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: ‘A Cromwellian Warship Wrecked Off Duart Castle, Mull Scotland, in 1653’ by Robert J. C. Mowat
In recent years, Armada wrecks, East Indiamen and others of less clear historical context have been investigated by excavation alongside the (putative) Swan (1653) and the Dartmouth (1690) which stranded on opposite sides in the eastern entrance to the Sound of Mull. The principal credit for this major development in Scottish, maritime and post-medieval archaeology falls to the author […] Read More
Filed under: Location | English Civil War | Irish Sea | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Archaeology | Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration | Navies
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 – ‘The Shipwreck Hunter: A lifetime of extraordinary discoveries on the ocean floor’ by Innes McCartney
David Mearns will be well known to many readers as a shipwreck hunter with a very successful track record going back over three decades. The Shipwreck Hunter is an autobiographical account of Mearns’s fascinating life which focuses primarily on his work on just nine of his most famous shipwreck discoveries and investigations. From student of marine biology […] Read More
Filed under: Post WW2 | Twentieth Century | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Archaeology | Biography
Book Review – ‘The Yankee Expedition to Sebastopol: John Gowen and the raising of the Russian Black Sea fleet 1857–1862’ by Howard J. Fuller
This is another self-published naval history by Chuck Veit, the last of which, A Dog Before a Soldier: Almost-lost Episodes in the U.S. Navy’s Civil War (2010), I treated rather unenthusiastically in my review in volume 99: 3 of the Mariner’s Mirror (2013). What an improvement this work is. Technically it is a direct follow-on to Raising Missouri: John Gowen and […] Read More
Filed under: Nineteenth Century | Shipwrecks | Other (location)
Subjects include: Navies
Book Review – ‘Shipwreck and Survival in Oman, 1763: The fate of the ‘Amstelveen’ and thirty castaways on the south coast of Arabia’ by Guido van Meersbergen
This attractively produced volume tells the story of the demise of the Dutch East Indiaman Amstelveen on the coast of Oman in August 1763, and the subsequent trek through the Arabian Desert by a band of 30 survivors. It is based on the eyewitness account by the only officer to survive the shipwreck, third mate Cornelis Eyks. […] Read More
Filed under: Eighteenth Century | Indian Ocean | Shipwrecks | East India Company
Subjects include: Merchant Marines | 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