Archive Results For: Shipwrecks
Book Review-‘Britain and the Ocean Road: Shipwrecks and people, 1297–1825’ by I. Friel, Pen
Britain’s maritime history is often studied by looking at events on the large scale. Friel’s book does something different. This book tells the individual stories of eight different ships, through which we can get a snapshot of events spanning just over 500 years. This is the first of two volumes employing this approach, with the […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Other (Nineteenth C) | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Archaeology | Manpower & Life at Sea
Book Review-‘Catastrophe at Spithead: The sinking of the ‘Royal George’’ by H. L. Rubinstein
Hilary Rubinstein’s in-depth research has successfully collated all the relevant information to explain why the 100-gun Royal George should have foundered on 29 August 1782 while at anchor between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. Certainly, to the many witnesses it was beyond belief that she could just disappear with only her mast visible in […] Read More
Filed under: English Channel | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Miscellaneous
Book Review-‘Down Amongst the Black Gang: The world and workplace of RMS ‘Titanic’ ’s stokers’ by R. P. Kerbrech
Subjectively the Titanic remains a much hackneyed travesty of maritime disaster research. However, this book is delightfully refreshing, and singularly conjures up the below decks world of the engineers who drove the palatial leviathan ships that plied the Atlantic run. The study is well written, and you can feel and smell the grime, dust and […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Twentieth C) | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea | Ocean Liners & Passenger Craft
Book Review – ‘Titanic: A fresh look at the evidence by a former Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents’ by John Lang
For readers beginning to be interested in the events of Titanic – presented without the trace of either a literary or antiquarian purpose (just the facts ma’am, just the facts) – they could do much worse than John Lang’s book, though it certainly has its flaws. In a lengthy preface Lang spells out a central conceit […] Read More
Filed under: Location | Atlantic | Twentieth Century | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration | Ocean Liners & Passenger Craft
Book Review-‘1545: Who sank the ‘Mary Rose’? ‘by P. Marsden
One of the questions asked of any shipwreck, whether a recent tragedy or an archaeological find, is why it did sink? Very often the real question being asked is, who is at fault? Modern accident investigation techniques focus on identifying all of the contributing factors to an air crash or ship sinking, such as technical […] Read More
Filed under: Tudors | English Channel | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Archaeology | Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration
Book Review-‘The Last Days of the High Seas Fleet: From mutiny to Scapa Flow’ by N. Jellico
Nicholas Jellicoe is the grandson of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe. Over the last few years he has thrown himself with great enthusiasm into the naval history of the First World War and his grandfather’s major role in it. I met him in Blackpool eight years ago to give him advice on launching his […] Read More
Filed under: WW1 | North Sea | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Navies
The Final Weeks of Service and Wreck of PS Comet, 1820
PS Comet, Europe’s first commercial steamship, launched in 1812, was rebuilt to new dimensions in 1819 with improved machinery, and wrecked in 1820. These facts are known, but not very much accurate detail exists about its wrecking. Many books and articles on the Comet repeat the same basic information, in some cases with minor variations and ambiguities which […] Read More
Filed under: Nineteenth Century | Other (Nineteenth C) | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Merchant Marines | Ocean Liners & Passenger Craft | Shipbuilding & Design
Figureheads and Symbolism Between the Medieval and the Modern: The ship Griffin or Gribshunden, one of the last Sea Serpents?
The Griffin or, as it was sometimes called, Gribshunden (griffin hound) was a ship that belonged to the Danish–Norwegian King Hans. The ship sank in 1495 and was one of the largest and most modern warships of its day. In 2015 a peculiar figurehead carving was raised from the wreck. It is shaped like a beast swallowing a man […] Read More
Filed under: Baltic | High Middle Ages | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Ship Models & Figureheads | Shipbuilding & Design
‘It was not his first Intention to swell the Work with so many Notes’: Annotation in William Falconer’s The Shipwreck and the birth of the Universal Dictionary of the Marine
William Falconer is well known for his influential Universal Dictionary of the Marine. Less well known is that the Dictionary owed its origins to Falconer’s other claim to fame as a poet. The Shipwreck (1762) is a narrative of his personal experience of a voyage, notable for its density of nautical terminology, and extensive annotation, explaining the seafaring terminology […] Read More
Filed under: Seven Years’ War | Eighteenth Century | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Miscellaneous
How Large Was Mars? An investigation of the dimensions of a legendary Swedish warship, 1563–1564
The Swedish warship Mars was considered to have been one of the largest ships in the world when it exploded and sank in 1564. The problem is that no written accounts clearly reveal its dimensions. This article reviews how different researchers have discussed the size of Mars in the past. It also aims to shed new light on this […] Read More
Filed under: Baltic | Other (Early Modern) | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Archaeology | Shipbuilding & Design