Browse content similar to Ben Wilson. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
of January the 14th has been set. More headlines coming up at the top | :00:04. | :00:12. | |
the Author with Nick Higham. The British Empire couldn't have existed | :00:12. | :00:18. | |
without the Royal Navy. Yet its beginnings were unpromising and to | :00:18. | :00:23. | |
date it is a shadow of its former self. The rise and fall of the | :00:23. | :00:27. | |
British navy is a story told in a new book by a young British | :00:27. | :00:35. | |
historian. Ben Wilson, there is a chapter in | :00:35. | :00:40. | |
this book in which you run through some of the words and phrases in | :00:40. | :00:45. | |
English we get from the sea and the Navy, things like learning the | :00:45. | :00:55. | |
:00:55. | :00:57. | ||
ropes, plain sailing, all at sea, grog, slush fund. What was slush? | :00:57. | :01:06. | |
Sailors ate horrible concoction of food, salt, pork, salt beef, | :01:06. | :01:10. | |
vegetables preserved insult, and it would be boiled down to make it | :01:10. | :01:14. | |
edible enough for a sailor. As it boiled the factories to the surface | :01:14. | :01:18. | |
and the cook took this as his privilege, the fact, and sold it to | :01:18. | :01:24. | |
members of the crew to waterproof rigging, Greece around the ship, and | :01:24. | :01:31. | |
it was called a slush fund. The penetration into English of | :01:31. | :01:37. | |
terms like that are an indication of how deeply imbued English culture | :01:37. | :01:40. | |
was with things navel and are absolutely central the Royal Navy | :01:40. | :01:48. | |
was for 250 years to Britain's idea of themselves. | :01:48. | :01:54. | |
We use that language all the time, almost without thinking, flat ship | :01:54. | :02:00. | |
-- flagship for example. It goes back to the time when Navy was at | :02:00. | :02:05. | |
the centre of political life. It became very important in the late | :02:05. | :02:09. | |
17th, 18th-century. Before that we were an island nation we were | :02:09. | :02:16. | |
actually pretty awful at naval warfare and victories like a defeat | :02:16. | :02:21. | |
of the Spanish Armada were a bit of a fluke. | :02:21. | :02:24. | |
That is an interesting part of the history of the Royal Navy, hazard in | :02:24. | :02:33. | |
the take-off was. -- how sudden the take-off was. There wasn't the tax | :02:33. | :02:39. | |
base to fund the large navies. When you get to the 16th century you | :02:39. | :02:46. | |
have English fighters at sea, but they are people like Drake. They are | :02:46. | :02:50. | |
not institutional naval men, they all own guns. | :02:50. | :02:55. | |
They are, but they come into the Navy at a key point. It is not -- | :02:55. | :02:59. | |
still the medieval idea of the collective navel belonging to | :02:59. | :03:04. | |
private individuals and becoming used as part of the state that they | :03:04. | :03:09. | |
were out for their own gain. Although they were supported by the | :03:09. | :03:15. | |
state, the Crown, they have their own agenda. A national strategy | :03:15. | :03:21. | |
undermined by the activities of McVitie -- but thirsty man of the | :03:21. | :03:26. | |
high seas. That is where they lead their skills. | :03:26. | :03:30. | |
The heyday of the Navy was the 18th century and the 19th century. What | :03:30. | :03:35. | |
made the Georgian may be such a fun little force? -- formidable. | :03:35. | :03:42. | |
With fiscal military revolution the state is able to tax and fund a | :03:42. | :03:46. | |
permanent Navy, the dockyard that can support a huge fleet to be sent | :03:46. | :03:50. | |
around the world, something unheard of the century before when either | :03:50. | :03:56. | |
the next mission to the French post bankrupted the Crown. Now you can | :03:56. | :04:00. | |
afford it but there is a willingness on the part of people to support the | :04:00. | :04:06. | |
Navy to see it as a projection of national power, national pride, to | :04:06. | :04:14. | |
invest in it. Its success led to more success, and the political | :04:14. | :04:19. | |
nation took the Navy to its heart. That culminated with the Navy of the | :04:19. | :04:29. | |
:04:29. | :04:29. | ||
Napoleonic wars and Admiral Nelson. There are a number of great admirals | :04:29. | :04:33. | |
throughout English and British history. Nelson brought together a | :04:33. | :04:39. | |
lot of the qualities they had. He had the Nelson touch, could reach | :04:39. | :04:43. | |
down to his men to encourage them to fight, he had a sure grasp of | :04:43. | :04:53. | |
:04:53. | :04:54. | ||
tactics, he became a great leader of men, a magnetic personality. | :04:54. | :04:58. | |
There are a number of heroes in this book, people who do heroic things, | :04:58. | :05:02. | |
and people who you clearly admired for the impact they had on the | :05:02. | :05:12. | |
:05:12. | :05:13. | ||
Navy. Another one is Jackie Fisher, who was the man who grew up with the | :05:13. | :05:20. | |
Navy as it went from sale to steam and he was an expert and the first | :05:20. | :05:25. | |
Sea Lord. Why is he such a remarkable man? | :05:25. | :05:34. | |
He he boarded a ship unrecognisable to Nelson's Navy, aircraft carriers, | :05:34. | :05:42. | |
so now, the shape of the modern Navy we would recognise. The Navy of | :05:42. | :05:45. | |
Nelson and these gentry figures who had gone to see and wanted to fight | :05:45. | :05:51. | |
was over. And you needed to use technology, every bit of new | :05:51. | :05:55. | |
technology had to be seized upon, he was a young man, an expert on | :05:55. | :06:02. | |
torpedo warfare and mine warfare. He grasped the things very early. He | :06:02. | :06:08. | |
saw long-range gunnery was essential for modern conflict. A lot of people | :06:08. | :06:12. | |
were very resistant to those ideas. They were still practising cutlass | :06:12. | :06:22. | |
drill and firing at point-blank range. | :06:22. | :06:25. | |
During the Second World War the Navy kept Britain flight, as it were, | :06:26. | :06:30. | |
protected convoys, destroyed U-boats, and insured the country | :06:30. | :06:37. | |
could keep fighting by securing that constant import as well as offensive | :06:37. | :06:42. | |
operations. The decline after the Second World War was very fast, and | :06:42. | :06:51. | |
it is continuing. The Navy has become, now it has lost its NATO | :06:51. | :06:53. | |
role as preventing submarine attack in a North Atlantic, it has become | :06:54. | :06:59. | |
the trigger for other weapons. It delivers troops or aircraft or | :06:59. | :07:03. | |
helicopters to battle scenes, it doesn't fight on the high seas any | :07:03. | :07:07. | |
more. You make the point that the reason why the Navy is no longer | :07:07. | :07:12. | |
central to us and our thinking is we don't actually feel in danger any | :07:12. | :07:17. | |
more. Throughout England and Britain's history seas have always | :07:17. | :07:20. | |
been a of threat, invasion, the modern world, those threats have | :07:20. | :07:25. | |
gone. They seem to have gone. Now the | :07:25. | :07:30. | |
security of this series is an international operation, they are | :07:30. | :07:33. | |
guarded by a coalition of forces, the Navy works within that system | :07:33. | :07:37. | |
which is very different from before. There are no threats on the high | :07:37. | :07:44. | |
seas, they come at choke points, Pirates of the African coast, that | :07:44. | :07:48. | |
could become a feature of naval warfare again, and it is interesting | :07:48. | :07:53. | |
private company is now undertaking convoy duties in pirate infested | :07:53. | :07:59. | |
waters, because the Navy cannot do it, and that is a throwback to an | :07:59. | :08:06. |