Opinion | The Guardian
You report (4 September) that sailors from the USS Abraham Lincoln spent a “record uninterrupted 286 days at sea”. That’s nowhere near a record: Nelson and his fleet blockaded Toulon for two years, 1803-05, without going ashore.
The American sailors complain about the food on their carrier; Nelson’s ships were exposed to terrible weather in which they pitched and rolled violently, and were cold, wet and plagued by rats. No electricity, let alone fridges; they ate salt pork and rock-hard bread full of weevils, drank green water, and every so often fought a battle or sailed to the Caribbean and back.
Apparently the Americans are behaving respectably in the red-light port of Pattaya, Thailand. That’s another difference: the British sailors certainly did not when they came back to Portsmouth and were given two years’ pay in cash.
Chris Hardy
West Wittering, West Sussex
