title: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

text: Despite his criticisms, Carlyle admired Rousseau's sincerity: "with all his drawbacks, and they are many, he has the first and chief characteristic of a Hero: he is heartily "in earnest". In earnest, if ever man was; as none of these French Philosophers were." He also admired his repudiation of atheism:Strangely through all that defacement, degradation and almost madness, there is in the inmost heart of poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. Once more, out of the element of that withered mocking Philosophism, Scepticism and Persiflage, there has arisen in this man the ineradicable feeling and knowledge that this Life of ours is true: not a Scepticism, Theorem, or Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Reality. Nature had made that revelation to him; had ordered him to speak it out. He got it spoken out; if not well and clearly, then ill and dimly,—as clearly as he could.Modern admirers of Rousseau include John Dewey and Claude Lévi-Strauss. According to Matthew Josephson, Rousseau has remained controversial for more than two centuries, and has continued to gain admirers and critics down to the present time. However, in their own way, both critics and admirers have served to underscore the significance of the man, while those who have evaluated him with fairness have agreed that he was the finest thinker of his time on the question of civilization.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865) and its sequel "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871). He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems "Jabberwocky" (1871) and "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Carroll came from a family of high-church Anglicans, and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher. Alice Liddell, the daughter of Christ Church's dean Henry Liddell, is widely identified as the original inspiration for "Alice in Wonderland", though Carroll always denied this.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: An avid puzzler, Carroll created the word ladder puzzle (which he then called "Doublets"), which he published in his weekly column for "Vanity Fair" magazine between 1879 and 1881. In 1982 a memorial stone to Carroll was unveiled at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. There are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, conservative, and high-church Anglican. Most of his male ancestors were army officers or Anglican clergymen. His great-grandfather, Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become the Bishop of Elphin in rural Ireland. His paternal grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in Ireland in 1803, when his two sons were hardly more than babies. The older of these sons, yet another Charles Dodgson, was Carroll's father. He went to Westminster School and then to Christ Church, Oxford. He reverted to the other family tradition and took holy orders. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree, which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead, he married his first cousin Frances Jane Lutwidge in 1830 and became a country parson.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson was born on 27 January 1832 at All Saints' Vicarage in Daresbury, Cheshire, the oldest boy and the third oldest of 11 children. When he was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees, Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious rectory. This remained their home for the next 25 years. Charles' father was an active and highly conservative cleric of the Church of England who later became the Archdeacon of Richmond and involved himself, sometimes influentially, in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the church. He was high-church, inclining toward Anglo-Catholicism, an admirer of John Henry Newman and the Tractarian movement, and did his best to instil such views in his children. However, Charles developed an ambivalent relationship with his father's values and with the Church of England as a whole.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: During his early youth, Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven, he was reading books such as "The Pilgrim's Progress". He also spoke with a stammer – a condition shared by most of his siblings – that often inhibited his social life throughout his years. At the age of twelve he was sent to Richmond Grammar School (now part of Richmond School) in Richmond, North Yorkshire.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In 1846 Dodgson entered Rugby School, where he was evidently unhappy, as he wrote some years after leaving: "I cannot say ... that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear." He did not claim he suffered from bullying, but cited little boys as the main targets of older bullies at Rugby. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, Dodgson's nephew, wrote that "even though it is hard for those who have only known him as the gentle and retiring don to believe it, it is nevertheless true that long after he left school, his name was remembered as that of a boy who knew well how to use his fists in defence of a righteous cause", which is the protection of the smaller boys.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy at his age since I came to Rugby", observed mathematics master R. B. Mayor. Francis Walkingame's "The Tutor's Assistant; Being a Compendium of Arithmetic" – the mathematics textbook that the young Dodgson used – still survives and it contained an inscription in Latin, which translates to: "This book belongs to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: hands off!" Some pages also included annotations such as the one found on p. 129, where he wrote "Not a fair question in decimals" next to a question.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and matriculated at the University of Oxford in May 1850 as a member of his father's old college, Christ Church. After waiting for rooms in college to become available, he went into residence in January 1851. He had been at Oxford only two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" – perhaps meningitis or a stroke – at the age of 47.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted, and achievement came easily to him. In 1852, he obtained first-class honours in Mathematics Moderations and was soon afterwards nominated to a Studentship by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey. In 1854, he obtained first-class honours in the Final Honours School of Mathematics, standing first on the list, and thus graduated as Bachelor of Arts. He remained at Christ Church studying and teaching, but the next year he failed an important scholarship exam through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship in 1855, which he continued to hold for the next 26 years. Despite early unhappiness, Dodgson remained at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death, including that of Sub-Librarian of the Christ Church library, where his office was close to the Deanery, where Alice Liddell lived.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: The young adult Charles Dodgson was about tall and slender, and he had curly brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account). He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, although this might be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of 17, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. In early childhood, he acquired a stammer, which he referred to as his "hesitation"; it remained throughout his life.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: The stammer has always been a significant part of the image of Dodgson. While one apocryphal story says that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with children, there is no evidence to support this idea. Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer, while many adults failed to notice it. Dodgson himself seems to have been far more acutely aware of it than most people whom he met; it is said that he caricatured himself as the Dodo in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", referring to his difficulty in pronouncing his last name, but this is one of the many supposed facts often repeated for which no first-hand evidence remains. He did indeed refer to himself as a dodo, but whether or not this reference was to his stammer is simply speculation.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson's stammer did trouble him, but it was never so debilitating that it prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society. He lived in a time when people commonly devised their own amusements and when singing and recitation were required social skills, and the young Dodgson was well equipped to be an engaging entertainer. He could reportedly sing at a passable level and was not afraid to do so before an audience. He was also adept at mimicry and storytelling, and reputedly quite good at charades.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In the interim between his early published writings and the success of the "Alice" books, Dodgson began to move in the pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. Around 1863, he developed a close relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family. He would often take pictures of the family in the garden of the Rossetti's house in Chelsea, London. He also knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Arthur Hughes, among other artists. He knew fairy-tale author George MacDonald well – it was the enthusiastic reception of "Alice" by the young MacDonald children that persuaded him to submit the work for publication.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In broad terms, Dodgson has traditionally been regarded as politically, religiously, and personally conservative. Martin Gardner labels Dodgson as a Tory who was "awed by lords and inclined to be snobbish towards inferiors". William Tuckwell, in his "Reminiscences of Oxford" (1900), regarded him as "austere, shy, precise, absorbed in mathematical reverie, watchfully tenacious of his dignity, stiffly conservative in political, theological, social theory, his life mapped out in squares like Alice's landscape". Dodgson was ordained a deacon in the Church of England on 22 December 1861. In "The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll", the editor states that "his Diary is full of such modest depreciations of himself and his work, interspersed with earnest prayers (too sacred and private to be reproduced here) that God would forgive him the past, and help him to perform His holy will in the future." When a friend asked him about his religious views, Dodgson wrote in response that he was a member of the Church of England, but "doubt[ed] if he was fully a 'High Churchman'". He added:


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson also expressed interest in other fields. He was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research, and one of his letters suggests that he accepted as real what was then called "thought reading". Dodgson wrote some studies of various philosophical arguments. In 1895, he developed a philosophical regressus-argument on deductive reasoning in his article "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", which appeared in one of the early volumes of "Mind". The article was reprinted in the same journal a hundred years later in 1995, with a subsequent article by Simon Blackburn titled "Practical Tortoise Raising".


title: Lewis Carroll

text: From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, contributing heavily to the family magazine "Mischmasch" and later sending them to various magazines, enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications "The Comic Times" and "The Train", as well as smaller magazines such as the "Whitby Gazette" and the "Oxford Critic". Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the "Whitby Gazette" or the "Oxonian Advertiser"), but I do not despair of doing so someday," he wrote in July 1855. Sometime after 1850, he did write puppet plays for his siblings' entertainment, of which one has survived: "La Guida di Bragia".


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In March 1856, he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in "The Train" under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll". This pseudonym was a play on his real name: "Lewis" was the anglicised form of "Ludovicus", which was the Latin for "Lutwidge", and "Carroll" an Irish surname similar to the Latin name "Carolus", from which comes the name "Charles". The transition went as follows:


title: Lewis Carroll

text: "Charles Lutwidge" translated into Latin as "Carolus Ludovicus". This was then translated back into English as "Carroll Lewis" and then reversed to make "Lewis Carroll". This pseudonym was chosen by editor Edmund Yates from a list of four submitted by Dodgson, the others being Edgar Cuthwellis, Edgar U. C. Westhill, and Louis Carroll.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In 1856, Dean Henry Liddell arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life over the following years, and would greatly influence his writing career. Dodgson became close friends with Liddell's wife Lorina and their children, particularly the three sisters Lorina, Edith, and Alice Liddell. He was widely assumed for many years to have derived his own "Alice" from Alice Liddell; the acrostic poem at the end of "Through the Looking-Glass" spells out her name in full, and there are also many superficial references to her hidden in the text of both books. It has been noted that Dodgson himself repeatedly denied in later life that his "little heroine" was based on any real child, and he frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text. Gertrude Chataway's name appears in this form at the beginning of "The Hunting of the Snark", and it is not suggested that this means that any of the characters in the narrative are based on her.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Information is scarce (Dodgson's diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing), but it seems clear that his friendship with the Liddell family was an important part of his life in the late 1850s, and he grew into the habit of taking the children on rowing trips (first the boy, Harry, and later the three girls) accompanied by an adult friend to nearby Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: It was on one such expedition on 4 July 1862 that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and greatest commercial success. He told the story to Alice Liddell and she begged him to write it down, and Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" in November 1864.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Before this, the family of friend and mentor George MacDonald read Dodgson's incomplete manuscript, and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he had taken the unfinished manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately. After the possible alternative titles were rejected – "Alice Among the Fairies" and "Alice's Golden Hour" – the work was finally published as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier. The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist. Annotated versions provide insights into many of the ideas and hidden meanings that are prevalent in these books. Critical literature has often proposed Freudian interpretations of the book as "a descent into the dark world of the subconscious", as well as seeing it as a satire upon contemporary mathematical advances.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego "Lewis Carroll" soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed "Alice in Wonderland" so much that she commanded that he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled "An Elementary Treatise on Determinants". Dodgson himself vehemently denied this story, commenting "... It is utterly false in every particular: nothing even resembling it has occurred"; and it is unlikely for other reasons. As T. B. Strong comments in a "Times" article, "It would have been clean contrary to all his practice to identify [the] author of Alice with the author of his mathematical works". He also began earning quite substantial sums of money but continued with his seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Late in 1871, he published the sequel "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There". (The title page of the first edition erroneously gives "1872" as the date of publication.) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects changes in Dodgson's life. His father's death in 1868 plunged him into a depression that lasted some years.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In 1876, Dodgson produced his next great work, "The Hunting of the Snark", a fantastical "nonsense" poem, with illustrations by Henry Holiday, exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of nine tradesmen and one beaver, who set off to find the snark. It received largely mixed reviews from Carroll's contemporary reviewers, but was enormously popular with the public, having been reprinted seventeen times between 1876 and 1908, and has seen various adaptations into musicals, opera, theatre, plays and music. Painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti reputedly became convinced that the poem was about him.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In 1895, 30 years after the publication of his masterpieces, Carroll attempted a comeback, producing a two-volume tale of the fairy siblings Sylvie and Bruno. Carroll entwines two plots set in two alternative worlds, one set in rural England and the other in the fairytale kingdoms of Elfland, Outland, and others. The fairytale world satirizes English society, and more specifically the world of academia. "Sylvie and Bruno" came out in two volumes and is considered a lesser work, although it has remained in print for over a century.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography under the influence first of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later of his Oxford friend Reginald Southey. He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: A study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over half of his surviving work depicts young girls, though about 60% of his original photographic portfolio is now missing. Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, boys, and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues, paintings, and trees. His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance and many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden because natural sunlight was required for good exposures.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: He also found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday, Lord Salisbury, and Alfred Tennyson.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: By the time that Dodgson abruptly ceased photography (1880, after 24 years), he had established his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, created around 3,000 images, and was an amateur master of the medium, though fewer than 1,000 images have survived time and deliberate destruction. He stopped taking photographs because keeping his studio working was too time-consuming. He used the wet collodion process; commercial photographers who started using the dry-plate process in the 1870s took pictures more quickly. Popular taste changed with the advent of Modernism, affecting the types of photographs that he produced.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: To promote letter writing, Dodgson invented "The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case" in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations up to one shilling. The folder was then put into a slipcase decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. It intended to organize stamps wherever one stored their writing implements; Carroll expressly notes in "Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing" it is not intended to be carried in a pocket or purse, as the most common individual stamps could easily be carried on their own. The pack included a copy of a pamphlet version of this lecture.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Another invention was a writing tablet called the nyctograph that allowed note-taking in the dark, thus eliminating the need to get out of bed and strike a light when one woke with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and a system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on a Palm device.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: He also devised a number of games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. Devised some time in 1878, he invented the "doublet" (see word ladder), a form of brain-teaser that is still popular today, changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG. It first appeared in the 29 March 1879 issue of "Vanity Fair", with Carroll writing a weekly column for the magazine for two years; the final column dated 9 April 1881. The games and puzzles of Lewis Carroll were the subject of Martin Gardner's March 1960 Mathematical Games column in "Scientific American".


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Other items include a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; a means for justifying right margins on a typewriter; a steering device for a velociman (a type of tricycle); fairer elimination rules for tennis tournaments; a new sort of postal money order; rules for reckoning postage; rules for a win in betting; rules for dividing a number by various divisors; a cardboard scale for the Senior Common Room at Christ Church which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip to fasten envelopes or mount things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways; and at least two ciphers for cryptography.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: He also proposed alternative systems of parliamentary representation. He proposed the so-called Dodgson's method, using the Condorcet method. In 1884, he proposed a proportional representation system based on multi-member districts, each voter casting only a single vote, quotas as minimum requirements to take seats, and votes transferable by candidates through what is now called Liquid democracy.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometry, linear and matrix algebra, mathematical logic, and recreational mathematics, producing nearly a dozen books under his real name. Dodgson also developed new ideas in linear algebra (e.g., the first printed proof of the Kronecker–Capelli theorem), probability, and the study of elections (e.g., Dodgson's method) and committees; some of this work was not published until well after his death. His occupation as Mathematical Lecturer at Christ Church gave him some financial security.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: His work in the field of mathematical logic attracted renewed interest in the late 20th century. Martin Gardner's book on logic machines and diagrams and William Warren Bartley's posthumous publication of the second part of Dodgson's symbolic logic book have sparked a reevaluation of Dodgson's contributions to symbolic logic. It is recognized that in his "Symbolic Logic Part II", Dodgson introduced the Method of Trees, the earliest modern use of a truth tree.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Robbins' and Rumsey's investigation of Dodgson condensation, a method of evaluating determinants, led them to the alternating sign matrix conjecture, now a theorem.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: The discovery in the 1990s of additional ciphers that Dodgson had constructed, in addition to his "Memoria Technica", showed that he had employed sophisticated mathematical ideas in their creation.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson wrote and received as many as 98,721 letters, according to a special letter register which he devised. He documented his advice about how to write more satisfying letters in a missive entitled "Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing".


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson's existence remained little changed over the last twenty years of his life, despite his growing wealth and fame. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881 and remained in residence there until his death. Public appearances included attending the West End musical "Alice in Wonderland" (the first major live production of his "Alice" books) at the Prince of Wales Theatre on 30 December 1886. The two volumes of his last novel, "Sylvie and Bruno", were published in 1889 and 1893, but the intricacy of this work was apparently not appreciated by contemporary readers; it achieved nothing like the success of the "Alice" books, with disappointing reviews and sales of only 13,000 copies.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: The only known occasion on which he travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in 1867 as an ecclesiastic, together with the Reverend Henry Liddon. He recounts the travel in his "Russian Journal", which was first commercially published in 1935. On his way to Russia and back, he also saw different cities in Belgium, Germany, partitioned Poland, and France.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson died of pneumonia following influenza on 14 January 1898 at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts", in Guildford in the county of Surrey, just four days before the death of Henry Liddell. He was two weeks away from turning 66 years old. His funeral was held at the nearby St Mary's Church. His body was buried at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: He is commemorated at All Saints' Church, Daresbury, in its stained glass windows depicting characters from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Some late twentieth-century biographers have suggested that Dodgson's interest in children had an erotic element, including Morton N. Cohen in his "Lewis Carroll: A Biography" (1995), Donald Thomas in his "Lewis Carroll: A Portrait with Background" (1995), and Michael Bakewell in his "Lewis Carroll: A Biography" (1996).


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Cohen, in particular, speculates that Dodgson's "sexual energies sought unconventional outlets", and further writes:


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Cohen goes on to note that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any eroticism", but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface" (p. 229). He argues that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year-old Alice Liddell and that this was the cause of the unexplained "break" with the family in June 1863, an event for which other explanations are offered. Biographers Derek Hudson and Roger Lancelyn Green stop short of identifying Dodgson as a paedophile (Green also edited Dodgson's diaries and papers), but they concur that he had a passion for small female children and next to no interest in the adult world. Catherine Robson refers to Carroll as "the Victorian era's most famous (or infamous) girl lover".


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Several other writers and scholars have challenged the evidential basis for Cohen's and others' views about Dodgson's sexual interests. Hugues Lebailly has endeavoured to set Dodgson's child photography within the "Victorian Child Cult", which perceived child nudity as essentially an expression of innocence. Lebailly claims that studies of child nudes were mainstream and fashionable in Dodgson's time and that most photographers made them as a matter of course, including Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margaret Cameron. Lebailly continues that child nudes even appeared on Victorian Christmas cards, implying a very different social and aesthetic assessment of such material. Lebailly concludes that it has been an error of Dodgson's biographers to view his child-photography with 20th- or 21st-century eyes, and to have presented it as some form of personal idiosyncrasy, when it was a response to a prevalent aesthetic and philosophical movement of the time.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Karoline Leach's reappraisal of Dodgson focused in particular on his controversial sexuality. She argues that the allegations of paedophilia rose initially from a misunderstanding of Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea – fostered by Dodgson's various biographers – that he had no interest in adult women. She termed the traditional image of Dodgson "the Carroll Myth". She drew attention to the large amounts of evidence in his diaries and letters that he was also keenly interested in adult women, married and single, and enjoyed several relationships with them that would have been considered scandalous by the social standards of his time. She also pointed to the fact that many of those whom he described as "child-friends" were girls in their late teens and even twenties. She argues that suggestions of paedophilia emerged only many years after his death, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of his relationships with women in an effort to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man interested only in little girls. Similarly, Leach points to a 1932 biography by Langford Reed as the source of the dubious claim that many of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached the age of 14.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In addition to the biographical works that have discussed Dodgson's sexuality, there are modern artistic interpretations of his life and work that do so as well – in particular, Dennis Potter in his play "Alice" and his screenplay for the motion picture "Dreamchild", and Robert Wilson in his musical "Alice".


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson had been groomed for the ordained ministry in the Church of England from a very early age and was expected to be ordained within four years of obtaining his master's degree, as a condition of his residency at Christ Church. He delayed the process for some time but was eventually ordained as a deacon on 22 December 1861. But when the time came a year later to be ordained as a priest, Dodgson appealed to the dean for permission not to proceed. This was against college rules and, initially, Dean Liddell told him that he would have to consult the college ruling body, which would almost certainly have resulted in his being expelled. For unknown reasons, Liddell changed his mind overnight and permitted him to remain at the college in defiance of the rules. Dodgson never became a priest, unique amongst senior students of his time.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: There is currently no conclusive evidence about why Dodgson rejected the priesthood. Some have suggested that his stammer made him reluctant to take the step because he was afraid of having to preach. Wilson quotes letters by Dodgson describing difficulty in reading lessons and prayers rather than preaching in his own words. But Dodgson did indeed preach in later life, even though not in priest's orders, so it seems unlikely that his impediment was a major factor affecting his choice. Wilson also points out that the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who ordained Dodgson, had strong views against clergy going to the theatre, one of Dodgson's great interests. He was interested in minority forms of Christianity (he was an admirer of F. D. Maurice) and "alternative" religions (theosophy). Dodgson became deeply troubled by an unexplained sense of sin and guilt at this time (the early 1860s) and frequently expressed the view in his diaries that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner, unworthy of the priesthood and this sense of sin and unworthiness may well have affected his decision to abandon being ordained to the priesthood.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: At least four complete volumes and around seven pages of text are missing from Dodgson's 13 diaries. The loss of the volumes remains unexplained; the pages have been removed by an unknown hand. Most scholars assume that the diary material was removed by family members in the interests of preserving the family name, but this has not been proven. Except for one page, material is missing from his diaries for the period between 1853 and 1863 (when Dodgson was 21–31 years old). During this period , Dodgson began experiencing great mental and spiritual anguish and confessing to an overwhelming sense of his own sin. This was also the period of time when he composed his extensive love poetry, leading to speculation that the poems may have been autobiographical.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Many theories have been put forward to explain the missing material. A popular explanation for one missing page (27 June 1863) is that it might have been torn out to conceal a proposal of marriage on that day by Dodgson to the 11-year-old Alice Liddell. However, there has never been any evidence to suggest that this was so, and a paper offers some evidence to the contrary which was discovered by Karoline Leach in the Dodgson family archive in 1996.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: This paper is known as the "cut pages in diary" document, and was compiled by various members of Carroll's family after his death. Part of it may have been written at the time when the pages were destroyed, though this is unclear. The document offers a brief summary of two diary pages that are missing, including the one for 27 June 1863. The summary for this page states that Mrs. Liddell told Dodgson that there was gossip circulating about him and the Liddell family's governess, as well as about his relationship with "Ina", presumably Alice's older sister Lorina Liddell. The "break" with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip. An alternative interpretation has been made regarding Carroll's rumoured involvement with "Ina": Lorina was also the name of Alice Liddell's mother. What is deemed most crucial and surprising is that the document seems to imply that Dodgson's break with the family was not connected with Alice at all; until a primary source is discovered, the events of 27 June 1863 will remain in doubt.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In his diary for 1880, Dodgson recorded experiencing his first episode of migraine with aura, describing very accurately the process of "moving fortifications" that are a manifestation of the aura stage of the syndrome. Unfortunately, there is no clear evidence to show whether this was his first experience of migraine "per se", or if he may have previously had the far more common form of migraine without aura, although the latter seems most likely, given the fact that migraine most commonly develops in the teens or early adulthood. Another form of migraine aura called Alice in Wonderland syndrome has been named after Dodgson's little heroine because its manifestation can resemble the sudden size-changes in the book. It is also known as micropsia and macropsia, a brain condition affecting the way that objects are perceived by the mind. For example, an afflicted person may look at a larger object such as a basketball and perceive it as if it were the size of a golf ball. Some authors have suggested that Dodgson may have experienced this type of aura and used it as an inspiration in his work, but there is no evidence that he did.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Dodgson also had two attacks in which he lost consciousness. He was diagnosed by a Dr. Morshead, Dr. Brooks, and Dr. Stedman, and they believed the attack and a consequent attack to be an "epileptiform" seizure (initially thought to be fainting, but Brooks changed his mind). Some have concluded from this that he had this condition for his entire life, but there is no evidence of this in his diaries beyond the diagnosis of the two attacks already mentioned. Some authors, Sadi Ranson in particular, have suggested that Carroll may have had temporal lobe epilepsy in which consciousness is not always completely lost but altered, and in which the symptoms mimic many of the same experiences as Alice in Wonderland. Carroll had at least one incident in which he suffered full loss of consciousness and awoke with a bloody nose, which he recorded in his diary and noted that the episode left him not feeling himself for "quite sometime afterward". This attack was diagnosed as possibly "epileptiform" and Carroll himself later wrote of his "seizures" in the same diary.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Most of the standard diagnostic tests of today were not available in the nineteenth century. Yvonne Hart, consultant neurologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, considered Dodgson's symptoms. Her conclusion, quoted in Jenny Woolf's 2010 "The Mystery of Lewis Carroll", is that Dodgson very likely had migraine and may have had epilepsy, but she emphasises that she would have considerable doubt about making a diagnosis of epilepsy without further information.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: There are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Copenhagen Street in Islington, north London is the location of the Lewis Carroll Children's Library.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: In 1982, his great-nephew unveiled a memorial stone to him in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. In January 1994, an asteroid, 6984 Lewiscarroll, was discovered and named after Carroll. The Lewis Carroll Centenary Wood near his birthplace in Daresbury opened in 2000.


title: Lewis Carroll

text: Born in All Saints' Vicarage, Daresbury, Cheshire, in 1832, Lewis Carroll is commemorated at All Saints' Church, Daresbury in its stained glass windows depicting characters from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". In March 2012, the Lewis Carroll Centre, attached to the church, was opened.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Bismarck was the first of two s built for Nazi Germany's . Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched in February 1939. Work was completed in August 1940, when she was commissioned into the German fleet. "Bismarck" and her sister ship were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European power.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: In the course of the warship's eight-month career, "Bismarck" conducted only one offensive operation that lasted 8 days in May 1941, codenamed . The ship, along with the heavy cruiser , was to break into the Atlantic Ocean and raid Allied shipping from North America to Great Britain. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, and British naval units were deployed to block their route. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the battlecruiser initially engaged "Prinz Eugen", probably by mistake, while engaged "Bismarck". In the ensuing battle "Hood" was destroyed by the combined fire of "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen", which then damaged "Prince of Wales" and forced her retreat. "Bismarck" suffered sufficient damage from three hits by "Prince of Wales" to force an end to the raiding mission.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The destruction of "Hood" spurred a relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy involving dozens of warships. Two days later, heading for occupied France to effect repairs, "Bismarck" was attacked by 16 Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier ; one scored a hit that rendered the battleship's steering gear inoperable. In her final battle the following morning, the already-crippled "Bismarck" was engaged by two British battleships and two heavy cruisers, and sustained incapacitating damage and heavy loss of life. The ship was scuttled to prevent her being boarded by the British, and to allow the ship to be abandoned so as to limit further casualties. Most experts agree that the battle damage would have caused her to sink eventually.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The wreck was located in June 1989 by Robert Ballard, and has since been further surveyed by several other expeditions.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The two s were designed in the mid-1930s by the German as a counter to French naval expansion, specifically the two s France had started in 1935. Laid down after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, "Bismarck" and her sister were nominally within the limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty that governed battleship construction in the interwar period. The ships secretly exceeded the figure by a wide margin, though before either vessel was completed, the international treaty system had fallen apart following Japan's withdrawal in 1937, allowing signatories to invoke an "escalator clause" that permitted displacements as high as .


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: "Bismarck" displaced as built and fully loaded, with an overall length of , a beam of and a maximum draft of . The battleship was Germany's largest warship, and displaced more than any other European battleship, with the exception of , commissioned after the war. "Bismarck" was powered by three Blohm & Voss geared steam turbines and twelve oil-fired Wagner superheated boilers, which developed a total of , and yielded a maximum speed of on speed trials. The ship had a cruising range of at . "Bismarck" was equipped with three FuMO 23 search radar sets, mounted on the forward and stern rangefinders and foretop.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The standard crew numbered 103 officers and 1,962 enlisted men. The crew was divided into twelve divisions of between 180 and 220 men. The first six divisions were assigned to the ship's armament, divisions one to four for the main and secondary batteries, and five and six manning anti-aircraft guns. The seventh division consisted of specialists, including cooks and carpenters, and the eighth division consisted of ammunition handlers. The radio operators, signalmen, and quartermasters were assigned to the ninth division. The last three divisions were the engine room personnel. When "Bismarck" left port, fleet staff, prize crews, and war correspondents increased the crew complement to over 2,200 men. Roughly 200 of the engine room personnel came from the light cruiser , which had been lost during Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of Norway. "Bismarck"s crew published a ship's newspaper titled "Die Schiffsglocke" (The Ship's Bell); this paper was only published once, on 23 April 1941, by the commander of the engineering department, Gerhard Junack.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: "Bismarck" was armed with eight SK C/34 guns arranged in four twin gun turrets: two super-firing turrets forward—"Anton" and "Bruno"—and two aft—"Caesar" and "Dora". Secondary armament consisted of twelve L/55 guns, sixteen L/65, sixteen L/83, and twelve anti-aircraft guns. "Bismarck" also carried four Arado Ar 196 reconnaissance floatplanes in a double hangar amidships and two single hangars abreast the funnel, with a double-ended thwartship catapult. The ship's main belt was thick and was covered by a pair of upper and main armoured decks that were and thick, respectively. The turrets were protected by thick faces and thick sides.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: "Bismarck" was ordered under the name (""Hannover" replacement"), a replacement for the old pre-dreadnought , under contract "F". The contract was awarded to the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, where the keel was laid on 1 July 1936 at Helgen IX. The ship was launched on 14 February 1939 and during the elaborate ceremonies was christened by Dorothee von Löwenfeld, granddaughter of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship's namesake. Adolf Hitler made the christening speech. Fitting-out work followed the launch, during which time the original straight stem was replaced with a raked "Atlantic bow" similar to those of the s. "Bismarck" was commissioned into the fleet on 24 August 1940 for sea trials, which were conducted in the Baltic. Ernst Lindemann took command of the ship at the time of commissioning.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: On 15 September 1940, three weeks after commissioning, "Bismarck" left Hamburg to begin sea trials in Kiel Bay. "Sperrbrecher 13" escorted the ship to Arcona on 28 September, and then on to Gotenhafen for trials in the Gulf of Danzig. The ship's power-plant was given a thorough workout; "Bismarck" made measured-mile and high speed runs. As the ship's stability and manoeuvrability were being tested, a flaw in her design was discovered. When attempting to steer the ship solely through altering propeller revolutions, the crew learned that "Bismarck" could be kept on course only with great difficulty. Even with the outboard screws running at full power in opposite directions, they generated only a slight turning ability. "Bismarck"s main battery guns were first test-fired in late November. The tests proved she was a very stable gun platform. Trials lasted until December; "Bismarck" returned to Hamburg, arriving on 9 December, for minor alterations and the completion of the fitting-out process.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The ship was scheduled to return to Kiel on 24 January 1941, but a merchant vessel had been sunk in the Kiel Canal and prevented use of the waterway. Severe weather hampered efforts to remove the wreck, and "Bismarck" was not able to reach Kiel until March. The delay greatly frustrated Lindemann, who remarked that "["Bismarck"] had been tied down at Hamburg for five weeks ... the precious time at sea lost as a result cannot be made up, and a significant delay in the final war deployment of the ship thus is unavoidable." While waiting to reach Kiel, "Bismarck" hosted Captain Anders Forshell, the Swedish naval attaché to Berlin. He returned to Sweden with a detailed description of the ship, which was subsequently leaked to Britain by pro-British elements in the Swedish Navy. The information provided the Royal Navy with its first full description of the vessel, although it lacked important facts, including top speed, radius of action, and displacement.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: On 6 March, "Bismarck" received the order to steam to Kiel. On the way, the ship was escorted by several Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters and a pair of armed merchant vessels, along with an icebreaker. At 08:45 on 8 March, "Bismarck" briefly ran aground on the southern shore of the Kiel Canal; she was freed within an hour. The ship reached Kiel the following day, where her crew stocked ammunition, fuel, and other supplies and applied a coat of dazzle paint to camouflage her. British bombers attacked the harbour without success on 12 March. On 17 March, the old battleship , now used as an icebreaker, escorted "Bismarck" through the ice to Gotenhafen, where the latter continued combat readiness training.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The Naval High Command ( or OKM), commanded by Admiral Erich Raeder, intended to continue the practice of using heavy ships as surface raiders against Allied merchant traffic in the Atlantic Ocean. The two "Scharnhorst"-class battleships were based in Brest, France, at the time, having just completed Operation Berlin, a major raid into the Atlantic. "Bismarck"s sister ship "Tirpitz" rapidly approached completion. "Bismarck" and "Tirpitz" were to sortie from the Baltic and rendezvous with the two "Scharnhorst"-class ships in the Atlantic; the operation was initially scheduled for around 25 April 1941, when a new moon period would make conditions more favourable.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Work on "Tirpitz" was completed later than anticipated, and she was not commissioned until 25 February; the ship was not ready for combat until late in the year. To further complicate the situation, was torpedoed in Brest and damaged further by bombs when in drydock. required a boiler overhaul following Operation Berlin; the workers discovered during the overhaul that the boilers were in worse condition than expected. She would also be unavailable for the planned sortie. Attacks by British bombers on supply depots in Kiel delayed repairs to the heavy cruisers and . The two ships would not be ready for action until July or August. Admiral Günther Lütjens, (Fleet Chief) of the Kriegsmarine, chosen to lead the operation, wished to delay the operation at least until either "Scharnhorst" or "Tirpitz" became available, but the OKM decided to proceed with the operation, codenamed Operation Rheinübung, with a force consisting of only "Bismarck" and the heavy cruiser . At a final meeting with Raeder in Paris on 26 April, Lütjens was encouraged by his commander-in-chief to proceed and he eventually decided that an operation should begin as soon as possible to prevent the enemy gaining any respite.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: On 5 May 1941, Hitler and Wilhelm Keitel, with a large entourage, arrived to view "Bismarck" and "Tirpitz" in Gotenhafen. The men were given an extensive tour of the ships, after which Hitler met Lütjens to discuss the forthcoming mission. On 16 May, Lütjens reported that "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen" were fully prepared for Operation Rheinübung; he was therefore ordered to proceed with the mission on the evening of 19 May. As part of the operational plans, a group of eighteen supply ships would be positioned to support "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen". Four U-boats would be placed along the convoy routes between Halifax and Britain to scout for the raiders.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: By the start of the operation, "Bismarck"s crew had increased to 2,221 officers and enlisted men. This included an admiral's staff of nearly 65 and a prize crew of 80 sailors, who could be used to crew transports captured during the mission. At 02:00 on 19 May, "Bismarck" departed Gotenhafen and made for the Danish straits. She was joined at 11:25 by "Prinz Eugen", which had departed the previous night at 21:18, off Cape Arkona. The two ships were escorted by three destroyers—, , and —and a flotilla of minesweepers. The Luftwaffe provided air cover during the voyage out of German waters. At around noon on 20 May, Lindemann informed the ship's crew via loudspeaker of the ship's mission. At approximately the same time, a group of ten or twelve Swedish aircraft flying reconnaissance encountered the German force and reported its composition and heading, though the Germans did not see the Swedes.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: An hour later, the German flotilla encountered the Swedish cruiser ; the cruiser shadowed the Germans for two hours in the Kattegat. "Gotland" transmitted a report to naval headquarters, stating: "Two large ships, three destroyers, five escort vessels, and 10–12 aircraft passed Marstrand, course 205°/20'." The OKM was not concerned about the security risk posed by "Gotland", though both Lütjens and Lindemann believed operational secrecy had been lost. The report eventually made its way to Captain Henry Denham, the British naval attaché to Sweden, who transmitted the information to the Admiralty. The code-breakers at Bletchley Park confirmed that an Atlantic raid was imminent, as they had decrypted reports that "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen" had taken on prize crews and requested additional navigational charts from headquarters. A pair of Supermarine Spitfires was ordered to search the Norwegian coast for the flotilla.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: German aerial reconnaissance confirmed that one aircraft carrier, three battleships, and four cruisers remained at anchor in the main British naval base at Scapa Flow, which persuaded Lütjens that the British were unaware of his operation. On the evening of 20 May, "Bismarck" and the rest of the flotilla reached the Norwegian coast; the minesweepers were detached and the two raiders and their destroyer escorts continued north. The following morning, radio-intercept officers on board "Prinz Eugen" picked up a signal ordering British reconnaissance aircraft to search for two battleships and three destroyers northbound off the Norwegian coast. At 7:00 on the 21st, the Germans spotted four unidentified aircraft, which quickly departed. Shortly after 12:00, the flotilla reached Bergen and anchored at Grimstadfjord, where the ships' crews painted over the Baltic camouflage with the standard "outboard grey" worn by German warships operating in the Atlantic.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: When "Bismarck" was in Norway, a pair of Bf 109 fighters circled overhead to protect her from British air attacks, but Flying Officer Michael Suckling managed to fly his Spitfire directly over the German flotilla at a height of and take photos of "Bismarck" and her escorts. Upon receipt of the information, Admiral John Tovey ordered the battlecruiser , the newly commissioned battleship , and six destroyers to reinforce the pair of cruisers patrolling the Denmark Strait. The rest of the Home Fleet was placed on high alert in Scapa Flow. Eighteen bombers were dispatched to attack the Germans, but weather over the fjord had worsened and they were unable to find the German warships.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: "Bismarck" did not replenish her fuel stores in Norway, as her operational orders did not require her to do so. She had left port short of a full load, and had since expended another on the voyage from Gotenhafen. "Prinz Eugen" took on of fuel. At 19:30 on 21 May, "Bismarck", "Prinz Eugen", and the three escorting destroyers left Bergen. At midnight, when the force was in the open sea, heading towards the Arctic Ocean, Raeder disclosed the operation to Hitler, who reluctantly consented to the raid. The three escorting destroyers were detached at 04:14 on 22 May, while the force steamed off Trondheim. At around 12:00, Lütjens ordered his two ships to turn toward the Denmark Strait to attempt the break-out into the open Atlantic.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: By 04:00 on 23 May, Lütjens ordered "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen" to increase speed to to make the dash through the Denmark Strait. Upon entering the Strait, both ships activated their FuMO radar detection equipment sets. "Bismarck" led "Prinz Eugen" by about ; mist reduced visibility to . The Germans encountered some ice at around 10:00, which necessitated a reduction in speed to . Two hours later, the pair had reached a point north of Iceland. The ships were forced to zigzag to avoid ice floes. At 19:22, hydrophone and radar operators aboard the German warships detected the cruiser at a range of approximately . "Prinz Eugen"s radio-intercept team decrypted the radio signals being sent by "Suffolk" and learned that their location had been reported.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Lütjens gave permission for "Prinz Eugen" to engage "Suffolk", but the captain of the German cruiser could not clearly make out his target and so held fire. "Suffolk" quickly retreated to a safe distance and shadowed the German ships. At 20:30, the heavy cruiser joined "Suffolk", but approached the German raiders too closely. Lütjens ordered his ships to engage the British cruiser; "Bismarck" fired five salvoes, three of which straddled "Norfolk" and rained shell splinters on her decks. The cruiser laid a smoke screen and fled into a fog bank, ending the brief engagement. The concussion from the 38 cm guns' firing disabled "Bismarck"s FuMO 23 radar set; this prompted Lütjens to order "Prinz Eugen" to take station ahead so she could use her functioning radar to scout for the formation.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: At around 22:00, Lütjens ordered "Bismarck" to make a 180-degree turn in an effort to surprise the two heavy cruisers shadowing him. Although "Bismarck" was visually obscured in a rain squall, "Suffolk"s radar quickly detected the manoeuvre, allowing the cruiser to evade. The cruisers remained on station through the night, continually relaying the location and bearing of the German ships. The harsh weather broke on the morning of 24 May, revealing a clear sky. At 05:07, hydrophone operators aboard "Prinz Eugen" detected a pair of unidentified vessels approaching the German formation at a range of , reporting "Noise of two fast-moving turbine ships at 280° relative bearing!"


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: At 05:45 on 24 May, German lookouts spotted smoke on the horizon; this turned out to be from "Hood" and "Prince of Wales", under the command of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland. Lütjens ordered his ships' crews to battle stations. By 05:52, the range had fallen to and "Hood" opened fire, followed by "Prince of Wales" a minute later. "Hood" engaged "Prinz Eugen", which the British thought to be "Bismarck", while "Prince of Wales" fired on "Bismarck". Adalbert Schneider, the first gunnery officer aboard "Bismarck", twice requested permission to return fire, but Lütjens hesitated. Lindemann intervened, muttering "I will not let my ship be shot out from under my ass." He demanded permission to fire from Lütjens, who relented and at 05:55 ordered his ships to engage the British.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The British ships approached the German ships head on, which permitted them to use only their forward guns; "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen" could fire full broadsides. Several minutes after opening fire, Holland ordered a 20° turn to port, which would allow his ships to engage with their rear gun turrets. Both German ships concentrated their fire on "Hood". About a minute after opening fire, "Prinz Eugen" scored a hit with a high-explosive shell; the explosion detonated unrotated projectile ammunition and started a large fire, which was quickly extinguished. After firing three four-gun salvoes, Schneider had found the range to "Hood"; he immediately ordered rapid-fire salvoes from "Bismarck"s eight 38 cm guns. He also ordered the ship's 15 cm secondary guns to engage "Prince of Wales". Holland then ordered a second 20° turn to port, to bring his ships on a parallel course with "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen". Lütjens ordered "Prinz Eugen" to shift fire and target "Prince of Wales", to keep both of his opponents under fire. Within a few minutes, "Prinz Eugen" scored a pair of hits on the battleship that started a small fire.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Lütjens then ordered "Prinz Eugen" to drop behind "Bismarck", so she could continue to monitor the location of "Norfolk" and "Suffolk", which were still to the east. At 06:00, "Hood" was completing the second turn to port when "Bismarck"s fifth salvo hit. Two of the shells landed short, striking the water close to the ship, but at least one of the 38 cm armour-piercing shells struck "Hood" and penetrated her thin deck armour. The shell reached "Hood"s rear ammunition magazine and detonated of cordite propellant. The massive explosion broke the back of the ship between the main mast and the rear funnel; the forward section continued to move forward briefly before the in-rushing water caused the bow to rise into the air at a steep angle. The stern also rose as water rushed into the ripped-open compartments. Schneider exclaimed "He is sinking!" over the ship's loudspeakers. In only eight minutes of firing, "Hood" had disappeared, taking all but three of her crew of 1,419 men with her.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: "Bismarck" then shifted fire to "Prince of Wales". The British battleship scored a hit on "Bismarck" with her sixth salvo, but the German ship found her mark with her first salvo. One of the shells struck the bridge on "Prince of Wales", though it did not explode and instead exited the other side, killing everyone in the ship's command centre, save Captain John Leach, the ship's commanding officer, and one other. The two German ships continued to fire upon "Prince of Wales", causing serious damage. Guns malfunctioned on the recently commissioned British ship, which still had civilian technicians aboard. Despite the technical faults in the main battery, "Prince of Wales" scored three hits on "Bismarck" in the engagement. The first struck her in the forecastle above the waterline but low enough to allow the crashing waves to enter the hull. The second shell struck below the armoured belt and exploded on contact with the torpedo bulkhead, completely flooding a turbo-generator room and partially flooding an adjacent boiler room. The third shell passed through one of the boats carried aboard the ship and then went through the floatplane catapult without exploding.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: At 06:13, Leach gave the order to retreat; only five of his ship's ten guns were still firing and his ship had sustained significant damage. "Prince of Wales" made a 160° turn and laid a smoke screen to cover her withdrawal. The Germans ceased fire as the range widened. Though Lindemann strongly advocated chasing "Prince of Wales" and destroying her, Lütjens obeyed operational orders to shun any avoidable engagement with enemy forces that were not protecting a convoy, firmly rejecting the request, and instead ordered "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen" to head for the North Atlantic. In the engagement, "Bismarck" had fired 93 armour-piercing shells and had been hit by three shells in return. The forecastle hit allowed of water to flood into the ship, which contaminated fuel oil stored in the bow. Lütjens refused to reduce speed to allow damage control teams to repair the shell hole which widened and allowed more water into the ship. The second hit caused some additional flooding. Shell-splinters from the second hit also damaged a steam line in the turbo-generator room, but this was not serious, as "Bismarck" had sufficient other generator reserves. The combined flooding from these two hits caused a 9-degree list to port and a 3-degree trim by the bow.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: After the engagement, Lütjens reported, "Battlecruiser, probably "Hood", sunk. Another battleship, "King George V" or "Renown", turned away damaged. Two heavy cruisers maintain contact." At 08:01, he transmitted a damage report and his intentions to OKM, which were to detach "Prinz Eugen" for commerce raiding and to make for Saint-Nazaire for repairs. Shortly after 10:00, Lütjens ordered "Prinz Eugen" to fall behind "Bismarck" to determine the severity of the oil leakage from the bow hit. After confirming "broad streams of oil on both sides of ["Bismarck"s] wake", "Prinz Eugen" returned to the forward position. About an hour later, a British Short Sunderland flying boat reported the oil slick to "Suffolk" and "Norfolk", which had been joined by the damaged "Prince of Wales". Rear Admiral Frederic Wake-Walker, the commander of the two cruisers, ordered "Prince of Wales" to remain behind his ships.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered all warships in the area to join the pursuit of "Bismarck" and "Prinz Eugen". Tovey's Home Fleet was steaming to intercept the German raiders, but on the morning of 24 May was still over away. The Admiralty ordered the light cruisers , , and to patrol the Denmark Strait in case Lütjens attempted to retrace his route. The battleship , which had been escorting and was due for a refit in the Boston Navy Yard, joined Tovey. Two old s were ordered into the hunt: , from Halifax, and , which was escorting Convoy HX 127. In all, six battleships and battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers were committed to the chase. By around 17:00, the crew aboard "Prince of Wales" restored nine of her ten main guns to working order, which permitted Wake-Walker to place her in the front of his formation to attack "Bismarck" if the opportunity arose.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: With the weather worsening, Lütjens attempted to detach "Prinz Eugen" at 16:40. The squall was not heavy enough to cover her withdrawal from Wake-Walker's cruisers, which continued to maintain radar contact. "Prinz Eugen" was therefore recalled temporarily. The cruiser was successfully detached at 18:14. "Bismarck" turned around to face Wake-Walker's formation, forcing "Suffolk" to turn away at high speed. "Prince of Wales" fired twelve salvos at "Bismarck", which responded with nine salvos, none of which hit. The action diverted British attention and permitted "Prinz Eugen" to slip away. After "Bismarck" resumed her previous heading, Wake-Walker's three ships took up station on "Bismarck"s port side.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Although "Bismarck" had been damaged in the engagement with "Hood" and forced to reduce speed, she was still capable of reaching , the maximum speed of Tovey's . Unless "Bismarck" could be slowed, the British would be unable to prevent her from reaching Saint-Nazaire. Shortly before 16:00 on 25 May, Tovey detached the aircraft carrier and four light cruisers to shape a course that would position her to launch her torpedo bombers. At 22:00, "Victorious" launched the strike, which comprised six Fairey Fulmar fighters and nine Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers of 825 Naval Air Squadron, led by Lt Cdr Eugene Esmonde. The inexperienced aviators nearly attacked "Norfolk" and the U.S. Coast Guard cutter on their approach; the confusion alerted "Bismarck"s anti-aircraft gunners.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: "Bismarck" also used her main and secondary batteries to fire at maximum depression to create giant splashes in the paths of the incoming torpedo bombers. None of the attacking aircraft were shot down. "Bismarck" evaded eight of the torpedoes launched at her, but the ninth struck amidships on the main armoured belt, throwing one man into a bulkhead and killing him and injuring five others. The explosion also caused minor damage to electrical equipment. The ship suffered more serious damage from manoeuvres to evade the torpedoes: rapid shifts in speed and course loosened collision mats, which increased the flooding from the forward shell hole and eventually forced abandonment of the port number 2 boiler room. This loss of a second boiler, combined with fuel losses and increasing bow trim, forced the ship to slow to . Divers repaired the collision mats in the bow, after which speed increased to , the speed that the command staff determined was the most economical for the voyage to occupied France.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Shortly after the Swordfish departed from the scene, "Bismarck" and "Prince of Wales" engaged in a brief artillery duel. Neither scored a hit. "Bismarck"s damage control teams resumed work after the short engagement. The sea water that had flooded the number 2 port side boiler threatened to enter the number 4 turbo-generator feedwater system, which would have permitted saltwater to reach the turbines. The saltwater would have damaged the turbine blades and thus greatly reduced the ship's speed. By morning on 25 May, the danger had passed. The ship slowed to to allow divers to pump fuel from the forward compartments to the rear tanks; two hoses were successfully connected and a few hundred tons of fuel were transferred.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: As the chase entered open waters, Wake-Walker's ships were compelled to zig-zag to avoid German U-boats that might be in the area. This required the ships to steam for ten minutes to port, then ten minutes to starboard, to keep the ships on the same base course. For the last few minutes of the turn to port, "Bismarck" was out of range of "Suffolk"s radar. At 03:00 on 25 May, Lütjens ordered an increase to maximum speed, which at this point was . He then ordered the ship to circle away to the west and then north. This manoeuvre coincided with the period during which his ship was out of radar range; "Bismarck" successfully broke radar contact and circled back behind her pursuers. "Suffolk"s captain assumed that "Bismarck" had broken off to the west and attempted to find her by also steaming west. After half an hour, he informed Wake-Walker, who ordered the three ships to disperse at daylight to search visually.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The Royal Navy search became frantic, as many of the British ships were low on fuel. "Victorious" and her escorting cruisers were sent west, Wake-Walker's ships continued to the south and west, and Tovey continued to steam toward the mid-Atlantic. Force H, with the aircraft carrier and steaming up from Gibraltar, was still at least a day away. Unaware that he had shaken off Wake-Walker, Lütjens sent long radio messages to Naval Group West headquarters in Paris. The signals were intercepted by the British, from which bearings were determined. They were wrongly plotted on board "King George V", leading Tovey to believe that "Bismarck" was heading back to Germany through the Iceland-Faeroe gap, which kept his fleet on the wrong course for seven hours. By the time the mistake had been discovered, "Bismarck" had put a sizeable gap between herself and the British ships.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: British code-breakers were able to decrypt some of the German signals, including an order to the Luftwaffe to provide support for "Bismarck" making for Brest, decrypted by Jane Fawcett on 25 May 1941. The French Resistance provided the British with confirmation that Luftwaffe units were relocating there. Tovey could now turn his forces toward France to converge in areas through which "Bismarck" would have to pass. A squadron of Coastal Command Consolidated Catalina flying boats based out of RAF Castle Archdale in Northern Ireland joined the search, covering areas where "Bismarck" might head in the attempt to reach occupied France. At 10:30 on 26 May, a Catalina piloted by Ensign Leonard B. Smith of the US Navy located her, some northwest of Brest. At her current speed, she would have been close enough to reach the protection of U-boats and the Luftwaffe in less than a day. Most British forces were not close enough to stop her.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The only possibility for the Royal Navy was "Ark Royal" with Force H, under the command of Admiral James Somerville. "Victorious", "Prince of Wales", "Suffolk" and were forced to break off the search due to fuel shortage; the only heavy ships remaining apart from Force H were "King George V" and "Rodney", but they were too distant. "Ark Royal"s Swordfish were already searching nearby when the Catalina found her. Several torpedo bombers also located the battleship, about away from "Ark Royal". Somerville ordered an attack as soon as the Swordfish returned and were rearmed with torpedoes. He detached the cruiser to shadow "Bismarck", though "Ark Royal"s aviators were not informed of this. As a result, the Swordfish, which were armed with torpedoes equipped with new magnetic detonators, accidentally attacked "Sheffield". The magnetic detonators failed to work properly and "Sheffield" emerged unscathed.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Upon returning to "Ark Royal", the Swordfish loaded torpedoes equipped with contact detonators. The second attack comprised fifteen aircraft and was launched at 19:10. At 20:47, the torpedo bombers began their attack descent through the clouds. As the Swordfish approached, "Bismarck" fired her main battery at "Sheffield", straddling the cruiser with her second salvo. Shell fragments rained down on "Sheffield", killing three men and wounding several others. "Sheffield" quickly retreated under cover of a smoke screen. The Swordfish then attacked; "Bismarck" began to turn violently as her anti-aircraft batteries engaged the bombers. One torpedo hit amidships on the port side, just below the bottom edge of the main armour belt. The force of the explosion was largely contained by the underwater protection system and the belt armour but some structural damage caused minor flooding.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The second torpedo struck "Bismarck" in her stern on the port side, near the port rudder shaft. The coupling on the port rudder assembly was badly damaged and the rudder became locked in a 12° turn to port. The explosion also caused much shock damage. The crew eventually managed to repair the starboard rudder but the port rudder remained jammed. A suggestion to sever the port rudder with explosives was dismissed by Lütjens, as damage to the screws would have left the battleship helpless. At 21:15, Lütjens reported that the ship was unmanoeuvrable.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: With the port rudder jammed, "Bismarck" was now steaming in a large circle, unable to escape from Tovey's forces. Though fuel shortages had reduced the number of ships available to the British, the battleships "King George V" and "Rodney" were still available, along with the heavy cruisers "Dorsetshire" and "Norfolk". Lütjens signalled headquarters at 21:40 on the 26th: "Ship unmanoeuvrable. We will fight to the last shell. Long live the Führer." The mood of the crew became increasingly depressed, especially as messages from the naval command reached the ship. Intended to boost morale, the messages only highlighted the desperate situation in which the crew found itself. As darkness fell, "Bismarck" briefly fired on "Sheffield", though the cruiser quickly fled. "Sheffield" lost contact in the low visibility and Captain Philip Vian's group of five destroyers was ordered to keep contact with "Bismarck" through the night.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: These destroyers encountered "Bismarck" at 22:38; the battleship quickly engaged them with her main battery. After firing three salvos, she straddled the Polish destroyer . The destroyer continued to close the range until a near miss at around forced her to turn away. Throughout the night and into the morning, Vian's destroyers harried "Bismarck", illuminating her with star shells and firing dozens of torpedoes, none of which hit. Between 05:00 and 06:00, "Bismarck"s crew attempted to launch one of the Arado 196 float planes to carry away the ship's war diary, footage of the engagement with "Hood", and other important documents. The third shell hit from "Prince of Wales" had damaged the steam line on the aircraft catapult, rendering it inoperative. As it was not possible to launch the aircraft, it had become a fire hazard, and was pushed overboard.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: After daybreak on 27 May, "King George V" led the attack. "Rodney" followed off her port quarter; Tovey intended to steam directly at "Bismarck" until he was about away. At that point, he would turn south to put his ships parallel to his target. At 08:43, lookouts on "King George V" spotted her, some away. Four minutes later, "Rodney"s two forward turrets, comprising six guns, opened fire, then "King George V"s guns began firing. "Bismarck" returned fire at 08:50 with her forward guns; with her second salvo, she straddled "Rodney". Thereafter, "Bismarck"s ability to aim her guns deteriorated as the ship, unable to steer, moved erratically in the heavy seas and deprived Schneider of a predictable course for range calculations.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: As the range fell, the ships' secondary batteries joined the battle. "Norfolk" and "Dorsetshire" closed and began firing with their guns. At 09:02, a 16-inch shell from "Rodney" struck "Bismarck"s forward superstructure, killing hundreds of men and severely damaging the two forward turrets. According to survivors, this salvo probably killed both Lindemann and Lütjens and the rest of the bridge staff, although other survivors stated that they saw Lindemann on the deck as the ship sank. The main fire control director was also destroyed by this hit, which probably also killed Schneider. A second shell from this salvo struck the forward main battery, which was disabled, though it would manage to fire one last salvo at 09:27. Lieutenant von Müllenheim-Rechberg, in the rear control station, took over firing control for the rear turrets. He managed to fire three salvos before a shell destroyed the gun director, disabling his equipment. He gave the order for the guns to fire independently, but by 09:31, all four main battery turrets had been put out of action. One of "Bismarck"s shells exploded 20 feet off "Rodney"s bow and damaged her starboard torpedo tube—the closest "Bismarck" came to a direct hit on her opponents.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: With the bridge personnel no longer responding, the executive officer "Fregattenkapitän" Hans Oels took command of the ship from his station at the Damage Control Central. Some near misses alongside the port side, and the fact that the ship was no longer able to fight back, caused Oels to decide at around 09:30 to scuttle "Bismarck" to prevent the ship being boarded by the British, and to allow the crew to abandon ship so as to reduce casualties. Bismarck was also slowly sinking due to an increasing list that allowed water to enter the ship via damage to the main deck, although the ship's very large metacentric height kept her afloat. At around 09:30 Oels ordered the men below decks to abandon ship; he instructed the engine room crews to open the ship's watertight doors and to prepare scuttling charges. This scuttling command ensured that down-flooding would start to descend below the gun deck, as the crew made their way up through watertight hatches that would thereafter be left open. This flooding would progressively cause the ship to list increasingly until it capsized. Gerhard Junack, the chief engineering officer, ordered his men to set the demolition charges with a 9-minute fuse but the intercom system broke down and he sent a messenger to confirm the order to scuttle the ship. The messenger never returned, so Junack primed the charges and ordered his men to abandon ship. They left the engine spaces at around 10:10. Junack and his comrades heard the demolition charges detonate as they made their way up through the various levels. Oels rushed throughout the ship, ordering men to abandon their posts. On the gun deck a huge explosion killed him and about a hundred others.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: By 10:00, Tovey's two battleships had fired over 700 main battery shells, many at very close range. "Rodney" closed to , point-blank range for guns of that size, and continued to fire. "Bismarck" had been reduced to a shambles, aflame from stem to stern. She was slowly settling by the stern from uncontrolled flooding with a 20 degree list to port. Tovey would not cease fire until the Germans struck their ensigns or it became clear they were abandoning ship. Overall the four British ships fired more than 2,800 shells at "Bismarck", and scored more than 400 hits, but were unable to sink "Bismarck" by gunfire. The heavy gunfire at virtually point-blank range devastated the superstructure and the sections of the hull that were above the waterline, causing very heavy casualties, but it contributed little to the eventual sinking of the ship. "Rodney" fired two torpedoes from her port-side tube and claimed one hit. According to Ludovic Kennedy, "if true, [this is] the only instance in history of one battleship torpedoing another".


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The scuttling charges detonated around 10:20. By 10:35, the ship had assumed a heavy port list, capsizing slowly and sinking by the stern. At around 10:20, running low on fuel, Tovey ordered the cruiser "Dorsetshire" to sink "Bismarck" with torpedoes and ordered his battleships back to port. "Dorsetshire" fired a pair of torpedoes into "Bismarck"s starboard side, one of which hit. "Dorsetshire" then moved around to her port side and fired another torpedo, which also hit. By the time these torpedo attacks took place, the ship was already listing so badly that the deck was partly awash. It appears that the final torpedo may have detonated against "Bismarck"s port side superstructure, which was by then already underwater. "Bismarck" disappeared beneath the surface at 10:40.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Junack, who had abandoned ship by the time it capsized, observed no underwater damage to the ship's starboard side. Von Müllenheim-Rechberg reported the same but assumed that the port side, which was then under water, had been more significantly damaged. Some survivors reported they saw Captain Lindemann standing at attention at the stem of the ship as she sank. Around 400 men were now in the water; "Dorsetshire" and the destroyer moved in and lowered ropes to pull the survivors aboard. At 11:40, "Dorsetshire"s captain ordered the rescue effort abandoned after lookouts spotted what they thought was a U-boat. "Dorsetshire" had rescued 85 men and "Maori" had picked up 25 by the time they left the scene. A U-boat later reached the survivors and found three men, and a German trawler rescued another two. One of the men picked up by the British died of his wounds the following day. Out of a crew of over 2,200 men, only 114 survived.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: In 1959, C. S. Forester published his novel "Last Nine Days of the Bismarck." The book was adapted for the movie "Sink the Bismarck!," released the following year. For dramatic effect the film showed "Bismarck" sinking a British destroyer and shooting down two aircraft, neither of which happened. That same year, Johnny Horton released the song "Sink the Bismark".


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The wreck of "Bismarck" was discovered on 8 June 1989 by Robert Ballard, the oceanographer responsible for finding . "Bismarck" was found to be resting on her keel at a depth of approximately , about west of Brest. The ship struck an extinct underwater volcano, which rose some above the surrounding abyssal plain, triggering a landslide. "Bismarck" slid down the mountain, coming to a stop about two-thirds of the way down. Ballard kept the wreck's exact location a secret to prevent other divers from taking artefacts from the ship, a practice he considered a form of grave robbing.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Ballard's survey found no underwater penetrations of the ship's fully armoured citadel. Eight holes were found in the hull, one on the starboard side and seven on the port side, all above the waterline. One of the holes is in the deck, on the bow's starboard side. The angle and shape indicates the shell that created the hole was fired from "Bismarck"s port side and struck the starboard anchor chain. The anchor chain has disappeared down this hole. Six holes are amidships, three shell fragments pierced the upper splinter belt, and one made a hole in the main armour belt. Further aft a huge hole is visible, parallel to the aircraft catapult, on the deck. The submersibles recorded no sign of a shell penetration through the main or side armour here, and it is likely that the shell penetrated the deck armour only. Naval historians William Garzke and Robert Dulin noted that the British battleships were shooting at very close range; the flat trajectory of the shells made it difficult to hit the relatively narrow target represented by the belt armour above the waterline due to the high waves, caused by gale force winds, which shielded the belt armour as shells that fell short would either strike the water and ricochet up into the superstructure or explode after striking the waves.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Ballard noted that he found no evidence of the internal implosions that occur when a hull that is not fully flooded sinks. The surrounding water, which has much greater pressure than the air in the hull, would crush the ship. Instead, Ballard points out that the hull is in relatively good condition; he states simply that ""Bismarck" did not implode." This suggests that "Bismarck"s compartments were flooded when the ship sank, supporting the scuttling theory. Ballard added "we found a hull that appears whole and relatively undamaged by the descent and impact". They concluded that the direct cause of sinking was scuttling: sabotage of engine-room valves by her crew, as claimed by German survivors.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The whole stern had broken away; as it was not near the main wreckage and has not yet been found, it can be assumed this did not occur on impact with the sea floor. The missing section came away roughly where the torpedo had hit, raising questions of possible structural failure. The stern area had also received several hits, increasing the torpedo damage. This, coupled with the fact the ship sank stern first and had no structural support to hold it in place, suggests the stern detached at the surface. In 1942 "Prinz Eugen" was also torpedoed in the stern, which collapsed. This prompted a strengthening of the stern structures on all German capital ships.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: In June 2001, Deep Ocean Expeditions, partnered with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, conducted another investigation of the wreck. The researchers used Russian-built mini-submarines. William N. Lange, a Woods Hole expert, stated, "You see a large number of shell holes in the superstructure and deck, but not that many along the side, and none below the waterline." The expedition found no penetrations in the main armoured belt, above or below the waterline. The examiners noted several long gashes in the hull, but attributed these to impact on the sea floor.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: An Anglo-American expedition in July 2001 was funded by a British TV channel. The team used the volcano—the only one in that area—to locate the wreck. Using ROVs to film the hull, the team concluded that the ship had sunk due to combat damage. Expedition leader David Mearns claimed significant gashes had been found in the hull: "My feeling is that those holes were probably lengthened by the slide, but initiated by torpedoes".


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The 2002 documentary "", directed by James Cameron and filmed in May–June 2002 using smaller and more agile Mir submersibles, reconstructed the events leading to the sinking. These provided the first interior shots. Unlike the Ballard expedition, Cameron's investigation was able to examine parts of the sides of the hull. When "Bismarck" hit the bottom bow first, massive "hydraulic outburst" separated much of the shell plating of the hull along the line where it joined the bottom of the armour belt. The decks under the armour deck have been compressed by 3 to 4 metres. The most extensive damage, including the gashes Mearns observed, was thus due to impact of the hull with the ocean floor as opposed to directly due to battle damage.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Although around 719 large calibre shells were fired at Bismarck that morning, Cameron’s survey noted only two instances where the 320 mm main side belt armour had actually been fully penetrated in the visible parts of the hull. These were both on the starboard side amidships. One hole is forward of the 320 mm displaced armour belt. In the second case the explosion dislodged a rectangular segment of the 320 mm armour. Instead, the expedition argues long range plunging fire hitting the deck was almost completely responsible for the damage that directly contributed to the sinking of the ship. The later close-range shelling (including by secondary armament) "devastated the superstructure and exposed parts of the hull above the waterline, and caused massive casualties", but contributed little to the sinking of the ship. British gunnery accuracy was "mediocre at best", partially due to the "miserable" firing conditions and the ship's list to port, with only around 10% of fired medium calibre shots hitting.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: The Cameron report stated that "The devastation caused by the shellfire combined with the effects of several torpedo hits to overwhelm and defeat the "Bismarck", causing the ship to begin sinking due to uncontrollable progressive flooding. The German crew sped the inevitable demise of their ship by initiating scuttling measures." It suggests the torpedoes may have increased the subsequent extensive damage to the ship when it hit the ocean floor. In some cases the torpedo blasts had failed to shatter the torpedo bulkheads., and some hits claimed may have been torpedoes that exploded prematurely due to the heavy seas. However the locations of other hits were buried in mud or were impossible to distinguish due to the extent of overall damage to the ship. Overall the report disputed Mearns' claim that scuttling was irrelevant to the timing of the sinking.


title: German battleship Bismarck

text: Despite their sometimes differing viewpoints, these experts generally agree that "Bismarck" would have eventually foundered if the Germans had not scuttled her first. Ballard estimated that "Bismarck" could still have floated for at least a day when the British vessels ceased fire and could have been captured by the Royal Navy, a position supported by Ludovic Kennedy (who was serving on the destroyer at the time). Kennedy stated, "That she would have foundered eventually there can be little doubt; but the scuttling ensured that it was sooner rather than later." The Cameron expedition's report asserts "Bismarck unquestionably would have sunk due to progressive flooding hours after the battle ended". In Mearns' subsequent book "Hood and Bismarck", he conceded that scuttling "may have hastened the inevitable, but only by a matter of minutes." Ballard later concluded that "As far as I was concerned, the British had sunk the ship regardless of who delivered the final blow."


title: Iain Armitage

text: Iain Armitage (; born July 15, 2008) is an American child actor. He is known for starring as Sheldon Cooper in "Young Sheldon", a prequel to "The Big Bang Theory", and Ziggy Chapman in "Big Little Lies". In 2018, Armitage received the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Series Leading Young Actor for the former role. He also provided the voice for young Shaggy Rogers in "Scoob!" (2020), and for the police puppy Chase in "" (2021).


title: Iain Armitage

text: Armitage resides in Arlington, Virginia, and is the son of actor Euan Morton, who was born in Falkirk, Scotland, and theater producer Lee Armitage. It was reported that he was named after Sir Ian McKellen. He is the grandson of former United States Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Lee Armitage.


title: Iain Armitage

text: Armitage first gained prominence via his YouTube series "Iain Loves Theatre" where he reviews stage shows from musical theater. His videos caught the attention of the theater industry, including a couple of agents who wanted to sign him up. During the 2015 Tony Awards, he served as a correspondent for Perez Hilton and was even referenced in the opening number of the show.


title: Iain Armitage

text: In January 2017, Armitage starred in an episode of "" ("Chasing Theo"), playing a young child, Theo Lachere, who has been kidnapped. He appeared in "Impractical Jokers" "Look Out Below", where he was talked to by Murr in "Who Let The Dogs Out?", in the second challenge of that episode. He played Ziggy Chapman in the HBO miniseries "Big Little Lies" and he appeared in "The Glass Castle", a film adaptation of Jeannette Walls' memoir of the same name. In the same year, he was also in the films "I'm Not Here" and "Our Souls at Night", which also starred Jane Fonda and Robert Redford.


title: Iain Armitage

text: In 2017, Armitage was cast as Sheldon Cooper as a child in "Young Sheldon", a prequel to the sitcom "The Big Bang Theory". In December 2018, he appeared in an episode of "The Big Bang Theory", playing young Sheldon on a videotape recording intended to cheer up and encourage an older Sheldon.


title: Iain Armitage

text: In 2020, Armitage voiced young Shaggy Rogers in the "Scooby-Doo" film "Scoob!". He was set to reprise the role in the film "Scoob: Holiday Haunt", which was set for release in late 2022 on HBO Max, but it was canceled in August 2022.


title: Iain Armitage

text: In 2021, Armitage voiced Chase in "", replacing Justin Paul Kelly from the Nickelodeon television series.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: Princess Beatrice, Mrs Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi (Beatrice Elizabeth Mary; born 8 August 1988) is a member of the British royal family. She is the elder daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Sarah, Duchess of York. She is a niece of Charles III and a granddaughter of Elizabeth II. Born fifth in line of succession to the British throne, she is now ninth. She has a younger sister, Princess Eugenie.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: Born in Portland Hospital, London, Beatrice attended St George's School, Ascot, before studying at Goldsmiths College, graduating with a bachelor's degree in history. She was briefly employed at the Foreign Office and Sony Pictures before joining software company Afiniti as Vice President of Strategic Partnerships. Beatrice also works privately with a number of charitable organisations, including the Teenage Cancer Trust and Outward Bound.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: She married Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, a property developer and Italian noble, in 2020. Their daughter Sienna Elizabeth was born on 18 September 2021.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: Upon the death of Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles III, Princess Beatrice became a Counsellor of State, a senior position within the royal family limited to the first four in the line of succession over the age of 21 and the sovereign's consort.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: Princess Beatrice was born at 8:18 pm on 8 August 1988 at the Portland Hospital, the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York, and fifth grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. She was baptised in the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace on 20 December 1988, her godparents being Viscount Linley (her father's cousin, now the 2nd Earl of Snowdon); the Duchess of Roxburghe (now Lady Jane Dawnay); Peter Palumbo; Gabrielle Greenall; and Carolyn Cotterell. Her name, an unexpected choice, was not announced until almost two weeks after her birth.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: Beatrice's parents divorced amicably when she was seven years old. The Duke and Duchess of York had agreed to joint custody of their two children. After the divorce, the Queen provided her parents with £1.4 million to set up a trust fund for her and Eugenie. Beatrice and her sister frequently travelled abroad with one or both of their parents.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: Beatrice began her early education at the independent Upton House School in Windsor, in 1991. From there, she and her sister both attended the independent Coworth Park School (now Coworth Flexlands School) from 1995. Beatrice continued her education at the independent St George's School in Ascot, where she was a pupil from 2000 to 2007. She was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of seven and went public with the diagnosis in 2005. She delayed sitting her GCSE exams for one year. She remained at St George's to take her A-Levels, earning an 'A' in drama, a 'B' in history, and a 'B' in film studies. She was elected Head Girl in her final year, and was a member of the school choir. Beatrice celebrated her 18th birthday with a masked ball at Windsor Castle in July 2006. Nikolai von Bismarck took her official birthday portrait.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: In September 2008, Beatrice started a three-year course studying for a BA in history and history of ideas at Goldsmiths, University of London. She graduated in 2011 with a 2:1 degree.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: During the summer of 2008, Beatrice obtained work experience as a sales assistant at Selfridges. She also worked at the Foreign Office's press office for a period of time without receiving a salary. It was also reported in 2008 that Beatrice was interested in pursuing a career at the "Financial Times" website. Beatrice was the first member of the family to appear in a non-documentary film when she had a small, non-speaking role as an extra in "The Young Victoria" (2009), based on the accession and early reign of her ancestor Queen Victoria. For a while, she was a paid intern at Sony Pictures, but she resigned after the hacking incident that affected the company in late 2014.


title: Princess Beatrice

text: In April 2015, it was reported that Beatrice had decided to move to New York City. , Beatrice had a full-time job and split her time between London and New York City. She is known as Beatrice York in her professional life and is Vice President of Partnerships and Strategy at Afiniti. She is also in charge of an Afiniti programme to engage senior business chiefs around the world to support women in leadership. She works with the programme through charity endeavours and speaking engagements.