"The Death of the Adder 1882." Topic

"It is well known that the USS Monitor, which can be argued to be the first modern warship, and which gave its name to a type of ship which would see service until the end of WW2, was lost off Cape Hatteras in late 1862. This resulted from a very low-freeboard vessel being exposed to heavy seas – conditions such ships were never intended for since they were designed as mobile and heavily-armoured batteries for service in sheltered waters such as river estuaries. Sixteen men died when the Monitor sank but the scale of the tragedy was dwarfed by the much heavier loss of a later, more sophisticated, vessel of the same type in 1882, the Adder of the Royal Netherlands Navy.

The monitor concept proved to be a very attractive one for the Dutch Navy, tasked as it was in home waters with defence of the approaches to its two largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The Netherlands coast in the mid-19th looked significantly different to what it does today. The Zuiderzee, the huge and shallow sea inlet to the north-east of Amsterdam would not be closed off by an enormous until 1932, and much of the area within it reclaimed. The Delta area in the south of the country, where the rivers Rhine, Maas and Schelde enter the sea, was a labyrinth of individual channels, some giving access to Rotterdam, and would remain so until the vast "Delta Works" were undertaken in the 1950s and 60s to close them off…"

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Amicalement
Armand

The word 'dam' has been bleeped. The expletive, if you can call it that, has an 'n' on the end.

It isnīt dam but another name for it, which also happens to be slang for a lesbian.

Oh… I see TJ. And an 'enormous' one at that.

Well,it would take a enormous one,now wouldn't it?

Dang Hafen, you just about killed my keyboard there! Lol!

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand