Talk:William Thomas Turner

Looks like a book
This Wikipedia article reads way too much like a short story or book. It needs to be cleaned up top conform to a higher quality standard. HistoryMaker2001 (talk) 06:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree and I've just changed it back to a stub. Hopefully it can be rebuilt from scratch. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk) 14:42, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Complete rewrite needed
This is probably one of the worst articles on Wikipedia for a notable historic figure. You could attach citation needed tags to almost every sentence and it reads more like a novel than an encyclopaedia entry. It needs urgent attention.

10 March 2011‎ 208.62.171.226
IP 208.62.171.226 copied and pasted much of the content of into this article, so I reverted it back to the previous version. It still may be a source from which to expand this article.--I am One of Many (talk) 05:12, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Minor clean up - typos
There are a couple of typos some of which may result from repeated removals of text, or not. For example, in the "Early Life and Career" section the article says:


 * Turner served under his father's command on the Queen of Nationas in While best known now for his role in the Lusitania disaster, Turner was an excellent navigator who accomplished several crossings at notable speeds, including Liverpool to New York in 12 days in 1910, and was promoted for his skill despite his unsuitably gruff demeanor around passengers.

According to the cited source in footnote 3, the ship should be the "Queen of the Nations." Then there appears to be a run on sentence beginning with "While," rather than a statement that he commanded the QoN "in While." What follows after "in" appears to have been deleted. It's unclear what was to follow, so I will delete the word "in" and separate the two sentences. That still leaves the sentence beginning with "While" as a very long sentence.

The next sentence states:
 * Turner was referred to passengers as, "a load of bloody monkeys who are constantly chattering".

"Turner was" is an incorrect verb as it appears that Turner did or said something not that he "was referred to." "Turner has referred to" doesn't seem to be the right temporal verb. Perhaps it was intended to be "Turner was said to have referred to passengers as ..."

The section of his "Career with Cunard" begins as follows:


 * Turner joined the Cunard Line in 1878 ... and left Cunard in 1883 to gain additional experience required for a promotion. Cunard gained his Captain's license in 1886, and then rejoined the line again in 1889.

This looks like a typo and it should be Turner who "gained his Captain's license."

I will be editing the article in accordance with the above.

There's another error I will not be fixing. The article concludes with


 * Turner died of intestinal cancer in 1933.[8] Turner's son, Merchant Navy Able Seaman Percy Wilfred Turner, age 55, was lost on 16/09/1941 on M.V. Jedmoor when it was sunk by a German submarine U-98 (1940). [9] the Jedmoor [10]

The last two words form a very incomplete sentence. If deleted, then the footnote reference will be lost, but I have no idea what the rest of the sentence was supposed to say. Perhaps someone more familiar with the history of the edits or with the topic can correct this.

There may be other typos; these are just the ones I saw when using this article for information purposes. Ileanadu (talk) 16:38, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Turner's "role in the Lusitania disaster"
In the Early Life and Career Section it states that:


 * While [Turner is] best known now for his role in the Lusitania disaster ..."

This implies that Turner did something in the Lusitania disaster that is significant, either in contributing to its cause, or in his response to it. There is nothing in the article that notes anything significant about what he did before or after. It merely states that he was the Captain at the time of the disaster, so it should just state "best known as the Captain of the Lusitania at the time of its sinking".

If there is some significant issue with what he did, that should be included in this article, as it would be valuable information for the reader/user. If there isn't anything, then this should just be changed to "best known as the Captain of the Lusitania at the time of its sinking." It's not enough that some significant act on his part is covered in the article on the sinking; there needs to be some indication in the article as to why his role is important, rather than just the fact that he was the Captain.

Having glanced at some other resources, it seems like this article does not provide nearly as much information as the reader should have. May 7th will be the 100th Anniversary of the Lusitania's sinking. It would be nice if this and the article on the Lusitania itself were in better shape by then as many readers may be looking for information by then.

Even with the bare bones provided here, there are questions that should be answered, such as why Turner survived and didn't go down with his ship. Also, it appears that his role before and during the sinking does have some controversy attached to it, yet none of it is mentioned here. See the orange menu on the left at: http://www.rmslusitania.info/ Ileanadu (talk) 17:56, 18 March 2015 (UTC)