David Weber Quotes
We will maintain heading until he's committed, then I want a hardskew-turn to starboard. As hard as you can make it, Chief. I want our starboard broadside on him as he passes below us, and then I want to cut down across his stern and stick it right up his kilt. Clear? (Honor Harrington)
Weber, David. On Basilisk Station. Baen Books, 1993.
Xerxes ignored her advice and attacked the Greek fleet at the Battle of Salamis. As Artemisia had predicted, the outnumbered Greeks routed the forces of Xerxes’ coalition preserving “The West” from dominance by “The East.” Artemisia’s fleet was the only one in the coalition to enjoy military success in the battle. See Xerxes {45633}. Artemisia is one of the first female military leaders and the only female naval commander until the end of the 20th century. She was 2500 years before her time.
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.
He didn’t succeed until Mahan wrote his marvelous treatise.
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.
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.
The sloop Margaretta was escorting 2 small merchant vessels came into the port of Machias, Massachusetts to purchase some lumber and firewood. However the commanding officer of Margaretta did not like the terms of the negotiations and threatened the town. An aroused and angry group of patriots then boarded and attacked the two merchant ships. The commander of Margaretta then maneuvered out of the port having lost the two small ships. But the Patriots were angry with the commander of the sloop and being excellent seamen who knew the local waters, used one of the merchant ships and a small local vessel to chase down the Naval sloop. They then boarded and captured Margaretta and fatally wounded the commander, James Moore. While Lexington was the first land victory for the patriots, this was the first sea victory and the Margaretta was the first British warship that was captured by the Patriots.
See {640847}, {640845} & {640846}. The capitalization is exactly as Adams wrote it. Note the omission of a capital letter for “congress” for whom he and many others had little respect even then.
David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He has written several science-fiction and fantasy books series, the best known of which is the Honor Harrington science-fiction series. His first novel, which he worked on with Steve White, sold in 1989 to Baen books. Baen remains Weber's major publisher.
