Royal-navy Stories

Jesus and Muhammad adopted the Hebrew's belief in one God and Christianity and Islam spread throughout the world. The Chinese were using gunpowder in the 9th century and, by the 13th , cannon dominated the battlefields. Paper money appeared in China from 1216, as many financial transactions were too large for heavy bronze coins. The Anglo-Saxons built light, fast ships to stop the Vikings raiding Britain and, in 1546, Henry VIII established the "Navy Royal" which Elizabeth I used to defeat the Spanish armada. Before 1764 a worker needed 50,000 hours to spin 100 lb of cotton thread on a hand-powered wheel but only 300 hours with a spinning machine. Between 1770 and 1773, James Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle and mapped the coasts of New Zealand, Australia and the west coast of north America. By 100 BCE, Chinese were weaving complex silk brocade cloth. In 1804, J. M. Jacquard reinvented the Chinese loom, using a chain of cards to control which threads of weft or warp appeared on the cloth. This was the beginning of computers. WHO THE HELL ARE WE? is a series of short books and videos describing the evolution of civilization. Almost everyone on the planet is five times wealthier than their ancestors only 50 years ago. This astonishing phenomenon has also improved health, education, and longevity. The cause; an explosive growth in ideas and productivity. It began when we learned to control fire, evolved articulate speech and stumbled onto the way to create infinite wealth; free trade. The discovery of agriculture made us richer but we also learned how to destroy wealth. Great civilization grew up but then disappeared leaving only incredible ruins and ideas. Later books detail some of the ideas and developments that increased the average life span from about 40 years to more than 80 and the average world income from less than $3 to more than $33 per person per day (and to $140 per day in some countries).

Denny, Licia, Miguel and I had been kidnapped by a press gang and forced aboard His Majesty's Ship Curious, a 20 gun sailing frigate. (Book 4 Undercover Curiousers). When the ship ran aground, we escaped, but, in 1778, the British Royal Navy hung deserters. The only way we could avoid this fate was to find work in the copper and tin mines at the far south west of England. These mines were essential to the war against the French navy and employees were exempt from military service. On the way west, we fought off some highway men and joined up with the famous British engineer James Watt. He was heading for one of the mines to repair a steam engines used to prevent the mine from flooding. Our carriage driver got lost along the way and we discovered that the locals were suspicious of all foreigners and not at all helpful. While Denny was helping Mr Watt to repair his steam engine at the Ting Tang mine, Licia, Miguel and I found out that the local mechanic had been sabotaging the engine. The local coal merchants feared the loss of sales (because Mr Watt's engine was more efficient) and were paying him to make the engine burn more coal. We tricked the saboteurs to prevent them damaging the engine and Mr Watt successfully demonstrated that the engine rapidly lowered the water level in the mine and, as a by-product, supplied more water to drive the waterwheel and trip hammers used to process the tin ore. Dr Zhang found us and we returned to Plymouth narrowly avoiding a troop of red-coats searching for highway men and . . . deserters. Back in Ottawa we discovered someone had destroyed Oppy's software and were trying to bomb the electric bookcase.