'What a fun book! Reading Sea Fever is enticing and intriguing, like watching floating treasure bob past your nose.' Tristram Gooley, author of The Natural Navigator Can you interpret the shipping forecast? Do you know your flotsam from your jetsam? Or who owns the foreshore? Can you tie a half-hitch - or would you rather splice the mainbrace? Full of charming illustrations and surprising facts, Sea Fever provides the answers to all these and more. Mixing advice on everything from seasickness to righting a capsized boat with arcane marine lore, recipes, history, dramatic stories of daring-do and guides to the wildlife we share our shores with, even the most experienced ocean-dweller will find something in these pages to surprise and delight.

Far Flung Lines shows how the British Empire used its maritime supremacy to construct and maintain a worldwide defence system that would protect its vital imperial interests. By combining a number of different historical threads - particularly imperial history, naval history and military history - Neilson and Kennedy rebut the idea that British defence policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was primarily concerned with maintaining the balance of power in Europe.

This unique and comprehensive account describes the interplay of internal and external factors in the emergence of the Austro-Hungarian Navy from a coastal defence force in 1904 to a respectable battle force capable of the joint operations with other Triple Alliance fleets in the Mediterranean by the eve of World War I. By 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Navy was the sixth largest navy in the world and the quality of its officers and men was widely recognised by most European naval observers at the time. The book describes the relationships between naval leaders, the heir to the throne Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the Parliament in shaping the dual Monarchy's naval policy. It also shows how the changes in foreign policy in Italy and underlying animosities between Rome and Vienna led to a naval race in the Adriatic that eventually bolstered Germany's naval position in respect to Great Britain in the North Sea.

Theodore Roosevelt led the charge in the 1890s for the creation of a US fleet of modern, steel-hulled, heavily-armed warships. The future president and his intellectual soul mate, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, championed the theory of sea power to fuel America's emerging global expansion. The US victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898 vindicated these views. These essays chart the role of Roosevelt and the war in the origins of US sea power.

A beautifully illustrated sailing classic. This rare memoir opens onto the early adventures of a 12-year-old boy sent to sea after the tragic deaths of his sister and father and the impending poverty of his mother. Not for these alone did the book draw great reviews from The Times and The Spectator, when first published in the 1920s. Recently, intrigued by this touching life story, his grandson researched press clippings and documents that compelled him to update and publish the book again, to reveal the full story that must have influenced and spurred on his hero. Weathering fierce storms and worse, in his first 8 years as an apprentice mariner the boy grew into a fine young man, learning from and appreciating the multicultured seamen about him as they ploughed through the Asian trading routes, often fighting off formidable pirates on the South China seas. On his first return home, now aged 20, Boughton arrived in time to save his mother from bailiffs and life in a poorhouse. (He supported her to the end of her days.) Exemplifying that steadfastness, he became a captain and then rose to become the Superintendent of the Shipping Federation of Britain as well as Member of the Marine Board for London. Notably, the book reproduces the original illustrations by Shoesmith, the still much admired artist of his day. The publication also includes old sea shanties, knots and amazing facts regarding world religions and more.

Specifically structured around research questions and avenues for further study, and providing the historical context to enable this further research, Modern Naval History is a key historiographical guide for students wishing to gain a deeper understanding of naval history and its contemporary relevance. Navies play an important role in the modern world, and the globalisation of economies, cultures and societies has placed a premium on maritime communications. Modern Naval History demonstrates the importance of naval history today, showing its relevance to a number of disciplines and its role in understanding how navies relate to their host societies. Richard Harding explains why naval history is still important, despite slipping from the attention of policy makers and the public since 1945, and how it can illuminate answers to questions relating to economic, diplomatic, political, social and cultural history. The book explores how naval history has informed these fields and how it can produce a richer and more informed historical understanding of navies and sea power.

Analyzes how negotiations between Dutch consuls and North African rulers over the liberation of Dutch sailors helped create a new diplomatic order in the western Mediterranean. This work offers a new perspective on the history of diplomacy in the western Mediterranean, examining how piracy and captivity at sea forced Protestant states from northwest Europe to develop complex relationships with Islamic North Africa. Tracing how Dutch diplomats and North African officials negotiated the liberation of Dutch sailors enslaved in the Maghrib, author Erica Heinsen-Roach argues that captivity and redemption helped shape (rather than undermine) a new diplomatic order in the western Mediterranean. Making use of extensive archival research, Consuls and Captives shows how encounters with North African society led the Protestant North to adjust to the norms and practices of the western Mediterranean. Dutch consuls became state representatives, tasked with claiming the unconditional release of captives from the Netherlands. But caught between these directives and the realities of Maghribi politics, the diplomats consented to pay ransom, participated in what they considered lavish gift-giving practices, and began to pay tribute -- all practices that were departures from the norms the Dutch States General upheld in "doing" diplomacy. In analyzing these adjustments, Heinsen-Roach brings into question earlier interpretations of diplomacy as a progressively evolving institution anchored in the western modern tradition. Consuls and Captives shows instead that early modern diplomacy in the western Mediterranean developed in uneven ways as a product of cultural encounters. With its compelling argument and wide-ranging evidence, this book will have a strong appeal to scholars of early modern diplomacy, slavery, and Mediterranean history, as well as to specialists on the Dutch Republic. Erica Heinsen-Roach is visiting assistant professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

In this book, O'Hara presents the first general history of Britons relationship with the surrounding oceans from 1600 to the present day. This all-encompassing account covers individual seafarers, ship-borne migration, warfare and the maritime economy, as well as the British peoples maritime ideas and self perception throughout the centuries.

Hydrofeminist Thinking with Oceans brings together authors who are thinking in, with and through the spaces of oceans and beaches in South African contexts to make alternative knowledges towards a justice-to-come and flourishing at a planetary level. Primary scholarly locations for this work include feminist new materialist and post-humanist thinking, and specifically locates itself within hydrofeminist thinking.

Together with a foreword by Astrida Neimanis, the chapters in this book explore both land and water with oceans as powerfully political spaces, globally and locally entangled in the violences of settler colonialism, land dispossession, slavery, transnational labour exploitation, extractivism and omnicides. South Africa is a productive space to engage in such scholarship. While there is a growing body of literature that works within and across disciplines on the sea and bodies of water to think critically about the damages of centuries of colonisation and continued extractivist capitalism, there remains little work that explores this burgeoning thinking in global Southern, and more particularly South African contexts.

South African histories of colonisation, slavery and more recently apartheid, which are saturated in the oceans, are only recently being explored through oceanic logics. This volume offers valuable Southern contributions and rich situated narratives to such hydrofeminist thinking. It also brings diverse and more marginal knowledges to bear on the project of generating imaginative alternatives to hegemonic colonial and patriarchal logics in the academy and elsewhere. While primarily located in a South African context, the volume speaks well to globalised concerns for justice and environmental challenges both in human societies and in relation to other species and planetary crises.

The chapters, which will be of interest to scholars, activists and other civil society stakeholders, share inspiring, rich examples of diverse scholarship, activism and art in these contexts, extending international scholarship that thinks in/on/with oceans, littoral zones and bodies of water. The book offers ethico-political perspectives on the role of research in ocean governance, policy development and collective decision-making for ecological justice. This book is suitable for students and scholars of post-qualitative, feminist, new materialist, embodied, arts-based and hydrofeminist methods in education, environmental humanities and the social sciences.

Promoted as virtually unsinkable, the ultimate luxury liner, the largest ship in the world, the RMS "Titanic" sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912, taking some 1,500 people to their death. Aboard the ship were the wealthy and famous as well as hundreds of immigrants seeking a new life in America. The most dramatic marine disaster of modern times, the "Titanic" tragedy captured the interest and imagination of the entire world. The intensity of interest in the catastrophe has increased, particularly after discovery of the wreck off the coast of Newfoundland in the mid-1980s. The resulting literature is vast, including both scholarly and popular sources.

Covering more than the published literature, the book also surveys memorabilia, artifacts, cultural icons, music, film, and exhibitions. Divided into three sections, the work opens with a historiographical survey of the literature, then includes descriptive lists of more peripheral material, and concludes with a bibliography of 674 entries. All items covered in the historiographical survey are included in the bibliography. This useful guide will appeal to researchers - both laymen and scholars - interested in the "Titanic."

A sailing classic, of real life adventure, beautifully illustratedTV Presenter JULIETTE FOSTER: "Captain George P Boughton's maritime career began in 1881 at the age of 12, and thanks to his grandson, the founder of GB Publishing Org, this intriguing memoir of a life at sea is now available to a new generation of readers." THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: "His book is genuine sea salt...warm colours of Mr Shoesmith's pictures accord well with the romantic story [of days before steamships]" THE SPECTATOR: "recalls emotions [on sea-life] that have fleeted from the minds of most" First published in 1926, Seafaring - The Full Story reveals that a life on the ocean waves was anything but jolly: conditions were tough, the food was just about edible while the work was back-breaking - although the salt-of-the-earth camaraderie helped. As much a one-man reminiscence as it is an elegy for a forgotten way of life, it's not hard to imagine a gravely-voiced Boughton recalling the era of the 'large sailing ships'. and why the world stopped being a better place when they were forced off the sea. Boughton died in 1940 at the age of 71, having worked his way up to the position of Superintendent to the Shipping Federation of Britain. With the publication of these memoirs, his contribution to our understanding of this area of history will surely live on." In this edition of Seafaring, which deals with ships and life aboard ships in the days before steam had conquered sail, a Prologue is added that tells of the tragic circumstances that led up to the author going to sea when aged twelve. An Epilogue also reveals his fortunes since writing the book. The men who spent the best part of their lives on sailing vessels are now gone but fortunately Captain Boughton, as one of them, committed to writing his first hand account of what their lives aboard were really like. The salt of the sea is in these breezy pages; they reflect the virile enjoyment with which the men of whom Captain Boughton writes faced the hardships of their existence. ~*~ The inclusion of several of the traditional sea "chanties", with the musical scores, and the end-papers that illustrate sailors' knots, add the final flavour to an inspiring and enduring book.

This open access book presents multidisciplinary research on the cultural history, ethnic connectivity, and oceanic transportation of the ancient Indigenous Bai Yue ( ) in the prehistoric maritime region of southeast China and southeast Asia. In this maritime Frontier of China, historical documents demonstrate the development of the "barbarian" Bai Yue and Island Yi ( ) and their cultural interaction with the northern Huaxia ( ) in early Chinese civilization within the geopolitical order of the "Central State-Four Peripheries Barbarians-Four Seas". Archaeological typologies of the prehistoric remains reveal a unique cultural tradition dominantly originating from the local Paleolithic age and continuing to early Neolithization across this border region. Further analysis of material culture from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age proves the stability and resilience of the indigenous cultures even with the migratory expansion of Huaxia and Han ( ) from north to south. Ethnographical investigations of aboriginal heritage highlight their native cultural context, seafaring technology and navigation techniques, and their interaction with Austronesian and other foreign maritime ethnicities. In a word, this manuscript presents a new perspective on the unique cultural landscape of indigenous ethnicities in southeast China with thousands of years' stable tradition, a remarkable maritime orientation and overseas cultural hybridization in the coastal region of southeast China.

This book covers various strategic issues around maritime security in terms of how Indonesia has sought to implement its Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF) vision, evaluating its regional impact within ASEAN. The Global Maritime Fulcrum' vision was declared by President Joko Widodo to refocus Indonesia's development paradigm to prioritize its maritime aspect in the Indo-Pacific. Divided across five pillars, namely: maritime culture, maritime resource management, maritime infrastructure and connectivity development, maritime diplomacy and maritime defense, the book presents that the implementation of this vision will doubtless have a significant regional impact, particularly in setting regional maritime agendas. In promoting an understanding of the challenges presented in implementing the Global Maritime Fulcrum and unpacking its multifaceted impact in the region, this book delves into Indonesia's maritime vision, the existing maritime arrangements within ASEAN, and Indonesia's interests in terms of its political economy relating to the maritime sector, strategic security issues, maritime diplomacy, and related regional power dynamics. Translated from Bahasa Indonesia into English, the book is relevant to scholars and policymakers in maritime studies, international relations, and regional studies relating to politics and power dynamics in Indonesia, specifically, and ASEAN more broadly.

An examination of women entrepreneurs who invested in, and often managed, non-feminine businesses such as shipping and shipbuilding in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Far from the genteel notion of Victorian women as milliners and haberdashers, this book shows that women could and did manage male businesses and manage men. Women invested in the expanding shipping industry throughout the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century and actively ran non feminine businesses such as shipbuilding. By setting the businesswomen firmly in the context of the industry, the book examines the business challenges from the woman's perspective. It demonstrates how a woman needed to understand the business requirements while in some cases also being a single parent. As business managers, they had to manage a male workforce, deal with large and important customersand ensure they maintained their firm's reputation and continued to win orders. Nor were these women mere caretakers for the next generation, in many cases continuing to run the business in an active manner after their son or sons were of age. This book reveals communities of independent women in England who were active entrepreneurs and investors, in a period when women were increasingly supposed to be relegated to a more domestic role. It includes briefbiographies of many of these women entrepreneurs who were also conventional mothers, wives and daughters. Helen Doe is an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies, University of Exeter; a Council Member ofthe Society for Nautical Research; chair of their marketing committee; a member of the British Commission for Maritime History; on the Advisory Council of the SS Great Britain; and a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.

This two-volume set highlights the importance of Iberian shipbuilding in the centuries of the so-called first globalization (15th to 18th), in confluence with an unprecedented extension of ocean navigation and seafaring and a greater demand for natural resources (especially timber), mostly oak (Quercus spp.) and Pine (Pinus spp.). The chapters are framed in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary line of research that integrates history, Geographic Information Sciences, underwater archaeology, dendrochronology and wood provenance techniques. This line of research was developed during the ForSEAdiscovery project, which had a great impact in the academic and scientific world and brought together experts from Europe and America. The volumes deliver a state-of-the-art review of the latest lines of research related to Iberian maritime history and archaeology and their developing interdisciplinary interaction with dendroarchaeology. This synthesis combines an analysis of historical sources, the systematic study of wreck-remains and material culture related to Iberian seafaring from the 15th to the 18th centuries, and the application of earth sciences, including dendrochronology. The set can be used as a manual or work guide for experts and students, and will also be an interesting read for non-experts interested in the subject. Volume 2 focuses on approaches to the study of shipwrecks including a synthesis of dendro-archaeological results, current interdisciplinary case studies and the specialist study of artillery and anchors.

This book updates African maritime economic history to analyse the influence of seaports and seaborne trade, processes of urbanization and development, and the impact of globalization on port evolution within the different regions of Africa. It succeeds the seminal collection edited by Hoyle & Hilling which was conceived during a phase of sustained economic growth on the African continent, and builds on a similar trend where African economies have experienced processes of economic growth and the relative improvement of welfare conditions. It provides valuable insights on port evolution and the way the maritime sector has impacted the hinterland and the regional economic structures of the affected countries, including the several and varied agents involved in these activities. African Seaports and Maritime Economics in Historical Perspective will be useful for economists, historians, and geographers interested in African and maritime issues, as well as policy makers interested in path-dependence and long-term analysis

A fascinating and original look at how the sea has defined Britain - and decided the course of its history - for thousands of years. Being an island nation is a core part of the British identity. An estimated two thirds of the world's population have never seen the sea, but in the UK that drops to under 10 per cent. Yet most people don't appreciate the impact our position on the edge of a continental shelf has had on our history, going back thousands of years. Our coast neither starts nor ends at the beach, and this eye-opening book takes a look beneath the surface to explore the forces of nature that have made Britain what it is. We experience some of the highest tides on the planet and we are battered with waves that have travelled halfway around the globe before they get here, but most of what we understand about our unique waters has only been discovered in living memory. In this fascinating guided tour of the fantastically varied British coastline, Professor David Bowers combines oceanography with maritime history, explaining tides, currents and waves in an accessible way whilst revealing how they have been responsible for both salvation (the Channel alone checked the Nazi advance in 1940) and disaster (such as the catastrophic 1953 flooding that led to the ingenious development of the Thames tidal barrier). He covers everything from how ocean swell waves were first recorded here in preparation for the D-Day landings, to how the first underwater light measurements paved the way to modern ocean satellite observation. This is a story 8,000 years in the making, ever since the country broke away from mainland Europe in the Mesolithic era, and in his insightful and irreverent telling of it Professor Bowers shows that the British Isles are defined by the sea, regardless of whether you look at them from land or water. With exclusive photos and specially commissioned illustrations, the book encourages you to visit all the places it explores, but when you stand on the beach or clifftop you will never think of Britain in quite the same way again.

Examines the union of England and Scotland by weaving the navy into a political narrative of events between the regal union in 1603 and the parliamentary union in 1707. This book examines the union of England and Scotland by weaving the navy into a political narrative of events between the regal union in 1603 and the parliamentary union in 1707. For most of the century the Scottish crown had no separate naval force which made the Stuart monarchs' navy, seen by them as a personal not a state force, unusual in being an institution which had a relationship with both kingdoms. This did not necessarily make the navy a shared organisation, as it continued to be financed from and based in England and was predominantly English. Nevertheless, the navy is an unusually good prism through which the nature of the regal union can be interrogated as English commanded ships interacted with Scottish authorities, and as Scots looked to the navy for protection from foreign invaders, such as the Dutch in the Forth in 1667, and for Scottish merchant ships trading with the Baltic and elsewhere. These interactions were often harmonious, but there were also many instances of tensions, particularly in the 1690s. The book illustrates both the ambiguous relationship between England and Scotland in the seventeenth century and also the navy's under-appreciated role in creating the political union of Britain.

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.

An account of the naval commander Roger of Lauria and his command of warfare at sea. Just before Vespers on 30 March 1282 at the Church of the Holy Spirit on the outskirts of Palermo, a drunken soldier of the occupying French forces of Charles of Anjou accosted a young Sicilian noblewoman. It sparked a bloody conflagration, the so-called War of the Sicilian Vespers, that would ultimately involve every part of the Mediterranean. The struggle for the coveted throne of Sicily eventually enmeshed all the great powers of medieval Europe - thepope, the Byzantine Emperor and the kings of France, England and Aragon. Because the core of the Kingdom of Sicily was a wealthy, strategic island dominating the centre of the Mediterranean, the battles were fought mostly at sea.And in war at sea, a single figure proved pre-eminent: Roger of Lauria - Aragon's "Admiral of Admirals". In the course of some twenty years of naval combat, he orchestrated decisive victories in six pitched battles and numerous limited actions, never once suffering a defeat: a feat never equalled - not even by the legendary Lord Horatio Nelson. Drawing from multiple Sicilian and Catalan sources as well as Angevin and Aragonese registers, this chronological narrative details the tactics and strategy Lauria employed to become the most successful galley fleet commander of the Middle Ages, while highlighting a crucial conflict at a pivotal point in European history, long overshadowed by the Hundred Years War. CHARLES D. STANTON is a retired US naval officer and airline pilot; he gained his PhD at the University of Cambridge.