Dead Reckoning | Hacker News Reader

Dead Reckoning

damninteresting.com

62 pointsca98am7916 comments

Every time I read one of these stories about extraordinary survival against all odds, I wonder how many other stories there are that never made it out because everyone involved died.

Almost like there should be a name for that sort of, I guess you'd call it, a bias?

You mean https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

The joke was not lost on me.

I was expecting it to be about - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning

And I thought it would be about https://store.steampowered.com/app/815560/Dead_Reckoning_The...

So did I.

There was a short bit about dead reckoning in the story, but I’d assume the title is more of a play on “dead”.

Use of dead reckoning (or, rather, the lack of viable alternatives at the time) is the reason the ship was wrecked.

sublime use of "Ear regardless"

Good catch. I can hear the snort-laugh as he typed this dad joke.

This is the one time I'll allow it :)

As someone who interacts too often with cat and dog lovers, my favourite part of the story (spoiler alert):

> Communicating via gestures, the natives agreed to trade for some food—a small stockpile of mollusks. They returned some time later offering three sheep, which the Englishmen eagerly accepted for future meals. The natives also offered two dogs, which the Englishmen immediately roasted and ate.

From the quite interesting article:

> Captain Cheap, however, was promoted to post captain, […]

If I understand the term post-captain correctly, this was not an actual rank to be promoted to. It just means that a captain's name was 'posted' on the Navy's seniority list as having been assigned command of a vessel, rather than holding the rank of captain without a command.

Post Captain was the permanent rank of captain, equivalent to the modern rank of Captain RN. Post Captains in the Royal Navy commanded ships of 20 guns and up, and the rank and title were retained when on half pay without a ship. Smaller sloops were generally commanded by a Commander (with the courtesy title of Captain when commanding; equivalent to Commander RN).

Critically, promotion to Post Captain was at the discretion of the admiralty, but onward to promotion to Rear Admiral and beyond was based strictly on seniority, so the Post Captain promotion was the critical one.

Interesting bit about one of the survivors:

> Byron went on to have a highly distinguished naval career, being promoted all the way to Vice-Admiral before he retired. One of his grandchildren grew up to be the famous poet Lord Byron; and one of Lord Byron’s children was Ada Lovelace, widely regarded as history’s first programmer.

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