ThoughtIdRetired

Yes, but...

Yes, but... is it right?

Old sources

This editor believes that ^{[obsolete source]} should be used more often across Wikipedia. A lot of old books are readily accessible on the internet. Is it because they have been superseded by later works based on developments in the field?

People will criticise you for going off on a tangent....

but those who don't go off on tangents keep going round in circles.

Things I wish I could remember without having to look them up

Quotations

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."Upton Sinclair

"There is almost no human action or decision that cannot be made to look more flawed and less sensible in the misleading light of hindsight." Anthony Hidden QC, during the inquiry into the Clapham rail disaster

"Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic." Thomas Szasz

"They never taste who always drink;
They always talk, who never think." Matthew Prior

"Arbores serit diligens agricola, quarum aspiciet baccam ipse nunquam —
The industrious husbandman plants trees, not one berry of which he will ever see." Cicero

"By exertion too long continued, the mind as well as the body becomes enervated, and incapable of enjoyment; as it has been known in some, who, travelling through Borrowdale in a morning, would not overlook the most trifling object; yet, in the latter part of the same day, have passed the most interesting scenes on Wast Water, without making any other inquiry than, “How far is it to the inn?”"

“An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes that can be made, in a narrow field.”— Niels Bohr

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing”—Socrates

“The extent to which beliefs are based on evidence is very much less than believers suppose.”—Bertrand Russell

“...being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.”—Daniel O'Connell, speaking about the Duke of Wellington

“There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end, until it be thoroughly finished, yields the true glory.” — Francis Drake, quoted by Peter Scott in The Battle of the Narrow Seas: The History of Light Coastal Forces in the Channel and North Sea 1939-1945 Perhaps a useful approach for a Wikipedia editor embarking on the improvement of an article.

Military History

"...the normal frontage for a division fully supported by artillery is 5 to 8 miles..."

Other stuff

" Life rafts clearly failed to provide the safe refuge which many crews expected. Seven lives were lost in incidents associated with rafts of which three were directly attributable to the failure of the raft and the yachts which these seven people abandoned were subsequently found afloat and towed to harbour. However 14 lives were saved in incidents in which survivors took to rafts from yachts which have not been recovered. Many crews used rafts successfully to transfer from yachts to helicopters or other vessels. It is asking a great deal of any very small craft to expect it to provide safe refuge in conditions which overwhelm a large yacht but this is what life rafts are expected to do."

Article aide memoire

Overton window

A FA review with some useful comments

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Galley/archive1

References I expect to use again

MacGregor: British and American Clippers ^: 46 ^: 1

MacGregor: The Tea Clippers ^: 122 ^: 1

MacGregor: Fast Sailing Ships

Lubbock:The China Clippers ^: 142 ^: 1

John Leather: Gaff Rig ^: 233

John Leather: Spritsails and Lugsails ^{: 358–363}

Edgar J March: Sailing Drifters

Llewellyn-Jones:The Royal Navy and Anti-Submarine Warfare, 1917-49 ^: 14–15

Biography of Walker, by Alan Burn

Evan Mawdsley: The War for the Seas

Marc Milner: Battle of the Atlantic (concise overview of whole subject from a Canadian author) ^{: ch 5}

Morison - vol 1 Battle of the Atlantic 1939-43

Eric McKee: Working Boats of Britain

Edgar J March: Inshore Craft of Britain in the Days of Sail and Oar ^: 61–62 ^: 61–62

Overy, The Bombing War ^{: 358–363}

Boats of Men of War

Sailing Rigs, an Illustrated Guide^: 99

Jane's Dictionary of Naval Terms^: 99 ^: 1

Underhill's Masting and Rigging^{: 280–288}^: 12 Note that page 205 has a useful bit about brigs being handy but were superseded by schooners which needed less crew.

Underhill's Sailing Ship Rigs and Rigging

The Search for Speed Under Sail ^: 43–45

Opposing the Slavers ^: 99

The Schooner, Its Design and Development from 1600 to the Present^: 48

The Merchant Schooners ^{: Author's note}

The Safeguard of the Sea^: 102

Navy Board Ship Models

Admiralty Salvage in Peace and War 1906-2006

The Whaleboat

John Leather, Sail and Oar

The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, 1625-1860

Sail's Last Century : the Merchant Sailing Ship 1830-1930 ^: 48–49

Opium, empire, and the global political economy

Tidewater Triumph

The Baltimore Clipper: its origins and development

Merchant Sailing Ships 1815-1850 Supremacy of Sail

Merchant Sailing Ships 1775-1815: Sovereignty of SailOn pg 14 is comment that larger crews were signed on for routes where piracy was a risk^: 14

The Aberdeen Line : George Thompson Jnr's incomparable shipping enterprise^: 122

The China bird : the history of Captain Killick, and the firm he founded, Killick Martin & Company^{: 128–129}

Cargoes. A Centenary Story of the Far Eastern Freight Conference^: 16

American small sailing craft, their design, development, and construction.

American clipper ships, 1833-1858

Greyhounds of the sea

PBO glossary of nautical terms: L

The language of sailing

British Fishing-Boats and Coastal Craft

The Oxford handbook of maritime archaeology^: 1148

The Advent of Steam - The Merchant Steamship before 1900

Admiralty Manual of Seamanship (1937)^{: 215–217}

Sailing Pilots of the Bristol Channel

Roger Barnes: The Dinghy Cruising Companion ^: 36

Barnes, Roger (2014). The Dinghy Cruising Companion: Tales and Advice from Sailing in a Small Open Boat (Kindle ed.). Oxford: Adlard Coles. ISBN 978-1-4081-7916-1.

Chivers, Marc (10 February 2015). "The Shetland Boat: History; Folklore and Construction". Shetland Boat Research. Retrieved 2 October 2021.^{[self-published source?]}

Rye, Theo (24 January 2017). "Great Yacht Designs 7 - Lively Lady". Classic Boat. Retrieved 2 October 2021.

Cooper, Ernest R (1927). "The Suffolk and Norfolk Beach Yawls". Mariner's Mirror. 13 (3): 213–218. doi:10.1080/00253359.1927.10655424.

Tom Cunliffe: Hand Reef and Steer ^: 26

Cunliffe, Tom (2016). Hand, Reef and Steer: Traditional Sailing Skills for Classic Boats (second ed.). London: Adlard Coles. ISBN 978-1-4729-2522-0.

John Leather: Gaff Rig ^: 233

Leather, John (1970). Gaff Rig. London: Adlard Coles Limited. ISBN 0-229-97489-9.

John Leather: Spritsails and Lugsails ^{: 358–363}

Leather, John (1989) [1979]. Spritsails and Lugsails. Camden, Maine: International Marine Publishing Company. ISBN 0-87742-998-7.

Inshore Craft, Traditional Working Vessels of the British Isles ^: 226 Print version of the Chatham Directory of Inshore Craft

Mannering, Julian; Greenhill, Basil, eds. (2013) [1997]. Inshore Craft, Traditional Working Vessels of the British Isles. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84832-167-0.
March, Edgar J. (2005a) [1970]. Inshore Craft of Great Britain in the Days of Sail and Oar. Vol. 1. London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 1-86176-264-X.
March, Edgar J. (2005b) [1970]. Inshore Craft of Great Britain in the Days of Sail and Oar. Vol. 2. London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 1-86176-269-0.
May, W E; Stephens, Simon (2003) [1999]. The Boats of Men of War. London: Caxton Editions. ISBN 1-84067-4318.
McKee, Eric (1997) [1983]. Working Boats of Britain, Their Shape and Purpose. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-277-3.
"Keeping Tradition Afloat". Shetland Museum & Archives. Retrieved 5 November 2020.
White, E W (1950). British Fishing Boats and Coastal Craft. HM Stationary Office. ISBN 978-1-4474-1119-2.

Casson: Ships and seamanship in the ancient world

Vaka moana : voyages of the ancestors : the discovery and settlement of the Pacific

Horridge ^: 144

The Oxford handbook of prehistoric Oceania

Harland: Seamanship in the Age of Sail

Early ships and seafaring : European water transport ^: 33

In tropical waters, for example, relatively lengthy sea passages were undertaken in large log rafts, especially after the introduction of sail.

Early Ships and Seafaring: Water Transport Beyond Europe (p. 11)

The sailor's word-book

Caravels:

Galleons:

Rock Art: A Potential Source of Information about Past Maritime Technology in the South-East Asia-Pacific Region

Asian Shipbuilding Technology

Sailing into the Past, trireme chapter

Bellwood, First Islanders^{: 90, 94, 117, 151}

Julian Whitewright (2012) Technological Continuity and Change: The Lateen Sail of the Medieval Mediterranean, Al-Masaq, 24:1, 1-19, DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2012.655580

Steffy, J. Richard (1994). Wooden ship building and the interpretations of shipwrecks (5th printing ed.). College Station: Texas A & M University Press. ISBN 9781603445207.

Greenhill, Basil (1988). The Evolution of the Wooden Ship (B T Batsford Ltd reprint ed.). Caldwell, New Jersey: The Blackburn Press. ISBN 978-1932846195.

Adams A maritime archaeology of ships^{: ch 6 the Gresham Ship}

"Beevor 2014">

Beevor, Antony (2014). The Second World War (Paperback ed.). London: Phoenix. ISBN 978-1780225647.>

Campbell, Gwyn. Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World ^: 1

The Potential Performance of Ancient Mediterranean Sailing Rigs

Mahdi, Waruno (2017). "Pre-Austronesian Origins of Seafaring in Insular Southeast Asia". In Acri, Andrea; Blench, Roger; Landmann, Alexandra (eds.). Spirits and ships: cultural transfers in early Monsoon Asia. Singapore: ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. ISBN 9789814762755.

Red Bay report

Anderson: The rigging of ships in the days of the spritsail topmast: 1600 - 1720

For use soon

Learning to sail the Duyfken replica, Nick Burningham

The Portsmouth block making system Cooper, Carolyn C. “The Portsmouth System of Manufacture.” Technology and Culture, vol. 25, no. 2, 1984, pp. 182–225. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3104712. Accessed 4 Feb. 2024.[1]

The sailing performance of ancient Polynesian canoes and the early settlement of East Polynesia [2]

The Common Origin of the Outrigger Canoes of Madagascar and East Africa. James Hornell

The Vanuatu "Butterfly Sail": A Polynesian Oceanic Spritsail in Melanesia [3] ANNE DI PIAZZA

Pacific Seascapes, Canoe Performance, and a Review of Lapita Voyaging with Regard to Theories of Migration GEOFFREY IRWIN [4]

Horridge in Canoes of the Grand Ocean [5]

WORDS FOR CANOES: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN OCEANIC SAILING CRAFT ANNE DI PIAZZA [6]

1500-1660 absence of reef points on the sails of larger vessels – bonnets being preferred.

For maritime prehistory

Rock Art: A Potential Source of Information about Past Maritime Technology in the South‐East Asia‐Pacific Region Peter V. Lape, Sue O’connor & Nick Burningham To cite this article: Peter V. Lape, Sue O’connor & Nick Burningham (2007) Rock Art: A Potential Source of Information about Past Maritime Technology in the South‐East Asia‐Pacific Region, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 36:2, 238-253, DOI: 10.1111/ j.1095-9270.2006.00135.x

Chart showing the dates and distances of early sea crossingsChapter 35, summary and discussion

Yousuke Kaifu, Masami Izuho, Ted Goebel, Hiroyuki Sato, and Akira Ono. Emergence and Diversity of Modern Human Behavior in Paleolithic Asia (Peopling of the Americas Publications) . Texas A&M University Press. Kindle Edition.

Training manual for the UNESCO foundation course on the protection and management of underwater cultural heritage in Asia and the Pacific, Charlotte Minh-Hà L. Pham https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000217234

and might use some time in the future

Red Bay excavation report

Depth charge development history[7]

G. Appleton (1959) DEAL LUGGERS, The Mariner's Mirror, 45:2, 145-153, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.1959.10658436[8]

The Sailing Boat: a Treatise On English And Foreign Boats

The Battle for the Code

Stand by For Action

The Life of Captain James Cook: James Cook, justifying the conversion of the schooner HMS Grenfell to a brig, mentions the better control that he would have over a brig versus a schooner. He sees a brig as having many advantages, with manoeuvrability being one of the.^: 82 [9]

"Reid also makes interesting and valuable observations that may not be widely-understood and accepted, but are nevertheless accurate. He points out that, contrary to popular modern misconceptions, schooners were not considered more weatherly, let alone faster than square-riggers by those who operated them. He gives the example of Lieut. James Cook who was given a schooner for his survey of newly-acquired territories in Canada, but requested permission to re-rig her as a brig to improve weatherliness and maneuverability in restricted waters. Few historians, if any, have had this insight, and Dr Reid is to be applauded for locating and including this information (p. 210). In parenthesis, one could observe that Captain Marryat also believed brigs to be faster and more weatherly than schooners, in his novel Percival Keene. Marryat served as midshipman under Cochrane, and is a reliable source"

for Austronesia etc.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/658682.pdf "Early Agriculture and Plant Domestication in New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia". Shows that movement of domesticated bananas predates the Austronesian expansion (among other things)

possibly of use

whaling museum[10]
whaleboat RMG narrative[11]
[12]

Outdated? on Pacific canoes https://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document//Volume_83_1974/Volume_83%2C_No._2/Outrigger_ages%2C_by_Edwin_Doran_Jnr.%2C_p_130-140/p1

info on talk page archives

brigs Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships/Archive 69#Brigs retained as naval training vessels in age of steam

pictures of interest, but copyright to be investigated

Scilly gig Czar salvaging steers[13]
1806 plan of gig[14]also ?same one more detail[15]
gig plans[16]
32 ft gig plan 1869[17]
1894 plan of 32 ft gig including sails[18]
boarding of the Spanish slaver Esperanza[19]
24 ft gig[20]
gig for royal yacht 1898[21]
Sail plan of Schooner Jackdaw, including studding sails and ringtail[22]
Training brig Martin[23]

References that appear on Wikipedia, but should not

Shaffer, Lynda Norene (1996). Maritime Southeast Asia to 1500. M.E. Sharpe. This book has been reviewed as containing "many errors of fact, misleading simplification of material and references that are frequently inadequate, inappropriate or dated.". See Barbara Watson Andaya in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies Vol. 10, No. 1 (1996), pp. 152-155. Therefore, as per WP:HSC, this is not an RS. See https://www.jstor.org/stable/40860555%7Cdate=June 2022

People I have met who have a Wikipedia article on them

(obviously, just where I have noticed that they are on Wikipedia)
Pat Reid
Gaston Caperton
Robert Drayson
Peter C. Lemon
Trudy Harrison
Pippa Funnell
Rob Purdham

Wikipedia procedures, information, etc.

WP:OVERQUOTING
WP:RS/AC
WP:RS
WP:IC inline citations
Template:Rp
WP:EDITDISC
Wikipedia:Splitting
WP:CONTEXTMATTERS: "Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable".
Wikipedia information pages [24]
MOS:DASH
WP:INDENT
WP:EOR
H:S (help searching)
Template:About
WP:SUMMARY
Template:Infobox ship begin
[25] (shows, inter alia, the time of day an editor is active)
wikiality

Commons/IWM (Montagu whaler)
:To cheer up AntiCompositeBot, you need to use one of our copyright tags, because the bot can't read English. In this case, I think {{PD-UKGov}} is appropriate, since the picture was taken by a Royal Navy sailor more than 50 years ago. In the Upload Wizard you can choose "Another reason not mentioned above" and enter `{{PD-UKGov}}` in the box.

Crown copyright: [26]

Things I have found on Wikipedia that I know I will regret not being able to find again

found on User:Tony1

Self-help writing tutorials:
Exercises in weeding out fluff from article text

Advanced editing exercises

Spot the ambiguity

Build your linking skills

Using hyphens and dashes

Copy-editing essentials, part of the Military History Academy

edit

Also accessible from User:Tony1/How to improve your writing

Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia

from Ships of ancient Rome

Morrison, John S; Gardiner, Robert, eds. (1995). The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times. London: Conway Maritime. ISBN 0-85177-554-3. OCLC 32117584.
- Casson, Lionel (1995b). "Merchant Galleys". In Morrison & Gardiner (1995), pp. 117–126.
- Coates, John F. "The Naval Architecture and Oar Systems of Ancient Galleys". In Morrison & Gardiner (1995), pp. 127–141.
- Hocker, Frederick M. "Late Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic Galleys and Fleets". In Morrison & Gardiner (1995), pp. 86–100.
- Rankov, Boris. "Fleets of the Early Roman Empire, 31 BC–AD 324". In Morrison & Gardiner (1995), pp. 78–85.

see Template:Harvard citation#Other author–date citation templates

spreadsheets to Wikipedia table

Is there an easy way of importing a simple Excel spreadsheet into a table in Wikipedia? I will shortly have 100 lines of a four column spreadsheet that analyses the citation and informational footnote style of a sample of featured articles (the results are a little surprising – so much for consistency of citation style within an article!) Thanks, ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:33, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Just copy-paste it in VisualEditor. (I tested this with Google Sheets, but it should work while copying from Excel as well. If not, just upload it to Google Drive first). – SD0001 (talk) 10:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

If that doesn't work you can just use an excel formula to generate the wikitext for the table rows

e.g. formula for e1: =CONCAT("|-\n|",A1,"||",B1,"||",C1,"||",D1)

I may have the syntax slightly off, but that demostrates the idea. This is how I usually do it. — Jts1882 | talk 10:32, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

There's also an excel2wiki tool on Toolforge, which seems to work fine as well. --rchard2scout (talk) 11:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

In addition to copy-pasting, you can also drag-and-drop a .csv or .tsv file into the visual editor. It's a bit of a secret feature. Matma Rex talk 16:41, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

For future reference: Help:Tables covers copying and pasting into Visual Editor (or dragging a .csv file to it) and the Toolforge link. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 204 § Excel to Wikipedia tables has a more detailed step-by-step about using Excel to generate the desired wikitext. isaacl (talk) 18:01, 20 February 2024 (UTC)