Spartan Gold: Hannibal's famous elephant crossing and more

from Page 3
Hannibal's famous elephant crossing in 217 BC

Hannibal (247–183 or 182 BC) was a Carthaginian military commander and tactician. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest military commanders in recorded history. His father, Hamilcar Barca, was the leading Carthaginian commander during the First Punic War, his younger brothers were Mago and Hasdrubal, and he was brother-in-law to Hasdrubal the Fair.

Hannibal lived during a period of great tension in the Mediterranean, when the Roman Republic established its supremacy over other great powers such as Carthage, the Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedon, Syracuse, and the Seleucid empire. One of his most famous achievements was at the outbreak of the Second Punic War, when he marched an army, which included war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into northern Italy. In his first few years in Italy, he won three dramatic victories — Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae — and won over many allies of Rome. Hannibal occupied much of Italy for 15 years, but a Roman counter-invasion of North Africa forced him to return to Carthage, where he was decisively defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama. Scipio had studied Hannibal's tactics and brilliantly devised some of his own, and finally defeated Rome's nemesis at Zama having previously driven Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother, out of the Iberian Peninsula.

After the war, Hannibal successfully ran for the office of suffete. He enacted political and financial reforms to enable the payment of the war indemnity imposed by Rome. However, Hannibal's reforms were unpopular with members of the Carthaginian aristocracy and in Rome, and he fled into voluntary exile. During this time, he lived at the Seleucid court, where he acted as military adviser to Antiochus III in his war against Rome. After Antiochus met defeat at Magnesia and was forced to accept Rome's terms, Hannibal fled again, making a stop in Armenia. His flight ended in the court of Bithynia, where he achieved an outstanding naval victory against a fleet from Pergamum. He was afterwards betrayed to the Romans and commited suicide by poisoning himself.

Charlemagne's in AD 800, returning from his coronation in Rome as the first Holy Roman Emperor

Charlemagne ( possibly 742 – 28 January 814), son of Pepin the Short, was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814.

He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800. His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the European Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and France.

The Holy Roman Emperor (German: Römisch-Deutscher Kaiser, or "Roman-German Emperor") is a term used by historians to denote a medieval ruler who, as German King, had also received the title of "Emperor of the Romans" from the Pope. After the 16th century, this elected monarch governed the Holy Roman Empire (later called Holy Roman Empire of the German nation), a Central European union of territories of the Medieval and Early Modern period.

Pepin the Short, King of France, had in 753 crossed the Pennines to meet Pope Stephen II.

Pepin (or Pippin) (died 24 September 768), called the Short (Pépin le Bref) or the Younger (Pippin der Jüngere), rarely the Great (Pippin der Grosse), was the first King of the Franks (752–68) of the Carolingian dynasty. In 741 he and his brother Carloman succeeded their father, Charles Martel, as mayors of the palace and de facto rulers of the kingdom during an interregnum (737–43). After the retirement of Carloman (747), Pepin obtained the permission of Pope Zachary to depose the last of the Merovingian kings, Childeric III, and assume the throne (752).

As he was named for his grandfather, Pepin of Heristal, in turn named for his grandfather, Pepin of Landen, both mayors of the palace, Pepin the Short has sometimes been numbered Pepin III.

Charlemagne was the son of Pepin the Short.

the Campo Formio treaty
The Treaty of Campo Formio (or Peace of Campo Formio, or rarely Treaty of Campoformido) was signed on 18 October 1797[1] (27 Vendémiaire, Year VI) by Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Philipp von Cobenzl as representatives of revolutionary France and the Austrian monarchy.[2] The treaty marked the victorious conclusion to Napoleon's campaigns in Italy, the collapse of the First Coalition, and the end of the first phase of the French Revolutionary Wars.

Terms of the treaty
Beyond the usual clauses of "firm and inviolable peace" the treaty transferred a number of Austrian territories into French hands. Lands ceded included the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium) and certain islands in the Mediterranean, including Corfu and other Venetian islands in the Adriatic Sea. Venice and its territories (Venetia) were divided between the two states: Venice, Istria and Dalmatia were turned over to the Austrian emperor. Austria recognized the Cisalpine Republic and the newly-created Ligurian Republic, formed of Genovese territories, as independent powers.

The treaty also contained secret clauses, which divided up certain other territories, made Liguria independent, and also agreed to the extension of the borders of France up to the Rhine, the Nette, and the Roer. Free French navigation was guaranteed on the Rhine, the Meuse and the Moselle. The French Republic had been expanded into Germany and Italy's natural boundaries.

The treaty was composed and signed after five months of negotiations. It was basically what had been agreed earlier at the Peace of Leoben in April 1797, but the negotiations had been spun out by both parties for a number of reasons. During the negotiating period the French had to crush a royalist coup in September. This was used as a cause for the arrest and deportation of royalist and moderate deputies in the Directory.

Napoleon's biographer, Felix Markham, wrote "the partition of Venice was not only a moral blot on the peace settlement but left Austria a foothold in Italy, which could only lead to further war." In fact the Peace of Campo Formio, though it reshaped the map of Europe and marked a major step in Napoleon's fame, was only a respite.

As a result of the treaty, Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, a prisoner from the French revolution, was released from Austrian captivity.

By passing Venetian possessions in Greece, such as the Ionian Islands to French rule, the Treaty of Campo Formio had an effect on later Greek history which was not intended or expected at the time. The placing of a small French garrison at the formerly Venetian-ruled town of Preveza, on the edge of Ottoman territory, proved untenable and had disastrous results for French soldiers and townspeople.

Campo Formio, now called Campoformido, is a village west of Udine in north-eastern Italy, in the middle between Austrian headquarters in Udine and Napoleon's residence. The French commander resided at Villa Manin near Codroipo, country mansion of Ludovico Manin, last Doge of Venice. It was there that Napoleon signed the treaty.

Pacific Vortex: 2100 hours and more

pg. x of the prologue
"Secure the bridge for diving at 2100."
The "bridge", on a submarine is a small open platform in the top of the sail, used for observation during surface operation.

2100 means 2100 hours, or 11 pm. This is the 24 hour clock, which is also known as military time in the US. In Europe, timetables for trains and planes are given with the 24 hour clock.

00:00 -- 12:00 a.m.(start of day) --"12 midnight"
01:00 -- 1:00 a.m.
02:00 -- 2:00 a.m.
03:00 -- 3:00 a.m.
04:00 -- 4:00 a.m.
05:00 -- 5:00 a.m.
06:00 -- 6:00 a.m.
07:00 -- 7:00 a.m.
08:00 -- 8:00 a.m.
09:00 -- 9:00 a.m.
10:00 -- 10:00 a.m.
11:00 -- 11:00 a.m.
12:00 -- 12:00 p.m.
12 noon
13:00 -- 1:00 p.m.
14:00 -- 2:00 p.m.
15:00 -- 3:00 p.m.
16:00 -- 4:00 p.m.
17:00 -- 5:00 p.m.
18:00 -- 6:00 p.m.
19:00 -- 7:00 p.m.
20:00 -- 8:00 p.m.
21:00 -- 9:00 p.m.
22:00 -- 10:00 p.m.
23:00 -- 11:00 p.m.
24:00 ("12 midnight")* (end of day)

Dupree lowered himself through the three levels of the conning tower - or sail, as the modern Navy called it...

A conning tower is a raised platform on a ship or submarine, often armored, from which an officer can con the vessel; i.e., give directions to the helmsman. It is usually located as high on the ship as practical, to give the conning team good visibility.

The verb 'conn' probably stems from the verb "conduct" rather from another plausible precedent, the verb "control". It is noted that the conning tower allows for efficient reconnaissance.

Admiral Douglas Monaster, from HMS Malefactor, is credited with using the term "control tower".

The conning tower of a submarine was a small watertight compartment within its sail (or fin in British usage) equipped with instruments and controls and from which the periscopes were used to direct the boat and launch torpedo attacks. It should not be confused with the submarine's control room, which was directly below it in the main pressure hull; or the bridge, a small exposed platform in the top of the sail. As improvements in technology allowed the periscopes to be made longer—then to be eliminated altogether, as in the Virginia-class—it became unnecessary to raise the conning station above the main pressure hull. The additional conning tower pressure hull was eliminated and its functions were added to the command and control center. Thus it is incorrect to refer to the sail of a modern submarine as a conning tower.

The Executive Officer and another man, the navigator, were bent over the plotting table.

An executive officer is generally a person responsible for running an organization, although the exact nature of the role varies depending on the organization.

In the units of some military forces, the Executive Officer (XO) is the second-in-command, reporting to the commanding officer (CO).

In the United States Army and Marine Corps, for example, there are XO billets in each company, battalion, and brigade, though not at higher levels of command. The XO billet is not a command; rather it is considered staff. The XO is typically responsible for the management of day-to-day activities, such as maintenance and logistics, freeing the unit commander to concentrate on tactical planning and execution. The XO also takes charge in the absence of the CO. While the experience gained as an XO is highly beneficial for an officer's professional development, never serving in the position will not preclude an officer from commanding later.

In the United States Navy and Coast Guard, XOs are normally assigned to all ships and shore units, and have a similar role to their counterparts in the Army and Marine Corps. On board Coast Guard cutters that are commanded by either a junior officer or a senior enlisted member, Executive Petty Officers (XPOs) are usually assigned to serve as second-in-command.

"Six hundred seventy miles north of Kahuku Point, Oahu."

Kahuku is a census-designated place (CDP) in the Koʻolauloa District on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, United States. In the Hawaiian language, ka huku means "the projection", presumably a reference to Kahuku Point nearby, the northernmost point of land on the island of Oahu. As of the 2000 Census, Kahuku had a total population of 2,097.

Spartan Gold: Grand St. Bernard Pass and more

the Pennine Alps had seen its shares of armies

The Pennine Alps (also: Valais Alps) are a mountain range in the western part of the Alps. They are located in Switzerland (Valais) and Italy (Piedmont and the Aosta Valley). The Col Ferret separates them from the Mont Blanc Massif; the Dora Baltea valley separates them from the Graian Alps; the Simplon Pass separates them from the Lepontine Alps; the Rhône valley separates them from the Bernese Alps.

The Italian side is drained by the rivers Dora Baltea, Sesia and Toce, tributaries of the Po. The Swiss side is drained by the Rhône River.

The Great St Bernard Tunnel, under the Great St Bernard Pass, leads from Martigny, Switzerland to Aosta.

The Gauls in 390 BC, on their way to trample Rome

The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish.

Archaeologically, they were the bearers of the La Tène culture (5th to 1st centuries BC). In the 3rd century BC, the Gauls expanded towards the southeast in a series of invasions, including the Gallic Invasion of Greece, with a few settling as far east as Anatolia, as the Galatians. They were conquered by Julius Caesar in the Gallic Wars in the 50s BC, and during the Roman period became assimilated into a Gallo-Roman culture. During the crisis of the third century, there was briefly a breakaway Gallic Empire under Postumus, Marcus Aurelius Marius and Tetricus I. By the arrival of the Franks during the Migration Period (5th century), the Gaulish language had been replaced by Vulgar Latin.

trampling Rome
Brennus (or Brennos) was a chieftain of the Senones, a Gallic tribe originating from the modern areas of France known as Seine-et-Marne, Loiret, and Yonne, but which had expanded to occupy northern Italy.

More important historically was a branch of the above (called Senones, by Polybius), who about 400 B.C. made their way over the Alps and, having driven out the Umbrians, settled on the east coast of Italy from Ariminum to Ancona, in the so-called ager Gallicus, and founded the town of Sena Gallica (Sinigaglia), which became their capital.

In 391 they invaded Etruria and besieged Clusium. The Clusines appealed to Rome, whose intervention, accompanied by a violation of the law of nations, led to war, the defeat of the Romans at the Allia (18 July 390) and the capture of Rome.

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Spartan Gold, by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood.
This annotation from the paperback edition of Berkley Publishing, 2009, and from Wikipedia unless otherwise credited.

Pacific Vortex: maiden trial and more

Dupree was chosen to command the Starbuck on her maiden trial

Every stage of life, for people and animals, has had a name. A "maiden" is a girl or young unmarried woman. (Old unmarried women can also be called maidens, but are more typically called spinsters.) At one point a maiden was also automatically considered to be a virgin, although that point is long past. But a "maiden trial" stems more from the virgin belief...the ship's "first" trip out to sea.

Typically, a ship goes out on "sea trials", then is officially christened and goes out on her maiden voyage.

A buzzer sounded; the officer on watch...picked up the bridge phone.

Watchmen were groups of men, usually authorised by a state, government, or society, to deter criminal activity and provide law enforcement. Watchmen have existed in various guises throughout the world and were generally succeeded by the emergence of formally organised policing.

An early reference to a watch can be found in the Bible where the Prophet Ezekiel states that it was the duty of the watch to blow the horn and sound the alarm. (Ezekiel 33:1-6)

The existence of watchmen have also been found in the Ottoman, Greek and Egyptian Empires.

The Roman Empire turned the role of a watchman into a profession by creating two organizations:
the Praetorian Guard thus establishing a rank and file system with a Captain of the Guard.
Vigiles, literally the watch.

The term the Watch then of course migrated into the naval lexicon as well.

"Echo sounder reports the seafloor has risen fifteen hundred feett in the last five miles.

Echo sounding is the technique of using sound pulses directed from the surface or from a submarine vertically down to measure the distance to the bottom by means of sound waves. This information is then typically used for navigation purposes or in order to obtain depths for charting purposes. Echo sounding can also refer to hydroacoustic "echo sounders" defined as active sound in water (sonar) used to study fish. Hydroacoustic assessments have traditionally employed mobile surveys from boats to evaluate fish biomass and spatial distributions. Conversely, fixed-location techniques use stationary transducers to monitor passing fish.

The word sounding is used for all types of depth measurements, including those that don't use sound, and is unrelated in origin to the word sound in the sense of noise or tones.

Technique
Distance is measured by multiplying half the time from the signal's outgoing pulse to its return by the speed of sound in the water, which is approximately 1.5 kilometres per second. For precise applications of echosounding, such as Hydrography, the speed of sound must also be measured typically by deploying a Sound Velocity Probe into the water. Echo sounding is effectively a special purpose application of sonar used to locate the bottom.

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Pacific Vortex, by Clive Cussler. 1982
This annotation comes from the 2010 Bantam Books Mass Market Edition, and from Wikipedia unless otherwise identified.

Spartan Gold: Napoleon's Reserve Army and more

...forty thousand soldiers of Napoleon's Reserve Army

Bonaparte returned from Egypt to France on 23 August 1799, and seized control of the French government on 9 November 1799 in the coup of 18 Brumaire, replacing the Directory with the Consulate. He reorganized the French military and created a reserve army positioned to support campaigns either on the Rhine or in Italy.

At home, Napoleon preferred the title of First Consul

The Consulate was the government of France between the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804. By extension, the term The Consulate also refers to this period of French history.

During this period, Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul had established himself as the head of a more conservative, authoritarian, autocratic, and centralized republican government in France while not declaring himself head of state. Nevertheless, due to the long-lasting institutions established during these years, Robert B. Holtman has called the Consulate "one of the most important periods of all French history.

he took in a lungful of air, settled his blue bicorne more firmly on his head

The bicorne or bicorn (two-cornered) is an archaic form of hat widely adopted in the 1790s as an item of uniform by European and American military and naval officers. It is now most readily associated with Napoléon Bonaparte but in practice most generals and staff officers of the Napoleonic period wore bicornes, and it survived as a widely worn full-dress headdress until at least 1914.

Descended from the tricorne, the black-coloured bicorne originally had a rather broad brim, with the front and the rear halves turned up and pinned together (in English the shorter front brim was called 'the cock' - hence 'cocked hat' - and the longer rear brim was termed 'the fan'), forming a semi-circular fan shape; there was usually a cockade in the national colours at the front. Later, the hat became more triangular in shape, its two ends became more pointed, and it was worn with the cockade at the right side. This kind of bicorne eventually became known in the English language as the cocked hat, although to this day it is still known in the French language as the bicorne.


The full-dress uniform of École Polytechnique of France comprises black trousers with a red stripe (a skirt for females), a coat with golden buttons and a belt, and a cocked hat (officially called a bicorne).Worn in the side-to-side "athwart" style during the 1790s, the bicorne was normally seen "fore-and-aft" in most armies and navies from about 1800 on. This change in style coincided with the flattening out of the pronounced front peak of the original headdress.

Some forms of bicorne were designed to be folded flat, so that they could be conveniently tucked under the arm when not being worn. A bicorne of this style is also known as a chapeau-bras or chapeau-de-bras.

The bicorne was widely worn until World War I as part of the full dress of officers of most of the world's navies. It survived to a more limited extent between the wars for wear by senior officers in the British, French, US, Japanese and other navies until World War II but has now almost disappeared in this context.

In addition to its military/naval uses, the bicorne was widely worn during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by civilian officials in European monarchies and Japan, when required to wear uniforms on formal occasions. This practice generally ceased after World War I but British colonial governors in temperate climates and governors general in some countries of the Commonwealth (notably Australia, Canada and New Zealand) continued to wear bicornes with ceremonial dress until the second half of the twentieth century.

General de Division, or Major-General, Arnaud Laurent...one of Napoleon's most trusted friends
I have been unable to find any mention of an Arnaud Laurent in Napoleon's army, let alone one of Napoleon's trusted friend.
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Spartan Gold, by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood.
This annotation from the paperback edition of Berkley Publishing, 2009, and from Wikipedia unless otherwise credited.

Pacific Vortex: nuclear submarine Starbuck and more

From the Prologue:

climbed onto the bridge of the nuclear submarine Starbuck

Cussler probably named the Starbuck after the Starbuck of Herman Melville's Moby Dick (which may also have been the origina of the name for the character in the play The Rainmaker), but that novel was published in 1851.

Where did Melville get the name?

The Starbuck family were a group of whalers operating out of Nantucket, Massachusetts from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Some members of the family gained wider exposure due to their discovery of various islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The two most prominent explorers in the family:
Valentine Starbuck - born in 1791
Obed Starbuck - 1797- 1882

(Starbucks, the coffee shop people, was indeed named after Melville's Starbuck.)

capable of cruising at one hundred twenty-five knots...two thousand feet beneath the sunlit surface.

Although the Starbuck was supposed to be the newest and most advanced sub afloat, Cussler was really exaggerating the speed of this submarine. The contemporary Los Angeles class attack subs (first built in 1972, last one built in 1996, could only go about 22 knots (about 23 miles per hour)-submerged. Today's attack class submarines (the Virginia-class) can't go much faster.

The knot (pronounced not) is a unit of speed equal to one nautical mile (which is defined as 1.852 km) per hour, approximately 1.151 mph. Etymologically, the term knot derives from counting the number of knots that unspooled from the reel of a chip log in a specific time.

1,852 m is the length of the internationally-agreed nautical mile. The U.S. adopted the international definition in 1954, having previously used the U.S. nautical mile (1,853.248 m).[5] The U.K. adopted the international nautical mile definition in 1970, having previously used the U.K. Admiralty nautical mile (6,080 ft [1,853.184 m]).

The speeds of vessels relative to the fluids in which they travel (boat speeds and air speeds) are measured in knots. For consistency, the speeds of navigational fluids (tidal streams, river currents and wind speeds) are also measured in knots. Thus, speed over the ground (SOG) (ground speed (GS) in aircraft) and rate of progress towards a distant point ("velocity made good", VMG) are also given in knots.

The Starbuck was like a thoroughbred jumper

The Thoroughbred is a horse breed best known for its use in horse racing. Although the word thoroughbred is sometimes used to refer to any breed of purebred horse, it technically refers only to the Thoroughbred breed. Thoroughbreds are considered "hot-blooded" horses, known for their agility, speed and spirit.

The Thoroughbred as it is known today was developed in 17th and 18th-century England, when native mares were crossbred with imported Oriental stallions of Arabian, Barb, and Turkoman breeding. All modern Thoroughbreds can trace their pedigrees to three stallions originally imported into England in the 17th century and 18th century, and to a larger number of foundation mares of mostly English breeding. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Thoroughbred breed spread throughout the world; they were imported into North America starting in 1730 and into Australia, Europe, Japan and South America during the 19th century. Millions of Thoroughbreds exist today, and more than 118,000 foals are registered each year worldwide.

Thoroughbreds are used mainly for racing, but are also bred for other riding disciplines such as show jumping, combined training, dressage, polo, and fox hunting. They are also commonly crossbred to create new breeds or to improve existing ones, and have been influential in the creation of the Quarter Horse, Standardbred, Anglo-Arabian, and various warmblood breeds.

Thoroughbred racehorses perform with maximum exertion, which has resulted in high accident rates and health problems such as bleeding from the lungs, low fertility, abnormally small hearts and a small hoof to body mass ratio. There are several theories for the reasons behind the prevalence of accidents and health problems in the Thoroughbred breed, and research continues.

The Department of Underwater Warfare ordered the trials to be conducted

This is a fictional title - for the United States it's called the Naval Undersea Warfare Center.

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Pacific Vortex, by Clive Cussler. 1982
This annotation comes from the 2010 Bantam Books Mass Market Edition, and from Wikipedia unless otherwise identified.

Spartan Gold: horse known as Styrie and more

Although painted on a horse, Napoleon and his men crossed the Alps on mules.

Read more about Napoleon at: http://www.napoleon.org

Grand St. Bernard Pass, Pennine Alps, May 1800

Great St. Bernard Pass (Fr. Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard, It. Colle del Gran San Bernardo) (el. 2469 m.) is the third highest road pass in Switzerland. It connects Martigny in the Canton of Valais in Switzerland to Aosta in Italy. It is the lowest pass lying on the ridge between the two highest summits of the Alps, Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. The pass itself is located in Switzerland in the canton of Valais, very close to Italy. It is located on the main watershed that separates the basin of the Rhone from that of the Po.

Great St. Bernard is the most ancient pass through the Western Alps, with evidence of use as far back as the Bronze Age and surviving traces of a Roman road. In 1800, Napoleon's army used the pass to enter Italy, an event depicted in Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass and Hippolyte Delaroche's Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, both notable oil paintings. Having been bypassed by easier and more practical routes, particularly the Great St Bernard Tunnel which opened in 1964, its value today is mainly historical and recreational.

Straddling the highest point of the road, the Great St Bernard Hospice was founded in 1049. The hospice later became famous for its use of St. Bernard dogs in rescue operations.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps
The last Gallic invasion over it occurred in May, 1800, under the direction of the 30-year-old First Consul of the French Republic, Napoleon Bonaparte. An Austrian army of 140,000 men had laid siege to French-occupied Genoa on the west coast of northern Italy. Napoleon traversed the pass with 40,000 men and 1/3 of their heavy artillery sending another 20,000 over three other passes as a diversion, intending to strike the Austrian rear. The panicked Austrians were unable to assemble fast enough to meet the French en masse but rather in a piecemeal way in June 1800, and so were defeated first at the Battle of Montebello and then at the Battle of Marengo.

Napoleon prepared for the march secretly by assembling men in small units below the pass, establishing supply dumps along the lower part of their route, and hiring artisans to set up shop along it as well. On May 15 an advance unit went over the pass to take Aosta, after which hospitals were set up at Martigny and Aosta. At Martigny the army assembled and received rations for three days. All the equipment - carriages, artillery, arms and ammunition - was disassembled and divided into packs of 60-70 pounds for the men to carry. The cannons were to be dragged up over the snow in hollowed-out pine half-logs by mules, and then when the mules died or were exhausted, by 100 soldiers and hired men each. Napoleon offered liberal monetary rewards to soldiers and laborers who could perform difficult portages in a timely fashion.

Over several days at the end of May the army went over the pass single-file, 6000 men per day. Bands played martial music along the route, with drum rolls at especially difficult places to alert the men. At the top the monks handed each man two glasses of wine and a slice of rye with cheese as he filed by (courtesy of the French army). Accounts of the amounts expended vary. On the other side the snow became so packed that the men slid down sitting. Napoleon was the last man over, sliding also. The good weather held for the entire crossing, which could easily have turned into a disaster, if it had not.

On the way up Napoleon had discussed affairs of the heart with his young guide and mule driver, Pierre Nicholas Dorsaz, who did not know his identity. Offered a reward at the top, Dorsaz asked for the mule on which Napoleon was riding. He received the mule and a short note for the chief supply officer of the army. Versions of the story vary, but they all agree that when the young man had turned in the note and had drawn his ample pay for the work, he found that his companion was Napoleon and the latter had given him a house and farm so that he could marry his sweetheart.

In the Aosta Valley Napoleon's army slipped by an Austrian garrison at Bard just out of cannon range. The commander related that he was astonished to watch an army of 40,000 men in full equipment go marching past from the direction of the heights

A gust of wind whipped snow around the horse known as Styrie.
I can find no mention of Styrie as one of Napoleon's horses. The most famous horse ridden by Napoleon was called Marengo.
Marengo: The Myth of Napoleon's Horse, by Jill Hamilton

An Arabian [horse] Napoleon had captured during his Egyptian campaign two year earlier

According to Jill Hamilton, author of Marengo: The Myth of Napoleon's Horse:
Napoleon, who had a preference for little Arabs over the more popular Thoroughbreds, reconstructed the national studs of France that had been closed during the Revolution as symbols of aristocracy. When Napoleon began his conquests he expropriated the studs from the conquered nations, establishing stallion depots and rebuilding France's horse breeding stock. Napoleon kept a stable of about 80 personal saddle horses, as well as matched teams of carriage horses (Louis XVI, by comparison, kept close to 1,800). Many of Napoleon's own horses were of similar appearance -Arabs with white or light gray coats- making identification of a specific horse today difficult. Baron Fain wrote: "The horses which the Emperor usually rode were Arabians; of small size, greyish-white coat, good-tempered, gentle gallopers, and easy amblers." Napoleon had had from ten to eighteen horses killed under him in battle during his career.

The Emperor's horses were thoroughly trained by Napoleon's riding master. Guns were fired close to their heads, swords unsheathed and bayonets crossed before them, drums, trumpets and other instruments played suddenly, flags waved, dogs and other animals driven between their legs, all to teach his mounts to be steady in any situation and accustom them to the unexpected. Las Cases, who accompanied Napoleon into exile on St. Helena, commented that, "The emperor was ill-served in saddle-horses but he had eight or ten of them which were acceptable to him: he only wanted to use these. His main officers would have been ashamed to ride them; they were little, skinny and without exterior, but sweet, gentle and reliable; nearly all were entire [not gelded] and not trimmed [without their tails docked -Napoleon opposed docking a horse's tail, a practice common in the British Army]." Constant, Napoleon's valet, wrote that, "The Emperor mounted a horse without grace... and I believe that he would not have always been very sturdy on the horse if we had not taken so much care to give him only horses perfectly trained." On the other hand, Ernst Otto Odeleben, more critical of Napoleon's lack of equestrian skills said: "Napoleon rode like a butcher...whilst galloping, his body rolled backwards and forwards and sideways, according to the speed of his horse."

The Egyptian campaign

1798.
After two months of planning, General Bonaparte, whose star was on the ascendant in France due to his military victories in Italy, decided France's naval power was not yet strong enough to confront the Royal Navy in the English Channel and proposed a military expedition to seize Egypt and thereby undermine Britain's access to its trade interests in India.

Bonaparte wished to establish a French presence in the Middle East, with the ultimate dream of linking with a Muslim enemy of the British in India, Tipu Sultan.

Napoleon assured the Directory that "as soon as he had conquered Egypt, he will establish relations with the Indian princes and, together with them, attack the English in their possessions." According to a February 1798 report by Talleyrand: "Having occupied and fortified Egypt, we shall send a force of 15,000 men from Suez to India, to join the forces of Tipu-Sahib and drive away the English." The Directory agreed in order to secure a trade route to India.

In May 1798, Bonaparte was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His Egyptian expedition included a group of 167 scientists: mathematicians, naturalists, chemists and geodesists among them; their discoveries included the Rosetta Stone, and their work was published in the Description de l'Égypte in 1809.

En route to Egypt, Bonaparte reached Malta on 9 June 1798, then controlled by the Knights Hospitaller. The two hundred Knights of French origin did not support the Grand Master, Prussian Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim, who had succeeded a Frenchman and made it clear they would not fight against their compatriots. Hompesch surrendered after token resistance, and Bonaparte captured a very important naval base with the loss of only three men.

General Bonaparte and his expedition eluded pursuit by the Royal Navy and on 1 July landed at Alexandria. He fought the Battle of Shubra Khit against the Mamluks, Egypt's ruling military caste. This helped the French practice their defensive tactic for the Battle of the Pyramids fought on 21 July, about 24 km from the pyramids.

General Bonaparte's forces of 25,000 roughly equalled those of the Mamluks' Egyptian cavalry, but he formed hollow squares with supplies kept safely inside. 29 French and approximately 2,000 Egyptians were killed. The victory boosted the morale of the French army.

On 1 August, the British fleet under Horatio Nelson captured or destroyed all but two French vessels in the Battle of the Nile, and Bonaparte's goal of a strengthened French position in the Mediterranean was frustrated.

His army had succeeded in a temporary increase of French power in Egypt, though it faced repeated uprisings. In early 1799, he moved an army into the Ottoman province of Damascus (Syria and Galilee). Bonaparte led these 13,000 French soldiers in the conquest of the coastal towns of Arish, Gaza, Jaffa, and Haifa.

The attack on Jaffa was particularly brutal: Bonaparte, on discovering many of the defenders were former prisoners of war, ostensibly on parole, ordered the garrison and 1,400 prisoners to be executed by bayonet or drowning to save bullets. Men, women and children were robbed and murdered for three days.

With his army weakened by disease—mostly bubonic plague—and poor supplies, Bonaparte was unable to reduce the fortress of Acre and returned to Egypt in May. To speed up the retreat, he ordered plague-stricken men to be poisoned. (However, British eyewitness accounts later showed that most of the men were still alive and had not been poisoned.) His supporters have argued this was necessary given the continued harassment of stragglers by Ottoman forces, and indeed those left behind alive were tortured and beheaded by the Ottomans. Back in Egypt, on 25 July, Bonaparte defeated an Ottoman amphibious invasion at Abukir.

While in Egypt, Bonaparte stayed informed of European affairs through irregular delivery of newspapers and dispatches. He learned France had suffered a series of defeats in the War of the Second Coalition.

On 24 August 1799, he took advantage of the temporary departure of British ships from French coastal ports and set sail for France, despite the fact he had received no explicit orders from Paris.

The army was left in the charge of Jean Baptiste Kléber. Unknown to Bonaparte, the Directory had sent him orders to return to ward off possible invasions of French soil, but poor lines of communication meant the messages had failed to reach him. By the time he reached Paris in October France's situation had been improved by a series of victories. The Republic was bankrupt, however, and the ineffective Directory was unpopular with the French population. The Directory discussed Bonaparte's "desertion" but was too weak to punish him.

Bonaparte was approached by one of the Directors, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, for his support in a coup to overthrow the constitutional government. The leaders of the plot included his brother Lucien; the speaker of the Council of Five Hundred, Roger Ducos; another Director, Joseph Fouché; and Talleyrand. On 9 November—18 Brumaire by the French Republican Calendar—Bonaparte was charged with the safety of the legislative councils, who were persuaded to remove to the Château de Saint-Cloud, to the west of Paris, after a rumour of a Jacobin rebellion was spread by the plotters. By the following day, the deputies had realised they faced an attempted coup. Faced with their remonstrations, Bonaparte led troops to seize control and disperse them, which left a rump legislature to name Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Ducos as provisional Consuls to administer the government.

Napoleon turned and signaled to his valet, Constant

His full name was Louis Constant Wairy. He was born in 1778 and died in 1845.

Constant wrote a book about his time in service to Napoleon: NAPOLEON AS HIS VALET'S HERO; MEMOIRS OF CONSTANT, First Valet de Chambre of the Emperor, on the Private Life of Napoleon, His Family, and His Court. English version translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. The book is availalbe at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/w#a1228.

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Spartan Gold, by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood.
This annotation from the paperback edition of Berkley Publishing, 2009, and from Wikipedia unless otherwise credited.

Pacific Vortex: Mutiny on the Bounty and more

The Pacific Ocean

...the voracious appetite of the Pacific.

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceans. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.

At 165.2 million square kilometres (63.8 million square miles) the Pacific covers about 46% of the Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth's land area combined.

The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres (35,797 ft).

The Pacific Ocean was sighted by Europeans early in the 16th century, first by the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and named it Mar del Sur (South Sea). Its current name was given by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish expedition of world circumnavigation in 1521, who encountered favourable winds as he reached the ocean and called it Mar Pacifico in Portuguese, meaning "peaceful sea".

The mutiny on the Bounty took place in the Pacific....Pitcairn Island

The mutiny on the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty occurred on 28 April 1789. (The movies that have been made dramatizing the story generally take liberty with the facts).

The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against the commanding officer, William Bligh. According to most accounts, the sailors were attracted to the idyllic life on the Pacific island of Tahiti and repelled by the harsh treatment of their captain.

On 5 April 1789, after five months in Tahiti, the Bounty set sail with its breadfruit cargo. On 28 April, some 1,300 miles west of Tahiti, near Tonga, mutiny broke out. From all accounts, Fletcher Christian and several of his followers entered Bligh's cabin, which he always left unlocked, awakened him, and pushed him on deck wearing only his nightshirt, where he was guarded by Christian holding a bayonet.

The eighteen mutineers set Captain Bligh and 18 of the 22 crew loyal to him afloat in a small boat. Mutineers then settled on Pitcairn Island or in Tahiti. The Bounty was subsequently burned off Pitcairn Island to avoid detection and to prevent desertion. Descendants of some of the mutineers and Tahitians still live on Pitcairn island.

After Bligh and his crew of 18 made an epic and eventful journey in the small boat to Timor in the Dutch East Indies, he returned to England and reported the mutiny.

Herman Melville's Moby Dick

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851, is widely considered to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that on this voyage Ahab has one purpose, to seek out a specific whale: Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg, which now drives Ahab to take revenge.

The Essex, the only known ship to be sunk by a whale

Two actual events served as the genesis for Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex in 1820, after it was rammed by a large sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex.

The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. Mocha Dick was rumored to have twenty or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. One of his battles with a whaler served as subject for an article by explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker or New-York Monthly Magazine.

So does the Hai Maru, blown to bits when an underwater volcano erupted beneath her hull.
I've been unable to find any record of a ship called the Hai Maru, let alone one destroyed by an underwater volcano.

Only one such incident has ever been reported:
From the New York Times, October 14, 1987: Underwater Volcano Erupts, Shaking Ship of Researchers

An undersea volcano in the south-central Pacific Ocean erupted directly beneath a California-based research vessel on Sunday, causing a fearful clamor as large bubbles of steam and gas shook the ship, bursting under her hull and in the surrounding water.

In a radio-telephone interview yesterday, Dr. Harmon Craig, chief scientist on the research ship Melville, described how one gigantic bubble pushed six feet above the ocean surface and exploded, shooting out jets of gas and exposing in its core a cluster of 20 or 30 volcanic rocks. Rocks Too Hot to Handle

The rocks were so filled with gas that they floated briefly. It was thought risky to place a small boat in the churning water, but the ship was maneuvered close enough to net a football-sized rock. Dr. Craig said he tried to pick it up but it was too hot to handle.

In a message to the ship's base, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, affiliated with the University of California at San Diego, Dr. Craig said bubbles bursting in nearby waters and under the hull made ''horrendous clangs and clamors.''

Such activity, he said in the radio-telephone interview, seemed to support the hypothesis of French seismologists in Tahiti, about 1,000 miles to the northwest, that mysterious rumblings they record from time to time originate from the bursting of bubbles in undersea volcanic eruptions.

The French, who operate seismic stations in the area to monitor atmospheric nuclear explosions at their test center on Mururua island, have long debated the source of these peculiar acoustic waves.

The determination that some originated beyond the southeast end of the Tubai, or Austral island chain, led 10 years ago to the discovery there of the undersea volcano that erupted Sunday, Dr. Craig said. ''It was remarkable that it was discovered exactly 10 years ago,'' he said.

The volcano has become known as the MacDonald Seamount.

A number of oceanographers said yesterday that they could not recall any previous incident in which a ship suddenly found itself in the midst of an undersea eruption. They pointed out that ships have passed areas of discolored water produced by earlier eruptions, and in some cases had intentionally ventured near eruptions that were building new islands.

In 1963 a fishing boat crew observed that the sea had begun to boil south of Iceland. Subsequent eruptions built the island of Surtsey.

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Pacific Vortex, by Clive Cussler. 1982
This annotation comes from the 2010 Bantam Books Mass Market Edition, and from Wikipedia unless otherwise identified.

Manifesto

The Clive Cussler novels follow a specific and very successful formula.

Each book opens decades or even centuries in the past, describing an historic event - the discovery of a ship locked in an iceberg, the kidnapping of President Lincoln, then fast forwards to the near future, in which the techno-thriller is tied in with those past happenings.

How much of these past events were true, and how much were invented to provide the necessary background for the adventures of Dirk Pitt, Kurt Austin, the crew of the Oregon, and so on?

We discuss it in this blog.