There was this thing, after an admiral wussed out of a fight & we lost Minorca they only went and shot him (despite him having some extremely influential mates). After that, the RN developed a fighting attitude under pretty much all circumstances. I’ve read that in some battles the French/Spanish leaders went in trying to preserve as many of their ships as possible, the Brits went in to win. Yeah sure, sometimes it didn’t work but it did an awful lot of the time (and sometimes the overly aggressive attitude nearly ended in disaster: Jutland). To briefly (probably mis)quote Admiral Cunningham whilst ordering his destroyers back to Crete to evacuate as many soldiers as poss (after losing many the day before) It takes 3 years to build a ship, it takes 3 centuries to build a tradition, we go back in
gunboatdiplomacy t1_iy5i5da wrote
Reply to comment by Sdog1981 in TIL that after the battle between the USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere, the captain of the Constitution, Isaac Hull, refused the sword of surrender from the captain of the Guerriere, James Richard Dacre, saying he could not accept it from a man who fought so gallantly by alcapwnage0007
There was this thing, after an admiral wussed out of a fight & we lost Minorca they only went and shot him (despite him having some extremely influential mates). After that, the RN developed a fighting attitude under pretty much all circumstances. I’ve read that in some battles the French/Spanish leaders went in trying to preserve as many of their ships as possible, the Brits went in to win. Yeah sure, sometimes it didn’t work but it did an awful lot of the time (and sometimes the overly aggressive attitude nearly ended in disaster: Jutland). To briefly (probably mis)quote Admiral Cunningham whilst ordering his destroyers back to Crete to evacuate as many soldiers as poss (after losing many the day before) It takes 3 years to build a ship, it takes 3 centuries to build a tradition, we go back in