A multi-disciplinary approach to two of the most important legal institutions of the Middle Ages. The wars waged by the English in France during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries led to the need for judicial agencies which could deal with disputes that arose on land and sea, beyond the reach of indigenous laws. This led to the jurisdictional development of the Courts of Chivalry and Admiralty, presiding over respectively heraldic and maritime disputes. They were thus of considerable importance in the Middle Ages; but they have attracted comparatively little scholarly attention. The essays here examine their officers, proceedings and the wider cultural and political context in which they had jurisdiction and operated in later medieval Western Europe. They reveal similarities in personnel, institutions and outlook, as well as in the issues confronting rulers in territories across Europe. They also demonstrate how assertions of sovereignty and challenges to judicial competence were inextricably linked to complex political agendas; and that both military and maritime law were international in reach because they were underpinned by trans-national customs and the principles and procedures of Continental civil law. Combininglaw with military and maritime history, and discussing the art and material culture of chivalric disputes as well as their associated heraldry, the volume provides fresh new insights into an important area of medieval life and culture. ANTHONY MUSSON is Head of Research at Historic Royal Palaces; NIGEL RAMSAY is Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Department of History at University College London. Contributors: Andrew Ayton, Richard Barber, John Ford, Laurent Hablot, Thomas K. Heeboll-Holm, Julian Luxford, Ralph Moffat, Philip Morgan, Bertrand Schnerb, Anne F. Sutton, Lorenzo Tanzini.

For five centuries protection has provided a basic currency for organising relations between polities. Protection underpinned sprawling tributary systems, permeated networks of long-distance trade, reinforced claims of royal authority in distant colonies and structured treaties. Empires made routine use of protection as they extended their influence, projecting authority over old and new subjects, forcing weaker parties to pay them for safe conduct and, sometimes, paying for it themselves. The result was a fluid politics that absorbed both the powerful and the weak while giving rise to institutions and jurisdictional arrangements with broad geographic scope and influence. This volume brings together leading scholars to trace the long history of protection across empires in Asia, Africa, Australasia, Europe and the Americas. Employing a global lens, it offers an innovative way of understanding the formation and growth of empires and uncovers new dimensions of the relation of empires to regional and global order.

This fascinating book provides a unique record of the careers and final underwater resting places of ships of the Cunard Line, whose rich history spans over 300 ships and nearly two centuries. Many books have been published on Cunard's heritage but the final fate of these ships is often little more than a footnote of history. Authors Sam Warwick and Mike Roussel have taken the shipwrecks as a starting point to create a vivid new history. Featured vessels include the well-known Caronia, Lancastria, Campania, Lusitania, Malta, Oregon, Scotia and Carpathia, famous for rescuing the survivors from the Titanic, as well as many others. Events surrounding the wrecking of each vessel are thoroughly explored and unique diver accounts are incorporated, along with never-before-seen underwater images of the wrecks. Finishing off with practical data for interested divers, this book offers a fresh analysis of Cunard's maritime history.

Freighters of the 1950s and '60s - with masts, booms and hatches - were the last of their generation. It was the end of an era, just before the massive transition to faster, more efficient containerised shipping on larger and larger vessels. These were 'working ships', but many would be retired prematurely and finish up under flags of convenience, for virtually unknown owners, before going off to the scrappers in the 1970s and '80s. For some ships, their life's work was cut short and their decommissioning was quick. In Handling Cargo, William H. Miller remembers the likes of Cunard, Holland America and United States Lines on the North Atlantic, Moore McCormack Lines to South America, Farrell Lines to Africa and P&O out East.

This volume brings together scholars of Mediterranean archaeology, ancient history, and complexity science to advance theoretical approaches and analytical tools for studying maritime connectivity. For the coast-hugging populations of the ancient Mediterranean, mobility and exchange depended on a distinct environment and technological parameters that created diverse challenges and opportunities, making the modeling of maritime interaction a paramount concern for understanding cultural interaction more generally. Network-inspired metaphors have long been employed in discussions of this interaction, but increasing theoretical sophistication and advances in formal network analysis now offer opportunities to refine and test the dominant paradigm of connectivity. Extending from prehistory into the Byzantine period, the case studies here reveal the potential of such network approaches. Collectively they explore the social, economic, religious, and political structures that guided Mediterranean interaction across maritime space.

Considered one of the most treacherous areas of Britain's coastline, Land's End has seen many shipwrecks over the past 2,000 years. Where the waters of the Atlantic meet those of the English Channel, storms are frequent and violent and have caught out many a ship. Thousands have been dashed against the rocky granite coast. In 1853, the RNLI established a lifeboat station at nearby Sennen Cove and the people of this small Cornish village have been saving lives ever since. The crews of Sennen have saved many lives in the past 160 years, helping those in distress from sailing dinghies to the largest of cargo ships. Nicholas Leach tells the story of Sennen's lifeboats and the volunteer lifeboat crews who have manned them in this fully revised and updated history of the lifeboat and wrecks off the tip of Cornwall.

In this revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Qing Empire from a maritime perspective, Ronald C. Po argues that it is reductive to view China over this period exclusively as a continental power with little interest in the sea. With a coastline of almost 14,500 kilometers, the Qing was not a landlocked state. Although it came to be known as an inward-looking empire, Po suggests that the Qing was integrated into the maritime world through its naval development and customs institutionalization. In contrast to our orthodox perception, the Manchu court, in fact, deliberately engaged with the ocean politically, militarily, and even conceptually. The Blue Frontier offers a much broader picture of the Qing as an Asian giant responding flexibly to challenges and extensive interaction on all frontiers - both land and sea - in the long eighteenth century.

Figureheads developed from an ancient tradition of decorating vessels with painted eyes, carved figures and animal heads. Vikings in Northern Europe adorned the bows of their ships with dragon heads, which were thought to help ships see their way through the sea. But what other purposes did sailors believe figureheads served? What stories do these beautiful objects tell? And what do the different characters symbolise? Exploring the history and traditions associated with figureheads, this illustrated guide contains 60 examples from the National Maritime Museum, home to the world's largest collection of figureheads. With a selection of short in-focus studies, the book looks at mythology, memorial, gender, empire, politics and literature surrounding these unique carvings. The National Maritime Museum is part of Royal Museums Greenwich.

Naming a boat is as personal as naming a baby (even if few male skippers would risk telling the wife that). The culmination of many years of dreaming and penny pinching, the purchase of a boat of any size is a huge event for any sailor, and with that comes serious naming pressure. Many boatowners have a secret fear that someone else got their brilliantly original name first - or ruined it for ever by reducing its reputation to snigger-worthy opprobrium. Sometimes it's so difficult to name a boat that skippers are desperate enough to ask the sorts of people who think Boaty McBoatface would be a good choice... The perfect gift for any skipper or would-be skipper, and featuring hundreds of common and uncommon names, this entertaining little book will answer perhaps the most important question new owners should ask themselves: what will this name say about me? And as everyone knows, once you've named a boat, you never ever change it, so it also answers the question: what is my boat name saying about me? Names will be categorised and listed alphabetically within these chapters: - Pun Intended (some reveal a classic wit, others reveal just how many desperate unfunny dullards there are sailing around in yachts called Seas the Day) - Common as Muck (bad names - Moondancer, Wave Catcher and others that sound like names from a bad children's novel: where they come from, why they're bad, and how to avoid inventing another) - A Bit of Pedigree (good names - but probably too classy for you to get away with copying them) - Don't Even Go There (they might be uncommon these days, but sometimes there's a good reason for that) - Word Piracy (expressions borrowed from other languages - with varying degrees of wisdom) - Myths, Legends and Gods (inspired by heroes and deities of cultures now lost to the past) - The Devil's Own (don't tempt fate by calling your boat Invincible, as the Royal Navy did each time the last one sank/exploded - plus other superstition-violating names) With fascinating history, a fair bit of psychology and a lot of humour, this is the essential guide for all would-be boat owners, and anyone buying a gift for Dad for Father's Day or Christmas.

This book explores the eight-month wave of mutinies that struck the French infantry and navy in 1919. Based on official records and the testimony of dozens of participants, it is the first study to try to understand the world of the mutineers. Examining their words for the traces of sensory perceptions, emotions and thought processes, it reveals that the conventional understanding of the mutinies as the result of simple war-weariness and low morale is inadequate. In fact, an emotional gulf separated officers and the ranks, who simply did not speak the same language. The revolt entailed emotional sequences ending in a deep ambivalence and sense of despair or regret. Taking this into account, the book considers how mutineer memories persisted after the events in the face of official censorship, repression and the French Communist Party's co-option of the mutiny. -- .

While the story of Endeavour is widely known, Captain Cook sailed with eight ships, which began their lives as merchant vessels. This detailed illustrated history tells the story of these vessels and the people who sailed in them. In placing these ships and people in the personal, political, social, financial, scientific and religious contexts of their times, this book provides a comprehensive and readable account of the 'long eighteenth century'. Using contemporary sources, this gripping narrative fills a gap in Cook history and attempts to catch something of the exciting, violent, gossipy but largely untaught and unknown period through which these vessels and their people sailed literally and figuratively between the old world and the new.

In 1858, Mary Millburn successfully made her escape from Norfolk, Virginia, to Philadelphia aboard an express steamship. Millburn's maritime route to freedom was far from uncommon. By the mid-nineteenth century an increasing number of enslaved people had fled northward along the Atlantic seaboard. While scholarship on the Underground Railroad has focused almost exclusively on overland escape routes from the antebellum South, this groundbreaking volume expands our understanding of how freedom was achieved by sea and what the journey looked like for many African Americans. With innovative scholarship and thorough research, Sailing to Freedom highlights little-known stories and describes the less-understood maritime side of the Underground Railroad, including the impact of African Americans' paid and unpaid waterfront labor. These ten essays reconsider and contextualize how escapes were managed along the East Coast, moving from the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland to safe harbor in northern cities such as Philadelphia, New York, New Bedford, and Boston. In addition to the volume editor, contributors include David S. Cecelski, Elysa Engelman, Kathryn Grover, Megan Jeffreys, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Mirelle Luecke, Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Michael D. Thompson, and Len Travers.

At a time when the Royal Navy was the biggest and best in the world, Georgian London was the hub of this immense industrial-military complex, underpinning and securing a global trading empire that was entirely dependent on the navy for its existence. Philip MacDougall explores the bureaucratic web that operated within the wider city area before giving attention to London's association with the practical aspects of supplying and manning the operational fleet and shipbuilding, repair and maintenance. His supremely detailed geographical exploration of these areas includes a discussion of captivating key personalities, buildings and work. The book examines significant locations as well as the importance of Londoners in the manning of ships and how the city memorialised the navy and its personnel during times of victory. An in-depth gazetteer and walking guide complete this fascinating study of Britain, her capital and her Royal Navy.

This volume represents a more Africanist approach to the framework of maritime landscapes and challenges of adapting international heritage policy such as the UNESCO convention. While the concept of a maritime landscape is very broad, a more focused thematic strategy draws together a number of case studies in South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, and Nigeria with a common thread. Specifically, the contributors address the sub-theme of sea ports and sea power as part of understanding the African maritime landscape. Sea ports and surrounds are dynamic centers of maritime culture supporting a rich diversity of cultural groups and economic activities. Strategic locations along the African coastline have associations with indigenous maritime communities and trade centers, colonial power struggles and skirmishes, establishment of naval bases and operations, and World War I and II engagements.

The Royal Navy's dramatic race to save the crew of a trapped Russian submarine. 5 August 2005. On a secret mission to an underwater military installation 30 miles off the coast of Kamchatka, Russian Navy submersible AS-28 ran into a web of cables and stuck fast. With 600 feet of freezing water above them, there was no escape for the seven crew. Trapped in a titanium tomb, all they could do was wait as their air supply slowly dwindled. For more than 24 hours the Russian Navy tried to reach them. Finally - still haunted by the loss of the nuclear submarine Kursk five years before - they requested international assistance. On the other side of the world Commander Ian Riches, leader of the Royal Navy's Submarine Rescue Service, got the call: there was a sub down. With the expertise and specialist equipment available to him Riches knew his team had a chance to save the men, but Kamchatka was at the very limit of their range and time was running out. As the Royal Navy prepared to deploy to Russia's Pacific coast aboard a giant Royal Air Force C-17 airlifter, rescue teams from the United States and Japan also scrambled to reach the area. On board AS-28 the Russian crew shut down all non-essential systems, climbed into thick thermal suits to keep the bone-chilling damp at bay and waited, desperate to eke out the stale, thin air inside the pressure hull of their craft. But as the first of them began to drift in and out of consciousness, they knew the end was close. They started writing their farewells. 72 HOURS tells the extraordinary, edge-of-the-seat and real-life story of one of the most dramatic rescue missions of recent years.

The Dive is a thrilling narrative nonfiction in the tradition of The Perfect Storm and Apollo 13. They were out of their depth, out of breath, and out of time. It was 1973. Two men were trapped in a crippled submarine 1,700 feet below sea. They only had enough air to survive for two days. On the ocean's surface there was a hastily assembled flotilla of rescue ships from both sides of the Atlantic. The world held its breath to await word of a rescue. In a routine dive to fix the telecommunication cable that snakes along the Atlantic sea bed, their mission had gone badly wrong. There was a catastrophic fault on board the Pisces III, and Roger Chapman and Roger Mallinson's mini-submarine went tumbling to the ocean bed almost half a mile below. The crippled sub and its crew were trapped far beyond the depth of any previous sub-sea rescue. They had just two days' worth of oxygen. However, on the surface the best estimates for a rescue of these men was a minimum of three days' time. The Dive is brilliantly researched by veteran journalist Stephen McGinty. Stephen adeptly reconstructs the race against time as Britain, America and Canada pooled their resources into a 'Brotherhood of the Sea' dedicated to stopping the ocean depths claiming two of their own. Based on previously undisclosed records, maritime logbooks, and exclusive interviews with all the key participants, The Dive takes the reader on an emotional and thrilling ride from the depths of defeat to a glimpse of the sun-dappled surface.

Bloodthirsty buccaneers and buried treasure, fierce sea battles and cold-blooded murders, Barbary ducats and silver pieces of eight. Des Ekin embarks on a roadtrip around the entire coast of Ireland, in search of our piratical heritage, uncovering an amazing history of swashbuckling bandits, both Irish-born and imported. Ireland's Pirate Trail tells stories of freebooters and pirates from every corner of our coast over a thousand years, including famous pirates like Anne Bonny and William Lamport, who set off to ply their trade in the Caribbean. Ekin also debunks many myths about our most well-known sea warrior, Granuaile, the 'Pirate Queen' of Mayo. Thoroughly researched and beautifully told. Filled with exciting untold stories.

In the twilight of the Renaissance, the grand duke of Tuscany-a scion of the fabled Medici family of bankers-invited foreign merchants, artisans, and ship captains to settle in his port city of Livorno. The town quickly became one of the most bustling port cities in the Mediterranean, presenting a rich tableau of officials, merchants, mariners, and slaves. Nobody could have predicted in 1600 that their activities would contribute a chapter in the history of free trade. Yet by the late seventeenth century, the grand duke's invitation had evolved into a general program of hospitality towards foreign visitors, the liberal treatment of goods, and a model for the elimination of customs duties. Livorno was the earliest and most successful example of a free port in Europe. The story of Livorno shows the seeds of liberalism emerging, not from the studies of philosophers such as Adam Smith, but out of the nexus between commerce, politics, and identity in the early modern Mediterranean.

The year 1588 marked a turning point in our national story. Victory over the Spanish Armada transformed us into a seafaring nation and it sparked a myth that one day would become a reality - that the nation's new destiny, the source of her future wealth and power lay out on the oceans. This book tells the story of how the navy expanded from a tiny force to become the most complex industrial enterprise on earth; how the need to organise it laid the foundations of our civil service and our economy; and how it transformed our culture, our sense of national identity and our democracy.

Brian Lavery's narrative explores the navy's rise over four centuries; a key factor in propelling Britain to its status as the most powerful nation on earth, and assesses the turning point of Jutland and the First World War. He creates a compelling read that is every bit as engaging as the TV series itself.

'Consistently illuminating ... Like all the best stories, it is about the timeless tides of power and influence ... trade deals can sometimes be sexy, thrilling and epic' Sinclair McKay, Spectator Life in Europe was fundamentally changed in the 16th century by the astonishing discoveries of the New World and of direct sea routes to Asia. To start with England was hardly involved and London remained a gloomy, introverted medieval city. But as the century progressed something extraordinary happened. Stephen Alford's evocative, original and fascinating new book uses the same skills that made his widely praised The Watchers so successful, bringing to life the network of merchants, visionaries, crooks and sailors who changed London forever. In a sudden explosion of energy English ships were suddenly found all over the world - trading with Russia and the Levant, exploring Virginia and the Arctic, and fanning out across the Indian Ocean. London's Triumph is above all about the people who made this possible - the families, the guild members, the money-men who were willing to risk huge sums and sometimes their own lives in pursuit of the rare, exotic and desirable. Their ambitions fuelled a new view of the world - initiating a long era of trade and empire, the consequences of which we still live with today.

The Zheng family of merchants and militarists emerged from the tumultuous seventeenth century amid a severe economic depression, a harrowing dynastic transition from the ethnic Chinese Ming to the Manchu Qing, and the first wave of European expansion into East Asia. Under four generations of leaders over six decades, the Zheng had come to dominate trade across the China Seas. Their average annual earnings matched, and at times exceeded, those of their fiercest rivals: the Dutch East India Company. Although nominally loyal to the Ming in its doomed struggle against the Manchus, the Zheng eventually forged an autonomous territorial state based on Taiwan with the potential to encompass the family's entire economic sphere of influence. Through the story of the Zheng, Xing Hang provides a fresh perspective on the economic divergence of early modern China from western Europe, its twenty-first-century resurgence, and the meaning of a Chinese identity outside China.

Originally named Juan Fernandez, the island of Robinson Crusoe in the South Pacific was the inspiration for Defoe's classic novel about the adventures of a shipwrecked sailor. Yet the complex story of Britain's relationship with this distant, tiny island is more surprising, more colourful and considerably darker. Drawing on voyage accounts, journal entries, maps and illustrations, acclaimed historian Andrew Lambert brings to life the voices of the visiting sailors, scientists, writers and artists, from the early encounters of the 1500s and the perilous journeys of the eighteenth-century explorers, to the naval conflicts of the First World War and the environmental concerns of more recent years. Crusoe's Island explores why we are still not willing to give up on the specks of land at the far ends of the earth.

The islands surrounding Scapa Flow made one of Britain's best natural harbours, while the location at the north of Scotland protected the approaches to the North Sea and Atlantic. The naval base was important during both wars but what makes Scapa Flow famous is its wrecks, the remains of a German fleet, which once numbered some 74 vessels, most of which were scuttled in 1919, as well as the war graves of HMS Royal Oak and HMS Vanguard. The wrecks of the navy ships still survive, along with eight German warships for which a second war came and prevented salvage. Now a divers' paradise, the wrecks of Scapa Flow bring divers from all over the world and employ many in Orkney itself. This is the story of the ships of Scapa Flow, their sinking and their salvage, using many previously unseen images of the recovery and subsequent removal of many of the German battleships and cruisers to Rosyth dockyard in Fife for breaking up.