Archive Results For: Pacific
Book review – ‘Dive Scapa Flow; Dive Palau: The shipwrecks’ by Innes McCartney
These two offerings by Rod Macdonald represent some of the best of the current crop of shipwreck guides for recreational divers. As a genre, this type of literature can be traced back to the dawn of sports diving in the middle of the last century. These books serve their market very well. Recreational divers seeking […] Read More
Filed under: North Sea | WW2 | Twentieth Century | Shipwrecks | Pacific
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics
Book Review-‘Picturing the Pacific: Joseph Banks and the shipboard artists of Cook and Flinders’ by J. Taylor
Taylor’s book comes just as institutions, societies and governments are beginning the decade-long process of commemorating the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s three voyages to the Pacific. On 25 August 1768 Cook set out in the Endeavour to view the transit of Venus and search for the unknown southern continent in the South Seas. […] Read More
Filed under: James Cook | Pacific
Subjects include: Art & Music
Book Review – ‘Whales’ Bones of the Americas, South Atlantic and Antarctica’ by Arthur G. Credland
This book is the penultimate volume in a magnificent series covering cetacean remains across the globe. Unlike the sites covered previously, for this book the author has relied on the judicious use of secondary sources, and information from his invaluable correspondents. This in no way diminishes the value as a reference source, however, and the […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Nineteenth Century | Twentieth Century | Pacific | Antarctic
Subjects include: Archaeology | Miscellaneous | Whaling & Fishing
Book Review – ‘The Sea in History: The modern world’ by Steven Gray
This tome forms a substantial finale to the four volume Sea in History series, a result of the huge Oceanides project. It is an 848-page behemoth, with a contributor list that reads like a who’s who of modern naval history, and indeed beyond the field. It is therefore appropriate that the volume is edited by a scholar as distinguished […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Baltic | English Channel | North Sea | Irish Sea | Mediterranean | Nineteenth Century | Indian Ocean | Caribbean | Pacific
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Manpower & Life at Sea | Merchant Marines | Miscellaneous | Navies | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review – ‘The Remarkable Hybrid Maritime World of Hong Kong and the West River Region in the Late Qing Period’ by S. C. M. Paine
From the mid-nineteenth century on, the Chinese junk trade could not compete with foreign steamers on the Yangzi River or along the Chinese coast, yet it survived through the 1930s in the West River Delta, home to the two key treaty ports of Canton and Hong Kong. This book explains why. The six chapters show […] Read More
Filed under: Nineteenth Century | Twentieth Century | Pacific
Subjects include: Merchant Marines | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review – ‘The Sea in History: The ancient world’ by Boris Rankov
The French-based Océanides project on The Sea in History, edited by Christian Buchet of the Centre d’Étude de la Mer at the Catholic University of Paris, has now been published in a series of four large volumes of which this, on the ancient world, is the first. The overall objectives of the series have already […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Antiquity | Mediterranean | Indian Ocean | Caribbean | Pacific
Subjects include: Archaeology | Manpower & Life at Sea | Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers | Whaling & Fishing
Book Review-‘‘No One Avoided Danger’: NAS Kaneohe Bay and the Japanese attack of 7 December 1941’ by J. M. Wenger, R. J. Cressman and J. F. Di Virgilio
This book is part of a series of works published by the Naval Institute Press to ‘fill [a] wide gap in military history by diving down to the lowest of levels of practical, personal, and tactical details’ (iii). Two of the three authors will be familiar to naval history audiences. Robert Cressman is a long-time […] Read More
Filed under: WW2 | Pacific
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics
Book Review-‘The Savage Shore: Extraordinary stories of survival and tragedy from the early voyages of discovery’ by G. Seal
In 1616 the Eendracht, commanded by Dirk Hartog, landed on an island in Western Australia, the first known Dutch ship to contact the western side of the continent. Hartog ordered a pewter plate to be mounted on a post, chronicling his presence. Eighty years later another Dutchman, Willem de Vlamingh, recovered Hartog’s plate and replaced […] Read More
Filed under: Pacific
Subjects include: Science & Exploration
Book Review-‘Whales’ Bones of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands’ by N. Redman
This is the sixth volume (not including a supplementary volume and a monograph on the Ostend whale) contributing towards fulfilling the author’s aim to catalogue cetacean remains around the globe. There are two more volumes in preparation, one for the Americas and one for Africa and Asia, which will complete the series. Many of the […] Read More
Filed under: Pacific
Subjects include: Whaling & Fishing
Book Review-‘Georges Baudoux’s Jean M’Baraï : The Trepang fisherman’ translated by K. Speedy
Karin Speedy has built on her previous academic works and experience in translating to bring Francophone Pacific literature to an English-speaking audience. In the introduction, Speedy makes the point that the Pacific had its own lingua franca prior to the arrival of Europeans, and suggests that the engagement of Malayo-Polynesian speakers by the so-called early […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C) | Other (Nineteenth C) | Pacific
Subjects include: Biography