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Billy Connolly

Sir William Connolly (born 24 November 1942) is a Scottish retired comedian, actor, artist, musician, and television presenter. He is sometimes known by the Scots nickname the Big Yin ("the Big One"). Known for his idiosyncratic and often improvised observational comedy, frequently including strong language, Connolly has topped many UK polls as the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. In 2022 he received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Connolly's trade, in the early 1960s, was that of a welder (specifically a boilermaker) in the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer. He first sang in the folk rock band The Humblebums with Gerry Rafferty and Tam Harvey, with whom he stayed until 1971, before beginning singing as a solo artist. In the early 1970s, Connolly made the transition from folk singer with a comedic persona to fully-fledged comedian, for which he is now best known. In 1972, he made his theatrical debut, at the Cottage Theatre in Cumbernauld, with a revue called Connolly's Glasgow Flourish. He also played the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 1972, Connolly's first solo album, Billy Connolly Live!, was produced, with a mixture of comedic songs and short monologues. In 1975 he topped the UK Singles Chart with "D.I.V.O.R.C.E."

As an actor, Connolly has appeared in various films, including  Water (1985), Indecent Proposal (1993), Pocahontas (1995), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Mrs Brown (1997) (for which he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role), The Boondock Saints (1999), The Last Samurai (2003), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008), Brave (2012), and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). On his 75th birthday in 2017, three portraits of Connolly were made by leading artists Jack Vettriano, John Byrne, and Rachel Maclean. These were later turned into part of Glasgow's official mural trail. In October that year, he was knighted at Buckingham Palace by Prince William, for services to entertainment and charity.

Connolly announced his retirement from comedy in 2018, and in recent years he has established himself as an artist. In 2020, he unveiled the fifth release from his Born on a Rainy Day collection in London, followed by another instalment later that year and has subsequently issued another five collections. During the filming of the ITV documentary Billy Connolly: It's Been a Pleasure, he described how art had given him "a new lease of life".

Early life
Connolly was born on 24 November 1942 at 69 Dover Street, "on the linoleum, three floors up", in Anderston, Glasgow. This section of Dover Street, between Breadalbane and Claremont streets, was demolished in the 1970s. Connolly refers to this in his 1983 song "I Wish I Was in Glasgow" with the lines "I would take you there and show you but they've pulled the building down" and "they bulldozed it all to make a road". The flat had only two rooms: a kitchen-living room, with a recess where the children slept, and another room for their parents. The family bathed in the kitchen sink, and there was no hot water.

Connolly was born to Catholic parents, William Connolly and Mary McLean, both of whom were of partly Irish descent. In 1946, when he was four years old, Connolly's mother left her children while their father was serving as an engineer in the Royal Air Force in Burma. "I've never felt abandoned by her," Connolly explained in 2009. "My mother was a teenager. My father was in Burma, fighting a bloody war. The Germans were dropping all sorts of crap on the town. We lived at the docks, so that's where all the bombs were happening. She was a teenager with two kids in a slum. A guy comes along and says, 'I love you. Come with me.' Given the choice, I think I'd have gone with him. It looks as though it might all end next Wednesday, from where you're standing. I don't have an ounce of feelings that she abandoned me. She tried to survive."

Connolly and his older sister, Florence (named after their maternal grandmother, and eighteen months his senior), were cared for by his father's two sisters, Margaret and Mona Connolly, in their cramped tenement in Stewartville Street, Partick. "My aunts constantly told me I was stupid, which still affects me today pretty badly. It's just a belief that I'm not quite as good as anyone else. It gets worse as you get older. I'm a happy man now but I still have the scars of that." Regarding his sister, Connolly has called her his "great defender". "To this day," he explained in 2009, "Guys say, 'God, your sister... We didn't dare beat you up – your sister was a nightmare'. She used to get after them."

In the mid-1960s, Flo was on holiday in Dunoon with her husband and two children. "My mother said, 'I saw Florence walking along, and I followed her.'" "I said, 'Did you speak to her?' 'Oh, no, I didn't,' she said. I thought, 'Oh, my god. It's like being a ghost while you're still alive.' Walking behind your own child. Having a look. I couldn't bear that."

The aunts resented the children for the fact that they had to sacrifice their young lives to look after them. It was Mona who was troubled the most by having to care for her niece and nephew. "It was very big of her to take on the responsibility, but having said that, I wish people wouldn't do that. I wish people wouldn't be very big for five minutes and rotten for twenty years. Just keep your 'big' and keep your 'rotten' and get out of my life, because, quite frankly, I would rather have gone to a children's home and be with a lot of other kids being treated the same. To this day, I'm still working on the things she did to me."

Connolly credits one of John Bradshaw's publications with helping him deal with his past demons. "He reckons that if this trauma happened to you when you were five or six then, emotionally, that part of you remains five or six. And what you have to do is carry that five- or six-year-old around with you and try and emotionally help that other part of you. It sounds a bit airy-fairy, but I think he's something of a genius, Mr Bradshaw."

His father returned from the war a stranger to his children shortly after the move to Partick. He never spoke to them about their mother's departure. Connolly's biography, Billy, written by wife Pamela Stephenson, documented years of physical and sexual abuse by his father, which began when he was ten and lasted until he was about 15. "Sometimes, when father hit me, I flew over the settee backwards in a sitting position. It was fabulous. Just like real flying, except you didn't get a cup of tea or a safety belt or anything." In 1949, Mona gave birth to a son, Michael, by a "local man". He was presented as a brother to Billy and Flo, and nobody questioned it.

Connolly's bedroom had double windows, which directly faced St Peter's Primary School across the street. Now defunct, the school has been converted into living accommodation. "The school was very violent indeed. At first, in the infant school, the nuns were very violent. And then over here at St Peter's, they were just strapping you all the time. I had a psychopath in here, called McDonald — Miss McDonald. 'Big Rosie', they called her. There was a guy with glasses in my class and she called him 'four eyes', and she was a teacher!"

At St. Peter's, Connolly decided that he wanted to make people laugh. "I can remember the moment in the school playground. I would have been 7 or 8. And I was sitting in a puddle and people were laughing. I had fallen in it and people found it funny. And it wasn't all that uncomfortable, so I stayed in it longer than I normally would because I really enjoyed the laughing. My life was very unhappy at the time, and laughter wasn't something I heard all the time, so it was a joy. And I realised quickly that if you can have an audience this way, life was rather pleasant." While at St Peter's, Connolly joined a gang. His arch-enemy was Geordie Sinclair, who lived around the corner.

Connolly was a Wolf Cub with the 141st Glasgow Scout Group. He revisits the site of one field trip, Auchengillan scout camp, during his World Tour of Scotland. At age 12, Connolly decided he wanted to become a comedian but did not think that he fit the mould, feeling he needed to become more "windswept and interesting". Also at that age, he joined an organisation called The Children of Mary. The group would visit people and say the Rosary, with a statue of the Lady of Lourdes in a shoebox. "We were as welcome as haemorrhoids." The group would all kneel around the statue and pray. "You could hear people hurrying prayers because there was a good television programme coming."

In the 1950s, Glasgow's sandstone tenements fell out of favour with the planners, which resulted in new houses being built on the fields and farmlands in the outskirts of the city. Between the ages of fourteen and twenty, Connolly was brought up on a now-demolished council estate on Kinfauns Drive in the Drumchapel district of Glasgow, and would make the daily journey to St. Gerard's Secondary School (also now defunct) in Govan, on the southern side of the River Clyde. He rode the bus to Partick, crossed the water by ferry and walked to 80 Vicarfield Street.

"Drumchapel is a housing estate just outside Glasgow. Well, it's in Glasgow, but just outside civilisation," he has joked. "To be quite honest, I quite liked it when I lived there. When I moved to Drumchapel, I was fourteen and there was a bluebell wood there, and it was in great condition then — I don't think it's in quite so good condition now — but it was lovely then. We had rabbits and pheasants, and I really quite liked it. I just started to dislike it when I got older, into my teens and things. In my late teens, when I was stuck out there, it cost me a lot of money to go anyplace. It was a kind of cowboy town, but I liked that aspect of it, buying stuff out of vans, a ragman coming in a wee green van."

Connolly revisited this tenement in Drumchapel during filming for The South Bank Show in 1992. "It eventually started to pall. This dreadful atmosphere came about the place. It's like Siberia. And once you're out here, there's no getting out of it. You have to buy your way out, or some kind of talent has to take you out, or you have to be very bright and move away to university."

Also at fourteen, Connolly started to become interested in music — mainly Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. At fifteen, he left school with two engineering qualifications, one collected by mistake which belonged to a boy named Connell.

Connolly was a year too young to work in the shipyards. Instead, he started working for John Smith's Bookshop, on St Vincent Street, delivering books on his bicycle. He became a delivery-van driver with Bilslands' Bakery until he was sixteen, when he was deemed overqualified (due to his J1 and J2 certificates) to become an engineer. Instead, he worked as a boilermaker at Alexander Stephen and Sons shipyard in Linthouse.

"What an extraordinary feeling," Connolly said, upon returning to the site of the now-demolished shipyard in 1992. "I spent a great deal of my life in here. From age 16 to... well, I started at 15. I started my apprenticeship at 16 and finished when I was 21. Stayed till I was 22, and moved along. I finished welding when I was 24. When I came here, as an apprentice, there was six ships being built, right where I'm standing. It was an extraordinary place. A hive of activity. Welders, caulkers, platers, burners, joiners, engineers, electricians. I learned how men talked to one another, and how merciless Glasgow humour can be. It has made an indelible mark on me." His foreman was Sammy Boyd, but the two biggest influences on him, according to the book written by his wife Pamela, were Jimmy Lucas and Bobby Dalgleish. Jimmy was one of Billy's trainers in the yard who helped him to hone his skills as a welder and a comedian.

Connolly also joined the Territorial Army Reserve unit 15th (Scottish) Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (15 PARA). He later commemorated his experiences in the song "Weekend Soldier".

Origin of "The Big Yin"
Connolly's nickname The Big Yin was first used during his adolescent years to differentiate between himself and his father. "My father was a very strong man. Broad and strong. He had an 18+1/2 inch neck collar. Huge, like a bull. He was "Big Billy" and I was "Wee Billy". And then I got bigger than him, and the whole thing got out of control. And then I became The Big Yin in Scotland. So, we'd go into the pub and someone would say, 'Billy Connolly was in.' 'Oh? Big Billy or Wee Billy?' 'The Big Yin.' 'Oh, Wee Billy.' If you were a stranger, you'd think, 'What are these people talking about?!'"

1960s
In the early 1960s, Connolly attended the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the first time. After spending time on the city's Rose Street, patronising the various drinking establishments, he became enamoured by some long-haired musicians and decided to model himself on them.

In 1965, after he had completed a 5-year apprenticeship as a boilermaker, Connolly accepted a ten-week job building an oil platform in Biafra, Nigeria. Upon his return to the United Kingdom, via Jersey, he worked briefly at John Brown & Company but decided to walk out on a Fair Friday to focus on being a folk singer.

After watching The Beverly Hillbillies, he bought his first banjo at the Barrowland market. He began to tour with the folkie crowd, including regular stints at The Scotia bar, on Stockwell Street, guided by folk singer Danny Kyle. "I kind of introduced Billy to the folk clubs, such as there were in those days – there were very few in those days. We used to go to places like Saturday Late or the Montrose Street Glasgow Folk Club."

Connolly formed a folk-pop duo called the Humblebums with Tam Harvey. In 1969, they were joined by Gerry Rafferty, who had approached Connolly after a gig in Paisley. The band signed for independent label, Transatlantic Records, and after recording one album (1969's First Collection of Merry Melodies), Harvey left the trio and Connolly and Rafferty went on to release two more albums: The New Humblebums (1969) and Open up the Door (1970). Connolly's time with Rafferty possibly influenced his future comedy, because years later he would recall how Rafferty's expert prank telephone calls, made while waiting to go on stage, used to make him "scream" with laughter. Connolly's contributions were primarily straightforward pop-folk with quirky and whimsical lyrics, but he had not especially focused on comedy at this point.

In 1968, a 26-year-old Connolly married Springburn native and interior designer Iris Pressagh, with whom he had two children. They initially lived on Redlands Road in Glasgow's West End, but, when fans began to wait out in the street, they moved to Drymen near the south-eastern shore of Loch Lomond.

Later that year, Connolly's mother went to meet him backstage after a Humblebums gig in Dunoon, where she was working in the cafeteria at Dunoon General Hospital. It was the second and final meeting between them since she had abandoned Connolly. She had been living in the town with her partner, Willie Adams, with whom she had three daughters and a son. "I went home to her house and stayed the night, instead of the hotel. The sadness is... She was a very nice woman, but we never got along. We both tried to like each other, and I don't think she liked me very much. I don't regret it, but I'm sad about it. I wish I'd liked her. And I wish she'd liked me."

In 1971, the Humblebums broke up, with Rafferty going on to record his solo album Can I Have My Money Back? Connolly returned to being a folk singer. His live performances featured humorous introductions that became increasingly long. The head of Transatlantic Records, Nat Joseph, who had signed The Humblebums and had nurtured their career, was concerned that Connolly find a way to develop a distinctive solo career just as his former bandmate, Gerry Rafferty, was doing. Joseph saw several of Connolly's performances and noted his comedic skills. Joseph had nurtured the recording career of another Scottish folk entertainer, Hamish Imlach, and saw potential in Connolly following a similar path. He suggested to Connolly that he drop the folk-singing and focus primarily on becoming a comedian.

1970s
In 1972, Connolly made his theatrical debut, at the Cottage Theatre in Cumbernauld, with a revue called Connolly's Glasgow Flourish. He played the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with poet Tom Buchan, with whom he had written The Great Northern Welly Boot Show, and in costumes designed by the artist and writer John Byrne, who also designed the covers of the Humblebums' records.

Also in 1972, Nat Joseph produced Connolly's first solo album, Billy Connolly Live!, a mixture of comedic songs and short monologues that hinted at what was to follow. In late 1973, Joseph produced the breakthrough album that propelled Connolly to British stardom. Recorded at a small venue, The Tudor Hotel in Airdrie, the record was a double album titled Solo Concert. Releasing a live double-album by a comedian who was virtually unknown (except to a cult audience in Glasgow) was an unusual gambit by Joseph but his faith in Connolly's talent turned out to be warranted. Joseph and his marketing team, which included publicist Martin Lewis, promoted the album to chart success on its release in 1974. It featured one of Connolly's most famous comedy routines — "The Crucifixion" — in which he likens Christ's Last Supper to a drunken night out in Glasgow. The recording was banned by many radio stations at the time.

In 1974, he sold out the Pavilion Theatre in his home town. In 1975, the rapidity and extent of Connolly's breakthrough was used to secure him a booking on Britain's premier TV chat show, the BBC's Parkinson. Connolly made the most of the opportunity and, ignoring objections from his manager, told a bawdy joke about a man who had murdered his wife and buried her bottom-up so he'd have somewhere to park his bike. This ribald humour was unusually forthright on a primetime Saturday night on British television in the mid-1970s, and his appearance made a great impact. "When I finished that show, I came back to Glasgow, and I was coming through the airport and the whole airport started to applaud." Connolly became a good friend of the host, Michael Parkinson, and now holds the record for appearances on the programme, having been a guest on fifteen occasions. Referring to that debut appearance, he later said: "That programme changed my entire life." Parkinson, in the documentary, Billy Connolly: Erect for 30 Years, stated that people still remember Connolly telling the punchline to the 'bike joke' three decades after that TV appearance. When asked about the material, Connolly stated, "Yes, it was incredibly edgy for its time. My manager, on the way over, warned me not to do it, but it was a great joke and the interview was going so well, I thought, 'Oh, fuck that!!' I don't know where I got the courage in those days, but Michael did put confidence in me." Connolly's success spread to other English-speaking countries: Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. However, his broad Scottish accent and British cultural references made success in the US improbable.

His increased profile led to contact with other celebrities; including musicians such as Elton John. John at that time was trying to assist British performers whom he personally liked to achieve success in the United States (he had released records in the US by veteran British pop singer Cliff Richard on his own Rocket label). John tried to give Connolly a boost in America by using him as the opening act on his 1976 US tour, but the well-intentioned gesture was a failure. John's American fans had no interest in being warmed-up by an unknown comedian – especially a Scotsman whose accent they found incomprehensible. "In Washington, some guy threw a pipe and it hit me right between my eyes", he told Michael Parkinson two years later. "It wasn't my audience. They made me feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit." The quip caused fellow guest Angie Dickinson to laugh uncontrollably.

Connolly continued to grow in popularity in the UK. In 1975, he signed with Polydor Records. Connolly continued to release live albums and he also recorded several comedic songs that enjoyed commercial success as novelty singles including parodies of Tammy Wynette's song "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." (which he performed on Top of the Pops in December 1975) and the Village People's "In the Navy" (titled "In the Brownies").

In 1976, Connolly's first play, An' Me wi' a Bad Leg, Tae, opened in Irvine and toured in London. It was there that, after consuming a sizable amount of cocaine and alcohol, he collapsed on the floor of a recording studio. In 1979, Connolly met Pamela Stephenson, the New Zealand-born comedy actress, for the first time when he made a cameo appearance on the BBC sketch show, Not the Nine O'Clock News, in which she was one of the four regular performers.

Returning to the stage, Connolly embarked on his Big Wee Tour of Britain, performing 69 dates in 84 days. While backstage in Brighton, he met Stephenson for a second time. He confided in her that he was unhappy and that his current marriage was over. Back at his hotel, where they began an affair, he reportedly drank thirty brandies. "What I saw of him – particularly in that dressing room – was that he was about to die," Stephenson said. "He was very suicidal. He was throwing everything away, desperately trying to feel no pain at all. You know how you get a sense from some people when they are very self-destructive that there is something they are trying to bury? They've got something they are trying to forget, or they are trying to drown their sorrows? He was hurting in a very deep way. I thought, 'If I leave this man, he's going to die.'"

Also in 1979, Connolly was invited by producer Martin Lewis to join the cast of The Secret Policeman's Ball, the third in the series of The Secret Policeman's Balls fundraising shows for Amnesty International. Connolly was the first comedic performer in the series who was not an alumnus of the Oxbridge school of middle-class university-educated entertainers and he made the most of his appearance. Appearing in the company of long-established talents such as John Cleese and Peter Cook helped elevate the perception of Connolly as one of Britain's leading comedic talents. Lewis also teamed Connolly with Cleese and Cook to appear in the television commercial for the album.

1980s
In 1981, John Cleese and Martin Lewis invited Connolly to appear in that year's Amnesty show, The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. The commercial success of the special US version of The Secret Policeman's Other Ball film (Miramax Films, 1982) introduced Connolly to a wider American audience, who were attracted to the film because of the presence of Monty Python members. His on-screen presence alongside these performers – who were already familiar to Anglophile comedy buffs – helped lay down a marker for Connolly's eventual return to the US in his own right eight years later.

En route to begin filming Water (1985) in Saint Lucia, Connolly drank an excessive amount of alcohol on the plane. Upon arriving on the island, he had dinner with the cast and crew, including Michael Caine.

"They had a jolly evening, then travelled back by bus through a part of the island that features steep cliffs on either side of a jungle road. As they careered along, Billy thought it would be a wheeze to cover the driver's eyes with his hands. 'I'll guide you,' insisted our drunken control-freak, 'Left, right... more right.' It was a game he had apparently played with his London driver: God knows how they managed to survive. Michael Caine apprehended Billy just in time to save the bus from plunging down a St Lucian ravine."

In 1985, he divorced Iris Pressagh, his wife of sixteen years (they had separated four years earlier), and he was awarded custody of their children Jamie and Cara. That same year, he performed An Audience with..., which was videotaped at the South Bank Television Centre in front of a celebrity audience for ITV. The uncut, uncensored version was subsequently released on video. In July 1985, Connolly performed at Live Aid at Wembley Stadium, immediately preceding Elton John, whom he introduced on stage.

1990s
Although Connolly had performed in North America as early as the 1970s and had appeared in several movies that played in American theatres, he nonetheless remained relatively unknown until 1990 when he was featured in the HBO special Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Connolly in Performance, produced by New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music. Soon after, Connolly succeeded Howard Hesseman as the star of the sitcom, Head of the Class for its final season. He would also take part on its spin-off series Billy. Connolly joined boxer Frank Bruno and Ozzy Osbourne when singing "The War Song of the Urpneys" in the British animated television series The Dreamstone.

In 1991, HBO released Billy Connolly: Pale Blue Scottish Person, a standup performance recorded at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

On 4 June 1992, Connolly performed his 25th-anniversary concert in Glasgow. Parts of the show and its build-up were documented in The South Bank Show, which aired later in the year. In early January 1994, Connolly began a 40-date World Tour of Scotland, which would be broadcast by the BBC later in the year as a six-part series. It was so well received he did Billy Connolly's World Tour of Australia for the BBC in 1995. The eight-part series followed Connolly on his custom-made Harley Davidson trike. Also in 1995, Connolly recorded a BBC special, entitled A Scot in the Arctic, in which he spent a week by himself in the Arctic Circle. He voiced Captain John Smith's shipmate, Ben, in Disney's animated film, Pocahontas.

In 1996, he appeared in Muppet Treasure Island as Billy Bones. In 1997, he starred with Dame Judi Dench in Mrs Brown, in which he played John Brown, the favoured Scottish servant of Queen Victoria. He was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Actor, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.

In 1998, Connolly's best friend, Danny Kyle, died. "He was my dearest, dearest, oldest friend", Connolly explained to an Australian audience on his Greatest Hits compilation, released in 2001. It was Kyle who helped Connolly overcome his habit of recoiling on being touched by others, a remnant of the abuse he endured as a child. "Every time it happened, Danny would just collapse with hysterics," said Pamela Stephenson. "'That's not normal, Billy,' Danny tried to be patient with him. 'You'll have to relax. It's touchy-feely, you know, the way we live. We like to touch each other and we kiss: we're different. You'll have to calm down or you'll always be fighting.'"

He performed a cover version of the Beatles' song, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" on George Martin's 1998 album, In My Life. In November 1998, Connolly was the subject of a two-hour retrospective entitled, Billy Connolly: Erect for 30 Years, which included tributes from Dench, Sir Sean Connery, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, and Eddie Izzard.

In 1999, after forming Tickety-Boo management company with Malcolm Kingsnorth, his tour manager and sound engineer of 25 years, Connolly undertook a four-month, 59-date sellout tour of Australia and New Zealand. Later in the year, he completed a five-week, 25-date sellout run at London's Hammersmith Apollo.

2000s
In 2000, Connolly starred in Beautiful Joe alongside Sharon Stone. The following year, he completed the third in his "World Tour" BBC series, this time of England, Ireland and Wales, which began in Dublin and ended in Plymouth. It was broadcast the following year. Also in 2001, Stephenson's first biography of her husband, Billy, was published. Much of the book is about Connolly the celebrity but the account of his early years provides a context for his humour and point of view. A follow-up, Bravemouth, was published in 2003.

A fourth BBC series, World Tour of New Zealand, was filmed in 2004 and aired that winter. Also in his 63rd year, Connolly performed two sold-out benefit concerts at the Oxford New Theatre in memory of Malcolm Kingsnorth. He has continued to be a much in-demand character actor, appearing in several films such as White Oleander (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004). He has played an eclectic collection of leading roles in recent years, including a lawyer who undertakes a legal case of Biblical proportions in The Man Who Sued God (2001), and a young boy's pet zombie in Fido (2006).

Also in 2005, Connolly and Stephenson announced, after fourteen years of living in Hollywood, they were returning to live in the former's native land. They purchased a 120 ft yacht with the profits from their house-sale and split the year between Malta and the 12-bedroom Candacraig House in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, which they had purchased in 1998 from Dame Anita Roddick.

Later in the year, Connolly topped an unscientific poll of "Britain's Favourite Comedian" conducted by the network Five, placing him ahead of performers such as John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, Dawn French, and Peter Cook. In 2006, he revealed he has a house on the Maltese island of Gozo. He and his wife also have an apartment in New York City near Union Square.

On 30 December 2007, Connolly escaped uninjured from a single-car accident on the A939 near Ballater, Aberdeenshire.

2010s
In 2011, Connolly and his wife were living full-time in New York City, whilst retaining their Candacraig residence. The Connollys decided to sell Candacraig House in September 2013, with a price of £2.75 million.

In 2012, Connolly provided the voice of King Fergus in Pixar's Scotland-set animated film Brave, alongside fellow Scottish actors Kelly Macdonald, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane, Emma Thompson, and Kevin McKidd. Connolly appeared as Wilf in Quartet, a 2012 British comedy-drama film based on the play Quartet by Ronald Harwood, directed by Dustin Hoffman.

In 2014, he appeared in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies as Dáin II Ironfoot, a great dwarf warrior and cousin of Thorin II Oakenshield. Peter Jackson stated: "We could not think of a more fitting actor to play Dain Ironfoot, the staunchest and toughest of dwarves, than Billy Connolly, the Big Yin himself. With Billy stepping into this role, the cast of The Hobbit is now complete. We can't wait to see him on the battlefield."

Steve Brown, Connolly's manager of 32 years, died in December 2017 at the age of 72. In 2018, Connolly, now resident in Florida, held his first art exhibition. He stated at the time that he would no longer be touring as a comedian.

2020s
As of 2021, he and his wife live in Florida. He published an autobiography, Windswept and Interesting, in October 2021.

In May 2022, Connolly received a BAFTA Fellowship in celebration of his five-decade long career.

Personal life
Connolly married Iris Pressagh in 1969. They separated in 1981 and divorced in 1985. In 1981 he began living with Pamela Stephenson; they were married in Fiji on 20 December 1989. "Marriage to Pam didn't change me; it saved me," he later said. "I was going to die. I was on a downwards spiral and enjoying every second of it. Not only was I dying, but I was looking forward to it." Connolly has two children from his first marriage and three from his second. He became a grandfather in 2001, when his daughter Cara gave birth to Walter.

In 1986, Connolly gave up alcohol, having been a heavy drinker. "I don't miss drinking. It has taken me by surprise," Connolly stated 24 years later. "I miss the craic. I miss the joy of it all. The headbanging stupidity, the loveliness, the craziness of it. I miss it terribly." He recalls blackouts that he would fill in upon returning to sobriety. "Well, [the memories] stopped coming back. But when I drank, I would go, 'Oh, I remember now.'" Connolly is describing the phenomenon of state-dependent learning. "That was frightening. I remember thinking, 'Beware, Billy boy. Beware. All is not well. Do something.'" Regarding the decision he made to stay sober: "If Pamela goes away, I'm on my own. There's nothing. There's only me and it. So the choice becomes very apparent."

Also in 1986, he visited Mozambique to appear in a documentary for Comic Relief. He also featured in the charity's inaugural live stage show, both as a stand-up and portraying a willing "victim" in his partner Pamela Stephenson's act of sawing a man in half to create two dwarfs. Connolly completed his first world tour in 1987, including six nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which was documented in the Billy and Albert video. In March 1988, his father died after a stroke, the eighth of his life. His mother died five years later, in 1993, of motor neurone disease.

In the book Billy (and in a December 2008 online interview), Connolly states he was sexually abused by his father between the ages of ten and fifteen. He believes this was a result of the Catholic Church not allowing his father to divorce after his mother left the family. Because of this, Connolly has a "deep distrust and dislike of the Catholic church and any other organisation that brainwashes people". He has called himself an atheist.

In September 2013, Connolly underwent minor surgery for early-stage prostate cancer. The announcement also stated that he was being treated for the initial symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Connolly had acknowledged earlier in 2013 that he had started to forget his lines during performances. In January 2019, he disclosed that its advance may force his retirement from performing.

In 2018, Connolly moved to Key West, Florida. He supports Celtic. Connolly has attention deficit disorder.

Ancestry
Connolly's paternal grandfather, whom—like his paternal grandmother—Connolly never met, was an Irish immigrant who left Ireland when he was ten years old. His great-great-great-grandfather (Charles Mills, a coast guard, 1796–1870) and great-great-grandfather (Bartholomew Valentine Connolly) were from Connemara.

His father was William Connolly; his mother, Mary "Mamie" McLean, was from the Clan Maclean of Duart Castle on the Isle of Mull on the west coast of Scotland. Mamie's father, Neil, was a Protestant and her mother, Flora, was a Roman Catholic who "made clandestine arrangements for the children to be baptised as Catholics", even though they were "formally raised as Protestants". His maternal grandparents moved inland to Finnieston Street, Glasgow, in the early 1900s.

Connolly appeared on the BBC's genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? on 2 October 2014, in which he discovered his Indian ancestry. His maternal great-great-great-grandfather, John O'Brien, fought at the Siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He was wounded during the long siege by a severe gunshot to the left shoulder. He married a local 13-year-old Indian girl called Matilda. They had four children and settled in Bangalore after his military service.

Political views
Connolly has been a vocal opponent of Scottish independence. In 1974, he made a political party television broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party which criticised the Scottish National Party. In 1999, he blamed the SNP for a perceived increase in Anglophobia in Scotland; described the new Scottish Parliament as a joke; and declined to attend the opening ceremony.

Connolly questioned the expense of independence, and whether average Scots would benefit from another level of government, though he added "Scots are very capable of making up their mind without my tuppence worth."

In April 2014, in an interview with the Radio Times leading up to the independence referendum, he stated "I think it's time for people to get together, not split apart. The more people stay together, the happier they'll be." He also referred to the Darien scheme, an effort to establish a Scottish colony in the Isthmus of Panama in 1698; the colony's failure destroyed the Kingdom of Scotland's economy and led to the Acts of Union in 1707. Connolly wrote, "You must remember that the Union saved Scotland. Scotland was bankrupt and the English opened us up to their American and Canadian markets, from which we just flowered."

During an interview with the BBC prior to polling day for the Scottish independence referendum on 18 September 2014, Connolly revealed he would not be voting as he was flying to New Zealand that day. He re-iterated his view that the people of Scotland did not need his opinion to make up their minds on the subject.

In October 2018, several media outlets stated that in his book Made in Scotland, released on 10 October, Connolly had voiced his support for independence in light of the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom leaving the European Union (Brexit), in which Scotland voted to remain. The Times reported Connolly as calling the Brexit vote a "disaster" and saying that independence "may be the way to go" in order for Scotland to maintain a connection to Europe. In Episode Five of the BBC Scotland documentary, Billy and Us, first broadcast on 11 June 2020, he said "I've never liked nationalism in any of its guises. I'm not saying I've never agreed with independence. I think a Scottish republic is as good an idea as any I ever heard."

Support for charity
Connolly is a patron of the National Association for Bikers with a Disability. He is also a patron of Celtic F.C.'s The Celtic Foundation.

Folk music
""

In 1965, together with Tam Harvey, Connolly started a group called the Humblebums. At their first gig, Connolly reportedly introduced them both to the audience by saying, "My name's Billy Connolly, and I'm humble. This is Tam Harvey, he's a bum." The band would later include Gerry Rafferty, who saw Connolly at a charity show in Paisley. "Gerry was very good for me. He taught me that I would never be a musician as long as my arse looked south. He was just so outstandingly good and getting better, and although I was getting better too, the space between us remained huge. He was a real musician, he knew and felt music, a bass player, with a lovely sense of harmony, as well as a great guitarist. I knew tunes and how to play them but that was where my musicianship ended. Unfortunately, I'm still the same to this day. I work very hard, I play every day but I'm still ordinary. I can be flashy, but it's all tricks really. He's a musician and I'm just not in the same league. So, I gave up these ambitions and concentrated on what I was really born to do."

After Harvey left the group, Connolly and Rafferty continued as a duo and the latter two of their three albums featured just that duo. Connolly sang, played five-string banjo, guitar, and autoharp, and at live shows entertained the audience with his humorous introductions to the songs.

Frank Bruno and Connolly provided lead vocals on, "The War Song of the Urpneys" from The Dreamstone; although the version heard in the series was largely sung by composer Mike Batt.

In his World Tour of Scotland, Connolly revealed that, at a trailer show during the Edinburgh Festival, the Humblebums took to the stage just before Yehudi Menuhin.

The Humblebums broke up in 1971 and both Connolly and Rafferty went solo. Connolly's first solo album in 1972, Billy Connolly Live! on Transatlantic Records, featured him as a singer-songwriter.

His early albums were a mixture of comedy performances, with comedic and serious musical interludes. Among his best-known musical performances were "The Welly Boot Song", a parody of the Scottish folk song "The Wark O' the Weavers", which became his theme song for several years; "In the Brownies", a parody of the hit Village People songs "In the Navy" and "Y.M.C.A." (for which Connolly filmed a music video); "Two Little Boys in Blue", a tongue-in-cheek indictment of police brutality done to the tune of Rolf Harris' "Two Little Boys"; and the ballad, "I Wish I Was in Glasgow", which Connolly would later perform in duet with Malcolm McDowell on a guest appearance on the 1990s American sitcom Pearl (which starred Rhea Perlman). He also performed the occasional Humblebums-era song such as, "Oh, No!" as well as straightforward covers such as a version of Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors", both of which were included on his Get Right Intae Him! album.

In November 1975, his rendition of Ben Colder's 1969 spoof of the Tammy Wynette song "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" was a UK No. 1 single for one week. Wynette's original was about parents spelling out words of an impending marital split to avoid traumatising their young child. The spoof version centred on dog owners using the same tactic to avoid worrying their pet about an impending trip to the vet (spelling out "W-O-R-M" or "Q-U-A-R-A-N-T-I-N-E", for example). His song, "No Chance" was a parody of J. J. Barrie's cover of the song, "No Charge".

In 1985, he sang the theme song to Super Gran which was released as a single. In 1996, he performed a cover of Ralph McTell's "In the Dreamtime" as the theme to his World Tour of Australia. By the late 1980s, Connolly had all but dropped the music from his act, though he still records the occasional musical performance, such as a 1980s recording of his composition "Sergeant, Where's Mine?" with the Dubliners. In 1998, he covered the Beatles' "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" on the George Martin tribute album In My Life. He sang the Scottish folk song "Bonnie George Campbell" during the film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. In 1995 and 2005, he released two albums of instrumental performances, Musical Tour of Scotland and, Billy Connolly's Musical Tour of New Zealand, respectively.

Connolly is among the artists featured on Banjoman, a tribute to American folk musician Derroll Adams, released in 2002. He played one song, "The Rock".

Stand-up comedy
Connolly's observational comedy is idiosyncratic and often off-the-cuff. He has offended certain sectors of audiences, critics and the media with his free use of the word "fuck", and he has made jokes relating to masturbation, blasphemy, defecation, flatulence, hemorrhoids, sex, his father's illness, his aunts' cruelty and, in the latter stages of his career, old age (specifically his experiences of growing old).

In 2007 and again in 2010, he was voted the greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups. He once again topped the list on Channel 5's Greatest Stand-Up Comedians, broadcast on New Year's Eve 2013.

Since the 1980s, Connolly has worn a custom-made black T-shirt with a shirt-tail as part of his on-stage attire. Steve Brown was his manager from 1986 until his death in 2017.

Comics writing
Between 1973 and 1977 Connolly wrote a newspaper gag-a-day comic with cartoonist Malky McCormick, titled The Big Yin.

Art
Connolly has published eleven collections of his art. His method is similar to that of the Surrealist Automatism movement, whereby the artist allows their hand to move randomly across the paper or canvas without a specific intent. In April 2019, to celebrate World Parkinson's Day, his art was projected onto MacLellan's Castle in Kirkcudbright. His first sculpture, which is inspired by his past as a welder, was released in March 2020. He spoke about his art and the inspiration behind it on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2022.

Discography
''Below is a partial list of Connolly's solo musical and comedic recordings. For his releases with the Humblebums, see here.''
 * 1972 – Billy Connolly Live
 * 1974 – Cop Yer Whack for This
 * 1974 – Solo Concert
 * 1975 – Get Right Intae Him! (#80 AUS )
 * 1975 – Words and Music
 * 1975 – The Big Yin
 * 1976 – Atlantic Bridge
 * 1977 – Billy Connolly
 * 1977 – Raw Meat for the Balcony!
 * 1978 – Anthology
 * 1979 – Riotous Assembly
 * 1981 – The Pick of Billy Connolly (compilation) (#34 AUS )
 * 1983 – A Change Is as Good as Arrest
 * 1983 – In Concert
 * 1984 – Big Yin Double Helping (compilation)
 * 1985 – An Audience with Billy Connolly
 * 1985 – Wreck on Tour
 * 1987 – Billy & Albert
 * 1991 – Live at the Odeon Hammersmith London
 * 1995 – Musical Tour of Scotland
 * 1995 – Live DownUnder 1995 (#23 AUS )
 * 1996 – World Tour of Australia
 * 1997 – Two Night Stand
 * 1999 – Comedy and Songs (compilation)
 * 1999 – One Night Stand Down Under
 * 2002 – Live in Dublin 2002
 * 2002 – The Big Yin – Billy Connolly in Concert (compilation)
 * 2003 – Transatlantic Years (compilation of material recorded between 1969 and 1974)
 * 2003 – Humble Beginnings: The Complete Transatlantic Recordings 1969–74
 * 2005 – Billy Connolly's Musical Tour of New Zealand
 * 2007 – Live in Concert
 * 2010 – The Man: Live in London (recorded January 2010)
 * 2011 – Billy Connolly's Route 66

Playwright
Connolly has written three plays:
 * An' Me Wi' A Bad Leg Tae (1975)
 * When Hair Was Long And Time Was Short (1977)
 * Red Runner (1979)

Awards and nominations

 * On 11 July 2001, Connolly was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) degree by the University of Glasgow.
 * In 2002, the BAFTA presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
 * In the 2003 Birthday Honours, Connolly was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), for "services to Entertainment".
 * On 4 July 2006, Connolly was awarded an honorary doctorate by Glasgow's Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD), for his service to performing arts.
 * On 18 March 2007 and again on 11 April 2010, Connolly was named Number One in Channel 4's "100 Greatest Stand-Ups".
 * On 22 July 2010, Connolly was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by Nottingham Trent University.
 * On 20 August 2010, Connolly was made a Freeman of Glasgow, with the award of the Freedom of the City of Glasgow.
 * On 10 December 2012, Connolly picked up his BAFTA Scotland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Television and Film at his BAFTA, A Life in Pictures, interview in the Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow.
 * In January 2016, he was presented with the Special Recognition award at the National Television Awards to honour his career.
 * In the 2017 Birthday Honours, Connolly was made a Knight Bachelor for "services to entertainment and charity".
 * As of 2017, Glasgow has at least three large-scale gable murals commissioned by BBC Scotland and one metalwork mural commissioned by Sanctuary Scotland Housing Association depicting him.
 * On 22 June 2017, Connolly received the Honorary degree of Doctor of the University (D.Univ) from University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
 * In November 2019, The Glasgow Times named Connolly as The Greatest Glaswegian as determined by a public poll.
 * At the BAFTA TV awards of 2022, Connolly was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship.

title: Billy Connolly


text:
Cámara's Flying Relief Column

During the Spanish–American War of 1898, Cámara's Flying Relief Column was a naval task force of Spain's most powerful warships, under the command of Rear Admiral Manuel de la Cámara, tasked with relieving Spanish forces in Manila after the defeat of Spanish Pacific Squadron under Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón by the American Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey in the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. The Spanish fleet, consisting of the battleship Pelayo, armored cruiser Emperador Carlos V, auxiliary cruisers Patriota and Rapido, destroyers Audaz, Osado, and Prosepina, and transports Buenos Aires and Panay, left Spain in June 1898. The squadron was far more powerful than that commanded by Dewey, which only consisted of four protected cruisers and two gunboats. The monitor USS Monterey (BM-6) had been ordered from the U.S. to the Philippines, and departed on 11 June.

With the bulk of the Spanish Navy heading to the Pacific, the U.S. made plans for battleships Iowa and Oregon and the cruiser USS Brooklyn to raid and bombard Spanish ports. But, following the destruction of the Spanish fleet in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, Cámara's column was ordered to return to Spain to defend the Spanish coast. On 7 July, after arriving in Egypt, Cámara's fleet turned home, and the American battleships never left the Caribbean.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Cámara's Flying Relief Column


text:
Centrophoridae

The Centrophoridae are a family of squaliform sharks. The family contains just two genera and about 15 species. They are sometimes called gulper sharks, but this is also the name of a specific species in the family, Centrophorus granulosus. These are generally deepwater fish. While some, such as the gulper shark C. granulosus, are found worldwide and fished commercially, others are uncommon and little-known. Their usual prey is other fish; some are known to feed on squid, octopus, and shrimp. Some species live on the bottom (benthic), while others are pelagic. They are ovoviviparous, with the female retaining the egg-cases in her body until they hatch.

They are small to medium sharks, ranging from 79 to 164 cm in adult body length. The members of the genus Deania generally have a long flattened snout.

Species
The 18 known species are grouped into two genera:

 * Centrophorus J. P. Müller & Henle, 1837
 * Centrophorus atromarginatus Garman, 1913 (dwarf gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus granulosus (Bloch & J. G. Schneider, 1801) . (gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus harrissoni McCulloch, 1915 (dumb gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus isodon (Y. T. Chu, Q. W. Meng & J. X. Liu, 1981) (blackfin gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus lusitanicus Barbosa du Bocage & Brito Capello, 1864 (lowfin gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus moluccensis Bleeker, 1860 (smallfin gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus seychellorum Baranes, 2003 (Seychelles gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus squamosus (Bonnaterre, 1788) (leafscale gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus tessellatus Garman, 1906 (mosaic gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus uyato Rafinesque, 1810 (Little gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus westraliensis W. T. White, Ebert & Compagno, 2008 (western gulper shark)
 * Centrophorus zeehaani W. T. White, Ebert & Compagno, 2008 (southern dogfish)
 * Centrophorus sp. A (minigulper)
 * Centrophorus sp. B (slender gulper)
 * Deania D. S. Jordan & Snyder, 1902
 * Deania calcea (R. T. Lowe, 1839) (birdbeak dogfish)
 * Deania hystricosa (Garman, 1906) (rough longnose dogfish)
 * Deania profundorum (H. M. Smith & Radcliffe, 1912) (arrowhead dogfish)
 * Deania quadrispinosa (McCulloch, 1915) (longsnout dogfish)

title: Centrophoridae


text:
Keith Wright (defensive tackle)

Keith Wright (born June 8, 1980) is a former American football defensive tackle.

Biography
Wright graduated at 17 and went to Arizona Western college, where he stayed for 2 years before moving on to Sacramento City College in 1999. There, he had a total of 14 sacks during one season. Later he had 68 tackles in his first season at Missouri. Then, he was moved to defensive tackle at the Missouri team, and he was able to complete 92 tackles in 2002. With that, he expected to be chosen in the third or fourth round of the 2003 NFL Draft.

Wright was drafted by the Houston Texans as the final pick of the sixth round of the 2003 NFL Draft. He signed a contract worth $925,000 for the seasons from 2003 to 2005.

On November 10, 2003, Wright was signed as a free agent from the Texans practice squad by the Indianapolis Colts.

On November 24, 2004, Wright was signed by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to their practice squad and released on July 27, 2005.

The Arizona Cardinals signed Wright to a one-year contract on August 5, 2005, but subsequently released him on August 29.

The Buccaneers signed him as a free agent in January 2006 and assigned him to NFL Europe. He was released on September 2, 2006, and signed to the Detroit Lions practice squad on October 18.

On August 29, 2011, Wright was arrested on suspicion of home invasion and sexual assault in the Natomas neighborhood of Sacramento, California. He was linked to three home invasions that took place in July and August 2011. During one of them, he sexually assaulted a woman and forced her to pull money out of two ATMs.

In October 2012, Wright was convicted on 19 charges including armed robbery, kidnapping, forced oral copulation, first degree burglary, and false imprisonment. On November 30, he was sentenced to 234 years and 8 months in prison.

title: Keith Wright (defensive tackle)


text:
Battle of Fuzhou

The Battle of Fuzhou, or Battle of Foochow, also known as the Battle of the Pagoda Anchorage (French: Combat naval de Fou-Tchéou, Chinese:, 馬江之役 or 馬尾海戰, literally Battle of Mawei), was the opening engagement of the 16-month Sino-French War (December 1883 – April 1885). The battle was fought on 23 August 1884 off the Pagoda Anchorage in Mawei (馬尾) harbour, 15 km to the southeast of the city of Fuzhou (Foochow). During the battle Admiral Amédée Courbet's Far East Squadron virtually destroyed the Fujian Fleet, one of China's four regional fleets.

Background

On 11 May 1884 French and Chinese negotiators concluded the Tientsin Accord, an agreement designed to end several months of undeclared hostilities between France and China in Tonkin. On 23 June 1884, French troops advancing to occupy Lạng Sơn, in accordance with the terms of this agreement, clashed near the small town of Bắc Lệ with a detachment of the Chinese Guangxi Army. The Chinese opened fire on the advancing French, precipitating a two-day battle in which the French column was seriously mauled. This incident, the Bắc Lệ ambush, was the proximate cause of the Sino-French War.

When news of the Bắc Lệ ambush reached Paris, there was fury at what was perceived as blatant Chinese treachery. Jules Ferry's government demanded an apology, an indemnity, and the immediate implementation of the terms of the Tianjin Accord. The Chinese government agreed to negotiate, but refused to apologise or pay an indemnity. The mood in France was against compromise, and although negotiations continued throughout July, Admiral Courbet was ordered to take his squadron to Fuzhou (Foochow).

Courbet was instructed to prepare to destroy the Foochow Navy Yard, 15 km downriver from Fuzhou at Mawei, and to attack the Chinese fleet in Mawei harbour. Ironically, the Foochow Navy Yard represented a substantial French investment in China's future, having been built several years earlier under the direction of the French administrator Prosper Giquel. During the second half of July and the first half of August Courbet gradually concentrated his squadron in Mawei harbour, at the Pagoda Anchorage—named for a conspicuous Chinese pagoda, the Luoxingta (羅星塔), which stood on a hill above the harbour.

Negotiations between France and China broke down in mid-August, and on the evening of 22 August Courbet was authorised by the French government to commence hostilities. He duly notified the foreign consuls, the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, and the commanders of several neutral warships moored at the Pagoda Anchorage (the British gunboats HMS Vigilant (1871), HMS Champion (1878) and HMS Sapphire (1874) and the American corvette USS Enterprise (1874)).

Order of battle
Only a fraction of the Far East squadron was present off the Pagoda Anchorage on the morning of 23 August. In particular, none of the Far East squadron's four ironclads was immediately available. Bayard, Courbet's flagship, was at Sharp Peak near the island of Matsu, guarding a vital telegraph station. Atalante was hunting down pirate ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Courbet had summoned the ironclads Triomphante from Shanghai and La Galissonnière from Keelung to join him off Fuzhou, but La Galissonnière had been detained at Keelung by bad weather, and although Triomphante was approaching the Min River, it was not clear whether she would be able to cross the bar at its entrance.

Courbet had under his immediate command the first-class cruisers Duguay-Trouin, Villars and d'Estaing, the third-class cruiser Volta (which he chose as his flagship during the engagement), the gunboats Lynx, Aspic and Vipère and Torpedo Boats No. 45 and No. 46. The second-class cruiser Châteaurenault and the troopship Saône had been left at the Jinpai pass, at the entrance to the Min River, to stop the Chinese from laying a barrage to prevent the squadron's escape.

The Chinese Fujian fleet consisted of the wooden corvette Yangwu (the flagship), the scout-transports Chenhang, Yongbao, Fupo, Feiyun and Ji'an, the paddle steamer Yixin, the wooden gunboats Zhenwei and CHINESE GUNBOAT Fuxing, and the Rendel flatiron gunboats Fusheng and Jiansheng. Twelve large junks were nearby, but did not take part in the battle. The French squadron displaced 14,500 tons and included 1,780 men, while the eleven warships in the Chinese fleet displaced 8,000 tons, and included 1,040 men. The French squadron was much better-led and better-armed than the Chinese fleet. Only a few of the Chinese ships were capable of offering serious resistance to Courbet's attack. The Chinese defence was under the command of the imperial commissioner Zhang Peilun (張佩綸), one of the leading members of China's war party.

Fleet deployments
The Chinese fleet was deployed into a northern group of eight ships and a southern group of three ships, with the French squadron lying in between. The wooden corvette Yangwu, the wooden gunboat Fuxing, the armed transport Fupo, the Rendel flatiron gunboats Jiansheng and Fusheng and the small paddle steamer Yixin were deployed on the northwest curve of the river, between the French ships and the Foochow Navy Yard. A little behind them lay the unarmed transports Yongbao and Chenhang, anchored just off the dockyard. The role of this northern group of ships was obviously to prevent the French from attacking the Navy Yard. Meanwhile, the armed wooden transports Ji'an and Feiyun and the wooden gunboat Zhenwei lay downstream of the French squadron, dangerously isolated on the southwesterly leg of the river, in front of the Customs building. Their job seems to have been to protect the Customs building and to block Courbet's exit from the Min River.

Courbet's plan provided for overwhelming firepower to be deployed against the Chinese fleet. He had noticed that the Chinese ships swung with the tide, and determined to make his attack just before the top of the tide at 2:00 pm on the following afternoon, Saturday 23 August, when with luck the Chinese ships would have swung away from the French ships and would be presenting their vulnerable sterns to the attackers. This timing was also important for another reason. If Triomphante successfully ascended the Min River, it was about then that she would be making her appearance.

Assuming that the Chinese fleet did not change its position, Courbet's orders provided for the French ships to be at action stations at 1:45 pm and to go into action at around 2:00 pm, on his signal. The battle would begin with an attack by Torpedo Boats No. 45 and No. 46 on Yangwu and Fupo. This attack would be supported by cannon and rifle fire from Volta. Volta would then concentrate on destroying a line of war junks and fireships drawn up just to the west of Losing Island. Once the attack by the torpedo boats had cleared the way, the gunboats Aspic, Vipère and Lynx would sail upriver towards the Navy Yard and take on the other ships of the Chinese northern group. Four steam launches under the command of lieutenant de vaisseau Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère, the future French admiral, were given the job of protecting Volta and the three French gunboats from attack by the Chinese mineboats. To the east Duguay-Trouin, Villars and d'Estaing were to reduce the three ships of the Chinese southern group, to engage the war junks from the flank, and to engage a battery armed with three Krupp cannon near the Pagoda, and three other batteries armed with Krupp cannon which protected the Arsenal. Their launches would be deployed to give protection against Chinese torpedo attacks.

The battle of Fuzhou

On the morning of Saturday 23 August, although the Chinese commanders knew that the French would launch their attack at around 2:00 pm, the sailors in both fleets went about their routine business. The ships of the Fujian Fleet made no attempt to redeploy or to anticipate the French attack by opening fire first. The French crews went to their action stations at 1:30 pm, after eating their midday meal. The Chinese did not react to this obvious threat, and at 1:45 pm the flurry of activity aboard the French ships died down. For the next ten minutes the tension grew aboard the French ships as the minutes ticked away towards 2:00 pm. At 1:55 pm a Chinese mineboat advanced towards the French squadron. Courbet immediately ordered the attack to begin, only five minutes short of his original timetable.

At the outset of the battle the Chinese flagship Yangwu was successfully attacked with a spar torpedo by Torpedo Boat No.46 (lieutenant de vaisseau Douzans) and grounded. The French torpedo boat suffered damage to her boiler during this attack. The despatch vessel Fupo was attacked less successfully by Torpedo Boat No.45 (lieutenant de vaisseau Latour), and was subsequently crippled by Volta's torpedo launch and carried by boarding by Boué de Lapeyrère's sailors. She had already been set alight by French shellfire, and was eventually abandoned by the French prize crew and sank in the middle of the Min River.

Their spar torpedoes expended, the two French torpedo boats drifted downriver after making their attack, towards the anchorage of the neutral vessels off Losing Island. Lieutenant Latour had been seriously wounded in the eye during the attack, but he refused an offer of medical assistance from American officers on Enterprise, explaining that he could not leave his post while the battle was still in progress.

Meanwhile, the French cruisers and the ironclad Triomphante, which joined the French squadron only minutes before the battle began, were making short work of the rest of the Chinese fleet. Chenhang, Yongbao, Feiyun, Ji'an, Fusheng and Jiansheng were either sunk or set alight by shellfire from the cruisers Duguay-Trouin, Villars and d'Estaing. Only Fupo and Yixin survived the battle without serious damage, by escaping upriver before the gunboats Lynx, Aspic and Vipère had a chance to engage them. Zhenwei was blown up by a single shell from Triomphante.

Before they were put out of action the outgunned Chinese vessels concentrated their fire on the French flagship Volta, hoping to kill Courbet and the officers of his entourage. Several sailors aboard the French cruiser were killed or wounded, and shortly after the start of the battle a roundshot ploughed through Courbet's command group on the flagship's bridge, killing the British pilot Thomas and only narrowly missing capitaine de frégate Gigon, Volta's captain. A few minutes later splinters from an exploding Chinese shell wounded lieutenant de vaisseau Ravel, Courbet's aide-de-camp.

The fighting ended at 5:00pm, but during the night of 23August the Chinese made a number of unsuccessful attacks with fireships on the French warships, obliging some of them to shift their anchorages to evade them.

Bombardment of the Foochow Navy Yard

On the morning of 24 August Courbet issued orders for his ships' landing companies to go ashore with the naval engineers to destroy the Foochow Navy Yard. Preparations were made for a landing, but Courbet then changed his mind, after observing that the Navy Yard was defended by organised groups of Chinese infantry. The attack was cancelled as the French sailors were on the point of climbing into their launches.

Instead, the French bombarded the Foochow Navy Yard, damaging a number of outbuildings and holing the sloop Henghai (Heng-hai, 橫海), still under construction and lying on the slips. A certain amount of damage was inflicted, but without the support of the heavy guns of Triomphante and Duguay-Trouin or the slightly lighter guns of the cruisers Villars and d'Estaing, which drew too much water to enter the shallows off the Navy Yard except around high tide, Courbet was unable to destroy the Yard completely. He himself admitted in his official report that the damage done 'was not as much as I had hoped for'.

The French squadron remained off Fuzhou during the night of 24 August. Once again the Chinese tried to make a night attack. At 4:00 am two Chinese torpedo launches tried to attack the gunboat Vipère, anchored at the head of the French line. Both launches were lit up by searchlights on the French ships and attacked with Hotchkiss fire by Duguay-Trouin. One launch was sunk instantly, while the crew of the other abandoned ship and swam for the shore.

Descent of the Min River

On 25 August, after receiving the congratulations of the captains of the neutral warships on the professionalism displayed by the French squadron during the action of 23 August, Courbet began to lead his ships back down the Min River. The squadron's two heaviest ships, Triomphante and Duguay-Trouin, led the way.

On 25 and 26 August the French bombarded the Tianluowan (田螺灣) and Min'an (閩安) batteries, two Chinese shore batteries covering the approach to Fuzhou through the narrow Min'an Pass. The Chinese batteries, built to fire only on enemy ships approaching from the mouth of the river, were taken in reverse and destroyed by Duguay-Trouin and Triomphante.

On 27 and 28 August the French squadron bombarded and destroyed the Chinese defences at the Jinpai pass near the entrance to the Min River. The Jinpai (金牌) and Changmen (長門) batteries, known to the French as Fort Kimpai and the White Fort (Fort Blanc), were put out of action, and the French also inflicted heavy casualties on a number of Chinese field batteries and infantry formations. However, before its guns were destroyed the White Fort was able to inflict moderate damage on the French ironclad La Galissonnière, which had sailed up from Keelung to join Courbet's squadron and attempted unsuccessfully to fight its way into the Min River. Chinese infantry at the Jinpai pass also killed and wounded several French sailors aboard the gunboat Vipère on 27 August.

Losses

The losses of the French squadron in the course of the operations before Fuzhou and in the Min River were relatively light (10 dead and 48 wounded). Most of these casualties were inflicted not by shellfire during the engagement of 23 August but by sniper fire from Chinese infantry during the squadron's descent of the Min River. The French dead included lieutenant de vaisseau Bouët-Willaumez, second-in-command of the gunboat Vipère and son of the noted French admiral Louis-Édouard Bouët-Willaumez (1809–71), who was shot dead on Vipère's bridge during an exchange of fire with the defenders of Fort Kimpai on 27 August. With the exception of La Galissonnière and Torpedo Boat No. 46, none of Courbet's vessels suffered serious damage.

The Chinese lost nine of the eleven ships of the Fujian Fleet. Some of the Chinese ships foundered where they were struck, sinking off the Pagoda anchorage and the Foochow Navy Yard. Others drifted downriver and either ran aground or sank between Losing Island and the Min'an pass. French officers aboard Châteaurenault, anchored near the entrance to the Min River, saw three Chinese warships drifting downriver on the evening of 23 August, abandoned by their crews and blazing from stem to stern. One of the Chinese ships exploded in front of their eyes.

Courbet estimated Chinese casualties at between 2,000 and 3,000 dead. The commemorative tablets in a shrine erected shortly after the war at the Pagoda Anchorage to honour the Chinese dead list the names of 831 sailors and soldiers killed on 23 August, but this list does not include the hundreds of Chinese soldiers killed by the French during their descent of the Min River.

The Chinese imperial commissioner Zhang Peilun, who made no serious attempt to coordinate the resistance of the Fujian fleet, was degraded after the battle and replaced by the veteran general Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠). He Jing (何璟), the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, Zhang Zhaotong (張兆棟), the governor of Fujian, and He Ruzhang (何如璋), the director-general of the Foochow Navy Yard, were also degraded. The Manchu General of Fuzhou Mutušan (穆圖善), who had directed the defence of the Jinpai pass on 27 and 28 August with skill and energy, kept his job.

The Cantonese naval officer Zhang Cheng (張成), a graduate of the Foochow naval college and captain of the Chinese flagship Yangwu, abandoned ship as soon as the battle started and was later beheaded for cowardice.

Factors in the French victory

One of the factors in the French victory at Fuzhou was that the French squadron had sailed up the Min River in time of peace. The Chinese claimed after the battle, with some justification, that the French would never have been able to ascend the river if the two countries had been at war. A second important factor was the absence from the battle of the modern battleships Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, which had recently been completed in Germany for China's Beiyang Fleet (Northern Seas fleet). The Chinese battleships were more powerful than any of the ships under Courbet's command, and in December 1883, foreseeing that war with China was imminent, the French persuaded the German government to detain them in the event of hostilities. The German government invented a number of plausible excuses for keeping the two battleships in port, and they remained in Germany for the duration of the Sino-French War. They were finally released in July 1885, and joined the Northern Seas fleet in October of the same year.

Some Chinese historians have asserted that disunity in the Chinese command structure was an important factor in the Chinese defeat. The Chinese regional fleets and armies represented a considerable 'personal' investment of revenue and prestige that was used to leverage influence at court, and the respective fleet commanders were often loath to see these important assets diminished by war damage. The result, at Fuzhou, was that the Fujian Fleet received little help from China's three other regional fleets. Despite appeals from Zhang Peilun and direct orders from the Empress Dowager Cixi, the commanders of the Beiyang Fleet, the Nanyang Fleet and the Guangdong Fleet declined to send ships to reinforce the Fujian Fleet. Feiyun and Ji'an, two Fujian vessels which had been loaned to the Guangdong Fleet in 1882 to observe French movements in the Gulf of Tonkin, were sent back to Fuzhou in early August by Zhang Zhidong, the governor-general of the two Guangs, arriving just in time to share the fate of their comrades in the forthcoming battle. However, Zhang did not release any of his own Guangdong ships. Li Hongzhang defied an order to send two ships from the Beiyang Fleet to Fuzhou, and the Zhejiang governor Liu Bingzhang (劉秉璋) refused to release the Nanyang ship Chaowu.

Ships involved in the Min River actions
France:

title: Battle of Fuzhou


text:
User:Mav/Citations

Wikicite inline ref: Smith 1999, p.500

Biology

 * Biology: Fourth Edition, Neil A. Campbell, (Benjamin/Cummings Publishing, New York; 1996) ISBN 0-8053-1957-3
 * The Economy of Nature: Fourth Edition, Robert E. Ricklefs, (W. H. Freeman and Company, New York; 1997) ISBN 0-7167-2815-X
 * The Immune System, Peter Parham, (Garland Publishing, New York; 2000) ISBN 0-8153-3848-1
 * Marine Fisheries Biology, Jennings, Kaiser, Reynolds, (Blackwell Science; 2001) ISBN 0-632-05098-5
 * Cat: The Complete Guide, Claire Bessant, (Metron Books, London; 1999) ISBN 1-58663-076-8
 * The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter, Philil M. Tierno Jr., (Pocket Books, New York; 2001) ISBN 0-7434-2187-6
 * In Search of the Double Helix: Quantum Physics of Life, John Gribbin, (McGraw-Hill Book Company; 1985) ISBN 0-07-024740-4
 * Immunology: An Illustrated Outline, David Male, (Mosby International; 1998) ISBN 0-397-44825-2

Chemistry

 * Introduction to Organic Chemistry, William H. Brown, (Sauders College Publishing, Forth Worth; 1997) ISBN 0-03-016914-3
 * Chemistry: Molecules, Matter, and Change; Third Edition, Atkins, Jones, (W. H. Freeman and Company, New York; 1997) ISBN 0-7167-2832-X
 *
 *
 * Introduction to Organic Chemistry, William H. Brown, (Sauders College Publishing, Forth Worth; 1997) ISBN 0-03-016914-3
 * Chemistry: Molecules, Matter, and Change; Third Edition, Atkins, Jones, (W. H. Freeman and Company, New York; 1997) ISBN 0-7167-2832-X
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *

 * http://www.vanderkrogt.net/elements/ (can't be used directly, but a good starting point)

General science

 * Genesis: The Origins of Man and the Universe, John Gribbin, (Delta / Eleanor Books; 1981) ISBN 0-440-52832-1

Geography/Oceanography

 * Invitation to Oceanography, Paul R. Pinet, (Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Boston; 1998) ISBN 0-7637-0614-0
 * Geographica: The complete illustrated Atlas of the world, Editors of James Mills-Hicks (Barnes and Noble Books; New York; 2004) ISBN 0-7607-5974-X

Geology

 * Earth System History, Steven M. Stanley, (W.H. Freeman and Company; 1999) ISBN 0-7167-2882-6
 * Fire Mountains of the West: The Cascade and Mono Lake Volcanoes, Stephen L. Harris, (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1988) ISBN 0-87842-220-X
 * Physical Geology: Eight Edition, Plummer, McGeary, Carlson, (McGraw-Hill: Boston; 1999) ISBN 0-697-37404-1
 * Geology of the Sierra Nevada, Mary Hill, (University of California Press, Berkeley; 1975) ISBN 0-520-02801-5
 * Roadside Geology of the Yellowstone Country, William J. Fritz, (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1985) ISBN 0-87842-170-X
 * Roadside Geology of Oregon, Alt, Hyndman (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1978) ISBN 0-87842-063-0
 * Roadside Geology of Northern and Central California, Alt, Hyndman (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 2000) ISBN 0-87842-409-1
 * The Colorado River Super Guide Map of the Grand Canyon, Bronze Black (Flagstaff, Arizona; Dragon Creek Publishing; 2003)
 * Geology of the Sierra Nevada, Mary Hill, (University of California Press, Berkeley; 1975) ISBN 0-520-02801-5
 * Roadside Geology of the Yellowstone Country, William J. Fritz, (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1985) ISBN 0-87842-170-X
 * Roadside Geology of Oregon, Alt, Hyndman (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1978) ISBN 0-87842-063-0
 * Roadside Geology of Northern and Central California, Alt, Hyndman (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 2000) ISBN 0-87842-409-1
 * The Colorado River Super Guide Map of the Grand Canyon, Bronze Black (Flagstaff, Arizona; Dragon Creek Publishing; 2003)
 * Geology of the Sierra Nevada, Mary Hill, (University of California Press, Berkeley; 1975) ISBN 0-520-02801-5
 * Roadside Geology of the Yellowstone Country, William J. Fritz, (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1985) ISBN 0-87842-170-X
 * Roadside Geology of Oregon, Alt, Hyndman (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1978) ISBN 0-87842-063-0
 * Roadside Geology of Northern and Central California, Alt, Hyndman (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 2000) ISBN 0-87842-409-1
 * The Colorado River Super Guide Map of the Grand Canyon, Bronze Black (Flagstaff, Arizona; Dragon Creek Publishing; 2003)
 * Roadside Geology of Oregon, Alt, Hyndman (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 1978) ISBN 0-87842-063-0
 * Roadside Geology of Northern and Central California, Alt, Hyndman (Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula; 2000) ISBN 0-87842-409-1
 * The Colorado River Super Guide Map of the Grand Canyon, Bronze Black (Flagstaff, Arizona; Dragon Creek Publishing; 2003)
 * The Colorado River Super Guide Map of the Grand Canyon, Bronze Black (Flagstaff, Arizona; Dragon Creek Publishing; 2003)
 * The Colorado River Super Guide Map of the Grand Canyon, Bronze Black (Flagstaff, Arizona; Dragon Creek Publishing; 2003)
 * The Colorado River Super Guide Map of the Grand Canyon, Bronze Black (Flagstaff, Arizona; Dragon Creek Publishing; 2003)
 * The Colorado River Super Guide Map of the Grand Canyon, Bronze Black (Flagstaff, Arizona; Dragon Creek Publishing; 2003)

History

 * The American Heritage Picture History of World War II, David G. McCullough, (American Heritage Publishing Company, New York; 1966) ISBN 07-001259-8
 * Stay Tuned: Television's Unforgettable Moments, Joe Garner, (Andrews McMeel Publishing; 2002) ISBN 0-7407-2693-5
 * Lost Empires: Living Tribes, Ross S. Bennett, (The National Geographic Society; 1982) ISBN 0-87044-434-4
 * The Renaissance Reader, Kenneth j. Atchity, (Harper Collins Publishers; 1996) ISBN 0-06-270129-0
 * The Old West: The Gunfighters, Paul Trachtman, (Time Life Books; 1974)
 * The Old West: The Trailblazers, Bill Bilbert, (Time Life Books; 1973)
 * The Old West: The Great Chiefs, Benjamin Capps, (Time Life Books; 1975)
 * Lost Civilizations, Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs, Dale M. Brown, (Time Life Books, Alexandria; 1992) ISBN 0-8094-9850-2
 * The Evolution of Medieval Thought, David Knowles, (Vintage Books, New York; 1962)
 * The Evolution of Medieval Thought, David Knowles, (Vintage Books, New York; 1962)

Math

 * Calculus: An Applied Approach, Fifth Edition, Larson Edwards, (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston; 1999) ISBN 0-395-91683-6

Physics

 * College Physics: Fourth Edition, Serway, Faughn, (Sauders College Publishing, Fort Worth; 1995) ISBN 0-03-003562-7
 * Pocket Guide to accompany Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Fourth Edition, Serway, Lind, (Saunders College Publishing, Fort Worth; 1996) ISBN 0-03-015659-9
 * Schrõdinder's Kittens and the Search for Reality, John Gribbin, (Back Bay Books, Boston; 1995) ISBN 0-316-32819-7
 * The Lighter Side of Gravity, Second Edition, Jayany V. Narlikar, (Cambridge University Press; 1996) ISBN 0-521-56565-0
 * A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Stephen Hawking, (Bantam Books, New York; 1988) ISBN 0-553-34614-8
 * After the First Three Minutes: The Story of Our Universe, T Padmanabhan, (Cambridge University Press; 1998) ISBN 0-521-62972-1

Mythology

 * Mythology, Edith Hamilton, (Little, Brown and Company, Boston; 1942)
 * Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life, tanslated by Dennis Tedlock, (Simon & Schuster, New York; 1985) ISBN 0-671-45241-X
 * World Mythology: An Anthology of the Great Myths and Epics, Second Edition, Donna Rosenberg, (NTC Publishing Group; 1986) ISBN

Natural History

 * Yosemite: A Visiters Companion, George Wuerthner, (Stackpole Books; 1994) ISBN 0-8117-2598-7
 * Yosemite National Park: A Natural History Guide to Yosemite and Its Trails, Jeffrey P. Schaffer, (Wilderness Press, Berkeley; 1999) ISBN 0-89997-244-6
 * The Tahoe Sierra: A Natural History Guide to 112 Hikes in the Northern Sierra, Jeffrey P. Schaffer, (Wilderness Press, Berkeley; 1998) ISBN 0-89997-220-9
 * Secrets in The Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks: Third Edition, Lorraine Salem Tufts (North Palm Beach, Florida; National Photographic Collections; 1998) ISBN 0-9620255-3-4
 * Zion National Park: Sanctuary in the Desert, Nicky Leach (Mariposa, California; Sierra Press; 2000)
 * Zion National Park: Sanctuary in the Desert, Nicky Leach (Mariposa, California; Sierra Press; 2000)

Other

 * The Space Shuttle Operations Manual, Joels, Kennedy, (Ballantine Books, New York; 1988) ISBN 0-345-34181-3
 * Design: An Illustrated Historical Overview, Thomas Hauffe, (Barron's; 1996) ISBN 0-8120-9772-6

Space

 * Moons and Planets, Fourth Edition, William K. Hartmann, (Wadsworth Publishing Company; 1999) ISBN 0-534-54630-7
 * Voyage Through the Universe, The Far Planets, Editors of Time-Life Books, (Time Life Books, 1988) ISBN 0-8094-6854-9

title: User:Mav/Citations


text:
Guaynabo, Puerto Rico

Guaynabo is a city, suburb of San Juan and municipality in the northern part of Puerto Rico, located in the northern coast of the island, north of Aguas Buenas, south of Cataño, east of Bayamón, and west of San Juan. Guaynabo is spread over 9 barrios and Guaynabo Pueblo (the downtown area and the administrative center of the suburb). Guaynabo is considered, along with its neighbors – San Juan and the municipalities of Bayamón, Carolina, Cataño, Trujillo Alto, and Toa Baja – to be part of the San Juan metropolitan area. It is also part of the larger San Juan-Caguas-Guaynabo Metropolitan Statistical Area, (the largest MSA in Puerto Rico).

The municipality has a land area of 27.13 sqmi and a population of 89,780 as of the 2020 census. The municipality is known for being an affluent suburb of San Juan and for its former Irish heritage. The studios of WAPA-TV is located in Guaynabo.

History
The first European settlement in Puerto Rico, Caparra, was founded in 1508 by Juan Ponce de León in land that is today part of Guaynabo. Ponce de León resided there as first Spanish governor of Puerto Rico. This settlement was abandoned in 1521 in favor of San Juan. The ruins of Caparra remain and are a U.S. National Historic Landmark. The Museum of the Conquest and Colonization of Puerto Rico, which features artifacts from the site and others in Puerto Rico, is located on the grounds.

The municipality of Guaynabo was founded in 1769 by Pedro R. Davila (P.R.), after a struggle for division from the municipality of Bayamón. Previously, the municipality was known as Buinabo, a name that it is popularly said to mean in Taíno "Here is another place of fresh water." Irish officer Thomas O'Daly and fellow Irishman Miguel Kirwan settled the area in the late 18th century and developed a farm and sugarcane plantation he named Hacienda San Patricio. The plantation no longer exists but the land on which it was located is now the central business district of Guaynabo and the San Patricio Plaza shopping mall.

On September 20, 2017 Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico. In Guaynabo, where 26.9% of the population live below the poverty level, 2800 homes were destroyed. The hurricane triggered numerous landslides in Guaynabo. Then president Donald Trump and his wife, Melania Trump visited Guaynabo. Due to the municipality's fiscal difficulties, it was not until April 2, 2019, over a year and half later, that the overtime pay owed to municipal workers was paid.

After 24 years as mayor, Héctor O'Neill García resigned in 2017 when allegations surfaced of sexual harassment toward a female municipal employee. He was replaced in a run-off election by Angel Pérez Otero, who in turn was forced out due to his arrest for Federal corruption allegations in 2021. Héctor O'Neill's son Edward O'Neill Rosa won the following run-off election to succeed him as mayor in January 2022.

Geography
Guaynabo is on the northern side.

Barrios

Like all municipalities of Puerto Rico, Guaynabo is subdivided into barrios. The municipal buildings, central square and large Catholic church are located in a smaller barrio referred to as "el pueblo", located near the center of the municipality.

 * 1) Camarones
 * 2) Frailes
 * 3) Guaraguao
 * 4) Guaynabo barrio-pueblo
 * 5) Hato Nuevo
 * 6) Mamey
 * 7) Pueblo Viejo
 * 8) Río
 * 9) Santa Rosa
 * 10) Sonadora

Sectors
Barrios (which are, in contemporary times, roughly comparable to minor civil divisions) are further subdivided into smaller areas called sectores (sectors in English). The types of sectores may vary, from normally sector to urbanización to reparto to barriada to residencial, among others.

Special Communities
Comunidades Especiales de Puerto Rico (Special Communities of Puerto Rico) are marginalized communities whose citizens are experiencing a certain amount of social exclusion. A map shows these communities occur in nearly every municipality of the commonwealth. Of the 742 places that were on the list in 2014, the following barrios, communities, sectors, or neighborhoods were in Guaynabo: Amelia, Buen Samaritano, Camarones barrio, Corea, El Polvorín, Honduras, Jerusalén, Los Filtros, Sector El Laberinto, Sector La Pajilla, Sector Los Ratones (Camino Feliciano), Sector San Miguel, Trujillo, Sector Tomé, Vietnam, and Villa Isleña.

Tourism
To stimulate local tourism, the Puerto Rico Tourism Company launched the Voy Turistiendo ("I'm Touring") campaign, with a passport book and website. The Guaynabo page lists Ruinas de Caparra, Paseo Tablado, and Plaza de Los Artistas, as places of interest.

Landmarks and places of interest

 * Rancho de Apa (restaurant)
 * Centro de Bellas Artes (Guaynabo Performing Arts Center)
 * Caparra Ruins
 * Caribe Recreational Center
 * Iglesia Parroquial de San Pedro Mártir
 * La Marquesa Forest Park
 * Paseo Tablado
 * Mario Morales Coliseum
 * San Patricio Plaza
 * Caparra Country Club
 * Plaza Guaynabo
 * Museum of Transportation
 * Museo del Deporte
 * Fort Buchanan

Economy
Several businesses have their headquarters or local Puerto Rican branches in Guaynabo. El Nuevo Día, Chrysler, Santander Securities, Puerto Rico Telephone, and many sales offices for large US and international firms (such as Total, Microsoft, Toshiba, Puma Energy and others) have their Puerto Rican headquarters in Guaynabo. WAPA-TV (Televicentro) and Univision Puerto Rico have their main studios in Guaynabo.

Iberia's San Juan-area offices are in Guaynabo.

Crime
Carjackings have been an ongoing problem in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico    and in 2014 the FBI reported a carjacking that occurred in Camarones.

Festivals and events
Guaynabo celebrates its patron saint festival in April. The Fiestas Patronales de San Pedro Martir is a religious and cultural celebration that generally features parades, games, artisans, amusement rides, regional food, and live entertainment.

Other festivals and events celebrated in Guaynabo include:
 * Three Kings Festival – January
 * Mabó Carnival – February
 * Mothers’ Day celebration – May
 * National Salsa Day – June
 * Fine Arts camp and recreation and sports camp – June
 * Bomba and Plena (folkloric music and dance) Festival – October
 * Official lighting of Christmas Lights – November

Sports
Guaynabo's old BSN team, the Guaynabo Mets, won national championships in 1980, 1982 and 1989, commanded by the player whom the Mario Morales Coliseum was named after, Mario "Quijote" Morales. The Conquistadores de Guaynabo, or Guaynabo Conquistadores, are the Guaynabo Mets replacement and still play in the Mario Morales Coliseum. The Mets de Guaynabo are the local women's volleyball team that play in the Liga de Voleibol Superior Femenino (LVSF), winning three titles in 1978, 1993–94 and 1995. They also play in the Mario Morales Coliseum. Guaynabo Fluminense FC is Guaynabo's professional soccer team that plays in the Puerto Rico Soccer League. The league started in 2008 and Guaynabo's current position in the league is 4th place. Guaynabo Fluminense FC play their matches at the Jose Bonano Stadium that was originally made for baseball, but became a soccer arena after the Puerto Rico Baseball League was cancelled for the 2008 season. It was at the same year that the Puerto Rico Soccer League was starting to take place. In the 2009 season, Guaynabo Fluminense FC moved to the Sixto Escobar Stadium.

 * Mets de Guaynabo (women's volleyball) - Liga de Voleibol Superior Femenino (LVSF)
 * Mets de Guaynabo (men's volleyball) - Liga de Voleibol Superior Masculino (LVSM)
 * Guaynabo Conquistadores (basketball) - Baloncesto Superior Nacional (BSN)
 * Mets de Guaynabo (basketball) - Baloncesto Superior Nacional (BSN)
 * Mets de Guaynabo (baseball) - Federación de Béisbol Aficionado de Puerto Rico (Béisbol Doble A)
 * Guaynabo Fluminense FC (soccer) - Puerto Rico Soccer League (PRSL)

Government and infrastructure
The United States Postal Service operates two post offices, Guaynabo and Caparra Heights, in Guaynabo.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons operates the Metropolitan Detention Center, Guaynabo in Guaynabo.

Some regions of the city belong to the Puerto Rico Senatorial district I while others belong to the Puerto Rico Senatorial district II. Both of the Districts are represented by two Senators. In 2016, Henry Neumann and Miguel Romero were elected as Senators for District I, while Migdalia Padilla and Carmelo Ríos have been serving as Senators for District II since being elected in 2004.

Mayors of Guaynabo from 1782 to 1969

 * {| class="wikitable"

! Term ! Name
 * 1782
 * Cayetano de la Sarna
 * 1800
 * Pedro Dávila
 * 1812
 * Dionisio Cátala
 * 1816
 * Angel Umpierre
 * 1818
 * Juan José González
 * 1821
 * Joaquín Goyena
 * 1822
 * José María Prosis
 * 1823
 * Simón Hinonio
 * 1825
 * José R. Ramírez
 * 1827
 * Antonio Guzmán
 * 1828
 * Genaro Oller
 * 1836
 * Andrés Degal
 * 1836
 * Agustín Rosario
 * 1840
 * Francisco Hiques
 * 1844
 * Martínez Díaz
 * 1848
 * Tomás Cátla
 * 1849
 * Andrés Vega
 * 1852
 * Justo García
 * 1856
 * José Tomás Sagarra
 * 1857
 * Manuel Manzano
 * 1859
 * Juan Floret
 * 1859
 * José Francisco Chiques
 * 1862
 * Segundo de Echeverte
 * 1862
 * José de Murgas
 * 1869
 * Juan J. Caro
 * 1873
 * Benito Gómez
 * 1874
 * Manuel Millones
 * 1876
 * José Otero
 * 1891
 * Juan Díaz de Barrio
 * 1914
 * José Ramón
 * 1914
 * José Carazo
 * 1919
 * Narciso Vall-llobera Feliú
 * 1924
 * Zenón Díaz Valcárcel
 * 1936
 * Dolores Valdivieso
 * 1944
 * Augosto Rivera
 * 1948
 * Jorge Gavillán Fuentes
 * 1956
 * Juan Román
 * 1964
 * José Rosario Reyes
 * }
 * Benito Gómez
 * 1874
 * Manuel Millones
 * 1876
 * José Otero
 * 1891
 * Juan Díaz de Barrio
 * 1914
 * José Ramón
 * 1914
 * José Carazo
 * 1919
 * Narciso Vall-llobera Feliú
 * 1924
 * Zenón Díaz Valcárcel
 * 1936
 * Dolores Valdivieso
 * 1944
 * Augosto Rivera
 * 1948
 * Jorge Gavillán Fuentes
 * 1956
 * Juan Román
 * 1964
 * José Rosario Reyes
 * }
 * 1944
 * Augosto Rivera
 * 1948
 * Jorge Gavillán Fuentes
 * 1956
 * Juan Román
 * 1964
 * José Rosario Reyes
 * }
 * 1964
 * José Rosario Reyes
 * }

Symbols
The municipio has an official flag and coat of arms.

Flag
This municipality has a flag.

Coat of arms
This municipality has a coat of arms.

Health facilities
Professional Hospital Guaynabo located on Felisa Rincón Avenue (formerly Las Cumbres Avenue), is the newest hospital infrastructure built in Puerto Rico. Guaynabo is the only city in Puerto Rico to have a hospital specialized in advanced vascular surgery. Some of the first and newest procedures performed in Puerto Rico during 2009 were done in Professional Hospital Guaynabo, including the first AxiaLIF surgery for lumbar fusion.

Transportation
The Tren Urbano has only one station in the municipality, Torrimar Station. Guaynabo has a bus network called “Guaynabo City Transport”. There are 63 bridges in Guaynabo.

Notable people

 * Iván DeJesús Jr., (born 1987) baseball player who played most for the Cincinnati Reds.
 * Tomas Nido, (born 1994) Baseball Catcher for the New York Mets.

Education
Guaynabo is home to Atlantic University College, which specializes in new media art.

The Japanese Language School of Puerto Rico (プエルトリコ補習授業校 Puerutoriko Hoshū Jugyō Kō), a weekend Japanese school, previously held its classes in Guaynabo. It closed in March 2006.

International relations
Guaynabo serves as a host city to four foreign consulates with business in Puerto Rico:
 * 🇸🇻 el salvador
 * 🇫🇮 finland
 * 🇳🇮 nicaragua
 * undefined

title: Guaynabo, Puerto Rico