A good naval site will have loads of details. It’ll tell you how big the guns were. It’ll tell you the displacement at various loads. It’ll tell you about the armour scheme and how thick the plating was. It’ll demonstrate an unhealthy interest in double bottoms. Particularly filthy ones might even whisper something about shaft horsepower.
Right, great. There’s loads of those already. Off you pop.
Now let’s make a fun naval site.
We want stories. We want opinions. We want to make you laugh. We want to be vaguely accurate but certainly never fair. If there’s a terrible submarine then we’ll stick in Das Boot. We’ll write it in a way that proper historians wince at but then concede is actually pretty funny. We all know they’ll be quoting it in the bar later anyway. We’ll write about all sorts of boats – commercial and naval, hyped and hypothetical. Some of those boats might even have been competent. Along the way we’ll no doubt learn something. Possibly that we shouldn’t have started.
So don’t expect numbers. Don’t expect careful graphs. Don’t come here looking for nuanced debate about the relative merits of the Kriegsmarine’s surface fleet in- I’m bored already.
Welcome to the worst ships to ever disgrace a slipway. Welcome to a world of percussive cartography. Welcome to a site that understands basic naval theory but nonetheless worships the unbalanced fleet. And welcome to a site that never saw a tumblehome it didn’t want to take home and cuddle.
Welcome to the DreadShips.
25 thoughts on “Manifesto”
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This is freaking outstanding. Can’t wait to dig in and read it all. Well done, you.
Good luck with the site!
Finally, Jane’s ships has an evil twin. Good luck!
It’s uncanny how humankind is attracted to “the horror, the horror”, so why not the nautical equivalent? Bring it on !!
This is exactly what the world needs – more high calibre, dazzling naval gazing. Hooray! Or possibly Huzzah!
Ahh, now THIS is the internet I remember and actually liked
Well, this sounds fun.
Hoot! Already looking good. best luck and may all your launches slip sideyways into success.
Yay! Well, this is going to be a lot easier than trying to faff about with Mastadon should Twitter eventually bite the dust
Looking forward to more amusement.
That’s better, proper website for us old uns. This is MUCH better. How do I send you pictures from the war bore homies I hang with? Still via abortion X Bird thing?
Huzzah!
+1 for percussive cartography, will you be discussing our lord and saviour ekranoplanes?
I am filled with … dread?
A dedicated dreadsite, dazzling! Transferred here from following you on that doomed X thing. Good to see, well done for setting this up and look forward to continuing on here
Will this include pre-dread naval horrors? Much nautical mileage to be found in my favourite period, 1870s-1900 ish
Go for it dude! Better a live rat than a dead duck!
I’m so in, let’s dance
And I am here for it.
The Cracked version of Combat Fleets
Absolutely love it. No question that your Manifesto lives up to the “premium” in the “premium naval nonsense” 🙂
Finally somewhere I can express my deviant admiration for so-wet-they’re-barely-usable casemates. Let’s go!
Once again, this is glorious stuff!
Will you bring over your threads from…”X”?
We’ll definitely cover the same ground, and possibly even feature some of the same jokes (the great thing about cheap jokes is they don’t cost much). It’s not going to be a case of porting over things directly though as it’s a different format.
Let us DO THIS!
The world was in need of this. Looking forward to tons of stories!
[holds head in hands, takes deep breath …]
If this is anything like your Twitter presence … then, of course, I’m in!
Bookmarked. 🙂