Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Fishery Protection Squadron

Fishery Protection Squadron

This is my first creation of content that goes beyond 2,000 characters, and I'm hoping it will meet B-Class or even GA. The references should be sound - all taken from books at the British Library - but being my first major article, I'm not sure where I might be falling down. I'm hoping the rest of MILHIST will be able to give me some pointers as to where the article needs improvement to be B- or GA- ready. Thanks all, The Cavalry (Message me) 00:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Demiurge1000

I've never been involved in peer review before, this is just what sticks out at me when reading the article. There is a bit of unevenness in coverage. Examples;

• The goodwill visit in August 1853 receives a bit too much coverage; it's not notable in itself, or at least certainly not to the extent that the exact time of arrival of the flagship and the relatively unremarkable weather conditions at the time are worth mentioning. The offence taken by the Vice Admiral over the gun salutes is worth including as an interesting anecdote, but it should perhaps be introduced as such, because starting discussion of it by mentioning that a 15-gun salute was fired leaves the reader initially wondering if that is remarkable in itself.

• The end of the section "French Shore" mentions a hope of a substantial expansion of the personnel of the reserve force, and a plan to turn St. John's into a naval fortress. It then doesn't say whether the hope was ever fulfilled, or the plan carried through.

• The section on the Lord Astor incident links in the same sentence an action taken (apparently in error) by battleships of Tsarist Russia in 1904, with actions taken (very deliberately) by a Soviet gunboat in 1923. There is a World War, two revolutions, nineteen years and several thousand miles between these two incidents! It's worth mentioning the earlier incident, and it's reasonable to suggest that it contributed to long term tensions between fishing fleets of the two countries (assuming the sources make that link), but it could be phrased better.

• It's mentioned that in 1957 it was considered sending a fisheries protection vessel to the fisheries off the coast of Norway, but it's then not explained whether one was sent that year or not.

• HMS Belton being sent to the northern fisheries, and HMS Mariner being handed over to the Burmese navy, are put together in the same sentence. This is a bit confusing for the reader, as there is actually no connection between these two events other than both ships being Fishery Protection Squadron vessels. I think the handover to the Burmese is worth including because it's interesting, but in that case it's worth covering the fates of any other ships disposed of (or commissioned) in similarly interesting circumstances.

• The section on the third Cod War should end by mentioning its outcome, rather than cutting off abruptly with a statement that there were fourteen rammings of ships. The trawlers withdrew demanding Royal Navy support, support was provided, the trawlers returned, there were rammings, and then...?

Dank

• Since my BritEng is weak, I only skimmed half the article. A few points:
• "a more policing-oriented approach": "-oriented" is a term to avoid in good writing, because it's commonly used by the press as a way to avoid saying anything that they can be pinned down on. Try to rewrite the sentence without it.
• "1960s-70s": An en-dash would be better, but best would be "1960s and 1970s".
• "There is a formal contract between [X, Y and Z]": In good writing, use "between" when you mean pairwise relationships among the elements in a list of three or more, such as when you're giving a list of players who are all competing one-on-one. Neither "among" nor "between" sounds smooth to me here; I'd go with "X, Y and Z have a contract allowing ...".
• "it is acknowledged to be a very difficult task to patrol UK fishing grounds.": Some will cite WEASEL here, but I don't think there's any sin being committed, it's just a style issue. "it is a very difficult task to patrol UK fishing grounds" with a citation means the same thing, and is generally preferred on and off Wikipedia, unless you want to draw attention to who's acknowledging this.
• "Each aircraft transmits the identity and position of the vessel to squadron ships, which, combined with satellite data from navigational databases which allows the squadron to build a surface picture of fishing activity": You've got an extra word somewhere there.
• "a fishing trawler with foul another's nets": I think you mean "will".
• "to ram each other ... even fire flare guns at each other": Ramming a ship sounds more dangerous than firing a flare gun, to me.

Partly disagree. When we think of ramming, it's normally pretty dramatic (a destroyer ramming a submarine in order to sink it, an aircraft carrier ramming a destroy accidentally and sinking it, a destroyer ramming a battleship at full speed in order to inflict serious damage), but the Cod War rammings were much less serious (one might almost call them "deliberate collisions"), resulted in no sinkings and I don't think any deaths or even serous injuries. While such rammings are obviously a risky thing to do and a somewhat extreme measure in a fishing dispute, firing a flare gun at another ship, and therefore presumably at men on deck, specifically brings about the possibility of serious harm for men on the ship targeted. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:56, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

How about "even firing flare guns at the crews"? (I made the edit.) - Dank (push to talk) 21:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

• "wafting meaning 'to convey safely' or 'to convoy'": "wafting meaning "conveying safely" or "convoying" ". Single quotes are fine in this context in BritEng, but WP:MOS has some arguments against them.
• "at Halifax, Nova Scotia for": I'm pretty sure BritEng style guides ask for a comma after "Scotia", just as AmEng style guides do. - Dank (push to talk) 20:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)