8 December 2024: Well, here we are in December and counting down the days to a new year and all the [hopefully] good things it will bring. As in the past 5 or 6 years, in the penultimate post of the year, we will continue to bring you a special version - Christmas-y if you will, of a traditional melody performed by members of the U.S. Navy Band. Responses are always positive and we hope you continue to enjoy this fun musical offering.
Happy listening. We'll see you next time with another perennial offering for this time of year.
26 November 2024: With the American holiday of Thanksgiving in two days and the general mayhem and chaos that often ensues, we decided to advance our program by a couple of days as it is unlikely the weekend (when we normally post) will be productive! And we're also thinking about the fact that there are barely 35 days left in the year 2024.... and that could be a good thing, depending on one's perspective! So, from Smithsonian Magazine an interesting article commemorating the capture and death of the infamous Blackbeard, AKA Edward Teach. The anniversary was a couple of days ago.
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How British Authorities Finally
Caught Up to the Most Notorious Pirate in History
On this day (23 November) in 1718, the Royal Navy attacked and killed Blackbeard, also
known as Edward Teach, off the coast of North Carolina
Something unthinkable happened during the summer of 1718. Edward Teach, the
infamous pirate known as Blackbeard,
decided to give up piracy—at least ostensibly—in exchange for a royal pardon from the governor of North Carolina absolving him and his men of all
wrongdoing.
This was a great deal for the pirates, whose wrongdoing was extensive. But
Blackbeard’s lawfulness—and his life—didn’t last long.
Just a few months prior, Blackbeard and his small pirate flotilla had blockaded
Charleston, South Carolina, for close to a week. He plundered ships, took
hostages and “struck a great terror to the whole Province of Carolina,” according to the pseudonymous author Captain Charles Johnson.
But with his new veneer of legality, Blackbeard appeared to settle down. He married the daughter of a local planter and moved into a
house in Bath, North Carolina, just down the street from the governor who’d pardoned him.
Blackbeard “had bought the loyalty of a colonial governor,” writes historian
Colin
Woodard in The Republic of Pirates, “but had yet to accumulate
the sort of fortune that would allow him to live like a king for the rest of
his days. Therefore, after a few weeks of rest, he returned to work.”
Alexander Spotswood, lieutenant governor of the
Colony of Virginia, had no patience for Blackbeard, especially after he
trampled over the terms of his plea deal in late August to capture two unarmed French ships.
In November 1718, Spotswood issued an official proclamation offering 100 pounds to anyone who could
produce evidence of having killed “Edward Teach, commonly called Captain Teach,
or Blackbeard.” (The reward for any other pirate captain was just 40 pounds.)
To ensure Blackbeard was neutralized, Spotswood gave Robert Maynard, an officer in the Royal Navy, control of 60 men and two sloops—small
sailboats that lacked cannons but could pursue Blackbeard in the narrow inlets
and shallows of the coast.
On November 17, the Ranger and the Janemade their way north from Virginia’s James River toward the barrier islands of North Carolina.
“This expedition was made with all imaginable secrecy,” Johnson wrote. On the night of November 21, Maynard and his men spotted Blackbeard’s boat near Ocracoke Island.
Although they were far outgunned, they attacked the next morning as
Blackbeard’s crew slept off a night of rowdy drinking. The advantage of
surprise only lasted briefly: The Jane ran aground, and once
Blackbeard’s boat got going, it was deadly.
“Damn you for villains, who are you? And, from whence came you?” Blackbeard
reportedly yelled as his boat pulled close to the Ranger.
“You may see by our colors we are no pirates,” Maynard, whose sloop was flying the British flag, responded. Blackbeard taunted
Maynard to come aboard his boat, to which Maynard implied that he would—but
only by force.
“Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters, or take any from you,”
Blackbeard said, taking a swig of liquor. Maynard then said he “expected no
quarters from him, nor should he give him any.”
After pulling close enough to Maynard’s sloop to conduct this conversation,
Johnson reported, Blackbeard’s better-armed boat then launched a salvo of grapeshot—“A
fatal stroke to them!” Twenty men on Maynard’s sloop died, and Blackbeard
presumed the rest of the crew dead. With victory at hand, he and his men boarded the Ranger to finish off the stragglers
and claim the sloop.
But Maynard and his men were not dead—they were hiding on the deck and in the hold and leapt up for close
combat with the pirates. In a melee of swords, daggers and pistols, Maynard’s
men, most of them injured, overwhelmed Blackbeard, leaving him shot five times
and cut 20.
As the pistol smoke settled, Maynard “caused Blackbeard’s head to be severed
from his body,” Johnson wrote. He strung the pirate’s head from the boat’s
bowsprit, where it dangled as the sloop sailed back to Virginia with 14
prisoners. Blackbeard, the scourge of the seas and the Southern Colonies, was
at long last dead on this day in 1718.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OK - that was kind of a grisly end for ol' Captain Teach, but yet another lesson in "crime doesn't pay!" Interestingly, Teach was not the last pirate captured and killed, but he was perhaps, one of the most notorious.
We wish all our American friends, here in the U.S. and abroad, a most happy Thanksgiving and a pleasant time with family and friends.
Yikes! Halfway through November, Thanksgiving (in U.S.) in under two weeks and the year end just 6 weeks away. Can't quite figure out what happened to 2024 - though I am not sorry to put it in the wake. This week's post comes from several sources - Washington Post, FoxNews and NBC as well as the U.S.Navy.
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The wreckage of the USS Edsall, an American warship that was
sunk during a battle with Japanese forces in World
War II, has been discovered more than 80 years after it was lost at the
bottom of the sea, U.S. and Australian officials announced Monday.
The final resting place of the USS Edsall, a Clemson-class
destroyer, was discovered late last year at the bottom of the Indian Ocean,
according to the U.S. Navy and Royal Australian Navy.
"Working in collaboration with the U.S. Navy, the Royal Australian Navy
used advanced robotic and autonomous systems, normally used for hydrographic
survey capabilities, to locate USS Edsall on the sea-bed," Chief of Royal
Australian Navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, said in a statement.
The warship was sunk on March 1, 1942, three months after the attack on
Pearl Harbor, during an encounter with Japanese battleships and dive bombers.
"Captain Joshua Nix and his crew fought valiantly, evading 1,400 shells
from Japanese battleships and cruisers, before being attacked by 26
carrier-dive bombers, taking only one fatal hit. There were no survivors,"
Caroline Kennedy, the U.S.
ambassador to Australia, said in a statement.
Japanese forces spotted the Edsall about 225 miles
south of Christmas Island as the U.S. warship was en route to aid another ship.
Historians have said that the Edsall sustained previous damage that would
prevent it from outrunning any of the Japanese cruisers or battleships.
Put into a "hopeless" position, historians say Nix, in an act of defiance against the
enemy, "chose to make a fight of it," laying a smoke screen and
commencing evasive maneuvers that thwarted the Japanese aim for more than an
hour before being overcome by dive bombers.
Nix’s evasive actions earned the respect of the Japanese, who said the
Edsall performed like a "Japanese dancing mouse," a popular pet in
Japan at the time that was known for its manic movements.
"The commanding officer of Edsall lived up to the U.S. Navy tenet,
‘Don’t give up the ship,’ even when faced with overwhelming odds," Lisa
Franchetti, the U.S. Navy chief of naval operations, said in a statement.
