October Newsletter

OCTOBER 2015 NEWSLETTER On 30th September some Rotary members and their wives/partners enjoyed a fish and chip supper in the RNLI Building and £120 was raised for their charity. Thanks go to Colin Crawford for organising the event. On Monday 5th October our newest member, Steve Oxley( introduced by Denis Foster) , was inducted and I am sure that he will serve the Club well in the coming years. He was telling me that he has lived and worked in Italy for a number of years before returning to the UK to live in Dovercourt to be near their family. On Monday 19th October our President inducted yet another new member, Lt Richard Wearmouth from the Salvation Army. Introduced by Rodney Parmenter, Richard’s joining will strengthen an already strong bond between the SA and the Club, and Richard will bring a new dimension to our organisation and will I’m sure to be a good Rotarian. The members who could not make the 19th October meeting will be pleased to hear that it was agreed to donate 2 x £50 to the Alzheimer’s Charity in memory of PP Dr Colin Menzies and PP John Barnes. Those who attended the Memorial Service for Colin at All Saints Church on Thursday 15th October learnt a lot about his early life and the service that he gave to the community throughout his long life. On Monday 26th October our speaker was PDG John Banks who gave a very interesting talk about the Klondike Gold Rush which took place between 1896-99 and attracted approx 100,000 prospectors although only about 40,000 made it to the goldfields and only a fraction of those made a killing. Gold was discovered on 16th August 1896 by an American prospector George Carmack and his Tagish wife Kate (Shaaw Tlaa), her brother Skookum Jim (Keish) and their nephew Dawson Charlie(Kaa Goox) while travelling down Rabbit (later Bonanza) Creek following a tip off from another prospector, Robert Henderson. Most prospectors followed either the Chilkoot or White Pass up to the Yukon River and then on by boat, after landing at either the ports of Skagway or Dyea. As John explained every prospector had to carry a year’s supply of food as decreed by the Canadian Government, and this could be up to a ton, taken up in short stages. People made more money buying and selling claims and supplying prospectors with their supplies. When gold was discovered in Nome (West Alaska) most of the prospectors still standing left Dawson City and made their way to the new goldfields. Like a lot of things the talk got me interested in the Goldrush and having been to Skagway I have had to find out more, The vote of thanks was very well given by Pat Heeney, who has been to Skagway and actually panned and found gold ! ​​​​**************************** Reception of Visitors November 2nd​​Denis Foster​​Pat Heeney​​Norman Hills​​ ​ 9th​​John Humm​​Doug Hutchins​​Bob Lazenby​​ ​ 16th​​Acland Madge​​Jenny Mealing​​Ken Morris​​ ​ 23rd​​Steve Oxley​​Graham Page​​Rod Parmenter​​ ​​​​**************************** Dates for your Diary Saturday October 31st​​-​​GUY CARNIVAL Monday November 2nd​​-​​DISTRICT GOVERNORS MTG – ALAN CLARK Sunday November 8th​​-​​REMEMBERANCE SUNDAY Monday November 9th​​-​​CLUB COUNCIL ​​​​***************************** Those of our members who are interested in horseracing and who probably watched the racing on Channel 4 on Sunday (4th October) and saw Frankie Dettori win the Prix de la Arc de Triumphe on Golden Horn might be interested in another jockey who also had as a colourful and controversial life as Frankie. He was the American jockey Ralph Neves, born on 26th August 1916 and died on 7th July 1995, who on 8th May at Hay Meadows Racetrack in San Mateo, California was thrown from his horse, Flannikins, pronounced dead and taken to the local hospital morgue. The story goes that he was given a shot of adrenaline to the heart, promptly sat bolt upright, ran out of the mortuary with just one boot on and everyone chasing him down the road. There was a pool hall just down the road, which he ran around a couple of times before running down to the railway station where he hailed a cab to take him back to the racetrack – there he ran into the jockey’s room and then proceeded to run down the racetrack and scared the hell out of all the race goers. The officials would not, of course, allow him to ride that afternoon but he was back the next day and it was reported that he won five races(that has been disputed since) and won a $500 bonus and a gold watch given by Bing Crosby. After his fall, new safety regulations were brought in, but Neves went on to have several more serious falls, one requiring brain surgery in 1959 and due to his ‘competitive’ style of riding he was suspended on several occasions. ​​​​***************************** Recently, we have heard about Edith Cavell’s life history and the 100th anniversary of her death, shot by the Germans for helping Allied POW’s escape from occupied Belgium. There have been several ladies throughout history that have become well known viz Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale but I came across an article about Gertrude Bell, who I had never heard of, although she played quite an important role in the Middle East at the time of WW1 and worked with Lawrence of Arabia. Born on 14th July, the daughter of Sir Hugh Bell and granddaughter of the Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, an industrialist and a Liberal MP in Disraeli’s government, she was very much influenced politically by him. She was educated at Queen’s College, London and at the age of 17 went to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University to study history which was one of the subjects that woman were allowed to study and two years later left with a first class honours degree in modern history. Her uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, was British minister in Tehran (Persia) and it was here that Gertrude travelled after leaving Oxford in 1892. She spent the next seven years travelling the world, mountaineering in Switzerland and developed a passion for archaeology and languages becoming fluent in Arabic, Persian, German and French and also speaking Turkish and Italian before returning to the Middle East. She travelled through Syria and Palestine and crossed Arabia six times during the next 12 years – in between she climbed mountains in Europe finding new paths to the summits before returning to Mesopotamia in 1909 to carry on her with her archaeology work where she met T E Lawrence, another archaeologist. When WW1 broke out, Gertrude requested a Middle East posting but was initially turned down, so volunteered with the Red Cross in France. In 1915 British Intelligence asked her to help get troops through the desert and from this time until her death in 1926, she was the only woman holding political power and influence in shaping British imperial policy in the region and was assigned to the Army Intelligence Headquarters in Cairo. Travelling extensively in the region she established close contact with the local tribes and being a women was allowed to meet the female members of the tribes and get their views, and so could hopefully find out if the tribes would join the British against the Ottoman Empire. She witnessed the massacre of some 12,000 Armenians by the Kurds and saw Armenian women being sold openly in Damascus market. After British troops captured Baghdad, Gertrude was given the title of ‘Oriental Secretary’ and joined an elite group of ‘Orientalists’ who were summoned by Winston Churchill to attend the 1921 Conference in Cairo to work out the boundaries of the British mandate and states such as Iraq. Together with Percy Cox (Chief Political Officer) and Lawrence, Gertrude worked to establish the countries of Transjordan and Iraq to be presided over by the Kings Abdullah and Faisal, sons of the leader of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Iraq would have an Arab government but remain under the influence of British officials who would remain in control. Gertrude thought that King Faisal would unite the country because of his Hashemite lineage (for the Shias) and coming from a respected Sunni family and she would advise the King in local matters, including matters involving tribal geography and local business. She also supervised leadership posts and selection of appointees for the Cabinet and her influence continued up to the time of her death in July 1926 – she had returned to the UK in 1925 because of family problems and ill-health and on her return to Baghdad developed pleurisy. Her death was due to an apparent overdose of sleeping pills and it has never been proved if it was intentional suicide or accidental, as she had left instructions for her maid to call her. In the 1920’s the Kurds wanted to an independent state and we shall always wonder that if the Sunnis and Shias had also been given separate states whether Iraq would be in such a mess as it is today. ​​​​************************************ It was the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21st and no doubt a lot of celebrations took place to remember the great victory of Nelson’ fleet against the French and Spanish Navies. There is a new book coming out this month entitled ‘In Nelson’s wake: the Navy and the Napoleonic Wars’ written by Dr James Davey, Curator of Naval History at the Nation Maritime Museum, in which he questions that Trafalgar was indeed the decisive battle that ended French invasion attempts and that the French and Spanish Navies received a crushing blow from which they never recovered. After considerable research he has found that the French troops amassed at Calais had moved East a fortnight before Trafalgar to confront the Austrian and Russian armies and that many British captains at Trafalgar conducted themselves appallingly with some ships hardly entering the battle and it took Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood (Nelson’s second in command) considerable effort to cover up the actual facts. The Admiralty took great care to present the battle in the most favourable manner which gave the myth of total victory and Nelson’s great state funeral in the winter of 1805-06 was not just designed to commemorate a man but help the government’s propaganda to sustain loyalism in a war that showed no signs of ending. Fifteen of the enemy ships had escaped and France went on to build more ships and their fleets were able to roam over the North Atlantic posing a threat to British commerce. The author does not want to suggest that Trafalgar was not important as it gave Britain a temporary naval advantage and counteracted the French victory at Austerlitz, where the Russian and Austrian armies were destroyed, leaving the French the dominant power on the Continent. Nelson’s deeds remained a prominent example of manliness. heroism and national duty and helped the Navy to play an ever greater role in combating Napoleon’s growing empire and as the war grew in intensity the British ships continued to sail the world’s oceans thwarting Napoleon’s ambitions and leading to final victory. Those members who have been to the National Maritime Museum would have probably seen the the coat worn by Nelson when he was shot, showing the fatal bullet hole but have you ever wondered what happened to the bullet? It is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle and it was presented by the family of William Beatty to Queen Victoria in 1842. Beatty was surgeon in HMS ’Victory’ at Trafalgar, and recorded Nelson’s famous words ‘ Kiss me Hardy’. In the famous signal ‘ England expects that every man will do his duty’ the word ‘expects’ was a substitution for the word ‘confides’ – the reason for this was that there was no single flag hoist for confides and it would have taken too long to spell out with eight single flags. There were 27 ships of the line at Trafalgar (plus smaller vessels) and as we know, attacked in two lines to break up the French and Spanish ships cutting the line of enemy ships allowing the British guns to fire into the sterns and bows of the French and Spanish ships before running parallel while receiving limited shots themselves.