Archive Results For: Pacific
Notes:Pieter Adriaensz Blanckert: Another survivor of the Liefde’s voyage to Japan
When the arrival of the first Dutch ship in Japan, the Liefde, in 1600 is examined in the historical literature, one survivor tends to overshadow the rest of the crew, William Adams. Although information about Adams’s early years is very limited, new books about him are published regularly, adding little, if anything, to our knowledge […] Read More
Filed under: Shipwrecks | Pacific
Subjects include: Biography
Book Review-‘Blazing Star, Setting Sun: The Guadalcanal-Solomons campaign, November 1942–March 1943’ by J. R. Cox
This thick volume is the third in a series written by Jeffrey R. Cox and published by Osprey. Rising Sun, Falling Skies (2014) covered the role of the US Navy in the calamitous Dutch East Indies campaign of early 1942. Morning Star, Midnight Sun (2018) dealt with the fighting around Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, […] Read More
Filed under: WW2 | Pacific
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics
Book Review-‘The Company Fortress: Military engineering and the Dutch East India Company in South Asia, 1638–1795, by E. Odegard
Dutch rule in Asia in the era of the Dutch East India Company (VoC) was sustained by fortified ports and strategic locations, supported with small armies moved by sea to enhance the defences. The failure of any one element in this strategy would bring down the rest. The VoC was a major economic and political […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Other (Eighteenth C) | Indian Ocean | Pacific
Subjects include: Administration | Harbours & Dockyards | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review-‘Chasing the ‘Bounty’: The voyages of the ‘Pandora’ and the ‘Matavy’’ by D. A. Maxton (ed.)
The story of the Bounty and its problematic ‘green grocery trip’ between 1787 and 1790, has long fascinated authors and historians. Over time, the truth behind the story has sadly become bogged down by a mixture of myth and fiction. The sheer number of plays, films, documentaries, radio programmes, books and news articles are almost […] Read More
Filed under: Mutiny & Discipline | Other (Eighteenth C) | Pacific
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea | Ship Handling & Seamanship
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-‘‘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
Book Review-‘The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters: Linchpin of victory 1935–1942’ byA. Boyd
This is a very important book for our understanding of the Second World War and of the Royal Navy’s part in it. It is revisionist history in the best sense: a thorough look back at archival material and a careful rethink which turns accepted historical wisdom on its head. Even better, it makes much better […] Read More
Filed under: Interwar | WW2 | Indian Ocean | Pacific
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Naval Aviation | Navies | Strategy & Diplomacy