Archive Results For: Atlantic
Book Review – ‘Forty Years Master: A life in sail and steam’ by Frank Scott
The title of this autobiography, Forty Years Master, sums up the dominating theme in Killman’s recollections: being in command of a merchant ship for four decades. This is also its structure, ship by ship, and the style, ‘authoritative’. The autobiographical text occupies 250 pages, and the remaining 100 pages are taken up the editorial team, […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Twentieth C) | Nineteenth Century | Other (Nineteenth C) | Twentieth Century | Pacific
Subjects include: Biography | Merchant Marines
Book Review – ‘Around Cape Horn Once More: The story of the French clipper ship ‘Montebello’’ by Frank Scott
This book centres on the life of the French barque Montebello (2,284 grt) from launch in October 1900 until it was wrecked in November 1906. The use of old postcards to illustrate places mentioned in the text works well, and the wreck photographs of the Montebello and Croisset are suitably poignant. However, the author, Paul Simpson, writes throughout […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | English Channel | Other (Twentieth C) | Twentieth Century | Pacific
Subjects include: Biography | Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration | Miscellaneous
Book Review – ‘People, Place, and Power on the Nineteenth-Century Waterfront: Sailortown’ by Isaac Land
This book is the first serious effort to synthesize the disparate studies on this topic and relate it to larger interpretive frameworks. Readers will find rich, vivid accounts here of the costs and benefits of desertion, of boarding houses reputable and otherwise, and of efforts to investigate and reform the waterfront. Although Graeme J. Milne […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Indian Ocean
Subjects include: Harbours & Dockyards | Manpower & Life at Sea | Miscellaneous
Book Review – ‘The First Atlantic Liner: Brunel’s Great Western steamship’ by W. Mark Hamilton
Helen Doe has written a marvellous new book on the early years of transatlantic passenger traffic, with special reference to the Great Western steamship. Her examination is from the perspective of the cultural and social historian and not the technical maritime specialist, but the reader is informed of the numerous technical challenges of early steamship travel. The Great […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Nineteenth Century | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration | Manpower & Life at Sea | Ocean Liners & Passenger Craft
Book Review – ‘The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker dwarf who became the first revolutionary abolitionist’ by Johan Francke
Marcus Rediker, Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Research Fellow at the Collège d’études mondiales/Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme in Paris, encountered the remarkable story of the abolitionist Benjamin Lay while working on The Many Headed Hydra, reading Lay’s magnum opus All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage, […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Eighteenth Century | Other (Eighteenth C) | Caribbean
Subjects include: Biography | Miscellaneous
Book Review – ‘Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740’ by Johan Francke
The Navigation Act of 1696 made provision for more Vice-Admiralty Courts in America. This resulted simultaneously in the objection of local councils and mutual accusations of piracy amongst them. When Parliament introduced the Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy in 1700, the tide definitively turned and what had been tolerated by officials for […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Eighteenth Century | Other (Early Modern) | Pirates | Other (Eighteenth C)
Subjects include: Administration | Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers
Book Review -‘The Luckiest Thirteen: The forgotten story of the men of St Finbarr – a trawler crew’s battle in the Arctic’ by Frank Scott
Brian W. Lavery has followed up The Headscarf Revolutionaries, his account of the ‘Hull Triple-Trawler Tragedy’ of 1968, with this story of an earlier Hull trawler tragedy. This time the vessel involved was one of the most modern in the fleet, a stern trawler that had revolutionized British fishing by allowing the entire catch to be […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Twentieth C)
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea | Whaling & Fishing
Book Review – ‘RMS ‘Queen Mary’: The final voyage’ by David Bowen
This book was published on the fiftieth anniversary of the retirement of the famous Cunard passenger liner Queen Mary. This ship was launched by Cunard to keep pace with fierce foreign competition on the transatlantic run, and started life in 1930 on the stocks at the Clydebank yard of John Brown and was known then prosaically […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Post WW2 | Twentieth Century
Subjects include: Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration | Ocean Liners & Passenger Craft
Book Review-‘Sighted Sub – Sank Same: The United States Navy’s air campaign against the U-boat’ by A. C. Care
The Battle of the Atlantic has been the focus of attention for many historians and the subject’s historiography is a wide and complex one. The International Naval Conference held in Liverpool in 1993 to mark the 50th anniversary of the battle’s turning point in favour of the Allies was probably the largest assembly of historians […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Submarines
Book Review-‘The Cod Hunters’ by J. Goodlad
This book tells an extraordinary tale of nineteenth-century social life in the North Atlantic, the hardships and triumphs of ordinary people. Cod fishing was seen as being a particularly hard job, and with good reason. It was not a hollow boast that the ‘cod hunters’ were dubbed ‘iron men in wooden boats’. The cod fisheries […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic
Subjects include: Whaling & Fishing
Book Review-‘Soltando amarras: La costa noratlántica ibérica en la Edad Moderna’ by M. Garcia Hurtado
Over the last 70 years the decline of fishing and the heavy maritime industries has hit many of the coastal regions of Europe extremely hard. Some local and national governments, looking to stimulate new investment, have supported a wide range of cultural projects. One of the beneficiaries of this policy is maritime history. Those declining […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic
Subjects include: Miscellaneous
Book Review: ‘The Other Norfolk Admirals: Myngs, Narbrough and Shovell’ by Sam McLean
In this book retired consultant anaesthetist Simon Harris discusses the careers of three important Royal Navy flag officers in the period 1660 to 1707: Christopher Myngs, John Narborough (or Narbrough) and Cloudesley Shovell. The book begins with a short description of the lives of the three admirals before they joined the Royal Navy; however it […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | English Channel | Period | Eighteenth Century | Other (Early Modern)
Subjects include: Biography | Navies