"Went the day well?" Part I

Went the day well?

We died and never knew.

But, well or ill,

Freedom, we died for you.

Written by John Maxwell Edwards (1875-1958) who also penned the following epitaph, inspired by  the ancient poet, Simonides of Ceos, as an epitaph to those who died at Thermopylae, and which was used as a memorial to those who fell in the ferocious fighting at Kohima in WWII. 

When you go home, tell them of us and say 

For your tomorrows these gave their today

All of that educational 'puffery' which, I would remind you, comes free of charge even though I had to look it all up because I didn't have a clue, stems from my previous post and an exchange with 'Kevin B' in the comments thread.  He raised the tricky subject of changing national characteristics and their effects, if any, on national politics.  As it happens, I am part way through reading Went The Day Well? by David Crane which is a fascinating combination of social as well as military history.  Mr. Crane takes us, hour by hour, through the Battle of Waterloo but at the same time he tells us what was happening to different people, most of them very ordinary people, in different places throughout the British Isles.  It is an excellent way of gaining a feel for the times across the spectrum of British society - high, middle and low!

Not the least of illuminations is the light he throws on the economic reality which lay behind the lofty talk of 'command of the sea':

It is not a mere matter of sentiment, either, because nobody looking out to sea at six o'clock this morning, to where the greatest East India fleet ever assembled lay spread across the Downs, could ever forget its role in the prosperity that had sustained Britain through two decades of war.  For more than twenty years the navy had convoyed the world's trade across the face of the globe, and from Liverpool to Gravesend - from the 'Isabella' and 'Aimwell' just arrived from Surinam and Barbados with their cargoes of sugar, cotton, coffee, aloes, ginger and tamarind, to the 'Heinrich' from Danzig, the 'Frau Anna' from Stockholm, the 'Jason' from Memel and the 'Frederick' from Hamburg - the country's great ports and quaysides rang to the same commercial tune that the navy had made possible."

(To be continued when I return from this afternoon's business!)

"The following account of one pound weight of manufactured cotton strikingly evinces the importance of that trade to Great Britain," Exeter's subscribers to 'The Alfred' could have read in the latest edition this Sunday; "there was sent off to London, lately, a small piece of muslin, about one pound weight, the history of which is thus related; it was come from the East Indies to London; from London it went to Lancashire, where it was manufactured into yarn; from Manchester it came to Paisley, and there was veined; afterwards it was sent to Dumbarton, where it was hand-sewed, and again brought to Paisley, whence it went to Glasgow and was finished, and from Glasgow it was sent per-coach to London"

The British loved this drum-roll to their Island's prosperity, loved the rattle of figures - the three years from picking to warehouse, the 5,000 miles by sea,the 920 miles by land, the 150 people employed in a single pound of cotton, the 2,000 percent profit - and knew that this was how they had brought Bonaparte to his knees.  Since the days of the Younger Pitt the country had been financing her continental allies, and as the Prussian, Russian and Austrian armies if the Seventh Coalition again marched against France on British gold, Britons could look out to sea and know that it was a war that their efforts and there industry would sustain as long as was necessary.

The 'Robert Quayle' from St. Domingo, carrying cotton, sugar,tea, coffee and mahongany; the 'Unicorn' from Demerara withits rum andmolasses; the 'Sally' from Trinidad with its lime juice and indigo; the 'Vestal' from New York with cotton and flaxseed, the 'Integrity' from Charleston; they were all in Liverpool this Sunday [18th June 1815].  Before the day was out the 'Jackson' would sail from Gravesend for Oporto and the 'Minerva' for Gibraltar and the 'Anna' for Riga and the 'Acorn' for St. Petersburg and for as long as most people could recall it was the navy that had controlled these sea channels.  It had kept open the Great Belt and the Baltic, it had supplied Britain's armies in Spain with its specie from South America and its grain; it had suppressed the coastal trade of Europe and turned the Mediterranean into a British lake.  There had been reverses against the Americans - though they were being quietly massaged away - and there had been little to brag of since Trafalgar but for the public and the sailor alike a British warship was the British character in action and the Royal Navy officer the incarnation of everything that made Britain innately superior to her enemies. [...]

It was a seductive idea, and one that would only grow and mutate with the century, and if there was no more truth in it than in most other national myths, the mere assumption of superiority had given the navy a psychological advantage that turned myth into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That passage, I think, gives us a very real, tangible notion of the incredible wealth that flowed in and out of British ports during the 19th century.  You can also gain an impression of how the 'British character' of the time was developed although I demur slightly at the word 'character' which is a far deeper and more complex idea than the sort of 'public opinion image' which, under different circumstances, can disappear faster than a puddle on a sunny day!  Even so, and even in the semi-democracy of the Regency period, politicians needed to take some account of the public mood before they took major decisions on war and peace.

Today, bombarded as we are with constant opinion polls that seek to act as mirrors to us all, the reflected image is still blurry and, more important, still very changeable.  And quite what the definition of a 'national character' is, I do not know!

 

 

Comments

[JK]

https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/japan-reconsiders-military-engagement-overseas

Might have to enter an email, I figure ya'll realize how to avoid charges

[Whitewall]

JK, I haven't been signed on with them since right after they were hacked a couple of years ago. It too a good bit to clean up.

[Andrew Duffin]

Hard to read that passage with a dry eye.

Look at us now: cowering before the very people we once defeated, beholden for our very laws to a bunch of unelected foreign bureaucrats, the Royal Navy reduced to eighteen ships (Eighteen!) - and no doubt to be reduced further, our trade dependent on people we don't control and barely influence, and trembling lest Mr. Putin decides to wreak revenge on us, revenge we cannot avoid and dare not respond to.

O tempora o mores.

[JK]

http://duffandnonsense.typepad.com/duff_nonsense/2015/03/went-the-day-well.html#comments

Posted by: Whitewall | Thursday, 12 March 2015 at 12:01

"JK, I haven't been signed on with them since right after they were hacked a couple of years ago. It too a good bit to clean up." (More than a couple actually.)
_____________________

Oh? I recall the very precise date I was informed of the hack - got me on Wikileaks (and that particular Google entry [and the three days prior, the three days subsequent] didn't particularly, take me too much to clean up.

You recall the holiday WW? ... George posting within the hour to the USNI site?

I'd actually been informed somewhat earlier - eight but no more that ten minutes my card issuer rang me up querying, "JK, you in Oman?"

"Nope. Do a .... .... .... .... .. [#set] then, ... ... ... [#set]."
____________________

Took a single visit by a couple of .. actually pretty courteous fellows .. to clear all that up. Had to call in twice but both those times were toll free.

Now I did have the sense to Freeze My Numbers so I, just as you might imagine WW ask, didn't you think of that?

Very locally I will admit to some surprises but, once I'd explained I was never active after the 3056Q program went active, that was that.

I take it you worked for the guy I chose not?

Can't think of any other reason you might've duressed.

[Whitewall]

JK, I was only touched by the hack over Christmas-New Year about three years ago I think. Time flies. George did come forth quickly and accepted responsibility for the entire breakdown.

In my life, it wasn't so much the places I have been, it was the kinds of places and it was the things I saw and did. That's why I am so alarmed by the world's current state of affairs...not just the US. History does not repeat. People repeat history. Sorry to be so vague.

[JK]

Just I noticed WW, and no big deal nor that it matters (and actually I'm happy for everybody avoided that Prick Assange)

Well, you know what I mean I'm damn near certain, it was only the folks with a certain type of cc tie-in, & ships boats and certain P3s & shit. I realize WW. No foul. You yell a warning the horseshoe is rolling - I yell "My turn to throw!"

To Be Clear

http://blog.usni.org/2012/01/11/the-hack-on-stratfor