THERE’S MONEY FOR NONSENSE BUT NOT ENOUGH FOR A HISTORICAL ICON
on 02/29/2012 at 11:19 AM
If it preserves the ship, I don’t see the problem. Of course the museum could ask for volunteers and donations instead, but it seems to me the goal of preserving the ship is worthwhile. I think the naysayers are overhyping the ‘dangers’.
I, for one, wouldn’t mind a ‘living museum’ concept, where you pay a fee to spend a weekend living like a regular sailor during Nelson’s time, and doing the upkeep/repairs just as the sailors then would have done. With some exceptions, of course–I don’t want to have to beat the biscuits on the table to scare the weevils out. And you could limit the grog to what was an acceptable amount back then.
That photo of the gun deck reminds me of Victor Hugo’s ‘Battle with the Cannon’ from his novel ‘Ninety-Three’.
La Vieuville was suddenly cut short by a cry of despair, and a the same time a noise was heard wholly unlike any other sound. The cry and sounds came from within the vessel.
The captain and lieutenant rushed toward the gun-deck but could not get down. All the gunners were pouring up in dismay.
Something terrible had just happened.
One of the carronades of the battery, a twenty-four pounder, had broken loose.
This is the most dangerous accident that can possibly take place on shipboard. Nothing more terrible can happen to a sloop of war in open sea and under full sail.
The guy responsible for the gun getting loose takes responsibility:
Suddenly, in the midst of this inaccessible ring, where the escaped cannon was leaping, a man was seen to appear, with an iron bar in his hand. He was the author of the catastrophe, the captain of the gun, guilty of criminal carelessness, and the cause of the accident, the master of the carronade. Having done the mischief, he was anxious to repair it. He had seized the iron bar in one hand, a tiller-rope with a slip-noose in the other, and jumped, down the hatchway to the gun-deck.
Then began an awful sight; a Titanic scene; the contest between gun and gunner; the battle of matter and intelligence; the duel between man and the inanimate.
The man stationed himself in a corner, and, with bar and rope in his two hands, he leaned against one of the riders, braced himself on his legs, which seemed two steel posts; and livid, calm, tragic, as if rooted to the deck, he waited.
He waited for the cannon to pass by him.
The gunner knew his gun, and it seemed to him as if the gun ought to know him. He had lived long with it. How many times he had thrust his hand into its mouth! It was his own familiar monster. He began to speak to it as if it were his dog.
“Come!” he said. Perhaps he loved it.
He seemed to wish it to come to him.
But to come to him was to come upon him. And then he would be lost. How could he avoid being crushed? That was the question. All looked on in terror.
Not a breast breathed freely, unless perhaps that of the old man, who was alone in the battery with the two contestants, a stern witness.
He might be crushed himself by the cannon. He did not stir.
Beneath them the sea blindly directed the contest.
At the moment when the gunner, accepting this frightful hand-to-hand conflict, challenged the cannon, some chance rocking of the sea caused the carronade to remain for an instant motionless and as if stupefied. “Come, now!” said the man.
It seemed to listen.
Suddenly it leaped toward him. The man dodged the blow.
The battle began.
He ultimately wins, and loses.
“General, in consideration of what this man has done, do you not think there is something due him from his commander?”
“I think so,” said the old man.
“Please give your orders,” replied Boisberthelot.
“It is for you to give them, you are the captain.”
“But you are the general,” replied Boisberthelot.
The old man looked at the gunner.
“Come forward,” he said.
The gunner approached.
The old man turned toward the Count de Boisberthelot, took off the cross of Saint-Louis from the captain’s coat and fastened it on the gunner’s jacket.
“Hurrah!” cried the sailors.
The mariners presented arms.
And the old passenger, pointing to the dazzled gunner, added:
“Now, have this man shot.”
Dismay succeeded the cheering.
Then in the midst of the death-like stillness, the old man raised his voice and said:
“Carelessness has compromised this vessel. At this very hour it is perhaps lost. To be at sea is to be in front of the enemy. A ship making a voyage is an army waging war. The tempest is concealed, but it is at hand. The whole sea is an ambuscade. Death is the penalty of any misdemeanor committed in the face of the enemy. No fault is reparable. Courage should be rewarded, and negligence punished.”
These words fell one after another, slowly, solemnly, in a sort of inexorable metre, like the blows of an axe upon an oak.
And the man, looking at the soldiers, added:
“Let it be done.”
The man on whose jacket hung the shining cross of Saint-Louis bowed his head.
At a signal from Count de Boisberthelot, two sailors went below and came back bringing the hammock-shroud; the chaplain, who since they sailed had been at prayer in the officers’ quarters, accompanied the two sailors; a sergeant detached twelve marines from the line and arranged them in two files, six by six; the gunner, without uttering a word, placed himself between the two files. The chaplain, crucifix in hand, advanced and stood beside him. “March,” said the sergeant. The platoon marched with slow steps to the bow of the vessel. The two sailors, carrying the shroud, followed. A gloomy silence fell over the vessel. A hurricane howled in the distance.
A few moments later, a light flashed, a report sounded through the darkness, then all was still, and the sound of a body falling into the sea was heard.
The old passenger, still leaning against the mainmast, had crossed his arms, and was buried in thought.
Boisberthelot pointed to him with the forefinger of his left hand, and said to La Vieuville in a low voice:
“La Vendee has a head.”
I am struck by the obvious parallel between HMS Victory and Great Britain.
Both once-mighty dreadnaughts that ruled the waves, now rotting and sinking.
Sad…
There is a difference CenTexTim. Men built those ships, and men man those ships. They are only rotting and sinking because men no longer have any guts.
Christopher - don’t pick at the metaphor. It leaves a scar.
Good point.
Is that all it takes to get scars these days?
02/29/2012 at 01:28 PM
