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It's a Spanish frigate but it would be neutral merchant owners suing Aubrey.
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Jan 25, 2023 00:53
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"Gentlemen" were afforded a lot of leeway to get unto debt in that society. The agent is the person Jack signs over the prizes to in exchange for a cash advance on their expected sale. Jack believes he'll eventually see the balance, minus a gigantic cut to the agent, so he tells all the people he's buying things from that they can, indeed, let him have it all on credit since he's going to be so rich once the prizes are sold. This, of course, totally falls apart if your agent fucks off ignominiously and the prizes aren't worth what you thought. Then everyone you promised money to wants the first cut from you because they know damned well you can't repay everyone.
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Jan 25, 2023 00:54
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Even in this painting showing only the stern you can see how unusual El Gamo's construction is. You wouldn't want to responsible for O&M on the only xebec frigate in the RN inventory.
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Jan 25, 2023 00:57
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I wish I had a better understanding of the ship terminology and whatnot to fully understand how crappy the Polychrest was supposed to be
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Jan 25, 2023 01:01
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I feel like whenever we talk about the Polychrest someone has to bring up that her inspiration the real-life HMS Arrow's problems were greatly exaggerated for the book. I guess it's fair that she wouldn't tack adequately on her initial cruise, just like Aubrey's Polychrest.
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Jan 25, 2023 |
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Jan 25, 2023 01:10
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Still on prize money, the distribution was fixed as such: The value of a prize’s cargo was divided into eighths, with the captain taking 3/8 (but losing one to the admiral, if any, under whose orders he was sailing), officers, chaplains, and surgeon sharing 2/8 between them, midshipmen, lower ranking warrant officers, and Marine Sergeants sharing 1/8, and the rest of the ship’s company, sometimes hundreds of men, sharing the final 2/8. So you can see why Royal Navy officers were so zealous about closing with the enemy and why there's always an admiral looking over your shoulder, demanding you do better. I love how throughout all books there is a tension between fighting for duty and glory, and fighting for shares of the spoils.  If this above image is still busted, here's the original link https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Sail_plan_xebec.svg Also the painting of the Speed vs El Gamo above doesn't show just how weird a xebec's sailplan is compared a standard square rigger three master. Twin lanteen sails? Nothing but foreign sorcery. jazzyjay fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jan 25, 2023 |
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Jan 25, 2023 02:47
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jazzyjay posted:Still on prize money, the distribution was fixed as such: The value of a prize’s cargo was divided into eighths, with the captain taking 3/8 (but losing one to the admiral, if any, under whose orders he was sailing), officers, chaplains, and surgeon sharing 2/8 between them, midshipmen, lower ranking warrant officers, and Marine Sergeants sharing 1/8, and the rest of the ship’s company, sometimes hundreds of men, sharing the final 2/8. The imgur link seems to be busted? Oh also thanks for the link to the Enterprize, I had no idea something like that existed so close to me, definitely going to have to check it out soon.
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Jan 25, 2023 03:17
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Bah, I'm phone posting with the Imgur app and it's acting up. It was just a sailplan from wiki so added in the link Do check out the Enterprize if you can, it's been years since I've been on her - they're based out of Williamstown but turn up all over the bay for fairs etc. Weirdest thing about her: Because the original boatbuilders in Tasmania couldn't do the forgings for wheel steering, she has a tiller that's three metres long. Sometimes we'd have to have four or more people holding the tiller so you weren't thrown off it by the rudder knocking about jazzyjay fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Jan 25, 2023 |
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Jan 25, 2023 03:38
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jazzyjay posted:Bah, I'm phone posting with the Imgur app and it's acting up. It was just a sailplan from wiki so added in the link I'm originally from Geelong so I got it easy by the looks of things
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Jan 25, 2023 04:11
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Here's a better picture of a Spanish Xebec frigate, as Jack encountered in the Cacafuego. This is from Naval Costumes, by Sir William Symonds RN, published 1840.  As for her rig, as Jack says "A xebec-frigate. A wonderfully curious rig, ain’t it? There’s nothing faster, I suppose broad in the beam to carry a vast great press of sail, but with a very narrow floor - but they need a prodigious crew; for, do you see, when she is sailing on a wind, she is a lateen, but when the wind comes fair, right aft or thereabouts, she strikes ‘em down on deck and sways up square yards instead, a great deal of labour. She must have three hundred men, at the least. She is changing to her square rig now, which means she is going up the coast." Meaning you wouldn't see them with all the sails up as per the above illustration - they'd either have their square rig up on the foremast, when sailing before the wind, or with the triagular lanteens on her main and mizzen masts when sailing against the wind.
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Jan 25, 2023 06:41
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I think he means they literally sway up new yards when they want to go downwind. Like change from xebec rig to ship rig. A prodigious amount of labor.
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Jan 25, 2023 23:46
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screaden posted:I wish I had a better understanding of the ship terminology and whatnot to fully understand how crappy the Polychrest was supposed to be I'm not nautical aside from a summer where I took sailing lessons two decades ago, but I think I understand some of it. The hull plan for HMS Dart, one of the inspirations for Polychrest (HMS Arrow that Arglebargle mentions was its sister ship)  And for HMS Project, the other inspiration, this being a small, shallow-drafted ship designed to mount a type of howitzer  Both double-ended (ie, both ends shaped like the front of a boat, with Project being worse - it has a loving rudder at both ends), and both with sliding keels like a personal sailboat's centerboard. In Post Captain, Polychrest was built like this so that the Main Cannon firing would recoil the whole ship back in the water instead of breaking things. Compare to the historical Surprise:  You can see in Surprise's plan, from the bottom view, how much more squared-off it was at the back. So one problem Jack had with Polychrest, despite his best efforts at getting the utmost performance out of a ship, is that it missed stays all the time. I'm guessing this is because the double-ended design meant Polychrest got shoved backwards whenever it tried to tack, though Dart and Arrow's captains seem to have been able to solve that issue. (Navigation 101 spoilered below in case you already know what that means.) When you're sailing upwind, you can't sail directly into the wind, otherwise you'll just get pushed back. You have to point off at an angle. Now, you probably can't stay at the same heading your entire trip, so at some point you have to turn to the opposite angle on the other side of the wind, and your course ends up looking like a big zigzag. When you make this turn across the wind, while pointing into the wind, that's called tacking. The critical point of the whole operation is when the front of the ship points directly into the wind, because if the wind brings your ship to a halt, there's no water moving over the rudder to keep it turning and complete the tack. This is called missing stays. You miss stays, you're dead in the water, and it's a big production to get going again. If you can't tack, you have to "wear", which is doing a big 270° turn in the opposite direction. It works every time but it takes more time, more room, and eats up your hard-won upwind progress, so you'd really prefer not to have to. The other big problem Jack had was that Polychrest had a huge leeway, which as I mentioned in a post above, literally meant how far off course to leeward (away from the wind) the ship gets blown by a wind hitting it from the side. If I had to guess, I'd say its removable keels didn't provide enough surface area along enough of the length of the ship to resist getting shoved off course.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:24
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I think the book actually mentions the Polychrest lurching backwards alarmingly while coming about.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:27
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Phy, that's all absolutely correct
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Jan 26, 2023 00:46
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Coolest thread on the forums, thanks for the illustrated explainer!
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Jan 26, 2023 01:17
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Phy posted:I'm not nautical aside from a summer where I took sailing lessons two decades ago, but I think I understand some of it. If you wear instead of tack you’re a scrub.
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Jan 26, 2023 01:45
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builds character posted:If you wear instead of tack you’re a scrub. A lubber! Thou shalt never poo poo a seaman's turd.
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Jan 26, 2023 01:50
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builds character posted:If you wear instead of tack you’re a scrub. Look at this landsman who thinks the naval yards just hand out spars and cordage to any Tom, Dick and Harry.
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Jan 26, 2023 02:06
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The Wikipedia article on HMS Arrow cites an 1830s source saying that adding ballast to the ship solved the staying problem, but that the admiralty considered selling her more than once because her integrated iron water tanks were leaking and couldn't be maintenanced due to design flaws. Jack does indeed bring up the early 19th century iron water tank problem in general but not in relation to the Polychrest.
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Jan 26, 2023 03:31
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jazzyjay posted:I love how throughout all books there is a tension between fighting for duty and glory, and fighting for shares of the spoils. I do love how piratical the RN is shown to be. I wouldn't personally call it "tension" tho -- the base greed and duty/glory mostly seem to dance hand in hand, sharing clothes and finishing each other's sentences!
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Jan 26, 2023 18:50
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Jack being incredulous that Stephen broke his promise not to consort with vampires and doesn't even have the decency to be embarrassed about it.
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Feb 7, 2023 17:47
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Pwnstar posted:Jack being incredulous that Stephen broke his promise not to consort with vampires and doesn't even have the decency to be embarrassed about it. Haha I just got up to this bit and had a little chuckle, also his insistence on being naked when returned to the ship.
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Feb 8, 2023 00:59
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I'm reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time, and Sophie's mother is so obviously drawn from Mrs. Bennet. It jumps out at you almost from the start. Also, once again discovering that Jane Austen was really funny.
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Feb 8, 2023 03:44
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I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time just last month and had the same thought. I wouldn't say Mrs. Williams is Mrs. Bennet, but they sure seem related.
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Feb 8, 2023 04:49
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time just last month and had the same thought. I wouldn't say Mrs. Williams is Mrs. Bennet, but they sure seem related. It's my grandma's favorite book, and I remember her telling me once that everyone bags on Mrs. Bennet, but since she has no sons making sure her daughters marry well is literally the only thing keeping her (and whichever daughters are still unmarried when her husband happens to die) out of the poorhouse, so it's not surprising it becomes an obsession. There's a passage in one of the books where Stephen is musing about the fact that Mrs. Williams is so avaricious because on some level she realizes that without her wealth she has no marketable skills and would be reduced to scraping together a few pennies doing manual labor like any other peasant.
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Feb 8, 2023 21:06
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Mr.Collins posted:"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel. Lady Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us which becomes herself and her daughter. I would advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest--there is no occasion for anything more. Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved." Was this also meant to be funny in Jane Austen's day? I love Mr. Collins letting out his inner mean girl here. If there's a Jane Austen/Regency literature thread let me know and I'll move this discussion there.
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Feb 12, 2023 02:19
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Was this also meant to be funny in Jane Austen's day? I love Mr. Collins letting out his inner mean girl here. It's meant to be funny, but it's not Mr. Collins letting out his inner mean girl, he's just a ridiculous person in general. I read Pride and Prejudice after having read the A-M series at least twice, and it's not only a lot easier to get through than I thought, but it's legitimately funny in a lot of places. Jane Austen was just as aware as we are of how silly the customs of the English gentry could be.
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Feb 12, 2023 21:57
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Austen typically is writing with multiple levels of irony -- the character, the narrator, the author, and the reader. There's an Annotated P&P that I recommend highly
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Feb 12, 2023 22:26
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Finished the book. It's funny how each of her novels has been the same for me, I struggle for about 50 pages or so, and then I'm hooked and devour the rest of the novel.thekeeshman posted:It's my grandma's favorite book, and I remember her telling me once that everyone bags on Mrs. Bennet, but since she has no sons making sure her daughters marry well is literally the only thing keeping her (and whichever daughters are still unmarried when her husband happens to die) out of the poorhouse, so it's not surprising it becomes an obsession. While she was hilarious, I felt her quite nicely redeemed in the end with how joyfully she reacted when Elizabeth told her she was engaged to Mr. Darcy. She just wanted her daughters taken care of, it was sweet.
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Feb 15, 2023 08:42
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I finally started reading these books after staring at this thread for some time. The books are great and this thread is a huge education on the technical and political background of them. So thank you for all for that! Post Captain has one of my favorite quotes about aging and responsibility: "but when a man puts on maturity and invulnerability, it seems he necessarily becomes indifferent to many things that gave him joy." That really hit me in the feels when I read that; it so perfectly crystallizes my feelings about being a parent and growing into middle age.
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Feb 26, 2023 22:21
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I'm sitting in an airport terminal and just finished Blue at the Mizzen. Definitely teared up a bit. Seems to be about as good an ending as you could ask for, with it being unplanned.
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Feb 26, 2023 23:10
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A Proper Uppercut posted:I'm sitting in an airport terminal and just finished Blue at the Mizzen. Definitely teared up a bit. Yeah, you can read the unfinished but it's really just table setting and doesn't really engage on anything. Blue at the Mizzen does really wrap thing up nicely, although Cochran himself did a whole bunch more crap in his life so there was more that could have been written.
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Feb 27, 2023 18:26
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Lockback posted:Yeah, you can read the unfinished but it's really just table setting and doesn't really engage on anything. Blue at the Mizzen does really wrap thing up nicely, although Cochran himself did a whole bunch more crap in his life so there was more that could have been written. Speaking of, I ran across this passage while reading this evening: Nutmeg of Consolation posted:'As for an end,' said Martin, 'are endings really so very important? Sterne did quite well without one; and often an unfinished picture is all the more interesting for the bare canvas. I remember Bourville's definition of a novel as a work in which life flows in abundance, swirling without a pause: or as you might say without an end, an organized end. And there is at least one Mozart quartet that stops without the slightest ceremony: most satisfying when you get used to it.'
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Mar 8, 2023 06:23
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I think I resonate with Stephen's point. People obsess absurdly on endings, to the point where an unsatisfying ending will make them feel that all previous parts of the work, no matter how much they enjoyed them, lose all merit in the light of an ending they don't like. I remember right near the end of the Dark Tower series King wrote a chapter talking directly to the reader where he says "Look there's an ending here, but I assure you that given the length and breadth of this thing and the attachments made you will not like it. You will be better off if you just stop here and put down the book and call it a day." And without going into it, he's probably right though I doubt anybody really listened to him.
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Mar 8, 2023 13:05
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Blue at the Mizzen, like the movie, got the ending just right: they sailed off over the horizon where they had adventures forever more.
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Mar 8, 2023 13:46
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Man I am always a little shocked at the scene in The Yellow Admiral where Stephen and Diana have just had sex and are talking about sex and walking around the bedroom naked. It's handled with no change in tone and yet it's so completely unprecedented in the series. Jack and Sophie and the service in general are so prudish in comparison. But the late 18th century really was a golden age of infidelity in the upper classes! Even the modern President of France feels a compulsion to keep his dalliances somewhat secret, while in the late 18th century kings and generals were just openly cohabiting with other men's wives!
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Mar 11, 2023 01:07
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18th C. Britain was very lewd and bawdy as a whole, especially in contrast to the 19th C. There are so many political cartoons of the period with farts and boobs and big bulges in breeches and everything else. In the Napoleonic period you get a bit more reserve and temperance coming in (see all those whiggish blue light and bluestocking captains/admirals that get mentioned in the books) that culminates in Victorian prudishness. It's mentioned a few times that Jack belongs to the cruder, more old-fashioned navy.
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Mar 11, 2023 02:03
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It's also a running complaint of Flashman in the Flashman books that the Victorian era is so prudish compared to the good old days of the early 1800s.
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Mar 11, 2023 02:11
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Class Warcraft posted:It's also a running complaint of Flashman in the Flashman books that the Victorian era is so prudish compared to the good old days of the early 1800s.
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Mar 11, 2023 15:08
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Nice 3D breakdown of Victory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nr1AgIfajI
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Mar 11, 2023 22:56
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