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Dreadnought Holiday Profile picture
Dreadnought Holiday
@TheDreadShips
Worse things happen at sea. Repeatedly. Emergency lifeboat and muster station @DreadShips@mastodon.me.uk
Kathryn Yeager Profile picture Mark Toner Profile picture Larry McCauley Profile picture 3 subscribed
Jun 9, 2022 • 27 tweets • 10 min read
This thing here, apparently roleplaying as legendary Russian environmental disaster and part-time aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, is Italian submarine Tito Speri.

And to answer the obvious question - yes, that is exactly what it looks like. A submarine with a flamethrower. A submarine pokes its head up above the ocean surface. That bit's entirely normal. The ENORMOUS plume of fire and smoke emitting from it? Yeah, that bit. That bit's very much less normal. Now I could fairly be described as a pyromaniac. I love playing with fire. The list of things I have successfully ignited whilst doing so includes televisions, greenhouses, and my brother in law.

Yet even I will concede that there is no place for a flamethrower on a submarine.
Dec 12, 2021 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
This thing here, caught in an inconvenient photograph during a little embarrassment, is HMS Montagu.

In the finest tradition of British leadership the captain is presumably about to tell us he's as furious as everyone else, and that nobody had told him anything about this. A half-sunken pre-dreadnought battleship (without the ludicrous tumblehome of French examples, but emphatically with the same "covered in glue and rolled through the naval stores" aesthetic topside) alongside some rocks, titled "HMS Montagu ashore at Lundy" and with the printers name. It's also been lightly colourised by the printers Launched in 1901, and commissioned in 1903, Montagu was amongst the Royal Navy's fastest and most modern battleships. In 1906 it was being used for radio trials, a technology that offered the tantalising prospect of hassling subordinates from two oceans away. HMS Montagu, "fully dressed" with signal flags decorating the rigging from stern to stem. The obvious bits to note are the booms for the torpedo nets, the two twelve inch guns forward, and the fact it hasn't yet sunk.
Oct 11, 2021 • 26 tweets • 9 min read
A few weeks ago I asked for nominations of female pioneers and heroes that deserved a thread for #ADL21.

And I'm now going to ignore the lot of you and chat about the hive of badassery that were the female pilots of Britain's Air Transport Auxiliary instead. Five ATA flyers Lettice Curtis, Jenny Broad, Audrey Sale-Barker, Gabrielle Patterson and Pauline Gower in 1942 by an Airspeed Oxford trainer It is an undeniable scientific fact that you could not throw a brick at this lot without hitting someone with an interesting story to tell.

You'd probably also receive the brick back with interest. These women were not here to play. Okay, so this is where my face blindness really sucks. There's clearly Pauline Gower in this staged group shot, but I'm jiggered if I recognise any of the others. They're all climbing out of an Airspeed Oxford (I think - I'm not much better at planes, and oh... wouldn't you rather follow a more competent account?)
May 22, 2021 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
*record scratch*
*freeze frame*

You're probably wondering how we got into this situation... In 1923, Captain Edward H Watson of the US Navy had the unexpected honour of discovering California.

The inevitable court martial didn't quite describe it in those terms. Official US Navy photograph of - and captioned - Cdr Edward H Watson, USN 1915. He's a typical WWI US naval captain, looking smart and - possibly - slightly embarrassed to be posing for an official photograph.
Aug 16, 2020 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
It occurs to me that some of you might not have got the joke here... Ooh, look! Alt text! You're about to see the words "old ship" a lot. Photo of Turbinia passing the Royal Navy at speed, labelled in the style of an Ikea catalogue. Turbinia has been labelled "Arshol" in mock Swedish. Yes, I am childish. This account generally specialises in failure, but I will happily throw everything out the window for Turbinia.

It might look like a scale model but it is utterly, gloriously beautiful at speed. Turbinia at speed in 1897. This boat is shifting some, but check out the bloke leaning casually against the railings.