Re: UN Ship Nomenclature

John Atkinson wrote:

> If you were a USian, I'd shoot your high school history teacher.  As
> you ain't. . . The reason there was a conclusion to that nasty
>

Isn't it just as easy to tell this story accurately as it is to beat
your
chest over it?

> boondoggle was because of France.  At a dump called "Yorktown" some
> overbred idiot named Lord Cornwallis got himself trapped.  See, it's
on
>

Well, I'd hardly call Cornwallis an idiot. He had a pretty good combat
record up to that point, and went on to continue a pretty good combat
record after the war in India where he engineered and led the campiagns
which won the Third Mysore War.

> a peninsula.	The original plan was for him to evacuate his army via
> the RN to New York to link up with another Brit army.  So he digs in
to
> await retrieval.  Besieging him are 8,000 Allied troops, split evenly
> between American regiments and French Marines.  The French contingent
> also includes a lot of the artillery and engineers.  So we're closing
>

There were approximately 17,000 US and French troops vs about 7,000
british. (Kegan, John "Fields of Battle" NYC 1996;   Mackesy, Piers G.
"War
for America" Cambridge, 1963)

> in on him,  when all of a sudden the RN finally arrives.  As do the
> French.  And once in the entire French Navy's history, it beats the RN
> to little bloody toothpicks.	Then Corwallis gives up.  Plus we had
the
>

Umm actually it was an indecisive engagement, with out major losses by
the
British. Still the commanders Graves and Hoods didn't feel they had
enough
strength to push through the French to relieve Cornwallis and withdrew
to
Yorktown. Hardly being smashed to Bloody toothpicks. (Mahan, Alfred T.
"Major Operations of the Navies in the American War of Independece"
Boston,
1953; Kegan, John "Fields of Battle)

> French shipping arms, uniforms, money, and ammunition to us like
> madmen.  In fact, the French crown went so far into debt to save us
> that it is considered one of the major causes of the French
> Revolution--the debts had to be repaid with crushing taxes, etc, etc,
> etc.	Plus there were independant foreign volunteers like Layfayette,
> Stuben (neither von nor a Major General.  He was a corporal who gave
> himself a field promotion on the ship over here) and a Pole whose name
>

Steuben was a "von". He was not a Corporal but a  Captain who served
with
distinction throughout the Seven years War and eventually wound up on
the
General Staff, appointed Aide-de-Camp to King Fredrick II. It was
Benjamin
Franklin and Silas Deane who decided that he should be represented to
the
Continental Congress as a "Lieutenant general in the King of Prussia's
service" in order to ensure he'd be listened to. The rest is, shall we
say,
history. (Palmer, John McCauley General von Stueben, New Haven, 1937)

Not that any of this changes the general story. But why diminish what
your
saying by talking out of your fourth point of contact?

Los ;-)