Talk:Bali Strait Incident

Citation format
This article would plainly benefit from using and sfn format. If you are serious about being a WP: GA, this would be a good start. Just saying. 19:28, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * In the Good article criteria outlined for Good Article status, subsection 2b does not specify or show preference to any particular inline citation style. Therefore, 7&6=thirteen, this has no bearing on this article's Good Article status. I appreciate your comment on the review and thank you for your service to Wikipedia. -- West Virginian   (talk)  19:46, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I was not demeaning your GA assessment. You are correct.  I think it is a good article, too.  I also know a better citation when I see it, and it would work well here.  WP:CITEVAR suggests I had to ask, not act.  7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 20:17, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The article appears to make a major error
I have been working on Woodford and it is clear from the summary of her voyage that she was sailing towards Canton, not away from it, at the time of the incident. I then checked the voyage summaries for the other four Indiamen: they were sailing to Canton, not away from it. I then looked on the map for the location of Ocean's wrecking. It is north of and west of the Bali strait. That is consistent with the Indiamen sailing towards China, and then a storm pushing her away from the Makassar Strait. A listing of EIC losses in a House of Commons report has Ocean wrecking on the outward bound leg of the voyage to China, not the inward/homeward bound leg. Lastly, Taunton Castle had to stop at Amboyna, which is well north of Java, and on the way to Canton, not from it. The article is going to need some serious re-writing to get the directions and facts correct. I don't have time right now but if necessary I will get to it soon. Regards, Acad Ronin (talk) 02:32, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
 * We need to be careful here - if this is indeed an error, it lies with Parkinson. He explicitly refers to the "homeward-bound China fleet" and the "returning Indiamen". He also suggests that the decision for Lennox to use the Bali Strait was made and communicated by Rainier at Macau on 30 December. This is hardly likely to be the case if Lennox was sailing to China rather than from it. If we think that Parkinson has it wrong then we need to be careful how we express it given the rules on no original research - we'll have to acknowledge Parkinson's error in the article itself.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:10, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It was James' fault. He explicitly calls them "homeward bound" and other authors have followed his lead since 1827. This could be an interesting test of Wikipedia's no original research rule.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi - this is a fun one. Fortunately, the evidence is all secondary sources. The most important are the British Library's summaries of the voyage logs. We would be taking those as given. There is also an item in a House of Commons report, and that is not original either. I have always understood the no original research rule as being based on verifiability. E.g., if I claim that my statistical analysis shows that on average East Indiamen took 82.5 days to sail from Calcutta to St Helena (a made up number), no one could verify it. However, in the Bali Straits case, and the vessels involved, we have clickable links to a solid source. We would have to mention James's error explicitly  as otherwise someone might try to "uncorrect" our work, given how well established James's story became. In my write-ups of ships I often cite Lloyd's Register, the London Gazette, Lloyd's List, the British Library's voyage summaries, and recently The Times (of London), and the like. In all cases I have a clickable link; so far the only time anyone raised an eyebrow was my citing the London Gazette. In that case I pointed out that was a newspaper and the primary source was the captain's letter to the Admiralty, which the LG reproduced. So, net-net, I think we are on pretty firm ground here. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 01:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That sounds reasonable to me - since I don't have these sources to hand, I suggest that when you have the time you can make the necessary changes, or, if you'd prefer, write a paragraph to insert into the article. Either way, I can then follow up with a brief discussion (maybe in a footnote) that outlines the errors James and Parkinson have made. Interestingly, neither Clowes, nor the consistently unreliable Brenton state the direction in which the convoy was traveling.--Jackyd101 (talk) 07:55, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Roger. Wilco. I can handle the directions of sail relatively easily. Once I do that, What we will need is a rewording of the background, plus a footnote on James, Parkinson, Clowes, and Benton. It is interesting that Clowes and Benton dodged the issue. They may have sensed that something was off, but not having Google, couldn't follow it up easily. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 13:41, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Once you've handled the directions of sail I'm happy to revise the background and put together a footnote for you to check and amend as necessary if that works for you? There's no rush, just give me a bell when its done.--Jackyd101 (talk) 15:24, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I have given the article a going over and would appreciate your doing so too. I have looked at it so often now that I no longer see typos, contradictions, etc. Also, the article still has a lot of redundancy. It needs a fresh eye. Given the data in the order of battle table it would be hard to argue for James's story. Biden got it right, and I noticed a footnote in his account in which he points out that James is wrong. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 00:36, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That does it. Thanks. Now, not only is it a GA, it is a more correct GA, and more correct than several of its (famous) sources. Acad Ronin (talk) 20:10, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * No, thank you. Without your eagle eye on those East Indiamen this would have gone on being wrong. Can I ask, was it the direction issue which made you trust Biden on Farquharson? I have to admit, the location of the wreck of Ocean bothered me at the time, and I read over the sources several times on the assumption that the Indiamen must have retreated back into the Java Sea after the action, but in the end decided that it was just incautious writing from James, especially after Parkinson backed him up. A nice collaboration all round! --Jackyd101 (talk) 20:18, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I can't fully reconstruct the detective work. I think it began with my questioning Biden's account of Farquharson being in charge because I had just finished an article on Alfred and knew he had come from Colombo and was sailing north, not south. Then I started looking at maps, and looking up Ocean and Woodford (which I had worked on some time previously without making connections), where I noticed that the voyage record summaries had them coming from Colombo and going north. Then I looked at the voyage record summaries for the other three, and realized that they were all at Colombo at the same time, and five ended up at Whampoa within a day or two of each other. Any one summary might be wrong, but not all six. But I admit, I felt that it was a bit of cheek on my part to question James and Parkinson. Net-net, one thing I love about these collaborative articles on WP is that eventually some correct the received historical record. For which the Internet and Google books deserve a lot of credit. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 20:27, 3 September 2017 (UTC)