Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Simba on November 01, 2009, 12:51:46 PM
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This is just a little aside from the 109E thread.
A quote from one of its messages: "Taking off short from the HMS Eagle . . . "
I'm the son of a Chief Engine Room Artificer, Royal Navy, and I've noticed an increasing tendency for journalists to use 'the HMS . . .', which is really bad writing.
I'll use one of Dad's former ships, the Colossus Class Light Fleet Carrier Warrior to make my point. H.M.S. stands for His/Her Majesty's Ship. The correct form to use when writing or talking about such a ship is either 'H.M.S. Warrior' or 'the Warrior', NOT 'the H.M.S. Warrior'; say it out loud in full, it sounds a bit daft, eh?
'The U.S.S. Enterprise' of course is correct. I speculate that the reason why 'the H.M.S.' has arisen is because lazy writers have just lifted 'the U.S.S.' straight off the page and modified it without thinking. Even BBC correspondents are doing it, so I've written to them too. Now that I've pointed out the error, I'm sure that the more intelligent people that fly AH will mend their ways.
Splice the mainbrace!
:cheers:
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Heheh Simba all squared away in "Bristol fasion" :)
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When did your dad serve on the H.M.S Warrior? Was it when the Warrior was in service with the Canadian navy?
ack-ack
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The Canadian Navy in action...
(http://www.murdoconline.net/2008/support_the_canadian_navy.jpg)
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Even BBC correspondents are doing it, so I've written to them too.
no surprise there - journalistic standards at the beeb have been dropping like a stone for years. their news website has basic blunders on it almost every day, they are currently "obsessed" with "randomly" quoting words which arent "quotes" at all. the BBC3 newsflashes are dreadful tabloid nonsense too. "In the news today, Leona Lewis..." wtf? u got 3 mins to sum up the days events and Leona Lewis doing anything is news? And how about this for a leading statement: "Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time this evening, he denies being a Nazi. More news in an hour." Thank god we can at least still rely on Paxman ;)
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"The USS Ticonderoga" would also be incorrect. "Ticonderoga" is a proper noun and "USS" is a title (just as is HMS) received on commissioning and removed when decomissioned. Even your comment that HMS Warrior could also be referred to as "the Warrior" is incorrect because "Warrior" is a proper noun. Correct usage would be "Captain, lookouts report Warrior is on the starboard quarter."
The plethora of incorrect references by the press and, in particular Hollywood and TV, is horrible. This should be surprising for the press given that they have standardized style books (most use the AP style book) that are supposed to provide the correct usage of things like names, acronyms, titles, etc. but they're generally quite lazy plus the AP doesn't always follow correct usage. For instance, Lieutenant Commander is correctly abreviated LCDR but the AP insists on Lt Cmdr.
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I like The Economist's style guide, they write to a very tight style, plus its the only one thats ever made me smile:
Hikes are walks, not increases. Vegetables, not teenagers, should be fresh. Only the speechless are dumb, the well-dressed smart and the insane mad. Scenarios are best kept for the theatre, postures for the gym, parameters for the parabola.
:)
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British Airways Pilots.... Callsign "Speedbird" are always saying "The Speedbird XX " drives me nuts to hear it.
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Mace, fair comment, but take it from one who knows, the correct form of address for H.M. and United States ships is as I've given it, particularly when writing.
Ack-Ack, my father was CERA of the engine room in* H.M.S Warrior during her 1957 circumnavigation, when she served as Control Ship for the naval component of Operation Grapple, the detonation of Britain's first H-bomb. He took a series of photos using a Kodak Brownie; Nephew Richard has the photo album now, I'll grab some scans later in the month and see if I can post them to this thread. One of the pictures is of the last TBM Avenger to serve afloat with the Royal Navy, just after it was dumped off the stern, 'Aloha' painted on its side. Warrior had previously served with the Royal Canadian Navy.
I've been aboard the original Warrior of 1860 too. As the son of an ex-Warrior, I get free admission whenever I can spare the time to toddle down to Pompey for a visit.
:cheers:
* In Dad's time, all Royal Navy officers and seamen served in their ship, provided it was a surface vessel; it was home, after all, and you didn't live on your home. Perversely, a Royal Navy submarine is always called a boat and the crew lives on it. Don't ask me why, it just is . . .
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Mace, fair comment, but take it from one who knows, the correct form of address for H.M. and United States ships is as I've given it, particularly when writing.
Ack-Ack, my father was CERA of the engine room in* H.M.S Warrior during her 1957 circumnavigation, when she served as Control Ship for the naval component of Operation Grapple, the detonation of Britain's first H-bomb. He took a series of photos using a Kodak Brownie; Nephew Richard has the photo album now, I'll grab some scans later in the month and see if I can post them to this thread. One of the pictures is of the last TBM Avenger to serve afloat with the Royal Navy, just after it was dumped off the stern, 'Aloha' painted on its side. Warrior had previously served with the Royal Canadian Navy.
I've been aboard the original Warrior of 1860 too. As the son of an ex-Warrior, I get free admission whenever I can spare the time to toddle down to Pompey for a visit.
:cheers:
* In Dad's time, all Royal Navy officers and seaman served in their ship, provided it was a surface vessel; it was home, after all, and you didn't live on your home. Perversely, a Royal Navy submarine is always called a boat and the crew lives on it. Don't ask me why, it just is . . .
Is the HMS Warrior from 1860 an iron clad? Must have been nice to walk the wooden decks of the Warrior.
ack-ack
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:lol
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Warrior was the world's first iron-built ironclad, at the time of its commissioning the world's most powerful warship. She was built in response to the news that the French had started building a wooden ironclad called the Gloire. Their Lordships of the Admiralty weren't keen to introduce new ship types that would render the old ones obsolete until they had to; as Gloire was considered a threat to British commercial vessels in the Channel, they stumped up for Warrior, which is regarded as the ancestor of all the metal-construction, screw-propelled battleships that followed.
Here in Bristol we've also got the honour of being the birth-place and home of the world's first iron-built, screw-propelled passenger liner, S.S. Great Britain (she was originally named S.S. The Great Britain but the Victorians decided that sounded as bad as 'the H.M.S.'). Ain't we Brits lucky?
:cool:
Take your point, Mace, just the ship's name is good form too. :aok
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Warrior was the world's first iron-built ironclad, at the time of its commissioning the world's most powerful warship. She was built in response to the news that the French had started building a wooden ironclad called the Gloire. Their Lordships of the Admiralty weren't keen to introduce new ship types that would render the old ones obsolete until they had to; as Gloire was considered a threat to British commercial vessels in the Channel, they stumped up for Warrior, which is regarded as the ancestor of all the metal-construction, screw-propelled battleships that followed.
Here in Bristol we've also got the honour of being the birth-place and home of the world's first iron-built, screw-propelled passenger liner, S.S. Great Britain (she was originally named S.S. The Great Britain but the Victorians decided that sounded as bad as 'the H.M.S.'). Ain't we Brits lucky?
:cool:
Take your point, Mace, just the ship's name is good form too. :aok
So the HMS Warrior (the iron clad) could be considered the first 'dreadnought'? Is the Warrior still sea worthy, like our Old Ironsides?
ack-ack
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So the HMS Warrior (the iron clad) could be considered the first 'dreadnought'? Is the Warrior still sea worthy, like our Old Ironsides?
ack-ack
She is afloat, unlike HMS Victory, but I don't believe her engines are operable.
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Is the HMS Warrior ...
So the HMS Warrior...
You're never gonna learn, ack ack! :lol
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For instance, Lieutenant Commander is correctly abreviated LCDR but the AP insists on Lt Cmdr.
The Medal of Honor is one that chaps me. Folks insist on calling it the "Congressional" Medal of Honor, when in fact, the award is simply the Medal of Honor.
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You're never gonna learn, ack ack! :lol
I'm sorry but I just couldn't resist such an easy target, sometimes the smart bellybutton in me over rides the more sensible parts of my brain. :devil
ack-ack
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Is the HMS Warrior from 1860 an iron clad? Must have been nice to walk the wooden decks of the Warrior.
ack-ack
it is an ironclad. Still docked in Portsmouth Harbour. HMS Victory is around the corner.
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So the HMS Warrior (the iron clad) could be considered the first 'dreadnought'? Is the Warrior still sea worthy, like our Old Ironsides?
Warrior isn't literally an iron clad although it's generally classed as one. Iron clad means iron armor over a wooden hull but Warrior is all iron so it technically isn't "clad" in iron, it IS iron. Other than being build of iron, Warrior is a fairly conventional, if very large, late 19th Century design based on sail and steam propulsion with predominently muzzle loading guns arranged in gunports. Dreadnought was a 20th Century design and the first battleship with nothing but big guns in turrets on it and steam turbine engines. It had none of the vestigial sails of the sail/steam era.
It's amazing that there are so few historical ships remaining considering all the importance placed on them. Visiting these old ships are a fabulous experience and I look forward to seeing some of the UK's one day. I'm particularly sad that we failed to preserve the most important warship in US naval history and that's Enterprise.
Here, here, to Stoney's comment on the MoH. It can be awarded by Congress but the correct name is simply MoH.
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"So the HMS Warrior (the iron clad) could be considered the first 'dreadnought'?"
Ack-Ack, you're being a tease. ;) Watch it, I'm an ol' Turk'ead and well-versed in the art of the wind-up.
Strictly speaking, an ironclad is any vessel clad in iron; in the naval world the term is applied to an armoured ship. Warrior was originally an iron ship, clad in iron armour backed by teak, the total weight of armour including the teak backing weighing 1,354 tons. As restored, she's afloat and moored alongside a purpose-built jetty in Portsmouth Harbour. A full-sized replica Penn trunk engine is installed and the boiler room is restored but the boiler fronts themselves are facades only, rather like an old Western town.
H.M.S. Dreadnought was the world's first 'all-big guns' fast battleship. She was built in Portsmouth Dockyard and turned the naval world on its head by rendering all other battleships instantly obsolete when she was launched in 1906.
I'll be happy to show you around the Historic Portsmouth Dockyard any time you're over here, folks. Take a trip on the ferry across the harbour to my birthplace Gosport and visit the Submarine Museum while you're at it; H.M.S. Alliance is looking a little weathered these days but she's the last conventional boat we've got and well worth a look-over, as is the rest of the exhibition (which includes the first RN submarine, the U.S.-designed Holland I).
Re: CV-6 Enterprise, there was never a ship that served her country better but at least scrapping her freed her name for application to a new nuclear-powered flat-top. She deserved a better fate, perhaps, but nothing lasts for ever, not even the mountains . . .
:salute
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As promised earlier in this thread, I've now got a scan of one of my favourite photos: 'Dad and the Bomb', taken using a Kodak Brownie camera. If somebody would be good enough to tell me how to insert images in here, I'll put it on.
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You need a host. Google image hosting for a site to use. When you have downloaded the image to the site, copy/paste the url for the image to your post using the 'image icon'.
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You need a host. Google image hosting for a site to use. When you have downloaded the image to the site, copy/paste the url for the image to your post using the 'image icon'.
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As promised earlier in this thread, I've now got a scan of one of my favourite photos: 'Dad and the Bomb', taken using a Kodak Brownie camera. If somebody would be good enough to tell me how to insert images in here, I'll put it on.
Use a free host like photobucket and upload the pictures. Then all you do is copy the link and past them within the (http://<link goes here>) tags in your post. Picture is now visible to all who read the thread.
ack-ack
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Thanks, I'll do that.
:cool:
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The Canadian Navy in action...
(http://www.murdoconline.net/2008/support_the_canadian_navy.jpg)
Pfffft, using a bolt action rifle and an ore. The US Coast Guard is much better. .50BMG and a Minn-Kota trolling motor baby!!!! :rock
(http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9G_bI8gmflKKAsAjNujzbkF/SIG=125g7lh68/EXP=1257958048/**http%3A//joe-ks.com/archives_oct2005/CoastGuard.jpg)
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Before anyone else hijacks this thread, I'd better put up those pics I promised. Here goes . . .
1. The last Avenger to serve aboard a Royal Navy carrier goes into the drink, May 1957.
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s95/Simba_of_DuxWing/DitchingthelastRNAVenger.jpg)
2. Aloha to the last Avenger.
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s95/Simba_of_DuxWing/LastRNAvengeratsea.jpg)
3. Dr. Strangelove, or How CERA Frank Evans Stopped Worrying And Learnt To Love The Bomb. The UK's first H-bomb's mushroom cloud, seen from the deck of H.M.S. Warrior, 15th May 1957.
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s95/Simba_of_DuxWing/DadandtheBomb2.jpg)
Dad didn't make old bones. He died aged 34 years on 17th May 1965, of a massive heart attack caused by 'major arterial deficiency', the Ministry of Defence's euphemism for one of the long-term effects of radiation poisoning. But he 'had the time of my life on that voyage' (visited Pitcairn Island, sailed through the Panama Canal, flew over and photographed the remains of Graf Spee at Montevedeo) and, being 'old Navy', had a favourite saying whenever somebody moaned about rough treatment.
If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined.
Too right.
:salute