Talk:Red, White and Blue (ship)
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 | A fact from Red, White and Blue (ship) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 9 October 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Article title
editI have created the article title, "Red, White and Blue", exactly as the ship name appears consistently in the original newspaper articles and documents of 1866 and 1867, with the comma and the lower-case "and". We don't have any images of the ship name as inscribed on the stern. otherwise we might have been able to use that as a source. Storye book (talk) 15:40, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
British or American English?
editI have created the article using British English because there are so many quotations from British sources. Although the subject is an American ship, I was concerned that if we had a main text with American spellings, with all those British-English quotations, the style would appear inconsistent and confusing. However if a large number of American quotations are added in future then perhaps that situation could change. Meanwhile, if anyone is unhappy about this, please discuss it here before changing the spellings in the article, so that a consensus can be found. Thank you. Storye book (talk) 15:40, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Not really a Barque
editThe text describes her as a barque, but the illustrations clearly show two yards on the mizzen(aft) mast. A sailing ship with square rig on all three masts is ship-rigged. She was a ship.Dean1954 (talk) 19:29, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- This article has been created by starting with the citations, then putting only the contents of the citations into the prose. The contemporary 1860s citations call her a barque and a ship after she has been rigged. If this terminology disagrees with our present-day dictionary-terminology, it may be that 1860s terminology was either different or more elastic. I'll see what I can do about explaining this in the article. I don't think I can change the prose content so that it no longer matches the citations. Regarding elasticity of language, one can only speculate. The 19th-century Romantic poets did like the word "barque", tending to use it for sailboat scenes which involved death-symbolism, mysterious journeys and so on. I am wondering whether that usage was driving the use of the word "barque" in the context of this adventure story. Storye book (talk) 20:36, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- Done. Thank you for kindly bringing this to my attention. Storye book (talk) 20:50, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- Update. I think I know now, what was happening. The 1860s journalists used the word "barque" in the archaic manner (as did the Romantic poets, who often spelled it "bark") to express the Romantic idea of a ship or boat. When they said it was rigged as a barque, they meant rigged as a ship. I don't think they ever meant to be precise as to the rigging when using that word. So the error is mine, in taking it as a precise reference to barque-rig, as we use the term today. I'll have another look at the article to see whether it needs tweaking any more. Storye book (talk) 09:54, 10 October 2020 (UTC)