King of the soap stars
QUESTION
In the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are, Danny Dyer discovered that his 22x greatgrandfather was Edward III. Given that Danny potentially had millions of 22x greatgrandparents, how surprising was this? I wIsh this programme would stop using phrases such as ‘Danny Dyer’s 22x greatgrandfather’. It should instead say ‘ one of Danny Dyer’s 22x great-grandfathers’. This would go some way to projecting the realities of genealogy.
Ancestry follows a geometric progression — two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on.
Therefore (and assuming no immigration and no commonality in any particular generation) we all have 16,777,216 ‘22x greatgrandparents’ and since that time have accumulated 33,554,430 direct antecedents.
Edward III was born in 1312 and died in 1377, and in the mid-14th century (before the Black Death) the population of England is estimated to have been between four to six million. Therefore everyone alive in the mid- 14th century would be on most people’s family tree, several times.
The difficult part of the process is reliably demonstrating the links before the start of civil registration (1837), the start of parish registers (1538) and back into the Dark Ages. The only chance one has is to find a provable link to a member of the landed gentry for whom written records and pedigrees are likely to exist.
so it’s not all that surprising that anyone is related to Edward III or william the Conqueror. what would be surprising is being able to prove it.
Clive Mullins, Yarmouth, Isle of Wight.
QUESTION
Watching the Danish TV drama 1864 about the war between Denmark and the German Confederation, why was the disputed area not given to Denmark in 1918 or 1945? ThE Duchy of schleswig was a province in southern Jutland, covering the area about 40 miles north and 55 miles south of the current border between Germany and Denmark. It had a large ethnically German population, but along with its southern neighbour, the Duchy of holstein, was under Danish administration after the 1815 Treaty of Paris, with settled postNapoleonic European borders.
This remained the situation until 1864 when the combined forces of Prussia and Austria defeated Denmark in the second schleswig war, forcing Christian IX, King of Denmark, on August 1, 1864, to renounce all his rights in the duchies in favour of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and King william I of Prussia. Under the 1864 Treaty of Vienna, schleswig and holstein were granted jointly to Prussia and Austria, Prussia occupying and administering schleswig and Austria occupying holstein.
But Prussia’s Chancellor otto von Bismarck, seeing a way to break Austria’s dominant position in the German Confederation, precipitated a crisis in holstein, triggering the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.
The so-called seven weeks war ended in a Prussian victory and was formally concluded on August 23 by the Treaty of Prague. This treaty assigned the whole of schleswig-holstein to Prussia, which also annexed hanover, hesse-Kassel, Nassau and Frankfurt, acquiring the territory which had separated the eastern and western parts of the Prussian state.
This was the situation in 1914 at the outbreak of world war I. schleswig, a province with a mixed ethnic German and Danish population, had been an integral part of Prussia, the German Empire’s dominant state, for 48 years.
At the end of the war, neutral Denmark pressed its claims for the territory, and the fate of schleswig was addressed in detail in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
section XII Articles 109-114 provided that German troops and civil authorities would vacate the province, that an international commission would immediately administer it, and that a plebiscite would be held to determine its national disposition.
The plebiscite devised by the Allies consisted of separate votes in the northern third of the Duchy and the southern twothirds. By stipulating two votes and drawing the division line north of Flensburg, the Allies all but guaranteed that the province would be partitioned between Denmark and Germany.
The vote took place on March 14, 1920, and as expected the northern third voted to return to Denmark and the southern two-thirds to remain part of Germany. After Germany lost world war II, there was limited appetite for Denmark to reacquire its lost territory in schleswig. A faction led by Prime Minister Knud Kristensen was keen to regain the land, but he was forced to resign after a vote of no confidence in the Danish parliament.
Sam Faulks, Hexham, Northumberland.
QUESTION
An earlier answer stated that Henry Kaiser designed the Liberty ships. Is this true? FUrThEr to answers about the Liberty ships (‘sam-boats’ to us Jolly Jacks), the designer of the ‘sam’ variation was an American, william Francis Gibbs.
The British Liberty (Empire and ocean classes) were of conventional two-island design, but the sam had its accommodation block mid- ships. some of the British Liberty ships were steam-turbine, others steam-reciprocating.
one of the most remarkable feats ever in shipbuilding was the construction of the robert E. Peary (Yard No 440) in November 1942. within two hours of construction commencing, her bottom shell was nearly finished, and the incredible pace of building was kept up until on November 12, just four days and 15.5 hours later, she was ready for launching.
Another 3½ days were spent on final fitting-out and she was ready for sailing.
so, eight days after her keel was laid, the ss robert E. Peary sailed away from the shipyard to join the ever-growing numbers of sam-boats. A total of 2,710 Liberty ships were constructed with many soldiering on after the war.
Th es a ms were propelled by steam-reciprocating engines. As the war was drawing to a close, the U.s. produced the sam-boats’ successor, the Victory ship. These were fast (17 knots) steam-turbine propelled ships, much more sophisticated than the sam.
There was a derelict sam (ss Valiant Enterprise) tied-up at the breakwater in Colombo (then Ceylon) harbour for many years as any other Jolly Jacks will remember. she had been abandoned by her owners in 1960 and was eventually towed out to sea and allowed to sink on 23/2/67 in a position which wouldn’t endanger other shipping.
After world war II, the U.s. Government sold off many Liberty ships, which had performed an important stop-gap until UK shipyards were able to replace our horrendous losses with new ship building.
Philip Roe (ex. MN Marine engineer. T&J Brocklebank Ltd.), Stamford Bridge, York.