its not SUPPOSED TO. if the Huns attack the west coast, conscription is legitimate as it is literally ON HOME SOIL, (or what can be considered home soil), and its not SUPPOSED to have an effect on the lads in Flanders and beyond. its mainly political, while also being sort of practical.
The Rainbow. A World War One on Canada's West Coast Timeline
- Thread starter YYJ
- Start date
I agree with your points in general, but not in specifics. It occurred to me that mounting modern heavy guns in the Halifax Citadel would be like mounting Furious's spare 18" turret in the Tower of London. It would serve no military purpose and would ruin a treasured historic site. Here is a map of Halifax's coastal defences:
From this document: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1657&context=cmh
The heaviest guns were mounted at Devil's Battery and Chebucto Battery, with 3 x 9.2" and 3 x 6" guns respectively.
yeah. thing is, modernizing a fort for land defence like say, Fort Henry (Kingston), is MUCH different than trying to modernize an old naval fort. If I wanted to modernize Fort Henry for say, 1914, you could just stick french 75mm field guns and machine gun emplacements where the cannons and rifles would go. but yeah. It would make more sense go place it where we see them on the map, but merge some of them into larger forts, and make them more heavily armed.
1914 infantry would have a hard time storming the Halifax Citadel without a sufficient artillery preparation. The layout is not all that different from the Belgian and French forts the Germans had to fight through on the western front. But the Halifax or, say Quebec City Citadels would not stand up well to a 1914 bombardment. The curtain scarp and counterscarp walls are stone rather than concrete covered with dirt, and the Canadian Forts have no armoured turrets or deep underground shelters. Still, throw on a pile of barbed wire and some machineguns and a few field guns and the attacker could have a costly time of it.
Google Streetview in the Citadel's ditch:
Google Maps
Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
www.google.ca
Last edited:
Fort McAuley in Victoria was upgraded twice OTL. The 1890s 6" disappearing guns depicted ITTL were first replaced by Rainbow's 6" naval guns in the 20s, and then by some modern coast defence 6" guns in the '30s. Each time they had to rebuild the concrete emplacements to accommodate the mount for the new guns.
1890s Disappearing gun positions as built (at Fort Rod Hill):
Final configuration in 1940:
Author photo.
1890s Disappearing gun positions as built (at Fort Rod Hill):
Final configuration in 1940:
Author photo.
Excellent Timeline, I reread it several times!
What was the fate of Leutnant Radl, interned in the United States?
What was the fate of Leutnant Radl, interned in the United States?
hence my idea of "modernizing it". Stick armoured turrets on the outside, put French 75mm field guns on the parapets, start reinforcing the area with concrete... that sort of thing. Quebec citadelle, if modernized to the French and Belgian WW1 standard, is practically impenetrable. especially if the US or other doesnt have proper siege artillery like the germans did. Other forts like Fort Henry in Kingston could also be modernized to his same standard, and it would essentially turn many of Canada's major sities into a hellish urban battlefield with a fort you have to deal with too.1914 infantry would have a hard time storming the Halifax Citadel without a sufficient artillery preparation. The layout is not all that different from the Belgian and French forts the Germans had to fight through on the western front. But the Halifax or, say Quebec City Citadels would not stand up well to a 1914 bombardment. The curtain scarp and counterscarp walls are stone rather than concrete covered with dirt, and the Canadian Forts have no armoured turrets or deep underground shelters. Still, throw on a pile of barbed wire and some machineguns and a few field guns and the attacker could have a costly time of it.
Google Streetview in the Citadel's ditch:
Google Maps
Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
marathag
Banned
| Shell |
|
|---|---|
| Caliber | 12 in (305 mm) |
| Breech | Slotted screw |
| Recoil |
|
| Elevation |
|
| Traverse | 360° |
| Rate of fire |
|
| Muzzle velocity |
|
| Effective firing range |
|
Here is the stats on the Austrian gun, also 12"
| Shell | 287 kg (633 lb) (light) 384 kg (847 lb) (heavy) |
|---|---|
| Caliber | 305 mm (12 in) |
| Breech | Horizontal sliding-block |
| Carriage | Box trail |
| Elevation | +40° to 70° |
| Traverse | 120° |
| Rate of fire | 10–12 rounds/hour |
| Muzzle velocity | 340 m/s (1,115 ft/s) |
| Effective firing range | 9,600 m (10,500 yd) |
| Maximum firing range | 11,300 m (12,400 yd) |
when did these come into service? (the new american mortars), and when would the US invade Canada? this is all timing.
View attachment 682417
fixed. so not really portable, not that the German Bethas were all that mobile, unlike the Skodas they borrowed from the Austrians, but did later have these
Shell
- 700 lb (320 kg)
- 1,046 lb (474 kg)
Caliber 12 in (305 mm) Breech Slotted screw Recoil
- 23 in (580 mm) (M1896MI)
- 24 in (610 mm) (M1896MII)
Elevation
- 45° (minimum for firing)
- 70° (maximum for firing)
Traverse 360° Rate of fire
- 1 round per minute (normal)
- 1.3 rounds per minute (maximum)
Muzzle velocity
- 1,500 ft/s (460 m/s) (700-lb shell)
- 1,050 ft/s (320 m/s) (1,046-lb shell)
Effective firing range
- 14,610 yd (13,360 m) (maximum 700-lb shell)
- 2,400 yd (2,200 m) (minimum 1,046-lb shell)
Here is the stats on the Austrian gun, also 12"
Shell 287 kg (633 lb) (light)
384 kg (847 lb) (heavy)Caliber 305 mm (12 in) Breech Horizontal sliding-block Carriage Box trail Elevation +40° to 70° Traverse 120° Rate of fire 10–12 rounds/hour Muzzle velocity 340 m/s (1,115 ft/s) Effective firing range 9,600 m (10,500 yd) Maximum firing range 11,300 m (12,400 yd)
marathag
Banned
First models in 1886, and about the only bit of 1st rank 'World Class' weaponry the US Army had. Made for the Endicott era Harbor Forts.
The Railway mounts were authorized in 1917, and completed in 1919
This conversation is wandering a bit. The 12" mortar at top is a US coastal defence mortar for the Endicott Period, so 1890s. Fired in anger in 1941/42 during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.
As we were discussing before, the events of this story might provoke a desire in the public and among politicians to build/upgrade Canada's coastal defence fortifications, but I can't see an appetite to spend money to build land forts to defend Canada against the US in the middle of World War 1. And the Citadels in Halifax and Quebec are in the wrong place, from a previous era of warfare. The Brialmont-style forts of the 1890s in Belgium and France, and most of continental Europe, were built in rings around strategic cities, to keep invaders out, not built in the center of town as a keep to make one last boss fight.
As we were discussing before, the events of this story might provoke a desire in the public and among politicians to build/upgrade Canada's coastal defence fortifications, but I can't see an appetite to spend money to build land forts to defend Canada against the US in the middle of World War 1. And the Citadels in Halifax and Quebec are in the wrong place, from a previous era of warfare. The Brialmont-style forts of the 1890s in Belgium and France, and most of continental Europe, were built in rings around strategic cities, to keep invaders out, not built in the center of town as a keep to make one last boss fight.
true. but I see it as more economical to just get more navy. couple of Birmingham Class Cruisers? and a half flotilla of DD's?
More economical is mines and guns as the mines don't need manpower when they are in warehouses, and efficient coastal defense artillery can mostly be manned by reservists with a very small active specialized cadre. Real warships that are manned by well trained crews with a decent amount of sea time and which are not quickly obsolete relative to potential enemies are EXPENSIVE if their primary purpose is to keep enemy long range commerce raiders out of protected littoral bastions.
Now if the RCN decides that they need to do long range patrols and convoy escort, then real warships might efficiently fill that role.
peak RCN in 1917 would be 6 Cruisers, 1 single Battleship, 15 Destroyers and a small manner of patrol vessels and coastal ships.
By the end of this TL the Germans have been swept from the seas as they had OTL.
By mid 1916 the HSF will be confined to its base after Jutland.
The RN has a number of predreads that were withdrawn and armoured cruisers that could be sent to the Canadians as a reaction to the events on the west coast with virtually zero impact to the conduct of the war.
If anything more Canadians would have volunteered than OTL for overseas service their nation having been savaged like Belgium, much of France and the British East coast had been.
I fail to see how it would negatively impact the war.
We've had a fair amount of artillery; how about something on the human factor now?
What was the honours list for the fight of the Rainbow? Did Commander Hose receive the Victoria Cross?
Did the men of the Leipzig and Nürnberg receive the Iron Cross? What about the ships themselves, a la Emden?
Will we see something of their postwar careers?
What will be the effect of this on Canadian defence politics?
What was the honours list for the fight of the Rainbow? Did Commander Hose receive the Victoria Cross?
Did the men of the Leipzig and Nürnberg receive the Iron Cross? What about the ships themselves, a la Emden?
Will we see something of their postwar careers?
What will be the effect of this on Canadian defence politics?
Appendix 1 : Scrapbook.
Nanaimo Daily News, July 7, 1957.
TORPEDO PANIC!
Crew Building Gabriola Ferry Terminal Dredges Up World War One Torpedo.
The Descanso Bay construction site for the new ferry wharf on Gabriola Island was evacuated this morning after workmen discovered they had brought to surface an explosive relic of local World War 1 history in the jaws of their grapple dredger.
“I thought it was an old pipe or something,” said dredge operator Arno Dekker. “It was really rusty. Then I saw tail fins and a propeller and I put two and two together. I said ‘Run Boys!’, and we did.”
Police secured the site from rubber-neckers, to a safe distance, and evacuated local homes. The RCMP Bomb Squad and Naval Bomb Disposal Unit from Esquimalt responded, and the weapon was carefully placed on a barge and taken to be sunk again, this time deeper and at a safer location, said Royal Canadian Navy Spokesman Captain Serge Archambault.
“We identified the munition as a 45cm C/03 Torpedo, as equipped the World War One German cruisers Nürnberg and Leipzig. The torpedo was taken to the Disused Explosives disposal zone in Area Whiskey Golf Georgia Strait, and allowed to sink again,” said Archambault. “It will rest at a depth of 1200 feet in a region of the Strait where anchoring is forbidden, so it should be quite safe. Our members did not attempt to defuse the torpedo because it was too old and in poor condition. The warhead on that weapon contains 400 pounds of TNT, so it was very fortunate that a boater did not snag their anchor on the firing pistol, sometime in the last 43 years.”
The curator of the Gabriola Island historical society asked Archambault if there was any possibility that the torpedo could be made safe and put on display, to which Archambault answered, “No.”
Descanso Bay was the site of the 1914 battle between the German cruiser Leipzig, and HMS Algerine, a Royal Navy Sloop. Algerine was sunk by a torpedo in the battle, and her wreck was salvaged long ago, but a second torpedo must have been fired by Leipzig, and sank into the mud until brought back up to daylight again this morning.
“Our house looks over the Bay there,” said local homemaker Loise Barlow. “We have all gone boating and swimming in the bay. It is scary to think that thing was just lying there, all this time.”
*
Vancouver Sun. August 31, 1972
(Excerpt)
The New Democratic Party’s landslide election victory last night brings another new face into the British Columbia Legislature. Winston Ng, a 48 year old former sawmill worker, lawyer, and union executive, fills the seat for the riding of Alberni. Ng won the seat handily over his Social Credit incumbent opponent. Ng is a well-known face, and has been a strong voice for labour in the forestry community. Ng’s victory makes him the first Chinese-Canadian elected to the BC Legislature, and, along with incoming MLAs Rosemary Brown and Emery Barnes, gives the province’s governing party something it has never had before, a caucus of visible minorities.
Ng said in his victory speech in the Port Alberni IWA Union Hall, “I would like to thank the people of Alberni for their vote of confidence in sending me to Victoria as your representative. As some of you may know, my father arrived here in the Valley during the First World War as a stoker on a German naval auxiliary. The ship was captured by the Canadian Navy, and he was given a new opportunity for life here in Canada. My father was welcomed, and worked hard, and we prospered. I have always found inspirational his belief that when working people come together, we can overcome any adversity.”
*
La Nouvell Revue Francaise
June 1925 edition
French Language
Travelogue: A week lost in the Cafés, Restaurants, and Bars of Budapest
André Gide
(excerpt)
…Now, our top buttons undone to accommodate the gourmanderie of the evening’s meal, and swaying down the cobbled streets of the old city from the excellent wine, we followed a local rascal’s advice and absconded to the Sörözo Radl on Vám Street, by the river. A long line of reprobates were leaning against the stone walls holding them up, or milling about, awaiting admission. Schlumberger, the shameless braggart that he is, proclaimed to the mountainous doorman that a famous French restaurant reviewer demanded immediate admission, and we were inside.
What a row! The brasserie crowd was a League of Nations. Moors, Jews, Gypsies, Bohemians, Vikings, Spaniards, Cossacks; men, women, and everything in-between, all demanding More, More, More! The barman never stopped pouring from a bottle of green absinthe. The skinniest man I have ever seen stood in the throng in front of the bar, in striped trousers and a singlet, balanced on a ball, a ball balanced on his nose. A passing tuxedoed waiter placed a canape on top of the ball. The man flicked his neck and the canape was in his mouth and the ball in his hands. He bowed, still balanced on the other ball, then motioned to the cigarette girl for a smoke. Fluted glasses filled with champagne, sleeves with pilsner, snifters of Cognac were raised in Hurrah! And the loudest voice cheering among them was the proprietor, Istevan Radl.
The klezmer band on stage became petulant that the crowd was ignoring them, and the accordionist jumped up on a table and held down every key at the same time with her elbow. We stayed until the place finally closed, I think.
*
Victoria Times Colonist. April 27, 1996.
Port Alberni Mill Saws Ancient Artillery Shell
Workers at the Macmillan Bloedel Somass Sawmill in Port Alberni received a rude surprise Monday morning, when a saw blade cut into a metal object buried inside a log. Annoyance turned to alarm when the workers discovered that the object was in fact a small artillery shell. RCMP and Military Bomb Disposal Teams were called, and it was determined that the projectile was solid steel and contained no explosive.
Sawyer Derwin Mack described the incident. “I was working in the cant saw control cab, and the feed chain came to a dead halt. Smoke started pouring out of the log, and bits of metal were flying. I’m glad I was behind plexiglass. I hit the kill switch, but the band saw broke anyways, and came off its wheels. I figured we hit a rock in the log. There is supposed to be a metal detector but I guess he must have missed that one. Took us hours to clear the jam. When the guys bucked up the log to salvage what we could, they found it was an artillery shell. That’s when we called the bomb squad.”
“The shell was not like a rifle bullet, lead and copper. That steel was hard, like tool steel. Took the teeth right off the blade, before it broke.”
Where did the mysterious projectile come from? Macmillan Bloedel management said the Sitka Spruce log in question came from a cutblock on the east shore of Barclay Sound, near Bamfield. Navy bomb disposal members identified the shell as a 57mm naval shell of British manufacture, commonly referred to as a 6 pounder, used by a number of navies from the 1890s until after the Second World War.
I asked Gordon Large, curator of the Esquimalt military museum and archives. “This is a fascinating find. We think this shell could be an artifact from the Battle of Bamfield, in 1914. People might remember, when the German Navy attacked the west coast of Canada in World War One, they captured a Fisheries Protection vessel, the Galiano, and used it against Canada. In one of history’s great coincidences, the Galiano and her sister ship Malaspina met in battle off Bamfield and fought to a draw, mutually sinking each other.”
“Both vessels were armed with the same 6 pounder guns, and either could have fired this shell. You could see how an errant shell could lodge in a tree, and the wound grow over, and the tree adding another 82 growth rings before falling to the loggers.”
“The manager of the Somass Sawmill wants to keep the shell on his desk as a memento, but we would like to acquire it for the Esquimalt Military Museum collection. It is a wonderful piece of history. The Germans showed up on this coast in the first weeks of the war to attack our industry, and in a sense, today this shell was still at it, 82 years later.”
*
CBC Radio One News Prince Rupert. August 27, 2006
Audio Transcript
(sound of outboard motor, boat wake, and seagulls)
Reporter: I am here travelling up Observatory Inlet, about 60 kilometers north east of Prince Rupert as the crow flies. We are here to visit some modern-day treasure hunters. As we round a bend in this deep coastal fjord, we can see a barge anchored mid-channel, and several attendant dive boats.
(boat motor slows,)
Voice: “bring her in here, slow. Yeah, that's it.”
(sounds of climbing out of boat, greeting)
R: Randy Zagato is the chief treasure hunter.
Randy Zagato: (laughs) They call me that. But when I hear that title, I think of guys like Mel Fisher, in the Caribbean, looking for Spanish galleons, or those guys at Oak Island. We are going after a wreck from the modern era, we have the manifest, when know exactly when and mostly where it sank and, most importantly, we found it.
(sound of equipment, and splashing)
R: A crane is lifting a kind of box out of the inlet, a diver is riding on top. In the box are a stack of green metal ingots, dozen of them.
RZ: These are blister copper ingots, 99 percent pure. They were smelted in Anyox, just up the inlet from here. Most people will not have heard of Anyox, because it is a ghost town. It hasn’t existed since 1934. The German navy attacked Anyox in August 1914, and destroyed the smelter. The smelter was built back because of the war, but it was killed for good by the Great Depression. And because they had really mined most of the ore.
When the mine was in operation, the smelted copper was taken by barge down the Inside Passage to Tacoma, Washington, for final processing. One thing the Germans did when they were here was sink two of those barges. The barge Balaclava was sunk in Granby Bay in 230 meters of water. Balaclava was carrying 800 tons of copper ingots. Those ingots were salvaged in the ‘40s.
The other barge, the Louisiana here, her position was not as well known. We found her last year with side scan sonar, at a depth of 538 meters. This inlet is really deep. Too deep for divers, we have to use a remotely operated vehicle with a claw. That makes for slow work. On top of that, the currents here are pretty strong, up to 3 knots, enough to affect the ROV, so we can only work on slack tide, about 4 hours in 24.
R: The diver in the water helps with the cable lifting the ROV out of the water. (sound of winch)
RZ: So what’s in it for us? Why go through all this hardship?”
Voice in backgound: Oh, looks like rain.
RZ: The bill of lading says Louisiana was carrying 47,808 of these ingots, each weighing 50 pounds. That is 1200 tons of copper. The value of copper today is at an all-time high, selling for $3.71 a pound. That comes to almost 9 million dollars.”
*
Rock Island Auction Company
Firearms Auction Catalogue Fall 2018
Item 4026
German WW1 Gewehr 98 Rifle
DWM (Deutche Waffen- Und Munitionfabriken) Berlin 1904
All Matching
Rare Imperial German Navy
Good condition
Reserve bid $2500
Stock Disk marked IMD 3126
Some wear on the stock and forestock.
The history of this rifle is intriguing for the collector. The gun has been in a family on San Juan Island in Washington State for four generations. Provenance is from a batch of rifles initially issued to the German light cruiser Nürnberg for her landing parties. When Nürnberg attacked the west coast of Canada in August 1914, this rifle was taken aboard the Canadian liner Princess Charlotte when she was captured and used as an armed merchant raider by the Germans, then abandoned when the liner was torpedoed and run aground on San Juan Island. The wreck was looted by locals, and dozens of Gewehr 98s became common deer rifles on the island and its surrounds. This is the only known survivor of the San Juan G98s.
Navy models of this rifle with matching numbers are almost unheard of.
*
ABE Books Listing
Rare and Antiquated Books.
An Officer’s Journey
(Die Reise eines Offiziers)
By FregattenKapitan Otto Von Spee
German Language 1952
Written during his four-year internment in Argentina, this candid autobiography traces the path of a Rhenish Prussian aristocratic boy’s upbringing, his admiration for his mostly absent father, his naval service in World War One in the Pacific, his internment and subsequent escape from neutral America, and his service in the Baltic in the later war and Russian intervention. Spee provides a valuable perspective to historians on the organizational, cultural, and ideological shifts in the evolution of Germany’s navy from Kaiserliche Marine to the Reichsmarine to Kreigsmarine. He also provides an unguarded view on his experience of the aristocratic German officer corps’ conflict with the emergent Nazi leadership of Germany, and the tension between professionalism, duty, and patriotism on the one hand vs. respect for tradition and humanism on the other. In the final section he reflects on Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of Eternal Recurrence, as he serves as Executive Officer on a ship named after his famous father, again engaging in commerce warfare in the waters of the Americas, and then spending for a second time in his life, a long period of inaction interned in a neutral country while his country is locked in the throes of an existential war.
*
Canadian War Museum, Ottawa
Exhibit: 1914-1918 First World War
Display: British Columbia 1914: Our Worst Fears Confirmed
Items and Artifacts
Left: Poster sized photograph of SMS Nürnberg, photo credit Grace Milligan.
Right: Poster sized photograph of HMCS Rainbow, pre-war.
Suspended from Ceiling: 18” RGF Mark IV Torpedo, Armament of CC-1 and CC-2 submarines
Above Display case: Large map of British Columbia, showing path of German cruisers and locations of events
Inside Display case:
50 lb. copper ingot from Anyox
HMCS Rainbow ship’s bell
Imperial German Naval Ensign, recovered from SS Princess Charlotte
Captain (later Admiral) Walter Hose’s Victoria Cross
Lump of Coal from Union Bay
57mm shell from Russian warship Anadyr, recovered from Prince Rupert hotel linen closet.
30 cm long section of Original Transpacific Telegraph Cable
Swatch of Wood Pulp from Ocean Falls
P04 Navy Model Luger with shoulder stock, surrendered at Bamfield
Smaller photographs of locations and persons, with captions.
TORPEDO PANIC!
Crew Building Gabriola Ferry Terminal Dredges Up World War One Torpedo.
The Descanso Bay construction site for the new ferry wharf on Gabriola Island was evacuated this morning after workmen discovered they had brought to surface an explosive relic of local World War 1 history in the jaws of their grapple dredger.
“I thought it was an old pipe or something,” said dredge operator Arno Dekker. “It was really rusty. Then I saw tail fins and a propeller and I put two and two together. I said ‘Run Boys!’, and we did.”
Police secured the site from rubber-neckers, to a safe distance, and evacuated local homes. The RCMP Bomb Squad and Naval Bomb Disposal Unit from Esquimalt responded, and the weapon was carefully placed on a barge and taken to be sunk again, this time deeper and at a safer location, said Royal Canadian Navy Spokesman Captain Serge Archambault.
“We identified the munition as a 45cm C/03 Torpedo, as equipped the World War One German cruisers Nürnberg and Leipzig. The torpedo was taken to the Disused Explosives disposal zone in Area Whiskey Golf Georgia Strait, and allowed to sink again,” said Archambault. “It will rest at a depth of 1200 feet in a region of the Strait where anchoring is forbidden, so it should be quite safe. Our members did not attempt to defuse the torpedo because it was too old and in poor condition. The warhead on that weapon contains 400 pounds of TNT, so it was very fortunate that a boater did not snag their anchor on the firing pistol, sometime in the last 43 years.”
The curator of the Gabriola Island historical society asked Archambault if there was any possibility that the torpedo could be made safe and put on display, to which Archambault answered, “No.”
Descanso Bay was the site of the 1914 battle between the German cruiser Leipzig, and HMS Algerine, a Royal Navy Sloop. Algerine was sunk by a torpedo in the battle, and her wreck was salvaged long ago, but a second torpedo must have been fired by Leipzig, and sank into the mud until brought back up to daylight again this morning.
“Our house looks over the Bay there,” said local homemaker Loise Barlow. “We have all gone boating and swimming in the bay. It is scary to think that thing was just lying there, all this time.”
*
Vancouver Sun. August 31, 1972
(Excerpt)
The New Democratic Party’s landslide election victory last night brings another new face into the British Columbia Legislature. Winston Ng, a 48 year old former sawmill worker, lawyer, and union executive, fills the seat for the riding of Alberni. Ng won the seat handily over his Social Credit incumbent opponent. Ng is a well-known face, and has been a strong voice for labour in the forestry community. Ng’s victory makes him the first Chinese-Canadian elected to the BC Legislature, and, along with incoming MLAs Rosemary Brown and Emery Barnes, gives the province’s governing party something it has never had before, a caucus of visible minorities.
Ng said in his victory speech in the Port Alberni IWA Union Hall, “I would like to thank the people of Alberni for their vote of confidence in sending me to Victoria as your representative. As some of you may know, my father arrived here in the Valley during the First World War as a stoker on a German naval auxiliary. The ship was captured by the Canadian Navy, and he was given a new opportunity for life here in Canada. My father was welcomed, and worked hard, and we prospered. I have always found inspirational his belief that when working people come together, we can overcome any adversity.”
*
La Nouvell Revue Francaise
June 1925 edition
French Language
Travelogue: A week lost in the Cafés, Restaurants, and Bars of Budapest
André Gide
(excerpt)
…Now, our top buttons undone to accommodate the gourmanderie of the evening’s meal, and swaying down the cobbled streets of the old city from the excellent wine, we followed a local rascal’s advice and absconded to the Sörözo Radl on Vám Street, by the river. A long line of reprobates were leaning against the stone walls holding them up, or milling about, awaiting admission. Schlumberger, the shameless braggart that he is, proclaimed to the mountainous doorman that a famous French restaurant reviewer demanded immediate admission, and we were inside.
What a row! The brasserie crowd was a League of Nations. Moors, Jews, Gypsies, Bohemians, Vikings, Spaniards, Cossacks; men, women, and everything in-between, all demanding More, More, More! The barman never stopped pouring from a bottle of green absinthe. The skinniest man I have ever seen stood in the throng in front of the bar, in striped trousers and a singlet, balanced on a ball, a ball balanced on his nose. A passing tuxedoed waiter placed a canape on top of the ball. The man flicked his neck and the canape was in his mouth and the ball in his hands. He bowed, still balanced on the other ball, then motioned to the cigarette girl for a smoke. Fluted glasses filled with champagne, sleeves with pilsner, snifters of Cognac were raised in Hurrah! And the loudest voice cheering among them was the proprietor, Istevan Radl.
The klezmer band on stage became petulant that the crowd was ignoring them, and the accordionist jumped up on a table and held down every key at the same time with her elbow. We stayed until the place finally closed, I think.
*
Victoria Times Colonist. April 27, 1996.
Port Alberni Mill Saws Ancient Artillery Shell
Workers at the Macmillan Bloedel Somass Sawmill in Port Alberni received a rude surprise Monday morning, when a saw blade cut into a metal object buried inside a log. Annoyance turned to alarm when the workers discovered that the object was in fact a small artillery shell. RCMP and Military Bomb Disposal Teams were called, and it was determined that the projectile was solid steel and contained no explosive.
Sawyer Derwin Mack described the incident. “I was working in the cant saw control cab, and the feed chain came to a dead halt. Smoke started pouring out of the log, and bits of metal were flying. I’m glad I was behind plexiglass. I hit the kill switch, but the band saw broke anyways, and came off its wheels. I figured we hit a rock in the log. There is supposed to be a metal detector but I guess he must have missed that one. Took us hours to clear the jam. When the guys bucked up the log to salvage what we could, they found it was an artillery shell. That’s when we called the bomb squad.”
“The shell was not like a rifle bullet, lead and copper. That steel was hard, like tool steel. Took the teeth right off the blade, before it broke.”
Where did the mysterious projectile come from? Macmillan Bloedel management said the Sitka Spruce log in question came from a cutblock on the east shore of Barclay Sound, near Bamfield. Navy bomb disposal members identified the shell as a 57mm naval shell of British manufacture, commonly referred to as a 6 pounder, used by a number of navies from the 1890s until after the Second World War.
I asked Gordon Large, curator of the Esquimalt military museum and archives. “This is a fascinating find. We think this shell could be an artifact from the Battle of Bamfield, in 1914. People might remember, when the German Navy attacked the west coast of Canada in World War One, they captured a Fisheries Protection vessel, the Galiano, and used it against Canada. In one of history’s great coincidences, the Galiano and her sister ship Malaspina met in battle off Bamfield and fought to a draw, mutually sinking each other.”
“Both vessels were armed with the same 6 pounder guns, and either could have fired this shell. You could see how an errant shell could lodge in a tree, and the wound grow over, and the tree adding another 82 growth rings before falling to the loggers.”
“The manager of the Somass Sawmill wants to keep the shell on his desk as a memento, but we would like to acquire it for the Esquimalt Military Museum collection. It is a wonderful piece of history. The Germans showed up on this coast in the first weeks of the war to attack our industry, and in a sense, today this shell was still at it, 82 years later.”
*
CBC Radio One News Prince Rupert. August 27, 2006
Audio Transcript
(sound of outboard motor, boat wake, and seagulls)
Reporter: I am here travelling up Observatory Inlet, about 60 kilometers north east of Prince Rupert as the crow flies. We are here to visit some modern-day treasure hunters. As we round a bend in this deep coastal fjord, we can see a barge anchored mid-channel, and several attendant dive boats.
(boat motor slows,)
Voice: “bring her in here, slow. Yeah, that's it.”
(sounds of climbing out of boat, greeting)
R: Randy Zagato is the chief treasure hunter.
Randy Zagato: (laughs) They call me that. But when I hear that title, I think of guys like Mel Fisher, in the Caribbean, looking for Spanish galleons, or those guys at Oak Island. We are going after a wreck from the modern era, we have the manifest, when know exactly when and mostly where it sank and, most importantly, we found it.
(sound of equipment, and splashing)
R: A crane is lifting a kind of box out of the inlet, a diver is riding on top. In the box are a stack of green metal ingots, dozen of them.
RZ: These are blister copper ingots, 99 percent pure. They were smelted in Anyox, just up the inlet from here. Most people will not have heard of Anyox, because it is a ghost town. It hasn’t existed since 1934. The German navy attacked Anyox in August 1914, and destroyed the smelter. The smelter was built back because of the war, but it was killed for good by the Great Depression. And because they had really mined most of the ore.
When the mine was in operation, the smelted copper was taken by barge down the Inside Passage to Tacoma, Washington, for final processing. One thing the Germans did when they were here was sink two of those barges. The barge Balaclava was sunk in Granby Bay in 230 meters of water. Balaclava was carrying 800 tons of copper ingots. Those ingots were salvaged in the ‘40s.
The other barge, the Louisiana here, her position was not as well known. We found her last year with side scan sonar, at a depth of 538 meters. This inlet is really deep. Too deep for divers, we have to use a remotely operated vehicle with a claw. That makes for slow work. On top of that, the currents here are pretty strong, up to 3 knots, enough to affect the ROV, so we can only work on slack tide, about 4 hours in 24.
R: The diver in the water helps with the cable lifting the ROV out of the water. (sound of winch)
RZ: So what’s in it for us? Why go through all this hardship?”
Voice in backgound: Oh, looks like rain.
RZ: The bill of lading says Louisiana was carrying 47,808 of these ingots, each weighing 50 pounds. That is 1200 tons of copper. The value of copper today is at an all-time high, selling for $3.71 a pound. That comes to almost 9 million dollars.”
*
Rock Island Auction Company
Firearms Auction Catalogue Fall 2018
Item 4026
German WW1 Gewehr 98 Rifle
DWM (Deutche Waffen- Und Munitionfabriken) Berlin 1904
All Matching
Rare Imperial German Navy
Good condition
Reserve bid $2500
Stock Disk marked IMD 3126
Some wear on the stock and forestock.
The history of this rifle is intriguing for the collector. The gun has been in a family on San Juan Island in Washington State for four generations. Provenance is from a batch of rifles initially issued to the German light cruiser Nürnberg for her landing parties. When Nürnberg attacked the west coast of Canada in August 1914, this rifle was taken aboard the Canadian liner Princess Charlotte when she was captured and used as an armed merchant raider by the Germans, then abandoned when the liner was torpedoed and run aground on San Juan Island. The wreck was looted by locals, and dozens of Gewehr 98s became common deer rifles on the island and its surrounds. This is the only known survivor of the San Juan G98s.
Navy models of this rifle with matching numbers are almost unheard of.
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ABE Books Listing
Rare and Antiquated Books.
An Officer’s Journey
(Die Reise eines Offiziers)
By FregattenKapitan Otto Von Spee
German Language 1952
Written during his four-year internment in Argentina, this candid autobiography traces the path of a Rhenish Prussian aristocratic boy’s upbringing, his admiration for his mostly absent father, his naval service in World War One in the Pacific, his internment and subsequent escape from neutral America, and his service in the Baltic in the later war and Russian intervention. Spee provides a valuable perspective to historians on the organizational, cultural, and ideological shifts in the evolution of Germany’s navy from Kaiserliche Marine to the Reichsmarine to Kreigsmarine. He also provides an unguarded view on his experience of the aristocratic German officer corps’ conflict with the emergent Nazi leadership of Germany, and the tension between professionalism, duty, and patriotism on the one hand vs. respect for tradition and humanism on the other. In the final section he reflects on Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of Eternal Recurrence, as he serves as Executive Officer on a ship named after his famous father, again engaging in commerce warfare in the waters of the Americas, and then spending for a second time in his life, a long period of inaction interned in a neutral country while his country is locked in the throes of an existential war.
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Canadian War Museum, Ottawa
Exhibit: 1914-1918 First World War
Display: British Columbia 1914: Our Worst Fears Confirmed
Items and Artifacts
Left: Poster sized photograph of SMS Nürnberg, photo credit Grace Milligan.
Right: Poster sized photograph of HMCS Rainbow, pre-war.
Suspended from Ceiling: 18” RGF Mark IV Torpedo, Armament of CC-1 and CC-2 submarines
Above Display case: Large map of British Columbia, showing path of German cruisers and locations of events
Inside Display case:
50 lb. copper ingot from Anyox
HMCS Rainbow ship’s bell
Imperial German Naval Ensign, recovered from SS Princess Charlotte
Captain (later Admiral) Walter Hose’s Victoria Cross
Lump of Coal from Union Bay
57mm shell from Russian warship Anadyr, recovered from Prince Rupert hotel linen closet.
30 cm long section of Original Transpacific Telegraph Cable
Swatch of Wood Pulp from Ocean Falls
P04 Navy Model Luger with shoulder stock, surrendered at Bamfield
Smaller photographs of locations and persons, with captions.
Search the Collection | Canadian War Museum
The collection features military objects, archival and photographic material, books, sound and visual recordings, and works of art. It is one of the finest collections of military holdings in the world.
www.warmuseum.ca
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YYJ, you have a real talent for spinning a tale.
While I realize that you are writing (at least partially) from your knowledge of the forts in BC, I certainly hope you use your talent to spin more tales to keep us entertained.
I wish I had quizzed my father more about his postings to those forts that were manned once again during the Korean war. Silly me, I had more important things to worry about in my youth. You know, girls, money, girls, parties, girls.......
My father died at about the same age I am now, not quite 70.
While I realize that you are writing (at least partially) from your knowledge of the forts in BC, I certainly hope you use your talent to spin more tales to keep us entertained.
I wish I had quizzed my father more about his postings to those forts that were manned once again during the Korean war. Silly me, I had more important things to worry about in my youth. You know, girls, money, girls, parties, girls.......
My father died at about the same age I am now, not quite 70.