Sam Willis > Quotes

“the political and symbolic significance of retaining a captured ship’s name were powerful, as was the sailors’ belief that to change the name of a ship was unlucky. British sailors were unable or unwilling to pronounce Téméraire properly, and so she became to them Timmera.”
― Sam Willis, The Fighting Temeraire: The Battle of Trafalgar and the Ship that Inspired J.M.W. Turner's Most Beloved Painting

“That day, then, jolly buck, we’ll set the taps a-flowin’ And drink rest and good luck to Admiral Boscawen.19”
― Sam Willis, The Fighting Temeraire: The Battle of Trafalgar and the Ship that Inspired J.M.W. Turner's Most Beloved Painting

“Fleet cohesion was achieved more through the complex social relationship between a commander and his officers than by orders alone. Fleet captains ignored their fleet commander time and again and would continue to do so up to, during and after the Battle of Trafalgar.”
― Sam Willis, The Fighting Temeraire: The Battle of Trafalgar and the Ship that Inspired J.M.W. Turner's Most Beloved Painting

“The reason for her nickname is lost. The problem is that we don’t know what eighteenth-century sailors understood by ‘saucy’; if it’s similar to how we understand it, it may have had very important subtle variations.”
― Sam Willis, The Fighting Temeraire: The Battle of Trafalgar and the Ship that Inspired J.M.W. Turner's Most Beloved Painting

“the Harveys’ most famous son. An experimental physician famous for his discovery of the circulation of the blood, he had been the personal physician to Charles I and had been present with him at the Battle of Edgehill in 1642. Research in the Harvey family papers has also revealed that he was responsible for the only known scientific examination of a witch’s familiar. Personally ordered by Charles I to examine a lady suspected of witchcraft who lived on the outskirts of Newmarket, the dubious Harvey visited her in the guise of a wizard. He succeeded in capturing and dissecting her pet toad. The animal, Harvey concluded dryly, was a toad.”
― Sam Willis, The Fighting Temeraire: The Battle of Trafalgar and the Ship that Inspired J.M.W. Turner's Most Beloved Painting