AceHistoryDesk – In recent years, flooding in the UK has, unfortunately, become a lot more common. There have been at least seven notable events since the beginning of the 21st Century and this figure will inevitably rise as the world continues to warm.
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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Jan.10. 2024: Sky History News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
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The subsequent damage to homes and infrastructure caused by flooding has a devastating effect on thousands of people’s lives and can also lead to numerous deaths.
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Thames Flood of 1928
Who’d have thought that an event about 80 miles west of London would cause a disaster in the capital? When heavy snow in the Cotswolds, the source of the Thames, thawed in early January 1928, it doubled the water volume and the turning tide caused an upstream surge.
On 7th January, water breached parts of the Thames embankment, flooding local homes and forcing residents to swim for their lives. Not everyone made it. At least 14 people drowned and another 4,000 were made homeless.
The most severely affected area of the city was Millbank, just south of Westminster. The water around the Tate Britain was so deep it reached the top of the ground floor doors and caused millions of pounds worth of damage to several paintings
Lynmouth Flood of 1952
Such was the severity of the Lynmouth Flood, the former lifeboat station was re-imagined as a memorial hall to honour the 34 residents who lost their lives.
Intense rainfall flooded Exmoor in Devon and then poured into the small village. As the water flowed through it accumulated debris that smashed into buildings, bridges, and vehicles, thus perpetuating the carnage. The damage was so severe that Lynmouth had to be virtually rebuilt.
52 years later, almost to the day on the same stretch of coastline, a similar event occurred 65 miles south in Boscastle.
Great Flood of 1968
6,250 square kilometres of land – stretching roughly from Hampshire and Sussex across Surrey, Kent, and Essex – was hit with over 100mm of torrential rainfall during July and September 1968.
Further west it claimed the lives of eight people in Bristol and flooded 3,000 local properties with many regions surrounding the city also affected. Most of the London borough of Lewisham was submerged and the town’s mayor jumped in a dingy to help evacuate residents.
Boscastle Flood of 2004
About one billion litres of water crashed through Boscastle in Cornwall on 16th August 2004. Two rivers, Valency and Jordan, burst their banks due to 75mm of rain falling in just two hours. The damage to the picturesque fishing port was unprecedented, with the Environment Agency describing the flash flooding as ‘among the most extreme ever recorded in Britain’.
Shops, pubs, and homes were flooded and at least 50 cars were washed away. A major rescue operation – that saw the deployment of helicopters, lifeboats, and the fire brigade – was coordinated with such efficiency that not a single loss of life was recorded.Image credit: Benjamin Evans
UK Floods of 2007
The May to July period in 2007 was the wettest since records began in 1776. June was one of the wettest months on record with double the national average rainfall across the whole of the country. Most areas in the south and east were largely unaffected as well as parts of Wales, Scotland, and the Midlands.
However, the rest of the country saw flooding so severe that both civil and military sources declared rescue efforts as the biggest in peacetime Britain. A total of 13 people died during the floods, a figure that would have been considerably higher without the aid of emergency services.
Millions of households were affected by power and water cuts and the medieval market town of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire (famed for its part in the War of the Roses during the late 15th Century) was turned into an island by flooding from both the River Severn and Avon.
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AceHistoryDesk – A drab office block sandwiched between a pub and a branch of Starbucks was a secret base of spy agency GCHQ, it has been confirmed.
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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Jan.08: 2024: BBC History 2019 News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
The unremarkable office block is sandwiched between a Starbucks and a pub
The anonymous building opposite St James’s Park Tube station in central London was used by British spooks for 66 years.
Despite the covert goings-on within, neighbours said the address’s purpose was an open secret among locals.
GCHQ acknowledged the location after moving out of its home.
Director Jeremy Fleming said the site in Palmer Street, used by intelligence officers since 1953, had been part of “a history full of amazing intelligence”.
The government-leased building has been used by the intelligence service since 1953
The entrance is through a nondescript black door opposite St James’s Park Tube station
GCHQ, known as Britain’s listening post, was set up on 1 November 1919 as a peacetime “cryptanalytic” unit.
During World War Two, staff were moved to Bletchley Park to decrypt German messages including, most famously of all, the Enigma communications.
When the service moved its headquarters to Cheltenham from the London suburb of Eastcote in the 1950s, the Ministry of Works provided the Palmer Street building as a centre to handle secret paperwork and a base for its director.
‘It was just common knowledge’
It turns out that it’s hard to put a spy HQ with frosted glass windows in the middle of central London without someone asking questions.
And at the Adam and Eve pub at the end of Palmer Street, the answers were surprisingly accurate. Asked if she knew what the building next door was, a barmaid said: “It’s M… MI6?”
The secretive neighbours were just a fact of life and she could not remember how she found out, she said. “We don’t really talk about it.”
She suggested that the landlord might know more, but the BBC’s inquiries fell foul of the pub chain’s operational security – press enquiries have to go through head office, the landlord said, before disappearing through a door marked “The Hideaway”.
Staff at Starbucks on the other side of the office building either knew less or refused to crack under interrogation. Regina Toth, who had worked in the coffee shop for two years, said: “It was very mysterious.”
At Pall Mall Barbers, Jack Holden knew it was “secret service or something”. He’d worked opposite the GCHQ building for six years, but seeing police cars come with lights flashing to move on a loiterer in the street convinced him that “it’s legit”.
It was just common knowledge,” he said.
“ It looks suspect, doesn’t it? With those blacked-out windows. It’s a very secure building.”
The spy agency said the unremarkable building, which is between a coffee shop and the Adam and Eve pub, had “played its part in significant events over the years, such as the 2012 London Olympics”.
It has been sold privately but future plans for it are not currently known.
The spy agency is known as Britain’s listening post
Despite the sale, GCHQ said it would maintain a presence in the capital, in addition to its Cheltenham HQ and other offices in Bude in Cornwall, Scarborough, Lincolnshire and Harrogate.
A new secure facility is also set to open in Manchester later in the year.
GCHQ was marking its centenary this year
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AceHistoryDesk – Britain’s longest-serving World War Two spy, Christine Granville, risked her life countless times carrying out missions across Europe, yet today her contribution is barely known. Who was she and why does the nation owe her such a great debt?
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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Jan.07: 2024: BBC History News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
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On 15 June 1952, Granville returned to the west London hotel she called home, her flight to Belgium having been cancelled due to engine failure.
After making her way to her usual room on the first floor, she heard a man in the lobby shouting her name and demanding the return of some letters. Downstairs, she found herself faced by her former lover who suddenly thrust a commando knife into her chest, fatally wounding her.
Having survived many perilous situations on three different fronts during the course of World War Two, it was a bitter irony that she should lose her life in the apparent safety of a Kensington hotel.
Granville worked for MI6 on several occasions in France, where agents had an average life-expectancy of only six weeks
Born in May 1908 as Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek, she was the daughter of a Polish count and, through her mother, an heir to a Jewish banking family. She spent her early years running free on a grand country estate, a childhood that would profoundly influence her later life.
“She’d been brought up used to a lot of freedom and adoration, taught to ride a horse, shoot a shotgun, all that sort of thing,” says historian Clare Mulley, who is the author of The Spy Who Loved, a biography of Christine Granville – the identity the agent assumed while working for the British.
In September 1939, she had been travelling in southern Africa with her second husband, a Polish diplomat, when they heard their homeland had been invaded by Nazi Germany. The couple headed straight to Britain to join the war effort.
While her husband went on to France to join the Allied forces, Granville had a different plan as to how she could make a difference.
“She storms off to what’s meant to be the secret headquarters of MI6,” says Mulley. “She doesn’t so much volunteer as demand to be taken on.”
While in France, Granville spent time in Vassieux-en-Vercors, which faced heavy German bombing
Granville submitted a plan to ski across the Carpathian Mountains into Nazi-occupied Poland, to take in Allied propaganda material and funds and bring back intelligence about the occupation.
As they had limited information about what was happening in Eastern Europe, it was a plan Britain’s spy bosses liked and, according to Mulley, Granville was promptly signed up as MI6’s first female recruit.
Over the following years, the Polish exile became the stuff of legend in the intelligence community. “She was this countess who had all of these connections to varying people in the know,” Mulley explains.
“She spoke all the right languages… and she knew how to get in and out under the radar because when she’d been a rather bored countess – because she’s a high-adrenalin woman – she used to smuggle cigarettes across the border skiing, just for kicks. She didn’t even smoke.”
Granville arrived for one mission in France by parachuting from only 200m during gale-force winds
During postings for MI6 in Hungary, Egypt and France, she would carry out missions, travelling across numerous borders, sometimes hidden in the boot of a car, sometimes while fleeing machine-gun fire, and often along with one of the many lovers she had during the war.
On one occasion, she received a microfilm that showed German forces lining up along the Soviet border for what looked like an imminent attack. It was passed on to Winston Churchill who, according to his daughter Sarah, would declare that Granville was his favourite agent.
Twice she would be captured and interrogated by the Germans but was able to spring herself free. On one occasion, she convinced her captors she had tuberculosis by biting her tongue so hard she appeared to be hacking up blood.
“Her great tool is her brain. She’s so quick-thinking; talks her way in and talks her way out. She’s amazing,” says Mulley.
Even animals were seemingly unable to resist her charms. In her book, Mulley describes two occasions when Granville was able to turn a snarling guard dog kept by border patrols into her pet that would follow her beck and call.
Along with her quick wits and immense courage, Granville was a master of manipulation and persuasion.
In 1944, she climbed up to a German garrison based on a strategic pass in the Alps. Using a loudhailer, she convinced a group of 63 Polish officers forced into the German army to sabotage the military installations and desert, causing the garrison’s commander to surrender.
On the same day, she discovered her Special Operations Executive (SOE) commander – and lover – had been arrested in Digne in south-east France by the Gestapo, along with two other agents, and faced being executed by a firing squad.
At great risk to her own safety, she managed to free them all by storming into Digne Prison, claiming she was the niece of Field Marshal Montgomery and informing the officer in charge an American attack was imminent.
Mulley says: “By the end of an hour she’s basically terrified this guy, and she says, ‘You know, if you go ahead with this execution I will make sure that you are strung up. If you do anything to me, you’re going to be hanging from a lamppost, but if you help me, I will speak out for you.'”
Francis Cammaerts, Granville’s commander in France and lover, was one of three men she managed to get released from a Nazi prison
“There is a reason women were really useful in these [intelligence] roles,” Mulley explains. “The men were expected to be working, so able-bodied men walking around are very suspicious. But women are going everywhere because they’re trying to keep the businesses going; they’re looking after their families and their in-laws – she’s undercover in plain sight.”
Yet in spite of her heroism, come the end of the war, in Britain Granville would find the country for which she had repeatedly risked her life had seemingly abandoned her.
“The last entry in the British files that relates to her, and this is just a quote from it, it says ‘she is no longer wanted’,” explains Mulley.
“Young men – some of them haven’t even served in the war themselves – they just say, ‘I doubt she did all this’ and ‘this little girl seems to be making things up’ and ‘she’s very difficult to place’. It’s very insulting, incredibly sexist stuff.”
The Shelbourne Hotel in Kensington, where Granville lived in London, was run by the Polish Relief Society to provide cheap accommodation
Even though Granville was unable to return to communist-controlled Poland because of the likelihood of her being targeted by the Soviet secret services, her temporary UK papers were not renewed and she had to leave Britain.
Granville would return to the UK to refuse to accept a George Medal and OBE awarded to her for her war efforts, thereby shaming the government into finally offering her citizenship. She ended up accepting the awards.
While living in the Shelbourne Hotel, she took on roles very different from her wartime escapades, waitressing in cafes and selling frocks in Harrods, before taking a job as a cleaner on a passenger ship.
“You have to remember that when she came to Britain to serve, she was with her diplomat husband at the start of the war and they arrive first class on a passenger ship, while at the end of the war, she’s having to become a bathroom stewardess on the liners – but at least it gives her some sort of feeling of freedom,” Mulley says.
Even so, Granville would again experience discrimination when the ship’s captain at one point requested his staff wear any medals they had earned during the war. Having served on three fronts, Granville had acquired numerous awards but was accused by her fellow workers of being a fake.
“She’s a woman, so it seems absolutely ridiculous. She’s got a foreign accent. She’s quite dark-haired, looks a bit Jewish. You know all of these prejudices are stacked against her and she gets a really hard time,” Mulley says.
One man, a fellow steward, did stand up for her – Dennis George Muldowney.
The pair started a relationship but Granville soon became bored by him. Spurned, an obsessive Muldowney continued to harass her until the night he murdered her in the Shelbourne Hotel.
“She came downstairs… then he just lunged at her and she cried out. She died within seconds of the impact; this blade had gone straight through her heart,” Mulley says.
The World War Two agent is buried under the name Krystyna Skarbek-Granville at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Kensal Green, north-west London
Muldowney would be hanged 10 weeks later and, while the murder became front-page news, over the years Granville’s story has faded from memory.
“She falls between every category, so no-one’s blowing the trumpet for her,” Mulley says.
“She’s too much of an action person to be really feminine, and yet she’s obviously too much of a woman to really be a male soldier. She’s too English for the Poles to consider her Polish – she’s never been recognised with an honour in Poland – and yet she’s far too Polish for the Brits to really consider her truly British.”
Mulley, who has been working to have Granville’s achievements more widely recognised, successfully organised in 2020 for a blue plaque to be placed on Number 1 Lexham Gardens, which was once the Shelbourne Hotel and is still a hotel today. Mulley was also behind the creation of a Granville Suite at the luxury hotel The OWO, which opened in September in what was once the Old War Office in Whitehall.
“She’s fallen between the lines and I think that’s what’s happened to her story as well,” Mulley says. “So I’m out there, solo championing her.”
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AceHistoryDesk – A call has gone out for people to check shelves and lofts for a missing opera.
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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Jan.06: 2024: By David Sillito: Arts BBC correspondent: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
This is a poster for Utopia Limited, 1894
The original score of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Utopia Limited was sold in 1915, but its whereabouts are unknown.
Gilbert and Sullivan created 13 operettas that are still performed today, but the manuscript for Utopia Limited has been lost.
Musical researcher Colin Jagger has been tracking down their original scores, saying current copies often have mistakes and omissions.
“The (current) score (of Utopia Limited) is completely unreliable. The only way (to be sure) is to go to Sullivan’s autograph manuscript,” he said.
“It seemed to me that the time is long overdue to give these materials proper editions which are free.”
Omissions, changes and mistakes
When the operas were first created, copyright law, as understood today, barely existed, and so the company that performed the works, D’Oyly Carte, kept tight control of the scores and any copies.
The versions used today often reflect how D’Oyly Carte performed the works, rather than Gilbert and Sullivan’s original intentions.
Some songs have disappeared altogether and, Jagger says, the scores have a multitude of omissions, changes and mistakes.
The objective now is to return to the originals, and create complete and corrected scores.
But the project cannot be finished until the lost opera is found.
Ashley Riches was The Pirate King in 2017 in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance
“All of these manuscripts…you can access mostly in the UK or one or two in the US. So I can go into the British Library and I can look at the Grand Duke in Sullivan’s own hand, and I can take photographs of it.
“I can study it away from the library as well. And I can go (online) to the Morgan Library in New York… and I can see a beautifully done copy of the manuscript of Safe Trial by Jury. They’re all there except for one.”
Utopia Limited is one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s less successful works.
It’s a story based around the problems and consequences of the introduction of limited liability laws in the 19th Century. Essentially, it’s a satire about business people leaving their creditors in the lurch.
The score was sold at auction in 1915 for 50 guineas to Sir Robert Hudson of Hill Hall in Essex.
Sir Robert died in 1927 and Hill Hall went on to house prisoners-of-war, and later became a women’s prison.
Where the score for Utopia Limited went is a mystery.
‘It’s probably out there’
Colin Jagger is convinced it has survived and is sitting on a shelf somewhere, telling the BBC: “We have no idea where it is now.”
“It could be in a loft or it could be on a shelf. The title is Utopia Limited. It’s very thick, a bit bigger than A4, not quite as big as A3, and it’s hardbound in leather and handwritten.
‘It would be awful to think it had been thrown away.
“So I think it’s probably out there but somebody maybe doesn’t know they’ve got it or they might not know who Gilbert Sullivan are.”
Mr Jagger has asked that anyone with any information about the missing score contacts him at cjagger99@gmail.com.
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AceHistoryDesk – A rare, early medieval cemetery has been unearthed in Wales and it has left archaeologists scratching their heads.
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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Jan.04: 2024: By Rebecca Morelle and Alison Francis : BBC News Science: You can see more on the medieval cemetery on Digging for Britain on BBC 2 at 8pm on 4 January. The full series is already available on iPlayer.TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
The skeletons are remarkably well preserved given their age
It’s thought to date to the 6th or 7th Century and 18 of the estimated 70 graves have been excavated so far.
Some of the well preserved skeletons have been found lying in unusual positions and unexpected artefacts are also emerging from the site.
The dig is starting to reveal more about this ancient community – but it’s also raising questions.
The cemetery lies in an unremarkable field in the grounds of Fonmon Castle, close to the end of the runway at Cardiff airport.
Over two summers, a team has been busy carefully removing the thin layer of topsoil to expose the graves that were carved into the bedrock so long ago.
BBC/Kevin Church
The front teeth from one of the skeletons are very worn
Summer Courts, an osteoarchaeologist from the University of Reading, says the skeletons are in good condition despite being around 1,500 years old.
She points to a skull that’s just been excavated, which is providing clues about how these people lived and worked.
“We have some teeth that are very worn in a kind of a funny way that might indicate the use of teeth as tools,” she says.
“Maybe for textile work, leather work or basketry – they’re pulling something through their front teeth.”
But some of the skeletons are posing a puzzle – they’re lying in a whole variety of positions.
Some are flat on their backs, normal for the period, while others are placed on their sides, and a few are buried in a crouching position with their knees tucked up against their chest.
The archaeologists aren’t sure what this means. Was the cemetery used over a long period of time as burial practices were changing? Or were some people being marked out as different?
BBC/Kevin Church
The team thinks there are about 70 graves at the site – 18 have been fully excavated so far
The items being found around the graves are also surprising and they show how life in the middle of the first millennium was very different from now.
Fragments of dishes and cups have been found, and splinters of animal bone that have been butchered and burnt. One item really brings this community to life: a tiny carved peg that may have been used as a marker for scoring in a game, perhaps something like we use in a cribbage board.
BBC/Kevin Church
This small carved peg is made from animal bone and may have been used for a medieval gaming board
Dr Andy Seaman, a specialist in early medieval archaeology from the University of Cardiff – who is leading the digging team – says unlike cemeteries now, this doesn’t seem to be just a place to dispose of the dead.
“We tend to think of graveyards as sort of enclosed spaces that we don’t really go to, but they probably would have been quite central to life in the past,” he explained.
“And it’s not just a place for people being buried, but it’s a place where communities are coming together: they are burying their dead, but they’re also undertaking other forms of activity, and social practice, including eating and drinking – and feasting”
BBC/Kevin Church
A tiny shard of glass imported from France was found in one of the graves
Most perplexing though is that the artefacts being discovered here suggest these people were far from ordinary.
While we’re at the dig, an excited shout goes up: “I’ve just found a piece of glass.”
It’s lying in one of the graves.
“It’s a rim shard, an ice-cream shaped cone vessel – very fine material, very fine glass… it’s a really nice find,” Andy Seaman says as he admires the fragment.
He thinks it’s from the Bordeaux region in France – and it’s not the only imported item, the team has also found pieces of pottery, possibly from North Africa.
BBC/Kevin Church
The team will carry out a DNA analysis of the bones to find out more about this community
The quality of these finds suggests that the people there were of a high status.
Tudur Davies, from the University of Cardiff, says: “The evidence we’ve got here is that the people have access to very high quality imported goods, that you can only get through trading or exchange networks, with people with a lot of wealth, to bring it here.
“What exactly is going on? Who are these people being buried here?”
BBC/Kevin Church
The artefacts suggest that the people buried at the cemetery may have been of high status
Further research is needed to get a more precise date for when the graveyard was in use, and DNA analysis will reveal more about the skeletons buried there.
The cemetery will provide a snapshot in time of both each individual and the community as a whole helping to shed more light on an era that we still know very little about.
But the questions about who actually lived and died here may take a lot longer to answer.
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AceHistoryDesk – A poem for a Lancaster Bomber crew who never returned home has been shared with their relatives, 80 years after being written.
Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Jan.02: 2024: By Giles Latcham & Nicola Goodwin: BBC News, West Midlands: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
The lost crew were from Birmingham, Plymouth, Yorkshire, Essex and Lincolnshire
Jean Gibson from Herefordshire created it in honour of the airmen ahead of a birthday party they were due to attend.
But when the crew was lost before the event took place, the words went into storage and were only recovered decades later by her son, Richard.
He was able to track down relatives of the men to share the verse with them.
The poem was discovered inside a small exercise book
Mr Gibson, from Rotherwas in Herefordshire, said he was looking through a collection of old documents when “one poem in this small exercise book just jumped out at me”.
He asked his mother to read the poem out loud and she also recounted the story behind it.
“Norm will pilot you through, John will aim his bombs true, until all this monstrosity stops,” the poem reads.
“If they are hit by the flack there is no turning back, they go on until the job [has] been done.”
Jean Gibson wrote the poem during WW2 ahead of a birthday party
In 1943 Jean Gibson had been a teenager living in Birmingham where a work colleague invited her to an 18th birthday party.
Mr Gibson said she was excited to hear her friend’s brother would be there with his Lancaster crew and was inspired to write a poem to present to them.
But by the time the party took place, the Lancaster crew had been lost and the piece was left un-read in a book of other poems.
Mr Gibson said it was only rediscovered shortly before his mother’s death, a couple of years ago.
Keith Wheatstone was born three months after his father died when the bomber was lost
Mr Gibson has since managed to get in touch with relatives of the crewmen featured in the poem, including the son of wireless operator Cyril Wheatstone.
Keith Wheatstone was born three months after his father’s death. He found out his dad was nick-named Corny through the poem.
“It makes him into a real person rather than someone you read about or see in a photograph,” he explained.
Richard Gibson said he wanted to “bring the names of these young men back from the dead”
After finding the poem, Mr Gibson said he wanted to “bring the names of these young men back from the dead, to celebrate their lives and acknowledge their sacrifice”.
He said he hoped that by re-telling the story he could pay tribute to them and the “countless other lives that were lost in the armed forces or on the streets of the civilian populations of Britain and Europe in those darkest of days”.
He also said that by sharing the poem, he could help keep alive the memory of his mother, whom he said “we miss dearly”.
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AceHistoryDesk – The Mary Rose was the pride of King Henry VIII’s naval fleet and is one of the most famous ships in British history. She sank in the Solent in 1545 and was miraculously raised from the depths in 1982. Here, is some fascinating facts about this iconic Tudor battleship.
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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.31: 2023: History Today News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
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1. She was commissioned to protect England
When Henry VIII came to power in 1509, he inherited a small navy with only a couple of sizeable ships. England was exposed to outside threats and so Henry commissioned two new ships to be built – the Mary Rose and the Peter Pomegranate. The large vessels represented Henry’s ambition for naval expansion and sent a clear message to England’s enemies.
2. Building the Mary Rose was a mammoth task
Construction began on the Mary Rose in early 1510 in Portsmouth. The state-of-the-art warship required a vast amount of timber, said to be around 40 acres’ worth of trees. It was built to accommodate up to 700 sailors, soldiers, gunners, surgeons and cooks. The 600-ton ship launched in July 1511.
3. It was most likely named after the Virgin Mary
Although a popular theory suggests the ship was named after Henry VIII’s favourite sister, Mary Tudor, it was most likely named in honour of the Virgin Mary. No direct evidence supports the sister theory, whilst it was common practice during Tudor times to name ships after saints. Plus, the Virgin Mary was also known as the ‘mystic rose’.
The rose could also be a direct reference to the Tudor rose, the emblem of the House of Tudor.
4. She once won a race
She might have been large and imperious and loaded with heavy guns, but the Mary Rose was also praised as one of the fastest ships in the fleet. This was put to the test in a rather extraordinary race in 1513. Sailing off the coast of Kent, the Mary Rose and several other ships went head-to-head. The Mary Rose took first prize even though her opponents were given head starts.
5. She sailed the seas for over three decades
For over 33 years, the Mary Rose sailed the Seven Seas, during which she saw conflict on numerous occasions. Most of her skirmishes were against the French, her most famous coming at the Battle of St Mathieu in August 1512.
In 1536, she underwent a variety of alterations, including the addition of extra gunports. These improvements might have affected her seaworthiness and led to her demise eight years later.
6. We don’t know why the Mary Rose sank
On 19th July 1545, the Mary Rose sank in the Solent – the strip of water running between the Isle of Wight and mainland England – as she looked to once again face off against an impending French armada.
A variety of theories have been put forward to explain why the pride of the English navy went down that day. Some have suggested a gust of wind caused the ship to take in water from her open gunports. Others have blamed the alterations made to her years before causing her to be overburdened and unseaworthy. Inexperienced or insubordinate crew members have also been suggested as causing the Mary Rose to sink.
Whatever the reason, the Mary Rose went down with over 400 crew onboard and only 34 survived.
7. Attempts were made to raise her straight away
Although history tells us that the Mary Rose didn’t see the light of day again until 1982, we do know that plans to raise her from the depths were hatched shortly after she sank. The plan involved attaching cables to her submerged hull and pulling them taut with a pair of other ships. Needless to say, it didn’t work.
Attempts were made again in 1836. This time pioneering divers were able to recover items from the wreckage but not the whole ship itself.
8. The Mary Rose was raised live on TV
On 11th October 1982, 60 million people around the world watched the wreck of the Mary Rose being raised live on television. Since 1979, the ground-breaking excavation project had seen over 22,000 diving hours being conducted in preparation for raising the wreck. In the end, a purpose-built metal frame was used to lift the Mary Rose out of the water.
9. 19,000 objects have been found
Over 19,000 objects have been recovered from the seabed around where the Mary Rose sank giving us a unique glimpse into Tudor England. Items have included a variety of things such as weapons, cutlery, coins, flasks and even a mitten and a sock. The bones of a dog and a rat have also been found.
10. Her crew was diverse
Modern isotope tests have been conducted on the skeletons of those crewmates who went down with the Mary Rose. The results have shown her crew was made up of a diverse bunch with some heralding from Europe, including Spain and Italy, and others from further ashore including North Africa.
11. The crew kept themselves entertained
As you might imagine, not every day upon the Mary Rose was consumed with battles and fighting, so the crew had understandably taken onboard a variety of things to keep them entertained. Games such as backgammon and dice as well as musical instruments like fiddles, pipes and even an early kind of oboe have all been recovered from the wreckage.
Around eight casks of beef bones have been recovered from the Mary Rose. Each one contained about 250 bones. Most likely heavily salted, the meat was probably sourced locally in Portsmouth before being taken onboard the ship. According to the official Mary Rose website: ‘experimental archaeology suggests that each of the bone fragments would have held approximately 1lb (453g) of meat, the quantity rationed for a crew member per day.’
13. The Mary Rose is now in a museum
The famous ship is now on display at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth.
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AceHistoryDesk – It is now 75 years since the famous Windrush ship arrived at Tilbury Docks, ushering in what is now known as the ‘Windrush Generation’. Of course, there has been a Black presence here since Roman times 2,000 years ago, but the term Windrush has come to define the presence and experiences of Black people post World War II.
@acenewsservices
Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.29: 2023: In this guest article, Tony Warner, the founder of Black History Walks and author of Black History Walks Volume 1, highlights several inspirational figures associated with the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
@peacewriter51
Here is a short history of a few people who were present before and after 1948 to give a flavour of the Black experience.
It also gives some context for the so-called ‘Windrush Scandal’ which should really be called the ‘Home Office Scandal’.
After the war, he trained as a lawyer and due to the increasing racism Black people experienced, got heavily involved in the Black British Civil Rights movement. He published a newspaper called Caribbean Newswhich campaigned for equality as a direct result of the colour bars faced by the Windrush Generation.
He was a founder of London’s Caribbean Labour Congress which lobbied for universal suffrage in the West Indies. He used his wartime experience and legal knowledge to fight against imperialism and teamed up with Dr Harold Moody’s ‘League of Coloured Peoples’.
Baron Baker
Baron Baker was another WWII veteran and a military policeman. He was one of the first Black people to move into Notting Hill from Jamaica in . After experiencing the colour bar in accommodation with signs that stated, ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ to men who had just risked their lives fighting for Britain, Baker set up an ex-servicemen’s club to help them find places to stay.
When he heard the Windrush was on its way in June 1948, he immediately knew they would have a hard time. He, therefore, lobbied the government to open the deep, air-raid shelter at Clapham Common and use it as accommodation for the many WWII military veterans on the ship. The nearest labour exchange/job centre to Clapham was in bombed-out Brixton. This directly led to the establishment of the Black community in Brixton. At the time Baron, was known as the godfather of Brixton.
His community activism carried on into the 1950s when fascist Oswald Mosley and the Teddy Boys encouraged racist attacks on Black people in Notting Hill. Baron Baker formed a Black self-defence group of ex-World War II veterans who would patrol the streets, escort people home and give them advice on how to deal with bricks through the window or arson attacks.
In August 1958, his headquarters was surrounded and attacked by 300 white hooligans baying, ‘Let’s lynch the n*****s! Let’s kill the n*****s!’Baron Baker and his soldiers knew all about countering terrorism. From the time the ‘n word’ was shouted, a barrage of petrol bombs sailed down from the rooftop causing the racists to scatter.
Baron Baker was arrested and beaten but his second in command took over and the soldiers spilled out into the streets of Notting Hill and defended the Black community.
Beryl Gilroy
Beryl Gilroy arrived in Britain from Guyana in 1951 and struggled to get a job as a teacher despite her qualifications. She became one of the first Black headteachers in Britain in 1969 at the Beckford primary school in Camden. Her 1976 book, Black Teacher, was refused by mainstream publishers as it was ‘too raw’.
Ms Gilroy went on to diversify the curriculum at a time when such terms were brand new. She also wrote children’s books with Black characters in them which was revolutionary at the time.
Her own children received a stellar education and went on to be pioneering educators. Professor Darla Gilroy is now Associate Dean at Central School St Martins. Professor Paul Gilroy heads up the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Race and Racialisation at University College London. The centre was born out of student protests of the eugenics history at UCL.
Professor Gilroy grew up being called racist names in the streets of London and is now one the most respected academics in the fields of race, history, culture and politics. He has published a library of critically acclaimed books on the subjects including ThereAin’t No Black in the Union Jack (1973), The Black Atlantic (1993) and Black Britain (2007). In 2019 he was awarded the Holberg Prize for outstanding academic contributions.
Jocelyn Barrow
Trinidadian Jocelyn Barrow came to England in 1959 and was made a Dame in 1992 for her outstanding anti-racist community work. Among her many achievements was breaking the colour bar in the West End. In the late 60s and early 70s, shops in Oxford Street and Regent Street had a colour bar against Black people in customer-facing roles. You could be a porter or stack shelves in the warehouse, but handling food, clothes or shoes was a bridge too far.
Dame Jocelyn lobbied for and achieved a meeting with the head of Marks and Spencer. She persuaded him to employ some Black girls thereby breaking the colour bar. Other stores followed suit especially as Dame Joycelyn threatened them with legal action backed up by the 1968 Race Relations Act which she had just successfully lobbied. As a qualified teacher, she also teamed up with Dr Beryl Gilroy to fight racism in education.
She campaigned against the discriminatory The Black and White Minstrel Show which portrayed harmful, negative stereotypes of Black people on the BBC right up to 1978 when it was finally cancelled. In 1981 she became the first Black governor at the BBC when Black people were hardly on TV. She cleared the way for many of the Black journalists/presenters and actors we know today.
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