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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Maritime history
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.
Those travelling on the seas have always been vulnerable to the
attacks of predators acting within or without the law. In the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such assaults reached new
heights as the development of trans-oceanic empires increased
massively the wealth and extent of sea-borne trade, and with it the
potential for prize-taking. Pirates and Privateers focuses on the
character of pirate communities in the Caribbean, the East Indies
and China, and on the scale and significance of privateering
operations based in the principal European maritime states. It
brings together the latest work of an internationally renowned
group of scholars to shed fresh light on the fascinating,
frequently misunderstood subject of violence at sea in the age of
sail.
Imperial Steam explores the early history of steamship travel to
Britain's imperial East. Drawing upon the wealth of voyage
narratives which were produced in the first decades of the new
route to India, the book examines the thoughts, emotions and
experiences of those whose lives were caught up with the imperial
project. The potent symbolism of the steamship, which exceeded the
often harsh realities of travel, provided a convincing narrative
for coming to terms with Britain's global empire - not just for
passengers, but for those at home who consumed the ubiquitous
accounts of steamship travel. Imperial Steam thus contributes to
our understanding of the role of imperial networks in the
production of the British imperial world view. -- .
The Sunday Times bestseller 'One of the most dramatic forgotten
chapters of the war, as told in a new book by the incomparable Max
Hastings' DAILY MAIL In August 1942, beleaguered Malta was within
weeks of surrender to the Axis, because its 300,000 people could no
longer be fed. Churchill made a personal decision that at all
costs, the 'island fortress' must be saved. This was not merely a
matter of strategy, but of national prestige, when Britain's
fortunes and morale had fallen to their lowest ebb. The largest
fleet the Royal Navy committed to any operation of the western war
was assembled to escort fourteen fast merchantmen across a thousand
of miles of sea defended by six hundred German and Italian
aircraft, together with packs of U-boats and torpedo craft. The
Mediterranean battles that ensued between 11 and 15 August were the
most brutal of Britain's war at sea, embracing four
aircraft-carriers, two battleships, seven cruisers, scores of
destroyers and smaller craft. The losses were appalling: defeat
seemed to beckon. This is the saga Max Hastings unfolds in his
first full length narrative of the Royal Navy, which he believes
was the most successful of Britain's wartime services. As always,
he blends the 'big picture' of statesmen and admirals with human
stories of German U-boat men, Italian torpedo-plane crews,
Hurricane pilots, destroyer and merchant-ship captains, ordinary
but extraordinary seamen. Operation Pedestal describes catastrophic
ship sinkings, including that of the aircraft-carrier Eagle,
together with struggles to rescue survivors and salvage stricken
ships. Most moving of all is the story of the tanker Ohio,
indispensable to Malta's survival, victim of countless Axis
attacks. In the last days of the battle, the ravaged hulk was kept
under way only by two destroyers, lashed to her sides. Max Hastings
describes this as one of the most extraordinary tales he has ever
recounted. Until the very last hours, no participant on either side
could tell what would be the outcome of an epic of wartime suspense
and courage.
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.
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.
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.
Here is a survivor's vivid account of the greatest maritime
disaster in history. The information contained in Gracie's account
is available from no other source. He provides details of those
final moments, including names of passengers pulled from the ocean
and of those men who, in a panic, jumped into lifeboats as they
were being lowered, causing injury and further danger to life.
Walter Lord, author of "A Night to Remember," comments that
Gracie's book--written shortly before he died from the exposure he
suffered on that night--is "invaluable for chasing down who went in
what boat," and calls Gracie "an indefatigable detective."
Based on hitherto unused sources in English and Spanish in British
and American archives, in this book naval historian Barry Gough and
legal authority Charles Borras investigate a secret Anglo-American
coercive war against Spain, 1815-1835. Described as a war against
piracy at the time, the authors explore how British and American
interests - diplomatic and military - aligned to contain Spanish
power to the critically influential islands of Cuba and Puerto
Rico, facilitating the forging of an enduring but unproclaimed
Anglo-American alliance which endures to this day. Due attention is
given to United States Navy actions under Commodore David Porter,
to this day a subject of controversy. More significantly though,
through the juxtaposition of British, American and Spanish sources,
this book uncovers the roots of piracy - and suppression- that laid
the foundation for the tortured decline of the Spanish empire in
the Americas and the subsequent rise of British and American
empires, instrumental in stamping out Caribbean piracy for good.
Overturns the generally held view that the press gang was the main
means of recruiting seamen by the British navy in the late
eighteenth century. SHORTLISTED for the Society for Nautical
Research's prestigious Anderson Medal. The press gang is generally
regarded as the means by which the British navy solved the problem
of recruiting enough seamen in the late eighteenth century. This
book, however, based on extensive original research conducted
primarily in a large number of ships' muster books, demonstrates
that this view is false. It argues that, in fact, the overwhelming
majority of seamen in the navy were there of their own free will.
Taking a long view across the late eighteenth century but
concentrating on the period of the French Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars of 1793-1815, the book provides great detailon the
sort of men that were recruited and the means by which they were
recruited, and includes a number of individuals' stories. It shows
how manpower was a major concern for the Admiralty; how the
Admiralty put in place a rangeof recruitment methods including the
quota system; how it worried about depleting merchant shipping of
sufficient sailors; and how, although most seamen were volunteers,
the press gang was resorted to, especially during the initial
mobilisation at the beginning of wars and to find certain kinds of
particularly skilled seamen. The book also makes comparisons with
recruitment methods employed by the navies of other countries and
by the British army. J. ROSS DANCY is Director of Graduate Studies
in History and Assistant Professor of History at Sam Houston State
University
One of the greatest treasures in the archives of the Welsh
Industrial and Maritime Museum is the Hansen Collection, consisting
of over 4500 negatives of shipping taken at Cardiff Docks between
1920 and 1975. Lars Peter Hansen, a native of Copenhagen, settled
in Cardiff in 1891 and he and his third son Leslie established a
photographic business in the docks; taking pictures of ships for
sale to seamen and shipowners was an important part of their
business. Following the retirement of Leslie Hansen in 1975, the
museum purchased the negative collection. Its historical value
cannot be overstated and this album is intended as a tribute to the
Hansens, who through their work have bequeathed to Wales a
pictorial record of shipping activity at the nation's premier port.
This edited volume moves beyond the traditional examination of the
treaty ports of China and Japan as places of cultural interaction.
It moves 'beyond the Bund', presenting instead the history of
material culture, the everyday life of the residents of the treaty
ports beyond the symbology of Shanghai's waterfront. Bringing for
the first time together scholars of China and Japan, museum
curators, legal, economic and architectural historians, it studies
the treaty ports not only as sites of cultural exchange, but also
as sites of social contestation, accommodation and mobility,
covering topics as varied as day to day life itself, such as
family, property and law, health and welfare, travel, visual
culture and memory. The call of this volume is to peel the multiple
layers of the encounter between East and West in the treaty ports
of China and Japan.
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