Liverpool Scottish:

Firstly the Liverpool Scottish Site: As you can see the site is very old looking. To be fair it has been created by the Hon. Sec with no professional support over a number of years but he does love his colours! It was also written using Frontpage. Getting rid of the frames and introducing CSS has pushed the site beyond Frontpages capabilities. Yes I know you can do almost anything in Frontpage but to go beyond the basics you need to understand html php and javascripts etc. and there are easier ways to do those than using Frontpage. Ultimately the plan is to have a virtual museum but phase one is to update the existing site. At the moment I’m reworking the seventy odd pages to modern standards. I expect to complete by mid January and will report my experiences once completed.

The Wrecks of Liverpool Bay:

The scanning has completed and I’ve OCRed the first batch of records. I found it a bit of a chore as my OCR software was just the bundled one with the cannon scanner. As the wreck cards are written using professional jargon and shorthand, ‘INS’ for insert for example the poor software was reduced to guessing. I have therefore splashed out and purchased (with real money!) ABBY’s OCR software Finereader. This is more accurate and once I’ve read the manual and played around a bit it started to learn so each card becomes more accurate. As the society is not meeting again until the end of January I am holding fire on this while I complete Task One above.

The future plans about the information are coming together as various members of the society want to use the cards as source data for further research with a view to producing a definitive ‘wrecks of Liverpool Bay’, hopefully on-line.

A second research project has also started based on a collection of 350 black and white negatives which have been donated to the society. This has started me looking at how to scan and store negatives and transparencies. So once the Liverpool Bay project is completed, as far as the IT bit anyway, I’ll be looking at that.

All the best to you all in the New Year and be sure the Mayans don’t get you!!

A day after my last post I uploaded a very crude demonstration of how Googlemaps could be used to show spacial information. The original proof of concept had used some imaginary test data, the SS Lollipop carrying a cargo of sweets was one. However I was concerned about the accuracy of the plots and therefore how useful overlaying the locations on Google maps would be. With these concerns in mind I decided to use the first seven records scanned as an experiment. The results of just these seven reveal some surprising historic facts on how the coastline has changed overtime and resolved a (very) minor mystery.

We also look at some technical problems of scanning and some political ones as well.

The Plot

My concerns over the accuracy of the plots was two fold. Firstly how accurate was the source data? The original records are written to half a second, which in theory should locate a position to within some 15 metres or about 17 yards. This would be more than sufficient for historic purposes. However having some experience of navigation I know using stellar navigation an accuracy of within a nautical mile is coincided good enough. The positions however recorded in the records are used to update Admiralty charts and therefore can be expected to be, if not within 15 metres was in my opinion going to be close enough and indeed as close as was possible to get without a complete resurveying of the bay and river. The greater concern was that since the records had been updated in the mid 70s a new datum for latitude and longitude had been adopted which googlemaps used. Depending on location the discrepancy between the new and old system could be as much as 100 metres! Before deciding whether to add the complication of adjusting the plots for the new datum I decided to replace my imaginary set of wrecks with real data.

You can imagine my initial reaction when one of the plots shows not in the river or bay but a significant distance onshore. The ship is the Admiral Nelson wrecked in 1886. The ‘Circumstances of Lost’ in the record reads ‘Drove on shore on Wallasey beach…’. If you zoom in on the plot you can see the location is shown along an irregular feature and to seaward is a rather straight seawall. The wall was built around 1930 and the irregular feature is the old coastline. So our sample of seven already has shown us how the cost around the Wirral has changed over time. The next example of how plotting the wrecks on google helps is the case of the Albert. I chose seven records as the last four where all called Albert. One simple referred to ‘Albert’, one referred to ‘Albert’ with a hand written 2 next to it. The other two referred to ‘Albert (part of)’ one with another hand written 2 after it. Now a professional navigator may well be able to mentally plot the locations of these wrecks in their head but for use lesser mortals how did the parts of Albert relate to the two Albert wrecks? It became immediately clear that ‘Albert’ 2 was a totally different wreck as it is in the bay while the other three form a cluster in the river.

It is clear I think from this very small sample that the plotting exercise is going to show a number of interesting and historically significant aspects of the wrecks of Liverpool Bay.

 Scanning Report:

The original plan was to scan the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board records and OCR them into a database. There have been however a number of issues. Firstly the quality of the original documents and the software available. The second is the attitude of the archive to the scanning exercise itself.

While the records are clean and typed the OCR exercise is not going as smoothly as I had hoped (surprise, surprise). The records a typed in Capitals and due the typewriter ribbons used wearing out and not completely forming the letters correctly B s are often read as R s for example. This is exacerbated by the records being written in in a short hand INS meaning ‘insert’ for example. The results is defiantly not normal English, and as my OCR software is Adobe Acrobat which for OCR is quite limited the resulting output is unusable with out a great deal of data cleansing. I have therefore as I use scanning/OCR a lot and plan to increase its use decided to buy a professional edition of Abbyy for my Christmas present. This will allow a form to be specified and hopefully ‘learn’ the jargon used reducing the work load of preparing the scanned data for input to a database.

There have been some issues arising with the museum and their attitude to the scanning. Perhaps surprisingly this has not been about the potential damage to the originals a scanning exercise can do but the dreaded ‘elf n safety’ and what is and is not ‘research’. The achieve has placed an embargo on scanning the documents as the equipment used (mine) had not been PAT tested. The fact that the equipment is not required (due to voltage) to require testing and as a member of the public using private equipment I am exempt appears not to be relevant. The solution shows the illogic of the situation. My scanner runs of the USB port on my laptop as long as I am not plugged into the mains I can continue scanning! This solution limits me to scanning 50 records a day before the battery runs out. As the Research Society want to increase the use of modern technology discussions are on going to find a more reasonable (logical) solution.

The second issue is the use of the scanned records as part of the google map. The archive wish to have the link in the googlemap removed and if the records are to be accessed a visit to the archive required, otherwise ‘it would just be a digitization exercise’. If I had visited the archive and diligently by hand copied the records and then published a book, of which there are many in the library, this would be considered my personnel and valid historical research. However if I write an API, format a web site and offer as evidence of the data presented a image of the record that is not research and just coping. Its putting the image on the site which seems to be the stumbling block. While I can see a potential copyright issue that’s not how the problem is phrased. So as it stand at the moment while I will probably be able to show wreck locations and an edited summary of the records you will have to travel personally to Liverpool to view the full record.

It is I suppose the attitudes of the professional historian and archivists to IT that promoted this site in the first place, and I can at least show how it could work with the existing seven plots which are being allowed.

But time moves on and the wheel of life returns to the beginning … and all that stuff. So what now?

Since starting this project what is the (relevant) news? In the summer of 2010 I helped the local TA battalion (Liverpool Scottish) with their archive, which explains what happened to the site that summer. During the autumn and over Christmas I wrote my dissertation on the early adoption of radio in the Royal Navy. Following that, as part of the degree, I did a work placement at the Fusilier Museum in Bury in their archive (there is a pattern here). Being awarded my degree in May and being in the fortunate position of not needing to work for a living, I have been wondering what to do with my life.

So here we are, I have joined the Liverpool Nautical Research Society and started a project for the Maritime Museum cataloging the Mersey Docks & Harbourboard’s records of the wrecks of Liverpool Bay. The goal is, apart from producing a traditional finder’s aid, to plot the locations of the wrecks (sorry no treasure galleons) on googlemaps using the same interface as you use to find your nearest Tescos (Americans substitute “Starbucks”). I have also re-contacted the Liverpool Scottish and started helping them again.

How will this effect this site? Well the original aim was to explore how the internet can help develop academic understanding of History and I think the Google project is right up that street so over the coming months I will attempt to record the development of the project.

So as they say watch this space and hopefully it won’t be two years before the next post!

I had the central idea for this article and wrote the core of it some years ago and have been developing the idea ever since. I find the idea useful when reading or listening to someone I disagree with, essentially it uses the physical moon as an analogy for the ‘Truth’ and how different viewpoints while not necessarily changing my own position on an issue can provide a richer understanding of it. All this may sound a bit meta-physical but my recent sojourn into academia has highlighted the variety of viewpoints on any subject. Furthermore, this semester I am taking a module on Contemporary Security Studies, this is due to the limits of choice, my others are all firmly based in Military History. However in Contemporary Security Studies, ‘Truth’ is a even more ephemeral subject than in post-modernist history. Take for example, Terrorism versus Freedom-fighters, Weapons of Mass Destruction versus legitimate defences, one can see how the same issue can have different ‘truths’ for different people. After some initial subject reading, this article is essentially written as a rant and to formalise my own thoughts in preparation for the up coming academic year.

Post-modernism teaches that all view are equally valid and there is no absolute ‘Truth’. This view however places the historian on shifting sands and, to mix metaphors, leaves students rudderless in a sea of conflicting arguments. Trying to deal with all these conflicting versions of history has reinforced my concept. I believe the concept could have a wider application than just history, however rather than propound a new credo for mankind, I will limit my thoughts to the study of history and why differing views are important, even if they do not actually convince you to change your mind on a subject. Consider this analogy.

Suppose you go out and look at the full moon. What do you see? Basically a whitish-yellow disc with some bland features. Now go and look at the moon at half or three-quarter phase. You cannot see all of the moon, you know that, but the parts you can see have greater detail, contrast and beauty its also obvious that it is a three dimensional globe and not a simple flat disc. Why?

At full moon the light is striking the moon from the same direction that you are looking from, essentially the moon is illuminated from your own prospective. At half or three-quarter phase the moon is being illuminated from literally a different viewpoint.

The ‘Truth’ is like the moon. While another point of view may not show the whole of the truth from your prospective, it can and does reveal greater detail and beauty about the part of the truth it does show. I am not suggesting you should accept wholeheartedly another’s prospective and change you own view. In fact moving would just produce the same bland whitish-yellow disc, admittedly with different features. No, I suggest you use the illumination from different viewpoints to enhance your understanding of your own vision of the truth.

When approaching any subject a person, historian or otherwise, will naturally takes an initial position, before hopefully, then reviews the arguments. As the initial position is essentially randomly chosen, it will almost inevitably change as one investigates the subject further. If you find that your position changes due to the various arguments that is fine, however do not reject those views which you disagree with as valueless. Even once your own views have matured, a different prospective, even one you profoundly disagree with, can by its very contrast, cast interesting shadows on your understanding and show details, which no amount of study from your own position would reveal.

I had an experience of this while watching Simon Schama’s History of Britain series. He is an emanate historian, but I do not agree with his meta-narrative, of the path of the progression/development of society through time, his views on 18^th century Britain compared to the emerging United States of America I find particularly bizarre. However, his views on events did make me look at my opinions and see more detail in ‘facts’ I already ‘knew’ which enriched my understanding of the events he was describing. It was Schama’s illumination from his different prospectives, that enhanced my understanding without necessarily having to agree with him. It was while trying to describe to some friends, exactly why I continued to watch a man I disagreed with, that the moon analogy came to mind.

In the post modernist world we live in today, with its tension between a multi-culturalism; where all view points are equally valid and a fundamentalism; where no other view point is valid, the concept that, somebody else’s opinion can be wrong but it can still have value for me, is important. It is important academically, as it allows my arguments to be based on sounder knowledge and understanding. It is important in life in general, as hearing the ‘truth’ from another perspective can enrich my viewpoint by showing all those interesting nuances, that listening only to those I agree with will never reveal. I hope this concept enables me a better historian than I would otherwise be.

The progress of firearms during the 19^th Century has been long understood and accepted. The Napoleonic short ranged, inaccurate, smooth bored musket gave way, first to the rifle musket then the breech-loader, before reaching the pinnacle of the magazine bolt actioned rifles, such as the Short Magazine Lee Enfield. This continuous development of range and accuracy forced the parallel development of field fortifications resulting in the ‘hell on earth’ of the trench warfare in 1914-18. A seminal example of this development was the American Civil War, troops fighting with rifled weapons capable of ranges of over 1000 yards using Napoleonic tactics, more suited to the short ranges of the 18^th Century, which lead inevitably to massive casualties of Pickett’s Charge and the like. In a direct response to these losses, armies developed the field fortifications of the later war, cumulating in the siege of Petersburg. This article will discuss an alternative view first offered by Paddy Griffith in 1986, developed by Brent Nosworthy and a current assessment of this view point provided by Earl J. Hess.

The firearm used by most combatants in the American Civil war differed from the weapons used in the Napoleonic wars in two major areas. Firstly the percussion cap had improved reliability, by removing the need to prime the weapon with gunpowder the weapon was now better able to withstand bad weather, while at the same time simplifying the loading procedure. The second improvement was the widespread introduction of rifling. The spinning of the bullet as it travelled down the barrel increased its stability in flight. It was this stability, and the predictability it gave the weapon, which allowed aimed shots out ranges far beyond those of the un-stabilized smooth-bore musket. The impact of these improvements would have on the closely packed ranks of troops on the battlefield was apparently obvious.

The muzzle loaded rifle musket was actually in use for a quite short period of time. The British had not completely equipped their troops, who advanced on the 20^th September 1854 along side the French against the smooth-bore armed Russians. In 1859 the rifle equipped French and Austrians faced each other at Solferino but the Italians were still fought equipped with the smooth-bore weapon. The last significant war fought with muzzle loaded rifles was the American Civil War, as by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 both sides fielded breech loaded rifles. For just over ten years the rifle musket dominated the battlefield. Even as the allies stormed the redoubts of Alma however the next generation of breech loading weapons were already the standard weapon of the soldiers in the Prussian Army¹, and by 1865 a relativity small but significant number of Union troops had even been armed with repeating magazine rifles.

It is the American Civil War which dominates the sources that document the history of this weapon, many due to the length of the war and the large numbers of American scholars interested in the subject. Our understanding of its impact, casualty rates and the general usage of the weapon are all effected by our understanding of that war, and as the vast majority of researchers are also American, by the seminal position that war takes in their history. As an example of American preoccupation with the American Civil War, in his book entitled ‘The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat’ Earl Hess cites the American Civil war as the only significant war fought with the weapon, ignoring the war of 1859 fought in northern Italy. This war which cumulated with the battle of Solferino, dwarfing those later fought between North and South in America. The suffering of 40,000 killed and wounded at Sollferino gave birth to the International Red Cross, which could be argued was an event of some historical significence.

In 1989 Paddy Griffith published the book ‘Battle Tactics of the American Civil War’. He analysed some 113 eye-witness accounts discovering that only 17 where beyond 250 yards and none beyond 500². His conclusion was that American Civil War Battles did not take place at ranges significantly different from those fought by Napoleon and Wellington. He also pointed out the already know examples of a number of occasions when regiments of troops had formed up a few tens of yards apart and blazed away for periods of up hours and on one occasion, at Marye’s heights at Fredericksburg, for two days. If the view of the deadly accuracy and efficiency of the rifle musket was correct the regiments involved should have been wiped out in just a few minutes. The general view of the established Civil War Historians may be summed up in a review in the Journal of American History³, which cited poor research and the fact that the impact of the rifle musket on the civil war battle field had long been understood.

The next major work on the subject was provided by Brent Nosworthy in his book ‘The Bloody Crucible of Courage’. The book deals with the battlefield tactics of all arms Naval, Artillery, Cavalry, and Infantry. Nosworthy agrees with Griffith but goes on to explain how a weapon which could repeatedly hit a target up to 1000 yards away, could allow battles between close ordered regiments at only a few tens of yards⁴. The answer was ballistics. The very method of imparted the spin to the projectile as it passed down the barrel of the gun, also slowed it down. The effect of this was to make the muzzle velocity of the rifle musket could be as much as 40% less than an earlier smooth-bore. The sights fitted of course accounted for this lower velocity by forcing the firer to point the weapon upwards. The ballistic arc of the gun however was very steep, meaning that for a large part of its flight the bullet would pass over the heads of troops standing in front of the firer. Nosworthy records French experiments that show the danger zone where the bullet is below head height and before it hits the ground to be at 993 yards only 12yards wide⁵. Nor was the rifle musket better at short ranges even at a 100 yards the flatter trajectory of the smooth bore was seen by many who studied the matter better⁶. The difficulty in hitting the target could be over come by training, as the weapon was intrinsically more accurate that it’s predecessor, the armies of the American Civil War were not however trained. The essentially amateur officer corps relied on a mix of recycled manuals and instructional pamphlets to learn their trade. These emphasized the need to hold fire until the last minute so as not to wast ammunition and in one cases to point the rifle at the knees of the approaching enemy⁷. The techniques enshrined in these manuals are those which the combatants of the wars of the French revolution would have received sixty years earlier. The American officer corps were not unique in the Napoleonic approach to battlefield tactics Jomini believed that the new rifle musket would only change minor tactics.⁸ For the private soldier on the battlefield any native ability would also be lost as he was required to deliver rapid volleys of fire not to take deliberate aim.

In 1989 Griffith had pointed out that the accepted view of how a American Civil War battle was fought could not be sustained, and Nosworthy had explained how the apparent wonder weapon had failed to deliver its promised lethality. There still remained some serious questions however, General Sedwick may not have uttered his famous last words but he did die, and if fear of the vaulted rifle musket did not cause the creation of the fieldworks of the later war then why build them?

In 2008 Earl J. Hess, an acknowledged expert on the Civil War and in particular it’s trench warfare, published his views on the controversy. Expanding on Griffith’s survey of eye-witness accounts and the technical manuals of Nosworthy he concluded that they were correct. The battlefield of the American Civil War was, due to training, doctrine, and the difficulty of delivering accurate aimed fire, essentially the same as it’s Napoleonic ancestor⁹. The key to this conclusion was the phrase ‘the battlefield’, he argues however that the rifle musket comes into it’s own and starts the evolution of the early 20^th century battlefield by its use in skirmishing. During the war Union and Confederate armies spent long periods of inactivity relatively close to each. During these period large numbers of pickets would fight a form of guerilla war attempting to harass the enemy main army. Hess’s book is replete with tables of ranges and ammunition allocation and expenditure rates, these are used to support his arguments. The analysis shows that ammunition expenditure of some units during these periods of supposed inactivity where as high as in battle and maintained over far longer periods of time. During the siege of Atlanta for example, the 96^th Illinois maintained a third of its number as pickets firing between three and five thousand rounds per day¹⁰. Recording the exploits of these skirmishers he identifies that the skills learnt in the picket line did not translate back to the battlefield as even dedicated skirmish units when pressed into battle performed similarly to other units in the battle-line¹¹.

In essence Hess argues that while on the battlefield, troops had neither the time nor inclination to produce aimed fire, the constant skirmishing did allow the exploitation of the range and accuracy of the rifle musket, and it was this which kick-started the development of the elaborate earthworks of Petersburg and other late war battlefields.

Bibliography

Griffith, Paddy. Battle tactics of the Civil War (1989), Yale University Press,

Hagerman, Edward . The American Civil War and the origins of modern warfare: ideas, organization, and field command, (1992), Indiana University Press

Hess, Earl. J. The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth,(2008), University Press of Kansas

Jamieson, Perry,The Journal of American History, (1990), vol:77 iss:1 p314 -315

Nosworthy, Brent. The Bloody Crucible of Courage,(2005),London,Constable & Robinson Ltd

One of the planned changes was to add one of those little icons that show up in the address line and on your bookmarks. Ian told me it was called a Favicon and that as browsers cache this info when a site is bookmarked then I needed to make the change now or nobody would see it!

As I already had an image I wanted to use I set about the job this morning. First problem was the image did not transfer very well to being only 16×16 pixels, it was too detailed. The image was of a 15th century capital T with all that fancy leaf work,so I had to simplify it not a pretty image at full scale but not too bad when reduced to icon size.

I then had a quick look via google to find out how to install it and found this entry  here so that was easy enough, I edited my test site (on a USB stick) and tested it. Spend more time finding out how to un-cashe the old site from my browser so I could see the change. Then uploaded the new header and icon file. Bobs you uncle site has a new favicon.

Welcome,

If you have read the editorial you will see why I have been moved to create this site. This series of posts will act as a journal of my journey no the development of this site. The site is starting at a very simple level and will develop in sophistication, I hope, over time.

While I was an IT professional my background is in large corporate databases and severs not in the technologies and techniques of web design. Hopefully my experience of IT will allow me to avoid too many errors but my lack of web based knowledge will allow non-IT readers to understand and appreciate how a site such as this may be built. That said what am I doing to site site at the moment?My first post is based on an essay I submitted for a course on the Origins of the Two World Wars. It is the first to be published about my current primary interest Military History. The development of the site is concentrating on uploading a number of links which I find useful and interesting. The Site plan is next to set up a counter to see if any one is actually visiting the site. I will also be looking into RSS what ever that is

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gooch, GP.& Templey, H.,’Minutes of the Committee of Imperial Defence’,26 May 1911,,British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914 Vol. VI,(1930), London, HMSO
Hall, Richard C.,The Balkan Wars 1912-1913; Prelude to the First World War, (2000),London, Routlridge
Haythornthwaite, Philip J.,The World War One Source Book, (1992),London, Arms and Amour Press
Joll, Jamers and Martel, Gordon,The Origins of the First World War (3rd Ed),(2007),London, Pearson Education Limited
Martin Terry ,The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,The Journal of Modern History, (1988), 70,4, p813 -861
Mombauer, Annika,The Origins of The First World War; Controversies and Consensus,(2002),London, Pearson Education Limited
Stevenson, David,Armaments and the Coming of War; Europe 1904-1914,(1996),Oxford, Oxford University Press
Strachan, Hew,The First World War: Vol1 To Arms,Oxford, Oxford University Press
Wilson, K.M. (ed.),Decisions for War, 1914, (London, 1995) ,London : UCL Press, 1995.