Talk:Bali Strait incident

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Bali Strait Incident/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: West Virginian (talk · contribs) 19:12, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Jackyd101, I will be engaging in thoughtful and comprehensive review of this article within the next 48 hours. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments in the meantime! -- West Virginian (talk) 19:12, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

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Jackyd101, I've finished my review and re-review of your article and find that it meets Good Article criteria. I've made a few comments and suggestions below that should first be addressed prior to its passage. Thanks for all your hard work on this one! -- West Virginian (talk) 18:28, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all taken care of, appreciate the review!--Jackyd101 (talk) 22:22, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Jackyd101, thank you for addressing my concerns and comments. I appreciated all your hard work on this article, and congratulate you on another job well done! I hereby pass this article to Good Article status! -- West Virginian (talk) 18:59, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, no copyvios, spelling and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Lede

• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section, the lede of this article adequately defines the Bali Strait Incident, establishes the incident's necessary context, and explains why the incident is otherwise notable.
• The info box for the Bali Strait Incident is beautifully formatted and its content is sourced within the prose of the text and by the references cited therein.
• Its a pity there is no image in the template, but this is certainly not a deal breaker for Good Article status.
• Île de France could stand to have Mauritius added behind it, but it isn't absolutely necessary.
• Should "China Fleet" be rendered as such in the lede, rather than China fleet?
• The lede is well-written, consists of content that is adequately sourced and verifiable, and I have no comments or questions for this section.

Background

• "By 1797" could stand to have a comma in the following pause.
• Île de France appears here again, and could stand to have Mauritius mentioned in parentheses following.
• At first I thought it may help to include an image or map here for geospatial context, but alas, the only map I could locate was the 1818 Pinkerton map of the Dutch East Indies. The images of Peter Rainier, junior and Pierre César Charles de Sercey are both black and white and of low quality, so I guess this section is fine without any of these.
• This section is otherwise well-written, consists of content that is adequately sourced and verifiable, and I have no further comments or questions for this section.

China Fleet

• This section is well-written, consists of content that is adequately sourced and verifiable, and I have no comments or questions for this section.

Orders of battle

• The tables are beautifully formatted, but I would suggest linking the sources with the harvnb template so that they are connected to the references below in the bibliography.

Aftermath

• Amboyna should be wiki-linked to Ambon, Maluku.
• This section is otherwise well-written, consists of content that is adequately sourced and verifiable, and I have no further comments or questions for this section.

Citation format

This article would plainly benefit from using and sfn format. If you are serious about being a WP: GA, this would be a good start. Just saying. 19:28, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

In the Wikipedia:Good article criteria outlined for Good Article status, subsection 2b does not specify or show preference to any particular inline citation style. Therefore, 7&6=thirteen, this has no bearing on this article's Good Article status. I appreciate your comment on the review and thank you for your service to Wikipedia. -- West Virginian (talk) 19:46, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I was not demeaning your GA assessment. You are correct. I think it is a good article, too. I also know a better citation when I see it, and it would work well here. WP:CITEVAR suggests I had to ask, not act. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:17, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The article appears to make a major error

@Jackyd101: I have been working on Woodford and it is clear from the summary of her voyage that she was sailing towards Canton, not away from it, at the time of the incident. I then checked the voyage summaries for the other four Indiamen: they were sailing to Canton, not away from it. I then looked on the map for the location of Ocean's wrecking. It is north of and west of the Bali strait. That is consistent with the Indiamen sailing towards China, and then a storm pushing her away from the Makassar Strait. A listing of EIC losses in a House of Commons report has Ocean wrecking on the outward bound leg of the voyage to China, not the inward/homeward bound leg. Lastly, Taunton Castle had to stop at Amboyna, which is well north of Java, and on the way to Canton, not from it. The article is going to need some serious re-writing to get the directions and facts correct. I don't have time right now but if necessary I will get to it soon. Regards, Acad Ronin (talk) 02:32, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

We need to be careful here - if this is indeed an error, it lies with Parkinson. He explicitly refers to the "homeward-bound China fleet" and the "returning Indiamen". He also suggests that the decision for Lennox to use the Bali Strait was made and communicated by Rainier at Macau on 30 December. This is hardly likely to be the case if Lennox was sailing to China rather than from it. If we think that Parkinson has it wrong then we need to be careful how we express it given the rules on no original research - we'll have to acknowledge Parkinson's error in the article itself.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:10, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

It was James' fault. He explicitly calls them "homeward bound" and other authors have followed his lead since 1827. This could be an interesting test of Wikipedia's no original research rule.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Jackyd101: - this is a fun one. Fortunately, the evidence is all secondary sources. The most important are the British Library's summaries of the voyage logs. We would be taking those as given. There is also an item in a House of Commons report, and that is not original either. I have always understood the no original research rule as being based on verifiability. E.g., if I claim that my statistical analysis shows that on average East Indiamen took 82.5 days to sail from Calcutta to St Helena (a made up number), no one could verify it. However, in the Bali Straits case, and the vessels involved, we have clickable links to a solid source. We would have to mention James's error explicitly as otherwise someone might try to "uncorrect" our work, given how well established James's story became. In my write-ups of ships I often cite Lloyd's Register, the London Gazette, Lloyd's List, the British Library's voyage summaries, and recently The Times (of London), and the like. In all cases I have a clickable link; so far the only time anyone raised an eyebrow was my citing the London Gazette. In that case I pointed out that was a newspaper and the primary source was the captain's letter to the Admiralty, which the LG reproduced. So, net-net, I think we are on pretty firm ground here. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 01:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me - since I don't have these sources to hand, I suggest that when you have the time you can make the necessary changes, or, if you'd prefer, write a paragraph to insert into the article. Either way, I can then follow up with a brief discussion (maybe in a footnote) that outlines the errors James and Parkinson have made. Interestingly, neither Clowes, nor the consistently unreliable Brenton state the direction in which the convoy was traveling.--Jackyd101 (talk) 07:55, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jackyd101:: Roger. Wilco. I can handle the directions of sail relatively easily. Once I do that, What we will need is a rewording of the background, plus a footnote on James, Parkinson, Clowes, and Benton. It is interesting that Clowes and Benton dodged the issue. They may have sensed that something was off, but not having Google, couldn't follow it up easily. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 13:41, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Excellent! Once you've handled the directions of sail I'm happy to revise the background and put together a footnote for you to check and amend as necessary if that works for you? There's no rush, just give me a bell when its done.--Jackyd101 (talk) 15:24, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jackyd101: I have given the article a going over and would appreciate your doing so too. I have looked at it so often now that I no longer see typos, contradictions, etc. Also, the article still has a lot of redundancy. It needs a fresh eye. Given the data in the order of battle table it would be hard to argue for James's story. Biden got it right, and I noticed a footnote in his account in which he points out that James is wrong. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 00:36, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jackyd101: That does it. Thanks. Now, not only is it a GA, it is a more correct GA, and more correct than several of its (famous) sources. Acad Ronin (talk) 20:10, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

@Acad Ronin: No, thank you. Without your eagle eye on those East Indiamen this would have gone on being wrong. Can I ask, was it the direction issue which made you trust Biden on Farquharson? I have to admit, the location of the wreck of Ocean bothered me at the time, and I read over the sources several times on the assumption that the Indiamen must have retreated back into the Java Sea after the action, but in the end decided that it was just incautious writing from James, especially after Parkinson backed him up. A nice collaboration all round! --Jackyd101 (talk) 20:18, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

@Jackyd101: I can't fully reconstruct the detective work. I think it began with my questioning Biden's account of Farquharson being in charge because I had just finished an article on Alfred and knew he had come from Colombo and was sailing north, not south. Then I started looking at maps, and looking up Ocean and Woodford (which I had worked on some time previously without making connections), where I noticed that the voyage record summaries had them coming from Colombo and going north. Then I looked at the voyage record summaries for the other three, and realized that they were all at Colombo at the same time, and five ended up at Whampoa within a day or two of each other. Any one summary might be wrong, but not all six. But I admit, I felt that it was a bit of cheek on my part to question James and Parkinson. Net-net, one thing I love about these collaborative articles on WP is that eventually some correct the received historical record. For which the Internet and Google books deserve a lot of credit. Cheers, Acad Ronin (talk) 20:27, 3 September 2017 (UTC)