John Byron (1723-86) died a vice-admiral, having earned the nickname 'Foulweather Jack' after much experience on rough seas. In 1741 he was a midshipman aboard HMS Wager in a squadron sent to attack Spanish ships off Chile. Shipwrecked in a storm after rounding Cape Horn, the majority of the survivors turned on their captain and attempted to make their own way home. Byron was among the group who stayed with the commanding officer. In 1768, now a commodore, he published this account of the five harrowing years it took to get back to England, by which time he was one of only four survivors. Although no doubt written to give his side of the story, it appealed to a public eager for tales of dramatic endurance against the odds. Aboard the Beagle on Darwin's voyage, the book also informed the shipwreck in Don Juan by the author's grandson.

In May 1787, eleven ships left England with more than seven hundred convicts on board, along with orders to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay, New South Wales. Watkin Tench (c.1758 1833) was a crew member on one of the ships of this First Fleet, the Charlotte, and he recalls the voyage and early days of the settlement in this vivid and engaging account, first published in 1789. The first half of the work retraces the route of the six-month journey, which took the fleet to Brazil and the Cape of Good Hope. The later chapters recount the landing at Botany Bay in January 1788, the establishment of a colony at nearby Port Jackson and observations about the natural world in this new settlement. Tench also discusses the initial interaction with the Aboriginal people, making this work an important source for scholars of British colonialism and Australian history.

Admiral William Henry Smyth (1780 1865) went to sea at an early age, becoming a sailor and surveyor with the East India Company, and later moving to Mediterranean waters. A founding member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830, he spent much of his free time engaged in scientific pursuits. One of his final projects was this 'word-book' of nautical terminology, which he had been compiling throughout his career, and whose publication was eagerly anticipated by his fellow naval officers. Although Smyth died before it was published in 1867, his notes were edited by his family and revised by Sir Edward Belcher (1799 1877). Ranging from technical terminology to sailors' slang, Smyth's glossary contains more than 700 pages of definitions, arranged alphabetically, making it an indispensable source on nineteenth-century nautical vocabulary for both maritime historians and sailing aficionados.

Bringing together specialists in ancient history, archaeology and Roman law, this book provides new perspectives on long-distance trade in the Roman world. Recent archaeological work has shown that maritime trade across the Mediterranean intensified greatly at the same time as the Roman state was extending its power overseas. This book explores aspects of this development and its relationship with changes in the legal and institutional apparatus that supported maritime commerce. It analyses the socio-legal framework within which maritime trade was conducted, and in doing so presents a new understanding of the role played by legal and social institutions in the economy of the Roman world.Chapters cover: Roman maritime trade, the influence of commercial considerations on navigational decision making, Roman legal responses to the threat of piracy, the conduct of Roman maritime trade from a socio-legal perspective, the role of written documentation in the transport process, maritime finance and the insights provided by the juristic interpretation of contracts of carriage-by-sea into aspects of Roman private law.

The shipowner and politician William Schaw Lindsay (1816-77) combined a wealth of personal experience with a meticulous approach to research. Originally published in 1874-6, this is his authoritative four-volume history of the world of ships and maritime trade. Its coverage ranges from the legend of Noah's Ark, through ancient commerce and the colonising expeditions of the middle ages, to the progress brought about by the introduction of steam to the shipping of Lindsay's own day. Details on construction and performance sit alongside explanations of the customs and superstitions of seamen, complemented by full accounts of many important nautical events. Volume 3 describes the extraordinary progress made by the United States of America in the first half of the nineteenth century, discusses Cromwell's Navigation Acts and the causes and effects of their abolition, and concludes with a warning against excessive legislation. Lindsay's practical knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject are evident throughout the work.

The shipowner and politician William Schaw Lindsay (1816-77) combined a wealth of personal experience with a meticulous approach to research. Originally published in 1874-6, this is his authoritative four-volume history of the world of ships and maritime trade. Its coverage ranges from the legend of Noah's Ark, through ancient commerce and the colonising expeditions of the middle ages, to the progress brought about by the introduction of steam to the shipping of Lindsay's own day. Details on construction and performance sit alongside explanations of the customs and superstitions of seamen, complemented by full accounts of many important nautical events. Volume 4 describes the changes produced by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and charts the rise of steam propulsion and its implications for modern-day commerce. Lindsay's practical knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject are evident throughout the work.

Joined by seven eminent natural scientists, including Karl von Scherzer (1821-1903), the Austrian naval expedition of 1857-9 was remarkable for its globe-spanning scale. During the course of the voyage, the naturalists collected an abundance of samples which contributed to several scientific discoveries, including the isolation of cocaine in its pure form. Some of the investigations also revolutionised knowledge in such fields as geology, oceanography, hydrography and geomagnetism, and are still being studied by modern-day researchers. Prepared by Scherzer and first published in English in 1861-3, this is a compelling three-volume account of the mission, remaining relevant to scholars interested in naval exploration and the history of science. Volume 3 includes notes on Sydney, Auckland, Tahiti, the coastal cities of South and Central America, and the journey back to Europe, as well as reflections by the author on the achievements of the expedition.

The explorer, soldier and geophysicist Sir Edward Sabine (1788 1883) served as astronomer on John Ross's 1818 expedition in search of the North-West Passage. His return to the Arctic, under William Parry in 1819 20, compounded a keen interest in geomagnetism and his publications earned him the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (whose presidency he would later hold). His experience and expertise made him a natural editor, therefore, of this Arctic narrative, translated into English from German by his wife, Elizabeth Juliana Leeves (1807 79), and published in 1840. It is the account by Ferdinand von Wrangell (1797 1870), a Russian explorer of Baltic German ancestry, regarding his expedition to survey Siberia's north-eastern coastline. Compiled from the notes of the scientists on board, this work offers a valuable and wide-ranging insight into an inaccessible and little-known portion of the globe.

Founded in 1666, the French Academie des Sciences was a prominent and prestigious organisation behind numerous scientific advances in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1817, commissioned by the Academie, Louis de Freycinet (1779-1841) embarked on a three-year expedition with the main purpose of investigating terrestrial magnetism and taking a series of pendulum measurements. In the course of this voyage around the world, the scientists aboard the Uranie also collected an abundance of samples and made significant observations in the fields of geography, ethnology, astronomy, hydrography and meteorology. The progress of this journey was detailed by Jacques Arago (1790-1855), draughtsman on the expedition, in the form of letters to a friend. This illustrated narrative is prefaced by a report to the Academie which summarises the mission's findings. Translated into English and published in 1823, this work is an informative and often witty account, reflecting contemporary ambitions in science and exploration.

Little is known of Captain Alexander Hamilton other than what he tells us in this work, first published in 1727. Written during his retirement, it is both an invaluable source of information on south-east Asia at the time and a lively travelogue of Hamilton's adventurous seafaring life in the service of the East India Company and independently between 1688 and 1723. An engaging storyteller, Hamilton writes of encounters with pirates, the Portuguese, and of a poisoning in Malacca, as well as providing vivid descriptions of the countries he visited - from Africa to Japan via India, Sumatra and China - and their social customs, religions, trade and commerce. His idiosyncratic maps and illustrations enhance his narrative despite his admission that he makes 'but little use of the pencil'. Volume 2 takes the reader up the east coast of India, thence to Burma, Sumatra, Java, Thailand, Cambodia, China, and finally Japan.

The bestselling account of the Battle of Trafalgar, by the authors of FINEST HOUR Two hundred years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte dominated Europe and threatened Britain with invasion. Against him stood the Royal Navy and the already legendary Admiral Horatio Nelson. On 21 October 1805, a massive naval battle off the coast of Spain decided mastery of the seas. Then, over the following days and nights, the battleships and their exhausted crews endured a gale of awesome fury. As Captain Charles Tyler wrote to his wife Margaret, 'the wind blew a perfect storm'. The authors of the bestselling FINEST HOUR tell this story not only through the diaries, letters and memoirs of the men who wrestled with the enemy and the elements, but also through the eyes of their wives and children. Whether you are already familiar with this period of history or are coming to it for the first time, TRAFALGAR is a book that will enthral as it illuminates an event whose repercussions still echo today.

On 2 July 1812, Captain David Porter raised a banner on the USS Essex proclaiming 'a free trade and sailors rights', thus creating a political slogan that explained the War of 1812. Free trade demanded the protection of American commerce, while sailors' rights insisted that the British end the impressment of seamen from American ships. Repeated for decades in Congress and in taverns, the slogan reminds us today that the second war with Great Britain was not a mistake. It was a contest for the ideals of the American Revolution bringing together both the high culture of the Enlightenment to establish a new political economy and the low culture of the common folk to assert the equality of humankind. Understanding the War of 1812 and the motto that came to explain it - free trade and sailors' rights - allows us to better comprehend the origins of the American nation.

On 2 July 1812, Captain David Porter raised a banner on the USS Essex proclaiming 'a free trade and sailors rights', thus creating a political slogan that explained the War of 1812. Free trade demanded the protection of American commerce, while sailors' rights insisted that the British end the impressment of seamen from American ships. Repeated for decades in Congress and in taverns, the slogan reminds us today that the second war with Great Britain was not a mistake. It was a contest for the ideals of the American Revolution bringing together both the high culture of the Enlightenment to establish a new political economy and the low culture of the common folk to assert the equality of humankind. Understanding the War of 1812 and the motto that came to explain it - free trade and sailors' rights - allows us to better comprehend the origins of the American nation.

The shipowner and politician William Schaw Lindsay (1816-77) combined a wealth of personal experience with a meticulous approach to research. Originally published in 1874-6, this is his authoritative four-volume history of the world of ships and maritime trade. Its coverage ranges from the legend of Noah's Ark, through ancient commerce and the colonising expeditions of the middle ages, to the progress brought about by the introduction of steam to the shipping of Lindsay's own day. Details on construction and performance sit alongside explanations of the customs and superstitions of seamen, complemented by full accounts of many important nautical events. Volume 1 encompasses shipping in the ancient world, the foundation of a royal and commercial navy in England, and tales of the Norman invasion and the Crusades to the Holy Land, ending with Christopher Columbus' voyages of discovery. Evident throughout the work are Lindsay's practical knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject.

The shipowner and politician William Schaw Lindsay (1816-77) combined a wealth of personal experience with a meticulous approach to research. Originally published in 1874-6, this is his authoritative four-volume history of the world of ships and maritime trade. Its coverage ranges from the legend of Noah's Ark, through ancient commerce and the colonising expeditions of the middle ages, to the progress brought about by the introduction of steam to the shipping of Lindsay's own day. Details on construction and performance sit alongside explanations of the customs and superstitions of seamen, complemented by full accounts of many important nautical events. Volume 2 encompasses Vasco da Gama's expeditions, the Spanish Armada, and a discussion of the varying fortunes of the East India Company. Evident throughout the work are Lindsay's practical knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject.

More than 6,000 ships have met their doom in the waters along the North Carolina coast, weaving a rich history of tragedy, drama and heroics along these picturesque beaches. Men have lost their lives, fortunes lost and heroes made where the combination of mixing currents, treacherous coastline and shifting underwater sandbars spells disaster for even the most seasoned sailor. These are the stories of daring rescues, tragic failures, enduring mysteries, buried treasure and fascinating legend.

Richard Biddle (1796-1847), an American politician and lawyer, published this work on the life of the explorer and cartographer, Sebastian Cabot (c.1481-1557), anonymously in 1831. He was responding to widespread criticisms of Cabot - allegedly an unscrupulous character who played the governments of England and Spain to his own ends. The work includes notes on Sebastian's discoveries on the North American continent along with his father, John, and his search for the North-West Passage. As a governor of the Muscovy Company, Cabot initiated the expansion of English trade to Russia and the East. Cabot's own accounts of his journeys have been lost; therefore, Biddle's research is derived from other sources, particularly the writings of Richard Hakylut (c.1552-1616). This study was recognised at the time as the best review of the history of maritime discovery in the period treated, and prompted further research into the Cabot legacies.

Sir Geoffrey Callender (1875 1946) was a British naval historian who was the first director of the National Maritime Museum. Originally published in 1943, and edited by Callender, this book was developed to provide individuals in naval service with a guide to understanding and writing effective formal English. The text is comprised of a series of small sections, each of which contains a piece of writing by a prominent author relating to life at sea, tasks relating to the piece and explanatory notes. An editorial introduction, guide to further reading and detailed glossary are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in British naval history or linguistics.

In May 1845, the famous Arctic explorer John Franklin (1786-1847) embarked on another attempt to find the elusive North-West Passage. He never returned from this voyage, and was last seen by whalers in Baffin Bay in July 1845. Some thirty rescue missions were launched between 1847 and 1859 to find the missing men. Franklin was not the first explorer to make the dangerous voyage to find the route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, and journalist Peter Lund Simmonds (1814-97) draws from a wide range of reports and publications about these expeditions in his history of the search for the North-West Passage, published in 1851. The detailed account also includes descriptions of the many missions to find Franklin, and this second edition was published later in the same year as the first in order to include updated reports on the progress of his rescue.

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.

The dissenting minister Andrew Kippis (1725-95) was a Member of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society. With this work of 1788, he was the first biographer of Captain James Cook (1728-79), although several of Cook's colleagues, including Johann Reinhold Forster in 1778 and David Samwell in 1786, had previously published memoirs of their service with him. Believing that 'his public transactions ... are the grand objects to which the attention of his biographer must be directed', Kippis draws on the official Admiralty accounts of Cook's voyages and focuses on his professional life. The book was criticised at the time for failing to convey Cook's personality and motivation, stressing his achievements without putting them in context. However, it remained the only biography for forty years, and shaped public perception of Cook as a brilliant navigator and commander, a fearless explorer and an exemplary British hero.

Henry Mathias Elmore (about whom little is known) was a sailor in the Royal Navy who quit in 1783 and set out for Calcutta to be involved with the East India Company's growing trade. Elmore worked as a commander on its ships, and he decided to write this account of sailing to and within the East, which was published in 1802, in order to share his navigational knowledge and to correct earlier inaccuracies. Although much of the work consists of specific, technical directions for piloting ships around Asia, Elmore's instructions give a vivid picture of the complexities of nineteenth-century navigation and the tribulations of sailing during this time. Some of the voyages he describes include sailing around the Indonesian islands and to the Malay coast, and how to reach China from Calcutta. Elmore also includes notes about locations of valuable commodities, such as spices, tea or gold, available for trade.

First published in 1914, this book was created to provide a comprehensive guide to the processes at the heart of ocean trade and shipping. Prior to publication, these processes had not been dealt with collectively, and descriptions of them could only be found scattered through disparate treatises. Originally aimed at naval and military officers, the focus of the text is explanatory, rather than technical, offering a practical grounding in a broad range of topics. The majority of the information relates to peacetime, but additional reflections are given on the position of ocean trade in the event of war. This is a highly informative book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in maritime history.

Arthur Cornwallis Evans (1860 1935) was chaplain on the steamship HMS Calliope on a three-year voyage to Asia and Australia (January 1887 to April 1890) that covered 76,814 nautical miles (88,395 miles), with more than 500 days spent at sea. He compiled this lively account of the voyage at the request of his shipmates, drawing information from several of their journals, and published it in Portsmouth in 1890 before the crew dispersed. It contains both brief factual entries about the progress of the voyage and more sustained descriptions of life on board ship and in port, including some naval culinary 'delicacies', an encounter with a robber in Hong Kong, the Russian foritifications at Vladivostok, fireworks in Sydney celebrating the centenary of New South Wales, the opening of Calliope Dock in Auckland (still in use today), visits to several Pacific islands, cricket matches and regattas, and an eclipse of the sun."

This is a comparative analysis of maritime law and its administration in five northern European towns. It has often been assumed that there was a common maritime law in northern Europe, shared between skippers and merchants who conducted their business along the North Sea and Baltic littoral. This study examines this assumption by studying the dissemination of law compilations across this region, and by comparing the contents of these and the judgments passed by urban courts in cases of shipwreck, jettison and ship collision. Medieval maritime law has never before been the subject of a major study in the English language. The practice of maritime law has, up until now, largely been ignored. This book is the first to offer a comparison of maritime laws and court proceedings. It is also unique in that it provides a truly comparative history, covering a large geographical area stretching from Aberdeen on the North Sea coast to Reval (present-day Tallinn) in the innermost regions of the Baltic. Key features: overview of all medieval maritime law compilations; an insight into the workings of medieval urban courts; a unique study of maritime law and legal practice; and, comparative approach allows for impactful conclusions on medieval shipping.