04/09/2010 Meet the Author


04/09/2010

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Higham. The British Empire could not have

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existed without the Royal Navy which for 200 years was the world 's most

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formidable fighting force. But the beginnings of the Navy were

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unpromising and today it is a shadow of its former self. The rise and

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fall of the British navy is a story told in a new book, Empire Of The

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Deep, by a young British historian, Ben Wilson.

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Ben Wilson, there is a chapter in this book where you run through some

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of the words and phrases in English that we get from the sea and from

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the Navy, things like learning the, some of them obvious like plain

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sailing, all at sea, grog, and able term, slush fund, I did not realise

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that was a naval term. Sailors ate a terrible quality of food which was

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ancient salt beef and salt fish, which had been preserved in salt and

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boils down to make it edible enough for a sailor. When it boils, the fat

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rose to the surface and it cooked. They sold the fat onto members of

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the crew for waterproofing and to Greece around the ship and it was

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called the slush fund. penetration into English of terms

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like that, they are an indication of how central the Navy was to English

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culture and to the idea of Britain and Britons. Yes, the language, we

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use it almost without thinking, flagship policies, things like that.

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It goes back to a time when the Navy was the centre of political and

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national life. It was from very unpromising beginnings, the Navy

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became very important in the late 19th century, but before that, even

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though we were an island nation, we were pretty awful with naval warfare

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and great victories like the Spanish Armada, they were a bit of a fluke?

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Yes, that is a very interesting part of the history of the Royal Navy,

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her sudden the take-off was in the middle of the 17th century. Before

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that, England did not have the tax base to fund a large Navy, and that

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was a problem for the English kings during the Middle Ages. And in the

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16th century, you do have English fighters at sea, but there are

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people like Drake and Hawkins that I really private ears, they are not

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institutional naval men, they are alone guns. Yes, they come into the

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Navy at key points, there is that medieval idea of the collective

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naval strength of the country belonging to private individuals and

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being used as part of the state, but they were guns for hire. They were

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out for their own gain, but even though they were supported by the

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state and by the Crown, they had their own agenda, so the national

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strategy was undermined by the activities of bloodthirsty men out

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to gain on the high sees. But that is where they gained their skills.

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-- out on the high seas. What made the 18th-century such a formidable

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force? With the fiscal military revolution in the 16 90s, the state

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was able to tax and fund the Navy, they could fund a dockyard to

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support a fleet that would go around the world and acts simultaneously in

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different places. This was unheard-of previous to that when an

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expedition to the French coast pretty much bankrupt the

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government, but there was a willingness on the part of people to

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support the Navy and to see it as a projection of national power and

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national pride and to invest in it, and this led to more success and

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more political nations taking the Navy to its heart. This culminated

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with the Navy of the Napoleonic Wars and Nelson, which would you say is

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the greatest admiral, Admiral Nelson? There are a number of great

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Admiral 's throughout English and British history. Nelson brought

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together a lot of the qualities they had, but Nelson had the Nelson

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touch. He could reach down to his mentoring courage them to find, he

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had a sure grasp of tactic, he had gone to see at a very early age, he

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was a great leader of men. He had a magnetic as a malady on the ship and

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with the fleet. There are many heroes in this book, people that do

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heroic things, but people you admire for the impact they had was the

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invention of the Georgian Navy, the 18th-century Royal Navy, then there

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was Jackie Fisher, the man that really grew up with the Navy as it

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went from sale to steam and he was a gonorrhoea expert, he was the first

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Sea Lord, why is it that he was such a remarkable man! -- and he was a

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military ammunition expert. This was very much the shape of a modern Navy

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that we would recognise. There was this Gentry figure that wanted to

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show that the Nelson era was over and you needed to use technology,

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every bit of new technology had to be seized upon and he was a young

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man that was an expert on to appease a warfare. In the 1860s and the

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early 1870s, he had a grasp of these things and he saw that long-range

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animation was important when people were resistant to these ideas. This

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was now warfare that would take place over five males, up to ten

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miles further. -- over five miles. During the war, the Navy kept

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Britain afloat, it sure that the country could keep fighting securing

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that constant inflow of imports as well as offensive operations, but

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the decline after the Second World War was very fast and it is

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continuing. Yes, the Navy has lost its NATO role in preventing

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submarine attacks in the north Atlantic, it has become the trigger

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for other weapons. It delivers troops or aircraft or helicopters to

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battle scenes. It does not fight in the high seas any more. You say that

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the reason why the Navy is no longer central to our thinking as a

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society, is that we do not actually feel in danger and in more.

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Throughout England and Britain's history, this season always been a

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source of threats to the nation, the modern world, those threats have all

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gone? They seem to have gone, the security of the Seas is an

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international operation and they are guarded by a coalition of forces.

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The Navy works within that system now which is very different from

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before. There are no local threat on the high seas. The trade was

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affected by pirates off the African coast, that could be a feature of

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naval warfare. The Navy are now taking part in pirate policing

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duties because others cannot do it. This is harping back to an age that

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others might have forgotten. Private companies doing the work of the

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