Talk:Naval battles of the American Revolutionary War

Merge
The West Indies and Gulf Coast campaigns article has nearly the exact same info as this one. We don't need to duplicate, and this article is broader in scope. Civil Engineer III 17:14, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * yes, marge Thanks to this article  Hmains 17:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Significant lack of citations and references
The large majority of this article has no citations and no references leading me to think it was written by someone with extensive knowledge of the subject, but who was perhaps paraphrasing material he or she has written previously. Wikipedia is greatly indebted to scholars who take the time to add their knowledge and expertise but articles must still follow Wikipedia guidelines and that means authoritative, original prose backed up with an adequate number of references and inline citations.

Also, this article has a lot of superfluous, flowery language making it read like a college textbook, not an encyclopedia article. I think much of it needs to be "translated" into plain English by someone with knowledge of the subject. Thank you. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 08:34, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Cannonading
"The fleets were equal but the action was indecisive, as the two forces merely passed one another, cannonading."

I don't understand what this means -- were none of the ships harmed because they were just cannonading (?) at each other? And if so, what do we call it when they are actually shooting at each other, intent on destroying the enemy's ships? Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 09:04, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 00:59, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

American spelling
This article is about the American Revolutionary war, therefore giving it "strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation", calling for the " use the (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation." per MOS:TIES. The recent revert of edits changing terms to American English on the basis that the article is written in British English misses that point entirely. The tagging of the article for use of British English is as uncalled for as is its misuse in proper nouns, such as Boston Harbour [sic] (as bad as calling the city in England Wooster. --Lineagegeek (talk) 21:44, 29 March 2017 (UTC)


 * 1st You didn't change anything, you edited two words, which maybe, just maybe, made the article 10% American English.
 * 2nd A war is, by definition, between two countries. It can't be more "about" one than the other, as, obviously, without one you can't have the other to fight alone, can you?
 * 3rd Beyond mixing two styles, you're mixing two tags too, as there's already one from November 2016, and another one at the top of this page.
 * 4th Not my point of view, but as you seem to use it without thinking about it, "America" didn't even existed when this started, it was all "Britain".
 * 5th Take a look at your link and read about consensus for a change. Bertdrunk (talk) 21:56, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Postmortem note: Go to the War of 1812 to see if you'll be able to change it too. Bertdrunk (talk) 22:15, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I really don't want to get dragged into an ENGVAR discussion, but a couple of observations. First, the first version of the article used British not American English ("centre", rather than "center", but I didn't check much further). That has to be balanced against the US title ("American Revolutionary War", rather than "American War of Independence"). Bertdrunk is right to point out that there were (at least) two sides to this conflict, and it is as much part of British history as it is American history, so there is no automatic TIES claim. It may be worth trying to remove a few of the pinch points if possible (I swapped out "theatre" for "war"), and there are synonyms available for harbour (port, etc) that can be used in places to remove what's may be seen as odd notes. – The Bounder (talk) 22:30, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

How is this a Good Article
How in the world can this be considered a good article when it fails good article criteria numbers 3 and 4 on its face. This article is not broad in its coverage at all, For example John Paul Jones is not even mentioned in the body of the article, not once! It also completely omits virtually all reference to major naval actions that occured outside of the eastern coast of North America. This was a global war, major naval actions occured in the Indian Ocean, Mediterranian Sea, the Caribbean Sea, and other areas. In fact most of the naval actions that occured during the war occured in the Caribbean and parts of the Atlantic Ocean not covered in this article. Some of the most decisive naval battles of the war are blatently omitted, such as Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1780). The Battle of the Saintes, perhaps the most important naval action of the entire war, is only mentioned in passing. The exploits and fate of the Continental Navy are also practically absent, for example nothing is mentioned as to how virtually all of the Continental Navy's major warships were hunted down and destroyed by the Royal Navy. This article clearly is not broad in its coverage and as a result presents a distorted biased part of view that makes it fail criteria number 4 as well.XavierGreen (talk) 16:09, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

ENGVAR
I've turned down an EditProtected request at Template talk:Editnotices/Page/Naval battles of the American Revolutionary War to put a British English template in an EditNotice on this article. I see at least one thread of MOS:ENGVAR-related dispute above. While WP:RETAIN applies as a, people are apt to make US "strong national ties" arguments, and consensus went that way it would trump RETAIN. If I've ever seen an ENGVAR matter that should probably be a WP:RFC, it is surely this one. It might well conclude to retain BrEng, but it's a discussion that needs to happen, not one that should be prevented by labeling the article with a template that can't be edited by regular users. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:37, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Naming
Naval battles of the American Revolutionary War? I think this should be called either American Revolutionary Naval Campaignor something similar? Suggestions? Eastfarthingan (talk) 13:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well the naval battles were part of separate campaigns and theaters. We really should have one overarching article for the Caribbean Theater for example and another for the European Theater.XavierGreen (talk) 17:14, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed; interesting enough there was this article but it has vanished or has been renamed on wiki. Eastfarthingan (talk) 18:07, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this article should merge with France in the American Revolutionary War? The detail has the same and is never clear where the Naval battles are - ie is this just Atlantic? then in that case it should include Spain and the Dutch Republic. Eastfarthingan (talk) 10:37, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Cuddalore
The American Revolution describes the revolution of the 13 Colonies in the Revolutionary War. Therefore, Cuddalore should be on here, despite it's location. Mebigrouxboy (talk) 22:32, 4 November 2021 (UTC)