Tudor and Stuart Seafarers tells the compelling story of how a small island positioned on the edge of Europe transformed itself into the world's leading maritime power. In 1485, England was an inward-looking country, its priorities largely domestic and European. Over the subsequent two centuries, however, this country was transformed, as the people of the British Isles turned to the sea in search of adventure, wealth and rule. Explorers voyaged into unknown regions of the world, while merchants, following in their wake, established lucrative trade routes with the furthest reaches of the globe. At home, people across Britain increasingly engaged with the sea, whether through their own lived experiences or through songs, prose and countless other forms of material culture. This exquisitely illustrated book delves into a tale of exploration, encounter, adventure, power, wealth and conflict. Topics include the exploration of the Americas, the growth of worldwide trade, piracy and privateering and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, brought to life through a variety of personalities from the well-known - Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Drake and Samuel Pepys - to the ordinary sailors, dockyard workers and their wives and families whose lives were so dramatically shaped by the sea.

The coasts of Scotland are a goldmine for fishing boats new and old, and this latest selection from James Pottinger covers a huge variety of them - from early trawlers to seine net boats, to modern twin rig side and stern trawlers. As it does so, it demonstrates the changes that evolved in the design of the boats themselves, as progress marches on: the numbers of handsome wooden boats have declined, while the smaller boats have flourished, now rigging themselves for trawling, lining and shellfish catching. With over 200 photographs, many previously unpublished, Scotland's Fishing Boats is a photographic journey through time at a variety of locations around Scotland and the Isles.

With a cast of swaggering swashbuckling characters, The Struggle for Sea Power charts the greatest war in the age of sail. In 1775 thirteen isolated colonies, without a navy or an army, began a war with Britain to win their independence from the greatest naval and military power on earth. The American Revolution was a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no fewer than twenty-two navies fighting on five oceans - to say nothing of rivers and lakes. Not until the Second World War would any nation actively fight in so many different theatres. Using original logs, reports, diaries and archaeological discoveries, The Struggle for Sea Power traces every key military event in the path to American Independence from a naval perspective. This is the gripping tale of the birth of the New World.

Since 1900, the Royal Navy has seen vast changes to the way it operates. This book tells the story, not just of defeats and victories, but also of how the navy has adjusted to over 100 years of rapid technological and social change. The navy has changed almost beyond recognition since the far-reaching reforms made by Admiral Fisher at the turn of the century. Fisher radically overhauled the fleet, replacing the nineteenth-century wooden crafts with the latest in modern naval technology, including battleships (such as the iconic dreadnoughts), aircraft carriers and submarines. In World War I and World War II, the navy played a central role, especially as unrestricted submarine warfare and supply blockades became an integral part of twentieth-century combat. However it was the development of nuclear and missile technology during the Cold War era which drastically changed the face of naval warfare - today the navy can launch sea-based strikes across thousands of miles to reach targets deep inland. This book navigates the cross currents of over 100 years of British naval history. As well as operational issues, the authors also consider the symbolism attached to the navy in popular culture and the way naval personnel have been treated, looking at the changes in on-board life and service during the period, as well as the role of women in the navy. In addition to providing full coverage of the Royal Navy's wartime operations, the authors also consider the functions of the navy in periods of nominal peace - including disaster relief, diplomacy and exercises. Even in peacetime the Royal Navy had a substantial role to play. Covering the whole span of naval history from 1900 to the present, this book places the wars and battles fought by the navy within a wider context, looking at domestic politics, economic issues and international affairs. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in naval history and operations, as well as military history more generally.

Lenora Warren tells a new story about the troubled history of abolition and slave violence by examining representations of shipboard mutiny and insurrection in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Anglo-American and American literature. Fire on the Water centers on five black sailors, whose experiences of slavery and insurrection either inspired or found resonance within fiction: Olaudah Equiano, Denmark Vesey, Joseph Cinque, Madison Washington, and Washington Goode. These stories of sailors, both real and fictional, reveal how the history of mutiny and insurrection is both shaped by, and resistant to, the prevailing abolitionist rhetoric surrounding the efficacy of armed rebellion as a response to slavery. Pairing well-known texts with lesser-known figures (Billy Budd and Washington Goode) and well-known figures with lesser-known texts (Denmark Vesey and the work of John Howison), this book reveals the richness of literary engagement with the politics of slave violence.

In the early years of the Industrial Revolution, canals formed the arteries of Britain. Most waterways were local concerns, carrying cargoes over short distances and fitted into regional groups with their own boat types linked to the major river estuaries. This new history of Britain's canals starts with the first Roman waterways, moving on to their golden age in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and ends with the present day, describing the rise and fall of canal building and use in the UK. It tells the story of the narrow boats and barges borne by the canals, and the boatmen who navigated them as well as the wider tale of waterway development through the progress of civil engineering. Replete with beautiful photographs, this a complete guide to some of the most accessible and beautiful pieces of Britain's heritage.

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.

After Britain's Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, a squadron of Royal Navy vessels was sent to the West Coast of Africa tasked with suppressing the thriving transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on previously unpublished papers found in private collections and various archives in the UK and abroad, this book examines the personal and cultural experiences of the naval officers at the frontline of Britain's anti-slavery campaign in West Africa. It explores their unique roles in this 60-year operation: at sea, boarding slave ships bound for the Americas and 'liberating' captive Africans; on shore, as Britain resolved to 'improve' West African societies; and in the metropolitan debates around slavery and abolitionism in Britain. Their personal narratives are revealing of everyday concerns of health, rewards and strategy, to more profound questions of national honour, cultural encounters, responsibility for the lives of others in the most distressing of circumstances, and the true meaning of 'freedom' for formerly enslaved African peoples. British anti-slavery efforts and imperial agendas were tightly bound in the nineteenth century, inseparable from ideas of national identity. This is a book about individuals tasked with extraordinary service, military men who also worked as guardians, negotiators, and envoys of abolition.

Suspended between sea and sky, battered by the waves and the wind, lighthouses mark the battlelines between the elements. They guard the boundaries between the solid human world and the primordial chaos of the waters; between stability and instability; between the known and the unknown. As such, they have a strange, universal appeal that few other manmade structures possess. Engineered to draw the gaze of sailors, lighthouses have likewise long attracted the attention of soldiers and saints, artists and poets, novelists and filmmakers, colonizers and migrants, and, today more than ever, heritage tourists and developers. Their evocative locations, their isolation and resilience have turned these structures into complex metaphors, magnets for stories. This book explores the rich story of the lighthouse in the human imagination.

'It would make the stones cry to hear those on board shrieking' - Daniel Buckley, third-class passenger For the first time, in this moving new book, Titanic's passengers and crewmen are permitted to tell the story of that lamentable disaster entirely in their own words. Included are letters, postcards, diary entries and memoirs that were written before, during and immediately after the maiden voyage itself. Many of the pre-sailing documents were composed by people who later lost their lives in the sinking and represent the last communications that these people ever had with their friends and loved ones at home. The subsequent letters and postcards give an unparalleled description of the events that occurred during the five days that Titanic was at sea, and the correspondence by survivors after the tragedy describes the horror of the disaster itself and the heartbreak they experienced at the loss of those they loved. This poignant compilation, by Titanic expert George Behe, also contains brief biographies of the passengers and crewmen, victims, as well as survivors, who wrote the documents in question.

**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.

World War I is one of the iconic conflicts of the modern era. For many years the war at sea has been largely overlooked; yet, at the outbreak of that war, the British Government had expected and intended its military contribution to be largely naval. This was a war of ideologies fought by and for empires. Britain was not defending simply an island; it was defending a far flung empire. Without the navy such an undertaking would have been impossible. In many respects the Royal Navy fought along the longest 'front' of any fighting force of the Great War, and it acted as the leader of a large alliance of navies. The Royal Navy fought in the North and South Atlantic, in the North and South Pacific, its ships traversed the globe from Australia to England, and its presence extended the war to every continent except Antarctica. Because of the Royal Navy, Britain could finance and resource not only its own war effort, but that of its allies. Following the naval arms race in the early 20th century, both Britain and Germany were equipped with the latest naval technology, including revolutionary new vessels such as dreadnoughts and diesel-powered submarines. Although the Royal Navy's operations in World War I were global, a significant proportion of the fleet's strength was concentrated in the Grand Fleet, which confronted the German High Seas Fleet across the North Sea. At the Battle of Jutland in 1916 the Royal Navy, under the command of Admiral Jellicoe, fought an iconic, if inconclusive battle for control of shipping routes. The navy might not have been able to win the war, but, as Winston Churchill put it, she 'could lose it in an afternoon'. The Royal Navy was British power and prestige. 43,244 British navy personnel would lose their lives fighting on the seas in World War I. This book tells their story and places the Royal Navy back at the heart of the British war effort, showing that without the naval dimension the First World War would not have been a truly global conflict

Describing any war as average is a strange expression, and there is certainly nothing average about this fascinating memoir from author and cartoonist Mike Peyton. Like thousasnds of others he gave an incorrect age to get into the army, worried that the war would be over before he could join in. Once in, he fought in the Western Desert until taken prisoner and transported first to Italy and then to Germany. In Germany he saw the Allied bombing of Dresden. He was initially sympathetic towards those in the city, but this was accompanied by the thought that it serves the bastards right. He escaped and walked East, eventually joining up with the Russian Red Army and fighting with them for the rest of his war.During his average war, Mike Peyton drew his first cartoon, and others, for a wall newspaper in a German prisoner of war camp. After the war, he enrolled at Manchester Art School, helped by one of his officers in the Western Desert being on the board of examiners. He became a cartoonist, sailing instructor and charter boat skipper - which gave him much material for his world famous sailing cartoons.

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.

A monumental, wholly accessible work of scholarship that retells human history through the story of mankind's relationship with the sea. An accomplishment of both great sweep and illuminating detail, The Sea and Civilization is a stunning work of history that reveals in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world's waterways. Lincoln Paine takes us back to the origins of long-distance migration by sea with our ancestors' first forays from Africa and Eurasia to Australia and the Americas. He demonstrates the critical role of maritime trade to the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley. He reacquaints us with the great seafaring cultures of antiquity like those of the Phoenicians and Greeks, as well as those of India, Southeast and East Asia who parlayed their navigational skills, shipbuilding techniques, and commercial acumen to establish vibrant overseas colonies and trade routes in the centuries leading up to the age of European overseas expansion. His narrative traces subsequent developments in commercial and naval shipping through the post-Cold War era. Above all, Paine makes clear how the rise and fall of civilizations can be traced to the sea.

As nurses, `Jenny Wrens', and above all as wives and mothers, women have quietly kept the Royal Navy afloat throughout history. From its earliest years, women maintained homes and families while men battled at sea, providing vital support behind the scenes. Later they also ran maritime businesses and worked as civilians in naval offices and dockyards. From 1884, women were able to serve as nurses in the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service and, from 1917, they became members of the Women's Royal Naval Service. The outbreak of both world wars gave women special opportunities and saw the role of women as Wrens, nursing sisters, VADs and medics change and develop. In more recent times, the development of equal rights legislation has fundamentally changed naval life: women are now truly in the navy and do `men's jobs' at sea. Using previously-unpublished first-hand material, this is the first book to reflect all the diverse roles that women have played in Royal Navy services. Jo Stanley situates women's naval activities within a worldwide context of women who worked, travelled and explored new options. This book provides vital new perspectives on both women's military history and the wider history of women who desired to work on or near the sea.

Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, arrived in the New World in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the next three decades, his exploits in the Caribbean in the service of the English became legend. His daring attacks on the mighty Spanish Empire on land and sea changed the fates of kings and queens. His victories helped shape the destiny of the New World. Morgan gathered disaffected English and European sailors and soldiers, hard-bitten adventurers, runaway slaves, cutthroats and sociopaths and turned them into the fiercest and most feared army in the Western Hemisphere. Sailing out from the English stronghold of Port Royal, Jamaica, 'the wickedest city in the New World', Morgan and his men terrorised Spanish merchant ships and devastated the cities where great riches in silver, gold, and gems lay waiting to be sent to the King of Spain. His last raid, a daring assault on the fabled city of Panama, helped break Spain's solitary hold on the New World for ever. Awash with bloody battles, political intrigues, and a cast of characters more compelling, bizarre and memorable than any found in a Hollywood swashbuckler, EMPIRE OF BLUE WATER brilliantly re-creates the passions and the violence of the age of exploration and empire. What's more, it chillingly depicts the apocalyptic natural disaster that finally ended the pirates' dominion.

With the opening of sea routes in the fifteenth century, groups of men and women left Portugal to establish themselves across the ports and cities of the Atlantic or Ocean Sea. They were refugees and migrants, traders and mariners, Jews, Catholics, and the Marranos of mixed Judaic-Catholic culture. They formed a diasporic community known by contemporaries as the Portuguese Nation. By the early seventeenth century, this nation without a state had created a remarkable trading network that spanned the Atlantic, reached into the Indian Ocean and Asia, and generated millions of pesos that were used to bankroll the Spanish empire. A Nation Upon The Ocean Sea traces the story of the Portuguese Nation from its emergence in the late fifteenth century to its fragmentation in the middle of the seventeenth and situates it in relation to the parallel expansion and crisis of Spanish imperial dominion in the Atlantic. Against the backdrop of this relationship, the book reconstitutes the rich inner life of a community based on movement, maritime trade, and cultural hybridity. We are introduced to mariners and traders in such disparate places as Lima, Seville and Amsterdam, their day-to-day interactions and understandings, their houses and domestic relations, their private reflections and public arguments.
This finely-textured account reveals how the Portuguese Nation created a cohesive and meaningful community despite the mobility and dispersion of its members; how its forms of sociability fed into the development of robust transatlantic commercial networks; and how the day-to-day experience of trade was translated into the sphere of Spanish imperial politics as merchants of the Portuguese Nationtook up the pen to advocate a program of commercial reform based on religious-ethnic toleration and the liberalization of trade.
A microhistory, A Nation Upon The Ocean Sea contributes to our understanding of the broader histories of capitalism, empire, and diaspora in the early Atlantic.

This volume will detail the history, weapons and tactics of the Japanese destroyers built before the war. This includes the famous Fubuki class (called "Special Type" by the Japanese, which were, when completed in the late 1920's, the most powerful class of destroyers in the world. This design forced all other major navies to follow suite and provided the basic design for the next many classes of Imperial Navy destroyers. This book will also cover the three classes built before the Special Type which were based on a German World War I design as well as two classes built after the advent of the Special Type. All of these ships had a rich history as they fought from the first battles of the Pacific War up until the very end when several accompanied the superbattleship Yamato on her death sortie. The final part of the book will be an analysis of the destroyer designs covered in the book which will include an examination of their strengths and weaknesses. The success (or lack of success) of these designs will be discussed and they will be compared to comparable Allied destroyer designs.