Charles Beresford Quotes
Battleships are cheaper than battles.
Charles Beresford, 1846-1919, British Admiral, Advice to the House of Commons
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The Persians arrived at an abandoned city and burned some of the major buildings. All the Athenian men went to the island of Salamis where he gathered Greeks from the other city states. They boarded ships and tricked the march larger Persian fleet into coming into the narrow part of the straits where it could not maneuver. The Greeks destroyed the Persian fleet with relatively few losses and with it went Xerxes dreams of conquest of the Greeks. The Persian navy could not feed their army and the Persians, the greatest empire of the day, retuned to Persia in defeat.
Gingrich, who avoided serving in the military throughout his life, was frequently opining on military matters, tactics and strategy in his speeches, media appearances and many writings. Generally, he was a Chicken Hawk {625110} urging military action and war although he had personally never experienced it. He spent much time in military meetings and conferences, and thought that he had developed some expertise from this and his extensive reading.
He didn’t succeed until Mahan wrote his marvelous treatise.
Koxinga had an overwhelmingly superior force, and wanted the Dutch to surrender and avoid bloodshed. The Dutch with their typical European colonial attitude, had great difficulty surrendering to “natives” even if outnumbered. Finally, the Dutch Commander agreed to surrender. Koxinga then established a Chinese Government on the Island and became a great hero of the Ming Dynasty. Note the graphic of the statue to him which is one of the very few Chinese memorial statues to a military hero showing him in action—very similar to European statues. Already Koxinga’s massed wooden junks with small cannon and fire torches had sunk one of the Dutch warships (they were not iron but had some iron plates on the deck to protect the gunners) and there were so many junks that the other Dutch ships sailed out to sea to avoid the Chinese huge number of junks.
Most Americans do not realize that our naval forces were disbanded after the Revolution and even the Constitution did not require a navy. We had some Federal revenue cutters to interdict smugglers but no warships and no permanent sailors or officers. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640850},86703,{640846} & {640848}
Charles William de la Poer Beresford, 1st Baron Beresford, GCB, GCVO, FRSGS, styled Lord Charles Beresford between 1859 and 1916, was a British admiral and Member of Parliament.
