The Mariners Mirror Archive
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-‘Dunkirk and the Little Ships’ by P. Weir,
The Little Ships of the evacuation of Dunkirk are firmly etched into the common folk lore surrounding the events of the Second World War. Requisitioned by the Royal Navy via the Ministry of Shipping, a series of workboats, fishing boats, small pleasure cruisers and leisure steamers were taken (mostly with the owner’s permission, sometimes without) […] Read More
Filed under: English Channel | WW2
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Leisure & Small Craft
Book Review-‘Johannes Holst: Seascape artist’ by W. König
The German first edition of this book, published in 2011, was reviewed in The Mariner’s Mirror, 98:3 (2012), p. 381). This is an updated review following the publication of a new and revised edition, this time in English. This update will concentrate on additions to the English edition. Where commonality exists between the English and […] Read More
Filed under: Nineteenth Century | Twentieth Century
Subjects include: Art & Music
Book Review-‘Science, Utility and British Naval Technology 1793-1815: Samuel Bentham and the royal dockyards’ by R. Morriss,
This essential book follows Roger Morriss’s Science, Utility and Maritime Power: Samuel Bentham in Russia, 1779–1791 of 2015, also reviewed in this journal, and his pioneering study The Royal Dockyards during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1983. It should be read in the context of major work on the physical development of the dockyards […] Read More
Filed under: Napoleonic War | Other (Eighteenth C)
Subjects include: Biography | Harbours & Dockyards
Book Review: ‘Mutiny on the Spanish Main: HMS ‘Hermione’ and the Royal Navy’s revenge’ by A. Konstam,
The Hermione mutiny needs little introduction to those interested in the social history of the Royal Navy. It was the most notorious, most bloody and probably the most ruthlessly punished mutiny suffered by the navy. The Spithead and Nore mutinies in May and June 1797 might have been greater in scale and important for the […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Eighteenth Century | Nineteenth Century
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Manpower & Life at Sea
Note: William Pratt of Greenwich (1717–95): Ship’s carpenter and painter
On 23 May 2018, as lot 31 in an auction of furniture and old master paintings, Doyle’s of New York sold a large picture from the collection of the publisher Nelson Doubleday Jr (1933–2015), which they described as ‘The St. Albans floated out at Deptford, after John Cleveley the Elder’ Read More
Filed under: Popular Topics
Subjects include: Art & Music
Note: George Camocke’s 1718 Proposal of a Jacobite–Pirate Alliance
Following Marcus Rediker noting a curious link between Jacobitism and the ‘Golden Age’ of Caribbean piracy, many works in the past decade have drawn attention to a proposal by George Camocke in 1718 to ally the Jacobites in Europe with the pirates in the Bahama islands in support of the exiled Stuart monarchy.1 The plan, […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Eighteenth C)
Subjects include: Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers | Strategy & Diplomacy
Note: In Opposition to the Lawful King’: Pirates and land-based authority in Sri Lanka, 1000–1500
Existing literature on piracy in the pre-colonial and colonial Indian Ocean deals with certain regions more than others, and the existence of pirates in pre-colonial Sri Lanka has not received much academic attention in English. This article is a review of evidence of piratical activity in historical sources concerning Sri Lanka for the period 1000 […] Read More
Filed under: Early Middle Ages | Indian Ocean
Subjects include: Pirates, Corsairs & Privateers
Note: HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Interest in Maritime History and Ship Preservation
During my time lecturing at what was then Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design (currently The Arts University Bournemouth), I was responsible, in 1976, for the research, design and development of a student-centred illustrated project on the SS Great Britain, 1845. The success of this project, supported by Richard Goold-Adams OBE, chairman of […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C)
Subjects include: Historic Vessels, Museums & Restoration
The Clydeside Cabal: The influence of Lord Weir, Sir James Lithgow, and Sir Andrew Rae Duncan on naval and defence policy, around 1918–1940
Lord Weir, Sir James Lithgow and Sir Andrew Rae Duncan were three close friends who grew up within a few miles of each other in Victorian Glasgow, and who went on to have uncommonly successful careers in engineering, shipbuilding, steel and finance. Despite occupying only footnotes in political histories, Weir, Lithgow and Duncan also were […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C)
Subjects include: Shipbuilding & Design | Strategy & Diplomacy
A Liverpool Shipping Line: Ocean Steam Ship Company Limited’s shipbuilding experience, 1962–1978
This article is based on a study, ‘Ocean’s Shipbuilding Experience’, undertaken in April 1976 and updated in January 1977 and January 1978, which investigated the company’s experience in ship construction in the UK and abroad. The investigation applied only to ships built for the Ocean Steam Ship Company and its principal associate companies, and vessels […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Twentieth C)
Subjects include: Shipbuilding & Design
Driven Mad by the Sea Serpent: The strange case of Captain George Drevar
In 1881 George Drevar, a merchant captain who had survived a shipwreck in the Cape Verde Islands, was tried at the Old Bailey for libel and threatening the life of the Commissioner of Wreck, Henry Cadogan Rothery, in part because of a disagreement over the existence of the great sea serpent. This article explains the […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Nineteenth C)
Subjects include: Biography | Miscellaneous