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.

England and Wales have long been captivated by the lighthouse, with many of the towers built at the countries' extremities seen as iconic structures. Lighthouses have seized the imagination for centuries, and have cut striking figures wherever they stand. Newly revised and wholly redesigned, Lighthouses of England and Wales is a complete guide to the lighthouses of England, Wales and the Channel Islands in one spectacular volume. Alongside stunning photographs are pocket histories and statistics for each lighthouse, tower and aid to navigation - large or small - as well as details of how to visit them. Whether you are a lighthouse aficionado, coastal walker, or just someone with an eye for a beautiful view, this is a book not to be missed.

In 1780 Richard Sheridan noted that merchants worked 'merely for money'. However, rather than being a criticism, this was recognition of the important commercial role that merchants played in the British empire at this time. Of course, merchants desired and often made profits, but they were strictly bound by commonly-understood socio-cultural norms which formed a private-order institution of a robust business culture. In order to elucidate this business culture, this book examines the themes of risk, trust, reputation, obligation, networks and crises to demonstrate how contemporary merchants perceived and dealt with one another and managed their businesses. Merchants were able to take risks and build trust, but concerns about reputation and fulfilling obligations constrained economic opportunism. By relating these themes to an array of primary sources from ports around the British-Atlantic world, this book provides a more nuanced understanding of business culture during this period. A theme which runs throughout the book is the mercantile community as a whole and its relationship with the state. This was an important element in the British business culture of this period, although this relationship came under stress towards the end of period, forming a crisis in itself. This book argues that the business culture of the British-Atlantic mercantile community not only facilitated the conduct of day-to-day business, but also helped it to cope with short-term crises and long-term changes. This facilitated the success of the British-Atlantic economy even within the context of changing geo-politics and an under-institutionalised environment. Not working 'merely for money' was a successful business model.

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.

London has always been a bustling place of trade; once the docks teemed with men, ships and goods from all over the world. Now all has been transformed: starting at Canary Wharf and continuing at the Royal Docks, a vibrant new area has sprung into existence providing commerce, housing, shops and restaurants. In London's Docklands the author takes you on a journey though the historical development of the area. He outlines life at the docks, the troubled industrial relations, their heyday as the hub of the Empire's trade and their eventual demise. Discover a collection of unique buildings, hidden tunnels, pioneering voyages and historical riverside pubs.

The schooner Bowdoin was designed and built in 1921 in Maine under the direction of naval officer and explorer Donald MacMillan. She is the only American schooner built specifically for Arctic exploration, and has sailed above the Arctic circle 29 times. Though named for Bowdoin College, the Bowdoin is owned by the Maine Maritime Academy, where it is used in the sail training program. The Bowdoin is the official sailing vessel of the state of Maine and is a registered national landmark. Author Kathryn Beales explores the first one hundred years of the Bowdoin's life at sea, covering its inception as a vessel that could withstand the rigors of Arctic exploration, fascinating stories of it many trips north, its commissioning by the U.S. Navy during World War II-and its subsequent decommissioning and sale as a hulk-its restoration to sailing status in 1968, and its final home at Maine Maritime. The vessel continues to sail and make exploratory trips to the Arctic. Her last open-sea voyage was to Nova Scotia in 2014.

A deeply researched, analytically rich, and vivid account of England's early maritime empire Drawing on a wealth of understudied sources, historian Eleanor Hubbard explores the labor conflicts behind the rise of the English maritime empire. Freewheeling Elizabethan privateering attracted thousands of young men to the sea, where they acquired valuable skills and a reputation for ruthlessness. Peace in 1603 forced these predatory seamen to adapt to a radically changed world, one in which they were expected to risk their lives for merchants' gain, not plunder. Merchant trading companies expected sailors to relinquish their unruly ways and to help convince overseas rulers and trading partners that the English were a courteous and trustworthy "nation." Some sailors rebelled, becoming pirates and renegades; others demanded and often received concessions and shares in new trading opportunities. Treated gently by a state that was anxious to promote seafaring in order to man the navy, these determined sailors helped to keep the sea a viable and attractive trade for Englishmen.

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.

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 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.

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.

A masterpiece of World War II heroism, this book catches the spirit and tone of an incredible fighting ship, the USS Aaron Ward, a destroyer-turned-minelayer on the radar picket lines in the Pacific.

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.

Numerous successful reprints of contemporary works on rigging and seamanship indicate the breadth of interest in the lost art of handling square-rigged ships. Modelmakers, marine painters and enthusiasts need to know not only how the ships were rigged but how much sail was set in each condition of wind and sea, how the various manoeuvres were carried out, and the intricacies of operations like reefing sails or 'catting' an anchor. Contemporary treatises such as Brady's Kedge Anchor in the USA or Darcy Lever's Sheet Anchor in Britain tell only half the story, for they were training manuals intended to be used at sea in conjunction with practical experiences and often only cover officially-condoned practices. This book, on the other hand, is a modern, objective appraisal of the evidence, concerned with the actualities as much as the theory. The author has studied virtually every manual published about seamanship over a period of nearly four centuries. This gives the book a completely international balance and allows him to describe for the first time the proper historical development of seamanship among the major navies of the world.

"Sunday, August 6, 1899, is a date that for many years will be held in memory as signalizing the most dreadful accident that has ever occurred within the boundaries of the state of Maine." Bangor Daily Commercial, August 7, 1899 In an era when the only means of travel to the new, glamorous, and growing resort of Bar Harbor was through a small, isolated, rural-yet-elegant point of land on the mainland in the small town of Hancock, Disaster at Mount Desert Ferry tells the true story of what was, at the time, Maine's deadliest disaster. The heartbreaking tale starts with the arrival of a train overcrowded with passengers anxious to be among the first to cross the bay and their rush for a ferry with too few seats, turning a casual summer Sunday outing into a scene of chaos, tragedy, death and heroism, occurring as quickly as the break of a wooden gangplank. Disaster at Mount Desert Ferry tells not only the complete story of the people and the events of that day, but of a time and way of life long gone by and nearly forgotten.

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.

During the Age of Sail, black seamen could be found in many shipboard roles in the Royal Navy, such as gunners, deck-hands and 'top men', working at heights in the rigging. In the later Age of Steam, black seamen were more likely to be found on merchantmen below deck; as cooks, stewards and stokers. Nevertheless, the navy was possibly a unique institution in that black and white could work alongside each other more than in any other occupation. In this fascinating work, Dr. Ray Costello examines the work and experience of seamen of African descent in Britain's navy, from impressed slaves to free Africans, British West Indians, and British-born Black sailors. Seamen from the Caribbean and directly from Africa have contributed to both the British Royal Navy and Merchant Marine from at least the Tudor period and by the end of the period of the British Slave Trade at least three percent of all crewmen were black mariners. Black sailors signed off in British ports helped the steady growth of a black population. In spite of racial prejudice in port, relationships were forged between sailors of different races which frequently ignored expected norms when working and living together in the isolated world of the ship. Black seamen on British ships have served as by no means a peripheral force within the British Royal and Mercantile navies and were not only to be found working in both the foreground and background of naval engagements throughout their long history, but helping to ensure the supply of foodstuffs and the necessities of life to Britain. Their experiences span the gamut of sorrow and tragedy, heroism, victory and triumph.

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.

Eighteen lighthouses still stand in the Carolinas, from Currituck Lighthouse near the Virginia border down to Haig Point Lighthouse near the border with Georgia. Author Zepke tells how they were built and how they have weathered hurricanes, erosion, and neglect. Some are open to visitors; others can be seen from the coast or on a passing boat. In this second edition, all the travel guide information is updated, along with new sections on light keepers, the U.S. Lighthouse Board, and a timeline.

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.

An extraordinary true story of danger, innovation and deep sea discovery. In 1971 Alec Crawford is determined to make his fortune from ship salvage. Early attempts lead nowhere until he teams up with a new partner, Simon Martin. Diving in Hebridean waters, they explore remains of the Spanish Armada, and the wreck of the SS Politician, the vessel made famous in the Whisky Galore. But money is scarce and irregular, and the work is fraught with danger and disappointment. Until they hear of one of the most incredible wrecks of all time - the White Star Liner Oceanic, which, when built in 1899, was the biggest and most luxurious ship in the world. Widely regarded as an 'undiveable' wreck, lying somewhere off the remote island of Foula, they decide to take the challenge. They face unbelievably dangerous waters and appalling weather conditions, and when a large salvage company takes action against them, they also have a huge legal fight on their hands. But if they succeed, the rewards will be enormous...