John Paul Jones was an American sailor, pirate and notorious British traitor. He was born in 1747 at Scotland and died in 1792. He had been engaged in the merchant marine previous to his settlement in Virginia, shortly before the beginning of the American War of Independence. On the opening of hostilities he volunteered with enthusiasm in the service of America, was appointed first lieutenant, and made a number of successful cruises.
In 1777 he sailed to France. From Brest as a headquarters he conducted in his ship, the Ranger, a remarkable expedition to the British coasts, for which his old acquaintance with the localities had well fitted him. In St George's Channel he took prizes, landed at Whitehaven and terrorized the seaboard for a short time. He captured the British ship Drake, and his success led him in 1779 to start in command of a small fleet against the eastern shore of the island; his own vessel was the Bon Homme Richard. With this fleet he encountered off Scarborough a British convoy and ships of war. A fierce naval battle followed between Jones' vessel and the British ship Serapis on the evening of September the 23rd, 1779. The Serapis finally struck, but the American ship was completely disabled, and the losses in the close-range struggle were great. Jones received the thanks of Congress and a gold sword from Louis XVI of France. After the war he was a rear-admiral in the Russian navy, and died in Paris. Research John Paul Jones
Robert Blake was a celebrated British admiral. He was born in 1599 at Bridgewater and died in 1657 at the entrance to Plymouth Sound. On finishing his education at Oxford he lived for some time in a private manner on the fortune left him by his father. He was elected member of parliament for Bridgewater in 1640, and after the dissolution of the parliament later he lost his seat and pursued a military career. In 1649 he was sent to command the fleet with Colonels Deane and Popham. He attempted to block up Prince Rupert in Kinsale, but the prince, contriving to get his fleet out, escaped to Lisbon, where Robert Blake followed him. Being refused permission to attack him in the Tagus by the King of Portugal, he took several rich prizes from the Portuguese, and followed Rupert to Malaga, where, without asking permission of Spain, he attacked him and nearly destroyed the whole of his fleet.
His greatest achievements were, however, in the Dutch War which broke out in 1652. On the 19th of May he was attacked in the Downs by Van Tromp with a fleet of forty-five sail, the force of Robert Blake amounting only to twenty-three, but Van Tromp was obliged to retreat.
On May the 29th he was again attacked by Van Tromp, whose fleet was now increased to eighty sail. Robert Blake had a very inferior force, and after every possible exertion was obliged to retreat into the Thames. In the following February he put to sea with sixty sail, and soon after met the Dutch admiral, who had seventy sail and 300 merchantmen under convoy. During three days a running fight up the Channel was maintained with obstinate valour on both sides, the result of which was the loss of eleven men-of-war and thirty merchant ships by the Dutch, while that of the English was only one man-of-war. In this action Blake was severely wounded.
On June the 3rd he again engaged Van Tromp and forced the Dutch to retire with considerable loss into their own harbours. In November 1654 he was sent with a strong fleet to enforce a due respect to the British flag in the Mediterranean. He sailed first to Algiers, which submitted, and then demolished the castles of Goletta and Porto Ferine, at Tunis, because the dey refused to deliver up the British captives. A squadron of his ships also blocked up Cadiz, and intercepted a Spanish Plate fleet.
In April, 1657, he sailed with twenty-four ships to Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe; and notwithstanding the strength of the place, burned the ships of another Spanish Plate fleet which had taken shelter there, and by a fortunate change of wind came out without loss. He died before landing on English soil, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, whence his body was removed at the Restoration and buried in St Margaret's Churchyard. Research Robert Blake
The Taleban (Taliban) are a group of fundamentalist Pashtun Muslims trained in Pakistani religious schools and former American trained and funded Islamic fighters (mujahedin) from the Afghan civil war (in which the USSR supported the Communist government, and the USA the Islamic terrorists who sought to other throw it). The group became known to the world when they were appointed by the Pakistani government to protect a convoy trying to open up a trade route between Pakistan and Central Asia. In addition the group captured the nearby city of Kandahar, beginning a remarkable advance which led to their capture of the capital, Kabul, in September 1996. The
Taleban claimed that their aim was to set up the world's most pure Islamic state, banning frivolities like television, music and cinema, and imposing severe fundamentalist Islamic laws including execution for even minor crimes, banning girls from school and women from hospital, from the areas of Afghanistan they controlled - 90% at the time of American led attacks on them in 2001. Research Taleban
The Battle of Cadiz was a naval battle which took place on July 21st 1640 when a French squadron under Armand de Breze defeated a Spanish convoy by employing a hitherto unknown tactic of attacking the Spanish convoy from both sides. The Spanish lost five vessels and about a thousand men, while the French losses were small. Research Battle of Cadiz
The Battle of The Saints was a British naval victory over the French on the 12th of April 1782 during the American War of Independence, off the islands of Les Saintes in the channel separating Dominica from Guadeloupe in the Windward Islands. The British achieved their short-term aim of preventing a French convoy from sailing, but more importantly this battle also had the effect of reasserting British naval supremacy in the western hemisphere.
A British fleet of 36 ships under Admiral Sir George Rodney was in the area watching a French convoy and a fleet of 33 ships which was being assembled by Admiral Francois de Grasse to protect the convoy. As the convoy was being escorted to Guadeloupe, Rodney fell on the rearmost ships, forcing the French fleet to turn about and come to their rescue. The two fleets approached each other in parallel lines but the French formation was ragged and a gap opened. George Rodney took his squadron through the gap, breaking the French line, and he captured or destroyed five French ships and took two others a few days later. French losses numbered some 3,000 casualties and 8,000 prisoners, while British losses were 261 killed and 837 wounded. Research Battle of The Saints
The English-Spanish Naval War was fought from 1585 to 1604 between England and Spain, and was due in no small part to religion, Elizabeth of England being protestant, Philip II of Spain catholic. Philip had delayed attacking England for thirty years because he was not anxious to rush into a conflict, of which the result might be doubtful, and which would in any case involve considerable expense. However, the English sailors had, for over twenty years, been conducting piratical raids on Spanish ships and Spanish ports, the climax of which was Sir Francis Drake's destructive raid on the West Indies in 1585. Elizabeth's interference in the Netherlands had become intolerable. And the Pope was urging Philip to embark on a war which he regarded as a crusade to destroy a heretic government. The execution of Mary Queen of Scots in February 1587 removed whatever doubts remained in Philip's mind. He had always questioned the wisdom of placing Mary on the English throne, for Mary was French, not Spanish, by upbringing and sympathy. Besides this, her son, James VI of Scotland, who was presumably the heir to both kingdoms, was a Protestant. But Mary had, not long before her death, disinherited James, and passed on her claims to the English throne to Philip himself. After that, Philip hesitated no longer. He gave orders for a great Armada to be prepared in all the ports of Spain.
It was while these preparations were being made that Drake made the Raid on Cadiz. The result of this raid justified the boast of Fenner (Drake's friend) that twelve of Her Majesty's ships were a match for all the galleys in the king's service. But all his countrymen did not share Fenner's confidence. To many, perhaps to most, the danger seemed appalling. England was without allies, a small country, with no regular army, standing alone against the might of the greatest empire in the world, an empire on which, it was boasted, 'the sun never set'. Philip was the master of the New World, and of a considerable portion of the Old. By annexing Portugal in 1580 he had absorbed the
dominions of his only serious rival in America and the Indies. The famous Spanish infantry were thought to be unbeatable. And it was these very soldiers, commanded by one of the greatest generals in history - the Duke of Parina - who were waiting to invadeEngland. Philip' s plan was to conquer England from the Netherlands, where Parma's army, 30,000 strong, was mustered. Parma built flat-bottomed boats at Antwerp in sufficient numbers to convey his army to England. When the Dutch blockaded the mouth of the Scheldt he caused a canal to be dug, so that the boats could be moved to Dunkirk. But, as Parma well knew, to cross to England was impossible without a protecting fleet. It was for this purpose that the Armada was provided. It was thought that a large Spanish fleet could easily dispose of a smaller number of English vessels, and that then the way would be clear for Parma to invadeEngland. But this plan of invasion was never carried into effect, for the Spanish fleet, though slightly superior in numbers, was hopelessly inferior in every other respect.
The English fleet was smaller than the Armada, but comprised of real ships of war, all heavily armed with guns. The Armada entered the English Channel on Saturday the 20th of July 1588 and on Monday the 29th of July, was fought the Battle of Gravelines. The English naval war with Spain continued until after Elizabeth's death, when peace was made by James I in 1604. Elizabeth knew that war is very costly. But, in the first flush of the victory over the Armada, the war party, led by Walsingham and Drake, was in the ascendant. Early in 1589, therefore, the offensive was taken against Spain with the Expedition to Portugal. In 1591 Admiral Lord Thomas Howard was sent to the Azores, with Sir Richard Grenville as second in command. Arriving there, the Admiral learnt that the Spaniards had mustered a large battle fleet to escort their treasure-ships home. He wisely decided to retreat, as he was completely outnumbered. Sir Richard Grenville, however, in the Revenge, remained - to wage his immortal fight with one ship against the whole Spanish fleet. So formidable were the English guns that the Revenge put up a fight lasting a day and a night before she surrendered. Then a stormarose which sank the Revenge together with over a hundred of the enemy- warships and treasure-ships. The years 1595 to 1597 saw a vigorous revival of the prosecution of the Spanish war. Elizabeth, alarmed at the news that Philip was preparing another Armada, sent once more for her old sailors. Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake undertook a raid on the Spanish possessions in the West Indies in 1595, but it was a failure. As he once more sailed his ship on Nombre de Dios Bay, Drake found that the Spaniards were considerably stronger than in the great days of his youth. Hawkins died at sea, and soon afterwards Drake himself died of a sickness which had already carried off large numbers of his men. He was buried at sea, in the waters that washed the Spanish Main, where his name had been a word of
ror for a generation.
The next year another fleet sailed from England under LordHoward of Effingham, Lord Thomas Howard, and Sir Waiter Raleigh. Essex commanded the army of 8000 men which it carried. This fleet destroyed the shipping in Cadiz harbour; Essex and his men landed and took the town, which they gave to the flames. Philip swore vengeance, and, against the advice of his captains, dispatched another Armada to England in the late autumn of 1596. It was, however, destroyed by a storm and never even sighted the English coast. The next year Essex and Raleigh went off on the 'Islands Voyage' - to the Azores. They missed the Spanish treasure-fleet by a few hours, quarrelled bitterly, and returned home empty- handed to face a wrathful queen. By way of reply Philip, who was now a dying man, ordered a third Armada to sail, but it suffered the same fate as its predecessor. The Islands Voyage was the last effort of the war as far as Elizabeth was concerned, though English privateers continued to attack Spanish merchant ships. The damage they did was considerable, and the main Spanish fleet from America could only cross the Atlantic with a large convoy of warships. Research English-Spanish Naval War
The G7e T11 (Zaunkonig 2) was a German 21 inch passive homing torpedo based on the earlier G7e T5, used by submarines of the Second World War, entering service in 1943. The torpedo was intended for use against convoy escorts. It had a range of 5700 metres and travelled at a speed of 25 knots. It was armed with a 200 kg Hexanite explosive warhead. Research G7e T11
The G7e T5 (Zaunkonig 1 or Gnat as the allies called it) was a German 21 inch passive homing torpedo used by submarines of the Second World War, entering service in 1943. The torpedo was intended for use against convoy escorts. It had a range of 5700 metres and travelled at a speed of 25 knots. It was armed with a 200 kg Hexanite explosive warhead. Research G7e T5
The G7e T5a was a German 21 inch homing torpedo based on the G7e T5, but used by E-boats of the Second World War, entering service in 1943. The torpedo was intended for use against convoy escorts. It had a range of 8000 metres and travelled at a speed of 22 knots. It was armed with a 200 kg Hexanite explosive warhead. Research G7e T5a
The G7e T5b was a German 21 inch passive homing torpedo based on the G7e T5, used by submarines of the Second World War, entering service in 1943. The torpedo was intended for use against convoy escorts. It had a range of 8000 metres and travelled at a speed of 22 knots. It was armed with a 200 kg Hexanite explosive warhead. Research G7e T5b
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
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