Neil Hanson (1)Resenhas

Details of great battle. The anguish of the soldiers and the battles that they fought not just against the enemy but against the squalor of the trenches and the heavy casualties. A piece of genius to take someone from the different areas of the battles in France & Flanders and to tell their story. Another book that defied gravity - I couldn't put it down

https://airminded.org/2024/04/03/first-blitz-i/ and https://airminded.org/2024/04/17/first-blitz-ii/½

The Custom of the Sea by Sean Hanson is the harrowing tale of four men who were left adrift at sea after being forced to abandon the Mignonette, which was suck by a "freak" 60 ft wave. Captain Tom Dudley had been hired to sail the old "but sturdy" yacht to Sydney, Australia from Southampton in May 1884. Accompanying him were mate Edwin Stephens, cook Edmund Brooks, and cabin boy Richard Parker. On July 5, while fighting a terrible gale, the keel is ripped asunder. The men had only 5 minutes to scramble into their lifeboat. It was a 13ft dinghy, and the only supplies they managed to grab were two tins of turnips, a chronometer and a baling bucket. After 19 days at sea, the men suffer from severe sunburns, malnutrition, dehydration and excruciating sores. Then, in desperation, Parker drinks sea water, putting him into a delirious coma. The other three, near death themselves, decide to mercy kill Parker and perform "the custom of the sea." On day 24, they are finally rescued and returned to Falmouth. However, a jury must then decide if what they did was murder or a necessity...

I really enjoyed Hanson's writing style and their ability to build a personality for each victim without stretching the truth. There's a lot of nautical terminology and jargon throughout, but I don't think that this slows down the narrative in any way. Dudley was surprisingly candid about what he and his men had done, which leads me to believe that the men weren't exactly plotting Parker's demise.. Dudley took pity on Parker, treating him kindly otherwise, which makes this story particularly tragic. The chapter on the sinking itself was very intense and well done. The image of the men clinging to the rigging as the wave hit will stick with me for a while.

With all the WW II escape stories and resulting books, I have never really thought about all the POW's held by all sides in WW I. This volume brought it to me clearly and with vigour. This volume focuses on British Empire soldiers from Britain and the colonies who were captured by Germany and its allies.

As in WW II, the blockade of Europe and specifically Germany led to shortages of everything including food. Thus it is understandable that Germany found it difficult to properly feed 1000's of prisoners when it could not feed its own people. The Red Cross packages and family provided parcels sent by POW's families kept the prisoners alive and apparently many of their guards who stole from the packages.

This book concentrates on the story of Holzminden Prison Camp which was run by a psychopath named Hauptmann Karl "Milwaukee Bill" Niemeyer described by someone as the personification of hate. His treatment of the POW's was cruel and inhuman and what we saw repeated twenty years later under the Nazi regime in WW II.

The title of the book is about a mass escape from this prison which became known as the first Great Escape. The ingenuity of the men to overcome so many difficulties in digging the tunnel and keeping it a secret for such a long period of time is amazing. After the escape, the Germans forced prisoners to did up the tunnel so they could discover where the entrance to it was because the prisoners had hidden it so completely the Germans were unable to find it.

I enjoyed reading this book, and it gave me a much better take on the Armada. Before this, I had known that many of the ships had been destroyed in a storm, but I had no idea about how much chaos the fireships caused at Gravelines (even though they didn’t actually ignite any Spanish ships). I also didn’t realize the whole mission for the Armada was as poorly thought out as it was, and the degree to which religion was behind it was also surprising – I hadn’t realized it had been treated as a crusade by both Spain and the Catholic Church. King Philip was convinced God was behind him to the extent that he believed God would work any necessary miracles to ensure the Armada was victorious:

“As the vast Armada set sail on the afternoon tide, the Pope’s special emissary to Lisbon sent a report to the Vatican of a conversation he had held with one of the highest officers in the Spanish fleet.

“If you meet the English Armada in the Channel do you expect to win the battle?”

“Of course.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It’s very simple. It is well known that we fight in God’s cause, so when we meet the English, God will surely arrange matters so that we can grapple and board them, either by sending some freak of weather, or, more likely, just by depriving the English of their wits. If we come to close quarters, Spanish valour and Spanish steel (and the great masses of soldiers we have on board) will make our victory certain. But unless God helps us with a miracle, the English, who have faster and handier ships than ours and many more long-range guns, and who know their advantage just as well as we do, will never close with us at all but stand aloof and knock us to pieces with their culverins without us being able to do them any serious hurt. So we are sailing against England in the confident hope of a miracle.” (Page 116).

Hence the title of the book.

I also didn’t know that King Philip didn’t stop at one Armada: “Before the year was out, Philip was laying plans for a further armada to achieve the success that had eluded its predecessor and fulfil his destiny as the warrior of Christ.” (Page 427). Ultimately, four others were sent after the most famous fleet. But the efforts were unsuccessful, not least because “each reverse only served to strengthen Philip’s belief in his God-given destiny, and further armadas were launched without apparent thought to the season, the weather or the likelihood of success.” (Page 427).

An interesting sidelight was the discussion of scurvy. While no one knew what caused it in the days of the Armada, I was surprised to learn that even back then people had noted that eating fresh fruits and vegetables would cure the problem. In fact, Richard Hawkins, who also invented a “water still” that could distill potable water from sea water, even pointed out that sour oranges and lemons were “a certain remedy for this infirmity.” However, no one acted on this knowledge, not least because fruits and vegetables were considered inferior food by everyone involved. This attitude, combined with the complacency, indifference, and incompetence rampant within the British navy at the time, meant that scurvy raged unabated for another two hundred and fifty years despite the cure being known. I found this particularly surprising given the danger of scurvy not only to life but also property – there were recorded cases of the disease wiping out every member of a ship’s crew and leaving only a ghost ship adrift on the ocean. And ships – especially battleships – have never been cheap to build.

This also definitely provided a different perspective on Queen Elizabeth the First, and it is not sympathetic. Apparently, she had the tendency to postpone painful or difficult decisions and was vacillating and indecisive, and this may have been why she never married rather than any Machiavellian scheming to play the continental powers against one another. She also appeared very stingy (“parsimonious” was the word the book used but it sounded a lot worse than that) and more like a villain than anything else. The idea that she wouldn’t call on Parliament to raise money to protect England against the Armada because she thought foreign affairs were something no one but “princes” should conduct, and because Parliament would naturally attach conditions to the money and want a say in how it was spent, just sounded outrageous and more like something a short-sighted egomaniac might do. I also got a different take on the “progresses” – from the point of view of this author, the progresses were self-aggrandizing wastes of money, instead of part of a strategy aimed at generating and maintaining good PR (as has been argued elsewhere). The famous Tilbury speech was also shown in a different light:

“Like so many of Elizabeth’s actions, the Tilbury appearance had been pure theatre, mere show, and the speech to her forces that has echoed down the ages was a sham, delivered after the danger from the Armada had passed. The demobilization of her forces that began while her words were still ringing in their ears shows that she knew that as well as any. Such cynical exercises suggest a very modern queen, more surface and style than substance.” (Page 382).

Of course, a modern queen acting primarily as head of state and not of government might not have ever made the speech to begin with. I think a more appropriate comparison would be to a modern politician primarily acting as head of government, who might very well behave similarly. But to the extent it shows that cynical political ploys are nothing new, I agree.

I enjoyed reading this book, and it gave me a much better take on the Armada. Before this, I had known that many of the ships had been destroyed in a storm, but I had no idea about how much chaos the fireships caused at Gravelines (even though they didn’t actually ignite any Spanish ships). I also didn’t realize the whole mission for the Armada was as poorly thought out as it was, and the degree to which religion was behind it was also surprising – I hadn’t realized it had been treated as a crusade by both Spain and the Catholic Church. King Philip was convinced God was behind him to the extent that he believed God would work any necessary miracles to ensure the Armada was victorious:

“As the vast Armada set sail on the afternoon tide, the Pope’s special emissary to Lisbon sent a report to the Vatican of a conversation he had held with one of the highest officers in the Spanish fleet.

“If you meet the English Armada in the Channel do you expect to win the battle?”

“Of course.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It’s very simple. It is well known that we fight in God’s cause, so when we meet the English, God will surely arrange matters so that we can grapple and board them, either by sending some freak of weather, or, more likely, just by depriving the English of their wits. If we come to close quarters, Spanish valour and Spanish steel (and the great masses of soldiers we have on board) will make our victory certain. But unless God helps us with a miracle, the English, who have faster and handier ships than ours and many more long-range guns, and who know their advantage just as well as we do, will never close with us at all but stand aloof and knock us to pieces with their culverins without us being able to do them any serious hurt. So we are sailing against England in the confident hope of a miracle.” (Page 116).

Hence the title of the book.

I also didn’t know that King Philip didn’t stop at one Armada: “Before the year was out, Philip was laying plans for a further armada to achieve the success that had eluded its predecessor and fulfil his destiny as the warrior of Christ.” (Page 427). Ultimately, four others were sent after the most famous fleet. But the efforts were unsuccessful, not least because “each reverse only served to strengthen Philip’s belief in his God-given destiny, and further armadas were launched without apparent thought to the season, the weather or the likelihood of success.” (Page 427).

An interesting sidelight was the discussion of scurvy. While no one knew what caused it in the days of the Armada, I was surprised to learn that even back then people had noted that eating fresh fruits and vegetables would cure the problem. In fact, Richard Hawkins, who also invented a “water still” that could distill potable water from sea water, even pointed out that sour oranges and lemons were “a certain remedy for this infirmity.” However, no one acted on this knowledge, not least because fruits and vegetables were considered inferior food by everyone involved. This attitude, combined with the complacency, indifference, and incompetence rampant within the British navy at the time, meant that scurvy raged unabated for another two hundred and fifty years despite the cure being known. I found this particularly surprising given the danger of scurvy not only to life but also property – there were recorded cases of the disease wiping out every member of a ship’s crew and leaving only a ghost ship adrift on the ocean. And ships – especially battleships – have never been cheap to build.

This also definitely provided a different perspective on Queen Elizabeth the First, and it is not sympathetic. Apparently, she had the tendency to postpone painful or difficult decisions and was vacillating and indecisive, and this may have been why she never married rather than any Machiavellian scheming to play the continental powers against one another. She also appeared very stingy (“parsimonious” was the word the book used but it sounded a lot worse than that) and more like a villain than anything else. The idea that she wouldn’t call on Parliament to raise money to protect England against the Armada because she thought foreign affairs were something no one but “princes” should conduct, and because Parliament would naturally attach conditions to the money and want a say in how it was spent, just sounded outrageous and more like something a short-sighted egomaniac might do. I also got a different take on the “progresses” – from the point of view of this author, the progresses were self-aggrandizing wastes of money, instead of part of a strategy aimed at generating and maintaining good PR (as has been argued elsewhere). The famous Tilbury speech was also shown in a different light:

“Like so many of Elizabeth’s actions, the Tilbury appearance had been pure theatre, mere show, and the speech to her forces that has echoed down the ages was a sham, delivered after the danger from the Armada had passed. The demobilization of her forces that began while her words were still ringing in their ears shows that she knew that as well as any. Such cynical exercises suggest a very modern queen, more surface and style than substance.” (Page 382).

Of course, a modern queen acting primarily as head of state and not of government might not have ever made the speech to begin with. I think a more appropriate comparison would be to a modern politician primarily acting as head of government, who might very well behave similarly. But to the extent it shows that cynical political ploys are nothing new, I agree.

Interesting story of how an inexperienced couple took over the remote Tan Hill Inn in the Yorkshire Dales and suffered a number of disasters on the way to falling in love with the Dales.

Took longer than it should have to finish this book about a topic I was unfamiliar with.½

Trench warfare details: Not for the faint-hearted or weak-of-stomach. I read it to learn about the Tommy and the Gerry (not so interested in the Yank). I was a bit disappointed that the end of Herr Hub's life was the end of the German side of the unknown soldier story, when there was a large amount of information included about subsequent commemoration efforts on the parts of the British and the Americans. But the book was still very informative.

A thorough account of the Great Fire, but with a bit too much dramatization and license taken with the known facts for my liking. Hanson speculates wildly at certain points, which bugs me.½

THE TRUE STORY OF THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON

Well researched and accurate, a historical detective story, meticulously researched, vividly told, which combines modern knowledge of the physics of fire, forensics and arson investigation with the moving eye-witness accounts contained in contemporary documents, private papers and personal letters.

The story itself is fascinating - the story of the four men whose horrible experience became a minor, highly politicized trial that affirmed the illegality of the custom of the sea, the unspoken acknowledgement that shipwrecked sailors would, sooner or later, most likely kill one of their company to feed the others.

The way it's told is absolutely awful. Hanson couldn't decide if he wanted to write a novel or a nonfiction account, and he makes a bad job of both options. Long passages are told as "recreations," which are entirely un-footnoted or endnoted, meaning there's no way to tell which bits are attributable to these particular men in this particular case and which bits are added in for atmosphere. They're not even particularly good narratives, unfortunately. I'd love to read an account of this case written by someone who knows what he's doing.

Beautifully evocative descriptions of the city of London and the lives of its inhabitants; very well written account of one of the most famous tragedies of London history

A compelling and tragic story of the human condition set in a context of the common man's adventure, privation and nobility vs. the aristocrat's manipulation of position and power at the former's expense.

Does the end justify the means? Both the common man and aristocrat make terribly difficult, questionable decisions that in the grand sweep of history seem like the "right thing "

What struck me most was the determination of those in authority to twist and turn to get the result THEY wanted.
The ability of semi-delirious men to recall chronological events was remarkable.

A strong work of history.

This book strengthens my view that the best contemporary writers are working in nonfiction. The descriptions of the spreading fire are as exciting and frightening as any fictional account.

At times he leaves the action of the story to use today’s science to decipher what probably happened. We can tell just how hot the fire at St. Paul’s Cathedral was by the color of the flames noted by numerous observers. He applies modern psychology to confessed arsonist Robert Hubert, but is correctly cautious in stating evidence is inconclusive. This is refrehing since many mass market histories jump to revise histroy with application of 21st century ideas, rather than simply raise questions.

The book seems to rush to a conclusion though. There was significant time spent on the ideas for rebuilding the city, but it is covered in little detail. Perhaps that is another book.

Not my kind of book, but I did think it was well written.

This kind of book makes reading history so enjoyable. The efforts to which the author has gone in weaving direct quotes from historical sources into the flow of the story is astounding. It makes for an engaging read. I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone with a fascination for the history of London.

Yep, usually because it is necessary for survival. Cannibalism for survival, this book describes and possibly fictionalizes a true account of three people who had to make the, yes THE, toughest decision of a person's life. And then they were accused of murder. Doh!

And funny thing about sea water and madness...

Great book. Although the subject is historical, the book is written in novel-like prose, which is necessary to understand the sequence of events that led to this catastrophe. It is highly recommended, since the influence of such an event can be seen in primary source materials, like the diary of Samuel Pepys, and other figures of the time (referenced in the book's notes and bibliography).

Though largely forgotten now, no doubt eclipsed in the collective memory by the more spectacular Blitz of World War Two, London was bombed by German aircraft during World War One. More than 100,000 kg of explosives and 6500 kg of incendiaries were dropped, and more than 800 people were killed.

First Blitz tells the story of that bombardment. It was small by the standards of modern warfare, but its very smallness provides an opportunity to tell the story in enormous detail, virtually raid by raid. On this small scale we can acquire an understanding impossible in modern war, can learn the names of the bomber crews, and of the people they killed.

First Blitz is especially strong on its portrayal of the German side of the conflict, drawing in particular on Walter Aschoff's _Londonfluge_, a 1940 memoir of his time flying a 'Gotha' bomber. I believe this book has never been published in English. Though a mediocre stylist (if the translation is faithful), Aschoff is an excellent recorder of his emotions as he flies over the British countryside and the London suburbs, savouring the fear and worry that he and his comrades must inspire in the population below, and enjoying the thrill of seeing far-off explosions and fires in his wake, indicating successful hits. He also provides gripping accounts of flying through dangerous weather in his fragile, open-cockpit 1917 aircraft, and of repeatedly facing anti-aircraft fire and attack by British aircraft.

The English side of the bombardment is represented by comparatively more secondary sources. Initially this reliance on secondary sources seemed a weakness: on reflection, the British side of the story has been so well researched and published, it would be a waste of effort for an author to reinvent that wheel. Among the more notable primary sources representing the English side is fighter pilot Cecil Lewis's memoir _Sagittarius Rising_, considerably better-written than Aschoff's. Then there are readers' memories published in England's Evening News newspaper in the early 1930s, which along with contemporary newspaper reports provide detailed first-hand accounts of the immediate aftermath of each raid.

The story culminates in the German race to deploy the 'fire plan', the complete destruction by fire of Paris and London, a plan which they were capable of executing by the end of the war, and which they came remarkably close to carrying out.

One striking observation that emerges is the lack of moral qualms on each side; neither the German bombers, nor the British pilots who fought them, believed the bombing was wrong. On the German side, morality was reserved for propaganda statements to the German press, which invariably claimed that the bombers targeted military targets, when in fact the inaccuracy of the bombing made it impossible to target anything in particular. The commanders who made the decisions to bomb were largely motivated by the belief that the killing of many women and children would weaken the British public's will to continue fighting the war; the killing of civilians was the intention of the bombing. Even British pilot Cecil Lewis felt that 'nobody in their right mind would deny that the Germans were perfectly right to bomb the capital of the British Empire'. After the war Britain's leaders vetoed efforts to bring the bombers and their commanders to justice, reasoning that to declare such actions war crimes would be to condemn their own pilots in the next war, as the bombing of enemy cities would clearly be an important part of any future conflict.

Despite its many merits, First Blitz is weakened by what seems to be an effort to appeal to a popular audience by making the footnotes as unobtrusive as possible. I'm a pedantic, sceptical reader, and I always want to know what the sources are. With this book, that meant maintaining two bookmarks, and effectively reading in turn the main section and the corresponding Notes section. It is difficult to imagine what readers who never look at the Notes would make of all those passages where quoted text appears without attribution in the main text; without knowing who said it, what country they were from, and when they said it, many of those quotations must lose most of their meaning. For example, on several occasions an account of the decision making of the German High Command is interrupted by a quotation, which the reader might reasonably infer is a statement by one of those commanders -- when in fact the quotation belongs to a British historian. And I think it is important to know that those stories from the Evening News were composed not immediately after the events they describe, but were stories the tellers had surely told and retold many times over the years, at the very least 'polishing' the details in the process. There is no doubt that they are largely true, but many have an 'enhanced' quality, with their narrow escapes and coincidences. All the information needed to understand the context of quoted text is there, but you have to work for it.½

This read fairly quickly, but then the fire was a fast worker, too, going through almost 400 acres of the walled city of London and nearly 60 acres outside the walls in about five days. Hanson reports on the course of the fire, the hanging of the man tried for setting it, and, briefly, on the rebuilding of London, with digressions into what modern fire science can tell us about the course of the fire and why the reported death toll was probably inaccurate.
Here are two quotes:

'The easterly gale was blowing harder than ever, carrying the smuts and soot and charred fragments for miles downwind. The walks and gardens of Kensington were almost buried beneath the ashes of linen, papers, and pieces of burnt plaster thrown there by the gale. "Had your Lordship been at Kensington you would have thought...it had been Doomsday, and that the heavens themselves had ben on fire; and the fearful cries and howlings of undone people did much increase the resemblance. The loss is inestimable. I believe there was never any such desolation by fire since the destruction of Jerusalem, nor will be till the last and general conflagration."

Richard Baxter "saw the half-burnt leaves of books near my dwelling" at Acton, five miles west of the city, and scraps of burned paper were driven by the wind as far as Eton and Windsor Great Park. Lady Carteret picked up one on the grounds of her house on which the only words visible were "Time is; it is done."'

The fire at St. Paul's:
'The gale from the east was indistinguishable in strength from the winds dragged in from every other direction by the ferocious appetite of the flames. Dust, dung, hay and straw, rags, laths and lumps of wood, pigeons and jackdaws still clinging to their roosts in the tower, all were sucked into the vortex and then spewed out, blackened and burned, from the fiery pillar of smoke and sparks rising miles into the sky.

A strange hissing sound, like rain sweeping across the roofs, made itself heard among the tumult of the fires. the lead of the cathedral roof, six acres in extent, was melting. Terrible in its beauty, bright silver in color and sparkling, hissing, and flashing as it fell, the molten lead tumbled in lava streams into the body of the church and cascaded from the spouts projecting from the outside walls. Everything it touched erupted in flame and fury. A tide of molten metal swept outward over the cobbles, "the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse nor man was able to tread on them." The molten lead ran down the kennels in floods, sweeping down the hill in a boiling, bubbling torrent toward the Thames, and suffocating, poisonous fumes filled the air.'

Over written in places with a slightly cavalier attitude to facts. Definitely against those in power whether in the military or civilian society. The story of the German soldier is well told during the war but not followed up.

How horrible to have had to suffer not only shipwreck & starvation, but to have to go through the ordeal of a trial & imprisonment for murder as well. Worse yet, when one of the same party that had participated in the cannibalism, testified against the other.