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Thomas Hopsonn
Sir Thomas Hopsonn or Hopson (1643 – 1717) was an English naval officer and member of parliament. His most famous action was the breaking of the boom during the battle of Vigo Bay in 1702. After retiring from active service, he became a Navy Commissioner and the governor of Greenwich Hospital. Early life and career Hopsonn was born in Shalfleet on the Isle of Wight, where he was baptised on 6 April 1643, the second son of Captain Anthony Hopson (d. 1667) and his wife Anne Kinge. According to local tradition, he was orphaned early in life and apprenticed to a tailor in Bonchurch, near Ventnor, before running off to sea. Samuel Smiles tells the tale thus in ''Self Help'': He was working as a tailor's apprentice near Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, when the news flew through the village that a squadron of men-of-war was sailing off the island. He sprang from the shopboard, and ran down with his comrades to the beach, to gaze upon the glorious sight. The boy was suddenly inflamed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Dahl
Michael Dahl (1659–1743) was a Swedish portrait painter who lived and worked in England most of his career and died there. He was one of the most internationally known Swedish painters of his time. He painted portraits of many aristocrats and some members of royal families, such as Anne, Queen of Great Britain, Queen Anne of Great Britain, Prince George of Denmark and the exiled Christina, Queen of Sweden, Queen Christina of Sweden. Childhood Michael Dahl was born in Stockholm, in 1656 or 1659: most of the sources point to 1659.Nationalencyklopedin 2012-03-12 (Swedish) 2012-03-12 (Swedish)Wilhelm Nisser, ''Michael Dahl and the Contemporary Swedish School of Painting in England'' (Almqvist & Wiksell) 1927:2. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bonchurch
Bonchurch is a small village to the east of Ventnor, now largely connected to the latter by suburban development, on the southern part of the Isle of Wight, England. One of the oldest settlements on the Isle of Wight, it is situated on Undercliff (Isle of Wight), The Undercliff adjacent to the Bonchurch Landslips (or "The Landslip") Site of Special Scientific Interest. The main village is backed by a cliff to the north, with the Upper Bonchurch section on the clifftop halfway up St Boniface Down on the main A3055 road. Geography Bonchurch is situated on a stable section of former landslip, its main street (Bonchurch Village Road) running east–west in a valley sheltered to the north by cliffs, and to the south by The Mount, a ridge of slipped rock. Bonchurch Village Road has an adjacent landscaped pond, fed by a Spring (hydrology), spring, on the site of former withy beds. The Shanklin-Ventnor route originally passed through Bonchurch, descending the cliff by the steep Bonchurch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Maritime Museum
The National Maritime Museum (NMM) is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. It is part of Royal Museums Greenwich, a network of museums in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom, it has no general admission charge; there are admission charges for most side-gallery temporary exhibitions, usually supplemented by many loaned works from other museums. Creation and official opening The museum was created by the National Maritime Museum Act 1934 under a Board of Trustees, appointed by HM Treasury. It is based on the generous donations of Sir James Caird (1864–1954). King George VI formally opened the museum on 27 April 1937 when his daughter Princess Elizabeth accompanied him for the journey along the Thames from London. The first director was Sir Geoffrey Callender. Collection Since the earliest times Greenwich has had associations with the sea and navigation. It was a landing place for the Romans, Henry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nimcha
A Nimcha is a single-handed sword from north Africa, especially used in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It is classified as a type of scimitar or ''saif''. Becoming popular in north Africa during the 16th century, surviving nimcha are usually from the late 18th century onward and are notable for often using older blades. Stylistically they often bore Arabian type handles with tugrah inscribed on the blade. Characteristics Blades on Nimcha came in a variety of forms, and were often imported from Europe. Always of a single edge variety the two main forms were either a short generally more deeply curved 'cutlass style', or a longer more slender form that sometimes bore a clipped point. Nimcha also have distinct hilts that sport forward pointing quillions, which end in a 'bud' style. The wooden handles are flat sided and squared off at an almost 90 degree "hooked" pommel. The blade and hilt are attached by a stud located on the top of the pommel The cross guard will often have a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbary Pirates
The Barbary pirates, or Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Salé, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Libya, Tripoli. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Turkish Abductions, Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in ''Razzia (military), Razzias'', raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands and Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture slaves for the Slavery in the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Arab slavery market in North Africa and the Middle East. Slaves in Barbary could be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Strickland
Sir Roger Strickland (1640–1717) was an English admiral and Member of Parliament. Life Strickland was the second son of Walter Strickland of Nateby Hall, Lancashire, and lived at Thornton Bridge near Aldborough in Yorkshire, a property acquired from his cousin Sir Thomas Strickland of Sizergh. He received his first command in 1665, and the following year he commanded the 48-gun ''Santa Maria'' in the Four Days' Battle (1–4 June 1666). In 1672, he commanded the 58-gun ''Plymouth'' at the Battle of Solebay, during which he recovered the ''Henry'', which had been captured by the Dutch. He also served in the battles of Schooneveld and Texel in 1673, as a result of which he was knighted. In 1677, he was promoted to rear-admiral and served as John Narbrough's third-in-command; on 1 April 1678, with Narbrough's successor, Admiral Herbert, he captured a 40-gun Algerian cruiser. Suspected (rightly) of being a crypto-Catholic, Strickland found his career stagnating during the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant. The Sea has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about , representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar—the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa—is only wide. The Mediterranean Sea e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lieutenant (Royal Navy)
LieutenantThe pronunciation of ''lieutenant'' is generally split between , , generally in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Commonwealth countries, and , , generally associated with the United States. See lieutenant. (abbreviated Lt, LT (U.S.), LT(USN), Lieut and LEUT, depending on nation) is a commissioned officer rank in many English-speaking nations' navies and coast guards. It is typically the most senior of junior officer ranks. In most navies, the rank's insignia may consist of two medium gold braid stripes, the uppermost stripe featuring an executive curl in many Commonwealth of Nations; or three stripes of equal or unequal width. The now immediately senior rank of lieutenant commander was formerly a senior naval lieutenant rank. Many navies also use a subordinate rank of sub-lieutenant. The appointment of "first lieutenant" in many navies is held by a senior lieutenant. This naval lieutenant ranks higher than an army lieutenants; within NATO countries the naval rank ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commissioned Officer
An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service. Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer, or a warrant officer. However, absent contextual qualification, the term typically refers only to a force's ''commissioned officers'', the more senior members who derive their authority from a commission from the head of state. Numbers The proportion of officers varies greatly. Commissioned officers typically make up between an eighth and a fifth of modern armed forces personnel. In 2013, officers were the senior 17% of the British armed forces, and the senior 13.7% of the French armed forces. In 2012, officers made up about 18% of the German armed forces, and about 17.2% of the United States armed forces. Historically, however, armed forces have generally had much lower proportions of officers. During the First World War, fewer than 5% of British soldiers were officers (partly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no maritime experience, but he rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, diligence, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy. The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. Early life Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London, on 23 Februar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dictionary Of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives. First series Hoping to emulate national biographical collections published elsewhere in Europe, such as the ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (1875), in 1882 the publisher George Smith (1824–1901), of Smith, Elder & Co., planned a universal dictionary that would include biographical entries on individuals from world history. He approached Leslie Stephen, then editor of the ''Cornhill Magazine'', owned by Smith, to become the editor. Stephen persuaded Smith that the work should focus only on subjects from the United Kingdom and its present and former colonies. An early working title was the ''Biographia Britannica'', the name of an earlier eighteen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Knox Laughton
Sir John Knox Laughton (23 April 1830 – 14 September 1915) was a British naval historian and arguably the first to delineate the importance of the subject of Naval history as an independent field of study. Beginning his working life as a mathematically trained civilian instructor for the Royal Navy, he later became Professor of Modern History at King's College London and a co-founder of the Navy Records Society. A prolific writer of lives, he penned the biographies of more than 900 naval personalities for the ''Dictionary of National Biography''. Family Laughton was born in Liverpool on 23 April 1830, the second son and youngest child of a former Master Mariner, James Laughton of Liverpool (1777–1859). In 1866, Laughton married his first wife, Isabella, daughter of John Carr of Dunfermline. They had two sons, Leonard and Arthur, and three daughters – Elsbeth, Mary and Dorothy. In 1886, Laughton married his second wife, María Josefa, daughter of Eugenio di Alberti, of C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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