Andy Gill

The sexiest little cannon you will ever see pouts at the camera. For reasons known best to the inventor, the bore and body of the cannon is elliptical and they've gone the extra mile to add a sexy little cupid's bow to the muzzle. It's only a brass model and I've no idea if the full size version was ever allowed to seal anything with a loving kiss.

This account is unashamedly francophilic, and has no truck with the Anglo prejudice that the French are obsessed with sex.

The official museum of the French army, on the other hand...

According to staff, this is a popular place for proposals. Have they even seen the movie!? "I love you most ardently." "You are the last man I could ever be prevailed upon to marry!"

#prideandprejudice
#janeausten
#stourhead

It also changes how we should view Stokes and the effect of isolation on mental health. He was not a capable officer affected by the strain. He was more like Donald Crowhurst, out of his depth, lying and afraid of exposure. This is a far darker and more complex story than the one we've been told 9/9

Taking command, Fitzroy would have known this about his predecessor. He would have known it was Stokes' inadequacy and fear of discovery that drove him mad, not just the stress of the task. But Fitzroy was an exceptional commander, so this changes how we should view his invitation to Darwin. 8/9

Flinn, the Master, sick of his treatment, requested a transfer to Adventure. King agreed, and dispatched a master's mate to the Beagle instead. According to King, this was why it happened. Knowing he could no longer hide his deficiencies, and terrified of being found out, Stokes shot himself. 7/9

They record a man loitering for two weeks just outside the rendezvous, in the process running out of most food and all the antiscorbutics, in the hope that King in the Adventure would have already left and thus would not find out the truth. But as he sailed into Port Famine, the ship was there. 6/9

They show a man that copied the charts, measurements and calculations of his assistant surveyor, Lt Skyring, and passed them off as his own. Who on the storm-tossed deck of the Beagle demanded an oath of loyalty from his officers that they would not tell anyone what had transpired. 5/9

They depict a man who repeatedly ignored the advice of his officers, sailed his ship into hazards that endangered them all, relied upon the Master and luck to extricate them, and then punished the crew for his own mistakes. A man whose surveying ability was substandard and woefully inadequate. 4/9

I have since discovered King's letter to the Admiralty reporting Stokes' death, and a diary by the Beagle's purser, which cast this simplistic interpretation into doubt. They paint Stokes not as a lonely soul burdened with responsibility but as a tyrant who abused his officers and men. 3/9

I claimed, in line with the epitaph on his gravestone, the official voyage narrative by PP King, and the opinion of various historians, that Stokes was driven by the stress and isolation of command to take his own life, and as a result, Fitzroy (potentially) invited Darwin as a friend/companion. 2/9

As historians, it is incumbent upon us to alter our arguments in light of new discoveries, even when it adds unwanted complexity to a topic we thought we understood. In that vein, I wish to amend my last thread about the death of Pringle Stokes, first commander of HMS Beagle. #navalhistory 1/9

Asked my kids if they'd ever heard of Charles Darwin.

"Yes," they said. "He's the bad guy in Star Wars." 🤔

That's going to be the subject of my MA dissertation 😉

Yes, he was described as being in "great pain" the entire time. The surgeon knew immediately that it was mortal. At times, Stokes was aware his end was near; at others, he spoke of resuming the surveying work as soon as he recovered. A very sad case. Fitzroy also took his own life many years later.

Thank you, it was my pleasure 😊

Scholars can't agree why he brought Darwin. Was it purely for science? Or was it because, knowing what the isolation and anxiety had done to his predecessor, he wanted a companion to stave off the loneliness? Whatever the case, the history of Beagle is incomplete without including Pringle Stokes 5/5

Lt. Skyring sailed the Beagle back to Montevideo, where Admiral Otway placed his Flag Lieutenant, Robert Fitzroy, in command. After completing the voyage, Fitzroy was commissioned to take the Beagle back to Patagonia to finish the survey. He wanted to bring a naturalist with him. He chose Darwin 4/5

dreary, it had been shunned by the very birds. The weather was the type where "the soul of Man dies in him." This was from a poem by Thomson: "The soul of man dies in him, loathing life/And black with more than melancholy views." On 1 August 1828, he shot himself in the head, dying 12 days later 3/5

Struggling against wind and waves to chart the Straits of Magellan, tacking upwards of 30 times a day to keep off rocky shores in weather so cold and stormy that more than half the crew were on the sick list, it all became too much for Stokes. In his journal he wrote that the landscape was so 2/5

When you hear the name HMS Beagle, you think of Darwin. If you're into #navalhistory, you might know of Fitzroy. But have you heard of Pringle Stokes, Beagle's captain on her first voyage to Patagonia? He is the reason Fitzroy (and indirectly Darwin) became bound up with that little 10-gun brig 1/5

Abusively (9)

Taxidermy (9)

That is a rather terrifying photo... 😳

Photo of book: The Commodore by Patrick O'Brian.

Ahoy shipmates, with only four Patrick O'Brian left I need some recommendations for naval fiction in the Age of Sail. I've already read the Hornblower, Bolitho, Drinkwater and Kydd series. Is Ramage any good?

#navalhistory
#historicalfiction

Rigmarole.

When the optician says "early signs of cataracts" and "unusual at your age", those are bad things, right? 😬

I picked this one up from an antique shop about 20 years ago. Know absolutely nothing of its history but I love every bit of it. She looks so alive, it's like it could have been taken yesterday.

Is this in case your houseboat accidentally goes over the Niagara Falls?

Thank you so much for this. Brilliant 👏

And Churchill had the audacity to say of his signal, "So far as the English Language may serve as a vehicle of thought, the words employed appear to express the intentions we had formed."

Much of 'World Crisis' is a defence of the indefensible.

The album cover is just as bad!