Re: Marine Contingents

At 11:33 16/11/98 -0800, you wrote:
>At 02:09 PM 11/13/1998 +0000, Mike Elliott wrote:
>>The counter argument to this (and the reason why we treated Marines
the way
>>we did in MT) is
>> that historically marines are considered to be part of the ships
>>complement. If we don't have to use mass for the crew, why should we
use
>>mass for marines?
>
>	Actually we don't usually have Marines aboard ships, unless we
are a
>Marine landing ship.  
SNIP
>	Phil P.

That's a difference between USN and RN practice- the RN had Royal
Marines
aboard as standard from the days of sail, when amongst other duties they
would man part of the main armament.  This latter part of the tradition
persisted as long as guns were a ships main armament, with 1 turret of
the
heaviest calibre aboard normally crewed by RM.

Talking of the days of sail, I must dig out a description of US boarding
helmets from the early 19th century.

Rob

"Rob Paul

Dept of Zoology
Oxford University
South Parks Road
Oxford
(01865) 271124
----------------------------------------------
"Once again, villainy is rotting meat 
before the maggots of justice!"
"