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Message |
    
Senan Molony
Member
Username: senan_molony
Post Number: 677
Registered: 1-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, November 20, 2005 - 10:06 pm: | 
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The story of Captain Fryatt was told again tonight in a new Channel 4 series, Not Forgotten.
Unfortunately Captain Fryatt is forgotten. But he is an important footnote and way-station in the Lusitania story.
Fryatt's much-lauded action in using his merchant vessel to ram a U-boat in March 1915 led to sponsored prizes for so doing and eventually British Government orders that it be attempted by ALL merchant ships when the opportunity arose.
There were a spate of such incidents, quickly leading to no-warning attacks by German submarines, since for a U-boat to surface was to invite ramming.
A precursor, like the Thordis incident, to the Lusitania sinking.
Fryatt was later captured and shot as a franc-tireur, which was a tough enough interpretation of the rules of war.
But Fryatt did get a huge public funeral at St Paul's Cathedral after the war, so that's all right then... |
Noel F.Jones
Member
Username: ver1tas
Post Number: 725
Registered: 7-2002
| | Posted on Monday, November 21, 2005 - 2:54 am: |
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"Unfortunately Captain Fryatt is forgotten".
Well the Dover Express did a spread on him recently.
It's a facile polemical device to that this or that historical episode is forgotten. Seek and ye shall find!
I had to make the same point over the allegedly forgotten sinking of the Mendi. On the same grounds one could make the same argument over the Mesopotamia campaign and so on ad infinitum.
You can take this as a plea for the exercise of the requisite objectivity when introducing fresh subject matter into what is after all an historical arena.
Noel |
