HMS Topaze (1858)
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HMS Topaze (1858)
HMS ''Topaze'' was a 51-gun wooden screw frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 12 May 1858, at HMNB Devonport, Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth. Her crew assisted in the building of the Race Rocks Lighthouse in British Columbia, Canada, and laid a bronze tablet in 1868 at the Juan Fernández Islands commemorating the stay of marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk. On the same voyage, the band from HMS ''Topaze'' played for the dedication of Congregation Emanu-El (Victoria, British Columbia), Congregation Emanu-El, now the Oldest synagogues in Canada, oldest surviving synagogue building in Canada. The voyage to Easter Island in 1868 saw the crew remove the two moai Hoa Hakananai'a and Moai Hava and ship them to Britain. Hoa Hakananai'a was found in November 1868 by officers and crew from the ''Topaze''. When first seen, it was buried up to about half its height or even more. It was dug out, dragged down on a sledge, and rafted out to the ship. Commodore Richard Ashmore Powell ...
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HMNB Devonport
His Majesty's Naval Base, Devonport (HMNB Devonport) is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Clyde and HMNB Portsmouth) and is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the Royal Navy. HMNB Devonport is located in Devonport, Devon, Devonport, in the west of the city of Plymouth, England. The base began as a Royal Navy Dockyard in the late 17th century, designed and built on open ground by Edmund Dummer (naval engineer), Edmund Dummer as an integrated facility for the repair and maintenance of warships, centred on his pioneering stone dry dock (one of the earliest stepped docks in the world). Over the next two centuries it expanded, reaching its present extent in the 20th century. Historically, the yard was also used for shipbuilding: over 300 naval vessels were built there, the last being HMS Scylla (F71), HMS ''Scylla'' (launched in 1968). The yard was known as HM Dockyard, Plymouth until 1843, when it was ren ...
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Ship's Doctor
A naval surgeon, or less commonly ship's doctor, is the person responsible for the health of the ship's company aboard a warship. The term appears often in reference to Royal Navy's medical personnel during the Age of Sail. Ancient uses Specialised crew members capable of providing medical care have been a feature of military vessels for at least two thousand years. The second-century Roman Navy under Emperor Hadrian included a surgeon aboard each of its triremes, with the position earning twice a regular officer's pay. Royal Navy From the early days of the Royal Navy, surgeons had been carried on board ships (albeit intermittently, depending on the length of voyage and likelihood of hostilities). In the Tudor period, surgeons were regulated by the Company of Barber-Surgeons. William Clowes, sometime Warden of the Company, and his colleague John Banister (both of whom had served at sea early in their careers) did much to ensure that naval surgeons were properly qualified and ...
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Grog
Grog is a term used for a variety of alcoholic beverages. Origin and history Popularization of rum and invention of grog Following Invasion of Jamaica, England's conquest of Jamaica in 1655, rum gradually replaced beer and brandy as the drink of choice for the Royal Navy. The prior ration of eight pints of beer was replaced with a ration of one half-pint of spirits. In 1740, to minimise the subsequent illness, drunkenness, and disciplinary problems, Vice-admiral (Royal Navy), British Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon ordered that the daily rum issue of of rum be mixed with of water, a water-to-rum ratio of 4:1, with half issued before noon and the remainder after the end of the working day. This both diluted Drunkenness, its effects and accelerated its spoilage, preventing hoarding of the allowance. The mixture of rum and water became known as a "grog". This procedure became part of the official regulations of the Royal Navy in 1756 until the reduction of the ration to the "tot" in ...
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Temperance Movement
The temperance movement is a social movement promoting Temperance (virtue), temperance or total abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emphasize alcohol (drug), alcohol's negative effects on people's Health effects of alcohol, health, personalities, and family lives. Typically the movement promotes alcohol education and it also demands the passage of new Alcohol law, laws against the sale of alcohol: either regulations on the availability of alcohol, or the prohibition of it. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the temperance movement became prominent in many countries, particularly in English-speaking, Scandinavian, and majority Protestant ones, and it eventually led to national prohibitions Prohibition in Canada, in Canada (1918 to 1920), Norway (spirits only from 1919 Norwegian prohibition referendum, 1919 to 1926 Norwegian continued prohibition ref ...
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Agnes Weston
Dame Agnes Elizabeth Weston, GBE (26 March 1840 – 23 October 1918) was an English philanthropist noted for her work with the Royal Navy. For over twenty years, she lived and worked among the sailors of the Royal Navy. The result of her powerful influence is evidenced in the widespread reform which took place in the habits of hundreds of men to whom her name was a talisman for good. In her day, one man in six in the navy was a total abstainer. Weston's work included her monthly letters to sailors, ''Ashore and Afloat'', which she edited, and the "Sailors' Rests", which she established in Portsmouth. She was the first woman given a full ceremonial Royal Navy funeral. Early life Weston was born on 26 March 1840 in London, the daughter of a barrister. In 1851 she, her mother and siblings were living in Weston, Bath. She was influenced from her teenage years onward by the Reverend James Fleming, curate of St Stephen, Lansdown, in the parish of Walcot, Bath (1855–1859), an advo ...
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British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.Among the national museums in London, sculpture and decorative art, decorative and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings. The National Gallery holds the national collection of Western European art to about 1900, while art of the 20th century on is at Tate Modern. Tate Britain holds British Art from 1500 onwards. Books, manuscripts and many works on paper are in the British Library. There are significant overlaps between the coverage of the various collections. Established in 1753, the British Museum was the first public national museum. In 2023, the museum received 5,820,860 visitors, 42% more than the previous y ...
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Queen Victoria
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days, which was List of monarchs in Britain by length of reign, longer than those of any of her predecessors, constituted the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (the fourth son of King George III), and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After the deaths of her father and grandfather in 1820, she was Kensington System, raised under close supervision by her mother and her Comptrol ...
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British Admiralty
The Admiralty was a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the Government of the United Kingdom that was responsible for the command of the Royal Navy. Historically, its titular head was the Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom, Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of its history, from the early Admiralty in the 18th century, 18th century until its abolition, the role of the Lord High Admiral was almost invariably put "in commission" and exercised by the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty, who sat on the governing Board of Admiralty, rather than by a single person. The Admiralty was replaced by the Admiralty Board (United Kingdom), Admiralty Board in 1964, as part of the reforms that created the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence and its Navy Department (Ministry of Defence), Navy Department (later Navy Command (Ministry of Defence), Navy Command). Before the Acts of Union 1707, the Office of t ...
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Hoa Hakananai'a
Hoa Hakananai'a is a moai, a statue from Easter Island. It was stolen from Orongo, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in 1868 by the crew of a British ship and is now in the British Museum in London. It has been described as a "masterpiece" and among the finest examples of Easter Island sculpture. Though relatively small, it is considered to be typical of the island's statue form, but distinguished by carvings added to the back, associated with the island's birdman cult. Etymology The statue was identified as Hoa Hakananai'a by islanders at the time it was removed; the British crew first recorded the name in the form 'Hoa-haka-nana-ia' or 'Hoa-haka-nama-ia'. It has been variously translated from the Rapa Nui language to mean 'breaking wave', 'surfriding', 'surfing fellow', 'master wave-breaker', 'lost or stolen friend', 'stolen friend', 'hidden friend' or 'doing robberies/mockeries friend'. Provenance In 1868, Hoa Hakananai'a was standing erect, part buried inside a freeston ...
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Moai
Moai or moʻai ( ; ; ) are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called Ahu (Easter Island), ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads, which account for three-eighths of the size of the whole statue. They also have no legs. The moai are chiefly the living faces (''aringa ora'') of deified ancestors (''aringa ora ata tepuna''). The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands History of Easter Island#European contacts, when Europeans first visited the island in 1722, but all of them had fallen by the latter part of the 19th century. The moai were toppled in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, possibly as a result of European contact or endemic warfare, internecine tribal wars. The production and tr ...
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