North Norfolk Coastal Change: Fill & Download for Free

Yes… and you say it “Cossy”. Simples… Like “Ayz-br-uh” is spelled ‘Happisburgh’, but coastal erosion will soon remove that place as a problem child.Living in Coss’y, with a car gives you quick access round the A47 bypass to Earlham Rd.But if you use public transport you better check the bus routes for a ‘circular service’ and times. You may be stuck with going into the centre before changing bus for one to UEA… but may pick up a shuttle there (if they are that advanced these days). Another downside is it is the opposite side of Norwich to the Broads and the roads to the closer coastal areas… that’s why its cheaper to live there. Upside, if you like the North Norfolk coast, is its (relative) proximity. You also get quick A47 access to NE England and the Midland routes… and what I call the ‘The Swan’ pub down in Ringland’s wet lands where you can quaff a pint on on evening by the small river, amid the visiting swans, in a good walking area of woodland and lanes. Also can get out to Feltham Woods and beyond. Not much night life, that’s mostly in the city.

People believe that climate change is a myth because energy corporations and the politicians who represent their states tell people it’s a myth. It’s very much like the tobacco companies that for years denied that nicotine was harmful. Tobacco denial eventually fell apart. We now know that company representatives lied to the public for many years, because profit was more important than human lives. Tobacco addiction caused some millions of deaths in the US alone.The actual science behind climate change is totally convincing. Climate changes naturally, of course, but the changes we are seeing are a thousand times faster. Climate change is here, and it’s caused by human action, particularly because of the use of fossil fuels: coal, oil, and gas.Among the impacts are rising temperatures, more energy input into the system that will manifest itself as more powerful storms, hotter summers, and ocean acidification. We may expect rising sea levels causing huge damage (and possibly making uninhabitable) in coastal cities like Miami, New Orleans, Norfolk,and New York City.As winters become less severe, we can expect tropical diseases such as Malaria, Dengue fever, and Chagas’ disease to move north into the US, and tropical invasive species like Burmese pythons to move north. The impact on agriculture is likely going to be severe.It’s only a myth because it is convenient for the energy industry that the public believes it. The myth is that it is a myth.

The first ironclads were constructed by France during the 1850s. They were initially used for shore bombardment, first seeing action at the Battle of Kinburn in 1855. Two years later in 1857 France began construction of the first ocean-going ironclad, the Gloire. Their ambition was to seize naval dominance over Britain by embracing this new technology, but those hopes were dashed when Britain began the construction of its own ironclad fleet.The United States had watched these developments with interest, and even begun experiments with its own ironclad designs; but peacetime budget limitations meant that none of these projects were completed. The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 changed that.The Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk, Virginia was under Federal control, but isolated and surrounded by secessionist territory. On 20 April 1861 its commandant ordered the deliberate demolition of its facilities and scuttling of the nine US Navy warships in the port. The largest of these ships was the wooden screw frigate USS Merrimack, 3200 tons and armed with 40 guns of various calibres. Launched in 1855, Merrimack was, along with her five sister ships, the most advanced ship in the US Navy. The retreating Federal forces set fire to her and burned her to the waterline before abandoning the navy yard.Scuttling of the USS MerrimackMeanwhile, President Lincoln ordered a naval blockade of the newly formed Confederacy. This was largely ineffective for the first few years, because the US Navy at the outbreak of war was far too tiny to cover the entire coastline of the south from Virginia to Texas. A major shipbuilding programme was put in hand; and in the meantime, the navy concentrated its efforts on a few locations of symbolic or strategic importance. One of these was Hampton Roads, the body of deep water that lay just north of Norfolk at the mouth of the James River. That navigable river led to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy and one of its very few industrial cities. Blockading it thus prevented the Confederates from using either Norfolk or Richmond as ports, as well as threatening a US naval landing on the coast near to the Confederate capital (as would indeed be attempted, though unsuccessfully, the following year.)Stephen Mallory was appointed Secretary of the Navy by Jefferson Davis in March 1861. He realised that the Confederacy would be unable to challenge the US blockade directly, head to head, due to its comparative lack of ships, industry and shipbuilding facilities. Instead, he devised a twofold strategy. While fast commerce raiders would harass Union shipping on the high seas, he would begin the construction of a fleet of ironclads. As he saw it, since Confederate warships would always be outnumbered, then each individual vessel must be far more powerful than its opponents. The new technology of iron armour seemed to offer that opportunity.The biggest limitation on Mallory's ambition was the availability of steam engines. There was only one factory in the entire Confederacy capable of building engines powerful enough to move an armoured warship: the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. Even here it would take a year at least to make the engines. However, it was then discovered that the wreck of the Merrimack could be salvaged, and her engines were repairable. Converting her into an ironclad would be much faster and cheaper than building one from scratch. Mallory ordered the project to go ahead on 11 July 1861.It took seven months to convert the Merrimack into an ironclad. The warship's burned upperworks were replaced by a heavy slanted casemate made of wood 610 mm thick, covered by 100 mm of iron plating in two layers. She was armed with ten heavy cannons; a broadside of three 9" smoothbore Dahlgren guns and one 6.4" Brooke rifled gun to each side, plus one 7" Brooke rifled gun firing to the front and to the rear. The ship's engines propelled her at 6 knots (11 kph), and she had a turning radius of about 1600 metres. Her crew was 320 men.The new ironclad was launched on 3 February 1862 and commissioned into the Confederate navy on 17 February under the new name CSS Virginia. As a side-note, the Northern newspapers refused to use this name, on the basis that the Rebels had no right to rename a United States warship, and continued to refer to her as the Merrimack. Even Southern newspapers were inconsistent, and used both names in their own stories.CSS Virginia, or Merrimack if you prefer.The Confederacy's plans had not gone unnoticed in the North, as Union spies brought news of what they were doing. Three weeks after Mallory gave authorisation for the conversion of the Merrimack, the US government's own Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, set up an Ironclad Board to develop a response to the Confederate warship. Congress allocated $1.5 million to the project on 3 August 1861.A Swedish engineer called John Ericsson had emigrated to New York in 1839. He was persuaded by a friend to submit a design to the Navy, which was accepted on 15 September despite its radically innovative design worrying many members of the Ironclad Board. Construction of the new warship began on 25 October, and astonishingly she was ready for launch on 30 January 1862, just over three months later. (Compare the seven months it took the Confederates to convert the Merrimack.) The new ship was named the USS Monitor.The Monitor was essentially a flat raft with a rotating round turret mounted on top. The turret was revolutionary: Monitor was only the second warship in the world to mount one (the first was the British ironclad HMS Trusty, fitted with an experimental turret the previous autumn). The turret had 200 mm of iron armour and mounted two 11" smoothbore guns. Monitor was only a quarter the size of Virginia (987 tons versus ~4000 tons), and had a crew of 49. She travelled at the same speed, 6 knots,but was more manoeuvrable.USS Monitor at seaAs soon as Monitor was commissioned into the US Navy she was ordered to sail from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Hampton Roads in order to be ready for the Virginia, which was known to be near completion. However, a series of teething troubles and last-minute mechanical faults meant that Monitor did not actually depart until 6 March. She had to be towed behind another ship for the three-day voyage, and almost sank en route when the turret ring started leaking.At the beginning of March 1862, the Northern blockade of Hampton Roads was being maintained by the North Atlantic Blocking Squadron under the command of Captain Louis Goldsborough. He had five major warships under his command -- two steam frigates, the Minnesota and Roanoke, which were sister ships of the Merrimack; two sailing frigates and a sailing sloop -- plus some smaller gunboats.Hampton Roads. The southern shore was under Confederate control, the northern Union control, and the James River led to the Confederate capital Richmond.On 8 March 1862 the CSS Virginia left port for the first time and steamed north into Hampton Roads to engage the Union fleet. She engaged in a battle with the sloop Cumberland and frigate Congress, managing to sink both of them. Virginia suffered only minor damage and two crew killed. As night fell she returned to port, intending to deal with the three remaining US warships the following day. Unknown to her, the USS Monitor arrived on the scene at 9:00 pm that night.At 8:00 am on a foggy morning, 9 March 1862, the CSS Virginia returned to the site of the previous day's battle and opened fire on the grounded wooden frigate USS Minnesota. To her surprise, the USS Monitor emerged from behind the Minnesota and closed in on the Confederate ship. The world's first battle between opposing ironclads on both sides had begun.Actually, though, the battle was disappointingly anticlimactic. The revolutionary new iron armour was just too good, and neither ship could seriously damage the other. They spent four hours circling around each other at very close range, constantly firing -- although Monitor's heavy guns were only capable of one shot every eight minutes. None of the hits penetrated the ships' armour, though they suffered jammed hatches, dislodged rivets and other minor damage. Nobody was killed on either side, though there were injuries and the Monitor's captain John Worden was temporarily blinded when a shell exploded right outside the viewing slit he was looking out of.After Worden's injury, Monitor briefly withdrew from the combat. The Confederate captain took this to be a sign that he had won the battle, and since he was running low on ammunition he decided to return to port. In fact, the Monitor's withdrawal was temporary, and under Worden's second-in-command she soon returned to the fight only to see the Virginia sailing away back to harbour. As a result, both sides claimed victory in the battle.While the battle between the two ironclads was inconclusive, the Confederates had sunk two wooden Union warships and damaged others, so on balance the victory probably belongs to them. On the other hand, the Union blockade was still in place and now reinforced by the Monitor, so it was a strategic failure.Although Virginia had not sustained any critical damage, she had sufficient minor damage to require her to remain in dry dock for the remainder of March. By the time she was ready for sea again on 4 April, the Union blockading squadron had been reinforced. A paddle-steamer, the USS Vanderbilt, had been fitted with a ram on her bow specifically to deal with the Virginia should she re-emerge: it was theorised that since cannon fire had proven ineffective, maybe ramming would do more good.During April and early May, the Virginia set out to sea again several times in order to lure the Union blockade fleet into another battle. However, the US squadron's commanders were under orders to avoid responding to provocation and remain under the cover of the land-based guns of Fort Monroe on the north bank of Hampton Roads. No further fighting between the ironclads occurred. Indeed, by the end of April two more Union ironclads had joined the blockade fleet.On 8 May 1862 a Union fleet began shelling the defences of Norfolk. The following day the commander of its Confederate garrison abruptly decided to retreat from the city. On 10 May a Union army landed and took control of Norfolk and its naval base. CSS Virginia was thus left without a port. Her captain rejected the idea of sailing out into the open sea; the ship was no longer seaworthy after her conversion into an ironclad. More serious thought was given to sailing up the James River to Richmond; but it was decided that the water was not deep enough. So on 11 May 1862 the CSS Virginia, formerly the Merrimack, was deliberately destroyed by her crew by setting fire to her powder magazine. The resulting explosion destroyed the ship far more thoroughly than the fire a year earlier.The Virginia was the first large Confederate ironclad, and by far the most famous, but not the last. Around 30 were launched during the course of the war. Some were purpose-built while others were converted from wooden ships. Almost all of them resembled the Virginia in design, though were usually smaller. They were not sea-going ships, being designed to attack Union blockade fleets in river estuaries or coastal waters, or operate on navigable rivers. The Confederacy also operated about 20 'cotton-clads', small gunboats protected by bales of cotton tightly stacked on their upper decks.A cotton-clad, the CSS Governor MooreMost of these ships had short but eventful lives: their fate was usually to launch a successful attack on the nearest Union squadron, then be destroyed in a later counter-attack by superior forces. One of the most famous incidents was the Battle of Mobile Bay in August 1864.By the fourth year of the war Mobile, Alabama was one of the last major ports left in Confederate hands. Blockade runners left Mobile for Cuba, where they could sell Southern cotton in return for European guns and munitions. The US government decided to permanently shut down this hole in its blockade by capturing the city with an amphibious invasion. Admiral David Farragut with a fleet of 18 ships, four of them ironclads, and 5,500 troops was given the task.Mobile was defended by three forts, a minefield, and a small squadron of three wooden gunboats and an ironclad, the CSS Tennessee. The Tennessee had been commissioned on 16 February 1864. She displaced 1,273 tons with a crew of 133 men, had up to 150 mm of armour on her casemate, was armed with six rifled guns (four 6.4" and two 7"), and had a speed of 5 knots.Farragut's plan was to steam into Mobile Bay, past the forts and minefield at the entrance, and engage the Confederates. One of his ironclads was sunk by the mines, but he ordered his ships to press on (allegedly with the words "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" though some historians consider this a later invention) and quickly sank or drove away the three wooden enemy ships. The Tennessee proved a harder target.The CSS Tennessee (left, passing Fort Morgan) engages the Union fleet in Mobile BayAdmiral Buchanan ordered his ship to steam right into the middle of the Union fleet and engage at close range, hoping to ram the enemy vessels. For three hours the Tennessee rampaged through the US ships, her armour making he almost immune to their fire. The Union fleet suffered many casualties, but no further ships sunk. Eventually, though, the Tennessee was battered into submission; her gunports jammed, her funnel shot away, her rudder chains broken. Eventually she was forced to surrender, and the Union had won the battle.In 1862 the Confederacy also attempted to purchase ocean-going ironclads from foreign powers, though with little success. The 4670-ton Santa Maria was ordered from the Thompson yard in Clydebank for £190,000; the 2751-ton Mississippi and North Carolina from John Laird in Merseyside for £94,000 each. The following year they also ordered two ships from Arman in Bordeaux, France, which were codenamed 'Sphynx' and 'Cheops' , since the cover story was that they were being built for the Egyptian Navy.However, the US government exerted strong diplomatic pressure on Britain and France not to allow these ships to be sold to the Confederacy, since it was considered a rebel regime and not a sovereign state. Eventually in 1863 (after the Emancipation Proclamation) those countries agreed. The three ships being built in the UK were seized; one was sold to Denmark (and renamed Danmark) while the other two were taken over directly by the Royal Navy (as HMS Scorpion and Wivern). One of the French ships was likewise sold to the Prussian navy as the SMS Prinz Adalbert. However, the Sphynx had a more eventful career.The Sphynx, also known as CSS Stonewall, Stærkodder, Kōtetsu and AzumaSphynx was designed as an ironclad ram, 1358 tons and 135 crew, armed with three cannons and armour up to 125 mm and with a speed of 10.5 knots. Construction began in 1863 and the ship was launched in June 1864. However, the United States had discovered that the ship was secretly being built for the Confederacy, and pressured Emperor Napoleon to instead sell her to Denmark. This was done, and the ship sailed to Copenhagen. However, on 6 January 1865 a group of Confederate sailors arrived in Denmark and, under mysterious circumstances, took control of the ship. They renamed her the CSS Stonewall and set out across the Atlantic.The newspapers in the United States published alarming stories about this powerful modern warship, and how devastating she would be against the wooden US blockade squadrons, or coastal northern cities. The US Navy sent several warships to try and intercept the Stonewall. The Confederate ship, however, developed a leak and had to divert to Spain for repairs. Union warships gathered outside the harbour, but when Stonewall put out to sea again on 24 March they fled rather than engage the ironclad.The CSS Stonewall made her way across the Atlantic and arrived in Cuba, only to discover that the Civil War was already over. Her captain surrendered his ship to the Cuban authorities, who in turn passed her over to the US government. Unsure what to do with her, the Americans eventually sold the Stonewall to the Shōgun of Japan for $40,000. She arrived in Japan just in time for the Shogunate to be overthrown by the Meiji Restoration, and so the CSS Stonewall, later renamed the Azuma 東, became the first ironclad warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy.Meanwhile, the Union had also constructed its own ironclads. Around 60 were laid down, including small river ironclads, though only about half were completed before the war ended and construction was halted. They included the Casco class, designed for use on the Mississippi; the Passaic class, which were enlarged and upgraded versions of the original USS Monitor; the Canonicus class, a further evolutionary development of the Passaics, and the Miantonomoh class, which were intended to be sea-going rather than the purely coastal design of the earlier ships. The basic design of USS Monitor, with its low, flat hull and revolving turret, was adopted for almost all subsequent US ironclads; and they were soon generically known as 'monitors' in her honour.USS Miantonomoh was begun in 1862, but only commissioned in September 1865 after the war was already over. She displaced 3,400 tons with a crew of 150 men, had 250 mm of armour, and was armed with two separate turrets, fore and aft, each mounting a pair of 15" smoothbore guns. Her speed was 7 knots. Her main claim to fame was that in May 1866 she crossed the Atlantic -- admittedly being towed most of the way -- and made ceremonial visits to Britain, France, Russia and six other nations. The unfamiliar design of the ship, with its armoured turrets and lack of conventional masts and sails, made a great impression on the public.USS MiantonomohDuring the war, the US Navy increased from 42 to 671 warships in commission -- although most of these were small wooden gunboats used for blockade and river duties, not ironclads. The end of the war saw almost all of them being promptly scrapped or sold off. It would be over 30 years before the United States launched any more armoured warships.