This edited article about General Gordon originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

General Gordon of Khartoum by Graham Coton

In London, the bells were ringing to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. In houses, great and small, glasses were being raised, and in the streets people were linking arms to join in the singing of Auld Lang Syne. It was a time for jollity, of optimism and hope for a better and more prosperous year than the last. A time when the future was something to celebrate.

But far away in the besieged city of Khartoum there was no cause to celebrate the New Year for the very good reason that it promised only suffering and probably death for everyone behind its walls. For nearly three hundred days, the men, women and children there had been surrounded and hemmed in by an evergrowing army of rebels under the control of the fanatical Mahdi, the self-styled Messiah of the Mohammedans.

Already the situation seemed hopeless. The streets swept by shell fire; rations down to the barest minimum for survival; hundreds already carried away by disease; troops continually deserting; the city held daily with the greatest difficulty and loss of life; communications with the outside world completely cut off: it was hardly surprising that those who still survived saw no reason to celebrate that first day of 1885.

It was, sadly, a situation which would not have occurred but for the stubborn pride of General Gordon, who had been sent to the Sudan charged with a commission to withdraw the British from the Egyptian garrisons of Suakin, Berber and Khartoum. Instead, on arriving at Khartoum, he had decided that its fall would inevitably lead to a widespread revolt and the eventual control of the whole of the Sudan by the Mahdi.

Fearing nothing, and convinced that he was an instrument in the hands of God, he had decided to hold Khartoum. After coming to this decision, he wrote cheerfully in his Journal: “I own to having been very insubordinate to Her Majesty’s Government and its officials, but it is my nature, and I cannot help it. I know if I was chief I would never employ myself, for I am incorrigible.” The possible fate of those under his care apparently did not seem to have worried him unduly.

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This edited article about motorcycle stunts originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

Some motor-cycle stunts are more spectacular than others

Captain Tony Scarisbrick is a man with an iron nerve. He needed this courage on 4th June, 1971, when he volunteered to be the forty-first man in a line of closely packed soldiers at a Royal Artillery motorcycle display at Woolwich, London.

Scarisbrick lay there unflinching as a motorcycle ridden by Sergeant Major Thomas Gledhill roared up a ramp at the end of a line of prone volunteers. As Gledhill reached the summit of the ramp, his 441 c.c. B.S.A. Victor Machine took off like a snarling beast. Would Gledhill have the power at his command to clear the men beneath him? Or would he crash upon them with disastrous results?

The watching crowds knew who was the most likely victim of an accident. It was Scarisbrick, calmly confident that Gledhill’s skill would enable him to rise to his feet unscathed at the end of the feat.

This confidence was fully justified. Gledhill cleared the 41 men successfully in a most spectacular leap on his machine which no man has yet been able to surpass.

This edited article about diving originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

Diver and sharks filmed underwater

Fright paralysed Lotte Hass. For a moment, she hung suspended in the warm tropical waters, staring in disbelief at the amazing creature which was swimming towards her.

It was like nothing she had ever seen before, for it is not everyone’s lot to come face to face with a manta ray. And this one had huge flippers which gave it a wingspan of over fifteen feet. Its features were frighteningly equipped with two large lobes which it used to shovel food into its mouth.

Lotte felt particularly defenceless in her skin-diving suit and face mask because all she had for her protection was a harpoon.

But she had been asked to swim close to the creature for a film about underwater life being made by her husband, Hans Hass, whose films have been shown on television in Britain. He had assured her that the manta ate nothing but tiny marine creatures called plankton, and had no teeth at all.

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This edited article about the Second World War originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

Nick Alkemade reached for the rip cord and pulled it right away, a charred thread with no effect whatsoever

Behind him was his plane, turned into a ball of fire and smoke after an enemy attack. Below him, well over three miles away, was the ground. And nothing but clouds stood between I. M. Chisov of the U.S.S.R. and what seemed like a swift end on the mountains.

Chisov had fallen from his plane, an Ilyushin 4, before he had had time to strap on his parachute harness in January, 1942, during the Second World War.

Falling at a speed which could have been anything between a hundred and a hundred and eighty miles an hour, Chisov plunged towards the peaks. Bouncing off the edge of a snow-covered ravine, he slid to the bottom, shattering his spine and fracturing his pelvis or hip bone.

But he was alive after a fall of 21,980 ft. (6,700 metres), having made the longest descent without a parachute on record.

Few men can know the fears of such an experience. But one who did share them was Sergeant Nick Alkemade of the R.A.F. who jumped from his blazing bomber over Germany during a war-time raid. When Alkemade pulled the rip cord of his parachute, he found that it had been reduced to ashes by the fire.

He fell from 20,000 ft. (6,096 metres) and landed in a deep drift of snow on the edge of a pine forest some miles outside Berlin.

His only injuries were a broken wrist and leg. He was captured by the Germans, who at first refused to believe his story until he showed them the charred remains of his parachute.

Before he was sent to a prisoner of war camp, Alkemade was given a signed and witnessed document testifying that he had fallen without a parachute from a height of over three miles.

“Without that,” they told him. “No one will believe your story after the war.”

This edited article about Poon Lim originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

All was calm aboard the S.S. Ben Lomond as it steamed through the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean near the equator on 23rd November, 1942, during the Second World War.

Suddenly, the peace of the ship was shattered as an enemy torpedo pierced the ship’s hull and exploded with a loud clap like thunder.

As water rushed through the hole torn in the metal hull, the ship listed to one side. Hurriedly, the crew took to their lifeboats. Among them was Second Steward Poon Lim who flung himself into the ocean and swam strongly towards a raft and scrambled on to it.

Strong currents carried him away from the sinking ship and the other survivors in their boats, and soon he was alone on the vast ocean.

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This edited article about Nelson originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 692 published on 19 April 1975.

Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar by Ron Embleton

Tough old salts wept. Their comrades were dying all around them on H.M.S. Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. And while this carnage distressed them, the man for whom they felt most deeply lay in his cabin, dying from an enemy sniper’s shot which had broken his back.

Horatio Nelson, the commander who had led them to great victories against the French and had lost an arm and an eye, was fading fast. We are told that his last thoughts were of his beloved Emma Hamilton and of their child. But perhaps he also thought of his own childhood which had begun in the parsonage at Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk.

Nelson was born to the rector and his wife on Michaelmas Day, 29 September 1758. He was their sixth child, and five more were to follow. To bring up so large a family on a parson’s small income would have been a problem in any case, but the sudden death of Mrs. Nelson, when most of the children were still young, was a disaster. The middle son, Horatio, was motherless at the age of nine.

Fortunately, his mother had rich and influential relations, and her brother, a captain in the Royal Navy, promised to take care of one of the boys. At the age of twelve, Horatio asked if he could be the one chosen to go to sea with his uncle. The answer came back, “What has little Horatio done, who is so weak, that out of all the rest he should be sent to rough it at sea? But let him come! The first time we go into action, a cannon-ball may knock off his head, and provide for him at once.”

Pale, frail and under-sized though he looked, Horatio was tougher than his uncle thought, and was to escape many a cannon-ball before he fell in battle, the victim of a sniper’s bullet. He seems to have been born to command. Already his older brother meekly took orders from him. The village lads obediently pumped a stream of water for Horatio to sail paper boats in the village street. On windy Barton Broad he learned to handle small, fast sailing dinghies. And he was well-known for stealing off on private escapades (birds’ nesting, fruit-stealing, and similar pranks reported by his schoolmasters) at the various boarding establishments to which he was sent.

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This edited article about the Titanic originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 668 published on 2 November 1974.

On the deck of the Titanic

Titanic sinks as her passengers attempt to escape the disaster in the inadequate number of lifeboats by Peter Jackson

The sinking of the Titanic by Graham Coton

The famous Titanic liner was certainly aptly named. At the time of the disaster, when she sank on her maiden voyage in 1912, she was the largest ship afloat, could carry 3,320 persons, and weighed 46,328 tons.

The Titanic was of an all-steel construction and inside her steel hull were watertight compartments, each 60 feet long, which were entered, one from another, through watertight doors. She was, it was claimed at the time, unsinkable!

Armed with this confidence in the ship, the pride of the White Star shipping line, the first passengers set sail from Britain for America on the Titanic’s first and last voyage.

The water of the Atlantic on the night of the disaster was very calm and flat. She was steaming at her top speed of 22 knots and making good time.

The icebergs which float south from the Greenland coast can be a great hazard to ships on the busy routes between Europe and North America. They chill the air around them so that they are often surrounded by a cloud of mist.

And on that fateful night of April 14, 1912, one of these treacherous icebergs could not be seen from the ship as it sailed happily along. It struck the Titanic a gigantic blow ripping a hole right along the ship’s side below the water line.

She took two hours to go down and during that time 652 passengers managed to get into the lifeboats, and a further 60 into collapsible boats. In all, 712 people were saved but 1,513 others perished. These included the famous journalist W. T. Stead and John Jacob Astor, the American inventor.

The tragedy of the disaster was that many more people could have survived. Less than twenty miles away from the stricken vessel was the Leyland liner Californian which could have come to the Titanic’s rescue had its radio operator been on duty. Only the arrival of the Cunard liner Carpathia 20 minutes after the Titanic went down prevented further loss of life.

As a result of the disaster, the first International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea was called in London in 1913. At this meeting rules were drawn up requiring that every ship should have lifeboat space for each person on board. The Titanic, incidentally, had only 1,178 boat spaces for the 2,224 on board. Also, that lifeboat drills be held during each voyage; and, since the Californian had not heard the distress calls of the Titanic, that ships maintain a 24-hour radio watch. The International Ice Patrol was also established to warn ships of ice in the North Atlantic shipping lanes.

This edited article about Joshua Slocum originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 680 published on 25 January 1975.

In 1895 Joshua Slocum claimed to have seen a spectre on board his sloop, ‘Spray’, by Graham Coton

The sailing sloop Spray was only 36 feet long, and the weather off the coast of Patagonia could hardly have been worse. Under short sail the little vessel rode it out as best she could, rising to the crest of each tremendous wave before dropping like a stone into the trough, while her timbers groaned in protest. Suddenly the Spray’s captain glanced behind him to see a wave of unbelievable size bearing down on him. He knew instinctively that there would be no riding this one. Without a moment’s hesitation he abandoned the wheel and leaped for the rigging, scrambling up as high as he could go.

From the top of the mast the man looked down in time to see the whole of his vessel vanish beneath countless tons of water. Clinging desperately to the rigging, he waited to see if the deck would appear again or not. Somewhat to his surprise it did, water cascading from it as the sloop shook herself like a dog. Totally unperturbed, the captain slid down from his perch and regained the cockpit. Perhaps if he had had some companion he might have made some half joking remark. But there was none. In that January of 1896, Captain Joshua Slocum was engaged on an enterprise that had never been attempted before.

Single handed, he was sailing round the world.

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This edited article about the Thirties originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 678 published on 11 January 1975.

The Spanish Civil War by Graham Coton

As the jack-booted Fascist troops of Benito Mussolini’s pre-war Italy crushed under foot the defenceless independent African state of Abyssinia, the 54 member states of the League of Nations met at their Geneva headquarters. Upon their decision that autumn day in 1935 hung the fate of the world.

The League, a kind of parliament of nations and the forerunner of the present-day United Nations, had come into being after the First World War, in 1920. For 11 years it had prospered. Then came the turning point.

It happened when a body of Japanese conspirators suddenly invaded Chinese Manchuria against the orders of their government. The year was 1934 – a year when the world was weakened and preoccupied by economic depression.

If the members of the League had acted quickly, they might have stopped the Japanese. Instead, they hesitated. While they dithered, the Japanese wrested four provinces from China.

And those nations who nurtured secret plans to expand, suddenly saw that the mighty League of Nations was just a paper tiger. It presented absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

Nothing seemed to go right for the League of Nations after the Japanese fiasco. The disarmament conference it had called in Geneva collapsed pathetically. In 1934 Hitler contemptuously withdrew Nazi Germany from League membership. The next year, Italy’s dictator Mussolini launched his attack on Abyssinia in the certain knowledge that he had nothing to fear from the League of Nations.

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This edited article about volunteer regiments in the British Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 672 published on 30 November 1974.

The case of Drummer Moore was difficult because there was no evidence of his desertion.

The sun beat down on Sergeant Pugh’s shako. Dust from the parched earth coated his clothes and, mixed with sweat, caked his face. His stomach was bloated with the morning’s beer, and he belched; then, slowly and carefully, he began to curse. No ordinary cursing this, but elaborate, imaginative, comprehensive cursing as befitted a former private in the Regular Army, now a sergeant in the Volunteers.

It was July 12, 1804. Across the Channel, Europe was in turmoil and France, under Napoleon, prepared to invade England. Meanwhile, Sergeant Pugh and two privates, who had volunteered to defend their native shores, were slogging across Farnham Common in a heatwave to pick up a deserter.

Sixty years had passed since England’s civilians had taken up arms against Bonnie Prince Charlie’s invasion of 1745. Since then, wars on the continent, war with America and war with France had made heavy demands on the Regular Army and had forced the government to maintain a large reservoir of part-time soldiers for protection at home.

The government had at first relied for this on the Militia. It had enforced and extended the Militia Acts by which able-bodied men were encouraged to train regularly as soldiers. To make up the numbers required, men were chosen by ballot. Those selected served for three years unless they claimed exemption, provided a substitute, or paid a fine.

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