This book explores the development of navigation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It examines the role of men of science, seamen and practitioners across Europe, and the realities of navigational practice, showing that old and new methods were complementary not exclusive, their use dependent on many competing factors.

The design, construction and verification of complex two- and three-dimensional shapes in architecture and ship geometry have always been a particularly demanding part of the art of engineering. Before science-based structural design and analysis were applied in the construction industries, i.e., before 1800, the task of conceiving, documenting and fabricating such shapes constituted the most significant interface between practitioner's knowledge and learned knowledge, above all in geometry. The history of shape development in these two disciplines therefore promises especially valuable insights into the knowledge history of shape creation. This volume is a collection of contributions by outstanding scholars in their fields of study, archaeology, history of architecture and ship design, in classic antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The volume presents a comparative knowledge history in these two distinct branches of construction engineering.

Worldwide maritime trade has been the driver of wealth-creation, knowledge-collection, social, political and economic progress and although some historians have shown that from the 15th century, Nick Collins shows it predates the end of the Ice Age when the Indian Ocean was the centre of long-haul voyages from east Africa to the Americas. It demonstrates the centrality of the Indian subcontinent. Meaningful trade gradually penetrated the Mediterranean, resulting in more famous civilisations including Phoenicians, Egyptians, Minoans and Greeks. How they and Hittite, Mittani etc are related is explained. How it collapsed in Europe in the 5th-7th centuries but continued in Asia concludes the story. It is based on huge reading with an attractive wring style, full of fascinating insights from an author with life-long experience in international shipping.

The story of John Devoy's 1876 Catalpa rescue is a tale of heroism, creativity, and the triumph of independent spirit in pursuit of freedom. The daily log on board the whaling ship Catalpa begins with the typical recount of a crew intact and a spirit unfettered, but such quiet words deceive the truth of the audacious enterprise that came to be known as one of the most important rescues in Irish American history. John Devoy's men aided in the break-in and subsequent rescue of Irish political prisoners from the Australian coast, allowing millions of fellow Irishmen and American-Feninans, many of whom secretly financed the dangerous plot, to draw courage from the newly exiled prisoners. Philip Fennell and Marie King, both descendants of pardoned Fenian prisoner, tell the story from the John Devoy's own records and from the ship's logbooks. John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition includes an introduction by Terry Golway and the personal diaries, letters, and reports from John Devoy and his men.

Sarah Baartman's iconic status as the "Hottentot Venus"--as "victimized" African woman, "Mother" of the new South Africa, and ancestral spirit to countless women of the African Diaspora--has led to countless essays, biographies, films, interviews, art installations, and research centers, comprising a virtual archive that seeks to find some meaning in her persona. Yet even those with the best intentions, fighting to give her agency, a voice, a personhood, continue to reinforce the outmoded European narrative of her life without asking "What if we looked at Baartman through another lens?" This collection, the first of its kind, offers a space in which international scholars, cultural activists, and visual artists examine the legacy of Baartman's life anew. It disrupts iconic, pop-culture narratives to seek an alternative Africanist rendering of a person whose life has left a profound impact on the ways in which Black women are displayed and represented the world over.

In 1682, Charles II invited his scandalous younger brother, James, Duke of York, to return from exile and take his rightful place as heir to the throne. To celebrate, the future king set sail in a fleet of eight ships destined for Edinburgh, where he would reunite with his young pregnant wife. Yet disaster struck en route, somewhere off the Norfolk coast. The royal frigate in which he sailed, the Gloucester, sank, causing some two hundred sailors and courtiers to perish. The diarist Samuel Pepys had been asked to sail with James but refused the invitation, preferring to travel in one of the other ships. Why? What did he know that others did not? Nigel Pickford's compelling account of the catastrophe draws on a richness of historical material including letters, diaries and ships' logs, revealing for the first time the full drama and tragic consequences of a shipwreck that shook Restoration Britain.

Shrouded by myth and hidden by Hollywood, the real pirates of the Caribbean come to life in this collection of essays edited by David Head. Twelve scholars of piracy show why pirates thrived in the New World seas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century empires, how pirates operated their plundering ventures, how governments battled piracy, and when and why piracy declined. The essays presented take the study of piracy, which can easily lapse into rousing, romanticized stories, to new heights of rigor and insight. The Golden Age of Piracy also delves into the enduring status of pirates as pop culture icons. Audiences have devoured stories about cutthroats such as Blackbeard and Henry Morgan from the time that pirates sailed the sea. By looking at the ideas of gender and sexuality surrounding pirate stories, the fad for hunting pirate treasure, and the construction of pirate myths, the book's contributors tell a new story about the dangerous men, and a few dangerous women, who terrorized the high seas.

Between the end of the Seven Years war in 1763, and the abolition of slavery within its Empire in 1833, Britain's maritime engagement with the wider world was transformed. The period was characterized by the contradictory and competing forces of revolution and reaction, 'liberty' and imperialism, war and peace, enlightenment and enslavement. The essays in this collection offer the path-breaking research of leading scholars to explore the significance and complexities of Britain's maritime world in this key period through a series of thematic discussions, comparing similar and contrasting movements and events. They were originally delivered as lectures in a series jointly sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research and by the Centre for Imperial and Maritime Studies at the National Maritime Museum.

This book investigates how the rulers of the Habsburg world empire developed and implemented a central maritime policy for the Netherlands and appointed an admiral of the sea or admiral-general for that purpose. It also explains why the Habsburgs were eventually unable to gain control of the maritime affairs of the Netherlands, in spite of the support of the powerful Burgundian Lords of Veere, who occupied the central position of admiral from 1491 to 1558. From their power base on the island of Walcheren in Zeeland, known as the key to the Netherlands at the time because of its central location between Holland, Flanders, Antwerp and the sea, they held an ideal vantage point for exercising the admiralship. The result not only offers an illuminating insight into the organisation of the war fleet, maritime trade and fishery, privateering and prize law in the Habsburg Netherlands, but also puts the success of the later Dutch Republic in a new perspective.

AHOY, MATE! Step into the past and aboard the decks of these twenty-five proud vessels, each one launched with high hopes but doomed finally to disaster. From the Huron, a wreck that caused 103 sailors to lose their lives, to the Pulaski, a maritime mishap where two star-crossed lovers almost lost each other forever, author Bob Brooke spins these tales with heart-pounding drama . Whether battered by hurricane-force gales, gouged by hidden rocks, or simply sabotaged by poor judgment, these ships live on in the most compelling ocean-going stories you've ever read.

ACTION-PACKED STORIES OF SHIPS SUCH AS: SS Benajmin Noble - SS Carl D. Bradley - SS Eastland - SS Edmund Fitzgerald - SS G. P. Griffith - SS Henry Steinbrenner - SS Island Queen - SS Kaliyuga - SS Kamloops - SS Lady Elgin - SS Mataafa - SS Noronic AHOY, MATE!Step into the past and aboard the decks of these twenty-one proud vessels, each one launched with high hopes but doomed finally to disaster. From the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the last major freighter lost on the lakes, to the Le Griffin, the ill-fated liner that mysteriously disappeared during a ruthless storm, author Michael J. Varhola spins these tales with heart-pounding drama. Whether battered by hurricane-force gales, gouged by hidden rocks, or simply sabotaged by poor judgment, these ships live on in the most compelling oceangoing stories you've ever read.

A wide-ranging history of the geography and communities of Kent from the earliest times to the present day. Kent, with its long coastline and its important geopolitical position close to London and continental Europe, and on major trading routes between Britain and the wider world, has had a very significant maritime history. This book covers a wide range of topics relating to that history from the earliest times to the present day. It sets Kent's varied coastline and waters in their geological and geographical context, showing how erosion and sediment deposition have contributed to the changing nature of maritime activities and populations. It examines Kent's strategic role in the defence of the country with the development and redevelopment of coastal defences, including four naval dockyards. It goes on to consider the supporting industries which grew up around the coastline, those which supplied raw materials and agricultural products from the county's hinterland, and its wider national and international trading links. It also discusses the diverse coastal communities of Kent and how they have changed in response to the demands of defence, trade, and changing population and migration patterns. In addition, the book includes detailed case studies which explore particular subject areas as exemplars of the major themes covered by the book.

In British shipping in the Mediterranean Katerina Galani investigates the impact of the French and Napoleonic wars on British maritime economic activity. Due to the close cooperation of the public and private sector at sea, the British adopted flexible business strategies to mitigate economic warfare and sustain shipping and trade in the Mediterranean. The book offers a comprehensive approach by combining the study of international relations, ports, ships, business organisation, deep-sea voyages and intra-Mediterranean navigation. Katerina Galani conceptualises the Mediterranean as an economic entity and she insightfully examines, for the first time, free traders along with the chartered Levant Company. Her analysis draws upon a unique collection of British and Mediterranean sources to construct a multifaceted view of British maritime activity.

Shows how the political turmoil of the Spanish American Wars of Independence allowed an upsurge in prize-taking activity by navies, privateers and pirates. Private maritime predation was integral to the Spanish American Wars of Independence. When colonists rebelled against Spanish rule in 1810 they deployed privateers - los corsarios insurgentes - to prosecute their revolutionary struggle at sea. Spain responded by commissioning privateers of its own, while the disintegration of Spanish authority in the New World created conditions in which unauthorised prize-taking - piracy - also flourished. This upsurge in privateering and piracy has been neglected by historians yet it posed a significant threat to British interests. As numerous vessels were captured and plundered, the British government - endeavouring to remain neutral in the Spanish American conflict - faced a dilemma. An insufficient response might hinder Britain's commercial expansion but an overly aggressive approach risked plunging the nation into another war. Privateering, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America assesses the varied and flexible ways the British government responded to prize-taking activity in order to safeguard and enhance its wider commercial and political objectives. This analysis marks a significant and original contribution to the study of privateering and piracy, and informs key debates about the development of international law and the character of British imperialism in the nineteenth century. Matthew McCarthy is Research Officer at the Maritime Historical Studies Centre, University of Hull. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Hull in 2011 and won the British Commission for Maritime History/Boydell & Brewer prize for best doctoral thesis in maritime history.

The history of the development of the unique vessels built for the New England fishing industry from colonial days to the first third of the twentieth century is here recounted by the leading authority on the subject. Mr. Chapelle gathered material from numerous sources over many years for this book, bringing together a vast amount of important information on the beautiful American fishing schooners, now extinct, built at Essex and other shipbuilding areas of New England. This book traces the evolution of the American fishing schooner from the eighteenth century to the last working and racing schooners of the mid-1930s. The designers, builders, and crews are also discussed. There are 137 plans of schooners which graphically show the development of the type. An important feature of the book is its illustrated glossary-appendix based on Mr. Chapelle's notebooks. It covers scores of items of hull construction and equipment, rigging and gear, color and carving, and includes notes by the builders and riggers themselves, in fact, everything that could be recorded about these crafts, then fast-disappearing.

The scientific and technological revolution in shipbuilding in the early twentieth century had a great impact on both the military and the industrial/commercial world. Miwao Matsumoto focuses on the relationship between this revolution and the structure and function of 'technology gatekeepers' during the process of transfer of marine science and technology from Britain to Japan in this period. His analysis is undertaken in light of a new 'composite model' of Japanese industrialization, which reveals more profound and subtle sociological implications than 'success or failure' type accounts of industrialization usually suggest.

Foreshadowing the twentieth-century experience, the Spanish American War was America's first modern foreign war. Catapulting the United States into an international world power, the war had lasting international implications. Besides America's acquisition of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, and Guam, the war led the United States to take to the international stage, confronting Germany and Japan (foreshadowing the conflict of World War II), and creating a diplomatic bridge between Great Britain and the United States. For Spain, the 1898-1899 conflict was the death knell of empire, which led to a national crisis culminating in the Spanish Civil War. This volume provides easily accessible information on the naval and army operations, Spanish operations, and the political background to the military events, with an emphasis on future foreign affairs.

The Spanish American War is seminal to an understanding of twentieth-century U.S. foreign relations--in Cuba, the Pacific, especially Japan, and with Great Britain. It is also central to an understanding of twentieth-century Spain. U.S. military history also requires an understanding of amphibious operations, naval and army reform, deployment command and control, and interservice cooperation as reflected in the Spanish American War. This book provides a quick reference to what was once called this splendid little war.

In this engaging tale of movement from one hemisphere to another, we see doctors at work attending to their often odious and demanding duties at sea, in quarantine, and after arrival. The book shows, in graphic detail, just why a few notorious voyages suffered tragic loss of life in the absence of competent supervision. Its emphasis, however, is on demonstrating the extent to which the professionalism of the majority of surgeon superintendents, even on ships where childhood epidemics raged, led to the extraordinary saving of life on the Australian route in the Victorian era.

Man lives on land, but the seas of the world are crucial to his lot. Focusing on navies as instruments of power and analysing what they indicate about the nature of state systems and cultures all over the world, Black provides an overview of the most significant debates within the field. Organised into key historical periods and accessibly framed, this wide-ranging account emphasises the links between past and present throughout the history of naval power.

On April 28th, 1789, a handful of men led by Fletcher Christian mutinied aboard the HMS Bounty, setting her captain, William Bligh, and 18 other men adrift, then vanishing into the Pacific Ocean. This is the story of the mutiny that became a landmark case in naval history.

Far from the romanticised image of the swashbuckling genre of maritime history, the eighteenth-century Caribbean was a 'marchlands' in which violence was a way of life and where solidarities were transitory and highly volatile. This book paints a picture of the eighteenth-century British Caribbean as a frontier zone in which war, international rivalry, disease and slavery are paramount themes. It explores the lure of the region as a vaunted site of potential wealth and derring-do, the fragility of tropical campaigns, the nature of slave insurrection, and the efforts of indigenous peoples (here, the Miskito of the Mosquito Coast and the Black Caribs of St Vincent) to carve out some autonomy from the British and Bourbon powers. It also explores the mutiny of a slave-ship and its unsuccessful raiding ventures in order to show how the dominant European powers sought to contain piracy in an expanding plantation complex. The book emphasizes the contrarieties of struggle, the difficulties preventing subaltern groups, whether slaves, free blacks, indigenous peoples or soldiers and sailors, from forging broader alliances, and the importance of tropical disease in shaping military outcomes. It warns against romanticizing resistance in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, showing that it was instead a 'marchlands' in which violence was a way of life and where solidarities were transitory and highly volatile.

In addition to being commercialised and romanticised, piracy's history has also been distorted, with many works straying far from the facts recorded in the Age of Sail. In this book, author Joseph Gibbs goes back to many of the original materials about those who went "on the account" (a classic euphemism for piracy) to deliver an engaging, closely interpreted anthology of seven decades of primary sources. The text comprises original monographs, handbills, trial records, newspaper articles, and official reports that deal with piracy in and involving the Americas in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Joseph Gibbs annotates and explains these records in order to clarify the era's historical, legal, literary, and nautical references. Along the way readers will experience violent mutinies, vicious sea battles, anti-piracy raids on Louisiana islands and Latin American coasts, and the United States' first sustained encounter with the Barbary Corsairs. They will also catch glimpses of maritime brigands as remarkable as any that walked the decks of piracy's earlier "golden age" and encounter the naval officers and sailors who strove to bring them to rough justice. Enhanced with period maps and illustrations, the book provides an enlightening introduction to piracy's original canon as it emerged in the era of the quill pen and hand-turned press.

Seafarers were the first workers to inhabit a truly international labour market, a sector of industry which, throughout the early modern period, drove European economic and imperial expansion, technological and scientific development, and cultural and material exchanges around the world. This volume adopts a comparative perspective, presenting current research about maritime labourers across three centuries, in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, to understand how seafarers contributed to legal and economic transformation within Europe and across the world. Focusing on the three related themes of legal systems, labouring conditions, and imperial power, these essays explore the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between seafarers' individual and collective agency, and the social and economic frameworks which structured their lives.

This volume deals with Xerxes' invasion of Greece (480 B.C.), particularly as a naval operation. It examines the traditions preserved by Aischylos, Herodotos, and others against the background of the revolutionary naval developments in the period preceding Xerxes' decision to attack. Among the subjects discussed are: the naval pressure on Persian foreign policy; the strength in numbers of the Persian navy in 480; its deployment in the waters of Salamis related to the physical features of the battlefield and the position of the Greeks; Themistokles' legendary message as a key to the Persian plan of attack; the quality of the opposing ships and their tactical capabilities; the battle of Salamis itself and its outcome. The book includes maps and a photograph of the area discussed.