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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Maritime history
Tom Cunliffe is one of the biggest names in the sailing world - an internationally renowned journalist and speaker, and the go-to guru when the BBC wants a presenter for a new TV series about maritime interests. For the last ten years he has edited the 'Great Seamanship' column of Yachting World magazine. Each column features an extract from a classic yachting book that covers an aspect of great seamanship. Tom introduces each extract by giving insightful background on the writer, their book and what makes their experience so worth reading about - and learning from. This book comprises Tom's 40 favourite extracts, and covers the entire scope of yachting concerns, from small-boat handling to yacht racing to long-distance cruising and exploring. Introduced in Tom's quintessential lively, engaging fashion, and illustrated with photos both from the original books and Tom's own archives, this book contains a wealth of yachting wisdom and is a collection to be treasured.
Cases of mutiny and other forms of protest are used to reveal full and interesting details of lascar shipboard life. Shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society's 2016 Gladstone Prize. Lascars were seamen from the Indian subcontinent and other areas of the Indian Ocean region who were employed aboard European ships from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. They experienced difficult working conditions and came from a wide variety of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds, which created considerable scope for friction between them and their Europeanofficers. This book, based on extensive original research, examines the role of lascars employed aboard country ships, East Indiamen and other British sailing vessels. The focus is on protest in its various forms, from mild unrest to violent acts of mutiny in which lascar crews murdered officers, seized ships and then sought refuge with local rulers. It is only through descriptions of such events - found in logbooks, seafaring diaries and the East India Company's judicial records - that many aspects of lascar life at sea become visible and lascar voices can be heard. Through the study of mutiny and other forms of protest, the book provides a detailed insight into shipboard conditions amongst lascars employed during this period. Aaron Jaffer completed his doctorate in history at the University of Warwick.
In contrast to the voluminous literature on trench warfare, few scholarly works have been written on how the First World War was experienced at sea. The conditions of war challenged the Royal Navy's position within British national identity and its own service ethos. This challenge took the form of a dialogue, fuelled by fear of civil unrest, between the discourses of paternalism from above and democratism from below. Laura Rowe explores issues of morale and discipline, using the contemporary language of discipline to shed light on key questions of how the service was able to absorb indiscipline with marked success through a subtle web of loyalties, history, ethos, traditions and customs, which were rooted in older notions of service but moulded by the new conditions of total war. In so doing, she provides not only a new methodological framework for understanding morale, but also military discipline and leadership.
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 wonderfully quirky history' SUNDAY TIMES 'The perfect read while you wait for your summer holiday to begin' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Quippy anecdotes are woven with historical reference and geographical context to give full colour' IRISH TIMES A bulwark against invasion, a conduit for exchange and a challenge to be conquered, the English Channel - 21 miles wide at its narrowest point - represents much more than a conductor of goods and people. Criss-crossing the Channel, Charlie Connelly collects its stories and brings them vividly to life, from tailing Oscar Wilde's shadow through the dark streets of Dieppe to unearthing Britain's first beauty pageant at the end of Folkestone pier. We learn that Louis Bleriot was actually a terrible pilot, the tragic fate of the first successful Channel swimmer, and that if a man with a buttered head and pigs' bladders attached to his trousers hadn't fought off an attack by dogfish we might never have had a Channel Tunnel. Charlie Connelly uncovers remarkable tales of swimmers and flyers, pirates and soldiers, heroes and villains, pioneers and refugees. Their stories are all united by the English Channel to ensure the sea that makes us an island will never be the same again.
Spanning four centuries and vast space, this book combines the global history of ideas with particular histories of encounters between European voyagers and Indigenous people in Oceania (Island Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands). Douglas shows how prevailing concepts of human difference, or race, influenced travellers' approaches to encounters. Yet their presuppositions were often challenged or transformed by the appearance, conduct, and lifestyle of local inhabitants. The book's original theory and method reveal traces of Indigenous agency in voyagers' representations which in turn provided key evidence for the natural history of man and the science of race. In keeping with recent trends in colonial historiography, Douglas diverts historical attention from imperial centres to so-called peripheries, discredits the outmoded stereotype that Europeans necessarily dominated non-Europeans, and takes local agency seriously.
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 is a factual account, written in the pace of fiction, of
hundreds of dramatic losses, heroic rescues, and violent adventures
at the stormy meeting place of northern and southern winds and
waters -- the Graveyard of the Atlantic off the Outer Banks of
North Carolina.
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.
Originally published in 1909 to 'interest and educate the public mind in the men who constitute the first line of our defensive forces', this series of beautiful illustrations and quaint descriptions explains the jobs behind the uniforms. From the responsibilities of the Admiral, to the manual work of the ordinary seaman and the duties of the stoker, this charming book provides a very British introduction to the Royal Navy.
This fascinating book provides a unique record of the careers and final underwater resting places of ships of the Cunard Line, whose rich history spans over 300 ships and nearly two centuries. Many books have been published on Cunard's heritage but the final fate of these ships is often little more than a footnote of history. Authors Sam Warwick and Mike Roussel have taken the shipwrecks as a starting point to create a vivid new history. Featured vessels include the well-known Caronia, Lancastria, Campania, Lusitania, Malta, Oregon, Scotia and Carpathia, famous for rescuing the survivors from the Titanic, as well as many others. Events surrounding the wrecking of each vessel are thoroughly explored and unique diver accounts are incorporated, along with never-before-seen underwater images of the wrecks. Finishing off with practical data for interested divers, this book offers a fresh analysis of Cunard's maritime history.
These essays deal with questions of navigation and, more broadly, the intellectual challenges posed by Spain's acquisition of an empire across the Atlantic. Crudely, they had to find out what was where and how to get there. The first section of the volume looks at the 16th-century Sevillan cosmographers and pilots charged with this task: their achievements, the social and political context in which they worked, and the methods used to establish scientific truths - including the resort to litigation. Ursula Lamb then turns to examine specific problems, from the routing of transatlantic shipping to the application of cartographic coordinates to allocate unexplored territories. The final articles move forward to the time when, after a lapse of two centuries, Spanish nautical science became revitalised, and the Spanish Hydrographic Office was established.
Each recipient is presented in a capsule biography including date of birth, awarding of the various Knights Cross grades, and other particulars to rank and career. Each is also shown in a World War II era photograph.
For 1930s Britain, the Queen Mary was a symbol of hope. Cunard had abandoned construction on what they had planned to be the grandest liner of all time (then known simply as Job 534) in the depths of the Depression. Her half-finished hull sat on the Clyde for years, but when Cunard announced they were going to complete her, it was a sign, perhaps, that the darkest days were over, that the country was emerging from economic disaster and that Britannia would soon rule the waves once again. The Queen Mary would go on to be one of the most famous ships in the world for all the right reasons. The first British ship to be over 1,000 feet in length, launched by her namesake (and for which the Clyde had to be artificially widened to allow such a large ship to pass through), she won the Blue Riband (the record for fastest Atlantic crossing) not once by twice - and when she won it the second time in 1938 she held it until 1952. After wartime service carrying up to 16,000 US troops to Europe at a time, she finally retired to Long Beach, California, in 1967. There she remains, a perfectly preserved reminder of a bygone era, and a celebration of the golden age of the transatlantic liner. In this book David Ellery, maritime historian, TV presenter and documentary maker, answers all the questions you might have about this glorious ship - and ones you might never have thought to ask too. This unique, accessible approach gives a fantastic introduction to the ship to anyone curious about her, but is also very detailed and comprehensive, covering everything from the ship's design, construction, engineering and interior fittings to her naming, wartime service and more. Packed with archival photographs and other original material, this is a fascinating and illuminating guide to the Queen Mary, looking beneath the sheen of her appointments to explore how her fame is well deserved.
The global legacy of mutiny and revolution on the high seas. Mutiny tore like wildfire through the wooden warships of the age of revolution. While commoners across Europe laid siege to the nobility and enslaved workers put the torch to plantation islands, out on the oceans, naval seamen by the tens of thousands turned their guns on the quarterdeck and overthrew the absolute rule of captains. By the early 1800s, anywhere between one-third and one-half of all naval seamen serving in the North Atlantic had participated in at least one mutiny, many of them in several, and some even on ships in different navies. In The Bloody Flag, historian Niklas Frykman explores in vivid prose how a decade of violent conflict onboard gave birth to a distinct form of radical politics that brought together the egalitarian culture of North Atlantic maritime communities with the revolutionary era's constitutional republicanism. The attempt to build a radical maritime republic failed, but the red flag that flew from the masts of mutinous ships survived to become the most enduring global symbol of class struggle, economic justice, and republican liberty to this day.
The focus of this volume is the rise and fall of the Indian maritime merchant in the early modern period: the heyday of Moghul Surat, the appearance of a group of independent merchant shipowners, and their eclipse at the end of the period in the face of European competition and monopolies. Much of the evidence for the activity of these Indian merchants comes from the records of the Dutch and English East India Companies, as well as the papers of English private merchants, and this is carefully assessed by Professor Das Gupta in these articles. He is also concerned to set the picture thus gained in the context of the trade of the Indian Ocean region as a whole, and to relate it to the questions of continuity and change raised by Van Leur.
A comprehensive overview of the activities of the British navy in the Baltic Sea from the earliest times until the twentieth century. This book presents a comprehensive overview of the activities of the British navy in the Baltic Sea from the earliest times until the twentieth century. It traces developments from Anglo-Saxon times, through the medieval period when there were frequent disputes between English kings and the Hanseatic League, the seventeenth-century wars with the Dutch, and Britain's involvement in the Northern Wars in the early years of the eighteenth century. It considersin detail the major period of British involvement in the Baltic during the Napoleonic Wars, when the British navy fought the Danes, Napoleon's allies, and was highly effective in ensuring Sweden's neutrality and Russia's change of allegiance. It goes on to discuss British naval actions in the Baltic during the Crimean War and in the First World War and its aftermath. Throughout, the book relates naval actions to patterns of trade, to wider internationalpolitics, and to geographical factors such as winter sea ice and the shallow nature of the Baltic Sea. John D. Grainger is the author of numerous books for a variety of publishers, including five previously published books for Boydell and Brewer, including Dictionary of British Naval Battles and The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854-56.
Piracy and the English Government, 1616-1642, explodes the myth that England was 'a nation of pirates', arguing that the English people were far more often victims of piracy. The costs to the economy and society resulting from piracy, which are critically examined here for the first time, reveal that not only were hundreds of English ships lost to pirates in the period, but an astonishing number of men, women and children (approximately 8,000) were carried away to Barbary by pirates and sold into slavery. The response of the government to these losses, which posed significant political problems for the early Stuart government, are explored and related to broader political concerns and influences.
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.
A comprehensive overview of the subject, demonstrating that the maritime aspects of the civil wars were much more important than has hitherto been acknowledged. NOMINATED FOR THE MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD! The civil wars in England, Scotland and Ireland in the period 1638-1653 are usually viewed from the perspective of land warfare. This book, on the other hand, presents a comprehensive overview of the wars from a maritime perspective. It considers the structure, organisation and manning of the parliamentarian, royalist, and Irish confederate navies, discussing how these changed overthe course of the wars. It also traces the development of the wars at sea, showing that the initial opting for parliament by seamen and officers in 1642 was a crucial development, as was the mutiny and defection of part of the parliamentarian navy in 1648. Moving beyond this it examines the nature of maritime warfare, including coastal sieges, the securing of major ports for parliament, the attempts by royalists to ship arms and other supplies from continental Europe, commerce raiding, and the transportation of armies and their supporters in the invasions of Scotland and Ireland. Overall the book demonstrates that the war at sea was an integral and important part of these dramatic conflicts. RICHARD J. BLAKEMORE is a Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World at the University of Reading. ELAINE MURPHY is a Lecturer in Maritime/Naval History at the University of Plymouth and author of Ireland and the War at Sea, 1641-1653 (Boydell Press, 2012).
Years ago, few people understood the value of the submerged cultural resources beneath the waters of the Chesapeake region. Recently, the search for the region's underwater heritage has been validated and initiated an intensified attempt to study and preserve the priceless resources in the waters of the bay and its tributaries. Tidewater Time Capsule presents a fascinating account of one underwater archaeological endeavor in which Donald G. Shomette was intimately involved: the underwater survey of the Patuxent River, and, in particular, the search for Commodore Joshua Barney's Chesapeake Flotilla, which was lost beneath the river's waters following a battle with the British during the War of 1812. The author skillfully sets the historical scene, and then proceeds to a first-person, on-the-site narrative of the investigative events as they happened. The Patuxent Project was the first underwater archaeological survey of an entire river system. In this multiphase investigation, archaeologists sought such diverse resources as inundated aboriginal and historic sites, harbor facilities, military establishments, battle sites, shipwrecks, and, in particular, the final resting place of Joshua Barney's famed Chesapeake Flotilla from the War of 1812.
Two centuries before the daring exploits of Navy SEALs and Marine Raiders captured the public imagination, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps were already engaged in similarly perilous missions: raiding pirate camps, attacking enemy ships in the dark of night, and striking enemy facilities and resources on shore. Even John Paul Jones, father of the American navy, saw such irregular operations as critical to naval warfare. With Jones's own experience as a starting point, Benjamin Armstrong sets out to take irregular naval warfare out of the shadow of the blue-water battles that dominate naval history. This book, the first historical study of its kind, makes a compelling case for raiding and irregular naval warfare as key elements in the story of American sea power. Beginning with the Continental Navy, Small Boats and Daring Men traces maritime missions through the wars of the early republic, from the coast of modern-day Libya to the rivers and inlets of the Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, Armstrong examines the era's conflicts with nonstate enemies and threats to American peacetime interests along Pacific and Caribbean shores. Armstrong brings a uniquely informed perspective to his subject; and his work - with reference to original naval operational reports, sailors' memoirs and diaries, and officers' correspondence - is at once an exciting narrative of danger and combat at sea and a thoroughgoing analysis of how these events fit into concepts of American sea power. Offering a critical new look at the naval history of the Early American era, this book also raises fundamental questions for naval strategy in the twenty-first century.
In The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram, author Dean Snow rights the record on a shipwrecked sailor who traversed the length of the North American continent only to be maligned as deceitful storyteller. In the autumn of 1569, a French ship rescued David Ingram and two other English sailors from the shore of the Gulf of Maine. The men had walked over 3000 miles in less than a year after being marooned near Tampico, Mexico. They were the only three men to escape alive and uncaptured, out of a hundred put ashore at the close of John Hawkins's disastrous third slaving expedition. A dozen years later, Ingram was called in for questioning by Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster. In 1589, the historian Richard Hakluyt published his version of Ingram's story based on the records of that interrogation. For four centuries historians have used that publication as evidence that Ingram was an egregious travel liar, an unreliable early source for information about the people of interior eastern North America before severe historic epidemics devastated them. In The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram, author and recognized archaeologist Dean Snow shows that Ingram was not a fraud, contradicting the longstanding narrative of his life. Snow's careful examination of three long-neglected surviving records of Ingram's interrogation reveals that the confusion in the 1589 publication was the result of disorganization by court recorders and poor editing by Richard Hakluyt. Restoration of Ingram's testimony has reinstated him as a trustworthy source on the peoples of West Africa, the Caribbean, and eastern North America in the middle sixteenth century. Ingram's life story, with his long traverse through North America at its core, can now finally be understood and appreciated for what it was: the tale of a unique, bold adventurer.
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