Arc

Light?

As in, is there an official illumination or not.  Or not. Nothing to do with Mount Ararat and doves and floodwaters.

     Conrad begs your forgiveness if you were expecting another weekend blog as has been every other, for that is not the case here.  O no.  For one thing, Your Humble Scribe is now the official The Manion Dog Sitter.  This requires <a long list>

     ANYWAY I was ever so diligent the night before, annotating the military career of Horatio Hornblower, in what might be described as an ascending trajectory.   Yes yes yes, he is a fictional character, yet inspired by real-life officers of the Senior Service.  Art!

C S Forrester's finest creation

     Hence the 'arc' in today's title.  No, I haven't seen the film, but Gregory Peck is quite apt as the brooding, introspective Hornblower.  He is no 'Mary Sue', being completely tone-deaf and acidly dismissive of all music, he gets seasick at the outset of every voyage, and finds it hard to socialise or make friends.  How ironic that Hollywood was glamourising an officer of the Royal Navy, whom they had been fighting against a mere 19 years before Hornblower started his career.

    Horatio - no we are not going to abbreviate his surname for obvious reasons - began his naval career in 1793 as a Midshipman, the lowest form of officer life.  Middies had to serve an effective apprenticeship of three years before they could apply to become a lieutenant.  To become a Lt one needed to pass an examination, which Horatio fails first time around.  Art!

     His excuse is that there was a battle going on at the time, and repelling an attack by Spanish fireships counts for more than classifying a sloop, frigate or ship of the line.  He is then promoted to Acting Lieutenant in command of a sloop, and is unfortunate enough to be captured by the Spanish, which you would expect to put a bit of a downward trend in his story arc.

     Not so!  For Horatio puts his imprisonment to good use, learning Spanish and Galician.  He also risks his life to rescue Spanish fishermen whose trawler had been dashed to bits on rocks, and has the moral fortitude to refuse rescue by a Royal Navy ship, since he had given his parole to his gaolers.  Stout chap!

     In fact the Spanish release him, being so impressed at his dutiful word and bravery in rescuing their own, allegedly the enemy.  Well, it's one thing to be recognised by your own side, quite another if it's the opposition.  Art!

     Horatio is promoted to Junior Lieutenant, and then again to Commander.  This was an intermediate officer rank, given to those in charge of a warship too large for a Lieutenant and too small for a Captain, typically a sloop of less than 20 guns - see above.  Art!

     Then comes the Treaty Of Amiens, whereby Perfidious Albion and Imperial France lay down the cudgels, which puts Horatio on half-pay, when even full pay wasn't that much.  Fortunately one of his transferrable skills is maths, which makes him a demon whist player - whist being a forerunner of BRIDGE - and he makes a modest income from winning games.

     Note my use of 'Perfidious', because it's apt.  The T Of Amiens required Albion to evacuate Malta, which they utterly refuse to do - it's an absolutely crucial element of dominating the entire Mediterranean - and the T Of Amiens is then Amen.  

     Horatio is back!  He is given command of the sloop HMS Hotspur, rather than being left ashore on half-pay, so his performance and behaviour to date had been observed with approval by the Admiralty.  His arc is ascendant again.  Art!

     He is promoted to Captain, and then given a job that the Admiralty could only have given to an officer with a reputation for complete honesty and diamond incorruptibility: recovering gold and silver bullion from a wreck sunk in Turkish waters.  

     Horatio's reward for this sterling - ha! Do you se O you do - service is command of the frigate HMS Lydia, where he first encounters Lady Barbara Wellesley, and my notes say 'fires were started'.  A lot of intense looks between the two, one suspects, but Horatio's better self informs the Lady that he's a married man.

     Possibly the pinnacle of Horatio's career is his command of HMS Sutherland, a 74-gun ship of the line, meaning he had really arrived as an officer.  His sense of duty thus compels him to tackle four French warships that had evaded the blockade of Toulon by the Royal Navy.  You don't need to be an expert in naval warfare in the nineteenth century to know that odds of four-to-one are not good.  So, the Sutherland is destroyed, two-thirds of her crew are  killed and Horatio is taken prisoner.  However - a word you surely knew was coming - three of the French ships are crippled and the last one badly damaged.  End of blockade runners.  Art!

     A more modern iteration.  Parts of it were filmed in the Black Sea, an area of more recent naval activity, which means it's time to move on.  Stick a pin in this subject of arcs and career trajectories, because we'll be coming back to it.

"The War Illustrated Edition 209 22nd June 1945"

Back to the central pages montage, which is looking at events of the year 1941.  Art!

     Suddenly the Sinister Union was an ally, meaning their 3 years of collaboration with the Teutons had to be swept under the rug and not mentioned.  This really was an epic mistake by Hitler, surely up there in the history of bad decisions, because not only was he taking on the world's largest army, he had left the world's largest navy and the world's largest empire undefeated.  Art!

     Note the correct spelling of 'Harbour'.  I don't usually post two photographs from these montages but made an exception here.  Once again, with impeccable stupdity, Herr Schickelgruber managed to muck things up, by declaring war on South Canada when  there was no reason to.  Not only that, the Japanese missed all the South Canadian aircraft carriers, which were to become the most important naval assets in the inaptly-named Pacific.

It Am Totally Not A Scam

So egregious is it, however, that it has temporarily broken the rules of grammar. you ought to recall the recent BOOJUM!s that delved into the world of whisky investments, where you were warned there are an awful lot of scammers about.  Art!

     36.3% is an outrageously high rate of return, where 5% is realistic.  Note the asterisk, which links to print so small it cannot be read.  Let me see if a Snip and magnification will clarify matters.  Art?

 
     "The value of investments -" and the MSN dots interfere with the text irreparably - "income from them, may fall or rise, and you might get back less than you invested".  (Emphasis is mine).

      So, it's a scamble.  As reliable and trustworthy as crypto-currency.  Which we have also and already cautioned you about.

Kaptain Ketamine Versus The Tangerine Toad

One has to wonder what the board at Tesla are thinking right now, as well as their shareholders, thanks to the very public and very loud falling-out between Elong Tusk and Donold Judas Trump.  Art!

     Their share price fell off a cliff when the insults and allegations started being fielded on Twitter, and expect MAGA members' Tweets to get shadow-banned and un-Liked and mysteriously vanish.  Tusk is an utter plonker, mind, because he thought he was 'friends' with Donold, a man who has spent his entire life friendless thanks to being concerned only with himself, and how wonderful he is.  Elsewhere, that disgustrous fraud Alex Jones has fallen foul of MAGAts by insisting he's not in their cult, and is now being defamed by them.  Which is richly satisfying.  Bring on the wheelie-bins of popcorn!

Finally -

Bear this name in mind: Chuck Pfarrer.