Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 August 8

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August 8

Chain of command on a Navy ship

For my purposes this is specifically WWI-era and British Royal Navy, but I imagine it can be applied more universally: if some catastrophe befalls a naval ship and kills the captain and his lieutenants, how does the chain of command progress after that? Is that universal across navies and across the centuries? I feel like I have a good grip on how Army ranks work, and the clear delineation between enlisted man and officer, but not so much with sailor and officer on a Navy vessel, or the way the officer ranks work when in the Navy they often seem to be tied to a specific role. Dr-ziego (talk) 12:02, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

See chief petty officer, petty officer and leading rating. A Google search failed to find any instance of this actually happening. Although a direct hit on a ship's bridge might kill or injure several officers, others would be stationed in various remote parts of the ship, so that the chances of them all being killed while the ship was still operable seems improbable. Alansplodge (talk) 20:52, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

A bit more digging finds the case of the destroyer HMS Venetia at the Battle of Boulogne in May 1940:

German forces almost succeeded in sinking HMS Venetia as it entered the harbour... With all the officers on the bridge of Venetia severely wounded or killed a young sub lieutenant took command and proceeded out of harbour stern first. [1]

Destroyers and larger warships had an aft conning station, from where the ship could be steered in case the controls on the bridge were disabled. Alansplodge (talk) 21:11, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Followup on Alansplodge's comment — at the time, you had engineering officers (who, I imagine, would work in the boiler rooms with the men they commanded) and other lesser officers from middle-class or lower-class backgrounds, and they definitely didn't work in close proximity to the frequently upper-class-background officers that you're asking about. Even if the captain and lieutenants are killed, the ship still has the engineering officers remaining, unless the catastrophe is significant enough to sink the ship or render her helpless. Nyttend (talk) 22:29, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Another example, although from WWII and the US Navy, was the USS San Francisco (CA-38) which received a direct hit on the bridge during the Battle of Guadalcanal in November of 1942. All bridge officers except one were killed, including Rear Admiral Daniel Callahan, the ship's captain and several other senior officers. The communications officer and the damage control officer were the highest ranking survivors and they managed to save the severely damaged ship, which was repaired at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California and stayed in active combat service through the end of the war. Cullen328 (talk) 23:07, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Unlikely for all the officers to be killed simultaneously in warfare, I imagine, but what about survival scenarios such as Franklin's lost expedition or (had it gone differently) Bligh's open boat voyage following the Mutiny on the Bounty, or similar smaller-scale situations in lifeboats etc? Dr-ziego (talk) 05:33, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Seeing that senior officers, junior officers, and men are likely to die in roughly equal numbers in the first scenario (starvation and freezing don't care about your rank), it seems unlikely that all the senior officers would die or be incapacitated while juniors are left. Moreover, in that kind of scenario you'd have plenty of time for the captain or a senior lieutenant to designate a replacement. Roughly the same with the Bligh situation, where you'd have time to figure out what would happen to whom; also, in a tiny boat, it might even degenerate to popular vote. Nyttend (talk) 20:57, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, there was the case of acting lieutenant William Sitgreaves Cox, an acting lieutenant who became his ship's commanding officer. He was found to have abandoned his post in battle because he took the wounded captain below deck; his name was finally cleared during the Truman administration. That was an American ship, and during the War of 1812, but is that helpful? John M Baker (talk) 22:43, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Verification help

On the article Sacred king, the third unsourced paragraph of the History section says: The Ashanti flogged a newly selected king (Ashantehene) before enthroning him. So that he might remember what it felt like to suffer as a man, to restrain him in his thereafter acquired god-like power, as the Auriga reminded the conquering hero returning home in his triumph, the crowd's ecstatic adulation rolling in waves across his ego, that he remained but a mortal, and must die.

Could someone please verify or confirm whether or not this is true? And what is "Auriga" supposed to mean in this context? StellarHalo (talk) 23:21, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

On the "auriga" reference, see the third paragraph of Auriga (slave). Deor (talk) 01:01, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

The only thing I have found is a brief reference in a footnote in a journal article:

Anshan Li. "Asafo and Destoolment in Colonial Southern Ghana, 1900-1953". The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 28, No. 2 (1995), pp. 327-357. doi:10.2307/221617.

It is about the enstoolment of Akan chiefs in general, not specifically the Asantehene.

²³After a new chief was elected, members of the asafo went to fetch him from his house. As a farewell to him as a commoner, they gave him a last ceremonial flogging and smeared him with white clay, then brought him before the assembly. They also perforned the same duty when a chief was destooled. Field, Akim-Kotoku, 22; D.W. Brokensha, Social Change at Larteh (London, 1966), 114.

A detailed description of the enstoolment ritual of the king of another Akan kingdom did not mention flogging, so this does not allow a definite conclusion that this also applies to the Asantehene.

I have removed the flowery addition (by an IP) about the supposed moral effect of the flogging.  --Lambiam 07:52, 10 August 2024 (UTC)