Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Reminds me of the men of Torpedo Squadron 8 at Midway. What a debt we owe all of them.
Or three Gladiators named Faith, Hope and Charity defending Malta.
See: “Red Duster, White Ensign by Ian Cameron.
Too bad the Brits don’t make young people like that any more.
There is a book, To War in a Stringbag, by Commander Charles Lamb, about flying the Swordfish. It covers their attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto and a lot more. A great read.
As CDR Salamander would say, “Fullbore!”
The Channel Dash was a particularly bleak moment for the UK in WWII. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Esmonde highlights the tale of the heroic squadron commander. Sad that the pilots had to pay such a steep price for long-standing organizational failures. I’ll skip the entire RNAF and RAF pre-war aircraft design dustup. Valor and skill could do only so much.
I was surprised. I thought that they were all shot down, with no survivors. It’s nice to know i was wrong.
They don’t make them like that anymore. God Speed Sir!
And when I was a pup in school in Alberta, The Princess Province, Faith, Hope and Charity were required reading.
Yes, Alberta. I was a kid, OK.
Catching up a bit, consequence of being on the far side of the world last week.
I had the privilege of serving on a ship with that name. An awful lot of people found the name humorous yet each vessel of the class bore the name of a characteristic that Americans admired. Even the US cannot name ships after all the admirable men but we did, once, try to name ships after the admirable characteristics that we admire in men (and women too).
Took a ride this morning at LAX with a gent back from USNS Loyal. There are still a few ships that aren’t named for anybody but rather for the characteristics we admire. We both flew in on a 747 from Japan that landed at 0730, hours ahead of schedule (medical case) in total fog. It was my first 0 0 landing. Taxiing on the ground I could barely see the wingtip. I know the pilots never saw the ground until we touched down. Weird.