'Nother Solent

Nelson's final prayer

written on the night before Trafalgar:

May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my Country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious Victory; and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; and may humanity after Victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him who made me, and may his blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my Country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen. Amen. Amen.

I found this on The Monarchist's series of posts about Trafalgar in real time minus two hundred years. That, in turn, I found via Tim Worstall. Among the comments to the Monarchist's post is one from a Spanish admirer of Nelson.

Another commenter, "dearime", says, "I preferred the period when public figures kept their religious opinions to themselves." My impression is that Nelson's prayer, while perfectly sincere - he knew that he might be writing it on the last night of his life - was a public but not a cynical act. He had one eye (if you will pardon the expression) on his own place in history. However that did not mean he was faking it. He of all men did not say or think the words "glory" or "honour" with a wry smile as we do even in our most exalted moments. For him honour was the wellspring of goodness, and his personal honour was unselfconsciously bound up with national honour. When he wrote to ask God to ensure that "no misconduct in any one" would tarnish his hoped-for victory he knew that if he was killed his words would be read and made public, and they would make it more likely that no misconduct would tarnish his victory. And that was truly, I think, the thing for which he prayed most fervently in his innermost heart.

I really, truly

didn't go here to gloat. I just thought it would be interesting to look at the Trafalgar commemorations from their point of view.

But they didn't think it would be interesting to look at the Trafalgar commemorations from their point of view.

More about foreign names given to British ships.

In response to this post, Jim Bennett writes

N.A.M. Rodger's great Command of the Ocean has a good discussion of this practice. And don't forget "The Fighting Temeraire" of Turnerian fame. It would have been interesting if the UK had kept this practice up. Had the Bismark been captured rather than sunk there could have been an HMS Bismark.

Generate more alternative-world ships for His Majesty here.

My husband points out that after the development of iron hulls, rifled guns and explosive shells ships usually were sunk rather than boarded. However, he says, if the chivalrous customs of Napoleon's time had continued, an HMS Bismark, HMS Graf Spee or HMS Emden would still have been possible even though these ships were sunk. Both sides in the Napoleonic wars sometimes named new ships after a worthy adversary that had been sent to the bottom of the sea, as well as merely keeping the names of prizes.

In case anyone is worried, even in that alternative world there would have been no danger of the Royal Navy ever getting itself landed with a ship called the HMS Adolf Hitler. Hitler was happy have SS Divisions named after him but he was aware enough of the all-or-nothing nature of modern naval warfare to refrain from extending any such practice to ships. After the loss of the Graf Spee, Hitler ordered the Deutschland to be renamed the Lützow. If the ship went down he did not want to see headlines saying "Germany sunk."

Make his trial impeccable

, says Amir Taheri.

Saddam is enjoying what he denied his victims: a public trial with defence lawyers of his choice and the rule of evidence taking into account the principle of reasonable doubt.

And that is how it should be.

Mind you, I bagsy the headline "One door closes, another door opens, eh, Saddam?" for later.

On sighting an elephant...

I have posted a Samizdata QotD here. It's about Frederick Courtenay Selous. The only thing I knew about this hunter, naturalist, soldier and eccentric yesterday was that the old Rhodesian army named the Selous Scouts after him. Nonetheless, it seems that he is still well-liked enough in Africa to have a wildlife reserve in Tanzania bear his name.

Grammar geeks

, go here.

(Grammar geeks go here.)

They didn't leave Jack to die alone in a space station full of corpses after all, then.

Good. But what's all this about "dark, wild and sexy"? I'm not sure that is at all the right spirit.

Now that the Big Beast

has crawled back to his lair I feel safe enough to say that there was something gloriously fey about even considering for party leader a man loathed by right-wingers for his europhile views* and by left-wingers for being Deputy Chairman of a tobacco company. The cigarette factory in North Korea was nicely calculated to enrage both factions.

The Guardian must have actually believed their own guff about Clarke being a lovable Tory vote-winner to have broken that story while he was still in contention. I knew that idea was rubbish, er, well, I did go wobbly for a bit, but Peter Briffa put me straight. He knows about these things from watching Big Brother.

*I thought of hanging this post on a quotation as I did with the last one, but "la trahison des clercs" was a tad too harsh. And I'd have had to include our beloved Home Secretary among the traitors as well, to account for the plurality of the clerks. On second thoughts...

"And there, scarce less illustrious

, goes the clerk."

- William Cowper, On observing some Names of Little Note recorded in the 'Biographica Britannica'.

An exchange of compliments.

The BBC has an article about the new stamps issued to commemorate the bicentennial of Trafalgar.

The stamps depict details from a rarely-displayed painting by William Heath showing the 1805 battle.

The two first class stamps show Nelson wounded and the British ships, the cutter Entreprenante and Belleisle, which was left dismasted.

But why, when France was the enemy, did two British ships have French names?

According to this, the Entreprenante had been taken as a prize in 1800 and had been left with her original name, as was often the custom when a ship had put up a good fight. Someone once speculated that if the Napoleonic wars had gone on long enough the two fleets would eventually have swapped names entirely.

That never came to pass, but real life went some way along that road. Villeneuve's combined French and Spanish fleet included a Berwick, Nelson's included the Tonnant, and there were three ship names that appeared in the line-ups of both fleets at Trafalgar: Swiftsure, Neptune and Achille. As if a British and a French Neptune were not enough, the Spanish provided a Neptuno.

"There is often found in commentators

a spontaneous strain of invective and contempt more eager and venemous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politicks against those whom he is hired to defame."

- Dr Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare

Great unused blog titles.

1) Why Can't It Chocolate?
2) Blind Elephant in a Bad Mood

The first was invented by Second Offspring, who one winter's day asked, "Why does it always have to snow? Why can't it chocolate?"

The second was applied to imprisoned Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in an officially-sanctioned poem published in the newspaper New Light of Myanmar.

Aspiring bloggers may use either, although I would like a large sum of money first.

It looks likely that the Iraqis have voted to accept

the proposed new constitution. But what if they had not? The New York Sun makes a good point:

Even a rejection of the constitution, because of the Sunni turnout, would not be bad news for Iraq. While in sports winning may be almost everything, in democracy taking part is really what counts. By voting the Sunnis have tied themselves to the democratic process. A democratic referendum involves a yes or no option. Only in dictatorships like Iraq under Saddam could a referendum only yield one result. Respected Iraqi democrats, such as Nibras Kazimi, who writes on these pages, have recommended rejecting the constitution, warning it risks giving too much power to clerics. If the constitution is rejected, democracy will continue. Elections will take place as planned in December, and the new parliament will simply start writing a constitution again. And if it the constitution is passed, the agreement made means amendments can be passed dealing with these concerns.

On the same lines, every now and then someone raises the spectre of a future democratic Iraq hostile to the US or the West generally. My response is that compared to the spectre of a future Iraqi dictatorship or Islamist gangster state, that ghostie can haunt me any time. So President Chelsea Clinton might have to put up with an Iraqi version of Chirac or Schroeder? Sheesh, that's politics for you. She'll cope.

In fact, I'll go further (this part of the post is being written half an hour later). Even if democracy were to fail in Iraq the fire has been lit and it would return. What a tragedy it would be if, after so much courage has been shown by Iraqi voters, the country were to suffer civil war or a military or religious coup. I do not think that likely but I do think it possible. People often say that Iraq, or the Middle Eastern countries generally, lack a tradition of democracy or a culture of legal, rather than violent, settlement of the question of who should rule. There's something in that. But your traditions grow and your culture is what you do. Twice in the last year great masses of Iraqis have voted, and in the same act have voted for the right to vote. For months, stretching into years now, the Shia majority have not turned to pogroms against the minority Sunni despite anti-Shia terrorism. And for their part the Sunni, this time, have also gone home in their thousands with defiantly purple fingers.

The Iraqi democratic tradition is young. It may die in infancy. But I suspect that even then it would not stay dead. Look at Turkey.

(NY Sun article via Real Clear Politics.)

WWF again.

Andrew Duffin writes:

Not the wrestlers, the other lot.

You ask about it being a "foundation" now.

I don't know the answer, but it's an odd outfit.

I have an acquaintance who is employed by one of our better universities (that's code for: not Oxbridge or Edinburgh or St.Andrews, but not a jumped-up poly either).

He's recently returned from a trip to China during which he took part in lots of worthy activities to do with helping people out in the sticks start businesses, become more independent of the state, stand on their own feet, respect the environment, etc etc.

The source of funding for this little junket? Yes, you guessed, that self-same WWF.

I did ask him what his work had to do with wildlife, but I don't think he regarded the question as a serious one.

Stranger and stranger!