Saturday - February 21, 2009

Some People Can Keep Secrets

A lot of people think that it's impossible to keep a secret, that the more people that know of something, the less possible it is to keep secret.

But that's not always true.  Throughout history, entire nations have kept secrets.  Yesterday I learned, via Cronaca, that an Elizabethan warship has recently been discovered and analyzed.  (The video at this link is nice.) They recovered its guns and learned that the English were ahead of their time using standardized guns and cannonballs.  All the other navies of the day were using cannon built one off, with nonstandard ammo.

How could we not know this?  Clearly, standardized weapons were critical for England's military success against the Spanish Armada.  Keeping that a secret gave them quite an edge against their enemies.  With standard guns, the English could have consistent training, gun tables, etc.  Other navies had to have more specialized training on each gun.  The Brits took a huge part of the art out and made it more scientific.

And no one else knew, until now.  

"It is known that during Elizabeth's reign, English sailors and gunners became greatly feared. For example, at the beginning of Henry VIII's reign, the English fleet was forced to retreat from heavily armed French galleys.

"By the time of Elizabeth, even Phillip of Spain was warning of the deadly English artillery. But no-one has ever been able to clearly show why this was."

The Byzantine Empire used a weapon called "Greek Fire."  No one knows what it is, the leading theory is that it was a naphtha-like flame thrower.  Supposedly, the Byzantines killed those that knew how to make it, to prevent the secret from getting out.

The ancient Greeks had their entire religion kept a mystery.  Only those initiated into the higher levels of priesthood were taught the Eleusian mysteries.  Those in the know died off after thousands of years of dominating Mediterranean culture.

Clearly, secrets are capable of being kept for quite a long time.  It makes you wonder what have been kept, and are still being kept, that we don't know about.

 

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