A Naval Edition

Last week I did a tour of the Village Cemetery. Included on the tour was Rear Admiral George Francis Faxon Wilde, Easton's only admiral "so far" as a proud navy mother was quick to point out. Anyway, he entered Annapolis in 1861 and retired in 1905 so I figured there was a career to research. There is, but you are not going to hear about that today. What you are going to hear about is the ease with which research can be done today. Without leaving my recliner, I now know everyone who was at Annapolis with him and every ship he served on. I've found references to the documents that tell of the inquiry into that time he almost sunk a battleship and a newspaper article on the wreck with maps. I really love electronic research, but I'm old enough to remember the days of actually visiting archives that are referenced in this interesting article from The Times Higher Education.  My high school days actually occurred in the dark ages when you actually had to hand write notes rather than xerox pages and underline. What a revelation getting to college and discovering the old wet process copy machines!

The Admiral Wilde paper, if it ever comes, will be written on Scrivener, a writing program dedicated to helping writers of long pieces organize their work. So far it's been great because it allows a writer to create a system much like the index cards that Buddy Wooster and Willis Smith insisted upon in the dark ages at OA! Here though chapters or sections can be linked to chunks of reference materials which you can view in a split screen.

Some tidbits from my initial research. Wilde is interesting in that he may be one of the first US Navy officers never to have served in an all sail vessel. The  promotion system used today in the Navy was in place in the 19th century. By 1897 everyone in Wilde's Annapolis class was a Commander or out of the service. None were Lt. Commanders and none were the next highest rank, Captain. Part of the Wilde story is how he was able to wreck one of our most important ships and still make Admiral.


In other sea related news, Great White Sharks have been sited off Chatham. What makes a shark Great instead of just Pretty Good? I suppose having an entire week of cable TV and three blockbuster films devoted to you helps, but have you ever wondered if there are Not-So-Great White Sharks? Well, it turns out all the living Carcharodon are Great, but it's just a way to make them feel good because the other species in the genus Carcharodon, the extinct Megalodon, was really, really great. The Great White tops out at about 20 feet and 5,000 lbs. Megalodon, which had a 25 million year run as a top predator, reached 52 feet in length. Instead of picking on itsy-bitsy seals, Megalodon ate whales. In fact one theory of Megalodon extinction claims the big shark ate all the slow whales and ran out of food when the climate cooled during the last Ice Age.  So in reality Roy Schneider didn't need a bigger boat, he needed an animal psychologist who could discuss overcompensation issues with Jaws.

For a less facetious view of Megalodon check out the really good article in Wikipedia.