#warships

[longbeard2500]

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.

and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.

...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.

see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.

while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.

especially if the president of the united states is on board.

yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.

and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."

but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.

...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.

not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.

yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.

but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire

[bowlby4]

[illustratus]

The First Journey of Victory, 1778 by William Lionel Wyllie

[ltwilliammowett]

How were cannonballs stored?

As they tended to roll about constantly, they had to be stored sensibly. Simply placing them in crates and running back and forth during a battle was not very effective, so they were stored in two ways. Cannonballs on board a ship were mainly stored in gunpowder magazines deep within the hull for stability reasons, whilst a small quantity of ‘ready-to-use’ ammunition was kept on the decks in wooden racks, known as ‘shot garlands’. More on that below, however.

Shot garlands aboard HMS Victory (x)

And not, as the so-called ‘Brass Monkey’ legend claims, stacked in pyramids on brass trays, known as ‘monkeys’. That refers to the army, not the navy, as the balls would simply roll away there.

The majority of the ship’s heavy round shot was stored in the hold in shot lockers, the lowest part of the ship, to serve as additional ballast and ensure a low centre of gravity. These chambers were usually located on both sides of the hull, near the main or stern hatches, which made it easier to hoist them up when needed: And they were divided internally to store projectiles of different sizes (weights) separately, thus avoiding mix-ups during battle.

The shot garlands consisted of long wooden planks with holes drilled into them to hold the individual cannonballs securely in place. They were typically mounted along the edges of hatch openings or between the gun ports on the sides of the ship (the gunwales). This ensured the balls were always ready for use, and as they were stored in such racks, they did not roll about.

HMS Victory, First Rate 1765, by Jonathan Eastland, Iain Ballantyne · 2011

Talking about Naval History, A Collection of Essays, by John B. Hattendorf · 2011

Nelson's Navy. The Ships, Men, and Organisation, 1793-1815, by  Brian Lavery · 2003

[palatinewolfsblog]

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States, Republican

[diemelusine]

HMS Erebus and Terror in the Antarctic (1847) by James Wilson Carmichael. National Maritime Museum.