Battleships, 1900-1922

Today's selection -- from Fifty Ships that Changed the Course of History by Ian Graham.The brief technological supremacy of Britain’s Dreadnought battleship:


“Battleship design underwent a revolution in the early 1900s. Torpedoes had become a serious danger to warships. They were more than capable of hitting ships, and sinking them, over their typical battle separation of about 3,000 yards (2.7 km). All the largest navies were thinking about fighting over longer ranges with bigger guns, but the first person to air the idea publicly was an Italian naval engineer, Vittorio Cuniberti. He wrote an article in 1903 proposing an ‘all-big-gun’ battleship. Just one size of gun was needed, because fighting at long range rendered most of the smaller guns carried by existing battleships unnecessary. Cuniberri's ideal future battleship would be armed only with the biggest guns available. The usual procedure was to design a ship first and then fill it with guns. From now on, the selection of the guns would come first and then the ship would be designed around them.


“The first all-big-gun battleship to be launched was the British Royal Navy's Dreadnought. She was armed with 10 12-inch (305-mm) guns in five twin-gun turrets. Each of these giant guns could hurl a shell weighing 8 50 pounds (390 kg) a distance of more than 10 miles (16 km). Dreadnought was also the first battleship to be powered by steam-turbine engines, giving the massive vessel a top speed of 21 knots (24 mph or 40 km/h) — faster than any other battleship afloat.


“HMS Dreadnought was intended to act as a deterrent to any nation thinking of attacking Britain. She was such a fast and powerful fighting vessel that she immediately rendered every other battleship obsolete. But other navies had been thinking along the same lines and soon built their own dreadnoughts. Japan had actually started building its first dreadnought, the Satsuma, before Britain, but Dreadnought was launched first. America's first dreadnought, USS Michigan, followed in 1908. The United States had been prompted to embark on a new warship construction program by the emergence of Japan as a serious naval power in the Pacific. Meanwhile in Europe, Britain was increasingly alarmed by the number of warships being built by Germany; they represented the first serious challenge to Britain's naval supremacy since Nelson's time. The result was a worldwide explosion in battleship construction, with each major naval power watching what the others did and then marching or surpassing it.


“HMS Dreadnought's technological lead did not last long. The first dreadnoughts were followed by even bigger and more heavily armed ships known as superdreadnoughts. The British were first again, with their Orion-class ships, but other nations quickly followed. They mounted bigger and bigger guns, ultimately 15-inch (380-mm) weapons. During this time there was also a change of fuel, from coal to oil. Oil packed more energy into a smaller volume, so oil-fired boilers could be smaller.

Dreadnought at sea in 1906


“Although she had been built for combat with other surface ships, the only action HMS Dreadnought saw during World War I was with a submarine.The German submarine U-29 surfaced in front of her in the Pentland Firth, north of Scotland, on March 18, 1915. Dreadnought rammed the submarine and sank it with all hands.


“Dreadnought battleships met in combat only once, at the Battle of Jutland during World War I. Ironically, HMS Dreadnought herself did not take part. The battle was fought between the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, and the German Navy's High Seas Fleet, commanded by Admiral Reinhard Scheer. The Royal Navy was blockading the North Sea to starve Germany of essential supplies and also to prevent the German navy from breaking out into the Atlantic where it could attack British merchant shipping. At the end of May 1916, a group of German battlecruisers ventured out into the North Sea to lure British ships out where the German fleet would be waiting for them. The German navy expected to be fighting only a small number of British ships. However, the British had learned that 40 German warships had left port and so they mobilized the entire Grand Fleet.


“On the afternoon of May 31, a British force of 151 ships including 28 battleships met a German force of 99 ships with 16 battleships.


“The German ships scored first, sinking three British ships. The British had more success in the engagements that followed. 1he fighting went on into the night until, under cover of darkness, the German ships returned to port. The Royal Navy had lost 14 ships and more than 6,000 dead. Germany lost 11 ships and more than 2,500 dead. Both sides claimed victory. The British had lost more ships and suffered higher casualties, but they retained control of the North Sea and stopped the German fleet from breaking out.


“After World War I, Germany was prevented from building new warships by the Treaty of Versailles. Britain, impoverished by the war, could not afford a new warship construction program and looked likely to be overtaken by other countries. However, none of the other major naval powers relished the vast expense of building new fleets. Consequently, the Washington Naval Treaty, signed in 1922 by the United States, Britain, Japan, France and Italy, limited the numbers, types and sizes of warships that could be built. In addition, the treaty required most of the old dreadnought-type ships to be scrapped. HMS Dreadnought herself had already been sold for scrap the previous year.”

Fifty Ships that Changed the Course of History
 
author: Ian Graham  
title: Fifty Ships that Changed the Course of History  
publisher: Firefly Books  
date:  
page(s): 130-133

Delanceyplace: Why Sharks Matter

Today's encore selection -- from Why Sharks Matter by David Shiffman. Shark biodiversity and biogeography:
 
"According to the latest edition of the field guide Sharks of the World, there are 536 recognized species of sharks. They range in size from the dwarf lanternshark, which could fit in your hand, to the school bus­-sized whale shark. Many -- like the sandbar shark (#BestShark) -- have the particularly sharky shape you're familiar with from movies or from visiting your local aquarium, but some, like the angel shark, are flat and capable of burying themselves in the sand to wait for prey. Some deep­-sea weirdos like the frilled shark are almost snake-like in appearance and movement. Many are gray or brown in color; some are blue; some, like the goblin shark, can be bubblegum pink. Some sharks have beautifully elaborate patterns of stripes or spots. Some are sleek, like the shortfin mako shark, which is among the fastest animals in the world. Others, like the angular roughshark, have just about the least hydrodynamic shape I can imagine: they look like the ocean's overinflated footballs.

"Recognizable sharks have been swimming in the ocean for more than 400 million years. This means that the first shark was on Earth not only well before dinosaurs trod the land but before trees existed. Though we've lost many species over the eons, sharks as a group have survived every mass extinction event in Earth's history -- which makes the conservation challenges they've faced in the past 50 years all the more heartbreaking. While we're talking about ancient sharks, let me assure you that, no, the giant and ancient megalodon is not still alive. It is definitely super-duper extinct. People claiming otherwise are lying to you, for reasons that remain unclear to me despite a decade of refuting this really strange folk legend. I've received death threats from people who believe I am part of a global conspiracy to hide the truth about megalodon. Once I even interacted with someone online who emphat­ically made the bizarre and obviously false claim that she had seen the US government rounding up and killing megalodons -- and that she had barely escaped with her life once the shark-killing soldiers spotted her.

"Sharks' habitats are as diverse as the animals themselves. Some sharks are found on coral reefs, while others, like the Greenland shark, are found under Arctic ice. (Fun fact about Greenland sharks: they have been found with digested polar bear and reindeer meat in their stomachs. These are probably the remains of scavenging animals that drowned, but I enjoy imagining a polar bear getting slurped from below as it swims between ice floes.) Some sharks live in the open ocean, where they'll never see a hard surface their entire lives. Some sharks live in the deep sea, where it's so dark that sunlight never reaches. The megamouth shark, a deep-sea animal with the world's coolest scientific name -- Megachasma pelagios, which means 'the giant mouth of the deep' -- has bioluminescent gums that entice prey to swim right into its mouth.

"US Navy Seals jokingly say that you can test whether there are sharks nearby by dipping your finger in the water and tasting it -- if it's salty, there are probably sharks around. While technically accurate -- there are sharks just about everywhere there's ocean -- the implication is incom­plete, because there are also sharks that live in fresh water. No, I'm not just referring to the bull shark, which Discovery's Shark Week program­ming wrongly claims year after year is the only shark that can enter fresh water. I'm also talking about Glyphis sharks, sometimes known as river sharks, which live almost their entire lives in fresh water. Unfor­tunately, river sharks are some of the most critically endangered sharks in the world, in no small part because they live closer co humans than ocean-dwelling sharks do.

Speartooth shark (Glyphis glyphis) at the Melbourne Aquarium

"What we already know about shark biodiversity is amazing, but it's what we don't know yet that many attendees at my public talks find shocking. We are still discovering new species all the time. A new species of chondrichthyan fish is discovered about every two weeks. Some of them get tons of media attention, like a new species of 'walking shark,' so called because they can crawl on their fins out of water for shore peri­ods of time, or a new species of dogfish named after shark science legend Genie Clark (Genie's dogfish, Squalus clarkae). Others are little known outside of science nerd circles. There's plenty left to discover. (But no, that doesn't mean that megalodon is still hiding out there.)

"Unfortunately, the threats these species face are as diverse as their habitats and color patterns, which means that there's no one-size-fits-all solution. For instance, creating no-fishing zones is less helpful to a spe­cies that moves around a lot and spends limited time in protected areas. Nor is a ban on selling shark fins especially useful for the many species killed for reasons having nothing to do with their fins. Generally speak­ing, any solution to a complex worldwide conservation problem simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker is perhaps too simple to be helpful."

Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World's Most Misunderstood Predator
 
author: David Shiffman  
title: Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World's Most Misunderstood Predator  
publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press  
date: 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press  
page(s): 15-17

The Second Deepest Place On Earth

Today's selection -- from The Underworld by Susan Casey. The Tonga Trench:


“[If the island of] Tonga lacks in terrestrial heft, its surrounding waters are magisterial. To sail 180 miles south from the capital city of Nuku'alofa, on Tongatapu, is to find yourself floating atop thirty-five thousand feet of unquiet ocean above a seabed laceration known as the Horizon Deep. It's the deepest point in the 850-mile-long Tonga Trench, and the world's second-deepest spot, period—just a whisper shy of the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep. You won't read about it in tourist brochures, but Tonga's ultradeep realm is one of the wonders of the underworld.


“In a contest of extremes, the Tonga Trench and the Mariana Trench are well matched. They're the inverted summits of Hades—a regal pair of forbidding destinations, as implacable as interstellar space. Like all hadal trenches they were created by subduction: as one tectonic plate dives beneath another, that collision bends the downgoing plate, forming a deep, V-shaped trench. There are approximately twenty-seven hadal trenches in the ocean, twenty-three of

which are located on the Ring of Fire, the belt of subduction zones around the Pacific margin. Only four of these trenches plunge below ten thousand meters (32,800 feet)—the Mariana, Tonga, Kermadec, and Philippine—and though they're well hidden from us, these titans are among the earth's most dramatic features.

The Tonga Trench constitutes the northern half of the Tonga-Kermadec subduction system, which extends 2,550 km (1,580 mi) between New Zealand and Tonga.


“The Mariana Trench has starred in undersea horror movies, but the Tonga Trench is scarier, and that's before you factor in the eight pounds of plutonium in its depths, jettisoned during the aborted Apollo 13 mission. It's steeper, more severe, more seismically volatile-busier. At the Tonga Trench's north end, the Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Australian plate at the startling rate of nine inches per year. Nowhere else is a tectonic plate being gobbled with such relish, seamounts and volcanoes ingested like dinner rolls. It's a buffet of geological havoc.


“Every so often the Tonga Trench gets indigestion and belches out an earthquake from way down in the mantle: a majority of the world's deepest quakes originate there, rumbling hundreds of miles beneath the seabed. In 2009, a slab of the Pacific plate cracked as it was being subducted, and the Tonga Trench roared. A magnitude 8.1 earthquake triggered two magnitude 7.8 earthquakes, and all three earthquakes shook simultaneously, generating tsunami waves that ravaged Tonga and Samoa.


“As an encore, one of Tonga's seafloor volcanoes burped up a new island, more than two miles long and a half mile wide, now known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai. (In January 2022, this same volcano would be historical in its fury, unleashing an eruption that blasted steam and ash thirty-six miles up into the mesosphere, created a two-hundred-and-ninety-foot tsunami at its epicenter, and sent shock waves around the globe.) In 2019, another Tongan island called Lateiki disappeared into the depths during a submarine eruption, only to pop up again in a slightly different location."

The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean
 
author: Susan Casey  
title: The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean  
publisher: Doubleday  
date:  
page(s): 117-119

Tomatoes - Savor the taste of independence!

By 

April 13, 2024

Growing your own tomatoes can be rewarding far beyond the sweet taste of your crop.

The traditional extra benefits keep bringing many of us back season after season. If you’re a gardener, you know the great feeling of acting directly on nature to produce the food you eat. Raising tomatoes gets you outside and sweating, and usually provides a sense of accomplishment. It encourages discipline and planning, and demands a bit of knowledge and a ton of patience.

And when you finally harvest those juicy edibles and carry them into your home — without once leaving your property — you can almost hear the fife and drums. You’re gripped by a feeling virtually unknown in today’s world: independence. This is what our ancestors fought for!

Any extras you have you can give away with pride. If the haul is sufficiently large, you might even can some for off-season. Gardeners everywhere have done this for ages.

Recently, though, I’ve taken pleasure in what gardening doesn’t involve.

What it doesn’t involve is the government, at least not in the meddling, bleeding sense. The tomatoes I grow are as valuable to me as money if not more so, since it is so hard to find good ones. Yet I have no intention of reporting them as “income.“

I take great satisfaction in not needing a license or any kind of certification to create a garden. I don’t have to join a union or seek some bureaucrat’s zoning approval to devote part of my land to raising vegetables. I don’t have to devise, then get blessed, any sort of warning label for my tomatoes. If I get sick when I eat them, tough. If the wage I pay myself is the market value of the tomatoes themselves, then I stand guilty of running a sweatshop. Even the most bountiful harvest doesn’t translate into a living wage.

If bugs are attacking my Better Boys, I can kill the pests without having the government jail me for murdering insects.

Most years I have by far more tomato plants than any of my neighbors, yet I live without fear of prosecution for my monopolistic tactics. They are free to grow more or grow none, as they wish, and I am free to harvest as many of the red devils as I can, or let them all rot on the vine.

Not one of my tomatoes will be confiscated for “social“ needs. I give some to others as an act of volition, not an act of Congress. And I give them from a sense of pride, not pity; to share, not from my “duty“ to serve others.

No official will seize any for my future well-being. If I want to eat my homegrowns after my plants have died it’s up to me to can some. I can limit myself to grow tomatoes of a single cultivar and not worry about charges of racism or lack of diversity. If I choose to grow some of every variety, no beefsteak supremacist can stop me.

I don’t have to tolerate congressional double talk of a gardener’s bill of rights, allowing me to sue any and every one for lousy vegetables.  The only right I have is the freedom to grow them or not.  If I have a poor crop I can blame whomever and whatever I want, but nobody’s going to listen except me.

In spite of a friend’s comment that garden-fresh tomatoes are almost as good as you-know-what, there are no interns around to wipe sweat from my brow. The most sensational event of the previous growing season happened when the handle of my shovel cracked after hitting a rock.

But in every personal undertaking there’s always the State to consider.

Gretchen’s decree

Deeply concerned for the safety of her state’s residents owing to a presumed virus invasion from a Chinese lab, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued a short-lived decree in early April, 2020 that prohibited “all stores larger than 50,000-square feet to cordon off their garden centers and plant nurseries, blocking customers from shopping in those sections through April 30.”  (Michiganians were still allowed to buy necessities such as liquor and lottery tickets, of course.)  In short, home gardening was put on hold for many people.  But Governor Whitmer, a reflective politician, canceled that order a week later in the name of “economic re-engagement.”

What possible threat could home gardens pose to public health or politicians that seem eager to do away with them?

Perhaps Governor Whitmer and others have heard of what happened in Vietnam.  In a May 2024 Reason article, author Rainer Zitelmann reports that

In 1990, with a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $98, Vietnam was the poorest country in the world, behind Somalia and Sierra Leone. Every bad harvest led to hunger, and Vietnam relied on food aid from the United Nations and financial assistance from the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. As late as 1993, 79.7 percent of the Vietnamese population was living in poverty.

By 2020, the poverty rate had fallen to 5 percent. Vietnam is now one of the most dynamic countries in the world, with a vibrant economy that creates great opportunities for hardworking people and entrepreneurs. Once a country unable to produce enough rice to feed its own population, it has become one of the world’s largest rice exporters, and a major electronics exporter too.

What happened?  A communist miracle?  You know better.

Like Lenin before them in the 1920s Soviet Union, the Vietnam communist regime decided to back off from their ideology somewhat.  Their reforms in the early 1980s amounted to making legal certain “spontaneous developments” that had been long ongoing in several villages.

Farmers refused to work in collectives and concentrated their work on the little land they owned themselves, because they could sell the goods they produced here at market prices.

Farmers were giving CPR to the market.

“Without such illegal or pilot procedures,” Tran Thi Anh-Dao wrote in the 2022 book Rethinking Asian Capitalism, “there is evidence that market mechanisms could never have emerged so rapidly.”

The market movement gradually mushroomed.

The reforms adopted in the next couple of years included permission for private manufacturers to employ up to 10 workers (later increased), abolition of internal customs checkpoints, elimination of the state foreign-trade monopoly, reduced restrictions on private enterprise, elimination of virtually all direct subsidies and price controls, separation of central banking from commercial banking, dismantling major elements of the central planning and price bureaucracies, the return of businesses in the South that had been nationalized in 1975 to their former owners or their relatives, and the return of land seized in the ’70s collectivization campaign if it was “illegally or arbitrarily appropriated.”

Moral for American home gardeners: Keep at it.

Even if you live in an apartment or a condo, you can grow tomatoes in big pots on your deck, but be sure to pick the right variety.  This year, treat yourself to some good eating while savoring the taste of independence — and remember those brave Vietnamese.

The Best of George F. Smith