Formed in 1901 by U.S. Steel Corporation, the Pittsburgh Steamship Company became the largest commercial fleet in the world and assumed a dominant role in Great Lakes shipping and the American steel industry. Tin Stackers tells its story: the ships, the men who sailed them, and the conditions that shaped their times. Drawing on company records and interviews with officials and sailors, Miller tells how the fleet kept organized labor off Great Lakes ships while leading the way in efficient operation, technological advancement, and employee safety. He emphasizes the human element in the company's history by relating the personal challenges faced by crews, and includes many archival photographs. Now navigating the waters of the lakes as the USS Great Lakes Fleet, Inc., these ships continue to play a part in commerce. Tin Stackers preserves their role in industrial history.

In this firsthand account of life aboard the ships of the Great Lakes, Mark Thompson weaves together the threads of a story that relives a centuries-old tradition. Thompson began his logbook after he reported for duty aboard the Calcite II at Fraser Shipyard in Superior, Wisconsin, for the 1996 shipping season. A Sailor's Logbook is the first such book to chronicle a sailor's life at the end of the twentieth century. Not just a detailing of weather, cargo, and crew relations, A Sailor's Logbook is also an account of the daily lives of a diverse group of crewmembers as they share their sailing knowledge, "sea stories," and the many memories that accompany the pictures. Although there are ample resources in museums, archival collections, and company files regarding statistical logbook information, A Sailor's Logbook details the intricacies of daily life on a Great Lakes freighter. Thompson navigates the reader through the waters of the Great Lakes and his own life in this very special narrative.

Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats That Won World War II, by Jerry E. Strahan, is the first biography of perhaps the most forgotten hero of the Allied victory. It was Higgins who designed the LCVP (landing craft vehicle, personnel) that played such a vital role in the invasion of Normandy, the landings in Guadalcanal, North Africa, and Leyte, and thousands of amphibious assaults throughout the Pacific. It was also Higgins who, after twenty years of failure by the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ships, designed and constructed an effective tank landing craft in sixty-one hours - a feat that caused the bureau to despise him. In 1938, Higgins owned a single small boatyard in New Orleans employing fewer than seventy-five people. Through exceptional drive, vision, and genius, his holdings expanded until by late 1943 he owned seven plants and employed more than twenty thousand workers. Because of his reputation for designing and producing assault craft in record-breaking time, Higgins was awarded the largest shipbuilding and aircraft contracts in history. During the war, Higgins Industries produced 20,094 boats, ranging from the 36-foot LCVP to the lightning-fast PT boats; the rocket-firing landing craft support boats; the 56-foot tank landing craft; the 170-foot FS ships; and the 27-foot airborne lifeboat that was dropped from the belly of a B-17 bomber. Higgins dedicated himself to providing Allied soldiers with the finest landing craft in the world, and he fought the Bureau of Ships, the Washington bureaucracy, and the powerful eastern shipyards in order to succeed. Strahan's portrait of Higgins reveals a colorful character - a hard-fisted, hard-swearing, and hard-drinking man whose Irishbackground and Nebraska birthplace made him an outsider to New Orleans' elite social circles. Higgins was also hard working, quickly progressing from an unknown southern boatbuilder to a major industrialist with a worldwide reputation. He was featured in Life, Time, Newsweek, and Fortune magazines, and appeared frequently on the front pages of the country's major newspapers. Even Adolf Hitler was aware of Higgins, calling him the "new Noah". Through Higgins' example, we see the way technological innovations, politics, labor unions, changing military agendas, and personalities worked together - and sometimes at odds - for an Allied victory. Strahan has based his work on extensive personal interviews with family members, key employees, and other close acquaintances of Higgins, as well as on previously inaccessible Higgins Industries archives. The result is an extremely informative account of one of the key players, and industries, of World War II.

China's long-term maritime history has been overlooked by the scholarly community, so much so that there is a misconception that the Chinese were sea- or ocean-phobic. This image has been promoted rather deliberately because a sailing-aversive China would fit in well with the non-capitalist development framework. This study shows that from 2100 B.C. to A.D. 1900, the Chinese were as enthusiastic about and capable of seagoing activities as other peoples. Evidence shows that economic interests provided Chinese sailing-related activities with a lasting impetus, and the private sector played a central role. However, maritime activities in China raise at least two paradoxes: the activities were incompatible with the agrarian dominance in the Chinese premodern economy, and there was a huge gap between China's maritime potential and maritime growth. This situation was symptomatic of both positive and negative effects of technical and economic aspects of premodern China. Technologically, limited maritime growth resulted from climatic and hydrographic conditions favorable to agriculture. Economically, it resulted from low Chinese participation in maritime activities because of safe returns from the agricultural sector. This book provides readers with a long-term analysis of Chinese maritime activities and their economic consequences in industries, infrastructure, trade, migration, and government policies. It shows a new insight into the causes for sterility of capitalist industrialization in premodern China.

This history of Burrell & Son of Glasgow describes the way in which ship ownership and operation developed during the final years of the age of sail and the beginning of the era of steamships. Not only does the work contain background material on tramp shipping commerce, it also includes a substantial database on ship building, ownership, and operations during this period. The information will be of interest to the maritime historian since it describes this important era in detail, and to the business historian interested in the strategy and structure of the shipping industry.

"The semiconductor industry is at the forefront of current tensions over international trade and investment in high technology industries. This book traces the struggle between U.S. and Japanese semiconductor producers from its origins in the 1950s to the novel experiment with ""managed trade"" embodied in the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Trade Arrangements of 1986, and the current debate over continuation of elements of that agreement. Flamm provides a thorough analysis of this experiment and its consequences for U.S. semiconductor producers and users, and presents extensive discussion of patterns of competition within the semiconductor industry. Using a wealth of new data, he argues that a fundamentally new trade regime for high technology industries is needed to escape from the present impasse. He lays out the alternatives, from laissez-faire to managed trade, and argues strongly for a new set of international ground rules to regulate acceptable behavior by government and firms in high-tech industries. Flamm's detailed analysis of competition within the semiconductor industry will be of great value to those interested in the industrial organization of high-technology industries, as well as those concerned with trade and technology policy, international competition, and Japanese industrial policies. "

The adventures and hardships of seafaring gold seekers In December 1848, spurred by President James K. Polk's confirmation that fabulous riches had indeed been discovered in far-off California, more than a thousand ships set sail for San Francisco. These ships, filled with eager fortune hunters, launched the maritime arm of America's largest gold rush. In To California by Sea, James P. Delgado provides a comprehensive examination of the Gold Rush from the perspective of the mariners and demonstrates that maritime activity is a pervasive thread in the event's history. Delgado vividly details the adventures and hardships of sea-going gold seekers as they sailed to California by way of Cape Horn or the waterways of Panama. He chronicles the establishment of the port of San Francisco, the rise of rough-and-ready seafaring law on the bay, and the role of the U.S. Revenue Marine (the present-day Coast Guard) in regulating the port. He also explores the powerful impact of the Gold Rush on maritime trade along the Pacific coast and throughout the world.

This set gives a broad introductory overview of the entire petroleum marine industry and how it is affected by the world petroleum markets. Volume 1: Oil: An introduction to shipping Why tanker owners? Pre-Onassis era Onassis era Post-Onassis era - creating and dealing with the surplus Refinary operation Tanker demand Tanker design and employment patterns Forecasting tanker rates Oil pollution liability LGP carriers LNG carriers.

This volume documents the concepts, experiences, results, and conclusions of the ESPRIT project NEUTRABAS (Neutral Product Definition Database for Large Multifunctional Systems). It deals with the development of a database for large multifunctional systems, in particular for ships and their multitudinous, complex subsystems. NEUTRABAS was the first European project aiming at an international standard based on ISO standard 10303 (STEP) methodology to define a comprehensive information model for ships and similar products of complex functionality, which will serve for the exchange and long term storage of product information. NEUTRABAS contributed to the first generation of shipbuilding product models and gained first experiences in implementing databases exploiting the new technology of the STEP standard.

Lionel Casson's encyclopedic study is the first of its kind to use underwater archaeological data to refine and area of scholarship that had, for the most part, relied on ancient texts and graphic representations. Tracing the history of early ships and seamanship from pre-dynastic Egypt to the Roman empire, from skiffs and barges to huge oared warships and royal yachts, Casson describes not only the ships themselves, but also the make-up and training of the crews, placement of weaponry, how cargo was stored, methods of navigation, harbor facilities, and the ways ships were named.

A foremost authority has written the first comprehensive reference about the U.S. Merchant Marine and American shipping from the introduction of steamships to today's diesel containerships--showing the impact of politics, economics, and technology on maritime history during the last two centuries. Over 500 entries describe people, private companies, business and labor groups, engineering and technological developments, government agencies, terms, key laws, landmark cases, issues, events, and ships of note. Short lists of references for further reading accompany these entries. Appendices include a chronology, diagrams of government organizations, and lists of business and labor groups by founding dates. An unusually extensive index lends itself to the varying research interests of students, teachers, and professionals in maritime and economic history, business-labor-government relations, and military studies.

Current Issues in Maritime Economics contains a selection of the papers presented at an international conference held in Rotterdam, June 1991. The book contains 11 papers from many world leaders in maritime economic analysis and will be of interest to shipping professsionals as well as to students of the field. Current Issues in Maritime Economics addresses three major areas of interest. First, contributors discuss the rapidly changing international context. Second, the relationship between market structure and the workability of competition is analyzed. The final area concerns the decision processes of firms in the changing shipping world. Individually these papers might have found their way into volumes on subjects as disparate as business finance, industrial structure, mathematical modelling or political philosophy. Together they offer a broad representation of both the issues and the style of analysis adopted by many of the world's leading maritime economists.

This work describes the activities of a handful of American companies and about eighty American captains who were trying to run ships on China's great river during the treacherous days between the two world wars. The considerable physical dangers of the Yangtze itself were compounded by the greater human hazards imposed by constant fighting among warlords, piracy, brigandry, kidnapping, opium and munitions smuggling, corruption, seizures, and other forms of intimidation. The events recall--and surpass--anything of the Wild West in American frontier history. No American steamship company survived longer than twelve years in this environment, but Standard Oil, which was sheltered from the worst of the violence, was able to operate its ships throughout the entire period.

More than a naval/military, or even economic, history, this book is also a commentary on a significant but largely unsuccessful American commercial venture overseas--one that was eventually scuttled by the actions of the Chinese and the American companies themselves. Ship buffs, maritime historians, students of the evolution of modern China, and those interested in American commercial history will find this study useful and entertaining.

Taking the subject of much lore as the topic of his book, Dunbaugh has written a carefully researched, comprehensive history of the overnight steamboat on Long Island Sound. In the nineteenth century, these steamboats provided the major means of transportation from New York to ports in southern New England or from Boston north to ports on the coast of Maine. Earlier accounts have either focused on the lore or been heavy with statistical data. Dunbaugh here provides a readable narrative history based on solid research.

The book's approach is chronological, discussing the early steamboat era, 1815-1835, in the first chapter and the feeder lines developing with the advent of the railroad in chapter 2. Chapter 3 covers the Vanderbilt era of the 1840s, while the next chapter turns to the Great Fall River Line, 1847-1854. Chapter 5 discusses the years from 1854 to 1861, a period of stability, and chapter 6 covers the Civil War years. Chapters on the era of Fisk and Gould and the Depression and Recovery of 1873-1880 follow. The final chapter covers the last decade of the independent lines and of the century. This volume will be of interest to historians specializing in the history of technology, business, or economic history--as well as to those interested in the history of steamboat transportation.

For more than a century Blue Funnel ships, managed from Liverpool by Alfred Holt and Company, held a unique place in Britain's shipping industry. Starting as pioneers of cargo liners between Liverpool and the Far East in 1866, the Company maintained a fine reputation built on its vessels, crews, shore staff, and management. This book traces the origins and evolution of the Line, charting its history through both world wars, its experiences in the great depression of the 1930s, and its vigorous response to the challenge of containerisation in the 1960s. Integrated into the text are discussions of the current roles of agencies and conferences, the singular management structure, and assessments of the parts played by key individuals.

China's waning interest in maritime activities, from the late 15th century on, ended when the People's Republic of China came to power in 1949. The new government, with few shipping and shipbuilding resources, took 12 years to initiate, in 1961, a maritime program for a national flag merchant marine. Within 26 years, in 1987, China ranked ninth in tonnage of ocean-going merchant ships and fourth in commercial shipbuilding among the world's maritime countries--a remarkable achievement unequaled by any other nation in peacetime. China's Rise to Commercial Maritime Power examines the forces that have brought China to her present competitive commercial maritime status as well as the forces that will enhance that position in the future. While not concerned with China's naval policy or shipping and shipbuilding history, the study focuses on recent maritime accords to advance China's interests and her current maritime policy. A little-known aspect of the policy is her flag of convenience fleet of almost four million tons operating world-wide by her wholly owned subsidiary shipping companies registered in Hong Kong, Panama, and Liberia. A major contribution to the study of China and her surge to world-class status in shipping and shipbuilding, this study, augmented throughout by numerous tables and a chart, will be of special interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, economics, and economic history.

Up and down the Great Lakes, wherever captains and seamen met, one of the chief topics of conversation is still the Great Storm--the worst disaster in Great Lakes history. By men of the Lakes, November 9, 1913 will always be remembered as Black Sunday, for it brought death to hundreds of their companions and destruction to scores of ships of the Lakes fleet. Each man who survived the Storm has a fascinating story to tell. Freshwater Fury is the first comprehensive history of the Great Storm. Author Frank Barcus, who has met and talked with many survivors during his trips on Lakes freighters over the past twenty years, presents here their vivid eye-witness accounts. The many drawings, maps, and diagrams executed by the author add pictorial interest to the story of this dramatic struggle between men and the elements.

The author's own sixty-five years of experience on the Erie Canal and Barge Canal System and interviews with other former boatmen make up a history of the old canal days of upper New York State.

The Canal du Midi, which threads through southwestern France and links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was an astonishing feat of seventeenth-century engineering--in fact, it was technically impossible according to the standards of its day. Impossible Engineering takes an insightful and entertaining look at the mystery of its success as well as the canal's surprising political significance. The waterway was a marvel that connected modern state power to human control of nature just as surely as it linked the ocean to the sea. The Canal du Midi is typically characterized as the achievement of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax farmer and entrepreneur for the canal. Yet Chandra Mukerji argues that it was a product of collective intelligence, depending on peasant women and artisans--unrecognized heirs to Roman traditions of engineering--who came to labor on the waterway in collaboration with military and academic supervisors. Ironically, while Louis XIV and his treasury minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert used propaganda to present France as a new Rome, the Canal du Midi was being constructed with unrecognized classical methods. Still, the result was politically potent. As Mukerji shows, the project took land and power from local nobles, using water itself as a silent agent of the state to disrupt traditions of local life that had served regional elites. Impossible Engineering opens a surprising window into the world of seventeenth-century France and illuminates a singular work of engineering undertaken to empower the state through technical conquest of nature.

Founded in 1873, the Holland America Line provided services carrying passengers and freight between the Netherlands and North America. When the Second World War ended, only nine of Holland America Line's twenty-five ships had survived and the company set about rebuilding. The pride of HAL's post-war fleet was SS Rotterdam, completed in 1959, which was one of the first ships on the North Atlantic equipped to offer two-class transatlantic crossings and single-class luxury cruising. However, competition from the airlines meant that in the early 1970s Holland America ended their transatlantic passenger services; in 1973 the company sold its cargo-shipping division. Now owned by the American cruise line Carnival, Holland America offers round-the-world voyages and cruises in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and Asia. In this book, renowned ocean liner historian and author William H. Miller takes a look at the Holland America Line and its post-war fleet up to 2015.

Since the Titanic disaster of 1912, the horrors of major maritime casualties have prompted international conventions and domestic legislation, but the link between events and outcomes (which are often separated by many years) is rarely understood by those working in the maritime industry. This book, the only comprehensive guide to this link, sets forth the major casualties of the last hundred years and explains resulting regulatory changes. Taking a macro-level view, it describes the trends and reactions across decades, and how, over time, focus has shifted from equipment failures to people and their behaviors as the primary cause of maritime casualties. Timely and thorough, it also explores the alarming increase in the criminalization of maritime accidents, especially the relatively recent reclassification of pollution incidents as "environmental crimes." This book offers broad insight to the history, laws, and conventions that regulate worldwide commercial maritime activity.

The Canal du Midi, which threads through southwestern France and links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was an astonishing feat of seventeenth-century engineering--in fact, it was technically impossible according to the standards of its day. "Impossible Engineering" takes an insightful and entertaining look at the mystery of its success as well as the canal's surprising political significance. The waterway was a marvel that connected modern state power to human control of nature just as surely as it linked the ocean to the sea.

The Canal du Midi is typically characterized as the achievement of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax farmer and entrepreneur for the canal. Yet Chandra Mukerji argues that it was a product of collective intelligence, depending on peasant women and artisans--unrecognized heirs to Roman traditions of engineering--who came to labor on the waterway in collaboration with military and academic supervisors. Ironically, while Louis XIV and his treasury minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert used propaganda to present France as a new Rome, the Canal du Midi was being constructed with unrecognized classical methods. Still, the result was politically potent. As Mukerji shows, the project took land and power from local nobles, using water itself as a silent agent of the state to disrupt traditions of local life that had served regional elites.

"Impossible Engineering" opens a surprising window into the world of seventeenth-century France and illuminates a singular work of engineering undertaken to empower the state through technical conquest of nature.