Archive Results For: Other (Nineteenth C)
Book Review: ‘Squadron: Ending the African slave trade’ by Clifford J. Pereira
It is refreshing to read an abolitionary narrative that is not focused on the Atlantic, but instead on the much older and longer-lasting Indian Ocean trade in enslaved Africans. Author John Broich takes an interesting though challenging angle, preferring to anchor the narrative around four personalities: Leopold Heath, George Sulivan, Edward Meara and Philip Colomb. […] Read More
Filed under: Nineteenth Century | Other (Nineteenth C) | Indian Ocean
Subjects include: Miscellaneous | Navies
Book Review-‘Ships of the Chester River: Shipbuilding on the Dee from Chester to the Point of Ayr 1800–1942’ by R. Martin
This is a detailed and well-researched analysis of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century shipbuilding on the River Dee at Chester and at small ports on the western bank of the Dee Estuary. These ports are all in the former Welsh county of Flintshire, now merged into Clwyd. Ship construction flourished here in six or seven different […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C) | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Shipbuilding & Design
Book Review-‘Greenwich and its Lost Hospitals: Havens of maritime welfare’ by G. C. Cook
Professor Cook is a distinguished physician with international experience. Since 2002, he has served as honorary archivist to the Seamen’s Hospital Society (SHS), and it is in this appointment that the genesis of this book lies. The SHS was a charitable institution founded in 1821 to provide medical services to seamen. It operated from three […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C) | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Administration
Book Review-‘The War Against the Pirates: British and American suppression of Caribbean piracy in the early nineteenth century’ by B. Gough andC. Borras
The recent rise in piracy studies has moved the history of maritime crime and oceanic security beyond the popular history or swashbuckling romantic tales of misunderstood men and women on the seven seas. Examinations of the economics of piracy, the motivations of individual sailors and captains, and how these actors related to the wider issues […] Read More
Filed under: Pirates | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers
Book Review-‘Before the Battlecruiser: The big cruiser in the world’s navies 1865–1910’ by A. Dodson
In a book which could at first sight be considered a detailed history of the armoured cruiser, it says much of the comprehensive nature of the author’s research that this type of warship is not mentioned in the title. In fact to have done so would have been inaccurate, because the book examines a broader […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C) | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Navies | Weapons
Book Review-‘The Royal Navy, China Station: 1861–1941’ by J. Parkinson
Subtitled ‘A History as seen through the careers of the Commanders in Chief’, this important new work notes that it was not until April 1864 that China was noted for the first time as a separate station from its prior connection to East India. By then Britain had fought and won its two ‘Opium’ wars […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C) | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review-‘Ungentle Goodnights: Life in a home for elderly and disabled naval sailors and marines and the perilous seafaring careers that brought them there’ by C. McKee
‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’. The subjects of Christopher McKee’s Ungentle Goodnights, the pensioned sailors at the US Naval Asylum in Philadelphia, were an intractable population that raged well into their twilight. The asylum ‘beneficiaries’, as McKee describes them, were not passive old men, but they fought with authorities and each other, […] Read More
Filed under: American Civil War | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Administration | Miscellaneous
Book Review-‘John Rae, Arctic Explorer: The unfinished autobiography’ by W. Barr (ed.)
I have long been aware of John Rae’s unfinished autobiography, which is held in the collection of the Scott Polar Research Institute, but have not had the pleasure of reading it, until now. As exhibitions officer with the Orkney Museum I was able to access the manuscript through an intern from the National Museums Scotland […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Biography
Book Review-‘After the Lost Franklin Expedition: Lady Franklin and John Rae’ by P. Baxter
It seems that Dr John Rae is a popular fellow, as on the back of his unfinished autobiography comes this new book by Peter Baxter. To recap the story, it contrasts the adventures of the Orkney-born Arctic explorer, Rae (1813–93), and veteran Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin. It was Rae who first discovered the fate […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Nineteenth C) | Arctic
Subjects include: Science & Exploration
Book Review-Salcombe Schooner Port: A maritime history of Salcombe and its merchant sailing vessels in the nineteenth century’ by R. Barrett
Roger Barrett is curator of Salcombe Maritime Museum. He has an immense depth of knowledge about the area, having also been a station manager at Prawle Point National Coastwatch Station. He is the author of three previous works, Prawle Point and the Coast between Start Point and Salcombe Bar, Start Point and its Lighthouse: History, […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Harbours & Dockyards