Talk:Passage of Humaitá

Merger proposal
I propose that Passage of Humaitá be merged into Fortress of Humaitá. I think that the content of Passage of Humaitá can be better appreciated in the context of an Article about the Fortress; otherwise, the difficulties that faced the attackers and defenders tend not to be appreciated.

There is anyway yet a further Article about this Fortress, namely Siege of Humaitá. I believe it make no sense to have three Articles about what is essentially the same topic. If all three Articles are merged it will be easier to improve the editing. Ttocserp 12:56, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * oppose - for reasons already explained in the other 2 articles, these are three different though related topics: the fortress, the siege of the fortress, and the battle that resulted in the (first) passage of the position by the Brazilian fleet (which had effects on the siege). Regards, DPdH (talk) 09:41, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Rewrite
The achievement of the Brazilian navy, now largely forgotten, was in its day astonishing, and so regarded by foreign observers. In this article I have identified over 30 sources. There is still a lot of work to do, however.Ttocserp 00:08, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Deletion of superfluous categories
I have deleted a lot of superfluous categories. They were grandfather categories. Wiki policy says not to have every grandfather category. Wiki policy says to diffuse to the lowest branch of the tree. That is now the position of the categories. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:56, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Please see further on your talk page. Ttocserp 16:10, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep it off my talk page please. Regarding Category:International relations theory - can you find one article that has a war in it, a battle or a passage? No? That's because it's about the subject in general. To have it otherwise would clutter it with a lot of material that is tangential to the subject. Only material that is directly germaine to the topic ought to be in the top level. Everything ought to find it's own place in the tree structure (i.e. the bottom-most logical leaf). And so for all the other categories that I deleted. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:36, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Citation links
All or nearly all the Harvard-style links between the refs and the citations are broken. Perhaps this should be fixed before the GA review. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:45, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you mean. (Strictly, I believe there are no Harvard-style links.) Could you mention one or two specific examples of broken links, please?Ttocserp 20:03, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I've checked all the url's and they are functioning. The article uses no Harvard-style citations, but, instead, shortened foonotes with the sfn|Reference|page template.  Ttocserp 20:37, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * However, I've changed the sources' templates so that they provide anchors, with effect that the shortened footnotes, if clicked on, do now link to the full citations.Ttocserp 06:02, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Shortening
I shall shorten this article substantially following advice from Randomness74.Ttocserp 12:32, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Angelo Agostini image
Torrimem, I'm not sure this really works as the lead image. It is naturally dark and obscure, whereas the Trajano de Travalho painting is vivid and compelling. As far as historical accuracy goes, neither qualifies anyway.Ttocserp 12:20, 4 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I thought it was a better image for a number of reasons:
 * It has a higher resolution;
 * It is closer to the events (1868);
 * It depicts the scene with all the key elements (all the ironclads, the river batteries, the river bend, the church and the chain), and shows the batteries firing etc.
 * We can request a contrast correction to solve the darkness issue, but if you still think the other image is better feel free to revert, I won't object it. Torimem (talk) 15:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I know what you mean. but the vessels went past at long intervals in lashed pairs, never in sight of one another. The truth is that there exists no historically accurate image of this event.  So it's a question of which has most artistic merit.Ttocserp 15:37, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

(5 November.) I have now reviewed this very carefully and I am quite certain this isn't up to lede image standard:

1. The Agostini image is utterly lacking in any pretence to historical accuracy.

(a) It does not even purport to show the correct ships. If you enlarge and read the caption, vessel #1 is stated to be Silvado. But Silvado did not take part in the Passage of Humaitá at all! (Just the Passage of Curupaity.) It stayed safely downstream. Likewise, vessel #2 is stated to be Lima Barros. It did not participate either! These facts, by themselves, are quite enough to show that Agostini was completely misinformed or, more probably, had no artistic intent to depict history.

(I accept it could be trying to show them providing covering fire, but they are unnecessarily and dangerously close for that.

(b) The ships are not drawn to scale and the monitors are made vastly larger than they really were.

(c) As showing the practical naval architecture, they are simply wrong. The real monitors were a credit to Brazilian naval architecture, being skilfully designed to hardly protrude out of the water.

(d) The naval strategy is completely misunderstood. The vessels proceeded in pairs, with at least half an hour between successive dashes, signalling by rocket to the next pair. The purpose was to get well clear since there was a risk of blocking the channel, as the article clearly explains. If Agostini had really meant to depict the historical event, which he did not, he would have been insulting the Brazilian Navy's professional acumen.

(e) This image makes it look much easier than it really was. The ships did not proceed in darkness and gloom: they were brilliantly illuminated by continual flashes of gunfire.

2. The Agostini image is not artistically meritorious either; by that criterion, there are far better candidates.

It is, after all, only a monochrome magazine engraving. The definition is not all that good. If we accept that this image must qualify — if at all — as work of art, it simply isn't. The best that one can say is that it isn't a bad magazine image by the standards of the time and place. The Victor Meirelle images, purely as art, are incomparably superior.

3. In summary, the Agostini engraving is rather poor artistically and gives a wholly misleading impression of the historical event. It isn't up to lead image standard.Ttocserp 12:07, 5 November 2023 (UTC)