Talk:Hornblower in the West Indies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is part of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to narrative novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the General Project Discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions. | ||
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. | ||
| Mid | This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale. | ||
|
Article Grading: |
|||
|
Tasks you can do:
|
|||
[edit] Promotion to Admiral by Seniority
I took out the following paragraph as irrelevant:
In the Royal Navy of the early nineteenth century promotion from Captain to Admiral was based solely on seniority. Hornblower was promoted to Captain in 1805. Compare with the distinguished officer Lord Thomas Cochrane, who was promoted to Captain in 1801, and was not promoted to Rear-Admiral until 1832. Seniority wouldn't have brought promotion to Rear-Admiral to Hornblower until the late 1830s or later.
Cochrane was convicted for fraud (wether fairly or not) and struck off the Navy List in 1814. He was not eligible for promotion until he got a pardon and a reinstatement in 1832 (at which time he was promoted to rear admiral). So he is not a valid comparison. Feel free to salvage whatever is useful. --Stephan Schulz 04:48, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
- I found another example and re-instated that paragraph. Edward Berry, appointed Captain 1797, Rear-Admiral 1821. FWIW, I think these dates show that when Cochrane was re-instated his reinstatement must have been with his original seniority. -- Geo Swan 14:24, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Out of interest I looked at the biographies of a number of well-known RN officers for the dates of their promotions to Post-Captain and then to Rear-Admiral, and calculated the interval between them - the results are below:
Name Capt. Adm. Yrs. Hornblower 1805 1818 13 Hardy 1798 1825 27 Berry 1797 1821 24 Ball 1783 1799 16 Pellew 1782 1804 22 Saumarez 1782 1801 19 Gambier 1778 1795 17 Jervis 1760 1787 27 Middleton 1758 1787 29 Anson 1724 1744 20 Avg. (not counting Hornblower) 22 years 4 months
This seems to show that Hornblower's elevation to flag-rank was extraordinarily rapid. C. Northcote Parkinson in his 'biography' of Hornblower puts this down to the fact that he was a member (even if only by marriage) of the influential Wellesley family. That said another famous fictional officer - Patrick O'Brian's "Jack Aubrey" - was made Post-Captain in 1804 and Admiral in 1816 - in only 12 years! -- dawkeye 21:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] unsupported {merge} suggestion
User:ColourBurst suggested merging HMS Crab (fictional Hornblower vessel) into this article. They didn't offer any reasons as to why this would be a good idea.
Personally, I think it is a bad idea.
- There are lots of fictional ships from well-known novels, movies, or televion shows, that have articles written about them.
- The Hornblower article has a section devoted to Hornblower's ships. HMS Crab is not the most important vessel HH sailed on. But, the existence of a reproduction of a similar vessel, where interested readers can read about what sailing on an RN vessel of this size would really be like, makes her suitable for an article.
Cheers! -- Geo Swan 17:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
