Talk:HMS Levant (1758)

Informal review

One relatively minor edit: Note A says "Adams' £9.5s fee compared unfavourably with an average £9.0s per ton" It should be "favorably" as his fee was more than the average. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hist ed (talk • contribs) 04:31, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Following up on a discussion on my talk page, I'd like to offer the following suggestions for how this article could be further developed ahead of a FAC:

• "Levant was assigned to the Royal Navy's Jamaica station" - perhaps say when
  • Done.
• " In final construction her hull was also larger than contracted, at 595  34⁄94 tons" - "in final construction" sounds a bit awkward: can another term be used? ('as completed' perhaps?)
  • Ykraps has proposed a rewording for this, which is fine. However I have a source somewhere which discusses the general inability of private shipyards to stick to precise construction dimensions. So I might reword this again to give it more context. The actual difference in dimensions had no real effect on Levant as a vessel - it's more a trivial oddity that it was slightly the wrong size.
• "She saw no engagement" - this is also a bit awkward
  • Done.
• "Tucker received orders from Admiral Rodney transferring Levant to the command of Captain John Laforey, previously of the sixth-rate HMS Echo" - do we know why? - was this a routine handover, or something else?
  • Routine promotion, but will add something on Laforey's career to make this clear.Story turns out to be more interesting than that. Tucker was ill with gout, and seems unable to continue as captain. He also went home to inherit a king's ransom from his uncle Ralph Allen, who died in 1764. Tucker's illness caught up with him also, however - he died in turn in 1770, at the age of 43. have added this to the article, partly in text, partly as note.
• "The rebuilt Levant" - 'rebuilding' usually refers to major modifications to a ship which leave it a substantially different vessel, which doesn't seem to be the case here given the quick time in which they were completed.
  • Done. Repairs sufficient to get her back home so she could be paid off. Not a rebuild in the correct sense of the word.
• "but put to sea again at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War" - can a date be provided?
  • Done, 22 June 1775. Also slightly reworded the sentence.
• I've made various tweaks to the article's wording, mainly to strip out some unneeded words. I'd suggest that there's scope for further copy editing along these lines.
  • Thanks, these are great. Have edited these sentences too much, and have needlessly convoluted the words.
• A map of the Caribbean at around the time of the Seven Years War would be more useful than the current map of Guadeloupe, which doesn't really depict anything useful to helping readers understand the article. A map of the western Mediterranean at around the time of the American Revolutionary War would also be helpful.
  • Hmm, good idea but I don't immediately have one that I could guarantee is PD. Will have a look around.
• Overall though, the article is in great shape and makes very good use of the available sources. Nick-D (talk) 03:54, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
  • @Nick-D: Thanks, am very appreciative of the review. Still don't like the way the article ends with a quote, might pull it out of the text and leave it as it stands only in the quotebox. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:22, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
    • I like the use of the quote to end the article personally: it helps to sum up the article. Nick-D (talk) 04:57, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
      • @Nick-D: Thanks, I can't think of anything better so will leave it there. One passing question: what do you think about giving prices in some kind of current value? Some sort of comparator seems necessary, otherwise the figures used in the article for construction or prize monies are entirely meaningless. But calculating inflation/purchasing power across 250 years generates an equally meaningless figure, for all that there are reliable websites like measuringworth.com that do exactly this.

I've contemplated using local comparators, but the actual comparisons are a bit arbitrary (building a mid-sized ship of the line is equivalent to building a large public building. Mr. Darcy's annual income would have built around two frigates). On my last FAC (eight years ago) I was advised to use the measuringworth method, but I gather modern views vary. -- Euryalus (talk) 06:37, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

As an economist, I'd suggest not including the conversion for the reasons you note - eg, that the methodologies for converting prices across such a long period of time are so problematic that the exercise is pointless at best. Few serious recent historians do this, with most generally using local comparators. It would probably be best to just let the figures speak for themselves unless the sources give some useful local comparators you can use without getting into WP:OR or SYNTH. Nick-D (talk) 07:42, 11 March 2017 (UTC)