Archive Results For: Popular Topics
Review: ‘Out of the Depths: A history of shipwrecks’ by A. G. Jamieson
It is estimated that there have been 3 million shipwrecks spanning a period of 4,000 years, and that only 1 per cent have been discovered, mostly over the last 60 years. Can this author, or any author indeed, relate ‘their significance and … the developments over the last sixty years that have made detailed study of those … shipwrecks […] Read More
Filed under: Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Archaeology | Science & Exploration
Review: ‘Royal Yachts Under Sail’ by B. Lavery
Brian Lavery is one of our most distinguished naval historians and a new book from him therefore comes with a great burden of expectation. And that expectation is wholly met in this case. This is a large-sized book packed with well over 100 beautifully reproduced illustrations which can only be defined as sumptuous. But it […] Read More
Filed under: Popular Topics
Subjects include: Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration | Shipbuilding & Design
Review: ‘Chasing the Bounty: The voyages of the ‘Pandora’ and ‘Matavy’ ‘ by D. A. Maxton (ed.)
In this lively and engaging book, Donald A. Maxton draws welcome attention to the oft-forgotten postscript to the infamous Bounty mutiny and clearly conveys that, in terms of drama, peril, and human endurance, the ordeal of the men of the Pandora and Matavy rivals anything faced by Captain Bligh, Fletcher Christian, or their shipmates. The […] Read More
Filed under: Mutiny & Discipline | Other (Eighteenth C) | Pacific
Subjects include: Administration | Biography
Review: ‘Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the ‘Gloucester’: A true Restoration tragedy’ by N. Pickford,
The North Sea is a shallow but unforgiving sea, susceptible to violent and unpredictable weather, poor visibility, and beset with shifting shallows, nowhere more so than the vicinity of the North Norfolk Sandbanks and particularly the inner two called the Leman and the Ower. Dawn on 6 May 1682 revealed this sea at its worst, […] Read More
Filed under: North Sea | Other (Early Modern) | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration
Notes: More than a Dictionary: Nikolaos Kourbellis’s English–Greek Maritime Dictionary
Some years ago I was browsing in the foreign languages section of an Oxfam Bookshop when, despite the fact that my knowledge of Greek stops short at the time of Pericles rather than that of Cavafy or Kazantzakis, my attention was caught by a copy of Nikolaos Kourbellis’ English–Greek Maritime Dictionary Read More
Filed under: Popular Topics
Subjects include: Merchant Marines | Ship Handling & Seamanship
Notes: Frederick Leyland: A re-assessment of his background
Frederick Leyland was one of the most successful shipowners and businessmen of the late nineteenth century and a noted patron of the arts. He began his career in 1844, aged 13, as an apprentice in the offices of the Liverpool ship owners John Bibby and Sons and within a dozen years or so, was a […] Read More
Filed under: Popular Topics
Subjects include: Biography
The Port of Hugli in Seventeenth-century Bengal
Medieval Bengal occupied a focal position on the map of India due to its unique topography. The province was profusely rich in agricultural and non-agricultural produce as attested in the accounts of many foreign travellers. Satgaon and Chittagong in Bengal were the initial trading centres and custom ports in the sixteenth century. With the decline […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Indian Ocean | East India Company
Subjects include: Harbours & Dockyards | Strategy & Diplomacy
Review : ‘Echoes from the Deep: Inventorising shipwrecks at the national scale by the application of marine geophysics and the historical text’ by I. McCartney
The new book by Innes McCartney describing the seabed survey project he led with Bangor University in the Irish Sea marks an important waypoint reached in the practice of archaeology at sea. More particularly it is part of a technological journey, which in England at least, can be said to have begun with pioneers like […] Read More
Filed under: Popular Topics | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Archaeology
Review : ‘The Ship Asunder: A maritime history of Britain in eleven vessels’ by T. Nancolla
In recent years the non-fiction market has been dominated by books of lists of objects. Neil MacGregor, when director of the British Museum, set the trend with A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010) and this has spawned no end of imitators and homages. You can now have, from a quick scan of […] Read More
Filed under: Popular Topics
Subjects include: Art & Music | Shipbuilding & Design
Review : ‘ Shipboard Literary Cultures: Reading, writing, and performing at sea’ by S. Liebich and L. Publicover (eds)
Shipboard Literary Cultures has a colourful cast of characters. The refractory captain of a Parliamentarian ship in the English Civil War features alongside a small girl aboard an American whaling vessel in the 1860s, a group of emigrant nuns voyaging on the SS Great Britain, and a cohort of American university students embarking on a […] Read More
Filed under: Popular Topics
Subjects include: Art & Music