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Christian,
I'm afraid you may have your centuries confused relative to Nelson and the Armada. The "Spanish Armada" of fame was a fleet dispatched by Philip II of Spain to invade England in the late 16th century - it was during Elizabeth I's reign and I have some vague recollection that Mary, Queen of Scots had something to do with encouraging Philip before she was executed. The Armada was defeated in a series of battles (and by some very bad weather) around the English Channel. Nelson didn't sail til the 18th century. Of course, the English and the Spanish had been going at it off and on the entire time and you'd have to say "on" in the early 1800's when Nelson "broke the enemy line" at the battle of Trafalgar. I believe that was during a time when the Spanish were allies of Napoleon - whether by choice or under duress I couldn't say - and the enemy fleet was a combined French/Spanish fleet. The battle is named after Cape Trafalgar in southern Spain. I'm pretty sure it's somewhere between Cadiz and Gibraltar so your gut feeling is right - I don't see it on the map either & wonder if it has a different name in Spanish. Will you be going to that part of Spain[Andalusia?]? The English victory has in common with the Armada battle of a bit over 200 years earlier that it ended any hopes held by the enemy of imminent invasion of Britain. As far as the policy question goes, you are remembering what I always referred to as the "trading policy" but is officially referred to as the "Risk Management Policy." It most definitely covers Portland trading operations. I haven't been as involved in that policy for the last couple of years as I was back when MEH was chief control officer. Ted Murphy now has responsibility for maintaining and enforcing the policy. I don't have a current version but will ask Ted for one. Mark Christian Yoder 05/22/99 11:12 AM To: Mark - ECT Legal Taylor/HOU/ECT@ECT cc: Elizabeth Sager/HOU/ECT@ECT Subject: Trading Limits Mark, I haven't had a chance to plunge into the book you lent me at the conference because I am flailing around wildly in as much as I can about certain Spanish topics before early July, including such things as, of course, Cervantes, a man whose mind I have come to love almost as much as Shakespeare's, the Catalans, the Spanish Civil War, the War of Spanish Succession, the Spanish Inquisition and of course the Spanish Aramada. I have never read a definitive account of that great moment in English naval history. Did Nelson fight in the Armada battle at Trafalgar? Is that the battle Jack Aubrey is always talking about? Where the hell is Trafalgar? I have the idea it is down there by Gibraltar but can't find it on the map. On the other hand, I have a vague fantasy of these little row boats coming out at the mouth of the Thames to battle the mighty Armada. When one considers what the panic must have been like in the Spanish fleet when they realized that in spite of their size and assumed invincibility they were actually vulnerable to that old maritime risk of sinking, one is involuntarily caused to cast one's badly jaundiced commercial-legal mind upon recent events of an analagous nature on board our own beloved ship, sailing as it has been in the northern commercial straits. Has our mighty Armada sailed out onto the seas of deregulation, only to meet the ...... perhaps I shall cease articulating this line of thought and dwell upon the ingenuity of the Engish. Anyway, I have come to a point here in Portland where I need to go back into the policy context of our trading business. I recall in Houston that we had these trading policies that you worked on and that they set limits and articulated responsibilities. Do you still have close contact with those policies and if so, is there a discrete document that pertains to the Portland desk and if so would you be so kind as to send me a hard copy of it? I want to ground myself again in the fundamentals so my daily battles can be a little more fun. --cgy
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