Talk:HMS Otranto

Latest comment: 9 years ago by 110.20.227.144 in topic GA Review

Untitled edit

S.S. Otranto Orient line. A brief history from the back of the dinner menu card Wednesday 9th January, 1957.

"Otranto" Gross Registered tonnage = 20,051 Shaft Horse Power = 20,000 Service speed = 17 1/2 knots Length overall = 658ft 7 in Breadth = 75ft N. of passengers = 1,394 No. of crew = 487 Built by = Vickers - Armstrong Ltd., Barrow

"Otranto" was launched on 9th June, 1925, and was originally designed to carry First and Third class passengers. She had a distinguished war service as a Trooper and was present at the North African, Sicilian and Salerno landings. She was frequently subjected to air attack, fortunately without sustaining damage. "Otranto" was the fourth and last of the pre - war Orient liners to return to commercial service, and in 1948 she was reconditioned as a One - Class Tourist ship at a cost of £1,250,000. She made her first post - war voyage as a passenger vessel from Tilbury on 14th July, 1949. 86.131.105.139 (talk) 12:42, 4 April 2013 (UTC)Martin Riddall <Otranto dinner menu 9th Jan 1957>Reply

Burial edit

' The American servicemen were exhumed and repatriated to the United States in 1920. '

Not all were repatriated, only those whose family requested repatriation. The others and unidentified bodies were buried in Brookwood American Cemetery. Two identified American soldiers and an identified American YMCA officer were buried at Kilchoman on Islay along with the British crew members of the vessel. An unnamed black sailor was buried at Port Ellen. jmb (talk)

GA Review edit

Please Note. The dates and information for the 1909, 1910 voyages of the Otranto do not tally with the ticket of my Grandfather, Robert Love who sailed for Sydney on 21 January 1910, by which time we are told the ship had done two runs to Australia and was cruising the Mediterranean Sea, to return to the Australia run in 1911. I doubt that even a new steamship could do two such runs since its launch in July, 1909. Greg McGuire, Otranto Descendent, Sydney Australia. Ref; Passenger Contract Ticket No.127, Orient Line, 17th Jan 1910. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.20.227.144 (talk) 05:33, 25 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

This review is transcluded from Talk:HMS Otranto/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Peacemaker67 (talk · contribs) 01:00, 30 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

Rate Attribute Review Comment
1. Well-written:
  1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.
  • There she remained until where? On the run? In the UK? Y
  • Who was Captain Edwards? He is introduced without explanation. Y
  • Same sentence, the grammar doesn't really work, there is something missing.
    • Davidson was apparently the acting captain for this voyage; the sources don't really provide anything else about him. I'm rather at a loss on how to rephrase as I can't see anything wrong with the sentence. I suppose that I could move up mention of him and his role as commodore to the lead sentence of the paragraph, but inserting that info seems to add more problems than it solves. Any suggestions?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:58, 1 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
      • suggest After taking fire from the light cruiser SMS Dresden and the armoured cruiser SMS Gneisenau, her commander Captain Edwards ordered Otranto out of line, away from the Germans. Otranto then headed west at her best speed as she had no value against the German cruisers. Glasgow was the only other British ship to survive the battle.
  • link Valparaiso Y
  1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
  • a few overlinks, Australia, bridge, amidships and Belfast. Y
  • 1600 should be 16:00 Y
  • suggest use of template:circa for the laid down field, rather than a ? Y
  • suggest the fact that the passengers were American troops be included in the lead Y
  • Lifeboats and Officer of the Deck seem to be inappropriately capitalised Y
2. Verifiable with no original research:
  2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
  2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
  2c. it contains no original research.
3. Broad in its coverage:
  3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
  3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
  4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
  5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute. no issues
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
  6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
  • the licensing on the two images aren't quite right. The infobox one doesn't have an author, so how we know it was taken by the UK govt is beyond me. The second one looks ok, but the licensing needs to point to collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/20460.html rather than Flickr, because the RMG is the real source. Suggest asking Nikki for assistance on the infobox one.
    • The infobox photo is from the Imperial War Museum, on which copyright has lapsed world-wide. Corrected source for the 1909 image, although I've swapped them around to match the chronology better.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:58, 30 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
      • Then the licence is incorrect, because there is no evidence it was published prior to 1964. Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 02:12, 30 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
        • None needed as it falls under "It is a photograph created by the United Kingdom Government and taken prior to 1 June 1957" Without an identified photographer, we must assume that it was taken by a RN photographer, as a donated photo would have a photographer identified. IWM photos have been used with this exact same level of sourcing in FA-class articles many, many times.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:59, 30 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
          • If that is the assumption, then that should be noted in the author field. Most of the photos from that collection (which was donated) are marked as having been taken by a RN surgeon, but that is not the case with this one. Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 03:44, 30 November 2014 (UTC) YReply
            • That seems unnecessary to me; I'm going to ask Nikki to weigh in on this.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:58, 1 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
            • Sure. Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 20:59, 1 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
              • "Photographer not identified" is the most apt author field - after all, there's none identified. That being said, I'm not sure we can assume it's a RN photographer, as Parkes was a historian and might have had photos from others in his collections, and IWM's licensing description isn't all that helpful. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:30, 2 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
  6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions. good coverage of civil and naval service, captions ok
  7. Overall assessment. On hold for seven days for remaining points to be addressed Passing, all criteria now met.

(Moving this discussion outside the confines of the review box) The key thing for me is that the IWM charges for commercial use of all its images, which means that they hold the copyright, regardless of the identity of the photographer and any gov't service. Oscar Parkes himself was a RN doctor, but I don't know if he was officially assigned to take photos or not. He was the editor of Jane's Fighting Ships for a time so he could well have been taking photos for his own purposes before donating his collection, possibly including photos that he didn't take, to the IWM. I'm quite comfortable in believing that his donation included all rights to his photos. As for the ones that he may have purchased, without knowing the photographer's identity we can never know what the true situation is. They could well be somebody's weekend snap or an official photo for which the documentation has been lost. And with that ambiguity, I'm not comfortable in a strict interpretation that says we cannot use any IWM photo that lacks documentation that it was taken by an official photographer.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:49, 2 December 2014 (UTC)Reply

IWM charges for commercial use of all of its images, even where it doesn't own the copyright - with photos that are unambiguously PD. That's what I meant in saying that their licensing description isn't helpful, because it doesn't allow us to draw conclusions about what the actual copyright status of the image is. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:20, 3 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
My view is that any assumptions (as distinct from known facts) about the authorship or donation status of a particular image should be noted on the image page. Otherwise, anyone coming across the image would assume it is entirely ok. That was my original point, and based on Nikki's comments, I think I'm entirely justified sticking to it. Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 08:40, 4 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
OK, done.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:49, 5 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
Passing, well done as usual. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 02:19, 6 December 2014 (UTC)Reply