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Stephen Fisher has smashed his book “Sword Beach” out of the park and has been literally followed by adoring fans on the summer festival circuit. Really excited to reveal that we’ve joined up to put a tour on next year - you can spend a long weekend walking Sword Beach with him in full nerd mode… more details:

This Week

On Monday, I looked at the first railways in America, how they impacted the future of the United States and what it was like to travel by train in the 1830s…

Let’s look at one well below the Mason-Dixon line. Prior to the arrival of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, passengers wanting to travel from Charleston to Hamburg, about 150 miles inland, had to rely on a two-seater stage coach that ran a measly three trips a week. They boasted fifty passengers a month. The key to Hamburg, which you might never have heard of, is that it was on the way to Atlanta, and right next to Augusta, Georgia, and the businessmen of Charleston wanted to tap into those rich, cotton-growing customers.

The developers of the railroad pondered the use of horsepower, and of sails (they weren’t the only ones) but in the end they settled on becoming the first railroad to offer a passenger service pulled by a steam locomotive.

There’s some contradiction online about this, but as best I can make out, on Christmas Day 1830, the Best Friend, which later exploded, pulled the first scheduled steam-hauled train in the US along a short piece of completed track, just beating the Baltimore & Ohio to the honour. The Best Friend of Charleston, which used some of the surviving bits, was the first steam locomotive built to spec in the US.

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The first 60 mile stretch of line to Branchville, SC opened in 1832, and by the end of the following year, the line to Hamburg was also up and running. This made the line the longest, continuous railroad on the planet at that point, at 136 miles, as well as the first to carry mail. The journey time was nearly twelve hours, but we’ll see in a bit the issue with timetables at this point. In the first six months of 1835, the railroad was averaging 2,500 passengers a month, compared to the 50 previously carried by the stagecoach. It was a hit.

A whole other article would be about the railroads of the south and how their comparative lack of decent development contributed to the loss of the civil war: 'Nothing could make up for the inferiority of the South's ports, the lack of adequate markets for imports and diversity of exports, and a slave-labour system that immobilised her capital resources.’

Back in the north, major towns and cities were already getting the hang of linking up their operations for their mutual gain, and expanding networks. Pennsylvania was key in terms of early impact and about a quarter of all track was laid within the state. Up until the Civil War, two-thirds of a railroad’s income was typically from freight, not people.

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Then on Thursday I looked at how important Malta is strategically, and what happened when at the height of their powers, the Ottoman Empire tried to dislodge some badly behaved Christian Knights… I may or may not have got a little bit obsessed with a mad, 80 year old pirate…

Key to all this was the fact that the Sultan was being prodded along by another old man, and he’s an absolute maniac. Bradford refers to Dragut as ‘the greatest Mohammedan seaman of his time.’ He was 80 years old. Yes, 80, and yet this pirate was spoiling for a fight. ‘Until you have smoked out this nest of vipers,’ he goaded the Sultan regarding the Knights at Malta, ‘you can do no good anywhere.’

Bust of Dragut in the Mersin Naval Museum (Wikipedia)

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Here’s Bradford’s write up on the man:

‘While he was still a boy, a Turkish Governor who happened to be passing through Charabalac was impressed by Dragut's intelligence and character. He took the boy with him to Egypt and had him educated, with the result that, as a young man, Dragut joined the military corps of the Mamelukes as a bombardier. He became an expert in artillery warfare and later, like many another ambitious young man, turned to the sea to seek his fortune. Starting as a gunner aboard corsair ships, he finally became owner of a galley sailing out of Alexandria. From then on, his progress was rapid and assured. The famous corsair Barbarossa took to the young man, and soon Dragut was sailing as one of Barbarossa's lieutenants. Attracted by his intrepidity and cunning, a number of other corsairs joined up with him. Before long he was in command of his own squadron. On the death of Barbarossa in 1545, he was acknowledged as his natural successor, and the greatest scourge of the Christians in the Mediterranean. His record of success, both by land and sea, was such that he earned from his fellow Moslems the well-deserved title of "The Drawn Sword of Islam". The French Admiral, Jurien de la Gravière, assessed him in these terms: "Dragut was superior to Barbarossa. A living chart of the Mediterranean, he combined science with audacity. There was not a creek unknown to him, not a channel that he had not sailed. Ingenious in devising ways and means, when all around him despaired, he excelled above all in escaping by unexpected methods from situations of great peril.’

Some of Dragut’s highlights at the expense of Christians:

• Raided Naples

• Looted Castellamare, and captured a galley belonging to the Knights with 70,000 ducats aboard.

• Stormed the sea port of Bastia in Corsica, carrying off more then 7,000 captives

• Took Reggio on the Straits of Messina by storm, enslaving the whole population, men, women and children

And my favourite:

‘Invested by the great Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria, in the North African island of Djerba, he had escaped by a clever ruse, carrying his ships overland to the far end of the island away from the harbour which Doria was blockading. Escaping by night, he had sailed away and captured a large vessel full of reinforcements bound for the Genoese admiral. His escape had made the great Doria the laughing stock of the Mediterranean, a slight which the Admiral never forgave.’

Next Week

Really excited to share some photos from a WW1 publication all about the Marne, and I’ll be digging into another famous legal trial from British history, but no time for more now, as I’m off to Uxbridge to give my talk on George V in WW1 for the first time in two years… no pressure…