Turtledove's Timeline 191 - a minor query

Peter Cowan

Just ploughing through Drive to the East and now The Grapple when I noticed something slightly odd. It isn't a major thing but just why is Sam Carsten's ship called Josephus Daniels?

In OTL there was a US Navy ship called Josephus Daniels - Belknap Guided Missile cruiser - but this was named after a democratic politician who had been Secretary of the Navy under Wilson. My quibble is that this guy was born in North Carolina in 1862, hardly an ideal name for a ship in the US navy in these novels.

I suppose butterflies could have his family move after the southern victory in the War of Seccession to the US - his father was, after all, killed accidently by Confederate troops - rather than to Wilson NC.

Any thoughts?
 
Last edited:
Thande

Thande

Donor
This should really be in Books, Games and Websites.

It said in the text of The Grapple that the Josephus Daniels in question was Secretary of the US Navy during the Great War.
 

Trotsky

It was a mistake. Among so many others.

Should Winston Churchill still be born to a British lord and a Yankee mother?

Should Pancho Villa be eligible for the Confederate Presidency even though he was born before Chihuahua was annexed to the South?

Should Robert Lansing be TR's Secretary of State if he loathed the man so much in OTL?

Why is Herbert Walker, a man from Connecticut, the Secretary of State in the Snake's (who hates Yankees with a passion, by the way) regime?

And then there were character inconsistencies, such as:

Just how old is Jake Featherston? In his first scene in TCCH (1924) he was said to be in his mid-thirties. So how did he manage to run for President and almost win three years earlier. Of course at the beginning of B&I (1917) he was also said to be in his mid-thirties then, too. He says he can also remember the slaves being manumitted, which would have made him older than his mid-thirties in 1924 if he can recall the 1880s.

Maybe Featherston borrowed an extra year from the U.S. flag with the mysterious 34 stars at the beginning of Walk in Hell.
 

Trotsky

I know. I had to correct a lot of them. If I recall you were also one of the editors who would always write something along the lines of "Jake Featherston is this timeline's version of Adolf Hitler," so I had to omit all references to OTL.
 
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