text:
Talk:Pierre Salinger

Salinger and Pan Am 103
The article originally stated that "In 1991, two Libyans were indicted over the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, but Salinger believed Libya had been set up. In a 1989 ABC Prime Time Live Special, he named the so-called "Kenyan Three" as the masterminds of the bombing. The program won an Emmy Award." This statement has been in the article since 2004. The 2004 edit added a lot of odd, sometimes derogatory material. For this statement, the chronology is scrambled, and the "Kenyan Three" is hapax legomenon, only appearing in websites that use this article. Salinger believed the claims of Syria-PFLP(GC) responsibility for Pan Am 103; this is verified in the letter by John Root now cited. There is an ad for this program in the NYT of Nov 30, 1989, which also verifies this. I have not been able to verify that this segment won an Emmy, and deleted this claim as well. Help, anyone who knows or can provide a source. There is other questionable material in the article as well. Rgr09 (talk) 10:29, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Salinger and Amiic
Information has several times been added claiming that Salinger was involved with a company called Amiic which specialized in promoting real estate in Europe. The source is the Monetas database in Switzerland, but the webpage cited simply shows the company was dissolved in 1997 and says nothing about Salinger's involvement in the company. I have deleted this twice and will continue to delete unless you can provide a source that actually says Salinger was involved with the company AND you take the time to explain why this is notable. Salinger was a businessman as well as a reporter and writer and worked for many companies over the decades. If Salinger did give lectures for Amiic, why is this in any way noteworthy? The same holds true for the other people that also keep getting the same information inserted in their articles, based on the same inadequate source, including Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Paul-Loup Sulitzer, and François Spoerry. Rgr09 (talk) 00:50, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your message. But really, it's rather easy to understand. In the 1980s, the Web didn't exist... So there is no reference on the Web. However, I confirm : that's a fact. Pierre Salinger was a lecturer and an important member of Amiic, an organization for thousands of real estate investors and developpers throughout the world. I think this fact is really notable for P. Salinger or for the others. Best regards. --86.73.64.212 (talk) 22:27, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

 * In the 1980s, Salinger's involvement in the company was regularly confirmed in numerous advertisements for Amiic. --86.73.64.212 (talk) 22:38, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

 * There should be sources of this. I know of his involvement in Gramco, but not in Amiic. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 22:47, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, there has to be a source for information in the Salinger article. Monetas gives no information on Salinger so we need something else.  The internet is not the only source of information, there are books, such as Salinger's 1995 autobiography, P.S., which I will try to check in the next month or so.  There are also trade publications, magazine, newsletters by the ton for real estate.  Some of these get scanned and put on the internet, some are available at libraries and archives.  References to such materials are perfectly good for this article.  Another way to approach this is to work up an article on Amiic.  If Salinger's work for Amiic was notable, Amiic itself should be notable. Perhaps an article on the history of Amiic would be a better place to put the information on the work of Salinger, Thiollet, Spoerry, et al. 05:40, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Salinger and TWA 800
Really? Only a brief mention is made in the introduction about his claims that a USN missile shotdown this airliner back in the 1990s. This pretty much trashed his reputation, yet is basically ignored in this "encyclopedic" article - imagine if he'd been a conservative media personality... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:801:4280:A710:588:E8E6:721D:AA5 (talk) 23:03, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

 * I wouldn't be so smug about this.

 * As written up in the TWA Flight 800 conspiracy theories page, six of the investigators who authored the initial NTSB report claiming internal explosion later recanted, as exposéd in some 2013 documentary film, though I had not been aware myself such a turn of events had occurred. --Kiyoweap (talk) 20:27, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Pierre Salinger


text:
Jean-Louis Barrault

Jean-Louis Bernard Barrault (8 September 1910 – 22 January 1994) was a French actor, director and mime artist who worked on both screen and stage.

Biography
Barrault was born in Le Vésinet in France in 1910. His father was 'a Burgundian pharmacist who died in the First World War.' :87 He studied at the Collége Chaptal until 1930, when he began his studies at the École du Louvre. :87

Theatre
From 1931 to 1935 Barrault studied and acted at Charles Dullin's L'Atelier. :32 His first performance was a small role in Ben Jonson's Volpone. At the time, Barrault was unable to afford rent and Dullin allowed him to sleep in the theatre on Volpone's bed. :16 It was L'Atelier that he first met and studied under Étienne Decroux, :41 with whom he would create the pantomime La Vie Primitive in 1931. :87

He was a member of the Comédie-Française from 1942 to 1946, performing lead roles in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Corneille's Le Cid. :32 He and his wife, actress Madeleine Renaud, formed their own troupe, Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, in 1946 at Paris' Théâtre Marigny. :161 In 1951 he published his memoirs, Reflections on the Theatre.

He was made director of Théâtre de France in 1959, and remained in the role until 1969. In 1971 he was reappointed director of Théâtre des Nations. He retired from theatre in 1990. :87

Film
In 1935 he had his first film role in Marc Allégret's Les Beaux Jours. :87 He would go on to act in nearly 50 movies over the course of his career. One of his most famous performances was in Marcel Carné's film Les Enfants du Paradis (1945), in which he played the mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau. :161

He was the uncle of actress Marie-Christine Barrault and sometime sponsor of Peter Brook. In 1940, he married the actress Madeleine Renaud. They founded a number of theaters together and toured extensively, including in South America.

Barrault died from a heart attack in Paris on 22 January 1994, at the age of 83. :87 He is buried with his wife Renaud in the Passy Cemetery in Paris.

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

title: Jean-Louis Barrault


text:
Squirrel-cage rotor

A squirrel-cage rotor is the rotating part of the common squirrel-cage induction motor. It consists of a cylinder of steel laminations, with aluminum or copper conductors embedded in its surface. In operation, the non-rotating stator winding is connected to an alternating current power source; the alternating current in the stator produces a rotating magnetic field. The rotor winding has current induced in it by the stator field, like a transformer except that the current in the rotor is varying at the stator field rotation rate minus the physical rotation rate. The interaction of the magnetic fields in the stator and the currents in the rotor produce a torque on the rotor.

By adjusting the shape of the bars in the rotor, the speed-torque characteristics of the motor can be changed, to minimize starting current or to maximize low-speed torque, for example.

Squirrel-cage induction motors are very prevalent in industry, in sizes from below 1 kW up to tens of megawatts (tens-of-thousand horsepower). They are simple, rugged, and self-starting, and maintain a reasonably constant speed from light load to full load, set by the frequency of the power supply and the number of poles of the stator winding. Commonly used motors in industry are usually IEC or NEMA standard frame sizes, which are interchangeable between manufacturers. This simplifies application and replacement of these motors.

History
Galileo Ferraris described an induction machine with a two-phase stator winding and a solid copper cylindrical armature in 1885. In 1888, Nikola Tesla received a patent on a two-phase induction motor with a short-circuited copper rotor winding and a two-phase stator winding. Developments of this design became commercially important. In 1889, Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky developed a wound-rotor induction motor, and shortly afterwards a cage-type rotor winding. By the end of the 19th century induction motors were widely applied on the growing alternating-current electrical distributions systems.

Structure

The motor rotor shape is a cylinder mounted on a shaft. Internally it contains longitudinal conductive bars (usually made of aluminium or copper) set into grooves and connected at both ends by shorting rings forming a cage-like shape. The name is derived from the similarity between this rings-and-bars winding and a squirrel cage.

The solid core of the rotor is built with stacks of electrical steel laminations. The figure shows one of many lamination sets used. The rotor lamination has a larger number of slots than its corresponding stator lamination, and the number of rotor slots should be a non-integer multiple of the number of stator slots to prevent magnetic interlocking of rotor and stator teeth at the starting instant.

The rotor bars may be made of either copper or aluminium. A very common structure for smaller motors uses die cast aluminium poured into the rotor after the laminations are stacked. Larger motors have aluminium or copper bars which are welded or brazed to end-rings. Since the voltage developed in the squirrel cage winding is very low, and the current very high, no intentional insulation layer is present between the bars and the rotor steel.

Theory
The field windings in the stator of an induction motor set up a rotating magnetic field through the rotor. The relative motion between this field and the rotor induces electric current in the conductive bars. In turn these currents lengthwise in the conductors react with the magnetic field of the motor to produce force acting at a tangent orthogonal to the rotor, resulting in torque to turn the shaft. In effect the rotor is carried around with the magnetic field but at a slightly slower rate of rotation. The difference in speed is called slip and increases with load.

Skewing
The conductors are often skewed slightly along the length of the rotor to reduce noise and smooth out torque fluctuations that might result at some speeds due to interactions with the pole pieces of the stator, by ensuring that at any time the same fraction of a rotor bar is under each stator slot. If rotor bars were parallel to the stator poles, the motor would experience a drop and then recovery in torque as each bar passes the gap in the stator.

The laminations shown in the photo have 36 bars in the stator and 40 bars in the rotor. The greatest common divisor of 36 and 40 is 4, with the result that no more than 4 bars of the stator and rotor can be aligned at any one time, which also reduces torque fluctuations.

The number of bars in the rotor determines to what extent the induced currents are fed back to the stator coils and hence the current through them. The constructions that offer the least feedback use prime numbers of rotor bars.

Laminations
The iron core serves to carry the magnetic field through the rotor conductors. Because the magnetic field in the rotor is alternating with time, the core uses construction similar to a transformer core to reduce core energy losses. It is made of thin laminations, separated by varnish insulation, to reduce eddy currents circulating in the core. The material is a low carbon but high-silicon iron with several times the resistivity of pure iron, further reducing eddy-current loss, and low coercivity to reduce hysteresis loss.

Rotor bars
The same basic design is used for both single-phase and three-phase motors over a wide range of sizes. Rotors for three-phase will have variations in the depth and shape of bars to suit the design classification. Generally, thick bars have good torque and are efficient at low slip, since they present lower resistance to the EMF. As the slip increases, the skin effect starts to reduce the effective depth and increases the resistance, resulting in reduced efficiency but still maintaining torque.

The shape and depth of the rotor bars can be used to vary the speed-torque characteristics of the induction motor. At standstill, the revolving magnetic field passes the rotor bars at a high rate, inducing line-frequency current into the rotor bars. Due to the skin effect, the induced current tends to flow at the outer edge of the winding. As the motor accelerates, the slip frequency decreases and induced current flows at greater depths in the winding. By tapering the profile of the rotor bars to vary their resistance at different depths, or by constructing a double squirrel cage, with a combination of high and low impedance rotor in parallel the motor can be arranged to produce more or less torque at standstill and near its synchronous speed.

Practical demonstration
To demonstrate how the cage rotor works, the stator of a single-phase motor and a copper pipe (as rotor) may be used. If adequate AC power is applied to the stator, an alternating magnetic field will revolve around within the stator. If the copper pipe is inserted inside the stator, there will be an induced current in the pipe, and this current will produce a magnetic field of its own in the pipe. The interaction between the stator's revolving magnetic field and the copper-pipe-rotor's induced magnetic field produces a torque and thus rotation.

Use in synchronous motors
A synchronous motor may have a squirrel-cage winding embedded in its rotor, used to increase the motor starting torque and so decrease the time to accelerate to synchronous speed. The squirrel cage winding of a synchronous machine will generally be smaller than for an induction machine of similar rating. When the rotor is turning at the same speed as the stator's revolving magnetic field, no current is induced into the squirrel-cage windings and the windings will have no further effect on the operation of the synchronous motor at steady-state.

The squirrel cage winding in some machines provides a damping effect for load or system disturbances, and in this role may be designated as an amortisseur windings. Large machines may only have amortisseur bars in the individual pole faces, not interconnected between poles. Because the squirrel cage winding is not large enough to dissipate the heat of continuous operation, large synchronous machines often have protective relays to detect when the machine has fallen out of synchronization with the supply voltage.

Induction generators
Three phase squirrel cage induction motors can also be used as generators. For this to work the motor must see a reactive load, and either be connected to a grid supply or an arrangement of capacitors to provide excitation current. For the motor to work as a generator instead of a motor the rotor must be spun faster than its stator's synchronous speed. This will cause the motor to generate power after building up its residual magnetism.

title: Squirrel-cage rotor


text:
Battle of Mobile Bay

The Battle of Mobile Bay of August 5, 1864, was a naval and land engagement of the American Civil War in which a Union fleet commanded by Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, assisted by a contingent of soldiers, attacked a smaller Confederate fleet led by Admiral Franklin Buchanan and three forts that guarded the entrance to Mobile Bay: Morgan, Gaines and Powell. Farragut's perhaps apocryphal order of "Damn the torpedoes! Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" became famous in paraphrase, as "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

The battle was marked by Farragut's seemingly-rash but successful run through a minefield that had just claimed one of his ironclad monitors, enabling his fleet to get beyond the range of the shore-based guns. This was followed by a reduction of the Confederate fleet to a single vessel, ironclad CSS Tennessee. Tennessee proceeded to engage the entire Northern fleet. Tennessee's armor enabled her to inflict more injury than she received, but she could not overcome the imbalance in numbers. She was eventually reduced to a motionless hulk and surrendered, ending the battle. With no navy to support them, the three forts also surrendered within days. Complete control of lower Mobile Bay thus passed to the Union forces.

Mobile had been the last important port on the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi River remaining in Confederate possession, so its closure was the final step in completing the blockade in that region. This Union victory, together with the capture of Atlanta, was extensively covered by Union newspapers and was a significant boost for Abraham Lincoln's bid for re-election three months after the battle. This battle concluded as being the last naval engagement in the state of Alabama in the war. It would also be Admiral Farragut's last engagement.

Mobile and Mobile Bay
The city of Mobile is situated near the head of Mobile Bay, where a natural harbor is formed by the meeting of the Mobile and Tensaw rivers. The bay is about 33 mi long; the lower bay is about 23 mi at its greatest width. It is deep enough to accommodate ocean-going vessels in the lower half without dredging; above the mouth of Dog River the water becomes shoal, preventing deep-draft vessels from approaching the city.

The mouth of the bay is marked on the east by a long narrow peninsula of sand, Mobile Point, that separates Bon Secour Bay, where the Bon Secour River enters the larger bay, from the gulf. The point ends at the main channel into Mobile Bay, and here the United States government erected a pre-war fort to shield Mobile from enemy fleets.

Across the entrance, the line of the peninsula is continued in a series of barrier islands, beginning with Dauphin Island. Northwest of Dauphin Island is Little Dauphin Island, then a series of minor islands that are interrupted by a secondary entrance to the bay, Grant's Pass. A few other small islands and shoals lie to the south of Dauphin Island, defining the main channel for as much as 10 mi south of the entrance.

Rather early in the war, the Confederate government decided not to defend its entire coastline, but rather to concentrate its efforts on a few of its most important ports and harbors. Following the loss of New Orleans in April 1862, Mobile became the only major port in the eastern Gulf of Mexico that needed to be defended.

The city subsequently became the center for blockade running on the gulf. Most of the trade between the Confederacy, Havana, and other Caribbean ports passed through Mobile. A few attempts were mounted to break the blockade, but they were not large enough to have lasting impact. Among the most embarrassing episodes of the war for the U.S. Navy was the passage of the raider CSS Florida through the blockade into Mobile Bay on September 4, 1862; this was followed by her later escape through the same blockade on January 15, 1863.

Although the orders given to Flag Officer David G. Farragut when he was assigned to command of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron had included instructions to capture Mobile as well as New Orleans, the early diversion of the squadron into the campaign for the lower Mississippi meant that the city and its harbor would not receive full attention until after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863.

Given respite by the Union strategy, the Confederate Army improved the defenses of Mobile Bay by strengthening Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines at the entrance to the bay. In addition, they set up Fort Powell, a smaller work that guarded the Grant's Pass channel. Grant's Pass was also obstructed by a set of piles and other impediments, which had the effect of diverting the tidal flow to Heron Pass.

Land
Mobile and Mobile Bay were within the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana, led by Major General Dabney H. Maury. Although Mobile was the site of the department headquarters, Maury did not exercise immediate command of the forts at the entrance to the bay, and he was not present during the battle and ensuing siege. Local command was entrusted to Brigadier General Richard L. Page.

The primary contribution of the Confederate Army to the defense of Mobile Bay was the three forts. Fort Morgan was a masonry structure dating from 1834. The fort mounted 46 guns, of which 11 were rifled. Its garrison numbered about 600.

Across the main channel from Fort Morgan on Dauphin Island was Fort Gaines, containing 26 guns, and with a garrison of about 600. When Page was not present, command of the fort fell to Colonel Charles D. Anderson.

At the western end of the bay was Fort Powell, smallest of the three, with 18 guns and about 140 men. It was commanded in Page's absence by Lieutenant Colonel James M. Williams. All three forts were flawed in that their guns were unprotected against fire from the rear; in addition, forts Powell and Gaines lacked adequate traverses.

The raw numbers of troops available do not indicate how effectively they would fight. The war was already winding down, and assertions were made that the morale of the soldiers was bad. The judgment is hard to quantify, but it would explain at least in part the poor performance of the defenders.

The Confederate Torpedo Bureau, directed by Major General Gabriel J. Rains, contributed a passive weapon to the defense. Men of the bureau had planted 67 "torpedoes" (naval mines) across the entrance, leaving a gap on the eastern side of the channel so blockade runners and other friendly vessels could enter or leave the harbor. The minefield was well marked by buoys, which Farragut knew well. Its purpose was not necessarily to sink enemy vessels trying to enter, but rather to force them to steer close to Fort Morgan and its guns.

The Confederate military also began construction in 1862 of two forts in Clarke County that were planned to prevent Union advancement into the interior of Alabama in the event that Mobile was captured. These forts, known as Fort Stonewall and Fort Sidney Johnston, also provided protection to the salt works in Clarke County, the Selma Naval Ordnance Works, and Montgomery.

Sea

The Confederate Navy likewise used the time they were given to improve the defense. Three small sidewheel gunboats of traditional type were stationed in the bay: CSS Selma, carrying four guns; Morgan, with six guns; and Gaines, also with six guns. In addition to these was the ironclad ram CSS Tennessee, which, though carrying only six guns, was a far more impressive fighting machine by virtue of her armor.

Tennessee had been built on the Alabama River near the town of Selma. Her guns were prepared under the direction of Commander Catesby ap Roger Jones, who had commanded CSS Virginia (ex-USS Merrimack) in her famous duel with USS Monitor (1862) on March 9, 1862, the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads. Jones succeeded to command of Virginia after her original commander, Franklin Buchanan, was wounded the previous day. Buchanan had been promoted to the rank of admiral for his exploits that day, the first admiral in the Confederacy. Admiral Buchanan was now in command of the small Confederate flotilla at Mobile.

Launched before her machinery and guns were in place, Tennessee was towed down to Mobile Bay for completion. Once that was done she had to cross the Dog River Bar to get into the lower bay. Tennessee drew 13 ft, but the bar had only 9 ft of water at high tide. To get her across, workers had to build a set of caissons, called "camels" by shipbuilders. These were fitted to her sides and pumped out, and barely lifted the ship enough to clear the bar. On May 18, 1864, she finally entered the lower bay.

Tennessee was the only armored vessel that the Confederate Navy put into lower Mobile Bay, but there were plans for others. Buchanan hoped that he would have as many as eight, including a pair of floating batteries, with which he could challenge the Union blockade, attack Pensacola and perhaps even recapture New Orleans. The manufacturing and transportation facilities of the South were not capable of this ambitious program, however, some of the projected fleet were completed in time to defend Mobile after the lower bay had been lost, but they were not there when most needed. Nevertheless, they imparted some urgency to Farragut's plans to maintain the blockade.

Union Navy

The man who led the Union fleet at Mobile Bay was Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, no longer Flag Officer Farragut. The U.S. Navy had undergone an organizational change in the second year of the war, one feature of which was the creation of the rank of rear admiral. The new rank implied that the ships of the navy would be employed as members of a fleet, not simply as collections of vessels with a common purpose.

The ships that made up his attacking fleet were of several distinct types, including some that had not even existed when the war began. Of the 18 vessels selected, eight were conventional wooden-hulled ships carrying large numbers of guns that fired broadside. Four of these had been with the West Gulf Blockading Squadron from the start (flagship USS Hartford (1858), USS Brooklyn (1858), USS Richmond (1860), and USS Oneida (1861)) and had fought in its battles on the Mississippi. Two smaller gunboats had likewise been with Farragut since the capture of New Orleans: USS Kennebec (1861) and USS Itasca (1861).

USS Galena (1862) was now very much like the others, but she had begun life as an experimental ironclad. Her armor had been found to be more hindrance than help, so it was removed. Three were double-enders (USS Octorara (1861), USS Metacomet (1863), and USS Port Royal (1862)), a type of warship that had been developed during the war to navigate the tortuous channels of the interior rivers. Finally, four were representatives of the New Navy: ironclad monitors. Of these, USS Manhattan (1863) and USS Tecumseh (1863) were improved versions of the original USS Monitor (1862), armed with two large guns in a single turret. The USS Chickasaw (1864) and USS Winnebago (1863) were twin-turreted river monitors of light draft; each mounted four guns that were smaller than those carried by the other two.

Union Army
Army cooperation was needed to take and hold the enemy forts. The commander of the Military Division of West Mississippi was Major General Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, a career soldier with whom Farragut worked in planning the attack on Mobile. He calculated that 5,000 soldiers could be taken from other responsibilities in the division, enough to effect a landing behind Fort Morgan and cut it off from communication with Mobile. Their plans were undercut, however, when General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant made an urgent call for troops to be sent to the Virginia theater, then entering its critical phase.

Canby then believed that he could spare no more than 2,000, not enough to invest the largest fort but enough to take Dauphin Island and thereby secure contact between the fleet inside the bay and their support in the gulf. Canby and Farragut recognized that they would not be able to threaten Mobile, but possession of the lower bay would be of great enough use to the blockading fleet that the projected attack should not be canceled.

Communication would be necessary between the fleet and the landing force, so Canby suggested that a contingent of his signal corpsmen be distributed among the major ships of Farragut's attacking force. Farragut accepted the offer. This almost casual mingling of the services was found quite useful during the battle.

On August 3, 1864, 1,500 men were landed approximately 15 miles west of the fort in preparation for the Siege of Fort Gaines, while under protection from one of Farragut's flotillas. The troops consisted of infantry detachments from the 77th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 34th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 96th Ohio Infantry, and 3rd Maryland Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, with General Gordon Granger as commander. The troops then marched toward Fort Gaines. On the evening of August 4, they entrenched and formed their skirmish line less than a half mile away.

Battle and siege

The army landing force under Granger was ready to launch the attack on August 3, but Farragut wanted to wait for his fourth monitor USS Tecumseh, expected at any moment but delayed at Pensacola. The admiral almost decided to proceed with only three monitors, and the army went ashore on Dauphin Island, acting under a misapprehension of naval intentions. The fleet was not ready to move yet, so the defenders were able to rush additional forces to Fort Gaines. After the battle, Farragut concluded that the delay had actually worked to the advantage of the Federal forces, as the reinforcements were not great enough to have any effect on the battle, but they were included in the surrender.

While the army was going ashore, Tecumseh made her belated appearance and Farragut made his final dispositions for the fleet. The 14 wooden-hulled vessels would be lashed together in pairs, in a reprise of a tactic that the admiral had used earlier at the Battle of Port Hudson at Port Hudson, Louisiana. The intent was that, if a ship were to be disabled by battle damage to her engines, her partner would be able to keep her moving.

The monitors would form a column and lead the way into the bay, moving in close to Fort Morgan on the right side of the channel as they went in. The other ships would form a separate double column and pass on the port side of the monitors, so that the armored ships would shield their wooden sisters from the guns of the fort. When the Confederate fleet made its expected appearance, the monitors would move to attack the armored Tennessee, while the rest of the fleet would fight the faster gunboats.

Passing the forts

At dawn on August 5, conditions were nearly ideal for the attack. The tide was running in, so Farragut had his ships reduce steam pressure in order to minimize damage if their boilers were hit; he relied on the current to give them speed. The southwest breeze that sprang up would carry smoke from the guns away from the fleet and into the faces of the artillerymen in Fort Morgan.

The fleet approached the fort with Tecumseh, Manhattan, Winnebago, and Chickasaw in order leading the way. The second column was led by Brooklyn lashed to Octorara. Brooklyn had the lead because she carried four chase guns that could fire forward, while the other large ships had only two. She was also fitted with a device for removing mines, referred to as a "cowcatcher" by Farragut in his reports. Following were Hartford and Metacomet, Richmond and Port Royal, Lackawanna and Seminole, Monongahela and Kennebec, Ossipee and Itasca, and Oneida and Galena.

The Confederate ships were ready for the attack, and they moved into position to intercept the Union fleet just beyond the minefield. At 6:47 a.m., Tecumseh fired the first shot, the forts replied, and the action became general. The ships in the second column (except for Brooklyn) could not reply to the guns of the Confederate vessels, so they had to concentrate on the fort. Much of the damage done to the Federal fleet was caused by the enemy ships, perhaps because the fire from the fort was suppressed.

Shortly after the start of the action, monitor Tecumseh moved past the fort and toward Tennessee, apparently in obedience to that part of her orders. Commander Tunis A. M. Craven either disregarded or forgot the instruction to stay to the east of the minefield, so he took his ship directly across. Almost immediately, a torpedo went off under her hull, and she filled with water and sank in two or three minutes. Only 21 of her crew of 114 were saved. Craven was among those lost, so he could not explain his decisions.

Captain James Alden of Brooklyn was apparently confused by conflicting orders, to stay on the port side of the monitors and to stay to the right of the minefield, so he stopped his ship and signaled Farragut for instructions. Farragut would not stop his flagship. Recognizing hesitation from his subordinate commanders, he took the bold action of ordering Captain Percival Drayton to send Hartford around Brooklyn and into the lead of the column and giving the order, “Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!”. This took the ship into the torpedoes that had just sunk Tecumseh, but Farragut was confident that most of them had been submerged too long to be effective. His gamble paid off, and the entire column of 14 warships passed through unharmed. Several Union sailors reported hearing clicks of torpedo detonators when passing through.

Tennessee lacked the speed needed to ram the Union vessels as they passed, allowing Farragut to order some of his small, faster gunboats to attack the three Confederate gunboats. Metacomet, unleashed from Hartford, captured Selma. Fire from the gunboats holed Gaines, and she would have sunk had she not been beached; she was then burned by her crew. Morgan put up no resistance, but fled to the protection of the guns of Fort Morgan; next night she crept through the anchored Union fleet and escaped to Mobile.

Clash with CSS Tennessee

Farragut expected Tennessee to take shelter under the guns of Fort Morgan while he rested his ships and assessed battle damage in the middle of the bay, but Buchanan instead decided to take on the entire Federal fleet single-handed. Possibly he hoped to repeat the ramming tactics that had been so successful at Hampton Roads two years earlier; Buchanan did not explain his reasoning.

This time, the ships that he was facing were in motion, and he had to contend with three monitors, not one. Tennessee was so slow that she became the target of ramming rather than her opponents. Several of the Federal sloops managed to ram, including Monongahela, which had been fitted with an iron shield on her bow for just this purpose. None of the collisions harmed the ironclad; in every case, the ramming vessel suffered more. Shots from Farragut's fleet bounced off Tennessees armor, but Tennessees fire was ineffective due to inferior powder and multiple misfires.

The balance was tilted finally when two monitors arrived. Tennessee was already almost motionless, her smokestack shot away and so unable to build up boiler pressure. Her rudder chains were parted so that she could not steer. Furthermore, some of the shutters on her gun ports were jammed, rendering the guns behind them useless. Chickasaw took up position at her stern, and Manhattan began to pummel the ram with her 15 in guns. The heavy shot bent in the iron shield and shattered its oak backing.

Fragments killed or wounded some of the crew; one of the casualties was Admiral Buchanan himself, who suffered a badly broken leg. No longer able to fight, Commander James D. Johnston, captain of Tennessee, requested and received permission from the wounded admiral to surrender. A little more than three hours had elapsed since Tecumseh had fired the first shot.

Forts Powell and Gaines
With the fleet no longer facing opposition from the Confederate Navy, Farragut could pay some attention to the forts. He dispatched monitor Chickasaw to throw a few shells at Fort Powell and then to assist the troops ashore at Fort Gaines. Although neither fort suffered significant casualties or damage, the bombardment was sufficient to reveal the vulnerability of each to fire from the rear.

At Fort Powell, Lt. Col. Williams asked for instructions from Brig. Gen. Page. Page responded with ambiguous orders that may have been appropriate for spirited troops, but were disastrous when issued to men as seemingly demoralized as those at Fort Powell: "When no longer tenable, save your garrison. Hold out as long as you can." Williams was convinced that resistance was futile, so he spiked his guns and blew up his magazines; then he and his garrison waded to the mainland and made their way to Mobile.

Col. Anderson at Fort Gaines held out longer, although he faced a more formidable foe. Granger's soldiers vastly outnumbered his own, no matter whose figures for the garrison are accepted. The Union troops could bring their artillery up to close range with impunity, being shielded behind the sand dunes of Dauphin Island. In position, they were able to take in reverse two guns that fired on Farragut's fleet when it was entering the bay.

In the judgment of an engineering officer who inspected the fort after the Union army had taken possession, "It was utterly weak and inefficient against our attack (land and naval), which would have taken all its fronts in front, enfilade, and reverse." Recognizing that his situation was hopeless, Anderson opened communication with Granger and Farragut under a flag of truce; ignoring orders from Page forbidding him to do so (and eventually removing him from command), he surrendered the fort on August 8.

Siege of Fort Morgan
As soon as the surrender of Fort Gaines was completed, Granger moved his force from Dauphin Island to the narrow strip of mainland behind Fort Morgan, where they were landed without opposition about 4 mi away, well out of range of its guns. The fort was thus immediately invested, cut off from all communication with Mobile.

Granger set about taking the fort by regular approaches — that is, establishing a sequence of trenches or other protective lines drawn ever closer to the objective, until finally its walls could be breached and it could be taken by assault. His first line was a gift, a line of trenches 1,400 yd from the fort that had been prepared by the garrison of the fort and then for some reason abandoned. It was a little farther than he would have liked, but it served quite well. Additional parallels were built with little interference, as the laborers could work behind the sand dunes.

While this was going on, monitors Winnebago, Chickasaw, and Manhattan were engaging in occasional bombardment. They were later joined by the former CSS Tennessee, captured on August 5, since repaired, and now renamed USS Tennessee. The most serious hindrance to the advance in this period was the weather; a storm on August 20 halted work for a while, and left standing water in low places. The fort was subjected to a day-long bombardment on August 22 from 16 siege mortars, 18 guns of various sizes, and the fleet, the monitors and Tennessee at short range and the rest of the ships at long range.

Inside the fort, Brig. Gen. Page feared that the bombardment would endanger his magazines, which contained 80,000 lb of powder. To avoid the risk, he had the powder brought out and flooded. That night, the magazines were indeed threatened when the woodwork of the citadel caught fire. The fire brought an increase in the rate of bombardment, and was extinguished only with great effort.

Feeling now that further resistance was useless, on August 23 Page ordered his remaining guns spiked or otherwise destroyed as far as possible. At 6 AM, he ordered the white flag raised, and the siege was over.

Farragut lashed to the rigging

An anecdote of the battle that has some dramatic interest has it that Farragut was lashed to the mast during the passage of Fort Morgan. This event came about after the battle had opened and smoke from the guns had clouded the air. In order to get a better view of the action, Farragut climbed into Hartford's rigging and soon was high enough that a fall would certainly incapacitate him and could have killed him. Seeing this, Captain Drayton sent a seaman aloft with a piece of line to secure the admiral. He demurred, saying, "Never mind, I am all right," but the sailor obeyed his captain's orders, tying one end of the line to a forward shroud, then around the admiral and to the after shroud.

Later, when CSS Tennessee made her unsupported attack on the Federal fleet, Farragut climbed into the mizzen rigging. Still concerned for his safety, Captain Drayton had Flag Lieutenant J. Crittenden Watson tie him to the rigging again. Thus, the admiral had been tied to the rigging twice in the course of the battle.

"Damn the torpedoes"
Most popular accounts of the battle relate that Brooklyn slowed when Tecumseh crossed her path, and Farragut asked why she was not moving ahead. The reply came back that naval mines (then called "torpedoes") were in her path—to which he allegedly replied, "Damn the torpedoes." The story did not appear in print until several years later, and some historians question whether it happened at all.

Some forms of the story are highly unlikely; the most widespread is that he shouted to Brooklyn, "Damn the torpedoes! Go ahead!" Men present at the battle doubted that any such verbal communication could be heard above the din of the guns. More likely, if it happened, is that he said to the captain of Hartford, "Damn the torpedoes. Four bells, Captain Drayton." Then he shouted to the commander of Metacomet, lashed to Hartford's side, "Go ahead, Jouett, full speed." The words have been altered in time to the more familiar, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

Army signals
Prior to the battle, the Army and Navy used completely different signals. The Navy used a cumbersome system of colored flags that would impart messages that had to be decoded, whereas the Army was experimenting with a far simpler wigwag system, recently developed by Col. Albert J. Myer. In order to communicate with Army forces ashore after the fleet was safely inside Mobile Bay, several members of the fledgling Signal Corps were put on the major ships of Farragut's fleet. They were expected to stay out of the way until they were needed; those on Hartford, for example, were assigned to assist the surgeon, so they were stationed below decks.

When Brooklyn encountered her difficulties with Tecumseh and the minefield, Captain Avery of Brooklyn wanted clarification of his orders more rapidly than could be done with navy signals, so he asked his army representatives to relay his question to the flagship. In order to read the message, the signal corpsmen on Hartford were brought up from below, and they stayed up through the rest of the fight. Their contribution was acknowledged by Farragut.

Court martial of Page
After General Page surrendered Fort Morgan, the victors found that all of the fort's guns had been spiked, and gun carriages and other supplies destroyed. Some believed that much of the damage had been done while the white flag was flying, in violation of the rules of war as they were then understood. The belief was so strong that Canby made a formal accusation, and Page was tried in New Orleans by a three-man council of war to consider the charges. After reviewing the evidence, the court found him not guilty of the charges.

Aftermath
The Battle of Mobile Bay was not bloody by standards set by the armies of the Civil War, but it was by naval standards. It was only marginally, if at all, less bloody than the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip and the Battle of Hampton Roads. The Federal fleet had lost 150 men killed and 170 wounded; on the Confederate ships, only 12 were dead and 19 wounded. Union Army losses were very light; in the siege of Fort Morgan, only one man was killed and seven wounded. Confederate losses, though not stated explicitly, seem to have been only slightly greater.

The continued presence of a Union Army force near Mobile constrained the Confederate Army in its last desperate campaigns. Maury realized that the numbers opposite him were inadequate for an attack, but the loss of Mobile would have been such a severe blow to the public mood that he would not send his guns or spare troops to support other missions.

This was particularly important to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, who was at that time engaged in the Atlanta campaign. Because Mobile remained unconquered the significance of Farragut's victory initially had little effect on Northern public opinion. As time passed and a sequence of other Union victories seemed to show that the war was winding down, the battle began to loom larger.

When Atlanta fell, in the words of historian James M. McPherson, "In retrospect the victory at Mobile Bay suddenly took on new importance as the first blow of a lethal one-two punch." The dispersal of Northern gloom assured President Abraham Lincoln's re-election in what was regarded as a referendum on continuation of the war.

With the capture of Fort Morgan, the campaign for the lower Mobile Bay was complete. Canby and Farragut had already decided before the first landings on Dauphin Island that the army could not provide enough men to attack Mobile itself; furthermore, the Dog River Bar that had impeded bringing Tennessee down now prevented Farragut's fleet from going up. Mobile did come under combined army-navy attack, but only in March and April 1865, after Farragut had been replaced by Rear Adm. Henry K. Thatcher. The city finally fell in the last days of the war.

A number of Civil War-era shipwrecks from the battle and its aftermath remain in the bay into the present, including American Diver, CSS Gaines, CSS Huntsville, USS Philippi, CSS Phoenix, USS Rodolph, USS Tecumseh, and CSS Tuscaloosa.

title: Battle of Mobile Bay


text:
Margaret Wilson

Margaret Anne Wilson (born 20 May 1947) is a New Zealand lawyer, academic and former Labour Party politician. She served as Attorney-General from 1999 to 2005 and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008, during the Fifth Labour Government.

Early life and career
Born in Gisborne, Wilson was raised in Morrinsville where her parents Bill and Patricia (Paddy) ran a small store. She was the eldest of four children. As a seven-year-old, she spent several months living in Auckland with her great-aunt and great-uncle after her father had a nervous breakdown. Wilson's family were Catholic and Labour-voting; Bill's father's cousin was the Labor Party Premier of New South Wales, Bob Heffron.

Wilson returned to Auckland to receive secondary education at St Dominic's College, and completed her final year as the only female student at Morrinsville College. She had a leg amputated due to cancer at the age of 16, which cut short her plans to be a physical education teacher. Instead, she studied law and graduated LLB(Honours) from the University of Auckland in 1970. Briefly, she worked as a law clerk and solicitor in Auckland from 1970 to 1972 (in 1971 she was secretary of the legal employees' union), before a master's in jurisprudence on workers' participation in management in New Zealand was completed in 1974. In her memoir, Wilson reports that only seven in her undergraduate class of 200 were women; her female classmates included future Chief Justice of New Zealand Sian Elias and future judge of the Hong Kong Court of First Instance Clare-Marie Beeson. Future members of Parliament David Lange and Jim McLay were also in the cohort. Wilson began lecturing in the University of Auckland law faculty in 1972 and continued in lecturing roles until 1990 (latterly in a part-time capacity as she became more politically active).

Wilson campaigned for Eddie Isbey, the Labour Party candidate in Grey Lynn, in 1969 and 1972. In 1975, she spent a year studying for a doctorate at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Ontario, which she did not complete. Before her overseas studies, Wilson had begun to campaign for women's rights; she returned to these aims in 1976 and joined the Labour Party as a means to those ends. She stood unsuccessfully for the Auckland City Council on a Labour Party ticket in both 1977 and 1980. In her memoir, Wilson reflected that future Prime Minister and her then-University of Auckland colleague Helen Clark encouraged her candidacy.

In the 1980s, Wilson was a senior figure in the extra-parliamentary Labour Party. She was elected as a women's representative on the Labour Party Council for two one-year terms in 1980 and 1981 and to the vice-presidency in 1982. From 1984 to 1987, she was president of the Labour Party, the first woman to do so. She contributed to the party's manifesto commitments on women's equality, which included the establishment of the Ministry for Women's Affairs, for the 1984 general election. It was suggested that Wilson stand for Parliament in 1987; she declined. Following her term as Labour president, she chaired the government's working group on equal employment opportunities and equal pay, served on the Law Commission, and was appointed as a director of the Reserve Bank. Between 1989 and 1990, she worked as chief political advisor to the Prime Minister, Geoffrey Palmer.

Wilson established the University of Waikato School of Law as New Zealand's fifth law school in 1990. She was its first Professor of law and founding Dean until 1999 when she became a Member of Parliament. Wilson was the first female Dean of a law school in New Zealand.

In 1993, Wilson was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal.

Member of Parliament
After nine years of a National-led Government, including three years of testing coalition arrangements, Labour anticipated forming a government after the 1999 election. Wilson's former Auckland University colleague Helen Clark, now leader of the Labour Party, invited Wilson to stand for election on the Labour Party list, with a view to being the Attorney-General should Labour successfully form a new government. Wilson agreed and also stood for election in the Tauranga electorate, displacing Labour's expected candidate, union organiser and former Tauranga Labour electorate committee chairman Terry Hughes. She placed third behind New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and National candidate Katherine O'Regan in a close race. Wilson sought a judicial recount as since New Zealand First won less than five percent of the party vote they would have no seats in parliament in at all if Peters lost the electorate (allowing Labour to govern solely with the Alliance and not needing the Greens). Peters criticised the recount as a waste of money. The recount resulted in Peters' majority increasing by one vote from 62 to 63.

As the ninth candidate on the Labour list, Wilson entered Parliament as a list MP and immediately gained election to the Cabinet. In addition to being appointed Attorney-General, she was additionally made Minister of Labour, Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, and associate minister for justice and state services. In the justice portfolio, she had delegated responsibility for constitutional and electoral policy, human rights, privacy and the Māori–Crown relationship.

Across her portfolios, Wilson had a strong focus on women's equality. She established the position of Equal Employment Opportunities commissioner at the Human Rights Commission and progressed reform to matrimonial property law. She also oversaw the replacement of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 with the Employment Relations Act 2000 and, as Attorney-General, revived and completed previous governments' attempts to cease using the Privy Council as the New Zealand's court of last resort and establish an independent Supreme Court of New Zealand.

Wilson remained a list MP after the 2002 election and, over the term, gained a more varied set of portfolios. She initially continued as Attorney-General, Minister of Labour, Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and Associate Minister of Justice. She was Minister for Courts until May 2003, until that role was reassigned to Rick Barker with Wilson as the associate minister. In February 2004, Wilson became Minister of Commerce (Paul Swain picked up the labour portfolio) and in November 2004, Wilson became the first Minister for Building Issues.

Speaker of the House
In December 2004, the Government announced that it would nominate Wilson for the post of Speaker of the House of Representatives, a position which would become vacant with the pending retirement of Jonathan Hunt. Previous speculation had focused on Mark Burton, the Minister of Defence. In her memoir, Wilson recalled advising Prime Minister Helen Clark toward the end of 2004 that she could not see herself doing a third term as a minister and that she intended to retire at the 2005 election. Clark suggested that Wilson consider the speakership instead.

On 3 March 2005, Parliament elected Wilson as its new speaker over candidacies by Clem Simich from the New Zealand National Party and Ken Shirley from the ACT Party. Wilson became New Zealand's first female speaker. After the 2005 election, she was re-elected to the position unopposed.

On 21 June 2005, Wilson ejected the Prime Minister Helen Clark from Parliament's Chamber for interjecting while National's Nick Smith was speaking.

Her style was noticeably different from her predecessor. In July 2006, National attempted a vote of no confidence in Wilson, after she refused to send a report on Labour MP Taito Phillip Field to the Privileges Committee, but Labour blocked the move. The most serious challenge to her authority as speaker came on 26 August 2008, when Act leader Rodney Hide initially refused her order to leave the debating chamber, saying, "I actually won't go now, Madam Speaker." She told him to "think carefully", but did not apply to have Hide named after he left. Wilson oversaw the launch of Parliament TV in July 2007.

Wilson announced in February 2008 that she would not be standing for re-election in 2008, and was considering academia rather than a diplomatic posting. She finished her role by closing the 48th Parliament.

In the 2009 New Year Honours, Wilson was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, in recognition of her services as a Member of Parliament and as Speaker. Following the restoration of titular honours by the New Zealand government later in 2009, Wilson declined re-designation as a Dame Companion.

Political views
Wilson strongly promotes various social causes such as feminism and multiculturalism, and opponents often painted her as Labour's most "politically correct" minister. She was the Minister responsible for the introduction of the new Supreme Court, which was controversial at the time, as well as changing the law on dividing property between partners after a separation, known now as relationship property law.

Wilson, alongside Helen Kelly, were noted opponents of neoliberalism and tried to support the union movement whilst in Government. However, Wilson acknowledged that the Labour Relations Act 1987 was a "an awkward compromise" between neoliberal economic values, and the rights of organised labour.

Return to academia
After leaving Parliament, she resumed her academic career at the Waikato University law school, being appointed Professor of Law and Public Policy (2009). In September 2020 she was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor by the University of Waikato.

Wilson published her memoir Activism, Feminism, Politics and Parliament in 2021.

Publications

 * Wilson, Margaret (1986) Working for Change In Clark, Margaret (ed). Beyond Expectations: fourteen New Zealand women write about their lives. Allen & Unwin. pp. 155–166.
 * Wilson, Margaret (1989) Labour in government, 1984-1987. Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, Wellington. ISBN 9780046410490
 * Wilson, Margaret (2021) Activism, Feminism, Politics and Parliament. Bridget Williams Books, Wellington. ISBN 9781988587844

title: Margaret Wilson


text: Category:Olympic softball players by year


text:
Brent oilfield

The Brent field was an oil and gas field located in the East Shetland Basin of the North Sea, 186 km north-east of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, Scotland, at a water depth of 140 m. The field operated by Shell UK Limited was discovered in 1971 and was once one of the most productive parts of the UK's offshore assets but has reached the stage where production is no longer economically viable. Decommissioning of the Brent field is complete with the exception of Brent C, which is producing from another field. The discovery well 211/26-1 was drilled in 1971 by the semi-submersible drilling rig "Staflo". This was a major surprise at the time as the nearest land in Scotland and Norway is composed of granite and other non reservoir metamorphic rocks.

Name
Shell initially named all of its UK oil fields after seabirds in alphabetical order by discovery – Auk, Brent, Cormorant, Dunlin, Eider, Fulmar and so on. Brent refers to the brent goose, and in turn gave its initials to the geologic subdivisions of the Middle Jurassic-age Brent Group that make up the field: Broom, Rannoch, Etive, Ness and Tarbert formations, with each name representing a loch in the Scottish Highlands.

Geology
Situated in the East Shetland Basin, the Brent is the archetype for many of the fields in the area, consisting of a tilted fault block exposing the eponymous Brent formation, next to bounding faults which allowed migration from deeper adjacent "kitchen" areas where the Kimmeridge Clay Formation becomes fully mature and releases hydrocarbons. Unusually on a worldwide scale (but common in this basin), the seal or cap rock for the reservoir (which stops the hydrocarbons from migrating further towards the surface) is also the Kimmeridge Clay, or technically the Heather Formation immediately below.

The reservoir depth is 2651 m.

Production
Production started on 11 November 1976, and on 13 December 1976 the first tanker was loaded. The Brent field oil was extracted by four platforms in an irregular SSW-NNE line. The first in place was the concrete-legged "Condeep" Brent Bravo, built by Norwegian Contractors in Stavanger, in August 1975. This was followed by the steel-jacket Brent Alpha built by Redpath Dorman Long in Methil and installed in May 1976; the concrete-legged Brent Delta, again built by Norwegian Contractors in Stavanger, in July 1976; and the concrete-base Brent Charlie, built by McAlpine/Sea Tank in Ardyne Point, installed in June 1978. As of 2004, the field was still producing oil through a manifold (all Brent Alpha fluids are produced across to Brent Bravo). A fifth installation, the floating Brent Spar, served as a storage- and tanker-loading buoy and was installed early in the field's construction. The "spar" design of this installation led to the name by which it became the best known of the Brent installations (outside the oil industry). The field also included a remote flare, the "Brent Flare", which was used to flare off excess gas before gas handling and export facilities were installed in the field, also used as a vent in winter 1995–96. This unit was decommissioned and removed using a heavy lifting barge in 2005.

The topsides for Brent Charlie were designed by Matthew Hall Engineering which was awarded the contract in January 1974. Initially there were facilities for 19 oil production wells, nine water injection wells, six gas injection wells and three spare slots. The production capacity was 150000 oilbbl per day and 8.5 million standard cubic metres of gas per day. There were three production trains each with four stages of separation with the first stage separators operating at a pressure of 9.6 bar. The 14 subsea storage cells had a capacity of 400000 oilbbl. Electricity generation was powered by three 12 MW Rolls-Royce Avon gas turbines. The topside accommodation was for 120 people. There were 14 topsides modules and the topsides weight was 34,000 tonnes.

The initial design parameters of the Brent installations is summarised in the table.

The field supplied oil via the Brent System pipeline to the terminal at Sullom Voe, while gas was piped through the FLAGS pipeline ashore at St Fergus on the north-east coast of Scotland. The production of oil from the field (in 1000s barrels) was: { "version": 2, "width": 400, "height": 200, "data": [ {			"name": "table", "values": [ {					"x": 1976, "y": 766 },				{					"x": 1977, "y": 9484 },				{					"x": 1978, "y": 28962 },				{					"x": 1979, "y": 65323 },				{					"x": 1980, "y": 51154 },				{					"x": 1981, "y": 84165 },				{					"x": 1982, "y": 118073 },				{					"x": 1983, "y": 146079 }			]		}	],	"scales": [ {			"name": "x", "type": "ordinal", "range": "width", "zero": false, "domain": { "data": "table", "field": "x" }		},		{			"name": "y", "type": "linear", "range": "height", "nice": true, "domain": { "data": "table", "field": "y" }		}	],	"axes": [ {			"type": "x", "scale": "x" },		{			"type": "y", "scale": "y" }	],	"marks": [ {			"type": "rect", "from": { "data": "table" },			"properties": { "enter": { "x": { "scale": "x", "field": "x" },					"y": { "scale": "y", "field": "y" },					"y2": { "scale": "y", "value": 0 },					"fill": { "value": "steelblue" },					"width": { "scale": "x", "band": "true", "offset": -1 }				}			}		}	] } The field underwent a £1.3 billion upgrade project in the mid-1990s, which involved depressurising the entire reservoir and making extensive modifications to three of the four Brent platforms. This converted them to low-pressure operation, which unlocked significant quantities of natural gas from the reservoir and extended the field life beyond 2010.

The field's peak production capacity reached 504,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) in 1982 and it produced a total of approximately three billion barrels of oil equivalent as of 2008.

The Brent field decommissioning project was initiated in 2006. Brent Delta was the first platform to cease production in December 2011, while the Brent Alpha and Bravo platforms stopped production in November 2014, Brent Charlie in March 2021.

Decommission
The Brent pipelines decommissioning programme was approved by the UK government in March 2020. As per the decommissioning plan, the gravity-based structures (GBS) of Delta, Charlie, and Bravo platforms, the jacket footings of Alpha platform, drill cuttings, and the GBS cell contents will not be removed from the field. The GBS subsea storage cells were used to temporarily store crude oil before pumping to tankers or pipeline.

The Brent field is being decommissioned in a phased manner. The Brent Delta topside decommissioning programme was approved by the UK government in July 2015, while that for the Alpha, Bravo, and the Charlie platforms were approved in August 2018. The topsides of the Brent Delta platform, weighing approximately 24,200 t, was removed in a single-lift in April 2017 and transported to Hartlepool for recycling. The topside was completely dismantled by February 2019.

The topsides of the Brent Bravo platform, weighing approximately 25,000 t, was removed in a single-lift in June 2019. The topside is currently being dismantled and recycled.

The legs of the Brent Bravo and Delta platforms remain in place with their GBS subsea storage cells. This will also apply to the Brent Charlie platform when decommissioned. The contents of the GBS storage cells are likely to be residual hydrocarbons and radioactive toxic elements.

Air incidents involving workers
On 31 July 1979, Dan Air fixed wing aircraft crashed attempting to take off from Sumburgh Airport. The flight was returning Brent Field workers to Aberdeen. There were 17 fatalities. The aircraft was an ex Aerolineas Argentinas HS 748 manufactured in 1962. The main cause was found to be a faulty gust lock. The co-pilot was found to have tranquillisers in his system. It is not known if he was in control as he had less than 100 hours on this type of aircraft.

On 6 November 1986, a Boeing Vertol BV234 Chinook helicopter G-BWFC crashed on approach to Sumburgh airport. The flight was returning from the Brent Field. There were 45 fatalities and 2 survivors one of whom was the pilot. The cause was found to be faulty transmission, which caused the twin rotor blades to collide.

On 25 July 1990, a Sikorsky S61-N helicopter G-BEWL crashed while attempting to land on Brent Spar. There were 6 fatalities including both pilots. The cause was found to be pilot error and design of the helideck.

title: Brent oilfield


text:
Jean-Gaspard Deburau

Jean-Gaspard Deburau (born Jan Kašpar Dvořák; 31 July 1796 – 17 June 1846), sometimes erroneously called Debureau, was a Bohemian-French mime. He performed from 1816 to the year of his death at the Théâtre des Funambules, which was immortalized in Marcel Carné's poetic-realist film Children of Paradise (1945); Deburau appears in the film (under his stage-name, "Baptiste") as a major character. His most famous pantomimic creation was Pierrot—a character that served as the godfather of all the Pierrots of Romantic, Decadent, Symbolist, and early Modernist theater and art.

Life and career
Born in Kolín, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), Deburau was the son of a Czech servant, Kateřina Králová (or Catherine Graff), and a former French soldier, Philippe-Germain Deburau, a native of Amiens. Philippe turned showman and performed at the head of a nomadic troupe. In 1814 he took the company to Paris and they were hired in 1816 by the manager of the Funambules.

Cast-lists indicate that he appeared as Pierrot right away, although it was not until 1825 that he became the sole actor to claim the role. He attained a certain fame in 1828, when the influential writer Charles Nodier published a panegyric about him. The journalist Jules Janin published a book of effusive praise, entitled Deburau, histoire du Théâtre à Quatre Sous, in 1832. By the middle of the 1830s, Deburau was widely known. Théophile Gautier wrote of his talent with enthusiasm ("the most perfect actor who ever lived"); Théodore de Banville dedicated poems and sketches to his Pierrot; Charles Baudelaire praised his style of acting.

In 1832, when he took his pantomime to the Palais-Royal, he failed spectacularly. The occasion was a benefit performance of a pantomime performed earlier—with great success—at the Funambules. Louis Péricaud, the chronicler of the Funambules, wrote that "never was there a greater disaster, a rout more complete for Deburau and his fellow-artists". Deburau himself was hissed, and he vowed to play thereafter before no other public than those "naïfs and enthusiasts" who were habitués of the Boulevard du Crime.

In 1836, Deburau was charged with murder after killing a boy who called him "Pierrot" on the street.

When he died, his son Jean-Charles (1829–1873) took over and later founded a "school" of pantomime, which flourished first in the south of France and then, at the end of the century, in Paris.

Jean-Gaspard Deburau is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (see photo at right).

Character roles
Pierrot was not Baptiste's only creation. As Robert Storey has pointed out, Deburau performed in many pantomimes unconnected with the commedia dell'arte: "He was probably the student-sailor Blanchot in Jack, l'orang-outang (1836), for example, and the farmhand Cruchon in Le Tonnelier et le somnambule ([The Cooper and the Sleepwalker] late 1838 or early 1839), and the goatherd Mazarillo in Fra-Diavolo, ou les Brigands de la Calabre ([Brother Devil, or The Brigands of Calabria] 1844). He was certainly the Jocrisse-like comique of Hurluberlu (1842) and the engagingly naïve recruit Pichonnot of Les Jolis Soldats ([The Handsome Soldiers] 1843)." Like Chaplin's various incarnations, all of whom bear some resemblance to the Little Tramp, these characters, though singular and independent creations, must undoubtedly have struck their audiences as Pierrot-like. For Deburau and Pierrot were synonymous in the Paris of post-Revolutionary France.

Pierrot
Deburau's Pierrot was more aggressive in his acrobatics (his "superabundance", in Péricaud's words, "of gestures, of leaps") than Baptiste's "placid" creation, and much less aggressive in his audacity and daring. Deburau dispensed with Pierrot's coarseness and emphasized his cleverness. As theater historian Edward Nye writes, "Pierrot had somehow intellectually matured and learnt to moderate his worst excesses, or even to turn them into relative virtues." The poet Gautier reproached him for having "denaturalized" the character. Part of this may have been due to what Rémy calls the vindictiveness of Deburau's own personality; Deburau forged a role with a commanding stage presence.

The expressivity of his acting was abetted by his alterations in Pierrot's costume. His overlarge cotton blouse and trousers freed him from the constraints of the woolen dress of his predecessors, and his abandoning the frilled collar and hat gave prominence to his expressive face. A black skullcap, framing that face, was his only stark adornment.

But his real innovations came in the pantomime itself. His biographers, as well as the chroniclers of the Funambules, contend that his pantomimes were all alike. The "naive scenarios" that "limited" his acting, according to his Czech biographer, Jaroslav Švehla, "did little more than group together and repeat traditional, threadbare, primitive, and in many cases absurd situations and mimic gags (cascades), insulting to even a slightly refined taste." And Adriane Despot, author of "Jean-Gaspard Deburau and the Pantomime at the Théâtre des Funambules", agrees: "most of the pantomimes are essentially the same; they share the atmosphere of light, small-scale, nonsensical adventures enlivened with comic dances, ridiculous battles, and confrontations placed in a domestic or otherwise commonplace setting." But Despot was familiar only with a handful of the scenarios, those few in print; by far the greater number, which present a picture of the pantomime rather different from Despot's, are in manuscript in the Archives Nationales de France and in the library of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. And Švehla is proceeding along misguided lines by assuming that Deburau "longed to represent a better character" than Pierrot: Deburau was apparently proud of his work at the Funambules, characterizing it to George Sand as an "art" (see next section below). "He loved it passionately", Sand wrote, "and spoke of it as of a grave thing."

The fact is that four distinct kinds of commedia-related pantomime held the stage at the Funambules, and for each Deburau created a now subtly, now dramatically different Pierrot.
 * The Rustic Pantomime: gesturing towards Pierrot's roots outside the commedia dell'arte, to the peasant Pierrot of bucolic tradition (such as Molière's Pierrot of Don Juan [1665]), the action of these scenarios is set in a hamlet or village. Pierrot is the hero: he is honest, good-hearted, but poor (and egotistically, comically naïve). Through an act of courage, he is able to overcome the scruples of the father of his beloved—a Lisette, or Finetta, or Babette—and win her at the dénouement. Examples: The Cossacks, or The Farm Set Ablaze (1840); Pierrot's Wedding (1845).
 * The Melo-Pantomime: finding their inspiration in the popular boulevard melodramas having no connection with the commedia dell'arte, these scenarios present Pierrot, not as a hero, but as a subaltern—often a soldier, sometimes a retainer working in the employ of the hero of the piece. They are set in exotic locales—Africa, America, Malta, China—and the action is (or is meant to be) thrillingly dramatic, fraught with villainous abductions, violent clashes, and spectacular rescues and reversals of fortune, often brought about by Pierrot's cleverness and daring. Examples: The Enchanted Pagoda (1845); The Algerian Corsaire, or The Heroine of Malta (1845).
 * The Realistic Pantomime: these are the pieces with which Despot seems most familiar. They are set in commonplace urban locales (shops, salons, public streets) and are usually peopled with the Parisian bourgeoisie (shopkeepers, merchants, valets). Pierrot is the center of attention in these scenarios, but it is a Pierrot that is often very different from the character thus-far described. "Libidinous and unscrupulous", writes Robert Storey, "often spiteful and cruel, he is redeemed only by his criminal innocence." He steals from a benefactress, takes outrageous advantage of a blind man, kills a peddler to procure the garments in which he presumes to court a duchess. This is the Pierrot described by Charles Nodier as a "naive and clownish Satan". (only when the pantomime has been written by Deburau himself, such as La Baleine [The Whale] of 1833, do we encounter, predictably, a less devilish Pierrot—one in fact deserving of Columbine's hand). Examples: Pierrot and His Creditors (1836); Pierrot and the Blind Man (1841).
 * The Pantomimic Fairy-Play: the grandest and most popular class of pantomimes—it occupied a third of the Funambules' repertoire —of which there are three subclasses:
 * The Pantomimic Pierrotique Fairy-Play: Pierrot is the only commedia dell'arte character (except Cassander, who sometimes puts in an appearance). Like the action in the other subclasses, the plot here unfolds in fairyland, which is populated by sorcerers and sorceresses, ogres and magicians, fairies and enchanters. Pierrot is usually sent on a quest, sometimes to achieve an amatory goal (for himself or his master), sometimes to prove his mettle, sometimes to redress an injustice. The settings are fantastic and gothic, the action bizarre and frenetic, and the comedy very broad. Examples: The Sorcerer, or The Demon-Protector (1838); Pierrot and the Bogeyman, or The Ogres and the Brats (1840).
 * The Pantomimic Harlequinesque Fairy-Play: the basis for the pantomimes still performed at Bakken in Denmark. In the landscape described above (and populated by the same warring spirits), Harlequin, the lover, carries Columbine off, triggering a pursuit by her papa, Cassander, and his serving-man Pierrot. The end of their adventures is, of course, their union, reluctantly blessed by their pursuers. Examples: Pierrot Everywhere (1839); The Three Hunchbacks (1842).
 * The Pantomimic Harlequinesque Fairy-Play in the English Style: borrows the "opening" of early nineteenth-century English pantomime: at the rise of curtain, two suitors are in dispute for the same young lady, and her father, a miser, chooses the richer of the two. A fairy appears to protect the sentimentally more deserving (Harlequin, after his transformation)—and to change all the characters into the commedia types. Then begins the chase. Examples: The Ordeals (1833); Love and Folly, or The Mystifying Bell (1840).

The people's Pierrot
If Deburau is known today, he is known as the Deburau of Children of Paradise. There he is an exemplar of the common people, a tragic long-suffering lover, a friend of the pure and lonely and distant moon. In Reality neither Deburau nor his Pierrot was such a figure. The myth was the product of clever journalism and idealizing romance. George Sand noted, after Deburau's death, that the "titis", the street boys of the Funambules, regarded Pierrot as their "model".

The tragic Pierrot
In 1842, a pantomime was performed at the Funambules in which Pierrot meets a tragic end. At the final curtain of The Ol' Clo's Man (Le Marrrchand d'habits!), Pierrot dies on stage. It was an unprecedented dénouement and one not to be repeated, at least at Deburau's theater (imagine the Little Tramp expiring at the end of one of Charlie Chaplin's films). It was also an anomaly for which his romantic admirers were responsible. This pantomime had been invented by Théophile Gautier in a "review" that he had published in the Revue de Paris. He conceived it in the "realistic" vein described above: Pierrot, having fallen in love with a duchess, kills an old-clothes man to secure the garments with which to court her. At the wedding, however, à la the Commander of Don Juan, the ghost of the peddler—the murdering sword protruding from his chest—rises up to dance with the bridegroom. And Pierrot is fatally impaled.

The temptation to use such material, devised by such an illustrious poet, was irresistible to the managers of the Funambules, and the "review" was immediately turned into a pantomime (probably by the administrator of the theater, Cot d'Ordan). It was not a success: it had a seven-night run, a poor showing for one of Baptiste's productions. If he indeed appeared in the piece—the matter is under dispute —he did so very reluctantly. It was never revived at the Funambules.

But like Banville's deathless prose, it was Gautier's "review" that survived—and prospered. Gautier's ex-son-in-law, Catulle Mendès, refashioned it into a pantomime in 1896, and when Sacha Guitry wrote his play Deburau (1918) he included it as the only specimen of the mime's art. Carné did the same.

The moonstruck Pierrot
Deburau's Romantic admirers often made the association with the clown and the moon. Banville's poem "Pierrot" (1842) concludes with these lines: "The white Moon with its horns like a bull / Peeps behind the scenes / At its friend Jean Gaspard Deburau." As the century progressed, the association grew stronger. Albert Giraud's Pierrot lunaire (1884) marked a watershed in the moon-maddening of Pierrot, as did the song-cycle that Arnold Schoenberg derived from it (1912).

title: Jean-Gaspard Deburau


text:
Gretna F.C.

Gretna Football Club was a Scottish professional football club based in the town of Gretna, Dumfries and Galloway, close to the border between England and Scotland, that last competed in the Scottish Premier League, the then top flight of Scottish football. Nicknamed the Black and Whites or the Anvils the club was founded in 1946, and had rapid and continual success in the mid-2000s, and reached the Scottish Cup Final in 2006, but the club fell into severe financial difficulties when businessman Brooks Mileson, its main financial backer, withdrew funds due to ill health. The club was forced to dissolve in 2008 due to money issues.

Despite being based in Scotland, the club participated in amateur and semi-professional leagues in English football from 1947 until they were elected to the Scottish Football League at the third attempt in 2002. Relying heavily on substantial financial support from Mileson, the club were promoted through the Scottish leagues from the Third Division to the Scottish Premier League in less than five years. The club also reached the 2006 Scottish Cup Final, losing in a penalty shoot-out to Hearts.

Gretna struggled badly in the SPL and the club were placed in administration after Mileson withdrew his support due to illness. At the end of the season, all of the club's staff were made redundant and the club were initially relegated to the Third Division due to their inability to guarantee fulfilment of their forthcoming fixtures. After this demotion, the one remaining offer to buy the club was withdrawn. The club resigned their place in the Scottish Football League on 3 June 2008 and were formally liquidated on 8 August.

The club's supporters' trust then decided to establish a new club, Gretna 2008, who were accepted into the East of Scotland Football League on 11 July 2008. Whilst sharing the same fanbase and a similar name, the new club has no legal connection with the original Gretna Football Club.

Formation
An amateur club called Gretna Green had existed in the town in the 19th century, but were bankrupt by the 1920s. This left the area without a team until Gretna Football Club was founded in 1946 by local workers and servicemen returning from the Second World War. Former professional footballer James Kerr was one of the club's founders and as part of the club's committee, his opinion held sway when picking the team. The club initially played in the Dumfries and District Junior League.

Period in English football
The following year, the club moved to the Carlisle and District League. This was despite the club being based in Scotland, albeit very close to the Anglo-Scottish border. They remained in this league for all but one season until 1982, when the club moved to the newly created Second Division of the Northern League. The club won this league and were promoted immediately, before back-to-back championship wins in the First Division, in 1990–91 and 1991–92, resulted in their promotion to the first division of the Northern Premier League.

During this period, the club featured in the FA Cup, becoming the first club based in Scotland to appear in the competition proper since Queens Park in 1887. They managed to take Rochdale to a replay in 1991 and gave Bolton Wanderers a scare in 1993 before being beaten.

The club saw its future in Scottish football and applied twice to join the Scottish League in 1993 and 1999. To help boost their later application, they played a Rangers XI in a game to raise money for victims of the Lockerbie bombing. Gretna won 2–1 against a strong team.

Rapid rise through the leagues
In 2002, Gretna were elected to the Scottish Football League at the third attempt, taking the place of Airdrieonians. The club was soon taken over by Brooks Mileson and with his financial input Gretna's on-field fortunes improved. Gretna won the Division Three, Division Two and Division One titles in successive seasons from 2005 to 2007. During their seasons of successive promotions they scored 297 goals, 130 in the 2004–05 season alone.

Gretna were also runners-up in the 2006 Scottish Cup. Gretna's 3–0 win in the semi-final against Dundee made them the first team from the third tier of Scottish league football to reach the final. Gretna lost to Heart of Midlothian in the final on penalties after a 1–1 draw. As Hearts had finished second in the Scottish Premier League and had therefore qualified for the UEFA Champions League, Gretna became the first team from the third tier of the Scottish league to qualify for the UEFA Cup. Gretna faced League of Ireland side Derry City in the second qualifying round, but lost 7–3 on aggregate, losing the first leg 5–1 at Fir Park, Motherwell (Raydale Park was deemed unsuitable for European football).

Gretna had also been promoted to the First Division in 2006, and for much of the 2006–07 season, they led the division, with a margin of 12 points at one stage. Manager Rowan Alexander was forced to step down in March 2007 due to unspecified health problems, though he later claimed that he had had no medical issues and had been asked to take time away by the club chairman. Coach Davie Irons stepped up to the manager's position and Gretna's form dipped; second-placed St Johnstone went on a good run, leaving Gretna with only a one-point lead going into the final day of the season. Gretna beat Ross County 3–2 with a last-minute goal by James Grady, ensuring promotion to the Scottish Premier League.

Gretna in the Scottish Premier League
During the 2007–08 season, Gretna had to play all their home games at Motherwell's home ground of Fir Park because Raydale Park did not meet SPL standards. Their first game in the SPL was against Falkirk which ended in a 4–0 defeat for Gretna. They continued to struggle, only gaining four points in their first 12 games and having to wait until 22 September 2007 for their first win in the SPL, defeating Dundee United 3–2 at Fir Park.

Far worse news was that during this time the club's financial situation became dire. The club had accumulated debts of nearly £4m, and owner Brooks Mileson fell ill and withdrew his financial support for the club (Mileson never fully recovered from his health problems and died on 3 November 2008). A confused management situation did not help. Whilst Rowan Alexander was officially still manager, Davie Irons was in control of the team. On 6 November 2007, Gretna officially sacked Alexander as manager and formally installed Irons in his position.

On 18 February 2008 it was revealed that Gretna staff, including players, had not received their wages on time. Irons and assistant manager Derek Collins both resigned from their posts the following day. Gretna director of football Mick Wadsworth, assisted by Iain Scott and Andy Smith, took charge of first-team affairs. The club went into administration on 12 March 2008 after Mileson's withdrawal of support. Under SPL regulations, this resulted in an automatic ten point deduction, meaning they had a total of only six points from 28 games on the date of entering administration. The SPL agreed to pay the players' wages until the end of the 2007–08 season, ensuring that the club were able to complete its fixtures in the SPL.

Administration led to cost-cutting and redundancies; club captain Chris Innes was made redundant on 25 March 2008, with the club explaining that he had "attracted interest from other clubs". The following day, 22 players, including eight members of the senior squad, along with coaching staff and the former owner's son were also made redundant. Gretna were mathematically relegated from the SPL on 29 March 2008 after being defeated 2–0 by St Mirren at Love Street, and broke the SPL's low attendance record on 5 April 2008 in their game against Inverness, when just 431 turned up for the match. They won their final SPL game, a home match against Hearts 1–0 with a goal from Gavin Skelton, which meant they finished the season with 13 points, narrowly avoiding setting a record low points total for the Scottish top-flight. Even without the point deduction, Gretna would have still been relegated by a 17-point margin behind Kilmarnock.

Liquidation
In early 2008 it was revealed by the administrator, Wilson Field of Sheffield, that Gretna had creditors of nearly £4m and assets (Raydale Park) of £812,000. HM Revenue and Customs was owed nearly £600,000 in total, and it was their threat to wind up the company that precipitated Gretna's move into administration. On 8 May, the administrator set a deadline of 17 May for a buyer to be found, or the club would be liquidated.

After that deadline passed without a buyer making a firm offer, all the remaining employees were made redundant, but it was reported that the club were still negotiating with an interested buyer. On 29 May, Gretna were relegated to the Third Division due to their financial struggles, with the Scottish Football League threatening expulsion should a takeover not be completed within a week. After a takeover bid fell through on 1 June, the administrators confirmed the following day that they would look to sell Raydale Park to someone who will use the site for something other than football.

Gretna resigned from the Scottish Football League on 3 June. Near neighbours Annan Athletic won the vote to replace Gretna in the Scottish league. With no ground, staff, players or a competition to play in, the club's dissolution was inevitable and the club was formally liquidated by the administrators on 8 August.

Successor club
The Gretna Supporters Society, (a Supporters' trust) formed a new club, Gretna 2008 on 2 July 2008 and applied to join both the East of Scotland Football League and the South of Scotland Football League. They were accepted into the East of Scotland League, though they initially played their matches at the Everholm Stadium in Annan. The club returned to Raydale Park in May 2009 which it now leases from the Raydale Partnership, a community group of which Gretna Supporters Society is a member.

Seasons
This is a list of seasons from the 1987–88 season from their time in England's Northern Football League and later the Northern Premier League and from 2002 to 2003, when the club was admitted to the Scottish Football League to 2007–08, when the club resigned its membership from the league and was liquidated following financial difficulties. The list details Gretna's record in major league and cup competitions, and the club's top league goal scorer of each season where available. Top scorers in bold were also the top scorers in Gretna's division that season. Records of minor competitions are not included.

 * NE = Not Eligible
 * PR = Preliminary round
 * QR1 = First qualifying round
 * QR2 = Second qualifying round
 * QR3 = Third qualifying round
 * R1 = Round 1
 * R2 = Round 2
 * R3 = Round 3
 * R4 = Round 4
 * QF = Quarter-finals
 * SPL = Scottish Premier League
 * SFL 1 = Scottish First Division
 * SFL 2 = Scottish Second Division
 * SFL 3 = Scottish Third Division
 * NPL 1 = Northern Premier League First Division
 * NFL 1 = Northern Football League First Division

English football

 * Northern League Division One
 * Champions (2): 1990–91, 1991–92
 * Runners-up (1): 1989–90
 * Northern League Division Two
 * Runners-up (1): 1982–83
 * Cumberland Senior Cup
 * Champions (11): 1958–59, 1959–60, 1966–67, 1982–83, 1983–84, 1987–88, 1988–89, 1991–92, 1993–94, 1994–95, 1996–97
 * Runners-up (8): 1952–53, 1956–57, 1960–61, 1967–68, 1974–75, 1977–78, 1985–86, 1992–93

Scottish football

 * Scottish Cup
 * Runners-Up (1): 2005–06
 * Scottish Football League Division One
 * Champions (1): 2006–07
 * Scottish Football League Division Two
 * Champions (1): 2005–06
 * Scottish Football League Division Three
 * Champions (1): 2004–05

Club records

 * Record victory – 20–0 v. Silloth (1962)
 * Record defeat – 2–9 v. Ashton United (2000)
 * Most league points in a season – 98 (2004–05)
 * Most league goals in a season – 38, Kenny Deuchar (2004–05)
 * Most hat-tricks in a season – 6, Kenny Deuchar (2004–05)

European record
Gretna qualified for a UEFA club competition on one occasion. In 2006, Gretna reached the final of the Scottish Cup whilst competing in the Scottish Second Division and were beaten by Heart of Midlothian. The winner of the Scottish Cup would normally qualify for the UEFA Cup, but because Hearts had already qualified for the UEFA Champions League through their league ranking in the Scottish Premier League, the place was passed to Gretna as runners-up. They were eliminated in the second qualifying round by Derry City, representing the Republic of Ireland, in a two-legged tie.

Managerial history

 * Mike McCartney (1988–2000)
 * Rowan Alexander (2000–2007)
 * Davie Irons (2007–08)
 * Andy Smith (2008)
 * Mick Wadsworth (2008)

title: Gretna F.C.


text:
Dianne Yates

Dianne Fae Yates (born 29 November 1943) is a former New Zealand politician. She was a Labour Party Member of Parliament from 1993 to 2008.

Early life and career
Yates was born in 1943 to parents Joy (née Hinton) and Frederick Yates, a builder, and raised on a farm outside Hamilton. She has one brother.

Yates trained as a teacher and also completed a Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University of Wellington and a Master of Education at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She worked as a teacher and education administrator in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe. In the 1970s, she worked on the television programme Country Calendar. Before entering Parliament, she worked as a continuing education officer at the University of Waikato.

Yates is divorced and has no children.

Member of Parliament
Yates joined the Labour Party in the 1970s. She was selected as the party's candidate in the marginal Hamilton East electorate for the 1993 election, where she defeated Tony Steel, who had won the seat for National three years prior, by an 80-vote margin. Yates and Steel were electoral rivals for four elections, trading Hamilton East between them until Steel's retirement upon defeat at the 2002 general election (Yates won the electorate by 614 votes). Although she was unsuccessful in Hamilton East in 1996, 1999, and 2005, she was returned as a list MP each time.

Yates sat on the justice and law reform committee from 1993 to 1999. She was not appointed a minister in the Fifth Labour Government, which held power in Yates' final three terms, but was highly active as a legislator with five private member's bills—mostly related to women's rights—considered by Parliament during her career. She held three select committee chairs: government administration from 1999 to 2005; foreign affairs, defence and trade from 2005 to 2008; and education and science in 2008. She was also deputy chair of the regulations review committee from 1999 to 2005 and a member of the health committee from 2002 to 2005.

Women's rights advocacy and legislation
In the Labour Party opposition led by Helen Clark, Yates was Labour's spokesperson for women's affairs. She was outspoken on some issues regarding technology, such as cloning and in vitro fertilisation, because of their potential impact on women and children. In her maiden statement, given on 15 March 1994, she stated: "We may be successful in breeding sheep and cattle for sale, but we must not breed human babies for sale... We could breed a nation of muscle-bound athletes; we could even classify our babies for various field events prior to their birth. If we are able to alter the muscle-to-fat ratio of cattle, what might we do to humans?"

Yates promoted a private member's bill "to ban cloning" and regulate assisted reproductive procedures in 1996, which was eventually passed as the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2004. The bill was based on the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. Yates said she came to the issue from a "radical feminist" perspective; while speaking on the bill in Parliament, she suggested the bill could do away with sexual intercourse for reproductive, but not recreational, purposes and that New Zealand needed "at most eight fit human males with high sperm counts" to replenish its population. She also advocated for a national register of to give children conceived through donation information about their genetic parents.

Yates was a supporter of paid parental leave and drafted legislation to provide a new parent with six weeks of paid time off. Ultimately her bill was not required as a more generous bill from Laila Harré, proposing twelve weeks, was supported by parliament in 1997. She was also active on alcohol safety reform for pregnant people. In 1999, she proposed amendments to government legislation that would have required all alcohol containers to carry warning labels including "Women should not drink liquor during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects." The amendments lost by a single vote. Yates brought the amendments again, as a private member's bill, the following year. The wording of the warnings were criticised by Attorney-General Margaret Wilson as being broader in wording and application than strictly necessary. Yates' bill was defeated at its first reading on 11 October 2000.

Electoral reform, and the potential for this to support the election of women, was another focus of Yates' career. She was a member of the Women's Electoral Lobby and Electoral Reform Coalition prior to her election as a Labour MP and supported the adoption of proportional representation. In her second term, she inherited the Local Elections (Single Transferable Vote Option) Bill from her defeated colleague Richard Northey. The bill proposed letting local authorities choose the single transferable vote electoral system for their elections. In the final parliament elected under the first-past-the-post voting system, the bill had been sent to the electoral reform subcommittee, which unanimously recommended its passage. However, the bill was eventually defeated in the first mixed-member proportional parliament, 57–63, in August 1998. The bill was later revived by Rod Donald and incorporated into the Local Electoral Act 2001.

Yates was a strong opponent of prostitution reform, describing prostitution as exploitation and the Prostitution Reform Bill that was debated between 2000 and 2003 as a tool to "protect brothels, brothel-keepers and the clients [and to] provide nice, clean brothels so that clients can go home to their wives undetected as to where they spent the night." During consideration of the bill, she unsuccessfully proposed an amendment seeking to criminalise clients rather than prostitutes. The bill passed by a single vote; after it was enacted, Yates lobbied Hamilton City Council to create a local bylaw banning prostitution in the city's suburbs.

Yates also sought to progress legislation on date rape drugs (which was incorporated into government legislation) and the practice of docking dogs' tails (which was abandoned after support for the change dissipated between the bill's first and second readings). As chair of the government administration committee, she led inquiries into the leaky building crisis and hate speech in New Zealand. She voted in favour of civil union legislation in 2004 and retaining or restoring an alcohol purchase age of 20 years in 1999 and 2006. She has a mixed record on euthanasia: voting in favour of a "death with dignity" bill in 1995 and against another in 2003. She was an opponent of the compulsory retirement savings scheme proposed by Winston Peters and defeated by a referendum in 1997, saying the way the scheme had been designed was "paternalistic."

Retirement
Yates contested Hamilton East for the fifth time in the 2005 election, but lost the seat to new National candidate David Bennett by a significant 5,298 votes. She was returned as a list MP. In August 2007, she announced that she would retire from Parliament by the end of the year in order to stand for the Hamilton City Council. She was unsuccessful in the election, finishing 7th—the top-polling unsuccessful candidate in her ward.

Yates' loss deferred her planned parliamentary retirement by several months. She gave her valedictory statement to Parliament on 19 March 2008 and left Parliament on 29 March 2008. Although Louisa Wall had been previously reported as Yates' replacement as a Labour Party list MP, Wall had entered Parliament early as a replacement for Ann Hartley. Instead, William Sio was named Yates' successor.

Following her retirement from Parliament, Yates was appointed to four government boards: Food Standards Australia New Zealand, Trust Waikato, Learning Media and Waikato Institute of Technology.

title: Dianne Yates