Threedecks Forum

I have never seen any references to Spanish navy galleys in the West Indies. There are numerous detailed studies of the shipyard at Havana, more comprehensive than Harbron: no galleys were built there, period. Note that the term "galley" was used outside the Baltic and Mediterranean for sa...

I hope Steve Silver comes back to check for additional replies. It would have been highly impractical to follow a "direct" route from anywhere in England to Halifax. The winds in the northern temperate latitudes are from the west. A straight line from England to Nova Scotia is somewhat sou...

The picture itself and more information would help. When is this mystery ship "said to have sailed" the Bay of Fundy. Who "said" this? Where is this said: in a caption to an illustration in a book? (title, author, and publication date?) in a blog or on some other website? (URL?) ...

The Honourable East India Company didn't trade to the West Indies, so your ancestor did not start out in the company. "Before the mast" means he was a common seaman, perhaps at first an entirely unskilled "landsman." The West Indies trade in the late 18th century was still concen...

There might be some information in The Spanish Official Account of the Attack on the Colony of Georgia, in America, and of Its Defeat on St. Simons Island , Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, Vol. 7, Part 3 (Savannah: Georgia Historical Society, 1913), concerning a Spanish attack in 1742...

"-en" in the Scandinavian languages (well, I don't know about Faeroese or Icelandic, but in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian) is a "definite" suffix or "enclitic definite article," so "Nidingen" just means "The Niding." Although the English are notorio...

You should be able to find the commanders of Chesterfield in the "Ships" section of this site. Winfield says that she was commanded by Captain William Lloyd from July 1755 and by Captain Challoner Ogle from 1757. You can look those two officers up in the "People" section. Note th...

It looks like Hervey's patrons in London designated him for a promotion from a sixth to a third rate. Knight was only a commander; his promotion to post rank depended on the appointment to Phœnix . Charnock says he shortly removed to Arundel , presumably to secure his promotion while not overriding ...

Hervey's journal was published in 1953; that ought to settle the matter: David Erskine, ed., Augustus Hervey's journal : being the intimate account of the life of a captain in the Royal Navy ashore and afloat, 1746-1759 ( London : W. Kimber, 1953). Hervey is also described as captain of Phoenix by D...

It's not just Chris Ware. Dudley Pope, At Twelve Mr. Byng Was Shot (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1962) has numerous references to Hervey, too many to check out, but on p. 159 he writes, "He was not particularly pleased when Byng told him … [he] could take over command of the Defiance ...