overall. It has two ring collars on the neck, which are incomplete, failing to meet at the back. The male has one black and one pink collar, which appears crescent shaped in side view, and has blue suffusion above it. The female has an indistinct black collar and a green collar, which becomes dark green across the cheeks and yellow-green at the back of the neck. The male has a black, narrow line running from the cere to the eye. The outer primary feathers of some males are tinged with blue. The upper bill of the adult male is bright red, the lower blackish brown, while the upper bill of the female is dark, almost black. The iris is yellow, varying from pale to greenish, but individuals with pink or white irides have also been noted. The skin around the eyes is orange, and the feet are grey, varying from greenish to blackish. The bill of the juvenile is red-orange, similar to that of the adult male, until two to three months after it fledges, when it changes to black, similar to that of the adult female. The immature is similar to the female.
Based on the single known specimen and contemporary accounts, it is believed the male of the extinct Réunion subspecies was generally similar to that of Mauritius, but differed in being slightly larger, each wing being 193 mm (7.6 in) long and the culmen 24.5 mm (0.96 in). The pink collar entirely encircled its neck, whereas it tapers out and leaves a gap at the back of the neck in the Mauritius subspecies. The Réunion subspecies also appears to have had darker lower parts. The echo parakeet is very similar to the related rose-ringed parakeet (which has been introduced to Mauritius, making confusion possible), though the green plumage of the former is darker and richer, its nape has a bluish wash, and its tail is greener above, and shorter. The female is similar to that of the rose-ringed parakeet though darker, and more emerald green. Unlike the echo parakeet, the rose-ringed parakeet does not display sexual dimorphism in beak colour. The echo parakeet is also stockier, and about 25% larger in body size and weight than the rose-ringed parakeet. The echo parakeet has comparatively shorter, broader, and more rounded wings than other Psittacula species, as well as a shorter and broader tail.
### Vocalisations
The echo parakeet has a wide range of vocalisations, and are most vocal before roosting in the evening. They vocalise all year, but more during the breeding season. The most common vocalisation is the contact call, a low, nasal squawk sounding like "chaa-chaa, chaa-chaa" (also transliterated as "chaa-choa" or "kaah"), which is emitted singly or in a fast series, about twice a second. The flight call is very similar to the contact call. There is a higher pitched excitement or alarm call which sounds like "chee-chee-chee-chee" three or four times a second, usually emitted during flight with shallow, rapid wing beats. When disturbed or frightened, it may give a short, sharp "ark" call. It emits more melodious chirrups and whistles while perched. A deep, quiet "werr-werr" and a "prr-rr-rr" purr has also been heard on two occasions from a female landing in a tree. A courtship call can be heard between September and December. They also "growl" when angry, in a similar way to other parrots. The voice of the echo parakeet is very different from that of the rose-ringed parakeet, which has higher, faster, and more "excited" sounding vocalisations, and their calls cannot be confused.
## Habitat and distribution
The echo parakeet is now restricted to forested areas of Mauritius with native vegetation, which covers less than 2% of Mauritius as of 2017, namely the Black River Gorges National Park in the southwest. They occupy only about 40 square kilometres (15 sq mi), and use about half of this area regularly. Within the park, there are four northern populations (in the Black River Gorges) and two southern (in Bel Ombre forest). In the upland forest, they prefer large, mature trees such as Canarium paniculatum, Syzygium contractum, Mimusops maxima, Labourdonnaisia sp. Other important feeding areas include lowland, intermediate and scrub forests. There are annual fluctuations in how often echo parakeets are seen in their habitats, which reflect population density. While the distribution of the species is tied to native forests, its numbers and distribution decreasing as these are destroyed, several early accounts indicate its distribution was always thin. The echo parakeet also formerly occurred in heavily degraded areas, which were therefore only lightly wooded. Though now sedentary, the parakeet may have moved between areas seasonally in search for food; if cyclones had stripped trees of fruits, for example.
A 2012 genetic study by the British zoologist Claire Raisin and colleagues showed that before the programme of captive breeding, echo parakeets from the more isolated Bel Ombre regions in the southern part of Black River Gorges National Park were genetically different from the rest of the population, but that the genetic diversity was dispersed across the bird's range after the period of intense managing, when birds were moved between areas. The genetic differentiation between the populations may originally have been due to forest clearing, which isolated them from each other.
## Behaviour and ecology
The echo parakeet is arboreal (tree dwelling) and keeps to the canopy of the forest when it feeds and rests. It usually moves around alone or in small groups and is less gregarious than the rose-ringed parakeet. When flying, the echo parakeet is good at exploiting updraughts while traversing ridges and flying over cliffs. It flies more slowly than the rose-ringed parakeet and has slower wing beats. It is adept at flying, though only for short distances, and is able to manoeuvre rapidly between the openings of the canopy. Like other Mauritian birds, echo parakeets are tame, more so during winter when food is scarce; they become more wary during the summer, when food is more readily available, and it becomes more difficult for humans to approach the birds. Breeding birds in nests are not disturbed by nearby cars and are not alarmed when their nests are examined. Echo parakeets mostly moult their feathers during summer, with variation in timing between individual birds and years. The body starts moulting in late winter, continuing for months, and the primary moult starts between November and January, well before the tail moults in March or April. Most of the echo parakeets have fully moulted by the end of June. The longevity of the species is unknown, but it can reach at least eight years.
The activity patterns of the echo parakeet are similar to those of other Psittacula parakeets in most respects. They mainly forage during mid-morning and mid- and late afternoon, and bad weather does not disrupt this activity. Groups rest and preen on large trees during the middle of the day (and occasionally at other times); these trees are usually not used for roosting. They are most active and vocal during the afternoon when they travel to and from feeding areas. They are very excitable during the hour before dusk (the time they roost), when they fly around in groups calling frequently, and briefly perch in treetops, before circling around again. They usually roost in sheltered areas on hillsides and ravines, preferring trees with dense foliage (such as Eugenia, Erythroxylum, or Labourdonnaisia), where they perch close to the trunks or in cavities. The number of birds recorded in individual roosting sites ranges from one to eleven. The birds usually leave a roosting site quietly in the morning, though some have been observed staying for several more hours.
### Breeding
The breeding behaviour of the echo parakeet is similar to that of other Psittacula parakeets, most of which can breed by the time they are two years old. As in their relatives, the neck and head patterns of the echo parakeet are displayed during courtship and are therefore sexually selected, with variation and intensity of the colours probably signifying fitness. The pink collars are raised (and made more conspicuous) during displays of dominance, while the iris is dilated and contracted. The breeding season usually begins in August or September, and nest-election occurs early during the season. The birds nest in natural cavities, often in large, old native trees, such as Calophyllum, Canarium, Mimusops, and Sideroxylon, at least 10 m (33 ft) above the ground, and not exposed to the south east, which is affected by trade winds. The cavities are usually in horizontal branches (rather than vertical trunks), are at least 50 cm (20 in) deep, 20 cm (8 in) wide, and their entrance holes are 10–15 cm (4–6 in) in diameter. Flooding often occurs, and some holes have overhangs or other features that prevent or minimise it.
Pair maintenance behaviour is demonstrated throughout the year, the male usually being assertive, and includes regurgitatory feeding, billing, and the male preening the feathers of the female's nape. Copulation has been observed in September and October, and the sequence that leads up to it is similar to that of the rose-ringed and Alexandrine parakeets. The male wipes his beak before approaching the female, walks slowly towards her, and preens her nape. The female squats horizontally, and is then mounted by the male, who repeatedly raises and drops his head during copulation. The mounting may last up to five minutes, whereafter the male may feed the female and the pair preen each other.
Eggs are laid between August and October, mostly in late September and early October, and late clutches may be due to repeated laying. Clutch size has been reported as normally two to four. The eggs are typical of parrots, rounded and white, measuring around 32.2 by 26.8 mm (1.27 by 1.06 in), and weighing about 11.4 g (0.40 oz). Incubation takes about 21–25 days and is done entirely by the female, as in related species. During this time, the female is fed four or five times a day by the male, approximately once every two hours, outside the nest hole. The young are brooded by the female, and are left unattended most of the day from two weeks after hatching. Nestlings about two weeks old were observed being fed by a parent with intervals of up to 79 minutes. It is unclear if one or both parents feed the young, but, as in other parrots, the female probably stays with them for the first few days while fed by the male, and when the young are homeothermic (have a stable body temperature), both take care of and feed the nestlings.
Two of the young are normally raised. Chicks develop slowly, with dark feather tracts visible on the back and primary quills after five days. The tracts are more visible after ten days when down tips breakthrough, their eyes are slit-like as they begin to open, and the legs turn from pinkish to pale grey. The eyes are almost fully open after fifteen days, and the chicks have a fine covering of greenish-grey down on most of the body, the secondary quills emerge, and feather tracts appear on the crown of the head. They are completely covered by greenish down after twenty days, and after thirty days the wing and tail feathers emerge. After forty days, all contour, wing, and tail feathers are well developed, but down is still retained on the lower parts and flanks. When nestlings are developed enough, they can threaten nest intruders with loud growls and bites but will retreat into nooks and stay still if the intruder persists. After fifty days, the chicks are rather active, flapping their wings and venturing near the entrance hole. Chicks fledge after 50–60 days, between late October and February, and fledglings remain near the nest entrance sometime after leaving. They accompany their parents to forage as soon as they can fly, and remain with them and are fed for two to three months after leaving the nest. The young have been observed imitating adults which were carefully selecting fruits, and have been observed being fed by adults as late as March.
Additional adult male echo parakeets acting as "helpers" by feeding the nesting female and the nestlings (usually rebuffed by the nesting pair, but sometimes disrupting nesting by making the pair leave their nest) were speculated to be correlated with a skewed sex ratio in the 1980s. The "helpers" were thought to be perhaps a recent phenomenon, possibly due to the destruction of foraging areas, and many non-breeding birds consequently being displaced to other areas, creating an unsustainable excess in the populations there. In the late 1990s, it was reported that the echo parakeet is perhaps not monogamous, but has a tendency for polyandry, where breeding groups consist of multiple males and a single female (though monogamous pairs were also observed). It was also shown that the sex ratio in the population is consistently biased towards males according to historical counts. A 2008 genetic study by the British biologists Tiawanna D. Taylor and David T. Parkin showed that the sex ratio was equal among echo parakeet chicks and embryos and that the male-biased sex ratio among adults is therefore not due to, for example, inbreeding. A preliminary 2009 genetic study by Taylor and Parkin showed that matings of "auxiliary males" with the female of a breeding pair do occur, and that the echo parakeet is therefore not strictly monogamous. Such a mating system is beneficial to the conservation of the species, as it increases genetic diversity, but it is unclear why such breeding groups form.
### Diet and feeding
The echo parakeet mainly feeds on native Mauritian plants, though small amounts of introduced plants are also eaten, and eats parts such as fruits (53%), leaves (31%), flowers (12%), buds, young shoots, seeds, twigs, and bark or sap (4%). It feeds in the trees and rarely or never lands on the ground, and returns to favoured trees, which have been used for generations in some cases. According to one study, more than 25% of the plant species taken consisted of Calophyllum tacamahaca, Canarium paniculatum, Tabernaemontana mauritiana, Diospyros sp., Erythrospermum monticolum, Eugenia sp., Labourdonnaisia sp., Mimusops maxima, Mimusops petiolaris, Nuxia verticillata and Protium obtusifolium. Some species, such as Calophyllum parviflorum, are more important than others, while fruits of Syzygium contractum and Sideroxylon cinereum were often ignored.
Echo parakeets never forage on the ground, in contrast to the rose-ringed parakeet, and may have been pushed into an arboreal niche because other parrots of Mauritius were already adapted for ground feeding. Species that are now rare may have been favoured in the past, such as Olax psittacorum, known as bois perroquets (parakeet trees), perhaps because the birds were fond of it. Parakeets must have had an impact on seed production of favoured plants in the past; some fruits have a very hard epicarp (the tough outer skin) resistant to parrots, which may have evolved for protection. Some species have a hard epicarp surrounded by a fleshy pericarp which is eaten by echo parakeets, after which they reject the former, which probably contributes to seed dispersal. In 1987, it was reported that the fruits of the very common, introduced, Psidium cattleianum (commonly known as strawberry guava) were not taken by the echo parakeet, but in 1998, it was reported that the birds were increasingly utilising this and other exotic plants, including Averrhoa carambola (star fruit), Ligustrum robustum (privet), and Solanum auriculatum (wild apple).
The echo parakeet forages in different areas in different seasons, and dwarf forest and scrubland are important throughout the year, the birds feeding on different species as edible parts become available. However, the fruiting of many plants is irregular and some species have become rare, and food is therefore not always seasonally available. When fruits are scarce during winter and early spring, the birds eat more leaves and spend more time foraging. The birds wander in search for food, sometimes several kilometres to and from an area. The echo parakeet forages alone or in small groups with individuals ignoring each other, but since so few birds used to exist, it has been hard to estimate how social the species is. Pairs stay loosely associated throughout the year and forage together. They mainly forage during the morning and late afternoon, feeding activity diminishing during harsh weather.
Echo parakeets are silent when they clamber around feeding. They remove fruits and flowers with their bills, sometimes hanging upside down to reach, the food is then held by a foot while eaten. When feeding on Tabernaemontana mauritiana leaves, the parakeets often scoop out the mesophyll (internal spongy tissue) while leaving the cellulose, whereafter the petiole and midrib are discarded. Many leaves and fruits are only partially eaten or sampled before being discarded. The parakeets may masticate a bite for several minutes before swallowing it.
### Aggression and competition
Psittacula parakeets employ mobbing behaviour with groups clustering together to noisily scold animals perceived as threatening. Echo parakeets may mob during territorial conflicts, or they may divert their flight to chase other birds. Echo parakeets have been observed chasing rose-ringed parakeets, Mauritius kestrels (Falco punctatus), white-tailed tropicbirds (Phaethon lepturus), and megabats. Mauritius kestrels are mobbed regularly by echo parakeets joining and flying around the kestrel together, and landing in surrounding trees while emitting alarm calls. They may also respond to introduced crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis) with loud calls, though they have also been observed to ignore nearby foraging monkeys. They compete for food with the monkeys, and their diet overlaps with that of the pink pigeon (Nesoenas mayeri), the Mauritius bulbul (Hypsipetes olivaceus), and the Mauritian flying fox (Pteropus niger).
The echo parakeet is only territorial during the breeding season and defends the area around the nest tree. Their territoriality is inconsistent and not vigorous, and birds are in loose association with their breeding areas outside the season. They may direct their territorial aggression at both conspecifics and other species, many encounters being subtle and hard to recognise. Both sexes take part in defence before laying, but the male takes a dominant role afterwards. They first react by calling, which may be enough to discourage an intruder, but if the interaction becomes more intense, one or both members of the pair will approach the intruder by cautiously jumping between tree limbs, and will circle slowly around the trees near the nest, as the intruder gets closer. Fights are rare, although on one occasion two males were observed fighting in low bushes and then on the ground; one male broke free and flew away, and neither appeared to be seriously injured.
The rose-ringed parakeet (of the subspecies P. k. borealis) was introduced to Mauritius around 1886 and is now flourishing there. Its population is estimated at 10,000 birds and it is widespread across Mauritius. Closely related to the echo parakeet and physically similar, though no hybrids have been recorded, they compete for nest-sites and probably some food, but are usually passive towards each other outside the breeding season; they have been seen pursuing each other as well as flying together and feeding in the same trees. While the rose-ringed parakeet has much broader feeding requirements (and may be ecologically separated), it may have excluded the echo parakeet from expanding and adjusting its feeding ecology to the changing environment by entirely occupying this more generalised niche. The most serious form of competition between the echo parakeet and the rose-ringed parakeet is over nest-sites; the introduced species often takes over cavities used by the native parakeets. Echo parakeets are reportedly easily frustrated when defending their nest-territories and have been seen relinquishing them without physically defending them. Two out of seven echo parakeet nest cavities were taken over by rose-ringed parakeets in 1974, and only rose-ringed parakeets were nesting in the Macabé Ridge area for several years.
## Status
### Decline
There are believed to have been seven endemic Mascarene parrot species; all but the echo parakeet have vanished. The others were likely made extinct by a combination of excessive hunting and deforestation by humans, as well as the invasive species brought with them (through predation and competition). On Mauritius, the echo parakeet coexisted with the broad-billed parrot (Lophopsittacus mauritianus) and the Mascarene grey parakeet (Psittacula bensoni), and the Réunion parakeet lived alongside the Mascarene parrot and the Mascarene grey parakeet. Newton's parakeet and the Rodrigues parrot (Necropsittacus rodricanus) lived on nearby Rodrigues. Worldwide, many parrots have been driven to extinction by humans; island populations have been especially vulnerable, partially due to their tameness. To the sailors who visited the Mascarene Islands from the late 16th-century onwards, the fauna was largely viewed as a source of food. Many other endemic species of Mauritius were lost after the arrival of humans to the island, including the dodo (Raphus cucullatus, which has since become a symbol of extinction), so the ecosystem of the island is severely damaged and hard to reconstruct. The surviving endemic fauna is still seriously threatened. Before humans arrived, Mauritius was entirely covered in forests, almost all of which have since been lost.
The last report of the Réunion parakeet is that of the French colonist Joseph-François Charpentier de Cossigny from 1732, and Hume expressed surprise that the population disappeared so quickly after the arrival of humans, considering the available habitat and the fact that the Mauritius population managed to survive. Hume estimated that the Réunion parakeet had gone extinct due to hunting and deforestation around 1730–50. Jones and colleagues pointed out that other Mascarene birds survived into the 18th and 19th centuries without being noted, and suggested that the Réunion parakeet could have survived as late as the early 19th century (Jossigny's sketch could support the parakeet surviving at least until c. 1770). Cossigny's final 1732 account of the Réunion parakeet (and the last of the Mascarene grey parakeet) reads as follows:
> The woods are full of parrots, either completely grey or completely green. They were eaten a lot formerly, the grey especially, but both are always lean and very tough whatever sauce one puts on them.
The Dutch soldier Johannes Pretorius (on Mauritius from 1666 to 1669) reported that there were many parrots, and that echo parakeets were caught alive with nets, but could sometimes not be caught, being too high up in trees. Parrots were often caught to be given as gifts or sold during the 17th century and were probably kept alive on Mauritius before being exported. That the parrots kept to high trees indicates they had become wary of humans at this time. In 1754 and 1756, D. de La Motte described the abundance of echo parakeets in Mauritius, and their use as food:
> One eats here [in Mauritius] a good number of long-tailed green parrots called perruches whose flesh is black and very good. A hunter can kill three or four dozen in a day. There is a time of year when these birds eat a seed that makes their flesh bitter and even dangerous.
Assessments of the echo parakeet's status varied in early literature; while it was said to be "quite common" in the 1830s, by 1876 the Newtons said "its numbers are gradually falling". In 1904, the French naturalist Paul Carié said the population was "reasonably large", while Rothschild said the bird was rare and apparently "on the verge of extinction" in 1907. Areas where the echo parakeet could be found were cleared for tea and forestry from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the birds were forced into the remaining native habitat, in and around the Black River Gorges. 50 pairs were estimated to be left in 1970, though this may have been too high. By 1975, it was estimated that about 50 individuals remained, but the population appears to have dropped noticeably in the following years, and by 1983 only a flock of 11 birds was seen, which was believed to represent the entire population. The drop in numbers around this time may have been tied to cyclone Claudette in December 1979. There was little nesting success, and the parakeets reproduced at a level below that necessary for replacement.
### Conservation
The plight of the endangered Mauritian birds attracted the attention of ornithologists beginning in the early 1970s, who went to the island to study them. The Mauritius kestrel was by 1973 considered the rarest bird in the world, with only six individuals left, and the pink pigeon numbered about 20 birds in the wild; both species were later saved from extinction through captive breeding by the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust (now known as Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust). The American biologist Stanley Temple began a programme to halt the decline of the echo parakeet in 1974, but these attempts failed, since unlike other Psittacula parakeets, it proved difficult to keep them in captivity (all the birds involved died). Capturing more birds also failed, none of the nest boxes placed by Temple were used by the parakeets, and translocating the few remaining birds elsewhere was deemed too risky. By the 1980s, most Mauritian naturalists believed the echo parakeet was going to be extinct in the near future; it was now considered the rarest and most endangered Mascarene bird, and was referred to as "the world's rarest parrot".
In 1980, Carl Jones described the situation as desperate, and stated that the remaining birds would have to be caught for captive breeding if the echo parakeet was to be saved; this solution was also recommended by the International Council for Bird Preservation the same year. By the 1980s, only 8–12 echo parakeets were known, including three females, and Jones, who had led the efforts that saved the Mauritius kestrel and the pink pigeon, turned his focus on the parakeets. The New Zealand conservationist Don Merton (who had faced similar problems with birds in his homeland) was invited to help, and drawing on their experience with other birds, they devised a strategy for the echo parakeet. They treated nests with insecticides to prevent chicks being killed by nest flies, secured nest entrances to prevent tropic-birds from taking over them, stapled smooth PVC around trunks and placed poison nearby to deter black rats, and pruned canopies around nest trees to prevent monkeys attacking by jumping there from nearby trees. Feeding hoppers were introduced to provide food during seasonal shortages, though it took years for the birds to learn how to use them, and nest cavities were made waterproof. Following improved breeding success in the wild, there were 16–22 birds in 1993/4, and another captive pair produced a chick in 1993. Due to the successes with saving native birds, the Black River Gorges and surrounding areas were declared the first national park of Mauritius in 1994.
In 1996, six previously unknown echo parakeet breeding groups were found in the Black River Gorges, some in areas of the Bel Ombre forest that had not been surveyed before and others within the known breeding range. These almost doubled the number of breeding groups from those seen the previous season. The echo parakeet was made a priority project by the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation following the season's breeding success, and it was decided to initiate a captive breeding programme at the Gerald Durrell Endemic Wildlife Sanctuary. It was discovered that from clutches of three or four eggs, only one chick would usually fledge, so the team began to take the surplus; the parents could more easily raise the brood they were left with, and such surplus chicks would be given to pairs that had failed to hatch their eggs. Many surplus chicks were also taken to the breeding centre where they were reared successfully, and the first three birds bred in captivity were released into the wild in 1997. These and later hand-reared birds were found to be too tame and naive; they would land on people's shoulders, or near cats and mongooses, which subsequently killed them. Jones decided to release the captive-bred birds after nine to ten weeks when fledging would normally occur, instead of seventeen, and these young birds were better at integrating with wild birds, and learning social and survival skills. Captive-bred birds who had learned to use feeding hoppers in captivity passed on this ability to wild birds, and the number of birds that fed at food hoppers and used nest boxes provided by the team increased in the following years. The birds had not used the nest boxes before 2001, after which they were improved in design. By 1998, there were 59–73 birds, including 14 that had been captive bred since 1997.
By 2005, 139 captive birds had been released and intensive management of the wild population ceased in 2006. Since then only supplemental food and nest boxes have been provided. By 2007, about 320 echo parakeets lived in the wild, with numbers growing, and the species was downgraded from critically endangered to endangered on the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species; its numbers were still low overall and its range restricted. In 2009–2010, 78% of nesting attempts occurred in nesting boxes and a record of 134 chicks fledged during this breeding season. By 2016 the population had approached 700 birds. Though the echo parakeet is considered to have been saved from extinction, it still needs continued management by humans to stay secure from remaining threats. Since the carrying capacity of the Black River Gorges National Park had reached its limit, echo parakeets were released in the mountains of eastern Mauritius around 2016, and it has been suggested that birds could be introduced to the other Mascarene Islands. In 2015, Jackson and colleagues suggested that, due to their close genetic relatedness, the echo parakeet could be used as ecological replacements of the extinct Réunion parakeet and Newton's parakeet of Rodrigues, which would also secure the echo parakeet further. Since it has been suggested that some endemic trees and parrots on the Mascarenes co-evolved, reintroducing the echo parakeet could aid in seed-dispersal, a function previously carried out by its extinct relatives. Jackson and colleagues cautioned that the rose-ringed parakeet is seen as a crop-pest on Rodrigues and that local communities may, therefore, be apprehensive towards the introduction of the very similar echo parakeet, which may act the same way in a new environment. By 2019, the population had reached 750 birds in the wild, and the species' conservation status was classified as vulnerable.
### Threats
The main threat to the species is destruction and alteration of its native habitat, resulting in the loss of feeding areas, which would force the birds to travel widely to find food. In times of food shortage, the female may not receive adequate amounts of food from the male and would be forced to leave the nest to forage, sometimes abandoning it completely. Parakeets have difficulties finding new nest sites if their nests are destroyed or taken by competitors, and many of the old trees used for nesting sites have been destroyed by cyclones; cyclones also kill birds and remove the fruit from trees. Competitors for nest-cavities include bees and wasps, white-tailed tropic-birds, rose-ringed parakeets, common mynas (Acridotheres tristis), and rats. Rats and crab-eating macaques prey on parakeet eggs and chicks (even nesting parents have been killed by the latter), and the monkeys are also the most serious competitors for food since they strip fruits off trees before they are ripe. Chicks are threatened by the bloodsucking larvae of tropical nest flies (Passeromyia heterochaeta) as well, which are a major cause of mortality. African giant land-snails (Achatina spp.) can suffocate chicks with their slime while entering nests in search of food or shelter. Other introduced species such as feral pigs and rusa deer (Rusa timorensis) also disturb the parakeets. Hunting by humans does not appear to have been a threat to the species in recent times, and very few have been taken for the pet trade.
An isolated case of psittacine beak and feather disease was recorded in an echo parakeet in 1996; in 2004 there was a significant outbreak, and a subsequent screening programme showed that more than 30% of sampled birds had encountered the disease. Birds younger than two years old are most affected, and 40–50% of fledglings die from it and associated infections each year. Some birds recover, but it is not known if they remain carriers of the disease and pass it on to their offspring, or how it is spread. The disease is also found in local rose-ringed parakeets, but it is not known in which direction it was first transmitted. Though Temple speculated that the population crash in the 1970s was due to disease, no evidence supports this. No parasites were found in droppings examined in the 1970s.
|
234,757 |
Pallas's leaf warbler
| 1,127,165,633 |
A small migratory passerine bird that breeds in northern Asia
|
[
"Birds described in 1811",
"Birds of Manchuria",
"Birds of Mongolia",
"Birds of North Asia",
"Phylloscopus"
] |
Pallas's leaf warbler (Phylloscopus proregulus) or Pallas's warbler, is a bird that breeds in mountain forests from southern Siberia east to northern Mongolia and northeast China. It is named for German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas, who first formally described it. This leaf warbler is strongly migratory, wintering mainly in south China and adjacent areas of southeast Asia, although in recent decades increasing numbers have been found in Europe in autumn.
Pallas's leaf warbler is one of the smallest Palearctic warblers, with a relatively large head and short tail. It has greenish upperparts and white underparts, a lemon-yellow rump, and yellow double wingbars, supercilia and central crown stripe. It is similar in appearance to several other Asian warblers, including some that were formerly considered to be its subspecies, although its distinctive vocalisations aid identification.
The female builds a cup nest in a tree or bush, and incubates the four to six eggs, which hatch after 12–13 days. The chicks are fed mainly by the female and fledge when they are 12–14 days old; both parents then bring food for about a week. Pallas's leaf warbler is insectivorous, feeding on the adults, larvae and pupa of small insects and spiders. Birds forage in bushes and trees, picking items from leaves or catching prey in short flights or while hovering. The Pallas's leaf warbler has a large range, and its numbers are believed to be stable. It therefore is evaluated as of "least concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
## Taxonomy
The English name of Pallas's leaf warbler commemorates the German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas, who found it on the Ingoda River in Siberia in May 1772. He named the new species as Motacilla proregulus when he finally published his findings in 1811. The current genus name Phylloscopus is from Ancient Greek phullon, "leaf", and skopos, "seeker" (from skopeo, "to watch"). The specific proregulus is from Greek pro, "close to", and the name regulus, referring to the similar-looking goldcrest, Regulus regulus.
First described by German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1826, the genus Phylloscopus comprises about 50 species of small insectivorous Old World woodland warblers that are either greenish or brown above and yellowish, white or buff below. The genus was formerly part of the Old World warbler family Sylvidae, but has now been split off as a separate family, the Phylloscopidae.
Within the genus, Pallas's leaf warbler is one of a group of similar tiny Asiatic species characterised by a yellow rump, a strong supercilium (stripe over the eye), double wing bars and a stripe on the crown of the head, once separated as the genus Abrornis but currently retained in Phylloscopus.
Pallas's leaf warbler was itself formerly treated as a complex of several subspecies, with the nominate form P. p. proregulus breeding in northern Asia, and other subspecies breeding much further south at high altitudes in the mountains from the western Himalayas east to western China (Yunnan and north to Gansu and Hebei).
Although field naturalists, such as Gilbert White in the 18th century and William Edwin Brooks in the 19th, had noted the importance of calls in separating often very similar-looking leaf warblers, for many years their views were not always accepted by the ornithological establishment. More recently, vocalisations have become increasingly important in taxonomy. In the case of the former subspecies of Pallas's leaf warbler, even though they differ only slightly in plumage, the southern forms are very distinctive vocally. Their songs and calls differ from those of the nominate race, and DNA analysis from 2006 has confirmed these forms to be sufficiently distinct that they are now treated as separate species, leaving Pallas's leaf warbler as a monotypic taxon. The split species are:
- Lemon-rumped warbler Phylloscopus chloronotus. Himalayas, southwest China. Three subspecies, P. c. chloronotus, P. c. forresti and P. c. simlaensis.
- Gansu leaf warbler Phylloscopus kansuensis. Central western China, monotypic.
- Chinese leaf warbler Phylloscopus yunnanensis (synonym P. sichuanensis). Western China, monotypic.
Of these, Phylloscopus chloronotus forresti is possibly also a separate species, but further analysis is required to confirm this. The breeding ranges of the Gansu leaf warbler and the Chinese leaf warbler overlap in southern Gansu, but the species are separated ecologically: the Gansu leaf warbler is found in taller forest habitats and the Chinese leaf warbler uses lower, often scrubby habitats. "Lemon-rumped warbler" was sometimes used as synonym for Pallas's leaf warbler before the species' split. Pallas's leaf warbler appears to have diverged from the Chinese leaf warbler 4.1–5.5 million years ago, and from its other former subspecies about 1.7–3.2 million years ago.
## Description
Pallas's leaf warbler is one of the smallest warblers, with a large head and short tail. At 9–10 centimetres (3.5–3.9 in) long and 4–7 grams (0.14–0.25 oz) in weight, it is slightly smaller than a yellow-browed warbler and barely any larger than a goldcrest. It has greenish upperparts and white underparts, but is very striking, with prominent pale yellow double wingbars on the wing covert feathers, bold yellow supercilia and central crown stripe, and a lemon-yellow rump. The bill is blackish-brown with a yellowish tinge to the cutting edges and the base of the lower mandible, the iris is brown, and the legs are brown with a green or greyish tinge. Although the yellow rump is obvious when a bird is low in vegetation or hovering, it can otherwise be hard to see.
In Asia, Pallas's leaf warbler can be distinguished from its former subspecies by its yellower head stripes, wingbars and throat as well as its different vocalisations. Other yellow-rumped Asiatic warblers resemble Pallas's; buff-barred and Brooks's leaf warblers are larger, much duller green above and less strongly marked, and their wing bars are buff and white respectively, not yellow. Ashy-throated warbler has grey head markings, face and throat, and pale yellow underparts.
The sexes of Pallas's leaf warbler have similar plumage, but non-breeding birds are somewhat brighter green above and have broad, bright fringes to their flight feathers. Juveniles are like the adults, but have a brown tinge to the upperparts, greyish-white underparts and a duller supercilium. Adults have a complete post-breeding moult in August or September before migrating south. Juveniles and pre-breeding adults have a partial moult in March or April, replacing all the body plumage and some tail feathers.
The song of Pallas's leaf warbler is delivered from a concealed perch near the top of a tall tree. It is strong and prolonged, with a medley of whistles, tirrit-tirrt-tirrit-terchee-choo-choo-chee-chee-chee or similar, with some phrases reminiscent of a canary, and interspersed trills. It lasts 2–4 seconds and may be heard in the winter quarters as well as from breeding birds. The call is a short, soft dju-ee. In contrast, the former subspecies have quite different songs, with sustained rattles for several seconds, or sometimes minutes. Their calls are typically sharp and monosyllabic.
## Distribution and habitat
Pallas's leaf warbler breeds in coniferous taiga forests including fir, spruce, pine and larch, or in mixed forest with rhododendron, karsu oak and a high percentage of conifers. In southern Russia, it was found breeding at up to 1,500–1,700 metres (4,900–5,600 ft). In winter, it uses a wider range of habitats, including broadleaf forest and scrub as well as conifers, and can be found in river valleys down to 100 metres (330 ft).
Pallas's leaf warbler breeds in Siberia from the Altai Mountains east to the Sea of Okhotsk, northern Mongolia, northeast China and possibly North Korea. It is strongly migratory and winters mainly in subtropical south China, northern Thailand and elsewhere in northeastern Indochina. It is rare but annual in Japan.
### Other movements
Pallas's leaf warbler now occurs regularly in Europe in autumn. The first known European record was shot in 1829 in Dalmatia, now Croatia, but John Gould, who formally described it, did not realise the species had already been discovered in Asia, and named it as the "Dalmatian Regulus", Regulus modestus. German ornithologist Heinrich Gätke, who moved to the then-British island of Heligoland in 1837 and stayed there for some fifty years, subsequently showed that several Asiatic species, including an occasional Pallas's leaf warbler, were regularly found there in autumn.
In the far west of Europe, the UK's first Pallas's leaf warbler was shot in 1896, although it was not until 1951 that the second was found. Thereafter, this species became increasingly common, ceasing to be a national rarity at the end of 1990. In 2003, for example, 313 were recorded in Britain. Pallas's leaf warbler also occurs at least annually in Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Most Pallas's leaf warblers found in Europe are first-year birds, and several reasons for the large increase in numbers in autumn have been proposed. In the past, these warblers were widely considered to be vagrants or reverse migrants, but were more recently thought to be undertaking a regular migration, taking advantage of the mild oceanic climate on the western fringes of Europe for overwintering. A flaw in that theory is that many birds should winter in Spain, particularly in the northwest, but Pallas's leaf warbler is rare in that country and tends to occur in the east. Spanish ornithologist Eduardo de Juana has therefore proposed that once the warblers reach northwest Europe, they then reorientate to a south easterly direction.
Outside Europe, Pallas's leaf warbler has been recorded as a vagrant in north Africa (Tunisia and Morocco), western Asia (Israel, Turkey and Iran), central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan), southeast Asia (Bangladesh and Taiwan), and Alaska.
## Behaviour
Pallas's leaf warbler is not wary but its unobtrusive arboreal lifestyle makes it difficult to observe, particularly in thick foliage. It is constantly in motion, and often hovers briefly like a goldcrest, although more frequently, and may sometimes hang upside-down.
### Breeding
Nesting is from June to July, with eggs laid from mid-June. The nest is built by the female in a conifer, usually next to the trunk at 0.5–10 metres (1.6–32.8 ft) above ground, sometimes in a bush. It is a round or elliptical cup made from twigs, leaves and other vegetation and lined with finer material including feathers, hair or fine grasses. Four to six blue-grey flecked white eggs are laid and incubated by the female. They hatch after 12–13 days, with the chicks fledging when 12–14 days old. They are fed mainly by the female while in the nest, but by both parents for about a week after fledging. In the south of the range, a pair may sometimes raise a second brood. The breeding territory in central Siberia is usually 3–5 hectares (7.4–12.4 acres), infrequently as much as 10 hectares (25 acres).
Pallas's leaf warbler, as with other members of its genus, is a host of the oriental cuckoo, a brood parasite. The cuckoo's egg is similar in appearance, though larger, to those of the host species.
### Feeding
Like its relatives, Pallas's leaf warbler is insectivorous, feeding on the adults, larvae and pupa of small insects including flies, moths and aphids; spiders are also taken. Birds forage in bushes and trees, picking items from leaves or catching prey in short flights or while hovering. When not breeding, they may join mixed-species foraging flocks together with tits, goldcrests and other warblers. In Asia, accompanying species may also include white-eyes, minivets and babblers.
## Status
The Pallas's leaf warbler has a large range, and although global population trends have not been quantified, numbers are believed to be stable. This species does not approach the thresholds for the population decline criterion of the IUCN Red List (that is, declining more than 30 percent in ten years or three generations). For these reasons, it is evaluated as of "least concern" by the IUCN.
Pallas's leaf warbler is widespread, common and locally abundant in Russia and northeast China. Breeding densities of up to 35–50 pairs/km<sup>2</sup> (90–130 pairs/mi<sup>2</sup>) have been recorded in southeast Russia, with only slightly lower figures in Siberia. It is locally common in parts of its wintering grounds in southeast Asia.
## Cited texts
|
12,240,375 |
SMS Mecklenburg
| 1,158,209,402 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1901 ships",
"Ships built in Stettin",
"Wittelsbach-class battleships",
"World War I battleships of Germany"
] |
SMS Mecklenburg ("His Majesty's Ship Mecklenburg") was the fifth ship of the Wittelsbach class of pre-dreadnought battleships of the German Imperial Navy. Laid down in May 1900 at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland), she was finished in May 1903. Her sister ships were Wittelsbach, Zähringen, Wettin, and Schwaben; they were the first capital ships built under the Navy Law of 1898, championed by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Mecklenburg was armed with a main battery of four 24-centimeter (9.4 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph).
Mecklenburg spent the early period of her career in I Squadron of the German fleet, participating in the peacetime routine of training cruises and exercises. After World War I began in August 1914, the ship was mobilized with her sisters as IV Battle Squadron. She saw limited duty in the Baltic Sea against Russian naval forces, and as a guard ship in the North Sea. The German High Command withdrew the ship from active service in January 1916 due to a threat from submarines and naval mines, together with severe shortages in personnel. For the remainder of her career, Mecklenburg served as a prison ship and as a barracks ship based in Kiel. She was stricken from the navy list in January 1920 and sold for scrapping the following year.
## Description
After the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) ordered the four Brandenburg-class battleships in 1889, a combination of budgetary constraints, opposition in the Reichstag (Imperial Diet), and a lack of a coherent fleet plan delayed the acquisition of further battleships. The Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office), Vizeadmiral (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Friedrich von Hollmann struggled throughout the early and mid-1890s to secure parliamentary approval for the first three Kaiser Friedrich III-class battleships. In June 1897, Hollmann was replaced by Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Alfred von Tirpitz, who quickly proposed and secured approval for the first Naval Law in early 1898. The law authorized the last two ships of the class, as well as the five ships of the Wittelsbach class, the first class of battleship built under Tirpitz's tenure. The Wittelsbachs were broadly similar to the Kaiser Friedrichs, carrying the same armament but with a more comprehensive armor layout.
Mecklenburg was 126.80 m (416 ft) long overall; she had a beam of 22.80 m (74 ft 10 in) and a draft of 7.95 m (26 ft 1 in) forward. She displaced 11,774 t (11,588 long tons) as designed and up to 12,798 t (12,596 long tons) at full load. The ship was powered by three 3-cylinder vertical triple-expansion engines that drove three screws. Steam was provided by six coal-fired Thornycroft boilers and six coal-fired cylindrical boilers. Mecklenburg's powerplant was rated at 14,000 metric horsepower (13,808 ihp; 10,297 kW), which gave her a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). The ship had a cruising radius of 5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km; 5,800 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). She had a crew of 30 officers and 650 enlisted men.
The ship's primary armament consisted of a main battery of four 24 cm (9.4 in) SK L/40 guns in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the central superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of eighteen 15 cm (5.9 inch) SK L/40 guns and twelve 8.8 cm (3.45 in) SK L/30 quick-firing guns. Her weaponry was rounded out with six 45 cm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, all submerged in the hull; one was in the bow, one in the stern, and the other four on the broadside. Her armored belt was 225 millimeters (8.9 in) thick in the central citadel that protected her magazines and machinery spaces and reduced to 100 mm (3.9 in) on either end of the hull. The deck was 50 mm (2 in) thick. Mecklenburg's main battery turrets had 250 mm (9.8 in) of armor plating.
## Service history
### Pre-war career
Mecklenburg's keel was laid down on 15 May 1900 at AG Vulcan in Stettin, under construction number 248. She was ordered under the contract name "F", as a new unit for the fleet. Mecklenburg, the last ship of her class, was launched on 9 November 1901; the ceremony was attended by Frederick Francis IV, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Fitting-out work proceeded faster on Mecklenburg than on her sister Schwaben, and so the former was commissioned on 25 June 1903, a full year before Schwaben. Mecklenburg cost 22,329,000 marks.
Immediately following her commissioning, Mecklenburg began sea trials, which lasted until mid-December 1903. She was assigned to II Division of I Squadron, alongside the battleships Kaiser Karl der Grosse and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Mecklenburg had to enter the drydock at Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) at Wilhelmshaven for minor improvements and repairs following her trials; this work lasted until the end of February 1904. After these modifications, Mecklenburg took part in individual and squadron training exercises, and a fleet review for the visiting British King Edward VII in June. The following month, the German fleet went on a cruise to Britain, the Netherlands, and Norway that lasted until August. Mecklenburg then participated in the annual autumn fleet exercises, which took place in late August and September, and a winter training cruise in November and December.
Starting in mid-December 1904, Mecklenburg went into Wilhelmshaven for periodic maintenance, which lasted until the beginning of March 1905. After emerging from drydock, Mecklenburg joined her sister ship Wittelsbach on a cruise through the Skagerrak to Kiel. While steaming through the Great Belt on 3 March, Mecklenburg struck the Hatter Reef off Samsø, Denmark, and became stuck. Another sister ship, Wettin, and the light cruiser Ariadne were sent to assist Wittelsbach in pulling Mecklenburg free of the reef. Mecklenburg then steamed under her own power to Kiel, where dockyard workers discovered a large dent in her bottom. Repair work was completed at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven by 20 April, allowing her to participate in the normal routine of training cruises and maneuvers with the fleet for the remainder of the year. During this period, the British Channel Fleet visited the German fleet while it was moored in Swinemünde. From mid-February to the end of March 1906, Mecklenburg was in the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven for her annual overhaul. The training routine continued without incident through 1907 but, in early April 1908, a major accident in one of Mecklenburg's broadside torpedo rooms nearly sank her. Water began to flood the ship and could only be stopped by sealing the torpedo tubes from the outside; repairs lasted until May.
Mecklenburg participated in a training cruise to the Azores in July and August 1908. She also won the Kaiser's Schießpreis (Shooting Prize) for the most accurate gunnery in her squadron, along with the battleship Lothringen. In mid-December, she returned once again to Wilhelmshaven for the yearly overhaul. The years 1909 and 1910 passed uneventfully for Mecklenburg, with the same pattern of training cruises and maneuvers as in previous years. She began her annual overhaul on 2 December 1910 and returned to service on 7 March 1911, though only briefly. On 31 July, Mecklenburg was replaced by the new dreadnought battleship Ostfriesland; Mecklenburg was then decommissioned and assigned to the Reserve Division in the North Sea. On 9 May 1912, she was transferred to the Reserve Division in the Baltic. She returned briefly to active service in 1912 from 9 to 12 May to move her from the North Sea to the Baltic, and again from 14 August to 28 September to participate in the fleet exercises that year. During the maneuvers, she served in III Squadron.
### World War I
After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Mecklenburg and the rest of her class were mobilized to serve in IV Battle Squadron, under the command of Vice Admiral Ehrhard Schmidt. The squadron was initially allocated to the North Sea, but was temporarily transferred to the Baltic in September. Starting on 3 September, IV Squadron, assisted by the armored cruiser Blücher, conducted a sweep into the eastern Baltic in the direction of the Svenska Högarna islands. The operation lasted until 9 September and failed to bring Russian naval units to battle. The squadron participated in a demonstration off Windau the next day. From 5 December to 2 April 1915, Mecklenburg and the rest of the squadron were assigned to guard duty in the North Sea, based in the mouth of the Elbe.
In May 1915, IV Squadron, including Mecklenburg, was transferred to support the German Army in the Baltic Sea area. Mecklenburg and her sisters were then based in Kiel. From 8 to 12 May, she participated in a sweep toward Gotland and Bogskär, to support the assault on Libau. Mecklenburg and the other ships stood off Gotland to intercept any Russian cruisers that might try to intervene in the landings, but this did not occur. On 10 May, after the invasion force had entered Libau, the British submarines HMS E1 and HMS E9 spotted IV Squadron, but were too far away to make an attack. After the operation, Mecklenburg and the rest of IV Squadron returned to the Elbe for guard duties, which lasted until 4 July. The next day, Mecklenburg departed for Kiel in preparation for a major operation in the Baltic. She proceeded to Danzig, and on 11 July departed for a sweep to Gotska Sandön; another patrol to western Gotland followed on 21–22 July. Mecklenburg then steamed from Danzig to Libau on 2 August, where she joined another foray toward Gotska Sandön from 7 to 10 August.
Mecklenburg and her sisters were not included in the German fleet that assaulted the Gulf of Riga in August 1915, due to the scarcity of escorts. The increasingly active British submarines forced the Germans to employ more destroyers to protect the capital ships. Mecklenburg took part in two sweeps to Huvudskär on 9–11 and 21–23 September. On 17 December she ran aground in the entrance to the harbor of Libau, but was towed free without suffering any damage. She was to replace the worn-out armored cruiser Prinz Heinrich in the reconnaissance forces of the fleet in the Baltic, but Mecklenburg and her sisters were removed from service shortly thereafter. By this stage of the war, the German Navy was facing severe shortages of crews, which could be alleviated by the decommissioning of older, less effective warships. Furthermore, the increasing threat from British submarines and Russian mines in the Baltic by 1916, the latter of which sank the armored cruiser Friedrich Carl, convinced the German navy to withdraw the elderly Wittelsbach-class ships from active service. On 6 January 1916, Mecklenburg left Libau bound for Kiel, arriving the following day. She was decommissioned on 24 January and placed in reserve.
Mecklenburg was initially based in Kiel and used as a floating prison. In early 1918, she became a barracks ship for the crews of U-boats being repaired in Kiel. The ship was briefly retained after the German defeat at the end of World War I, but was to be discarded under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which limited the re-formed Reichsmarine to eight pre-dreadnought battleships of the Deutschland and Braunschweig classes, of which only six could be operational at any given time. Accordingly, on 25 January 1920, Mecklenburg was stricken from the naval register. She was sold to Deutsche Werke, a shipbuilder based in Kiel, on 16 August 1921 for 1,750,000 Marks, and was broken up for scrap metal that year at Kiel-Nordmole.
|
18,932,608 |
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
| 1,172,121,951 |
US science fiction magazine
|
[
"1930 establishments in the United States",
"Analog Science Fiction and Fact",
"Magazines established in 1930",
"Magazines formerly owned by Condé Nast",
"Monthly magazines published in the United States",
"Penny Publications magazines",
"Pulp magazines",
"Science fiction digests",
"Science fiction magazines established in the 1930s",
"Science fiction magazines published in the United States",
"Street & Smith"
] |
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William Clayton, and edited by Harry Bates. Clayton went bankrupt in 1933 and the magazine was sold to Street & Smith. The new editor was F. Orlin Tremaine, who soon made Astounding the leading magazine in the nascent pulp science fiction field, publishing well-regarded stories such as Jack Williamson's Legion of Space and John W. Campbell's "Twilight". At the end of 1937, Campbell took over editorial duties under Tremaine's supervision, and the following year Tremaine was let go, giving Campbell more independence. Over the next few years Campbell published many stories that became classics in the field, including Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, A. E. van Vogt's Slan, and several novels and stories by Robert A. Heinlein. The period beginning with Campbell's editorship is often referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
By 1950, new competition had appeared from Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Campbell's interest in some pseudo-science topics, such as Dianetics (an early non-religious version of Scientology), alienated some of his regular writers, and Astounding was no longer regarded as the leader of the field, though it did continue to publish popular and influential stories: Hal Clement's novel Mission of Gravity appeared in 1953, and Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" appeared the following year. In 1960, Campbell changed the title of the magazine to Analog Science Fact & Fiction; he had long wanted to get rid of the word "Astounding" in the title, which he felt was too sensational. At about the same time Street & Smith was merged into Condé Nast, and the magazine's name changed again to its current form by 1965. Campbell remained as editor until his death in 1971.
Ben Bova took over from 1972 to 1978, and the character of the magazine changed noticeably, since Bova was willing to publish fiction that included sexual content and profanity. Bova published stories such as Frederik Pohl's "The Gold at the Starbow's End", which was nominated for both a Hugo and Nebula Award, and Joe Haldeman's "Hero", the first story in the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning "Forever War" sequence; Pohl had been unable to sell to Campbell, and "Hero" had been rejected by Campbell as unsuitable for the magazine. Bova won five consecutive Hugo Awards for his editing of Analog.
Bova was followed by Stanley Schmidt, who continued to publish many of the same authors who had been contributing for years; the result was some criticism of the magazine as stagnant and dull, though Schmidt was initially successful in maintaining circulation. The title was sold to Davis Publications in 1980, then to Dell Magazines in 1992. Crosstown Publications acquired Dell in 1996 and remains the publisher. Schmidt continued to edit the magazine until 2012, when he was replaced by Trevor Quachri.
## Publishing history
### Clayton
In 1926, Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first science fiction (sf) magazine. Gernsback had been printing scientific fiction stories for some time in his hobbyist magazines, such as Modern Electrics and Electrical Experimenter, but decided that interest in the genre was sufficient to justify a monthly magazine. Amazing was very successful, quickly reaching a circulation over 100,000. William Clayton, a successful and well-respected publisher of several pulp magazines, considered starting a competitive title in 1928; according to Harold Hersey, one of his editors at the time, Hersey had "discussed plans with Clayton to launch a pseudo-science fantasy sheet". Clayton was unconvinced, but the following year decided to launch a new magazine, mainly because the sheet on which the color covers of his magazines were printed had a space for one more cover. He suggested to Harry Bates, a newly hired editor, that they start a magazine of historical adventure stories. Bates proposed instead a science fiction pulp, to be titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, and Clayton agreed.
Astounding was initially published by Publisher's Fiscal Corporation, a subsidiary of Clayton Magazines. The first issue appeared in January 1930, with Bates as editor. Bates aimed for straightforward action-adventure stories, with scientific elements only present to provide minimal plausibility. Clayton paid much better rates than Amazing and Wonder Stories—two cents a word on acceptance, rather than half a cent a word, on publication (or sometimes later)—and consequently Astounding attracted some of the better-known pulp writers, such as Murray Leinster, Victor Rousseau, and Jack Williamson. In February 1931, the original name Astounding Stories of Super-Science was shortened to Astounding Stories.
The magazine was profitable, but the Great Depression caused Clayton problems. Normally a publisher would pay a printer three months in arrears, but when a credit squeeze began in May 1931, it led to pressure to reduce this delay. The financial difficulties led Clayton to start alternating the publication of his magazines, and he switched Astounding to a bimonthly schedule with the June 1932 issue. Some printers bought the magazines which were indebted to them: Clayton decided to buy his printer to prevent this from happening. This proved a disastrous move. Clayton did not have the money to complete the transaction, and in October 1932, Clayton decided to cease publication of Astounding, with the expectation that the January 1933 issue would be the last one. As it turned out, enough stories were in inventory, and enough paper was available, to publish one further issue, so the last Clayton Astounding was dated March 1933. In April, Clayton went bankrupt, and sold his magazine titles to T.R. Foley for \$100; Foley resold them in August to Street & Smith, a well-established publisher.
### Street and Smith
Science fiction was not entirely a departure for Street & Smith. They already had two pulp titles that occasionally ventured into the field: The Shadow, which had begun in 1931 and was tremendously successful, with a circulation over 300,000; and Doc Savage, which had been launched in March 1933. They gave the post of editor of Astounding to F. Orlin Tremaine, an experienced editor who had been working for Clayton as the editor of Clues, and who had come to Street & Smith as part of the transfer of titles after Clayton's bankruptcy. Desmond Hall, who had also come from Clayton, was made assistant editor; because Tremaine was editor of Clues and Top-Notch, as well as Astounding, Hall did much of the editorial work, though Tremaine retained final control over the contents.
The first Street & Smith issue was dated October 1933; until the third issue, in December 1933, the editorial team was not named on the masthead. Street & Smith had an excellent distribution network, and they were able to get Astounding'''s circulation up to an estimated 50,000 by the middle of 1934. The two main rival science fiction magazines of the day, Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories, each had a circulation about half that. Astounding was the leading science fiction magazine by the end of 1934, and it was also the largest, at 160 pages, and the cheapest, at 20 cents. Street & Smith's rates of one cent per word (sometimes more) on acceptance were not as high as the rates paid by Bates for the Clayton Astounding, but they were still better than those of the other magazines.
Hall left Astounding in 1934 to become editor of Street & Smith's new slick magazine, Mademoiselle, and was replaced by R.V. Happel. Tremaine remained in control of story selection. Writer Frank Gruber described Tremaine's editorial selection process in his book, The Pulp Jungle:
> As the stories came in Tremaine piled them up on a stack. All the stories intended for Clues in this pile, all those for Astounding in that stack. Two days before press time of each magazine, Tremaine would start reading. He would start at the top of the pile and read stories until he had found enough to fill the issue. Now, to be perfectly fair, Tremaine would take the stack of remaining stories and turn it upside down, so next month he would start with the stories that had been on the bottom this month.
Gruber pointed out that stories in the middle might go many months before Tremaine read them; the result was erratic response times that sometimes stretched to over 18 months.
In 1936 the magazine switched from untrimmed to trimmed edges; Brian Stableford comments that this was "an important symbolic" step, as the other sf pulps were still untrimmed, making Astounding smarter-looking than its competitors. Tremaine was promoted to assistant editorial director in 1937. His replacement as editor of Astounding was 27-year-old John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell had made his name in the early 1930s as a writer, publishing space opera under his own name, and more thoughtful stories under the pseudonym "Don A. Stuart". He started working for Street & Smith in October 1937, so his initial editorial influence appeared in the issue dated December 1937. The March 1938 issue was the first that was fully his responsibility. In early 1938, Street & Smith abandoned its policy of having editors-in-chief, with the result that Tremaine was made redundant. His departure, on May 1, 1938, gave Campbell a freer rein with the magazine.
One of Campbell's first acts was to change the title from Astounding Stories to Astounding Science-Fiction, starting with the March 1938 issue. Campbell's editorial policy was targeted at the more mature readers of science fiction, and he felt that "Astounding Stories did not convey the right image. He intended to subsequently drop the "Astounding" part of the title, as well, leaving the magazine titled Science Fiction, but in 1939 a new magazine with that title appeared. Although "Astounding" was retained in the title, thereafter it was often printed in a color that made it much less visible than "Science-Fiction". At the start of 1942 the price was increased, for the first time, to 25 cents; the magazine simultaneously switched to the larger bedsheet format, but this did not last. Astounding returned to pulp-size in mid-1943 for six issues, and then became the first science fiction magazine to switch to digest size in November 1943, increasing the number of pages to maintain the same total word count. The price remained at 25 cents through these changes in format. The hyphen was dropped from the title with the November 1946 issue.
The price increased again, to 35 cents, in August 1951. In the late 1950s, it became apparent to Street & Smith that they were going to have to raise prices again. During 1959, Astounding was priced at 50 cents in some areas to find out what the impact would be on circulation. The results were apparently satisfactory, and the price was raised with the November 1959 issue. The following year, Campbell finally achieved his goal of getting rid of the word "Astounding" in the magazine's title, changing it to Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction. The "/" in the title was often replaced by a symbol of Campbell's devising, resembling an inverted U pierced by a horizontal arrow and meaning "analogous to". The change began with the February 1960 issue, and was complete by October; for several issues both "Analog" and "Astounding" could be seen on the cover, with "Analog" becoming bolder and "Astounding" fading with each issue.
### Condé Nast
Street & Smith was acquired by Samuel Newhouse, the owner of Condé Nast, in August 1959, though Street & Smith was not merged into Condé Nast until the end of 1961. Analog was the only digest-sized magazine in Condé Nast's inventory—all the others were slicks, such as Vogue. All the advertisers in these magazines had plates made up to take advantage of this size, and Condé Nast changed Analog to the larger size from the March 1963 issue to conform. The front and back signatures were changed to glossy paper, to carry both advertisements and scientific features. The change did not attract advertising support, however, and from the April 1965 issue Analog reverted to digest size once again. Circulation, which had been increasing before the change, was not harmed, and continued to increase while Analog was in slick format. From the April 1965 issue the title switched the "fiction" and "fact" elements, so that it became Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact.
Campbell died suddenly in July 1971, but there was enough material in Analog's inventory to allow the remaining staff to put together issues for the rest of the year. Condé Nast had given the magazine very little attention, since it was both profitable and cheap to produce, but they were proud that it was the leading science fiction magazine. They asked Kay Tarrant, who had been Campbell's assistant, to help them find a replacement: she contacted regular contributors to ask for suggestions. Several well-known writers turned down the job; Poul Anderson did not want to leave California, and neither did Jerry Pournelle, who also felt the salary was too small. Before he died, Campbell had talked to Harry Harrison about taking over as editor, but Harrison did not want to live in New York. Lester del Rey and Clifford D. Simak were also rumored to have been offered the job, though Simak denied it; Frederik Pohl was interested, but suspected his desire to change the direction of the magazine lessened his chances with Condé Nast. The Condé Nast vice president in charge of selecting the new editor decided to read both fiction and nonfiction writing samples from the applicants, since Analog's title included both "science fiction" and "science fact". He chose Ben Bova, afterwards telling Bova that his stories and articles "were the only ones I could understand". January 1972 was the first issue to credit Bova on the masthead.
Bova planned to stay for five years, to ensure a smooth transition after Campbell's sudden death; the salary was too low for him to consider remaining indefinitely. In 1975, he proposed a new magazine to Condé Nast management, to be titled Tomorrow Magazine; he wanted to publish articles about science and technology, leavened with some science fiction stories. Condé Nast was not interested, and refused to assist Analog with marketing or promotions. Bova resigned in June 1978, having stayed for a little longer than he had planned, and recommended Stanley Schmidt to succeed him. Schmidt's first issue was December 1978, though material purchased by Bova continued to appear for several months.
### Davis Publications, Dell Magazines, and Crosstown Publications
In 1977, Davis Publications launched Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and after Bova's departure, Joel Davis, the owner of Davis Publications, contacted Condé Nast with a view to acquiring Analog. Analog had always been something of a misfit in Condé Nast's line up, which included Mademoiselle and Vogue, and by February 1980 the deal was agreed. The first issue published by Davis was dated September 1980. Davis was willing to put some effort into marketing Analog, so Schmidt regarded the change as likely to be beneficial, and in fact circulation quickly grew, reversing a gradual decline over the Bova years, from just over 92,000 in 1981 to almost 110,000 two years later. Starting with the first 1981 issue, Davis switched Analog to a four-weekly schedule, rather than monthly, to align the production schedule with a weekly calendar. Instead of being dated "January 1981", the first issue under the new regime was dated "January 5, 1981", but this approach led to newsstands removing the magazine much more quickly, since the date gave the impression that it was a weekly magazine. The cover date was changed back to the current month starting with the May 1982 issue, but the new schedule remained in place, with a "Mid-September" issue in 1982 and 1983, and "Mid-December" issues for more than a decade thereafter. Circulation trended slowly down over the 1980s, to 83,000 for the year ending in 1990; by this time the great majority of readers were subscribers, as newsstand sales declined to only 15,000.
In 1992 Analog was sold to Dell Magazines, and Dell was in turn acquired by Crosstown Publications in 1996. That year the Mid-December issues stopped appearing, and the following year the July and August issues were combined into a single bimonthly issue. An ebook edition became available in 2000 and has become increasingly popular, with the ebook numbers not reflected in the published annual circulation numbers, which by 2011 were down to under 27,000. In 2004 the January and February issues were combined, so that only ten issues a year appeared. Having just surpassed John W. Campbell's tenure of 34 years, Schmidt retired in August 2012. His place was taken by Trevor Quachri, who continues to edit Analog as of 2018. From January 2017, the publication frequency became bimonthly (six issues per year).
## Contents and reception
### Bates
The first incarnation of Astounding was an adventure-oriented magazine: unlike Gernsback, Bates had no interest in educating his readership through science. The covers were all painted by Wesso and similarly action-filled; the first issue showed a giant beetle attacking a man. Bates would not accept any experimental stories, relying mostly on formulaic plots. In the eyes of Mike Ashley, a science fiction historian, Bates was "destroying the ideals of science fiction". One historically important story that almost appeared in Astounding was E.E. Smith's Triplanetary, which Bates would have published had Astounding not folded in early 1933. The cover Wesso had painted for the story appeared on the March 1933 issue, the last to be published by Clayton.
### Tremaine
When Street & Smith acquired Astounding, they also planned to relaunch another Clayton pulp, Strange Tales, and acquired material for it before deciding not to proceed. These stories appeared in the first Street & Smith Astounding, dated October 1933. This issue and the next were unremarkable in quality, but with the December issue, Tremaine published a statement of editorial policy, calling for "thought variant" stories containing original ideas and not simply reproducing adventure themes in a science fiction context. The policy was probably worked out between Tremaine and Desmond Hall, his assistant editor, in an attempt to give Astounding a clear identity in the market that would distinguish it from both the existing science fiction magazines and the hero pulps, such as The Shadow, that frequently used sf ideas.
The "thought variant" policy may have been introduced for publicity, rather than as a real attempt to define the sort of fiction Tremaine was looking for; the early "thought variant" stories were not always very original or well executed. Ashley describes the first, Nat Schachner's "Ancestral Voices", as "not amongst Schachner's best"; the second, "Colossus", by Donald Wandrei, was not a new idea, but was energetically written. Over the succeeding issues, it became apparent that Tremaine was genuinely willing to publish material that would have fallen foul of editorial taboos elsewhere. He serialized Charles Fort's Lo!, a nonfiction work about strange and inexplicable phenomena, in eight parts between April and November 1934, in an attempt to stimulate new ideas for stories. The best-remembered story of 1934 is probably Jack Williamson's "The Legion of Space", which began serialization in April, but other notable stories include Murray Leinster's "Sidewise in Time", which was the first genre science fiction story to use the idea of alternate history; "The Bright Illusion", by C.L. Moore, and "Twilight", by John W. Campbell, writing as Don A. Stuart. "Twilight", which was written in a more literary and poetic style than Campbell's earlier space opera stories, was particularly influential, and Tremaine encouraged other writers to produce similar stories. One such was Raymond Z. Gallun's "Old Faithful", which appeared in the December 1934 issue and was sufficiently popular that Gallun wrote a sequel, "Son of Old Faithful", published the following July. Space opera continued to be popular, though, and two overlapping space opera novels were running in Astounding late in the year: The Skylark of Valeron by E.E. Smith, and The Mightiest Machine, by Campbell. By the end of the year, Astounding was the clear leader of the small field of sf magazines.
Astounding's readership was more knowledgeable and more mature than the readers of the other magazines, and this was reflected in the cover artwork, almost entirely by Howard V. Brown, which was less garish than at Wonder Stories or Amazing Stories. Ashley describes the interior artwork as "entrancing, giving hints of higher technology without ignoring the human element", and singles out the work of Elliot Dold as particularly impressive.
Tremaine's policy of printing material that he liked without staying too strictly within the bounds of the genre led him to serialize H.P. Lovecraft's novel At the Mountains of Madness in early 1936. He followed this with Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time" in June 1936, though protests from science fiction purists occurred. Generally, however, Tremaine was unable to maintain the high standard he had set in the first few years, perhaps because his workload was high. Tremaine's slow responses to submissions discouraged new authors, although he could rely on regular contributors such as Jack Williamson, Murray Leinster, Raymond Gallun, Nat Schachner, and Frank Belknap Long. New writers who did appear during the latter half of Tremaine's tenure included Ross Rocklynne, Nelson S. Bond, and L. Sprague de Camp, whose first appearance was in September 1937 with "The Isolinguals". Tremaine printed some nonfiction articles during his tenure, with Campbell providing an 18-part series on the solar system between June 1936 and December 1937.
### Campbell
Street & Smith hired Campbell in October 1937. Although he did not gain full editorial control of Astounding until the March 1938 issue, Campbell was able to introduce some new features before then. In January 1938, he began to include a short description of stories in the next issue, titled "In Times To Come"; and in March, he began "The Analytical Laboratory", which compiled votes from readers and ranked the stories in order. The payment rate at the time was one cent a word, and Street & Smith agreed to let Campbell pay a bonus of an extra quarter-cent a word to the writer whose story was voted top of the list. Unlike other editors Campbell paid authors when he accepted—not published—their work; publication usually occurred several months after acceptance.
Campbell wanted his writers to provide action and excitement, but he also wanted the stories to appeal to a readership that had matured over the first decade of the science fiction genre. He asked his writers to write stories that felt as though they could have been published as non-science fiction stories in a magazine of the future; a reader of the future would not need long explanations for the gadgets in their lives, so Campbell asked his writers to find ways of naturally introducing technology to their stories. He also instituted regular nonfiction pieces, with the goal of stimulating story ideas. The main contributors of these were R.S. Richardson, L. Sprague de Camp, and Willy Ley.
Campbell changed the approach to the magazine's cover art, hoping that more mature artwork would attract more adult readers and enable them to carry the magazine without embarrassment. Howard V. Brown had done almost every cover for the Street & Smith version of Astounding, and Campbell asked him to do an astronomically accurate picture of the Sun as seen from Mercury for the February 1938 issue. He also introduced Charles Schneeman as a cover artist, starting with the May 1938 issue, and Hubert Rogers in February 1939; Rogers quickly became a regular, painting all but four of the covers between September 1939 and August 1942. They differentiated the magazine from rivals. Algis Budrys recalled that "Astounding was the last magazine I picked up" as a child because, without covers showing men with ray guns and women with large breasts, "it didn't look like an SF magazine".
#### Golden Age
The period beginning with Campbell's editorship of Astounding is usually referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction, because of the immense influence he had on the genre. Within two years of becoming editor, he had published stories by many of the writers who would become central figures in science fiction. The list of names included established authors like L. Ron Hubbard, Clifford Simak, Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, Henry Kuttner, and C.L. Moore, who became regulars in either Astounding or its sister magazine, Unknown, and new writers who published some of their first stories in Astounding, such as Lester del Rey, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt, and Robert Heinlein.
The April 1938 issue included the first story by del Rey, "The Faithful", and de Camp's second sale, "Hyperpilosity". Jack Williamson's "Legion of Time", described by author and editor Lin Carter as "possibly the greatest single adventure story in science fiction history", began serialization in the following issue. De Camp contributed a nonfiction article, "Language for Time Travelers", in the July issue, which also contained Hubbard's first science fiction sale, "The Dangerous Dimension". Hubbard had been selling genre fiction to the pulps for several years by that time. The same issue contained Clifford Simak's "Rule 18"; Simak had more-or-less abandoned science fiction within a year after breaking into the field in 1931, but he was drawn back by Campbell's editorial approach. The next issue featured one of Campbell's best-known stories, "Who Goes There?", and included Kuttner's "The Disinherited"; Kuttner had been selling successfully to the other pulps for a few years, but this was his first story in Astounding. In October, de Camp began a popular series about an intelligent bear named Johnny Black with "The Command."
The market for science fiction expanded dramatically the following year; several new magazines were launched, including Startling Stories in January 1939, Unknown in March (a fantasy companion to Astounding, also edited by Campbell), Fantastic Adventures in May, and Planet Stories in December. All of the competing magazines, including the two main extant titles, Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories, were publishing space opera, stories of interplanetary adventure, or other well-worn ideas from the early days of the genre. Campbell's attempts to make science fiction more mature led to a natural division of the writers: those who were unable to write to his standards continued to sell to other magazines; and those who could sell to Campbell quickly focused their attention on Astounding and sold relatively little to the other magazines. The expansion of the market also benefited Campbell because writers knew that if he rejected their submissions, they could resubmit those stories elsewhere; this freed them to try to write to his standards.
In July 1939, the lead story was "Black Destroyer", the first sale by van Vogt; the issue also included "Trends", Asimov's first sale to Campbell and his second story to see print. Later fans identified the issue as the start of the Golden Age. Other first sales that year included Heinlein's "Lifeline" in August and Sturgeon's "Ether Breather" the following month. One of the most popular authors of space opera, E.E. Smith, reappeared in October, with the first installment of Gray Lensman. This was a sequel to Galactic Patrol, which had appeared in Astounding two years before.
Heinlein rapidly became one of the most prolific contributors to Astounding, publishing three novels in the next two years: If This Goes On—, Sixth Column, and Methuselah's Children; and half a dozen short stories. In September 1940, van Vogt's first novel, Slan, began serialization; the book was partly inspired by a challenge Campbell laid down to van Vogt that it was impossible to tell a superman story from the point of view of the superman. It proved to be one of the most popular stories Campbell published, and is an example of the way Campbell worked with his writers to feed them ideas and generate the material he wanted to buy. Isaac Asimov's "Robot" series began to take shape in 1941, with "Reason" and "Liar!" appearing in the April and May issues; as with "Slan", these stories were partly inspired by conversations with Campbell. Van Vogt's "The Seesaw", in the July 1941 issue, was the first story in his "Weapon Shop" series, described by critic John Clute as the most compelling of all van Vogt's work. The September 1941 issue included Asimov's short story "Nightfall" and in November, Second Stage Lensman, the next novel in Smith's Lensman series, began serialization.
The following year brought the first installment of Asimov's "Foundation" stories; "Foundation" appeared in May and "Bridle and Saddle" in June. The March 1942 issue included Van Vogt's novella "Recruiting Station", an early version of a Changewar. Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore began to appear regularly in Astounding, often under the pseudonym "Lewis Padgett", and more new writers appeared: Hal Clement, Raymond F. Jones, and George O. Smith, all of whom became regular contributors. The September 1942 issue contained del Rey's "Nerves", which was one of the few stories to be ranked top by every single reader who voted in the monthly Analytical Laboratory poll; it dealt with the aftermath of an explosion at a nuclear plant.
Campbell emphasized scientific accuracy over literary style. Asimov, Heinlein, and de Camp were trained scientists and engineers. After 1942, several of the regular contributors such as Heinlein, Asimov, and Hubbard, who had joined the war effort, appeared less frequently. Among those who remained, the key figures were van Vogt, Simak, Kuttner, Moore, and Fritz Leiber, all of whom were less oriented towards technology in their fiction than writers like Asimov or Heinlein. This led to the appearance of more psychologically oriented fiction, such as van Vogt's World of Null-A, which was serialized in 1945. Kuttner and Moore contributed a humorous series about an inventor, Galloway Gallegher, who could only invent while drunk, but they were also capable of serious fiction. Campbell had asked them to write science fiction with the same freedom from constraints that he had allowed them in the fantasy works they were writing for Unknown, Street & Smith's fantasy title; the result was "Mimsy Were the Borogoves", which appeared in February 1943 and is now regarded as a classic. Leiber's Gather, Darkness!, serialized in 1943, was set in a world where scientific knowledge is hidden from the masses and presented as magic; as with Kuttner and Moore, he was simultaneously publishing fantasies in Unknown.
Campbell continued to publish technological sf alongside the soft science fiction. One example was Cleve Cartmill's "Deadline", a story about the development of the atomic bomb. It appeared in 1944, when the Manhattan Project was still not known to the public; Cartmill used his background in atomic physics to assemble a plausible story that had strong similarities to the real-world secret research program. Military Intelligence agents called on Campbell to investigate, and were satisfied when he explained how Cartmill had been able to make so many accurate guesses. In the words of science fiction critic John Clute, "Cartmill's prediction made sf fans enormously proud", as some considered the story proof that science fiction could be predictive of the future.
#### Post-war years
In the late 1940s, both Thrilling Wonder and Startling Stories began to publish much more mature fiction than they had during the war, and although Astounding was still the leading magazine in the field, it was no longer the only market for the writers who had been regularly selling to Campbell. Many of the best new writers still broke into print in Astounding rather than elsewhere. Arthur C. Clarke's first story, "Loophole", appeared in the April 1946 Astounding, and another British writer, Christopher Youd, began his career with "Christmas Tree" in February 1949. Youd would become much better known under his pseudonym "John Christopher". William Tenn's first sale, "Alexander the Bait", appeared in May 1946, and H. Beam Piper's "Time and Time Again" in the April 1947 issue was his first story. Along with these newer writers, Campbell was still publishing strong material by authors who had become established during the war. Among the better-known stories of this era are "Vintage Season", by C.L. Moore (under the pseudonym Lawrence O'Donnell); Jack Williamson's story "With Folded Hands"; The Players of Null-A, van Vogt's sequel to The World of Null-A; and the final book in E.E. Smith's Lensman series, Children of the Lens.
In the November 1948 issue, Campbell published a letter to the editor by a reader named Richard A. Hoen that contained a detailed ranking of the contents of an issue "one year in the future". Campbell went along with the joke and contracted stories from most of the authors mentioned in the letter that would follow the Hoen's imaginary story titles. One of the best-known stories from that issue is "Gulf", by Heinlein. Other stories and articles were written by some of the most famous authors of the time: Asimov, Sturgeon, del Rey, van Vogt, de Camp, and the astronomer R. S. Richardson.
#### 1950s and 1960s
By 1950, Campbell's strong personality had led him into conflict with some of his leading writers, some of whom abandoned Astounding as a result. The launch of both The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction in 1949 and 1950, respectively, marked the end of Astounding's dominance of science fiction, with many now regarding Galaxy as the leading magazine. Campbell's growing interest in pseudoscience also damaged his reputation in the field. Campbell was deeply involved with the launch of Dianetics, publishing Hubbard's first article on it in Astounding in May 1950, and promoting it heavily in the months beforehand; later in the decade he championed psionics and antigravity devices.
Although these enthusiasms diminished Campbell's reputation, Astounding continued to publish some popular and influential science fiction. In 1953, Campbell serialized Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, described by John Clute and David Langford as "one of the best-loved novels in sf", and in 1954 Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" appeared. The story, about a girl who stows away on a spaceship, generated much reader debate, and has been described as capturing the ethos of Campbell's Astounding. The spaceship is carrying urgently needed medical supplies to a planet in distress, and has a single pilot; the ship does not have enough fuel to reach the planet if the girl stays on the ship, so the "cold equations" of physics force the pilot to jettison the girl, killing her.
Later in the 1950s and early 1960s writers like Gordon R. Dickson, Poul Anderson, and Harry Harrison appeared regularly in the magazine. Frank Herbert's Dune was serialized in Analog in two separate sequences, in 1963 and 1965, and soon became "one of the most famous of all sf novels", according to Malcolm Edwards and John Clute. 1965 marked the year Campbell received his eighth Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine; this was the last one he would win.
### Bova
Bova, like Campbell, was a technophile with a scientific background, and he declared early in his tenure that he wanted Analog to continue to focus on stories with a scientific foundation, though he also made it clear that change was inevitable. Over his first few months some long-time readers sent in letters of complaint when they judged that Bova was not living up to Campbell's standards, particularly when sex scenes began to appear. On one occasion—Jack Wodhams' story "Foundling Fathers", and its accompanying illustration by Kelly Freas—it turned out that Campbell had bought the story in question. As the 1970s went on, Bova continued to publish authors such as Anderson, Dickson, and Christopher Anvil, who had appeared regularly during Campbell's tenure, but he also attracted authors who had not been able to sell to Campbell, such as Gene Wolfe, Roger Zelazny, and Harlan Ellison. Frederik Pohl, who later commented in his autobiography about his difficulties in selling to Campbell, appeared in the March 1972 issue with "The Gold at the Starbow's End", which was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and that summer Joe Haldeman's "Hero" appeared. This was the first story in Haldeman's "Forever War" sequence; Campbell had rejected it, listing multiple reasons including the frequent use of profanity and the implausibility of men and women serving in combat together. Bova asked to see it again and ran it without asking for changes. Other new writers included Spider Robinson, whose first sale was "The Guy With the Eyes" in the February 1973 issue; George R.R. Martin, with "A Song for Lya", in June 1974; and Orson Scott Card, with "Ender's Game", in the August 1977 issue.
Two of the cover artists who had been regular contributors under Campbell, Kelly Freas and John Schoenherr, continued to appear after Bova took over, and Bova also began to regularly feature covers by Rick Sternbach and Vincent Di Fate. Jack Gaughan, who had had a poor relationship with Campbell, sold several covers to Bova. Bova won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for five consecutive years, 1973 through 1977.
### Schmidt
Stanley Schmidt was an assistant professor of physics when he became editor of Analog, and his scientific background was well-suited to the magazine's readership. He avoided making drastic changes, and continued the long-standing tradition of writing provocative editorials, though he rarely discussed science fiction. In 1979 he resurrected "Probability Zero", a feature that Campbell had run in the early 1940s that published tall tales—humorous stories with ludicrous or impossible scientific premises. Also in 1979 Schmidt began a series of columns titled "The Alternate View", an opinion column that was written in alternate issues by G. Harry Stine and Jerry Pournelle, and which is still a feature of the magazine as of 2016, though now with different contributors. The stable of fiction contributors remained largely unchanged from Bova's day, and included many names, such as Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, and George O. Smith, familiar to readers from the Campbell era. This continuity led to criticisms within the field, Bruce Sterling writing in 1984 that the magazine "has become old, dull, and drivelling... It is a situation screaming for reform. Analog no longer permits itself to be read." The magazine thrived nevertheless, and though part of the increase in circulation during the early 1980s may have been due to Davis Publications' energetic efforts to increase subscriptions, Schmidt knew what his readership wanted and made sure they got it, commenting in 1985: "I reserve Analog for the kind of science fiction I've described here: good stories about people with problems in which some piece of plausible (or at least not demonstrably implausible) speculative science plays an indispensable role".
Over the decades of Schmidt's editorship, many writers became regular contributors, including Arlan Andrews, Catherine Asaro, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Michael Flynn, Geoffrey A. Landis, Paul Levinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Charles Sheffield and Harry Turtledove. Schmidt never won an editing Hugo while in charge of the magazine, but after he resigned he won the 2013 Hugo for Editor Short Form.
### Quachri
Schmidt retired in August 2012, and his place was taken by Trevor Quachri, who mostly continued the editorial policies of Schmidt. Starting in January 2017, the publication became bimonthly.
## Bibliographic details
Editorial history at Astounding and Analog:
- Harry Bates, January 1930 – March 1933
- F. Orlin Tremaine, October 1933 – October 1937
- John W. Campbell, Jr., October 1937 – December 1971
- Ben Bova, January 1972 – November 1978
- Stanley Schmidt, December 1978 – August 2012
- Trevor Quachri, September 2012 – present
Astounding was published in pulp format until the January 1942 issue, when it switched to bedsheet. It reverted to pulp for six issues, starting in May 1943, and then became the first of the genre sf magazines to be published in digest format, beginning with the November 1943 issue. The format remained unchanged until Condé Nast produced 25 bedsheet issues of Analog between March 1963 and March 1965, after which it returned to digest format. In May 1998, and again in December 2008, the format was changed to be slightly larger than the usual digest size: first to 8.25 x 5.25 in (210 x 135 mm), and then to 8.5 x 5.75 in (217 x 148 mm).
The magazine was originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science; this was shortened to Astounding Stories from February 1931 to November 1932, and the longer title returned for the three Clayton issues at the start of 1933. The Street & Smith issues began as Astounding Stories, and changed to Astounding Science-Fiction in March 1938. The hyphen disappeared in November 1946, and the title then remained unchanged until 1960, when the title Analog Science Fact & Fiction was phased in between February and October (i.e., the words "Astounding" and "Analog" both appeared on the cover, with "Analog" gradually increasing in prominence over the months, culminating in the name "Astounding" being completely dropped.) In April 1965 the subtitle was reversed, so that the magazine became Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and it has remained unchanged since then, though it has undergone several stylistic and orthographic variations.
As of 2016, the sequence of prices over the magazine's history is as follows:
### Overseas editions
A British edition published by Atlas Publishing and Distributing Company ran from August 1939 until August 1963, initially in pulp format, switching to digest from November 1953. The pulp issues began at 96 pages, then dropped to 80 pages with the March 1940 issue, and to 64 pages in December that year. All the digest issues were 128 pages long. The price was 9d until October 1953; thereafter it was 1/6 until February 1961, and 2/6 until the end of the run. The material in the British editions was selected from the U.S. issues, most stories coming from a single U.S. number, and other stories picked from earlier or later issues to fill the magazine. The covers were usually repainted from the American originals.
An Italian magazine, Scienza Fantastica<sup> [it]</sup>, published seven issues from April 1952 to March 1953, the contents drawn mostly from Astounding, along with some original stories. The editor was Lionello Torossi<sup> [it]</sup>, and the publisher was Editrice Krator. Another Italian edition, called Analog Fantascienza, was published by Phoenix Enterprise in 1994/1995, for a total of five issues. Danish publisher Skrifola produced six issues of Planetmagazinet in 1958; it carried reprints, mostly from Astounding, and was edited by Knud Erik Andersen.
A German anthology series of recent 1980s stories from Analog was published in eight volumes by Pabel-Moewig Verlag<sup> [de]</sup> from October 1981 up to June 1984.
### Anthologies
Anthologies of stories from Astounding or Analog'' include:
|
22,535,664 |
Ambondro mahabo
| 1,126,812,741 |
Species of small mammal from the middle Jurassic of Madagascar
|
[
"Australosphenida",
"Fossil taxa described in 1999",
"Fossils of Madagascar",
"Jurassic Madagascar",
"Jurassic mammals of Africa"
] |
Ambondro mahabo is a mammal from the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) Isalo III Formation (about 167 million years ago) of Madagascar. The only described species of the genus Ambondro, it is known from a fragmentary lower jaw with three teeth, interpreted as the last premolar and the first two molars. The premolar consists of a central cusp with one or two smaller cusps and a cingulum (shelf) on the inner, or lingual, side of the tooth. The molars also have such a lingual cingulum. They consist of two groups of cusps: a trigonid of three cusps at the front and a talonid with a main cusp, a smaller cusp, and a crest at the back. Features of the talonid suggest that Ambondro had tribosphenic molars, the basic arrangement of molar features also present in marsupial and placental mammals. It is the oldest known mammal with putatively tribosphenic teeth; at the time of its discovery it antedated the second oldest example by about 25 million years.
Upon its description in 1999, Ambondro was interpreted as a primitive relative of Tribosphenida (marsupials, placentals, and their extinct tribosphenic-toothed relatives). In 2001, however, an alternative suggestion was published that united it with the Cretaceous Australian Ausktribosphenos and the monotremes (the echidnas, the platypus, and their extinct relatives) into the clade Australosphenida, which would have acquired tribosphenic molars independently from marsupials and placentals. The Jurassic Argentinean Asfaltomylos and Henosferus and the Cretaceous Australian Bishops were later added to Australosphenida, and new work on wear in australosphenidan teeth has called into question whether these animals, including Ambondro, did have tribosphenic teeth. Other paleontologists have challenged this concept of Australosphenida, and instead proposed that Ambondro is not closely related to Ausktribosphenos plus monotremes, or that monotremes are not australosphenidans and that the remaining australosphenidans are related to placentals.
## Discovery and context
Ambondro mahabo was described by a team led by John Flynn in a 1999 paper in Nature. The scientific name derives from the village of Ambondromahabo, close to which the fossil was found. It is known from the Bathonian (middle Jurassic, about 167 million years ago) of the Mahajanga Basin in northwestern Madagascar, in the Isalo III unit, the youngest of the three rock layers that make up the Isalo "Group". This unit has also yielded crocodyliform and plesiosaur teeth and remains of the sauropod Lapparentosaurus.
## Description
Ambondro was described on the basis of a fragmentary right mandible (lower jaw) with three teeth in it (Figure 1), interpreted as the last premolar (p-last) and the first two molars (m1 and m2). It is in the collection of the University of Antananarivo as specimen UA 10602. Relative to other primitive mammals, it is small. Each of the teeth has a prominent cingulum (shelf) on the inner (lingual) side. The p-last has a strong central cusp. There is a cuspule (small cusp) on the back of the tooth and probably another on the inner front corner. This tooth resembles the molars of symmetrodonts, a group of primitive mammals, but the back cusp is smaller than the metaconid of symmetrodonts.
The front half of the m1 and m2 consists of the trigonid, a group of three cusps forming a triangle: the paraconid at the front on the inner side, protoconid in the middle on the outer (labial) side, and metaconid at the back on the inner side (see Figure 2). The three cusps form a right angle with each other at the protoconid, so that the trigonid is described as "open". The paraconid is higher than the metaconid. At the front margin, a cingulum is present that is divided into two small cusps. Unlike in various early tribosphenic mammals and close relatives, there is no additional cuspule behind the metaconid. At the back of the trigonid, the crest known as the distal metacristid is located relatively close to the outer side of the tooth and is continuous with another crest, the cristid obliqua, which is in turn connected to the back of the tooth.
The talonid, another group of cusps, makes up the back of the tooth. It is wider than long and contains a well-developed cusp, the hypoconid, on the outer side and a depression, the talonid basin, in the middle. The cristid obliqua connects to the hypoconid. The smaller hypoconulid cusp is present towards the inner side of the tooth, and the hypoconid and hypoconulid are connected by a cutting edge which is suggestive of the presence of a metacone cusp on the upper molars. Further towards the inner side, a crest, the entocristid, rims the talonid basin; on m1, it is swollen and on m2, it contains two small cuspules, but a distinct entoconid cusp is absent. This entocristid is continuous with the lingual cingulum.
Wear facets are areas of a tooth that show evidence of contact with a tooth in the opposing jaw when the teeth are brought together (known as occlusion). Flynn and colleagues identified two wear facets at the front and back margins of the talonid basin; they argue that these wear facets suggest the presence of a protocone (another cusp on the outer side of the tooth) on the upper molars. In a 2005 paper on Asfaltomylos, a related primitive mammal from Argentina, Thomas Martin and Oliver Rauhut disputed the presence of these wear facets within the talonid basin in Ambondro and instead identified wear facets on the cusps and crests surrounding the basin. They proposed that wear in the australosphenidan talonid occurs mainly on the rims, not in the talonid basin itself, and that australosphenidans may not have had a functional protocone.
## Interpretations
In their paper, Flynn and colleagues described Ambondro as the oldest mammal with tribosphenic molars—the basic molar type of metatherian (marsupials and their extinct relatives) and eutherian (placentals and their extinct relatives) mammals, characterized by the protocone cusp on the upper molars contacting the talonid basin on the lower molars in chewing. The discovery of Ambondro was thought to extend the known temporal range of tribosphenic mammals 25 million years further into the past. Consequently, Flynn and colleagues argued against the prevailing view that tribosphenic mammals originated on the northern continents (Laurasia), and instead proposed that their origin lies in the south (Gondwana). They cited the retention of a distal metacristid and an "open" trigonid as characters separating Ambondro from more modern tribosphenidans.
In 2001, Zhe-Xi Luo and colleagues alternatively proposed that a tribosphenic molar pattern had arisen twice (compare Figure 3, top)—once giving rise to the marsupials and placentals (Boreosphenida), and once producing Ambondro, the Cretaceous Australian Ausktribosphenos, and the living monotremes, which first appeared in the Cretaceous (united as Australosphenida). They characterized Australosphenida by the shared presence of a cingulum on the outer front corner of the lower molars, a short and broad talonid, a relatively low trigonid, and a triangulated last lower premolar.
Also in 2001, Denise Sigogneau-Russell and colleagues in their description of the earliest Laurasian tribosphenic mammal, Tribactonodon, agreed with the relationship between Ausktribosphenos and monotremes, but argued that Ambondro was closer to Laurasian tribosphenidans than to Ausktribosphenos and monotremes. As evidence against the integrity of Australosphenida, they cited the presence of lingual cingula in various non-australosphenidan mammals; the presence of two cusps in the anterior cingulum in Ambondro as well as some boreosphenidans; the different appearance of the premolar in Ambondro (flat) and Ausktribosphenos (squared); and the contrast between the talonids of Ambondro (with a well-developed hypoconid on the labial side) and Ausktribosphenos (squared).
The next year, Luo and colleagues published a more thorough analysis confirming their previous conclusion and adding the Cretaceous Australian Bishops to Australosphenida. They mentioned the condition of the hypoconulid, which is inclined forward, rather than backward as in boreosphenidans, as an additional australosphenidan character and noted that Ausktribosphenos and monotremes were united, to the exclusion of Ambondro, by the presence of a V-shaped notch in the distal metacristid. In the same year, Asfaltomylos was described from the Jurassic of Argentina as another australosphenidan. In contrast to Ambondro, this animal lacked a distal metacristid and did not have as well-developed a lingual cingulum.
However, in 2003 Michael Woodburne and colleagues revised the phylogenetic analysis published by Luo and colleagues, making several changes to the data, particularly in the monotremes. Their results (Figure 3, bottom) challenged the division between Australosphenida and Boreosphenida, as proposed by Luo et al. Instead, they excluded monotremes from Australosphenida and placed the remaining australosphenidans close to Eutheria, with Ambondro most closely related to Asfaltomylos. In 2007, Guillermo Rougier and colleagues described another australosphenidan, Henosferus, from the Jurassic of Argentina; they argued against a relationship between Eutheria and Australosphenida (Figure 3, top), but were ambivalent about the placement of monotremes within Australosphenida. Based in part on Martin and Rauhut's earlier work on wear facets in australosphenidans, they questioned the presence of a true functional protocone on the upper molars of non-monotreme australosphenidans—none of which are known from upper teeth—and consequently suggested that australosphenidans may not, after all, have had truly tribosphenic teeth.
|
302,759 |
Jack Hobbs
| 1,162,817,673 |
English cricketer
|
[
"1882 births",
"1963 deaths",
"A. E. R. Gilligan's XI cricketers",
"British Army personnel of World War I",
"British Home Guard soldiers",
"Burials in Sussex",
"C. I. Thornton's XI cricketers",
"Cambridgeshire cricketers",
"Cricket people awarded knighthoods",
"Cricketers from Cambridge",
"England Test cricketers",
"English cricketers",
"English cricketers of 1890 to 1918",
"English cricketers of 1919 to 1945",
"H. D. G. Leveson Gower's XI cricketers",
"Knights Bachelor",
"L. G. Robinson's XI cricketers",
"Lord Hawke's XI cricketers",
"Lord Londesborough's XI cricketers",
"Marylebone Cricket Club Australian Touring Team cricketers",
"Marylebone Cricket Club South African Touring Team cricketers",
"Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers",
"Military personnel from Cambridgeshire",
"North v South cricketers",
"P. F. Warner's XI cricketers",
"Players cricketers",
"Players of the South cricketers",
"Royal Air Force airmen",
"Royal Air Force cricketers",
"Royal Air Force personnel of World War I",
"Royal Flying Corps soldiers",
"S. H. Cochrane's XI cricketers",
"Surrey cricketers",
"Wisden Cricketers of the Century",
"Wisden Cricketers of the Year",
"Wisden Leading Cricketers in the World"
] |
Sir John Berry Hobbs (16 December 1882 – 21 December 1963), always known as Jack Hobbs, was an English professional cricketer who played for Surrey from 1905 to 1934 and for England in 61 Test matches between 1908 and 1930. Known as "The Master", he is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is the leading run-scorer and century-maker in first-class cricket, with 61,237 runs and 197 centuries. A right-handed batsman and an occasional right-arm medium pace bowler, Hobbs also excelled as a fielder, particularly in the position of cover point. Hobbs was named as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century alongside Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, Shane Warne, and Sir Viv Richards.
Born the eldest of 12 children to a Cambridge cricket groundsman and umpire in 1882, Hobbs wished from an early age to pursue a career in cricket from following his father's matches at Cambridge University colleges, and playing for teams on Parkers Piece.
His early batting was undistinguished, but a sudden improvement in 1901 brought him to the attention of local teams. In 1903, he successfully applied to join Surrey, with the support of England batsman Tom Hayward. His reputation grew and when he qualified to play for Surrey, he scored 88 on his first-class debut and a century in his next game. Over the following seasons, he established himself as a successful county player and in 1908 made his Test debut for England, scoring 83 in his first innings. After some mixed early performances for England, Hobbs' success against South African googly bowlers made his place secure, and by 1911–12, when he scored three centuries in the Test series against Australia, critics judged him the world's best batsman. In county cricket, he developed an attacking, dynamic style of play and was very successful up until 1914. After serving in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, he maintained his reputation when cricket resumed in 1919, but his career was threatened by appendicitis, which caused him to miss most of the 1921 season. When he returned, he was a more cautious batsman and used a safer style of play. Subsequently, he became more consistent and scored prolifically in both Test and domestic cricket until his retirement. During this period, he played some of his most acclaimed innings.
Hobbs' success was based on fast footwork, an ability to play many different shots, and excellent placement of the ball. Among the first batsmen to succeed against previously devastating googly bowlers, he adapted his technique to meet the new styles of bowling that arose early in his career; he mixed classical shots with an effective defence. He was particularly successful on difficult pitches for batting. An opening batsman, Hobbs established several effective opening partnerships; with Tom Hayward and Andy Sandham for Surrey and with Wilfred Rhodes and Herbert Sutcliffe for England. Despite batting against "ruthless bowlers on very hostile pitches with [fewer] safety regulations", his partnership with Sutcliffe remains in 2022 the highest average for a first-wicket partnership in Test history by a wide margin. Contemporaries rated Hobbs extremely highly, and critics continue to list him among the best batsmen of all time.
Hobbs was very close to Ada, his wife of 56 years; the pair were able to live comfortably in later life through Hobbs' substantial wage from Surrey, his commercial endorsements, and the proceeds of the sporting goods shop he opened in 1921 and ran for nearly the rest of his life.
After his cricketing retirement, he also worked in journalism. Knighted in 1953 — the first professional cricketer to be so honoured — he spent his later years nursing his wife. He died, aged 81, a few months after her in 1963.
## Early life
### Childhood and early cricket
Hobbs was born in Cambridge on 16 December 1882, the first of 12 children to John Cooper Hobbs, a slater, and his wife Flora Matilda Berry. Hobbs was raised in a poor, run-down area of the city, and he spent most of his childhood in near poverty. Hobbs senior, a lover of cricket, changed his career to become a professional cricketer, and in 1889 was appointed groundsman and umpire at Jesus College.
From an early age, Hobbs played cricket whenever he could. His first games were played in the streets near his house. He was educated at a primary school affiliated with his local Anglican church, St Matthew's, and moved in 1891 to York Street Boys' School, a fee-paying establishment; Hobbs later admitted to being a poor scholar but was successful at sports. He played cricket regularly for the St Matthew's choir team and the York Street school team, and during holidays helped his father at Jesus College. In his final year at York Street, to supplement the family budget, Hobbs took a job working before school hours in the domestic service of a private house. On leaving school in 1895, he worked as an errand boy until his father's connections at the university secured him a summer job as a college servant, chiefly assisting the cricket team. Aged 16, Hobbs became an apprentice gas fitter, and practised cricket on Parker's Piece, an open area of common land in Cambridge, in his spare time. He played for various local clubs but did not initially stand out as a cricketer: although better than most other Cambridge batsmen, no coaches or major teams approached him, and his batting gave little indication of the success which came later.
Hobbs' breakthrough came in 1901. His batting improved throughout the season, during which he scored 102 for Ainsworth against the Cambridge Liberals, his first century. At the end of the season, he was included in a Cambridge XI, a team chosen from the best local cricketers, to play a prestigious match against a team of professional cricketers brought by the Cambridge-born Surrey cricketer Tom Hayward. Hobbs' overall record was unremarkable, but at the end of the season he was invited to play as an amateur for Cambridgeshire; he achieved little in his appearances.
Early in 1902, Hobbs was appointed as assistant to the professional cricket coach at Bedford School, working as a groundsman and bowling in the nets. In late August, he returned to Cambridge to play as a professional for the first time. For a fee of ten shillings, Hobbs appeared for a team from the nearby town of Royston against Hertfordshire Club and Ground and scored 119 runs. His success delighted his family and made him a local celebrity. Hobbs' father, who had helped to arrange his appearance in the match, died from pneumonia a week later. Despite local fund-raising efforts for the bereaved family, Hobbs senior's death left his wife and children facing great financial hardship. Francis Hutt, a former friend and colleague of the father, contacted Essex County Cricket Club to request a trial for Hobbs. That county never replied—Hobbs later scored his maiden first-class century against them—but Hutt was more successful when he asked Hayward to look at Hobbs with a view to recommending him to Surrey. Consequently, in late 1902, Hobbs batted on Parker's Piece against Hayward and Bill Reeves, an Essex cricketer born in Cambridge, impressing Hayward in the process. In the winter of 1902–03 Hobbs assumed his father's duties as groundsman at Jesus College.
### Surrey cricketer
Hobbs was summoned to Surrey for a trial in April 1903, and subsequently offered a contract with the ground staff at the Oval on a basic wage during the season of 30 shillings a week. Hobbs could not immediately play for Surrey owing to the qualification rules in place at the time for the County Championship—a player had to be born in a county or to have lived there for two years in order to represent it. To achieve qualification, he moved to the Surrey area of London. Around this time he played football for local teams as a forward with some success, but struggled financially during the winter months and found it hard to find employment.
While qualifying, Hobbs played for Surrey's Colts side and for the Club and Ground Eleven, both of which were teams for young cricketers. Although he made some substantial scores, according to his biographer, Leo McKinstry, "just as he had done for much of his early life, [Hobbs] performed satisfactorily without doing anything startling". In the 1903 season he scored 480 runs at an average of 34.29, as well as taking 19 wickets as his bowling improved. The following season, Hobbs played only for the Club and Ground, increased his average to 43.90, and impressed people connected with the Surrey county side. His sudden improvement brought about a temporary return to the Cambridgeshire team, for which he remained qualified by birth. His batting was praised, particularly when he scored 195 and 129 in two matches against Hertfordshire. In total, he scored 696 runs in 13 innings for Cambridgeshire, averaging 58.00.
## First-class cricketer
By the start of the 1905 season, Hobbs had qualified for Surrey and was already being noted as a player of promise. At the time, Surrey needed an opening batsman to partner Tom Hayward. Although Hobbs had rarely opened the batting, he was selected as Hayward's opening partner for Surrey's first game of the season. He made his debut on 24 April 1905 against a team representing the "Gentlemen of England"; after scoring 18 runs in the first innings, he scored a rapid 88 in the second before rain ensured the match was drawn. The Surrey team and committee were impressed, and Hobbs retained his place for the club's opening County Championship match against Essex. When he scored 155 runs in around three hours during Surrey's second innings, the Surrey captain Lord Dalmeny awarded Hobbs his County Cap. Over the following weeks, Hobbs scored consistently, hitting another century against Essex and 94 runs against the touring Australian cricket team. But a combination of fatigue from continuous cricket and the pressure of first-class cricket adversely affected his form, and he struggled for the remainder of the season even as the county tried various measures to help him. In first-class cricket that season, Hobbs scored 1,317 runs at an average of 25.82, including two centuries and four other scores over fifty, to finish ninth in the Surrey batting averages. As an occasional medium-paced bowler, he took six wickets. Reviewing Surrey's season, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack singled Hobbs out for attention, praising his early-season form; it suggested that he was the best professional batsman Surrey had found for a long time. The Times noted that, while performing well, Hobbs had fallen short of the standards suggested by his start.
After a winter of practice, Hobbs displayed greater consistency in 1906. Displaying a wider range of shots, he scored four centuries, including another against Essex, and established an effective opening partnership with Hayward. Between his debut and Hayward's retirement in 1914, the pair shared 40 opening partnerships in excess of 100 runs. Hobbs was generally the junior partner, and was overawed by Hayward, to the extent that he did not feel confident enough to invite him to his wedding. Hayward influenced Hobbs' mental approach, particularly his running between the wickets, but the pair were dissimilar in style. In all first-class cricket in 1906, Hobbs scored 1,913 runs at an average of 40.70 with a highest score of 162, placing him second in the Surrey averages. Wisden praised his improved fielding and commented that he was "one of the best professional bats of the year". Hobbs made further advances in 1907. Unusually frequent rain during the season—Wisden described the season as the wettest ever—meant that pitches often favoured bowlers. After a poor start, Hobbs successfully adapted to the conditions, and scored consistently well. In June, he and Hayward shared four century opening partnerships in one week. Hobbs scored four centuries in total and by the end of the season had scored 2,135 runs, averaging 37.45. He was one of only three men to pass 2,000 runs; he was second to Hayward in the Surrey averages, and eighth nationally. His performances brought him to the attention of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) selectors, and he was chosen for the Players in the prestigious Gentlemen v Players matches in July, although he scored few runs in either game.
## Test match cricketer
### First appearances
Hobbs was selected to tour Australia in the 1907–08 season with an MCC team, given his opportunity by the unavailability of several leading players. Throughout the outward voyage, Hobbs was severely affected by sea-sickness, a condition which afflicted him on sea voyages throughout his life; in later tours, he travelled overland as far as possible to reduce his time on ships. Consequently, he missed the first two games of the tour against the Australian state teams. His appearances were further limited by the reluctance of the MCC captain, Arthur Jones, to select him. He played in only two of the early matches, failing on both occasions, and was left out of the team for the first Test match. After England lost the game, Hobbs was chosen for the second Test. Hobbs made his Test debut on 1 January 1908 at Melbourne Cricket Ground. Opening the England batting on the second day, Hobbs scored 83 runs in 182 minutes. Eventually, England needed 282 to win and did so by one wicket; Hobbs scored 28. He retained his place for the rest of the series. In the fourth match, he scored 57 on a pitch badly affected by rain; by adopting a policy of attacking the bowling he hit ten fours. He concluded his series with an innings of 72 in the final game, but could not prevent a third successive English defeat—the home side won the five-match series 4–1. He scored 302 runs in the Tests at an average of 43.14. In other first-class matches, he scored centuries against Tasmania and Victoria, totalling 876 runs at 41.71.
Hobbs scored fewer runs in 1908, despite better conditions for batting. Even so, he scored 81 in the Gentlemen v Players game, achieved a batting average over 40 in the County Championship and scored six centuries for Surrey. In all first-class games, Hobbs scored 1,904 runs at 37.33. For his achievements that season, Hobbs was chosen as one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year. The citation noted that "at the present time there is perhaps no better professional batsman in England except Hayward and Tyldesley".
Hobbs began the 1909 season with a succession of large scores, including a double century in one match and two separate centuries in another. Such form placed him in contention for a place in the England team to play Australia that year, despite the English batting strength. But the England captain, Archie MacLaren, was unconvinced that Hobbs possessed the required quality. The Surrey captain and England selector H. D. G. Leveson Gower persuaded the committee to include Hobbs in the squad, then convinced a reluctant MacLaren to play him in the team. In the first Test, played at Edgbaston, Hobbs opened the batting with MacLaren but was dismissed from the first ball he received. The match was a low-scoring one, and Australia set England 105 runs to win. Hobbs, this time opening the batting with C. B. Fry, hit 62 not out and England passed the target without losing a wicket. England lost the next two matches, and Hobbs was unsuccessful, with a top-score of 30 in four innings. A badly injured finger meant that he missed the remainder of the Test series; in three games, he scored 132 runs at an average of 26.40. England lost the series when the remaining two matches were drawn. Hobbs struggled to regain his form when he recovered; he averaged 40.65 for the season, but of the 2,114 first-class runs he scored, nearly half came in the first month of the season.
### Dominance in South Africa
Hobbs accepted an invitation to tour South Africa that winter with the MCC. The cricketing conditions were challenging: matches were played on matting pitches, unfamiliar to English players, and the South African googly bowlers had previously troubled most leading English batsmen, provoking debate over how batsmen could combat the new delivery. The MCC captain, Leveson Gower, selected Wilfred Rhodes to open the batting with Hobbs for the first Test. Rhodes, a defensively-minded batsman who excelled at taking quick singles, had begun his career as a bowler who batted down the order. He steadily improved his batting, eventually becoming an opening batsman. Hobbs and Rhodes, between 1910 and 1921, opened the batting 36 times for England and shared eight century partnerships; their average of 61.31 runs per opening partnership remains the second highest in Test history. In other first-class cricket, they shared a further five century opening partnerships. Their association was notable for effective running; the pair developed such an unusually good understanding that they were able to run without calling to each other. They scored singles by pushing the ball just past nearby fielders and running quickly. Critics believed that they raised the art of running to a new level.
This tactic developed from the first day that Hobbs and Rhodes batted together in the first Test; they added 159 runs for the first wicket. Hobbs scored 89 in the first innings and 35 in the second, and while England lost narrowly, he appeared much more comfortable than the other English batsmen against the googly. Hobbs and Rhodes shared a partnership of 207 in the tour match following the Test, in which Hobbs scored 163. England also lost the second Test, but Hobbs scored 53 and 70, sharing two substantial opening partnerships with Rhodes. The failure of the other batsmen, defeated by the googly bowlers, caused consternation in the English press. As England had few effective pace bowlers on the tour, Hobbs opened the bowling in the first two Tests, as well as the batting. In the third Test, he scored 93 not out to guide England to a three-wicket victory. However, the series was lost when England were defeated in the fourth match; Hobbs scored 0 and 1, the only time in his Test career that he failed to reach double figures in either innings, and his worst match return in first-class cricket. In the final game of the series, he scored his first Test hundred, opening the batting and sharing a partnership of 221 with Rhodes which was a record at the time for the first wicket in Test matches. Hobbs scored 187, an innings praised by Wisden for its "brilliancy". In this match he once more opened the bowling, dismissing Reggie Schwarz, his only Test wicket. England won the match by nine wickets and the series finished 3–2 against them. Hobbs scored 1,124 first-class runs at an average of 66.11 on the tour, while in the Test matches, he scored 539 runs at 67.37. None of the other English batsmen came close to matching his success against the googly, and by the end of the series, critics were beginning to describe him as the world's leading batsman. Wisden commented: "Beyond everything else from the English point of view the feature of the trip was the superb batting of Hobbs, who easily adapted himself to the matting wickets and scored from the famous googly bowlers with amazing skill and facility. When they came home the other members of the team could not say too much in his praise."
Fatigue from the South African tour affected Hobbs in 1910. He scored 1,982 runs at an average of 33.03, the lowest average of his career apart from his first season. More effective during 1911, after a long rest during the winter, Hobbs was consistently successful in a hot, dry summer which produced good batting pitches. He played few large innings, but was very effective in high-pressure games, and scored 2,376 runs at 41.68. Bowling more frequently than in other seasons, Hobbs took 28 first-class wickets. Against Oxford University, Hobbs bowled throughout the second innings to take seven wickets for 56 runs, the best figures of his career.
### Success against Australia
Hobbs was an automatic selection for the MCC tour of Australia in the winter of 1911–12. During the first Test, which Australia won by 146 runs, Hobbs scored 63 in the first innings, although by his own admission he did not play well. Rhodes was in the team, but did not open the batting owing to his poor form; Hobbs opened with Septimus Kinneir. England recovered to win the second Test; after bowling Australia out for 184 and taking a first-innings lead of 81, the visiting team eventually faced a target of 219 to win. Hobbs and Rhodes, restored to the opening position, began with a partnership of 57. Hobbs scored 126 not out, his first century against Australia, and scored particularly well from the bowling of H. V. "Ranji" Hordern, a googly bowler who had taken 12 wickets in the first Test. Wisden commented that Hobbs "played one of the finest innings of his life", and England won by eight wickets. Australia were once more bowled out for a low score in the third Test; this time Hobbs and Rhodes added 147 for the first wicket and Hobbs scored 187. England reached a total of 501 and won the match by seven wickets.
Having established a lead in the series, England began the fourth Test by bowling Australia out for 191. At the end of the first day, Hobbs and Rhodes had scored 54 together, and the next day they took their partnership for the first wicket to 323, setting a new record for the highest partnership for any wicket in Test matches. Their partnership remained an overall Test record for 22 years and the highest for the first wicket until 1948. As of 2016, this remains England's highest opening partnership against Australia. The pair scored easily from the bowling but faced criticism for slow batting. Even so, Hobbs reached a century in 133 minutes and proceeded to play more aggressively afterwards. He was finally dismissed for 178. England reached a total of 589 and bowled Australia out for 173 to win the match by an innings and regain the Ashes. England also won the final Test to take the series 4–1; Hobbs scored 32 and 45, sharing a partnership of 76 with Rhodes in the second innings. Hobbs ended the series with an aggregate of 662 runs at an average of 82.75, setting a new record number of runs for an individual batsman in a Test series. His average was far greater than any other batsman on either team, and the tour established him as the world's best batsman. In addition, in all first-class matches he ran out 15 batsmen while fielding at cover point. The Australians did not dare run when he fielded the ball for fear of the speed of his throw. In all first-class matches, Hobbs scored 943 runs at 55.47.
The 1912 season was unusually wet, which resulted in some very difficult pitches for batting. Wisden remarked that Hobbs did not bat particularly well for Surrey. The press criticised him for trying to score too quickly and losing his wicket in the process. During the summer, both Australia and South Africa toured England, taking part in the Triangular Tournament. Hobbs made a slow start to the competition when he was bowled in the first over in England's opening match, and his form was uncertain in the early part of the season. However, he scored a century against Australia at Lord's Cricket Ground on a very difficult batting pitch in England's second game, sharing a partnership of 112 with Rhodes. He continued with scores of 55 and 68 in the next two games against South Africa, and his batting was praised by the press; for the first time, in the Times, he was referred to as "a great master". South Africa were defeated in five of their six games (the other was drawn). As the first two games between England and Australia were drawn, the final match was designated as the deciding match for the tournament. Hobbs and Rhodes opened with 107, and Hobbs scored 66. These runs were crucial and England won the game by 244 runs. Hobbs had the best batting average for the summer from all three teams; he averaged 40.75 against South Africa and 56.00 against Australia. In all first-class cricket his aggregate was 2,042 runs at 37.81.
### Years before the war
In 1913, batting in a more controlled fashion, Hobbs scored 2,605 runs at an average of 50.09, placing him second in the national averages. He continued to score quickly, twice scoring 100 runs before lunch on the first day of a match; against Worcestershire, he and Hayward shared an opening partnership of 313 in 190 minutes. In the winter of 1913–14, the MCC sent a strong team to South Africa. The opposition team lacked effective players, and England won the five-Test series 4–0, mainly as a result of the bowling of Sydney Barnes. Hobbs scored 443 runs at an average of 63.28 in the series; he did not score a century, but accumulated scores of 82, 92 and 97, while he and Rhodes shared two century opening partnerships and another of 92. Hobbs adopted a cautious approach, and Wisden noted that he was "not quite so brilliant as in England" but said that he was "an absolute master on matting wickets [pitches]." In all first-class matches, he scored 1,489 runs at 74.45.
After a slow start to the 1914 season, Hobbs recorded a string of centuries, including a score of 226, his highest at that time. The looming First World War overshadowed much of the season. Cricket initially continued once the war began, but as the Oval had been requisitioned by the military, Hobbs' benefit match was moved from the Oval to Lord's. This move, and the public's preoccupation with the war, consigned the game to a financial failure; in total, Hobbs' benefit raised £657 (£80,663 in 2021 terms), lower than most benefits and far less than usually raised for cricketers of Hobbs' standing. The Surrey committee agreed to give him another benefit when the war concluded. Hobbs scored his 11th century of the season before public pressure terminated the cricket season. During the winter, the MCC declared Surrey as County Champions; although the war prevented the completion of all the matches, Surrey led comfortably enough for the other counties not to object. This was the only time in Hobbs' career that Surrey were champions. In all first-class games in 1914, he scored 2,697 runs at 58.63. As the war began, Hobbs reputation was at its peak; he was described by Wisden as "one of the greatest bats of his generation". McKinstry states that during the season: "With his free-scoring method, [Hobbs] had dazzled in a way that he was never to do again."
## First World War
Unlike many other cricketers, Hobbs did not immediately join the army, but worked in a munitions factory, possibly as a clerk. Writing later, Hobbs related that he was criticised for not joining up, but suggested he did not realise how serious the war would be, and was conscious of the need to care for his family. From March 1915 he found extra work as coach at Westminster School, and in May began to play on Saturdays as a professional for Idle in the Bradford Cricket League. The continuation of competitive cricket in Bradford, when all other such cricket had ceased, was controversial. Several clubs hired top-class professionals and matches became very popular. Although his arrival was eagerly anticipated, Hobbs never reached the expected heights, averaging 36.63 throughout the 1915 season. But his signing provoked an angry exchange of correspondence between the Yorkshire president Lord Hawke, who was highly critical of the employment of professionals, and John Booth, the president of the Bradford League. Hobbs never publicly commented on the matter, but was instrumental in recruiting Frank Woolley to play in the league. He continued to play for Idle in 1916, and was more successful, scoring 790 runs at 52.60 and taking 65 wickets at 6.27. But his conscription after the season into the Royal Flying Corps ended his regular cricket in the league.
Hobbs joined the Corps in October 1916 as an air mechanic and after training was posted to London, then Norfolk; at first he had time to appear in charity cricket matches and in several games for Idle. In November 1917, he joined 110 Squadron which remained in England despite plans to send it to France. By 1918, the cricket authorities began to arrange more matches and Hobbs played successfully several times at Lord's. In September 1918, 110 Squadron, as part of the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF), was sent to France and took an active part in the fighting, but Hobbs never discussed his career in the RAF. Even so, some of his family remained critical and felt that the worst of the war was over when Hobbs went to France. He was demobilised in February 1919.
## Career after the war
### Resumption of cricket
When first-class cricket resumed in 1919, Surrey awarded Hobbs a five-year contract worth £400 a year (£24,185 in 2021 money). During the season, he began to open the batting with Andy Sandham, who succeeded to Hayward's position as Hobbs' partner; in the following years, the pair established an effective partnership. In total, they shared 66 century opening partnerships and averaged over 50 for the first wicket. Like Hobbs' other successful partnerships, this one was based on quick running. Sandham, even when successful, was often overshadowed by his partner; on one occasion, Sandham scored a century but the headlines were reserved for Hobbs' duck. Sandham usually played the subordinate role and Hobbs took most of the bowling.
Hobbs made a good start to the 1919 season and, despite a brief spell of failure through over-aggression, batted consistently. He scored a double century for Surrey against a touring Australian Imperial Forces cricket team and centuries in each of the three Gentlemen v Players matches—the only player ever to do so in one season. His rescheduled benefit match raised £1,670 (£91,750 in 2021 terms), money he used to open a sports shop in London. The shop was successful, and he ran it until just before his death. The additional income gave him considerable financial independence. In total that year, Hobbs scored 2,594 runs in first-class matches, more than anyone else, at an average of 60.32. After a winter working in his shop, his good form continued into 1920. Four of his eleven first-class centuries came in consecutive innings in June, and he totalled 2,827 runs at 58.89. He also took five wickets for 21 runs against Warwickshire, and his 17 wickets at an average of 11.82 placed him at the top of the Surrey bowling averages.
Hobbs toured Australia with the MCC during the 1920–21 season, under the captaincy of J. W. H. T. Douglas, when Australia won every match of the five-Test series. He was one of the few English successes. He scored two centuries in the opening three first-class games, and in the first Test top-scored in both England innings with 49 and 59. In the second Test, he scored 122 on a difficult pitch which had been affected by rain. Wisden commented that this was "from the English point of view, the finest innings of the tour". He also scored a century in defeat in the third Test, hitting 123 in the final innings as England failed to score 489 to win the game. He did not pass 50 again in the series; after a failure on the fourth Test, he tore a thigh muscle batting in a game before the final Test. Persuaded by Douglas to play anyway, he scored 40 and 34 but struggled to field effectively. One unsuccessful attempt to chase the ball caused some of the crowd to jeer him, which led to controversy when two amateur members of the team, Percy Fender and Rockley Wilson, wrote scathingly about the incident. Hobbs scored a total of 924 first-class runs on the tour, at an average of 51.33; in Test matches, he scored 505 runs at 50.50. Although he and Rhodes resumed their opening partnership, apart from in the first Test, when C. A. G. Russell partnered Hobbs, they could not replicate their former successes, and shared only one stand worth more than fifty.
Hobbs played just five first-class matches in 1921, when Australia toured England. In his opening first-class game, he played against the touring team, but tore the same thigh muscle injured in Australia. He missed the opening two Tests, but once recovered, scored a century for Surrey; as England trailed 2–0 in the five-Test series, the selectors chose him for the third Test. In the days approaching the match, played in Leeds, he suffered from increasing stomach pain but reluctantly played. On the first day of the match, he had to leave the field, and after a day of rest the pain worsened. He consulted Sir Berkley Moynihan, a prominent surgeon based in Leeds, who diagnosed acute appendicitis and operated the same day. In the opinion of the surgeon, Hobbs would not have lived another five hours without surgery. He missed the rest of the season.
Hobbs returned to cricket in 1922 and batted effectively throughout the first months of the season, scoring 10 first-class centuries in total. One of the centuries came in the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's, in which he captained the Players team for the first time. Towards the end of the season, his form faded owing to the lingering effects of his illness and operation the previous year. Wisden observed that he frequently tired during longer innings and often tried to get out soon after reaching three figures; this habit of giving up his innings continued throughout the remainder of his career. The season also marked a turning point in his batting approach where he preferred to score more slowly and take fewer risks, in contrast to his adventurous pre-war tactics. Second in the national batting averages for 1922, he scored 2,552 runs at an average of 62.24, but declined an invitation to tour South Africa that winter with the MCC. Less successful during the wet 1923 season, Hobbs failed on many occasions and was unsuccessful in both Gentlemen v Players games. He was still struggling with the after-effects of his operation and Wisden noticed he once more tried to score too quickly early in an innings. However, against Somerset, he scored the 100th century of his first-class career, the third man to reach the landmark after W. G. Grace and Hayward. Overall in the season, he scored 2,087 runs at 37.95.
### Partnership with Sutcliffe
Hobbs signed a new contract worth £440 (£28,463 in 2021 terms) a season before the 1924 season. His form recovered to the extent that his biographer, John Arlott, described it as the beginning of "his quite phenomenal second lease of cricketing life". Batting conditions were good throughout the summer and Hobbs' opening partnership with Sandham for Surrey began to approach its peak of effectiveness. Hobbs also established an opening partnership with Yorkshire's Herbert Sutcliffe; the pair had opened together briefly in previous seasons and were chosen to open in a Test trial early in 1924, beginning a six-year Test association. They were often successful in difficult batting conditions; Hobbs, generally the dominant partner, usually faced more of the bowling. By the time of his retirement, they had opened the batting 38 times in Tests, shared 15 century opening partnerships, and added 3,249 runs together; their average partnership was 87.81, the highest in all Tests for a pair of opening batsmen as of 2016. In all first-class matches, they had added 100 for the first wicket 26 times and had an average partnership of over 77. As with Hobbs' other partnerships, they ran well between the wickets, and established a particular reputation for reliability; according to McKinstry, they became an "English institution". The cricket writer Gerald Howat suggests that "'Hobbs and Sutcliffe' became almost a synonym for English stability."
Following their success in the 1924 trial match, Hobbs and Sutcliffe were selected for the England team to play the first Test against South Africa. When England batted first, the pair added 136 for the first wicket; Hobbs, playing a Test innings in England for the first time since 1912, scored 76. England won the match by a large margin. In the second Test, Hobbs and Sutcliffe opened with 268 runs for the first wicket; Hobbs scored 211, his highest Test score. At the time, the innings was the highest played at Lord's in a Test and equalled the highest in a Test match in England. England scored 531 for the loss of two wickets and won the match by an innings. Having initially declined an invitation to tour Australia with the MCC in the coming winter, Hobbs was left out of the team for the fourth Test. After the MCC accepted his request to allow his wife Ada to accompany him—the wives of professionals were not usually permitted to tour—he changed his mind, and was added to the England team for the fifth Test. In the series, he scored 355 runs at an average of 71.00, while in all first-class matches he totalled 2,094 runs at 58.16. He finished second in the national averages, and the cricket press noted that, although Hobbs scored more slowly and in less spectacular fashion than previously, he batted in a safer, secure style which was more successful in terms of run-scoring.
The MCC team which toured Australia under the captaincy of Arthur Gilligan in 1924–25 lost the Test series 4–1, but critics thought the winning margin flattered the host country. Between them in the Test matches, Hobbs and Sutcliffe scored seven centuries and shared four opening partnerships which passed 100 runs. Hobbs began the tour well, and scored consistently in the matches before the Tests. In the first Test, in reply to Australia's first innings of 450, Hobbs and Sutcliffe opened with 157 runs. Hobbs went on to his seventh century against Australia, beating the previous record number in England-Australia Tests by Victor Trumper. Australia eventually set England a target of 605 runs. Hobbs and Sutcliffe shared their second century opening partnership of the game, but England lost by 193 runs. During the match, Hobbs became the leading run-scorer in Test cricket, passing the previous record of 3,412 runs set by Clem Hill in 1912. In the second Test, Australia scored 600 during the opening two days. In reply, Hobbs and Sutcliffe batted throughout the third day without being separated, scoring 283. They concentrated on defence but both men reached centuries, and the press praised their achievements. Even so, Australia won the game by 81 runs, and in the aftermath of the defeat, Cecil Parkin, a former Test bowler and vocal critic of Gilligan's captaincy, wrote a newspaper article suggesting that Hobbs should assume the leadership of the side. This suggestion provoked a reaction from Lord Hawke—"Pray God, no professional will ever captain England"—and subsequent press debate over the idea of Hobbs as captain. In reality, Hobbs had no desire to captain England.
Australia once more batted first in the third Test, scoring 489. For tactical reasons, Hobbs did not open the batting but scored 119 and shared another century partnership with Sutcliffe. Wet weather altered the course of the match and, despite an opening partnership of 63 between Hobbs and Sutcliffe, Australia won by 11 runs. The opening batsmen shared their fourth century partnership of the series in the fourth Test as England won by an innings, but Australia won the final match to win the series 4–1 and in a heavy defeat, Hobbs failed in both innings. In the series, he scored 573 runs at an average of 63.66, and made two half-centuries in addition to his three hundreds. Critics in Australia and England once more recognised him as the leading batsman in the world. Hobbs and Sutcliffe far outscored the remaining MCC batsmen and Wisden judged that with better support from other batsmen they could have won the series. In all games, Hobbs scored 865 first-class runs at 54.06.
### Peak of popularity
Hobbs was particularly successful in 1925. Early in the season a string of centuries, including a run of four in consecutive innings, made him the first batman to reach 1,000 runs that season and brought him close to Grace's record of 126 first-class hundreds. He scored the 125th century of his career against Kent on 20 July, but amid intense press and public interest, Hobbs lost form through a combination of anxiety and fatigue. He continued to score well, but could not reach three figures in an innings—after one innings of 54, a newspaper headline proclaimed that "Hobbs Fails Again". It was not until 15 August, against Somerset, that Hobbs scored 101 to reach the landmark, an achievement praised and feted throughout the country over the following weeks. On the final day of the match, Hobbs scored another century to become the outright record holder. He ended his season with an innings of 266 in a Gentlemen v Players match at the Scarborough Festival, his highest to date and the best score made in the Gentlemen v Players series, and 104 for the Rest of England against Yorkshire, the County Champions. In total, he scored 16 centuries—setting a record for most centuries in a season—and totalled 3,024 runs at an average of 70.32 to top the national averages for the first time. Following his successful season, Hobbs was in great demand. He attended several functions in his honour but rejected offers to appear on stage, in film and to stand as a Liberal parliamentary candidate.
Hobbs was given a third benefit by Surrey in 1926, which raised £2670 (£173,651 in 2021 terms). Further recognition came when he and Rhodes joined the England selection committee for the Ashes series to be played that summer; for professional cricketers to serve as England selectors was unprecedented. Hobbs began the season well, and after the first Test, which was badly affected by rain, he remained in form by scoring 261 against Oxford University, sharing an opening partnership of 428 with Sandham; this remained a Surrey first wicket record as of 2016. In the drawn second Test, he and Sutcliffe shared an opening stand of 182. Hobbs scored 119 but was criticised for slowing down later in his innings, leading to accusations that he was more concerned with reaching three figures than batting for the team. The third Test was also drawn. England followed on in the face of a large Australian total, but Hobbs and Sutcliffe opened the second innings with a partnership of 156 and Hobbs scored 88 as the game was saved. During the fourth Test, he temporarily assumed the captaincy when Arthur Carr withdrew from the match owing to illness; Hobbs became the first professional to captain England at home. The selectors and players on both teams believed Hobbs performed well tactically. He scored 74 in England's innings, but heavy rain ensured a fourth successive draw.
As everything depended on the final game, the Imperial Cricket Conference agreed that the match be played to a finish. Carr was replaced as captain by Percy Chapman, a decision which proved controversial in the press; Rhodes was also recalled to the team, aged 48. Amid huge public interest, the match was evenly balanced at the end of the second day when England began their second innings. Overnight rain seriously damaged the pitch before the third morning and few critics—including members of the home team—expected England to score many runs. But Hobbs and Sutcliffe, who had scored 49 on the second evening, began to bat confidently before the effects of a hot sun drying a damp pitch made batting even more hazardous. Concentrating on defence, but scoring whenever possible, the pair added 172 in total. Immediately after reaching 100, Hobbs was out and received a prolonged ovation from the crowd. Many critics believed that, given the conditions, match situation and pressure, this was his greatest innings. England built up a large lead and bowled Australia out to win the Ashes. Late in the season, Hobbs made the highest score of his career, 316 not out for Surrey against Middlesex at Lord's, establishing a record individual innings for Lord's which survived until 1990. In total, Hobbs scored 2,949 runs at 77.60, including 12 centuries, to be placed first in the national batting averages.
Hobbs missed a large part of the 1927 season with a combination of illness and injury. In between his absences, he performed well, although he was left out of the Gentlemen v Players match. He scored 1,641 runs at 52.93, including seven centuries. He began the 1928 season with four centuries in the first month, but another leg injury kept him out of cricket for six weeks. When he recovered, he was selected in the last two of the three Tests against the West Indies, playing their first Test series. In his first game, he and Sutcliffe shared a century partnership; in the third, Hobbs scored 159, having opened with a 155-run partnership with Sutcliffe. England won the series 3–0. Hobbs maintained his batting form until the end of the season; he finished second in the batting averages, scoring 2,542 runs at an average of 82.00 and hitting 12 centuries. Critics believed he remained unsurpassed among English batsmen.
### Final Tests
Hobbs toured Australia for a final time as a player in 1928–29 as part of a strong MCC team, and despite substantial scores in early games, did not bat well. He made little contribution to England's victories in the first two Tests, and some critics noticed a decline in his batting, a judgement reinforced when he was out to a poorly-chosen shot in the first innings of the third Test for 20. Australia were able to build up a substantial lead, and overnight rain before the sixth day of the match made them likely winners. England needed 332 to win, but on a pitch growing more difficult as it dried, a total of 100 was considered unlikely. Hobbs and Sutcliffe survived to add 105 for the first wicket; observers praised their technique against the turning ball, although the Australian bowlers were criticised for ineffective tactics. Hobbs was out for 49; at his suggestion, Douglas Jardine came in to bat next, and England reached the end of the day having lost just one wicket for a score of 199. Next day, the team won the game to take a 3–0 lead in the series with two to play and ensure they retained the Ashes. In the fourth Test, Hobbs scored 74 and shared a partnership of 143 with Sutcliffe as England won by 12 runs; in the final game, won by Australia, he scored 142 on the first day, his final Test century and 12th against Australia. Scoring his hundred at the age of 46 years 82 days, he remained as of 2016 the oldest player to score a Test century. In first-class games on the tour, Hobbs scored 962 runs at 56.58. and 451 runs at 50.11 in the Tests.
Hobbs missed more cricket with injuries and illnesses in 1929; between 1926 and 1930, he missed more than a third of Surrey's matches. However, he scored heavily and compiled 2,263 runs at an average of 66.55 to lead the first-class averages. Unfit for the first two Tests against South Africa, he chose to miss the next two, and played in the final game, scoring 10 and 52. Critics observed a general slowing in Hobbs' scoring throughout the season, and he scored more often in singles than in his earlier years.
Hobbs began 1930 in good form, and, with Rhodes, was added to the selection panel again for the Ashes series that season. In the first Test, Hobbs scored 78 and 74; he top-scored in both innings, but failed in the next two Tests. Before the third and fourth Tests, feeling tired and concerned by his form, he offered to stand down but the other selectors declined his suggestion. When he batted in the fourth Test, he shared an opening partnership of 108 with Sutcliffe, their 11th century stand against Australia. After two hours batting, he was out for 31. With the series level at 1–1, the final Test was to be played to a finish, but before it began, Hobbs announced that it would be his last. Shortly after making the decision, he returned to form, scoring a century and passing, in his next game, W. G. Grace's record career-aggregate of 54,896 first-class runs. Before the deciding Test, the selectors sacked Percy Chapman as captain. The press speculated that Hobbs would replace him, but Bob Wyatt was chosen; Hobbs may have turned down an offer of the captaincy at the meeting of selectors. In the match, Hobbs scored 47 in the first innings. When he came out to bat in the second, in the face of a large Australian first-innings lead, Hobbs was given an ovation by the crowd and the Australian fielders gave him three cheers. Hobbs was moved by his reception but scored only nine runs before he was dismissed, and Australia won the match and series. In his final series, he scored 301 runs at 33.44. In 61 Tests, he had scored 5,410 runs at an average of 56.94. He retired as the leading run-scorer in Test matches, a record he held until it was passed by Wally Hammond in 1937. Maintaining his form for the rest of the season, Hobbs scored 2,103 first-class runs in 1930 at 51.29.
### End of career
During the winter of 1930–31, Hobbs and Sutcliffe joined a private team run by the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram which toured India and Ceylon. Hobbs was very popular with the crowds, and scored 593 runs. These runs, and in particular the two centuries he scored, were to prove controversial. Hobbs never believed that the matches were, or should have been, of first-class status, but statisticians later judged them to be first-class. Wisden never recognised the centuries and so records his century total as 197. Other authorities give 199 centuries. Despite using a more limited batting technique, Hobbs remained successful in 1931. He played several representative matches and took part in the 150th century opening partnership of his career. In total, he scored 2,418 first-class runs in the season at 56.23. In 1932, despite missing several matches owing to injuries and fatigue, he scored 1,764 runs at 56.90, including centuries in each innings against Essex. According to Mason, this latter performance prompted Douglas Jardine to coin the nickname "The Master" for Hobbs. Hobbs scored 161 not out for the Players against the Gentlemen, his 16th century in the fixture, to pass the record total of WG Grace for the Gentlemen.
Hobbs was partially involved in the Bodyline controversy in Australia in 1932–33. Late in the 1932 season, Bill Bowes consistently bowled short-pitched deliveries against him in a match between Surrey and Yorkshire. Bowes was criticised in the press and particularly by Pelham Warner, who was to manage the MCC team in Australia. Hobbs accompanied the team to Australia as a journalist, writing for the News Chronicle and The Star, accompanied by his ghostwriter Jack Ingham. During the tour, Hobbs neither condemned Bodyline nor fully described the English tactics. Other journalists admired Hobbs but dismissed his writing as "bland". When he returned to England, Hobbs openly criticised the English tactics in newspaper columns and in a book he wrote about the tour. In 1933, playing less frequently, he scored 1,105 runs at 61.38, aged 50. After missing the first games with illness, he scored 221 against the touring West Indian team, to the acclaim of the press. He did not play every game, and the Surrey committee allowed him to choose which matches to play. More centuries followed later that season, which took him to 196 in his career, fuelling anticipation that he would reach 200 centuries. That winter he accompanied the MCC team in India as a journalist. Before the next season, Surrey constructed a new entrance to the Oval which was named after Hobbs. In 1934, he scored 624 runs at 36.70. After a solid start, he scored his final first-class century against Lancashire. After this he played irregularly, and his batting began to appear uncomfortable. Hobbs realised his career was over: in February 1935, he announced his retirement. There were many tributes and a public dinner was held in his honour which was attended by many leading figures in cricket. In all first-class cricket, Hobbs scored 61,760 runs at an average of 50.70 according to ESPNcricinfo. Later in 1935, Hobbs was made an honorary life member of Surrey.
## Style and technique
For much of Hobbs' career, critics judged him to be the best batsman in the world. E. W. Swanton described him in 1963 as "a supreme master of his craft, and the undisputed head of his profession". Neville Cardus said that Hobbs was the first batsman to develop a technique to succeed consistently against googly bowlers, and that he mastered all types of bowling, all over the world and in a variety of conditions. Other critics have suggested that Hobbs moved the focus of batting from aesthetic off side shots to leg side play more suited to swing and googly bowling. Swanton wrote that Hobbs combined classical play with effective defence—including protecting the wickets using his pads—against the ball unexpectedly moving towards the stumps. His pad-play was controversial: it removed any possibility of dismissal but was regarded by some cricket authorities as negative and unsporting.
Many of his English contemporaries rated Hobbs superior to Donald Bradman, often regarded as the greatest batsman in the history of cricket, on difficult pitches. In difficult batting conditions Hobbs batted with great success, and several of his most highly regarded innings came in such circumstances. Murphy suggests: "Before Bradman, he was the most consistent run-getter of all time, yet no one worried less about the sheer slog of carving out big scores." Hobbs frequently was out deliberately soon after reaching a century—roughly a quarter of his centuries were scores less than 110—and was not particularly interested in most statistics. An article in Wisden in 2000 stated: "He was never as dominant as Bradman; he never wanted to be. But his contemporaries were in awe of his ability to play supremely and at whim, whatever the conditions."
Hobbs' technique was based on strong forearms and good foot movement. R. C. Robertson-Glasgow suggested that "his footwork was, as near as is humanly possible, perfect. In every stroke, he moved into line with the ball with so little effort that he could bat for hours without over-taxing energy of mind or body." He played every type of shot—he did not have a "signature" shot like other batsmen, but selected his strokes effectively; according to Alec Kennedy, who bowled to Hobbs, it seemed that he could predict what the bowler would do. In contrast to many leading batsmen from his time, Hobbs preferred to play off the back foot as he believed it gave him more time to see the ball and adapt his shot. Capable of playing all the strokes, he hit the ball precisely between fielders and sometimes delayed his shot to make the ball travel more slowly and allow more time to run; he also ran well between the wickets. He liked to score his first run quickly when he came into bat, and he often looked to score quickly at the start of an innings, before the bowlers had settled; on occasion, Hobbs targeted the main bowling threats from the opposition in an attempt to neutralise them. Early in his career, mainly before the First World War, Hobbs was an aggressive, fast-scoring batsman who played many shots. After the war, he was more circumspect and adapted his technique to account for both his increased age, and the increased pressure and expectation from the public and teammates. He concentrated to a greater extent on batting for longer periods; many critics, including Hobbs himself, recognised the change and suggested that he was a better batsman before 1914. However, commentators also noted that he displayed greater certainty and control in this later period; Cardus wrote that "he scored his centuries effortlessly now; we hardly noted the making of them." This was the period in which he became known as "The Master", and he was more consistent than before the war. This was the time when the public regarded him with the most respect and affection; 98 of his centuries and 26,411 of his runs (at an average of 58.62) in first-class cricket were scored after he reached the age of 40.
Hobbs was an occasional medium-paced bowler who bowled a good length and made the ball swing. Some critics judged him to be a potentially good bowler, but both Surrey and England were reluctant for him to bowl regularly, fearing it would affect his batting. As a fielder, Hobbs improved greatly from his early days. He fielded in the covers and was expert in cutting off potential runs and returning the ball quickly to the wicket-keeper. Contemporaries believed him to be one of the best cover fielders there had been, and remarked on his powers of anticipation in getting to the ball. They also noted he sometimes deceived batsmen with his casual attitude and occasional deliberate mis-fields; these would be followed by very sharp fielding which often produced a run out.
Although a professional—captains at the time were almost exclusively amateurs—the respect in which Hobbs was held meant that he was accepted as a captain. Many, but not all, critics considered him a competent tactician and leader. He regularly led the Players team against the Gentlemen and sometimes at Surrey in the absence of Percy Fender, but he was a reluctant captain. He disliked the responsibility and decision-making of leadership, and rarely even offered tactical advice.
## Reputation and legacy
Hobbs was twice selected as Wisden's Cricketer of the Year, in 1909 and 1926; only he and Pelham Warner have received this award twice. In 1963, Neville Cardus chose him as one of the best six cricketers of the previous 100 years, to mark Wisden's centenary. More recently, Hobbs was selected by a panel of experts in 2000 as one of five Wisden cricketers of the 20th century. In 2009, he was selected by cricket historians and writers as a member of England's all-time best team, and included in a similar team to represent the best players worldwide in the history of cricket. Hobbs' Test batting average of 56.94 remained as of 2016 the sixth best among batsmen to have passed 5,000 runs, despite a rise in the number of batsmen who average more than 50 since 2000. Among openers who have scored 5,000 Test runs, he has the third best average behind Sutcliffe and Len Hutton. He was comfortably the leading Test run-scorer during his career, and had the highest number of Test runs at the time of his retirement. Between 1910 and 1929, he averaged 65.55 in Test cricket.
Gideon Haigh suggests that Hobbs was a "spontaneous and original", trend-setting batsman who was not afraid to depart from orthodoxy. Gerald Howat notes that, aside from his batting achievements, "Hobbs's biographers and obituarists could strike no discordant note. He was a man of moral probity, religious conviction, and personal commitment. And he was humble enough to see himself as an ordinary person blessed with one extraordinary talent, which he put into its proper perspective. It was an attitude of mind which tempered the sternness of his approach with an engaging humour and a delight in playing practical jokes." Among his contemporaries, Hobbs was regarded as modest and kind, and never criticised other players. He avoided confrontation, although he was "quietly determined", according to Wisden, and tried to avoid publicity. According to Fender, Hobbs "gave stature" to the profession of cricket. Modern critics have expressed some reservations: some have pointed out that his batting average, although high, has been surpassed by others, and that among his many centuries, few were as large as other players managed. However, others contend that his impact on the game, his achievement in showing that professionals could bat as freely and stylishly as amateurs, and his kindness place him among the top cricketers of all time. Wisden described him in 2000: "More than anyone else, he lifted the status and dignity of the English professional cricketer." In summing up his place in history, it said: "He was not an artist, like some of his predecessors, nor yet a scientist, like some of the moderns; he was perhaps the supreme craftsman."
## Personal life
### Family life
In 1900, Hobbs met Ada Ellen Gates, a cobbler's daughter, at an evening church service held in St Matthew's, Cambridge. The progress of their relationship was slowed by Hobbs' shyness and devotion to cricket, but the pair eventually married on 26 September 1906 at the church in which they met. They planned to keep the event quiet, but it was reported in the press and the couple received gifts and messages from Hobbs' Surrey team-mates. Hobbs so disliked being separated from his wife during cricket tours that in later years she often accompanied the team overseas. They had four children: Jack, born in 1907, Leonard in 1909, Vera in 1913 and Ivor in 1914.
Hobbs and his wife lived in rented property for the first years of their marriage. His earnings placed them roughly in the bracket of lower middle class according to McKinstry: although more prosperous than he had been during his childhood, the family were not initially financially comfortable. Hobbs' wages increased with his reputation so that by 1913, he was earning £375 (£46,040 in 2021 terms) each year, placing his family within the bracket of the London middle class. After several years of moving from one property to another, he was able to buy his own house in 1913, in Clapham Common, a prosperous area of London. By the middle of the 1920s, cricket in England was extremely popular and the players were famous. Hobbs was the biggest attraction to the sport, and a combination of his cricket earnings (estimated to be around £780 [£50,457 in 2021 terms] each year), the income from his business, product endorsement—he was one of the first cricketers to benefit from lending his name to commercial products—and ghostwritten books and articles made him relatively wealthy. According to McKinstry, his annual earnings probably reached £1,500 (£97,032 in 2021 terms) a year by 1925, more than a family doctor at the time. Consequently, in 1928, the family moved to a large house in private grounds, and Hobbs was able to send his children to private schools. He had greater financial independence than most contemporary cricketers, but he was always first concerned to give his family the security lacking from his childhood.
### Retirement and final years
Following his retirement from cricket in 1934, Hobbs continued to work as a journalist, first with Jack Ingham then with Jimmy Bolton as his ghostwriters. He accompanied the MCC team to Australia in 1936–37 and published four books which sold well in the 1930s. In addition, he produced two ghostwritten autobiographies, but generally avoided self-publicity or controversy. He continued to work at his sports shop and he and Ada moved home several times. By the mid-1930s, his wife was becoming mentally and physically frail. Hobbs supported several charities in his spare time and continued to play cricket at club and charity level.
During the Second World War, Hobbs served in the Home Guard at New Malden. In 1946, Hobbs became the first professional to be elected to the Surrey committee. The same year, he and his wife moved to Hove, following several years of health concerns and worries over his business and children. Ada's health continued to deteriorate, and the couple spent some time in South Africa in an attempt to aid her recuperation.
In 1953, Hobbs was knighted, the first professional cricketer to be so honoured. He was reluctant to accept it and only did so when convinced that it was an honour to all professional cricketers, not just himself. In the same year, John Arlott formed the "Master's Club", a group of Hobbs' admirers who met regularly to celebrate him. Hobbs remained active into the 1960s, including working in his shop. By the late 1950s, Ada required the use of a wheelchair, and Hobbs spent most of his time caring for her. She died in March 1963. Hobbs' own health began to fail shortly afterwards, and he died on 21 December 1963 at the age of 81. He left £19,445 (£433,263 in 2021 terms) in his will and was buried in Hove Cemetery. A memorial service was held at Southwark Cathedral in February 1964.
|
70,639,304 |
Ignace Tonené
| 1,172,417,222 |
Algonquin chief (1840/41–1916)
|
[
"1840s births",
"1916 deaths",
"19th-century Canadian politicians",
"Algonquin people",
"Canadian fur traders",
"Canadian gold prospectors",
"History of Temagami",
"History of mining in Canada",
"Hudson's Bay Company people",
"Indigenous leaders in Ontario",
"People from Temagami",
"Upper Canada people"
] |
Ignace Tonené (1840 or 1841 – 15 March 1916), also known as Nias or by his Ojibwe name Maiagizis (), was a Teme-Augama Anishnabai chief, fur trader, and gold prospector in Upper Canada. He was a prominent employee of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Tonené was the elected deputy chief before being the lead chief and later the life chief of his community. In his role as deputy, he negotiated with the Canadian federal government and the Ontario provincial government, advocating for his community to receive annual financial support from both. His attempts to secure land reserves for his community were thwarted by the Ontario premier Oliver Mowat.
Tonené's prospecting triggered a 1906 gold rush and the creation of Kerr Addison Mines Ltd., although one of his claims was stolen from him by white Canadian prospectors.
Tonené died in 1916 at the age of 74 or 75. He is buried near Mount Kanasuta in Quebec.
## Early life
Maiagizis was most commonly known by his English name Ignace Tonené, often shortened to Nias. He was born in 1840 or 1841 near Lake Temagami in the Temagami First Nation in Upper Canada. He was the eldest son of François Kabimigwune and Marian and grandson of Temagami chief White Bear (Wabimakwa). His brother was Frank White Bear (died 1930).
## Career and community leadership
Tonené worked for the Hudson's Bay Company from 1857, delivering mail between its trading posts at Lake Timiskaming and Lake Temagami. He also worked at Fort Témiscamingue where he likely learned French.
### Leadership
Around 1889, Tonené was elected as deputy chief (anike ogima) taking over the role from his father. In 1877, Tonené filed a land claim concerning the Temagami region with the Parry Sound federal Indian Agent. In 1878, Tonené took over as head chief. He oversaw the adoption of potato farming and cattle raising. As chief, Tonené was noted for his principles, advocating to the community that debts must be paid, including to the Hudson's Bay Company. Unlike other First Nations surrounding Lake Huron, Tonené's community was not a party to the Robinson Treaties. The treaties were two 1850 formal agreements between Ojibwa chiefs and the Crown in which chiefs relinquished land in exchange for immediate and ongoing financial payments. Tonené advocated for redress and support for his people. Tonené was concerned about the impact of lumberjacks and their impact on the natural resources of the area. He advocated to federal Indian agent Charles Skene for the provision of an annuity payment and the creation of reserve.
During a speech in January 1889, Tonené warned his community: "The white men were coming closer and closer every year and the deer and furs were becoming scarcer and scarcer ... so that in a few years more Indians could not live by hunting alone." He continued to press the government for federal financial support and the creation of a reserve through a series of meetings and letters written in Anishinaabe, which resulted in an acknowledgment from Indian agent Deputy Superintendent Lawrence Vankoughnet in 1880 that approximately 2,800 square miles (7,300 km<sup>2</sup>) of Temagami land were indeed unceded. Initially Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald deferred the matter to the Ontario Premier, but in 1883 the Department of Indian Affairs agreed to an annual payment to the nation. The prices were comparable to the amounts received by other First Nations who were parties to Robinson Huron Treaty. In 1884, Tonené convened a tribal council on Bear Island to discuss the potential location for the reserve; the community agreed it should be about 100 square miles (260 km<sup>2</sup>) surrounding Cross Lake and at the south end of Lake Temagami. The federal government agreed to the proposal, but the Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat, who had a reputation for hostility towards to Indigenous treaty rights, blocked the land transfer, primarily concerned about the value of the red and white pine lumber at the location. It was not until 1943 that lands were finally set aside for the Temagami and the official creation of the Bear Island Reserve not occur until 1971.
In 1889, after Oliver Mowat's refusal to create the reserve and as his chiefdom ended, Tonené moved his family to land between Lake Opasatica and Lake Dasserat near Abitibi, Quebec. In 1889, he travelled to Bear Island to meet Indian agent Thomas Walton and ask for seeds and farming equipment for his community. Tonené hunted and trapped to feed his family, and in 1903 starting prospecting, motivated by the recent silver discovery at Cobalt, Ontario. His successful finds of gold instigated the Larder Lake gold rush of 1906, according to the Canadian Mining Journal. The gold that he discovered at McGarry later became the Kerr-Addison mine, and he staked at least one claim there which was subsequently stolen from him by white settlers. The Tonene Old Indian Mining Company issued a prospectus just prior to the start of World War I, but sources do not indicate if Tonené benefited from the company.
Tonené was succeeded as head chief by John Paul, though Tonené continued to hunt and trap in Abitibi country. Following the 1893 death of John Paul, Tonené once again became head chief, and from 1910 he was the honorary or life chief and the primary advisor to the new head chief, his younger brother Frank White Bear.
## Personal life
In 1860, Tonené married Angèle, the daughter of former Temagami band chief Nebenegwune. They had two sons and two daughters, and Angèle died in childbirth in 1869. In 1871, Tonené married Elisabeth Pikossekat of Timiskaming band and they had three daughters.
Both of Tonené's sons died before adulthood, although his five daughters all lived into adulthood, married, and had children.
## Death and legacy
Tonené died on 15 March 1916, near Lake Abitibi, Quebec. He was buried close to Mount Kanasuta, Quebec, near the Quebec–Ontario border. The location of his burial was later turned into a gravel pit and then a community dump.
In 2016, Tournene Lake, south of Bear Lake and north of Larder Lake, was officially renamed Chief Tonene Lake.
|
568,055 |
Are You Experienced
| 1,166,280,540 |
1967 studio album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
|
[
"1967 debut albums",
"Albums produced by Chas Chandler",
"Albums recorded at Olympic Sound Studios",
"Barclay (record label) albums",
"Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients",
"MCA Records albums",
"Polydor Records albums",
"Reprise Records albums",
"The Jimi Hendrix Experience albums",
"Track Records albums",
"United States National Recording Registry albums",
"United States National Recording Registry recordings"
] |
Are You Experienced is the debut studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Released in 1967, the LP was an immediate critical and commercial success, and it is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. The album features Jimi Hendrix's innovative approach to songwriting and electric guitar playing which soon established a new direction in psychedelic and hard rock music.
After struggling to earn a living on the R&B circuit as a backing guitarist, Hendrix signed a management and production contract in 1966 with former Animals member Chas Chandler and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery. Chandler brought Hendrix to London and recruited members for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, a band designed to showcase the guitarist's talents. In late October, after having been rejected by Decca Records, the Experience signed with Track, a new label formed by the Who's managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. Are You Experienced and its preceding singles were recorded over a five-month period from late October 1966 through early April 1967. The album was completed in 16 recording sessions at three London locations, including De Lane Lea Studios, CBS Studios, and Olympic Studios.
Released in the UK on May 12, 1967, Are You Experienced spent 33 weeks on the charts, peaking at number two. The album was issued in the US on August 23 by Reprise Records, where it reached number five on the US Billboard Top LPs, remaining on the chart for 106 weeks, 76 of those in the Top 40. The album also spent 70 weeks on the US Billboard Hot R&B LPs chart, where it peaked at number 10. The US version contained some of Hendrix's best known songs, including the Experience's first three singles, which, though omitted from the British edition of the LP, were top ten hits in the UK: "Purple Haze", "Hey Joe", and "The Wind Cries Mary". Hendrix was unhappy with the cover artwork for the UK edition, and solicited photographer Karl Ferris to create a more "psychedelic" cover for the US release.
In 2000, it was voted number 63 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. Rolling Stone ranked Are You Experienced 30th on its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2010, the magazine placed four songs from the US version of the album on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: "Purple Haze" (17), "Foxy Lady" (153), "Hey Joe" (201), and "The Wind Cries Mary" (379). In 2005, the record was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress in recognition of its cultural significance to be added to the National Recording Registry. Writer and archivist Reuben Jackson of the Smithsonian Institution wrote: "it's still a landmark recording because it is of the rock, R&B, blues ... musical tradition. It altered the syntax of the music ... in a way I compare to James Joyce's Ulysses."
## Background
By May 1966, Jimi Hendrix was struggling to earn a living playing the R&B circuit as a back-up guitarist. During a performance at one of New York City's most popular nightspots, the Cheetah Club, he was noticed by Linda Keith, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Shortly after, Hendrix relocated to the city's Greenwich Village and began a residency at the Cafe Wha? fronting his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Keith recommended Hendrix to Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and producer Seymour Stein. They failed to see Hendrix's musical potential, and rejected him. She then referred him to Chas Chandler, who was leaving the Animals and interested in managing and producing artists. Chandler liked the Billy Roberts song "Hey Joe", and was convinced he could create a hit single with the right artist. Impressed with Hendrix's live version of the song with his band, he brought him to London on September 24, 1966, and signed him to a management and production contract with himself and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery.
Immediately following Hendrix's arrival in London, Chandler began recruiting members for a band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, designed to showcase the guitarist's talents. Hendrix met the guitarist Noel Redding at an audition for the New Animals, where Redding's knowledge of blues progressions impressed Hendrix. Chandler asked Redding if he wanted to play bass guitar in Hendrix's band; Redding agreed. Chandler then began looking for a drummer and soon after, he contacted Mitch Mitchell through a mutual friend. Mitchell, who had recently been fired from Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, participated in a rehearsal with Redding and Hendrix where they bonded over their shared interest in rhythm and blues. When Chandler phoned Mitchell later that day to offer him the position, he readily accepted. In late October, after having been rejected by Decca Records, the Experience signed with Track, a new label formed by the Who's managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp.
## Recording
Are You Experienced and its preceding singles were recorded over a five-month period from October 23, 1966 to April 4, 1967. The album was completed in 16 recording sessions at three London locations, including De Lane Lea Studios, CBS, and Olympic. Chandler booked many of the sessions at Olympic because the facility was acoustically superior and equipped with most of the latest technology, though it was still using four-track recorders, whereas American studios were using eight-track.
Chandler's budget was limited, so in an effort to reduce expenditures he and Hendrix completed much of the album's pre-production work at their shared apartment. From the start, Chandler intentionally minimized the creative input of Mitchell and Redding. He later explained: "I wasn't concerned that Mitch or Noel might feel that they weren't having enough—or any—say ... I had been touring and recording in a band for years, and I'd seen everything end as a compromise. Nobody ended up doing what they really wanted to do. I was not going to let that happen with Jimi." When the Experience began studio rehearsals, Hendrix already had the chord sequences and tempos worked out for Mitchell, and Chandler would direct Redding's bass parts.
### October to December 1966
Chandler and the Experience found time to record between performances in Europe. They began on October 23, recording "Hey Joe" at De Lane Lea Studios, with Chandler as producer and Dave Siddle as engineer. The song featured backing vocals by the Breakaways. Soon after the session began, Chandler asked Hendrix to turn his guitar amplifier down, and an argument ensued. Chandler commented: "Jimi threw a tantrum because I wouldn't let him play guitar loud enough ... He was playing a Marshall twin stack, and it was so loud in the studio that we were picking up various rattles and noises." According to Chandler, Hendrix then threatened to leave England, stating: "If I can't play as loud as I want, I might as well go back to New York." Chandler, who had Hendrix's immigration papers and passport in his back pocket, laid the documents on the mixing console and told Hendrix to "piss off". Hendrix laughed and said: "All right, you called my bluff", and they got back to work. Redding wrote in his diary that they completed two songs during the October 23 session, but the second one has never been positively identified. Author Sean Egan speculated that it might have been Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" or Wilson Pickett's "Land of a Thousand Dances". Chandler decided that they should use an Experience original for the B-side of the single, so he encouraged Hendrix to start writing; he composed his first Experience song, "Stone Free", the following day. Chandler, in an effort to minimize studio expenses, purchased rehearsal time at the Aberbach House in London. He abandoned this practice after realizing how quickly the group could learn songs while warming up in the studio. On November 2, 1966, the Experience returned to De Lane Lea to continue work on their first single. During the session, they recorded "Stone Free" and a demo version of "Can You See Me". This marked the first time that the Experience recorded a song that was eventually included on the original UK release of the album.
Chandler had been dissatisfied with the sound quality at De Lane Lea, so he took the advice of Kit Lambert and booked time at CBS Studios. On December 13, 1966, after taking a five-week break from recording while they performed in Europe, the Experience reconvened at CBS. Assisted by engineer Mike Ross, the band were especially productive during the session, recording instrumentation and vocals for "Foxy Lady" and basic instrumental tracks for "Love or Confusion", "Can You See Me", and "Third Stone from the Sun". Ross recalled the impact of Hendrix's Marshall stacks: "It was so loud you couldn't stand in the studio ... I'd never heard anything like it in my life." When Ross asked Hendrix where he would like the microphone placed Hendrix replied: "Oh, man, just put a mic about twelve feet away on the other side of the studio. It'll sound great." Ross agreed, and with a Neumann condenser mic he recorded Hendrix's guitar playing in a large room that, according to Ross, "was absolutely vital to the uniquely powerful Experience sound." Ross noted that input from Mitchell and Redding was minimized, and he asserted that Chandler was clearly "the one in charge" of the sessions. The band played together live at CBS; the lead and backup vocals were overdubbed. Despite his dwindling finances, Chandler encouraged the Experience to record numerous takes of a song, affording them the luxury of repeated attempts at a satisfactory recording. With a live instrument track as the foundation of the recordings, they eschewed the common practice of piecing together parts of several takes to make one continuous piece. After the December 13 recording session, the band made their television debut, on Britain's Ready Steady Go!
On December 15, 1966, finishing touches were made on the four rhythm tracks that were recorded the previous session. Although Chandler enjoyed working at CBS and he appreciated the high quality of the recordings they made there, he ended his professional connection with the studio after a disagreement between him and owner Jake Levy over his failure to make payment. Chandler had planned to pay Levy for the sessions after the album was completed, but Levy demanded payment upfront. Chandler viewed this as an unreasonable expectation, and he vowed that he would never again do business with CBS. The fifth and final song recorded there was "Red House". As stereophonic sound was not yet popular among music fans, these recordings were all monaural mixes; Ross explained: "back then ... mono was king. All the effort went into the mono." He estimated that they spent no more than 30 minutes mixing any one track.
The first Experience single, with "Hey Joe" as the A-side and "Stone Free" as the B-side, was released in the UK on December 16, 1966. Track Records was not yet operational, so their distributor, Polydor Records, issued the single with their logo. It reached number six on the UK chart in early 1967. On December 21, 1966, Chandler and the Experience returned to De Lane Lea with Dave Siddle as engineer. They recorded two alternate versions of "Red House" and began work on "Remember"; both tracks were significantly re-worked in April 1967 at Olympic Studios.
### January to April 1967
#### January
After a three-week break from recording while they played gigs in England, including a December 29 appearance on Top of the Pops, the Experience reconvened at De Lane Lea on January 11, 1967. As "Hey Joe" was gaining chart momentum in the UK, they began working on their second single, which featured Hendrix's second songwriting effort, "Purple Haze", as its A-side. The track presented a more complex arrangement than the band's previous recordings, and required four hours of studio time to complete, which Chandler considered extravagant. The session was the first time that he and the group had experimented with guitar effects. Acoustic engineer Roger Mayer introduced Hendrix to the Octavia, an octave-doubling effect pedal, in December 1966, and he first recorded with the effect during the guitar solo of "Purple Haze". When Track Records sent the master tapes for "Purple Haze" to Reprise for remastering, they wrote on the tape box: "Deliberate distortion. Do not correct."
On January 11, 1967, the Experience worked on their third A-side, "The Wind Cries Mary", a song that marked their first use of overdubbing in lieu of retakes as a method of achieving a satisfactory track. Chandler explained: "There were five guitar overdubs all linking in together to sound like one guitar." The song, which Redding and Mitchell had not yet heard before that day, was completed during the session. Chandler had decided that they should discard the rough version of "Third Stone from the Sun" from December 13 and re-record the song; they completed a basic track for the piece, but were unable to achieve a finished master. The group managed to produce an acceptable live recording of the basic track for "Fire" after seven takes. Next, they attempted Hendrix's newly written ballad, "The Wind Cries Mary". Without the benefit of rehearsals, the band recorded the song in one take, to which Hendrix added several guitar overdubs; Chandler estimated that they spent approximately 20 minutes on the completed rhythm track. According to Chandler, by this time Redding and Mitchell had begun to complain about their limited input. Chandler explained that financial considerations influenced the creative dynamic: "[They] were sort of fighting the fact that they had no say during recording sessions ... they were starting to come up with suggestions, but ... We didn't need to be arguing with Noel for ten minutes and Mitch for five ... We just couldn't afford the time."
Between January 12 and February 2, 1967, the Experience took a break from recording while they played 20 dates in England, including a second appearance on Top of the Pops, on January 18. Chandler was dissatisfied with the sound quality of the January 11 recordings and frustrated by the large number of noise complaints that they had received from people living and working near De Lane Lea. He explained: "There was a bank above the studio ... and it was at the time when computers were just coming in ... we would play so loud that it would foul up the computers upstairs." Brian Jones and Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones encouraged Chandler to try Olympic Studios, which was considered the top independent London studio. Despite the growing chart success of their first single, Chandler's money problems persisted. Olympic required advance payment for studio time, but Polydor had not yet released any funds to Track for disbursement. When Chandler went to Polydor asking for relief they responded by guaranteeing him a line of credit at Olympic.
#### February
With his budget concerns alleviated, Chandler booked time at Olympic, where on February 3, 1967, he and the Experience met sound engineer Eddie Kramer. During Kramer's first session with the group, he deviated from the standard recording method that they had been using at CBS and De Lane Lea, which was to record bass and drums in mono on two tracks. He instead recorded Mitchell's drums on two tracks in stereo, leaving the remaining two tracks available for Redding's bass and rhythm guitar parts played by Hendrix. Kramer's unorthodox approach, which was inspired by Hendrix's complaints regarding the limitations of four-track recordings, captured the live sound of the band using all four available tracks. Kramer and Chandler then pre-mixed and reduced the first four tracks down to two, making two more tracks available for lead guitar overdubs and vocals. This method satisfied both Hendrix's perfectionism and Chandler's desire to reduce the number of takes required for a satisfactory rhythm track, thus minimizing their expenses. Another change instigated by Kramer was the use of a mixture of close and distant microphone placements when recording Hendrix's guitar parts whereas, during previous sessions, the microphones had been placed about twelve feet away from Hendrix's amplifiers. In addition to the usual choices, Kramer used Beyerdynamic M 160 ribbon microphones, which were typically not used to record loud music.
During the February 3, 1967, session at Olympic, the Experience improved the January 11 master tape of "Purple Haze" by re-recording the vocal and lead guitar parts, and adding another Octavia guitar overdub, which was sped-up and panned at the end of the song. The group reconvened at Olympic on February 7, continuing their work on "Purple Haze" by recording Hendrix's rhythm guitar and vocal parts, as well as Redding's background vocals. They spent time overdubbing ambient background sounds by playing tapes through a set of headphones that were held near a microphone, creating an echo effect as the headphones were moved closer; they completed a final mix of "Purple Haze" the following day. During the session, they worked on the De Lane Lea master tape of "Fire", replacing everything except Redding's bass line, which he double-tracked in an effort to accentuate the recording's lower frequencies. Kramer placed the second bass line on a dedicated track and blended Redding's original bass line with Mitchell's newly recorded drum part. They also recorded Mitchell and Redding's backing vocals. "Foxy Lady" was also reworked on February 8; Redding recorded a new bass line and Hendrix and Mitchell added overdubs to their existing parts. After recording backing vocals by Redding and lead vocals from Hendrix, Kramer prepared the song's final mix.
Hendrix was not as confident a singer as he was a guitarist, and because he strongly disliked anyone watching him sing he asked the engineers at Olympic to construct a privacy barrier between him and the control room. This created problems when the studio lights were low, and the engineers were unable to see him, making his visual cues and prompts difficult to communicate. As was the case at De Lane Lea, Hendrix's penchant for using multiple amplifiers at extreme volume drew criticism and complaints from the people living and working near to the studio. Olympic tape operator George Chkiantz recalled: "Sometimes, it got so loud we'd turn the [control booth] monitors off and there was really very little difference." Chkiantz noted that reactions to Hendrix's music were not always positive: "I seem to recall a lot of musicians, a lot of people, saying, 'I can't see what all the fuss is about myself', or 'I don't know how you listen to all that noise; I'd be scared to work with him' ... Chas was convinced that he was on to something. Not everyone was convinced that Chas was right." Another issue that complicated the sessions were the large number of female fans who would show up at the studio wanting to watch the Experience record. As a habit, Hendrix would indiscriminately tell people where they would be on any given day, which led to large groups of fans following him everywhere. Olympic employees were tasked with keeping them under control and at a safe distance so as to not unduly burden the recording process. Chkiantz commented: "It was extraordinary. I worked with the Stones. I worked with the Beatles. I worked with Led Zeppelin. I was not as jumpy; it was not as difficult as with Hendrix. It was something of an open house. Hendrix was not difficult at all, but I personally would have preferred not to have loads of girls lurking in the woodwork."
On February 20, 1967, the Experience continued working on Are You Experienced, but scheduling conflicts at Olympic led Chandler to book time at De Lane Lea. During the session they recorded "I Don't Live Today", which featured a manual wah effect that predated the pedal unit. They managed to complete a working master by the end of the day, though Hendrix eventually recorded a new lead vocal at Olympic.
#### March and April
The Experience took a week break from recording while playing gigs in England, and returned to De Lane Lea on March 1, 1967, to attempt a studio recording of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". Although the song had long been a staple of the group's live show, they failed to achieve an acceptable basic track, owing mostly to Mitchell's inability to keep consistent time during the session.
The second Experience single, "Purple Haze"/"51st Anniversary", was released on March 1. It entered the UK singles chart on the 23rd, peaking at number three. During that month, the band took another long break from recording while they played gigs in Belgium, Germany, and the UK, including appearances on the UK television show Dee Time and the BBC radio show Saturday Club. Scheduling conflicts at Olympic led Chandler to book a March 29 session at De Lane Lea. On this date the band worked on another newly written Hendrix composition, "Manic Depression"; they finished a rough mix by the end of the session that was later rejected in favor of a re-mix completed at Olympic. On April 3, the Experience returned to Olympic, adding overdubs and completing final mixes on several unfinished masters. During the eight-hour session, the band recorded three new songs, including "Highway Chile", "May This Be Love", and "Are You Experienced?". As the album's title track featured backwards rhythm guitar, bass, and drums, replication of the beat caused Mitchell some consternation when attempting the song live. Chandler completed final mixes for "I Don't Live Today", "Are You Experienced?", and "May This Be Love" before the end of a session that Kramer described as "very organized."
In an effort to free up space for Hendrix's lead vocals, further reduction mixing was completed for "Are You Experienced?" during a session at Olympic on April 4, 1967. With the title track complete, the Experience shifted their focus to the January 11 rough demo of "Third Stone from the Sun". Chandler decided that they should discard the original De Lane Lea tape and record a new version of the song. During the session, Kramer prepared a reduction mix of "Highway Chile", which made two tracks available for Hendrix's lead guitar and vocal overdubs. Though stereo and mono mixes were completed for the song, Chandler preferred the mono version, which he paired with "The Wind Cries Mary" for release as the group's third UK single. A reduction mix was prepared for "Love or Confusion", and Hendrix took advantage of the newly vacant tracks by adding lead guitar and vocals. A final mix was completed before the end of the session. On April 5, Chandler participated in a mastering session at Rye Muse Studios for "Highway Chile" and "The Wind Cries Mary", during which preparations were made so that Track could begin manufacturing records. On the 10th, he and the Experience returned to Olympic, spending the bulk of the session on editing dialogue segments for "Third Stone from the Sun", which were then slowed down and mixed into the song. Kramer concentrated his efforts on the song's complicated mix: "The song was like a watercolor painting ... each track was composed of four, fairly dense composite images."
After the April 10, 1967, recording session, the Experience spent the next two weeks playing shows and attending promotional appearances in England, including a spot on the BBC television program Monday Monday and BBC2's Late Night Line-Up. Chandler, Hendrix, and Kramer completed the final mixing of Are You Experienced at Olympic by 3 a.m. on April 25. Chandler had agreed to audition the finished LP for Polydor's head of A&R, Horst Schmaltze, at 11 a.m., so after a few hours of sleep he prepared a suitable acetate demo and traveled to Polydor. Chandler recalled: "As Horst started to put the needle on the record, I broke out in a cold sweat, thinking ... when he hears this, he's going to order the men in white coats to take me away ... Horst played the first side through and didn't say a word. Then he turned the disk over and played the other side. I started thinking about how I was going to talk my way out of this. At the end of the second side, he just sat there. Finally, he said, 'This is brilliant. This is the greatest thing I've ever heard.'" Horst immediately became an ardent supporter of the album and the band, championing the marketing and distribution of their debut LP.
## Music and lyrics
According to Hendrix biographer Harry Shapiro, the music on Are You Experienced incorporates a variety of music genres from rhythm and blues to free jazz; author Peter Doggett noted its "wide variety of styles", while journalist Chris Welch said "each track has a different personality". Musicologist Gilbert Chase asserted that the album "marked a high peak in hard rock", and music critic Jim DeRogatis characterized the LP and its preceding singles as "raw, focused psychedelic rock". A contemporary review published in Newsweek in October 1967 identified the influence of soul music on the Experience and the album. In 1989, Hit Parader magazine ranked it number 35 in a list of the top 100 heavy metal albums. In 2006, writer and archivist Reuben Jackson of the Smithsonian Institution wrote: "it's still a landmark recording because it is of the rock, R&B, blues ... musical tradition. It altered the syntax of the music ... in a way I compare to, say, James Joyce's Ulysses."
Included on the UK edition of Are You Experienced were two tracks that represented the music Hendrix had played in the US before the formation of the Experience: the blues track "Red House" and the rhythm and blues song "Remember". The album's psychedelic title track, which author Sean Egan described as impressionistic, featured the post-modern soundscapes of backwards guitar and drums that pre-date scratching by 10 years. Musicologist Ritchie Unterberger considers the lyrics to "I Don't Live Today" to be more at home in a gothic rock setting than in psychedelia, however; he describes the music as being "played and sung with an ebullience that belies the darkness of the lyrics." The song's tribal rhythms served as a platform for Hendrix's innovative guitar feedback improvisations. Whereas "Fire" is a funk and soul hybrid driven by Mitchell's drumming, "May This Be Love" and "The Wind Cries Mary" are soft ballads that demonstrate Hendrix's ability to write thoughtful lyrics and subtle melodies. The influence of raga rock can be heard in his sitar-like guitar solo on "Love or Confusion". "Can You See Me" is an uptempo rocker that features Hendrix's double tracked vocals and his use of a one-note bend in the style of Hank Marvin. Although "Hey Joe" is a folk song, and the only cover on the album, it would become one of Hendrix's most requested tracks.
The UK edition of Are You Experienced opened with "Foxy Lady", a track that, with the exception of a few overdubs, was recorded in one session at CBS. Hendrix wrote the song about Heather Taylor, a London socialite who later married the Who's Roger Daltrey. It begins with the fade-in of an F note that Hendrix is bending-up to F sharp while applying generous finger vibrato. Using his guitar's control knob, he slowly increases volume until an audio feedback loop develops and he slides into the song's implied dominant seventh sharp ninth chord. Hendrix used a combination of natural amplifier overdrive and fuzz box effects units to create the song's razor-sharp guitar tone. Its blues–inspired solo—his fourth since arriving in England—used pentatonic scales while showcasing his innovative approach to melody; by exploiting the increased sustain created by overdriving his amplifiers, he moved seamlessly between the middle and high registers with a fluid, singing tone. Author Peter Doggett compared its slow beat to Memphis soul; David Stubbs described the track as a prototype for heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath.
Although the lyrics to "Purple Haze", which opened the US edition of Are You Experienced, are often misinterpreted as describing an acid trip, Hendrix explained: "[It] was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea." He speculated that the dream may have been inspired by a science fiction story about a purple death ray. Redding stated that Hendrix had not yet taken LSD at the time of the song's writing, which was after a gig in London on December 26, 1966. The first draft of the lyrics was exceedingly long, so Chandler and Hendrix reduced its length to something appropriate for mainstream pop music. It opens with a guitar/bass harmony in the interval of a tritone that was known as the diabolus in musica during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The Catholic Church prohibited medieval composers of religious music from using the tritone, or flattened fifth, because as musicologist Dave Whitehill wrote: "to play it was like ringing Satan's doorbell." In the opinion of the author Ritchie Unterberger, the opening riff has "become a permanent part of rock's vocabulary." Whereas Rolling Stone described the song as the beginning of late-1960s psychedelia, the authors Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek identified Hendrix's use of R&B, funk, and soul elements in the track.
In 1967, Hendrix told the journalist Keith Altham that "Third Stone from the Sun" is about a visiting space alien who, upon evaluation of the human species, decides that people are not fit to rule Earth, destroys their civilization, and places the planet in the care of chickens. The song is composed of two contrasting sections, one that features a jazzy guitar melody played in the style of Wes Montgomery over a straightforward rock tempo, and another that showcases Hendrix's free-form mixolydian mode guitar lines with a jazz beat. The track contains no proper vocals, instead using spoken words played at half-speed to invoke images of interstellar space travel. In addition to jazz elements, Unterberger identified Hendrix's use of surf music motifs in the track that are reminiscent of earlier works by the Ventures, a group from the Pacific Northwest that Hendrix would have heard during his childhood.
Hendrix described "Manic Depression" as "ugly times music"; during a live performance he explained the meaning of the lyrics: "It's a story about a cat wishing he could make love to music instead of the same old everyday woman." The song is unusual in that it's written in triple meter, or time, which is the time signature commonly associated with a waltz; most rock music is written in . Although his delivery is rock oriented, Mitchell's drumming on the track is reminiscent of Elvin Jones's fluid jazz patterns. Musicologist Andy Aledort noted Hendrix's "dramatic use of chromaticism" during the song's opening bars and the "heavily vibratoed unison bends" that presage what he described as one of Hendrix's best guitar solos.
"The Wind Cries Mary" is the first ballad recorded by the Experience; Hendrix wrote the lyrics after an argument with his girlfriend, Kathy Etchingham, whose middle name is Mary. She explained: "I smashed plates on the floor, [and] he swept them up. He locked me in the bathroom for absolutely ages and ... eventually Chas's girlfriend Lotta let me out ... I ran out to get a taxi and was standing under the traffic lights, and I had red hair and a red dress. I went back after I'd cooled down and he'd already written it." The song featured a chord progression inspired by Curtis Mayfield and lyrics that reflected Hendrix's admiration of Bob Dylan. "Stone Free" expressed Hendrix's desire to preserve his personal freedom, demurring the concepts of conformity and long-term relationships. He revisited this theme in "51st Anniversary" and "Highway Chile". Omitted from the American version of the album, "Red House" did not see an official release in the US until the 1969 compilation Smash Hits. An unusual feature of the recording is that it does not include a bass guitar track; Redding instead played rhythm guitar with his equalization set strongly in favor of bass tones. It is Hendrix's only original twelve-bar blues.
## Album cover
Chris Stamp designed the cover of the UK version of Are You Experienced, which featured a picture of Hendrix, Mitchell, and Redding by Bruce Fleming. The image shows Hendrix wearing a long dark cape while standing over Mitchell and Redding, striking what Egan described as a "Dracula-esque pose". Chandler contacted Fleming based on the photographer's previous work with the Hollies, the Dave Clark Five, and the Animals. The photo shoot took place in February after Fleming had attended several recording sessions and Experience gigs. Chandler made a point of requesting that the band member's faces be clearly visible in the photograph; Fleming explained: "[Album covers] got much more esoteric as time went on, but to establish the artist we had to get their faces across so the kids would recognize them." He took monochrome and color shots of the band; Track selected an image from the latter group. Fleming had indicated which picture he preferred they use, marking the shot with a cross, but after the album's release he realized that they had selected another, less desirable image. According to Fleming, the shot that he chose was "more sinister; more interesting". Stamp hired graphic artist Alan Aldridge to design the sleeve's psychedelic lettering. Track inexplicably put only the album's title on the cover, omitting the band's name; Polydor issued the release throughout Europe with Hendrix's name printed at the top in matching font. The cover art's combination of dull green and brown tones, juxtaposed with the jocular nature of the subject's pose, created a weak overall visual impression; Stamp commented: "It's not a great cover at all. Hopefully, we made up for that in all the other covers."
Hendrix disliked the UK cover of Are You Experienced, so arrangements were made for a photo shoot with graphic designer Karl Ferris. Hendrix wanted "something psychedelic", so he requested Ferris because he appreciated the photographer's sleeve-work on the Hollies' June 1967 release Evolution. During a meeting with the band, Ferris told Hendrix that he wanted to hear more of their music from which to draw inspiration. They accommodated his request by allowing him to attend several sessions for their second album, Axis: Bold as Love. Ferris brought home tapes from the sessions, which along with Are You Experienced he listened to intently. His first impression of the music was that it was "so far out that it seemed to come from outer space", which inspired him to develop a backstory about a "group travelling through space in a Biosphere on their way to bring their unworldly space music to earth." With this concept in mind, he took color photographs of the band at Kew Gardens in London, using a fisheye lens which was then popular in Mod sub-culture. Ferris used what Egan described as "an infrared technique of his own invention which combined color reversal with heat signature", further enhancing the exotic nature of the image. Ferris was an experienced fashion photographer, and his interest in the finer details of his covers led him to choose the band's wardrobe. After seeing Hendrix with his hair combed away from the scalp, Ferris requested that he wear it that way during the photo shoot. Hendrix's girlfriend, Kathy Etchingham, trimmed his hair to improve its symmetry, forming an afro that became the basis of a homogenized Experience image. Redding and Mitchell liked Hendrix's new hairstyle, so Ferris hired a hairdresser to style their hair in a similar fashion. After purchasing clothing for Redding and Mitchell at the boutiques on King's Road—Hendrix wore clothes from his wardrobe, including a psychedelic jacket with a pair of eyes printed on the front which had been given to him by a fan—the Experience travelled to Kew Gardens. In an effort to focus on Hendrix's hands, Ferris shot the band at a low angle. The daylight faded soon after their arrival at the garden, so they returned the following day for a second shoot, which was not needed; the image selected for the US cover of Are You Experienced was the first shot taken the previous day. Ferris chose the cover's yellow background and its surreal lettering, and he intended for a textured gatefold jacket that Reprise, as a cost-saving measure, did not approve.
## Release
### Europe
The third Experience single, "The Wind Cries Mary" backed by "Highway Chile", was released in the UK on May 5, 1967, while "Purple Haze" occupied the number three spot in the charts. The management's decision to release the single while the previous one was still present in the UK charts was unorthodox, as was the choice of "The Wind Cries Mary", which differed greatly from "Purple Haze". Stamp recalled: "We did that on purpose ... We wanted musically to show who this person was." Egan wrote: "It alerted the public to the fact that the so-called Wild Man of Borneo was capable of songs of delicacy and sensitivity." "The Wind Cries Mary" reached number six in the UK in May.
Track Records released Are You Experienced in the UK on May 12, 1967. It entered the charts on May 27, where it spent 33 weeks, peaking at number two. It remained in the charts long enough that it was still present when the Experience released their second album, Axis: Bold as Love. The album, which was released in the UK without the first three singles, was prevented from reaching the top spot by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
In France and the Benelux countries, Hendrix's recordings were released by Barclay Records in a distribution deal secured by Jeffery.
### North America
Although popular in Europe at the time, the Experience's first US single, "Hey Joe", failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 chart upon its release on May 1, 1967. The group's fortunes improved when Paul McCartney recommended them to the organizers of the Monterey Pop Festival. He insisted that the event would be incomplete without Hendrix, whom he called "an absolute ace on the guitar", and he agreed to join the board of organizers on the condition that the Experience perform at the festival in mid-June. During the climax of the festival, which was filmed by D. A. Pennebaker for the documentary Monterey Pop, Hendrix burned and smashed his guitar on stage for dramatic effect.
After the show-stealing performance, Reprise Records agreed to distribute Are You Experienced. However, despite the increased awareness that the Experience's performance at Monterey provided, the second Experience single, "Purple Haze" / "The Wind Cries Mary", released in the US on August 16, 1967, stalled at number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100. Although the single performed poorly in the US charts, its presence on underground FM radio stations, which were transitioning from easy listening and classical music formats to album cuts, significantly aided sales of the LP. Reprise allocated a \$20,000 promotional budget for the LP, which was an unprecedented amount for an unproven artist. Released in the US on August 23 by Reprise, Are You Experienced reached number five on the Billboard Top LPs chart. The album remained on Billboard's album chart for 106 weeks, 76 of those in the Top 40. The North American edition of Are You Experienced featured a new cover by Karl Ferris and a new track list, with Reprise omitting "Red House", "Remember", and "Can You See Me", and including the first three A-sides omitted from the UK release: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary".
## Reception and legacy
Are You Experienced was an immediate commercial success, selling more than one million copies within seven months of its release. Reviewing the album in 1967, Melody Maker praised its artistic integrity and the Experience's varied use of tempo. NME's Keith Altham said it is "a brave effort by Hendrix to produce a musical form which is original and exciting". However, not all contemporary writers gave the LP a favorable review; in November 1967, Rolling Stone's Jon Landau wrote that although he considered Hendrix a "great guitarist and a brilliant arranger", he disapproved of his singing and songwriting. He criticized the quality of the material and described the lyrics as inane: "Above all this record is unrelentingly violent, and lyrically, inartistically violent at that."
Many music critics have since named Are You Experienced as one of the greatest rock and roll debut albums. According to Associated Press writer Hillel Italie, it was among the notable debuts in a year that marked rock music's transition into the album era. Journalist Ritchie Unterberger described it as "one of the definitive albums of the psychedelic era", while author Chris Smith said the release was "a landmark in a summer of landmark albums". Noe Goldwasser, the founding editor of Guitar World magazine, called it "a veritable textbook of what a musician can do with his instrument" and "the measure by which everything ... in rock and roll has been compared since." According to music journalist Charles Shaar Murray, the album "completely changed notions of what a guitar could sound like, or indeed, what music could sound like", while The Miami Herald credited Are You Experienced with introducing acid rock, classic rock, and the guitar aesthetic of heavy metal. Critic Robert Christgau called it a "bombshell debut" in his review for Blender and said its songs were innovative for how they utilized three-minute pop structures as a medium for Hendrix's unprecedentedly heavy and turbulent guitar and loud, powerful hooks, which greatly appealed to young listeners.
Rolling Stone includes the album and several songs on various "best of" lists, such as:
- 500 Greatest Albums of All Time – No. 30, calling it an "epochal debut", and praising Hendrix's "exploitation of amp howl", and characterizing his guitar playing as "incendiary ... historic in itself". (2020)
- 500 Greatest Songs of All Time – "Purple Haze" (No. 17), "Foxy Lady" (No. 153), "Hey Joe" (No. 201), and "The Wind Cries Mary" (No. 379). (2011)
- Best Debut Albums of All Time – No. 3, crediting it as the LP "that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia", stating: "Every idea we have of the guitarist as groundbreaking individual artist comes from this record." (2013)
Additionally, Mojo magazine listed Are You Experienced as the greatest guitar album of all time in 2013. In 2005, Are You Experienced was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The album was also included in "A Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
## Track listing
Since the first release of Are You Experienced in 1967, there have been six different track listings. Since 1997, compact disc editions in the US and UK feature 17 tracks, including all songs that appeared on either the original UK/international edition of the album or the original North American edition, as well as the Experience's first three singles ("Hey Joe" b/w "Stone Free", "Purple Haze" b/w "51st Anniversary", and "The Wind Cries Mary" b/w "Highway Chile").
### Original UK and international edition
The original UK Track album did not list running times for the songs. Instead, they are taken from the original international Polydor edition. All tracks written by Jimi Hendrix.
### Original North American edition
The listings are taken from the original US Reprise album. All tracks written by Jimi Hendrix, except where noted.
### CD releases
Are You Experienced was first issued on the Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD format in 1985 by Polydor Records (Track's successor) in Europe and Reprise in the US. These early CDs essentially copied the original LP record albums and used the same tracks, sequencing, and cover art as their 1967 counterparts. Both were reissued with minor changes in 1989–1991 and the Reprise release CD sleeve included "Digital re-mastering by Joe Gastwirt, assisted by Dave Mitson using the Sonic Solutions NoNoise System, under the supervision of Are You Experienced? Ltd."
In 1993, Alan Douglas, who managed Hendrix's recording catalogue, reached an agreement with MCA Records for the future releases of Hendrix material. He also announced plans for new reissues of the three Experience albums: "Everything in the present catalogue is a budget release ... They're all 25-year-old packages. I want to take it high-level ... with all these new elements". Along with new artwork and liner notes, the MCA reissue was remastered with only one track selection and order for both the European and America markets. The 17-track CD included the first three Experience British singles (both A-sides and B-sides), followed by the 11 songs as they appeared on the Track/Polydor UK album release.
The 1993 Douglas reissues were short-lived; in 1997, his tenure as the overseer of Hendrix's catalogue was taken over by Experience Hendrix (the Hendrix family-controlled company). By April 1997, a new reissue was released, which restored the original artwork and sequencing for both the US and UK releases. However, both reissues included an additional six tracks, which provided the same 17 tracks (all the original singles and album tracks) in the UK and US, although in a different order. Since 1997, these have been the official authorized CD versions of the original albums. In 2010, Sony's Legacy Recordings became the exclusive distributor for the recordings managed by Experience Hendrix.
## Personnel
Jimi Hendrix Experience
- Jimi Hendrix – guitars, vocals; piano on "Are You Experienced?"
- Noel Redding – bass guitar (except on "Red House"); backing vocals on "Foxy Lady," "Fire," and "Purple Haze"; rhythm guitar on "Red House"
- Mitch Mitchell – drums; percussion on "Stone Free" and "Can You See Me"; backing vocals on "Fire"
Additional personnel
- The Breakaways – backing vocals on "Hey Joe"
- Chas Chandler – producer
- Dave Siddle – engineering on "Manic Depression", "Can You See Me", "Love or Confusion", "I Don't Live Today", "Fire", "Remember", "Hey Joe", "Stone Free", "Purple Haze", "51st Anniversary", and "The Wind Cries Mary"
- Eddie Kramer – engineering on "The Wind Cries Mary", "Are You Experienced?", and "Red House"; additional engineering on "Love or Confusion", "Fire", "Third Stone from the Sun", and "Highway Chile"
- Mike Ross – engineering on "Foxy Lady", "Red House", and "Third Stone from the Sun"
## Charts
## Certifications
|
1,636,015 |
NASA Astronaut Group 2
| 1,173,904,854 |
2nd group of NASA astronauts
|
[
"1962 establishments in the United States",
"1962 in spaceflight",
"NASA Astronaut Corps",
"NASA Astronaut Group 2"
] |
NASA Astronaut Group 2, also known as the Next Nine and the New Nine, was the second group of astronauts selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Their selection was announced on September 17, 1962. The group augmented the Mercury Seven. President John F. Kennedy had announced Project Apollo, on May 25, 1961, with the ambitious goal of putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, and more astronauts were required to fly the two-man Gemini spacecraft and three-man Apollo spacecraft then under development. The Mercury Seven had been selected to accomplish the simpler task of orbital flight, but the new challenges of space rendezvous and lunar landing led to the selection of candidates with advanced engineering degrees (for four of the nine) as well as test pilot experience.
The nine astronauts were Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, James McDivitt, Elliot See, Tom Stafford, Ed White, and John Young. The Next Nine were the first astronaut group to include civilian test pilots: See had flown for General Electric, and Armstrong had flown the X-15 rocket-powered aircraft for NASA. Six of the nine flew to the Moon (Lovell and Young twice), and Armstrong, Conrad, and Young walked on it as well. Seven of the nine were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
## Background
The launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, started a Cold War technological and ideological competition with the United States known as the Space Race. The demonstration of American technological inferiority came as a profound shock to the American public. In response to the Sputnik crisis, a new civilian agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was created to oversee an American space program. The Space Task Group (STG) at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, created an American crewed spaceflight project called Project Mercury. The selection of the first astronauts, known as the "Original Seven" or "Mercury Seven", was announced on April 9, 1959.
By 1961, although it was yet to launch a person into space, the STG was confident that Project Mercury had overcome its initial setbacks, and that the United States had overtaken the Soviet Union as the most advanced nation in space technology. The STG began considering Mercury Mark II, a two-person successor to the Mercury spacecraft. This confidence was shattered on April 12, 1961, when the Soviet Union launched Vostok 1, and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. In response, President John F. Kennedy announced a far more ambitious goal on May 25, 1961: to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. The effort to land a man on the Moon already had a name: Project Apollo. The two-person Mercury II spacecraft concept was formally announced by the STG head, Robert R. Gilruth, on December 7, 1961, and on January 3, 1962, it was officially named Project Gemini.
On April 18, 1962, NASA formally announced that it was accepting applications for a new group of astronauts who would assist the Mercury astronauts with Project Mercury, and join them in flying Project Gemini missions. It was anticipated that they might go on to command Project Apollo missions. Unlike the selection process for the Mercury Seven, which was carried out in secret, this selection was widely advertised; public announcements and the minimum standards were communicated to aircraft companies, government agencies and the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.
## Selection criteria
> Right now, in the beginning, we are picking experienced test pilots, not because they are fighter pilots, but because they have experience in dealing with new machines, unusual situations, being scared to death yet reacting properly. We're not saying for a minute that no one except test pilots has this experience. But this group also has the engineering background that we're looking for to get our programs started.
The five minimum selection criteria were that an applicant:
- was an experienced test pilot, with 1,500 hours test pilot flying time, who had graduated from a military test pilot school, or had test pilot experience with NASA or the aircraft industry;
- had flown high-performance jet aircraft;
- had earned a degree in engineering or the physical or biological sciences;
- was a U.S. citizen, under 35 years of age, and 6 feet 0 inches (1.83 m) or less in height; and
- was recommended by their employer.
The criteria differed from those of the Mercury Seven selection in several ways. The Gemini spacecraft was expected to be roomier than the Mercury one, so the height requirement was relaxed slightly. This made Thomas P. Stafford eligible. A college degree was now required, but could be in the biological sciences. Civilian test pilots were now eligible, but the requirement for experience in high-performance jets favored those with recent experience, and fighter pilots over those with multi-engine experience such as Scott Carpenter of the Mercury Seven. The age limit was lowered from 40 to 35 because whereas Mercury was a short-term project, Project Apollo was going to run until the end of the decade at least. The changed selection criteria meant that the selection panel could not simply select another group from the Mercury Seven finalists.
At this time, Jerrie Cobb, a female award-winning pilot, was pressing for women to be allowed to become astronauts. In 1961 she was one of thirteen women known as the Mercury 13 who had passed the same medical evaluation tests given to the Mercury Seven astronauts as part of a USAF project that assessed the capability of women for spaceflight. Although women were not prevented from applying to become NASA astronauts in 1962, the requirement for jet test pilot experience effectively excluded them. NASA Administrator James E. Webb made this point in a statement to the press in spring 1962, adding: "I do not think we shall be anxious to put a woman or any other person of particular race or creed into orbit just for the purpose of putting them there."
## Selection process
The U.S. Navy (USN) and U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) submitted the names of all their applicants who met the selection criteria, but the U.S. Air Force (USAF) conducted its own internal selection process, and it only submitted the names of eleven candidates. The Air Force ran them through a brief training course in May 1962 on how to speak and conduct themselves during the NASA selection process. The candidates called it a "charm school". General Curtis LeMay told them:
> There are a lot of people who'll say you're deserting the Air Force if you're accepted into NASA. Well, I'm the Chief of the Air Force, and I want you to know I want you in this program. I want you to succeed in it, and that's your Air Force mission. I can't think of anything more important.
In all, 253 applications were received by the June 1, 1962, deadline. Neil Armstrong submitted his application a week after the deadline, but Walter C. Williams, the associate director of the Space Task Group, wanted Armstrong for the space program, so he had Richard Day, who acted as secretary of the selection panel, add it to the pile of applications when it arrived. Paul Bikle, the director of the NASA's Flight Research Center, and therefore Armstrong's boss, declined to recommend Armstrong for astronaut selection because he had misgivings about his performance.
The three-person selection panel consisted of Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, and NASA test pilot Warren J. North, although Williams sat in on some sessions. They reduced the candidates to 32 finalists, from whom they hoped to select between five and ten new astronauts. Nine of the USAF's eleven candidates were chosen as finalists, and one of those rejected, Joe Engle, was selected with NASA Astronaut Group 5 in 1966. Of the rest, thirteen were from the Navy, four were Marines, and six were civilians. Four had been finalists in the Mercury Seven selection: Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, John Mitchell and Robert Solliday. Lovell had not been selected for the Mercury Seven due to a high bilirubin blood count.
The finalists were sent to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio for medical examinations. The tests there were much the same as those employed to select the Mercury Seven. One candidate was found to be 2 inches (5 cm) too tall. Another four were eliminated on the basis of ear, nose and throat examinations. The remaining 27 then went to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, where the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) was being established. They were individually interviewed by the selection panel.
Nine candidates were selected, and their names forwarded to Gilruth for approval. Slayton informed each of them by phone on September 14. The nine were Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, James McDivitt, Elliot See, Tom Stafford, Ed White, and John Young. They arrived in Houston on September 15. To avoid tipping off the media, all checked into the Rice Hotel in Houston under the name of Max Peck, its general manager. On September 17, the media crowded into the 1800-seat Cullen Auditorium at the University of Houston for the official announcement, but it was a more low-key event than the unveiling of the Mercury Seven three years before.
As with those who had been passed over in the Mercury Seven selection, most of the rejected finalists went on to have distinguished careers. Three achieved flag rank: William E. Ramsey became a vice admiral in the Navy, William H. Fitch a lieutenant general in the Marine Corps and Kenneth Weir, a major general in the Marine Corps. Four would become NASA astronauts in later selections: Alan Bean, Michael Collins and Richard Gordon in 1963, and Jack Swigert in 1966. Francis G. Neubeck was selected as an astronaut for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, but never flew in space.
## Demographics
Like the Mercury Seven, all of the Next Nine were male and white, and all were married, with an average of two children. Unlike the Mercury Seven, not all were Protestants; McDivitt was the first Roman Catholic chosen as an astronaut. Conrad, Lovell and Young were from the Navy; Borman, McDivitt, Stafford and White from the Air Force; and Armstrong and See were civilians, although both had previously served in the Navy. All were test pilots, and Borman and McDivitt were also early graduates of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS).
Their average age at the time of selection was 33 years and one month, compared to 34 years and ten months for the Mercury Seven when they were selected in April 1959. They had an average of 2,800 flying hours each, 1,900 of them in jets. This was 700 fewer flying hours than the Mercury Seven, but 200 more hours in jets. Their average weight was slightly higher – 161.5 pounds (73.3 kg) compared to 159 pounds (72 kg). Their mean IQ was 132 on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. All had earned Bachelor of Science degrees. Three had Master of Science degrees in aeronautical engineering: Borman from the California Institute of Technology, See from the University of California at Los Angeles, and White from University of Michigan.
## Group members
## Assimilation
The new astronauts became known as the Next Nine, or the New Nine. They moved to the Houston area in October 1962. Most of them bought lots and built houses in Nassau Bay, a new development to the east of the MSC. Conrad and Lovell built houses in Timber Cove, south of the MSC. Developers in Timber Cove and Nassau Bay offered astronauts mortgages with small down payments and low interest rates. The MSC complex was not yet complete, so NASA temporarily leased office space in Houston. Slayton's wife Marge and Borman's wife Susan organized an Astronauts' Wives Club along the lines of the Officers' Wives Clubs that were a feature of military bases. As Slayton was in charge of astronaut activities, Marge was considered to be the equivalent of the commanding officer's wife. The nine were honored guests at Houston society parties, such as those thrown by socialite Joanne Herring, and their wives received \$1,000 Neiman Marcus gift vouchers () from an anonymous source.
A lawyer, Henry Batten, agreed to negotiate a deal with Field Enterprises for their personal stories, along the lines of the Life magazine deal enjoyed by the Mercury Seven, for no fee. As with the Life deal, there was some disquiet about the propriety of astronauts cashing in on government-created fame, but Mercury Seven astronaut John Glenn intervened, and personally raised the matter with Kennedy, who approved the deal. The deals with Field and Time-Life (which owned Life magazine) earned each of the Next Nine astronauts \$16,250 () per annum over the next four years, and provided them with \$100,000 life insurance policies (). Due to the dangerous nature of an astronaut's job, insurance companies would have charged them unaffordably high premiums.
## Training
Astronaut training was supervised by Raymond Zedehar, who reported to Warren North, the Director of Flight Crew Operations at the MSC. Initially, each of the astronauts was given four months' of classroom instruction on subjects such as spacecraft propulsion, orbital mechanics, astronomy, computing, and space medicine. Classes were for six hours a day, two days a week. There was also familiarization with the Gemini spacecraft, Titan II and Atlas boosters, and the Agena target vehicle. After classroom training was completed, there was a series of seminars on space science. The astronaut's lack of scientific training was recognized, but it was hoped that this would bring their knowledge up to a level where they could communicate with scientists. The first was delivered by Homer E. Newell Jr., NASA's Director of Space Sciences. Subsequent seminars covered topics such as the USAF's X-15 and X-20 Dyna-Soar programs, and the development of nuclear rocket engines. Geologist Eugene Shoemaker developed a training plan to teach the astronauts the fundamentals of selenology, the geology of the Moon. In January 1963 they went to Flagstaff, Arizona, where they studied the Meteor Crater and lava flows, and observed the Moon through the telescope at the Lowell Observatory.
In Zero-G training at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio on May 20, 1963, each the Next Nine astronauts flew two flights in a reduced-gravity aircraft, a modified KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft. Each flight flew 20 parabolas that gave them between 20 and 30 seconds of weightlessness. Jungle survival training was conducted for all sixteen Mercury Seven and Next Nine astronauts at the USAF Tropic Survival School at Albrook Air Force Station in Panama in June. This was the first time that the two groups had trained together. This was followed in August by desert survival training at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada, and field exercises at Carson Sink. Each astronaut had to survive on four liters (ten U.S. pints) of water and the food in their spacecraft survival packs. In September, all sixteen were given instruction in parachute landings on land and water, but only the Next Nine attended the second phase of the program, water survival training on the Dilbert Dunker at the USN school at the Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and on Galveston Bay.
Following the precedent set by the Mercury Seven, each of the Next Nine was assigned a special area in which to develop expertise that could be shared with the others, and to provide astronaut input to designers and engineers. Armstrong was responsible for trainers and simulators; Borman for boosters, with special responsibility for abort systems; Conrad for cockpit layout, pilot controls and systems integration; Lovell for recovery systems, including the parachutes, paraglider and lunar module; McDivitt for guidance and navigation systems; See for electrical systems and coordination of mission planning; Stafford for communications systems, mission control and the ground support network; White for flight control systems, and Young for environmental control systems, survival gear, personal equipment and space suits.
## Legacy
Collins wrote that in his opinion "this group of nine was the best NASA ever picked, better than the seven that preceded it, or the fourteen, five, nineteen, eleven and seven that followed." Slayton felt so too, describing them as "probably the best all-round group ever put together." Looking over the tentative schedule of Apollo missions, Slayton calculated that up to 14 three-person crews might be required, but the 16 astronauts on hand could fill just five. Though he considered the schedule to be optimistic, he did not want a shortage of astronauts to be the reason the schedule could not be met, and he therefore proposed another round of recruiting. On June 5, 1963, NASA announced that it was seeking another ten to fifteen new astronauts.
The Next Nine went on to illustrious careers as astronauts. Apart from See and White, who were killed in a T-38 crash and in the Apollo fire, respectively, all went on to command Gemini and Apollo missions. Six of the nine flew to the Moon (Lovell and Young twice), and Armstrong, Conrad and Young walked on it as well. Seven of the nine received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for their service, valor, and sacrifice:
- Armstrong, for commanding Apollo 11, the first lunar landing;
- Borman, for commanding Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to the Moon;
- Conrad, for commanding Skylab 2, and saving the damaged station;
- Lovell, for commanding the ill-fated Apollo 13;
- Stafford, for commanding the international Cold War Apollo-Soyuz Test Project;
- White, posthumously, killed in the Apollo 1 fire; and
- Young, for commanding the first Space Shuttle mission, STS-1, in the .
## General references
|
22,450,244 |
Armillaria gallica
| 1,171,007,895 |
Species of fungus in the family Physalacriaceae
|
[
"Armillaria",
"Bioluminescent fungi",
"Fungal tree pathogens and diseases",
"Fungi described in 1987",
"Fungi of Africa",
"Fungi of Asia",
"Fungi of Europe",
"Fungi of North America"
] |
Armillaria gallica (synonymous with A. bulbosa and A. lutea) is a species of honey mushroom in the family Physalacriaceae of the order Agaricales. The species is a common and ecologically important wood-decay fungus that can live as a saprobe, or as an opportunistic parasite in weakened tree hosts to cause root or butt rot. It is found in temperate regions of Asia, North America, and Europe. The species forms fruit bodies singly or in groups in soil or rotting wood. The fungus has been inadvertently introduced to South Africa. Armillaria gallica has had a confusing taxonomy, due in part to historical difficulties encountered in distinguishing between similar Armillaria species. The fungus received international attention in the early 1990s when an individual colony living in a Michigan forest was reported to cover an area of 15 hectares (37 acres), weigh at least 9.5 tonnes (9,500 kg; 21,000 lb), and be 1,500 years old. This individual is popularly known as the "humongous fungus", and is a tourist attraction and inspiration for an annual mushroom-themed festival in Crystal Falls. Recent studies have revised the fungus's age to 2,500 years and its size to about 400 tonnes (400,000 kg; 880,000 lb), four times the original estimate.
Armillaria gallica is a largely subterranean fungus, and it produces fruit bodies that are up to about 10 cm (3.9 in) in diameter, yellow-brown, and covered with small scales. On the underside of the caps are gills that are white to creamy or pale orange. The stem may be up to 10 cm (3.9 in) long, with a white cobwebby ring that divides the color of the stem into pale orange to brown above, and lighter-colored below. The fungus can develop an extensive system of underground root-like structures, called rhizomorphs, that help it to efficiently decompose dead wood in temperate broadleaf and mixed forests. It has been the subject of considerable scientific research due to its importance as a plant pathogen, its ability to bioluminesce, its unusual life cycle, and its ability to form large and long-lived colonies.
## Phylogeny, taxonomy and naming
Confusion has surrounded the nomenclature and taxonomy of the species now known as Armillaria gallica, paralleling that surrounding the genus Armillaria. The type species, Armillaria mellea, was until the 1970s believed to be a pleiomorphic species with a wide distribution, variable pathogenicity, and one of the broadest host ranges known for the fungi. In 1973, Veikko Hintikka reported a technique to distinguish between Armillaria species by growing them together as single spore isolates on petri dishes and observing changes in the morphology of the cultures. Using a similar technique, Kari Korhonen showed in 1978 that the European Armillaria mellea species complex could be separated into five reproductively isolated species, which he named "European Biological Species" (EBS) A through E. About the same time, the North American A. mellea was shown to be ten different species (North American Biological Species, or NABS I through X); NABS VII was demonstrated shortly after to be the same species as EBS E. Because several research groups had worked with this widely distributed species, it was assigned several different names.
The species that Korhonen called EBS B was named A. bulbosa by Helga Marxmüller in 1982, as it was thought to be equivalent to Armillaria mellea var. bulbosa, first described by Jean Baptiste Barla (Joseph Barla) in 1887, and later raised to species status by Josef Velenovský in 1927. In 1973, the French mycologist Henri Romagnesi, unaware of Velenovský's publication, published a description of the species he called Armillariella bulbosa, based on specimens he had found near Compiègne and Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte in France. These specimens were later demonstrated to be the same species as the EBS E of Korhonen; EBS B was later determined to be A. cepistipes. Therefore, the name A. bulbosa was a misapplied name for EBS E. In 1987 Romagnesi and Marxmüller renamed EBS E to Armillaria gallica. Another synonym, A. lutea, had originally been described by Claude Casimir Gillet in 1874, and proposed as a name for EBS E. Although the name had priority due to its early publication date, it was rejected as a nomen ambiguum because of a lack of supporting evidence to identify the fungus, including a specimen, type locality, and incomplete collection notes. A. inflata (Velenovský, 1920) may represent another synonym, but the type specimens were not preserved, so it is considered a dubious name (nomen dubium). As of 2010, both the Index Fungorum and MycoBank consider Armillaria gallica Marxm. & Romagn. to be the current name, with A. bulbosa and A. lutea as synonyms.
Phylogenetic analysis of North American Armillaria species based on analysis of amplified fragment length polymorphism data suggests that A. gallica is most closely related to A. sinapina, A. cepistipes, and A. calvescens. These results are similar to those reported in 1992 that compared sequences of nuclear ribosomal DNA.
The specific epithet gallica is botanical Latin for "French" (from Gallia, "Gaul"), and refers to the type locality. The prior name bulbosa is Latin for "bulb-bearing, bulbous" (from bulbus and the suffix -osa). Armillaria is derived from the Latin armilla, or "bracelet".
## Description
The fruit bodies of Armillaria gallica have caps that are 2.5–9.5 cm (1.0–3.7 in) broad, and depending on their age, may range in shape from conical to convex to flattened. The caps are brownish-yellow to brown when moist, often with a darker-colored center; the color tends to fade upon drying. The cap surface is covered with slender fibers (same color as the cap) that are erect, or sloping upwards.
When the fruit bodies are young, the underside of the caps have a cottony layer of tissue stretching from the edge of the cap to the stem—a partial veil—which serves to protect the developing gills. As the cap grows in size the membrane is eventually pulled away from the cap to expose the gills. The gills have an adnate (squarely attached) to somewhat decurrent (extending down the length of the stem) attachment to the stem. They are initially white, but age to a creamy or pale orange covered with rust-colored spots. The stem is 4–10 cm (1.6–3.9 in) long and 0.6–1.8 cm (0.24–0.71 in) thick, and almost club-shaped with the base up to 1.3–2.7 cm (0.5–1.1 in) thick. Above the level of the ring, the stem is pale orange to brown, while below it is whitish or pale pink, becoming grayish-brown at the base. The ring is positioned about 0.4–0.9 cm (0.16–0.35 in) below the level of the cap, and may be covered with yellowish to pale-brownish woolly cottony mycelia. The base of the stem is attached to rhizomorphs, black root-like structures 1–3 mm in diameter. While the primary function of the below-ground mycelia is to absorb nutrients from the soil, the rhizomorphs serve a more exploratory function, to locate new food bases.
### Microscopic features
When the spores are seen in deposit, such as with a spore print, they appear whitish. They have an ellipsoid or oblong shape, usually contain an oil droplet, and have dimensions of 7–8.5 by 5–6 μm. The spore-bearing cells, the basidia, are club-shaped, four-spored (rarely two-spored), and measure 32–43 by 7–8.7 μm. Other cells present in the fertile hymenium include the cheilocystidia (cystidia present on the edge of a gill), which are club-shaped, roughly cylindrical and 15–25 by 5.0–12 μm. Cystidia are also present on the stem (called caulocystidia), and are broadly club-shaped, measuring 20–55 by 11–23 μm. The cap cuticle is made of hyphae that are irregularly interwoven and project upward to form the scales seen on the surface. The hyphae that make up the surface scales typically measure 26–88 μm long by 11–27 μm thick and can be covered with a crust of pigment. Clamp connections are present in the hyphae of most tissues.
### Edibility
Like all Armillaria species, A. gallica is considered edible. Thorough cooking is usually recommended, as the raw mushroom tastes acrid when fresh or undercooked. One author advises to consume only a small portion initially, as some people may experience an upset stomach. The taste is described as "mild to bitter", and the odor "sweet", or reminiscent of camembert cheese.
### Similar species
Armillaria calvescens is rather similar in appearance, and can only be reliably distinguished from A. gallica by observing microscopic characteristics. A. calvescens has a more northern distribution, and in North America, is rarely found south of the Great Lakes. A. mellea has a thinner stem than A. gallica, but can be more definitively distinguished by the absence of clamps at the base of the basidia. Similarly, A. cepistipes and A. gallica are virtually identical in appearance (especially older fruit bodies), and are identified by differences in geographical distribution, host range, and microscopic characteristics. Molecular methods have been developed to discriminate between the two species by comparing DNA sequences in the gene coding translation elongation factor 1-alpha.
### Metabolites
Armillaria gallica can produce cyclobutane-containing metabolites such as arnamiol, a natural product that is classified as a sesquiterpenoid aryl ester. Although the specific function of arnamiol is not definitively known, similar chemicals present in other Armillaria species are thought to play a role in inhibiting the growth of antagonistic bacteria or fungi, or in killing cells of the host plant prior to infection.
### Bioluminescence
The mycelia (but not the fruit bodies) of Armillaria gallica are known to be bioluminescent. Experiments have shown that the intensity of the luminescence is enhanced when the mycelia are disturbed during growth or when they are exposed to fluorescent light. Bioluminescence is caused by the action of luciferases, enzymes that produce light by the oxidation of a luciferin (a pigment). The biological purpose of bioluminescence in fungi is not definitively known, although several hypotheses have been suggested: it may help attract insects to help with spore dispersal, it may be a by-product of other biochemical functions, or it may help deter heterotrophs that might consume the fungus.
## Humongous fungus
Researchers reported finding Armillaria gallica in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the early 1990s, during an unrelated research project to study the possible biological effects of extremely low frequency radio stations, which were being investigated as a means to communicate with submerged submarines. In one particular forest stand, Armillaria-infected oak trees had been harvested, and their stumps were left to rot in the field. Later, when red pines were planted in the same location, the seedlings were killed by the fungus, identified as A. gallica (then known as A. bulbosa). Using molecular genetics, they determined that the underground mycelia of one individual fungal colony covered 15 ha (37 acres), weighing over 9,500 kilograms (21,000 lb), with an estimated age of 1,500 years. The analysis used restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) to examine isolates collected from fruit bodies and rhizomorphs (underground aggregations of fungal cells that resemble plant roots) along 1-kilometer (0.6 mi) transects in the forest. The 15-hectare area yielded isolates that had identical mating type alleles and mitochondrial DNA restriction fragment patterns; this degree of genetic similarity indicated that the samples were all derived from a single genetic individual, or clone, that had reached its size through vegetative growth. In their conclusion, the authors noted: "This is the first report estimating the minimum size, mass, and age of an unambiguously defined fungal individual. Although the number of observations for plants and animals is much greater, members of the fungal kingdom should now be recognized as among the oldest and largest organisms on earth." After the Nature paper was published, major media outlets from around the world visited the site where the specimens were found; as a result of this publicity, the individual acquired the common name "humongous fungus". There was afterward some scholarly debate as to whether the fungus qualified to be considered in the same category as other large organisms such as the blue whale or the giant redwood.
The fungus has since become a popular tourist attraction in Michigan, and has inspired a "Humongous Fungus Fest" held annually in August in Crystal Falls. The organism was the subject of a Late Show Top Ten List on Late Night with David Letterman, and an advertising campaign by the rental company U-Haul.
## Life cycle and growth
The life cycle of A. gallica includes two diploidization–haploidization events. The first of these is the usual process of cell fusion (forming a diploid) followed by meiosis during the formation of haploid basidiospores. The second event is more cryptic and occurs before fruit body formation. In most basidiomycetous fungi, the hyphae of compatible mating types will fuse to form a two-nucleate, or dikaryotic stage; this stage is not observed in Armillaria species, which have cells that are mostly monokaryotic and diploid. Genetic analyses suggest that the dikaryotic mycelia undergo an extra haploidization event prior to fruit body formation to create a genetic mosaic. These regular and repeating haploidization events result in increased genetic diversity, which helps the fungus to adapt to unfavorable changes in environmental conditions, such as drought.
The growth rate of A. gallica rhizomorphs is between 0.3 and 0.6 m (1.0 and 2.0 ft) per year. Population genetic studies of the fungus conducted in the 1990s demonstrated that genetic individuals grow mitotically from a single point of origin to eventually occupy territories that may include many adjacent root systems over large areas (several hectares) of forest floor. Based on the low mutation rates observed in large, long-lived individuals, A. gallica appears to have an especially stable genome. It has also been hypothesized that genetic stability may result from self-renewing mycelial repositories of nuclei with stem cell-like properties.
Specific mechanisms of somatic growth have been proposed to explain how species such as A. gallica keep somatic mutations in check, thus promoting their longevity. The common element of these mechanisms is asymmetric cell division in which a group of cells is maintained that divide infrequently and are thus less prone to replication errors leading to mutations. At the somatic growth front of A. gallica mutation rate was proposed to be kept low by cells dividing infrequently, but giving rise to cells behind the growth front that divide rapidly thus promoting tissue growth although at the expense of a higher mutation rate.
## Habitat and distribution
Armillaria gallica can normally be found on the ground, but sometimes on stumps and logs. Mushrooms that appear to be terrestrial are attached to plant roots underneath the surface. It is widely distributed and has been collected in North America, Europe, and Asia (China, Iran, and Japan). The species has also been found in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, where it is thought to have been introduced from potted plants imported from Europe during the early colonization of Cape Town. In Scandinavia, it is absent in areas with very cold climates, like Finland or Norway, but it is found in southern Sweden. It is thought to be the most prevalent low altitude species of Armillaria in Great Britain and France. The upper limits of its altitude vary by region. In the French Massif Central, it is found up to 1,100 m (3,600 ft), while in Bavaria, which has a more continental climate, the upper limit of distribution reaches 600 m (2,000 ft). In Serbian forests, it is the most common Armillaria between elevations of 70 to 1,450 m (230 to 4,760 ft). Field studies suggest that A. gallica prefers sites that are low in organic matter and have high soil pHs.
In North America, it is common east of the Rocky Mountains, but rare in the Pacific Northwest. In California, where it is widely distributed, the fungus is found in a variety of plant communities, including aspen, coastal oak woodland, Douglas Fir, Klamath mixed conifer, montane hardwood, montane hardwood-conifer, montane riparian, Redwood, Sierran mixed conifer, valley oak woodland, valley-foothill riparian, and White Fir. It was found to be the most common Armillaria species in hardwood and mixed oak forests in western Massachusetts.
A Chinese study published in 2001 used the molecular biological technique restriction fragment length polymorphism to analyze the differences in DNA sequence between 23 A. gallica specimens collected from the Northern Hemisphere. The results suggest that based on the restriction fragment length polymorphism patterns observed, there are four global A. gallica subpopulations: the Chinese, European, North American–Chinese, and North American–European geographical lineages. A 2007 study on the northeastern and southwestern Chinese distribution of Armillaria, using fruit body and pure culture morphology, concluded that there are several unnamed species (Chinese biological species C, F, H, J and L) that are similar to the common A. gallica.
## Ecology
Armillaria gallica is a weaker pathogen than the related A. mellea or A. solidipes, and is considered a secondary parasite—typically initiating infection only after the host's defenses have been weakened by insect defoliation, drought, or infection by another fungus. Fungal infection can lead to root rot or butt rot. As the diseased trees die, the wood dries, increasing the chance of catching fire after being struck by lightning. The resulting forest fire may, in turn, kill the species that killed the trees. Plants that are under water stress caused by dry soils or waterlogging are more susceptible to infection by A. gallica. It has been shown to be one of several Armillaria species responsible for widespread mortality of oak trees in the Arkansas Ozarks. The fungus has also been shown to infect Daylily in South Carolina, Northern highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) in Italy and vineyards (Vitis species) of Rías Baixas in northwestern Spain. The latter infestation "may be related to the fact that the vineyards from which they were isolated were located on cleared forestry sites". When A. solidipes and A. gallica co-occur in the same forest, infection of root systems by A. gallica may reduce damage or prevent infection from A. solidipes.
Armillaria gallica can develop an extensive subterranean system of rhizomorphs, which helps it to compete with other fungi for resources or to attack trees weakened by other fungi. A field study in an ancient broadleaved woodland in England showed that of five Armillaria species present in the woods, A. gallica was consistently the first to colonize tree stumps that had been coppiced the previous year. Fractal geometry has been used to model the branching patterns of the hyphae of various Armillaria species. Compared to a strongly pathogenic species like A. solidipes, A. gallica has a relatively sparse branching pattern that is thought to be "consistent with a foraging strategy in which acceptable food bases may be encountered at any distance, and which favours broad and divisive distribution of potential inoculum." Because the rhizomorphs form regular networks, mathematical concepts of graph theory have been employed to describe fungal growth and interpret ecological strategies, suggesting that the specific patterns of network attachments allow the fungus "to respond opportunistically to spatially and temporally changing environments".
Armillaria gallica may itself be parasitized by other soil flora. Several species of the fungus Trichoderma, including Trichoderma polysporum, T. harzianum and T. viride, are able to attack and penetrate the outer tissue of A. gallica rhizomorphs and parasitize the internal hyphae. The infected rhizomorphs become devoid of living hyphae about one week after the initial infection. Entoloma abortivum is another fungus that can live parasitically upon A. gallica. The whitish-gray malformed fruit bodies that may result are due to the E. abortivum hyphae penetrating the mushroom and disrupting its normal development.
## See also
- List of Armillaria species
- List of bioluminescent fungi
|
542,922 |
Tintin in the Congo
| 1,157,472,999 |
Comic album by Belgian cartoonist Hergé
|
[
"1931 graphic novels",
"1946 graphic novels",
"Censored comics",
"Comics set in Africa",
"Comics set in Belgian Congo",
"Comics set in the 1930s",
"Controversies in Belgium",
"Cultural depictions of cartoonists",
"French-language literature",
"Literature first published in serial form",
"Race-related controversies in comics",
"Racism in Belgium",
"Tintin books",
"Works originally published in Le Petit Vingtième"
] |
Tintin in the Congo (French: Tintin au Congo; ) is the second volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian comic strip artist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from May 1930 to June 1931 before being published in a collected volume by Éditions de Petit Vingtième in 1931. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are sent to the Belgian Congo to report on events in the country. Amid various encounters with the native Congolese people and wild animals, Tintin unearths a criminal diamond smuggling operation run by the American gangster Al Capone.
Following on from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and bolstered by publicity stunts, Tintin in the Congo was a commercial success within Belgium and was also serialised in France. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with Tintin in America in 1932, and the series subsequently became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1946, Hergé re-drew and coloured Tintin in the Congo in his distinctive ligne-claire style for republication by Casterman, with further alterations made at the request of his Scandinavian publisher for a 1975 edition.
In the late 20th century, Tintin in the Congo became increasingly controversial for both its racist colonial attitude toward Congolese people and for its glorification of big-game hunting. Accordingly, attempts were made in Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States to either ban the work or restrict its availability to children. Critical reception of the work has been largely negative, with commentators on The Adventures of Tintin describing it as one of Hergé's lesser works.
## Synopsis
Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy travel to the Belgian Congo, where a cheering crowd of native Congolese greet them. Tintin hires a native boy, Coco, to assist him in his travels, and soon thereafter Tintin rescues Snowy from a crocodile. A criminal stowaway tries to kill Tintin, but monkeys throw coconuts at the stowaway that knock him unconscious. A monkey kidnaps Snowy, but Tintin saves him by disguising himself as another monkey. That night, the stowaway escapes.
The next morning, Tintin, Snowy, and Coco crash their car into a train, which the reporter fixes and tows to the village of the Babaorum tribe. He meets the king, who invites him to a hunt the next day. A lion knocks Tintin unconscious, but Snowy rescues him by biting off its tail. Tintin gains the admiration of the natives, making the Babaorum witch-doctor Muganga jealous. With the help of the criminal stowaway, Muganga accuses Tintin of destroying the tribe's sacred idol. The enraged villagers imprison Tintin, but then turn against Muganga when Tintin shows them footage of the witch-doctor and the stowaway conspiring to destroy the idol. Tintin becomes a hero in the village: when he cures a man using quinine, he is hailed as a Boula Matari ("Breaker of rocks") and a local woman bows down to him, saying, "White man very great! Has good spirits ... White mister is big juju man!" Angered, Muganga starts a war between the Babaorum and their enemies, the M'Hatuvu, whose king leads an attack on the Babaorum village. Tintin outwits them, and the M'Hatuvu cease hostilities and come to idolise Tintin. Muganga and the stowaway plot to kill Tintin and make it look like a leopard attack, but Tintin survives and saves Muganga from a boa constrictor; Muganga pleads mercy and ends his hostilities.
The stowaway again attempts to kill Tintin, binding him and hanging him from a tree branch over a river to be eaten by crocodiles, but he is rescued by a passing Catholic missionary, who invites Tintin to go on an elephant hunt. Then, disguised as a missionary, the stowaway captures Tintin again, leaving him tied up in a boat set to go over a waterfall, but the Catholic priest once again saves him. Tintin confronts the stowaway and they fight over a cliff, where the latter is eaten by crocodiles. After reading a letter from the stowaway's pocket, Tintin finds that someone called "A.C." has ordered his elimination. Tintin captures a criminal who tried to rendezvous with the stowaway and learns that "A.C." is none other than the American gangster Al Capone, who is trying to gain control of African diamond production. Tintin and the colonial police arrest the rest of the diamond smuggling gang and after having a few more adventures with different animals, Tintin and Snowy return to Belgium.
## History
### Background
Georges Remi—best known under the pen name Hergé—was the editor and illustrator of Le Petit Vingtième ("The Little Twentieth"), a children's supplement to Le Vingtième Siècle ("The Twentieth Century"), a staunchly Roman Catholic, conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels. Run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez, the paper described itself as a "Catholic Newspaper for Doctrine and Information" and disseminated a far-right, fascist viewpoint. According to Harry Thompson, such political ideas were common in Belgium at the time, and Hergé's milieu was permeated with conservative ideas revolving around "patriotism, Catholicism, strict morality, discipline, and naivety".
In 1929, Hergé began The Adventures of Tintin comic strip for Le Petit Vingtième, a series about the exploits of a fictional Belgian reporter named Tintin. Following the success of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, serialised weekly in Le Petit Vingtième from January 1929 to May 1930, Hergé wanted to send Tintin to the United States. Wallez insisted he write a story set in the Belgian Congo, then a Belgian colony and today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Belgian children learned about the Congo in school, and Wallez hoped to encourage colonialist and missionary zeal in his readership. He believed that the Belgian colonial administration needed promotion at a time when memories "were still fairly fresh" of the 1928 visit to the colony by the Belgian King Albert and Queen Elisabeth. He also hoped that some of his readers would be inspired to work in the Congo.
Hergé characterised Wallez's instructions in a sarcastic manner, saying Wallez referred to the Congo as "our beautiful colony which has great need of us, tarantara, tarantaraboom". He already had some experience in illustrating Congolese scenes; three years previously, Hergé had provided two illustrations for the newspaper that appeared in an article celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Henry Morton Stanley's expedition to the Congo. In one of these, Hergé depicted a native Congolese bowing before a European, a scene that he repeated in Tintin in the Congo.
As in Land of the Soviets, where Hergé had based his information about the Soviet Union almost entirely on a single source, in Tintin in the Congo he used limited source material to learn about the country and its people. He based the story largely on literature written by missionaries, with the only added element being that of the diamond smugglers, possibly adopted from the "Jungle Jim-type serials". Hergé visited the Colonial Museum of Tervuren, examining their ethnographic collections of Congolese artefacts, including costumes of the Leopard Men. He adopted hunting scenes from André Maurois's novel The Silence of Colonel Bramble, while his animal drawings were inspired by Benjamin Rabier's prints. He also listened to tales of the colony from some of his colleagues who had been there, but disliked their stories, later claiming: "I didn't like the colonists, who came back bragging about their exploits. But I couldn't prevent myself from seeing the Blacks as big children, either".
### Original publication, 1930–31
Tintin in the Congo was serialised under the French title of Tintin au Congo in Le Petit Vingtième from 5 June 1930 to 11 June 1931; it was syndicated to the French Catholic newspaper Cœurs Vaillants. Drawn in black and white, it followed the same formula employed in Land of the Soviets, remaining "essentially plotless" according to the Hergé specialist Michael Farr, and consisting of largely unrelated events that Hergé improvised each week. Hergé later commented on the process of writing these early adventures, stating: "The Petit Vingtième came out on Wednesday evening, and I often didn't have a clue on Wednesday morning how I was going to get Tintin out of the predicament I had put him in the previous week". The strip's visual style was similar to that of Land of the Soviets. In the first instalment of Tintin in the Congo, Hergé featured Quick and Flupke, two young boys from Brussels whom he had recently introduced in another Le Petit Vingtième comic strip, in the crowd of people saying goodbye to Tintin.
Like Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo was popular in Belgium. On the afternoon of 9 July 1931, Wallez repeated the publicity stunt he had used when Soviets ended by having a young actor, Henry de Doncker, dress up as Tintin in colonial gear and appear in Brussels and then Liège, accompanied by 10 African bearers and an assortment of exotic animals hired from a zoo. Co-organised with the Bon Marché department store, the event attracted 5,000 spectators in Brussels. In 1931, Brussels-based Éditions de Petit Vingtième collected the story together into a single volume, and Casterman published a second edition in 1937. By 1944 the book had been reprinted seven times, and had outsold each of the other seven books in the series. The series' success led Wallez to renegotiate Hergé's contract, giving him a higher salary and the right to work from home.
### Second version, 1946
In the 1940s, after Hergé's popularity increased, he redrew many of the original black-and-white Tintin stories in colour using the ligne claire ("clear line") drawing style he had developed, so that they fitted in visually with the newer Adventures of Tintin that he had produced. Hergé first made some changes in this direction in 1940, when the story was serialised in the Dutch-language Het Laatste Nieuws.
At Casterman's prompting, Tintin in the Congo was subsequently fully re-drawn, and the new version was published in 1946. As a part of this modification, Hergé cut the page length from 110 plates to the standard 62 pages, as suggested by the publisher Casterman. He also made several changes to the story, cutting many of the references to Belgium and colonial rule. For example, in the scene where Tintin teaches Congolese school children about geography, he states in the 1930–31 version: "My dear friends, today I'm going to talk to you about your country: Belgium!" whereas in the 1946 version, he instead gives them a mathematics lesson. Hergé also changed the character of Jimmy MacDuff, the owner of the leopard that attacks Tintin, from a black manager of the Great American Circus into a white "supplier of the biggest zoos in Europe".
In the 1946 colour version, Hergé added a cameo appearance from Thomson and Thompson, the two detectives that he had introduced in the fourth Tintin story, Cigars of the Pharaoh (1932–34), which was chronologically set after the Congolese adventure. Adding them to the first page, Hergé featured them in the backdrop, watching a crowd surrounding Tintin as he boards a train and commenting that it "Seems to be a young reporter going to Africa ..." In the same frame, Hergé inserted depictions of himself and his friend Edgar P. Jacobs (the book's colourist) into the crowd seeing Tintin off.
### Later alterations and releases
When Tintin in the Congo was first released by the series' Scandinavian publishers in 1975, they objected to page 56, where Tintin drills a hole into a live rhinoceros, fills it with dynamite, and blows it up. They asked Hergé to replace this page with a less violent scene, which they believed would be more suitable for children. Hergé agreed, as he regretted the scenes of big-game hunting in the work soon after producing it. The altered page involved the rhinoceros running away unharmed after accidentally knocking down and triggering Tintin's gun.
Although publishers worldwide had made it available for many years, English publishers refused to publish Tintin in the Congo because of its perceived racist content. In the late 1980s, Nick Rodwell, then agent of Studios Hergé in the United Kingdom, told reporters of his intention to finally publish it in English and stated his belief that publishing the original 1931 black and white edition would cause less controversy than releasing the 1946 colour version. After more delay, in 1991—sixty years after its original 1931 publication—it was the last of The Adventures of Tintin to see publication in English. The 1946 colour version eventually appeared in English in 2005, published in Britain by Egmont.
## Critical analysis
Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline believed that Hergé's drawing became more assured throughout the first version of the story without losing any of its spontaneity. He thought that the story began in "the most inoffensive way", and that throughout the story Tintin was portrayed as a Boy Scout, something he argued reflected Hergé's "moral debt" to Wallez. Biographer Benoît Peeters opined that Tintin in the Congo was "nothing spectacular", with some "incredibly cumbersome" monologues, but he thought the illustrations "a bit more polished" than those in Land of the Soviets. Believing the plot to be "extremely simple", he thought that Tintin's character was like a child manipulating a world populated by toy animals and lead figurines. Michael Farr felt that, unlike the previous Tintin adventure, some sense of a plot emerges at the end of the story with the introduction of the American diamond-smuggling racket. Philippe Goddin thought the work to be "more exciting" than Land of the Soviets and argued that Hergé's depiction of the native Congolese was not mocking but a parody of past European militaries. By contrast, Harry Thompson believed that "Congo is almost a regression from Soviets", in his opinion having no plot or characterisation; he described it as "probably the most childish of all the Tintin books". Simon Kuper of the Financial Times criticised both Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo as the "worst" of the Adventures, opining that they were "poorly drawn" and "largely plot-free".
Farr saw the 1946 colour version as poorer than the black and white original; he said it had lost its "vibrancy" and "atmosphere", and that the new depiction of the Congolese landscape was unconvincing and more like a European zoo than the "parched, dusty expanses of reality". Peeters took a more positive attitude towards the 1946 version, commenting that it contained "aesthetic improvements" and "clarity of composition" because of Hergé's personal development in draughtsmanship, as well as an enhancement in the dialogue, which had become "more lively and fluid".
In his psychoanalytical study of the series, Jean-Marie Apostolidès highlighted that in the Congolese adventure, Tintin represented progress and the Belgian state was depicted as a model for the natives to imitate. In doing so, he argued, they could become more European and thus civilised from the perspective of Belgian society, but that instead they ended up appearing as parodies. Opining that Tintin was imposing his own view of Africa onto the Congolese, Apostolidès remarked that Tintin appeared as a god-figure, with evangelical overtones in the final scene. Literary critic Tom McCarthy concurred that Tintin represented the Belgian state, but also suggested that he acted as a Christian missionary, even being "a kind of god" akin to the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899). McCarthy compared the scene where Tintin exposes Muganga as a fraud to that in which the character of Prospero exposes the magician in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.
## Criticism
### Racism
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, several campaigners and writers characterised Tintin in the Congo as racist due to its portrayal of the Congolese as infantile and stupid. According to McCarthy, Hergé depicted the Congolese as "good at heart but backwards and lazy, in need of European mastery". There had been no such controversy when originally published, because it was only following the decolonisation of Africa, which occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, that Western attitudes towards indigenous Africans shifted. Harry Thompson argued that Tintin in the Congo must be viewed in the context of European society in the 1930s and 1940s, and that Hergé had not written the book to be "deliberately racist". Thompson argued that the story reflected the average Belgian view of Congolese people at the time, one that was more "patronising" than malevolent. Apostolidès supported this idea, as did Peeters, who asserted that "Hergé was no more racist than the next man". After meeting Hergé in the 1980s, Farr commented, "You couldn't have met someone who was more open and less racist."
Contrastingly, Assouline stated that in 1930s Belgium, Hergé would have had access to literature by the likes of André Gide and Albert Londres that was critical of the colonial regime. Assouline claimed that Hergé instead chose not to read such reports because they conflicted with the views of his conservative milieu. Laurence Grove—President of the International Bande Dessinée Society and an academic at the University of Glasgow—concurred, remarking that Hergé adhered to prevailing societal trends in his work, and that "[w]hen it was fashionable to be a colonial racist, that's what he was". Comic book historian Mark McKinney noted that other Franco-Belgian comic artists of the same period had chosen to depict the native Africans in a more favourable light, citing the examples of Jijé's 1939 work Blondin et Cirage (Blondy and Shoe-Black), in which the protagonists are adopted brothers, one white, the other black, and Tif et Tondu, which was serialised in Spirou from 1939 to 1940 and in which the Congolese aid the Belgians against their American antagonists.
Farr and McCarthy stated that Tintin in the Congo was the most popular Tintin adventure in Francophone Africa. According to Thompson, the book remained hugely popular in the Congo even after the country achieved independence in 1960. Nevertheless, government figures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have criticised the book. In 2004, after the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel De Gucht described President Joseph Kabila's provisional DRC government as incompetent, Congolese Information Minister Henri Mova Sakanyi accused him of "racism and nostalgia for colonialism", remarking that it was like "Tintin in the Congo all over again". The South African comics writer Anton Kannemeyer has parodied the perceived racist nature of the book to highlight what he sees as the continuing racist undertones of South African society. In his Pappa in Afrika (2010), a satire of Tintin in the Congo, he portrays Tintin as an Afrikaner with racist views of indigenous Africans.
#### Attempts to ban or restrict access to the book
In August 2007, Congolese student Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo filed a complaint in Brussels, claiming that Tintin in the Congo was an insult to the Congolese people that should be banned. Public prosecutors initiated a criminal case although the matter was transferred to a civil court in April 2010. Mondondo called the comic "racist and xenophobic," while his lawyers argued that it amounted to "a justification of colonisation and of white supremacy". Alain Berenboom, lawyer for both Moulinsart, the company which controls Hergé's estate, and Casterman, the book's publisher, argued that the cartoonist's depiction of the Congolese "wasn't racism but kind paternalism". Berenboom said that banning it would set a dangerous precedent for the availability of literature by other historical authors, such as Charles Dickens or Jules Verne, which also contain stereotypes of non-white ethnicities. In February 2012 the court ruled that the book would not be banned, deciding that it was "clear that neither the story, nor the fact that it has been put on sale, has a goal to ... create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, or humiliating environment", and that it therefore did not break Belgian law. Belgium's Centre for Equal Opportunities warned against "over-reaction and hyper political correctness".
In July 2007, British human rights lawyer David Enright complained to the United Kingdom's Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) that the book was sold in the children's section of Borders bookshop. The CRE called on bookshops to remove the comic; responding that it was committed to letting its "customers make the choice", Borders moved the book to an area reserved for adult graphic novels. UK bookseller Waterstone's followed suit. Another British retailer, WHSmith, said that the book was sold on its website, but with a label that recommended it for readers aged 16 and over. The CRE's attempt to ban the book was criticised by Conservative Party politician Ann Widdecombe, who remarked that the organisation had more important things to do than regulate the availability of historical children's books. The media controversy increased interest in the book, and Borders reported that its sales of Tintin in the Congo had been boosted 4,000%, while it also rose to eighth on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Publisher Egmont UK also responded to racism concerns by placing a protective band around the book with a warning about its content and writing an introduction describing its historical context.
Tintin in the Congo also came under criticism in the United States; in October 2007, in response to a complaint by a patron, the Brooklyn Public Library in New York City placed the graphic novel in a locked back room, only permitting access by appointment. Tintin in the Congo became part of a drawn-out media debate in Sweden after national newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported on the book's removal from a children's library in Kulturhuset in Stockholm in September 2011. The incident, nicknamed "Tintin-gate", led to heated discussions in mainstream and social media concerning accusations of racism and censorship. Complaints about the availability of the book in Sweden were also voiced by the Swedish-Belgian Jean-Dadaou Monyas, supported by Afrosvenskarna, an interest group for Swedes of African descent. The complaint to the Chancellor of Justice was turned down as violations of hate speech restrictions in the Swedish Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression must be filed within one year of publication, and the latest Swedish edition of Tintin in the Congo appeared in 2005.
### Hunting and animal cruelty
Tintin in the Congo shows Tintin taking part in what Farr described as "the wholesale and gratuitous slaughter" of animals; over the course of the Adventure, Tintin shoots several antelope, kills an ape to wear its skin, rams a rifle vertically into a crocodile's open mouth, kills an elephant for ivory, stones a buffalo, and (in earlier editions) drills a hole into a rhinoceros before planting dynamite in its body, blowing it up from the inside. Such scenes reflect the popularity of big-game hunting among affluent visitors in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1930s. Hergé later felt guilty about his portrayal of animals in Tintin in the Congo and became an opponent of blood sports; when he wrote Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934), he had Tintin befriend a herd of elephants living in the Indian jungle.
Philippe Goddin stated that the scene in which Tintin shoots a herd of antelope was "enough to upset even the least ecological reader" in the 21st century. When India Book House first published the book in India in 2006, its national branch of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals issued a public criticism, and chief functionary Anuradha Sawhney stated that the book was "replete with instances that send a message to young minds that it is acceptable to be cruel to animals".
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Death of Jimi Hendrix
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Death of American musician Jimi Hendrix
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"Barbiturates-related deaths",
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"Jimi Hendrix",
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On September 18, 1970, American musician Jimi Hendrix died in London at the age of 27. One of the 1960s' most influential guitarists, he was described by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music."
In the days before his death, Hendrix had been in poor health, in part from fatigue caused by overwork, a chronic lack of sleep, and an assumed influenza-related illness. Insecurities about his personal relationships, as well as disillusionment with the music industry, had also contributed to his frustration. Although the details of his final hours and death are disputed, Hendrix spent much of his last day alive with Monika Dannemann. In the morning hours of September 18, Dannemann found Hendrix unresponsive in her apartment at the Samarkand Hotel, 22 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill. She called for an ambulance at 11:18 a.m., and Hendrix was taken to St Mary Abbots Hospital, where an attempt was made to resuscitate him. He was pronounced dead at 12:45 p.m.
The post-mortem examination concluded that Hendrix aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates. At the inquest, the coroner, finding no evidence of suicide, and lacking sufficient evidence of the circumstances, recorded an open verdict. Dannemann stated that Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage.
On October 1, 1970, Hendrix was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Renton, Washington. In 1992, his former girlfriend, Kathy Etchingham, asked British authorities to reopen the investigation into Hendrix's death. A subsequent inquiry by Scotland Yard proved inconclusive, and in 1993 they decided against proceeding with an investigation.
## Background
During the week before his death, Jimi Hendrix was dealing with two pending lawsuits: one a paternity case, and the other a recording contract dispute that was due to be heard by a UK High Court the following week. He was also troubled with wanting to leave his manager, Michael Jeffery. Hendrix was fatigued and suffering from poor health, owing in part to severe exhaustion caused by overworking, a chronic lack of sleep, and a persistent illness assumed to be influenza-related. Lacking trusting personal relationships, his insecurities about the future and disillusionment with the music industry contributed to his frustration.
On September 11, 1970, Hendrix gave his final interview in his suite at the Cumberland Hotel in London, where he talked with Keith Altham, a journalist for Record Mirror. During the interview, Hendrix confirmed reports that Billy Cox, the bass player in his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was leaving. Cox, who had been suffering from severe exhaustion and was exhibiting symptoms of paranoia, mutually agreed with Hendrix that they should suspend their plans to collaborate musically. When Altham asked Hendrix: "Do you feel any kind of compulsion to prove yourself as King Guitar", Hendrix replied: "No, I don't even let that bother me. Because they say a lot of things about people that, if they let it bother them, they wouldn't even be around today ... King Guitar now? Wow, that's a bit heavy." Altham also suggested that Hendrix invented psychedelic music, to which he laughed and replied: "A mad scientist approach ... I don't consider [my music] the invention of psychedelic, it's just asking a lot of questions."
The following day, Hendrix received a phone call from one of his girlfriends, Devon Wilson, who had become jealous after hearing rumors that he was dating another woman, Kirsten Nefer. Nefer recalled: "I heard Jimi talk to Devon ... she was mad ... she went into fits ... Jimi said 'Devon, get off my back'". Hendrix was scheduled to perform in Rotterdam on September 13, but the show, along with three others, was cancelled because of Cox's incapacitation. During the evening of September 13, Nefer visited Hendrix at the Cumberland. After informing him that she would have to go back to work that evening, he convinced her to phone her boss, actor George Lazenby, and ask for the night off. Lazenby became angry and shouted over the phone to Nefer: "You're nothing but a fucking groupie", which Hendrix overheard. The exchange upset him, and he told Nefer: "Don't you ever go out to that guy again". Nefer explained to him that she had spent six months working on a film with Lazenby and that she did not want to quit her job; Hendrix eventually agreed. Nefer spent the night with him and left in the morning.
Hendrix spent most of the early afternoon and evening of September 14 discussing his career plans with the record producer Alan Douglas. In the early morning hours of September 15, he went to London's Heathrow Airport with Douglas, who was returning to New York. Hendrix's confidante Sharon Lawrence was in London, and spoke with him that day. Lawrence commented: "Jimi tracked me down, detailing his pressures and discussing the 'so-called friends'. He was jittery and angry." According to Lawrence, Hendrix told her: "I can't sleep. I can't focus to write any songs." Later that afternoon, his girlfriend Monika Dannemann arrived at the Cumberland. She and Hendrix then drove to her apartment in the Samarkand Hotel, 22 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill.
During the afternoon of September 15, Hendrix was asked by his friend Eric Burdon, formerly of the Animals, if he wanted to participate in a jam session at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club with Burdon's newly formed band, War. Hendrix accepted, but when he arrived at the club that evening, he was not allowed to play owing to his apparently drug-related disorientation. Burdon commented: "Jimi came down and was well out of it. He ... was wobbling too much to play, so I told him to come back the following night." Hendrix returned the next night and presented a healthier appearance. The crowd was enthusiastic and impressed by his performance despite his uncharacteristically subdued guitar playing when he sat in with War on "Tobacco Road" and "Mother Earth". This was the last time Hendrix played guitar in public.
## Final hours
### Late morning and early afternoon
Although the details of Hendrix's last day and death are unclear and widely disputed, he had spent much of September 17 in London with Monika Dannemann. He awoke late that morning at Dannemann's apartment in the Samarkand Hotel. By around 2:00 p.m., he was sitting in a garden area outside the apartment enjoying some tea while she took photographs of him holding his favorite Fender Stratocaster guitar that he called "Black Beauty". In the opinion of author Tony Brown, "Jimi doesn't look particularly healthy in these photographs: his face seems a little puffy and on only a few of the pictures does he attempt to smile."
According to Dannemann, by 3:00 p.m. they had left the apartment to use a bank. They continued on to Kensington Market, where Hendrix signed an autograph for a young boy, purchased a leather jacket, and ordered some shoes. He also briefly spoke with his ex-girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, inviting her to visit him at his hotel that evening at 8:00 p.m.; she declined the invitation because of prior engagements, and later admitted that she had "regretted it ever since". Hendrix and Dannemann then went to a Chelsea antiques market, where Hendrix purchased more clothing. After another stop to buy writing paper, which he used to compose his final lyrics, Dannemann and Hendrix drove to his suite at the Cumberland Hotel, meeting Devon Wilson as she walked down King's Road. Hendrix asked Dannemann to stop the car so that he could get out and talk with Wilson, who invited Hendrix to a party that evening. Dannemann became jealous, giving Wilson a cold stare during the brief meeting. Later, Phillip Harvey invited Dannemann and Hendrix to tea; they accepted. Prior to their arrival at Harvey's, they briefly stopped by the Cumberland.
While at the hotel, Hendrix made several telephone calls. Dannemann said he phoned his lawyer Henry Steingarten, asking him to find a way out of his contract with his manager Mike Jeffery, and producer Eddie Kramer, for whom Hendrix left a voice message. Mitch Mitchell said that he called Hendrix at the Cumberland on September 17, after having been asked to do so by tour manager Gerry Stickells, who had spoken to Hendrix just minutes earlier. Mitchell said that during the phone conversation Hendrix agreed to join him around midnight at the Speakeasy Club for a previously arranged jam session, which included Sly Stone.
### Late afternoon and evening
After stopping at the Cumberland, Hendrix and Dannemann accompanied Harvey to his apartment, arriving around 5:30 p.m. Hendrix and Dannemann smoked hashish and drank tea and wine with Harvey and two of his female companions while discussing their individual careers. Sometime around 10:00 p.m., Dannemann, apparently feeling left out of the conversation and jealous of the attention Hendrix was giving Harvey's female friends, became visibly upset and stormed out of the flat. Hendrix followed her, and an argument ensued between them during which Dannemann reportedly shouted: "you fucking pig". Harvey, concerned that their yelling would draw unwanted attention from the police, asked them to quiet down.
Harvey, who had remained silent about the incident out of respect for his father Lord Harvey, gave an affidavit after his father's death in 1994. In his statement, he claims to have been mildly concerned for Hendrix's safety, worried that Dannemann might "resort to serious physical violence". According to Harvey, Dannemann "verbally assaulted [Hendrix] in the most offensive possible way". Approximately 30 minutes later, Hendrix re-entered the flat and apologized for the outburst before leaving with Dannemann at 10:40 p.m. Dannemann said she then prepared a meal for them at her apartment around 11:00 p.m. and shared a bottle of wine with Hendrix. Sometime after returning to the apartment, Hendrix took a bath, then wrote a poem titled "The Story of Life". He also called former producer/co-manager Chas Chandler and left a message on the answering machine, "I need help bad, man."
### Early morning
At approximately 1:45 a.m. on Friday, September 18, Dannemann drove Hendrix to the party Wilson had invited him to earlier that day, which was hosted by Hendrix's acquaintance and business associate, Pete Kameron. At the party, Hendrix complained to Kameron about business problems, ate some food, and took at least one amphetamine tablet. Approximately 30 minutes later, Dannemann rang the flat's intercom asking for Hendrix. Another guest, Stella Douglas, asked her to return later. According to guest Angie Burdon, the estranged wife of Eric Burdon of the Animals, when Dannemann came back around 15 minutes later, Douglas used an assertive approach with her to the point of being impolite. Undeterred, Dannemann demanded to speak with Hendrix. Burdon recalled: "[Hendrix] got angry because [Dannemann] wouldn't leave him alone." According to Burdon, other guests at the party shouted out the windows at Dannemann, asking her to leave. Hendrix eventually yielded and spoke with Dannemann before unexpectedly leaving the party around 3:00 a.m.
Dannemann, the only eyewitness to Hendrix's final hours, said that sometime after 3:00 a.m., she prepared two tuna fish sandwiches for them after arriving back at her basement apartment. Around 4:00 a.m., Hendrix, struggling with insomnia after having consumed amphetamines hours earlier, asked her for sleeping tablets. She later said she refused his request hoping he would fall asleep naturally. Dannemann said she surreptitiously took a sleeping tablet sometime around 6:00 a.m., with Hendrix still awake. She awoke sometime between 10:00–10:20 a.m. to find him sleeping normally in bed next to her. She said she then left to purchase cigarettes, and when she returned around 11:00 a.m., found him in bed breathing, although unconscious and unresponsive. She telephoned for an ambulance at 11:18 a.m. and one arrived at 11:27 a.m.
When ambulance crew members Reg Jones and John Saua arrived at the Samarkand, the door to the flat was wide open, the gas fire was on, the curtains were drawn, and the apartment was dark. The crew called out several times, but after receiving no response, they entered and found Hendrix alone in bed. Dannemann was nowhere to be found. According to Jones: "Well, we had to get the police, we only had [Hendrix] and an empty flat, so John ran up and radioed, and got the aspirator ... It was horrific. He was covered in vomit. There was tons of it all over the pillow—black and brown it was. His airway was completely blocked all the way down ... We felt his pulse ... [shone] a light in his eyes. But there was no response at all." At 11:30 a.m., police officers Ian Smith and Tom Keene responded to a call for police assistance from the ambulance control centre. Jones commented: "Once the police arrived, which seemed like no time at all, we got [Hendrix] off to hospital as quick as we could."
The ambulance crew left the hotel at approximately 11:35 a.m. to take Hendrix to St Mary Abbots Hospital and they arrived at 11:45 a.m. Medical registrar Martin Seifert stated: "Jimi was rushed into the [resuscitation] room. He was put on a monitor, but it [ECG trace] was flat. I pounded his heart [CPR] a couple of times, but there was no point, he was dead". According to Seifert, the attempt to resuscitate Hendrix lasted "just a few minutes". The surgical registrar, John Bannister, commented: "He was cold and he was blue. He had all the parameters of someone who had been dead for some time. We worked on him for about half an hour without any response at all." Bannister pronounced Hendrix dead at 12:45 p.m., on Friday, September 18, 1970; he was 27 years old. He later stated: "On admission he was obviously dead. He had no pulse, no heartbeat, and the attempt to resuscitate him was merely a formality."
## Media response
During the morning of September 18, Eric Burdon arrived at the Samarkand sometime before the ambulance crew and found that Hendrix was already dead. Burdon immediately became concerned that police would find drugs at the apartment, and as he was collecting incriminating evidence, he found the poem that Hendrix had written hours earlier, "The Story of Life". Burdon, who said he had previously discussed suicide and death with Hendrix, assumed the poem was a suicide note. Under this assumption, he made comments to the press regarding his belief that Hendrix had committed suicide that he has since recanted: "I made false statements ... I simply didn't understand what the situation was. I misread the note ... I thought it was a goodbye". Dannemann said Hendrix told her: "I want you to keep this [poem] forever [and] I don't want you to forget anything that is written. It's a story about you and me".
Soon after Bannister pronounced Hendrix dead, a hospital spokesperson told the press: "We don't know where, how, or why he died, but he died of an overdose." By that evening, many newspapers in London and New York had printed sensationalized headlines that exploited the death-from-overdose account. Hendrix's public relations manager, Les Perrin, granted an interview on Dutch radio soon after the hospital announcement. He commented: "Well, all I know is that Mr. Hendrix's body was taken to St. Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington, London, at 11:45 this morning, and he was certified to be dead on arrival." At 2:00 p.m., BBC Radio 1 reported: "Jimi Hendrix, regarded by millions as one of the most talented and original performers in modern rock music, is dead." That evening, The New York Times described him as "a genius black musician, a guitarist, singer and composer of brilliantly dramatic power. He spoke in gestures as big as he could imagine and create."
On September 19, Dannemann spoke with a journalist for the German tabloid Bild. During the interview, published on September 24, Dannemann stated: "I loved him, and Jimi loved me ... We were already engaged ... I would then have designed the sleeves for his records ... He could not sleep. So I gave him the tablets." On September 20, a reporter from The Daily Telegraph interviewed Dannemann's brother, Klaus-Peter Dannemann, who stated: "[Monika] telephoned me on [September 19] and told me that [Hendrix] took nine sleeping tablets. She said that Jimi had told her that he wanted to sleep for a day and a half before he went to America. She told me that he did not intend to kill himself."
## Post-mortem
To determine the cause of death, the coroner, Gavin Thurston, ordered a post-mortem examination on Hendrix's body, which was performed on September 21, by Professor Robert Donald Teare, a forensic pathologist. Teare reported that Hendrix was "well nourished and muscular", and he identified a quarter-inch scar on Hendrix's left wrist. He said that there were "no stigmata of [intravenous] drug addiction. Once these marks are there [in the skin], they never go away. In this case, there were no marks at all." Although Teare observed that the right side of Hendrix's heart was widely dilated, he found no evidence of valvular heart disease. He discovered a partially collapsed left lung and 400 ml of fluid in Hendrix's chest. Both lungs were congested, and vomit was found in the smaller bronchi. According to Teare, Hendrix's stomach "contained a medium-sized partially digested meal in which rice could be distinguished." Teare concluded that Hendrix's kidneys were healthy, and his liver was congested. His "bladder was half full of clear urine." He stated that Hendrix's blood alcohol content was 100 mg per 100 ml, "enough to fail a breathalyzer test ... the equivalent of about four pints of beer." Teare reported that analysis of Hendrix's blood "revealed a mixture of barbiturates consistent with those from Vesparax", and he estimated that drug concentrations translated to ingestion of 1.8 grams of barbiturate, 20 mg of amphetamine, and 20 mg of cannabis. Teare gave the cause of death as: "Inhalation of vomit due to barbiturate intoxication." He did not attempt to determine Hendrix's time of death.
Thurston began an inquest on September 23, and on September 28 he concluded that Hendrix had aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates. Citing "insufficient evidence of [the] circumstances", he recorded an open verdict. He commented: "The cause of death was clearly inhalation of vomit due to barbiturate intoxication, but there is no evidence as to intention to commit suicide ... If the question of intention cannot be answered, then it is proper to find the cause of death and leave it an open verdict." Dannemann later stated that Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets. Intended to be taken in half-tablet doses, nine tablets of the powerful sedative amounted to 18 times the recommended amount.
After Hendrix's body had been embalmed by Desmond Henley, it was flown to Seattle, Washington, on September 29. After a service at Dunlap Baptist Church on October 1, he was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Renton, Washington, the location of his mother's gravesite. Hendrix's family and friends traveled in 24 limousines. More than two hundred people attended the funeral, including several notable musicians such as the original Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, as well as Miles Davis, John Hammond and Johnny Winter.
## Inconsistencies and the Scotland Yard inquiry
Tony Brown, author of Jimi Hendrix: The Final Days (1997), had been in regular contact with Dannemann from 1980 until her death in 1996. He visited with her on multiple occasions and spoke with her numerous times over the phone. Soon after contacting her, Brown came to the conclusion that her account of the events of Hendrix's final days "would change from one call to the next." In the days following Hendrix's death, she gave two significantly different accounts of the morning of September 18.
At approximately 4:00 p.m. on September 18, Dannemann told Police Sergeant John Shaw: "We went to sleep about 7:00 a.m. When I woke up at eleven his face was covered in vomit, and he was breathing noisily. I sent for an ambulance, and he was taken to hospital. I also noticed that ten of my sleeping tablets were missing." In a statement given to P. Weyell of the coroner's office on September 24, she said:
> I made a sandwich and we talked until about 7:00 a.m. He then said that he wanted to go to sleep. He took some tablets, and we went to bed. I woke up about 11:00 a.m., and saw that Jimi's face was covered in vomit. I tried to wake him but could not. I called an ambulance and he was taken to the hospital in Kensington ... Prior to going with him to the hospital, I checked my supply of Vesparax sleeping tablets and found that nine of them were missing.
In Dannemann's initial statements, she said she awoke at 11 a.m. on September 18. During the inquest she stated that she awoke at 10:20 a.m., and left to purchase cigarettes, something she had previously failed to mention. In 1971, she wrote a manuscript in which she said she awoke at 10 a.m. In 1975, during an interview with author Caesar Glebbeek, Dannemann stated that she awoke at 9 a.m. According to Burdon, Dannemann phoned him as "the first light of dawn was coming through the window." Stickells said he received a phone call regarding a problem with Hendrix "between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m." Mitchell said he waited for Hendrix at the Speakeasy Club until they closed at 4 a.m., and a couple of hours after his hour and a half drive home, he received a phone call from Stickells, who told him Hendrix had died. In her statements to the police and coroner's office, Dannemann never mentioned telephoning Burdon.
Although Dannemann claimed that Hendrix was alive when placed in the ambulance at approximately 11:30 a.m. and that she rode with him on the way to the hospital, the ambulance crew later denied she was there. Statements from the paramedics who responded to the call support that they found Hendrix alone in the flat when they arrived at 11:27 a.m., fully clothed and apparently already dead. Jones later commented: "[When] we arrived at the flat, the door was flung wide open, nobody about, just the body on the bed." Saua stated: "There was just me and the casualty and Reg the driver. Nobody else." Burdon stated: "[Dannemann] didn't leave in the ambulance; she was with me". According to Jones, Hendrix's bowels and bladder had released some of their contents prior to the ambulance crew's arrival at the Samarkand. Saua stated that the vomit was dry when they arrived, making use of their aspirator ineffective. Saua commented: "When we moved [Hendrix], the gases were gurgling, you get that when someone has died". According to police officer Smith: "The ambulance men were there, but Jimi was dead ... There was really nothing they could do for him." Smith also disputes Dannemann's claim that she was there with Hendrix at the flat and in the ambulance:
> No, I remember quite clearly the doors shutting on the crew and Jimi ... there was no one about. If she had been in the flat, they would never have called us to come ... But because no one was there, he was dead, and circumstances were a little odd, suspicious, they radioed ... us in. It wasn't until later in the day that I found out that it was Jimi Hendrix.
In 1992, after having conducted an extensive review of the events of September 18, 1970, the London Ambulance Service issued an official statement: "There was no one else, except the deceased, at the flat when they arrived; nor did anyone else accompany them in the ambulance to St. Mary Abbotts Hospital."
In 1992, having arranged for a private investigation of Hendrix's death, Etchingham supplied the results of the effort to UK authorities and requested they reopen the coroner's inquest. After a several-month inquiry by Scotland Yard, during which every interested party to the events was interviewed, officials were confident the request would be granted. The investigation eventually proved inconclusive in 1993, when Attorney General Sir Nicholas Lyell decided that proceeding with the investigation would not serve the public, owing in part to the excessive time that had passed since Hendrix's death.
## Explanatory notes
## General and cited sources
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The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it created the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab in New Jersey also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations.
A Kinetoscope prototype was first semipublicly demonstrated to members of the National Federation of Women's Clubs invited to the Edison laboratory on May 20, 1891. The completed version was publicly unveiled in Brooklyn two years later, and on April 14, 1894, the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history took place in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes. Instrumental to the birth of American movie culture, the Kinetoscope also had a major impact in Europe; its influence abroad was magnified by Edison's decision not to seek international patents on the device, facilitating numerous imitations of and improvements on the technology. In 1895, Edison introduced the Kinetophone, which joined the Kinetoscope with a cylinder phonograph. Film projection, which Edison initially disdained as financially nonviable, soon superseded the Kinetoscope's individual exhibition model. Numerous motion picture systems developed by Edison's firm in later years were marketed with the name Projecting Kinetoscope.
## Development
An encounter with the work and ideas of photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge appears to have spurred Thomas Edison to pursue the development of a motion picture system. On February 25, 1888, in Orange, New Jersey, Muybridge gave a lecture amid a tour in which he demonstrated his zoopraxiscope, a device that projected sequential images drawn around the edge of a glass disc, producing the illusion of motion. Edison's laboratory was close by, and either or both Edison and his company's official photographer, William Dickson, may have attended. Two days later, Muybridge and Edison met at the Edison lab in West Orange and discussed the possibility of joining the zoopraxiscope with the Edison phonograph—a combination system that would play sound and images concurrently. No such collaboration was undertaken, but in October 1888, Edison filed a preliminary claim, known as a caveat, with the U.S. Patent Office announcing his plans to create a device that would do "for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear". It is clear that it was intended as part of a complete audiovisual system: "we may see & hear a whole Opera as perfectly as if actually present". In March 1889, a second caveat was filed, in which the proposed motion picture device was given a name, Kinetoscope, derived from the Greek roots kineto- ("movement") and scopos ("to view").
Edison assigned Dickson, one of his most talented employees, to the job of making the Kinetoscope a reality. Edison would take full credit for the invention, but the historiographical consensus is that the title of creator can hardly go to one man:
> While Edison seems to have conceived the idea and initiated the experiments, Dickson apparently performed the bulk of the experimentation, leading most modern scholars to assign Dickson with the major credit for turning the concept into a practical reality. The Edison laboratory, though, worked as a collaborative organization. Laboratory assistants were assigned to work on many projects while Edison supervised and involved himself and participated to varying degrees.
Dickson and his then lead assistant, Charles Brown, made halting progress at first. Edison's original idea involved recording pinpoint photographs, 1/32 of an inch wide, directly on to a cylinder (also referred to as a "drum"); the cylinder, made of an opaque material for positive images or of glass for negatives, was coated in collodion to provide a photographic base. An audio cylinder would provide synchronized sound, while the rotating images, hardly operatic in scale, were viewed through a microscope-like tube. When tests were made with images expanded to a mere 1/8 of an inch in width, the coarseness of the silver bromide emulsion used on the cylinder became unacceptably apparent. Around June 1889, the lab began working with sensitized celluloid sheets, supplied by John Carbutt, that could be wrapped around the cylinder, providing a far superior base for the recording of photographs. The first film made for the Kinetoscope, and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in the United States, may have been shot at this time (there is an unresolved debate over whether it was made in June 1889 or November 1890); known as Monkeyshines, No. 1, it shows an employee of the lab in an apparently tongue-in-cheek display of physical dexterity. Attempts at synchronizing sound were soon left behind, while Dickson would also experiment with disc-based exhibition designs.
The project would soon head off in more productive directions, largely impelled by a trip of Edison's to Europe and the Exposition Universelle in Paris, for which he departed August 2 or 3, 1889. During his two months abroad, Edison visited with scientist-photographer Étienne-Jules Marey, who had devised a "chronophotographic gun"—the first portable motion picture camera—which used a strip of flexible film designed to capture sequential images at 12 frames per second. Upon his return to the United States, Edison filed another patent caveat, on November 2, which described a Kinetoscope based not just on a flexible filmstrip, but one in which the film was perforated to allow for its engagement by sprockets, making its mechanical conveyance much more smooth and reliable. The first motion picture system to employ a perforated image band was apparently the Théâtre Optique, patented by French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud in 1888. Reynaud's system did not use photographic film, but images painted on gelatine frames. At the Exposition Universelle, Edison would have seen both the Théâtre Optique and the electrical tachyscope of German inventor Ottamar Anschütz. This disc-based projection device, also known as the Schnellseher ("quick viewer"), is often referred to as an important conceptual source for the development of the Kinetoscope. Its crucial innovation was to take advantage of the persistence of vision theory by using an intermittent light source to momentarily "freeze" the projection of each image; the goal was to facilitate the viewer's retention of many minutely different stages of a photographed activity, thus producing a highly effective illusion of constant motion. By late 1890, intermittent visibility would be integral to the Kinetoscope's design.
The question of when the Edison lab began working on a filmstrip device is a matter of historical debate. According to Dickson, in mid-1889, he began cutting the stiff celluloid sheets supplied by Carbutt into strips for use in such a prototype machine; in August, by his description, he attended a demonstration of George Eastman's new flexible film and was given a roll by an Eastman representative, which was immediately applied to experiments with the prototype. As described by historian Marta Braun, Eastman's product
> was sufficiently strong, thin, and pliable to permit the intermittent movement of the film strip behind [a camera] lens at considerable speed and under great tension without tearing ... stimulat[ing] the almost immediate solution of the essential problems of cinematic invention.
Some scholars—in particular, Gordon Hendricks, in The Edison Motion Picture Myth (1961)—have argued that the lab began working on a filmstrip machine much later and that Dickson and Edison misrepresented the date to establish priority for reasons of both patent protection and intellectual status. In any event, though film historian David Robinson claims that "the cylinder experiments seem to have been carried on to the bitter end" (meaning the final months of 1890), as far back as September 1889—while Edison was still in Europe, but corresponding regularly with Dickson—the lab definitely placed its first order with the Eastman company for roll film. Three more orders for roll film were placed over the next five months.
Only sporadic work was done on the Kinetoscope for much of 1890 as Dickson concentrated on Edison's unsuccessful venture into ore milling—between May and November, no expenses at all were billed to the lab's Kinetoscope account. By early 1891, however, Dickson and his new chief assistant, William Heise, had succeeded in devising a functional strip-based film viewing system. In the new design, whose mechanics were housed in a wooden cabinet, a loop of horizontally configured 3/4 inch (19 mm) film ran around a series of spindles. The film, with a single row of perforations engaged by an electrically powered sprocket wheel, was drawn continuously beneath a magnifying lens. An electric lamp shone up from beneath the film, casting its circular-format images onto the lens and thence through a peephole atop the cabinet. The device incorporated a rapidly spinning shutter whose purpose—as described by Robinson in his discussion of the completed version—was to "permi[t] a flash of light so brief that [each] frame appeared to be frozen. This rapid series of apparently still frames appeared, thanks to the persistence of vision phenomenon, as a moving image." The lab also developed a motor-powered camera, the Kinetograph, capable of shooting with the new sprocketed film. To govern the intermittent movement of the film in the camera, allowing the strip to stop long enough so each frame could be fully exposed and then advancing it quickly (in about 1/460 of a second) to the next frame, the sprocket wheel that engaged the strip was driven by an escapement disc mechanism—the first practical system for the high-speed stop-and-go film movement that would be the foundation for the next century of cinematography.
On May 20, 1891, the first invitational demonstration of a prototype Kinetoscope was given at the laboratory for approximately 150 members of the National Federation of Women's Clubs. The New York Sun described what the club women saw in the "small pine box" they encountered:
> In the top of the box was a hole perhaps an inch in diameter. As they looked through the hole they saw the picture of a man. It was a most marvelous picture. It bowed and smiled and waved its hands and took off its hat with the most perfect naturalness and grace. Every motion was perfect....
The man was Dickson; the little movie, approximately three seconds long, is now referred to as Dickson Greeting. On August 24, three detailed patent applications were filed: the first for a "Kinetographic Camera", the second for the camera as well, and the third for an "Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects". In the first Kinetograph application, Edison stated, "I have been able to take with a single camera and a tape-film as many as forty-six photographs per second...but I do not wish to limit the scope of my invention to this high rate of speed...since with some subjects a speed as low as thirty pictures per second or even lower is sufficient." Indeed, according to the Library of Congress archive, based on data from a study by historian Charles Musser, Dickson Greeting and at least two other films made with the Kinetograph in 1891 were shot at 30 frames per second or even slower. The Kinetoscope application also included a plan for a stereoscopic film projection system that was apparently abandoned.
Early in 1892, steps began to make coin operation, via a nickel slot, part of the mechanics of the viewing system. Before the end of the year, the design of the Kinetoscope was essentially complete. The filmstrip, based on stock manufactured first by Eastman, and then, from April 1893, by New York's Blair Camera Co., was 1 3/8 inches wide; each vertically sequenced frame bore a rectangular image, 1 inch wide by 3/4 inch high, and four perforations on each side. Within a few years, this basic format—with the gauge known by its metric equivalent, 35 mm—would be adopted globally as the standard for motion picture film, which it remains to this day. The publication in the October 1892 Phonogram of cinematographic sequences shot in the format demonstrates that the Kinetograph had already been reconfigured to produce movies with the new film.
As for the Kinetoscope itself, there have been differing descriptions of the location of the shutter providing the crucial intermittent visibility effect. According to a report by inventor Herman Casler described as "authoritative" by Hendricks, who personally examined five of the six still-extant first-generation devices, "Just above the film,...a shutter wheel having five spokes and a very small rectangular opening in the rim [rotates] directly over the film. An incandescent lamp...is placed below the film...and the light passes up through the film, shutter opening, and magnifying lens...to the eye of the observer placed at the opening in the top of the case." Robinson, on the other hand, says the shutter—which he agrees has only a single slit—is positioned lower, "between the lamp and film". The Casler–Hendricks description is supported by the diagrams of the Kinetoscope that accompany the 1891 patent application, in particular, diagram 2. A side view, it does not illustrate the shutter, but it shows the impossibility of it fitting between the lamp and the film without a major redesign and indicates a space that seems suitable for it between the film strip and the lens. Evidently, that major redesign took place, as Robinson's description is confirmed by photographs of multiple Kinetoscope interiors, two among the holdings of The Henry Ford and one that appears in Hendricks's own book.
On February 21, 1893, a patent was issued for the system that governed the intermittent movement of film in the Kinetograph (though one was not granted for a version of the camera as a whole until 1897). The escapement-based mechanism would be superseded within a few years by competing systems, in particular those based on the so-called Geneva drive or "Maltese cross" that would become the norm for both movie cameras and projectors. The exhibition device itself—which, despite erroneous accounts to the contrary, never employed intermittent film movement, only intermittent lighting or viewing—was finally awarded its patent, number 493,426, on March 14. The Kinetoscope was ready to be unveiled.
## Going public
The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope was held not at the Chicago World's Fair, as originally scheduled, but at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893. The first film publicly shown on the system was Blacksmith Scene (also known as Blacksmiths); directed by Dickson and shot by Heise, it was produced at the new Edison moviemaking studio, the world's first, known as the Black Maria. Despite extensive promotion, a major display of the Kinetoscope, involving as many as twenty-five machines, never took place at the Chicago exposition. Kinetoscope production had been delayed in part because of Dickson's absence of more than eleven weeks early in the year with a nervous breakdown. Hendricks, referring to various accounts, including ones in the July 22 Science and the October 21 Scientific American, argues that one Kinetoscope did make it to the fair. Robinson, in contrast, argues that such "speculation" is "conclusively dismissed by an 1894 leaflet issued for the launching of the invention in London," which states, "the Kinetoscope was not perfected in time for the great Fair." Echoing Hendricks's position, fair historian Stanley Appelbaum states, "Doubt has been cast on the reports of [the Kinetoscope's] actual presence at the fair, but these reports are numerous and circumstantial." Noting that the fair featured up to two dozen Anschütz Schnellsehers—some or all of a peephole, not projection, variety—film historian Deac Rossell asserts that their presence "is the reason that so many historical sources were confused for so long.... [A]nyone who made a clear claim to see the Kinetoscope undoubtedly saw the Schnellseher under its deliberately deceptive name of The Electrical Wonder."
Work proceeded, though slowly, on the Kinetoscope project. On October 6, a U.S. copyright was issued for a "publication" received by the Library of Congress consisting of "Edison Kinetoscopic Records." It remains unclear what film was awarded this, the first motion picture copyright in North America. By the turn of the year, the Kinetoscope project would be reenergized. During the first week of January 1894, a five-second film starring an Edison technician was shot at the Black Maria; Fred Ott's Sneeze, as it is now widely known, was made expressly to produce a sequence of images for an article in Harper's magazine. Never intended for exhibition, it would become one of the most famous Edison films and the first identifiable motion picture to receive a U.S. copyright. With commercial exploitation close at hand, on April 1, the motion picture operation was formally made the Kinetograph Department of the Edison Manufacturing Company, for which Edison appointed a new vice president and general manager: William E. Gilmore. Two weeks later, the Kinetoscope's epochal moment arrived.
On April 14, 1894, a public Kinetoscope parlor was opened by the Holland Bros. in New York City at 1155 Broadway, on the corner of 27th Street—the first commercial motion picture house. The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill. The four-foot-tall machines were purchased from the new Kinetoscope Company, which had contracted with Edison for their production; the firm, headed by Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon, included among its investors Andrew M. Holland, one of the entrepreneurial siblings, and Edison's former business chief, Alfred O. Tate. The ten films that comprise the first commercial movie program, all shot at the Black Maria and each running about 15 to 20 seconds, were descriptively titled: Barber Shop, Bertoldi (mouth support) (Ena Bertoldi, a British vaudeville contortionist), Bertoldi (table contortion), Blacksmiths, Roosters (some manner of cock fight), Highland Dance, Horse Shoeing, Sandow (Eugen Sandow, a German strongman managed by Florenz Ziegfeld), Trapeze, and Wrestling. As historian Charles Musser describes, a "profound transformation of American life and performance culture" had begun.
Twenty-five cents for no more than a few minutes of entertainment was hardly cheap diversion. For the same amount, one could purchase a ticket to a major vaudeville theater; when America's first amusement park opened in Coney Island the following year, a 25-cent entrance fee covered admission to three rides, a performing sea lion show, and a dance hall. The Kinetoscope was an immediate success, however, and by June 1, the Hollands were also operating venues in Chicago and San Francisco. Entrepreneurs (including Raff and Gammon, with their own International Novelty Co.) were soon running Kinetoscope parlors and temporary exhibition venues around the United States. New firms joined the Kinetoscope Company in commissioning and marketing the machines. The Kinetoscope exhibition spaces were largely, though not uniformly, profitable. After fifty weeks in operation, the Hollands' New York parlor had generated approximately \$1,400 in monthly receipts against an estimated \$515 in monthly operating costs; receipts from the Chicago venue (located in a Masonic temple) were substantially lower, about \$700 a month, though presumably operating costs were lower as well. For each machine, Edison's business at first generally charged \$250 to the Kinetoscope Company and other distributors, which would use them in their own exhibition parlors or resell them to independent exhibitors; individual films were initially priced by Edison at \$10. During the Kinetoscope's first eleven months of commercialization, the sale of viewing machines, films, and auxiliary items generated a profit of more than \$85,000 for Edison's company.
One of the new firms to enter the field was the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company (no relation to Raff and Gammon's Kinetoscope Company); the firm's partners, brothers Otway and Grey Latham, Otway's friend Enoch Rector, and their employer, Samuel J. Tilden Jr., sought to combine the popularity of the Kinetoscope with that of prizefighting. This led to a series of significant developments in the motion picture field: The Kinetograph was then capable of shooting only a 50-foot-long negative. At 16 frames per foot, this meant a maximum running time of 20 seconds at 40 frames per second (fps), the speed most frequently employed with the camera. At the rate of 30 fps that had been used on occasion as far back as 1891, a film could run for almost 27 seconds. Hendricks identifies Sandow as having been shot at 16 fps, as does the Library of Congress in its online catalog, where its duration is listed as 40 seconds. Even at the slowest of these rates, the running time would not have been enough to accommodate a satisfactory exchange of fisticuffs; 16 fps, as well, might have been thought to give too herky-jerky a visual effect for enjoyment of the sport. The Kinetograph and Kinetoscope were modified, possibly with Rector's assistance, so they could manage filmstrips three times longer than had previously been used.
On June 15, a match with abbreviated rounds was staged between boxers Michael Leonard and Jack Cushing at the Black Maria. Seven-hundred-and-fifty feet worth of images or even more were shot at the rate of 30 fps—easily the longest motion picture to date. Several weeks later, the film premiered at the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company's parlor at 83 Nassau Street in New York. A half-dozen expanded Kinetoscope machines each showed a different round of the fight for a dime, meaning 60 cents to see the complete bout. For a planned series of follow-up fights (of which the outcome of at least the first was fixed), the Lathams signed famous heavyweight James J. Corbett, stipulating that his image could not be recorded by any other Kinetoscope company—the first movie star contract. In sum, seventy-five films were shot at the Edison facility in 1894.
Just three months after the commercial debut of the motion picture came the first recorded instance of motion picture censorship. The film in question showed a performance by the Spanish dancer Carmencita, a New York music hall star since the beginning of the decade. According to one description of her live act, she "communicated an intense sexuality across the footlights that led male reporters to write long, exuberant columns about her performance"—articles that would later be reproduced in the Edison film catalog. The Kinetoscope movie of her dance, shot at the Black Maria in mid-March 1894, was playing in the New Jersey resort town Asbury Park by summer. The town's founder, James A. Bradley, a real estate developer and leading member of the Methodist community, had recently been elected a state senator: "The Newark Evening News of 17 July 1894 reported that [Senator] Bradley...was so shocked by the glimpse of Carmencita's ankles and lace that he complained to Mayor Ten Broeck. The showman was thereupon ordered to withdraw the offending film, which he replaced with Boxing Cats." The following month, a San Francisco exhibitor was arrested for a Kinetoscope operation "alleged to be indecent." The group whose disgruntlement occasioned the arrest was the Pacific Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose targets included "illicit literature, obscene pictures and books, the sale of morphine, cocaine, opium, tobacco and liquors to minors, lottery tickets, etc.," and which proudly took credit for having "caused 70 arrests and obtained 48 convictions" in a recent two-month span.
The Kinetoscope was also gaining notice abroad. On July 16, 1894, it was demonstrated publicly for the first time in Europe at the 20 boulevard Montmartre newsroom of Le petit Parisienne, where photographer Antoine Lumière may have seen it for the first time. In September, the first Kinetoscope parlor outside the United States opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The first European Kinetoscope parlor was soon operating in Paris, at 20 boulevard Poissonnière. One of the owners was a business associate of Antoine Lumière's, whom he gave a strip from Barber Shop and a request for cheaper alternatives to the expensive Edison-produced films he was showing. Along with the stir created by the Kinetoscope itself, this was one of the primary inspirations for the Lumière brothers, Antoine's sons, who would go on to develop not only improved motion picture cameras and film stock but also the first commercially successful movie projection system. In mid-October, a Kinetoscope parlor opened in London. At the end of November, by which point New York City was host to half a dozen Kinetophone parlors and London to nearly as many, a venue with five machines opened in Sydney, Australia. By January 3, 25,000 filmgoers had paid the one-shilling fee (roughly equivalent to 25 cents, the same price for five film viewings as in the New York debut).
Dissemination of the system proceeded rapidly in Europe, as Edison had left his patents unprotected overseas. The most likely reason was the technology's reliance on a variety of foreign innovations and a consequent belief that patent applications would have little chance of success. An alternative view, however, used to be popular: The 1971 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, for instance, claims that Edison "apparently thought so little of his invention that he failed to pay the \$150 that would have granted him an international copyright [sic]." As recently as 2004, Andrew Rausch stated that Edison "balked at a \$150 fee for overseas patents" and "saw little commercial value in the Kinetoscope." Given that Edison, as much a businessman as an inventor, spent approximately \$24,000 on the system's development and went so far as to build a facility expressly for moviemaking before his U.S. patent was awarded, Rausch's interpretation is not widely shared by present-day scholars. Whatever the cause, two Greek entrepreneurs, George Georgiades and George Tragides, took advantage of the opening. Already successfully operating a pair of London movie parlors with Edison Kinetoscopes, they commissioned English inventor and manufacturer Robert W. Paul to make copies of them. After fulfilling the Georgiades–Tragides contract, Paul decided to go into the movie business himself, proceeding to make dozens of additional Kinetoscope reproductions. In this pursuit, and to make films for both the original device and its knockoffs, Paul and photographer Birt Acres—briefly Paul's business partner—would originate a number of important innovations in both camera and exhibition technology. Meanwhile, plans were advancing at the Black Maria to realize Edison's goal of a motion picture system uniting image with sound.
## Kinetophone
The Kinetophone (also known as Phonokinetoscope) was an early attempt by Edison and Dickson to create a sound-film system. The October 1893 Scientific American report on the Chicago World's Fair suggests that a Kinetograph camera accompanied by a cylinder phonograph was presented there as a demonstration of the potential to simultaneously record image and sound. The first known movie made as a test of the Kinetophone was shot at Edison's New Jersey studio in late 1894 or early 1895; now referred to as the Dickson Experimental Sound Film, it is the only surviving movie with live-recorded sound made for the Kinetophone. In March 1895, Edison offered the device for sale; involving no technological innovations, it was a Kinetoscope whose modified cabinet included an accompanying cylinder phonograph. Kinetoscope owners were also offered kits with which to retrofit their equipment. The first Kinetophone exhibitions appear to have taken place in April.
Though a Library of Congress educational website states, "The picture and sound were made somewhat synchronous by connecting the two with a belt", this is incorrect. As historian David Robinson describes, "The Kinetophone...made no attempt at synchronization. The viewer listened through tubes to a phonograph concealed in the cabinet and performing approximately appropriate music or other sound." Historian Douglas Gomery concurs, "[Edison] did not try to synchronize sound and image." Leading production sound mixer Mark Ulano writes that Kinetophones "did not play synchronously other than the phonograph turned on when viewing and off when stopped." While the surviving Dickson test involves live-recorded sound, certainly most, and probably all, of the films marketed for the Kinetophone were shot as silents, predominantly march or dance subjects; exhibitors could then choose from a variety of musical cylinders offering a rhythmic match. For example, three different cylinders with orchestral performances were proposed as accompaniments for Carmencita: "Valse Santiago", "La Paloma", and "Alma-Danza Spagnola".
Even as Edison followed his dream of securing the Kinetoscope's popularity by adding sound to its allure, many in the field were beginning to suspect that film projection was the next step that should be pursued. When Norman Raff communicated his customers' interest in such a system to Edison, he summarily rejected the notion:
> No, if we make this screen machine that you are asking for, it will spoil everything. We are making these peep show machines and selling a lot of them at a good profit. If we put out a screen machine there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States. With that many screen machines you could show the pictures to everybody in the country—and then it would be done. Let's not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Under continuing pressure from Raff, Edison eventually conceded to investigate the possibility of developing a projection system. He seconded one of his lab's technicians to the Kinetoscope Company to initiate the work, without informing Dickson. Tensions between the latter and Edison Company general manager William Gilmore had been running high for months; Dickson's eventual discovery of the Kinetoscope Company move appears to have been another central factor in his break with Edison that occurred in April 1895. The Kinetophone's debut excited little demand; a total of just forty-five of the machines were built over the next half-decade. With Dickson's departure, Edison ceased new work on sound cinema for an extended period.
## Projection wins out
On January 3, 1895, a British inventor received a patent for an unwieldy contraption meant to cast an enlarged Kinetoscope image onto a screen. Over the course of the year, even as new Kinetoscope exhibits opened as far afield as Mexico City, major cities across Europe, locales large and small around Australia, and Auckland, New Zealand, it became evident that the system was going to lose out to projected motion pictures. In its second year of commercialization, the Kinetoscope operation's profits plummeted by more than 95 percent, to just over \$4,000. The Latham brothers and their father, Woodville, had been developing a film projection system, retaining the services of former Edison employee Eugene Lauste and benefiting secretly from Dickson's assistance while he was still in Edison's employ. A few weeks after he and Edison fell out, Dickson openly participated in an April 21 screening of the Latham group's new Eidoloscope for at least one member of the New York press, which historians describe as the first public film projection in the U.S. On May 20, in Lower Manhattan, the world's first run of commercial motion picture screenings began: the Eidoloscope show's prime attraction was a boxing match between Young Griffo and Charles Barnett, approximately eight minutes long. European inventors, most prominently the Lumières and Germany's Skladanowsky brothers, were moving forward with similar systems. Another challenge came from a new "peep show" device, the cheap, flip-book-based Mutoscope—another venture to which Dickson had secretly contributed while working for Edison and to which he devoted himself following the Eidoloscope debut. Before year's end, the Mutoscope team, using their Mutograph camera as a basis, developed a projector. At that point, North American orders for new Kinetoscopes had all but evaporated.
By the beginning of 1896, Edison was turning his focus to the promotion of a projector technology, the Phantoscope, developed by young inventors Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. The rights to the system had been acquired by Raff and Gammon, who redubbed it the Vitascope and arranged with Edison to present himself as its creator. The Vitascope premiered in New York in April and met with swift success, but was just as quickly surpassed by the Cinématographe of the Lumières, which arrived in June with the backing of Benjamin F. Keith and his circuit of vaudeville theaters. The Eidoloscope's prospects, meanwhile, were crippled by projection deficiencies and business disputes. In September 1896, the Mutoscope Company's projector, the Biograph, was released; better funded than its competitors and with superior image quality, by the end of the year it was allied with Keith and soon dominated the North American projection market.
Departing the Vitascope operation after little more than a year—in which the Edison Company's film-related business made a \$25,000 profit—Edison commissioned the development of his own projection systems, the Projectoscope and then multiple iterations of the Projecting Kinetoscope, eventually targeting semiprofessional and amateur customers. At its peak, around 1907–8, the Projecting Kinetoscope commanded 30 percent of US projector sales. In 1912, Edison introduced the ambitious Home Projecting Kinetoscope, which employed a unique format of three parallel columns of sequential frames on one strip of film—the middle column ran through the machine in the reverse direction from its neighbors. It was a commercial failure. Three years later, the Edison operation came out with its last substantial new film exhibition technology, a short-lived theatrical system called the Super Kinetoscope. Aside from the actual Edison Studios film productions, the company's most creative work in the motion picture field from 1897 on involved the use of Kinetoscope-related patents in threatened or actual lawsuits for the purpose of financially pressuring or blocking commercial rivals.
As far back as some of the early Eidoloscope screenings, exhibitors had occasionally shown films accompanied by phonographs playing appropriate, though very roughly timed, sound effects; in the style of the Kinetophone described above, rhythmically matching recordings were also made available for march and dance subjects. While Edison oversaw cursory sound-cinema experiments after the success of The Great Train Robbery (1903) and other Edison Manufacturing Company productions, it was not until 1908 that he returned in earnest to the combined audiovisual concept that had first led him to enter the motion picture field. Edison patented a synchronization system connecting a projector and a phonograph, located behind the screen, via an assembly of three rigid shafts—a vertical one descending from each device, joined by a third running horizontally the entire length of the theater, beneath the floor. Two years later, he supervised a press demonstration at the laboratory of a sound-film system of either this or a later design.
In 1913, Edison finally introduced the new Kinetophone—like all of his sound-film exhibition systems since the first in the mid-1890s, it used a cylinder phonograph, now connected to a Projecting Kinetoscope via a fishing line–type belt and a series of metal pulleys. It met with early acclaim, but poorly trained operators had trouble keeping picture in synchronization with sound and, like other sound-film systems of the era, the Kinetophone had not solved the issues of insufficient amplification and unpleasant audio quality. Its drawing power as a novelty soon faded and when a fire at Edison's West Orange complex in December 1914 destroyed all of the company's Kinetophone image and sound masters, the system was abandoned.
## See also
- William Friese-Greene
- List of film formats
- Motion Picture Patents Company
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Alan McNicoll
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Senior Royal Australian Navy officer and diplomat
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Vice Admiral Sir Alan Wedel Ramsay McNicoll, KBE, CB, GM (3 April 1908 – 11 October 1987) was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and a diplomat. Born in Melbourne, he entered the Royal Australian Naval College at the age of thirteen and graduated in 1926. Following training and staff appointments in Australia and the United Kingdom, he was attached to the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the Second World War. As torpedo officer of the 1st Submarine Flotilla in the Mediterranean theatre, McNicoll was decorated with the George Medal in 1941 for disarming enemy ordnance. He served aboard HMS King George V from 1942, sailing in support of several Arctic convoys and taking part in the Allied invasion of Sicily. McNicoll was posted for staff duties with the Admiralty from September 1943 and was involved in the planning of the Normandy landings. He returned to Australia in October 1944.
McNicoll was made executive officer of in September 1945. Advanced to captain in 1949, he successively commanded and before being transferred to the Navy Office in July 1950. In 1952, McNicoll chaired the planning committee for the British nuclear tests on the Montebello Islands, and was appointed commanding officer of . He commanded the ship for two years before it was sold off for scrap, at which point he returned to London to attend the Imperial Defence College in 1955. He occupied staff positions in London and Canberra before being posted to the Naval Board as Chief of Personnel in 1960. This was followed by a term as Flag Officer Commanding HM Australian Fleet.
McNicoll's career culminated with his promotion to vice admiral and appointment as First Naval Member and Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) in February 1965. As CNS, McNicoll had to cope with significant morale and recruitment issues occasioned by the February 1964 collision between HMAS Melbourne and Voyager and, furthermore, oversaw an extensive modernisation of the Australian fleet. In 1966, he presided over the RAN contribution to the Vietnam War, and it was during his tenure that the Australian White Ensign was created. McNicoll retired from the RAN in 1968 and was appointed as the inaugural Australian Ambassador to Turkey. He served in the diplomatic post for five years, then retired to Canberra. McNicoll died in 1987 at the age of 79.
## Early life and career
Alan McNicoll was born in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, Victoria, on 3 April 1908. He was the second of five sons of Walter McNicoll, a school teacher and Militia officer, and Hildur (née Wedel Jarlsberg). The young McNicoll was of noble Norwegian descent through his mother. He was initially educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, before the family moved to Goulburn, from where he was sent to attend The Scots College in Sydney. On 1 January 1922, at the age of thirteen, McNicoll entered the Royal Australian Naval College at Jervis Bay. Described as "urbane and studious", he performed well both academically and in sport, ultimately placing first in seamanship, history and English. On graduation in 1926, McNicoll was posted to Britain for service and further training with the Royal Navy.
Advanced to acting sub-lieutenant in September 1928, McNicoll's appointment to the United Kingdom concluded the following year, at which point he returned to Australia and was initially posted to the land base HMAS Cerberus. He was attached to soon after, before being assigned for duties with . In his Lieutenants' Examinations in 1929, McNicoll achieved 1st Class Certificates in all of his subjects and was awarded a prize of £10 as a result. He was promoted to lieutenant in July 1930, with seniority from 1 April that year. Completing a twelve-month posting aboard between 1932 and 1933, McNicoll decided to specialise as a torpedo officer and returned to the United Kingdom in order to undertake the long course at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. While in the UK, McNicoll wrote and published Sea Voices, a book of poems centred on naval life.
McNicoll's detachment to the Royal Navy was terminated in 1935 on his graduation from Dartmouth, and he returned to Australia. Over the next three years, he saw service in HMAS Canberra, and Cerberus, advancing to lieutenant commander on 1 April 1938. On 18 May 1937, McNicoll wed Ruth Timmins at St Stephen's Church of England at Brighton. From March 1939, McNicoll was once again seconded to the Royal Navy, receiving a posting to the torpedo school HMS Vernon; he was serving in Vernon on the outbreak of the Second World War. While residing at Portsmouth, McNicoll and his wife had their first child, a son named Ian, in June that year. Ian died when one week old. The couple later had two more sons, Guy and Anthony, and a daughter, Deborah.
## Second World War
On 14 September 1939, eleven days after the outbreak of the Second World War, McNicoll was posted to HMS Victory, the flagship of Admiral Sir William James, the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth. In April 1940, McNicoll was transferred to the light cruiser HMS Fiji as a member of the ship's commissioning crew. During McNicoll's time aboard the ship, it was severely damaged by a torpedo in operations on 1 September and barely made it back to harbour. McNicoll ultimately served on Fiji for six months before being attached to HMS Medway, a submarine depot ship stationed at Alexandria, Egypt, in October 1940. In this post he was made torpedo officer of the 1st Submarine Flotilla operating in the Mediterranean theatre. In addition to his standard duties, McNicoll was regularly involved in rendering safe captured enemy ordnance. On one such occasion, he was tasked with disarming the captured Italian submarine Galileo Galilei, which entailed removing the inertia pistols from eight torpedoes that had badly corroded. As a consequence of his "gallant and undaunted devotion to duty" in this action, McNicoll was awarded the George Medal and presented a Commander-in-Chief's Commendation. His decoration was promulgated in a supplement to the London Gazette on 8 July 1941.
In April 1942, McNicoll transferred to the battleship HMS King George V and served as Squadron Torpedo Officer. As part of the Home Fleet, King George V provided support to several Arctic convoys throughout the conflict. From April to May 1942, King George V formed up as a support component to Convoy PQ 15, the first for McNicoll. While sailing in thick fog on 1 May, King George V collided with the destroyer HMS Punjabi after the latter crossed under the bow of the battleship. Punjabi was sliced in two during the collision, and sank with heavy loss of life. Several depth charges were also ignited on the damaged stern of King George V during the accident. King George V was patched up at Seidisfjord, before sailing to Gladstone Dock, Liverpool, to receive repairs.
In December 1942, HMS King George V deployed in support of Convoy JW 51A, the first Russian convoy to sail direct from the United Kingdom without stopping at Iceland. The journey was completed without incident. On receiving word of the German naval attack on Convoy JW 51B in what became known as the Battle of the Barents Sea, King George V was dispatched along with nine other ships from Scapa Flow on 31 December to provide cover for the returning Convoy RA 51 and to attempt to catch the German ships engaged in the previous assault. The German ships were ultimately not encountered, and RA 51 was returned safely. King George V later provided a covering force for two further convoys during early 1943, before being transferred to the Mediterranean during May in preparation for Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily. Promoted to commander on 30 June 1943, McNicoll took part in the Sicilian invasion the following month, with King George V serving as part of the covering force. Prior to the invasion, King George V, along with HMS Howe, had executed a bombardment of Trapani and the islands of Favignana and Levanzo on the night of 11/12 July, as part of a deception suggesting landings on the west coast of Sicily.
McNicoll was briefly reposted to HMS Victory on 1 September 1943, before being transferred for staff duties with the Admiralty in London the following month. He completed a year-long attachment with the Admiralty, and was involved in the planning for the Normandy landings. On 15 February 1944, he attended an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace, where he was formally presented his George Medal by King George VI. McNicoll returned to Australia and was attached to the staff of HMAS Cerberus in October 1944; he spent the remainder of the war in this post. Up to this period, McNicoll had completed all but five of his years of military service attached to the Royal Navy. McNicoll's three brothers also served in the Second World War: Ronald Ramsay, who ultimately retired with the rank of major general and served in the Korean War, as a colonel with the Royal Australian Engineers; Frederick Oscar Ramsay as a lieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN); and David Ramsay—who would become an accomplished journalist—as a lieutenant in the 7th Division up to 1944, before spending the remainder of the conflict as a war correspondent for Consolidated Press, in which capacity he covered the Normandy landings.
## Senior command
### Ships' captain
McNicoll was appointed executive officer of the light cruiser on 16 September 1945, a fortnight after the cessation of hostilities in the Pacific theatre. From November 1945 until July 1947, Hobart spent nine months operating in Japanese waters over three distinct periods as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. The ship was placed in reserve from December 1947, and McNicoll briefly transferred to HMAS Penguin before assuming the post of Director of Plans and Operations at the Navy Office in Melbourne on 6 January 1948. Advanced to captain in June 1949, he was posted two months later to , a River-class frigate, as the ship's commanding officer, and was simultaneously placed in charge of the 1st Frigate Squadron. He was appointed an honorary aide-de-camp to the Governor-General of Australia in December for a period of three years. In January 1950, McNicoll transferred to command the destroyer and was subsequently made Captain (D) in control of the 10th Destroyer Squadron.
During McNicoll's tenure as commanding officer of Warramunga, the ship operated in Australian waters as part of the Australia Station, sailing to New Zealand for a visit during March 1950. On the outbreak of the Korean War in June that year, Warramunga was selected as part of the Australian contribution to the conflict. Moreover, the ship was to be attached to a force of five Royal Navy destroyers led by a captain, making it expedient to have the Australian ship commanded by an officer of lower rank; McNicoll was consequently replaced by Commander Otto Becher on 28 July. McNicoll was then posted to the Navy Office to assist in the introduction and co-ordination of National Service in the Australian military in response to the National Service Act 1951. He moved to the land base HMAS Lonsdale in October 1951, on being made Deputy Chief of Naval Staff.
In 1952, McNicoll was appointed chairman of the planning committee for the British nuclear tests on the Montebello Islands, off the coast of Western Australia. Later that year, he was made commanding officer of the heavy cruiser , a post he held for the next two years. As commander of Australia, McNicoll also served as Chief Staff Officer to the Flag Officer Commanding HM Australian Fleet. HMAS Australia was near the end of its naval service and had been relegated to training duties from 1950. As such, the cruiser was primarily consigned to Australian waters, though a brief trip to New Zealand did occur in October 1953. McNicoll was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1954 New Year Honours List for his involvement in the British atomic program; he was presented with the decoration three months later by Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony at Government House, Melbourne.
The year of 1954 was to be HMAS Australia'''s last in service, with the ship conducting Royal and Vice Regal tasks as some of its final duties. In February and March, HMAS Australia served as part of the escort for the Royal Yacht Gothic during the Australian leg of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation tour. The cruiser was presented with the Gloucester Cup on 25 March as the ship "considered to be foremost in general efficiency, cleanliness, seamanship and technical training" during the year of 1953. As one of the ship's final duties with the Navy, Australia was tasked with transporting Field Marshal Sir William Slim, the Governor-General of Australia, along with his wife and their staff on a cruise around the Coral Sea, the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Passage. The voyage embarked on 4 May, and two days later Australia fired its 8-inch guns for the final time. While in the Coral Sea, a Dutch naval ship was discovered to be incapacitated off the coast of Hollandia, Netherlands New Guinea, and was consequently towed by Australia to Cairns. McNicoll was later appointed a Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau by the Dutch government for his rescue of the ship.
### Rise to Chief of Naval Staff
McNicoll relinquished command of HMAS Australia in July 1954 before the cruiser was paid off and marked for disposal the following month, and he briefly returned to duties at the Navy Office. In November, he embarked for London to attend the Imperial Defence College as part of the 1955 course intake, which signified that he had been marked for senior command. McNicoll and his wife, Ruth, had separated in 1950 and their divorce, which cited adultery as the cause, was finalised in October 1956, while the former was still in London. On 17 May the following year, McNicoll wed Frances Mary Chadwick, a journalist, in the Hampstead register office. Made acting rear admiral in January 1957, McNicoll was appointed as Head of the Australian Joint Service Staff in London. He returned to Australia in February 1958 and was selected to serve as Deputy Secretary (Military) at the Department of Defence; McNicoll's rank was made substantive in July that year.
On 8 January 1960, McNicoll was posted to the Naval Board in Canberra as Second Naval Member and Chief of Personnel. As noted by historian Ian Pfennigwerth, McNicoll held this position at a time in which recruitment and retention in the Navy particularly lagged behind targets. McNicoll was additionally appointed as a trustee of the RAN Relief Trust Fund during this period. Completing his term on the Naval Board, McNicoll was posted as Flag Officer Commanding HM Australian Fleet on 8 January 1962 and hoisted his standard aboard , the flagship of the RAN. The Australian government had designated the role of the RAN to be primarily one of anti-submarine warfare, a posture which McNicoll thought unwise. McNicoll argued that surface and air weapons posed a threat equal to that of submarines toward vessels in modern naval warfare. As such, he campaigned for a contemporary aircraft carrier to replace that of HMAS Melbourne. The Army and Air Force opposed McNicoll's stance, and the government ultimately concluded that there was no strategic requirement for a new carrier in light of agreements contained in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. In any event, McNicoll experienced a particularly demanding tenure as Fleet Commander since the RAN was in the process of a complete overhaul of its order of battle and, as a consequence, he had to manage the introduction and deployment into service of six Ton-class minesweepers acquired from the Royal Navy, along with the first batch of Westland Wessex helicopters and modernised afloat support capabilities. Furthermore, McNicoll was charged with the responsibility of ensuring Australian naval commitments to the Far East Strategic Reserve were met.
McNicoll's two-year term as Fleet Commander concluded on 6 January 1964, at which point he returned to the Naval Board as Fourth Naval Member and Chief of Supply. However, this post proved short-lived with his appointment as Flag Officer-in-Charge East Australia Area, headquartered at the land base HMAS Kuttabul in Sydney, from June that year. In the 1965 New Year Honours, McNicoll was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
### Chief of Naval Staff
On 24 February 1965, McNicoll was promoted vice admiral and made Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) in succession to Vice Admiral Sir Hastings Harrington. By virtue of this position, McNicoll was head of the Naval Board and the functional commander of the RAN. McNicoll's term as CNS was characterised by a period of heightened activity for the RAN in light of the Australian commitments to the Indonesia–Malaysia Konfrontasi and the Vietnam War. He furthermore had to oversee an extensive modernisation of the fleet, with the introduction into service of the Perth-class destroyers, Attack-class patrol boats, and the initial batch of Oberon-class submarines. The Fleet Air Arm was also re-equipped with American fixed wing aircraft. Despite these acquisitions, the RAN possessed a rather thin and limited fleet during this period, which McNicoll blamed on past naval planning. He criticised the lack of foresight in earlier decisions that had led to "inconsistencies and inadequate estimating" in the future needs of the RAN, which had consequently left the fleet outdated and minimal. In addition to the RAN's materiel issues, McNicoll faced significant problems with morale and recruitment. A series of mishaps and accidents over the previous decade led to what naval historian Tom Frame termed as "an appreciable erosion of public confidence in the navy's professional standards". The situation intensified following the February 1964 collision between HMAS Melbourne and Voyager. The two subsequent Royal Commissions into the incident subjected the RAN to unprecedented scrutiny and damaged the public perception of its senior leadership. McNicoll had to cope with the turmoil occasioned by these events and concerned himself with the restoration of morale in the Navy.
The tenure of Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger as Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee was set to expire in May 1966, and a replacement had to be selected from the service chiefs. The Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Sir John Wilton, had among defence and military circles been assumed to be the natural successor. However, mounting speculation arose from late 1965 over who was to be selected for the position as it became known Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies preferred McNicoll for the post, as did Secretary of the Department of Defence Sir Ted Hicks, who thought McNicoll more intelligent and objective than his army counterpart. McNicoll lobbied ardently for the position, and was supported by his wife, Frances, who actively campaigned on her husband's behalf. By December 1965, Scherger's replacement had still not been decided upon and Menzies chose to delay the decision until the new year. However, Menzies retired in January 1966 and was succeeded by his deputy, Harold Holt. Holt and the newly appointed Minister for Defence, Allen Fairhall, preferred Wilton and ultimately selected him to succeed Scherger. In any event, McNicoll was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1966 New Year Honours for his service as CNS.
McNicoll was eager for a RAN contribution to the Vietnam War and, in July 1966, proposed that the four Australian minesweepers operating out of Singapore be deployed to Vietnamese waters since Konfrontasi was at an end and the vessels were no longer necessary in that area. The notion was rejected by Fairhall, however, who was conscious of an upcoming election and was adamant that nothing be decided until afterward. The possibility of a naval contribution to Vietnam was raised again in December, and it was decided that the guided missile destroyer and a clearance diving team of six personnel be deployed as the Royal Australian Navy Force Vietnam. Per an agreement between McNicoll and Admiral Roy L. Johnson, Commander of the United States Pacific Fleet, HMAS Hobart was to be attached to the United States Seventh Fleet and conduct shore bombardment operations. The deployment of an Australian destroyer to Vietnam became permanent, with the ships operating on a six-month rotation. To McNicoll's satisfaction, the RAN contribution to the theatre was further bolstered in 1967 with the formation of the RAN Helicopter Flight Vietnam and the dispatch of naval aviators to serve in an Army support role with No. 9 Squadron RAAF.
The visible legacy of McNicoll's service as CNS is the Australian White Ensign. The British White Ensign had been flown by Australian vessels since the formation of the RAN in 1911, but the Australian contribution to Vietnam—a conflict in which the United Kingdom was not involved—served to complicate the situation. Federal politician Sam Benson questioned the Australian use of the British ensign before parliament in October 1965, and McNicoll later raised the issue with the Naval Board. The Naval Board ultimately decided to recommend to the government that the RAN create its own unique white ensign. A design accompanied the recommendation, which described the ensign as a "white flag with the Union Flag in the upper canton at the hoist with six blue stars positioned as in the Australian flag". The government approved the proposal, and the Australian White Ensign was formally introduced throughout the RAN on 1 March 1967.
After 46 years of service, McNicoll retired from the RAN on 2 April 1968 and was succeeded as CNS by Vice Admiral Victor Smith. In the lead-up to his retirement, McNicoll completed a farewell tour by visiting several ships and naval establishments throughout Australia. The trip culminated with a two-week visit to Vietnam, and McNicoll was present in Saigon when the city was attacked by Viet Cong forces as part of the Tet Offensive. As a man who "liked action", McNicoll later stated that he received a "great thrill" during the assault as he awaited transportation back to Australia.
## Ambassador and later life
On his retirement from the Navy, McNicoll was appointed by the Australian government as its inaugural ambassador to Turkey. He was able to form amiable relations between the governments of Australia and Turkey, despite the physical and logistic issues associated with the establishment of a new embassy and the lack of knowledge both nations had of one another. McNicoll held his diplomatic post in Ankara for five years, before he returned to Australia in 1973 and retired to Canberra. A man of "culture and refined literary tastes", McNicoll engaged his passion for the arts during retirement and in 1979 published his translation of The Odes of Horace''. He was also a music lover and a keen fly-fisherman.
Sir Alan McNicoll died on 11 October 1987 at the age of 79. Remembered as a "well-informed, hard working and skilled administrator", he was cremated with full naval honours. McNicoll was survived by his wife, and by the children from his first marriage.
|
3,043,886 |
Enzyme kinetics
| 1,171,470,537 |
Study of biochemical reaction rates catalysed by an enzyme
|
[
"Catalysis",
"Enzyme kinetics"
] |
Enzyme kinetics is the study of the rates of enzyme-catalysed chemical reactions. In enzyme kinetics, the reaction rate is measured and the effects of varying the conditions of the reaction are investigated. Studying an enzyme's kinetics in this way can reveal the catalytic mechanism of this enzyme, its role in metabolism, how its activity is controlled, and how a drug or a modifier (inhibitor or activator) might affect the rate.
An enzyme (E) is typically a protein molecule that promotes a reaction of another molecule, its substrate (S). This binds to the active site of the enzyme to produce an enzyme-substrate complex ES, and is transformed into an enzyme-product complex EP and from there to product P, via a transition state ES\*. The series of steps is known as the mechanism:
E + S ⇄ ES ⇄ ES\* ⇄ EP ⇄ E + P
This example assumes the simplest case of a reaction with one substrate and one product. Such cases exist: for example, a mutase such as phosphoglucomutase catalyses the transfer of a phospho group from one position to another, and isomerase is a more general term for an enzyme that catalyses any one-substrate one-product reaction, such as triosephosphate isomerase. However, such enzymes are not very common, and are heavily outnumbered by enzymes that catalyse two-substrate two-product reactions: these include, for example, the NAD-dependent dehydrogenases such as alcohol dehydrogenase, which catalyses the oxidation of ethanol by NAD<sup>+</sup>. Reactions with three or four substrates or products are less common, but they exist. There is no necessity for the number of products to be equal to the number of substrates; for example, glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase has three substrates and two products.
When enzymes bind multiple substrates, such as dihydrofolate reductase (shown right), enzyme kinetics can also show the sequence in which these substrates bind and the sequence in which products are released. An example of enzymes that bind a single substrate and release multiple products are proteases, which cleave one protein substrate into two polypeptide products. Others join two substrates together, such as DNA polymerase linking a nucleotide to DNA. Although these mechanisms are often a complex series of steps, there is typically one rate-determining step that determines the overall kinetics. This rate-determining step may be a chemical reaction or a conformational change of the enzyme or substrates, such as those involved in the release of product(s) from the enzyme.
Knowledge of the enzyme's structure is helpful in interpreting kinetic data. For example, the structure can suggest how substrates and products bind during catalysis; what changes occur during the reaction; and even the role of particular amino acid residues in the mechanism. Some enzymes change shape significantly during the mechanism; in such cases, it is helpful to determine the enzyme structure with and without bound substrate analogues that do not undergo the enzymatic reaction.
Not all biological catalysts are protein enzymes: RNA-based catalysts such as ribozymes and ribosomes are essential to many cellular functions, such as RNA splicing and translation. The main difference between ribozymes and enzymes is that RNA catalysts are composed of nucleotides, whereas enzymes are composed of amino acids. Ribozymes also perform a more limited set of reactions, although their reaction mechanisms and kinetics can be analysed and classified by the same methods.
## General principles
The reaction catalysed by an enzyme uses exactly the same reactants and produces exactly the same products as the uncatalysed reaction. Like other catalysts, enzymes do not alter the position of equilibrium between substrates and products. However, unlike uncatalysed chemical reactions, enzyme-catalysed reactions display saturation kinetics. For a given enzyme concentration and for relatively low substrate concentrations, the reaction rate increases linearly with substrate concentration; the enzyme molecules are largely free to catalyse the reaction, and increasing substrate concentration means an increasing rate at which the enzyme and substrate molecules encounter one another. However, at relatively high substrate concentrations, the reaction rate asymptotically approaches the theoretical maximum; the enzyme active sites are almost all occupied by substrates resulting in saturation, and the reaction rate is determined by the intrinsic turnover rate of the enzyme. The substrate concentration midway between these two limiting cases is denoted by K<sub>M</sub>. Thus, K<sub>M</sub> is the substrate concentration at which the reaction velocity is half of the maximum velocity.
The two important properties of enzyme kinetics are how easily the enzyme can be saturated with a substrate, and the maximum rate it can achieve. Knowing these properties suggests what an enzyme might do in the cell and can show how the enzyme will respond to changes in these conditions.
## Enzyme assays
Enzyme assays are laboratory procedures that measure the rate of enzyme reactions. Since enzymes are not consumed by the reactions they catalyse, enzyme assays usually follow changes in the concentration of either substrates or products to measure the rate of reaction. There are many methods of measurement. Spectrophotometric assays observe the change in the absorbance of light between products and reactants; radiometric assays involve the incorporation or release of radioactivity to measure the amount of product made over time. Spectrophotometric assays are most convenient since they allow the rate of the reaction to be measured continuously. Although radiometric assays require the removal and counting of samples (i.e., they are discontinuous assays) they are usually extremely sensitive and can measure very low levels of enzyme activity. An analogous approach is to use mass spectrometry to monitor the incorporation or release of stable isotopes as the substrate is converted into product. Occasionally, an assay fails and approaches are essential to resurrect a failed assay.
The most sensitive enzyme assays use lasers focused through a microscope to observe changes in single enzyme molecules as they catalyse their reactions. These measurements either use changes in the fluorescence of cofactors during an enzyme's reaction mechanism, or of fluorescent dyes added onto specific sites of the protein to report movements that occur during catalysis. These studies provide a new view of the kinetics and dynamics of single enzymes, as opposed to traditional enzyme kinetics, which observes the average behaviour of populations of millions of enzyme molecules.
An example progress curve for an enzyme assay is shown above. The enzyme produces product at an initial rate that is approximately linear for a short period after the start of the reaction. As the reaction proceeds and substrate is consumed, the rate continuously slows (so long as the substrate is not still at saturating levels). To measure the initial (and maximal) rate, enzyme assays are typically carried out while the reaction has progressed only a few percent towards total completion. The length of the initial rate period depends on the assay conditions and can range from milliseconds to hours. However, equipment for rapidly mixing liquids allows fast kinetic measurements at initial rates of less than one second. These very rapid assays are essential for measuring pre-steady-state kinetics, which are discussed below.
Most enzyme kinetics studies concentrate on this initial, approximately linear part of enzyme reactions. However, it is also possible to measure the complete reaction curve and fit this data to a non-linear rate equation. This way of measuring enzyme reactions is called progress-curve analysis. This approach is useful as an alternative to rapid kinetics when the initial rate is too fast to measure accurately.
## Single-substrate reactions
Enzymes with single-substrate mechanisms include isomerases such as triosephosphateisomerase or bisphosphoglycerate mutase, intramolecular lyases such as adenylate cyclase and the hammerhead ribozyme, an RNA lyase. However, some enzymes that only have a single substrate do not fall into this category of mechanisms. Catalase is an example of this, as the enzyme reacts with a first molecule of hydrogen peroxide substrate, becomes oxidised and is then reduced by a second molecule of substrate. Although a single substrate is involved, the existence of a modified enzyme intermediate means that the mechanism of catalase is actually a ping–pong mechanism, a type of mechanism that is discussed in the Multi-substrate reactions section below.
### Michaelis–Menten kinetics
As enzyme-catalysed reactions are saturable, their rate of catalysis does not show a linear response to increasing substrate. If the initial rate of the reaction is measured over a range of substrate concentrations (denoted as [S]), the initial reaction rate ($v_0$) increases as [S] increases, as shown on the right. However, as [S] gets higher, the enzyme becomes saturated with substrate and the initial rate reaches V<sub>max</sub>, the enzyme's maximum rate.
The Michaelis–Menten kinetic model of a single-substrate reaction is shown on the right. There is an initial bimolecular reaction between the enzyme E and substrate S to form the enzyme–substrate complex ES. The rate of enzymatic reaction increases with the increase of the substrate concentration up to a certain level called V<sub>max</sub>; at V<sub>max</sub>, increase in substrate concentration does not cause any increase in reaction rate as there is no more enzyme (E) available for reacting with substrate (S). Here, the rate of reaction becomes dependent on the ES complex and the reaction becomes a unimolecular reaction with an order of zero. Though the enzymatic mechanism for the unimolecular reaction ES -\>[k\_{cat}] E + P can be quite complex, there is typically one rate-determining enzymatic step that allows this reaction to be modelled as a single catalytic step with an apparent unimolecular rate constant k<sub>cat</sub>. If the reaction path proceeds over one or several intermediates, k<sub>cat</sub> will be a function of several elementary rate constants, whereas in the simplest case of a single elementary reaction (e.g. no intermediates) it will be identical to the elementary unimolecular rate constant k<sub>2</sub>. The apparent unimolecular rate constant k<sub>cat</sub> is also called turnover number, and denotes the maximum number of enzymatic reactions catalysed per second.
The Michaelis–Menten equation describes how the (initial) reaction rate v<sub>0</sub> depends on the position of the substrate-binding equilibrium and the rate constant k<sub>2</sub>.
$v_0 = \frac{V_{\max}[\ce{S}]}{K_M + [\ce{S}]}$ (Michaelis–Menten equation)
with the constants
<math chem> \begin{align}
K_M \\ &\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\\ \frac{k\_{2} + k\_{-1}}{k\_{1}} \approx K_D\\\\ V\_\max \\ &\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\\ k\_{cat}\ce{[E]}\_{tot} \end{align} </math>
This Michaelis–Menten equation is the basis for most single-substrate enzyme kinetics. Two crucial assumptions underlie this equation (apart from the general assumption about the mechanism only involving no intermediate or product inhibition, and there is no allostericity or cooperativity). The first assumption is the so-called quasi-steady-state assumption (or pseudo-steady-state hypothesis), namely that the concentration of the substrate-bound enzyme (and hence also the unbound enzyme) changes much more slowly than those of the product and substrate and thus the change over time of the complex can be set to zero $d\ce{[ES]}/{dt} \; \overset{!} = \;0$. The second assumption is that the total enzyme concentration does not change over time, thus $\ce{[E]}_\text{tot} = \ce{[E]} + \ce{[ES]} \; \overset{!} = \; \text{const}$. A complete derivation can be found here.
The Michaelis constant K<sub>M</sub> is experimentally defined as the concentration at which the rate of the enzyme reaction is half V<sub>max</sub>, which can be verified by substituting [S] = K<sub>M</sub> into the Michaelis–Menten equation and can also be seen graphically. If the rate-determining enzymatic step is slow compared to substrate dissociation ($k_2 \ll k_{-1}$), the Michaelis constant K<sub>M</sub> is roughly the dissociation constant K<sub>D</sub> of the ES complex.
If [S] is small compared to $K_M$ then the term $[\ce S] / (K_M + [\ce S]) \approx [\ce S] / K_M$ and also very little ES complex is formed, thus [E]\_{\rm tot} \approx [E]. Therefore, the rate of product formation is
$v_0 \approx \frac{k_{cat}}{K_M} \ce{[E] [S]} \qquad \qquad \text{if } [\ce S] \ll K_M$
Thus the product formation rate depends on the enzyme concentration as well as on the substrate concentration, the equation resembles a bimolecular reaction with a corresponding pseudo-second order rate constant $k_2 / K_M$. This constant is a measure of catalytic efficiency. The most efficient enzymes reach a $k_2 / K_M$ in the range of 10<sup>8</sup> – 10<sup>10</sup> M<sup>−1</sup> s<sup>−1</sup>. These enzymes are so efficient they effectively catalyse a reaction each time they encounter a substrate molecule and have thus reached an upper theoretical limit for efficiency (diffusion limit); and are sometimes referred to as kinetically perfect enzymes. But most enzymes are far from perfect: the average values of $k_{2}/K_{\rm M}$ and $k_{2}$ are about $10^5 {\rm s}^{-1}{\rm M}^{-1}$ and $10 {\rm s}^{-1}$, respectively.
### Direct use of the Michaelis–Menten equation for time course kinetic analysis
The observed velocities predicted by the Michaelis–Menten equation can be used to directly model the time course disappearance of substrate and the production of product through incorporation of the Michaelis–Menten equation into the equation for first order chemical kinetics. This can only be achieved however if one recognises the problem associated with the use of Euler's number in the description of first order chemical kinetics. i.e. e<sup>−k</sup> is a split constant that introduces a systematic error into calculations and can be rewritten as a single constant which represents the remaining substrate after each time period.
$[S]=[S]_0(1-k)^{t}\,$
$[S]=[S]_0(1-v/[S]_0)^{t}\,$
$[S]=[S]_0(1-(V_{\max} [S]_0 / (K_M + [S]_0)/[S]_0))^{t}\,$
In 1983 Stuart Beal (and also independently Santiago Schnell and Claudio Mendoza in 1997) derived a closed form solution for the time course kinetics analysis of the Michaelis-Menten mechanism. The solution, known as the Schnell-Mendoza equation, has the form:
$\frac{[S]}{K_M} = W \left[ F(t) \right]\,$
where W[ ] is the Lambert-W function. and where F(t) is
$F(t) = \frac{[S]_0}{K_M} \exp\!\left(\frac{[S]_0}{K_M} - \frac{V_\max}{K_M}\,t \right) \,$
This equation is encompassed by the equation below, obtained by Berberan-Santos, which is also valid when the initial substrate concentration is close to that of enzyme,
$\frac{[S]}{K_M} = W \left[ F(t) \right]- \frac{V_\max}{k_{cat} K_M}\ \frac{W \left[ F(t) \right]}{1+W \left[ F(t) \right]}\,$
where W[ ] is again the Lambert-W function.
### Linear plots of the Michaelis–Menten equation
The plot of v versus [S] above is not linear; although initially linear at low [S], it bends over to saturate at high [S]. Before the modern era of nonlinear curve-fitting on computers, this nonlinearity could make it difficult to estimate K<sub>M</sub> and V<sub>max</sub> accurately. Therefore, several researchers developed linearisations of the Michaelis–Menten equation, such as the Lineweaver–Burk plot, the Eadie–Hofstee diagram and the Hanes–Woolf plot. All of these linear representations can be useful for visualising data, but none should be used to determine kinetic parameters, as computer software is readily available that allows for more accurate determination by nonlinear regression methods.
The Lineweaver–Burk plot or double reciprocal plot is a common way of illustrating kinetic data. This is produced by taking the reciprocal of both sides of the Michaelis–Menten equation. As shown on the right, this is a linear form of the Michaelis–Menten equation and produces a straight line with the equation y = mx + c with a y-intercept equivalent to 1/V<sub>max</sub> and an x-intercept of the graph representing −1/K<sub>M</sub>.
$\frac{1}{v} = \frac{K_{M}}{V_{\max} [\mbox{S}]} + \frac{1}{V_\max}$
Naturally, no experimental values can be taken at negative 1/[S]; the lower limiting value 1/[S] = 0 (the y-intercept) corresponds to an infinite substrate concentration, where 1/v=1/V<sub>max</sub> as shown at the right; thus, the x-intercept is an extrapolation of the experimental data taken at positive concentrations. More generally, the Lineweaver–Burk plot skews the importance of measurements taken at low substrate concentrations and, thus, can yield inaccurate estimates of V<sub>max</sub> and K<sub>M</sub>. A more accurate linear plotting method is the Eadie–Hofstee plot. In this case, v is plotted against v/[S]. In the third common linear representation, the Hanes–Woolf plot, [S]/v is plotted against [S]. In general, data normalisation can help diminish the amount of experimental work and can increase the reliability of the output, and is suitable for both graphical and numerical analysis.
### Practical significance of kinetic constants
The study of enzyme kinetics is important for two basic reasons. Firstly, it helps explain how enzymes work, and secondly, it helps predict how enzymes behave in living organisms. The kinetic constants defined above, K<sub>M</sub> and V<sub>max</sub>, are critical to attempts to understand how enzymes work together to control metabolism.
Making these predictions is not trivial, even for simple systems. For example, oxaloacetate is formed by malate dehydrogenase within the mitochondrion. Oxaloacetate can then be consumed by citrate synthase, phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase or aspartate aminotransferase, feeding into the citric acid cycle, gluconeogenesis or aspartic acid biosynthesis, respectively. Being able to predict how much oxaloacetate goes into which pathway requires knowledge of the concentration of oxaloacetate as well as the concentration and kinetics of each of these enzymes. This aim of predicting the behaviour of metabolic pathways reaches its most complex expression in the synthesis of huge amounts of kinetic and gene expression data into mathematical models of entire organisms. Alternatively, one useful simplification of the metabolic modelling problem is to ignore the underlying enzyme kinetics and only rely on information about the reaction network's stoichiometry, a technique called flux balance analysis.
### Michaelis–Menten kinetics with intermediate
One could also consider the less simple case
`{E} + S `
` <=>[k_{1}][k_{-1}]`
`ES`
` ->[k_2]`
`EI`
` ->[k_3]`
`{E} + P`
where a complex with the enzyme and an intermediate exists and the intermediate is converted into product in a second step. In this case we have a very similar equation
<math chem>
v_0 = k\_{cat}\frac\ce{[S] [E]\_0}{K_M^{\prime}+ \ce{[S]}} </math> but the constants are different
<math> \begin{align}
K_M^{\prime} \\ &\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\\ \frac{k_3}{k_2 + k_3} K_M = \frac{k_3}{k_2 + k_3} \cdot \frac{k\_{2} + k\_{-1}}{k\_{1}}\\\\ k\_{cat} \\ &\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\\ \dfrac{k_3 k_2}{k_2 + k_3} \end{align} </math> We see that for the limiting case $k_3 \gg k_2$, thus when the last step from EI -\> E + P is much faster than the previous step, we get again the original equation. Mathematically we have then $K_M^{\prime} \approx K_M$ and $k_{cat} \approx k_2$.
## Multi-substrate reactions
Multi-substrate reactions follow complex rate equations that describe how the substrates bind and in what sequence. The analysis of these reactions is much simpler if the concentration of substrate A is kept constant and substrate B varied. Under these conditions, the enzyme behaves just like a single-substrate enzyme and a plot of v by [S] gives apparent K<sub>M</sub> and V<sub>max</sub> constants for substrate B. If a set of these measurements is performed at different fixed concentrations of A, these data can be used to work out what the mechanism of the reaction is. For an enzyme that takes two substrates A and B and turns them into two products P and Q, there are two types of mechanism: ternary complex and ping–pong.
### Ternary-complex mechanisms
In these enzymes, both substrates bind to the enzyme at the same time to produce an EAB ternary complex. The order of binding can either be random (in a random mechanism) or substrates have to bind in a particular sequence (in an ordered mechanism). When a set of v by [S] curves (fixed A, varying B) from an enzyme with a ternary-complex mechanism are plotted in a Lineweaver–Burk plot, the set of lines produced will intersect.
Enzymes with ternary-complex mechanisms include glutathione S-transferase, dihydrofolate reductase and DNA polymerase. The following links show short animations of the ternary-complex mechanisms of the enzymes dihydrofolate reductase and DNA polymerase.
### Ping–pong mechanisms
As shown on the right, enzymes with a ping-pong mechanism can exist in two states, E and a chemically modified form of the enzyme E\*; this modified enzyme is known as an intermediate. In such mechanisms, substrate A binds, changes the enzyme to E\* by, for example, transferring a chemical group to the active site, and is then released. Only after the first substrate is released can substrate B bind and react with the modified enzyme, regenerating the unmodified E form. When a set of v by [S] curves (fixed A, varying B) from an enzyme with a ping–pong mechanism are plotted in a Lineweaver–Burk plot, a set of parallel lines will be produced. This is called a secondary plot.
Enzymes with ping–pong mechanisms include some oxidoreductases such as thioredoxin peroxidase, transferases such as acylneuraminate cytidylyltransferase and serine proteases such as trypsin and chymotrypsin. Serine proteases are a very common and diverse family of enzymes, including digestive enzymes (trypsin, chymotrypsin, and elastase), several enzymes of the blood clotting cascade and many others. In these serine proteases, the E\* intermediate is an acyl-enzyme species formed by the attack of an active site serine residue on a peptide bond in a protein substrate. A short animation showing the mechanism of chymotrypsin is linked here.
## Reversible catalysis and the Haldane equation
External factors may limit the ability of an enzyme to catalyse a reaction in both directions (whereas the nature of a catalyst in itself means that it cannot catalyse just one direction, according to the principle of microscopic reversibility). We consider the case of an enzyme that catalyses the reaction in both directions:
`{E} + {S} `
` <=>[k_{1}][k_{-1}]`
`ES`
` <=>[k_{2}][k_{-2}]`
`{E} + {P}`
The steady-state, initial rate of the reaction is $v_0 = \frac{d\, [{\rm P}]}{dt} = \frac{(k_1 k_2\, [{\rm S}]- k_{-1}k_{-2}[{\rm P}])[{\rm E}]_0}{k_{-1}+k_2+k_1\,
[{\rm S}]+k_{-2}\, [{\rm P}]}$
$v_0$ is positive if the reaction proceed in the forward direction ($S \rightarrow P$) and negative otherwise.
Equilibrium requires that $v=0$, which occurs when $\frac{[{\rm P}]_{\rm eq}}{[{\rm S}]_{\rm eq}}=\frac{k_1 k_2}{k_{-1} k_{-2}}=K_{\rm eq}$. This shows that thermodynamics forces a relation between the values of the 4 rate constants.
The values of the forward and backward maximal rates, obtained for $[{\rm S}] \rightarrow \infty$, $[{\rm P}] =0$, and $[{\rm S}] =0$, $[{\rm P}] \rightarrow \infty$, respectively, are $V_{\rm max}^f = k_{2} {\rm [E]}_{tot}$ and $V_{\rm max}^b = -k_{-1} {\rm [E]}_{tot}$, respectively. Their ratio is not equal to the equilibrium constant, which implies that thermodynamics does not constrain the ratio of the maximal rates. This explains that enzymes can be much "better catalysts" (in terms of maximal rates) in one particular direction of the reaction.
On can also derive the two Michaelis constants $K_M^S=(k_{-1}+k_2)/k_1$and $K_M^P=(k_{-1}+k_2)/k_{-2}$. The Haldane equation is the relation $K_{\rm eq}=\frac{[{\rm P}]_{\rm eq}}{[{\rm S}]_{\rm eq}}=\frac{V_{\rm max}^f / K_M^S}{V_{\rm max}^b / K_M^P}$.
Therefore, thermodynamics constrains the ratio between the forward and backward $V_{\rm max}/K_M$ values, not the ratio of $V_{\rm max}$values.
## Non-Michaelis–Menten kinetics
Many different enzyme systems follow non Michaelis-Menten behavior. A select few examples include kinetics of self-catalytic enzymes, cooperative and allosteric enzymes, interfacial and intracellular enzymes, processive enzymes and so forth. Some enzymes produce a sigmoid v by [S] plot, which often indicates cooperative binding of substrate to the active site. This means that the binding of one substrate molecule affects the binding of subsequent substrate molecules. This behavior is most common in multimeric enzymes with several interacting active sites. Here, the mechanism of cooperation is similar to that of hemoglobin, with binding of substrate to one active site altering the affinity of the other active sites for substrate molecules. Positive cooperativity occurs when binding of the first substrate molecule increases the affinity of the other active sites for substrate. Negative cooperativity occurs when binding of the first substrate decreases the affinity of the enzyme for other substrate molecules.
Allosteric enzymes include mammalian tyrosyl tRNA-synthetase, which shows negative cooperativity, and bacterial aspartate transcarbamoylase and phosphofructokinase, which show positive cooperativity.
Cooperativity is surprisingly common and can help regulate the responses of enzymes to changes in the concentrations of their substrates. Positive cooperativity makes enzymes much more sensitive to [S] and their activities can show large changes over a narrow range of substrate concentration. Conversely, negative cooperativity makes enzymes insensitive to small changes in [S].
The Hill equation is often used to describe the degree of cooperativity quantitatively in non-Michaelis–Menten kinetics. The derived Hill coefficient n measures how much the binding of substrate to one active site affects the binding of substrate to the other active sites. A Hill coefficient of \<1 indicates negative cooperativity and a coefficient of \>1 indicates positive cooperativity.
## Pre-steady-state kinetics
In the first moment after an enzyme is mixed with substrate, no product has been formed and no intermediates exist. The study of the next few milliseconds of the reaction is called pre-steady-state kinetics. Pre-steady-state kinetics is therefore concerned with the formation and consumption of enzyme–substrate intermediates (such as ES or E\*) until their steady-state concentrations are reached.
This approach was first applied to the hydrolysis reaction catalysed by chymotrypsin. Often, the detection of an intermediate is a vital piece of evidence in investigations of what mechanism an enzyme follows. For example, in the ping–pong mechanisms that are shown above, rapid kinetic measurements can follow the release of product P and measure the formation of the modified enzyme intermediate E\*. In the case of chymotrypsin, this intermediate is formed by an attack on the substrate by the nucleophilic serine in the active site and the formation of the acyl-enzyme intermediate.
In the figure to the right, the enzyme produces E\* rapidly in the first few seconds of the reaction. The rate then slows as steady state is reached. This rapid burst phase of the reaction measures a single turnover of the enzyme. Consequently, the amount of product released in this burst, shown as the intercept on the y-axis of the graph, also gives the amount of functional enzyme which is present in the assay.
## Chemical mechanism
An important goal of measuring enzyme kinetics is to determine the chemical mechanism of an enzyme reaction, i.e., the sequence of chemical steps that transform substrate into product. The kinetic approaches discussed above will show at what rates intermediates are formed and inter-converted, but they cannot identify exactly what these intermediates are.
Kinetic measurements taken under various solution conditions or on slightly modified enzymes or substrates often shed light on this chemical mechanism, as they reveal the rate-determining step or intermediates in the reaction. For example, the breaking of a covalent bond to a hydrogen atom is a common rate-determining step. Which of the possible hydrogen transfers is rate determining can be shown by measuring the kinetic effects of substituting each hydrogen by deuterium, its stable isotope. The rate will change when the critical hydrogen is replaced, due to a primary kinetic isotope effect, which occurs because bonds to deuterium are harder to break than bonds to hydrogen. It is also possible to measure similar effects with other isotope substitutions, such as <sup>13</sup>C/<sup>12</sup>C and <sup>18</sup>O/<sup>16</sup>O, but these effects are more subtle.
Isotopes can also be used to reveal the fate of various parts of the substrate molecules in the final products. For example, it is sometimes difficult to discern the origin of an oxygen atom in the final product; since it may have come from water or from part of the substrate. This may be determined by systematically substituting oxygen's stable isotope <sup>18</sup>O into the various molecules that participate in the reaction and checking for the isotope in the product. The chemical mechanism can also be elucidated by examining the kinetics and isotope effects under different pH conditions, by altering the metal ions or other bound cofactors, by site-directed mutagenesis of conserved amino acid residues, or by studying the behaviour of the enzyme in the presence of analogues of the substrate(s).
## Enzyme inhibition and activation
Enzyme inhibitors are molecules that reduce or abolish enzyme activity, while enzyme activators are molecules that increase the catalytic rate of enzymes. These interactions can be either reversible (i.e., removal of the inhibitor restores enzyme activity) or irreversible (i.e., the inhibitor permanently inactivates the enzyme).
### Reversible inhibitors
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 different effects result from the inhibitor binding to the enzyme E, to the enzyme–substrate complex ES, or to both, respectively. 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. The binding of an inhibitor and its effect on the enzymatic activity are two distinctly different things, another problem the traditional equations fail to acknowledge. In noncompetitive inhibition the binding of the inhibitor results in 100% inhibition of the enzyme only, and fails to consider the possibility of anything in between. In noncompetitive inhibition, the inhibitor will bind to an enzyme at its allosteric site; therefore, the binding affinity, or inverse of K<sub>M</sub>, of the substrate with the enzyme will remain the same. On the other hand, the V<sub>max</sub> will decrease relative to an uninhibited enzyme. On a Lineweaver-Burk plot, the presence of a noncompetitive inhibitor is illustrated by a change in the y-intercept, defined as 1/V<sub>max</sub>. The x-intercept, defined as −1/K<sub>M</sub>, will remain the same. In competitive inhibition, the inhibitor will bind to an enzyme at the active site, competing with the substrate. As a result, the K<sub>M</sub> will increase and the V<sub>max</sub> will remain the same. 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>\cfrac{V\_\max}{1 + \cfrac{[I]}{K_i}}
= \cfrac{V\_\max}{\cfrac{[I]+K_i}{K_i}} </math>
Adding zero to the bottom ([I]-[I])
$\cfrac{V_\max}{\cfrac{[I]+K_i}{[I]+K_i-[I]}}$
Dividing by [I]+K<sub>i</sub>
<math>\cfrac{V\_\max}{\cfrac{1}{1 - \cfrac{[I]}{[I]+K_i}}}
= V\_\max - V\_\max \cfrac{[I]}{[I]+K_i} </math>
This notation demonstrates that similar to the Michaelis–Menten equation, where the rate of reaction depends on the percent of the enzyme population interacting with substrate, 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 just \>0%. 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.
$V_\max - \Delta V_\max \cfrac{[I]}{[I]+K_i}$
or
$V_{\max1} - (V_{\max1} - V_{\max2} ) \cfrac{[I]}{[I]+K_i}$
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 denoted here as "X".
$V_{\max1} - (V_{\max1} - V_{\max2} ) \cfrac{[X]}{[X]+K_x}$
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 one proposed above to modulate V<sub>max</sub> should be appropriate in most situations:
$K_{m1} - (K_{m1} - K_{m2} ) \cfrac{[X]}{[X]+K_x}$
### Irreversible inhibitors
Enzyme inhibitors can also irreversibly inactivate enzymes, usually by covalently modifying active site residues. These reactions, which may be called suicide substrates, follow exponential decay functions and are usually saturable. Below saturation, they follow first order kinetics with respect to inhibitor. Irreversible inhibition could be classified into two distinct types. Affinity labelling is a type of irreversible inhibition where a functional group that is highly reactive modifies a catalytically critical residue on the protein of interest to bring about inhibition. Mechanism-based inhibition, on the other hand, involves binding of the inhibitor followed by enzyme mediated alterations that transform the latter into a reactive group that irreversibly modifies the enzyme.
### Philosophical discourse on reversibility and irreversibility of inhibition
Having discussed reversible inhibition and irreversible inhibition in the above two headings, it would have to be pointed out that the concept of reversibility (or irreversibility) is a purely theoretical construct exclusively dependent on the time-frame of the assay, i.e., a reversible assay involving association and dissociation of the inhibitor molecule in the minute timescales would seem irreversible if an assay assess the outcome in the seconds and vice versa. There is a continuum of inhibitor behaviors spanning reversibility and irreversibility at a given non-arbitrary assay time frame. There are inhibitors that show slow-onset behavior and most of these inhibitors, invariably, also show tight-binding to the protein target of interest.
## Mechanisms of catalysis
The favoured model for the enzyme–substrate interaction is the induced fit model. This model proposes that the initial interaction between enzyme and substrate is relatively weak, but that these weak interactions rapidly induce conformational changes in the enzyme that strengthen binding. These conformational changes also bring catalytic residues in the active site close to the chemical bonds in the substrate that will be altered in the reaction. Conformational changes can be measured using circular dichroism or dual polarisation interferometry. After binding takes place, one or more mechanisms of catalysis lower the energy of the reaction's transition state by providing an alternative chemical pathway for the reaction. Mechanisms of catalysis include catalysis by bond strain; by proximity and orientation; by active-site proton donors or acceptors; covalent catalysis and quantum tunnelling.
Enzyme kinetics cannot prove which modes of catalysis are used by an enzyme. However, some kinetic data can suggest possibilities to be examined by other techniques. For example, a ping–pong mechanism with burst-phase pre-steady-state kinetics would suggest covalent catalysis might be important in this enzyme's mechanism. Alternatively, the observation of a strong pH effect on V<sub>max</sub> but not K<sub>M</sub> might indicate that a residue in the active site needs to be in a particular ionisation state for catalysis to occur.
## History
In 1902 Victor Henri proposed a quantitative theory of enzyme kinetics, but at the time the experimental significance of the hydrogen ion concentration was not yet recognized. After Peter Lauritz Sørensen had defined the logarithmic pH-scale and introduced the concept of buffering in 1909 the German chemist Leonor Michaelis and Dr. Maud Leonora Menten (a postdoctoral researcher in Michaelis's lab at the time) repeated Henri's experiments and confirmed his equation, which is now generally referred to as Michaelis-Menten kinetics (sometimes also Henri-Michaelis-Menten kinetics). Their work was further developed by G. E. Briggs and J. B. S. Haldane, who derived kinetic equations that are still widely considered today a starting point in modeling enzymatic activity.
The major contribution of the Henri-Michaelis-Menten approach was to think of enzyme reactions in two stages. In the first, the substrate binds reversibly to the enzyme, forming the enzyme-substrate complex. This is sometimes called the Michaelis complex. The enzyme then catalyzes the chemical step in the reaction and releases the product. The kinetics of many enzymes is adequately described by the simple Michaelis-Menten model, but all enzymes have internal motions that are not accounted for in the model and can have significant contributions to the overall reaction kinetics. This can be modeled by introducing several Michaelis-Menten pathways that are connected with fluctuating rates, which is a mathematical extension of the basic Michaelis Menten mechanism.
## Software
ENZO (Enzyme Kinetics) is a graphical interface tool for building kinetic models of enzyme catalyzed reactions. ENZO automatically generates the corresponding differential equations from a stipulated enzyme reaction scheme. These differential equations are processed by a numerical solver and a regression algorithm which fits the coefficients of differential equations to experimentally observed time course curves. ENZO allows rapid evaluation of rival reaction schemes and can be used for routine tests in enzyme kinetics.
## See also
- Protein dynamics
- Diffusion limited enzyme
- Langmuir adsorption model
|
268,015 |
Roberta Williams
| 1,170,861,578 |
American video game designer (born 1953)
|
[
"1953 births",
"American video game actresses",
"American video game designers",
"Game Developers Conference Pioneer Award recipients",
"Living people",
"Place of birth missing (living people)",
"Sierra On-Line employees",
"The Game Awards winners",
"Video game writers",
"Women video game designers",
"Women video game developers"
] |
Roberta Lynn Williams (; born February 16, 1953) is an American video game designer and writer, who co-founded Sierra On-Line with her husband, game developer Ken Williams. In 1980, her first game, Mystery House, became a modest commercial success; it is credited as the first graphic adventure game. She is also known for creating and maintaining the King's Quest series, as well as designing the full motion video game Phantasmagoria in 1995.
Sierra was acquired by CUC International in 1996, leading to layoffs and management changes. Williams took a brief sabbatical, and returned to the company in a game design role, but grew increasingly frustrated with CUC's creative and business decisions. After the release of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity in 1998, she left the game industry in 1999 and focused her retirement on traveling and writing historical fiction. In 2021 she released her historical novel, Farewell to Tara. Soon after, she returned to game development with the 3D remake of the classic adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, released in January 2023 as Colossal Cave.
Several publications have named Roberta Williams as one of the best or most influential creators in the video game industry, for co-founding Sierra, pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, and creating the King's Quest series. Several publications have called her the "Queen of adventure games". She has received the Industry Icon Award from The Game Awards, and the Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards.
## Early life and career
Born in Los Angeles, Roberta Heuer grew up in rural Southern California as the daughter of an agricultural inspector. A shy child with a vivid imagination, she often created fairy-tale adventure stories to entertain her family. She would lie in bed and imagine fantastical situations, which she sometimes described as her "movies". She met her future husband Ken Williams when they were both teenagers, and the two began dating. After high school she became a clerk at the Los Angeles County Welfare Department, in part thanks to her father's connections working in local government. In late 1972 Roberta married Ken just a few days after his eighteenth birthday, and gave birth to their first son in November 1973. The couple briefly moved to Illinois, where she was employed as a computer operator, soon moving back to Los Angeles where she took a job at Lawry's Foods as a computer programmer working in COBOL.
By 1979 the couple had two children. Ken was employed as a computer programmer and consultant, working on large IBM mainframe machines. They wanted to leave Los Angeles to fulfill their dream of living in the woods. As Ken brainstormed ideas for a technology business that could become viable outside of a major city, Roberta purchased an AppleII computer for the family, which strained their expenses. Roberta's love of computers grew as she played several text adventure games.
## Game design career
### Early graphic adventure games (1979–1983)
Around 1979, Roberta Williams was an avid player of text adventures on her teletype machine, particularly as a fan of Colossal Cave Adventure. She was inspired to speak to her husband Ken Williams about her vision for what a video game could be, drawing influence from Agatha Christie's story And Then There Were None, and the board game Clue. Roberta convinced Ken to provide the technical knowledge to program the game, while she contributed her experience with fiction and storytelling. Roberta drew the pictures using her Apple II and a Versawriter, a graphics tablet that could be used to hand-trace a piece of paper and input the image into a computer. Since no programs existed to read the Versawriter image, Ken had to write one, eventually compressing nearly seventy images onto a disk.
The result was Mystery House, an adventure game with black and white graphics for the Apple II computer. Released in 1980, the game was distributed by mail order, advertised in computer magazines under the name of Ken's consulting company, On-Line Systems. The game soon sold ten thousand copies, with Roberta personally packing the disks and supporting materials in Ziploc bags, and answering her home phone to provide hints for the game's puzzles. Ken began to personally distribute copies of the game to computer stores. He quit his consulting job, with hopes that it would allow the couple to eventually move out of the city.
They released the Wizard and the Princess later that year, improving on their previous title with color graphics and dithering. The game sold 60,000 copies, leading them to hire more employees for distribution and programming. Encouraged by the success of their first two games, On-Line Systems switched its focus from consulting to game development. Roberta's ambitions grew with the design of Time Zone, a time-travelling game spanning thousands of years, which was released on twelve disks in 1982. Around this time, Roberta's parents retired and moved to Oakhurst, California, and she hoped to move close by. With their company expanding, the couple was finally able to move On-Line Systems from Simi Valley, California to Coarsegold. They also changed their company name to Sierra On-Line, based on its location near the Sierra Nevada mountains.
After just two years Sierra had grown to nearly a hundred employees with \$10million in revenue. Sierra's success started to attract investors, including venture capitalists. Around this time, Jim Henson approached Ken Williams to create a game adaptation of The Dark Crystal, before the film's release. Roberta was excited by the project, believing video games to be a facet of entertainment as much as film. She designed much of the game adaptation on paper; it was finalized and released in 1983. The high-profile game caused the company to attract mainstream media attention, and Roberta hoped that the entertainment industry would not just recognize the value of games, but also the value of the artists who created them.
### King's Quest breakthrough (1983–1994)
By 1983 Sierra's new investors pushed the company to diversify into video game cartridges for platforms such as the Atari. The video game industry soon experienced a crash, and Sierra's board of directors began to push a merger with Spinnaker Software, an educational software company. When Spinnaker presented their proposal to the Sierra board, Roberta proclaimed, "These guys are a joke. No one in the industry respects them. Can't we talk about something productive?" Although Ken Williams was amenable to the deal, Roberta strongly opposed it, and the merger did not proceed. Sierra was forced to downsize to 30 employees, and the Williams family mortgaged their home to pay their remaining employees.
Sierra had cultivated a strong relationship with IBM as the IBM PC was being developed, and Wizard and the Princess was one of the first games released for the computer under the title Adventure in Serenia. Around the time of Sierra's financial difficulties, IBM offered to invest in the struggling company, with hopes of creating a game that could showcase the technical capabilities of their upcoming IBM PCjr. Roberta had wanted to build on her experience with The Wizard and the Princess with a fully animated adventure game, in a pseudo-3D world. This led to the 1984 release of King's Quest, conceived as a blend of common fairy tales that could be directly experienced as a game. Although the PCjr was considered a failure, King's Quest was ported to many other platforms and quickly rose to bestseller status. The game was considered revolutionary for its pseudo-3D elements, becoming the first adventure game to allow the player character to move in front of, behind, or over other objects on the screen. It was also the first computer game to support the 16-color EGA standard, setting a new standard for future graphic adventure games.
Meanwhile, Roberta continued her role as designer of the King's Quest series, which earned a reputation for its unique style of storytelling, as well as its increasingly advanced graphics and technology. The 1986 release of King's Quest III: To Heir is Human was larger and longer than previous games in the series, and earned a ranking on Time's list of 50 Best Video Games of All Time. When King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella was released in 1988, it was one of the first games to receive sound card support, and one of the first adventure games to support a mouse. It was also one of the first games to feature a female protagonist, a creative decision that Williams seeded by introducing the character in the previous game. Some of her peers cautioned that this might deter men from playing the game, but it was even more commercially successful than previous installments. A post-release survey revealed that most men did not mind playing as a female protagonist, whereas many female players preferred the experience. Sierra received registration cards for the game with a near 40% female audience, leading journalists to credit Williams with expanding the player base for personal computer games. King's Quest IV has been considered one of the most influential video games of all time, impacting the design of games such as Maniac Mansion and other LucasArts adventure games.
Williams continued to design other titles, such as the educational title Mixed-Up Mother Goose. The game went on to sell more than 500,000 copies, and the CD-ROM version earned the Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Award for Best Early Education Program. In 1989 Williams released another mystery adventure game called The Colonel's Bequest, which iterated on ideas from her original Mystery House game with more detailed graphics and improved text parsing. The game was still rare for featuring a female protagonist, and deviated from the traditional adventure game formula to become more of an interactive mystery, putting more onus on the player to discover the plot. The 1990 release of King's Quest V became the first game to use an icon-based interface, continuing the series' innovations in game design. The game was critically acclaimed, winning several awards upon release, with Computer Gaming World including it in their 1996 list of greatest games of all time.
By the early 1990s Sierra was a publicly traded company, generating \$100million per year in revenue. The company released The Dagger of Amon Ra in 1991, a sequel to The Colonel's Bequest based on characters and concepts created by Williams. Meanwhile, Williams worked with Jane Jensen to design King's Quest VI. Released in 1992, it was recognized by several publications as one of the best adventure games, if not one of the best games overall. By the mid 1990s, Williams was considered the company's most popular game designer, particularly for her success with the King's Quest series. The saga is still remembered as the only video game series created and maintained by a female designer.
### Later games and career exit (1995–1999)
Williams branched out from her work on King's Quest by designing Phantasmagoria, a realistic horror adventure game. As a long time fan of the novels of Stephen King, she had often contemplated whether it was possible to create a terrifying video game. Because she believed it would be difficult to make a truly frightening game without live actors, the game was created entirely in full-motion video. The production ultimately cost \$4million, with a team of nearly two hundred people and a script of more than five hundred pages. Designed as a mature title for adults, The game was marketed as an interactive film, and published on seven CD-ROMs. Although Phantasmagoria received a mixed critical reception, it was one of the most commercially successful adventure games and Sierra's bestselling game, selling more than a million copies upon its release in 1995. Williams recalls the game as her favorite achievement.
In 1996 Sierra was sold to CUC International for more than a billion dollars in stock. Roberta had opposed the deal, and several other high-ranking Sierra employees had felt there was something suspicious about CUC's financials. Roberta ultimately acquiesced, recognizing that the terms of the deal were too favorable to refuse, and that she could be sued by their shareholders if she failed to maximize their value. The company's management and decision-making dramatically changed under CUC, leading Ken Williams to leave his role at Sierra and work directly for their new parent company. The CUC restructuring also led to lay-offs. Roberta Williams took a sabbatical from the game industry, as the company released The Roberta Williams Anthology, a compilation of 14 games.
Roberta Williams returned to game development in early 1997 to work on King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. She hoped to re-introduce some interactivity absent in Phantasmagoria, and to embrace the advances in 3D graphics technology. Sierra had changed significantly as a company, and its new management insisted on adding elements from popular role-playing games such as Diablo, while straying from the game's traditional adventure elements. When she removed certain role-playing elements, the team would re-add them, leading to a power struggle with management. Roberta's frustrations with her lack of control were coupled with suspicions of CUC, after allegations of financial fraud had surfaced about the company. Worried about the company's future, she talked to Ken about selling their stock. The couple soon divested from the company, Ken resigning at the end of 1997, and Roberta staying to finish Mask of Eternity. Released in 1998, the game was considered a commercial and critical disappointment, leading to further layoffs, and the sale of Sierra to Vivendi. That year, CUC was convicted of financial fraud, having exaggerated their revenues by more than half a billion dollars (equivalent to \$million in ). The decline of Sierra had an emotional impact on Roberta, who left the company in 1999. By the 2000s, Sierra's assets were held by Activision Blizzard, after a merger between Activision and Vivendi.
## Retirement
After the release of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, Roberta Williams described herself as taking a sabbatical from the game industry in 1999. In actuality, both she and Ken had signed a non-compete clause with CUC that prevented them from working in the game industry for five years. According to Ken, "By the time the five years were up, we had moved on to other ventures," thus ending Roberta's career in the game industry after 18 years and 20 games. At that time, she stayed away from the public eye and rarely spoke to the press. In a rare 2006 interview she said her greatest achievement was creating Phantasmagoria, though she expressed her love of the King's Quest series for its influence on her early career. Williams said that her role as a game designer was in the past, and that she was focused on writing a historical novel. She has also focused on travel, becoming an avid sailor with her husband.
In 2011 the video game website Gamezebo reported that she had returned from her sabbatical as a design consultant on the social network game Odd Manor, for Facebook. By 2012, Replay Games had recruited Sierra veterans Al Lowe and Paul Trowe to return to the Leisure Suit Larry adventure game series, which led Trowe to try to persuade the Williamses to return to the game industry. Activision hired Telltale Games to develop a new entry in the King's Quest series. Williams declined to work on the game, but did offer some advice. The game was later canceled in 2013. Activision attempted to revive the Sierra brand in 2014, leading developer The Odd Gentlemen to create King's Quest: A Knight to Remember. According to the studio, they consulted with Roberta Williams "to make a game like they would make if they had continued making adventure games".
In 2019 Vancouver Film School announced The Roberta Williams Women in Game Design Scholarship, in partnership with game studios The Coalition and Blackbird Interactive. In 2021, Williams self-published her first novel Farewell to Tara, set in mid-1800s Ireland during the time of the Great Famine.
Roberta and Ken announced plans to return to game development in June 2021, in collaboration with artist Marcus Maximus Mera. In an interview that same year, she expressed caution that a veteran game designer could successfully return to the industry after an extended break, saying there are merits to ending one's career at its peak. In 2022 the team revealed that their new studio Cygnus Entertainment was creating a remake of Colossal Cave Adventure titled Colossal Cave 3D Adventure. Roberta explained that this pioneering game from the 1970s had inspired her career, and she was excited to re-imagine it as an interactive 3D experience.
## Legacy and accolades
In 1995 Next Generation included Roberta Williams among their list of 75 power players in the game industry. Computer Gaming World also ranked her as tenth on their 1997 list of the most influential people in computer gaming, praising her impact on the design of adventure games. GameSpot likewise ranked her number ten on their 1999 list of "the most influential people in computer gaming of all time" for "pushing the envelope of graphic adventures" and being "especially proactive in creating games from a woman's point of view and titles that appealed to the mainstream market, all the while integrating the latest technologies in graphics and sound wherever possible". In 2009 IGN included both her and Ken in the 23rd position on the list of top game creators of all time, highlighting their role in co-founding Sierra as "the company behind some of the best and most well known adventure games of the '80s and '90s".
Computer Gaming World inducted Roberta Williams into their Hall of Fame in 2011. Both Roberta and Ken were given an Industry Icon Award at The Game Awards in 2014. She also earned the Pioneer Award at the 20th Game Developers Choice Awards in March 2020, for her influential work in the graphical adventure game genre with Mystery House, as well as her role in creating the King's Quest series and co-founding Sierra.
Ken Williams has described her as a perfectionist, "extremely smart, intuitive and usually right. She can't be managed." Ars Technica has called her "one of the more iconic figures in adventure gaming", noting her as one of the first well-known female game designers, and praising her writing and design work on Phantasmagoria and the King's Quest series. The Smithsonian Magazine has noted her as a pioneer of graphic adventure games, for creating the first home computer game to include graphics. Several publications have referred to her as "the Queen of adventure games".
Roberta Williams has personally inspired the characters and artwork of other games. She posed for the cover of the game Softporn Adventure by Chuck Benton, published by On-Line Systems. She posed much later with her children as Mother Goose for the cover photograph of Mixed-Up Mother Goose. She also makes a cameo appearance in Leisure Suit Larry 3, where Larry interrupts her while "directing" a scene for King's QuestIV. Ellie Williams, protagonist of the 2013 video game series The Last of Us is named for Ken and Roberta. She was also a source of inspiration for the character of Cameron Howe in the AMC television drama Halt and Catch Fire. The Williams family donated a collection of design materials to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games.
## Works
### Games
- Mystery House (1980)
- Wizard and the Princess (1980)
- Mission Asteroid (1981)
- Time Zone (1982)
- The Dark Crystal (1983)
- King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown (1984)
- Mickey's Space Adventure (1984)
- King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne (1985)
- King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human (1986)
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose (1987)
- King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (1988)
- Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest (1989)
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (1990)
- King's Quest 1: Quest for the Crown (Remake) (1990)
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose Multimedia (1990)
- Laura Bow in The Dagger of Amon Ra (1992)
- King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992)
- King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994)
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose Deluxe (1995)
- Phantasmagoria (1995)
- Shivers (1995)
- King's Quest: Mask of Eternity (1998)
- Odd Manor (2014)
- Colossal Cave (January 19, 2023)
### Novels
- Farewell to Tara (2021)
|
3,608,348 |
The Heart of a Woman
| 1,135,245,463 |
1961 memoir by Maya Angelou
|
[
"1981 books",
"Books by Maya Angelou",
"English-language books",
"Literary autobiographies",
"Novels about writers",
"Random House books"
] |
The Heart of a Woman (1981) is an autobiography by American writer Maya Angelou. The book is the fourth installment in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. The Heart of a Woman recounts events in Angelou's life between 1957 and 1962 and follows her travels to California, New York City, Cairo, and Ghana as she raises her teenage son, becomes a published author, becomes active in the civil rights movement, and becomes romantically involved with a South African anti-apartheid fighter. One of the most important themes of The Heart of a Woman is motherhood, as Angelou continues to raise her son. The book ends with her son leaving for college and Angelou looking forward to newfound independence and freedom.
Like Angelou's previous volumes, the book has been described as autobiographical fiction, though most critics, as well as Angelou, have characterized it as autobiography. Although most critics consider Angelou's first autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings more favorably, The Heart of a Woman has received positive reviews. It was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1997.
Critic Mary Jane Lupton says it has "a narrative structure unsurpassed in American autobiography" and that it is Angelou's "most introspective" autobiography. The title is taken from a poem by Harlem Renaissance poet Georgia Douglas Johnson, which connects Angelou with other female African-American writers. African-American literature critic Lyman B. Hagen states, "Faithful to the ongoing themes of survival, sense of self, and continuing education, The Heart of a Woman moves its central figures to a point of full personhood". The book follows Angelou to several places in the US and Africa, but the most important journey she describes is "a voyage into the self."
## Background
The Heart of a Woman, published in 1981, is the fourth installment of Maya Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. The success of her previous autobiographies and the publication of three volumes of poetry had brought Angelou a considerable amount of fame by 1981. And Still I Rise, her third volume of poetry, was published in 1978 and reinforced Angelou's success as a writer. Her first volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Writer Julian Mayfield states that Angelou's work set a precedent not only for other black women writers but for the genre of autobiography as a whole. Angelou had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women through the writing of her life stories. It made her, as scholar Joanne Braxton stated, "without a doubt ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer." Angelou was one of the first African-American female writers to discuss her personal life publicly, and one of the first to use herself as a central character in her books. Writer Hilton Als calls her a pioneer of self-exposure, willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of her personality and choices. 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."
In 1957, the year The Heart of a Woman opens, Angelou had appeared in an off-Broadway revue that inspired her first film, Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her own compositions, something she does not mention in the book. Also in 1957 and not discussed in the book, her first album, Miss Calypso, was released; it was reissued as a CD in 1995. According to Als, Angelou sang and performed calypso music because it was popular at the time, and not to develop as an artist. As described in The Heart of a Woman, Angelou eventually gave up performing for a career as a writer and poet. According to Chuck Foster, who wrote the liner notes in Miss Calypso's 1995 reissue, her calypso music career is "given short shrift" and dismissed in the book.
### Title
> The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
> As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
> Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
> In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
> The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
> And enters some alien cage in its plight,
> And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
> While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
> -— "The Heart of a Woman", by Georgia Douglas Johnson
Angelou takes the title of her fourth autobiography from a poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson, a Harlem Renaissance writer. Critic Lyman B. Hagan states that although the title is "less striking or oblique than titles of her preceding books," it is appropriate because Johnson's poem mentions a caged bird and provides a connection to Angelou's first autobiography, whose title was taken from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The title suggests Angelou's painful loneliness and exposes a spiritual dilemma also present in her first volume. Johnson's use of the metaphor is different from Dunbar's because her bird is a female whose isolation is sexual rather than racial. The caged bird may also refer to Angelou after her failed marriage, but writer Mary Jane Lupton says that "the Maya Angelou of The Heart of a Woman is too strong and too self-determined to be kept in a cage".
The Heart of a Woman is the first time Angelou identifies with another female African-American writer. Her early literary influences were men, including James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and William Shakespeare. Angelou has stated that she always admired women writers like Anne Spencer, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston. Her choice of title for this book is an acknowledgment of her legacy as a Black woman writer.
## Synopsis
The events described in The Heart of a Woman take place between 1957 and 1962, beginning shortly after the end of Angelou's previous autobiography, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas. Angelou and her teenage son Guy have moved into a houseboat commune in Sausalito, California. After a year, they move to a rented house near San Francisco. Singer Billie Holiday visits Angelou and her son there, and Holiday sings "Strange Fruit", her famous song about the lynching of Black men, to Guy. Holiday tells Angelou, "You're going to be famous. But it won't be for singing." In 1959, Angelou and Guy moved to New York City. The transition is difficult for Guy, and Angelou is forced to protect him from a gang leader. No longer satisfied with performing in nightclubs, she dedicates herself to acting, writing, political organizing, and her son. Her friend, novelist John Killens, invites her to join the Harlem Writers Guild. She meets other important African-American artists and writers, including James Baldwin, who would become her mentor. She becomes a published writer for the first time.
Angelou becomes more politically active and participates in African-American and African protest rallies, including helping to organize a sit-in at the United Nations following the execution of Patrice Lumumba, the ousted prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She meets Malcolm X and is struck by his good looks and magnetism. After hearing Martin Luther King Jr. speak, she and her friend, activist Godfrey Cambridge, are inspired to produce a successful fundraising event for King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) called Cabaret For Freedom. King names her coordinator of SCLC's office in New York. She performs in Jean Genet's play The Blacks, with Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, and Cicely Tyson.
In 1961, Angelou meets South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make. Angelou and Make never marry, but she and Guy move with Make to London and Cairo, where she acts as his political wife while he is in exile. Their relationship is full of cultural conflicts; he expects her to be a subservient African wife, and she yearns for the freedom of a working woman. She learns that Make is too friendly with other women and is irresponsible with money, so she accepts a position as assistant editor at the Arab Observer. Their relationship is examined by their community of friends, and Angelou and Make eventually separate. Angelou accepts a job in Liberia, and she and Guy travel to Accra, where he has been accepted to attend college. Guy is seriously injured in an automobile accident, so she begins working at the University of Ghana and remains there while he recuperates. The Heart of a Woman ends with Guy leaving for college and Angelou remarking to herself, "At last, I'll be able to eat the whole breast of a roast chicken by myself."
## Genre
All seven of Angelou's installments of her life story are in the tradition of African-American autobiography. Starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou challenges the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Angelou said in 1989 that she is the only serious writer to choose autobiography to express herself, but she reports not one person's story, but the collective's. Scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe writes that Angelou is representative of the convention in African-American autobiography as a public gesture that speaks for an entire group of people. Her use of devices common in fictional writing, such as dialog, characterization and thematic development, has led some reviewers to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction.
All of Angelou's autobiographies conform to the autobiography's standard structure: they are written by a single author, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, technique, and theme. In a 1983 interview with literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou calls her books autobiographies, and later acknowledges that she follows the slave narrative tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I' meaning 'we'". Lupton compares The Heart of a Woman with other autobiographies, and states that for the first time in Angelou's series, she is able to present herself as a model for successful living. However, Angelou's "woman's heart"—her perspective as a woman with concerns about her self-esteem and the conflicts with her lovers and her son—is what makes her autobiography different. Angelou's feelings as described in The Heart of a Woman, which Lupton calls Angelou's "most introspective" book, are what dictates the book's form.
Angelou recognizes that there are fictional aspects to all her books, which differentiate her work from more traditional "truthful" autobiographies. Her approach parallels the conventions of many African-American autobiographies written during the abolitionist period in the US when truth was often censored for purposes of self-protection. Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the tradition of African-American autobiography, but insists that she has created a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form. In a 1998 interview with journalist George Plimpton, Angelou discusses 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 states, "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." Angelou has never admitted to changing the facts in her stories. Hagen states, "One can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work", and that Angelou uses aspects of fiction writing to make her depictions of events and people more interesting. Angelou's long-time editor, Robert Loomis, said that she could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different impact on the reader.
The Heart of a Woman is similar to Angelou's previous volumes because it is narrated from the intimate point of view of a woman and a mother, but by this time, she can refer to events that occurred in her past books. Angelou has become a serial autobiographer, something Lupton calls "a narrative structure unsurpassed in American autobiography". Angelou successfully draws upon her previous works, and can build upon the themes she has already explored; for example, Angelou threatens the gang leader who has been threatening her son, a powerful incident when considered in light of Angelou's rape in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Lupton calls Angelou's violent behavior an "unconscious effort to rewrite her own history".
## Style
Angelou does not begin to create her own narrative until The Heart of a Woman, which depends less upon the conventions of fiction than her previous books. For example, there is less dialog and fewer dramatic episodes. The Heart of a Woman is more uplifting than its predecessors due to Angelou's resolution of her conflict between her duties as a mother and her success as a performer.
Angelou perfects the use of the vignette in The Heart of a Woman to present her acquaintances and close associates. Two of her most developed vignettes in this book are of Billie Holiday and Malcolm X. The vignettes of those she knew well, like Vusumzi Make, also present her interactions and relationships. Hagen writes that although "frank talk seemed to be almost requisite for a commercially successful book" in the early 1980s, Angelou values monogamy, fidelity, and commitment in her relationships.
For the only time in this series, Angelou describes her son's accident in detail at both the end of this book and the beginning of her next one, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, a technique that centralizes the two books, connects them with each other, creates a strong, emotional link between them, and repeats Angelou's pattern of ending each book on a positive note. In this book, Angelou ends with a hopeful look to the future as her son attains his independence and she looks forward to hers. Hagen writes, "Faithful to the ongoing themes of survival, sense of self, and continuing education, The Heart of a Woman moves its central figures to a point of full personhood."
## Themes
### Race
Race, like in the rest of the series, is a central theme in The Heart of a Woman. The book opens with Angelou and Guy living in an experimental commune with white people, trying to participate in the new openness between Blacks and whites. She is not completely comfortable with the arrangement; Angelou never names her roommates, even though "naming" has been an important theme in her books thus far. For the most part, Angelou is able to get along well with whites, but she occasionally encounters prejudice, as when she needs help from white friends to rent a home in a segregated neighborhood. Hagen calls Angelou's descriptions of whites and the hopes for eventual equality in this book "optimistic". Angelou continues her indictment of white power structure and her protests against racial injustice.
Angelou becomes more politicized and develops a new sense of Black identity. Even Angelou's decision to leave show business is political. She sees herself as a social and cultural historian of her time, and of the civil rights and Black literary movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She becomes more attracted to the causes of Black militants in the US and Africa, to the point of entering into a relationship with a significant militant, and becomes more committed to activism. During this time, she becomes an active political protester, but she does not think of herself in that way. She places the focus upon herself and uses the autobiographical form to demonstrate how the civil rights movement influenced her. According to Hagen, Angelou's contributions to civil rights as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".
### Journey
Travel is a common theme in American autobiography as a whole; McPherson writes that it is something of a national myth to Americans as a people. This is also the case for African-American autobiography, which has its roots in the slave narrative. The Heart of a Woman has three primary settings—the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, and Egypt—and two secondary ones—London and Accra.
Like all of Angelou's books, the structure of The Heart of a Woman is based on a journey. Angelou emphasizes the theme of movement by opening her book with a spiritual ("The ole ark's a-moverin'"), which McPherson calls "the theme song of the United States in 1957". This spiritual, which contains a reference to Noah's Ark, presents Angelou as a type of Noah and demonstrates her spirituality. Angelou mentions Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac's 1951 novel On the Road, thus connecting her own journey and uncertainty about the future with the journeys of literary figures. Even though Angelou travels to Africa for a relationship, she makes a connection with the continent. Lupton states, "Africa is the site of her growth". Angelou's time in Africa makes her more aware of her African roots as she searches for the past of her ancestors. Although Angelou journeys to many places in the book, the most important journey she describes is "a voyage into the self".
### Writing
Angelou's primary role in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas was stage performer, but in The Heart of a Woman she changes from someone who uses others' method of expression—the songs and dances of the African, Caribbean, and African-American oral tradition—to a writer. Angelou makes this decision for political reasons as she becomes more involved with the civil rights movement, and so that she can care for her son. For the first time in Angelou's autobiographies, she begins to think of herself as a writer and recounts her literary development. Angelou begins to identify with other Black women writers for the first time in The Heart of a Woman. She has been influenced by several writers since her childhood, but this is the first time she mentions female authors. Up to this point, her identification has been with male writers; her new affiliations with female writers is due to her emerging feminism.
Angelou's concept of herself as an artist changed after her encounter with Billie Holiday. Up to that point, Angelou's career was more about fame than about art; Als states, "Developing her artistry was not the point". Als also says that Angelou's busy career, instead of revealing her ambition, shows "a woman who is only moderately talented and perpetually unable to understand who she is". Angelou, in spite of the mistakes of her youth, needed the approval and acceptance of others, and observes that Holiday was able to perceive this. Holiday tells her, "You're going to be famous. But it won't be for singing."
Angelou had begun to write sketches, songs and short stories, and shows her work to her friend John Killens, who invites her to New York City to develop her writing skills. She joins the Harlem Writers Guild and receives feedback from other African-American authors such as Killens, Rosa Guy, and Caribbean writer Paule Marshall, who would eventually make significant contributions to African-American literature. Angelou dedicates herself to improving her craft, forcing herself to understand the technical aspects of writing. Lupton writes, "Readers can actually envision in this volume the distinguished artist who becomes the Maya Angelou of the 1990s".
### Motherhood
Motherhood, a theme throughout Angelou's autobiographies, becomes more complex in The Heart of a Woman. Although Guy struggles with the developmentally appropriate process of adolescent separation from his mother, they remain close. Many years of experience as a mother, and her success as a writer, actress, and activist, enable Angelou to behave more competently and with more maturity, professionally and as a mother. Her self-assurance becomes a major part of her personality. Her past conflict between her professional and personal lives are resolved, and she fulfills her promise to Guy she made to him at the end of her previous autobiography that they would never be separated again. Lupton writes that Angelou resolves this conflict by subordinating her needs to her child's.
Lupton also writes that motherhood is important in Angelou's books, as is "the motif of the responsible mother". Angelou's commitment to caring for her son is revealed in her confrontation with the street gang leader who has threatened Guy. In this episode, which Lupton considers the most dramatic in the book, Angelou has become a powerful mother. Angelou is no longer torn by self-doubt, but is now a strong and aggressive Black mother. Angelou has become what Joanne Braxton calls the "outraged mother", which represents the Black mother's strength and dedication found throughout slave narratives. Lupton also writes that Angelou has become a reincarnation of her grandmother, a central figure in Caged Bird.
By the end of The Heart of a Woman, Angelou is alone; for example, after Guy recuperates from the car accident, he leaves her to attend college. The final word in the book is the negative "myself", a word that signifies Angelou's new-found freedom and independence. Angelou has become truly herself and is no longer defined as someone's wife or mother. Scholar Wallis Tinnie calls this moment one of "illusive transcendence" and "a scene of hope and completion". For the first time in many years, Angelou will be able to eat a chicken breast alone, something that is valued throughout her books. Lupton calls this thought "perfectly formed". Tinnie states that The Heart of a Woman's "lonely aching" hearkens back to the poem that inspired the book's title.
## Critical reception and sales
Critics gave The Heart of a Woman positive reviews, praising its professional qualities. The American Library Association's Choice magazine says that although Caged Bird was the best of Angelou's autobiographies, "every book since has been very much worth the reading and pondering". Janet B. Blundell writes that the book was "lively, revealing, and worth the reading", but also found it "too chatty and anecdotal". Hagen responded to this criticism by stating that all of Angelou's books consist of episodes connected by theme and character. Sheree Crute, writing for Ms., appreciated the episodic nature of Angelou's writing and praised her for her "wonderfully unaffected story telling skills". Cudjoe called it "the most political segment of Angelou's autobiographical statement".
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's inauguration; in the following week, sales of her works, including The Heart of a Woman, rose by 300–600 percent. Bantam Books printed 400,000 copies of her books to meet demand. Random House, which published Angelou's hardcover books and the poem later that year, reported that they sold more of her books in January 1993 than they did in all of 1992, marking a 1,200 percent increase. In 1997, Angelou's friend Oprah Winfrey named The Heart of a Woman as a selection in her book club, making it a bestseller and increasing its total printing to over one million copies, sixteen years after its publication.
|
3,369,304 |
Hurricane Emily (1993)
| 1,167,805,598 |
Atlantic hurricane in 1993
|
[
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"1993 in North Carolina",
"1993 in Virginia",
"1993 natural disasters in the United States",
"August 1993 events",
"Category 3 Atlantic hurricanes",
"Hurricanes in North Carolina",
"Hurricanes in Virginia",
"September 1993 events"
] |
Hurricane Emily in 1993 caused record flooding in the Outer Banks of North Carolina while remaining just offshore. The fifth named storm and the first yet strongest hurricane of the year's hurricane season, Emily developed from a tropical wave northeast of the Lesser Antilles on August 22, 1993. It moved northwestward and strengthened into a tropical storm on August 25, after becoming nearly stationary southeast of Bermuda. Emily then curved to the southwest but quickly resumed its northwest trajectory while strengthening into a hurricane. Late on August 31, the hurricane reached peak winds of 115 mph (185 km/h) on its approach to North Carolina. Although part of the eye passed over Hatteras Island in the Outer Banks, its absolute center remained 23 mi (37 km)/h) offshore. Gradually weakening, the hurricane swerved away from the coast toward the northeast and later east. Emily stalled again, this time northeast of Bermuda, and dissipated on September 6 to the southeast of Newfoundland.
The threat of Emily prompted hurricane warnings for much of the North Carolina coast and northward through Delaware. A mandatory evacuation for Ocracoke and Hatteras islands displaced 160,000 people during the busy Labor Day weekend; the loss in tourism revenue amounted to \$10 million (1993 USD). About 1,600 residents on these islands rode out the storm in their homes, and emergency officials stayed behind. Most of the evacuees went to hotels or stayed with friends or relatives, causing an increase in business across southeastern Virginia, where effects were minimal. Due to uncertainty in forecasting Emily's path, there were also evacuations from the coasts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Fire Island in New York.
While bypassing the Outer Banks, Emily produced strong winds that coincided with high tides during a full moon, causing severe flooding along the Pamlico Sound. In Buxton, the floods left behind water marks as high as 10.54 ft (3.21 m), and the entire villages of Avon and Hatteras were inundated. The storm downed thousands of trees and wrecked 553 homes—completely destroying 168—leaving a quarter of the Cape Hatteras population homeless. Structural damage in North Carolina was estimated at \$35 million. Along the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia, three swimmers drowned.
## Meteorological history
Hurricane Emily originated from an African tropical wave that passed through the Cape Verde Islands on August 17, 1993. The wave traversed the tropical Atlantic and developed a closed cyclonic circulation five days later about 800 miles (1,300 km) east-northeast of Puerto Rico, when the National Hurricane Center (NHC) classified it as a tropical depression. Moving northwestward, the depression remained poorly organized for several days, with an ill-defined circulation center and sporadic thunderstorms, in part due to unfavorable wind shear from an upper-level low to its north. On August 25, the depression became nearly stationary in response to weakening steering currents. As the upper environment turned less hostile to development, a reconnaissance aircraft found unusually high sustained winds—an indication that the cyclone had quickly strengthened into a strong tropical storm. The NHC named the storm Emily and upgraded it to a hurricane the following day, based on reports of 75 mph (121 km/h) winds from a second reconnaissance mission.
Upon becoming a hurricane, Emily was centered roughly 1,000 mi (1,600 km) east of the Florida peninsula, passing well south of Bermuda. A ridge of high pressure began to mature to its north, forcing the hurricane westward on August 27. Emily's winds vacillated between tropical storm and hurricane force over the course of the day, although the cyclone resumed its strengthening by August 28 upon developing favorable upper-level outflow. Traversing warm sea surface temperatures, the hurricane continued to improve in appearance on satellite images, and the barometric pressure within its eye steadily decreased. Emily retraced toward the northwest on August 29, when a shortwave trough eroded the southern periphery of the contiguous ridge. The NHC expressed uncertainty in forecasting Emily's track, stating that South Carolina, North Carolina, and Mid-Atlantic states were at risk of a direct hit from the hurricane. As high pressure re-established itself off the North Carolina coast, Emily briefly turned west-northwestward on August 30 before initiating a prolonged curve toward the north. By that time, the NHC forecast Emily to remain offshore, though one tropical cyclone forecast model projected that the hurricane would move inland.
Early on August 31, a reconnaissance flight indicated that Emily had become a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale, and further intensification was expected because of warm waters. Later that day, reconnaissance reported that Emily had achieved a peak intensity of 115 mph (185 km/h), a Category 3 major hurricane; the aircraft also observed flight-level winds of 152 mph (245 km/h). At its peak, the center of the hurricane was located 23 mi (37 km) east of Hatteras Island while turning northward. Its eye measured 45 mi (72 km) in diameter, and a portion moved over Hatteras and the Pamlico Sound, constituting a direct hit but not a landfall. After affecting the Outer Banks, Emily continued around the large high-pressure area, turning northeastward into an area with cooler ocean temperatures. The eye nonetheless remained distinct, and Emily maintained much of its intensity through September 2. Later that day, the hurricane turned sharply eastward in response to a trough nearby. Wind shear over the region increased, weakening Emily as its eye feature quickly dissipated. Emily turned to the southeast and diminished to a tropical storm on September 3, about 500 mi (800 km) northeast of Bermuda, with a significant deterioration of the convection. Once again becoming nearly stationary, Emily further weakened to a tropical depression late on September 4, after only a small area of thunderstorms remained near the center. It accelerated toward the northeast and became extratropical on September 6, dissipating shortly thereafter.
## Preparations
The NHC forecasts for Emily were generally accurate. On August 29, two days before the storm's closest approach, the NHC issued a hurricane watch from Cape Romain, South Carolina, to Fenwick Island, Delaware, including the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds of North Carolina as well as the Chesapeake Bay south of the Patuxent River. The next day, the watch was discontinued south of Little River, South Carolina. A hurricane warning was issued from Bogue Inlet to the border of North Carolina and Virginia on August 30, and was extended a day later to Cape Henlopen, Delaware. The watches and warnings were canceled as Emily turned out to sea.
During the week when Emily approached shore, the North Carolina government was scheduled to have a two-day emergency management exercise involving a hurricane strike; the storm caused the exercise to be postponed. On August 29, a voluntary evacuation was issued for the Outer Banks, and within 36 hours of the storm's approach, a mandatory evacuation was issued for Ocracoke and Hatteras Island. A total of 160,000 people (mostly tourists) evacuated from the Outer Banks, representing about 90% of the population there. The evacuation was completed within 12 hours, expedited by highway patrol and making U.S. Route 158 and the Wright Memorial Bridge one-way inland. About 1,000 residents on Hatteras Island and another 600 on Ocracoke rode out the storm in their homes. The United States Coast Guard evacuated personnel to the mainland, leaving behind a skeleton crew to maintain their facilities. The National Park Service closed the campground on Ocracoke two days before the storm. Several towns in southeastern North Carolina were also evacuated, and schools closed across the region.
Because of the uncertainty in forecasting when and if Emily would make its northeast turn, Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder declared a state of emergency and put the National Guard on alert. In Virginia Beach, residents of seaside homes and low-lying areas were recommended to evacuate, while a mandatory evacuation was ordered for Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Residents in mobile homes and on campgrounds were also advised to seek shelter. At least 750 people left their homes, 711 of whom resided in storm shelters. The Norfolk International Airport was closed for 13 hours, and rail service was suspended. To the north, officials in Ocean City, Maryland, declared a phase-one emergency ahead of the storm; beaches were closed, and tourists were recommended to leave. About 100,000 people evacuated from the coast of Maryland; 3,600 stayed in storm shelters. In Delaware, 892 people used storm shelters after voluntarily evacuating. Beaches in New Jersey closed due to threatening waves. About 20,000 people also evacuated from Fire Island, New York. Across the Atlantic coast, 33 emergency shelters were opened in response to Emily, though most evacuees instead relied on hotels or the homes of friends and relatives to ride out the storm.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assisted in coordinating preparations for Emily. The United States Department of Defense sent power equipment, previously used during the Great Flood of 1993, to Fort Bragg, while the United States Department of Agriculture stockpiled food in risk zones. Power companies deliberately shut off the power in the Outer Banks to reduce damage to the system and mitigate the risk of electrocutions. At Naval Station Norfolk, 28 ships sailed out to sea to ride out the storm; aircraft were evacuated, and nonessential personnel were sent home. The North Carolina government announced ahead of the storm that it would not create a State Disaster Fund, instead relying on private relief organizations such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. The state's park service pre-positioned 60 members with chainsaws to help clear downed trees. Because Emily hit during the busy Labor Day weekend, the tourism industry suffered about \$10 million in business losses. Many of the evacuees relocated to southeastern Virginia, which saw greatly increased business during the weekend.
## Impact
### North Carolina
As Emily approached the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Diamond Shoal Light off Cape Hatteras recorded 2-minute sustained winds of 99 mph (159 km/h), along with gusts of 147 mph (237 km/h). Closer to shore, surface winds reached 115 mph (185 km/h) in the Pamlico Sound. The National Weather Service in Buxton reported sustained winds of 60 mph (97 km/h), with gusts to 98 mph (158 km/h), before the wind recording instrument failed due to water intrusion. A reliable but unofficial wind station at a commercial building reported a gust of 107 mph (172 km/h). These high winds lasted for several hours due to the storm's slow movement. There were two possible tornadoes in the Outer Banks region. On the south side of Hatteras Island, the storm coincided with high tides, producing a peak storm surge of 10.2 ft (3.1 m) in Buxton. Large waves caused moderate beach erosion, comparable to that of a winter storm. The heaviest rainfall related to Emily occurred over the Outer Banks, where a peak total of 7.51 in (191 mm) was recorded in Buxton. Minimal rain fell farther inland, with only 1.00 in (25 mm) reported at Gum Neck in mainland Tyrrell County.
Overall damage from the storm was lighter than expected, largely confined to the barrier islands of Dare and Hyde counties. Severe flooding from the storm affected a 17 mi (27 km) stretch of the Hatteras Island. Coinciding with high tides during a full moon, the hurricane's winds pushed water from the Pamlico Sound to the south, lowering levels along the mainland and inundating the barrier islands; surge flooding was minor on the ocean side. At Frisco and Hatteras, water levels along the Pamlico Sound reached 8.5 ft (2.6 m) above normal—their highest in the 20th century, surpassing those in Hurricane Gloria eight years prior. These water levels may have been the highest in the region since the 1899 San Ciriaco hurricane. In Buxton, the waters rose 3 to 4 ft (0.9 to 1 m) per hour at one point, leaving behind flood marks as high as 10.54 ft (3.21 m). The entire villages of Avon and Hatteras were inundated. Only the highest dunes along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore remained dry, and a section of dunes just north of Buxton was nearly breached. The waters—1 to 2 ft (0.3 to 0.6 m) higher than the predicted 100-year flood—broke through windows and entered houses; some residents who did not exit their homes had to ride out the storm in their attics to escape the flooding. Officials at the Dare County Emergency Operations Center evacuated due to intrusion of floodwaters. The Cape Hatteras National Weather Service office was flooded for the first time since its inception in 1957, and sustained damage to its rain chart and an antenna. Many boats in marinas were wrecked, and hundreds of cars floated away from parking lots or streets; flooded police cars had their emergency lights activated after the wires were damaged. Farther south, impact from the storm was limited on Ocracoke Island.
Emily's winds destroyed several roofs and knocked down thousands of trees and power lines, with many signs and sheds damaged. All towns south of the Bonner Bridge were without power, affecting at least 1,500 people, and Buxton lost water supply after the main water line was damaged. The combination of strong winds and floods left 553 homes uninhabitable in the Outer Banks, with 168 houses completely destroyed, including three that were washed away. Six of the destroyed homes were owned by the Coast Guard. The heaviest damage was largely in older homes or structures not up to code. About 25% of the Hatteras population was left homeless. The Cape Hatteras School sustained about \$3.1 million in damage, after flooding 4 ft (1.2 m) deep destroyed computers and textbooks. Tidal floods, sand, and debris forced authorities to close Highway 12. Traffic lights along the route were damaged, and downed trees blocked the road in two areas. Sinkholes, some the size of three cars, developed along the route. Throughout North Carolina, damage from the storm was estimated at \$35 million, mostly on Hatteras Island and chiefly to the south of Avon. Rough surf killed two people in Nags Head, despite the beach being closed to swimming, and one person suffered injuries while escaping a flooded home.
### Elsewhere
Outside of North Carolina, Emily produced gusts of 37 mph (59 km) at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge–Tunnel. To the north of the storm, Ocean City, Maryland, measured 2.80 in (71 mm) of precipitation. Above-normal tides were reported as far south as Charleston, South Carolina; high tides also spread farther north, with a storm surge of 1.2 ft (0.37 m) at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge–Tunnel and 0.6 ft (0.18 m) in Lewes, Delaware.
High waves caused beach erosion northward through Virginia. At Virginia Beach, the waves led to minor flooding along the Sandbridge section; rough surf and a strong undertow drowned one swimmer there. The storm triggered statewide power outages that affected about 5,000 residents, as well as the Hampton Roads Bridge–Tunnel. In Newport News, lightning set a roof on fire in the Lee Hall section of the city. Emily's light rains in the area were not enough to break a prolonged drought that plagued Virginia. Rough seas and high tides later caused coastal flooding along Fire Island in New York.
## Aftermath
As Emily's winds eased over land, various assessment teams left Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to determine the extent of damage. FEMA informed the North Carolina congressional delegation about the storm's threat to their constituents. The agency later received compliments for their timely preparations for storm-related operations. All airports on the Outer Banks were reopened by September 1. In response to the extensive scale of the power outages, power companies flew a helicopter over the region to assess the damage. The power was expected to be out for two weeks. Six emergency vehicles were sent to Dare County to provide drinking water.
On September 3, Governor Jim Hunt declared a state of disaster for North Carolina, while President Bill Clinton declared Dare County a disaster area a week later. This allowed residents there to apply for federal assistance, as well as local governments to request aid to rebuild public buildings. Operating out of Avon, FEMA distributed about \$1 million in housing assistance to 444 people and provided \$400,000 in individual grants to 153 applicants. The Small Business Administration received 812 applications for small business loans.
Shelters closed by September 1 and residents returned to their homes, although Hatteras Island remained off-limits to everyone but emergency workers for several days. Unemployment across Hatteras rose in the wake of the damage to local businesses, and many restaurants lost product when their refrigerators failed during the power outages. Residents piled debris from their damaged homes on roads, primarily Highway 12, and workers responded by clearing the debris. The highway was speedily reopened and repaired at a cost of around \$1 million. Within two weeks of the storm, businesses resumed as cleaning work was under way, and the island was reopened to tourists. Clean-up operations in the region lasted weeks to months. In the three months after the storm, saltwater intrusion into the Cape Hatteras water supply boosted chlorine levels from 40 to 280 milligrams per litre (0.0014 to 0.0099 ounces per litre); it took another three months for the chlorine to decrease to normal concentrations. Around 50 homeowners affected by Emily raised their houses to prevent a recurrence, partially funded by flood insurance payments.
## See also
- List of North Carolina hurricanes
- Other storms of the same name
|
34,289 |
Yasser Arafat
| 1,173,537,594 |
Palestinian political leader (1929–2004)
|
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"2004 deaths",
"20th-century Palestinian politicians",
"20th-century presidents in Asia",
"21st-century Palestinian politicians",
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"Yasser Arafat"
] |
Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat (/ˈærəfæt/ ARR-ə-fat, also US: /ˈɑːrəfɑːt/ AR-ə-FAHT; Arabic: محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, romanized: Muḥammad Yāsir ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʻAbd al-Raʼūf ʿArafāt al-Qudwa al-Ḥusaynī; Arabic: ياسر عرفات, romanized: Yāsir ʿArafāt) or by his kunya Abu Ammar (Arabic: أبو عمار, romanized: ʾAbū ʿAmmār), was a Palestinian political leader. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 to 2004 and President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) from 1994 to 2004. Ideologically an Arab nationalist and a socialist, he was a founding member of the Fatah political party, which he led from 1959 until 2004.
Arafat was born to Palestinian parents in Cairo, Egypt, where he spent most of his youth and studied at the University of King Fuad I. While a student, he embraced Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist ideas. Opposed to the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, he fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Following the defeat of Arab forces, Arafat returned to Cairo and served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students from 1952 to 1956.
In the latter part of the 1950s, Arafat co-founded Fatah, a paramilitary organization seeking the removal of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian state. Fatah operated within several Arab countries, from where it launched attacks on Israeli targets. In the latter part of the 1960s Arafat's profile grew; in 1967 he joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and in 1969 was elected chair of the Palestinian National Council (PNC). Fatah's growing presence in Jordan resulted in military clashes with King Hussein's Jordanian government and in the early 1970s it relocated to Lebanon. There, Fatah assisted the Lebanese National Movement during the Lebanese Civil War and continued its attacks on Israel, resulting in it becoming a major target of Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions.
From 1983 to 1993, Arafat based himself in Tunisia, and began to shift his approach from open conflict with the Israelis to negotiation. In 1988, he acknowledged Israel's right to exist and sought a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In 1994 he returned to Palestine, settling in Gaza City and promoting self-governance for the Palestinian territories. He engaged in a series of negotiations with the Israeli government to end the conflict between it and the PLO. These included the Madrid Conference of 1991, the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 2000 Camp David Summit. The success of the negotiations in Oslo led to Arafat being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, in 1994. At the time, Fatah's support among the Palestinians declined with the growth of Hamas and other militant rivals. In late 2004, after effectively being confined within his Ramallah compound for over two years by the Israeli army, Arafat fell into a coma and died. While the cause of Arafat's death has remained the subject of speculation, investigations by Russian and French teams determined no foul play was involved.
Arafat remains a controversial figure. Palestinians generally view him as a martyr who symbolized the national aspirations of his people. Israelis regarded him as a terrorist. Palestinian rivals, including Islamists and several PLO leftists, frequently denounced him as corrupt or too submissive in his concessions to the Israeli government.
## Early life
### Birth and childhood
Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt. His father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza City, whose mother, Yasser's paternal grandmother, was Egyptian. Arafat's father battled in the Egyptian courts for 25 years to claim family land in Egypt as part of his inheritance but was unsuccessful. He worked as a textile merchant in Cairo's religiously mixed Sakakini District. Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along with his younger brother Fathi, the only offspring born in Cairo. Jerusalem was the family home of his mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, who died from a kidney ailment in 1933, when Arafat was four years of age.
Arafat's first visit to Jerusalem came when his father, unable to raise seven children alone, sent Yasser and his brother Fathi to their mother's family in the Mughrabi Quarter of the Old City. They lived there with their uncle Salim Abul Saud for four years. In 1937, their father recalled them to be taken care of by their older sister, Inam. Arafat had a deteriorating relationship with his father; when he died in 1952, Arafat did not attend the funeral, nor did he visit his father's grave upon his return to Gaza. Arafat's sister Inam stated in an interview with Arafat's biographer, British historian Alan Hart, that Arafat was heavily beaten by his father for going to the Jewish quarter in Cairo and attending religious services. When she asked Arafat why he would not stop going, he responded by saying that he wanted to study Jewish mentality.
### Education
In 1944, Arafat enrolled in the University of King Fuad I and graduated in 1950. At university, he engaged Jews in discussion and read publications by Theodor Herzl and other prominent Zionists. By 1946 he was an Arab nationalist and began procuring weapons to be smuggled into the former British Mandate of Palestine, for use by irregulars in the Arab Higher Committee and the Army of the Holy War militias.
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Arafat left the University and, along with other Arabs, sought to enter Palestine to join Arab forces fighting against Israeli troops and the creation of the state of Israel. However, instead of joining the ranks of the Palestinian fedayeen, Arafat fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood, although he did not join the organization. He took part in combat in the Gaza area (which was the main battleground of Egyptian forces during the conflict). In early 1949, the war was winding down in Israel's favor, and Arafat returned to Cairo from a lack of logistical support.
After returning to the University, Arafat studied civil engineering and served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) from 1952 to 1956. During his first year as president of the union, the University was renamed Cairo University after a coup was carried out by the Free Officers Movement overthrowing King Farouk I. By that time, Arafat had graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and was called to duty to fight with Egyptian forces during the Suez Crisis; however, he never actually fought. Later that year, at a conference in Prague, he donned a solid white keffiyeh–different from the fishnet-patterned one he adopted later in Kuwait, which was to become his emblem.
### Marriage
In 1990, Arafat married Suha Tawil, a Palestinian Christian, when he was 61 and Suha, 27. Her mother introduced her to him in France, after which she worked as his secretary in Tunis. Prior to their marriage, Arafat adopted fifty Palestinian war orphans. During their marriage, Suha tried to leave Arafat on many occasions, but he forbade it. Suha said she regrets the marriage, and given the choice again would not repeat it. In mid-1995, Arafat's wife Suha gave birth in a Paris hospital to a daughter, named Zahwa after Arafat's mother.
### Name
Arafat's full name was Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini. Mohammed Abdel Rahman was his first name, Abdel Raouf was his father's name and Arafat his grandfather's. Al-Qudwa was the name of his tribe and al-Husseini was that of the clan to which the al-Qudwas belonged. The al-Husseini clan was based in Gaza and is not related to the well-known al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem.
Since Arafat was raised in Cairo, the tradition of dropping the Mohammed or Ahmad portion of one's first name was common; notable Egyptians such as Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak did so. However, Arafat dropped Abdel Rahman and Abdel Raouf from his name as well. During the early 1950s, Arafat adopted the name Yasser, and in the early years of Arafat's guerrilla career, he assumed the nom de guerre of Abu Ammar. Both names are related to Ammar ibn Yasir, one of Muhammad's early companions. Although he dropped most of his inherited names, he retained Arafat due to its significance in Islam.
## Rise of Fatah
### Founding of Fatah
Following the Suez Crisis in 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser agreed to allow the United Nations Emergency Force to establish itself in the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, precipitating the expulsion of all guerrilla or "fedayeen" forces there—including Arafat. Arafat originally attempted to obtain a visa to Canada and later Saudi Arabia, but was unsuccessful in both attempts. In 1957, he applied for a visa to Kuwait (at the time a British protectorate) and was approved, based on his work in civil engineering. There he encountered two Palestinian friends: Salah Khalaf ("Abu Iyad") and Khalil al-Wazir ("Abu Jihad"), both official members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Arafat had met Abu Iyad while attending Cairo University and Abu Jihad in Gaza. Both would later become Arafat's top aides. Abu Iyad traveled with Arafat to Kuwait in late 1960; Abu Jihad, also working as a teacher, had already been living there since 1959. After settling in Kuwait, Abu Iyad helped Arafat obtain a temporary job as a schoolteacher.
As Arafat began to develop friendships with Palestinian refugees (some of whom he knew from his Cairo days), he and the others gradually founded the group that became known as Fatah. The exact date for the establishment of Fatah is unknown. In 1959, the group's existence was attested to in the pages of a Palestinian nationalist magazine, Filastununa Nida al-Hayat (Our Palestine, The Call of Life), which was written and edited by Abu Jihad. FaTaH is a reverse acronym of the Arabic name Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini which translates into "The Palestinian National Liberation Movement". "Fatah" is also a word that was used in early Islamic times to refer to "conquest."
Fatah dedicated itself to the liberation of Palestine by an armed struggle carried out by Palestinians themselves. This differed from other Palestinian political and guerrilla organizations, most of which firmly believed in a united Arab response. Arafat's organization never embraced the ideologies of the major Arab governments of the time, in contrast to other Palestinian factions, which often became satellites of nations such as Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and others.
In accordance with his ideology, Arafat generally refused to accept donations to his organization from major Arab governments, in order to act independently of them. He did not want to alienate them, and sought their undivided support by avoiding ideological alliances. However, to establish the groundwork for Fatah's future financial support, he enlisted contributions from the many wealthy Palestinians working in Kuwait and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf, such as Qatar (where he met Mahmoud Abbas in 1961). These businessmen and oil workers contributed generously to the Fatah organization. Arafat continued this process in other Arab countries, such as Libya and Syria.
In 1962, Arafat and his closest companions migrated to Syria—a country sharing a border with Israel—which had recently seceded from its union with Egypt. Fatah had approximately three hundred members by this time, but none were fighters. In Syria, he managed to recruit members by offering them higher incomes to enable his armed attacks against Israel. Fatah's manpower was incremented further after Arafat decided to offer new recruits much higher salaries than members of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), the regular military force of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was created by the Arab League in 1964. On 31 December, a squad from al-Assifa, Fatah's armed wing, attempted to infiltrate Israel, but they were intercepted and detained by Lebanese security forces. Several other raids with Fatah's poorly trained and badly-equipped fighters followed this incident. Some were successful, others failed in their missions. Arafat often led these incursions personally.
Arafat was detained in Syria's Mezzeh Prison when a Palestinian Syrian Army officer, Yusef Urabi, was killed. Urabi had been chairing a meeting to ease tensions between Arafat and Palestinian Liberation Front leader Ahmed Jibril, but neither Arafat nor Jibril attended, delegating representatives to attend on their behalf. Urabi was killed during or after the meeting amid disputed circumstances. On the orders of Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad, a close friend of Urabi, Arafat was subsequently arrested, found guilty by a three-man jury and sentenced to death. However, he and his colleagues were pardoned by President Salah Jadid shortly after the verdict. The incident brought Assad and Arafat to unpleasant terms, which would surface later when Assad became President of Syria.
### Leader of the Palestinians
On 13 November 1966, Israel launched a major raid against the Jordanian administered West Bank town of as-Samu, in response to a Fatah-implemented roadside bomb attack which had killed three members of the Israeli security forces near the southern Green Line border. In the resulting skirmish, scores of Jordanian security forces were killed and 125 homes razed. This raid was one of several factors that led to the 1967 Six-Day War.
The Six-Day war began when Israel launched air strikes against Egypt's air force on 5 June 1967. The war ended in an Arab defeat and Israel's occupation of several Arab territories, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although Nasser and his Arab allies had been defeated, Arafat and Fatah could claim a victory, in that the majority of Palestinians, who had up to that time tended to align and sympathize with individual Arab governments, now began to agree that a 'Palestinian' solution to their dilemma was indispensable. Many primarily Palestinian political parties, including George Habash's Arab Nationalist Movement, Hajj Amin al-Husseini's Arab Higher Committee, the Islamic Liberation Front and several Syrian-backed groups, virtually crumbled after their sponsor governments' defeat. Barely a week after the defeat, Arafat crossed the Jordan River in disguise and entered the West Bank, where he set up recruitment centers in Hebron, the Jerusalem area and Nablus, and began attracting both fighters and financiers for his cause.
At the same time, Nasser contacted Arafat through the former's adviser Mohammed Heikal and Arafat was declared by Nasser to be the "leader of the Palestinians." In December 1967 Ahmad Shukeiri resigned his post as PLO Chairman. Yahya Hammuda took his place and invited Arafat to join the organization. Fatah was allocated 33 of 105 seats of the PLO Executive Committee while 57 seats were left for several other guerrilla factions.
### Battle of Karameh
Throughout 1968, Fatah and other Palestinian armed groups were the target of a major Israeli army operation in the Jordanian village of Karameh, where the Fatah headquarters—as well as a mid-sized Palestinian refugee camp—were located. The town's name is the Arabic word for 'dignity', which elevated its symbolism in the eyes of the Arab people, especially after the collective Arab defeat in 1967. The operation was in response to attacks, including rockets strikes from Fatah and other Palestinian militias, within the Israeli-occupied West Bank. According to Said Aburish, the government of Jordan and a number of Fatah commandos informed Arafat that large-scale Israeli military preparations for an attack on the town were underway, prompting fedayeen groups, such as George Habash's newly formed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Nayef Hawatmeh's breakaway organization the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), to withdraw their forces from the town. Though advised by a sympathetic Jordanian Army divisional commander to withdraw his men and headquarters to the nearby hills, Arafat refused, stating, "We want to convince the world that there are those in the Arab world who will not withdraw or flee." Aburish writes that it was on Arafat's orders that Fatah remained, and that the Jordanian Army agreed to back them if heavy fighting ensued.
In response to persistent PLO raids against Israeli civilian targets, Israel attacked the town of Karameh, Jordan, the site of a major PLO camp. The goal of the invasion was to destroy Karameh camp and capture Yasser Arafat in reprisal for the attacks by the PLO against Israeli civilians, which culminated in an Israeli school bus hitting a mine in the Negev, killing two children. However, plans for the two operations were prepared in 1967, one year before the bus attack. The size of the Israeli forces entering Karameh made the Jordanians assume that Israel was also planning to occupy the eastern bank of the Jordan River, including the Balqa Governorate, to create a situation similar to the Golan Heights, which Israel had captured just 10 months prior, to be used a bargaining chip. Israel assumed that the Jordanian Army would ignore the invasion, but the latter fought alongside the Palestinians, opening heavy fire that inflicted losses upon the Israeli forces. This engagement marked the first known deployment of suicide bombers by Palestinian forces. The Israelis were repelled at the end of a day's battle, having destroyed most of the Karameh camp and taken around 141 PLO prisoners. Both sides declared victory. On a tactical level, the battle went in Israel's favor and the destruction of the Karameh camp was achieved. However, the relatively high casualties were a considerable surprise for the Israel Defense Forces and was stunning to the Israelis. Although the Palestinians were not victorious on their own, King Hussein let the Palestinians take credit. Some have alleged that Arafat himself was on the battlefield, but the details of his involvement are unclear. However, his allies–as well as Israeli intelligence–confirm that he urged his men throughout the battle to hold their ground and continue fighting. The battle was covered in detail by Time, and Arafat's face appeared on the cover of the 13 December 1968 issue, bringing his image to the world for the first time. Amid the post-war environment, the profiles of Arafat and Fatah were raised by this important turning point, and he came to be regarded as a national hero who dared to confront Israel. With mass applause from the Arab world, financial donations increased significantly, and Fatah's weaponry and equipment improved. The group's numbers swelled as many young Arabs, including thousands of non-Palestinians, joined the ranks of Fatah.
When the Palestinian National Council (PNC) convened in Cairo on 3 February 1969, Yahya Hammuda stepped down from his chairmanship of the PLO. Arafat was elected chairman on 4 February. He became Commander-in-Chief of the Palestinian Revolutionary Forces two years later, and in 1973, became the head of the PLO's political department.
## Confrontation with Jordan
In the late 1960s, tensions between Palestinians and the Jordanian government increased greatly; heavily armed Palestinian elements had created a virtual "state within a state" in Jordan, eventually controlling several strategic positions in that country. After their proclaimed victory in the Battle of Karameh, Fatah and other Palestinian militias began taking control of civil life in Jordan. They set up roadblocks, publicly humiliated Jordanian police forces, molested women and levied illegal taxes—all of which Arafat either condoned or ignored. King Hussein considered this a growing threat to his kingdom's sovereignty and security, and attempted to disarm the militias. However, in order to avoid a military confrontation with opposition forces, Hussein dismissed several of his anti-PLO cabinet officials, including some of his own family members, and invited Arafat to become Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan. Arafat refused, citing his belief in the need for a Palestinian state with Palestinian leadership.
Despite Hussein's intervention, militant actions in Jordan continued. On 15 September 1970, the PFLP (part of the PLO) hijacked four planes and landed three of them at Dawson's Field, located 30 miles (48 km) east of Amman. After the foreign national hostages were taken off the planes and moved away from them, three of the planes were blown up in front of international press, which took photos of the explosion. This tarnished Arafat's image in many western nations, including the United States, who held him responsible for controlling Palestinian factions that belonged to the PLO. Arafat, bowing to pressure from Arab governments, publicly condemned the hijackings and suspended the PFLP from any guerrilla actions for a few weeks. He had taken the same action after the PFLP attacked Athens Airport. The Jordanian government moved to regain control over its territory, and the next day, King Hussein declared martial law. On the same day, Arafat became supreme commander of the PLA.
As the conflict raged, other Arab governments attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution. As part of this effort, Gamal Abdel Nasser led the first emergency Arab League summit in Cairo on 21 September. Arafat's speech drew sympathy from attending Arab leaders. Other heads of state took sides against Hussein, among them Muammar Gaddafi, who mocked him and his schizophrenic father King Talal. A ceasefire was agreed upon between the two sides, but Nasser died of a massive heart attack hours after the summit, and the conflict resumed shortly afterward.
By 25 September, the Jordanian Army achieved dominance, and two days later Arafat and Hussein agreed to a ceasefire in Amman. The Jordanian Army inflicted heavy casualties on the Palestinians—including civilians—who suffered approximately 3,500 fatalities. After repeated violations of the ceasefire from both the PLO and the Jordanian Army, Arafat called for King Hussein to be toppled. Responding to the threat, in June 1971, Hussein ordered his forces to oust all remaining Palestinian fighters in northern Jordan, which they accomplished. Arafat and a number of his forces, including two high-ranking commanders, Abu Iyad and Abu Jihad, were forced into the northern corner of Jordan. They relocated near the town of Jerash, near the border with Syria. With the help of Munib Masri, a pro-Palestinian Jordanian cabinet member, and Fahd al-Khomeimi, the Saudi ambassador to Jordan, Arafat managed to enter Syria with nearly two thousand of his fighters. However, due to the hostility of relations between Arafat and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad (who had since ousted President Salah Jadid), the Palestinian fighters crossed the border into Lebanon to join PLO forces in that country, where they set up their new headquarters.
## Headquarters in Lebanon
### Official recognition
Because of Lebanon's weak central government, the PLO was able to operate virtually as an independent state. During this time in the 1970s, numerous leftist PLO groups took up arms against Israel, carrying out attacks against civilians as well as military targets within Israel and outside of it.
Two major incidents occurred in 1972. The Fatah subgroup Black September Organization hijacked Sabena Flight 572 en route to Vienna and forced it to land at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel. The PFLP and the Japanese Red Army carried out a shooting rampage at the same airport, killing twenty-four civilians. Israel later claimed that the assassination of PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani was a response to the PFLP's involvement in masterminding the latter attack. Two days later, various PLO factions retaliated by bombing a bus station, killing eleven civilians.
At the Munich Olympic Games, Black September kidnapped and killed eleven Israeli athletes. A number of sources, including Mohammed Oudeh (Abu Daoud), one of the masterminds of the Munich massacre, and Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli historian, have stated that Black September was an armed branch of Fatah used for paramilitary operations. According to Abu Daoud's 1999 book, "Arafat was briefed on plans for the Munich hostage-taking." The killings were internationally condemned. In 1973–74, Arafat closed Black September down, ordering the PLO to withdraw from acts of violence outside Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In 1974, the PNC approved the Ten Point Program (drawn up by Arafat and his advisers), and proposed a compromise with the Israelis. It called for a Palestinian national authority over every part of "liberated" Palestinian territory, which refers to areas captured by Arab forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War (present-day West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip). This caused discontent among several of the PLO factions; the PFLP, DFLP and other parties formed a breakaway organization, the Rejectionist Front.
Israel and the US have alleged also that Arafat was involved in the 1973 Khartoum diplomatic assassinations, in which five diplomats and five others were killed. A 1973 United States Department of State document, declassified in 2006, concluded "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat." Arafat denied any involvement in the operation and insisted it was carried out independently by the Black September Organization. Israel claimed that Arafat was in ultimate control over these organizations and therefore had not abandoned terrorism.
In addition, some circles within the US State Department viewed Arafat as an able diplomat and negotiator who could get support from many Arab governments at once. An example of that, we find in March 1973 that Arafat tried to arrange for a meeting between the President of Iraq and the Emir of Kuwait in order to resolve their disputes.
Also in 1974, the PLO was declared the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" and admitted to full membership of the Arab League at the Rabat Summit. Arafat became the first representative of a non-governmental organization to address a plenary session of the UN General Assembly. In his United Nations address, Arafat condemned Zionism, but said, "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." He wore a holster throughout his speech, although it did not contain a gun. His speech increased international sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
Following recognition, Arafat established relationships with a variety of world leaders, including Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin. Arafat was Amin's best man at his wedding in Uganda in 1975.
### Fatah involvement in Lebanese Civil War
Although hesitant at first to take sides in the conflict, Arafat and Fatah played an important role in the Lebanese Civil War. Succumbing to pressure from PLO sub-groups such as the PFLP, DFLP and the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), Arafat aligned the PLO with the Communist and Nasserist Lebanese National Movement (LNM). The LNM was led by Kamal Jumblatt, who had a friendly relationship with Arafat and other PLO leaders. Although originally aligned with Fatah, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad feared a loss of influence in Lebanon and switched sides. He sent his army, along with the Syrian-backed Palestinian factions of as-Sa'iqa and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) led by Ahmad Jibril to fight alongside right-wing Christian forces against the PLO and the LNM. The primary components of the Christian front were the Phalangists loyal to Bachir Gemayel and the Tigers Militia led by Dany Chamoun, a son of former President Camille Chamoun.
In February 1975, a pro-Palestinian Lebanese MP, Maarouf Saad, was shot and killed, reportedly by the Lebanese Army. His death from his wounds, the following month, and the massacre in April of 27 Palestinians and Lebanese travelling on a bus from Sabra and Shatila to the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp by Phalangist forces precipitated the Lebanese Civil War. Arafat was reluctant to respond with force, but many other Fatah and PLO members felt otherwise. For example, the DFLP carried out several attacks against the Lebanese Army. In 1976, an alliance of Christian militias with the backing of the Lebanese and Syrian armies besieged Tel al-Zaatar camp in east Beirut. The PLO and LNM retaliated by attacking the town of Damour, a Phalangist stronghold where they massacred 684 people and wounded many more. The Tel al-Zaatar camp fell to the Christians after a six-month siege in which thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed. Arafat and Abu Jihad blamed themselves for not successfully organizing a rescue effort.
PLO cross-border raids against Israel grew during the late 1970s. One of the most severe—known as the Coastal Road massacre—occurred on 11 March 1978. A force of nearly a dozen Fatah fighters landed their boats near a major coastal road connecting the city of Haifa with Tel Aviv-Yafo. There they hijacked a bus and sprayed gunfire inside and at passing vehicles, killing thirty-seven civilians. In response, the IDF launched Operation Litani three days later, with the goal of taking control of Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. The IDF achieved this goal, and Arafat withdrew PLO forces north into Beirut.
After Israel withdrew from Lebanon, cross-border hostilities between PLO forces and Israel continued, though from August 1981 to May 1982, the PLO adopted an official policy of refraining from responding to provocations. On 6 June 1982, Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon to expel the PLO from southern Lebanon. Beirut was soon besieged and bombarded by the IDF; Arafat declared the city to be the "Hanoi and Stalingrad of the Israeli army." The Civil War's first phase ended and Arafat—who was commanding Fatah forces at Tel al-Zaatar—narrowly escaped with assistance from Saudi and Kuwaiti diplomats. Towards the end of the siege, the US and European governments brokered an agreement guaranteeing safe passage for Arafat and the PLO—guarded by a multinational force of eight hundred US Marines supported by the US Navy—to exile in Tunis. Arafat returned to Lebanon a year after his eviction from Beirut, this time establishing himself in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. This time Arafat was expelled by a fellow Palestinian working under Hafez al-Assad. Arafat did not return to Lebanon after his second expulsion, though many Fatah fighters did.
## Headquarters in Tunisia
Arafat and Fatah's center for operations was based in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, until 1993. In 1985 Arafat narrowly survived an Israeli assassination attempt when Israeli Air Force F-15s bombed his Tunis headquarters as part of Operation Wooden Leg, leaving 73 people dead; Arafat had gone out jogging that morning. The following year Arafat had his operational headquarters in Baghdad for some time.
### First Intifada
During the 1980s, Arafat received financial assistance from Libya, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which allowed him to reconstruct the badly damaged PLO. This was particularly useful during the First Intifada in December 1987, which began as an uprising of Palestinians against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The word Intifada in Arabic is literally translated as "tremor"; however, it is generally defined as an uprising or revolt.
The first stage of the Intifada began following an incident at the Erez checkpoint where four Palestinian residents of the Jabalya refugee camp were killed in a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver. Rumors spread that the deaths were a deliberate act of revenge for an Israeli shopper who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in Gaza four days earlier. Mass rioting broke out, and within weeks, partly upon consistent requests by Abu Jihad, Arafat attempted to direct the uprising, which lasted until 1992–93. Abu Jihad had previously been assigned the responsibility of the Palestinian territories within the PLO command and, according to biographer Said Aburish, had "impressive knowledge of local conditions" in the Israeli-occupied territories. On 16 April 1988, as the Intifada was raging, Abu Jihad was assassinated in his Tunis household by an Israeli hit squad. Arafat had considered Abu Jihad as a PLO counterweight to local Palestinian leadership in the territories, and led a funeral procession for him in Damascus.
The most common tactic used by Palestinians during the Intifada was throwing stones, molotov cocktails, and burning tires. The local leadership in some West Bank towns commenced non-violent protests against Israeli occupation by engaging in tax resistance and other boycotts. Israel responded by confiscating large sums of money in house-to-house raids. As the Intifada came to a close, new armed Palestinian groups—in particular Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—began targeting Israeli civilians with the new tactic of suicide bombings, and internal fighting amongst the Palestinians increased dramatically.
### Change in direction
In August 1970, Arafat declared: "Our basic aim is to liberate the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. We are not concerned with what took place in June 1967 or in eliminating the consequences of the June war. The Palestinian revolution's basic concern is the uprooting of the Zionist entity from our land and liberating it." However, in early 1976, at a meeting with US Senator Adlai Stevenson III, Arafat suggested that if Israel withdrew a "few kilometers" from parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and transferred responsibility to the UN, Arafat could give "something to show his people before he could acknowledge Israel's right to exist".
On 15 November 1988, the PLO proclaimed the independent State of Palestine. Though he had frequently been accused of and associated with terrorism, in speeches on 13 and 14 December Arafat repudiated 'terrorism in all its forms, including state terrorism'. He accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242 and Israel's right "to exist in peace and security" and Arafat's statements were greeted with approval by the US administration, which had long insisted on these statements as a necessary starting point for official discussions between the US and the PLO. These remarks from Arafat indicated a shift away from one of the PLO's primary aims—the destruction of Israel (as entailed in the Palestinian National Covenant)–and toward the establishment of two separate entities: an Israeli state within the 1949 armistice lines, and an Arab state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On 2 April 1989, Arafat was elected by the Central Council of the Palestine National Council, the governing body of the PLO, to be the president of the proclaimed State of Palestine.
Prior to the Gulf War in 1990–91, when the Intifada's intensity began to wear down, Arafat supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and opposed the US-led coalition attack on Iraq. He made this decision without the consent of other leading members of Fatah and the PLO. Arafat's top aide Abu Iyad vowed to stay neutral and opposed an alliance with Saddam; on 17 January 1991, Abu Iyad was assassinated by the Abu Nidal Organization. Arafat's decision also severed relations with Egypt and many of the oil-producing Arab states that supported the US-led coalition. Many in the US also used Arafat's position as a reason to disregard his claims to being a partner for peace. After the end of hostilities, many Arab states that backed the coalition cut off funds to the PLO and began providing financial support for the organization's rival Hamas and other Islamist groups. Arafat narrowly escaped death again on 7 April 1992, when an Air Bissau aircraft he was a passenger on crash-landed in the Libyan Desert during a sandstorm. Two pilots and an engineer were killed; Arafat was bruised and shaken.
## Palestinian Authority and peace negotiations
### Oslo Accords
In the early 1990s, Arafat and leading Fatah officials engaged the Israeli government in a series of secret talks and negotiations that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords. The agreement called for the implementation of Palestinian self-rule in portions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five-year period, along with an immediate halt to and gradual removal of Israeli settlements in those areas. The accords called for a Palestinian police force to be formed from local recruits and Palestinians abroad, to patrol areas of self-rule. Authority over the various fields of rule, including education and culture, social welfare, direct taxation and tourism, would be transferred to the Palestinian interim government. Both parties agreed also on forming a committee that would establish cooperation and coordination dealing with specific economic sectors, including utilities, industry, trade and communication.
Prior to signing the accords, Arafat—as Chairman of the PLO and its official representative—signed two letters renouncing violence and officially recognizing Israel. In return, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, on behalf of Israel, officially recognized the PLO. The following year, Arafat and Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Shimon Peres. The Palestinian reaction was mixed. The Rejectionist Front of the PLO allied itself with Islamists in a common opposition against the agreements. It was rejected also by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan as well as by many Palestinian intellectuals and the local leadership of the Palestinian territories. However, the inhabitants of the territories generally accepted the agreements and Arafat's promise for peace and economic well-being.
### Establishing authority in the territories
In accordance with the terms of the Oslo agreement, Arafat was required to implement PLO authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He insisted that financial support was imperative to establishing this authority and needed it to secure the acceptance of the agreements by the Palestinians living in those areas. However, Arab states of the Persian Gulf—Arafat's usual source for financial backing—still refused to provide him and the PLO with any major donations for siding with Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Ahmed Qurei—a key Fatah negotiator during the negotiations in Oslo—publicly announced that the PLO was bankrupt.
In 1994, Arafat moved to Gaza City, which was controlled by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)—the provisional entity created by the Oslo Accords. Arafat became the President and Prime Minister of the PNA, the Commander of the PLA and the Speaker of the PLC. In July, after the PNA was declared the official government of the Palestinians, the Basic Laws of the Palestinian National Authority was published, in three different versions by the PLO. Arafat proceeded with creating a structure for the PNA. He established an executive committee or cabinet composed of twenty members. Arafat also replaced and assigned mayors and city councils for major cities such as Gaza and Nablus. He began subordinating non-governmental organizations that worked in education, health, and social affairs under his authority by replacing their elected leaders and directors with PNA officials loyal to him. He then appointed himself chairman of the Palestinian financial organization that was created by the World Bank to control most aid money towards helping the new Palestinian entity.
Arafat established a Palestinian police force, named the Preventive Security Service (PSS), that became active on 13 May 1994. It was mainly composed of PLA soldiers and foreign Palestinian volunteers. Arafat assigned Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub to head the PSS. Amnesty International accused Arafat and the PNA leadership of failing to adequately investigate abuses by the PSS (including torture and unlawful killings) against political opponents and dissidents as well as the arrests of human rights activists.
Throughout November and December 1995, Arafat toured dozens of Palestinian cities and towns that were evacuated by Israeli forces including Jenin, Ramallah, al-Bireh, Nablus, Qalqilyah and Tulkarm, declaring them "liberated". The PNA also gained control of the West Bank's postal service during this period. On 20 January 1996, Arafat was elected president of the PNA, with an overwhelming 88.2 percent majority (the other candidate was charity organizer Samiha Khalil). However, because Hamas, the DFLP and other popular opposition movements chose to boycott the presidential elections, the choices were limited. Arafat's landslide victory guaranteed Fatah 51 of the 88 seats in the PLC. After Arafat was elected to the post of President of the PNA, he was often referred to as the Ra'is, (literally president in Arabic), although he spoke of himself as "the general". In 1997, the PLC accused the executive branch of the PNA of financial mismanagement causing the resignation of four members of Arafat's cabinet. Arafat refused to resign his post.
### Other peace agreements
In mid-1996, Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister of Israel. Palestinian-Israeli relations grew even more hostile as a result of continued conflict. Despite the Israel-PLO accord, Netanyahu opposed the idea of Palestinian statehood. In 1998, US President Bill Clinton persuaded the two leaders to meet. The resulting Wye River Memorandum detailed the steps to be taken by the Israeli government and PNA to complete the peace process.
Arafat continued negotiations with Netanyahu's successor, Ehud Barak, at the Camp David 2000 Summit in July 2000. Due partly to his own politics (Barak was from the leftist Labor Party, whereas Netanyahu was from the rightist Likud Party) and partly due to insistence for compromise by President Clinton, Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in 73 percent of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian percentage of sovereignty would extend to 90 percent over a ten- to twenty-five-year period. Also included in the offer was the return of a small number of refugees and compensation for those not allowed to return. Palestinians would also have "custodianship" over Al-Aqsa, sovereignty on all Islamic and Christian holy sites, and three of Jerusalem's four Old City quarters. Arafat rejected Barak's offer and refused to make an immediate counter-offer. He told President Clinton that, "the Arab leader who would surrender Jerusalem is not born yet."
After the September 2000 outbreak of the Second Intifada, negotiations continued at the Taba summit in January 2001; this time, Ehud Barak pulled out of the talks to campaign in the Israeli elections. In October and December 2001, suicide bombings by Palestinian militant groups increased and Israeli counter strikes intensified. Following the election of Ariel Sharon in February, the peace process took a steep downfall. Palestinian elections scheduled for January 2002 were postponed—the stated reason was an inability to campaign due to the emergency conditions imposed by the Intifada, as well as IDF incursions and restrictions on freedom of movement in the Palestinian territories. In the same month, Sharon ordered Arafat to be confined to his Mukata'a headquarters in Ramallah, following an attack in the Israeli city of Hadera; US President George W. Bush supported Sharon's action, claiming that Arafat was "an obstacle to the peace."
## Political survival
Arafat's long personal and political survival was taken by most Western commentators as a sign of his mastery of asymmetric warfare and his skill as a tactician, given the extremely dangerous nature of politics of the Middle East and the frequency of assassinations. Some commentators believe his survival was largely due to Israel's fear that he could become a martyr for the Palestinian cause if he were assassinated or even arrested by Israel. Others believe that Israel refrained from taking action against Arafat because it feared Arafat less than Hamas and the other Islamist movements gaining support over Fatah. The complex and fragile web of relations between the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states contributed also to Arafat's longevity as the leader of the Palestinians.
Israel attempted to assassinate Arafat on a number of occasions, but has never used its own agents, preferring instead to "turn" Palestinians close to the intended target, usually using blackmail. According to Alan Hart, the Mossad's specialty is poison. According to Abu Iyad, two attempts were made on Arafat's life by the Israeli Mossad and the Military Directorate in 1970. In 1976, Abu Sa'ed, a Palestinian agent working for the Mossad, was enlisted in a plot to put poison pellets that looked like grains of rice in Arafat's food. Abu Iyad explains that Abu Sa'ed confessed after he received the order to go ahead, explaining that he was unable to go through with the plot because, "He was first of all a Palestinian and his conscience wouldn't let him do it." Arafat claimed in a 1988 interview with Time that because of his fear of assassination by the Israelis, he never slept in the same place two nights in a row.
### Relations with Hamas and other militant groups
Arafat's ability to adapt to new tactical and political situations was perhaps tested by the rise of the Hamas and PIJ organizations, Islamist groups espousing rejectionist policies with Israel. These groups often bombed non-military targets, such as malls and movie theaters, to increase the psychological damage and civilian casualties. In the 1990s, these groups seemed to threaten Arafat's capacity to hold together a unified nationalist organization with a goal of statehood.
An attack carried out by Hamas militants in March 2002 killed 29 Israeli civilians celebrating Passover, including many senior citizens. In response, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, a major military offensive into major West Bank cities. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, stated in September 2010 that Arafat had instructed Hamas to launch what he termed "military operations" against Israel in 2000 when Arafat felt that negotiations with Israel would not succeed.
Some Israeli government officials opined in 2002 that the armed Fatah sub-group al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades commenced attacks towards Israel in order to compete with Hamas. On 6 May 2002, the Israeli government released a report, based in part on documents, allegedly captured during the Israeli raid of Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, which allegedly included copies of papers signed by Arafat authorizing funding for al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades' activities. The report implicated Arafat in the "planning and execution of terror attacks".
### Attempts to marginalize
Persistent attempts by the Israeli government to identify another Palestinian leader to represent the Palestinian people failed. Arafat was enjoying the support of groups that, given his own history, would normally have been quite wary of dealing with or supporting him. Marwan Barghouti (a leader of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades) emerged as a possible replacement during the Second Intifada, but Israel had him arrested for allegedly being involved in the killing of twenty-six civilians, and he was sentenced to five life terms.
Arafat was finally allowed to leave his compound on 2 May 2002 after intense negotiations led to a settlement: six PFLP militants, including the organization's secretary-general Ahmad Sa'adat, wanted by Israel, who had been holed up with Arafat in his compound, would be transferred to international custody in Jericho. After the wanted men were handed over the siege was lifted. With that, and a promise that he would issue a call to the Palestinians to halt attacks on Israelis, Arafat was released. He issued such a call on 8 May. On 19 September 2002, the IDF largely demolished the compound with armored bulldozers in order to isolate Arafat. In March 2003, Arafat ceded his post as Prime Minister to Mahmoud Abbas amid pressures by the US.
The Israeli security Cabinet on 11 September 2003 decided that "Israel will act to remove this obstacle [Arafat] in the manner, at the time, and in the ways that will be decided on separately". Israeli Cabinet members and officials hinted on Arafat's death, the Israeli military had begun making preparations for Arafat's possible expulsion in the near future, and many feared for his life. Israeli peace activists of Gush Shalom, Knesset members and others went into the Presidential Compound prepared to serve as a human shield. The compound remained under siege until Arafat's transfer to a French hospital, shortly before his death.
In 2004, President Bush dismissed Arafat as a negotiating partner, saying he had "failed as a leader", and accused him of undercutting Abbas when he was prime minister (Abbas resigned the same year he was given the position). Arafat had a mixed relationship with the leaders of other Arab nations. His support from Arab leaders tended to increase whenever he was pressured by Israel; for example, when Israel declared in 2003 it had made the decision, in principle, to remove him from the Israeli-controlled West Bank. In an interview with the Arabic news network Al Jazeera, Arafat responded to Ariel Sharon's suggestion that he be exiled from the Palestinian territories permanently, by stating, "Is it his [Sharon's] homeland or ours? We were planted here before the Prophet Abraham came, but it looks like they [Israelis] don't understand history or geography."
## Financial dealings
Under the Oslo Peace Accords, Israel undertook to deposit the VAT tax receipts on goods purchased by Palestinians into the Palestinian treasury. Until 2000, these monies were transferred directly to Arafat's personal accounts at Bank Leumi, in Tel Aviv.
In August 2002, the Israeli Military Intelligence Chief alleged that Arafat's personal wealth was in the range of US\$1.3 billion. In 2003 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted an audit of the PNA and stated that Arafat had diverted \$900 million in public funds to a special bank account controlled by himself and the PNA Chief Economic Financial adviser. However, the IMF did not claim that there were any improprieties, and it specifically stated that most of the funds had been used to invest in Palestinian assets, both internally and abroad.
However, in 2003, a team of American accountants—hired by Arafat's own finance ministry—began examining Arafat's finances. In its conclusions, the team claimed that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to \$1 billion, with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands. The head of the investigation stated that "although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public." An investigation conducted by the General Accounting Office reported that Arafat and the PLO held over \$10 billion in assets even at the time when he was publicly claiming bankruptcy.
Although Arafat lived a modest lifestyle, Dennis Ross, former Middle East negotiator for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, stated that Arafat's "walking-around money" financed a vast patronage system known as neopatrimonialism. According to Salam Fayyad—a former World Bank official whom Arafat appointed Finance Minister of the PNA in 2002—Arafat's commodity monopolies could accurately be seen as gouging his own people, "especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral." Fayyad claims that Arafat used \$20 million from public funds to pay the leadership of the PNA security forces (the Preventive Security Service) alone.
Fuad Shubaki, former financial aide to Arafat, told the Israeli security service Shin Bet that Arafat used several million dollars of aid money to buy weapons and support militant groups. During Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, the Israel army recovered counterfeit money and documents from Arafat's Ramallah headquarters. The documents showed that, in 2001, Arafat personally approved payments to Tanzim militants. The Palestinians claimed that the counterfeit money was confiscated from criminal elements.
## Illness and death
### Unsuccessful Israeli assassination attempts
The Israeli government tried for decades to assassinate Arafat, including attempting to intercept and shoot down private aircraft and commercial airliners on which he was believed to be traveling. The assassination was initially assigned to Caesarea, the Mossad unit in charge of Israel's numerous targeted killings. Shooting down a commercial airliner in international airspace over very deep water was thought to be preferable to make recovery of the wreckage, and hence investigation, more difficult. Following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Israeli Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon created a special task force code named "Salt Fish" headed by special ops experts Meir Dagan and Rafi Eitan to track Arafat's movements in Lebanon to kill him because Sharon saw Arafat as a "Jew murderer" and an important symbol, symbols being as important as body counts in a war against a terrorist organization. The Salt Fish task force orchestrated the bombing of buildings where Arafat and senior PLO leaders were believed to be staying. Later renamed "Operation Goldfish", Israeli operatives followed Israeli journalist Uri Avnery to a meeting with Arafat in an additional unsuccessful attempt to kill him. In 2001, Sharon as prime minister is believed to have made a commitment to cease attempts to assassinate Arafat. However, following Israel's successful assassination in March 2004 of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a founder of the Hamas movement, Sharon stated in April 2004 that "this commitment of mine no longer exists."
### Failing health
The first reports of Arafat's failing health by his doctors for what his spokesman said was influenza came on 25 October 2004, after he vomited during a staff meeting. His condition deteriorated in the following days. Following visits by other doctors, including teams from Tunisia, Jordan, and Egypt—and agreement by Israel to allow him to travel—Arafat was flown from Ramallah to Jordan by a Jordanian military helicopter and from there to France on a French military plane. He was admitted to the Percy military hospital in Clamart, a suburb of Paris. On 3 November, he had lapsed into a gradually deepening coma.
Arafat was pronounced dead at 03:30 UTC on 11 November 2004 at the age of 75 of what French doctors called a massive hemorrhagic cerebrovascular accident (hemorrhagic stroke). Initially, Arafat's medical records were withheld by senior Palestinian officials, and Arafat's wife refused an autopsy because they were Muslim. French doctors also said that Arafat suffered from a blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, although it is inconclusive what brought about the condition. When Arafat's death was announced, the Palestinian people went into a state of mourning, with Qur'anic mourning prayers emitted from mosque loudspeakers throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and tires burned in the streets. The Palestinian Authority and refugee camps in Lebanon declared 40 days of mourning.
### Funeral
On 11 November 2004, a French Army guard of honour held a brief ceremony for Arafat, with his coffin draped in a Palestinian flag. A military band played the French and Palestinian national anthems, and a Chopin funeral march. French President Jacques Chirac stood alone beside Arafat's coffin for about ten minutes in a last show of respect for Arafat, whom he hailed as "a man of courage". The next day, Arafat's body was flown from Paris aboard a French Air Force transport plane to Cairo, Egypt, for a brief military funeral there, attended by several heads of states, prime ministers and foreign ministers. Egypt's top Muslim cleric Sayed Tantawi led mourning prayers preceding the funeral procession.
Israel refused Arafat's wish to be buried near the Masjid Al-Aqsa or anywhere in Jerusalem, citing security concerns. Israel also feared that his burial would strengthen Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem. Following the Cairo procession, Arafat was "temporarily" buried within the Mukataa in Ramallah; tens of thousands of Palestinians attended the ceremony. Arafat was buried in a stone, rather than wooden, coffin, and Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat said that Arafat would be reburied in East Jerusalem following the establishment of a Palestinian state. After Sheikh Taissir Tamimi discovered that Arafat was buried improperly and in a coffin—which is not in accordance with Islamic law—Arafat was reburied on the morning of 13 November at around 3:00 am. On 10 November 2007, prior to the third anniversary of Arafat's death, President Mahmoud Abbas unveiled a mausoleum for Arafat near his tomb in commemoration of him.
### Theories about the cause of death
Numerous theories have circulated regarding Arafat's death, with the most prominent being poisoning (possibly by polonium) and AIDS-related illnesses, as well as liver disease or a platelet disorder.
In September 2005, an Israeli AIDS expert claimed that Arafat bore all the symptoms of AIDS based on obtained medical records. But others, including Patrice Mangin of the University of Lausanne and The New York Times, disagreed with this claim, insisting that Arafat's record indicated that it was highly unlikely that the cause of his death was AIDS. Arafat's personal doctor Ashraf al-Kurdi and aide Bassam Abu Sharif maintained that Arafat was poisoned, possibly by thallium. A senior Israeli physician concluded that Arafat died from food poisoning. Both Israeli and Palestinian officials have denied claims that Arafat was poisoned. Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath ruled out poisoning after talks with Arafat's French doctors.
On 4 July 2012, Al Jazeera published the results of a nine-month investigation, which revealed that none of the causes of Arafat's death suggested in several rumors could be true. Tests carried out by a Swiss scientific experts found traces of polonium in quantities much higher than could occur naturally on Arafat's personal belongings. On 12 October 2013, the British medical journal The Lancet published a peer-reviewed article by the Swiss experts about the analysis of the 38 samples of Arafat's clothes and belongings and 37 reference samples which were known to be polonium-free, suggesting that Arafat could have died of polonium poisoning.
On 27 November 2012, three teams of international investigators, a French, a Swiss, and a Russian team, collected samples from Arafat's body and the surrounding soil in the mausoleum in Ramallah, to carry out an investigation independently from each other.
On 6 November 2013, Al Jazeera reported that the Swiss forensic team had found levels of polonium in Arafat's ribs and pelvis 18 to 36 times the average. According to the Swiss expert team (including notably experts in radio-chemistry, radio-physics and legal medicine), on a probability scale ranging from one to six, death by polonium poisoning is around five. While Al Jazeera reported that the scientist were "confident up to an 83 percent level" that polonium poisoning occurred, but Francois Bochud (the head of the Swiss team) clarified to Al Jazeera that this is not the case and that the scale does not allow a simple division like this; he stated only that the poisoning hypothesis by polonium is "reasonably supported". Forensic Biologist Nathan Lents of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the report's results are consistent with a possible polonium poisoning, but "There's certainly not a smoking gun here." Derek Hill, a professor in radiological science at University College London who was not involved in the investigation, said "I would say it's clearly not overwhelming proof, and there is a risk of contamination (of the samples), but it is a pretty strong signal. ... It seems likely what they're doing is putting a very cautious interpretation of strong data."
On 26 December 2013, a team of Russian scientists released a report saying they had found no trace of radioactive poisoning—a finding that came after the French report found traces of the radioactive isotope polonium. Vladimir Uiba, the head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, said that Arafat died of natural causes and the agency had no plans to conduct further tests. Unlike the Swiss report, the French and Russian reports were not made public, at the time. The Swiss experts read the French and Russian reports and argued that the radiologic data measured by the other teams supported their conclusions of a probable death by polonium poisoning. In March 2015, a French prosecutor closed a 2012 French inquiry, stating that French experts had determined Arafat's death was of natural causes, and that the polonium and lead traces found were environmental.
## Legacy
Places named in his honor include:
- Martyr Yasser Arafat Governmental Hospital
- Yasser Arafat Cup
- Yasser Arafat International Airport
## See also
- List of Fatah members
- List of international trips made by Yasser Arafat
- Nobel Prize controversies
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Madman's Drum
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1930 wordless novel by Lynd Ward
|
[
"1930 American novels",
"Wordless novels by Lynd Ward"
] |
Madman's Drum is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985), published in 1930. It is the second of Ward's six wordless novels. The 118 wood-engraved images of Madman's Drum tell the story of a slave trader who steals a demon-faced drum from an African he murders, and the consequences for him and his family.
Ward's first wordless novel was Gods' Man of 1929. Ward was more ambitious with his second work in the medium: the characters are more nuanced, the plot more developed and complicated, and the outrage at social injustice more explicit. Ward used a wider variety of carving tools to achieve a finer degree of detail in the artwork, and was expressive in his use of symbolism and exaggerated emotional facial expressions.
The book was well received upon release, and the success of Ward's first two wordless novels encouraged publishers to publish more books in the genre. In 1943 psychologist Henry Murray used two images from the work in his Thematic Apperception Test of personality traits. Madman's Drum is considered less successfully executed than Gods' Man, and Ward streamlined his work in his next wordless novel, Wild Pilgrimage (1932).
## Synopsis
A slave trader condemns his family to the curse of a demon-faced drum he steals from an African. The slave trader becomes rich and buys a mansion for his family, in which he displays the drum and the sword he used to kill the drum's original owner. He catches his son playing on the drum, beats the boy, and insists he read and study. The slave trader is lost at sea when he tries to return to Africa.
The boy devotes himself to study, while distancing himself from the vices of his peers. He embraces and then rejects religion, and a cross he tosses to the floor trips and kills his mother. He becomes a successful scientist, and in middle age marries and has two daughters, but is cold and indifferent to his family. One by one he loses them: his wife dies after having an affair with a musician, one daughter falls into depression when her labor-organizer lover is framed and hanged for murder, and the other daughter falls in love with a man who pimps her to others. Driven insane by the loss of all who were close to him, he equips himself with the forbidden drum to play music with a leering piper who has roamed his grounds for years.
## Background
Lynd Ward (1905–1985) was born in Chicago to Methodist minister Harry F. Ward, a social activist and the first chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union. Throughout his career, the younger Ward's work displayed the influence of his father's interest in social injustice. He was drawn to art from an early age, and contributed images and text to high school and college newspapers.
After getting a university degree in fine arts in 1926, Ward married writer May McNeer and the couple left for an extended honeymoon in Europe. Ward spent a year studying wood engraving in Leipzig, Germany, where he encountered German Expressionist art and read the wordless novel The Sun (1919) by Flemish woodcut artist Frans Masereel (1889–1972). Ward returned to the United States and freelanced his illustrations. In New York City in 1929, he came across the wordless novel Destiny (1926) by German artist Otto Nückel (1888–1955). Nückel's only work in the genre, Destiny told of the life and death of a prostitute in a style inspired by Masereel's, but with a greater cinematic flow. The work inspired Ward to create a wordless novel of his own: Gods' Man (1929). In his second such work, Madman's Drum, he hoped to explore more deeply the potential of the narrative medium, and to overcome what he saw as a lack of individuality in the characters in Gods' Man.
## Production and publishing history
Ward made 118 woodcuts for Madman's Drum. The black-and-white images are not uniform in size—they measure from 4 by 3 inches (10.2 cm × 7.6 cm) to 5 by 4 inches (13 cm × 10 cm). Cape & Smith published the book in October 1930 in trade and deluxe editions, the latter in a signed edition limited to 309 copies. Jonathon Cape published the book in the UK in 1930. It had a Japanese publication in 2002 by , and in 2005 Dover Publications brought it back into print as a standalone edition in the US. It appeared in the collected volume Storyteller Without Words: The Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward in 1974, and again in 2010 in the Library of America collection Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts, edited by cartoonist Art Spiegelman. The original woodblocks are in the Lynd Ward Collection in the Joseph Mark Lauinger Memorial Library at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
## Style and analysis
Madman's Drum is a more ambitious work than Gods' Man, with a larger cast of characters and more complicated plot. The book is more explicit in its far-leftist politics, and includes a subplot in which the main character's sister's communist lover is executed for his political beliefs. Late in life Ward described it as "set a hundred years or more ago ... in an obviously foreign land", but that the story's situation and characters could be encountered "almost anywhere at any time".
The art has a variety of line qualities and textures, and more detail than in Gods' Man. Ward availed himself of a larger variety of engraving tools, such as the multiple-tint tool for making groups of parallel lines, and rounded engraving tools for organic textures. The large cast of characters is distinguished by visual details in faces and clothing, such as the main character's sharp nose and receding hairline and his wife's checked dress.
A wide range of emotions such as resentment and terror is expressed through exaggerated facial expressions. Ward broadens his use of visual symbolism, as with a young woman's purity represented by a flower she wears—she is deflowered by a young man whose vest is adorned with flowers. His house also displays a floral stucco pattern and is adorned with phallic spears and an exultant rooster as a weathervane. To French comics scripter , the "madman" in the title could be interpreted as any of a number of its characters: the laughing image adorning the drum, the subdued African, the slave trader, and even Ward himself.
## Reception and legacy
On its release in 1930, the book received mixed reviews, though it sold quite well on the heels of Gods' Man. The success of Ward's first two wordless novels led American publishers to put out a number of similar books, including Nückel's Destiny in 1930, as well as books by Americans and other Europeans. Interest in wordless novels was short-lived, however, and few besides Masereel and Ward produced more than a single work. Each of Ward's six books sold fewer copies than the previous one, and he abandoned the genre in 1940 after an attempt at a seventh. In 1943 psychologist Henry Murray used two images from Madman's Drum in his Thematic Apperception Test of personality traits.
A reviewer for The Burlington Magazine in 1931 judged the book a failed experiment, finding the artwork uneven and the narrative hard to follow without even the chapter titles of Gods' Man. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman considers Ward's second wordless novel a "sophomore slump", whose story is bogged down by Ward's attempt to flesh out the characters and produce a more complicated plot. He believes the book has strengths and weaknesses: it has stronger compositions, but the more finely engraved images are "harder to read", and the death of the wife and other plot points are unclear and difficult to interpret. By contrast, Grant Scott argues that "the novel serves as a major and largely successful attempt to push images as far as they will go in the direction of the semantic, lapidary complexity of the modernist novel” , and Jérôme LeGlatin sees Madman's Drum as Ward's first masterpiece, " at every fault, in each failure" as Ward freed himself from the restraint displayed in Gods' Man.
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UEFA Euro 2016 final
| 1,161,493,232 |
European football tournament final match
|
[
"France at UEFA Euro 2016",
"France national football team matches",
"France–Portugal relations",
"International association football competitions hosted by Paris",
"July 2016 sports events in France",
"Portugal at UEFA Euro 2016",
"Portugal national football team matches",
"Sport in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis",
"UEFA Euro 2016",
"UEFA European Championship finals"
] |
The UEFA Euro 2016 Final was the final match of Euro 2016, the fifteenth edition of the European Football Championship, UEFA's quadrennial competition for national football teams. The match was played at the Stade de France in Paris, France, on 10 July 2016, and was contested by Portugal and France. The 24-team tournament began with a group stage, from which 16 teams qualified for the knockout phase. En route to the final, Portugal finished third in Group F, with draws against Iceland, Austria and Hungary. Portugal then defeated Croatia in the last 16 before beating Poland in the quarter-final after a penalty shoot-out. They progressed to the final after beating Wales in the semi-final. France finished the group stage as winners of Group A, beating Romania and Albania before drawing with Switzerland. In the knockout rounds, France defeated the Republic of Ireland and Iceland before beating Germany in the semi-final.
The final took place in front of 75,868 spectators and was refereed by English official Mark Clattenburg. Midway through the first half, Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo was taken off the pitch on a stretcher injured and was replaced by Ricardo Quaresma, leaving Nani playing alone upfront. The first half ended goalless and neither side made any changes to their playing personnel during the interval. Despite opportunities to score for both sides, regular time ended 0–0 and the match went into extra time. The game remained goalless, and three minutes into the second period of additional time, Raphaël Guerreiro's free kick from around 25 yards (23 m) struck the underside of the France crossbar. A minute later, Portugal took the lead through Eder: his low shot from 25 yards (23 m) beat France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris. After two minutes of stoppage time, the final whistle was blown and Portugal won the match 1–0, to claim their first major tournament title.
Portugal's Pepe was named man of the match, and France's Antoine Griezmann received the player of the tournament award. In winning the final, Portugal became the tenth different nation to win the European Championship, twelve years after losing their first final, at home in the 2004 tournament. France became the second host team to lose the final, after Portugal, and suffered their first defeat at a major tournament hosted in the country since the 1960 European Nations' Cup third-place playoff against Czechoslovakia. This was the fifth European Championship final to end in a draw after 90 minutes of play, and the second whose winners were decided by extra time, after the inaugural final in 1960. As the winners, Portugal gained entry into their first FIFA Confederations Cup, which was played in Russia in 2017.
## Background
UEFA Euro 2016 was the fifteenth edition of the European Football Championship, UEFA's football competition for national teams, held between 10 June and 10 July 2016 in France. Qualifying rounds were held between September 2014 and November 2015, in which 53 teams were divided into nine groups of five or six, playing each other on a home-and-away round-robin tournament basis. The top two teams in each group, along with France, the host team, qualified for the finals, as did Turkey who had the best third-place record. The remaining four places were determined via two-legged play-offs involving the other eight third-placed teams. In the final tournament, the 24 teams were divided into six groups of four with each team playing each other once within the group. The two top teams from each group along with the four best third-placed sides advanced to a knock-out phase.
France had previously played in two European Championship finals, winning as tournament hosts against Spain in 1984, and via a golden goal against Italy in the Netherlands in 2000. Portugal had played in one prior final, losing to Greece in their own country in 2004. The two teams had previously met 24 times, their first encounter taking place in 1926 when France won 4–2 in Toulouse. Before the final, France had won eighteen of those meetings, Portugal five, and with one draw. Portugal's last victory was in a 1975 friendly in France, after which France won all ten of the subsequent meetings. All three of their previous competitive meetings – in the semi-finals of Euro 1984, Euro 2000, and the 2006 FIFA World Cup – had been French victories. At the start of the tournament, Portugal were listed in eighth place in the FIFA World Rankings, while France were seventeenth.
The final was held at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris. The announcement of the venue was made by UEFA, along with the full tournament schedule, on 25 April 2014, following a meeting held in Paris. The French capital had hosted the finals of two previous European Championships, in 1960 and 1984, both at the Parc des Princes. A UEFA Category Four stadium, the Stade de France is the sixth-largest stadium in Europe and was the largest venue of Euro 2016, with a maximum capacity for the tournament of 80,000. The final was the seventh match played in the stadium at Euro 2016, which included the tournament's opening game between France and Romania.
## Route to the final
### Portugal
After qualifying for Euro 2016 as winners of Group I with seven wins and a defeat in their eight matches, Portugal were drawn in Group F for the finals tournament. Their first group game was against Iceland at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Étienne on 14 June. Gylfi Sigurðsson had two early chances to put Iceland ahead but both shots were saved by Portugal goalkeeper Rui Patrício, before Nani gave Portugal the lead in the 31st minute after a cross from André Gomes. Five minutes into the second half, Iceland equalised when Birkir Bjarnason scored from a Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson cross that had been missed by Portugal's Vieirinha. Despite having the majority of the possession and more shots throughout the match, Portugal were unable to retake the lead and the game ended 1–1. Portugal's second opponents were Austria at the Parc des Princes four days later. The first half ended goalless, but late in the second half, Portugal were awarded a penalty kick. Cristiano Ronaldo, who became his country's most-capped player in that game, was fouled in Austria's penalty area by defender Martin Hinteregger but missed the penalty, striking the foot of the goalpost. He also had a header disallowed for offside and the match ended 0–0.
In their final group match, Portugal faced Hungary at the Parc Olympique Lyonnais in Décines-Charpieu on 22 June. Zoltán Gera gave Hungary the lead in the 19th minute with a volley, before Nani struck a low shot past Gábor Király in the Hungary goal following a pass from Ronaldo to level the scores. Balázs Dzsudzsák restored Hungary's lead two minutes after half-time with a deflected shot, only for Ronaldo to make it 2–2 three minutes later. Dzsudzsák scored his second deflected strike in the 55th minute, but Ronaldo equalised once again, this time with a header in the 60th minute. The match ended 3–3, and with a late winning goal from Iceland against Austria, Portugal ended the group stage in third place. Only four of the six third-placed teams qualified; Portugal were ranked third of the six and progressed along with Slovakia, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
In the round of 16, Portugal faced Group D winners Croatia at the Stade Bollaert-Delelis in Lens on 25 June. The match was described by the BBC Sport's Saj Chowdhury as "a turgid affair", and noted as a game that "won't live long in anyone's memory" by Barry Glendenning in The Guardian. Regular time ended goalless without a single shot in the first 24 minutes, a European Championship record. With three minutes of extra time remaining, Ronaldo's shot was kept out by Danijel Subašić, the Croatia goalkeeper, but Ricardo Quaresma headed in the rebound from close range to give Portugal a 1–0 victory.
Portugal's quarter-final opponents, at the Stade Vélodrome in Marseille on 30 June, were Poland, who took an early lead when Kamil Grosicki's cross was struck into the Portugal goal by Robert Lewandowski within the opening two minutes, the second-fastest goal scored in the history of the tournament at the time. With 17 minutes of the first half remaining, Renato Sanches played a one-two with Nani and struck a shot that deflected off Grzegorz Krychowiak into the Poland goal to level the scores at 1–1. The second half of the match was goalless, as were the two halves of extra time, so the game went to a penalty shoot-out. Ronaldo, Sanches and João Moutinho scored their penalties for Portugal, while Lewandowski, Arkadiusz Milik and Kamil Glik replied for Poland to make it 3–3. Nani then put Portugal ahead before Jakub Błaszczykowski's strike was saved by Rui Patrício. Quaresma scored Portugal's fifth penalty to seal the win and progression to the semi-finals.
Portugal returned to the Parc Olympique Lyonnais on 6 July to face Wales, who were participating in their first major tournament since the 1958 FIFA World Cup. After a goalless first half, Portugal took the lead five minutes after the interval, when Ronaldo headed past Wayne Hennessey, the Wales goalkeeper, following a short corner. Three minutes later, Nani diverted a long-range shot from Ronaldo past Hennessey to give Portugal a 2–0 victory and progression to the UEFA European Championship final.
### France
Having qualified for Euro 2016 automatically as hosts, France were placed in Group A for the finals. In their first group match, they faced Romania at the Stade de France on 10 June. Antoine Griezmann came closest to scoring in a goalless first half when he struck the Romania goalpost with a header. Thirteen minutes into the second half, France took the lead when Olivier Giroud headed in Dimitri Payet's cross. Seven minutes later, Patrice Evra fouled Romania's Nicolae Stanciu in the France penalty area and Bogdan Stancu levelled the scores from the resulting penalty kick. With a minute of the match remaining, Payet scored from 20 yards (18 m) to give France a 2–1 victory.
France's next opponents were Albania, against whom they played five days later at the Stade Vélodrome. Albania defended well and came close to taking the lead when Ledian Memushaj's shot hit the post. France scored in the last minute of normal time with the game's first shot on target when Griezmann headed in Adil Rami's cross. Six minutes into stoppage time and with the final kick of the match, Payet scored and France won 2–0. In their final group match, France played Switzerland at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Villeneuve-d'Ascq on 19 June. Paul Pogba hit the frame of Switzerland's goal twice, while Payet also hit the crossbar. Bacary Sagna pulled the shirt of Switzerland's Blerim Džemaili in stoppage time in France's penalty area but no penalty was awarded, and the match ended 0–0. France ended as Group A winners and progressed to the round of 16.
France faced the third-placed team from Group E, the Republic of Ireland, at the Parc Olympique Lyonnais on 26 June. In the second minute, Pogba fouled Shane Long in the France penalty area and Robbie Brady scored the resulting penalty to give the Republic of Ireland a 1–0 lead. Griezmann scored the equaliser with a header for France twelve minutes after half-time, before scoring his second four minutes later to make it 2–1. Shane Duffy was shown a red card in the 66th minute for a professional foul on Griezmann and although France won the match 2–1, both Rami and N'Golo Kanté were unavailable in the next round, having picked up two bookings in the tournament.
France's quarter-final opponents were Iceland, who had knocked out England in the previous round. Giroud put France into the lead after 12 minutes with a low shot before Pogba doubled his side's advantage with a header eight minutes later. Payet scored in the 43rd minute with a low shot from around 30 yards (27 m), before Griezmann increased the lead further with a lob over Hannes Þór Halldórsson, the Iceland goalkeeper, to make it 4–0 just before half-time. Kolbeinn Sigþórsson scored for Iceland eleven minutes after the interval, before Giroud restored France's four-goal lead with a header from a Payet free kick. Bjarnason scored a headed goal with six minutes of the match remaining, but that proved to be the final goal as the game ended 5–2.
In the semi-finals, France faced Germany, the 2014 FIFA World Cup winners, at the Stade Vélodrome on 7 July in a rematch of the 2014 World Cup quarter-final (won 1–0 by Germany). Two minutes into first-half stoppage time, Bastian Schweinsteiger was adjudged to have handled the ball when he challenged Evra in the penalty area, and Griezmann scored the resulting penalty to give France a 1–0 lead at half-time. With 18 minutes of the match remaining, Griezmann scored from close range after Manuel Neuer had failed to clear a cross from Pogba. Joshua Kimmich almost pulled a goal back for Germany, but his shot hit the frame of the France goal and his header on the rebound was saved by Hugo Lloris. The match ended 2–0 to give France their first victory over Germany in a major tournament since the 1958 FIFA World Cup.
## Pre-match
The official match ball for the knockout phase and final was the Adidas Fracas, provided by German sports equipment company Adidas. Announced during the tournament, the ball was officially launched on 20 June. This was the first time a match ball was not used exclusively for the final, and the first time multiple ball designs were used throughout the tournament (excluding the final).
On 8 July 2016, the UEFA Referees Committee announced the officiating team, led by 41-year-old English referee Mark Clattenburg of The Football Association. His compatriots Simon Beck and Jake Collin were chosen as assistant referees, and fellow Englishmen Anthony Taylor and Andre Marriner the additional assistants. Hungarian Viktor Kassai was chosen as the fourth official, and his fellow countryman György Ring as the reserve assistant. Clattenburg became the second official to referee both a UEFA Champions League final and European Championship final in the same season, after Pedro Proença in 2012. This made it a hat-trick of cup finals for Clattenburg, after the 2016 FA Cup Final and the 2016 UEFA Champions League Final, all within a seven-week span. Clattenburg, FIFA-listed since 2007 and a UEFA Elite referee, also officiated the 2012 Olympics gold medal match and the 2014 UEFA Super Cup. He became the first English European Championship final referee since Arthur Holland in 1964. The match was Clattenburg's fourth appointment at Euro 2016.
In the hours leading up to the final, there were clashes between fans trying to access the Eiffel Tower fan zone and police attempting to prevent overcrowding. Police carried out a controlled explosion on a package left near the stadium complex, while fans set litter bins alight. The disruption was under control by the second half, but after the match, fights broke out between fans outside the stadium. Police advised people not to travel to the Eiffel Tower or the Champs-Élysées as the area was not safe.
Before the start of the match, the closing ceremony was held at 8:45 p.m. It featured 600 dancers and a live rendition of "Seven Nation Army" by various musicians including members of the Paris Fire Brigade, the French Republican Guard, and the Choir of Radio France, before French DJ David Guetta and Swedish singer Zara Larsson performed the official tournament song "This One's for You". Before the match started, the stadium was invaded by silver Y moths, which caused some irritation to the players, staff and coaches. Workers at the stadium had left the lights switched on the day before the match which attracted huge swaths of insects. The players and coaches of each team during the warm-up tried swatting the moths, and ground staff used brushes to clean moths from the walls, ground and other areas.
France's starting line-up was unchanged from the semi-final, while Portugal brought back Pepe and William Carvalho, who missed the semi-final through injury and suspension respectively, for Bruno Alves and Danilo. France adopted a 4–2–3–1 formation while Portugal played as a 4–1–3–2. Before the match, Portugal's manager, Fernando Santos reacted to the criticism his side had received during the tournament, stating "I want it to continue ... I want us to win [the final] without deserving it!"
## Match
### Summary
#### First half
Portugal kicked off the final at around 9:00 p.m. CEST on 10 July 2016 in front of an attendance of 75,868, in sunny conditions with a temperature of 28 °C (82 °F) and 38% humidity. After early mistakes from both José Fonte and Carvalho, in the fourth minute, Cédric Soares sent a long pass to Nani whose shot went over the France crossbar from 15 yards (14 m). Two minutes later, a header out from Fonte fell to France's Moussa Sissoko whose volley was off-target before Griezmann struck a half-volley wide of the Portugal goal. In the eighth minute, Payet put in a strong tackle on Ronaldo who subsequently appeared to be in pain. In the 10th minute, a mistake from Pepe allowed Payet to cross for Griezmann whose header was saved by Rui Patrício. Giroud's attempt to score from the subsequent corner was also saved by the Portugal goalkeeper. In the 18th minute, Ronaldo left the pitch for medical attention and returned after a period of Portugal possession with a strapped knee before Sissoko struck a shot that was deflected just over the crossbar. Midway through the half João Mário volleyed wide of the France goal before Ronaldo, taken off the pitch on a stretcher, was substituted for Quaresma, and Portugal changed to a 4–1–4–1 formation with Nani playing alone upfront. In the 34th minute, Sissoko nutmegged Adrien Silva before striking a shot which was kept out by Rui Patrício. Cédric was then shown a yellow card for a foul on Payet. Three minutes later, Nani passed to Adrien Silva who was tackled in the France penalty area. From the resulting corner, Fonte headed over the crossbar. With four minutes of the half remaining, Payet's shot was blocked by Pepe. Two minutes into stoppage time, João Mario’s cross towards Nani passed wide of the far post and the half ended goalless.
#### Second half
Neither side made any changes to their playing personnel during the interval and France kicked off the second half. Four minutes in, Sissoko fouled Pepe, who then dispossessed Payet before he could shoot. In the 53rd minute, France won a corner after a clearance from Pepe which Rui Patrício caught on the second attempt. Pogba then struck a shot high over the Portugal crossbar from around 30 yards (27 m). There was a brief delay to the match while a pitch invader was removed by security. In the 56th minute, João Mario's cross was headed behind by Samuel Umtiti and Quaresma's subsequent corner was headed clear by Evra. Three minutes later, France made their first substitution of the game with Kingsley Coman coming on to replace Payet. Coman's first significant contribution was to pass to Griezmann whose shot was caught by Rui Patrício. In the 62nd minute, João Mario was shown the yellow card for tripping Giroud and four minutes later Pogba's pass found Coman who sent in a cross which Griezmann headed wide from 6 yards (5.5 m).
Portugal then made their second substitution, with João Moutinho replacing Adrien Silva. With 17 minutes remaining, Coman played a one-two with Giroud but Coman's cross into the Portugal penalty area failed to find any of his teammates. Two minutes later, Coman passed the ball to Giroud in the Portugal box who struck it low but his shot was saved by Rui Patrício. In the 78th minute, both sides made their third substitutions, André-Pierre Gignac coming on for Giroud, and Eder replacing Renato Sanches. Nani's mis-hit cross was pushed away by Lloris before he caught Quaresma's subsequent overhead kick. Umtiti was then booked and Nani's 25-yard (23 m) left-footed strike went over the France crossbar. In the 84th minute, Sissoko ran with the ball, shooting from around 25 yards (23 m), but his strike was kept out by Rui Patrício. Two minutes into stoppage time, Evra played in a low cross to Gignac, who beat Pepe and struck the ball against the inside of the Portugal goalpost. Regular time ended with the score still 0–0 and the match proceeded into extra time.
#### Extra time
France kicked off the first half of extra time and four minutes in, Eder won a free-kick after being fouled by Umtiti. Quaresma sent in a curling pass from around 35 yards (32 m) and Pepe headed it wide although he was offside. Raphaël Guerreiro was then booked for a foul on Sissoko before Blaise Matuidi was shown the yellow card for fouling Eder. Carvalho was booked a minute later for a professional foul on Coman. A minute before half time, Portugal won a corner which was taken by Quaresma. Eder headed the ball goalwards and Lloris pushed it away before his defence cleared it. Three minutes into the second half, Laurent Koscielny was shown the yellow card for handball (although television replays appeared to show the ball had actually struck Eder's hand) and Guerreiro's subsequent free kick from around 25 yards (23 m) struck the underside of the France crossbar. A minute later, Portugal took the lead through Eder: he received the ball, held off Koscielny before running infield, and struck it from 25 yards (23 m) with a low shot that beat Lloris to his right. France immediately brought on Anthony Martial to replace Sissoko. Rui Patrício then caught a cross from Evra before Nani shot high after Portugal had made a break from a France corner. In the 114th minute, Pogba was booked for pushing João Mario. With four minutes remaining, Nani's cross was cleared by Sagna, who also made a tackle on João Mario in the final minute of extra time. After two minutes of stoppage time, the final whistle was blown and Portugal won the match 1–0.
### Details
### Statistics
## Post-match
Portugal's Pepe was named man of the match. ESPN said that the winning strike was "brilliantly taken" and "one that deserved to win any final". Griezmann was given the player of the tournament award, and six players, four from Portugal and two from France, were named in the UEFA team of the tournament. The match was Portugal's first competitive win against France, first overall win against France since 1975, and gave Portugal their first major trophy. The win also qualified Portugal for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia, marking their first appearance in the competition, and the first time that three countries from the same confederation participated in the competition (hosts Russia, world champions Germany, and European champions Portugal).
In winning the final, Portugal became the tenth different nation to win the European Championship, twelve years after losing their first final at home in the 2004 tournament. France became the second host team to lose the final, after Portugal in 2004. This was the fifth European Championship final to end in a draw after 90 minutes of play and the first to finish goalless. It was also the second whose winners were decided by extra time, after the inaugural final in 1960.
Signed from Benfica a few weeks before the tournament, Bayern Munich's Renato Sanches became the youngest player to win the European Championship at 18 years and 328 days. Sanches was later named the Young Player of the Tournament by UEFA. Ronaldo described the victory as "one of the happiest moments of my career ... This is a unique moment for me. It's unforgettable." Portugal manager Santos praised the Portugal supporters, suggesting they had "lifted our souls", and reflected on Eder: "The ugly duckling scored! Now he's the beautiful swan!" He remarked that his team were "as simple as doves, and as wise as serpents." His counterpart, Didier Deschamps, was downcast, noting "the overriding emotion is huge disappointment. It's cruel to lose the final like that." He remarked that "we've missed a unique opportunity to win a Euros in our own country. There are no words." His captain, Lloris, explained that his side had not made the best of their opportunities but was magnanimous in defeat, praising his opposition: "We need to congratulate Portugal as they were very strong mentally throughout the tournament."
Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Notícias suggested the victory was "the greatest moment in the history of Portuguese football", and A Bola announced every Portugal player to be a "hero". France's L'Équipe declared that they were "devastated" and viewed the future of the side with pessimism, suggesting "it's far from certain that they will bounce back quickly". Le Parisien took solace from the fact that Griezmann ended the tournament as top scorer, with the highest total since Michel Platini in Euro 1984. Diario AS in Spain criticised Portugal's approach, suggesting they "certainly didn't play football to go down in the annals of the beautiful game" while Italy's Corriere della Sera reported that "they fully deserved this triumph". Le Monde later reported that the tournament had generated €1.22 billion in revenue to the country in contrast to the cost of hosting it, estimated at less than €200 million. The same publication listed the 2016 final as 10th in its top 30 Euro matches.
In the next international tournament, the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Portugal were eliminated in the first knockout round by Uruguay, after finishing the group stage in second place behind Spain. France, led once again by Deschamps, won the tournament, beating Croatia 4–2 in the final. Portugal failed to defend their European Championship title at UEFA Euro 2020, losing to Belgium in the round of 16, and France were also eliminated at that stage, suffering defeat to Switzerland in a penalty shoot-out.
## See also
- France–Portugal football rivalry
- France at the UEFA European Championship
- Portugal at the UEFA European Championship
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36,448,046 |
Bernard Bosanquet (cricketer)
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English cricketer
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Bernard James Tindal Bosanquet (13 October 1877 – 12 October 1936) was an English cricketer best known for inventing the googly, a delivery designed to deceive the batsman. When bowled, it appears to be a leg break, but after pitching the ball turns in the opposite direction to that which is expected, behaving as an off break instead. Bosanquet, who played first-class cricket for Middlesex between 1898 and 1919, appeared in seven Test matches for England as an all-rounder. He was chosen as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1905.
Bosanquet played cricket for Eton College from 1891 to 1896, before gaining his Blue at Oriel College, Oxford. He was a moderately successful batsman who bowled at fast-medium pace for Oxford University between 1898 and 1900. As a student, he made several appearances for Middlesex and achieved a regular place in the county side as an amateur. While playing a tabletop game, Bosanquet devised a new technique for delivering a ball, later named the "googly", which he practised during his time at Oxford. He first used it in cricket matches around 1900, abandoning his faster style of bowling, but it was not until 1903, when he had a successful season with the ball, that his new delivery began to attract attention. Having gone on several minor overseas tours, Bosanquet was selected in 1903–04 for the fully representative Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) tour of Australia. During that tour, he made his Test debut for England and although he largely failed as a batsman, he performed well as a bowler and troubled all the opposing batsmen with his googly.
More success followed; in the 1904 season, he took more than 100 wickets and his bowling career peaked when he took eight wickets for 107 runs in the first Test against Australia in 1905 to bowl England to victory. However, he never mastered control of good length bowling and remained an erratic performer. After 1905, Bosanquet's bowling went into decline; he practically gave it up and made fewer first-class appearances owing to his business interests. After taking part in the First World War in the Royal Flying Corps, he married and had a son, Reginald Bosanquet, who later became a television newsreader. He died in 1936, aged 58.
## Early life
Bosanquet was born in Bulls Cross, Enfield, Middlesex, on 13 October 1877. He was one of five children of Bernard Tindal Bosanquet and his wife Eva Maude Cotton, daughter of Sir William James Richmond Cotton; Bosanquet had a younger brother and three sisters. His younger brother Nicolas Edmund Tindal Bosanquet also played cricket for Eton. Many of his relations were well known in their fields, including his uncle and namesake Bernard Bosanquet the philosopher. His grandfather, James Whatman Bosanquet, was a banker and achieved distinction as a biblical historian. His father worked for the banking firm Bosanquet & Co., and became a partner in a firm of hide, leather, and fur brokers in London; he was also High Sheriff of Middlesex from 1897 to 1898 and captained Enfield cricket club. His great-grandfather, Sir Nicolas Conyngham Tindal, was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas between 1829 and 1846.
After going to Sunnymede School in Slough, Bosanquet attended Eton College between 1891 and 1896. While at Eton, he received cricket coaching from the Surrey professionals Maurice Read and Bill Brockwell. They improved his play to the point where he played for the cricket first eleven in 1896. Against Winchester College, he took three wickets and scored 29 not out in the second innings, while at Lord's Cricket Ground against Harrow School, Bosanquet scored 120 runs in 140 minutes. At this time, he bowled fast-medium pace, while as a batsman he had developed, in the words of his obituary in The Times, "a rather curious, wristless style; stiff and yet powerful".
## Oxford University
In 1897, Bosanquet went to Oriel College, Oxford, and although he left in 1900 without completing a degree, he recorded many sporting accomplishments. Making his first-class debut in 1898 for Oxford University against a team selected by Middlesex captain A. J. Webbe, he had little batting success during the season, having a top score of 17 runs. He was more productive with the ball, twice taking five wickets in an innings for Oxford, and was awarded his cricket Blue. Selected for the University Match, he made 54 not out, his highest score of the season. He later made two appearances for Middlesex, but did not distinguish himself, scoring 17 runs and taking no wickets. In all first-class matches in 1898, Bosanquet scored 168 runs at a batting average of 14.00 and took 30 wickets at a bowling average of 18.70. At the end of the season, he joined a team led by Plum Warner which toured America, where he had further success as a bowler.
Bosanquet improved his record for Oxford in 1899, scoring two fifties and taking five wickets on three occasions before the University match. Against Cambridge, he failed with the bat but took seven wickets for 89 runs in the first innings. Bosanquet's record earned him selection for the Gentlemen against the Players; in this prestigious match he took only one wicket but scored 61 runs. He played another two matches for Middlesex and ended the season with a batting record of 419 runs in all matches, at an average of 27.93, and 55 wickets at 22.72. He played some end of season non-first-class matches for I Zingari, taking 16 wickets in a game against Ireland, and went on another tour of America, led by K. S. Ranjitsinhji.
Bosanquet's final season for Oxford was his best statistically. He scored his maiden first-class century against London County and, against Sussex, he recorded what were to be the best bowling figures of his career, taking nine for 31 in the second innings and a total of 15 wickets in the game for 65 runs. His final match for Oxford was the 1900 University match, in which he scored 42 and 23. For the remainder of the season, Bosanquet re-joined Middlesex, and in his second match, against Leicestershire, achieved the rare distinction of a century in each innings: 136 in 110 minutes in the first innings, followed by 139 in 170 minutes in the second. He scored three further fifties for Middlesex and once took five wickets in an innings, but bowled comparatively rarely, only once bowling more than 13 overs in an innings. In all first-class matches in the season, Bosanquet scored 1,026 runs at 34.20 and took 50 wickets at 23.20.
In all his matches for Oxford, Bosanquet scored 801 runs at an average of 25.03 and took 112 wickets at an average of 19.49. In other sports, he received half-Blues for hammer-throwing and billiards, and also played ice hockey.
## Developing the googly
### Genesis
Bosanquet is remembered as the inventor of the googly, a delivery designed to deceive the batsman. When bowled, it appears to be a leg break, but after pitching the ball turns in the opposite direction to that expected, behaving as an off break instead. However, Bosanquet was a pace bowler in his university days. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack described his bowling from this period as "very useful ... but that was all, and had he kept to his original style real distinction at cricket would only have come to him through his batting". Furthermore, he disliked bowling quickly, believing he was destined only to be used as a last resort and that he would have little success as a fast bowler. Consequently, Bosanquet decided to change his style. According to his own account, his inspiration came in the mid-1890s, from a table-top game he often played called Twisti-Twosti; the object was to bounce a tennis ball on a table so that it could not be caught by an opposing player. Bosanquet began to experiment with ways of throwing the ball so that, after pitching, it turned and spun in an unexpected direction, without his opponent detecting any difference in the delivery. Finding he could do this successfully, he began to practise using the same method to bowl in a form of soft-ball cricket and then in the cricket nets with a hard ball, but did not at the time take his discovery seriously. It was not until 1899 or 1900 that Bosanquet began to practise in earnest, and developed an orthodox leg break in the nets to complement his new style of delivery, which spun in the same direction as an off break. During the lunch breaks in Oxford matches, he would often bowl to the best opposing batsmen in the nets, delivering several leg breaks, followed by an off break, without changing his bowling action; the ball would sometimes hit the bemused batsman on the knee, to the amusement of spectators. A slightly different version of events was provided by the son of Louise Bosanquet, Bernard's cousin, who claimed in 1965 that Bosanquet conceived the idea in 1890 and practised bowling to Louise with a tennis ball from 1893 onwards. There were later suggestions that other cricketers invented the googly before Bosanquet. In 1935, Jack Hobbs wrote that Kingsmill Key, a former captain of Surrey, told him that the googly was invented by an Oxford student, Herbert Page, in the 1880s. Key claimed that Page bowled the delivery regularly, but never used it in a first-class match.
Practising throughout 1899 and 1900, Bosanquet began to use the googly in minor matches before using it in important cricket. His first use of the new delivery in first-class cricket came in the match against Leicestershire in 1900 in which he scored two centuries. In the second innings, Samuel Coe had scored 98 when Bosanquet, still known as a fast-bowler, bowled his off break; the ball bounced four times and the batsman was stumped (although, writing in 1925, Bosanquet recalled Coe had been bowled). Bosanquet later wrote that the wicket "was rightly treated as a joke, and was the subject of ribald comment". Middlesex captains permitted him to try googlies if there was little pressure on, but he later wrote: "Though I could claim some five or six wickets before the close of the season, my efforts produced far more laughter than dismay in the hearts of opposing batsmen". But Bosanquet persisted with the delivery and soon began to be noticed by influential cricketers who recognised the potential of the googly. Previously, some bowlers occasionally bowled unintended googlies, but were unable to control them. Although batsmen were accustomed to off break or leg break bowlers, it was an unprecedented problem to face a bowler who could bowl both types of delivery at will, disguising which one he bowled. Bosanquet persuaded teammates to remain silent as he wished to maintain the impression that his off break was an accident so that batsmen were not expecting it. He further tried to play down his successes: he feigned surprise, acting as if they were similarly accidental.
It was around 1903 that Bosanquet's delivery first became known as a "googly". Pelham Warner claimed that the first use of the word was in the Lyttelton Times, a newspaper based in Canterbury, New Zealand, during a 1902–03 tour, but subsequent research has failed to find it. Some have suggested a Maori origin for the word, although other explanations include a derivation from "guile" meaning cunning, or from the word "googler", meaning a high, flighted delivery at the time.
### Regular use in County Cricket
Apart from some early season games for MCC and A. J. Webbe's XI, all of Bosanquet's cricket in 1901 was for Middlesex. He maintained his faster style of bowling but also began to bowl slow leg breaks, with the as-yet unrecognised googly mixed in as variation. Later, he found he could not effectively maintain both styles and decided to concentrate on spin, gradually dropping his quick bowling. His bowling brought him 36 wickets at an average of 37.52 in 1901 but did not take more than three wickets in a single innings. With the bat, it took until July for him to pass fifty runs in an innings but his form improved in August with four fifties. He ended the season with consecutive centuries against Surrey and Essex. In total, Bosanquet scored 1,240 runs at an average of 32.63, and Warner regarded him as one of the three most reliable batsmen in the Middlesex side. After the season, Bosanquet went on his third tour of America, captaining a team himself. From January to April 1902, he toured the West Indies with Richard Bennett's team. He scored 623 runs at an average of 34.61 with five fifties and 55 wickets at an average of 15.47, including figures of eight for 30 in one innings. Bosanquet's cricket followed a similar pattern in 1902. He scored 749 runs at an average of 24.96, with a century against Cambridge. However, he did not pass fifty after the end of May until his last game of the season. With the ball, he took 40 wickets at an average of 21.17. These included 10 wickets against Oxford and 10 against Nottinghamshire; the latter performance, when he took seven for 57 in the second innings was described as remarkable by Wisden. It was the first time that his new bowling style attracted attention, although Bosanquet himself tried to play down the success for fear of alerting batsmen to his googly.
### Controversy in New Zealand
In the winter of 1902–03, Bosanquet took part in another tour, this time with Lord Hawke's team which played matches in New Zealand and Australia and was captained by Warner. In New Zealand, he played two matches against a New Zealand representative side, and in all matches scored 148 runs at an average of 18.50 with one fifty, an innings of 82 against South Island. Bosanquet also took 18 wickets at an average of 22.61; his style of bowling attracted a great deal of attention. In one game, Charles Bannerman, who played in Australia's first Test match in 1877, was umpire. He told Warner: "When the next team goes to Australia, be sure that Mr Bosanquet is in it. He bowls a lot of bad 'uns; but that ball of his that breaks the wrong way will be very useful on the hard Australian wickets." However, the tour was more notable for an incident in the match against Canterbury. Bosanquet had taken an early wicket in the first innings, but bowled poorly afterwards. He was the fourth bowler used in the second innings and with his third ball, it looked as if he had bowled Walter Pearce behind his legs as he attempted a big hit. However, both umpires were unsighted and the non-striker Arthur Sims, who also had his view obscured, urged Pearce not to leave the middle. The tourists' wicket-keeper, Arthur Whatman, Bosanquet and other English players surrounded the umpire, who decided Pearce was not out. Bosanquet then turned to Sims and said: "You're a nice cheat. I bowled him round his legs. Anybody could see that." Sims responded that there was reasonable doubt, but Whatman began to swear and call him a cheat. Bosanquet later bowled Sims and Canterbury were easily defeated. However, the incident continued to attract attention. The English team were severely criticised in the press and Sims' employers refused to release him for any further matches unless Bosanquet apologised. Bosanquet wrote letters of apology to Sims and to the Canterbury Cricket Association, and Sims later told him to forget about it, but Sims' employers would not let him take part in the remaining games.
The tour moved to Australia and Bosanquet scored fifties against the three states which Hawke's team played, accumulating 168 runs at an average of 33.60. As a bowler, he took eight wickets at 42.75. His best bowling performance was to take six for 153 out of a New South Wales total of 463. This included the wicket of Victor Trumper, the leading Australian batsman and one of the best in the world at the time. Bosanquet delivered two conventional leg breaks followed by a googly, later described by Bosanquet as the first bowled in Australia, which bowled Trumper. Many critics were impressed by the wicket-taking potential of googly bowling on hard pitches and Warner later described Bosanquet's bowling as causing a sensation.
## Test match bowler
### Recognition of the googly
In the English 1903 season, Bosanquet's batting record improved. He scored a century against Oxford in the second match of the season, followed by six for 31 in Oxford's second innings. He went on to score nine fifties, including three in successive innings, in an aggregate of 1,082 runs at an average of 34.90. With the ball, he recorded his best wicket haul in a season, taking 63 wickets at an average of 21.00. While this was not seen as a particularly impressive record, Wisden noted that "the batsmen who played against him came to the conclusion that he had immense possibilities." Critics recognised that Bosanquet had developed a new style of bowling. While he could not always control the place the ball would land, making him erratic, several cricketers including Warner believed if he could gain more control, he would become one of the best bowlers in the world. Although his bowling was still developing, and he was still trying to perfect bowling an ordinary leg break as well as master the googly, he took six wickets in consecutive innings against Surrey and Kent, going on to take 10 wickets in the latter match. He also took 12 wickets in a match for Warner's team against a touring side, the Gentlemen of Philadelphia. Bosanquet's contributions helped Middlesex to win the County Championship for the first time. Although no Test matches were played that season, Warner believed that Bosanquet's form would have gained him a place in a representative side. For the first time since 1899, he was selected for the Gentlemen against the Players, although he was unsuccessful.
Bosanquet's performances during the season earned him a place on Warner's team for the first tour of Australia by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which was to include Test matches. Warner later wrote that he was accused of selecting Bosanquet out of favouritism as they played on the same county team, and received "a hail of criticism and disapprobation" as a result. Before the tour began, Sussex and England batsman C. B. Fry wrote an open letter to Warner in the Daily Express, stating Warner "must persuade that Bosanquet of yours to practise, practise, practise those funny 'googlies' of his till he is automatically certain of his length. That leg-break of his which breaks from the off might win a test match!"
### MCC tour of Australia
Bosanquet was one of the few bowlers in the MCC team not to have some success in the opening two matches of the tour, although he impressed Warner. In addition, he scored 79 runs with the bat in the second game. The third match of the tour was against New South Wales; Bosanquet took four for 60, and his googly caused many problems, particularly for Australia's opening batsman Reggie Duff. He continuously defeated the batsmen, maintaining his length effectively through the innings. By this stage of the tour, Warner believed that Bosanquet was potentially the best bowler in a strong attack if he could bowl a good length, particularly on hard, fast pitches which normally would favour the batsmen. However, Bosanquet's bowling form remained erratic; in a minor match against a weak side, the opposing captain made a joke about his team's bowling being no worse than Bosanquet's.
Bosanquet played in the first Test against Australia, making his Test debut for England. Australia batted first and recovered from a poor start to score 285 runs; Bosanquet took the wickets of Warwick Armstrong and Syd Gregory with googlies to finish with two for 52 in 13 overs. He scored a single run when he batted, out of an English total of 577. In the second innings he bowled 23 overs and took one for 100. The English bowlers came under heavy punishment from the Australian batsmen; Victor Trumper scored an unbeaten 185 and the team reached 485. Bosanquet had Monty Noble stumped, and Warner later wrote that he was in good form with the ball, beating Trumper with a googly and troubling others. England needed to score 194 to win and Bosanquet came to the wicket with 13 needed to win; he scored one run before the winning hit was made. A hand injury forced Bosanquet to miss the second Test. However, with England 2–0 up in the series, he returned for the third Test. On a very good pitch for batting, Bosanquet took three for 95 in an Australian innings of 388, and none of the batsmen were comfortable batting against his googly. When England replied, Bosanquet was out for 10 runs, hitting a poor shot as his team were bowled out for 245. In Australia's second innings, Bosanquet bowled badly at first, delivering full tosses and long hops at the end of the third day's play. Next morning, his bowling improved as he established a good length, delivering a spell of seven overs in which he took four wickets for 23 runs, again causing confusion with his googly. He finished the innings with figures of four for 73. However, he failed again with the bat, scoring 10 runs in his second innings as England fell to a heavy defeat.
There followed a break in the series of almost a month as the MCC team played more state teams. In the match against Tasmania, Bosanquet scored 35 and an unbeaten 124 which included eighteen fours and five hits over the boundary. However, his bowling was poor; Warner wrote that Bosanquet "bowled abominably". Against New South Wales, a team the tourists regarded as the biggest challenge outside of the Test matches, Bosnanquet was very successful. In the first innings, he scored 54 runs in 65 minutes, then took two for 51 with the ball. When the MCC batted again, he played an innings which Warner called the best of his career. Unbeaten on 17 at the start of the third day, Bosanquet scored 97 runs in 65 minutes before being dismissed for 114. Bosanquet followed this with figures of six for 45, including two wickets bowled by the googly.
The fourth Test proved to be the crucial game of the series. England scored 249, of which Bosanquet made 12 before falling to the final ball of the first day, and Australia replied with 131. Bosanquet was required to bowl only two overs. He failed again in the second innings, scoring seven but England reached 210. Australia required 329 to win, which was considered possible on a good pitch; Warner recorded that Australia's batsmen believed their team to be favourites. Bosanquet came on to bowl shortly before the tea interval and immediately took the wickets of Clem Hill and Syd Gregory. He went on to take another four wickets, at one point having taken five wickets for 12 runs, to complete figures of six for 51. England won by 157 runs to ensure they could not lose the series, being 3–1 up with one game remaining. Australia recorded a consolation victory in favourable conditions for the bowlers in the final Test, and Bosanquet scored 20 runs in the match and bowled four overs without taking a wicket. In the final match of the tour, Bosanquet scored 22 and took three for 70 in the first innings, one wicket coming when the batsman gave a catch to the wicketkeeper from a wide ball which bounced three times.
In all first-class matches on the tour, Bosanquet scored 587 runs at an average of 36.68 and took 37 wickets at an average of 27.27. In Test matches, he took 16 wickets at an average of 25.18 and scored 62 runs at an average of 8.85 with a top-score of 16. Following the team's return home, Bosanquet wrote an article giving his impressions of the tour for Wisden. The main Wisden report stated: "Bosanquet's value with the ball cannot be judged from the averages, as on his bad days he is, as everyone knows, one of the most expensive of living bowlers. When he was in form the Australians thought him far more difficult on hard wickets than any of the other bowlers, Clement Hill saying, without any qualification, that his presence in the eleven won the rubber."
The reaction of crowds in Australia was slightly different. According to Justin Parkinson, in his book on the history of English leg spin, they took to "calling Bosanquet 'Elsie', a tribute to the elaborate, supposedly effeminate jumpers he wore." They also named the googly delivery a "Bosie". However, this may have been more than a simple shortening of his name. According to Parkinson, it may have referred to the nickname ("Bosey") of Lord Alfred Douglas who was widely known to have had a homosexual affair, a criminal act at the time, with Oscar Wilde. This remained a topical subject, and the source of humour, in Australia. Parkinson suggests that the anonymous originator of the name "Bosie" for the googly must have been aware of the association. He also notes that the other common term in Australia for the googly was "wrong 'un", which was slang for both "criminal" and "homosexual". Parkinson suggests that these two terms for the googly, the nickname "Elsie", were attempts to "label the whole English ruling class as effete".
### 1904 season
The 1904 season was Bosanquet's best with bat and ball. Although he made a slow start batting, failing to reach double figures in six of his first nine innings, he was immediately successful with the ball. He took nine for 107 for MCC against the touring South African team and seven for 83 for I Zingari against Gentlemen of England, going on to take 11 wickets in the latter match. Then for Middlesex, he scored 110 in 85 minutes with 16 fours, in a tied match against the South Africans, and 126 in two hours against Surrey including a five and 16 fours. In the latter match he also took five for 139. This preceded his selection for two Gentlemen v Players matches in six days. In the first at Lord's, he scored nine and 22 and took four wickets in the match. At the Oval, he hit 145 in 210 minutes with two fives and 15 fours. After taking two for 97 in the Players' first innings, he took six for 60 in the second to give the Gentlemen their second victory in a week. In a loss to Lancashire, the eventual 1904 County Championship winners, Bosanquet took six for 99 for Middlesex and in a drawn game against Yorkshire, who finished second in the table, he scored 141 and took 10 for 248. Immediately following the Yorkshire game, Bosanquet took 12 for 240 in a defeat of Nottinghamshire. After a quiet time in the return game against Lancashire, Bosanquet had a run of three consecutive successful matches. In the first, he took six for 75 against Surrey. In a close victory over Kent, he took five for 23 and eight wickets in the match after scoring 80 runs, and he achieved figures of 14 for 190 in a win against Sussex. In an end of season festival game, Bosanquet took five for 89 for the South against the North. In all first-class matches, Bosanquet achieved the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets: he scored 1,405 runs at an average of 36.02 and took 132 wickets at an average of 21.62, the only time in his career he passed 100 wickets in a season. He accumulated five fifties and four centuries; with the ball he took 10 or more wickets in four matches and had 14 five wicket hauls.
His performance in 1904 earned him selection as one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year; the citation noted he was more likely that any other bowler to dismiss a strong side on a good batting wicket, and no batsmen had deciphered how he bowled the googly. However, it also remarked that "he sends down more bad balls than any other front rank bowler."
### 1905 season
The Australians toured England in 1905, but Bosanquet played only three games before the first Test. He scored 93 against Nottinghamshire, while against Sussex, he scored centuries in each innings for the second time in his career. His first innings century took 105 minutes and his second took 75 minutes. He also took eight for 53 in the second innings to bowl Middlesex to victory and give him 11 wickets in the game. He became the first player in first-class cricket to score two centuries and take 10 wickets in the same match; only two further players have since achieved the feat, as of 2015. Bosanquet was selected for the opening Test match, his first such appearance in England. In England's first innings, he assisted in a recovery, making his highest Test score of 27. Australia took a first innings lead, but despite a failure by Bosanquet, England scored 426 for five declared in their second innings. Australia were set 402 to win, which was considered unlikely in the time available so the tourists had to bat until the end of the game to achieve a draw. The pitch remained good for batting and Australia reached 62 without losing a wicket. Subsequently, Bosanquet took five quick wickets, including a good catch from his own bowling to dismiss Hill, to reduce Australia to 100 for five. Although the tourists managed a partial recovery, Bosanquet continued to take wickets. With very little time remaining owing to poor light—if play had stopped, Australia would have achieved a draw—he took the last wicket to fall, giving England a 213-run victory. Bosanquet had taken his best Test figures of eight for 107. Wisden reported: "The Englishmen owed everything to Bosanquet ... He gained nothing from the condition of the ground, the pitch remaining firm and true to the end."
After two county matches in which he did little with bat or ball, Bosanquet played in the second Test. However, in his two innings, he scored only six and four not out, and did not bowl in the only innings. After taking 11 wickets for Middlesex against Kent in the only match he played between the Tests, in the third match of the series, Bosanquet scored 20 and 22 not out and took one wicket in the match. This was his final appearance of the series as he was dropped for the final two Tests. Wisden reported that "Bosanquet was a complete disappointment". The almanack also commented in the report on the first Test: "In the first flush of his triumph his place in the England team seemed secure for the whole season, but he never reproduced his form, and dropped out of the eleven after the match at Leeds." This was his final Test. In seven matches for England he scored 147 runs at an average of 13.36 and took 25 wickets at 24.16.
In the remainder of the season, Bosanquet never took more than three wickets in an innings, although he scored a century against Essex and three other fifties. He played for the Gentlemen against the Players scoring 38 and 19 but did not take a wicket in the 17 overs he bowled. In 20 first-class matches, Bosanquet scored 1,198 runs (average 37.43) and took 63 wickets (average 27.77). After this season, he rarely bowled and later stated that he did not bowl the googly after 1905, particularly after one embarrassing attempt to do so in a match at Harrow. In another eight seasons of first-class cricket, he took only 22 wickets. However, his batting seemed to improve in this time.
## Later career
After 1905, Bosanquet played fewer first-class matches owing to his business career, and appeared as a batsman rather than an all-rounder. He played rarely for Middlesex, but usually seemed to make runs despite his lack of practice. He played four matches in 1906. He scored 87 and 101 for Middlesex against Somerset in his first game and took five for 51 against Yorkshire in his second. His good form continued in his third match for Middlesex as he scored two fifties against Essex and he was chosen for the Gentlemen against the Players. Although he did not bowl in that match, he scored 56 in the first innings. In total, he scored 415 runs at 51.87 and took eight wickets at 46.00. The following season, he played six matches for Middlesex, took two wickets and scored 358 runs at 35.00 with three fifties. Bosanquet played more often in 1908. He made 1,081 runs at an average of 54.05, topping the first-class batting averages. He scored centuries for Middlesex against Somerset and Lancashire in addition to five fifties. He represented the Gentlemen v Players twice—at Lord's and in an end of season festival game—without reaching fifty. However, in two other festival games in September, Bosanquet scored a fifty for the South against the North and scored 214, the highest score of his career, for the Rest of England against Yorkshire, the County Champions. In the season, he also took 12 wickets at an average of 29.00, although only bowling more than 10 overs in an innings three times, the final wickets of his career.
Bosanquet did not appear in first-class cricket again until 1911 when he played two matches in the Scarborough Festival at the end of the season. During the first game, he scored a century in 75 minutes for the Gentlemen against the Players, who had an attack including Sydney Barnes. In 1912, he played for Middlesex against the Australians but did not bat or bowl, before appearing in three festival games in August and September. He played twice in 1913, hitting two fifties for L. Robinson's XI against Cambridge University and scoring a third fifty in a match at the end of the season, while in 1914 he appeared for Middlesex against Hampshire in Frank Tarrant’s benefit match and for L. Robinson's XI against Oxford University. After the First World War, Bosanquet made seven appearances in the 1919 season, six of them for Middlesex, scoring three fifties in an aggregate of 335 runs (average 27.91). He did not appear again in first-class cricket. He ended his career with 11,696 runs at an average of 33.41 with 21 centuries. With the ball, he took 629 wickets at an average of 23.80. He continued to be successful in a good class of club cricket and in matches at country houses. His son later recalled how he "drifted from one country-house party to the next, tipping the butler on Monday morning, before travelling to his next social-cum-sporting invitation."
## Style and technique
After he became a leg break bowler, Bosanquet bowled the ball very slowly and did not look dangerous. However, while still appearing to bowl a leg break, he could deliver an off break which confused the best batsmen in the world and this googly was recognised as a completely new style of delivery. He achieved this through dropping his wrist before releasing the ball. The unfamiliarity of this type of bowling increased his effectiveness on the occasions when he could bowl a good length. But he was never a reliable bowler; on other occasions, he bowled long hops and full tosses giving away easy runs. Warner noted that Bosanquet had been "described as the 'worst best bowler' in the world".
Bosanquet did not bat in a style typical of a cricketer from Eton, where batsmen were taught to play with style and grace. Warner described him as "decidedly stiff and awkward looking ... He does not seem to play the ball in a free, unconstrained way, but rather stabs at it and gives one the impression of making his stroke at the very last moment." In Australia, Bosanquet was troubled by fast pitches and struggled against bowlers such as Monty Noble and Bert Hopkins who could make the ball move towards him through the air. Nevertheless, he displayed great confidence in his ability and on a pitch which assisted spinners, he could flick the ball onto the leg side very effectively. He could hit the ball hard, particularly when driving. The Times said: "He had a wonderful eye and great strength of fore-arm and anything short he could hit very hard."
## Personal life and legacy
In the First World War, Bosanquet was a lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps. On 5 April 1924, he married Mary Janet Kennedy-Jones, the daughter of a Member of Parliament. They had one child, Reginald, who later achieved fame as a television newsreader. When his father died, Bosanquet sold the family home, Claysmore, in Middlesex and moved to Wykehurst Farm, Surrey, where he died on 12 October 1936. He left an estate valued at £2,276 0s. 4d (approximately £112,310 or US\$129,900 in 2021 terms).
As the googly caused a sensation following its invention, many other cricketers tried to emulate Bosanquet. Reggie Schwarz, the South African cricketer who played for Middlesex, learned how to bowl the googly through observation of Bosanquet; Schwarz in turn passed it on to the South African bowlers Aubrey Faulkner, Bert Vogler and Gordon White. These four raised the bowling of the googly to a high standard and raised fears of the detrimental effect it would have on batting. Following the development of googly bowling by South Africans, it was further refined by English and Australian cricketers until it became firmly established. In later years, the googly was blamed for a deterioration in the quality and attractiveness of batting. Bosanquet refused to accept any blame and published a defence in The Morning Post during 1924, later reprinted in Wisden, which humorously downplayed the impact of the googly. He wrote: "It is not for me to defend it. Other and more capable hands have taken it up and exploited it, and, if blame is to be allotted, let it be on their shoulders. For me is the task of the historian, and if I appear too much in the role of the proud parent, I ask forgiveness."
Until the invention of the googly, bowling was expected to be predictable, and the googly may initially have been considered an underhand tactic. On one occasion, Nottinghamshire batsman William Gunn was stumped after running down the pitch in an attempt to stop a ball bowled by Bosanquet. Gunn's teammate Arthur Shrewsbury then protested that Bosanquet's bowling was unfair. On another occasion, when asked if the googly was illegal, Bosanquet is said to have replied, "Oh no, only immoral." For many years, the googly remained known as a "Bosie" in Australia. His Times obituary stated, "No man probably has in his time had so important and lasting an influence on the game of cricket".
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66,963,658 |
American transportation in the Siegfried Line campaign
| 1,158,898,277 |
American logistics in Europe in World War II
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[
"Military logistics of World War II",
"Military logistics of the United States",
"Western European Campaign (1944–1945)"
] |
American transportation played a crucial part in the military logistics of the World War II Siegfried Line campaign, which ran from the end of the expulsion of the German armies from Normandy in mid-September 1944 until December 1944, when the American Army was engulfed by the German Ardennes offensive. In August 1944, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected to continue the pursuit of the retreating German forces beyond the Seine instead of pausing to build up supplies and establish the lines of communication as called for in the original Operation Overlord plan. The subsequent advance to the German border stretched the American logistical system to its breaking point, and the advance came to a halt in mid-September.
The Germans attempted to delay the Allied advance until the onset of bad weather by denying access to ports and demolishing communications infrastructure in order to give their own forces time to recover. Between September and November, the American forces in Europe suffered from severe transportation problems. In September, Cherbourg was the only deep-water port in northwest Europe in Allied hands capable of handling Liberty ships, but it had been badly damaged, and took a long time to restore. Smaller ports could handle only small, shallow-draft coastal trading vessels known as "coasters". Two-thirds of the British coaster fleet, on which critical industries depended, was dedicated to the campaign. Over time, rough seas, enemy action and continuous use laid up a quarter of the coaster fleet for repairs. From September onwards, an increasing volume of supplies came directly from the United States. These were stowed in Liberty ships so as to make optimal use of their cargo space. The shipments frequently included heavy and bulky items that required dockside cranes to unload. The available port capacity was insufficient to unload the ships arriving. As the number of ships awaiting discharge in European waters climbed, turnaround times increased, and fewer ships reported back to port in the United States, precipitating a widespread shipping crisis.
Additional port capacity was obtained through the opening of Rouen and Le Havre in September and October respectively, and of Antwerp in November. Antwerp was capable of handling all the Allies' needs, but before the war it had been a transit port, and did not possess large amounts of covered storage space. The Americans were allocated only a small amount of this, all uncovered, on the assumption that American supplies would immediately be moved to the depots around Liège. The limiting factor then shifted to port clearance. Initially, motor transport was widely used, but as the railways were brought back into service, they shouldered the burden of moving supplies from the ports to the depots. Inland water transport was developed to relieve pressure on the railways. Four waterways were rehabilitated for military use: the Seine, Oise and Rhône rivers, and the Albert Canal. Air transport was the least economic form of transport, but in September and October, with road and rail transport unable to supply even the minimum daily requirements of the armies, it was called upon to supplement them.
Although logistical difficulties constituted a brake on combat operations, they were not the only factors that brought the Allied advance to a halt. The American forces also had to contend with rugged terrain, worsening weather and, above all, with stubborn German resistance. The German recovery was sufficient to mount the Ardennes offensive in December. This threatened Antwerp and the depot areas around Liège, which also came under attack from German V-weapons and air raids. This placed immense strain on the American communications, but by the new year the American transportation system was more robust than ever, and preparations were under way to support the final assault on Germany.
## Background
In the first seven weeks after the commencement of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day (6 June 1944), determined German opposition exploited the defensive value of the Normandy bocage country against American forces. At first, the Allied advance was slower than the Operation Overlord plan had anticipated. The American Operation Cobra, which commenced on 25 July, effected a turnaround in the operational situation by achieving a breakout from the Normandy lodgment area. The Germans were outmaneuvered and driven into a chaotic retreat. The 12th Army Group became active on 1 August, under the command of Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley. It initially consisted of the First Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, and the Third Army, under Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr. The Ninth Army, under Lieutenant General William H. Simpson, joined the 12th Army Group on 5 September.
British General Sir Bernard Montgomery, the commander of the British 21st Army Group, remained in command of all ground forces, British and American, until 1 September, when the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, opened his Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in France, and assumed direct command of the ground forces. This brought not just the 12th and 21st Army Groups under Eisenhower's direct command, but also Lieutenant General John C. H. Lee's Communications Zone (COMZ), which became operational on the continent on 7 August.
Bradley had previously exercised control over the Advance Section (ADSEC) of COMZ as the senior American commander on the continent. As such, he had prescribed stock levels in the depots and priorities for the delivery of supplies, and apportioned service units between the armies and the Communications Zone. Bradley believed that as the senior operational commander he should exercise such authority, as was the case in the British forces. Under the American organization, COMZ headquarters also functioned as the headquarters of the European Theater of Operations, United States Army (ETOUSA).
The Allied commanders pushed their forces to the limits logistically to take advantage of the chaotic German retreat. By 3 August Patton's Third Army was advancing into Brittany. Bradley ordered Patton to turn east, leaving only minimal forces behind. This decision entailed grave risk, for under the Operation Overlord plan, the ports of Lorient and Quiberon Bay were to be developed for the logistical support of the American forces under the codename Operation Chastity. This was the first in a series of critical decisions that subordinated logistical considerations to short-term operational advantage.
In mid-August, Eisenhower decided to continue the pursuit of the retreating German forces beyond the Seine. This stretched the logistical system. Between 25 August and 12 September the Allied armies advanced from the D plus 90 phase line, the position the Operation Overlord plan expected to be reached 90 days after D-Day, to the D plus 350 phase line, moving through 260 phase lines in just 19 days. Although the planners had estimated that no more than twelve divisions could be maintained beyond the Seine, by September sixteen were, albeit on reduced scales of rations and supplies. Logistical forecasts were repeatedly shown to be overly pessimistic, imbuing a sense of confidence that difficulties could be overcome.
The advance came to a halt in September. This was not a result of inadequate supplies or port capacity – there were still some 600,000 long tons (610,000 t) of supplies stockpiled in the Normandy lodgment area in November – nor solely by a shortage of fuel. Rather, the problem was the inability to deliver fuel and supplies to the armies. Railways could not be repaired and pipelines could not be constructed quickly enough.
Motor transport was used as a stopgap, but there was a shortage of suitable vehicles. There was political interference by the Truman Committee, which considered the production of heavy-duty vehicles to be wasteful and unnecessarily reducing the number of civilian vehicles that could be built, and production difficulties arising from a shortage of forgings and castings for heavy-duty axles, engines and transmissions. The insufficient numbers of heavy trucks compelled the Army to use the smaller general purpose 21⁄2-ton 6×6 trucks for long hauls, for which they were unsuited. Overloading, overuse, accidents and poor maintenance practices took their toll. The pursuit resulted in large quantities of equipment being damaged, worn out, and written off. In November, SHAEF reported to the War Department that each month 375 medium and 125 light tanks, 900 21⁄2-ton trucks, 1,500 jeeps, 700 mortars and 100 artillery pieces had been written off. Tank losses in August and September respectively had been 25.3 percent and 16.5 percent of establishment, and the reserves were exhausted. More than 15,000 vehicles were unserviceable, awaiting repairs or parts. While the American soldier was reputed to have more mechanical aptitude and experience than any other soldiers in the world, this was seldom on display. A Bill Mauldin cartoon depicted a mechanic standing atop a pile of wrecked vehicles and commenting: "I'll be derned. Here's one what wuz wrecked in combat."
Failure to follow proper procedures contributed to the waste and disorder. Dumps established by the armies were frequently turned over to COMZ with little or no paperwork, so supplies were unrecorded, unidentified and unlocatable, resulting in duplicate requisitions. This was exacerbated by the dispatch of filler cargoes of unwanted goods shipped solely to make maximum use of the available transport. The indenting system itself was imperfect and slow in responding to urgent demands. Logisticians at all levels strove to improvise, adapt and overcome difficulties, with considerable success, but short-term solutions frequently created longer-term problems. Hoarding, bartering, over-requisitioning, and cannibalizing vehicles for spare parts degraded the effectiveness of the supply system.
The German strategy was to conduct a fighting withdrawal to the Siegfried Line (which they called the Westwall) while holding the ports as long as possible and conducting a scorched earth program to deny or destroy as much of the transportation infrastructure as possible. The hope was that these measures would restrict the Allies' operational capabilities, which relied heavily on logistical support, and thereby gain sufficient time to reconstitute the German forces. If six to eight weeks could be gained, then bad autumn weather would set in, further restricting the Allies' mobility, air operations and logistical support, and the German forces might be able to take the offensive again.
## Shipping
Under the Operation Overlord plan US forces would be supported over the Omaha and Utah landing beaches, an artificial Mulberry harbor, and the ports of Cherbourg in Normandy and Saint-Malo and Quiberon Bay in Brittany. This was considered insufficient, and the planners (correctly) forecast a port capacity shortfall by D plus 120, when autumn weather would hamper beach operations. The American Mulberry was abandoned after it was damaged in a storm in June, and the delay in capturing and opening Cherbourg meant that Cherbourg, the beaches and the minor ports had to handle far more daily tonnage than originally planned. There was another storm on 1 August, and rain, fog and heavy seas intermittently hampered beach operations in August and September. Weather was not the only problem: the road transport needed for beach clearance had been run constantly since June and increasing numbers of vehicles were worn out and in need of repair. In October weather conditions were consistently bad and discharges averaged 6,243 long tons (6,343 t) per day. The Utah and Omaha beaches were closed for good on 13 and 19 November respectively.
On 11 July Cherbourg's target was raised from 8,500 to 20,000 long tons (8,600 to 20,300 t) per day by the end of September, but this could not be met. Delays in removing mines and underwater obstacles caused the rehabilitation of the port to fall far behind schedule, and discharges actually fell during September because the port had to handle troop movements with their organizational equipment, which had originally been planned to land at Brest. SHAEF decided on 7 September that Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, Lorient and Quiberon Bay would not be developed, and by the time the Battle for Brest ended on 25 September, the port was so badly damaged that plans to use it were shelved indefinitely.
The Overlord planners had identified a need for shallow-draft vessels, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff had allocated 625,000 deadweight tons (635,000 deadweight tonnes) of coasters for the first six weeks of the operation. This represented about two-thirds of the British coaster fleet, on which critical industries depended for the transport of iron, coal and other commodities. The allocation of so much coastal shipping to Overlord entailed temporarily shutting down a quarter of the UK's blast furnaces. The British therefore wanted the shipping returned as soon as possible. It was planned that after the first six weeks, the allocation to Overlord would be reduced to 250,000 deadweight tons (254,000 deadweight tonnes).
Under the circumstances, the coasters could not be released. Some 560,000 deadweight tons (570,000 deadweight tonnes) of coasters were still engaged in the cross-Channel run in September, and this actually rose to over 600,000 deadweight tons (610,000 deadweight tonnes) in November. The crux of the problem was slow turnaround times. A survey of coaster movements in late October and early November found that 63 round trip voyages had required 1,422 ship-days instead of the planned 606. Diversions to alternate ports, increasingly bad weather, and vessels being laid up for repairs all contributed to this situation. Between 20 and 25 percent of the coaster fleet was laid up for repairs in November and December. Not until December, after the opening of the port of Antwerp, was it possible to release 50,000 deadweight tons (51,000 deadweight tonnes) of coasters, but that was from support of the 21st Army Group; the American allocation actually increased.
It was planned that an increasing volume of supplies would come directly from the United States from September onwards. These ships were not combat loaded, but stowed so as to make optimal use of cargo space. Whereas vehicles had been brought across from the UK on motor transport (MT) vessels (ships specially outfitted to carry vehicles), landing ships, tank (LSTs) or landing craft, tank (LCTs), they now arrived in crates and boxes, with some assembly required. Nearly every ship would arrive with boxed vehicles or other bulky or heavy items. This kind of awkward cargo needed to be discharged at ports where large shore cranes were available; to discharge them over the beaches or at minor ports was difficult, although not impossible. But the only major port in Allied hands on 25 August was Cherbourg. An alternate was to discharge in the UK, assemble them there and transfer the vehicles to the continent in MT ships. SHAEF was allocated 258 MT ships in July, but this was cut to 62 in August, which was still 22 more than originally allocated.
COMZ believed that it could receive 250 ocean-going ships in September, of which 175 would be discharged on the continent and the rest in the UK. It estimated that the available port capacity on the continent would be 27,000 long tons (27,000 t) per day, which was expected to rise to 40,000 long tons (41,000 t) per day in October. By the end of September, 219 ships would require discharge on the continent, which was 44 more than the theater said it needed for its current requirements, the additional supplies being to build up stocks for the future. The forecasts of unloading capacity proved optimistic: in the third week of September, the tonnage of American cargo discharged on the continent was 37,000 long tons (38,000 t) per day, but it dipped to 28,000 long tons (28,000 t) per day in the last week of September, and averaged 25,000 long tons (25,000 t) per day in October. Only 95 ships were discharged on the continent in September.
Keeping ships at anchor was not just wasteful; in a war zone it was also dangerous. An accumulation of idle shipping invited enemy attacks and would subject the ships to damage from the autumn gales. The War Department saw no reason for commodity-loaded vessels (ships loaded with a single class of supply) to be held for longer than the interval between convoy sailings, usually about a week, and cut ten ships from each of the six convoys sailing for Europe between 12 September and 10 October. The Army Service Forces (ASF) and War Shipping Administration (WSA) feared that the ETO's demands might require cuts to the UK Import Program – foodstuffs to keep the British population fed, and raw materials to keep its civil and munitions industries running. As it turned out, only minor cuts had to be made because several MT and store ships were released from cross-Channel traffic in August in time to reach ports in the US and sail for Europe again in September.
Over 200 ships were in European waters awaiting discharge in early October, and Captain Granville Conway, the Deputy Administrator of the WSA, considered the ETO's estimate that 260 would be unloaded in October to be unrealistic. On 6 October the War Department decided to cut another forty ships from the upcoming convoys in October and November. Lee protested that while discharges had not met the forecasts, and much of what had been discharged was merely piling up in Normandy owing to lack of transport resources, the lack of depots on the continent rendered it necessary to retain ships in European waters as floating warehouses for urgent requirements. He had recently called forward nineteen ships loaded with engineering supplies in order to obtain an average of 150 long tons (150 t) of urgently needed equipment from each vessel. ASF was unimpressed, and the cuts went ahead.
Unloadings averaged 25,000 long tons (25,000 t) per day in October, and by 20 October the number of vessels awaiting discharge had risen to over 240, of which 140 were commodity loaded. The Chief of ASF, Lieutenant General Brehon B. Somervell, informed Lee that he could expect no more commodity-loaded ships with rations, vehicles or ammunition until he made headway with reducing the backlogs. Somervell dispatched Brigadier General John M. Franklin, the Assistant Chief of Transportation for water transportation, and a former president of the United States Lines, to advise the ETO on improving turnaround time and developing more realistic estimates of port capacity. He arrived in France on 28 October and was appointed the Assistant Chief of Transportation of COMZ and ETOUSA.
The shipping crisis in the ETO escalated into a global one. Merchant ship construction was lagging behind schedule, mainly due to a deficit of 35,000 skilled workers in the shipyards, as they were being lured away to work on the higher-priority amphibious cargo ships and Boeing B-29 Superfortress programs, where pay and conditions were better. The Allied merchant fleet was still growing at a rate of 500,000 deadweight tons (510,000 deadweight tonnes) per month, but the number of ships available for loading at US ports was shrinking. The problem was growing retentions of vessels by the theaters, of which the ETO was the worst but not the only offender. The chairman of the Maritime Commission, Vice Admiral Emory S. Land, noted that 350 ships were being held idle in the theaters awaiting discharge, and 400 more WSA vessels were being retained for various uses by theater commanders. This represented 7,000,000 deadweight tons (7,100,000 deadweight tonnes) of shipping, which was about 30 percent of all Allied-controlled tonnage. As ships failed to return from overseas on time, supplies began piling up in ports, depots and railway sidings in the United States.
Drastic measures were required. On 18 November the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) approved and forwarded to President Franklin Roosevelt a memorandum from Somervell recommending cuts in non-military shipments. Specifically, Somervell proposed eliminating the American contribution to the UK Import Program of 40 sailings per month, reducing Lend-Lease to the UK by 12 sailings per month, those to the USSR by 10, and cutting civilian relief to Europe by 34. Conway enlisted Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's chief advisor, in putting the WSA's case to the president: that it could not ask the British "to bear the brunt of our failure to utilize our ships properly." Roosevelt instructed the WSA to negotiate a cut in the UK Import Program for December 1944, January 1945 and February 1945 with the British, asked the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion to investigate the labor situation at the shipyards, and told the JCS to get the theaters to break up the pools of idle shipping and improve turnaround times.
COMZ managed to unload 115 ships in November. The port commanders improved the discharge rate from 327 long tons (332 t) per ship per day in October to 457 long tons (464 t) per ship per day in November by offering incentives such as extra leave to their best performing hatch crews. On 6 December the JCS prohibited selective unloading and directed that shipping requirements be modified to match actual discharge capacities. Each theater was ordered to establish a shipping control agency that would ensure compliance with these directives. In the ETO, the shipping control agency consisted of the Chief of Staff of COMZ, Major General Royal B. Lord; his Assistant Chief of Staff (G-4) at COMZ, Brigadier General James H. Stratton; and Franklin. Somervell ordered 25 of the 35 Liberty ships that had been engaged in the cross-Channel service and ships that had been sitting idle with non-urgent supplies after being partially unloaded to return to the United States. The latter resulted in 35,000 long tons (36,000 t) of pierced steel plank and other surfacing for airfields being returned on 21 ships, only to be shipped back again on the next convoy.
The opening of the port of Antwerp on 28 November promised to solve the port capacity problem, but the German Ardennes offensive caused a halt to the movement of supplies to the threatened depots around Liège, and they piled up at the ports. Unloading had to be curtailed, and on 23 December ETOUSA requested that 24 ships be cut from the next convoys. Only 130 ships were unloaded in December, and based on Franklin's sanguine assessment of capacity, the War Department cut the number of sailings to 175 in January and February 1945. By the end of January 1945 116 vessels lay idle awaiting discharge, and on 3 February ETOUSA recommended that March 1945 sailings be cut from 233 to 203. The War Department went even further and reduced it to 172. However, February 1945 saw a steady increase in the discharge rate, which rose to over 50,000 long tons (51,000 t) per day, an increase of 20,000 long tons (20,000 t) per day over what had been achieved in December 1944 and January 1945, and the shipping crisis finally appeared to be resolved.
## Ports
### Minor ports
When hopes that Brest and Quiberon Bay would soon be opened faded, COMZ decided to compensate by developing the minor ports in Normandy and Brittany. The minor Brittany ports proved uneconomical to operate; their capacity was small, they had no deep-water berths, and by the time many of them were repaired they were hundreds of miles from the front. However, they met a critical need at a time when bad weather threatened to close the Normandy beaches. They were operated by the 16th Major Port, which was relieved by the 5th Major Port in September. The rehabilitation of the Normandy port of Granville was undertaken by the 1055th and 1058th Port Construction and Repair Groups. Granville had been subject to systematic demolition, with quays cratered, cranes tipped into the water, and the harbor blocked with sunken craft. It was operated solely as a coal port, and averaged 1,244 long tons (1,264 t) per day from when it was opened on 18 September until it closed on 21 April 1945.
The task of rehabilitating the Brittany ports of Cancale, Saint-Brieuc and Saint-Malo was carried out by the 1053rd Port Construction and Repair Group and the 360th Engineer General Service Regiment, but work on Saint-Malo was abandoned as it neared completion because the task of opening the inland waterways serving it was not considered worth the effort. It was handed over to the French on 21 November. Tidal conditions at Cancale proved unfavorable, and it was never used. Saint-Brieuc was opened in mid-September but discharges averaged only 317 long tons (322 t) per day, mostly coal for local railways and power stations, and it was handed over to the French on 9 November.
Another minor port in Brittany, Morlaix, was not badly damaged, and it was quickly restored by the 1057th Port Construction and Repair Group. The first convoy of two Liberty ships and ten LSTs arrived on 25 August. Nearby Roscoff was also opened. Between them, they had anchorages for up to six Liberty ships, which were discharged using Army lighters, Navy landing craft and civilian boats, and handled an average of 2,105 long tons (2,139 t) per day until they were closed on 14 December. The opening of the Seine ports of Rouen and Le Havre permitted the closure of shallow-draft minor ports, and the small Normandy ports of Saint-Brieuc, Barfleur, Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, Carentan, Grandcamp and Isigny were handed over to the French in November.
### Cherbourg
The rehabilitation of Cherbourg fell behind schedule. The first oil tanker did not discharge at the Digue de Querqueville in Cherbourg Harbor until 25 July, over two weeks behind schedule. The British train ferry HMS Twickenham arrived with its first load of diesel electric locomotives and rolling stock on 29 July, but the Jetée du Homet was not yet ready to receive them, and they had to be unloaded with cranes. Although barges and coasters were supposed to commence discharging in the Bassin à Flot on 26 July, it was not until 11 August that they did so. Worst affected by delays were the deep-water berths required for Liberty ships. The first four Liberty ships entered Cherbourg on 16 July, but berths were not yet available. They had to be unloaded at anchor into amphibious trucks known as DUKWs, whose name was pronounced (and sometimes spelled) "ducks".
A Liberty ship was able to berth at the Digue du Homet on 9 August, nineteen days later than planned. Another month passed before berths were available in the Bassin Napoléon III, and it was 21 September before the Bassin Charles X was opened. The Darse Transatlantique was not cleared of mines until 21 August and the access channel was not cleared until 18 September. The first Liberty ship did not berth there until 8 October. The rehabilitation effort was reported as 75 percent complete in mid-September, but only five of the planned twenty-eight deep-water berths were operational by then. Not until 15 December was the rehabilitation work completed.
The port of Cherbourg was operated by the 4th Port, under the command of Colonel Cleland C. Sibley, which was augmented by Colonel August H. Schroeder's 12th Port. From 16 August, the 4th Port was part of Colonel Theodore Wyman Jr.'s Normandy Base Section. The operation of a major port requires a great deal of coordination, and much of this was worked out through trial and error. Bringing vessels into the port was a US Navy responsibility, but the Naval harbor master would take the Army's preferences into account in deciding what berth should be used. For example, the Army preferred vessels with cargo suitable for unloading by DUKW anchor in the Petit Rade to avoid long hauls from the Grande Rade. But communication between the office of the Naval harbor master and the headquarters of the 4th Port was unsatisfactory at first, and it took time to develop a smooth working relationship.
Problems arose when ships arrived unexpectedly and there were no preparations to receive them. Advance warning of ship arrivals was necessary because unloading a ship was a complicated business. Sufficient stevedores had to be provided to work the hatches, and the required cargo handling equipment, such as cranes, had to be available. Trucks and railway cars had to be brought forward and spotted on the quays to allow cargo to be quickly cleared, and the depots and dumps had to be alerted to be ready to receive the supplies. Some arrived without manifests or stowage plans. In some cases the only way the contents of a ship could be determined was for the port personnel to board it and physically check. At first the Navy refused to allow ships without manifests to enter the port at all, but too often they were found to contain critical cargo.
Of the 439,660 long tons (446,720 t) of Army cargo discharged at Cherbourg by 13 September, just 38.4 percent was unloaded at quayside berths or over LST ramps; the rest was unloaded by DUKWs and lighters. This was slower and more manpower intensive than quayside unloading due to multiple handling. DUKWs were suitable only for handling small, packaged items, and had a rated capacity of 2+1⁄2 long tons (2.54 t), although they were frequently overloaded. Bulkier or heavier items could be unloaded onto barges, but they too had limitations. While DUKWs could go ashore at the Nouvelle Plage at any time, barges had to be tied to mooring boats and await high tide before they could be towed into the basins for unloading. Both were subject to disruption by bad weather. Communications were a problem initially, with the Navy's signal lamp not up to the task. A small Signal Corps Radio was employed instead. Two radio networks were eventually established: one for the tugboats, and one for coordinating hatch operations.
The 4th Port was handicapped by the slow arrival of its unit equipment, which had been brought from the UK on twelve ships but unloaded at Utah Beach instead of Cherbourg. The hatch crew found themselves lacking basic gear such as ropes, slings and cargo nets, and three DUKWs went around collecting gear from ships in the harbor. Cranes were also in short supply, and this was exacerbated by a dearth of well-trained crane operators. In the UK, where the 4th Port had worked the docks along the River Mersey, crane operating had been mostly carried out by experienced civilians. A training program was initiated at Cherbourg, where crane operators were instructed by a pair of sergeants who had learned crane operation in the UK. In the meantime, inexperienced operators caused avoidable damage both to cranes and to cargo. Insufficient numbers of skilled mechanics were available to repair the cranes, and there was a shortage of spare parts as well. The result was that at times half the cranes were out of action.
Disappointing discharge figures led to Sibley being relieved of command. He was succeeded by Colonel James A. Crothers on 29 September. Despite the worsening weather, the tonnage of cargo discharged at Cherbourg climbed from 10,481 long tons (10,649 t) per day in September to 11,793 long tons (11,982 t) per day in October, mainly due to increased quantities being unloaded at the quaysides. By then it was evident that while the target of discharging 20,000 long tons (20,321 t) per day might be achievable, port discharge was only half the battle; the cargo also had to be cleared away from the port and taken to the depots and dumps. Motor transport was in demand to support the armies, and the rains turned the dirt roads around the dumps into mud, resulting in bogged-down vehicles. Railway facilities were improved, with 90 miles (140 km) of additional track laid, and two large marshalling yards were built outside the city.
Whenever there were a few days running of good weather, cargo built up at the port. SHAEF was dissatisfied with how the port was being run, and on 30 October Wyman was relieved of command of the Normandy Base Section and replaced by Major General Lucius D. Clay, on loan from ASF. Clay recognized that the heart of the problem was a lack of coordination between the port and rail operations, and he delegated the necessary authority over the railways to Crothers. This brought about an improvement in clearance tonnage in November. Clay remained for only a few weeks. On 26 November Colonel Eugene M. Caffey assumed temporary command of the Normandy Base Section until Major General Henry S. Aurand arrived on 17 December. Unloading at Cherbourg reached its peak in November. With the opening of ports further north it declined in importance, although it remained an important port for the discharge of ammunition.
### Le Havre
The Seine ports had figured prominently in the Overlord plan, but for the supply of the 21st Army Group, not the American forces. It was expected that they would replace the British Normandy beaches around D plus 120, and be handed over to the Americans around D plus 240, when the Channel ports had been opened. Rouen was captured on 30 August but was not usable until downstream Le Havre was also taken on 12 September. An American line of communication from Le Havre would cross that of the British, but Le Havre was 200 miles (320 km) closer to the front line than the Brittany ports, and it was estimated that every 5,000 long tons (5,100 t) landed at Le Havre could save the equivalent of seventy quartermaster truck companies. On 11 September the Deputy G–4 for Movements and Transportation at SHAEF, British Major General Charles Napier, recommended that Le Havre be assigned to COMZ. It was now anticipated that the maintenance of US forces would eventually be provided through Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
Le Havre had been the second largest port in France before the war, but it had been heavily damaged by German demolitions and Allied land, sea and aerial bombardment. Lee directed that Le Havre would be developed as an interim port capable of handling 8,000 to 10,000 long tons (8,100 to 10,200 t) per day. This was to be done as rapidly as possible, with the minimum amount of reconstruction effort. The rehabilitation of Le Havre and Rouen was assigned to a task force under the command of Colonel Frank F. Bell, the commander of the 373rd Engineer General Service Regiment. In addition to his own regiment, he ultimately also had the 1055th and 1061st Engineer Port Construction and Repair Groups, the 392nd Engineer General Service Regiment, the 1071st Engineer Port Repair Ship Crew, the 1044th Engineer Gas Generating Unit, the 971st Engineer Maintenance Company, the 577th Engineer Dump Truck Company and two Royal Navy parties. The Seabees of the 28th Naval Construction Battalion also worked there.
The first Liberty ships entered the inner harbor of Le Havre on 19 September, but mines and obstructions limited the docks to landing craft and coasters. USS Miantonomah brought port clearance supplies from Cherbourg to Le Havre on 21 September, but on departure on 25 September it navigated the inner and outer harbors and cleared the blockships only to strike a mine and sink. Not until 13 October was the first Liberty ship able to dock.
The Seabees built a 60-by-1,000-foot (18 by 305 m) floating pier outside the main sea wall from pontoons capable of handling six cargo vessels that was connected to the shore with a Bailey bridge. Two artificial piers were made from Phoenix breakwaters salvaged from the Mulberry harbor. A major problem was damage to the Rochemont lock gates, which subjected the quay walls to damage from the hydrostatic pressure of the 25 to 40 feet (7.6 to 12.2 m) tides. After several unsuccessful attempts to repair them in place, the 1055th Port Construction and Repair Group removed the gates, repaired them in the dry dock, and completed their reinstallation on 30 November. As a result, the tidal range in the wet basins was reduced by 20 ft (6.1 m). Inside the gates the Seabees constructed floating piers by joining pairs of rhino ferries taken from Omaha Beach. These were made stationary by driving timber pilings, and connected to the shore by a Bailey bridge. The first Liberty ship passed through the lock on 16 December.
Le Havre was operated by the 16th Major Port, under the command of Brigadier General William M. Hoge, who had commanded the Provisional Engineer Special Brigade Group on Omaha Beach. He was succeeded by Colonel Thomas J. Weed on 31 October. It was joined by the 52nd Port in January. The number of berths that the logisticians felt was necessary were never developed, so the port continued to depend on DUKWs and lighters. In the first quarter of 1945, seven DUKW companies handled 35.2 percent of the cargo; quayside discharges accounted for 23.3 percent and lighters handled the rest.
The use of DUKWs had its drawbacks in the multiple handling of cargo and interruptions to operations occasioned by bad weather. DUKWs had never been intended to operate for long periods of time, but one company reported that its DUKWs had over 70,000 miles (110,000 km) on the clock. By November, about 76 percent of the DUKWs were inoperable. Chronic shortages of spare parts forced a resort to cannibalizing inoperable vehicles, and improvisations such as making propeller shaft strut bearings from applewood and replacement rudders from scrap metal. Nonetheless, the port exceeded COMZ's expectations, handling 9,500 long tons (9,700 t) per day by the end of December.
In that month, the port dispatched 92 trains carrying ammunition to the forward areas in response to the German Ardennes offensive, and rockets were rushed to Liège to help defend the threatened base area there. By the year's end, the 16th Major Port and some 4,000 French civilian stevedores had unloaded 434,920 long tons (441,900 t) of cargo. In 1945 the work force was augmented with 6,000 German prisoners of war. The port set a record of 198,768 long tons (201,958 t) in January 1945, and by the end of May had unloaded 1,254,129 long tons (1,274,254 t).
In addition to handling cargo Le Havre also became an important debarkation point for American troops. In January 1945 the 52nd Port was attached to the 16th Major Port and its commander, Colonel William J. Deyo, was given responsibility for troop movements. That month the Red Horse Staging Area was established in the Le Havre area. Troops debarked over a long steel ponton pier and a troopship berth at the Quai d'Escale. Arrivals peaked at 247,607 troops in March 1945.
### Rouen
Rouen was not as badly damaged as Le Havre. The Germans had demolished the cargo handling facilities and blocked the river channel with toppled cranes and sunken boats and barges, but 14,000 feet (4,300 m) of the quays were still in good condition. The nearby marshalling yards had been heavily damaged by Allied bombing, but another yard 12 miles (19 km) away was easily accessible by road. The rehabilitation task was undertaken by elements of the Le Havre engineering task force consisting of the 1061st Engineer Port Construction and Repair Group, a Royal Navy party, and a platoon of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion. The more difficult task of clearing away the mines and removing sunken vessels obstructing the river channel was handled by the US Navy with the help of French authorities.
Rouen was operated by a detachment of the 16th Major Port until the 11th Port took over on 20 October. The first ships to arrive were a pair of coasters from the UK carrying petrol, oil and lubricants (POL) on 15 October. At this point nine berths were available, and the port's rehabilitation was estimated to be 20 percent completed. During the month it handled 23,844 long tons (24,227 t) from 48 different vessels, most of which were coasters. Larger vessels could be accommodated, but they first had to be partially unloaded in Le Havre in order to negotiate the shallow channel between Le Havre and Rouen. During a neap tide a ship had to be lightened to draw no more than 16+1⁄2 feet (5.0 m) lest it block the channel for ten days until the spring tide arrived. The US Army had four hopper dredges that had been earmarked for work on the Loire River, but only one, the Hoffman, operated by the 1077th Engineer Dredge Crew, had a shallow enough draft to operate on the Seine. Special care had to be taken to avoid grounding the dredge.
The port was so successful that on 8 November COMZ ordered all coasters except those carrying coal to unload at Rouen. Discharges rose to 127,569 long tons (129,616 t) in November and 132,433 long tons (134,558 t) in December. The port's main problem was not a shortage of berths, but of labor and road and railway resources for port clearance. Clearance by barge over the inland waterways commenced on 22 November and was mainly used to meet civilian needs. Troops began debarking at Rouen, starting with a landing ship, infantry (LSI) on 10 November, and 51,111 troops passed through that port by the end of the year. In the same period 22,078 vehicles arrived on LSTs, coasters and MT ships. The port's peak of activity was in March 1945, when 15 Liberty ship and 26 coaster berths were available and it handled 268,174 long tons (272,477 t) of cargo; 9,000 US Army troops, 5,000 French civilians, and 9,000 prisoners of war were working the port.
### Antwerp
Before the war Antwerp had been one of the world's busiest ports, handling 12,000 vessels and nearly 60,000,000 long tons (61,000,000 t) of freight in 1938. It was situated on the Scheldt River some 55 miles (89 km) inland, but unlike other ports on tidal estuaries, it could receive deep draft vessels on all tides. With a minimum depth at the quays of 27 feet (8.2 m), the river was still 500 yards (460 m) wide at this point, which gave even the largest vessels ample room to maneuver. The port had 3+1⁄2 miles (5.6 km) of quays along the river, and nearly 26 miles (42 km) more in eighteen wet basins accessible through four locks. There were 322 hydraulic and 270 electric cranes, and numerous floating cranes and grain elevators. There were 900 warehouses, a granary capable of storing nearly 1,000,000 imperial bushels (36,000,000 L) and 750,000 cubic feet (21,000 m<sup>3</sup>) of cold storage. Petroleum pipelines ran from the tanker berths to 498 storage tanks with a capacity of 100,000,000 imperial gallons (450,000,000 L). Labor to work the port was plentiful, and included skilled boat crews, crane operators and mechanics. Antwerp was well-served by roads, railway and canals for barge traffic. There were 500 miles (800 km) of railway lines that connected to the Belgian railway system, and there was also access to inland waterways. Through the Albert Canal, barges could reach the Meuse River, which ran through Liège, where the American bases were located.
Antwerp was captured on 4 September, with its port facilities largely intact thanks to the British Army's rapid advance, and the efforts of the Belgian Resistance, which assisted the British 11th Armoured Division in finding the least heavily defended route into the city and forestalled the German demolition of the port facilities. Antwerp was just 65 miles (105 km) from the depots around Liège supporting the First Army, and even though the Third Army depots around Nancy were 250 miles (400 km) from Antwerp, this was closer than Cherbourg, which was more than 400 miles (640 km) from the depots. It was estimated that 21 divisions could be supported from Cherbourg, of which 6 would be by road and 15 by rail, but 54 divisions could be supported by rail from Antwerp. However, the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, noted on 3 September that the entrances to Antwerp and Rotterdam could be blocked and mined, and it could not be predicted how long it would take to open them. Operations to clear the Scheldt estuary were initiated by the First Canadian Army in October, and completed in the first week of November.
Both COMZ and the 12th Army Group urged SHAEF to allocate a portion of Antwerp's capacity to the support of the American forces. On considering the matter SHAEF concluded that Antwerp was indeed sufficiently large to serve the needs of both the British and the American forces. Eisenhower rejected a proposal from Lee that it be operated jointly, as joint control of ports had been shown to not work well in the past; the port was to be run by the British. Lee arranged a conference in Antwerp with representatives of COMZ and the 21st Army Group between 24 and 26 September. Tentative agreements were reached on the allocation of tonnage capacity, storage facilities and railway lines, and arrangements were made for the command and control of the port and its installations, and regarding responsibility for rehabilitation works. Additional matters were discussed at a second conference in Brussels on 5 October, and the result was formalized in a Memorandum of Agreement that became known as the "Treaty of Antwerp", and was signed by Major General Miles Graham, the Major General Administration at 21st Army Group, and Colonel Fenton S. Jacobs, the commander of the Channel Base Section.
The American forces would use the basins to the north of a line drawn through the Bassin Albert (Albertdok), and the British would use those to the south. The Americans were guaranteed a minimum of 62 berths. The basins along the river would be shared, and allocated based on need. It was expected that the port would handle 40,000 long tons (41,000 t) per day not counting bulk POL, of which 22,500 long tons (22,900 t) was allocated to the Americans and 17,500 long tons (17,800 t) to the British. Overall command of the port was vested in the Royal Navy Naval Officer in Charge (NOIC), Captain Cowley Thomas, who also chaired a port executive committee on which both American and British interests were represented. Local administration was the responsibility of the British base sub area commander. US forces were allocated primary rights to the roads and railway lines leading southeast to Liège, while the British were given those leading to the north and northeast. A joint US, British and Belgian Movements Organization for Transport (BELMOT) was created to coordinate highway, railway and waterway traffic.
The rehabilitation of the port was undertaken by the British, on the understanding that American resources could be called upon as required. The main US engineer unit assigned was the 358th Engineer General Service Regiment. Two of the ETO's five engineer port repair ships were also available. American engineers cleared rubble away from the quays, improved roads, repaired rail lines, rebuilt warehouses and constructed hardstands. The main American project was the repair of mine damage to the Kruisschans sluice, the longest of the four that connected the river with the wet basins, and the only one that provided access to the American wet basins. Work commenced on 6 November and was completed in time for the arrival of the first Liberty ship, SS James B. Weaver, on 28 November. By this time 219 of the 242 berths were cleared, all the port's cranes were in working order, and all the bridges needed to access the quays had been repaired. The port's floating equipment was augmented by a small fleet of American harbor craft that included 17 small tugboats, 20 towboats and 6 floating cranes.
The 13th Port was assigned to operate the American part of Antwerp, and began arriving from Plymouth in October 1944. It was joined by the 5th Major Port in November and December. The commander of the 13th Port, Colonel Doswell Gullatt, who had led the 5th Engineer Special Brigade at Omaha Beach on D-Day, was designated the overall commander. He had also been the district engineer in Mobile, Alabama, and had extensive experience in flood control and the construction of piers and docks. Most of the work of unloading ships was carried out by Belgian stevedores, some 9,000 of whom were working on the American section of the port on an average day in December. American personnel operated in a supervisory capacity. The biggest problem with the Belgian workers was transporting them to and from their homes, as German V-weapon and air attacks on the port forced many of them to move to the outskirts of the city. The city suffered heavy damage from these attacks, and there were more than 10,000 casualties. The workers' living conditions deteriorated during the winter, and on 16 January they went on strike over shortages of food, clothing and coal. The strike lasted only one day, and it ended when the burgomaster promised the workers food and coal at regulated prices. To keep the civilian workers at their jobs, the city of Antwerp granted workers in the port area a 25 percent increase in pay, but since the V-weapons were fairly inaccurate, this soon led to more industrial disputes when workers elsewhere demanded the same.
Between October 1944 and March 1945 V-1 flying bombs struck Antwerp nearly every day, with 150 striking the port area. Three anti-aircraft brigades were deployed to defend the city under the command of Brigadier General Clare H. Armstrong. The possibility of a V-weapon striking an ammunition ship was taken seriously enough to ban ammunition ships from Antwerp. Ammunition, except some for the anti-aircraft guns around Antwerp, was unloaded at Cherbourg or Le Havre. The danger was real enough: on 8 January a V-2 rocket struck pier 123 about 50 yards (46 m) from the American freighter SS Blenheim. Twenty of those on board were injured, and the ship was so badly damaged that nearly a month was required to effect repairs to enable it to sail. A week later, another V-2 hit berth 218 and badly damaged the Liberty ship Michael de Kovats, injuring three on board and killing a soldier on the pier. V-weapons were also used against the depots around Liège between November 1944 and March 1945. One that struck a fuel dump on 17 December started a fire that consumed 400,000 US gallons (1,500,000 L) of gasoline, and another on 21 December destroyed or badly damaged fourteen railway cars and set fire to six others. Some of the burning cars contained bags of mail from home, which were hastily unloaded.
Antwerp was capable of handling far more than the allotted 40,000 long tons (41,000 t) a day; the limiting factor was clearance. Before the war, Antwerp had been a transit port, and it did not possess large amounts of covered storage space. What there was, was taken over by the British, as Antwerp was the logical site for the 21st Army Group's base installations. The Americans were allocated only a small amount of storage space, none of which was covered, on the assumption that American supplies would immediately be moved to the depots around Liège. Colonel William E. Potter, the G-4 Plans chief at COMZ, estimated that storing any more than 15,000 long tons (15,000 t) in the port area would hamper port operations, but 85,000 long tons (86,000 t) accumulated in the first two weeks of the port's operation. This was mainly due to a shortage of railway rolling stock, but clearance by barge also fell below expectations.
Port operations were interrupted by the German Ardennes offensive, which commenced on 16 December 1944, and threatened the depots around Liège. Rail and barge shipments to the area were halted, and large quantities of supplies piled up in the port area. By 4 January 1945 there were nearly 3,500 railway cars lying fully loaded but idle at the port; thousands more unloaded cars were at the ADSEC depots around Liège. Five anti-aircraft gun battalions were re-roled as infantry to protect Antwerp in case of a German breakthrough. In January, new depots were opened in the Lille area, and supplies began moving again, but the number of railway cars reporting each day was consistently below what was required to clear the backlog. That month, Antwerp handled 432,756 long tons (439,700 t) of cargo, of which 238,518 long tons (242,345 t) was cleared by rail, 120,799 long tons (122,737 t) by road and 41,616 long tons (42,284 t) by barge.
### Ghent
Ghent was an inland port about 20 miles (32 km) from the sea, which was accessed through the Ghent–Terneuzen Canal. Before the war it had been the second busiest port in Belgium after Antwerp. Although captured in September 1944, it had not figured in Allied logistical planning, as Antwerp was considered sufficient. The intensity of the German V-weapon attacks had brought about a reconsideration, and it was decided to activate Ghent as a backup in case Antwerp was temporarily put out of action. Ghent had not been badly damaged, but some bridges had been demolished, the lock gates had been damaged, cranes had been removed and there were some sunken ships. The administration of the port was similar to that of Antwerp, with a port executive committee. Tonnage capacity was divided, with 5,000 long tons (5,100 t) per day for the British and 7,500 long tons (7,600 t) for the Americans. The American sector was operated by the US 17th Port.
Ghent had been used by the Germans only for barge traffic, so bringing it into operation required dredging 450,000 long tons (460,000 t) of sand and aggregate. This was carried out by the US Army hopper dredge W. L. Marshall, which had previously been engaged in dredging the Scheldt, and had several doors blown off by near misses by V-1s and V-2s. As it turned out, the 57-foot (17 m) beam of a Liberty ship could just pass through the Terneuzen locks. The first US Liberty ship to do so, the Hannis Taylor, reached Ghent on 23 January. The port was used for both Liberties and coasters. In its first month of operation, Ghent unloaded only 2,500 long tons (2,500 t) per day, but it was handling twice that by March.
## Highways
Motor transport was the most flexible form of transportation in that it could make deliveries to any location at any time, and could respond rapidly to changing demands. By September 1944 motor transport had three missions: short hauls around depots, port clearance, and long hauls on the lines of communication between them. Most of the activity involved short hauls, but during the pursuit from the Seine to the German border in August and early September, the distance between the armies and the ports and beaches stretched to over 400 miles (640 km), and most of the long haulage had to be carried out by motor transport. On an average day the Red Ball Express dispatched 8,209 long tons (8,341 t) in 1,542 trucks carrying an average load of 5.3 long tons (5.4 t) per truck per round trip that averaged 714 miles (1,149 km). Fortunately, the road network in northern France and Belgium had not been badly damaged, and required little maintenance effort. Highway repair mainly involved filling in potholes.
Although the Red Ball Express was the first and most famous express highway delivery route, it was not the only one. The Red Lion ran from 16 September to 12 October and hauled 18,000 long tons (18,000 t) of supplies from Bayeux to Brussels. Half of the supplies were for the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions participating in Operation Market Garden to seize a crossing over the Rhine. Eight companies were withdrawn from the Red Ball Express for the purpose: six equipped with standard GMC CCKW 21⁄2-ton 6×6 trucks, and two with 10-ton semi-trailers. They were supported by two medium automotive maintenance companies, which maintained a pool of replacement vehicles that could be issued in cases where repairs could not be carried out immediately.
The White Ball route was organized by the Channel Base Section and ran from Le Havre and Rouen to rail transfer points in Paris and Reims. It operated from 6 October 1944 to 10 January 1945. An average of 29 truck companies were involved, delivering 134,067 long tons (136,218 t) of supplies with an average outbound trip of 113 miles (182 km). The Green Diamond was organized by the Normandy Base Section and delivered 15,600 long tons (15,900 t) of supplies from Cherbourg to railway transfer points at Granville and Dol between 10 October and 1 November.
The last to operate was the ABC Haul, which delivered supplies from Antwerp to the depots around Liège. It differed from the others in that it used an average of sixteen companies, all of which were equipped with semi-trailer trucks with 10-long-ton (10 t) trailers. It ran from 30 November 1944 until 26 March 1945, and hauled 245,000 long tons (249,000 t). There was one more: the Little Red Ball Express, which was organized to deliver 100 long tons (100 t) of critical supplies from Carentan to Paris each day. While the train took three days to make this run, a truck could do it in just one. It ran from 15 December 1944 until 17 January 1945, after which it was replaced by an express train.
Requests for more heavy vehicles led to reduced production of 21⁄2-ton vehicles. The main bottleneck in both cases was the foundries, which could not meet the demand for castings of axles, transmissions, and engines. Nonetheless, there were still more trucks available at the New York Port of Embarkation than could be shipped, due to the port capacity crisis. The War Department canceled sailings of ships loaded with trucks, and none were delivered in November or December. Instead, priority was given to the shipment of tires, inner tubes, antifreeze and spare parts for the vehicles already in the theater.
Tires were the most critical item, being in short supply because the Japanese had overrun most of the world's sources of natural rubber in 1942. The main causes of loss of tires were overload-induced blowouts and damage from carelessly discarded C ration cans that littered the roads, but even disregarding damage from accidents, blowouts or enemy action, the life expectancy of a truck tire was about 12,000 miles (19,000 km). The War Department had allotted a replacement factor of 7.5 percent per month, but during August and September trucks were run over much greater distances than had been anticipated. An ADSEC inspection in September revealed that 70 percent of its trucks had been run for over 10,000 miles (16,000 km). The replacement of thousands of worn-out tires commenced that month. Repairing and retreading efforts could not keep up with demand, mainly due to shortages of materials such as the camelback rubber used for repairs. By November the 12th Army Group was reporting that the shortage of tires was impeding combat operations, and the following month all 10-ton trailers and 1,000 trucks were off the road because there were no tires.
COMZ attempted to obtain additional supplies of tires by restoring the local French and Belgian tire industries. This was hampered by a shortage of raw materials, which had to be imported, and the transportation systems and electricity grids, which had to be restored. The first tire made from American synthetic rubber was produced by the Goodrich factory in Paris on 4 January 1945, and by the end of the month it was turning out 4,000 tires per month and the Michelin plant was making 2,000. Meanwhile, since inspections had shown that 40 percent of tire losses were due to preventable causes such as underinflation and overloading, the theater launched a media campaign in the Stars and Stripes newspaper and on the Armed Forces Network radio. The War Department removed the tires from unserviceable vehicles in the United States, and brokered a moratorium on industrial disputes in the synthetic rubber industry to increase production.
The flexibility of motor transport was demonstrated in December when the American armies were struck by the German Ardennes offensive. On 18 December, two days after it began, 274 21⁄2-ton trucks were taken from the White Ball Route and another 258 from the Seine Base Section to move the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to the Ardennes. The following day another 347 trucks were taken from the White Ball Route to help the Third Army respond to the offensive. Semitrailers were withdrawn from the ABC Haul to assist, and by the end of the month 2,500 trucks had been withdrawn from port clearance and short haul duties to handle emergency movements of troops, equipment and supplies. At Liège tanker trucks removed 400,000 US gallons (1,500,000 L) of aviation spirit from threatened fuel depots.
## Railways
While motor transport was flexible, it lacked the capacity of rail transport to move large tonnages over long distances. It was upon the railways that the movement of supplies from the ports to the depots ultimately depended. The railway system in northern France was operated by the 2nd Military Railway Service, under the command of Brigadier General Clarence L. Burpee, an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad executive who had commanded the 703rd Railway Grand Division in the North African campaign and the military railways in the Italian campaign.
By the end of September, the 2nd Military Railway Service was responsible for the operation of roughly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of single-track railway and 2,775 miles (4,466 km) of double-track railway lines. To the northeast of Paris, lines had been opened to the depot areas around Liège and Verdun. The extent of damage to the rail network varied greatly. Most of the bridges across the Seine had been destroyed by Allied bombing or demolished by the retreating Germans, and for a time freight had to be routed through the passenger network in Paris. To the northeast, the Germans had not had sufficient time to carry out widespread demolitions, and the network was largely intact, although some of the double-track lines had single-track sections, and only one bridge in the Liège area was still standing, resulting in a bottleneck that was not rectified until January 1945.
Rehabilitation of the railway system was largely a matter of repairing bridges. The US Army had not developed military railway bridges, so the material for this was of British origin, although some of it was manufactured in the United States. This included British 75-pound (34 kg) flat-bottom tracks; rolled steel joist spans that came in lengths of 17, 21, 27, 31 and 35 feet (5.2, 6.4, 8.2, 9.4 and 10.7 m); a 40-foot (12 m) sectional box girder bridge; and unit construction railway bridges that came in lengths from 50 to 80 feet (15 to 24 m). Five engineer general service regiments were earmarked for railway construction duties, but only two, the 332nd Engineer General Service Regiment and the 347th Engineer General Service Regiment, received special training at the Railway Bridging School at Kings Newton in England. American engineers liked the rolled steel beams that the Germans used. These were manufactured at Differdange in Luxembourg, and after it was liberated in September 1944 it began producing steel beams for the Allies. By the end of December, approximately 3,500 miles (5,600 km) of single track and 5,000 miles (8,000 km) of double track lines were in operation.
The railway system was steadily improved in September and October, easing the burden on the motor vehicles. The railway system northeast of the Seine was in relatively good condition, and had greater capacity than that to the southwest. Two transloading points were established around Paris, at Aubervilliers station for the First Army, and Vincennes station for the Third Army, where trucks could transfer their loads onto trains. Aubervilliers could accommodate 225 railroad cars and load 20 simultaneously, while Vincennes could accommodate 400 and load 115 simultaneously. The task of loading the trains was performed by 300 to 350 French civilians who worked in three eight-hour shifts each day. Except for a crane at Vincennes, there was no provision for loading heavy or bulky items, so only loads that could be manhandled were accepted. Manifests were checked at a regulating point at Trappes south of Paris, and trucks were routed accordingly. Truck to train transfer proved very successful, and Red Ball shipments beyond Paris were discontinued on 20 October, except for some heavy and bulky engineering supplies. In early November, such items began being hauled all the way by train, and the Red Ball Express was discontinued on 16 November, around the same time as the Normandy beaches were closed. In October, 798 freight trains arrived in Paris from Normandy and Brittany, and 999 departed for destinations in the northeast hauling US Army cargo. By November, 23,000 long tons (23,000 t) of supplies was being forwarded northeast of the Seine each day, representing over half the tonnage arriving at the depots.
It was not intended that the railway network would be operated entirely by Allied service personnel for an extended period of time. The plan was that the lines would be progressively handed over to civilian operators once the fighting had passed through and the network was restored. The rapid Allied advance in August and September disrupted this plan, and resulted in the military personnel being spread far more widely and thinly than anticipated. This was complicated by the fact that while the railway operating battalions were formed around cadres drawn from American railroads, not all of their personnel had operating or supervisory experience. Difficulties also arose in dealing with the French civilian operators through differences of language, documentation and operating procedures.
The most important limiting factor affecting the railways was the availability of rolling stock. The Operation Overlord planners had anticipated that much of the French rolling stock would be destroyed by Allied bombing, and that the retreating Germans would take what they could with them. This proved prescient: only fifty serviceable French locomotives were captured southwest of the Seine. It was estimated that the Allied forces would require 2,724 of the large 2-8-0 and 680 of the smaller 0-6-0 type, of which 1,800 and 470 respectively would be for American use, but only 1,358 2-8-0s and 362 0-6-0s were on hand by the end of June 1944.
Due to cutbacks in American locomotive production, the War Department was unable to guarantee delivery of the remaining 2,000 locomotives, and suggested that ETOUSA obtain 450 locomotives that had been loaned to the British. The British refused to hand them over unless the Americans released their coasters. In December, 100,000 deadweight tons (100,000 deadweight tonnes) of coasters was released, and the British agreed to ship 150 locomotives in December, followed by 100 per month thereafter. By the end of the year 1,500 locomotives had been shipped to the continent, and 800 captured French, German and Italian ones had been repaired by French and American mechanics and restored to service.
More than 57,000 railroad cars of various types, including boxcars, flatcars, refrigerator cars and tank cars were shipped to the continent. Of these, some 20,000 had been shipped from the US in the form of knock-down kits and had been assembled in the UK. These were augmented by captured rolling stock. Nonetheless, serious shortages of rolling stock developed in November. Part of the problem was that the armies liked to keep a certain amount of supplies on wheels, using railroad cars as mobile warehouses, but a major factor was a decision to ship bulk supplies directly from the ports to the ADSEC and army depots to reduce port congestion. These depots were primarily points for issuing supplies, with limited unloading and storage capacity, and did not have sufficient resources to classify and segregate bulk supplies. By the end of November there were 11,000 loaded freight cars on the rails northeast of Paris, and ten days later this had increased to 14,000, but the depots could unload only about 2,000 cars per day. This resulted in increased railroad car turnaround times, with many cars taking 20 to 40 days to be unloaded.
COMZ recognized what was happening, and took steps to remedy the situation, but before they could take effect the German Ardennes offensive engulfed the American army. The forward railheads at Malmedy, Eupen and Herbesthal had to be evacuated. Rail shipments abruptly dropped from 50,000 to 30,000 long tons (51,000 to 30,000 t) per day as supplies were held back until the operational situation improved, and trains were used to back haul stocks from depots threatened by the German advance. About 35,000 railroad cars accumulated in forward areas, while supplies piled up at the ports and trains were held idle. Bridges were damaged by Allied and German demolitions and air attacks. The vital railway bridge over the Meuse at Namur was struck by a German air raid on 24 December that set off Allied demolition charges. The bridge had to be rebuilt, and was reopened for traffic on 15 January 1945.
## Air
Air transport was the least economic form of transport, but in September and October, with road and rail transport unable to supply even the minimum daily requirements of the armies, the Ninth Air Force and ADSEC, air transport was called on to supplement them. In the second week of September, troop carrier and cargo aircraft of the First Allied Airborne Army's IX Troop Carrier Command and No. 46 Group RAF, and converted Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers managed to deliver 1,000 long tons (1,000 t) per day to airfields at Saint-Dizier, Clastres and Florennes that were made available by the Ninth Air Force. The First Allied Airborne Army units were withdrawn to participate in Operation Market Garden, leaving only the B-24s. Each could carry between 1,600 and 1,800 US gallons (6,100 and 6,800 L) in four bomb bay tanks. In thirteen days of operations commencing on 9 September, 1,601 B-24 sorties delivered 2,589,065 US gallons (9,800,680 L) of gasoline. They were augmented by some British Handley Page Halifax bombers. Part of the planned Market Garden resupply missions were canceled on 22 September, and in the final week of September deliveries averaged a record 1,525 long tons (1,549 t) per day.
The Communications Zone would have liked to have continued to exploit air transport to the maximum extent, but the use of bombers was uneconomical, and they were withdrawn at the end of September. Bad flying weather in October reduced daily deliveries by air to 675 long tons (686 t) per day. In November, 3,227 long tons (3,279 t) were dispatched by air, of which 2,143 long tons (2,177 t) was gasoline. The Third Army complained about this. Gasoline was no longer in short supply; what was required was winter clothing and equipment. It was suspected that gasoline was being shipped simply because it was on hand and easy to handle.
In December, isolated units of the 106th Infantry Division called for air supply, and 150 aircraft were readied, but the mission was not flown due to bad weather around their bases in the UK. Mussions were flown to support the 101st Airborne Division, which was cut off in Bastogne. Between 23 and 27 December, 850 sorties were flown to airdrop supplies, and 61 more were dispatched with gliders, one of which carried a surgical team. As was normal for this sort of operation, some supplies could not be recovered for various reasons, but the 101st Airborne Division considered it successful. An attempt to resupply cut off elements of the 3rd Armored Division was less successful; errors in map reading resulted in 23 of the 29 aircraft dispatched dropping their supplies behind enemy lines, and the rest were either diverted or shot down. A second attempt the following day was canceled due to bad weather.
## Inland waterways
Inland water transport had not figured prominently in the Operation Overlord plan because it was felt that the benefit from rehabilitating the waterways would not be worth the effort involved. A policy was therefore laid down that waterways would be used only where the repairs required were minor and when there was a clear necessity for their use. In September such a need arose to restore inland waterways to supply coal to the Paris region in order to relieve pressure on the railways. In November an Inland Waterways Division was established in the Office of the Chief of Transportation. Four waterways were rehabilitated for military use: the Seine, Oise and Rhône rivers, and the Albert Canal.
The Oise was restored to supply coal to Paris from the coalfields around Valenciennes. Its rehabilitation was undertaken by the 1057th Port Construction and Repair Group, which repaired several locks and removed 34 obstructions, mostly demolished bridges. The Seine was rehabilitated to bring civil relief supplies to Paris from Rouen and Le Havre. It too was obstructed by sunken bridges and damaged locks. The biggest task was the repair of the locks of the Tancarville Canal, which had been built to allow barges from Le Havre to reach the Seine without having to negotiate the Seine estuary, where there were strong tidal currents. The 1055th Port Construction and Repair Group finished this work in March 1945.
Barge traffic on the Seine was obstructed by a pair of ponton bridges. They had to be opened to allow barges through, but this interrupted motor traffic. At Le Manoir there was a railway bridge built by the British that was too low to permit barge traffic. The bridge was raised in October, but then the river rose in November as the Seine flooded, reducing clearance below the minimum again. The river rose so high it was feared that the bridge would be washed away, and consideration was given to routing the trains hauling British supplies from Normandy via Paris instead. On 25 December the bridge was struck by a tugboat and put out of commission. It was then removed.
The Albert Canal had more direct military use, as it connected Antwerp with the depots around Liège. Its rehabilitation was undertaken jointly with the British, with the Americans responsible for the 50-mile (80 km) section between Kwaadmechelen and Liège. This work was undertaken by the 1056th Port Construction and Repair Group, with assistance from the 332nd and 355th Engineer General Service Regiments and Belgian civilian contractors. Delays in clearing away obstructions in the Albert Canal, notably the demolished Yserburg Bridge at the entrance, caused the opening of the canal to be delayed from 15 to 28 December, by which time there was a backlog of 198 loaded barges. During the winter the canal froze, and sea mules—tiny tugs normally used for towing barges—equipped with bulldozer blades were used as icebreakers. Barges eventually handled half the tonnage discharged at Antwerp. Between December 1944 and July 1945, 1,222,000 long tons (1,242,000 t) of Army cargo was carried by barge on the Albert Canal, and 580,000 long tons (590,000 t) on the French waterways.
## Outcome
Although logistical difficulties constituted a brake on combat operations, they were not the only factors that brought the Allied advance to a halt. The American forces also had to contend with rugged terrain, worsening weather and, above all, stiffening German resistance. American forces were widely dispersed and, with the logistical situation preying on his mind, a cautious Hodges ordered his corps commanders to halt when they encountered strong resistance. Patton's intelligence officer, Colonel Oscar W. Koch, warned that the German Army had been defeated, but not routed, and was not on the brink of collapse. He forecast that fierce resistance and a last-ditch struggle could be expected.
As American forces confronted the defenses of the Siegfried Line, priority shifted from fuel to ammunition. The armies made little progress during the fighting in September and October. Although the logistical situation improved even before the opening of Antwerp, the effort to reach the Rhine in November was probably premature. Worsening weather and stubborn German resistance impeded the American advance as much as any logistical difficulties. The German recovery was sufficient to mount the Ardennes offensive in December. This placed immense strain on the American lines of communication, especially the newly opened port of Antwerp. By the new year though, the American transportation system was stronger and more robust than ever, and preparations were underway to support the final drive into the heart of Germany.
|
29,191,170 |
SMS Markgraf
| 1,159,358,112 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1913 ships",
"König-class battleships",
"Maritime incidents in 1919",
"Ships built in Bremen (state)",
"World War I battleships of Germany",
"World War I warships scuttled at Scapa Flow",
"Wreck diving sites in Scotland"
] |
SMS Markgraf was the third dreadnought battleship of the four-ship König class. She served in the Imperial German Navy during World War I. The battleship was laid down in November 1911 and launched on 4 June 1913. She was formally commissioned into the Imperial Navy on 1 October 1914, just over two months after the outbreak of war in Europe. Markgraf was armed with ten 30.5-centimeter (12.0 in) guns in five twin turrets and could steam at a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). Markgraf was named in honor of the royal family of Baden. The name Markgraf is a rank of German nobility and is equivalent to the English Margrave, or Marquess.
Along with her three sister ships, König, Grosser Kurfürst, and Kronprinz, Markgraf took part in most of the fleet actions during the war, including the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916. At Jutland, Markgraf was the third ship in the German line and heavily engaged by the opposing British Grand Fleet; she sustained five large-caliber hits and her crew suffered 23 casualties. Markgraf also participated in Operation Albion, the conquest of the Gulf of Riga, in late 1917. The ship was damaged by a mine while en route to Germany following the successful conclusion of the operation.
After Germany's defeat in the war and the signing of the Armistice in November 1918, Markgraf and most of the capital ships of the High Seas Fleet were interned by the Royal Navy in Scapa Flow. The ships were disarmed and reduced to skeleton crews while the Allied powers negotiated the final version of the Treaty of Versailles. On 21 June 1919, days before the treaty was signed, the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the fleet to be scuttled to ensure that the British would not be able to seize the ships. Unlike most of the scuttled ships, Markgraf was never raised for scrapping; the wreck is still sitting on the bottom of the bay.
## Design
The four König-class battleships were ordered as part of the Anglo-German naval arms race; they were the fourth generation of German dreadnought battleships, and they were built in response to the British Orion class that had been ordered in 1909. The Königs represented a development of the earlier Kaiser class, with the primary improvement being a more efficient arrangement of the main battery. The ships had also been intended to use a diesel engine on the center propeller shaft to increase their cruising range, but development of the diesels proved to be more complicated than expected, so an all-steam turbine powerplant was retained.
Markgraf displaced 25,796 t (25,389 long tons) as built and 28,600 t (28,100 long tons) fully loaded, with a length of 175.4 m (575 ft 6 in), a beam of 29.5 m (96 ft 9 in) and a draft of 9.19 m (30 ft 2 in). She was powered by three Bergmann steam turbines, with steam provided by three oil-fired and twelve coal-fired boilers, which developed a total of 40,830 shp (30,450 kW) and yielded a maximum speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). The ship had a range of 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km; 9,200 mi) at a cruising speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph). Her crew numbered 41 officers and 1,095 enlisted men.
She was armed with ten 30.5 cm (12 in) SK L/50 guns arranged in five twin gun turrets: two superfiring turrets each fore and aft and one turret amidships between the two funnels. Her secondary armament consisted of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 quick-firing guns and six 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 quick-firing guns, all mounted singly in casemates. As was customary for capital ships of the period, she was also armed with five 50 cm (19.7 in) underwater torpedo tubes, one in the bow and two on each beam. Markgraf's 8.8 cm guns were removed and replaced with four 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns.
The ship's armored belt consisted of Krupp cemented steel that was 35 cm (13.8 in) thick in the central citadel that protected the propulsion machinery spaces and the ammunition magazines, and was reduced to 18 cm (7.1 in) forward and 12 cm (4.7 in) aft. In the central portion of the ship, horizontal protection consisted of a 10 cm (3.9 in) deck, which was reduced to 4 cm (1.6 in) on the bow and stern. The main battery turrets had 30 cm (11.8 in) of armor plate on the sides and 11 cm (4.3 in) on the roofs, while the casemate guns had 15 cm (5.9 in) of armor protection. The sides of the forward conning tower were also 30 cm thick.
## Service history
Markgraf was ordered under the provisional name Ersatz Weissenburg and built at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen under construction number 186. Her keel was laid in November 1911 and she was launched on 4 June 1913. At her launching ceremony, the ship was christened by Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden, the head of the royal family of Baden, in honor of which the ship had been named. Fitting-out work was completed by 1 October 1914, the day she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet. Following her commissioning, Markgraf conducted sea trials, which lasted until 12 December. By 10 January 1915, the ship had joined III Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet with her three sister ships. On 22 January 1915, III Squadron was detached from the fleet to conduct maneuver, gunnery, and torpedo training in the Baltic. The ships returned to the North Sea on 11 February, too late to assist I Scouting Group at the Battle of Dogger Bank.
In the aftermath of the loss of SMS Blücher at the Battle of Dogger Bank, Kaiser Wilhelm II removed Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl from his post as fleet commander on 2 February. Admiral Hugo von Pohl replaced him as commander of the fleet; von Pohl carried out a series of sorties with the High Seas Fleet throughout 1915. The first such operation—Markgraf's first with the fleet—was a fleet advance to Terschelling on 29–30 March; the German fleet failed to engage any British warships during the sortie. Another uneventful operation followed on 17–18 April, and another three days later on 21–22 April. Markgraf and the rest of the fleet remained in port until 29 May, when the fleet conducted another two-day advance into the North Sea. On 11–12 September, Markgraf and the rest of III Squadron supported a minelaying operation off Texel. Another uneventful fleet advance followed on 23–24 October.
Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer became commander in chief of the High Seas Fleet on 18 January 1916 when Admiral von Pohl became too ill from liver cancer to continue in that post. Scheer proposed a more aggressive policy designed to force a confrontation with the British Grand Fleet; he received approval from the Kaiser in February. The first of Scheer's operations was conducted the following month, on 5–7 March, with an uneventful sweep of the Hoofden. Another sortie followed three weeks later on the 26th, with another on 21–22 April. On 24 April, the battlecruisers of Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's I Scouting Group conducted a raid on the English coast. Markgraf and the rest of the fleet sailed in distant support. 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 artillery 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
Markgraf 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. Markgraf was the third ship in the German line, behind her sisters König and Grosser Kurfürst and followed by Kronprinz. The four ships made up V Division of III Battle Squadron, and they were the vanguard of the fleet. III Battle Squadron was the first of three battleship units; directly astern were the Kaiser-class battleships of VI Division, III Battle Squadron. III Squadron was followed by the Helgoland and Nassau classes of I Battle Squadron; in the rear guard were the obsolescent Deutschland-class pre-dreadnoughts of II Battle Squadron.
Shortly before 16:00 the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group encountered the British 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under the command of Vice Admiral 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, König's crew 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.
Markgraf opened fire on the battlecruiser Tiger at a range of 21,000 yards (19,000 m). Markgraf and her two sisters fired their secondary guns on British destroyers attempting to make torpedo attacks against the German fleet. Markgraf continued to engage Tiger until 18:25, by which time the faster battlecruisers managed to move out of effective gunnery range. During this period, the battleships Warspite and Valiant of the 5th Battle Squadron fired on the leading German battleships. At 18:10, one of the British ships scored a 15-inch (38 cm) shell hit on Markgraf. Shortly thereafter, the destroyer Moresby fired a single torpedo at Markgraf and missed from a range of about 8,000 yd (7,300 m). Malaya fired a torpedo at Markgraf at 19:05, but the torpedo missed due to the long range. Around the same time, Markgraf engaged a cruiser from the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron before shifting her fire back to the 5th Battle Squadron for ten minutes. During this period, two more 15-inch shells hit Markgraf, though the timing is unknown. The hit at 18:10 struck on a joint between two 8-inch-thick side armor plates; the shell burst on impact and holed the armor. The main deck was buckled and approximately 400 t (390 long tons; 440 short tons) of water entered the ship. The other two shells failed to explode and caused negligible damage.
Shortly after 19:00, the German cruiser Wiesbaden had become disabled by a shell from the British battlecruiser Invincible; Rear Admiral Paul Behncke in König attempted to position his four ships to cover the stricken cruiser. Simultaneously, the British III and IV Light Cruiser Squadrons began a torpedo attack on the German line; while advancing to torpedo range, they smothered Wiesbaden with fire from their main guns. The obsolescent armored cruisers of the 1st Cruiser Squadron also joined in the melee. Markgraf and her sisters fired heavily on the British cruisers, but even sustained fire from the battleships' main guns failed to drive them off. Markgraf fired both her 30.5 cm and 15 cm guns at the armored cruiser Defence. Under a hail of fire from the German battleships, Defence exploded and sank; credit is normally given to the battlecruiser Lützow, though Markgraf's gunners also claimed credit for the sinking.
Markgraf then fired on the battlecruiser Princess Royal and scored two hits. The first hit struck the 9-inch armor covering "X" barbette, was deflected downward, and exploded after penetrating the 1-inch deck armor. The crew for the left gun were killed, the turret was disabled, and the explosion caused serious damage to the upper deck. The second shell penetrated Princess Royal's 6-inch belt armor, ricocheted upward off the coal bunker, and exploded under the 1-inch deck armor. The two shells killed 11 and wounded 31. At the same time, Markgraf's secondary guns fired on the cruiser Warrior, which was seriously damaged by 15 heavy shells and forced to withdraw. Warrior foundered on the trip back to port the following morning.
Around 19:30, Admiral John Jellicoe's main force of battleships entered the battle; Orion began firing at Markgraf at 19:32; she fired four salvos of 13.5-inch Armor-Piercing, Capped (APC) shells and scored a hit with the last salvo. The shell exploded upon impacting the armor protecting the No. 6 15 cm gun casemate. The shell failed to penetrate but holed the armor and disabled the gun. The explosion seriously injured two and killed the rest of the gun crew. A heavy shell nearly struck the ship at the same time, and at 19:44, a bent propeller shaft forced Markgraf's crew to turn off the port engine; naval historian John Campbell speculated that this shell was the one that damaged the shaft. Her speed dropped to 17 or 18 kn (31 or 33 km/h; 20 or 21 mph), though she remained in her position in the line.
Shortly after 20:00, the German battleships engaged the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron; Markgraf fired primarily 15 cm shells. In this period, Markgraf was engaged by Agincourt's 12-inch guns, which scored a single hit at 20:14. The shell failed to explode and shattered on impact on the 8-inch side armor, causing minimal damage. Two of the adjoining 14-inch plates directly below the 8-inch armor were slightly forced inward and some minor flooding occurred. The heavy fire of the British fleet forced Scheer to order the fleet to turn away. Due to her reduced speed, Markgraf turned early in an attempt to maintain her place in the battle line; this, however, forced Grosser Kurfürst to fall out of formation. Markgraf fell in behind Kronprinz while Grosser Kurfürst steamed ahead to return to her position behind König. After successfully withdrawing from the British, Scheer ordered the fleet to assume night cruising formation, though communication errors between Scheer aboard Friedrich der Grosse and Westfalen, the lead ship, caused delays. Several British light cruisers and destroyers stumbled into the German line around 21:20. In the ensuing short engagement Markgraf hit the cruiser Calliope five times with her secondary guns. The fleet fell into formation by 23:30, with Grosser Kurfürst the 13th vessel in the line of 24 capital ships.
Around 02:45, several British destroyers mounted a torpedo attack against the rear half of the German line. Markgraf initially held her fire as the identities of the destroyers were unknown. But gunners aboard Grosser Kurfürst correctly identified the vessels as hostile and opened fire while turning away to avoid torpedoes, which prompted Markgraf to follow suit. Heavy fire from the German battleships forced the British destroyers to withdraw. At 05:06, Markgraf and several other battleships fired at what they thought was a submarine.
The High Seas Fleet managed to punch through the British light forces without drawing the attention of Jellicoe's battleships, and subsequently reached Horns Reef by 04:00 on 1 June. Upon reaching Wilhelmshaven, Markgraf went into harbor while several other battleships took up defensive positions in the outer roadstead. The ship was transferred to Hamburg where she was repaired in AG Vulcan's large floating dock. Repair work was completed by 20 July. In the course of the battle, Markgraf had fired a total of 254 shells from her main battery and 214 rounds from her 15 cm guns. She was hit by five large-caliber shells, which killed 11 men and wounded 13.
### Subsequent operations
Following repairs in July 1916, Markgraf went into the Baltic for trials. The ship was then temporarily assigned to I Scouting Group for the fleet operation on 18–19 August. Due to the serious damage incurred by Seydlitz and Derfflinger at Jutland, the only battlecruisers available for the operation were Von der Tann and Moltke, which were joined by Markgraf, Grosser Kurfürst, and the new battleship Bayern. The British were aware of the German plans, and sortied the Grand Fleet to meet them. By 14:35 during the action of 19 August 1916, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and, unwilling to engage the whole of the Grand Fleet just 11 weeks after the decidedly close engagement at Jutland, turned his forces around and retreated to German ports.
Markgraf was present for the uneventful advance in the direction of Sunderland on 18–20 October. Unit training with III Squadron followed from 21 October to 2 November. Two days later, the ship formally rejoined III Squadron. On the 5th, a pair of U-boats grounded on the Danish coast. Light forces were sent to recover the vessels, and III Squadron, which was in the North Sea en route to Wilhelmshaven, was ordered to cover them. During the operation, the British submarine J1 torpedoed both Grosser Kurfürst and Kronprinz and caused moderate damage. For most of 1917, Markgraf was occupied with guard duties in the North Sea, interrupted only by a refit period in January and periodic unit training in the Baltic.
### Operation Albion
In early September 1917, following the German conquest of the Russian port of Riga, the German navy decided to eliminate the Russian naval forces that still held the Gulf of Riga. The Admiralstab (Navy High Command) planned an operation to seize the Baltic island of Ösel, and specifically the Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe Peninsula. On 18 September, the order was issued for a joint operation with the army to capture Ösel and Moon Islands; the primary naval component was to comprise the flagship, Moltke, along with III and IV Battle Squadrons of the High Seas Fleet. III Squadron consisted of the four König-class ships, and was by this time augmented with the new battleship Bayern. IV Squadron consisted of the five Kaiser-class battleships. Along with nine light cruisers, three torpedo boat flotillas, and dozens of mine warfare ships, the entire force numbered some 300 ships, supported by over 100 aircraft and six zeppelins. The invasion force amounted to approximately 24,600 officers and enlisted men.
Opposing the Germans were the old Russian pre-dreadnoughts Slava and Tsesarevich, the armored cruisers Bayan, Admiral Makarov, and Diana, 26 destroyers, and several torpedo boats and gunboats. Three British C-class submarines were also stationed in the Gulf. The Irben Strait, the main southern entrance to the Gulf of Riga, was heavily mined and defended by a number of coastal artillery batteries. The garrison on Ösel numbered nearly 14,000 men, though by 1917 it had been reduced to 60 to 70 percent strength.
The operation began on 12 October, when Moltke and the four König-class ships covered the landing of ground troops by suppressing the shore batteries covering Tagga Bay. Markgraf fired on the battery located on Cape Ninnast. After the successful amphibious assault, III Squadron steamed to Putziger Wiek, although Markgraf remained behind for several days. On the 17th, Markgraf left Tagga Bay to rejoin her squadron in the Gulf of Riga, but early on the following morning she ran aground at the entrance to Kalkgrund. The ship was quickly freed, and she reached the III Squadron anchorage north of Larina Bank on the 19th. The next day, Markgraf steamed to Moon Sound, and on the 25th participated in the bombardment of Russian positions on the island of Kynö. The ship returned to Arensburg on 27 October, and two days later was detached from Operation Albion to return to the North Sea.
Markgraf struck a pair of mines in quick succession while in the Irben Strait and took in 260 metric tons (260 long tons; 290 short tons) of water. The ship continued on to Kiel via Neufahrwasser in Danzig; she then went on to Wilhelmshaven, where the mine damage was repaired. The work was completed at the Imperial Dockyard from 6 to 23 November. After repairs were completed, Markgraf returned to guard duty in the North Sea. She missed an attempted raid on a British convoy on 23–25 April 1918, as she was in dock in Kiel from 15 March to 5 May for the installation of a new foremast.
### Fate
Markgraf 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 in order to obtain a better bargaining position for Germany, despite the expected casualties. However, many of the war-weary sailors felt 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, including Markgraf, mutinied. 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 ships, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, were interned in the British naval base in Scapa Flow. Prior to the departure of the German fleet, Admiral Adolf von Trotha made clear to von Reuter that he could not allow the Allies to seize the ships, under any conditions. The fleet rendezvoused with the British light cruiser Cardiff, which led the ships to the Allied fleet that was to escort the Germans to Scapa Flow. The massive flotilla consisted of some 370 British, American, and French warships. Once the ships were interned, their guns were disabled through the removal of their breech blocks, and their crews were reduced to 200 officers and enlisted men.
The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Treaty of Versailles. Von Reuter believed that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June 1919, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. Unaware that the deadline had been extended to the 23rd, Reuter ordered the ships to be sunk at the first opportunity. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships. Markgraf sank at 16:45. The British soldiers in the guard detail panicked in their attempt to prevent the Germans from scuttling the ships; they shot and killed Markgraf's captain, Walter Schumann, who was in a lifeboat, and an enlisted man. In total, the guards killed nine Germans and wounded twenty-one. The remaining crews, totaling some 1,860 officers and enlisted men, were imprisoned.
Markgraf was never raised for scrapping, unlike most of the other capital ships that were scuttled. Markgraf and her two sisters had sunk in deeper water than the other capital ships, which made any salvage attempt more difficult. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 put a halt to all salvage operations, and after the war it was determined that salvaging the deeper wrecks was financially impractical. The rights to future salvage operations on the wrecks were sold to Britain in 1962. Owing to the fact that the steel that composed their hulls was produced before the advent of nuclear weapons, Markgraf and her sisters are among the few accessible sources of low-background steel, which has occasionally been removed for use in scientific devices.
The wrecks of Markgraf and the battleships König and Kronprinz Wilhelm were designated maritime scheduled ancient monuments on 23 May 2001. The wrecks are popular dive sites, and are protected by a policy barring divers from recovering items from them. In 2017, marine archaeologists from the Orkney Research Center for Archaeology conducted extensive surveys of Markgraf and nine other wrecks in the area, including six other German and three British warships. The archaeologists mapped the wrecks with sonar and examined them with remotely operated underwater vehicles as part of an effort to determine how the wrecks are deteriorating.
The wreck at some point came into the ownership of the firm Scapa Flow Salvage, which sold the rights to the vessel to Tommy Clark, a diving contractor, in 1981. Clark listed the wreck for sale on eBay with a "buy-it-now" price of £250,000, with the auction lasting until 28 June 2019. Three other wrecks—those of Kronprinz Wilhelm, König, and the light cruiser Karlsruhe—all also owned by Clark, were also placed for sale. The wrecks of Markgraf and her two sisters ultimately sold for £25,500 apiece to a company from the Middle East, while Karlsruhe sold to a private buyer for £8,500.
|
44,014,406 |
Hugh Beadle
| 1,146,035,815 |
Rhodesian lawyer and politician
|
[
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"1980 deaths",
"20th-century King's Counsel",
"Alumni of The Queen's College, Oxford",
"British colonial army officers",
"Chief justices of Rhodesia",
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"Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom",
"Officers of the Order of the British Empire",
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"Rhodesian Queen's Counsel",
"Rhodesian lawyers",
"Rhodesian politicians",
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"Southern Rhodesian military personnel of World War II",
"University of Cape Town alumni",
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] |
Sir Thomas Hugh William Beadle, (6 February 1905 – 14 December 1980) was a Rhodesian lawyer, politician and judge who served as Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia from March 1961 to November 1965, and as Chief Justice of Rhodesia from November 1965 until April 1977. He came to international prominence against the backdrop of Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain in November 1965, upon which he initially stood by the British Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs as an adviser; he then provoked acrimony in British government circles by declaring Ian Smith's post-UDI administration legal in 1968.
Born and raised in the Southern Rhodesian capital Salisbury, Beadle read law in the Union of South Africa and in Great Britain before commencing practice in Bulawayo in 1931. He became a member of the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly for Godfrey Huggins's ruling United Party in 1939. Appointed Huggins's Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1940, he retained that role until 1946, when he became Minister of Internal Affairs and Justice; the Education and Health portfolios were added two years later. He retired from politics in 1950 to become a Judge of the High Court of Southern Rhodesia. In 1961, he was knighted and appointed Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia; three years later he became president of the High Court's new Appellate Division and a member of the British Privy Council.
Beadle held the Rhodesian Front, the governing party from 1962, in low regard, dismissing its Justice Minister Desmond Lardner-Burke as a "small time country solicitor". As independence talks between Britain and Southern Rhodesia gravitated towards stalemate, Beadle repeatedly attempted to arrange a compromise. He continued these efforts after UDI, and brought Harold Wilson and Smith together for talks aboard HMS Tiger. The summit failed; Wilson afterwards castigated Beadle for not persuading Smith to settle.
Beadle's de jure recognition of the post-UDI government in Rhodesia in 1968 outraged the Wilson government and drew accusations from the British Prime Minister and others that he had furtively supported UDI all along. His true motives remain the subject of speculation. After Smith declared a republic in 1970, Beadle continued as Chief Justice; he was almost removed from the Imperial Privy Council, but kept his place following Wilson's 1970 electoral defeat soon after. Beadle retired in April 1977 and thereafter sat as an acting judge in special trials for terrorist offences.
## Early life and education
Thomas Hugh William Beadle (generally known as Hugh) was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia on 6 February 1905, the only son and eldest child of Arthur William Beadle and his wife Christiana Maria (née Fischer). He had two sisters. The family was politically conservative and favoured joining the Union of South Africa during the latter years of Company rule, sharing a firm consensus that Sir Charles Coghlan and his responsible government movement were, in Beadle's recollection, "a pretty wild bunch of jingoes". Responsible government ultimately prevailed in the 1922 referendum of the mostly white electorate, and Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing colony the following year.
After attending Salisbury Boys' School, Milton High School in Bulawayo and Diocesan College, Rondebosch, Beadle studied law at the University of Cape Town. He completed his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1928, then continued his studies in England as a Rhodes Scholar at The Queen's College, Oxford. There he played rugby and tennis for the college, boxed for the university and qualified as a pilot with the Oxford University Air Squadron. On 16 July 1928, Beadle received his commission as a Pilot Officer (Class AA) in the Reserve of Air Force Officers, Royal Air Force. On 16 January 1930, he was promoted to the rank of Flying Officer, was transferred to Class C in 1931 and completed his service with the RAF on 16 July 1933. He graduated with a second-class Bachelor of Civil Law degree in 1930, and soon after was called to the English bar. He briefly read in London chambers before commencing practice in Bulawayo in 1931. In 1934 he married Leonie Barry, a farmer's daughter from Barrydale in the Cape of Good Hope; they had two daughters.
## Political and judicial career
### MP and Cabinet minister
After returning to Rhodesia, Beadle took an interest in politics; he joined the United Party, created from the former Rhodesia Party and the conservative faction of the Reform Party to contest the 1934 general election. He was attracted to the United Party not so much by its policies but by his admiration for its leading figures—he considered the Prime Minister Godfrey Huggins "a man of the calibre I think of Rhodes". The Southern Rhodesian electoral system allowed only those who met certain financial and educational qualifications to vote. The criteria were applied equally to all regardless of race, but since most black citizens did not meet the set standards, the electoral roll and the colonial Legislative Assembly were overwhelmingly from the white minority (about 5% of the population). The United Party broadly represented commercial interests, civil servants and the professional classes.
Beadle stood in Bulawayo South in the 1934 election, challenging Harry Davies, the Labour leader. Davies defeated Beadle by 458 votes to 430, but the United Party won decisively elsewhere and formed a new government with 24 out of the 30 parliament seats. Huggins, who remained prime minister, held Beadle in high regard and made him a close associate. In the 1939 election, Beadle won a three-way contest in Bulawayo North with 461 votes out of 869, and became a United Party MP. Beadle was seconded to the Gold Coast Regiment with the rank of temporary captain following the outbreak of the Second World War, but was released from military service at the request of the Southern Rhodesian government to serve as Huggins's Parliamentary Secretary, "with access to all ministers and top-ranking officials on the PM's business to speed up affairs". He held this post from 1940 to 1946, during which time he was also Deputy Advocate General for the Southern Rhodesian armed forces. In the 1945 New Year Honours he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). For his service during the war, Beadle was also honoured by the King of the Hellenes with the rank of Officer of the Order of the Phoenix.
In the first post-war election in 1946, Beadle defeated Labour's Cecil Maurice Baker in Bulawayo North by 666 votes to 196. He was appointed Minister of Justice and Minister of Internal Affairs. The same year he was made a King's Counsel. Two years later, after retaining his seat in the 1948 election with a large majority, he was assigned two more portfolios, those of Education and Health. Around this time he turned down an approach from a group of Liberal and rebel United Party MPs to challenge Huggins's premiership. Beadle had entered the Cabinet at a time when relations between the United Party and the British Labour Party were warming. He formed a good relationship with Aneurin Bevan, the UK Minister of Health, and put considerable work into attempting to create a Southern Rhodesian system similar to National Insurance in Britain. These efforts were largely unsuccessful, but did lead to a maternity grant for white mothers, nicknamed the "Beadle baby scheme". Beadle retired from politics in 1950 to accept a seat on the Southern Rhodesian High Court. This decision surprised many of his contemporaries; Beadle would explain later that he left politics as he did not feel he would work well under his United Party colleague Edgar Whitehead, whose subsequent rise to the premiership he correctly predicted. Having served for more than three years as a member of the Executive Council of Southern Rhodesia, he was granted the right in August 1950 to retain the title "The Honourable" for life.
### Judicial career
Beadle filled the seat on the High Court bench vacated by Sir Robert Tredgold, who had just been appointed Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia. Despite his close relationship with Huggins, Beadle had strong misgivings regarding Federation with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which became Huggins's flagship project. Beadle argued that since the British government would never devolve indigenous African affairs to Federal responsibility, native policy in the three territories would never be co-ordinated, meaning "the thing was bound to crash". Nevertheless, Huggins sent him to London in 1949 to discuss the legal problems of the proposed Federation with the British government. Beadle later expressed regrets that he had not played a bigger role in drawing up the constitution for the Federation, which was inaugurated as an indissoluble entity in 1953, following a mostly white referendum in Southern Rhodesia. Huggins spent three years as Federal Prime Minister before retiring in 1956. Whitehead became Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia in 1958.
After Leonie's death in 1953, Beadle married Olive Jackson, of Salisbury, in 1954. He later said that he was repeatedly asked to resign from the bench to become the Federal Minister of Law or stand for Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, but "didn't regard any of the issues as crucial enough to warrant my going back". Beadle's biographer Claire Palley describes him as "a learned, fair but also adventurous judge". He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1957 New Year Honours. In August 1959, amid rising black nationalism and opposition to the Federation, particularly in the two northern territories, Beadle chaired a three-man tribunal on the Southern Rhodesian government's preventive detention of black nationalist leaders without trial during the disturbances. He upheld the government's actions, reporting that the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress had disseminated "subversive propaganda", encouraged racial hatred, intimidated people into joining and undermined the authority of tribal chiefs, government officials and police.
In 1960 Beadle was a member of the Monckton Commission on the Federation's future. According to Aidan Crawley, a British member of the commission, Beadle began the process "as a radical advocate of white supremacy" but later expressed markedly different views. The commissioners "hardly agreed on anything", in Beadle's recollection. While not recommending dissolution, the Monckton report was strongly critical of the Federation. It advocated a wide range of reforms, rejected any further advance towards Federal independence until these were implemented, and called for the territories to be permitted to secede if opposition continued. Beadle was knighted in the 1961 New Year Honours and the same year appointed Chief Justice of the High Court of Southern Rhodesia. A primary school in Bulawayo was named after him. In Mehta v. City of Salisbury (1961), a case challenging the racial segregation of a public swimming pool, Beadle decided that apartheid made precedents in South African case law invalid, ruled that the plaintiff's dignity had been unlawfully affronted, and awarded him damages. Following continued black nationalist opposition to the Federation, particularly in Nyasaland, the British government announced in 1962 that Nyasaland would be allowed to secede. This was soon extended to Northern Rhodesia as well, and at the end of 1963 the Federation was dismantled.
Whitehead's United Federal Party was defeated in the 1962 Southern Rhodesian general election by the Rhodesian Front (RF), an all-white, firmly conservative party led by Winston Field whose declared goal was independence for Southern Rhodesia without major constitutional changes and without commitment to any set timetable regarding black majority rule. RF proponents downplayed black nationalist grievances regarding land ownership and segregation, and argued that despite the racial imbalance in domestic politics—whites made up 5% of the population, but over 90% of registered voters—the electoral system was not racist as the franchise was based on financial and educational qualifications rather than ethnicity. Beadle expressed an extremely low opinion of the RF. Ian Smith, who replaced Field as prime minister in 1964, was in Beadle's eyes an unconvincing leader; Desmond Lardner-Burke, the Justice Minister, was a "fascist" and a "small time country solicitor ... incapable of producing correct documents for an undefended divorce action". The same year Smith took over, Beadle became a member of the Privy Council in London and president of the new Appellate Division of the Southern Rhodesian High Court. In this latter role he blocked a Legislative Assembly act to extend periods of preventive restriction outside times of emergency, ruling it against the declaration of rights contained in Southern Rhodesia's 1961 constitution.
### UDI
Britain granted independence to Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, renamed Zambia and Malawi respectively, under black majority governments in 1964. As independence talks between the British and Southern Rhodesian governments continued with little progress, speculation began to mount that the colonial government might attempt a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) if no accommodation could be found. The British High Commissioner in Salisbury, J B Johnston, had few doubts about how Beadle would respond to such an act, writing that he was "quite certain that no personal considerations would deflect him for a moment from administering the law with absolute integrity." Arthur Bottomley, the British Сommonwealth Secretary, took a similar line, describing Beadle to the Prime Minister Harold Wilson as "a staunch constitutionalist" who would be disposed to "frustrate any illegal action by Mr Smith's government".
Beadle told Wilson that he and the judiciary would stand by the law in the event of a UDI, but that he expected the armed forces and police to side with the post-UDI authorities. He thought UDI would be a political and economic mistake for Rhodesia, and attempted to dissuade Smith from this course of action, but at the same time asserted that if UDI occurred it was "not the function of a court to attempt to end the revolution and restore legality". He warned his High Court colleagues that he would not direct "a judicial rebellion against the Rhodesian government".
Smith and Wilson made little progress towards a settlement during 1964 and 1965; each accused the other of being unreasonable. The RF won a decisive victory in the May 1965 general election. After efforts to forge a compromise in London in early October 1965 failed, Wilson, desperate to avert UDI, travelled to Salisbury later that month to continue negotiations. Beadle's "irrepressible ingenuity led to an incredible succession of proposals for a settlement", Wilson recalled, but these talks also failed. The two sides agreed on an investigatory Royal Commission, possibly chaired by Beadle, to recommend a path towards independence, but could not settle on the terms. Beadle continued to seek a compromise, and on 8 November persuaded Smith to allow him to go to London to meet Wilson again. Beadle told Wilson that he thought Smith was personally disposed to continue talks but under pressure from some of his ministers to abandon negotiations. Wilson told the British House of Commons that Beadle had provided "wise advice" to both governments, and was "welcome [in] this country not only for his sagacity, judgement, and humanity but as a man with the courage of a lion."
Beadle later wrote to his fellow High Court judge Benjamin Goldin that he thought he had "saved the situation" by going to London, having persuaded Wilson to give some ground on the terms for the Royal Commission, but his trip alarmed the pro-UDI camp in the Rhodesian Cabinet, who feared that Beadle might be carrying a message to the Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs telling him to prorogue parliament. Smith and his Cabinet declared independence on 11 November 1965, while Beadle was at Lusaka Airport on his way home. Smith later rejected the suggestion that Beadle could have had anything significant to tell them on his return, saying that "the only thing that Beadle could have done when he got back was to have talked us out of insisting on our questions".
Before announcing UDI to the nation, Smith, Lardner-Burke and the Deputy Prime Minister Clifford Dupont visited Gibbs at Government House to inform him personally and ask him to resign. Gibbs made clear that he would not do so, but indicated that he would vacate Government House and return to his farm. When Beadle arrived later in the day, he not only persuaded Gibbs to stay at the official residence, but moved in himself to provide advice and moral support. On Beadle's counsel, Gibbs instructed those responsible for law and order in Rhodesia to stay at their posts and carry on as normal. When the Governor showed no sign of stepping down, Smith's government effectively replaced him with Dupont, appointing the latter to the post of Officer Administering the Government created by the 1965 constitution attached to UDI. Lardner-Burke asked Beadle to administer the oath of allegiance to Dupont, but was rebuffed; Beadle said he would be committing a criminal offence if he did so.
The UK government introduced extensive economic and political sanctions against Rhodesia and indicated that any dialogue had to take place through Gibbs. Beadle was told to liaise with Lardner-Burke regarding any proposals Smith's government might have. Beadle would later recount that the post-UDI government briefly threatened him, telling him to "go now, otherwise you lose your job", but he was ultimately left alone. The Chief Justice noted in his diary that Smith's government was "not prepared to force [a] showdown with the judges".
### Madzimbamuto case and Tiger talks
During the immediate post-UDI period Beadle, in his role as Chief Justice, occupied a unique position as he could speak directly with all the main players—Gibbs, Smith and Wilson. He became the main intermediary between them, and received a dormant commission from the UK government to replace Gibbs as governor in case of necessity. He visited London in January 1966 and, according to Wilson's Attorney General Elwyn Jones, was "scornful of the 1965 constitution". Some in Rhodesia criticised Beadle for going to London, or accused him of siding with Gibbs against Smith. The Chief Justice insisted that he was just trying to do his best for Rhodesia, a claim Smith accepted, saying Beadle "thought more of his country than of his position". The UK Foreign Office remained wary, speculating in a January 1966 report that while the British government hoped to reclaim Rhodesia "in such a way that policy and thinking is reoriented, racial attitudes changed, and the path to majority rule firmly laid," the Chief Justice "would be content to see a 1961-type constitution, without independence, remain for a long time".
Beadle summarised the Rhodesian judiciary's position in light of UDI by saying simply that the judges would carry on with their duties "according to the law", but this non-committal stance was challenged by legal cases heard at the High Court. The first of these was Madzimbamuto v. Lardner-Burke N. O. and Others, concerning Daniel Madzimbamuto, a black nationalist detained without trial five days before UDI under emergency powers. When Lardner-Burke's ministry prolonged the state of emergency in February 1966, Madzimbamuto's wife appealed for his release, arguing that since the UK government had declared UDI illegal and outlawed the Rhodesian government, the state of emergency (and, by extension, her husband's imprisonment) had no legal basis. The High Court's General Division ruled on 9 September 1966 that the UK retained legal sovereignty, but that to "avoid chaos and a vacuum in the law" the Rhodesian government should be considered to be in control of law and order to the same extent as before UDI. Madzimbamuto appealed to Beadle's Appellate Division, which considered the case over the next year and a half.
Beadle arranged "talks about talks" between the British and Rhodesian governments during 1966, which led to Smith and Wilson meeting personally aboard HMS Tiger off Gibraltar between 2 and 4 December. Beadle had to be hoisted aboard because of a back injury. Negotiations snagged primarily over the matter of the transition. Wilson insisted on the abandonment of the 1965 constitution, the dissolution of the post-UDI government and a period under a British Governor—conditions that Smith saw as tantamount to surrender, particularly as the British proposed to draft and introduce the new constitution only after a fresh test of opinion under UK control. Indeed, Smith had warned Beadle before the summit that unless he "could assure his people that a reasonable constitution had been agreed", he would feel unable to settle. Smith said he could not agree without first consulting his ministers in Salisbury, infuriating Wilson, who declared that a central condition of the talks had been that he and Smith would have plenipotentiary powers to make a deal.
Beadle agreed with Smith that a deal ending UDI without any prior agreement on the replacement constitution would meet with widespread opposition among white Rhodesians, but still felt that Salisbury should agree. He asked Smith to commend the terms to his colleagues in Salisbury, speculating that if he did the Cabinet would surely accept. Smith refused to make such a commitment, much to the disappointment of Beadle and Gibbs, and signed the final document only to acknowledge it as an accurate record. Wilson was furious with Beadle, feeling that he should have taken a far firmer line to persuade Smith to settle; after Beadle left the meeting, Wilson said that he "could not understand how any man could have a slipped disc whom Providence had failed to provide with a backbone". Beadle and Gibbs urged Smith to reconsider during the journey home, but made little headway.
During the Rhodesian Cabinet meeting on the proposals, the judges were kept informed by the "expression on Sir Hugh's face and from comments of increasing despair", Goldin later wrote; the Chief Justice "spent the whole day in his chambers looking more anxious and despondent after each occasion on which he was smuggled into the Cabinet meeting to explain the meaning or effect of particular provisions". On 5 December 1966, when Beadle heard at Government House that Smith's ministers had rejected the terms, he stood "as though pole-axed", Gibbs's Private Secretary Sir John Pestell recalled, and appeared close to collapse. The judge's wife and daughter helped him to slowly return to his room.
### De facto decision; rejection of royal prerogative
The United Nations instituted mandatory economic sanctions against Rhodesia in December 1966. Over the next year British diplomatic activity regarding Rhodesia was diminished; the UK government's stated policy shifted towards NIBMAR—"no independence before majority rule". Beadle grappled with the Rhodesian problem privately and in correspondence, attempting to reconcile the Smith administration's control over the country with the unconstitutional nature of UDI. Erwin Griswold, the United States Solicitor General, wrote to him that as he saw it the Rhodesian judges could not recognise the post-UDI government as de facto while also claiming to act under the Queen's commission.
Ruling on Madzimbamuto's appeal in January 1968, Beadle and three other judges decided that Smith's post-UDI order was not de jure but should be acknowledged as the de facto government by virtue of its "effective control over the state's territory". Sir Robert Tredgold, the former Southern Rhodesian and Federal Chief Justice, told Gibbs that Beadle had thereby "sold the pass" and "should be asked to leave Government House". The following month, considering the fate of James Dhlamini, Victor Mlambo and Duly Shadreck, three black Rhodesians sentenced to death before UDI for murder and terrorist offences, Beadle upheld Salisbury's power to execute the men. Whitehall reacted by announcing on 1 March 1968 that at the request of the UK government, the Queen had exercised the royal prerogative of mercy and commuted the sentences to life imprisonment. Dhlamini and the others promptly applied for a permanent stay of execution.
At the hearing for Dhlamini and Mlambo on 4 March 1968, Beadle dismissed the statement from London, saying it was a decision by the UK government and not the Queen herself, and that in any case the 1961 constitution had transferred the prerogative of mercy from Britain to the Rhodesian Executive Council. "The present government is the fully de facto government and as such is the only power that can exercise the prerogative," he concluded. "It would be strange indeed if the United Kingdom government, exercising no internal power in Rhodesia, were given the right to exercise the prerogative of clemency." The Judge President Sir Vincent Quenet and Justice Hector Macdonald agreed, and the application was dismissed. Dhlamini, Mlambo and Shadreck were hanged two days later.
Justice John Fieldsend of the High Court's General Division resigned in protest, writing to Gibbs that he no longer believed the High Court to be defending the rights of Rhodesian citizens. Beadle told reporters that "Her Majesty is quite powerless in this matter," and that "it is to be deplored that the Queen was brought into this". At Government House, the Chief Justice berated Gibbs for "dragging the Queen into the political argument". To the Governor's astonishment, Beadle conceded that for some time he had no longer considered himself to be sitting under the 1961 constitution, but had not made this clear as he had not fully accepted the 1965 constitution as valid. Gibbs told him to leave Government House forthwith. They never met again.
In his analysis of Beadle's behaviour, Manuele Facchini suggests that the Chief Justice considered the matter from a dominion-style viewpoint—by stressing the 1961 constitution and the rights held by Salisbury thereunder, he was repudiating not the royal prerogative itself, but rather the attempt to exercise it at the behest of British rather than Rhodesian ministers. Kenneth Young comments that the British government's involvement of the Queen inadvertently strengthened the post-UDI authorities' position; outraged, many in Rhodesia who had heretofore rejected UDI now threw their weight behind the RF. Beadle, deeply disillusioned, wrote to a friend that he was "thoroughly fed up with the way the Wilson government had behaved in this whole affair."
### De jure decision
Madzimbamuto petitioned for the right to appeal against his detention to the Privy Council in London; the Rhodesian Appellate Division ruled that he had no right to do so, but the Privy Council considered his case anyway. It ruled in his favour on 23 July 1968, deciding that orders for detention made by the Rhodesian government were invalid regardless of whether they were under the 1961 or 1965 constitution, and that Madzimbamuto was illegally detained. Harry Elinder Davies, one of the Rhodesian judges, announced on 8 August that the Rhodesian courts would not consider this ruling binding as they no longer accepted the Privy Council as part of the Rhodesian judicial hierarchy. Justice J R Dendy Young resigned in protest at Davies's ruling on 12 August and four days later became Chief Justice of Botswana. Madzimbamuto would remain in prison until 1974.
Beadle and his judges granted full de jure recognition to the post-UDI government on 13 September 1968, while rejecting the appeals of 32 black nationalists who one month earlier had been convicted of terrorist offences and sentenced to death. Beadle declared that while he believed the Rhodesian judiciary should respect rulings of the Privy Council "so far as possible", the judgement of 23 July had made it legally impossible for Rhodesian judges to continue under the 1961 constitution. He asserted that as he could not countenance a legal vacuum, the only alternative was the 1965 constitution. Referring to the Privy Council's decision that the UK might yet remove the post-UDI government, he said that "on the facts as they exist today, the only prediction which this court can make is that sanctions will not succeed in overthrowing the present government ... and that there are no other factors which might succeed in doing so". UDI, the associated 1965 constitution and the government were thereafter considered de jure by the Rhodesian legal system.
The British Commonwealth Secretary George Thomson expressed outrage, accusing Beadle and the other judges of breaching "the fundamental laws of the land", while Gibbs stated that since his position as governor existed under the 1961 constitution he could only reject the ruling. An internal UK Foreign Office memorandum rejected Beadle's argument but recognised his belief that "because of the effect of the effluxion of time, he was entitled to take a different view", and concluded that the Chief Justice's argument was "sufficiently plausible to make it difficult to say that that position is manifestly improper or that, in adopting it, Sir Hugh Beadle is manifestly guilty of misconduct." Beadle explained in a 1972 interview: "We had been doing our best to try and uphold the law and when the thing was in the revolutionary stage we dug our toes in, we wouldn't budge. But then as the government became more and more entrenched we had to apply the principle of law, which says that if a revolution succeeds the law changes with it. Yet because we accepted the inevitable we're blamed by a lot of people for being responsible for the revolution, which is a very different thing."
### Threatened removal from Privy Council; republican Chief Justice
Beadle's acceptance of the post-UDI order effectively placed him on the side of the RF and removed any chance of his regaining an intermediary role with Wilson. The British Prime Minister minimised the political impact of the Chief Justice's decision by presenting it as evidence that Beadle had furtively supported UDI all along, and subsequently excluded him from the diplomatic dialogue. Wilson pursued a second initiative which led to a fresh round of talks with Smith off Gibraltar aboard HMS Fearless in October 1968. Marked progress towards agreement was made but the Rhodesian delegation demurred on a new British proposal, the "double safeguard". This would involve elected black Rhodesians controlling a blocking quarter in the Rhodesian parliament, with the power to veto retrogressive legislation, and thereafter having the right to appeal passed bills to the Privy Council in London. Smith's team accepted the principle of the blocking quarter but agreement could not be reached on the technicalities; the involvement of the Privy Council was rejected by Smith as a "ridiculous" provision that would prejudice Rhodesia's sovereignty. The talks ended without success.
Smith's government held a referendum on 20 June 1969 in which the mostly white electorate overwhelmingly voted in favour of both a new constitution and the declaration of a republic. Four days later the UK Foreign Office released Gibbs from his post, withdrew the British residual mission in Salisbury and closed the post-UDI government's representative office at Rhodesia House in London. The 1969 constitution introduced a President as head of state, a multiracial senate, separate black and white electoral rolls (each with qualifications) and a mechanism whereby the number of black MPs would increase in line with the proportion of income tax revenues paid by black citizens. This process would stop once blacks had the same number of seats as whites; the declared goal was not majority rule, but rather "parity between the races".
Michael Stewart, Wilson's Foreign Secretary, recommended that Britain take preliminary steps towards removing Beadle from the Privy Council if the Chief Justice did not resign or dissociate himself from the republic "within a week or two" after the new constitution came into force. Given the gravity of such an action—only one Privy Counsellor, Edgar Speyer, was struck off the list during the 20th century—and the likelihood that accusations of vindictiveness would result, the British government was loath to do this, and hoped that Beadle would remove the need for it by resigning.
Smith officially declared a republic on 2 March 1970, and on 10 April the RF was decisively returned to power in the first republican election, winning all 50 white seats out of a total of 66. Six days later, Dupont was sworn in as the first president of Rhodesia. British officials learned only from the Rhodesian radio that Dupont's oath of office was administered not by Beadle but by the "Acting Chief Justice", Hector Macdonald. Beadle's absence prompted speculation in British quarters, but this promptly dissipated after The Rhodesia Herald reported on 29 April that a High Court farewell to Sir Vincent Quenet, a retiring judge, would be presided over by the republic's Chief Justice Sir Hugh Beadle.
On 6 May 1970, Stewart suggested to Wilson that they should formally advise the Queen to remove Beadle from the Privy Council. Wilson resolved to wait until after the British general election the following month. This decision proved decisive for Beadle as, to the surprise of many, the Conservatives won the election, and Edward Heath replaced Wilson as prime minister. Heath's government decided against removing Beadle from the Privy Council, surmising that this would only hinder progress towards an accommodation with Smith. Beadle remained a Privy Counsellor for the rest of his life.
### Later years
In May 1973 Beadle chaired the High Court appeal hearing for Peter Niesewand, a freelance reporter for the overseas press who had been convicted of espionage under the Official Secrets Act, prompting outcry abroad. Niesewand had written three articles in November 1972 claiming to describe the Rhodesian military's plans for combating communist-backed black nationalist guerrillas, and had been sentenced by a magistrate to two years' hard labour, one year suspended. Beadle, Goldin and Macdonald rejected the state prosecution and unanimously overturned the conviction, ruling that Niesewand's reports had embarrassed the government but did not damage the Rhodesian state. "Factual evidence as opposed to opinion was never given," Beadle commented. The government promptly expelled Niesewand from Rhodesia.
After Olive's death in a motor accident in 1974, Beadle married Pleasance Johnson in 1976. He retired as Chief Justice in 1977; Macdonald succeeded him. For the rest of his life, Beadle served as an acting judge in special trials where suspected insurgents were tried for terrorist offences carrying the death penalty. In March 1977 he refused to try Abel Mapane and Jotha Bango, two Botswana citizens facing arms charges, ruling that since Rhodesia and Botswana were not at war and the Rhodesian Army had crossed into Botswana to capture the accused, the court had no jurisdiction. "Were it not so it would mean this Court condoned the illegal abduction of Botswana nationals," he explained.
Beadle continued to serve under the short-lived, unrecognised government of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, which replaced the Rhodesian republic in June 1979, and under the British interim authorities following the Lancaster House Agreement of December that year. Following fresh elections in February–March 1980, the UK granted independence to Zimbabwe under the leadership of Robert Mugabe in April. Beadle died, aged 75, in Johannesburg on 14 December 1980. Hugh Beadle Primary School in Bulawayo retains its name in the 21st century.
## Personality and appraisal
"A short, stocky man of ruddy complexion with a toothbrush moustache," Claire Palley writes, "Beadle had a blunt manner, looking hard at all whom he encountered. His drive and enthusiasm were overwhelming, whether at work, in charitable activities, or as a courageous hunter and fisherman. He had a warm family life and many friends." According to J.R.T. Wood, Wilson "hated Beadle perhaps because Beadle was clever but spoke his mind"; the British Prime Minister described Beadle to Lord Alport shortly after UDI as combining "the courage of a lion" with "the smartness of a fox". In Lord Blake's History of Rhodesia, Beadle is characterised as "an irrepressible, bouncy extrovert, who does not always perceive the reaction which he causes in others." Garfield Todd, Premier of Southern Rhodesia from 1956 to 1958, saw Beadle as "impulsive" and "always inclined to overstate his case".
The black nationalist movement regarded Beadle as a white supremacist, pointing to his 1959 preventive detention ruling as evidence.
Wilson and other British figures saw him as two-faced for first supporting Gibbs, then declaring Smith's post-UDI government legal, and concluded that the judge must have always been a furtive UDI supporter, a theory that many have accepted. Wilson's private assistant Marcia Falkender identified Beadle as "the villain of the piece", while Bottomley dubbed him UDI's "evil genius".
Others, including Palley, Wood and Facchini, contend that Beadle was determined to avert UDI and afterwards sincere in his search for an accommodation until he came to believe this was not possible. "Beadle accepted the rebellion when he realised that he was identifying himself with 'the code of an Empire that had ceased to exist'," Facchini concludes. "Thus, he retained his Privy Counsellorship as a vestige of the Rhodesia he had known all his life."
Palley asserts that but for UDI, "Beadle would have been remembered as a Commonwealth chief justice who upheld individual liberty".
"The thing that I've regretted most is this UDI and also I've regretted more than anything the fact that later it wasn't settled," Beadle said in 1972; "I think it could have been settled at a much earlier stage if Wilson had been a bit more reasonable."
Julian Greenfield, a close friend and colleague of Beadle, considered him "one who put service to the country first and foremost and laboured unceasingly on what he believed to be its true interests." According to Palley, Beadle's own view was similar—that "he did his best for his country in a time of difficult choices".
|
53,797,776 |
Equestrian statue of Edward Horner
| 1,168,244,681 |
Memorial to Edward Horner, who died of wounds in the First World War
|
[
"Bronze sculptures in England",
"Equestrian statues in the United Kingdom",
"Mells, Somerset",
"Monuments and memorials in Somerset",
"Works of Edwin Lutyens in England",
"World War I memorials in England"
] |
The equestrian statue of Edward Horner stands inside St Andrew's Church in the village of Mells in Somerset, south-western England. It was designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, as a memorial to Edward Horner, who died of wounds in the First World War. The sculpture was executed by Sir Alfred Munnings.
Edward Horner was the only surviving son and heir of Sir John and Lady Frances Horner of Mells Manor and a member of an extended upper-class social group known as the Coterie, many of whom were killed in the war. The group included Diana Manners who Edward pursued unsuccessfully for several years, his future brother-in-law - Raymond Asquith Julian Grenfell, Patrick Shaw-Stewart and Charles Lister. Shortly after the war broke out, he was a yeomanry officer in the part-time Territorial Force but he was keen to join the fighting on the Western Front and obtained a transfer to a cavalry regiment through his family's connections. He was wounded in May 1915, losing a kidney, and did not return to the war until early 1917. He was assigned a staff post but again secured a transfer to the front line. Shortly after his return to the fighting, on 21 November 1917, he was wounded again; he died the same day.
Lutyens was a friend of the Horner family, having designed multiple buildings and structures for them since the beginning of the 20th century. As well as Horner's memorial, he designed a memorial to Raymond Asquith (also in St Andrew's Church), and Mells War Memorial in the centre of the village. For Horner's memorial, Lutyens designed the plinth himself, and engaged the renowned equestrian painter and war artist Alfred Munnings for the latter's first public work of sculpture. The plinth is in Portland stone and set into it is Horner's original grave marker; the family's coat of arms is carved into the front, while the sides bear various dedicatory inscriptions. The statue is a bronze of a cavalry officer on horseback, bare-headed, with his helmet and sword on the horse's saddle. Lutyens was known for abstract and ecumenical themes in his war memorial designs, but the statue of Horner is an example of his use of more conventional imagery to commemorate an individual. Installed in the Horner family chapel in St Andrew's Church in 1920 at a cost of £1,000, it was moved to its present location in the church in 2007.
## Biography
Edward William Horner (born 3 May 1888) was the third child of Sir John Horner, KCVO, of Mells Manor, and his wife Frances (née Graham), and their first son. The family was reputed to be descendants of "Little Jack Horner", the subject of an 18th-century nursery rhyme. Sir John was a London barrister and later commissioner of woods, for which he was knighted in 1908. Frances was a prominent member of the Souls social group, whom she regularly hosted at Mells.
Edward was the last direct male heir of the Horner family, his younger brother (Mark) having died of scarlet fever before the war. He was educated at Summer Fields School near Oxford, then at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Officers' Training Corps. At Oxford, he became part of the social network known as the Coterie. The group was made up largely of heirs to aristocratic families and included Raymond Asquith, Horner's future brother-in-law. Many of them were frequent visitors to Mells Manor at the beginning of the 20th century. Horner vigorously pursued Lady Diana Manners, a leading light of The Coterie, without much success. He struggled academically, graduating from Oxford with only a third-class degree, much to the disappointment of his parents and particularly his mother, who concentrated all her ambitions on Edward after Mark's premature death. Struggling for career options, Edward pursued his parents' ambition for him to become a barrister. He was called to the bar, and began a pupillage in 1914 in the chambers of Hugh Fraser under the ultimate guidance of F. E. Smith, one of the most distinguished barristers of the day.
Like many contemporary men, especially those from aristocratic backgrounds, Horner felt a keen sense of patriotism fostered by his private education and by tales from imperial campaigns around the turn of the 20th century, especially the Second Boer War (1899–1902). On 19 August 1914, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the North Somerset Yeomanry, a part-time Territorial Force unit with no obligation to serve abroad. After the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, his regiment was ordered to Hampshire for training. Unlike the men under his command, among them farmers who were reluctant to leave their land, Horner was keen to join the fighting in France. However, life in the North Somerset Yeomanry was not to Edward's liking. He wrote to his mother to complain that they had taken his two best hunters, and his man servant, and he was made to "sleep on bare boards" and rise at 5 a.m. As an influential aristocratic family, the Horners were able to secure him a transfer first to the Royal Horse Guards and then, in October 1914, to the 18th (Queen Mary's Own) Hussars. The 18th Hussars were stationed at Tidworth Camp in Wiltshire under the 11th Reserve Cavalry for training, after which they were deployed to the Western Front in early 1915.
Horner arrived first at Rouen, well behind the front, and then in February 1915 was ordered forward to Hazebrouck on the Belgian border. In May 1915, he was assigned to escort a working party to dig trenches on the north side of the Yser Canal. During the march, he was wounded in the abdomen by shrapnel from an artillery shell. Hospitalised at the No. 7 General Hospital at Boulogne in France, he had a kidney removed, and at one point his condition was so grave that his parents were given special permission to visit him. They were accompanied by Diana Manners and a private doctor and nurse. He left the hospital on 1 June and was allowed to return to Mells to recuperate for the summer of 1915. Eager to return to the front, Horner went before a medical board in December 1915 but was told that his missing kidney rendered him ineligible for front-line duties. He was sent again to Tidworth to await orders, which arrived in January 1916, instructing him to sail for Egypt. He was promoted to temporary lieutenant in November 1916.
He was first assigned a staff post in Egypt but was again able to transfer to a fighting role in France in February 1917. In October that year, the family's second home at Mells Park was destroyed by fire; Horner was given compassionate leave in early November and returned to the village to visit his parents. Returning to France, he was given command of a troop (16 soldiers and horses). The 18th Hussars were part of the Battle of Cambrai, where they were holding the village of Noyelles, south-east of Cambrai itself. He was hit in the groin on 21 November 1917 and evacuated to No. 48 Casualty Clearing Station near Ytres but died that evening. He is buried in Rocquigny-Equancourt Road British Cemetery, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The headstone for his grave in France contains the epitaph "Small time, but in that small most greatly lived this star of England", from Shakespeare's Henry V.
## Commissioning
Sir Edwin Lutyens was among the most distinguished architects in Britain. He became a nationally renowned designer of war memorials following his work as an adviser to (and later one of the principal architects for) the Imperial War Graves Commission and his design for The Cenotaph on London's Whitehall. As well as dozens of public war memorials in towns and cities across Britain, Lutyens designed several private memorials to individual casualties, usually the sons of friends or clients. Many were heirs to the country houses Lutyens had built earlier in his career, as in Mells where he renovated the manor at the beginning of the 20th century. His work in Mells arose through his friend and collaborator Gertrude Jekyll, who introduced him to the Horners through a family connection. Lutyens established a friendship which led to multiple commissions in the village. In addition to his work on the manor, he redesigned its gardens and worked on several related buildings and structures, and after the war was responsible for a tribute to Raymond Asquith (Edward's brother-in-law), also located in St Andrew's Church, and the village war memorial. Lutyens designed two other memorials to Horner: a wooden board featuring a description of the events leading up to his death, which was placed on a wall in the family chapel in St Andrew's Church; and a stone tablet in Cambrai Cathedral.
Alfred Munnings was a painter specialising in horses. He volunteered for military service at the outbreak of war but was deemed unfit due to lack of sight in one eye. He volunteered to tend to army horses and was later recruited as a civilian war artist attached to Canadian cavalry. In 1919, he was beginning to move into sculpture. The Horner memorial was his first public work of sculpture, for which Lutyens commissioned him based on a pre-existing friendship. The work led to several further commissions for equine statues, including from the Jockey Club for a sculpture of the racehorse Brown Jack at Epsom Downs Racecourse. Munnings produced two models in clay for review by Lady Horner; he worked from photographs provided by Lady Horner and a live model in producing the statue. At one point, Munnings was so dissatisfied with the statue's head that he cut it off and re-cast it from scratch.
## Design and history
The memorial stands inside St Andrew's Church in Mells. The Horner family had a long association with the church, which shares a wall with the manor house. The family has its own chapel (formerly the Lady Chapel) in the church which contains the tombs of several family members. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Horners funded extensive restoration work to the building. The memorial is a bronze equestrian statue, sculpted by Munnings, featuring Edward Horner as a young cavalry officer, bare-headed and seated on horseback with his sword and helmet attached to the saddle. The statue originally faced a stained-glass window featuring a Madonna and Child, creating the image of Horner riding towards the light. It stands on a Portland stone plinth designed by Lutyens, reminiscent of his Cenotaph and described by Lutyens' biographer Jane Ridley as "deceptively simple". The temporary memorial cross, which originally marked Horner's grave in France, inscribed SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF LIEUT. E. W. HORNER 18TH Q.M.O. HUSSARS / DIED OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN ACTION NOV 21ST 1917", is set into the rear of the plinth while the Horner family's coat of arms is moulded into the front. The south (left) side bears the inscription EDWARD / DEAR SON OF JOHN HORNER AND FRANCES HIS WIFE WHO FELL IN ACTION AT NOYELLES NOV 21 1917 AGED TWENTY EIGHT, while the north (right) side reads HE HATH OUTSOARED THE SHADOW OF OUR NIGHT, from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonaïs (1821), an elegy for John Keats.
According to Colin Amery, who chaired an exhibition of Lutyens' work in the 1980s, "some of [Lutyens'] finest memorials and tombs" are to be found in Mells, and Edward Horner's memorial is one of "Lutyens' best and most moving tributes to the waste of life in the Great War". In his public war memorials (particularly the Cenotaph and the various memorials based on it), Lutyens often used abstract and ecumenical designs, feeling that a different form of architecture was needed to convey the sense of sorrow at the enormous loss of life. Where he was commissioned to commemorate an individual, however, Lutyens was more open to conventional imagery, such as a statue of an officer. According to Tim Skelton, author of Lutyens and the Great War (2008), the Horner statue is "widely considered to be one of the most moving of personal memorials to the [First World War]". Lutyens' original design for Horner's memorial included pillars rising from the plinth to enclose the statue in a mausoleum, but this part of the proposal was not implemented. Munnings' mould for the statue is on display at the Munnings Art Museum, in his former home and studio in Dedham in Essex.
The statue was installed in 1920. It cost over £1,000 and was by far the largest and most elaborate of the several war-related monuments in Mells. Frances Horner initially hoped for it to stand underneath the church's bell tower, but the suggestion prompted objections from villagers and the churchwardens, who were hesitant about having it in the church at all. Thus it was placed in the Horner chapel, on the north side of the chancel. In 2007 it was moved to the west end of the north aisle, as the church trustees wished to create space to allow more flexible use of the church.
## See also
- World War I memorials
- List of equestrian statues in the United Kingdom
|
25,983,098 |
Private Case
| 1,172,470,705 |
Collection of erotica at the British Library
|
[
"1857 establishments in England",
"1973 establishments in England",
"British Library collections",
"British pornography",
"Censorship in the United Kingdom",
"Research libraries in the United Kingdom"
] |
The Private Case is a collection of erotica and pornography held initially by the British Museum and then, from 1973, by the British Library. The collection began between 1836 and 1870 and grew from the receipt of books from legal deposit, from the acquisition of bequests and, in some cases, from requests made to the police following their seizures of obscene material.
From its foundation in the eighteenth century, the British Museum acted as the national library of Britain. It was one six legal deposit libraries in automatic receipt of all works published in the UK; this included pornographic or salacious material, seditious publications, those subversive of religion and works that could later be deemed by the courts as libellous. From the nineteenth century, the subversive and libellous material was separated into the Suppressed Safe collection while the erotica and pornography were placed in a locked cupboard known as the Private Case. Access to the material was restricted, and the catalogue of Private Case publications was not released to the library's general readership.
The contents of the Private Case collection changed over time, shrinking as works were declassified and put into the general collection, and growing when the library received bequests and donations from collectors. Some of these were large: the book collector Henry Spencer Ashbee's 1900 bequest contained 1,379 volumes of erotica; the anthropologist Eric Dingwall—an honorary assistant keeper to the department of printed books—donated several works during his lifetime and at his death; and in 1964 the bibliophile Charles Reginald Dawes bequeathed 246 works of erotic literature.
From 1964—and reflecting the increasing liberalisation of social mores of the time—the library began to liberalise its approach to works in the Private Case, revising the collection and moving items onto the general catalogue for open access, a process that was completed in 1983. There have been no new entries in the Private Case since 1990 and all new erotic or pornographic material is put on open access on the general catalogue. There is no restriction on access to the Private Case material, except for some items which are in a fragile condition. At its largest, the collection comprised some 4,000 works; as at 2023 about 2,500 volumes are still classified by the library as part of the Private Case.
## Background
The British Museum Act created the British Museum in June 1753. The Act provided for the purchase of the collection of the physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane and the Cotton library, assembled by the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton; the Harleian Library, the collection of the Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. The British Library Act 1972 created the British Library on 1 July 1973. Into the new body were combined the library holdings of the British Museum—which provided most of the British Library's collection—the National Central Library and the National Lending Library for Science and Technology. The library later also incorporated the holdings of the British National Bibliography, the Office for Scientific and Technical Information, the India Office Library and Records and the British Institute of Recorded Sound.
The British Library is one of six legal deposit libraries in the UK and Ireland, and the only one to have a right to automatically receive a copy of every printed work published in the UK. In addition to books, this includes pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, sheet music and maps. Certain digital material is also collected under legal deposit, including some websites, e-journals and CD-ROMs. As a legal deposit organisation the works they receive include pornographic or salacious material, seditious publications, those subversive of religion and works that are potentially libellous. Historically, such works have been accepted by the library, but some were not released into their general access collections or were not included on the publicly accessible catalogue. As well as the legal deposit works lodged with the library, they would also receive private donations and posthumous bequests from collectors, including those who amassed works of erotica and pornography; these were also accepted, but not put in the general access collection.
## History
### Nineteenth century
There are no records in the minutes of the British Museum trustees' meetings or within the records of the librarians regarding the opening of the Private Case, and no accurate date when it happened. Philip Harris, a former deputy keeper at the British Museum Library, records that in 1836 the Reverend Henry Baber—when he held the post of Keeper of the Printed Books—reported to a parliamentary select committee that young men should not have access to improper French novels, and that he had locked up such works, particularly those with illustrations, and they would only be released upon application to himself. This, Harris notes, was the beginning of what became the Private Case. Paul Cross, a member of staff of the British Library, puts the date of the case's opening at approximately 1841, while the library was under the leadership of Sir Henry Ellis and Anthony Panizzi was the Keeper of Printed Books. The process was continued by Panizzi's successor John Winter Jones, who did not inform the library's trustees or officials of the practice of withholding books from circulation. The historian Peter Fryer, in his study of the Private Case, considers the case began in 1856 or later; the cultural critic Gershon Legman estimates that it began operating between 1866 and 1870, based on the dates of the early accessions.
According to Cross and Harris, between the late 1830s or early 1840s and 1854 the collection grew to 27 books, then to 60 by 1860 and by 1864 the collection grew to 78 items. The collection included several works published pseudonymously, as was common at the time. These included works such as The Crafty Whore (1658) by the Italian author Pietro Aretino (translated by Richard Head from the original Italian); The Whore's Rhetorick (1683) by Philp-Puttanus (a pseudonym of the Italian writer Ferrante Pallavicino); A New Description of Merryland (1741) by Roger Pheuquewell (a pseudonym of Thomas Stretzer); The Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria (1741) by Philogynes Clitorides; Teague-root Display'd (1746) by Paddy Strong-Cock; Matrimonial Ceremonies Display'd (1748); Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (1788–1790); The Cuckold's Chronicle (1793); and Paradise Lost; or The Great Dragon Cast Out (1838) by Lucian Redivivus.
Some publishers of pornographic material did not forward their works to the British Museum Library. A boom in pornography was seen in the 1850s, much of it generated from the publishing houses in Holywell Street, London, which were known for their output of pornographic books. Some pornographic publishers, such as William Dugdale, never sent their works to the library, which meant they had to be acquired later by the library either through purchase or from a donation.
In 1865 the antiquarian George Witt gifted his phallicism collection to the British Museum; much of this went into the museum's Secretum—their room for items deemed obscene—with the printed matter going into the Private Case. One of the works was Des divinités génératrices, ou, Du culte du phallus (1805) which was, like many of his works, personally monogrammed. By 1885 the catalogue for the Private Case had changed, with 108 former entries removed and 49 new works added. Although it is likely that the Private Case collection began as a lockable case, by 1890 the collection had expanded to fill 12 cupboards.
### Twentieth and twenty-first centuries
The bibliophile Henry Spencer Ashbee made a bequest to the library in 1900 of 15,299 volumes containing 8,764 works, of which 1,379 volumes were classed as erotica. The non-contentious works were entered into the library's general catalogue, and duplicates disposed of. Erotica was put into the Private Case; any duplicated works were destroyed. The remaining works included Le Caleçon des coquettes du jour (1763); La Masturbomanie ou jouissance solitaire (1830); Anandria, ou Confessions de Mademoiselle Sapho, avec la clef (1866) by "la citoyenne Raucourt"; Das Kind der Lust, oder die Freuden des Genusses (1873); The Romance of Lust (1873–1876); La Joie du pornographe; ou, Nouveau recueil d'amusemens (1884); as well as several editions of Fanny Hill by the English novelist John Cleland, and the works of the French eroticist the Marquis de Sade. Also included in his bequest were three volumes of bibliographies of erotica he compiled; titled Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877), Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (1879) and Catena Librorum Tacendorum (1885), Ashbee published them under the pseudonym Pisanus Fraxi.
In the early 20th century, the library split the segregated books into two collections. They placed the pornography and erotic literature in the Private Case—a lockable cabinet in the library's basement—with the shelf-mark P.C. The libellous and subversive works were given the name the Suppressed Safe collection and the shelf-mark S.S. They were locked in the cupboard of the keeper of printed books until they were moved into seven safes in the basement.
By 1913 the Private Case contained not just works of pornography or erotica, but serious works on sex, including the six-volume work Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897–1910) by Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter's The Intermediate Sex (1908); the latter was available in the general catalogues of several academic and public libraries, but confined to the Private Case in the British Museum Library. Other inclusions were some issues of The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine—although most of the issues remained on in the general collection—as they contained articles about flogging girls. In 1920 David Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford, a trustee of the museum, bequeathed over 200 works of erotica to the museum "for preservation or destruction at the discretion of the Trustees". The library destroyed the duplicated books and the remainder went into the Private Case.
In around 1934 the bibliophile and collector Alfred Rose was given permission to copy the internal catalogue of the Private Case. He took details of the titles present in the case and also included the works of other collections of erotica in major libraries. Rose published the book under the pseudonym Rolf S. Reade, an anagram of his name. Titled Registrum Librorum Eroticorum, it contains 5,061 works. By the time the book was published in 1936, Rose had died. On his death, Rose bequeathed seven works of erotica to the library, including The Bride's Confession (1917); The Festival of the Passions (1863); and The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (1890) by Nicolas Chorier. According to Cross, the books donated are "of exceptional interest".
In 1950 the Private Case was expanded by the receipt of the Eliot–Phelips collection, formed by Edward Phelips, which had been held by the Guildhall Library, London. Among the 33 works they received were Sodome (1888) and Gomorrhe (1889) by Henri d'Argis; Odor di Femina (1919) by Edmond Dumoulin; and Ma Vie secrète (1923). The last of these was a French translation of the English novel My Secret Life, possibly written by Ashbee or William Haywood.
In 1946 the anthropologist Eric Dingwall was appointed honorary assistant keeper to the department of printed books of the British Museum, where he curated the Private Case. In 1967 he negotiated with the police to obtain what was described as "44 magazines and 15 other articles" they had seized in a raid in Brighton, East Sussex. When the police asked if the museum had particular authority to obtain the material, J. L. Wood, the assistant keeper of printed books, informed them that:
> as the National Library, we have a duty to collect any material which will serve for study and research and we already possess a collection of material of the kind you describe in your letter, kept under conditions of special security.
Among the items given over were twenty-one "Soho typescripts", also known as "Soho bibles". These were pornographic books published in the 1950s and 1960s and associated with the sex shops of Soho, the centre of London's sex industry, but also sold under the counter by provincial bookdealers. Typically they were handmade—typed texts which were then mimeographed with card covers stapled—and produced in small quantities.
Dingwall also donated several works to the museum which he had purchased privately, including 44 works of erotica, mostly in German, which he gave in 1947; these included typewritten and carbon copy works of the 1920s from German flagellation clubs. Between 1951 and 1955 he acquired and donated 38 works, including Frank and Ich by Georges Grassal, Nini à Lesbos by Jacques des Linettes and 3 books pederastic in nature. One of the works Dingwall acquired for the museum was a first edition (1749) of Fanny Hill; Cross describes the book as "of exceptional rarity and historical importance". At his death in 1986, Dingwall bequeathed the British Library several works, including de Sade's La philosophie dans le boudoir (1795) and Le roman de Violette (1870), as well as several bibliographies of erotica.
In 1964 the British Museum Library received a bequest of 246 works of erotic literature from Charles Reginald Dawes; according to Cross, writing in 1991, "many scholars now consider to be of more importance than the Ashbee erotica collection". The Dawes bequest included four editions of Fanny Hill; The Memoirs of Dolly Morton; five editions of works by de Sade; and Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, an early work of gay erotic fiction, published anonymously but speculatively attributed—in part at least—to Oscar Wilde. Also included was Dawes's copy of My Secret Life (1889–1895), an 11-volume first edition, which was one of the 25 copies printed. Dawes had much of his collection bound in Morocco leather or calfskin, and included his book-plate.
In 1964 the collector Beecher Moore gave his collection to the library. Moore—a friend of Stephen Ward, one of the central figures in the Profumo affair—was investigated by the Metropolitan Police, as many of Ward's friends were. Moore was concerned by the police's comments about his collection; he donated it to the library as quickly as he could. Dingwall negotiated the division of the collection and its exchange between Moore, the museum and the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research. Most of the collection they obtained comprised French limited editions, although it also included erotica in English from the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the English works of pornography were deemed "duplicated material" and were turned down by the Keeper of Printed Books for inclusion into the library collection on the basis that "we are, after all, a library, not an institute of sexual research". The historian and bibliophile Patrick J. Kearney described Moore's collection as "not so rich in rarities as the Ashbee or Dawes collections", although it "provided the Private Case with a valuable cross-section of English erotica published on the continent".
Until the 1960s the procedure to obtain access to Private Case material was exacting; the historian Alison Moore described it as "particularly labyrinthine". The segregation of the Private Case material from the works in the general catalogue included the list of its contents, which meant readers were unaware the library held copies of the works. In the 1960s there were two copies of an official catalogue of the contents, both held by senior members of the library staff. To obtain access to a book, a reader had to write to the library and ask if they had a copy of the work; if this was confirmed, they could ask for access to it. The reader would then be invited for interview to ascertain if they were a serious scholar with a legitimate and reasonable rationale to access the material and not—as one principal librarian described it—involved in "indiscriminate browsing in the field of erotica". Holders of short-term reader's tickets were not allowed access to the Private Case, but those with longer-term tickets could apply in writing to the Principal Keeper to get access. This practice lasted from the inception of the case until the 1960s.
With the increasing liberalisation of social mores in the 1960s and the availability of many of the Private Case works in bookshops, in 1964 the library began to liberalise its approach to works in the Private Case, revising the catalogues and moving items to the general catalogue for open access. Because of what Harris calls "the bibliographical complexities" of the undertaking, the process took until 1983. According to Moore around a third of the Private Case was moved onto the general catalogue during the 1970s. In 1973, when the British Museum Library collection was passed to the control of the British Library, the illustrated pillow books in the Private Case, which contained no text, were transferred to the British Museum Department of Oriental Antiquities (now the Museum's Department of Asia).
There have been no new entries into the Private Case since 1990. All new erotic or pornographic material is put on open access on the general catalogue, with no restrictions on access, except for some volumes, because of their fragile condition. At its largest, the collection comprised some 4,000 works, although as at 2023 there are about 2,500 volumes still classified by the library as being part of the collection; the library describes the Private Case as "a historical collection". In 2019 the contents of the Private Case were digitised and made available through the Gale subscription database Archives of Sexuality & Gender. Gale describes the Private Case material as "an interesting study in social ethics as the definition of obscenity evolved since the mid-19th century"; the British Library, while noting that nearly all the contents were "produced by heterosexual men for heterosexual men", describes the works as a "unique insight into historic attitudes towards gender, sexuality and obscenity".
## Historiography
In 1913 the Bibliothèque nationale de France published a bibliography of its Collection de l'Enfer—the French equivalent of the Private Case. The move induced the lawyer and writer E. S. P. Haynes to produce "The Taboos of the British Museum Library", an essay in the literary magazine The English Review. Describing the existence of the Private Case as "unsatisfactory", he criticised the museum for censorship and wrote that "the reputation of our National Library is suffering in consequence" of the segregation of books. The library practice of keeping the names of Private Case books off the general catalogue he thought "a ruinous policy, and one which in the long run may prove suicidal. Students will tend to go elsewhere". He also stated that by censoring the existence of works in its holdings, the library "is placing itself in a most dubious position".
Despite Haynes's essay the wider public continued to be unaware of the existence of the Private Case until the 1960s and it was only in 1962 that the library acknowledged that it held a collection of books not included in the main general catalogue. The situation of the segregated books was not discussed more widely until 1963 when there was a debate in the correspondence pages of The Times Literary Supplement about the library's policy. One of those involved in the correspondence was Peter Fryer, who went on to publish Private Case—Public Scandal: Secrets of the British Museum Revealed in 1966; the book was part of what Harris calls Fryer's "courteous but persistent campaign on the subject".
Kearney catalogued the Private Case collection and published The Private Case: An Annotated Bibliography of the Private Case Erotica Collection in the British (Museum) Library in 1981, following seven years of research. It contains 1,920 items, although the material contains flaws. The historian A. S. G. Edwards, in an article for The Book Collector, calls the bibliography "of very limited usefulness", given that the book only details the works that were in the Private Case at the time of Kearney's research, and not the many items that had previously been in the case but had since been reclassified. Edwards also highlights flaws in attribution of some publications to anonymously produced books; in this way, Edwards says, it is "very hard for the user of this work to be sure of the dividing line between hard fact and authorial conjecture".
## Similar collections
The British Library is not the only research library that holds large amounts of pornography in its collections. The Bibliothèque nationale de France contains the Collection de l'Enfer, and the Library of Congress houses the Δ (Delta) collection (merged into the general collection in 1964). The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford classifies their collection as Φ (Phi)—a joke that a reader viewing the material may exclaim "Fie!" The Widener Library at Harvard University used to class its pornographic holdings as "Inferno"—which it later shorted to "I°". The library at Trinity College Dublin has a limited collection, despite its legal deposit status. The censorship laws of Ireland are such that the library can only acquire pornographic works with permission from the Minister for Justice, and the express permission of the Head Librarian is needed to access the material. There is also the specialist research collection of the Kinsey Institute; the institute's founder Alfred Kinsey, began collecting research material into sexual behaviour, including works of erotica, in 1938. There is dispute on whether the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana also holds an extensive pornography or erotica collection. Although the figures of 25,000 volumes and 100,000 prints and drawings have been put forward, Legman describes this as a "legend" and the historian H. Paul Jeffers calls it "a persistent and false belief".
|
13,758,486 |
French battleship Gaulois
| 1,155,165,565 |
French Navy's Charlemagne class pre-dreadnought battleship
|
[
"1896 ships",
"Charlemagne-class battleships",
"Maritime incidents in 1915",
"Maritime incidents in 1916",
"Ships sunk by German submarines in World War I",
"Ships with Belleville boilers",
"World War I battleships of France",
"World War I shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea"
] |
Gaulois was one of three Charlemagne-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the French Navy (Marine Nationale) in the mid-1890s. Completed in 1899, she spent most of her career assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron (Escadre de la Méditerranée). The ship accidentally rammed two other French warships early in her career, although neither was seriously damaged, nor was Gaulois.
Following the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gaulois escorted troop convoys from French North Africa to France for a month and a half. She was ordered to the Dardanelles in November 1914 to guard against a sortie into the Mediterranean by the ex-German battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim. In 1915, Gaulois joined British ships in bombarding Ottoman fortifications. She was badly damaged during one such bombardment in March and had to beach herself to avoid sinking. She was refloated and sent to Toulon for permanent repairs. Gaulois returned to the Dardanelles and covered the Allied evacuation in January 1916. She was en route to the Dardanelles after a refit in France when she was torpedoed and sunk on 27 December by a German submarine; four crewmen were lost.
## Design and description
The Charlemagne-class ships were smaller versions of the preceding Bouvet, albeit with an improved armament. They were 117.7 metres (386 ft 2 in) long overall and had a beam of 20.26 metres (66 ft 6 in). At deep load, the ships had a draught of 7.4 metres (24 ft 3 in) forward and 8.4 metres (27 ft 7 in) aft. They displaced 11,260 tonnes (11,080 long tons) normally, and 11,415 tonnes (11,235 long tons) at deep load. When serving as flagships, their crew numbered 750 men, but had 32 officers and 660 ratings as private ships. The ships were powered by three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft using steam generated by 20 Belleville boilers. These boilers were coal-burning with auxiliary oil sprayers and were designed to produce 14,200 metric horsepower (10,444 kW; 14,006 ihp) to give the Charlemagne class a speed of 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph). During her sea trials, Gaulois reached a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) from 14,220 metric horsepower (10,459 kW; 14,025 ihp). The ships carried enough coal to give them a range of 3,776 nautical miles (6,993 km; 4,345 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).
The Charlemagnes carried their main battery of four Canon de 305 mm (12 in) Modèle 1893 guns in two twin-gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure. Their secondary armament consisted of ten Canon de 138.6 mm (5.5 in) Modèle 1893 guns, eight of which were mounted in individual casemates and the remaining pair in shielded mounts on the forecastle deck amidships. They also carried eight Canon de 100 mm (3.9 in) Modèle 1893 guns in open mounts on the superstructure. The ships' anti-torpedo boat defences consisted of twenty Canon de 47 mm (1.9 in) Modèle 1885 and two 37 mm (1.5 in) Maxim guns, fitted in platforms on both masts, on the superstructure, and in casemates in the hull. The ships mounted four 450-millimetre (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, two on each broadside, one submerged and the other above water. As was common with ships of their generation, they were built with a plough-shaped ram.
The Charlemagne-class ships had a complete waterline belt of nickel-steel armour that ranged in thickness from 300 to 400 mm (11.8 to 15.7 in) and was thickest amidships. The armour plates were 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high with the upper 0.5 m (1 ft 8 in) above the design waterline and they tapered to a maximum thickness of 150 mm (5.9 in) at their bottom edges. The thicknesses of the bottom edges of the plates gradually reduced to 134 mm (5.3 in) at the bow and 110 mm (4.3 in) at the stern. The gun turrets were protected by 320 mm (12.6 in) of Harvey armour and their barbettes had 270-millimetre (10.6 in) plates of the same type of armour. The main armoured deck was 70 mm (2.8 in) thick and there was a 40-millimetre-thick (1.6 in) splinter deck below it. The conning tower had a 326-millimetre-thick (12.8 in) face and 276 mm (10.9 in) sides.
## Construction and career
Gaulois, named after the tribes that inhabited France during Roman times, was ordered on 22 January 1895 from the Arsenal de Brest. Her sister ship Charlemagne was being built in the slipway intended for Gaulois so the latter ship's construction was delayed until the former was launched. Gaulois was laid down on 6 January 1896 and launched on 6 October of the same year. She was commissioned (armement définitif) on 15 January 1899. The ship was initially assigned to the Northern Squadron (Escadre du Nord), but was then assigned to the 1st Battleship Division of the Mediterranean Squadron on 30 September, together with Charlemagne.
The sisters remained based in Brest until they departed for Toulon on 18 January 1900. The following month, while exercising in the harbour at Hyères, Gaulois accidentally rammed the destroyer Hallebarde, gouging a 4-by-1.5-metre (13.1 by 4.9 ft) hole in the smaller ship. Hallebarde reached Toulon where she was repaired, while the battleship was barely damaged. On 18 July, after combined manoeuvres with the Northern Squadron, the ship participated in a naval review conducted by the President of France, Émile Loubet, at Cherbourg. The following year, Gaulois and the Mediterranean Squadron participated in an international naval review by Loubet in Toulon with ships from Spain, Italy and Russia.
In October 1901, the 1st Battleship Division, under the command of Rear-Admiral (contre-amiral) Leonce Caillard, was ordered to proceed to the port of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, then owned by the Ottoman Empire. After landing two companies of marines that occupied the major ports of the island on 7 November, Sultan Abdul Hamid II agreed to enforce contracts made with French companies and to repay loans made by French banks. The 1st Division departed Lesbos in early December and returned to Toulon. In May 1902, the ship became the flagship of Vice-Admiral (vice-amiral) François Fournier who led a small delegation to celebrate the unveiling of the statue of Comte de Rochambeau in Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C. On 23 May President Theodore Roosevelt was received aboard and the ship visited New York City and Boston before heading back to France. She made another port visit to Lisbon, Portugal, before arriving back at Toulon on 14 June.
During exercises off Golfe-Juan on 31 January 1903, Gaulois accidentally rammed Bouvet. The latter was barely damaged, but Gaulois lost two armour plates from her bow; both captains were relieved of their commands. Captain (Capitaine de vaisseau) Pierre Le Bris assumed command of Gaulois on 20 March. In April 1904, she was one of the ships that escorted Loubet during his state visit to Italy. Later that year, the ship made port visits in Thessaloniki and Athens, Greece, with the rest of the Mediterranean Squadron. A wireless telegraph was installed aboard Gaulois in December 1905. Together with the battleships Iéna and Bouvet, the ship aided survivors of the April 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Naples, Italy. On 16 September she participated in an international naval review in Marseille, together with British, Spanish and Italian ships.
For the rest of the decade, she participated in exercises with the Mediterranean Squadron and made several port visits in France and its dependencies. In January 1907, the ships was transferred to the 2nd Battleship Division and then to the 4th Battleship Division in July 1908 with her sisters. By 5 January 1909, the 4th Division had been reassigned to the 2nd Battle Squadron (Escadre de ligne). Gaulois sank the target ship Tempête on 18 March after she had been fired upon by four other battleships. By 5 January 1910 the divisions of the battle squadrons had been renumbered and the 4th Division was now the 1st Division of the 2nd Battle Squadron. The squadron was transferred to Brest where it replaced the former Northern Squadron on 27 February. Shortly afterwards, one of Gaulois's torpedoes moderately damaged the bow of the destroyer Fanion while training. On 1 August 1911 the 2nd Battle Squadron was renumbered as the 3rd Battle Squadron and Gaulois participated in a large naval review by President Armand Fallières off Toulon on 4 September. The ship was reassigned to the Mediterranean Squadron on 16 October 1912 and she participated in a naval review by President Raymond Poincaré on 10 June 1913. The 3rd Battle Squadron was dissolved on 11 November 1913 and the ship was assigned to the Complementary Division (Division de complément) together with Bouvet and her sister Saint Louis. In June 1914, the Navy planned to assign Gaulois to the Training Division of the Squadron as of October, but this was cancelled upon the outbreak of war in August.
### World War I
Together with the older French pre-dreadnoughts, the ship's first mission in the war was to escort troop convoys from North Africa to France. Later in September, her main turrets required repairs in Bizerte, French Tunisia, as the forward turret was having difficulty traversing. Gaulois was ordered to Tenedos Island, not far from the Ottoman Gallipoli Peninsula, in November to guard against a sortie by the ex-German battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim, relieving the battleship Suffren which needed a refit in Toulon. Gaulois became the flagship of Rear-Admiral Émile Guépratte upon her arrival on 15 November. He transferred his flag back to Suffren when she returned on 10 January 1915.
On 19 February, Gaulois supported Suffren as the latter ship bombarded Ottoman forts covering the mouth of the Dardanelles. Late in the day, Gaulois bombarded the fort at Orhaniye Tepe on the Asian side of the strait. During the subsequent bombardment on 25 February, the ship anchored some 6,000 metres (6,600 yd) from the Asiatic shore and engaged the forts at Kum Kale and Cape Helles. Their return fire was heavy enough to force Gaulois to up anchor before she could suppress their guns. Later in the day, she closed to within 3,000 metres (3,300 yd) of the forts and engaged them with her secondary armament. During the day's action, the ship was hit twice, but these did little damage.
On 2 March, the French squadron bombarded targets in the Gulf of Saros, at the base of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Five days later, the French squadron attempted to suppress the Ottoman guns defending the Dardanelles while British battleships bombarded the fortifications. Gaulois was hit by a 15-centimetre (5.9 in) shell during this attack that caused little damage as it failed to detonate. Guépratte and his squadron returned to the Gulf of Saros on 11 March where they again bombarded Ottoman fortifications.
They returned to the Dardanelles to assist in the major attack on the fortifications planned for 18 March. British ships made the initial entry into the strait, but the French ships passed through them to engage the forts at closer range. Gaulois was hit twice during this bombardment; the first shell struck the quarterdeck, but caused little damage other than deforming the deck. The second shell hit just above the waterline on the starboard bow and appeared to do little damage, but it had pushed in the armour plates below the waterline and opened up a hole 7 metres (23 ft) by 22 centimetres (8.7 in) through which water flooded. Little could be done to staunch the inflow and Captain André-Casimir Biard decided to head for the Rabbit Islands, north of Tenedos, where he could beach his ship for temporary repairs. He ordered the non-essential crewmen off the ship in case she foundered en route, but managed to reach the islands, escorted by Charlemagne.
Gaulois was refloated on 22 March and departed for Toulon via Malta three days later, escorted by Suffren. They encountered a storm on 27 March off Cape Matapan and the ship began taking on water as the repairs began to leak under the pressure of the storm. She radioed for assistance later that night and the armoured cruiser Jules Ferry and three destroyers arrived several hours later. The ship arrived in the Bay of Navarin the following morning and more repairs were made with the assistance of the crew of the hulked old battleship Marceau. Gaulois arrived without further incident at Toulon on 16 April and entered drydock the following day. The Navy took the opportunity to increase her stability by lightening her masts, removing some armour from the superstructure and conning tower as well as dismounting two 100 mm and six 47 mm guns. The ship was also fitted with anti-torpedo bulges (soufflages) amidships to increase her beam and thus her stability.
Her repairs were completed by early June and Gaulois departed for the Dardanelles on 8 June. She reached Lemnos on 17 June and relieved Saint Louis on 27 July. The ship anchored 1,000 metres (1,100 yd) off the shore on 11 August to bombard an Ottoman artillery battery at Achi Baba. Splinters from return fire detonated a 100 mm shell and started a small fire, but it was put out without much trouble. On her voyage home, Gaulois ran aground at the harbour entrance and had to unload most of her ammunition before she could be refloated on 21 August. Together with the pre-dreadnought République, the ship covered the Allied evacuation from Gallipoli in January 1916. Badly in need of a refit, she sailed for Brest on 20 July where her captain argued that the range of her main armament needed to be increased by 4,000 metres (4,400 yd) if she was to be considered fit for the battleline. Some thought was given to disarming her and converting her into a barracks ship, but nothing was done before the ship was ordered back to the Eastern Mediterranean on 25 November.
#### Fate
By 27 December, Gaulois had reached the Sea of Crete and was off the southern coast of Greece when she was torpedoed by the at 08:03 despite being escorted by the destroyer Dard and two armed trawlers. The single torpedo hit slightly abaft the mainmast and started uncontrollable flooding below the waterline. It killed two crewmen and another pair drowned as they attempted to abandon ship; the rest of the crew was successfully rescued. The ship capsized at 09:03 and sank eight minutes later off Cape Maleas at in 480–500 metres (1,570–1,640 ft) of water.
|
554,587 |
HMS New Zealand (1911)
| 1,172,717,565 |
Indefatigable-class battlecruiser
|
[
"1911 ships",
"Indefatigable-class battlecruisers",
"Ships built in Govan",
"World War I battlecruisers of the United Kingdom"
] |
HMS New Zealand was one of three Indefatigable-class battlecruisers. Launched in 1911, the ship was funded by the government of New Zealand as a gift to Britain, and she was commissioned into the Royal Navy in 1912. She had been intended for the China Station, but was released by the New Zealand government at the request of the Admiralty for service in British waters.
During 1913, New Zealand was sent on a ten-month tour of the British Dominions, with an emphasis on a visit to her namesake nation. She was back in British waters at the start of the First World War, and operated as part of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, in opposition to the German High Seas Fleet. During the war, the battlecruiser participated in all three of the major North Sea battles—Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank, and Jutland—and was involved in the response to the inconclusive Raid on Scarborough, and the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight. New Zealand contributed to the destruction of two cruisers during her wartime service and was hit by enemy fire only once, sustaining no casualties; her status as a "lucky ship" was attributed by the crew to a Māori piupiu (warrior's skirt) and hei-tiki (pendant) worn by the captain during battle.
After the war, New Zealand was sent on a second world tour, this time to allow Admiral John Jellicoe to review the naval defences of the Dominions. In 1920, the battlecruiser was placed in reserve. She was broken up for scrap in 1922 in order to meet the United Kingdom's tonnage limit in the disarmament provisions of the Washington Naval Treaty.
## Design
The Indefatigable class was not a significant improvement on the preceding Invincible class; the main difference was the enlargement of the dimensions to give the ships' two wing turrets a wider arc of fire. The ships were smaller and not as well protected as the contemporary German battlecruiser SMS Von der Tann and subsequent German designs. While Von der Tann's characteristics were not known when the lead ship of the class, Indefatigable, was laid down in February 1909, the Royal Navy obtained accurate information on the German ship before work began on New Zealand and her sister ship .
New Zealand had an overall length of 590 feet (179.8 m), a beam of 80 feet (24.4 m), and a draught of 29 feet 9 inches (9.1 m) at deep load. The ship displaced 18,500 long tons (18,800 t) at load and 22,130 long tons (22,490 t) at deep load. She initially had a crew of 818 officers and ratings, though this was to increase in subsequent years. At the time of her visit to New Zealand in 1913 the engineering department had a staff of 335.
The ship was powered by two sets of Parsons direct-drive steam turbines, each driving two propeller shafts, using steam provided by 31 coal-burning Babcock & Wilcox boilers. The turbines were rated at 44,000 shaft horsepower (33,000 kW) and were intended to give the ship a maximum speed of 25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph). However, during trials in 1912, the turbines produced over 49,000 shp (37,000 kW), which allowed New Zealand to reach 26.39 knots (48.87 km/h; 30.37 mph). The ship carried enough coal and fuel oil to give her a range of 6,690 nautical miles (12,390 km; 7,700 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).
The ship carried eight BL 12-inch Mk X guns in four twin gun turrets. Two turrets were mounted fore and aft on the centreline, identified as 'A' and 'X' respectively. The other two were wing turrets mounted amidships and staggered diagonally: 'P' was forward and to port of the centre funnel, while 'Q' was situated starboard and aft. Each wing turret had a limited ability to fire to the opposite side, but if the ship was full broadside to her target she could bring all eight main guns to bear. Her secondary armament consisted of sixteen 4-inch BL Mk VII guns positioned in the superstructure. She mounted two 18-inch submerged torpedo tubes, one on each side aft of 'X' barbette, and twelve torpedoes were carried.
The Indefatigables were protected by a waterline 4–6-inch (102–152 mm) armoured belt that extended between and covered the end barbettes. Their armoured deck ranged in thickness between 1.5 and 2.5 inches (38 and 64 mm) with the thickest portions protecting the steering gear in the stern. The turret faces were 7 inches (178 mm) thick, and the turrets were supported by barbettes of the same thickness.
New Zealand's 'A' turret was fitted with a 9-foot (2.7 m) rangefinder at the rear of the turret roof. It was also equipped to control the entire main armament in the event that the normal fire control positions were knocked out or communication between the primary positions and the gun layers was disabled.
### Wartime modifications
The ship was fitted with a single QF 6 pounder Hotchkiss anti-aircraft (AA) gun from October 1914 to the end of 1915. In March 1915, a single QF 3 inch 20 cwt AA gun was added. It was provided with 500 rounds. The battlecruiser's 4-inch guns were enclosed in casemates and given blast shields during a refit in November to better protect the gun crews from weather and enemy action. Two aft guns were removed at the same time.
New Zealand received a fire-control director sometime between mid-1915 and May 1916; this centralised fire control under the director officer, who now fired the guns. The turret crewmen merely had to follow pointers transmitted from the director to align their guns on the target. This greatly increased accuracy, as it was easier to spot the fall of shells and eliminated the problem of the ship's roll dispersing the shells when each turret fired independently.
To address deficiencies in the armour of British capital ships raised by the Battle of Jutland New Zealand entered the dockyard in November 1916 where an additional inch of armour was added to selected horizontal areas of the main deck. In the forward part of the ship it covered the magazines for A-turret and the 4-inch guns; midships to cover the magazines for Q- and P-turrets, while it was extended vertically by 3 feet 6 inches (1.07 m) to protect the magazine trunks and escape shafts. During a refit in June 1917 the armour was again improved when 1-inch armour plate was added on the lower deck at the bottom of the Inner and Outer Upper Coal bunkers as well as over the boiler.
By 1918, New Zealand carried two aircraft, a Sopwith Pup and a Sopwith 11⁄2 Strutter, on flying-off ramps fitted on top of 'P' and 'Q' turrets. The Pup was intended to shoot down Zeppelins while the 11⁄2 Strutter was used for spotting and reconnaissance. Each platform had a canvas hangar to protect the aircraft during inclement weather.
### Post-war modifications
In preparation for its role as Admiral Jellicoe’s personal transport for his planned visit to Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand New Zealand was refitted between December 1918 and February 1919. The fore topmast and both top gallants were replaced. Her flying-off platforms were removed and new peacetime trim was installed. The range clocks were removed and the deflection scales on the turrets were painted over. The lower forward four-inch guns were removed and replaced with cabins on the port and starboard sides of the forward superstructure to house Jellicoe and provide offices for his staff of eight.
While in Bombay in 1919 the battlecruiser was painted in a light grey colour.
## Acquisition and construction
At the start of the 20th century, the British Admiralty maintained that naval defence of the British Empire, including the Dominions, should be unified under the Royal Navy. Attitudes on this matter softened during the first decade, and at the 1909 Imperial Conference, the Admiralty proposed the creation of Fleet Units: forces consisting of a battlecruiser, three light cruisers, six destroyers, and three submarines. While Australia and Canada were encouraged to purchase fleet units to serve as the core of new national navies, other fleet units would be operated by the Royal Navy at distant bases, particularly in the Far East; New Zealand was asked to partially subsidise a fleet unit for the China Station.
To this end, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Sir Joseph Ward, announced on 22 March 1909 that his country would fund a battleship (later changed to an Indefatigable-class battlecruiser) as an example to other countries. It is unclear why this design was selected, given that it was known to be inferior to the battlecruisers entering service with the Imperial German Navy (German: Kaiserliche Marine). Historian John Roberts has suggested that the request may have been attributable to the Royal Navy's practice of using small battleships and large cruisers as flagships of stations far from the United Kingdom, or it might have reflected the preferences of the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet John Fisher, preferences not widely shared. The New Zealand Government took out a loan to fund the cost of the ship.
### Naming of the ship
When it came to naming the new ship the most obvious name was already being used by the existing King Edward VII-class battleship HMS New Zealand. It was decided to transfer the name to the new battlecruiser and to rename the older ship. Among the suggested names were Arawa, Caledonia, Wellington and Maori (which was already being used by a destroyer, and thus would have required a double renaming) being floated before Zealandia was eventually decided upon and subsequently approved by the King.
### Construction
Wright has identified that the Controller of the Admiralty John Jellicoe had wanted to have Australia and New Zealand constructed by the same shipbuilder. This would have reduced construction costs and simplified administration. Tenders were issued early in 1910, but of those who were prepared to tender, all were only prepared to construct one vessel. Both Australia and New Zealand for unknown reasons agreed to accept that of John Brown & Company which was highest of the two successful tenders, but the former signalled its acceptance first, leaving New Zealand to accept that of Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering. The estimated cost of Fairfield’s offer was £1.8 million, which included the guns and the first issue of ammunition. Fairfield had already built HMS Indomitable, which would have given them confidence in their cost estimate, which included all stores including first coal and ammunition. In the end John Brown & Company delivered Australia well under their original tendered price.
New Zealand's keel was laid at Fairfield's yard on the Clyde on 20 June 1910.
The construction contract was between the Admiralty and Fairfield (using the Admiralty’s standard contract terms) and was overseen by the Admiralty with manufacturer’s payment claims being approved and then passed on by the Admiralty to the New Zealand High Commission’s office in London for forwarding onto New Zealand for payment. Variation claims were often individually itemised (such as £1. 12s. 6d. for a specific drawing) and passed on for payment, with some payments still being processed as late as the 1914-15 financial year. The ship was built with all stores supplied from the Admiralty at the "Rate Book" price plus 20 per cent, with exception of the coal. The Admiralty did not charge New Zealand for its management of the project. Fairchild’s share of the contract made a profit of £50,454 (6 per cent).
The four main gun mountings were made by Armstrong Whitworth’s Elswick Ordnance Works, at a cost of £207,593 (excluding delivery and assembly) while the guns were supplied by both Armstrong Whitworth and Vickers. The 22 x 12-inch guns (which included six spares) and 36 x 4-inch guns (which included four spares) required to equip both of the Dominion’s ships cost a combined total of £249,550.
New Zealand was launched on 1 July 1911 in front of 8,000 onlookers by Lady Theresa Ward, the wife of Sir Joseph Ward, using a bottle of New Zealand wine for the christening. Following her launch New Zealand was moved by the Clyde Shipping Company’s tugs Flying Linnet and Flying Swallow to the shipyard’s fitting out basin, for installation of the boilers, engines, and auxiliary machinery though temporary openings in the main deck before the superstructure and armament was installed.
The battlecruiser's first captain, 40 year old Lionel Halsey took command on 21 September 1912.
Sea trials began in October with the hull checked in dry dock on 8 October prior to a 30 hour steam test at three-quarter power being undertaken on the 9 and 10 October. Full power tests were conducted off Polperro on 14 October with 49,048 hp being generated. These tests found that she met her design speed with an average speed over an eight hour period of 25.1 knots (by log) and 26.1 knots (by bearings) while experiencing near ideal sea conditions with the machinery generating 49,048 hp at an average of 297.687 revolutions. Over the “measured mile” she reached 25.49 knots (based on revolutions) and 26.3 knots (by bearings). Following gun and torpedo trials in mid-October the battlecruiser returned to Fairfield to correct any defects and make modifications before acceptance inspections commenced in mid-November.
New Zealand was formally commissioned at Govan on 19 November 1912. The Admiralty required that all new ships be drydocked as part of the acceptance process to allow the completion and inspection of all underwater fittings. As Fairchild didn’t have their own drydock, the ship sailed from Govan with the nucleus of her crew to Devonport to use that shipyard’s facilities. By now the ship’s hull had spent a considerable time in Fairchild’s often polluted fitting out basin, so the hull was cleaned and then painted with a fresh anti-fouling coating.
The ship was officially completed on 23 November 1912, when she reached her nominally full complement of crew. Her officers by now included three New Zealanders, Lieutenant Alexander David Boyle (1887–1965), Lieutenant Rupert Clare Garsia and Midshipman Hugh Beckett Anderson (1897–1971), all from Christchurch.
]
To signal her upcoming completion the New Zealand government commissioned the marine artist William Lionel Wyllie to produce a painting of New Zealand which he titled Tower House', Portsmouth [HMS “New Zealand” fitting out]. In subsequent years he also produced other paintings of the ship.
## Service history
In December 1912 the battlecruiser began the task of working up prior to joining the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron. While at sea over the 1912-13 New Year some of the masting was damaged by a storm.
### 1913 circumnavigation of the world
In 1912 it was agreed that the ship would visit its donor country as a thank you for funding its construction, with a basic nine month long itinerary developed in the last months of 1912. To facilitate the flag-waving cruise New Zealand was temporary detached from the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron on 20 January 1913 for the duration of the voyage with Halsey having independent command. The initial date of departure progressively moved backward into 1913 with the ship finally departing the Royal Navy dockyard at Devonport on 28 January for Portsmouth which it reached two days later.
On 3 February, 300 expatriate New Zealanders organized by Sir Thomas Mackenzie (New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom) visited the ship at which he unveiled the battlecruiser’s coat or arms (which had been gifted by the country’s expatriate community in the United Kingdom). This was followed by a visit by King George V (accompanied by Winston Churchill and James Allen (New Zealand’s Minister of Finance and Defence) and other high–ranking officials on 5 February 1913.
As soon as the King’s party had departed New Zealand took on coal before departing Portsmouth on 6 February. There were stops at St Vincent, Ascension Island, Cape Town, Simon’s Town and Durban in South Africa and then at Melbourne in Australia before New Zealand reached Wellington, New Zealand on 12 April. This was the start of an event that gripped the country as thousands of New Zealanders came to catch a sight of and where possible visit “our Dreadnought”. For the ship’s crew this meant having to attend a constant parade of events and festivities.
After an 11 day stay in the capital New Zealand proceeded up the east coast of the North Island to visit Napier, Gisborne and Auckland, before streaming south to visit Lyttelton, Akaroa, where she exercised with HMS Pyramus before continuing on to Timaru, Otago Harbour, Bluff, Milford Sound, Greymouth, Westport, Nelson, Picton, before stopping again at Wellington. From there she proceeded up the West Coast of the North Island visiting Wanganui, Russell and back to Auckland which was reached on 21 June.
The battlecruiser received numerous gifts while in New Zealand, including a naval ensign and a union jack. Two greenstone hei-tiki (pendants), which were intended to ward off evil were gifted to the ship. One was given by the Boy Scouts of Wellington on 13 April. and the second by Christchurch businessman C. J. Sloman in May 1913. He had deposited the hei-tiki at Canterbury Museum in 1913 and then uplifted it a few months later in order to lend it to the ship on the condition that it had to be returned to Canterbury Museum should the name New Zealand ever be removed from the navy list.
The most notable gift was the personal gift to Halsey of a Māori piupiu (a warrior's skirt made from rolled flax). According to legend the chief who gave the piupiu to Halsey, instructed him to wear it during battle in order to protect the ship and its crew. If he did, then the ship would be involved in three sea battles; it would be hit only once; and that no one on board would be killed. On many of these occasions speeches were often given in the Māori language, which may resulted in a misunderstanding about the purpose of the gift. It is unclear exactly who presented the piupiu to Halsey, as he did not record details about who it was or about any prophesy. There are a number of possibilities as to who gifted the piupiu. One is that it was given by Rotorua Māori in Auckland on 26 June. Another is that it was given by Rangitīaria Dennan in Rotorua on 7 May. This account is supported by Halsey’s daughter, which mentions meeting Dennan and a discussion with him about her father being gifted a piupiu when he made an honorary chief of the tribe. Another possibility was that the piupiu was given by the Te Arawa chief Mita Taupopoki. On the 17 April a large group from Ngāti Raukawa visited the battlecruiser in Wellington at which it is recorded that “a presentation of piupiu (garments of war)” were made. Another likely candidate was that the piupiu was given to Halsey on behalf of Ngāi Tahu chief Mana Himiona Te Ataotu by Southern Māori MP, Taare Rakatauhake Parata (Charles Rere Parata) when he visited the ship in Wellington on 19 April 1913. On this occasion a piupiu was recorded as being given. A delegation of 25 leading Māori (including Māori members of parliament) did visit the battlecruiser in Wellington on 21 April among whom was Tureiti Te Heuheu Tukino V a leading chief of the Ngāti Tūwharetoa, But this occasion it was reported that “two kiwi robes, a tangiwai pendant, two korowai robes, and a kickio ("carpet mat") were gifted.
As a result of this visit the officers and crew of New Zealand were to maintain a close relationship with her donor country and its citizens over her years of service and her adventures were closely followed in the Dominion’s newspapers. Though none of the crew were Māori they would occasionally perform the haka (in which they had received instruction while in New Zealand) at functions. The ship’s Māori connection was also maintained by its official letterhead paper featuring the "Aotearoa", which was the Māori word for New Zealand.
By the time the battlecruiser departed New Zealand from Auckland on 28 June for Fiji, a total of 376,114 New Zealanders had visited the vessel during her time in the country, though other sources quote 376,086, 368,118. and 378,068. It is estimated that approximately another 125,000 had been able to see the ship either from the shore or from boats. At the time the country had a population of one million. The battlecruiser streamed across the Pacific via Suva, Fiji and Honolulu to dock on 23 July at the naval base of Esquimalt on Vancouver Island, Canada.
After departing Esquimalt New Zealand headed south stopping at Mazatlán, Acapulco, Panama City, Callao, Valparaíso, Punta Arenas, before she steamed through the Strait of Magellan and on to Montevideo, Rio Janeiro, then various islands of the Caribbean and finally Halifax, Nova Scotia (in Canada) before arriving in Portsmouth on 8 December 1913 having circumnavigated the globe.
She had sailed 45,320 miles, consumed 31,833 tons of coal and had been visited by 500,151 people in what was the longest voyage to date by a vessel of the dreadnought era.
The voyage was judged such a success that Halsey was knighted for his efforts.
### Assigned to the Grand fleet
The Admiralty requested that New Zealand return to the United Kingdom when the tour concluded, rather than remain in the Pacific region as originally planned. The New Zealand Government acceded to the request. As a result upon her return to the United Kingdom, New Zealand joined the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron (1st BCS) of the Grand Fleet. The squadron visited Brest in February 1914, and Riga, Reval and Kronstadt in the Russian Empire the following June. While there they were visited by the Tsar and Tssarina on the 27 June and that evening hosted in a formal ball in conjunction with Lion, which was moored alongside. On the 29 June the squadron departed for the United Kingdom. The intention was that New Zealand would decommission on 30 August prior to transferring to the Mediterranean fleet where she would become the flagship of Rear Admiral Archibald Moore, but the outbreak of war cancelled that deployment.
### First World War
On 19 August 1914, shortly after the First World War began, New Zealand was transferred to the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron (2nd BCS)).
#### Battle of Heligoland Bight
New Zealand's first wartime action was the Battle of Heligoland Bight on 28 August 1914, as part of the battlecruiser force under the command of Admiral David Beatty. Beatty's ships were originally intended to provide distant support for the British cruisers and destroyers closer to the German coast, in case large units of the High Seas Fleet sortied in response to the British attacks once the tide rose. When the British light forces failed to disengage on schedule at 11:35, the battlecruisers, led by Beatty aboard his flagship, Lion, began to head south at full speed to reinforce the smaller British ships; the rising tide meant that German capital ships would be able to clear the sandbar at the mouth of the Jade estuary.
The brand-new light cruiser Arethusa had been crippled earlier in the battle and was under fire from the German light cruisers SMS Strassburg and SMS Cöln when Beatty's battlecruisers loomed out of the mist at 12:37. By this time, New Zealand had fallen behind the three newer and faster battlecruisers and was not in position to significantly participate in the battle. Strassburg was able to evade fire by hiding in the mists, but Cöln remained visible and was quickly crippled by the British squadron. Before the German ship could be sunk, Beatty was distracted by the sudden appearance of the elderly light cruiser SMS Ariadne off his starboard bow. He turned to pursue, but Ariadne was set afire after only three salvos fired from under 6,000 yards (5,500 m). At 13:10, Beatty turned north and made a general signal to retire. Shortly after turning north, the battlecruisers encountered the crippled Cöln, which was sunk by two salvos from Lion. During the battle, New Zealand's captain, Lionel Halsey, wore the Māori piupiu over his uniform, setting a tradition followed for the duration of the war. Two days after the battle, New Zealand was transferred back to the 1st BCS, when the battlecruiser Inflexible arrived from the Mediterranean.
#### Raid on Scarborough
The German Navy had decided on a strategy of bombarding British towns on the North Sea coast in an attempt to draw out the Royal Navy and destroy elements of it in detail. An earlier raid on Yarmouth on 3 November 1914 had been partially successful, but a larger-scale operation was later devised by Admiral Franz von Hipper. The fast battlecruisers would conduct the bombardment, while the rest of the High Seas Fleet stationed itself east of Dogger Bank, so they could cover the battlecruisers' return and destroy any pursuing British vessels. Having broken the German naval codes, the British were planning to catch the raiding force on its return journey, although they were not aware of the High Seas Fleet's presence. Admiral Beatty's 1st BCS (now reduced to four ships, including New Zealand) and the 2nd Battle Squadron (consisting of six dreadnoughts) were detached from the Grand Fleet in an attempt to intercept the Germans near Dogger Bank.
Admiral Hipper's raiders set sail on 15 December 1914, and successfully bombarded several English towns; British destroyers escorting the 1st BCS had already encountered German destroyers of the High Seas Fleet at 05:15 and fought an inconclusive action with them. Vice Admiral Sir George Warrender, commanding the 2nd Battle Squadron, had received a signal at 05:40 that the destroyer Lynx was engaging enemy destroyers, although Beatty had not. The destroyer Shark spotted the German armoured cruiser SMS Roon and her escorts at about 07:00, but could not transmit the message until 07:25. Admiral Warrender received the signal, as did New Zealand, but Beatty, aboard Lion, did not, even though New Zealand had been specifically tasked to relay messages between the destroyers and the flagship. Warrender attempted to pass on Shark's message to Beatty at 07:36, but did not manage to make contact until 07:55. On receiving the message, Beatty reversed course, and dispatched New Zealand to search for Roon. She was being overhauled by New Zealand when Beatty received messages that Scarborough was being shelled at 09:00. Beatty ordered New Zealand to rejoin the squadron and turned west for Scarborough.
The British forces, heading west to cover the main route through the minefields protecting the coast of England, split up while passing the shallow Southwest Patch of Dogger Bank; Beatty's ships headed to the north, while Warrender passed to the south. This left a 15-nautical-mile (28 km; 17 mi) gap between them, through which the German light forces began to move. At 12:25, the light cruisers of the II Scouting Group began to pass the British forces searching for Hipper. The light cruiser Southampton spotted the light cruiser SMS Stralsund and signalled a report to Beatty. At 12:30, Beatty turned his battlecruisers toward the German ships, which he presumed were the advance screen for Hipper's ships. However, those were some 50 kilometres (31 mi) behind. The 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron, which had been screening for Beatty's ships, detached to pursue the German cruisers, but a misinterpreted signal from the British battlecruisers sent them back to their screening positions. This confusion allowed the German light cruisers to escape, and alerted Hipper to the location of the British battlecruisers. The German battlecruisers wheeled to the north-east of the British forces and also made good their escape.
New Zealand became flagship of the 2nd BCS of the Grand Fleet on 15 January 1915, and saw action the following week in the Battle of Dogger Bank.
#### Battle of Dogger Bank
On 23 January 1915, a force of German battlecruisers under the command of Admiral Hipper sortied to clear Dogger Bank of any British fishing boats or small craft that might be there to collect intelligence on German movements. Alerted by decoded German transmissions, a larger force of British battlecruisers, including New Zealand, sailed under the command of Admiral Beatty to intercept. Contact was initiated at 07:20. on the 24th, when Arethusa spotted the German light cruiser SMS Kolberg. By 07:35, the Germans had spotted Beatty's force and Hipper ordered a turn south at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph), believing that this speed would outdistance any British battleships to the north-west; he planned to increase speed to the armoured cruiser SMS Blücher's maximum of 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph) if necessary to outrun any battlecruisers.
Beatty ordered his battlecruisers to make all practical speed to catch the Germans before they could escape. New Zealand and Indomitable were the slowest of Beatty's ships, and gradually fell behind the newer battlecruisers, despite New Zealand achieving an indicated speed of 27 knots due to the original overdesign of the engines and to the efforts of her stokers. Despite dropping behind, New Zealand was able to open fire on Blücher by 09:35, and continued to engage the armoured cruiser after the other British battlecruisers had switched targets to the German battlecruisers. After about an hour, New Zealand had knocked out Blücher's forward turret, and Indomitable began to fire on her as well at 10:31. Two 12-inch shells pierced the German ship's armoured deck and exploded in an ammunition room four minutes later. This started a fire amidships that destroyed her two port 21 cm (8.3 in) turrets, while the concussion damaged her engines so that her speed dropped to 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph), and jammed her steering gear. At 10:48, Beatty ordered Indomitable to attack her, but the combination of a signalling error by Beatty's flag lieutenant and heavy damage to Beatty's flagship Lion, which had knocked out her radio and caused enough smoke to obscure her signal halyards, caused the rest of the British battlecruisers, temporarily under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Gordon Moore in New Zealand, to think that that signal applied to them. In response, they turned away from Hipper's main body and engaged Blücher. New Zealand fired 147 shells at Blücher before the German ship capsized and sank at 12:07 after being torpedoed by Arethusa.
Halsey had again worn the piupiu over his uniform during the battle, and the lack of damage to New Zealand was once more attributed to its good luck properties.
New Zealand was relieved by Australia as flagship of the 2nd BCS on 22 February 1915. The squadron joined the Grand Fleet in a sortie on 29 March, in response to intelligence that the German fleet was leaving port as the precursor to a major operation. By the next night, the German ships had withdrawn, and the squadron returned to Rosyth. On 11 April, the British fleet was again deployed on the intelligence that a German force was planning an operation. The Germans intended to lay mines at the Swarte Bank, but after a scouting Zeppelin located a British light cruiser squadron, they began to prepare for what they thought was a British attack. Heavy fog and the need to refuel caused Australia and the British vessels to return to port on 17 April, and although they were redeployed that night, they were unable to stop two German light cruisers from laying the minefield.
In June 1915 Halsey was promoted to Captain of the fleet with rank of Commodore on HMS Iron Duke and was succeeded as captain of New Zealand by J.F.E. (Jimmy) Green. Despite it being his personal property Halsey left the piupiu in the care of Green.
From 26 to 28 January 1916, the 2nd BCS was positioned off the Skagerrak while the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron swept the strait in an unsuccessful search for a possible minelayer.
#### Collison with HMAS Australia
On the morning of 21 April 1916, the 2nd BCS left Rosyth at 04:00 (accompanied by the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron and destroyers) again bound for the Skagerrak, this time to support efforts to disrupt the transport of Swedish ore to Germany. The planned destroyer sweep of the Kattegat was cancelled when word came that the High Seas Fleet was mobilising for an operation of their own (later learned to be timed to coincide with the Irish Easter Rising), and the British ships were ordered to a rendezvous point in the middle of the North Sea, with the 1st and 3rd Battlecruiser Squadrons while the rest of the Grand Fleet made for the south-eastern end of the Long Forties.
At 15:30 on the afternoon of 22 April, the three squadrons of battlecruisers were patrolling together to the north-west of Horn Reefs when heavy fog came down, while the ships were steaming abreast at 19.5 knots, with Australia on the port flank. Concerned about possible submarine attack Beatty issued instructions at 15:35 for the fleet to commence zigzagging. It took some time for the instruction to be relayed by signal flag down the line and so it wasn't until 15:40 that Australia with a cruiser to her port side commenced her first zigzag and swung to starboard. The crew were aware that New Zealand was on that side about five cables (926 metres) away but the poor visibility meant that as they made their turn they didn’t see her until it was too late and they hit at 15:43, despite Australia attempting to turn away to port. Australia’s side was torn open from frames 59 to 78 by the armour plate on the hull below her sister ships P-turret, while as New Zealand turned away her outer port propeller damaged Australia’s hull below her Q-turret.
Australia slowed to half-speed as the mist hid her sister ship, but the damage to New Zealand’s propeller caused a temporary loss of control and she swung back in front of Australia which despite turning to port, had her stem crushed at 15:46 as she scraped the side of New Zealand, just behind her P-turret. Both ships to come to a complete stop about 30–40 yd (27–37 m) apart while their respective officers assessed the damage. The damage control teams on the Australia were soon busy storing up bulkheads and sealing off the damage portions to prevent any more water entering the ship. Meanwhile off watch Australian sailors took advantage of a convenient potato locker to hurl both its contents and insults at the crew of their nearby sister ship. New Zealand was soon underway, returning to Rosyth with the rest of the squadron.
The same fog caused the battleship Neptune to collide with a merchant ship and the destroyers Ambuscade, Ardent and Garland to collide with one another.
Once it was safe to proceed Australia with her speed restricted to 12, and then later to 16 knots arrived back at Rosyth to find both drydocks occupied, one by New Zealand and the other by HMS Dreadnought so she departed for Newcastle-on-Tyne, where she was further damaged trying to dock during strong winds. As this facility couldn’t handle all of the repairs that it needed the battlecruiser was ordered to Devonport. Australia was not able to return to sea until 31 May, thus missing the Battle of Jutland.
Meanwhile New Zealand replaced her damaged propeller with Australia’s spare propeller which was in store at Rosyth and returned to the fleet on 30 May, a day before the start of the Battle of Jutland. Due to the continued absence of Australia Rear Admiral William Christopher Pakenham transferred his flag from Indefatigable to New Zealand.
#### Battle of Jutland
On 31 May 1916, the 2nd BCS consisted of its flagship New Zealand and Indefatigable; Australia was still under repair following her collision with New Zealand. The squadron was assigned to Admiral Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet, which had put to sea to intercept a sortie by the High Seas Fleet into the North Sea. The British were able to decode the German radio messages and left their bases before the Germans put to sea. Hipper's battlecruisers spotted the Battlecruiser Fleet to their west at 15:20, but Beatty's ships did not spot the Germans to their east until 15:30. Two minutes later, he ordered a course change to east-south-east to position himself astride the German's line of retreat and called his ships' crews to action stations. He also ordered the 2nd BCS, which had been leading, to fall in astern of the 1st BCS. Hipper ordered his ships to turn to starboard, away from the British, to assume a south-easterly course, and reduced speed to 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) to allow three light cruisers of the 2nd Scouting Group to catch up. With this turn, Hipper was falling back on the High Seas Fleet, then about 60 miles (97 km) behind him. Around this time, Beatty altered course to the east as it was quickly apparent that he was still too far north to cut off Hipper.
Thus began the so-called "Run to the South" as Beatty changed course to steer east-south-east at 15:45, paralleling Hipper's course, now that the range closed to under 18,000 yards (16,000 m). The Germans opened fire first at 15:48, followed by the British. The British ships were still in the process of making their turn, and only the two leading ships, Lion and Princess Royal, had steadied on their course when the Germans opened fire. The British formation was echeloned to the right with Indefatigable in the rear and the furthest to the west, and New Zealand ahead of her and slightly further east. The German fire was accurate from the beginning, but the British overestimated the range as the German ships blended into the haze. Indefatigable aimed at Von der Tann, while New Zealand, disengaged herself, targeted SMS Moltke. By 15:54, the range was down to 12,900 yards (11,800 m) and Beatty ordered a course change two points to starboard to open up the range at 15:57. Indefatigable was destroyed at about 16:03, when her magazines exploded.
After Indefatigable's loss, New Zealand shifted her fire to Von der Tann in accordance with Beatty's standing instructions. The range had grown too far for accurate shooting, so Beatty altered course four points to port to close the range again between 16:12 and 16:15. By this time, the 5th Battle Squadron, consisting of four Queen Elizabeth-class battleships, had closed up and was engaging Von der Tann and Moltke. At 16:23, a 13.5-inch (340 mm) shell from Tiger struck near Von der Tann's rear turret, starting a fire among the practice targets stowed there that completely obscured the ship and caused New Zealand to shift fire to Moltke. At 16:26, the ship was hit by a 28-centimetre (11 in) shell, fired by Von der Tann, on 'X' barbette that detonated on contact and knocked loose a piece of armour that briefly jammed 'X' turret and blew a hole in the upper deck. Four minutes later, Southampton, scouting in front of Beatty's ships, spotted the lead elements of the High Seas Fleet charging north at top speed. Three minutes later, she sighted the topmasts of Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer's battleships, but did not transmit a message to Beatty for another five minutes. Beatty continued south for another two minutes to confirm the sighting himself before ordering a sixteen-point turn to starboard in succession. New Zealand, the last ship in the line, turned prematurely to stay outside the range of the oncoming battleships.
New Zealand was straddled several times by the battleship SMS Prinzregent Luitpold but was not hit. Beatty's ships maintained full speed in an attempt to increase the distance between them and the High Seas Fleet, and gradually moved out of range. They turned north and then north-east to try to rendezvous with the main body of the Grand Fleet. At 17:40, they opened fire again on the German battlecruisers. The setting sun blinded the German gunners, and as they could not make out the British ships, they turned away to the north-east at 5:47. Beatty gradually turned more towards the east to allow him to cover the deployment of the Grand Fleet in battle formation and to move ahead of it, but he mistimed his manoeuvre and forced the leading division to fall off towards the east, further away from the Germans. By 18:35, Beatty was following Indomitable and Inflexible of the 3rd BCS as they were steering east-south-east, leading the Grand Fleet, and continuing to engage Hipper's battlecruisers to their south-west. A few minutes earlier, Scheer had ordered a simultaneous 180° starboard turn and Beatty lost sight of the High Seas Fleet in the haze. Twenty minutes later, Scheer ordered another 180° turn which put them on a converging course again with the British, which had altered course to the south. This allowed the Grand Fleet to cross Scheer's T, forming a battle line that cut across his battle line and badly damaging his leading ships. Scheer ordered yet another 180° turn at 19:13 in an attempt to extricate the High Seas Fleet from the trap into which he had sent them.
This was successful, and the British lost sight of the Germans until 8:05, when Castor spotted smoke bearing west-north-west. Ten minutes later, she had closed the range enough to identify German torpedo boats, and engaged them. Beatty turned west upon hearing gunfire and spotted the German battlecruisers only 8,500 yards (7,800 m) away. Inflexible opened fire at 20:20, followed by the rest of Beatty's battlecruisers. New Zealand and Indomitable concentrated their fire on SMS Seydlitz, and hit her five times before she turned west to disengage. Shortly after 20:30, the pre-dreadnought battleships of Rear Admiral Mauve's II Battle Squadron were spotted and fire switched to them. The Germans had poor visibility and were able to fire only a few rounds at them before turning away to the west. The British battlecruisers hit the German ships several times before they blended into the haze around 8:40. After this, Beatty changed course to south-south-east and maintained that course, ahead of both the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet, until 02:55 the next morning, when the order was given to reverse course and head home.
New Zealand arrived back in Rosyth on 2 June and dropped anchor at 09:55. The crew had approximately 50 minutes rest before with the potential possibly that she may have to put to sea again they began the task of refuelling with 1,178 tons of coal and then replenishing the ammunition with 480 12-inch shells, work which continued until 03:30 on the following morning.
New Zealand fired 430 twelve-inch shells during the battle, 100 from A-turret, 129 from P-turret, 105 from Q-turret and 96 from X-turret, more than any other ship on either side. Despite this rate of fire, only four successful hits were credited to her: three on Seydlitz and one on the pre-dreadnought SMS Schleswig-Holstein. This gave a hit rate of less than one per cent. Other than the single hit on X-turret the only other damage was from near misses and was minimal, consisting of a shell through the silk jack, a splinter hitting the ensign staff, the No. 3 cutter hit had some damage to its bow and the No.2 picket boat was hit in three places. This confirmed to the crew that the piupiu and hei-tiki worn by Captain Green, brought good luck.
#### Post-Jutland career
New Zealand was relieved by Australia as flagship on 9 June and temporarily attached to the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, until HMS Renown relieved her in September. On the evening of 18 August, the Grand Fleet put to sea in response to a message deciphered by Room 40 that indicated that the High Seas Fleet, minus II Squadron, would be leaving harbour that night. The German objective was to bombard Sunderland on 19 August, based on extensive reconnaissance provided by airships and submarines. The Grand Fleet sailed with 29 dreadnought battleships and six battlecruisers. Throughout the next day, Jellicoe and Scheer received conflicting intelligence; after reaching the location in the North Sea where the British expected to encounter the High Seas Fleet, they turned north in the erroneous belief that they had entered a minefield. Scheer turned south again, then steered south-eastward to pursue a lone British battle squadron sighted by an airship, which was in fact the Harwich Force of cruisers and destroyers under Commodore Tyrwhitt. Realising their mistake, the Germans changed course for home. The only contact came in the evening when Tyrwhitt sighted the High Seas Fleet but was unable to achieve an advantageous attack position before dark, and broke off contact. The British and the German fleets returned home; the British lost two cruisers to submarine attacks, and one German dreadnought had been torpedoed. New Zealand underwent a refit at Rosyth in November 1916. She temporarily replaced Australia as squadron flagship between 29 November and 7 January 1917.
On 1 October 1917 Green following a promotion to Rear-Admiral gave up his command of the ship, but it wasn’t until 13 December 1917 that Captain Edward Coverley Kennedy took on temporary command, which he held until 17 January 1918 when Richard Webb took over the permanent captain. Webb remained captain until September 1918 when he was made a Rear-admiral and left to take up the role of Assistant High Commissioner at Constantinople. In the latter stages of the war a number of New Zealand soldiers on leave were able to take advantage of the open invitation extended to them by New Zealand’s captain to visit the ship.
German minesweepers and escorting light cruisers were attempting to clear British-laid minefields in the Heligoland Bight in late 1917. The Admiralty planned a large operation for 17 November to destroy the ships, and allocated two light cruiser squadrons and the 1st Cruiser Squadron covered by the reinforced 1st Battlecruiser Squadron and, more distantly, the 1st Battle Squadron of battleships. New Zealand was attached to the 1st BCS for this operation, which became known as the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight. New Zealand did not fire her guns during the battle. As in previous engagements, Captain Green wore the piupiu and tiki for luck.
During 1918, New Zealand and the Grand Fleet's other capital ships were used on occasion to escort convoys between the United Kingdom and Norway. The 2nd BCS spent the period from 8 to 21 February covering these convoys in company with battleships and destroyers, and put to sea on 6 March in company with the 1st BCS to support minelayers. The 2nd BCS again supported minelayers in the North Sea from 25 June or 26 June to the end of July. During September and October, New Zealand and the 2nd BCS supervised and protected minelaying operations north of Orkney.
By the time of the 1918 armistice New Zealand had since August 1914 sailed 84,458 nautical miles, consumed 97,034 tons of coal and fired a total of 664 12-inch shells in action.
As a member of the 2nd BCS the battlecruiser was present at the surrender of the High Seas Fleet in November 1918. To witness the event New Zealand embarked five soldiers from the New Zealand Division and a New Zealand newspaper reporter. New Zealand was assigned responsibility for checking the compliance of SMS Derfflinger with the terms of its internment.
### Post-war
In September 1918 Leonard Andrew Boyd Donaldson took over command of the ship and remained in command until 11 February 1919. In December 1918 New Zealand was used to convey Queen Maud and Prince Olav from Norway for their state visit of the United Kingdom.
With the war at an end most of the United Kingdom’s older capital ships were put into reserve, as they were by now obsolete and with the government wishing to make significant cuts in its military expenditure there was little chance of their returning to full service, especially once the formal peace treaty was signed with Germany in mid-1919. One exception was New Zealand, which it was decided would be used to transport, Admiral Jellicoe on what was to be an expected yearlong visit to India and the dominions of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to assist with planning and coordinating their naval policies and defences.
To prepare her for voyage the battlecruiser underwent a refit between December 1918 and 11 February 1919 at the end of which she was recommissioned with a virtually all new crew under the command of Captain Oliver Elles Leggett. Among the crew were four New Zealanders, Alexander David Boyle who was by now a Lieutenant Commander, Surgeon Lieutenant George Donald Macintosh, Sub-Lieutenant Mervyn S. Thomas and midshipman Derek Perry. Lady Jellicoe accompanied her husband, as well as a staff of eight to assist him with his work. Also on the ship was Clutha Mackenzie (the blind son of the New Zealand High Commissioner) who was returning to New Zealand as Jellicoe's guest.
The battlecruiser departed Portsmouth on 31 February 1919 and while crossing the Bay of Biscay encountered a storm that forced the evacuation of the newly constructed accommodation for Jellicoe and his staff when it became apparent that the dockyard had failed to seal the holes in the structure. After a 24 hour stop at Gibraltar for Jellicoe to make his first official visit the battlecruiser continued onto Port Said to take on approximately 2,000 tons of coal before continuing through the Suez Canal to make a brief stop at Suez where Jellicoe rejoined it (having left it at Port Said to visit Cairo) before crossing the Arabian Sea Ocean to reach Bombay Bombay on 14 March. While Jellicoe was engaged in a week of consultations in Delhi, 1,740 tons of coal was taken on board and the opportunity was taken for the battlecruiser to be painted in the dockyard. This was completed on 22 March, just in time for the ship to host a ball three days later. The battlecruiser then made a two day visit to Karachi before returning to Bombay. Unfortunately while in Karachi a sailor, A. B. Rennie was killed after falling off a balcony while on shore. Once back in Bombay some of the crew got into trouble while on shore leave, which was cancelled in response.
New Zealand departed Bombay on 1 May for Columbo, which was reached two days later, where 1,800 tons of coal and 700 tons of oil was taken on board, in preparation for the journey across the Indian Ocean. By the 9 May the battlecruiser was in the vicinity of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and the opportunity was taken to divert so that the crew could see the remains of SMS Emden.
The battlecruiser arrived at Albany, Western Australia, on 15 May, where Jellicoe and his staff disembarked to take an overland route across the country. New Zealand sailed via Perth, Outer Harbor (near Adelaide), Melbourne and Hobart with the opportunity taken for New Zealand to exercise with Australia and other units of the RAN prior to reaching Sydney. Here the ship was drydocked in Sunderland Dock at Cockatoo Island where its bottom was scraped and painted, before being refloated and coaled. The battlecruiser left Sydney on 16 August for New Zealand.
Wellington was reached on 20 August, where, as the influenza pandemic was rampant. As a result the crew was subjected to a medical inspection before anyone was allowed to disembark. While in Wellington the ship was visited by approximately 50,000 New Zealanders prior to the 24 August before it proceeded south to Lyttelton, which was reached on 1 September. The ship then proceeded north to anchor off Picton on 13 September where it spent two days and then after a stop in Wellington it sailed up the east coast of the North Island to reach Auckland on 22 September. Jellicoe During the next six weeks he visited ports throughout the country and carried out, while preparing a three-volume report for the government. The ship was particularly popular in New Zealand, with Jellicoe, the officers and crew attending numerous social engagements. The tour around the country allowed Jellicoe and his staff to familiarize themselves with the country as they prepared recommendations for the New Zealand government on its naval policy. Crowds flocked to visit the battlecruiser as they had done in 1913. Jellicoe, too, was popular and he later returned to New Zealand to serve as Governor-General from 1920 to 1924.
The battlecruiser left Auckland on 3 October, briefing stopping at Suva in Fiji and Samoa with mail, where at the latter her 12-inch guns were fired to entertain the local chiefs, then Fanning Island for (six hours) and Hawaii. Enroute the ship called upon Christmas Island (Kiritimati), southeast of Fanning Island, on 19 November 1920, thinking it uninhabited. Instead, they were greeted by Joe English, of Medford, Massachusetts, who had been manager of a copra plantation on the island, but had become marooned with two others, when the war had broken out. The men were rescued.
The battlecruiser arrived in Canada, the final country to be assessed when it docked on 8 November and docking at Esquimalt on Vancouver Island. The Jellicoes left the ship on 20 November to tour Canada and the United States by train before re-joining it in Key West. On 11 November 1919 two rugby teams from the ship competed against local teams from Victoria. The officers played the Wanderers and the crew played V.I.A.A (Vancouver Island Athletic Association).
After leaving Vancouver the ship stopped at San Diego, before passing via the Panama Canal into the Caribbean where as well as visiting Havana time was spent in Jamaica, where exercising of the main armament was undertaken. During a stop at Port of Spain on the island of Trinidad Petty Officer Thorn fell off a wharf and was drowned. Heading north the battlecruiser picked Jellicoe at Key West on 8 January 1920
The battlecruiser reached Portsmouth on 3 February 1920 having covered 33,514 nautical miles. As Jellicoe had been promoted to Admiral of the Fleet while overseas the ship was greeted by the appropriate 19-gun salute from HMS Victory.
### Put into reserve
On 6 February New Zealand was pulled by tugs to a mooring on the Hamoaze. Most of the crew sent on six weeks leave, with a skeleton crew of 250 remaining behind under the command of Lieutenant Commander Alexander David Boyle.
Leggett gave up command of New Zealand and was succeeded by Captain Hartley Russell Gwennap Moore (1881–1953) on 11 March 1920. Moore remained in that position until July 1921.
New Zealand was paid off into reserve on 15 March 1920. By this time the battlecruiser was regarded as obsolete by the Royal Navy, as she was coal powered and her 12-inch guns were inferior to the 15-inch (381 mm) guns deployed on the latest generation of capital ships.
New Zealand was briefly recommissioned on 1 July 1921 with a reserve crew to replace HMS Hercules as flagship at Rosyth under the command of Captain Ralph Eliot (1881–1958), who had previously been in command of Hercules. Eliot was to be the ship’s last captain, and remained in command until 1 September 1921.
### Scrapping
Along with all of the other British 12-inch battleships and battlecruisers it was agreed that New Zealand would be scrapped to meet the tonnage restrictions set on the British Empire by the Washington Naval Treaty.
New Zealand was sold for scrap together with Agincourt and Princess Royal to the Exeter based electrical engineering firm of J&W Purves with the proviso that they had to be demolished within 18 months of the Washington Naval Treaty being ratified. To meet the Admiralty’s desire to provided work for unemployed dock workers at Rosyth Dockyard the contract was immediately transferred the contract to a new entity chaired by A. Wallace Cowan (1877–1964) called the Rosyth Shipbreaking Company which would undertake the scrapping of the vessels at Rosyth. It took until 19 December 1922 to legally organize the transfer of the ships from the Royal Navy to the new company, which had among its directors Admiral J.F.E. Green who had commanded the ship at the Battle of Jutland. Leased facilities were set up adjacent to where the vessels were lying alongside a wharf on the south side of the main basin in the Naval Dockyard at Rosyth. The vessels were taken over on 25 January 1923 with work commencing first on New Zealand. By March 1923 her superstructure had been removed and she was moved out of the basin and beached above the low tide mark on a beach outside of the wall of the northwest dockyard. A large portion of New Zealand;s hull was still being dismantled in July 1924 and it wasn’t until September 1924 that the last components of New Zealand were removed from the site. And her place on the beach was taken over by the Princess Royal. Between them the three vessels yielded 40,000 tons of steel, approximately 10,000 tons of armour plate and even 3,000 tons of coal still in their bunkers.
The New Zealand government received £20,000 from the sale of the vessel.
The New Zealand Government completed paying off the loan used to fund the ship in the 1944/45 financial year.
## Artifacts
By the time of the decision to scrap New Zealand had a impressive collection of silverware and trophies (officially listed at 47 in January 1919).
As well as the above mentioned silverware and trophies numerous other items were removed from the vessel prior to scrapping and sent back to New Zealand. Among the items were the ship's bell, a boomerang, two greenstone mere (clubs), silver cups, gunnery shields, two hei-tiki, a complete laundry, a 42-foot long motor launch, the ship’s flags, some searchlights, a steering wheel, four 4-inch QF guns and associated rangefinders. Some furniture was sent to the High Commission in London, though they lost out on the wardroom buffet, which ended up in New Zealand’s Parliament restaurant, Bellamy’s. Most of these items arrived in New Zealand in late 1923. The ship’s former captains were sent furniture from the captain’s cabin.
The 4-inch guns, a range finder and laundry equipment, were used by military units. During the Second World War, the 4-inch guns were the main armament of the land batteries which protected the entrances to the harbours at Auckland, Wellington and Lyttelton. Two of these guns have since 23 November 1929 been located outside of the northern entrance to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. At the outbreak of World War Two, they were removed with one being returned to service while the other gun which was too damaged to repair, was placed in storage at the museum. Two guns were once again returned to display outside the museum in 1959.
On 12 December 1924 A. Wallace Cowan presented an ink stand and cigar boxes made from the ship’s timbers to New Zealand High Commissioner Sir James Allen and current New Zealand Prime Minister William Massey (who was in the United Kingdom at the time), while a third cigar box was sent to Ward. One of these cigar boxes is currently held by the Auckland Museum. Teak from the ship was used as flooring in Cowan’s house. A photo album of the breaking up of the vessel was presented by Cowan’s daughter to the New Zealand Royal Navy in 1968 and is now held by National Archives New Zealand.
Auckland War Memorial Museum has among its collection Pelorus Jack’s silver collar (a gift received from the New Zealanders of Transvaal), another brass-studded collar and his harness. Another collar, gifted by the Pretoria Public Works Department, is held by the Royal New Zealand Navy Museum, Devonport.
The other artifacts are on display in various museums in New Zealand. The hei-tiki donated by C. J. Sloman has been in the Canterbury Museum since 1932. Having once been on display in the Wellington Maritime Museum the auxiliary steering wheel and an engine telegraph are now, together with other items is in the possession of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington.
Other than for when it was lent for display at the 1940 Centennial Exhibition in New Zealand the captain's piupiu remained with Halsey until his death in 1949. His daughter Ruth bequeathed it to New Zealand upon her death in 2002 and since 2005 it has been on display at the Torpedo Bay Navy Museum in Auckland alongside the ship's bell, the wardroom buffet and other artifacts, including the piece of armour knocked off of X-turret at the Battle of Jutland. When HMS Queen Mary exploded at the Battle of Jutland debris from the ship fell on New Zealand, among which was a ring-bolt. This is now in the collection of the Torpedo Bay Navy Museum.
The South Canterbury Museum in Timaru, New Zealand holds the silk naval ensign which flew from HMS "New Zealand" during all of its naval engagements in World War I (including at the Battle of Jutland). The naval ensign and a union jack were purchased by the women's branch of the Navy League in Timaru and presented to the ship when it visited Timaru in May 1913.
## Ship's mascot
The ship’s first mascot was a bulldog donated by a New Zealander resident in London and named after the famous dolphin that greeted ships at French pass in the Marlborough Sounds of New Zealand. The first was "discharged dead" from the Navy on 24 April 1916 after falling down the forward funnel. His will requested not only that his successor be a “bull pup of honest parentage, clean habits, and moral tendencies”, but also that “no Dachshound or other dog of Teutonic extraction” be permitted on board the ship (except as rations for his successor).
His successor’s service at the Battle of Jutland caused him to become afraid of gunfire and when it was considered it was unlikely he could survive the ship’s return voyage through the tropics back to the United Kingdom he was discharged with the rank of leading sea dog and given to the people of Auckland in October 1919. Following six month quarantine Jack was taken under the care of the superintendent of parks.
|
24,356,582 |
Sholes and Glidden typewriter
| 1,162,766,564 |
First commercially successful typewriter
|
[
"1874 introductions",
"American inventions",
"Typewriters"
] |
The Sholes and Glidden typewriter (also known as the Remington No. 1) was the first commercially successful typewriter. Principally designed by the American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes, it was developed with the assistance of fellow printer Samuel W. Soule and amateur mechanic Carlos S. Glidden. Work began in 1867, but Soule left the enterprise shortly thereafter, replaced by James Densmore, who provided financial backing and the driving force behind the machine's continued development. After several short-lived attempts to manufacture the device, the machine was acquired by E. Remington and Sons in early 1873. An arms manufacturer seeking to diversify, Remington further refined the typewriter before finally placing it on the market on July 1, 1874.
During its development, this typewriter evolved from a crude curiosity into a practical device, the basic form of which became the industry standard. The machine incorporated elements which became fundamental to typewriter design, including a cylindrical platen and a four row QWERTY keyboard. Several design deficiencies remained, however. The Sholes and Glidden could print only upper-case letters—an issue remedied in its successor, the Remington No. 2—and was a "blind writer", meaning the typist could not see what was being written as it was entered.
Initially, the typewriter received an unenthusiastic reception from the public. Lack of an established market, high cost, and the need for trained operators slowed its adoption. Additionally, recipients of typewritten messages found the mechanical, all-upper-case writing to be impersonal and even insulting. The new communication technologies and expanding businesses of the late 19th century, however, had created a need for expedient, legible correspondence, and so the Sholes and Glidden and its contemporaries soon became common office fixtures. The typewriter is credited with assisting the entrance of women into the clerical workplace, as many were hired to operate the new devices.
## History
### Early development
The Sholes and Glidden typewriter had its origin in a printing machine designed in 1866 by Christopher Latham Sholes to assist in printing page numbers in books, and serial numbers on tickets and other items. Sholes, a Wisconsin printer, formed a partnership with Samuel W. Soule, also a printer, and together they began development work in Charles F. Kleinsteuber's machine shop, a converted mill in northern Milwaukee. Carlos S. Glidden, an inventor who frequented the machine shop, became interested in the device and suggested that it might be adapted to print alphabetical characters as well. In July 1867, Glidden read an article in Scientific American describing "the Pterotype", a writing machine invented by John Jonathon Pratt and recently featured in an issue of London Engineering. Glidden showed the article to Sholes, who thought the machine "complicated and liable to get out of order", and was convinced that a better machine could be designed. To that point, several dozen patents for printing devices had been issued in the United States and abroad. None of the machines, however, had been successful or effective products.
In November 1866, following their successful collaboration on the numbering machine, Sholes asked Soule to join him and Glidden in developing the new device. Mathias Schwalbach, a German clockmaker, was hired to assist with construction. To test the proposed machine's feasibility, a key was taken from a telegraph machine and modified to print the letter "W"; by September 1867, a model with a full alphabet, numbers, and rudimentary punctuation had been completed, and it was used to compose letters to acquaintances in the hope of selling the invention, or procuring funds for its manufacture. One recipient, James Densmore, immediately bought a 25% interest for \$600, the cost of the machine's development to that date. Densmore saw the machine for the first time in March 1868, and was unimpressed; he thought it clumsy and impractical, and declared it "good for nothing except to show that its underlying principles were sound". Among other deficiencies, the device held paper in a horizontal frame, which limited the thickness of the paper that could be used and made alignment difficult. A patent for the "Type-Writer" was granted on June 23, 1868, and, despite the device's flaws, Densmore rented a building in Chicago in which to begin its manufacture. Fifteen units were produced before a lack of funds forced the venture back to Milwaukee.
### Refinement
During 1869, an improved model was designed which, unlike the previous version, drew upon work done by other inventors. A machine patented in 1833 by Charles Thurber, for example, used a cylindrical platen. Sholes adapted the idea and implemented a rotating drum to which the paper was clipped, replacing the frame of the previous model. Soule and Glidden did not assist development of the new platen and, as their interest in the venture was waning, sold their rights to the original machine to Sholes and Densmore. Prototypes were sent to professionals in various fields, including James O. Clephane, a stenographer whose heavy use destroyed several machines. Clephane's feedback, although "caustic", led to the development of an additional 25 to 30 prototypes, each an improvement on its predecessor. In summer 1870, Densmore traveled to New York to demonstrate the machine to Western Union, which was looking for a method to record telegrams. Western Union ordered several machines, but declined to purchase the rights, as it believed a superior device could be developed for less than Densmore's asking price of \$50,000.
To supply the orders and to repay debts, Densmore began to manufacture the machine in summer 1871. During this time, the machine was revised to improve durability and the platen was redesigned after feedback from Western Union, which wanted the ability to print on a continuous roll, indicated that clipping paper to the platen was impractical. The new design, however, infringed a patent granted to Charles A. Washburn in November 1870; Washburn, consequently, received royalties on future production. In 1872, to manufacture the new machine in earnest, a former wheelwright shop was secured along with several employees. Although the machines worked well, the lack of economies of scale prevented the venture from yielding a profit. In exchange for funding the ventures, Densmore had been acquiring an ever-increasing ownership interest. Sholes was eventually bought out for a cash payment of \$12,000. Glidden kept his one-tenth right of the patent. Densmore consulted with George W. N. Yost, a manufacturer with whom he had been acquainted, who suggested showing the machine to E. Remington and Sons. Remington, an arms manufacturer seeking to diversify after the Civil War, possessed the machining equipment and skilled machinists necessary to further develop the complex machine. A typewritten letter was sent to Remington, where executive Henry H. Benedict was impressed by the novelty and encouraged company president Philo Remington to pursue the device.
### Start of an industry
Following a demonstration at Remington's offices in New York, the company contracted on March 1, 1873, to manufacture 1,000 machines, with the option to produce an additional 24,000. Although the agreement required Densmore to give Remington \$10,000 and royalty rights, a marketing firm to be formed by Densmore and Yost was allowed to serve as the exclusive sales agent. Remington dedicated a wing of its factory to the typewriter, and spent several months retooling and re-engineering the device; production began in September and the machine entered the market on July 1, 1874. Typewriter production was largely overseen by Jefferson Clough and William K. Jenne, manager of Remington's sewing machine division. The redesigned machine was sturdier and more reliable than Sholes' model, but it had taken on some of the characteristics of a sewing machine, including a japanned case with floral ornamentation and a stand with a treadle to operate the carriage return. The typewriter, however, had been rushed into production with insufficient testing, and early models were soon returned for adjustments and repair.
By December 1874, only 400 typewriters had been sold, due in part to their high price and poor reliability. As businesses were slow to adopt the machine, authors, clergymen, lawyers and newspaper editors were the targeted customers. Individuals, however, generally did not write enough to justify the machine's price of about \$125, the average annual income per person at the time. There were exceptions, however; Mark Twain was among the first to purchase the machine, which he termed a "curiosity breeding little joker". Although the machine was exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, it was overshadowed by Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. Several design and manufacturing improvements followed—including replacing the treadle with a hand lever—and 4,000 machines had been sold by 1877. In 1878, Remington outsourced marketing to E. & T. Fairbanks & Company, a scale manufacturer, as marketing to that point had produced only lackluster sales.
An improved model, the Remington No. 2, was also introduced in 1878. The new machine was able to type upper and lowercase characters, thus remedying a significant drawback of its predecessor. As the only typewriter manufacturer, Remington maintained a monopoly position until the American Writing Machine Company introduced a typewriter to compete with the Remington machines in 1881. In response to the new competition, Remington lowered the price of the Sholes and Glidden (referred to in sales literature as the Remington No. 1) to \$80, and negotiated an agreement with the marketing firm Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict to take all the machines produced. The arrangement marked the beginning of the typewriter's commercial success, as the agency's marketing prowess led to the sale of 1,200 machines in its first year. By 1884, more competitors had appeared, including the Hammond Typewriter Company, the Crandall Type-Writer Company and the Hall Typewriter Company; in the decade since the introduction of the Sholes and Glidden, a "thriving typewriter industry" had developed.
## Design
The Sholes and Glidden typewriter incorporated several components adapted from existing devices, such as escapement (a mechanism governing carriage movement) adapted from clockwork, keys adapted from telegraph machines and type hammers adapted from the piano. In developing the first model, however, Sholes and Soule had not investigated printing machines created by other inventors and, consequently, developed several poor designs which could have been avoided. The failure to research earlier designs also led to the reinvention of features which had already been developed. Soule, for example, suggested a circular typebar orientation. A circular arrangement had been used more than 30 years earlier in a machine designed by Xavier Progin in 1833.
In the machine's original 1868 design, paper was placed horizontally on the top of the machine, held in place by a movable square frame (to provide line and letter spacing). Above the paper and centered on the device, an arm held an inked ribbon which crossed over a small metal plate. Depressing a key caused a typebar to rise from underneath the paper, pressing the paper upwards against the ribbon and thus printing an inked character. This method of imprinting required use of very thin, nonstandard paper (such as tissue paper). Two variants were produced with alternative methods of actuating the typebars: one in which the keys and typebars were connected by a series of wires and one in which the keys directly "kicked" the typebars upwards.
The arm and frame components were replaced with a cylindrical platen in 1869. Unlike modern typewriters, the revised machine entered letters around the cylinder, with axial rotation providing letter spacing and horizontal shifting providing line spacing. Paper was clipped directly to the cylinder, which limited its length and width to the dimensions of the apparatus. The platen was again redesigned in early 1872 to allow the use of paper of any length. The redesigned platen also introduced the modern spacing functionality (horizontal and axial movement providing letter and line spacing, respectively). The cylindrical platen became "an indispensable part of every standard [typewriter]".
By the end of 1872, the appearance and function of the typewriter had assumed the form that would become standard in the industry and remain largely unchanged for the next century. Although the machine possessed a cylindrical platen and what was essentially a QWERTY keyboard, two design elements that would later become essential were lacking: the ability to write in upper and lowercase letters and "visible" print. Although the former was implemented in the Remington No. 2, the machine was fundamentally an "upstrike" design, meaning the typebars struck upwards against the underside of the platen. As this occurred inside the machine, the operator could not see what was being entered as it was typed. Although competing brands, such as the Oliver and Underwood, began to market "visible" typewriters in the 1890s, a Remington-branded model did not appear until the Remington No. 10 in 1906.
### QWERTY keyboard
The QWERTY keyboard, so named for the first six characters of the uppermost alphabetic row, was invented during the course of the typewriter's development. The first model constructed by Sholes used a piano-like keyboard with two rows of characters arranged alphabetically as follows:
Schwalbach later replaced the piano-like keys with "buttons" and positioned them into four banked rows. The mechanics of the machine, however, made the alphabetical arrangement problematic. The typebars were attached to the circumference of a metal ring, forming a "basket". When a key was pressed, the corresponding typebar would swing upwards, causing the print head to strike at the center of the ring. Gravity would then return the typebar to its initial position. The implication of this design, however, was that pressing adjoining keys in quick succession would cause their typebars to collide and jam the machine. To mitigate this problem, keys were reordered using analysis of letter frequency and trial and error. Densmore asked his son-in-law, a Pennsylvania school superintendent, what letters and combinations of letters appeared most often in the English language. Typebars corresponding to letters in commonly occurring alphabetical pairs, such as S and T, were placed on opposite sides on the ring. The keyboard ultimately presented to Remington was arranged as follows:
After it purchased the device, Remington made several adjustments—including switching the period and "R" keys, so that salesmen could impress customers by typing "TYPEWRITER" using the keys in the top row—which created a keyboard with what is essentially the modern QWERTY layout.
## Reception and legacy
The Sholes and Glidden was the first commercially successful typewriter. Industrialization and corporate growth in the late 19th century produced a business environment for which the device was well suited. New communications technologies, such as the telegraph and telephone, facilitated geographic expansion and increased the speed with which business was conducted. The resulting increase in the volume of correspondence required messages to be produced quickly and legibly. Before the typewriter, clerks and copyists could write relatively quickly in shorthand or longhand. The comprehension of these scripts, however, required either special training or close concentration. Typesetting was used when legibility was important, but it was a slow and expensive process. The typewriter succeeded because it simultaneously addressed both issues.
The public was initially skeptical of the typewriter, and reactions included apathy and antagonism. Outside of large companies, letters generally did not need to be composed quickly; as the device was reliant upon its operator, it offered no automation. In business settings involving customer interaction, the unfamiliar machines were viewed with suspicion (as there existed the perception that mechanical devices could be rigged by unscrupulous merchants) and the presence of such a large object between the customer and employee "interrupted the 'personal touch'". Individuals receiving typewritten letters often found them insulting (as type implied they could not read handwriting) or impersonal, problems exacerbated by the all upper-case writing. The typewriter also precipitated privacy concerns, as recipients of letters of a personal nature believed a third-party operator or typesetter must have been involved in their composition.
### Women and the typewriter
The association of women with the typewriter may be linked to the way in which it was marketed. Before the typewriter was acquired by Remington, Sholes' daughter was employed to demonstrate the device and to appear in promotional images, which served as the basis for early advertisements. Remington's sales agents later marketed the machine with tactics including the use of attractive women to demonstrate the device at trade shows and in hotel lobbies. Depictions of female operators suggested the device was "easy enough for a woman" and suited for domestic use. Although also designed to allow Remington to maintain manufacturing efficiencies with its sewing machine division, the typewriter's aesthetics (the sewing machine stand and floral ornamentation) were further intended to facilitate its acceptance into the household.
A "major consequence" of the typewriter's development was the entrance of women into the clerical work force. Although women were already employed in factories and certain service industries in the 1880s, the typewriter facilitated an influx of women into office settings. Before the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) established the first typing school in 1881, women were trained by the manufacturer and their typing services provided to customers along with the machine. The expansion of correspondence and paper work made possible by the efficiency of typewriters also created demand for additional clerical workers. The low wages paid to women compared to that of men, often 50% (or less), made hiring women more attractive for businesses. As typing and stenography positions could pay up to ten times more than those in factories, women began to be more attracted to office work. While in 1874 less than 4% of clerical workers in the United States were women, by 1900, the number had increased to approximately 75%.
Before his death, Sholes remarked of the typewriter, "I do feel that I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will enable them more easily to earn a living."
## See also
- American Typewriter, a modern font based on the Sholes and Glidden typewriter font
- Dvorak, an alternative to the QWERTY keyboard layout
- Thomas Hall (1834-1911), invented the first portable typewriter
|
437,338 |
Al-Walid I
| 1,166,260,720 |
Sixth Umayyad caliph (r. 705–715)
|
[
"670s births",
"715 deaths",
"8th-century Umayyad caliphs",
"8th-century monarchs in Africa",
"8th-century monarchs in Asia",
"8th-century monarchs in Europe",
"Arab Muslims",
"People from Medina",
"Umayyad people of the Arab–Byzantine wars",
"Year of birth uncertain"
] |
Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (Arabic: الوليد بن عبد الملك بن مروان, romanized: al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān; c. 674 – 23 February 715), commonly known as al-Walid I (Arabic: الوليد الأول), was the sixth Umayyad caliph, ruling from October 705 until his death in 715. He was the eldest son of his predecessor, Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705). As a prince, he led annual raids against the Byzantines from 695 to 698 and built or restored fortifications along the Syrian Desert route to Mecca. He became heir apparent in c. 705, after the death of the designated successor, Abd al-Malik's brother Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan.
Under al-Walid, his father's efforts to centralize government, impose a more Arabic and Islamic character on the state, and expand its borders were continued. He heavily depended on al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, his father's powerful viceroy over the eastern half of the caliphate. During his reign, armies commissioned by al-Hajjaj conquered Sind and Transoxiana in the east, while the troops of Musa ibn Nusayr, the governor of Ifriqiya, conquered the Maghreb and Hispania in the west, bringing the caliphate to its largest territorial extent. War spoils from the conquests enabled al-Walid to finance impressive public works, including his greatest architectural achievement, the Great Mosque of Damascus, as well as the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. He was the first caliph to institute programs for social welfare, aiding the poor and handicapped among the Muslim Arabs of Syria, who held him in high esteem.
His reign was marked by domestic peace and prosperity and likely represented the peak of Umayyad power, though it is difficult to ascertain his direct role in its affairs. The balance al-Walid maintained among the elites, including the Qays and Yaman army factions, may have been his key personal achievement. On the other hand, the massive military expenditures of his rule, as well as his extravagant grants to the Umayyad princes, became a financial burden on his successors.
## Early life
Al-Walid was born in Medina in c. 674, during the rule of Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), the founder and first caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate. His father, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, was a member of the Umayyad dynasty. While Mu'awiya belonged to the Umayyads' Sufyanid branch, resident in Syria, al-Walid's family was part of the larger Abu al-As line in the Hejaz (western Arabia, where Mecca and Medina are located). His mother, Wallada bint al-Abbas ibn al-Jaz, was a descendant of Zuhayr ibn Jadhima, a famous 6th-century chief of the Banu Abs tribe. In 684, after Umayyad rule collapsed amid the Second Muslim Civil War, the Umayyads of the Hejaz were expelled by a rival claimant to the caliphate, Ibn al-Zubayr, and relocated to Syria. There al-Walid's grandfather, the elder statesman Marwan I (r. 684–685), was recognized as caliph by pro-Umayyad Arab tribes. With the tribes' support, he restored the dynasty's rule in Syria and Egypt by the end of his reign. Abd al-Malik succeeded Marwan and conquered the rest of the caliphate, namely Iraq, Iran, and Arabia. With the key assistance of his viceroy of Iraq, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, Abd al-Malik instituted several centralization measures, which consolidated Umayyad territorial gains.
The war with the Byzantine Empire, which dated to the Muslim conquest of Syria in the 630s, resumed in 692 after the collapse of the truce that had been reached three years earlier. Annual campaigns were thereafter launched by the Umayyads in the Arab–Byzantine frontier zone and beyond. During his father's caliphate, al-Walid led the campaigns in 696, 697, 698 and 699. In his summer 696 campaign, he raided the area between Malatya (Melitene) and al-Massisa (Mopsuestia), while in the following year, he targeted a place known in Arabic sources as 'Atmar', located at some point north of Malatya. He also led the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca in 698.
In 700 or 701, al-Walid patronized the construction or expansion of Qasr Burqu', a fortified Syrian Desert outpost on the route connecting Palmyra in the north with the Azraq oasis and Wadi Sirhan basin in the south, ultimately leading to Mecca and Medina. His patronage is attested by an inscription naming him as "the emir al-Walid, son of the commander of the faithful". According to the historian Jere L. Bacharach, al-Walid built the nearby site of Jabal Says, likely as a Bedouin summer encampment between his base of operations in al-Qaryatayn and Qasr Burqu'. Bacharach speculates that al-Walid used the sites, located in the territory of Arab tribes, to reaffirm their loyalty, which had been critical to the Umayyads during the civil war.
## Caliphate
Toward the end of his reign, Abd al-Malik, supported by al-Hajjaj, attempted to nominate al-Walid as his successor, abrogating the arrangement set by Marwan whereby Abd al-Malik's brother, the governor of Egypt, Abd al-Aziz, was slated to succeed. Though the latter refused to step down from the line of succession, he died in 704 or early 705, removing the principal obstacle to al-Walid's nomination. After the death of Abd al-Malik on 9 October 705, al-Walid acceded. Al-Walid was physically described by the 9th-century historian al-Ya'qubi as "tall and swarthy ... snub-nosed ... with a touch of gray [sic] at the tip of his beard". He noted that al-Walid "spoke ungrammatically". To his father's chagrin, al-Walid abandoned speaking the classical Arabic in which the Qur'an was written but insisted that everyone in his company have knowledge of the Qur'an.
Al-Walid essentially continued his father's policies of centralization and expansion. Unlike Abd al-Malik, al-Walid heavily depended on al-Hajjaj and allowed him free rein over the eastern half of the caliphate. Moreover, al-Hajjaj strongly influenced al-Walid's internal decision-making, with officials often being installed and dismissed upon the viceroy's recommendation.
### Territorial expansion
The renewal of the Muslim conquests on the eastern and western frontiers had begun under Abd al-Malik, after he neutralized the Umayyads' domestic opponents. Under al-Walid, the armies of the caliphate "received a fresh impulse" and a "period of great conquests" began, in the words of the historian Julius Wellhausen. During the second half of al-Walid's reign, the Umayyads reached their furthest territorial extent.
#### Eastern frontiers
Expansion from the eastern frontiers was overseen by al-Hajjaj from Iraq. His lieutenant governor of Khurasan, Qutayba ibn Muslim, launched several campaigns in Transoxiana (Central Asia), which had been a largely impenetrable region for earlier Muslim armies, between 705 and 715. Qutayba gained the surrender of Bukhara in 706–709, Khwarazm and Samarkand in 711–712, and Farghana in 713. He mainly secured Umayyad suzerainty through tributary alliances with local rulers, whose power remained intact. With Qutayba's death in 716, his army disbanded and the weak Arab position in Transoxiana allowed for the local princes and the Turgesh nomads to roll back most of Qutayba's gains by the early 720s. From 708 or 709, al-Hajjaj's nephew, Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, conquered Sind, the northwestern part of South Asia.
#### Western frontiers
In the west, al-Walid's governor in Ifriqiya (central North Africa), Musa ibn Nusayr, another holdover from Abd al-Malik's reign, subjugated the Berbers of the Hawwara, Zenata and Kutama confederations and advanced on the Maghreb (western North Africa). In 708 or 709, he conquered Tangier and Sus, in the far north and south of modern-day Morocco. Musa's Berber mawla (freedman or client; pl. mawali), Tariq ibn Ziyad, invaded the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) in 711, and was reinforced by Musa in the following year. By 716, a year after al-Walid's death, Hispania had been largely conquered. The massive war spoils netted by the conquests of Transoxiana, Sind and Hispania were comparable to the amounts accrued in the Muslim conquests during the reign of Caliph Umar (r. 634–644).
#### Byzantine front
Al-Walid appointed his half-brother Maslama as governor of the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) and charged him with leading the war effort against Byzantium. Although Maslama established a strong power base in the frontier zone, the Umayyads made few territorial gains during al-Walid's reign. After a lengthy siege, the Byzantine fortress of Tyana was captured and sacked in c. 708. Al-Walid did not lead any of the annual or bi-annual campaigns, but his eldest son al-Abbas fought reputably alongside Maslama. His other sons Abd al-Aziz, Umar, Bishr and Marwan also led raids.
By 712, the Arabs solidified their control of Cilicia and the areas east of the Euphrates River and launched raids deep into Anatolia. After one such raid against Ancyra in 714, the Byzantine emperor Anastasios II (r. 713–715) sent a delegation to negotiate a truce with al-Walid or decipher his intentions. The delegates reported back that al-Walid was planning a land and naval assault to conquer the Byzantine capital Constantinople. Al-Walid died in 715 and the siege was carried out under his successors, ending in 718 as a disaster for the Arabs.
### Provincial affairs
#### Syria
Al-Walid entrusted most of Syria's military districts to his sons; al-Abbas was assigned to Homs, Abd al-Aziz to Damascus, and Umar to Jordan. In Palestine, al-Walid's brother Sulayman had been appointed by their father as governor and remained in office under al-Walid. Sulayman sheltered the deposed governor of Khurasan, Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, a fugitive from al-Hajjaj's prison, in 708. Despite his initial disapproval, al-Walid pardoned Yazid as a result of Sulayman's lobbying and payment of the heavy fine that al-Hajjaj had imposed on Yazid.
#### Egypt
Between 693 and 700, Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj initiated the dual processes of establishing a single Islamic currency in place of the previously used Byzantine and Sasanian coinage and replacing Greek and Persian with Arabic as the language of the bureaucracy in Syria and Iraq, respectively. These administrative reforms continued under al-Walid, during whose reign, in 705 or 706, Arabic replaced Greek and Coptic in the diwan (government departments) of Egypt. The change was implemented by al-Walid's half-brother, Abd Allah, the governor of Egypt and appointee of Abd al-Malik. These policies effected the gradual transition of Arabic as the sole official language of the state, unified the varied tax systems of the caliphate's provinces and contributed to the establishment of a more ideologically Islamic government. In 709, al-Walid replaced Abd Allah with his katib (scribe), Qurra ibn Sharik al-Absi, who belonged to the same tribe as the caliph's mother. This was prompted either because of mounting complaints against Abd Allah's corruption, which was blamed for Egypt's first recorded famine under Islamic rule, or a desire to install a loyalist as governor. Qurra ibn Sharik served until his death in 715 and established a more efficient means of tax collection, reorganized Egypt's army and, on al-Walid's orders, restored the mosque of Fustat.
#### Hejaz
Al-Walid initially kept Abd al-Malik's appointee, Hisham ibn Isma'il al-Makhzumi, as governor of the Hejaz and leader of the Hajj pilgrimage. Both offices were of great prestige owing to the central religious importance of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities of Islam. Al-Walid dismissed him in 706 as punishment for flogging and humiliating the prominent Medinan scholar Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib for refusing to give the oath of allegiance to al-Walid as heir apparent during Abd al-Malik's reign. Although Hisham's act was in support of al-Walid, he considered it an abusive excess. According to the historian M. E. McMillan, other than al-Walid's "sense of righteous indignation", dynastic politics motivated his dismissal order. Hisham was the maternal grandfather of al-Walid's half-brother Hisham, who was a contender for the caliphal succession, which al-Walid coveted for his son Abd al-Aziz. Rather than leaving such a close relative of his brother Hisham at the helm of the Islamic holy cities, al-Walid installed his cousin Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, who was the husband of al-Walid's sister Fatima and brother to al-Walid's wife Umm al-Banin, the mother of Abd al-Aziz. On al-Walid's orders, Umar had Hisham publicly humiliated, an unprecedented motion against a sacked governor of Medina, which set "a dangerous precedent", according to McMillan.
Umar maintained friendly ties to the holy cities' religious circles. He led the Hajj for at least four of the six years he was in office, with al-Walid's son Umar leading it in 707 and al-Walid leading it in 710, the only time he left Syria during his caliphate. Umar provided safe haven to Iraqis evading the persecution of al-Hajjaj. Umar informed al-Walid of al-Hajjaj's abuses, while al-Hajjaj advised the caliph to dismiss Umar for hosting Iraqi rebels. Al-Walid, wary of the Hejaz once again developing into a center of anti-Umayyad activity as it had during the Second Muslim Civil War, dismissed Umar in 712. He split the governorship of the Hejaz, appointing al-Hajjaj's nominees Khalid ibn Abdallah al-Qasri to Mecca and Uthman ibn Hayyan al-Murri to Medina. Neither was ever appointed to lead the Hajj, al-Walid reserving that office for Maslama and his own sons.
### Balancing of tribal factions
As a result of the Battle of Marj Rahit, which inaugurated Marwan's reign in 684, a sharp division developed among the Syrian Arab tribes, who formed the core of the Umayyad army. The loyalist tribes that supported Marwan formed the Yaman confederation, alluding to ancestral roots in Yemen (South Arabia), while the Qays, or northern Arab, tribes largely supported Ibn al-Zubayr. Abd al-Malik reconciled with the Qays in 691, but competition for influence between the two factions intensified as the Syrian army was increasingly empowered and deployed to the provinces, where they replaced or supplemented Iraqi and other garrisons.
Al-Walid maintained his father's policy of balancing the power of the two factions in the military and administration. According to the historian Hugh N. Kennedy, it is "possible that the caliph kept it [the rivalry] on the boil so that one faction [would] not acquire a monopoly of power". Al-Walid's mother genealogically belonged to the Qays and he accorded Qaysi officials certain advantages. However, Wellhausen doubts that al-Walid preferred one faction over the other, "for he had no need to do so, and it is not reported" by the medieval historians. The Qays–Yaman division intensified under al-Walid's successors, who did not maintain his balancing act. The feud was a major contributor to the Umayyad regime's demise in 750.
### Public works and social welfare
From the beginning of his rule, al-Walid inaugurated public works and social welfare programs on a scale unprecedented in the caliphate's history. The efforts were financed by treasure accrued from the conquests and tax revenue. He and his brothers and sons built way-stations and dug wells along the roads in Syria and installed street lighting in the cities. They invested in land reclamation projects, entailing irrigation networks and canals, which boosted agricultural production. Al-Hajjaj also carried out irrigation and canal projects in Iraq during this period, in a bid to restore its agricultural infrastructure, damaged by years of warfare, and to find employment for its demobilized inhabitants.
Al-Walid or his son al-Abbas founded the city of Anjar, between Damascus and Beirut, in 714. It included a mosque, palace, and residential, commercial, and administrative structures. According to the art historian Robert Hillenbrand, Anjar "has the best claim of any Islamic foundation datable before 750 ... to be a city", though it was probably abandoned within forty years of its construction. In the Hejaz, al-Walid attempted to redress the hardships of pilgrims making the trek to Mecca by having water wells dug throughout the province, improving access through the mountain passes, and building a drinking fountain in Mecca. The historian M. A. Shaban theorizes that while al-Walid's projects in the cities of Syria and the Hejaz had a "utilitarian purpose", they were mainly intended to provide employment, in the form of cheap labor, for the growing non-Arab populations in the cities.
Welfare programs included financial relief for the poor and servants to assist the handicapped, though this initiative was limited to Syria, and only to the Arab Muslims there. As such, Shaban considered it "a special state subsidy to the ruling class".
#### Patronage of great mosques
Al-Walid turned the example of his father's construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem into a wide-scale building program. His patronage of great mosques in Damascus, Jerusalem and Medina underlined his political legitimacy and religious credentials. The mosque he founded in Damascus, later known as the Umayyad Mosque, was the greatest architectural achievement of his rule. Under his predecessors, Muslim residents had worshipped in a small musalla (prayer room) attached to the 4th-century Christian cathedral of John the Baptist. By al-Walid's reign, the musalla could not cope with the fast-growing Muslim community and no sufficient free spaces were available in Damascus for a large congregational mosque. In 705, al-Walid had the cathedral converted into a mosque, compensating local Christians with other properties in the city.
Most of the structure was demolished. Al-Walid's architects replaced the demolished space with a large prayer hall and a courtyard bordered on all sides by a closed portico with double arcades. The mosque was completed in 711. The army of Damascus, numbering some 45,000 soldiers, were taxed a quarter of their salaries for nine years to pay for its construction. The scale and grandeur of the great mosque made it a "symbol of the political supremacy and moral prestige of Islam", according to the historian Nikita Elisséeff. Noting al-Walid's awareness of architecture's propaganda value, Hillenbrand calls the mosque a "victory monument" intended as a "visible statement of Muslim supremacy and permanence". The mosque has maintained its original form until the present day.
In Jerusalem, al-Walid continued his father's works on the Temple Mount. There is disagreement as to whether the al-Aqsa Mosque, which was built on the same axis of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, was originally built by Abd al-Malik or al-Walid. Several architectural historians hold that Abd al-Malik commissioned the project and that al-Walid finished or expanded it. The earliest source indicating al-Walid's work on the mosque is the Aphrodito Papyri, which contain letters from December 708 – June 711 between his governor of Egypt, Qurra ibn Sharik, and an official in Upper Egypt discussing the dispatch of Egyptian laborers and craftsmen to help build the "Mosque of Jerusalem". It is likely that the unfinished administrative and residential structures that were built opposite the southern and eastern walls of the Temple Mount, next to the mosque, date to the era of al-Walid, who died before they could be completed.
In 706 or 707, al-Walid instructed Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz to significantly enlarge the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. Its redevelopment entailed the demolition of the living quarters of Muhammad's wives and the incorporation of the graves of Muhammad and the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr (r. 632–634) and Umar. The vocal opposition to the demolition of Muhammad's home from local religious circles was dismissed by al-Walid. He lavished large sums for the reconstruction and supplied mosaics and Greek and Coptic craftsmen. According to Hillenbrand, the building of a large-scale mosque in Medina, the original center of the caliphate, was an "acknowledgement" by al-Walid of "his own roots and those of Islam itself" and possibly an attempt to appease Medinan resentment at the loss of the city's political importance to Syria under the Umayyads. In the words of McMillan, the mosque and the works benefitting the pilgrims to the holy cities "were a form of reconciliation ... a constructive counterweight to the political damage" caused by the Umayyad sieges of Mecca in 683 and 692 and assault on Medina during the civil war. Other mosques that al-Walid is credited for expanding in the Hejaz include the Sanctuary Mosque around the Kaaba in Mecca and the mosque of Ta'if.
## Death and succession
Al-Walid died of an illness in Dayr Murran, an Umayyad winter estate on the outskirts of Damascus, on 23 February 715, about one year after al-Hajjaj's death. He was buried in Damascus at the cemetery of Bab al-Saghir or Bab al-Faradis and Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz led the funeral prayers.
Al-Walid unsuccessfully attempted to nominate his son Abd al-Aziz as his successor and void the arrangements set by his father, in which Sulayman was to succeed al-Walid. Relations between the two brothers had become strained. Sulayman acceded and dismissed nearly all of al-Walid's governors. Although he maintained the militarist policies of al-Walid and Abd al-Malik, expansion of the caliphate largely ground to a halt under Sulayman (r. 715–717).
## Assessment and legacy
According to the historian Giorgio Levi Della Vida, "The caliphate of al-Walīd saw the harvest of the seed planted by the long work of ʿAbd al-Malik". In the assessment of Shaban:
> Walīd I's reign (705–15/86–96) was in every way a direct continuation of his father's and was unruffled. Ḥajjāj remained in power, in fact he became more powerful, and the same policies were followed. The only difference was that the tranquillity of these years allowed Walīd to develop further the internal implications of the ʿAbdulmalik-Ḥajjāj policy.
The historian Gerald Hawting comments that the combined reigns of al-Walid and Abd al-Malik, tied together by al-Hajjaj, represented in "some ways the high point of Umayyad power, witnessing significant territorial advances both in the east and the west and the emergence of a more marked Arabic and Islamic character in the state's public face". Domestically, it was generally a period of peace and prosperity. Kennedy asserts that al-Walid's reign was "remarkably successful and represents, perhaps, the zenith of Umayyad power", though his direct role in these successes is unclear and his primary accomplishment may have been maintaining the equilibrium between the rival factions of the Umayyad family and military.
By virtue of the conquests of Hispania, Sind and Transoxiana during his reign, his patronage of the great mosques of Damascus and Medina, and his charitable works, al-Walid's Syrian contemporaries viewed him as "the worthiest of their caliphs", according to the 9th-century historian Umar ibn Shabba. Several panegyrics were dedicated to al-Walid and his sons by al-Farazdaq, his official court poet. The latter's contemporary, Jarir, lamented the caliph's death in verse: "O eye, weep copious tears aroused by remembrance; after today there is no point in your tears being stored." The Christian poet al-Akhtal considered al-Walid to be "the caliph of God through whose sunna rain is sought".
Al-Walid embraced the formal trappings of monarchy in a manner unprecedented among earlier caliphs. He resided at several palaces, including in Khunasira in northern Syria and Dayr Murran. The considerable wealth in his treasury allowed him to spend extravagantly on his relatives. Expectations of such grants among the growing number of Umayyad princes continued under his successors. Their generous stipends and costly private constructions were resented by "nearly everyone else" in the caliphate and were "a drain on the treasury", according to the historian Khalid Yahya Blankinship. More significant were the costs to equip and pay the armies driving the conquests. The substantial expenditures under both Abd al-Malik and al-Walid became a financial burden on their successors, under whom the flow of war spoils, on which the caliphal economy depended, began to diminish. Blankinship notes that the enormous losses incurred during the 717–718 siege of Constantinople alone "practically wiped out the gains made under al-Walid".
## Family
Compared to his brothers, al-Walid had an "exceptional number of marriages", at least nine, which "reflect both his seniority in age ... and his prestige as a likely successor" to Abd al-Malik, according to the historian Andrew Marsham. The marriages were intended to forge political alliances, including with potential rival families like those of the descendants of the fourth caliph, Ali (r. 656–661), and the prominent Umayyad statesman, Sa'id ibn al-As. Al-Walid married two of Ali's great-granddaughters, Nafisa bint Zayd ibn al-Hasan and Zaynab bint al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan. He married Sa'id's daughter, Amina, whose brother al-Ashdaq had been removed from the line of succession by Marwan and was killed in an attempt to topple Abd al-Malik. One of his wives was a daughter of a Qurayshite leader, Abd Allah ibn Muti, who was a key official under Ibn al-Zubayr. Among his other wives was a woman of the Qaysi Banu Fazara tribe, with whom he had his son Abu Ubayda.
Marsham notes al-Walid's marriage to his first cousin, Umm al-Banin, "tied the fortunes" of Abd al-Malik and her father, Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan. From her al-Walid had his sons Abd al-Aziz, Muhammad, Marwan, and Anbasa, and a daughter, A'isha. From another Umayyad wife, Umm Abd Allah bint Abd Allah ibn Amr, a great-granddaughter of Caliph Uthman (r. 644–656), al-Walid had his son Abd al-Rahman. He also married Umm Abd Allah's niece, Izza bint Abd al-Aziz, whom he divorced.
Out of his twenty-two children, fifteen were born to slave concubines, including al-Abbas, whose mother was Greek. According to al-Tabari, the mother of al-Walid's son Yazid III (r. 744–744) was Shah-i-Afrid (also called Shahfarand), the daughter of the Sasanian prince Peroz III and granddaughter of the last Sasanian king, Yazdegerd III (r. 632–651). She had been taken captive in the conquest of Transoxiana and was gifted to al-Walid by al-Hajjaj. The mother of his son Ibrahim (r. 744–744) was a concubine named Su'ar or Budayra. His other sons by concubines were Umar, Bishr, Masrur, Mansur, Rawh, Khalid, Jaz, Maslama, Tammam, Mubashshir, Yahya, and Sadaqa.
In 744, around a dozen of al-Walid's sons, probably resentful at being sidelined from the caliphal succession, conspired with other Umayyad princes and elites under Yazid III to topple their cousin Caliph al-Walid II (r. 743–744). His assassination in April 744 sparked the Third Muslim Civil War (744–750). Yazid III acceded but died six months later, after which he was succeeded by his half-brother Ibrahim. The latter did not attain wide recognition and was overthrown in December 744 by a distant Umayyad kinsman, Marwan II (r. 744–750). Several descendants of al-Walid, progeny of his son Rawh, were executed during the Abbasid Revolution which toppled Umayyad rule in 750. Others from the lines of his sons al-Abbas and Umar survived, including the Habibi family, which attained prominence in the Umayyad emirate of al-Andalus after its establishment in 756.
|
3,645,339 |
George Macaulay
| 1,164,748,470 |
English cricketer
|
[
"1897 births",
"1940 deaths",
"British Army personnel of World War I",
"C. I. Thornton's XI cricketers",
"Cricketers from North Yorkshire",
"Cricketers who have taken five wickets on Test debut",
"Deaths from pneumonia in Scotland",
"England Test cricketers",
"English cricketers",
"English cricketers of 1919 to 1945",
"Marylebone Cricket Club Australian Touring Team cricketers",
"Marylebone Cricket Club South African Touring Team cricketers",
"Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers",
"Military personnel from Yorkshire",
"People educated at Barnard Castle School",
"People from Thirsk",
"Players cricketers",
"Royal Air Force officers",
"Royal Air Force personnel killed in World War II",
"Royal Field Artillery soldiers",
"Wisden Cricketers of the Year",
"Yorkshire cricketers"
] |
George Gibson Macaulay (7 December 1897 – 13 December 1940) was a professional English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 1920 and 1935. He played in eight Test matches for England from 1923 to 1933, achieving the rare feat of taking a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket. One of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1924, he took 1,838 first-class wickets at an average of 17.64 including four hat-tricks.
A leading member of the Yorkshire team which achieved a high level of success in the time he played, Macaulay was a volatile character who played aggressively. He left a job at a bank to become a professional cricketer, making his first-class debut aged 23 as a fast bowler. Meeting limited success, he altered style to deliver off spin in addition to his pace bowling. This proved so effective that he was chosen to play for England in Test matches. However, his perceived poor attitude towards the game, and an unsuccessful match in the 1926 Ashes probably prevented him playing more Tests. His form slumped following injuries in the late 1920s, but a recovery in the early 1930s led to a recall by England, although he broke down in his second match back. Another injury in 1934 made cricket difficult for him and his first-class career ended in 1935, although he continued playing club cricket until the Second World War. A pilot officer in the Royal Air Force, he died of pneumonia on active service in the Second World War.
## Early life
Macaulay was born in Thirsk on 7 December 1897. His father was a well-known local cricketer, as were his uncles. Macaulay was educated at Barnard Castle; in later years, he took teams of famous cricketers to play annual matches against the school eleven. Upon leaving school, he worked as a bank clerk in Wakefield; there, and in nearby Ossett, he played cricket and football. In the First World War, Macaulay served with the Royal Field Artillery; afterwards he returned to work for the same bank as before, initially in London, then in Herne Bay, Kent, playing club cricket in his spare time.
## Playing career
### Yorkshire debut
In 1920, Yorkshire needed to strengthen its bowling attack. Of the team's previously successful bowlers, Major Booth had been killed in the war, Alonzo Drake had died soon afterwards from illness, and George Hirst was past his best. Although Wilfred Rhodes was able to ease the shortfall by resuming his career as a frontline spin bowler, Yorkshire needed new bowlers, particularly pacemen. Macaulay had been spotted playing club cricket by Sir Stanley Christopherson, a former Kent player. Subsequently, Harry Hayley, a 19th-century Yorkshire cricketer, saw Macaulay in action and was sufficiently impressed to recommend him for a trial with the county. At the beginning of the 1920 season, Macaulay played in two warm-up games for Yorkshire, taking six wickets for 52 runs in a one-day game and four for 24 and two for 19 in a two-day game. This was good enough to earn a first-class debut on 15 May 1920 against Derbyshire in the County Championship, although he only took one wicket. Playing in the early part of the season, he took five wickets for 50 runs, his first five-wicket haul, against Gloucestershire, followed by six for 47 against Worcestershire. He continued to play until the middle of June before dropping out of the team after an unsuccessful match against Surrey. In ten first-class matches, he had taken 24 wickets at an average of 24.35, and managed a top score of just 15 with the bat. Wisden said he "had neither the pace nor the stamina required", while it later said he tried to bowl at speeds beyond his capability. Even so, he decided to become a professional cricketer. Hirst and Rhodes persuaded him to reduce his pace and concentrate on bowling a good length while trying to spin the ball. He practised through the winter of 1920–21 to be ready for the next season.
Bowling a mixture of medium pace and his new style of off spin, Macaulay played 27 matches in 1921. After taking wickets steadily at the start of the season, in his fourth game he took six wickets for ten runs as Warwickshire were bowled out for 72. Four more wickets in the second innings gave Yorkshire a big victory and Macaulay had match figures of ten wickets for 65 runs, the first time he had taken ten wickets in a match. Macaulay then came to wider public attention by taking six wickets for three runs to bowl out Derbyshire for 23 runs. He later took ten wickets in the match against Surrey in a losing cause, and in total that season he took 101 first-class wickets at an average of 17.33, placing him third in the Yorkshire bowling averages. With the bat, he scored 457 runs at an average of 22.59, surprising commentators with his ability. This included a maiden first-class century against Nottinghamshire. His innings of 125 not out took Yorkshire from 211 for seven wickets when he came in to bat (228 for eight soon after) to a total of 438 for nine declared, a lead of 264; Yorkshire went on to a comfortable win. His overall success in the season meant that his place in the team was secure.
Macaulay improved his bowling record in 1922, taking more wickets at a lower average (133 wickets at an average of 14.67), and scoring another century. Helping Yorkshire to win the first of four County Championships in a row, Macaulay finished second to Rhodes in the team's bowling averages. The first two matches of the season brought Macaulay figures of six for eight and five for 23 in a ten wicket win over Northamptonshire and six for 12 out of an opposition total of 78 in an innings win over Glamorgan. While he took only one wicket in the second innings, his first three innings had given him 17 wickets for 43 runs. He continued to pick up wickets, but his most significant performance came in June. In front of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) members at Lord's, he took five for 31 as Middlesex were bowled out for 138. Those watching were impressed and he was selected for the Players against the Gentlemen at the same ground in July. He took three for 97 out of a total of 430 in one of the most important matches of the season. These performances earned his selection for the MCC tour to South Africa that winter, although there were concerns his fitness was insufficient. Statistically, Macaulay's best performance came shortly afterwards against Gloucestershire; he took seven for 47 and twelve wickets in the match. Macaulay also scored 486 runs at an average of 17.35.
### Test debut
Macaulay played eight first-class matches in South Africa in 1922–23, taking 29 wickets at an average of 16.37. His best first-class performances were six for 18 against Pretoria and eight wickets in the match against Transvaal, while he was effective in minor matches, taking five for 40 against East Rand and six for 19 against Zululand. After England lost the first Test match, which Wisden attributed to a weakness in bowling, Macaulay replaced Greville Stevens and made his Test match debut for England in the second Test. He took the wicket of George Hearne with his first ball. He was the fourth player to take a wicket with his maiden delivery in Test cricket. In total, he took two for 19 in the first innings. In the second innings, South Africa were comfortably placed with a score of 157 for one, but four wickets fell to Macaulay while 13 runs were scored. Macaulay ended the innings with five wickets for 64. Wisden commented that he bowled very finely in this match. He hit the winning run, batting at number eleven, to seal a one-wicket win for England. He played in the remaining three Tests, finishing with 16 wickets at an average of 20.37. England won the series 2–1, but the Wisden correspondent for the tour was not impressed by the English performances, noting that no really effective bowlers had emerged.
With his health improved by the tour, Wisden reported that Macaulay was in excellent form for the whole of the 1923 season. His performances earned him selection as one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year. The citation praised his stamina, spin and ability to bowl on all kinds of pitches but noted that he was easily discouraged and had a negative attitude if circumstances went against him. He achieved his highest season total of wickets to date, taking 166 at an average of 13.84, and came third in both the Yorkshire and national bowling averages. His best performance came in the first match of the season, when he took seven wickets for 13 against Glamorgan as they were dismissed for 63. Later in the season, he took a hat-trick against Warwickshire while claiming five for 42. With the bat, Macaulay scored 463 runs at an average of 18.52. There were no international matches that season, but Macaulay was selected for The Rest in a Test trial against England in which he took just one wicket.
In 1924, Macaulay further increased his total of wickets to 190 and lowered his bowling average to 13.23, placing him first in the national averages. His batting declined as he scored 395 runs at an average of 11.96. Although selected for another Test trial, Macaulay did not play in the series against the touring South African team until the third Test at Leeds, where he took one wicket in each South African innings, but was omitted from the final two Tests. Despite his success in the season, he was not chosen to tour Australia with the MCC that winter, even though Maurice Tate, the leading bowler on the tour, lacked support. Macaulay had been involved in controversy on the field in 1924. At the time, the Yorkshire team were notorious for their aggressive attitude while fielding. In a match against Middlesex in 1924 at Sheffield, the hostility of the crowd provoked an MCC inquiry which found that Yorkshire bowler Abe Waddington had incited the spectators. Further incidents followed against Surrey. The editor of Wisden blamed Yorkshire's poor discipline on a small group of approximately four players. Without naming Macaulay as one of them, he noted that Lord Hawke, the Yorkshire president, believed Macaulay should have been in the team to Australia, and that "it was entirely his own fault he was not chosen". It is also possible that during a match at this time, Macaulay openly criticised the captaincy and bowling of Arthur Gilligan, the England captain.
Since 1923, Macaulay had run a cricket outfitters in Leeds and Wakefield with his Yorkshire team-mate Herbert Sutcliffe, borrowing £250 from his mother to help establish the business. During the winter of 1924–25, the shop became a limited company and Macaulay one of its directors. According to Sutcliffe's biographer Alan Hill, Macaulay quickly lost interest, and the partnership was dissolved a year later, but Sutcliffe made the lone venture a success. Macaulay received £900 from the outfitters upon his resignation.
### Mid-1920s career
Macaulay's most successful season in terms of wickets was 1925, despite a very dry summer which produced a succession of good batting pitches. He took 211 wickets at an average of 15.48, coming top of the Yorkshire averages. Exactly 200 of his wickets were taken for Yorkshire—only Wilfred Rhodes and George Hirst had previously reached 200 wickets for Yorkshire, and only Bob Appleyard has done so since, as of 2013. One of Macaulay's highest profile performances in 1925 came for Yorkshire against Sussex, who were chasing 263 to win the game. Just after lunch on the final day, the score was 223 for three wickets. A possibly apocryphal story suggests that Macaulay drank champagne in the interval. He then delivered a spell of five wickets for eight runs in 33 balls to bowl out his opponents and finish with figures of seven for 67. He then left the field exhausted. The cricket historian Mick Pope describes the match as a "lasting testimony to [Macaulay's] belief that no cause was ever lost". Macaulay was again selected for the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord's, and took five wickets in the match. With the bat, Macaulay scored 621 runs at an average of 23.88, although he only passed fifty twice.
Yorkshire's reign as County Champions ended in 1926, the first season since 1921 when Yorkshire did not win the Championship. Wisden noted that the Yorkshire attack, with the exception of Rhodes, was less effective than previously. Macaulay bowled fewer overs and took fewer wickets at a higher bowling average; his 134 wickets, at an average of 17.78, placed him second in the Yorkshire averages. Selected for a Test trial, he failed to take a wicket. Wisden described his performance as "lifeless", while cricket writer Neville Cardus noted that he had "yet again ... fallen below his best away from the Yorkshire XI". He was not chosen for the Gentlemen v Players match, never representing the Players again.
Macaulay was selected for the third Test against Australia at Headingley, possibly because Arthur Carr, the England captain, expected the pitch to favour spinners. The Australians were concerned that Macaulay represented a threat to their batting, but the match did not work out in Macaulay's favour as a bowler; having been dropped at the start of play, Charlie Macartney played what Wisden called one of the best innings of his career and vigorously attacked the England bowling, achieving the rare feat of scoring a century before the lunch interval. The Australian batsman had asked his captain if he could attack Macaulay in particular, and the Yorkshire bowler suffered as Macartney quickly dominated him. Macaulay eventually had Macartney caught after hitting a short ball in the air, but it was Macaulay's only success in the innings. Macaulay conceded 123 runs in 32 overs as Australia scored 494. When Macaulay came into bat from number ten in the batting order, England were 182 for eight wickets and facing defeat. He played an attacking innings of 76, hitting ten fours, in a partnership of 108 with George Geary. This began an England recovery which helped the team to escape with a draw. Nevertheless, Macaulay did not play in the final two Tests of the series. Later in the season, he took fourteen wickets for 92 runs against Gloucestershire, including eight for 43 in the second innings. These were the best bowling figures of his career that he achieved in a match. Apart from his batting success in the Test match, Macaulay scored another two fifties and in the match against Somerset achieved a century.
### Decline
Over the next four seasons, Yorkshire failed to win the Championship, although they never finished lower than fourth in the table. The team displayed an unaccustomed weakness in bowling, particularly after the death of Roy Kilner in 1928. The effectiveness of the main bowlers was reduced by age and injury; only Macaulay remained at something approaching his bowling peak. However, his performances worsened each year. His bowling figures in the 1927 season were similar to his achievements in 1926, showing only a slight decline, but his total of wickets fell each season until 1930.
In 1927, Macaulay took 130 wickets at an average of 18.26. However, he suffered a foot injury in 1928, and took time to recover his best form. His wicket tally fell to 120 and his average climbed to 24.37. His total of wickets decreased further to 102 in 1929 and his average remained above 20. Hampered by another foot injury throughout 1930, Macaulay failed to take 100 wickets for the first time since his debut season; his average of 25.12 was the highest of his career. In these seasons, he was only selected for one representative match, a Test trial in 1928 in which he failed to take a wicket. At the same time, his batting faded. In 1927, Macaulay scored his highest run aggregate and passed fifty six times while hitting 678 runs at an average of 25.11. He improved his batting average in 1928, accumulating 517 runs at 25.85 with four more fifties. However, after 1928, he never averaged more than 16.26 with the bat and only scored two more fifties in his career, both in 1929.
## End of first-class career
### Return to form
From the 1931 season, Yorkshire once again dominated the County Championship, winning three consecutive trophies. A large part of the success was an increase in bowling strength. In 1931, Macaulay slightly increased his haul of wickets from 91 to 97, and his average dropped from 25.12 to 15.75. This placed him third in the Yorkshire averages, behind Hedley Verity and Bill Bowes, who both took over 100 wickets and led a very strong bowling attack. That season, Macaulay was awarded a benefit match against Surrey which raised £1,633, worth approximately £82,700 in 2008. At the time, this was considered a poor reward for a Yorkshire cricketer. The following season, Macaulay took fewer wickets, managing 84 at an average of 19.07, which placed him fifth in the Yorkshire averages. He achieved his best bowling figures in first-class cricket when he took eight for 21 against the Indian touring side. By now, Macaulay was a specialist spinner and had largely abandoned pace bowling; Bill Bowes and Arthur Rhodes opened the Yorkshire bowling.
The 1933 season signalled a return to form for Macaulay. Wisden judged that he "recovered fully his length, spin and command over variations in pace". He bowled more overs than anyone else in the team and passed 100 wickets for the first time since 1929, the tenth and final time he did so, taking 148 wickets at an average of 16.45. Against Northamptonshire, he took seven for nine as the team was bowled out for 27. He finished the match with thirteen for 34. Against Lancashire, when his match figures were twelve for 49, he took a hat-trick in a sequence of four wickets in five balls; he also took twelve wickets against Leicestershire. His form won a recall to the Test side after seven years. Not picked initially, a decision described by Wisden as unfair, he played in the first Test when E. W. Clark dropped out of the team before the match. Macaulay took one wicket in the first innings but had figures of four for 57 in the second innings to earn approval from Wisden. He was picked for the second Test but bowled only 14 overs before injuring his foot when fielding; he was unable to take any further part in the game. He did not play in the third Test but was selected in festival game at Scarborough for the team selected from the MCC party which toured Australia in the previous winter. He played instead of an injured player, even though he did not take part in the tour. Macaulay ended second in the Yorkshire bowling averages. In its review of the season, Wisden stated that his form in the early part of the season would have placed his among the best cricketers in the world.
### Final seasons
Macaulay's final two seasons were affected by injury, as he was increasingly bothered by rheumatism. In the 1934 season, while trying to take a catch, he injured the finger he used to spin the ball. He did not appear for Yorkshire until June, but went on to take 55 wickets at an average of 23.43. The next season was his final one. He only played nine matches, taking 22 wickets at 20.09. At the end of the year, he retired from first-class cricket and Yorkshire awarded him a special grant of £250. Yorkshire did have a replacement in mind; Frank Smailes was considered to be versatile enough in his bowling style to take Macaulay's place, but it was not until Ellis Robinson secured a place in 1937 that a new specialist off-spinner was found.
Macaulay ended his career with 1,837 first-class wickets at an average of 17.65. In eight Test matches, he took 24 of those wickets at an average of 27.58. In addition, he scored 6,055 runs at an average of 18.07 and held 373 catches. He took 100 wickets in a season ten times, a record only surpassed by four others for Yorkshire, while only three other Yorkshire bowlers have taken 200 wickets in a season. He also took four hat-tricks.
### Post-Yorkshire career
Following his retirement, Macaulay initially attempted to market a patented rheumatic medicine, but the business quickly failed. He then established an athletic outfitting shop in Leeds. This business also was unsuccessful; Macaulay blamed a lack of money and competition from other businesses. Consequently, he filed for bankruptcy in 1937. Macaulay accused Yorkshire of worsening his situation by withholding most of his benefit money—of the total raised, he received only £530. He believed that he was owed the balance, and continued his business under that assumption, but Yorkshire had invested the amount and he only received the interest. The matter arose in court, and when asked why he thought the money would be paid to him, Macaulay answered: "Because I had earned it". He also rejected the accusation that he spent his time drinking in public houses, and another that he had neglected his two failed businesses. The Official Receiver found that Macaulay's complaint against Yorkshire was without justification. Macaulay suggested that he should arrange for the invested money to be paid to his creditors in his will. Macaulay secured new employment, and a few days after the hearing it was announced that he would play professional cricket in Wales.
Macaulay played league cricket in Wales and Lancashire until the Second World War. During 1937, he was the professional at Ebbw Vale cricket club, and in 1938 and 1939, he played in the Lancashire League as the professional for Todmorden, for whom he took nine wickets for 10 runs against Ramsbottom in the Worsley Cup final. Ramsbottom were bowled out for 47 to give Macaulay's team a 26-run win.
When the Second World War began, Macaulay joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) Volunteer Reserve in 1940 as a Pilot Officer, and was stationed at Church Fenton, close to Barkston Ash where he lived with his wife Edith. Later in the year, he was stationed in the Shetland Islands, where he was bothered by the cold. Six days after his 43rd birthday, he died of pneumonia at the Sullom Voe RAF station on 13 December 1940. He was buried in Lerwick Cemetery in Shetland.
## Style and personality
As a batsman, Macaulay was reasonably good and possibly better than his statistics would suggest. He was capable of batting well in a crisis but may have been prevented from honing his batting skills by the Yorkshire leadership who wished him to focus on bowling. He generally batted low down in the order after the all-rounders in the team. Macaulay's fielding was also very effective. He was excellent at close range to the batsmen, particularly from his own bowling.
As a bowler, Macaulay fulfilled two roles. At the start of an innings, when the ball was new and hard, he opened the bowling with medium-fast deliveries that swung away from right-handed batsmen. In this style, he was very accurate and bowled a variety of deliveries to unsettle his opponents. Cricket writer R. C. Robertson-Glasgow considered him to be better than any similar bowler in the 1920s except Maurice Tate, the leading medium paced bowler in England. Macaulay could vary his pace from medium to fast depending on the needs of the match situation and the type of pitch. When the pitch was suitable for spinning the ball, he bowled medium-paced off breaks. Wisden said that his spin made him more effective than other bowlers of his speed on a sticky wicket, a pitch which has been affected by rain, making it erratic and difficult to bat on. His obituary further stated: "Under suitable conditions for using the off-break, batsmen seemed at his mercy." This was because he could bowl deliveries which were almost impossible for batsmen to play without getting out, but at the same time it was very difficult to score runs against him. Robertson-Glasgow wrote that "on a rain-damaged pitch he was in his glory." He would make small adjustments to the positions of his fielders or bowl from different sides of the wicket, often making gestures or facial expressions as he did so. Robertson-Glasgow said that "only the best could survive the onslaught except by a miracle", and described Macaulay as a great bowler. The cricket writer Jim Kilburn suggested that Macaulay was "a great cricketer. He was great not so much in mathematical accomplishment ... as in cricketing character."
Macaulay's bowling action was relaxed and effortless, being admired by his contemporaries. Kilburn wrote: "His run-up was half-shambling, his steps short and his shoulders swaying, but his feet were faultlessly placed and his aim was high at the instant of delivery". However, critics and team-mates more widely knew him as passionate, hostile and fiery when bowling. Kilburn said that batsmen were Macaulay's "mortal enemies". He knew many tricks to dismiss or unsettle them, including the tactic of bowling the ball straight at their head without pitching, which was usually considered dangerous and unfair. Kilburn observed that "should the batsman survive he would be rewarded with a glare of concentrated venom calculated to stagger any but the stoutest heart ... Every scrap of his heart and soul went into every ball he bowled. He never gave up and his persistence was invariably triumphant sooner or later". The Yorkshire Post, after his death, observed: "Macaulay will always be remembered for the fierceness of his enthusiasm when there was a fighting chance of victory".
Macaulay displayed a temper when matters went against him. Robertson-Glasgow described him as an unusual man, "fiercely independent, witty, argumentative, swift to joy and anger. He had pleasure in cracking a convention or cursing an enemy ... A cricket-bag came between him and his blazer hanging on a peg; and he'd kick it and tell it a truth or two, then laugh." Bill Bowes described how, when he was bowling, he would glare and mutter under his breath; he seemed to be "filled with a devilish energy". He would make sharp or biting comments, particularly if a fielder made a mistake when he was bowling and although often amusing, it could at times hurt the recipients, and his anger made his team-mates wary of him. Yet, he could also express appreciation when a skillful batsmen hit a good shot from his bowling; the result was that his colleagues were never sure what to expect from him, even after playing with him for years. Herbert Sutcliffe said he could be charming when not playing, but his wit could be sharp. Robertson-Glasgow nevertheless described him as "a glorious opponent; a great cricketer; and a companion in a thousand".
|
30,291,715 |
Mantra-Rock Dance
| 1,136,366,318 |
1967 counterculture music event
|
[
"1967 in California",
"1967 in San Francisco",
"1967 music festivals",
"Counterculture festivals",
"Hinduism in popular culture",
"Hippie movement",
"International Society for Krishna Consciousness",
"Jam band festivals",
"Janis Joplin",
"January 1967 events in the United States",
"Kirtan performers",
"Krishna in popular culture",
"Music festivals established in 1967",
"Rock festivals in the United States"
] |
The Mantra-Rock Dance was a counterculture music event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. It was organized by followers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) as an opportunity for its founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, to address a wider public. It was also a promotional and fundraising effort for their first center on the West Coast of the United States.
The Mantra-Rock Dance featured some of the most prominent Californian rock groups of the time, such as the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, as well as the then relatively unknown Moby Grape. The bands agreed to appear with Prabhupada and to perform for free; the proceeds were donated to the local Hare Krishna temple. The participation of countercultural leaders considerably boosted the event's popularity; among them were the poet Allen Ginsberg, who led the singing of the Hare Krishna mantra onstage along with Prabhupada, and LSD promoters Timothy Leary and Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
The Mantra-Rock Dance concert was later called "the ultimate high" and "the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippie era." It led to favorable media exposures for Prabhupada and his followers, and brought the Hare Krishna movement to the wider attention of the American public. The 40th anniversary of the Mantra-Rock Dance was commemorated in 2007 in Berkeley, California.
## Background
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (also referred to as "Bhaktivedanta Swami" or "Prabhupada"), a Gaudiya Vaishnava sannyasi and teacher, arrived in New York City from his native India in 1965 and "caught the powerful rising tide" of a counterculture that was fascinated with his homeland and open to new forms of "consciousness-expanding spirituality." After establishing his first American temple in New York City at 26 Second Avenue, Prabhupada requested his early follower Mukunda Das and his wife Janaki Dasi to open a similar ISKCON center on the West Coast of the United States.
Mukunda and Janaki met up with friends from college, who would later come to be known as Shyamasundar Das, Gurudas, Malati Dasi, and Yamuna Dasi. Teaming up with them, Mukunda rented a storefront in the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which at that time was turning into the hub of the hippie counterculture, and stayed to take care of the developing new center.
## Preparation and promotion
To raise funds, gain supporters for the new temple, and to popularize Prabhupada's teachings among the hippie and countercultural audience of the Haight-Ashbury scene, the team decided to hold a charitable rock concert and invited Prabhupada to attend. Despite his position as a Vaishnava sannyasi and some of his New York followers objecting to what they saw as an inappropriate invitation of their guru to a place full of "amplified guitars, pounding drums, wild light shows, and hundreds of drugged hippies," Prabhupada agreed to travel from New York to San Francisco and take part in the event. Using their acquaintance with Rock Scully, manager of the Grateful Dead, and Sam Andrew, founding member and guitarist of the Big Brother and the Holding Company – who were among the most prominent rock bands in California at the time – Shyamasundar and Gurudas secured their consent to perform for charity at the concert, charging only the "musicians' union minimum" of \$250. Malati Dasi happened to hear Moby Grape, a relatively unknown group at the time, and she convinced the other team members to invite the band to play at the concert as well.
Another leading countercultural figure, the beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg, was a supporter of Prabhupada. He had met the swami earlier in New York and assisted him in extending his United States visa. Despite disagreeing with many of Prabhupada's required prohibitions, especially the ones pertaining to drugs and promiscuity, Ginsberg often publicly sang the Hare Krishna mantra, which he had learned in India. He made the mantra part of his philosophy and declared that it "brings a state of ecstasy." He was glad that Prabhupada, an authentic swami from India, was now trying to spread the chanting in America. Along with other countercultural ideologues like Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts, Ginsberg hoped to incorporate Prabhupada and the chanting of Hare Krishna into the hippie movement. Ginsberg agreed to take part in the Mantra-Rock Dance concert and to introduce the swami to the Haight-Ashbury hippie community.
As for the choice of venue, the team considered both the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom, finally settling on the latter as its impresario, Chet Helms, appeared to be "more sympathetic to the spirit of the concert" and agreed to let it be used for a charity event. Artist Harvey Cohen, one of the first ISKCON followers, designed a Stanley Mouse-inspired promotional poster with a picture of Prabhupada, details of the event, and a request to "bring cushions, drums, bells, cymbals." To generate interest among members of the countercultural community of Haight-Ashbury, Mukunda published an article entitled "The New Science" in the San Francisco Oracle, a local underground newspaper specializing in alternative spiritual and psychedelic topics. He wrote:
> The Haight-Ashbury district is soon to be honored by the presence of His Holiness, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, who will conduct daily classes in the Bhagavad Gita, discussions, chanting, playing instruments, and devotional dancing in a small temple in the neighborhood. ... Swamiji's use of the Hare Krishna Mantra is already known throughout the United States. Swamiji's chanting and dancing is more effective than Hatha or Raja Yoga or listening to Ali Akbar Khan on acid or going to a mixed media rock dance.
Ginsberg helped plan and organize a reception for Prabhupada, who was scheduled to arrive from New York on January 17, 1967. When the swami arrived at the San Francisco Airport, 50 to 100 hippies chanting "Hare Krishna" greeted him in the airport lounge with flowers. A few days later the San Francisco Chronicle published an article entitled "Swami in the Hippie Land" in which Prabhupada answered the question, "Do you accept hippies in your temple?" by saying, "Hippies or anyone – I make no distinctions. Everyone is welcome."
## Event
The Mantra-Rock Dance was scheduled on Sunday evening, January 29, 1967 – a day of the week that Chet Helms deemed odd and unlikely to generate substantial attendance. Admission was fixed at \$2.50 and limited to door sales. Despite the apprehensions of the organizers, by the beginning of the concert at 8 PM an audience of nearly 3,000 had gathered at the Avalon Ballroom, filling the hall to its capacity. Latecomers had to wait outside for vacancies in order to enter. Participants were treated on prasad (sanctified food) consisting of orange slices and, regardless of the prohibition on drugs, many in the crowd were smoking marijuana and taking other intoxicants. However, the atmosphere in the hall was peaceful. Strobe lights and a psychedelic liquid light show, along with pictures of Krishna and the words of the Hare Krishna mantra, were projected onto the walls. A few Hells Angels were positioned in the back of the stage as the event's security guards. Prabhupada's biographer Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami thus describes the Mantra-Rock Dance audience:
> Almost everyone who came wore bright or unusual costumes: tribal robes, Mexican ponchos, Indian kurtas, "God's-eyes," feathers, and beads. Some hippies brought their own flutes, lutes, gourds, drums, rattles, horns, and guitars. The Hell's Angels, dirty-haired, wearing jeans, boots, and denim jackets and accompanied by their women, made their entrance, carrying chains, smoking cigarettes, and displaying their regalia of German helmets, emblazoned emblems, and so on – everything but their motorcycles, which they had parked outside.
The evening opened with Prabhupada's followers – men in "Merlin gowns" and women in saris – chanting Hare Krishna to an Indian tune, followed by Moby Grape. When the swami himself arrived at 10 PM, the crowd of hippies rose to their feet to greet him respectfully with applause and cheers. Gurudas, one of the event's organizers, describes the effect that Prabhupada's arrival had on the audience, "Then Swami Bhaktivedanta entered. He looked like a Vedic sage, exalted and otherworldly. As he advanced towards the stage, the crowd parted and made way for him, like the surfer riding a wave. He glided onto the stage, sat down and began playing the kartals."
Ginsberg welcomed Prabhupada onto the stage and spoke of his own experiences chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. He translated the meaning of the Sanskrit term mantra as "mind deliverance" and recommended the early-morning kirtans at the local Radha-Krishna temple "for those coming down from LSD who want to stabilize their consciousness upon reentry," calling the temple's activity an "important community service." He introduced Prabhupada and thanked him for leaving his peaceful life in India to bring the mantra to New York's Lower East Side, "where it was probably most needed."
After a short address by Prabhupada, Ginsberg sang "Hare Krishna" to the accompaniment of sitar, tambura, and drums, requesting the audience to "[j]ust sink into the sound vibration, and think of peace." Then Prabhupada stood up and led the audience in dancing and singing, as the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Moby Grape joined the chanting and accompanied the mantra with their musical instruments. The audience eagerly responded, playing their own instruments and dancing in circles. The group chanting continued for almost two hours, and concluded with the swami's prayers in Sanskrit while the audience bowed down on the floor. After Prabhupada left, Janis Joplin took the stage, backed by Big Brother and the Holding Company, and continued the event with the songs "The House of the Rising Sun" and "Ball 'n' Chain" late into the night.
## Reaction and effect
The LSD pioneer Timothy Leary, who made an appearance at the Mantra-Rock Dance along with Augustus Owsley Stanley III and even paid the entrance fee, pronounced the event a "beautiful night". Later Ginsberg called the Mantra-Rock Dance "the height of Haight-Ashbury spiritual enthusiasm, the first time that there had been a music scene in San Francisco where everybody could be part of it and participate," while historians referred to it as "the ultimate high" and "the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippy era."
Moby Grape's performance at the Mantra-Rock Dance catapulted the band onto the professional stage. They subsequently had gigs with The Doors at the Avalon Ballroom and at the "First Love Circus" at the Winterland Arena, and were soon signed to a contract with Columbia Records.
The Mantra-Rock Dance helped raise around \$2,000 for the temple and resulted in a massive influx of visitors at the temple's early morning services. Prabhupada's appearance at the Mantra-Rock Dance made such a deep impact on the Haight-Ashbury community that he became a cult hero to most of its groups and members, regardless of their attitudes towards his philosophy or the life restrictions that he taught. The Hare Krishna mantra and dancing became adopted in some ways by all levels of the counterculture, including the Hells Angels, and provided it with a "loose commonality" and reconciliation, as well as with a viable alternative to drugs. As the Hare Krishna movement's popularity with the Haight-Ashbury community continued to increase, Prabhupada and followers chanting and distributing prasad became a customary sight at important events in the locale.
At the same time, as the core group of his followers continued to expand and become more serious about the spiritual discipline, Prabhupada conducted new Vaishnava initiations and named the San Francisco temple "New Jagannatha Puri" after introducing the worship of Jagannath deities of Krishna there. Small replicas of these deities immediately became a "psychedelic hit" worn by many hippies on strings around their necks.
Since the Mantra-Rock Dance brought the Hare Krishna movement to the wider attention of the American public, Prabhupada's increased popularity attracted the interest of the mainstream media. Most notably, he was interviewed on ABC's The Les Crane Show and lectured on the philosophy of Krishna consciousness on a KPFK radio station program hosted by Peter Bergman. Prabhupada's followers also spoke about their activities on the San Francisco radio station KFRC.
On August 18, 2007, a free commemorative event dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Mantra-Rock Dance was held at the People's Park in Berkeley, California.
## See also
- List of jam band music festivals
- List of historic rock festivals
|
47,226,795 |
1996–97 Gillingham F.C. season
| 1,154,464,129 | null |
[
"1996–97 Football League Second Division by team",
"Gillingham F.C. seasons"
] |
During the 1996–97 English football season, Gillingham F.C. competed in the Football League Second Division, the third tier of the English football league system. It was the 65th season in which Gillingham competed in the Football League, and the 47th since the club was voted back into the league in 1950. In the previous season, the team had gained promotion from the Third Division. Prior to the new season, Gillingham signed seven new players, paying a new club record transfer fee for Watford's Andy Hessenthaler. The team's form was poor in the first half of the season and at the end of 1996, Gillingham were in 21st position in the 24-team league table, putting them in danger of relegation back to the fourth tier. The club signed Ade Akinbiyi from Norwich City for another record fee in early January. In the second half of the season the team's performances improved and they finished the season in 11th position in the table.
Gillingham also competed in three knock-out competitions. The team reached the fourth round of the Football League Cup; in the third round they held Coventry City of the FA Premier League to a draw at home and won the replay. It was the first time Gillingham had beaten a team from the top division of English football since 1908. They also reached the third round of the FA Cup but were eliminated from the Football League Trophy in the first round. The team played 57 competitive matches, winning 25, drawing 12 and losing 20. Simon Ratcliffe made the most appearances during the season, playing 52 times. Iffy Onuora, who joined the club at the start of the season, was top goalscorer, with 21 goals in the Second Division and a total of 23 across all competitions. The highest attendance recorded at the club's home ground, Priestfield Stadium, was 10,603, for the League Cup match against Coventry City.
## Background and pre-season
The 1996–97 season was Gillingham's 65th playing in the Football League and the 47th since the club was elected back into the League in 1950 after being voted out in 1938. In the previous season, Gillingham had finished second in the Third Division. The team had thus been promoted to the Second Division, returning to the third tier of the English football league system for the first time since 1989.
Tony Pulis was the club's manager for a second season, having been appointed in 1995 after chairman Paul Scally purchased the club. Following the club's promotion, there was a significant turnover in the playing squad. A number of players who had been regulars at the lower level departed, including Dave Martin, captain of the promotion-winning team. He was replaced as captain by Andy Hessenthaler, who joined from Watford; the transfer fee for the midfielder was , a new record for the highest fee paid by Gillingham to sign a player. Hessenthaler would go on to have a lengthy career at the club, both as a player and a manager, and in 2014 was voted Gillingham's greatest ever player by supporters.
Six other players joined the club prior to the start of the new season, four of whom incurred a transfer fee. The highest fee other than that paid for Hessenthaler was for Lenny Piper, a teenaged midfielder who joined the club from Wimbledon. Matt Bryant and Jon Ford, both defenders, arrived from Bristol City for and Bradford City for respectively, and Iffy Onuora, a forward, joined from Mansfield Town for . Two further players, both defenders, arrived on free transfers: Ian Chapman from Brighton & Hove Albion and John Humphrey from Charlton Athletic. The club adopted a new kit, replacing the previous season's blue and black striped shirts with plain blue. The second-choice kit, to be worn in the event of a clash of colours with the opposition, was red. The team prepared for the new season with a number of friendly matches; most were against semi-professional non-League clubs, but the team also played Nottingham Forest of the FA Premier League.
## Second Division
### August–December
Gillingham began the season with a home game at Priestfield Stadium against Bristol City. New signings Bryant, Ford, Humphrey, Hessenthaler, Chapman and Onuora were all in the starting line-up, and Piper came on as a substitute to score the winning goal in the final minute to give his team a 3–2 victory. In the next three matches the team only managed to score a single goal, and the month of August ended with two consecutive defeats. Gillingham beat Burnley on 7 September but then again lost twice in a row. In the second of these defeats, a 1–0 away defeat against Walsall, Leo Fortune-West, the previous season's top goalscorer, suffered a broken ankle and was unable to play again for seven months. In the next game, Onuora achieved the team's only hat-trick of the season, scoring all three goals in a 3–1 victory at home to Rotherham United. The forward also scored Gillingham's only goal in each of the next three matches, which produced one win, one draw, and one defeat; after this run Gillingham were 14th in the 24-team league table.
On 15 October, Gillingham defeated Shrewsbury Town 2–1, but then began a run of five league games without a win. With Fortune-West missing, Pulis paired Onuora with various different players in the forward positions. One of these, Steve Butler, scored two penalty kicks against Millwall on 19 October, making him only the fourth player to score from more than one penalty for Gillingham in a Football League match, but Gillingham lost 3–2. Defender Guy Butters, a signing from Portsmouth, made his debut in the draw with Preston North End on 26 October, and Pulis further bolstered his defensive options by signing Adrian Pennock from AFC Bournemouth for .
Gillingham ended the winless run with a victory over Peterborough United on 19 November, despite goalkeeper Jim Stannard suffering an injury and defender Mark Harris having to take over in goal. Pulis quickly signed goalkeeper Andy Marshall on loan from Norwich City and he saved a penalty on his debut against York City, but Gillingham lost both that game and the next one, after which they had dropped to 20th in the table. The team began December with a win over Crewe Alexandra and followed the victory with draws against two teams who were in the top six of the league table, Bury and Watford. It was the first time that the team had gone three consecutive league games without losing during the season. This short unbeaten run was followed, however, by a defeat at home to Luton Town on Boxing Day. Gillingham's final match of 1996 was away to Burnley, who won 5–1; Onuora was sent off after receiving a second yellow card for angrily throwing the ball at the assistant referee. The defeat left Gillingham 21st in the table, putting them in the relegation places.
### January–May
Due to the postponement of a number of scheduled matches, the first league game of 1997 did not take place until 18 January and resulted in a 1–1 draw with Notts County. Forward Ade Akinbiyi made his debut, having joined the club days earlier from Norwich City for another new club record fee of . He scored his first goal for the club seven days later in a 4–1 victory over Plymouth Argyle, the team's biggest win of the season. Gillingham remained undefeated in the league in 1997 until the end of February, a run of six games. The team followed a win over Bristol Rovers on 8 February with victory over York City, the first time they had won two consecutive league games all season, and then gained a third consecutive win by defeating Peterborough United. After this run, Gillingham had climbed to 15th in the table.
In March, Fortune-West was fit again after his injury but could not regain a place in the team due to the form of Onuora and Akinbiyi and was sent on loan to Leyton Orient of the Third Division. Gillingham began the month with a 3–2 defeat to Crewe Alexandra, the first time the team had lost in the league in 1997, but followed it up by defeating sixth-placed Watford, Butler scoring the winning goal against his former club in the final minute. Beginning with the game against Wycombe Wanderers on 22 March, Onuora scored in five consecutive matches, making him only the seventh player to achieve this feat for Gillingham in the Football League. The first three games of this run resulted in victories over Wycombe, Rotherham and Bristol City. In the next game, against promotion-chasing Brentford, Onuora gave Gillingham the lead but their opponents scored twice to win; Gillingham ended March 15th in the table.
Gillingham's first match of April resulted in a 2–2 draw against Chesterfield; Gillingham were winning until the final minute but then conceded an equalising goal. Seven days later, Gillingham drew 2–2 against AFC Bournemouth in identical circumstances, conceding an equaliser in the 90th minute. Butler scored in both games and also scored in the next two, a victory over Stockport County and a defeat to Blackpool. Gillingham ended the season with three consecutive 2–0 victories, defeating Millwall, Walsall and Shrewsbury. Onuora scored two goals and Akinbiyi three during this run. Gillingham finished the season in 11th place in the table, six points below the promotion play-off places.
### Match details
Key
- In result column, Gillingham's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- pen. = Penalty kick
- o.g. = Own goal
Results
### Partial league table
## Cup matches
### FA Cup
As a Second Division team, Gillingham entered the 1996–97 FA Cup in the first round. A goal from Butler gave Gillingham 1–0 victory over Hereford United of the Third Division. In the second round, Gillingham played another Third Division team, Cardiff City, and won 2–0 with goals from Onuora and Hessenthaler. The teams from the top two divisions of English football entered the competition in the third round and Gillingham were paired with Derby County of the FA Premier League. The game took place on 14 January and by the midway point of the second half remained goalless, however the referee abandoned the match due to the frozen pitch. The game was re-scheduled for a week later; with forwards Onuora, Akinbiyi and Bailey all unavailable due to injury or suspension, Gillingham played poorly and lost 2–0.
#### Match details
Key
- In result column, Gillingham's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- pen. = Penalty kick
- o.g. = Own goal
Results
### Football League Cup
As a Second Division team, Gillingham entered the 1996–97 Football League Cup in the first round and were drawn to play Swansea City of the Third Division. Gillingham won the first leg of the two-legged tie 1–0 at Swansea's Vetch Field and then won the second leg at Priestfield 2–0 to progress 3–0 on aggregate. In the second round, Gillingham played Barnsley of the First Division. The first leg at Barnsley's Oakwell ground ended in a 1–1 draw and Gillingham won the second leg 1–0 to eliminate their higher-level opponents. In the third round, Gillingham were paired with Coventry City of the FA Premier League. The match drew an attendance of 10,603, the largest of the season at Priestfield. Coventry scored two goals in the first half, but goals from Onuora and Ratcliffe in the second half earned Gillingham a draw. The replay took place at Coventry's Highfield Road ground, and a second half goal from Neil Smith gave Gillingham a 1–0 win; Trevor Haylett of The Guardian attributed Gillingham's victory to their "compact, disciplined rearguard in which their three centre-halves stood tall all night against a Coventry attack whose ideas petered out after a bright opening spell". It was the club's first victory over a team from the top division of English football since 1908 and first ever win over top-level opposition away from home. Gillingham's opponents in the fourth round were Ipswich Town of the First Division. A goal approximately 15 minutes from the end of the game gave Ipswich a 1–0 win and Gillingham, for whom Ratcliffe was sent off, were eliminated from the League Cup. Bryant was missing from the Gillingham team and Pulis admitted after the match that this was because the defender had been accidentally shot in the leg while participating in field sports.
#### Match details
Key
- In result column, Gillingham's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- pen. = Penalty kick
- o.g. = Own goal
Results
### Football League Trophy
In the first round of the 1996–97 Football League Trophy, a tournament exclusively for Second and Third Division teams, Gillingham played Cardiff City of the Third Division. The score was 1–1 after 90 minutes, but Cardiff scored a golden goal winner in extra time to eliminate Gillingham from the competition; it was the first time Gillingham had ever lost to such a goal. The attendance of 1,193 was the lowest of the season at Priestfield.
#### Match details
Key
- In result column, Gillingham's score shown first
- H = Home match
- A = Away match
- pen. = Penalty kick
- o.g. = Own goal
Results
## Players
Thirty players made at least one appearance for Gillingham during the season. Ratcliffe made the most, playing in 52 of the team's 57 games. Smith played 51 times and five other players made more than 40 appearances. Two players made only one appearance each. Richard Carpenter, who had played for Gillingham since 1990, played in one game at the start of the season before being transferred to Fulham. Andrew Sambrook, a teenager from the club's youth team, made one appearance for the first team; the club offered him a professional contract at the end of the season, but he opted to accept a sporting scholarship to a university in the United States.
Fifteen players scored at least one goal for Gillingham during the season. Onuora was the top scorer; he scored 21 times in the Second Division, once in the FA Cup, and once in the League Cup. His total of 23 goals was the highest by a Gillingham player for five seasons; it was more than twice that of the next highest scorer, Butler, who achieved a total of 11 goals across all competitions.
## Aftermath
At the end of the season, the Gordon Road stand at Priestfield was demolished and replaced with a new stand in the first significant redevelopment of the stadium for more than 30 years. Harris and Smith left the club to join Cardiff City and Fulham respectively. Following on from the strong finish to the 1996–97 season, Gillingham began the following season mounting a challenge for promotion, which would take the club to the second tier of English football for the first time, but the team ultimately fell short of the play-offs, finishing seventh.
|
242,123 |
The Diary of a Nobody
| 1,165,863,682 |
1892 comic novel by George and Weeden Grossmith
|
[
"1892 British novels",
"British comedy novels",
"British novels adapted into films",
"British novels adapted into plays",
"British novels adapted into television shows",
"Collaborative novels",
"English novels",
"Fictional diaries",
"J. W. Arrowsmith books",
"Novels first published in serial form",
"Novels set in London",
"Works originally published in Punch (magazine)"
] |
The Diary of a Nobody is an English comic novel written by the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith, with illustrations by the latter. It originated as an intermittent serial in Punch magazine in 1888–89 and first appeared in book form, with extended text and added illustrations, in 1892. The Diary records the daily events in the lives of a London clerk, Charles Pooter, his wife Carrie, his son William Lupin, and numerous friends and acquaintances over a period of 15 months.
Before their collaboration on the Diary, the brothers each pursued successful careers on the stage. George originated nine of the principal comedian roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas over 12 years from 1877 to 1889. He also established a national reputation as a piano sketch entertainer and wrote a large number of songs and comic pieces. Before embarking on his stage career, Weedon had worked as an artist and illustrator. The Diary was the brothers' only mature collaboration. Most of its humour derives from Charles Pooter's unconscious and unwarranted sense of his own importance, and the frequency with which this delusion is punctured by gaffes and minor social humiliations. In an era of rising expectations within the lower-middle classes, the daily routines and modest ambitions described in the Diary were instantly recognised by its contemporary readers, and provided later generations with a glimpse of the past that it became fashionable to imitate.
Although its initial public reception was muted, the Diary came to be recognised by critics as a classic work of humour, and it has never been out of print. It helped to establish a genre of humorous popular fiction based on lower or lower-middle class aspirations, and was the forerunner of numerous fictitious diary novels in the later 20th century. The Diary has been the subject of several stage and screen adaptations, including Ken Russell's "silent film" treatment of 1964, a four-part TV film scripted by Andrew Davies in 2007, and a widely praised stage version in 2011, in which an all-male cast of three played all the parts.
## Authorship and origin
The Diary of a Nobody was the work of George Grossmith and his brother Weedon Grossmith, the sons of a court reporter and part-time stage entertainer, also named George. The younger George followed his father, first as a reporter and later on the stage; the 7-years-younger Weedon studied at the West London School of Art and had some success as a portrait painter before becoming a comic actor. The brothers were fascinated with the stage at an early age. In 1864, at 17 and 10, they hosted a complex programme of musical and dramatic entertainment in their parents' garden at Haverstock Hill. This included a 20-minute burlesque version of Hamlet, in which George played the title role; Weedon was Ophelia.
By 1877 the younger George Grossmith had established himself as a comic piano sketch entertainer in provincial institutes and literary societies. In that year he was seen by Arthur Sullivan and, separately, by W. S. Gilbert, in performances of their one-act comic opera Trial by Jury. Impressed, they engaged him to play the comic lead in their new, full-length work, The Sorcerer. Thereafter, Grossmith created the leading comic role in each of Gilbert and Sullivan's long-running comic operas until The Yeomen of the Guard, which closed in 1889. While appearing in the operas, Grossmith continued his piano entertainment career at private parties and matinees, writing and composing his own material. He became the most successful comic entertainer of his day, writing numerous operettas, around 100 piano sketches, some 600 songs and short piano pieces, and three books. For Punch magazine in 1884 he provided a series of short sketches based on his experiences as a court reporter at Bow Street Magistrates' Court. In 1889, Grossmith ended his connection with Gilbert and Sullivan to pursue his piano sketch career full-time and continued to perform until 1908. He died in 1912.
As an artist Weedon Grossmith exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Grosvenor Gallery. He also contributed illustrations to Punch and the prestigious Art Journal. He was nevertheless dissatisfied with his financial prospects as an artist, and by 1885 was pursuing an alternative career as an actor. He continued his career on the stage with considerable success until 1918, making his name playing roles he described as "cowards, cads and snobs", and as browbeaten small men under the thumb of authority. He wrote several plays, of which The Night of the Party (1901) was his most successful, and from 1894 was engaged in the management of two West End theatres. He died in 1919. The literary scholar Peter Morton, who published an annotated edition of the Diary in 2009, suggests that many of the events depicted in it were drawn from the brothers' own home experiences, and that Weedon, "something of a scapegrace compared with his perfectionist brother", was the model for Lupin.
## Synopsis
The diary begins on 3 April of an unstated year, and runs for approximately 15 months. In a short prologue, readers are informed that Charles Pooter and his wife Caroline (Carrie) have just moved to a new home at "The Laurels", Brickfield Terrace, Holloway. Mr Pooter is a City of London clerk with Perkupp's, possibly an accountancy or private banking firm (though their business is not explicitly stated). The couple's 20-year-old son William works as a bank clerk in Oldham. The first entries describe the Pooters' daily lives and introduce their particular friends, such as their neighbour Gowing, the enthusiastic bicyclist Cummings, and the Jameses from Sutton. From the beginning a pattern is set whereby the small vexations of the Pooters' daily lives are recounted, many of them arising from Pooter's unconscious self-importance and pomposity. Trouble with servants, tradesmen, and office juniors occur regularly, along with minor social embarrassments and humiliations.
The rare formal social events in the Pooters' lives are particular magnets for misfortune. They receive an invitation from the Lord Mayor of London to attend a ball at the Mansion House for "Representatives of Trade and Commerce". After days of keen anticipation they are dismayed, when they arrive, to find that the gathering is undistinguished. Pooter is snobbishly upset to be greeted familiarly by his local ironmonger, even more so when this tradesman appears to be on social terms with some of the more important guests. Pooter overindulges in champagne and humiliates Carrie by collapsing on the dance floor.
In the summer their son arrives from Oldham and informs his parents that he wishes henceforth to be called by his middle name, "Lupin". He has been dismissed from his bank post for idleness; although dismayed, Pooter sees this as a chance to get his son into Perkupp's. Lupin joins the couple for their annual holiday week in Broadstairs, but relationships are strained by Lupin's "fast" habits. On their return, Pooter's efforts to find Lupin a job at first prove fruitless. The boy is interested in amateur dramatics and joins an organisation called the "Holloway Comedians". With the help of Pooter's employer Mr. Perkupp, Lupin finally secures a clerical position with a firm of stockbrokers in November. He then shocks his parents by announcing his engagement.
Lupin's fiancée, Daisy Mutlar, is the sister of one of his theatrical friends and is, he says, "the nicest, prettiest, and most accomplished girl he ever met". Pooter is disappointed when he meets her: "She is a big young woman... at least eight years older than Lupin. I did not even think her good-looking". Nevertheless, in her honour the Pooters give a large dinner-party, to which Pooter invites Mr Perkupp. The party becomes boisterous; Mr Perkupp arrives at a particularly raucous moment, and decides not to stay. Pooter believes the party has failed, and is despondent, although Carrie deems it a great success. However, within a few days, Lupin informs them that the engagement is off.
In the following weeks Lupin often brings the Holloway troupe back to "The Laurels". These occasions are graced with the unexplained presence of a complete stranger, Mr Padge, who regularly occupies the best chair as if by right. Lupin opts out of the family's Christmas celebrations, and then announces, to everyone's astonishment, that the engagement to Daisy is back on. Christmas passes happily enough, despite a supper party which degenerates into a food fight instigated by Daisy.
In the New Year, Pooter is promoted to senior clerk at Perkupp's, and his salary raised by £100 a year, but his achievement is overshadowed by Lupin's announcement that he has just profited by £200 through a timely shares speculation. Lupin persuades his father, and Gowing and Cummings, to invest small sums in Parachikka Chlorates, the source of his gains. The Pooters meet a new friend of Lupin's, Mr Murray Posh, who Pooter thinks is somewhat over-familiar with Daisy and might, he warns Lupin, be a rival for her hand. Lupin pooh-poohs this notion. Later, Pooter learns that he and his friends have lost their investment; indeed, Lupin's stockbroking firm has collapsed entirely and its principal has fled. Lupin is thus unemployed; worse, that same day the engagement of Daisy Mutlar to Murray Posh is announced. Lupin's only consolation, he tells his father, is that he persuaded Posh to invest £600 in Parachikka Chlorates. However, in Pooter's eyes the situation is redeemed when Mr Perkupp offers Lupin a clerkship.
April begins with another social disaster. The Pooters receive an invitation to a ball given by the East Acton Rifle Brigade, which they imagine will be a glittering occasion. It turns out to be shabby and down-at-heel; furthermore, having liberally supplied fellow-guests—among them Mr Padge—with food and drink which he thinks is free, Pooter is presented at the end with a large bill that he can barely afford to pay. Other social events also turn sour: a lunch party with Mr Finsworth, the father of an old friend, is marred by some unfortunate comments by Pooter on the Finsworth family portraits. On another occasion they meet a loud and over-opinionated American, Mr Hardfur Huttle, who, Pooter realises, is like a mature version of Lupin.
Lupin is sacked from Perkupp's for persuading their top client, Mr Crowbillon, to take his business to another firm. Pooter is mortified, but the new firm rewards Lupin with a £25 commission and a job at £200 a year. Lupin resumes his friendship with Murray Posh and Daisy, who is now Mrs Posh. Lupin moves to lodgings in Bayswater, where Pooter and Carrie are invited to dine and where they meet Murray's sister, known as "Lillie Girl", a woman of around 30. Pooter learns that Murray Posh has settled £10,000 on both Daisy and "Lillie Girl".
Pooter is summoned to meet Hardfur Huttle, who offers Perkupp's a new client to replace Mr Crowbillon. Perkupp is so grateful to Pooter for this introduction that he buys up the freehold of "The Laurels" and presents the deeds to Pooter. As the couple celebrate, a letter arrives from Lupin announcing his engagement to "Lillie Girl": "We shall be married in August, and among our guests we hope to see your old friends Gowing and Cummings".
## Publication and reception history
The Diary made its initial appearance as an intermittent serial in the satirical weekly magazine Punch. The first of the 26 instalments was announced in the issue of 26 May 1888 with a brief editorial note: "As everybody who is anybody is publishing Reminiscences, Diaries, Notes, Autobiographies, and Recollections, we are sincerely grateful to 'A Nobody' for permitting us to add to the historic collection". The diary entry dates are several weeks behind the dates on which they appear in Punch. The Punch serialisation ended in May 1889 with the diary entry for 21 March, which records the Pooters and their friends celebrating the minor triumph of Lupin's appointment as a clerk at Perkupp's. That was the intended end of the diary; however, when the writers were preparing the manuscript for publication as a book, they added a further four months' entries to the text, and included 26 illustrations by Weedon Grossmith.
In June 1892 J.W. Arrowsmith Ltd published the Diary in book form, although its critical and popular success was not evident until the third edition appeared in October 1910. After the First World War the book's popularity continued to grow; regular reprintings and new editions ensured that thereafter the book was never out of print. Audiobook versions have been available since 1982. The writer Robert McCrum, in a personal list of "The 100 greatest novels of all time" published in The Observer newspaper, listed the Diary at number 35.
### Early indifference
The Punch serialisation attracted little critical comment; The Athenaeum's literary critic thought the series "may have escaped unnoticed amid better jokes". When the Diary was published as a book, Punch heralded it in its issue of 23 July 1892 as "very funny", adding: "not without a touch of pathos". However, apart from a warmly approving report in The Saturday Review, the book's initial critical reception was lukewarm. The Review's critic thought the book "admirable, and in some of its touches [it] goes close to genius", with a natural and irresistible appeal: "The Diary has amused us from cover to cover". This contrasted with the negative judgement of The Athenaeum, which opined that "the book has no merit to compensate for its hopeless vulgarity, not even that of being amusing". It questioned the tastefulness of jokes aimed almost exclusively at the poverty of underpaid city clerks, and concluded: "Besides, it is all so dull". The Speaker's critic thought the book "a study in vulgarity", while The New York Times, reviewing the first American edition, found the work largely incomprehensible: "There is that kind of quiet, commonplace, everyday joking in it which we are to suppose is highly satisfactory to our cousins across the water ... Our way of manufacturing fun is different". Although details of sales figures are not given, Arrowsmiths later acknowledged that the early editions of the book did not have a wide public impact.
### Growing reputation
By 1910 the Diary was beginning to achieve a reputation in London's literary and political circles. In his essay "On People in Books", published earlier that year, the writer and humourist Hilaire Belloc hailed the Diary as "one of the half-dozen immortal achievements of our time ... a glory for us all". Among others who recorded their appreciation of the work were Lord Rosebery, the former prime minister, who told Arrowsmiths that he thought he had "purchased and given away more copies than any living man ... I regard any bedroom I occupy as unfurnished without a copy of it". Another essayist-cum-politician who added his tribute was Augustine Birrell, who in 1910 occupied the cabinet post of Chief Secretary for Ireland. Birrell wrote that he ranked Charles Pooter alongside Don Quixote as a comic literary figure, and added a note of personal pride that one of the characters in the book—"an illiterate charwoman, it is true"—carried his name. Arrowsmiths printed these appreciations as prefaces in the 1910 and subsequent issues. The 1910 edition proved immediately popular with the reading public, and was followed by numerous reprintings. In its review of this edition The Bookman's critic wrote of Charles Pooter: "You laugh at him—at his small absurdities, his droll mishaps, his well-meaning fussiness; but he wins upon you and obtains your affection, and even your admiration, he is so transparently honest, so delightfully and ridiculously human".
In its review of the book's fourth edition, published in 1919, The Bookman observed that the book was now a firm favourite with the public. "It has had many imitators ... but not one of them has rivalled the original, and they have all faded away". The reviewer recommended the book's "quaint drollery, its whimsical satire and delightfully quiet irony". In Canada, Queen's Quarterly magazine's sympathetic reception of the book contrasted with that of The New York Times nearly 30 years previously. It praises the understated but lovable self-portrait of Pooter, and adds that "It is not till the second or third reading—and you are bound to reread it—that the really consummate art of this artless book becomes apparent". The literary critic D. B. Wyndham Lewis summarised the Pooters as "warm, living, breathing, futile, half-baked, incredibly alive and endearing boneheads".
### Acclaim
The novelist Evelyn Waugh had been familiar with the Diary since his childhood. It was a great favourite of his parents—Arthur Waugh used to read passages aloud to his family, and Evelyn's biographer Selina Hastings has drawn attention to the distinctly Pooterish elements in the Waugh household. Evelyn Waugh was initially contemptuous of the book, but grew to admire it, to the extent of writing in his 1930 essay "One Way to Immortality" that it was "the funniest book in the world". He added: "Nobody wants to read other people's reflections on life and religion and politics, but the routine of their day, properly recorded, is always interesting, and will become more so as conditions change with the years". Morton posits that several of the leading characters in Waugh's early novels, though socially far removed from the Pooters, share the bafflement of Charles and Carrie with the problems of a changing world. In his 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited, Waugh has Lady Marchmain comforting her family by reading aloud from the Diary "with her beautiful voice and great humour of expression". Morton suggests that one of the work's attractions to Waugh was his personal identification with Lupin, and the way in which the disapproved son (as Waugh saw himself) repeatedly manages to turn adverse circumstances to his ultimate advantage.
At about the time that Waugh was discovering his affection for the Diary another writer, J. B. Priestley, was extolling it as an exemplar of English humour; Jerome K. Jerome, Priestley asserted, never wrote anything as good: "[P]oor Mr Pooter, with his simplicity, his timidity, his goodness of heart, is not simply a figure of fun but one of those innocent, lovable fools who are dear to the heart". In a 1943 essay, George Orwell considered the book an accurate account of English life in the 1880s. In describing Pooter he revived the Don Quixote analogy but saw this English equivalent as a sentimentalised version of the original, one who "constantly suffers disasters brought upon him by his own folly". In the years after the Second World War the book's stock remained high; Osbert Lancaster deemed it "a great work of art", and similar enthusiasm was expressed by a new generation of writers and social historians. Gillian Tindall, writing in 1970, thought the Diary "the best comic novel in the language", and lauded Pooter as "the presiding shade" of his era. This accolade was echoed a further generation on by A. N. Wilson, who wrote in his study of the Victorian era: "Who is to say that Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley are more typical of the [1890s] than the lower-middle class Charles and Carrie Pooter?" Wilson also observed the extent to which the Pooters had become recognised as "arbiters of the greatest good taste", as the late 20th-century English middle classes sought to acquire or preserve authentic Victorian features in their carefully crafted "period" homes. A Spectator article of 2008 remarks on how such houses as "The Laurels", the humble habitats of 1890s City clerks, had by the 21st century become desirable £1 million-plus homes in what it terms "banker land".
## Literary and cultural influence
Peter Bailey, in his study "White Collars, Gray Lives" (1999), traces the beginnings of literary interest in the lower-middle classes to the "disquieting irruption of a new breed of petty bourgeois shop and office workers" that faced Victorian writers in the last quarter of the 19th century. The Grossmiths' Diary was a typical satire of its time; it probed the lower-middle class lives of the Pooters and poked fun at their pretensions and petty concerns. Tony Joseph calls the Diary "a sharp analysis of social insecurity". Although many writers had themselves come from humble backgrounds, they often sought to disguise their origins through scorn: "putting the boot in on the lower middle classes", says Bailey, "has long been the intellectual's blood sport". However, the quarter-century following the publication of The Diary of a Nobody saw a tendency to mix mockery with sympathy, even approval. In the works of writers such as George Gissing, H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and E. M. Forster, characters emerged who, despite the recognisably Pooterish aspects of their lives, were by no means entirely absurd. Bennett and Wells could poke fun at figures such as "Denry Machin", "Mr Polly" or "Mr Lewisham", while at the same time celebrating their fortitude, energy and determination to look for better things. In cases such as these, writes Bailey, "disdain could change to admiration and national self-identification, as the Little Man ... was transposed into Everyman, a model of cheerful resilience in times of crisis."
During the past century, the fictitious diary has developed as an accepted means of comedic expression; the original has, says Morton, "been fertile ground which has germinated many seeds". An early example is Anita Loos's novel of 1925: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady in which the protagonist, Lorelei Lee, records her flirtatious adventure in prose that "follows the mannerisms of colloquial speech" and suggests innocence or ignorance yet, the critic Elyse Graham observes, "burlesques, in excoriating detail, the vernacular of the American middle class". The diary genre became particularly popular in the late 20th century. In 1978–81 Christopher Matthew produced three volumes of diaries recording the daily life of "Simon Crisp", a bachelor would-be man-about town of the era. The title of the first, The Diary of a Somebody, is a direct reference to the Grossmith original. Reviewing this volume in The Spectator, Benny Green points out several parallels with the original, in both character and event. Matthew's book, says Green, is amusing, but the Grossmiths' book is superior; it is "affecting as well as comical, in a way that the Matthew pastiche is not". In 1982 came the first appearance of Sue Townsend's teenage creation, Adrian Mole, whose passage into young manhood and early middle age is charted in a long series of diaries. The more middle-aged he becomes, says Morton, the more he resembles Pooter.
Keith Waterhouse's Mrs Pooter's Diary of 1983 is an adaptation of the Grossmith original that shifts the narrative voice to Carrie Pooter. In 1996 Helen Fielding used the imaginary diary format for Bridget Jones's Diary, which records the daily paraphernalia of a single woman's life. The New York Times critic wrote that it "captures neatly the way modern women teeter between 'I am woman' independence and a pathetic girlie desire to be all things to all men." This diary began as a weekly column in The Independent. In the 1990s the satirical magazine Private Eye lampooned John Major, British prime minister 1990–97, in "The Secret Diary of John Major aged 473⁄4", a hybrid of the Adrian Mole diaries with The Diary of a Nobody, which made much fun of Major's lower-middle class origins.
The social historian James Hammerton defines "Pooterism" as "the dependent weakness and inflated social pretension of white-collar workers, constructed in the workplace but expressed just as powerfully at home". Jon Wilde of The Guardian observes this characteristic in a number of British TV comedy creations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: Captain Mainwaring, Victor Meldrew, and Peep Show's Mark Corrigan are all examples of characters "whose blinkered view of themselves is forever in sharp contrast to how they are perceived by the world". Charles Pooter, says Hammerton, was a metaphor for lower middle-class pretension, pomposity and self-importance, set up for mockery by the "elites". However, by the mid-20th century changes in the perception of masculine roles in lower middle-class society had stifled the mockery, as men increasingly embraced domesticity. Hammerton remarks that the Grossmiths "would surely appreciate the irony in seeing features of the lower middle-class existence they mocked so mercilessly becoming the more universal model for 20th century family life". Bailey remarks on how the poet John Betjeman presented the Pooters "not as objects of ridicule but of envy, snug and secure in their suburban retreat".
## Adaptations
In September 1954 a stage version of the Diary, by Basil Dean and Richard Blake, was presented at London's Arts Theatre with a cast that included George Benson and Dulcie Gray as the Pooters and Leslie Phillips as Lupin. Anthony Hartley, writing in The Spectator, classed this production as "fair-to-middling", with sympathetic performances from the principals: "[I]t is a precondition of this kind of play that everybody concerned should have a heart of gold: only in the case of Mr. Pooter's employer, Mr. Perkupp, do we actually hear the metal chinking."
In 1986 Waterhouse presented an adaptation of his "Mrs Pooter" text at the Garrick Theatre, with Judi Dench and Michael Williams. This version was revived in 1993 at the Greenwich Theatre in a production by Matthew Francis. Clive Swift and Patricia Routledge played Charles and Carrie, in what Paul Taylor in The Independent described as "essentially a two-hander ... in which all the other folk (including Lupin Pooter, the uppish, worrying son) are either imagined characters or, at times, impersonated by the Pooters".
In March 2011 the Diary was the subject of an even less orthodox production at the Royal & Derngate Theatre, Northampton. Adapted by Hugh Osborne, with an all-male cast led by Robert Daws, this supposes that Pooter has arranged for his diaries to be performed by amateur actors. Lyn Gardner in The Guardian found it "a show of some charm – though one that, like Pooter himself, does not quite have the credentials to be quite so pleased with itself".
In 2014 a production of the Diary was staged in London by Rough Haired Pointer at the White Bear Theatre and later transferred to the King's Head Theatre. This production was revived at the King's Head in 2017; Time Out said of it: "It captures the original’s sharp subtext, frivolous wit and heavy irony, while also being very, very silly".
The first adaptation for screen was Ken Russell's short (40-minute) film for the BBC film unit in 1964. Russell shot this in the style of the silent films of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, with the text narrated in a voice-over. The BBC screened two subsequent adaptations: in 1979 a version dramatised by Basil Boothroyd, and in 2007 a four-part dramatisation by Andrew Davies, directed by Susanna White and first shown on BBC Four as part of the channel's Edwardian season. The Guardian's critic wrote of the latter that Hugh Bonneville was "immaculate as the ignored kerfuffler [Pooter]."
BBC Radio 4 has broadcast several dramatisations of the Diary. These include Stephen Tompkinson and Annette Badland in a 2004 adaptation by Kelvin Segger, and Johnny Vegas and Katherine Parkinson in Andrew Lynch's 2012 adaptation. In May 1990, the BBC World Service broadcast a radio version of the 1986 Keith Waterhouse adaptation, starring Judi Dench and Michael Williams; this production was later re-broadcast on 24 December 1991 on BBC Radio 4.
|
7,712,262 |
Lyon-class battleship
| 1,136,535,705 |
Proposed fleet of battleships for the French Navy
|
[
"Battleship classes",
"Battleships of the French Navy",
"Proposed ships",
"Ship classes of the French Navy"
] |
The Lyon class was a set of battleships planned for the French Navy (Marine Nationale) in 1913, with construction scheduled to begin in 1915. The class was to have comprised four ships, named Lyon, Lille, Duquesne, and Tourville. The first two were named for cities in France, and the latter pair honored the French admirals Abraham Duquesne and Anne Hilarion de Tourville. The Lyon class' design was an improvement on the previous Normandie class, utilizing a fourth quadruple-gun turret to mount a total of sixteen 34 cm (13.4 in) guns. Construction on the Lyons was cancelled due to the August 1914 outbreak of World War I, before any of the ships were laid down.
## Design
The French Navy began a dreadnought battleship construction program in 1910 with the four ships of the Courbet class. Two years later, the French legislature passed a naval law which called for a fleet of twenty-eight battleships by 1920. Under this plan, three ships would be ordered in 1912; these became the Bretagne class. Two more were projected for 1913 and another two for 1914, which were to be the first four Normandie-class battleships, though an amendment to the law increased the pace of construction to four Normandies in 1913 and a fifth of the same design in 1914. Four ships were projected for 1915. Design work on the vessels to follow the Normandies began in 1912; the design staff submitted several proposals for the new battleships, with displacements ranging from 27,000 metric tons (26,574 long tons) to 29,000 t (28,542 long tons). In 1913, the Navy authorized a fourth class of battleships, what was to have been the Lyon class, and scheduled their construction for 1915.
One of the main considerations for the new design was the armament to be carried. The French were aware that the latest British battleships—the Queen Elizabeth class—were to be armed with 38 cm (15 in) guns, prompting significant consideration of matching this caliber for the Lyon design. The design staff prepared four variants, two armed with the standard French 34 cm gun in twin or quadruple gun turrets, and two armed with 38 cm guns in twin turrets. The designers also briefly considered a ship armed with twenty 30.5 cm (12 in) guns in quadruple turrets, but the decrease in gun caliber was deemed to be a step in the wrong direction and it was quickly rejected. At the time, the French Navy believed that at the expected battle ranges in the Mediterranean, the 34 cm gun was effective and so the larger 38 cm gun was not necessary. The design staff determined the 38 cm gun would take too long to design, so the proposals that incorporated these weapons were rejected and officials chose between the two 34 cm proposals. The first proposal, which mounted fourteen guns, was a 27,500-metric-ton (27,066-long-ton) ship 185 meters (607 ft) long. On 24 November 1913, the design staff instead chose the slightly larger second design, armed with sixteen guns in four quadruple turrets, but the specific 34 cm gun to be used to arm the ships was still an open question.
The first proposal by the Directorate of Artillery (Direction de l'artillerie) was for the existing 45-caliber gun used by the Bretagne and Normandie-class ships to be modified to use a slightly longer shell that weighed 590 kg (1,300 lb), 50 kg (110 lb) more than the existing shell, and was optimized for underwater performance. The second proposal was for a 50-caliber gun that fired a larger 630 kg (1,390 lb) shell. Accommodating the extra volume and weight of the longer gun was estimated to increase the displacement of the design to 31,000–32,000 t (31,000–31,000 long tons) and to increase the cost from 87 million francs to 93–96 million. The first option was ultimately selected in February 1914. The first two ships, Lyon and Lille, were scheduled to be ordered on 1 January 1915, and Duquesne and Tourville would have followed on 1 April.
The run-up to and beginning of World War I led to the end of the Lyon class. The French government mobilized its reserve forces in July, a month before the conflict, and thereby stripped its shipyards of many of the specialized tradesmen required for constructing the ships. The French also redirected their industrial capacity to weapons and munition orders from the army. In light of such constraints, the navy decided that only those ships that could be completed quickly would be worked upon, such as the Bretagnes.
### Ships
### Characteristics
The ships would have been 190 m (623 ft 4 in) long between perpendiculars and 194.5 m (638 ft 1 in) long overall. They would have had a beam of 29 m (95 ft 2 in) and a draft of 8.65 to 9.2 m (28 ft 5 in to 30 ft 2 in). Their displacement was estimated at 29,600 metric tons (29,100 long tons). The propulsion system had not been settled by the time the class was cancelled; the design staff proposed either the mixed steam turbine and triple-expansion engine system used in the first four ships of the preceding Normandie class or the all-turbine system used in the last Normandie-class ship, Béarn, in a memo dated 13 September 1913. They also considered new geared turbines that had proved satisfactory in the new destroyer Enseigne Gabolde. The final design called for a propulsion system rated at 40,000 metric horsepower (39,000 shp) with a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). An unknown number of boilers were to be trunked into two funnels amidships.
The main battery of the Lyons would have been sixteen 34 cm Modèle 1912M guns mounted in four quadruple-gun turrets. They would have all been mounted on the centerline, although the arrangement is not clear. A preliminary sketch, attached to the design staff's memo of 19 September 1913, showed one turret was placed forward, one amidships, and two in a superfiring pair aft, although the contemporary Journal of United States Artillery suggests the turrets would have been mounted in two superfiring pairs, forward and aft. The turrets weighed 1,500 t (1,500 long tons), and were electrically trained and hydraulically elevated. The guns were divided into pairs and mounted in twin cradles; a 40 mm (1.6 in) thick bulkhead divided the turrets. Each pair of guns had its own ammunition hoist and magazine. They could be fired simultaneously or independently. Before work on the Lyon class had started, the French Navy had begun experimenting with new types of shells. After learning that shells had penetrated the hulls of battleships underwater to burst below their armored belts during the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904 and during British gunnery trials in 1907, the French Navy began investigating how they might optimize shell design to improve their performance through the water. By 1913 the navy believed that it had a design that could be accurate through the water for a distance of 100 meters (328 ft).
The secondary armament was to consist of twenty-four guns, either the 55-caliber 138.6 mm Modèle 1910 or a new automatic model, each singly-mounted in casemates in the hull sides. The M1910 guns fired a 36.5 kg (80 lb) shell at a muzzle velocity of 830 m/s (2,700 ft/s). The ships would also have been equipped with a pair of 47 mm (1.9 in) anti-aircraft guns and six submerged torpedo tubes of unknown size.
The ships would have been protected with a modified version of the armor layout of the earlier Normandie class. The primary alteration was that the upper strake of armor intended to protect the secondary armament was reduced from 160 millimeters (6.3 in) on the Normandies to 100 millimeters (3.9 in). The reduction compensated for the additional armor below the waterline to better protect the hull against "diving" shells. The waterline armor belt would have been 300 millimeters (11.8 in) thick between the barbettes of the end turrets. The turrets were also intended to be protected with an armor thickness of 300 millimeters on their faces. The lower armored deck would have consisted of a total of 42 millimeters (1.7 in) of mild steel; the deck sloped downwards to meet the bottom of the waterline belt and the sloped portion of the deck would have had a total thickness of 70 millimeters (2.8 in). The upper armored deck was intended to be 40 millimeters (1.6 in). Between the end barbettes, below the waterline belt, the thickness of the hull would have graduated from 80 to 35 millimeters (3.1 to 1.4 in) in thickness down to a depth of 6 meters (19 ft 8 in) below the waterline forward and 4.5 meters (14 ft 9 in) aft.
|
1,052,626 |
Typhoon Paka
| 1,172,173,322 |
Pacific typhoon in 1997
|
[
"1997 Pacific hurricane season",
"1997 Pacific typhoon season",
"1997 disasters in the Philippines",
"December 1997 events",
"Eastern Pacific tropical storms",
"November 1997 events",
"Off-season Eastern Pacific tropical cyclones",
"Retired Pacific hurricanes",
"Typhoons",
"Typhoons in Guam",
"Typhoons in the Federated States of Micronesia",
"Typhoons in the Marshall Islands",
"Typhoons in the Northern Mariana Islands",
"Typhoons in the Philippines"
] |
Typhoon Paka, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Rubing, was the last tropical cyclone of the 1997 Pacific hurricane and typhoon season, and was among the strongest Pacific typhoons in the month of December. Paka, which is the Hawaiian name for Pat, developed on November 28 from a trough well to the southwest of Hawaii. The storm tracked generally westward for much of its duration, and on December 7 it crossed into the western Pacific Ocean. Much of its track was characterized by fluctuations in intensity, and on December 10 the cyclone attained typhoon status as it crossed the Marshall Islands. On December 16, Paka struck Guam and Rota with winds of 230 km/h (140 mph), and it strengthened further to reach peak winds on December 18 over open waters as the final super typhoon of the year. Subsequently, it underwent a steady weakening trend, and on December 23 Paka dissipated.
Typhoon Paka first impacted the Marshall Islands, where it dropped heavy rainfall and left in damages. Later, it passed just north of Guam, where strong winds destroyed about 1,500 buildings and damaged 10,000 more; 5,000 people were left homeless, and the island experienced a complete power outage following the typhoon. Damage on the island totaled , which warranted the retirement of its name. Paka also caused minor damage in the Northern Mariana Islands, and overall, the typhoon did not cause any reported fatalities.
## Meteorological history
As the weather synoptics of the northern Pacific Ocean transitioned into a late-fall to early winter-type pattern, convection from the monsoon trough extended to the east of the International Date Line. During late November, a westerly disturbance developed into twin troughs on opposite sides of the equator; the one in the Southern Hemisphere ultimately developed into Tropical Cyclone Pam, while the one in the Northern Hemisphere formed into an area of convection about 2,000 km (1,200 mi) southwest of Hawaii. The disturbance gradually organized as it drifted north-northeastward, and on November 28 it developed into Tropical Depression Five-C about 465 km (289 mi) west-northwest of Palmyra Atoll. Operationally, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) did not begin issuing warnings on the system until December 2.
The tropical depression continued drifting north-northeastward, and failed to strengthen significantly. It turned to the west on December 1, due to the presence of a strong anticyclone to its north with a ridge extending westward past the International Date Line. On December 2, based on satellite estimates, the CPHC upgraded the depression to Tropical Storm Paka while located about 1,000 km (620 mi) south-southeast of Johnston Atoll. Due to the presence of high clouds across the area, forecasters had difficulty at times in locating the low-level circulation. After becoming a tropical storm, Paka remained nearly stationary for about two days before resuming a slow motion to the west-southwest. It steadily intensified due to warm water temperatures, and on December 3 the storm attained winds of 105 km/h (65 mph). The next day, however, it encountered dry air and began weakening; by December 6, the winds had decreased to minimal tropical storm status for about 12 hours. Subsequently, Paka began to re-intensify, and on December 7 the storm crossed the International Date Line into the western North Pacific Ocean with winds of 80 km/h (50 mph).
Upon entering the western North Pacific Ocean, tropical cyclone warning duties transferred from the CPHC to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), and the JMA first assessed Paka as a 65 km/h (40 mph) storm. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) unofficially assumed warning duties for interests in the United States Department of Defense. Paka continued to intensify after crossing the date line, and from late on December 7 through early the following day it remained a strong tropical storm. However, upper-level wind shear increased, and it again weakened. At 1200 UTC on December 9, the JTWC assessed Paka as an 85 km/h (53 mph) tropical storm and forecast it to continue weakening. By December 10, the shear had begun to decrease as the storm moved through the Marshall Islands, and that night the JTWC upgraded Paka to typhoon status. Paka officially attained typhoon status when JMA classified it with winds of 120 km/h (75 mph) at 0000 UTC on December 11.
After attaining typhoon status, Paka strengthened fairly quickly, and by December 12 it reached sustained winds of 150 km/h (93 mph) for a ten-minute (10 min) duration, or 215 km/h (134 mph) over a one-minute (1 min) duration. Subsequently, it briefly weakened as its forward motion increased. However, Paka again re-intensified, and at 1200 UTC on December 14 it attained the unofficial ranking of Category 5 super typhoon status while over the open Pacific Ocean with estimated 1-minute sustained winds of 260 km/h (160 mph). At the same time, the JMA classified it with 10 min sustained winds of 175 km/h (109 mph). After reaching its initial peak intensity, Paka underwent an eyewall replacement cycle and began weakening as it approached the southern Mariana Islands; the NEXRAD Doppler weather radar from Guam revealed the presence of a primary eyewall of 74 km (46 mi) in diameter, with a fragmented inner wall cloud of 19 km (12 mi) in diameter. Additionally, satellite imagery indicated an eyewall mesovortex within the eye of the typhoon. It slowed and began to re-intensify as it continued westward, and at 0530 UTC on December 16 the northern portion of the outer eyewall of Paka passed over the island of Rota; 20 minutes later, the southern portion of the inner wall cloud moved across northern Guam. As it tracked through the Rota Channel, the center of Paka passed about 8 km (5.0 mi) north of the northern tip of Guam, its closest approach to the island.
Typhoon Paka continued to steadily intensify after passing the Marianas Islands, and late on December 17 it reached its peak intensity of 185 km/h (115 mph) 10 min sustained) while located 440 km (270 mi) west-northwest of Guam. Early on December 18, the JTWC assessed it as attaining peak winds of 295 km/h (183 mph) 1 min winds). On December 19, it entered the area of responsibility of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, or PAGASA, and was named Rubing. Shortly thereafter, Paka moved through an area of progressively increasing wind shear, which resulted in a steady weakening trend. By December 21, winds decreased to tropical storm status. The next day, it degenerated into a tropical depression before it dissipated on December 23.
## Preparations and impact
### Marshall Islands
Prior to the typhoon passing through the Marshall Islands, several hundred residents on the island of Ebeye fled to safer structures. The threat of Paka prevented Continental Micronesia from flying in or out of the area.
Paka entered the Marshall Islands between Mili and Majuro as a tropical storm on December 10, and after strengthening into a typhoon, it left the archipelago on December 14. The cyclone affected several islands in the nation, and the Majuro and Kwajalein atolls reported wind gusts in excess of 75 km/h (47 mph). On Jaluit Atoll, the typhoon dropped 217 mm (8.5 in) of precipitation in six hours, with a total of about 300 mm (12 in) recorded in 30 hours. Strong waves inundated low-lying islands, which flooded crops with salt water. The combination of the wind and flooding caused severe damage to banana, papaya, and lime trees across the territory. Typhoon Paka damaged 70% of the houses on Ailinglaplap Atoll, and most of the coconut trees on the atoll were left toppled or damaged. Strong winds left large portions of Ebeye island without electricity or telephone. The typhoon caused no reported deaths or injuries in the region, and damage was estimated at .
### Guam
The Guam National Weather Service issued a typhoon watch on December 14, which was upgraded to a typhoon warning the next day. The Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport was closed during the passage of Paka, with only emergency flights permitted.
Passing a short distance north of the island, Typhoon Paka produced strong winds across northern Guam, though reliable wind reports are incomplete due to the long duration and intensity of the winds. The highest reading believed to be reliable was at Apra Harbor. There, a station recorded a wind gust of 277 km/h (172 mph) before the sensor failed as winds shifted to the southwest; since the winds from the southwest were stronger and of greater duration, officials believe gusts there reached 297 km/h (185 mph). Additionally, Andersen Air Force Base recorded a peak wind gust of 381 km/h (237 mph), which at the time was considered the highest wind speed on record, surpassing the 1934 world record of 372 km/h (231 mph) on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. However, a subsequent wind survey of the area discarded the reading at the base, as it was considered unreliable. As microbarographs are less exposed than wind sensors, pressure readings on the island are considered accurate; the lowest reading on the island was 948 hPa (27.99 inHg) at Andersen Air Force Base. In two days, the typhoon dropped about 533 mm (21.0 in) of precipitation on the northern portion of the island, or about 89% of the monthly rainfall total. Waves along northern Guam reached about 11 m (36 ft) in height.
The strong winds from Paka left around 1,500 buildings destroyed on the island, of which 1,160 were single-family homes. A further 10,000 buildings sustained damage to some degree, with 60% of the homes on the island reporting major damage. In all, about 5,000 people were left homeless due to the typhoon. Additionally, an estimated 30–40% of the public buildings received major damage. Buildings on the island made of reinforced concrete fared well, as opposed to light metal-frame structures, which more often than not were destroyed. Large tourist hotels near Hagåtña, on which Guam is dependent, received generally minor damage, such as broken windows and damaged power generators.
A complete island-wide power outage followed the typhoon; damage to the main electrical transmission and distribution system was estimated at . Following the passage of the typhoon, 25% of the homes on Guam were left without water. Telephone service remained working after the storm, due to most lines being underground. Strong waves washed away a few coastal roads in the northern portion of the island, leaving them temporarily closed. The waves surpassed the seawall at Apra Harbor, damaging the road and infrastructure of the seaport; many boats were washed ashore after breaking from their moorings. Strong winds damaged a radar system and lights along the runway of the Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport, though most airport facilities received light damage. Andersen Air Force Base also sustained heavy damage, with hundreds of downed trees and many facilities left damaged. Across Guam, damage was estimated at . About 100 people were injured, but the typhoon caused no deaths on the island.
### Northern Mariana Islands
A typhoon watch was issued for Rota, Tinian, and Saipan on December 14, which was upgraded to a typhoon warning the next day. Because Paka was intensifying while passing to the south of Rota, the first wind, or northeast through east winds, was less severe than the second wind from the southeast. Sustained winds on the island reached 145 km/h (90 mph), with gusts reaching 185 km/h (115 mph). Many trees in the mountainous portion of the island were left defoliated, which limited nesting and foraging sites for the endangered bridled white-eye bird. While passing to the south of the island, Paka dropped 250–300 mm (9.8–11.8 in) of rain. Damage on the island totaled \$4.4 million (1997 USD, \$6.4 million 2015 USD). The typhoon also produced above-normal precipitation on Saipan.
## Aftermath
Following the passage of the typhoon in the Ailinglaplap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, residents experienced severe food shortages due to damaged crops and little rainfall. Experts estimated the entire redevelopment of its fauna would require more than a decade. As a result of the crop shortage, large-scale evacuations of the islands' residents were considered. Officials in the nation requested assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the United States, and on March 20, 1998, the area was declared a disaster area; the declaration allowed for the usage of emergency funds.
On December 17, 1997, President Bill Clinton declared Guam a federal disaster area, making it eligible for federal assistance. One week later, a disaster declaration was ordered for the Northern Mariana Islands. Ultimately, FEMA received 14,770 Individual Assistance Applications from residents on Guam. In turn, FEMA provided the residents with over \$27 million in assistance (1997 USD, \$39 million 2015 USD). The entire island of Guam was left without power after Paka. Water and sewage systems on Guam were directly affected minimally by the typhoon. With the usage of power generators, most areas of the island had water pumping capabilities within a few days after the typhoon. The Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport was partially reopened to daytime flights a day after the typhoon, and by a week after the passage of Paka the airport was fully re-opened.
### Retirement
Due to the severe damage from the typhoon, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center requested the retirement of the name in April 2006; the name Paka was replaced with Pama.
## See also
- 1997–98 El Niño event
- List of off-season Pacific hurricanes
- Typhoon Gay (1992)
- Typhoon Oliwa
- Typhoon Keith
|
17,194,836 |
Indigenous people of the Everglades region
| 1,141,493,137 |
Peoples of the Florida Everglades
|
[
"Everglades",
"History of Key West, Florida",
"Native American history of Florida",
"Native American tribes in Florida",
"Seminole"
] |
The indigenous people of the Everglades region arrived in the Florida peninsula of what is now the United States approximately 14,000 to 15,000 years ago, probably following large game. The Paleo-Indians found an arid landscape that supported plants and animals adapted to prairie and xeric scrub conditions. Large animals became extinct in Florida around 11,000 years ago. Climate changes 6,500 years ago brought a wetter landscape. The Paleo-Indians slowly adapted to the new conditions. Archaeologists call the cultures that resulted from the adaptations Archaic peoples. They were better suited for environmental changes than their ancestors, and created many tools with the resources they had. Approximately 5,000 years ago, the climate shifted again to cause the regular flooding from Lake Okeechobee that gave rise to the Everglades ecosystems.
From the Archaic peoples, two major tribes emerged in the area: the Calusa and the Tequesta. The earliest written descriptions of these people come from Spanish explorers, who sought to convert and conquer them. Although they lived in complex societies, little evidence of their existence remains today. The Calusa were more powerful in number and political structure. Their territory was centered on modern-day Ft. Myers, and extended as far north as Tampa, as far east as Lake Okeechobee, and as far south as the Keys. The Tequesta lived on the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula around what is today Biscayne Bay and the Miami River. Both societies were well adapted to live in the various ecosystems of the Everglades regions. Their people often traveled through the heart of the Everglades, though they rarely lived within it.
After more than 210 years of relations with the Spanish, both indigenous societies lost cohesiveness. Official records indicate that survivors of war and disease were transported to Havana with Spanish colonists in the late 18th century, after Great Britain took over some of the territory. Isolated groups may have been assimilated into the Seminole nation, which formed in northern Florida when a band of Creek consolidated surviving members of pre-Columbian societies in Florida into their own group to become a distinct tribe, in a process of ethnogenesis. They also were joined by free blacks and escaped slaves, who became known as Black Seminole. The Seminole were forced south and into the Everglades by the U.S. military during the Seminole Wars from 1835 to 1842. The U.S. military pursued the Seminole into the region, which resulted in some of the first recorded European-American explorations of much of the area. Federally recognized Seminole tribes continue to live in the Everglades region. Since the late 20th century, they have developed casino gambling on six reservations in the state, which generate revenues for the welfare and education of their tribes.
## Prehistoric peoples
Humans first inhabited the peninsula of Florida approximately 14,000 to 15,000 years ago; it looked vastly different at that time and had a different climate. The west coast extended about 100 miles (160 km) to the west of its current location. The landscape had large dunes and sweeping winds characteristic of an arid region, and pollen samples show foliage was limited to small stands of oak and scrub bushes. As Earth's glacial ice retreated, winds slowed and vegetation became more prevalent and varied. The Paleo-Indian diets consisted of small plants and available wild game, which included saber-toothed cats, ground sloths, and spectacled bears. The Pleistocene megafauna died out around 11,000 years ago. Around 6,500 years ago, the climate of Florida changed again during the Holocene climatic optimum and became much wetter. Paleo-Indians spent more time in camps and less time traveling between sources of water.
The Paleo-Indians who survived are now known as the Archaic peoples of the Florida peninsula. They lived on after the extinction of most big game and were primarily hunter-gatherers who depended on smaller game and fish. They relied on plants for food more than their ancestors. They were able to adapt to the shifting climate and the resulting changes in animal and plant populations.
Florida experienced a prolonged drought at the onset of the Early Archaic era that lasted until the Middle Archaic period. Although the population decreased overall on the peninsula, their use of tools increased significantly during this time. Artifacts demonstrate that these people used drills, knives, choppers, atlatls, and awls made from stone, antlers, and bone.
During the Late Archaic period, the climate became wetter again and by approximately 3000 BCE, the rise of water tables allowed an increase in population. Cultural development also took place. Florida Indians formed into three similar but distinct cultures: Okeechobee, Caloosahatchee, and Glades, named for the bodies of water where they were centered.
The Glades culture is divided into three periods based on evidence found in middens. In 1947, archaeologist John Goggin described the three periods after examining shell mounds. He excavated one on Matecumbe Key, another at Gordon Pass near modern-day Naples, and a third south of Lake Okeechobee near modern-day Belle Glade. The Glades I culture, lasting from 500 BCE to 800 CE, was apparently focused around Gordon Pass and is considered the least sophisticated due to the lack of artifacts. What has been found—primarily pottery—is gritty and plain. With the advent of a well-established culture in 800 CE, the Glades II period is characterized by more ornate pottery, wide use of tools throughout the South Florida region, and the appearance of religious artifacts at burial sites. By 1200, the Glades III culture exhibited the height of their development. Pottery became ornate enough to be subdivided into types of decoration. More importantly, evidence of an expanding culture is revealed through the development of ceremonial ornaments made from shell, and the construction of large earthworks associated with burial rituals. From the Glades III culture developed two distinct tribes that lived in and near the Everglades in the historic period: the Calusa and the Tequesta.
## Calusa
What is known of the inhabitants of Florida after 1566 was recorded by European explorers and settlers. Juan Ponce de León is credited as the first European to have contact with Florida's indigenous people in 1513. Ponce de León met with hostility from tribes that may have been the Ais and the Tequesta before rounding Cape Sable to meet the Calusa, the largest and most powerful tribe in South Florida. Ponce de León found at least one of the Calusa fluent in Spanish. The explorer assumed the Spanish-speaker was from Hispaniola, but anthropologists have suggested that communication and trade between Calusa and native people in Cuba and the Florida Keys was common, or that Ponce de León was not the first Spaniard to make contact with the native people of Florida. During his second visit to South Florida, Ponce de León was killed by the Calusa, and the tribe gained a reputation for violence, causing future explorers to avoid them. In the more than 200 years the Calusa had relations with the Spanish, they were able to resist their attempts to missionize them.
The Calusa were referred to as Carlos by the Spanish, which may have sounded like Calos, a variation of the Muskogean word kalo meaning "black" or "powerful". Much of what is known about the Calusa was provided by Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda. Fontaneda was a 13-year-old boy who was the only survivor of a shipwreck off the coast of Florida in 1545. For seventeen years he lived with the Calusa until explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés found him in 1566. Menéndez took Fontaneda to Spain where he wrote about his experiences. Menéndez approached the Calusa with the intention of establishing relations with them to ease the settlement of the future Spanish colony. The chief, or cacique, was called Carlos by the Spanish. Positions of importance in Calusa society were given the adopted names Carlos and Felipe, transliterated from Spanish royal tradition. However, the cacique Carlos described by Fontaneda was the most powerful chief during Spanish colonization. Menéndez married his sister in order to facilitate relations between the Spanish and the Calusa. This arrangement was common in societies in South Florida people. Polygamy was a method of solving disputes or settling agreements between rival towns. Menéndez, however, was already married and expressed discomfort with the union. Unable to avoid the marriage, he took Carlos' sister to Havana where she was educated, and where one account reported that she died years later, the marriage never consummated.
Fontaneda explained in his 1571 memoir that Carlos controlled fifty villages located on Florida's west coast, around Lake Okeechobee (which they called Mayaimi) and on the Florida Keys (which they called Martires). Smaller tribes of Ais and Jaega who lived to the east of Lake Okeechobee, paid regular tributes to Carlos. The Spanish suspected the Calusa of harvesting treasures from shipwrecks and distributing the gold and silver between the Ais and Jaega, with Carlos receiving the majority. The main village of the Calusa, and home of Carlos, bordered Estero Bay at present-day Mound Key where the Caloosahatchee River meets the Gulf of Mexico. Fontaneda described human sacrifice as a common practice: when the child of a cacique died, each resident gave up a child to be sacrificed, and when the cacique died, his servants were sacrificed to join him. Each year a Christian was required to be sacrificed to appease a Calusa idol. The building of shell mounds of varying sizes and shapes was also of spiritual significance to the Calusa. In 1895 Frank Hamilton Cushing excavated a massive shell mound on Key Marco that was composed of several constructed terraces hundreds of yards long. Cushing unearthed over a thousand Calusa artifacts. Among them he found tools made of bone and shell, pottery, human bones, masks, and animal carvings made of wood.
The Calusa, like their predecessors, were hunter-gatherers who existed on small game, fish, turtles, alligators, shellfish, and various plants. Finding little use for the soft limestone of the area, they made most of their tools from bone or teeth, although they also found sharpened reeds effective. Weapons consisted of bows and arrows, atlatls, and spears. Most villages were located at the mouths of rivers or on key islands. They used canoes for transportation, as evidenced by shell mounds in and around the Everglades that border canoe trails. South Florida tribes often canoed through the Everglades, but rarely lived in them. Canoe trips to Cuba were also common.
Calusa villages often had more than 200 inhabitants, and their society was organized in a hierarchy. Apart from the cacique, other strata included priests and warriors. Family bonds promoted the hierarchy, and marriage between siblings was common among the elite. Fontaneda wrote, "These Indians have no gold, no silver, and less clothing. They go naked except for some breech cloths woven of palms, with which the men cover themselves; the women do the like with certain grass that grows on trees. This grass looks like wool, although it is different from it". Only one instance of structures was described: Carlos met Menéndez in a large house with windows and room for over a thousand people.
The Spanish found Carlos uncontrollable, as their priests and the Calusa fought almost constantly. Carlos was killed when a Spanish soldier shot him with a crossbow. Following Carlos' death, leadership of the society passed to the war chief Felipe, who was also killed by the Spanish shortly after. Estimated numbers of Calusa at the beginning of the occupation of the Spanish ranged from 4,000 to 7,000. The society endured a decline of power and population after Carlos; by 1697 their number was estimated to be about 1,000. In the early 18th century, the Calusa came under attack from the Yamasee to the north; many asked to be removed to Cuba, where almost 200 died of illness. Some of these later relocated to Florida, and remnants may have been eventually assimilated into the Seminole culture, which developed during the 18th century.
## Tequesta
Second in power and number to the Calusa in South Florida were the Tequesta (also called Tekesta, Tequeste, and Tegesta). They occupied the southeastern portion of the lower peninsula in modern-day Dade, Broward, and the southern half of Palm Beach counties. They may have been controlled by the Calusa, but accounts state that they sometimes refused to comply with the Calusa caciques, which resulted in war. Like the Calusa, they rarely lived within the Everglades, but found the coastal prairies and pine rocklands to the east of the freshwater sloughs habitable. To the north, their territory was bordered by the Ais and Jaega. Like the Calusa, the Tequesta societies centered on the mouths of rivers. Their main village was probably on the Miami River or Little River. A large shell mound on the Little River marks where a village once stood. Though little remains of the Tequesta society, a site of archeological importance called the Miami Circle was discovered in 1998 in downtown Miami. It may be the remains of a Tequesta structure. Its significance has yet to be determined, though archeologists and anthropologists continue to study it.
The Spanish described the Tequesta as greatly feared by their sailors, who suspected the natives of torturing and killing survivors of shipwrecks. Spanish priests wrote that the Tequesta performed child sacrifices to mark the occasion of making peace with a tribe with whom they had been fighting. Like the Calusa, the Tequesta hunted small game, but depended more upon roots and less on shellfish in their diets. They did not practice cultivated agriculture. They were skilled canoeists and hunted in the open ocean for what Fontaneda described as whales, but were probably manatees. They lassoed the manatees and drove a stake through their snouts.
The first contact with Spanish explorers occurred in 1513 when Juan Ponce de León stopped at a bay he called Chequescha, or Biscayne Bay. Finding the Tequesta unwelcoming, he left to make contact with the Calusa. Menéndez met the Tequesta in 1565 and maintained a friendly relationship with them, building some houses and setting up a mission. He also took the chief's nephew to Havana to be educated, and the chief's brother to Spain. After Menéndez visited, there are few records of the Tequesta: a reference to them in 1673, and further Spanish contact to convert them. The last reference to the Tequesta during their existence was written in 1743 by a Spanish priest named Father Alaña, who described their ongoing assault by another tribe. The survivors numbered only 30, and the Spanish transported them to Havana. In 1770 a British surveyor described multiple deserted villages in the region where the Tequesta had lived. Archeologist John Goggin suggested that by the time European Americans settled the area in 1820, any remaining Tequesta were assimilated into the Seminole people. Common descriptions of Native Americans in Florida by 1820 identified only the "Seminoles".
## Seminole / Miccosukee
Following the demise of the Calusa and Tequesta, Native Americans in southern Florida were referred to as "Spanish Indians" in the 1740s, probably due to their friendlier relations with Spain. Between the Spanish defeat in the Seven Years' War in 1763 and the end of the American War of Independence in 1783, the United Kingdom ruled Florida. The first known use of the term "Seminolie" is from a British Indian agent in a document dated 1771. The beginnings of the tribe are vague, but records show that Creeks invaded the Florida peninsula, conquering and assimilating what was left of pre-Columbian societies into the Creek Confederacy. The mixing of cultures is evident in the language influences present among the Seminoles: various Muskogean languages, notably Hitchiti, and Creek, as well as Timucuan. In the early 19th century, a US Indian agent explained the Seminoles this way: "The word Seminole means runaway or broken off. Hence ... applicable to all the Indians in the Territory of Florida as all of them ran away ... from the Creek ... Nation". Linguistically, the term "Seminole" comes from a corruption of the Spanish word "cimarron," likening their migratory history to wild horses. The traditional Muskogee Creek Language lacks a rhotic phoneme. There was a metathesis of the penultimate and ultimate syllables.
Creeks, who were centered in modern-day Alabama and Georgia, were known to incorporate conquered tribes into their own. Some Africans escaping slavery from South Carolina and Georgia fled to Florida, lured by Spanish promises of freedom should they convert to Catholicism, and found their way into the tribe. Seminoles originally settled in the northern portion of the territory, but the 1823 Treaty of Moultrie Creek forced them to live on a 5-million-acre (20,000 km<sup>2</sup>) reservation north of Lake Okeechobee. They soon ranged farther south, where they numbered approximately 300 in the Everglades region, including bands of Miccosukees—a similar tribe who spoke a different language—who lived in The Big Cypress. Unlike the Calusa and Tequesta, the Seminole depended more on agriculture and raised domesticated animals. They hunted for what they ate, and traded with European-American settlers. They lived in structures called chickees, open-sided palm-thatched huts, probably adapted from the Calusa.
In 1817, Andrew Jackson invaded Florida to hasten its annexation to the United States in what became the First Seminole War. After Florida became a U.S. territory and settlement increased, conflicts between colonists and Seminoles became more frequent. The Second Seminole War (1835–1842) resulted in almost 4,000 Seminoles in Florida being displaced or killed. The Seminole Wars pushed the Indians farther south and into the Everglades. Those who did not find refuge in the Everglades were relocated to Oklahoma Indian territory under Indian Removal.
The Third Seminole War lasted from 1855 to 1859. Over its course, 20 Seminoles were killed and 240 were removed. By 1913, Seminoles in the Everglades numbered no more than 325. They made their villages in hardwood hammocks, islands of hardwood trees that formed in rivers or pine rockland forests. Seminole diets consisted of hominy and coontie roots, fish, turtles, venison, and small game. Villages were not large, due to the limited size of hammocks, which on average measured between one and 10 acres (40,000 m<sup>2</sup>). In the center of the village was a cook-house, and the largest structure was reserved for eating. When the Seminoles lived in northern Florida, they wore animal-skin clothing similar to their Creek predecessors. The heat and humidity of the Everglades influenced their adapting a different style of dress. Seminoles replaced their heavier buckskins with clothing of unique calico patchwork designs made of lighter cotton, or silk for more formal occasions.
The Seminole Wars increased the U.S. military presence in the Everglades, which resulted in the exploration and mapping of many regions that had not previously been recorded. The military officers who had done the mapping and charting of the Everglades were approached by Thomas Buckingham Smith in 1848 to consult on the feasibility of draining the region for agricultural use.
### Modern times
Between the end of the Third Seminole War and 1930, a few hundred Seminoles continued to live in relative isolation in the Everglades area. Flood control and drainage projects in the area beginning in the early 20th century opened up much land for development and significantly altered the natural environment, inundating some areas while leaving former swamps dry and arable. These projects, along with the completion of the Tamiami Trail which bisected the Everglades in 1930, simultaneously ended old ways of life and introduced new opportunities. A steady stream of white developers and tourists came to the area, and the native people began to work in local farms, ranches, and souvenir stands. They cleared land for the town of Everglades, and were "the best fire fighters [the National Park Service] could recruit" when Everglades National Park caught fire in times of drought.
As metropolitan areas in South Florida began to grow, the Miccosukee branch of the Seminoles became closely associated with the Everglades, simultaneously seeking privacy and serving as a tourist attraction, wrestling alligators, selling crafts, and giving eco-tours of their land. As of 2008, there were six Seminole and Miccosukee reservations throughout Florida; they feature casino gaming that supports the tribe.
## See also
- History of Florida
- Indigenous peoples of Florida
- Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands
|
338,636 |
European rock pipit
| 1,172,685,825 |
Small passerine bird that breeds in western Europe
|
[
"Anthus",
"Birds described in 1798",
"Birds of Eurasia",
"Birds of Europe",
"Birds of Scandinavia",
"Pipits and wagtails",
"Taxa named by George Montagu (naturalist)"
] |
The European rock pipit (Anthus petrosus), or simply rock pipit, is a species of small passerine bird that breeds in western Europe on rocky coasts. It has streaked greyish-brown upperparts and buff underparts, and is similar in appearance to other European pipits. There are three subspecies, of which only the Fennoscandian one is migratory, wintering in shoreline habitats further south in Europe. The European rock pipit is territorial at least in the breeding season, and year-round where it is resident. Males will sometimes enter an adjacent territory to assist the resident in repelling an intruder, behaviour only otherwise known from the African fiddler crab.
European rock pipits construct a cup nest under coastal vegetation or in cliff crevices and lay four to six speckled pale grey eggs which hatch in about two weeks with a further 16 days to fledging. Although insects are occasionally caught in flight, the pipits feed mainly on small invertebrates picked off the rocks or from shallow water.
The European rock pipit may be hunted by birds of prey, infested by parasites such as fleas, or act as an involuntary host to the common cuckoo, but overall its population is large and stable, and it is therefore evaluated as a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
## Taxonomy and systematics
The family Motacillidae consists of the wagtails, pipits and longclaws. The largest of these groups is the pipits in the genus Anthus, which are typically brown-plumaged terrestrial insectivores. Their similar appearances have led to taxonomic problems; the water pipit and the buff-bellied pipit were considered subspecies of the European rock pipit until they were separated by the British Ornithologists' Union in 1998. The European rock pipit is closely related to the meadow, red-throated and rosy pipits as well as its former subspecies.
The first formal description naming this species was by English naturalist George Montagu in 1798. It had previously been described in 1766 by Thomas Pennant, in the first edition of British Zoology, although he did not distinguish it from the common titlark (meadow pipit). It was first shown to be different from that species by John Walcott in the 1789 edition of his Synopsis of British Birds, in which he called it the sea lark. John Latham was the first to give the European rock pipit a scientific name, Alauda obscura in 1790, but the specimen he examined had been misidentified as to the species and was in fact a dusky lark. In the same year, Montagu, whom Latham had consulted about the bird, discovered the European rock pipit on the coast of South Wales, where it was known to some fishermen in the region as the "rock lark". He adopted that name for the species and gave it the scientific name Alauda petrosus.
The scientific name of the European rock pipit is from Latin. Anthus is the name given by Pliny the Elder to a small bird of grasslands, and the specific petrosus means "rocky", from petrus, "rock".
There are three recognised subspecies of the European rock pipit:
A. p. kleinschmidti is sometimes merged with the nominate form, A. p. petrosus. The suggested subspecies A. p. meinertzhageni on South Uist, A. p. hesperianus on the Isle of Arran, and A. p. ponens in northwestern France cannot be reliably separated from the nominate form. There is a geographical trend in appearance, with longer-billed, darker birds at the western end of the range, and shorter-billed, paler individuals in the east.
## Description
The European rock pipit is 16.5–17 centimetres (6.5–6.7 in) long and weighs 18–32.5 grams (0.63–1.15 oz). The nominate race has smoky-olive upperparts, weakly streaked with darker brown, and buff underparts, heavily marked with poorly defined brown streaks. The legs, bill and iris are dark brown or blackish, and there is a pale eye-ring. The sexes are alike; although males average slightly brighter than females, the overlap is complete and birds cannot be sexed on appearance or measurements. Immature birds resemble the adult, although they may sometimes be browner and more streaked above, looking superficially similar to meadow pipits.
Compared to the nominate form, A. p. kleinschmidti has slightly yellower, less olive, upperparts and brighter and yellower underparts between the breast streaking. A. p. littoralis may show pinkish underparts and a pale supercilium (eyebrow) in summer, thereby resembling the water pipit. Vagrant European rock pipits in winter are readily distinguishable from water pipits, but very difficult to assign to subspecies by appearance or measurements. The western populations are known to be nearly sedentary, so east of the Elbe basin vagrant Eurasian rock pipits are presumably mostly littoralis.
Adult European rock pipits have a complete moult in August–September, at which time juveniles replace their body and some wing covert feathers, giving them an appearance very like the adults. From late January to early March there is a partial moult and individually variable moult of some body and wing covert feathers, and sometimes the central tail feathers.
The European rock pipit is closely related to the water pipit and the meadow pipit, and is rather similar in appearance. Compared to the meadow pipit, the European rock pipit is darker, larger and longer-winged than its relative, and has dark, rather than pinkish-red, legs. The water pipit in winter plumage is also confusable with the European rock pipit, but has a strong supercilium and greyer upperparts; it is also typically much warier. The European rock pipit's dusky, rather than white, outer tail feathers are also a distinction from all its relatives. The habitats used by European rock and water pipits are completely separate in the breeding season, and there is little overlap even when birds are not nesting.
The European rock pipit's song is a sequence of about twenty tinkling cheepa notes followed by a rising series of thin gee calls, and finishing with a short trill. The shrill pseep flight call is intermediate between the soft sip sip sip of the meadow pipit and the water pipit's short, thin fist.
## Distribution and habitat
The European rock pipit is almost entirely coastal, frequenting rocky areas typically below 100 metres (330 ft), although on St Kilda it breeds at up to 400 metres (1,300 ft). The European rock pipit is not troubled by wind or rain, although it avoids very exposed situations. It may occur further inland in winter or on migration.
The breeding range is temperate and Arctic Europe on western and Baltic Sea coasts, with a very small number sometimes nesting in Iceland. The nominate race is largely resident, with only limited movement. A. p. kleinschmidti, which nests on the Faroe Islands and the Scottish islands, may move to sandy beaches or inland to rivers and lakes in winter. A. p. littoralis is largely migratory, wintering on coasts from southern Scandinavia to southwest Europe, with a few reaching Morocco. Wanderers have reached Spitsbergen and the Canary Islands, but records in Europe away from the coast are rare. For example, a male shot at Dresden in 1894, now in the collection of the local State Museum of Zoology, is the sole specimen for Saxony.
Migratory populations leave their breeding grounds in September and October, returning from March onwards, although in the far north they may not arrive before May.
## Behaviour
The European rock pipit is a much more approachable bird than the water pipit. If startled, it flies a fairly short distance, close to the ground, before it alights, whereas its relative is warier and flies some distance before landing again. Eurasian rock pipits are usually solitary, only occasionally forming small flocks.
### Breeding
The European rock pipit is highly territorial in the breeding season, and throughout the year where it is resident. Breeding males have a song display in which they fly to 15–30 metres (49–98 ft) above the ground, then circle or descend to the ground with a fluttering "parachute" flight. Territorial males will sometimes enter the territory of an adjacent male to cooperate in evicting an intruder. This behaviour, which requires the ability to distinguish the resident from the intruder, is only otherwise known from the African fiddler crab.
Eggs are laid from early to mid-April in Britain and Ireland, from mid-May in southern Scandinavia, and from June in the north. The nest is always close to the shore, in a cliff crevice or hole, or under the cover of vegetation. It is constructed by the female from seaweed and dead grass, and lined with finer fibres or hair.
The clutch is four to six eggs, glossy pale grey with darker grey or olive speckles mainly at the wider end. They measure 21.6 by 16.0 millimetres (0.85 in × 0.63 in) and weigh 2.7 grams (0.095 oz), of which 5% is shell. They are incubated for 14–16 days to hatching, almost entirely by the female, although males have been recorded as occasionally helping. The naked altricial chicks are brooded by the female and fledge in about 16 days. Both parents may feed the chicks for several days after fledging. There may be two broods in a year in the south of the pipit's range, and just one further north.
In a British survey, a hatching rate of 82% and a fledging rate of 78% gave an overall 58% nesting success, with an average 2.5 surviving young per pair. In contrast, a study in northwestern France found juvenile mortality was nearly 70%. The average lifespan is not recorded, although the maximum recorded age is 10.9 years.
### Feeding
The European rock pipit's feeding habitat is rocky coasts, rather than the damp grassland favoured by the water pipit. The European rock pipit feeds mainly on invertebrates, seeking out most of its prey on foot, only occasionally flying to catch insects. It will venture into shallow water as it follows retreating waves, and may take advantage of human activity that exposes sea slaters or other species that hide under stones.
Food items include snails, worms, small crustaceans, flies and beetles. The proportions of each prey species vary with season and locality. Amphipod larvae are important in Ireland and Scotland, crustaceans in Norway, and the mollusc Assiminea grayana in the Netherlands. Small fish are occasionally eaten, and in hard weather pipits may scavenge for other food, including human food litter. There is little competition from other species for food, since rocky beach specialists like the purple sandpiper take slightly larger food items, and may wade in deeper water. When food is abundant, meadow pipits may also feed on the shore, but are driven away by the European rock pipits when there is less prey available.
## Predators and parasites
The European rock pipit is hunted by birds of prey including the Eurasian sparrowhawk. As with other members of its genus, it is a host of the common cuckoo, a brood parasite. Eggs laid by cuckoos that specialise in using pipits as their hosts are similar in appearance to those of the pipit.
The European rock pipit is also a host to the flea Ceratophyllus borealis, and several other flea species in the genera Ceratophyllus and Dasypsyllus. The Eurasian rock pipit can benefit from parasitism of the common periwinkle Littorina littoria by the castrating trematode Parorchis acanthus. Beaches can become attractive where the decline of the periwinkle results in more ungrazed algae, with corresponding increases in invertebrates and a greater diversity of smaller Littorina snails as food for the pipits.
## Status
Estimates of the breeding population of the European rock pipit vary, but may be as high as 408,000 pairs, of which around 300,000 pairs are in Norway. Despite slight declines in the British population and some range expansion in Finland, the population is considered overall to be large and stable, and for this reason it is evaluated as a species of least concern by the IUCN.
Breeding densities vary from 0.9–6 pairs/km (1.4–9.7 pairs/mi) of coast depending on the quality of the habitat. There are few threats, although oil spills can temporarily reduce the invertebrate population of affected rocky coasts.
|
24,475,766 |
Free State of Galveston
| 1,170,908,540 |
Era in Galveston, Texas history
|
[
"Culture of Galveston, Texas",
"Galveston County, Texas",
"Gambling in Texas",
"Greater Houston",
"Gulf of Mexico",
"History of Galveston, Texas",
"History of Texas",
"Populated coastal places in Texas",
"Prohibition in the United States",
"Seaside resorts in Texas"
] |
The Free State of Galveston (sometimes referred to as the Republic of Galveston Island) was a satirical name given to the coastal city of Galveston in the U.S. state of Texas during the early-to-mid-20th century. Today, the term is sometimes used to describe the culture and history of that era.
During the Roaring Twenties, Galveston Island emerged as a popular resort town, attracting celebrities from around the country. Gambling, illegal liquor, and other vice-oriented businesses were a major part of tourism. The "Free State" moniker embodied a belief held by many locals that Galveston was beyond what they perceived were repressive mores and laws of Texas and the United States. Two major figures of the era were the businessmen, power brokers and crime bosses Sam and Rosario Maceo, who ran the chief casinos and clubs on the island and were heavily involved in local politics and the tourism industry. The success of vice on the island, despite being illegal, was enabled by lax attitudes in society and in government, both on the island and in the county. In one of the more famous examples of this, a state committee, investigating gambling at the fabled Balinese Room, was told by the local sheriff that he had not raided the establishment because it was a "private club" and because he was not a "member".
Much of this period represented a high point in Galveston's economy. It is sometimes referred to as the "open era" or the "wide-open era" because the business owners and the community made little effort to hide the illegal activities. The tourist industry spawned by the illegal businesses helped to offset Galveston's decline as a commercial and shipping center following a devastating hurricane in 1900, but crackdowns against gambling and prostitution in Texas during the mid-20th century made these businesses increasingly difficult to sustain. By the end of the 1950s, this era of Galveston's history had ended. As a result, its economy became stagnant for many years afterward.
## Background
The island of Galveston, which lies on the Gulf of Mexico, held one of the first major settlements in the eastern part of what is now Texas. During the mid- to late 19th century, it became the largest city in the state. Galveston was also an important national commercial center and one of the busiest seaports in the United States, as the Port of Galveston was able to capitalize on Texas' rapid rise in the cotton trade. Its downtown was known as the "Wall Street of the Southwest", and by 1900, the city had one of the highest per capita incomes in the U.S. Though nearby Houston was emerging as an important city in its own right, Galveston was the state's cultural and economic center at the time. Vices such as prostitution and gambling, which were common throughout Texas during the 19th century, continued to be tolerated to various degrees on the island in the early 20th century.
The 1900 Galveston hurricane was an unparalleled disaster. Estimates of the death toll range from 6,000 to 12,000 people, in addition to many more on the Gulf Coast and along the shores of the bay. Immediately after the hurricane, Galveston worked to revive itself as a port and an entertainment center, including the construction of tourist destinations such as the Hotel Galvez, which opened in 1911. In the same year, the Galveston–Houston Electric Railway opened and became recognized as the fastest interurban rail system in the country. Galveston's port was also rebuilt quickly, and by 1912, had become the second-leading exporter in the nation, behind New York. Nevertheless, after the 1900 storm and another in 1915, many avoided investing in the island.
Galveston had been a major port of entry for Texas and the West during the 19th century, and a new wave of immigration came through the port in the early 20th century. For a time, it was known as "Little Ellis Island". In contrast to the heavily German immigration of the 19th century, the new arrivals in Galveston were Greeks, Italians, Russian Jews (part of the Galveston Movement), and others who came to settle in many parts of the country, including some who remained on the island itself. Of particular note are the Sicilian immigrants who formed a significant community in Galveston County, as well as the nearby city of Brazoria.
The opening of the Houston Ship Channel in 1915 further challenged the port city. Houston and Texas City, as well as other ports, rapidly overtook Galveston as leading ports and commercial centers; by 1930, map makers were showing Houston as the major city on the Texas coast, instead of Galveston. Cotton shipping, which Galveston had thoroughly dominated on a worldwide level, began migrating to other ports in Texas and on the West Coast.
As Galveston's traditional economy declined, Texas' oil boom began in 1901, with oil wells and refineries constructed throughout the state. Galveston's direct role in this boom was minimal, as investors avoided building pipelines and refineries on the island itself (though for a time oil was shipped through the island). Nevertheless, wealth brought on by the boom transformed nearby Houston, Texas City, Goose Creek (modern Baytown), and other communities. Houston in particular became home to a large community of wealthy businessmen and investors. Galveston became even more tourism-focused as the city sought to attract these nearby nouveau riche. Though, the city had some success in re-establishing tourism and shipping, its economy struggled to rise to the level it had been before the 1900 storm.
## Prohibition and the Maceos
During the early 20th century, reform movements in the U.S. (the so-called Progressive movement) made most forms of gambling illegal in most communities. Gambling continued illegally in many places, though, creating new opportunities for criminal enterprises. The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1919, outlawed the manufacture, transportation, importation, and sale of alcoholic beverages and initiated the Prohibition era. The new law was widely unpopular, and rum-running and bootlegging became rampant. Galveston's already lax social attitudes allowed this, as well as brothels and other illegal businesses, to blossom in the city. These institutions were so accepted that at one point, the city required health inspections for prostitutes to ensure the safety of their clients.
At the beginning of Prohibition, two main gangs divided the city: the Beach Gang led by Ollie Quinn, and the Downtown Gang led by Johnny Jack Nounes. Though the gangs largely kept to themselves, shootouts and gang-related killings were not unheard of. Rum-running became big business; liquor was imported from overseas and distributed throughout the city, the state, and other parts of the country. A "rum row" (a line of booze-laden ships from Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas) became a fixture about 35 miles (56 km) beyond the coastline, where smaller boats fetched the goods and brought them to shore. Quinn was the leading figure in Galveston's vice market. Quinn's partner Dutch Voight is often referred to as the "father" of organized gambling on the island because he established organized poker games in 1910. Quinn's main casino, the Deluxe Club, was an island landmark.
About this time, the Maceo family became important to Galveston's history. The family had immigrated from Palermo, Sicily, to Louisiana in 1901. Two brothers, Rosario (Rose) and Salvatore (Sam) Maceo, trained as barbers and moved to Galveston shortly before World War I to start their business. As Prohibition took hold, the brothers began to give their customers gifts of (low-quality) wine that they were able to smuggle. As their customers became more interested in the liquor, the Maceos gradually became more serious bootleggers. They allied themselves with the Beach Gang, opened a "cold drink place" (i.e., speakeasy), and invested in the gang's gambling operations.
Eventually the Maceos, with Quinn, opened the Hollywood Dinner Club, at the time the most elegant night club on the Gulf Coast. The club featured crystal chandeliers, a large dance floor, and air conditioning (a new technology at the time; the Hollywood was the first club in the nation to use it). Because of Sam's smooth personality, he became the "face" of the nightclub. Guy Lombardo performed for the club's opening, and Sam attracted a steady stream of celebrity performers thereafter. The club hosted one of the nation's first remote radio broadcasts, and featured Ben Bernie's orchestra (one of the nation's most famous performing groups), which was introduced by a young Walter Cronkite. The club, the first venue in the nation to offer high-class gaming, dining, entertainment, and air conditioning under one roof, was unique at the time.
A crackdown by federal law enforcement led to the arrests of the leaders of the city's gangs, which allowed the Maceo brothers to gain control of the island's underworld. The Maceos gradually invested in numerous clubs and other entertainment ventures in the city involving gambling and bootlegging. Their other big venture, besides the Hollywood, was a club and casino called Maceo's Grotto (later renamed the Balinese Room), which opened in 1929. The Maceos soon controlled most of the gambling and liquor on the island. The Turf Grill/Turf Athletic Club in downtown became their headquarters. Their wealth and Sam's ability to deal with influential figures allowed them to exert increasing influence over other businesses and the government of the island. They established strong relationships with "respectable" business leaders such as the Moodys, the Sealys, and the Kempners. The Maceos' influence on the island lasted for nearly three decades. To compensate for the sometimes-ineffectual police force and judicial system on the island, Rose organized a group of vigilantes known as the Night Riders to keep the peace. Area residents considered the island and their homes entirely safe in spite of rampant criminal activity. The Maceos' bookkeeper was known to walk to the bank carrying millions in deposits without any protection. The Maceos protected the citizens of the island in many ways, such as limiting how much locals were allowed to gamble at the casinos, donating heavily to local charities, and investing in community development.
The Maceo empire soon extended beyond Galveston Island and gradually expanded throughout Galveston County with the family owning more than 60 businesses, as well as slot machines throughout the county. Investments in oil speculation helped to diversify the Maceos' portfolio and add to their wealth. Law enforcement sources accused them of running the narcotics trade as far north as Dallas and Sam was even charged, but authorities were never able to make the charges stick, and indeed some sources claim that they were genuinely false.
## Economy
Like much of the country, and particularly Texas, Galveston boomed in the 1920s, but even the Great Depression did not stop Galveston's run of prosperity. Despite the financial ruin that faced much of the country during the Depression, not a single Galveston bank failed and unemployment was almost unheard of. Key business sectors in Galveston during the Free State era were casinos and prostitution, in addition to many legitimate businesses. During much of the period, the vice industries provided the majority of employment. Two families held particular prominence on the island during this era; the Moodys controlled the largest legitimate interests, and the Maceos controlled the largest criminal enterprises. Both families were wealthy, with business empires that extended beyond the island.
### Legitimate businesses
As the island rebuilt from the 1900 storm, legitimate business interests attempted to expand the economy by rebuilding tourism and further diversifying from shipping. Important nonentertainment businesses included insurance, hotels, banks, shipping, and commercial fishing. The medical and nursing schools, as well as the hospitals of the University of Texas Medical Branch, were a stable sector on the island throughout the 20th century. The Moody family built one of the largest hotel empires in the U.S., and their American National Insurance Company was so successful that it actually grew—tremendously—during the Depression.
In the entertainment sector, various ploys were used to attract tourists. In 1920, an annual beauty contest, named the Pageant of Pulchritude (also known as the Miss Universe contest) in 1926, was started in Galveston by C.E. Barfield, manager of a local amusement park owned by the Maceos. The contest was part of Splash Day, the kick-off of the summer tourist season each year, and became the first international beauty contest, attracting participants from England, Russia, Turkey, and many other nations until its demise in 1932. This contest is said to have served as a model for the modern Miss America pageant and others. At its height, the pageant tripled the island's population the weekend it ran. Even after the international contest's closing, Splash Day was revived in various forms and continued to attract tourists. Other annual events included an extravagant Mardi Gras celebration in spring. The grand Buccaneer Hotel was constructed in 1929 creating an additional hotel landmark to compete with the Galvez (in addition to many other smaller hotel venues).
Much of Galveston's success as a tourist destination was the result of E. Sid Holliday, who became the publicity and convention director of the Galveston Chamber of Commerce in 1925, and later became its head. The chamber helped promote the legitimate face of Galveston's tourism and business community (though it cooperated heavily with the criminal enterprises). Legitimate amusements such as an amusement park that included a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster (the Mountain Speedway), in addition to the beaches and upscale shopping districts (notably the Strand) drew visitors, including those less interested in the city's illegal attractions. One of the most spectacular efforts by the chamber, though not one of the city's greatest successes, was the Pleasure Pier (originally known as the Brantly Harris Recreational Pier). This huge pier (later converted to the Flagship Hotel), built in the 1940s and used by the military until the end of the war, featured restaurants, rides, and an amphitheater.
A significant contributor to the economy through the 1940s was the military. Fort Crockett, the Army Air Base at Scholes Field, the Navy Section Base on Pelican Island, Camp Wallace and the blimp base at Hitchcock all helped pump money into the local economy, as did military shipments at the port and shipbuilding. The soldiers and sailors were a steady stream of customers for area businesses.
### Vice businesses
Casinos offering illegal gambling and drinking were the largest tourist draws on the island. Though the Maceos operated the island's biggest casinos, they generally were very tolerant of competing clubs and casinos, provided their owners understood and respected the Maceos' authority. By the 1930s, Seawall Boulevard was filled with lavish casinos; other areas of town also had pockets of gambling. As late as 1950, about 300 businesses, ranging from grocery stores to barber shops, operated slot machines. Bars were even more ubiquitous; according to one report in 1927, 489 drinking establishments were in the city, more than any other city on the Gulf Coast and among the highest concentrations in the nation. The red-light district, centered on Postoffice Street, was kept entirely separate from the nightclubs and other entertainment venues. It was so successful that the island for a time had the highest concentration of prostitutes in the world (one of every 62 residents), working in more than 50 bordellos in addition to other smaller establishments. The financial success of these vice industries attracted mobsters such as New York's Albert Anastasia and Chicago's Al Capone, who tried to enter Galveston's market without success. Capone's enforcer Frank Nitti, in fact, had been a former partner of Galveston Downtown Gang leader Jack Nounes before the Maceo era.
Galveston became a major port of entry for illegal liquor from Mexico and Canada, shipped through the Caribbean and distributed from the island throughout Texas and to other destinations. Galveston became the primary supplier for Houston, Dallas, Denver, St. Louis and Omaha; indeed some shipments reached as far north as Detroit. This traffic helped to offset the gradual loss of shipping traffic in the cotton and sulfur trades.
The major legitimate businesses on the island, such as banking and hotels, were able to thrive in large part because of the illegal activities. Though many of these business leaders steered clear of direct involvement in the business affairs of the Maceos and the gangs, their relationships were hardly antagonistic. Some, such as financier, hotelier, and insurance executive William Lewis Moody, Jr., actually welcomed illegal gambling because it brought tourists who filled up his hotels. He was even known to make loans to the Maceos' syndicate.
The Free State economy was not confined simply to the island, but extended through much of Galveston County. Throughout the county, substantial casino operations were developed by the Fertitta, Salvato, and Maceo families, including the casino districts in Kemah (featuring the Chili Bowl and White House casinos, among others) and Dickinson (featuring the Silver Moon and the Dickinson Social Club). Houstonians often humorously referred to the Galveston County line as the "Maceo-Dickinson line" (a pun referring to the Mason-Dixon line).
The vice activities on the island and in the county were not unique in Texas. San Antonio had perhaps the second-most infamous red-light district in the early 20th century and most major cities in the state had significant vice activities at least until midcentury, though most went into decline before Galveston's did. During the open era, Galveston's vice industries dominated, while most other areas of the state were at times forced to crack down on vice due to public pressure.
## Culture
### Society
The city's permissive attitude was not confined to gangs, politicians, and elite businessmen. The citizenry in general took pride in the traditional Galveston approach to freedom. A notable example of this occurred at a political rally where one candidate openly blasted the "hoodlums" running illegal activities. His opponent then addressed the crowd as "my fellow hoodlums", which helped guarantee his victory in the election. Even decades later in 1993, when Vic C. Maceo, cousin of Sam and Rose, opened fire on a local who he believed owed him money, the incident was viewed by many in the community with nostalgia, recalling the Free State era.
Though other parts of Texas and the United States sometimes tolerated prostitution, gambling, and violations of liquor laws (e.g. Dallas is said to have had 27 casinos and numerous brothels during World War II), these communities usually at least made a pretense of trying to enforce vice laws. In Galveston, vice was conducted openly; according to a 1993 Texas Monthly article by author Gary Cartwright, "Galveston's red-light district may have been the only one in the country that thrived with the blessings of both city hall and the Catholic church." So lax were attitudes toward vice that football betting cards were openly sold in the high schools.
High society in the city regularly attracted some of the biggest names in the entertainment business, including Frank Sinatra, Jayne Mansfield, Duke Ellington, and Bob Hope. The clubs were regularly visited by famous Houstonians such as Howard Hughes, Diamond Jim West, and Glenn McCarthy.
Galveston's attitudes toward race were at times unique in the region. The strict segregationalist attitudes prevalent in many parts of the U.S. were not always as stark in Galveston's society as in some other parts of Texas. One of the most striking examples of this was the gradual establishment of biracial labor unions of waterfront workers beginning in the 19th century, although eventually this alliance fell victim to segregationist influence. Racist ideology was always an ever-present factor in the city, however, as evidenced by the name of the group which ran the Mardi Gras, the Kotton Karnival Kids (KKK, the same initials as the Ku Klux Klan).
### Arts
The city had numerous venues for the arts, including the State Theater (today the Grand Opera House), which featured vaudeville acts in addition to motion pictures. Less formally, entertainment could be found at the Balinese Room, Hollywood Dinner Club, and other clubs featuring musical performances by major entertainers. Additionally for many years, the city held free concerts on the beach by major orchestras and other performers. The entertainment venues regularly attracted some of the biggest names in the entertainment business, including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Guy Lombardo, Jack Benny, Gene Autry, Phil Silvers, Jane Russell, George Burns, Duke Ellington, and Bob Hope.
### Sports
The Texas League, a baseball league, was founded in the 1800s, temporarily discontinued, and then restarted in the early 1900s evolving into a minor league. During the 1930s, investors in Galveston, particularly Shearn Moody, established the Galveston Buccaneers baseball team, a successor to the former Galveston Pirates. The Buccaneers won the league championship in 1934, but the team was sold in 1937 after Moody's death. After the war, the new Gulf Coast League was established and the Galveston White Caps team was created. Galveston won the championship in 1953, but the team then faded and was disbanded in 1955 as the rest of Galveston's economy was collapsing.
The city created the Oleander Bowl football tournament in 1948, which evolved into the Shrimp Bowl and lasted until the late 1950s. Originally a tournament between colleges in the region, it eventually became a contest between local military units. The tournament was never especially successful, only bringing in modest crowds at its peak.
## Government and law enforcement
Following the 1900 hurricane, Galveston adopted a commission government (in 1960 the city switched to council-manager system). At the beginning of Prohibition, the city council originally opposed gambling and vice; though the council members were tolerant of small-scale activities which had always been a part of the city, they were more concerned about organized crime. As the Maceos reorganized vice in the city and made these businesses more respectable, the council became far more accepting of the criminal enterprises, particularly as they became linchpins of the local economy. According to some reports, this was because the Maceos bought the cooperation of the council members, taking advantage of the easily corruptible structure of the commission.
Law enforcement at the county level, and to some degree at the state level, became notoriously tolerant of the illegal activities in Galveston, in no small part because of the prosperity they generated, and the bribery and influence peddled by the Maceos. The city police very early on became entirely complicit.
Galveston County Sheriff Frank Biaggne served from 1933 to 1957 and was known for largely disregarding the mainstream illegal activities on the island. When a state committee investigating illegal activities on the island asked the sheriff about his reluctance to raid the Balinese Room, he replied only that it was a "private club" and he was not a "member". The county attorney and the local police commissioner were similarly complicit (Commissioner Johnston once bragged about being on the payroll of 46 brothels). According to a former Texas Ranger, a local justice of the peace would readily issue search warrants for local clubs to the Rangers, but would immediately telephone the owners to warn them.
Law enforcement's corrupt attitude generally was not at the expense of the people. Apart from the economic benefits provided by the Maceos, these bosses provided a high degree of protection to the island's citizens. When serious crimes were committed the local police would sometimes contact the Maceos to have the matter dealt with. However, the island was not completely peaceful; threats at the point of a gun were a common means for the Maceo gang to ensure control. Though the average citizen was relatively safe, gangland slayings of potential rivals did take place on occasion.
## End of an era
### Maceos move on
{\| class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin:0 0 0.5em 1em;" border="1"
\|+ Income of the Maceo operations\*
(1948–1950) ! Year !! Real income !! Today's dollars \|- \| 1948 \|\| \$3.24 million \|\| \$ \|- \| 1949 \|\| \$3.43 million \|\| \$ \|- \| 1950 \|\| \$3.84 million \|\| \$ \|- \| colspan=3 \| \* According to the syndicate's records, though
there was testimony of additional hidden profits.
The heyday of the Free State was over by the 1940s. Because of conflicts with the United States Treasury, the Hollywood Dinner Club was shut down in the late 1930s. The local clubs found attracting major entertainment figures to be increasingly difficult. Gambling had been legalized in Nevada in 1931, and this distinct advantage over Galveston, and other illegal gambling centers, gradually lured mob figures such as New York City's Bugsy Siegel to Las Vegas. The competition created by the up-and-coming entertainment center in the desert substantially challenged the island on the Gulf over the next several years. Still, even during its later years, the Balinese Room was able to attract the likes of Tony Bennett and Peggy Lee, among others. And as late as 1950, the annual income of the Maceo empire was reportedly \$3.84 million (\$ in today's terms).
By the late 1940s, corruption in Texas at the state and county levels was in decline, while pressure against vice across the state and across the nation was on the rise. Even San Antonio's famed Sporting District, once one of the nation's largest red-light districts, was shut down in 1941. As state investigations of the Maceos' activities became more serious, Sam and Rose began plans to move their empire to Nevada. The Maceos became major investors in the Desert Inn, which was the largest and most elaborate casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip when it opened in 1950. Moe Dalitz (who opened the Desert Inn) and Sam Maceo had long been allies and business partners; indeed, it was the Maceos' influence in the Nevada legislature that made Dalitz's Nevada operations possible. The Las Vegas project's financing was largely facilitated by the Maceos and Moodys through ANICO (which loaned millions to known mob figures). Soon ANICO was one of the largest lenders to Las Vegas casinos. Sam and Rose Maceo transferred controlling interest of most of their Galveston empire to a new group dominated by the Fertitta family, with investments coming from business interests around the island. The Fertitta group never wielded the influence that the Maceos had (though a generation later Tilman and Frank Fertitta came to be major entertainment magnates themselves). Sam Maceo died in 1951, and Rose died in 1954.
### Free State ends
During the 1950s, more dangerous criminal elements took advantage of Galveston's lax law enforcement and the absence of the Maceo brothers' influence. Non-vice crime increased in the city. The New Orleans crime syndicate, headed by Carlos Marcello, ran guns to Cuba through the island. Fugitives such as suspected JFK plotter David Ferrie used Galveston as a safe haven.
By the 1950s, gambling and prostitution were being actively repressed in most parts of Texas. In 1953, the police commissioner, Walter L. Johnston, under pressure from local citizens groups concerned about moral decline and high rates of venereal disease, shut down the red-light district. However, the mayoral victory of George Roy Clough, a supporter of regulated vice, led to the district's being re-established in 1955. That year, Galveston was labeled by national anti-prostitution groups as the "worst spot in the nation as far as prostitution is concerned".
Paul Hopkins won the 1956 election for sheriff and set about shutting down the island's illegal activities once and for all. One of the first successful busts of the gambling industry was an undercover operation by Texas Ranger Clint Peoples at the Balinese Room. In 1957, Attorney General Will Wilson and Department of Public Safety head Homer Garrison (with help from former FBI special agent Jim Simpson) began a massive campaign of raids that wrecked the gambling and prostitution industry on the island, along with liquor imports. Forty-seven clubs, brothels, and other vice establishments were reportedly closed, and 2,000 slot machines were destroyed. Though officials said they destroyed all of the city's gaming equipment, some locals including R.S. Maceo, nephew of Sam and Rose, claimed that most of the equipment was shipped to Las Vegas before authorities ever discovered it.
### Aftermath
As the vice industries crashed, so did tourism, and the rest of the Galveston economy declined with it. The economy stagnated during the 1950s, and after 1957, the Free State was effectively gone. Fort Crockett, which had been used as an Army recreation center following the war, was shut down in 1955. Many of the island's most important entertainment business leaders left the city and set up shop in Las Vegas. Neither the economy nor the culture of the city was the same afterward. Civic leaders made several failed attempts at new ventures, including the Oleander Bowl football tournament (1948) and the Pelican Island bridge (1956) for access to a new industrial park, which never materialized. The city's television station, KGUL, moved to Houston in 1959; the telephone company headquarters and many other businesses relocated off the island, as well. To make matters worse, some of the island's attractions were destroyed by Hurricane Carla in 1961 and never rebuilt.
The economy continued in muted form. The three main establishment families on the island, the Moodys, the Sealys, and Kempners, had essentially unrivalled control of the island. The Splash Day celebrations restarted, drawing tourists to the coast. Many hotels, banks, and some insurance companies remained, as did the medical and nursing schools, and the hospitals. Efforts at historical preservation (notably including those of George P. Mitchell) gradually helped to re-establish the island's tourism industry, though in a very different form from the past. Nonbinding referendums were put forward in the 1980s regarding legalization of casinos in the city, but were defeated by the voters each time, demonstrating the changes in the city since the bygone era. Informal polls in 2008 and 2010 indicate this sentiment may be changing. Indeed, gambling aboard cruise ships leaving from Galveston is now commonplace.
## In popular culture
Though this era in Galveston's history has not received a great deal of attention in popular culture (compared, for example, to Al Capone's Chicago), some popular fiction and true crime story-telling have centered on the era. Some notable examples include the novels Under the Skin by James Carlos Blake, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier by Sarah Bird, No Greater Deception: A True Texas Story by Sydney Dotson, Galveston by Suzanne Morris, and Overlords by Matt Braun, as well as the anthology Lone Star Sleuths: An Anthology of Texas Crime Fiction by Bill Davis, et al. Galveston's Balinese Room was also the subject of a 1975 song by rock band ZZ Top.
Galveston, The Musical!
opened in 2003 at Galveston's Strand Theatre and in 2011 at the Hobby Center in Houston. The musical theater production centers on the arrival of the Maceo brothers and the empire they created during this period of the island's history.
## See also
- American Mafia
- Gambling in the United States
- History of the Galveston Bay Area
- History of vice in Texas
- Other illegal gambling empires of the 1920s–1950s:
\* Miami
\* New Orleans
\* Atlantic City, New Jersey
\* Hot Springs, Arkansas
\* Newport, Kentucky
\* Phenix City, Alabama
|
7,840 |
Chrono Cross
| 1,172,617,906 |
1999 video game
|
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"Chrono (series)",
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"Nintendo Switch games",
"PlayStation (console) games",
"PlayStation 4 games",
"Single-player video games",
"Turn-based role-playing video games",
"Video game sequels",
"Video games about cats",
"Video games about parallel universes",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games scored by Yasunori Mitsuda",
"Windows games",
"Xbox One games"
] |
is a 1999 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation video game console. It is set in the same world as Chrono Trigger, which was released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Chrono Cross was designed primarily by scenarist and director Masato Kato, who had help from other designers who also worked on Chrono Trigger, including art director Yasuyuki Honne and composer Yasunori Mitsuda. Nobuteru Yūki designed the characters of the game.
The story of Chrono Cross focuses on a teenage boy named Serge and a theme of parallel worlds. Faced with an alternate reality in which he died as a child, Serge endeavors to discover the truth of the two worlds' divergence. The flashy thief Kid and many other characters assist him in his travels around the tropical archipelago El Nido. Struggling to uncover his past and find the mysterious Frozen Flame, Serge is chiefly challenged by Lynx, a shadowy antagonist working to apprehend him.
Upon its release in Japan in 1999 and North America in 2000, Chrono Cross received critical acclaim, earning a perfect 10.0 score from GameSpot. The game shipped 1.5 million copies worldwide by 2003, leading to a Greatest Hits re-release and continued life in Japan as part of the Ultimate Hits series. Chrono Cross was later re-released for the PlayStation Network in Japan in July 2011, and in North America four months later. A remaster of the game, titled was released on April 7, 2022, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.
## Gameplay
Chrono Cross features standard role-playing video game gameplay with some differences. Players advance the game by controlling the protagonist Serge through the game's world, primarily by foot and boat. Navigation between areas is conducted via an overworld map, much like Chrono Trigger's, depicting the landscape from a scaled-down overhead view. Around the island world are villages, outdoor areas, and dungeons, through which the player moves in three dimensions. Locations such as cities and forests are represented by more realistically scaled field maps, in which players can converse with locals to procure items and services, solve puzzles and challenges, or encounter enemies. Like Chrono Trigger, the game features no random encounters; enemies are openly visible on field maps or lie in wait to ambush the party. Touching the monster switches perspectives to a battle screen, in which players can physically attack, use "Elements", defend, or run away from the enemy. Battles are turn-based, allowing the player unlimited time to select an action from the available menu. For both the playable characters and the computer-controlled enemies, each attack reduces their number of hit points (a numerically based life bar), which can be restored through some Elements. When a playable character loses all hit points, he or she faints. If all the player's characters fall in battle, the game ends and must be restored from a previously saved chapter—except for specific storyline-related battles that allow the player to lose. Chrono Cross's developers aimed to break new ground in the genre, and the game features several innovations. For example, players can run away from all conflicts, including boss fights and the final battle.
### Battle and Elements
The Element system of Chrono Cross handles all magic, consumable items, and character-specific abilities. Elements unleash magic effects upon the enemy or party and must be equipped for use, much like the materia of 1997's Final Fantasy VII. Elements can be purchased from shops or found in treasure chests littered throughout areas. Once acquired, they are allocated to a grid whose size and shape are unique to each character. They are ranked according to eight tiers; certain high level Elements can only be assigned on equivalent tiers in a character's grid. As the game progresses, the grid expands, allowing more Elements to be equipped and higher tiers to be accessed. Elements are divided into six paired oppositional types, or "colors," each with a natural effect. Red (fire/magma) opposes Blue (water/ice), Green (wind/flora) opposes Yellow (earth/lightning), and White (light/cosmos) opposes Black (darkness/gravity). Each character and enemy has an innate color, enhancing the power of using same-color Elements while also making them weak against elements of the opposite color. Chrono Cross also features a "field effect", which keeps track of Element color used in the upper corner of the battle screen. If the field is purely one color, characters are able to unleash a powerful summon element at the cost of one of the player's stars. The field will also enhance the power of Elements of the colors present, while weakening Elements of the opposite colors. Characters also innately learn some special techniques ("Techs") that are unique to each character but otherwise act like Elements. Like Chrono Trigger, characters can combine certain Techs to make more powerful Double or Triple Techs. Consumable Elements may be used to restore hit points or heal status ailments during or after battle.
Another innovative aspect of Chrono Cross is its stamina bar. At the beginning of a battle, each character has seven points of stamina. When a character attacks or uses an Element, stamina is decreased proportionally to the potency of the attack. Stamina slowly recovers when the character defends or when other characters perform actions in battle. Characters with stamina below one point must wait to take action. Use of an Element reduces the user's stamina bar by seven stamina points; this often means that the user's stamina gauge falls into the negative and the character must wait longer than usual to recover. With each battle, players can enhance statistics such as strength and defense. However, no system of experience points exists; after four or five upgrades, statistics remain static until players defeat a boss. This adds a star to a running count shown on the status screen, which allows for another few rounds of statistical increases. Players can equip characters with weapons, armor, helmets, and accessories for use in battle; for example, the "Power Seal" upgrades attack power. Items and equipment may be purchased or found on field maps, often in treasure chests. Unlike Elements, weapons and armor cannot merely be purchased with money; instead, the player must obtain base materials—such as copper, bronze, or bone—for a blacksmith to forge for a fee. The items can later be disassembled into their original components at no cost.
### Parallel dimensions
The existence of two major parallel dimensions, like time periods in Chrono Trigger, plays a significant role in the game. Players must go back and forth between the worlds to recruit party members, obtain items, and advance the plot. Much of the population of either world have counterparts in the other; some party members can even visit their other versions. The player must often search for items or places found exclusively in one world. Events in one dimension sometimes have an impact in the other—for instance, cooling scorched ground on an island in one world allows vegetation to grow in the other world. This system assists the presentation of certain themes, including the questioning of the importance of one's past decisions and humanity's role in destroying the environment. Rounding out the notable facets of Chrono Cross's gameplay are the New Game+ option and multiple endings. As in Chrono Trigger, players who have completed the game may choose to start the game over using data from the previous session. Character levels, learned techniques, equipment, and items gathered copy over, while acquired money and some story-related items are discarded. On a New Game+, players can access twelve endings. Scenes viewed depend on players' progress in the game before the final battle, which can be fought at any time in a New Game+ file.
## Plot
### Characters
Chrono Cross features a diverse cast of 45 party members. Each character is outfitted with an innate Element affinity and three unique special abilities that are learned over time. If taken to the world opposite their own, characters react to their counterparts (if available). Many characters tie in to crucial plot events. Since it is impossible to obtain all 45 characters in one playthrough, players must replay the game to witness everything. Through use of the New Game+ feature, players can ultimately obtain all characters on one save file.
Serge, the game's protagonist, is a 17-year-old boy with blue hair who lives in the fishing village of Arni. One day, he slips into an alternate world in which he drowned ten years before. Determined to find the truth behind the incident, he follows a predestined course that leads him to save the world. He is assisted by Kid, a feisty, skilled thief who seeks the mythical Frozen Flame. Portrayed as willful and tomboyish due to her rough, thieving past, she helps Serge sneak into Viper Manor in order to obtain the Frozen Flame. Kid vows to find and defeat Lynx, an anthropomorphic panther who burned down her adopted mother's orphanage.
Lynx, a cruel agent of the supercomputer FATE, is bent on finding Serge and using his body as part of a greater plan involving the Frozen Flame. Lynx travels with Harle, a mysterious, playful girl dressed like a harlequin. Harle was sent by the Dragon God to shadow Lynx and one day steal the Frozen Flame from Chronopolis, a task she painfully fulfills despite being smitten with Serge.
To accomplish this goal, Harle helps Lynx manipulate the Acacia Dragoons, the powerful militia governing the islands of El Nido. As the Dragoons maintain order, they contend with Fargo, a former Dragoon turned pirate captain who holds a grudge against their leader, General Viper. Though tussling with Serge initially, the Acacia Dragoons—whose ranks include the fierce warriors Karsh, Zoah, Marcy, and Glenn—later assist him when the militaristic nation of Porre invades the archipelago. The invasion brings Norris and Grobyc to the islands, a heartful commander of an elite force and a prototype cyborg soldier, respectively, as they too seek the Frozen Flame.
### Story
The game begins with Serge located in El Nido, a tropical archipelago inhabited by ancient natives, mainland colonists, and beings called Demi-humans. Serge slips into an alternate dimension in which he drowned on the beach ten years prior, and meets the thief, "Kid". As his adventure proceeds from here, Serge is able to recruit a multitude of allies to his cause. While assisting Kid in a heist at Viper Manor to steal the Frozen Flame, he learns that ten years before the present, the universe split into two dimensions—one in which Serge lived, and one in which he perished. Through Kid's Astral Amulet charm, Serge travels between the dimensions. At Fort Dragonia, with the use of a Dragonian artifact called the Dragon Tear, Lynx switches bodies with Serge. Unaware of the switch, Kid confides in Lynx, who stabs her as the real Serge helplessly watches. Lynx boasts of his victory and banishes Serge to a strange realm called the Temporal Vortex. He takes Kid under his wing, brainwashing her to believe the real Serge (in Lynx's body) is her enemy. Serge escapes with help from Harle, although his new body turns him into a stranger in his own world, with all the allies he had gained up to that point abandoning him due to his new appearance. Discovering that his new body prevents him from traveling across the dimensions, he sets out to regain his former body and learn more of the universal split that occurred ten years earlier, gaining a new band of allies along the way. He travels to a forbidden lagoon known as the Dead Sea—a wasteland frozen in time, dotted with futuristic ruins. At the center, he locates a man named Miguel and presumably Home world's Frozen Flame. Charged with guarding the Dead Sea by an entity named FATE, Miguel and three visions of Crono, Marle, and Lucca from Chrono Trigger explain that Serge's existence dooms Home world's future to destruction at the hands of Lavos. To prevent Serge from obtaining the Frozen Flame, FATE destroys the Dead Sea.
Able to return to Another world, Serge allies with the Acacia Dragoons against Porre and locates that dimension's Dragon Tear, allowing him to return to his human form. He then enters the Sea of Eden, Another world's physical equivalent of the Dead Sea, finding a temporal research facility from the distant future called Chronopolis. Lynx and Kid are inside; Serge defeats Lynx and the supercomputer FATE, allowing the six Dragons of El Nido to steal the Frozen Flame and retire to Terra Tower, a massive structure raised from the sea floor. Kid falls into a coma, and Harle bids the party goodbye to fly with the Dragons. Serge regroups his party and tends to Kid, who remains comatose. Continuing his adventure, he obtains and cleanses the corrupted Masamune sword from Chrono Trigger. He then uses the Dragon relics and shards of the Dragon Tears to create the mythic Element Chrono Cross. The spiritual power of the Masamune later allows him to lift Kid from her coma. At Terra Tower, the prophet of time, revealed to be Belthasar from Chrono Trigger, visits him with visions of Crono, Marle, and Lucca. Serge learns that the time research facility Chronopolis created El Nido thousands of years ago after a catastrophic experimental failure drew it to the past. The introduction of a temporally foreign object in history caused the planet to pull in a counterbalance from a different dimension. This was Dinopolis, a city of Dragonians—parallel universe descendants of Chrono Trigger's Reptites. The institutions warred and Chronopolis subjugated the Dragonians. Humans captured their chief creation—the Dragon God, an entity capable of controlling nature.
Chronopolis divided this entity into six pieces and created an Elements system. FATE then terraformed an archipelago, erased the memories of most of Chronopolis's staff, and sent them to inhabit and populate its new paradise. Thousands of years later, a panther demon attacked a three-year-old Serge. His father took him to find assistance at Marbule, but Serge's boat blew off course due to a raging magnetic storm caused by Schala. Schala, the princess of the Kingdom of Zeal, had long ago accidentally fallen to a place known as the Darkness Beyond Time and began merging with Lavos, the chief antagonist of Chrono Trigger. Schala's storm nullified Chronopolis's defenses and allowed Serge to contact the Frozen Flame; approaching it healed Serge but corrupted his father, turning him into Lynx. A circuit in Chronopolis then designated Serge "Arbiter", simultaneously preventing FATE from using the Frozen Flame by extension. The Dragons were aware of this situation, creating a seventh Dragon under the storm's cover named Harle, who manipulated Lynx to steal the Frozen Flame for the Dragons.
After Serge returned home, FATE sent Lynx to kill Serge, hoping that it would release the Arbiter lock. Ten years after Serge drowned, the thief Kid—presumably on Belthasar's orders—went back in time to save Serge and split the dimensions. FATE, locked out of the Frozen Flame again, knew that Serge would one day cross to Another world and prepared to apprehend him. Lynx switched bodies with Serge to dupe the biological check of Chronopolis on the Frozen Flame. Belthasar then reveals that these events were part of a plan he had orchestrated named Project Kid. Serge continues to the top of Terra Tower and defeats the Dragon God. Continuing to the beach where the split in dimensions had occurred, Serge finds apparitions of Crono, Marle, and Lucca once more. They reveal that Belthasar's plan was to empower Serge to free Schala from melding with Lavos, lest they evolve into the "Time Devourer", a creature capable of destroying spacetime. Lucca explains that Kid is Schala's clone, sent to the modern age to take part in Project Kid. Serge uses a Time Egg—given to him by Belthasar—to enter the Darkness Beyond Time and vanquish the Time Devourer, separating Schala from Lavos and restoring the dimensions to one. Thankful, Schala muses on evolution and the struggle of life and returns Serge to his home, noting that he will forget the entire adventure. She then seemingly records the experience in her diary, noting she will always be searching for Serge in this life and beyond, signing the entry as Schala "Kid" Zeal, implying that she and Kid have merged and became whole again. A wedding photo of Kid and an obscured male sits on the diary's desk. Scenes then depict a real-life Kid searching for someone in a modern city, intending to make players entertain the possibility that their own Kid is searching for them. The ambiguous ending leaves the events of the characters' lives following the game up to interpretation.
### Relation to Radical Dreamers
Chrono Cross employs story arcs, characters, and themes from Radical Dreamers, a Satellaview side story to Chrono Trigger released in Japan. Radical Dreamers is an illustrated text adventure which was created to wrap up an unresolved plot line of Chrono Trigger. Though it borrows from Radical Dreamers in its exposition, Chrono Cross is not a remake of Radical Dreamers, but a larger effort to fulfill that game's purpose; the plots of the games are irreconcilable. To resolve continuity issues and acknowledge Radical Dreamers, the developers of Chrono Cross suggested the game happened in a parallel dimension. A notable difference between the two games is that Magus—present in Radical Dreamers as Gil—is absent from Chrono Cross. Director Masato Kato originally planned for Magus to appear in disguise as Guile, but scrapped the idea due to plot difficulties. Kato specifically felt that the game's large number of characters, as well as the difficult production schedule, did not allow him to develop the relationship between Magus and Kid. In the DS version of Chrono Trigger, Kato teases the possibility of an amnesiac Magus.
## Development
Square began planning Chrono Cross immediately after the release of Xenogears in 1998 (which itself was originally conceived as a sequel to the SNES game). Chrono Trigger's scenario director Masato Kato had brainstormed ideas for a sequel as early as 1996, following the release of Radical Dreamers. Square's managers selected a team, appointed Hiromichi Tanaka producer, and asked Kato to direct and develop a new Chrono game in the spirit of Radical Dreamers. Kato thought Dreamers was released in a "half-finished state", and wanted to continue the story of the character Kid. Kato and Tanaka decided to produce an indirect sequel. They acknowledged that Square would soon re-release Chrono Trigger as part of Final Fantasy Chronicles, which would give players a chance to catch up on the story of Trigger before playing Cross. Kato thought that using a different setting and cast for Chrono Cross would allow players unfamiliar with Chrono Trigger to play Cross without becoming confused. The Chrono Cross team decided against integrating heavy use of time travel into the game, as they thought it would be "rehashing and cranking up the volume of the last game". Masato Kato cited the belief, "there's no use in making something similar to before [sic]", and noted, "we're not so weak nor cheap as to try to make something exactly the same as Trigger ... Accordingly, Chrono Cross is not Chrono Trigger 2. It doesn't simply follow on from Trigger, but is another, different Chrono that interlaces with Trigger." Kato and Tanaka further explained their intentions after the game's release:
> We didn't want to directly extend Chrono Trigger into a sequel, but create a new Chrono with links to the original. Yes, the platform changed; and yes, there were many parts that changed dramatically from the previous work. But in my view, the whole point in making Chrono Cross was to make a new Chrono with the best available skills and technologies of today. I never had any intentions of just taking the system from Trigger and moving it onto the PlayStation console. That's why I believe that Cross is Cross, and NOT Trigger 2.
> When creating a series, one method is to carry over a basic system, improving upon it as the series progresses, but our stance has been to create a completely new and different world from the ground up, and to restructure the former style. Therefore, Chrono Cross is not a sequel to Chrono Trigger. Had it been, it would have been called Chrono Trigger 2. Our main objective for Chrono Cross was to share a little bit of the Chrono Trigger worldview, while creating a completely different game as a means of providing new entertainment to the player. This is mainly due to the transition in platform generation from the SNES to the PS. The method I mentioned above, about improving upon a basic system, has inefficiencies, in that it's impossible to maximize the console's performance as the console continues to make improvements in leaps and bounds. Although essentially an RPG, at its core, it is a computer game, and I believe that games should be expressed with a close connection to the console's performance. Therefore, in regards to game development, our goal has always been to "express the game utilizing the maximum performance of the console at that time." I strongly believe that anything created in this way will continue to be innovative.
Full production began on Chrono Cross in mid-1998. The Chrono Cross team reached 80 members at its peak, with additional personnel of 10–20 cut-scene artists and 100 quality assurance testers. The team felt pressure to live up to the work of Chrono Trigger's "Dream Team" development group, which included famous Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama. Kato and Tanaka hired Nobuteru Yūki for character design and Yasuyuki Honne for art direction and concept art. The event team originally envisioned a short game, and planned a system by which players would befriend any person in a town for alliance in battle. Developers brainstormed traits and archetypes during the character-creation process, originally planning 64 characters with unique endings that could vary in three different ways per character. Kato described the character creation process: "Take Pierre, for example: we started off by saying we wanted a wacko fake hero like Tata from Trigger. We also said things like 'we need at least one powerful mom', 'no way we're gonna go without a twisted brat', and so on so forth."
As production continued, the length of Cross increased, leading the event team to reduce the number of characters to 45 and scrap most of the alternate endings. Developers humorously named the character Pip "Tsumaru" in Japanese (which means "packed") as a pun on their attempts to pack as much content into the game as possible. To avoid the burden of writing unique, accented dialogue for several characters, team member Kiyoshi Yoshii coded a system that produces accents by modifying basic text for certain characters. Art director Nobuteru Yuuki initially wanted the characters to appear in a more chibi format with diminutive proportions. The game world's fusion of high technology and ethnic, tribal atmospheres proved challenging at first. He later recalled striving to harmonize the time period's level of technology, especially as reflected in characters' garb. The demands of the art style led to Square merging the Final Fantasy VIII team into that of Chrono Cross two months before the Japanese release.
The Chrono Cross team devised an original battle system using a stamina bar and Elements. Kato planned the system around allowing players to avoid repetitive gameplay (also known as "grinding") to gain combat experience. Elements were developed while planning the final battle (during which a sequence of specific Elements must be triggered), and then applied in reverse to the rest of the game. Hiromichi Tanaka likened the Elements system to card games, hoping players would feel a sense of complete control in battle. The team programmed each battle motion manually instead of performing motion capture. Developers strove to include tongue-in-cheek humor in the battle system's techniques and animations to distance the game from the Final Fantasy franchise. Masato Kato planned for the game's setting to feature a small archipelago, for fear that players would become confused traveling in large areas with respect to parallel worlds. He hoped El Nido would still impart a sense of grand scale, and the development team pushed hardware limitations in creating the game's world. To create field maps, the team modeled locations in 3D, then chose the best angle for 2D rendering. The programmers of Chrono Cross did not use any existing Square programs or routines to code the game, instead writing new, proprietary systems. Other innovations included variable-frame rate code for fast-forward and slow-motion gameplay (awarded as a bonus for completing the game) and a "CD-read swap" system to allow quick data retrieval.
Masato Kato directed and wrote the main story, leaving sub-plots and minor character events to other staff. The event team sometimes struggled to mesh their work on the plot due to the complexity of the parallel worlds concept. Masato Kato confirmed that Cross featured a central theme of parallel worlds, as well as the fate of Schala, which he was previously unable to expound upon in Chrono Trigger. Concerning the ending sequences showing Kid searching for someone in a modern city, he hoped to make players realize that alternate futures and possibilities may exist in their own lives, and that this realization would "not ... stop with the game". He later added, "Paraphrasing one novelist's favorite words, what's important is not the message or theme, but how it is portrayed as a game. Even in Cross, it was intentionally made so that the most important question was left unanswered." Kato described the finished story as "ole' boy-meets-girl type of story" with sometimes-shocking twists. Kato rode his motorcycle to relieve the stress of the game's release schedule. He continued refining event data during the final stages of development while the rest of the team undertook debugging and quality control work. Square advertised the game by releasing a short demo of the first chapter with purchases of Legend of Mana. The North American version of Cross required three months of translation and two months of debugging before release. Richard Honeywood translated, working with Kato to rewrite certain dialogue for ease of comprehension in English. He also added instances of wordplay and alliteration to compensate for difficult Japanese jokes. To streamline translation for all 45 playable characters, Honeywood created his own version of the accent generator which needed to be more robust than the simple verbal tics of the Japanese cast. Although the trademark Chrono Cross was registered in the European Union, the game was not released in Europe.
After the game was done, the team was merged with those behind Parasite Eve II, Brave Fencer Musashi and Mana to make Final Fantasy XI. The programming for the game endured as the basis for the engine of Final Fantasy XI.
### Music
Chrono Cross was scored by freelance video game music composer Yasunori Mitsuda, who previously worked on Chrono Trigger. Director Masato Kato personally commissioned Mitsuda's involvement, citing a need for the "Chrono sound". Kato envisioned a "Southeast Asian feel, mixed with the foreign tastes and the tones of countries such as Greece"; Mitsuda centered his work around old world cultural influences, including Mediterranean, Fado, Celtic, and percussive African music. Mitsuda cited visual inspiration for songs: "All of my subjects are taken from scenery. I love artwork." To complement the theme of parallel worlds, he gave Another and Home respectively dark and bright moods, and hoped players would feel the emotions of "'burning soul,' 'lonely world,' and 'unforgettable memories'". Mitsuda and Kato planned music samples and sound effects with the philosophy of "a few sounds with a lot of content".
Xenogears contributor Tomohiko Kira played guitar on the beginning and ending themes. Noriko Mitose, as selected by Masato Kato, sang the ending song—"Radical Dreamers – The Unstolen Jewel". Ryo Yamazaki, a synthesizer programmer for Square Enix, helped Mitsuda transfer his ideas to the PlayStation's sound capabilities; Mitsuda was happy to accomplish even half of what he envisioned. Certain songs were ported from the score of Radical Dreamers, such as "Gale", "Frozen Flame", and "Viper Mansion". Other entries in the soundtrack contain leitmotifs from Chrono Trigger and Radical Dreamers. The melody of "Far Promise \~ Dream Shore" features prominently in "Dreams of the Ages" and "Sailing (Another World)". Masato Kato faced internal opposition in hiring Noriko Mitose:
> Personally, for me, the biggest pressure was coming from the ending theme song. From the start of the project, I had already planned to make the ending into a Japanese song, but the problem was now "who was going to sing the song?" There was a lot of pressure from the people in the PR division to get someone big and famous to sing it, but I was totally against the idea. And as usual, I didn't heed to the surrounding complaints, but this time, there was a pretty tough struggle.
Production required six months of work. After wrapping, Mitsuda and Kato played Chrono Cross to record their impressions and observe how the tracks intermingled with scenes; the ending theme brought Kato to tears. Players who preordered the game received a sampler disc of five songs, and Square released a three-CD official soundtrack in Japan after the game's debut. The soundtrack won the Gold Prize for the PlayStation Awards of 2000. In 2005, Square Enix reissued the soundtrack due to popular demand. Earlier that year, Mitsuda announced a new arranged Chrono Cross album, scheduled for release in July 2005. Mitsuda's contract with Square gave him ownership and full rights to the soundtrack of Chrono Cross. It was delayed, and at a Play! A Video Game Symphony concert in May 2006, he revealed it would feature acoustic music and would be "out within the year", later backtracking and alleging a 2007 release date. Mitsuda posted a streaming sample of a finished track on his personal website in January 2009, and has stated the album will be released to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Japanese debut of Cross. Music from Chrono Cross has been featured in the September 2009 Symphonic Fantasies concerts, part of the Symphonic Game Music Concert series conducted by Arnie Roth. That same year, the Chrono Cross theme "Scars of Time" was voted first place in Hardcore Gaming 101's "Best Video Game Music of All Time" poll. "Scars of Time" was also featured in 2012 by NPR in a program about classically arranged video game scores.
## Release and reception
Chrono Cross shipped 850,000 units in Japan and 650,000 abroad by 2003. It was re-released once in the United States as a Sony Greatest Hits title and again as part of the Japanese Ultimate Hits series. Chrono Cross was also released on the PlayStation Network in Japan on July 6, 2011, and in North America on November 8, 2011, but a PAL region release has not been announced. Critics praised the game's complex plot, innovative battle system, varied characters, moving score, vibrant graphics, and success in breaking convention with its predecessor. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave Chrono Cross a Gold Award, scoring it 10/10/9.5 in their three reviewer format with the first review declaring the game to be "a masterpiece, plain and simple". GameSpot awarded the game a perfect 10, one of only sixteen games in the 40,000 games listed on Gamespot to have been given the score, and its Console Game of the Year Award for 2000. It also received the annual Best Role-Playing Game, Best Game Music and Best PlayStation Game awards, and nominations for Best Game Story and Best Graphics, Artistic. IGN gave the game a score of 9.7, and Cross appeared 89th in its 2008 Top 100 games list. Famitsu rated the game 36 out of 40 from four reviewers.
Fan reaction was largely positive, though certain fans complained that the game was a far departure from its predecessor, Chrono Trigger; Chrono Cross broke convention by featuring more characters, fewer double and triple techs, fewer instances of time travel, and few appearances of Trigger characters and locations. Producer Hiromichi Tanaka and director Masato Kato were aware of the changes in development, specifically intending to provide an experience different from Chrono Trigger. Kato anticipated and rebuffed this discontent before the game's release, wondering what the Chrono title meant to these fans and whether his messages ever "really got through to them". He continued, "Cross is undoubtedly the highest quality Chrono that we can create right now. (I won't say the 'best' Chrono, but) If you can't accept that, then I'm sorry to say this but I guess your Chrono and my Chrono have taken totally different paths. But I would like to say, thank you for falling in love with Trigger so much." Tanaka added, "Of course, the fans of the original are very important, but what innovation can come about when you're bound to the past? I believe that gameplay should evolve with the hardware." Kato later acknowledged that he could have "shown more empathy to the player" by making the story less complex, and acknowledged fans who felt the game was a departure from Chrono Trigger, noting that one can still "equally enjoy the game." He later reflected in 2015 that "the bashing was terrible" in reference to fans' push-back on featuring so many playable characters, acknowledging the complaint that recruiting all characters required several playthroughs.
During the 4th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Chrono Cross for the "Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", and "Console Role-Playing" awards.
## Legacy
On December 9, 2021, a cross-over event between Chrono Cross and the free-to-play RPG Another Eden was released. A collaborative effort between Chrono writer Kato and composer Mitsuda, the game features elements similar to the Chrono series, such as talking frog protagonists and time-travel elements. Titled Complex Dream, the event introduces several Chrono Cross characters, including Serge, Kid, and Harle, as well as gameplay elements from the series such as element magic and combo techs.
### Remaster
Publications began discussion of a possible remastered version of Chrono Cross in September 2021, when a security flaw allowed for a web developer to see an internal listing of current and upcoming video games in Nvidia's GeForce Now database, which included a never-announced Chrono Cross Remastered. Nvidia later confirmed that the list was real, but that the games listed were speculative, and may or may not end up getting a final release. A second Nvidia leak occurred the following November, which again listed Chrono Cross Remastered, this time with a December 2021 release date. Further comments on the game's existence also arose in November; Video Games Chronicle reported Nick Baker of the XboxEra podcast could confirm prior reports of its existence, and game website Gematsu separately confirmed the game's existence. On December 4, 2021, Square Enix announced a cross over event between Chrono Cross and mobile game Another Eden; the announcement spurred more discussion on a remaster, considering Square was reviving the game for the first time in 20 years, and writer Masato Kato worked on both games.
A remaster of the game, titled Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, was announced on February 9, 2022 during a Nintendo Direct presentation, being slated for release on April 7, 2022 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. The remaster of the title includes quality-of-life updates such as the ability to disable encounters, in addition to an enhanced OST. The remaster is also bundled with the text adventure game Radical Dreamers, previously only available to Japanese players through the Satellaview peripheral for the Super Famicom. Masato Kato, Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuteru Yuuki, and Hiromichi Tanaka were brought in to lightly polish the game's dialogue, music, character art, and mechanics, respectively. Tanaka revealed that the game's assets, stored on magnetic tape after development ceased in 1999, were lost in the intervening years, causing him to rely on a personal backup he had maintained for certain aspects of his polishing work. Producer Koichiro Sakamoto further explained that creating the remaster required teams to painstakingly upscale the game's original location art and remap each 3D field map, sometimes relying on AI to improve the resolution. The work demanded close scrutiny to ensure no original details were missed.
While Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition was received well by critics, it received a negative reaction from players in part due to how it performed as compared to its PlayStation 1 counterpart. Analysis showed that the remastered version had its frame rate dropping quite frequently, and was also unable to cross the threshold of 30 FPS. This issue has been noticed across all the platforms it was released on.
On February 22, 2023, Square-Enix released an update patch for the remaster on all systems it released for which has fixed various gameplay issues with the remaster, as well as updating several performance aspects of the game including increasing the game’s framerate to 60fps.
### Sequel
In 2001, Hironobu Sakaguchi revealed the company's staff wanted to develop a new game and were discussing script ideas. Although Kato was interested in a new title, the project had not been greenlighted. Square then registered a trademark for Chrono Break worldwide, causing speculation concerning a new sequel. Nothing materialized, and the trademark was dropped in the United States on November 13, 2003, though it still stands in Japan and the European Union. Kato later returned to Square Enix as a freelancer to work on Children of Mana and Dawn of Mana. Mitsuda also expressed interest in scoring a new Chrono series game. In 2005, Kato and Mitsuda teamed up to do a game called Deep Labyrinth, and again in 2008 for Sands of Destruction, both for the Nintendo DS. The February 2008 issue of Game Informer ranked the Chrono series eighth among the "Top Ten Sequels in Demand", naming the games "steadfast legacies in the Square Enix catalogue" and asking "what's the damn holdup?!" In Electronic Gaming Monthly's June 2008 "Retro Issue", writer Jeremy Parish cited Chrono as the franchise video game fans would be most thrilled to see a sequel to. In the May 1, 2009, issue of Famitsu, Chrono Trigger placed 14th out of 50 in a vote of most-wanted sequels by the magazine's readers. At E3 2009, SE Senior Vice President Shinji Hashimoto remarked, "If people want a sequel, they should buy more!"
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5,271,271 |
23rd (Northumbrian) Division
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Infantry division of the British Army in WWII
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[
"Infantry divisions of the British Army in World War II",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1940",
"Military units and formations established in 1939",
"Military units and formations in County Durham",
"Military units and formations in Northumberland"
] |
The 23rd (Northumbrian) Division was an infantry division of the British Army, which fought briefly in the Battle of France during the Second World War. In March 1939, after the re-emergence of Germany as a European power and its occupation of Czechoslovakia, the British Army increased the number of divisions within the Territorial Army by duplicating existing units. The 23rd (Northumbrian) Division was formed in October 1939, as a second-line duplicate of the 50th (Northumbrian) Motor Division. It was made up of two brigades, unlike regular infantry divisions that were composed of three, with battalions hailing from the north of England.
It was intended that the division would remain in the United Kingdom to complete training and preparation, before being deployed to France within twelve months of the war breaking out. The division spent little time training and its soldiers were dispersed and used to guard strategically important and vulnerable locations across North East England. Guard duty and little preparation for war were seen as a hindrance to good morale. In France, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was suffering from a manpower shortage among rear-line units. To boost morale, provide additional labour and guards for the rear echelon of the BEF, and score political points with the French Government and military, the division was sent to France in April 1940, leaving behind most of its administration and logistical units as well as heavy weapons and artillery. The men were assigned to aid in the construction and guarding of airfields. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Edmund Ironside, secured a promise from the BEF that the division would not be used in action owing to it being untrained and incomplete.
When Germany invaded Belgium and the Netherlands, the BEF and French armies moved to meet the attack, leaving behind the 23rd Division to continue guarding airfields. The main German attack came through the Ardennes and moved to cut off the British and French forces in northern France. With no other reserves available, the 23rd Division was ordered to the front line to defend the Canal du Nord—the only watercourse obstacle between the main German assault and the English Channel—and the only defensible position at which to stop the German attempt to encircle the BEF. By the time the division arrived at the canal, the Germans had already crossed south of their sector where French forces had yet to take up positions. Having destroyed the bridges in their area, the division was ordered to fall back to new positions to defend the town of Arras. Before the 70th Infantry Brigade could take up this new position, it was caught by advancing German armoured forces and overrun. The military situation further deteriorated, resulting in the decision to begin the Dunkirk evacuation. Elements of the division conducted delaying and rearguard actions around the perimeter before being evacuated on 31 May 1940, having suffered heavy losses. In Britain, the division was disbanded and its units were transferred to other formations to bring them up to strength.
## Background
Throughout the 1930s, tensions built between Germany and the United Kingdom and its allies. During late 1937 and 1938, German demands for the annexation of Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia led to an international crisis. To avoid war, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, met with the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in September and came to the Munich Agreement, which accepted that the Germans would annex the Sudetenland. Chamberlain had intended the agreement to lead to further peaceful resolution of differences, but relations between both countries soon deteriorated. On 15 March 1939, Germany breached the terms of the agreement by invading and occupying the remnants of the Czech state.
On 29 March, the British Secretary of State for War Leslie Hore-Belisha announced plans to increase the part-time Territorial Army (TA) from 130,000 men to 340,000, doubling the number of divisions. The plan was for existing TA divisions, referred to as the first-line, to recruit over their establishments, aided by an increase in pay for Territorials, the removal of restrictions on promotion which had hindered recruiting, the construction of better-quality barracks, and an increase in supper rations. The units would then form a new division, referred to as the second-line, from cadres. This process was dubbed "duplicating". The 23rd (Northumbrian) Division was to be created as a second-line formation, a duplicate of the first-line 50th (Northumbrian) Motor Division. Despite the intention for the army to grow, the programme was complicated by a lack of central guidance on the expansion and duplication process and issues regarding the lack of facilities, equipment and instructors. It had been envisioned by the War Office that the duplicating process and recruiting the required numbers of men would take no more than six months. The 50th (Northumbrian) Motor Division started this process in March. For example, the Durham Light Infantry (DLI) created three new battalions, each based around an initial cadre of just 25 officers and men. In April, limited conscription was introduced. At that time 34,500 men, all aged 20, were conscripted into the regular army, initially to be trained for six months before being deployed to the forming second-line units. The process varied widely between the TA divisions. Some were ready in weeks while others had made little progress by the time the Second World War began.
## History
### Formation
The 50th Division created the 69th Infantry Brigade as a second-line duplicate of the 150th Infantry Brigade, and the 70th Infantry Brigade as a second-line duplicate of the 151st Infantry Brigade. These brigades had been created by the outbreak of the war and were administered by the 50th Division until the 23rd (Northumbrian) divisional headquarters was formed on 2 October 1939. At this point, they were transferred to the new division, which in turn was assigned to Northern Command. Command of the division was given to Major-General William Norman Herbert, who was called out of retirement and had previously commanded the 50th Division. The 69th Brigade comprised the 5th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, the 6th and 7th Battalions, Green Howards; and the 70th Infantry Brigade comprised the 10th, 11th and 12th Battalions, DLI.
The 23rd (Northumbrian) Division lacked any official descriptive, being labelled neither a "Motor" division like its first-line parent formation, nor an "Infantry" division akin to the majority of other British divisions. The shoulder patch is debated in the sources. It has been described as the white rose of Yorkshire but also as a Tudor rose (an amalgamation of the White Rose of York and the Red Rose of Lancaster). Sources differ on whether the background was blue or green. Michael Chappell stated the white rose motif represented the Yorkshire regiments within the division, and that a green background represented the light infantry lineage of these regiments. "Examples of this sign made up for wear on uniform (with the rose stencilled on a felt patch) are in collections and indicate that the 23rd were probably one of [the few] formations wearing 'illegal' battle insignia in 1940".
### Initial service and transfer to France
Following the outbreak of hostilities, the National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939 was passed. This established nineteen as the minimum age for front line service, and soldiers under that age were transferred from combat units. Due to this policy, 40,000 TA men were moved between units. For the 23rd (Northumbrian) Division, this resulted in the loss of upwards of 10 per cent of its strength. It was envisioned that the TA divisions each be deployed intact to reinforce the regular army formations in France as equipment became available, all 26 TA divisions being deployed by the end of the first year of the war. Instead, the division was assigned to guarding vulnerable points and other locations across North East England; a common assignment for second-line formations, to free up first-line formations for training. This left little time for actual training other than parade-ground drill, a situation that adversely impacted morale. On 1 February, the 12th DLI became the Tyneside Scottish and a part of the Black Watch.
As 1939 turned into 1940, the division became caught up in an effort to address manpower shortages among the British Expeditionary Force's (BEF) rear-echelon units. More men were needed to work along the line of communication, and the army had estimated that by mid-1940 it would need at least 60,000 pioneers. The lack of such men had taxed the Royal Engineers (RE) and Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps (AMPC) as well as impacting frontline units, which had to be diverted from training to help construct defensive positions along the Franco-Belgian border. To address this issue, it was decided to deploy untrained territorial units as an unskilled workforce; thereby alleviating the strain on the existing pioneer units and freeing up regular units to complete training. As a result, the decision was made to deploy the 12th (Eastern), 23rd (Northumbrian), and the 46th Infantry Divisions to France. Each division would leave their heavy equipment and most of their logistical, administrative, and support units behind. In total, the elements of the three divisions that were transported to France amounted to 18,347 men. The divisions were to aid in the construction of airfields and pill-boxes. The intent was that by August their job would be completed and they could return to the United Kingdom to resume training before being redeployed to France as front-line soldiers. The Army believed that this diversion from guard duty would also raise morale. Lionel Ellis, the author of the British official history of the BEF in France, wrote that while the divisions "were neither fully trained nor equipped for fighting ... a balanced programme of training was carried out so far as time permitted". Historian Tim Lynch commented that the deployment also had a political dimension, allowing "British politicians to tell their French counterparts that Britain had supplied three more infantry divisions towards the promised nineteen by the end of the year".
General Edmund Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was opposed to such a use of these divisions. He reluctantly caved to the political pressure to release the divisions, having been assured by General Sir John Gort (commander of the BEF) that the troops would not be used as frontline combat formations. The 23rd left the United Kingdom on 21 April 1940, arrived in France the following day, and was placed under the direct command of the BEF. As a labour force, the division was deployed to the region around St Pol to build airstrips. It transferred without heavy equipment or Universal Carriers and impressed a limited amount of civilian transport for mobility. The men took their rifles, although some had still not been trained in their use. Each battalion brought 14 Bren light machine guns (although few had been trained in how to use them), at most 10 Boys anti-tank rifles, and a few 2 in (51 mm) mortars.
### German invasion of France
On 10 May 1940, the Phoney War—the period of inactivity on the Western Front since the start of the conflict—came to an end as the German military invaded Belgium and the Netherlands. As a result, the majority of the BEF along with the best French armies and their strategic reserve moved forward to assist the Belgian and Dutch armies. While these forces attempted to stem the tide of the German advance, the main German assault pushed through the Ardennes Forest and crossed the River Meuse. This initiated the Battle of Sedan and threatened to split the Allied armies in two, separating those in Belgium from the rest of the French military along the Franco-German border.
The 23rd (Northumbrian) Division, which had not advanced with the rest of the BEF, was still employed in rear-echelon duties. It was spread across the French departments of Pas-de-Calais and Somme, and had now been assigned to guard airfields. Demonstrating the division's lack of mobility, when the 10th Battalion, DLI was assigned to guard airfields near Abbeville (south of the River Somme) it required all of the divisional transport and immobilised all other units to accomplish this move.
Once the Allied commanders had realised that the German crossing of the Meuse had turned into a major breakthrough, the BEF and French armies began a fighting withdrawal from Belgium back to France. On 17 May, the lack of French reserves prompted Général Alphonse Joseph Georges, commander of all Allied forces in North-East France, to order the 23rd Division to be deployed to the new frontline along the Canal du Nord to face the German breakthrough. The following day, the division was placed under the command of Petreforce, the grouping of the 12th (Eastern), the 23rd Division, and other nearby units under the 12th Division's commander Major-General Roderic Petre. Petre informed his subordinates of the over-optimistic report that had been given to him, that the French were resilient on either side of the German breakthrough and that only small German units had penetrated deep into French territory; forces Petreforce could handle.
### Fighting near Arras
The 23rd was ordered to occupy a 16-mile (26-kilometre) front along the Canal du Nord, around 6 miles (10 km) west of Cambrai and 10 miles (16 km) east of Arras. The canal represented the last major water obstacle between the advancing German force and the English Channel. The 23rd Division was the only British formation standing in the way of the main German assault and the BEF's supply lines. The British official history acknowledges that the division "could do little to stop" the advancing Germans. The troops, having to make their way through refugee-packed roads, arrived along the canal but were unable to dig-in due to a lack of tools. Brigadier Richard Dawnay's 69th Brigade held the northern portion of the division's sector, taking up positions at Arleux and was in contact with the French First Army on their northern flank. Brigadier Philip Kirkup's 70th Brigade held the southern flank, to a distance of about 10 miles (16 km) north of Péronne. Additional French troops were supposed to be covering the division's southern flank, but due to the swift nature of the German advance they never arrived along the canal.
The author Hugh Sebag-Montefiore described the state of the unfinished canal: "there was no water in it, and the deep ditch that was supposed to hold up the German armour would not have challenged a car in some places, let alone a tank". At this point, a composite battery of eleven field guns and two 4.5-inch (110 mm) howitzers were assigned to the division, coming from a Royal Artillery (RA) training camp near Arras. Most of the guns lacked the required equipment for indirect fire and could only be fired over open sights; some had no sights at all. The division soon encountered the vanguard of the German force, who did not attempt to force the canal in the division's area. With Germans nearby, the order was given to blow the bridges across the canal that included one bridge being destroyed while refugees were still crossing. During the day, an alleged spy was brought to the headquarters of the 1st Battalion, Tyneside Scottish. The individual was briefly interrogated by Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Swinburne and the battalion's French liaison officer before a summary execution was carried out by Sergeant Dick Chambers. The division soon suffered its first casualties from air attacks. Unbeknown to the troops, the German advance troops had already formed a bridgehead over the canal to the south of the division.
Having been in position for less than 24 hours, the division was ordered to withdraw towards Arras as a result of the German crossings of the canal. The 69th Brigade moved and took up position along the River Scarpe, northeast of Arras while the 8th Royal Northumberland Fusiliers (the division's motorcycle reconnaissance battalion) entered the town itself to reinforce the garrison. The 70th Brigade was to take up position southwest of the town along the Arras–Doullens road as far as Saulty. By daybreak on 20 May, only the 70th Brigade headquarters and parts of the 10th and 11th DLI were in position. The rest of the brigade was spread out to the south east. Some were waiting on the few trucks in use to ferry them to their intended positions. Others were marching west along the roads in open formation with wide intervals under a constant threat from the Luftwaffe. During this, the brigade was joined by men of the Ordnance Corps and AMPC, who were largely unarmed.
What followed was a series of confused company actions fought by the 70th Brigade in and around the villages of Wancourt, Neuville-Vitasse, Mercatel and Ficheux. At 08:30 on 20 May, elements of the German 8th Panzer Division entered Wancourt and overran parts of the 11th DLI who were awaiting transport. Ill-equipped to engage tanks, these men were either killed or captured following the engagement that saw hand-to-hand fighting with the German panzergrenadiers. Between Neuville-Vitasse and Ficheux, the Tyneside Scottish were ambushed by the Germans. The battalion deployed on either side of the road. Company Sergeant-Major Baggs described "the boys fighting like hell with tanks all around them simply going over the men". Sustaining casualties from heavy flanking machine-gun fire, the battalion was unable to stop two German tanks, which moved up within 20 yards (18 m) of their positions and engaged the British troops with gun fire. Surrounded, the battalion surrendered. Baggs further described the scene: " ... our dead comrades [lay] all over the field on each side of the road. What a sacrifice!" Around 80 of the original 450 men managed to escape. On the western outskirts of Ficheux, B and C Companies of the 10th DLI were caught in the open along the road by German tanks and infantry. Both companies went to ground near the road and were engaged by three waves of German attacks, which included 22 tanks. While two tanks were put out of action, the two companies were eventually overwhelmed. The men of C Company were killed or captured in its entirety, while B Company was reduced to a platoon in strength. Later in the day, one company of the 11th DLI engaged German tanks and infantry at their old camp at Nuncq, before extracting themselves from the fight and retreating towards Abbeville. Unknown to these troops, the Germans had already captured the town and the retreating British troops were soon taken prisoner. What remained of the brigade retreated west to Houdain. That night it was only able to muster 233 officers and men including engineers picked up earlier in the day. Stragglers were rounded up by the 70th Brigade, which organised roughly 800 men of the 23rd Division into four rifle companies and turned them over to the 46th Division.
Ellis wrote that the "12th and 23rd Divisions ... had practically ceased to exist" as a result of the fighting that saw the "whole tract of country between the Scarpe and the Somme" fall into German hands, and "the British lines of communication ... finally cut; and the way to the Channel ports ... open". He continued: "It is a modest estimate of what these two Territorial divisions did to damage and delay the enemy's forces. But it may be perhaps accepted, with this important rider – at this time every single hour's delay was of incalculable service to the rest of the British Forces in France". David Fraser likewise wrote " ... these battalions, ill prepared, under-equipped and unsupported nevertheless on occasion held up the enemy for several hours".
Under mortar fire and with German troops on the opposite bank of the Scarpe, the 69th Brigade withdrew towards Farbus and Vimy Ridge, north of Arras. There, the brigade was issued with more machine guns, anti-tank rifles, and mortars although the level of training in their use was still inadequate. During the withdrawal, the brigade was attacked from the air and witnessed the Luftwaffe strafing refugee columns. Their stay at Vimy Ridge was short-lived due to the ongoing artillery fire, and the brigade moved closer to Arras taking up position at Roclincourt. The brigade could move no closer due to the heavy fighting ongoing around the town. Arras was now reinforced by the fully equipped 5th and 50th (Northumbrian) Divisions which subsequently launched a minor counter-attack. The remains of the 70th Brigade retreated to Lattre. Colonel David Marley, of the 10th DLI, began to collect and direct the remnants of the brigade. In the coming days this force became known as "Marley Force" and essentially replaced the destroyed 70th Brigade, Marley being treated as a brigadier by the division. This force withdrew to Hermaville, then onto Cambligneul by the 21st. Marley, out of contact with the division, drove to Arras to report to Petreforce HQ and was informed the 23rd Division was concentrating on the outskirts of Lille at Seclin. Transport was provided, and Marley Force made their move.
### Retreat to Dunkirk
During the 22nd and 23rd, appreciating the danger that the BEF was now in, Gort issued orders for several units to deploy to form a cordon around the BEF's line of retreat and to cover its rear from a potential strong German attack. The La Bassée Canal and the river Aa were the only defensible positions covering the BEF's southern and western flanks. Two fully equipped divisions were to take up position along this line, with whatever reinforcements Gort could muster. As part of the latter, Marley Force and the 69th Brigade were to take up positions along the canal with the intent to defend Watten, near St. Omer, and Gravelines on the coast. Marley Force departed their camp, escorted by armoured cars and light tanks, but were soon turned around on the orders of Herbert, with no reason provided. The 69th Brigade embarked on three-ton trucks and began a 70-mile (110 km) trek towards their position. Due to ongoing aerial bombardments that blocked the roads and inflicted casualties, only the 6th Green Howards managed to arrive at the brigade's destination. They were cut off from the rest of the brigade for the remainder of the campaign. At Gravelines, around 10 miles (16 km) east of besieged Calais, the battalion was supported by French troops. In this position, the Green Howards fended off several German attacks and knocked out two tanks. At Calais, the garrison was ordered to deliver rations to Dunkirk. To do so, four tanks were sent out to reconnoitre the road to Gravelines to see if it was open and could allow the rest of the garrison to follow. These tanks were fired on by the Green Howards, before they were recognised as British tanks, without inflicting damage or casualties. They represented the final elements of the British force in Calais to escape, before the German cordon was complete and the garrison surrendered. The tanks joined the defence, and the battalion continued to hold the area despite mounting casualties from German artillery and air attacks.
Over the following days, the Germans established bridgeheads over the river and canal and continued to press the BEF from all sides. On 26 May, with the BEF completely surrounded, and the military situation in Flanders further deteriorating, the decision was made to evacuate the BEF from Dunkirk, the only remaining port in British hands. With the evacuation order given, the remnants of the 23rd Division began withdrawing towards Dunkirk with the men always under the threat of or actual attack from the air. During this stage of the campaign, the division was assigned to III Corps for a 48-hour period, before being placed under II Corps for the remainder of the campaign. A detachment of 100 men formed a rearguard to defend bridges over the La Bassée Canal, resulting in their eventual death or capture. On the 28th, the division reached Killem Lynde, Marley Force having conducted further rearguard duties before being relieved by other British forces. Here, all remaining transport and unnecessary baggage was destroyed. On 30 May, the division entered the final Dunkirk perimeter and moved into a defensive position behind the 50th (Northumberland) Motor Division. Marley Force surrendered all their Bren guns to the 50th Division, and around 100 men from the 11th DLI went into the frontline to reinforce their sister battalion, the 8th DLI.
Meanwhile, the 6th Green Howards had continued to fend off German attacks at Gravelines until ordered to withdraw to Bergues. From Bergues, the battalion was sent to Haeghe-Muelen, 8 miles (13 km) south east of Dunkirk, to bolster the garrison composed of Irish and Welsh Guards protecting the right flank of the main withdrawal corridor to the port. Scavenging abandoned small arms, anti-tank rifles, and ammunition, the battalion held their position for a further 48 hours, suffering casualties and fending off German attacks. On 29 May, the battalion was ordered to hand over their Bren guns and ammunition to the Welsh Guards and retire to Dunkirk.
What was left of the division assembled on the beaches during the morning of 31 May. While some troops were picked up on the beaches of Dunkirk, the majority of the men were evacuated via the harbour's mole during the day. During the course of the campaign, the division suffered around 1,900 casualties.
### Disbandment
As soon as the troops returned from France, the British Army began implementing lessons learnt from the campaign. This involved the decision for the basic division to be based around three brigades. This process involved the break up of four second-line territorial divisions to reinforce depleted formations and aid in transforming the Army's five motor divisions (made up of two brigades) into infantry divisions (made up of three brigades). This included the disbanding of the 23rd Division, which occurred on 30 June, its units being dispersed.
Specifically, the 69th Infantry Brigade (along with the 233rd Field Company, RE, and the 124th Field Regiment, RA) was transferred to the division's first-line counterpart, the 50th (Northumberland) Motor Division to finalise its re-organisation into an infantry division. These units, as part of the 50th (Northumberland) Infantry Division, would go on to fight in the North African Campaign, the Allied invasion of Sicily, and the North West Europe Campaign including Operation Overlord. The 70th Brigade was used to reinforce "Alabaster Force", the British force sent to occupy Iceland. This force was based around the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division, which had been reduced to two brigades prior to its deployment. On 18 May 1942, the 70th Brigade officially became part of that division and subsequently fought in Normandy. The 8th Royal Northumberland Fusiliers became the 3rd Reconnaissance Regiment, Reconnaissance Corps and served in the 3rd Infantry Division until the end of the war, fighting in North West Europe. The 507th Field Company, RE were assigned to the 148th Independent Brigade Group.
## Order of battle
## See also
- List of British divisions in World War II
- British Army Order of Battle (September 1939)
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Niels Bohr
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Danish physicist (1885–1962)
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Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research.
Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which he proposed that energy levels of electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. Although the Bohr model has been supplanted by other models, its underlying principles remain valid. He conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analysed in terms of contradictory properties, like behaving as a wave or a stream of particles. The notion of complementarity dominated Bohr's thinking in both science and philosophy.
Bohr founded the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, now known as the Niels Bohr Institute, which opened in 1920. Bohr mentored and collaborated with physicists including Hans Kramers, Oskar Klein, George de Hevesy, and Werner Heisenberg. He predicted the existence of a new zirconium-like element, which was named hafnium, after the Latin name for Copenhagen, where it was discovered. Later, the element bohrium was named after him.
During the 1930s, Bohr helped refugees from Nazism. After Denmark was occupied by the Germans, he had a famous meeting with Heisenberg, who had become the head of the German nuclear weapon project. In September 1943 word reached Bohr that he was about to be arrested by the Germans, so he fled to Sweden. From there, he was flown to Britain, where he joined the British Tube Alloys nuclear weapons project, and was part of the British mission to the Manhattan Project. After the war, Bohr called for international cooperation on nuclear energy. He was involved with the establishment of CERN and the Research Establishment Risø of the Danish Atomic Energy Commission and became the first chairman of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1957.
## Early life
Niels Henrik David Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 7 October 1885, the second of three children of Christian Bohr, a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, and his wife Ellen née Adler, who came from a wealthy Jewish banking family. He had an elder sister, Jenny, and a younger brother Harald. Jenny became a teacher, while Harald became a mathematician and footballer who played for the Danish national team at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. Niels was a passionate footballer as well, and the two brothers played several matches for the Copenhagen-based Akademisk Boldklub (Academic Football Club), with Niels as goalkeeper.
Bohr was educated at Gammelholm Latin School, starting when he was seven. In 1903, Bohr enrolled as an undergraduate at Copenhagen University. His major was physics, which he studied under Professor Christian Christiansen, the university's only professor of physics at that time. He also studied astronomy and mathematics under Professor Thorvald Thiele, and philosophy under Professor Harald Høffding, a friend of his father.
In 1905 a gold medal competition was sponsored by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters to investigate a method for measuring the surface tension of liquids that had been proposed by Lord Rayleigh in 1879. This involved measuring the frequency of oscillation of the radius of a water jet. Bohr conducted a series of experiments using his father's laboratory in the university; the university itself had no physics laboratory. To complete his experiments, he had to make his own glassware, creating test tubes with the required elliptical cross-sections. He went beyond the original task, incorporating improvements into both Rayleigh's theory and his method, by taking into account the viscosity of the water, and by working with finite amplitudes instead of just infinitesimal ones. His essay, which he submitted at the last minute, won the prize. He later submitted an improved version of the paper to the Royal Society in London for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Harald became the first of the two Bohr brothers to earn a master's degree, which he earned for mathematics in April 1909. Niels took another nine months to earn his on the electron theory of metals, a topic assigned by his supervisor, Christiansen. Bohr subsequently elaborated his master's thesis into his much-larger Doctor of Philosophy (dr. phil.) thesis. He surveyed the literature on the subject, settling on a model postulated by Paul Drude and elaborated by Hendrik Lorentz, in which the electrons in a metal are considered to behave like a gas. Bohr extended Lorentz's model, but was still unable to account for phenomena like the Hall effect, and concluded that electron theory could not fully explain the magnetic properties of metals. The thesis was accepted in April 1911, and Bohr conducted his formal defence on 13 May. Harald had received his doctorate the previous year. Bohr's thesis was groundbreaking, but attracted little interest outside Scandinavia because it was written in Danish, a Copenhagen University requirement at the time. In 1921, the Dutch physicist Hendrika Johanna van Leeuwen would independently derive a theorem in Bohr's thesis that is today known as the Bohr–Van Leeuwen theorem.
In 1910, Bohr met Margrethe Nørlund, the sister of the mathematician Niels Erik Nørlund. Bohr resigned his membership in the Church of Denmark on 16 April 1912, and he and Margrethe were married in a civil ceremony at the town hall in Slagelse on 1 August. Years later, his brother Harald similarly left the church before getting married. Bohr and Margrethe had six sons. The oldest, Christian, died in a boating accident in 1934, and another, Harald, was severely mentally disabled. He was placed in an institution away from his family's home at the age of four and died from childhood meningitis six years later. Aage Bohr became a successful physicist, and in 1975 was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, like his father. A son of Aage, Vilhem A. Bohr, is a scientist affiliated with the University of Copenhagen and the National Institute on Aging of the USA. Hans [da] became a physician; Erik [da], a chemical engineer; and Ernest, a lawyer. Like his uncle Harald, Ernest Bohr became an Olympic athlete, playing field hockey for Denmark at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.
## Physics
### Bohr model
In September 1911, Bohr, supported by a fellowship from the Carlsberg Foundation, travelled to England, where most of the theoretical work on the structure of atoms and molecules was being done. He met J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory and Trinity College, Cambridge. He attended lectures on electromagnetism given by James Jeans and Joseph Larmor, and did some research on cathode rays, but failed to impress Thomson. He had more success with younger physicists like the Australian William Lawrence Bragg, and New Zealand's Ernest Rutherford, whose 1911 small central nucleus Rutherford model of the atom had challenged Thomson's 1904 plum pudding model. Bohr received an invitation from Rutherford to conduct post-doctoral work at Victoria University of Manchester, where Bohr met George de Hevesy and Charles Galton Darwin (whom Bohr referred to as "the grandson of the real Darwin").
Bohr returned to Denmark in July 1912 for his wedding, and travelled around England and Scotland on his honeymoon. On his return, he became a privatdocent at the University of Copenhagen, giving lectures on thermodynamics. Martin Knudsen put Bohr's name forward for a docent, which was approved in July 1913, and Bohr then began teaching medical students. His three papers, which later became famous as "the trilogy", were published in Philosophical Magazine in July, September and November of that year. He adapted Rutherford's nuclear structure to Max Planck's quantum theory and so created his Bohr model of the atom.
Planetary models of atoms were not new, but Bohr's treatment was. Taking the 1912 paper by Darwin on the role of electrons in the interaction of alpha particles with a nucleus as his starting point, he advanced the theory of electrons travelling in orbits of quantized "stationary states" around the atom's nucleus in order to stabilize the atom, but it wasn't until his 1921 paper that he showed that the chemical properties of each element were largely determined by the number of electrons in the outer orbits of its atoms. He introduced the idea that an electron could drop from a higher-energy orbit to a lower one, in the process emitting a quantum of discrete energy. This became a basis for what is now known as the old quantum theory.
In 1885, Johann Balmer had come up with his Balmer series to describe the visible spectral lines of a hydrogen atom:
$\frac{1}{\lambda} = R_\mathrm{H}\left(\frac{1}{2^2} - \frac{1}{n^2}\right) \quad \text{for} \ n=3,4,5,...$
where λ is the wavelength of the absorbed or emitted light and R<sub>H</sub> is the Rydberg constant. Balmer's formula was corroborated by the discovery of additional spectral lines, but for thirty years, no one could explain why it worked. In the first paper of his trilogy, Bohr was able to derive it from his model:
$R_Z = { 2\pi^2 m_e Z^2 e^4 \over h^3 }$
where m<sub>e</sub> is the electron's mass, e is its charge, h is Planck's constant and Z is the atom's atomic number (1 for hydrogen).
The model's first hurdle was the Pickering series, lines which did not fit Balmer's formula. When challenged on this by Alfred Fowler, Bohr replied that they were caused by ionised helium, helium atoms with only one electron. The Bohr model was found to work for such ions. Many older physicists, like Thomson, Rayleigh and Hendrik Lorentz, did not like the trilogy, but the younger generation, including Rutherford, David Hilbert, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Max Born and Arnold Sommerfeld saw it as a breakthrough. The trilogy's acceptance was entirely due to its ability to explain phenomena which stymied other models, and to predict results that were subsequently verified by experiments. Today, the Bohr model of the atom has been superseded, but is still the best known model of the atom, as it often appears in high school physics and chemistry texts.
Bohr did not enjoy teaching medical students. He decided to return to Manchester, where Rutherford had offered him a job as a reader in place of Darwin, whose tenure had expired. Bohr accepted. He took a leave of absence from the University of Copenhagen, which he started by taking a holiday in Tyrol with his brother Harald and aunt Hanna Adler. There, he visited the University of Göttingen and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he met Sommerfeld and conducted seminars on the trilogy. The First World War broke out while they were in Tyrol, greatly complicating the trip back to Denmark and Bohr's subsequent voyage with Margrethe to England, where he arrived in October 1914. They stayed until July 1916, by which time he had been appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, a position created especially for him. His docentship was abolished at the same time, so he still had to teach physics to medical students. New professors were formally introduced to King Christian X, who expressed his delight at meeting such a famous football player.
### Institute of Physics
In April 1917 Bohr began a campaign to establish an Institute of Theoretical Physics. He gained the support of the Danish government and the Carlsberg Foundation, and sizeable contributions were also made by industry and private donors, many of them Jewish. Legislation establishing the institute was passed in November 1918. Now known as the Niels Bohr Institute, it opened on 3 March 1921, with Bohr as its director. His family moved into an apartment on the first floor. Bohr's institute served as a focal point for researchers into quantum mechanics and related subjects in the 1920s and 1930s, when most of the world's best known theoretical physicists spent some time in his company. Early arrivals included Hans Kramers from the Netherlands, Oskar Klein from Sweden, George de Hevesy from Hungary, Wojciech Rubinowicz from Poland and Svein Rosseland from Norway. Bohr became widely appreciated as their congenial host and eminent colleague. Klein and Rosseland produced the institute's first publication even before it opened.
The Bohr model worked well for hydrogen and ionized single electron Helium which impressed Einstein, but could not explain more complex elements. By 1919, Bohr was moving away from the idea that electrons orbited the nucleus and developed heuristics to describe them. The rare-earth elements posed a particular classification problem for chemists, because they were so chemically similar. An important development came in 1924 with Wolfgang Pauli's discovery of the Pauli exclusion principle, which put Bohr's models on a firm theoretical footing. Bohr was then able to declare that the as-yet-undiscovered element 72 was not a rare-earth element, but an element with chemical properties similar to those of zirconium. (Elements had been predicted and discovered since 1871 by chemical properties) and Bohr was immediately challenged by the French chemist Georges Urbain, who claimed to have discovered a rare-earth element 72, which he called "celtium". At the Institute in Copenhagen, Dirk Coster and George de Hevesy took up the challenge of proving Bohr right and Urbain wrong. Starting with a clear idea of the chemical properties of the unknown element greatly simplified the search process. They went through samples from Copenhagen's Museum of Mineralogy looking for a zirconium-like element and soon found it. The element, which they named hafnium (Hafnia being the Latin name for Copenhagen) turned out to be more common than gold.
In 1922 Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them". The award thus recognised both the Trilogy and his early leading work in the emerging field of quantum mechanics. For his Nobel lecture, Bohr gave his audience a comprehensive survey of what was then known about the structure of the atom, including the correspondence principle, which he had formulated. This states that the behaviour of systems described by quantum theory reproduces classical physics in the limit of large quantum numbers.
The discovery of Compton scattering by Arthur Holly Compton in 1923 convinced most physicists that light was composed of photons, and that energy and momentum were conserved in collisions between electrons and photons. In 1924, Bohr, Kramers and John C. Slater, an American physicist working at the Institute in Copenhagen, proposed the Bohr–Kramers–Slater theory (BKS). It was more a programme than a full physical theory, as the ideas it developed were not worked out quantitatively. BKS theory became the final attempt at understanding the interaction of matter and electromagnetic radiation on the basis of the old quantum theory, in which quantum phenomena were treated by imposing quantum restrictions on a classical wave description of the electromagnetic field.
Modelling atomic behaviour under incident electromagnetic radiation using "virtual oscillators" at the absorption and emission frequencies, rather than the (different) apparent frequencies of the Bohr orbits, led Max Born, Werner Heisenberg and Kramers to explore different mathematical models. They led to the development of matrix mechanics, the first form of modern quantum mechanics. The BKS theory also generated discussion of, and renewed attention to, difficulties in the foundations of the old quantum theory. The most provocative element of BKS – that momentum and energy would not necessarily be conserved in each interaction, but only statistically – was soon shown to be in conflict with experiments conducted by Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger. In light of these results, Bohr informed Darwin that "there is nothing else to do than to give our revolutionary efforts as honourable a funeral as possible".
### Quantum mechanics
The introduction of spin by George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit in November 1925 was a milestone. The next month, Bohr travelled to Leiden to attend celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Hendrick Lorentz receiving his doctorate. When his train stopped in Hamburg, he was met by Wolfgang Pauli and Otto Stern, who asked for his opinion of the spin theory. Bohr pointed out that he had concerns about the interaction between electrons and magnetic fields. When he arrived in Leiden, Paul Ehrenfest and Albert Einstein informed Bohr that Einstein had resolved this problem using relativity. Bohr then had Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit incorporate this into their paper. Thus, when he met Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan in Göttingen on the way back, he had become, in his own words, "a prophet of the electron magnet gospel".
Heisenberg first came to Copenhagen in 1924, then returned to Göttingen in June 1925, shortly thereafter developing the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. When he showed his results to Max Born in Göttingen, Born realised that they could best be expressed using matrices. This work attracted the attention of the British physicist Paul Dirac, who came to Copenhagen for six months in September 1926. Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger also visited in 1926. His attempt at explaining quantum physics in classical terms using wave mechanics impressed Bohr, who believed it contributed "so much to mathematical clarity and simplicity that it represents a gigantic advance over all previous forms of quantum mechanics".
When Kramers left the institute in 1926 to take up a chair as professor of theoretical physics at the Utrecht University, Bohr arranged for Heisenberg to return and take Kramers's place as a lektor at the University of Copenhagen. Heisenberg worked in Copenhagen as a university lecturer and assistant to Bohr from 1926 to 1927.
Bohr became convinced that light behaved like both waves and particles and, in 1927, experiments confirmed the de Broglie hypothesis that matter (like electrons) also behaved like waves. He conceived the philosophical principle of complementarity: that items could have apparently mutually exclusive properties, such as being a wave or a stream of particles, depending on the experimental framework. He felt that it was not fully understood by professional philosophers.
In February 1927, Heisenberg developed the first version of the uncertainty principle, presenting it using a thought experiment where an electron was observed through a gamma-ray microscope. Bohr was dissatisfied with Heisenberg's argument, since it required only that a measurement disturb properties that already existed, rather than the more radical idea that the electron's properties could not be discussed at all apart from the context they were measured in. In a paper presented at the Volta Conference at Como in September 1927, Bohr emphasized that Heisenberg's uncertainty relations could be derived from classical considerations about the resolving power of optical instruments. Understanding the true meaning of complementarity would, Bohr believed, require "closer investigation". Einstein preferred the determinism of classical physics over the probabilistic new quantum physics to which he himself had contributed. Philosophical issues that arose from the novel aspects of quantum mechanics became widely celebrated subjects of discussion. Einstein and Bohr had good-natured arguments over such issues throughout their lives.
In 1914 Carl Jacobsen, the heir to Carlsberg breweries, bequeathed his mansion (the Carlsberg Honorary Residence, currently known as Carlsberg Academy) to be used for life by the Dane who had made the most prominent contribution to science, literature or the arts, as an honorary residence (Danish: Æresbolig). Harald Høffding had been the first occupant, and upon his death in July 1931, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters gave Bohr occupancy. He and his family moved there in 1932. He was elected president of the Academy on 17 March 1939.
By 1929 the phenomenon of beta decay prompted Bohr to again suggest that the law of conservation of energy be abandoned, but Enrico Fermi's hypothetical neutrino and the subsequent 1932 discovery of the neutron provided another explanation. This prompted Bohr to create a new theory of the compound nucleus in 1936, which explained how neutrons could be captured by the nucleus. In this model, the nucleus could be deformed like a drop of liquid. He worked on this with a new collaborator, the Danish physicist Fritz Kalckar, who died suddenly in 1938.
The discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn in December 1938 (and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner) generated intense interest among physicists. Bohr brought the news to the United States where he opened the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics with Fermi on 26 January 1939. When Bohr told George Placzek that this resolved all the mysteries of transuranic elements, Placzek told him that one remained: the neutron capture energies of uranium did not match those of its decay. Bohr thought about it for a few minutes and then announced to Placzek, Léon Rosenfeld and John Wheeler that "I have understood everything." Based on his liquid drop model of the nucleus, Bohr concluded that it was the uranium-235 isotope and not the more abundant uranium-238 that was primarily responsible for fission with thermal neutrons. In April 1940, John R. Dunning demonstrated that Bohr was correct. In the meantime, Bohr and Wheeler developed a theoretical treatment which they published in a September 1939 paper on "The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission".
## Philosophy
Heisenberg said of Bohr that he was "primarily a philosopher, not a physicist". Bohr read the 19th-century Danish Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Richard Rhodes argued in The Making of the Atomic Bomb that Bohr was influenced by Kierkegaard through Høffding. In 1909, Bohr sent his brother Kierkegaard's Stages on Life's Way as a birthday gift. In the enclosed letter, Bohr wrote, "It is the only thing I have to send home; but I do not believe that it would be very easy to find anything better ... I even think it is one of the most delightful things I have ever read." Bohr enjoyed Kierkegaard's language and literary style, but mentioned that he had some disagreement with Kierkegaard's philosophy. Some of Bohr's biographers suggested that this disagreement stemmed from Kierkegaard's advocacy of Christianity, while Bohr was an atheist.
There has been some dispute over the extent to which Kierkegaard influenced Bohr's philosophy and science. David Favrholdt argued that Kierkegaard had minimal influence over Bohr's work, taking Bohr's statement about disagreeing with Kierkegaard at face value, while Jan Faye argued that one can disagree with the content of a theory while accepting its general premises and structure.
### Quantum physics
There has been much subsequent debate and discussion about Bohr's views and philosophy of quantum mechanics. Regarding his ontological interpretation of the quantum world, Bohr has been seen as an anti-realist, an instrumentalist, a phenomenological realist or some other kind of realist. Furthermore, though some have seen Bohr as being a subjectivist or a positivist, most philosophers agree that this is a misunderstanding of Bohr as he never argued for verificationism or for the idea that the subject had a direct impact on the outcome of a measurement.
Bohr has often been quoted as saying that there is "no quantum world" but only an "abstract quantum physical description". This was not said by Bohr, but rather by Aage Petersen attempting to summarize Bohr's philosophy in a reminiscence after Bohr's death. N. David Mermin recalled Victor Weisskopf declaring that Bohr wouldn't have said anything of the sort and exclaiming, "Shame on Aage Petersen for putting those ridiculous words in Bohr's mouth!"
Numerous scholars have argued that the philosophy of Immanuel Kant had a strong influence on Bohr. Like Kant, Bohr thought distinguishing between the subject's experience and the object was an important condition for attaining knowledge. This can only be done through the use of causal and spatial-temporal concepts to describe the subject's experience. Thus, according to Jan Faye, Bohr thought that it is because of "classical" concepts like "space", "position", "time," "causation", and "momentum" that one can talk about objects and their objective existence. Bohr held that basic concepts like "time" are built in to our ordinary language and that the concepts of classical physics are merely a refinement of them. Therefore, for Bohr, we need to use classical concepts to describe experiments that deal with the quantum world. Bohr writes:
> It is decisive to recognize that, however far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is simply that by the word 'experiment' we refer to a situation where we can tell to others what we have done and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics (APHK, p. 39).
According to Faye, there are various explanations for why Bohr believed that classical concepts were necessary for describing quantum phenomena. Faye groups explanations into five frameworks: empiricism (i.e. logical positivism); Kantianism (or Neo-Kantian models of epistemology in which classical ideas are a priori concepts that the mind imposes on sense impressions); Pragmatism (which focus on how human beings experientially interact with atomic systems according to their needs and interests); Darwinianism (i.e. we are adapted to use classical type concepts, which Léon Rosenfeld said that we evolved to use); and Experimentalism (which focuses strictly on the function and outcome of experiments which thus must be described classically). These explanations are not mutually exclusive, and at times Bohr seems to emphasize some of these aspects while at other times he focuses on other elements.
According to Faye "Bohr thought of the atom as real. Atoms are neither heuristic nor logical constructions." However, according to Faye, he did not believe "that the quantum mechanical formalism was true in the sense that it gave us a literal ('pictorial') rather than a symbolic representation of the quantum world." Therefore, Bohr's theory of complementarity "is first and foremost a semantic and epistemological reading of quantum mechanics that carries certain ontological implications." As Faye explains, Bohr's indefinability thesis is that
> the truth conditions of sentences ascribing a certain kinematic or dynamic value to an atomic object are dependent on the apparatus involved, in such a way that these truth conditions have to include reference to the experimental setup as well as the actual outcome of the experiment.
Faye notes that Bohr's interpretation makes no reference to a "collapse of the wave function during measurements" (and indeed, he never mentioned this idea). Instead, Bohr "accepted the Born statistical interpretation because he believed that the ψ-function has only a symbolic meaning and does not represent anything real." Since for Bohr, the ψ-function is not a literal pictorial representation of reality, there can be no real collapse of the wavefunction.
A much debated point in recent literature is what Bohr believed about atoms and their reality and whether they are something else than what they seem to be. Some like Henry Folse argue that Bohr saw a distinction between observed phenomena and a transcendental reality. Jan Faye disagrees with this position and holds that for Bohr, the quantum formalism and complementarity was the only thing we could say about the quantum world and that "there is no further evidence in Bohr's writings indicating that Bohr would attribute intrinsic and measurement-independent state properties to atomic objects (though quite unintelligible and inaccessible to us) in addition to the classical ones being manifested in measurement."
## Nazism and Second World War
The rise of Nazism in Germany prompted many scholars to flee their countries, either because they were Jewish or because they were political opponents of the Nazi regime. In 1933, the Rockefeller Foundation created a fund to help support refugee academics, and Bohr discussed this programme with the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Max Mason, in May 1933 during a visit to the United States. Bohr offered the refugees temporary jobs at the institute, provided them with financial support, arranged for them to be awarded fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, and ultimately found them places at institutions around the world. Those that he helped included Guido Beck, Felix Bloch, James Franck, George de Hevesy, Otto Frisch, Hilde Levi, Lise Meitner, George Placzek, Eugene Rabinowitch, Stefan Rozental, Erich Ernst Schneider, Edward Teller, Arthur von Hippel and Victor Weisskopf.
In April 1940, early in the Second World War, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Denmark. To prevent the Germans from discovering Max von Laue's and James Franck's gold Nobel medals, Bohr had de Hevesy dissolve them in aqua regia. In this form, they were stored on a shelf at the Institute until after the war, when the gold was precipitated and the medals re-struck by the Nobel Foundation. Bohr's own medal had been donated to an auction to the Finnish Relief Fund, and was auctioned off in March 1940, along with the medal of August Krogh. The buyer later donated the two medals to the Danish Historical Museum in Frederiksborg Castle, where they are still kept.
Bohr kept the Institute running, but all the foreign scholars departed.
### Meeting with Heisenberg
Bohr was aware of the possibility of using uranium-235 to construct an atomic bomb, referring to it in lectures in Britain and Denmark shortly before and after the war started, but he did not believe that it was technically feasible to extract a sufficient quantity of uranium-235. In September 1941, Heisenberg, who had become head of the German nuclear energy project, visited Bohr in Copenhagen. During this meeting the two men took a private moment outside, the content of which has caused much speculation, as both gave differing accounts. According to Heisenberg, he began to address nuclear energy, morality and the war, to which Bohr seems to have reacted by terminating the conversation abruptly while not giving Heisenberg hints about his own opinions. Ivan Supek, one of Heisenberg's students and friends, claimed that the main subject of the meeting was Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, who had proposed trying to persuade Bohr to mediate peace between Britain and Germany.
In 1957, Heisenberg wrote to Robert Jungk, who was then working on the book Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists. Heisenberg explained that he had visited Copenhagen to communicate to Bohr the views of several German scientists, that production of a nuclear weapon was possible with great efforts, and this raised enormous responsibilities on the world's scientists on both sides. When Bohr saw Jungk's depiction in the Danish translation of the book, he drafted (but never sent) a letter to Heisenberg, stating that he never understood the purpose of Heisenberg's visit, was shocked by Heisenberg's opinion that Germany would win the war, and that atomic weapons could be decisive.
Michael Frayn's 1998 play Copenhagen explores what might have happened at the 1941 meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr. A television film version of the play by the BBC was first screened on 26 September 2002, with Stephen Rea as Bohr. The same meeting had previously been dramatised by the BBC's Horizon science documentary series in 1992, with Anthony Bate as Bohr, and Philip Anthony as Heisenberg. The meeting is also dramatized in the Norwegian/Danish/British miniseries The Heavy Water War.
### Manhattan Project
In September 1943, word reached Bohr and his brother Harald that the Nazis considered their family to be Jewish, since their mother was Jewish, and that they were therefore in danger of being arrested. The Danish resistance helped Bohr and his wife escape by sea to Sweden on 29 September. The next day, Bohr persuaded King Gustaf V of Sweden to make public Sweden's willingness to provide asylum to Jewish refugees. On 2 October 1943, Swedish radio broadcast that Sweden was ready to offer asylum, and the mass rescue of the Danish Jews by their countrymen followed swiftly thereafter. Some historians claim that Bohr's actions led directly to the mass rescue, while others say that, though Bohr did all that he could for his countrymen, his actions were not a decisive influence on the wider events. Eventually, over 7,000 Danish Jews escaped to Sweden.
When the news of Bohr's escape reached Britain, Lord Cherwell sent a telegram to Bohr asking him to come to Britain. Bohr arrived in Scotland on 6 October in a de Havilland Mosquito operated by the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). The Mosquitos were unarmed high-speed bomber aircraft that had been converted to carry small, valuable cargoes or important passengers. By flying at high speed and high altitude, they could cross German-occupied Norway, and yet avoid German fighters. Bohr, equipped with parachute, flying suit and oxygen mask, spent the three-hour flight lying on a mattress in the aircraft's bomb bay. During the flight, Bohr did not wear his flying helmet as it was too small, and consequently did not hear the pilot's intercom instruction to turn on his oxygen supply when the aircraft climbed to high altitude to overfly Norway. He passed out from oxygen starvation and only revived when the aircraft descended to lower altitude over the North Sea. Bohr's son Aage followed his father to Britain on another flight a week later, and became his personal assistant.
Bohr was warmly received by James Chadwick and Sir John Anderson, but for security reasons Bohr was kept out of sight. He was given an apartment at St James's Palace and an office with the British Tube Alloys nuclear weapons development team. Bohr was astonished at the amount of progress that had been made. Chadwick arranged for Bohr to visit the United States as a Tube Alloys consultant, with Aage as his assistant. On 8 December 1943, Bohr arrived in Washington, D.C., where he met with the director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. He visited Einstein and Pauli at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and went to Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons were being designed. For security reasons, he went under the name of "Nicholas Baker" in the United States, while Aage became "James Baker". In May 1944 the Danish resistance newspaper De frie Danske reported that they had learned that 'the famous son of Denmark Professor Niels Bohr' in October the previous year had fled his country via Sweden to London and from there travelled to Moscow from where he could be assumed to support the war effort.
Bohr did not remain at Los Alamos, but paid a series of extended visits over the course of the next two years. Robert Oppenheimer credited Bohr with acting "as a scientific father figure to the younger men", most notably Richard Feynman. Bohr is quoted as saying, "They didn't need my help in making the atom bomb." Oppenheimer gave Bohr credit for an important contribution to the work on modulated neutron initiators. "This device remained a stubborn puzzle," Oppenheimer noted, "but in early February 1945 Niels Bohr clarified what had to be done."
Bohr recognised early that nuclear weapons would change international relations. In April 1944, he received a letter from Peter Kapitza, written some months before when Bohr was in Sweden, inviting him to come to the Soviet Union. The letter convinced Bohr that the Soviets were aware of the Anglo-American project, and would strive to catch up. He sent Kapitza a non-committal response, which he showed to the authorities in Britain before posting. Bohr met Churchill on 16 May 1944, but found that "we did not speak the same language". Churchill disagreed with the idea of openness towards the Russians to the point that he wrote in a letter: "It seems to me Bohr ought to be confined or at any rate made to see that he is very near the edge of mortal crimes."
Oppenheimer suggested that Bohr visit President Franklin D. Roosevelt to convince him that the Manhattan Project should be shared with the Soviets in the hope of speeding up its results. Bohr's friend, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, informed President Roosevelt about Bohr's opinions, and a meeting between them took place on 26 August 1944. Roosevelt suggested that Bohr return to the United Kingdom to try to win British approval. When Churchill and Roosevelt met at Hyde Park on 19 September 1944, they rejected the idea of informing the world about the project, and the aide-mémoire of their conversation contained a rider that "enquiries should be made regarding the activities of Professor Bohr and steps taken to ensure that he is responsible for no leakage of information, particularly to the Russians".
In June 1950, Bohr addressed an "Open Letter" to the United Nations calling for international cooperation on nuclear energy. In the 1950s, after the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test, the International Atomic Energy Agency was created along the lines of Bohr's suggestion. In 1957 he received the first ever Atoms for Peace Award.
## Later years
With the war now ended, Bohr returned to Copenhagen on 25 August 1945, and was re-elected President of the Royal Danish Academy of Arts and Sciences on 21 September. At a memorial meeting of the Academy on 17 October 1947 for King Christian X, who had died in April, the new king, Frederick IX, announced that he was conferring the Order of the Elephant on Bohr. This award was normally awarded only to royalty and heads of state, but the king said that it honoured not just Bohr personally, but Danish science. Bohr designed his own coat of arms which featured a taijitu (symbol of yin and yang) and a motto in Latin: contraria sunt complementa, "opposites are complementary".
The Second World War demonstrated that science, and physics in particular, now required considerable financial and material resources. To avoid a brain drain to the United States, twelve European countries banded together to create CERN, a research organisation along the lines of the national laboratories in the United States, designed to undertake Big Science projects beyond the resources of any one of them alone. Questions soon arose regarding the best location for the facilities. Bohr and Kramers felt that the Institute in Copenhagen would be the ideal site. Pierre Auger, who organised the preliminary discussions, disagreed; he felt that both Bohr and his Institute were past their prime, and that Bohr's presence would overshadow others. After a long debate, Bohr pledged his support to CERN in February 1952, and Geneva was chosen as the site in October. The CERN Theory Group was based in Copenhagen until their new accommodation in Geneva was ready in 1957. Victor Weisskopf, who later became the Director General of CERN, summed up Bohr's role, saying that "there were other personalities who started and conceived the idea of CERN. The enthusiasm and ideas of the other people would not have been enough, however, if a man of his stature had not supported it."
Meanwhile, Scandinavian countries formed the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1957, with Bohr as its chairman. He was also involved with the founding of the Research Establishment Risø of the Danish Atomic Energy Commission, and served as its first chairman from February 1956.
Bohr died of heart failure at his home in Carlsberg on 18 November 1962. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried in the family plot in the Assistens Cemetery in the Nørrebro section of Copenhagen, along with those of his parents, his brother Harald, and his son Christian. Years later, his wife's ashes were also interred there. On 7 October 1965, on what would have been his 80th birthday, the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen was officially renamed to what it had been called unofficially for many years: the Niels Bohr Institute.
## Accolades
Bohr received numerous honours and accolades. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he received the Hughes Medal in 1921, the Matteucci Medal in 1923, the Franklin Medal in 1926, the Copley Medal in 1938, the Order of the Elephant in 1947, the Atoms for Peace Award in 1957 and the Sonning Prize in 1961. He became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1923, an international member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1925, a member of the Royal Society in 1926, an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 1940, and an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1945. The Bohr model's semicentennial was commemorated in Denmark on 21 November 1963 with a postage stamp depicting Bohr, the hydrogen atom and the formula for the difference of any two hydrogen energy levels: $h\nu = \epsilon_2 - \epsilon_1$. Several other countries have also issued postage stamps depicting Bohr. In 1997, the Danish National Bank began circulating the 500-krone banknote with the portrait of Bohr smoking a pipe. On 7 October 2012, in celebration of Niels Bohr's 127th birthday, a Google Doodle depicting the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom appeared on Google's home page. An asteroid, 3948 Bohr, was named after him, as was the Bohr lunar crater and bohrium, the chemical element with atomic number 107.
## See also
- Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox
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1,531,811 |
SMS König
| 1,164,877,869 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
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[
"1913 ships",
"König-class battleships",
"Maritime incidents in 1919",
"Ships built in Wilhelmshaven",
"World War I battleships of Germany",
"World War I warships scuttled at Scapa Flow"
] |
SMS König was the first of four König-class dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) during World War I. König (English: King) was named in honor of King William II of Württemberg. Laid down in October 1911, the ship was launched on 1 March 1913. The construction of König was completed shortly after the outbreak of World War I; she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 9 August 1914.
Along with her three sister ships, Grosser Kurfürst, Markgraf, and Kronprinz, König took part in most of the fleet actions during the war. As the leading ship in the German line on 31 May 1916 in the Battle of Jutland, König was heavily engaged by several British battleships and suffered ten large-caliber shell hits. In October 1917, she forced the Russian pre-dreadnought battleship Slava to scuttle herself in the Battle of Moon Sound, which followed Germany's successful Operation Albion.
König was interned, along with the majority of the High Seas Fleet, at Scapa Flow in November 1918 following the Armistice. On 21 June 1919, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter gave the order to scuttle the fleet, including König, while the British guard ships were out of the harbor on exercises. Unlike most of the scuttled ships, König was never raised for scrapping; the wreck is still on the bottom of the bay.
## Design
The four König-class battleships were ordered as part of the Anglo-German naval arms race; they were the fourth generation of German dreadnought battleships, and they were built in response to the British Orion class that had been ordered in 1909. The Königs represented a development of the earlier Kaiser class, with the primary improvement being a more efficient arrangement of the main battery. The ships had also been intended to use a diesel engine on the center propeller shaft to increase their cruising range, but development of the diesels proved to be more complicated than expected, so an all-steam turbine powerplant was retained.
König displaced 25,796 t (25,389 long tons) as built and 28,600 t (28,100 long tons) fully loaded, with a length of 175.4 m (575 ft 6 in), a beam of 29.5 m (96 ft 9 in) and a draft of 9.19 m (30 ft 2 in). She was powered by three Parsons steam turbines, with steam provided by three oil-fired and twelve coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft water-tube boilers, which developed a total of 42,708 shaft horsepower (31,847 kW) and yielded a maximum speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). The ship had a range of 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km; 9,200 mi) at a cruising speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph). Her crew numbered 41 officers and 1,095 enlisted men.
She was armed with ten 30.5 cm (12 in) SK L/50 guns arranged in five twin gun turrets: two superfiring turrets each fore and aft and one turret amidships between the two funnels. König was the first German battleship to mount all of her main battery artillery on the centerline. Like the earlier Kaiser-class battleships, König could bring all of her main guns to bear on either side, but the newer vessel enjoyed a wider arc of fire due to the all-centerline arrangement. Her secondary armament consisted of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 quick-firing guns and six 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 quick-firing guns, all mounted singly in casemates. As was customary for capital ships of the period, she was also armed with five 50 cm (19.7 in) underwater torpedo tubes, one in the bow and two on each beam.
The ship's armored belt consisted of Krupp cemented steel that was 35 cm (13.8 in) thick in the central citadel that protected the propulsion machinery spaces and the ammunition magazines, and was reduced to 18 cm (7.1 in) forward and 12 cm (4.7 in) aft. In the central portion of the ship, horizontal protection consisted of a 10 cm (3.9 in) deck, which was reduced to 4 cm (1.6 in) on the bow and stern. The main battery turrets had 30 cm (11.8 in) of armor plate on the sides and 11 cm (4.3 in) on the roofs, while the casemate guns had 15 cm (5.9 in) of armor protection. The sides of the forward conning tower were also 30 cm thick.
## Service
König was ordered under the provisional name "S" and built at the Kaiserliche Werft dockyards in Wilhelmshaven, under construction number 33. Her keel was laid in October 1911 and she was launched on 1 March 1913 by the King's cousin, Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg. Fitting-out work was completed by 9 August 1914, the day she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet. Directly after commissioning, König conducted sea trials, which were completed by 23 November 1914. Her crew consisted of 41 officers and 1,095 enlisted men. Afterward, the ship was attached to V Division of III Battle Squadron of the German High Seas Fleet, where she would later be joined by her sister ships. On 9 December, König ran aground in the Wilhelmshaven roadstead. Her sister ship Grosser Kurfürst, following right behind, rammed her stern and caused some minor damage. König was then freed from the bottom and taken back to Wilhelmshaven; repair work lasted until 2 January 1915.
### Operations in the North Sea
König took part in several fleet sorties in support of Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers of I Scouting Group; however, due to her grounding outside Wilhelmshaven, the ship missed the first operation of these battlecruisers on the night of 15/16 December 1914, when they were tasked with bombarding the English coast to lure out a portion of the British Grand Fleet to the waiting German fleet. On 22 January 1915, König and the rest of III Squadron were detached from the fleet to conduct maneuver, gunnery, and torpedo training in the Baltic. They returned to the North Sea on 11 February, too late to assist I Scouting Group at the Battle of Dogger Bank.
König then took part in several sorties into the North Sea. On 29 March, the ship led the fleet out to Terschelling. Three weeks later, on 17–18 April, she supported an operation in which the light cruisers of II Scouting Group laid mines off the Swarte Bank. Another fleet advance occurred on 22 April, again with König in the lead. On 23 April, III Squadron returned to the Baltic for another round of exercises lasting until 10 May. Another minelaying operation was conducted by II Scouting Group on 17 May, with the battleship again in support.
König participated in a fleet advance into the North Sea which ended without combat from 29 until 31 May. She was then briefly assigned to picket duty in the German defensive belt. The ship again ran aground on 6 July, though damage was minimal. The ship supported a minelaying operation on 11–12 September off Texel. Another fleet advance followed on 23–24 October; after returning, König went into drydock for maintenance, rejoining the fleet by 4 November. The ship was then sent back to the Baltic for more training on 5–20 December. On the return voyage, she was slightly damaged after grounding in the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal during a snow storm. König was in the Baltic on 17 January 1916 for further training, then on 24 January returned to the North Sea. Two fleet advances followed on 5–6 March and 21–22 April.
König was available on 24 April 1916 to support a raid on the English coast, again as support for the German battlecruiser force in I Scouting Group. 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 artillery duel ensued before the Harwich Force withdrew. Reports of British submarines in the area prompted the retreat of I Scouting Group. At this point, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, who had been warned of the sortie of the Grand Fleet from its base at Scapa Flow, also withdrew to safer German waters. König then went to the Baltic for another round of exercises, including torpedo drills off Mecklenburg.
### Battle of Jutland
König 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. König, followed by her sisters Grosser Kurfürst, Markgraf, and Kronprinz, made up V Division of III Battle Squadron, and they were the vanguard of the fleet. III Battle Squadron was the first of three battleship units; directly astern were the Kaiser-class battleships of VI Division, III Battle Squadron. Directly astern of the Kaiser-class ships were the Helgoland and Nassau classes of I Battle Squadron; in the rear guard were the obsolescent Deutschland-class pre-dreadnoughts of II Battle Squadron.
Shortly before 16:00 CET, 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, König's crew 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 at 17:46, the order to open fire was given.
König, Grosser Kurfürst, and Markgraf were the first to reach effective gunnery range; they engaged the battlecruisers Lion, Princess Royal, and Tiger, respectively, at a range of 21,000 yards. König's first salvos fell short of her target, and so she shifted her fire to the nearer Tiger. Simultaneously, König and her sisters began firing on the destroyers Nestor and Nicator with their secondary battery. The two destroyers closed in on the German line, and after having endured a hail of gunfire, maneuvered into a good firing position. Each ship launched two torpedoes apiece at König and Grosser Kurfürst, although all four weapons missed. In return, a secondary battery shell from one of the battleships hit Nestor and wrecked her engine room. The ship, along with the destroyer Nomad, was crippled and lying directly in the path of the advancing German line. Both of the destroyers were sunk, and German torpedo boats stopped to pick up survivors. At around 18:00, König and her three sister ships shifted their fire to the approaching Queen Elizabeth-class battleships of 5th Battle Squadron. König initially engaged Barham until that ship was out of range, then shifted to Valiant. However, the faster British battleships were able to move out of effective gunnery range quickly.
Shortly after 19:00, the German cruiser Wiesbaden had become disabled by a shell from the British battlecruiser Invincible; Rear Admiral Paul Behncke in König attempted to maneuver his four ships to cover the stricken cruiser. Simultaneously, the British III and IV Light Cruiser Squadrons began a torpedo attack on the German line; while advancing to torpedo range, they smothered Wiesbaden with fire from their main guns. König and her sisters fired heavily on the British cruisers, but even sustained fire from the battleships' main guns failed to drive off the British cruisers. In the ensuing melee, the British armored cruiser Defence was struck by several heavy caliber shells from the German dreadnoughts. One salvo penetrated the ship's ammunition magazines and, in a massive explosion, destroyed the cruiser.
Shortly after 19:20, König again entered gunnery range of the battleship Warspite and opened fire on her target. She was joined by the dreadnoughts Friedrich der Grosse, Ostfriesland, Helgoland, and Thüringen. However, König rapidly lost sight of Warspite, as she had been in the process of turning east-northeast. Nearly simultaneously, British light cruisers and destroyers attempted to make a torpedo attack against the leading ships of the German line, including König. Shortly thereafter, the main British line came into range of the German fleet; at 19:30 the British battleships opened fire on both the German battlecruiser force and the König-class ships. König came under especially heavy fire during this period. In the span of 5 minutes, Iron Duke fired 9 salvos at König from a range of 12,000 yards; only one shell hit the ship. The 13.5-inch shell struck the forward conning tower but instead of penetrating, the shell ricocheted off and detonated some 50 yards past the ship. Rear Admiral Behncke was injured, though he remained in command of the ship. The ship was then obscured by smoke that granted a temporary reprieve.
By 20:00, the German line was ordered to turn westward to disengage from the British fleet. König, at the head, completed her turn and then reduced speed to allow the vessels behind her to return to formation. Shortly thereafter, four British light cruisers resumed the attacks on the crippled Wiesbaden; the leading German battleships, including König, opened fire on the cruisers in an attempt to drive them off. The pursuing British battleships had by this time turned further south and nearly managed to "cross the T" of the German line. To rectify this situation, Admiral Scheer ordered a 16-point turn south and sent Hipper's battlecruisers on a charge toward the British fleet. During the turn, König was struck by a 13.5-inch shell from Iron Duke; the shell hit the ship just aft of the rearmost gun turret. König suffered significant structural damage, and several rooms were filled with smoke. During the turn to starboard, Vice Admiral Schmidt, the commander of I Battle Squadron, decided to turn his ships immediately, instead of following the leading ships in succession. This caused a great deal of confusion, and nearly resulted in several collisions. As a result, many of the German battleships were forced to drastically reduce speed, which put the entire fleet in great danger. In an attempt to mitigate the predicament, König turned to port and laid a smokescreen between the German and British lines.
During the battle, König suffered significant damage. A heavy shell penetrated the main armored deck toward the bow. Another shell hit the armored bulkhead at the corner and shoved it back five feet, breaking off a large piece from the armor plate in the process. Shell splinters from another hit penetrated several of the casemates that held the 15 cm secondary guns, two of which were disabled. The ammunition stores for these two guns were set on fire and the magazines had to be flooded to prevent an explosion. The ship nevertheless remained combat effective, as her primary battery remained in operation, as did most of her secondary guns; König could also steam at close to her maximum speed. Other areas of the ship had to be counter-flooded to maintain stability; 1,600 tons of water entered the ship, either as a result of battle damage or counter-flooding efforts. The flooding rendered the battleship sufficiently low in the water to prevent the ship from being able to cross the Amrum Bank until 09:30 on 1 June. König was taken to Kiel for initial repairs, as that was the only location that had a floating dry dock large enough to fit the ship. Repairs were conducted there from 4 to 18 June, at which point the ship was transferred to the Howaldtswerke shipyard. König was again ready to join the fleet by 21 July. In the course of the battle, she suffered 45 men killed and 27 wounded, the highest tally for any surviving battleship in the German fleet.
### Subsequent operations
Following completion of repairs, König was again detached to the Baltic for training, from the end of July until early August. König was back in the North Sea on 5 August. A major fleet sortie occurred on 18–20 August, with König again in the lead. I Scouting Group was to bombard the coastal town of Sunderland, in an attempt to draw out and destroy Beatty's battlecruisers. However, as Von der Tann and Moltke were the only battlecruisers in fighting condition, the new battleship Bayern and two of König's sisters, Markgraf and Grosser Kurfürst, were temporarily assigned to I Scouting Group. Admiral Scheer and the rest of the High Seas Fleet would trail behind providing cover. The British were aware of the German plans and sortied the Grand Fleet to meet them, leading to the inconclusive action of 19 August 1916. By 14:35, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and, unwilling to engage the whole of the Grand Fleet just 11 weeks after the decidedly close call at Jutland, turned his forces around and retreated to German ports.
König remained in port until 21 October, when the ship was again sent to the Baltic for training. The ship returned to the fleet on 3 November. König and the rest of III Squadron then steamed out to Horns Reef on 5–6 November. König was then assigned various tasks, including guard duty in the German Bight and convoy escort in the Baltic. 1917 saw several training missions in the Baltic during 22 February – 4 March; 14–22 March and 17 May – 9 June. König then went into Wilhelmshaven for maintenance on 16 June. The installation of a new heavy foremast and other work lasted until 21 July. On 10 September, König again went into the Baltic for training maneuvers.
### Operation Albion
In early September 1917, following the German conquest of the Russian port of Riga, the German navy decided to eliminate the Russian naval forces that still held the Gulf of Riga. The Admiralstab (the Navy High Command) planned an operation to seize the Baltic island of Ösel, and specifically the Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe Peninsula. On 18 September, the order was issued for a joint operation with the army to capture Ösel and Moon Islands; the primary naval component was to comprise the flagship, Moltke, along with III Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet. V Division included the four König-class ships, and was by this time augmented with the new battleship Bayern. VI Division consisted of the five Kaiser-class battleships. Along with 9 light cruisers, 3 torpedo boat flotillas, and dozens of mine warfare ships, the entire force numbered some 300 ships, supported by over 100 aircraft and 6 zeppelins. The invasion force amounted to approximately 24,600 officers and enlisted men. Opposing the Germans were the old Russian pre-dreadnoughts Slava and Tsesarevich, the armored cruisers Bayan, Admiral Makarov, and Diana, 26 destroyers, and several torpedo boats and gunboats. The garrison on Ösel numbered some 14,000 men.
König departed Kiel on 23 September for Putziger Wiek, where the ship remained until 10 October. The operation began on 12 October; at 03:00 König anchored off Ösel in Tagga Bay and disembarked soldiers. By 05:50, König opened fire on Russian coastal artillery emplacements, joined by Moltke, Bayern, and the other three König-class ships. Simultaneously, the Kaiser-class ships engaged the batteries on the Sworbe peninsula; the objective was to secure the channel between Moon and Dagö islands, which would block the only escape route of the Russian ships in the Gulf. Both Grosser Kurfürst and Bayern struck mines while maneuvering into their bombardment positions, with minimal damage to the former. Bayern was severely wounded, and had to be withdrawn to Kiel for repairs. At 17:30, König departed the area to refuel; she returned to the Irben Strait on 15 October.
On 16 October, it was decided to detach a portion of the invasion flotilla to clear the Russian naval forces in Moon Sound; these included the two Russian pre-dreadnoughts. To this end, König and Kronprinz, along with the cruisers Strassburg and Kolberg and a number of smaller vessels, were sent to engage the Russian battleships, leading to the Battle of Moon Sound. They arrived by the morning of 17 October, but a deep Russian minefield thwarted their progress. The Germans were surprised to discover that the 30.5 cm guns of the Russian battleships out-ranged their own 30.5 cm guns. The Russian ships managed to keep the distance wide enough to prevent the German battleships from being able to return fire, while still firing effectively on the German ships, and the Germans had to take several evasive maneuvers to avoid the Russian shells. However, by 10:00, the minesweepers had cleared a path through the minefield, and König and Kronprinz dashed into the bay. By 10:13, König was in range of Slava and quickly opened fire. Meanwhile, Kronprinz fired on both Slava and the cruiser Bayan. The Russian vessels were hit dozens of times, until at 10:30 the Russian naval commander, Admiral Bakhirev, ordered their withdrawal. König had hit Slava seven times; the damage inflicted prevented her from escaping to the north. Instead, she was scuttled and her crew was evacuated on a destroyer. In the course of the engagement, König struck the cruiser Bayan once. Following the engagement, König fired on shore batteries on Woi and Werder.
On 20 October, König was towed by mine sweepers into the Kuiwast roadstead. König transferred soldiers to the island of Schildaum which was then occupied. By that time, the fighting on the islands was winding down; Moon, Ösel, and Dagö were in German possession. The previous day, the Admiralstab had ordered the cessation of naval actions and the return of the dreadnoughts to the High Seas Fleet as soon as possible. On the return voyage, König struck bottom in a heavy swell. The ship was repaired in Kiel; the work lasted until 17 November.
### Final operations
Following König's return from the Baltic, the ship was tasked with guard duties in the North Sea and with providing support for minesweepers. König returned to the Baltic on 22 December for further training, which lasted until 8 January 1918. Another round of exercises was conducted from 23 February to 11 March. On 20 April König steamed out to assist a German patrol that was engaged with British forces. The ship was part of the force that steamed to Norway to intercept a heavily escorted British convoy on 23–25 April, though the operation was canceled when the battlecruiser Moltke suffered mechanical damage. König was briefly grounded in the northern harbor of the island of Helgoland on 30 May. Two months later, on 31 July, König and the rest of III Squadron covered a minesweeping unit in the North Sea. The ship then went to the Baltic for training on 7–18 August, after which König returned to the North Sea. König conducted her last exercise in the Baltic starting on 28 September; the maneuvers lasted until 1 October.
König was to have taken part in a final fleet action days before the Armistice, an operation which envisioned the bulk of the High Seas Fleet sortieing from their base in Wilhelmshaven to engage the British Grand Fleet. To retain a better bargaining position for Germany, Admirals Hipper and Scheer intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy, whatever the cost to the fleet. On 29 October 1918, the order was given to depart from Wilhelmshaven to consolidate the fleet in the Jade roadstead, with the intention of departing the following morning. However, starting on the night of 29 October, sailors on Thüringen mutinied. The unrest spread to other battleships, including König. The operation was ultimately canceled; in an attempt to suppress the mutiny, Admiral Scheer ordered the fleet be dispersed. König and the rest of III Squadron were sent to Kiel. During the subsequent mutiny, König's captain was wounded three times, and both her first officer and adjutant were killed.
### Fate
Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, were interned in the British naval base at Scapa Flow. Prior to the departure of the German fleet, Admiral Adolf von Trotha made clear to von Reuter that he could not allow the Allies to seize the ships, under any conditions. The fleet rendezvoused with the British light cruiser Cardiff, which led the ships to the Allied fleet that was to escort the Germans to Scapa Flow. The massive flotilla consisted of some 370 British, American, and French warships. Once the ships were interned, their guns were disabled through the removal of their breech blocks.
The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Versailles Treaty. Von Reuter believed that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. Unaware that the deadline had been extended to the 23rd, Reuter ordered the ships to be sunk. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships. König sank at 14:00; the ship was never raised for scrapping, unlike most of the other capital ships that were scuttled. The rights to future salvage operations on the wreck were sold to Britain in 1962.
The wrecks of König and the battleships Markgraf and Kronprinz Wilhelm were designated maritime scheduled ancient monuments on 23 May 2001. The ship is now a popular dive site in Scapa Flow, lying at a depth of 40 m (130 ft) on a sandy floor to the east of Cava. She turned over as she sank and the hull faces upwards at about 20 m (66 ft) down. There are several dynamited holes in her superstructure where salvagers have gained access to obtain non-ferrous metals. In 2017, marine archaeologists from the Orkney Research Center for Archaeology conducted extensive surveys of König and nine other wrecks in the area, including six other German and three British warships. The archaeologists mapped the wrecks with sonar and examined them with remotely operated underwater vehicles as part of an effort to determine how the wrecks are deteriorating.
The wreck at some point came into the ownership of the firm Scapa Flow Salvage, which sold the rights to the vessel to Tommy Clark, a diving contractor, in 1981. Clark listed the wreck for sale on eBay with a "buy-it-now" price of £250,000, with the auction lasting until 28 June 2019. Three other wrecks—those of Kronprinz Wilhelm, Markgraf, and the light cruiser Karlsruhe—all also owned by Clark, were also placed for sale. The wrecks of König and her two sisters ultimately sold for £25,500 apiece to a company from the Middle East, while Karlsruhe sold to a private buyer for £8,500.
|
990,790 |
H. C. McNeile
| 1,141,676,099 |
British soldier and author (1888–1937)
|
[
"1888 births",
"1937 deaths",
"20th-century British screenwriters",
"20th-century English male writers",
"20th-century English novelists",
"British Army personnel of World War I",
"British male novelists",
"British male screenwriters",
"English thriller writers",
"Graduates of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich",
"Novelists from Cornwall",
"People educated at Cheltenham College",
"People from Bodmin",
"People from West Chiltington",
"Recipients of the Military Cross",
"Royal Engineers officers"
] |
Herman Cyril McNeile, MC (28 September 1888 – 14 August 1937), commonly known as Cyril McNeile and publishing under the name H. C. McNeile or the pseudonym Sapper, was a British soldier and author. Drawing on his experiences in the trenches during the First World War, he started writing short stories and getting them published in the Daily Mail. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names, he was given the pen name "Sapper" by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail; the nickname was based on that of his corps, the Royal Engineers.
After the war McNeile left the army and continued writing, although he changed from war stories to thrillers. In 1920 he published Bulldog Drummond, whose eponymous hero became his best-known creation. The character was based on McNeile himself, on his friend Gerard Fairlie and on English gentlemen generally. McNeile wrote ten Bulldog Drummond novels, as well as three plays and a screenplay.
McNeile interspersed his Drummond work with other novels and story collections that included two characters who appeared as protagonists in their own works, Jim Maitland and Ronald Standish. He was one of the most successful British popular authors of the inter-war period before his death in 1937 from throat cancer, which has been attributed to damage sustained from a gas attack in the war.
McNeile's stories are either directly about the war, or contain people whose lives have been shaped by it. His thrillers are a continuation of his war stories, with upper class Englishmen defending England from foreigners plotting against it. Although he was seen at the time as "simply an upstanding Tory who spoke for many of his countrymen", after the Second World War his work was criticised as having fascist overtones, while also displaying the xenophobia and anti-semitism apparent in some other writers of the period.
## Biography
### Early life
McNeile was born in Bodmin, Cornwall. He was the son of Malcolm McNeile, a captain in the Royal Navy who at the time was governor of the naval prison at Bodmin, and Christiana Mary (née Sloggett). The McNeile family had ancestral roots from both Belfast and Scotland, and counted a general in the British Indian Army among their members.
McNeile did not like either of his given names but preferred to be called Cyril, although he was always known by his friends as Mac. After attending a prep school in Eastbourne, he was further educated at Cheltenham College. On leaving the college, he joined the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from which he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers as a second lieutenant in July 1907. He underwent further training at the Royal School of Military Engineering before a short posting to Aldershot Garrison. He received promotion to lieutenant in June 1910 and was posted to Canterbury, serving three years with the 3rd Field Troop, until January 1914, when he was posted to Malta.
In 1914 McNeile was promoted to the rank of captain. He was still in Malta when the war broke out and was ordered to France in October 1914; he travelled via England and married Violet Evelyn Baird on 31 October 1914. Baird was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Baird Douglas of the Cameron Highlanders.
### First World War service
On 2 November 1914 McNeile travelled to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Few details are known about McNeile's wartime service, as his records were destroyed by incendiary bombs during the Second World War. He spent time with a number of Royal Engineer units on the Western Front, including 1st Field Squadron RE, 15th Field Company RE and RE elements of the 33rd Division.
McNeile's first known published story, Reminiscences of Sergeant Michael Cassidy, was serialised on page four of the Daily Mail from 13 January 1915. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names except during their half-pay sabbaticals, many would write under a pseudonym; Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail, gave McNeile the pen name "Sapper", as the Royal Engineers were commonly known as the Sappers. McNeile later confided that he had started writing through "sheer boredom". Some of his stories appeared on page four of the Daily Mail over the following months. Northcliffe was impressed by his writing and attempted, but failed, to have him released from the army to work as a war correspondent. By the end of 1915, he had written two collections of short stories, The Lieutenant and Others and Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E., both of which were published by Hodder & Stoughton. Although many of the stories had already appeared in the Daily Mail, between 1916 and 1918 Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E. sold 135,000 copies and The Lieutenant and Others published in 1915 sold 139,000 copies. By the end of the war he had published three more collections, Men, Women, and Guns (1916), No Man's Land (1917) and The Human Touch (1918). In 1916 he wrote a series of articles titled The Making of an Officer, which appeared under the initials C. N., in five issues of The Times between 8 and 14 June 1916. The articles were aimed at young and new officers to explain their duties to them; these were collected together and published by Hodder & Stoughton later in 1916.
During his time with the Royal Engineers, McNeile saw action at the First and Second Battles of Ypres—he was gassed at the second battle—and the Battle of the Somme. In 1916 he was awarded the Military Cross and was mentioned in dispatches; in November that year he was gazetted to acting major. From 1 April to 5 October 1918, he commanded a battalion of the Middlesex Regiment and was promoted to acting lieutenant-colonel; the scholar Lawrence Treadwell observes that "for an engineer to command an infantry regiment was ... a rarity". 18th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment under McNeile saw action for the remainder of his command, and were involved in fighting during the Hundred Days Offensive in the St. Quentin-Cambrai sector in September 1918; during the year, he was again mentioned in dispatches. On 2 October 1918 he broke his ankle and was briefly hospitalised, which forced him to relinquish his command of the regiment on 4 October. He was on convalescent leave when the war ended in November 1918. During the course of the war, he had spent a total of 32 months in France, and had probably been gassed more than once. His literary output from 1915 to 1918 accounted for more than 80 collected and uncollected stories. His brother—also in the Royal Engineers—had been killed earlier in the war.
### Post-war years
McNeile had a quiet life after the war; his biographer Jonathon Green notes that "as in the novels of fellow best-selling writers such as P. G. Wodehouse or Agatha Christie, it is the hero who lives the exciting life". Although he was an "unremittingly hearty man", he suffered from delicate health following the war. He had a loud voice and a louder laugh, and "liked to enliven clubs and restaurants with the sight and sound of military good fellowship"; his friend and collaborator Gerard Fairlie described him as "not everybody's cup of tea", and commented that "he was loud in every possible way—in his voice, in his laugh, in his clothes, in the unconscious swagger with which he always motivated himself, in his whole approach to life". McNeile and his wife had two sons.
On 13 June 1919 McNeile retired onto the reserve officer list and was confirmed in the rank of major. The same year he also published a short-story collection, Mufti, in which he introduced a type of character as "the Breed", a class of Englishman who was patriotic, loyal and "physically and morally intrepid". Although well received by the critics, the book failed commercially and, by the end of 1922, had only sold 16,700 copies from its first print run of 20,000; the unsold copies were pulped and the novel went out of print later that year.
In 1920 McNeile published Bull-Dog Drummond, whose eponymous hero—a member of "the Breed"—became his most famous creation. He had first written Drummond as a detective for a short story in The Strand Magazine, but the character was not successful and was changed for the novel, which was a thriller. Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond DSO, MC was described in the novel's sub-title as "a demobilised officer who found peace dull" after service during the First World War with the fictional Loamshire Regiment. Drummond went on to appear in ten full-length novels by McNeile and a further seven by his friend Gerard Fairlie. The character was an amalgam of Fairlie, himself, and his idea of an English gentleman. Drummond also had roots in the literary characters Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Richard Hannay and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Drummond was characterised as large, very strong, physically unattractive and an "apparently brainless hunk of a man", who was also a gentleman with a private income; he could also be construed as "a brutalized ex-officer whose thirst for excitement is also an attempt to reenact [sic] the war". The character was later described by Cecil Day-Lewis, author of rival gentleman detective Nigel Strangeways, as an "unspeakable public school bully". Drummond's main adversary across four novels is Carl Peterson, a master criminal with no national allegiance, who is often accompanied by his wife, Irma. Irma is described by Jonathon Green as "the slinky epitome of a twenties 'vamp'", and by Lawrence Treadwell as dark, sexy and from an oriental background, "a true femme fatale". After Carl Peterson's death in The Final Count, Irma swears revenge on Drummond and kidnaps his wife—whom he had met in Bull-Dog Drummond—with the intent of killing him in the ensuing chase. Irma Peterson appears in six of McNeile's books, and in a further five by Fairlie.
McNeile adapted Bulldog Drummond for the stage. It was produced at Wyndham's Theatre during the 1921–22 season, with Gerald du Maurier playing the title role; it ran for 428 performances. The play also ran in New York during the same season, with A. E. Matthews as Drummond. Later in 1922 McNeile resigned his reserve commission with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and moved as a tax exile to Territet, Montreux, Switzerland, with his wife; the Swiss countryside was later described in a number of his stories.
The following year McNeile introduced the character of Jim Maitland, a "footloose sahib of the period". Maitland was the protagonist of the 1923 novel Jim Maitland; he later appeared in a second novel in 1931, The Island of Terror. Around the time McNeile killed off the Carl Peterson character in The Final Count (1926), he also introduced the character Ronald Standish, who first appeared in "The Saving Clause" (1927) and "Tiny Carteret" (1930) before becoming the protagonist in two collections of short stories, Ronald Standish (1933) and Ask for Ronald Standish (1936). The character also appeared in the final three Drummond novels, Knock-Out (1933), Bull-Dog Drummond at Bay (1935) and Challenge (1937). Standish was a sportsman who played cricket for England and was a part-time consultant with the War Office.
In 1929 McNeile edited a volume of short stories from O. Henry, The Best of O. Henry; the stories had served as models for him when he had started as a writer. The same year, the film Bulldog Drummond was released, starring Ronald Colman in the title role. Colman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor at the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony. The film earned \$750,000 at the box office, and McNeile received an estimated £5,000 for the rights to his novel. The same year he wrote his second play—The Way Out—which was staged at the Comedy Theatre in January 1930. About a year later he and his wife returned to England, and settled near Pulborough, West Sussex.
In 1935 McNeile, Fairlie, Sidney Gilliat and J.O.C. Orton collaborated on the screenplay Bulldog Jack, a "comedy thriller" with Jack Hulbert and Fay Wray, which was produced by Gaumont British.
### Death and legacy
In 1937 McNeile was working with Fairlie on the play Bulldog Drummond Hits Out when he was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. He came to an agreement with Fairlie for the play to continue after his death and for Fairlie to continue writing the Drummond stories. McNeile died on 14 August 1937 at his home in West Chiltington, West Sussex. Although most sources identify throat cancer as the cause of death, Treadwell also suggests that it may have been lung cancer. It was "traceable to his war service", and attributed to a gas attack. His funeral, with full military honours, was conducted at Woking crematorium. At his death his estate was valued at over £26,000.
Bulldog Drummond Hits Out was finished by Fairlie and had a short tour of Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh, before opening in London at the Savoy Theatre on 21 December 1937. The story was later turned into a novel by Fairlie, with the title Bulldog Drummond on Dartmoor. Fairlie continued to write Drummond novels, seven in total. When the Second World War broke out, Fairlie put Bulldog Drummond firmly in the anti-fascist camp, fighting for Britain.
Drummond, McNeile's chief literary legacy, became a model for other literary heroes created in the 1940s and '50s. W. E. Johns used McNeile's work as a model for his character Biggles, while Ian Fleming admitted that James Bond was "Sapper from the waist up and Mickey Spillane below". Sydney Horler's popular character "Tiger" Standish was also modelled on Drummond.
## Writing
McNeile's works fall into two distinct phases. Those works published between 1915 and 1918 are his war stories, and relate directly to his experiences during the First World War, while the later works are largely thrillers. His war stories were marketed by the Daily Mail and Hodder & Stoughton as a soldier's eyewitness accounts. When he started writing thrillers, Hodder & Stoughton advertised McNeile as a "light and entertaining" writer, and began publishing his works in the "Yellow Jacket" series. Magazine editors competed vigorously for Sapper's stories and paid extravagant prices for them. Gerald Fairlie, his close friend and collaborator, has put it on record that Sapper was the highest-paid short story writer of his time.
### Style and technique
McNeile's early works, the war stories published before 1919, are either "plot-driven adventure narrative[s]", such as the short stories "The Song of the Bayonet" and "Private Meyrick, Company Idiot", or "atmospheric vignette[s]", such as "The Land of Topsy Turvy" and "The Human Touch". McNeile would write about 1,000 words every morning in a routine that was rarely disturbed; he took no breaks while writing and would do no re-writes until he completed his work. The academic Jessica Meyer has criticised his style as having "little aesthetic merit, being stylised, clichéd and often repetitive"; Richard Usborne agreed, adding that the female characters were "cardboard" and that McNeile was "wonderfully forgetful" about characters dead in one book and alive in the next. In the Bulldog Drummond stories, Watson identifies the central character as "a melodramatic creation, workable only within a setting of melodrama". The academic Joan DelFattore points out that while the characters and plots cannot be considered to be unique, credible or well-rounded, his books "make no claim to literary excellence", and are instead, "good, solid thrillers". Usborne agrees, and believes that McNeile wrote good stories that were flawed but well told. Meyer classifies the non-war stories as middlebrow, with "sentimental plotlines and presenting a social message about the condition of England". His early novels, particularly Bull-Dog Drummond and The Black Gang, were structured loosely and in some ways as short stories. The academic Hans Bertens blamed this on McNeile's lack of experience and self-confidence, noting that in his later novels, McNeile "mastered the tricks of his trade".
DelFattore outlines the use of double adjectives to reinforce feelings towards enemies in both his war stories and thrillers, such as "filthy, murdering Boche", and "stinking, cowardly Bolshevik". She and the scholar Lise Jaillant also comment on the dehumanisation of the enemy, comparing them to animals and vermin. Watson noted the frequency of the use of the word "devil"—and variations—when discussing antagonists.
### Major themes
#### First World War
The major theme running throughout McNeile's works is the First World War. Between 1915 and 1918 he had five collections of short stories published about the war, while his post-war fiction can be seen as an extension of those stories, as "both treat the war as a trial with manhood at stake". His war stories were considered by contemporary audiences as anti-sentimental, realistic depictions of the trenches, and as a "celebration of the qualities of the Old Contemptibles". McNeile's view, as expressed through his writing, was that war was a purposeful activity for the nation and for individuals, even if that purpose was later wasted: a "valuable chance at national renewal that had been squandered". The positive effects of war on the individual were outlined by McNeile in The Making of an Officer, his series of articles in The Times, in which he wrote about "the qualities of leadership and selflessness essential to 'inspire' subalterns", a theme he returned to in his war stories—particularly The Lieutenant and Others and Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E—and then afterwards in his fictional stories, notably the Bulldog Drummond works.
McNeile's fictional work—particularly his Drummond series of books—shows characters who have served in the war and have been affected by it; Jaillant comments that Drummond's war-time experience "has shaped his social identity, his skills, and even his physical appearance". The Drummond character has been "brutalized by war", which accounts for his physical approach when dealing with Peterson and others.
#### England
McNeile provided Drummond with a "flamboyantly aggressive patriotism" towards England, which Drummond defends physically against those who challenge its stability or morality. Bertens tried to argue that the patriotism demonstrated by Drummond was closer to nationalistic pride and a paranoia about threats directed at the upper middle classes, of which Drummond was a member. Drummond's nickname—Bulldog—is symbolic of England, and he and his English gentlemen friends—"the Breed"—fight the conspiracy of foreigners threatening England's stability. McNeile's thriller stories do not often pit Englishman against Englishman as the main characters; most of the foreigners in his books are the villains.
#### Sport
Running throughout McNeile's books is the metaphor of warfare as sport. His war stories include descriptions of fights between individuals that carry a sporting motif: in Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E., he writes, "To bag a man with a gun is one thing; there is sport—there is an element of one against one, like when the quality goes big game shooting. But to bag twenty men by a mine has not the same feeling at all, even if they are Germans". The motif was continued into the Drummond novels. McNeile reinforces this theme through his use of the language of public school sports, or of boxing, poker or hunting. The titles of his books also use sporting imagery: The Third Round, The Final Count, Knock-Out and Challenge.
### Reception
McNeile's war story collections sold well; nearly 50,000 copies of his first book, Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E., were purchased in its first year, and nearly 58,000 copies the following year. His thrillers were also popular, with Bulldog Drummond selling 396,302 copies between 1920 and 1939, exceeding the 100,000-copies benchmark for "best-sellers". At his peak in the 1920s, he was the highest paid short story writer in the world, and it was estimated that in the last five years of his life he was earning around £10,000 a year; the Daily Mirror estimated that during his writing career he had earned £85,000.
McNeile's war stories were seen by reviewers as honest portrayals of the war, with British and American reviewers in the mainstream press praising his realism and avoidance of sentimentality in dealing with his subject matter. Reviewing Men, Women, and Guns for The Times Literary Supplement, Francis Henry Gribble wrote that "Sapper has been successful in previous volumes of war stories ... When the time comes for picking out the writers whose war fiction has permanent value, his claim to be included in the list will call for serious examination." The reviewer of Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E. for The Atlanta Constitution reminded its readers that McNeile "has been called the foremost literary genius of the British army." Jaillant observes that once McNeile moved from war stories to thrillers, with the concurrent re-positioning of advertising and marketing by Hodder & Stoughton, the reviewers also treated him differently, and presented him as "a writer of thrillers, without any pretension to literary seriousness". When reviewing Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back for The New York Times, the critic observed that "if you like a good knock-down-and-drag-out yarn with excitement and violence on nearly every page, you can't go wrong on Bulldog Drummond"; for the novel Bulldog Drummond at Bay, the reviewer considered that "as a piece of fictional melodrama, the book is first rate". In the British market, The Times Literary Supplement also characterised him as a mass-market thriller writer, which contrasted with its consideration of his earlier works.
#### Controversy
From the 1950s on, McNeile's work came to be viewed in the light of events of the Second World War, and journalists such as Richard Usborne highlighted aspects of the stories which he considered were "carrying the Führer-principle". DelFattore agrees, and considers that the second Bulldog Drummond novel—The Black Gang (1922)—is when the fascist element was introduced. Jaillant notes that the accusations of fascism only came about after the Second World War, while the academic Ion Trewin considers that through the Drummond stories, McNeile was seen at the time as "simply an upstanding Tory who spoke for many of his countrymen".
Throughout the Drummond stories, much of the language used by McNeile relating to ethnic minorities or Jews is considered by DelFattore to be "intensely conservative by modern standards"; Green observes that while the characters of other contemporary writers, such as Agatha Christie, "exhibit the inevitable xenophobia and anti-Semitism of the period, McNeile's go far beyond the 'polite' norms". J. D. Bourn considers his language to be "rather distasteful", while the academic Michael Denning observed that "Drummond is a bundle of chauvinisms, hating Jews, Germans, and most other foreigners".
## Works
|
23,046,498 |
Andalusian horse
| 1,172,247,997 |
Horse breed from the Iberian Peninsula
|
[
"Andalusia",
"Andalusian horse",
"Horse breeds",
"Horse breeds originating in Spain"
] |
The Andalusian, also known as the Pure Spanish Horse or PRE (pura raza española), is a horse breed from the Iberian Peninsula, where its ancestors have lived for thousands of years. The Andalusian has been recognized as a distinct breed since the 15th century, and its conformation has changed very little over the centuries. Throughout its history, it has been known for its prowess as a war horse, and was prized by the nobility. The breed was used as a tool of diplomacy by the Spanish government, and kings across Europe rode and owned Spanish horses. During the 19th century, warfare, disease and crossbreeding reduced herd numbers dramatically, and despite some recovery in the late 19th century, the trend continued into the early 20th century. Exports of Andalusians from Spain were restricted until the 1960s, but the breed has since spread throughout the world, despite their low population. In 2010, there were more than 185,000 registered Andalusians worldwide.
Strongly built, and compact yet elegant, Andalusians have long, thick manes and tails. Their most common coat color is gray, although they can be found in many other colors. They are known for their intelligence, sensitivity and docility. A sub-strain within the breed known as the Carthusian, is considered by breeders to be the purest strain of Andalusian, though there is no genetic evidence for this claim. The strain is still considered separate from the main breed however, and is preferred by breeders because buyers pay more for horses of Carthusian bloodlines. There are several competing registries keeping records of horses designated as Andalusian or PRE, but they differ on their definition of the Andalusian and PRE, the purity of various strains of the breed, and the legalities of stud book ownership. At least one lawsuit is in progress as of 2011, to determine the ownership of the Spanish PRE stud book.
The Andalusian is closely related to the Lusitano of Portugal, and has been used to develop many other breeds, especially in Europe and the Americas. Breeds with Andalusian ancestry include many of the warmbloods in Europe as well as western hemisphere breeds such as the Azteca. Over its centuries of development, the Andalusian breed has been selected for athleticism and stamina. The horses were originally used for classical dressage, driving, bullfighting, and as stock horses. Modern Andalusians are used for many equestrian activities, including dressage, show jumping and driving. The breed is also used extensively in movies, especially historical pictures and fantasy epics.
## Characteristics
Andalusians stallions and geldings average at the withers and 512 kilograms (1,129 lb) in weight; mares average and 412 kilograms (908 lb). The Spanish government has set the minimum height for registration in Spain at for males and for mares – this standard is followed by the Association of Purebred Spanish Horse Breeders of Spain (Asociación Nacional de Criadores de Caballo de Pura Raza Española or ANCCE) and the Andalusian Horse Association of Australasia. The Spanish legislation also requires that in order for animals to be approved as either "qualified" or "élite" breeding stock, stallions must stand at least and mares at least .
Andalusian horses are elegant and strongly built with a straight or slightly convex profile. Ultra convex and concave profiles are discouraged in the breed, and are penalized in breed shows. Necks are long and broad, running to well-defined withers and a massive chest. They have a short back and broad, strong hindquarters with a well-rounded croup. The breed tends to have clean legs, with no propensity for blemishes or injuries, and energetic gaits. The mane and tail are thick and long, but the legs do not have excess feathering. Andalusians tend to be docile, while remaining intelligent and sensitive. When treated with respect they are quick to learn, responsive, and cooperative.
There are two additional characteristics unique to the Carthusian strain, believed to trace back to the strain's foundation stallion Esclavo. The first is warts under the tail, a trait which Esclavo passed to his offspring, and a trait which some breeders felt was necessary to prove that a horse was a member of the Esclavo bloodline. The second characteristic is the occasional presence of "horns", which are frontal bosses, possibly inherited from Asian ancestors. The physical descriptions of the bosses vary, ranging from calcium-like deposits at the temple to small horn-like protuberances near or behind the ear. However, these "horns" are not considered proof of Esclavo descent, unlike the tail warts.
In the past, most coat colors were found, including spotted patterns. Today most Andalusians are gray or bay; in the US, around 80 percent of all Andalusians are gray. Of the remaining horses, approximately 15 percent are bay and 5 percent are black, dun or palomino or chestnut. Other colors, such as buckskin, pearl, and cremello, are rare, but are recognized as allowed colors by registries for the breed.
In the early history of the breed, certain white markings and whorls were considered to be indicators of character and good or bad luck. Horses with white socks on their feet were considered to have good or bad luck, depending on the leg or legs marked. A horse with no white markings at all was considered to be ill-tempered and vice-ridden, while certain facial markings were considered representative of honesty, loyalty and endurance. Similarly, hair whorls in various places were considered to show good or bad luck, with the most unlucky being in places where the horse could not see them – for example the temples, cheek, shoulder or heart. Two whorls near the root of the tail were considered a sign of courage and good luck.
The movement of Andalusian horses is extended, elevated, cadenced and harmonious, with a balance of roundness and forward movement. Poor elevation, irregular tempo, and excessive winging (sideways movement of the legs from the knee down) are discouraged by breed registry standards. Andalusians are known for their agility and their ability to learn difficult moves quickly, such as advanced collection and turns on the haunches. A 2001 study compared the kinematic characteristics of Andalusian, Arabian and Anglo-Arabian horses while moving at the trot. Andalusians were found to overtrack less (the degree to which the hind foot lands ahead of the front hoof print) but also exhibit greater flexing of both fore and hind joints, movement consistent with the more elevated way of going typically found in this breed. The authors of the study theorized that these characteristics of the breed's trot may contribute to their success as a riding and dressage horse.
A 2008 study found that Andalusians experience ischaemic (reduced blood flow) diseases of the small intestine at a rate significantly higher than other breeds; and stallions had higher numbers of inguinal hernias, with risk for occurrence 30 times greater than other breeds. At the same time, they also showed a lower incidence of large intestinal obstruction. In the course of the study, Andalusians also showed the highest risk of laminitis as a medical complication related to the intestinal issues.
## History
### Early development
The Andalusian horse is descended from the Iberian horses of Spain and Portugal, and derives its name from its place of origin, the Spanish region of Andalusia. Cave paintings show that horses have been present on the Iberian Peninsula as far back as 20,000 to 30,000 BCE. Although Portuguese historian Ruy d'Andrade hypothesized that the ancient Sorraia breed was an ancestor of the Southern Iberian breeds, including the Andalusian, genetic studies using mitochondrial DNA show that the Sorraia is part of a genetic cluster that is largely separated from most Iberian breeds.
Throughout history, the Iberian breeds have been influenced by many different peoples and cultures who occupied Spain, including the Celts, the Carthaginians, the Romans, various Germanic tribes and the Arabs. The Iberian horse was identified as a talented war horse as early as 450 BCE. Mitochondrial DNA studies of the modern Andalusian horse of the Iberian peninsula and Barb horse of North Africa present convincing evidence that both breeds crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and were used for breeding with each other, influencing one another's bloodlines. Thus, the Andalusian may have been the first European "warmblood", a mixture of heavy European and lighter Oriental horses. Some of the earliest written pedigrees in recorded European history were kept by Carthusian monks, beginning in the 13th century. Because they could read and write, and were thus able to maintain careful records, monastics were given the responsibility for horse breeding by certain members of the nobility, particularly in Spain. Andalusian stud farms for breeding were formed in the late 15th century in Carthusian monasteries in Jerez, Seville and Cazalla.
The Carthusians bred powerful, weight-bearing horses in Andalusia for the Crown of Castile, using the finest Spanish Jennets as foundation bloodstock. These horses were a blend of Jennet and warmblood breeding, taller and more powerfully built than the original Jennet. By the 15th century, the Andalusian had become a distinct breed, and was being used to influence the development of other breeds. They were also noted for their use as cavalry horses. Even though in the 16th and 17th centuries Spanish horses had not reached the final form of the modern Andalusian, by 1667 William Cavendish, the Duke of Newcastle, called the Spanish horse of Andalusia the "princes" of the horse world, and reported that they were "unnervingly intelligent". The Iberian horse became known as the "royal horse of Europe" and was seen at many royal courts and riding academies, including those in Austria, Italy, France and Germany. By the 16th century, during the reigns of Charles V (1500–1558) and Phillip II (1556–1581), Spanish horses were considered the finest in the world. Even in Spain, quality horses were owned mainly by the wealthy. During the 16th century, inflation and an increased demand for harness and cavalry horses drove the price of horses extremely high. The always expensive Andalusian became even more so, and it was often impossible to find a member of the breed to purchase at any price.
### Dissemination
Spanish horses also were spread widely as a tool of diplomacy by the government of Spain, which granted both horses and export rights to favored citizens and to other royalty. As early as the 15th century, the Spanish horse was widely distributed throughout the Mediterranean, and was known in northern European countries, despite being less common and more expensive there. As time went on, kings from across Europe, including every French monarch from Francis I to Louis XVI, had equestrian portraits created showing themselves riding Spanish-type horses. The kings of France, including Louis XIII and Louis XIV, especially preferred the Spanish horse; the head groom to Henri IV, Salomon de la Broue, said in 1600, "Comparing the best horses, I give the Spanish horse first place for its perfection, because it is the most beautiful, noble, graceful and courageous". War horses from Spain and Portugal began to be introduced to England in the 12th century, and importation continued through the 15th century. In the 16th century, Henry VIII received gifts of Spanish horses from Charles V, Ferdinand II of Aragon and the Duke of Savoy and others when he wed Katherine of Aragon. He also purchased additional war and riding horses through agents in Spain. By 1576, Spanish horses made up one third of British royal studs at Malmesbury and Tutbury. The Spanish horse peaked in popularity in Great Britain during the 17th century, when horses were freely imported from Spain and exchanged as gifts between royal families. With the introduction of the Thoroughbred, interest in the Spanish horse faded after the mid-18th century, although they remained popular through the early 19th century. The Conquistadors of the 16th century rode Spanish horses, particularly animals from Andalusia, and the modern Andalusian descended from similar bloodstock. By 1500, Spanish horses were established in studs on Santo Domingo, and Spanish horses made their way into the ancestry of many breeds founded in North and South America. Many Spanish explorers from the 16th century on brought Spanish horses with them for use as war horses and later as breeding stock. By 1642, the Spanish horse had spread to Moldavia, to the stables of Transylvanian prince George Rakoczi.
### 19th century to present
Despite their ancient history, all living Andalusians trace to a small number of horses bred by religious orders in the 18th and 19th centuries. An influx of heavy horse blood beginning in the 16th century, resulted in the dilution of many of the bloodlines; only those protected by selective breeding remained intact to become the modern Andalusian. During the 19th century, the Andalusian breed was threatened because many horses were stolen or requisitioned in wartime, including the War of the Oranges, the Peninsular War and the three Carlist Wars. Napoleon's invading army also stole many horses. One herd of Andalusians was hidden from the invaders however, and subsequently used to renew the breed. In 1822, breeders began to add Norman blood into Spanish bloodlines, as well as further infusions of Arabian blood. This was partially because increasing mechanization and changing needs within the military called for horses with more speed in cavalry charges as well as horses with more bulk for pulling gun carriages. In 1832, an epidemic seriously affected Spain's horse population, from which only one small herd survived in a stud at the monastery in Cartuja. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, European breeders, especially the Germans, changed from an emphasis on Andalusian and Neapolitan horses (an emphasis that had been in place since the decline of chivalry), to an emphasis on the breeding of Thoroughbreds and warmbloods, further depleting the stock of Andalusians. Despite this change in focus, Andalusian breeding slowly recovered, and in 1869, the Seville Horse Fair (originally begun by the Romans), played host to between ten and twelve thousand Spanish horses. In the early 20th century, Spanish horse breeding began to focus on other breeds, particularly draft breeds, Arabians, Thoroughbreds and crosses between these breeds, as well as crosses between these breeds and the Andalusian. The purebred Andalusian was not viewed favorably by breeders or the military, and their numbers decreased significantly.
Andalusians only began to be exported from Spain in 1962. The first Andalusians were imported into Australia in 1971, and in 1973 the Andalusian Horse Association of Australasia was formed for the registration of these Andalusians and their offspring. Strict quarantine guidelines prohibited the importation of new Andalusian blood to Australia for many years, but since 1999, regulations have been relaxed and more than half a dozen new horses have been imported. Bloodines in the United States also rely on imported stock, and all American Andalusians can be traced directly to the stud books in Portugal and Spain. There are around 8,500 animals in the United States, where the International Andalusian and Lusitano Horse Association (IALHA) registers around 700 new purebred foals every year. These numbers indicate that the Andalusian is a relatively rare breed in the United States. In 2003, there were 75,389 horses registered in the stud book, and they constituted almost 66 percent of the horses in Spain. Breed numbers have been increasing during the 21st century. At the end of 2010, a total of 185,926 pura raza española horses were recorded in the database of the Spanish Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, y Medio Rural y Marino. Of these, 28,801 or about 15% were in other countries of the world; of those in Spain, 65,371 or about 42% were in Andalusia.
### Strains and sub-types
The Carthusian Andalusian or Cartujano is generally considered the purest Andalusian strain, and has one of the oldest recorded pedigree lines in the world. The pure sub-type is rare, as only around 12 percent of the Andalusian horses registered between the founding of the stud book in the 19th century and 1998 were considered Carthusians. They made up only 3.6 percent of the overall breeding stock, but 14.2 percent of the stallions used for breeding. In the past, Carthusians were given preference in breeding, leading to a large proportion of the Andalusian population claiming ancestry from a small number of horses and possibly limiting the breed's genetic variability. A 2005 study compared the genetic distance between Carthusian and non-Carthusian horses. They calculated a Fixation index (F<sub>ST</sub>) based on genealogical information and concluded that the distinction between the two is not supported by genetic evidence. However, there are slight physical differences; Carthusians have more "oriental" or concave head shapes and are more often gray in color, while non-Carthusians tend toward convex profiles and more often exhibit other coat colors such as bay.
The Carthusian line was established in the early 18th century when two Spanish brothers, Andrés and Diego Zamora, purchased a stallion named El Soldado and bred him to two mares. The mares were descended from mares purchased by the Spanish king and placed at Aranjuez, one of the oldest horse breeding farms in Spain. One of the offspring of El Soldado, a dark gray colt named Esclavo, became the foundation sire of the Carthusian line. One group of mares sired by Esclavo in about 1736 were given to a group of Carthusian monks to settle a debt. Other animals of these bloodlines were absorbed into the main Andalusian breed; the stock given to the monks was bred into a special line, known as Zamoranos. Throughout the following centuries, the Zamoranos bloodlines were guarded by the Carthusian monks, to the point of defying royal orders to introduce outside blood from the Neapolitan horse and central European breeds. They did, however, introduce Arabian and Barb blood to improve the strain. The original stock of Carthusians was greatly depleted during the Peninsular Wars, and the strain might have become extinct if not for the efforts of the Zapata family. Today, the Carthusian strain is raised in state-owned stud farms around Jerez de la Frontera, Badajoz and Cordoba, and also by several private families. Carthusian horses continue to be in demand in Spain, and buyers pay high prices for members of the strain.
### Influence on other breeds
Spain's worldwide military activities between the 14th and 17th centuries called for large numbers of horses, more than could be supplied by native Spanish mares. Spanish custom also called for mounted troops to ride stallions, never mares or geldings. Due to these factors, Spanish stallions were crossed with local mares in many countries, adding Spanish bloodlines wherever they went, especially to other European breeds.
Because of the influence of the later Habsburg families, who ruled in both Spain and other nations of Europe, the Andalusian was crossbred with horses of Central Europe and the Low Countries and thus was closely related to many breeds that developed, including the Neapolitan horse, Groningen, Lipizzaner and Kladruber. Spanish horses have been used extensively in classical dressage in Germany since the 16th century. They thus influenced many German breeds, including the Hanoverian, Holstein, East Friesian and Oldenburg. Dutch breeds such as the Friesian and Gelderland also contain significant Spanish blood, as do Danish breeds such as the Frederiksborg and Knabstrupper.
Andalusians were a significant influence on the creation of the Alter Real, a strain of the Lusitano, and the Azteca, a Mexican breed created by crossing the Andalusian with American Quarter Horse and Criollo bloodlines. The Spanish jennet ancestors of the Andalusian also developed the Colonial Spanish Horse in America, which became the foundation bloodstock for many North and South American breeds. The Andalusian has also been used to create breeds more recently, with breed associations for both the Warlander (an Andalusian/Friesian cross) and the Spanish-Norman (an Andalusian/Percheron cross) being established in the 1990s.
## Naming and registration
Until modern times, horse breeds throughout Europe were known primarily by the name of the region where they were bred. Thus the original term "Andalusian" simply described the horses of distinct quality that came from Andalusia in Spain. Similarly, the Lusitano, a Portuguese horse very similar to the Andalusian, takes its name from the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, now part of western Spain and most of Portugal.
The Andalusian horse has been known historically as the Iberian Saddle Horse, Iberian War Horse, Spanish Horse, Portuguese, Peninsular, Extremeño, Villanos, Zapata, Zamoranos, Castilian, and Jennet. The Portuguese name refers to what is now the Lusitano, while the Peninsular, Iberian Saddle Horse and Iberian War Horse names refer to horses from the Iberian Peninsula as a whole. The Extremeño name refers to Spanish horses from the Extremadura province of Spain and the Zapata or Zapatero name to horses that come from the Zapata family stud. The Villano name has occasionally been applied to modern Andalusians, but originally referred to heavy, crossbred horses from the mountains north of Jaen. The Carthusian horse, also known as the Carthusian-Andalusian and the Cartujano, is a sub-type of the Andalusian, rather than a distinct breed in itself. A common nickname for the Andalusian is the "Horse of Kings". Some sources state that the Andalusian and the Lusitano are genetically the same, differing only in the country of origin of individual horses.
In many areas today, the breeding, showing, and registration of the Andalusian and Lusitano are controlled by the same registries. One example of this is the International Andalusian and Lusitano Horse Association (IALHA), claimed to have the largest membership of any Andalusian registering organization. Other organizations, such as The Association of Purebred Spanish Horse Breeders of Spain (Asociación Nacional de Criadores de Caballo de Pura Raza Española or ANCCE), use the term pura raza española or PRE to describe the true Spanish horse, and claim sole authority to officially register and issue documentation for PRE Horses, both in Spain and anywhere else in the world. In most of the world the terms "Andalusian" and "PRE" are considered one and the same breed, but the public position of the ANCCE is that terms such as "Andalusian" and "Iberian horse" refer only to crossbreds, which the ANCCE considers to be horses that lack quality and purity, without official documentation or registration from official Spanish Stud Book.
In Australasia, the Australasia Andalusian Association registers Andalusians (which the registry considers an interchangeable term for PRE), Australian Andalusians, and partbred Andalusians. They share responsibility for the Purebred Iberian Horse (an Andalusian/Lusitano cross) with the Lusitano Association of Australasia. In the Australian registry, there are various levels of crossbred horses. A first cross Andalusian is a crossbreed that is 50 percent Andalusian, while a second cross Andalusian is the result of crossing a purebred Andalusian with a first cross – resulting in a horse of 75 percent Andalusian blood. A third cross, also known by the registry as an Australian Andalusian, is when a second cross individual is mated with a foundation Andalusian mare. This sequence is known as a "breeding up" program by the registry.
### Pure Spanish Horse (PRE)
The name pura raza española (PRE), usually rendered in English "Pure Spanish Horse" (not a literal translation) is the term used by the ANCCE, a private organization, and the Ministry of Agriculture of Spain. The ANCCE uses neither the term "Andalusian" nor "Iberian horse", and only registers horses that have certain recognized bloodlines. In addition, all breeding stock must undergo an evaluation process. The ANCCE was founded in 1972. Spain's Ministry of Agriculture recognizes the ANCCE as the representing entity for PRE breeders and owners across the globe, as well as the administrator of the breed stud book. ANCCE functions as the international parent association for all breeders worldwide who record their horses as PRE. For example, the United States PRE association is affiliated with ANCCE, follows ANCCE rules, and has a wholly separate governance system from the IALHA.
A second group, the Foundation for the Pure Spanish Horse or PRE Mundial, has begun another PRE registry as an alternative to the ANCCE. This new registry claims that all of their registered horses trace back to the original stud book maintained by the Cria Caballar, which was a branch of the Spanish Ministry of Defense, for 100 years. Thus, the PRE Mundial registry asserts that their registry is the most authentic, purest PRE registry functioning today.
As of August 2011, there is a lawsuit in progress to determine the legal holder of the PRE stud book. The Unión de Criadores de Caballos Españoles (UCCE or Union of Spanish Horse Breeders) has brought a case to the highest European Union courts in Brussels, charging that the Ministry of Spain's transfer of the original PRE Libro de Origen (the official stud book) from the Cria Caballar to ANCCE was illegal. In early 2009, the courts decided on behalf of UCCE, explaining that the Cria Caballar formed the Libro de Origin. Because it was formed by a government entity, it is against European Union law for the stud book to be transferred to a private entity, a law that was broken by the transfer of the book to ANCCE, which is a non-governmental organization. The court found that by giving ANCCE sole control of the stud book, Spain's Ministry of Defense was acting in a discriminatory manner. The court held that Spain must give permission to maintain a breed stud book (called a Libro Genealógico) to any international association or Spanish national association which requests it. Based on the Brussels court decision, an application has been made by the Foundation for the Pure Spanish Horse to maintain the United States stud book for the PRE. As of March 2011, Spain has not revoked ANCCE's right to be the sole holder of the PRE stud book, and has instead reaffirmed the organization's status.
## Uses
The Andalusian breed has over the centuries been consistently selected for athleticism. In the 17th century, referring to multi-kilometer races, Cavendish said, "They were so much faster than all other horses known at that time that none was ever seen to come close to them, even in the many remarkable races that were run." In 1831, horses at five years old were expected to be able to gallop, without changing pace, four or five leagues, about 12 to 15 miles (19 to 24 km). By 1925, the Portuguese military expected horses to "cover 40 km over uneven terrain at a minimum speed of 10 km/h, and to gallop a flat course of 8 km at a minimum speed of 800 metres per minute carrying a weight of at least 70 kg", and the Spanish military had similar standards.
From the beginning of their history, Andalusians have been used for both riding and driving. Among the first horses used for classical dressage, they still compete in international competition in dressage today. At the 2002 World Equestrian Games, two Andalusians were on the bronze medal-winning Spanish dressage team, a team that went on to take the silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Today, the breed is increasingly being selectively bred for increased aptitude in classical dressage. Historically, however, they were also used as stock horses, especially suited to working with Iberian bulls, known for their aggressive temperaments. They were, and still are, known for their use in mounted bull fighting. Mares were traditionally used for la trilla, the Spanish process of threshing grain practiced until the 1960s. Mares, some pregnant or with foals at their side, spent full days trotting over the grain. As well as being a traditional farming practice, it also served as a test of endurance, hardiness and willingness for the maternal Andalusian lines.
Andalusians today are also used for show jumping, western pleasure and other horse show events. The current Traveler, the mascot of the University of Southern California, is an Andalusian. The dramatic appearance of the Andalusian horse, with its arched neck, muscular build and energetic gaits, has made it a popular breed to use in film, particularly in historical and fantasy epics. Andalusians have been present in films ranging from Gladiator to Interview with the Vampire, and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life to Braveheart. The horses have also been seen in such fantasy epics as The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, King Arthur, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In 2006, a rearing Andalusian stallion, ridden by Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Oñate, was recreated as the largest bronze equine in the world. Measuring 36 feet (11 m) high, the statue currently stands in El Paso, Texas.
|
15,766,637 |
2006 Gator Bowl
| 1,171,381,950 | null |
[
"2005–06 NCAA football bowl games",
"2006 in sports in Florida",
"21st century in Jacksonville, Florida",
"Gator Bowl",
"January 2006 sports events in the United States",
"Louisville Cardinals football bowl games",
"Virginia Tech Hokies football bowl games"
] |
The 2006 Gator Bowl was a college football bowl game between the Louisville Cardinals and the Virginia Tech Hokies at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, on January 2, 2006. The game was the final contest of the 2005 football season for each team and resulted in a 35–24 Virginia Tech victory. Louisville represented the Big East Conference (Big East), and Virginia Tech represented the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in the competition.
Louisville was selected as a participant in the 2006 Gator Bowl following a 9–2 regular season of their first year in the Big East Conference. Louisville won its last five games before the Gator Bowl and participated in the Liberty Bowl at the end of the previous season. Facing the 15th-ranked Cardinals, were the 12th-ranked Hokies. Virginia Tech finished 10–2 regular season, and included wins over 15th-ranked Georgia Tech and traditional rivals Virginia and West Virginia. A loss to Florida State in the inaugural ACC Championship Game gave Tech a position in the Gator Bowl instead of the more prestigious Bowl Championship Series-run Orange Bowl game. Pre-game media coverage of the game focused on Louisville's loss of star quarterback Brian Brohm to injury, Virginia Tech's fall from being a contender for the national championship, the fact that both teams were playing under new conference affiliations, and the rise of Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick, younger brother of NFL star Michael Vick.
The 2006 Gator Bowl began on January 2, 2006, at 12:30 p.m. EST in Jacksonville. Louisville led for much of the game, beginning with an 11-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter by backup quarterback Hunter Cantwell, who filled in for the injured Brohm. Tech's offense replied with a field goal, but Louisville was able to add another touchdown before the end of the quarter, extending its lead to 14–3. In the second quarter, Virginia Tech fought back and narrowed Louisville's lead to a single touchdown. At halftime, the score was 17–10 in Louisville's favor. In the second half, Virginia Tech's offense began to have success. Tech earned the only points of the third quarter—a 28-yard field goal from kicker Brandon Pace—to narrow Louisville's lead to 17–13. In the fourth quarter, the game fully turned in the Hokies' favor. Though Louisville scored a touchdown early in the quarter, Virginia Tech scored 22 unanswered points in the final 13 minutes of the game to take a 35–24 lead and earn the win.
Tailback Cedric Humes was named the most valuable player of the game for Virginia Tech, and quarterback Hunter Cantwell was named the Cardinals' most valuable player. Tech punter Nic Schmitt set Gator Bowl records for punt yardage and average punt distance, kicking the ball six times for 300 yards, an average of 50 yards per kick. Virginia Tech's win was marred by excessive penalties and unsportsmanlike conduct that resulted in the ejection of one player. Following the game, Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick was released from the team as a result of several incidents of misconduct, including a stomp on Louisville defender Elvis Dumervil's leg during the game. Several players who participated in the game, including Dumervil, later went on to careers in the National Football League.
## Team selection
In the 2005 college football season, the Atlantic Coast Conference had an automatic bid to the Gator Bowl. By contract, the Gator Bowl Association—which produces the game—possessed the first pick of bowl-eligible ACC teams after the winner of the ACC Championship Game was given a spot in a Bowl Championship Series (BCS) game. This was the final year that the Gator Bowl had first pick of eligible ACC teams, as contract renegotiations later resulted in the Gator Bowl slipping to the third selection, beginning with the 2006 college football season. Virginia Tech, losers of the 2005 ACC Championship Game, were chosen by the Gator Bowl Association to participate as the ACC's representative to the 2006 Gator Bowl.
The other half of the matchup would consist of either Notre Dame or the first selection from the Big East Conference after that conference's automatic BCS bid. Because Notre Dame was selected to play in the 2006 Fiesta Bowl, a BCS game, the Gator Bowl Association was required to select the Big East's Louisville Cardinals, which, like Virginia Tech, finished second in their conference.
### Louisville
The Louisville Cardinals football team came into the 2005 season having gone 11–1 the previous season, including a season-ending 44–40 victory over Boise State in the 2004 Liberty Bowl. In addition, Louisville was also entering a new conference—the Big East—after departing Conference USA following the end of the 2004 season. In a poll of media members covering the Big East prior to the 2005 season, Louisville was predicted to win the Big East championship its first year in the conference.
In their first and second games of the season, the Cardinals lived up to that expectation. At in-state rival Kentucky, Louisville earned a 31–24 victory to win the Governor's Cup. This was followed the next week by a 63–27 victory over non-conference opponent Oregon State. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, their first Big East conference game of the season—and of school history—did not go as well. At South Florida, the ninth-ranked Cardinals were outscored 45–14, the first time in 13 games Louisville's offense was held to less than 30 points.
Following the loss, Louisville recovered, scoring 61 points and 69 points, respectively, in non-conference wins over Florida Atlantic University and North Carolina, returning to their previous offensive success. Again, however, Louisville faltered against a Big East opponent. The Cardinals' second Big East game, at West Virginia University, was another Louisville loss, 46–44. West Virginia later went on to finish 11–1 for the season, winning the Big East championship and defeating the Georgia Bulldogs in the 2006 Sugar Bowl.
Louisville, meanwhile, returned to its winning ways. The Cardinals, following their loss to the Mountaineers, won their first Big East game in school history the next week, over the Cincinnati Bearcats, 46–22. The rout of Cincinnati sparked a five-game winning streak, which concluded on December 3 with a 30–20 victory over the University of Connecticut Huskies. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, starting quarterback Brian Brohm, who had the sixth-best season (in terms of passing yards) in Louisville history, suffered a season-ending knee injury. With West Virginia having won the Big East championship and an automatic Bowl Championship Series game bid, Big East second-place Louisville was selected by the Gator Bowl even before the victory over Connecticut.
### Virginia Tech
The Virginia Tech Hokies football team began the 2005 college football season as reigning Atlantic Coast Conference football champions. The Hokies also played in the 2005 Sugar Bowl against the third-ranked Auburn Tigers, losing 16–13 in a close contest. Expectations were high for the Hokies to repeat their ACC championship performance the next year, and a preseason poll of media covering ACC football resulted in Virginia Tech being picked to face Florida State in the inaugural ACC Championship Game.
In its first game of the season, however, eighth-ranked Virginia Tech almost let those expectations fall short. At North Carolina State, the Hokies trailed at halftime and were tied at the beginning of the fourth quarter before eking out a 20–16 win in the final minutes. The Hokies bounced back from the close contest in their second game of the season—against the Duke Blue Devils—as Tech raced to a 45–0 victory. The Hokies held Duke to just 35 yards of total offense, Tech's best defensive performance in the modern era.
The win over Duke was followed by several others in succession. Heading into their ninth game of the season, the Hokies were 8–0 record and the third-ranked college football team in the country. Against the fifth-ranked Miami Hurricanes, however, Virginia Tech suffered its first defeat of the season, falling 27–7. Tech recovered by winning its next two games, earning a spot in the inaugural Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game, held in Jacksonville, Florida. There, the Hokies lost, 27–22, to the Florida State Seminoles. The Seminoles earned an automatic bid to a Bowl Championship Series game by virtue of the victory—had Virginia Tech won the game, it would have been awarded the bid. The day after Tech lost the ACC Championship Game, the Gator Bowl extended a formal invitation to Virginia Tech, which the Hokies accepted. Ninth-ranked Miami, the same team that beat the Hokies 27–7 earlier in the season, was considered for selection, but the Gator Bowl Association took into consideration Virginia Tech's history of having a large fan base travel to its bowl games, and selected the Hokies on those grounds.
## Pregame buildup
Pregame media and fan interest surrounding the game focused largely on Louisville's top-ranked offense and Virginia Tech's first-ranked scoring defense. Other major points of media coverage included the two teams' quarterbacks: Louisville's Hunter Cantwell, who replaced starter Brian Brohm after Brohm suffered a season-ending knee injury; and Virginia Tech's Marcus Vick, brother of National Football League star Michael Vick. Also a concern for Louisville was the health of star running back Michael Bush, who missed two games in November due to an injury. On a wider note, there was also interest in the conference-level showdown between a new Big East team (Louisville) and a team that left the Big East for the ACC after the 2003 season (Virginia Tech). For Virginia Tech, there was also the hope of overcoming the disappointment of a season that saw the Hokies ranked third in the country and in the hunt for the national championship before failing to even win the Atlantic Coast Conference and missing a bid to a Bowl Championship Series game.
When betting on the game opened, spread bettors favored Virginia Tech by 10 points. Five days after betting opened, the point spread narrowed to 7.5, still in favor of Virginia Tech. Two weeks later, the point spread remained at 7.5 in favor of Virginia Tech.
### Offensive matchup
#### Louisville offense
Heading into the Gator Bowl, Louisville's scoring offense was ranked third in the country—averaging 45.2 points per game—and was held under 30 points just once in their preceding 21 games. The high-powered Cardinals' offense was predicted to pose a challenge for the Virginia Tech defense.
With star quarterback Brian Brohm having undergone surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament, there were some questions as to how backup Hunter Cantwell would perform under pressure. Cantwell played well in the Cardinals' season-ending contest against Connecticut, but some commentators predicted that Virginia Tech's quicker defense would pose problems for him. In that contest, Cantwell completed 16 of 25 passes for 271 yards and a touchdown. In high school, Cantwell passed for 7,272 yards and 70 touchdowns. His .606 career completion percentage ranked 11th in Kentucky state history.
Running back Michael Bush was predicted to return to form after suffering a foot injury that kept him out of two games in November. Bush ran for 121 yards and three touchdowns against Connecticut, his first game back from the injury. Heading into the Gator Bowl, Bush earned a school-record 24 touchdowns and led the country in scoring. He ran for 1,049 yards in nine games. He was also a capable receiver, catching 20 passes for 245 yards and a touchdown. But with Brohm on the sidelines, it was expected the Cardinals would rely on Bush's legs more than usual, in an effort to minimize the need for the inexperienced Cantwell to pass the ball.
Louisville wide receiver Mario Urrutia, who caught 31 passes for 702 yards and six touchdowns during the regular season, stirred a bit of controversy in the final days leading up to the Gator Bowl after he declared that Virginia Tech's first-ranked defense was "mostly hype".
#### Virginia Tech offense
Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick was considered the key player for the Virginia Tech offense heading into the Gator Bowl. The younger brother of first-overall NFL Draft pick Michael Vick—who also played for Tech—Marcus led the league in passing efficiency (141.6 rating), completed 166 of 268 passes (60.3 percent) for 2,190 yards and 15 touchdowns, with ten interceptions. On the ground, he ran for 370 yards and six touchdowns. Prior to the Gator Bowl, he pledged that he would return for another season at Virginia Tech before entering the NFL draft. "The NFL is tough. It's the real deal. You've got to be ready for it. You just don't want to rush into just throwing yourself out there because of the money or anything like that. You've got to really be prepared for it", he said.
On the ground, two different Tech players were predicted to share time running the ball. Senior running back Cedric Humes was predicted to get the bulk of the carries in the game, but redshirt freshman Branden Ore was also predicted to see some plays at times. Humes rushed the ball 140 times for 639 yards and ten touchdowns during the regular season. Ore, meanwhile, ran the ball for 591 yards and six touchdowns.
Wide receiver Josh Morgan was also considered a key component of the Hokie offense. Morgan finished the season with 28 receptions for 471 yards and four touchdowns. Prior to the game, Morgan predicted that if the Hokies executed their plays well, they would emerge the victors.
Backup guard Brandon Gore broke his ankle during the Hokies' loss to Florida State and would not be able to participate. Senior Tech running back Mike Imoh, who shared time running the ball during the regular season with Ore and Humes, was also out after undergoing surgery to repair an injured ankle. Adding to the injury situation for Virginia Tech was offensive tackle Jimmy Martin, who suffered a sprained knee ligament in practice leading up to the game. Martin started 45 consecutive games prior to the Gator Bowl, a streak that was broken when he was replaced by Brandon Frye on the day of the game.
### Defensive matchup
#### Louisville defense
Shortly after Louisville was selected to the 2006 Gator Bowl, Cardinals defensive end Elvis Dumervil was awarded the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, given annually to the top defensive college football player in the United States. Dumervil also earned several other honors in the weeks leading up to the game, including being named Big East Defensive Player of the Year, an Associated Press All-American and earning the Ted Hendricks Award, given annually to the best defensive end in the country. Dumervil led the nation in sacks (20) and forced fumbles (10) during the regular season. Prior to the game, he announced that he was looking forward to the contest, saying, "To me, I wanted to play the best possible team in the Gator Bowl, and I think that's what we've got".
A week and a half after Dumervil won the Nagurski Trophy, senior defensive tackle Montavious Stanley, who was a leader on defense for Louisville, underwent surgery to repair a torn pectoral muscle. Stanley was the Cardinals' best run-stopper on defense, amassing 48 tackles and 5.5 sacks during the season.
#### Virginia Tech defense
Coming into the Gator Bowl, the Virginia Tech defense was ranked first in total defense, second in pass defense, fourth in rushing defense, and third in scoring defense, allowing an average of just over 12 points per game. The Virginia Tech defense was led by defensive end Darryl Tapp, a first-team All-ACC pick, an American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) All-American, a finalist for the Lott Trophy, and a finalist for the Ted Hendricks Award. Tapp was considered a natural leader both on and off the field and led the Hokies' defensive workouts during practice. Tapp finished the regular season with 45 tackles (including 12.5 for a loss) and ten sacks. He was also named a second-team Associated Press All-American, and he won the Dudley Award, given annually to the best college football player in the state of Virginia.
Tech cornerback Jimmy F. Williams, considered a cornerstone of the Hokie defense, was a finalist for the Nagurski Trophy that season, but lost to Louisville's Elvis Dumervil. Williams was Tech's sole first-team Associated Press All-American and also was named to the American Football Coaches Association, Football Writers Association of American and Walter Camp All-America teams. He recorded 44 tackles and an interception for the Hokies in the regular season. Williams had foregone entering the NFL draft after the 2004 college football season in order to return to Virginia Tech for his senior season, and he was expected to be a high draft pick upon graduation.
## Game summary
The 2006 Gator Bowl kicked off at 12:30 p.m. EST on January 2, 2006 in Jacksonville, Florida. Official attendance for the game was listed as 63,780, placing it at 34th (out of 62) on the list of Gator Bowls in terms of attendance. At kickoff, the weather was mostly cloudy with a temperature of approximately 76 degrees. The wind was from the south-southwest at 11 miles per hour (18 km/h). Approximately 4.14 million American households watched the game on television, earning the game a Nielsen rating of 3.93. The pre-game show featured the Marching Virginians, the Cardinal Marching Band, and the Wachovia Dance Team, a collection of Jacksonville-area entertainers. Also before kickoff, the stadium was overflown by a flight of U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets from VFA-103, based in Virginia. The national anthem was sung by Monty Lane Allen, member of a Gospel singing group.
### First quarter
Virginia Tech won the ceremonial pre-game coin toss to select first possession and deferred its option to the second half; Louisville elected to receive the opening kick. The Cardinals began the game's opening drive at their own 18-yard line after the opening kickoff. Running back Michael Bush rushed for 12 yards on the game's opening play, netting the game's first first down. Subsequent plays, however, saw Louisville struggle to gain another. Facing fourth down and six yards at their own 34-yard line, the Cardinals seemingly prepared to punt. Instead, the Cardinals executed a trick play by running back Kolby Smith, who ran with the ball. Smith surprised the Tech defense and broke free for a 30-yard run, converting the first down and continuing the Louisville drive. Eight plays later, Louisville quarterback Hunter Cantwell connected on an 11-yard pass to Mario Urrutia for a touchdown and the game's first points. The extra point kick was good, and with 10:42 remaining in the first quarter, Louisville took a 7–0 lead.
Virginia Tech's first possession of the game began at its own 32-yard line after Louisville's post-touchdown kickoff. Tech running back Cedric Humes gained 12 yards and a first down on the Hokies' first play of the game, and quarterback Marcus Vick completed a 24-yard pass to wide receiver Josh Hyman three plays later to get another first down and drive the Hokies into Louisville territory. After Vick was stopped for losses on two consecutive rushing plays, he completed another long pass to Hyman for a first down. Subsequent plays saw Tech advance into the Louisville red zone but fail to gain another first down. Kicker Brandon Pace entered the game to attempt a 36-yard field goal kick, which was successful. With six minutes remaining in the first quarter, Tech cut Louisville's lead to 7–3.
Louisville's second drive of the game was much quicker than the Cardinals' first. After beginning at their own 20-yard line, it took the Cardinals just seven plays to travel 80 yards and earn a touchdown. Louisville was helped throughout the drive by repeated Virginia Tech personal foul penalties. Tech players committed three separate 15-yard personal fouls during the drive, one of which came after Louisville's successful extra point kick when cornerback Jimmy Williams bumped a game official. Williams was ejected from the game for the contact and was removed from the field after watching the next series from the sidelines. The touchdown and extra point extended Louisville's first-quarter lead to 14–3.
Tech received the ball at its 20-yard line with 2:44 remaining in the first quarter. Three quick rushes picked up 22 yards and two first downs, pushing the ball to the Tech 42-yard line. On the next play, however, wide receiver Justin Harper committed a 15-yard pass interference penalty, which negated much of the previous plays' gains. Marcus Vick rushed for five yards, threw two incomplete passes, and was unable to get another first down after the penalty. With time winding down in the quarter, Tech was forced to punt the ball away. The game's first punt traveled 53 yards, and Louisville took over on offense at its 40-yard line following a 25-yard punt return as time expired in the quarter. At the end of the first quarter, Louisville led Virginia Tech, 14–3.
### Second quarter
Louisville began the second quarter in possession of the ball at its 40-yard line. Despite having good field position, the Cardinals were unable to gain more than four yards on three plays and were forced into their first punt of the game. Throughout much of the second quarter, both teams traded punts as each went three and out on several occasions. By the quarter's halfway point, Virginia Tech punted the ball twice in the period. Louisville punted the ball three times after kicking no punts at all in the first quarter.
After the third Louisville punt, Virginia Tech took over at its 46-yard line. Unlike the previous second-quarter possessions, which saw the Tech offense struggle to move the ball effectively, Tech began its drive with a five-yard rush. After losing seven yards on the next play, Marcus Vick completed a 19-yard pass to tight end Jeff King, driving the Hokies into Louisville territory for the first time in the quarter. Two plays later, Vick connected with wide receiver Justin Harper on a 33-yard pass that resulted in the Hokies' first touchdown of the game. With 4:56 remaining in the first half of the game, Tech trimmed Louisville's lead to 14–10.
Following the Tech touchdown, Louisville attempted to answer with points of its own before halftime. After starting on his own 20-yard line, Hunter Cantwell completed two quick passes that resulted in 26 yards. Two plays later, Michael Bush broke free for a 34-yard run, driving Louisville deep into the Virginia Tech side of the field. Despite having a first down at the Virginia Tech 18-yard line, Louisville was unable to gain any yards on three consecutive plays. Bush was stopped for no gain on a rushing attempt, and two Cantwell passes fell incomplete. Kicker Arthur Carmody came in to complete a 35-yard field goal, and with 2:16 remaining in the first half, Louisville led by a score of 17–10.
After receiving Louisville's kickoff, Virginia Tech elected to run out the clock and bring the first half to an end. During the process, Marcus Vick ran the ball on a designed play and was tackled by Cardinals defensive end Elvis Dumervil after Vick gained nine yards. Following the play, Vick paused, then stomped on Dumervil's leg. Though referees failed to observe the stomp, television commentators replayed the action, and Tech coaches considered pulling Vick from the game as punishment. At the end of the first half of play, Louisville held a 17–10 lead.
### Third quarter
The second half of play began with Virginia Tech receiving the ball, going three and out, and punting the ball back to Louisville. The Cardinals reciprocated by also going three and out and punting the ball back to Virginia Tech. The Hokies began their second drive of the quarter at their one-yard line. Despite beginning deep in their own end of the field, Virginia Tech mounted a successful drive. Tailback Branden Ore and quarterback Marcus Vick alternated rushes, picking up 18 yards and a first down. After Vick was sacked by the Louisville defense, he recovered by throwing a 29-yard pass for another first down. Following the pass, Vick and Ore rushed for six consecutive plays, alternating carries at various intervals. Inside the Louisville red zone, however, the Cardinals' defense stiffened and the Tech offense began to falter. After Tech successfully gained a first down on fourth and one, the Hokies were unable to gain another. Tech kicker Brandon Pace was forced to make his second field goal of the game, this one a 28-yarder, to make the game 17–13 with 2:52 remaining in the quarter. The Tech drive began with 11:17 remaining in the quarter and took eight minutes and 25 seconds off the clock.
Louisville received the post-field goal kickoff, but again went three and out, punting the ball back to Virginia Tech. Louisville did not pick up a first down in the third quarter, and Tech began yet another drive as time ran out in the quarter. With one quarter remaining in the game, Tech narrowed the Louisville lead to 17–13.
### Fourth quarter
Shortly after the fourth quarter began, the Virginia Tech drive that began in the waning moments of the third quarter came to an end. The Hokies were forced to punt, and Louisville began its first drive of the fourth quarter. The Cardinals' Harry Douglas ran for 29 yards on their first play of the drive. On the second, Hunter Cantwell completed a 29-yard touchdown pass to Gary Barnidge. It took Louisville just 33 seconds and two plays to travel 58 yards and earn a touchdown. The score gave Louisville a 24–13 lead with 13:32 remaining to play. But just as it took Louisville just two plays to score, so too did it take Virginia Tech two plays to answer the Louisville touchdown. After taking over at his team's 22-yard line, Marcus Vick completed a 54-yard pass to wide receiver David Clowney. Virginia Tech and Louisville committed offsetting 15-yard personal foul penalties before the play, to no effect on the Hokie offense. On the next play after the long pass, Cedric Humes rushed for 24 yards and the answering Hokie touchdown. It took just 28 seconds for Virginia Tech to answer the Louisville touchdown. Having done that, Tech went Louisville one better, successfully scoring a two-point conversion on a pass from Vick to Morgan. The touchdown and two-point conversion cut the Louisville lead to 24–21.
The Cardinals began their second drive of the quarter at their own 25-yard line. In fits and starts, the Louisville offense advanced down the field. Kolby Smith ran for a yard, Michael Bush for two, then six yards, and Cantwell completed two passes of seven yards each. The Cardinals were also helped by a defensive pass interference penalty against Virginia Tech, which gave Louisville a first down by penalty. As Louisville began to enter Tech territory in earnest, however, the Cardinals suffered their first turnover of the game. Facing third down and three yards from the Virginia Tech 40-yard line, Cantwell was sacked and fumbled the ball. Tech defender Xavier Adibi scooped up the loose ball, and Tech gained the initiative. Following the fumble, the Hokies began a drive at their 47-yard line. On the first play, Tech was aided by a pass interference penalty on Louisville. The penalty was followed by a three-yard Cedric Humes rush and yet another pass interference penalty against Louisville. Humes rushed twice more for five yards, and Vick completed a 16-yard pass to David Clowney before Vick completed a five-yard touchdown pass to Jeff King. The score and subsequent extra point gave Virginia Tech a 28–24 lead—its first of the game—with 6:03 remaining.
Louisville took over on offense needing to get a touchdown to regain a lead before the waning clock finally ran out of time. After the Tech kickoff and a touchback, the Cardinals took over at their 20-yard line. Michael Bush ran for 10 yards and a first down, and Hunter Cantwell scrambled for six more on a rushing play. Facing third down and needing four yards, Cantwell dropped back to pass for the first down. As the pass soared through the air, Tech defender James Anderson jumped and caught the ball, intercepting it. Still on his feet, Anderson quickly rushed the other way and, unimpeded, ran 39 yards into the end zone for a Virginia Tech touchdown. The score and extra point energized Virginia Tech's offense and defense and gave the Hokies an 11-point lead—35–24—with 4:45 remaining in the game.
Louisville returned on offense, needing to score quickly, make a stop on defense, then score a second time to take the lead. The energized Tech defense was disinclined to allow any such thing. Though Cantwell completed two short passes for 16 yards and a first down, he was sacked on first down and the Tech defense prevented him from completing another pass. Two passes were knocked down by Hokie defenders, while another fell short. After Louisville failed to convert a fourth down, Virginia Tech took over on offense. The Hokies proceeded to run out the clock, executing two short rushes and an incomplete pass. Louisville had one final chance on offense after a Tech punt, but three consecutive desperation Hail Mary passes were unsuccessful. Two fell incomplete, and the third was intercepted by Tech cornerback Brandon Flowers. With time almost gone, Tech finished running out the clock and secured the victory. As time expired, Virginia Tech held a 35–24 lead and won the 2006 Gator Bowl.
## Final statistics
Running back Cedric Humes was named the game's most valuable player for Virginia Tech, and quarterback Hunter Cantwell was named the Cardinals' most valuable player. Tech punter Nic Schmitt set Gator Bowl record for punt yardage and average punt distance, kicking the ball six times for 300 yards, an average of 50 yards per kick.
Despite being more highly promoted in pregame media coverage, Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick was outperformed statistically by Louisville's Hunter Cantwell. Vick completed 11 of 21 passes for 203 yards and two touchdowns. He also ran for 10 yards on 13 carries. Cantwell, meanwhile, completed 15 of his 37 passes for 216 yards, three touchdowns, and three interceptions.
On the ground, Tech running back Cedric Humes led all rushers with 22 carries for 113 yards and one touchdown. Louisville's leading rusher, Michael Bush, had 16 carries for 94 yards and one fumble. The third-leading rusher in the game was Tech's Branden Ore, who carried the ball 11 times for 56 yards. Louisville's Kolby Smith carried the ball three times for 32 yards, including a 30-yard run that was the game's second-longest rushing play.
Defensively, Virginia Tech dominated, intercepting the ball three times, forcing a fumble once, and earning one defensive touchdown. Two Louisville defenders had the best individual performances during the game, however. Brandon Johnson and Abe Brown had six tackles apiece, and Brown sacked Marcus Vick once for a loss of ten yards. The sack was one of three earned by the Louisville offense during the game. Virginia Tech's defense earned two sacks during the game, and the Hokies' leading tackler was Vince Hall, who recorded four and two assists on sacks of Louisville's Hunter Cantwell.
## Postgame effects
Virginia Tech's victory in the 2006 Gator Bowl had far-reaching effects for both the Hokies and the Louisville Cardinals. The win pushed Tech to 11–2 on the season, while the Cardinals' loss ensured they ended the 2005 season with a 9–3 overall record. The game itself provided more than \$14 million in economic benefit to the Jacksonville area as Louisville and Virginia Tech fans flocked to the region, spending money on food, hotel rooms, transportation, and entertainment.
Virginia Tech quarterbacks coach Kevin Rogers announced after the game that he would be leaving the team in order to become an assistant coach with the NFL's Minnesota Vikings. Rogers was replaced by new hire Mike O'Cain. Tech offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring's second job as offensive line coach was filled by James Madison University assistant coach Curt Newsome.
### Marcus Vick
Following the 2005 ACC Championship Game, Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick stormed off the field, refusing to talk to reporters following the loss. Vick, who picked up a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty late in that game, also earned several unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in the 2006 Gator Bowl, where post-game replays revealed he purposefully stomped on the leg of Louisville Cardinals' defensive end Elvis Dumervil. Vick claimed he apologized to Dumervil after the game, but Dumervil stated that no apology was made. In the wake of the incident, Virginia Tech officials announced that they would be conducting a review of Vick's conduct on and off the field.
On January 6, 2006, just a few days after the Gator Bowl, Virginia Tech officials dismissed Vick from the Virginia Tech football team, citing a December 17 traffic stop in which Vick was cited for speeding and driving with a revoked or suspended license. Vick hid the information from the team and the infraction was not discovered until January. The traffic stop, an earlier suspension from the team, and his unsportsmanlike conduct during the 2005 ACC Championship Game and 2006 Gator Bowl were used as grounds for his dismissal. In response to being dismissed from the team, Vick was quoted as saying, "It's not a big deal. I'll just move on to the next level, baby". Vick appeared in one regular-season NFL game for the Miami Dolphins in 2006. The Dolphins did not renew his contract, and he has been out of football ever since.
### 2006 NFL Draft
On April 29 and 30, the National Football League held its annual player draft. Over a dozen players who participated in the 2006 Gator Bowl were selected in the draft. Virginia Tech had a record nine players selected in the draft, with Darryl Tapp (31st overall) selected first from the Hokies. Jimmy Williams (37th overall), James Anderson (88th), Jeff King (155th), Jonathan Lewis (177th), Justin Hamilton (222nd), Jimmy Martin (227th), Will Montgomery (234th), and Cedric Humes (240th) were the other Tech players selected. Louisville had four players selected in the draft. Offensive guard Jason Spitz was selected 75th overall and was the first Cardinals' offensive lineman to be drafted since 1996. Elvis Dumervil was selected with the 126th selection, linebacker Brandon Johnson was selected 142nd, and defensive tackle Montavious Stanley was selected 182nd.
## See also
- Glossary of American football
- 2006 NCAA Division I FBS football rankings
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940,770 |
Tessa Sanderson
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British former javelin thrower (born 1956)
|
[
"1956 births",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1974 British Commonwealth Games",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1976 Summer Olympics",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1978 Commonwealth Games",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1980 Summer Olympics",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1984 Summer Olympics",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1986 Commonwealth Games",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1988 Summer Olympics",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1990 Commonwealth Games",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1992 Summer Olympics",
"Athletes (track and field) at the 1996 Summer Olympics",
"Black British sportswomen",
"British female javelin throwers",
"British heptathletes",
"Commanders of the Order of the British Empire",
"Commonwealth Games competitors for England",
"Commonwealth Games gold medallists for England",
"Commonwealth Games gold medallists in athletics",
"English Olympic medallists",
"English female javelin throwers",
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"Jamaican female javelin throwers",
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"Olympic gold medallists for Great Britain",
"Sportspeople from Saint Elizabeth Parish",
"Sportspeople from Wolverhampton",
"UK Athletics Championships winners",
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] |
Theresa Ione Sanderson CBE (born 14 March 1956) is a British former javelin thrower. She appeared in every Summer Olympics from 1976 to 1996, winning the gold medal in the javelin throw at the 1984 Olympics. She was the second track and field athlete to compete at six Olympics, and the first Black British woman to win an Olympic gold medal.
Sanderson won gold medals in the javelin throw at three Commonwealth Games (1978, 1986 and 1990) and at the 1992 IAAF World Cup. She was runner-up at the 1978 European Athletics Championships, and competed in three world championships (1983, 1987, and 1997). Sanderson was UK National Champion three times and AAA National Champion in amateur athletics ten times. She set five Commonwealth records and ten British national records in the javelin, as well as records at the junior and masters levels. During her career, Sanderson had a rivalry with fellow Briton Fatima Whitbread, who took the bronze in the 1984 Olympics.
Outside athletics, Sanderson has made several guest television appearances, and was a sports reporter for Sky News when it began broadcasting in 1989. Sanderson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1985 and became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2004 New Years Honours. She was Vice-chair of Sport England from 1999 to 2005, and later established the Tessa Sanderson Foundation and Academy, which aims to encourage young people and people with disabilities to take up sport.
## Early life
Theresa Ione Sanderson was born on 14 March 1956 in St Elizabeth, Colony of Jamaica. Her parents left Jamaica to find work in England when Sanderson was five. She was cared for by her grandmother until she went to live with her parents in Wednesfield (then in Staffordshire) at age six. Barbara Richards, her physical education teacher at Ward's Bridge High School, noted her talent for athletics and encouraged her to succeed; Richards threatened to place Sanderson in after-school detention if she did not train, an approach which Sanderson later said helped. She first threw a javelin at age 14, betting with a friend for a bag of chips on who would be able to throw it further.
## Athletic career
### Early career
Sanderson was a member of Wolverhampton & Bilston Athletics Club, competing in the javelin throw and multi-event disciplines. In 1972, aged 16, Sanderson won the Intermediate javelin event at the English Schools' Athletics Championships. She was selected to compete in the javelin throw at the 1973 European Athletics Junior Championships the following year, where she reached the final but finished 12th with a throw of – well behind the winner, Tonya Khristova of Bulgaria, who threw . Sanderson then decided to focus on the javelin throw rather than the pentathlon, partly because she thought that javelin competitions would provide more opportunities for travel. She made her senior international debut in the javelin throw at the 1974 British Commonwealth Games, finishing fifth. Later that year, Sanderson finished 13th in the 1974 European Athletics Championships. She broke the British javelin-throw junior record five times, achieving a distance of in 1974. Sanderson set the national record in 1976, throwing , and went on to set ten national records and five Commonwealth records.
The 1976 season saw Sanderson's debut at the Olympics. Aged 20, she was the youngest competitor in her event and threw to finish ninth. In July 1977, at the European Cup semi-finals in Dublin, she threw – a national record and the second-longest distance by a woman at the time. At the European Cup finals, Ruth Fuchs of East Germany won the gold and Sanderson took the silver. Later that year, Sanderson was the bronze medalist at the 1977 IAAF World Cup.
Sanderson won her first major gold medal with a throw of in the 1978 Commonwealth Games, the first time England had won Commonwealth gold in the women's javelin since 1962. A few weeks later, Sanderson took silver at the 1978 European Athletics Championships behind Fuchs; she was the bronze medalist at the 1979 European Cup again behind Fuchs, both of them losing out to Romanian Éva Ráduly-Zörgő. Selected for the 1980 Summer Olympics, she failed to meet the qualifying standard for the final, reaching only with her first throw and having her other two attempts declared no-throws.
After the 1980 Summer Olympic Games, Sanderson asked Wilf Paish of the Carnegie Institute of Physical Education in Leeds to become her coach, and lived with his family once he agreed. A throw of was enough for Sanderson to win at the 1981 Pacific Conference Games. At the 1981 European Cup, she was runner-up behind Antoaneta Todorova of Bulgaria who made a world-record throw of . She also competed in the pentathlon and heptathlon, setting UK and Commonwealth records for the heptathlon twice in 1981. Later that year, Sanderson had an achilles tendon rupture in her left leg and broke a bone in her throwing arm. Surgery on her Achilles tendon was unsuccessful, and she required another operation; the injuries prevented her from competing for 22 months. After returning, Sanderson achieved her career-best javelin throw of at the Tarmac Games in Edinburgh on 26 June 1983. It was the third-longest throw by a woman at the time, when the record was thrown by Tiina Lillak of Finland ten days previously. Sanderson finished fourth at the 1983 World Championships; another British competitor, Fatima Whitbread, who was coming to the fore as her rival, won silver. After re-injuring her Achilles tendon at the championship, Sanderson had surgery on both Achilles tendons a few days after the competition ended.
### Olympic gold and later career
Sanderson won the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in the javelin, setting a new Olympic record with her throw of . Whitbread won the bronze; it was Great Britain's first Olympic win in a throwing event since the modern Olympics began in 1896. Sanderson is the first Black British woman to win an Olympic gold medal. Sanderson wrote in her 1986 autobiography that following her Olympic victory, she had not intended to compete in the following athletics season, but she did take part in several competitions after being persuaded by her management company IMG to do so. Although she finished behind Whitbread in five successive meetings, Sanderson did produce the fourth-longest women's javelin throw of the year. She won gold at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, and Whitbread took the silver medal.
In March 1987, Sanderson announced that she would change her focus from the javelin throw to the heptathlon. Shortly before then, she had moved to London and was looking for a career in television or promotional work. In fact, she only competed in one heptathlon after this, in July. At the Dairy Crest Games in August, Whitbread (who had been undefeated during the season) injured her shoulder; Sanderson won the event. Sanderson then announced that she would train with Mick Hill in Italy for the world championships. Whitbread won the world championship, and Sanderson finished fourth.
About ten days before participating in the 1988 Summer Olympics as defending champion, Sanderson burst the skin around her ankle and exposed her Achilles tendon. She failed to qualify for the final and left the competition limping, with blood visible on the bandage on her injured ankle. Sanderson left the stadium on crutches before the medal ceremony, where Whitbread received the silver medal behind Petra Felke from East Germany.
Sanderson announced after the 1988 Olympics that she would retire from the javelin throw, but made an unexpected return to competition in 1989 at the McVitie's International Challenge; she finished third. She also finished third at the 1989 European Cup, despite not being in top condition. At the 1990 Commonwealth Games, a throw of was enough for Sanderson to retain her title. She finished 12th at the 1990 European Athletics Championships, but was later moved up to 11th. Aged 35, Sanderson won at the 1991 European Cup over a field which included world-record holder Felke.
Her fifth Olympic Games appearance, at the 1992 Summer Olympics, set a record for Olympic appearances by a British athlete. Sanderson's best throw, , was almost five metres less than the winning throw of by Silke Renk and 3.28 metres less than bronze medalist Karen Forkel. She won gold at the 1992 World Cup with a throw of , nearly three metres further than any other competitor.
### Rivalry with Fatima Whitbread
Alan Hubbard wrote in a 1990 article in The Observer about Sanderson and Whitbread that "their hate-hate relationship has been one of the most enduring in British sport", lasting almost a decade. The same year, Matthew Engel wrote in The Guardian that "the Sanderson-Whitbread feud is, of course, one of the most splendid in sport", and Tom Lamont, in the same newspaper 29 years later, commented that "Whitbread and Sanderson were always uneasy rivals and the enmity that developed during their overlapping careers became as famous as their achievements, and seems to survive in their retirement". Hubbard cited Sanderson's perception that Whitbread received preferential treatment from the British Amateur Athletic Board. The Board's promotions officer, Andy Norman, who had a role in setting British athletes' fees, was a family friend of Whitbread and her mother and coach, Margaret. Margaret Whitbread was also the national coach for women's javelin in 1985, when her daughter was often participating in international events compared to only one in the season up to June 1985 for Sanderson. In 1987, Sanderson threatened to boycott athletics events, for which she was being paid £1,000 each by British Athletics compared to Whitbread's £10,000. Sanderson agreed to a new deal at the beginning of June that year. Sanderson also objected to the endorsement that the Whitbreads had given to the Australian athlete Sue Howland, who competed at the 1990 Commonwealth Games after a two-year doping suspension, saying that she felt that they should have supported British athletes instead.
During their respective careers, Sanderson won an Olympic and three Commonwealth golds, and Whitbread gained one world and one European title. In all, Sanderson placed higher in 27 of the 45 times that they faced each other in competition, although Whitbread had the better results of the pair from 1984 to 1987. In 2019, Sanderson told an interviewer from The Daily Telegraph that although she had initially been on friendly terms with Whitbread, before "the competition got to Whitbread's head" and they fell out, "The rivalry was one of the best things when you look at it now. It drove me to another level. It made me want to beat her every time. It's calmer now. I respect her and I hope she respects me."
### Return to competition
After a four-year hiatus, Sanderson returned to track and field competition in 1996. She set masters (over-40) record throws of and with her first two throws in May, surpassing the previous record of . After two further masters-record throws, Sanderson increased the record to at the Securicor Games in July. At the 1996 Summer Olympics, she became the second track and field athlete (after Romanian discus thrower Lia Manoliu) to compete at six Olympics but did not qualify for the final. Sanderson also failed to qualify for the final at the 1997 World Championships, her last international appearance. Sanderson retired from competition in 1997; Whitbread had retired five years earlier.
During the 1970s, the use of performance-enhancing drugs was common in throwing events; Sanderson spoke against the practice, consistently maintaining an anti-doping stance. Her rival, two-time Olympic champion Fuchs, later admitted using steroids in the East German sports programme. The East German team did not compete in the 1984 Olympic Games as they participated in a wider boycott led by the Soviet Union. Sanderson told reporters from The Daily Telegraph in 2021 that she felt during her career she had been "robbed" of medals by losing to competitors using drugs.
## Outside competition
Sanderson has appeared as a guest on several television shows, including panel games A Question of Sport (in 1979), Bullseye (1984), Catchphrase Celebrity Special (1991), and Celebrity Wife Swap (2009). When Sky News was launched in 1989, Sanderson was a sports reporter for the channel, and she also co-hosted ITV's light-entertainment programme Surprise Surprise with Cilla Black. In 2012, Sanderson was in "Billy's Olympic Nightmare", a BBC Red Button episode of soap opera EastEnders, and was a contestant on ITV's Dancing on Ice Goes Gold in the same year. At age 58, she began modelling for the Grey Model Agency.
Sanderson was vice-chair of Sport England from 1999 to 2005. In 2006, she founded an academy in Newham which helped to find and train athletes to represent Britain in the 2012 Summer Olympics. The Tessa Sanderson Foundation and Academy was established in September 2009 to encourage young people and people with disabilities to take up sport with mentoring and support.
From 2009 to 2013, Sanderson organised an annual 10 km race in Newham; part of the route was through Olympic Park. Although the 2013 event attracted 3,000 participants (representing 45 different nationalities), it was cancelled in 2014; Sanderson said that the Newham Council wanted to double its fee, and delayed meeting about the race. Sanderson was appointed to the board of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, chaired by Baroness Ford, to "develop and manage" the park after the 2012 Olympics.
## Honours
Sanderson, the British Athletics Writers' Association Athlete of the Year in 1977, 1978 and 1984, was inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012. Candidates for the Hall of Fame are selected by a panel of experts and then voted on by the public. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1985 New Year Honours after her Olympic gold-medal performance, raised to Officer (OBE) in the 1998 New Year Honours for her charity work, and to Commander (CBE) in the 2004 New Year Honours for her service to Sport England.
Sanderson is an honorary graduate of the University of Wolverhampton, and was made an Honorary Fellow of London South Bank University in 2004. That year, she was one of 100 Great Black Britons in a poll taken after the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons failed to include any Black Britons. Later that year, Sanderson received a Sportswomen of the Year Lifetime Achievement award from The Sunday Times. A housing estate in Wednesfield near where she began learning the javelin throw was named Sanderson Park after her. Two roads are named after her: Tessa Sanderson Place is near Wandsworth Road in South London, and Tessa Sanderson Way is in Greenford, West London.
## Personal life
Sanderson has spoken about the discrimination she has experienced as a black woman. She told The Guardian in 1990 that she had faced racial discrimination (although not in her sporting career), and she felt that sexism was the reason women athletes were not adequately paid. Sanderson experienced racist language and behaviour in school (including being spat on), and has spoken about receiving a racist letter saying that she was not truly British after her 1984 Olympic gold medal. She told Sky Sports in October 2020, "Black athletes didn't have the voice they have now, so I just had to fight my own battles", and expressed disappointment at the continuing lack of Black, Asian and minority representation in sports governing bodies.
Tessa: My Life in Athletics, Sanderson's autobiography, was published in 1986. In 1990, she sued several newspapers and was awarded £30,000 in damages by the High Court of Justice for claims that she had "stolen another woman's husband". Sanderson said that her affair with the man, Derrick Evans (a fitness instructor known as Mr Motivator) began after his marriage had broken up. Sanderson had starred in the fitness videos Cardiofunk (1990) and Body Blitz (c. 1992) with Evans.
On 3 May 2010, Sanderson married former judo Olympian Densign White at St Paul's Cathedral in London. Her bridesmaids were fellow Olympic teammates Sharron Davies, Kelly Holmes and Christine Ohuruogu. She had three unsuccessful in vitro fertilisation treatments by the age of 50. Sanderson and White began fostering four-month-old twins Cassius and Ruby Mae in 2013 and adopted them the following year, when Sanderson was 58. Her nephew, Dion Sanderson, is a footballer who debuted with Wolverhampton Wanderers in October 2019.
## Career statistics
### Personal bests
### Seasonal bests
The table below shows Sanderson's best javelin performance per season.
#### Season rankings
Sanderson's position in the rankings of women's javelin throw athletes, based on their longest throw in the year. Only positions in the top 25 are shown.
### International competitions
The table shows Sanderson's performances representing Great Britain and England in international competitions.
"(q)" denotes position in qualifying round.
### National titles
- AAA Junior Championships (under 17): 1971 and 1972
- English Schools Champion: 1972 (intermediate) and 1973 (senior)
- British Schools International match: 1973
- English Commonwealth Games trials: 1973 and 1978
- British Olympic Games trials: 1976 and 1984
- 10 times AAA National Champion: 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1996
- 3 times UK National Champion: 1977, 1978, 1997
### Midland Counties Championships
These were competitions for women based in the English Midlands counties of Avon, Gloucestershire, Hereford and Worcester, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Salop, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and West Midlands.
- Javelin throw: 1974, 1975, 1977
- Pentathlon: 1976
- 400 m hurdles: 1977
## See also
- Javelin throw at the Olympics
- List of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games
- List of Olympic medalists in athletics (women)
- List of Commonwealth Games medallists in athletics (women)
- List of European Athletics Championships medalists (women)
- List of javelin throwers
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Liberty Bell
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A symbol of American independence and liberty
|
[
"1752 establishments in Pennsylvania",
"Broken bells",
"Buildings and structures completed in 1752",
"History of Allentown, Pennsylvania",
"Independence National Historical Park",
"Individual bells in the United States",
"Landmarks in Philadelphia",
"Liberty symbols",
"National symbols of the United States",
"Philadelphia in the American Revolution",
"Tourist attractions in Philadelphia"
] |
The Liberty Bell, previously called the State House Bell or Old State House Bell, is an iconic symbol of American independence located in Philadelphia. Originally placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House (now renamed Independence Hall), the bell today is located across the street in the Liberty Bell Center in Independence National Historical Park. The bell was commissioned in 1752 by the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly from the London firm of Lester and Pack (known subsequently as the Whitechapel Bell Foundry), and was cast with the lettering "Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof", a Biblical reference from the Book of Leviticus (). The bell first cracked when rung after its arrival in Philadelphia, and was twice recast by local workmen John Pass and John Stow, whose last names appear on the bell. In its early years, the bell was used to summon lawmakers to legislative sessions and to alert citizens about public meetings and proclamations.
Although no immediate announcement was made of the Second Continental Congress's vote for independence — and so the bell could not have rung on July 4, 1776, related to that vote—bells were rung on July 8 to mark the reading of the United States Declaration of Independence. While there is no contemporary account of the Liberty Bell ringing, most historians believe it was one of the bells rung. After American independence was secured, the bell fell into relative obscurity until, in the 1830s, the bell was adopted as a symbol by abolitionist societies, who dubbed it the "Liberty Bell".
The bell acquired its distinctive large crack sometime in the early 19th century. A widespread story claims it cracked while ringing after the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835. The bell became famous after an 1847 short story claimed that an aged bellringer rang it on July 4, 1776, upon hearing of the Second Continental Congress's vote for independence. Although the bell did not ring for independence on that July 4, the tale was widely accepted as fact, even by some historians. Beginning in 1885, the city of Philadelphia, which owns the bell, allowed it to be transported to various expositions and patriotic gatherings. The bell attracted huge crowds wherever it went, additional cracking occurred, and pieces were chipped away by souvenir hunters. The last such journey occurred in 1915, after which the city refused further requests.
After World War II, Philadelphia allowed the National Park Service to take custody of the bell, while retaining ownership. The bell was used as a symbol of freedom during the Cold War and was a popular site for protests in the 1960s. It was moved from its longtime home in Independence Hall to a nearby glass pavilion on Independence Mall in 1976, and then to the larger Liberty Bell Center adjacent to the pavilion in 2003. The bell has been featured on coins and stamps, and its name and image have been widely used by corporations.
## Founding (1751–1753)
Philadelphia's city bell had been used to alert the public to proclamations or civic danger since the city's 1682 founding. The original bell hung from a tree behind the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall) and was said to have been brought to the city by its founder, William Penn. In 1751, with a bell tower being built in the Pennsylvania State House, civic authorities sought a bell of better quality that could be heard at a greater distance in the rapidly expanding city. Isaac Norris, speaker of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, gave orders to the colony's London agent, Robert Charles, to obtain a "good Bell of about two thousands pound weight".
> We hope and rely on thy care and assistance in this affair and that thou wilt procure and forward it by the first good opp<sup>o</sup> as our workmen inform us it will be much less trouble to hang the Bell before their Scaffolds are struck from the Building where we intend to place it which will not be done 'till the end of next Summer or beginning of the Fall. Let the bell be cast by the best workmen & examined carefully before it is Shipped with the following words well shaped around it.
>
> By Order of the Assembly of the Povince [sic] of Pensylvania [sic] for the State house in the City of Philada 1752
>
> and Underneath
>
> Proclaim Liberty thro' all the Land to all the Inhabitants thereof.-Levit. XXV. 10.
The reference to Leviticus in Norris's directive reflects the contemporaneous practice of assigning unique qualities to bells that reflected their particular composition and casting.
## Inscription
The inscription on the bell reads:
> > Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof Lev. XXV. v X. By Order of the ASSEMBLY of the Province of PENSYLVANIA for the State House in Philad<sup>A</sup> Pass and Stow Philad<sup>a</sup> MDCCLIII
At the time, "Pensylvania" was an accepted alternative spelling for "Pennsylvania". That spelling was used by Alexander Hamilton, a graduate of King's College (now Columbia University), in 1787 on the signature page of the Constitution of the United States.
Robert Charles dutifully ordered the bell from Thomas Lester of the London bellfounding firm of Lester and Pack (known subsequently as the Whitechapel Bell Foundry) for the sum of £150 13s 8d, (equivalent to £ in ) including freight to Philadelphia and insurance. It arrived in Philadelphia in August 1752. Norris wrote to Charles that the bell was in good order, but they had not yet sounded it, as they were building a clock for the State House's tower. The bell was mounted on a stand to test the sound, and at the first strike of the clapper, the bell's rim cracked. The episode would be used to good account in later stories of the bell; in 1893, former President Benjamin Harrison, speaking as the bell passed through Indianapolis, stated, "This old bell was made in England, but it had to be re-cast in America before it was attuned to proclaim the right of self-government and the equal rights of men." Philadelphia authorities tried to return it by ship, but the master of the vessel that had brought it was unable to take it on board.
Two local founders, John Pass and John Stow, offered to recast the bell. Though they were inexperienced in bell casting, Pass had headed the Mount Holly Iron Foundry in neighboring New Jersey and came from Malta that had a tradition of bell casting. Stow, on the other hand, was only four years out of his apprenticeship as a brass founder. At Stow's foundry on Second Street, the bell was broken into small pieces, melted down, and cast into a new bell. The two founders decided that the metal was too brittle, and augmented the bell metal by about ten percent, using copper. The bell was ready in March 1753, and Norris reported that the lettering (that included the founders' names and the year) was even clearer on the new bell than on the old.
City officials scheduled a public celebration with free food and drink for the testing of the recast bell. When the bell was struck, it did not break, but the sound produced was described by one hearer as like two coal scuttles being banged together. Mocked by the crowd, Pass and Stow hastily took the bell away and again recast it. When the fruit of the two founders' renewed efforts was brought forth in June 1753, the sound was deemed satisfactory, though Norris indicated that he did not personally like it. The bell was hung in the steeple of the State House the same month.
The reason for the difficulties with the bell is not certain. The Whitechapel Foundry took the position that the bell was either damaged in transit or was broken by an inexperienced bell ringer, who incautiously sent the clapper flying against the rim, rather than the body of the bell. In 1975, the Winterthur Museum conducted an analysis of the metal in the bell, and concluded that "a series of errors made in the construction, reconstruction, and second reconstruction of the Bell resulted in a brittle bell that barely missed being broken up for scrap". The Museum found a considerably higher level of tin in the Liberty Bell than in other Whitechapel bells of that era, and suggested that Whitechapel made an error in the alloy, perhaps by using scraps with a high level of tin to begin the melt instead of the usual pure copper. The analysis found that, on the second recasting, instead of adding pure tin to the bell metal, Pass and Stow added cheap pewter with a high lead content, and incompletely mixed the new metal into the mold. The result was "an extremely brittle alloy which not only caused the Bell to fail in service but made it easy for early souvenir collectors to knock off substantial trophies from the rim".
## Early days (1754–1777)
Dissatisfied with the bell, Norris instructed Charles to order a second one, and see if Lester and Pack would take back the first bell and credit the value of the metal towards the bill. In 1754, the Assembly decided to keep both bells; the new one was attached to the tower clock while the old bell was, by vote of the Assembly, devoted "to such Uses as this House may hereafter appoint." The Pass and Stow bell was used to summon the Assembly. One of the earliest documented mentions of the bell's use is in a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Catherine Ray dated October 16, 1755: "Adieu. The Bell rings, and I must go among the Grave ones, and talk Politiks. [sic]" The bell was rung in 1760 to mark the accession of George III to the throne. In the early 1760s, the Assembly allowed a local church to use the State House for services and the bell to summon worshipers, while the church's building was being constructed. The bell was also used to summon people to public meetings, and in 1772, a group of citizens complained to the Assembly that the bell was being rung too frequently.
Despite the legends that have grown up about the Liberty Bell, it did not ring on July 4, 1776 (at least not for any reason connected with independence) since no public announcement was made of the Declaration of Independence until four days later, on July 8, 1776. When the Declaration was publicly read for the first time in Philadelphia, on July 8, 1776, there was a ringing of bells. While there is no contemporary account of the Liberty Bell ringing, most authorities agree that it was among the bells that rang. However, there is some chance that the poor condition of the State House bell tower prevented the bell from ringing. According to John C. Paige, who wrote a historical study of the bell for the National Park Service, "We do not know whether or not the steeple was still strong enough to permit the State House bell to ring on this day. If it could possibly be rung, we can assume it was. Whether or not it did, it has come to symbolize all of the bells throughout the United States which proclaimed Independence."
If the bell was rung, it would have been most likely rung by Andrew McNair, who was the doorkeeper both of the Assembly and of the Congress, and was responsible for ringing the bell. As McNair was absent on two unspecified days between April and November, it might have been rung by William Hurry, who succeeded him as doorkeeper for Congress. Bells were also rung to celebrate the first anniversary of Independence on July 4, 1777.
## Hidden in Allentown (1777–1778)
After Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was seen as an inevitable British Army attack. Bells could easily be recast into munitions, and locals feared the Liberty Bell and other bells would meet this fate.
The bell was hastily taken down from the tower in September 1777, and sent by heavily guarded wagon train to Bethlehem and then to the Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town (present-day Allentown, Pennsylvania), where it was hidden under the church floor boards during the British occupation of Philadelphia. The bell remained hidden in Allentown for nine months until its return to Philadelphia in June 1778, following the British retreat from Philadelphia on June 18, 1778.
Upon the bell's return to Philadelphia, the steeple of the State House was in poor condition, and was subsequently torn down and restored. The bell was placed in storage until 1785 when it was again mounted for ringing.
## Post-Revolutionary War (1779–1846)
Placed on an upper floor of the State House, the bell was rung in the early years of independence on the Fourth of July and on Washington's Birthday, as well as on Election Day to remind voters to hand in their ballots. It also rang to call students at the University of Pennsylvania to their classes at nearby Philosophical Hall. Until 1799, when the state capital was moved to Lancaster, it again rang to summon legislators into session. When Pennsylvania, having no further use for its State House, proposed to tear it down and sell the land for building lots, the City of Philadelphia purchased the land, together with the building, including the bell, for \$70,000, equal to \$ today. In 1828, the city sold the second Lester and Pack bell to St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church, which was burned down by an anti-Catholic mob in the Philadelphia Nativist Riots of 1844. The remains of the bell were recast; the new bell is now located at Villanova University.
It is uncertain how the bell came to be cracked; the damage occurred sometime between 1817 and 1846. The bell is mentioned in a number of newspaper articles during that time; no mention of a crack can be found until 1846. In fact, in 1837, the bell was depicted in an anti-slavery publication — uncracked. In February 1846 Public Ledger reported that the bell had been rung on February 23, 1846, in celebration of Washington's Birthday (as February 22 fell on a Sunday, the celebration occurred the next day), and also reported that the bell had long been cracked, but had been "put in order" by having the sides of the crack filed. The paper reported that around noon, it was discovered that the ringing had caused the crack to be greatly extended, and that "the old Independence Bell ... now hangs in the great city steeple irreparably cracked and forever dumb".
The most common story about the cracking of the bell is that it happened when the bell was rung upon the 1835 death of the Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall. This story originated in 1876, when the volunteer curator of Independence Hall, Colonel Frank Etting, announced that he had ascertained the truth of the story. While there is little evidence to support this view, it has been widely accepted and taught. Other claims regarding the crack in the bell include stories that it was damaged while welcoming Lafayette on his return to the United States in 1824, that it cracked announcing the passing of the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, and that some boys had been invited to ring the bell, and inadvertently damaged it. David Kimball, in his book compiled for the National Park Service, suggests that it most likely cracked sometime between 1841 and 1845, either on the Fourth of July or on Washington's Birthday.
The Pass and Stow bell was first termed "the Liberty Bell" in the New York Anti-Slavery Society's journal, Anti-Slavery Record. In an 1835 piece, "The Liberty Bell", Philadelphians were castigated for not doing more for the abolitionist cause. Two years later, in another work of that society, the journal Liberty featured an image of the bell as its frontispiece, with the words "Proclaim Liberty". In 1839, Boston's Friends of Liberty, another abolitionist group, titled their journal The Liberty Bell. The same year, William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery publication The Liberator reprinted a Boston abolitionist pamphlet containing a poem entitled "The Liberty Bell" that noted that, at that time, despite its inscription, the bell did not proclaim liberty to all the inhabitants of the land.
## Becoming a symbol (1847–1865)
A great part of the modern image of the bell as a relic of the proclamation of American independence was forged by writer George Lippard. On January 2, 1847, his story "Fourth of July, 1776" appeared in the Saturday Courier. The short story depicted an aged bellman on July 4, 1776, sitting morosely by the bell, fearing that Congress would not have the courage to declare independence. At the most dramatic moment, a young boy appears with instructions for the old man: to ring the bell. It was subsequently published in Lippard's collected stories. The story was widely reprinted and closely linked the Liberty Bell to the Declaration of Independence in the public mind. The elements of the story were reprinted in early historian Benson J. Lossing's The Pictorial Field Guide to the Revolution (published in 1850) as historical fact, and the tale was widely repeated for generations after in school primers.
In 1848, with the rise of interest in the bell, the city decided to move it to the Assembly Room (also known as the Declaration Chamber) on the first floor, where the Declaration and United States Constitution had been debated and signed. The city constructed an ornate pedestal for the bell. The Liberty Bell was displayed on that pedestal for the next quarter-century, surmounted by an eagle (originally sculpted, later stuffed). In 1853, President Franklin Pierce visited Philadelphia and the bell, and spoke of the bell as symbolizing the American Revolution and American liberty. At the time, Independence Hall was also used as a courthouse, and African-American newspapers pointed out the incongruity of housing a symbol of liberty in the same building in which federal judges were holding hearings under the Fugitive Slave Act.
In February 1861, then President-elect Abraham Lincoln came to the Assembly Room and delivered an address en route to his inauguration in Washington DC. In 1865, Lincoln's body was returned to the Assembly Room after his assassination for a public viewing of his body, en route to his burial in Springfield, Illinois. Due to time constraints, only a small fraction of those wishing to pass by the coffin were able to; the lines to see the coffin were never less than 3 miles (4.8 km) long. Nevertheless, between 120,000 and 140,000 people were able to pass by the open casket and then the bell, carefully placed at Lincoln's head so mourners could read the inscription, "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
## Traveling icon of freedom (1866–1947)
In 1876, Philadelphia city officials discussed what role the bell should play in the nation's Centennial festivities. Some wanted to repair it so it could sound at the Centennial Exposition being held in Philadelphia, but the idea was not adopted; the bell's custodians concluded that it was unlikely that the metal could be made into a bell that would have a pleasant sound, and that the crack had become part of the bell's character. Instead, a replica weighing 13,000 pounds (5,900 kg) (1,000 pounds for each of the original states) was cast. The metal used for what was dubbed "the Centennial Bell" included four melted-down cannons: one used by each side in the American Revolutionary War, and one used by each side in the Civil War. That bell was sounded at the Exposition grounds on July 4, 1876, was later recast to improve the sound, and today is the bell attached to the clock in the steeple of Independence Hall. While the Liberty Bell did not go to the Exposition, a great many Exposition visitors came to visit it, and its image was ubiquitous at the Exposition grounds—myriad souvenirs were sold bearing its image or shape, and state pavilions contained replicas of the bell made of substances ranging from stone to tobacco. In 1877, the bell was hung from the ceiling of the Assembly Room by a chain with thirteen links.
Between 1885 and 1915, the Liberty Bell made seven trips to various expositions and celebrations. Each time, the bell traveled by rail, making a large number of stops along the way so that local people could view it. By 1885, the Liberty Bell was widely recognized as a symbol of freedom, and as a treasured relic of Independence, and was growing still more famous as versions of Lippard's legend were reprinted in history and school books. In early 1885, the city agreed to let it travel to New Orleans for the World Cotton Centennial exposition. Large crowds mobbed the bell at each stop. In Biloxi, Mississippi, the former President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis came to the bell. Davis delivered a speech paying homage to it, and urging national unity. In 1893, it was sent to Chicago's World Columbian Exposition to be the centerpiece of the state's exhibit in the Pennsylvania Building. On July 4, 1893, in Chicago, the bell was serenaded with the first performance of The Liberty Bell March, conducted by "America's Bandleader", John Philip Sousa. Philadelphians began to cool to the idea of sending it to other cities when it returned from Chicago bearing a new crack, and each new proposed journey met with increasing opposition. It was also found that the bell's private watchman had been cutting off small pieces for souvenirs. The city placed the bell in a glass-fronted oak case. In 1898, it was taken out of the glass case and hung from its yoke again in the tower hall of Independence Hall, a room that would remain its home until the end of 1975. A guard was posted to discourage souvenir hunters who might otherwise chip at it.
By 1909, the bell had made six trips, and not only had the cracking become worse, but souvenir hunters had deprived it of over one percent of its weight. (Its weight was reported as 2,080 lb (940 kg) in 1904.) When, in 1912, the organizers of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition requested the bell for the 1915 fair in San Francisco, the city was reluctant to let it travel again. The city finally decided to let it go as the bell had never been west of St. Louis, and it was a chance to bring it to millions who might never see it otherwise. However, in 1914, fearing that the cracks might lengthen during the long train ride, the city installed a metal support structure inside the bell, generally called the "spider". In February 1915, the bell was tapped gently with wooden mallets to produce sounds that were transmitted to the fair as the signal to open it, a transmission that also inaugurated transcontinental telephone service. Some five million Americans saw the bell on its train journey west. It is estimated that nearly two million kissed it at the fair, with an uncounted number viewing it. The bell was taken on a different route on its way home; again, five million saw it on the return journey. Since the bell returned to Philadelphia, it has been moved out of doors only five times: three times for patriotic observances during and after World War I, and twice as the bell occupied new homes in 1976 and 2003. Chicago and San Francisco had obtained its presence after presenting petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of children. Chicago tried again, with a petition signed by 3.4 million schoolchildren, for the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition and New York presented a petition to secure a visit from the bell for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Both efforts failed.
In 1924, one of Independence Hall's exterior doors was replaced by glass, allowing some view of the bell even when the building was closed. When Congress enacted the nation's first peacetime draft in 1940, the first Philadelphians required to serve took their oaths of enlistment before the Liberty Bell. Once the war started, the bell was again a symbol, used to sell war bonds. In the early days of World War II, it was feared that the bell might be in danger from saboteurs or enemy bombing, and city officials considered moving the bell to Fort Knox, to be stored with the nation's gold reserves. The idea provoked a storm of protest from around the nation, and was abandoned. Officials then considered building an underground steel vault above which it would be displayed, and into which it could be lowered if necessary. The project was dropped when studies found that the digging might undermine the foundations of Independence Hall. On December 17, 1944, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry offered to recast the bell at no cost as a gesture of Anglo-American friendship. The bell was again tapped on D-Day, as well as in victory on V-E Day and V-J Day.
## Park Service administration (1948–present)
After World War II, and following considerable controversy, the City of Philadelphia agreed that it would transfer custody of the bell and Independence Hall, while retaining ownership, to the federal government. The city would also transfer various colonial-era buildings it owned. Congress agreed to the transfer in 1948, and three years later Independence National Historical Park was founded, incorporating those properties and administered by the National Park Service (NPS or Park Service). The Park Service would be responsible for maintaining and displaying the bell. The NPS would also administer the three blocks just north of Independence Hall that had been condemned by the state, razed, and developed into a park, Independence Mall.
In the postwar period, the bell became a symbol of freedom used in the Cold War. The bell was chosen for the symbol of a savings bond campaign in 1950. The purpose of this campaign, as Vice President Alben Barkley put it, was to make the country "so strong that no one can impose ruthless, godless ideologies on us". In 1955, former residents of nations behind the Iron Curtain were allowed to tap the bell as a symbol of hope and encouragement to their compatriots. Foreign dignitaries such as Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and West Berlin Mayor Ernst Reuter were brought to the bell, and they commented that the bell symbolized the link between the United States and their nations. During the 1960s, the bell was the site of several protests, both for the civil rights movement, and by various protesters supporting or opposing the Vietnam War.
Almost from the start of its stewardship, the Park Service sought to move the bell from Independence Hall to a structure where it would be easier to care for the bell and accommodate visitors. The first such proposal was withdrawn in 1958, after considerable public protest. The Park Service tried again as part of the planning for the 1976 United States Bicentennial. The Independence National Historical Park Advisory Committee proposed in 1969 that the bell be moved out of Independence Hall, as the building could not accommodate the millions expected to visit Philadelphia for the Bicentennial. In 1972, the Park Service announced plans to build a large glass tower for the bell at the new visitors center at South Third Street and Chestnut Street, two blocks east of Independence Hall, at a cost of \$5 million, but citizens again protested the move. Instead, in 1973, the Park Service proposed to build a smaller glass pavilion for the bell at the north end of Independence Mall, between Arch and Race streets. Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo agreed with the pavilion idea, but proposed that the pavilion be built across Chestnut Street from Independence Hall, which the state feared would destroy the view of the historic building from the mall area. Rizzo's view prevailed, and the bell was moved to a glass-and-steel Liberty Bell Pavilion, about 200 yards (180 m) from its old home at Independence Hall, as the Bicentennial year began.
During the Bicentennial, members of the Procrastinators' Club of America jokingly picketed the Whitechapel Bell Foundry with signs "We got a lemon" and "What about the warranty?" The foundry told the protesters that it would be glad to replace the bell — so long as it was returned in the original packaging. In 1958, the foundry (then trading under the name Mears and Stainbank Foundry) had offered to recast the bell, and was told by the Park Service that neither it nor the public wanted the crack removed. The foundry was called upon, in 1976, to cast a full-size replica of the Liberty Bell (known as the Bicentennial Bell) that was presented to the United States by the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and was housed in the tower once intended for the Liberty Bell, at the former visitor center on South Third Street.
### Liberty Bell Center
In 1995, the Park Service began preliminary work on a redesign of Independence Mall. Architects Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates developed a master plan with two design alternatives. The first proposed a block-long visitors center on the south side of Market Street, that would also house the Liberty Bell. This would have interrupted the mall's three-block vista of Independence Hall, and made the bell visible only from the south, i.e. Chestnut Street. The second alternative placed a similar visitors center on the north side of Market Street, also interrupting the mall's vista, with the bell in a small pavilion on the south side. City planner Edmund Bacon, who had overseen the mall's design in the 1950s, saw preservation of the vista of Independence Hall as essential. He created his own plan that included a domed bell pavilion built north of Market Street. Public reaction to the possibility of moving the Liberty Bell so far from Independence Hall was strongly negative. NPS announced that the bell would remain on the block between Chestnut and Market streets. Other plans were proposed, each had strengths and weaknesses, but the goal of all was to encourage visitors to see more of the historical park than just the Liberty Bell.
The Olin Partnership was hired to create a new master plan for Independence Mall; its team included architect Bernard Cywinski, who ultimately won a limited design competition to design what was called the Liberty Bell Center (LBC). Cywinski's design was unveiled in early 1999. Significantly larger than the existing pavilion, allowing for exhibit space and an interpretive center, the proposed LBC building also would cover about 15% of the footprint of the long-demolished President's House, the "White House" of George Washington and John Adams. Archaeologists excavating the LBC's intended site uncovered remnants of the 1790–1800 executive mansion that were reburied. The project became highly controversial when it was revealed that Washington's slaves had been housed only feet from the planned LBC's main entrance. The Park Service refused to redesign the LBC building, or delay its construction. Initially, NPS resisted interpreting the slaves and the slave quarters, but after years of protest by Black activists, agreed. The new facility that opened hours after the bell was installed on October 9, 2003, is adjacent to an outline of Washington's slave quarters marked in the pavement, with interpretive panels explaining the significance of what was found. The GPS address is 526 Market Street.
Inside the LBC, visitors pass through a number of exhibits about the bell before reaching the Liberty Bell itself. Due to security concerns following an attack on the bell by a visitor with a hammer in 2001, the bell is hung out of easy reach of visitors, who are no longer allowed to touch it, and all visitors undergo a security screening.
Today, the Liberty Bell weighs 2,080 pounds (940 kg). Its metal is 70% copper and 25% tin, with the remainder consisting of lead, zinc, arsenic, gold, and silver. It hangs from what is believed to be its original yoke, made from American elm. Although the crack in the bell appears to end at the abbreviation "Philad<sup>a</sup>" in the last line of the inscription, that is merely the widened crack, filed out during the 19th century to allow the bell to ring. A hairline crack, extending through to the inside of the bell, continues towards the right and gradually moves to the top of the bell, through the word "and" in "Pass and Stow", then through the word "the" before the word "Assembly", and finally through the letters "rty" in the word "Liberty". The crack ends near the attachment with the yoke.
Professor Constance M. Greiff, in her book tracing the history of Independence National Historical Park, wrote of the Liberty Bell:
> [T]he Liberty Bell is the most venerated object in the park, a national icon. It is not as beautiful as some other things that were in Independence Hall in those momentous days two hundred years ago, and it is irreparably damaged. Perhaps that is part of its almost mystical appeal. Like our democracy it is fragile and imperfect, but it has weathered threats, and it has endured.
## Legacy and commemorations
In addition to the replicas that are seen at Independence National Historical Park, early replicas of the Liberty Bell include the so-called Justice Bell or Women's Liberty Bell, commissioned in 1915 by suffragists to advocate for women's suffrage. This bell had the same legend as the Liberty Bell, with two added words, "establish justice", words taken from the Preamble to the United States Constitution. It also had the clapper chained to the bell so it could not sound, symbolizing the inability of women, lacking the vote, to influence political events. The Justice Bell toured extensively to publicize the cause. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (granting women the vote), the Justice Bell was brought to the front of Independence Hall on August 26, 1920, to finally sound. It remained on a platform before Independence Hall for several months before city officials required that it be taken away, and today is at the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge.
As part of the Liberty Bell Savings Bonds drive in 1950, 55 replicas of the Liberty Bell (one each for the 48 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories) were ordered by the United States Department of the Treasury and were cast in France by the Fonderie Paccard. The bells were to be displayed and rung on patriotic occasions. Many of the bells today are sited near state capitol buildings. Although Wisconsin's bell is now at its state capitol, initially it was sited on the grounds of the state's Girls Detention Center. Texas's bell is located inside the Academic Building on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station. The Texas bell was presented to the university in appreciation of the service of the school's graduates.
In 1950, too, an enlarged and slightly modified replica of the Liberty Bell, baptized Freedom Bell, was cast in England, brought to the United States, and toured the country as part of a "Crusade of Freedom". It was then shipped to Germany and installed in the tower of West Berlin's city hall. When Robert F. Kennedy visited the city in 1962, followed by his brother John F. Kennedy in June 1963, both drew a parallel between the Liberty Bell and the new Freedom Bell.
The Liberty Bell appeared on a commemorative coin in 1926 to mark the sesquicentennial of American independence. Its first use on a circulating coin was on the reverse side of the Franklin half dollar, struck between 1948 and 1963. It also appeared on the Bicentennial design of the Eisenhower dollar, superimposed against the moon.
On the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1926, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative stamp depicting the Liberty Bell for the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1926, though this stamp actually depicts the replica bell erected at the entrance to the exposition grounds. The Liberty Bell was chosen for the stamp design theme because the symbol was most representative of the nation's independence. Since then the Liberty Bell has appeared on several other U.S. postage stamps, including the first forever stamp, issued since 2007.
An image of the Liberty Bell appears on the current \$100 note. The image changes color, depending on the angle at which it is held.
In 1962, the Liberty Bell Museum was erected in the basement of Zion United Church of Christ in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where the Liberty Bell was successfully hidden for nine months from September 1777 until June 1778 during the British Army's occupation of the colonial capital of Philadelphia.
The name "Liberty Bell" or "Liberty Belle" is commonly used for commercial purposes, and has denoted brands and business names ranging from a life insurance company to a Montana escort service. Walt Disney World has a replica of the Liberty Bell that is in Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom. The replica was cast from the mold of the actual Liberty Bell in 1989. A large outline of the bell hangs over the right-field bleachers at Citizens Bank Park, home of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team, and is illuminated and swings back and forth and a bell sound is played whenever one of their players hits a home run or if the Phillies win that game. This bell outline replaced one at the Phillies' former home, Veterans Stadium.
On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell announced via ads and press releases that it had purchased the Liberty Bell and changed its name to the Taco Liberty Bell. The bell, the ads related, would henceforth spend half the year at Taco Bell corporate headquarters in Irvine, California. Outraged calls flooded Independence National Historical Park, and Park Service officials hastily called a press conference to deny that the bell had been sold. After several hours, Taco Bell admitted that it was an April Fools' Day joke. Despite the protests, company sales of tacos, enchiladas, and burritos rose by more than a half million dollars that week.
## See also
- Liberty Bell Memorial Museum, located in Melbourne, Florida
- Liberty Bell Museum, located in Allentown, Pennsylvania
- Liberty Bell Ruby, a massive ruby sculpted into the shape of the Liberty Bell
- The Mercury spacecraft that astronaut Gus Grissom flew on July 21, 1961, was dubbed Liberty Bell 7. Mercury capsules were somewhat bell-shaped, and this one received a painted crack to mimic the original bell. Liberty Bell 7 became the only Mercury capsule to suffer an integrity failure.
- Margaret Buechner composed a work for chorus and orchestra, Liberty Bell, that incorporates a 1959 recording of the actual bell made by Columbia Records.
- Freedom Bell in Berlin, Germany – given as a gift from Americans to the city of Berlin in 1950 as a symbol of the fight for freedom and against communism in Europe
- The superhero Liberty Belle whose powers are derived from the ringing of the bell.
- The Freedom Bell, American Legion twice-size replica that resides in front of Union Station in Washington, D.C. toured the United States aboard the 1975–76 Bicentennial American Freedom Train.
- The Rhodesian Independence Bell, a replica of the Liberty Bell funded by American donors to commemorate Rhodesian independence
- The Tsar Bell, an early 18th-century Russian bell famous for its massive size and its damaged state
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Worlds End State Park
| 1,138,898,925 |
Park in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania
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[
"1932 establishments in Pennsylvania",
"Allegheny Plateau",
"Campgrounds in Pennsylvania",
"Civilian Conservation Corps in Pennsylvania",
"Important Bird Areas of Pennsylvania",
"National Register of Historic Places in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania",
"Park buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania",
"Parks in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania",
"Protected areas established in 1932",
"Protected areas of Sullivan County, Pennsylvania",
"State parks of Pennsylvania"
] |
Worlds End State Park is a 780-acre (316 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania. The park, nearly surrounded by Loyalsock State Forest, is in the Loyalsock Creek valley on Pennsylvania Route 154 in Forks and Shrewsbury Townships southeast of the borough of Forksville. The name Worlds End has been used since at least 1872, but its origins are uncertain. Although it was founded as Worlds End State Forest Park by Governor Gifford Pinchot in 1932, the park was officially known as Whirls End State Forest Park from 1936 to 1943.
The park's land was once home to Native Americans, followed by settlers who cleared the forests for subsistence farming and later built sawmills. The second growth forests in and surrounding Worlds End State Park are partially a result of the efforts of the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. They helped overcome the clearcutting of the early 20th century, and built many of the park's facilities, including the cabins that earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places.
A wide variety of wildlife is found in the park, which is also part of an Important Bird Area. Located in the Endless Mountains region of the dissected Allegheny Plateau, Worlds End has a continental climate and rocks and fossils from the Carboniferous period. It is one of "Twenty Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks" named by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which describes it as "[v]irtually in a class by itself, this wild, rugged and rustic area seems almost untamed". The park offers year-round recreational opportunities, including environmental education, hiking, camping in tents and cabins, whitewater rafting, swimming, cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, hunting, and fishing.
## Name
An 1872 map uses the name Worlds End for the area around the S-shaped serpentine bend in Loyalsock Creek. Worlds End State Forest Park opened in 1932, and its name has caused some confusion and controversy over the years. William S. Swingler, Assistant District Forester of Wyoming State Forest (reorganized as Loyalsock State Forest in 2005), penned this note about the story of the name in 1935:
> There was even a dispute as to the proper name of the area. Some people called it Worlds End, others Whirl's Glen, and still others Whirls End. The first name arose from the topography of the place. Seven mountain ranges converge on the point and one does receive the sensation of being at the ultimate ends of the earth. The proponents of the second name base their claim upon the whirlpool in the Loyalsock Creek, and the third name was probably a contraction of the other two. Since the whirlpool had largely disappeared, it was decided that the name Worlds End would be most appropriate. Hence, the name Worlds End State Forest Park.
This was not the end of the controversy. A letter campaign led to the name of the park being changed to Whirls End State Forest Park in 1936; opponents of the new name launched another letter-writing campaign to revert the name to Worlds End State Forest Park. This matter was brought before the State Geographic Board, which supervised the official naming of places. The board ruled that the name be changed once again to Worlds End State Forest Park in 1943. The word Forest was dropped on November 11, 1954, when the park was officially named Worlds End State Park by the Pennsylvania Geographic Board. This has been the official name ever since, but the names Whirls End and Whirls Glen are still used, and are synonymous with Worlds End.
Two other etymologies have been suggested. The first is that an early road along the gorge had a sheer drop to the creek hundreds of feet below, which prompted thoughts of the world's end in early travelers. The second is that the bend in Loyalsock Creek, and the surrounding area that became the park, was originally known as Huerle's Bend, but then "years of mispronunciation turned it into World's End (State Park)". Whatever the source, as of 2012 the name Worlds End State Park is unique in the USGS Geographic Names Information System and on its maps of the United States. The possessive apostrophe is not part of the official name, although it does appear in older records and in informal usage today.
## History
### Native Americans
Humans have lived in what is now Pennsylvania since at least 10,000 BC. The first settlers were Paleo-Indian nomadic hunters known from their stone tools. The hunter-gatherers of the Archaic period, which lasted locally from 7000 to 1000 BC, used a greater variety of more sophisticated stone artefacts. The Woodland period marked the gradual transition to semi-permanent villages and horticulture, between 1000 BC and 1500 AD. Archeological evidence found in the state from this time includes a range of pottery types and styles, burial mounds, pipes, bows and arrow, and ornaments.
Worlds End State Park is in the West Branch Susquehanna River drainage basin, whose earliest recorded inhabitants were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks. They were a matriarchial society that lived in stockaded villages of large longhouses. Their numbers were greatly reduced by disease and warfare with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, and by 1675 they had died out, moved away, or been assimilated into other tribes.
After this, the lands of the West Branch Susquehanna River valley were under the nominal control of the Iroquois. The Iroquois also lived in longhouses, primarily in what is now New York, and had a strong confederacy which gave them power beyond their numbers. To fill the void left by the demise of the Susquehannocks, the Iroquois encouraged displaced tribes from the east to settle in the West Branch watershed, including the Shawnee and Lenape (or Delaware).
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) led to the migration of many Native Americans westward to the Ohio River basin. On November 5, 1768, the Province of Pennsylvania acquired the New Purchase from the Iroquois in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, including what is now Worlds End State Park. After the American Revolutionary War, Native Americans almost entirely left Pennsylvania.
The land that became Sullivan County was originally part of Northumberland County, then became part of Lycoming County when it was formed in 1795. Settlers first arrived in the park's townships in 1794. Shrewsbury Township was formed from Muncy Township in 1803, and Forks Township was formed from Shrewsbury Township in 1833, both while still part of Lycoming County. Sullivan County was formed from the northeastern part of Lycoming County on March 15, 1847.
### Horse trails and lumber era
The earliest settlers in the Worlds End area rode on two horse trails to traverse the rugged mountains between Muncy Creek and the confluence of Little Loyalsock Creek with Loyalsock Creek at Forksville. These rugged and rocky trails were used steadily until 1895, when Pennsylvania Route 154 was constructed to take their place. Part of these old horse trails are still in use and known as Pioneer Road and Double Run Road, and form part of two of the seven hiking trails in the park. Worlds End trail and Pioneer Road meet at the Worlds End Vista, which is thought to be a possible inspiration for the park's name.
Prior to the arrival of William Penn and his Quaker colonists in 1682, it has been estimated that up to 90 percent of what is now Pennsylvania was covered with woods: over 31,000 square miles (80,000 km<sup>2</sup>) of white pine, eastern hemlock, and a mix of hardwoods. The forests near the three original counties, Philadelphia, Bucks, and Chester, were the first to be harvested, as the early settlers used the readily available timber to build homes, barns, and ships, and cleared the land for agriculture. The demand for lumber slowly increased and by the time of the American Revolution the lumber industry had reached the interior and mountainous regions of Pennsylvania.
Lumber thus became one of the leading industries in Pennsylvania. Trees were used to furnish fuel to heat homes, tannin for the many tanneries that were spread throughout the state, and wood for construction, furniture, and barrel making. Large areas of forest were harvested by colliers to fire iron furnaces. Rifle stocks and shingles were made from Pennsylvania timber, as were a wide variety of household utensils, and the first Conestoga wagons.
By the mid-19th century, the demand for lumber reached the area, where eastern white pine and eastern hemlock covered the surrounding mountainsides. Lumbermen came and harvested the trees and sent them down Loyalsock Creek to the West Branch Susquehanna River and to sawmills there. The old-growth forests of eastern white pine and eastern hemlock were soon clearcut and the hills were stripped bare. Nothing was left except the dried-out tree tops, which became a fire hazard, so much of the land burned and was left barren. In the 1920s a sawmill was built on land now in the park, and two more were located about 1 mile (1.6 km) south. After it was "thoroughly logged", the area became a tangle of briars and brush.
### Civilian Conservation Corps
The history of Worlds End State Park goes back to 1929, when the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters, a precursor to the modern Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, began purchasing land devastated by logging and wild fire to create a state forest. The land that specifically became the park was purchased from the Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company in 1929 and Mrs. "Doc" Randall in 1931. Worlds End State Park was established by forest ranger John Annabelle in 1932, with a budget of \$50 that purchased four picnic tables.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a work relief program for young men from unemployed families, established in 1933. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation, it was designed to combat unemployment during the Great Depression. The CCC operated in every U.S. state. The recreational development of the park began in 1933, when four CCC camps were built in Sullivan County. One of these, CCC Camp S-95, built many of the park facilities, such as the dam for the swimming area, the cabins, hiking trails and roads. The CCC workers blasted out bedrock in the creek for the swimming area and built the Canyon Vista road and lookout.
CCC Camp S-95, which opened on May 29, 1933, on the site of an old lumber camp, was able to distinguish itself over the years it operated in Sullivan County. Two floods swept through the area in 1933 and 1936. The August flood of 1933 caused extensive damage and largely destroyed the newly built camp. During the course of the flooding two young men from Camp S-95 saved the lives of two drowning children at Worlds End State Park. The flood of 1936 covered a large area within the West Branch Susquehanna River Valley. The young men of the CCC camp were among the leaders in the cleaning up after the flood and rebuilding many destroyed bridges and roads. In 1936 the park was officially expanded beyond the original small picnic area. Camp S-95 closed in 1941.
#### Historic district
In 1987 the CCC architecture earned the Worlds End State Park Family Cabin District within the park a listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The 18.4-acre (7.4 ha) historic district includes nineteen cabins and three latrines built by the CCC between 1933 and 1941. Seven of the cabins have one room, nine have two rooms, and three have three rooms. There are also three modern latrines within the district which are designated as non-contributing structures. The historic structures are examples of CCC work that reflects the standards set forth by the Department of the Interior. The cabins and latrines are constructed with native stones and timber and are placed on the land in a way that minimizes interference with the natural surroundings of the park.
### Modern era
Since the CCC finished their work at the park in 1941, Worlds End State Park has continued to develop and change. In 1951 the Loyalsock Trail, which passes through the park, was laid out by Explorer Scouts. This trail has been maintained and extended by the Alpine Club of Williamsport since 1953. While the park was always popular in Pennsylvania, by the 1960s it began to attract attention from outside the state. The park was home to the first annual whitewater slalom race on Loyalsock Creek in 1964, which attracted over 100 competitors in 1965. A 1964 The New York Times article featured Worlds End park and its "excellent trout stream", and one in 1967 mentioned the park's "peerless wilderness views", "half-acre swimming pool carved into cool Loyalsock Creek" and "public campsites".
In 1980, a 900-square-foot (84 m<sup>2</sup>) trailer was added as a temporary park office. The accomplishments of the CCC at Worlds End State Park were recognized in 1987 by the inclusion of the Family Cabin District on the NRHP. In 1997 the park's Important Bird Area (IBA) was one of the first 73 IBAs established in Pennsylvania. On November 12, 2002, a new 4,300-square-foot (399 m<sup>2</sup>) visitor center and park office was dedicated, which included 1,680 square feet (156 m<sup>2</sup>) of public space for environmental education and public programs. The building, constructed with an "energy-efficient design and recycled materials", was part of a \$1.1 million project that included the park's first flush toilets and sewage treatment plant. In 2003 a \$2.7 million project added flush toilets and running water to all the park's wash-houses, renovated the cabins, and made major improvements in the day use area.
In 2004, the Loyalsock Creek Watershed Association installed a fence on the creek's banks near the cabins to limit pedestrian access and erosion. The association planted shrubs and trees in the same area to stabilize the creek's banks in 2008, and in September 2010 replaced more than 1,500 feet (460 m) of fence with a less visible version. On January 25, 2010, flooding caused by heavy rain and melt from 20 inches (510 mm) of snow "washed out a bridge" leading to the cabin area and destroyed 86 feet (26 m) of road there, leaving the park looking like "the set of disaster movie". The cabin area road needed \$72,120 in repairs, the park was not fully restored until Memorial Day. Two floods hit the park in 2011, the first from Hurricane Irene on August 29, and the second from Tropical Storm Lee on September 8. Lee washed away about 20 to 22 short tons (18 to 20 t) of gravel used to make emergency repairs to roads in the park from Irene damage. Loyalsock Creek reached 20.4 feet (6.2 m) south of the park, and campers in the park had to be evacuated. Worlds End and Promised Land State Park had "significant damage to roads and bridges", damage to Loylasock State Forest roads was also heavy, and the DCNR estimated the two storms caused \$3 to \$4 million of damage to its forests and parks. Worlds End was closed for two weeks after the Lee flood.
As of 2012, post-war facilities include the park office, five wash-houses and other modern restroom facilities, beach house with concession stand, chapel, amphitheater, and modern camping areas. Worlds End State Park is one of twenty-one chosen by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Parks for its "Twenty Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks" list. The DCNR describes it as "[v]irtually in a class by itself, this wild, rugged and rustic area seems almost untamed". It goes on to praise the opportunities for camping and hiking at the park, and its scenery and vistas.
## Geology, paleontology, and Marcellus shale
The land on which Worlds End State Park sits has undergone tremendous change over the last 350 million years. It was once part of the coastline of a shallow sea that covered a great portion of what is now North America. The high mountains to the east of the sea gradually eroded, causing a buildup of sediment made up primarily of clay, sand and gravel. Tremendous pressure on the sediment caused the formation of the rocks that are found today in the Loyalsock Creek drainage basin: sandstone, shale, conglomerates, coal, and limestone.
Four major rock formations are present in Worlds End State Park, all at least partly from the Carboniferous period. The youngest of these, which forms the highest points in the park, is the early Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation, a gray conglomerate that may contain sandstone, siltstone, and shale, as well as anthracite coal. The Loyalsock gorge rim and the upper part of its walls are the late Mississippian Mauch Chunk Formation, which is formed with grayish-red shale, siltstone, sandstone, and conglomerate. Below this is the Mississippian Burgoon Formation, which comprises buff-colored sandstone and conglomerate. The creek bed and base of the gorge walls are the late Devonian and early Mississippian Huntley Mountain Formation, which is made of relatively soft grayish-red shale and olive-gray sandstone.
The park is at an elevation of 1,175 feet (358 m) on the Allegheny Plateau, which formed in the Alleghenian orogeny some 300 million years ago, when Gondwana (specifically what became Africa) and what became North America collided, forming Pangaea. The local region is known as the Endless Mountains, but despite the name these are not true mountains: instead millions of years of erosion have made this a dissected plateau, causing the "mountainous" terrain seen today. The hardest of the ancient rocks are on top of the ridges, while the softer rocks eroded away forming the valleys: the Loyalsock gorge is approximately 800 feet (244 m) deep in the park. Loyalsock Creek and its tributaries have been a primary force in the creation of the valleys, as the creek makes its way across the landscape to its mouth at the West Branch Susquehanna River in Montoursville.
Fossils have been found in Worlds End State Park, as the area was once a river delta on an ancient coastline. This coast was home to an ancient ancestor of the lungfish, which would burrow in the mud to survive dry spells. Fossils of these burrows have been discovered in the red siltstone formations in and near the park.
The Marcellus Formation, a shale rich in natural gas, lies thousands of feet below Worlds End State Park and much of Pennsylvania. As of June 30, 2012, there were 127 active gas wells in Sullivan County, with 14 of those in Forks or Shrewsbury Townships. The state did not purchase the mineral rights to much of the land it owns. Anadarko Petroleum (now Occidental Petroleum) owns the mineral rights under the [Loyalsock] state forest and plans to drill in it. About 80% of the mineral rights to its state parks are not owned by Pennsylvania, and the owner of Worlds End State Park's mineral rights is unknown. According to William Kocher, Worlds End's manager, "if the owner decided to drill [in the park] ... the state would have no right to say no." Natural gas pipeline construction upstream of the park spilled a "significant amount" of sediment and mud into Loyalsock Creek in September 2012.
### Climate
The Allegheny Plateau has a continental climate, with occasional severe low temperatures in winter and average daily temperature ranges of 20 °F (11 °C) in winter and 80 °F (14 °C) in summer. For the region the park is in, the average minimum temperature in January is 10 °F (−12 °C), while the average maximum temperature in July is 75 °F (24 °C). The mean annual precipitation for Loyalsock Creek is 42 to 48 inches (1067 to 1219 mm). Pennsylvania receives the most acid rain of any state in the United States. Because Loyalsock Creek is in a sandstone, shale, conglomerates, coal, and limestone mountain region, it has a relatively low capacity to neutralize added acid. This makes it especially vulnerable to increased acidification from acid rain, which poses a threat to the long-term health of the plants and animals in the creek. The highest recorded temperature at the park was 104 °F (40 °C) in 1936, and the record low was −27 °F (−33 °C) in 1994. On average, July is the hottest month at Worlds End, January is the coldest, and June the wettest.
## Ecology
Worlds End State Park is near Forksville on Pennsylvania Route 154 in the narrow, serpentine valley of Loyalsock Creek. It is nearly surrounded by Loyalsock State Forest, which was known here as Wyoming State Forest until July 1, 2005. Common trees found in the state park and forest include black cherry, eastern hemlock, red maple, tulip poplar, yellow birch, and white ash. The northern hardwood and hemlock forests are threatened in general by deer overgrazing, while the woolly adelgid, an invasive hemiptera, threatens the hemlock populations. In 2010 Worlds End was part of over 2,600 acres (1,100 ha) of state forests and parks combating the woolly adelgid with a \$110,000 federal grant to the DCNR's "Forest Pest Management Division for insecticide treatment of high-value Eastern hemlocks". Several different interpretive and educational programs on environmental and ecological topics are offered at the park each summer.
### Wildlife and Important Bird Area
Worlds End State Park has an extensive forest cover of hemlock-filled valleys and hardwood tree-covered mountains, which makes it a habitat for "big woods" wildlife. Animals such as white-tailed deer, black bear, wild turkey, red and gray squirrels are seen fairly regularly. Less commonly seen but present in the park are creatures such as bobcats, coyote, fishers, river otters, and timber rattlesnakes. Loyalsock Creek is home to native brook trout and black bass which feed on a variety of insects including mosquitos, dragonflies, and gnats.
Bird watchers have observed over 200 species of birds in the park, including the great blue heron, northern harrier, white-throated sparrow and highly sensitive species which are rare as breeding birds in Pennsylvania such as northern goshawk and yellow-bellied flycatcher. The state park and forest are part of the larger Pennsylvania Important Bird Area (IBA) \#42, which encompasses 214,839 acres (86,942 ha). The Pennsylvania Audubon Society has designated the IBA as a globally important habitats for the conservation of bird populations. The IBA is home to Swainson's thrush and ruffed grouse, the state bird of Pennsylvania. Other notable passerine species found in the park and IBA include blue-headed and red-eyed vireos, Acadian and least flycatchers. Breeding warblers in the park include both northern and Louisiana waterthrushes, as well as Blackburnian, black-throated blue, black-throated green, Canada, magnolia, mourning, Nashville, and yellow-rumped.
Worlds End State Park is featured in the Audubon Society's Susquehanna River Birding and Wildlife Trail Guide. Birds of interest in the park include common mergansers along the creek and other riparian species such as belted kingfisher, as well as barred, great horned, and the scarce, elusive northern saw-whet owls. Other avian species seen in the park and believed to nest there include tufted titmouse, brown creeper, red-breasted nuthatch, common raven, scarlet tanager, yellow-bellied sapsucker, and winter wren. These bird populations are typical of "mature northern hardwood-hemlock forests and high elevation swamps and conifer swamps".
## Recreation
### Trails
There are over 20 miles (32 km) of hiking trails at Worlds End State Park. Most of the trails are rocky and steep, so hikers are encouraged to wear proper footgear and to be prepared for icy conditions during the cold winter months. As John Young writes in Hike Pennsylvania, "If you want to do some hiking in the Worlds End region, you should know that hiking here means climbing". Worlds End State Park is open during the winter months for snowmobiling and cross-country skiing. Most of the trails are too steep or rugged for either activity, but the park roads are open, as are trails on surrounding state forest lands.
- Loyalsock Trail, often abbreviated LT, is a rugged 59.28-mile (95.40 km) hiking trail that stretches from near Loyalsockville, in Lycoming County on Pennsylvania Route 87 to north of Laporte in Sullivan County, just off U.S. Route 220. This trail follows the ridges and streams of the Loyalsock Creek watershed. The trail is primarily within the boundaries of Loyalsock State Forest and uses some old logging roads and abandoned railroad grades. The Loyalsock Trail was originally blazed in a yellow rectangle with a red stripe, and red can lids with a yellow "LT". Recently, the trail markers have been changed to a yellow disc with a red "LT".
- Link Trail is a moderate 8.5-mile (13.7 km) trail marked with a red X on a yellow circle blaze. The trail starts at the Cabin Bridge in the park and follows Loyalsock Creek before it branches off and follows Double Run. The trail then ascends to Canyon Vista and heads out into Loyalsock State Forest where it links up with the Loyalsock Trail at the 55.33-mile (89.05 km) post. The Loyalsock Trail can be followed back for a 17.62 miles (28.36 km) long loop.
- Canyon Vista Trail is a 3.5-mile (5.6 km) loop trail with blue blazes that passes through the eastern portion of the park and a stand of ash, sugar maple, and black cherry trees. This trail passes a maze-like jumble of blocky Pottsville Formation rocks known as the Rock Garden, adjacent to Canyon Vista. The vista is at an elevation of 1,750 feet (530 m) and "rewards the hiker with a spectacular view of the Loyalsock Creek gorge".
- Worlds End Trail is a 3.25-mile (5.23 km) trail with yellow blazes that begins at the park office and ascends to an overlook of the swimming area. It then crosses the old Pioneer Road, which was used by some of the first settlers to the area, and enters the Loyalsock State Forest, ending at the 37.77-mile (60.78 km) post of the Loyalsock Trail, which can be followed back to the park office to make a loop 11.5 miles (18.5 km) long.
- Butternut Trail is a 2.5-mile (4.0 km) trail marked with orange blazes that loops through a hardwood forest and crosses over Butternut Run. Two side trails connect Butternut Trail with the Loyalsock Trail.
- Double Run Nature Trail is an easy 1.2-mile (1.9 km) trail, marked with a green stripe on a white rectangle blaze, that loops through woodlands along the west branch of Double Run. Wildflowers like Jack-in-the-pulpit, Solomon's seal and wild ginger can be seen on this trail, which passes by an intermittent waterfall.
- High Rock Trail is 1.0 mile (1.6 km) and passes a waterfall on High Rock Run. This steep trail is marked with red blazes and climbs a hollow filled with lichen-covered rocks to a vista. A part of this trail used to pass so close to cliffs that two hikers fell to their deaths; this part of the trail has been relocated for safety.
### Fishing, hunting, and whitewater
According to John Young, "As soon as you enter Worlds End State Park, you hear it: the never-ending rush of the waters of Loyalsock Creek". The creek and its tributary Double Run have been designated as approved trout waters within the park by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. This means the waters will be stocked with trout and may be fished during trout season. Hunting is permitted on about half of the lands of Worlds End State Park. Hunters are expected to follow the rules and regulations of the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The common game species are ruffed grouse, eastern gray squirrels, turkey, white-tailed deer and bears; however, the hunting of groundhogs is prohibited.
Edward Gertler, author of Keystone Canoeing, writes that Loyalsock Creek's "exciting whitewater, above Forksville, has long been a favorite of paddlers who are quick and tolerant enough to endure its fickle water levels and weather". This is the stretch of the creek in and near the park, whose "long, steepening, and complex boulder patch and ledgy rapids demand your attention ... A boater's chute through the middle of the swimming area dam at Worlds End State Park climaxes this run".
The best time for whitewater boating on Loyalsock Creek at Worlds End State Park is from March to May, and the park hosts a slalom race on Loyalsock Creek each spring. The whitewater gradient is 41 for the section of the creek in and near the park, and its rating on the International Scale of River Difficulty is II to III+, with sections reaching IV. The water is too swift for open canoes, so visitors are asked to use kayaks. The swimming area is closed to whitewater boating during the summer months.
### Cabins, camping, swimming, and picnics
When appointed as manager of the park in 2002, William C. Kocher said "Camping really is king here at Worlds End, and the rustic cabins are especially popular ... We also have plenty of picnics and reunions, many of them drawing generation after generation, year after year". Worlds End State Park has three options for visitors interested in staying overnight. There are 19 rustic cabins, each with a refrigerator, stove, fireplace, table with chairs, and beds. There is a 70-site tent and camper campground along Pennsylvania Route 154. Some of the campsites have an electric hook-up, and there is a central shower facility with water and restrooms located nearby. Three organized group tenting areas, each capable of accommodating 30 people, are also available north of the cabins. They may also be used for one large group of up to 90 campers. Non-denominational Christian worship services, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, are held in a wooded chapel at the park on Sunday mornings during the summer.
The picnic and swimming areas are adjacent to each other, with the building housing the bath house and concession stand between them. There are many picnic tables and several pavilions available for day use by visitors to the park. During the Great Depression the Civilian Conservation Corps built a 7-foot (2.1 m) tall dam on Loyalsock Creek, which provides a 1 acre (0.40 ha) swimming area at Worlds End State Park. Since 2008, lifeguards are no longer on duty at the park.
## Nearby state parks
The following state parks are within 30 miles (48 km) of Worlds End State Park:
- Mount Pisgah State Park (Bradford County)
- Ricketts Glen State Park (Columbia, Luzerne, and Sullivan Counties)
- Susquehanna State Park (Lycoming County)
|
20,183,876 |
Schmerber v. California
| 1,109,053,271 | null |
[
"1966 in California",
"1966 in United States case law",
"Blood tests",
"Legal history of California",
"Medical lawsuits",
"United States Fifth Amendment self-incrimination case law",
"United States Fourth Amendment case law",
"United States Supreme Court cases",
"United States Supreme Court cases of the Warren Court"
] |
Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified the application of the Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for searches that intrude into the human body. Until Schmerber, the Supreme Court had not yet clarified whether state police officers must procure a search warrant before taking blood samples from criminal suspects. Likewise, the Court had not yet clarified whether blood evidence taken against the wishes of a criminal suspect may be used against that suspect in the course of a criminal prosecution.
In a 5–4 opinion, the Court held that forced extraction and analysis of a blood sample is not compelled testimony; therefore, it does not violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The Court also held that intrusions into the human body ordinarily require a search warrant. However, the Court ruled that the involuntary, warrantless blood sample taken in this case was justified under the Fourth Amendment's exigent circumstances exception because evidence of blood alcohol would be destroyed by the body's natural metabolic processes if the officers were to wait for a warrant. In 2013, the Supreme Court clarified in Missouri v. McNeely that the natural metabolism of alcohol in the bloodstream is not a per se exigency that would always justify warrantless blood tests of individuals suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol.
In the years following the Court's decision in Schmerber, many legal scholars feared the ruling would be used to limit civil liberties. Other scholars, including Nita A. Farahany, Benjamin Holley, and John G. New, have suggested courts may use the ruling in Schmerber to justify the use of mind reading devices against criminal suspects. Because the Court's ruling in Schmerber prohibited the use of warrantless blood tests in most circumstances, some commentators argue that the decision was responsible for the proliferation of breathalyzers to test for alcohol and urine analyses to test for controlled substances in criminal investigations.
## Background
###
In the 1950s, the Supreme Court of the United States issued two key rulings clarifying the constitutionality of physical intrusions into the human body by police and other government agents. In Rochin v. California, police officers broke into the home of an individual suspected of selling narcotics and observed him place several small objects into his mouth. Officers were unable to force his mouth open, so they transported him to a local hospital where his stomach was pumped against his will. A unanimous Supreme Court held the involuntary stomach pump was an unlawful violation of substantive due process because it "shocked the conscience", and was so "brutal" and "offensive" that it did not comport with traditional ideas of fair play and decency. In 1957, the Court held in Breithaupt v. Abram that involuntary blood samples "taken by a skilled technician" neither "shocked the conscience" nor violated substantive due process. In Breithaupt, police took a blood sample from a patient suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol while he lay unconscious in a hospital. The Court held that the blood samples were justified, in part, because "modern community living requires modern scientific methods of crime detection." Additionally, the Court mentioned in dicta that involuntary blood samples may violate the constitution if officers do not provide "every proper medical precaution" to the accused.
### Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule
Until the twentieth century, courts would admit evidence at trial even if it was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Although the Supreme Court developed an exclusionary rule for federal cases in Weeks v. United States and Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, the Court held in 1949 that the exclusionary rule did not apply to the states. In Rochin, the Court held that evidence obtained in a manner that "shocks the conscience" must be excluded in criminal prosecutions but the court declined to incorporate a broad exclusionary rule for all Fourth Amendment violations. By the middle of the twentieth century, many state courts had crafted their own exclusionary rules. In 1955, the California Supreme Court ruled in People v. Cahan that the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule applied in California because it was necessary to deter constitutional violations by law enforcement. In 1961, the Supreme Court of the United States relied upon Cahan to hold in Mapp v. Ohio that the exclusionary rule was incorporated to the states.
### Arrest and prosecution
On the night of November 12, 1964, Armando Schmerber and a passenger were driving home after drinking at a tavern and bowling alley in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California, when their car skidded off the road and struck a tree. Schmerber and his companion were injured in the crash and taken to a hospital for treatment. When investigating police officers arrived at the hospital, they asked Schmerber to submit a sample of his blood, but Schmerber refused. Although they did not possess a search warrant, officers instructed attending physicians to take a blood sample from Schmerber. The blood sample indicated that Schmerber was intoxicated, and he was placed under arrest. The blood sample was ultimately admitted into evidence at trial, and Schmerber was convicted for driving under the influence of intoxicating liquors. Schmerber objected to the admissibility of the blood sample, claiming that the police violated his rights to due process, his right against self-incrimination, his right to counsel, and his right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures. The Appellate Department of the California Superior Court rejected Schmerber's arguments, and the California District Court of Appeal declined to review his case.
### Arguments before the Court
Schmerber submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, which granted certiorari on January 17, 1966. In his brief, Schmerber argued, inter alia, that the warrantless blood test violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures, as well as his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The Los Angeles City Attorney's office represented the State of California on appeal. In their brief, the City Attorney argued that the blood test did not violate the Fourth Amendment because the seizure was conducted incident to a lawful arrest. The City Attorney also argued that admitting the sample into evidence did not violate Schmerber's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because blood is not testimonial evidence under the Fifth Amendment. Oral arguments were held on April 25, 1966, and the Court issued its opinion on June 20, 1966.
## Opinion of the Court
In his majority opinion, Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. held that Schmerber's constitutional rights were not violated when police took his blood without his consent. Relying upon the Court's holding in Breithaupt v. Abram, he concluded that the police did not violate Schmerber's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because the extraction and chemical analysis of the blood sample did not involve "even a shadow of testimonial compulsion." Likewise, Justice Brennan held that the officers did not violate Schmerber's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures. Justice Brennan wrote that absent exigent circumstances, searches that involve intrusions into the human body require a search warrant. Here, the search was not justified as a search incident to arrest because weapons and contraband are not ordinarily concealed beneath the skin. However, the involuntary blood draw was justified under the Fourth Amendment's exigent circumstances exception because if the officers had waited to receive a search warrant, evidence of intoxication would have been lost through the body's natural metabolism of alcohol in the bloodstream. He wrote that the responding officer "might reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency," where evidence would be destroyed if he waited to receive a warrant. Additionally, Justice Brennan cautioned that the Court's ruling was limited "only to the facts of the present record" and that "minor intrusions into an individual's body under stringently limited conditions in no way indicates that it permits more substantial intrusions, or intrusions under other conditions."
### Justice Harlan's concurrence
In his concurring opinion, Justice John Marshall Harlan II agreed that the involuntary blood sample did not implicate involuntary testimonial compulsion, but wrote separately to emphasize his opinion that the case before the Court "in no way implicates the Fifth Amendment." Additionally, Justice Harlan cited to his dissent in Miranda v. Arizona where he argued against a broad expansion of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Justice Harlan disagreed with the Court's ruling in Miranda and even stated that the case "represents poor constitutional law and entails harmful consequences for the country at large."
### Dissenting opinions
All four dissenting Justices wrote separate dissenting opinions in Schmerber. Chief Justice Earl Warren reiterated his dissenting opinion in Breithaupt v. Abram, where he argued that involuntary blood samples violate substantive due process. Justice Hugo Black authored an impassioned dissent in which he argued that the officers violated Schmerber's right against self-incrimination. He wrote, "[b]elieving with the Framers that these constitutional safeguards broadly construed by independent tribunals of justice provide our best hope for keeping our people free from governmental oppression, I deeply regret the Court's holding." Justice William O. Douglas also reiterated his dissent in Breithaupt v. Abram, but added that physical invasions into the human body violate the right to privacy enumerated in Griswold v. Connecticut and that "[n]o clearer invasion of this right of privacy can be imagined than forcible bloodletting of the kind involved here." Finally, Justice Abe Fortas wrote that the involuntary blood sample was an act of violence that violated substantive due process and that states may not resort to acts of violence when prosecuting crimes.
## Subsequent developments
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Supreme Court revisited questions about the constitutionality of involuntary bodily intrusions in several key cases. In 1973, the Court ruled in Cupp v. Murphy that the police were permitted to extract a tissue sample from underneath a suspect's fingernails to recover "evanescent" physical evidence. The suspect in Cupp was suspected of strangling his wife and voluntarily went to a police station to answer questions. Officers noticed bloodstains under the suspect's fingernails and detained him, but did not place him under arrest. Against the suspect's wishes, the police scraped out a tissue sample from under his fingernails to retrieve the evidence. The biological material found under the suspect's fingernails was later found to have come from the victim. Citing Schmerber, the Court held that this warrantless search was justified under the exigent circumstances exemption of the Fourth Amendment because the search was necessary to preserve the “highly evanescent evidence” under the defendant's fingernails.
Twelve years later, the Court again revisited the topic of involuntary bodily intrusions in Winston v. Lee, where the Court held that the State of Virginia could not force an individual to undergo surgery to extract a bullet that may be evidence of a crime. The Court applied its previous holding in Schmerber to conclude that the surgery would constitute an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment and that a crucial factor for evaluating any bodily intrusion "is the extent to which the procedure may threaten the safety or health of the individual." Writing for the Court's majority, Justice Brennan concluded that forcing a patient to undergo major surgery intrudes too far upon individual privacy rights and that surgical intrusions "can only be characterized as severe."
In 1989, the Court ruled in Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association that warrantless blood tests of railroad employees were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The Court reaffirmed that the “compelled intrusio[n] into the body for blood to be analyzed for alcohol content” is a search under the Fourth Amendment, but that warrantless blood tests of railroad employees were necessary to "prevent accidents and casualties in railroad operations that result from impairment of employees by alcohol or drugs.” The Court also concluded that when individuals “participate in an industry that is regulated pervasively to ensure safety,” these individuals “have a reduced expectation of privacy.” Because these employees had a "diminished expectation of privacy," the warrantless blood tests were permissible. Justice Thurgood Marshall and Justice Brennan wrote a dissenting opinion in which they argued that this case was distinguishable from Schmerber because "no such exigency prevents railroad officials from securing a warrant before chemically testing the samples they obtain."
### South Dakota v. Neville and self-incrimination
After the Court issued its decision in Schmerber, a split of authority emerged in lower courts with regard to whether the Fifth Amendment's right against self-incrimination prohibited the use of a suspect's refusal to submit to a blood test as evidence of guilt. The United States Supreme Court resolved this split in authority in South Dakota v. Neville, where the Court held that prosecutors could use a suspect's refusal to submit to a blood test as evidence of guilt, and the introduction of this evidence at trial does not violate the suspect's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Writing for the Court's majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor concluded that "the state did not directly compel respondent to refuse the test" and that a "simple blood-alcohol test is so safe, painless, and commonplace" a suspect would not feel coerced to refuse the test. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Thurgood Marshall, in which he argued that the Court in Schmerber intended to adopt a broad and liberal interpretation of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
### Missouri v. McNeely and the exigent circumstances exception
Over time, a split of authority grew among lower courts with regard to whether the Fourth Amendment's exigent circumstances exception allowed officers to always conduct warrantless blood tests on individuals suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol because evidence of alcohol was being destroyed by the body's natural metabolic processes. States that recognized this per se exigency argued that "[o]nce police arrest a suspect for drunk driving, each passing minute eliminates probative evidence of the crime." In 2012, the Court granted review in Missouri v. McNeely to resolve this question. In a 5–4 opinion, the Court rejected the theory that the natural dissipation of blood alcohol constituted a per se exigency. Instead, the court affirmed the basic principle from Schmerber that absent "an emergency that justifie[s] acting without a warrant," police may not conduct warrantless blood testing on suspects. Consequently, exigency in drunk driving cases "must be determined case by case based on the totality of the circumstances."
## Analysis
Scholars have described Schmerber v. California as a landmark case and a "watershed moment" in the history of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Likewise, John D. Castiglione described the case as "seminal for its place in the annals of Fifth Amendment jurisprudence." Constitutional law scholar Akhil Reed Amar identified Schmerber as a turning point in the Fifth Amendment's "distinction between words and physical evidence." Anne Marie Schubert has also argued that Schmerber served as the genesis for a long line of Supreme Court cases ordering the compelled production of physical evidence. Because Schmerber foreclosed the use of warrantless blood tests in most circumstances, some scholars, including John A. Scanlan, argue that the Court's ruling was responsible for the proliferation of breathalyzers to test for alcohol and urine analysis to test for controlled substances in criminal investigations.
### Immediate reaction
Soon after the Court's ruling, analysts predicted that the effects of the case would be "far-reaching." Some analysts feared the ruling would be used to justify "other intrusive searches." Other commentators also observed that the Court's holding in Schmerber seemed to "reverse direction" from the court's decision in Miranda v. Arizona one week earlier, where the Court enlarged protections against the police for criminal suspects. However, in his assessment of Schmerber, Charles L. Berry praised the decision as a "successful effort to find a practical solution to the problem of the drinking motorist." Additionally, many law journals also offered commentary of the case's significance. For example, a November 1966 article in the Harvard Law Review opined that Justice Brennan's majority opinion was "a good exposition of his view of the interrelationship between the fourth and fifth amendments," and a February 1967 article in the Texas Law Review argued that Schmerber "exemplifies the proposition that the fifth amendment is not absolute."
### Impact
Some legal scholars have criticized the Court's ruling in Schmerber for infringing too far upon civil liberty and privacy. E. John Wherry, Jr., former Dean of the University of Orlando School of Law, wrote that "[b]lindly following Schmerber as authorization for all non-consensual blood seizure for forensic purposes is, in this day and age, an outrage." Writing for the Notre Dame Law Review, Blake A. Bailey, Elaine M. Martin, and Jeffrey M. Thompson observed that although the Court limited the holding in Schmerber to the facts of the case, prior to Winston v. Lee, many lower courts relied upon the ruling to order criminal defendants to undergo surgery to remove bullets that may have been evidence of a crime. Other scholars have expressed concern that the Court's decision to exclude physical evidence from protections against self-incrimination may one day lead to the use of mind reading devices when prosecuting criminal suspects. For example, the Harvard Law Review suggested that the Court's decision may be used to justify monitoring brain waves. Additionally, in an article in the journal Developments in Mental Health Law, Benjamin Holley suggested that "neurotechnological lie detection" could be used in criminal prosecutions, as long as a suspect's words are not "linked with the physical manifestations sought to be introduced at trial." Likewise, in an article in the Journal of Legal Medicine, John G. New suggested that non-testimonial evidence gathered from electroencephalography or magnetic resonance imaging may be admissible to demonstrate a suspect's thoughts.
## See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 384
- List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Warren Court
|
34,356,752 |
1998 Football League First Division play-off final
| 1,170,272,662 |
Association football match in 1998
|
[
"1998 Football League play-offs",
"1998 sports events in London",
"Association football penalty shoot-outs",
"Charlton Athletic F.C. matches",
"EFL Championship play-off finals",
"May 1998 sports events in the United Kingdom",
"Sunderland A.F.C. matches"
] |
The 1998 Football League First Division play-off Final was an association football match played on 25 May 1998 at Wembley Stadium, London, between Charlton Athletic and Sunderland. The match was to determine the third and final team to gain promotion from the Football League First Division, the second tier of English football, to the Premier League for the 1998–99 season. The top two teams of the 1997–98 Football League First Division season gained automatic promotion, and the teams placed from third to sixth place in the table took part in play-off semi-finals; Sunderland had ended the season in third position and Charlton had finished fourth. The clubs won their semi-finals and competed for the final promotion place. Winning the game was estimated to be worth up to twenty million pounds to the successful team.
The match was played in front of almost 78,000 spectators and was refereed by Eddie Wolstenholme. Clive Mendonca opened the scoring for Charlton midway through the first half, before Niall Quinn equalised early in the second. Kevin Phillips then scored his 35th goal of the season to put Sunderland ahead but Mendonca doubled his own tally with fewer than twenty minutes remaining. Quinn restored Sunderland's lead two minutes later, before a Richard Rufus header for Charlton five minutes from the end of regular time made the score 3–3, and sent the game into extra time. Nicky Summerbee then gave Sunderland the lead for the third time before Mendonca completed his hat-trick, the first player to do so in a play-off final. Extra time ended 4–4, so the game was determined by a penalty shootout. Both teams scored their first five spot-kicks before the shootout moved to 'sudden death'. Michael Gray stepped forward to take Sunderland's seventh penalty, but his weak strike was saved by the Charlton goalkeeper Saša Ilić and Charlton won 7–6 on penalties.
Sunderland ended their following season as champions of the First Division, amassing a record 105 points, and were promoted to the 1999–2000 Premier League. Charlton's next season saw them finish in eighteenth position, five points from safety, and relegated back to the First Division. The 1998 play-off final is considered by players, managers, pundits and the media to be one of the most memorable and dramatic games played at Wembley.
## Route to the final
Sunderland finished the regular 1997–98 season in third place in the Football League First Division, the second tier of the English football league system, one place ahead of Charlton Athletic. Both therefore missed out on the two automatic places for promotion to the Premier League and instead took part in that season's play-offs to determine the third promoted team. Sunderland finished one point behind Middlesbrough (who were promoted in second place) and four behind league winners Nottingham Forest. Charlton ended the season two points behind Sunderland.
Charlton faced Ipswich Town in their play-off semi-final and the first leg was played at Portman Road in Ipswich on 10 May 1998. An early own goal from Jamie Clapham decided the ill-disciplined match in which nine yellow cards were shown, including two to Charlton's Danny Mills who was dismissed in the 73rd minute. The match ended 1–0 and secured Charlton's eighth consecutive clean sheet. Arguments between the players continued after the final whistle culminating in an altercation in the players' lounge in which Ipswich defender Mauricio Taricco's nose was broken by Neil Heaney. The second leg was played three days later at Charlton's home ground, The Valley, and once again ended in a 1–0 victory to the London club. Although Ipswich dominated in periods of the second half, they only forced one save from Saša Ilić, the opposition goalkeeper. Charlton won the tie 2–0 on aggregate and qualified for the play-off final.
Sunderland's opponents for their play-off semi-final were Sheffield United, the first leg being played at Bramall Lane in Sheffield on 10 May 1998. Kevin Ball put the visiting team into an early lead, scoring after 17 minutes, but Marcelo equalised before Vassilios Borbokis scored the winner with 14 minutes to go, the match ending 2–1 to Sheffield United. The return leg was played at the Stadium of Light three days later, Sunderland taking the lead midway through the first half after Nicky Marker deflected a cross-shot from Allan Johnston past his own goalkeeper. Seven minutes before half time, Kevin Phillips doubled Sunderland's lead with his 34th goal of the season. With 17 minutes of the second half remaining, the Sunderland goalkeeper Lionel Pérez made two saves to deny Graham Stuart before keeping Paul Devlin's shot out with what the BBC described as "a truly world-class save". The match ended 2–0 to Sunderland who progressed to the final with a 3–2 aggregate victory.
## Match
### Background
That season, the Charlton manager Alan Curbishley had invested around £1.7 million in his squad, signing Clive Mendonca from Grimsby Town for £700,000. Other signings included Mills, Matty Holmes and Eddie Youds, while Ilić was acquired on a free transfer from semi-professional team St. Leonards of the Southern Football League (known at that time as the Dr Martens League for sponsorship reasons); he went on to be selected over Charlton's 1996–97 player of the year Andy Petterson. Before the season commenced, Russell Kempson wrote in The Times that he considered Sunderland to be among the favourites for promotion back to the Premier League, along with Middlesbrough and Wolverhampton Wanderers. He added that "Alan Curbishley will continue to do a good job at The Valley, yet achieve nothing tangible". The Liverpool Echo noted that Sunderland had suffered relegation as a result of a failure to score towards the end of the previous season, and Peter Reid's investment of more than £4 million in the transfer market sought to address that issue.
Mendonca was the highest scorer for Charlton with 25 goals in 44 appearances across all competitions during the regular 1997–98 season, followed by the midfielder John Robinson with 9 goals in 42 matches. Sunderland had paid £350,000 for Phillips in July 1997 and he formed a prolific strike partnership with club-record signing Niall Quinn throughout the season: Phillips had scored 33 times in 44 appearances, and Quinn 15 times from 37 games. Phillips had also been named the League Player of the Year. Reid wrote in his 2017 autobiography that Phillips was "arguably the best signing [he] ever made".
This was Charlton's second appearance in the second tier play-off final, having beaten Leeds United after a replay in the two-legged 1987 Football League Second Division play-off final. Sunderland were also making their second appearance in a second-tier play-off final: despite losing 1–0 to Swindon Town in the 1990 Football League Second Division play-off final at the old Wembley Stadium, they were promoted as Swindon were later found guilty of financial misconduct. Charlton had played in the second tier of English football for the last eight seasons, having been relegated from the First Division in the 1989–90 season. Sunderland were aiming to return to the Premier League at the first time of asking, having been relegated in the previous season. During the regular season, both games between the sides had ended in a draw: the match at the Stadium of Light in November 1997 was goalless, while the return fixture the following March resulted in a 1–1 draw.
With Charlton's run of nine consecutive clean sheets and a series of 1–0 victories leading up to the final, their captain Mark Kinsella acknowledged the club's reputation for being "boring" but noted "at this stage of the season it's not about the performances, it's about results and we have been coming up trumps". Kinsella himself had opted to take part in the play-off final in preference to collecting his third cap for the Republic of Ireland in a friendly in Dublin against Mexico two days prior, suggesting the domestic match was "the biggest game in Charlton's history" and that as club captain, he "had to be there". Curbishley noted that his club were "firmly back on the map" and that "people ... are talking about what a good side we are". Before the final, the Charlton board of directors announced that a new West Stand would be complete before the start of the next season and that a new £1 million sponsorship deal with Mesh Computers had been agreed with the newly embellished shirts being worn for the match. The Sunderland manager Peter Reid was resolute: "This is a massive, massive game for Sunderland Football Club, and it's one which I am confident my lads can win – if they are at their best." Previewing the match, Liam Kirk writing in the Irish Independent predicted a close game and that both teams would "satisfy the neutral and both rely on strikers plucked astutely from obscurity". Irish bookmaker Paddy Power had Sunderland as favourites to win, while former England international Gary Stevens also thought the Wearside club had the advantage.
For Sunderland, Quinn had recovered from a recurring hamstring injury he aggravated in the second leg of the play-off semi-final against Sheffield United, while Phillips was also fit after suffering a thigh strain in the same match. Charlton's Robinson was selected on the bench having not played for eight weeks following a hairline fracture of his right leg. The referee for the match was Eddie Wolstenholme; he had officiated the second leg of the semi-final between Ipswich and Charlton. It was reported in the press that the match was worth £5–10 million, and later by Deloitte to be worth up to £20 million, to the winning team from television revenue. The match was broadcast live in the UK on Sky Sports. Charlton wore their traditional red and white kit while Sunderland were in an away strip of old gold and dark blue.
### First half
The match kicked off around 3 p.m. in front of a Wembley crowd of 77,739, around 35,000 of which were Charlton supporters. Their team started the better, with a strong defence and a midfield which disrupted Sunderland's passing. The first chance fell to Sunderland in the 14th minute following an error from Ilić, and six minutes later Ball was unmarked but his header from a Nicky Summerbee corner went over Charlton's crossbar. In the 23rd minute Charlton took the lead. Mills' throw-in was flicked on to Mark Bright who passed to Mendonca. He dummied Jody Craddock and struck from 15 yards (14 m), beating Pérez in the goal. Sunderland had opportunities to score through Ball and Quinn, although Gray was required to prevent Bright from scoring after a cross from Heaney. Towards the end of the half, Lee Clark's shot went over the Charlton goal before Youds' tackle prevented Summerbee from shooting. The whistle was blown by Wolstenholme and the half ended, 1–0 to Charlton.
### Second half
During the break, Sunderland made their first substitution of the game, Chris Makin coming on to replace Darren Holloway. In the 50th minute, the score was levelled by Quinn. He evaded Youds to head a Summerbee corner between the near post and Mark Bowen, making it 1–1. Kinsella then came close to scoring from a free kick and Quinn missed a good chance, shooting over the crossbar, before Phillips put Sunderland ahead in the 58th minute. Having been put through by Clark, he lobbed Ilić to make it 2–1. Charlton made their first change of the game minutes later, Heaney being replaced by Steve Jones. In the 71st minute, Richard Rufus passed to Mendonca, who took two touches and struck the ball into the Sunderland goal, levelling the match once again. Two minutes later, Quinn put Sunderland ahead: after controlling a deep cross from Clark using his chest, the Sunderland forward struck the ball past Ilić, making it 3–2. Phillips was then replaced by Danny Dichio who quickly missed a chance by electing to attempt a volley rather than a diving header from a Summerbee cross. Mendonca was then prevented from scoring twice by the Sunderland defence, before Rufus brought the game level once again. Pérez missed an attempted clearance on a Robinson corner, having been blocked by Bright, and Rufus was left unmarked to score his first Charlton goal in 165 appearances for the club, and make it 3–3 with five minutes remaining. No further goals were scored so the game went into extra time.
### Extra time and penalties
Early into the first period of extra time, Bright was taken off and replaced by Steve Brown. On eight minutes, Sunderland went ahead with their fourth goal of the match. A cushioned ball from Quinn found Summerbee who struck a shot from the edge of the penalty area past Ilić. Quinn then missed a chance from 6 yards (5.5 m) to convert Johnston's cross to score Sunderland's fifth. Alex Rae then came on to replace Clark. Minutes later, Steve Jones played to ball behind Mendonca whose first touch controlled it and whose second touch was to volley past Pérez, scoring his 28th goal of the season. Rae and Craddock both missed chances to score the winner for Sunderland, and extra time ended with the score level on 4–4; the match would need to be determined via a penalty shootout, which was to be conducted at the Sunderland end of the stadium. Sunderland went into the shootout without two of their regular penalty-takers as both Phillips and Clark had been replaced through injury. Mendonca scored the first penalty, followed by Summerbee, Brown, Johnston, Keith Jones, Ball, Kinsella, Makin, Bowen and Rae, to make it 5–5 and take the shootout to sudden death. Robinson and Quinn then scored, to make it 6–6. Shaun Newton then stepped up to give the advantage to Charlton. Gray's weak shot was then saved by Ilić to his left and the match was over, Charlton winning 7–6 on penalties, and promotion to the Premier League.
### Details
## Post-match
Kinsella was jubilant: "we battled to come from behind and we just kept going and going ... every time we fell behind I felt we could lose, but we just kept pulling them back." The Sunderland forward Quinn claimed that despite the loss, his team were "the best footballing side in this division" but stated he was "delighted for Charlton because we've battled it out with them all season". The Sunderland manager Reid said of Gray who missed the final penalty: "our crowd's reaction to him was second to none. But I feel for the kid, he's heartbroken". Speaking of his team's performance, Reid noted: "I think our inexperience told in the first 45 minutes – we gave the ball away too cheaply". Mendonca offered sympathy to Sunderland's Gray, with whom he had attended Castle View School in Sunderland: "it must be a personal nightmare for him. Michael's a ... local Sunderland lad. It must hurt him so much." Mendonca was abused by some Sunderland supporters as he left the pitch: "that wasn't very nice, I'm gutted it's come to this ... I'd just like to say sorry to all my mates in Sunderland". Curbishley praised Mendonca: "he had four attempts in the game and scored three while the other was saved. What more can you ask?" Curbishley had avoided watching Gray's penalty, preferring instead to keep his head in his hands Talking about his penalty save, Ilić noted: "I hadn't made a save all game so I thought this would be a good time". Charlton held a civic reception at Woolwich Town Hall the day after the final, the players making the journey there from the valley on an open-top bus.
Nick Varley, writing in The Guardian suggested that the final was "the best game played at Wembley in 30 years". The Irish Independent described the match as "one of Wembley's most astonishing games" and "a day of unimaginable drama". Roy Collins of The Guardian, described Charlton's victory as "the most splendid of triumphs after the most splendid of games". In scoring his 35th goal of the season, Phillips broke Sunderland's post-war season scoring record previously held by Brian Clough. Mendonca became the first player to score a hat-trick in a play-off final. After the match Phillips stated that he was staying with Sunderland despite their failure to secure promotion, explaining that "all this transfer talk is a lot of nonsense. Playing in front of 40,000 every week, the support is unbelievable". Quinn also stated that he was keen to resolve his contract negotiations to allow him to remain at the club. Phillips, who had been carrying a shin injury for seven months, and Clark who had a hernia problem, were to have operations over the summer. Curbishley's assistant Les Reed left the club after the penalty shootout win to join the Football Association as a technical director; he had made the decision to leave before the final but delayed the announced. After the defeat, Sunderland's share price dropped from more than £5 to less than £4, with an estimated loss in value of around £10 million.
Sunderland ended their following season as champions of the First Division, amassing a record 105 points, and were promoted to the 1999–2000 Premier League. The record stood until Reading finished the 2005–06 Football League Championship with 106 points. Reid described their performance during the season as reaching "a level no one would have dreamed possible" after their Wembley defeat. Charlton's next season saw them finish in eighteenth position, five points from safety, and relegated back to the First Division.
## Legacy
Gray has since reflected that the penalty miss "stayed with me for as long as I wore a Sunderland shirt, which was 12-and-a-half years". In an interview for British radio station Talksport in 2018, he confirmed that he "really didn't want to take [it] ... I just didn't want to be the person responsible for us losing such an important match. It wasn't a good penalty ... as soon as I hit it, I saw Sasa Ilić diving across to his left hand side. I knew he'd saved it. It was the worst feeling in the world." He has also noted that "that penalty miss was probably the defining moment of me becoming an adult ... it still hits you hard, even 20 years on". Curbishley later noted that Reid was the first person to enter the Sunderland changing room after the game and that he congratulated every player. In his 2017 autobiography, Reid described the match as "so remarkable and an outcome so dramatic that it transcended football". He also suggested that his selection of younger, less experienced players was an issue: "Inexperience was a big thing in the game. If you look at the back four I had out — Craddock, (Darren) Williams, (Darren) Holloway were all young players". Reid also spoked of how his team, and in particular Gray, had practised for a penalty shootout: "The irony is at the Stadium of Light practising pens, Micky Gray was drilling them in the top corner with an arrogance and aplomb. I said, 'Oh, it’s easy doing it here. Wait till it's Wembley and there’s 100,000 and you’ve got to do it.' As soon as I said it, I thought, 'Oh, no, no, please don't.' I shot myself in the foot".
Ilić played a further 26 times for Charlton before the club signed Dean Kiely. Before the shootout, Ilić recalled: "I had all my team-mates coming up to me saying, 'It’s all up to you.' I’m like, 'Guys, come on, it's up to everybody'". In a 2019 interview he explained "I found a 10p coin and kept flicking it to decide which way to go. That made me decide to go to my left – unfortunate for Michael Gray and great for us". The referee Wolstenholme later described it as the highlight of his officiating career. He noted that it "was probably the best game I ever refereed, not because of me personally but the game itself. It was perfect because nobody even mentioned me."
Miles Kent writing for the Bleacher Report in 2008 called it "Wembley's greatest game" and described the contest as "a tremendous thriller ... [which] has etched itself into folklore as one of the classic matches in the rich history of English football". In 2009, Eurosport listed the match as 19th best association football match of all-time. In 2014, the English Football League listed it first in its "Top 10 Football League Play-Off Finals", noting that it was "arguably the most unforgettable Play-Off Final". FourFourTwo's Merv Payne referred to the match as "the bonkers Wembley showdown that lives long in the memory", while in 2019, the Evening Standard described the final as an "epic showdown" and that it would "forever be a part club folklore". The South London Press described Ilić's save and Mendonca's hat-trick as "iconic, indelible moments in Charlton Athletic’s history". In 2019, Rob Stevens of BBC Sport suggested that the match was "arguably the best play-off final in English Football League history". Mick Collins, writing in his 2003 history of Charlton Athletic, suggested: "if life is a series of peaks and troughs, for many Charlton fans, Monday, 25 May 1998, at about 6 p.m., marks the highest point".
Sunderland faced Charlton in the 2019 EFL League One play-off final, with a goal in injury time securing the London club's promotion to the EFL Championship. It was the first time in the history of the play-offs that two teams would face each other in a final for a second time.
|
12,595,787 |
2008 Orange Bowl
| 1,129,893,336 |
Post-season college football bowl game
|
[
"2007–08 NCAA football bowl games",
"2008 in sports in Florida",
"January 2008 sports events in the United States",
"Kansas Jayhawks football bowl games",
"Orange Bowl",
"Virginia Tech Hokies football bowl games"
] |
The 2008 FedEx Orange Bowl was a post-season college football bowl game between the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Kansas Jayhawks on January 3, 2008, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Spread bettors favored Virginia Tech by three points, but in a game dominated by defensive and special teams play, Kansas defeated Virginia Tech 24–21. The game was part of the 2007–08 Bowl Championship Series (BCS) of the 2007 NCAA Division I FBS football season and was the concluding game of the season for both teams. This 74th edition of the Orange Bowl was televised in the United States on Fox and was watched by more than eight million viewers.
The game between the fifth-ranked ACC champion Virginia Tech Hokies and the eighth-ranked Kansas Jayhawks from the Big 12 Conference (Big 12) was played at neutral-site Dolphins Stadium. Tech served as the home team in the contest. Virginia Tech automatically qualified for the Orange Bowl by virtue of the ACC's tie-in with the bowl, while the Orange Bowl selected Kansas over West Virginia, which had been upset by then 4–7 Pittsburgh, and conference rival Missouri. Two weeks after Kansas's selection, controversy erupted when a deal was revealed to put 4th-ranked Oklahoma against Virginia Tech. The deal was vetoed by BCS commissioners, and the selection of Kansas was upheld.
The game marked the first time the Jayhawks had been to the Orange Bowl since the 1969 Orange Bowl and was their first bowl game since the 2005 Fort Worth Bowl, when they defeated Houston 41–13. Virginia Tech last played in the Orange Bowl game in December 1996, losing to Nebraska 21–41. The 2008 Orange Bowl was Virginia Tech's 15th consecutive season with a bowl game, a streak dating to the 1993 Independence Bowl.
Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing completed 20 of his 37 passes for 227 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. On the opposite side of the ball, Virginia Tech quarterback Sean Glennon finished the game 13 for 28 passing, earning 160 yards and one touchdown, with two interceptions. Kansas cornerback Aqib Talib, whose 60-yard interception return for a touchdown gave Kansas its first lead of the game, won the game's Most Valuable Player award. After the game, Talib was one of several players from both teams to announce an intention to enter the 2008 NFL Draft.
## Team selection
As champions of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Virginia Tech was awarded an automatic bid to the Orange Bowl game. The automatic ACC bid was the result of an off-season deal following the inaugural ACC Championship Game which granted the winner of the ACC Championship Game an automatic bid to the Orange Bowl unless it was ranked high enough in the Bowl Championship Series standings to play in the National Championship Game.
### Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech's 2007 football season began five months after the Virginia Tech massacre, and football served as a way to help the university community emotionally heal. The opening game of the season, on September 1, 2007, was against East Carolina University and featured numerous remembrance ceremonies and commemorations before the Hokies earned a 17–7 victory. One week later, Virginia Tech traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to face the No. 2 Louisiana State University Tigers, widely regarded in pre-season polls as favorites to play in the National Championship Game. The Tigers overwhelmed the Hokies in front of a home crowd, 48–7.
In the wake of the Hokies' defeat, Virginia Tech chose to start a new quarterback and a new offensive plan. Behind freshman Tyrod Taylor, the Hokies earned five straight victories, including a win over No. 22 Clemson by 18 points. During the winning streak, Sean Glennon, who had started at quarterback for the Hokies during the first two games of the season, returned to alternate possessions with Taylor in an unusual two-quarterback system. On October 25, the Hokies faced No. 2 Boston College on a Thursday night in Blacksburg, Virginia. Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan managed a late-game comeback to win the game 14–10 with 11 seconds remaining.
With four consecutive victories after the loss, including a win over then-No. 16 Virginia, the Hokies won the Coastal division and secured a bid to the 2007 ACC Championship Game in Jacksonville, Florida. There, they faced a rematch with Boston College, champions of the Atlantic Division. As in the previous matchup, defense dominated, but unlike in the earlier matchup, Matt Ryan was unable to seize the victory. Two fourth-quarter interceptions by Virginia Tech sealed the Hokie win and an automatic bid to the Orange Bowl game.
### Kansas
Kansas began its 2007 football season unregarded and without much consideration from the national media. In the opening Associated Press football poll of the 2007 season, Kansas did not receive a single vote. From their opening game of the year, however, the Jayhawks began to impress voters with their offensive efficiency. Against Mid-American Conference Champion Central Michigan University, Kansas scored 52 points while allowing only a single touchdown.
Over the next three games, Kansas outscored its opponents 162–16. As Kansas's Big 12 schedule began, the Jayhawks continued to win. On October 6, Kansas traveled to Manhattan, Kansas, home of then-ranked No. 24 Kansas State University for the opening game of its Big 12 schedule. In front of 50,924 spectators, Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing struggled for the first time in the season. Late in the fourth quarter, Reesing threw a ball that bounced off the facemask of wide receiver Dexton Fields before being intercepted. The interception set up a Kansas State touchdown that put Kansas into a 24–21 deficit with seven and a half minutes remaining. Reesing and the Jayhawks struck back quickly, however, and scored a 30-yard touchdown to take the lead for good.
With the win, Kansas broke into the rankings of the top 25 college football teams in the country for the first time since 1996, entering the AP Poll at No. 20. Over the next six weeks, Kansas defeated Nebraska, Oklahoma State, and Texas A&M, and Kansas climbed the national rankings. By the 13th week of the season, the stage had been set for an epic game against Kansas's traditional rival, Missouri.
Due to prior agreement, the 2007 edition of the Border War was held in Kansas City, Missouri, at Arrowhead Stadium, home of the National Football League's Kansas City Chiefs. In front of over 80,000 fans, No. 4 Missouri defeated No. 2 Kansas 36–28, giving the Jayhawks their first loss of the season. Missouri, with the win, earned a trip to the Big 12 Championship Game. In that game, Oklahoma defeated Missouri 38–17 to earn an automatic bid to the 2008 Fiesta Bowl. Because the loss was Missouri's second of the year, Kansas (which had only one loss) was selected as an at-large pick by the BCS and earned a trip to the Orange Bowl.
### Controversy
Although Virginia Tech's selection via automatic bid was relatively quiet, Kansas' selection caused a great deal of controversy. Kansas had lost to Big 12 runner-up Missouri and had a lower Bowl Championship Poll ranking than the Tigers. Some believed Missouri should have been selected ahead of Kansas because they had defeated Kansas and because they had played in the Big 12 Championship Game. According to BCS officials, however, Missouri's two losses were more of a detriment than Kansas's one loss and subsequent championship game absence.
Pundits and fans who opposed Kansas' selection pointed to the Jayhawks' strength of schedule, which at one point during the season was as low as 109th out of 119 Division I teams. By the time of the BCS selection, however, Kansas's strength of schedule had climbed by a small amount, reaching 88th in the Sagarin rankings and 74th in the CBS rankings. The final rankings rated Kansas' schedule as more difficult than Hawaii, which was also selected to play in the BCS. Aggravating the situation was the fact that Kansas and Missouri had one of the most intense rivalries in college football. Known as the Border War, the roots of the rivalry dated to the years before the American Civil War.
Two weeks after the selection of Kansas, yet another controversy arose when it was revealed that Big 12 and ACC officials had worked out an agreement to feature an Oklahoma/Virginia Tech matchup in the Orange Bowl in the hours leading up to the final selection. Oklahoma, who initiated the proposal, requested that it face the highest-ranked BCS opponent then available, which would have been Virginia Tech (ranked 3rd in the BCS). Normally, Oklahoma, the 2007 Big 12 Champion, would have played in the Fiesta Bowl, which holds the automatic rights to the Big 12 Champion's BCS bid. A little-known clause in the Bowl Championship Series contract, however, allows for the commissioners of the BCS to override that bid if the automatically selected team had played in the game the previous year, or to create a more interesting matchup. Oklahoma had played in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and seemed a perfect candidate for execution of the clause. Representatives from the Orange and Fiesta bowls reportedly worked out a deal to swap Oklahoma and Kansas and Dan Beebe, the commissioner from the Big 12, presented the plan to the BCS committee. The remaining BCS commissioners rejected the request (with only the Big 12, ACC and Big East commissioners in favor) and honored the original selection of Kansas for the Orange Bowl and forced Oklahoma to accept its automatic Fiesta Bowl Bid. The release of this plan upset many fans at both schools and across the country, who perceived that an (4) Oklahoma – (3) Virginia Tech matchup would have been superior to a (8) Kansas – (3) Virginia Tech game. Ironically, while Oklahoma-Virginia Tech was perceived as a better match-up due to their high rankings, both teams went on to be upset by the lower ranked team with Oklahoma losing 48–28 to (9)West Virginia.
## Pregame buildup
Most pre-game media and popular coverage of the 2008 Orange Bowl focused on the matchup between Kansas's No. 2 scoring offense and Virginia Tech's No. 2 scoring defense. Outside factors, such as coaching, previous experience, and fan support were also considered in pre-game analysis of the matchup. Outside story lines included Virginia Tech's recovery from the Virginia Tech Massacre and recovery from late-season losses suffered by each team (against Missouri for Kansas and against Boston College for Virginia Tech).
### Offensive matchups
#### Kansas
Heading into the Orange Bowl, Kansas was ranked second in the nation in scoring (44.3) and sixth in yards per game (491). Kansas scored 40 or more points eight times during the 2007 season and scored 50 points five times. Kansas's ground game was led by running back Brandon McAnderson, who averaged 87.5 yards per game during the 2007 season and earned 1,050 yards and 16 touchdowns in the season leading to the Orange Bowl. Through the air, Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing earned the 11th-highest passer rating in the country, averaging a 152.41 quarterback rating in 2007. Reesing completed 62.6% of his passes during the 2007 season, earning 3,259 yards, 32 touchdowns, and just six interceptions. Reesing's favorite receiver was Marcus Henry, who was ranked No. 29 in the country for passing yardage, averaging over 82 receiving yards per game. During 2007, Henry earned 994 yards and nine touchdowns. On the offensive line, the Jayhawks were led by All-American left tackle Anthony Collins, who finished as a finalist for the Outland Trophy, awarded to college football's best offensive lineman. Because of the Jayhawks' effectiveness on offense, they punted the ball just 46 times during the 2007 season, the seventh-lowest total in Division I.
#### Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech featured an unusual two-quarterback system on offense, as quarterbacks Sean Glennon and Tyrod Taylor shared time behind center. Though unusual, the system was successful in leading the Hokies to their second ACC Championship in four years. During the 2007 regular season, Glennon threw for 1,636 yards and 11 touchdowns, completing 63 percent of his passes. Taylor, meanwhile, passed for 916 yards and five touchdowns while also rushing for 431 yards. Some pundits predicted Kansas might have difficulty with Taylor's mobility, as his style of play was similar to that of Missouri's Chase Daniel, who gave Kansas its sole loss of the 2007 season. On the other end of the Virginia Tech aerial offense was a corps of capable receivers, led by senior wide receivers Eddie Royal and Josh Morgan. Morgan was the fifth-ranked receiver in Virginia Tech history, having earned 1,787 receiving yards. Royal was sixth, having earned 1,767 yards. Two of Tech's other receivers, Josh Hyman and Justin Harper, recorded 1,138 and 1,274 receiving yards each, marking the first time in Virginia Tech history that the Hokies had four different thousand-yard career receivers on the same team. On the ground, the Hokies were led by running back Branden Ore, who rushed for 876 yards and eight touchdowns during the regular season. One week before the Orange Bowl, Tech coaches revealed that Ore would be suspended for the first quarter of the game against Kansas as punishment for showing up late to the Hokies' final pre-bowl practice. Ore was replaced by sophomore rusher Kenny Lewis Jr.
### Defensive matchups
#### Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech finished the season ranked second nationally in points allowed per game (15.5) and fourth nationally in yardage allowed (293). The Hokies didn't allow a fourth-quarter point in the five games after giving up 14 fourth-quarter points to Boston College in Blacksburg. One key player in the Virginia Tech defense was linebacker Xavier Adibi, who had scored his third career defensive touchdown in the ACC Championship Game against Boston College. Adibi, together with fellow linebacker Vince Hall, made up "the best LB duo in the country," according to ESPN commentator Chris Spielman. Hall's effectiveness had, however, been limited in the 2007 season by a broken wrist suffered against Clemson. Hall missed four games with the injury, but returned to play the final three contests of the season for Virginia Tech and promised to be featured heavily in the 2008 Orange Bowl. Backing up the Virginia Tech linebackers was a strong backfield, which had produced 12 NFL draft picks in the nine years preceding the 2007 season. Primary among the backfield players were cornerbacks Victor Harris and Brandon Flowers, who Sports Illustrated.com called "maybe the best cornerback duo in the country".
#### Kansas
Kansas, meanwhile, was less-highly regarded on defense and came into the 2008 Orange Bowl ranked 57th nationally in pass defense. On the ground, however, Kansas was ranked far higher, sixth in the nation. In addition, Kansas allowed an average of only 16 points per game, good enough for to be ranked fourth nationally. A key portion of that run defense was defensive tackle James McClinton, who was named the Big 12's Defensive Lineman of the Year and earned second-team All-America honors. McClinton finished the 2007 regular season with 10.5 tackles for loss and promised more of the same for the Orange Bowl. The team captain of the Jayhawk defense, meanwhile, was All-American cornerback Aqib Talib. Talib was also a threat on offense, catching eight passes, including four touchdowns, during the regular season.
## Game summary
The 2008 Orange Bowl kicked off at 8:30 p.m. EST at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. The official attendance for the game was listed as 74,111 (the eighth consecutive Orange Bowl sellout), but actual attendance appeared to be lower, and several upper-deck sections of the stadium were sparsely filled. Approximately 15 million viewers watched the game, earning the broadcast a Nielsen rating of 7.4. The broadcast of the 2008 Orange Bowl was the only BCS bowl game to show a rise in television viewers over the previous season's broadcast, as the 2007 Orange Bowl had only earned a Nielsen rating of 7.0. The national anthem was sung by American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee.
The coin toss featured former star players for both schools, Bruce Smith for Virginia Tech and Gale Sayers for Kansas. Kansas won the toss and elected to defer its choice until the second half. Virginia Tech chose to receive the ball to start the game. Kansas would receive the ball to begin the second half. At kickoff, the air temperature was unseasonably cold for Miami at 57 °F (14 °C), and the skies were cloudy with intermittent rain.
### First quarter
Virginia Tech's Eddie Royal fielded the opening kickoff from Kansas kicker Scott Webb, returning it 59 yards to the 41-yard line of Kansas. The return gave the Virginia Tech offense excellent field position to begin the game. Tech quarterback Sean Glennon connected on an 11-yard pass to Justin Harper for a first down on the opening play of the game, but Kansas' defense stiffened on subsequent plays. After Virginia Tech's Tyrod Taylor entered the game at quarterback, Kansas sacked Taylor twice, pushing Virginia Tech 19 yards backward, out of field goal range. Because of the sacks, Virginia Tech was forced to punt the ball away without scoring any points.
The punt was downed in the end zone for a touchback, and Kansas began its first offensive possession of the game at its 20-yard line. Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing proved remarkably effective, completing six of his eight passes during the drive and rushing for five yards on a quarterback scramble. Reesing drove Kansas' offense into Virginia Tech territory, but after Tech's Orion Martin sacked Reesing, Kansas was unable to gain another first down and kicker Scott Webb was sent into the game to attempt a 44-yard field goal. Webb's kick sailed wide of the uprights, however, and the game remained scoreless with 6:44 remaining in the first quarter.
After the missed field goal, Virginia Tech took over on offense at its own 27-yard line. Running back Kenny Lewis, Jr., replacing the suspended Branden Ore, ran for a first down, and Tyrod Taylor connected on an 11-yard pass to Eddie Royal for another first down. Now inside Kansas territory, Taylor attempted another pass. Kansas All-American cornerback Aqib Talib jumped between Taylor's throw and the receiver, intercepting the ball. Talib returned the interception 60 yards to the end zone for a Kansas touchdown, the first points of the game. An extra point kick by Scott Webb made the score 7–0 Kansas with 5:15 remaining in the quarter.
High-stepping into the endzone, Aqib Talib committed a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, which was enforced on the post-score kickoff. The penalty, coupled with a good kick return by Virginia Tech, gave the Hokies excellent field position for their third possession of the game. Quarterback Sean Glennon capitalized on that field position, connecting on a 24-yard pass to wide receiver Justin Harper. The catch pushed Virginia Tech inside Kansas territory and seemingly set up the Hokie offense for their first score of the game. After two plays for no gain and a five-yard loss when Glennon was sacked by James Holt, Virginia Tech was forced to attempt a 49-yard field goal. Jud Dunlevy's kick fell short, however, and Virginia Tech was denied a score. Kansas recovered the short kick, which landed in the end zone, and returned the ball 39 yards. Despite the momentum earned by the missed kick, Kansas went three plays without gaining a first down and was forced to punt the ball away. Virginia Tech recovered the ball at its 15-yard line and ran two plays before time ran out in the first quarter.
At the end of the first quarter, Kansas had kept Virginia Tech scoreless while capitalizing on a 60-yard interception return by Aqib Talib for the game's only points, a 7–0 lead.
### Second quarter
Virginia Tech began the second quarter in possession of the ball and facing a third-and-five from its own 20-yard line. On the first play of the quarter, quarterback Sean Glennon threw for the first down, but was intercepted at the 37-yard line by Kansas' Chris Harris. After the interception, Kansas had the ball at the Virginia Tech 31-yard line. Todd Reesing connected on a first-down pass to Derek Fine, and running back Brandon McAnderson contributed several short rushes. The Kansas offense failed to gain a second first down after the interception, however, and kicker Scott Webb was again called upon to attempt a field goal, this time from 32 yards away. Unlike his first kick, the second sailed through the uprights for three points. With 12 minutes remaining in the second quarter, Kansas extended its lead to 10–0.
Virginia Tech recovered the post-field goal kickoff at its own 31-yard line, and Branden Ore, having entered the game after his one-quarter suspension, advanced the ball three yards. Quarterback Tyrod Taylor also advanced the ball five yards on a scramble, but failed to gain a first down. The Hokies were forced to punt the ball away, and Kansas recovered the kick at its 41-yard line. With good field position and momentum granted by the interception and field goal, Kansas moved the ball quickly. Todd Reesing was sacked by Nekos Brown and Xavier Adibi, but connected to Jake Sharp for 20 yards on two passes, advancing the ball deep into Virginia Tech territory. Passes to Marcus Henry and Dezmon Briscoe advanced Kansas 21 more yards into Hokie territory, and Brandon McAnderson rushed for five yards on the ground. Capping the Kansas drive was a 13-yard toss by Reesing to Henry for a touchdown. The score, which came with 7:03 remaining in the first half, gave Kansas a 17–0 lead, its largest of the game.
Virginia Tech recovered the post-touchdown kickoff desperately needing to score before halftime. Kansas had played strongly on defense throughout the first half, and the game's momentum was firmly behind the Jayhawks, who had capitalized on two Virginia Tech turnovers. Sean Glennon completed a three-yard pass to Josh Morgan to begin the drive, but it was running back Branden Ore who did the vast majority of the work during the Hokies' final offensive drive of the first half. After Glennon's pass, Ore rushed the ball on six straight plays, picking up 33 yards and two first downs on the way. After that, Glennon contributed a five-yard run of his own, which was aided by a 15-yard facemask penalty against Kansas. Branden Ore received the ball again, rushing on five consecutive plays, culminating in a one-yard run for a touchdown. The score came with just 1:03 left in the half, giving Virginia Tech its first points of the game and narrowing Kansas' lead to 17–7.
Kansas received Virginia Tech's kickoff, and the Hokies attempted to give themselves another chance at offense by calling timeouts after Kansas rushed the ball. The timeouts stopped the clock, but Kansas managed to earn a first down and run out the clock after Tech used its allotted three timeouts. Heading into halftime, Kansas still had the lead and the momentum, but a Virginia Tech touchdown had cut the Jayhawks' lead to just 10 points, 17–7.
### Halftime show
The halftime show of the 2008 Orange Bowl was headlined by American blues rock band ZZ Top, who played their song Sharp Dressed Man. The band was a favorite of Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing, who expressed regrets prior to the game that he would not be able to listen to the performance. Also featured during the halftime show were a group of high school marching bands, who played Stevie Ray Vaughan's Crossfire while ZZ Top's stage was disassembled. Following the halftime show, the Fox truck broadcasting the game experienced a power outage. As Fox crews worked to get the power restored, the second half was delayed by three minutes.
### Third quarter
Kansas, which had won the pre-game coin toss, received the ball to open the second half. Todd Reesing initially began where he had left off in the first half, completing a pass to Dexton Fields for 12 yards and a first down. On subsequent plays, however, Virginia Tech showed some of the defensive prowess that had been promoted heavily heading into the game. Aqib Talib was tackled for a loss of six yards after catching a pass. Reesing was sacked under heavy pressure from the Tech defense. On third down, a Reesing pass was nearly intercepted by Cody Grimm, who knocked it down to force a Kansas punt. On the subsequent return, Virginia Tech earned its first big play of the game. Eddie Royal, who had returned every one of Virginia Tech's first-half kicks, received the ball and lateraled it to Justin Harper, who returned it 84 yards for a touchdown. The score cut Kansas' lead to just three points with 11:35 remaining in the third quarter.
With the game's momentum now firmly in their favor, the Virginia Tech defense stopped Kansas' offense on three straight plays, forcing another Kansas punt. The kick traveled 62 yards and was recovered at the Virginia Tech 18-yard line. Virginia Tech's offense, despite the poor field position, moved quickly, partly due to a 15-yard pass interference penalty against Kansas. Sean Glennon completed a controversial 37-yard pass to tight end Greg Boone to drive the Hokies deep into Kansas territory. Initially, the pass appeared to have been intercepted by a Kansas defender, but subsequent replays revealed Boone had wrested possession of the ball away from the defender. Three rushes deep inside the Kansas red zone netted the Hokies just nine more yards, setting up a fourth-and-one scenario for the Virginia Tech offense. Rather than risk a failed fourth-down conversion, Virginia Tech head coach Frank Beamer sent in kicker Jud Dunlevy to attempt a 25-yard field goal. During the kick, however, Kansas defender Joe Mortensen rushed through the Virginia Tech line and blocked the kick, denying the Hokies three points and preserving a 17–14 Kansas lead with 6:31 remaining in the quarter.
The block neutralized all the Virginia Tech momentum that had been gained with the punt-return touchdown and kept Kansas in the lead. After the block, however, Kansas failed to gain a first down on offense. Though forced to punt the ball away, punter Kyle Tucker's 42-yard kick was helped by a 10-yard illegal blocking penalty against Virginia Tech that pinned the Hokies at their own 25-yard line. Branden Ore picked up a first down with two rushes, but the Tech offense failed to gain another first down and the Hokies were forced to punt the ball again.
Kansas took over at its own 12-yard line after the punt. On the first play of the drive, Reesing completed a 37-yard pass to Dexton Fields, putting the ball near midfield. Three straight incomplete passes later, Kansas faced a fourth-and-ten and a punt. Instead of punting the ball away, however, Kansas elected to try a risky fake punt-pass. Instead of snapping the ball to the punter, the ball was snapped to running back Brandon McAnderson, who threw the ball 22 yards downfield to Micah Brown for a first down. On the very next play, Reesing, having returned to the field, connected on a 28-yard pass to Dexton Fields, who was pushed out of bounds just short of the goal line. With a first-and-goal from inside the one-yard line, a Kansas touchdown seemed inevitable. On the first play inside the red zone, however, Kansas fumbled the ball. Though the ball was recovered by a Kansas player, the play lost four yards. On the next play, Kansas committed a 15-yard personal foul penalty. The personal foul was followed by a 10-yard holding penalty, and Kansas was pushed entirely outside the Virginia Tech red zone. In an effort to push back, Reesing threw a pass deep downfield. Instead of being completed, however, the ball was intercepted by Virginia Tech's D.J. Parker. With 39 seconds left in the quarter, Virginia Tech had stopped Kansas from gaining a point despite the Jayhawks penetrating inside the Virginia Tech one-yard line.
As the quarter came to an end, the Hokies gained two quick first downs and advanced the ball 26 yards, seemingly having regained the momentum lost with the blocked kick. With one quarter remaining in the game, however, Kansas still had a three-point lead, 17–14.
### Fourth quarter
The first few plays of the fourth quarter failed to live up to the promise that had been shown in the third for the Hokies. Two incomplete passes and one that gained just two yards forced Virginia Tech to punt the ball away with 13:49 remaining in the quarter. After taking over at its 33-yard line, Kansas had no more success on offense than did Virginia Tech. After three straight plays with no gain, Kansas was forced to punt the ball away as well. A 58-yard kick by Kyle Tucker pinned Virginia Tech inside its 10-yard line, and the Hokies were unable to advance the ball much beyond the ten-yard line. An incomplete pass and a two-yard run by Branden Ore were all the offense managed before Sean Glennon threw a 20-yard interception to the Jayhawks' Justin Thornton. Thornton returned the ball 30 yards to the Virginia Tech two-yard line, and on Kansas' first play after the interception, Todd Reesing ran two yards for the touchdown. The score gave the Jayhawks a 24–14 lead with just 10:57 remaining.
After the Kansas kickoff, Virginia Tech took over at its 33-yard line. Needing a score, the Hokies committed a five-yard false start penalty before quarterback Sean Glennon was sacked by Kansas' Mike Rivera. The two plays pushed the Virginia Tech offense back, preventing them from gaining a first down. Forced to punt the ball away, Virginia Tech had to play defense as Kansas took over at its 28-yard line. Secure in their lead, Kansas elected to run the ball in an effort to keep the clock moving and bring the game to an end more quickly. Brandon McAnderson broke free for 28 yards on the first play of the drive, and Jake Sharp contributed another first down on the ground before the Hokie defense stopped Kansas on an attempt to earn a first down on a fourth-and-two deep inside Virginia Tech territory.
Having stopped Kansas on fourth down, Virginia Tech took over on offense at its 22-yard line. With just 5:51 remaining in the game, the Hokies badly needed to score quickly and get a defensive stop in order to have a chance to win. The Hokies advanced on the first aspect of that requirement as Sean Glennon converted several first downs through the air. Kansas allowed no play over nine yards until late in the drive, forcing Virginia Tech to use up valuable time. On the last play of the drive, Sean Glennon connected on a 20-yard strike to Justin Harper for a touchdown. The score cut Kansas' lead to just three points, but with just three minutes remaining in the game, Virginia Tech's comeback would only be complete if the Hokies could recover a difficult onside kick.
Jud Dunlevy kicked the ball, which traveled the regulation 10 yards, but was recovered by Kansas. The Hokies, despite failing to recover the onside kick, still had a chance for another offensive possession if they stopped Kansas' offense short of a first down. Because the Hokies had two timeouts remaining, they could stop the clock after two Kansas plays, thus preserving time for a Virginia Tech offensive drive. An 11-yard pass by Todd Reesing netted Kansas a first down, however, and subsequent runs by the Jayhawks allowed Kansas to run out the clock despite the Virginia Tech timeouts. Kansas preserved its lead by kneeling on the ball inside the Virginia Tech 5-yard line on the final plays of the game, and the 24–21 victory was celebrated as time ran out.
## Final statistics
Kansas' Aqib Talib was named the game's Most Valuable Player. Talib's 60-yard interception return for a touchdown was the Orange Bowl's first since the 1968 Orange Bowl, when Oklahoma's Bob Stephenson performed the same feat. When he appeared on stage on the field after the game to receive his award, Talib exclaimed, "I felt like Deion!", a reference to former NFL star Deion Sanders.
The two teams finished with extremely similar statistical totals, as befitting a close game. The two teams were within 38 total yards of each other; Kansas had 344 yards and Virginia Tech had 306. That relative closeness was reflected in the teams' first-down totals as well. Virginia Tech earned 20 first downs: 10 rushing, eight passing, and two via penalty. Kansas, meanwhile, earned 19 first downs: five rushing, 13 passing, and one via penalty.
Over two-thirds of Kansas' offense came through the air as the Jayhawks racked up 249 net passing yards. The Hokies, meanwhile, earned almost half their offense on the ground. The end result of the varying offensive strategies was much the same, however. Kansas successfully converted six of its 17 third-down attempts, while Virginia Tech converted seven of its 17 attempts. The time of possession was one key stat in favor of Kansas, as Kansas controlled the ball for 33:47, over 7 minutes more than Virginia Tech's possession time of 26:13.
The difference in the game came from special teams and turnovers. Virginia Tech turned the ball over three times, while Kansas turned the ball over just once. Kansas converted its three takeaways into 17 points, giving the Jayhawks an enormous advantage on the scoreboard. Virginia Tech failed to convert its sole turnover recovery into any points.
### Virginia Tech statistical recap
On offense, the Hokies largely kept up with the Jayhawks, despite a losing effort. The two-quarterback system that had been heavily promoted heading into the game was largely abandoned in the first quarter after freshman Tyrod Taylor was sacked on his first two plays and threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown during his second time on the field. After those two abortive first-quarter appearances, and a single play at the beginning of the second quarter, Taylor did not re-enter the game until a single play halfway through the fourth quarter. With Taylor largely removed from the game, junior Sean Glennon was left to fill the gaps. Glennon had a solid, if unspectacular, game, completing 13 of his 28 passes for 160 yards and a touchdown. Glennon did struggle at times against the Jayhawks' defense, however, throwing two interceptions that resulted in 10 Kansas points.
With Glennon behind center, the Virginia Tech offense utilized several different wide receivers in the passing game. Eight different players caught at least one pass, and the leading receiver, Justin Harper, hauled in four catches for 64 yards and a touchdown. Receiver Josh Morgan, meanwhile, caught three passes, bringing him to 122 receptions for his career, passing Antonio Freeman for second place all-time at Virginia Tech. Ernest Wilford remains first in the Virginia Tech record book, with 126 receptions.
The Hokies were slightly more effective rushing the ball. In the ground game, seven different players carried the ball at least once, netting 135 rushing yards. Branden Ore finished the game with 116 yards, leading all rushers on both teams. That total put him just eight yards short of his second-straight 1,000-yard season. Ore's total is even more impressive when one considers he had been suspended for the entire first quarter of the game, his place taken by backup rusher Kenny Lewis, Jr. Lewis finished the game with four carries for 22 yards, and did not see much action after Ore entered the game at the beginning of the second quarter.
On special teams, the Hokies had several highs and lows. Justin Harper's 84-yard punt-return touchdown sparked a Virginia Tech rally that brought the Hokies within striking distance, but failures on special teams also ended the rally and turned the momentum of the game against Virginia Tech. Kicker Jud Dunlevy had been the third-most accurate kicker in the nation heading into the Orange Bowl, having hit 21 of his 24 field goal attempts during the season. He only needed two field goals to break Tech's record for most field goals in the season, set at 22 by Shayne Graham in 1998. Though Dunlevy had two chances for field goals, one fell short and the other was blocked.
On defense, the Hokies were led by linebacker Vince Hall, who recorded seven solo tackles, one assisted tackle, and one pass break-up. Hokies' defender Orion Martin also had a big game, recording six solo tackles, one assisted tackle, and two sacks of Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing. Two other defensive players recorded one sack apiece, and D.J. Parker recorded the Hokies' sole interception on defense.
### Kansas statistical recap
On offense, the Jayhawks recorded a total of 344 yards, 249 of which came through the air. Quarterback Todd Reesing was the key contributor to the Kansas aerial attack, completing 20 of his 37 passes for 227 yards and just one interception. The only other Kansas player to record passing yards was running back Brandon McAnderson, who threw a 22-yard first-down pass during a fake punt. Though under pressure for much of the game, Reesing was sacked four times, Kansas continued to maintain an effective pass attack throughout the game.
Eight different receivers caught at least one pass, with Dexton Fields leading all receivers in the game with seven catches for 101 yards. Both totals were the highest marks recorded in the game by either team. Fields was also the recipient of a play that tied for the longest pass play of the game, a 37-yard toss from Reesing halfway through the third quarter. Cornerback and game MVP Aqib Talib came into the game as a receiver several times, but because his appearance in the game was such an unusual occurrence, the Virginia Tech defense was able to zero in on him and prevent him from catching the ball.
The Jayhawks' ground game was less effective than their pass offense, but still had success against a tough Virginia Tech defense. Running back Brandon McAnderson, Kansas' leading rusher, finished the game with 15 carries for 75 yards. Backup running back Jake Sharp rushed nine times for 33 yards, including several key first-down runs.
As successful as Kansas' offense was, it was the Jayhawks' special teams (beating Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer at his own game) that earned them the victory. Kansas blocked one Virginia Tech field goal, and caused Tech kicker Jud Dunlevy to miss another short. Kansas punter Kyle Tucker did an excellent job pinning Virginia Tech deep in its own end of the field, kicking the ball five times for a total of 250 yards, averaging 50 yards a punt. His longest punt, a 62-yard kick, was one of three punts that were downed inside Tech's 20-yard line.
The Kansas defense, which had been ill-regarded heading into the game, performed well, as MVP Aqib Talib finished the game with five tackles in addition to the interception he returned for a touchdown. The Jayhawks' leading tackler was Mike Rivera, who earned 12 tackles, including one sack of quarterback Sean Glennon. Altogether, the Jayhawks sacked Virginia Tech's quarterbacks five times, including two sacks on the opening drive of the game.
## Postgame effects
Kansas' victory in the 2008 Orange Bowl had far-reaching effects for both Virginia Tech and Kansas as well as college football teams around the country. The victory allowed Kansas to finish its 2007 season with a final record of 12–1, while the loss brought Virginia Tech to a final record of 11–3. The game itself provided tens of millions of dollars of economic impact for the South Florida region, which attracted tens of thousands of visitors from both Virginia and Kansas. In Kansas, bars and liquor stores benefited from the game, as Jayhawks' fans stocked up on food and alcohol for the game.
A bet on the game between the governors of Kansas and Virginia was resolved when Virginia Governor Tim Kaine sent a Virginia smoked ham to the Kansas state capitol. Had Virginia Tech won, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius would have sent Kaine an assortment of Kansas beef.
### Virginia Tech
The Hokies' loss to Kansas lowered its bowl winning percentage since 1993 to 40 percent. In the 15 bowl games played between the 1993 Independence Bowl and the 2008 Orange Bowl, the Hokies amassed a record of six wins and nine losses. Despite the loss to the Jayhawks and the loss of several graduating players, Virginia Tech was a popular pick to repeat as ACC champions heading into the off-season. The seniors who graduated following the Orange Bowl game were the winningest team in Virginia Tech history, becoming one of just three teams in Division I to win at least 10 games each of the previous four years. Junior Sean Glennon's second consecutive failure to win a bowl game, however, re-opened the question of whether he or Tyrod Taylor would be the Hokies' starter at quarterback in 2008.
### Kansas
Kansas' victory over Virginia Tech was the Jayhawks' fifth bowl victory and was the 11th bowl game in the history of the Kansas Jayhawks football team. Because of the unexpected nature of the Jayhawks' success, some pundits proclaimed the 2008 Orange Bowl as ranking among the greatest Kansas sports victories of all time. The game paid \$17 million to the Big 12 Conference and helped to boost the Kansas football team's national profile among potential recruits. In addition, the program saw an increase in ticket sales in the years immediately following the bowl appearance. Two months after the football team's Orange Bowl win, the men's basketball team won the National Championship becoming only the second school to win a BCS Bowl game and National Championship in basketball in the same school year. Additionally the 49 wins combined from the football team and basketball team were the most combined wins in NCAA history from a football team and men's basketball team.
### 2008 NFL Draft
The 2008 Orange Bowl provided an excellent national platform for players from both Kansas and Virginia Tech to impress National Football League scouts prior to the 2008 NFL Draft, held April 26 and April 27, 2008. Virginia Tech cornerback Brandon Flowers was one of the first Orange Bowl participants to announce his intent to enter the draft following the game. Flowers, a redshirt junior, finished the season with five interceptions.
Two Kansas players announced that they would leave early for the NFL. Aqib Talib, the game's MVP, and All-American Anthony Collins announced they would enter the 2008 draft, capitalizing on their successful season. In total, twelve players from that game were drafted, eight from Virginia Tech and four from Kansas.
|
48,646,541 |
Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi
| 1,168,748,685 |
Latin poem arranged by Faltonia Betitia Proba
|
[
"4th-century Christian texts",
"4th-century Latin books",
"4th-century manuscripts",
"4th-century poems",
"Christian manuscripts",
"Christian poetry",
"Jerome",
"Latin manuscripts",
"Latin poems",
"Poetry based on works by Virgil",
"Works based on Georgics",
"Works based on the Aeneid"
] |
Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi (; A Virgilian Cento Concerning the Glory of Christ) is a Latin poem arranged by Faltonia Betitia Proba ( AD 352–384) after her conversion to Christianity. A cento is a poetic work composed of verses or passages taken from other authors and re-arranged in a new order. This poem reworks verses extracted from the work of Virgil to tell stories from the Old and New Testament of the Christian Bible. Much of the work focuses on the story of Jesus Christ.
While scholars have proposed a number of hypotheses to explain why the poem was written, a definitive answer to this question remains elusive. Regardless of Proba's intent, the poem would go on to be widely circulated, and it eventually was used in schools to teach the tenets of Christianity, often alongside Augustine of Hippo's De doctrina Christiana. But while the poem was popular, critical reception was more mixed. A pseudonymous work purportedly by Pope Gelasius I disparaged the poem, deeming it apocryphal, and many also believe that St. Jerome wrote negatively of Proba and her poem. Other thinkers like Isidore of Seville, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio wrote highly of Proba, and many praised her ingenuity. During the 19th and 20th centuries the poem was criticized as being of poor quality, but recent scholars have held the work in higher regard.
## Origin and style
The author of the poem, Faltonia Betitia Proba, was born c. AD 322. A member of an influential, aristocratic family, she eventually married a prefect of Rome named Clodius Celsinus Adelphius. Proba wrote poetry, and according to contemporary accounts, her first work was titled Constantini bellum adversus Magnentium; this poem, which is now lost, recounted the war between Roman Emperor Constantius II and the usurper Magnentius that occurred between AD 350–53. At some point, Proba converted from paganism to Christianity, and De laudibus Christi, which was probably written c. AD 352–384, was her attempt to "turn away from battle and slayings in order to write holy things".
With the exception of the proem and invocation of the poem, the entirety of De laudibus Christi is a cento (i.e. a patchwork poem) made up of rearranged verses extracted from the works of the Roman poet Virgil. Proba's choice to rework Virgil seems to have been made for two reasons: First, Virgil was an influential poet who had been commissioned by Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor, to write the mytho-historical epic Aeneid. Arguably the most influential Roman poet, Virgil's artistic clout was immense, being felt well into late antiquity, and he was imitated by Late Latin poets like Juvencus and Prudentius. The respect given to Virgil often manifested in the form of centos, which reached peak popularity in the fourth century AD. Second, Virgil was often seen as a pre-Christian prophet due to a popular interpretation of his fourth Eclogue, which many believed foretold the birth of Jesus.
Hardly any names are present in De laudibus Christi. This is because Virgil never used Hebrew names like "Jesus" and "Mary", and thus Proba was limited in terms of what she was able to work with. To compensate, Proba used vague words like mater ("mother"), pater ("father"), deus ("god"), and vates ("poet" or "priest") to refer to key Judeo-Christian figures. In places, this handicap interferes with readability (according to G. Ronald Kastner and Ann Millin, "Necessary passives and circumlocutions brought about by the ... absences in [Virgil] of appropriate terminology render the text impassable at times"). An exception to the poem's lack of names is found in a reference to Moses, whom Proba refers to by invoking the name "Musaeus". According to the classicist Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed, "Proba [probably] used the name Musaeus for the Judeo-Christian prophet, since it was often believed from the Hellenistic era onward that Mousaios was the Greek name for Moses".
## Contents
### Summary
The cento's 694 lines are divided into a proem and invocation (lines 1–55), select stories from the Old Testament books of Genesis (lines 56–318) and Exodus (lines 319–32), select stories from the New Testament Gospels (lines 333–686), and an epilogue (lines 687–94). At the beginning of the poem, Proba references her earlier foray into poetry before rejecting it in the name of Christ. This section also serves as an inversion and thus rejection of the Virgilian tradition: whereas Virgil opened the Aeneid by proclaiming that he will "sing of weapons and a man" (arma virumque cano), Proba rejects warfare as a subject worthy of Christian poetry. Proba then describes herself as a prophet (vatis Proba) and calls upon God and the Holy Spirit (eschewing the traditional invocation of the Muses) to aid her in her work. At the end of the invocation, Proba states her poem's main purpose: to "tell how Virgil sang the offices of Christ."
The passages focusing on the Old Testament concern the creation of the world, the Fall of Man, the Great Flood, and the Exodus from Egypt. Proba's presentation of the Creation—largely based on rewordings of Virgil's Georgics—reorganizes the Genesis narrative to better align it with contemporary Greco-Roman beliefs about the origin of the world. Cullhed argues that certain aspects of the creation story are "abbreviated ... amplified or even transposed" so that Proba can avoid repetitive passages, such as the double creation of man (Genesis 1:25–27 and Genesis 2:18–19). In the events leading to the Fall of Man, Eve's actions are largely based on the story of Dido from Book IV of the Aeneid, thereby "repeatedly foreshadowing ... the imminent disaster of the Fall". The Serpent is described with lines that detail Laocoön's death (from Book II, Aeneid) and the snake sent by the fury Alecto to enrage Amata (from Book VII, Aeneid). Proba relies on the first two books of the Georgics (specifically, the sections that discuss the Iron Age of Man) to describe human life after Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; in this way, she connects the Greco-Roman concept of the Ages of Man with the Judeo-Christian concept of the Fall of Man.
After the story of Creation, Proba briefly references the Great Flood by making use of lines from the fourth book of the Georgics that originally discussed the death of a beehive and the necessity of laws after the end of the Golden Age, respectively. According to the classicist Karla Pollmann, by using lines that concern destruction and the establishment of law, Proba is able to convey the traditional idea that Noah's survival represents the dawning of a "second creation and a new order" (that is, the Patriarchal age). Proba dedicates only a few lines to Exodus before moving onto the New Testament. Cullhed reasons that this is because the Book of Exodus and the remaining Old Testament is replete with violence and warfare that is stylistically too close to the tradition of pagan epic poetry—a tradition that Proba expressly rejects in the proem of De laudibus Christi. In the transitional section between the Old and New Testaments, Proba appropriates the invocation of the Muses of war that immediately precedes the Catalogue of Italians (from Book VII, Aeneid) and verses that originally described Aeneas's prophetic shield (from Book VIII, Aeneid). According to Culhed, these verses originally functioned as poetic devices, enabling Virgil to move from the "Odyssean" first half of the poem to the "Iliadic" latter half. Proba likewise has re-purposed these verses to aid in her transition from the Old Testament into the New.
The portion of De laudibus Christi that focuses on the New Testament recounts the birth of Jesus, his life and deeds, his crucifixion, and the advent of the Holy Spirit. Although Jesus and Mary are featured, Joseph is omitted. Jesus is often described by language befitting a Virgilian hero, and Mary is depicted by lines originally relating to Venus and Dido. Proba's Sermon on the Mount begins by borrowing the Sibyl of Cumae's description of punishment for the unrighteous (from Book VI, Aeneid), and some scholars contend that this portion of De laudibus Christi is the first description of hell in Christian poetry. Christ's deeds are reduced to three events: calming the sea, walking on water, and the call of the disciples. To describe Christ's crucifixion, Proba uses several lines that originally related to warfare, destruction, and death, such as the battle between Aeneas and the Rutuli (from Book XII, Aeneid), the Sack of Troy (from Book II), and the suffocation of Laocoön by giant serpents (from Book II). Notably, Christ is crucified not on a cross, but an oak tree, which Cullhed argues "synthesizes Jewish, Roman and Christian religious codes", as the species of tree was associated in the Greco-Roman world with Jupiter, and in the Judeo-Christian tradition with the Binding of Isaac. After covering Christ's death, Proba borrows lines referring to the erotic love between Dido and Aeneas to represent the decidedly more spiritual love that Christ shares with his disciples. The end of the poem focuses on Christ describing the world to come and his ascension into Heaven; Proba conveys the former via the prophecy made by both Celaeno and the Oracle of Delos (both from Book III, Aeneid), and the latter with language that originally described the god Mercury.
### Characterization of Jesus
Due to her borrowing from Virgil, Proba's Christ is very similar to the Virgilian epic hero. Parallels between the two include both seeking a goal greater than their own happiness, initiating realms "without end", and projecting auras of divinity. According to the early Christian specialist Elizabeth A. Clark and the classicist Diane Hatch, Proba's purpose was to "imbue the Christ with heroic virtues" akin to the Virgilian hero. The poet does this in three major ways: First, she describes Jesus as remarkably beautiful, with "a magnificent and commanding presence" similar to that of Aeneas. Second, during the Crucifixion, Jesus does not go meekly to his death, but aggressively lashes out at his persecutors. Her reconfiguration of Jesus's crucifixion is thus in line with Aeneas' vindictive slaying of Turnus described at the very end of the Aeneid. Finally, Proba transfers to Jesus portions of prophecies scattered throughout the Aeneid that detail Rome's glorious future, thus recasting pagan oracles in a Christian light.
### Characterization of Mary
The characterization of Mary has caused much scholarly debate. The historian Kate Cooper sees Mary as a courageous, intelligent materfamilias. Clark and Hatch write that Proba stresses Mary's maternity by omitting Joseph and presenting Mary as Jesus's sole human parent. Conversely, the Latinist Stratis Kyriakidis argues that despite Mary's presence in the poem, she lacks feminine attributes, and is thus "impersonal". According to Kyriakidis, this is intentional on Proba's part, as it draws attention to Christ's divinity—an aspect that "would be incompatible with a human, feminine mother."
Cullhed writes that the most scholarly views of Mary in the poem are inadequate, and that Proba made Mary "the twofold fulfillment and antitype of both Eve and Dido." Cullhed bases this on the fact that line 563 of the fourth book of the Aeneid (from Mercury's speech to Aeneas, in which the god admonishes the hero for lingering with Dido in Carthage) is used in two of the sections of the cento: once, in which Adam admonishes Eve for sinning, and again, in which Mary learns that Herod wants to kill her child. According to Cullhed, the "negative characterization" of the original verse and its reuse in the Old Testament portion of the cento is transformed into a "positively charged ability" allowing Mary and Jesus to escape Herod's wrath. Because Mary can foretell the future, she is compared (through the use of Virgilian language) to Greco-Roman goddesses and prophets.
## Proba's character and motivation
Because historical information about Proba is limited, many scholars have taken to analyzing De laudibus Christi to learn more about her. According to the classicist Bernice Kaczynski, "Scholars have seen traces of Proba's own character in her emphasis on the beauty of the natural world, readily apparent in her account of the creation." The cento suggests that Proba had great regard for "domestic matters, for marriage and the family, for marital devotion and [for] filial piety". While the New Testament stresses asceticism, Proba seems to de-emphasize its importance, given that topics like virginity and poverty are not stressed in her poem. In regards to issues of finance, Proba reinterprets a number of the New Testament episodes in which Jesus urges his followers to eschew wealth as passages suggesting that Christians should simply share wealth with their families. These changes illustrate Proba's historical context, her socio-economic position, and the expectations of her class.
As to why Proba arranged in the poem in the first place, scholars are still divided. The Latinist R. P. H. Green argues that the work was a reaction to the Roman emperor Julian's law forbidding Christians from teaching literature that they did not believe to be true (which is to say, classical Greek and Latin mythology). Proba's goal, Green writes, was to present Virgil "without [pagan] gods, and [thus] a [Virgil] no longer vulnerable to Christian criticism". In this way, a Christian teacher could use the text to discuss Virgil without compromising their religious and moral integrity. Clark and Hatch, on the other hand, postulate that Jesus's Virgilian nature in the cento may have been Proba's attempt to rebut the unflattering, demonizing descriptions of Jesus in Julian's Caesares and Contra Galilaeos. They conclude that the hypothesis is intriguing but unverifiable due to the lack of information about Proba, the date of the cento's creation, and her intentions. Finally, the classicist Aurelio Amatucci suggests that Proba composed the cento to teach her children stories from the Bible, although there is no solid evidence that the poem was ever intended to be a teaching tool.
## Reception
In the late-4th and early-5th centuries, the work began to receive a more mixed response. Many scholars hold that the Church Father Jerome was a critic of the work; in a letter written from Bethlehem to Paulinus of Nola castigating Virgilian centos, he warned against following an "old chatterbox" (garrula anus) and those who think of calling "the Christless Maro [i.e. Virgil] a Christian" (non ... Maronem sine Christo possimus dicere Christianum). According to the historian James Westfall Thompson, Jerome "strongly inveighed against this method of destroying the sense of a pagan author", and that "his love of the classics and his Christian piety were alike offended" by Proba's actions. Conversely, Roman Emperor Arcadius (who reigned from AD 395–408) received a copy of the poem, and his version has a fifteen-line dedication contending that Proba's work is "Maro changed for the better in sacred meaning" (Maronem mutatum in melius divino ... sensu). The work was also presented to Empress Aelia Eudocia, the wife of Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II (who reigned from AD 408–450).
During late antiquity, a pseudonymous document known as the Decretum Gelasianum—which was long believed to have been issued by Pope Gelasius I (who held the papacy from AD 492–496)—declared De laudibus Christi to be apocryphal and a "reprehensible work of poetry". But almost a century later, Archbishop Isidore of Seville (AD 560–636) called Proba the "only woman to be ranked among the men of the church" (Proba ... femina inter viros ecclesiasticos ... posita sola). In regards to De laudibus Christi, Isidore wrote that "it is not the work which should be admired, but [Proba's] ingenuity" in compiling the poem (Cuius quidem non miramur studium sed laudamus ingenium).
During the Renaissance, Proba and her work were praised as examples of studiousness and scholarship. In a 1385 letter to Anna von Schweidnitz (the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV), the Italian poet and scholar Petrarch referenced Proba and her work while discussing female geniuses, and in 1374 the humanist Giovanni Boccaccio included Proba in his biographical collection of historical and mythological women entitled De mulieribus claris. In 1474, the poem was published by the Swiss printer Michael Wenssler, which likely made Proba the first female author to have had her work reproduced by a printing press. In 1518, Proba's work was once again being used in an educational setting, this time by John Colet of St Paul's School, who believed that Proba "wrote ... wysdom with clene and chast Latin".
Scholarship in the 19th and early 20th century was more critical of De laudibus Christi. Some classicists and philologists of the era cite the work as an example of late antiquity's "poverty of ideas". In 1849, William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology called the poem "trash" worthy of "no praise", and in 1911, P. Lejay of The Catholic Encyclopedia wrote that "the action of the poem is constrained and unequal, the manner absurd, [and] the diction frequently either obscure or improper". Despite these rather negative appraisals, contemporary scholars have taken a renewed interest in the poem, and many see it as worthy of study. Cullhed, in particular, considers the work "of considerable historical and cultural importance [for] it belongs to the small number of ancient texts with a female author and stands out as one of our earliest extant Christian Latin poems." The first English-language work dedicated in its entirety to Proba and her poem was the 2015 monograph, Proba the Prophet, written by Cullhed.
## Authorship controversy
The poem is traditionally attributed to Faltonia Betitia Proba largely on the assertion of Isidore, who wrote in his Etymologiae that De laudibus Christi was the product of a woman named Proba who was the wife of a man named Adelphus (Proba, uxor Adelphi, centonem ex Vergilio ... expressit). But the classicist and medievalist Danuta Shanzer has argued that the poem was not the work of Faltonia Betitia Proba, but rather her granddaughter, Anicia Faltonia Proba, who lived in the late-fourth and early-fifth centuries. Shanzer—who is of the opinion that Faltonia Betitia Proba likely died in AD 351—bases much of her assertion on supposed date inconsistencies and anachronisms within the text. For instance, Shanzer points out that lines 13–17 of De laudibus Christi strongly resemble lines 20–24 of the poem Carmen contra paganos, which was written sometime after Faltonia Betitia Proba's death. Shanzer also claims that De laudibus Christi alludes to a notable debate about the date of Easter that took place in AD 387, thereby suggesting that the poem must date from the latter part of the fourth century. Finally, Shanzer argues that the reference to the war between Magnentius and Constantius in the work's proem precludes the possibility that Faltonia Betitia Proba arranged De laudibus Christi, due to the fact that the war took place in the same year as her supposed death. Shanzer rounds out her hypothesis by also invoking a textual argument, noting that the author of De laudibus Christi is often referred to in later manuscripts by titles that only Anicia Proba would have received, such as "mother of the Anicians" or the "eminent Roman Mistress".
In her 2015 book Proba the Prophet, Cullhed counters Shanzer's claims, first by noting that there is no definitive evidence that Faltonia Betitia Proba died in AD 351 and that such an assertion remains speculative at best. Cullhed also argues that "there are no 'grounds for determining priority'" of the poem's opening lines, and that the supposed reference to the AD 387 debate about Easter could have likely referred to an earlier, perhaps less famous dispute. As to the titles found in later manuscripts, Cullhed writes that it is likely that they were erroneously inserted during the Middle Ages by scribes who had understandably confused the two Probas. Cullhed also reasons that if Anicia Proba had written De laudibus Christi, the Latin poet Claudian would have almost certainly praised her poetic abilities in his AD 395 panegyric celebrating the joint consulship of her sons Anicius Hermogenianus Olybrius and Anicius Probinus. Cullhed concludes: "The evidence for discrediting Isidore's attribution [of Faltonia Betitia Proba as the author of the cento] is not sufficient, and so, I will assume that the cento was written in the mid-fourth century by Faltonia Betitia Proba." Today, the general consensus among classicists and scholars of Latin is that De laudibus Christi was indeed written by Faltonia Betitia Proba.
## See also
- Interpretatio Christiana, the adaptation of non-Christian elements of culture or historical facts to the worldview of Christianity
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Retiarius
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Roman gladiator who fought with equipment styled on that of a fisherman
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"Gladiator types",
"Tridents"
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A retiarius (plural retiarii; literally, "net-man" in Latin) was a Roman gladiator who fought with equipment styled on that of a fisherman: a weighted net (rete (3rd decl.), hence the name), a three-pointed trident (fuscina or tridens), and a dagger (pugio). The retiarius was lightly armoured, wearing an arm guard (manica) and a shoulder guard (galerus). Typically, his clothing consisted only of a loincloth (subligaculum) held in place by a wide belt, or of a short tunic with light padding. He wore no head protection or footwear.
The retiarius was routinely pitted against a heavily armed secutor. The net-fighter made up for his lack of protective gear by using his speed and agility to avoid his opponent's attacks and waiting for the opportunity to strike. He first tried to throw his net over his rival. If this succeeded, he attacked with his trident while his adversary was entangled. Another tactic was to ensnare his enemy's weapon in the net and pull it out of his grasp, leaving the opponent defenceless. Should the net miss or the secutor grab hold of it, the retiarius likely discarded the weapon, although he might try to collect it back for a second cast. Usually, the retiarius had to rely on his trident and dagger to finish the fight. The trident, as tall as a human being, permitted the gladiator to jab quickly, keep his distance, and easily cause bleeding. It was not a strong weapon, usually inflicting non-fatal wounds so that the fight could be prolonged for the sake of entertainment. The dagger was the retiarius's final backup should the trident be lost. It was reserved for when close combat or a straight wrestling match had to settle the bout. In some battles, a single retiarius faced two secutores simultaneously. For these situations, the lightly armoured gladiator was placed on a raised platform and given a supply of stones with which to repel his pursuers.
Retiarii first appeared in the arena during the 1st century AD and had become standard attractions by the 2nd or 3rd century. The gladiator's lack of armour and his reliance on evasive tactics meant that many considered the retiarius the lowliest (and most effeminate) of the gladiators, an already stigmatised class. Passages from the works of Juvenal, Seneca, and Suetonius suggest that those retiarii who fought in tunics may have constituted an even more demeaned subtype (retiarii tunicati) who were not viewed as legitimate retiarii fighters but as arena clowns. Nevertheless, Roman artwork, graffiti, and grave markers include examples of specific net-men who apparently had reputations as skilled combatants and lovers.
## History and role
Roman gladiators fell into stock categories modelled on real-world precedents. Almost all of these classes were based on military antecedents; the retiarius ("net-fighter" or "net-man"), who was themed after the sea, was one exception. Rare gladiator fights were staged over water; these may have given rise to the concept of a gladiator based on a fisherman. Fights between differently-armed gladiators became popular in the Imperial period; the retiarius versus the scaly secutor developed as the conflict of a fisherman with a stylised fish. The earlier murmillones had borne a fish on their helmets; the secutores with their scaly armour evolved from them. However, because of the stark differences in arms and armour between the two types, the pairing pushed such practices to new extremes. Roman art and literature make no mention of retiarii until the early Imperial period; for example, the type is absent from the copious gladiator-themed reliefs dating to the 1st century found at Chieti and Pompeii. Nevertheless, graffiti and artifacts from Pompeii attest to the class's existence by this time. Fights between retiarii and secutores probably became popular as early as the middle of the 1st century CE; the net-fighter had become one of the standard gladiator categories by the 2nd or 3rd century CE and remained a staple attraction until the end of the gladiatorial games. In addition to the man-versus-nature symbolism inherent in such bouts, the lightly armoured retiarius was viewed as the effeminate counterpoint to the manly, heavily armoured secutor. The retiarius was also seen as water to the secutor's fire, one constantly moving and escaping, the other determinedly inescapable. Another gladiator type, the laquearius ("noose-man"), was similar to the retiarius but fought with a lasso in place of a net.
The more skin left unarmoured and exposed, the lower a gladiator's status and the greater his perceived effeminacy. Likewise, the engulfing net may have been seen as a feminine symbol. The light arms and armour of the retiarius thus established him as the lowliest, most disgraced, and most effeminate of the gladiator types. Helmets allowed both gladiators and spectators to dehumanise the fighters; when an arena combatant had to kill a comrade-at-arms, someone he had probably lived and trained with every day, his opponent's helmet added an extra layer of separation. However, the retiarius was allowed no head protection; his face was visible to all. The emperor Claudius had all net-fighters who lost in combat put to death so that spectators could enjoy their expressions of agony. The retiarius's fighting style was another strike against him, as reliance on speed and evasion were viewed as undignified in comparison to the straightforward trading of blows. The retiarii lived in the worst barracks. Some members of the class trained to fight as Samnites, another gladiator type, in order to improve their status.
There is evidence that those net-men wearing tunics, known as retiarii tunicati, formed a special sub-class, one even more demeaned than their loincloth-wearing colleagues. The Roman satirist Juvenal wrote that:
> So even the lanista's establishment is better ordered than yours, for he separates the vile from the decent, and sequesters even from their fellow-retiarii the wearers of the ill-famed tunic; in the training-school, and even in gaol, such creatures herd apart....
The passage suggests that tunic-wearing retiarii were trained for a different role, "in servitude, under strict discipline and even possibly under some restraints." Certain effeminate men mentioned by Seneca the Younger in his Quaestiones naturales were trained as gladiators and may correspond to Juvenal's tunic-wearing retiarii. Suetonius reports this anecdote: "Once a band of five retiarii in tunics, matched against the same number of secutores, yielded without a struggle; but when their death was ordered, one of them caught up his trident and slew all the victors." The reaction of Emperor Caligula showed the disgust with which he viewed the gladiators' actions: "Caligula bewailed this in a public proclamation as a most cruel murder, and expressed his horror of those who had had the heart to witness it." The fate of the retiarii is not revealed. This was probably not a standard competition, as real gladiators did not surrender so easily. Rather, such tunic-wearing net-men may have served as comic relief in the gladiatorial programming.
Juvenal's second satire, wherein he deplores the immorality he perceived in Roman society, introduces a member of the Gracchus family who is described as a homosexual married (in female persona) to a horn player. Gracchus later appears in the arena:
> Greater still the portent when Gracchus, clad in a tunic, played the gladiator, and fled, trident in hand, across the arena—Gracchus, a man of nobler birth than the Capitolini, or the Marcelli, or the descendants of Catulus or Paulus, or the Fabii: nobler than all the spectators in the podium; not excepting him who gave the show at which that net was flung.
Gracchus appears once again in Juvenal's eighth satire as the worst example of the noble Romans who have disgraced themselves by appearing in public spectacles and popular entertainments:
> To crown all this [scandal], what is left but the amphitheatre? And this disgrace of the city you have as well—Gracchus not fighting as equipped as a Mirmillo, with buckler or falchion (for he condemns—yes, condemns and hates such equipment). Nor does he conceal his face beneath a helmet. See! he wields a trident. When he has cast without effect the nets suspended from his poised right hand, he boldly lifts his uncovered face to the spectators, and, easily to be recognized, flees across the whole arena. We can not mistake the tunic, since the ribbon of gold reaches from his neck, and flutters in the breeze from his high-peaked cap. Therefore, the disgrace, which the Secutor had to submit to, in being forced to fight with Gracchus, was worse than any wound.
The passage is obscure, but Cerutti and Richardson argue that Gracchus begins the fight as a loincloth-wearing retiarius. When the tide turns against him, he dons a tunic and a womanish wig (spira), apparently part of the same costume, and thus enjoys a reprieve, although this attire may not itself have been considered effeminate as it was also worn by the priests of Mars of whom Gracchus was the chief priest. The change of clothing seems to turn a serious fight into a comical one and shames his opponent. It is unusual to see a gladiator depicted this way in a satire, as such fighters usually take the role of men who are "brawny, brutal, sexually successful with women of both high and low status, but especially the latter, ill-educated if not uneducated, and none too bright intellectually." The retiarius tunicatus in the satire is the opposite: "a mock gladiatorial figure, of equivocal sex, regularly dressed in costume of some sort, possibly usually as a woman, and matched against a secutor or murmillo in a mock gladiatorial exhibition."
Despite their low status, some retiarii became quite popular throughout the early Empire. The fact that spectators could see net-fighters' faces humanised them and probably added to their popularity. At Pompeii, graffiti tells of Crescens or Cresces the retiarius, "lord of the girls" and "doctor to nighttime girls, morning girls, and all the rest." Evidence suggests that some homosexual men fancied gladiators, and the retiarius would have been particularly appealing. Roman art depicts net-men just as often as other types. A mosaic found in 2007 in a bathhouse at the Villa dei Quintili shows a retiarius named Montanus. The fact that his name is recorded indicates that the gladiator was famous. The mosaic dates to c. CE 130, when the Quintilii family had the home built; the emperor Commodus, who fought in gladiatorial bouts as a secutor, acquired the house in CE 182 and used it as a country villa. In modern times, popular culture has made the retiarius probably the most famous type of gladiator.
## Arms and armour
The retiarius is the most readily identifiable gladiator type, due to his signature equipment: arm guard (manica), shoulder guard (galerus), net (rete), trident (fuscina or tridens), and dagger (pugio). (Technically, the retiarius was not a "gladiator" at all, since he did not fight with the sword—gladius—after which such fighters took their name.) His weapons and armour could be decorated. An embellished gladiatorial dagger is held at the Naples National Archaeological Museum. Archaeologists have excavated three engraved shoulder guards from the gladiator barracks at Pompeii: one is engraved with illustrations of an anchor, a crab, and a dolphin; another with cupids and the head of Hercules; and a third with weapons and the inscription RET/SECUND ("retiarius, second rank").
Although the net (rete) was this gladiator's signature weapon, few depictions of the device survive. Combat with throwing nets may have occurred on ancient battlefields, but modern experiments and comparisons with modern fishing nets offer the only clues as to how the gladiatorial net was constructed. Such data indicate that the rete was circular, with a wide mesh about 3 metres (9.8 feet) in diameter and lead weights along the edges. A rope ran around the perimeter of the mesh, with the ends tied to the gladiator's wrist. Because it was thrown, the net was sometimes called a iaculum.
The retiarius complemented his net with an iron or bronze trident (fuscina, fascina or, rarely, tridens) that stood about as high as a human being. A skull found in a gladiator graveyard in Ephesus, Turkey, shows puncture holes consistent with a trident strike. The wounds are 5 centimetres (2.0 inches) apart and match a bronze trident excavated from Ephesus harbour in 1989. The trident's prongs are 21.6 centimetres (8.5 inches) long.
A long, straight-bladed dagger (pugio) was the gladiator's final weapon. A tombstone found in Romania shows a retiarius holding a dagger with four spikes (known as a quadrens—each spike at the corner of a square guard) instead of the usual bladed dagger. This was previously thought to be an artistic invention or perhaps a ceremonial weapon but a recently excavated femur bone from a gladiator graveyard in Ephesus has wounds consistent with the use of such a weapon.
The retiarius wore minimal armour; unlike other gladiator types, he wore no helmet, greaves, or shield. He wore a manica on his left arm, where other gladiators wore it on the right; this allowed him to more fluidly make a right-handed cast of his net. Attached to the top of this was a long bronze or leather guard over the upper left arm and shoulder, known as a galerus. This guard extended 12 to 13 centimetres (4.7 to 5.1 inches) beyond the shoulder blade and flared outward, allowing free movement of the gladiator's head. The device protected the upper arm, head and face when the retiarius kept his left side to his opponent. The armour was designed to let the net-man duck his head behind it, and it was curved so as to deflect a blow from the top downwards, not up towards the eyes. Three examples of this protective gear found at Pompeii vary between 30 and 35 centimetres (12 and 14 inches) in length and about the same in width. They weigh about 1.1 to 1.2 kg (2.4 to 2.6 lb).
In the Eastern Roman Empire in later years, some retiarii wore a chainmail manica instead of the galerus. This mail covered the arm and upper chest. Equipment styles stayed relatively fixed in the Western Empire.
Besides these items, the retiarius wore only a loincloth (subligaculum) held in place by a wide belt and gaiters or, as images show in lieu of the loincloth, a tunic that left the right shoulder uncovered. He wore fabric padding on his body to provide minimal additional protection. Artistic depictions show that other options included legbands, anklebands, a headband, and a medallion. All told, the retiarius's equipment weighed 7 to 8 kilograms (15.4 to 17.6 lb), making him the lightest of the standard gladiator types. Like other arena combatants, the retiarius fought barefoot.
## Fighting style
The retiarius was traditionally pitted against a secutor or, possibly on rare occasions, a murmillo. Despite the disparity between the nearly nude net-fighter and his heavily armoured adversary, modern re-enactments and experiments show that the retiarius was by no means outmatched. His lack of heavy equipment meant that he could use speed and evasion to his advantage. He also fought with three offensive weapons to his opponent's one. The net-fighter had to avoid close combat at all costs, keep his distance, and wait for an opening to stab with his trident or throw his net. The name secutor means "pursuer" or "chaser", because this gladiator had to chase down the retiarius. They were also known as contraretiarii ("those against the net-man"). The secutor's strategy was to keep behind his shield (scutum) and force his opponent into close combat so that he could strike with his sword. In close quarters, the net-man had only his galerus shoulder guard for defence; its design forced him to keep his head ducked down behind it. The secutor's helmet greatly restricted his sight, hearing, and airflow. Coupled with the heavy weight of his arms and armour—the gear of a murmillo, of which the secutor was a variant, weighed 15 to 18 kg (33 to 40 lb)—this gladiator was in greater danger of exhausting himself in a long fight. One of the retiarius's tactics was to jab at the secutor's shield (the heaviest part of his equipment), forcing him to block and wear himself out.
In skilled hands, the net was a useful weapon. The retiarius's primary objective with it was to capture his opponent. A ewer found at Rheinzabern demonstrates the throwing technique: the retiarius held the net folded up in his right hand and cast it underhanded. He held his trident and dagger in his left hand, careful to keep the trident's prongs pointed downward to avoid snagging it in the mesh. If the toss missed, the retiarius used the drawrope tied to his wrist to bring the net back in hand. On a successful cast, the gladiator tightened the drawcord around the net's perimeter and tried to unbalance or topple his rival. A successful cast of the net could win the battle for the retiarius straightaway. This was not certain, however, as a mosaic at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid shows: in the first panel, the retiarius Kalendio has caught his opponent, a secutor named Astyanax, in his net. In the later image, however, Kalendio lies on the ground, wounded, and raises his dagger to surrender. The inscription above Kalendio shows the sign for "null", implying that the match organisers ordered him killed.
The net could ensnare the secutor's weapon to disarm him and snag away his shield to put him at a significant disadvantage. Other retiarius tricks were to whip the net at his opponent's eyes to blind him and at his legs to trip him. The helmet of the secutor was smooth and round to avoid snagging the net. In most cases, the secutor knew to expect the net-man's tactics and tried to intercept and hold on to the weapon, possibly unsteadying his enemy by yanking on the net. In such danger, the retiarius could sever the drawstring from his wrist with his dagger. The secutor stood by a lost net and left little chance to recover it. Speculation surrounds the frequency with which the retiarius used his net. Extant imagery rarely shows gladiators of the type with a net, yet the class is named for the device, and Juvenal uses the net to quickly identify a retiarius in his satires. The discrepancy may simply be a case of artistic licence; other types of gladiator are often shown without their weapons but can be assumed to be holding them due to their stance, and a net is a particularly difficult weapon to depict. The lack of nets in retiarius images may show gladiators who have already lost the weapon in the fight. Another possibility is that some retiarii simply did not use nets.
In most bouts, the retiarius probably had to resort to fighting with just his trident and dagger, placing him at a disadvantage. The trident was his primary weapon in such situations, and its length allowed the retiarius to keep his opponent at bay. He held the weapon two-handed, left nearer the prongs, so that he could parry his enemy's strikes with its shaft and strike with both ends. Wielded two-handed, the weapon could land powerful blows. Images show retiarii stabbing downward at the secutor's unshielded legs or stabbing down at the helmet in an attempt to poke through an eyehole. The trident itself was too weak to pierce the metal, although a skull found at Ephesus, Turkey, dating to CE 200 to 300 shows that a trident strike to the head could be fatal on a bareheaded opponent. The secutor's helmet was rounded and free of protrusions to avoid snaring the net or being caught in the trident's prongs, but attacks on it forced the secutor to duck or hide behind his shield. This reduced his field of vision and gave the retiarius an advantage with his speed. Should the secutor strike with his sword, the retiarius parried with the trident prongs and attempted to disarm him. Likewise, the more heavily armoured gladiator tried to block the trident with his shield and force the net-man to lose it. Another type of gladiator, scissor could also be pitted against a retiarius. Images from the Eastern Roman Empire show scissores wearing a tubular arm-guard in lieu of a shield. The guard fits over the left hand and ends in a hooked, knife-like blade that was probably intended to parry the net and trident or to snag and pull away the net. Scissores who succeeded in this probably dropped the hook weapon and fought with just a sword.
The retiarius held the dagger in his left hand. The gladiator could use the dagger to cut his net free if it got snagged on his trident. He might fight with the trident in one hand and the dagger in the other, but this negated the advantage of distance afforded by the longer weapon when wielded by itself. The dagger also served as a backup should the retiarius lose both net and trident. He attacked with the dagger when he had the element of surprise and could attempt to wrestle the secutor to the ground. Fights could devolve into straight wrestling matches in such situations, perhaps with daggers. Should the retiarius win and be ordered to kill his rival, he used his knife to stab him or cut his throat. Evidence shows that retiarii could be quite successful combatants; a tombstone from Gaul reads, "[For] the retiarius, L. Pompeius, winner of nine crowns, born in Vienna, twenty-five years of age. His wife put this up with her own money for her wonderful spouse." Nevertheless, the gladiators themselves were prone to boast: A graffito at Pompeii shows the retiarius Antigonus, who claims a ridiculous 2,112 victories, facing a challenger called Superbus, who has won but a single fight.
In some contests, a retiarius faced two secutores at the same time. He stood on a bridge or raised platform with stairs and had a pile of fist-sized stones to lob at his adversaries and keep them at bay. The secutores tried to scale the structure and get at him. The platform (called a pons, "bridge") may have been constructed over water. Such scenarios were one of the rare situations where gladiators were not paired one on one.
## See also
- List of Roman gladiator types
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Josquin des Prez
| 1,172,140,667 |
Composer of the Renaissance (c. 1450–1521)
|
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"1450s births",
"1521 deaths",
"15th-century Franco-Flemish composers",
"16th-century Franco-Flemish composers",
"Belgian male classical composers",
"Classical composers of church music",
"French Roman Catholics",
"French male classical composers",
"Josquin des Prez"
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Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez (c. 1450–1455 – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the Franco-Flemish School and had a profound influence on the music of 16th-century Europe. Building on the work of his predecessors Guillaume Du Fay and Johannes Ockeghem, he developed a complex style of expressive—and often imitative—movement between independent voices (polyphony) which informs much of his work. He further emphasized the relationship between text and music, and departed from the early Renaissance tendency towards lengthy melismatic lines on a single syllable, preferring to use shorter, repeated motifs between voices. Josquin was a singer, and his compositions are mainly vocal. They include masses, motets and secular chansons.
Josquin's biography has been continually revised by modern scholarship, and remains highly uncertain. Little is known of his early years; he was born in the French-speaking area of Flanders, and he may have been an altar boy and have been educated at the Cambrai Cathedral, or taught by Ockeghem. By 1477 he was in the choir of René of Anjou and then probably served under Louis XI of France. Now a wealthy man, in the 1480s Josquin traveled Italy with the Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, may have worked in Vienna for the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, and wrote the motet Ave Maria ... Virgo serena, and the popular chansons Adieu mes amours and Que vous ma dame. He served Pope Innocent VIII and Pope Alexander VI in Rome, Louis XII in France, and Ercole I d'Este in Ferrara. Many of his works were published by Ottaviano Petrucci in the early 16th century, including the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae. In his final years in Condé, Josquin produced some of his most admired works, including the masses Missa de Beata Virgine and Missa Pange lingua; the motets Benedicta es, Inviolata, Pater noster–Ave Maria and Praeter rerum seriem; and the chansons Mille regretz, Nimphes, nappés and Plus nulz regretz.
Influential both during and after his lifetime, Josquin has been described as the first Western composer to retain posthumous fame. His music was widely performed and imitated in 16th-century Europe, and was highly praised by Martin Luther and the music theorists Heinrich Glarean and Gioseffo Zarlino. In the Baroque era, Josquin's reputation became overshadowed by the Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, though he was still studied by some theorists and music historians. During the 20th-century early music revival, publications by August Wilhelm Ambros, Albert Smijers, Helmuth Osthoff and Edward Lowinsky, and a successful academic conference, caused his reevaluation as a central figure in Renaissance music. This has led to controversy over whether he has been unrealistically elevated over his contemporaries, particularly in light of over a hundred attributions now considered dubious. He continues to draw interest in the 21st century and his music is frequently recorded, central in the repertoire of early music vocal ensembles, and the subject of continuing scholarship. He was celebrated worldwide on the 500th anniversary of his death in 2021.
## Name
Josquin's full name, Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez, became known in the late 20th century from a pair of 1483 documents found in Condé-sur-l'Escaut, where he is referred to as the nephew of Gille Lebloitte dit des Prez and the son of Gossard Lebloitte dit des Prez. His first name Josquin is a diminutive form of Josse, the French form of the name of a Judoc, a Breton saint of the 7th century. Josquin was a common name in Flanders and Northern France in the 15th and 16th centuries. Other documents indicate that the surname des Prez had been used by the family for at least two generations, perhaps to distinguish them from other branches of the Lebloitte family. At the time, the name Lebloitte was rare and the reason that Josquin's family took up the more common surname des Prez as their dit name remains uncertain.
His name has many spellings in contemporary records: his first name is spelled as Gosse, Gossequin, Jodocus, Joskin, Josquinus, Josse, Jossequin, Judocus and Juschino; and his surname is given as a Prato, de Prato, Pratensis, de Prés, Desprez, des Prés and des Près. In his motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix, he includes an acrostic of his name, where it is spelled IOSQVIN Des PREZ. Documents from Condé, where he lived for the last years of his life, refer to him as "Maistre Josse Desprez". These include a letter written by the chapter of Notre-Dame of Condé to Margaret of Austria where he is named as "Josquin Desprez". Scholarly opinion differs on whether his surname should be written as one word (Desprez) or two (des Prez), with publications from continental Europe preferring the former and English-language publications the latter. Modern scholarship typically refers to him as Josquin.
## Life
### Early life
#### Birth and background
Little is known about Josquin's early years. The specifics of his biography have been debated for centuries. The musicologist William Elders noted that "it could be called a twist of fate that neither the year, nor the place of birth of the greatest composer of the Renaissance is known". A now-outdated theory is that he was born around 1440, based on a mistaken association with Jushinus de Kessalia, recorded in documents as "Judocus de Picardia". A reevaluation of his later career, name and family background has discredited this claim. He is now thought to have been born around 1450, and at the latest 1455, making him a "a close contemporary" of Loyset Compère and Heinrich Isaac, and slightly older than Jacob Obrecht.
Josquin's father was a policeman in the castellany of Ath, who was accused of numerous offenses, including complaints of undue force, and disappears from the records after 1448. Nothing is known of Josquin's mother, who is absent from surviving documents, suggesting that she was either not considered Josquin's legitimate mother, or that she died soon after, or during, his birth. Around 1466, perhaps on the death of his father, Josquin was named by his uncle and aunt, Gille Lebloitte dit des Prez and Jacque Banestonne, as their heir.
Josquin was born in the French-speaking area of Flanders, in modern-day northeastern France or Belgium. Despite his association with Condé in his later years, Josquin's own testimony indicates that he was not born there. The only firm evidence for his birthplace is a later legal document in which Josquin described being born beyond Noir Eauwe, meaning 'Black Water'. This description has puzzled scholars, and there are various theories on which body of water is being referred to. L'Eau Noire river in the Ardennes has been proposed, and there was a village named Prez there, though the musicologist David Fallows contends that the complications surrounding Josquin's name make a surname connection irrelevant, and that the river is too small and too far from Condé to be a candidate. Fallows proposes a birthplace near the converging Escaut and Haine rivers at Condé, preferring the latter since it was known for transporting coal, perhaps fitting the "Black Water" description. Other theories include a birth near Saint-Quentin, Aisne, due to his early association with the Collegiate Church of Saint-Quentin, or in the small village of Beaurevoir, which is near the Escaut, a river that may be referred to in an acrostic in his later motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix.
#### Youth
There is no documentary evidence covering Josquin's education or upbringing. Fallows associates him with Goseequin de Condent, an altar boy at the collegiate church of Saint-Géry, Cambrai until mid-1466. Other scholars such as Gustave Reese relay a 17th-century account from Cardinal Richelieu's friend Claude Hémeré, suggesting that Josquin became a choirboy with his friend Jean Mouton at the Collegiate Church of Saint-Quentin; this account has been questioned. The collegiate chapel there was an important center of royal patronage and music for the area. All records from Saint-Quentin were destroyed in 1669, and Josquin may have acquired his later connections with the French royal chapel through an early association with Saint-Quentin. He may have studied under Johannes Ockeghem, a leading composer whom he greatly admired throughout his life. This is claimed by later writers such as Gioseffo Zarlino and Lodovico Zacconi; Josquin wrote a lamentation on the death of Ockeghem, Nymphes des bois. There is no concrete evidence for this tutorship, and later commentators may only have meant that Josquin "learnt from the older composer's example". Josquin musically quoted Ockeghem several times, most directly in his double motet Alma Redemptoris mater/Ave regina caelorum, which shares an opening line with Ockeghem's motet Alma Redemptoris mater.
Josquin could have been associated with Cambrai Cathedral, as there is a "des Prez" among the cathedral's musicians listed in Omnium bonorum plena, a motet by Compère. The motet was composed before 1474 and names many important musicians of the time, including Antoine Busnois, Johannes Tinctoris, Johannes Regis, Ockeghem and Guillaume Du Fay. The motet may refer to the singer Pasquier Desprez, but Josquin is a likelier candidate. Josquin was certainly influenced by Du Fay's music; the musicologist Alejandro Planchart suggests that the impact was not particularly large.
#### Early career
The first firm record of Josquin's employment is from 19 April 1477 when he was a singer in the chapel of René of Anjou, in Aix-en-Provence. Other evidence may place him in Aix as early as 1475. Josquin remained there until at least 1478, after which his name disappears from historical records for five years. He may have remained in René's service, joining his other singers to serve Louis XI, who sent them to the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris. Josquin's connection to Louis XI could be furthered by his early motet Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo, which may be a musical tribute for the king, since it ends with the psalm verse "In te Domine speravi, non confundar in aeternum", the line Louis commissioned Jean Bourdichon to write on 50 scrolls in the Château de Plessis-lez-Tours. A less accepted theory for Josquin's activities between 1478 and 1483 is that he had already entered the household of his future employer Ascanio Sforza in 1480. In that case, Josquin would have been with Ascanio in Ferrara and might have written his Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae at this time for Ercole d'Este. Around this period the Casanatense chansonnier was collected in Ferrara, which includes six chansons by Josquin, Adieu mes amours, En l'ombre d'ung buissonet, Et trop penser, Ile fantazies de Joskin, Que vous ma dame and Une mousque de Biscaye. Adieu mes amours and Que vous ma dame are thought to have been particularly popular, given their wide dissemination in later sources.
In February 1483 Josquin returned to Condé to claim his inheritance from his aunt and uncle, who may have been killed when the army of Louis XI besieged the town in May 1478 and had the population locked and burned in a church. In the same document, the collegiate church of Condé is reported to have given vin d'honneur (lit. 'wine of honor') to Josquin, because "as a musician who had already served two kings, he was now a distinguished visitor to the little town". Josquin hired at least 15 procurators to deal with his inheritance, suggesting he was then wealthy. This would explain how later in his life he was able to travel frequently and did not have to compose greatly demanded mass cycles like contemporaries Isaac and Ludwig Senfl.
### Italy and travels
#### Milan and elsewhere
A surviving record indicates that Josquin was in Milan by 15 May 1484, perhaps just after his 1483 trip to Condé. In March 1484 he may have visited Rome. Fallows speculates that Josquin left Condé for Italy so quickly because his inheritance gave him more freedom and allowed him to avoid serving a king who he suspected had caused the deaths of his aunt and uncle. By then, the sacred music of Milan Cathedral had a reputation for excellence. Josquin was employed by the House of Sforza, and on 20 June 1484 came into the service of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. Josquin's renown as a composer, a strong recommendation from a patron of fellow musician, or the use of his wealth, might have helped him get this prestigious and long-term position. While working for Ascanio, on 19 August Josquin successfully requested a previously rejected dispensation to be rector at the parish church Saint Aubin without having been ordained a priest. Joshua Rifkin dates the well-known motet Ave Maria ... Virgo serena to this time, c. 1485.
Josquin went to Rome with Ascanio in July 1484 for a year, and may have gone to Paris for a litigation suit involving the benefice in Saint Aubin during the later 1480s. Around this time the poet Serafino dell'Aquila wrote his sonnet to Josquin, "Ad Jusquino suo compagno musico d'Ascanio" ("To Josquin, his fellow musician of Ascanio"), which asks him "not to be discouraged if his 'genius so sublime' seemed poorly remunerated". Between 1485 and 1489 Josquin may have served under the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus in Vienna; an account by the Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro in 1539 recalls the archbishop of Esztergom Pal Varday [hu] stating that the court of Matthias included "excellent painters and musicians, among them even Josquin himself". Some scholars suggest Aleandro was repeating a false rumor, or that Varday confused Josquin des Prez for Josquin Dor or Johannes de Stokem. Fallows contends that it is unlikely that Varday, who was well-educated and a musician, would have made such a mistake, but concedes that it is possible. The court of Matthias had a high standard of music and employed numerous musicians, many of them from Italy. Though Fallows asserts that Josquin's presence in the Hungarian king's service is likely, the evidence is circumstantial, and no original documents survive to confirm the claim. Josquin was in Milan again in January 1489, probably until early May, and met the theorist and composer Franchinus Gaffurius there.
#### Rome
From June 1489 until at least April 1494, Josquin was a member of the papal choir in Rome, under Pope Innocent VIII then the Borgia pope Alexander VI. Josquin may have arrived there due to an exchange of singers between Ludovico Sforza and Pope Innocent, where the latter sent Gaspar van Weerbeke to Milan, presumably in return for Josquin. Josquin's arrival brought much-needed prestige to the choir, as the composers Gaspar and Stokem had left recently and the only other choristers known to be composers were Marbrianus de Orto and Bertrandus Vaqueras. Two months after his arrival, Josquin laid claim to the first of various benefices on 18 August. Holding three unrelated benefices at once, without having residency there or needing to speak that area's language, was a special privilege that Josquin's tenure and position offered; many of his choir colleagues had also enjoyed such privileges. His claims included a canonry at the Notre-Dame de Paris; Saint Omer, Cambrai; a parish in the gift of Saint-Ghislain Abbey; the Basse-Yttre parish church; two parishes near Frasnes, Hainaut; and Saint-Géry, Cambrai. Surviving papal letters indicate that some of these claims were approved, but he does not appear to have taken up any of the canonries. The Sistine Chapel's monthly payment records give the best record of Josquin's career, but all papal chapel records from April 1494 to November 1500 are lost, making it unknown when he left Rome.
After restorations from 1997 to 1998, the name JOSQUINJ was found as a graffito on the wall of the Sistine Chapel's cantoria (choir gallery). It is one of almost four hundred names inscribed in the chapel, around a hundred of which can be identified with singers of the papal choir. They date from the 15th to 18th centuries, and the JOSQUINJ signature is in the style of the former. There is some evidence suggesting the name refers to Josquin des Prez; it may be interpreted as either "Josquin" or "Josquinus", depending on whether the curved line on the far right is read as the abbreviation for "us". Other choristers named Josquin tended to sign their name in full, whereas Josquin des Prez is known to have done so mononymously on occasion. Andrea Adami da Bolsena notes in his 1711 Osservazioni per ben regolare il coro dei cantori della Cappella Pontificia that in his time Josquin's name was visibly 'sculpted' in the Sistine Chapel's choir room. The musicologist Richard Sherr writes that "while this is not a true autograph signature, the possibility that Josquin des Prez actually produced it during his stay in the papal chapel is very high", and Fallows says that "it hardly counts as an autograph, but it may be the closest we can get."
### France
Documents found since the late 20th century have shed some light on Josquin's life and works between 1494 and 1503; at some point he was ordained a priest. In August 1494 he went to Cambrai, as attested by a vin d'honneur (lit. 'wine of honor') record, and he may have returned to Rome soon after. From then to 1498 there is no firm evidence for his activities; Fallows suggests he stayed in Cambrai for these four years, citing Johannes Manlius's 1562 book Locorum communium collectanea, which associates Josquin with Cambrai's musical establishment. This assertion would fit with Josquin's possible youthful connections in Cambrai and later vin d'honneur there. Manlius cites the reformer Philip Melanchthon as the source for many of his stories, strengthening the authenticity of his Josquin anecdotes; Melanchthon was close to musical figures of his time, including the publisher Georg Rhau and the composer Adrianus Petit Coclico.
Two letters between members of the House of Gonzaga and Ascanio Sforza suggest that Josquin may have re-entered the service of the Sforza family in Milan around 1498; they refer to a servant Juschino who delivered the hunting dogs to the Gonzagas. Circumstantial evidence suggests Juschino may have been Josquin des Prez, but he is not known to have been qualified for such a task, and it would be unusual to refer to him as a servant rather than a musician or singer. Josquin probably did not stay in Milan long, since his former employers were captured during Louis XII's 1499 invasion. Before he left, he most likely wrote two secular compositions, the well-known frottola El Grillo ("The Cricket"), and In te Domine speravi ("I have placed my hope in you, Lord"), based on Psalm 31. The latter might be a veiled reference to the religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola, who had been burned at the stake in Florence in 1498, and for whom Josquin seems to have had a special reverence; the text was Savonarola's favorite psalm, a meditation on which he left unfinished in prison when he was executed.
Josquin was probably in France during the early 16th century; documents found in 2008 indicate that he visited Troyes twice between 1499 and 1501. The long doubted account from Hémeré that Josquin had a canonry at Saint-Quentin was confirmed by documentary evidence that he had exchanged it by 30 May 1503. Canonries at Saint-Quentin were almost always gifts from the French king to royal household members, suggesting Josquin had been employed by Louis XII. According to Glarean in the Dodecachordon of 1547, the motet Memor esto verbi tui servo tuo ("Remember thy promise unto thy servant") was composed as a gentle reminder to the king to keep his promise of a benefice to Josquin. Glarean claimed that on receiving the benefice, Josquin wrote a motet on the text Bonitatem fecisti cum servo tuo, Domine ("Lord, thou hast dealt graciously with thy servant") to show his gratitude to the king, either Louis XI or Louis XII. Although such a motet survives and is mentioned with Josquin's Memor esto in many sources, Bonitatem fecisti is now attributed to Carpentras. Some of Josquin's other compositions have been tentatively dated to his French period, such as Vive le roy, and In exitu Israel, which resembles the style of other composers of the French court. The five-voice De profundis, a setting of Psalm 130, seems to have been written for a royal funeral, perhaps that of Louis XII, Anne of Brittany or Philip I of Castile.
### Ferrara
Josquin arrived in Ferrara by 30 May 1503, to serve Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, an arts patron who had been trying for many years to replace the composer and choirmaster Johannes Martini, who had recently died. No extant documents record Josquin as having worked in Ferrara before, though his earlier associations with Ercole suggest prior employment there; he signed a deed indicating he did not intend to stay there for long. Ercole is known to have met with Josquin's former employer Louis XII throughout 1499 to 1502, and these meetings may have led to his service for the Duke. Two letters survive explaining the circumstances of his arrival, both from courtiers who scouted musical talent in the service of Ercole. The first of these was from Girolamo da Sestola (nicknamed "Coglia") to Ercole, explaining: "My lord, I believe that there is neither lord nor king who will now have a better chapel than yours if your lordship sends for Josquin [...] and by having Josquin in our chapel I want to place a crown upon this chapel of ours" (14 August 1502). The second letter, from the courtier Gian de Artiganova, criticized Josquin and suggested Heinrich Isaac instead:
> "To me [Isaac] seems well suited to serve your lordship, more so than Josquin, because he is more good-natured and companionable, and will compose new works more often. It is true that Josquin composes better, but he composes when he wants to and not when one wants him to, and he is asking 200 ducats in salary while Isaac will come for 120—but your lordship will decide."
Around three months later, Josquin was chosen; his salary of 200 ducats was the highest ever for a ducal chapel member. The Artiganova letter is a unique source for Josquin's personality, and the musicologist Patrick Macey interprets it as meaning he was a "difficult colleague and that he took an independent attitude towards producing music for his patrons". Edward Lowinsky connected his purportedly difficult behavior with musical talent, and used the letter as evidence that Josquin's contemporaries recognized his genius. Musicologist Rob Wegman questions whether meaningful conclusions can be drawn from such an anecdote. In a later publication, Wegman notes the largely unprecedented nature of such a position and warns "yet of course the letter could equally well be seen to reflect the attitudes and expectations of its recipient, Ercole d'Este".
While in Ferrara, Josquin wrote some of his most famous compositions, including the austere, Savonarola-influenced Miserere mei, Deus, which became one of the most widely distributed motets of the 16th century. Also probably from this period was the virtuoso motet Virgo salutiferi, set to a poem by Ercole Strozzi, and O virgo prudentissima based on a poem by Poliziano. Due to its stylistic resemblance to Miserere and Virgo salutiferi, the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae is also attributed to this time; it was previously thought to have been written in the early 1480s. Josquin did not stay in Ferrara long. An outbreak of the plague in 1503 prompted the evacuation of the Duke and his family, as well as two-thirds of the citizens, and Josquin left by April 1504. His replacement, Obrecht, died of the plague in mid-1505.
### Condé
Josquin probably moved from Ferrara to his home region of Condé-sur-l'Escaut, and became provost of the collegiate church of Notre-Dame on 3 May 1504; he may have obtained the post from Philip I's sponsorship. His role gave him political responsibility, and put him in charge of a workforce which included a dean, a treasurer, 25 canons, 18 chaplains, 16 vicars, 6 choir-boys and other priests. This was an appealing place for his old age: it was near his birthplace, had a renowned choir and was the leading musical establishment in Hainaut, besides St. Vincent at Soignies and Cambrai Cathedral. Very few records of his activity survive from this time; he bought a house in September 1504, and sold it (or a different one) in November 1508. The Josquin mentioned may be the Joskin who traveled to present chansons to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Brussels or Mechelen.
In his later years Josquin composed many of his most admired works. They include the masses Missa de Beata Virgine and Missa Pange lingua; the motets Benedicta es, Inviolata, Pater noster–Ave Maria and Praeter rerum seriem; and the chansons Mille regretz, Nimphes, nappés and Plus nulz regretz. The last of these, Plus nulz regretz, is set to a poem by Jean Lemaire de Belges that celebrates the future engagement between Charles V and Mary Tudor. In his last years Josquin's music saw European-wide dissemination through publications by the printer Ottaviano Petrucci. Josquin's compositions were given a prominent place by Petrucci, and were reissued numerous times.
On his deathbed, Josquin left an endowment for the performance of his work, Pater noster, at all general processions when townsfolk passed his house, stopping to place a wafer on the marketplace altar to the Holy Virgin. He died on 27 August 1521 and left his possessions to Condé's chapter of Notre Dame. He was buried in front of the church's high altar, but his tomb was destroyed, either during the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) or in 1793 when the church was demolished amid the French Revolution.
## Music
After Du Fay died in 1474, Josquin and his contemporaries lived in a musical world of frequent stylistic change, in part due to the movement of musicians between different regions of Europe. A line of musicologists credits Josquin with three primary developments:
1\) The gradual departure from extensive melismatic lines, and emphasis instead on smaller motifs. These "motivic cells" were short, easily recognizable melodic fragments which passed from one voice to another in a contrapuntal texture, giving it an inner unity.
2\) The prominent use of imitative polyphony, equally between voices, which "combines a rational and homogeneous integration of the musical space with a self-renewing rhythmic impetus".
3\) A focus on the text, with the music serving to emphasize its meaning, an early form of word painting.
The musicologist Jeremy Noble concludes that these innovations demonstrate the transition from the earlier music of Du Fay and Ockeghem, to Josquin's successors Adrian Willaert and Jacques Arcadelt, and eventually to the late Renaissance composers Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlande de Lassus. Josquin was a professional singer throughout his life, and his compositions are almost exclusively vocal. He wrote in primarily three genres: the mass, motet, and chanson (with French text). In his 50-year career, Josquin's body of work is larger than that of any other composer of his period, besides perhaps Isaac and Obrecht. Establishing a chronology of his compositions is difficult; the sources in which they were published offer little evidence, and historical and contextual connections are meager. Few manuscripts of Josquin's music date from before the 16th century, due to, according to Noble, "time, war and enthusiasm (both religious and anti-religious)". Identifying earlier works is particularly difficult, and later works only occasionally offer any more certainty. The musicologist Richard Taruskin writes that modern scholarship is "still nowhere near a wholly reliable chronology and unlikely ever to reach it", and suggests that the current tentative models "tell us more about ourselves, and the way in which we come to know what we know, than they do about Josquin".
### Masses
The mass is the central rite of the Catholic Church, and polyphonic settings of the ordinary of the mass—the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei—increased in popularity in the 14th century. From the 15th century, composers treated it as a central genre in Western classical music in accordance with greater demand. By Josquin's time, masses were generally standardized into substantial, polyphonic five-movement works, making it difficult for composers to satisfy both liturgical and musical demands. Previous examples in the genre by composers such as Du Fay and Ockeghem were widely admired and emulated.
Josquin and Obrecht led an intensive development of the genre. Josquin's masses are generally less progressive than his motets—though he is credited with numerous innovations in the genre. His less radical approach may be explained by most of the masses being earlier works, or the structural and textual limitations of the genre. Almost all are for four voices.
The Josquin Companion categorizes the composer's masses into the following styles:
- Canonic masses, which contains one or more voices derived from another via strict imitation;
- Cantus firmus masses, in which a pre-existing tune appears in one voice of the texture, with the other voices being more or less freely composed;
- Paraphrase masses, based on a popular monophonic song which is used freely in all voices, and in many variations;
- Parody masses, based on a polyphonic song, which appears in whole or in part, with material from all voices in use, not just the tune; and
- Solmization masses, named soggetto cavato by Zarlino, in which the base tune is drawn from the syllables of a name or phrase.
Josquin began his career at a time when composers started to find strict cantus firmus masses limiting. He pioneered paraphrase and parody masses, which were not well established before the 16th century. Many of his works combine the cantus firmus style with paraphrase and parody, making strict categorization problematic. Reflecting on Josquin's masses, Noble notes that "In general his instinct, at least in his mature works, seems to be to extract as much variety as possible from his given musical material, sacred or secular, by any appropriate means."
#### Canonic masses
Josquin's predecessors and contemporaries wrote masses based on canonic imitation. The canonic voices in these masses derive from pre-existing melodies such as the "L'homme armé" song (Faugues, Compère and Forestier), or chant (Fevin and La Rue's Missae de feria). Josquin's two canonic masses are not based on existing tunes, and so stand apart from the mainstream. They are closer to the Missa prolationum written by Ockeghem, and Missa ad fugam by de Orto, both of which use original melodies in all the voices.
Josquin's two canonic masses were published in Petrucci's third book of Josquin masses in 1514; the Missa ad fugam is the earlier of the two. It has a head-motif consisting of the whole first Kyrie which is repeated in the beginning of all five movements. The canon is restricted to the highest voice, and the pitch interval between the voices is fixed while the temporal interval varies between only two values; the two free voices generally do not participate in the imitation. The precise relationship of Josquin's mass to de Orto's is uncertain, as is Josquin's authorship of the mass.
No questions of authenticity cloud the Missa sine nomine, written during Josquin's final years in Condé. In contrast to the inflexibility of the canonic scheme in the Missa ad fugam, the temporal and pitch interval of the canon, along with the voices that participate in it, are varied throughout. The free voices are more fully integrated into the texture, and frequently participate in imitation with the canonic voices, sometimes preemptively.
#### Cantus firmus masses
Prior to Josquin's mature period, the most common technique for writing masses was the cantus firmus, a technique which had been in use for most of the 15th century. Josquin used the technique early in his career, with the Missa L'ami Baudichon considered to be one of his earliest masses. This mass is based on a secular tune similar to "Three Blind Mice". Basing a mass on such a source was an accepted procedure, as evidenced by the existence of the mass in Sistine Chapel part-books copied during the papacy of Julius II (1503–1513).
Josquin's most famous cantus firmus masses are the two based on the "L'homme armé" (lit. 'the armed man'), a popular tune for mass composition throughout the Renaissance. Though both are relatively mature compositions, they are very different. Missa L'homme armé super voces musicales, is a technical tour-de-force on the tune, containing numerous mensuration canons and contrapuntal display. Throughout the work, the melody is presented on each note of the natural hexachord: C, D, E, F, G and A. The later Missa L'homme armé sexti toni is a "fantasia on the theme of the armed man." While based on a cantus firmus, it is also a paraphrase mass, for fragments of the tune appear in all voices; throughout the work the melody appears in a wide variety of tempos and rhythms. Technically it is almost restrained, compared to the other L'homme armé mass, until the closing Agnus Dei, which contains a complex canonic structure including a rare retrograde canon, around which other voices are woven.
#### Paraphrase masses
The paraphrase mass differed from the cantus firmus technique in that the source material, though still monophonic, could be (by Josquin's time) highly embellished, often with ornaments. As in the cantus firmus technique, the source tune may appear in many voices of the mass. Several of Josquin's masses feature the paraphrase technique, such as the early Missa Gaudeamus, which also includes cantus firmus and canonic elements. The Missa Ave maris stella, also probably an early work, paraphrases the Marian antiphon of the same name; it is one of his shortest masses. The late Missa de Beata Virgine paraphrases plainchants in praise of the Virgin Mary. As a Lady Mass, it is a votive mass for Saturday performance, and was his most popular mass in the 16th century.
The best known of Josquin's paraphrase masses, and one of the most famous mass settings of the Renaissance, is the Missa Pange lingua, based on a hymn by Thomas Aquinas for the Vespers of Corpus Christi. It was probably the last mass Josquin composed. This mass is an extended fantasia on the tune, using the melody in all voices and all parts of the mass, in elaborate and ever-changing polyphony. One of the high points of the mass is the et incarnatus est section of the Credo, where the texture becomes homophonic, and the tune appears in the topmost voice. Here the portion which would normally set—"Sing, O my tongue, of the mystery of the divine body"—is instead given the words "And he became incarnate by the Holy Ghost from the Virgin Mary, and was made man." Noble comments that "The vigour of the earlier masses can still be felt in the rhythms and the strong drive to cadences, perhaps more so than in the Missa de Beata Virgine, but essentially the two contrasting strains of Josquin's music—fantasy and intellectual control—are so blended and balanced in these two works that one can see in them the beginnings of a new style: one which reconciles the conflicting aims of the great 15th-century composers in a new synthesis that was in essence to remain valid for the whole of the 16th century."
#### Parody masses
Du Fay was one of the first to write masses based on secular songs (a parody mass), and his Missa Se la face ay pale, dates to the decade of Josquin's birth. By the turn of the 16th century, composers were moving from quoting single voice lines, to widen their reference to all voices in the piece. This was part of the transition from the medieval cantus firmus mass, where the voice bearing the preexisting melody stood aloof from the others, to the Renaissance parody masses, where all the voices formed an integrated texture. In such masses, the source material was not a single line, but motifs and points of imitation from all voices within a polyphonic work. By the time Josquin died, these parody masses had become well established and Josquin's works demonstrate the variety of methods in musical borrowing during this transition period.
Six works are generally attributed to Josquin which borrow from polyphonic pieces, two of which also include canonic features. One of these—the Missa Di dadi, which includes a canon in the "Benedictus"—is based on a chanson by Robert Morton and has the rhythmic augmentation of the borrowed tenor part indicated by dice faces, which are printed next to the staff. Canon can also be found in the "Osanna" of the Missa Faisant regretz which is based on Walter Frye's Tout a par moy. The Missa Fortuna desperata is based on the popular three-voice Italian song Fortuna desperata. In this mass, Josquin used each of the Italian song's voices as cantus firmi, varying throughout the work. A similar variation in the source material's voices is used in the Missa Malheur me bat, based on a chanson variously attributed to Martini or Abertijne Malcourt. The dating of Missa Malheur me bat remains controversial, with some scholars calling it an early composition, and others a later one. The Missa Mater Patris, based on a three-voice motet by Antoine Brumel, is probably the earliest true parody mass by any composer, as it no longer contains any hint of a cantus firmus. Missa D'ung aultre amer is based on a popular chanson of the same name by Ockeghem, and is one of Josquin's shortest masses.
#### Solmization mass
A solmization mass is a polyphonic mass which uses notes drawn from a word or phrase. The style is first described by Zarlino in 1558, who called it soggetto cavato, from soggetto cavato dalle parole, meaning "carved out of the words". The earliest known mass by any composer using solmization syllables is the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, which Josquin wrote for Ercole I. It is based on a cantus firmus of musical syllables of the Duke's name, 'Ercole, Duke of Ferrara', which in Latin is 'Hercules Dux Ferrarie'. Taking the solmization syllables with the same vowels gives: Re–Ut–Re–Ut–Re–Fa–Mi–Re, which is D–C–D–C–D–F–E–D in modern nomenclature. The Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae remains the best known work to use this device and was published by Petrucci in 1505, relatively soon after its composition. Taruskin notes that the use of Ercole's name is Josquin's method of memorialization for his patron, akin to a portrait painting.
The other Josquin mass to prominently use this technique is the Missa La sol fa re mi, based on the musical syllables contained in 'laisse faire moy' ("let me take care of it"). Essentially the entire mass's content is related to this phrase, and the piece is thus something of an ostinato. The traditional story, as told by Glarean in 1547, was that an unknown aristocrat used to order suitors away with this phrase, and Josquin immediately wrote an "exceedingly elegant" mass on it as a jab at him. Scholars have proposed different origins for the piece; Lowinsky has connected it to the court of Ascanio Sforza, and the art historian Dawson Kiang connected it to the Turkish prince Cem Sultan's promise to the pope to overthrow his brother Bayezid II.
### Motets
Josquin's motets are his most celebrated and influential works. Their style varies considerably, but can generally be divided into homophonic settings with block chords and syllabic text declamation; ornate—and often imitative—contrapuntal fantasias in which the text is overshadowed by music; and psalm settings which combined these extremes with the addition of rhetorical figures and text-painting that foreshadowed the later development of the madrigal. He wrote most of them for four voices, which had become the compositional norm by the mid-15th century, and descended from the four-part writing of Guillaume de Machaut and John Dunstaple in the late Middle Ages. Josquin was also a considerable innovator in writing motets for five and six voices.
Many of the motets use compositional constraint on the process; others are freely composed. Some use a cantus firmus as a unifying device, some are canonic, others use a motto which repeats throughout, and some use several of these methods. In some motets which use canon, it is designed to be heard and appreciated as such; in others a canon is present, but difficult to hear. Josquin frequently used imitation in writing his motets, with sections akin to fugal expositions occurring on successive lines of the text he was setting. This is prominent in his motet Ave Maria ... Virgo serena, an early work where each voice enters by restating the line sung before it. Other early works such as a Alma Redemptoris mater/Ave regina caelorum show prominent imitation, as do later ones such as his setting of Dominus regnavit (Psalm 93) for four voices. Josquin favored the technique throughout his career.
Few composers before Josquin had written polyphonic psalm settings, and these form a large proportion of his later motets. Josquin's settings include the famous Miserere (Psalm 51); Memor esto verbi tui, based on Psalm 119; and two settings of De profundis (Psalm 130), which are often considered to be among his most significant accomplishments. Josquin wrote several examples of a new type of piece developed in Milan, the motet-chanson. Though similar to 15th-century works based on the formes fixes mold which were completely secular, Josquin's motet-chansons contained a chant-derived Latin cantus firmus in the lowest of the three voices. The other voices sang a secular French text, which had either a symbolic relationship to the sacred Latin text, or commented on it. Josquin's three known motet-chansons are Que vous madame/In pace, A la mort/Monstra te esse matrem and Fortune destrange plummaige/Pauper sum ego.
### Secular music
Josquin left numerous French chansons, for three to six voices, some of which were probably intended for instrumental performance as well. In his chansons, he often used a cantus firmus, sometimes a popular song whose origin can no longer be traced, as in Si j'avoye Marion. In other works he used a tune originally associated with a separate text, or freely composed an entire song, using no apparent external source material. Another technique Josquin used was to take a popular song and write it as a canon with itself, in two inner voices, and write new melodic material above and around it, to a new text: he did this in one of his most famous chansons, Faulte d'argent.
Josquin's earliest chansons were probably composed in northern Europe, under the influence of composers such as Ockeghem and Busnois. Unlike them, he never adhered strictly to the conventions of the formes fixes—the rigid and complex repetition patterns of the rondeau, virelai, and ballade—instead he often wrote his early chansons in strict imitation, as with many of his sacred works. He was one of the first to write chansons with all voices equal parts of the texture, and many contain points of imitation, similar to his motets. He also used melodic repetition, especially where the lines of text rhymed, and many of his chansons had a lighter texture and faster tempo than his motets. Some of his chansons were almost certainly designed to be performed with instruments; Petrucci published many of them without text, and some of the pieces (for example, the fanfare-like Vive le roy) contain writing more idiomatic for instruments than voices. Josquin's most famous chansons circulated widely in Europe; some of the better-known include his lament on the death of Ockeghem, Nymphes des bois/Requiem aeternam; Mille regretz, an uncertain attribution to Josquin; Nimphes, nappés; and Plus nulz regretz.
Josquin also wrote at least three pieces in the manner of the frottola, a popular Italian song form which he would have heard during his years in Milan. These songs include Scaramella, El grillo and In te domine speravi. They are even simpler in texture than his French chansons, being almost uniformly syllabic and homophonic, and they remain among his most frequently performed pieces.
## Portraits
A small woodcut portraying Josquin is the most reproduced image of any Renaissance composer. Printed in Petrus Opmeer's 1611 Opus chronographicum orbis universi, the woodcut is the earliest known depiction of Josquin and presumably based on an oil painting which Opmeer says was kept in the collegiate church of St. Goedele. Church documents discovered in the 1990s have corroborated Opmeer's statement about the painting's existence. It may have been painted during Josquin's lifetime and was owned by Petrus Jacobi (), a cantor and organist at St. Gudula, Brussels. Following the will's instructions, the altarpiece was placed next to Jacobi's tomb, but it was destroyed in the late 16th century by Protestant iconoclasts. Whether the woodcut is a realistic likeness of the oil painting remains uncertain; Elders notes that comparisons between contemporaneous woodcuts based on original paintings that do survive often show incompetent realizations, putting the accuracy of the woodcut in question.
The Portrait of a Musician, widely attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, depicts a man holding sheet music, which has led many scholars to identify him as a musician. The work is usually dated to the mid-1480s, and numerous candidates have been proposed, including Franchinus Gaffurius and Atalante Migliorotti, though none have achieved wide approval. In 1972, the Belgian musicologist Suzanne Clercx-Lejeune [fr] argued the subject is Josquin; she interpreted the words on the sitter's sheet music as "Cont" (an abbreviation of "Contratenor"), "Cantuz" (Cantus) and "A Z" (an abbreviation of "Altuz"), and she identified the music as Josquin's llibata Dei Virgo nutrix. Several factors make this unlikely: the painting does not resemble the Opmeer portrait, the notation is largely illegible and as a priest in his mid-thirties Josquin does not seem like the younger layperson in the portrait. Fallows disagrees, noting that "a lot of new details point to Josquin, who was the right age, in the right place, had already served at least two kings, and was now rich enough to have his portrait painted by the best", but concludes that "we shall probably never know who Leonardo's musician was".
A portrait from the early 16th century kept in the Galleria nazionale di Parma is often related to Josquin. It is usually attributed to Filippo Mazzola, and is thought to depict the Italian music theorist Nicolò Burzio [it], though neither the attribution nor sitter are certain. The man in the painting is holding an altered version of Josquin's canon Guillaume se va chauffer. Fallows notes that the subject has similar facial features to the portrait printed by Opmeer, but concludes that there is not enough evidence to conclude Josquin is the sitter. Clercx-Lejeune also suggested Josquin was depicted in Jean Perréal's fresco of the liberal arts in Le Puy Cathedral, but this has not achieved acceptance from other scholars. An 1811 painting by Charles-Gustave Housez [fr] depicts Josquin; it was created long after the composer's death, but Clercx-Lejeune has contended that it is an older portrait which Housez restored and modified.
## Legacy
### Influence
Elders described Josquin as "the first composer in the history of Western music not to have been forgotten after his death", while John Milsom called him "the towering composer of the Renaissance". Fallows wrote that his influence on 16th century European music is comparable to that of Beethoven on the 19th and Igor Stravinsky on the 20th century. Comparisons with Beethoven are particularly common, though Taruskin cautions that:
> "Drawing parallels between [Josquin and Beethoven] is easy; doing so has become traditional in music historiography. Unease with this tradition has occasionally been expressed by those who see in it a danger to an unprejudiced view of Josquin and his time [...] To think of Josquin merely as a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Beethoven would be like placing him behind the nearer figure and thereby obscuring him from view."
His popularity led to imitation by fellow composers, and some publishers (especially in Germany) misattributed works to him after his death to meet the demand for new Josquin compositions. This inspired a well-known remark that "now that Josquin is dead, he is producing more compositions than when he was still alive". Fallows asserts that the issue was more complex than publishers attempting to increase their profits: similar names of composers and compositions caused confusion, as did works which quoted Josquin, or student works which imitated his style. Josquin's pupils may have included Jean Lhéritier and Nicolas Gombert; Coclico claimed to be his student, though his statements are notoriously unreliable.
Numerous composers wrote laments after his death, three of which were published by Tielman Susato in a 1545 edition of Josquin's music. These included works by Benedictus Appenzeller, Gombert, Jacquet of Mantua and Jheronimus Vinders, as well as the anonymous Absolve, quaesumus, while Jean Richafort's requiem musically quoted him. Josquin's compositions traveled widely after his death, more so than those of Du Fay, Ockeghem and Obrecht combined. Surviving copies of his motets and masses in Spanish cathedrals date from the mid-16th century, and the Sistine Chapel is known to have performed his works regularly throughout the late 16th century and into the 17th. Instrumental arrangements of his works were often published from the 1530s to the 1590s. Josquin was described by Taruskin as the "master architect" of High Renaissance music, and his compositions were parodied or quoted throughout Europe by almost every major composer of the later Renaissance, including Arcadelt, Brumel, Bartolomé de Escobedo, Antoine de Févin, Robert de Févin, George de La Hèle, Lupus Hellinck, Pierre Hesdin [ca], Lassus, Jacquet, Claudio Merulo, Philippe de Monte, Pierre Moulu, Philippe Rogier, Palestrina, Cipriano de Rore, Nicola Vicentino and Willaert.
### Reputation
#### Commendation, decline and reconsideration
There is little information on Josquin's reputation during his lifetime. His composition of masses was commended by Paolo Cortese [it], and the poet Jean Molinet and the music theorists Gaffurius and Pietro Aron wrote about his works. Josquin's popularity during his lifetime is also suggested by publications: Petrucci's Misse Josquin of 1502 was the first single-composer mass anthology, and Josquin was the only composer whose masses merited a second and a third volume. Fallows asserts that Josquin gained European renown between 1494 and 1503, since the Petrucci publications and references by Gaffurius and Molinet occurred during this time. After Josquin's death, humanists such as Cosimo Bartoli, Baldassare Castiglione and François Rabelais praised him, with Bartoli describing him as Michelangelo's equal in music. Josquin was championed by the later theorists Heinrich Glarean and Gioseffo Zarlino, and the theologian Martin Luther declared "he is the master of the notes. They must do as he wills; as for the other composers, they have to do as the notes will."
Upon the emergence of Baroque music in the 17th century, Josquin's dominance began to lessen. He was overshadowed by Palestrina, who dominated the pre-common practice period musical narrative, and whose compositions were considered the summit of polyphonic refinement. Until the 20th century, discussion of Josquin's music was mainly limited to music scholars such as the theorists Angelo Berardi in the 1680s–1690s, and Johann Gottfried Walther in 1732. The late 18th century saw a new interest in Netherlandish music: studies from Charles Burney, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Raphael Georg Kiesewetter [de] and François-Joseph Fétis gave Josquin more prominence. The music historian August Wilhelm Ambros described Josquin in the 1860s as "one of the towering figures of Western music history, not merely a forerunner of Palestrina but his equal", and his research established the foundation for modern Josquin scholarship. In the early 20th century, leading musicologists such as Alfred Einstein and Carl Dahlhaus largely dismissed Josquin. Various publications then began to raise his status, beginning with a new edition of his complete works by Albert Smijers (1920s) and high evaluation by Friedrich Blume in the Das Chorwerk [de] series. The early music revival raised Josquin's status, and brought the first major study on him by Helmuth Osthoff (Vol 1 1962/Vol 2 1965), an influential article by Lowinsky (1964), and debates between the musicologist Joseph Kerman and Lowinsky (1965). The 1971 International Josquin Festival-Conference firmly established Josquin in the center of Renaissance music, a position later cemented by Lowinsky's 1976 monograph. The New Josquin Edition began publication in 1987.
#### Skepticism and revision
Reflecting on the sentiment that Josquin was "the greatest composer of his generation, and the most important, innovative, and influential composer of the late 15th and early 16th centuries", Sherr notes growing dissent from that position in the early 21st century. Josquin's 2001 article in Grove Music Online lists less than 200 works attributed to him, down from more than 370. These revisions of Josquin's oeuvre have compromised some earlier scholarship which analyzed Josquin's style with works now not considered his. Major revision has also occurred in Josquin's biography, with entire portions of it being rewritten due to Josquin having being confused with people with similar names. Controversy has arisen about the extent of Josquin's influence; there is no doubt about his importance in Western music, but some scholars have contended that the extent of his reevaluation has unrealistically apotheosized him over his contemporaries. Wegman asserts that Obrecht was more highly regarded in Josquin's time, to which Noble has noted that Josquin's prestigious positions, publications and employers "scarcely looks like the career of an unregarded composer". Reflecting on the dispute, Sherr has concluded that Josquin's reputation is somewhat lessened, but on the basis of his most admired and firmly attributed works "he remains one of the towering figures in the history of music".
Since the 1950s, Josquin's music has become central to the repertoire of many early music vocal ensembles and has been increasingly featured in recordings, with those by the Hilliard Ensemble, Orlando Consort, and A Sei Voci recommended by critics in the 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die (2017) survey. The Tallis Scholars have recorded all of Josquin's masses, and won the Gramophone "record of the year" in 1987 for their recording of Missa Pange lingua, the only early music group to do so. Josquin's presence in 21st-century scholarship remains strong; he was the subject of David Fallows's major monograph (2009), which is currently the standard biography for the composer, and he and Machaut were the only pre-Baroque composers to have entire chapters in Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music (2005). The 500th anniversary of Josquin's death in 2021 was widely commemorated.
|
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Hurricane Gert
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Category 2 Atlantic and Pacific hurricane in 1993
|
[
"1993 Atlantic hurricane season",
"1993 in Mexico",
"Atlantic hurricanes in Mexico",
"Category 2 Atlantic hurricanes",
"Eastern Pacific tropical depressions",
"Hurricanes in Belize",
"Hurricanes in Costa Rica",
"Hurricanes in El Salvador",
"Hurricanes in Honduras",
"Hurricanes in Nicaragua",
"September 1993 events"
] |
Hurricane Gert was a large tropical cyclone that caused extensive flooding and mudslides throughout Central America and Mexico in September 1993. The seventh named storm and third hurricane of the annual hurricane season, Gert originated as a tropical depression from a tropical wave over the southwestern Caribbean Sea on September 14. The next day, the cyclone briefly attained tropical storm strength before moving ashore in Nicaragua and proceeding through Honduras. It reorganized into a tropical storm over the Gulf of Honduras on September 17, but weakened back to a depression upon crossing the Yucatán Peninsula. Once over the warm waters of the Bay of Campeche, Gert quickly strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane by September 20. The hurricane made a final landfall on the Gulf Coast of Mexico near Tuxpan, Veracruz, with peak winds of 100 mph (160 km/h). The rugged terrain disrupted the cyclone's structure; Gert entered the Pacific Ocean as a depression near the state of Nayarit on September 21, where it briefly redeveloped a few strong thunderstorms before dissipating at sea five days later.
Gert's broad wind circulation produced widespread and heavy rainfall across Central America through September 15–17. Combined with saturated soil following Tropical Storm Bret's passage a month earlier, the rain triggered widespread floods and mudslides that isolated thousands of people across numerous communities. In Costa Rica, blustery weather destroyed a national park and led to significant losses in the agricultural and tourism sectors. Much of the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras endured overflowing rivers, engulfing cities, villages, and crops with mud and water. Gert's winds were at their strongest upon landfall in Mexico, yet the worst effects in the country were also due to freshwater flooding after an extreme rainfall event in the Huasteca region resulted in water accumulations as high as 31.41 inches (798 mm). An increasing number of major rivers burst their banks over a period of several days, fully submerging extensive areas of land around the Pánuco basin. Tens of thousands of residents were forced to evacuate as raging floodwaters demolished scores of structures in what was described as the region's worst disaster in 40 years.
In Gert's wake, the road networks across the affected countries remained severely disrupted for extended periods of time, hampering rescue missions and relief efforts in badly flooded regions. National governments and emergency workers opened shelters and distributed food for the thousands that had lost their homes and sources of income in the storm. Throughout Central America and Mexico, Gert claimed the lives of 116 people and left 16 others missing. The disaster left swaths of private property, infrastructure, and farmland in complete ruins, amounting to damage costs of more than \$170 million (1993 USD). Despite the excessive damage and catastrophic loss of life caused by the storm, the name Gert was not retired following the season, and was used again in the 1999 Atlantic hurricane season.
## Meteorological history
Hurricane Gert had a complex lifespan as a large and slow-moving tropical cyclone, repeatedly interacting with nearby landmasses and other atmospheric systems. Its genesis was traced to a tropical wave—an area of low pressure oriented north to south—that moved off the African coast to the south of Dakar on September 5, 1993. The wave tracked westward across the tropical Atlantic at a rapid pace and relatively low latitudes, where its interaction with the Intertropical Convergence Zone fostered the formation of convection. On its approach to the Caribbean, the system developed a weak low-pressure center at sea level, which crossed Trinidad on September 11. Although most of the cloud field brushed over the northern coast of South America, the system survived its contact with land and emerged over the southwestern Caribbean Sea on September 13. There, owing to favorable tropospheric conditions aloft, the wave showed signs of cyclonic development, as its convection thickened into curved, well-defined bands. Given these structural changes alongside a defined surface circulation, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) classified the system as a tropical depression at 1800 UTC on September 14, when it was located 105 miles (169 km) north of the Atlantic coast of Panama.
From its inception onwards, the depression exhibited a rather large wind field on satellite images and radiosonde data. Its broad cloud pattern gradually coalesced, and by 0900 UTC on September 15, the NHC had determined it sufficiently strong to be upgraded to Tropical Storm Gert. The center of the storm proceeded west-northwestward, moving ashore near Bluefields, Nicaragua, with winds of 40 mph (64 km/h) at 1800 UTC. Gert's interaction with land impeded additional strengthening; the storm weakened back to a tropical depression just six hours after its landfall. While the storm's center remained land-bound for nearly two days, parts of its large circulation abutted the adjacent Caribbean and Pacific waters to draw in moisture and heat. As such, Gert retained its status as a tropical cyclone on its journey northwestward across the terrains of Nicaragua and Honduras. In doing so, the storm consistently defied the NHC's forecasts for its imminent dissipation.
On September 17, Gert finally exited the coast, accessed the waters of the Gulf of Honduras and restrengthened to a tropical storm. Its duration over water—and with that any opportunity for additional strengthening—was curtailed by a mid- to upper-level trough over the eastern Gulf of Mexico; it turned the storm to the north-northwest and brought it over the coast of Belize the next day. Inland, Gert began to interact with a high-pressure ridge to its northwest, which nudged the storm slightly more to the west. After crossing the Yucatán Peninsula and winding down over land, Gert entered the Bay of Campeche offshore Champotón as a tropical depression late on September 18. The open tropical waters, combined with light wind shear aloft, allowed the storm's convection to deepen and reconsolidate. At 0600 UTC the next day, Gert once more restrengthened into a tropical storm. The storm veered toward the west and slowed slightly in response to a shortwave trough to its north, granting it more time to mature over water. On September 20, data from a United States Air Force aircraft indicated that Gert had become a hurricane with maximum winds of 75 mph (121 km/h). Within hours, it attained its peak intensity as a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale, with sustained winds of 100 mph (160 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 970 mbar (hPa; 28.64 inHg).
At about 2100 UTC on September 20, Gert made its final landfall at peak intensity on the coast of Mexico, just north of Tuxpan, Veracruz. The hurricane accelerated and weakened quickly over the rugged mountains of the Sierra Madre Oriental, deteriorating into a tropical depression by September 21. Despite its declining strength, the large circulation again remained intact as it crossed the country. Gert entered the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Nayarit later that day, where the NHC reclassified it as Tropical Depression Fourteen-E. What remained of the deep convection waxed and waned in intensity; satellite estimates show the depression may have briefly regained tropical storm strength on September 22. It proceeded on a west to west-northwestward track with sparse thunderstorms for two days. Once the last of this convection diminished, the shallow cyclone was swept up by low-level flow. Steered farther and farther southwest, the depression encountered increasingly cool ocean temperatures. With any chance at redevelopment thwarted, the system dissipated at sea on September 26.
## Preparations
After confirming the development of a tropical depression, authorities in Costa Rica issued a green alert for coastal regions on September 14. The following day, a tropical storm warning was issued for the Atlantic coast of the country. National television and radio stations broadcast warning messages to the public, and emergency crews were dispatched in case conditions were to warrant intervention. This helped with the effective and timely clearing of hospitals, as well as the evacuation of residents in high-risk zones. A tropical storm warning was posted for the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua on September 15, extending south from Puerto Cabezas to the adjacent islands. In Honduras, early storm warnings allowed several hundred residents to evacuate well ahead of Gert's arrival. Once it became evident that the storm would strike the Yucatán Peninsula, coastal areas from Belize northward to Cozumel, Mexico, were placed under a tropical storm warning on September 17 until Gert's landfall the next day.
While Gert was still located over the peninsula, the government of Mexico issued a tropical storm watch for the Gulf Coast from the city of Veracruz northward to Soto la Marina, Tamaulipas. By September 18, it was upgraded to a tropical storm warning and extended southward to Minatitlán, although the initial watch area was placed under a hurricane watch after Gert showed signs of strengthening. The next day, the tropical storm watch from Soto La Marina to Nautla was upgraded to a hurricane warning as it became clearer where Gert would make landfall. Prior to impact, several ports along the Gulf Coast halted their operations, and people living in risk zones were evacuated. All warnings and watches were discontinued after the hurricane moved inland.
## Impact
Gert was a large tropical cyclone for most of its lifespan; it always remained close enough to the coast to restrengthen and redevelop strong thunderstorms. In consequence, the storm produced heavy rainfall over a large area, causing extensive flooding and mudslides from Central America to Mexico. The disaster resulted in at least 116 deaths and 16 missing persons; damage to roads, property, crops and vegetation surmounted \$170 million.
### Costa Rica
Although Gert's center remained off the coast of Costa Rica, its large circulation produced brisk winds and heavy rainfall across the country. A local weather station recorded 13.1 inches (330 mm) of rain during the storm. Geologically, the hardest-hit regions consisted of sedimentary layers with poor hydraulic conductivity and were therefore prone to soil saturation. The initial rainfall raised the levels of many rivers, exacerbating the flood threat. The imminent overflow of the Tempisque River prompted wide-scale evacuations, though the river crested gradually without major consequences. After hours of prolonged rainfall, many Pacific regions such as Quepos, Pérez Zeledón, and Osa experienced flooding and landslides, which inflicted moderate damage to roads and bridges.
The floods ruined about 500 acres (2.0 km<sup>2</sup>) of banana crop and damaged oil palm plantations. Small-scale farmers of reed, maize, beans, and rice were also affected. The storm disrupted local fishing and wrecked several small boats in Quepos. High winds brought great destruction to about 65 percent of the vegetation in the Manuel Antonio National Park, vastly impacting the tourism-driven economy of Quepos. Gert left moderate property damage in its wake; it destroyed 27 homes and otherwise damaged 659, mostly because of flooding. Overall costs totaled \$3.1 million, of which \$1.7 million was due to the impaired infrastructure. Roughly 1,000 people sought shelter during the storm. Owing to the timely preparations in the country, only one cardiac arrest fatality was attributable to Gert when a landslide buried a home.
### Nicaragua
Moving ashore in Nicaragua a month after Tropical Storm Bret's passage, Gert caused excessive rainfall over already saturated regions. Despite striking the Atlantic coast, the storm produced the largest amounts of precipitation over northern and Pacific coastal areas. A maximum of 17.8 in (450 mm) fell at Corinto; other significant totals include 17.6 in (450 mm) at Chinandega and 17.5 in (440 mm) at León. The capital of Managua recorded 9.8 in (250 mm) of rain during the event. Sustained winds from the storm reached no more than 40 mph (64 km/h) upon landfall near Bluefields, though they downed trees and power lines and generated high waves of up to 12 feet (3.7 m) offshore. After weakening to a depression inland, Gert continued to produce moderate gales along its path through the country.
`Off the coast near Big Corn Island, rough surf and winds destroyed nine fishing boats. Two canoes with an unknown number of occupants disappeared at sea. Gert produced significant coastal flooding on moving ashore near Bluefields and Tasbapauni, prompting about 1,000 residents and hundreds of indigenous Miskito villagers to evacuate. Farther inland, prolonged heavy rain caused numerous rivers to overflow, which led to disastrous freshwater flooding, especially in departments around Lake Nicaragua. Three tributaries of the Escondido River, one of which rose 32 ft (9.8 m) above normal, overflowed near the city of Rama. Reaching heights of up to 40 ft (12 m), flood waters submerged 95 percent of the residential space, entering houses and vehicles and displacing 17,000 citizens. All crops in and around the city were lost in the deluge. In the Rivas Department, the discharge from the Ochomogo River near the city of Rivas inundated several communities, while Cárdenas, a coastal community along the border with Costa Rica, endured several days of flooding rains. Damage in the departments of Chontales and Boaco was considerable; floods in Boaco killed five people and affected 6,000 others. The affected regions endured widespread disruptions in transportation as landslides moved onto bridges and roads; in Granada city, the isolation caused sanitation issues and led to the death of a pregnant woman who could not be transported to the hospital.`
In total, Gert destroyed 252 houses and damaged another 293 across 14 of Nicaragua's departments; the storm was also responsible for considerable infrastructural damage and economic losses. As many as 123,000 people were affected throughout the country, and there were 37 confirmed fatalities. The impact on the ecology was profound: rivers, estuaries, and mangroves in and around lakes Nicaragua and Managua, as well as the inhabiting fauna, suffered from severe erosion and siltation. Since flooding from Tropical Storm Bret had occurred just one month earlier, an exclusive damage estimate for Gert is unavailable. The two storms inflicted a combined \$10.7 million in damage, primarily to private property.
### Honduras
Although it had weakened to a depression, Gert continued to drop significant rainfall while crossing Honduras. In Tegucigalpa, at least 6.77 in (172 mm) of rain were recorded. Damaging floods swept through 13 of the country's 18 departments; however, northern Honduras and the Mosquitia Region, which had already endured the onslaught of Tropical Storm Bret in the previous month, bore the brunt of the devastation. The additional flooding from Gert affected 24,000 people in the region and made communication with surrounding areas nearly impossible. Elsewhere, the rain filled several major rivers, including the Ulúa; many rivers across the Sula Valley had their banks destroyed, flooding much of San Pedro Sula—the country's second-largest city—and adjacent municipalities in the Cortés Department. The rising water prompted many residents to evacuate, and the Ramón Villeda Morales International Airport halted all of its operations. The storm devastated Puerto Cortés, one of the most important port cities in Central America. Elsewhere in the Cortés Department, a river in Choloma overflowed and triggered widespread flooding; landslides in that area claimed the lives of six people.
In all, Gert wrought \$10 million worth of damage to roads, bridges, and property. The country's agriculture was devastated, losing about 5,700 acres (23 km<sup>2</sup>) of low-lying farmland with banana, sugar, and citrus crops. The disaster affected 67,447 people, of which roughly 60 percent had to evacuate from their homes. In its final public statement, the government of Honduras confirmed 27 deaths, though 12 missing persons remained unaccounted for.
### Elsewhere in Central America
While passing through Central America, Gert generated an increase in cloudiness and showers across El Salvador, with a maximum 15.35 in (390 mm) of rain recorded. Strong winds uprooted trees or snapped their limbs, damaging power lines and knocking out power. In one community, mudslides destroyed a major highway. The Río Grande de San Miguel caused an excessive discharge of water just southwest of Usulután, washing out about 2,500 acres (10 km<sup>2</sup>) of crops from adjacent plantations. Several other areas faced significant losses from the flooding, including San Marcos and San Vicente; some property and road damage occurred in San Miguel. Although fishing operations were suspended at the height the storm, four Salvadorean fishermen disappeared at sea. Overall, Gert affected nearly 8,000 residents and destroyed twelve homes in El Salvador; officials there confirmed five drowning deaths related to the storm.
In Guatemala, torrential rains from Gert affected approximately 20,000 people and killed one girl. The agricultural sector in the country suffered substantial losses from the flooding, though there were no specific reports of material damage. Gert moved ashore near Belize City as a minimal tropical storm, dropping rainfall in coastal areas. Just offshore, a weather station on Hunting Caye recorded 9.5 in (240 mm) during the event. Despite the rain, only minor flooding occurred in Belize City.
### Mexico
While crossing the Yucatán Peninsula, Gert dropped considerable rainfall in Quintana Roo; a 24-hour accumulation of 7.4 in (190 mm) was recorded at Chetumal, although higher localized totals of around 15 in (380 mm) fell elsewhere in the state. Gusty winds briefly buffeted the coast during the storm's landfall, with a maximum wind speed of 44 mph (71 km/h) recorded in Chetumal. The effects of the storm were limited to localized floods, however, which cut off one road to traffic and forced the inhabitants from low-lying areas in Chetumal and Felipe Carrillo Puerto to evacuate to higher ground. Scattered showers also caused light flooding in parts of the state of Campeche, including Ciudad del Carmen.
Upon Gert's final landfall, high gales and waves battered wide stretches of coastline in the states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz, though hurricane-force winds were largely confined to areas within the cyclone's southern eyewall. Tuxpan, just south of where the eye moved ashore, recorded wind velocities of more than 100 mph (160 km/h), while 80 mph (130 km/h) gusts occurred farther south in Poza Rica. To the north, winds reached 55 mph (89 km/h) in Tampico, Tamaulipas. Despite the severity of the winds, the worst of Gert was due to orographic lift when its broad circulation interacted with the eastern side of the Sierra Madre Oriental, generating extreme precipitation over much of the Huasteca region. As many as 31.41 in (798 mm) of rain were recorded in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, while Tempoal in Veracruz observed a 24-hour total of 13.35 in (339 mm) from the storm.
The first signs of damage were from high winds on September 20, which uprooted trees and tore off residential roofs in Tuxpan, Naranjos, Cerro Azul, and Poza Rica. Following Gert's extreme rains, catastrophic flooding struck Mexico's Huasteca region over a period of several days, as many of its rivers rose to critical levels. In Veracruz, the imminent overflow of the Tempoal, Moctezuma, and Calabozo rivers forced thousands of residents from the municipalities of Tempoal, El Higo, and Platón Sánchez to leave their homes. The Calabozo River eventually topped its banks, cutting the village of Platón Sánchez off from the outside world. By far the most devastating, however, was the overflow of the Pánuco River on September 24, which runs from the Valley of Mexico through the municipality of Pánuco and empties in the gulf. Rushing water swept through 30 of Veracruz's 212 municipalities, completely submerging more than 5,000 homes. El Higo bore the brunt of the flooding, with 90 percent of its residential area left under water.
After days of continued downpours in Gert's wake, the Pánuco River rose to 27.60 ft (8.41 m) above normal by September 27—its highest level in 40 years. Once again exceeding its banks, the river destroyed a major levee in city of Pánuco, forcing 8,000 residents to evacuate. Disastrous flooding reached as far north as southern Tamaulipas, where 5,000 people had to seek refuge. Half of Tampico was coated in deep layers of mud, with scores of structures demolished. The urban areas of Madero and Altamira were also hit by the deluge. Roughly 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km<sup>2</sup>) of land around the Pánuco basin and Tampico were under water, including vast amounts of citrus, coffee, corn, maiz, bean, grain, and soy crops. Telephone, water, and electricity services throughout the region were severely disrupted, and numerous communities were isolated due to broken bridges and roads. In San Luis Potosí, water damage to schools, bridges, and roads was particularly widespread. The agricultural sector suffered heavy losses when the flooding washed away large amounts of livestock and roughly 80 percent of its crops. Throughout the state, 55,000 residents were affected by the storm, and 25 people lost their lives. Gert's trail of destruction extended as far inland as Hidalgo, where 35 rivers overtopped their banks. Floods and mudslides destroyed 38 bridges and 86 roads, as well cutting off power, telephone, and water services, disrupting communication in 361 localities. Property damage in Hidalgo was significant; 4,425 homes, 121 schools, and 49 public buildings were compromised across 35 municipalities. About 167,000 acres (680 km<sup>2</sup>) of farmland were destroyed in the storm. Fifteen deaths occurred in the state, and eight people sustained injuries.
Overall, Gert became the worst natural disaster to strike the region in 40 years; it displaced 203,500 people—many in need of shelter—and left 29,075 houses damaged or destroyed across Mexico. More than 667,000 acres (2,700 km<sup>2</sup>) of crops were in ruins. Material damage totaled \$156 million, and the death toll stood at 45.
## Aftermath
### Central America
Because of the storm's impact on the country, the government of Costa Rica declared a national emergency on September 16, 1993. Emergency crews were dispatched to assess the damage and distribute life supplies to the affected population, including 90,940 pounds (41,250 kg) of food, 1,422 mattresses, and 1,350 blankets. With much of the road network left disrupted across the affected regions, the country's agriculture, tourism, and commerce suffered considerable losses. In particular, the obstruction of the major Pan-American Highway, which connects the central region to the south of the country, had a discernible impact on the local economy. Following the expansive flooding of farmland, many independent crop producers were unable to partake in subsequent sowings.
Prior to Gert, a state of emergency had been in effect for Nicaragua as a result of Tropical Storm Bret. National and regional aid agencies, including the Red Cross, accordingly extended their relief efforts with the passage of Gert. Following the widespread muddy floods, many rural areas along the coast where the storm made landfall necessitated purification of their water wells and reconstruction of those that had been destroyed. Although the government did not reappeal for international assistance, several cash donations were made by overseas organizations through a transfer channel at the Swiss Bank Corporation. The United Nations Development Programme provided \$50,000 for the purchase of fuel, and UNICEF distributed \$25,000 worth of household supplies and medicine. The World Food Programme donated 160,000 lbs (72 tonnes) of food supplies and offered disaster expert services. The federal governments of Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, and Spain donated a combined \$300,000 in aid.
On September 18, the President of Honduras declared a state of emergency for several municipalities after surveying the affected regions by helicopter. The governments of Japan, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom provided a combined \$310,300 for the purchase of relief items. Although most storm victims received aid within a few days, the deteriorated road network caused a large delay in relief efforts to the hard-hit Mosquitia region. Sewage systems and waterworks countrywide were in serious need of restoration. With the destruction of its sole water reservoir, much of Puerto Cortés endured potable water shortages for months in Gert's wake. Public health concerns rose in the wake of Gert, with the cost of required medicines pinned at \$208,000. A contamination of the water supplies in rural areas exacerbated a cholera outbreak. By September 28, about 27,000 residents unable to reenter their flooded homes remained in government shelters. Seven weeks later, a temporary housing project was implemented for the 120 families most in need. Approximately 5,900 families across Honduras lost their source of income due to the storm.
### Mexico
In response to the flood disaster, the Red Cross immediately began distributing aid to victims across the Huasteca region. After assessing the situation by helicopter, the President of Mexico declared the Pánuco river basin an emergency zone and ordered search and rescue missions. Many homes sustained irreparable damage to their roofs, leaving tens of thousands homeless. The government appealed for international aid, seeking clothes, food, and medical supplies. Five storage centers in Hidalgo provided more than 93 million lbs (42,000 tonnes) of food supplies. Throughout San Luis Potosí, 142,000 lb (64 t) of chicken, 45,000 pantries, and 76,000 disposable plates were distributed, as well as 50,440 blankets and 6,081 airbeds. Several schools served as shelters for the homeless; the sheltered elderly, children, and pregnant or nursing women received \$27,000 worth of milk powder donations.
In the wake of Gert, the amount of respiratory disease and skin infection cases rose slightly, although the overall health situation for the country remained well under control. By two weeks after the hurricane, over 65,000 people across the region had been accommodated in shelters; most stayed there until the floods receded, although many who returned home a month later continued to rely on relief provisions. A grant of \$22,000 was made available for the purchase of roofing sheets for those in urgent need of home repair. The president approved \$37.4 million to commence reconstruction of roads and houses and to assist farmers throughout the region.
## See also
- List of Category 2 Atlantic hurricanes
- List of Atlantic–Pacific crossover hurricanes
- Hurricane Diana (1990)
- Tropical Storm Arlene (1993)
- Tropical Storm Bret (1993)
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Courtney Love
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American rock musician and actress (born 1964)
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Courtney Michelle Love (née Harrison; born July 9, 1964) is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and actress. A figure in the alternative and grunge scenes of the 1990s, her career has spanned four decades. She rose to prominence as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989. Love has drawn public attention for her uninhibited live performances and confrontational lyrics, as well as her highly publicized personal life following her marriage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. In 2020, NME named her one of the most influential singers in alternative culture of the last 30 years.
Love had an itinerant childhood, but was primarily raised in Portland, Oregon, where she played in a series of short-lived bands and was active in the local punk scene. After briefly being in a juvenile hall, she spent a year living in Dublin and Liverpool before returning to the United States and pursuing an acting career. She appeared in supporting roles in the Alex Cox films Sid and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987) before forming the band Hole in Los Angeles with guitarist Eric Erlandson. The group received critical acclaim from underground rock press for their 1991 debut album, produced by Kim Gordon, while their second release, Live Through This (1994), was met with critical accolades and multi-platinum sales. In 1995, Love returned to acting, earning a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance as Althea Leasure in Miloš Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), which established her as a mainstream actress. The following year, Hole's third album, Celebrity Skin (1998), was nominated for three Grammy Awards.
Love continued to work as an actress into the early 2000s, appearing in big-budget pictures such as Man on the Moon (1999) and Trapped (2002), before releasing her first solo album, America's Sweetheart, in 2004. The subsequent several years were marred with publicity surrounding Love's legal troubles and drug relapse, which resulted in a mandatory lockdown rehabilitation sentence in 2005 while she was writing a second solo album. That project became Nobody's Daughter, released in 2010 as a Hole album but without the former Hole lineup. Between 2014 and 2015, Love released two solo singles and returned to acting in the network series Sons of Anarchy and Empire. In 2020, she confirmed she was writing new music. Love has also been active as a writer; she co-created and co-wrote three volumes of a manga, Princess Ai, between 2004 and 2006, and wrote a memoir, Dirty Blonde (2006).
## Life and career
### 1964–1982: Childhood and education
Courtney Michelle Harrison was born July 9, 1964, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, California, the first child of psychotherapist Linda Carroll (née Risi; born 1944) and Hank Harrison (1941–2022), a publisher and road manager for the Grateful Dead. Her parents met at a party held for Dizzy Gillespie in 1963, and the two married in Reno, Nevada after Carroll discovered she was pregnant. Carroll, who was adopted at birth, is the biological daughter of novelist Paula Fox. Love's matrilineal great-grandmother was Elsie Fox (née de Sola), a Cuban writer who co-wrote the film The Last Train from Madrid with Love's great-grandfather, Paul Hervey Fox, cousin of writer Faith Baldwin and actor Douglas Fairbanks. Phil Lesh, the founding bassist of the Grateful Dead, is Love's godfather. According to Love, she was named after Courtney Farrell, the protagonist of Pamela Moore's 1956 novel Chocolates for Breakfast. Love is of Cuban, English, German, Irish, and Welsh descent. Through her mother's subsequent marriages, Love has two younger half-sisters, three younger half-brothers (one of whom died in infancy), and one adopted brother.
Love spent her early years in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, until her parents divorced in 1970. In a custody hearing, her mother, as well as one of her father's girlfriends, testified that Hank had dosed Courtney with LSD when she was a toddler. Carroll also alleged that Hank threatened to abduct his daughter and flee with her to a foreign country. Though Hank denied these allegations, his custody was revoked. In 1970, Carroll relocated with Love to the rural community of Marcola, Oregon where they lived along the Mohawk River while Carroll completed her psychology degree at the University of Oregon. There, Carroll remarried to schoolteacher Frank Rodríguez, who legally adopted Love. Though Love was baptized a Roman Catholic, her mother maintained an unorthodox home; according to Love, "There were hairy, wangly-ass hippies running around naked [doing] Gestalt therapy", and her mother raised her in a gender-free household with "no dresses, no patent leather shoes, no canopy beds, nothing". Love attended a Montessori school in Eugene, Oregon, where she struggled academically and socially. She has said that she began seeing psychiatrists at "like, [age] three. Observational therapy. TM for tots. You name it, I've been there." At age nine, a psychologist noted that she exhibited signs of autism, among them tactile defensiveness. Love commented in 1995: "When I talk about being introverted, I was diagnosed autistic. At an early age, I would not speak. Then I simply bloomed."
In 1972, Love's mother divorced Rodríguez, remarried to sportswriter David Menely, and moved the family to Nelson, New Zealand. Love was enrolled at Nelson College for Girls, but soon expelled for misbehavior. In 1973, Carroll sent Love back to Portland, Oregon, to be raised by her former stepfather and other family friends. At age 14, Love was arrested for shoplifting from a Portland department store and remanded at Hillcrest Correctional Facility, a juvenile hall in Salem, Oregon. While at Hillcrest, she became acquainted with records by Patti Smith, the Runaways, and the Pretenders, who later inspired her to start a band. She was intermittently placed in foster care throughout late 1979 until becoming legally emancipated in 1980, after which she remained staunchly estranged from her mother. Shortly after her emancipation, Love spent two months in Japan working as a topless dancer, but was deported after her passport was confiscated. She returned to Portland and began working at the strip club Mary's Club, adopting the surname Love to conceal her identity; she later adopted Love as her surname. She worked odd jobs, including as a DJ at a gay disco. Love said she lacked social skills, and learned them while frequenting gay clubs and spending time with drag queens. During this period, she enrolled at Portland State University, studying English and philosophy. She later commented that, had she not found a passion for music, she would have sought a career working with children.
In 1981, Love was granted a small trust fund that had been left by her maternal grandparents, which she used to travel to Dublin, Ireland, where her biological father was living. She audited courses at Trinity College, studying theology for two semesters. She later received honorary patronage from Trinity's University Philosophical Society in 2010. While in Dublin, Love met musician Julian Cope of the Teardrop Explodes at one of the band's concerts. Cope took a liking to Love and offered to let her stay at his Liverpool home in his absence. She traveled to London, where she was met by her friend and future bandmate, Robin Barbur, from Portland. Recalling Cope's offer, Love and Barbur moved into Cope's home with him and several other artists, including Pete de Freitas of Echo & the Bunnymen. De Freitas was initially hesitant to allow the girls to stay, but acquiesced as they were "alarmingly young and obviously had nowhere else to go". Love recalled: "They kind of took me in. I was sort of a mascot; I would get them coffee or tea during rehearsals." Cope writes of Love frequently in his 1994 autobiography, Head-On, in which he refers to her as "the adolescent".
In July 1982, Love returned to the United States. In late 1982, she attended a Faith No More concert in San Francisco and convinced the members to let her join as a singer. The group recorded material with Love as a vocalist, but fired her; according to keyboardist Roddy Bottum, who remained Love's friend in the years after, the band wanted a "male energy". Love returned to working abroad as an erotic dancer, briefly in Taiwan, and then at a taxi dance hall in Hong Kong. By Love's account, she first used heroin while working at the Hong Kong dance hall, having mistaken it for cocaine. While still inebriated from the drug, Love was pursued by a wealthy male client who requested that she return with him to the Philippines, and gave her money to purchase new clothes. She used the money to purchase an airfare back to the United States.
### 1983–1987: Early music projects and film
At age 19, through her then-boyfriend's mother, film costume designer Bernadene Mann, Love took a job at Paramount Studios cleaning out the wardrobe department of vintage pieces that had suffered dry rot or other damage. During this time, Love became interested in vintage fashion. She subsequently returned to Portland, where she formed short-lived musical projects with her friends Ursula Wehr and Robin Barbur (namely Sugar Babylon, later known as Sugar Babydoll). After meeting Kat Bjelland at the Satyricon nightclub in 1984, the two formed the group the Pagan Babies. Love asked Bjelland to start the band with her as a guitarist, and the two moved to San Francisco in June 1985, where they recruited bassist Jennifer Finch and drummer Janis Tanaka. According to Bjelland, "[Courtney] didn't play an instrument at the time" aside from keyboards, so Bjelland would transcribe Love's musical ideas on guitar for her. The group played several house shows and recorded one 4-track demo before disbanding in late 1985. After Pagan Babies, Love moved to Minneapolis, where Bjelland had formed the group Babes in Toyland, and briefly worked as a concert promoter before returning to California. Drummer Lori Barbero recalled Love's time in Minneapolis:
> She lived in my house for a little while. And then we did a concert at the Orpheum. It was in 1988. It was called O-88 with Butthole Surfers, Cows & Bastards, Run Westy Run, and Babes in Toyland. And I guess Maureen [Herman] took Courtney to the airport after she stole all the money. She stayed and stayed, and then the next day she wanted me to take her to the airport. And so I drove her to the airport. She had just had some weird fight with the guy at the desk, and then she left. She said, "I'm going to go to L.A. and I'm going to get my face done and I'm going to be famous." And then she did.
Deciding to shift her focus to acting, Love enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute and studied film under experimental director George Kuchar, featuring in one of his short films, Club Vatican. She also took experimental theater courses in Oakland taught by Whoopi Goldberg. In 1985, Love submitted an audition tape for the role of Nancy Spungen in the Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy (1986) and was given a minor supporting role by director Alex Cox. After filming Sid and Nancy in New York City, she worked at a peep show in Times Square and squatted at the ABC No Rio social center and Pyramid Club in the East Village. That year, Cox cast her in a leading role in his film Straight to Hell (1987), a Spaghetti Western starring Joe Strummer, Dennis Hopper, and Grace Jones, shot in Spain in 1986. The film was poorly reviewed by critics, but it caught the attention of Andy Warhol, who featured Love in an episode of Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes. She also had a part in the 1988 Ramones music video for "I Wanna Be Sedated", appearing as a bride among dozens of party guests.
Displeased by the "celebutante" fame she had attained, Love abandoned her acting career in 1988 and resumed work as a stripper in Oregon, where she was recognized by customers at a bar in the small town of McMinnville. This prompted Love to go into isolation and relocate to Anchorage, Alaska, where she lived for three months to "gather her thoughts", supporting herself by working at a strip club frequented by local fishermen. "I decided to move to Alaska because I needed to get my shit together and learn how to work", she said in retrospect. "So I went on this sort of vision quest. I got rid of all my earthly possessions. I had my bad little strip clothes and some big sweaters, and I moved into a trailer with a bunch of other strippers."
### 1988–1991: Beginnings of Hole
At the end of 1988, Love taught herself to play guitar and relocated to Los Angeles, where she placed an ad in a local music zine: "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac." By 1989, Love had recruited guitarist Eric Erlandson; bassist Lisa Roberts, her neighbor; and drummer Caroline Rue, whom she met at a Gwar concert. Love named the band Hole after a line from Euripides' Medea ("There is a hole that pierces right through me") and a conversation in which her mother told her that she could not live her life "with a hole running through her". On July 23, 1989, Love married Leaving Trains vocalist James Moreland in Las Vegas; the marriage was annulled the same year. She later said that Moreland was a transvestite and that they had married "as a joke". After forming Hole, Love and Erlandson had a romantic relationship that lasted over a year.
In Hole's formative stages, Love continued to work at strip clubs in Hollywood (including Jumbo's Clown Room and the Seventh Veil), saving money to purchase backline equipment and a touring van, while rehearsing at a Hollywood studio loaned to her by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Hole played their first show in November 1989 at Raji's, a rock club in central Hollywood. Their debut single, "Retard Girl", was issued in April 1990 through the Long Beach indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry and was played by Rodney Bingenheimer on local rock station KROQ. Hole appeared on the cover of Flipside, a Los Angeles-based punk fanzine. In early 1991, they released their second single, "Dicknail", through Sub Pop Records.
With no wave, noise rock, and grindcore bands being major influences on Love, Hole's first studio album, Pretty on the Inside, captured an abrasive sound and contained disturbing, graphic lyrics, described by Q as "confrontational [and] genuinely uninhibited". The record was released in September 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth with assistant production from Gumball's Don Fleming; Love and Gordon had met when Hole opened for Sonic Youth during their promotional tour for Goo at the Whisky a Go Go in November 1990. In early 1991, Love sent Gordon a personal letter asking her to produce the record for the band, to which she agreed.
Pretty on the Inside received generally positive critical reception from indie and punk rock critics and was named one of the 20 best albums of the year by Spin. It gained a following in the United Kingdom, charting at 59 on the UK Albums Chart, and its lead single, "Teenage Whore", entered the UK Indie Chart at number one. The album's feminist slant led many to tag the band as part of the riot grrrl movement, a movement with which Love did not associate. The band toured in support of the record, headlining with Mudhoney in Europe; in the United States, they opened for the Smashing Pumpkins, and performed at CBGB in New York City.
During the tour, Love briefly dated Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan and then the Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. The journalist Michael Azerrad states that Love and Cobain met in 1989 at the Satyricon nightclub in Portland, Oregon. However, the Cobain biographer Charles Cross gives the date as February 12, 1990; Cross said that Cobain playfully wrestled Love to the floor after she said that he looked like Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum. According to Love, she met Cobain at a Dharma Bums show in Portland, while Love's bandmate Eric Erlandson said that he and Love were introduced to Cobain in a parking lot after a concert at the Hollywood Palladium on May 17, 1991. In late 1991, Love and Cobain became re-acquainted through Jennifer Finch, one of Love's friends and former bandmates. Love and Cobain were a couple by 1992.
### 1992–1995: Marriage to Kurt Cobain, Live Through This and breakthrough
Shortly after completing the tour for Pretty on the Inside, Love married Cobain on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, on February 24, 1992. She wore a satin and lace dress once owned by actress Frances Farmer, and Cobain wore plaid pajamas. During Love's pregnancy, Hole recorded a cover of "Over the Edge" for a Wipers tribute album, and recorded their fourth single, "Beautiful Son", which was released in April 1993. On August 18, the couple's only child, a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born in Los Angeles. They relocated to Carnation, Washington, and then Seattle.
Love's first major media exposure came in a September 1992 profile with Cobain for Vanity Fair by Lynn Hirschberg, entitled "Strange Love". Cobain had become a major public figure following the surprise success of Nirvana's album Nevermind. Love was urged by her manager to participate in the cover story. During the prior year, Love and Cobain had developed a heroin addiction; the profile painted them in an unflattering light, suggesting that Love had been addicted to heroin during her pregnancy. The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services investigated, and custody of Frances was temporarily awarded to Love's sister Jaimee. Love claimed she was misquoted by Hirschberg, and asserted that she had immediately quit heroin during her first trimester after she discovered she was pregnant. Love later said the article had serious implications for her marriage and Cobain's mental state, suggesting it was a factor in his suicide two years later.
On September 8, 1993, Love and Cobain made their only public performance together at the Rock Against Rape benefit in Hollywood, performing two acoustic duets of "Pennyroyal Tea" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night". Love also performed electric versions of two new Hole songs, "Doll Parts" and "Miss World", both written for their upcoming second album. In October 1993, Hole recorded their second album, Live Through This, in Atlanta. The album featured a new lineup with bassist Kristen Pfaff and drummer Patty Schemel.
In April 1994, Cobain killed himself in the Seattle home he shared with Love, who was in rehab in Los Angeles at the time. In the following months, Love was rarely seen in public, staying at her home with friends and family. Cobain's remains were cremated and his ashes divided into portions by Love, who kept some in a teddy bear and some in an urn. In June, she traveled to the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in Ithaca, New York and had Cobain's ashes ceremonially blessed by Buddhist monks. Another portion was mixed into clay and made into memorial sculptures.
Live Through This was released one week after Cobain's death on Geffen's subsidiary label DGC. On June 16, Pfaff died of a heroin overdose in Seattle. For Hole's impending tour, Love recruited the Canadian bassist Melissa Auf der Maur. Hole's performance on August 26, 1994, at the Reading Festival—Love's first public performance following Cobain's death—was described by MTV as "by turns macabre, frightening and inspirational". John Peel wrote in The Guardian that Love's disheveled appearance "would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam", and that her performance "verged on the heroic ... Love steered her band through a set which dared you to pity either her recent history or that of the band ... The band teetered on the edge of chaos, generating a tension which I cannot remember having felt before from any stage."
Live Through This was certified platinum in April 1995 and received numerous accolades. The success combined with Cobain's suicide produced publicity for Love, and she was featured on Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People in 1995. Her erratic onstage behavior and various legal troubles during Hole's tour compounded the media coverage of her. Hole performed a series of riotous concerts over the following year, with Love frequently appearing hysterical onstage, flashing crowds, stage diving, and getting into fights with audience members. One journalist reported that at the band's show in Boston in December 1994: "Love interrupted the music and talked about her deceased husband Kurt Cobain, and also broke out into Tourette syndrome-like rants. The music was great, but the raving was vulgar and offensive, and prompted some of the audience to shout back at her."
In January 1995, Love was arrested in Melbourne for disrupting a Qantas flight after getting into an argument with a stewardess. On July 4, 1995, at the Lollapalooza Festival in George, Washington, Love threw a lit cigarette at musician Kathleen Hanna before punching her in the face, alleging that she had made a joke about her daughter. She pleaded guilty to an assault charge and was sentenced to anger management classes. In November 1995, two male teenagers sued Love for allegedly punching them during a Hole concert in Orlando, Florida in March 1995. The judge dismissed the case on grounds that the teens "weren't exposed to any greater amount of violence than could reasonably be expected at an alternative rock concert". Love later said she had little memory of 1994 and 1995, as she had been using large quantities of heroin and Rohypnol at the time.
### 1996–2002: Acting success and Celebrity Skin
After Hole's world tour concluded in 1996, Love made a return to acting, first in small roles in the Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic Basquiat and the drama Feeling Minnesota (1996), and then a starring role as Larry Flynt's wife Althea in Miloš Forman's critically acclaimed 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt. Love went through rehabilitation and quit using heroin at the insistence of Forman; she was ordered to take multiple urine tests under the supervision of Columbia Pictures while filming, and passed all of them. Despite Columbia Pictures' initial reluctance to hire Love due to her troubled past, her performance received acclaim, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress. Critic Roger Ebert called her work in the film "quite a performance; Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress." She won several other awards from various film critic associations for the film. During this time, Love maintained what the media noted as a more decorous public image, and she appeared in ad campaigns for Versace and in a Vogue Italia spread. Following the release of The People vs. Larry Flynt, she dated her co-star Edward Norton, with whom she remained until 1999.
In late 1997, Hole released the compilations My Body, the Hand Grenade and The First Session, both of which featured previously recorded material. Love attracted media attention in May 1998 after punching journalist Belissa Cohen at a party; the suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. In September 1998, Hole released their third studio album, Celebrity Skin, which featured a stark power pop sound that contrasted with their earlier punk influences. Love divulged her ambition of making an album where "art meets commerce ... there are no compromises made, it has commercial appeal, and it sticks to [our] original vision." She said she was influenced by Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, and My Bloody Valentine when writing the album. Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan co-wrote several songs. Celebrity Skin was well received by critics; Rolling Stone called it "accessible, fiery and intimate—often at the same time ... a basic guitar record that's anything but basic." Celebrity Skin went multi-platinum, and topped "Best of Year" lists at Spin and The Village Voice. It garnered Hole's only number-one single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart with "Celebrity Skin". Hole promoted the album through MTV performances and at the 1998 Billboard Music Awards, and were nominated for three Grammy Awards at the 41st Grammy Awards ceremony.
Before the release of Celebrity Skin, Love and Fender designed a low-priced Squier brand guitar, the Vista Venus. The instrument featured a shape inspired by Mercury, a little-known independent guitar manufacturer, Stratocaster, and Rickenbacker's solid body guitars. It had a single-coil and a humbucker pickup and was available in 6-string and 12-string versions. In an early 1999 interview, Love said about the Venus: "I wanted a guitar that sounded really warm and pop, but which required just one box to go dirty ... And something that could also be your first band guitar. I didn't want it all teched out. I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch."
Hole toured with Marilyn Manson on the Beautiful Monsters Tour in 1999, but dropped out after nine performances; Love and Manson disagreed over production costs, and Hole was forced to open for Manson under an agreement with Interscope Records. Hole resumed touring with Imperial Teen. Love later said Hole also abandoned the tour due to Manson and Korn's (whom they also toured with in Australia) sexualized treatment of teenage female audience members. Love told interviewers at 99X.FM in Atlanta: "What I really don't like—there are certain girls that like us, or like me, who are really messed up ... they're very young, and they do not need to be taken and raped, or filmed having enema contests ... [they were] going out into the audience and picking up fourteen and fifteen-year-old girls who obviously cut themselves, and then [I had] to see them in the morning ... it's just uncool."
In 1999, Love was awarded an Orville H. Gibson award for Best Female Rock Guitarist. During this time, she starred opposite Jim Carrey as his partner Lynne Margulies in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon (1999), followed by a role as William S. Burroughs's wife Joan Vollmer in Beat (2000) alongside Kiefer Sutherland. Love was cast as the lead in John Carpenter's sci-fi horror film Ghosts of Mars, but backed out after injuring her foot. She sued the ex-wife of her then-boyfriend, James Barber, whom Love alleged had caused the injury by running over her foot with her Volvo. The following year, she returned to film opposite Lili Taylor in Julie Johnson (2001), in which she played a woman who has a lesbian relationship; Love won an Outstanding Actress award at L.A.'s Outfest. She was then cast in the thriller Trapped (2002), alongside Kevin Bacon and Charlize Theron. The film was a box-office flop.
In the interim, Hole had become dormant. In March 2001, Love began a "punk rock femme supergroup", Bastard, enlisting Schemel, Veruca Salt co-frontwoman Louise Post, and bassist Gina Crosley. Post recalled: "[Love] was like, 'Listen, you guys: I've been in my Malibu, manicure, movie-star world for two years, alright? I wanna make a record. And let's leave all that grunge shit behind us, eh? We were being so improvisational, and singing together, and with a trust developing between us. It was the shit." The group recorded a demo tape, but by September 2001, Post and Crosley had left, with Post citing "unhealthy and unprofessional working conditions". In May 2002, Hole announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group over their record contract.
In 1997, Love and former Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl formed a limited liability company, Nirvana LLC, to manage Nirvana's business dealings. In June 2001, Love filed a lawsuit to dissolve it, blocking the release of unreleased Nirvana material and delaying the release of the Nirvana compilation With the Lights Out. Grohl and Novoselic sued Love, calling her "irrational, mercurial, self-centered, unmanageable, inconsistent and unpredictable". She responded with a letter stating that "Kurt Cobain was Nirvana" and that she and his family were the "rightful heirs" to the Nirvana legacy.
### 2003–2008: Solo work and legal troubles
In February 2003, Love was arrested at Heathrow Airport for disrupting a flight and was banned from Virgin Airlines. In October, she was arrested in Los Angeles after breaking several windows of her producer and then-boyfriend James Barber's home and was charged with being under the influence of a controlled substance; the ordeal resulted in her temporarily losing custody of her daughter.
After the breakup of Hole, Love began composing material with songwriter Linda Perry, and in July 2003 signed a contract with Virgin Records. She began recording her debut solo album, America's Sweetheart, in France shortly after. Virgin Records released America's Sweetheart in February 2004; it received mixed reviews. Charles Aaron of Spin called it a "jaw-dropping act of artistic will and a fiery, proper follow-up to 1994's Live Through This" and awarded it eight out of ten, while Amy Phillips of The Village Voice wrote: "[Love is] willing to act out the dream of every teenage brat who ever wanted to have a glamorous, high-profile hissyfit, and she turns those egocentric nervous breakdowns into art. Sure, the art becomes less compelling when you've been pulling the same stunts for a decade. But, honestly, is there anybody out there who fucks up better?" The album sold fewer than 100,000 copies. Love later expressed regret over the record, blaming her drug problems at the time. Shortly after it was released, she told Kurt Loder on TRL: "I cannot exist as a solo artist. It's a joke."
On March 17, 2004, Love appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman to promote America's Sweetheart. Her appearance drew media coverage when she lifted her shirt multiple times, flashed Letterman, and stood on his desk. The New York Times wrote: "The episode was not altogether surprising for Ms. Love, 39, whose most public moments have veered from extreme pathos—like the time she read the suicide note of her famous husband, Kurt Cobain, on MTV—to angry feminism to catfights to incoherent ranting." Hours later, in the early morning of March 18, Love was arrested in Manhattan for allegedly striking a fan with a microphone stand during a small concert in the East Village. She was released within hours and performed a scheduled concert the following evening at the Bowery Ballroom. Four days later, she called in multiple times to The Howard Stern Show, claiming in broadcast conversations with Stern that the incident had not occurred, and that actress Natasha Lyonne, who was at the concert, was told by the alleged victim that he had been paid \$10,000 to file a false claim leading to Love's arrest.
On July 9, 2004, her 40th birthday, Love was arrested for failing to make a court appearance for the March 2004 charges, and taken to Bellevue Hospital, allegedly incoherent, where she was placed on a 72-hour watch. According to police, she was believed to be a potential danger to herself, but deemed mentally sound and released to a rehab facility two days later. Amidst public criticism and press coverage, comedian Margaret Cho published an opinion piece, "Courtney Deserves Better from Feminists", arguing that negative associations of Love with her drug and personal problems (including from feminists) overshadowed her music and wellbeing. Love pleaded guilty in October 2004 to disorderly conduct over the incident in East Village.
Love's appearance as a roaster on the Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson in August 2005, in which she appeared intoxicated and disheveled, attracted further media attention. One review said that Love "acted as if she belonged in an institution". Six days after the broadcast, Love was sentenced to a 28-day lockdown rehab program for being under the influence of a controlled substance, violating her probation. To avoid jail time, she accepted an additional 180-day rehab sentence in September 2005. In November 2005, after completing the program, Love was discharged from the rehab center under the provision that she complete further outpatient rehab. In subsequent interviews, Love said she had been addicted to substances including prescription drugs, cocaine, and crack cocaine. She said she had been sober since completing rehabilitation in 2007, and cited her Soka Gakkai Buddhist practice (which she began in 1988) as integral to her sobriety.
In the midst of her legal troubles, Love had endeavors in writing and publishing. She co-wrote a semi-autobiographical manga, Princess Ai (Japanese: プリンセス·アイ物語), with Stu Levy, illustrated by Misaho Kujiradou and Ai Yazawa; it was released in three volumes in the United States and Japan between 2004 and 2006. In 2006, Love published a memoir, Dirty Blonde, and began recording her second solo album, How Dirty Girls Get Clean, collaborating again with Perry and Billy Corgan. Love had written several songs, including an anti-cocaine song titled "Loser Dust", during her time in rehab in 2005. She told Billboard: "My hand-eye coordination was so bad [after the drug use], I didn't even know chords anymore. It was like my fingers were frozen. And I wasn't allowed to make noise [in rehab] ... I never thought I would work again." Tracks and demos for the album leaked online in 2006, and a documentary, The Return of Courtney Love, detailing the making of the album, aired on the British television network More4 in the fall of that year. A rough acoustic version of "Never Go Hungry Again", recorded during an interview for The Times in November, was also released. Incomplete audio clips of the song "Samantha", originating from an interview with NPR, were distributed on the internet in 2007.
### 2009–2012: Hole revival and visual art
In March 2009, fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir brought a libel suit against Love concerning a defamatory post Love made on her Twitter account, which was eventually settled for \$450,000. Several months later, in June 2009, NME published an article detailing Love's plan to reunite Hole and release a new album, Nobody's Daughter. In response, former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson stated in Spin magazine that contractually no reunion could take place without his involvement; therefore Nobody's Daughter would remain Love's solo record, as opposed to a "Hole" record. Love responded to Erlandson's comments in a Twitter post, claiming "he's out of his mind, Hole is my band, my name, and my Trademark". Nobody's Daughter was released worldwide as a Hole album on April 27, 2010. For the new line-up, Love recruited guitarist Micko Larkin, Shawn Dailey (bass guitar), and Stu Fisher (drums, percussion). Nobody's Daughter featured material written and recorded for Love's unfinished solo album, How Dirty Girls Get Clean, including "Pacific Coast Highway", "Letter to God", "Samantha", and "Never Go Hungry", although they were re-produced in the studio with Larkin and engineer Michael Beinhorn. The album's subject matter was largely centered on Love's tumultuous life between 2003 and 2007, and featured a polished folk rock sound, and more acoustic guitar work than previous Hole albums.
The first single from Nobody's Daughter was "Skinny Little Bitch", released to promote the album in March 2010. The album received mixed reviews. Robert Sheffield of Rolling Stone gave the album three out of five, saying Love "worked hard on these songs, instead of just babbling a bunch of druggy bullshit and assuming people would buy it, the way she did on her 2004 flop, America's Sweetheart". Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine also gave the album three out of five: "It's Marianne Faithfull's substance-ravaged voice that comes to mind most often while listening to songs like 'Honey' and 'For Once in Your Life'. The latter track is, in fact, one of Love's most raw and vulnerable vocal performances to date ... the song offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a woman who, for the last 15 years, has been as famous for being a rock star as she's been for being a victim." Love and the band toured internationally from 2010 into late 2012 promoting the record, with their pre-release shows in London and at South by Southwest receiving critical acclaim. In 2011, Love participated in Hit So Hard, a documentary chronicling bandmate Schemel's time in Hole.
In May 2012, Love debuted an art collection at Fred Torres Collaborations in New York titled "And She's Not Even Pretty", which contained over 40 drawings and paintings by Love composed in ink, colored pencil, pastels, and watercolors. Later in the year, she collaborated with Michael Stipe on the track "Rio Grande" for Johnny Depp's sea shanty album Son of Rogues Gallery, and in 2013, co-wrote and contributed vocals on "Rat A Tat" from Fall Out Boy's album Save Rock and Roll, also appearing in the song's music video.
### 2013–2015: Return to acting; libel lawsuits
After dropping the Hole name and performing as a solo artist in late 2012, Love appeared in spring 2013 advertisements for Yves Saint Laurent alongside Kim Gordon and Ariel Pink. Love completed a solo tour of North America in mid-2013, which was purported to be in promotion of an upcoming solo album; however, it was ultimately dubbed a "greatest hits" tour, and featured songs from Love's and Hole's back catalogue. Love told Billboard at the time that she had recorded eight songs in the studio.
Love was subject of a second landmark libel lawsuit brought against her in January 2014 by her former attorney Rhonda Holmes, who accused Love of online defamation, seeking \$8 million in damages. It was the first case of alleged Twitter-based libel in U.S. history to make it to trial. The jury, however, found in Love's favor. A subsequent defamation lawsuit filed by fashion designer Simorangkir in February 2014, however, resulted in Love being ordered to pay a further \$350,000 in recompense.
On April 22, 2014, Love debuted the song "You Know My Name" on BBC Radio 6 to promote her tour of the United Kingdom. It was released as a double A-side single with the song "Wedding Day" on May 4, 2014, on her own label Cherry Forever Records via Kobalt Label Services. The tracks were produced by Michael Beinhorn, and feature Tommy Lee on drums. In an interview with the BBC, Love revealed that she and former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson had reconciled, and had been rehearsing new material together, along with former bassist Melissa Auf der Maur and drummer Patty Schemel, though she did not confirm a reunion of the band. On May 1, 2014, in an interview with Pitchfork, Love commented further on the possibility of Hole reuniting, saying: "I'm not going to commit to it happening, because we want an element of surprise. There's a lot of is to be dotted and ts to be crossed."
Love was cast in several television series in supporting parts throughout 2014, including the FX series Sons of Anarchy, Revenge, and Lee Daniels' network series Empire in a recurring guest role as Elle Dallas. The track "Walk Out on Me", featuring Love, was included on the Empire: Original Soundtrack from Season 1 album, which debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian praised the track, saying: "The idea of Courtney Love singing a ballad with a group of gospel singers seems faintly terrifying ... The reality is brilliant. Love's voice fits the careworn lyrics, effortlessly summoning the kind of ravaged darkness that Lana Del Rey nearly ruptures herself trying to conjure up."
In January 2015, Love starred in a New York City stage production, Kansas City Choir Boy, a "pop opera" conceived by and co-starring Todd Almond. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times praised her performance, noting a "soft-edged and bewitching" stage presence, and wrote: "Her voice, never the most supple or rangy of instruments, retains the singular sound that made her an electrifying front woman for the band Hole: a single sustained noted can seem to simultaneously contain a plea, a wound and a threat." The show toured later in the year, with performances in Boston and Los Angeles. In April 2015, the journalist Anthony Bozza sued Love, alleging a contractual violation regarding his co-writing of her memoir. Love performed as the opening act for Lana Del Rey on her Endless Summer Tour for eight West Coast shows in May and June 2015. During her tenure, Love debuted the single "Miss Narcissist", released on Wavves' independent label Ghost Ramp. She was also cast in a supporting role in James Franco's film The Long Home, based on the novel by William Gay, her first film role in over ten years; as of 2022, it remains unreleased.
### 2016–present: Fashion and forthcoming music
In January 2016, Love released a clothing line in collaboration with Sophia Amoruso, "Love, Courtney", featuring 18 pieces reflecting her personal style. In November 2016, she began filming the pilot for A Midsummer's Nightmare, a Shakespeare anthology series adapted for Lifetime. She starred as Kitty Menéndez in Menendez: Blood Brothers, a biopic television film based on the lives of Lyle and Erik Menéndez, which premiered on Lifetime in June 2017.
In October 2017, shortly after the Harvey Weinstein scandal made news, a 2005 video of Love warning young actresses about Weinstein went viral. In the footage, while on the red carpet for the Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson, Love was asked by Natasha Leggero if she had any advice for "a young girl moving to Hollywood"; she responded, "If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons [hotel], don't go." She later tweeted, "Although I wasn't one of his victims, I was eternally banned by [Creative Artists Agency] for speaking out."
In the same year, Love was cast in Justin Kelly's biopic JT LeRoy, portraying a film producer opposite Laura Dern. In March 2018, she appeared in the music video for Marilyn Manson's "Tattooed in Reverse", and in April she appeared as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race. In December, Love was awarded a restraining order against Sam Lutfi, who had acted as her manager for the previous six years, alleging verbal abuse and harassment. Her daughter, Frances, and sister, Jaimee, were also awarded restraining orders against Lutfi. In January 2019, a Los Angeles County judge extended the three-year order to five years, citing Lutfi's tendency to "prey upon people".
On August 18, 2019, Love performed a solo set at the Yola Día festival in Los Angeles, which also featured performances by Cat Power and Lykke Li. On September 9, Love garnered press attention when she publicly criticized Joss Sackler, an heiress to the Sackler family OxyContin fortune, after she allegedly offered Love \$100,000 to attend her fashion show during New York Fashion Week. In the same statement, Love indicated that she had relapsed into opioid addiction in 2018, stating that she had recently celebrated a year of sobriety. In October 2019, Love relocated from Los Angeles to London.
On November 21, 2019, Love recorded the song "Mother", written and produced by Lawrence Rothman, as part of the soundtrack for the horror film The Turning (2020). In January 2020, she received the Icon Award at the NME Awards; NME described her as "one of the most influential singers in alternative culture of the last 30 years". The following month, she confirmed she was writing a new record which she described as "really sad ... [I'm] writing in minor chords, and that appeals to my sadness." In March 2021, Love said she had been hospitalized with acute anemia in August 2020, which had nearly killed her and reduced her weight to 97 pounds (44 kg); she made a full recovery.
In August 2022, Love revealed the completion of her memoir, The Girl with the Most Cake, after a nearly ten-year period of writing.
It was announced on May 15, 2023, that Love had been cast in Assassination, a biographical film about the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, directed by David Mamet and co-starring Viggo Mortensen, Shia LaBeouf, Al Pacino, and John Travolta.
## Artistry
### Influences
Love has been candid about her diverse musical influences, the earliest being Patti Smith, The Runaways, and The Pretenders, artists she discovered while in juvenile hall as a young teenager. As a child, her first exposure to music was records that her parents received each month through Columbia Record Club. The first record Love owned was Leonard Cohen's Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), which she obtained from her mother: "He was so lyric-conscious and morbid, and I was a pretty morbid kid", she recalled. As a teenager, she named Flipper, Kate Bush, Soft Cell, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Lou Reed, and Dead Kennedys among her favorite artists. While in Dublin at age fifteen, Love attended a Virgin Prunes concert, an event she credited as being a pivotal influence: "I had never seen so much sex, snarl, poetry, evil, restraint, grace, filth, raw power and the very essence of rock and roll", she recalled. "[I had seen] U2 [who] gave me lashes of love and inspiration, and a few nights later the Virgin Prunes fucked–me–up." Decades later, in 2009, Love introduced the band's frontman Gavin Friday at a Carnegie Hall event, and performed a song with him.
Though often associated with punk music, Love has noted that her most significant musical influences have been post-punk and new wave artists. Commenting in 2021, Love said:
> There's this idea of "Courtney is punk and stuck in 1995!" but that's not the case. I was more [influenced by] new wave or post-punk. My number one greatest song of all time is "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division, and I will take no fucking prisoners in that battle. But the band that affected me more than even Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan was Echo and the Bunnymen.
Over the years, Love has also named several other new wave and post-punk bands as influences, including The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Television, and Bauhaus.
Love's diverse genre interests were illustrated in a 1991 interview with Flipside, in which she stated: "There's a part of me that wants to have a grindcore band and another that wants to have a Raspberries-type pop band." Discussing the abrasive sound of Hole's debut album, she said she felt she had to "catch up with all my hip peers who'd gone all indie on me, and who made fun of me for liking R.E.M. and The Smiths." She has also embraced the influence of experimental artists and punk rock groups, including Sonic Youth, Swans, Big Black, Diamanda Galás, the Germs, and The Stooges. While writing Celebrity Skin, she drew influence from Neil Young and My Bloody Valentine. She has also cited her contemporary PJ Harvey as an influence, saying: "The one rock star that makes me know I'm shit is Polly Harvey. I'm nothing next to the purity that she experiences."
Literature and poetry have often been a major influence on her songwriting; Love said she had "always wanted to be a poet, but there was no money in it." She has named the works of T.S. Eliot and Charles Baudelaire as influential, and referenced works by Dante Rossetti, William Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, and Anne Sexton in her lyrics.
### Musical style and lyrics
Musically, Love's work with Hole and her solo efforts have been characterized as alternative rock; Hole's early material, however, was described by critics as being stylistically closer to grindcore and aggressive punk rock. Spin's October 1991 review of Hole's first album noted Love's layering of harsh and abrasive riffs buried more sophisticated musical arrangements. In 1998, she stated that Hole had "always been a pop band. We always had a subtext of pop. I always talked about it, if you go back ... what'll sound like some weird Sonic Youth tuning back then to you was sounding like the Raspberries to me, in my demented pop framework."
Love's lyrical content is composed from a female's point of view, and her lyrics have been described as "literate and mordant" and noted by scholars for "articulating a third-wave feminist consciousness." Simon Reynolds, in reviewing Hole's debut album, noted: "Ms. Love's songs explore the full spectrum of female emotions, from vulnerability to rage. The songs are fueled by adolescent traumas, feelings of disgust about the body, passionate friendships with women and the desire to escape domesticity. Her lyrical style could be described as emotional nudism." Journalist and critic Kim France, in critiquing Love's lyrics, referred to her as a "dark genius" and likened her work to that of Anne Sexton.
Love has remarked that lyrics have always been the most important component of songwriting for her: "The important thing for me ... is it has to look good on the page. I mean, you can love Led Zeppelin and not love their lyrics ... but I made a big effort in my career to have what's on the page mean something." Common themes present in Love's lyrics during her early career included body image, rape, suicide, conformity, pregnancy, prostitution, and death. In a 1991 interview with Everett True, she said: "I try to place [beautiful imagery] next to fucked up imagery, because that's how I view things ... I sometimes feel that no one's taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there's a certain female point of view that's never been given space."
Critics have noted that Love's later musical work is more lyrically introspective. Celebrity Skin and America's Sweetheart are lyrically centered on celebrity life, Hollywood, and drug addiction, while continuing Love's interest in vanity and body image. Nobody's Daughter was lyrically reflective of Love's past relationships and her struggle for sobriety, with the majority of its lyrics written while she was in rehab in 2006.
### Performance
Love has a contralto vocal range. According to Love, she never wanted to be a singer, but rather aspired to be a skilled guitarist: "I'm such a lazy bastard though that I never did that", she said. "I was always the only person with the nerve to sing, and so I got stuck with it." She has been regularly noted by critics for her husky vocals as well as her "banshee [-like]" screaming abilities. Her vocals have been compared to those of Johnny Rotten, and David Fricke of Rolling Stone described them as "lung-busting" and "a corrosive, lunatic wail". Upon the release of Hole's 2010 album, Nobody's Daughter, Amanda Petrusich of Pitchfork compared Love's raspy, unpolished vocals to those of Bob Dylan. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Love at number 130 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
She has played a variety of Fender guitars throughout her career, including a Jaguar and a vintage 1965 Jazzmaster; the latter was purchased by the Hard Rock Cafe and is on display in New York City. Between 1989 and 1991, Love primarily played a Rickenbacker 425 because she "preferred the 3/4 neck", but she destroyed the guitar onstage at a 1991 concert opening for the Smashing Pumpkins. In the mid-1990s, she often played a guitar made by Mercury, an obscure company that manufactured custom guitars, as well as a Univox Hi-Flier. Fender's Vista Venus, designed by Love in 1998, was partially inspired by Rickenbacker guitars as well as her Mercury. During tours after the release of Nobody's Daughter (post-2010), Love has played a Rickenbacker 360 onstage. Her setup has included Fender tube gear, Matchless, Ampeg, Silvertone and a solid-state 1976 Randall Commander.
Love has referred to herself as "a shit guitar player", further commenting in a 2014 interview: "I can still write a song, but [the guitar playing] sounds like shit ... I used to be a good rhythm player but I am no longer dependable." Throughout her career, she has also garnered a reputation for unpredictable live shows. In the 1990s, her performances with Hole were characterized by confrontational behavior, with Love stage diving, smashing guitars or throwing them into the audience, wandering into the crowd at the end of sets, and engaging in sometimes incoherent rants. Critics and journalists have noted Love for her comical, often stream-of-consciousness-like stage banter. Music journalist Robert Hilburn wrote in 1993 that, "rather than simply scripted patter, Love's comments between songs [have] the natural feel of someone who is sharing her immediate feelings." In a review of a live performance published in 2010, it was noted that Love's onstage "one-liners [were] worthy of the Comedy Store."
## Philanthropy
In 1993, Love and husband Kurt Cobain performed an acoustic set together at the Rock Against Rape benefit in Los Angeles, which raised awareness and provided resources for victims of sexual abuse. In 2000, Love publicly advocated for reform of the record industry in a personal letter published by Salon. In the letter, Love said: "It's not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster or Gnutella or Freenet or iMesh or beaming their CDs into a My.MP3.com or MyPlay.com music locker. It's piracy when those guys that run those companies make side deals with the cartel lawyers and label heads so that they can be 'the label's friend', and not the artists'." In a subsequent interview with Carrie Fisher, she said that she was interested in starting a union for recording artists, and also discussed race relations in the music industry, advocating for record companies to "put money back into the black community [whom] white people have been stealing from for years."
Love has been a long-standing supporter of LGBT causes. She has frequently collaborated with Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, taking part in the center's "An Evening with Women" events. The proceeds of the event help provide food and shelter for homeless youth; services for seniors; legal assistance; domestic violence services; health and mental health services, and cultural arts programs. Love participated with Linda Perry for the event in 2012, and performed alongside Aimee Mann and comedian Wanda Sykes. Speaking on her collaboration on the event, Love said: "Seven thousand kids in Los Angeles a year go out on the street, and forty percent of those kids are gay, lesbian, or transgender. They come out to their parents, and become homeless ... for whatever reason, I don't really know why, but gay men have a lot of foundations—I've played many of them—but the lesbian side of it doesn't have as much money and/or donors, so we're excited that this has grown to cover women and women's affairs."
She has also contributed to AIDS organizations, partaking in benefits for amfAR and the RED Campaign. In May 2011, she donated six of her husband Cobain's personal vinyl records for auction at Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation event for victims of child abuse, rape, and domestic violence. She has also supported the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.
## Influence
Love has had an impact on female-fronted alternative acts and performers. She has been cited as influential on young female instrumentalists in particular, having once infamously proclaimed: "I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming ... I strap on that motherfucking guitar and you cannot fuck with me. That's my feeling." In The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon, it is noted:
> [Love] truly lived up to Paul Westerberg's (The Replacements) assessment of pretty girls "playing makeup/wearing guitar" ... She frequently stood on stage, microphone in hand and foot on monitor, and simply let her Fender guitar dangle around her neck. She truly embodied the empowerment that came with playing the electric guitar ... Love depended heavily upon her male lead guitar foil Eric Erlandson, but the rest of her band remained exclusively female throughout several lineup changes.
With over 3 million records sold in the United States alone, Hole became one of the most successful rock bands of all time fronted by a woman. VH1 ranked Love no. 69 in their list of The 100 Greatest Women in Music History in 2012. In 2015, the Phoenix New Times declared Love the number one greatest female rock star of all time, writing: "To build a perfect rock star, there are several crucial ingredients: musical talent, physical attractiveness, tumultuous relationships, substance abuse, and public meltdowns, just to name a few. These days, Love seems to have rebounded from her epic tailspin and has leveled out in a slightly more normal manner, but there's no doubt that her life to date is the type of story people wouldn't believe in a novel or a movie."
Among the alternative musicians who have cited Love as an influence are Scout Niblett; Brody Dalle of The Distillers; Dee Dee Penny of Dum Dum Girls; Victoria Legrand of Beach House; Annie Hardy of Giant Drag; and Nine Black Alps. Contemporary female pop artists Lana Del Rey, Avril Lavigne, Tove Lo, and Sky Ferreira have also cited Love as an influence. Love has frequently been recognized as the most high-profile contributor of feminist music during the 1990s, and for "subverting [the] mainstream expectations of how a woman should look, act, and sound." According to music journalist Maria Raha, "Hole was the highest-profile female-fronted band of the '90s to openly and directly sing about feminism." Patti Smith, a major influence of Love's, also praised her, saying: "I hate genderizing things ... [but] when I heard Hole, I was amazed to hear a girl sing like that. Janis Joplin was her own thing; she was into Big Mama Thornton and Bessie Smith. But what Courtney Love does, I'd never heard a girl do that."
She has also been a gay icon since the mid-1990s, and has jokingly referred to her fanbase as consisting of "females, gay guys, and a few advanced, evolved heterosexual men." Love's aesthetic image, particularly in the early 1990s, also became influential and was dubbed "kinderwhore" by critics and media. The subversive fashion mainly consisted of vintage babydoll dresses accompanied by smeared makeup and red lipstick. MTV reporter Kurt Loder described Love as looking like "a debauched rag doll" onstage. Love later said she had been influenced by the fashion of Chrissy Amphlett of the Divinyls. Interviewed in 1994, Love commented "I would like to think–in my heart of hearts–that I'm changing some psychosexual aspects of rock music. Not that I'm so desirable. I didn't do the kinder-whore thing because I thought I was so hot. When I see the look used to make one more appealing, it pisses me off. When I started, it was a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? thing. My angle was irony."
## Discography
### Hole discography
- Pretty on the Inside (1991)
- Live Through This (1994)
- Celebrity Skin (1998)
- Nobody's Daughter (2010)
### Solo discography
- America's Sweetheart (2004)
## Filmography
- Sid and Nancy (1986)
- Straight to Hell (1987)
- The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
- 200 Cigarettes (1999)
- Man on the Moon (1999)
- Julie Johnson (2001)
- Trapped (2002)
|
38,216,125 |
James Hogun
| 1,068,196,376 |
Irish-American general (d1781)
|
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"American people who died in prison custody",
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"Continental Army officers from North Carolina",
"Members of the North Carolina Provincial Congresses",
"People from Halifax County, North Carolina",
"Prisoners who died in British military detention",
"Year of birth unknown"
] |
James Hogun (died January 4, 1781) was an Irish-American military officer who was as one of five generals from North Carolina to serve with the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Born in Ireland, Hogan migrated to North Carolina – then a British colony – in 1751. Settling in Halifax County, he raised a family and established himself as a prominent local figure.
A member of the county's Committee of Safety, he represented it at the North Carolina Provincial Congress and helped to draft the first Constitution of North Carolina. Initially a major in the 7th North Carolina Regiment, Hogun advanced quickly in rank during 1776 to become the unit's commanding officer. He participated in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown in 1777. The Continental Congress promoted Hogun to brigadier general in 1779, although several congressmen and the North Carolina General Assembly wished to see Thomas Clark of North Carolina promoted instead.
Hogun was in command of North Carolina's line brigade during the siege of Charleston in the spring of 1780, which ended in the surrender of all but one of North Carolina's regiments of regular infantry as well as more than 5,000 Patriot soldiers under Major General Benjamin Lincoln. Hogun was the highest-ranking officer from North Carolina to be captured and imprisoned after the surrender of Charleston, and despite being offered the opportunity to leave internment under a parole that was generally extended to other captured Continental officers, he remained in a British prisoner-of-war camp near Charleston. Hogun likely chose imprisonment in order to prevent the British Army from recruiting Continental soldiers for its campaign in the West Indies. He became ill and died in the prison on Haddrel's Point, a peninsula in Charleston's harbor.
## Early life
Much of Hogun's early life remains unknown, due to his relative obscurity until the American Revolutionary War. He immigrated to North Carolina from Ireland, his place of birth, in 1751, and on October 3 that year he married Ruth Norfleet. The couple had a son, Lemuel. Hogun made his home near the modern-day community of Hobgood in Halifax County.
In 1774, Hogun became a member of the Halifax County Committee of Safety, which indicated his rise to prominence since arriving in the colony 23 years prior. Between August, 1775, and November, 1776, Hogun represented Halifax County in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth North Carolina Provincial Congresses, and demonstrated an interest in military matters. As a delegate, Hogun assisted in drafting the first Constitution of North Carolina.
## American Revolutionary War
### Initial command
Hogun was named a major in the 7th North Carolina Regiment in April 1776, and was given command of the unit on November 26, 1776. Initially, the regiment had some difficulty organizing after several of the officers delayed their military work in order to take care of their personal affairs. Hogun was forced to reprimand his officers sharply, threatening them with the loss of their commissions. At the same time, currents of doubt ran through North Carolina, as Loyalists attempted to hinder enlistment of Patriots by spreading rumors about the imminent demise of the Patriot army in the north, and disease that was allegedly ravaging that force.
While commanding his regiment, Hogun fought against the British Army in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and was present at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777–78. In 1778, Hogun was given orders to assist in recruiting the so-called "additional regiments" requested by the Continental Congress from North Carolina, and afterwards was ordered to West Point with the first regiment so recruited. After his arrival, and throughout the late autumn and winter of 1778–79, Hogun's regiment served on a work detail tasked with building up the fortifications at West Point. Hogun was not satisfied with this task, but his men lacked sufficient weapons to allow them to serve as a combat unit at that time. Approximately 400 muskets had to be requisitioned for the regiment to be fully armed.
### Promotion and Philadelphia
In early 1779, Major General Benedict Arnold, then Commandant of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, requested that General George Washington send him an additional regiment of Continental soldiers to guard the Patriot stores in Philadelphia. Hogun was sent to Arnold with his newly recruited regiment, arriving on or before January 19, 1779.
On January 9, 1779, while en route to Philadelphia, Hogun was promoted to brigadier general by the Continental Congress. His promotion came about in part as a result of what Thomas Burke, a delegate to the Continental Congress from North Carolina, and a fellow Irishman, termed the "distinguished intrepidity" Hogun had exhibited at Germantown. This caused some controversy, as the North Carolina General Assembly, which was customarily consulted for the promotion of generals from that state, had already nominated Thomas Clark and Jethro Sumner for promotion to the rank of brigadier general. Sumner was promoted, but Clark was passed over in favor of Hogun, who received the support of nine of the thirteen states. Hogun's surprising victory was due in large part to Burke's lobbying efforts among his colleagues in the Continental Congress. By political conventions governing such matters, Burke was bound by the vote of the North Carolina General Assembly to support the state legislature's recommendations of Clark and Sumner, but he worked to convince other Congressmen to vote for Hogun over Clark. Hogun was appointed to succeed Arnold as Commandant of Philadelphia on March 19, 1779, serving until November 22 that year.
### Charleston campaign
In November 1779, Hogun took command of the North Carolina Brigade of the North Carolina Line, composed of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th North Carolina Regiments. Through the winter of 1779–80, Hogun led the brigade of about 700 men from Philadelphia to Charleston, South Carolina, where he was placed under the command of Major General Benjamin Lincoln. The march was arduous, and Hogun's brigade endured one of the coldest, harshest winters in years.
Hogun's command arrived at Charleston on March 13, 1780, which according to Lincoln gave "great spirit to the Town, and confidence to the Army." The North Carolinians were immediately put to the task of defending the city, which was threatened with a siege by British General Henry Clinton in early March. Shortly after Hogun's arrival, many of North Carolina's militia present in the city began to return home because their enlistment terms ended on or about March 24. The militiamen had only agreed to serve limited terms, and as they were not under Hogun's direct command he was powerless to stop them leaving.
Charleston was principally located on a peninsula, and so Lincoln aligned his Continental units in defensive works that barricaded the "neck" of the peninsula, using a line of redoubts, redans, and batteries. These defensive works were connected by a parapet, and commanded from a concrete hornwork jutting out from the defensive line. In front of the fortifications, the Patriot forces dug an 18-foot-wide moat, and between the moat and parapet they constructed a line of abatis to stall any British assault. When the siege by the British Army began in earnest on April 1, Hogun and his men were positioned on the right of the Continental Army's lines, near the Cooper River.
Hogun participated in a council of war on April 20, 1780. Several members of the South Carolina Privy Council, a part of the civilian government, threatened to block the Continental Army's attempts to withdraw from Charleston, if the council of war voted to do so. Although the defending army had only eight to ten days worth of provisions, Lincoln bowed to pressure from civil authorities and delayed evacuation. On April 26, another council of war at which Hogun was present determined that the British presence on all sides of the city prevented the army's escape. For the next two weeks, the British and Patriot forces exchanged artillery and rifle fire at all times of day, and the British bombardment whittled down the American breastworks.
On May 8, Lincoln called another council of war with all his army's general and field officers and ships' captains to discuss terms of surrender that had been proposed by Clinton. Of the 61 officers in attendance at that council, 49, including Hogun, voted to offer terms of capitulation with the British commander. When these were rejected, hostilities continued, and Lincoln called another council of war on May 11 to further discuss terms of capitulation. The council voted to present further terms to Clinton, which he accepted. On May 12, 1780, Hogun was among the officers under Lincoln who formally surrendered to the British Army, along with approximately 5,000 Continental and militia soldiers. The surrender led to the loss of all but one of the regiments of the North Carolina Line then in existence, depriving the state of all regular, non-militia soldiers. As a brigadier general, Hogun held the highest rank of the approximately 814 Continental soldiers from North Carolina who capitulated at Charleston.
### Imprisonment and death
Rather than allowing himself to be paroled, Hogun requested he be taken prisoner, and was interned at the British prison camp at Haddrel's Point on Point Pleasant, located in what is now Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, across from Sullivan's Island. Hogun's decision was based, in part, on his desire to stifle the recruiting efforts of the British, who sought to enlist captured Continental soldiers to serve in the British West Indies. The British, however, held only the officers at Haddrel's Point, deciding to house the enlisted men in barracks in Charleston.
Officers at Haddrel's Point were subjected to harsh treatment, barred from fishing to catch much-needed food, and threatened with deportation from South Carolina. Approximately 3,300 Patriot soldiers were confined in prison camps around Charleston that were similar to the one at Haddrel's Point, and many were destined for cramped, unsanitary prison ships. Because of the conditions, many Continental soldiers agreed to join Loyalist regiments, but Hogun and other officers set up courts martial in the camps and attempted to maintain a dignified military structure. Hogun's health soon declined, and he died in the prison camp on January 4, 1781. He was buried in an unmarked grave.
## Legacy
On March 14, 1786, the North Carolina legislature granted Hogun's son, Lemuel, a 12,000-acre (4,900 ha; 19 sq mi) tract near modern-day Nashville, Tennessee, in recognition of his father's service. The elder Hogun was one of twenty-two Patriot generals who perished during the American Revolutionary War, and one of twelve who died from disease or other non-combat causes. In the early 20th century, North Carolina jurist and historian Walter Clark noted that while the careers of three of North Carolina's other generals – Brigadier Generals Francis Nash and James Moore, and Major General Robert Howe – were well known to contemporary historians, the story of Hogun's career as well as that of Jethro Sumner had been neglected.
Hogun's personal papers appear to have been destroyed while in the possession of his descendants in Alabama during the American Civil War, leaving virtually no surviving correspondence that would shed further light on his life. In 1954, the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program, a division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, erected a historical marker in Hogun's honor near his former home in Halifax County.
|
630,354 |
Dungeon Siege
| 1,168,600,148 |
2002 action role-playing game
|
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"Action role-playing video games",
"Cooperative video games",
"Dungeon Siege",
"Fantasy video games",
"MacOS games",
"Microsoft games",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"Square Enix franchises",
"Video games adapted into films",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games scored by Jeremy Soule",
"Video games with expansion packs",
"Video games with gender-selectable protagonists",
"Windows games"
] |
Dungeon Siege is an action role-playing game developed by Gas Powered Games and published by Microsoft in April 2002, for Microsoft Windows, and the following year by Destineer for Mac OS X. Set in the pseudo-medieval kingdom of Ehb, the high fantasy game follows a young farmer and her companions as they journey to defeat an invading force. Initially only seeking to warn the nearby town of the invasion of a race of creatures named the Krug, the farmer and the companions that join her along the way are soon swept up in finding a way to defeat another race called the Seck, resurgent after being trapped for 300 years. Unlike other role-playing video games of the time, the world of Dungeon Siege does not have levels but is a single, continuous area without loading screens that the player journeys through, fighting hordes of enemies. Also, rather than setting character classes and manually controlling all of the characters in the group, the player controls their overall tactics and weapons and magic usage, which direct their character growth.
Dungeon Siege was the first title by Gas Powered Games, which was founded in May 1998 by Chris Taylor, then known for the 1997 real-time strategy game Total Annihilation. Joined by several of his coworkers from Cavedog Entertainment, Taylor wanted to create a different type of game, and after trying several concepts they decided to make an action role-playing game as their first title. Taylor also served as one of the designers for the game, joined by Jacob McMahon as the other lead designer and producer and Neal Hallford as the lead story and dialogue writer. The music was composed by Jeremy Soule, who had also worked on Total Annihilation. Gas Powered Games concentrated on making a role-playing game that was stripped of the typical genre elements they found slow or frustrating, to keep the player focused on the action. Development took over four years, though it was initially planned to take only two; completing the game within even four years required the team to work 12- to 14-hour days and weekends for most of the time.
The game was highly rated by critics upon release; it is listed by review aggregator Metacritic as the third-highest rated computer role-playing game of 2002. Critics praised the graphics and seamless world, as well as the fun and accessible gameplay, but were dismissive of the plot. Dungeon Siege sold over 1.7 million copies, and was nominated for the Computer Role-Playing Game of the Year award by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Gas Powered Games emphasized creating and releasing tools for players to use in making mods for the game during development, which resulted in an active modding community after release. An expansion pack, Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna, was released in 2003, and a further series of games was developed in the franchise, consisting of Dungeon Siege II (2005) and its own expansion Dungeon Siege II: Broken World (2006), a spinoff PlayStation Portable game titled Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony (2006), and a third main title, Dungeon Siege III (2011). A trilogy of movies, with the first loosely inspired by the plot of Dungeon Siege, were released as In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007, theaters), In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds (2011, home video), and In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission (2014, home video).
## Gameplay
Dungeon Siege is an action role-playing game set in a pseudo-medieval high fantasy world, presented in 3D with a third-person virtual camera system under the control of the player, in which the player characters navigate the terrain and fight off hostile creatures. The player chooses the gender and customizes the appearance of the main character of the story prior to the start of the game and typically controls them. The main character is joined by up to seven other characters, which are controlled via artificial intelligence; the player may switch which character they are controlling at any time. The other characters move in relation to the controlled character according to the formation and level of aggression towards enemies chosen by the player. The additional characters can be removed from the group and re-recruited at any given time.
The game world is not broken up into levels, but is instead one large area not separated by loading screens. As the player journeys through the largely linear world, they encounter numerous monsters and enemies of varying types that attack whenever the party of player characters approach. The party defends themselves and attacks enemies using melee and ranged weapons, and nature and combat magic. The player does not select a character class for the characters, unlike other role-playing video games; instead, using weapons or magic of a particular type increases the character's skill with them over time. Whenever a player gains enough experience points from killing enemies and reaches a new level in that weapon type, they gain some number of points in their strength, dexterity, or intelligence statistics, which in turn relate to the number of health points and mana that they have, and damage that they do with weapons.
Characters can equip weapons, armor, rings, and amulets, which provide attack or defense points, or give bonuses to some other statistic. There are also usable items such as potions to restore a character's health or mana. Weapons, armor, and other items are found by killing enemies, breaking containers, or by purchase from vendors. Each character has an inventory, represented as a fixed grid, with each item depicted by a shape taking up spaces on the grid. One character type, the mule, cannot use weapons or magic, but has a much larger inventory.
Dungeon Siege has both a single-player and multiplayer mode. The single-player mode consists of a single story and world; players can either create a new character when starting the story or use one created in a prior playthrough. The cooperative multiplayer mode allows for up to eight players to play through either the single-player storyline or in the multiplayer map, which features a central town hub with increasingly difficult enemies as players move away from it. Multiplayer games can be set to different difficulty levels, allowing accommodation of higher-leveled characters. Additional maps can be created by players that can allow for competitive multiplayer instead. Multiplayer matches can be created and joined via local area networks, direct IP addresses, and, prior to its closure in 2006, through the Microsoft Zone matchmaking service.
## Plot
Dungeon Siege is set in the Kingdom of Ehb, a varied region on the continent of Aranna containing deserts, swamps, forests, and mountains, created three centuries earlier at the dissolution of the Empire of Stars. At the beginning of the game, the player character's farming village is attacked by a race of creatures named the Krug. The main character, a farmer with no given background who is named by the player, journeys through the Krug forces to the town of Stonebridge. Upon breaking the siege of the town, and gaining their first companion, the player character is tasked by the town's garrison leader Gyorn with journeying to the town of Glacern and alerting the Ehb military forces, called the 10th Legion, of the incursion and defeating any forces they encounter along the way. After journeying through crypts, mines, and mountains, the player character reaches Glacern, where they are informed that the Krug invasion happened the same day that the Grand Mage Merik disappeared, and are charged with traveling over the mountains to Fortress Kroth to assist the legion there. In the mountains they find Merik, who informs them that the Krug invasion is part of a larger invasion by the Seck, who destroyed the Empire of Stars before being imprisoned underneath Castle Ehb, and who have escaped and taken the castle. Merik asks the player to help recover the Staff of Stars from the Goblins. Prior to its theft, the Staff had kept the Seck imprisoned in the Vault of Eternity.
The player fights through monsters and bandits in crystal caves, a forest, a swamp, and an underground Goblin fortress filled with mechanical war machines. After recovering the Staff from the Goblins, the player character meets a division of the 10th Legion and is pointed towards Fortress Kroth, which has been overrun with undead. After clearing the fortress and fighting monsters and a dragon in the Cliffs of Fire, they march on Castle Ehb. The player characters then storm the castle and fight through the Seck forces to rescue King Konreid. He informs the party that the Seck's leader, Gom, is seeking the magical weapons from the Empire of Stars stored in the Chamber of Stars, and that the characters must secure the weapons and then defeat the remaining Seck. The player character collects the weapons and fights through lava caves and the Vault of Eternity where the Seck had been imprisoned. The player character kills Gom, defeating the Seck and saving the kingdom.
## Development
Gas Powered Games was founded in May 1998 by Chris Taylor, then known for the 1997 real-time strategy game Total Annihilation. Joined by several of his coworkers from Cavedog Entertainment, Taylor wanted to create a different type of game than before, and after trying several concepts the team decided to make an action role-playing game as their first title. As well as helping create the initial concept, Taylor served as one of the designers for the game, joined by Jacob McMahon as the game's other lead designer and producer and Neal Hallford as the game's lead story and dialogue writer. Hallford was brought onto the project after it had already started; Taylor had devised the start and end of the game but left the intervening details and background story to him. The game's music was composed by Jeremy Soule, who had also worked on Total Annihilation. The development team included around thirty people during development, with changes over time, and reached forty at the project's conclusion. The development of the game took over four years, though it was initially planned to take only two.
Dungeon Siege was inspired by prior role-playing games such as Baldur's Gate and the Ultima series, but primarily by Diablo, which Taylor admired for having an experience that "concentrated on action" that players could jump into without first researching the gameplay details and settings. Taylor wanted to expand that concept into a streamlined, immersive, and action-heavy role-playing game that removed common elements of the genre that he found boring, frustrating, or slow. Taylor also wanted to make the gameplay itself simpler than contemporary role-playing games, so as to appeal to a wider audience. To that end, he asked Hallford to craft a narrative that was also fast and streamlined; he had him write a detailed backstory for the game, which would not be presented to players but would inform and inspire the developers, leaving the in-game text restrained to keep players engaged with the action. Hallford described the process of writing for the game as similar to other game projects, besides a greater emphasis on brevity, though he has said that he was brought onto the project much later than he usually is, which meant that he had to create a story that worked as a background to the set pieces that had already been developed. The plot of the game was intended by Taylor to be subordinate to the gameplay; to that end, he was unconcerned that his overall story arc was considered, even by the development team, to be somewhat of a cliché, as he felt that journeying to defeat an "ultimate evil" was very motivating to players. Taylor and Hallford discussed producing a Dungeon Siege novel to explore Hallford's story, though it never came to fruition.
Taylor wanted to further improve on the Diablo role-playing game formula by removing the concept of picking a character class at all and omitting Diablo's long loading times. The development team also tried to make the game more streamlined by removing the need to backtrack to previously visited towns to sell items, by adding inventories to companion characters and pack mules. At one point in development, they planned to have a "helper" character who would pick up items dropped by enemies to let the player avoid doing so themselves. The developers also changed some elements that were standard in role-playing games that Taylor and the other developers found frustrating, such as letting players resell items to vendors for the same price that they were bought for instead of a steep discount, and "sipping" or only partially using potions instead of always using up the whole item.
Gas Powered Games included their game development tool, called the Siege Editor, as a tool for players to mod the game. Having seen the output of players creating mods for Total Annihilation, Taylor wanted to "take that to the extreme" and provide a full set of tools to foster a community of players enhancing and changing the game after release. He felt that the tools, which could allow players to make new game worlds, characters, and gameplay, would help support a large, long-term community of players around the game. Gas Powered Games hoped that providing what Daily Radar called "one of the most comprehensive level toolsets we've ever seen" would allow players to quickly and easily create small game regions, as well as allow more serious modders the ability to develop entire parallel games using the Dungeon Siege game engine. They also hoped that this modding community would be able to enhance and extend the multiplayer gameplay beyond what they could release. Taylor attributed his enthusiasm for releasing their own development tools for modding to both his enjoyment of seeing mods for Total Annihilation produced years after its release as well as the lack of negative consequences to John Carmack and id Software's historical tendency to release the entire source code to their games. Taylor later estimated that the company spent around twenty percent of their budget on developing the modding tools.
After the first year of development, Gas Powered Games found that they were not going to be able to finish the game within the planned two years; not only was the seamless world without loading screens harder to create than they had thought, but, according to lead developer Bartosz Kijanka, they had been overambitious in choosing how many innovative features they could put into the game's custom engine, such as the wide range through which the virtual camera system could zoom in and out. Other features supported and later dropped included allowing up to ten characters at once—and therefore maintaining up to ten areas of the single-player world—instead of the final maximum of eight, and a weather system that included wind blowing projectiles off course. According to Kijanka, the developers also spent a lot of time changing technologies mid-development, such as building a custom animation editor before moving to a licensed one, and starting with the OpenGL graphics library only to switch to Direct3D. As a result, the team was required to work 12- to 14-hour days and weekends for most of the development time in order to complete the game within four years. In a 2011 interview, Taylor stated that in retrospect the final cost in development time of the seamless world may have been too high, and also that the team tried to make too large of a game for their budget; he believed that a game with closer to 35 hours of playtime instead of 70 would have been a better and more polished experience given their constraints.
By 2000, Gas Powered Games had begun to search for a publisher for the game. Taylor claims that multiple publishers were interested in the game, but he was convinced by Ed Fries to partner with the newly established Microsoft PC publishing group. Although Microsoft's publishing wing was established in part to publish games for the newly announced Xbox console, Gas Powered Games and Microsoft did not strongly consider bringing the game to the console. Taylor believes that this was due to the size of the game itself, as well as the small market for role-playing games on consoles at the time. Dungeon Siege was initially planned for release in the third quarter of 2001, before being delayed to the following year, and Gas Powered Games spent the added time tuning and polishing the game and expanding the game's items and multiplayer features. Dungeon Siege was released for Microsoft Windows on April 5, 2002, by Microsoft, and for Mac OS X on May 2, 2003, by Destineer.
## Reception
Dungeon Siege was commercially successful, selling over 1.7 million copies. According to the NPD Group, preorders of the game in the month before its release made it the eighth-best selling computer game of March 2002, and upon release in the following month it rose to second-best selling, after The Sims: Vacation. It fell to seventh and then thirteenth place the following two months, and finished in 14th place for the year overall. By August 2006, it had sold 360,000 copies and earned \$14.5 million in the United States alone. This led Edge to declare it the country's 44th-best selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006. By September 2002, Dungeon Siege had also received a "Gold" certification from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD), indicating sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The game was highly rated by critics upon release; it is listed by review aggregator Metacritic as the third-highest rated computer role-playing game of 2002, behind Neverwinter Nights and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and the twenty-first-highest computer game overall for the year. The graphics were highly praised; Dan Adams of IGN called it "ridiculously pretty to watch", while reviewers for GameSpot and GamePro praised the environments as being detailed and varied. Robert Coffey of Computer Gaming World and Greg Vederman of PC Gamer similarly lauded the detailed environments, while Andy McNamara and Kristian Brogger of Game Informer and GameSpy's Peter Suciu called out the seamless world without loading screens as especially worthy of note. Suciu further praised how the freeform, seamless map was used to create areas that were not shaped like rectangular regions with a winding path filling up the space, as was typical with other role-playing games of the time. The IGN and GamePro reviewers commended the sound effects as excellent and for helping to create the atmosphere of the game, while the IGN and GameSpot reviewers also praised the "ambient orchestral score".
The gameplay was similarly lauded; the GamePro review claimed that "Dungeon Siege's gameplay is perhaps its biggest and most transparent improvement over previous titles in the genre." Several reviewers compared it favorably to Diablo II (2000), then one of the most popular computer action role-playing games, with Adams of IGN claiming that it was very similar to Diablo II with some changes and improvements, and Coffey of Computer Gaming World stating that the only thing keeping it from being directly rated as better was that the shift to a more tactical gameplay made it too different of a game to directly compare. PC Gamer's Vederman, Computer Gaming World's Coffey, and the GameSpot reviewer praised the gameplay as being streamlined and accessible; they liked the tactical nature of controlling a party of adventurers who improved according to how they were used rather than directly controlling their actions and statistics. IGN's Adams, however, said that the gameplay could get monotonous, Vederman of PC Gamer felt that the gameplay combat choices were somewhat limited, and GameSpy's Suciu disliked the linearity of the single-player game. Adams further added that many of the tactical choices in the game were inconsequential, as all battles quickly devolved into brawls, and that the freeform system of leveling was essentially the same as four character classes as pursuing multiple tracks was ineffective.
The multiplayer content received mixed reviews: Adams praised the amount of additional content, while Suciu and the GameSpot reviewer noted that the multiplayer gameplay could easily become unbalanced between different players. The single-player plot was generally dismissed as inconsequential: the GamePro reviewer termed it "skeletal" and the Game Informer reviewers "lackluster", and the GameSpot reviewer called it "bland and forgettable" and concluded that players who wanted a "deeper role-playing game" would be disappointed. Overall, Vederman of PC Gamer called Dungeon Siege "one of the best, most enjoyable games of the year" and GamePro's reviewer claimed it "walks all over its competition with almost effortless grace", while Adams of IGN concluded that it was entertaining but had "untapped potential".
## Legacy
After it was showcased at E3 2000, Dungeon Siege proceeded to win the Best RPG award from Game Revolution and Most Immersive Role-playing Game award from GameSpot. After release, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) nominated Dungeon Siege for "Computer Role-Playing Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Innovation in Computer Gaming" at the 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; it did not win either category, losing to Neverwinter Nights and Battlefield 1942, respectively. The game was also a nominee for PC Gamer US's "2002 Best Roleplaying Game" award, but lost again to Neverwinter Nights. It did win the Best PC Game Graphics award from IGN.
Gas Powered Games' release of the Siege Editor did spark the rise of a modding community around the game; even before release several modding groups announced intentions to use the engine to create large-scale mods remaking games from the Ultima series of role playing games. After the game's release, numerous mods were created, including several "total conversion" mods that made wholly new games and stories such as "The Lands of Hyperborea" and "Elemental". Gas Powered Games released one mod of their own in July 2002 titled "Yesterhaven", created by six designers over six weeks, which provided a short multiplayer storyline for low-level characters wherein they defended a town from three thematic plagues of monsters. It was followed up by Legends of Aranna, a full expansion pack developed by Mad Doc Software and released on November 11, 2003 for Windows and Mac OS X by Microsoft. The expansion pack added little new gameplay besides new terrains, creatures, and items, but featured an entirely separate story from the original game. In Legends, the player controls another unnamed farmer; after the Staff of Stars is stolen by a creature called the Shadowjumper, they set off to retrieve it. After fighting their way through monsters in icy hills, jungles, and islands, the player arrives at the mystical Great Clock, a giant artifact which controls Aranna's seasons. There they defeat the Shadowjumper and retrieve the Staff of Stars. It received generally less positive reviews than the original, with critics praising the amount of content but criticizing the lack of changes to the base gameplay. At the 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the AIAS nominated Legends of Aranna for "Computer Role-Playing Game of the Year", though it lost to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Several other games have been released in the Dungeon Siege series, beginning with Dungeon Siege II (2005). That game received its own expansion pack, Dungeon Siege II: Broken World (2006), and was followed by a spinoff PlayStation Portable game titled Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony (2006) and a third main title, Dungeon Siege III (2011). A movie directed by Uwe Boll and inspired by the original game, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, was released in theaters in 2007; it has been described as being "loosely based" on the game, and was a commercial and critical failure. It was followed by the home video sequels In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds (2011) and In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission (2014).
|
5,466,682 |
Star Control 3
| 1,171,436,884 |
1996 video game
|
[
"1996 video games",
"Accolade (company) games",
"Adventure games set in space",
"Classic Mac OS games",
"DOS games",
"Games commercially released with DOSBox",
"Legend Entertainment games",
"MacSoft games",
"Multidirectional shooters",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"Multiplayer hotseat games",
"Space opera video games",
"Star Control",
"Video game sequels",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games with isometric graphics",
"Windows games"
] |
Star Control 3 is a 1996 action-adventure game developed by Legend Entertainment and published by Accolade. The third installment in the Star Control trilogy, the game was released for MS-DOS in 1996 and Mac OS in 1998. The story takes place after Star Control II, beginning with a disaster that disrupts superluminal travel through hyperspace. This leads the player to investigate a new quadrant of space, joined by allied aliens from the previous games.
The game features a single-player campaign that is similar to the previous installment, combining space exploration, alien dialogue, and ship-to-ship combat. As a mainstay of the series, the player engages in top-down battles between starships with unique abilities. In contrast to Star Control II, hyperspace flight is replaced with instantaneous fast travel. Planetary exploration is replaced with a colony management system, inspired by the original Star Control. Combat offers more detailed steering and aiming, as well as additional player-versus-player multiplayer options.
Accolade hired Legend Entertainment to create this sequel after the series creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford decided to pursue other projects. Legend was selected due to their passion for the previous Star Control games, as well as their experience as veteran game writers from the acclaimed adventure game studio Infocom. They designed the game in consultation with fans, replacing features from Star Control II that received negative feedback. Star Control 3 was considered a critical and commercial success upon release, with praise for its story and varied gameplay. However, the game later suffered from comparisons to the award-winning Star Control II, with a mixed legacy among both fans and critics.
## Gameplay
Star Control 3 is a space action-adventure game with strategic elements. The gameplay is distinct from the rest of the series, combining elements from the first two games with new systems. Star Control 3 features ship-to-ship combat, as seen in the previous games. It also includes a colonization system inspired by the first Star Control, with story, exploration, and dialogue similar to that of Star Control II.
Star Control 3 features a 2D ship combat system, which the previous games in the series call the "melee" mode. Two starships face off in a space battle and attempt to outgun and outmaneuver each other. Every alien race has a unique ship, each with its own weapon and secondary ability. Action in Star Control 3 utilizes the same top-down perspective from the previous games, as well as offering a new perspective from behind the ship. The ship controls allow more degrees of rotation, with more detailed aiming, steering, and scaling.
This combat can be played as a stand-alone game mode, offering competition against an artificial intelligence opponent or against other players. Where the first two games allowed two players to play at the same keyboard, Star Control 3 includes multiplayer modes for network, modem, and serial connections. However, several of the ships from previous games are removed, as the game only includes ships that are featured in its story.
The combat system is integrated into a single-player story mode, where the player explores planetary systems to meet alien races, colonize worlds, collect items, and advance the game's plot. The player can use warp technology to instantaneously travel to any star in the sector by clicking on a star map with a mouse, in contrast to the slower hyperspace voyages in Star Control II. The change is explained in-game as a mysterious hyperspace collapse, which becomes the central question driving the player's action. The player must follow the origins of this collapse to the galactic core, where they encounter new alien friends and foes. Much of the game involves dialog with alien races, each with unique personalities. The player can select from different dialog options, leading to different reactions and story events. The dialog screens feature digitized full-motion video of mechanical puppets, instead of the 2D animated pixel art of the previous games.
While the previous game had the player gather resources by landing on planets, Star Control 3 has the player earn resources through a colony management system. This approach builds on the colonization system of the first Star Control. Eventually, a planetary colony will provide resources such as fuel, ships, crew, and artifacts. The player manages each planet's priorities, and each planet is suited to a different alien race. These colonies offer the player a convenient way to resupply without returning to a central star base.
## Plot
In Star Control 3, the player takes the role of "the Captain", the central protagonist from the previous game. Shortly after the events of Star Control II, hyperspace mysteriously collapses throughout the galaxy, stranding most spacefaring races. For the next several years, the Captain experiments with ancient Precursor artifacts and creates a new ship that can instantly warp between stars, without hyperspace. The Captain eventually traces the origins of the hyperspace collapse to the galactic core and assembles an alliance of ten alien races to investigate the unexplored quadrant.
In the distant Kessari Quadrant, the Captain clashes with the Hegemonic Crux, a power bloc of several alien races led by the Ploxis Plutocrats. The Captain's investigation also reveals an apocalyptic threat, the imminent return of interdimensional beings called the Eternal Ones, who appear once an eon to consume all sentient energy.
The Captain eventually discovers that the ancient Precursors disappeared on purpose, devolving themselves into a non-sentient species that the Eternal Ones would not consume. The Precursors also created semi-sentient robots, the Daktaklakpak, to reverse this process after the Eternal Ones left. However, the Daktaklakpak malfunctioned, leaving the Precursors stranded at an animal intelligence level. The Captain temporarily restores a single Precursor to their full intelligence, who explains that the hyperspace collapse is connected to interdimensional fatigue caused by the Eternal Ones. Before the Precursor dies, they tell the Captain about an unfinished Precursor project, which could harvest sentient energy for the Eternal Ones in a non-lethal way.
The Captain encounters other urgent threats in the Kessari Quadrant. They persuade the Owa race to stop dumping their antimatter waste on Rainbow Worlds, which was preventing them from performing their function of mitigating interdimensional fatigue. The Captain also breaks the power of the Hegemonic Crux, culminating in the defeat of a Crux Precursor battleship at the galactic core.
The Captain finally confronts the Heralds of the Eternal Ones at the galactic core. After defeating them, the Captain finds a way to combine the Eternal Ones' technology with the unfinished technology from the Precursors. The Captain uses the new device to peacefully gather enough sentient energy to satisfy the Eternal Ones, saving all sentient life from destruction.
## Development
### Hiring and continuity
Star Control was created by Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III and published by Accolade. After the success of Star Control II, Accolade offered Ford and Reiche the same budget to produce a third game, which they turned down to pursue other projects. As Ford and Reiche had retained the rights to their characters and stories from the first two games, they licensed their content to Accolade so that the publisher could create Star Control 3 without their involvement. Producer George MacDonald from Accolade decided to work with Michael Lindner and Daniel Greenberg of Legend Entertainment, after hearing about their love of Star Control from Legend president Bob Bates. MacDonald and Lindner led the game design, and the programming team was led by Mark Poesch. Legend's writers included veterans from acclaimed adventure game developer Infocom, with Lindner and Greenberg leading the writing team for Star Control 3.
To guide the project, the staff at Legend assembled a "bible" about Star Control based on the series' manuals and scripts, with the fan community providing corrections and additions. Fan feedback was actively solicited through magazines and the bourgeoning internet. Legend also consulted with Ford and Reiche to answer open questions from Star Control II, such as the true fate of the Precursors and the relationship between Earth and the Arilou. Legend wanted to continue the previous story while adding new characters and plots, so they set the game in a new quadrant of space. This allowed them to introduce new alien enemies in the form of the Hegemonic Crux, as well as expanding on the mystery of the Precursors' disappearance. MacDonald described the game's relationship between gameplay and narrative, explaining that "Star Control is at its core a giant story, and you have to find this story and explore it."
### Design and production
Early in development, a concept document was created by Legend Entertainment co-founder Mike Verdu. Legend also compiled a detailed binder of letters, faxes, and e-mails, with fan suggestions for the next Star Control game, which they incorporated into their plans. A major target of fan criticism was the tedium of the planetary resource gathering from Star Control II, as well as complaints about returning to Earth to refuel. The team decided to replace planet landing with a colony management system, an allusion to the strategy elements from the first Star Control game. The colony feature was designed to provide a convenient place for players to refuel, as well as a logical location to recruit crew and ships. MacDonald explained that "we wanted a big universe to explore, but we wanted to make it easier to actually get places".
The developers were fans of the original 2D art of the Star Control II aliens and were hesitant to utilize 3D graphics that were too mathematical or robotic. However, they were also concerned that the 2D graphics created in the early 1990s were already obsolete. Finding a third way forward, they designed the characters by filming live animatronic puppets, designed to take advantage of the storage potential of the CD-ROM. MacDonald wanted the new game "to bring the visuals and multimedia elements as far forward as we could". Working with special effects company SOTAFX, they developed their character concepts into fully-automated animatronic puppets. The registration points on the robotic puppets were integrated with software that could control their movements. While a few aliens would be created digitally, most of them were constructed in person, filmed against a blue screen, and then composited with background footage of hand-crafted miniature film sets. The team eventually completed animations for 24 alien characters (12 new and 12 returning), which required extensive personnel to engineer, program, film, and convert to digital video.
The developers also added an isometric view option to the combat screen. This led to aiming challenges that required more dynamic camera-movement. They also rendered more ship angles than previous games to support more granular aiming and steering. This array of camera angles and lighting effects proved to be a challenge but ultimately ran smoothly on an i486 processor, as found in personal computers of the day.
Star Control 3 features professionally voiced dialog with a cast different from that of Star Control II, which was previously performed by personal friends of Reiche and Ford. Audio producer Kathleen Bober auditioned talent from other games, as well as soap operas and documentaries, until they arrived at performances that felt accurate to the alien characters. They directed the actors to convey the feel of the characters based on inflection and tone, rather than accents or distortions. The result was a unique voice and lingual pattern for each alien, with over 11 hours of audio created from 18 voice actors. The designers also chose a MIDI soundtrack instead of the previous sample-based module format, as this would make it easier to port the game to consoles (which ultimately never happened).
Star Control 3 had been scheduled for release by the end of 1995, but the game was delayed due to the complexities of all the interactions between the different aliens. The game was finally published on September 24, 1996. A version was planned for the PlayStation, as well as bringing the series back to Sega consoles on the Sega Saturn, but both ports were ultimately canceled. In late 1997, MacSoft announced that they would re-publish several Accolade games for Mac OS, leading to the re-release of Star Control 3 in April 1998. By the early 2000s, the Star Control series was no longer available at retail. Star Control 3 was later re-released in 2011, allowing the game to be played on contemporary operating systems.
## Reception
Star Control 3 was considered a commercial success. It debuted on PC Data's computer game sales charts in the eleventh place in September 1996, and climbed to tenth position the following month. The game exited PC Data's top 20 in November. In its initial two months, Star Control 3 surpassed 100,000 units in sales. The PC version received positive reviews from critics. According to review aggregator website Metacritic, Star Control 3 received an average score of 89%, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. The game earned a nomination for a Spotlight Award at the 1996 Computer Game Developers Conference, for "Best Script, Story or Interactive Writing".
Chris Buxton from PC Review praised the game for its combat mode and called it "one of the best games on the PC", with the magazine highlighting it as a "PC Review Essential". Tim Soete of GameSpot celebrated Star Control 3 for its integration of action, adventure, strategy, and exploration, calling it one of the best games of 1996. Computer Games Magazine also called it one of the best games of the year, applauding its characters and story, as well as its improved graphics and animations compared to Star Control II. Writing for PC Gamer, Michael Wolf felt that Star Control 3 blended elements from previous games "with mixed results". While he praised the evolution of combat and story within the series, he also criticized the strategic elements that were inspired by the first Star Control. Overall, PC Gamer awarded the game an "Editor's Choice" with a 90% rating, stating that it "has some pretty big shoes to fill, and it does so beautifully".
A few publications were critical of the game's strategy-based colony system, while still recommending the game overall. Although Computer Gaming World felt that "the strategy module isn't much fun", they were "totally engrossed" by the game's fusion of ship combat, story-based adventure, and character interaction. According to Jeff Lundrigan of Next Generation, both the strategy elements and graphics fell short of expectations, although the narrative and overall variety "more than make up for it". Comparing the game to Star Control II, Barry Brenesal from PC Games praised the addition of the colony system. While Brenesal noted that Star Control 3 had lost some humor and color from the previous game, he felt this was outweighed by the game's broader changes, including its improved game engine and game balance. Italian publication PC Game Parade's Davide Mascaretti also felt that the game had lost some of the novelty of Star Control II, but he still recommended the game overall, especially its combat. Star Control 3 was consistently praised for its combat, as well as its writing and character interaction.
Two years later, the Mac OS version received more mixed reviews. Macworld's Michael Gowan wrote that Star Control 3 was lacking a modern feel, particularly in its action and dialog. Next Generation criticized the port as "obsolete" and rated it lower than the original release, saying that Star Control 3 falls short of other space simulation games on Mac OS. MacAddict still praised the game for its plot and character interaction, despite the game's "outdated" graphics. The game also received four out of five stars in MacHome Journal, who felt that the depth of the single-player game was complemented by an additional multiplayer mode.
### Legacy
Ultimately, Star Control 3 is not remembered as fondly as its predecessor. Despite earning critical praise on release, the fanbase never warmed up to it and some fans do not consider it part of the series canon. In 2000, GameSpot listed Star Control 3's ending on its list of the ten most disappointing game endings, calling it "the final nail in the coffin for a game that could have continued a much-loved legacy". When IGN compiled their 2003 list of greatest games, they celebrated Star Control II while noting that Star Control 3 "paled in comparison". Upon its re-release in 2011, GOG.com noted that fans were critical of the game, despite its excellent reviews. Game developer and historian Neal Tringham suggested that Star Control 3 was not successful at reproducing the successful design of the second game. Historian Rusel DeMaria also explained that fans did not consider Star Control 3 as good as its predecessor, noting that they were developed by different teams. Writing for Kotaku, Logan Booker stated that "no one's really nailed a successor to Star Control II and an official addition to the series was killed off by the lacklustre Star Control 3."
Initially, series creators Ford and Reiche had promoted Star Control 3 as a "visually rich" and "captivating sequel". Years later, the duo cautioned against focusing too much on questions from the previous games, concluding that a "smattering of that is fun, but the whole point is to extend the mystery". Reiche also felt that the new character design lost the charm of the previous game's digital paintings. Kurt Kalata of Hardcore Gaming 101 described the efforts of Legend Entertainment, that "[i]t's obvious the designers of Star Control III had great reverence for the older games, it still can't help but feel like fan fiction. That feeling, that everything is slightly off, is what harms Star Control 3 the most." Still, the publication also noted that the antagonist's goal of harvesting sentience was an influence on the Mass Effect series and their antagonist, the Reapers.
In 1998, a follow-up game titled StarCon was planned, featuring the Crux as a major faction, but Accolade suspended the project to re-evaluate their plans for the Star Control license. Star Control 3 thus marked the last official installment to the series.
|
172,764 |
Talyllyn Railway
| 1,169,196,857 |
Narrow gauge railway in north Wales
|
[
"1866 establishments in Wales",
"2 ft 3 in gauge railways in Wales",
"Articles containing video clips",
"Heritage railways in Snowdonia",
"Narrow gauge railways in Snowdonia",
"Railway inclines in Wales",
"Talyllyn Railway"
] |
The Talyllyn Railway (Welsh: Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for 7+1⁄4 miles (12 km) from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865 to carry slate from the quarries at Bryn Eglwys to Tywyn, and was the first narrow gauge railway in Britain authorised by Act of Parliament to carry passengers using steam haulage. Despite severe underinvestment, the line remained open, and in 1951 it became the first railway in the world to be preserved as a heritage railway by volunteers.
Since preservation, the railway has operated as a tourist attraction, expanding its rolling stock through acquisition and an engineering programme to build new locomotives and carriages. In 1976, an extension was opened along the former mineral line from Abergynolwyn to the new station at Nant Gwernol. In 2005 a major rebuilding and extension of Tywyn Wharf station took place, including a much-expanded facility for the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum, and in 2021 the railway was designated a World Heritage Site as part of the slate landscape of north-west Wales.
The fictional Skarloey Railway, which formed part of The Railway Series of children's books by The Rev. W. Awdry, was based on the Talyllyn Railway. The preservation of the line inspired the Ealing Comedy film The Titfield Thunderbolt.
## Name
The origin of the railway's name is uncertain: it may refer to the parish of Tal-y-llyn, which contains its eastern terminus, or it may come from Tal-y-llyn, a large glacial ribbon lake at the foot of Cadair Idris 3 miles (4.8 km) further east.
## Gauge
The gauge of the track is unusual, and was shared by only three other public railways in the United Kingdom: the Corris Railway and the Plynlimon and Hafan Tramway both a few miles from the Talyllyn, and the Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway in Scotland.
## History
### Commercial history
#### Origins and construction: up to 1866
Slate quarrying began in the hills above Tywyn in the 1830s, but although many small quarries and test levels were established, only one major quarry was developed in the region, the Bryn Eglwys quarry, 7 miles (11 km) north east of the town. Underground working began in the early 1840s, and by 1847 the quarry was being worked by local landowner John Pughe. The finished slates were sent by packhorse to the wharf at Pennal, transferred to boats for a river trip to Aberdyfi (also spelled as Aberdovey), and then finally loaded into seagoing vessels, a complex and expensive transportation arrangement which limited the quarry's output. In 1861 the outbreak of the American Civil War cut off supplies of cotton to the mills of the north west of England and as a result a number of prosperous mill owners looked for new business opportunities to diversify their interests. One such owner was William McConnel of Lancashire who, in 1859, had purchased Hengwrt Hall near Dolgellau, north of Tywyn. In January 1864, McConnel formed the Aberdovey Slate Company, which leased the land including Bryn Eglwys from the landowner, Lewis Morris of Machynlleth.
McConnel set about improving Bryn Eglwys to increase its output. He focused on providing rail transport for the isolated quarry, and in April 1864 he reached agreement with local landowners to purchase the land necessary to build a railway towards Tywyn and onwards to the port of Aberdyfi. Construction was well underway by July 1864. The standard gauge Aberystwith and Welsh Coast Railway was expanding rapidly from its base at Machynlleth, however, and in 1863 had reached Tywyn, so McConnel decided to build his line from the quarry to Tywyn, as the nearest point where slate could be transferred to the standard gauge railway. This was despite the line's initial isolation from the rest of the system because of difficulties in bridging the estuary of the Afon Dyfi to the south. An Act of Parliament (28 and 29 Vict, cap cccxv) allowing the company to operate passenger trains as a public railway was given Royal Assent on 5 July 1865, and the company appointed James Swinton Spooner as engineer for the construction. He laid out plans for a relatively straight line climbing steadily from Tywyn to the quarry and work quickly got underway. By September 1866 construction had advanced to the point where the Board of Trade inspector Captain Henry Tyler could make an initial inspection and report.
Tyler's report led to an unusual alteration, as it was discovered that the internal width of the overbridges was only 9 ft 1 in (277 cm), but the railway's passenger carriages were 5 ft 3.5 in (161.3 cm) wide, leaving only 1 ft 10+3⁄4 in (57.8 cm) clearance on either side, which was 7+3⁄4 in (19.7 cm) less than the minimum required clearance of 2 ft 6 in (76 cm). To alleviate this problem, McConnel proposed that the doors on one side of each carriage be permanently barred and the track slewed off-centre beneath the bridges to allow adequate clearance at least on the side with doors, which would allow passengers to get out of the carriages if the train stopped underneath a bridge. Tyler agreed to this arrangement, and to this day all carriages on the Talyllyn have doors on one side only, an unusual feature for a public railway which is shared (albeit for different reasons) with the neighbouring Corris Railway. Tyler also required that improvements be made to the railway's first two steam locomotives, as locomotive No. 1 suffered from excessive "vertical motion" and No. 2 was said to suffer from "horizontal oscillation". No. 1 was returned to its manufacturer where a set of trailing wheels was added to reduce the rear overhang, and the springs on No. 2 were adjusted and the crank pins shortened to reduce its oscillation.
Tyler did not approve the opening until his listed improvements were completed, although slate trains and unofficial passenger trains were running in 1865. During November of that 1866, Tyler returned to Tywyn and re-inspected the railway following which, subject to some further minor improvements, he approved its formal opening for passenger service. The first public passenger timetable was issued in December 1866, and the first purpose-built, steam-worked, narrow gauge public railway in Britain opened for service.
#### Prosperity under McConnel: 1866–1880s
The railway opened with two locomotives, one carriage and several goods vehicles in use and was operated under a "one engine in steam" policy to ensure that two trains could not collide. Initially the working locomotive was housed in a wooden shed at Ty Dwr on the mineral line above Abergynolwyn station, while the main engineering works at Pendre were constructed. The Pendre works opened on 17 February 1867 and from then on trains began working from Pendre instead of Abergynolwyn.
At the time of the line's opening, stations were provided at Pendre and Abergynolwyn. In 1867, the halt at Rhydyronen opened, followed by Dolgoch later that year and Brynglas in 1872. Some time shortly after the opening of the railway a branch to Abergynolwyn village was provided. A steep incline dropped from the mineral line east of Abergynolwyn station to the village below, where a series of tram lines radiated. Coal, building materials and general goods were delivered down the incline and the contents of the village cesspits were hauled back up for disposal along the lineside.
The railway used steam locomotives from the start, unlike its neighbour the horse-drawn Corris Railway. The original two locomotives, although of entirely different design, were both purchased from Fletcher, Jennings & Co. of Whitehaven in Cumbria, and both are still in service, 150 years on, although so many of their parts have been replaced down the years that much of their present-day component metal is not original. The Talyllyn's rare gauge is thought to have been adopted to match that of the Corris Railway, and the line's two original steam locomotives were among the earliest locomotives built for such a narrow gauge. No. 1 Talyllyn is an and No. 2 Dolgoch is an . The line carried slate from the quarry to the wharf at Tywyn and general goods along its length. Public passenger trains initially ran between Abergynolwyn, Dolgoch and Pendre stations only; quarrymen were carried on unofficial trains that continued on from Abergynolwyn to the foot of the Alltwyllt incline in Nant Gwernol gorge.
The line operated successfully during its early years, serving the quarry and the local district. By 1880, Bryn Eglwys employed 300 workers and was producing 8,000 long tons (8,100 t) of finished slate per year, all shipped via the railway. Passenger traffic was substantial, rising from 11,500 passengers carried in 1867 to over 23,000 (roughly equivalent to 40,000 passenger journeys) in 1877.
#### Declining fortunes: 1880s–1910
In 1879, McConnel bought out the other shareholders of the Aberdovey Slate Company, and became the sole owner of the railway, the quarry and much of Abergynolwyn village.
From the 1880s onwards the "Grand Tour" was a popular option with tourists. This used charabancs to link the Talyllyn and Corris railways via Tal-y-llyn Lake and Cadair Idris, returning on Cambrian Railways trains. The last two decades of the 19th century saw a decline in the demand for slate and many smaller quarries fell on hard times, including Bryn Eglwys, where by 1890 production had halved to 4,000 long tons (4,100 t) a year. In 1896, production at the Penrhyn Quarry in north Wales, one of the largest producers of slate, was stopped due to labour disputes, resulting in a temporary increase in demand at other quarries. McConnel expanded production at Bryn Eglwys to take advantage of the sudden demand, but only with the aim of maximising profits during the remainder of his lease, which was to expire in 1910. He built new trial levels without proper provision for the removal of overburden and pushed the limits of safe working in the existing chambers. As McConnel's lease drew to its close, there was no prospect of a further lessee coming forward and work began on dismantling the quarry's equipment.
#### Haydn Jones era: 1911–1950
The Bryn Eglwys quarry was the primary employer in the Abergynolwyn district, so its closure caused significant distress. In 1910, local landowner Henry Haydn Jones was elected the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Merioneth. He understood the importance of Bryn Eglwys, and at the end of the year he purchased the quarry company for just over £5000. The quarry re-opened in January 1911, though Haydn Jones did not have capital to invest in the quarry. The first workings reopened were on the Broad Vein, which yielded relatively hard slate that was less popular and therefore difficult to sell. The lack of an available market for this output forced the quarry to switch to extracting softer slate from the Narrow Vein but, because Haydn Jones could not afford to open new workings into the Narrow Vein, he resorted to the dangerous practice of narrowing the columns that supported the roofs of the underground chambers. This practice had begun under McConnel's ownership and Haydn Jones continued it throughout his ownership of the quarry. A brief construction boom after the First World War saw production return to around 4,000 long tons (4,100 t) per year.
The 1920s also saw an upsurge in holiday traffic, as Britain recovered from the war and tourism gained in popularity. The Talyllyn saw summer passenger numbers grow significantly and regularly had to supplement its formal passenger stock with slate wagons fitted with planks as seats. An unusual tourist service offered by the railway was to hire a slate wagon, which would be left at Abergynolwyn. At the end of the day the tourists would return to Tywyn in the wagon, powered by gravity. This service was discontinued in the early 1930s. The additional income from the tourist trade defrayed some of the costs of operating the railway, but never enough for it to make a profit during Haydn Jones' ownership.
The lease on Bryn Eglwys expired in 1942, but was extended on an annual basis. The October 1942 Bradshaw's Guide shows two return passenger trains operating only on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, taking 45 minutes in each direction. No passenger service was provided on other days. Overnight on 26 December 1946, several weakened support columns in the quarry gave way, resulting in a significant collapse; the quarry was deemed unsafe and closed immediately. Haydn Jones had promised to continue operating the railway as long as he was alive and so, despite the closure of the quarry, the railway continued to run trains on a shoestring budget. In 1947 the British railway system was nationalised and the Talyllyn was one of the few operating railways not included. The reasons for this are unclear, but it is significant that all official mention of the railway had ceased several decades before and it is likely that the line was simply forgotten by officialdom. Between 1947 and 1949 the railway ran a passenger service two days a week. In 1949 Haydn Jones, who owned the Aberllefenni Slate Quarry purchased 10 tons of rail from the recently lifted Corris Railway. On 2 July 1950 Haydn Jones died and closure of the railway seemed inevitable, but the line continued to operate for the remainder of the summer season, ending on 6 October.
### Preservation
#### Rescue: 1951–1960
The author and biographer Tom Rolt visited the line in 1949, along with the locomotive engineer David Curwen. In the summer of 1950, Rolt wrote a letter to the Birmingham Post newspaper suggesting that a rescue of the Talyllyn be undertaken. He received sufficient positive response for a meeting of interested enthusiasts to be held on 11 October 1950 at the Imperial Hotel in Birmingham. Around 70 people, including Patrick Whitehouse, attended the meeting, with Rolt proposing the formation of a committee to look into the acquisition of the railway. With the support of the meeting, the committee – with Rolt as chairman and Whitehouse as Secretary – met for the first time on 23 October and immediately entered into negotiation with Haydn Jones' executors.
The transfer of ownership to the committee was legally complex, but both parties agreed that all shares in the railway company would be transferred from Haydn Jones' estate to a new company called Talyllyn Holdings Ltd., whose board consisted of two directors from the executors and two from the committee. The transfer took place on 8 February 1951, at which point the newly formed Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society effectively took control of the railway. The Society immediately began to publicise its efforts, hoping to raise funds and find further volunteers to help reopen the railway, and by May nearly 650 members had joined the society. The railway re-opened under the control of the Society for the first time on the Whit Monday bank holiday, 14 May 1951, with trains running between Wharf and Rhydyronen stations. Regular trains began to run on 4 June and continued through the summer, with David Curwen acting as the first Chief Mechanical Engineer. One of the volunteers who worked on the railway that month was Vic Mitchell.
`In the early years of preservation, the line struggled to operate using the original rolling stock. When the line was taken over in 1950 Dolgoch was the only operating locomotive and it was apparent that it was in need of a major overhaul. To enable operations to continue, two further steam locomotives, Nos. 3 and 4, were purchased from the recently closed Corris Railway in 1951 and named Sir Haydn and Edward Thomas respectively. Because both railways were built to the unusual gauge of it was relatively easy to adapt the Corris locomotives to work on the Talyllyn. No. 3 became the first new locomotive to travel on the railway for over 80 years in 1951, but it frequently derailed, and on inspection it turned out that the Talyllyn track was laid approximately half an inch (13 mm) wider than the official gauge, a deliberate policy by the old company to accommodate the long wheelbase of Talyllyn. Both Talyllyn and Dolgoch had unusually wide wheel treads that allowed them to stay on the wide-of-gauge track. This problem was eventually cured by relaying the railway to its correct gauge and altering Talyllyns trailing wheels to allow them to swivel horizontally, shortening the locomotive's fixed wheelbase. No. 4 was unserviceable when it arrived, but John Alcock, the chairman of the Hunslet Engine Company, was a member of the Preservation Society and had No. 4 overhauled free of charge at his works. No. 4 then began service on the railway in 1952 and worked the majority of the trains that season.`
Another early addition to the locomotive fleet was No. 6 Douglas, donated to the society by the Birmingham engineering firm Abelsons Ltd. This locomotive was built for the depot railway serving RAF Calshot where it worked until 1945, and, after rebuilding from its original gauge, it entered service in 1954. Through the 1950s the volunteers and staff members of the TRPS rebuilt the line and rescued it from its state of decay, during a period characterised by a "Boy's Own comic spirit of adventure, involving enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility".
On 22 May 1957 the BBC produced a live outside broadcast from the railway, during which Wynford Vaughan Thomas and Huw Weldon commentated on a trip from Dolgoch to Abergynolwyn. The publicity from this broadcast drew substantial numbers of visitors to the railway that summer, with more than 57,500 passengers carried, and this increase in revenue in turn enabled the railway to continue to improve its infrastructure and provide tourists with a better experience. The following year locomotive No. 1 Talyllyn returned to steam after an extensive overhaul.
An important development during this period was the establishment of the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum at Tywyn Wharf station. The first exhibit for what was to become the museum was a locomotive donated in 1952 by Guinness from their recently closed St. James's Gate Brewery railway. In 1954 the Preservation Society agreed to start work on a formal museum, and exhibits from around the United Kingdom were acquired to form the nucleus of the collection. In 1955 work started on converting the old gunpowder store at Wharf station into a temporary museum building, and in 1956 the first exhibit arrived at Tywyn.
#### Securing the infrastructure: 1960–1969
The 1960s proved to be a decade of consolidation for the Talyllyn. Pendre works underwent several much-needed expansions, adding additional covered storage for carriages and more workshop room. Modern machine tools, along with proper lighting and a new power supply were added. Substantial improvements to Tywyn Wharf station were also made, along with continued relaying and upgrading of the track to Abergynolwyn. Passenger numbers continued to climb after the 1957 BBC broadcast; in 1960, 67,000 passenger journeys were made, increasing to 78,500 in 1964. In response to this growing popularity the railway undertook a programme of new rolling stock construction.
By the early 1960s Tywyn Wharf station was in need of major improvements. Before preservation, the station had contained only a fan of sidings, which meant that there was no way for the locomotive of an arriving train to run round the carriages. As a result, trains were pushed from behind as far as Pendre, where the locomotive could be moved past the carriages to the front of the train. A loop was installed at Wharf in 1952, being used from the start of the 1952 season, to avoid having to propel trains to Pendre, but in the winter of 1964/65 a major upgrade of the station was carried out. This improved the track layout and extended the original office building to provide covered accommodation for passengers and a shop.
As passenger numbers continued to grow during the late 1960s it became clear that further motive power was needed, especially as the rebuilt No. 1 was not performing well. The Talyllyn's unusual track gauge and restricted loading gauge meant that it was unlikely that a locomotive could be found that could work on the line unaltered, so in 1969 a gauge steam locomotive was purchased from the Bord na Mona (Irish Peat Board) with a view to rebuilding it for use on the Talyllyn. This locomotive was unofficially known as Irish Pete, a nod to its original use.
#### Extension to Nant Gwernol: 1969–1980
The preservation society had long held ambitions to extend the railway along the former mineral extension from Abergynolwyn to the foot of the Alltwyllt incline, and as early as 1959 work had begun to trace the owners of the land that the extension traversed. Planning began in the mid-1960s, but construction did not start until 1968 when the winding house for the Abergynolwyn village incline was demolished. To bring the line up to passenger standards some of the curves needed to be eased, and this required blasting work, as the line runs on a narrow ledge on the hillside at this point. The extension and new station at Nant Gwernol were opened on 22 May 1976 by Wynford Vaughan Thomas who drove in the ceremonial "golden spike" to complete the extension. Despite this official opening ceremony, minor work still remained to bring the extension to the standard required to run regular passenger trains, but regular train services began on 29 May 1976.
Although the extension of the railway was completed in 1976, work in the vicinity continued with the creation of footpaths connecting to the new station. A new footbridge was built crossing the Nant Gwernol gorge and connecting the station with the existing path on the east side of the river. The bridge and paths were opened on 3 May 1980 by Lord Parry, the chairman of the Wales Tourist Board. By the mid-1970s, it had become clear that passenger numbers were no longer increasing. After 1973, the peak year for passengers on the Talyllyn with 186,000 passenger journeys made, numbers were to decline consistently until the 1990s. Preliminary work on the conversion of Irish Pete for use on the Talyllyn, which had begun in the early 1970s, was put on hold in 1975 and the chassis and boiler were put into storage at Pendre.
#### Consolidation: 1980–2001
With passenger numbers falling and the line extended to Nant Gwernol, the railway entered a period of consolidation. By 1987, the boiler on locomotive No. 6 Douglas was life expired and in need of replacement. Consideration was given to reviving the project to build a new locomotive from the components of Irish Pete instead of purchasing a new boiler for Douglas and in early 1988 work recommenced on the rebuilding of the ex-Bord na Mona locomotive. A new design for an 0-4-2 side tank locomotive was prepared by the railway's Chief Engineer John Bate, which reused the chassis and boiler from the locomotive with a new superstructure and the addition of trailing wheels, and the new locomotive, officially named Tom Rolt after the Preservation Society's first chairman, was put into service on 6 May 1991. During this period further expansions of both Tywyn Wharf and Pendre stations were undertaken and Abergynolwyn station, which had been rebuilt as part of the Nant Gwernol extension in the 1970s, was expanded further to provide an additional attraction at the eastern end of the line.
One major anomaly remained in the railway's operations: the 1889 Regulation of Railways Act had required, amongst other measures, that all British passenger trains be fitted with continuous brakes. McConnel had secured an exemption for the Talyllyn Railway, on the basis that the low speed of operation meant they were unnecessary and that the cost of compliance would bankrupt the enterprise, but by the end of the 1990s the Railway Inspectorate was insisting that the Talyllyn be brought into compliance with the act, a little over 100 years after it had passed. By 2001, the railway had fitted its entire passenger fleet with the necessary equipment, operated by air brake pumps mounted on the locomotives.
#### New museum: 2001–present
The Preservation Society celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2001, and as part of the year of celebrations a major new project was launched to once more extend and improve facilities at Tywyn Wharf station. For many years the station had been home to semi-permanent buildings housing the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum, but the new plans for the station included the construction of a new two-storey building to house the museum and the extension of the existing station building to house a new cafe and booking office. Work began on the first phase of the project in January 2002. In 2003 the railway received a £682,500 Heritage Lottery grant towards the £1,170,000 cost of redeveloping Wharf station, and the new station and museum were officially opened by Prince Charles (later King Charles III) and Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall, on 13 July 2005. The railway has seen a steady increase in passengers carried since the turn of the millennium, with nearly 51,000 passenger bookings and 95,500 passenger journeys recorded in 2006, although this figure is still only around half the peak figure carried in 1973. In 2011, the railway celebrated 60 years of preservation, and received an Engineering Heritage Award from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in recognition of its importance in Welsh industrial heritage.
The railway struggled financially for several years after the banking collapse of 2007, but slowly began to recover. In 2008 a large amount of equipment was purchased from the gauge military railway at RNAD Trecwn, including a large quantity of track components and three diesel locomotives. In 2011 the railway celebrated the 60th anniversary of its rescue by the volunteers of 1951.
In April 2012 locomotive No.2 Dolgoch appeared at the Steel Steam and Stars Gala at the Llangollen Railway, running on a temporary section of narrow gauge track. This was the first time that Dolgoch had operated away from its home railway in 146 years. In June 2013 the railway was awarded the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service. 2015 was the 150th anniversary of the official opening of the railway, and this was celebrated with a series of events throughout the year. In 2021, the Slate Landscape of North-west Wales, which includes the Talyllyn Railway and Bryn Eglwys Quarry, was designated a World Heritage Site.
## Today
The Talyllyn Railway remains a successful and popular tourist attraction. The original 1860s locomotives and passenger stock still run regularly alongside the roster of more modern rolling stock. The railway is promoted as one of The Great Little Trains of Wales, a joint marketing scheme launched in 1970 that encompasses ten narrow gauge railways in the country, mostly found in north and mid Wales.
### Special events
The railway operates a programme of special events throughout the year. These have include in the past the Anything-Goes Gala, Have-A-Go Gala, Tom Rolt Steam and Vintage Rally and Victorian Week. Occasional events are based on locomotives masquerading as their fictional counterparts from the Skarloey Railway. Since 1984 there has been an annual running event called Race the Train, which follows the railway track 7 miles (11 km) from Tywyn to Abergynolwyn and back again. The challenge is for runners to complete the 14-mile (23 km) cross country route faster than the train, which takes around 1 hour 47 minutes.
### Young Members Group
The Young Members Group (YMG) are members and volunteers of the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society who are between the ages of 14 and 25. On occasions during the peak season, the Railway has held Young Members Days in which the youngest qualified people available that day run the railway.
## Route
### Original passenger line
The main terminus of the line is at Tywyn Wharf (originally known as King's Station, after a local landowner), where the railway's administrative headquarters and the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum are located. When the line carried traffic from the quarry, slates were transferred to the Cambrian Railways on the transhipment sidings. Leaving Wharf station, which stands at an elevation of 40 ft (12 m) above sea level, the line passes immediately under the A493 Machynlleth to Dolgellau road and enters a long cutting that climbs towards Pendre, at a maximum gradient of 1 in 60. On the left (north) side of the cutting there was once a long siding used for gravity shunting of wagons into the sidings at Wharf station. The railway runs through the cutting for about 0.5 miles (800 m), before passing under another road bridge and passing the locomotive and carriage sheds and works at Pendre.
From Pendre, the railway passes over a gated level crossing and runs beside an industrial estate before climbing up to Ty Mawr bridge and on to Hendy, the first of five minor halts, which serves the adjacent farm. The railway runs in an approximately north-easterly direction along the Fathew valley, mainly through fields of local farms on the valley floor, although this is where some of the steepest gradients on the line are to be found. The ruling gradient of the line is 1 in 60.
More local halts follow at Fach Goch, and Cynfal, the latter having a small platform. The section from Cynfal to Rhydyronen was relaid in 1951 using rail purchased from the Corris Railway after the latter line's closure in 1948. Rhydyronen, a request stop, was the first intermediate station built on the line, opening in 1867. A siding at the station was shortened in 1957 and removed completely circa 1975. A short steep climb under a road bridge follows the station, followed by a slight downhill gradient. Unlike the Ffestiniog Railway, the Talyllyn was not designed to be worked as a gravity line, however this is the only downhill section between Pendre and Nant Gwernol. Another minor halt follows at Tynllwynhen, before the passing loop and request stop at Brynglas.
Above Brynglas, the line crosses the Cwm Pandy stream and enters a shallow cutting, climbing as it goes. The cutting ends at a road overbridge after which the line runs through open countryside as it starts to ascend the valley side on a ledge. After approximately 0.75 miles (1,210 m) it enters woodlands west of Dolgoch, climbing steadily, then curves to the south east and crosses the Dolgoch gorge on the Dolgoch viaduct, which carries the line 51 ft (16 m) above the Dolgoch ravine. Dolgoch station is immediately east of the viaduct, situated on a left-hand curve at 187 ft (57 m) above sea level, and is the main intermediate station on the line, being popular with tourists visiting the nearby falls. The railway continues in a north easterly direction, curving through the woods and climbing the valley side. It shortly passes Quarry Siding, where a halt and passing loop are located; this is the site of a small old shale quarry, the rock from which was used for ballasting on the railway. A large permanent way and storage shed opened on the site in 2013. The line continues its ascent towards Abergynolwyn station, situated on a ledge cut into the hillside.
### Abergynolwyn to Nant Gwernol
The original terminus of the statutory railway was Abergynolwyn, beyond which the railway continued as a 0.75-mile (1.21 km) long mineral extension, now converted for passenger use. The extension was originally sharply curved, as the line turns south east into the steeply sided Nant Gwernol gorge but these curves were eased when conversion for passenger use took place in 1976. The whole section is within woods, now owned by the Natural Resources Wales. Shortly after crossing over the forestry road the line reaches Tŷ Dŵr, where the original locomotive shed stood from 1865 until it was demolished after Pendre works opened in 1867. A slate water tower at this point was in use into the 1950s, and was rebuilt in 2022.
After passing the site of Ty Dwr the railway bends around 'Amen' corner and soon after the Village Incline is reached. From here the line runs into the gorge, high above the river on a narrow ledge, ending at the foot of the first incline leading to the Bryn Eglwys quarry. The original line fanned out into a set of three sidings, used to marshal trains of loaded slate wagons coming down from the quarry and empty wagons waiting to ascend. Nant Gwernol station, the eastern terminus of the line, was built on the site of the sidings.
The village of Abergynolwyn was built to house the quarrymen of Bryn Eglwys and their families, and to serve the village an incline with winding house was laid three quarters of the way along the mineral extension. The winding house for the incline stood on the narrow ledge, with the mineral line passing through it. The two-track incline dropped 150 ft (46 m) over a distance of 363 ft (111 m). At its foot, the line crossed the Nant Gwernol on a girder bridge. Immediately after the bridge, short lines branched off to the east from a wagon turntable to the coal yard and smithy of Pandy Farm and west to a writing slate factory (later a carpenter's yard). The main branch then split to form a storage loop, with a further wagon turntable and a longer branch serving the houses and school to the north east. The main branch continued north, crossing the main road then passing between the two main terraces in the village before ending in a turntable and a final short line connecting to the Capel Jerusalem chapel. The village incline was lifted during the early years of preservation, to provide much needed rail to replace the existing track. The winding house was demolished in 1968 to allow realignment of the railway to form the extension to Nant Gwernol.
### Galltymoelfre Tramway
Until the closure of the quarries in 1946, the line east from Abergynolwyn was worked as a mineral tramway – only slate and goods trains serving Bryn Eglwys ran on this section. The quarry lay about one mile (1.6 km) south-east of Nant Gwernol station and 300 ft (91 m) above it, with a further mineral tramway connecting the quarry with the railway. What is now Nant Gwernol station was the terminus of the Talyllyn Railway proper. Here the line fanned out into a set of sidings where inbound trains were left and outbound slate trains assembled. The sidings were located on a narrow ledge in the side of the Nant Gwernol gorge.
Rising south-east from the end of the sidings was the 633 ft (193 m) long, double track gravity operated, Alltwyllt incline, from the top of which the Galltymoelfre Tramway ran south-east towards the quarry for about 0.5 miles (800 m). The tramway was laid in light bridge rail and worked for its entire existence using horses. The tramway ended at the foot of the Cantrybedd incline''', a 440 ft (130 m) long double track, gravity operated incline. This final incline rose to the north edge of Bryn Eglwys quarry, reaching a height of 612 ft (187 m) above sea level.
## Operation
The line has six steam locomotives for passenger trains and four diesel locomotives, which are primarily used for shunting and to haul works trains. It is unusual for all steam locomotives to be operable at the same time, as at least one is normally scheduled for overhaul. The railway also owns 23 carriages and vans, including all of the original carriages and the brake van built for the railway.
The railway is single track, so special measures have to be taken to prevent collisions. Before preservation, the railway operated a "one engine in steam" policy, but with growing passenger numbers it became necessary to install passing loops and a more stringent method of single line control was introduced. The line is worked by Electric Key tokens installed in 1973, which authorise the driver to enter a section of single line, and these are interlocked to prevent more than one token being withdrawn for a section at any one time. There is a loop at Pendre, which was used from the opening of the railway for shunting purposes, and further loops were installed at Brynglas in 1953 and Quarry Siding in 1963. When the Nant Gwernol extension opened in 1976, Abergynolwyn also became a passing loop.
Each passing loop is controlled by a small signal box, known as a block-post. These house the lever frames that control the points, the token equipment and telephones. The railway has few signals; instead it has stop boards at Pendre, Brynglas, Quarry Siding and Nant Gwernol, and the blockman allows trains to proceed by use of flags. There are colour light signals located at Tywyn Wharf, operated from the Control Office and disc signals controlled from the ground frame. Abergynolwyn has colour light signals, which are operated from the blockpost. When the block-post is unmanned, it is the responsibility of the locomotive crew to change the token before proceeding.
## In popular culture
### The Railway Series
The Talyllyn Railway is represented in The Railway Series books by the Reverend W. Awdry and its television adaptation Thomas & Friends as the Skarloey Railway; most of the fictional locomotives are based on real-life equivalents. Awdry visited the line on a family holiday in the early days of preservation and became involved as a volunteer soon afterwards. Several of the stories in The Railway Series come from his real-life experiences at the Talyllyn, and some of the books contain full-page illustrations of Talyllyn locomotives. One of Awdry's early experiences as a volunteer guard was waving for a train to depart Abergynolwyn too soon, causing the line's Refreshment Lady to miss the train; an event adapted in both the books and the TV series. His son Christopher and his wife Diana, and their son Richard would all volunteer with the Talyllyn as well. Wilbert's study along with his model trains were donated to the Talyllyn after his death and placed on display in the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum. In 2021 the railway began hosting the Awdry Extravaganza sharing lectures on The Railway Series from the Awdry study collection, and displaying artifacts and fan creations related to The Railway Series and Thomas & Friends. The railway was briefly threatened legally by TV series creator Britt Allcroft for using the characters without paying her production company licensing fees, however since the railway's agreement to use the Skarloey Railway characters predated the TV series; the railway was able to continue using them without licensing them as part of Day Out with Thomas.
### The Titfield Thunderbolt
The preservation of the Talyllyn Railway by volunteers was the inspiration for the 1953 film The Titfield Thunderbolt, an Ealing Studios comedy about a group of villagers attempting to run a service on a disused branch line after closure. T. E. B. Clarke, the script writer for the film, had heard about the preservation of the Talyllyn and spent a day on the railway in 1951, and some of the early incidents in preservation were incorporated into the film. In the book Railway Adventure Tom Rolt recalled that he had hoped the film might be produced on the Talyllyn, but it was eventually filmed on the recently closed Camerton branch of the Bristol and North Somerset Railway branch line along the Cam Brook valley in Somerset. The actor Hugh Griffith, who played Dan in the film, was a friend of Tom Rolt and an early vice-president of the preservation society.
### Railway with a Heart of Gold
In 1953, the American film producer Carson "Kit" Davidson produced a documentary film entitled Railway with a Heart of Gold, portraying the early days of preservation. Some incidents were staged for the film, such as a piece falling off the locomotive, which Davidson later described as "corny". However most of the film was simply a record of the work and incidents that took place on the railway at the time, including a dramatic shot of Sir Haydn'' derailing due to the poor condition of the track at the time. The film, which was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012, ends with the quote "It is a relic, this railway, a bit of ornamental scrollwork lifted from the pattern of yesterday and kept as a memento."
## See also
- British narrow gauge railways
- List of 2 ft 3 in gauge railways
- List of British heritage and private railways
- Tourism in Wales
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Thunderbirds (TV series)
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British science-fiction TV series
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Thunderbirds is a British science fiction television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, filmed by their production company AP Films (APF) and distributed by ITC Entertainment. It was made between 1964 and 1966 using a form of electronic marionette puppetry (dubbed "Supermarionation") combined with scale model special effects sequences. Two series, totalling thirty-two 50-minute episodes, were filmed; production ended with the completion of the sixth episode of the second series after Lew Grade, the Andersons' financial backer, failed in his bid to sell the programme to American network television.
Set in the 2060s, Thunderbirds is a follow-up to the earlier Supermarionation productions Four Feather Falls, Supercar, Fireball XL5 and Stingray. It follows the exploits of International Rescue, a life-saving organisation equipped with technologically advanced land, sea, air and space rescue craft; these are headed by a fleet of five vehicles named the Thunderbirds and launched from the organisation's secret base of operations in the Pacific Ocean. The main characters are ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy, leader of International Rescue, and his five adult sons, who pilot the Thunderbird machines.
Thunderbirds debuted in September 1965 on the ITV network. The series was exported to around 30 countries during the 1960s. Periodically repeated, it was adapted for radio in the 1990s and has influenced many TV programmes and other media. Besides tie-in merchandise, the series has been followed by two feature film sequels – Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6 – as well as an anime adaptation, a mime theatre show and a live-action film. A remake series premiered in 2015; the same year, three new episodes, based on tie-in audio plays and made using the same techniques as the original series, were created to mark its 50th anniversary.
Widely regarded as the Andersons' most popular and commercially successful series, Thunderbirds has been praised for its special effects (directed by Derek Meddings) and musical score (composed by Barry Gray). It is also remembered for its title sequence, which begins with an oft-quoted countdown by Jeff Tracy voice actor Peter Dyneley: "5, 4, 3, 2, 1: Thunderbirds Are Go!"
## Premise
Set between 2065 and 2067, Thunderbirds follows the exploits of the Tracy family, headed by American industrialist and ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy. Jeff is a widower with five adult sons: Scott, John, Virgil, Gordon and Alan. The Tracys make up International Rescue, a secret organisation founded to save human life. They are aided in this mission by technologically advanced land, sea, air and space vehicles that are called into service when conventional rescue methods prove ineffective. The most important of these vehicles are the five "Thunderbird machines", each assigned to one of the five Tracy brothers:
- Thunderbird 1: a blue and silver hypersonic rocket plane used for fast response and danger zone reconnaissance. Piloted by Scott, rescue co-ordinator.
- Thunderbird 2: a green supersonic carrier aircraft that transports supporting rescue vehicles and equipment in detachable capsules called "pods". Piloted by Virgil.
- Thunderbird 3: a red single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft. Piloted alternately by Alan and John, with Scott as co-pilot.
- Thunderbird 4: a yellow utility submersible. Piloted by Gordon and usually launched from Thunderbird 2.
- Thunderbird 5: a grey and gold space station that relays distress calls from around the world. Manned alternately by "space monitors" John and Alan.
The family live on Tracy Island, International Rescue's base of operations in the South Pacific Ocean, in a luxurious villa that they share with four others: Jeff's mother, Grandma Tracy; the bespectacled scientist and engineer Brains, who designed the Thunderbirds machines; Brains' assistant Tin-Tin, who is also Alan's girlfriend; and Tin-Tin's father Kyrano, the Tracys' retainer. In this remote location, International Rescue is safe from criminals and spies who envy its technology and aim to acquire the secrets of the Thunderbird machines.
Some of International Rescue's operations are triggered by sabotage or negligence instead of accidents. For missions requiring espionage, the organisation incorporates a network of undercover agents headed by English aristocrat Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward and her butler Aloysius Parker. Based at Creighton-Ward Mansion in Kent, Penelope and Parker travel in FAB 1, a specially-modified Rolls-Royce. Members of International Rescue acknowledge orders with the expression "FAB" (a shortening of the 1960s vogue word "fabulous", but spoken like an initialism: "F-A-B").
International Rescue's most persistent opponent is master criminal the Hood. Based in a temple in the Malaysian jungle and possessing powers of hypnosis and dark magic, the Hood exerts a telepathic control over Kyrano, his estranged half-brother, and manipulates the Tracys into rescues that unfold according to his own malevolent designs. This gives him opportunities to spy on the Thunderbird machines and, by selling their secrets, make himself rich.
## Production
Thunderbirds was the fourth Supermarionation puppet TV series to be produced by APF, which was founded by the husband-and-wife duo of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (née Thamm) with their business partners Arthur Provis, Reg Hill, and John Read. Pitched in late 1963, the series was commissioned by Lew Grade of ITC, APF's parent company, on the back of the positive audience response to Stingray.
Gerry Anderson drew inspiration for the series' underlying concept from the West German mining disaster known as the Wunder von Lengede ("Miracle of Lengede"). In October 1963, the collapse of a nearby dam flooded an iron mine in the municipality of Lengede, killing 29 miners and trapping 21 others underground. Lacking the means to drill an escape shaft, the authorities were forced to requisition a heavy-duty bore from Bremen; despite the considerable time necessary to transport the bore by rail significantly reducing the chances of a successful rescue, 11 of the trapped miners were eventually saved. Recognising the advantages of swifter crisis response, Anderson conceived the idea of an "international rescue" organisation that could use supersonic aircraft to transport specialised rescue equipment quickly over long distances.
Seeking to distinguish his proposal from APF's earlier productions, Anderson attempted to pitch the stories at a level that would appeal to both adults and children. Whereas previous series had been broadcast in late-afternoon children's timeslots, Anderson wanted Thunderbirds to be shown during the evening to attract a broader family audience. Sylvia remembers that "our market had grown and a 'kidult' show ... was the next step." The Andersons retired to their holiday villa in Portugal to expand the premise, script the pilot episode and compose a writers' guide. According to Sylvia, the writing process depended on a "division of labour", whereby Gerry created the action sequences while she managed characterisation. The decision to make a father and his sons the main characters was influenced by the premise of Bonanza, as well as Sylvia's belief that the use of more than one heroic character would broaden the series' appeal. The Tracy brothers were named after Mercury Seven astronauts: Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Gordon Cooper and Alan Shepard.
The series' title was derived from a letter written by Gerry's brother, Lionel, while he had been serving overseas as an RAF flight sergeant during World War II. While stationed in Arizona, Lionel had made reference to Thunderbird Field, a nearby United States Army Air Forces base. Drawn to the "punchiness" of "Thunderbirds", Anderson renamed the series, whose working title had been "International Rescue", as well as the star vehicles, which had initially been designated Rescues 1 to 5. His inspiration for the launch sequences of Thunderbirds 1, 2 and 3 originated from contemporary US Air Force launch procedure: Anderson had learnt how the Strategic Air Command would keep its pilots on permanent standby, seated in the cockpits of their aircraft and ready for take-off at a moment's notice.
In the DVD documentary The Thunderbirds Companion, Anderson explained how a rise in filming costs had made overseas distribution revenue even more important and essentially caused Thunderbirds to be made "as an American show". During the character development and voice casting process, the Andersons' main priority was to ensure that the series had transatlantic appeal, thus increasing the chances of winning an American network deal and the higher audience figures that this market had to offer.
### Filming
Thunderbirds was filmed at APF's studios on the Slough Trading Estate between 1964 and 1966. In preparation, the number of full-time crew was expanded to 100. Shooting began in September 1964 after five months of pre-production. Due to the new series' technical complexity, this was a period longer than for any of the earlier productions. To speed up the filming, episodes were shot in pairs on separate stages and by separate crews (designated "A" and "B"). By 1964, APF was the UK's largest commercial user of colour film, consuming more than three million feet (570 miles or 910 kilometres) of stock per year.
As with APF's previous three series, the Andersons devised Thunderbirds as a 25-minute show. In late 1964, Alan Pattillo, a longtime writer and director for APF, was made the company's first official script editor. This move was aimed to reduce the burden on Gerry Anderson who, while reserving his producer's right to overall creative control, had grown weary of revising scripts himself. Direction of episodes was assigned in pairs: veterans Pattillo and David Elliott alternated with the less-experienced Desmond Saunders and newcomer David Lane for each month's filming. Due to the difficulties of setting up takes, progress was slow: even on a productive day, it was rare for the crew to complete more than two minutes of puppet footage. In a contemporary interview, Hill noted that Thunderbirds contained several times as many shots as a typical live-action series. He explained that rapid editing was necessary on account of the characters' lack of facial expression, which made it difficult to sustain the viewer's interest for more than a few seconds per shot.
After viewing the finished pilot, "Trapped in the Sky", Lew Grade was so impressed with the series that he instructed Anderson to extend the length of each episode from 25 to 50 minutes – enough to fill an hour-long commercial timeslot. He also increased the budget per episode from £25,000 to £38,000. As a result, Thunderbirds became not only APF's longest and highest-budgeted production, but also one of the most expensive TV series ever made up to that point. The total budget for the 26-episode Series One was approximately £1 million (about £ million in ).
The production, which had been shooting two 25-minute episodes every two weeks, faced great challenges transitioning to the new format: nine episodes had already been fully or partly filmed, scripts for ten more had been written, and major rewrites would be needed to satisfy the longer running time. Anderson lamented: "Our time-scale was far too drawn out. ITC's New York office insisted that they should have one show a fortnight ... Everything had to move at twice the speed." APF spent over seven months extending the existing episodes and filmed the new 50-minute format at a rate of two episodes every four weeks.
Tony Barwick, who had impressed Pattillo and the Andersons with an unsubmitted script that he had written for Danger Man, was recruited to assist in writing subplots and filler material. He found that the longer format created opportunities to strengthen the characterisation. Science fiction writer John Peel suggests that "small character touches" make the puppet cast of Thunderbirds "much more rounded" than those of earlier APF series. He compares the writing favourably to that of live-action drama. The new footage proved useful during the development of the first series finale, "Security Hazard": since the previous two episodes ("Attack of the Alligators!" and "The Cham-Cham") had overspent their budgets, Pattillo devised a flashback-dominated clip show containing only 17 minutes of new material to reduce costs.
Filming of Series One was completed in December 1965. A second series was also commissioned late that year and entered production in March 1966. Barwick became a full-time member of the writing staff and took over the role of script editor from the outgoing Pattillo. The main puppet cast and vehicles were rebuilt; in addition, the art department expanded some of the standing sets, including the Tracy Villa lounge and the Thunderbird 5 control room. To accommodate the simultaneous filming of the TV series and Thunderbirds Are Go, APF purchased two more buildings on the Slough Trading Estate and converted them into new stages. As personnel and studio space were divided between the two productions, filming of the TV series progressed at half the previous speed, with B crew shooting one episode a month. Filming on Thunderbirds Are Go was completed by June, allowing A crew to resume work on the series to shoot what would prove to be its penultimate episode, "Ricochet".
Production of Thunderbirds ended in August 1966 with the completion of the sixth episode of Series Two. In February that year, it had been reported that Grade had been unable to sell the series in the United States due to disagreements over timeslots. In July, he cancelled Thunderbirds after failing in his second attempt to secure an American buyer. The three major US networks of the time—NBC, CBS and ABC—had all bid for the series, with Grade repeatedly increasing the price. When NBC withdrew its offer, the other two immediately followed.
By the time of its cancellation, Thunderbirds had become widely popular in the UK and was being distributed extensively overseas. Grade, however, believed that without the financial boost of an American network sale, a full second series would fail to recover its production costs. He therefore asked Anderson to devise a new concept that he hoped would stand a greater chance of winning over the profitable US market. This became Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
### Casting and characters
Dialogue recording sessions were supervised by the Andersons and Reg Hill, with Sylvia Anderson in charge of casting. Dialogue was recorded once per month at a rate of two scripts per session. Supporting parts were not assigned, but negotiated by the cast among themselves. Two recordings would be made at each session: one to be converted into electronic pulses for the puppet filming, the other to be added to the soundtrack during post-production. The tapes were edited at Gate Recording Theatre in Birmingham.
In the interest of transatlantic appeal, it was decided that the main characters would be mostly American and therefore actors capable of producing an appropriate accent were used. British, Canadian and Australian actors formed most of the voice cast; the only American involved was stage actor David Holliday, who was noticed in London's West End and given the part of Virgil Tracy. Following the completion of the first series, Holliday returned to the US. The character was voiced by English actor Jeremy Wilkin for Thunderbirds Are Go, Series Two and Thunderbird 6.
British actor David Graham was among the first to be cast. He had previously voiced characters in Four Feather Falls, Supercar, Fireball XL5 and Stingray. Beyond the APF productions, he had supplied one of the original Dalek voices on Doctor Who. Cast alongside Graham was Australian actor Ray Barrett. Like Graham, he had worked for the Andersons before, having voiced Titan and Commander Shore in Stingray. A veteran of radio drama, Barrett was skilled at performing a range of voices and accents in quick succession. Villains of the week would typically be voiced by either Barrett or Graham. Aware of the sensitive political climate of the Cold War and not wishing to "perpetuate the idea that Russia was the enemy with a whole generation of children watching", Gerry Anderson decided the Hood (voiced by Barrett) should be Oriental and placed his temple hideout in Malaysia to defy the viewer's expectations.
Although Lady Penelope and Parker (the latter voiced by Graham) were among the first characters developed, neither was conceived as a major role. Parker's Cockney manner was based on a waiter at a pub in Cookham that was sometimes visited by the crew. On Gerry Anderson's recommendation, Graham dined there regularly to study the accent. Anderson's first choice for the role of Penelope had been Fenella Fielding, but Sylvia insisted she take the part herself. Her Penelope voice was intended to emulate Fielding and Joan Greenwood. On Penelope and Parker's secondary role as comic relief, Gerry explained, "We British can laugh at ourselves, so therefore we had Penelope and Parker as this comedy team. And in America they love the British aristocracy too.'"
As well as Jeff Tracy, English-Canadian actor Peter Dyneley voiced the recurring character of Commander Norman, chief of air traffic control at London International Airport. His supporting character voices were typically those of upper-class Englishmen. Shane Rimmer, the voice of Scott, was cast on the strength of his performance on the BBC soap opera Compact. Meanwhile, fellow Canadian Matt Zimmerman was selected at a late stage in the process. The expatriate West End actor was given the role of Alan on the recommendation of his friend, Holliday: "They were having great difficulty casting the part of Alan as they wanted a certain sound for him, being the youngest brother. David, who [was] a bit older than I am, told them that he had this friend, me, who would be great."
Christine Finn, known for her role in the TV serial Quatermass and the Pit, provided the voices of Tin-Tin Kyrano and Grandma Tracy. With Sylvia Anderson, she was also responsible for voicing most of the female and child supporting characters. Supporting parts were occasionally voiced by John Tate, Paul Maxwell and Charles Tingwell; the latter two joined the cast in Series Two following their contributions to Thunderbirds Are Go. None of these three actors were credited for their performances.
### Design and effects
The puppet stages used for the filming of Thunderbirds were only one-fifth the size of those used for a standard live-action production, typically measuring 12 by 14 metres (39 by 46 ft) with a three-metre-high (9.8 ft) ceiling. Bob Bell, assisted by Keith Wilson and Grenville Nott, headed the art department for Series One. During the simultaneous filming of Series Two and Thunderbirds Are Go in 1966, Bell attended mainly to the film, entrusting set design for the TV series to Wilson.
Since it was necessary for the art department's interior sets to conform to the special effects department's exterior plans, each team closely monitored the other's work. According to Sylvia Anderson, Bell's challenge was to produce complex interiors on a limited budget while resisting the effects department's push for "more extravagant" design. This task was complicated by the unnatural proportions of the puppets: Bell struggled to decide whether the sets should be built to a scale proportionate to their bodies or their oversized heads and hands. He used the example of FAB 1 to illustrate the problem: "As soon as we positioned [the puppets] standing alongside [the model], they looked ridiculous, as the car towered over them." He ultimately adopted a "mix-and-match" approach, in which smaller items, such as tableware, were scaled to their hands and furniture to their bodies.
While designing the Creighton-Ward Mansion sets, Bell and his staff strove for authenticity, ordering miniature Tudor paintings, 1⁄3-scale Georgian- and Regency-style furniture and carpeting in the shape of a polar bear skin. This realism was enhanced by adding scrap items acquired from household waste and electronics shops. For example, a vacuum cleaner pipe serves as Virgil Tracy's launch chute.
#### Puppets
The head puppet sculptors were Christine Glanville and Mary Turner, who also served as the lead puppeteers. Glanville and Turner's team built the 13 members of the main cast in six months at a cost of between £250 and £300 per puppet (about £ and £ in ). Since pairs of episodes were being filmed simultaneously on separate stages, the characters needed to be sculpted in duplicate. Facial expressions were diversified by means of replaceable heads: as well as a head with a neutral expression, each main character was given a "smiler", a "frowner" and a "blinker". The finished puppets were about 22 inches (56 cm) tall, or 1⁄3 adult human height.
The puppets were made up of more than 30 individual components, the most important of which was the solenoid that synchronised lip movements with the characters' pre-recorded dialogue. This device was positioned inside the head unit; consequently, torsos and limbs appeared relatively small. The puppets' likenesses and mechanics are remembered favourably by puppeteer Wanda Brown, who preferred the Thunderbirds marionettes over the accurately-proportioned ones that first appeared in Captain Scarlet: "The puppets were easier to operate and more enjoyable because they had more character to them ... Even some of the more normal-looking faces, such as Scott and Jeff, for me had more character than the puppets in the series that came afterwards." Rimmer speaks positively of the puppets' still being "very much caricatures", since it made them "more lovable and appealing ... There was a naive quality about them and nothing too complex."
The appearances of the main characters were inspired by those of actors and other entertainers, who were typically selected from the show business directory Spotlight. According to Glanville, as part of a trend away from the strong caricature of previous series, APF was seeking "more natural faces" for the puppets. The face of Jeff Tracy was based on that of Lorne Greene, Scott on Sean Connery, Alan on Robert Reed, John on Adam Faith and Charlton Heston, Brains on Anthony Perkins and Parker on Ben Warriss. Sylvia Anderson brought the character of Penelope to life in likeness as well as voice: after her test moulds were rejected, sculptor Mary Turner decided to use Anderson herself as a template.
Main character heads were initially sculpted in either Plasticine or clay. Once the general aspect had been finalised, this served as the template for a silicone rubber mould. This was coated with Bondaglass (fibreglass mixed with resin) and enhanced with Bondapaste, a putty-like substance, to accentuate contours. The Bondaglass shell was then fitted with a solenoid, leather mouth parts and plastic eyes, as well as incisor teeth—a first for a Supermarionation production. Puppets known as "revamps", which had plastic heads, portrayed the supporting characters. These marionettes started their working lives with only a mouth and eyes; their faces were remoulded from one episode to the next. Particularly striking revamp moulds were retained and, as their numbers increased, photographed to compile an internal casting directory.
Wigs were made of mohair or, in the case of the Penelope puppet, human hair. Puppet bodies were built in three sizes: "large male" (specifically for the Tracys and the Hood), "small male" and "small female". Sylvia Anderson, the head costume designer, devised the main characters' attire. To give the puppets increased mobility, the costume department generally avoided stiff synthetic materials, instead working with cotton, silk and wool. Between 1964 and 1966, the department's stock numbered more than 700 costumes.
Each puppet's head was fitted with around ten thin tungsten steel wires. During the filming, dialogue was played into the studio using modified tape recorders that converted the feed into electronic pulses. Two of the wires relayed these pulses to the internal solenoid, completing the Supermarionation process. The wires, which were sprayed black to reduce their visibility, were made even less noticeable through the application of powder paint that matched the background colours of the set. Glanville explained the time-consuming nature of this process: "[The puppeteers] used to spend over half an hour on each shot getting rid of these wires, looking through the camera, puffing a bit more [paint] here, anti-flare there; and, I mean, it's very depressing when somebody will say to us, 'Of course the wires showed.'" Positioned on an overhead gantry with a hand-held cruciform, the puppeteers co-ordinated movements with the help of a viewfinder-powered CCTV feedback system. As filming progressed, the crew started to dispense with wires and instead manipulate the puppets from the studio floor using rods.
Due to their low weight and the fact that they had only one control wire per leg, the puppets were unable to walk convincingly. Therefore, scenes involving movement were filmed from the waist up, with a puppeteer holding the legs below the level of the camera and using a "bobbing" action to simulate motion. Alternatively, dynamic shots were eliminated altogether: in an interview with New Scientist, director of photography John Read spoke of the advantages of circumventing the lack of agility so that the puppets "appear, for example, to walk through doors (although the control wires make this impossible) or pick up a coffee cup (although their fingers are not in fact jointed)." Live-action shots of human hands were inserted whenever scripts called for more dexterous actions to be performed.
#### Special effects
The scale model effects for every APF series from Supercar to UFO were directed by Derek Meddings, who later worked on the James Bond and Superman films. Knowing that Thunderbirds would be the "biggest project [APF] had worked on", Meddings found himself struggling to manage his workload with the single filming unit that had produced all the effects for Stingray. He therefore established a second unit under technician Brian Johncock, and a third exclusively for filming airborne sequences. This expansion increased the number of APF crews and stages to five each. A typical episode contained around 100 effects shots and Meddings' team completed up to 18 per day.
An addition to the effects department was Mike Trim, who served as Meddings' assistant in designing vehicles and buildings. Meddings and Trim jointly pioneered an "organic" design technique in which the exteriors of models and sets were customised with parts from model kits and children's toys. Models and sets were also "dirtied down" with powder paint or pencil lead to create a used look. Toy cars and vans were used in long shot, while scale vehicles were equipped with basic steering and suspension for added realism. Miniature fans and Jetex pellets, which are capable of issuing air jets or chemical exhaust, were attached to the undersides to simulate dust trails. Another of Meddings' inventions was a closed, cyclical effects stage nicknamed the "rolling road": consisting of two or more loops of canvas running at different speeds, this device allowed shots of moving vehicles to be filmed on a static set to make more efficient use of the limited studio space. Airborne aircraft sequences were mounted against a "rolling sky", with smoke fanned across to simulate passing clouds.
One of Meddings' first tasks was to shoot stock footage of the Thunderbird machines and the series' main locations, Tracy Island and Creighton-Ward Mansion. The finished island model was a composite of more than a dozen smaller sets that could be detached from the whole and filmed separately. The architecture of the mansion was based on that of Stourhead House, located on the Stourhead Estate in Wiltshire. In the absence of head designer Reg Hill, who was serving as associate producer, Meddings was further tasked with designing the Thunderbird fleet and FAB 1. Scale models for the six main vehicles were built by a contractor, Master Models of Middlesex. Models and puppet sets combined, more than 200 versions of the Thunderbird machines were created for the series.
During the designing and filming process, Meddings' first priorities were realism and credibility. With the exception of Thunderbird 5, each vehicle was built in three or four scales. Meddings' swing-wing concept for Thunderbird 1 was inspired by his wish to create something "more dynamic" than a fixed-wing aircraft. He remained unsatisfied with the prototype of Thunderbird 2 until he inverted the wings, later commenting, "... at the time, all aircraft had swept-back wings. I only did it to be different." This decision was made out of personal preference and was not informed by any expert knowledge on Meddings' part. He described the Thunderbird 2 launch as "probably the most memorable" sequence that his team devised for an APF production.
The largest model of Thunderbird 3, whose design was loosely based on the Soviet Soyuz rocket, was six feet (1.8 m) tall. Thunderbird 4 was particularly difficult to film: as the scale of the model did not correspond to the water inside the shooting tank, creative camera angles and rapid editing were used to produce a sense of realistic perspective. Thunderbird 5, the most difficult vehicle for Meddings to visualise, was based on the Tracy Island Round House. Since most of the space station's appearances were provided by stock footage, the model was rarely filmed. Pod Vehicles were designed on an episode-by-episode basis and built from balsa wood, Jelutong wood or fibreglass. To save time and costs, other minor vehicles were built in-house from radio-controlled model kits.
As the puppets of Lady Penelope and Parker needed to fit inside, the largest of all the models was the seven-foot FAB 1, which cost £2,500 (about £ in ) to build. The Rolls-Royce's name and colour were both chosen by Sylvia Anderson. Rolls-Royce Limited supervised the construction of the plywood model and supplied APF with an authentic radiator grille for close-up shots of the front of the car. In exchange for its cooperation, the company requested that a Spirit of Ecstasy be fixed to the chassis and that the characters avoid referring to the brand with abbreviations such as "Rolls".
Scale explosions were created using substances such as fuller's earth, petrol gel, magnesium strips and Cordtex explosive. They were originally filmed at up to 120 frames per second (f.p.s.), so that when slowed down to the regular 24 f.p.s., their apparent magnitude and length would be increased. Gunpowder canisters were ignited to create rocket jets. The wires that electronically fired the rockets also allowed a member of the crew, holding a cruciform and positioned on an overhead gantry, to "fly" the model over the set. By far the most unwieldy model was Thunderbird 2, which Meddings remembered as being "awful" to fly. A combination of unreliable rockets and weak wiring frequently caused problems: should the former be slow to ignite, the current quickly caused the latter to overheat and snap, potentially damaging the model and even setting fire to the set. Conditions above the studio floor were often dangerous due to the heat and smoke. Although many of the exhaust sound effects used in the series were drawn from an audio library, some were specially recorded during a Red Arrows display at RAF Little Rissington in Gloucestershire.
By 1966, Meddings' commitments were split between Series Two and Thunderbirds Are Go. While Meddings worked on the film, camera operator Jimmy Elliott assumed the responsibility of directing the TV effects. By this stage, the basic frame of Thunderbird 2 had been damaged so many times that the model had needed to be rebuilt from scratch. Meddings was displeased with the result, reflecting that the replacement was "not only the wrong colour, it was a completely different shape ... I never felt our model-makers managed to recapture the look of the original."
Critic David Garland suggests that the challenge facing the Thunderbirds effects department was to strike a balance between the "conventional science fiction imperative of the 'futuristic'" and the "seeping hyper-realist concerns mandated by the Andersons' approach to the puppets". Thunderbirds has been praised for the quality of its effects. Jim Sangster and Paul Condon, writers of Collins Telly Guide, consider the model work "uniformly impressive". To Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, writers of The Guinness Book of Classic British TV, the effects are "way beyond anything seen on TV previously". Impressed by their work on Thunderbirds, film director Stanley Kubrick hired several members of Meddings' staff to supervise the effects shooting for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
#### Title sequence
The series' title sequence, storyboarded by Gerry Anderson, is made up of two parts. It opens with a countdown of "5, 4, 3, 2, 1: Thunderbirds Are Go!", provided by Dyneley in character as Jeff Tracy. In a departure from the style of Stingray, the Thunderbirds title sequence varies with each episode: the first part consists of an action montage that serves as a preview of the plot. Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn, biographers of Gerry Anderson, compare this device favourably to a film trailer.
The second part, accompanied by composer Barry Gray's "The Thunderbirds March", features portraits of the main puppet cast superimposed on various vehicles and settings. Peel describes this as "ostensibly a return to the 'series stars' concept long known in TV", while Garland considers such imagery demonstrative of Anderson's commitment to "incremental realism" through a convergence of human and puppet characteristics. Essayist Jonathan Bignell suggests that the use of portraits conveys Anderson's partiality to "visual revelation of machines and physical action".
According to Daniel O'Brien, writer of SF:UK: How British Science Fiction Changed the World, the Thunderbirds title sequence encapsulates the reasons for the series' enduring popularity. Dyneley's countdown is particularly well remembered and has been widely quoted. Dean Newman of the Syfy channel website ranks Thunderbirds eighth in a list of "Top 10 TV title sequences", while Den of Geek's Martin Anderson considers the sequence the best of any TV series.
### Music
The score was composed by Gray, who served as musical director for all of the Anderson productions up to the first series of Space: 1999. In response to Gerry Anderson's request that the main theme have a "military feel", Gray produced a brass-dominated piece titled "The Thunderbirds March", which was recorded in December 1964 at Olympic Studios in London. The end titles were originally to have been accompanied by "Flying High", a lyrical track sung by Gary Miller with backing by Ken Barrie. Ultimately, a variation of the march was used instead. Incidental music was recorded over nine months between March and December 1965. As most of the music budget was spent on the series' earlier episodes, later instalments drew heavily on APF's ever-expanding music library.
Peel considers "The Thunderbirds March" to be "one of the best TV themes ever written—perfect for the show and catchy when heard alone". Morag Reavley of BBC Online argues that the piece is "up there ... in the quintessential soundtrack of the Sixties" with the James Bond films and the songs of Frank Sinatra, Elvis and The Beatles. More generally, he praises the series' "catchy, pulse-quickening tunes", as well as Gray's aptitude for "musical nuance" and the mixing of genres. Heather Phares of Allmusic considers "Thunderbirds Are Go!"—the track accompanying the launch sequences of Thunderbirds 1, 2 and 3—to be a reflection of the mod aspect of 1960s British spy fiction. She also highlights Gray's homage to—and divergence from—musical norms, commenting that his score "sends up the spy and action/adventure conventions of the '60s very stylishly and subtly".
David Huckvale identifies Wagnerian homage in both the theme music and the series' premise. Noting that the theme's opening string ostinato is similar in effect to a recurring motif in Ride of the Valkyries, he also likens the Thunderbird machines to Valkyries themselves: "Their function is more benevolent than those warrior maidens, but they do hover over danger, death and destruction." Kevin J. Donnelly of the University of Southampton acknowledges the series' "big-sounding orchestral score", which he compares to that of a live-action film. He also suggests that the music serves partly to draw attention away from the physical imperfections of the puppets.
## Broadcast history
The first episode of Thunderbirds premiered on 30 September 1965 on the ATV Midlands, Westward and Channel franchises of the ITV network. Transmissions by other franchises, including ATV London and Granada, began the following month. Honouring the Andersons' wish for family appeal, many areas showed the series during prime time (typically in a 7.00 p.m. slot). The final episode, the Christmas-themed "Give or Take a Million", was first broadcast on 25 December 1966. Like other British series filmed in colour in the mid-1960s, Thunderbirds was first screened in its home market in black and white, colour broadcasting not starting on the main channels of BBC1 and ITV until November 1969.
Despite Grade's decision to double the running time, Thunderbirds was also sold in a two-part, 25-minute episode format. Each "concluding" part began with a narration by Shane Rimmer summarising the first part's action. Granada first showed the series in this format, airing both episode parts on the same night (one before and one after the ITN Evening News). It broadcast the original format for the first time when it began repeats in 1966. In 1968, the franchise briefly screened episodes in three parts due to timeslot restrictions. In the Midlands, ATV broadcast Series One in the hour-long format; Series Two, along with repeats of Series One, was then shown in the two-part format on consecutive evenings. The availability of re-runs varied greatly. ATV Midlands hosted regular repeats into the early 1970s; by contrast, between 1968 and 1976 Yorkshire Television showed no episodes at all. The series was last transmitted on the ITV network in 1981.
In 1990, eight of the 19 audio episodes were turned into radio dramas for broadcast on BBC Radio 5. The radio series was a success and prompted the BBC to acquire the rights to the TV episodes, which it aired on BBC2 (in all UK regions simultaneously) from September 1991. After this first run, which averaged more than six million viewers per episode, the BBC repeated the series six times: from 1992 to 1993 (Series One only), 1994 to 1995 (nine episodes only), 2000 to 2001 (in remastered form), and 2003, 2005 and 2006. Other channels to have shown the series include UK Gold (from 1994 to 1995), Bravo (1996–97), Cartoon Network (2001–02), Boomerang (2001–03) and Syfy (2009). In Scotland, the BBC aired a Gaelic dub, Tairnearan Tar As ("Thunderbirds Are Go") in 1993 and 1994. UK channel Talking Pictures TV began airing the series on 2 September 2023.
During the 1960s, Thunderbirds was distributed in about 30 countries including the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and Japan. International advance sales totalled £350,000 (about £ million in ). In Japan, where it was first broadcast by NHK, Thunderbirds acquired a significant fan following and influenced the series Ultraman, Mighty Jack, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. In the US, the 25-minute format was placed in first-run syndication in 1968 to modest success. Internationally, the series has also been broadcast by TechTV, G4 and Family Room HD (US), BBC Kids and YTV (Canada), Nine Network and Foxtel (Australia), TV3 (New Zealand), MediaCorp TV12 (Singapore) and RTÉ Two (Republic of Ireland).
## Reception
Thunderbirds is generally considered the Andersons' most popular series and their greatest critical and commercial success. In 1966, the Royal Television Society awarded the series a Silver Medal for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. In 2007, Thunderbirds came 19th in a Radio Times poll for the best science fiction TV programme of all time, and in 2013, it was ranked fourth in the Channel 5 list show 50 Greatest Kids' TV Shows. Acknowledging the series' "enduring appeal for both young and old", Robert Sellers remarks that "the cult of Thunderbirds has grown to near-mythic proportions."
For Peel, Thunderbirds is "without a doubt the peak of the Supermarionation achievement". Suggesting that the series is pitched at a "more adult" level than its predecessors, he adds that its sense of adventure, effective humour and "gripping and convincing" episodes ensured that "everyone in the audience found something to love about it." Simon Heffer, a fan of Thunderbirds in childhood, commented positively on the series for The Daily Telegraph in 2011: "All the elements we children discerned in whatever grown-up television we had been allowed to watch were present in Thunderbirds: dramatic theme and incidental music; well-developed plots; goodies and baddies; swaggering Americans, at a time when the whole of Britain was in a cultural cringe to them; and, of course, glamorous locations ... Then, of course, there was the nail-biting tension of the rescues themselves ..." Film critic Kim Newman describes the series as a "television perennial".
In his foreword to John Marriott's book, Thunderbirds Are Go!, Anderson put forward several explanations for the series' lasting success: it "contains elements that appeal to most children—danger, jeopardy and destruction. But because International Rescue's mission is to save life, there is no gratuitous violence." According to Anderson, Thunderbirds incorporates a "strong family atmosphere, where Dad reigns supreme". Both O'Brien and script editor Alan Pattillo have praised the series' positive "family values". In addition, Heffer and others have written of its cross-generational appeal. In 2000, shortly before the series' BBC revival, Brian Viner remarked in Radio Times that Thunderbirds was on the point of "captivating yet another generation of viewers". Stuart Hood, writing for The Spectator in 1965, praised Thunderbirds as a "modern fairy tale"; adding that it "can sometimes be frightening", he recommended that children watch it accompanied by their parents. Writing for Dreamwatch in 1994, Andrew Thomas described Thunderbirds as only "nominally" a children's programme: "Its themes are universal and speak as much to the adult in the child as the child in the adult."
Jeff Evans, author of The Penguin TV Companion, argues that the series' 50-minute format allows for stronger character development and "tension-building". O'Brien is less positive in his appraisal of the writing, asserting that the plots are often "formulaic" and are sometimes "stretched to snapping point" by the extended running time. Cornell, Day and Topping are critical: they consider the writing at times "woefully poor" and argue that Thunderbirds as a whole is "often as clichéd as previous Anderson series". Peel, despite praising the storylines and characterisation, suggests that the "tongue-in-cheek" humour of Stingray is less evident. Where Thunderbirds improves on its predecessor, Peel believes, is in its rejection of fantasy plot devices, child and animal characters, comical and stereotyped villains and what he terms the "standard Anderson sexism": female characters, marginalised in earlier series, are more commonly seen to play active and sometimes heroic roles.
Noting the attention to detail of the series' launch sequences, Jonathan Bignell argues that part of the motivation for dedicating large amounts of screen time to the Thunderbird craft is the need to compensate for the limited mobility of the puppet cast. The focus on futuristic machines has also been explored by cultural historian Nicholas J. Cull, who comments that of all the Andersons' series, Thunderbirds is the most evocative of a recurring theme: the "necessity of the human component of the machine", whereby the failures of new technology are overcome by "brave human beings and technology working together". This makes the series' vision of the 2060s "wonderfully humanistic and reassuring". O'Brien similarly praises this optimism, comparing the Tracy family to guardian Übermensch. Writing for Wired UK magazine, Warren Ellis asserts that the series' scientific vision could inspire the next generation of "mad and frightening engineers", adding that Thunderbirds "trades in vast, demented concepts ... immense and very beautiful ideas as solutions to problems."
Thomas argues that the world of Thunderbirds is similar to the 1960s to the extent that contemporary capitalism and class structures appear to have survived mostly intact. He also observes, however, that wealth and high social status are often depicted as character flaws rather than strengths. According to Thomas, a contributing factor to the series' lasting popularity is the realism of International Rescue's machines. Newman, for his part, suggests that "the point isn't realism. The 21st century of Thunderbirds is detailed ... but also de-populated, a high-tech toyland". He is more negative in his comparisons of contemporary and future values, noting the "square, almost 50s" attitudes to race, gender and class. With regard to stereotyping, Hood comments that he "would be happier if [villains] didn't seem to be recognisable by their pigmentation". Cull, by contrast, considers the series largely progressive on the subject of race, arguing that it rejects negative stereotyping through the use of "positive non-white characters" such as Kyrano and Tin-Tin. However, he deems many of the one-off villains derivative, commenting that these characters are typically presented as "corrupt businessmen, spivs and gangsters familiar from crime films".
Various commentators—including Bignell, Cull and O'Brien—have also discussed Thunderbirds as a product of the Cold War era. Bignell comments that the Hood's Oriental appearance and mysterious powers draw parallels with James Bond villains and fears of China operating as "a 'third force' antagonistic to the West". Cull observes that, despite the series' focus on the dangers of nuclear technology, the Thunderbird machines contradict this particular theme: in their case, "an image of technology associated with the threat of Cold War mass destruction—the rocket emerging from the hidden silo—was appropriated and deployed to save life rather than to take it." He argues that the series adheres more closely to cultural norms by drawing on the "Cold War cult of the secret agent whose skills defend the home from enemies unknown", noting Lady Penelope's role as a spy in addition to two episodes ("30 Minutes After Noon" and "The Man from MI.5") that are heavily influenced by the James Bond novels and film adaptations.
The series' presentation of smoking was the subject of a study published in the medical journal Tobacco Control in 2002. Despite identifying examples in 26 episodes, Kate Hunt of the University of Glasgow concluded that Thunderbirds does not actively promote smoking—a view opposed by the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation (RCLCF) at the time of the series' relaunch on BBC2. Rejecting the RCLCF's proposal that the remastered episodes be edited to digitally erase all visible cigarettes and cigars, the BBC stated that the series "does not glorify or encourage smoking" and described the activity as "incidental to the plot".
During a 2001 exhibition dedicated to the series, Masaaki Hirakata, curator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, likened Thunderbirds to "a modern sci-fi expression of bunraku, which probably explains why it was accepted so readily [in Japan]".
## Merchandise
A comic strip featuring the characters of Lady Penelope and Parker debuted in the early issues of the children's weekly TV Century 21 in 1965. A full-length Thunderbirds strip appeared a year later, after which the Lady Penelope adventures were given a comic of their own. The Thunderbirds strip in TV Century 21 (later named TV21) ran from January 1966 to June 1970; it was originally by Alan Fennell and Frank Bellamy, with subsequent contributors including Scott Goodall, Don Harley and John Cooper. It was reprinted in Polystyle Publications' Countdown comic in 1971 and 1972.
More than 3,000 Thunderbirds-themed products have been marketed since the series' first appearance. To accommodate the high demand for tie-ins, APF established three dedicated subsidiaries: APF Merchandising, APF Music and APF Toys. Due to the series' popularity, some British commentators dubbed the 1966 end-of-year shopping season "Thunderbirds Christmas". In the early 1990s, Matchbox launched a new toy range to coincide with the BBC2 repeats. Sales figures for Christmas 1992 surpassed those attained by Star Wars merchandise in the 1970s and 1980s. Demand for Matchbox's Tracy Island Playset overwhelmed supply, leading to shop fights and a substantial black market for the toy.
From 1965 to 1967, APF released 19 Thunderbirds audio plays on vinyl EP records. Three were original stories; the rest were condensed re-tellings of various TV episodes narrated by the regular characters. The late 1960s also saw the publication of Thunderbirds, Lady Penelope, and Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds annuals as well as eight original Thunderbirds novels. In 2008, FTL Publications of Minnesota launched a new series of tie-in novels.
The series' first tie-in video game, developed by Firebird Software for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum computers, was released in 1985. Since then, titles have been released for the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and PlayStation 2. In the late 1980s, Thunderbirds was released on home video for the first time by PolyGram and its subsidiary Channel 5. Following its acquisition by Carlton in 1999, the series was digitally remastered for the release of the first DVD versions in 2000. Blu-ray editions followed in 2008.
An official Thunderbirds board game was published in 2015. It was designed by Matt Leacock, designer of the Pandemic board game. Three expansions of the core game were published in 2016: Above & Beyond, The Hood, and Tracy Island.
## Later productions
Thunderbirds has been followed by two film sequels, a live-action film adaptation, two animated TV remakes and several re-edited presentations for TV and home video. The second of the remakes, Thunderbirds Are Go, premiered on ITV in 2015, the 50th anniversary year of the original.
### Film
The feature film sequels Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6 were released in 1966 and 1968. Lew Grade had approved the production of the first film before the TV series began to air. Written and produced by the Andersons and directed by David Lane, the films were distributed by United Artists. Both were critical and commercial failures, and plans for further sequels were abandoned.
In the early 1980s, episodes of Thunderbirds and other Supermarionation series were re-edited by ITC's New York offices to create a series of compilation films. Branded "Super Space Theater", this format was mainly intended for family viewing on American syndicated and cable TV. Three Thunderbirds features were produced: Thunderbirds to the Rescue, Thunderbirds in Outer Space and Countdown to Disaster.
Plans for a live-action film adaptation were first announced in 1993. These eventually culminated in the 2004 film Thunderbirds, directed by Jonathan Frakes and produced by StudioCanal and Working Title Films. It was a critical and commercial failure and poorly received by fans of the TV series.
### TV
The Andersons sold their intellectual and profit participation rights to Thunderbirds and their other productions in the 1970s. As a result, they had no developmental control over later adaptations of their works. Thunderbirds was first remade for TV in the early 1980s as Thunderbirds 2086. In this anime re-imagining, set 20 years after the original, the vastly expanded International Rescue is based within an arcology and operates 17 Thunderbird machines. It was inspired by Thunderhawks, an updated story concept by Gerry Anderson and Reg Hill that later served as the basis for Anderson's Terrahawks.
Two re-edited series, based on condensed versions of 13 of the original episodes, aired in the US in 1994. The first, Thunderbirds USA, was broadcast as part of the Fox Kids programming block; the second, Turbocharged Thunderbirds, was syndicated by UPN. Devised as a comedy, Turbocharged Thunderbirds moved the action to the planet "Thunder-World" and combined the original puppet footage with new live-action scenes featuring a pair of human teenagers.
As well as Thunderhawks, Anderson developed other ideas for a remake. A 1976 concept, Inter-Galactic Rescue 4, was to have featured a variable-configuration craft capable of performing rescues on land and sea, in air and in space; Anderson pitched the idea to NBC, who rejected it. This was followed in 1984 by another proposed re-imagining, T-Force, which Anderson was at first unable to pursue due to a lack of funding. Development resumed in 1993, when it was decided to produce the series, now titled GFI, using cel animation. However, Anderson was disappointed with the results and the production was abandoned.
In 2005, Anderson re-affirmed his wish to remake Thunderbirds but stated that he had been unable to secure the necessary rights from Granada Ventures. His negotiations with Granada and its successor, ITV plc, continued for the next few years. In 2008, he expressed his commitment to creating an "updated" version, ideally using CGI; three years later, he announced that work on the new series had commenced. Following Anderson's death in December 2012, it was confirmed that ITV Studios and Pūkeko Pictures had struck a deal to remake Thunderbirds using a combination of CGI and live-action model sets. The new series, Thunderbirds Are Go, premiered in 2015.
Later that year, to mark the series' 50th anniversary, ITV commissioned Pod 4 Films to produce a mini-series of new Thunderbirds episodes based on three of the 1960s audio plays. Funding was obtained through Kickstarter and the mini-series had its premiere screening at the BFI Southbank in 2016. Titled The Anniversary Episodes, it was released on BritBox in 2020 alongside all 32 episodes of the original Thunderbirds.
### Audio
In April 2021, Big Finish Productions announced the launch of a new series of audiobooks based on the Anderson productions. The first of these, Thunderbirds: Terror from the Stars (an adaptation of the 1966 tie-in novel Thunderbirds by John Theydon) was released in May 2021. Produced by Anderson Entertainment, the audiobooks feature Jon Culshaw as the voices of Jeff Tracy and Parker, with Genevieve Gaunt as Lady Penelope.
## Influence
Thunderbirds has influenced TV, cinema and other media. The 1960s sketch comedy Not Only... But Also included a segment called "Superthunderstingcar" — a parody of Thunderbirds, Supercar and Stingray. The puppet comedy of Team America: World Police was directly inspired by the idiosyncrasies of the Thunderbirds marionettes. Allusion and homage are also evident in the Wallace and Gromit short film A Close Shave, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Spaced, as well as the character design of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
International Rescue was the inspiration for the International Rescue Corps, a volunteer organisation started by a group of British firemen who contributed to the humanitarian effort following the 1980 Irpinia earthquake. Virgin Group used the series in the branding of its services: Virgin Atlantic flew a Boeing 747-400 called Lady Penelope and Virgin Trains operated a fleet of sixteen Class 57 rescue locomotives named after the main characters and vehicles.
Cover versions of "The Thunderbirds March" have been released by musicians and bands including Billy Cotton, Joe Loss, Frank Sidebottom, The Rezillos and The Shadows. Songs inspired by the series include Busted's "Thunderbirds / 3AM" (which forms part of the soundtrack of the 2004 film), "International Rescue" by Fuzzbox, "Thunderbirds Are Coming Out" by TISM, and "Thunderbirds – Your Voice" by V6. The music video for the Dire Straits single "Calling Elvis", directed by Gerry Anderson, featured a collection of Thunderbirds-style puppets.
A mime theatre show, Thunderbirds: F.A.B., has toured internationally and popularised a staccato style of movement known as the "Thunderbirds walk". It has been periodically revived as Thunderbirds: F.A.B. – The Next Generation.
During the 1960s, APF produced Thunderbirds-themed TV adverts for Kellogg's breakfast cereal and Lyons Maid ice lollies. Lyons' Fab lolly, introduced in 1967, was launched to capitalise on the series' success and originally used FAB 1, Lady Penelope and Parker in its branding. In later decades, Thunderbirds has been used in advertising for Kit Kat chocolate bars, Swinton Insurance, Specsavers, Halifax and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.
The first annual "International Thunderbirds Day" was celebrated on 30 September 2017, the 52nd anniversary of the series' debut. To mark the event, Vue Cinemas hosted special Thunderbirds screenings in 52 locations around the UK, the Emirates Air Line cable car featured "Thunderbirds Are Go" branding, and the InterContinental London - The O2 hotel offered a "Lady Penelope Afternoon Tea" from 15 September until 30 October.
## See also
- List of early colour TV shows in the UK
|
42,173 |
Aston Villa F.C.
| 1,173,870,065 |
Association football club in Birmingham, England
|
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"1874 establishments in England",
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"Aston Villa F.C.",
"EFL Cup winners",
"English Football League clubs",
"FA Cup winners",
"Football clubs in Birmingham, West Midlands",
"Football clubs in England",
"Football clubs in the West Midlands (county)",
"Premier League clubs",
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Aston Villa Football Club, commonly referred to as Villa, is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. The club competes in the , the top tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1874, they have played at their home ground, Villa Park, since 1897. Aston Villa is one of the oldest and most successful clubs in England, having won the Football League First Division seven times, the FA Cup seven times, the League Cup five times, and the European Cup and European Super Cup once.
Aston Villa has been a leading English club since the 1880s, renowned for their short, quick combination passing under Scotsman George Ramsay, who was appointed as the world's first professional football manager in 1886. The club was influential in the sport's move to professionalism in 1885 and it was a Villa director, William McGregor who founded the world's first Football League in 1888.
George Ramsay's trophy haul of six League Championships and six FA Cups established Aston Villa as the most successful club in England, a position it held from the 1890s until the 1970s. Villa scored 128 goals in season 1930–31, which remains the all-time top-flight record, however the club began its first decline in the mid-1930s; the 1940s and 50s was generally a period of mediocrity followed by a steep decline in the 1960s which culminated in a takeover of the club by Doug Ellis in 1968 and Villa's first and only relegation to the third tier of English football in 1969–70. Villa returned to the elite from the mid-1970s under manager Ron Saunders, who led the club to a seventh top-flight league title in 1980–81. They became only the fourth English club to win the European Cup, in 1981–82, followed by the European Super Cup in 1982.
Aston Villa was a founding member of the Premier League in 1992, one of just three clubs to have been founding members of both the Football League and the Premier League. The club regularly qualified for European football in the 1990s, but following a period in which the club struggled to compete with the high levels of spending of the leading clubs, Doug Ellis sold his stake in the club to American billionaire Randy Lerner, whose ownership of the club ended with Villa's first and only relegation from the Premier League in season 2015–16. The club returned to the Premier League in 2019.
During its history Villa has spent 110 seasons in the top-flight, the second highest of any club, and provided 76 England internationals, also the second highest of any club. Aston Villa is currently ranked 5th in the all-time English top flight table, since its creation in 1888 and is the seventh most successful club in English football by competitive honours.
Villa have a fierce local rivalry with Birmingham City and the Second City derby between the teams has been played since 1879. There is also a local rivalry with West Bromwich Albion, with matches between the sides known as the West Midlands derby. The club's traditional kit colours are claret shirts with sky blue sleeves, white shorts and sky blue socks. Their traditional club badge is of a rampant lion. The club is currently owned by the NSWE group, a company owned by the Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris and the American billionaire Wes Edens.
## History
### Formation and rise to prominence (1874−1886)
Aston Villa Football Club were formed in March 1874, by members of the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel in Handsworth which is now part of Birmingham. The four founders of Aston Villa were Jack Hughes, Frederick Matthews, Walter Price and William Scattergood, who were members of the chapel's cricket team looking for a way to stay fit during the winter months. Due to the lack of local football teams Aston Villa's first match was against the local Aston Brook St Mary's Rugby team. As a condition of the match, the Villa side had to agree to play the first half under Rugby rules and the second half under Association rules. Villa won their first game 1–0.
The infant club's fortunes changed forever when a young Scotsman called George Ramsay stumbled across the Villa players' practice match in Aston Park in 1876. He was asked to make up the numbers and they were amazed by his skills, they had never seen such a display of close ball control before. When the game was over, the Villa players surrounded him and invited him to join the club and become their captain. Word spread about how fine a player Ramsay was, spectators began turning up to watch the little man nicknamed ‘Scotty’. He also took charge of training, Ramsay later described the newly formed club's approach to the game as 'a dash at the man and a big kick at the ball'. Ramsay was influenced by the Scottish club, Queen's Park, who pioneered what became known as 'combination football' in his native Glasgow, the intricate passing game he introduced was a revolutionary move for an English club in the late 1870s.
Villa began to establish themselves as one of the best teams in the Midlands, winning their first honour, the Birmingham Senior Cup in 1880. The club would go on to lift the trophy 9 times in the next 12 seasons.
### Victorian and Edwardian golden age (1886–1914)
Following the professionalisation of football in 1885, the club decided that it needed a full-time paid manager. The following advert was placed in the Birmingham Daily Gazette newspaper in June 1886:
> 'Wanted: manager for Aston Villa Football Club, who will be required to devote his whole time under direction of the committee. Salary £100 per annum. Applications with reference must be made not later than June 23rd to Chairman of the Committee, Aston Villa Club House, 6 Witton Road, Aston’
Villa received 150 applicants for the role, but with his strong association with the club George Ramsay was the overwhelming choice of the membership. Thus on 26 June 1886, Aston Villa appointed what has been described as the world's first professional football manager. The following season Aston Villa rose to national prominence, as the first Midlands team to win the FA Cup in 1887. Villa's captain, the powerful Scottish centre-forward Archie Hunter became one of the game's first household names, being the first player to score in every round of the FA Cup. Aston Villa were one of the dozen teams that competed in the inaugural Football League in 1888 with one of the club's directors, William McGregor being the league's founder. Following the professionalisation of football in 1885, clubs needed regular income to pay their players' wages. Frequently friendlies were cancelled due to opponents' FA Cup or county cup matches or clubs simply failed to honour a fixture in favour of a more lucrative match elsewhere. McGregor took action after seeing Villa matches cancelled, to the increasing frustration of the club's fans, on five consecutive Saturdays. In 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. Following two meetings between representatives of the leading clubs, the world's first Football League season began in September 1888 with 12 member clubs from the Midlands and north of England: Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Despite Villa founding the league, by 1893 they had yet to win it. Villa Committee Member Frederick Rinder was the instigator of a club meeting at Barwick Street in February 1893 that removed the committee running the club at the time. All fourteen committee members resigned and were replaced by a committee of five led by Rinder after he gave a rousing speech criticising the board's tolerance of ill discipline and players' drinking. On the pitch, manager George Ramsay was moulding a team that became renowned for its short, quick combination passing which saw Villa win its first league title in 1893–94; the season after that the club won its second FA Cup in 1894-95. This was followed by back-to-back League titles in 1895–96 and 1896–97.
Aston Villa emerged as the most successful English club of the Victorian era, winning no fewer than five League titles and three FA Cups by the end of Queen Victoria's reign in 1901. Villa's captain during this era was Birmingham-born forward John Devey, who enjoyed a successful partnership with the lightning-fast winger Charlie Athersmith and marshalling Villa's defence was the tough-tackling Scotsman James Cowan, who had an unrivalled sense of timing and anticipation. In 1897, the year Villa won The Double, they moved into their present home, the Aston Lower Grounds. Supporters coined the name "Villa Park"; no official declaration listed the ground as Villa Park.
Success continued into the Edwardian era, with Villa lifting the FA Cup for the fourth time in 1904–05, and a sixth league title in 1909–10. A further FA Cup triumph was achieved on the eve of the First World War in 1913, with the club narrowly missing out on winning a second Double, finishing runners-up in the league. Star-players during this era included Howard Spencer, the cultured defender who captained both Villa and England, and the prolific strike force of Joe Bache and Harry Hampton who between them scored 382 goals in claret and blue.
### Relative decline and first relegation (1920–1939)
In January 1920, Billy Walker scored twice on his Villa debut in a 2–1 FA Cup first-round win over QPR; the club won the FA Cup for the sixth time that season and Walker went on to establish himself as Villa's star player of the 1920s, scoring a record 244 goals in 531 appearances, captaining Villa and England. George Ramsay retired in 1926, at the age of 71, his replacement Billy Smith was unable to continue Ramsay's success, in reality several other football clubs had caught up with Aston Villa, most notably Arsenal, who the club finished runners-up to in the league in 1930–31 and 1932–33. Despite missing out on the league title, Villa Park crowds were entertained by attacking football, the 128 goals scored in 1930–31, remains the all-time top-flight record to the present day. A remarkable 49 of the league goals that season were scored by centre-forward Tom 'Pongo' Waring, with another 30 goals from winger Eric Houghton.
The club appointed Jimmy McMullan as manager in 1934, however, the move proved disastrous, resulting in Villa's first ever relegation in 1935–36 after 48 years in the top flight. Villa struggled largely due to a dismal defensive record: they conceded 110 goals in 42 games, 7 of them coming from Arsenal's Ted Drake in an infamous 1–7 defeat at Villa Park. The club made seven signings and spent a staggering sum for the time of £35,500 trying to retain top-flight status at all costs, but were unable to buy their way out of trouble. Aston Villa, at the time one of the most famous and successful clubs in world football, was relegated in 1936 for the first time in its history.
Following relegation to the Second Division, the Villa board brought back the ageing former club chairman Fred Rinder, who said on his return "Villa have been a great club, are still a great club, and always will be a great club". He was vocal in his criticism of the board for its "almost total neglect of the reserve team, instead relying on paying big fees for ready made players". He believed that this change in policy from scouting and developing young homegrown talent led to a decline in the club's culture and style of play, which alongside a tolerance of ill-discipline in the players led to Villa's relegation. Rinder's first act was to travel to Austria to recruit the progressive coach Jimmy Hogan as manager. Within two seasons, Hogan had guided Villa back to the top flight as Second Division champions playing attractive free-flowing football. Hogan outlined his philosophy: "I am a teacher and lover of constructive football with every pass, every kick, every movement an object." He used to tell his players that "football was like a Viennese waltz, a rhapsody. one-two-three, one-two-three, pass-move-pass, pass-move-pass.". Unfortunately, the Second World War ended Hogan's project to restore Aston Villa to the top of the English game.
### Mediocrity and discontent (1945–1961)
Like all English clubs, Villa lost seven seasons to the Second World War, and that conflict brought several careers to a premature end. Bumper crowds flocked to Villa Park following the war, 76,588 people attended the FA Cup quarter-final between Villa and Derby County in March 1946, which is the all-time record attendance at Villa Park. The team was rebuilt under the guidance of former player Alex Massie for the remainder of the 1940s. Star players of this era included the one-club man Harry Parkes, the Welsh centre forward Trevor Ford and inside-forward Johnny Dixon, however the club only achieved mid-table finishes throughout the forties and fifties, never finishing higher than 6th place in the league. The board came in for increasing criticism during this time, with the 1953 AGM described by the Sports Argus as "the longest and liveliest Villa meeting". Shareholders and supporters criticised the club's lack of youth development, recruitment and training methods. When Danny Blanchflower put in a transfer request in 1954 he said that "the club had grown fat and lazy on its old traditions and the decay was eating at the once solid foundations".
Despite narrowly avoiding relegation the season before, Aston Villa's first trophy for 37 years came in the 1956–57 season when another former Villa player, Eric Houghton led the club to a then record seventh FA Cup Final win, defeating the 'Busby Babes' of Manchester United 2–1 with Northern Irish winger Peter McParland scoring both goals. The team continued to struggle for consistency in the league though, which led to Eric Houghton being sacked in December 1958. His replacement Joe Mercer could not prevent the club being relegated for only the second time in their history in 1958-59. However, under the stewardship of Mercer, Villa returned to the top-flight in 1960 as Second Division Champions with a talented young side which became known as 'Mercer's Minors'. The following season Aston Villa became the first team to win the Football League Cup with England centre-forward Gerry Hitchens scoring an impressive 42 goals in 1960-61.
### Deep malaise and revival (1961–1974)
Hitchens' goals brought him to the attention of Italian club Inter Milan, who offered him a large financial incentive to sign. He was sold for £85,000 in summer of 1961, his replacement, Derek Dougan was not a success and Villa slid backwards. Mercer's forced retirement from the club in July 1964, following a stress-induced stroke, signalled a period of deep turmoil and malaise. The most successful club in England had failed to keep pace with changes in the modern game; three of the five-man board of directors were over 70 years old, the club had neglected its scouting network and coaching structure and the club's finances were in a parlous state. This led to the club selling its top striker Tony Hateley to Chelsea for £100,000 in October 1966, without his goals Villa were relegated for the third time in its history, under manager Dick Taylor in 1967. The board even sold the club's training ground outside Villa Park for housing, leaving the team in the position of training on borrowed training pitches of local factory teams.
The following season the fans called for the board to resign as Villa finished 16th in the Second Division. With mounting debts and Villa lying at the bottom of Division Two, the board sacked Tommy Cummings (the manager brought in to replace Taylor), and within weeks the entire board resigned under overwhelming pressure from fans. After much speculation, control of the club was bought by London financier Pat Matthews, who brought in Doug Ellis as chairman in December 1968. Ellis later recalled that "you could write your name in the dust, window frames were rotting, the smell of failure and imminent financial ruin hung in the air"; one of their first acts was to raise £205,835 in a share issue which cleared the club's debts. Doug Ellis's first managerial appointment was the outspoken Scottish manager Tommy Docherty, who after initial success, was sacked after 13 months in charge with the club at the foot of Second Division. His replacement was former club captain and reserve team manager Vic Crowe, who could not prevent Villa being relegated to the Third Division for the first time in its history at the end of the 1969–70 season.
The following season Villa surprised everyone by beating Manchester United in the two-legged semi-final to reach the 1971 League Cup Final, in which the team played well but were defeated by two late Tottenham Hotspur goals. There was a renewed sense of optimism at Villa Park as the club was promoted to the Second Division as champions with average attendances of 30,000 and a record 70 points in 1971–72 season. Off the pitch, the board purchased the new 20-acre Bodymoor Heath Training Ground in December 1971, with a view to improving the club's youth development and coaching facilities.
### Back among the elite (1974–1992)
Following a 14th place finish in the Second Division, Crowe was replaced in August 1974 by Ron Saunders. He was a fitness fanatic, whose brand of no-nonsense man-management proved effective, with the club winning the League Cup the following season and, by the end of season 1974–75, he had taken Aston Villa back into the First Division and into Europe. One player who had been a mainstay of the Villa team throughout the rollercoaster of relegations and subsequent revival was fan-favourite Charlie Aitkin, who made 659 appearances at left back for the club between 1959 and 1976, making him Villa's all-time record appearance holder.
Aston Villa were back among the elite as Saunders continued to mould a winning team, finishing 4th in the league and winning a further League Cup in 1976–77, with the formidable strike partnership of Brian Little and Andy Gray, who became the first player to win both the PFA Young Player of the Year and PFA Players' Player of the Year in the same season.
The 1970s was an era of boardroom unrest at Villa Park. Ron Saunders had a strained relationship with Doug Ellis, resenting Doug's perceived interference in football matters. Over time Ellis became an isolated figure on the board, as the other directors sided with Saunders. He was ousted as chairman in 1975 to make way for Sir William Dugdale. He remained on the board until 1979, when he left the club after a protracted power struggle with majority shareholder Ron Bendall. With Ellis gone, Saunders became all-powerful as manager.
Villa achieved a seventh top-flight league title in 1980–81, with players such as Gordon Cowans, Tony Morley and captain Dennis Mortimer leading the club to its first top-flight title in 71 years. Remarkably, they did so using just 14 players, with seven players being ever-presents. Villa's Birmingham-born forward Gary Shaw was named 1980-1981 PFA Young Player of the Year.
To the surprise of commentators and fans, Ron Saunders quit halfway through the 1981–82 season, with Villa in the quarter final of the European Cup. Saunders had expressed his exasperation with the board at the lack of funds available to him to strengthen the team and fell out with the chairman Ron Bendall over the terms of his contract. He was replaced by his softly-spoken assistant manager Tony Barton who guided the club to a 1–0 victory over Bayern Munich in the European Cup final in Rotterdam courtesy of a Peter Withe goal in the 67th minute. Ten minutes into the final, Villa's first choice goalkeeper, Jimmy Rimmer, was injured and young substitute keeper Nigel Spink was called into action, having only made one previous appearance in the first team. Spink performed superbly, keeping a clean sheet, and helping Villa become only the fourth English club to lift the European Cup.
The following season the defence of the European Cup ended in a quarter-final defeat to Juventus, but Villa won the European Super Cup, beating Barcelona 3–1 on aggregate. This marked a pinnacle though and Villa's fortunes declined sharply for most of the 1980s. Doug Ellis returned as chairman and majority shareholder in November 1982. The club was saddled with significant debts and questions had been raised by the police regarding fraudulent financial activity surrounding the building of the North Stand at Villa Park from 1980-82. The cost of the work was £1.3 million. An internal investigation found that £700,000 of the £1.3 million worth of bills were unaccounted for. A later report by accountants Deloitte found that there were "serious breaches of recommended codes of practice and poor site supervision". Ellis immediately set about trying to reduce the club's overheads. He informed the players that they needed to take pay cuts and told the manager Tony Barton that there was a need to reduce the playing staff. Saunders' team was broken up and not adequately replaced, culminating in the club being relegated in 1987, just five years after Villa had been crowned European champions.
However, Villa bounced back quickly, achieving promotion the following year under Graham Taylor and a runners-up position in the top-flight in the 1989–90 season with a fine side that included Paul McGrath, Tony Daley and David Platt. Following this success, Graham Taylor accepted the offer to take over as England manager in 1990.
### 24 years in the Premier League (1992–2016)
Villa were one of the founding members of the Premier League in 1992, one of just three clubs to have been founding members of both the Football League in 1888 and the Premier League, along with Blackburn Rovers and Everton. Villa finished runners-up to Manchester United in the inaugural season under the charismatic manager Ron Atkinson. His side lifted the League Cup in 1994, beating Manchester United 3–1 in the final, with goals from Dalian Atkinson and Dean Saunders, but the team struggled for form in the league and Atkinson was replaced by former Villa striker Brian Little in November 1994. Little assembled a young side which included players as Gareth Southgate, Steve Staunton, Ian Taylor and Dwight Yorke, leading the club to a fifth League Cup triumph in 1996, beating Leeds United 3–0 at Wembley. Villa finished fourth in the league that season, and fifth the season after.
Following a dip in form, Doug Ellis sacked Brian Little and replaced him with another former Villa player John Gregory in February 1998. One of his first matches in charge was the UEFA Cup quarter-final against Atlético Madrid, which Villa lost on away goals over two-legs. In the summer of 1998, Villa's star-player Dwight Yorke told Gregory he wanted to leave the club, to which Gregory was later attributed as saying that he "would have shot Yorke if he had had a gun in his office". He was transferred to Manchester United for £12.6 million in August 1998. Gregory managed four top-eight finishes in the league and took the club to an FA Cup final in 2000 with a side that included David James, Dion Dublin, Paul Merson and Gareth Barry but was unable to assemble a team capable of challenging for Champions League places. At the end of the season Villa's captain Gareth Southgate handed in a transfer request, claiming that "if I am to achieve in my career, it is time to move on." Gregory's frustration at the lack of investment in the team led to him publicly accusing the chairman Doug Ellis of being "stuck a time warp"; their relationship remained strained until Gregory resigned in January 2002.
Ellis appointed Graham Taylor for a second spell in February 2002, but a 16th place finish in the league led to his replacement with David O'Leary in June 2003. After a sixth place finish in his first season, Villa slid backwards to 10th and 16th place finishes under O'Leary, culminating in him leaving in the summer of 2006.
After 23 years as chairman and single biggest shareholder (approximately 38%), Doug Ellis finally decided to sell his stake in Aston Villa due to ill-health at the age of 82. After much speculation it was announced the club was to be bought by American businessman Randy Lerner, owner of NFL franchise the Cleveland Browns. The arrival of a new owner in Lerner and of manager Martin O'Neill marked the start of a new period of optimism at Villa Park and sweeping changes occurred throughout the club including a new badge, investment in state-of-the-art facilities at the Bodymoor Heath Training Ground and significant investment in the squad in the summer of 2007. The first Cup final of the Lerner era came in 2010 when Villa were beaten 2–1 in the League Cup Final.
Just five days before the opening day of the 2010–11 season, O'Neill resigned as manager, despite three consecutive 6th place finishes, due to frustration in the lack of investment in the squad, following the sale of star players Gareth Barry, James Milner and Ashley Young. His replacement Gérard Houllier stepped down due to ill-health in September 2011, to be replaced by Birmingham City manager Alex McLeish, despite howls of protest from fans against his appointment. McLeish's contract was terminated at the end of the 2011–12 season after Villa finished in 16th place, and he was replaced by Paul Lambert.
In February 2012, the club announced a financial loss of £53.9 million, and Lerner put the club up for sale three months later. With Lerner still on board, but unwilling to spend following the stock market crash of 2008, the club was uncompetitive for several seasons, culminating in the 2014–15 season, when Lambert was sacked in February 2015 after the team managed just 12 goals in the first 25 league games, the lowest in Premier League history. Tim Sherwood succeeded him, and steered the club away from relegation while also leading them to the 2015 FA Cup Final. However, the club sold two of its star players Christian Benteke and captain Fabian Delph in the summer transfer window and did not adequately replace them. Villa struggled in the 2015–16 season, and Sherwood was sacked following six consecutive defeats. He was replaced by Rémi Garde, who left after just five months with Villa lying bottom of the table; his reign included a club-record 19 game winless run. The club was relegated at the end of the season, ending their 29-year stay in the top flight.
### Takeovers, Championship years and promotion (2016–present)
In June 2016, Chinese businessman Tony Xia bought the club for £76 million. Former Chelsea boss Roberto Di Matteo was appointed as the club's new manager, but was sacked after just 12 games following a poor start to the season. He was replaced by former Birmingham manager Steve Bruce. Bruce led the team to finish fourth in the 17/18 season, but lost in the 2018 EFL Championship play-off final to Fulham.
After failing to secure promotion to the Premier League in the 2017–18 season, owner Tony Xia sought additional outside investment in the club. On 20 July 2018 it was announced that the NSWE group, an Egyptian company owned by the Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris and the American billionaire Wes Edens were to invest in the football club. They purchased a controlling 55% stake in the club and Sawiris took over the role of club chairman, appointing Christian Purslow as CEO.
In October 2018, Bruce was sacked after winning only once in a nine match stretch. He was replaced by Brentford manager and boyhood Villa fan Dean Smith, with former captain John Terry and Richard O'Kelly as his assistants. Under Smith performances and results improved, with the team finishing fifth and reaching the playoffs again—helped on by a club-record 10 league game winning streak. They reached the 2019 EFL Championship play-off final and defeated Derby County 2–1 to gain promotion back to the Premier League after a three-year absence.
On the eve of Villa's Premier League return, Recon Group's minority share ownership was bought out by NSWE, meaning Xia no longer had any stake in the club. In Villa's first season back in the Premier League the team battled relegation for most of the season but managed to avoid it with a 17th-place finish, staying up on the final day. In Villa's second season back in the Premier League, Smith oversaw an 11th-place finish, but was unable to persuade star player and captain Jack Grealish to remain at the club when Manchester City's British-record £100 million bid triggered his release clause. Following a poor start to the 2021–22 season, which saw seven losses in the club's opening 11 games, Dean Smith was dismissed.
Aston Villa appointed former Liverpool and England captain Steven Gerrard as head coach on 11 November 2021. After a poor start to the 2022–23 season, in which Villa won just twice and scored only seven goals in their opening 11 games, Gerrard was sacked in October 2022, and replaced by four-time Europa League-winning Spanish manager Unai Emery. He led Villa to 7th place and qualification for the Europa Conference League in his first season.
## Colours and badge
The club colours are a claret shirt with sky blue sleeves, white shorts with claret and blue trim, and sky blue socks with claret and white trim. They were the original wearers of the claret and blue. Villa's colours at the outset were royal blue caps and stockings, royal blue and scarlet "striped" (in the context of the time, hooped) jerseys, and white knickerbockers, one of the club rules including a provision that "no member can take part in a match without wearing the above uniform". For a few years after that (1877–79) the team wore several different kits from all white, blue and black, red and blue to plain green. By 1880, black jerseys with a Scottish Lion Rampant embroidered on the chest were introduced by Villa's Scottish leaders William McGregor and George Ramsay. This remained the first choice strip for six years. On Monday, 8 November 1886, an entry in the club's official minute book states:
> \(i\) Proposed and seconded that the colours be chocolate and sky blue shirts and that we order two dozen. (ii) Proposed and seconded that Mr McGregor be requested to supply them at the lowest quotation.
The chocolate colour later became claret. Nobody is quite sure why claret and blue became the club's adopted colours. Several other football teams adopted their distinctive colours including West Ham United, Burnley, Scunthorpe United and Turkish club Trabzonspor. Crystal Palace also played in Villa's colours until the 1970s.
A new badge was revealed in May 2007, for the 2007–08 season and beyond. The new badge includes a star to represent the European Cup win in 1982, and has a light blue background behind Villa's 'lion rampant'. The traditional motto "Prepared" remains in the badge, and the name Aston Villa has been shortened to AVFC, FC having been omitted from the previous badge. The lion is now unified as opposed to fragmented lions of the past. Randy Lerner petitioned fans to help with the design of the new badge.
On 6 April 2016, the club confirmed that it would be using a new badge from the 2016–17 season after consulting fan groups for suggestions. The lion in the new badge has claws added to it, and the word "Prepared" was removed to increase the size of the lion and club initials in the badge. In November 2022, following a fan-led vote, the club announced it would adopt a new badge for the following season. The new badge's usage was later clarified to be exclusive to on-field kits and training wear by club president of business operations, Chris Heck, with the existing badge continuing to be utilized as the primary in all other channels.
### Kit sponsorship
Aston Villa's kit was produced by local manufacturers until 1974, when Umbro became the first kit supplier to have its logo on a Villa shirt. Since then, the kit has been manufactured by a number of different suppliers including Le Coq Sportif, Reebok, Nike and Kappa. Aston Villa's first shirt sponsor was Davenports Breweries in the 1982–83 season. Since then, shirts have borne the logos of a number of local and national companies including AST Computers and Rover. Aston Villa forwent commercial kit sponsorship for the 2008–09 and 2009–10 seasons; instead advertising the charity Acorns Children's Hospice, the first deal of its kind in Premier League history. The partnership continued until 2010 when a commercial sponsor replaced Acorns, with the hospice becoming the club's Official Charity Partner. In 2014–15, the Acorns name returned to Aston Villa's home and away shirts, but only for children's shirts re-affirming the club's support for the children's charity. A shirt sleeve sponsor was used for the first time in the 2019–20 season with BR88 being displayed. The kit manufacturer for the 2023–24 season is Castore with gambling company BK8 as the shirt sponsor and trading company Trade Nation as the sleeve sponsor.
## Stadium
Aston Villa's current home venue is Villa Park; the team previously played at Aston Park (1874–1876) and Wellington Road (1876–1897). Villa Park is the largest football stadium in the English Midlands, and the eighth largest stadium in England. It has hosted 16 England internationals at senior level, the first in 1899, and the most recent in 2005. Thus, it was the first English ground to stage international football in three different centuries. Villa Park is the most used stadium in FA Cup semi-final history, having hosted 55 semi-finals. In 2022, the club announced plans to rebuild the North Stand and part of the Trinity Road stand, which will take the maximum capacity over 50,000.
The current training ground is located at Bodymoor Heath near Kingsbury in north Warwickshire, the site for which was purchased by former chairman Doug Ellis in the early 1970s from a local farmer. Although Bodymoor Heath was state-of-the-art in the 1970s, by the late 1990s the facilities had started to look dated. In November 2005, Ellis and Aston Villa plc announced a state of the art £13 million redevelopment of Bodymoor in two phases. The new training ground was officially unveiled on 6 May 2007, by then manager Martin O'Neill, then team captain Gareth Barry and 1982 European Cup winning team captain Dennis Mortimer, with the Aston Villa squad moving in for the 2007–08 season.
It was announced on 6 August 2014, that Villa Park would appear in the FIFA video game from FIFA 15, with all other Premier League stadiums also fully licensed from this game onwards.
## Ownership
The first shares in the club were issued towards the end of the 19th century as a result of legislation that was intended to codify the growing numbers of professional teams and players in the Association Football leagues. FA teams were required to distribute shares to investors as a way of facilitating trading among the teams without implicating the FA itself. This trading continued for much of the 20th century until Ellis started buying up many of the shares in the 1960s. He was chairman and substantial shareholder of "Aston Villa F.C." from 1968 to 1975 and the majority shareholder from 1982 to 2006. The club were floated on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in 1996, and the share price fluctuated in the ten years after the flotation. In 2006 it was announced that several consortia and individuals were considering bids for Aston Villa.
On 14 August 2006, it was confirmed that Randy Lerner, then owner of the National Football League's Cleveland Browns, had reached an agreement of £62.6 million with Aston Villa for a takeover of the club. Lerner took full control on 18 September with Ellis and his board replaced with a new board by Lerner on 19 September 2006. Lerner appointed himself Chairman of the club with Charles Krulak as a non-executive director and Ellis awarded the honorary position of Chairman Emeritus. Lerner put the club up for sale in May 2014, valuing it at an estimated £200 million.
On 18 May 2016, Randy Lerner agreed the sale of Aston Villa to Recon Group, owned by Chinese businessman Xia Jiantong. The sale was completed on 14 June 2016 for a reported £76 million after being approved by the Football League, with the club becoming part of Recon Group's Sport, Leisure and Tourism division. Recon Group were selected to take over Aston Villa following a selection process by the club.
After failing to secure promotion to the Premier League in the 2017–18 season speculation about financial difficulties at the club began to mount. This prompted the owner Tony Xia to seek additional investment. On 20 July 2018 it was announced that the NSWE group, an Egyptian company owned by the Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris and the American billionaire Wes Edens were to invest in the football club. They purchased a controlling 55% stake in the club and Sawiris took over the role of club chairman. On 9 August 2019, on the eve of Villa's Premier League return, documents from Companies House revealed that Recon Group's minority share ownership had been bought out, and Dr. Tony Xia no longer had any stake in the club.
## Social responsibility
Aston Villa has a unique relationship with the Acorns Children's Hospice charity that is groundbreaking in English football. In a first for the Premier League, Aston Villa donated the front of its kit shirts, usually reserved for high-paying sponsorships, to Acorns Hospice so that the charity would gain significant additional visibility and more funds. Outside of the shirt sponsorship the club has paid for hospice care for the charity as well as regularly providing player visits to hospice locations.
In September 2010, Aston Villa launched an initiative at Villa Park called Villa Midlands Food (VMF) where the club will spend two years training students with Aston Villa hospitality and events in association with Birmingham City Council. The club opened a restaurant in the Trinity Road Stand staffed with 12 students recruited from within a 10-mile (16 km) radius of Villa Park with most of the food served in the restaurant sourced locally.
### Aston Villa Foundation
In 2016, Aston Villa created a registered charity, the Aston Villa Foundation. The aim of the charity is to deliver the social responsibility work of Aston Villa. Working alongside key local and national stakeholders, the Foundation delivers projects such as football in the community, disability, health and wellbeing, education, interventions and community relations.
In May 2021, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge met with members of the Foundation at Aston Villa's Bodymoor Heath Training Ground. This was following the Foundation providing 1000 hot meals a week to local organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom as well as allowing a local NHS Trust to make use of Villa Park's facilities.
## Supporters and rivalries
Aston Villa have a large fanbase and draw support from all over the Midlands and beyond, with supporters' clubs all across the world. Former Villa chief executive Richard Fitzgerald has stated that the ethnicity of the supporters is currently 98% white. When Randy Lerner's regime took over at Villa Park, they aimed to improve the support from ethnic minorities. A number of organisations have been set up to support the local community, including Aston Pride. A Villa in the Community programme has also been set up to encourage support among young people in the region. The new owners have also initiated several surveys aimed at gaining the opinions of Villa fans and to involve them in the decision making process. Meetings also occur every three months where supporters are invited by ballot and are invited to ask questions to the board. In 2011, the club supported a supporter-based initiative for an official anthem to boost the atmosphere at Villa Park. The song "The Bells Are Ringing" is to be played before games.
Like many English football clubs, Aston Villa has had several hooligan firms associated with it: Villa Youth, Steamers, Villa Hardcore and the C-Crew, the last mentioned being very active during the 1970s and 1980s. As can be seen across the whole of English football, the hooligan groups have now been marginalised. In 2004, several Villa firms were involved in a fight with QPR fans outside Villa Park in which a steward died. The main groupings of supporters can now be found in a number of domestic and international supporters' clubs. This includes the Official Aston Villa Supporters Club which also has many smaller regional and international sections. There were several independent supporters clubs during the reign of Doug Ellis but most of these disbanded after his retirement. The supporter group My Old Man Said formed to stand up for Villa supporters' rights, as a direct result of Villa supporters' protest against the club's appointment of Alex McLeish. The club's supporters also publish fanzines such as Heroes and Villains and The Holy Trinity.
Aston Villa's arch-rivals are Birmingham City, with games between the two clubs known as the Second City Derby. Historically though, West Bromwich Albion have arguably been Villa's greatest rivals, a view highlighted in a fan survey, conducted in 2003. The two teams contested three FA Cup finals in the late 19th century. Villa also enjoy less heated local rivalries with Wolverhampton Wanderers and Coventry City. Through the relegation of West Brom and Birmingham City, to the Football League Championship, in the 2005–06 season, at the start of 2006–07 Premiership season, Villa were the only Midlands club in that League. The nearest opposing team Villa faced during that season was Sheffield United, who played 62 miles (100 km) away in South Yorkshire. For the 2010–11 season, West Bromwich Albion were promoted and joined Aston Villa, Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Birmingham City in the Premier League. This marked the first time that the "West Midlands' Big Four" clubs have been in the Premier League at the same time, and the first time together in the top flight since the 1983–84 season. Birmingham were relegated at the end of the 2010–11 season, ending this period.
The rivalry was renewed in 2016/17 when Aston Villa suffered relegation from the Premier League. They were joined by West Brom for the 2018/19 season, but was once again ended when Villa won promotion back to the Premier League
## Statistics
Season 2023-24 is Aston Villa's 110th season in the top tier of English football. The only club to have spent longer in the top flight are Everton, with 121 seasons, making Aston Villa versus Everton the most-played fixture in English top-flight football. Aston Villa were relegated from the top tier of English football in 2016, having played in every Premier League season since its establishment in 1992–93, but were promoted back in 2018–19. They are ninth in the All-time FA Premier League table, and have the fifth highest total of major honours (20) won by an English club.
Aston Villa currently hold the record number of league goals scored by any team in the English top flight; 128 goals were scored in the 1930–31 season, one more than Arsenal who won the league that season for the very first time, with Villa runners-up. Villa forward Archie Hunter became the first player to score in every round of the FA Cup in Villa's victorious 1887 campaign. Villa's longest unbeaten home run in the FA Cup spanned 13 years and 19 games, from 1888 to 1901.
Aston Villa are one of six English teams to have won the European Cup. They did so on 26 May 1982 in Rotterdam, beating Bayern Munich 1–0 thanks to Peter Withe's goal.
## Honours
Aston Villa Football Club have won European and domestic league honours. The club's last English honour was in 1996 when they won the League Cup, and most recently they won the 2001 UEFA Intertoto Cup.
### Domestic
League
- First Division / Premier League
- Winners (7): 1893–94, 1895–96, 1896–97, 1898–99, 1899–1900, 1909–10, 1980–81
- Runners–up: 1888–89, 1902–03, 1907–08, 1910–11, 1912–13, 1913–14, 1930–31, 1932–33, 1989–90, 1992–93
- Second Division / First Division / Championship
- Winners: 1937–38, 1959-60
- Runners–up: 1974–75, 1987–88
- Play–off winners: 2018–19
- Third Division / Second Division / League One
- Winners: 1971–72
Cups
- FA Cup
- Winners (7): 1886–87, 1894–95, 1896–97, 1904–05, 1912–13, 1919–20, 1956–57
- Runners–up: 1891–92, 1923–24, 1999–2000, 2014–15
- Football League Cup / EFL Cup
- Winners (5): 1960–61, 1974–75, 1976–77, 1993–94, 1995–96
- Runners–up: 1962–63, 1970–71, 2009–10, 2019–20
- FA Charity Shield / FA Community Shield
- Winners: 1981
- Sheriff of London Charity Shield
- Winners: 1899, 1901
### European
- European Cup / UEFA Champions League
- Winners: 1981–82
- European Super Cup / UEFA Super Cup
- Winners: 1982
- Intertoto Cup
- Winners: 2001
- Joint Winners: 2008
## Players
### First-team squad
, official first team squad.
### Out on loan
### Under-21s and Academy
Players under 21 who have made their senior league debut are listed in the senior squad, this list below includes all academy players to have been named in a senior matchday squad.
### Out on loan
## Notable players
There have been many players who can be called notable throughout Aston Villa's history. These can be classified and recorded in several forms. The Halls of Fame and PFA Players of the Year are noted below. As of 2022, Aston Villa are only surpassed by Tottenham Hotspur (78), for providing the most England internationals with 76 Villa players debuting for England, this record is jointly held with Corinthians. Aston Villa have had several players who were one-club men, including inaugural club Hall of Fame inductee Billy Walker. In 1998, to celebrate the 100th season of League football, The Football League released a list entitled the Football League 100 Legends that consisted of "100 legendary football players." There were seven players included on the list who played for Villa: Danny Blanchflower, Trevor Ford, Archie Hunter, Sam Hardy, Paul McGrath, Clem Stephenson and Peter Schmeichel (who would go on to play for Villa three seasons later).
Aston Villa have had a number of players who have been successful on the international stage while they were at the club. Emiliano Martínez has won all his senior Argentina caps to date while at Aston Villa, having debuted in June 2021. He is currently the most decorated international player for Aston Villa having won the 2021 Copa América, the 2022 Finalissima and the 2022 FIFA World Cup; he was awarded the Golden Glove awards at both the Copa América and World Cup; he was subsequently awarded The Best FIFA Goalkeeper award in February 2023. Paul McGrath and Steve Staunton (Republic of Ireland), as well as Olof Mellberg (Sweden) all captained their national sides in the 1990, 2002 and 2006 World Cups respectively. McGrath appeared nine times at the World Cup while at Aston Villa, a record for an active Villa player.
Three Aston Villa players have won the PFA Players' Player of the Year award. In 1977 Andy Gray won the award. In 1990 it was awarded to David Platt, whilst Paul McGrath won it in 1993. The PFA Young Player of the Year, which is awarded to players under the age of 23, has been awarded to four players from Aston Villa: Andy Gray in 1977; Gary Shaw in 1981; Ashley Young in 2009 and James Milner in 2010. The National Football Museum in Preston, Lancashire administers the English Football Hall of Fame which currently contains one Villa team, five Villa players and one manager. The 1982 European Cup-winning team were inducted into the Hall of Fame in October 2011. Former Aston Villa players named in the Hall of Fame are Clem Stephenson, Danny Blanchflower, Peter Schmeichel, Cyrille Regis, and Paul McGrath; as well as former manager Joe Mercer.
In 2006 the club announced the creation of an "Aston Villa Hall of Fame." This was voted for by fans and the inaugural induction saw 12 former players, managers and directors named. Former club captain Stiliyan Petrov was added to the list in May 2013.
- Gordon Cowans
- Eric Houghton
- Brian Little
- Dennis Mortimer
- Stiliyan Petrov
- Ron Saunders
- Peter Withe
- Paul McGrath
- Peter McParland
- Charlie Aitken
- William McGregor
- George Ramsay
- Billy Walker
## Non-playing staff
### Corporate hierarchy
Source:
### Management hierarchy
### Notable managers
The following managers have all won at least one trophy when in charge or have been notable for Villa in the context of the League, for example Jozef Vengloš who holds a League record.
## In popular culture
Aston Villa were the subject, together with Sunderland, of one of the earliest football paintings in the world – possibly the earliest – when in 1895 the artist Thomas M. M. Hemy painted a picture of a game between the teams at Sunderland's then ground Newcastle Road.
A number of television programmes have included references to Aston Villa over the past few decades. In the sitcom Porridge, the character Lennie Godber is a Villa supporter. When filming began on Dad's Army, Villa fan Ian Lavender was allowed to choose Frank Pike's scarf from an array in the BBC wardrobe; he chose a claret and blue one – Aston Villa's colours. The character Nessa in the BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey was revealed as an Aston Villa fan in an episode screened in December 2009.
In the 1952 film The Card, the main character Denry Machin (Alec Guinness) becomes a town councillor and purchases the rights to locally born Aston Villa player 'Callear', the "greatest centre-forward in England", for the failing local football club.
Villa have also featured on several occasions in prose. Stanley Woolley, a character in Derek Robinson's Booker shortlisted novel Goshawk Squadron is an Aston Villa fan and names a pre-war starting eleven Villa side. Together with The Oval, Villa Park is referenced by the poet Philip Larkin in his poem about the First World War, MCMXIV. Aston Villa are also mentioned in Harold Pinter's play The Dumb Waiter. The club receive a passing mention in Aldous Huxley's debut novel Crome Yellow.
Notable supporters of Aston Villa include Prince William, former Prime Minister David Cameron, musician Ozzy Osbourne, actor Tom Hanks, and golfer Justin Rose.
## Aston Villa Women
Aston Villa have a women's football side that compete in the Women's Super League having been promoted as champions of the 2019-20 FA Women's Championship. They were founded as Solihull F.C. in 1973 and affiliated to Aston Villa in 1989.
|
44,926,841 |
Girl Pat
| 1,123,931,194 |
Small fishing trawler from the Lincolnshire port of Grimsby
|
[
"1935 ships",
"Fishing vessels of the United Kingdom",
"Maritime incidents in 1936",
"Naval trawlers of the United Kingdom",
"Port of London",
"Ships built in Lowestoft",
"Trawlers",
"World War II patrol vessels of the United Kingdom"
] |
Girl Pat was a small fishing trawler, based at the Lincolnshire port of Grimsby, that in 1936 was the subject of a media sensation when its captain took it on an unauthorised transatlantic voyage. The escapade ended in Georgetown, British Guiana, with the arrest of the captain, George "Dod" Orsborne, and his brother. The pair were later imprisoned for the theft of the vessel.
Built in 1935, Girl Pat was the property of the Marstrand Fishing Company of Grimsby. On 1 April 1936, Orsborne, with a crew of four and his brother James as a supernumerary, took the vessel out on what the owners authorised as a routine North Sea fishing trip of two to three weeks' duration. After leaving port, Orsborne informed the crew that they were going on an extended cruise in more southerly waters. Nothing more was heard of them until mid-May, when the owners, who had by then assumed the vessel lost, received invoices relating to its repair and reprovisioning in the northern Spanish port of Corcubión. Subsequent sightings placed her in the Savage Islands, at Dakar in Senegal, and Îles du Salut off the coast of French Guiana in South America. The captain's main means of navigation during a voyage of more than 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km) was a sixpenny school atlas and a compass. At one point Girl Pat was reported wrecked in the Bahamas, with all hands lost. After the vessel's capture and detention following a chase outside Georgetown on 19 June, Orsborne and his crew were hailed as heroes in the world's press.
Charged with the theft of the vessel in October 1936, Orsborne maintained in court that the owners had instructed him to get rid of the ship, as part of a scheme to obtain its insurance value. This claim was dismissed by the court. Years later, in his memoirs, Orsborne told a different, uncorroborated story: in absconding with Girl Pat he had been carrying out a mission on behalf of British Naval Intelligence, connected with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936.
After his release from prison, Orsborne took part in further maritime adventures and served in the navy in the Second World War. He died in 1957. In Georgetown Girl Pat was acquired by new owners who returned her to Britain, where she was displayed as a tourist attraction in several resorts. In 1939 she was sold to the Port of London Authority for use as a wreck-marking vessel and, after being requisitioned by the Royal Navy during the war, was returned to the authority in 1945. There is no public record of her subsequent career.
## Background
### Orsborne
George Black Orsborne was born George Black on 4 July 1902, in the small north Scottish coastal town of Buckie. He assumed the Orsborne name when his widowed mother remarried and moved the family to Aberdeen, where George, nicknamed "Dod", spent his formative years. When he was 14, Orsborne lied about his age and enlisted as a Boy Seaman in the Royal Navy; in his memoirs he wrote: "I never did have an adolescence". He served in the Dover Patrol, and was wounded during the 1918 Zeebrugge Raid. After leaving the Navy in December 1919 and working ashore for a brief period, he was persuaded by a former captain of the Cutty Sark, Captain Wilkins, to go back to sea. He joined the merchant navy, sailing mainly in small ships based in Liverpool.
At 21 he passed his master's ticket examinations and took over his first command, a Grimsby trawler. During the following ten years, Orsborne said his career included "a bit of everything—rum-running, whaling, deep-sea trawling in the Arctic". In November 1935, back in Grimsby, he became skipper of the former seine fishing boat Gipsy Love, which its owners, the Marstrand Fishing Company, had converted into a trawler.
### Crew and vessel
In March 1936, for his second voyage in Gipsy Love, Orsborne attempted to engage the services of an experienced seaman, Alexander MacLean, to whom he confided that the trip might go further afield—perhaps to Bermuda or South America—but MacLean declined the opportunity. Orsborne offered the mate's berth to Harry Stone, a local seaman who did not possess a mate's ticket but was told by Orsborne that he could use MacLean's number. The other crew members were a Yorkshireman, Hector Harris, and a 17-year-old Scottish cook, Howard Stephen (sometimes given as Stephens). The formal crew was joined by Orsborne's younger brother James, a grocer, who had no formal status on board and was later classified as a stowaway. Gipsy Love left Grimsby late in March 1936, supposedly to fish in the Dogger Bank area of the North Sea, but within hours had returned to port with engine trouble. With the consent of the owners, Orsborne transferred stores and crew to another Marstrand vessel, the small trawler Girl Pat; James Orsborne again joined them.
Built in 1935 in Oulton Broad, Suffolk, Girl Pat was a vessel of 55 gross registered tons (GRT), 19 NRT. She was 66 feet (20 m) long, with a beam of 18.7 feet (5.7 m), a hold depth of 8.7 feet (2.7 m), and accommodation for six. Some sources refer to her as a "seine netter", suggesting that like the Gipsy Love she had been converted to trawling. She was insured with underwriters for £3,000. Her regular engineer, George Jefferson, was added to Orsborne's picked crew for the forthcoming voyage.
## Voyage
### First phase: Grimsby to Corcubión
Girl Pat left Grimsby on 1 April 1936. According to Stone's later account, when they entered the open sea, Orsborne assembled the crew—except for Jefferson—in the wheelhouse and told them that this would not be a normal fishing trip. Instead, he proposed to take the boat south, first calling at Dover where he would get rid of Jefferson, who was not included in his further plans. At this stage Orsborne was apparently undecided as to his longer-term intentions, but indicated that they would be sailing into southern waters and might go fishing for pearls.
On 3 April the craft reached Dover, where Jefferson was taken ashore and given food and drink. When he returned to the harbour, Girl Pat had departed; the engineer returned in some confusion to Grimsby. As Girl Pat sailed into the English Channel, Orsborne revealed to his crew that the vessel contained no charts, and that future navigation would be dependent on a cheap school atlas that he showed them. He changed details in the boat's log book, entering himself as "G. Black," Stone as "H. Clark," and James Orsborne as "A. Black". After anchoring off Jersey in the Channel Islands to await calmer weather, Girl Pat proceeded southwards through the Bay of Biscay. Orsborne ordered changes to the boat's appearance: the bowsprit was altered, and the fishing registration number on the side of the hull was blacked out. According to Stone, Orsborne indicated an itinerary that included Madeira, the Canary Islands, the African coast and, eventually, Cape Town. They might then sell the boat and share the proceeds. Severe weather in the Bay of Biscay hampered progress and battered the small vessel, and on 12 April they took shelter in the small northern Spanish port of Corcubión, where they stayed for around 14 days. Necessary repairs were carried out, and the boat was reprovisioned. Orsborne instructed that the accounts for these services, totalling £235, be sent to Marstrand's in Grimsby, as their punishment, he later said, for letting the boat be taken out with inadequate stores and equipment.
Following Jefferson's return to Grimsby, Marstrand's were puzzled by Orsborne's actions, but initially thought that he had taken on another engineer in Dover and had gone fishing, perhaps in new grounds. There were unconfirmed sightings of Girl Pat in the Baltic Sea and elsewhere. As weeks passed with no definite news, the Marstrand directors assumed that the vessel was lost, either through foundering or barratry, and claimed insurance. They had already received sums totalling £2,400 from the underwriters, when they were surprised by the arrival of bills from Corcubión, together with the news that Girl Pat had sailed from the port on 24 April, her destination unknown.
### Second phase: Corcubión to Dakar
After Girl Pat left Corcubión, there was speculation in the port that Orsborne intended to fish in the waters around Gibraltar, but there was no sighting of the vessel in that vicinity. Stone later recalled that after sailing for some time, they arrived at some uninhabited islands—this is consistent with a probable sighting by the British liner SS Avoceta, which on 17 May reported seeing a vessel closely matching the trawler's description, anchored in the Savage Islands. This small uninhabited archipelago, roughly 170 nautical miles (310 km) south of Madeira and roughly the same distance north of the Canary Islands, had long been associated with stories of pirates' buried treasure, and news that Girl Pat had been seen there gave rise to press speculation that she was engaged on a hunt for treasure. Lloyd's of London sent a representative to Las Palmas, to investigate the sighting; meanwhile Girl Pat made an unobserved call at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where she was repainted.
Leaving Tenerife, Girl Pat continued her journey southward, following the African coast. According to Stone's account, the crew went ashore at Port Etienne in French West Africa (now Nouadhibou, in Mauritania), leaving the boat unguarded. While they were away, marauders stole gear and provisions, leaving the crew almost destitute: "All we had left to eat and drink were four bottles of water, a tin of corned beef, a bottle of lime juice and a tin of condensed milk". Leaving Port Etienne, they ran aground on a sandbank and were stranded for three days. Eventually they managed to refloat the vessel, and on 23 May were picked up by a pilot boat which brought them into the harbour at Dakar, starving and exhausted.
Stone had fallen ill with appendicitis during the previous leg of the voyage; he was hospitalised in Dakar and took no further part in the adventure. Orsborne was able to obtain further fuel and water, but Girl Pat'''s arrival attracted the attention of the local Lloyd's agent, who had been on the lookout for the vessel. On 26 May he saw Orsborne and inspected the log book, where he discovered the false names and other inconsistencies. Orsborne was asked to present the ship's papers at the British consulate but, on the pretext that he needed to test the engines, he rapidly put to sea. The appearance of Girl Pat in Dakar—the first confirmation since Corcubión that the vessel was still afloat—was widely reported. Relatives of the crew members were relieved that those aboard were safe but were apprehensive about what might lie ahead.
### Third phase: Dakar to Georgetown
The level of public interest in the Girl Pat affair was enough for Gaumont British to consider making it the subject of a feature film. In the House of Commons on 29 May, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade stated that no requests had been made for the detention of the vessel in foreign ports; two weeks later, Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, confirmed that, on behalf of the underwriters, the Foreign Office had asked that Girl Pat be refused credit and detained on entering any port.
On 2 June the French liner Jamaique reported a small boat, flying the British flag and steaming southwards, near the Bissagos Islands 250 nautical miles (460 km) south of Dakar. Although this was at first assumed to be Girl Pat, the next reported sighting, on 9 June, was more than 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) to the west, on the other side of the Atlantic. Captain Jones of the Lorraine Cross, an American ship, cabled Lloyds' agents in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana) with an account of a small ship flying a distress signal off the South American coast, 47 nautical miles (87 km) north-east of Cayenne. There were apparently four men on board. The boat's name and markings had been painted out, but she claimed to be the "Margaret Harold" bound for Trinidad from London. Jones thought the crew's behaviour suspicious, and when he asked to see the ship's papers, the ship lowered the distress signal and sped away. Jones said the vessel was "undoubtedly a British fisherman", and thought it was Girl Pat. In Grimsby, a Marstrand spokesman expressed little surprise at this new location, and confirmed that the ship had sufficient speed to have crossed the ocean in the time since her last confirmed sighting. A check with Lloyd's indicated that there was no registered ship named Margaret Harold.
A report from the Îles du Salut, a few miles off the coast of French Guiana, indicated that a vessel similar in appearance to Girl Pat had watered there on 10 June. An air search, by a Pan-American aircraft, covered over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of coastline around Georgetown, without sighting the craft. On 17 June several newspapers carried reports of the discovery of the wreck of a small boat, and three bodies, at Atwood Cay, a small island in the Bahamas. Much of the press assumed this to be Girl Pat; one headline read "Did School Atlas Course Lead Crew to Death?". The reports proved false when, early in the morning of 19 June, a police launch towed Girl Pat into Georgetown harbour.
### Capture, detention and arrest
On the evening of 18 June the British steamer Arakaka had spotted a small ship a few miles outside Georgetown, and radioed this information to the shore. An unarmed police launch left Georgetown to investigate; as they approached, the crew of the as yet unidentified vessel became hostile. They denied that she was Girl Pat and threatened violence should officers attempt to board her. The launch retreated to Georgetown, where the police armed themselves and obtained authority to seize the suspect vessel. They returned early the following morning to find that their quarry was departing. A two-hour chase ensued, which The Hull Daily Mail glamorised as a sporting contest: "Like some coursing greyhound the faster Government ship stuck to the tail of the fleeing suspect which, harelike, doubled back on her course to dodge her pursuer". According to the British Daily Worker, the chase "[outdid] the most spectacular efforts of film directors". Finally, while manoeuvring at close quarters, the vessels collided. The stern of the suspect boat was severely damaged, whereupon she surrendered and was taken in tow. The name displayed on the vessel's hull was "Kia-ora", but Stephens quickly admitted to their captors that the ship was Girl Pat.
With Girl Pat secured and under guard in Georgetown harbour, the Orsborne brothers, Harris, and Stephens were taken to police headquarters in the City Hall. The police issued a statement that the four were there "at their own request. They are under no form of detention". In London, officials struggled to establish the exact legal position, and issued confusing statements. Meanwhile, Orsborne and his companions were widely hailed as heroes. The German newspaper Hamburger Fremdenblatt asked: "Is this not a bit of British tradition, to do the unconventional out of love for adventure, if great personal risks, audacity and romance are connected therewith?". A man from the town of Hull thought the adventure demonstrated "the spirit of Drake", and called for a public subscription to meet the crew's debts and expenses. An alternative view, expressed in the Hull Daily Mail, was to question whether the men should be regarded so favourably, or merely as "men who have run away with someone else's property".
Once released by the police, Harris and Stephens returned immediately to England, where they arrived on 13 July. The Orsborne brothers waited in Georgetown for their position to be clarified; George Orsborne told the press he was anxious to return home where, he insisted, many job offers were open to him. On 27 June, following further discussions in London, the brothers were arrested on a warrant issued under the Fugitive Offenders Act, and brought before the Georgetown magistrates, where they were charged with the theft of Girl Pat.
## Hearings, trial and sentence
### In Georgetown
The brothers were held in custody, awaiting a deportation hearing. On 4 July they were remanded for a further week, and bail was again refused. Although the brothers declared their willingness to waive the deportation process and accept immediate transfer to England, they continued to be detained. On 22 July the hearings in the Georgetown magistrates' court finally began, with the formal identification of Girl Pat. On 24 July the magistrates ordered that the brothers be sent to England to face trial, once the formal approval of the colonial governor, Sir Geoffry Northcote, had been given. The governor was in no hurry to act; the Orsbornes finally left Georgetown on 13 August, when they boarded the cargo liner Inanda.
While the Orsbornes were in Georgetown, Harold Stone, Girl Pat's erstwhile mate, made his way home from Dakar and arrived in Liverpool on 20 July. After interviews with the police, Stone spoke to the press of the hardships suffered during the Girl Pat voyage, especially the shortages of food and water: "I would not want to go through the experience again". He confirmed that they had navigated using a school atlas, but added that they had possessed a compass.
### Bow Street, London
Early on 2 September Inanda docked at Gravesend, Kent. The brothers were immediately driven to London for a formal appearance at Bow Street Magistrates' Court, where they were charged with theft and conspiracy. Against police opposition—because, they said, "certain developments" might arise—the magistrate bailed each defendant in the sum of £500, and required them to surrender their passports.
When the hearing resumed on 10 September, the court heard from Marstrands' managing director that George Orsborne had not been given authority to operate Girl Pat outside the North Sea. Stone testified that Orsborne had made plain his intentions to take the boat south from the outset, and also gave evidence concerning the changes to the ship's log. The court heard from Jefferson and other Dover witnesses, from Alexander MacLean, and from the Lloyd's agent in Dakar. The defence counsel did not answer the detailed aspects of the prosecution's case, but stated that at the forthcoming trial, "very serious allegations" would be made against certain of the prosecution witnesses. The brothers pleaded not guilty, and were remanded on continuing bail for trial at the Old Bailey. In the interval between the Bow Street hearings and the trial, which was set to begin in October, Girl Pat was sold.
### Old Bailey
The Old Bailey trial began on 19 October 1936. The prosecution opened by stating that this should not be considered as "a cheerful buccaneering adventure," but as a breach of trust on the part of George Orsborne, to whom the owners had entrusted their ship. The objective of the voyage had not been to benefit the owners, but to make money for the defendants.
MacLean testified that in his discussions with George Orsborne, he had formed the impression that the captain was part-owner of the vessel. Orsborne had mentioned to him the possibility of engaging in profitable activities such as gun-running and smuggling. John Moore, the managing director of Marstrand's, stated that he had expected Orsborne to take Girl Pat fishing in an area of the North Sea where another Marstrand vessel was fishing successfully. When Moore was cross-examined, the defence's "serious allegations" were revealed. It was put to Moore that he had instructed George Orsborne not to go fishing, but to get rid of the vessel so that the company could claim its insurance value, of which Orsborne would be rewarded with a share. The defence alleged that the company was in poor financial shape, and that its ships were heavily mortgaged. Moore denied that he had made any such suggestion to Orsborne. The company, he insisted, was financially sound, the mortgages on its vessels were relatively low, and he had never discussed insured values with Orsborne. The defence further alleged that when taken out Girl Pat had been in an unseaworthy condition, inadequately provisioned and unfit for a normal fishing voyage. This suggestion was also denied by Moore.
After Stone and Jefferson reprised the evidence they had given in Bow Street, George Orsborne took the stand. He said he had not agreed to Moore's proposal to "lose" the vessel, and after departing with Girl Pat had still been undecided about what he would do. He had left Jefferson in Dover because he was a poor mechanic and a drunk. Moore, he asserted, was mistaken in claiming that the boat's provisions and equipment were adequate. Orsborne said that while the boat was sheltering in Jersey, he had suggested to the crew that they "may as well make a holiday of it", and then proposed that they make a circle of the Atlantic Ocean before returning to Grimsby. There was no intention to fall in with Moore's scheme or to steal the vessel; they would "thank the owners for the loan of the ship" and return it. Orsborne added that while they were in port at Corcubión, he was offered money for Girl Pat, but turned it down. Orsborne denied that he had tried to conceal his or the boat's true identity in Dakar, or had left the port to avoid enquiries—the sudden departure was due, he said, to troubles with the natives. Nor had he attempted to evade the authorities in Georgetown; his movements there had arisen from concern for the safety of his vessel, which was being jeopardised by the manoeuvres of the police launch.
James Orsborne, giving evidence, said that he had learned from his brother about Moore's proposal to get rid of the boat, and had told George that he would be "a darned fool" even to consider the suggestion. He had stayed with his brother because "I thought that if he was going to do anything crazy I might manage to prevent him". Recalled to the witness box, Moore said that he had refused to employ James Orsborne because he considered him dishonest.
In his closing speech, defence counsel said that the key to the case was whether the Orsborne brothers intended to deprive the owners permanently of their vessel. The evidence, he said, was more suggestive of a "joy-ride half-way round the world", than of theft or anything more sinister. Prosecuting counsel argued that if the month's joy-ride was the innocent explanation, why had it been necessary to introduce into the case the unfounded allegations of proposed insurance fraud "against men whose reputations were above suspicion?". In his summing up, the judge condemned the arrangements whereby the Orsbornes were receiving money from the press for the rights to their story. This was unwarranted and undesirable: "Whether the two prisoners be guilty or innocent [of theft], the property of someone else was being used by them without permission ...George Orsborne clearly knew that he was acting directly against his employer's interests". The jury was out for only 35 minutes before returning guilty verdicts against both defendants. On 22 October George Orsborne was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment, and James to 12 months.
### Orsborne's alternative account
Thirteen years after the trial, in a memoir entitled Master of the Girl Pat published by Doubleday, George Orsborne provided a new context for the Girl Pat voyage. According to this narrative, he had been recruited in 1935 to work for British Naval Intelligence. The Girl Pat venture was a secret assignment, connected with the imminent Spanish Civil War. Between the stops at Corcubión and Dakar, Orsborne claims, he carried out a mission to blow up a railway bridge in Spanish Morocco. The stops at Port Etienne, Dakar and elsewhere had been to receive further instructions from Naval Intelligence. In this later account Orsborne changes crew names and other details: Stone becomes "Fletcher", and his leaving the voyage in Dakar is recorded by Orsborne as a "desertion". Some of Orsborne's dates are inconsistent with the boat's known movements—he gives 26 June as the date of arrival in Dakar, and the account he gives of his Old Bailey trial bears no relation to the published record. Orsborne describes his stay in Wormwood Scrubs prison as "a wonderful experience. I wouldn't have missed it for anything".
## Aftermath
After the trial, the press and public remained broadly sympathetic to the Orsborne brothers. During the committal stages The Spectator had commented that the adventure "had given romantic satisfaction to the whole world" and that her captain had become a national hero. On the day after the sentencing, The Times leading article noted the public's sustained pleasure in the escapade. Nearly 30 years later, in his social history of the between-the-wars years, Ronald Blythe portrayed the affair as an anti-establishment gesture, "a colourful snook cocked in the face of some of the most soul-crippling officialdom ever experienced by ordinary men and women".
While in prison, George Orsborne lent his name to a ghost-written account of the Girl Pat adventure, which repeated the claim that the vessel had been sent out inadequately equipped and provisioned. Marstrand's successfully sued the publishers, Hutchinsons, and two newspapers which had repeated the details. On his release, Orsborne planned to make a single-handed transatlantic crossing in an open boat, but the trip was delayed, and finally cancelled when war began in September 1939. Likewise, nothing came of an announcement in 1938 that Orsborne would lead an expedition to the Caribbean and up the Amazon.
During the war, Orsborne worked as mate on a trawler which formed part of Britain's anti-invasion force, before rejoining the Royal Navy. His wartime exploits included service as a beachmaster during the Normandy landings of June 1944, a spell as a commando in Combined Operations, and service in the Far East, where he records being captured and imprisoned by the Japanese. In September 1947 Orsborne was one of two men rescued in mid-Atlantic from the abandoned ketch Lovely Lady; the other was a stowaway, a Spanish greengrocer.
In his 1949 memoir Master of the Girl Pat, George Orsborne records briefly that Stephens went straight back to sea after the adventure, that Harris drank up his share of the crew's newspaper money, and that "Fletcher" (Stone) emigrated to Australia. James Orsborne worked for a while in the Mediterranean, assisting refugees from the Spanish Civil War. Later he went to Canada. He was in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese in February 1942, and was not heard from again. George Orsborne died on 23 December 1957, at Belle Île off the Brittany coast, while delivering a motor-cruiser from Nice to England.
### Later years of ship
Girl Pat was repaired and refitted in Georgetown by her new owners, the Grimsby-based firm Girl Pat Ltd, and was brought back to England, arriving at Portsmouth on 9 May 1937 She remained there for two weeks as a tourist attraction, before moving to London on 28 May. Her new owners declared that they were still undecided as to the ship's longer-term future, but for the time being she would be displayed at Blackpool and other holiday resorts. On 17 February 1939 The Times reported that Girl Pat had been sold to the Port of London Authority (PLA), to be used as a wreck-marking vessel. After the outbreak of war in September 1939, she was requisitioned by the Admiralty for naval use, and is listed as one of the "minor war vessels" in service in July 1940. By 1945 she had been returned to the PLA; there is no public record of her subsequent history. The name Girl Pat'' was adopted by at least one later registered vessel; in August 1966 a 60-ton yacht of that name was arrested by Greek coastguards in the Gulf of Corinth and its occupants charged with the theft of antiquities.
|
335,375 |
The Long and Winding Road
| 1,169,351,302 |
1970 single by the Beatles
|
[
"1970 singles",
"1970 songs",
"1970s ballads",
"2002 singles",
"Andy Williams songs",
"Apple Records singles",
"Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles",
"Cashbox number-one singles",
"Cissy Houston songs",
"Gareth Gates songs",
"Number-one singles in Scotland",
"Pop ballads",
"RPM Top Singles number-one singles",
"Rock ballads",
"Song recordings produced by Phil Spector",
"Songs about loneliness",
"Songs about roads",
"Songs published by Northern Songs",
"Songs written by Lennon–McCartney",
"The Beatles songs",
"UK Singles Chart number-one singles",
"Will Young songs"
] |
"The Long and Winding Road" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1970 album Let It Be. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. When issued as a single in May 1970, a month after the Beatles' break-up, it became the group's 20th and last number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States.
The main recording of the song took place in January 1969 and featured a sparse musical arrangement. When preparing the tapes from these sessions for release in April 1970, producer Phil Spector added orchestral and choral overdubs. Spector's modifications angered McCartney to the point that when he made his case in the English High Court for the Beatles' disbandment, McCartney cited the treatment of the song as one of six reasons justifying the split. New versions of the song with simpler instrumentation were subsequently released by McCartney and by the Beatles.
## Inspiration
Paul McCartney said he came up with the title "The Long and Winding Road" during one of his first visits to his property High Park Farm, near Campbeltown in Scotland, which he purchased in June 1966. The phrase was inspired by the sight of a road "stretching up into the hills" in the remote Highlands surroundings of lochs and distant mountains. He wrote the song at his farm in 1968, inspired by the growing tension among the Beatles. Based on other comments McCartney has made, author Howard Sounes writes, the lyrics can be seen as McCartney expressing his anguish at the direction of his personal life, as well as a nostalgic look back at the Beatles' history. McCartney recalled: "I just sat down at my piano in Scotland, started playing and came up with that song, imagining it was going to be done by someone like Ray Charles. I have always found inspiration in the calm beauty of Scotland and again it proved the place where I found inspiration."
Once back in London, McCartney recorded a demo version of "The Long and Winding Road" during one of the recording sessions for The Beatles. Later, he offered the song to Tom Jones on the condition that the singer release it as his next single. In Jones' recollection, he was forced to turn it down since his record company were about to issue "Without Love" as a single.
The composition takes the form of a piano-based ballad, with conventional chord changes. McCartney described the chords as "slightly jazzy" and in keeping with Charles' style. The song's home key is E-flat major but it also uses the relative C minor. The opening theme is repeated throughout. The song lacks a traditional chorus, and the melody and lyrics are ambiguous about the opening stanza's position in the piece. In this way, according to musicologist Alan Pollack, it is unclear whether the song has just begun, is in the verse, or is in the bridge.
In an interview in 1994, McCartney said of "The Long and Winding Road": "It's rather a sad song. I like writing sad songs, it's a good bag to get into because you can actually acknowledge some deeper feelings of your own and put them in it. It's a good vehicle, it saves having to go to a psychiatrist." He also told his biographer Barry Miles in the 1990s that the song was "all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach ... the road that you never get to the end of".
## Recording
### January 1969
McCartney premiered "The Long and Winding Road" on 7 January 1969 during the Beatles' filmed rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios. After they abandoned thoughts of returning to public performance, and instead decided to make a new album, the band recorded several takes of the song at their Apple Studio in central London on 26 January and again on 31 January. The line-up was McCartney on lead vocals and piano, John Lennon on six-string bass guitar, George Harrison on electric guitar played with a Leslie speaker effect, Ringo Starr on drums, and guest keyboardist Billy Preston on electric piano. Lennon, who rarely played bass, made several mistakes on the recording.
As seen in the Get Back documentary, following the 26 January recording session, the band discussed the possibility of adding an orchestral accompaniment to the song. "The only way I've ever heard it in my head," McCartney said, "is like Ray Charles's band.... We were planning to do it anyway for a couple of numbers, just to have a bit of brass and a bit of strings." George Harrison supported the idea of a brass accompaniment: "It would be nice with some brass just doing the sustaining chord thing, moving and just holding notes."
In May 1969, Glyn Johns, who had been asked by the Beatles to compile and mix the Get Back album from the sessions, selected the 26 January recording. The 31 January take, which had slightly different lyrics and was recorded with Johns in an unofficial producer's role, was used in the film, subsequently titled Let It Be.
### April 1970
In early 1970, Lennon and Harrison asked the Beatles' manager, Allen Klein, to turn over the January 1969 recordings to American producer Phil Spector, in the hope of salvaging an album to accompany the Let It Be documentary film. McCartney had become estranged from his bandmates at this time, due to his opposition to Klein's appointment as manager. Several weeks were lost before McCartney replied to messages requesting his approval for Spector to begin working on the recordings. Spector chose to return to the same 26 January recording of "The Long and Winding Road".
Spector made various changes to the songs. His most dramatic embellishments occurred on 1 April 1970, the last ever Beatles recording session, when he added orchestral overdubs to "The Long and Winding Road", "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine" at EMI Studios. The only member of the Beatles present was Starr, who played drums with the session musicians to create Spector's characteristic Wall of Sound. Already known for his eccentric behaviour in the studio, Spector was in a peculiar mood that day, according to balance engineer Peter Bown: "He wanted tape echo on everything, he had to take a different pill every half-hour and had his bodyguard with him constantly. He was on the point of throwing a wobbly, saying 'I want to hear this, I want to hear that. I must have this, I must have that.'" The orchestra became so annoyed by Spector's behaviour that the musicians refused to play any further; at one point, Bown left for home, forcing Spector to telephone him and persuade him to return after Starr had told Spector to calm down.
Spector nonetheless succeeded in overdubbing "The Long and Winding Road", using eight violins, four violas, four cellos, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitars, and a choir of fourteen women. The orchestra was scored and conducted by Richard Hewson, a young London arranger who had worked with Apple artists Mary Hopkin and James Taylor. This lush orchestral treatment was in direct contrast to the Beatles' stated intentions for a "real" recording when they began work on Get Back.
On 2 April, Spector sent each of the Beatles an acetate of the completed album with a note saying: "If there is anything you'd like done to the album, let me know and I'll be glad to help ... If you wish, please call me about anything regarding the album tonight." All four of the band members sent him their approval by telegram.
## Dispute over Spector's overdubs
According to author Peter Doggett, McCartney had felt the need to accommodate his bandmates when accepting Spector's version of Let It Be. However, following his announcement of the Beatles' break-up in a press release accompanying the release of his debut solo album, McCartney, on 9 April, he came to resent Spector's additions, particularly on "The Long and Winding Road." On 14 April, with manufacturing underway for Let It Be, he sent a terse letter to Klein, demanding that the harp be removed from the song and that the other added instrumentation and voices be reduced. McCartney concluded the letter with the words: "Don't ever do it again." Klein attempted to phone McCartney but he had changed his number without informing Apple; Klein then sent a telegram asking McCartney to contact him or Spector about his concerns. According to Klein, "The following day, a message was relayed to me [from McCartney] that the letter spoke for itself." With Let It Be scheduled for release in advance of the film, Klein allowed the production process to continue with Spector's version of "The Long and Winding Road" intact.
In an interview published by the Evening Standard in two parts on 21 and 22 April 1970, McCartney said:
> The album was finished a year ago, but a few months ago American record producer Phil Spector was called in by John Lennon to tidy up some of the tracks. But a few weeks ago, I was sent a re-mixed version of my song "The Long and Winding Road" with harps, horns, an orchestra and women's choir added. No one had asked me what I thought. I couldn't believe it. I would never have female voices on a Beatles record.
The band's usual producer, George Martin, called the remixes "so uncharacteristic" of the Beatles. Johns, who was denied a production credit by Lennon, later described Spector's embellishments as "revolting ... just puke".
McCartney asked Klein to dissolve the Beatles' partnership, but was refused. Exasperated, he took the case to the High Court in London in early 1971, naming Klein and the other Beatles as defendants. Among the six reasons McCartney gave for dissolving the Beatles was that Klein's company, ABKCO, had imposed changes to "The Long and Winding Road" without consulting McCartney. In his written affidavit, Starr countered this statement by saying that when Spector had sent acetates of Let It Be to each of the Beatles for their approval, with a request also for feedback: "We all said yes. Even at the beginning Paul said yes. I spoke to him on the phone, and said, 'Did you like it?' and he said, 'Yeah, it's OK.' He didn't put it down." Starr added: "And then suddenly he didn't want it to go out. Two weeks after that, he wanted to cancel it." Author Nicholas Schaffner commented that, in light of McCartney's contention in the High Court, it was surprising that he personally accepted the band's Grammy Award for Let It Be in March 1971 – when the album won in the category Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special – and that he chose to feature his wife Linda's voice so prominently on his post-Beatles recordings.
Speaking to music journalist Richard Williams soon after the overdubbing sessions, Spector said that he had asked whether any of the Beatles would like to help him produce the album, but none of them had wanted to. He later said he was forced into orchestrating "The Long and Winding Road" to cover the poor quality of Lennon's bass playing; Spector also denied that McCartney was not consulted, saying that he had first contacted McCartney about the choice of musical arranger. In his book Revolution in the Head, Beatles scholar Ian MacDonald wrote: "The song was designed as a standard to be taken up by mainstream balladeers ... It features some atrocious bass-playing by Lennon, prodding clumsily around as if uncertain of the harmonies and making many comical mistakes. Lennon's crude bass playing on 'The Long and Winding Road', though largely accidental, amounts to sabotage when presented as finished work." In 2003, Spector called McCartney's criticism "hypocritical", alleging that "Paul had no problem picking up the Academy Award [sic] for the Let It Be movie soundtrack, nor did he have any problem in using my arrangement of the string and horn and choir parts when he performed it during 25 years of touring on his own. If Paul wants to get into a pissing contest about it, he's got me mixed up with someone who gives a shit."
## Release
The song was released on the Let It Be album on 8 May 1970. On 11 May, seven days before the album's North American release, Apple issued "The Long and Winding Road" as a single in the United States with "For You Blue" on the B-side. The single was released in several European countries but not the United Kingdom. In the context of the recent news regarding the Beatles' split, the song captured the sadness that many listeners felt.
In the US, "For You Blue" gained sufficient radio airplay for Billboard to chart the two songs together, as a double-sided hit. The record was similarly listed as a double A-side when it topped Canada's singles chart. On 13 June 1970, it became the Beatles' twentieth and final number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and held the top position for a second week. The band thereby set the all-time record for number of chart-topping singles on the Billboard Hot 100. The Beatles achieved this feat in a period of less than six-and-a-half years, starting with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on 1 February 1964, during which they topped the Hot 100 in one out of every six weeks. "The Long and Winding Road" also topped the US charts compiled by Cash Box and Record World, giving the band their 22nd and 23rd number-one hits on those charts.
The single had a relatively brief run on the Billboard Hot 100 and its contemporary US sales were insufficient for gold accreditation by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In February 1999, "The Long and Winding Road" was certified platinum by the RIAA for sales of 1,000,000.
## Critical reception
Let It Be received largely unfavourable reviews from music critics, many of whom ridiculed Spector's use of orchestration, particularly on "The Long and Winding Road". In his album review for Melody Maker, Richard Williams wrote that "Paul's songs seem to be getting looser and less concise, and Spector's orchestrations add to the Bacharach atmosphere. The strings add a pleasant fullness in places, but intrude badly near the end and the harps are too much." Rolling Stone's reviewer, John Mendelsohn, was especially critical of Spector's work, saying: "He's rendered 'The Long and Winding Road' ... virtually unlistenable with hideously cloying strings and a ridiculous choir that serve only to accentuate the listlessness of Paul's vocal and the song's potential for further mutilation at the hands of the countless schlock-mongers who will undoubtedly trip all over one another in their haste to cover it." Mendelsohn said that while the song was a "slightly lesser chapter in the ongoing story of McCartney as facile romanticist", "it might have eventually begun to grow on one as unassumingly charming" without Spector's "oppressive mush".
In 1973, musicologist and critic Wilfrid Mellers wrote: "The music has a tremendous expectancy ... Whether or no Paul approved of the plush scoring of 'The Long and Winding Road', it works not because it guys the feeling but because the feeling has integrity." MacDonald said: "With its heart-breaking suspensions and yearning backward glances from the sad wisdom of the major key to the lost loves and illusions of the minor, 'The Long and Winding Road' is one of the most beautiful things McCartney ever wrote. Its words, too, are among his most poignant, particularly the reproachful lines of the brief four-bar middle section. A shame Lennon didn't listen more generously."
According to Williams, writing in his book Phil Spector: Out of His Head, Spector's mistake was in "taking McCartney at his face value" and emphasising the sentimental qualities that George Martin's orchestral arrangements for the Beatles had successfully tempered. Williams added: "Some might say that this track, above all others, epitomises Paul McCartney, and that when Spector sent the saccharine strings sweeping in after the first line of vocal, he was merely highlighting the reality." In a 2003 review for Mojo, shortly after the announcement that McCartney planned to issue "a string-less Let It Be", John Harris opined: "As someone who experiences a Proustian rush every time the orchestra crash-lands in 'The Long and Winding Road', I can only implore him to think again. Besides, underneath all the Wagnerian gloop, John's bass playing is horribly out of tune ..." Referring to the version subsequently released without the controversial overdubs, Adam Sweeting of The Guardian said the song was "indubitably improved by the removal of Spector's wall of schmaltz" but "still teeth-clenchingly mawkish".
In 2011, Rolling Stone placed "The Long and Winding Road" at number 90 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Beatles Songs". On a similar list compiled by Mojo in 2006, the song appeared at number 27. In his commentary for the magazine, Brian Wilson described it as his "all time favourite Beatles track", saying that while the Beatles were "genius songwriters", this song was distinguished by a "heart-and-soul melody". Wilson concluded: "When they broke up I was heartbroken. I think they should have kept going."
## Other Beatles and McCartney versions
Since the original release in 1970, there have been six additional recordings released by McCartney. After he had resisted playing any of his Beatles songs with his band Wings, he included "The Long and Winding Road" in the set list for Wings' 1975–76 world tour. A live version appeared on the 1976 album Wings over America.
McCartney re-recorded "The Long and Winding Road" for the soundtrack to his 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street. George Martin produced the track, which includes saxophone accompaniment and what authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter describe as a Las Vegas-style musical arrangement. A second new studio recording of the song was made by McCartney in 1989 and used as a B-side of single releases from his Flowers in the Dirt album, starting with the "Postcard Pack" vinyl format of "This One".
On McCartney's 1989–90 world tour in support of Flowers in the Dirt – his first world tour since 1975–76 – the song was performed with a musical backing that, in Kenneth Womack's view, "clearly attempts to replicate" the strings added by Spector in 1970. The version released on the live album from the tour, Tripping the Live Fantastic, was the only song taken from McCartney's two April 1990 shows at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. The live single version was also included on The 7" Singles Box in 2022.
The 1996 Beatles' outtakes compilation Anthology 3 includes the original 26 January 1969 take, without Spector's overdubs. "The Long and Winding Road" provided the working title for Apple executive Neil Aspinall's early version of the documentary film that became the 1995 TV series The Beatles Anthology. The title was changed in the 1990s after Harrison objected to the project being named after McCartney's song.
In 2003, McCartney persuaded Starr and Ono (as Lennon's widow) to release Let It Be... Naked. McCartney said that his long-standing dissatisfaction with the released version of "The Long and Winding Road" was partly the impetus for the new version. The album included a take of the song from 31 January 1969. With no strings or other added instrumentation, it was closer to the Beatles' original intention than the 1970 version. This take is also the one seen in the film Let It Be and on the Beatles' 2015 video compilation 1. Starr said of the Let It Be... Naked version: "There's nothing wrong with Phil's strings [on the 1970 release], this is just a different attitude to listening. But it's been 30-odd years since I've heard it without all that and it just blew me away."
"The Long and Winding Road" has continued to be a staple of McCartney's post-Beatles concert repertoire. In July 2005, he performed the song to close the Live 8 concert in London. On his 2009 tours, McCartney played it as part of a nostalgia-filled set that included tributes to Linda, Lennon and Harrison. In the case of "The Long and Winding Road", the performance was accompanied by screen-projected photos taken by Linda of the family's Arizona ranch, including the horse trail she and McCartney rode shortly before her death.
## Cover versions
"The Long and Winding Road" was one of several McCartney compositions from the Beatles era that became widely covered by easy listening artists and persuaded adults that the younger generation's musical tastes had merit. A version by British singer Ray Morgan reached number 32 on the UK Singles Chart in 1970.
As McCartney had originally envisaged, Ray Charles recorded a cover version in 1971, released on Volcanic Action of My Soul. A "live" vocal of Ray, as described in the liner notes to Ray Sings, Basie Swings, was later overdubbed with the Count Basie Orchestra and issued on that 2006 album. Aretha Franklin released a recording of the song on her 1972 album Young, Gifted and Black, a version that Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield calls "the greatest of all Beatle covers". Cilla Black released a version on her 1973 Martin-produced album Day by Day with Cilla; McCartney described this recording as the definitive version of the song.
Other versions include a cover by Leo Sayer on the 1976 All This and World War II soundtrack, a 1978 recording by Peter Frampton for Robert Stigwood's film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a 1999 performance by George Michael at the Royal Albert Hall memorial concert for Linda McCartney, and a 2010 performance at the White House by Faith Hill when Barack Obama gave McCartney the Gershwin Prize. In 1985, a recording by Billy Ocean peaked at number 24 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. In 2002, British Pop Idol series one contestants Will Young and Gareth Gates recorded a version released as a double A-side with Gates' version of "Suspicious Minds"; the single topped the UK Singles Chart and the Scottish Singles Chart. The duet by itself also reached number 4 in Ireland.
## Personnel
According to Walter Everett, except where noted:
The Beatles
- Paul McCartney – vocal, piano
- John Lennon – six-string bass
- George Harrison – electric guitar
- Ringo Starr – drums
Additional musicians
- Billy Preston – electric piano
- Uncredited orchestral musicians – 18 violins, 4 violas, 4 cellos, harp, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 guitars, 14 female voices
- Richard Hewson – orchestral arrangement
- John Barham – choral arrangement
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
|
4,569,663 |
Helmut Lent
| 1,172,915,714 |
German fighter ace (1918–1944)
|
[
"1918 births",
"1944 deaths",
"20th-century Lutherans",
"Deaths in Nazi Germany",
"German Lutherans",
"German World War II flying aces",
"Hitler Youth members",
"Luftwaffe personnel killed in World War II",
"Military personnel from the Province of Brandenburg",
"People from Gorzów County",
"Recipients of the Gold German Cross",
"Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds",
"Reich Labour Service members",
"Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1944"
] |
Helmut Lent (13 June 1918 – 7 October 1944) was a German night-fighter ace in World War II. Lent shot down 110 aircraft, 102 of them at night. Born into a devoutly religious family, he showed an early passion for glider flying; against his father's wishes, he joined the Luftwaffe in 1936. After completing his training, he was assigned to the 1. Squadron, or Staffel, of Zerstörergeschwader 76 (ZG 76), a wing flying the Messerschmitt Bf 110 twin-engine heavy fighter. Lent claimed his first aerial victories at the outset of World War II in the invasion of Poland and over the North Sea. During the invasion of Norway he flew ground support missions before he was transferred to the newly established Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 (NJG 1), a night-fighter wing.
Lent claimed his first nocturnal victory on 12 May 1941 and on 30 August 1941 was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for 22 victories. His steady accumulation of aerial victories resulted in regular promotions and awards. On the night of 15 June 1944, Major Lent was the first night fighter pilot to claim 100 nocturnal aerial victories, a feat which earned him the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds on 31 July 1944.
On 5 October 1944, Lent flew a Junkers Ju 88 on a routine transit flight from Stade to Nordborchen, 5 kilometres (3 mi) south of Paderborn. On the landing approach one of the engines cut out and the aircraft collided with power lines. All four members of the crew were fatally wounded. Three men died shortly after the crash and Lent succumbed to his injuries two days later on 7 October 1944.
## Childhood, education and early career
Lent was born on 13 June 1918 in Pyrehne, district of Landsberg an der Warthe, Province of Brandenburg, Germany (now Pyrzany, Lubusz Province, western Poland) and christened Helmut Johannes Siegfried Lent. He was the fifth child of Johannes Lent, a Lutheran minister and Marie Elisabeth, née Braune. Helmut Lent had two older brothers, Werner and Joachim, and two older sisters, Käthe and Ursula. His family was deeply religious; in addition to his father, both of his brothers and both grandfathers were also Lutheran ministers.
From Easter 1924 until Easter 1928, Lent attended the local public primary school at Pyrehne. His father and oldest brother Werner then tutored him at home in preparation for the entrance examination at the public secondary school at Landsberg. In February 1933, Helmut joined the Jungvolk, the junior branch of the Hitler Youth. From March 1933, he acted as a youth platoon leader, or Jungzugführer (1 March 1933 – 1 April 1935) and flag-bearer, or Fähnleinführer (1 April 1935 – 9 November 1935) until he left the Jungvolk to prepare for his diploma examination. Helmut passed his graduation examinations at the age of seventeen on 12 December 1935. On 2 February 1936, he began the eight-week compulsory National Labor Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) at Mohrin. He joined the military service in the Luftwaffe as a Fahnenjunker on 1 April 1936, against the wishes of his father.
His military training began on 6 April 1936 at the 2nd Air Warfare School (Luftkriegsschule 2) at Gatow, on the south-western outskirts of Berlin. He swore the National Socialist oath of allegiance on 21 April 1936. Flight training began on Monday, 7 August 1936 at Gatow. His first flight was in a Heinkel He 72 Kadet D-EYZA single engine biplane. Lent logged his first solo flight on 15 September 1936 in a Focke-Wulf Fw 44 Stieglitz. By this time, Lent had accumulated 63 flights in his logbook. In conjunction with flight training, the students also learned to drive motorcycles and cars and during one of these training exercises, Lent was involved in a road accident, breaking his upper leg badly enough to prevent him from flying for five months. This did not adversely affect his classroom training and on 1 April 1937, after taking his commission examination, he was promoted to Fähnrich. On 19 October 1937 Lent completed his flight training and was awarded the A/B License. He earned his wings on 15 November 1937. On 1 February 1938, he was promoted to Oberfähnrich (first ensign), and on 1 March 1938 to Leutnant. By this time, he had made 434 flights in eight different types of aircraft and had accumulated 112 hours and 48 minutes flying time, mostly in daylight flights, in single engine training aircraft.
After leaving Gatow, Helmut Lent was posted to the Heavy Bomber Crew School, or Große Kampffliegerschule at Tutow, in northeast Germany. He spent three months training as an observer (1 March 1938 – 30 May 1938). Prior to completing this course, Lent was run over by a car, resulting in a broken lower jaw, concussion, and internal bleeding. On 1 July 1938, Lent was posted to the 3rd Group of Jagdgeschwader 132 "Richthofen" (III./JG 132), flying on 19 July 1938 for the first time after his injuries.
At the beginning of September, Lent's squadron, 7./JG 132, relocated to Großenhain near Dresden, in preparation and support of the annexation of Czechoslovakia. Lent flew a number of operational patrols in this conflict until his Staffel relocated again to Rangsdorf on 29 September 1938. After the tension over the occupation of the Sudeten territories eased, Lent's unit began a conversion to the Messerschmitt Bf 108 Taifun. On 1 November 1938 III./JG 132 moved to Fürstenwalde, between Berlin and Frankfurt an der Oder, and was renamed II./JG 141, and Lent was posted to the 6th Squadron.
II./JG 141 changed its designation to I./Zerstörergeschwader 76 (I./ZG 76) on 1 May 1939 at the same time relocating to an airfield at Olmütz, Czechoslovakia. The group was being re-equipped with the Messerschmitt Bf 110, and Lent made his first flight in the Bf 110 on 7 June 1939. Lent was granted his Luftwaffe Advanced Pilot's Certificate (Erweiterter Luftwaffen-Flugzeugführerschein), also known as 'C'-Certificate, confirming proficiency on multi-engine aircraft, on 12 May 1939. While converting to the Bf 110, Lent did not have a regular wireless operator (Funker) in the rear gunner's seat, but on 14 August 1939 he was accompanied in M8+AH for the first time by Gefreiter Walter Kubisch. During the prelude of World War II on 25 August 1939 I./ZG 76 deployed to an airfield at Ohlau to the southeast of Breslau.
## World War II
World War II began at 04:45 on Friday 1 September 1939 when German forces crossed the Polish border. Helmut Lent, flying a Bf 110 marked M8-DH, took off from Ohlau, at 04:44 to escort Heinkel He 111 bombers on a mission over Krakow.
### Invasion of Poland
The German plans for the invasion of Poland were conceived under the codename Fall Weiss (Case White). This operation called for simultaneous attacks on Poland from three directions, the north, the west and the south, beginning at 04:45 on the early morning of 1 September 1939. On this morning Helmut Lent, with Kubisch as his wireless operator and rear gunner, escorted a formation of Heinkel 111 bombers of I. and III./Kampfgeschwader 4 (KG 4) attacking the airfields at Krakow in support of the southern prong of the German attack. At 16:30 on 2 September 1939, the second day of the German attack, Lent took off in the direction of Łódź and claimed his first aerial-victory of the war, shooting down a PZL P.11.
At this point of the campaign the Bf 110s switched from bomber escort to ground-attack since the Polish Air Force was all but defeated. In this capacity Lent and Kubisch destroyed a twin-engined monoplane on the ground on 5 September and another aircraft, a PZL P.24, on 9 September. On 12 September 1939 he was attacked by a Polish aircraft which shot out his starboard engine. Lent made a forced landing behind German lines. He flew five more missions during the Polish campaign, destroying one anti-aircraft battery. For his actions in the Polish campaign Lent was awarded one of the first Iron Cross 2nd Class (Eisernes Kreuz zweiter Klasse) of World War II on 21 September 1939. I./ZG 76 relocated to the Stuttgart area on 29 September 1939 to defend the western border against the French and British, who had been at war with Germany since 3 September 1939. From early October to middle December I./ZG 76 operated from a number of airfields in the Stuttgart and Ruhr areas before relocating north to Jever on 16 December 1939.
### Battle of the Heligoland Bight
During the first month of the war the Royal Air Force (RAF) mostly focused its bomber attacks against anti-shipping operations on the German Bight. RAF bombers mounted a heavy attack against shipping off Wilhelmshaven on 18 December 1939 in what became known as the Battle of the Heligoland Bight. Twenty-four twin-engine Vickers Wellington from No. 9 Squadron, No. 37 Squadron and No. 149 Squadron formed up over Norfolk heading for the island of Heligoland. Two aircraft aborted the mission due to mechanical defects, but the remaining 22 pursued the attack and were spotted by a Freya radar on the East Frisian Islands.
Helmut Lent was ordered to intercept and engage the attacking bomber force and after refuelling—Lent had just landed at Jever from an armed patrol—claimed three Wellingtons, two of which, shot down at 14:30 and 14:45, were later confirmed. The two aircraft were both from No. 37 Squadron, captained by Flying Officer P.A. Wimberley and Flying Officer O.J.T. Lewis respectively, and both crashed in the shallow sea off Borkum. It is likely that his third claim may have been No. 37 Squadron Wellington 1A N2396, LF-J, piloted by Sergeant H. Ruse, which crash-landed on the sand dunes of Borkum. Lent was refused the victory over Wimberley, as the Wellington was attacked by Lent after it had already been badly damaged and was about to crash. The Wellington was credited to pilot Carl-August Schumacher.
His success as a fighter pilot over the North Sea had made him a minor national hero. Exploits such as those at Heligoland made good news stories for German propaganda machine. Consequently, he attracted fan mail—mainly from young girls and women—among them Elisabeth Petersen. Lent replied to her letter, and he and Elisabeth met on a blind date at the Reichshof hotel in Hamburg, after which they enjoyed a skiing holiday in Hirschegg in February 1940.
### Norwegian Campaign and Battle of Britain
On 8 April 1940 eight aircraft of 1./ZG 76, under the command of Staffelkapitän Werner Hansen, deployed northward from Jever to Westerland on Sylt in preparation for operation Weserübung, the invasion of Norway. The German plan for the attack called for an amphibious assault on the Norwegian capital, Oslo, and six major ports from Kristiansand in the south to Narvik in the north. Simultaneously, Junkers 52 (Ju 52) transport aircraft would drop parachute troops to secure Oslo's Fornebu airport. Additional Ju 52s were scheduled to arrive at Fornebu twenty minutes after the parachute drop, by which time the airfield had to be in German hands. 1./ZG 76 was to provide air cover and ground-attack support for both waves. Eight Bf 110 Zerstörer of 1./ZG 76 took off at 7:00 in the morning, planning to synchronise their arrival at Fornebu with the parachute drop at 8:45. The distance from Westerland to Fornebu meant that this was a one-way operation; the Bf 110s could not hold enough fuel for the return trip. Their fuel was calculated to provide them 20 minutes flying time over Fornebu, and the pilots would have to land at Fornebu once the airfield had been seized.
On the early morning flight to Fornebu, Lent engaged and shot down a Norwegian Gloster Gladiator. While the Ju 52s transporting the German paratroops came under heavy fire, Lent's Rotte engaged the enemy ground positions. Lent's starboard engine caught fire, forcing him to land immediately. With Kubisch manning the movable machine gun, Lent negotiated the capitulation with the Norwegian ground forces and the airfield was in German hands.
At 18:50 the same day, Lent and his Staffelkapitän Werner Hansen took off again from Fornebu in undamaged Bf 110s. During the 40-minute flight, they came across a RAF Short Sunderland flying boat, serial number L2167, from No. 210 Squadron RAF which they shot down together; Hansen received credit for the "kill". Helmut Lent was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class (Eisernes Kreuz erster Klasse) on 13 May 1940 before he was transferred to Trondheim on 18 May. He claimed his second aerial victory of the Norwegian campaign on 27 May over a RAF Gloster Gladiator from No. 263 Squadron RAF, piloted by Flight Lieutenant Caesar Hull. On 2 June 1940 Lent and his wingman Thönes claimed a Gladiator each. The flight lasted 5 hours and 46 minutes and their opponents were again from No. 263 Squadron, aircraft serial number N5893 piloted by Pilot Officer J.L. Wilkie, and N5681 piloted by Pilot Officer L.R. Jacobsen. He claimed his seventh victory overall and final of the Norwegian theatre of operations on 15 June 1940 over a No. 254 Squadron RAF Bristol Blenheim, piloted by Pilot Officer P.C. Gaylord. On 1 July 1940 Lent was promoted to Oberleutnant and on 13 July 1./ZG 76 was relocated to Stavanger/Forus.
Helmut Lent briefly participated in the Battle of Britain when on 15 August 1940 twenty-one Bf 110s from I./ZG 76 escorted He 111 bombers from Kampfgeschwader 26 (KG 26) on their attack on Yorkshire and the Newcastle/Sunderland area. I./ZG 76 lost seven aircraft on this mission and it was Helmut Lent's 98th and final mission as a Zerstörer pilot.
### Night fighter career
By June 1940 RAF Bomber Command penetrations of German airspace had increased to the level at which Hermann Göring decreed that a night-fighter force should be formed. The officer tasked with its creation was Wolfgang Falck, Gruppenkommandeur of the I./Zerstörergeschwader 1 (ZG 1). The night-fighter force began to expand rapidly, with existing units being divided to form the nucleus of new units. By October 1940 Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 (NJG 1) comprised three Gruppen, while Nachtjagdgeschwader 2 (NJG 2) and Nachtjagdgeschwader 3 (NJG 3), were still forming. It was during this period that Helmut Lent reluctantly became a member of the night-fighter force. At the end of August Lent wrote home, "We are currently converting to night fighting. We are not very enthusiastic. We would sooner head directly for England."
Lent completed night fighter training at Ingolstadt in south-western Germany, and was appointed squadron leader, or Staffelkapitän, of the newly formed 6./NJG 1 on 1 October 1940. The squadron was based at Deelen Airfield, located 12.5 kilometres (8 mi) north of Arnhem in the Netherlands. On the night 11–12 May 1941, Lent claimed his first nocturnal aerial victories against two Wellington IC bombers from No. 40 Squadron RAF on a mission against Hamburg. BL-H (serial number R1330) was shot down at 01:40 near Süderstapel and BL-Z (R1461) at 02:49 near Nordstrand.
On 1 July 1941, he took command of 4./NJG 1, stationed in the Netherlands at Fliegerhorst (airfield) Leeuwarden, 161 kilometres (100 mi) north of Arnheim, on the Friesland coast. From this position in the so-called German Bight, the squadron patrolled the North Sea coast, and could intercept Allied night-time bombing missions, what Nazi propaganda called terror attacks, which were conducted from England. By the end of the war, the 4./NJG 1 was one of the most successful Nachtjagdstaffeln—a squadron of a night fighter wing—of the Luftwaffe. Other members included such night fighter pilots as Oberleutnant Helmut Woltersdorf, Leutnant Ludwig Becker (44 victories, KIA February 1943), Leutnant Egmont Prinz zur Lippe-Weißenfeld (51 victories, killed in a flying accident in the Netherlands in March 1944), Leutnant Leopold Fellerer (41 victories), Oberfeldwebel Paul Gildner (46 victories, killed in a flying accident at Fliegerhorst Gilze-Rijen in the Netherlands in February 1943), and Unteroffizier Siegfried Ney (12 victories, KIA February 1943). On 30 August 1941, Lent received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes) for seven daytime and 14 night victories.
On 1 November 1941, Lent became acting Group Commander Gruppenkommandeur of the newly formed II./NJG 2. On 1 October 1942, II./NJG 2 was renamed and became IV./NJG 1. Lent's first aerial victory as a Gruppenkommandeur, his 20th night-time, and his last in 1941, came during the night of Friday 7 November to Saturday 8 November. He shot down a Wellington 1C heading for Berlin, which came down near Akkrum. The six-man crew of the bomber, X9976 of No. 75 (New Zealand) Squadron, was killed in action. This achievement earned Lent a reference in the Wehrmachtbericht (his first of six in total), an information bulletin issued by the headquarters of the Wehrmacht. To be singled out individually in the Wehrmachtbericht was an honour and was entered in the Orders and Decorations' section of one's Service Record Book.
Lent was promoted to Hauptmann on 1 January 1942. Later that year, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub) on 6 June 1942, at which time his total stood at 34 nocturnal victories plus seven day-time victories. The award was presented at the Führerhauptquartier on 28 and 29 June, his tally standing then at 39 nocturnal and seven day-time victories. Lent also held the distinction of achieving the first Lichtenstein radar-assisted air victory in a Dornier Do 215B-5 night fighter. Lent flew Dornier Do 215B-5 code R4+DC regularly on Himmelbett missions because of its five-hour endurance. Lent claimed at least four victories in this machine.
By the end of 1942, Lent had 56 victories and was the top German night-fighter ace. He was promoted to Major on 1 January 1943 and appointed Geschwaderkommodore of NJG 3 on 1 August 1943 at Geschwader Headquarters at Stade, west of Hamburg. After 73 kills, of which 65 were claimed at night, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern) on 2 August 1943 and notified by telegram on 4 August. The Swords were presented to him at the Führerhauptquartier at Rastenburg on 10/11 August 1943.
In January 1944, Lent downed three so-called "heavies"—four-engined strategic bombers—in one night, but his aircraft was damaged by return fire, requiring a forced landing. He used only 22 cannon shells to down two bombers on the night of the 22–23 March 1944, and fired only 57 rounds in seven minutes against three Avro Lancasters on 15–16 June. Promoted to Oberstleutnant, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten) in recognition of his 110 confirmed air kills, the first of two night-fighter pilots to be awarded the decoration. The second was Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, who, with 121 aerial victories, became aviation history's leading night-fighter pilot.
### Personal life
All German officers were required to obtain official permission to marry; however, this was usually a bureaucratic formality. When Lent decided to marry Elizabeth Petersen, his admirer from Hamburg whom he had met on a blind date, his case was more complicated. 'Elisabeth Petersen' was in fact Helene (Lena) Senokosnikova, who had been born in Moscow in April 1914. She had been afraid to reveal her true identity, since Russians were not popular in the Third Reich, but after a thorough investigation into her background and racial ancestry, she received her German citizenship on 15 March 1941. They were married on 10 September 1941 in Wellingsbüttel, Hamburg. The marriage produced two daughters. Christina was born on 6 June 1942; the second, Helma, was born on 6 October 1944, shortly after her father's fatal crash.
Both of Helmut's older brothers, Joachim and Werner, as members of the Confessing Church (German: Bekennende Kirche), encountered trouble with the Nazi Party. The Confessing Church was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church. Werner Lent, an adherent of the Confessing church, was arrested for the first time in 1937 after preaching an anti-Nazi sermon. In June 1942, his brother Joachim was arrested by the Gestapo after reading the so-called Mölders letter from the pulpit. The Mölders letter was a propaganda piece conceived by Sefton Delmer, the chief of the British black propaganda in the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) to capitalise on the death of Germany's fighter ace Werner Mölders; this letter, ostensibly written by Mölders, attested to the supreme importance of his Catholic faith in his life—by implication, placing faith above his allegiance to the National Socialist Party.
### Death
On 5 October 1944, Lent flew his Junkers Ju-88 G–6, coded D5+AA, from Stade to Paderborn. His crew included his long-time radio operator Oberfeldwebel Walter Kubisch, the member of a Propagandakompanie (Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops) Leutnant Werner Kark in the aerial gunner position, and Oberleutnant Hermann Klöss, second radio operator. Lent was on his way to visit the Geschwaderkommodore of the NJG 1, Oberstleutnant Hans-Joachim Jabs, to discuss operational matters. Shortly before the arrival at Paderborn/Nordborchen, the airfield had come under attack by the United States Army Air Forces, leaving craters on the runway. An emergency makeshift runway was cleared and marked out for Lent, but an overhead electrical cable was overlooked. During the landing approach, the left engine of the plane failed, causing the wing to dip. Lent was unable to keep the plane steady and it struck high-voltage cables and crashed. All four members of the crew sustained serious injuries but were rescued alive. Kubisch and Klöss succumbed to their injuries on the same day, Kark on the next morning and Lent himself died two days later on 7 October 1944.
Lent's state funeral was held in the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, on Wednesday 11 October 1944. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring took the salute at Lent's coffin, which was draped in the national flag of the Nazi Germany. Ahead of the coffin, carrying Lent's honours and decorations on a velvet cushion, marched Oberstleutnant Werner Streib, the Inspector of Night Fighters. Six steel-helmeted officers, all recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, escorted the coffin on its caisson and stood as guard of honour during the ceremony: Oberstleutnant Günther Radusch, Oberstleutnant Hans-Joachim Jabs, Major Rudolf Schoenert, Hauptmann Heinz Strüning, Hauptmann Karl Hadeball and Hauptmann Paul Zorner. On 12 October 1944 Lent and his crew were interred in a single grave in the military cemetery at Stade.
## Commemoration
A number of Helmut Lent's awards were auctioned at Sotheby's, London, on 18 July 1966. The items were bought in one lot by an anonymous bidder for the total sum of £500. The purchaser was Adolf Galland, the former General der Jagdflieger, acting on behalf of the West German Ministry of Defence. The awards were sold by Helmut Lent's elder daughter Christina after consultation with her mother, Lena, who was in urgent need for money to pay for an operation. The Federal Ministry of Defence presented the collection to the Wehrgeschichtliches Museum Rastatt, Germany.
In 1964, West German Army Aviation Corps installation in Rotenburg (Wümme), Lower Saxony was named the Lent Barracks, or Lent-Kaserne, on a recommendation of Lent's former superior. In 2014, the Bundeswehr decided to rename the facility as Lent was no longer considered to be an appropriate namesake. The process, which is expected to finalise in end 2015, involves 1,500 soldiers and 250 civil employees of the site and was initiated by the commander Oberstleutnant Edmund Vogel in early 2015. In September 2016 the district administrator Herrmann Luttmann, member of the moderate right-wing Party CDU stated "No substantial evidence has been found that indeed Helmut Lent was a supporter of the Nazi regime". Luttmann will therefore recommend to keep the name to the local government. Lars Klingbeil, member of the Bundestag and of the Defence Committee has signalled that the German armed forced would adhere to the decision made on local level despite all controversies.
"It's long overdue to rename the last barracks named after Wehrmacht officers," Professor Johannes Tuchel, head of the German Resistance Memorial, told Bild am Sonntag. "Officers like Schulz, Lent and Marseille fought in Hitler's war and were part of Nazi propaganda." The barracks should be renamed after soldiers who resisted the Nazi regime, he said. "Those who fought for human rights and the rule of law cannot be commemorated enough." Historian Wolfram Wette concurs with this opinion, citing the tradition directive of 1982. Historian Sönke Neitzel has the opinion that the Bundeswehr should keep the name of Lent, who was not a Nazi but only a value-oriented person who followed his Christian image of humankind (christlichen Menschenbild), even if no Wehrmacht soldier came out of the war completely clean. Despite this, Neitzel thinks that except for the case of Erwin Rommel, in five years no Bundeswehr barracks will retain the name of a Wehrmacht man any more, since soldiers do not want to risk their careers to defend names unwanted by the Ministry of Defence.
On 18 March 2018, the Bundeswehr released the latest regulations on military tradition (Traditionserlass) which stipulates that "The Bundeswehr does not maintain a tradition of people, troop units and military institutions in German (military) history who, according to today's understanding, have acted in a criminal, racist or inhuman manner." Based on these regulations, it was decided that the Lent Barracks would be renamed. Following an inquiry submitted by the Left Party on 8 October 2019, the Cabinet of Germany responded that members of the Lent Barracks had proposed renaming the barracks after forester and Freikorps officer Johann Christian von Düring. On 8 June 2020, the barracks was officially renamed the Von-Düring Barracks.
## Summary of career
### Aerial victory claims
Lent is officially credited with 111 victories in 507 flights. The total includes 103 victories at night, during which he destroyed 59 four-engine bombers and one Mosquito, among other types. Lent received a posthumous promotion to Oberst (Colonel). Mathews and Foreman, authors of Luftwaffe Aces — Biographies and Victory Claims, researched the German Federal Archives and found documentation for 111 aerial victory claims, including seven as a Zerstörer pilot and 104 as a night fighter pilot, plus three further unconfirmed claims.
The majority of his victories were claimed with detailed geographical locations. However, two of his victories were claimed in a Planquadrat (grid reference), for example "QE-PE". The Luftwaffe grid map (Jägermeldenetz) was composed of rectangles measuring 15 minutes of latitude by 30 minutes of longitude, an area of about 360 square miles (930 km<sup>2</sup>).
### Awards
- Pilot's Badge (15 November 1937)
- Sudetenland Medal
- Narvik Shield (30 January 1941)
- Wound Badge (1939)
- in Black (14 July 1941)
- in Silver (22 December 1943)
- Iron Cross (1939)
- 2nd class (21 September 1939)
- 1st class (11 May 1940)
- Honour Goblet of the Luftwaffe (Ehrenpokal der Luftwaffe) on 26 June 1941
- Front Flying Clasp of the Luftwaffe for Destroyer Pilots in Gold
- Front Flying Clasp of the Luftwaffe for Nightfighter Pilots in Gold with Pennant "300"
- Combined Pilots-Observation Badge in Gold with Diamonds
- German Cross in Gold on 9 April 1942 as Hauptmann in the II./Nachtjagdgeschwader 2
- Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds
- Knight's Cross on 30 August 1941 as Oberleutnant and Staffelkapitän of the 6./Nachtjagdgeschwader 1
- 98th Oak Leaves on 6 June 1942 as Hauptmann and Gruppenkommandeur of the II./Nachtjagdgeschwader 2
- 32nd Swords on 2 August 1943 as Major and Gruppenkommandeur of the IV./Nachtjagdgeschwader 1
- 15th Diamonds on 31 July 1944 as Oberstleutnant and Geschwaderkommodore of the Nachtjagdgeschwader 3
### Promotions
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8,870,404 |
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
| 1,164,801,892 |
1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby
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[
"1768 paintings",
"Birds in art",
"Collections of the National Gallery, London",
"Historical scientific instruments",
"Paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby",
"Physics experiments",
"Science in art"
] |
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, one of a number of candlelit scenes that Wright painted during the 1760s. The painting departed from convention of the time by depicting a scientific subject in the reverential manner formerly reserved for scenes of historical or religious significance. Wright was intimately involved in depicting the Industrial Revolution and the scientific advances of the Enlightenment. While his paintings were recognized as exceptional by his contemporaries, his provincial status and choice of subjects meant the style was never widely imitated. The picture has been owned by the National Gallery in London since 1863 and is regarded as a masterpiece of British art.
The painting depicts a natural philosopher, a forerunner of the modern scientist, recreating one of Robert Boyle's air pump experiments, in which a bird is deprived of air, before a varied group of onlookers. The group exhibits a variety of reactions, but for most of the audience scientific curiosity overcomes concern for the bird. The central figure looks out of the picture as if inviting the viewer's participation in the outcome.
## Historical background
In 1659, Robert Boyle commissioned the construction of an air pump, then described as a "pneumatic engine", which is known today as a "vacuum pump". The air pump was invented by Otto von Guericke in 1650, though its high cost deterred most contemporary scientists from constructing the apparatus. Boyle, the son of the Earl of Cork, had no such concerns—after its construction, he donated the initial 1659 model to the Royal Society and had a further two redesigned machines built for his personal use. Aside from Boyle's three pumps, there were probably no more than four others in existence during the 1660s: Christiaan Huygens had one in The Hague, Henry Power may have had one at Halifax, and there may have been pumps at Christ's College, Cambridge, and the Montmor Academy in Paris. Boyle's pump, which was largely designed to Boyle's specifications and constructed by Robert Hooke, was complicated, temperamental, and problematic to operate. Many demonstrations could only be performed with Hooke on hand, and Boyle frequently left critical public displays solely to Hooke—whose dramatic flair matched his technical skill.
Despite the operational and maintenance obstacles, construction of the pump enabled Boyle to conduct a great many experiments on the properties of air, which he later detailed in his New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects, (Made, for the Most Part, in a New Pneumatical Engine). In the book, he described in great detail 43 experiments he conducted, on occasion assisted by Hooke, on the effect of air on various phenomena. Boyle tested the effects of "rarified" air on combustion, magnetism, sound, and barometers, and examined the effects of increased air pressure on various substances. He listed two experiments on living creatures: "Experiment 40", which tested the ability of insects to fly under reduced air pressure, and the dramatic "Experiment 41," which demonstrated the reliance of living creatures on air for their survival. In this attempt to discover something "about the account upon which Respiration is so necessary to the Animals, that Nature hath furnish'd with Lungs", Boyle conducted numerous trials during which he placed a large variety of different creatures, including birds, mice, eels, snails and flies, in the vessel of the pump and studied their reactions as the air was removed. Here, he describes an injured lark:
> ... the Bird for a while appear'd lively enough; but upon a greater Exsuction of the Air, she began manifestly to droop and appear sick, and very soon after was taken with as violent and irregular Convulsions, as are wont to be observ'd in Poultry, when their heads are wrung off: For the Bird threw her self over and over two or three times, and dyed with her Breast upward, her Head downwards, and her Neck awry.
By the time Wright painted his picture in 1768, air pumps were a relatively commonplace scientific instrument, and itinerant "lecturers in natural philosophy"—usually more showmen than scientists—often performed the "animal in the air pump experiment" as the centrepiece of their public demonstration. These were performed in town halls and other large buildings for a ticket-buying audience, or were booked by societies or for private showings in the homes of the well-off, the setting suggested in both of Wright's demonstration pieces. One of the most notable and respectable of the travelling lecturers was James Ferguson FRS, a Scottish astronomer and probable acquaintance of Joseph Wright (both were friends of John Whitehurst). Ferguson noted that a "lungs-glass" with a small air-filled bladder inside was often used in place of the animal, as using a living creature was "too shocking to every spectator who has the least degree of humanity".
The full moon in the picture is significant as meetings of the Lunar Circle (renamed the Lunar Society by 1775) were timed to make use of its light when travelling.
Wright met Erasmus Darwin in the early 1760s, probably through their common connection of John Whitehurst, first consulting Darwin about ill health in 1767 when he stayed in the Darwin household for a week. The energy and vivacity of both Erasmus and Mary (Polly) Darwin impressed Wright. In the 1980s Eric Evans (National Gallery) suggested that Darwin is the figure in the left foreground who holds a watch. As this composed timekeeper is not consistent with Darwin's flamboyant character, it is more likely that this is Dr William Small. The attention to timekeeping fits with Dr Small's role as the social secretary for the Lunar Circle. Small returned from Virginia in 1764 and established his practice in Birmingham in 1765, consistent with this being a meeting in 1767. The profile and wig of this figure are consistent with a contemporary portrait of Small by Tilly Kettle.
## Painting
### Background
During his apprenticeship and early career Wright concentrated on portraiture. By 1762, he was an accomplished portrait artist, and his 1764 group portrait James Shuttleworth, his Wife and Daughter is acknowledged as his first true masterpiece. Benedict Nicolson suggests that Wright was influenced by the work of Thomas Frye; in particular by the 18 bust-length mezzotints which Frye completed just before his death in 1762. It was perhaps Frye's candlelight images that tempted Wright to experiment with subject pieces. Wright's first attempt, A Girl reading a Letter by candlelight with a Young Man looking over her shoulder from 1762 or 1763, is a trial in the genre, and is fetching though uncomplicated. Wright's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump forms part of a series of candlelit nocturnes that he produced between 1765 and 1768.
There was a long history of painting candlelit scenes in Western art, although as Wright had not at this date travelled abroad, there remains uncertainty as to what paintings he might have seen in the original, as opposed to prints. Nicolson, who made studies of both Wright and other candlelight painters such as the 17th-century Utrecht Caravaggisti, thought their paintings, among the largest in the style, those most likely to have influenced Wright. However Judy Egerton wonders if he could have seen any, preferring as influences the far smaller works of the Leiden fijnschilder Godfried Schalcken (1643–1706), whose reputation was much greater in the early 18th century than subsequently. He had worked in England from 1692 to 1697, and several of his paintings can be placed in English collections in Wright's day.
Although he was the leading expert writing in English, Nicolson does not suggest that Wright is likely to have known of the 17th-century candlelit narrative religious subjects of Georges de La Tour and Trophime Bigot, which, in their seriousness, are the closest works to Wright that are lit only by candle. The Dutch painters' works and other candlelit scenes by 18th-century English painters such as Henry Morland (father of George) tended instead to exploit the possibilities of semi-darkness for erotic suggestiveness. Some of Wright's own later candlelit scenes were by no means as serious as his first ones, as seen from their titles: Two Boys Fighting Over a Bladder and Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight.
The first of his candlelit masterpieces, Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight, was painted in 1765, and showed three men studying a small copy of the "Borghese Gladiator". Viewing the Gladiator was greatly admired; but his next painting, A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in place of the Sun (normally known by the shortened form A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery or just The Orrery), caused a greater stir, as it replaced the Classical subject at the centre of the scene with one of a scientific nature. Wright's depiction of the awe produced by scientific "miracles" marked a break with traditions in which the artistic depiction of such wonder was reserved for religious events, since to Wright the marvels of the technological age were as awe-inspiring as the subjects of the great religious paintings.
In both of these works the candlelit setting had a realist justification. Viewing sculpture by candlelight, when the contours showed well and there might even be an impression of movement from the flickering light, was a fashionable practice described by Goethe. In the orrery demonstration the shadows cast by the lamp representing the sun were an essential part of the display, used to demonstrate eclipses. But there seems no reason other than heightened drama to stage the air pump experiment in a room lit by a single candle, and in two later paintings of the subject by Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo the lighting is normal.
The painting was one of a number of British works challenging the set categories of the rigid, French-dictated hierarchy of genres in the late 18th century, as other types of painting aspired to be treated as seriously as the costumed history painting of a Classical or mythological subject. In some respects the Orrery and Air Pump subjects resembled conversation pieces, then largely a form of middle-class portraiture, though soon to be given new status when Johann Zoffany began to paint the royal family in about 1766. Given their solemn atmosphere however, and as it seems none of the figures are intended to be understood as portraits (even if models may be identified), the paintings can not be regarded as conversation pieces. The 20th-century art historian Ellis Waterhouse compares these two works to the "genre serieux" of contemporary French drama, as defined by Denis Diderot and Pierre Beaumarchais, a view endorsed by Egerton.
An anonymous review from the time called Wright "a very great and uncommon genius in a peculiar way". The Orrery was painted without a commission, probably in the expectation that it would be bought by Washington Shirley, 5th Earl Ferrers, an amateur astronomer who had an orrery of his own, and with whom Wright's friend Peter Perez Burdett was staying while in Derbyshire. Figures thought to be portraits of Burdett and Ferrers feature in the painting, Burdett taking notes and Ferrers seated with his son next to the orrery. Ferrers purchased the painting for £210, but the 6th Earl auctioned it off, and it is now held by Derby Museum and Art Gallery.
### Detail
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump followed in 1768, the emotionally charged experiment contrasting with the orderly scene from The Orrery. The painting, which measures 72 by 941⁄2 inches (183 by 244 cm), shows a grey cockatiel fluttering in panic as the air is slowly withdrawn from the vessel by the pump. The witnesses display various emotions: one of the girls worriedly watches the fate of the bird, while the other is too upset to observe and is comforted by her father; two gentlemen (one of them dispassionately timing the experiment) and a boy look on with interest, while the young lovers to the left of the painting are absorbed only in each other. The scientist himself looks directly out of the picture, as if challenging the viewer to judge whether the pumping should continue, killing the bird, or whether the air should be replaced and the cockatiel saved.
Aside from that of the children, little sympathy is directed toward the bird; David Solkin suggests the subjects of the painting show the dispassionate detachment of the evolving scientific society. Individuals are concerned for each other: the father for his children, the young man for the girl, but the distress of the cockatiel elicits only careful study. To one side of the boy at the rear, the cockatiel's empty cage can be seen on the wall, and to further heighten the drama it is unclear whether the boy is lowering the cage on the pulley to allow the bird to be replaced after the experiment or hoisting the cage back up, certain of its former occupant's death. It has also been suggested that he may be drawing the curtains to block out the light from the full moon.
Jenny Uglow believes that the boy echoes the figure in the last print of William Hogarth's The Four Stages of Cruelty by pointing out the arrogance and potential cruelty of experimentation, while David Fraser also sees the compositional similarities with the audience grouped round a central demonstration. The neutral stance of the central character and the uncertain intentions of the boy with the cage were both later ideas: an early study, discovered on the back of a self-portrait, omits the boy and shows the natural philosopher reassuring the girls. In this sketch it is obvious that the bird will survive, and thus the composition lacks the power of the final version. Lochlann Jain has analyzed the painting in the context of a contemporary cultural history and medicine of human suffocation and choking. Wright, who took many of his subjects from English poetry, probably knew the following passage from "The Wanderer" (1729) by Richard Savage:
>
> So in some Engine, that denies a Vent,
>
> If unrespiring is some Creature pent,
>
> It sickens, droops, and pants, and gasps for Breath,
>
> Sad o'er the Sight swim shad'wy Mists of Death;
>
> If then kind Air pours powerful in again.
>
> New Heats, new Pulses quicken ev'ry Vein;
>
> From the clear'd, lifted, life-rekindled Eye,
>
> Dispers'd, the dark and dampy Vapours fly.
The cockatiel would have been a rare bird at the time, "and one whose life would never in reality have been risked in an experiment such as this". It did not become well known until after it was shown in illustrations to the accounts of the voyages of Captain Cook in the 1770s. Prior to Cook's voyage, cockatiels had been imported only in small numbers as exotic cage-birds. Wright had painted one in 1762 at the home of William Chase, featuring it both in his portrait of Chase and his wife (Mr & Mrs William Chase) and a separate study, The Parrot. In selecting such a rarity for this scientific sacrifice, Wright not only chose a more dramatic subject than the "lungs-glass", but was perhaps making a statement about the values of society in the Age of Enlightenment. The grey plumage of the cockatiel also shows much more effectively in the darkened room than the small dull-coloured bird in Wright's early oil sketch. A resemblance has been pointed out between the group of the bird and the two nearest figures and a type of depiction of the Trinity found in Early Netherlandish painting, where the Holy Spirit is represented by a dove, to which God the Father (the philosopher) points, while Christ (the father) gestures in blessing to the viewer.
On the table are various other pieces of equipment that the natural philosopher would have used during his demonstration: a thermometer, candle snuffer and cork, and close to the man seated to the right is a pair of Magdeburg hemispheres, which would have been used with the air pump to demonstrate the difference in pressure exerted by the air and a vacuum: when the air was pumped out from between the two hemispheres they were impossible to pull apart. The air pump itself is rendered in exquisite detail, a faithful record of the designs in use at the time. What may be a human skull in the large liquid-filled glass bowl would not have been a normal piece of equipment; William Schupbach suggests that it and the candle, which is presumably lighting the bowl from behind, form a vanitas—the two symbols of mortality reflecting the cockatiel's struggle for life.
### Style
The powerful central light source creates a chiaroscuro effect. The light illuminating the scene has been described as "so brilliant it could only be the light of revelation". The single source of light is obscured behind the bowl on the table; some hint of a lamp glass can be seen around the side of the bowl, but David Hockney has suggested that the bowl itself may contain sulphur, giving a powerful single light source that a candle or oil lamp would not. In the earlier study a candle holder is visible, and the flame is reflected in the bowl. Hockney believes that many of the Old Masters used optical equipment to assist in their painting, and suggests that Wright may have used lenses to transfer the image to paper rather than painting directly from the scene, as he believes the pattern of shadows thrown by the lighting could have been too complicated for Wright to have captured so accurately without assistance. It may be observed, however, that the stand on which the pump is situated casts no shadow on the body of the philosopher, as it could be expected to do.
Wright's Air Pump was unusual in that it depicted archetypes rather than specific people, though various models for the figures have been suggested. The young lovers may have been based on Thomas Coltman and Mary Barlow, friends of Wright's, whom he later painted in Mr and Mrs Thomas Coltman (also in the National Gallery) after their marriage in 1769; Erasmus Darwin has been suggested as the man timing the experiment on the left of the table, and John Warltire, whom Darwin had invited to help with some air pump experiments in real life, as the natural philosopher; but Wright never identified any of the subjects or suggested they were based on real people.
In The Orrery, all the subjects have been identified apart from the philosopher, who has physical similarities to Isaac Newton but differs enough to make positive identification impossible. Nicolson detects the strong influence of Frye throughout the picture. Particularly striking is the similarity between Frye's mezzotint Portrait of a Young Man of 1760–1761 and the figure of the boy with his head cocked staring intently at the bird. In 1977, Michael Wynne published one of Frye's chalk drawings from around 1760, An old man leaning on a staff, which is so similar to the observer in the right foreground in Wright's picture to make it impossible that Wright had not seen it. There are other hints of Frye's style in the painting: even the figure of the natural philosopher has touches of Frye's Figure with Candle. Though Henry Fuseli would later also develop on the style of Frye's work there is no evidence of him having painted anything similar until the early 1780s. So, although he had already been in England at the time the Air Pump was produced, it is unlikely that he was an influence on Wright.
Wright's scientific paintings adopted elements from the tradition of history painting but lacked the heroic central action typical of that genre. While ground-breaking, they are regarded as peculiar to Wright, whose unique style has been explained in many ways. Wright's provincial status and ties to the Lunar Society, a group of prominent industrialists, scientists and intellectuals who met regularly in Birmingham between 1765 and 1813, have been highlighted, as well as his close association with and sympathy for the advances made in the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. Other critics have emphasised a desire to capture a snapshot of the society of the day, in the tradition of William Hogarth but with a more neutral stance that lacks the biting satire of Hogarth's work.
## Reception
The scientific subjects of Wright's paintings from this time were meant to appeal to the wealthy scientific circles in which he moved. While never a member himself, he had strong connections with the Lunar Society: he was friends with members John Whitehurst and Erasmus Darwin, as well as Josiah Wedgwood, who later commissioned paintings from him. The inclusion of the moon in the painting was a nod to their monthly meetings, which were held when the moon was full. Like The Orrery, Wright apparently painted Air Pump without a commission, and the picture was purchased by Dr Benjamin Bates, who already owned Wright's Gladiator. An Aylesbury physician, patron of the arts and hedonist, Bates was a diehard member of the Hellfire Club. Wright's account book shows a number of prices for the painting: P<sup>d</sup>£200 is shown in one place and £210 in another, but Wright had written to Bates asking for £130, stating that the low price "might much injure me in the future sale of my pictures, and when I send you a receipt for the money I shall acknowledge a greater sum." Whether Bates ever paid the full amount is not recorded; Wright only notes in his account book that he received £30 in part payment.
Wright exhibited the painting at the Society of Artists exhibition in 1768 and it was re-exhibited before Christian VII of Denmark in September the same year. Viewers remarked that it was "clever and vigorous", while Gustave Flaubert, who saw it on a visit to England in 1865–66, considered it "charmant de naïveté et profondeur". It was popular enough that a mezzotint was engraved from it by Valentine Green which was published by John Boydell on 24 June 1769, and initially sold for 15 shillings. This was reprinted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, in increasingly weak impressions. Ellis Waterhouse called it "one of the wholly original masterpieces of British art".
From Bates, the picture passed to Walter Tyrell; another member of the Tyrell family, Edward, presented it to the National Gallery, London, in 1863, after it had failed to sell at an auction at Christie's in 1854. The painting was transferred to the Tate Gallery in 1929, although it was actually on loan to Derby Museum and Art Gallery between 1912 and 1947. It has been lent out for exhibitions to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1976, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1979–1980, and Paris (Grand Palais), New York (Metropolitan) and the Tate in London in 1990. It was reclaimed by the National Gallery from the Tate in 1986. They describe its condition as good, with minor alterations visible on some figures. It was last cleaned in 1974.
The painting is scheduled to be exhibited at the Huntington Library in California between February 12, 2022 and May 30, 2022.
The striking scene has been used as the cover illustration for many books on topics both artistic and scientific. It has even spawned pastiches and parodies: the book cover of The Science of Discworld, by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, is a tribute to the painting by artist Paul Kidby, who replaces Wright's figures with the book's protagonists. Shelagh Stephenson's play An Experiment with an Air Pump, inspired by the painting, was the joint winner of the 1997 Margaret Ramsay Award and had its premiere at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 1998.
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Emmy Noether
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German Jewish mathematician (1882–1935)
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Amalie Emmy Noether (US: /ˈnʌtər/, UK: /ˈnɜːtə/; ; 23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She discovered Noether's First and Second Theorems, which are fundamental in mathematical physics. She was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed some theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.
Noether was born to a Jewish family in the Franconian town of Erlangen; her father was the mathematician Max Noether. She originally planned to teach French and English after passing the required examinations, but instead studied mathematics at the University of Erlangen, where her father lectured. After completing her doctorate in 1907 under the supervision of Paul Gordan, she worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen without pay for seven years. At the time, women were largely excluded from academic positions. In 1915, she was invited by David Hilbert and Felix Klein to join the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen, a world-renowned center of mathematical research. The philosophical faculty objected, however, and she spent four years lecturing under Hilbert's name. Her habilitation was approved in 1919, allowing her to obtain the rank of Privatdozent.
Noether remained a leading member of the Göttingen mathematics department until 1933; her students were sometimes called the "Noether boys". In 1924, Dutch mathematician B. L. van der Waerden joined her circle and soon became the leading expositor of Noether's ideas; her work was the foundation for the second volume of his influential 1931 textbook, Moderne Algebra. By the time of her plenary address at the 1932 International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich, her algebraic acumen was recognized around the world. The following year, Germany's Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, and Noether moved to the United States to take up a position at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania where she taught, among others, doctoral and post-graduate women including Marie Johanna Weiss, Ruth Stauffer, Grace Shover Quinn and Olga Taussky-Todd. At the same time, she lectured and performed research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Noether's mathematical work has been divided into three "epochs". In the first (1908–1919), she made contributions to the theories of algebraic invariants and number fields. Her work on differential invariants in the calculus of variations, Noether's theorem, has been called "one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics". In the second epoch (1920–1926), she began work that "changed the face of [abstract] algebra". In her classic 1921 paper Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen (Theory of Ideals in Ring Domains), Noether developed the theory of ideals in commutative rings into a tool with wide-ranging applications. She made elegant use of the ascending chain condition, and objects satisfying it are named Noetherian in her honor. In the third epoch (1927–1935), she published works on noncommutative algebras and hypercomplex numbers and united the representation theory of groups with the theory of modules and ideals. In addition to her own publications, Noether was generous with her ideas and is credited with several lines of research published by other mathematicians, even in fields far removed from her main work, such as algebraic topology.
## Personal life
Emmy Noether was born on 23 March 1882, the first of four children of mathematician Max Noether and Ida Amalia Kaufmann, both from Jewish merchant families. Her first name was "Amalie", after her mother and paternal grandmother, but she began using her middle name at a young age, and she invariably used the name "Emmy Noether" in her adult life and her publications.
In her youth, Noether did not stand out academically although she was known for being clever and friendly. She was near-sighted and talked with a minor lisp during her childhood. A family friend recounted a story years later about young Noether quickly solving a brain teaser at a children's party, showing logical acumen at that early age. She was taught to cook and clean, as were most girls of the time, and she took piano lessons. She pursued none of these activities with passion, although she loved to dance.
She had three younger brothers: the eldest, Alfred, was born in 1883, was awarded a doctorate in chemistry from Erlangen in 1909, but died nine years later. Fritz Noether, born in 1884, is remembered for his academic accomplishments. After studying in Munich he made a reputation for himself in applied mathematics. He was executed in the Soviet Union in 1941. The youngest, Gustav Robert, was born in 1889. Very little is known about his life; he suffered from chronic illness and died in 1928.
In 1935, Noether underwent surgery for an ovarian cyst and, despite signs of a recovery, died four days later at the age of 53.
## University life and education
Noether showed early proficiency in French and English. In the spring of 1900, she took the examination for teachers of these languages and received an overall score of sehr gut (very good). Her performance qualified her to teach languages at schools reserved for girls, but she chose instead to continue her studies at the University of Erlangen.
This was an unconventional decision; two years earlier, the Academic Senate of the university had declared that allowing mixed-sex education would "overthrow all academic order". One of only two women in a university of 986 students, Noether was allowed only to audit classes rather than participate fully, and required the permission of individual professors whose lectures she wished to attend. Despite these obstacles, on 14 July 1903 she passed the graduation exam at a Realgymnasium in Nuremberg.
During the 1903–1904 winter semester, she studied at the University of Göttingen, attending lectures given by astronomer Karl Schwarzschild and mathematicians Hermann Minkowski, Otto Blumenthal, Felix Klein, and David Hilbert. Soon thereafter, restrictions on women's participation in that university were rescinded.
Noether returned to Erlangen. She officially reentered the university in October 1904, and declared her intention to focus solely on mathematics. Under the supervision of Paul Gordan she wrote her dissertation, Über die Bildung des Formensystems der ternären biquadratischen Form (On Complete Systems of Invariants for Ternary Biquadratic Forms, 1907). Gordan was a member of the "computational" school of invariant researchers, and Noether's thesis ended with a list of over 300 explicitly worked out invariants. This approach to invariants was later superseded by the more abstract and general approach pioneered by Hilbert. Although it had been well received, Noether later described her thesis and a number of subsequent similar papers she produced as "crap".
## Teaching period
### University of Erlangen
For the next seven years (1908–1915) she taught at the University of Erlangen's Mathematical Institute without pay, occasionally substituting for her father when he was too ill to lecture. In 1910 and 1911 she published an extension of her thesis work from three variables to n variables.
Gordan retired in the spring of 1910, but continued to teach occasionally with his successor, Erhard Schmidt, who left shortly afterward for a position in Breslau. Gordan retired from teaching altogether in 1911 when Schmidt's successor Ernst Fischer arrived; Gordan died a year later in December 1912.
According to Hermann Weyl, Fischer was an important influence on Noether, in particular by introducing her to the work of David Hilbert. From 1913 to 1916 Noether published several papers extending and applying Hilbert's methods to mathematical objects such as fields of rational functions and the invariants of finite groups. This phase marks the beginning of her engagement with abstract algebra, the field of mathematics to which she would make groundbreaking contributions.
Noether and Fischer shared lively enjoyment of mathematics and would often discuss lectures long after they were over; Noether is known to have sent postcards to Fischer continuing her train of mathematical thoughts.
### University of Göttingen
In the spring of 1915, Noether was invited to return to the University of Göttingen by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Their effort to recruit her, however, was blocked by the philologists and historians among the philosophical faculty: Women, they insisted, should not become privatdozenten. One faculty member protested: "What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?" Hilbert responded with indignation, stating, "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as privatdozent. After all, we are a university, not a bathhouse."
Noether left for Göttingen in late April; two weeks later her mother died suddenly in Erlangen. She had previously received medical care for an eye condition, but its nature and impact on her death is unknown. At about the same time Noether's father retired and her brother joined the German Army to serve in World War I. She returned to Erlangen for several weeks, mostly to care for her aging father.
During her first years teaching at Göttingen she did not have an official position and was not paid; her family paid for her room and board and supported her academic work. Her lectures often were advertised under Hilbert's name, and Noether would provide "assistance".
Soon after arriving at Göttingen, however, she demonstrated her capabilities by proving the theorem now known as Noether's theorem, which shows that a conservation law is associated with any differentiable symmetry of a physical system. The paper was presented by a colleague, F. Klein, on 26 July 1918 to a meeting of the Royal Society of Sciences at Göttingen. Noether presumably did not present it herself because she was not a member of the society. American physicists Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill argue in their book Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe that Noether's theorem is "certainly one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics, possibly on a par with the Pythagorean theorem".
When World War I ended, the German Revolution of 1918–1919 brought a significant change in social attitudes, including more rights for women. In 1919 the University of Göttingen allowed Noether to proceed with her habilitation (eligibility for tenure). Her oral examination was held in late May, and she successfully delivered her habilitation lecture in June 1919.
Three years later she received a letter from Otto Boelitz [de], the Prussian Minister for Science, Art, and Public Education, in which he conferred on her the title of nicht beamteter ausserordentlicher Professor (an untenured professor with limited internal administrative rights and functions). This was an unpaid "extraordinary" professorship, not the higher "ordinary" professorship, which was a civil-service position. Although it recognized the importance of her work, the position still provided no salary. Noether was not paid for her lectures until she was appointed to the special position of Lehrbeauftragte für Algebra a year later.
## Work in abstract algebra
Although Noether's theorem had a significant effect upon classical and quantum mechanics, among mathematicians she is best remembered for her contributions to abstract algebra. In his introduction to Noether's Collected Papers, Nathan Jacobson wrote that
> The development of abstract algebra, which is one of the most distinctive innovations of twentieth century mathematics, is largely due to her – in published papers, in lectures, and in personal influence on her contemporaries.
She sometimes allowed her colleagues and students to receive credit for her ideas, helping them develop their careers at the expense of her own.
Noether's work in algebra began in 1920. In collaboration with W. Schmeidler, she then published a paper about the theory of ideals in which they defined left and right ideals in a ring.
The following year she published a paper called Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen, analyzing ascending chain conditions with regard to (mathematical) ideals. Noted algebraist Irving Kaplansky called this work "revolutionary"; the publication gave rise to the term "Noetherian ring" and the naming of several other mathematical objects as Noetherian.
In 1924 a young Dutch mathematician, B.L. van der Waerden, arrived at the University of Göttingen. He immediately began working with Noether, who provided invaluable methods of abstract conceptualization. Van der Waerden later said that her originality was "absolute beyond comparison". In 1931 he published Moderne Algebra, a central text in the field; its second volume borrowed heavily from Noether's work. Although Noether did not seek recognition, he included as a note in the seventh edition "based in part on lectures by E. Artin and E. Noether".
Van der Waerden's visit was part of a convergence of mathematicians from all over the world to Göttingen, which became a major hub of mathematical and physical research. From 1926 to 1930 Russian topologist Pavel Alexandrov lectured at the university, and he and Noether quickly became good friends. He began referring to her as der Noether, using the masculine German article as a term of endearment to show his respect. She tried to arrange for him to obtain a position at Göttingen as a regular professor, but was able only to help him secure a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation. They met regularly and enjoyed discussions about the intersections of algebra and topology. In his 1935 memorial address, Alexandrov named Emmy Noether "the greatest woman mathematician of all time".
## Graduate students and influential lectures
In addition to her mathematical insight, Noether was respected for her consideration of others. Although she sometimes acted rudely toward those who disagreed with her, she nevertheless gained a reputation for constant helpfulness and patient guidance of new students. Her loyalty to mathematical precision caused one colleague to name her "a severe critic", but she combined this demand for accuracy with a nurturing attitude. A colleague later described her this way:
> Completely unegotistical and free of vanity, she never claimed anything for herself, but promoted the works of her students above all.
### Göttingen
In Göttingen, Noether supervised more than a dozen doctoral students; her first was Grete Hermann, who defended her dissertation in February 1925. She later spoke reverently of her "dissertation-mother". Noether also supervised Max Deuring, who distinguished himself as an undergraduate and went on to contribute to the field of arithmetic geometry; Hans Fitting, remembered for Fitting's theorem and the Fitting lemma; and Zeng Jiongzhi (also rendered "Chiungtze C. Tsen" in English), who proved Tsen's theorem. She also worked closely with Wolfgang Krull, who greatly advanced commutative algebra with his Hauptidealsatz and his dimension theory for commutative rings.
Her frugal lifestyle at first was due to her being denied pay for her work; however, even after the university began paying her a small salary in 1923, she continued to live a simple and modest life. She was paid more generously later in her life, but saved half of her salary to bequeath to her nephew, Gottfried E. Noether.
Biographers suggest that she was mostly unconcerned about appearance and manners, focusing on her studies. A distinguished algebraist Olga Taussky-Todd described a luncheon during which Noether, wholly engrossed in a discussion of mathematics, "gesticulated wildly" as she ate and "spilled her food constantly and wiped it off from her dress, completely unperturbed". Appearance-conscious students cringed as she retrieved the handkerchief from her blouse and ignored the increasing disarray of her hair during a lecture. Two female students once approached her during a break in a two-hour class to express their concern, but they were unable to break through the energetic mathematical discussion she was having with other students.
According to van der Waerden's obituary of Emmy Noether, she did not follow a lesson plan for her lectures, which frustrated some students. Instead, she used her lectures as a spontaneous discussion time with her students, to think through and clarify important problems in mathematics. Some of her most important results were developed in these lectures, and the lecture notes of her students formed the basis for several important textbooks, such as those of van der Waerden and Deuring.
Several of her colleagues attended her lectures, and she allowed some of her ideas, such as the crossed product (verschränktes Produkt in German) of associative algebras, to be published by others. Noether was recorded as having given at least five semester-long courses at Göttingen:
- Winter 1924/1925: Gruppentheorie und hyperkomplexe Zahlen [Group Theory and Hypercomplex Numbers]
- Winter 1927/1928: Hyperkomplexe Grössen und Darstellungstheorie [Hypercomplex Quantities and Representation Theory]
- Summer 1928: Nichtkommutative Algebra [Noncommutative Algebra]
- Summer 1929: Nichtkommutative Arithmetik [Noncommutative Arithmetic]
- Winter 1929/30: Algebra der hyperkomplexen Grössen [Algebra of Hypercomplex Quantities]
These courses often preceded major publications on the same subjects.
Noether spoke quickly – reflecting the speed of her thoughts, many said – and demanded great concentration from her students. Students who disliked her style often felt alienated. Some pupils felt that she relied too much on spontaneous discussions. Her most dedicated students, however, relished the enthusiasm with which she approached mathematics, especially since her lectures often built on earlier work they had done together.
She developed a close circle of colleagues and students who thought along similar lines and tended to exclude those who did not. "Outsiders" who occasionally visited Noether's lectures usually spent only 30 minutes in the room before leaving in frustration or confusion. A regular student said of one such instance: "The enemy has been defeated; he has cleared out."
Noether showed a devotion to her subject and her students that extended beyond the academic day. Once, when the building was closed for a state holiday, she gathered the class on the steps outside, led them through the woods, and lectured at a local coffee house. Later, after Nazi Germany dismissed her from teaching, she invited students into her home to discuss their plans for the future and mathematical concepts.
### Moscow
In the winter of 1928–1929 Noether accepted an invitation to Moscow State University, where she continued working with P.S. Alexandrov. In addition to carrying on with her research, she taught classes in abstract algebra and algebraic geometry. She worked with the topologists Lev Pontryagin and Nikolai Chebotaryov, who later praised her contributions to the development of Galois theory.
Although politics was not central to her life, Noether took a keen interest in political matters and, according to Alexandrov, showed considerable support for the Russian Revolution. She was especially happy to see Soviet advances in the fields of science and mathematics, which she considered indicative of new opportunities made possible by the Bolshevik project. This attitude caused her problems in Germany, culminating in her eviction from a pension lodging building, after student leaders complained of living with "a Marxist-leaning Jewess".
Noether planned to return to Moscow, an effort for which she received support from Alexandrov. After she left Germany in 1933 he tried to help her gain a chair at Moscow State University through the Soviet Education Ministry. Although this effort proved unsuccessful, they corresponded frequently during the 1930s, and in 1935 she made plans for a return to the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, her brother Fritz accepted a position at the Research Institute for Mathematics and Mechanics in Tomsk, in the Siberian Federal District of Russia, after losing his job in Germany, and was subsequently executed during the Great Purge.
## Recognition
In 1932 Emmy Noether and Emil Artin received the Ackermann–Teubner Memorial Award for their contributions to mathematics. The prize included a monetary reward of and was seen as a long-overdue official recognition of her considerable work in the field. Nevertheless, her colleagues expressed frustration at the fact that she was not elected to the Göttingen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (academy of sciences) and was never promoted to the position of Ordentlicher Professor (full professor).
Noether's colleagues celebrated her fiftieth birthday in 1932, in typical mathematicians' style. Helmut Hasse dedicated an article to her in the Mathematische Annalen, wherein he confirmed her suspicion that some aspects of noncommutative algebra are simpler than those of commutative algebra, by proving a noncommutative reciprocity law. This pleased her immensely. He also sent her a mathematical riddle, which he called the "m<sub>μν</sub>-riddle of syllables". She solved it immediately, but the riddle has been lost.
In September of the same year, Noether delivered a plenary address (großer Vortrag) on "Hyper-complex systems in their relations to commutative algebra and to number theory" at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich. The congress was attended by 800 people, including Noether's colleagues Hermann Weyl, Edmund Landau, and Wolfgang Krull. There were 420 official participants and twenty-one plenary addresses presented. Apparently, Noether's prominent speaking position was a recognition of the importance of her contributions to mathematics. The 1932 congress is sometimes described as the high point of her career.
## Expulsion from Göttingen by Nazi Germany
When Adolf Hitler became the German Reichskanzler in January 1933, Nazi activity around the country increased dramatically. At the University of Göttingen the German Student Association led the attack on the "un-German spirit" attributed to Jews and was aided by a privatdozent named Werner Weber, a former student of Noether. Antisemitic attitudes created a climate hostile to Jewish professors. One young protester reportedly demanded: "Aryan students want Aryan mathematics and not Jewish mathematics."
One of the first actions of Hitler's administration was the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which removed Jews and politically suspect government employees (including university professors) from their jobs unless they had "demonstrated their loyalty to Germany" by serving in World War I. In April 1933 Noether received a notice from the Prussian Ministry for Sciences, Art, and Public Education which read: "On the basis of paragraph 3 of the Civil Service Code of 7 April 1933, I hereby withdraw from you the right to teach at the University of Göttingen." Several of Noether's colleagues, including Max Born and Richard Courant, also had their positions revoked.
Noether accepted the decision calmly, providing support for others during this difficult time. Hermann Weyl later wrote that "Emmy Noether—her courage, her frankness, her unconcern about her own fate, her conciliatory spirit—was in the midst of all the hatred and meanness, despair and sorrow surrounding us, a moral solace." Typically, Noether remained focused on mathematics, gathering students in her apartment to discuss class field theory. When one of her students appeared in the uniform of the Nazi paramilitary organization Sturmabteilung (SA), she showed no sign of agitation and, reportedly, even laughed about it later. This, however, was before the bloody events of Kristallnacht in 1938, and their praise from Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
## Refuge at Bryn Mawr and Princeton, in the United States
As dozens of newly unemployed professors began searching for positions outside of Germany, their colleagues in the United States sought to provide assistance and job opportunities for them. Albert Einstein and Hermann Weyl were appointed by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, while others worked to find a sponsor required for legal immigration. Noether was contacted by representatives of two educational institutions: Bryn Mawr College, in the United States, and Somerville College at the University of Oxford, in England. After a series of negotiations with the Rockefeller Foundation, a grant to Bryn Mawr was approved for Noether and she took a position there, starting in late 1933.
At Bryn Mawr, Noether met and befriended Anna Wheeler, who had studied at Göttingen just before Noether arrived there. Another source of support at the college was the Bryn Mawr president, Marion Edwards Park, who enthusiastically invited mathematicians in the area to "see Dr. Noether in action!" Noether and a small team of students worked quickly through van der Waerden's 1930 book Moderne Algebra I and parts of Erich Hecke's Theorie der algebraischen Zahlen (Theory of algebraic numbers).
In 1934, Noether began lecturing at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton upon the invitation of Abraham Flexner and Oswald Veblen. She also worked with and supervised Abraham Albert and Harry Vandiver. However, she remarked about Princeton University that she was not welcome at "the men's university, where nothing female is admitted".
Her time in the United States was pleasant, surrounded as she was by supportive colleagues and absorbed in her favorite subjects. In the summer of 1934 she briefly returned to Germany to see Emil Artin and her brother Fritz before he left for Tomsk. Although many of her former colleagues had been forced out of the universities, she was able to use the library as a "foreign scholar". Without incident, Noether returned to the United States and her studies at Bryn Mawr.
## Death
In April 1935 doctors discovered a tumor in Noether's pelvis. Worried about complications from surgery, they ordered two days of bed rest first. During the operation they discovered an ovarian cyst "the size of a large cantaloupe". Two smaller tumors in her uterus appeared to be benign and were not removed, to avoid prolonging surgery. For three days she appeared to convalesce normally, and she recovered quickly from a circulatory collapse on the fourth. On 14 April she fell unconscious, her temperature soared to 109 °F (42.8 °C), and she died. "[I]t is not easy to say what had occurred in Dr. Noether", one of the physicians wrote. "It is possible that there was some form of unusual and virulent infection, which struck the base of the brain where the heat centers are supposed to be located."
A few days after Noether's death her friends and associates at Bryn Mawr held a small memorial service at College President Park's house. Hermann Weyl and Richard Brauer traveled from Princeton and spoke with Wheeler and Taussky about their departed colleague. In the months that followed, written tributes began to appear around the globe: Albert Einstein joined van der Waerden, Weyl, and Pavel Alexandrov in paying their respects. Her body was cremated and the ashes interred under the walkway around the cloisters of the M. Carey Thomas Library at Bryn Mawr.
## Contributions to mathematics and physics
Noether's work in abstract algebra and topology was influential in mathematics, while in physics, Noether's theorem has consequences for theoretical physics and dynamical systems. She showed an acute propensity for abstract thought, which allowed her to approach problems of mathematics in fresh and original ways. Her friend and colleague Hermann Weyl described her scholarly output in three epochs:
> Emmy Noether's scientific production fell into three clearly distinct epochs:
>
> \(1\) the period of relative dependence, 1907–1919
>
> \(2\) the investigations grouped around the general theory of ideals 1920–1926
>
> \(3\) the study of the non-commutative algebras, their representations by linear transformations, and their application to the study of commutative number fields and their arithmetics
In the first epoch (1907–1919), Noether dealt primarily with differential and algebraic invariants, beginning with her dissertation under Paul Gordan. Her mathematical horizons broadened, and her work became more general and abstract, as she became acquainted with the work of David Hilbert, through close interactions with a successor to Gordan, Ernst Sigismund Fischer. After moving to Göttingen in 1915, she produced her work for physics, the two Noether's theorems.
In the second epoch (1920–1926), Noether devoted herself to developing the theory of mathematical rings.
In the third epoch (1927–1935), Noether focused on noncommutative algebra, linear transformations, and commutative number fields.
Although the results of Noether's first epoch were impressive and useful, her fame among mathematicians rests more on the groundbreaking work she did in her second and third epochs, as noted by Hermann Weyl and B.L. van der Waerden in their obituaries of her.
In these epochs, she was not merely applying ideas and methods of earlier mathematicians; rather, she was crafting new systems of mathematical definitions that would be used by future mathematicians. In particular, she developed a completely new theory of ideals in rings, generalizing earlier work of Richard Dedekind. She is also renowned for developing ascending chain conditions, a simple finiteness condition that yielded powerful results in her hands. Such conditions and the theory of ideals enabled Noether to generalize many older results and to treat old problems from a new perspective, such as elimination theory and the algebraic varieties that had been studied by her father.
### Historical context
In the century from 1832 to Noether's death in 1935, the field of mathematics – specifically algebra – underwent a profound revolution, whose reverberations are still being felt. Mathematicians of previous centuries had worked on practical methods for solving specific types of equations, e.g., cubic, quartic, and quintic equations, as well as on the related problem of constructing regular polygons using compass and straightedge. Beginning with Carl Friedrich Gauss's 1832 proof that prime numbers such as five can be factored in Gaussian integers, Évariste Galois's introduction of permutation groups in 1832 (although, because of his death, his papers were published only in 1846, by Liouville), William Rowan Hamilton's discovery of quaternions in 1843, and Arthur Cayley's more modern definition of groups in 1854, research turned to determining the properties of ever-more-abstract systems defined by ever-more-universal rules. Noether's most important contributions to mathematics were to the development of this new field, abstract algebra.
### Background on abstract algebra and begriffliche Mathematik (conceptual mathematics)
Two of the most basic objects in abstract algebra are groups and rings.
A group consists of a set of elements and a single operation which combines a first and a second element and returns a third. The operation must satisfy certain constraints for it to determine a group: It must be closed (when applied to any pair of elements of the associated set, the generated element must also be a member of that set), it must be associative, there must be an identity element (an element which, when combined with another element using the operation, results in the original element, such as adding zero to a number or multiplying it by one), and for every element there must be an inverse element.
A ring likewise, has a set of elements, but now has two operations. The first operation must make the set a commutative group, and the second operation is associative and distributive with respect to the first operation. It may or may not be commutative; this means that the result of applying the operation to a first and a second element is the same as to the second and first – the order of the elements does not matter. If every non-zero element has a multiplicative inverse (an element x such that a x = x a = 1 ), the ring is called a division ring. A field is defined as a commutative division ring.
Groups are frequently studied through group representations. In their most general form, these consist of a choice of group, a set, and an action of the group on the set, that is, an operation which takes an element of the group and an element of the set and returns an element of the set. Most often, the set is a vector space, and the group represents symmetries of the vector space. For example, there is a group which represents the rigid rotations of space. This is a type of symmetry of space, because space itself does not change when it is rotated even though the positions of objects in it do. Noether used these sorts of symmetries in her work on invariants in physics.
A powerful way of studying rings is through their modules. A module consists of a choice of ring, another set, usually distinct from the underlying set of the ring and called the underlying set of the module, an operation on pairs of elements of the underlying set of the module, and an operation which takes an element of the ring and an element of the module and returns an element of the module.
The underlying set of the module and its operation must form a group. A module is a ring-theoretic version of a group representation: Ignoring the second ring operation and the operation on pairs of module elements determines a group representation. The real utility of modules is that the kinds of modules that exist and their interactions, reveal the structure of the ring in ways that are not apparent from the ring itself. An important special case of this is an algebra. (The word algebra means both a subject within mathematics as well as an object studied in the subject of algebra.) An algebra consists of a choice of two rings and an operation which takes an element from each ring and returns an element of the second ring. This operation makes the second ring into a module over the first. Often the first ring is a field.
Words such as "element" and "combining operation" are very general, and can be applied to many real-world and abstract situations. Any set of things that obeys all the rules for one (or two) operation(s) is, by definition, a group (or ring), and obeys all theorems about groups (or rings). Integer numbers, and the operations of addition and multiplication, are just one example. For example, the elements might be computer data words, where the first combining operation is exclusive or and the second is logical conjunction. Theorems of abstract algebra are powerful because they are general; they govern many systems. It might be imagined that little could be concluded about objects defined with so few properties, but precisely therein lay Noether's gift to discover the maximum that could be concluded from a given set of properties, or conversely, to identify the minimum set, the essential properties responsible for a particular observation. Unlike most mathematicians, she did not make abstractions by generalizing from known examples; rather, she worked directly with the abstractions. In his obituary of Noether, her student van der Waerden recalled that
> The maxim by which Emmy Noether was guided throughout her work might be formulated as follows: "Any relationships between numbers, functions, and operations become transparent, generally applicable, and fully productive only after they have been isolated from their particular objects and been formulated as universally valid concepts."
This is the begriffliche Mathematik (purely conceptual mathematics) that was characteristic of Noether. This style of mathematics was consequently adopted by other mathematicians, especially in the (then new) field of abstract algebra.
### Example: Integers as a ring
The integers form a commutative ring whose elements are the integers, and the combining operations are addition and multiplication. Any pair of integers can be added or multiplied, always resulting in another integer, and the first operation, addition, is commutative, i.e., for any elements a and b in the ring, a + b = b + a. The second operation, multiplication, also is commutative, but that need not be true for other rings, meaning that a combined with b might be different from b combined with a. Examples of noncommutative rings include matrices and quaternions. The integers do not form a division ring, because the second operation cannot always be inverted; there is no integer a such that 3 × a = 1.
The integers have additional properties which do not generalize to all commutative rings. An important example is the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, which says that every positive integer can be factored uniquely into prime numbers. Unique factorizations do not always exist in other rings, but Noether found a unique factorization theorem, now called the Lasker–Noether theorem, for the ideals of many rings. Much of Noether's work lay in determining what properties do hold for all rings, in devising novel analogs of the old integer theorems, and in determining the minimal set of assumptions required to yield certain properties of rings.
### First epoch (1908–1919): Algebraic invariant theory
Much of Noether's work in the first epoch of her career was associated with invariant theory, principally algebraic invariant theory. Invariant theory is concerned with expressions that remain constant (invariant) under a group of transformations. As an everyday example, if a rigid yardstick is rotated, the coordinates (x<sub>1</sub>, y<sub>1</sub>, z<sub>1</sub>) and (x<sub>2</sub>, y<sub>2</sub>, z<sub>2</sub>) of its endpoints change, but its length L given by the formula L<sup>2</sup> = Δx<sup>2</sup> + Δy<sup>2</sup> + Δz<sup>2</sup> remains the same. Invariant theory was an active area of research in the later nineteenth century, prompted in part by Felix Klein's Erlangen program, according to which different types of geometry should be characterized by their invariants under transformations, e.g., the cross-ratio of projective geometry.
An example of an invariant is the discriminant B<sup>2</sup> − 4 A C of a binary quadratic form x·A x + y·B x + y·C y , where x and y are vectors and "·" is the dot product or "inner product" for the vectors. A, B, and C are linear operators on the vectors – typically matrices.
The discriminant is called "invariant" because it is not changed by linear substitutions x → a x + b y, y → c x + d y with determinant a d − b c = 1 . These substitutions form the special linear group SL<sub>2</sub>.
One can ask for all polynomials in A, B, and C that are unchanged by the action of SL<sub>2</sub>; these are called the invariants of binary quadratic forms and turn out to be the polynomials in the discriminant.
More generally, one can ask for the invariants of homogeneous polynomials A<sub>0</sub> x<sup>r</sup> y<sup>0</sup> + ... + A<sub>r</sub> x<sup>0</sup> y<sup>r</sup> of higher degree, which will be certain polynomials in the coefficients A<sub>0</sub>, ..., A<sub>r</sub>, and more generally still, one can ask the similar question for homogeneous polynomials in more than two variables.
One of the main goals of invariant theory was to solve the "finite basis problem". The sum or product of any two invariants is invariant, and the finite basis problem asked whether it was possible to get all the invariants by starting with a finite list of invariants, called generators, and then, adding or multiplying the generators together. For example, the discriminant gives a finite basis (with one element) for the invariants of binary quadratic forms.
Noether's advisor, Paul Gordan, was known as the "king of invariant theory", and his chief contribution to mathematics was his 1870 solution of the finite basis problem for invariants of homogeneous polynomials in two variables. He proved this by giving a constructive method for finding all of the invariants and their generators, but was not able to carry out this constructive approach for invariants in three or more variables. In 1890, David Hilbert proved a similar statement for the invariants of homogeneous polynomials in any number of variables. Furthermore, his method worked, not only for the special linear group, but also for some of its subgroups such as the special orthogonal group.
### First epoch (1908–1919): Galois theory
Galois theory concerns transformations of number fields that permute the roots of an equation. Consider a polynomial equation of a variable x of degree n, in which the coefficients are drawn from some ground field, which might be, for example, the field of real numbers, rational numbers, or the integers modulo 7. There may or may not be choices of x, which make this polynomial evaluate to zero. Such choices, if they exist, are called roots. For example, if the polynomial is x<sup>2</sup> + 1 and the field is the real numbers, then the polynomial has no roots, because any choice of x makes the polynomial greater than or equal to one. If the field is extended, however, then the polynomial may gain roots, and if it is extended enough, then it always has a number of roots equal to its degree.
Continuing the previous example, if the field is enlarged to the complex numbers, then the polynomial gains two roots, +i and −i, where i is the imaginary unit, that is, i<sup> 2</sup> = −1 . More generally, the extension field in which a polynomial can be factored into its roots is known as the splitting field of the polynomial.
The Galois group of a polynomial is the set of all transformations of the splitting field which preserve the ground field and the roots of the polynomial. (These transformations are called automorphisms.) The Galois group of x<sup>2</sup> + 1 consists of two elements: The identity transformation, which sends every complex number to itself, and complex conjugation, which sends +i to −i. Since the Galois group does not change the ground field, it leaves the coefficients of the polynomial unchanged, so it must leave the set of all roots unchanged. Each root can move to another root, however, so transformation determines a permutation of the n roots among themselves. The significance of the Galois group derives from the fundamental theorem of Galois theory, which proves that the fields lying between the ground field and the splitting field are in one-to-one correspondence with the subgroups of the Galois group.
In 1918, Noether published a paper on the inverse Galois problem. Instead of determining the Galois group of transformations of a given field and its extension, Noether asked whether, given a field and a group, it always is possible to find an extension of the field that has the given group as its Galois group. She reduced this to "Noether's problem", which asks whether the fixed field of a subgroup G of the permutation group S<sub>n</sub> acting on the field k(x<sub>1</sub>, ... , x<sub>n</sub>) always is a pure transcendental extension of the field k. (She first mentioned this problem in a 1913 paper, where she attributed the problem to her colleague Fischer.) She showed this was true for n = 2, 3, or 4. In 1969, R.G. Swan found a counter-example to Noether's problem, with n = 47 and G a cyclic group of order 47 (although this group can be realized as a Galois group over the rationals in other ways). The inverse Galois problem remains unsolved.
### First epoch (1908–1919): Physics
Noether was brought to Göttingen in 1915 by David Hilbert and Felix Klein, who wanted her expertise in invariant theory to help them in understanding general relativity, a geometrical theory of gravitation developed mainly by Albert Einstein. Hilbert had observed that the conservation of energy seemed to be violated in general relativity, because gravitational energy could itself gravitate. Noether provided the resolution of this paradox, and a fundamental tool of modern theoretical physics, with Noether's first theorem, which she proved in 1915, but did not publish until 1918. She not only solved the problem for general relativity, but also determined the conserved quantities for every system of physical laws that possesses some continuous symmetry. Upon receiving her work, Einstein wrote to Hilbert:
> Yesterday I received from Miss Noether a very interesting paper on invariants. I'm impressed that such things can be understood in such a general way. The old guard at Göttingen should take some lessons from Miss Noether! She seems to know her stuff.
For illustration, if a physical system behaves the same, regardless of how it is oriented in space, the physical laws that govern it are rotationally symmetric; from this symmetry, Noether's theorem shows the angular momentum of the system must be conserved. The physical system itself need not be symmetric; a jagged asteroid tumbling in space conserves angular momentum despite its asymmetry. Rather, the symmetry of the physical laws governing the system is responsible for the conservation law. As another example, if a physical experiment has the same outcome at any place and at any time, then its laws are symmetric under continuous translations in space and time; by Noether's theorem, these symmetries account for the conservation laws of linear momentum and energy within this system, respectively.
Noether's theorem has become a fundamental tool of modern theoretical physics, both because of the insight it gives into conservation laws, and also, as a practical calculation tool. Her theorem allows researchers to determine the conserved quantities from the observed symmetries of a physical system. Conversely, it facilitates the description of a physical system based on classes of hypothetical physical laws. For illustration, suppose that a new physical phenomenon is discovered. Noether's theorem provides a test for theoretical models of the phenomenon:
> If the theory has a continuous symmetry, then Noether's theorem guarantees that the theory has a conserved quantity, and for the theory to be correct, this conservation must be observable in experiments.
### Second epoch (1920–1926): Ascending and descending chain conditions
In this epoch, Noether became famous for her deft use of ascending (Teilerkettensatz) or descending (Vielfachenkettensatz) chain conditions. A sequence of non-empty subsets A<sub>1</sub>, A<sub>2</sub>, A<sub>3</sub>, etc. of a set S is usually said to be ascending, if each is a subset of the next
$A_{1} \subset A_{2} \subset A_{3} \subset \cdots.$
Conversely, a sequence of subsets of S is called descending if each contains the next subset:
$A_{1} \supset A_{2} \supset A_{3} \supset \cdots.$
A chain becomes constant after a finite number of steps if there is an n such that $A_n = A_m$ for all m ≥ n. A collection of subsets of a given set satisfies the ascending chain condition if any ascending sequence becomes constant after a finite number of steps. It satisfies the descending chain condition if any descending sequence becomes constant after a finite number of steps.
Ascending and descending chain conditions are general, meaning that they can be applied to many types of mathematical objects—and, on the surface, they might not seem very powerful. Noether showed how to exploit such conditions, however, to maximum advantage.
For example: How to use chain conditions to show that every set of sub-objects has a maximal/minimal element or that a complex object can be generated by a smaller number of elements. These conclusions often are crucial steps in a proof.
Many types of objects in abstract algebra can satisfy chain conditions, and usually if they satisfy an ascending chain condition, they are called Noetherian in her honor. By definition, a Noetherian ring satisfies an ascending chain condition on its left and right ideals, whereas a Noetherian group is defined as a group in which every strictly ascending chain of subgroups is finite. A Noetherian module is a module in which every strictly ascending chain of submodules becomes constant after a finite number of steps. A Noetherian space is a topological space in which every strictly ascending chain of open subspaces becomes constant after a finite number of steps; this definition makes the spectrum of a Noetherian ring a Noetherian topological space.
The chain condition often is "inherited" by sub-objects. For example, all subspaces of a Noetherian space, are Noetherian themselves; all subgroups and quotient groups of a Noetherian group are likewise, Noetherian; and, mutatis mutandis, the same holds for submodules and quotient modules of a Noetherian module. All quotient rings of a Noetherian ring are Noetherian, but that does not necessarily hold for its subrings. The chain condition also may be inherited by combinations or extensions of a Noetherian object. For example, finite direct sums of Noetherian rings are Noetherian, as is the ring of formal power series over a Noetherian ring.
Another application of such chain conditions is in Noetherian induction—also known as well-founded induction—which is a generalization of mathematical induction. It frequently is used to reduce general statements about collections of objects to statements about specific objects in that collection. Suppose that S is a partially ordered set. One way of proving a statement about the objects of S is to assume the existence of a counterexample and deduce a contradiction, thereby proving the contrapositive of the original statement. The basic premise of Noetherian induction is that every non-empty subset of S contains a minimal element. In particular, the set of all counterexamples contains a minimal element, the minimal counterexample. In order to prove the original statement, therefore, it suffices to prove something seemingly much weaker: For any counter-example, there is a smaller counter-example.
### Second epoch (1920–1926): Commutative rings, ideals, and modules
Noether's paper, Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen (Theory of Ideals in Ring Domains, 1921), is the foundation of general commutative ring theory, and gives one of the first general definitions of a commutative ring. Before her paper, most results in commutative algebra were restricted to special examples of commutative rings, such as polynomial rings over fields or rings of algebraic integers. Noether proved that in a ring which satisfies the ascending chain condition on ideals, every ideal is finitely generated. In 1943, French mathematician Claude Chevalley coined the term, Noetherian ring, to describe this property. A major result in Noether's 1921 paper is the Lasker–Noether theorem, which extends Lasker's theorem on the primary decomposition of ideals of polynomial rings to all Noetherian rings. The Lasker–Noether theorem can be viewed as a generalization of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic which states that any positive integer can be expressed as a product of prime numbers, and that this decomposition is unique.
Noether's work Abstrakter Aufbau der Idealtheorie in algebraischen Zahl- und Funktionenkörpern (Abstract Structure of the Theory of Ideals in Algebraic Number and Function Fields, 1927) characterized the rings in which the ideals have unique factorization into prime ideals as the Dedekind domains: integral domains that are Noetherian, 0- or 1-dimensional, and integrally closed in their quotient fields. This paper also contains what now are called the isomorphism theorems, which describe some fundamental natural isomorphisms, and some other basic results on Noetherian and Artinian modules.
### Second epoch (1920–1926): Elimination theory
In 1923–1924, Noether applied her ideal theory to elimination theory in a formulation that she attributed to her student, Kurt Hentzelt. She showed that fundamental theorems about the factorization of polynomials could be carried over directly. Traditionally, elimination theory is concerned with eliminating one or more variables from a system of polynomial equations, usually by the method of resultants.
For illustration, a system of equations often can be written in the form M v = 0 where a matrix (or linear transform) M (without the variable x) times a vector v (that only has non-zero powers of x) is equal to the zero vector, 0. Hence, the determinant of the matrix M must be zero, providing a new equation in which the variable x has been eliminated.
### Second epoch (1920–1926): Invariant theory of finite groups
Techniques such as Hilbert's original non-constructive solution to the finite basis problem could not be used to get quantitative information about the invariants of a group action, and furthermore, they did not apply to all group actions. In her 1915 paper, Noether found a solution to the finite basis problem for a finite group of transformations G acting on a finite-dimensional vector space over a field of characteristic zero. Her solution shows that the ring of invariants is generated by homogeneous invariants whose degree is less than, or equal to, the order of the finite group; this is called Noether's bound. Her paper gave two proofs of Noether's bound, both of which also work when the characteristic of the field is coprime to \|G\|! (the factorial of the order \|G\| of the group G). The degrees of generators need not satisfy Noether's bound when the characteristic of the field divides the number \|G\|, but Noether was not able to determine whether this bound was correct when the characteristic of the field divides \|G\|! but not \|G\|. For many years, determining the truth or falsehood of this bound for this particular case was an open problem, called "Noether's gap". It was finally solved independently by Fleischmann in 2000 and Fogarty in 2001, who both showed that the bound remains true.
In her 1926 paper, Noether extended Hilbert's theorem to representations of a finite group over any field; the new case that did not follow from Hilbert's work is when the characteristic of the field divides the order of the group. Noether's result was later extended by William Haboush to all reductive groups by his proof of the Mumford conjecture. In this paper Noether also introduced the Noether normalization lemma, showing that a finitely generated domain A over a field k has a set {x<sub>1</sub>, ..., x<sub>n</sub>} of algebraically independent elements such that A is integral over k[x<sub>1</sub>, ..., x<sub>n</sub>].
### Second epoch (1920–1926): Contributions to topology
As noted by Pavel Alexandrov and Hermann Weyl in their obituaries, Noether's contributions to topology illustrate her generosity with ideas and how her insights could transform entire fields of mathematics. In topology, mathematicians study the properties of objects that remain invariant even under deformation, properties such as their connectedness. An old joke is that "a topologist cannot distinguish a donut from a coffee mug", since they can be continuously deformed into one another.
Noether is credited with fundamental ideas that led to the development of algebraic topology from the earlier combinatorial topology, specifically, the idea of homology groups. According to the account of Alexandrov, Noether attended lectures given by Heinz Hopf and by him in the summers of 1926 and 1927, where "she continually made observations which were often deep and subtle" and he continues that,
> When ... she first became acquainted with a systematic construction of combinatorial topology, she immediately observed that it would be worthwhile to study directly the groups of algebraic complexes and cycles of a given polyhedron and the subgroup of the cycle group consisting of cycles homologous to zero; instead of the usual definition of Betti numbers, she suggested immediately defining the Betti group as the complementary (quotient) group of the group of all cycles by the subgroup of cycles homologous to zero. This observation now seems self-evident. But in those years (1925–1928) this was a completely new point of view.
Noether's suggestion that topology be studied algebraically was adopted immediately by Hopf, Alexandrov, and others, and it became a frequent topic of discussion among the mathematicians of Göttingen. Noether observed that her idea of a Betti group makes the Euler–Poincaré formula simpler to understand, and Hopf's own work on this subject "bears the imprint of these remarks of Emmy Noether". Noether mentions her own topology ideas only as an aside in a 1926 publication, where she cites it as an application of group theory.
This algebraic approach to topology was also developed independently in Austria. In a 1926–1927 course given in Vienna, Leopold Vietoris defined a homology group, which was developed by Walther Mayer, into an axiomatic definition in 1928.
### Third epoch (1927–1935): Hypercomplex numbers and representation theory
Much work on hypercomplex numbers and group representations was carried out in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but remained disparate. Noether united these results and gave the first general representation theory of groups and algebras.
Briefly, Noether subsumed the structure theory of associative algebras and the representation theory of groups into a single arithmetic theory of modules and ideals in rings satisfying ascending chain conditions. This single work by Noether was of fundamental importance for the development of modern algebra.
### Third epoch (1927–1935): Noncommutative algebra
Noether also was responsible for a number of other advances in the field of algebra. With Emil Artin, Richard Brauer, and Helmut Hasse, she founded the theory of central simple algebras.
A paper by Noether, Helmut Hasse, and Richard Brauer pertains to division algebras, which are algebraic systems in which division is possible. They proved two important theorems: a local-global theorem stating that if a finite-dimensional central division algebra over a number field splits locally everywhere then it splits globally (so is trivial), and from this, deduced their Hauptsatz ("main theorem"):
> every finite dimensional central division algebra over an algebraic number field F splits over a cyclic cyclotomic extension.
These theorems allow one to classify all finite-dimensional central division algebras over a given number field. A subsequent paper by Noether showed, as a special case of a more general theorem, that all maximal subfields of a division algebra D are splitting fields. This paper also contains the Skolem–Noether theorem which states that any two embeddings of an extension of a field k into a finite-dimensional central simple algebra over k, are conjugate. The Brauer–Noether theorem gives a characterization of the splitting fields of a central division algebra over a field.
## Recognition
Noether's work continues to be relevant for the development of theoretical physics and mathematics and she is consistently ranked as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. In his obituary, fellow algebraist BL van der Waerden says that her mathematical originality was "absolute beyond comparison", and Hermann Weyl said that Noether "changed the face of algebra by her work". During her lifetime and even until today, Noether has been characterized as the greatest woman mathematician in recorded history by mathematicians such as Pavel Alexandrov, Hermann Weyl, and Jean Dieudonné.
In a letter to The New York Times, Albert Einstein wrote:
> In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importance in the development of the present-day younger generation of mathematicians.
## List of doctoral students
## See also
- List of things named after Emmy Noether
- Timeline of women in science
|
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Germanium
| 1,172,934,891 |
Chemical element with atomic number 32
|
[
"Chemical elements",
"Chemical elements predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev",
"Chemical elements with diamond cubic structure",
"Germanium",
"Group IV semiconductors",
"Infrared sensor materials",
"Materials that expand upon freezing",
"Metalloids",
"Optical materials"
] |
Germanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid in the carbon group that is chemically similar to its group neighbors silicon and tin. Like silicon, germanium naturally reacts and forms complexes with oxygen in nature.
Because it seldom appears in high concentration, germanium was discovered comparatively late in the discovery of the elements. Germanium ranks near fiftieth in relative abundance of the elements in the Earth's crust. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev predicted its existence and some of its properties from its position on his periodic table, and called the element ekasilicon. In 1886, Clemens Winkler at Freiberg University found the new element, along with silver and sulfur, in the mineral argyrodite. Winkler named the element after his country, Germany. Germanium is mined primarily from sphalerite (the primary ore of zinc), though germanium is also recovered commercially from silver, lead, and copper ores.
Elemental germanium is used as a semiconductor in transistors and various other electronic devices. Historically, the first decade of semiconductor electronics was based entirely on germanium. Presently, the major end uses are fibre-optic systems, infrared optics, solar cell applications, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Germanium compounds are also used for polymerization catalysts and have most recently found use in the production of nanowires. This element forms a large number of organogermanium compounds, such as tetraethylgermanium, useful in organometallic chemistry. Germanium is considered a technology-critical element.
Germanium is not thought to be an essential element for any living organism. Similar to silicon and aluminium, naturally-occurring germanium compounds tend to be insoluble in water and thus have little oral toxicity. However, synthetic soluble germanium salts are nephrotoxic, and synthetic chemically reactive germanium compounds with halogens and hydrogen are irritants and toxins.
## History
In his report on The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements in 1869, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev predicted the existence of several unknown chemical elements, including one that would fill a gap in the carbon family, located between silicon and tin. Because of its position in his periodic table, Mendeleev called it ekasilicon (Es), and he estimated its atomic weight to be 70 (later 72).
In mid-1885, at a mine near Freiberg, Saxony, a new mineral was discovered and named argyrodite because of its high silver content. The chemist Clemens Winkler analyzed this new mineral, which proved to be a combination of silver, sulfur, and a new element. Winkler was able to isolate the new element in 1886 and found it similar to antimony. He initially considered the new element to be eka-antimony, but was soon convinced that it was instead eka-silicon. Before Winkler published his results on the new element, he decided that he would name his element neptunium, since the recent discovery of planet Neptune in 1846 had similarly been preceded by mathematical predictions of its existence. However, the name "neptunium" had already been given to another proposed chemical element (though not the element that today bears the name neptunium, which was discovered in 1940). So instead, Winkler named the new element germanium (from the Latin word, Germania, for Germany) in honor of his homeland. Argyrodite proved empirically to be Ag<sub>8</sub>GeS<sub>6</sub>. Because this new element showed some similarities with the elements arsenic and antimony, its proper place in the periodic table was under consideration, but its similarities with Dmitri Mendeleev's predicted element "ekasilicon" confirmed that place on the periodic table. With further material from 500 kg of ore from the mines in Saxony, Winkler confirmed the chemical properties of the new element in 1887. He also determined an atomic weight of 72.32 by analyzing pure germanium tetrachloride (GeCl
<sub>4</sub>), while Lecoq de Boisbaudran deduced 72.3 by a comparison of the lines in the spark spectrum of the element.
Winkler was able to prepare several new compounds of germanium, including fluorides, chlorides, sulfides, dioxide, and tetraethylgermane (Ge(C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>5</sub>)<sub>4</sub>), the first organogermane. The physical data from those compounds—which corresponded well with Mendeleev's predictions—made the discovery an important confirmation of Mendeleev's idea of element periodicity. Here is a comparison between the prediction and Winkler's data:
Until the late 1930s, germanium was thought to be a poorly conducting metal. Germanium did not become economically significant until after 1945 when its properties as an electronic semiconductor were recognized. During World War II, small amounts of germanium were used in some special electronic devices, mostly diodes. The first major use was the point-contact Schottky diodes for radar pulse detection during the War. The first silicon-germanium alloys were obtained in 1955. Before 1945, only a few hundred kilograms of germanium were produced in smelters each year, but by the end of the 1950s, the annual worldwide production had reached 40 metric tons (44 short tons).
The development of the germanium transistor in 1948 opened the door to countless applications of solid state electronics. From 1950 through the early 1970s, this area provided an increasing market for germanium, but then high-purity silicon began replacing germanium in transistors, diodes, and rectifiers. For example, the company that became Fairchild Semiconductor was founded in 1957 with the express purpose of producing silicon transistors. Silicon has superior electrical properties, but it requires much greater purity that could not be commercially achieved in the early years of semiconductor electronics.
Meanwhile, the demand for germanium for fiber optic communication networks, infrared night vision systems, and polymerization catalysts increased dramatically. These end uses represented 85% of worldwide germanium consumption in 2000. The US government even designated germanium as a strategic and critical material, calling for a 146 ton (132 tonne) supply in the national defense stockpile in 1987.
Germanium differs from silicon in that the supply is limited by the availability of exploitable sources, while the supply of silicon is limited only by production capacity since silicon comes from ordinary sand and quartz. While silicon could be bought in 1998 for less than \$10 per kg, the price of germanium was almost \$800 per kg.
## Characteristics
Under standard conditions, germanium is a brittle, silvery-white, semi-metallic element. This form constitutes an allotrope known as α-germanium, which has a metallic luster and a diamond cubic crystal structure, the same as diamond. While in crystal form, germanium has a displacement threshold energy of $19.7^{+0.6}_{-0.5}~\text{eV}$. At pressures above 120 kbar, germanium becomes the allotrope β-germanium with the same structure as β-tin. Like silicon, gallium, bismuth, antimony, and water, germanium is one of the few substances that expands as it solidifies (i.e. freezes) from the molten state.
Germanium is a semiconductor having an indirect bandgap, as is crystalline silicon. Zone refining techniques have led to the production of crystalline germanium for semiconductors that has an impurity of only one part in 10<sup>10</sup>, making it one of the purest materials ever obtained. The first semi-metallic material discovered (in 2005) to become a superconductor in the presence of an extremely strong electromagnetic field was an alloy of germanium, uranium, and rhodium.
Pure germanium is known to spontaneously extrude very long screw dislocations, referred to as germanium whiskers. The growth of these whiskers is one of the primary reasons for the failure of older diodes and transistors made from germanium, as, depending on what they eventually touch, they may lead to an electrical short.
### Chemistry
Elemental germanium starts to oxidize slowly in air at around 250 °C, forming GeO<sub>2</sub> . Germanium is insoluble in dilute acids and alkalis but dissolves slowly in hot concentrated sulfuric and nitric acids and reacts violently with molten alkalis to produce germanates ([GeO
<sub>3</sub>]<sup>2−</sup>
). Germanium occurs mostly in the oxidation state +4 although many +2 compounds are known. Other oxidation states are rare: +3 is found in compounds such as Ge<sub>2</sub>Cl<sub>6</sub>, and +3 and +1 are found on the surface of oxides, or negative oxidation states in germanides, such as −4 in Mg
<sub>2</sub>Ge. Germanium cluster anions (Zintl ions) such as Ge<sub>4</sub><sup>2−</sup>, Ge<sub>9</sub><sup>4−</sup>, Ge<sub>9</sub><sup>2−</sup>, [(Ge<sub>9</sub>)<sub>2</sub>]<sup>6−</sup> have been prepared by the extraction from alloys containing alkali metals and germanium in liquid ammonia in the presence of ethylenediamine or a cryptand. The oxidation states of the element in these ions are not integers—similar to the ozonides O<sub>3</sub><sup>−</sup>.
Two oxides of germanium are known: germanium dioxide (GeO
<sub>2</sub>, germania) and germanium monoxide, (GeO). The dioxide, GeO<sub>2</sub> can be obtained by roasting germanium disulfide (GeS
<sub>2</sub>), and is a white powder that is only slightly soluble in water but reacts with alkalis to form germanates. The monoxide, germanous oxide, can be obtained by the high temperature reaction of GeO<sub>2</sub> with Elemental Ge. The dioxide (and the related oxides and germanates) exhibits the unusual property of having a high refractive index for visible light, but transparency to infrared light. Bismuth germanate, Bi<sub>4</sub>Ge<sub>3</sub>O<sub>12</sub>, (BGO) is used as a scintillator.
Binary compounds with other chalcogens are also known, such as the disulfide (GeS
<sub>2</sub>) and diselenide (GeSe
<sub>2</sub>), and the monosulfide (GeS), monoselenide (GeSe), and monotelluride (GeTe). GeS<sub>2</sub> forms as a white precipitate when hydrogen sulfide is passed through strongly acid solutions containing Ge(IV). The disulfide is appreciably soluble in water and in solutions of caustic alkalis or alkaline sulfides. Nevertheless, it is not soluble in acidic water, which allowed Winkler to discover the element. By heating the disulfide in a current of hydrogen, the monosulfide (GeS) is formed, which sublimes in thin plates of a dark color and metallic luster, and is soluble in solutions of the caustic alkalis. Upon melting with alkaline carbonates and sulfur, germanium compounds form salts known as thiogermanates.
Four tetrahalides are known. Under normal conditions GeI<sub>4</sub> is a solid, GeF<sub>4</sub> a gas and the others volatile liquids. For example, germanium tetrachloride, GeCl<sub>4</sub>, is obtained as a colorless fuming liquid boiling at 83.1 °C by heating the metal with chlorine. All the tetrahalides are readily hydrolyzed to hydrated germanium dioxide. GeCl<sub>4</sub> is used in the production of organogermanium compounds. All four dihalides are known and in contrast to the tetrahalides are polymeric solids. Additionally Ge<sub>2</sub>Cl<sub>6</sub> and some higher compounds of formula Ge<sub>n</sub>Cl<sub>2n+2</sub> are known. The unusual compound Ge<sub>6</sub>Cl<sub>16</sub> has been prepared that contains the Ge<sub>5</sub>Cl<sub>12</sub> unit with a neopentane structure.
Germane (GeH<sub>4</sub>) is a compound similar in structure to methane. Polygermanes—compounds that are similar to alkanes—with formula Ge<sub>n</sub>H<sub>2n+2</sub> containing up to five germanium atoms are known. The germanes are less volatile and less reactive than their corresponding silicon analogues. GeH<sub>4</sub> reacts with alkali metals in liquid ammonia to form white crystalline MGeH<sub>3</sub> which contain the GeH<sub>3</sub><sup>−</sup> anion. The germanium hydrohalides with one, two and three halogen atoms are colorless reactive liquids.
The first organogermanium compound was synthesized by Winkler in 1887; the reaction of germanium tetrachloride with diethylzinc yielded tetraethylgermane (Ge(C
<sub>2</sub>H
<sub>5</sub>)
<sub>4</sub>). Organogermanes of the type R<sub>4</sub>Ge (where R is an alkyl) such as tetramethylgermane (Ge(CH
<sub>3</sub>)
<sub>4</sub>) and tetraethylgermane are accessed through the cheapest available germanium precursor germanium tetrachloride and alkyl nucleophiles. Organic germanium hydrides such as isobutylgermane ((CH
<sub>3</sub>)
<sub>2</sub>CHCH
<sub>2</sub>GeH
<sub>3</sub>) were found to be less hazardous and may be used as a liquid substitute for toxic germane gas in semiconductor applications. Many germanium reactive intermediates are known: germyl free radicals, germylenes (similar to carbenes), and germynes (similar to carbynes). The organogermanium compound 2-carboxyethylgermasesquioxane was first reported in the 1970s, and for a while was used as a dietary supplement and thought to possibly have anti-tumor qualities.
Using a ligand called Eind (1,1,3,3,5,5,7,7-octaethyl-s-hydrindacen-4-yl) germanium is able to form a double bond with oxygen (germanone). Germanium hydride and germanium tetrahydride are very flammable and even explosive when mixed with air.
### Isotopes
Germanium occurs in 5 natural isotopes: , , , , and . Of these, is very slightly radioactive, decaying by double beta decay with a half-life of 1.78×10<sup>21</sup> years. is the most common isotope, having a natural abundance of approximately 36%. is the least common with a natural abundance of approximately 7%. When bombarded with alpha particles, the isotope will generate stable , releasing high energy electrons in the process. Because of this, it is used in combination with radon for nuclear batteries.
At least 27 radioisotopes have also been synthesized, ranging in atomic mass from 58 to 89. The most stable of these is , decaying by electron capture with a half-life of 270.95 days. The least stable is , with a half-life of 30 ms. While most of germanium's radioisotopes decay by beta decay, and decay by delayed proton emission. through isotopes also exhibit minor delayed neutron emission decay paths.
### Occurrence
Germanium is created by stellar nucleosynthesis, mostly by the s-process in asymptotic giant branch stars. The s-process is a slow neutron capture of lighter elements inside pulsating red giant stars. Germanium has been detected in some of the most distant stars and in the atmosphere of Jupiter.
Germanium's abundance in the Earth's crust is approximately 1.6 ppm. Only a few minerals like argyrodite, briartite, germanite, renierite and sphalerite contain appreciable amounts of germanium. Only few of them (especially germanite) are, very rarely, found in mineable amounts. Some zinc-copper-lead ore bodies contain enough germanium to justify extraction from the final ore concentrate. An unusual natural enrichment process causes a high content of germanium in some coal seams, discovered by Victor Moritz Goldschmidt during a broad survey for germanium deposits. The highest concentration ever found was in Hartley coal ash with as much as 1.6% germanium. The coal deposits near Xilinhaote, Inner Mongolia, contain an estimated 1600 tonnes of germanium.
## Production
About 118 tonnes of germanium were produced in 2011 worldwide, mostly in China (80 t), Russia (5 t) and United States (3 t). Germanium is recovered as a by-product from sphalerite zinc ores where it is concentrated in amounts as great as 0.3%, especially from low-temperature sediment-hosted, massive Zn–Pb–Cu(–Ba) deposits and carbonate-hosted Zn–Pb deposits. A recent study found that at least 10,000 t of extractable germanium is contained in known zinc reserves, particularly those hosted by Mississippi-Valley type deposits, while at least 112,000 t will be found in coal reserves. In 2007 35% of the demand was met by recycled germanium.
While it is produced mainly from sphalerite, it is also found in silver, lead, and copper ores. Another source of germanium is fly ash of power plants fueled from coal deposits that contain germanium. Russia and China used this as a source for germanium. Russia's deposits are located in the far east of Sakhalin Island, and northeast of Vladivostok. The deposits in China are located mainly in the lignite mines near Lincang, Yunnan; coal is also mined near Xilinhaote, Inner Mongolia.
The ore concentrates are mostly sulfidic; they are converted to the oxides by heating under air in a process known as roasting:
GeS<sub>2</sub> + 3 O<sub>2</sub> → GeO<sub>2</sub> + 2 SO<sub>2</sub>
Some of the germanium is left in the dust produced, while the rest is converted to germanates, which are then leached (together with zinc) from the cinder by sulfuric acid. After neutralization, only the zinc stays in solution while germanium and other metals precipitate. After removing some of the zinc in the precipitate by the Waelz process, the residing Waelz oxide is leached a second time. The dioxide is obtained as precipitate and converted with chlorine gas or hydrochloric acid to germanium tetrachloride, which has a low boiling point and can be isolated by distillation:
GeO<sub>2</sub> + 4 HCl → GeCl<sub>4</sub> + 2 H<sub>2</sub>O
GeO<sub>2</sub> + 2 Cl<sub>2</sub> → GeCl<sub>4</sub> + O<sub>2</sub>
Germanium tetrachloride is either hydrolyzed to the oxide (GeO<sub>2</sub>) or purified by fractional distillation and then hydrolyzed. The highly pure GeO<sub>2</sub> is now suitable for the production of germanium glass. It is reduced to the element by reacting it with hydrogen, producing germanium suitable for infrared optics and semiconductor production:
GeO<sub>2</sub> + 2 H<sub>2</sub> → Ge + 2 H<sub>2</sub>O
The germanium for steel production and other industrial processes is normally reduced using carbon:
GeO<sub>2</sub> + C → Ge + CO<sub>2</sub>
## Applications
The major end uses for germanium in 2007, worldwide, were estimated to be: 35% for fiber-optics, 30% infrared optics, 15% polymerization catalysts, and 15% electronics and solar electric applications. The remaining 5% went into such uses as phosphors, metallurgy, and chemotherapy.
### Optics
The notable properties of germania (GeO<sub>2</sub>) are its high index of refraction and its low optical dispersion. These make it especially useful for wide-angle camera lenses, microscopy, and the core part of optical fibers. It has replaced titania as the dopant for silica fiber, eliminating the subsequent heat treatment that made the fibers brittle. At the end of 2002, the fiber optics industry consumed 60% of the annual germanium use in the United States, but this is less than 10% of worldwide consumption. GeSbTe is a phase change material used for its optic properties, such as that used in rewritable DVDs.
Because germanium is transparent in the infrared wavelengths, it is an important infrared optical material that can be readily cut and polished into lenses and windows. It is especially used as the front optic in thermal imaging cameras working in the 8 to 14 micron range for passive thermal imaging and for hot-spot detection in military, mobile night vision, and fire fighting applications. It is used in infrared spectroscopes and other optical equipment that require extremely sensitive infrared detectors. It has a very high refractive index (4.0) and must be coated with anti-reflection agents. Particularly, a very hard special antireflection coating of diamond-like carbon (DLC), refractive index 2.0, is a good match and produces a diamond-hard surface that can withstand much environmental abuse.
### Electronics
Germanium can be alloyed with silicon, and silicon-germanium alloys are rapidly becoming an important semiconductor material for high-speed integrated circuits. Circuits utilizing the properties of Si-SiGe heterojunctions can be much faster than those using silicon alone. The SiGe chips, with high-speed properties, can be made with low-cost, well-established production techniques of the silicon chip industry.
High efficiency solar panels are a major use of germanium. Because germanium and gallium arsenide have nearly identical lattice constant, germanium substrates can be used to make gallium-arsenide solar cells. Germanium is the substrate of the wafers for high-efficiency multijunction photovoltaic cells for space applications, such as the Mars Exploration Rovers, which use triple-junction gallium arsenide on germanium cells. High-brightness LEDs, used for automobile headlights and to backlight LCD screens, are also an important application.
Germanium-on-insulator (GeOI) substrates are seen as a potential replacement for silicon on miniaturized chips. CMOS circuit based on GeOI substrates has been reported recently. Other uses in electronics include phosphors in fluorescent lamps and solid-state light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Germanium transistors are still used in some effects pedals by musicians who wish to reproduce the distinctive tonal character of the "fuzz"-tone from the early rock and roll era, most notably the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face.
Germanium has been studied as a potential material for implantable bioelectronic sensors that are resorbed in the body without generating harmful hydrogen gas, replacing zinc oxide- and indium gallium zinc oxide-based implementations.
### Other uses
Germanium dioxide is also used in catalysts for polymerization in the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The high brilliance of this polyester is especially favored for PET bottles marketed in Japan. In the United States, germanium is not used for polymerization catalysts.
Due to the similarity between silica (SiO<sub>2</sub>) and germanium dioxide (GeO<sub>2</sub>), the silica stationary phase in some gas chromatography columns can be replaced by GeO<sub>2</sub>.
In recent years germanium has seen increasing use in precious metal alloys. In sterling silver alloys, for instance, it reduces firescale, increases tarnish resistance, and improves precipitation hardening. A tarnish-proof silver alloy trademarked Argentium contains 1.2% germanium.
Semiconductor detectors made of single crystal high-purity germanium can precisely identify radiation sources—for example in airport security. Germanium is useful for monochromators for beamlines used in single crystal neutron scattering and synchrotron X-ray diffraction. The reflectivity has advantages over silicon in neutron and high energy X-ray applications. Crystals of high purity germanium are used in detectors for gamma spectroscopy and the search for dark matter. Germanium crystals are also used in X-ray spectrometers for the determination of phosphorus, chlorine and sulfur.
Germanium is emerging as an important material for spintronics and spin-based quantum computing applications. In 2010, researchers demonstrated room temperature spin transport and more recently donor electron spins in germanium has been shown to have very long coherence times.
## Strategic importance
Due to its use in advanced electronics and optics, Germanium is considered a technology-critical element (by e.g. the European Union), essential to fulfill the green and digital transition. As China controls 60% of global Germanium production it holds a dominant position over the world's supply chains. On 3 July 2023 China suddenly imposed restrictions on the exports of Germanium (and Gallium), ratcheting up trade tensions with Western allies. Invoking "national security interests," the Chinese Ministry of Commerce informed that companies that intend to sell products containing Germanium would need an export licence. It sees such products as "dual-use" items that may have military purposes and therefore warrant an extra layer of oversight. The new dispute opened a new chapter in the increasingly fierce technology race that has pitted the United States, and to a lesser extent Europe, against China. The US wants its allies to heavily curb, or downright prohibit, advanced electronic components bound to the Chinese market in order to prevent Beijing from securing global technology supremacy. China denied any tit-for-tat intention behind the Germanium export restrictions. Following China's export restrictions, Russian state-owned company Rostec announced an increase in germanium production to meet domestic demand.
## Germanium and health
Germanium is not considered essential to the health of plants or animals. Germanium in the environment has little or no health impact. This is primarily because it usually occurs only as a trace element in ores and carbonaceous materials, and the various industrial and electronic applications involve very small quantities that are not likely to be ingested. For similar reasons, end-use germanium has little impact on the environment as a biohazard. Some reactive intermediate compounds of germanium are poisonous (see precautions, below).
Germanium supplements, made from both organic and inorganic germanium, have been marketed as an alternative medicine capable of treating leukemia and lung cancer. There is, however, no medical evidence of benefit; some evidence suggests that such supplements are actively harmful. U.S. Food and Drug Administration research has concluded that inorganic germanium, when used as a nutritional supplement, "presents potential human health hazard".
Some germanium compounds have been administered by alternative medical practitioners as non-FDA-allowed injectable solutions. Soluble inorganic forms of germanium used at first, notably the citrate-lactate salt, resulted in some cases of renal dysfunction, hepatic steatosis, and peripheral neuropathy in individuals using them over a long term. Plasma and urine germanium concentrations in these individuals, several of whom died, were several orders of magnitude greater than endogenous levels. A more recent organic form, beta-carboxyethylgermanium sesquioxide (propagermanium), has not exhibited the same spectrum of toxic effects.
Certain compounds of germanium have low toxicity to mammals, but have toxic effects against certain bacteria.
### Precautions for chemically reactive germanium compounds
While use of germanium itself does not require precautions, some of germanium's artificially produced compounds are quite reactive and present an immediate hazard to human health on exposure. For example, Germanium tetrachloride and germane (GeH<sub>4</sub>) are a liquid and gas, respectively, that can be very irritating to the eyes, skin, lungs, and throat.
## See also
- Germanene
- Vitrain
- History of the transistor
|
163,036 |
Ralph Richardson
| 1,171,074,275 |
English actor (1902–1983)
|
[
"1902 births",
"1983 deaths",
"20th-century English male actors",
"Actors awarded knighthoods",
"Actors from Cheltenham",
"Best British Actor BAFTA Award winners",
"Burials at Highgate Cemetery",
"Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor winners",
"Drama Desk Award winners",
"English Roman Catholics",
"English male Shakespearean actors",
"English male film actors",
"English male stage actors",
"English male television actors",
"English male voice actors",
"Fleet Air Arm aviators",
"Fleet Air Arm personnel of World War II",
"Knights Bachelor",
"Male actors from Gloucestershire",
"Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve personnel of World War II"
] |
Sir Ralph David Richardson (19 December 1902 – 10 October 1983) was an English actor who, with John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, was one of the trinity of male actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. He worked in films throughout most of his career, and played more than sixty cinema roles. From an artistic but not theatrical background, Richardson had no thought of a stage career until a production of Hamlet in Brighton inspired him to become an actor. He learned his craft in the 1920s with a touring company and later the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In 1931 he joined the Old Vic, playing mostly Shakespearean roles. He led the company the following season, succeeding Gielgud, who had taught him much about stage technique. After he left the company, a series of leading roles took him to stardom in the West End and on Broadway.
In the 1940s, together with Olivier and John Burrell, Richardson was the co-director of the Old Vic company. There, his most celebrated roles included Peer Gynt and Falstaff. He and Olivier led the company to Europe and Broadway in 1945 and 1946, before their success provoked resentment among the governing board of the Old Vic, leading to their dismissal from the company in 1947. In the 1950s, in the West End and occasionally on tour, Richardson played in modern and classic works including The Heiress, Home at Seven, and Three Sisters. He continued on stage and in films until shortly before his sudden death at the age of eighty. He was celebrated in later years for his work with Peter Hall's National Theatre and his frequent stage partnership with Gielgud. He was not known for his portrayal of the great tragic roles in the classics, preferring character parts in old and new plays.
Richardson's film career began as an extra in 1931. He was soon cast in leading roles in British and American films including Things to Come (1936), The Fallen Idol (1948), Long Day's Journey into Night (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). He received nominations and awards in the UK, Europe and the US for his stage and screen work from 1948 until his death. Richardson was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, first for The Heiress (1949) and again (posthumously) for his final film, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984).
Throughout his career, and increasingly in later years, Richardson was known for his eccentric behaviour on and off stage. He was often seen as detached from conventional ways of looking at the world, and his acting was regularly described as poetic or magical.
## Life and career
### Early years
Richardson was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the third son and youngest child of Arthur Richardson and his wife Lydia (née Russell) on 19 December 1902. The couple had met while both were in Paris, studying with the painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Arthur Richardson had been senior art master at Cheltenham Ladies' College from 1893.
In 1907 the family split up; there was no divorce or formal separation, but the two elder boys, Christopher and Ambrose, remained with their father and Lydia left them, taking Ralph with her. The ostensible cause of the couple's separation was a row over Lydia's choice of wallpaper for her husband's study. According to John Miller's biography, whatever underlying causes there may have been are unknown. An earlier biographer, Garry O'Connor, speculates that Arthur Richardson might have been having an extramarital affair. There does not seem to have been a religious element, although Arthur was a dedicated Quaker, whose first two sons were brought up in that faith, whereas Lydia was a devout convert to Roman Catholicism, in which she raised Ralph. Mother and son had a variety of homes, the first of which was a bungalow converted from two railway carriages in Shoreham-by-Sea on the south coast of England.
Lydia wanted Richardson to become a priest. In Brighton he served as an altar boy, which he enjoyed, but when sent at about fifteen to the nearby Xaverian College, a seminary for trainee priests, he ran away. As a pupil at a series of schools he was uninterested in most subjects and was an indifferent scholar. His Latin was poor, and during church services he would improvise parts of the Latin responses, developing a talent for invention when memory failed that proved useful in his later career.
In 1919, aged sixteen, Richardson took a post as office boy with the Brighton branch of the Liverpool Victoria insurance company. The pay, ten shillings a week, was attractive, but office life was not; he lacked concentration, frequently posting documents to the wrong people as well as engaging in pranks that alarmed his superiors. His paternal grandmother died and left him £500, which, he later said, transformed his life. He resigned from the office post, just in time to avoid being dismissed, and enrolled at the Brighton School of Art. His studies there convinced him that he lacked creativity, and that his drawing skills were not good enough.
Richardson left the art school in 1920, and considered how else he might make a career. He briefly thought of pharmacy and then of journalism, abandoning each when he learned how much study the former required and how difficult mastering shorthand for the latter would be. He was still unsure what to do, when he saw Sir Frank Benson as Hamlet in a touring production. He was thrilled, and felt at once that he must become an actor.
Buttressed by what was left of the legacy from his grandmother, Richardson determined to learn to act. He paid a local theatrical manager, Frank R. Growcott, ten shillings a week to take him as a member of his company and to teach him the craft of an actor. He made his stage debut in December 1920 with Growcott's St Nicholas Players at the St Nicholas Hall, Brighton, a converted bacon factory. He played a gendarme in an adaptation of Les Misérables and was soon entrusted with larger parts, including Banquo in Macbeth and Malvolio in Twelfth Night.
### Early career
The heyday of the touring actor-manager was nearing its end but some companies still flourished. As well as Benson's, there were those of Sir John Martin-Harvey, Ben Greet, and, only slightly less prestigious, Charles Doran. Richardson wrote to all four managers: the first two did not reply; Greet saw him but had no vacancy; Doran engaged him, at a wage of £3 a week. Richardson made his first appearance as a professional actor at the Marina Theatre, Lowestoft, in August 1921, as Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice. He remained with Doran's company for most of the next two years, gradually gaining more important roles, including Banquo in Macbeth and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar.
Doran's company specialised in the classics, principally Shakespeare. After two years of period costumes Richardson felt the urge to act in a modern work. He left Doran in 1923 and toured in a new play, Outward Bound by Sutton Vane. He returned to the classics in August 1924, in Nigel Playfair's touring production of The Way of the World, playing Fainall. While on that tour he married Muriel Hewitt, a young member of Doran's company, known to him as "Kit". To his great happiness, the two were able to work together for most of 1925, both being engaged by Sir Barry Jackson of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre for a touring production of The Farmer's Wife. From December of that year they were members of the main repertory company in Birmingham. Through Jackson's chief director, the veteran taskmaster H. K. Ayliff, Richardson "absorbed the influence of older contemporaries like Gerald du Maurier, Charles Hawtrey and Mrs Patrick Campbell." Hewitt was seen as a rising star but Richardson's talents were not yet so apparent; he was allotted supporting roles such as Lane in The Importance of Being Earnest and Albert Prossor in Hobson's Choice.
Richardson made his London debut in July 1926 as the stranger in Oedipus at Colonus in a Sunday-night performance at the Scala Theatre, with a cast including Percy Walsh, John Laurie and D. A. Clarke-Smith. He then toured for three months in Eden Phillpotts's comedy Devonshire Cream with Jackson's company led by Cedric Hardwicke.
When Phillpotts's next comedy, Yellow Sands, was to be mounted at the Haymarket Theatre in the West End, Richardson and his wife were both cast in good roles. The play opened in November 1926 and ran until September 1928; with 610 performances it was the longest London run of Richardson's entire career. During the run Muriel Hewitt began to show early symptoms of encephalitis lethargica, a progressive and ultimately fatal illness.
Richardson left the run of Yellow Sands in March 1928 and rejoined Ayliff, playing Pygmalion in Back to Methuselah at the Royal Court Theatre; also in the cast was a former colleague from the Birmingham Repertory, Laurence Olivier. The critics began to notice Richardson and he gained some favourable reviews. As Tranio in Ayliff's modern-dress production of The Taming of the Shrew, Richardson played the character as a breezy cockney, winning praise for turning a usually dreary role into something richly entertaining. For the rest of 1928 he appeared in what Miller describes as several unremarkable modern plays. For much of 1929 he toured South Africa in Gerald Lawrence's company in three period costume plays, including The School for Scandal, in which he played Joseph Surface. The sole venture into musical comedy of his career was in Silver Wings in the West End and on tour. It was not a personal triumph; the director's final injunction to the company was, "For God's sake don't let Richardson sing". In May 1930 Richardson was given the role of Roderigo in Othello in what seemed likely to be a prestigious production, with Paul Robeson in the title role. The biographer Ronald Hayman writes that though a fine singer, "Robeson had no ear for blank verse" and even Peggy Ashcroft's superb performance as Desdemona was not enough to save the production from failure. Ashcroft's notices were laudatory, while Richardson's were mixed; they admired each other and worked together frequently during the next four decades.
### Old Vic, 1930–32
In 1930 Richardson, with some misgivings, accepted an invitation to join The Old Vic company. The theatre, in an unfashionable location south of the Thames, had offered inexpensive tickets for opera and drama under its proprietor Lilian Baylis since 1912. Its profile had been raised considerably by Baylis's producer, Harcourt Williams, who in 1929 persuaded the young West End star John Gielgud to lead the drama company. For the following season Williams wanted Richardson to join, with a view to succeeding Gielgud from 1931 to 1932. Richardson agreed, though he was not sure of his own suitability for a mainly Shakespearean repertoire, and was not enthusiastic about working with Gielgud: "I found his clothes extravagant, I found his conversation flippant. He was the New Young Man of his time and I didn't like him."
The first production of the season was Henry IV, Part 1, with Gielgud as Hotspur and Richardson as Prince Hal; the latter was thought by The Daily Telegraph "vivacious, but a figure of modern comedy rather than Shakespeare." Richardson's notices, and the relationship of the two leading men, improved markedly when Gielgud, who was playing Prospero, helped Richardson with his performance as Caliban in The Tempest:
> He gave me about two hundred ideas, as he usually does, twenty-five of which I eagerly seized on, and when I went away I thought, "This chap, you know, I don't like him very much but by God he knows something about this here play." ... And then out of that we formed a friendship.
The friendship and professional association lasted until the end of Richardson's life. Gielgud wrote in 1983, "Besides cherishing our long years of work together in the theatre, where he was such an inspiring and generous partner, I grew to love him in private life as a great gentleman, a rare spirit, fair and balanced, devotedly loyal and tolerant and, as a companion, bursting with vitality, curiosity and humour." Among Richardson's other parts in his first Old Vic season, Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra gained particularly good notices. The Morning Post commented that it placed him in the first rank of Shakespearean actors. At the beginning of 1931 Baylis re-opened Sadler's Wells Theatre with a production of Twelfth Night starring Gielgud as Malvolio and Richardson as Sir Toby Belch. W. A. Darlington in The Daily Telegraph wrote of Richardson's "ripe, rich and mellow Sir Toby, [which] I would go many miles to see again."
During the summer break between the Old Vic 1930–31 and 1931–32 seasons, Richardson played at the Malvern Festival, under the direction of his old Birmingham director, Ayliff. Salaries at the Old Vic and the Festival were not large, and Richardson was glad of a job as an extra in the 1931 film Dreyfus. As his wife's condition worsened he needed to pay for more and more nursing; she was looked after in a succession of hospitals and care homes.
Succeeding Gielgud as leading man at the Old Vic, Richardson had a varied season, in which there were conspicuous successes interspersed with critical failures. James Agate was not convinced by him as the domineering Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew; in Julius Caesar the whole cast received tepid reviews. In Othello Richardson divided the critics. He emphasised the plausible charm of the murderous Iago to a degree that Agate thought "very good Richardson, but indifferent Shakespeare", whereas The Times said, "He never stalked or hissed like a plain villain, and, in fact, we have seldom seen a man smile and smile and be a villain so adequately." His biggest success of the season was as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Both Agate and Darlington commented on how the actor transformed the character from the bumbling workman to the magically changed creature on whom Titania dotes. Agate wrote that most of those who had played the part hitherto "seem to have thought Bottom, with the ass's head on, was the same Bottom, only funnier. Shakespeare says he was 'translated', and Mr Richardson translated him." With Sybil Thorndike as a guest star and Richardson as Ralph, The Knight of the Burning Pestle was a hit with audiences and critics, as was a revival of Twelfth Night, with Edith Evans as Viola and Richardson again playing Sir Toby, finishing the season to renewed praise.
### West End and Broadway
Richardson returned to the Malvern Festival in August 1932. He was in four plays, the last of which, Bernard Shaw's Too True to Be Good, transferred to the New Theatre in London the following month. The play was not liked by audiences and ran for only forty-seven performances, but Richardson, in Agate's phrase, "ran away with the piece", and established himself as a West End star. In 1933 he had his first speaking part in a film, playing the villain, Nigel Hartley, in The Ghoul, which starred Cedric Hardwicke and Boris Karloff. The following year he was cast in his first starring role in a film, as the hero in The Return of Bulldog Drummond. The Times commented, "Mr Ralph Richardson makes Drummond as brave and stupid on the screen as he is in print."
Over the next two years Richardson appeared in six plays in London ranging from Peter Pan (as Mr Darling and Captain Hook) to Cornelius, an allegorical play written for and dedicated to him by J. B. Priestley. Cornelius ran for two months; this was less than expected, and left Richardson with a gap in engagements in the second half of 1935. He filled it by accepting an invitation from Katharine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic to play Mercutio in their production of Romeo and Juliet on a US tour and on Broadway. Romeo was played by Maurice Evans and Juliet by Cornell. Richardson's performance greatly impressed American critics, and Cornell invited him to return to New York to co-star with her in Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra, though nothing came of this.
In 1936, London Films released Things to Come, in which Richardson played the swaggering warlord "The Boss". His performance parodied the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini so effectively that the film was immediately banned in Italy. The producer was Alexander Korda; the two men formed a long and mutually beneficial friendship. Richardson later said of Korda, "Though not so very much older than I am, I regarded him in a way as a father, and to me he was as generous as a prince." In May 1936 Richardson and Olivier jointly directed and starred in a new piece by Priestley, Bees on the Boatdeck. Both actors won excellent notices, but the play, an allegory of Britain's decline, did not attract the public. It closed after four weeks, the last in a succession of West End productions in which Richardson appeared to much acclaim but which were box-office failures. In August of the same year he finally had a long-running star part, the title role in Barré Lyndon's comedy thriller, The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse, which played for 492 performances, closing in October 1937.
After a short run in The Silent Knight, described by Miller as "a Hungarian fantasy in rhymed verse set in the fifteenth century", Richardson returned to the Old Vic for the 1937–38 season, playing Bottom once again and switching parts in Othello, playing the title role, with Olivier as Iago. The director, Tyrone Guthrie, wanted to experiment with the theory that Iago's villainy is driven by suppressed homosexual love for Othello. Olivier was willing to co-operate, but Richardson was not; audiences and most critics failed to spot the supposed motivation of Olivier's Iago, and Richardson's Othello seemed underpowered. O'Connor believes that Richardson did not succeed with Othello or Macbeth because of the characters' single-minded "blind driving passion – too extreme, too inhuman", which was incomprehensible and alien to him. It was for the same reason, in O'Connor's view, that he never attempted the title roles in Hamlet or King Lear.
Richardson made his television debut in January 1939, reprising his 1936 stage role of the chief engineer in Bees on the Boatdeck. His last stage part in the 1930s was Robert Johnson, an Everyman figure, in Priestley's Johnson Over Jordan directed by Basil Dean. It was an experimental piece, using music (by Benjamin Britten) and dance as well as dialogue, and was another production in which Richardson was widely praised but which did not prosper at the box-office. After it closed, in May 1939, he did not act on stage for more than five years.
### Second World War
At the outbreak of war Richardson joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a sub-lieutenant pilot. He had taken flying lessons during the 1930s and had logged 200 hours of flying time, but, though a notoriously reckless driver, he admitted to being a timid pilot. He counted himself lucky to have been accepted, but the Fleet Air Arm was short of pilots. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-commander. His work was mostly routine administration, probably because of "the large number of planes which seemed to fall to pieces under his control", through which he acquired the nickname "Pranger" Richardson. He served at several bases in the south of England, and in April 1941, at the Royal Naval Air Station, Lee-on-Solent, he was able to welcome Olivier, newly commissioned as a temporary sub-lieutenant. Olivier rapidly eclipsed Richardson's record for pranging.
In 1942, on his way to visit his wife at the cottage where she was cared for by a devoted couple, Richardson crashed his motor-bike and was in hospital for several weeks. Kit was at that point mobile enough to visit him, but later in the year her condition worsened and in October she died. He was intensely lonely, though the camaraderie of naval life was some comfort. In 1944 he married again. His second wife was the actress Meriel Forbes, a member of the Forbes-Robertson theatrical family. The marriage brought him lifelong happiness and a son, Charles (1945–98), who became a television stage manager.
During the war Richardson compered occasional morale-boosting shows at the Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere, and made one short film and three full-length ones, including The Silver Fleet, in which he played a Dutch Resistance hero, and The Volunteer, a propaganda film in which he appeared as himself.
Throughout the war Guthrie had striven to keep the Old Vic company going, even after German bombing in 1942 left the theatre a near-ruin. A small troupe toured the provinces, with Sybil Thorndike at its head. By 1944, with the tide of the war turning, Guthrie felt it time to re-establish the company in a London base, and invited Richardson to head it. Richardson made two stipulations: first, as he was unwilling to seek his own release from the forces, the governing board of the Old Vic should explain to the authorities why it should be granted; secondly, that he should share the acting and management in a triumvirate. Initially he proposed Gielgud and Olivier as his colleagues, but the former declined, saying, "It would be a disaster, you would have to spend your whole time as referee between Larry and me." It was finally agreed that the third member would be the stage director John Burrell. The Old Vic governors approached the Royal Navy to secure the release of Richardson and Olivier; the Sea Lords consented, with, as Olivier put it, "a speediness and lack of reluctance which was positively hurtful."
### Old Vic, 1944–47
The triumvirate secured the New Theatre for their first season and recruited a company. Thorndike was joined by, among others, Harcourt Williams, Joyce Redman and Margaret Leighton. It was agreed to open with a repertory of four plays: Peer Gynt, Arms and the Man, Richard III and Uncle Vanya. Richardson's roles were Peer, Bluntschli, Richmond and Vanya; Olivier played the Button Moulder, Sergius, Richard and Astrov. The first three productions met with acclaim from reviewers and audiences; Uncle Vanya had a mixed reception. The Times thought Olivier's Astrov "a most distinguished portrait" and Richardson's Vanya "the perfect compound of absurdity and pathos". Agate, on the other hand, commented, "'Floored for life, sir, and jolly miserable' is what Uncle Vanya takes three acts to say. And I just cannot believe in Mr Richardson wallowing in misery: his voice is the wrong colour." In 1945 the company toured Germany, where they were seen by many thousands of Allied servicemen; they also appeared at the Comédie-Française theatre in Paris, the first foreign company to be given that honour. The critic Harold Hobson wrote that Richardson and Olivier quickly "made the Old Vic the most famous theatre in the Anglo-Saxon world."
The second season, in 1945, featured two double-bills. The first consisted of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. Olivier played the warrior Hotspur in the first and the doddering Justice Shallow in the second. He received good notices, but by general consent the production belonged to Richardson as Falstaff. Agate wrote, "He had everything the part wants – the exuberance, the mischief, the gusto. ... Here is something better than virtuosity in character-acting – the spirit of the part shining through the actor." As a teenager, the director Peter Hall saw the production; he said fifty years later, "Of the performances I've seen in my life I'm gladdest I saw that." In the second double bill it was Olivier who dominated, in the title roles of Oedipus Rex and The Critic. Richardson took the supporting role of Tiresias in the first, and the silent, cameo part of Lord Burleigh in the second. After the London season the company played both the double-bills and Uncle Vanya in a six-week season on Broadway.
The third, and final, season under the triumvirate was in 1946–47. Olivier played King Lear, and Richardson, Cyrano de Bergerac. Olivier would have preferred the roles to be cast the other way about, but Richardson did not wish to attempt Lear. Richardson's other roles in the season were Inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls, Face in The Alchemist and John of Gaunt in Richard II, which he directed, with Alec Guinness in the title role.
During the run of Cyrano, Richardson was knighted in the 1947 New Year Honours, to Olivier's undisguised envy. The younger man received the accolade six months later, by which time the days of the triumvirate were numbered. The high profile of the two star actors did not endear them to the new chairman of the Old Vic governors, Lord Esher. He had ambitions to be the first head of the National Theatre and had no intention of letting actors run it. He was encouraged by Guthrie, who, having instigated the appointment of Richardson and Olivier, had come to resent their knighthoods and international fame. Esher terminated their contracts while both were out of the country, and they and Burrell were said to have "resigned".
Looking back in 1971, Bernard Levin wrote that the Old Vic company of 1944 to 1947 "was probably the most illustrious that has ever been assembled in this country". The Times said that the triumvirate's years were the greatest in the Old Vic's history; as The Guardian put it, "the governors summarily sacked them in the interests of a more mediocre company spirit".
### International fame
For Richardson, parting company with the Old Vic brought the advantage of being free, for the first time, to earn substantial pay. The company's highest salary had been £40 a week. After his final Old Vic season he made two films in quick succession for Korda. The first, Anna Karenina, with Vivien Leigh, was an expensive failure, although Richardson's notices in the role of Karenin were excellent. The second, The Fallen Idol, had notable commercial and critical success, and won awards in Europe and America. It remained one of Richardson's favourites of his films. In Miller's words, "Carol Reed's sensitive direction drew faultless performances not just from Ralph as Baines (the butler and mistakenly suspected murderer), but also from Michèle Morgan as his mistress, Sonia Dresdel as his cold-hearted wife, and especially from Bobby Henrey as the distraught boy, Philippe."
Richardson had gained a national reputation as a great actor while at the Old Vic; films gave him the opportunity to reach an international audience. Unlike some of his theatre colleagues, he was never condescending about film work. He admitted that film could be "a cage for an actor, but a cage in which they sometimes put a little gold", but he did not regard filming as merely a means of subsidising his much less profitable stage work. He said, "I've never been one of those chaps who scoff at films. I think they're a marvellous medium, and are to the stage what engravings are to painting. The theatre may give you big chances, but the cinema teaches you the details of craftsmanship." The Fallen Idol was followed by Richardson's first Hollywood part. He played Dr Sloper, the overprotective father of Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress, based on Henry James's novel Washington Square. The film did not prosper at the box-office despite good reviews, an Academy Award for Best Actress for Havilland, and nominations for the director (William Wyler) and Richardson.
The Heiress had been a Broadway play before it was a film. Richardson so liked his part that he decided to play it in the West End, with Ashcroft as Sloper's daughter Catherine. The piece was to open in February 1949 at Richardson's favourite theatre, the Haymarket. Rehearsals were chaotic. Burrell, whom Richardson had asked to direct, was not up to the task – possibly, Miller speculates, because of nervous exhaustion from the recent traumas at the Old Vic. With only a week to go before the first performance, the producer, Binkie Beaumont, asked him to stand down, and Gielgud was recruited in his place. Matters improved astonishingly; the production was a complete success and ran in London for 644 performances.
After one long run in The Heiress, Richardson appeared in another, R. C. Sherriff's Home at Seven, in 1950. He played an amnesiac bank clerk who fears he may have committed murder. He later recreated the part in a radio broadcast, and in a film version, which was his sole venture into direction for the screen. Once he had played himself into a role in a long run, Richardson felt able to work during the daytime in films, and made two others in the early 1950s beside the film of the Sherriff piece: Outcast of the Islands, directed by Carol Reed, and David Lean's The Sound Barrier, released in 1951 and 1952 respectively. For the latter he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. With his characteristic liking for switching between modern roles and the classics, his next stage part was Colonel Vershinin in Three Sisters in 1951. He headed a strong cast, with Renée Asherson, Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson as the sisters, but reviewers found the production weakly directed, and some felt that Richardson failed to disguise his positive personality when playing the ineffectual Vershinin. He did not attempt Chekhov again for more than a quarter of a century.
In 1952 Richardson appeared at the Stratford-upon-Avon Festival at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (forerunner of the Royal Shakespeare Company). His return to Shakespeare for the first time since his Old Vic days was keenly anticipated, but turned out to be a serious disappointment. He had poor reviews for his Prospero in The Tempest, judged too prosaic. In the second production of the festival his Macbeth, directed by Gielgud, was generally considered a failure. He was thought unconvincingly villainous; the influential young critic Kenneth Tynan professed himself "unmoved to the point of paralysis", though blaming the director more than the star. Richardson's third and final role in the Stratford season, Volpone in Ben Jonson's play, received much better, but not ecstatic, notices. He did not play at Stratford again.
Back in the West End, Richardson was in another Sherriff play, The White Carnation, in 1953, and in November of the same year he and Gielgud starred together in N. C. Hunter's A Day by the Sea, which ran at the Haymarket for 386 performances. During this period, Richardson played Dr Watson in an American/BBC radio co-production of Sherlock Holmes stories, with Gielgud as Holmes and Orson Welles as the evil Professor Moriarty. These recordings were later released commercially on disc.
In late 1954 and early 1955 Richardson and his wife toured Australia together with Sybil Thorndike and her husband, Lewis Casson, playing Terence Rattigan's plays The Sleeping Prince and Separate Tables. The following year he worked with Olivier again, playing Buckingham to Olivier's Richard in the 1955 film of Richard III. Olivier, who directed, was exasperated at his old friend's insistence on playing the role sympathetically.
Richardson turned down the role of Estragon in Peter Hall's premiere of the English language version of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 1955, and later reproached himself for missing the chance to be in "the greatest play of my generation". He had consulted Gielgud, who dismissed the piece as rubbish, and even after discussing the play with the author, Richardson could not understand the play or the character. Richardson's Timon of Athens in his 1956 return to the Old Vic was well received, as was his Broadway appearance in The Waltz of the Toreadors for which he was nominated for a Tony Award in 1957. He concluded the 1950s with two contrasting West End successes, Robert Bolt's Flowering Cherry, and Graham Greene's The Complaisant Lover. The former, a sad piece about a failed and deluded insurance manager, ran for 435 performances in 1957–58; Richardson co-starred with three leading ladies in succession: Celia Johnson, Wendy Hiller and his wife. Greene's comedy was a surprise hit, running for 402 performances from June 1959. Throughout rehearsals the cast treated the love-triangle theme as one of despair, and were astonished to find themselves playing to continual laughter. During the run, Richardson worked by day on another Greene work, the film Our Man in Havana. Alec Guinness, who played the main role, noted "the object-lesson in upstaging in the last scene between Richardson and Noël Coward", faithfully captured by the director, Carol Reed.
### 1960s
Richardson began the 1960s with a failure. Enid Bagnold's play The Last Joke was savaged by the critics ("a meaningless jumble of pretentious whimsy" was one description). His only reason for playing in the piece was the chance of acting with Gielgud, but both men quickly regretted their involvement. Richardson then went to the US to appear in Sidney Lumet's film adaptation of Long Day's Journey into Night, alongside Katharine Hepburn. Lumet later recalled how little guidance Richardson needed. Once, the director went into lengthy detail about the playing of a scene, and when he had finished, Richardson said, "Ah, I think I know what you want – a little more flute and a little less cello". After that, Lumet was sparing with suggestions. Richardson was jointly awarded the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor prize with his co-stars Jason Robards Jr and Dean Stockwell.
Richardson's next stage role was in a starry revival of The School for Scandal, as Sir Peter Teazle, directed by Gielgud in 1962. The production was taken on a North American tour, in which Gielgud joined the cast as, he said, "the oldest Joseph Surface in the business". A revival of Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1963 was judged by the critic Sheridan Morley to have been a high-point of the actor's work in the 1960s. Richardson joined a British Council tour of South Africa and Europe the following year; he played Bottom again, and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
For his next four stage productions, Richardson was at the Haymarket. Father Carving a Statue (1964) by Graham Greene was short-lived. He had a more reliable vehicle in Shaw's You Never Can Tell (1966) in which he played the philosopher-waiter William, and in the same year he had a great success as Sir Anthony Absolute in The Rivals. The critic David Benedictus wrote of Richardson's performance, "he is choleric and gouty certainly, the script demands that he shall be, but his most engaging quality, his love for his son in spite of himself, shines through every line." In 1967 he again played Shylock; this was the last time he acted in a Shakespeare play on stage. His performance won critical praise, but the rest of the cast were less well received.
Interspersed with his stage plays, Richardson made thirteen cinema films during the decade. On screen he played historical figures including Sir Edward Carson (Oscar Wilde, 1960), W. E. Gladstone (Khartoum, 1966) and Sir Edward Grey (Oh! What a Lovely War, 1969). He was scrupulous about historical accuracy in his portrayals, and researched eras and characters in great detail before filming. Occasionally his precision was greater than directors wished, as when, in Khartoum, he insisted on wearing a small black finger-stall because the real Gladstone had worn one following an injury. After a role playing a disabled tycoon and Sean Connery's uncle in Woman of Straw, in 1965 he played Alexander Gromeko in Lean's Doctor Zhivago, an exceptionally successful film at the box office, which, together with The Wrong Box and Khartoum, earned him a BAFTA nomination for best leading actor in 1966. Other film roles from this period included Lord Fortnum (The Bed Sitting Room, 1969) and Leclerc (The Looking Glass War, 1970). The casts of Oh! What a Lovely War and Khartoum included Olivier, but he and Richardson did not appear in the same scenes, and never met during the filming. Olivier was by now running the National Theatre, temporarily based at the Old Vic, but showed little desire to recruit his former colleague for any of the company's productions.
In 1964 Richardson was the voice of General Haig in the twenty-six-part BBC documentary series The Great War. In 1967 he played Lord Emsworth on BBC television in dramatisations of P G Wodehouse's Blandings Castle stories, with his wife playing Emsworth's bossy sister Constance, and Stanley Holloway as the butler, Beach. He was nervous about acting in a television series: "I'm sixty-four and that's a bit old to be taking on a new medium." The performances divided critical opinion. The Times thought the stars "a sheer delight ... situation comedy is joy in their hands". The reviewers in The Guardian and The Observer thought the three too theatrical to be effective on the small screen. For television he recorded studio versions of two plays in which he had appeared on stage: Johnson Over Jordan (1965) and Twelfth Night (1968).
During the decade, Richardson made numerous sound recordings. For the Caedmon Audio label he re-created his role as Cyrano de Bergerac opposite Anna Massey as Roxane, and played the title role in a complete recording of Julius Caesar, with a cast that included Anthony Quayle as Brutus, John Mills as Cassius and Alan Bates as Antony. Other Caedmon recordings were Measure for Measure, The School for Scandal and No Man's Land. Richardson also recorded some English Romantic poetry, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and poems by Keats and Shelley for the label. For Decca Records Richardson recorded the narration for Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and for RCA the superscriptions for Vaughan Williams's Sinfonia antartica – both with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Prokofiev conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Vaughan Williams by André Previn.
Richardson's last stage role of the decade was in 1969, as Dr Rance in What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton. It was a conspicuous failure. The public hated the play and made the fact vociferously clear at the first night.
### 1970–74
In 1970 Richardson was with Gielgud at the Royal Court in David Storey's Home. The play is set in the gardens of a nursing home for mental patients, though this is not clear at first. The two elderly men converse in a desultory way, are joined and briefly enlivened by two more extrovert female patients, are slightly scared by another male patient, and are then left together, conversing even more emptily. The Punch critic, Jeremy Kingston wrote:
> At the end of the play, as the climax to two perfect, delicate performances, Sir Ralph and Sir John are standing, staring out above the heads of the audience, cheeks wet with tears in memory of some unnamed misery, weeping soundlessly as the lights fade on them. It makes a tragic, unforgettable close.
The play transferred to the West End and then to Broadway. In The New York Times Clive Barnes wrote, "The two men, bleakly examining the little nothingness of their lives, are John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson giving two of the greatest performances of two careers that have been among the glories of the English-speaking theater." The original cast recorded the play for television in 1972.
Back at the Royal Court in 1971 Richardson starred in John Osborne's West of Suez, after which, in July 1972, he surprised many by joining Peggy Ashcroft in a drawing-room comedy, Lloyd George Knew My Father by William Douglas-Home. Some critics felt the play was too slight for its two stars, but Harold Hobson thought Richardson found unsuspected depths in the character of the ostensibly phlegmatic General Boothroyd. The play was a hit with the public, and when Ashcroft left after four months, Celia Johnson took over until May 1973, when Richardson handed over to Andrew Cruickshank in the West End. Richardson afterwards toured the play in Australia and Canada with his wife as co-star. An Australian critic wrote, "The play is a vehicle for Sir Ralph ... but the real driver is Lady Richardson."
Richardson's film roles of the early 1970s ranged from the Crypt Keeper in Tales from the Crypt (1972) and dual roles in Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man to the Caterpillar in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972) and Dr Rank in Ibsen's A Doll's House (1973). The last of these was released at the same time as an American film of the same play, starring Jane Fonda; the timing detracted from the impact of both versions, but Richardson's performance won good reviews. In The Observer, George Melly wrote, "As for Sir Ralph as Dr Rank, he grows from the ageing elegant cynic of his first appearance (it's even a pleasure to watch him remove his top hat) to become the heroic dying stoic of his final exit without in any way forcing the pace." In 1973 Richardson received a BAFTA nomination for his performance of George IV in Lady Caroline Lamb, in which Olivier appeared as Wellington.
### 1975–1983
Peter Hall, having succeeded Olivier as director of the National Theatre, was determined to attract Ashcroft, Gielgud and Richardson into the company. In 1975 he successfully offered Richardson the title role in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, with Ashcroft and Wendy Hiller in the two main female roles. The production was one of the early successes of Hall's initially difficult tenure. The critic Michael Billington wrote that Hall had done the impossible in reconciling the contradictory aspects of the play and that "Richardson's Borkman is both moral monster and self-made superman; and the performance is full of a strange, unearthly music that belongs to this actor alone."
Richardson continued his long stage association with Gielgud in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land (1975) directed by Hall at the National. Gielgud played Spooner, a down-at-heel sponger and opportunist, and Richardson was Hirst, a prosperous but isolated and vulnerable author. There is both comedy and pain in the piece: the critic Michael Coveney called their performance "the funniest double-act in town", but Peter Hall said of Richardson, "I do not think any other actor could fill Hirst with such a sense of loneliness and creativity as Ralph does. The production was a critical and box-office success, and played at the Old Vic, in the West End, at the Lyttelton Theatre in the new National Theatre complex, on Broadway and on television, over a period of three years.
After No Man's Land, Richardson once again turned to light comedy by Douglas-Home, from whom he commissioned The Kingfisher. A story of an old love affair rekindled, it opened with Celia Johnson as the female lead. It ran for six months, and would have lasted much longer had Johnson not withdrawn, leaving Richardson unwilling to rehearse the piece with anyone else. He returned to the National, and to Chekhov, in 1978 as the aged retainer Firs in The Cherry Orchard. The notices for the production were mixed; those for Richardson's next West End play were uniformly dreadful. This was Alice's Boys, a spy and murder piece generally agreed to be preposterous. A legend, possibly apocryphal, grew that during the short run Richardson walked to the front of the stage one night and asked, "Is there a doctor in the house?" A doctor stood up, and Richardson sadly said to him, "Doctor, isn't this a terrible play?"
After this débâcle the rest of Richardson's stage career was at the National, with one late exception. He played Lord Touchwood in The Double Dealer (1978), the Master in The Fruits of Enlightenment (1979), Old Ekdal in The Wild Duck (1979) and Kitchen in Storey's Early Days, specially written for him. The last toured in North America after the London run. His final West End play was The Understanding (1982), a gentle comedy of late-flowering love. Celia Johnson was cast as his co-star, but died suddenly just before the first night. Joan Greenwood stepped into the breach, but the momentum of the production had gone, and it closed after eight weeks.
Films in which Richardson appeared in the later 1970s and early 1980s include Rollerball (1975), The Man in the Iron Mask (1977), Dragonslayer (1981) in which he played a wizard and Time Bandits (1981) in which he played the Supreme Being. In 1983 he was seen as Pfordten in Tony Palmer's Wagner; this was a film of enormous length, starring Richard Burton as Richard Wagner and was noted at the time, and subsequently, for the cameo roles of three conspiratorial courtiers, played by Gielgud, Olivier and Richardson – the only film in which the three played scenes together. For television, Richardson played Simeon in Jesus of Nazareth (1977), made studio recordings of No Man's Land (1978) and Early Days (1982), and was a guest in the 1981 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show. His last radio broadcast was in 1982 in a documentary programme about Little Tich, whom he had watched at the Brighton Hippodrome before the First World War.
In Witness for the Prosecution, a television remake of the 1957 film, he played the barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts, co-starring Deborah Kerr and Diana Rigg. In the United States, it was shown on the CBS network in December 1982. Richardson's last two films were released after his death: Give My Regards to Broad Street, with Paul McCartney, and Greystoke, a retelling of the Tarzan story. In the last, Richardson played the stern old Lord Greystoke, rejuvenated in his latter days by his lost grandson, reclaimed from the wild; he was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award. The film bears the superscription, "Dedicated to Ralph Richardson 1902–1983 – In Loving Memory"
Richardson's final stage role was Don Alberto in Inner Voices by Eduardo De Filippo at the National in 1983. The direction was criticised by reviewers, but Richardson's performance won high praise. He played an old man who denounces the next-door family for murder and then realises he dreamt it but cannot persuade the police that he was wrong. Both Punch and The New York Times found his performance "mesmerising". After the London run the piece was scheduled to go on tour in October. Just before that, Richardson suffered a series of strokes, from which he died on 10 October, at the age of eighty. All the theatres in London dimmed their lights in tribute; the funeral Mass was at Richardson's favourite church, the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory, in Soho; he was buried in Highgate Cemetery; and the following month there was a memorial service in Westminster Abbey.
## Character and reputation
As a man, Richardson was on the one hand deeply private and on the other flamboyantly unconventional. Frank Muir said of him, "It's the Ralphdom of Ralph that one has to cling to; he wasn't really quite like other people." In Coveney's phrase, "His oddness was ever startling and never hardened into mere eccentricity." Richardson would introduce colleagues to his ferrets by name, ride at high speed on his powerful motor-bike in his seventies, have a parrot flying round his study eating his pencils, or take a pet mouse out for a stroll, but behind such unorthodox behaviour there was a closely guarded self who remained an enigma to even his closest colleagues. Tynan wrote in The New Yorker that Richardson "made me feel that I have known this man all my life and that I have never met anyone who more adroitly buttonholed me while keeping me firmly at arm's length."
Richardson was not known for his political views. He reportedly voted for Winston Churchill's Conservative party in 1945, but there is little other mention of party politics in the biographies. Having been a devoted Roman Catholic as a boy, he became disillusioned with religion as a young man, but drifted back to faith: "I came to a kind of feeling I could touch a live wire through prayer". He retained his early love of painting, and listed it and tennis in his Who's Who entry as his recreations.
Peter Hall said of Richardson, "I think he was the greatest actor I have ever worked with." The director David Ayliff, son of Richardson's and Olivier's mentor, said, "Ralph was a natural actor, he couldn't stop being a perfect actor; Olivier did it through sheer hard work and determination." Comparing the two, Hobson said that Olivier always made the audience feel inferior, and Richardson always made them feel superior. The actor Edward Hardwicke agreed, saying that audiences were in awe of Olivier, "whereas Ralph would always make you feel sympathy ... you wanted to give him a big hug. But they were both giants."
Richardson thought himself temperamentally unsuited to the great tragic roles, and most reviewers agreed, but to critics of several generations he was peerless in classic comedies. Kenneth Tynan judged any Falstaff against Richardson's, which he considered "matchless", and Gielgud judged "definitive". Richardson, though hardly ever satisfied with his own performances, evidently believed he had done well as Falstaff. Hall and others tried hard to get him to play the part again, but referring to it he said, "Those things I've done in which I've succeeded a little bit, I'd hate to do again."
A leading actor of a younger generation, Albert Finney, has said that Richardson was not really an actor at all, but a magician. Miller, who interviewed many of Richardson's colleagues for his 1995 biography, notes that when talking about Richardson's acting, "magical" was a word many of them used. The Guardian judged Richardson "indisputably our most poetic actor". For The Times, he "was ideally equipped to make an ordinary character seem extraordinary or an extraordinary one seem ordinary". He himself touched on this dichotomy in his variously reported comments that acting was "merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing" or, alternatively, "dreaming to order".
Tynan, who could be brutally critical when he thought Richardson miscast, nevertheless thought there was something godlike about him, "should you imagine the Almighty to be a whimsical, enigmatic magician, capable of fearful blunders, sometimes inexplicably ferocious, at other times dazzling in his innocence and benignity". Harold Hobson wrote, "Sir Ralph is an actor who, whatever his failure in heroic parts, however short of tragic grandeur his Othello or his Macbeth may have fallen, has nevertheless, in unromantic tweeds and provincial hats, received a revelation. There are more graceful players than he upon the stage; there is none who has been so touched by Grace."
## See also
- List of British actors
- List of British Academy Award nominees and winners
- List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Oldest nominees for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
- List of actors with Academy Award nominations
|
301,737 |
Right whale
| 1,163,825,623 |
Three species of large baleen whales of the genus Eubalaena
|
[
"Balaenidae",
"Cetaceans of Europe",
"Endangered animals",
"Mammals of Japan",
"Mammals of North America",
"Taxa named by John Edward Gray"
] |
Right whales are three species of large baleen whales of the genus Eubalaena: the North Atlantic right whale (E. glacialis), the North Pacific right whale (E. japonica) and the Southern right whale (E. australis). They are classified in the family Balaenidae with the bowhead whale. Right whales have rotund bodies with arching rostrums, V-shaped blowholes and dark gray or black skin. The most distinguishing feature of a right whale is the rough patches of skin on its head, which appear white due to parasitism by whale lice. Right whales are typically 13–17 m (43–56 ft) long and weigh up to 100 short tons (91 t; 89 long tons) or more.
All three species are migratory, moving seasonally to feed or give birth. The warm equatorial waters form a barrier that isolates the northern and southern species from one another although the southern species, at least, has been known to cross the equator. In the Northern Hemisphere, right whales tend to avoid open waters and stay close to peninsulas and bays and on continental shelves, as these areas offer greater shelter and an abundance of their preferred foods. In the Southern Hemisphere, right whales feed far offshore in summer, but a large portion of the population occur in near-shore waters in winter. Right whales feed mainly on copepods but also consume krill and pteropods. They may forage the surface, underwater or even the ocean bottom. During courtship, males gather into large groups to compete for a single female, suggesting that sperm competition is an important factor in mating behavior. Gestation tends to last a year, and calves are weaned at eight months old.
Right whales were a preferred target for whalers because of their docile nature, their slow surface-skimming feeding behaviors, their tendency to stay close to the coast, and their high blubber content (which makes them float when they are killed, and which produced high yields of whale oil). Although the whales no longer face pressure from commercial whaling, humans remain by far the greatest threat to these species: the two leading causes of death are being struck by ships and entanglement in fishing gear. Today, the North Atlantic and North Pacific right whales are among the most endangered whales in the world.
## Naming
A common explanation for the name right whales is that they were regarded as the right ones to hunt, as they float when killed and often swim within sight of shore. They are quite docile and do not tend to shy away from approaching boats. As a result, they were hunted nearly to extinction during the active years of the whaling industry. However, this origin is questionable: in his history of American whaling, Eric Jay Dolin writes:
> Despite this highly plausible rationale, nobody actually knows how the right whale got its name. The earliest references to the right whale offer no indication why it was called that, and some who have studied the issue point out that the word "right" in this context might just as likely be intended "to connote 'true' or 'proper,' meaning typical of the group."
For the scientific names, the generic name Eubalaena means "good or true whales", and specific names include glacialis ("ice") for North Atlantic species, australis ("southern") for Southern Hemisphere species, and japonica ("Japanese") for North Pacific species.
## Taxonomy
The right whales were first classified in the genus Balaena in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus, who at the time considered all of the right whales (including the bowhead) as a single species. Through the 1800s and 1900s, in fact, the family Balaenidae has been the subject of great taxonometric debate. Authorities have repeatedly recategorized the three populations of right whale plus the bowhead whale, as one, two, three or four species, either in a single genus or in two separate genera. In the early whaling days, they were all thought to be a single species, Balaena mysticetus. Eventually, it was recognized that bowheads and right whales were in fact different, and John Edward Gray proposed the genus Eubalaena for the right whale in 1864. Later, morphological factors such as differences in the skull shape of northern and southern right whales indicated at least two species of right whale – one in the Northern Hemisphere, the other in the Southern Ocean. As recently as 1998, Rice, in his comprehensive and otherwise authoritative classification listed just two species: Balaena glacialis (the right whales) and Balaena mysticetus (the bowheads).
In 2000, two studies of DNA samples from each of the whale populations concluded the northern and southern populations of right whale should be considered separate species. What some scientists found more surprising was the discovery that the North Pacific and North Atlantic populations are also distinct, and that the North Pacific species is more closely related to the southern right whale than to the North Atlantic right whale. The authors of one of these studies concluded that these species have not interbred for between 3 million and 12 million years.
In 2001, Brownell et al. reevaluated the conservation status of the North Pacific right whale as a distinct species, and in 2002, the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) accepted Rosenbaum's findings, and recommended that the Eubalaena nomenclature be retained for this genus.
A 2007 study by Churchill provided further evidence to conclude that the three different living right whale species constitute a distinct phylogenetic lineage from the bowhead, and properly belong to a separate genus.
The following cladogram of the family Balaenidae serves to illustrate the current scientific consensus as to the relationships between the three right whales and the bowhead whale.
A cladogram is a tool for visualizing and comparing the evolutionary relationships between taxa; the point where each node branches is analogous to an evolutionary branching – the diagram can be read left-to-right, much like a timeline.
Whale lice, parasitic cyamid crustaceans that live off skin debris, offer further information through their own genetics. Because these lice reproduce much more quickly than whales, their genetic diversity is greater. Marine biologists at the University of Utah examined these louse genes and determined their hosts split into three species 5–6 million years ago, and these species were all equally abundant before whaling began in the 11th century. The communities first split because of the joining of North and South America. The rising temperatures of the equator then created a second split, into northern and southern groups, preventing them from interbreeding. "This puts an end to the long debate about whether there are three Eubalaena species of right whale. They really are separate beyond a doubt", Jon Seger, the project's leader, told BBC News.
### Others
The pygmy right whale (Caperea marginata), a much smaller whale of the Southern Hemisphere, was until recently considered a member of the Family Balaenidae. However, they are not right whales at all, and their taxonomy is presently in doubt. Most recent authors place this species into the monotypic Family Neobalaenidae, but a 2012 study suggests that it is instead the last living member of the Family Cetotheriidae, a family previously considered extinct.
Yet another species of right whale was proposed by Emanuel Swedenborg in the 18th century—the so-called Swedenborg whale. The description of this species was based on a collection of fossil bones unearthed at Norra Vånga, Sweden, in 1705 and believed to be those of giants. The bones were examined by Swedenborg, who realized they belong to a species of whale. The existence of this species has been debated, and further evidence for this species was discovered during the construction of a motorway in Strömstad, Sweden in 2009. To date, however, scientific consensus still considers Hunterius swedenborgii to be a North Atlantic right whale. According to a DNA analysis conducted, it was later confirmed that the fossil bones are actually from a bowhead whale.
## Characteristics
Adult right whales are typically 13–16 m (43–52 ft) long. They have extremely thick bodies with a girth as much as 60% of total body length in some cases. They have large, broad and blunt pectoral flippers and the deeply notched, smoothly tipped tail flukes make up to 40% of their body length. The North Pacific species is on average the largest of the three species. weigh 100 short tons (91 t; 89 long tons). The upper jaw of a right whale is a bit arched, and the lower lip is strongly curved. On each side of the upper jaw are 200–270 baleen plates. These are narrow and approximately 2–2.8 m (6.6–9.2 ft) long, and are covered in very thin hairs. Right whales have a distinctive wide V-shaped blow, caused by the widely spaced blowholes on the top of the head. The blow rises 5 m (16 ft) above the surface.
The skin is generally black with occasional white blotches on the body, while some individuals have mottled patterns. Unlike other whales, a right whale has distinctive callosities (roughened patches of skin) on its head. The callosities appear white due to large colonies of cyamids (whale lice). Each individual has a unique callosities pattern. In 2016, a competitive effort resulted in the use of facial recognition software to derive a process to uniquely identify right whales with about 87% accuracy based on their callosities. The primary role of callosities has been considered to be protection against predators. Right whale declines might have also reduced barnacles.
An unusually large 40% of their body weight is blubber, which is of relatively low density. Consequently, unlike many other species of whale, dead right whales tend to float. Many southern right whales are seen with rolls of fats behind blowholes that northern species often lack, and these are regarded as a sign of better health condition due to sufficient nutrition supply, and could have contributed in vast differences in recovery status between right whales in the southern and northern hemisphere, other than direct impacts by humankind.
The penis on a right whale can be up to 2.7 m (8.9 ft) – the testes, at up to 2 m (6.6 ft) in length, 78 cm (2.56 ft) in diameter, and weighing up to 525 kg (1157 lbs), are also by far the largest of any animal on Earth. The blue whale may be the largest animal on the planet, yet the testicles of the right whale are ten times the size of those of the blue whale. They also exceed predictions in terms of relative size, being six times larger than would be expected on the basis of body mass. Together, the testicles make up nearly 1% of the right whale's total body weight. This strongly suggests sperm competition is important in mating, which correlates to the fact that right whales are highly promiscuous.
## Range and habitat
The three Eubalaena species inhabit three distinct areas of the globe: the North Atlantic in the western Atlantic Ocean, the North Pacific in a band from Japan to Alaska and all areas of the Southern Ocean. The whales can only cope with the moderate temperatures found between 20 and 60 degrees in latitude. The warm equatorial waters form a barrier that prevents mixing between the northern and southern groups with minor exclusions. Although the southern species in particular must travel across open ocean to reach its feeding grounds, the species is not considered to be pelagic. In general, they prefer to stay close to peninsulas and bays and on continental shelves, as these areas offer greater shelter and an abundance of their preferred foods.
Because the oceans are so large, it is very difficult to accurately gauge whale population sizes. Approximate figures:
- 400 North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) live in the North Atlantic;
- 23 North Pacific right whales have been identified in the eastern North Pacific (Eubalaena japonica) and
- 15,000 southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) are spread throughout the southern part of the Southern Hemisphere.
### North Atlantic right whale
Almost all of the 400 North Atlantic right whales live in the western North Atlantic Ocean. In northern spring, summer and autumn, they feed in areas off the Canadian and northeast U.S. coasts in a range stretching from New York to Newfoundland. Particularly popular feeding areas are the Bay of Fundy and Cape Cod Bay. In winter, they head south towards Georgia and Florida to give birth. There have been a smattering of sightings further east over the past few decades; several sightings were made close to Iceland in 2003. These are possibly the remains of a virtually extinct eastern Atlantic stock, but examination of old whalers' records suggests they are more likely to be strays. However, a few sightings have happened between Norway, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the Canary Islands and Italy; at least the Norway individuals come from the Western stock.
### North Pacific right whale
The North Pacific right whale appears to occur in two populations. The population in the eastern North Pacific/Bering Sea is extremely low, numbering about 30 individuals. A larger western population of 100–200 appears to be surviving in the Sea of Okhotsk, but very little is known about this population. Thus, the two northern right whale species are the most endangered of all large whales and two of the most endangered animal species in the world. Based on current population density trends, both species are predicted to become extinct within 200 years. The Pacific species was historically found in summer from the Sea of Okhotsk in the west to the Gulf of Alaska in the east, generally north of 50°N. Today, sightings are very rare and generally occur in the mouth of the Sea of Okhotsk and in the eastern Bering Sea. Although this species is very likely to be migratory like the other two species, its movement patterns are not known.
### Southern right whale
The last major population review of southern right whales by the International Whaling Commission was in 1998. Researchers used data about adult female populations from three surveys (one in each of Argentina, South Africa and Australia) and extrapolated to include unsurveyed areas and estimated counts of males and calves (using available male:female and adult:calf ratios), giving an estimated 1997 population of 7,500 animals. More recent data from 2007 indicate those survey areas have shown evidence of strong recovery, with a population approaching twice that of a decade earlier. However, other breeding populations are still very small, and data are insufficient to determine whether they, too, are recovering.
The southern right whale spends the summer months in the far Southern Ocean feeding, probably close to Antarctica. It migrates north in winter for breeding, and can be seen around the coasts of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mozambique, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. The South American, South African and Australasian groups apparently intermix very little, if at all, because of the strong fidelity of mothers to their feeding and calving grounds. The mother passes these instincts to her calves.
## Life history
Right whales swim slowly, reaching only 5 kn (9.3 km/h) at top speed. However, they are highly acrobatic and frequently breach (jump clear of the sea surface), tail-slap and lobtail.
### Diet and predation
The right whales' diets consist primarily of zooplankton, primarily the tiny crustaceans called copepods, as well as krill, and pteropods, although they are occasionally opportunistic feeders. As with other baleens, they feed by filtering prey from the water. They swim with an open mouth, filling it with water and prey. The whale then expels the water, using its baleen plates to retain the prey. Prey must occur in sufficient numbers to trigger the whale's interest, be large enough that the baleen plates can filter it, and be slow enough that it cannot escape. The "skimming" may take place on the surface, underwater, or even at the seabed, indicated by mud occasionally observed on right whales' bodies.
The right whales' two known predators are humans and orcas. When danger lurks, a group of right whales may cluster into a circle, and thrash their outwards-pointing tails. They may also head for shallow water, which sometimes proves to be an ineffective defense. Aside from the strong tails and massive heads equipped with callosities, the sheer size of this animal is its best defense, making young calves the most vulnerable to orca and shark attacks.
### Vocalization and hearing
Vocalizations made by right whales are not elaborate compared to those made by other whale species. The whales make groans, pops and belches typically at frequencies around 500 Hz. The purpose of the sounds is not known but may be a form of communication between whales within the same group. Northern right whales responded to sounds similar to police sirens—sounds of much higher frequency than their own. On hearing the sounds, they moved rapidly to the surface. The research was of particular interest because northern rights ignore most sounds, including those of approaching boats. Researchers speculate this information may be useful in attempts to reduce the number of ship-whale collisions or to encourage the whales to surface for ease of harvesting.
### Courtship and reproduction
During the mating season, which can occur at any time in the North Atlantic, right whales gather into "surface-active groups" made up of as many as 20 males consorting a single female. The female has her belly to the surface while the males stroke her with their flippers or keep her underwater. The males do not compete as aggressively against each other as male humpbacks. The female may not become pregnant but she is still able to assess the condition of potential mates. The mean age of first parturition in North Atlantic right whales is estimated at between 7.5 and 9 years. Females breed every 3–5 years; the most commonly seen calving intervals are 3 years and may vary from 2 up to 21 years due to multiple factors.
Both reproduction and calving take place during the winter months. Calves are approximately 1 short ton (0.91 t; 0.89 long tons) in weight and 4–6 m (13–20 ft) in length at birth following a gestation period of 1 year. The right whale grows rapidly in its first year, typically doubling in length. Weaning occurs after eight months to one year and the growth rate in later years is not well understood—it may be highly dependent on whether a calf stays with its mother for a second year.
Respective congregation areas in the same region may function as for different objectives for whales.
### Lifespan
Very little is known about the life span of right whales. One of the few well-documented cases is of a female North Atlantic right whale that was photographed with a baby in 1935, then photographed again in 1959, 1980, 1985, and 1992. Consistent callosity patterns ensured it was the same animal. She was last photographed in 1995 with a seemingly fatal head wound, presumably from a ship strike. By conservative estimates (e.g. she was a new mother who had just reached sexual maturity in 1935), she was nearly 70 years to more than 100 years of age, if not older. Research on the closely related bowhead whale exceeding 210 years suggests this lifespan is not uncommon and may even be exceeded.
## Relationship to humans
### Whaling
In the early centuries of shore-based whaling before 1712, right whales were virtually the only catchable large whales, for three reasons:
- They often swam close to shore where they could be spotted by beach lookouts, and hunted from beach-based whaleboats.
- They are relatively slow swimmers, allowing whalers to catch up to them in their whaleboats.
- Once killed by harpoons, they were more likely to float, and thus could be retrieved. However, some did sink when killed (10–30% in the North Pacific) and were lost unless they later stranded or surfaced.
Basque people were the first to hunt right whales commercially, beginning as early as the 11th century in the Bay of Biscay. They initially sought oil, but as meat preservation technology improved, the animal was also used for food. Basque whalers reached eastern Canada by 1530 and the shores of Todos os Santos Bay (in Bahia, Brazil) by 1602. The last Basque voyages were made before the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). All attempts to revive the trade after the war failed. Basque shore whaling continued sporadically into the 19th century.
"Yankee whalers" from the new American colonies replaced the Basques. Setting out from Nantucket, Massachusetts, and Long Island, New York, they took up to a hundred animals in good years. By 1750, the commercial hunt of the North Atlantic right whale was essentially over. The Yankee whalers moved into the South Atlantic before the end of the 18th century. The southernmost Brazilian whaling station was established in 1796, in Imbituba. Over the next hundred years, Yankee whaling spread into the Southern and Pacific Oceans, where the Americans were joined by fleets from several European nations. The beginning of the 20th century saw much greater industrialization of whaling, and the harvest grew rapidly. According to whalers' records, by 1937 there had been 38,000 takes in the South Atlantic, 39,000 in the South Pacific, 1,300 in the Indian Ocean, and 15,000 in the North Pacific. The incompleteness of these records means the actual take was somewhat higher.
As it became clear the stocks were nearly depleted, the world banned right whaling in 1937. The ban was largely successful, although violations continued for several decades. Madeira took its last two right whales in 1968. Japan took twenty-three Pacific right whales in the 1940s and more under scientific permit in the 1960s. Illegal whaling continued off the coast of Brazil for many years, and the Imbituba land station processed right whales until 1973. The Soviet Union illegally took at least 3,212 southern right whales during the 1950s and '60s, although it reported taking only four.
### Whale watching
The southern right whale has made Hermanus, South Africa, one of the world centers for whale watching. During the winter months (July–October), southern right whales come so close to the shoreline, visitors can watch whales from strategically placed hotels. The town employs a "whale crier" (cf. town crier) to walk through the town announcing where whales have been seen. In Brazil, Imbituba in Santa Catarina has been recognized as the National Right Whale Capital and holds annual Right Whale Week celebrations in September when mothers and calves are more often seen. The old whaling station there has been converted to a museum dedicated to the whales. In winter in Argentina, Península Valdés in Patagonia hosts the largest breeding population of the species, with more than 2,000 animals catalogued by the Whale Conservation Institute and Ocean Alliance.
## Conservation
Both the North Atlantic and North Pacific species are listed as a "species threatened with extinction which [is] or may be affected by trade" (Appendix I) by CITES, and as "endangered" by the IUCN Red List. In the United States, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a subagency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has classified all three species as "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, they are listed as "depleted".
The southern right whale is listed as "endangered" under the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, as "nationally endangered" under the New Zealand Threat Classification System, as a "natural monument" by the Argentine National Congress, and as a "State Natural Monument" under the Brazilian National Endangered Species List.
The US and Brazil added new protections for right whales in the 2000s to address the two primary hazards. While environmental campaigners were, as reported in 2001, pleased about the plan's positive effects, they attempted to force the US government to do more. In particular, they advocated 12 knots (22 km/h) speed limits for ships within 40 km (25 mi) of US ports in times of high right whale presence. Citing concerns about excessive trade disruption, it did not institute greater protections. The Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States and the Ocean Conservancy sued the NMFS in September 2005 for "failing to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, which the agency acknowledges is 'the rarest of all large whale species' and which federal agencies are required to protect by both the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act", demanding emergency protection measures.
The southern right whale, listed as "endangered" by CITES and "lower risk - conservation dependent" by the IUCN, is protected in the jurisdictional waters of all countries with known breeding populations (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay). In Brazil, a federal Environmental Protection Area encompassing some 1,560 km<sup>2</sup> (600 sq mi) and 130 km (81 mi) of coastline in Santa Catarina State was established in 2000 to protect the species' main breeding grounds in Brazil and promote whale watching.
On February 6, 2006, NOAA proposed its Strategy to Reduce Ship Strikes to North Atlantic Right Whales. The proposal, opposed by some shipping interests, limited ship speeds during calving season. The proposal was made official when on December 8, 2008, NOAA issued a press release that included the following:
- Effective January 2009, ships 65 feet (20 m) or longer are limited to 10 knots (19 km/h) in waters off New England when whales begin gathering in this area as part of their annual migration. The restriction extends to 20 nautical miles (37 km) around major mid-Atlantic ports.
- The speed restriction applies in waters off New England and the southeastern US, where whales gather seasonally:
- Southeastern US from St. Augustine, Florida to Brunswick, Georgia from Nov 15 to April 15
- Mid-Atlantic U.S. areas from Rhode Island to Georgia from Nov 1 to April 30.
- Cape Cod Bay from Jan 1 to May 15
- Off Race Point at the northern end of Cape Cod from March 1 to April 30
- Great South Channel of New England from April 1 to July 31
- Temporary voluntary speed limits in other areas or times when a group of three or more right whales is confirmed
- Scientists would assess the rule's effectiveness before the rule expires in 2013.
In 2020, NOAA published its assessment and found that since the speed rule was adopted, the total number of documented deaths from vessel strike decreased but serious and non-serious injuries have increased. A report by the organization Oceana found that between 2017 and 2020, disobedience of the rule reached close to 90% in mandatory speed zones while in voluntary areas, disobedience neared 85%.
### Threats
The leading cause of death among the North Atlantic right whale, which migrates through some of the world's busiest shipping lanes while journeying off the east coast of the United States and Canada, is being struck by ships. At least sixteen ship-strike deaths were reported between 1970 and 1999, and probably more remain unreported. According to NOAA, twenty-five of the seventy-one right whale deaths reported since 1970 resulted from ship strikes.
A second major cause of morbidity and mortality in the North Atlantic right whale is entanglement in plastic fishing gear. Right whales ingest plankton with wide-open mouths, risking entanglement in any rope or net fixed in the water column. Rope wraps around their upper jaws, flippers and tails. Some are able to escape, but others remain tangled. Whales can be successfully disentangled, if observed and aided. In July 1997, the U.S. NOAA introduced the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan, which seeks to minimize whale entanglement in fishing gear and record large whale sightings in an attempt to estimate numbers and distribution.
In 2012, the U.S. Navy proposed to create a new undersea naval training range immediately adjacent to northern right whale calving grounds in shallow waters off the Florida/Georgia border. Legal challenges by leading environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council were denied in federal court, allowing the Navy to proceed. These rulings were made despite the extremely low numbers (as low as 313 by some estimates) of right whales in existence at this time, and a very poor calving season.
|
398,887 |
Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz
| 1,162,153,018 |
Prussian cavalry general (1721–1773)
|
[
"1721 births",
"1773 deaths",
"Barons of Germany",
"Cavalry commanders",
"Deaths from syphilis",
"Generals of Cavalry (Prussia)",
"Military personnel from North Rhine-Westphalia",
"People from Kleve (district)",
"People from the Duchy of Cleves",
"People of the Silesian Wars",
"Prussian military personnel of the Seven Years' War",
"Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (military class)"
] |
Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Seydlitz (3 February 1721 – 8 November 1773) was a Prussian officer, lieutenant general, and among the greatest of the Prussian cavalry generals. He commanded one of the first Hussar squadrons of Frederick the Great's army and is credited with the development of the Prussian cavalry to its efficient level of performance in the Seven Years' War. His cavalryman father retired and then died while Seydlitz was still young. Subsequently, he was mentored by Margrave Frederick William of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Seydlitz's superb horsemanship and his recklessness combined to make him a stand-out subaltern, and he emerged as a redoubtable Rittmeister (cavalry captain) in the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) during the First and Second Silesian Wars.
Seydlitz became legendary throughout the Prussian Army both for his leadership and for his reckless courage. During the Seven Years' War, he came into his own as a cavalry general, known for his coup d'œil, his ability to assess at a glance the entire battlefield situation and to understand intuitively what needed to be done: he excelled at converting the King's directives into flexible tactics. At the Battle of Rossbach, his cavalry was instrumental in routing the French and Imperial armies. His cavalry subsequently played an important role in crushing the Habsburg and Imperial left flank at the Battle of Leuthen. Seydlitz was wounded in battle several times. After the Battle of Kunersdorf in August 1759, he semi-retired to recover from his wounds, charged with the protection of the city of Berlin. He was not healthy enough to campaign again until 1761.
Frederick rewarded him with Order of the Black Eagle on the field after the Battle of Rossbach; he had already received the Pour le Mérite for his action at the Battle of Kolin. Although estranged from Frederick for several years, the two were reconciled during Seydlitz's final illness. Seydlitz died in 1773, and Frederick's heirs included his name on the Equestrian statue of Frederick the Great in Berlin, in a place of honor.
## Early life
Seydlitz was born on 3 February 1721, in Kalkar in the Duchy of Cleves, where his father, Daniel Florian von Seydlitz, was a major of Prussian cavalry with the Cuirassier Regiment Markgraf Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Schwedt No. 5. In 1726, his father left military service and moved the family to Schwedt, where he became a forestry master in East Prussia; the senior Seydlitz died in 1728, leaving a widow and children in restricted financial circumstances. Limited schooling was available to young Seydlitz; sources differ whether he knew how to speak and write in French, the lingua franca of Frederick the Great's Court. One biographer, Bernhard von Poten, maintained that his German was good, and if he knew French, he preferred German and wrote it with a "fine, firm hand, unusually correct, in well-formed sentences and with apt expression," and he knew enough Latin to express himself well. His future sovereign, Frederick, always addressed him in German.
By Seydlitz's seventh year, he could ride a horse well, raced with older boys, and he was, by most accounts, a wild and high-spirited child. At the age of fourteen he went as a page to the court of the Margrave Frederick Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Schwedt, who had been his father's colonel. The Margrave was a grandson of the Great Elector, and a nephew to both Frederick I of Prussia and Leopold of Anhalt Dessau. Himself a reckless man, the "Mad" Margrave inspired in young Seydlitz a passion for feats of daredevil horsemanship. Seydlitz did not limit this passion to horses: the Margrave once dared him to ride a wild stag, which he did. Seydlitz became a skilled horseman, and many stories tell of his feats, the best known of which involved riding between the sails of a windmill in full swing. Seydlitz remained in his position as a page to the Margrave until King Frederick William appointed him as cornet in the Margrave's Cuirassier Regiment No. 5 (his father's old regiment) on 13 February 1740.
## Military career
Seydlitz's first months as a cornet were made difficult by the regimental colonel, who considered him a spy for the Margrave, and abused him by sending him on useless errands and generally making it clear that the cornet was no match for the colonel. Within a year of Seydlitz's commission, the old King Frederick William died and his son, Frederick II of Prussia, ascended to the throne. Frederick claimed Silesia from the Habsburg's Maria Theresa, and made a broad appeal to arms. The Margrave's regiment played an important role in the ensuing war, during which Seydlitz came to the notice of the King several times. Once, when Frederick asked the caliber of the artillery shelling the Prussian line, opinions were divided and vague. Seydlitz rode in front of the battery, halting in their line of fire. When he saw a ball hit the ground, he picked it up, wrapped it in his handkerchief and presented it to the King.
In May 1742, while stationed with his regiment in Kranowitz during the First Silesian War, the regimental colonel ordered him to take 30 men and hold a village post until infantry came to his assistance; despite heavy fire, the grudging colonel did not send reinforcements. Realizing what had happened, the brigade's general took three squadrons of heavy cavalry to relieve Seydlitz, but these were turned back by fire from the Austrian line. Subsequently, Seydlitz was forced to surrender his small unit. He entered into Austrian captivity with several of his closest comrades, including Charles de Warnery.
Frederick exchanged an Austrian captain for Cornet Seydlitz. Upon his return from captivity, Seydlitz had a choice to wait for the first lieutenancy that became available in a cuirassier regiment, or take the immediate command of a troop of hussars, as a captain. Hussars were the newest form of service in the Prussian army, and not as prestigious an assignment as cuirassiers, but Seydlitz chose the immediate promotion to a lesser unit. In 1743, the King made him a Rittmeister (captain) in the 4th Hussars. He entirely skipped the rank of lieutenant. With the 4th Hussars, he was stationed in the city of Trebnitz and he brought his squadron to a state of conspicuous efficiency.
In August 1744, the King entered Bohemia, took Prague, and then moved south. Lieutenant General Count Nassau led the vanguard, and Seydlitz participated with the Natzmer Hussars, commanded by Major Hans Heinrich Adam Schütz, a violent man of whose conduct of warfare Seydlitz disapproved. Seydlitz served through the Second Silesian War. On 22 May, Hans Karl von Winterfeldt, trusted by the King as a good judge of character, reported to Frederick: "Certainly, at Hohenfriedberg, on the 4 June, [Seydlitz] captured the Saxon general [Georg Sigismund] von Schlichting personally, after he had cut the reins from him." Based largely on his conduct at Hohenfriedberg and Winterfeldt's recommendation, Frederick promoted Seydlitz to major on 28 July at the unusually young age of twenty-four.
Seydlitz led his squadron at the Battle of Soor on 30 September, scouting the enemy's position before the battle, and then participating in the action. He was also present in the engagement at Katholisch-Hennersdorf on 23 November, which proved convincingly to Frederick the benefit of close support during a cavalry charge. At the successful action on 27 November, Seydlitz led 15 squadrons in an attack on the Austrian rear guard. The Austrians were dispersed and nearly destroyed.
### Development of cavalry tactics
After Frederick concluded the peace on 25 December 1748, Seydlitz returned with his squadron to Trebnitz. In the subsequent years of peace, Seydlitz developed flexible cavalry tactics. He assembled a plan on tactical form and training for the Prussian cavalry and presented it to the King. Frederick approved the procedures and Seydlitz established a rigorous training program. He would leave his own estate by jumping the gate; he required similar horsemanship from all his men, regardless of whether they were cuirassiers, hussars or dragoons. They had to be capable of galloping across broken fields, wheeling in formation, and riding in close action. Furthermore, they had to be prepared to support any movement of infantry, or to react to any action from the enemy. Under Seydlitz's direction, possibly influenced by the ideas of Frederik Sirtema van Grovestins, Prussian cavalry learned to use only their swords, as pistols or carbines could not be fired with accuracy and had to be reloaded. Frederick set up straw dummies for his troopers to shoot; their shots were woefully inaccurate, but Seydlitz's tactics demonstrated that the troopers could hit their target with a sword every time. Generally, cavalry horses were the sturdy warm-blood Trakehners, from Frederick's stud farm in Trakenhen, East Prussia.
On 21 September 1752, after a successful review in which the different cavalry forms demonstrated their competencies, the King promoted Seydlitz to lieutenant colonel and the commander-in-chief of cavalry and, on 13 October of the same year, to the commander of the Dragoon Regiment Württemberg No. 12, whose staff was at Treptow. Frederick was not satisfied with the regiment's performance, and instructed Seydlitz to "put it back into order". In 1753 Frederick appointed Seydlitz to the command of the 8th Cuirassiers. In Seydlitz's hands, this regiment soon became a model for the rest of the Prussian Army's mounted force. In 1755 Frederick promoted him to colonel.
By the start of the Seven Years' War, Seydlitz's transformed cavalry had become Frederick's pride and joy: it had unrivaled training and an esprit de corps bolstered by Frederick's confidence in its members, and by their confidence in Seydlitz. The King had issued orders that no Prussian cavalryman would allow himself to be attacked without a commensurate response, under penalty of being cashiered; consequently, Prussian cavalrymen were active, impetuous and aggressive. For the King, Seydlitz's cavalry became the dynamic factor in the army of the state, and would be the tool by which Frederick could challenge empires. In 1756, Seydlitz's cavalry became Frederick's weapon of choice.
## Seven Years' War
In May 1757, in defiance of the custom of holding the heavy cavalry in reserve, Seydlitz brought his regiment forward to join the advance guard at the Battle of Prague. Here he nearly lost his life attempting to ride through a marshy pool; his horse became stuck in quicksand and his troopers pulled him away. At the Prussian loss at Kolin in June 1757, he and a cavalry brigade checked the Austrian pursuit by a brilliant charge. Two days later, the King promoted him to major general and awarded him the Pour le Mérite. Seydlitz felt he had deserved the promotion for a long time, for he responded to Hans Joachim von Zieten's congratulations by saying, "It was high time, Excellency, if they wanted more work out of me. I am already thirty-six."
Another example of his leadership and his coup d'œil, the ability to see at a glance what needed to be done, occurred after the Battle of Kolin. The loss at Kolin forced the King to lift the siege at Prague. The King's brother, Augustus William, took command of the army and ordered the retreat from Prague. Seydlitz was attached to the advanced corps of Karl Christoph von Schmettau in a brigade of ten squadrons. As Seydlitz's wing entered Lusatia, near the town of Zittau, the Austrians were present in force, and Seydlitz with his squadrons were trapped in the town. Tricking the Austrians into thinking his troop was a foraging party, his cavalry burst on the Austrian cavalry before they could climb into their saddles. Seydlitz led his cavalry in an escape, in close column, and was quickly out of sight.
### Battle of Rossbach
On the morning of the Battle of Rossbach, Frederick passed over two senior generals and placed Seydlitz in command of the whole of the cavalry, much to those men's annoyance and to Seydlitz's satisfaction. At Rossbach, Seydlitz's coup d'œil and his understanding of the King's objectives led to battlefield success. After positioning the cavalry in two ranked lines, he watched the French army move for several minutes, while puffing on his pipe; his troopers never took their eyes off him. When he threw his pipe away, this was the signal they had waited for: the first line of massed squadrons surged forward, smashing the unprepared French in the flank. Typically, cavalry action in the mid-eighteenth century meant a single cavalry charge; the cavalry would spend the rest of the action pursuing fleeing troops. At Rossbach, though, not content with this single attack, Seydlitz called his second formation of squadrons in another charge; he then withdrew all 38 squadrons into a copse, where they regrouped under cover of the trees. Without waiting for new orders from the King, Seydlitz deployed the Prussian cavalry a third time; this proved a critical factor in the battle. As trained, Seydlitz's squadrons charged headlong into the French columns: a massive wall of horses galloping flank to flank, their riders flashing swords and maneuvering at full speed. By the end of the battle, only seven infantry battalions of Frederick's army had fired a shot; the rest of the victory had been the work of Seydlitz's 38 squadrons and Karl Friedrich von Moller's artillery.
That day, the Prussians took as trophies 72 cannons (62 percent of the French/Imperial artillery), seven flags, and 21 standards. With some 3,500 horsemen and 20 cannons, plus a portion of Prince Henry's regiment of infantry, the Prussian army had defeated the combined armies of two European powers, France and the Holy Roman Empire. The tactics at Rossbach became a landmark in the history of military art. The same night, on the field, the King awarded Seydlitz the Order of the Black Eagle, and promoted him to lieutenant general. Seydlitz had been wounded during the melée and he remained out of action for four months, nursed by a lady in Leipzig.
### Campaign 1758–59
Seydlitz rejoined the King in 1758 and on 25 August, at the Battle of Zorndorf, Seydlitz's cavalry again secured the victory. He led thirty-six squadrons into a mass of Russian cavalry mingled with infantry. This charge broke the Russian right wing and sent them running for the woods. At the Prussian debacle at Hochkirch, on 14 October 1758, he covered the Prussian retreat with 108 squadrons, and in the disaster of Kunersdorf, on 12 August 1759, he received another severe wound in a hopeless attempt to storm a hill held by the Russians; his 8th Cuirassiers was one of the few intact regiments at the end of the battle. While recuperating in Berlin, he helped organize a defense of the city during the Austro-Russian raid (October 1760). Although he was unable to prevent the Russians from briefly occupying the city, Frederick later praised Seydlitz for his conduct.
Seydlitz's health frequently kept him off the battlefield, and he did not reappear at the front until 1761. Then, he received command of a wing of Prince Henry's army, composed of troops of all arms, and many of his fellow officers expressed doubts as to his fitness for this command, as his service had been with the cavalry exclusively. Subsequently, though, at Freiberg on 29 October 1762, his direction of both his infantry and his cavalry in turn decided the outcome of the battle.
## Later life
After the Seven Years' War concluded with the Treaty of Hubertusburg (1763), Seydlitz became inspector general of the cavalry in Silesia, where eleven regiments were permanently stationed and where Frederick sent all his most promising officers to be trained. In 1767, Frederick promoted Seydlitz to general of cavalry.
Seydlitz's later years were marred by domestic unhappiness. During his convalescence in Berlin, on 18 April 1761, he had married Susannah Johanna Albertine Hacke, daughter of Hans Christoph Friedrich Graf von Hacke, and she was eventually unfaithful to him, reportedly due to the syphilis from which he had suffered for decades. He had at least one daughter, according to an early biographer, Anton König, and two according to another biographer, Robert Lawley. The oldest daughter married first to an official from Breslau, and was divorced. She married second to a Polish count, and divorced soon after. She eventually converted to Catholicism, but died in a madhouse in Brieg. The youngest lived to old age and died in poverty near Lausitz.
By the end of the decade, some misunderstanding brought an end to his formerly close friendship with the King. Seydlitz's health had been declining for years and he suffered from recurrent bouts of syphilis; in 1772, after an attack of apoplexy, he completed a couple of stays at the spa at Carlsbad to take the mineral waters. While these helped somewhat, his other activities continued without moderation, and to his detriment. A subordinate brought him two healthy Circassian beauties, whose company he enjoyed but who undoubtedly stressed his tenuous health. In August 1773, in his last illness, Frederick and Seydlitz met again at Seydlitz's home at Minkovsky near Ohlau (now Oława, Poland). The King sat beside his sickbed, horrified at Seydlitz's condition, and even persuaded him to take some of his medications, but Seydlitz would not look at him; the illness had already deformed his face. Eventually paralyzed, whether from another stroke or the underlying tertiary syphilis, Seydlitz died at Ohlau in Silesia in November 1773.
## Character
Seydlitz was generally admired for the superb coup d'œil that allowed him to utilize the cavalry to its full potential. His 19th-century biographer, K. A. Varnhagen von Ense, related that Seydlitz lived above all for the service, and promoted the training of his hussars before all else. According to Anton Balthasar König, who wrote in 1780–1790, Seydlitz performed best at taverns and excelled in practical jokes: one would gather that Seydlitz was a drunkard, a rake, and a savage, but another of his biographers, Bernhard von Poten, cited conflicting descriptions offered by Seydlitz's contemporaries, particularly Warnery, as more accurate. Nevertheless, there is some evidence to support König's assertion, at least of Seydlitz's excesses: Seydlitz was no doubt dependent upon his tobacco and had been since his teenage years, although he smoked a pipe rather than using snuff, as many officers did; he was indeed reckless, as his career testified; he enjoyed the company of women; and Seydlitz indeed suffered from recurring illness.
## Memorials
In 1851, Frederick William IV, Frederick's great-great nephew, included Seydlitz's name on the Equestrian statue of Frederick the Great in Berlin, honoring those who had helped to build the Prussian state. Seydlitz holds a position of honor as one of the four full-sized mounted figures, sharing the first tier of the plinth with the King's brother, his cousin, and Hans Joachim von Zieten. A bronze sculpture installed at Wilhelmplatz, in Berlin, was created by Anton Lulvès, a copper worker from Hamburg. SMS Seydlitz, representing the first generation of battlecruisers, was ordered in 1910 and commissioned in May 1913, the fourth such vessel built for the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet. The heavy cruiser Seydlitz, of the Admiral Hipper class, was launched in 1939, but never completed.
|
20,178,472 |
Project E
| 1,128,169,440 |
Cold War project for the US to provide the UK with nuclear weapons
|
[
"1958 in military history",
"Nuclear history of the United Kingdom",
"Nuclear weapons program of the United States",
"United Kingdom–United States military relations"
] |
Project E was a joint project between the United States and the United Kingdom during the Cold War to provide nuclear weapons to the Royal Air Force (RAF) until sufficient British nuclear weapons became available. It was subsequently expanded to provide similar arrangements for the British Army of the Rhine. A maritime version of Project E known as Project N provided nuclear depth bombs used by the RAF Coastal Command.
The British nuclear weapons project, High Explosive Research, successfully tested a nuclear weapon in Operation Hurricane in October 1952, but production was slow and Britain had only ten atomic bombs on hand in 1955 and fourteen in 1956. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, approached the President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, with a request that the US supply nuclear weapons for the strategic bombers of the V bomber fleet until sufficient British weapons became available. This became known as Project E. Under an agreement reached in 1957, US personnel had custody of the weapons, and performed all tasks related to their storage, maintenance and readiness. The bombs were held in secure storage areas (SSAs) on the same bases as the bombers.
The first bombers equipped with Project E weapons were English Electric Canberras based in Germany and the UK that were assigned to NATO. These were replaced by Vickers Valiants in 1960 and 1961 as the long-range Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor assumed the strategic nuclear weapon delivery role. Project E weapons equipped V-bombers at three bases in the UK from 1958. Due to operational restrictions imposed by Project E, and the consequential loss of independence of half of the British nuclear deterrent, they were phased out in 1962 when sufficient British megaton weapons became available, but remained in use with the Valiants in the UK and RAF Germany until 1965.
Project E nuclear warheads were used on the sixty Thor Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles operated by the RAF from 1959 to 1963 under Project Emily. The British Army acquired Project E warheads for its Corporal missiles in 1958. The US subsequently offered the Honest John missile as a replacement. They remained in service until 1977 when Honest John was superseded by the Lance missile. Eight-inch and 155 mm nuclear artillery rounds were also acquired under Project E. The last Project E weapons were withdrawn from service in 1992.
## Background
During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project codenamed Tube Alloys. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, and the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, signed the Quebec Agreement, which merged Tube Alloys with the American Manhattan Project to create a combined British, American and Canadian project. The September 1944 Hyde Park Aide-Mémoire extended commercial and military cooperation into the post-war period. Many of Britain's top scientists participated in the Manhattan Project. The Quebec Agreement specified that nuclear weapons would not be used against another country without mutual consent. On 4 July 1945, Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson agreed on Britain's behalf to the use of nuclear weapons against Japan.
The British government considered nuclear technology to be a joint discovery, and trusted that America would continue to share it. On 16 November 1945, President Harry S. Truman and Prime Minister Clement Attlee signed a new agreement that replaced the Quebec Agreement's requirement for "mutual consent" before using nuclear weapons with one for "prior consultation", and there was to be "full and effective cooperation in the field of atomic energy", but this was only "in the field of basic scientific research". The United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) ended technical cooperation. Its control of "restricted data" prevented US allies from receiving any information. Fearing a resurgence of American isolationism, and Britain losing its great power status, the UK government restarted its own development effort, now codenamed High Explosive Research.
In 1949, the Americans offered to make atomic bombs in the US available for Britain to use if the British agreed to curtail their atomic bomb programme. This would have given Britain nuclear weapons much sooner than its own target date of late 1952. Only those bomb components required by war plans would be stored in the UK; the rest would be kept in the US and Canada. The offer was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff on the grounds that it was not "compatible with our status as a first class power to depend on others for weapons of this supreme importance". As a counter-offer, they proposed limiting the British nuclear weapons programme in return for American bombs. The opposition of key American officials, including the United States Atomic Energy Commission's Lewis Strauss, and Senators Bourke B. Hickenlooper and Arthur Vandenberg, coupled with security concerns aroused by the 2 February 1950 arrest of the British physicist Klaus Fuchs as an atomic spy, resulted in the proposal being dropped.
## Negotiation
The first British atomic bomb was successfully tested in Operation Hurricane; it was detonated on board the frigate HMS Plym anchored off the Monte Bello Islands in Australia on 3 October 1952. The first Blue Danube atomic bombs were delivered to the Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command Armaments School at RAF Wittering on 7 and 11 November 1953, but the RAF had no bombers capable of carrying them. The first production order for 25 Vickers Valiants was issued on 9 February 1951, and they were delivered on 8 February 1955.
Once production of V-bombers began in earnest, their numbers soon exceeded that of the available atomic bombs. Production of atomic bombs was slow, and Britain had only ten on hand in 1955, and fourteen in 1956. At this rate, there would not be sufficient bombs to arm all the V-bombers until 1961. At the three-power Bermuda Conference with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in December 1953, Churchill suggested that the US allow Britain access to American nuclear weapons to make up the shortfall. There were several technical and legal issues. For American bombs to be carried in British aircraft, the US would have to disclose weights and dimensions, while their delivery would require data concerning their ballistics. The release of such information was restricted by the McMahon Act. There would also be issues of custody, security and targeting.
In May 1954, the Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force (USAF), General Thomas D. White, approached the head of the British Joint Staff Mission (BJSM) in Washington, DC, General Sir John Whiteley, with an offer to provide the RAF with an interim force of up to 90 new Boeing B-47 Stratojet bombers. This represented about \$400 million in equipment that would not be counted against the Mutual Defense Assistance Program. The RAF was wary. The B-47 was judged inferior to the English Electric Canberra although it had greater range and could carry a larger bomb load. It would require 10,000-foot (3,000 m) runways, and the RAF had had a bad experience with the last American-built bomber it operated, the Boeing Washington. Above all, there was the potential loss of prestige and independence. The head of RAF Bomber Command, Sir Hugh Lloyd, favoured acceptance, but the Secretary of State for Air, Lord de L'Isle and Dudley, and the Minister of Supply, Duncan Sandys, advised Churchill against it. In June, the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir William Dickson, informed the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General Nathan Twining, that the RAF was declining the offer.
In the lead-up to Churchill's next meeting with Eisenhower in June 1954, the President's assistant for atomic energy, Major General Howard G. Bunker, discussed carriage of American atomic bombs in British aircraft with the BJSM. A detailed list of the equipment and technical data required was drawn up, and the USAF undertook to provide training and technical assistance, and to establish facilities to store, assemble and assist with loading the bombs. The McMahon act was amended in August 1954, and while it did not go nearly as far as the British government wanted—the transfer of information regarding the design and manufacture of nuclear weapons was still prohibited—it did now allow for the interchange of information on their use. This paved the way for the Agreement for Cooperation Regarding Atomic Information for Mutual Defence Purposes with Britain, which was signed on 15 June 1955. A colonel and two majors from the USAF and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project were given briefings on RAF aircraft to determine which US bombs could be carried. The Americans then wanted to know how many bombs would be required. The Minister of Defence, Harold Macmillan, determined that the V-bomber force would reach a strength of 240 aircraft during 1958. Each would carry one atomic bomb.
Dickson visited the US for talks with Twining in September 1955. A public announcement was made in the form of a news leak published in The Daily Telegraph and The New York Times on 8 June 1956, which was officially denied the following day. Agreement on the provision of American bombs—now called Project E—was reached, resulting in a detailed plan on 12 December 1956. This was then approved by the United States Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The UK government notified Wilson of its approval on 30 January 1957. The agreement was confirmed by Eisenhower and Macmillan, now Prime Minister, during their March 1957 meeting in Bermuda to repair the damage done to Anglo-American relations by the Suez Crisis. A formal Memorandum of Understanding was negotiated in Washington by the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sir Geoffrey Tuttle, on 21 May 1957.
In a letter to Macmillan on 25 March 1957, Eisenhower stated:
> The United States Government welcomes the agreement to coordinate the strike plans of the United States and United Kingdom bomber forces, and to store United States nuclear weapons on RAF airfields under United States custody for release subject to decision by the President in an emergency. We understand that for the present at least these weapons will be in the kiloton range. The United Kingdom forces could obviously play a much more effective part in joint strikes if the United States weapons made available to them in emergency were in the megaton range, and it is suggested that this possibility might be examined at the appropriate time."
## Implementation
### Tactical bombers
It fell to the commander of the UK-based US Third Air Force, Major General Roscoe C. Wilson, to initiate Project E. Wilson had been liaison officer with the Manhattan Project, and Deputy Chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, and was very familiar with nuclear weapons. The first aircraft to be fitted for American atomic bombs were not V-bombers but 28 Canberra bombers earmarked as night interdictors for the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) in 1957. These were new B(I)8 models, which came straight from the manufacturer for modification to carry the Mark 7 nuclear bomb. The intention was that they would be able to carry either American or British bombs, but since the latter were not available, they were only fitted for American bombs. Later-model Canberras would be able to carry both. Since the specifications for the bomb bay doors said they opened 52 inches (1,300 mm) wide, and the tail fins of the bombs were between 50.36 and 50.69 inches (1,279 and 1,288 mm) wide, no problem was anticipated, but it turned out that the doors only opened between 50.50 and 51.19 inches (1,283 and 1,300 mm), depending on the aircraft, which meant that the bombs would have to be individually matched with aircraft. After some thought, 0.5 inches (13 mm) was cut off each bomb fin.
Four squadrons of Canberras were based in Germany, their Mark 7 bombs being stored at RAF Germany bases at RAF Bruggen, RAF Geilenkirchen, RAF Laarbruch and RAF Wildenrath. The crews practised the Low Altitude Bombing System (LABS) for tactical nuclear attacks. There were also four squadrons of nuclear-armed Canberras based in the UK at RAF Coningsby and RAF Upwood; these were capable of using either the Mark 7 or the British Red Beard nuclear weapons. They too were assigned to the SACEUR in October 1960. The Air Ministry decided to replace these Canberras with Valiants as the Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor V-bombers became available and replaced the Valiants in the strategic role. A Valiant squadron at RAF Marham was assigned to SACEUR on 1 January 1961, followed by two more in July. The UK-based Canberra squadrons were then disbanded. Each of the 24 Valiants was equipped with two of the more powerful Project E B28 nuclear bombs. These were replaced by the newer B43 nuclear bombs, which were more suitable for laydown delivery, in early 1963. The availability of US bombs meant that more British bombs were available for use elsewhere. A permanent storage site for 32 Red Beards was opened at RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus in November 1961, and one for 48 Red Beards at RAF Tengah in Singapore. Only the aircraft on Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) were armed with a pair of live bombs. These aircraft were kept armed and fuelled on hardstands surrounded by 6-foot (1.8 m) high chain-link fences. The Valiants were taken out of service in 1965. The Canberras continued in service, with their Project E B43 bombs until the last was retired in June 1972. They were replaced by Phantom FGR.2s, which carried Project E B43 and B57 nuclear bombs between June 1972 and October 1976, when they in turn were replaced in the tactical nuclear role by the Jaguar GR.1, which carried British WE.177 bombs.
### Strategic bombers
Project E modifications to Valiants commenced at RAE Farnborough in February 1956. Crew training was carried out with American instructors at RAF Boscombe Down. The planned V-bomber force had now been reduced to 144 aircraft, and it was intended to equip half of them with Project E weapons. The first 28 Valiants were modified by October 1957; the remaining 20 Valiants, along with 24 Vulcans, were ready by January 1959. The Victors were also modified to carry US weapons.
Under the Project E Memorandum of Understanding, US personnel had custody of the weapons. That meant they performed all the tasks related to their storage, maintenance and readiness. The bombs were kept in secure storage areas (SSAs) on the same bases as the bombers. British staff were not permitted to enter the SSAs; it was therefore impossible to store British and Americans bombs in the same SSA. Bomber Command designated RAF Marham, RAF Waddington and RAF Honington as bases with US SSAs. Another three sites had British SSAs. US custody created operational problems. The procedure for handing over the bombs added an extra ten minutes to the bombers' reaction time, and the requirement that US personnel had guardianship of the weapons at all times meant that neither they nor the bombers could be relocated to dispersal airfields as the RAF desired.
Initially, 72 Mark 5 nuclear bombs were supplied for the V-bombers. They had a yield of up to 100 kilotonnes of TNT (420 TJ). The successful British development of the hydrogen bomb, and a favourable international relations climate caused by the Sputnik crisis, led to the United States Atomic Energy Act being amended again in 1958, resulting in the long-sought resumption of the nuclear Special Relationship between Britain and the US in the form of the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement. The US now agreed to supply the V-bombers with megaton weapons in place of the Mark 5, in the form of Mark 15 and Mark 39 nuclear bombs.
The Treasury immediately inquired as to whether this meant that the British megaton bomb programme could be terminated. Project E was intended to be a stopgap measure, and while the RAF was impressed with the superior yield of US thermonuclear weapons, its Director of Plans noted that "by retaining Project E at its present strength the US may continue to underestimate the UK independent capability, so that the weight given to HM Government's influence on vital issues would be less than it might otherwise be." Both Sandys and the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Dermot Boyle, argued that the UK needed the capacity to initiate a nuclear war unilaterally, but this was not possible if US permission was required for half of the force. With sufficient British bombs becoming available, operational issues and the concept of an independent nuclear deterrent came to the fore.
The Air Council decided on 7 July 1960 that Project E weapons would be phased out by December 1962, by which time it was anticipated that there would be sufficient British megaton weapons to equip the entire strategic bomber force. Project E weapons were replaced by British Yellow Sun bombs at RAF Honington on 1 July 1961 and Waddington on 30 March 1962. Problems encountered in the development of Red Beard meant that the replacement of kiloton weapons took longer. The UK-based Valiants at Honington and Wittering were withdrawn in April and October 1962, and the last Valiants were retired from the V-bomber force in July 1965. The final practice loading at RAF Marham—with the Mark 43s—was in January 1965, and the last US personnel left the base in July.
### British Army of the Rhine
Project E was expanded to encompass similar arrangements for providing nuclear weapons to the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). NATO began integrating tactical nuclear weapons into its war plans in 1954, and BAOR adopted a doctrine under which it would be the dominant arm on the battlefield as NATO forces conducted a fighting withdrawal to the Rhine. In 1954, the British Army purchased 113 Corporal missiles from the US. It was intended that they would be equipped with British warheads under a project codenamed Violet Vision, but Project E offered a quicker, simpler and cheaper alternative. Weapons were made available under the same terms as those of the RAF: US custody and dual control. 27 Guided Weapons Regiment, Royal Artillery, based at the Napier Barracks in Dortmund, became the first unit to equip with the Corporal in June 1960. A second Corporal regiment, 47 Guided Weapons Regiment, Royal Artillery, was formed at the Napier Barracks in 1961. Between them they had about 100 Corporal missiles. The Mark 7 warheads had to be drawn from US Army storage sites in southern Germany until arrangements were made for local storage in August 1959.
The Corporal had several limitations. It was liquid-fuelled, and the hydrazine fuel and nitric acid oxidiser were highly toxic and corrosive; it required several hours to fuel, so it could not engage targets of opportunity; there could be delays in the countdown process, which made it hard to warn the troops to close their eyes or aircraft to avoid the area; and it was guided by a radio beam that could be jammed or diverted. During test firings in the Outer Hebrides, eight out of twelve missiles accurately hit their targets; four fell short, a significant concern given the danger nuclear weapons posed to friendly troops. A new British project was begun to develop a better missile, codenamed Blue Water, which was to have used the British Indigo Hammer and later the Tony warhead. 47 Regiment gave up its Corporals in 1965, and returned to the UK, and the 27 Regiment followed in 1967. The British government's September 1965 announcement of the withdrawal of the Corporal missiles raised concerns in West Germany that Britain might "de-denuclearise" BAOR.
As an interim measure, the US offered the Honest John missile. The offer was accepted, and 120 Honest John missiles with W31 warheads were supplied in 1960, enough to equip three artillery regiments: 24 Regiment at Assaye Barracks in Nienburg from 1960 to 1962 and then at Barker Barracks in Paderborn from 1962 to 1972; 39 Regiment at Dempsey Barracks in Sennelager; and 50 Regiment at Menden. Each regiment had two batteries of Honest Johns, and two of nuclear-capable eight-inch M115 howitzers, which were later replaced by M110 howitzers with W33 nuclear warheads. Yellow Anvil, a British nuclear artillery round project, was cancelled in 1958, and Blue Water met the same fate on 10 August 1962. The Honest Johns therefore remained in service until 1977. The 50 Missile Regiment was then re-equipped with the Lance missile, with its W70 nuclear warhead. With four batteries, 50 Missile Regiment had the same number of launchers as the three Honest John regiments. The W48 was acquired for the 155 mm M109 howitzers. Both it and the W33 remained in service until 1992. The British Army also considered acquiring the Davy Crockett, but had decided against it by February 1962.
### Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles
In 1953, the US Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson, raised the possibility of a joint ballistic missile programme with the Minister of Supply, Duncan Sandys. This resulted in an agreement on collaboration being signed on 12 August 1954, and a British Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) development project codenamed Blue Streak. The United States pursued two Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) projects in parallel to Blue Streak: the US Army's Jupiter and the USAF's Thor. When Sandys, now the Minister of Defence, visited the US in January 1957, he found the Americans anxious to deploy IRBMs in Britain. Macmillan and Eisenhower agreed to do so during their summit in Bermuda in March 1957, and a formal agreement was drawn up on 17 December; at the end of the month it was decided that Britain would receive Thor and not Jupiter missiles. The deployment was codenamed Project Emily.
The RAF activated 20 squadrons between September 1958 and December 1959 to operate the 120 Thor missiles. They were located at 20 old wartime airfields so that the government did not have to purchase new land. Each missile was supplied with its own Mark 49 warhead, a variant of the Mark 28 with a thinner and lighter casing. While the Thor missile bases were manned by the RAF, the warheads were supplied under Project E. Each had a USAF authorisation officer. The missiles used a dual key system, one of which was held by the authorisation officer. Occasionally a missile would be chosen for test firing, for which the missile and its RAF crew would be flown to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Twelve test firings were conducted between 6 October 1959 and 12 June 1962. Under the original agreement, the USAF paid the cost of maintenance for the missiles for five years. After a debate over costs and benefits, the Air Council decided on 31 May 1962 that Project Emily should be terminated by the end of 1963. The last Thor squadrons were inactivated on 23 August 1963. The missiles were returned to the United States.
### Project N
A maritime version of Project E was created, known as Project N. Providing American atomic bombs for Royal Navy ships would have involved similar dual key arrangements and detachments of US Marines on board Royal Navy ships. This was deemed impractical even for ships and weapons dedicated to use in European waters. RAF Coastal Command acquired Mk 101 Lulu nuclear depth bombs (with the W34 nuclear warhead) for its Avro Shackleton and Hawker Siddeley Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft from 1965 to 1971 under Project N. These were replaced by the more capable Mark 57, which was stockpiled at RAF St Mawgan and RAF Machrihanish for US, Dutch and British aircraft.
## Impact on British nuclear weapon development
As well as meeting the needs of the UK forces, Project E affected the design and development of British nuclear weapons. Interim designs like Violet Club were no longer required, as Project E weapons could do the job pending the development of a British weapon. The British designers were particularly impressed by the Mark 28, which was not only lighter than the British Green Grass warhead used in Yellow Sun, but considerably more economical in its use of expensive fissile material. An Anglicised version of the Mark 28 was developed, known as Red Snow, and a Yellow Sun Mark 2 using Red Snow cost £500,000 compared with £1,200,000 for the Mark 1 with Green Grass.
## End of Project E
When the Cold War ended in 1991, there were more than 500 US nuclear weapons in the UK. Of these, about 400 were bombs, 48 were Ground Launched Cruise Missiles, and approximately 100 were B57 nuclear depth bombs. The BAOR still had about 85 Lance missiles, and more than 70 W33 eight-inch and W48 155 mm nuclear artillery shells. The cruise missiles were withdrawn in 1991 under the terms of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The United States then decided to withdraw its short-range nuclear weapons. The last US warheads, including the Mark 57 nuclear depth bombs and those used by the BAOR, were withdrawn in July 1992. The only American nuclear weapons then remaining in the UK were 110 or so B61 nuclear bombs stored at RAF Lakenheath for USAF F-15E Strike Eagles, which were withdrawn by 2008. The British WE.177 nuclear bombs used by the RAF and Royal Navy were withdrawn from service in August 1998, at which point the only remaining British nuclear weapons were the warheads on the Trident missiles of the Vanguard-class submarines.
|
205,928 |
George Moore (novelist)
| 1,168,229,559 |
Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist
|
[
"1852 births",
"1933 deaths",
"19th-century Anglo-Irish people",
"19th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights",
"19th-century Irish novelists",
"19th-century Irish poets",
"19th-century Irish short story writers",
"20th-century Anglo-Irish people",
"20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights",
"20th-century Irish male writers",
"20th-century Irish memoirists",
"20th-century Irish novelists",
"20th-century Irish poets",
"20th-century Irish short story writers",
"Académie Julian alumni",
"Alumni of St Mary's College, Oscott",
"Irish male dramatists and playwrights",
"Irish male novelists",
"Irish male short story writers",
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"People from Carnacon",
"Victorian poets",
"Writers from County Mayo"
] |
George Augustus Moore (24 February 1852 – 21 January 1933) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day.
As a naturalistic writer, he was amongst the first English-language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists, and was particularly influenced by the works of Émile Zola. His writings influenced James Joyce, according to the literary critic and biographer Richard Ellmann, and, although Moore's work is sometimes seen as outside the mainstream of both Irish and British literature, he is as often regarded as the first great modern Irish novelist.
## Life
### Family origins
George Moore's family had lived in Moore Hall, near Lough Carra, County Mayo, for almost a century. The house was built by his paternal great-grandfather—also called George Moore—who had made his fortune as a wine merchant in Alicante. The novelist's grandfather—another George—was a friend of Maria Edgeworth, and author of An Historical Memoir of the French Revolution. His great-uncle, John Moore, was president of the Province of Connacht in the short-lived Irish Republic of 1798 during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
George Moore's father, George Henry Moore, sold his stable and hunting interests during the Great Irish Famine, and from 1847 to 1857 served as an Independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Mayo in the British House of Commons. George Henry was renowned as a fair landlord, fought to uphold the rights of tenants, and was a founder of the Catholic Defence Association. His estate consisted of 5000 ha (50 km<sup>2</sup>) in Mayo, with a further 40 ha in County Roscommon.
### Early life
Moore was born in Moore Hall in 1852. As a child, he enjoyed the novels of Walter Scott, which his father read to him. He spent a good deal of time outdoors with his brother, Maurice George Moore, and also became friendly with the young Willie and Oscar Wilde, who spent their summer holidays at nearby Moytura. Oscar was to later quip of Moore: "He conducts his education in public".
His father had again turned his attention to horse breeding and in 1861 brought his champion horse, Croagh Patrick, to England for a successful racing season, together with his wife and nine-year-old son. For a while, George was left at Cliff's stables until his father decided to send him to his alma mater facilitated by his winnings. Moore's formal education started at St. Mary's College, Oscott, a Catholic boarding school near Birmingham, where he was the youngest of 150 boys. He spent all of 1864 at home, having contracted a lung infection brought about by a breakdown in his health. His academic performance was poor while he was hungry and unhappy. In January 1865, he returned to St. Mary's College with his brother Maurice, where he refused to study as instructed and spent time reading novels and poems. That December the principal, Spencer Northcote, wrote a report that: "he hardly knew what to say about George." By the summer of 1867, he was expelled, for (in his own words) 'idleness and general worthlessness', and returned to Mayo. His father once remarked, about George and his brother Maurice: "I fear those two redheaded boys are stupid", an observation which proved untrue for all four sons.
### London and Paris
In 1868, Moore's father was again elected MP for Mayo and the family moved to London the following year. Here, Moore senior tried, unsuccessfully, to have his son follow a career in the military though, prior to this, he attended the School of Art in the South Kensington Museum where his achievements were no better. He was freed from any burden of education when his father died in 1870. Moore, though still a minor, inherited the family estate that generated a yearly income of £3,596. He handed the estate over to his brother Maurice to manage and in 1873, on attaining his majority, moved to Paris to study art. It took him several attempts to find an artist who would accept him as a pupil. Rodolphe Julian, who had previously been a shepherd and circus masked man, took him on for 40 francs a month. At Académie Julian he met Louis Welden Hawkins who became Moore's flatmate and whose trait, as a failed artist, shows up in Moore's own characters. He met many of the key artists and writers of the time, including Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Daudet, Mallarmé, Turgenev and, above all, Zola, who was to prove an influential figure in Moore's subsequent development as a writer.
While still in Paris his first book, a collection of lyric poems called The Flowers of Passion, was self-published in 1877. The poems were derivative, and were maliciously reviewed by the critics who were offended by some of the depravities in store for moralistic readers. The book was withdrawn by Moore. He was forced to return to Ireland in 1880 to raise £3,000 to pay debts incurred on the family estate, owing to his tenants refusing to pay their rent and the drop in agricultural prices. During his time back in Mayo, he gained a reputation as a fair landlord, continuing the family tradition of not evicting tenants and refusing to carry firearms when travelling round the estate. While in Ireland, he decided to abandon art and move to London to become a professional writer. There he published his second poetry collection, Pagan Poems, in 1881. These early poems reflect his interest in French symbolism and are now almost entirely neglected. In 1886 Moore published Confessions of a Young Man, a lively memoir about his 20s spent in Paris and London among bohemian artists. It contains a substantial amount of literary criticism for which it has received a fair amount of praise, for instance The Modern Library chose it in 1917 to be included in the series as "one of the most significant documents of the passionate revolt of English literature against the Victorian tradition."
### Controversy in England
During the 1880s, Moore began work on a series of novels in a realist style. His first novel, A Modern Lover (1883) was a three-volume work, as preferred by the circulating libraries, and deals with the art scene of the 1870s and 1880s in which many characters are identifiably real. The circulating libraries in England banned the book because of its explicit portrayal of the amorous pursuits of its hero. At this time the British circulating libraries, such as Mudie's Select Library, controlled the market for fiction, and the fee-paying public expected them to guarantee the morality of the novels provided. His next realist novel, A Mummers Wife (1885) was also regarded as unsuitable by Mudie's, and W H Smith refused to stock it on their news-stalls. Despite this, during its first year of publication the book went through fourteen editions, mainly because of the publicity stirred up by its opponents. The French newspaper Le Voltaire published it in serial form as La Femme du cabotin in July–October 1886. His next novel, A Drama in Muslin was again banned by Mudie's and Smith's. In response Moore declared war on the circulating libraries by publishing two provocative pamphlets; Literature at Nurse and Circulating Morals. In these, he complained that the libraries profit from salacious popular fiction while refusing to stock serious literary fiction.
Moore's publisher Henry Vizetelly began to issue unabridged mass-market translations of French realist novels that endangered the moral and commercial influence of the circulating libraries around this time. In 1888, the circulating libraries fought back by encouraging the House of Commons to implement laws to stop "the rapid spread of demoralising literature in this country". Vizetelly was brought to court by the National Vigilance Association (NVA) for "obscene libel". The charge arose from the publication of the English translation of Zola's La Terre. A second case was brought the following year to force implementation of the original judgement and to remove all of Zola's works. This led to the 70-year-old publisher becoming involved in the literary cause. Throughout Moore supported the avant garde publisher, and on 22 September 1888, about a month before the trial, wrote a letter that appeared in the St. James Gazette. In it Moore suggested that, rather than a jury of twelve tradesmen, Vizatelly should be judged by three novelists. Moore pointed out that such celebrated books as Madame Bovary and Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin had morals equivalent to Zola's, though their literary merits might differ.
Because of his willingness to tackle such issues as prostitution, extramarital sex, and lesbianism, Moore's novels were initially met with scandal, but this subsided as the public's taste for realist fiction grew. Moore began to find success as an art critic with the publication of books such as Impressions and Opinions (1891) and Modern Painting (1893), the first significant attempt to introduce the Impressionists to an English audience. By this time Moore was first able to live from the proceeds of his literary work.
Other realist novels by Moore from this period include A Drama in Muslin (1886), a satiric story of the marriage trade in Anglo-Irish society that hints at same-sex relationships among the unmarried daughters of the gentry, and Esther Waters (1894), the story of an unmarried housemaid who becomes pregnant and is abandoned by her footman lover. Both of these books have remained almost constantly in print since their first publication. His 1887 novel A Mere Accident is an attempt to merge his symbolist and realist influences. He also published a collection of short stories: Celibates (1895).
### Dublin and the Celtic Revival
In 1901, Moore returned to Dublin at the suggestion of his cousin and friend, Edward Martyn. Martyn had been involved in Ireland's cultural and dramatic movements for some years, and was working with Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats to establish the Irish Literary Theatre. Moore soon became deeply involved in this project and in the broader Irish Literary Revival. He had already written a play, The Strike at Arlingford (1893), which was produced by the Independent Theatre. The play was the result of a challenge between Moore and George Robert Sims over Moore's criticism of all contemporary playwrights in Impressions and Opinions. Moore won the one hundred pound bet made by Sims for a stall to witness an "unconventional" play by Moore, though Moore insisted the word "unconventional" be excised.
The Irish Literary Theatre staged his satirical comedy The Bending of the Bough (1900), adapted from Martyn's The Tale of a Town, originally rejected by the theatre but unselfishly given to Moore for revision, and Martyn's Maeve. Staged by the company which would later become the Abbey Theatre, The Bending of the Bough was a historically important play and introduced realism into Irish literature. Lady Gregory wrote that it: "hits impartially all round". The play was a satire on Irish political life, and as it was unexpectedly nationalist, was considered the first to deal with a vital question that had appeared in Irish life. Diarmuid and Grania, a poetic play in prose co-written with Yeats in 1901, was also staged by the theatre, with incidental music by Elgar. After this production Moore took up pamphleteering on behalf of the Abbey, and parted company with the dramatic movement.
Moore published two books of prose fiction set in Ireland around this time; a second book of short stories, The Untilled Field (1903) and a novel, The Lake (1905). The Untilled Field deals with clerical interference in the daily lives of the Irish peasantry, and of the issue of emigration. The stories were originally written for translation into Irish, to serve as models for other writers working in the language. Three of the translations were published in the New Ireland Review, but publication was then paused because of their perceived anti-clerical sentiment. In 1902 the entire collection was translated by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha and Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin, and published in a parallel-text edition by the Gaelic League as An-tÚr-Ghort. Moore later revised the texts for the English edition. These stories were influenced by Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, a book recommended to Moore by W. K. Magee, a sub-librarian of the National Library of Ireland, who had earlier suggested that Moore "was best suited to become Ireland's Turgenev". The tales are recognised by some as representing the birth of the Irish short story as a literary genre.
In 1903, following a disagreement with his brother Maurice over the religious upbringing of his nephews, Moore declared himself to be Protestant. His conversion was announced in a letter to the Irish Times newspaper. Moore remained in Dublin until 1911. In 1914, he published Hail and Farewell, a gossipy three-volume memoir of his time there, which entertained readers but infuriated former friends. Moore quipped, "Dublin is now divided into two sets; one half is afraid it will be in the book, and the other is afraid that it won't".
In his later years he was increasingly friendless, having quarrelled bitterly with Yeats and Osborn Bergin, among others: Oliver St. John Gogarty said: "It was impossible to be a friend of his, because he was incapable of gratitude".
### Later life
Moore returned to London in 1911, where, with the exception of frequent trips to France, he was to spend much of the rest of his life. In 1913, he travelled to Jerusalem to research his next novel, The Brook Kerith (1916). Moore once again courted controversy, as the story was based on the supposition that a non-divine Christ did not die on the cross but instead was nursed back to health and repented of his pride in declaring himself Son of God. Other books from this period include a further collection of short-stories called A Storyteller's Holiday (1918), a collection of essays called Conversations in Ebury Street (1924) and a play, The Making of an Immortal (1927). Moore also spent considerable time revising and preparing his earlier writings for new editions.
Partly because of his brother Maurice's pro-treaty activity, Moore Hall was burnt by anti-treaty partisans in 1923, during the final months of the Irish Civil War. Moore eventually received compensation of £7,000 from the government of the Irish Free State. By this time the brothers had become estranged, mainly because of George's unflattering portrait of Maurice in Hail and Farewell. Tension also arose from their religious differences: Maurice frequently made donations to the Roman Catholic Church from estate funds. George later sold a large part of the estate to the Irish Land Commission for £25,000.
Moore was friendly with many members of the expatriate artistic communities in London and Paris, and had a long-lasting relationship with Maud, Lady Cunard. Moore took a special interest in the education of Maud's daughter, the well-known publisher and art patron, Nancy Cunard. It has been suggested that Moore, rather than Maud's husband, Sir Bache Cunard, was Nancy's father, but this is not generally credited by historians, and it is not certain that Moore's relationship with Nancy's mother was ever more than platonic. Moore's last novel, Aphrodite in Aulis, was published in 1930.
He died at his address of 121 Ebury Street in the London district of Belgravia in early 1933, leaving a fortune of £70,000. He was cremated in London at a service attended by Ramsay MacDonald among others. An urn containing his ashes was interred on Castle Island in Lough Carra in view of the ruins of Moore Hall. A blue plaque commemorates his residency at his London home.
## Works
- Flowers of Passion London: Provost & Company, 1878
- Martin Luther: A Tragedy in Five Acts London: Remington & Company, 1879
- Pagan Poems London: Newman & Company, 1881
- A Modern Lover London: Tinsley Brothers, 1883
- A Mummer's Wife London: Vizetelly & Company, 1885
- Literature at Nurse London: Vizetelly & Company, 1885
- A Drama in Muslin London: Vizetelly & Company, 1886
- A Mere Accident London: Vizetelly & Company, 1887
- Parnell and His Island London: Swan Sonnenshein Lowrey & Company, 1887
- Confessions of a Young Man London: Swan Sonnenshein Lowrey & Company, 1888
- Spring Days London: Vizetelly & Company, 1888
- Mike Fletcher London: Ward & Downey, 1889
- Impressions and Opinions London: David Nutt, 1891
- Vain Fortune London: Henry & Company, 1891
- Modern Painting London: Walter Scott, 1893
- The Strike at Arlingford London: Walter Scott, 1893
- Esther Waters London: Walter Scott, 1894
- Celibates London: Walter Scott, 1895
- Evelyn Innes London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898
- The Bending of the Bough London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1900
- Sister Teresa London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901
- The Untilled Field London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903
- The Lake London: William Heinemann, 1905
- Memoirs of My Dead Life London: William Heinemann, 1906
- The Apostle: A Drama in Three Acts Dublin: Maunsel & Company, 1911
- Hail and Farewell London: William Heinemann, 1911, 1912, 1914
- Elizabeth Cooper Dublin: Maunsel & Company, 1913
- Muslin London: William Heinemann, 1915
- The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story London: T. Warner Laurie, 1916
- Lewis Seymour and Some Women London: William Heinemann, 1917 (reworking of A Modern Lover)
- A Story-Teller's Holiday London: Cumann Sean-eolais na hÉireann (privately printed), 1918
- Avowals London: Cumann Sean-eolais na hÉireann (privately printed), 1919
- The Coming of Gabrielle London: Cumann Sean-eolais na hÉireann (privately printed), 1920
- Heloise and Abelard London: Cumann Sean-eolais na hÉireann (privately printed), 1921
- In Single Strictness London: William Heinemann, 1922
- Conversations in Ebury Street London: William Heinemann, 1924
- Pure Poetry: An Anthology London: Nonesuch Press, 1924
- The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe London: William Heinemann, 1924
- Daphnis and Chloe, Peronnik the Fool New York: Boni & Liveright, 1924
- Ulick and Soracha London: Nonesuch Press, 1926
- Celibate Lives London: William Heinemann, 1927 (reworking of Celibates including the short story "Albert Nobbs" from A Story-Teller's Holiday, which was made into a film starring Glenn Close in 2011.)
- The Making of an Immortal New York: Bowling Green Press, 1927
- The Passing of the Essenes: A Drama in Three Acts London: William Heinemann, 1930
- Aphrodite in Aulis New York: Fountain Press, 1930
- The Talking Pine Paris: The Hours Press, 1931
- A Communication to My Friends London: Nonesuch Press, 1933
- Diarmuid and Grania: A Play in Three Acts Co-written with W. B. Yeats, Edited by Anthony Farrow, Chicago: De Paul, 1974
Letters
- Moore Versus Harris Detroit: privately printed, 1921
- Letters from George Moore to Ed. Dujardin 1886-1922 New York: Crosby Gaige, 1929
- Letters of George Moore Bournemouth: Sydenham, 1942
- GM: Memories of George Moore by Nancy Cunard. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956
- Letters to Lady Cunard Ed. Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957
- George Moore in Transition Ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1968
|
26,390,015 |
Boulton and Park
| 1,170,231,597 |
British entertainers and cross-dressers
|
[
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] |
Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park were Victorian cross-dressers. Both were homosexual men from upper-middle-class families, both enjoyed wearing women's clothes and both enjoyed taking part in theatrical performances—playing the women's roles when they did so. It is possible that they asked for money for sex, although there is some dispute over this. In the late 1860s they were joined on a theatrical tour by Lord Arthur Clinton, the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Newark. Also homosexual, he and Boulton entered into a relationship; Boulton called himself Clinton's wife, and had cards printed showing his name as Lady Arthur Clinton.
Boulton and Park were indiscreet when they cross-dressed in public, and came to the attention of the police. They were under police surveillance for a year before they were arrested in 1870, while in drag, after leaving a London theatre. When they appeared at Bow Street Magistrates' Court the morning after the arrest they were still clothed in the women's dresses from the previous evening; a crowd of several hundred people were there to see them. The two men were subjected to an intrusive physical examination from a police surgeon and held on remand for two months. They were charged with conspiracy to commit sodomy, a crime that carried a maximum prison sentence of life with hard labour. Just before the case started Clinton died, possibly of scarlet fever or suicide; it is also possible his death was faked and he fled abroad. The case came before the Court of the Queen's Bench the following year, Boulton and Park with three other men. All five were found not guilty after the prosecution failed to establish that they had anal sex. The judge, Sir Alexander Cockburn, the Lord Chief Justice, was highly critical of the police investigation and the treatment of the men by the police surgeon. Boulton and Park admitted to appearing in public dressed as women, which was "an offence against public morals and common decency". They were bound over for two years.
The case was reported in all the major newspapers, often in lurid terms. Several penny pamphlets were published focusing on the sensational aspect of the case. The events surrounding Boulton and Park are seen as key moments in the gay history of the UK. The arrest and trial have been interpreted differently over time, from innocent Victorian sentimentalism to a wilful ignoring of the men's sexuality by the courts to ensure they were not convicted. Recent examinations have been from the perspective of transgender history. The case was a factor that led to the introduction of the 1885 Labouchere Amendment which made male homosexual acts punishable by up to two years' hard labour. Boulton and Park both continued performing on stage after the trial, and both worked for a while in the US. Park died in 1881, probably of syphilis; Boulton died in 1904 from a brain tumour.
## Background
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, male homosexual acts were illegal under English law and were punishable by imprisonment under section 61 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The Act abolished the death penalty for sodomy which had been part of Henry VIII's Buggery Act 1533. Under the 1861 act, sodomy in the UK carried a life sentence in prison with hard labour. Cases involving homosexual activity were rarely brought to trial, however, and those that were had a lower conviction rate than other crimes—there was a 28 per cent conviction rate for sodomy against a 77 per cent rate for all other offences. The sociologist Ari Adut observes that most suspects were either caught having sex in public, or were targets of a politically motivated prosecution. Many suspects were allowed to leave the country before trial.
The concept of homosexuality, while known about, was not understood by the authorities in the 1870s. The historian and sociologist Jeffrey Weeks considers that the idea of homosexuality was "extremely undeveloped both in the Metropolitan Police and in high medical and legal circles, suggesting the absence of any clear notion of a homosexual category or of any social awareness of what a homosexual identity might consist". Such ignorance by the medical profession was seen as proof that homosexual activity was not undertaken in Britain, in contrast to the knowledge gained by French and German doctors. For British medico-jurisprudent works, such as Alfred Swaine Taylor's 1846 work A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, the act of sodomy was linked to bestiality, and described as "the unnatural connection of a man with a man or with an animal. The evidence required to establish it is the same as in rape, and therefore penetration alone is sufficient to constitute it".
While the authorities were ignorant of the extent of homosexuality in Britain, some parts of the West End of London—including the Burlington Arcade, just off Piccadilly—were associated with homosexuality and male prostitution. According to the historian Matt Cook, this "confirm[ed] the association of homosexual behaviour with fashion, effeminacy and monetary transaction". This burgeoning homosexual culture was aligned with effeminacy and cross-dressing, according to the literary scholar Joseph Bristow, in his work "Remapping the Sites of Modern Gay History". Public opinion—and the opinion of the authorities—was never against those men caught up in homosexual scandals, according to Adut. As examples he cites those associated with the 1889 Cleveland Street scandal, who remained in positions in society, except one, who left the country; similarly, when Boulton and Park were cleared of the main charges against them, they continued acting in Britain and abroad.
Cross-dressing was not illegal in the 1870s; it was associated with the theatre, particularly pantomime; there was no association in the minds of the general public between cross-dressing and homosexuality. When arrests were made for cross-dressing, it was under the charge of occasioning a breach of the peace. There had been cases of cross-dressing heard in the courts in the second half of the 19th century: in 1858 two men, one 60 years old and one 35, were arrested at an unlicensed dancing room. The 60-year-old was dressed as a Dresden shepherdess, the 35-year-old in modern female dress; they were arrested on grounds they had acted "for the purpose of exciting others to commit an unnatural offence". The same year a landlady reported her lodger for behaving indecently in the parlour window while dressed in women's clothing.
## Early lives
### Thomas Ernest Boulton
Thomas Ernest Boulton—commonly known as Ernest—was born on 18 December 1847 at Kings Road, Tottenham, Middlesex (now London); he was the older of two boys who survived past infancy. His parents were Thomas Alfred Boulton, a wine merchant, and his wife, Mary Ann ('' Levick). The Boultons had three other sons who died of tuberculosis in infancy; Ernest was a sickly baby who his parents thought also had the condition. During childhood he also developed a fistula in his rectum which needed surgery.
Neil McKenna, who wrote a biography of Boulton and Park, described Boulton as "pretty with his blue-violet eyes, large as saucers in his pale face, and his dark hair cascading in baby curls"; McKenna notes that as a child, Boulton was often mistaken for a baby girl. From the time he was six Boulton began dressing up and acting as a girl, often as a parlourmaid. He once dressed up and served his unknowing grandmother at the dinner table. When he left the room, she commented to Boulton's mother "I wonder, having sons, that you have so flippant a girl about you".
As Boulton grew up he continued cross-dressing, a practice about which his parents were indulgent. When he was about eighteen his father discussed a potential career in the professions, but Boulton said he wanted to work in the theatre. His father got his way, and in 1866 Boulton began work as a clerk at the Islington branch of the London and County Bank. He did not like the work, and his attendance was often sporadic; he resigned from the position soon after his employers had written to Boulton's father to question whether his son was suitable for the bank. Boulton was homosexual and was known to his friends as Stella, although sometimes also by Miss Ernestine Edwards. In 1867 he was arrested with his friend Martin Cumming in the Haymarket—a known venue for prostitution—when they were wearing dresses and soliciting men for sex; no charges were brought. He was arrested again a few weeks later for the same offence, this time with a man called Campbell, a transvestite male prostitute who went under the sobriquet Lady Jane Grey. The two appeared at Marlborough Street Magistrates Court where they were fined.
### Frederick William Park
Frederick William Park was the third son and twelfth child of Alexander Atherton Park, the Master of the Court of Common Pleas—one of the superior courts of Westminster—and his wife, Mary. He was baptised on 5 January 1847 at St Mary's Church, Wimbledon. Park's mother died before his third birthday. He grew up in the family home at Wimpole Street, central London, where he was educated at home by his sisters and a governess.
Park's eldest brother, Atherton, was killed while serving with the 24th Bombay Native Infantry in Jhansi, India, while Park was still young. His other brother, Harry, was arrested at about the age of 16—when Park was 11 or 12—for homosexual activity. Harry's Italian boyfriend had attempted to blackmail him over their affair, and when Harry refused to pay, reported him to the police. He vehemently denied the accusations at a magistrates' court and the case was dismissed. Harry was open with his younger brother about his homosexuality and, McKenna suggests, had probably guessed that Park was also gay. Harry called his brother "Fan" or "Fanny" from a young age. On 1 April 1862, two or three years after the court appearance, Harry was arrested for indecent assault on a police officer in Weymouth Mews (off Weymouth Street). In court again, bail of £600 was set. Harry was sentenced to a year's hard labour, and was then sent to Scotland by his father to avoid further scandal. Park's father decided the best profession for Frederick was within the law, and arranged for him to be articled with a solicitor in Chelmsford, Essex.
Park was a regular cross-dresser and went under several names when in women's attire, including Fanny Winifred Park, Mrs Mable [sic] Foster, Mrs Jane, Mabel Foley and Fanny Graham.
## Fanny and Stella
There is no record of when Boulton and Park first met, but the two became close friends, with a joint love of the stage and of cross-dressing. They would go out in public dressed in either—and sometimes both—male and female attire. According to McKenna it is probable that they both acted as male prostitutes at times, although Richard Davenport-Hines, writing for the Dictionary of National Biography says "they were not prostitutes but sometimes asked their admirers for money".
When the two appeared in public wearing female attire many of those who saw them believed they were women. In drag, they watched the 1869 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, went shopping in London's West End, ate at restaurants and went to the theatre and music halls. According to the theatre historian Laurence Senelick, Boulton and Park's "simpering and mincing that had ... [them] thrown out of the Alhambra Music Hall when in women's clothes, and out of the Burlington Arcade when in men's clothes" were popular when they were engaged in their theatricals. When they went out in male attire, Boulton and Park would wear tight trousers and shirts open at the collar, wearing make-up; this was, according to Senelick, "more disturbing and offensive to passers-by than their drag". To store their dresses, cosmetics and other items, as well as a base from which they went out, the two rented a small flat at 13 Wakefield Street, off Regent Square.
In the late 1860s Boulton and Park were part of a theatre troupe that toured Britain, giving private theatricals. In addition to private houses, they appeared on stage in the Egyptian Hall, Chelmsford; Brentwood and Southend, Essex; and the Spa Rooms at Scarborough, North Yorkshire. They always took the female roles and dressed accordingly; in the theatre programmes, their names were listed as Boulton and Park, and audience members knew the parts were played by two men. In 1868 they were joined on tour by Lord Arthur Clinton, the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Newark, who performed in male roles in the entertainment. They played husband and wife on the stage, and shared an on-stage kiss; it raised no complaints from any of the audiences or in the local press.
Clinton had been in a relationship with Boulton for about a year; although there is no evidence that their relationship was sexual, it is considered very likely, according to several historians, including Charles Upchurch, Sean Brady and McKenna. Boulton called himself Clinton's wife, and had cards printed showing his name as Lady Arthur Clinton.
Boulton and Park had been so flagrant in their behaviour that they came to the attention of the police, and the pair had been under surveillance for over a year prior to their arrest.
## Arrest and investigation
On the evening of 28 April 1870 Boulton and Park—both in drag—went to the Strand Theatre where they had reserved a box; they were accompanied by two friends, Hugh Mundell and Cecil Thomas, both of whom were wearing male attire. When the group left the theatre and ordered a cab, Boulton and Park were arrested; Thomas ran off and Mundell accompanied the pair to the police station in Bow Street. As the police were unsure whether Boulton and Park were male or female—despite both stating they were men dressed as women for a "lark"—they were ordered to undress, and did so, in front of several policemen. The two men were kept in Bow Street overnight and were kept company by Mundell, who had been arrested at the station for refusing to give his name and address.
The following morning Boulton and Park were taken across the road into Bow Street Magistrates' Court; they were still wearing their dresses from the previous evening. A crowd of several hundred people had gathered to see the two make their way into court. McKenna observes that their arrest was too late to appear in the morning papers, and it is not known how the news had travelled so widely in such a short space of time. The court room was also full of spectators. The two men were charged that they:
> did with each and one another feloniously commit the abominable crime of buggery,
> further that they did unlawfully conspire together, and with divers other persons, feloniously, to commit the said crimes further that they did unlawfully conspire together, and with divers other persons to induce and incite other persons feloniously with them to commit the said crime
> and further that they being men, did unlawfully conspire together, and with divers others, to disguise themselves as women and to frequent places of public resort, so disguised, and to thereby openly and scandalously outrage public decency and corrupt public morals.
The court heard from four policemen, one of whom had visited the Wakefield Street flat that morning and showed the magistrate a series of photographs of Boulton and Park in male and female attire. He told the court he had conducted surveillance on Boulton and Park for the previous year. Another policeman stated he had been on surveillance duty at the Wakefield Street flat for the past fortnight, and had seen the late-night comings and goings of the two men. The magistrate remanded Boulton and Park in custody for seven days; they were held at the Coldbath Fields Prison.
They left the court and returned to the neighbouring police cells where they were physically examined without consent by James Paul, the doctor who worked with the Bow Street division of the Metropolitan Police. Paul inspected the anuses of both men. On Boulton he reported "The anus was dilated, and more dilatable, and the muscles surrounding the anus easily opened"; on Park he said "The anus was very much dilated, ... and dilatable to a very great extent. The rectum was large, and there was some discoloration around the edge of the anus, caused probably by sores". Although not an expert in sexual activity, he deemed "there were symptoms in these men as I should expect to find in men that had committed unnatural crimes". He also noted that both Boulton and Park had large penises and Boulton also had a scrotum "of inordinate length"; he said this was a result of their sodomy. To counter the evidence, the defence arranged for six doctors, including Frederick Le Gros Clark—the examiner from the University of London—and the doctor of Coldbath Fields—to physically examine Boulton and Park. They all concluded that there was no evidence of sodomitical activity and that there was nothing abnormal in the size of either man's penis. The only point that was out of the ordinary was Boulton's operation scar from the removal of the fistula.
When Boulton and Park appeared at the Bow Street court for re-examination the following week, a crowd of around a thousand was gathered outside the court to see them arrive, and the courtroom was full to capacity. Some of the crowd were disappointed to see them dressed in male attire. When examined, Mundell stated that he "believed Boulton to be a woman", and made amorous advances to her accordingly. A list of items seized from the Wakefield Street flat was read out: it included numerous items of women's clothing, ladies shoes and boots, wigs, hair pieces, hairdressing equipment, make-up and wadding—the last of which was used for padding. Bail was refused, and Boulton and Park were again put on remand; they were told that there would be more attendances at the court for examination.
Boulton and Park appeared for examination at the magistrates' court seven times by 28 May, and details of the evidence gathered by the police was included in the hearings. The police investigation, under the control of Superintendent James Thompson, continued while Boulton and Park were on remand and their findings were raised in the magistrates' court. Witnesses who came forward to the police included John Reeve—a manager at the Alhambra Theatre of Variety—and George Smith, the beadle of Burlington Arcade; both men reported that they had ejected Boulton and Park from their respective premises on numerous occasions. Thompson travelled to Edinburgh and interviewed the landlady of Louis Hurt, a Post Office surveyor and friend with whom Boulton had stayed. Thompson tried to get the landlady to agree with the premise that Boulton and Hurt regularly shared a bed together; she told the detective that Boulton slept in a different room. Thompson removed photographs of Boulton and correspondence between the two men. Following the trail of correspondence, police also interviewed John Safford Fiske, the American consul in Leith, and again removed photographs and correspondence.
Boulton and Park were released from remand on 11 July 1870, having been held for over two months. The police investigation continued and, in addition to Boulton and Park, charges were brought against Clinton, Hurt, Fiske and three others who were found to be connected: William Somerville, Martin Cumming and C. F. Thomas. Somerville had accompanied Boulton and Park to a ball; they had been in drag, he had been in male clothing. He had also written letters to Boulton which the police had found; they were the basis of the charge against him. Thomas was an independently wealthy man who was driven to meet the others in his own carriage. He and Cumming would both join the others in public in women's clothing. Somerville, Cumming and Thomas all absconded before the trial. Charges against Mundell were dropped, and he was listed as a witness for the prosecution.
On 18 June 1870 it was reported that Clinton had died of scarlet fever. He made a deathbed denial against the accusations of sodomy and dictated a note to his solicitor: "Nothing can be laid to my charge other than the foolish continuation of the impersonation of theatrical characters which arose from a simple frolic in which I permitted myself to become an actor." He was buried on 23 June in Christchurch, Hampshire. Given the circumstances Clinton was in, it is possible that he killed himself, although McKenna considers it likely that there was no suicide, but that he lived abroad, possibly in Paris, Sydney or New York.
Initially it was thought that the case against the men would be heard in the Old Bailey, but on 4 July Boulton's counsel applied for the case to be moved to the Court of the Queen's Bench to be heard before Sir Alexander Cockburn, the Lord Chief Justice. The legal historian Judith Rowbotham considers this was "the first hint that the prosecution was falling apart". Davenport-Hines considers that failure was because the police "failed to cajole the parties to denounce each other or to muster convincing witnesses".
## Trial
The trial ran between 9 and 15 May 1871 before a special jury. The prosecution was led by Sir Robert Collier and Sir John Coleridge, the Attorney General and Solicitor General, respectively, and the team included Hardinge Giffard—who was later the Lord Chancellor—and Henry James, who later held the positions of both Attorney General and Solicitor General. The defendants were represented by Sir George Lewis. Both Boulton and Park dressed in male clothing for the trial and both had grown facial hair in the year since their arrest; Davenport-Hines considers this was probably at the direction of Lewis.
With no physical evidence that sodomy had taken place and no witnesses to homosexual activity by any of the accused, the prosecution said that the lifestyles of the men—their public displays of transvestitism—were proof of homosexual activity. The defence stated that Boulton's and Park's actions were not criminal but feckless and immature. Their theatrical background playing women's roles was used as a defence and to explain their possession of women's clothing. Rowbotham notes that Clinton's deathbed confession would have had an impact on the jury; such statements were taken seriously and would have undermined the prosecution's case.
The witnesses produced by the prosecution proved disastrous for them, and many told the court they had seen no evidence of homosexual or improper behaviour. Mundell told the court that Boulton and Park had told him several times—verbally and in correspondence—that they were men in drag, but he had disbelieved them. He recounted that Boulton had rebuffed physical advances, rather than encouraging any homosexual activity. Smith, the beadle, commented extensively on his dismissal for accepting tips from female prostitutes to ply their trade in Burlington Arcade; he told the court he had been "getting up evidence for the police in this little affair" and that he expected to be paid by the police for giving evidence. The prosecution presented and read out in court examples of the correspondence involving the accused men, the defence argued that these were shows of affection between the writers—albeit with language exaggerated by "theatrical propensities"—and not evidence of a physical relationship.
One of the defence witnesses was Boulton's mother, who told the court that she knew and approved of her son's friendship with Clinton. According to Rowbotham, Mary Boulton's testimony "gave the impression that while Boulton had been foolish in extending his wearing of female attire beyond ... [his theatrical] performances, it was also an indication of how they had all continued play-acting off-stage". Boulton's parents had accompanied him and Clinton to the theatre—with Boulton in male attire—and both parents had seen him perform on stage. According to Morris Kaplan, in his history of homosexuality in the late nineteenth-century, Boulton's mother "portrayed the group of cross-dressers and their admirers as a cozy domestic circle of young male friends".
Cockburn's summing up was critical of the prosecution's case and the behaviour of the police. He said that the investigation in Scotland, and charges against Fiske and Hurt were excessive. He also commented that the police had no jurisdiction to act without a warrant in Scotland and that the court had no jurisdiction to try people for an event that took place in Scotland, which was a matter for the Scottish courts, operating under Scots law. He considered that Paul's physical examination was improper, and he doubted that the police had made a sufficiently strong case that proved homosexual activity had taken place. There was no doubt, he said, that some of the accused had appeared in public in women's clothing, and suggested that such outrages of public decency should be addressed by future legislation that allowed sentences "of two or three months' imprisonment, with the treadmill attached to it, with, in case of repetition of the offence, a little wholesome corporal discipline, would, I think, be effective, not only in such cases, but in all cases of outrage against public decency."
After deliberating for fifty-three minutes the jury found all four men not guilty. At the announcement, Boulton fainted; there was applause, cheers and cries of "Bravo!" from the public gallery. Kaplan observes that the case "was fraught with contested issues touching on gender, sexuality, social class and urban culture".
On 6 June 1871 the last remaining matter from the court case was brought to a close. Boulton and Park had a remaining charge of appearing in public dressed as women, which was "an offence against public morals and common decency". They met Cockburn in his chambers, where they dropped their pleas of not guilty to accept being bound over for two years against a sum of 500 guineas each.
## Post-trial lives
After the trial Boulton returned to performing and appeared in Eastbourne in September 1871; that October he appeared on stage in Burslem and Hanley, Staffordshire, before performing in Bolton, Lancashire. From 1874 he spent some time in New York, performing under the name Ernest Byrne, and it is possible he met Clinton there. Boulton returned to Britain in 1877 and again toured. He died on 30 September 1904 at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London, from a brain tumour.
Park also travelled to New York and appeared on stage under the name Fred Fenton, where he had some limited success in character parts and was a resident performer at the Fifth Avenue Theatre for a time. He died in 1881, aged 33 or 34, probably of syphilis, according to McKenna.
## Newspaper coverage
The arraignment hearings and trial were widely reported in national and local press in Britain, and most of the London papers had provided extensive space for the coverage. Boulton's and Park's private lives—and those of their known friends and associates—were scrutinised and publicised in the press; they appeared under sensational headlines, including "Men in Petticoats", "The Gentlemen Personating Women", "The 'Gentlemen-Women' Case" and "The 'Men-Women' at Bow Street".
Many of the papers included leaders that were indignant that homosexuality—which was considered a foreign habit—was being practised in England. After the acquittal, some of the leader writers changed their stances, and The Times said they had "a certain sense of relief that we record this morning the failure of a prosecution"; a guilty verdict, the leader writer continued, "would have been felt at home, and received abroad, as a reflection of our national morals".
In the reports after their first appearance at the magistrates' court, most major newspapers included extensive descriptions of Boulton's and Park's attire and hair style. This included the quality press, including The Times, which reported:
> When placed in the dock Boulton wore a cherry-coloured silk evening dress trimmed with white lace; his arms were bare and he had on bracelets. He wore a wig and painted chignon. Park's costume consisted of a dark green satin dress, low necked, trimmed with black lace, of which material he also had a shawl round his shoulders. His hair was flaxen and in curls. He had on a pair of white kid gloves.
In addition to the extensive newspaper coverage, several penny pamphlets were produced with titles that included "Men in Petticoats", "The Unnatural History and Petticoat Mystery of Boulton and Park", "Stella, the Star of the Strand", "The Lives of Boulton and Park: Extraordinary Revelations", "Life and Examination of the Would-be Ladies" and "The Life and Examination of Boulton and Park, the Men in Women's Clothing". Many showed illustrations of Boulton and Park in male and female attire. Michelle Liu Carriger, in her examination of the penny pamphlets, identifies a change in the approach taken by the illustrators. In the early publications, Boulton and Park are portrayed as attractive ladies; by four weeks into the magistrate's hearing, they are shown as a "distinctly more grotesque masculine cast". This was particularly true in the illustrations of The Illustrated Police News, one of the more lurid publications of the time. Kaplan observes that many of the penny pamphlets carried "ritual condemnation" of the accused men, not in keeping with the sensational nature of the images and details in the publications.
## Historiography
The historian Harry Cocks states that the interpretation of history of the Boulton and Park arrest and trial "has gone through distinct phases"; the professor of English Simon Joyce, considers that interpretations are consistent in their treatment of Boulton and Park as men. Cocks identifies the following themes: the lawyer William Roughhead thought the relationship to be largely innocent and sprang from the sentimental romanticism that the Victorians adopted; the barrister H. Montgomery Hyde wrote that Boulton and Park were homosexuals who were not imprisoned because there was insufficient evidence presented in court. Weeks and Alan Sinfield, the gender studies academic, argue that the court ignored the possibility of homosexuality, which meant a conviction was not possible. Cocks considers that both Upchurch and Bartlett write that the courts demonstrated "wilful ignorance" that refuted the possibility that there was a homosexual element in society. Senelick identifies and studies Boulton and Park in relation to stage drag artistes.
Joyce sees the common theme that Boulton and Park were considered at the time, and in subsequent studies, as two men who dressed in women's clothing. He views the story of Boulton and Park from the position of a transgender history. He observes that one of the major British newspapers—and some of the hearings in the magistrates' courts—use feminine pronouns in describing the accused, and of Mary Boulton's evidence that her son "has presented as female since the age of six". Joyce argues that:
> Fanny and Stella's story is studded with moments of recognition and also with aspects that are barely comprehensible today, and I want to argue that those points of apparent incommensurability with current thinking are just as valuable in helping us understand transgender people as having a history, albeit one that is sometimes fractured and non-linear.
## Legacy
Cocks describes the Boulton and Park trial as "one of the central parts of any history of male homosexuality"; Jason Boyd, in Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, describes the trial as:
> a significant moment in the history of the hesitant emergence of a public discourse of the homosexual as an identity. Perhaps more importantly, the base is significant in its revelation of a "pre-homosexual" subculture which was obviously extensive, varied and flourishing, involving, in differing roles and degrees, men of all walks of life.
The Crown's failure to secure the prosecution of Boulton and Park showed the difficulties in investigating private activities, particularly offences for homosexual activity. The failure to convict the men was one factor in the introduction of the 1885 Labouchere Amendment. This—formally, section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, named after its sponsor, Henry Labouchère—made male homosexual acts punishable by up to two years' hard labour. According to the historian William A. Cohen, at the time of the Boulton and Park case, homosexuality was "identifiable within a sociomedical sexual taxonomy, but was not yet recognized as a juridical subject". The subsequent introduction of the Labouchere Amendment, "virtually criminaliz[ed] gay male style itself".
During the hearings in May 1870, Reynolds's Newspaper reported that a witness said "'We shall come in drag', which means wearing women's costumes"; the magistrate commented that "This is the first time the meaning of the word 'drag' has been given in evidence?" The exchange is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as the first known use of the term "drag" for cross-dressing.
## Portrayals
Boulton and Park appear as characters in The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, an 1881 work of homosexual pornographic literature by John Saul, a male prostitute. In the work, Boulton was named "Laura" and Park was named "Selina". In the story, the cross-dressing narrator recounts how he meets Boulton and Park, dressed as women, at Haxell's Hotel on the Strand, with Clinton. Later on, the narrator spends the night at Boulton and Park's rooms in Eaton Square, and the next day has breakfast with them "all dressed as ladies". According to Cohen, the work "provides a piquant complement to the other narratives of their lives, valuable both for radically shifting the perspective and for highlighting the tendentiousness of any report about 'sodomitical practices'."
Boulton and Park appear in the plays Lord Arthur's Bed (2008) by the playwright Martin Lewton, Fanny and Stella: The Shocking True Story (2015) by Glenn Chandler and Stella'', by Neil Bartlett; the last of these was co-commissioned by the London International Festival of Theatre, Holland Festival and Brighton Festival in 2016. Boulton and Park are also the subjects of a Victorian limerick that was popular at the time of the case. Cohen considers it shows an "anachronistic conflation of sodomy and bestiality". The historian Angus McLaren judges that the limerick shows that at the time there was a "popular belief that homosexuality and transvestism were inseparable". According to the historian Catharine Arnold, the limerick showed that the Boulton and Park case "lived on in popular culture".
> > There was an old person of Sark Who buggered a pig in the dark;
> >
> > ` The swine in surprise `
> > ` Murmured: "God blast your eyes, `
> >
> > Do you take me for Boulton and Park?"
## See also
- Timeline of LGBT history in Britain
|
1,614,606 |
Moorgate tube crash
| 1,162,874,337 |
1975 train crash on the London Underground
|
[
"1975 disasters in the United Kingdom",
"1975 in London",
"Disasters on the London Underground",
"February 1975 events in the United Kingdom",
"History of the City of London",
"Railway accidents in 1975",
"Transport in the City of London"
] |
The Moorgate tube crash occurred on 28 February 1975 at 8:46 am on the London Underground's Northern City Line; 43 people died and 74 were injured after a train failed to stop at the line's southern terminus, Moorgate station, and crashed into its end wall. It is considered the worst peacetime accident on the London Underground. No fault was found with the train, and the inquiry by the Department of the Environment concluded that the accident was caused by the actions of Leslie Newson, the 56-year-old driver.
The crash forced the first carriage into the roof of the tunnel at the front and back, but the middle remained on the trackbed; the 16-metre-long (52 ft) coach was crushed to 6.1 metres (20 ft). The second carriage was concertinaed at the front as it collided with the first, and the third rode over the rear of the second. The brakes were not applied and the dead man's handle was still depressed when the train crashed. It took 13 hours to remove the injured, many of whom had to be cut free from the wreckage. With no services running into the adjoining platform to produce the piston effect pushing air into the station, ventilation was poor and temperatures in the tunnel rose to over 49 °C (120 °F). It took a further four days to extract the last body, that of Newson; his cab, normally 91 centimetres (3 ft) deep, had been crushed to 15 centimetres (6 in).
The post-mortem on Newson showed no medical reason to explain the crash. A cause has never been established, and theories include suicide, that he may have been distracted, or that he was affected by conditions such as transient global amnesia or akinesis with mutism. The subsequent inquest established that Newson had also inexplicably overshot platforms on the same route on two other occasions earlier in the week of the accident. Tests showed that Newson had a blood alcohol level of 80 mg/100 ml—the level at which one can be prosecuted for drink-driving—though the alcohol may have been produced by the natural decomposition process over four days at a high temperature.
In the aftermath of the crash, London Underground introduced a safety system that automatically stops a train when it is travelling too fast. This became known informally as Moorgate protection. Northern City Line services into Moorgate ended in October 1975 and British Rail services started in August 1976. After a long campaign by relatives of the dead, two memorials were unveiled near the station, one in July 2013 and one in February 2014.
## Background
The London Underground—also known as the Underground or the Tube—is a public rapid transit system serving London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire. The first line opened in 1863 and by 1975 the network contained 250 miles (400 km) of route track; that year three million people used the service each day. The Tube was one of the safest methods of transport in Britain in 1975. Apart from suicides, there were only 14 deaths on the Underground between 1938 and 1975, 12 of which occurred in the 1953 Stratford crash.
Moorgate station, in the City of London, was the terminus at the southern end of the Northern City Line, five stops and 2.6 miles (4.2 km) from the northern end at Drayton Park. Moorgate is an interchange between the Underground network and suburban overground services. The station contains ten platforms; numbers 7 to 10 are deep level, and numbers 9 and 10 are used for the Northern City Line service. At the end of platform 9 in 1975 was a red warning light atop a post, situated in front of a 61-centimetre-high (2 ft) sand drag placed to stop overrunning trains. The drag was 11 metres (36 ft) long, of which 5.8 metres (19 ft) was on the tracks in front of the platform, and 5.2 metres (17 ft) was inside an overrun tunnel that was 20.3 metres (67 ft) long, 4 metres (13 ft) high and 4.9 metres (16 ft) wide. The tunnel had been designed to accommodate larger main line rolling stock and so was wider than the standard tube tunnel width of 3.7 metres (12 ft). A buffer stop, which had once been hydraulic, but had not been functioning as such for some time prior to the crash, was at the end of the tunnel, in front of a solid wall. The approach to Moorgate from Old Street station, the stop prior to the terminus, was on a falling gradient of 1 in 150 for 196 metres (642 ft) before levelling out for 71 metres (233 ft) to platform 9; a scissors crossover was located just prior to platforms 9 and 10. There was a speed limit of 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) on the line, and a limit of 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) on entry into Moorgate station.
From November 1966 the Northern City Line ran 1938 rolling stock. Weekly checks were made on the stock's brakes, doors and compressors; all equipment on the train was examined on a six-week basis and the cars were lifted from their bogies for a thorough examination once a year.
## Crash
On 28 February 1975 the first shift of the Northern City Line service was driven by Leslie Newson, 56, who had worked for London Transport since 1969 and been driving on the Northern City Line for the previous three months. Newson was known by his colleagues as a careful and conscientious motorman (driver). On 28 February he carried a bottle of milk, sugar, his rule book, and a notebook in his work satchel; he also had £270 in his jacket to buy a second-hand car for his daughter after work. According to staff on duty his behaviour appeared normal. Before his shift began he had a cup of tea and shared his sugar with a colleague; he jokingly said to the colleague "Go easy on it, I shall want another cup when I come off duty".
The first return trips of the day between Drayton Park and Moorgate, which started at 6:40 am, passed without incident. Robert Harris, the 18-year-old guard who had started working for London Underground in August 1974, was late and joined the train when it returned to Moorgate at 6:53 am; a driver waiting to go on duty took his place until his arrival. Newson and Harris made three further return trips before the train undertook its final journey from Drayton Park at 8:38 am, thirty seconds late. The train carried approximately 300 passengers; it was a Friday and, as it was the peak of rush hour, most of the travellers were commuters. As the exit from platform 9 was next to the overrun tunnel, the first two carriages were more popular with commuters and more full than the remaining four. Although pupils from the nearby City of London School for Girls would normally have been on the service at that time, the pupils had a day's holiday as the school was in use for external examinations. The journalist Sally Holloway, in her history of the crash, observes that the number of casualties could have been higher if the girls had been attending school.
After the train departed Old Street on its 56-second journey to Moorgate, Harris was bored and left his position at the guard's control panel—which contained the controls for the emergency brake—at the front of the rear carriage and walked to the back of the train to look for a newspaper. He did not find one and spent his time reading the advertisements on the walls at the rear of the carriage.
On arrival at Moorgate at 8:46 am, the train, which comprised two units of three connected cars, did not slow. It was still under power and no brakes were applied; it passed through the station at 30–40 mph (48–64 km/h). The signalman on duty later reported that the train appeared to be accelerating as it passed along the platform. A passenger waiting to take the return journey stated that Newson appeared "to be staring straight ahead and to be somewhat larger than life". Tests were later done on trains entering platform 9 at slow speed. These showed that because of the station lighting, it was impossible to clearly see the driver's eyes. Witnesses standing on the platform saw Newson sitting upright and facing forward, his uniform neat and still wearing his hat; his hands appeared to be on the train's controls as far as they could tell.
The brakes were not applied and the dead man's handle was still depressed when the train entered the overrun tunnel, throwing up sand from the drag; when the driver's cab crashed into the hydraulic buffer, the carriage was separated from its bogie and the coachwork was forced into the end wall and the roof. The first 15 seats of the carriage were crushed into 0.61 metres (2 ft). The second coach was forced under the rear of the first, which buckled at three points into the shape of a V with a tail, and had its rear forced into the tunnel roof. With the weight of the train piling up behind it, the 16-metre-long (52 ft) front coach was crushed to 6.1 metres (20 ft). The third car was damaged at both ends, more significantly at the leading end as it rode over the second. Javier Gonzalez, a passenger who was travelling in the front carriage, described the moment the train crashed:
> Just above my newspaper I saw a lady sitting opposite me and then the lights went out. I have the image of her face to this day. She died.
>
> As darkness came, there was a very loud noise of the crash, metal and glass breaking, no screams, all in the fraction of the second, one takes to breathe in. It was all over in no time.
Forty-two passengers and the driver died; seventy-four people were treated in hospital for their injuries. It was, and remains, the worst peacetime accident on the Underground.
## Rescue
The first call to the emergency services was received at 8:48 am; the London Ambulance Service arrived at 8:54 am and the London Fire Brigade at 8:57 am. At around the same time the City of London Police alerted nearby St Bartholomew's Hospital (Barts) that "a tube train had hit the buffers" at Moorgate, but there was no indication at that stage of the seriousness of the crash. A small assessment team comprising a casualty officer and a medical student was sent from the hospital; 15 minutes later a resuscitation unit was sent, although the hospital staff were still unaware of the scale of the problem. The City of London Police also contacted the medical unit of BP at Britannic House, Finsbury Circus. Donald Dean and a team of two doctors and two nurses walked around to the station to assist, and were the first medical assistance at the scene. After assessing the situation, Dean realised that he did not have enough painkillers with him, or in BP stores, so he went to the Moorgate branch of Boots where the pharmacist gave him the shop's entire supply of morphine and pethidine. The Fire Brigade undertook a brief inspection of the site and, once they saw what they were dealing with, the status was updated to a Major Accident event; additional ambulances and fire tenders were soon sent. One of the doctors from Barts later described the scene:
> The front carriage was an indescribable tangle of twisted metal and in it the living and the dead were heaped together, intertwined among themselves and the wreckage.
>
> It was impossible to estimate the number [of casualties] involved with any degree of accuracy because the lighting was poor, the victims were all tangled together, and everything was covered with a thick layer of black dust. Many of the victims were writhing in agony and were screaming for individual attention. It was obvious from an early stage that the main problem was the disentanglement of a heap of people, many of whom appeared to be in imminent danger of suffocation.
By around 9:00 am the last casualty had been removed from the third carriage. By 9:30 am Moorgate and many of the surrounding roads had been cordoned off to allow space for the co-ordination teams above ground to manage the flow of vehicles—particularly for ambulances taking casualties to hospitals. A message was sent from the London Fire Brigade headquarters to all fire stations in London; it estimated that there were still 50 people trapped and warned that "this incident will be protracted". To make a clear passage through the wreckage for equipment, the emergency services and injured commuters, a circular route was organised through the carriages. Firemen cut holes in parts of the structure, including in the floors and ceilings of the carriages through which it was possible to move, even if it meant crawling through some areas. At 10:00 am a medical team arrived from The London Hospital and set up a makeshift operating theatre on a platform near the triage team.
Platform 9 was 21 metres (70 ft) underground, and fire and ambulance crews had to carry all the equipment they needed through the station and down to the scene of the accident. The depth at which they were operating, and the shielding effect of the soil and concrete, meant their radios could not get through to the surface. Messages and requests for further supplies were passed by runners, which led to mistakes: one doctor requested further supplies of the pain-killing gas Entonox, but by the time the request reached the surface, it had been garbled to "the doctor wants an empty box". The fire brigade deployed a small team with "Figaro", an experimental radio system that worked in deep locations. Working conditions for the emergency services became increasingly difficult throughout the day. The crash had thrown soot and dirt into the air from the sand drag, and from between the two metal layers of the tube carriages. Everything was covered with a thick layer of the residue which was easily disturbed. The lamps and cutting gear used by the fire brigade raised the temperature to over 49 °C (120 °F) and oxygen levels began to drop. In the deep lines at Moorgate, ventilation is produced by the piston effect, created by trains forcing air through the tube lines. With services stopped since the crash, no fresh air was reaching platforms 9 and 10. A large electric fan was placed at the top of the escalators in an attempt to remedy the situation, but soot and dirt was disturbed and little draught was created; the machine was soon turned off.
By 12:00 noon only five live casualties were left to be extracted; by 3:15 pm only two were left: Margaret Liles, a 19-year-old Woman Police Constable (WPC), and Jeff Benton, who worked at the London Stock Exchange. They were in the front part of the first carriage at the time of the crash and ended up trapped together, pinned down under the girders of the carriage's structure. The Fire Brigade worked for several hours to release Benton, but it became apparent that Liles needed to be removed first, which could only be done by amputating her left foot. She was finally removed from the wreckage after the procedure at 8.55 pm; Benton was removed at 10:00 pm. As soon as Benton had been removed, all equipment was turned off and silence was ordered among the emergency services. Shouts were made for any people trapped to respond; there were no responses and the site medical officer declared that all the remaining bodies in the wreckage were dead. During the day mouth-to-mouth resuscitation had been needed to save two people, and two victims died of crush syndrome soon after being released from the wreckage. Benton also died of crush syndrome, in hospital on 27 March 1975, despite initially good progress.
## Aftermath
### Clearing up
Work on removing the bodies and clearing the wreckage from the tunnel began after the last casualty had been removed. With no casualties remaining, the Fire Brigade were able to use flame cutting equipment. After the third carriage was cut free from the second, at 1:00 am on 1 March the third carriage began to be winched back down the track; as it began moving a body that no-one had seen fell from the wreckage and onto the track. According to Joseph Milner, the chief fire officer of the London Fire Brigade, the body gave "the first indication of how protracted would be the work ahead". Once the carriage had been removed, a doctor again checked for further signs of living casualties; none were found.
The use of the flame cutting equipment had a detrimental effect on the atmosphere on the platform. Oxygen levels dropped from the norm of 21 per cent to 16 per cent and the smell of decomposition from the bodies trapped in the wreckage was noticed by workers. Those working on the platform or tunnel were restricted to 20-minute spells working, followed by 40 minutes' recovery time on the surface. All workers had to wear gloves and masks; any cuts had to be reported, and no-one with a cut was allowed to be involved in the extrication of a body. Temperatures improved after a company donated an air conditioning unit, which was installed at ground level, and the air piped down into the tunnel.
During 1 and 2 March the wreckage of the second carriage was cut away in sections and winched free; clearance of the carriages continued round the clock until a break was forced by a telephoned bomb scare at 10:00 pm on 2 March, which forced the crews to evacuate the station. The last passenger was removed from the front carriage at 3:20 pm on 4 March, which left only the driver's body. Gordon Hafter, London Underground's chief engineer, and Lieutenant Colonel Ian McNaughton, the Chief Inspecting Officer of Railways, examined the driver's cab; normally 91 centimetres (3 ft) deep, it had been crushed to 15 centimetres (6 in). They ascertained that Newson was at his controls, although his head had been forced through the front window. Hafter reported his examination about Newson to the subsequent inquiry:
> His left hand was close to, but not actually on the driver's brake handle and his right arm was hanging down to the right of the main controller. His head was to the left of the dead man's handle which had been forced upwards, beyond its normal travel, and was resting on his right shoulder.
Newson's body was removed at 8:05 pm on 4 March; the Fire Brigade cleared the remainder of the wreckage by 5:00 am on 5 March and handed control of the platform back to London Underground. The rescue and clean-up operation involved the efforts of 1,324 firemen, 240 policemen, 80 ambulance men, 16 doctors and several nurses.
Services on the line had been suspended on the day of the crash. A shuttle service between Drayton Park and Old Street was used from 1 March 1975 until normal traffic returned on 10 March.
### Investigation and inquiry
The post-mortem was undertaken on Newson by the Home Office pathologist Keith Simpson on 4 March 1975. He found no physical conditions, such as a stroke or heart attack, that would have explained the crash. Initial findings showed no drugs or alcohol in Newson's bloodstream, and there was no evidence of liver damage from heavy drinking.
On 7 March 1975 Anthony Crosland, the Secretary of State for the Environment, instructed McNaughton to undertake an investigation of the crash. McNaughton's inquiry began on 13 March and was paused after a day and a half; during that time it was established that the mechanics of the train were in working order and that there were no known problems with Newson's health, although the results of pathological tests were still awaited. McNaughton said he was perplexed as to the causes of the crash, but that he would proceed with the next part of his inquiry, which was to undertake further enquiries and to consider measures so the accident could not be repeated.
The coroner's inquest was held between 14 and 18 April 1975. David Paul, the coroner, was unhappy that a government inquiry had already begun, as evidence was in the public domain, and could affect the inquest's jury. Sixty-one witnesses gave evidence. An analysis of Newson's kidneys by the toxicologist Anne Robinson showed his blood alcohol level at the time of the post-mortem was 80 mg/100 ml. Robinson stated that there were several biological processes that produced alcohol in the body after death, and it was not possible to reach a definite conclusion as to whether this was the result of consumption of alcohol or a product of the process of decomposition. She added "there are so many unknown factors here that it is difficult to be precise and definite. One has to make a number of assumptions", although she stated that it was likely that he had been drinking. 80 mg/100 ml was—and, as at 2022, still is—the legal limit in England for driving. It was the highest reading of four samples taken from Newson's body; the lowest was 20 mg/100 ml. Newson's widow stated that her husband drank spirits only rarely; David Paul agreed that it was out of character with all he had heard, and agreed that further tests could be run on Newson's samples. On the final day of the inquiry, Roy Goulding, a specialist in the forensic examination of poisons, stated that while he reached the same results of 80 mg/100 ml, his conclusions differed from Robinson's; Goulding stated that as alcohol was naturally produced in the blood after death, it was not possible to confirm that Newson had been drinking prior to the crash. Several of Newson's colleagues reported that they had no suspicions that Newson had been drinking, and that his behaviour on the morning of the crash was normal. David Paul asked Simpson to comment on the findings relating to alcohol levels. He informed the coroner that "it is generally accepted that as much as 80 mg/100ml may make its appearance in a decomposing body after four days in a [relatively] high temperature". The jury returned verdicts of accidental death.
On 19 March a memorial service was held at St Paul's Cathedral, London, attended by 2,000 mourners, including representatives of the emergency services and Newson's widow and family.
McNaughton published his report almost a year later, on 4 March 1976. He wrote that tests showed no equipment fault on the train, and that the dead man's handle had no defect. From X-rays it was clear that at the moment of the crash Newson's hand was on the dead man's handle. There were no electrical burns on his skin or clothing to indicate an electrical fault. McNaughton observed that because of Harris's lack of experience, he could not have taken any action to stop the accident from happening, although he thought the young man "displayed himself as idle and undisciplined". He concluded that "the accident was solely due to a lapse on the part of the driver, Motorman Newson".
Given the inquest findings relating to alcohol in Newson's bloodstream, McNaughton examined the possibility that Newson was drunk. He received expert advice that even if Newson had drunk sufficient alcohol to achieve a blood alcohol level of 80 mg/100 ml, it would not account for the crash. McNaughton also examined the possibility of suicide by Newson, but considered it unlikely, given other indications, including Newson's plans for purchasing a car later in the day and that he had driven the route without error for the preceding 21⁄2 hours. During the inquest Harris testified that Newson had also overshot a platform three or four days before the accident, and a passenger had also reported a second overshoot by Newson that week. The suicide expert Bruce Danto stated of the overshoots, "that does not sound like misjudgment to me. That sounds like a man who is getting the feeling of how to run a train into a wall".
McNaughton investigated the possibility that Newson may have been daydreaming or distracted to the point that he did not realise the train was entering Moorgate. McNaughton concluded that as the train went over the scissor crossing before the platform, it would have brought the driver to his senses. It was also likely that Newson would have realised his circumstances before the train hit the wall, and would have thrown his hands up in front of his face in a reflex action. Medical evidence presented to the inquiry raised the possibility that the driver had been affected by conditions such as transient global amnesia or akinesis with mutism, where the brain continues to function and the individual remains aware, although not being able to move physically. There was no evidence to indicate either condition: to positively diagnose akinesis with mutism would depend on a microscopic examination of the brain, which was not possible because of decomposition, and transient global amnesia leaves no traces. McNaughton's report found that there was insufficient evidence to say if the accident was due to a deliberate act or a medical condition.
> I must conclude, therefore, that the cause of this accident lay entirely in the behaviour of Motorman Newson during the final minute before the accident occurred. Whether his behaviour was deliberate or whether it was the result of a suddenly arising physical condition not revealed as a result of post-mortem examination, there is not sufficient evidence to examine, but I am satisfied that no part of the responsibility for the accident rests with any other person and that there was no fault or condition of the train, track or signalling that in any way contributed to it.
## Legacy
London Underground services into Moorgate on the Northern City Line had previously been scheduled to be replaced by British Rail services from Welwyn Garden City and Hertford; the accident did not change the plan. The last London Underground services on the Northern City Line ran into Moorgate on 4 October 1975 and British Rail services started in August 1976, having previously terminated at Broad Street station.
When platform 9 reopened there had been changes introduced to aid drivers. The back wall of the tunnel was painted white and a large, heavy-duty buffer preceded the sand drag. Shortly after the crash, London Underground imposed a speed limit of 10 mph (16 km/h) for all trains entering terminal platforms. Operating instructions were changed so that the protecting signal at terminal platforms was held at danger until trains approaching were travelling slowly, or had been brought to a stop, although this caused delays and operating problems.
### Moorgate protection
Since the death of a driver in 1971, when an empty stock train crashed into buffers in a tunnel siding near Tooting Broadway, London Underground had been introducing speed controls at such locations. By the time of the Moorgate crash, 12 of the 19 locations had the equipment installed. In July 1978, approval was given for Moorgate protection, Moorgate control or Trains Entering Terminal Stations (TETS) to be introduced at all dead-end termini on manually driven lines on the Underground system.
At Moorgate's platform 9, three timed train stops were installed; the first at the scissors crossing, the second at the start of the platform and the third halfway down the platform. If the train passes any of these at more than 12.5 miles per hour (20.1 km/h) the emergency brake is applied. Resistors were placed in the traction supply of trains, to prevent a train accelerating when entering the platform, although the value of these resistors had to be changed after installation. Relays switch the resistors out when the train is permitted to leave. The system was operational in all locations by 1984.
This accident also led to changes in signalling. Previously it had always been standard policy for the last signal indication before a buffer-stop or bay platform to indicate "clear" (green) light to the train driver and "caution" (single-yellow) light if the platform was partly occupied. Following the Moorgate accident, signalling was changed to give an approach-controlled delayed yellow aspect when the line was clear to the buffer-stops and red plus a subsidiary aspect (two white lights at 45 degrees) when the line or platform was partly occupied.
### Memorials
In the south-west corner of Finsbury Square, 410 metres (450 yd) north of Moorgate station, a memorial lists those who died. Measuring 1.2 by 0.9 metres (4 ft × 3 ft), it was unveiled in July 2013 after a long campaign by relatives of the victims and supporters. On 28 February 2014 a memorial plaque was unveiled by Fiona Woolf, the Lord Mayor of London, on the side of the station building, in Moor Place.
### In the media
In 1977 the BBC One programme Red Alert examined whether an accident like Moorgate could happen again. The writer Laurence Marks, whose father died in the disaster, presented Me, My Dad and Moorgate, a Channel 4 documentary broadcast on 4 June 2006; he stated that he believed the crash was due to suicide by Newson. In 2009 the BBC Radio 4 programme In Living Memory examined the causes of the crash, and in 2015 Real Lives Reunited, aired on BBC One, recorded survivors meeting the firemen who cut them from the wreckage.
|
3,782,389 |
George Robey
| 1,172,064,796 |
English music hall singer, stage & film actor
|
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Sir George Edward Wade, CBE (20 September 1869 – 29 November 1954), known professionally as George Robey, was an English comedian, singer and actor in musical theatre, who became known as one of the greatest music hall performers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a comedian, he mixed everyday situations and observations with comic absurdity. Apart from his music hall acts, he was a popular Christmas pantomime performer in the English provinces, where he excelled in the dame roles. He scored notable successes in musical revues during and after the First World War, particularly with the song "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)", which he performed with Violet Loraine in the revue The Bing Boys Are Here (1916). One of his best-known original characters in his six-decade long career was the Prime Minister of Mirth.
Born in London, Robey came from a middle-class family. After schooling in England and Germany, and a series of office jobs, he made his debut on the London stage, at the age of 21, as the straight man to a comic hypnotist. Robey soon developed his own act and appeared at the Oxford Music Hall in 1890, where he earned favourable notices singing "The Simple Pimple" and "He'll Get It Where He's Gone to Now". In 1892, he appeared in his first pantomime, Whittington Up-to-date in Brighton, which brought him to a wider audience. More provincial engagements followed in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool, and he became a mainstay of the popular Christmas pantomime scene.
Robey's music hall act matured in the first decade of the 1900s, and he undertook several foreign tours. He starred in the Royal Command Performance in 1912 and regularly entertained before aristocracy. He was an avid sportsman, playing cricket and football at a semi-professional level. During the First World War, in addition to his performances in revues, he raised money for many war charities and was appointed a CBE in 1919. From 1918, he created sketches based on his Prime Minister of Mirth character and used a costume he had designed in the 1890s as a basis for the character's attire. He made a successful transition from music hall to variety shows and starred in the revue Round in Fifty in 1922, which earned him still wider notice. With the exception of his performances in revue and pantomime, he appeared as his Prime Minister of Mirth character in all the other entertainment media including variety, music hall and radio.
In 1913 Robey made his film debut, but he had only modest success in the medium. He continued to perform in variety theatre in the inter-war years and, in 1932, starred in Helen!, his first straight theatre role. His appearance brought him to the attention of many influential directors, including Sydney Carroll, who signed him to appear on stage as Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 in 1935, a role that he later repeated in Laurence Olivier's 1944 film, Henry V. During the Second World War, Robey raised money for charities and promoted recruitment into the forces. By the 1950s, his health had deteriorated, and he entered into semi-retirement. He was knighted a few months before his death in 1954.
## Biography
### Early life
Robey was born at 334 Kennington Road, Kennington, London, on 20 September 1869. His father, Charles Wade, was a civil engineer who spent much of his career on tramline design and construction. Robey's mother, Elizabeth Mary Wade née Keene, was a housewife; he also had two sisters. His paternal ancestors originated from Hampshire; his uncle, George Wade, married into aristocracy in 1848, a link which provided a proud topic of conversation for future generations of the Wade family. When Robey was five, his father moved the family to Birkenhead, where he helped in the construction of the Mersey Railway. Robey began his schooling in nearby Hoylake at a dame school. Three years later the family moved back to London, near the border between Camberwell and Peckham. At around this time, trams were being introduced to the area, providing Charles Wade with a regular, well-paid job.
To fulfil an offer of work, Charles Wade moved the family to Germany in 1880, and Robey attended a school in Dresden. He devoted his leisure hours to visiting the city's museums, art galleries and opera houses and gained a reasonable fluency in German by the time he was 12. He enjoyed life in the country and was impressed with the many operatic productions held in the city and with the Germans' high regard for the arts. When he was 14, his father allowed him to move in with a clergyman's family in the German countryside, which he used as a base while studying science at Leipzig University. To earn money, he taught English to his landlord's children and minded them while their parents were at work. Having successfully enrolled at the university, he studied art and music and stayed with the family for a further 18 months so he could complete his studies before returning to England in 1885. He later claimed, apparently untruthfully, to have studied at the University of Cambridge.
At the age of 18 Robey travelled to Birmingham, where he worked in a civil engineer's office. It was here that he became interested in a career on the stage and often dreamed of starring in his own circus. He learned to play the mandolin and became a skilled performer on the instrument. This drew interest from a group of local musicians and, together with a friend from the group who played the guitar, Robey travelled the local area in search of engagements. Soon afterwards, they were hired to play at a charity concert at the local church, St Mary and St Ambrose in Edgbaston, a performance that led to more local bookings. For the next appearance, Robey performed an impromptu version of "Killaloo", a comic ditty taken from the burlesque Miss Esmeralda. The positive response from the audience encouraged him to give up playing the mandolin to concentrate instead on singing comic songs.
#### London debut
By 1890 Robey had become homesick, and so he returned to South London, where he took employment in a civil engineering company. He also joined a local branch of the Thirteen Club, whose members, many of whom were amateur musicians, performed in small venues across London. Hearing of his talent, the founder of the club, W. H. Branch, invited Robey to appear at Anderton's Hotel in Fleet Street, where he performed the popular new comic song "Where Did You Get That Hat?". Robey's performance secured him private engagements for which he was paid a guinea a night. By the early months of 1891, Robey was much in demand, and he decided to change his stage name. He swapped "Wade" for "Robey" after working for a company in Birmingham that bore the latter name. It was at around this time that he met E. W. Rogers, an established music hall composer who wrote songs for Marie Lloyd and Jenny Hill. For Robey, Rogers wrote three songs: "My Hat's a Brown 'Un", "The Simple Pimple" and "It Suddenly Dawned Upon Me".
In 1891 Robey visited the Royal Aquarium in Westminster where he watched "Professor Kennedy", a burlesque mesmerist from America. After the performance, Robey visited Kennedy in his dressing room and offered himself as the stooge for his next appearance. They agreed that Robey, as his young apprentice, would be "mesmerised" into singing a comic song. At a later rehearsal, Robey negotiated a deal to sing one of the comic songs that had been written for him by Rogers. Robey's turn was a great success, and as a result he secured a permanent theatrical residency at the venue. Later that year, he appeared as a solo act at the Oxford Music Hall, where he performed "The Simple Pimple" and "He'll Get It Where He's Gone to Now". The theatrical press soon became aware of his act, and The Stage called him a "comedian with a pretty sense of humour [who] delivers his songs with considerable point and meets with all success". In early 1892, together with his performances at the Royal Aquarium and the Oxford Music Hall, Robey starred alongside Jenny Hill, Bessie Bonehill and Harriet Vernon at the Paragon Theatre of Varieties in Mile End, where, according to his biographer Peter Cotes, he "stole the notices from experienced troupers".
That summer, Robey conducted a music hall tour of the English provinces which began in Chatham and took him to Liverpool, at a venue owned by the mother of the influential London impresario Oswald Stoll. Through this engagement Robey met Stoll, and the two became lifelong friends. In early December, Robey appeared in five music halls a night, including Gatti's Under the Arches, the Tivoli Music Hall and the London Pavilion. In mid-December, he travelled to Brighton, where he appeared in his first Christmas pantomime, Whittington Up-to-Date. Pantomime would become a lucrative and regular source of employment for the comedian. Cotes calls Robey's festive performances the "cornerstone of his comic art", and the source of "some of his greatest successes".
#### Music hall characterisations
During the 1890s Robey created music hall characters centred on everyday life. Among them were "The Chinese Laundryman" and "Clarence, the Last of the Dandies". As Clarence, Robey dressed in a top hat and frock coat and carried a malacca cane, the garb of a stereotypical Victorian gentleman. For his drag pieces, the comedian established "The Lady Dresser", a female tailor who was desperate to out-dress her high class customers, and "Daisy Dillwater, the District Nurse" who arrived on stage with a bicycle to share light-hearted scandal and gossip with the audience before hurriedly cycling off.
With Robey's popularity came an eagerness to differentiate himself from his music hall rivals, and so he devised a signature costume when appearing as himself: an oversized black coat fastened from the neck down with large, wooden buttons; black, unkempt, baggy trousers and a partially bald wig with black, whispery strands of unbrushed, dirty-looking hair that poked below a large, dishevelled top-hat. He applied thick white face paint and exaggerated the redness on his cheeks and nose with bright red make-up; his eye line and eyebrows were also enhanced with thick, black greasepaint. He held a short, misshaped, wooden walking stick, which was curved at the top. Robey later used the costume for his character, The Prime Minister of Mirth. The outfit helped Robey become instantly recognisable on the London music hall circuit. He next made a start at building his repertoire and bought the rights to comic songs and monologues by several well-established music hall writers, including Sax Rohmer and Bennett Scott. For his routines, Robey developed a characteristic delivery described by Cotes as "a kind of machine-gun staccato rattle through each polysyllabic line, ending abruptly, and holding the pause while he fixed his audience with his basilisk stare."
#### Success in pantomime and the provinces
At the start of 1894, Robey travelled to Manchester to participate in the pantomime Jack and Jill, where he was paid £25 a week for a three-month contract. He did not appear in Jack and Jill until the third act but pleased the holiday crowds nonetheless. During one performance the scenery mechanism failed, which forced him to improvise for the first time. Robey fabricated a story that he had just dined with the Lord Mayor before detailing exactly what he had eaten. The routine was such a hit that it was incorporated into the show as part of the script.
In the final months of 1894, Robey returned to London to honour a contract for Augustus Harris at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the details of which are unknown. In September he starred in a series of stand-up comedy shows that he would perform every September between 1894 and 1899. These short performances, in English seaside resorts including Scarborough and Bournemouth, were designed chiefly to enhance his name among provincial audiences. For the 1895 and 1896 Christmas pantomimes, he appeared in Manchester and Birmingham, respectively, in the title role of Dick Whittington, for which he received favourable reviews and praise from audiences. Despite the show's success, Robey and his co-stars disliked the experience. The actress Ada Reeve felt that the production had a bad back-stage atmosphere and was thankful when the season ended, while the comedian Barry Lupino was dismayed at having his role, Muffins, considerably reduced.
On 29 April 1898, Robey married his first wife, the Australian-born musical theatre actress Ethel Hayden, at St Clement Danes church in the Strand, London. The congregation was made up of various theatrical colleagues; J. Pitt Hardacre was his best man, and composer Leslie Stuart was the organist. Robey and Ethel resided briefly in Circus Road, St John's Wood, until the birth of their first child Edward in 1900. They then moved to 83 Finchley Road in Swiss Cottage, Hampstead. Family life suited Robey; his son Edward recalled many happy experiences with his father, including the evenings when he would accompany him to the half-dozen music halls at which he would be appearing each night.
By the start of the new century, Robey was a big name in pantomime, and he was able to choose his roles. Pantomime enjoyed wide popularity until the 1890s, but by the time Robey had reached his peak, interest in it was on the wane. A type of character he particularly enjoyed taking on was the pantomime dame, which historically was played by comedians from the music hall. Robey was inspired by the older comedians Herbert Campbell and Dan Leno, and, although post-dating them, he rivalled their eccentricity and popularity, earning the festive entertainment a new audience. In his 1972 biography of Robey, Neville Cardus thought that the comedian was "at his fullest as a pantomime Dame".
In 1902 Robey created the character "The Prehistoric Man". He dressed as a caveman and spoke of modern political issues, often complaining about the government "slapping another pound of rock on his taxes". The character was received favourably by audiences, who found it easy to relate to his topical observations. That year he released "The Prehistoric Man" and "Not That I Wish to Say Anything" on shellac discs using the early acoustic recording process.
Robey signed a six-year contract in June 1904 to appear annually at, among other venues, the Oxford Music Hall in London, for a fee of £120 a week. The contract also required him to perform during the spring and autumn seasons between 1910 and 1912. Robey disputed this part of the contract and stated that he agreed to this only as a personal favour to the music hall manager George Adney Payne and that it should have become void on Payne's death in 1907. The management of the Oxford counter-claimed and forbade Robey from appearing in any other music hall during this period. The matter went to court, where the judge found in Robey's favour.
Robey was engaged to play the title role in the 1905 pantomime Queen of Hearts. The show was considered risqué by the theatrical press. In one scene Robey accidentally sat on his crown before bellowing "Assistance! Methinks I have sat upon a hedgehog"; in another sketch, the comedian mused, "Then there's Mrs Simkins, the swank! Many's the squeeze she's had of my blue bag on washing day." Robey scored a further hit with the show the following year, in Birmingham, which Cotes describes as "the most famous of all famous Birmingham Theatre Royal pantomimes". Robey incorporated "The Dresser", a music hall sketch taken from his own repertoire, into the show. Over the next few years he continued to tour the music hall circuit both in London and the English provinces and recorded two songs, "What Are You Looking at Me For?" and "The Mayor of Mudcumdyke", which were later released by the Gramophone and Typewriter Company.
### Career peak years
#### Sporting interests and violin-making
Off-stage, Robey led an active lifestyle and was a keen amateur sportsman. He was proud of his healthy physique and maintained it by performing frequent exercise and following a careful diet. By the time he was in his mid-thirties, he had played as an amateur against Millwall, Chelsea and Fulham football clubs. He organised and played in many charity football matches throughout England, which were described by the sporting press as being of a very high standard, and he remained an active football player well into his fifties. Robey became associated with cricket by 1895 when he led a team of amateur players for a match at Turney Road in Dulwich. In September 1904, while appearing in Hull, he was asked by the cricketer Harry Wrathall to take part in a charity cricket match at the Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Robey played so well that Wrathall asked him to return the following Saturday to take part in a professional game. That weekend, while waiting in the pavilion before the game, Robey was approached by an agent for Hull City A.F.C., who asked the comedian to play in a match that same afternoon. Robey agreed, swapped his cricket flannels for a football kit and played with the team against Nottingham Forest as an inside right.
By 1903 Robey was playing at a semi-professional level. He was signed as an inside forward by Millwall Football Club and scored many goals for them. He also displayed a good level of ability in vigoro, an Australian sport derived from both cricket and baseball which was short-lived in England. Two years later he became a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club and played in minor games for them for many years. He gained a reputation at the club for his comic antics on the field, such as raising his eyebrows at the approaching bowler in an attempt to distract him. The writer Neville Cardus was complimentary about Robey's cricket prowess and called him "an elegant player" whose performances on the cricket field were as entertaining as they were on the stage. Although a versatile player, Robey thought of himself as a "medium-paced, right-handed bowler".
Robey was asked to help organise a charity football match in 1907 by friends of the Scottish football trainer James Miller, who had died the previous year. Robey compiled a team of amateur footballers from the theatrical profession and met Miller's former team Chelsea Football Club at their home ground. The match raised considerable proceeds for Miller's widow. Robey was proud of the match and joked: "I just wanted to make sure that Chelsea stay in the first division."
In his spare time, Robey made violins, a hobby that he first took up during his years in Dresden. He became a skilled craftsman of the instrument, although he never intended for them to be played in public. Speaking in the 1960s, the violinist and composer Yehudi Menuhin, who played one of Robey's violins for a public performance during that decade, called the comedian's finished instrument "very professional". He was intrigued by the idea that a man as famous as Robey could produce such a "beautifully finished" instrument, unbeknown to the public. Robey was also an artist, and some of his pen and ink self-caricatures are kept at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
#### Oswald Stoll
Robey's first high-profile invitation came in the first decade of the 1900s from Hugh Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale, who hired him as entertainment for a party he was hosting at Carlton House Terrace in Westminster. Soon afterwards, the comedian appeared for the first time before royalty when King Edward VII had Robey hired for several private functions. Robey performed a series of songs and monologues and introduced the "Mayor of Mudcumdyke", all of which was met with much praise and admiration from the royal watchers. He was later hired by Edward's son, the Prince of Wales (the future King George V), who arranged a performance at Carlton House Terrace for his friend Lord Curzon.
In July 1912, at the invitation of the impresario Oswald Stoll, Robey took part for the first time in the Royal Command Performance, to which Cotes attributes "one of the prime factors in his continuing popularity". King George V and Queen Mary were "delighted" with Robey's comic sketch, in which he performed the "Mayor of Mudcumdyke" in public for the first time. Robey found the royal show to be a less daunting experience than the numerous private command performances that he gave during his career.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Robey wished to enlist in the army but, now in his 40s, he was too old for active service. Instead, he volunteered for the Special Constabulary and raised money for charity through his performances as a comedian. It was not uncommon for him to finish at the theatre at 1:00 am and then to patrol as a special constable until 6:00 am, where he would frequently help out during zeppelin raids. He combined his civilian duties with work for a volunteer motor transport unit towards the end of the war, in which he served as a lieutenant. He committed three nights a week to the corps while organising performances during the day to benefit war charities. Robey was a strong supporter of the Merchant Navy and thought that they were often overlooked when it came to charitable donations. He raised £22,000 at a benefit held at the London Coliseum, which he donated in the navy's favour.
#### Film debut and The Bing Boys Are Here
Robey's first experience in cinema was in 1913, with two early sound film shorts: "And Very Nice Too" and "Good Queen Bess", made in the Kinoplasticon process, where the film was synchronised with phonograph records. The next year, he tried to emulate his music hall colleagues Billy Merson and Charlie Austin, who had set up Homeland Films and found success with the Squibs series of films starring Betty Balfour. Robey met filmmakers from the Burns Film Company, who engaged him in a silent short entitled "George Robey Turns Anarchist", in which he played a character who fails to blow up the Houses of Parliament. He continued to appear sporadically in film throughout the rest of his career, never achieving more than a modest amount of success.
In 1914, for the first time in many years, Robey appeared in a Christmas pantomime as a male when he was engaged to play the title role in Sinbad the Sailor; Fred Emney Sr played the dame role. Although the critics were surprised by the casting, it appealed to audiences, and the scenes featuring Robey and Emney together proved the most memorable. During the war the demand for light entertainment in the English provinces guaranteed Robey frequent bookings and a regular income. His appearances in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow were as popular as his annual performances in Birmingham. His wife Ethel accompanied him on these tours and frequently starred alongside him.
By the First World War, music hall entertainment had fallen out of favour with audiences. Theatrical historians blame the music hall's decline on the increasing salaries of performers and the halls' inability to present profitably the twenty or thirty acts that the audiences expected to see. Revue appealed to wartime audiences, and Robey decided to capitalise on the medium's popularity. Stoll offered Robey a lucrative contract in 1916 to appear in the new revue The Bing Boys Are Here at the Alhambra Theatre, London. Dividing his time between three or four music halls a night had become unappealing to the comedian, and he relished the opportunity to appear in a single theatre. He was cast as Lucius Bing opposite Violet Loraine, who played his love interest Emma, and the couple duetted in the show's signature song "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)", which became an international success.
This London engagement was a new experience for Robey, who had only been familiar with provincial pantomimes and week-long, one-man comedy shows. Aside from pantomime, he had never taken part in a long-running production, and he had never had to memorise lines precisely or keep to schedules enforced by strict directors and theatre managers. The Bing Boys Are Here ran for 378 performances and occupied the Alhambra for more than a year. The theatrical press praised Robey as "the first actor of the halls". He made two films towards the end of the war: The Anti-frivolity League in 1916 and Doing His Bit the following year.
#### Zig-Zag to Joy Bells
Robey left the cast of The Bing Boys during its run, in January 1917, to star at the London Hippodrome in Albert de Courville, Dave Stamper and Gene Buck's lavishly staged revue Zig-Zag!. Robey included a sketch based on his music hall character "The Prehistoric Man", with Daphne Pollard playing the role of "She of the Tireless Tongue". In another scene, he played a drunken gentleman who accidentally secures a box at the Savoy Theatre instead of an intended hotel room. The audience appeared unresponsive to the character, so he changed it mid-performance to that of a naive Yorkshire man. The change provoked much amusement, and it became one of the most popular scenes of the show. Zig-Zag ran for 648 performances. Stoll again secured Robey for the Alhambra in 1918 for a sequel, The Bing Boys on Broadway. The show, again co-starring Violet Loraine, matched the popularity of its predecessor and beat the original show's run with a total of 562 performances.
Robey returned to the London Hippodrome in 1919 where he took a leading role in another hit revue, Joy Bells. Phyllis Bedells took over from Pollard as his stage partner, with Anita Elson and Leon Errol as supporting dancers. Robey played the role of an old-fashioned father who is mystified over the changing traditions after the First World War. He interpolated two music hall sketches: "No, No, No" centred on turning innocent, everyday sayings into suggestive and provocative maxims, and "The Rest Cure" told the story of a pre-op hospital patient who hears worrying stories of malpractice from his well-meaning friends who visit him. In the Italian newspaper La Tribuna, the writer Emilio Cecchi commented: "Robey, just by being Robey, makes us laugh until we weep. We do not want to see either Figaro or Othello; it is quite enough for Robey to appear in travelling costume and to turn his eyes in crab-like fashion from one side of the auditorium to another. Robey's aspect in dealing with his audience is paternal and, one might say, apostolic." Joy Bells ran for 723 performances.
In the early months of 1919, Robey completed a book of memoirs, My Rest Cure, which was published later that year. During the run of Joy Bells he was awarded the Legion of Honour for raising £14,000 for the French Red Cross. He declined a knighthood that same year because, according to Cotes, he was worried that the title would distance him from his working-class audiences; he was appointed a CBE by George V at Buckingham Palace instead. On the morning of the penultimate Joy Bells performance, Robey was invited to Stoll's London office, where he was offered a role in a new revue at the Alhambra Theatre. On the journey, he met the theatre impresario Sir Alfred Butt, who agreed to pay him £100 more, but out of loyalty to Stoll, he declined the offer and resumed his £600 a week contract at the Alhambra. On 28 July 1919, Robey took part in his second Royal Command Performance, at the London Coliseum. He and Loraine sang "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)".
### Inter-war years
#### Films and revues of the early 1920s
A gap in the Alhambra's schedule allowed Stoll to showcase Robey in a new short film. "George Robey's Day Off" (1919) showed the comedian acting out his daily domestic routines to comic effect, but the picture failed at the box office. The British director John Baxter concluded that producers did not know how best to apply Robey's stage talents to film.
By 1920 variety theatre had become popular in Britain, and Robey had completed the successful transition from music hall to variety star. Pantomime, which relied on its stars to make up much of the script through ad lib, was also beginning to fall out of favour, and his contemporaries were finding it too difficult to create fresh material for every performance; for Robey, however, the festive entertainment continued to be a lucrative source of employment.
Robey's first revue of the 1920s was Johnny Jones, which opened on 1 June 1920 at the Alhambra Theatre. The show also featured Ivy St. Helier, Lupino Lane and Eric Blore and carried the advertisement "A Robey salad with musical dressing". One of the show's more popular gags was a scene in which Robey picked and ate cherries off St. Helier's hat, before tossing the stones into the orchestra pit which were then met by loud bangs from the bass drum. A sign of his popularity came in August 1920 when he was depicted in scouting costume for a series of 12 Royal Mail stamps in aid of the Printers Pension Corporation War Orphans and the Prince of Wales Boy Scout Funds.
The revue Robey en Casserole (1921) was next for Robey, during which he led a troupe of dancers in a musical piece called the "Policemen Ballet". Each dancer was dressed in a mock police uniform on top and a tutu below. The show was the first failure for the comedian under Stoll's management. That December Robey appeared in his only London pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, at the Hippodrome. His biographer, Peter Cotes, remembered the comedian's interpretation of Dame Trot as "enormously funny: a bucolic caricature of a woman, sturdy and fruity, leathery and forbidding" and thought that Robey's comic timing was "in a class of its own." In March 1922 Robey remained at the Hippodrome in the revue Round in Fifty, a modernised version of Round the World in Eighty Days, which proved to be another hit for the London theatre, and a personal favourite of the comedian.
#### Marriage breakdown and foreign tours
Stoll brought Robey to cinema audiences a further four times during 1923. The first two films were written with the intention of showcasing the comedian's pantomime talents: One Arabian Night was a reworking of Aladdin and co-starred Lionelle Howard and Edward O'Neill, while Harlequinade visited the roots of pantomime. One of Robey's more notable roles under Stoll was Sancho Panza in Maurice Elvey's 1923 film Don Quixote, for which he received a fee of £700 a week. The amount of time he spent working away from home led to the breakdown of his marriage, and he separated from Ethel in 1923. He had a brief affair with one of his leading ladies and walked out of the family home.
Robey made a return to the London Hippodrome in 1924 in the revue Leap Year in which he co-starred with Laddie Cliff, Betty Chester and Vera Pearce. Leap Year was set in South Africa, Australia and Canada, and was written to appeal to the tourists who were visiting London from the Commonwealth countries. Robey was much to their tastes, and his rendition of "My Old Dutch" helped the show achieve another long run of 421 performances. Sky High was next and opened at the London Palladium in March 1925. The chorus dancer Marie Blanche was his co-star, a partnership that caused the gossip columnists to comment on the performers' alleged romance two years previously. Despite the rumours Blanche continued as his leading lady for the next four years, and Sky High lasted for 309 performances on the West End stage.
The year 1926 was lacking in variety entertainment, a fact largely attributed to the UK general strike that had occurred in May of that year. The strike was unexpected by Robey, who had signed the previous year to star in a series of variety dates for Moss Empires. The contract was lucrative, made more so by the comedian's willingness to manage his own bookings. He took the show to the provinces under the title of Bits and Pieces and employed a company of 25 artists as well as engineers and support staff. Despite the economic hardships of Britain in 1926, large numbers of people turned out to see the show. He returned to Birmingham, a city where he was held in great affection, and where he was sure the audiences would embrace his new show. However, censors demanded that he omit the provocative song "I Stopped, I Looked, I Listened" and that he heavily edit the sketch "The Cheat". The restrictions failed to dampen the audiences' enthusiasm, and Bits and Pieces enjoyed rave reviews. It ran until Christmas and earned a six-month extension.
In the spring of 1927 Robey embraced the opportunity to tour abroad, when he and his company took Bits and Pieces to South Africa, where it was received favourably. By the time he had left Cape Town, he had played to over 60,000 people and had travelled in excess of 15,000 miles. Upon his return to England in October, he took Bits and Pieces to Bradford. In August 1928, Robey and his company travelled to Canada, where they played to packed audiences for three months. It was there that he produced a new revue, Between Ourselves, in Vancouver, which was staged especially for the country's armed forces. The Canadians were enthusiastic about Robey; he was awarded the freedom of the city in London, Ontario, made a chieftain of the Sarcee tribe, and was an honorary guest at a cricket match in Edmonton, Alberta. He described the tour as "one of unbroken happiness." In the late 1920s Robey also wrote and starred in two Phonofilm sound-on-film productions, Safety First (1928) and Mrs. Mephistopheles (1929).
In early 1929 Robey returned to South Africa and then Canada for another tour with Bits and Pieces, after which he started another series of variety dates back in England. Among the towns he visited was Woolwich, where he performed to packed audiences over the course of a week. Here he met the theatre managers Frank and Agnes Littler, with the latter briefly becoming his manager. In 1932 Robey appeared in his first sound film, The Temperance Fête, and followed this with Marry Me, which was, according to his biographer A. E. Wilson, one of the most successful musical films of the comedian's career. The film tells the story of a sound recordist in a gramophone company who romances a colleague when she becomes the family housekeeper.
By the later months of 1932, Robey had formed a romantic relationship with the Littlers' daughter Blanche (1897–1981), who then took over as his manager. The couple grew close during the filming of Don Quixote, a remake of the comedian's 1923 success as Sancho Panza. Unlike its predecessor, Don Quixote had an ambitious script, big budget and an authentic foreign setting. Robey resented having to grow a beard for the role and disliked the French climate and gruelling 12-week filming schedule. He refused to act out his character's death scene in a farcical way and also objected to the lateness of the "dreadfully banal" scripts, which were often written the night before filming.
#### Venture into legitimate theatre
Until 1932 Robey had never played in legitimate theatre, although he read Shakespeare from an early age. That year he took the part of King Menelaus in Helen!, which was an English-language adaptation by A. P. Herbert of Offenbach's operetta La belle Hélène. The show's producer C. B. Cochran, a longstanding admirer of Robey, engaged a prestigious cast for the production, including Evelyn Laye and W. H. Berry, with choreography by Léonide Massine and sets by Oliver Messel. The operetta opened on 30 January 1932, becoming the Adelphi Theatre's most successful show of the year. The critic Harold Conway wrote that while Robey had reached the pinnacle of his career as a variety star, which only required him to rely on his "breezy, cheeky personality", he had reservations about the comedian's ability to "integrate himself with the other stars ... to learn many pages of dialogue, and to remember countless cues."
After the run of Helen!, Robey briefly resumed his commitments to the variety stage before signing a contract to appear at the Savoy Theatre as Bold Ben Blister in the operetta Jolly Roger, which premiered in March 1933. The production had a run of bad luck, including an actors' strike which was caused by Robey's refusal to join the actors' union Equity. The dispute was settled when he was included as a co-producer of the show, thus excluding him as a full-time actor. Robey made a substantial donation to the union, and the production went ahead. Despite its troubles, the show was a success and received much praise from the press. Harold Conway of the Daily Mail called the piece "one of the outstanding triumphs of personality witnessed in a London theatre". Later that year, Robey completed his final autobiography, Looking Back on Life. The literary critic Graham Sutton admired Robey for his honest and frank account, and thought that he was "at his best when most personal".
#### Shakespearean roles
According to Wilson, Robey revered Shakespeare and had an "excellent reading knowledge of the Bard" even though the comedian had never seen a Shakespeare play. As a child, he had committed to memory the "ghost" scene in Hamlet. Writing in 1933, Cochran expressed the opinion that Robey had been a victim of a largely conservative and "snobbish" attitude from theatre managers, that the comedian was "cut out for Shakespeare", and that if he had been frequently engaged in playing the Bard's works, then "Shakespeare would probably have been popular." In 1934, the theatre director Sydney Carroll offered Robey the chance to appear as Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, but he initially declined the offer, citing a hectic schedule, including a conflict with his appearance in that year's Royal Variety Performance on 8 May. He was also concerned that he would not be taken seriously by legitimate theatre critics and knew that he would not be able to include a comic sketch or to engage in his customary resourceful gagging. In the same year, Robey starred in a film version of the hit musical Chu Chin Chow. The New York Times called him "a lovable and laughable Ali Baba".
At the start of 1935 Robey accepted his first Shakespearean role, as Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1, which surprised the press and worried fans who thought that he might retire the Prime Minister of Mirth. The theatrical press were sceptical of a music hall performer taking on such a distinguished role; Carroll, the play's producer, vehemently defended his casting choice. Carroll later admitted taking a gamble on employing Robey but wrote that the comedian "has unlimited courage in challenging criticism and risking his reputation on a venture of this kind; he takes both his past and his future in both hands and is faced with the alternative of dashing them into the depths or lifting them to a height hitherto undreamt of." Carroll further opined that "[Robey] has never failed in anything he has undertaken. He is one of the most intelligent and capable of actors."
Henry IV, Part I opened on 28 February at Her Majesty's Theatre, and Robey proved himself to be a capable Shakespearean actor, though his Shakespearean debut was marred initially by an inability to remember his lines. A journalist from The Daily Express thought that Robey seemed uncomfortable, displayed a halting delivery and was "far from word perfect". Writing in The Observer, the critic Ivor Brown said of Robey's portrayal: "In no performance within my memory has the actor been more obviously the afflicted servant of his lines and more obviously the omnipotent master of the situation". Another journalist, writing in the Daily Mirror, thought that Robey "gave 25 percent of Shakespeare and 75 percent of himself".
In any case, such was Robey's popularity in the role that the German theatre and film producer Max Reinhardt declared that, should the opportunity arise for a film version, the comedian would be his perfect choice as Falstaff. Cotes described Robey as having "a great vitality and immense command of the [role]. He never faltered, he had to take his audience by the throat and make them attentive at once because he couldn't play himself in." Although he was eager to be taken seriously as a legitimate actor, Robey provided a subtle nod in the direction of his comic career by using the wooden cane intended for the Prime Minister of Mirth for the majority of his scenes as Falstaff. The poet John Betjeman responded to the critics' early scepticism: "Variety artistes are a separate world from the legitimate stage. They are separate too, from ballet, opera, and musical comedy. It is possible for variety artists to appear in all of these. Indeed, no one who saw will ever forget the superb pathos and humour of George Robey's Falstaff". Later, in 1935, Blanche Littler persuaded Robey to accept Carroll's earlier offer to play Bottom, and the comedian cancelled three weeks' worth of dates. The press were complimentary of his performance, and he later attributed his success to Littler and her encouragement.
### Later career: 1936–50
#### Radio and television
Robey was interviewed for The Spice of Life programme for the BBC in 1936. He spoke about his time spent on the music hall circuit, which he described as the "most enjoyable experience" of his life. The usually reserved Robey admitted that privately he was not a sociable person and that he often grew tired of his audiences while performing on stage, but that he got his biggest thrill from making others laugh. He also declared a love for the outdoors and mentioned that, to relax, he would draw "comic scribbles" of himself as the Prime Minister of Mirth, which he would occasionally give to fans. As a result of the interview he received more than a thousand fan letters from listeners. Wilson thought that Robey's "perfect diction and intimate manner made him an ideal broadcast speaker". The press commented favourably on his performance, with one reporter from Variety Life writing: "I doubt whether any speaker other than a stage idol could have used, as Robey did, the first person singular almost incessantly for half an hour without causing something akin to resentment. ... The comedian's talk was brilliantly conceived and written."
In the later months of 1936, Robey repeated his radio success with a thirty-minute programme entitled "Music-Hall", recorded for American audiences, to honour the tenth birthday of the National Broadcasting Corporation. In it, he presented a montage of his characterisations as well as impressions of other famous acts of the day. A second programme, which he recorded the following year, featured the comedian speaking fondly of cricket and of the many well-known players whom he had met on his frequent visits to the Oval and Lord's cricket grounds over his fifty-year association.
In the summer of 1938 Robey appeared in the film A Girl Must Live, directed by Carol Reed, in which he played the role of Horace Blount. A report in the Kinematograph Weekly commented that the 69-year-old comedian was still able to "stand up to the screen by day and variety by night." A journalist for The Times opined that Robey's performance as an elderly furrier, the love interest of both Margaret Lockwood and Lilli Palmer, was "a perfect study in bewildered embarrassment".
Robey made his television debut in August 1938 but was unenthused with the medium and only made rare appearances. The BBC producer Grace Wyndham Goldie was dismayed at how little of his "comic quality" was conveyed on the small screen. Goldie thought that Robey's comic abilities were not limited to his voice and depended largely on the relation between his facial expressions and his witty words. She felt that he should "be forbidden, by his own angel, if nobody else, to approach the ordinary microphone". Nonetheless, Goldie remained optimistic about Robey's future television career. The journalist L. Marsland Gander disagreed and thought that Robey's methods were "really too slow for television".
That November, and with his divorce from Ethel finalised, Robey married Blanche Littler, who was more than two decades his junior, at Marylebone Town Hall. At Christmas, he fractured three ribs and bruised his spine when he accidentally fell into the orchestra pit while appearing in the 1938–39 pantomime Robinson Crusoe in Birmingham. He attributed the fall to his face mask which gave him a limited view of the stage. The critic Harold Conway was less forgiving, blaming the accident on the comedian's "lost self-confidence" and opining that the accident was the start of Robey's professional decline.
#### Second World War
Aware of demand for his act in Australia, Robey conducted a second tour of the country at the start of 1939. While he was appearing at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney, war broke out with Germany. Robey returned to England and concentrated his efforts on entertaining to raise money for the war effort. He signed up with the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) for whom he appeared in a wide range of shows and also in his own one-man engagements. He would sometimes turn up unannounced to perform at hospitals, munition factories, airfields, anti-aircraft posts and other venues where there was an audience of just a few people.
During the 1940s, Robey appeared predominantly in troop concerts as himself but caused controversy by jokingly supporting the Nazis and belittling black people during his act. His intentions were to gently poke fun at the "Little Englanders", but audiences thought that he was sympathising with Nazism. His jocular view that a defeat for Hitler would mean a victory for bolshevism was highlighted in a series of controversial interviews, which caused him much embarrassment when challenged and which he regretted afterwards. His views became known in the press as "Robeyisms", which drew increasing criticism, but his Prime Minister of Mirth remained popular, and he used the character to divert the negative publicity. Cotes wrote that Robey was not a politician, merely a jingoist, who "lived long enough to feel [that] his little-Englander outlook [was causing him] acute embarrassment, and his army of admirers deep dismay."
Robey starred in the film Salute John Citizen in 1942, directed by Maurice Elvey and co-starring Edward Rigby and Stanley Holloway, about the effects that the war had on a normal British family. In a 1944 review of the film, Robey was described as being "convincing in [an] important role" but the film itself had "dull moments in the simple tale". That Christmas, Robey travelled to Bristol, where he starred in the pantomime Robinson Crusoe. A further four films followed in 1943, one of which promoted war propaganda while the other two displayed the popular medium of cine-variety. Cine-variety introduced Robey to the Astoria in Finsbury Park, London, a venue which was used to huge audiences and big-name acts and was described as "a super-cinema".
During the early months of 1944, Robey returned to the role of Falstaff when he appeared in the film version of Henry V, produced by Eagle-Lion Films. The American film critic Bosley Crowther had mixed opinions of the film. Writing in The New York Times in 1946, he thought that it showcased "a fine group of British film craftsmen and actors", who contributed to "a stunningly brilliant and intriguing screen spectacle". Despite that, he considered the film's additional screenplay poor and called Falstaff's deathbed scene "non-essential and just a bit grotesque." Late in 1944, he appeared in Burnley in a show entitled Vive Paree alongside Janice Hart and Frank O'Brian. In 1945, Robey starred in two minor film roles, as "Old Sam" in The Trojan Brothers, a short comedy film in which two actors experience various problems as a pantomime horse, and as "Vogel" in the musical romance Waltz Time. He spent 1947 touring England, while the following spring he undertook a provincial tour of Frederick Bowyer's fairy play The Windmill Man, which he also co-produced with his wife.
### Last years
#### Decline in health
In June 1951, now aged 81, Robey starred in a midnight gala performance at the London Palladium in aid of the family of Sid Field who had died that year. For the finale, Robey performed "I Stopped, I Looked, I Listened" and "If You Were the Only Girl in the World"; the rest of the three-hour performance featured celebrities from the radio, television and film mediums. The American comedian Danny Kaye, who was also engaged for the performance, called Robey a "great, great artist". The same month, Robey returned to Birmingham, where he opened a garden party at St. Mary and St. Ambrose Church, a venue in which he had appeared at the beginning of his career. On 25 September he appeared for the BBC on an edition of the radio series Desert Island Discs for which he chose among others "Mondo ladro", Falstaff's rueful complaint about the wicked world in Verdi's opera Falstaff. For the rest of the year Robey made personal appearances opening fetes and attending charity events.
Robey took part in the Festival of Variety for the BBC in 1951, which paid tribute to the British music hall. For his performance, he adopted an ad-lib style rather than use a script. His wife sat at the side of the stage, ready to provide support should he need it. According to Wilson, Robey's turn earned the loudest applause of the evening. The following month Robey undertook a long provincial tour in the variety show Do You Remember? under the management of Bernard Delfont. After an evening's performance in Sheffield, he was asked by a local newspaper reporter if he considered retiring. The comedian quipped: "Me retire? Good gracious, I'm too old for that. I could not think of starting a new career at my age!" In December, he opened the Lansbury Lodge home for retired cricketers in Poplar, East London; he considered the ceremony to be one of the "happiest memories of his life."
By early 1952, Robey was becoming noticeably frail, and he lost interest in many of his sporting pastimes. Instead, he stayed at home and drew comic sketches featuring the Prime Minister of Mirth. In May he filmed The Pickwick Papers, in which he played the role of old Tony Weller, a part which he had initially turned down on health grounds. The following year, and in aid of the games fund, he starred as Clown in a short pantomime at the Olympic Variety Show at the Victoria Palace Theatre. Organisers asked for him to appear in the Prime Minister of Mirth costume instead of the usual clown garb, a request the comedian was happy to fulfil.
#### Knighthood and death
In the early months of 1954, a knighthood was conferred on Robey by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace. During the following weeks, his health declined; he became confined to a wheelchair and spent the majority of his time at home under the care of his wife. In May he opened a British Red Cross fete in Seaford, East Sussex, and, a month later, made his last public appearance, on television as a panellist in the English version of The Name's the Same. Wilson called Robey's performance "pathetic" and thought that he appeared with only "a hint of his old self". By June he had become housebound and quietly celebrated his 85th birthday surrounded by family; visiting friends were organised into appointments by his wife Blanche, but theatrical colleagues were barred in case they caused the comedian too much excitement.
Robey suffered a stroke on 20 November and remained in a semi-coma for just over a week. He died on 29 November 1954 at his home in Saltdean, East Sussex, and was cremated at the Downs Crematorium in Brighton. Blanche continued to live on the Sussex coast until her death at the age of 83 in 1981.
## Tributes and legacy
News of Robey's death prompted tributes from the press, who printed illustrations, anecdotes and reminders of his stage performances and charitable activities. "Knighthood notwithstanding, George Robey long ago made himself a place as an entertainer and artist of the people", declared a reporter from the Daily Worker, while a critic for the Daily Mail wrote: "Personality has become a wildly misused word since his heyday, but George Robey breathed it in every pore." In Robey's obituary in The Spectator, Compton Mackenzie called the comedian "one of the last great figures of the late Victorian and Edwardian music-hall."
In December 1954, a memorial service for Robey was held at St Paul's Cathedral. The diverse congregation consisted of royalty, actors, hospital workers, stage personnel, students and taxi drivers, among others. The Bishop of Stepney, Joost de Blank, said: "We have lost a great English music hall artist, one of the greatest this country has known in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Performers gave readings at the service, including the comedian Leslie Henson, who called Robey "that great obstinate bullock of variety". In his lifetime, Robey helped to earn more than £2,000,000 for charitable causes, with £500,000 of that figure being raised during the First World War. In recognition of his efforts, the Merchant Seaman's Convalescent Home in Limpsfield, Surrey, named a ward after him, and managerial staff at the Royal Sussex Hospital later bought a new dialysis machine in his memory.
Robey's comic delivery influenced other comedians, but opinions of his effectiveness as a comic vary. The radio personality Robb Wilton acknowledged learning a lot from him, and although he felt that Robey "was not very funny", he could time a comic situation perfectly. Similarly, the comedian Charlie Chester admitted that, as a comedian, Robey "still didn't make me laugh," although he described him as "a legend" whose Prime Minister of Mirth character used a beautiful make-up design. Robey's biographer Peter Cotes disagreed with these assessments, praising the comedian's "droll like humour" and comparing it in greatness to Chaplin's miming and Grock's clowning. Cotes wrote: "His Mayor, Professor of Music, Saracen, Dame Trot, Queen of Hearts, District Nurse, Pro's Landlady, and of course his immortal Prime Minister, were all absurdities: rich, outsize in prim and pride, gloriously disapproving bureaucratic petty officialdom at its worst, best and funniest."
Violet Loraine called her former co-star "one of the greatest comedians the world has ever known", while the theatrical producer Basil Dean opined that "George was a great artist, one of the last and [sic] the really big figures of his era. They don't breed them like that now." The actor John Gielgud, who remembered meeting Robey at the Alhambra Theatre in 1953, called the comedian "charming, gracious [and] one of the few really great ones" of the music hall era. Upon his death, Robey's costume for the Prime Minister of Mirth was donated to the London Museum.
|
60,212,358 |
Gadsden Purchase half dollar
| 1,091,714,094 |
Proposed commemorative U.S. coin
|
[
"Early United States commemorative coins",
"Fifty-cent coins"
] |
The Gadsden Purchase half dollar was a proposed commemorative coin to be issued by the United States Bureau of the Mint. Legislation for the half dollar passed both houses of Congress in 1930 but was vetoed by President Herbert Hoover. The House of Representatives sustained his action, 96 votes in favor of overriding it to 243 opposed, well short of the necessary two-thirds majority. This was the first veto of Hoover's presidency and the first ever for a commemorative coin bill.
The proposal to commemorate the 1854 congressional ratification of the Gadsden Purchase was the brainchild of El Paso coin dealer Lyman W. Hoffecker, who wanted a commemorative coin he could control and distribute. He gained the support of several members of Congress from Texas and the Southwest, and a bill was introduced in Congress in April 1929, receiving a hearing 11 months later. Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon sent a letter and two officials in opposition to the bill, but it passed both houses of Congress without dissent. On April 21, 1930, Hoover vetoed the bill, deeming commemorative coins abusive. Although only one congressman spoke in favor of Hoover's action during the override debate in the House, the veto was easily sustained.
No commemorative coins were struck during the remainder of the Hoover Administration. They resumed after Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated, but by 1935 Roosevelt was citing Hoover's veto in urging Congress to avoid passing commemorative coin bills. He vetoed one in 1938. In 1946, Harry S. Truman adopted similar arguments in warning he would oppose further coin bills, and he vetoed one in 1947. Dwight D. Eisenhower vetoed three more in 1954. No non-circulating commemorative coins were struck from 1955 until after the Treasury Department changed its position in 1981.
## Hearing
The Gadsden Purchase came as the result of negotiation between the U.S. minister to Mexico James Gadsden and Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna. Following the Mexican–American War, there were border disputes along the Mexican Cession left unresolved by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Specifically, Southerners in the United States sought land over which a southern route of a transcontinental railroad could run. Accordingly, U.S. President Franklin Pierce sent Gadsden to resolve these issues. The resulting treaty was signed on December 30, 1853. Initially, 45,000 square miles (120,000 km<sup>2</sup>) were to be conveyed in exchange for \$15 million. But when the original treaty failed to pass the U.S. Senate, both the land and the payment were reduced by about a third. The Gadsden Purchase, west of El Paso, forms part of the states of Arizona and New Mexico.
During the late 1920s, El Paso coin dealer Lyman W. Hoffecker tried hard to gain congressional approval for a half dollar commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Gadsden Purchase. In 1929, he founded the Gadsden Purchase Commission (essentially just Hoffecker himself). At the time, commemorative coins were not sold by the government—Congress, in authorizing legislation, usually designated an organization which had the exclusive right to purchase them at face value and vend them to the public at a premium. Hoffecker wanted to be able to control the distribution of the Gadsden Purchase half dollars.
The April 1929 issue of The Numismatist printed a letter from Hoffecker, who was said to have designed the proposed coin and would be responsible for its distribution. It stated that Texas Congressman Claude Benton Hudspeth of El Paso had agreed to introduce legislation for the Gadsden piece. Hoffecker related that the coin would have the portrait of Gadsden on its obverse and on its reverse a map of New Mexico and Arizona depicting the purchased lands and El Paso. Ten thousand coins were to be sought, to be issued at \$1.50 (equivalent to \$ in 2020) each.
Hudspeth introduced a bill for a Gadsden Purchase half dollar into the House of Representatives on April 25, 1929; it was referred to the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures. On January 29, 1930, committee chairman Randolph Perkins of New Jersey sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, enquiring as to the Treasury's views. Mellon replied on the 31st, opposing the bill. He felt that Congress had wisely decided in 1890 that coin designs should not be changed more often than once in 25 years, and that the 15 commemorative coin bills passed since 1920 were wasteful and a burden on the Mint. He noted that in 1927, at the time of the Vermont Sesquicentennial half dollar, the Coinage Committee had gone on record in opposition of commemorative coin issues, many of which were only of local and not national significance. Several issues had failed to sell out, resulting in coins being returned to the Mint to be melted, and he suggested that a medal be issued instead of a coin. On March 8, Hoffecker sent a telegram to the committee offering to pay for the entire issue of 10,000 anytime the department wanted, and given that the Mint had produced over 30,000,000 coins for other nations in 1929, any burden posed by commemorative half dollars was slight.
Hearings were held by the committee on the bill on March 10 (briefly) and 17, 1930, with Perkins presiding. On the 17th, Congressman Guinn Williams appeared on behalf of Hudspeth, who was ill. Williams, a Texan, stated that the coin issue was important to the entire Southwest, that proponents would not allow the government to incur any expense, and stated that they were ready to pay for the coins. He also presented a joint resolution of the houses of the Texas Legislature, asking the state's representatives to introduce and support a bill for a Gadsden Purchase half dollar. Next to speak was Albert Gallatin Simms of New Mexico, who assured the committee of his support for the bill, and that of his state's two senators. Hudspeth sent a letter, and his secretary Kate George told the committee that the senators from Texas, New Mexico and Arizona were unanimously in favor of the bill. Hudspeth's letter stated he had been told by Hoffecker's committee that the money from the coins would be used to set up a small monument where the U.S. flag had first been raised in the Gadsden Purchase.
Mellon had sent two Treasury officials to the hearing, Assistant Secretary Walter E. Hope and Assistant Director of the Mint Mary M. O'Reilly. In his testimony, Hope warned that the issuance of commemorative half dollars was leading to confusion, and there was a risk of counterfeiting. Sales for some issues had not met expectations, resulting in many commemoratives being returned to the Mint for redemption and melting. O'Reilly told of a man who was about to be put off a Philadelphia streetcar, having only a commemorative half dollar to pay the fare, something not recognized by the conductor. He was allowed to remain after the superintendent of the Philadelphia Mint, also a passenger, paid his fare. Luther A. Johnson of Texas appeared in support of the bill, and presented a letter from Hoffecker dated March 5, stating that the coins could be easily sold, and that when his committee had met with President Herbert Hoover, the president had told them the event should be fittingly celebrated. After the testimony concluded, the Coinage Committee went into executive session and endorsed the bill.
## Passage by Congress
Perkins's committee issued a report dated March 17, 1930, stating that the anniversary of the Gadsden Purchase was of international importance, and there was no risk to the Treasury given the willingness of Hoffecker to pay for the coins. On March 19, Perkins called up the bill before the House, and it passed without debate or dissent. Immediately thereafter, Perkins had another commemorative coin bill passed by the House, for the 300th anniversary of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In the Senate, the Gadsden bill was referred to the Committee on Banking and Currency. On April 2, the committee issued a report through Tom Connally of Texas, similar to the House report (of which a copy was attached), recommending passage. On April 7, the bill passed the Senate without debate or opposition. The bill was engrossed and signed on April 9 by the Speaker of the House pro tempore and by Charles Curtis, Vice President of the United States, and was presented to President Hoover on April 10.
## Veto and override attempt
On April 21, 1930, Hoover vetoed the bill, returning it unsigned with a list of his objections to the House of Representatives where it originated. This veto was the first of Hoover's presidency, and the first time a commemorative coin bill had been vetoed. The president vetoed the bill on the advice of the Treasury Department. Hoover noted the issuance of 15 commemorative coins over the past decade, something he said allowed the opportunity for counterfeiting. He stated, "the matter is not perhaps one of large importance in itself, were it not for the fact of the great number of other similar proposals"—he noted the five other commemorative coin bills then before Congress, and if the Gadsden Purchase bill were enacted, it would be harder to turn down the other proposals. Deeming the issuance of commemorative coins a misuse of the coinage system, he offered the government's assistance in the production of medals, which could provide a souvenir without impacting the coinage. Hoover's attitude was said to be informed by fundraising committees returning large amounts of several commemorative coin issues to the Mint for redemption and melting, something he considered wasteful.
The day after the veto, the House Coinage Committee sought a vote to override it. Many of the bill's proponents came to the House floor to back the override, with the support of members from other parts of the country who sought commemorative coins. Those who would override dominated the debate, with only one speaker, House Majority Leader John Q. Tilson of Connecticut, supporting the president. The override attempt fell well short of the two-thirds needed, as 96 representatives voted in favor of the override, with 243 against it. Five Republicans voted to override Hoover's veto: New Mexico Congressman Simms and four from the East and Midwest.
The New York Sun applauded Hoover's "sound common sense" while Hoffecker's hometown paper, the El Paso Herald, stated that "President Hoover administered a figurative slap to Arizona, New Mexico and El Paso". On April 26, The Washington Post published an editorial in favor of Hoover's action:
> It is to be hoped that the practice of minting special coins for occasions of this kind is definitely at an end ... The issuance of commemorative coins has become a nuisance ... Yet if Congress thus favors one celebration, how can it refuse another? The only sound policy is uniform coinage for use only as a means of exchange. The clamor for souvenir coins arises from the fact that they may be sold at a profit. But Congress has authorized the minting of so many souvenir coins recently that profits have fallen off. ... President Hoover's judgment ... meets with general approval.
## Aftermath
According to David Bullowa in his 1938 volume on commemoratives, "with the vetoing of the Gadsden Purchase half-dollar proposal ... a statement was issued that commemorative coins were superfluous and that their purpose might be as well accomplished with officially authorized medals. These pieces, if struck, would adequately serve collectors, it was thought, and such pieces would not tend to 'confuse the coinage'."
No commemorative coins were authorized or struck during the remainder of Hoover's presidency. Following the inauguration of Hoover's successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, striking and authorization of commemoratives resumed. By 1935, Roosevelt had warned Congress against issuing large numbers of commemoratives and repeated this in 1937, both times citing Hoover's veto of the Gadsden Purchase bill, and urging the issuance of medals instead. He vetoed a coin bill in 1938 for the 400th anniversary of Coronado's expedition. In 1946, President Harry Truman signed the first authorizations for commemorative coins since 1937, but cited the Treasury's position and stated he would not look with favor on further issues. Citing Hoover's veto, he vetoed a bill for a commemorative half dollar for the centennial of Wisconsin statehood on July 31, 1947. Similar arguments were made by the Treasury under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who vetoed three commemorative coin bills in 1954. No commemoratives were issued thereafter until the department changed its position in 1981, as the Washington 250th Anniversary half dollar was being considered; it was issued in 1982. The government sold the new commemoratives to collectors and dealers, rather than having sales conducted by a designated group.
Although Hoffecker was unsuccessful with the Gadsden Purchase piece, he tried again in 1935. He was the designer and distributor of the Old Spanish Trail half dollar and was also the distributor of the Elgin, Illinois, Centennial half dollar (1936). In 1936, Hoffecker testified before Congress on the abuses committed by the distributors of commemorative coins. From 1939 to 1941, he served as president of the American Numismatic Association. He died in 1955.
## See also
- Louisiana Purchase Sesquicentennial half dollar, vetoed by Eisenhower in 1954.
|
50,742,290 |
Political Animals and Animal Politics
| 1,153,523,942 |
Collection of papers about animal ethics
|
[
"2014 non-fiction books",
"Animal ethics books",
"Animal law",
"Animal welfare",
"Books in political philosophy",
"Environmental non-fiction books",
"Palgrave Macmillan books",
"Political science books"
] |
Political Animals and Animal Politics is a 2014 edited collection published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by the green political theorists Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg. The work addresses the emergence of academic animal ethics informed by political philosophy as opposed to moral philosophy. It was the first edited collection to be published on the topic, and the first book-length attempt to explore the breadth and boundaries of the literature. As well as a substantial introduction by the editors, it features ten sole-authored chapters split over three parts, respectively concerning institutional change for animals, the relationship between animal ethics and ecologism, and real-world laws made for the benefit of animals. The book's contributors were Wissenburg, Schlosberg, Manuel Arias-Maldonado, Chad Flanders, Christie Smith, Clemens Driessen, Simon Otjes, Kurtis Boyer, Per-Anders Svärd, and Mihnea Tanasescu. The focus of their individual chapters varies, but recurring features include discussions of human exceptionalism, exploration of ways that animal issues are or could be present in political discourse, and reflections on the relationship between theory and practice in politics.
In part, Political Animals and Animal Politics arose from a workshop that Wissenburg and Schlosberg organised at the 2012 European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions conference, though not all attendees contributed to the volume and not all contributors presented at the workshop. Footage of the workshop appeared in De Haas in de Marathon (The Pacer in the Marathon), a 2012 documentary about the Dutch Party for the Animals. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published as part of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn.
Reviewers identified the contributions from Driessen, Flanders and Boyer as of particular interest, but challenged the inclusion of chapters focused on the environment. They criticised the book's failure to include contributions from, or sufficiently engage with the work of, the key voices in the politically focused animal ethics literature, such as Robert Garner, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Alasdair Cochrane, Kimberly Smith, or Siobhan O'Sullivan. Wissenburg's chapter was identified as the one that engaged most directly with this literature, but his approach was a negative one. Garner has written that Political Animals and Animal Politics should be praised for its trailblazing, but predicted that it would be superseded by stronger collections on the same theme.
## Production and release
The Dutch green political theorist Marcel Wissenburg and the American green political theorist David Schlosberg organised a workshop entitled "Political Animals and Animal Politics" at the 2012 European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions conference, which was held at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, between 10 and 15 April 2012. The two had been talking for around a year about organising a conference broadly on the theme of "nature, animals and political theory". The workshop aimed to fill a gap in the political literature on the status of nonhuman animals, something, they claimed, previously considered only at the margins of work otherwise about the environment/resource management, or else by those more primarily interested in moral issues. Both Wissenburg and Schlosberg presented papers; papers were also presented by Manuel Arias-Maldonado (University of Granada), Susan Boonman-Berson (Wageningen University and Research), Kurtis Boyer (Lund University), Clemens Driessen (Utrecht University), Chad Flanders (Saint Louis University), Robert Garner (University of Leicester), Margareta Hanes (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Paul Lucardie (University of Groningen), Christopher Neff (University of Sydney), Kaspar Ossenblok (Ghent University), Simon Otjes (Leiden University), Christie Smith (University of Exeter), Mihnea Tanasescu (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Catherine Zwetkoff (University of Liège). For Schlosberg, the workshop, and the wide range of papers presented, illustrated the "coming-of-age of animal politics as a subfield of political theory".
The workshop featured a lecture by Michel Vandenbosch, of the Belgian organisation Global Action in the Interest of Animals. On the second day, those involved were joined by Niko Koffeman of the Dutch Party for the Animals and Karen Soeters of that party's Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation think tank. Footage from that day of the workshop, shot by Joost de Haas, was included in the documentary film De Haas in de Marathon (The Pacer in the Marathon, 2012). The film was created by de Haas, who was commissioned by the Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation. It focuses on the Party for the Animals's first ten years, including interviews with people associated with the party and explorations of the party's public reception. The film premiered on 28 October 2012, during a gathering to celebrate the party's 10th anniversary. It has since been made available in numerous languages.
Wissenburg and Schlosberg's workshop formed the basis of Political Animals and Animal Politics, a collection edited by Wissenburg and Schlosberg, earlier versions of many of the volume's chapters having been presented at that time. Originally, the editors had intended to have discussion of political theory, of movements for animals and of real-world politics, but the final volume was somewhat more theory-based than this. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan; it is part of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, which is edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. This interdisciplinary series aims to explore the practical and conceptual challenges posed by animal ethics. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published in hardback (), softback (), eBook (), and online () formats.
Political Animals and Animal Politics was the first edited collection devoted to the "political turn in animal ethics", and the first "book-length attempt at seeking to define the contours" of this literature. According to Siobhan O'Sullivan, the book may have been the first time that political turn in animal ethics—a phrase that had been used at European conferences for a number of years—appeared in print. This "animal political philosophy" is identified by the editors as an academic literature at the meeting point of animal ethics, political philosophy and real-world (but theory-driven) politics. Wissenburg and Schlosberg posit that this literature, though at one time only a small part of more morally focused animal ethics, has developed into a separate field of enquiry in its own right. They single out two key texts: Robert Garner's 2013 A Theory of Justice for Animals (Oxford University Press) and Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's 2011 Zoopolis (Oxford University Press). Recognising the editors' identification of the political turn in animal ethics, Garner, writing with O'Sullivan and Alasdair Cochrane, argues that the literature is both made distinct and unified by its focus on justice; contributions to this literature, these authors argue, "imagine how political institutions, structures and processes might be transformed so as to secure justice for both human and nonhuman animals. Put simply, the essential feature of the political turn is this constructive focus on justice."
## Synopsis
Political Animals and Animal Politics has three key aims, and, correspondingly, its chapters are split into three sections. These aims are the analysis of three key "innovations" that the editors identify in the book's introduction. The first of these is the move, in animal ethics, from thinking about personal change to thinking about the implementation of rules or norms of conduct at the societal level. The second of these is a possible rapprochement between animal ethics and ecologism (environmental ethics and green political theory). The third is the increased presence of animal protection laws for the benefit of nonhuman animals themselves. Aside from the introduction, the book features ten single-authored chapters: three in Part I: The Politicization of the Animal Advocacy Discourse, three in Part II: The Rapprochement between Animal Ethics and Ecologism, and four in Part III: The Introduction of Laws and Institutions for the Benefit of Animals.
## Contributions
"Rethinking the Human-Animal Divide in the Anthropocene", Manuel Arias-Maldonado
Arias-Maldonado argues that traditional appeals to the value of nonhuman animals have failed to be sufficiently motivating, and that, instead, human/nonhuman relationships are appropriately grounded upon the ideas of human exceptionalism and human domination. These notions, he claims, can be the basis of political transformation for nonhuman animals. He argues that once these ideas are properly understood, they can ground an idea of human sympathy for nonhuman animals, which is just one part of a caring and sustainable Anthropocene. Even if an alternative politics might ultimately be preferable, Arias-Maldonado argues, a change to a focus on sympathy might be useful and realistic as a political strategy.
"An Agenda for Animal Political Theory", Marcel Wissenburg
For the purposes of his contribution, Wissenburg takes many standard contentions in animal ethics for granted. However, he challenges mainstream animal ethicists' tendency to adopt the language of liberalism, which he suggests misconstrues nonhuman animals as individuals and posits false dichotomies about their status. This adoption of liberal ideas can come in Tom Regan's "old" form or Donaldson and Kymlicka's "new" form. Wissenburg challenges Donaldson and Kymlicka's extension of citizenship to nonhuman animals, and instead sketches the outline of an alternative proposal that pays attention to individual animals' modes of being. This he labels, adapting a phrase from Robert Nozick, "liberalism for humans and feudalism for animals".
"Public Reason and Animal Rights", Chad Flanders
Flanders argues that nonhuman animals could be "below" politics, in that they do not have politically considerable interests, or "above" politics, in that they have rights that trump political decision-making processes. Flanders argues that if animals are excluded from basic justice, as John Rawls held, they can be defended on metaphysical grounds (what Rawls refers to as on the basis of comprehensive doctrines, as opposed to the public reasons which must be used for arguments in the political realm). This is potentially liberating for animal advocates. Nonetheless, Flanders argues, animal issues may be matters of basic justice insofar as they affect humans or that animals themselves have rights. Alternatively, the wrongness of animal cruelty may be a "fixed point" in our political reasoning. Flanders concludes that Rawlsianism provides a good starting point for the inclusion of animals in political decision-making.
"Articulating Ecological Injustices of Recognition", Christie Smith
Smith draws on Val Plumwood to argue that rather than solely think about resituating animals in ethical terms, what is needed is the resituation of humans in ecological terms; both are needed, she argues, as the two tasks are linked. Smith rejects the culture/nature dichotomy, and suggests that a politics of recognition is an appropriate way to think about relationships. She draws upon feminist and ecofeminist literature to conceive of recognition theory beyond intersubjective self/other relations, allowing recognition beyond the human self. Smith seeks to show that recognition theories should not be considered "soft" or "naive" as accounts of justice, and instead that they offer an appropriate mode for thinking about ecological and animal injustices.
"Ecological Justice for the Anthropocene", David Schlosberg
Schlosberg's contribution, is partly a response to challenges made to his Defining Environmental Justice (2007). Schlosberg aims to step beyond previous accounts of animal rights or environmentalism as requirements of justice by deploying a mixed capabilities/deliberation approach applicable to both ecosystems and nonhuman animals. Schlosberg challenges criticisms of his capabilities approach (specifically, a capabilities approach that moves beyond humans) grounded in the existence of conflicts of capabilities, claiming that a form of deliberative democracy can overcome the problem posed by these conflicts. His mixed account, he claims, provides a form of justice appropriate for thinking about human and nonhuman individuals and collectives in the Anthropocene.
"Animal Deliberation", Clemens Driessen
Driessen explores ways in which nonhuman animals might be understood to be engaging in political deliberation. His claim is empirical rather than normative, as he presents nonhuman animals as already being in political dialogue with humans; rather than arguing that rights should be extended to animals, he calls for a recognition of how interactions with animals have always been political. This is particularly noticeable, he argues, when humans are involved in the development of new technologies, analysing the example (following Bruno Latour) of Gaston Lagaffe building a door in dialogue with his boss and the office cat, and of farmers and cows using milking robots. He argues that a recognition of this animal deliberation can lead to more thoughtful forms of both environmentalism and democracy.
"Animal Party Politics in Parliament", Simon Otjes
Otjes's approach is more empirical than that of many contributors to Political Animals and Animal Politics. He examines the Dutch Party for the Animals (PvdD), which, in 2006, won two seats in the House of Representatives. Otjes explores whether the PvdD's presence has changed the amount of time more established parties spent on animal issues by examining both parliamentary speeches and motions before and after the introduction of the PvdD members. He finds that established parties began to talk more about animal issues in 2006, and that this could be attributed to conflict between the PvdD and the established parties. Though Otjes allows that his study's relevance may seem limited, he concludes that smaller parties can affect government agenda by remaining focused on their own primary concern.
"The Limits of Species Advocacy", Kurtis Boyer
Boyer observes the distinction between how nonhuman animals can receive political protection as individuals and as species. He argues that the latter form of protection is motivated by a desire to preserve human experience of the species rather than the experiences of the nonhuman animals themselves. Politically motivated species advocacy, Boyer argues, is highly anthropocentric, as advocates present these animals as sharing in particular revered virtues; as a result, the likes of habitat and genetic health are the focus of advocates, rather than the nonhuman animals themselves. Using the example of polar bear preservation, Boyer illustrates how species advocacy becomes tied up with broader political goals concerning humans and competing visions of the value of animals. He concludes that the advancement of species advocacy can limit the achievement of the goals of the animal welfare or animal rights movements.
"Slaughter and Animal Welfarism in Sweden 1900–1944", Per-Anders Svärd
Svärd, taking a more empirical approach than many other contributors, explores laws surrounding animal welfare in early 20th-century Sweden. He seeks to offer an empirical grounding for the argument that animal welfarism is problematic for animals, entrenching harmful use and speciesism. He analyses all official documentation from the Riksdag from 1900–1944 on the subject of animal slaughter and welfare drawing upon Foucauldian policy analysis and poststructuralist discourse analysis. He conceives of the debates as a political problematisation in which (drawing upon Lacanian psychoanalysis) animal cruelty was blamed on certain "other" groups (such as Jews and Sami). He argues that animal welfarism was not the natural continuation of an old anti-cruelty discourse, but that Sweden's 1937 regulation of slaughter and 1944 animal protection laws served to reconstitute, reaffirm, and expand speciesist relations, paving the way for animal exploitation's expansion.
"The Rights of Nature: Theory and Practice", Mihnea Tanasescu
Tanasescu explores the idea of rights for nature, an idea that, though unorthodox, has seen success in implementation. He introduces the concept, with a focus on the differences between moral and legal rights, before examining the particular case of Ecuador's entrenchment of rights for nature in its 2008 constitution, which is compared with other real-world cases. He finally addresses what can be learnt from these theoretical and practical considerations. He concludes that much work on the topic is left to be done, but the key lesson to be learnt is the significance of innovation; environmental politics, he claims, should remain both inventive and optimistic.
## Academic reception
Political Animals and Animal Politics was reviewed by Garner for Environmental Values, and the philosophers Jeremy David Bendik-Keymer, Josh Milburn, and Dan Hooley for Environmental Ethics, the Political Studies Review and the Journal of Animal Ethics respectively. Garner lamented the absence of many of the key voices in the political theory literature on animal ethics—such as Cochrane, Donaldson and Kymlicka, O'Sullivan, Tony Milligan, Kimberly Smith or Garner himself—in the book, meaning that Political Animals and Animal Politics "takes on the role of an observer of this debate rather than directly contributing to it in a leading sense". He also felt that the book offered little consideration of the details of the work of these leading theorists, identifying the absence of discussion of Cochrane's interest-based rights approach, a superficial consideration of Regan's account of animal rights, an oversimplification of his own position and a lack of context to understand the respective work of Kimberly Smith and O'Sullivan. He considered Wissenburg's chapter to be the only one that engages with the debate about the political turn in general, but noted that Wissenburg's approach is a negative one; Garner considered this unsurprising, given that Wissenburg is a green political theorist with little sympathy for "animal political theory".
Bendik-Keymer praised the book as having a "report-from-a-cutting-edge-conference quality", characterising two conceptual divides as shaping the volume: first, the distinction between theories endorsing human exceptionalism and those not; and, second, the disconnect between theory and practice. For him, the essays of part three—effectively three case studies—illustrated ways that the "actual practice of politics evince psychological and pragmatic concerns that do not fit neatly into normative foundations". The core philosophical debate (about human exceptionalism) takes place in parts one and two. In part one, he suggested, essays assumed (and sometimes supported) human exceptionalism, sometimes framing it as the only justified way to include animals in politics, while human exceptionalism was denied in part two. It is Bendik-Keymer's view, in line with part one but against part two, that one need not reject anthropocentrism to "open up ecological thought". Anthropocentrism, he argued, can be "open to ecological identifications, having humane virtues, and showing responsibility for our behavior", though this is often denied in environmental ethics. Parts two and three, Bendik-Keymer felt, reveal "the need for a viable politics of animals to be grounded in an adequate experience of community". The area of research that the book exposes, he argued, is animal community, and, in particular, whether animals' roles as co-creators of community (though not politics) calls for their recognition as political agents, rather than simply being included in politics through the ethical concern of human political agents.
Milburn questioned the success of the volume in achieving its second stated goal, concerning rapprochement between animal and environmental ethics; he considered the contributions respectively of Christie Smith, Schlosberg, and Tanasescu to be more clearly in the domain of environmental ethics than animal ethics, questioning the extent to which they belong in a volume about "animal politics". Similarly, Hooley argued that Political Animals and Animal Politics was "less of a work in the emerging field of animal politics than it is a collection of essays in the field of environmental politics". Alternatively, he claimed it could be viewed as a mixed work, noting that the contributions from Flanders, Otjes, Boyer and Svärd offered new contributions to the literature on animals and politics. Hooley thought it surprising that few authors engaged with the work of Donaldson and Kymlicka, and was critical of Wissenburg's discussion of the pair, which he claimed was "all too brief and ultimately disappointing".
Milburn thought that the opening chapters (and introduction) did well to establish the volume, and was happy with the inclusion of the more empirical contributions, given their potential theoretical significance. He picked out the chapters by Driessen, Boyer, and Wissenburg respectively as highlights, suggesting that the contributions of Driessen and Boyer seemed to challenge the volume's second stated goal, and noting that, though it was strong, he disagreed with the claims of Wissenburg's chapter. Garner highlighted the contributions of Flanders and Driessen, and commended the editors for putting together the book. Hooley concluded his review by claiming that the book offered something to those interested in the place of animals in politics, but that much of its contents would be of more interest for those looking to read about environmental political theory.
## Legacy
Garner identified Political Animals and Animal Politics as the first edited collection devoted to the political turn in animal ethics. Though he claimed that it was likely to be superseded, he argued that Political Animals and Animal Politics should be "welcomed for its trailblazing". Subsequent collections identified in reviews of the literature in the political turn include Garner and O'Sullivan's The Political Turn in Animal Ethics and Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade's Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues. Another publication identified in these reviews is the open access journal Politics and Animals; this published its first issue in 2015 with an "editorial collective" consisting of Boyer, Svärd, Katherine Wayne and Guy Scotton.
|
293,253 |
Princess Alice of Battenberg
| 1,164,598,046 |
Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark (1885–1969)
|
[
"1885 births",
"1969 deaths",
"20th-century British nuns",
"20th-century Eastern Orthodox nuns",
"Battenberg family",
"Burials at the Church of Mary Magdalene",
"Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Anglicanism",
"Danish Righteous Among the Nations",
"Danish princesses",
"Daughters of British marquesses",
"Deaf royalty and nobility",
"Eastern Orthodox Christians from the United Kingdom",
"Eastern Orthodox Righteous Among the Nations",
"Eastern Orthodox abbesses",
"Exiled royalty",
"German Righteous Among the Nations",
"German princesses",
"Greek Righteous Among the Nations",
"Greek deaf people",
"Greek princesses",
"House of Glücksburg (Greece)",
"Members of the Royal Red Cross",
"People from Windsor, Berkshire",
"People with schizophrenia",
"Royal reburials",
"Royalty and nobility with disabilities"
] |
Princess Alice of Battenberg (Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie; 25 February 1885 – 5 December 1969) was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II, and the paternal grandmother of King Charles III. After marrying Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903, she adopted the style of her husband, becoming Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark.
A great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alice was born in Windsor Castle and grew up in the United Kingdom, Germany and Malta. A Hessian princess by birth, she was a member of the Battenberg family, a morganatic branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt. She was congenitally deaf. She lived in Greece until the exile of most of the Greek royal family in 1917. On returning to Greece a few years later, her husband was blamed in part for the country's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and the family was once again forced into exile until the restoration of the Greek monarchy in 1935.
In 1930, Princess Andrew was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a sanatorium in Switzerland; thereafter, she lived separately from her husband. After her recovery, she devoted most of her remaining years to charity work in Greece. She stayed in Athens during the Second World War, sheltering Jewish refugees, for which she is recognised as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Israel's Holocaust memorial institution, Yad Vashem. After the war, she stayed in Greece and founded a Greek Orthodox nursing order of nuns known as the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary.
After the fall of King Constantine II of Greece and the imposition of military rule in Greece in 1967, Princess Andrew was invited by her son and daughter-in-law to live at Buckingham Palace in London, where she died two years later. In 1988, her remains were transferred from a vault in her birthplace, Windsor Castle, to the Church of Mary Magdalene at the Russian Orthodox convent of the same name on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
## Early life
Alice was born in the Tapestry Room at Windsor Castle in Berkshire in the presence of her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. She was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the Queen's second daughter. Her father was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine through his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia Hauke, who was created Princess of Battenberg in 1858 by Louis III, Grand Duke of Hesse. Her three younger siblings, Louise, George, and Louis, later became Queen of Sweden, Marquess of Milford Haven, and Earl Mountbatten of Burma, respectively.
She was christened Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie in Darmstadt on 25 April 1885. She had six godparents: her three surviving grandparents, Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse, Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine, and Julia, Princess of Battenberg; her maternal aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia; her paternal aunt Princess Marie of Erbach-Schönberg; and her maternal great-grandmother Queen Victoria.
Alice spent her childhood between Darmstadt, London, Jugenheim, and Malta (where her naval officer father was occasionally stationed). Her mother noticed that she was slow in learning to talk, and became concerned by her indistinct pronunciation. Eventually, she was diagnosed with congenital deafness after her grandmother, Princess Battenberg, identified the problem and took her to see an ear specialist. With encouragement from her mother, Alice learned to both lip-read and speak in English and German. Educated privately, she studied French, and later, after her engagement, she learned Greek. Her early years were spent in the company of her royal relatives, and she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of the Duke of York (later King George V) and Mary of Teck in 1893. A few weeks before her 16th birthday, she attended the funeral of Queen Victoria in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and shortly afterward she was confirmed in the Anglican faith.
## Marriage
Princess Alice met Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (known as Andrea within the family), the fourth son of King George I of Greece and Olga Constantinovna of Russia, while in London for King Edward VII's coronation in 1902. They married in a civil ceremony on 6 October 1903 at Darmstadt. The following day, there were two religious marriage ceremonies; one Lutheran in the Evangelical Castle Church, and one Greek Orthodox in the Russian Chapel on the Mathildenhöhe. She adopted the style of her husband, becoming "Princess Andrew". The bride and groom were closely related to the ruling houses of the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Greece, and their wedding was one of the great gatherings of the descendants of Queen Victoria and Christian IX of Denmark held before World War I. Prince and Princess Andrew had five children, all of whom later had children of their own.
After their wedding, Prince Andrew continued his career in the military and Princess Andrew became involved in charity work. In 1908, she visited Russia for the wedding of Grand Duchess Marie of Russia and Prince William of Sweden. While there, she talked with her aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, who was formulating plans for the foundation of a religious order of nurses. Princess Andrew attended the laying of the foundation stone for her aunt's new church. Later in the year, the Grand Duchess began giving away all her possessions in preparation for a more spiritual life. On their return to Greece, Prince and Princess Andrew found the political situation worsening, as the Athens government had refused to support the Cretan parliament, which had called for the union of Crete (still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire) with the Greek mainland. A group of dissatisfied officers formed a Greek nationalist Military League that eventually led to Prince Andrew's resignation from the army and the rise to power of Eleftherios Venizelos.
## Successive life crises
With the advent of the Balkan Wars, Prince Andrew was reinstated in the army, and Princess Andrew acted as a nurse, assisting at operations and setting up field hospitals, work for which King George V awarded her the Royal Red Cross in 1913. During World War I, her brother-in-law King Constantine I of Greece followed a neutrality policy despite the democratically elected government of Venizelos supporting the Allies. Princess Andrew and her children were forced to shelter in the palace cellars during the French bombardment of Athens on 1 December 1916. By June 1917, the King's neutrality policy had become so untenable that she and other members of the Greek royal family were forced into exile when her brother-in-law abdicated. For the next few years, most of the Greek royal family lived in Switzerland.
The global war effectively ended much of the political power of Europe's dynasties. The naval career of her father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had collapsed at the beginning of the war in the face of anti-German sentiment in Britain. At the request of King George V, he relinquished the Hessian title Prince of Battenberg and the style of Serene Highness on 14 July 1917, and anglicized the family name to Mountbatten. The following day, the King created him Marquess of Milford Haven in the peerage of the United Kingdom. The following year, two of her aunts, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, were murdered by Bolsheviks after the Russian revolution. At the end of the war the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian empires had fallen, and Princess Andrew's uncle, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, was deposed.
On King Constantine's restoration in 1920, they briefly returned to Greece, taking up residence on Corfu at Mon Repos (inherited by Prince Andrew on his father's assassination in 1913). But after the defeat of the Hellenic Army in the Greco-Turkish War, a Revolutionary Committee under the leadership of Colonels Nikolaos Plastiras and Stylianos Gonatas seized power and forced King Constantine into exile once again. Prince Andrew, who had served as commander of the Second Army Corps during the war, was arrested. Several former ministers and generals arrested at the same time were shot following a brief trial, and British diplomats assumed that Prince Andrew was also in mortal danger. After a show trial, he was sentenced to banishment, and Prince and Princess Andrew and their children fled Greece aboard a British cruiser, HMS Calypso, under the protection of the British naval attaché, Commander Gerald Talbot.
## Illness
The family settled in a small house loaned to them by Princess George of Greece and Denmark at Saint-Cloud, on the outskirts of Paris, where Princess Andrew helped in a charity shop for Greek refugees. She became deeply religious and, in October 1928, converted to the Greek Orthodox Church. That winter, she translated into English her husband's defence of his actions during the Greco-Turkish War. Soon afterward, she began claiming that she was receiving divine messages and that she had healing powers.
In 1930, Princess Andrew began to behave in a very disturbed manner and claimed to be in contact with Christ and the Buddha. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, first by Thomas Ross, a psychiatrist who specialised in shell-shock, and subsequently by Sir Maurice Craig, who treated the future King George VI before he had speech therapy. The diagnosis was confirmed at Ernst Simmel's sanatorium at Tegel, Berlin. Princess Andrew was forcibly removed from her family and placed in Ludwig Binswanger's sanatorium in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. It was a famous and well-respected institution with several celebrity patients, including Vaslav Nijinsky, the ballet dancer and choreographer, who was there at the same time as Princess Andrew. Binswanger also diagnosed the princess with schizophrenia. Both he and Simmel consulted Sigmund Freud, who believed that her delusions were the result of sexual frustration. He recommended "X-raying her ovaries in order to kill off her libido." Princess Andrew protested that she was sane and repeatedly tried to leave the asylum.
During Princess Andrew's long convalescence, she and Prince Andrew drifted apart, her daughters all married German princes in 1930 and 1931 (she did not attend any of the weddings), and Prince Philip went to the United Kingdom to stay with his uncles, Lord Louis Mountbatten and George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, and his grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven.
Princess Andrew remained at Kreuzlingen for two years, but after a brief stay at a clinic in Merano in northern Italy, was released and began an itinerant, incognito existence in Central Europe. She maintained contact with her mother but broke off ties to the rest of her family until the end of 1936. In 1937, her daughter Cecilie, son-in-law, and two of her grandchildren were killed in an air accident at Ostend; she and Prince Andrew met for the first time in six years at the funeral. (Prince Philip and Lord Louis Mountbatten also attended.) She resumed contact with her family, and in 1938 returned to Athens alone to work with the poor, while living in a two-bedroom flat near the Benaki Museum.
## World War II
During World War II, Princess Andrew was in the difficult situation of having sons-in-law fighting on the German side and a son in the British Royal Navy. Her cousin, Prince Victor zu Erbach-Schönberg, was the German ambassador in Greece until the occupation of Athens by Axis forces in April 1941. She and her sister-in-law, Princess Nicholas of Greece, lived in Athens for the duration of the war, while most of the Greek royal family remained in exile in South Africa. She moved out of her small flat and into her brother-in-law George's three-storey house in the centre of Athens. She worked for the Red Cross, helped organise soup kitchens for the starving populace and flew to Sweden to bring back medical supplies on the pretext of visiting her sister Louise, who was married to the Crown Prince. She organised two shelters for orphaned and lost children, and a nursing circuit for poor neighbourhoods.
The occupying forces apparently presumed Princess Andrew was pro-German, as one of her sons-in-law, Prince Christoph of Hesse, was a member of the NSDAP and the Waffen-SS, and another, Berthold, Margrave of Baden, had been invalided out of the German army in 1940 after an injury in France. Nonetheless, when visited by a German general who asked her, "Is there anything I can do for you?", she replied, "You can take your troops out of my country."
After the fall of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in September 1943, the German Army occupied Athens, where a minority of Greek Jews had sought refuge. The majority (about 60,000 out of a total population of 75,000) were deported to Nazi concentration camps, where all but 2,000 died. During this period, Princess Andrew hid Jewish widow Rachel Cohen and two of her five children, who sought to evade the Gestapo and deportation to the death camps. In 1913, Rachel's husband, Haimaki Cohen, had aided King George I of Greece. In return, King George had offered him any service that he could perform should Cohen ever need it. Years later, during the Nazi threat, Cohen's son remembered this, and appealed to Princess Andrew, who, with Princess Nicholas, was one of only two remaining members of the royal family left in Greece. Princess Andrew honoured the promise and saved the Cohen family.
When Athens was liberated in October 1944, Harold Macmillan visited Princess Andrew and described her as "living in humble, not to say somewhat squalid conditions". In a letter to her son, she admitted that in the last week before liberation she had had no food except bread and butter, and no meat for several months. By early December, the situation in Athens was far from improved; Communist guerrillas (ELAS) were fighting the British for control of the capital. As the fighting continued, Princess Andrew was informed that her husband had died, just as hopes of a post-war reunion of the couple were rising. They had not seen each other since 1939. During the fighting, to the dismay of the British, she insisted on walking the streets distributing rations to policemen and children in contravention of the curfew order. When warned that she was in danger of being struck by a stray bullet, she replied "they tell me that you don't hear the shot that kills you and in any case I am deaf. So, why worry about that?"
## Widowhood
Princess Andrew returned to the United Kingdom in April 1947 to attend the November wedding of her only son, Philip, to Princess Elizabeth, the elder daughter and heir presumptive of King George VI. She had some of her remaining jewels used in Princess Elizabeth's engagement ring. On the day of the wedding, her son was created Duke of Edinburgh by George VI. For the wedding ceremony, Princess Andrew sat at the head of her family on the north side of Westminster Abbey, opposite the King, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. It was decided not to invite Princess Andrew's daughters (the groom's sisters) to the wedding because of anti-German sentiment in Britain following World War II.
In January 1949, the princess founded a nursing order of Greek Orthodox nuns, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, modelled after the convent that her aunt, the martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, had founded in Russia in 1909. She trained on the Greek island of Tinos, established a home for the order in a hamlet north of Athens, and undertook two tours of the United States in 1950 and 1952 in an effort to raise funds. Her mother was baffled by her actions, "What can you say of a nun who smokes and plays canasta?", she said. Her daughter-in-law became queen of the Commonwealth realms in 1952, and Princess Andrew attended her coronation in June 1953, wearing a two-tone grey dress and wimple in the style of her nun's habit. However, the order eventually failed through a lack of suitable applicants.
In 1960, she visited India at the invitation of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, who had been impressed by Princess Andrew's interest in Indian religious thought, and for her own spiritual quest. The trip was cut short when she unexpectedly took ill, and her sister-in-law, Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, who happened to be passing through Delhi on her own tour, had to smooth things with the Indian hosts who were taken aback at Princess Andrew's sudden change of plans. She later claimed she had had an out-of-body experience. Edwina continued her own tour, and died the following month.
Increasingly deaf and in failing health, Princess Andrew left Greece for the last time following the 21 April 1967 Colonels' Coup. Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh invited Princess Andrew to reside permanently at Buckingham Palace in London. King Constantine II of Greece and Queen Anne-Marie went into exile that December after a failed royalist counter-coup.
## Death and burial
Despite suggestions of senility in later life, Princess Andrew remained lucid but physically frail. She died at Buckingham Palace on 5 December 1969. She left no possessions, having given everything away. Initially her remains were placed in the Royal Crypt in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on 10 December 1969, but before she died she had expressed her wish to be buried at the Convent of Saint Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem (near her aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, a Russian Orthodox saint). When her daughter, Princess George of Hanover, complained that it would be too far away for them to visit her grave, Princess Andrew jested, "Nonsense, there's a perfectly good bus service!". Her wish was realised on 3 August 1988 when her remains were transferred to her final resting place in a crypt below the church.
On 31 October 1994, Princess Andrew's two surviving children, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess George of Hanover, went to Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial) in Jerusalem to witness a ceremony honouring her as "Righteous Among the Nations" for having hidden the Cohens in her house in Athens during the Second World War. Prince Philip said of his mother's sheltering of persecuted Jews, "I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with a deep religious faith, and she would have considered it to be a perfectly natural human reaction to fellow beings in distress." In 2010, the princess was posthumously named a Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government.
## Titles, styles, and honours
### Titles and styles
- 25 February 1885 – 6 October 1903: Her Serene Highness Princess Alice of Battenberg
- 6 October 1903 – 5 December 1969: Her Royal Highness Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark
- From 1949 until her death, she was sometimes known as Mother Superior Alice-Elizabeth
### Honours
- Dame of the Order of the Golden Lion, 7 October 1903
- Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Olga and Sophia
- Royal Red Cross, 1913
- Dame of the Order of Queen Maria Luisa, 9 April 1928
Posthumous:
- Righteous Among the Nations, 1993
- British Hero of the Holocaust, 2010
## Issue
## Ancestry
|
2,368,329 |
Hex Enduction Hour
| 1,167,943,126 | null |
[
"1982 albums",
"Albums produced by Grant Showbiz",
"Albums produced by Richard Mazda",
"Art punk albums",
"Post-punk albums by English artists",
"The Fall (band) albums"
] |
Hex Enduction Hour is the fourth studio album by the English post-punk group the Fall. Released on 8 March 1982, it builds on the low-fidelity production values and caustic lyrical content of their earlier recordings, and features a two-drummer lineup. Frontman Mark E. Smith establishes an abrasive Northern aesthetic built in part from the 20th century literary traditions of kitchen sink realism and magic realism. Smith described the album as an often-satirical but deliberate reaction to the contemporary music scene, a stand against "bland bastards like Elvis Costello and Spandau Ballet ... [and] all that shit."
Recording for Hex began during a 1981 three-concert visit to Iceland, where Smith was inspired both by the otherworldliness of the island's landscape and the enthusiasm of an audience unaccustomed to visiting rock groups. The Fall recorded "Hip Priest", "Iceland" and non-album single "Look, Know" at the Hljóðriti studio in Reykjavík, and the remaining tracks in a disused cinema in Hitchin, Hertfordshire.
Its cover art was seen by many in the music industry as coarse and lacking accepted layout or typographical qualities; HMV would only shelve it back to front on their racks. The album peaked at number 71 on the UK charts and attracted the attention of several record labels.
## Background and recording
By 1981, the Fall had released three critically acclaimed albums, but band leader Mark E Smith felt the group was undervalued and poorly supported by their label Rough Trade Records, whom he regarded as "a bunch of well meaning but inept hippies". He felt constrained by the label's ethos and worried that the Fall were in danger of becoming "just another Rough Trade band". Smith made overtures to other labels, and found kindred adventurous spirits at small emergent label Kamera Records. Kamera's first release in November 1981 was the Fall's single "Lie Dream of a Casino Soul", which also featured drummer Karl Burns for the first time since Live at the Witch Trials. Burns previously substituted for Paul Hanley on a US tour when the latter was denied a visa for being too young, and upon the group's return to the UK, Smith suggested that Burns should stay on as a second drummer.
In September 1981, the Fall travelled to Reykjavík, Iceland for the first time to play three concerts, organised by Einar Örn. While there, they recorded three new songs ("Hip Priest", "Iceland" and non-album single "Look, Know") at Hljóðriti studio. The studio, normally used by local folk artists, had lava walls (according to Smith, it resembled an igloo), a factor that gave it its otherworldly sound. Kamera agreed to pay costs for the rest of the recordings and hired producer Richard Mazda, who suggested that the sessions would take place in a disused cinema in Hitchin, known as Regal Sound Studio, as the ambience would resemble the band's live sound. According to critic John Doran, "uncertainty around a record label seeps into the album's sound, the work of a band with a gun pressed to their heads".
Hex Enduction Hour takes influence from the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray", Captain Beefheart and the early 1970s Krautrock band Can. Smith has said that the title was intended to invoke witchcraft, that he concocted the word "Enduction" to suggest the album could be a listener's induction into the Fall and that "Hex" was a reference to this being the band's sixth release. His vocals are higher in the mix than on previous Fall releases and were described in 1982 by Sounds as "emerg[ing] like a loudhailer from a fog of guitar scratch". The songs were deliberately produced in a raw and low-fidelity approach by Smith, Grant Showbiz and Richard Mazda in a sound described at the time as a "well produced noise" that was acceptable by Fall standards. Critic Mark Storace claimed he "could have done a better job on a 4-track if I was pissed out of my head". Smith responded by saying that "nowadays people just can't just shut up if they don't know what they're talking about." Elaborating on the purposely amateurish production values, Smith remarked that "it was all recorded in deliberately bad places ... deliberately simple sort of thing. Three songs were written at rehearsal and done the next time."
## Music and lyrics
The album was the Fall's first to include Karl Burns and Paul Hanley in the band's classic two-drummer lineup. Smith intended the album's lyrics "to be like reading a really good book. You have a couple of beers, sit down and immerse yourself. None of those fuckers Elvis Costello or Spandau Ballet did that". Hex Enduction Hour was written during an unusually prolific period in his career. Many of the tracks had already been dropped from the band's live set by the time they visited Australia and New Zealand in the autumn of 1982. The earlier single "Look, Know" was recorded during the Icelandic sessions but not included on the album. This was characteristic of Smith's "never look back" approach.
Opening track "The Classical" acts as a statement of intent similar to that in "Crap Rap 2/Like to Blow" from the Fall's debut album Live at the Witch Trials. Whereas on the earlier song Smith described himself as "Northern white crap that talks back", in the opening lines of Hex Enduction Hour he complains that the fact that contemporary music lacks culture is his "brag", observing that a "taste for bullshit reveals a lust for a home of office" and references "obligatory niggers", before accusingly shouting "Hey there, fuckface, hey there, fuckface". Pavement released a cover of the track in the early 1990s; Smith later dismissed them as mere Fall copyists. "Jawbone and the Air Rifle" depicts a nightmarish folklore tale of a poacher (described as a "rabbit killer") bored by a decades-old marriage who escapes by roaming the local countryside at night hunting prey. One night the protagonist "lets out a misplaced shot", which draws the Hex of the "Broken Brothers Pentacle Church". The song's main focal point is toward the end when the lyrics detail a series of semi-religious, semi-pagan horrific and repeating hallucinations.
"Hip Priest" was recorded in Iceland in a single take, and is one of Smith's most personal songs, apparently written in bemusement following a recent rise in the band's popularity. The track has been compared to dub but in its Northern bleakness "it had been invented in a drizzly motorway rather than in recording studios in Jamaica." "Hip Priest" was re-recorded in 1988 in a glam rock style as "Big New Prinz" for the album "I Am Kurious Oranj". An excerpt of "Hip Priest" was used in 1991 in the climactic end scene of Jonathan Demme's film The Silence of the Lambs.
"Fortress/Deer Park" starts with a Casio VL-1 rhythm preset, the same as used by Trio on the 1982 hit single "Da Da Da". Its lyrics form a broad and jaundiced look at English culture and subcultures in the early 1980s. It mentions "Good King Harry was there, fucking Jimmy Savile" while the lines "I took a walk down W11; I had to walk through 500 European punks" are a dry put-down of the fashion-oriented.
"Winter" is split into two parts, broken by a fade out and fade in: "Winter (Hostel-Maxi)" closes Side 1 of the record and "Winter 2" opens Side 2. It was described by Smith in early press releases as "concerning an insane child who is taken over by a spirit from the mind of a cooped-up alcoholic". During the intro of "Winter (Hostel-Maxi)", the narrator describes waiting, hung over, in the early afternoon for the pubs to open. The remainder of the song consists of descriptions of and encounters with a dry-out house, a cleaning lady (the mother of the "insane child"), a feminist with anti-nicotine and anti-nuclear stickers on her car (an Austin Maxi) and a "half-wit" child. After that, the lyrics move towards magic realism and ad-libbed inscrutability: "The mad kid had four lights: the average is two point-five-lights; the mediocre is two lights".
"Who Makes the Nazis" concludes that Nazis are born of "intellectual halfwits". The track contains a number of sounds played through a dictaphone, a device that was to feature heavily in later Fall albums, most notably This Nation's Saving Grace.
"Iceland" was improvised in a single take. Smith was taken by a country that he described in 2008 as still inaccessible and "totally unlike what it is now. Beer was against the law. You could only drink shit like pints of peach schnapps". It consists of a two-note piano figure and a banjo part, over which Smith played a tape recording he had made of the wind howling outside his bedroom window. According to guitarist Marc Riley, "He [Smith] just said he needed a tune, something Dylanish, and we knocked around on the piano in the studio and came up with that. But we hadn't heard the words until he suddenly did them." The line "Fall down flat in the Cafe aisle without a glance from the clientele" describes an incident that had happened to Smith that morning. He had tripped in a nearby cafe and fallen across several tables. He was surprised by the lack of response from the other customers, who seemed to have dismissed him as just another drunk.
The closing track, "And This Day", originally lasted about 25 minutes, but was edited down to ten minutes to fit the album's length; it still remains one of the Fall's longest studio songs.
## Cover art
Hex Enduction Hour'''s all-white cover is lined with pen marks and scribbles and was described by music critic Robertson as "meticulously shoddy". It consists of a series of pen scribbles laid down by Smith. The markings are mostly random rhetorical phrases and sentence fragments added by Smith and include wording such as "Lie-Dream 80% of 10% OR 6% over no less than 1/4 = ??????", "Hail Sainsbury's!", "CHUMMY LIFESTYLE", "HAVE A BLEEDIN GUESS" and "CIGS. SMOKED HERE". In an interview with Sounds that summer, Smith mentioned that he liked artwork to reflect the album content and that his graphic choices reflected his attitude to music. He mentioned how he was drawn to cheap and misspelled posters, amateur layouts of local papers and printed cash and carry signs with "inverted commas where you don't need them".
The album art was seen by many within the music industry as coarse and lacking accepted layout or typographical qualities. HMV would only shelve the sleeve back to front on their racking shelves.
## Reception
Hex Enduction Hour was the first Fall album to reach the UK Albums Chart, where it spent three weeks, peaking at no. 71. By mid-1983 it had sold 20,000 copies, reflecting a surge in the band's popularity, and five years into their career brought them to the attention of major record labels. Critics were highly enthusiastic. Reviewing for the NME, Richard Cook described the band as tighter and more disciplined than in earlier recordings, and call Hex as "their master piece to date". He praised their use of recording-studio techniques and atmospherics without resorting to glamorisation. Melody Maker's Colin Irwin said it was "incredibly exciting and utterly compelling". Edwin Pouncey of Sounds said it was "the furthest adventure the Fall have ever embarked upon, one that absorbs and holds the listener in a grip of iron. It is also more importantly the Fall's finest hour." A dissenter was Neil McCormick of Irish fortnightly Hot Press, who dismissed the album as secondhand melodramatic punk and said that if the album was "meant to be minimalist or primitive then it fatally ignores the true primitivism of the strong melody and accessible lyrics found in folk music."
Later, Record Collector described the album as a "taut, twitchy and ominous masterclass in DIY post-punk", and singled out Smith's lyrics for praise. The Quietus, in 2009, wrote of the album as "arguably ... The Fall's mightiest hour", while Stylus Magazine wrote that "Hex demonstrates the culmination of 'early' Fall: a monolithic beast of ragged grooves piloted through the embittering miasma of English society by the verbose acidity/Joycean all-inclusiveness of Mark E. Smith." Pitchfork listed Hex Enduction Hour as the 33rd best album of the 1980s. Comedian Stewart Lee said it is favourite album and "probably the best album of all time."
According to Smith, the album's lyrics had a negative impact on the band's later career. In 1984, Motown Records expressed interest in signing the band to a new UK division, with a provisional offer of a £46,000 up-front advance. A label executive asked to hear something from the Fall's back catalogue, but Hex was the only album Smith had available; he remembered thinking, "when he hears that, we've had it." The rejection letter stated that the label saw "no commercial potential in this band whatsoever". Smith believes this was due to the "obligatory niggers" line from the opening track "The Classical".
## Re-issues
The album went out of print when the Kamera label folded in 1983, but a German edition on the Line imprint remained available, with copies pressed on white vinyl. Line issued a CD edition, flat transferred from a later generation tape. In 2002, a new edition titled Hex Enduction Hour + (adding both sides of the "Look, Know" single) was released via Smith's Cog Sinister imprint.
The album was remastered and issued in 2005 by Sanctuary Records, along with a disc of bonus live material. Smith conceded that the remastering was an improvement, but when asked if he liked the bonus live tracks he admitted that he hadn't listened "that far". For unexplained reasons, "Look, Know" was removed from the bonus material, although its b-side remained intact; however it would later appear on The Fall Box Set 1976–2007''.
## Track listing
Songwriting credits adapted from the original album sleeve notes.
## Personnel
The Fall:
- Mark E. Smith – vocals, tape operation on "Fortress/Deer Park" and "Iceland", guitar, production, cover design
- Steve Hanley – bass guitar, backing vocals
- Marc Riley – electronic organ, guitar, piano, backing vocals, banjo on "Iceland"
- Craig Scanlon – guitar, backing vocals, piano on "Iceland"
- Paul Hanley – drums, guitar on "Winter"
- Karl Burns – drums, backing vocals, tape operation on "Fortress/Deer Park"
Additional personnel
- Kay Carroll – percussion, backing vocals, manager
Technical personnel
- Richard Mazda – production
- Tony J. Sutcliffe – engineering
- Alan Skinner – cover design
|
293,349 |
Lethbridge
| 1,167,912,931 |
City in Alberta, Canada
|
[
"1890 establishments in the Northwest Territories",
"Cities in Alberta",
"Hudson's Bay Company trading posts",
"Lethbridge",
"Populated places established in 1890"
] |
Lethbridge (/ˈlɛθbrɪdʒ/ LETH-brij) is a city in the province of Alberta, Canada. With a population of 101,482 in its 2019 municipal census, Lethbridge became the fourth Alberta city to surpass 100,000 people. The nearby Canadian Rocky Mountains contribute to the city's warm summers, mild winters, and windy climate. Lethbridge lies southeast of Calgary on the Oldman River.
Lethbridge is the commercial, financial, transportation and industrial centre of southern Alberta. The city's economy developed from drift mining for coal in the late 19th century and agriculture in the early 20th century. Half of the workforce is employed in the health, education, retail and hospitality sectors, and the top five employers are government-based. The only university in Alberta south of Calgary is in Lethbridge, and two of the three colleges in southern Alberta have campuses in the city. Cultural venues in the city include performing art theatres, museums and sports centres.
## History
Before the 19th century, the Lethbridge area was populated by several First Nations at various times. The Blackfoot referred to the area as Aksaysim ("steep banks"), Mek-kio-towaghs ("painted rock"), Assini-etomochi ("where we slaughtered the Cree") and Sik-ooh-kotok ("coal"). The Sarcee referred to it as Chadish-kashi ("black/rocks"), the Cree as Kuskusukisay-guni ("black/rocks"), and the Nakoda (Stoney) as Ipubin-saba-akabin ("digging coal"). The Kutenai people referred to it as ʔa•kwum.
After the US Army stopped alcohol trading with the Blackfeet Nation in Montana in 1869, traders John J. Healy and Alfred B. Hamilton started a whiskey trading post at Fort Hamilton, near the future site of Lethbridge. The post's nickname became Fort Whoop-Up. The whiskey trade led to the Cypress Hills Massacre of many native Assiniboine in 1873. The North-West Mounted Police, sent to stop the trade and establish order, arrived at Fort Whoop-Up on October 9, 1874. They managed the post for the next 12 years.
Lethbridge's economy developed from drift mines opened by Nicholas Sheran in 1874 and the North Western Coal and Navigation Company in 1882. North Western's president was William Lethbridge, from whom the city derives its name. By the turn of the century, the mines employed about 150 men and produced 300 tonnes of coal each day. In 1896, local collieries were the largest coal producers in the Northwest Territories, with production peaking during World War I. An internment camp was set up at the Exhibition Building in Lethbridge from September 1914 to November 1916. After the war, increasing oil and natural gas production gradually replaced coal production, and the last mine in Lethbridge closed in 1957.
The first rail line in Lethbridge was opened on August 28, 1885, by the Alberta Railway and Coal Company, which bought the North Western Coal and Navigation Company five years later. The rail industry's dependence on coal and the Canadian Pacific Railway's efforts to settle southern Alberta with immigrants boosted Lethbridge's economy. After the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) moved the divisional point of its Crowsnest Line from Fort Macleod to Lethbridge in 1905, the city became the regional centre for Southern Alberta. In the mid-1980s, the CPR moved its rail yards in downtown Lethbridge to nearby Kipp, and Lethbridge ceased being a rail hub.
Between 1907 and 1913, a development boom occurred in Lethbridge, making it the main marketing, distribution and service centre in southern Alberta. Such municipal projects as a water treatment plant, a power plant, a streetcar system, and exhibition buildings—as well as a construction boom and rising real estate prices—transformed the mining town into a significant city. Between World War I and World War II, however, the city experienced an economic slump. Development slowed, drought drove farmers from their farms, and coal mining rapidly declined from its peak. After World War II, irrigation of farmland near Lethbridge led to growth in the city's population and economy. Lethbridge College (previously Lethbridge Community College) opened in April 1957 and the University of Lethbridge in 1967.
## Geography
The city of Lethbridge is located at 49.7° north latitude and 112.833° west longitude and covers an area of 127.19 square kilometres (49.11 sq mi). It is divided by the Oldman River; its valley has been turned into one of the largest urban park systems in North America at 16 square kilometres (4,000 acres) of protected land. Lethbridge is Alberta's third-largest city by population and area after Calgary and Edmonton. It is located near the Canadian Rockies, 210 kilometres (130 mi) southeast of Calgary.
Lethbridge is split into three geographical areas: north, south and west. The Oldman River separates West Lethbridge from the other two, while Crowsnest Trail and the Canadian Pacific Railway rail line separate North and South Lethbridge. The newest and largest of the three areas, West Lethbridge (pop. 40,898) is home to the University of Lethbridge—which opened at that site in 1971. Although several farms existed on what is now the Westside, the first housing development was not completed until 1974 and Whoop-Up Drive access opened only in 1975. Much of the city's recent growth has been on the west side, and it has the youngest median age of the three. The north side (pop. 28,172) was originally populated by workers from local coal mines. It has the oldest population of the three areas, is home to multiple industrial parks and includes the former Hamlet of Hardieville, which was annexed by Lethbridge in 1978. South Lethbridge (pop. 32,412) is the commercial heart of the city; it contains the downtown core, the bulk of retail and hospitality establishments, and the Lethbridge College.
### Climate
Lethbridge has a semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification BSk) with an average maximum temperature of 12.8 °C (55.0 °F) and an average minimum temperature of −1.1 °C (30.0 °F). With precipitation averaging 380.2 mm (14.97 in), and 264 dry days on average, Lethbridge is the eleventh driest city in Canada. Mean relative humidity hovers between 69 and 78% in the morning throughout the year, but afternoon mean relative humidity is more uneven, ranging from 38% in August to 58% in January. On average, Lethbridge has 116 days with wind speed of 40 km/h (25 mph) or higher, ranking it as the second city in Canada for such weather.
Its high elevation of 929 m (3,048 ft) and close proximity to the Rocky Mountains provides Lethbridge with cooler summers than other locations in the Canadian Prairies. These factors protect the city from strong northwest and southwest winds and contribute to frequent chinook winds during the winter. Lethbridge winters have the highest temperatures in the prairies, reducing the severity and duration of winter cold periods and resulting in fewer days with snow cover. The average daytime temperature peaks by the end of July/beginning of August, when it reaches 26.4 °C (79.5 °F). The city's temperature reaches a maximum high of 35.0 °C (95.0 °F) or greater on average once or twice a year.
The highest temperature ever recorded in Lethbridge was 40.5 °C (104.9 °F) on August 10, 2018. The lowest temperature ever recorded was −42.8 °C (−45.0 °F) on January 7, 1909, December 18, 1924, January 3, 1950, and December 29, 1968.
## Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the City of Lethbridge had a population of 98,406 living in 40,225 of its 42,862 total private dwellings, a change of 6.1% from its 2016 population of 92,729. With a land area of 121.12 km<sup>2</sup> (46.76 sq mi), it had a population density of in 2021.
At the census metropolitan area (CMA) level in the 2021 census, the Lethbridge CMA had a population of 123,847 living in 48,647 of its 51,735 total private dwellings, a change of 5.5% from its 2016 population of 117,394. With a land area of 2,958.96 km<sup>2</sup> (1,142.46 sq mi), it had a population density of in 2021.
The population of the City of Lethbridge according to its 2019 municipal census is 101,482, a change of 1.7% from its 2018 municipal census population of 99,769. With the 2019 municipal census results, the City of Lethbridge became the fourth city in Alberta to surpass 100,000 people.
In the 2016 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the City of Lethbridge had a population of 92,729 living in 37,575 of its 39,867 total private dwellings, a change of 11% from its 2011 population of 83,517. With a land area of 122.09 km<sup>2</sup> (47.14 sq mi), it had a population density of in 2016. The same census reported that the metropolitan area of Lethbridge was 117,394 in 2016, up from 105,999 in 2011. Subsequent data from Statistics Canada showed that the 2020 metropolitan population was 128,851, an increase of 1.5% over the previous year.
### Religion
In 2021, 49.8% of residents were Christian, down from 64.6% in 2011. 16.1% of the population were Catholic, 12.9% were Protestant, and 11.3% were Christians of unspecified denomination. All other Christian denominations and Christian-related traditions made up 9.6%, including a large population of Latter Day Saints adherents(5.8%). 44.3% of the population was nonreligious or secular, up from 32.4% in 2011. 8.1% followed a religion (or spiritual belief) other than Christianity. The largest non-Christian religions were Islam (1.9%), Hinduism (1.3%), and Buddhism (1.1%).
### Language
According to the 2021 census, 83.9% of residents spoke English as a first language. Other common mother tongues were Spanish (1.6%),Tagalog (1.4%), Nepali (1.0%), German (0.9%), French (0.8%), Chinese Languages (0.7%), Arabic (0.7%) and Dutch (0.6%). 1.7% of residents claimed both English and a non-official language as their first language.
### Ethnicity
Lethbridge had 12.9% visible minorities and 7.1% Aboriginal in 2016. Below is a full break down of the demographics. The city is also the home of the largest Bhutanese community in Canada.
## Economy
Lethbridge is southern Alberta's commercial, distribution, financial and industrial centre (although Medicine Hat plays a similar role in southeastern Alberta). It has a trading area population of 341,180, including parts of British Columbia, and provides jobs for up to 86,000 people who commute to and within the city from a radius of 100 kilometres (62 mi).
Lethbridge's economy has traditionally been agriculture-based; however, it has diversified in recent years. Half of the workforce is employed in the health, education, retail and hospitality sectors, and the top five employers are government-based. Several national companies are based in Lethbridge. From its founding in 1935, Canadian Freightways based its head office there until moving operations to Calgary in 1948, though its call centre remains in Lethbridge. Taco Time Canada was based in the city from 1978 to 1995 before moving to Calgary. Minute Muffler, which began in 1969, is based in Lethbridge. International shipping company H & R Transport has been based in the city since 1955. Braman Furniture, which has locations in Manitoba and Ontario, was headquartered in Lethbridge from 1991 to 2008.
Lethbridge serves as a hub for commercial activity in the region by providing services and amenities. Many transport services, including Red Arrow buses, four provincial highways, rail service and an airport, are concentrated in or near the city. In 2004, the police services of Lethbridge and Coaldale combined to form the Lethbridge Police Service. Lethbridge provides municipal water to Coaldale, Coalhurst, Diamond City, Iron Springs, Monarch, Shaughnessy and Turin.
In 2002, the municipal government organized Economic Development Lethbridge, a body responsible for promoting and developing the city's commercial interests. Two years later, the city joined in a partnership with 24 other local communities to create an economic development alliance called SouthGrow, representing a population of over 140,000. In 2006, Economic Development Lethbridge partnered with SouthGrow Regional Initiative and Alberta SouthWest Regional Alliance to create the Southern Alberta Alternative Energy Partnership. This partnership promotes business related to alternative energy, including wind power, solar power and biofuel, in the region.
## Arts and culture
Lethbridge was designated a Cultural Capital of Canada for the 2004–2005 season. The Southern Alberta Ethnic Association (Multicultural Heritage Centre) promotes multiculturalism and ethnic heritage in the community.
The city is home to venues and organizations promoting the arts. Founded in 1958, the Allied Arts Council of Lethbridge is the largest organization in the city dedicated to preserving and enhancing the local arts. In the spring of 2007, the Allied Arts Council Facilities Steering Committee initiated the Arts Re:Building Together Campaign, a grass roots campaign initiative to raise awareness and support for improving arts facilities in Lethbridge. The campaign identified three arts buildings: the Yates Memorial Centre, the Bowman Arts Centre, and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery as cornerstone facilities in the community requiring care and attention. On July 14, 2007, the Finance Committee of City Council approved four arts capital projects for inclusion in the city's Ten Year Capital Plan. Under the campaign to 2010, the renovation and expansion of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery was completed, a new Community Arts Centre will be built in downtown Lethbridge, the City of Lethbridge has a Public Art Program, and a committee was formed to research the possibility of a new Performing Arts Centre in Lethbridge.
Lethbridge has a public library and three major museum/galleries. The Southern Alberta Art Gallery is a contemporary gallery; the community arts centre Casa, administered by the Allied Arts Council; and the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery produces contemporary exhibitions including works from its extensive collection of Canadian, American and European art.
The city is also home to the Lethbridge Symphony, which was founded in 1960 and incorporated as a non-profit in 1961. It has produced several spin-off music groups, including the Southern Alberta Chamber Orchestra, and the still-active Lethbridge Musical Theatre, which produces an annual show. Vox Musica, which traces its roots back to 1968, is a community choir previously based at the University of Lethbridge. As a fully independent non-profit society, Vox Musica continues to rehearse and perform at Southminster United Church and around the community. Theatrical productions are presented by the University of Lethbridge's drama department and New West Theatre, which performs at the Genevieve E. Yates Memorial Centre using its two theatres: the 500-seat proscenium Yates Theatre and the 180-seat black box Sterndale Bennett Theatre.
## Attractions
The city, which began as a frontier town, has several historical attractions. The Lethbridge Viaduct, commonly known as the High Level Bridge, is the longest and highest steel trestle bridge in North America. It was completed in 1909 on what was then the city's western edge. Indian Battle Park, in the coulees of the Oldman River, commemorates the last battle between the Cree and the Blackfoot First Nations in 1870.
Originally known as Fort Hamilton, Fort Whoop-Up was a centre of illegal activities during the late 19th century. It was first built in 1869 by J.J. Healy and A.B. Hamilton as a whiskey post and was destroyed by fire a year later. A second, sturdier structure later replaced the fort.
As the cultural centre of southern Alberta, Lethbridge has notable cultural attractions. Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden in south Lethbridge was opened in 1967 as part of a Canadian centennial celebration attended by Japan's Prince and Princess Takamatsu. The Galt Museum & Archives is the largest museum in the Lethbridge area; the building housing the museum served as the city's main hospital during the late 19th century and early 20th centuries. Several other important attractions are based in Lethbridge, including the Lethbridge Military Museum and the Helen Schuler Nature Centre which educates about the river bottom and coulees.
Several structures such as the historic post office are prominent on the skyline of Lethbridge. Less well-known than the High Level Bridge, the post office is one of the most distinctive buildings in Lethbridge. Built in 1912, the four-storey structure is crowned by a functioning clock tower. Other prominent buildings include office towers; the water tower, which was originally built in 1958 and sold to a private developer who converted it into a restaurant; and the Alberta Terminals grain elevators.
From March 2018 to August 2020, Lethbridge was home to ARCHES, 24-hour supervised drug use site. It was the busiest SCS in North America with 663 visits a day. The Star called it a "new landmark". The SCS featured injection drug and inhalation drug facilities and it was a subject of disagreement by the nearby business community. The site closed at the end of August 2020 after the province removed grant funding following discovery of misappropriation of public funds.
## Sports and recreation
Lethbridge has designated 16 percent of the land within city boundaries as parkland, including the 755 hectares (1,870 acres) Oldman River valley parks system. It has facilities for field sports, numerous baseball diamonds, the Spitz Stadium, the Nicholas Sheran Park (a disc golf course), two skateparks, a BMX track, a climbing wall, a dozen tennis courts, and seven pools. It is home to five golf courses, including the award-winning Paradise Canyon Golf Resort, and is within 30 km (19 mi) of several others.
Built for the 1975 Canada Games, the ENMAX Centre is Lethbridge's multipurpose arena. The 6,500-seat facility has hosted concerts, three-ring circuses, multicultural events, national curling championships, basketball events, banquets, skating events and is home to the Lethbridge Hurricanes, a major Western Hockey League franchise. The arena has a running track, racquetball and squash courts, and a full-size ice rink. In 1997, the 58,000-square-foot (5,400 m<sup>2</sup>) Servus Sports Centre (originally the Lethbridge Soccer Centre) was built directly south of the ENMAX Centre and added two regulation size indoor soccer pitches to the complex. The Lethbridge Kyodokan Judo Club facility is located next to the Community Savings Place, and has been a Judo Canada Regional Training Centre since 2015.
On the city's west side, Phase 1 of the ATB Centre, a recreation complex, opened in 2016 and houses two hockey rinks and the Lethbridge Curling Club. Phase 2 of this project The Cor Van Ray YMCA opened in May 2019 and includes a field house with basketball courts and a 300m running track, as well as an aquatics centre with slides and a wave pool.
Several winter sports venues are in or near Lethbridge. The city has six indoor ice arenas with a total ice area of 11,220 square metres (120,800 sq ft) and a total seating capacity of 8,149. Other than the ENMAX Centre, all ice surfaces are available from October to April only. Lethbridge is 150 kilometres (93 mi) east of the Castle Mountain ski resort.
Lethbridge hosted the inaugural championship match for the Western Women's Canadian Football League in 2011, while the city's WWCFL team, the Lethbridge Steel, played in three straight title matches from 2012 to 2014. In October 2020, the Canadian Junior Football League (CJFL) announced an expansion team would begin play in Lethbridge at the 3,500-seat University of Lethbridge Stadium in 2022. The Lethbridge Vipers will be the seventh team in the Prairie Junior Football Conference and the 19th team in the CJFL.
## Government
Eight councillors and a mayor make up the Lethbridge City Council. City voters elect a new government every four years. The last election was October 18, 2021. Lethbridge does not have a ward system, so the mayor and all councillors are elected at large. The 2009–2011 operating budget of the City of Lethbridge was –278 million, more than half of which came from property tax. One Member of Parliament (MP) representing Lethbridge sits in the House of Commons in Ottawa, and two members of Alberta's legislative assembly (MLAs), representing Lethbridge-East (UCP) and Lethbridge-West (NDP), sit in the legislative assembly in Edmonton.
Traditionally, political leanings in Lethbridge have been right-wing. Federally, from 1917 to 1930, Lethbridge voters switched between various federal parties, but from 1935 to 1957, they voted Social Credit in each election. Progressive Conservatives held office from 1958 until 1993, when the Reform Party of Canada was formed. The Reform party and its various subsequent incarnations such as the current Conservative Party of Canada have dominated the polls since. The city's two provincial electoral districts are represented by one government MLA, currently Nathan Neudorf for Lethbridge-East, and one opposition MLA, currently Shannon Phillips for Lethbridge-West.
Alberta Health Services, the provincial health authority that plans and delivers health services on behalf of the Ministry of Health, administers public health services in Lethbridge. Chinook Health oversees facilities in southwestern Alberta, such as the Chinook Regional Hospital and St. Michael's Health Centre.
## Transportation
Mass transit in Lethbridge consists of 40 buses (with an average age of 10 years) operating on more than a dozen routes. Traditionally, bus routes in the city started and ended downtown. In the early 21st century, however, Lethbridge Transit introduced cross-town and shuttle routes, such as University of Lethbridge to Lethbridge College, University of Lethbridge to the North Lethbridge terminal, and Lethbridge College to the North Lethbridge terminal. Several routes converge near the Chinook Regional Hospital, although it is not officially a terminal.
The Parks and Recreation department maintains the citywide, 30-kilometre (19 mi) pedestrian/cyclist Coal Banks Trail system (map). The system was designed to connect the Oldman River valley with other areas of the city, including Pavan Park in the north, Henderson Lake in the east, Highways 4 and 5 in the south and a loop in West Lethbridge (including University Drive and McMaster Blvd).
Four provincial highways (3, 4, 5, and 25) run through or terminate in Lethbridge. This has led to the creation of major arterial roads, including Mayor Magrath Drive, University Drive and Scenic Drive. This infrastructure and its location on the CANAMEX Corridor has helped make Lethbridge and its freight depots a major shipping destination. Lethbridge is 100 kilometres (62 mi) north of the United States border via Highways 4 and 5 and 210 kilometres (130 mi) south of Calgary via Highways 2 and 3. Highways 2, 3 and 4 form part of the CANAMEX trade route between Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
Lethbridge has a commercial airport, the Lethbridge Airport, and the CPR rail yards in Kipp, Alberta (12 km away). The airport provides commercial flights to Calgary, industrial and corporate opportunities, as well as private and charter flights elsewhere. The airport provides customs services for flights arriving from the United States. The rail yards were moved to Kipp, just west of the city, from downtown Lethbridge in 1983. The yards were planned for redevelopment with a mix of multi-family residential, commercial and light industrial land uses. The Park Place Mall is now located on the portion of the former rail yards north of 1 Avenue South between Scenic Drive to the west and Stafford Drive to the east.
## Education
The Lethbridge School Division and the separate Holy Spirit Roman Catholic School Division administer grades kindergarten through 12 locally. The Palliser School Division, which is based in Lethbridge, administers public primary and secondary education in the outlying areas. Lethbridge School Division administers five high schools (Chinook High School, Immanuel Christian High School, Lethbridge Collegiate Institute, Victoria Park High School, and Winston Churchill High School), four middle schools, and 14 elementary schools in Lethbridge. Immanuel Christian covers grades 6 through 12.
Lethbridge is home to Lethbridge College, founded in 1957, and the University of Lethbridge, founded in 1967. Red Crow Community College has a campus in the city. During the 2015–2016 school year, the University of Lethbridge and the Lethbridge College had a combined enrolment of 14,820, which represented 20 percent of the city's population.
## Media
Lethbridge has two major newspapers: the daily Lethbridge Herald and the weekly Lethbridge Sun Times. The university and college each have a student-run, weekly newspaper. There are 11 FM radio stations, including CKXU-FM, a campus radio station located at the University of Lethbridge.
## Notable people
## See also
- List of communities in Alberta
- List of cities in Alberta
- List of people from Lethbridge
|
11,903,129 |
Cardinal-nephew
| 1,140,921,906 |
Nephew or relative of a pope appointed as a cardinal by him
|
[
"Cardinal-nephews",
"College of Cardinals",
"History of the Roman Curia",
"Nepotism",
"Officials of the Roman Curia"
] |
A cardinal-nephew (Latin: cardinalis nepos; Italian: cardinale nipote; Spanish: valido de su tío; Portuguese: cardeal-sobrinho; French: prince de fortune) was a cardinal elevated by a pope who was that cardinal's relative. The practice of creating cardinal-nephews originated in the Middle Ages, and reached its apex during the 16th and 17th centuries. The last cardinal-nephew was named in 1689 and the practice was abolished in 1692. The word nepotism originally referred specifically to this practice, when it appeared in the English language about 1669. From the middle of the Avignon Papacy (1309–1377) until Pope Innocent XII's anti-nepotism bull (a papal charter), Romanum decet pontificem (1692), a pope without a cardinal-nephew was the exception to the rule. Every Renaissance pope who created cardinals appointed a relative to the College of Cardinals, and the nephew was the most common choice, although one of Alexander VI's creations was his own son.
The institution of the cardinal-nephew evolved over seven centuries, tracking developments in the history of the papacy and the styles of individual popes. From 1566 until 1692, a cardinal-nephew held the curial office of the Superintendent of the Ecclesiastical State, known as the Cardinal Nephew, and thus the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. The curial office of the Cardinal Nephew as well as the institution of the cardinal-nephew declined as the power of the Cardinal Secretary of State increased and the temporal power of popes decreased in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The list of cardinal-nephews includes at least fifteen, and possibly as many as nineteen popes (Gregory IX, Alexander IV, Adrian V, Gregory XI, Boniface IX, Innocent VII, Eugene IV, Paul II, Alexander VI, Pius III, Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, Benedict XIII, and Pius VII; perhaps also John XIX and Benedict IX, if they were really promoted cardinals; as well as Innocent III and Benedict XII, if in fact they were related to their elevators); one antipope (John XXIII); and two or three saints (Charles Borromeo, Guarinus of Palestrina, and perhaps Anselm of Lucca, if he was really a cardinal).
## History
### Before 1566
The creation of cardinal-nephews predates the hierarchical preeminence of cardinals within the Roman Catholic Church, which grew out of the 1059 decree of Pope Nicholas II, In nomine Domini, which established cardinal bishops as the sole electors of the Pope, with the consent of cardinal deacons and cardinal priests. The first known cardinal-nephew is Lottario (Latin: Loctarius), seniore, cousin of Pope Benedict VIII (1012–1024), elected circa 1015. Benedict VIII also elevated his brother Giovanni (the future Pope John XIX) and his cousin Teofilatto (the future Pope Benedict IX) as cardinal-deacons. The first known cardinal-nephew after 1059 is Anselm of Lucca, the nephew or brother of Pope Alexander II (1061–1073), although until the end of 12th the majority of the alleged cases of such appointments are dubious, either because the relationship between the Pope and cardinal is not proven, or because the cardinalate of the papal kinsman is uncertain. However, it is beyond doubt that the promotions of papal relatives to the College of Cardinals were common in 13th century.
According to historian John Bargrave, "by the Council of Bazill, Session 21, the number of cardinals was not to be above 24, and not any nephew of the Pope or of any cardinal was to be of that number. (Session 23.)"
Pope Clement VI (1342–1352) created more cardinal-nephews than any other pontiff, including six on September 20, 1342, the greatest number of cardinal-nephews elevated at one time. The capitulation of the 1464 papal conclave limited the Pope it elected (Pope Paul II) to appointing one cardinal-nephew, along with other conditions designed to increase the power of the College of Cardinals and reduce the Pope's ability to dilute that power.
The Fifth Council of the Lateran declared in 1514 that the care of relatives was to be commended, and the creation of cardinal-nephews was often recommended or justified based on the need to care for indigent family members. A cardinal-nephew could usually expect profitable appointments; for example, Alessandro Farnese, cardinal-nephew of Pope Paul III (1534–1549) held 64 benefices simultaneously in addition to the vice-chancellorship.
Pope Paul IV (1555–1559), in his old age, was said to have "fallen almost completely under the cardinal-nephew's influence"; Paul IV's cardinal-nephew, Carlo Carafa, was accused in August 1558 by a Theatine of seducing a Roman noble woman, Plautila de' Massimi, who had come into possession of an inordinate amount of money and jewelry, but the accusations were dismissed by the pontiff. Saint Charles Borromeo, cardinal-nephew of Pope Pius IV (1559–1565), had ensured the subordination of the secretarius intimus to the Cardinal Nephew, which came to be sometimes known as the secretarius maior. Pius IV was notorious for nepotism: between 1561 and 1565 he transferred more than 350,000 scudi to his relatives.
### 1566–1692
Following the Council of Trent (1563), Pope Pius V (1566–1572) drew up the terms for the office of the Superintendent of the Ecclesiastical State, who was to handle the temporal affairs of the Papal States and the foreign relations of the Holy See. After abortively attempting to divide the duties of the Superintendent between four non-familial cardinals, Pius V acceded to the urgings of the College of Cardinals and his Spanish ambassador, and appointed his grandnephew, Michele Bonelli, as Superintendent, demarcating his duties with a papal bull of March 14, 1566. However, Pius V relentlessly avoided delegating any real autonomous power to Bonelli.
The Cardinal Nephew (also called cardinale padrone or Secretarius Papae et superintendens status ecclesiasticæ: "Superintendent of the Ecclesiastical State", Italian: Sopraintendente dello Stato Ecclesiastico) was an official legate of the Roman Curia, approximately equivalent to the Cardinal Secretary of State, which absorbed its functions after the office of Cardinal Nephew was abolished in 1692. The office has been likened by historians to a "prime minister", "alter ego", or "vice-pope". The Cardinal Nephew was generally among a Pope's first cardinal creations, and his creature was traditionally accompanied by a salute from the guns of Castel Sant'Angelo.
Following the Avignon Papacy, the Cardinal Nephew was responsible for the spiritual and temporal governance of the Comtat Venaissin, where the Avignon Popes had resided; in 1475, Pope Sixtus IV raised the Diocese of Avignon to the rank of an archbishopric, to the benefit of his nephew Giuliano della Rovere.
The terms of the office of Cardinal Nephew were established by a papal brief developed and refined by Pius V's successors to Paul V (1605–1621). The Cardinal Nephew was also the correspondence liaison for all papal nuncios and gubernatorial legates, and the prefect for two congregations: the Consulta and the Congregazione del Buon Governo. The Cardinal Nephew was also the captain-general of the papal army and a "channel through which flowed benefices one way and gold the other".
However, these formal functions only came into force during the pontificates of unusually weak Popes; most Cardinal Nephews were the de facto rubber stamp of the pontiff himself.
Although Pope Leo XI (1605) died before he was able to elevate his nephew, Roberto Ubaldini, Ubaldini was elevated by Leo XI's successor, Pope Paul V in 1615.
Some historians consider Scipione Borghese, cardinal-nephew to Pope Paul V, to be the "prototypical representative" of a cardinal-nephew, unlike those before him, created to "provide for and oversee the permanent social and economic ascent of the reigning papal family into the ranks of the high Roman aristocracy". For example, in 1616, 24 of the 30 abbeys belonging to Borghese were rented out, a practice the Council of Trent had attempted to eliminate. A thorough financial analysis of Borghese's cardinalate by Volker Reinhardt (based on a series of extant account books) examines the strategies Borghese used to build up wealth during his uncle's pontificate and non-ecclesiastical assets before his uncle's death, which Volker considers to be exemplary of Baroque papal families. It is estimated that Paul V Borghese had transferred to his family approximately 4% of the total income of the Holy See during his pontificate. Borghese's personal revenues in 1610 were 153,000 scudi compared to the mere 4,900 scudi that constituted his entire family's income in 1592.
Pope Gregory XIV (1590–1591) began the practice of creating cardinal-nephews whose formal appointment coincided de facto with their nomination, and was thus separate from the ordinal process for creating cardinals, and, when he fell ill, he authorized his cardinal-nephew, Paolo Emilio Sfondrato, to use the Fiat ut petitur, a power which was later diminished at the urging of the college. Paul V issued a motu proprio on April 30, 1618, formally bestowing on his cardinal-nephew the same authority Pope Clement VIII had given to Pietro Aldobrandini, beginning what historian Laurain-Portemer calls "l'age classique'" of nepotism.
Pope Gregory XV's (1621–1623) cardinal-nephew, Ludovico Ludovisi, the first cardinal-nephew known as il cardinale padrone ("the Cardinal boss") accumulated a vast array of benefices: the bishopric of Bologna, 23 abbeys, the directorship of the Apostolic Signatura, as well as the offices of the vice-chancellor and high-chamberlain, and was able to have most of them redistributed among 17 of his kinsmen upon his death. These benefices and offices netted Ludovisi more than 200,000 scudi annually, and he is considered to have exercised "more unlimited authority" than any previous cardinal-nephew. Notably, cardinal-nephews were allowed to create facultas testandi to will the rewards of their benefices to secular family members. Gregory XV's successor, Urban VIII (1623–1644) convened two special committees of theologians, both of whom endorsed this practice.
Not all Cardinal Nephews were cardinal-nephews in the strictest sense. In fact, papal historian Valérie Pirie considers not having a nephew a "tremendous asset for a would-be Pope" as it left the position open for an ally cardinal. For example, Pope Clement X gave the office to Cardinal Paoluzzi-Altieri, whose nephew had recently married Laura Caterina Altieri, the sole heiress of Clement X's family. Many historians consider Olimpia Maidalchini, the sister-in-law of Pope Innocent X (1644–1655), to have been a de facto Cardinal Nephew; the position was formally held by her son, Camillo Pamphili, then her nephew, Francesco Maidalchini (after Pamphili renounced his cardinalate in order to wed), and (after Francesco proved incompetent) Camillo Astalli, her cousin.
Popes often had only a few choices for the creation of a Cardinal Nephew. According to papal historian Frederic Baumgartner, Pope Sixtus V's (1585–1590) reign "started badly" because Alessandro Peretti di Montalto was "his only nephew eligible for the office, but he could hardly serve the Pope as a trustworthy confidant", causing several cardinals to refuse to attend his investiture. Another papal historian Ludwig von Pastor notes that "the misfortune of Pope Pamphilj was that the only person in his family who would have had the qualities necessary to fill such a position was a woman".
Pope Innocent XI (1676–1689) despised the practice and only accepted his election as Pope after the College of Cardinals consented to his plans for reform, which included a ban on nepotism. However, Innocent XI backed down after thrice failing to achieve the support of the majority of his cardinals for a bull banning nepotism, which had been tediously composed between 1677 and 1686. Innocent XI refused entreaties from within the papal court to bring his only nephew, Livio Odescalchi, the prince of Sirmio, to Rome, although he did elevate Carlo Stefano Anastasio Ciceri, a distant relative, cardinal on September 2, 1686. Innocent XI's successor, Pope Alexander VIII (1689–1691), was the last Pope to create a Cardinal Nephew. Alexander VIII also undid another reform of Innocent XI by restoring the revenues of the former Chancery to the Vice-Chancellor, who was, at the time, his cardinal-nephew, Pietro Ottoboni. Edith Standen, a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, calls Ottoboni the "last and certainly not least magnificent example" of the "splendor of an extinct species, the Cardinal-Nephew".
Until 1692 (and sometimes thereafter), the cardinal-nephew (or a lay nephew) would be the chief archivist of the Pope, usually removing the archives to a family archive upon the death of the pontiff. In particular, the archival collections of the Barberini, Farnese, Chigi, and Borghese families contain important papal documents.
### Since 1692
Pope Innocent XII (1691–1700) issued a papal bull on June 22, 1692, Romanum decet pontificem, banning the office of Cardinal Nephew, limiting his successors to elevating only one cardinal relative, eliminating various sinecures traditionally reserved for cardinal-nephews, and capping the stipend or endowment the nephew of a Pope could receive to 12,000 scudi. Romanum decet pontificem was later incorporated into the Code of Canon Law of 1917 in canons 240, 2; 1414, 4; and 1432, 1. In 1694, Innocent XII's series of reforms was concluded with an expensive campaign to eliminate the "venality" of offices while reimbursing their current holders. These reforms are viewed by some scholars as a delayed reaction to the financial crisis created by the nepotism of Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644).
However, even following Romanum decet pontificem, only three of the eight Popes of the 18th century failed to make a nephew or brother cardinal. The College of Cardinals apparently preferred rule by nephews than by favorites, which they perceived as the alternative; for example, the college urged Pope Benedict XIII (1724–1730) to appoint a cardinal-nephew, who they hoped would replace Benedict XIII's notorious lieutenant Niccolò Coscia. Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585) also had to be urged by key figures in the college to appoint his cardinal-nephew: Filippo Boncompagni.
The cardinal-nephews of the 18th century declined in influence as the power of the Cardinal Secretary of State increased. The church of Pope Benedict XIII (1724–1730) is described by historian Eamon Duffy as "all the evils of nepotism without the nephew". Neri Maria Corsini, cardinal-nephew of Pope Clement XII (1730–1740) was by far the most powerful cardinal-nephew of the 18th century, on account of his uncle's advanced age and blindness. However, Clement XII's successor, Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758) was described by Hugh Walpole as "a priest without indolence or interest, a prince without favorites, a Pope without nephews".
Romualdo Braschi-Onesti, cardinal-nephew of Pius VI (1775–1799), was the penultimate cardinal-nephew. Despite Pius VI's lineage to a noble Cesena family, his only sister had married a man from the poor Onesti family. Therefore, he commissioned a genealogist to discover (and inflate) some trace of nobility in the Onesti lineage, an endeavor which yielded only a circuitous connection to Saint Romualdo.
After the turbulent 1800 papal conclave, Pope Pius VII (1800–1823) shunned the institution of the cardinal-nephew and instead relied on his Cardinal Secretary of State, Ercole Consalvi. During the 19th century, the only nephew of a Pope created cardinal was Gabriele della Genga Sermattei, nephew of Pope Leo XII, created cardinal by Pope Gregory XVI on February 1, 1836. Although the institutionalization of nepotism disappeared in the 18th century, "pietas" (duty to family) remained a theme of papal administration into the 20th century, although rarely with the overt intervention of a papal uncle. Following the example of Pius VI, Popes Leo XIII (who elevated his brother, Giuseppe Pecci, cardinal on May 12, 1879) and Pius XII (1939–1958) weakened the formal curial bureaucracy in favor of a parallel government, in which family members often figured prominently. The loss of temporal power over the Papal States (de facto in 1870 with the "Roman Question" and de jure in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty) also eliminated the structural conditions which had figured prominently in the family politics of earlier Popes.
## Role in conclaves
Even into the 18th century, the cardinal-nephew was a natural power broker at the conclave following his uncle's death, as a figure whom cardinals desirous of continuing the status quo could rally around. In particular, the cardinal-nephew often commanded the loyalty of his uncle's creatures, whom he generally had a role in naming. For example, Alessandro Peretti di Montalto led his uncle's creatures in the papal conclave of 1590 despite being only 21. According to conclave historian Frederic Baumgartner, "the purpose of such appointments was ensuring that the Pope's family would have power and influence for a much longer time than the brief period that a Pope could expect to reign". A notable exception is Pope Gregory XV (1621–1623) who declined on his death bed the request of Ludovico Ludovisi to name more relatives to the college, saying he had "enough to account to God for the unworthy ones he had appointed".
However, cardinal-nephews were not guaranteed the leadership of their uncle's creatures; for example, in the papal conclave, 1621, Scipione Borghese could count only twenty-nine votes (a fraction of his uncle's fifty-six cardinals), Pietro Aldobrandini controlled only nine (of his uncle's thirteen remaining cardinals), and Montalto only five of his uncle's remaining cardinals. In fact, international rivalries sometimes overwhelmed family loyalties when cardinal-nephews were relatively "poorly organized". As Pope Innocent X (1644–1655) died with the office of Cardinal Nephew vacant his faction proved divided and leaderless in the conclave, although his sister-in-law Olimpia Maidalchini was invited to address the cardinals from within the enclosure, the only woman ever so honored.
Instruzione al cardinal Padrone circa il modo come si deve procurare una fazione di cardinali con tutti i requisiti che deve avere per lo stabilimento della sua grandezza ("Instructions to the chief cardinal on how to create a faction of cardinals with all the requisites for the establishment of his grandeur"), discovered in the archive of the Santa Maria de Monserrato offers advice to cardinal-nephews for consolidating power within the College of Cardinals. Another text, the Ricordi dati da Gregorio XV al cardinale Lodovisio suo nipote ("Memoir addressed by Gregory XV to his Nephew Cardinal Lodovisio") offers advice for how to rise within the Curia.
An analysis of the five papal conclaves between 1605 and 1644 shows that cardinal-nephews were generally unsuccessful in electing their chosen candidates, although the victor was usually a cardinal created by the deceased Pope. Crown-cardinals in particular, when they deigned to travel to Rome for the conclave, tended to oppose the election of cardinal-nephews, although they equally opposed the election of crown-cardinals of other monarchs. In general, a cardinal-nephew had to outlive one or more successors of his uncle to become regarded as papabile, both because of their youth and their tendency to be blamed for any unpopular papal policies of their uncles.
A papal election could bring a dramatic change of fortune for a cardinal-nephew, often bringing the former favorites into conflict with the new Pope. For example, Prospero Colonna and Francisco de Borja were excommunicated, and Carlo Carafa was executed. The papal conclave, May 1605, is one example of a conclave where a candidate (Antonmaria Sauli) was defeated because enough other cardinals were convinced of the need for "a Pope willing to punish the cardinal-nephews for robbing the papacy". A cardinal-nephew was also a potential threat to any future pontiff; for example, Ludovisi came to lead the opposition against Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644), even talking about calling a council against the Pope (which never occurred as Ludovisi died in 1632) because "no one else had the standing to confront Urban's titanic temper".
## Legacy
Nepotism is a common feature in the history of governance, particularly in cultures where identity and loyalty are determined more at the level of the family than that of the nation-state. The use of nephews, rather than direct descendants, is a product of the tradition of clerical celibacy within the Catholic Church, although hereditary descent from uncles to nephews is also seen in the patriarchate of the Assyrian Church of the East.
The creation of relatives and known-allies as cardinals was only one way in which medieval and Renaissance Popes attempted to dilute the power of the College of Cardinals as an "ecclesiastical rival" and perpetuate their influence within the church after their death. The institution of the cardinal-nephew had the effect both of enriching the Pope's family with desirable benefices and of modernizing the administration of the papacy, by allowing the pontiff to rule through a proxy which was more easily deemed fallible when necessary and provided a formal distance between the person of the pontiff and the everydayness of pontifical affairs.
Gregorio Leti's Papal Nepotism, or the True Relation of the Reasons Which Impel the Popes to make their Nephews Powerful (1667) is one example of contemporary criticism of the institution of the cardinal-nephew; Leti holds the rare distinction of having all of his publications on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("List of Prohibited Books"). The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 defended the institution of the cardinal-nephew as a necessary countermeasure to the intrigue of the old Church. According to Francis A. Burkle-Young, 15th century Popes in particular found it necessary to elevate their relatives to the College of Cardinals due to their distrust of the crown-cardinals, Roman baronial families, and Italian princely families who also populated the college. According to Thomas Adolphus Trollope, a famed papal historian, "the evil wrought by them in and to the church has been well nigh fatal to it; and it continued to increase until increasing danger warned the Pontiffs to abstain. The worst cardinals, providing, of course, the material for the worst Popes, have been for the most part cardinal nephews, the temptation to the creation of such having been rendered too great to be resisted by the exorbitant greatness of the power, dignity, and wealth attributed to the members of the Sacred College. The value of these great "prizes" was so enormous, that the "hat" became an object of ambition to princes, and it was the primary object with a long series of Popes to bestow it on their kinsmen."
### Cardinal Secretary of State
The curial office of Cardinal Secretary of State in many ways evolved from the roles formerly filled by cardinal-nephews. From 1644 to 1692, the power of the Cardinal Secretary of State was essentially inversely proportional to that of the Cardinal Nephew, to whom the Secretariat was subordinate. During some pontificates, for example that of Pope Pius V (1566–1572) and his nephew Michele Bonelli, the cardinal-nephew and secretary of state were one and the same.
According to Baumgartner, "the rise of a centralized administration with professional bureaucrats with careers in the papal service" proved more effective than nepotism for future Popes and thus "greatly reduced the need for papal nephews". The rise of the Cardinal Secretary of State was the "most obvious element of this new approach".
## See also
- List of cardinal-nephews
- Favourite
- Captain General of the Church
- Lay cardinal
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York Park
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Sports stadium in Tasmania
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[
"1921 establishments in Australia",
"AFL Women's grounds",
"Australian Football League grounds",
"Buildings and structures in Launceston, Tasmania",
"Rugby World Cup stadiums",
"Rugby union stadiums in Australia",
"Soccer venues in Tasmania",
"Sport in Launceston, Tasmania",
"Sports venues completed in 1921",
"Sports venues in Tasmania",
"Tasmanian Heritage Register",
"University of Tasmania",
"Women's Big Bash League"
] |
York Park is a sports ground in the Inveresk and York Park Precinct, Launceston, Australia. Holding 19,500 people, York Park is known commercially as University of Tasmania (UTAS) Stadium and was formerly known as Aurora Stadium under a previous naming rights agreement signed with Aurora Energy in 2004. Primarily used for Australian rules football, its record attendance of 20,971 was set in June 2006, when Hawthorn Football Club played Richmond Football Club in an Australian Football League (AFL) match.
The area was swampland before becoming Launceston's showgrounds in 1873. In the following decades the grounds were increasingly used for sports, including cricket, bowls and tennis. In 1919, plans were prepared for the transformation of the area into a multi-sports venue. From 1923, the venue was principally used for Australian rules football by the Northern Tasmanian Football Association, and for occasional inter-state games. Visiting mainland football clubs regularly played mid-season or end-of-season matches at the ground. Other sports such as cricket, tennis, bowling, cycling and foot-racing have been played at the venue.
Hawthorn has played between two and five AFL matches each season since 2001, and the St Kilda Football Club played two games a year between 2003 and 2006. In 2007, the Tasmanian Government signed a \$16.4 million, five-year sponsorship deal with Hawthorn, under which the club will play four regular season games and one National Australia Bank Cup pre-season match at the venue each year. The venue hosted its first VFL/AFL finals during the 2021 AFL finals series.
Throughout its history, York Park has hosted major pop concerts and other entertainments. Since 2001 it has been a venue for international sports events, and in 2005 was redeveloped at a cost of \$23.6 million. On 21 February 2009 York Park became home to the Tasmanian Football Hall of Fame.
## History
The area now known as York Park was originally "swampy, sour, and choked with weeds". After European settlement, it was used for landfill before becoming the Launceston showgrounds in 1874. By 1881, 47 acres (0.19 km<sup>2</sup>) of land (now York and Invermay Parks) had been taken over by the Launceston City Council "for the purpose of recreation, health and enjoyment". The area was ready to be used for two cricket games by the end of 1886. Cricketers were full of praise for the ground, but because winter rain caused it to become waterlogged, footballers (Australian rules) were often unable to use the facility.
At a council meeting in July 1901, one member, Alderman Storrer, proposed that Inveresk Park be renamed York Park in honour of the Duke of York (later King George V), who visited Tasmania during the Federation celebrations of 1901. The proposal was passed 4–2, although another member, Alderman Sadler, noted that "Launceston was well known as a loyal community and did not need to change the park's name" to prove their fidelity to the monarchy. A bowling green and tennis courts were completed by 1910, along with the main oval which was used for state school sports. In 1919, the council held a competition for the design of the York Park sports ground, the winner to receive £20. The final design had to include two full sized tennis courts, a bowling green, a cycling track, cricket and football grounds with dressing rooms and facilities for spectators. Although not fully complete, York Park was officially opened by the St Andrews Caledonian Society on 1 January 1921. A cycling track surrounding the perimeter fence was in use by September of the same year. On 4 May 1923 The Examiner reported on that "Work on the grandstand was completed for the opening of the 1923 football season, when the game was transferred from the NTCA Ground to York Park. Work on the grandstand and the seating round the oval has been proceeded with at top speed, and spectators at the game tomorrow should have little to complain of." The first game between teams representing the northern and southern halves of Tasmania took place at the oval in August 1923 in front of a crowd of 9,441. A reporter from The Examiner commented: "The oval is in good order and well grassed and the new motor mower copes with the latter very effectively under favourable conditions. The whole five acres can be cut in six hours, as compared with twenty hours by the horse mower." When the ground was harrowed, glass and other debris would surface; a contemporary observer, John Orchard, later remembered: "they'd line up a whole group of people, perhaps thirty or forty players, and we'd go along with a container alongside each other and we'd pick up everything that was likely to hurt a player."
Heavy floods in 1929 caused substantial damage to the ground, destroying the cycling track, which was subsequently rebuilt. In the 1930s the Launceston Football Club, who played regularly at the ground, won six consecutive premierships before World War II intervened. As a consequence of the war NTFA matches were canceled after the 1941 season, not to resume until May 1945. Three years later, 12 ornamental trees were planted at the ground, in memory of NTFA players who had lost their lives in the war.
In 1960, York Park was the venue of a football match in which Tasmania defeated Victoria for the first time. The match was attended by a record crowd of approximately 15,000. Four years later, the southern stand (demolished in 2004) was completed. In the 1970s another stand was added, capable of holding 650 spectators and incorporating sales kiosks and committee rooms.
Up to 1999 York Park had remained a sports ground used predominately for local events, generally attracting modest crowds; according to ground manager Robert Groenewegen, supporters were able to "park [their] car[s] next to the boundary fence". However, before the 1998 federal election the local member of parliament (MP) representing the Division of Bass, Warwick Smith—a minister from the ruling Liberal Party—promised public funding for the redevelopment of York Park. Although Smith lost his seat, the Liberals retained power and kept the promise. The \$6.4 million redevelopment completed in 2000 was the first major phase in the process of raising the ground to Australian Football League (AFL) standard. Work included the construction of the Gunns Stand, a two-level grandstand originally holding 2,500 (now extended to 5,700) which incorporates corporate facilities. Other improvements added were five 45 m (148 ft) television standard light towers, a watering and drainage system able to disperse up to 100 millimetres (3.9 in) of rain an hour, and 85 in-ground sprinklers capable of rising 15 centimeters (5.9 in).
In 2003, the Government of Tasmania allocated \$2 million to erect a roof above 6,000 terrace seats, in readiness for the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup; this meant that almost all of the seating area was protected from the weather. In 2004, the ground became known as Aurora Stadium as the result of six-year naming rights sponsorship deal with Aurora Energy. During 2006, the state government supplied \$150,000 for new gates and ticket boxes at the stadium entry. The gates were later named after recently deceased Tasmanian Premier Jim Bacon. These gates, and the heritage-listed Northern Stand, have been placed on the Tasmanian Heritage Register as culturally significant to the state. The two-storey Cameron-Tyson stand was in 2005, replaced by an extension of the Gunns Stand.
In March 2008, an arson attack destroyed part of the Northern Stand, causing between \$300,000 and \$500,000 damage. In December 2008 the Launceston City Council proposed a \$7 million development for a replacement Northern Stand. The project includes the relocation of the old Northern Stand's heritage roof into part of the redevelopment of facilities at Invermay Park. The old structure at York Park will be replaced with a 2,125-seat grandstand which will include three AFL compliant changerooms, an AFL umpire changeroom, a corporate facility for 936 people in corporate boxes, suites and function rooms, coaches boxes, along with statistician, timekeepers and print media rooms. Post-match press conference, drug testing, and radio rooms will also be included. The stand has increased the ground's capacity to 21,000 and the seating capacity to 13,825. These works were designed by Tasmania-based architects Philp Lighton Architects. The Australian Government was expected to contribute \$4 million, the Tasmanian Government \$2 million and Launceston City Council \$500,000. The Hawthorn Football Club are currently asking for a "sizeable" contribution from the AFL towards the development, and Inveresk Precinct Authority chairman Robin McKendrick has indicated that a contribution of \$1 million was possible.
On 22 October 2016, the University of Tasmania bought the naming rights to the stadium for a five-year contract that would take effect on 1 January as the university campus would sit next to York Park, bringing an end to a 13-year partnership with Aurora Energy.
In March 2022 Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein announced the government intended to expand the seating capacity of the stadium to 27,500 and install retractable seating for rectangular sports. The development will occur within the following five years, provided the state government's \$65 million contribution is matched by the federal government and the stadium's ownership is transferred from the Launceston City Council to the state government-run Stadiums Tasmania agency.
## Sports and events
### Australian rules football
Australian rules football is the main sport played at the stadium which has hosted Australian Football League (AFL) games since 2001, when the state government started paying interstate clubs to relocate their home games. Melbourne-based Hawthorn played one game in 2001 and two in 2002, and in 2003 were joined by another Melbourne team, St Kilda. In 2004, it was estimated that the cost to the government per game was between \$300,000 and \$500,000, but Tasmanian Premier Jim Bacon stated that the government was making a profit on its investment, estimating that each game injected between \$1 million and \$1.5 million into the Tasmanian economy.
The number of AFL matches peaked in 2006, when Hawthorn played three home games and one pre-season game, while St Kilda played two home games. The games drew an average crowd of 17,108, with a record attendance of 20,971 for the match between Hawthorn and Richmond.
Controversy occurred at York Park when, in a game between St Kilda and Fremantle, the final siren was too quiet to be heard by any of the umpires; play was restarted in error, and in the subsequent confusion St Kilda levelled the scores. After a protest, the AFL Commission convened and overturned the result, awarding Fremantle the victory. The stadium's sirens were replaced, and the old ones were put on display at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.
In 2007 York Park benefitted from a five-year, \$16.4 million sponsorship of Hawthorn by the state government. Under the sponsorship agreement the stadium is the venue for five of Hawthorn's matches each year—one pre-season and four premiership games. Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett has expressed interest in his club playing higher profile teams, such as Collingwood, at the stadium.
As well as being an AFL venue, York Park is the long-term base of North Launceston, and thus hosts regular Tasmanian State League matches. The ground also hosted occasional Tasmanian Devils Football Club home games in the Victorian Football League, from 2001 until the club's demise in 2008.
In 2021, due to COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns preventing matches from being played in Melbourne and Sydney, York Park hosted its first two AFL finals matches: both first-week elimination finals, the first a victory over , and the second a Greater Western Sydney Giants win over the Sydney Swans in Sydney Derby XXII.
### Other uses
York Park hosted its first international sporting fixture in the group phase of the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup, when Romania and Namibia played in front of 15,457 spectators. As a soccer venue the stadium has hosted one National Soccer League match and three A-League pre-season games. Melbourne Knights and Perth Glory played a national league match at the stadium during the 2001–02 NSL season. In July 2006, after the A-League replaced the NSL, the stadium hosted Tasmania's first A-League match when Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United played in the pre-season competition. In 2007, 8,061 attended the corresponding match, which has since become a regular fixture. In addition to pre-season matches, Aurora Stadium has also hosted regular season A-League matches: on 1 February 2012, Melbourne Victory played Gold Coast United FC in a regular season A-League game in front of a crowd of 5,268 people and on 12 January 2013, Melbourne Victory played against Central Coast Mariners in front of a crowd of 6,238 people. Inveresk Precinct Authority chairman Robin McKendrick has stated that ground authorities are attempting to win hosting rights for Australian national soccer team matches. On 30 December 2017, the ground played host to its first ever Big Bash League match when the Hobart Hurricanes took a home game to York Park with the Sydney Thunder being their opponents. The Thunder won by 57 runs in front of 16,734 fans. Western United FC are playing two home matches in 2021.
Among non-sporting events, before its redevelopment the stadium hosted an Ike & Tina Turner concert and a Billy Graham religious revival meeting. The Crusty Demons performed at the stadium during 2006 and March 2008. Elton John performed at York Park during his Rocket Man: Greatest Hits Live Tour at the end of 2007; this remains his only appearance in Tasmania as of August 2009.
## Structures and facilities
York Park is an oval-shaped grassed arena surrounded by several different stands, the largest being the two-tier Gunns Stand on the ground's western side. The stand originally had a capacity of 2,500, which was increased by an extension in 2005 to 5,700. The stand has two corporate box areas, the Gunns Function Centre and the Corporate Function Centre. Immediately north of the Stand is the Aurora Function Centre, which also houses coaches' boxes, and is next to the heritage listed Northern Stand connecting the Northern, Southern and Eastern Terraces. The stands have a collective capacity of 6,000, bringing the ground's total seating to 11,700. The Railway Workers Hill is a small, uncovered stand located at the eastern side of the ground between the Northern and Eastern Terraces. The ground has a parking capacity of approximately 2,500, from the use of large grassy areas at the adjacent Inveresk site, with an option of street parking.
York Park has often been criticised for its large playing surface, which is blamed for producing unattractive low-scoring football. Prior to the start of 2009, only 11 of 28 matches saw a score beyond 100 points. For a pre-season match in 2009, 13 metres of width was removed from the outer wing "in a bid to produce more attractive games." Before the match, Groenewegen said, "Because that outer wing was so wide, once they [a team] chipped wide out there it was very easy for teams to flood back because you were so far away from the goals." The ground is also known for its strong wind, which hinders the accuracy of long-distance kicks that are propelled high into the air.
A grant of \$50,000 from the Tasmanian Community Fund in 2005 helped the Launceston City Council and AFL Tasmania construct a permanent Tasmanian Football Hall of Fame at York Park. The ground was chosen as the site because it is regarded as the home of Australian rules football in Tasmania. AFL Tasmania initiated the Hall of Fame nomination process, and since 2005 various clubs, players and grounds have been inducted. The Hall of Fame opened to the public on 21 February 2009. As of May 2009, \$23.6 million had been spent re-developing the stadium.
## Crowds
The ground's record attendance is 20,971, at an AFL match between Hawthorn and Richmond on 18 June 2006. This match occurred before the Northern Stand was damaged and the stadium's capacity reduced. An AFL match between Hawthorn and St Kilda on 8 August 2009 saw a capacity crowd of 20,011, the largest crowd since the fire. The stadium's lowest AFL attendance is 9,007 for the match between Hawthorn and on 23 June 2018.
The highest recorded attendance for an interstate match at York Park is 15,000 for the 1960 clash between Tasmania and Victoria.
The highest recorded attendance for a Tasmanian Football League match at York Park is 6,755 for the 1989 Second Semi Final played between North Launceston and North Hobart on 2 September 1989.
The highest recorded attendance for a soccer match is 8,061, when Melbourne Victory played Adelaide United on 16 July during a 2007 A-League Pre-Season Challenge Cup match. The Billy Graham religious revival meeting on 17 March 1959 attracted 17,000 attendees, a record for a non-sporting event at the ground.
### Attendance records
Top 10 sports attendance records
<sup>Last updated on 1 January 2012</sup>
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