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Ted,
Of recent attempts to glorify Cloudesley Shovell, you wrote
"Why anyone should wish to honour the man and to lay a wreath on his tomb in
Westminster Abbey is a mystery to me."

I suppose it goes back to the ancient sense that a shipwreck is a matter of
fate, that Neptune cast those ships on the rocks, or at least that the
generally poor state of navigation was responsible, and not Shovell
personally. But Shovell had options on that night 300 years ago. He could
have waited.

Speaking of that tomb in Westminster, everyone has agreed for most of the
past 300 years that is an ugly, unflattering thing that represents Shovell
as some sort of slovenly old Roman emperor rather than showing him as a
warrior or a mariner. I have wondered recently whether this may have been
intentional. At that time, it would have been unseemly and unpatriotic to
ridicule openly the memory of Admiral Shovell. But the tomb does just that
and has done so now for almost 300 years. That's some cruel justice!

 -FER
http://www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars


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