Casualty rates, then and now
One of my not-for-work books in August was a history of the decline of the New England fisheries. This paragraph jumped out at me: One night in February, 1862, Gloucester [Massachusetts] alone lost 120 men and 15 fishing vessels to a northeast gale on Georges Bank. A summer gale in 1873 swept the grounds from ...
One of my not-for-work books in August was a history of the decline of the New England fisheries. This paragraph jumped out at me:
One night in February, 1862, Gloucester [Massachusetts] alone lost 120 men and 15 fishing vessels to a northeast gale on Georges Bank. A summer gale in 1873 swept the grounds from the Grand Banks to Georges, claiming 128 men.... Between 1860 and 1880 The Fishermen's Book records 1,800 Gloucestermen lost at sea, an average of 90 men a year for a town whose population never exceeded 25,000 people.
Among other things, this makes me understand better how Americans endured the casualty rates of the Civil War.
One of my not-for-work books in August was a history of the decline of the New England fisheries. This paragraph jumped out at me:
One night in February, 1862, Gloucester [Massachusetts] alone lost 120 men and 15 fishing vessels to a northeast gale on Georges Bank. A summer gale in 1873 swept the grounds from the Grand Banks to Georges, claiming 128 men…. Between 1860 and 1880 The Fishermen’s Book records 1,800 Gloucestermen lost at sea, an average of 90 men a year for a town whose population never exceeded 25,000 people.
Among other things, this makes me understand better how Americans endured the casualty rates of the Civil War.
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