In the decades after the United States formally declared its independence in 1776, Americans struggled to gain recognition of their new republic and their rights as citizens. None had to fight harder than the nation's seamen, whose labor took them far from home and deep into the Atlantic world. Citizen Sailors tells the story of how their efforts to become American at sea in the midst of war and revolution created the first national, racially inclusive model of United States citizenship. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal immerses us in sailors' pursuit of safe passage through the ocean world during the turbulent age of revolution. Challenged by British press-gangs and French privateersmen, who considered them Britons and rejected their citizenship claims, American seamen demanded that the U.S. government take action to protect them. In response, federal leaders created a system of national identification documents for sailors and issued them to tens of thousands of mariners of all races-nearly a century before such credentials came into wider use. Citizenship for American sailors was strikingly ahead of its time: it marked the federal government's most extensive foray into defining the boundaries of national belonging until the Civil War era, and the government's most explicit recognition of black Americans' equal membership as well. This remarkable system succeeded in safeguarding seafarers, but it fell victim to rising racism and nativism after 1815. Not until the twentieth century would the United States again embrace such an inclusive vision of American nationhood.

Provides a huge amount of detail about everyday maritime life in the important port of Whitby, home port of Captain Cook. The ancient but isolated town of Whitby has made a huge contribution to the maritime history of Britain: Captain Cook learned sailing and navigation here; during the eighteenth century the town was a provider of an exceptionally large number of transport ships in wartime; and in the nineteenth century Whitby became a major whaling port. This book examines how it came to be such an important shipping centre. Drawing on extensive maritime records, the author shows that it was commercial entrepreneurship which brought about the growth of Whitby's shipping industry, first in the export of local alum and carrying coal to London, then in northern European trades, alongside its very successful ship-building industry. The book includes details from the financial accounts of voyages. These provide a fascinating insight into seafaring in the period with details of the hierarchical structure of crews,and of shipboard apprentices learning the trade. Overall, a very full picture emerges of every aspect of the shipping industry of this key port. ROSALIN BARKER is an Honorary Fellow in the History Department at the University of Hull, and was formerly a tutor in adult education at the universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Hull and the Open University.

One of the most acclaimed Nelson books of recent years, this collection presents over 500 letters which record his life and exploits in his own words. Nelson was a letter writer of great flair and somehow, between his naval service and recovering from various illnesses and wounds and, of course, despite his famously tangled love-life, he managed to write an extraordinary numberof them, on all subjects and addressed to all manner of recipients. This widely-praised volume collects together over 500 of those letters, dating from 1777 to just days before the Battle of Trafalgar that would seal both his fateand his fame. They range from detailed battle orders to passionate love letters, from the business of securing - or giving - patronage to diplomatic reports for kings, queens, politicians and dignitaries. All aspects of Nelson's life are covered here, particularly his seldom-glimpsed family life, so that the reader cannot fail to see him in a new light. Nor can any reader fail to marvel at the combination of traits that made the man great: his brilliant leadership and organisation, his daring and ruthless military mind and, not least, his very real compassion, even for his enemies. Dr COLIN WHITE was Director of the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth, UK. One of Britain's leading naval historians, he was recognised worldwide as an authority on Nelson. In 2005, he was the mastermind behind the hugely successful 'Trafalgar Festival', for which he was awarded the Longman-History Today Trustees Prize. Published in association with the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Naval Museum.

Unlike other books on eighteenth-century British admirals, which tell and re-tell the history of admirals' successful exploits, this book investigates what exactly were the qualities which made for successful naval leadership in this period. It identifies twelve key qualities, and discusses how far each of the many leading admirals of the period possessed these qualities. It argues that Hawke and Nelson were the outstanding naval leaders of the eighteenth century, outlining their respective careers and showing how both of them possessed, more than the other admirals, the key qualities of leadership. Moreover, it argues that British fleet tactics and blockade strategy reached a new high level in the middle of the eighteenth century; that Hawke played the leading operational role in achieving this; and that Hawke has been undervalued both in the history of the British navy and in public estimation of Britain's great military and naval leaders. Overall, the book provides a refreshing reappraisal of British naval warfare in the eighteenth century, enabling readers to relive key battles and other encounters, and appreciate how crucial, alongside other key factors which are also discussed, the leadership qualities of the admirals were in bringing about success, or, in some cases, failure. Ruddock Mackay has published extensively on maritime history and taught at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth and the University of St Andrews. Michael Duffy, who was Director of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies at the University of Exeter 1991-2007, has also published extensively on maritime history.

This second volume of articles by G.V. Scammell offers new insights into the history of British and European shipping in the centuries of Europe's penetration into the oceans of the world, from the 15th to the 18th century. It examines the building, ownership and operation of merchantmen in the context of economic and social developments of the period, combining this with the investigation of the vital, but still comparatively neglected, subjects of the lives, working conditions, beliefs, skills and behaviour of seamen. This is the basis for discussion of the means and methods by which British shipping and merchants established themselves in oceanic trades, including those of other powers, considered in relation to the growth of British maritime and commercial supremacy. The final studies then examine the causes and consequences of European and British seaborne expansion, particularly in Asia.

The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery shows how, at a moment of crisis after the Age of Revolutions, ambitious planters in the Upper US South, Cuba, and Brazil forged a new set of relationships with one another to sidestep the financial dominance of Great Britain and the northeastern United States. They hired a transnational group of chemists, engineers, and other "plantation experts" to assist them in adapting the technologies of the Industrial Revolution to suit "tropical" needs and maintain profitability. These experts depended on the know-how of slaves alongside whom they worked. Bondspeople with industrial craft skills played key roles in the development of new production technologies like sugar mills. While the very existence of skilled enslaved workers contradicted the racial ideologies underpinning slavery and allowed black people to wield new kinds of authority within the plantation world, their contributions reinforced the economic dynamism of the slave economies of Cuba, Brazil, and the Upper South. When separate wars broke out in all three locations in the 1860s, the transnational bloc of masters and experts took up arms to perpetuate the Greater Caribbean they had built throughout the 1840s and 1850s. Slaves played key wartime roles on the opposing side, helping put an end to chattel slavery. However, the worldwide racial division of labor that emerged from the reinvented plantation complex has proved more durable.

This timely collection brings together twelve original essays on the cultural meaning of the sea in British literature and history, from early modern times to the present. Interdisciplinary in conception, it charts metaphorical and material links between the idea of the sea in the cultural imagination and its significance for the social and political history of Britain, offering a fresh analysis of the impact of the ocean on the formation of British cultural identities. Among the cultural and literary artifacts considered are early modern legal treatises on marine boundaries, Renaissance and Romantic poetry, 19th- and 20th-century novels, popular sea songs, recent Hollywood films, as well as a diverse range of historical and critical writings. Writers discussed include Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Scott, Conrad, du Maurier, Unsworth, O'Brian, and others. All these cultural and literary 'fictions of the sea' are set in relation to wider issues relevant to maritime history and the historical experience of seafaring: problems of navigation and orientation, piracy, empire, colonialism, slavery, multi-ethnic shipboard communities, masculinity, gender relations. By combining the interests of three related but distinct areas of study-the analysis of sea fiction, critical maritime history, and cultural studies-in a focus upon the historical meaning of the sea in relation to its textual and cultural representation, Fictions of the Sea offers an original contribution to the practice of existing disciplines.

This is an entirely new Naval Staff History covering the period immediately after the Second World War and the Royal Navy operations to prevent illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine, at the time under British Mandate from the United Nations. The Palestine Patrol, as it became known, illustrates clearly the problems facing navies conducting operations other than war; in particular those involving maritime embargo measures.

This book presents an account of the use and actions of the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, one of the primary pieces of the German navy in WWII.

Covers all German heavy bomber models used during WWII.

Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became the most divisive issue facing the new government. The founders particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams debated fiercely. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect from pirates or drain the treasury and provoke hostility? Britain alone had hundreds of powerful warships.

From the decision to build six heavy frigates, through the cliff-hanger campaign against Tripoli, to the war that shook the world in 1812, Ian W. Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and the narrative flair of Patrick O'Brian."

This authoritative work forms a comprehensive examination of the legal and historical context of marine insurance, providing a detailed overview of the events and factors leading to its codification in the Marine Insurance Act 1906. It investigates the development of the legal principles and case law that underpin the Act to reveal how successful this codification truly was, and to demonstrate how these historical precedents remain relevant to marine insurance law to this day. Beginning with the pivotal year of 1756, Rob Merkin QC organises his analysis era by era, situating the leading cases and emerging fundamentals of the marine insurance industry in the context of external events such as war, the growth of free international trade, and the expansion of empire. Offering insight into the origins of familiar legal principles in the field, the book provides a deeper understanding of the legal framework within which historical events took place and how this shaped both the development of marine insurance law and the political and economic circumstances surrounding it. Key features include: In-depth research by one of the leading experts in marine insurance law Context for and therefore deeper understanding of legal principles in the field An authoritative account of the development of modern law of marine insurance through its historical roots. Legal historians interested in marine insurance and international maritime law more broadly as well as other historians of the period will find the depth of research and breadth of coverage in this book invaluable. Its grounding of important principles in their historical context will also be useful to practising lawyers in the field grappling with current marine insurance issues.

This book surveys the lives and careers of naval officers across Europe at the height of the age of sail. It traces the professionalization of naval officers by exploring their preparation for life at sea and the challenges they faced while in command. It also demonstrates the uniqueness of the maritime experience, as long voyages and isolation at sea cemented their bond with naval officers across Europe while separating them from landlubbers. It depicts, in a way no previous study has, the parameters of their shared experiences-both the similarities that crossed national boundaries and connected officers, and the differences that can only be seen from an international perspective.

Dampier's observations and descriptions are as valid today as they were in the 17th century and this book is to be commended to anyone who is interested in the great early voyages of exploration. THE REVIEW William Dampier [1651-1715] is the most remarkable seaman that England produced in the century and a half between Drake and Captain Cook. They each circumnavigated the world once; Dampier did so three times. He commanded the firstgovernment-funded voyage of discovery with a specific mission to report on matters of government and science. A good seaman, but a bad commander, he spent most of his life as a privateer, buccaneer, or pirate, and his career culminated in the capture of the great treasure galleon sent each year from the New World to Spain. But he was also a great writer, author of the first major English travel book, A New Voyage Round the World, and of scientifictreatises and descriptions of natural history. His expedition to Australia was in many ways disastrous, with his ships being lost; but the book that came out of it, A Voyage to New Holland, is rich in evocative accounts ofthe peoples and places he had found or visited. He was not afraid to record things he could not explain, for `better qualified persons who shall come after me', and his books were reference works used extensively not only by subsequent voyagers but by modern scientists who continue to cite his observations. This edited account of his voyages gives an admirable picture of this fascinating and unorthodox figure in his own words. GERALD NORRIS writes on maritime and musical subjects. His books include West Country Pirates and Buccaneers, Stanford, the Cambridge Jubilee and Tchaikovsky and A Musical Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland.

Admiral Raoul Castex is France's most important modern naval strategist. Military historian Eugenia Kiesling offers the essence of Castex's original five volume study, Theories Strategiques, in a useful one-volume abridgment and a very readable translation. It emphasizes the admiral's method of strategic analysis while omitting most of the historical narrative. Included are chapters defining strategy and relating it to policy and geography, analyzing the role of maritime forces and the significance of command at sea, prescribing a theory of conduct of operations, and introducing Castex's favorite themes: strategic manoeuvre, strategie generale, and the theory of "perturbation." Two narrative chapters on German operations in the North Sea from 1914 to 1916 remain as examples of the author's historical style. The introduction places Castex's work in four distinct contexts: the international debate among naval theorists on the nature and importance of "command at sea," the controversy within France between advocates of the "historical" and "material" schools of naval strategy, the contemporary concern over coordinated naval strategy for total war, and his contribution to the formulation of French strategy between the world wars. In an era of expanding global responsibilities and shrinking national economies, Castex's balanced view of naval power offers many insights for today's new generation of naval thinkers.

Sea-power made the British Empire what it was: without sea-power there would have been no empire, or at least no empire in the form it actually took. In this masterful analysis of the role of the sea in the history of the British Empire, Jeremy Black follows in the tradition of classic works by C. R. Boxer on the Dutch and Portuguese seaborne empires and by J. H. Parry on the Spanish seaborne empire. Black considers how the ocean affected British exploration, defense, trade, commerce, and the navy, as well as the attitudes and perceptions of the British people themselves.
The book covers the process of imperial expansion, the decline of the Empire, and the role of the navy in the postimperial age. Attractively illustrated and wide in scope, the book demonstrates the profound influence that proximity to the sea has exerted on virtually every aspect of British history and culture.

Shows how the image of Cornish wreckers as villains deliberately luring ships on to the rocks is a myth. Although the popular myth of Cornish wrecking is well-known within British culture, this book is the first comprehensive, systematic inquiry to separate out the layers of myth from the actual practices. Weaving in legal, social and cultural history, it traces the development of wreck law - the right to salvage goods washed on shore - and explores the responses of a coastal populace who found their customary practices increasingly outside the law, especially as local individual rights were being curtailed and the role of centralised authority asserted. This groundbreaking study also considers the myths surrounding wrecking, showing how these developed over time, and how moral attitudes towards wrecking changed. Overall, the picture of evil wreckers deliberately luring ships onto the rocks is dispelled, to be replaced by a detailed picture of a coastal populace - poor and gentry alike - who were involved in a multi-faceted, sophisticated coastal practice and who had their own complex popular beliefs about the harvest and salvage of goods washing ashore from shipwreck. CATHRYN J. PEARCE holds a PhD in Maritime History from Greenwich Maritime Institute. A former associate professor of history with the University of Alaska Anchorage's Kenai Peninsula College, she is now with University Campus Suffolk where she continues to research on the relationship of coastal people with the sea.

In 1498 a young captain sailed from Portugal, circumnavigated Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean, and discovered the sea route to the Indies, opening up access to the fabled wealth of the East. It was the longest voyage known to history; the ships were pushed to their limits, their crews were racked by storms and devastated by disease. However, the greatest enemy was neither nature nor the fear of venturing into unknown worlds. With blood-red Crusader crosses emblazoned on their sails, the explorers arrived in the heart of the Muslim East at a time when the old hostilities between Christianity and Islam had intensified. In two voyages that spanned six years, Vasco da Gama would fight a running sea battle that would ultimately change the fate of three continents. The Last Crusade is an epic tale of spies, intrigue, and treachery; of bravado, brinkmanship, and confused - often comical collisions - between cultures encountering one another for the first time. With the world once again tipping back East, The Last Crusade offers a key to understanding age-old religious and cultural rivalries resurgent today.

A uniquely detailed study of a Japanese aircraft carrier that took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, before being sunk at Midway. Hiryu was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1930s. Her aircraft supported the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in mid-1940 and during the first month of the Pacific War, she took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Wake Island. She supported the conquest of the Dutch East Indies in January 1942 and her aircraft bombed Darwin, Australia, and continued to assist in the Dutch East Indies campaign. In April, Hiryu's aircraft helped sink two British heavy cruisers and several merchant ships during the Indian Ocean raid. After a brief refit, Hiryu and three other fleet carriers of the First Air Fleet participated in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. After bombarding American forces on the atoll, the carriers were attacked by aircraft from Midway and the carriers USS Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown. Dive bombers from Yorktown and Enterprise crippled Hiryu and set her afire. She was scuttled the following day after it became clear that she could not be salvaged. The loss of Hiryu and three other IJN carriers at Midway was a crucial strategic defeat for Japan and contributed significantly to the Allies' ultimate victory in the Pacific. Drawing on new research and technology, this edition is the most comprehensive examination of Hiryu ever published. It includes a complete set of detailed line drawings with fully descriptive keys and full-color 3D artwork, supported by technical details, photographs, and text on the building of the ship and a record of the ship's service history.

It is commonplace that warfare was integral to the European expansion, pitting the superiorities of the European against the inferiorities of the 'native'. The aim of this book is to look deeper, and to examine the technological, political and economic structures and capacities of the competing forces that shaped their ability to wage war, and the impact that colonial wars had on European and non-European states and societies alike. Questions of the extent to which one side could adapt its military institutions, tactics and technology to those of its opponents figure prominently. This was far from an inevitable one-way process, and environment and disease remained vital factors. The studies also situate these conflicts within the broader debate concerning the so-called military revolution, and show that our ideas of this need to be reconsidered in the light of what was happening outside Europe.

This fourth collection by David Jacoby focuses on Western economic expansion the Eastern Mediterranean during the 11th-15th centuries. He is concerned to emphasize the interconnections linking the West, Byzantium and the Levant, and to examine normative sources for commercial activity (charters, etc.) against the background of actual practice, such as reflected in notarial documents. The articles deal with the evolution of urban centres, the trade in raw materials, and at the same time questions of technology transfer and the mobility of merchants and craftsmen. Particular attention is given to the silk trade: the author argues that demographic expansion in the Byzantine world, as in the West, stimulated economic growth, and demand for silk led to the emergence of a market-driven industry in Byzantium.

This compelling narrative recounts the eighteenth and nineteenth century "shipping out" of Pacific Islanders aboard European and American vessels, a kind of "counter-exploring", that echoed the ancient voyages of settlement of their island ancestors. The author weaves numerous local, regional and national accounts into a single narrative that builds to a history of cross-cultural contact. Based on an exhaustive search and summary of primary source material, the work shows that non-Europeans played a dynamic role in the integration of the world economy and the many forms of acculturation that ensued. Chappell explains the significance of "shipping out" as a world history phenomenon and demonstrates that European expansion was a two-sided process involving a variety of participants.