Ben Wilson Meet the Author


Ben Wilson

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of January the 14th has been set. More headlines coming up at the top

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the Author with Nick Higham. The British Empire couldn't have existed

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without the Royal Navy. Yet its beginnings were unpromising and to

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date it is a shadow of its former self. The rise and fall of the

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British navy is a story told in a new book by a young British

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historian. Ben Wilson, there is a chapter in

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this book in which you run through some of the words and phrases in

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English we get from the sea and the Navy, things like learning the

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ropes, plain sailing, all at sea, grog, slush fund. What was slush?

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Sailors ate horrible concoction of food, salt, pork, salt beef,

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vegetables preserved insult, and it would be boiled down to make it

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edible enough for a sailor. As it boiled the factories to the surface

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and the cook took this as his privilege, the fact, and sold it to

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members of the crew to waterproof rigging, Greece around the ship, and

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it was called a slush fund. The penetration into English of

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terms like that are an indication of how deeply imbued English culture

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was with things navel and are absolutely central the Royal Navy

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was for 250 years to Britain's idea of themselves.

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We use that language all the time, almost without thinking, flat ship

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-- flagship for example. It goes back to the time when Navy was at

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the centre of political life. It became very important in the late

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17th, 18th-century. Before that we were an island nation we were

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actually pretty awful at naval warfare and victories like a defeat

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of the Spanish Armada were a bit of a fluke.

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That is an interesting part of the history of the Royal Navy, hazard in

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the take-off was. -- how sudden the take-off was. There wasn't the tax

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base to fund the large navies. When you get to the 16th century you

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have English fighters at sea, but they are people like Drake. They are

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not institutional naval men, they all own guns.

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They are, but they come into the Navy at a key point. It is not --

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still the medieval idea of the collective navel belonging to

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private individuals and becoming used as part of the state that they

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were out for their own gain. Although they were supported by the

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state, the Crown, they have their own agenda. A national strategy

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undermined by the activities of McVitie -- but thirsty man of the

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high seas. That is where they lead their skills.

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The heyday of the Navy was the 18th century and the 19th century. What

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made the Georgian may be such a fun little force? -- formidable.

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With fiscal military revolution the state is able to tax and fund a

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permanent Navy, the dockyard that can support a huge fleet to be sent

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around the world, something unheard of the century before when either

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the next mission to the French post bankrupted the Crown. Now you can

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afford it but there is a willingness on the part of people to support the

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Navy to see it as a projection of national power, national pride, to

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invest in it. Its success led to more success, and the political

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nation took the Navy to its heart. That culminated with the Navy of the

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Napoleonic wars and Admiral Nelson. There are a number of great admirals

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throughout English and British history. Nelson brought together a

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lot of the qualities they had. He had the Nelson touch, could reach

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down to his men to encourage them to fight, he had a sure grasp of

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tactics, he became a great leader of men, a magnetic personality.

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There are a number of heroes in this book, people who do heroic things,

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and people who you clearly admired for the impact they had on the

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Navy. Another one is Jackie Fisher, who was the man who grew up with the

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Navy as it went from sale to steam and he was an expert and the first

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Sea Lord. Why is he such a remarkable man?

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He he boarded a ship unrecognisable to Nelson's Navy, aircraft carriers,

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so now, the shape of the modern Navy we would recognise. The Navy of

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Nelson and these gentry figures who had gone to see and wanted to fight

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was over. And you needed to use technology, every bit of new

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technology had to be seized upon, he was a young man, an expert on

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torpedo warfare and mine warfare. He grasped the things very early. He

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saw long-range gunnery was essential for modern conflict. A lot of people

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were very resistant to those ideas. They were still practising cutlass

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drill and firing at point-blank range.

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During the Second World War the Navy kept Britain flight, as it were,

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protected convoys, destroyed U-boats, and insured the country

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could keep fighting by securing that constant import as well as offensive

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operations. The decline after the Second World War was very fast, and

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it is continuing. The Navy has become, now it has lost its NATO

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role as preventing submarine attack in a North Atlantic, it has become

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the trigger for other weapons. It delivers troops or aircraft or

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helicopters to battle scenes, it doesn't fight on the high seas any

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more. You make the point that the reason why the Navy is no longer

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central to us and our thinking is we don't actually feel in danger any

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more. Throughout England and Britain's history seas have always

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been a of threat, invasion, the modern world, those threats have

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gone. They seem to have gone. Now the

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security of this series is an international operation, they are

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guarded by a coalition of forces, the Navy works within that system

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which is very different from before. There are no threats on the high

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seas, they come at choke points, Pirates of the African coast, that

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could become a feature of naval warfare again, and it is interesting

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private company is now undertaking convoy duties in pirate infested

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waters, because the Navy cannot do it, and that is a throwback to an

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