Germany's firstarmored cruiser, SMSFürst Bismarck was built for the Imperial Navy in the late 1890s. Her completion was rushed in early 1900 due to the outbreak of theBoxer Uprising in China the previous year;Fürst Bismarck arrived there later in 1900, becoming the flagship of the East Asia Squadron. The ship remained in East Asia until 1909 and underwent a refit that lasted until 1914 and her return to Germany. No longer considered fit for combat,Fürst Bismarck served as a training vessel during World War I. She was decommissioned at the end of 1918 and scrapped.
Captain Cook was a Royal Navy officer famous for leading three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand, and led the first recorded visit by Europeans to the east coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. His voyages covered tens of thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas, which he mapped in greater detail than anyone before. He was killed during his second visit to Hawaii in February 1779.
Commonly known as Parliamentary Joan, Alkin was a publisher, nurse and spy for the Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Her husband was arrested and hanged in 1643 by the Royalists for spying for the Parliamentarians; Alkin continued his work, spying in Oxford, even during thetown's siege. She also published Parliamentary newsbooks—proto-newspapers. After the civil war, she nursed casualties of theFirst Anglo-Dutch War. She is thought to have died in late 1655.
As Fortuna puts it in the FAC nomination statement, this article is "a kind of bookend to itscounterpart of 15 years earlier; I think they'll make a nice pair. To be fair, too, the English come out probably worse in this than the previous campaign, albeit doing even less while it was taking place. Even the contemporaryhoi-polloi—usually dead keen on a bit of old-fashioned neighbour bashing—were distinctly unimpressed."
ShroCat's second entry this month covers the death ofLord Louis Mountbatten, a retired British soldier/statesman and cousin to Queen Elizabeth II, on 27 August 1979 off the coast of Ireland.Thomas McMahon, a volunteer for theProvisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), planted a bomb on Mountbatten's cabin cruiser during Mountbatten's annual summer trip toClassiebawn Castle. The bomb killed Mountbatten, his grandson Nicholas and Nicholas's grandmother Doreen, as well as Paul Maxwell, a boy who was crewing on the boat. McMahon was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1979.
Continuing HF's work on theVicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War, this battle took place on May 14, 1863, outsideJackson, Mississippi. Union Major GeneralUlysses S. Grant approached Jackson from two directions and GeneralJoseph E. Johnston, sent by the Confederate government to take command in Mississippi, decided almost immediately that the city could not be held. BrigadierJohn Gregg fought a delaying action that bought time for the Confederate wagon train to escape. Afterwards, Jackson suffered a wide range of destruction, ranging from legitimate military and infrastructure targets to wanton pillaging to released convicts burning down a prison.
New featured pictures
Interior of the Angle of Taku North Fort Immediately After Its Capture by Storm
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