Browse content similar to 04/09/2010. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
Higham. The British Empire could not have | :00:10. | :00:14. | |
existed without the Royal Navy which for 200 years was the world 's most | :00:14. | :00:18. | |
formidable fighting force. But the beginnings of the Navy were | :00:18. | :00:21. | |
unpromising and today it is a shadow of its former self. The rise and | :00:21. | :00:27. | |
fall of the British navy is a story told in a new book, Empire Of The | :00:27. | :00:33. | |
Deep, by a young British historian, Ben Wilson. | :00:33. | :00:37. | |
Ben Wilson, there is a chapter in this book where you run through some | :00:37. | :00:42. | |
of the words and phrases in English that we get from the sea and from | :00:42. | :00:47. | |
the Navy, things like learning the, some of them obvious like plain | :00:47. | :00:53. | |
sailing, all at sea, grog, and able term, slush fund, I did not realise | :00:53. | :01:02. | |
that was a naval term. Sailors ate a terrible quality of food which was | :01:02. | :01:06. | |
ancient salt beef and salt fish, which had been preserved in salt and | :01:06. | :01:13. | |
boils down to make it edible enough for a sailor. When it boils, the fat | :01:13. | :01:18. | |
rose to the surface and it cooked. They sold the fat onto members of | :01:18. | :01:24. | |
the crew for waterproofing and to Greece around the ship and it was | :01:24. | :01:30. | |
called the slush fund. penetration into English of terms | :01:30. | :01:40. | |
:01:40. | :01:40. | ||
like that, they are an indication of how central the Navy was to English | :01:40. | :01:50. | |
culture and to the idea of Britain and Britons. Yes, the language, we | :01:50. | :01:53. | |
use it almost without thinking, flagship policies, things like that. | :01:53. | :01:58. | |
It goes back to a time when the Navy was the centre of political and | :01:58. | :02:02. | |
national life. It was from very unpromising beginnings, the Navy | :02:02. | :02:07. | |
became very important in the late 19th century, but before that, even | :02:07. | :02:13. | |
though we were an island nation, we were pretty awful with naval warfare | :02:13. | :02:18. | |
and great victories like the Spanish Armada, they were a bit of a fluke? | :02:18. | :02:23. | |
Yes, that is a very interesting part of the history of the Royal Navy, | :02:23. | :02:28. | |
her sudden the take-off was in the middle of the 17th century. Before | :02:28. | :02:33. | |
that, England did not have the tax base to fund a large Navy, and that | :02:33. | :02:38. | |
was a problem for the English kings during the Middle Ages. And in the | :02:38. | :02:43. | |
16th century, you do have English fighters at sea, but there are | :02:43. | :02:47. | |
people like Drake and Hawkins that I really private ears, they are not | :02:47. | :02:53. | |
institutional naval men, they are alone guns. Yes, they come into the | :02:53. | :02:57. | |
Navy at key points, there is that medieval idea of the collective | :02:57. | :03:01. | |
naval strength of the country belonging to private individuals and | :03:01. | :03:05. | |
being used as part of the state, but they were guns for hire. They were | :03:05. | :03:08. | |
out for their own gain, but even though they were supported by the | :03:08. | :03:15. | |
state and by the Crown, they had their own agenda, so the national | :03:15. | :03:18. | |
strategy was undermined by the activities of bloodthirsty men out | :03:18. | :03:26. | |
to gain on the high sees. But that is where they gained their skills. | :03:26. | :03:32. | |
-- out on the high seas. What made the 18th-century such a formidable | :03:32. | :03:40. | |
force? With the fiscal military revolution in the 16 90s, the state | :03:40. | :03:45. | |
was able to tax and fund the Navy, they could fund a dockyard to | :03:45. | :03:51. | |
support a fleet that would go around the world and acts simultaneously in | :03:51. | :03:55. | |
different places. This was unheard-of previous to that when an | :03:55. | :03:57. | |
expedition to the French coast pretty much bankrupt the | :03:57. | :04:01. | |
government, but there was a willingness on the part of people to | :04:01. | :04:05. | |
support the Navy and to see it as a projection of national power and | :04:05. | :04:12. | |
national pride and to invest in it, and this led to more success and | :04:12. | :04:17. | |
more political nations taking the Navy to its heart. This culminated | :04:17. | :04:22. | |
with the Navy of the Napoleonic Wars and Nelson, which would you say is | :04:22. | :04:28. | |
the greatest admiral, Admiral Nelson? There are a number of great | :04:28. | :04:31. | |
Admiral 's throughout English and British history. Nelson brought | :04:31. | :04:37. | |
together a lot of the qualities they had, but Nelson had the Nelson | :04:37. | :04:41. | |
touch. He could reach down to his mentoring courage them to find, he | :04:41. | :04:47. | |
had a sure grasp of tactic, he had gone to see at a very early age, he | :04:47. | :04:53. | |
was a great leader of men. He had a magnetic as a malady on the ship and | :04:53. | :04:57. | |
with the fleet. There are many heroes in this book, people that do | :04:57. | :05:06. | |
heroic things, but people you admire for the impact they had was the | :05:06. | :05:10. | |
invention of the Georgian Navy, the 18th-century Royal Navy, then there | :05:10. | :05:15. | |
was Jackie Fisher, the man that really grew up with the Navy as it | :05:15. | :05:20. | |
went from sale to steam and he was a gonorrhoea expert, he was the first | :05:20. | :05:30. | |
:05:30. | :05:31. | ||
Sea Lord, why is it that he was such a remarkable man! -- and he was a | :05:31. | :05:38. | |
military ammunition expert. This was very much the shape of a modern Navy | :05:38. | :05:45. | |
that we would recognise. There was this Gentry figure that wanted to | :05:45. | :05:50. | |
show that the Nelson era was over and you needed to use technology, | :05:50. | :05:53. | |
every bit of new technology had to be seized upon and he was a young | :05:53. | :06:00. | |
man that was an expert on to appease a warfare. In the 1860s and the | :06:00. | :06:06. | |
early 1870s, he had a grasp of these things and he saw that long-range | :06:06. | :06:14. | |
animation was important when people were resistant to these ideas. This | :06:14. | :06:19. | |
was now warfare that would take place over five males, up to ten | :06:19. | :06:28. | |
miles further. -- over five miles. During the war, the Navy kept | :06:28. | :06:31. | |
Britain afloat, it sure that the country could keep fighting securing | :06:31. | :06:39. | |
that constant inflow of imports as well as offensive operations, but | :06:39. | :06:42. | |
the decline after the Second World War was very fast and it is | :06:42. | :06:51. | |
continuing. Yes, the Navy has lost its NATO role in preventing | :06:51. | :06:55. | |
submarine attacks in the north Atlantic, it has become the trigger | :06:55. | :07:00. | |
for other weapons. It delivers troops or aircraft or helicopters to | :07:00. | :07:05. | |
battle scenes. It does not fight in the high seas any more. You say that | :07:05. | :07:09. | |
the reason why the Navy is no longer central to our thinking as a | :07:09. | :07:14. | |
society, is that we do not actually feel in danger and in more. | :07:14. | :07:18. | |
Throughout England and Britain's history, this season always been a | :07:18. | :07:22. | |
source of threats to the nation, the modern world, those threats have all | :07:22. | :07:27. | |
gone? They seem to have gone, the security of the Seas is an | :07:27. | :07:31. | |
international operation and they are guarded by a coalition of forces. | :07:31. | :07:34. | |
The Navy works within that system now which is very different from | :07:34. | :07:44. | |
:07:44. | :07:45. | ||
before. There are no local threat on the high seas. The trade was | :07:45. | :07:48. | |
affected by pirates off the African coast, that could be a feature of | :07:48. | :07:55. | |
naval warfare. The Navy are now taking part in pirate policing | :07:55. | :08:01. | |
duties because others cannot do it. This is harping back to an age that | :08:01. | :08:05. | |
others might have forgotten. Private companies doing the work of the | :08:05. | :08:12. |