I’ve been trying to come up with a way to express my thinking about the capture of 15 Royal Marines and sailors of the Royal Navy. Luckily for me, someone else captured it for me:

It’s been over 200 years since the Royal Navy placed a frigate and a fighting captain in every part of the world’s oceans deep enough to float one in order to frustrate Napoleon’s imperial ambitions and safeguard the Home Islands. It’s been almost a hundred and forty years since Parliament sent a combined force 0f 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, 26,000 camp followers and 40,000 animals led by General Sir Robert Napier on a 400 mile trek across some of the harshest terrain in Africa to rescue a handful of British diplomats and missionaries held hostage by the mad king of Abyssinia. The flower of a generation was cut down on Flanders fields to safeguard the continent from Prussian militarism, and even at their darkest hour, the bravery and pluck of the British citizen following the debacle at Dunkirk and during the Blitz was never in doubt.

But it appears perhaps that the last of that Britain may have sailed home victorious at the end of the campaign to wrest the Faulkland Islands back from Argentine aggression. The Iron Lady may not have “been for turning,” but the wheel turned on without her. What was Britain seems to have become Europe.

When in times of old the British lion did roar, the world would tremble. Now the commodore of a royal fleet with a 1000-year history, and a man commanding a ship belonging to that fleet - a fleet, by the way, which seems to be evaporating before our very eyes - suffers 15 of his people to be illegally seized without firing a shot. Having placed them in danger in a war zone without, it would appear, having even been in the position to support them. In much the same waters where a previous insult was issued three years ago.

I don’t know how I feel about a shooting war with Iran. But if a bunch of vessels come alongside some of your folks sitting in a couple of rubber boats, and you’ve got weapons aboard, it seems obvious what your course of action should be.

There was a time — before satellite communications and GPS — that Royal Navy Captains, Commodores, Admirals and Commanders-In-Chief has absolute authority to act, so long as they did so within the confines of their orders from the Admiralty. And acting in ones’ own defense was always permissable. Now, the Admiralty is excerising tactical command of individual vessels at sea from cushioned chairs in London. And that’s obviously to the detriment of its sailors and Royal Marines.

Indeed, looking back to the days of Nelson and Napoleon, if a Royal Navy officer hauled down colors and surrendered his ship and his men without firing a shot, he would likely as not have been court martialed and set on the beach, at half pay and without a ship for the duration of his life.

Where has that spirit gone?

HT: Streiff at Redstate