Mary Rose
Built between 1509 and 1511, the Mary Rose was one of the first ships able to fire a broadside. King Henry VIII, described her as, “the fairest flower of all the ships that ever sailed”. The ship marked the transition between the medieval ‘floating castles’ and the sleeker galleons. On July 19 1545, The heavily laden Mary Rose heeled over in a squall of wind and rapidly capsized, water pouring into the lower gun ports. She went down with more than 90 guns on her decks and only 40 of her 700 crew survived. Salvage work started the same year the great warship sank, raising some guns, yards and sails, but was halted by 1550
The Mary Rose was finally raised in 1982 after 437 years at the bottom of the Solent. A cannon was fired from the ramparts of Southsea Castle to signal the historic moment. Since then over 10,000 well-preserved items have been excavated including weapons, clothes and even a backgammon set. The Mary Rose now forms part of a museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
As a BTW, my middle names happen to be Mary Rose. Hubby keeps telling me I'm an old wreck so now I can tell him I'm the the "fairest flower of all the . . . er . . . seas" heh heh
Titanic
The Titanic is the world's most famous shipwreck. The White Star Line steamer sank on her maiden voyage in 1912. The Titanic boasted a gymnasium, swimming pools, a squash court and Turkish baths. At 11.40pm on 14 April 1912, the Titanic’s lookout rang the bell three times and said, “Iceberg right ahead”. The Titanic's remains were discovered after a long search in 1985, since then several expeditions have returned to the site and explored the wreck.
Can you ever think of Titanic now withour hearing Celine Dion singing in the back of your head? :rolleyes:
Lusitania
Sailing from New York to Liverpool, the pride of the Cunard fleet, Lusitania, nicknamed ‘the greyhound of the seas’, was sunk by a German torpedo off the Old Head of Kinsale, Southern Ireland on Friday 7th May, 1915. Shortly after 2:10 pm on Friday 7 May 1915, Lusitania was hit without warning by a torpedo fired by the German Submarine U-20. She sank in a matter of 20 minutes and 1,201 men, women and children were lost. Of these fatalities, 128 were American citizens.
Bismarck
The Bismarck was the pride of the German navy. Described by Winston Churchill as, "a terrific ship and a masterpiece of naval construction," she was the length of three football fields. However, the maiden voyage of this German warship was short-lived. In May 1941, after an eight-day chase in the Atlantic, Bismarck succumbed to attack from the British in one of the most dramatic sea battles of the war. Crippled by heavy enemy fire, Bismarck tumbled and slid to a halt on a steep undersea mountain. Only 115 of the 2,200 crew survived. In 1989, Dr Robert D Ballard and his team finally found Bismarck's remains.
Belgrano
The sinking of the warship Belgrano is one of the most dramatic and controversial events of the Falklands War. On May 2 1982, HMS Conqueror, the British nuclear submarine, fired two torpedoes at the Argentine warship, General Belgrano. Some 300 men were killed on impact.
Although I personally think one of the most dramatic and controversial events of the Falklands War was Simon Weston who was appallingly badly burned over 50 per cent of his body when his ship, the Sir Galahad, was hit by an Argentine missile. It was something of a miracle that he survived. His face melted in the heat. He lost an ear and part of the other one, part of his nose, and he has no eyelids. His legs in shorts were bright purple with burns. His hands were clawed and rigid with some fingers missing. yet there he was, full of jokes and energetic self-confidence.
(Polly Toynbee guardian.co.uk, Monday October 11 1982 15:16 BST )
Today the military awards are announced for valour in the Falklands campaign. Tomorrow the Falklands victory parade wends its triumphal way from Armoury House to the Guildhall, flags waving, crowds cheering, everything but the defeated General Galtieri in chains.
Meanwhile, one man who will not be there is Welsh Guardsman Simon Weston. He will be there in spirit, one hundred per cent, but he will be down at the Army's rehabilitation centre at Chessington learning to use his hands again.
He was one of the Welsh Guardsmen trapped in the tank deck of the Sir Galahad at Bluff Cove when it was hit by an Argentine missile. Twenty-two men from his own platoon of 30 were burned to death. Another seven were badly burned, and only one man escaped unhurt.
A giant fireball flashed through the deck. "A red alert went. We hit the deck and I saw this great orange and red streak. Trouble was, I watched, and didn't protect my face. Three lads next to me were in flames. I didn't feel a thing, just a rush of hot air in my throat." He says it took him about 15 seconds to get out. "I moved so fast. A Marine sergeant pushed me up the stairs and I kept on going till I got out. I saw a lot of bodies on fire, burning all over."
He was put into a landing craft. "Medics gave me some jabs. I was in a bad way. They cut the clothes off me. It didn't hurt much. You see, I was burned so bad that my nerve endings had gone, so I didn't feel it, though my legs, which weren't so bad, were a bit sore." He goes in for a lot of understatement.
"When I got to the medical post I began to go into shock. I was seeing bodies all around me. There were a lot anyway. Some people were having trachecotomies on the spot. It was all operating tables and bodies and I started to panic. They knocked me out pretty quick as I was shouting and frightening the others.
When he came round he was lying on a stretcher next to another man, who has since become a firm friend.
"He was lying next to me. He leant over and was sick all over me. That's how we met," he says, laughing.
He's a great one for jokes. He has become a kind of walking mascot at the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital in Woolwich. His cheeriness defies belief.
I met him in a corridor in the hospital, bounding along, accompanied by a nurse, on his way to being transported to Chessington. He was appallingly badly burned over 50 per cent of his body. It was something of a miracle that he survived. His face melted in the heat. He lost an ear and part of the other one, part of his nose, and he has no eyelids. His legs in shorts were bright purple with burns. His hands were clawed and rigid with some fingers missing. yet there he was, full of jokes and energetic self-confidence. The brigadier who was showing me round greeted him warmly and introduced him to me. He told his story almost as if all this had happened to somebody else.
"When a doctor came to see me at first he said: 'God, you're ugly.' I said to him, 'you're looking pretty ugly too.' I had a terrible thirst. I was saying to people that I'd swap my family for a cold can of Coke."
The brigadier explained that burns victims often die of dehydration as they lose so much liquid from the weeping of their burns. It was the promptness of the setting up of drips on the beach which saved many of their lives.
"I was pretty cheerful at first," the guardsman says. The brigadier told how when he first saw his face his only response was, "Oh, oh, you've got a lot of work to do on that."
Guardsman Weston says, however, that he did become deeply depressed in the last stages of his journey home on board the hospital ship Uganda. "They kept telling me I could go home, and then that I couldn't. Then I got septicaemia. I wanted to be flown back, but they kept me. A surgeon on board saved my eyesight."
He describes his first bath. "No one could pick me up as they didn't know where to hold me. Then I just decided to get up and get in the bath myself. I won three cans of cider and a pack of cigarettes for that. I felt better afterwards.
When the Uganda docked, he was flown in a Chinook helicopter to the burns unit at Woolwich. "They rushed me upstairs when I got here," he says. "I'd stuck to the stretcher."
Later he was allowed home to Nelson, in Wales, for his 21st birthday. "The whole village came out to see me. It was magic, a magic time. The pain subsided after I went home. I felt better. The nerve endings had been growing back and I'd been getting a lot of pain. I'd been a bit delirious at times."
He says he has been promised that he can stay in the Army. "I'm going back to my mortar platoon and my mates," he says with complete confidence. He jokes that he can just move one hand enough to hold a beer glass. "I'll be back in the rugby team next year." Then he added, "I think about the 22 lads killed in my platoon. I think how sad it is they didn't get the chance to prove themselves. They all wanted to fight, but they never got the chance.
"I did feel bitterness at one time. Why me? Why this and why that? But it was a must, this war. Lives were lost, and I'm sorry, but dictators must be stopped. No two ways about it. We can't let dictators rule the world."
He was even cheerful about the state of his face. "They say beauty's in the eyes of the beholder, don't they? Well, I'm beautiful, I was beautiful before and I'm beautiful now." He's famous around the hospital wards for repeating that phrase.
Name 5 well-known islands
