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Article: Fall in, there. (British army to search for shipwreck of troopship Warren Hastings)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- June 25, 1988
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IF ANYTHING pleases the British I army more than its traditions and its relics, it is a mixture of both, spiced with a disaster. An expedition shortly to be mounted by the Royal Green Jackets, an infantry regiment of great repute, couples all that with the promise of some fun for a few of its soldiers as well.
The disaster occurred in january 1897, when a British troopship, the Warren Hastings, out of Cape Town bound for Mauritius and India, ran aground on a spur of rock protruding a few hundred yards into the sea from the south-eastern coast of Reunion, an island in the southern Indian Ocean. The captain later claimed at his trial that volcano eruptions had ...