Hilary L. Rubinstein

Another high-profile British maritime disaster that I've been aware of at the level of a historical footnote, so I was happy to avail myself of a monograph that would (hopefully) give me a blow-by-blow of how one goes about having a capital ship founder in a protected harbor. Before one gets there though, Rubinstein gives you a biography of Richard Kempenfelt, a much-esteemed officer of the Royal Navy, who had finally ascended to a level of command that matched his reputation for competence; leading a relief operation to a besieged Gibraltar in 1782. This wartime "emergency" situation probably went a long way to setting the stage for the disaster.

As for what happened, this appears to be a classic case of a lot of small bad choices, and a self-imposed schedule, leading to disaster. For reasons that are no longer clear, there was an imperative to repair some plumbing associated with the ship's pumps, but there was no time to unload "Royal George" to bring her into dry dock, so the decision was made to "heel" her over on one side so that workmen could access the relevant area under the waterline. This was done while tons of provisions and supplies were being loaded on the ship, when several hundred extra people were visiting the ship before she sailed, while some key technical officers were ashore (particularly the boatswain's mate), and with no concern that the seas might pick up. By the time it was noticed that a dangerous amount of water was slopping on board through the lower gun ports, the center of gravity of the ship was likely out of kilter, and the crash effort to undo the "heel" probably provoked the actual foundering; leading to hundreds of deaths.

Where things get even more interesting is when the board of inquiry was convened, since Martin Waghorn, the captain of "Royal George" had survived. You might think that since you had the single most responsible individual on hand that there would be a sanguinary execution to "encourage the rest." Such was not the case though, as said board seems to have been determined to declare the whole matter an act of god which none could have foreseen. The attitude seems to have been that the damage was done, and that there was no point in asking questions that might sully the reputation of Admiral Kempenfelt; not to mention that there was still a war going on.

From there Rubinstein wraps up the book with an account of salvage operations (which took several decades), and some consideration of the aftermath for the survivors, and how this disaster is remembered.… (mehr)

Hilary Rubinstein wrote Chosen in part to give high school students an overview of Jewish history in Australia, so it came close to being the ideal for my purposes (close rather than spot on because it was published in 1987, so I'm left with a 21 year gap). Especially in the first half, it's rich in snippets of interesting information. Did you know, for instance, that there were between eight and 14 Jewish convicts on the First Fleet, that Australia's first native born Governor General was a Jew, that in the mid nineteenth century there was a thriving Jewish community in Ballarat, that Nathan F. Spielvogel wrote lively short stories about that community, that the leader of the Australian armed forces in the First World War and effective founder of Anzac Day was a Jew, that the rumours that Governor Arthur Phillip had a Jewish mother are without foundation? OK, I knew some of those, but it was great to read a narrative tying them together. And there are plenty of memorable anecdotes and flashes of historic wit. A parliamentary opponent of Isaac Isaacs, in his pre-GG days, once said of him, 'The honourable member looks as if he would like to eat me,' to which he replied, 'The honourable member has forgotten my religion.'

Jews have made up between .4 and .5 of a percent of Australia's population pretty much ever since 1788. Roughly speaking, Chosen (as in the people chosen by God, but also the land chosen by immigrants) divides the history into three periods. In the colonial period, Jews were on more or less equal footing with other settlers. They were overwhelmingly British or anglicised in origin, from all classes and walks of life, including a reasonable number of felons, convicted and otherwise. From the middle of the 19th century to the beginning of the first world war, they took an active part in the affairs of the general community (parliamentarians, merchants, artists, farmers, labourers, you name it), and though there was some assimilation, largely because the chronic shortage of Jewish women resulted in a lot of 'marrying out', there were increasingly organised populations of Jews in every colony. There was antisemitism in the form of vicious stereotypes -- read just about any respected Australian writer of the period, from Marcus Clark (especially him) to Henry Lawson, and you will find nasty stuff -- but mostly it was peripheral, kept in the wings as is customary to be unleashed when things get rough and a scapegoat is needed for whatever calamity has befallen. In the 1990s in response to rumours that huge numbers of poor Jews from Eastern Europe were to be brought to Australia, anti-Jewish rhetoric flared up with frightening intensity in the newspapers and public meetings, particularly in the labour movement. Even though it was obvious that the real issue was working people's fear of losing their jobs to cheaper imported labour, the ease with which that fear could be diverted into antisemitism was a rude shock to Australia's Jewish communities. Hilary Rubinstein's second period, then, the first half of the 20th century, was marked by what she calls a 'cult of inconspicuousness': if Jews could only make themselves a small enough target, they would avoid fanning the embers of antisemitism. The communal leaders, still of British stock or culture, presented the Jewish identity as little more than a religion, some even referring to it as a 'denomination' as if on a par with Anglicanism or Catholicism. This strategy came very close to endorsing assimilation, and it may well have led to the distinctive Jewish culture and identity being diluted to the point of non-existence, except that from about the 1920s, when Eastern European Jews began to arrive in Australia in larger numbers, escaping horrific pogroms in which 100 000 men, women and children were. These new arrivals were mostly not inclined to inconspicuousness, and not all of them were observant. Up until that time Judaism had been virtually the only organising force in the communities. In the 1940s, Jewish Boards of Deputies, by various names and with members representing many sectors of an increasingly diverse community, were established in all states. And after the second world war, with the huge increase in immigration, especially of Holocaust survivors (more to Australia than any other country apart from Israel), and then the dramatic reduction of Australia's isolation, the third, modern period was ushered in.

http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20081014083252/index.htm...… (mehr)