British power and global expansion between 1755 and 1815 have mainly been attributed to the fiscal-military state and the achievements of the Royal navy at sea. Roger Morriss here sheds new light on the broader range of developments in the infrastructure of the state needed to extend British power at sea and overseas. He demonstrates how developments in culture, experience and control in central government affected the supply of ships, manpower, food, transport and ordnance as well as the support of the army, permitting the maintenance of armed forces of unprecedented size and their projection to distant stations. He reveals how the British state, although dependent on the private sector, built a partnership with it based on trust, ethics and the law. This book argues that Britain's military bureaucracy, traditionally regarded as inferior to the fighting services, was in fact the keystone of the nation's maritime ascendancy.

This volume explores the transnational dimensions of mutiny and maritime radicalism during the great cycle of war and revolution that began in the mid-1750s and continued until the 1840s. The central theme of the volume is mutiny - its causes, frequency, forms, patterns and outcomes - charting, linking and comparing maritime insurrections in different oceans, on warships, merchant vessels and convict ships. The contributions concentrate on the mutineers themselves, their social composition, self-organisation, objectives and ideas. Also included is unrest in port cities, sites of international exchange between maritime and landed forms of resistance. Sailors spent significant amounts of time in port, sometimes connecting shipboard unrest and radical movements on land in personal, political and social ways. The contributions cover the age of revolution in its full geographic extent, including the Atlantic with its wars and revolutions, but also the Indian and Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.

In the middle of the night, October 1850, three British sailors searching for lost countrymen are set upon the rugged shore on the far edge of the vast Russian Empire. Only two will return from this cruel and harsh land called Alyaksa. Edward Adams, a young Victorian-era doctor, was part of an expedition sent to Russian Alaska in search of explorer John Franklin and his crew. As the mission's naturalist, Adams filled a journal with observations, recordings and drawings of his excursion, revealing a person who thrived on new experiences and had a true gift for recording what he observed.Full of drama and adventure, "Into the Savage Land" takes reader back to the Alaska of 1850. Reminiscent of the popular serialised stories that appeared in British papers at the time, the journal presents a first-person account of travels into the interior of the colony and the inherent dangers involved, including freezing temperatures, suspicious Russians and warring Natives. Edited and annotated by Ernest Sipes, this publication offers an exceptional opportunity for students of the literature of Alaska and anyone interested in the region's colourful history.

The historian R. H. Tawney famously wrote, 'The sixteenth century lives in terror of the tramp.' The eighteenth century lived in terror of the tramps of the seas - pirates. Pirates have fascinated people ever since. It was a harsh life for those who went 'on the account', constantly overshadowed by the threat of death - through violence, illness, shipwreck, or the hangman's noose. The lure of gold, the excitement of the chase and the freedom that life aboard a pirate ship offered were judged by some to be worth the risk. Helen Hollick explores both the fiction and fact of the Golden Age of piracy, and there are some surprises in store for those who think they know their Barbary Corsair from their boucanier.Everyone has heard of Captain Morgan, but who recognises the name of the aristocratic Frenchman Daniel Montbars? He killed so many Spaniards he was known as 'The Exterminator'. The fictional world of pirates, represented in novels and movies, is different from reality. What draws readers and viewers to these notorious hyenas of the high seas? What are the facts behind the fantasy? Helen Hollick reveals all, weaving into the history her own fictional creations.

A childhood fascination of shipwrecks and a meeting with Millvina Dean, the youngest Titanic survivor, inspired the author to meet more survivors of both the titanic and other disasters. They are the people who tell the stories here - all tales of overcoming adversity and personal loss and living and moving on in the aftermath.

"Now for the Contest" tells the story of the Civil War at sea in the context of three campaigns: the blockade of the southern coast, the raiding of Union commerce, and the projection of power ashore. The Civil War at sea was profoundly influenced by innovation and asymmetry--both sides embraced innovation, but differences in their resources and their strategic objectives pushed them down different paths. At its peak the Union navy boasted over fifty thousand men and nearly seven hundred ships. The Confederate navy was far smaller, never exceeding some five thousand men, and it numbered its ships in the tens rather than the hundreds. The Confederacy's "technology strategy" and its overseas programs formed the main counterweight to the Union's numerical force.
"Now for the Contest" also examines how both sides mobilized and employed their resources for a war that proved to be of unprecedented intensity and duration. For both antagonists the conduct of the naval war was complicated by rapid technological change, as steam power, metal armor, and more powerful ordnance sparked experiment and innovation both in naval construction and in tactics. The war years brought tremendous change to a service that did not always welcome it. Innovative technologies flourished in this hothouse atmosphere, however, and a rising generation of naval leaders would carry the knowledge of combat into the long peace that followed.

Maritime archaeology deals with shipwrecks and is carried out by divers rather than diggers..It embraces maritime history and analyzes changes in ship-building, navigation, and seamanship, and offers fresh perspectives on the cultures and societies that produced the ships and sailors. Drawing on detailed past and recent case studies, Richard A. Gould provides an up-to-date review of the field that includes dramatic new findings arising from improved undersea technologies. This second edition of Archaeology and the Social History of Ships has been updated throughout to reflect new findings and new interpretations of old sites. The new edition explores advances in undersea technology in archaeology, especially remotely operated vehicles. The book reviews many of the major recent shipwreck findings, including the Vasa in Stockholm, the Viking wrecks at Roskilde Fjord, and the Titanic.

Overshadowed by the better known Spanish Armada of 1588, three centuries ago, the final Spanish Armada set sail against England and Scotland. This little known invasion is often treated as part of the little known Jacobite campaign of 1719. However, this invasion and the subsequent campaign in Scotland were part of the virtually unknown War of the Quadruple Alliance. This conflict has never been hitherto covered in a book in the English language. This book is a study of war and diplomacy involving several of the European powers, with fighting on the high seas, in Scotland, Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily. It is a tale of a once great power taking advantage of apparently favourable international circumstances to regain parts of its lost empire. Success seemed possible, but the fortunes of war are fluctuating and luck only goes so far. Eventually the realities of military power reasserted themselves with bloody results. This book presents an account of this little known war. The emphasis is on Britain's naval, diplomatic and military efforts, whilst not neglecting those of its allies and enemies, both abroad and at home. It draws on a variety of little or unused primary sources held at the National Archives and elsewhere and boasts a cast of interesting and unusual characters.

Ordered to join the Pacific Squadron in 1854, the sloop of war Decatur sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, through the Strait of Magellan to Valparaiso, Honolulu, and Puget Sound, then on to San Francisco, Panama, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, while serving in the Pacific until 1859, the eve of the Civil War. Historian Lorraine McConaghy presents the ship, its officers, and its crew in a vigorous, keenly rendered case study that illuminates the forces shaping America's antebellum navy and foreign policy in the Pacific, from Vancouver Island to Tierra del Fuego.

One of only five ships in the squadron, the Decatur participated in numerous imperial adventures in the Far West, enforcing treaties, fighting Indians, suppressing vigilantes, and protecting commerce. With its graceful lines and towering white canvas sails, the ship patrolled the sandy border between ocean and land.

"Warship under Sail" focuses on four episodes in the Decatur's Pacific Squadron mission: the harrowing journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan; a Seattle war story that contested American treaties and settlements; participation with other squadron ships on a U.S. State Department mission to Nicaragua; and more than a year spent anchored off Panama as a hospital ship. In a period of five years, more than 300 men lived aboard ship, leaving a rich record of logbooks, medical and punishment records, correspondence, personal journals, and drawings. Lorraine McConaghy has mined these records to offer a compelling social history of a warship under sail. Her research adds immeasurably to our understanding of the lives of ordinary men at sea and American expansionism in the antebellum Pacific West.

Lorraine McConaghy is the historian at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.

"The world that Dr. McConaghy has captured, both aboard the Decatur and in the ports it visited, will be unfamiliar to almost everyone who reads this book; indeed, that strangeness or lost-ness is one of her major points. The maps and historic images help to make that world more concrete." - Coll Thrush, author of "Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place"

"The story the author tells is fresh and original and relates to a number of significant subjects, including the history of the Old Navy, the Pacific Northwest, antebellum national politics, the Manifest Destiny movement, and the lore of the sea." - James Valle, Delaware State University

"In "Warship under Sail," McConaghy has found a lens through which to examine anew the founding of Seattle. The vessel participated in the iconic 'Battle of Seattle, ' that day-long skirmish during January 1856 between 'Natives' and 'non-Natives' that looms so large in historical accounts of the city." - John M. Findlay, University of Washington

Listen to Lorraine McConaghy talk about the book:

http: //www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=collection_podcasts

The result is a portrait of the battle between men and the sea. In many cases it was the sea that won. It is also a tribute to those of the lifeboat service who risked their lives so that others in distress might be saved.

The raising of the _Mary Rose_ in 1982 was a remarkable feat of archaeology and her subsequent preservation and display at Portsmouth a triumph of technical skill and imagination. She is more than a relic, however. She has a story to tell, and her sinking in the Solent in 1545, when under attack by the French, and the reasons for it, have intrigued historians for generations. With the benefit of access to her remains, archaeologists have been able to slowly unravel the mystery of her foundering on a calm summer's day in July 1545. This new book by one of the country's leading experts on the _Mary Rose_ contains much that is published for the first time. It has the first full account of the battle in which Henry VIII's warship was sunk, and tells the stories of the English and French admirals. It examines the design and construction of the ship and how she was used, and develops themes begun when he was earlier commissioned by the Mary Rose Trust to write the multi-volume history of the ship. He shows for the first time conclusively that the French fleet arrived unexpectedly to seize the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth a day later than was once believed, that the many bodies found in the wreck reflect her at action stations, and that the ship had had an extra deck added and was therefore more unstable than was previously thought. Finally, the author makes it clear who was responsible for the loss of the _Mary Rose_, after describing what happened onboard, deck by deck, in her last moments afloat. The fascinating revelation will intrigue the general reader as well as the historian and archaeologist and the book is set to become the last word on the career of this most famous of ships.

A detailed study of the origins and demise of schooner-based pearling in Australia. For most of its history, Australian pearling was a shore-based activity. But from the mid-1880s until the World War I era, the industry was dominated by highly mobile, heavily capitalized, schooner-based fleets of pearling luggers, known as floating stations, that exploited Australia's northern continental shelf and the nearby waters of the Netherlands Indies. Octopus Crowd:Maritime History and the Business of Australian Pearling in Its Schooner Age is the first book-length study of schooner-based pearling and explores the floating station system and the men who developed and employed it. Steve Mullins focuses on the Clark Combination, a syndicate led by James Clark, Australia's most influential pearler. The combination honed the floating station system to the point where it was accused of exhausting pearling grounds, elbowing out small-time operators, strangling the economies of pearling ports, and bringing the industry to the brink of disaster. Combination partners were vilified as monopolists-they were referred to as an ""octopus crowd""-and their schooners were stigmatized as hell ships and floating sweatshops. Schooner-based floating stations crossed maritime frontiers with impunity, testing colonial and national territorial jurisdictions. The Clark Combination passed through four fisheries management regimes, triggering significant change and causing governments to alter laws and extend maritime boundaries. It drew labor from ports across the Asia-Pacific, and its product competed in a volatile world market. Octopus Crowd takes all these factors into account to explain Australian pearling during its schooner age. It argues that the demise of the floating station system was not caused by resource depletion, as was often predicted, but by ideology and Australia's shifting sociopolitical landscape.

On 14th April 1912 the Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and sank. Fifteen hundred passengers and crew lost their lives. As the order to abandon ship was given, the orchestra took their instruments on deck and continued to play. They were still playing when the ship went down. The violinist, 21 year-old Jock Hume, knew that his fiancee, Mary, was expecting their first child, the author's mother. One hundred years later, Christopher Ward reveals a dramatic story of love, loss and betrayal, and the catastrophic impact of Jock's death on two very different Scottish families. He paints a vivid portrait of an age in which class determined the way you lived - and died. An outstanding piece of historical detective work, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON is also a moving account of how the author's quest to learn more about his grandfather revealed the shocking truth about a family he thought he knew, a truth that had been hidden for nearly a hundred years.

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 incredible story of the "King of the Pirates," who burst from the waters of early Canada to become a terror of the seas. He was tall, dark, and handsome, he wore fine velvets and lace, and in four tumultuous years he tore the guts out of the Atlantic. Bartholomew Roberts took over four hundred ships and rarely lost a fight at sea in his short, spectacular reign. Black Flag of the North tells the story of Roberts's dramatic life, from his boyhood in rural South Wales through his days at sea in the slave trade. He set the Atlantic aflame from the Grand Banks to Brazil, and by blood and fire won his reputation as the fearless and feared king of the pirates.

In SS Great Britain, Helen Doe provides a narrative account of this famous and historically important ship. Experimental and controversial, Great Britain led the way for iron shipbuilding and screw propulsion. The book charts the ship's brilliant design and construction, and the tribulations of her owners as they battled financial crises to turn Isambard Kingdom Brunel's vision into reality. Brunel was passionate about this ship and was devastated when a navigational error stranded her in Dundrum Bay, Ireland. She was rescued in a great feat of salvage and went on to a long life at sea, carrying passengers to New York, troops to the Crimea and India, and thousands of emigrants to Australia. Helen Doe highlights the contribution of the many individuals connected to the ship, ranging from crew members to passengers, at least one grand Victorian scandal, and the mysterious disappearance of her long-serving captain. In this way, the ship's life and times are recreated and the history of a technical marvel is given a human face. The ship was salvaged a second time, when she was rescued from the Falkland Islands and towed home across the Atlantic. She now sits in splendour in her original dock in Bristol and is one of the most visited attractions in Britain. This a compelling account of an iconic ship and of an important moment in industrial history.

Despite the vast literature on the transatlantic slave trade, the role of sailors aboard slave ships has remained unexplored. This book fills that gap by examining every aspect of their working lives, from their reasons for signing on a slaving vessel, to their experiences in the Caribbean and the American South after their human cargoes had been sold. It explores how they interacted with men and women of African origin at their ports of call, from the Africans they traded with, to the free black seamen who were their crewmates, to the slaves and ex-slaves they mingled with in the port cities of the Americas. Most importantly, it questions their interactions with the captive Africans they were transporting during the dread middle passage, arguing that their work encompassed the commoditisation of these people ready for sale.

Admiral Lord Nelson's diamond Chelengk is one of the most famous and iconic jewels in British history. Presented to Nelson by the Sultan Selim III of Turkey after the Battle of the Nile in 1798, the jewel had thirteen diamond rays to represent the French ships captured or destroyed at the action. A central diamond star on the jewel was powered by clockwork to rotate in wear. Nelson wore the Chelengk on his hat like a turban jewel, sparking a fashion craze for similar jewels in England. The jewel became his trademark to be endlessly copied in portraits and busts to this day. After Trafalgar, the Chelengk was inherited by Nelson's family and worn at the Court of Queen Victoria. Sold at auction in 1895 it eventually found its way to the newly opened National Maritime Museum in Greenwich where it was a star exhibit. In 1951 the jewel was stolen in a daring raid by an infamous cat-burglar and lost forever. For the first time, Martyn Downer tells the extraordinary true story of the Chelengk: from its gift to Nelson by the Sultan of Turkey to its tragic post-war theft, charting the jewel's journey through history and forging sparkling new and intimate portraits of Nelson, of his friends and rivals, and of the woman he loved.

**Longlisted for the Mountbatten Maritime Media Awards 2022** A groundbreaking history of the Black Joke, the most famous member of the British Royal Navy's anti-slavery squadron, and the long fight to end the transatlantic slave trade. Initially a slaving vessel itself, the Black Joke was captured in 1827 and repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots. Over the next five years, the vessel liberated more enslaved people than any other in Britain's West Africa Squadron. As Britain attempted to snuff out the transatlantic slave trade by way of treaty and negotiation, enforcing these policies fell to ships such as the Black Joke as they battled slavers, weather disasters, and interpersonal drama among captains and crew that reverberated across oceans. The Black Joke is a crucial and deeply compelling work of history, both as a reckoning with slavery and abolition and as a lesson about the power of political will - or the lack thereof.

In the depths of Antarctic winter, hundreds of miles from land or rescue, a small fishing boat is swallowed by waves as high as houses.

The captain is fatally slow to act, and then paralyzed by fear. The officers flee for their lives. Only the actions of Matt Lewis, a 23-year-old British marine biologist and one of the most inexperienced men aboard, will save the lives of the South African crew.

Lewis is the last man off the sinking boat, and leads the escape onto three life rafts. There the battle for survival begins.

A smuggler ... 'honest thief' or 'wretch'? Opinion was divided some 200 years ago when smuggling was in its heyday and known as 'that infamous traffick'. Charles Lamb, the essayist, was in favour when he wrote in the early 1800s, 'I like a smuggler; he is the only honest thief.' The great lexicographer Dr Johnson begged to differ when he wrote this definition in his dictionary: 'A smuggler is a wretch who, in defiance of the laws, imports or exports without payment of the customs.' Most people would rather agree with Lamb, but Johnson's definition is nearer the truth. The heyday of the contraband trade came in the eighteenth century when heavy taxes on luxury items made their illegal importation highly profitable. The British love for these supposed luxuries of tea, tobacco and spirits is explained in fascinating detail. The violence of the trade is explored through the notorious Hawkhurst gang, who resorted to wholesale corruption, terrorism and murder to protect their infamous trafficking. Their enormous crimes are described in detail, as are the trials which finally broke up the gang in 1749. Chris McCooey has traced the history of an era which was brought to a violent and bloody conclusion in the 1830s. It dispels many misconceptions that the reader may have about the subject and provides a new insight into an intriguing period of our history.