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Mr. Mambold posted:On a King's warship, you wipe your rear end with a Mel Gibson if the captain says you do! Wipe a person's eye? I'm not really sure the origin of the phrase, and maybe it is still in use in the UK?
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Aug 19, 2020 18:14
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Yeah impressment existed for a reason. If a man-o-warsman’s life was actually better than life on shore, I doubt the Impress Service would have been so busy. Don't they talk about this a bit? One of the reasons you have to impress people is that the navy pays less well than other occupations (which also don't involve getting shot as a general rule) so able seamen prefer to be in not-the-navy. I know they impress other folks from time to time but my understanding of the practice generally is that it was primarily for sailors.
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Aug 20, 2020 23:02
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builds character posted:Don't they talk about this a bit? One of the reasons you have to impress people is that the navy pays less well than other occupations (which also don't involve getting shot as a general rule) so able seamen prefer to be in not-the-navy. I know they impress other folks from time to time but my understanding of the practice generally is that it was primarily for sailors. I think it paid better than other laborer jobs, it was just that you had to be isolated from the entire world, living in a close packed airless wooden ship with a hundred other filthy sailors, and you had to do hard labor at all hours of the night and your superiors were allowed to beat you and you'd be soaked and wet and miserable, subject to hundred-degree heat and freezing winds and might end up shot or drowned or mutilated from flying splinters. I know they talked about how merchantmen paid better than the Navy, but that was probably not a factor for the average impressed landsman.
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Aug 21, 2020 02:37
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Phenotype posted:I think it paid better than other laborer jobs, it was just that you had to be isolated from the entire world, living in a close packed airless wooden ship with a hundred other filthy sailors, and you had to do hard labor at all hours of the night and your superiors were allowed to beat you and you'd be soaked and wet and miserable, subject to hundred-degree heat and freezing winds and might end up shot or drowned or mutilated from flying splinters. I know they talked about how merchantmen paid better than the Navy, but that was probably not a factor for the average impressed landsman. Sorry if I’m missing something and being dumb here. My point was that it pays worse than other sailor jobs and impressment is really for sailors not landsmen. Despite all the landsmen who get impressed by Jack.
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Aug 21, 2020 04:24
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I believe impressment was technically for sailors only, but anyone who’d been to sea at any point would count, even if they’d been living on dry land for ages. I tried finding a solid source but most seem a bit vague on this point.
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Aug 21, 2020 09:54
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Fire Safety Doug posted:I believe impressment was technically for sailors only, but anyone who’d been to sea at any point would count, even if they’d been living on dry land for ages. I tried finding a solid source but most seem a bit vague on this point. Its mentioned in the books. some guy who spent 6 months puking his guts out in the channel, then went ashore and barely even looked at water after that for years got picked up by a pressgang because he had an anchor tattoo. Stephen sends him ashore for a made up medical liability as a kindness since he would lose his business otherwise. But as Aubrey would say "its a hard service"
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Aug 21, 2020 13:23
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Fire Safety Doug posted:I believe impressment was technically for sailors only, but anyone who’d been to sea at any point would count, even if they’d been living on dry land for ages. I tried finding a solid source but most seem a bit vague on this point. Yeah, impressment was for sailors but like any policy like that it can be horribly abused. A lot of the horror stories aren't true but people definitely got pressed beyond what the scope intended. Jack trying to press the men arresting him for outstanding debts is supposed to be levity, but I'm sure there are tons of stories of people who never should have been on a boat getting pressed.
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Aug 21, 2020 14:55
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At one point later in the series, one of or both Stephen and Jack muse upon the difference in morale between pressed men serving resignedly under a hard horse captain and the freely enlisted American sailors. This was during the War of 1812, when the British are repeatedly stunned by American victories at sea. I thought that was an interesting sidebar by O'Brian.
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Aug 21, 2020 16:30
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Also I think some people were turned over to the navy as an alternative to a prison sentence, which also can't have been great for either discipline and morale. And O'Brien does touch on the effects of tyrannical captains, look at Corbett in The Mauritius Command.
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Aug 21, 2020 18:32
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Yeah, serving under Jack Aubrey is both figuratively and literally winning the lottery.
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Aug 21, 2020 18:52
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Which edition of the audio books is the good edition?
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Sep 8, 2020 21:15
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Nektu posted:Which edition of the audio books is the good edition? Patrick Tull's narration
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Sep 8, 2020 23:30
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Nektu posted:Which edition of the audio books is the good edition? https://www.audible.com/pd/Master-and-Commander-Audiobook/B002V0KS9A
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Sep 9, 2020 01:21
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MeatwadIsGod posted:Patrick Tull's narration
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Sep 9, 2020 01:40
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Well, I finally finished Blue At The Mizzen today, nearly five years on from when I first dove into Master and Commander on my honeymoon. Part of me spent the book looking for signs that O'Brian was in some way losing his touch. I think I have my sadness over Terry Pratchett's last few books to thank for that, but thankfully this was just as much of an Aubrey-Maturin as any of them. There were moments that surprised me, to be certain - Horatio Hanson feels like, for want of better words, a backdoor pilot for a new series, and then there's Jack's homesickness at Sophie's letter, or his reference to some element of rigging that sounded to Stephen like a vulgarity even worse than the usual naval standard, that I couldn't parse at all. But there's the usual delightful turns of phrase ("pistols for two, and coffee for one"), old friends like Joe Plaice and Awkward Davies and a reference to Stephen's boiled-poo poo rocks, and the book ends about as well as one might hope - on a high note, with Surprise racing off at the summons of the Admiralty, for another adventure that, at long last, we're not privileged to see. I'm going to read these again sometime. It may take a while, but I'll be back.
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Sep 21, 2020 09:16
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I wouldn't pay for it but you can also read the first 60 pages or so of the unfinished voyage. Blue at the Mizzen was a really good place to end things and Unfinished really just starts the table setting that isn't terribly interesting before stopping.
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Sep 21, 2020 14:27
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Phy posted:... his reference to some element of rigging that sounded to Stephen like a vulgarity even worse than the usual naval standard, that I couldn't parse at all. ... Also there's no better time to start reading than now. The first books are obviously different, takes a few to really get going, but there's some good connection through the novels that you've doubtless forgotten. They were published over a period of 30 years, so you're still reading them "fairly quickly". 
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Sep 22, 2020 05:18
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Well I've started the steady search through 300 pages for vulgar rigging but it's gonna be like finding Atlantis without a chart. Perhaps some hint and we can interpret for you? oval office splice, you lubber.
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Sep 22, 2020 17:43
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Mr. Mambold posted:oval office splice, you lubber. Standing rigging around a spar, where two lines are meeting in opposite directions. It takes more rope to eye splice each end around the spar, so you send them around either side of the spar and long splice each end into the other side. Basically ---O--- We won't discuss the out come with more incoming lines.
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Sep 26, 2020 06:40
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Kaiser suggested I post here with a link to my project thread in DIY. I made a wooden model ship, and I'm now working on posting the entire build log there. The ship in question is fairly period relevant to O'Brian's stuff, as it is an Armed Virginia Sloop of 1768, an example of an American Privateer of the era. Link to project - The saga of a wood model ship build This thread reminds me that I should get back into this book series. I own the first 12 but only managed to finish the first 2 for some reason.
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Oct 22, 2020 00:18
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From the reddit sub- deleted scenes from Master & Commander https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y1DCX1ZK_s
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Oct 24, 2020 18:35
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Mr. Mambold posted:From the reddit sub- deleted scenes from Master & Commander Jack swimming with clothes on? What is this nonsense.
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Oct 25, 2020 23:35
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So the single upside to the pandemic for me has been discovering this series. Currently on The Fortune of War. Haven't seen this one quoted yet:quote:'Wallis,' said Maturin, 'I am happy to find you here. How is your penis?' At their last meeting he had carried out an operation on his colleague in political and military intelligence, who wished to pass for a Jew: the operation, on an adult, had proved by no means so trifling as he or Wallis had supposed, and Stephen had long been haunted by thoughts of gangrene. Anyway, two stupid questions: 1) What does 'hull-up'/'hull-down' mean, when describing another ship? 2) Often when sailing alongside other ships, they'll "send a boat" to grab supplies or meet the Admiral for dinner or whatever. How involved are the logistics of sending a boat? Do they need to slow down or is it really that easy?
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Oct 30, 2020 19:43
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Zoracle Zed posted:So the single upside to the pandemic for me has been discovering this series. Currently on The Fortune of War. Haven't seen this one quoted yet: Hullup - ship is visible in all its glory. Zoracle Zed posted:2) Often when sailing alongside other ships, they'll "send a boat" to grab supplies or meet the Admiral for dinner or whatever. How involved are the logistics of sending a boat? Do they need to slow down or is it really that easy? Edit: Wait, I forgot about the amount of work that killick needs to get the nr1 scraper ready. So I guess the logistics are more involved than I said. Nektu fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 20:06
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Zoracle Zed posted:2) Often when sailing alongside other ships, they'll "send a boat" to grab supplies or meet the Admiral for dinner or whatever. How involved are the logistics of sending a boat? Do they need to slow down or is it really that easy? Disclaimer, I am a mere lubber, but here's my understanding of it: In this period the boats are stored upside down on the deck, usually with the smaller inside the larger like nesting dolls. To lower them into the water you swing the boom (a length of wood attached to the mast at one end, with the other end roped up to the top, so it can be secured parallel to the mast or let down to about 90 degrees to it) out to leeward of the ship, and lower the boat from that down into the water. I can't shed much light on what that process looked like, but I know you got it in the water and then everyone ran down the side into it. Later on in this period something called davits were introduced, a sort of double crane that hangs over then on the stern or quarter - a boat can hang from it (in smooth weather) with bow & stern each suspended from one of the cranes. This means you can have the whole boats crew board it, then lower the boat straight into the water from a pulley on each crane, staying level. Ie much quicker. I don't know it the ships had to slow down, but I don't imagine so unless the wind was so strong that a boat couldn't swim anyway.
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Oct 31, 2020 19:19
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Genghis Cohen posted:and then everyone ran down the side into it. Except Stephen 
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Oct 31, 2020 19:34
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Here's a thread with some great pictures of some guy's fantastic model of the Surprise showing some boat storage and newfangled quarter-davits in action: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/5146-hms-surprise-by-navis-factorem-finished-175/page/9/
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Nov 1, 2020 05:39
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I loved that deleted scene of Stephen knocking his head on the overhang as he makes his exit from scene. Though I realize this aspect of the books wasn't what they were going for with the film.
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Nov 1, 2020 06:08
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Zoracle Zed posted:So the single upside to the pandemic for me has been discovering this series. Currently on The Fortune of War. Haven't seen this one quoted yet: I think this is the first moment that made me actually lol. It's the frank, immediate bluntness of the question, served up as a genuine inquiry to one's health, that really does it.
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Nov 1, 2020 07:23
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Just read this in the OSHA thread in GBS, and what in the goddamn?Platystemon posted:It’s probably like ships and was the most direct mechanical arrangement and now it’s hung on through inertia. I never had A Sea Of Words when I was reading through, and this seems like exactly the sort of thing that would have to be explained to Stephen - did it come up and I just don't remember it?
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Jan 9, 2021 01:52
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Phy posted:Just read this in the OSHA thread in GBS, and what in the goddamn? I'm pretty sure it didnt. On the upside, I finally realized that "a wig covers a multitude of sins" also applies to face masks. Not today razor, not today.
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Jan 9, 2021 11:51
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Phy posted:I never had A Sea Of Words when I was reading through, and this seems like exactly the sort of thing that would have to be explained to Stephen - did it come up and I just don't remember it? See "mechanism" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_wheel
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Jan 10, 2021 05:10
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Yeah it's definitely skipped and there are plenty of opportunities. At one point I went through some of the battles and there are places where impossible directions are given, and others where the behavior of the vessel seems contradictory. Could you post some examples.
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Jan 10, 2021 12:14
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(That ships' wheel gif was still hosed so I fixed it up, lol ... Can't wait to be wrong, or to be right and still the wiki fuckers out-stubborn me.) e: it seems the person who made the image has been permabanned from wikipedia for trying to get paid, so maybe it'll stick. Sax Solo fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jan 10, 2021 |
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Jan 10, 2021 19:01
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Sax Solo posted:(That ships' wheel gif was still hosed so I fixed it up, lol ... Can't wait to be wrong, or to be right and still the wiki fuckers out-stubborn me.) I found out years ago that it's useless to try and fix errors in Wikipedia since some wikilord sitting on the article will just revert it back.
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Jan 10, 2021 19:14
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Sax Solo posted:(That ships' wheel gif was still hosed so I fixed it up, lol ... Can't wait to be wrong, or to be right and still the wiki fuckers out-stubborn me.) Thank you! The old gif annoyed the hell out of me.
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Jan 10, 2021 19:26
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https://twitter.com/russellcrowe/status/1350675788102713346?s=20
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Jan 17, 2021 12:30
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Is he saying he falls asleep because it's boring or is he just cranking it?
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Jan 17, 2021 14:15
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I haven't watched it in quite some time --- being in a rather musical mood starting yesterday, it might be soon --- but surely that first battle concludes before the 10min mark. Apparently they're too dim to realize that the first few minutes establish the Surprise as a character and create a visual model of "silence" in order to ensure that the battles can be "deafening"/overwhelming without, you know, actually leaving your ears ringing. What do these people watch? Lots of popular movies have so much visual and audible white noise in them, I'd fall asleep within minutes. If I want cinematic cocaine, I'm going to be watching cartoons. Rocky and Bullwinkle is more intellectually stimulating than most sitcoms. Been in a reading mood lately, but if this is "the year of the recovery", ...
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Jan 17, 2021 17:01
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Careful of your pink baby hands shinnying down from the maintop, Ian, or you're liable to a sad little burn. Mr. Mambold fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 17:38
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