Mark,  Thanks indeed, as my Englishman rare book finding agent named Paul 
(pronounced "Pole") Merchant  up the street says, for all the help with the 
naval history.  It gets  to swirling around from time to time.  Nelson, 
Jack's great idol, smote the hated Spanish and French at Trafalgar in the 
18th century long after the Armada had been wrecked at the mouth of the 
Thames,  an event that Shakespeare must have been aware of.   I am working 
through Spanish history by reading a book by the art critic Robert Hughes 
about Barcelona, and did not realize the unique maritime power of that City.  
At one time, it dominated the Mediterranean in its time of glory which was 
back in the Middle Ages, I want to say in the 7 or 8 hundreds. .  They have 
an outstanding Maritime Museum containing examples of those wierd sounding 
boats like  xebecs and lateens and, the prize I want to see is the big ship 
that some Austrian hero sailed at the famous battle of Lepanto, which battle 
is referred to by Cervantes in Don Quixote as the time when Christianity 
dealt the hated Turks  a heavy blow.  Cervantes was wounded in the battle and 
languished in a Turkish prison in north Africa, some of which comes out in 
his immortal tale.  I will not be near Trafalgar because we are going to go 
from Madrid to Granada to Barcelona in a triangle but will at some point be 
able to  gaze out across the Mediterranean  in the direction of some of those 
little islands that O'Brien mentions, I think one of them is called Minorca 
and there is a Belarazic or something like that.   And we will see some of 
the Pyrennes (sp?) where Stephen had his family castle and through which he 
dragged Jack in that bear costume which always amuses me so much to recall.  

If you could obtain from Ted Murphy  and send me the current Risk Management 
Policy I would be forever grateful.  I like to go back to the text from time 
to time.  --cgy 


To: Christian Yoder/HOU/ECT@ECT
cc:  
Subject: Re: Trading Limits  

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