The fire on the Wharves of Algiers, shortly after the commencement of the Bombardment by the Anglo-Dutch Fleet, 27 August 1816, by Nicolaas Baur, 1816 - 1820

The Bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816

by George Chambers

1676 – Michiel de Ruyter, Date of Death

Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter (IPA: [miˈxil ˈaːdrijaːnˌsoːn də ˈrœytər]; 24 March 1607 – 29 April 1676) was a Dutch admiral. His achievements with the Dutch Navy during the Anglo-Dutch Wars earned him the reputation as one of the most skilled naval commanders in history.

De Ruyter was named lieutenant admiral and commander of the Dutch fleet at the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1665, and in 1666 he won a hard-fought victory in the Four Days' Battle in the southern North Sea. 

Continuing his fight against the French, De Ruyter was fatally wounded by a cannonball at the Battle of Augusta off Sicily in 1676, and died a week later in Syracuse. His body was brought back to Amsterdam, where he was accorded a state funeral and interred in the Nieuwe Kerk.

The Great Fire of London - Josepha Jane Battlehooke

The Great Fire of London swept through central London from Sunday, 2 September to Thursday, 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief.

The fire started in a bakery shortly after midnight on Sunday, 2 September, and spread rapidly. The use of the major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of demolition, was critically delayed due to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth. By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fears of the homeless focused on the French and Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War; these substantial immigrant groups became victims of street violence. On Tuesday, the fire spread over nearly the whole City, destroying St Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II's court at Whitehall. Coordinated firefighting efforts were simultaneously getting underway. The battle to put out the fire is considered to have been won by two key factors: the strong east wind dropped, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks, halting further spread eastward.

The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan which still exists today.

Animation Night 114 - Joann Sfar

So. Hello everyone! Welcome back to Animation Night.

In the misty olden days of Animation Night, back on #11, we held a night on French animation. On that day we were going to watch The Rabbi’s Cat, directed Joann Sfar. But, unfortunately, the torrent gods were not kind enough to grant me seeds, and so we didn’t get the chance.

But in the time since, it seems a seed managed to log on! So we can finally see what we missed...

Joann Sfar, then! Sfar is a French comics writer and artist, of the major figures of a ‘new wave’ of bandes desinées in the mid-2000s. He’s got quite a set of parents: his mother Lilou was an Ashkenazi-Jewish pop singer from Ukraine, and his father André Sfar a Sefardi-Jewish lawyer from Algeria who spent his career taking down neonazis.

And if that’s not enough, Lilou died when Joann was just three years old, so he was raised by André along with Lilou’s own father, a Ukrainian military doctor who during WWII was able to save the injured right hand of the novelist André Malraux, author of La Condition humaine (known in English as Man’s Fate) and thereby secure himself French citizenship. This information I’m just copying from Wikipedia, but it seems to be sourced from interviews with Sfar.

All this is relevant, because Sfar channels a lot of his life into his works. The Rabbi’s Cat in particular draws on his father’s life in Algeria, in the 1920s when Algeria was a French colony (forty years before Algeria would secure its independence).

A brief word on the background to this: by 1830, Algeria had been controlled for hundreds of years by the Ottoman empire, during which period it enjoyed more or less independence, sometimes even having wars with other Ottoman subjects. It was one of several homes of the ‘Barbary pirates’, who attacked European towns and ships primarily to take slaves.

It seems that these ‘pirates’ were continuous with the state, with the ruler’s title of Dey established by the corsair captains in 1671, and recognised by the Ottomans as regent from 1710, taxing a countryside ruled by ‘autonomous tribal states’ (a phrase due to Helen Chapan Metz, whose Algeria: A Country Study seems to have been paraphrased to make the Wikipedia article.)

Despite many Deys getting assassinated, this arrangement remained stable and lasted up into the 19th century. Gradually, though, the European powers started to win the naval wars: the Spanish leveled the city of Algiers in 1784, the US defeated the Ottoman Algerians twice in the early 1800s, and then an Anglo-Dutch fleet showed up in 1816 to bombard Algiers again. Finally, the French invaded in the 1830s, taking first Algiers and then gradually the rest of the country by 1875 and killing ‘approximately 825,000’ indigenous Algerians in the process through ‘scorched earth’ warfare and resulting disease, reducing the population by around a third.

After the end of the war, thousands of French and European settlers moved into Algeria, and the French ran a program of forced assimilation, while confiscating communal land from the ‘tribal peoples’ for the private benefit of European settlers, while suppressing the native Muslim population. Eventually, following the end of WWII, Algeria would throw off French rule after a brutal war in which they faced concentration camps, rape, torture and arbitrary, gruesome executions, a period famously written about by Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth; all of this proved a terrible way to control a population and the Algerians fought back hard, until the French begrudgingly accepted Algerian independence in 1962. Since then, the country has mostly been ruled by the FLN, the primary nationalist party.

This story takes place roughly in the middle of French rule, during the 1920s. The premise is that a cat belonging to a Sefardi rabbi eats a parrot, gaining the ability to speak; deploring the cat’s behaviour and sarcasm, the rabbi decides he ought to teach the cat Torah, which throws open a theological can of worms.

So, more historical background! Jews in Algeria during the period of French colonisation were allowed to gain French citizenship while Muslims were not, putting them in the awkward (and perhaps all too familiar) position of go-between for colonisers and colonised and potential scapegoat. During the war for independence, the FLN appealed to Jews to side with them, but a large part of the Jewish population sided with the French instead; after the war, only three-generation Muslims were given Algerian citizenship and almost all the Jewish population of Algeria fled to France, André Sfar presumably among them. So that’s the background inflecting Joann’s life; by the time he was born in 1971, the war was over, and all of this he could only hear second hand.

The Rabbi’s Cat began life as a comic book series which ran from 2002-2006, went on hiatus, and then resumed in 2015 with near-annual releases up until 2021. I haven’t read it, but you can read a brief review of it here.

So now we come to the actual animated film, created by Sfar’s own Autochenille Production, a company founded in 2007 to make “author-driven, challenging films to appeal to children and adults” named after a car that features in The Rabbi’s Cat. It is funded by multiple French TV networks; I would not be surprised if it also had a bunch of government arts council funding like the vast majority of European animated films. It dropped at - where else? - Annecy in 2011, and duly won the award.

Of its production, most information is only available in French, but luckily the MTL is pretty good. Sfar had been bombarded with offers to adapt his comic, refusing all of them; he only thought of directing it himself when his editors asked him why. He was accompanied by two more experienced directors of animated films, Clément Oubrerie and Antoine Delesvaux, and brought in a lot of younger animators such as the ‘band of little geniuses’ Hugo Ferrandez, Grégory Elbaz, Gabriel Schemoul and Agnès Maupré with fine arts backgrounds, plus a couple of experienced animators in Jean-Christophe Dessaint and ‘Zyk’ who I believe helped with shooting video reference.

The animation process involved shooting a lot of live action reference footage with pre-voicing; their inspiration went back to early Disney (Animation Night 84) and Fleischer (briefly discussed Animation Night 21). Of Fleischer, Sfar says (google translation):

"Leurs dessins animés ne s'adressaient pas qu'aux enfants, raconte Sfar. On y voyait des histoires d'amour, des voyous, des vraies bizarreries. Le studio Fleischer était très cosmopolite, un mélange d'immigrés juifs et italiens. Toutes leurs musiques étaient faites par la crème des jazzmen noirs. Plus quelques vrais truands parmi les bailleurs de fonds."

"Their cartoons weren't just for children, says Sfar. We saw love stories, thugs, real oddities. The Fleischer studio was very cosmopolitan, a mixture of Jewish and Italian immigrants. All their music was made by the cream of black jazzmen. Plus a few real mobsters among the backers."

Visually, he had ambitions: in contrast to Persepolis, clearly a big inspiration, he wanted to do something ‘truly cinematic’ with ‘great spaces, depth of field’ inspired by Fritz Lang, Fellini and del Toro. Sfar had directed one film before this in live action, but this was his first time in animation. Not that you’d know it: a quick scan through shows the film is full of nice little subtle bits of character acting, and the backgrounds have an unusual style that takes after the comics in using flat shading, thin black lines and hatching.

It doesn’t always quite work (scenes of perfectly static water ripples are especially odd), but it’s certainly distinctive.

Narratively, the film goes through a series of episodes, eventually turning on the Rabbi, his cat and a Soviet painter going out on an expedition into the desert intending to find a country of Jews in Ethiopia. Reviews particularly speak of the film’s illustration of kinship between Jewish and Arab people; they are sometimes critical of the plot’s meandering but generally come out to praise the film. And it comes with a friend’s recommendation as well, so I’m looking forward to it a lot.

It seems to be Sfar’s only animated film, sadly. He was a producer on Aya of Yop City, another autobiographical comic-based film directed by Ivorian author Maruerite Aboute and Clément Oubrerie; a big step up for French animation set in Africa insofar as its director is actually African (*looks sternly at Kirikou*). Unfortunately, I have not been able to track down a copy of this film.

Then, to round out our program, we have a little oddity from 2014: a package film that brings together renowned independent animators from across the world. That film is The Prophet, adapted from the 1923 book of mystic parables by the Lebanese-American poet and writer, Kahlil Gibran. The film is the passion project of actress Salma Hayek, directed by The Lion King director Roger Allers; it comprises a unifying CG story about the meeting of a young girl and a too-good-for-this-world poet, framing a series of short musical sequences based on Gibran’s poems, each one directed by a well-known independent animator in their characteristic style.

Of the list, then, one is Sfar (hence the inclusion in this night). Others include the brilliant Tomm Moore of Cartoon Saloon (Animation Night 14, Animation Night 49) and Bill Plympton who we met a few weeks ago (Animation Night 112), as well as Mohammed Saeed Harib from the UAE, creator of the FREEJ series, and Paul and Gaetan Brizzi, a pair of twins who have both worked together on French animation such as Asterix vs Caesari and Babar before joining Disney in 1990 and working there for several decades during the ‘renaissance’ period. With such a diverse and talented set of animators on board, how could it possibly go wrong?

Unfortunately, the last inclusion is... more of a problem for me. Nina Paley is an independent animator and copyleft proponent known for her two religious satire films Sita Sings the Blues and Seder-Masochism... and also an active TERF, like, and I don’t mean this in the sense of ‘said some nasty things once or twice’ but like, ‘outspoken proponent of the “gender critical” hate-cult movement’. She’s one of those people in the open source movement who just seem to think that, after making a few breaks from the social dogma, they have everything figured out, and then immediately take a massive shit on some other group of people. And it inflects her movies too; Seder-Masochism is a gender-essentialist fable all about how patriarchal authority covered up the good wholesome womens’ version of Judaism, which is hard to swallow with the TERF thing running under the surface. So as far as I’m concerned, she can fully fuck right off; I will show some films by some pretty dubious people but this one’s personal lmao; don’t expect to ever see Animation Night: Nina Paley.

On top of that, we can add the casting of Liam Neeson as the voice of the poet. To be fair, when this film came out, Neeson’s bizarre racist diatribe had yet to happen, but his voice just sounds glaringly awful in the role of ‘the poet’, the intonation of an American reading out quotes in a civ game. It sounds bad enough that I went looking for a copy of the French dub, without success. The trailer ends with him going ‘my crime? poetry.’ in a voice like we’re supposed to go oooooh, how could they and not just burst out laughing. I went looking for the French dub as more likely to be bearable, but I can only find it in English.

So the production seems like kind of a mess. What I might do is just like, fast forward the framing story and show only the guest segments, since they’re really the only reason I’m interested in this thing in the first place. Still, it is the only other piece of Sfar animation I have to hand, and I do think there is likely to be some gorgeous animation in those guest segments.

And that’s about all I have time to write. Animation Night 114 will begin at around 8pm UK time, around 4 hours from this post, at picarto.tv/canmom - until then I will be working on my Chroma Corps character, so please feel free to drop by!

The Spanish Armada

The Spanish Armada was an enormous 130-ship naval fleet dispatched by Spain in 1588 as part of a planned invasion of England. Following years of hostilities between Spain and England, King Philip II of Spain assembled the flotilla in the hope of removing Protestant Queen Elizabeth I from the throne and restoring the Roman Catholic faith in England. Spain’s “Invincible Armada” set sail that May, but it was outfoxed by the English, then battered by storms while limping back to Spain with at least a third of its ships sunk or damaged. The defeat of the Spanish Armada led to a surge of national pride in England and was one of the most significant chapters of the Anglo-Spanish War. 

King Philip II’s decision to attempt an overthrow of Queen Elizabeth I was several years in the making. Despite their family connections—Philip had once been married to Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary—the two royals had severe political and religious differences and had engaged in a “cold war” for much of the 1560s and 1570s. Philip was particularly incensed by the spread of Protestantism in England, and he had long toyed with the idea of conquering the British Isle to bring it back into the Catholic fold. Tensions between Spain and England flared in the 1580s, after Elizabeth began allowing privateers such as Sir Francis Drake to conduct pirate raids on Spanish fleets carrying treasure from their rich New World colonies. By 1585, when England signed a treaty of support with Dutch rebels in the Spanish-controlled Netherlands, a state of undeclared war existed between the two powers. That same year, Philip began formulating an “Enterprise of England” to remove Elizabeth from the throne. 

The Spanish Armada was a naval force of about 130 ships, plus some 8,000 seamen and an estimated 18,000 soldiers manning thousands of guns. Roughly 40 of the ships were warships. The Spanish plan called for this “Great and Most Fortunate Navy” to sail from Lisbon, Portugal, to Flanders, where it would rendezvous with 30,000 crack troops led by the Duke of Parma, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands. The fleet would then guard the army as it was ferried across the English Channel to the Kent coast to begin an overland offensive against London. It was impossible for Spain to hide the preparations for a fleet as large as the Armada, and by 1587, Elizabeth’s spies and military advisors knew an invasion was in the works. That April, the Queen authorized Francis Drake to make a preemptive strike against the Spanish. After sailing from Plymouth with a small fleet, Drake launched a surprise raid on the Spanish port of Cadiz and destroyed several dozen of the Armada’s ships and over 10,000 tons of supplies. The “singeing of the king of Spain’s beard,” as Drake’s attack was known in England, was later credited with delaying the launch of the Armada by several months. The English used the time bought by the raid on Cadiz to shore up their defenses and prepare for invasion. Elizabeth’s forces built trenches and earthworks on the most likely invasion beaches, strung a giant metal chain across the Thames estuary and raised an army of militiamen. They also readied an early warning system consisting of dozens of coastal beacons that would light fires to signal the approach of the Spanish fleet. 

Led by Drake and Lord Charles Howard, the Royal Navy assembled a fleet of some 40 warships and several dozen armed merchant vessels. Unlike the Spanish Armada, which planned to rely primarily on boarding and close-quarters fighting to win battles at sea, the English flotilla was heavily armed with long-range naval guns. In May 1588, after several years of preparation, the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon under the command of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. When the 130-ship fleet was sighted off the English coast later that July, Howard and Drake raced to confront it with a force of 100 English vessels. The English fleet and the Spanish Armada met for the first time on July 31, 1588, off the coast of Plymouth. Relying on the skill of their gunners, Howard and Drake kept their distance and tried to bombard the Spanish flotilla with their heavy naval cannons. While they succeeded in damaging some of the Spanish ships, they were unable to penetrate the Armada’s half-moon defensive formation. 

Over the next several days, the English continued to harass the Spanish Armada as it charged toward the English Channel. The two sides squared off in a pair of naval duels near the coasts of Portland Bill and the Isle of Wight, but both battles ended in stalemates. By August 6, the Armada had successfully dropped anchor at Calais Roads on the coast of France, where Medina-Sidonia hoped to rendezvous with the Duke of Parma’s invasion army. Desperate to prevent the Spanish from uniting their forces, Howard and Drake devised a last-ditch plan to scatter the Armada. At midnight on August 8, the English set eight empty vessels ablaze and allowed the wind and tide to carry them toward the Spanish fleet hunkered at Calais Roads. The sudden arrival of the fireships caused a wave of panic to descend over the Armada. Several vessels cut their anchors to avoid catching fire, and the entire fleet was forced to flee to the open sea. With the Armada out of formation, the English initiated a naval offensive at dawn on August 8. In what became known as the Battle of Graveline's, the Royal Navy inched perilously close to the Spanish fleet and unleashed repeated salvos of cannon fire. Several of the Armada’s ships were damaged and at least four were destroyed during the nine-hour engagement, but despite having the upper hand, Howard and Drake were forced to prematurely call off the attack due to dwindling supplies of shot and powder. 

With the Spanish Armada threatening invasion at any moment, English troops gathered near the coast at Tilbury in Essex to ward off a land attack. Queen Elizabeth herself was in attendance and - dressed in military regalia and a white velvet gown - she gave a rousing speech to her troops, one that is often cited as among the most inspiring speeches ever written and delivered by a sovereign leader: "I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field." Shortly after the Battle of Graveline's, a strong wind carried the Armada into the North Sea, dashing the Spaniards’ hopes of linking up with the Duke of Parma’s army. With supplies running low and disease beginning to spread through his fleet, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia resolved to abandon the invasion mission and return to Spain by rounding Scotland and Ireland. The Spanish Armada had lost over 2,000 men during its naval engagements with the English, but its journey home proved to be far more deadly. The once-mighty flotilla was ravaged by sea storms as it rounded Scotland and the western coast of Ireland. Several ships sank in the squalls, while others ran aground or broke apart after being thrown against the shore. 

By the time the “Great and Most Fortunate Navy” finally reached Spain in the autumn of 1588, it had lost as many as 60 of its 130 ships and suffered some 15,000 deaths. The vast majority of the Spanish Armada’s losses were caused by disease and foul weather, but its defeat was nevertheless a triumphant military victory for England. By fending off the Spanish fleet, the island nation saved itself from invasion and won recognition as one of Europe’s most fearsome sea powers. The clash also established the superiority of heavy cannons in naval combat, signaling the dawn of a new era in warfare at sea. While the Spanish Armada is now remembered as one of history’s great military blunders, it didn’t mark the end of the conflict between England and Spain. In 1589, Queen Elizabeth launched a failed “English Armada” against Spain. 

King Philip II, meanwhile, later rebuilt his fleet and dispatched two more Spanish Armadas in the 1590s, both of which were scattered by storms. It wasn’t until 1604—over 16 years after the original Spanish Armada set sail—that a peace treaty was finally signed ending the Anglo-Spanish War as a stalemate. 

Events 2.18 (before 1940)

1229 – The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, signs a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy. 1268 – The Battle of Wesenberg is fought between the Livonian Order and Dovmont of Pskov. 1332 – Amda Seyon I, Emperor of Ethiopia begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim provinces. 1478 – George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is executed in private at the Tower of London. 1637 – Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepts an important Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by six warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them. 1735 – The ballad opera called Flora, or Hob in the Well went down in history as the first opera of any kind to be produced in North America (Charleston, S.C.) 1781 – Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: Captain Thomas Shirley opens his expedition against Dutch colonial outposts on the Gold Coast of Africa (present-day Ghana). 1791 – Congress passes a law admitting the state of Vermont to the Union, effective 4 March, after that state had existed for 14 years as a de facto independent largely unrecognized state. 1797 – French Revolutionary Wars: Sir Ralph Abercromby and a fleet of 18 British warships invade Trinidad. 1814 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Montereau. 1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America. 1861 – With Italian unification almost complete, Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumes the title of King of Italy. 1873 – Bulgarian revolutionary leader Vasil Levski is executed by hanging in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities. 1878 – John Tunstall is murdered by outlaw Jesse Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico. 1885 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States. 1900 – Second Boer War: Imperial forces suffer their worst single-day loss of life on Bloody Sunday, the first day of the Battle of Paardeberg. 1906 – Édouard de Laveleye forms the Belgian Olympic Committee in Brussels. 1911 – The first official flight with airmail takes place from Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (now India), when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away. 1915 – U-boat Campaign: The Imperial German Navy institutes unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters around Great Britain and Ireland. 1930 – While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto. 1930 – Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft. 1932 – The Empire of Japan creates the independent state of Manzhouguo (the obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) free from the Republic of China and installed former Chinese Emperor Aisin Gioro Puyi as Chief Executive of the State. 1938 – Second Sino-Japanese War: During the Nanking Massacre, the Nanking Safety Zone International Committee is renamed "Nanking International Rescue Committee", and the safety zone in place for refugees falls apart.

Great fire of London

The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the wall to the west. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief.

The fire started in a bakery in Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September, and spread rapidly. The use of the major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of removing structures in the fire's path, was critically delayed due to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth. By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fears of the homeless focused on the French and Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War; these substantial immigrant groups became victims of street violence. On Tuesday, the fire spread over nearly the whole City, destroying St Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II's court at Whitehall. Coordinated firefighting efforts were simultaneously getting underway. The battle to put out the fire is considered to have been won by two key factors: the strong east wind dropped, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks, halting further spread eastward.

The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan which still exists today.

Navy pilot survived Great Escape Camp Long March

After three months of harsh winter weather, and after being bombed by the RAF, Howard reached Wulmenau, a village in northern Germany, where he wrote to his fiancée, Bernadette Taylor: “British tanks caught us today, 2 May at 11.40 and the infantry must Be here this afternoon. Oh, gods, what a day of joy and gladness – cheers and wild waving – all of us, English, Americans, Poles, Russians, Dutch, French – all shout into the stormy sky.” And a week later he sent a telegram: Home today. See you soon.” They married on June 2, 1945. Charles Vivien Howard was born in Hartlepool on November 11, 1919 and raised in Greatham, Co Durham, where his father was the principal of a local elementary school. He won a scholarship at Henry Smith Grammar School in Hartlepool and his first job, in 1937, was in the research laboratories of ICI Billingham, a methanol plant. As the war approached, his father advised him to join the Royal Navy and train as a pilot. RAF officers were captured in Stalag Luft III, 1944. Hence 76 prisoners of war made a freedom break, which served as the inspiration for the war film The Great Escape.attributed to him:GT He learned to fly Tiger Moth biplanes at Elmdon, now Birmingham International Airport, and was on a weekend getaway from there, “Fun to Blackpool,” where he met his future wife. He received his pilot’s wings in May 1940. After the war, Howard agreed to a permanent commission in the Navy and was based in Cauldrose, in Cornwall, for several years, flying the Seafires, Sea Furies, and, in the new age of aircraft, Sea Vampires and Meteors. In early 1956, he commanded 830 Naval Air Squadron at RNAS Ford, Sussex, where he flew the Westland Wyvern, the largest single-seater propeller-powered aircraft of a British airline. The squadron embarked on the aircraft carrier Eagle for Operation Cavalry, the Anglo-French intervention during the Suez Crisis. The 16th Squadron’s planes became the only ones engaged in combat by Wyvern when Howard led the first wave, on 1 November, to attack Egyptian airfields near the Suez Canal. They drew two or three sorties a day until work was suspended. Vivian Howard with his wife Bernadette and son, also Vivian. He said, “It was a very small area to operate [in] A few days later we were competing for the same goals with other aircraft from the British and French carriers. It was like Piccadilly Circus. We often encountered the Egyptian Air Force with their MiGs. It was an exciting time.” Two aircraft were lost, and Howard was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for Valiant and Distinguished Services in the Near East from October to December 1956. In 1960, Howard took a helicopter induction course before being appointed advisor to the commanding general, Far Eastern Fleet. He spent two years in the Defense Policy Staff at Whitehall and was the British Naval Attaché in Bonn from 1973 to 1975. He spent 10 years working as an engineer before retiring entirely at his home in Mollington, Oxfordshire. His wife Vivian Howard died, and he is survived by a son and two daughters. The Telegraph, London. Source link Originally published at Melbourne News Vine

The Bombardment of Algiers was an attempt on 27 August 1816 by Britain and the Netherlands to end the slavery practices of Omar Agha, the Dey of Algiers. An Anglo-Dutch fleet under the command of Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth bombarded ships and the harbour defences of Algiers.

There was a continuing campaign by various European navies and the American navy to suppress the piracy against Europeans by the North African Barbary states. The specific aim of this expedition, however, was to free Christian slaves and to stop the practice of enslaving Europeans. To this end, it was partially successful, as the Dey of Algiers freed around 3,000 slaves following the bombardment and signed a treaty against the slavery of Europeans. However, this practice did not end completely until the French conquest of Algeria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers_(1816)

The Battle of Lagos on 27 June 1693, by Jean Antoine Theodore Gudin (1802-1880)

The Battle of Texel 1673 by Jan de Quelery

Bay of Algiers


The Anglo-Dutch fleet in the Bay of Algiers, which thrived on an economy of piracy in the 17th century. Painting by Nicolaas Baur (1818). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Four Days Battle 1666

The Battle of Four Days, also known as the Battle of Four Days in some English sources and how Vierdaagse Zeeslg in Dutch, was a naval battle of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Fought from 1 June to 4 June 1666 in the Julian or old-style calendar which was later used in England, in the southern North Sea, it began off the Flemish coast and ended near the English coast. It remains one of the longest naval engagements in history. The Dutch accounts referred to his dates from 11 June to 14 June 1666 using the New Style calendar. The Dutch inflicted significant damage on the English fleet, which lost ten ships in total, with over 1,000 men killed, including two vice admirals, Sir Christopher Myngs and Sir William Berkeley, and nearly 2,000 British were taken prisoner including a third deputy admiral, George Ayscue. The Dutch casualties were four ships destroyed by fire and over 1,550 men killed, including Lieutenant Admiral Cornelis Evertsen, Vice Admiral Abraham van der Hulst and Rear Admiral Frederick Stachouwer. Although the result was a clear Dutch victory, it did not render the English fleet incapable of further action, as it was able to prevent a Dutch attempt to attack and destroy it at anchor in the Thames Estuary in early July. After a quick refit, the British fleet defeated the Dutch fleet off the North Foreland on 25 July in the battle on St. James's Day.

The fire on the Wharves of Algiers, shortly after the commencement of the Bombardment by the Anglo-Dutch Fleet, 27 August 1816, Museum of the Netherlands

De brand op de werven in de haven van Algiers, kort na het begin van het bombardement door de Engels-Nederlandse vloot, 27 augustus 1816. Rechts een oorlogsschip.

http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5945

"Nation in arms."

"As the Republic faltered in the face of foreign invasion, internal insurrection and economic crisis, the revolutionary leadership grew more radical. In June 1793, the Jacobin faction seized control of the government. Facing an extremely volatile domestic and international situation, the Jacobins called for extraordinary measures to protect the nation and the revolutionary ideals. They believed that only strong and centralized leadership could save the Republic. Such was provided by the twelve-member Committee of Public Safety (CPS), which introduced radical reforms to achieve greater social equality and political democracy and began imposing the government's authority throughout the nation through violent repression and terror.

In the interest of the nation's defense, the CPS launched a levée en masse- the masterwork of minister of war Lazare Carnot- that mobilized the resources of the entire nation. "From this moment until that in which the enemy shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic," stated the National Convention's decree of August 23, "all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the service of the armies." In a remarkable administrative feat, the revolutionary government had raised an astonishing fourteen new armies and equipped some 800,000 men within a year. The CPS introduced universal conscription of all single men ages eighteen to twenty-five, requisitioned supplies from individual citizens, and ensured that factories and mines produced at full capacity. The success of this mass mobilization was aided by a vast state propaganda that touted the levée en masse as a patriotic duty aimed at defending la patrie against tyranny and foreign threats. Citizens not privileged not bear arms and fight on the front line were encouraged to work harder to make up for it. These messages were spread via posters, broadsides, leaflets, and newspapers, while speakers and decorated veterans toured the country to rouse the masses. In creating the "nation in arms", the Jacobins heralded the emergence of modern warfare.

The citizens soldiers of the Republic proved their worth on the battlefields. In September 1793 General Jean Nicolas Houchard defeated the Anglo-Hanoverian army at Hondschoote in Flanders, while Jean-Baptiste Jourdan routed the Austrians at Wattignies on October 15-16, thus turning the tide of war against the First Coalition. Two months later the French army drove the Anglo-Spanish force out of the strategically important port of Toulon, where an obscure artillery major named Napoléon Bonaparte first distinguished himself. In the west of France, the revolutionary armies brutally suppressed the royalist revolt in the Vendée. After General Jourdan's victory at Fleurus on June 26, 1794, the French pushed back the Coalition forces along the northern frontier and reclaimed Belgium and the Rhineland; in January 1795 the Dutch Texel fleet of fourteen ships-of-the-line was trapped in ice and captured by a French squadron of hussars and an infantry company riding pillion behind them- the only example in history of a cavalry capturing a fleet."

Alexander Mikaberidze- The Napoleonic Wars, A Global History.