"England Expects" and remembering ABERFAN,Plus HMAS Australia.

      "England expects this day that every man will do his duty", was the signal hoisted at the yard arm of Admiral Horatio Nelsons Flag ship the HMS Victory ,commanded by Capt Hardy on the forenoon of Monday 21st of October 1805. Although certain standards of fair play in naval warfare were  expected this wasn't the case on this particular occasion, Inspections  of 'Victory's guns corroborate the fact that Grape Shot (balls on a chain) were a no no but were used during this battle against a superior number of French and Spanish ships and to add to the discomfort of the enemy upper deck gun crews and others were the bags of gravel (stones) fired by the forward guns of Nelsons fleet of ships. Can you imagine the destructive influence of a spread forty feet wide of several hundred large chunks of stone. If anyone was to blame for any infringement of the rules it would have been the orchestrator of the so called  dirty tricks Naughty Horatio Nelson  who was unable to answer any accusations due to him  being either dead or drunk on his arrival in Blighty pickled in a barrel of brandy, Kiss me Hardy, "Hic'..... Further info from Google.
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October 21st 1944. on a more sombre note , this was a major tragedy when the HMAS Australia_ a County Class Heavy Cruiser was struck by a Japanese Kamikaze plane killing 30 sailors and levelling her three funnels and upper decks, I personally recall seeing the ship on her return to Sydney,
The following year 1945 , the combined U/S and British Fleet downed an estimated 2,800 Japanese Kamikaze planes, Ask me about it !!. or Read 'The Forgotten Fleet'.
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October 21st 1966. ABERFAN, Wales, How can anyone around at the time forget this absolute major tragedy. It pales with most stories about unnecessary loss of innocent lives.
Practically a whole generation of children and teachers were suffocated by a descending Slag Heap caused by heavy rain, which covered the mining village. Please read this heart rending story.

Google. The Aberfan Disaster

On the 21 October 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a tip of coal waste slid onto the village of Aberfan in South Wales.
These pages were initially set up as part of a project to catalogue and conserve an archive of material relating to the disaster held at Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais libraries. Their objective is to act as a starting place for those interested in finding out about the disaster. They provide an overview of the circumstances surrounding the disaster and, more importantly, a guide and link to the more detailed sources of information available elsewhere.
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Remember, we must learn which matters may be breached occasionally at our convenience and which ones may never be if we are to live pleasantly with our fellow man.
Have a wonderful weekend . Vest Daily Gaggle.

Comments

Another blogger wrote about Aberfan this morning. What a tragedy. For a generation. Much as wars have been, with less reason.
Have a good weekend.
Anonymous said…
I read a Welsh blog this morning mentioning the Aberfan disaster and it must have a most horrendous thing. I suppose rich people died in the Hindenburg disaster but so often it is the poorer members of society who suffer the most in a disaster, such as Cyclone Katrina in New Orleans.
Vest said…
EC & Andrew. it seems with a couple of birthdays of friends and these other sad incidents on October 21 that date will never become erased from my mind.
River said…
Three little slices of history I'd never heard about before.
Quite hard to read about the Aberfan tragedy with getting tears in the eyes.

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