Talk:The Armada Service

A fact from The Armada Service appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 24 April 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Armada Service, rumoured to have been made from New World silver captured from the Spanish Armada, was buried during the English Civil War and lay hidden until 1827?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/April. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Armada Service.

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After the Splats?

The artcle says;

"The Splat family sold the dishes at Christie's in London for £11,500 in June 1911, when they were acquired by the British Museum.^[1]

But the Alastair Dickenson source^[2] says this:

"The plates were passed down through the family until they were buried during the English Civil War in 1645 in an underground potato store at a farm in Brixton, near Plymouth. They remained there for nearly 200 years before they were found by farm workers and returned to the Harris family.

Between 1827 and 1885 five of the plates went missing again, as records show that only 26 were sold at auction in 1885 and again at Christie’s in about 1910 when they made a world record price. More recently, the British Museum acquired the set of 26 in 1992 and the whereabouts of the other five remained unknown until the sale at Lawrence’s of Crewkerne last week. The pair had ended up in America and were bought at auction in the southern states before finding their way into the Somerset saleroom. Still no one knows the location of the other three."

So which is correct? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:56, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Hersey, Stewart (1 May 2009). "The Silver Armada Dish and Their History". GoArticles.com. Retrieved 10 April 2013.
^ "Alastair's Armada silver". Homes & Antiques. BBC Worldwide/Immediate Media Company. Retrieved 11 April 2013.

Who knows? WP:Truth WP:RS Thus, who cares? After hundreds of years, much of this is unknowable and unprovable. Its reputation and rumor at best. I don't think it is our function to parse the sources and sort it out. We can report it, note the disparity, and let the readers sort it out. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:45, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I was hoping only that 2 RSs might win against 1, if they could be found. I know we all gave up on "truth" long ago. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:57, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One could try to weigh the credibility of sources. One would intuitively think (I guess) that the British Museum is a higher order of magnitude than somebody trying to sell replicas. But a lot of them is based on rumor and supposition. You are right as rain that the various claimants may care, as in trying to show that something had been stolen from them. If there is a court proceeding, that might constitute a WP:RS. We've seen examples of those kinds of proceedings recently concerning art that was stolen by the Third Reich, and survivors of the dispossessed art come forward. But absent that sort of record, which may involve a credibility finding by a competent authority with jurisdiction over the parties and subject matter, getting into the truth of it is real ephemeral, since all the participants have been dead for a long time. Inevitably, such an inquiry gets into hearsay, double and triple hearsay, and disputed questions about the authenticity of questioned documents. So I think we ought to let this stuff go, and simply report the contentions, and not the facts. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:14, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

'Phew! Do you actually practice law, or just aspire to such a lofty profession?! haha. But I quite agree. I had considered adding "it has been claimed by.. " etc. etc. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:22, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually practice. Did not mean to get overly technical, but I was not just making that stuff up. I know more about law than I do about Wikipedia. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:33, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's very comforting for me to be told that, 7&6/=12. Folks say "WP:THERAPY", but what they don't realise is that wikipedia is, in fact, just a very extended projective psychometric test battery. Ah, the data analysis possibilities are endless, I tell you. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:41, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A psychologist with whom I am acquainted made the same observation. Parenthetically, he was particularly aggrieved by Rorschach test (the article and the discussion) which rather cavalierly tended to trash, taint and confuse a useful psychometric tool. But I digress. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:55, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh what a coincidence. I'm sure Uncle Jimbo is all totally "street legal" with the famous blots.. (alas), "lol" Martinevans123 (talk) 20:03, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they contradict each other don't they..♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 11:16, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(A bit like wikipedia editors..?) I am wondering what the local newspaper was in the Plymouth area in 1827. And if any editions still exist from that time. And if anyone has search access. Might be worth a note at Project Devon? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:17, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Have now left a short note here. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I now have in my quiver access to High Beam research, which I have never activated. I will do that, and see what I can find. May be a few days before I get back to you. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:21, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Me too. But so far, alas, "Armada Service" "Plymouth newspaper 1827" and "Plymouth Splat" have all drawn a blank. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lead paragraph

The lead says it is a set of 26, when elsewhere it is fairly clear it was 31in the original set, 26 of which are now in the British Museum. Should this be reworked? 7&6=thirteen (☎) 22:18, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think so. The local newspaper reports, when unearthed by the Splat workers, claimed "upwards of 30". I wonder which 1827 paper that was.... Martinevans123 (talk) 22:26, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

31 is not a very good number. Minus one and we would have had Thirty pieces of silver. Rather like the answer to the proverbial question, Why did Mrs. O'Grady use 239 beans in her bean soup? "One more would have made it 2-farty". [You have to imagine that in an Irish accent.] 7&6=thirteen (☎) 23:06, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, whenever I'm in Dublin I always drop in for a sing-song with Kitty O'Grady. But it all makes sense now why they needed all that room for potatoes - maybe the workers actually found 32 pieces? (hope that's not too defamatory a suggestion..) Martinevans123 (talk) 07:53, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Legally speaking (at least on most countries) you can't defame the dead. Who the workers were is completely lost in the fog of history. How many pieces there really were (and whether someone put one under their coat and walked away) we will never know. And why and when the silver was hidden is at best informed speculation. So we deal with the reports in the sources, as that's all there is. A stream cannot rise higher than its source. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 12:20, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

.. or as Kitty O'Grady always used to say: "You can never bury a dish lower than a potato, so you can't." Martinevans123 (talk) 14:57, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I like that quote. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I note that if one clicks on bean soup, you wind up at a Balkan article. How weird is that? 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:17, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the reason for my random Serbian references, I'm afraid... Not as wierd as my wiki re-mapped brain. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:22, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Identity of Christopher Harris?

Is Christopher Harris (the owner of the set) the same as Christopher Harris who was MP for Plymouth?

The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981 has the MP marrying twice but neither time to a Sydenham. Nedrutland (talk) 17:42, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How curious. It's difficult to imagine two people with the same name being successive MPs for Plymouth at that time. Perhaps a son has been confused with a father here? Or maybe (perhaps more likely) Barbara or Bridget also used the name Elizabeth? Martinevans123 (talk) 18:02, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also - was he knighted when he became Vice Admiral of Devon? The title of Sir is not mentioned in the parliament history source? Martinevans123 (talk) 18:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Vice-Admiral of Devon

The article says ".. was Vice-Admiral of Devon during the reign of James I." The History of Parliament source [1] says "v.-adm. 1600" - but that doesn't line up with List of Vice-Admirals of Devon which gives: "Sir Walter Raleigh 1585–1603". Martinevans123 (talk) 18:16, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The source says " dep. (to Ralegh) v.-adm. Devon 1596, v.-adm. 1600; acting capt. Plymouth fort 1601." (under offices held) and then later "Upon Sir John Gilbert’s death in 1596, Ralegh appointed Harris deputy vice-admiral, and, after the arrest of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Harris took charge of Plymouth fort, submitting a report to the Privy Council on essential repairs in 1602." Nedrutland (talk) 19:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

um, yes it does.... does that mean/imply that both Raleigh and Harris were vice-Admirals from 1600? Martinevans123 (talk) 19:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unhelpfully, the source for that List page http://www.history.ac.uk/office/viceadmirals2.html is a dead link Nedrutland (talk) 09:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

[Hersey-1] Hersey, Stewart (1 May 2009). "The Silver Armada Dish and Their History". GoArticles.com. Retrieved 10 April 2013.

[Alastair-2] "Alastair's Armada silver". Homes & Antiques. BBC Worldwide/Immediate Media Company. Retrieved 11 April 2013.

[1]

[2]