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chained_bear commented on the word Cloudesley Shovell
"When the English lost an entire fleet just 20 miles off its coast on a foggy night in 1707, the flaws of dead reckoning became painfully conspicuous. The disaster had an even more piquant lesson to teach. The night before the accident, a common seaman approached the fleet's admiral, Cloudesley Shovell, to say that he had been keeping a record of the ship's position and believed that it was off course. The admiral responded to this news with alacrity. He charged the man with mutiny and had him hanged forthwith. The law was on the admiral's side. It quite explicitly forbade 'subversive navigation by an inferior,' confirming once more how officials discountenanced an inquiring spirit.
"Within twenty-four hours the seaman's figures proved correct. All four ships ran directly into the Scilly Isles. The two thousand soldiers and sailors aboard perished. The admiral, one of two survivors, was murdered by a marauder on the beach, but perhaps not before he had time to contemplate his rectitude in punishing unauthorized ingenuity."
--Joyce Appleby, Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013), p. 172
Long live his name in infamy.
December 28, 2016