Archive Results For: Atlantic
Book Review: ‘Abandon Ship: The real story of the sinkings in the Falklands War’ by P. Brown,
In this anniversary year of the Falklands war, our minds turn to the details of that conflict. But do we know all the facts? We of course knew of the sinkings as and when they actually happened, and understood the patent circumstances. But this book demonstrates that until its publication we have not heard the […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Twentieth C)
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Submarines
Review:- ‘Suppressing Piracy in the Early Eighteenth Century: Pirates, merchants and British imperial authority in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans’ by D. Wilson
Testing the traditional narrative of a stateled effort by Britain to eradicate piracy in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the first few decades of the eighteenth century, David Wilson questions the archive and finds a different story than the one commonly accepted in the historiography. Rather than focus on the imperial record, Wilson utilizes […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Eighteenth Century | Pirates | Indian Ocean | Caribbean
Subjects include: Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review-‘The Corsairs of Saint-Malo: Network organization of a merchant elite under the Ancien Regime’ by H. Hillman
Exploring how privateering provided ample opportunities for mercantile networking and profit-sharing, Henning Hillmann offers a multidisciplinary look at the organizational linkages between merchants, captains, and corsairs (pirates to those they attacked). Attempting to map and understand the rise and fall of Saint-Malo as both a base for privateering and standard commerce, Hillmann utilizes a sociological […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | English Channel
Subjects include: Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers
Book Review-‘Hitler’s Attack U-boats: The Kriegsmarine’s WWII Submarine Strike Force’ by J. P. Mallmann Showell,
In 1986 economic historian Corelli Barnet promoted a hypothesis that the German economy was far stronger during the Second World War than appearances may suggest. While evidence does not back this up, German submarine production was, due in no small part to the organizational skills of Albert Speer and to the system of distributed manufacturing […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Interwar | WW2
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Submarines
Book Review-‘Total Undersea War: The evolutionary role of the snorkel in Dönitz’s U-boat fleet 1944–1945’ by A. S. Hamilton
This is a well-produced and hefty – in all senses – book which gives a detailed technical account of the development of the snorkel and argues persuasively that it was a revolutionary technology whose impact in the closing period of the Second World War has been denied or overlooked by historians. Hamilton is a previously […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | WW2
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Submarines
The Wreck of HMS Sceptre and the Danish warship Oldenborg in Table Bay on 5 November 1799
During a hurricane off Cape Town on 5 November 1799, the Royal Navy ship of the line HMS Sceptre was driven ashore and wrecked with the loss more than two-thirds of its crew. Just a few hundred metres from where Sceptre was lost, lay the Danish ship of the line Oldenborg. The two 64-gun ships […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Eighteenth C) | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Lifesaving & Coastguard
Book Review: ‘Mutiny on the Spanish Main: HMS ‘Hermione’ and the Royal Navy’s revenge’ by A. Konstam,
The Hermione mutiny needs little introduction to those interested in the social history of the Royal Navy. It was the most notorious, most bloody and probably the most ruthlessly punished mutiny suffered by the navy. The Spithead and Nore mutinies in May and June 1797 might have been greater in scale and important for the […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Eighteenth Century | Nineteenth Century
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Manpower & Life at Sea
Note: George Camocke’s 1718 Proposal of a Jacobite–Pirate Alliance
Following Marcus Rediker noting a curious link between Jacobitism and the ‘Golden Age’ of Caribbean piracy, many works in the past decade have drawn attention to a proposal by George Camocke in 1718 to ally the Jacobites in Europe with the pirates in the Bahama islands in support of the exiled Stuart monarchy.1 The plan, […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Eighteenth C)
Subjects include: Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers | Strategy & Diplomacy
Driven Mad by the Sea Serpent: The strange case of Captain George Drevar
In 1881 George Drevar, a merchant captain who had survived a shipwreck in the Cape Verde Islands, was tried at the Old Bailey for libel and threatening the life of the Commissioner of Wreck, Henry Cadogan Rothery, in part because of a disagreement over the existence of the great sea serpent. This article explains the […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Biography | Miscellaneous
The Fourth Duke of Portland’s Pantaloon (1831–1852): Private yacht, experimental ‘brig sloop of war’ and slave-ship hunter
The launch of the 323-ton private brig rigged yacht Pantaloon at Troon in 1831 for the Duke of Portland, marks the opening of the final and contentious ‘Symonds’ era in British wooden hull naval architecture. Designed for the duke by Captain William Symonds RN it was immediately acquired by the Royal Navy as a fast […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Shipbuilding & Design