Followers

Wednesday 25 April 2012

Fear God and Dread Nought

I've always been fairly well read on the Royal Navy with the Great War being no exception so I was not expecting to be learning too much from an Osprey publication. This one was entitled 'British Dreadnought Vs German Dreadnought' and subtitled 'Jutland 1916'. It is from their 'Duel' series and I expected to read a fair comparison between them.



A fair comparison between the equivalent ships in the two fleets it was too albeit at a fairly low level of detail. Nothing much to write home about! At £5.76 plus postage I was not expecting too much at all.

One little detail did catch my eye as a possible typo. No it was definitely an error I thought. I even checked some of my other sources just to be sure. A quick peek through my copy of Janes confirmed my suspicions.

The Osprey stated that HMS Agincourt had a main battery of 14 guns each of 14" calibre. Nope said my memory banks, fourteen 12" guns is what she carried and both Wikipedia and Janes agreed with me.

Now if an Osprey approved author can make a simple mistake like that in a publication then how many other mistakes are there to be found in this publication alone. I will not be spending any of my precious reading time in trying to find out.
 


2 comments:

  1. Jim,

    Oops! A decent proofreader who knew their stuff should have spotted that ... but I doubt if they did, hence the mistake 'got through'.

    All the best,

    Bob

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  2. I think there needs to more proofreaders in the world. I once checked a bit of web text for an author friend of mine. It was appalling or maybe just a bit bad, I can't remember clearly. My author friend admitted that he needed a good proofreader to get by. He has done dozens of books for Osprey. God Help Us and Fear Authors who can't write proper!!

    :)

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