Word: fleetly
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...because I think your dirty digs at Vice Admiral Hepburn are entirely uncalled for, misleading and spiteful. . . . Any fool can readily see the innuendo in the first paragraph of the article. Vice Admiral Hepburn does not owe his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet in any degree to the fact that the President and the Secretary of the Navy are old acquaintances of his, as it appears to me you have clearly insinuated. Their knowledge of his absolute fitness for the job no doubt may have influenced them in approving recommendation made by Navy men to appoint...
...quietly, observantly in Japan. Stranded in San Francisco, he shipped aboard a windjammer, worked his 20,000-mile passage around Cape Horn to Liverpool. The World War took him as a private, left him a gassed officer. After the Armistice he went back to journalism. Last Christmas he left Fleet Street for good, went to the country to write more books...
...horribly, while after a dozen the back looked like 'so much putrefied liver.' After a time the bones showed through, blood burst from the bitten tongue and lips of the victim, and, expelled from his lungs, dribbled through his nostrils and ears. ... To be flogged through the Fleet to the tune of the 'Rogue's March' meant almost certain death, if not on the spot, a few days later; and on being sentenced to this fiendish punishment, an offender was usually offered the choice of being hanged. A severe flogging smashed...
...food, low pay and brutal officers were undermining the Fleet's morale, though the Admiralty was woodenly unaware. England was at war with France, Holland and Spain; it was no time to talk about grievances or reforms. When the Admiralty received identical petitions from eleven ships' crews of the Channel Fleet, it did not even acknowledge them. By the time the authorities woke to the fact that trouble was brewing, it was too late. They ordered the Fleet to sea; it stayed where it was. Less mutineers than strikers, the sailors respectfully but firmly took over their ships...
Fired by the news of the Channel Fleet's feat, the North Sea Fleet at the Nore next tried to organize a strike of its own. Captain William Bligh, once of the Bounty, now of the Director, was one of the first officers to be put ashore. More aimless and violent than the Spithead mutiny, this "floating republic" made the mistake of threatening a Government that had just made all the concessions it felt like making. When the Admiralty tried to starve them out by cutting off their supplies, the mutineers retaliated by trying to blockade the Port...