Talk:Capture of the sloop Anne/Archive 1

assessment

• meets B class in MH except for uncited paragraph. auntieruth (talk) 15:42, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I still have some work to do here, but can you please clarify which paragraph is of most concern? 172.56.4.96 (talk) 02:36, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

NPOV?

Having actually done extensive research on this topic (and the 1820's US Navy Anti-Piracy Campaign in general), i find it surprising that virtually this entire article seems to be sourced from Cardona Bonet's El Marinero, Bandolero, Pirata y Contrabandista Roberto Cofresí, it appears that virtually no english language sources have been used. The absence of any reference the primary authoritative historical English language works (such as Gardner Weld Allen's "Our Navy and the West Indian Pirates") leads me to wonder whether the account presented here is biased towards the Spanish accounts of this action due to the excessive reliance on Spanish language sources.XavierGreen (talk) 20:05, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not inclined to think so Xavier, Cardona Bonet's research cites both the original correspondence between Sloat and the Secretary of the US Navy and the Spanish correspondence between the Southern Command and the Governor. Both of the final reports are cited here as well, as you can see in the reports section. Virtually all of the English literature that I found was based on the same letters and the official report by Sloat (or the spin off account of the Niles' Register), but if there is additional independent content, I implore you to include it. Cardona Bonet agrees with Acosta that the Spanish account is excessively generous to the Spanish government (see "Renovales' Report") and, like her, gives full credit to Lt. Pendergrast in his own work (this should not come as a surprise, since both historians were members of the Puerto Rico Genealogical Society).

Frankly, the only part where the Spanish account takes prominence is in the "Capture of Cofresí" section (since the US Navy was not involved in the land search) and even then, Cardona's book makes it a point of noting that the credit was unfairly attributed to commander Marcano and that the militiamen received second-rate awards due to their race (which actually seems a bit anti-Spanish, but Cardona presents it with pragmatism). The narrative of the article follows the American reports for the rest of the article and you can note that it never gives credit to Renovales or the mayor of Ponce for the strategy or the organization of the mission. Having said that, I can e-mail a folder with the content of the book to anyone still concerned with any POV based on the language of the sources. - Caribbean~H.Q. 18:53, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to note that the "Preparations" section is almost entirely taken from Cpt. Sloat's logbook. There is no mention of the preparations in the Spanish account besides Renovales' dubious claim, which is not part of the actual narrative and only mentioned in the "Reports" section as "discrepancies". - Caribbean~H.Q. 19:01, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

If Cardona's account matches the source materials you have mentioned then that's fine for purposes of historicity of the narrative. However, I still think that the article is overly reliant on a single foreign language source, as this is the English version of wikipedia English sources are preferred when available (and they are to a degree available here). If you decide to take this article further down the review process (such as Military history A-class, or Featured Article review) I imagine the issue might arise.XavierGreen (talk) 03:26, 30 June 2015 (UTC)