Talk:Battle of the Basque Roads

Rewrite
There doesn't appear to be a lot of activity on this page, but I am planning to substantially rewrite this article in my userspace over the coming week or so, with better sourcing and more detailed information both on the battle and the court-martial which followed it. I also plan to put together a detailed order of battle. If any one has any questions or comments, you know where to find me.--Jackyd101 (talk) 18:28, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Who broke the boom?
The article says that both the explosion vessels and HMS Mediator broke the boom. This was a bone of contention at Gambier's court-martial; I wonder what modern sources say? Pinkbeast (talk) 00:58, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Casualties and losses
Shouldn't the fireships be listed on the British side here? -165.234.252.11 (talk) 15:46, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I would do this myself just based off what's in the article, but I think it's a little unclear how many fireships were lost. It says there was one attack by the two explosion ships, followed by a wave of twenty fireships, but it also says Cochrane had twenty-one fireships and some explosion ships (were these in addition to the 21 fireships? created by modifying 2 of his allotted fireships? either way, the fireship count is off by 1). I suppose since both claims have been unsourced for 10 years I should probably just look for a book about the battle. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 16:15, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think fireships are losses. They are weapons.--Ykraps (talk) 19:06, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I see what you're saying, but I think they're a little more significant than just weapons. More important than my opinion, though, is that it's weird that they're listed with all of the ships going into the battle, but not as losses. Taking a quick look at some other articles on fireship battles, they generally aren't included in either list, but the box for the battle of Chesma article has 4 fireships listed as going in and 4 fireships listed as not coming out. This article could go either way, I suppose. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 15:23, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Rewrite
Two years ago I promised to rewrite this article (see above). Real life got in the way and I took a two year hiatus from Wikipedia. Now that things have settled down a bit, temporarily at least, I decided to come back and finish off what I started. I notice there has been no major activity on this article since December 2015, and much of it is in a poor state, so I hope no one will object - if you have any problems with what I've done, please send a message my way and we'll talk it out.

I have worked up a new version of the article in my userspace, and I will copy and paste it straight into the article, but for the record a history of the edits that went into it can be found at the redirect User:jackyd101/Battle of Basque Roads. As the article was getting long, I have also created two spin-off articles: one on the spectacular trial of Gambier entitled Court-martial of James, Lord Gambier and the Order of battle at the Battle of the Basque Roads which lists the ships, commanders and casualties in an accessible format. I also rewrote the article on the smaller associated action, the Battle of Les Sables-d'Olonne. Its been a pleasure to put all this together over the last few weeks and I welcome any comments or corrections.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:09, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Just a note, I had to leave off a few unreferenced stray points that I could not locate reliable sources for. If anyone wants to put them back, please use a source to do so. --Jackyd101 (talk) 23:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

transitive / intransitive verbs
This article appears to use a few verbs in a 'non-British' way. The verb 'protest' is intransitive and needs to be followed by 'for' or 'against'. I know you quite often see people trying to use it in a transitive way but this is not standard British English. Even worse is 'resign the Navy' - I have never heard anyone say anything similar to that - it needs to be 'resign from the navy' Briandaugherty (talk) 17:57, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Citing
"blazing fireships drifted randomly across the anchorage, some passing amid the great hulls of the French line. Shells from Aetna and thousands of rockets burst amid the confusion as the forts and all ships fired their guns at threats real and imagined; "a scene. . . peculiarly awful and sublime." According to whom ? Who is Woodman citing ? Mr.Lovecraft (talk) 13:56, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * That line is cited to James, not Woodman, and is verbatim from James' book, The Naval History of Great Britain, Volume V, 1808–1811. The semtence, "The Aix Road was now a scene of 'sublime horror'" is cited to Woodman and that is a direct quote from Woodman's book, The Sea Warriors.--Ykraps (talk) 17:26, 12 September 2022 (UTC)