[hdrevzin]

To anyone who knows:

What nautical disaster is Nautical Disaster about? Someone told me it was about D-Day, but that seems wrong to me. If anyone knows, post me back...

HDR

[eags]

This is lengthy off the burning church site

Nautical Disaster is a much more complex song then it initially appears. The song begins 'I had this dream...' and then proceeds to describe a scene in which the narrator is a survivor of a shipwreck. The events described match quite closely the sinking of the Nazi battleship Bismarck. A brief history lesson -

The Bismarck was Hitler’s greatest warship. Fully loaded, she weighed 50,153 tons.

DKM Bismarck
The Bismarck was supposed to turn the course of the war - many believed the British fleet to be incapable of sinking her. After a battle in which she sank the HMS Hood, she headed for St. Nazaire, the only port on the coast of France with a dry dock big enough to hold her. An order was given by Winston Churchill to "Get the Bismarck". The hunt for the battleship dominated the world’s press. The chase lasted four days and covered 1,750 nautical miles. Spotted by a Coastal Command Catalina flying boat, Bismarck's position was reported to the Royal Navy ships. Finally, on May 27, 1941 the battleship Bismarck met her end after 277 days of war service.



Severely damaged by salvos from the battleships HMS King George V and HMS Rodney, she was finally sent to the bottom, about 1,000 km west of Brest, by torpedoes from the cruiser HMS Dorsetshire. This was the radio message sent by Dorsetshire after that action.

Casualties amounted to 2097 officers, men and cadets lost. There were 115 survivors, picked up by the Dorsetshire and the destroyer Maori. The Dorsetshire was in the process of rescuing the survivors from the Bismarck when they spotted an approaching U-Boat. In what remains a controversial decision, the Dorsetshire withdrew from the area, leaving hundreds of men in the water. Those who were on the rail of the ship were hauled on deck, but those who were only half way up the ropes were dragged behind the ship until they could no longer hold on and the people still in the water were left clawing at the paint of the Dorsetshire's hull as she pulled away.

'Then the dream ends...' Nautical Disaster is not about this WWII naval battle. Rather, Nautical Disaster uses the sinking of the Bismarck as a metaphor. Nautical Disaster is a song about ending a relationship with someone in the cruelest and most painful manner possible, as is revealed when the narrator tells Susan that their conversation is "as faint as a sound in my memory as those fingernails scratching on my hull."

In 1989, the wreck of the Bismarck was found. She lies intact at 4,600 metres.

Sources:
Radio Story - HMS Dorsetshire
National Geographic Explorer on CNBC
Naval and Military History Page

[jeromio]

all you can really say to that is............thats some serious "heads up" man!