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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Maritime history
This book examines how the principal British maritime industries -
shipping, shipbuilding and ports - adapted, or failed to adapt, to
a changing world in the period between 1918 to 1990, and discusses
their reactions to the great opportunities seemingly offered by
offshore oil and gas from the mid-1960s. At the outbreak of World
War I, Britain's maritime industries still dominated the world. The
British merchant fleet was by far the largest in the world, the
nation's shipbuilding output eclipsed all rivals, and British ports
were busy and expanding.By 1990, British shipping was a shadow of
its former self, shipbuilding seemed on the verge of total
collapse, and although the ports had been modernised, trade was
concentrated at only a few of them. For almost four centuries,
these industries had been of vital importance to Britain's wealth
and power, but by 1990, politicians scarcely gave them a second
thought.
What happened at Pearl Harbor? What really happened? The Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor is one of those rare moments where, in the
space of a few hours, the "hinge of Fate" turned and the course of
history was utterly changed. Nearly eight decades later, it has
become one of those events which almost everyone knows of, but
hardly anyone seems to know about. How-and why-did the Empire of
Japan and the United States of America collide on blood and flames
that Sunday morning when the sun rose and the bombs fell? Pearl:
The 7th Day of December 1941 is the story of how America and Japan,
two nations with seemingly little over which to quarrel, let peace
slip away, so that on that "day which will live in infamy," more
than 350 dive bombers, high-level bombers, torpedo planes, and
fighters of the Imperial Japanese Navy did their best to cripple
the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet, killing 2,403 American
servicemen and civilians, and wounding another 1,178. It's a story
of emperors and presidents, diplomats and politicians, admirals and
generals - and it's also the tale of ordinary sailors, soldiers,
and airmen, all of whom were overtaken by a rush of events that
ultimately overwhelmed them. Pearl shows the real reasons why the
America's political and military leaders underestimated Japan's
threat America's security, and why their Japanese counterparts
ultimately felt compelled to launch the Pearl Harbor attack. Pearl
offers more than superficial answers, showing how both sides
blundered their way through arrogance, over-confidence, racism,
bigotry, and old-fashioned human error to arrive at the moment when
the Japanese were convinced that there was no alternative to war.
Once battle is joined, Pearl then takes the reader into the heart
of the attack, where the fighting men of both nations showed that
neither side had a monopoly on heroism, courage, cowardice, or
luck, as they fought to protect their nations.
This is a highly readable and generously illustrated history of
piracy and privateering in the Indian Ocean. At the beginning of
the 17th century, pirates infested the Caribbean waters, harassing
the major European powers, but they were eventually driven from the
region. Some pirates took refuge in Madagascar, where they
attempted to capture the lucrative cargo carried by vessels on the
shipping route of the European East India Companies. At the end of
the 18th century, in order to weaken British influence in the
Indian Ocean, France hired privateers to attack commercial ships of
the British East India Company. This was an alternative to open
warfare, and heralded the privateers' era. Author Denis Piat
recounts the history of the pirates and privateers in the Indian
Ocean, especially in Mauritius, from the pirates' arrival in the
region to the wrecked ships still to be found today in deep water,
and provides portraits of the most famous privateers among them.
Passed down in the oral tradition and sung traditionally as working
songs, sea shanties tell the human stories of life at sea: hard
graft, battling the elements, the loss of ships or pining for a
lady on shore. Its pages decorated with hand-drawn or wood-cut
illustrations from celebrated artist Jonny Hannah, Sailor Song
addresses the current modern revival of sea shanties, and seeks to
celebrate and to explore the historical, musical and social history
of the traditional sea song through 40 beautiful, mournful,
haunting and uplifting shanties. Acclaimed shanty devotee Gerry
Smyth presents the background to each one alongside musical
notation. The lyrics are elaborated with explanations of
terminology, context including historical facts and accounts of
life at sea, and the characters, both fictional and non-fictional,
that appear in the songs from the great age of sail to the last
days of square-rig. Where appropriate, a direct digital link is
made to a shanty recording in the British Library Sound Archive.
The story of how the fearsome Atlantic Ocean was explored by early
sailors, including the Vikings, whose brilliant navigation matched
their bravery. The early voyages into the deep waters of the
Atlantic rank among the greatest feats of exploration. In tiny,
fragile vessels the Irish monks searched for desolate places in the
ocean in which to pursue their vocation; their successors, the
Vikings, with their superb ship-building skills, created fast,
sea-worthy craft which took them far out into the unknown, until
they finally reached Greenland and America. G.J. Marcus looks at
the history of theseexpeditions not only as a historian, but also
as a practical sailor. Besides the problem of what these early
explorers actually achieved, he poses the even more fascinating
question of how they did it, without compass, quadrant, or
astrolabe. From the opening descriptions of the launching of a
curach on the Aran Islands, through the great pages of the Norse
Sagas describing the first recorded sighting of America, the author
brilliantly conveys theexcitement and danger of the conquest of the
North Atlantic in a narrative that is based equally on scholarly
research and sound seamanship. G.J. MARCUS's previous books include
The Maiden Voyage, on the sinking of the Titanic.
Crosbie Smith explores the trials and tribulations of
first-generation Victorian mail steamship lines, their passengers,
proprietors and the public. Eyewitness accounts show in rich detail
how these enterprises engineered their ships, constructed
empire-wide systems of steam navigation and won or lost public
confidence in the process. Controlling recalcitrant elements within
and around steamship systems, however, presented constant
challenges to company managers as they attempted to build trust and
confidence. Managers thus wrestled to control shipbuilding and
marine engine-making, coal consumption, quality and supply,
shipboard discipline, religious readings, relations with the
Admiralty and government, anxious proprietors, and the media -
especially following a disaster or accident. Emphasizing
interconnections between maritime history, the history of
engineering and Victorian culture, Smith's innovative history of
early ocean steamships reveals the fraught uncertainties of
Victorian life on the seas.
First Published in 1967. Using a number of original sources of
newspapers, rare documents, magazines and records this book offers
the history of Liverpool privateering and the delicate subject of
the Liverpool slave trading.
A sociological investigation into maritime state power told through
an exploration of how the British Empire policed piracy. Early in
the seventeenth-century boom of seafaring, piracy allowed many
enterprising and lawless men to make fortunes on the high seas, due
in no small part to the lack of policing by the British crown. But
as the British empire grew from being a collection of far-flung
territories into a consolidated economic and political enterprise
dependent on long-distance trade, pirates increasingly became a
destabilizing threat. This development is traced by sociologist
Matthew Norton in The Punishment of Pirates, taking the reader on
an exciting journey through the shifting legal status of pirates in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Norton shows us that
eliminating this threat required an institutional shift: first
identifying and defining piracy, and then brutally policing it. The
Punishment of Pirates develops a new framework for understanding
the cultural mechanisms involved in dividing, classifying, and
constructing institutional order by tracing the transformation of
piracy from a situation of cultivated ambiguity to a criminal
category with violently patrolled boundaries-ending with its
eradication as a systemic threat to trade in the English Empire.
Replete with gun battles, executions, jailbreaks, and courtroom
dramas, Norton's book offers insights for social theorists,
political scientists, and historians alike.
May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth is a privileged glimpse into the
private correspondence of the officers and sailors who set out in
May 1845 on the Erebus and Terror for Sir John Franklin's fateful
expedition to the Arctic. The letters of the crew and their
correspondents begin with the journey's inception and early
planning, going on to recount the ships' departure from the river
Thames, their progress up the eastern coast of Great Britain to
Stromness in Orkney, and the crew's exploits as far as the
Whalefish Islands off the western coast of Greenland, from where
the ships forever departed the society that sent them forth. As the
realization dawned that something was amiss, heartfelt letters to
the missing were sent with search expeditions; those letters,
returned unread, tell poignant stories of hope. Assembled
completely and conclusively from extensive archival research,
including in far-flung family and private collections, the
correspondence allows the reader to peer over the shoulders of
these men, to experience their excitement and anticipation, their
foolhardiness, and their fears. The Franklin expedition continues
to excite enthusiasts and scholars worldwide. May We Be Spared to
Meet on Earth provides new insights into the personalities of those
on board, the significance of the voyage as they saw it, and the
dawning awareness of the possibility that they would never return
to British shores or their families.
The Titanic is one of the most famous maritime disasters of all
time, but did the Titanic really sink on the morning of 15 April
1912? Titanic's older sister, the nearly identical Olympic, was
involved in a serious accident in September 1911 - an accident that
may have made her a liability to her owners the White Star Line.
Since 1912 rumours of a conspiracy to switch the two sisters in an
elaborate insurance scam has always loomed behind the tragic story
of the Titanic. Could the White Star Line have really switched the
Olympic with her near identical sister in a ruse to intentionally
sink their mortally damaged flagship in April 1912, in order to
cash in on the insurance policy? Laying bare the famous conspiracy
theory, world-respected Titanic researchers investigate claims that
the sister ships were switched in an insurance scam and provide
definitive proof for whether it could - or could not - have
happened.
Did you ever wonder which civilisation first took to water in small
craft? Who worked out how to measure distance or plot a course at
sea? Or why the humble lemon rose to such prominence in the diets
of sailors? Taking one hundred objects that have been pivotal in
the development of sailing and sailing boats, the book provides a
fascinating insight into the history of sailing. From the earliest
small boats, through magnificent Viking warships, to the technology
that powers some of the most sophisticated modern yachts, the book
also covers key developments such as keeps and navigational aids
such as the astrolabe, sextant and compass. Other more apparently
esoteric objects from all around the world are also included,
including the importance of citrus fruit in the prevention of
scurvy, scrimshaw made from whalebone and the meaning of sailor's
tattoos. Beautifully illustrated with lively and insightful text,
it's a perfect gift for the real or armchair sailor, the book gives
an alternative insight into how and why we sail the way we do
today.
Jean Barbot, who served as a commercial agent on French
slave-trading voyages to West Africa in 1678-9 and 1681-2, in 1683
began an account of the Guinea coast, based partly on his voyage
journals (only one of which is extant) and partly on previous
printed sources. The work was interrupted by his flight to England,
as a Huguenot refugee, in 1685, and not finished until 1688. When
Barbot found that his lengthy French account could not be
published, he rewrote it in English, enlarging it even further, and
then continually revising it up to his death in 1712. The
manuscript was eventually published in 1732. Barbot's book had
considerable influence on later European attitudes to Black Africa
and the Atlantic slave trade and in modern writings on both
subjects is frequently cited as evidence. The French account serves
as the base for the present edition and is presented in English
translation but additional material in the later English version is
inserted. The edition concentrates on Barbot's original
information. He copied much from earlier sources - this derived
material is omitted but is identified in the notes. The original
material, mainly on Senegal, Sierra Leone, River Sess, Gold Coast
and the Calabars, is extensively annotated, not least with
comparative references to other sources. Apart from its narrative
interest, the edition thus provides a starting point for the
critical assessment of a range of early sources on Guinea. The
edition opens with an introductory essay discussing Barbot's life
and career and analysing his sources. Barbot provided a large
number of his own drawings of topographical and ethnographical
features, in particular drawings of almost all of the European
forts in Guinea. Many of these illustrations are reproduced. This
volume covers the coast from the River Volta to Cape Lopez. The
main pagination of this and the previous volume (2nd series 175)
series is continuous. This is a new print-on-demand hardback
edition of the volume first published in 1991.
Jean Barbot, who served as a commercial agent on French
slave-trading voyages to West Africa in 1678-9 and 1681-2, in 1683
began an account of the Guinea coast, based partly on his voyage
journals (only one of which is extant) and partly on previous
printed sources. The work was interrupted by his flight to England,
as a Huguenot refugee, in 1685, and not finished until 1688. When
Barbot found that his lengthy French account could not be
published, he rewrote it in English, enlarging it even further, and
then continually revising it up to his death in 1712. The
manuscript was eventually published in 1732. Barbot's book had
considerable influence on later European attitudes to Black Africa
and the Atlantic slave trade and in modern writings on both
subjects is frequently cited as evidence. The French account serves
as the base for the present edition and is presented in English
translation but additional material in the later English version is
inserted. The edition concentrates on Barbot's original
information. He copied much from earlier sources - this derived
material is omitted but is identified in the notes. The original
material, mainly on Senegal, Sierra Leone, River Sess, Gold Coast
and the Calabars, is extensively annotated, not least with
comparative references to other sources. Apart from its narrative
interest, the edition thus provides a starting point for the
critical assessment of a range of early sources on Guinea. The
edition opens with an introductory essay discussing Barbot's life
and career and analysing his sources. Barbot provided a large
number of his own drawings of topographical and ethnographical
features, in particular drawings of almost all of the European
forts in Guinea. Many of these illustrations are reproduced. This
volume covers the coast from Senegal to Gold Coast. The main
pagination of this and the following volume (Second series 176)
series is continuous. This is a new print-on-demand hardback
edition of the volume first published in 1991.
This enthusiastically reviewed, scrupulously researched and
prize-winning book, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week,
chronicles a resonant episode of Victorian history. It is the tale
of the agitation led by Samuel Plimsoll MP, 'The Sailor's Friend',
and by his wife Eliza, who worked together to defend sailors
against nefarious practices including overloading and the use of
unseaworthy 'coffin-ships'. The backlash of libel cases and
vilification almost ruined Plimsoll, but his drive and passion made
him feverishly popular with the public; he was the subject of
plays, novels, street ballads and music hall songs. With the
demonstrative support of the nation, he faced down his enemies,
came close to ousting Disraeli's government and achieved lasting
safety measures for merchant sailors, including the load line that
bears his name. Nicolette Jones throws light on a cross-section of
Victorian society and tells the story of an epic legal, social, and
political battle for justice, which is still an inspiring example
of how the altruism and courage of determined individuals can make
the world a better place.
This is the first of three volumes detailing the history of the
Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers and naval air
squadrons, during the Second World War. It deals with the formative
period between 1939 and 1941 when the Fleet Air Arm tried to
recover from the impact of dual control and economic stringencies
during the inter-war period while conducting a wide range of
operations. There is in depth coverage of significant operations
including the Norwegian campaign, Mediterrranean actions such as
the attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto and the Battle of Cape
Matapan, and the torpedo attacks on the German battleship Bismarck.
Incidents involving the loss of and damage to aircraft carriers,
including the sinking of Ark Royal, one of the most famous ships in
the early years of World War Two, are also reported. Of major
importance are key planning and policy issues. These include the
requirements for aircraft carriers, the evolving debate regarding
the necessary types of aircraft and attempts to provide sufficient
facilities ashore for naval air squadrons. A wide range of official
documents are used to enable the reader to appreciate the
complexity of the operations and other issues which faced the Fleet
Air Arm. This volume will appeal to everyone interested in how the
Royal Navy adapted to the use of air power in the Second World War.
Its reports bring actions vividly to life. Its correspondence
demonstrates the fundamental foundation of planning, policy and
logistics. In common with succeeding volumes on the Fleet Air Arm,
this volume provides a new and vital perspective on how Britain
fought the Second World War.
Scottish Arctic Whaling brings to light a previously little-known
but important Scottish industry. The author's extensive use of
original sources such as log-books and diaries shows that hundreds
of whaling vessels, sailing variously from sixteen east-coast
Scottish ports, harvested more than 20,000 bowhead whales at East
Greenland, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. And they did so under almost unimaginably
demanding and hazardous conditions. More than 110 ships were lost,
while others were often detained within the pack-ice, causing the
whale men to suffer starvation, disease, scurvy, frostbite and
death. In 1836 alone, more than 100 whalers on the Advice and
Thomas, Dundee, and Dee of Aberdeen perished when they became
entrapped at Davis Strait. Nevertheless, by the second half of the
nineteenth century, through hard work, skill and perseverance,
Scotland had a virtual monopoly on Arctic oil and bone, until
seriously depleted stocks and the outbreak of the First World War
brought the industry to a close.
Despite the port's prominence in maritime history, its cultural
significance has long been neglected in favour of its role within
economic and imperial networks. Defined by their intersection of
maritime and urban space, port towns were sites of complex cultural
exchanges. This book, the product of international scholarship,
offers innovative and challenging perspectives on the cultural
histories of ports, ranging from eighteenth-century Africa to
twentieth-century Australasia and Europe. The essays in this
important collection explore two key themes; the nature and
character of 'sailortown' culture and port-town life, and the
representations of port towns that were forged both within and
beyond urban-maritime communities. The book's exploration of port
town identities and cultures, and its use of a rich array of
methodological approaches and cultural artefacts, will make it of
great interest to both urban and maritime historians. It also
represents a major contribution to the emerging, interdisciplinary
field of coastal studies.
Maritime workers occupy a central place in global labour history.
This new and compelling account from Australia, shows seafaring and
waterside unions engaged in a shared history of activism for
legally regulated wages and safe liveable conditions for all who go
to sea. Maritime Men of the Asia-Pacific provides a corrective to
studies which overlook this region's significance as a provider of
the world's maritime labour force and where unions have a rich
history of reaching across their differences to forge connections
in solidarity. From the 'militant young Australian' Harry Bridges
whose progressive unionism transformed the San Francisco
waterfront, to Australia's successful implementation of the
Maritime Labour Convention 2006, this is a story of vision and
leadership on the international stage. Unionists who saw themselves
as internationalists were also operating within a national and
imperial framework where conflicting interests and differences of
race and ideology had to be overcome. Union activists in India,
China and Japan struggled against indentured labour and 'coolie'
standards. They linked with their fellow-unionists in pursuing an
ideal of international labour rights against the power of
shipowners and anti-union governments. This is a complex story of
endurance, cooperation and conflict and its empowering legacy.
From a chance acquisition of a battered leather-bound notebook, an
extensive and extremely well-written narrative was revealed which
recounted the life of a midshipman in the East India Company,
through to the time when he owned his own vessels and settled in
Tasmania. "Chronometer Jack" is an outstanding autobiography by
John Miller, an Edinburgh-born Shipmaster and Coastguard officer,
an educated man whose working life commenced on board East India
Company ships. It provides many insights into the tough but
sometimes amusing life under William Younghusband on the Lord
Castlereagh, the tyrannical Tommy Larkins on the Marquis Camden and
Thomas Balderston on the Asia. Seconded to an opium vessel and the
associated risks of trading in opium in the 1820s, Miller
experienced the trauma of capture by the Chinese. Returning to
Scotland, he married Jessie Adamson, the sister of John and Robert,
famed pioneers of photography. Later, Miller set up in business as
a master-shipowner in the convict colony of Tasmania, trading
mainly with Sydney and Port Phillip. The gripping narrative is full
of incident and unforgettable characters and his first-hand
observations on society in Van Diemen's Land when still a convict
colony make compelling reading. Bankrupted, Miller and his family
were forced to return to Britain where circumstances forced him to
join the Coastguard, serving in Northumberland, Tynemouth and
Lincolnshire. His frustrations with bureaucracy, the higher status
accorded former Royal Navy Officers and, in his recruiting
capacity, the relatively poor quality of seamen joining the Royal
Naval Reserve, constantly surface in the text - a rare insight into
the occupation and tribulations experienced by a Coastguard officer
in the 1850s and '60s. Although Captain Miller's original
manuscript included numerous references to people identified only
by an initial letter, most of these were subsequently identified,
providing his narrative with a rich and well-attested
circumstantial context.
The Zheng family of merchants and militarists emerged from the
tumultuous seventeenth century amid a severe economic depression, a
harrowing dynastic transition from the ethnic Chinese Ming to the
Manchu Qing, and the first wave of European expansion into East
Asia. Under four generations of leaders over six decades, the Zheng
had come to dominate trade across the China Seas. Their average
annual earnings matched, and at times exceeded, those of their
fiercest rivals: the Dutch East India Company. Although nominally
loyal to the Ming in its doomed struggle against the Manchus, the
Zheng eventually forged an autonomous territorial state based on
Taiwan with the potential to encompass the family's entire economic
sphere of influence. Through the story of the Zheng, Xing Hang
provides a fresh perspective on the economic divergence of early
modern China from western Europe, its twenty-first-century
resurgence, and the meaning of a Chinese identity outside China.
This is the story of the unusually long and interesting career of a
small Scottish schooner spent primarily in the southern hemisphere.
From the construction of the vessel to the careers of those who
sailed in her, the story is full of rogues, heroes, the famous and
infamous, as well as ordinary people calmly going about their daily
business in tempestuous and difficult times. Visionary colonists,
whalers, sealers, Maoris, botanists, butchers, missionaries,
cannibals, convicts, aristocrats, explorers and more are linked in
this narrative and thereby exemplify the courage, skill and vision
of people who experience hardship, danger and adversity in their
quest for riches in colonial lands.
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