MDMD (1): Questions: "damned ships"

[athena1 at garnet.berkeley.edu]

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>Date: Fri, 6 Jun 97 12:10:42 -0700
>From: David Casseres <casseres at apple.com>
>Subject: Re: MDMD(1): Questions

>41.1 `I have not yet begun to fight' `There's something wrong
with our
>damn'd ships today, Chatfield' real or made up? Sources?

>>I've heard the first one all my life; the second one is new to
me.

   This is my first posting as a new Pynchon-l member although I
have done a fair amount of lurking and archive reading in a most
interesting and varied list.  So hope the following contribution
to one of TP's embedded quotations  will be of use.

POSSIBLE SPOILER


























M&D 41.1  Dave Casseres (Friday Jun 6) inquired about the
quotation, "There's something wrong with our damned ships today,
Chatfield!"
     Pynchon places this in "the Company of great Humorous Naval
Quotations" along with John Paul Jones' "I have not yet begun to
fight" (the most bloody encounter between Jones' BONHOMME RICHARD
and HMS SERAPIS, 1779,--as his own ship sank Jones stepped on
board the surrendered SERAPIS to share a glass of wine with its
captain) and in the context of the demoralized l'GRAND's breaking
off a strenuous engagement with the Mason and Dixon carrying
SEAHORSE with the perhaps less immortal utterance by Commandant
St. Foux, "Meanwhile, I sail away.  Poohpooh!  Adieu!"(M&D, 39)
At any rate it would seem great Humorous Naval Quotations are engendered
by heavy fighting and serious injuries.
  As for "something wrong with our damned ships today, Chatfield":
  Speaker was Admiral David Beatty on board HMS LION
to his Flag Captain, Chatfield, during the opening phase of the
battle cruiser action at the Battle of Jutland, May 31, 1916,
between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet in
the North Sea just off the Jutland peninsula of Denmark.
Beatty had just seen two of his six battle cruisers,
INDEFATIGABLE and QUEEN MARY blow up (there were hardly any
survivors from the disasters), struck by salvos from their German
counterparts, and observing a third, PRINCESS ROYAL, bracketed by
near misses and enveloped in smoke and water, thought she had
blown up also.  Hence his celebrated remark, usually cited as
"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today,
Chatfield," although TP may have changed the expletive to the
more genteel "damn" out of respect for 18th century decorum.
Immediately after this remark, and still believing he was now
commanding a force reduced from six to three battle cruisers
against the German five, Beatty issued an order to steer two
points closer to the enemy, thus seeking to close the range in
classic Nelson tradition (and perhaps also seeking to reduce the
high trajectory fire of the German salvos which had apparently
penetrated his ships' armorplate).
   Later in the general fleet action a third British battle
cruiser HMS INVINCIBLE exploded and sank (4 survivors), and if
you add on the catastrophic sinking of HMS HOOD by the BISMARCK
in WW II one might agree with Beatty that there was indeed
something wrong with the bl--dy ships--, either a classic of
British understatement--which is probably why TP liked the
quotation, or else a sombre assessment of the truth.  Many argue
that the battle cruiser design was underprotected with regard to
armor plate but the British habit of packing their cordite
explosive in easily inflammable silk bags--whereby a turret fire
could ignite the whole ammunition train down to the magazines--
was probably responsible for the losses at Jutland (the Germans
used brass casings which were notably safer).  For a close
analysis of the battle see John Campbell, _Jutland:  An Analysis
of the Fighting_, US Naval Institute Press, 1986.
      Sources:  Beatty's laconic utterance, that of a natural
leader in a critical moment, no doubt became celebrated in Navy
messrooms soon after the fleet returned to its ports. It is cited
widely in literature about Jutland which is voluminous, 
Jutland being the only naval encounter involving the main battle
lines of Dreadnought type battleships, and controversial since
the British sought reasons why an imperilled High Seas Fleet
managed thrice in the course of action to elude annihilation
while the Germans, having given the vaunted Grand Fleet a bloody
nose and lived to tell the tale, claimed a tactical victory,
although Britannia continued to rule the waves.  Perhaps Beatty's
comment had even filtered down to the Pig Bodines of TP's naval
world to be passed on, if so rather a Pynchonian alpha and omega
between the dashing aristocratic Beatty and Pig--or his avatar--
with that diseased baboon fur handshake.
     Winston Churchill gives a vivid account of the battle
(including "something wrong with our bl--dy ships today") in his
World War I history, _The World Crisis_, although Churchill's
critique of tactical manouvres and decisions is largely
discounted by naval historians; there is an interesting fictional
treatment of the battle and its WW I context in Robert H.
Pilpel's 1979 novel, _To The Honor of The Fleet_.

Diane Clemens
athena1 at garnet.berkeley.edu