When Empires Strike Back

摘要

Going into battle, the captain notes from the bridge that the crosswind has picked up, and he has a word with his officer of the deck. The OOD issues an order to the young helmsman. The helmsman turns the wood-spoked wheel to the right, and the boatswain picks up his silver whistle and alerts the crew. A seaman plots the change of course on a large paper chart with a straightedge and pencil, noting the time. Below, in sight of the captain, hundreds of crewmem-bers ready the ship's weapons for a fight. Ah, the ritual and romance of the fighting ship in the Age of Sail, when the loo-gun man-of-war, one of the most complex machines ever devised, roamed the oceans of the world. It's the romance that turned Patrick O'Brian's 20 Aubrey/Maturin novels into modern classics of nautical fiction and, Hollywood hopes, will make this month's Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe, into a blockbuster. But the scene described above is actually standard operating procedure on the bridge of Nimitz-class U.S. Navy supercarriers today, carriers such as the recently commissioned U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, the Harry S. Truman and the Abraham Lincoln. Silver whistles, pencil and charts, the spoked wheel―all are used in today's Navy, although, of course, a carrier also relies on instant messaging via encrypted satellite signals and, instead of powder-fired cannon shot, launches cruise missiles and smart-bomb-equipped F/A-18 Hornets.