British Maritime Research Articles

Exploiting inter- and intracontinental markets: The business of transporting convicts to the Australian colonies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century

This article explores the pivotal role played by convict transports in the expansion and redirection of British maritime trade to the East. Through an investigation into the business of transporting prisoners across the seas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, it reveals that contractors, shipowners and captains connected to convict transportation were at the forefront of exploiting new trading opportunities in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. By analysing the voyages of convict ships within the prism of long-haul trading ventures, this work reveals the often overlooked business acumen of those who organized and executed convict transportation as they participated in inter- and intra-continental maritime trade.

“Johnny Come Lately” – An Essay on Latter-Day Myths about Rural Crime and Justice Studies

“Johnny Come Lately” is a colloquialism with roots backs to nineteenth century British maritime days. It is used here to illustrate the recent emergence of new myths about rural crime and justice studies. As rural crime and justice studies have emerged and grown over the previous 50-plus years, a number of scholars have discussed and debunked myths about crime and rurality, but unfortunately, new falsehoods have been purposively created of late. In this paper, each latter-day myth is described, debunked and then transformed into positive directives about the future of rural crime and justice studies, following the example set by Ceccato and Abraham (2022). These positives include: (1) there must be a sustained effort to make the location for rural crime studies and the scholars who do the research and theorizing ever more diverse; (2) rural crime studies, both old and new, must be made more easily accessible to this generation and future generations of scholars, practitioners and policy-makers alike; (3) rural crime studies must continue to improve theoretical sophistication through application, critique, and revision, and through theoretical interpretation of previously published empirical work; and (4) a thorough synthesis of the rural crime and justice studies literature is imperative to its future development.

Sustaining transformations: changing marine governance, environmental meaning, and ‘left behind’ Brexit narratives on the Yorkshire East Coast

Transformations to sustainability are frequently framed as key to blue growth, but they often engender complex consequences for communities. This article illustrates the role of environmental meaning in these processes through the lens of the Brexit vote on the Yorkshire East Coast. Based on discursive institutionalist analysis of narrative materials from semi-formal interviews conducted in 2017 alongside textual documentation from media, policy, and regional archives, I trace connections between transforming marine governance regimes, environmental meaning, and the British relationship with the EU from the Cod Wars to today. The transformation towards ecosystem-based management in British maritime governance post UNCLOS III left local communities feeling ‘left behind’ not only economically but also in terms of marginalised local meanings of place, labour, and environment. The Brexit vote, in this context, shows the multivalence of transformational processes and the importance of considering environmental meaning as part of their just execution.

Carnival in Africa

Carnival in Africa

The Royal Navy and Julian Corbett, 1990–2020

Sir Julian Stafford Corbett (1854–1922) is perhaps the UK’s most influential maritime thinker, but how influential has he been with the Royal Navy of the past 30 years, and how important should he be? Andrew Livsey shows that the answer to the first question is only slightly. He played a major role in the early editions of Book of Reference 1806, British Maritime Doctrine, but less thereafter. His influence elsewhere is difficult to find and his place in naval tuition has been limited. For the second question, Corbett has a role, but the Royal Navy has much else to consider.◼

COVID Reflections

COVID Reflections

Nautico-imperialism and settler-colonialism: water and land in the New South Wales colony

ABSTRACT This article outlines the role of rivers and oceans in colonial land 'settlement' in Sydney. The analysis exposes a form of thalassic colonisation, whereby territoriality was a defining feature of settler-colonialism in the first decades of the colonial invasion, but wherein claiming and/or controlling vast bodies of water was necessary to that territoriality. Britain was a maritime empire and Sydney a maritime town in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and there was a maritime pathway to early land theft in Australia. This archival analysis follows the colonial ships and Aboriginal nawi (bark canoes) to undertake a history from the water. Three nautico-imperial logics of settler-colonialism are presented. 1) ‘Aboriginal resistance and labour’ highlights the role of Aboriginal action against and incorporation into the colonial maritime economy and industries, and British Royal Navy exploration more broadly. 2) ‘Atomised colonial landscapes’ shows how Aboriginal Country was used as a colonial resource in the early maritime industries, with land claimed for ship building yards and whaling and sealing infrastructure, and trees felled for ship building. 3) Theorising the rivers and oceans as a ‘nautico-imperial infrastructure’ shows that water preceded land as a pivotal colonial infrastructure for the British maritime empire.

Wave conditions encountered by ships—A report from a larger shipping company based on ERA5

This study reports about the wave conditions encountered by the fleet of Maersk Line. Herein, wave conditions refer to integral wave parameters in terms of significant wave height, zero-upcrossing period, and wave direction (equivalently relative wave heading), but main focus is on the significant wave height. The study includes data from 189 container ships, where auto-logged data has been collected over a three-years period (2017–2020) during operations in the majority of the world’s larger oceans. In total, the data corresponds to 1 million hours of operation. The encountered wave heights are compared with the information from wave scatter diagrams given by the Global Wave Statistics (British Maritime Technology, 1986). The study shows that weather routing and seamanship have an effect, but the effect is not as pronounced as reported in a previous study (Olsen et al., 2006). The study also presents findings in relation to the temporal and spatial variation in encountered wave height along ship routes at consecutive wave points spaced by the sailing distance in 30–120 min. It is shown that the variation can be large and, as such, the concept of “stationary conditions” might be compromised sometimes in the analysis of wave-ship interactions.

All at sea? Using seaborne mobilities to decolonialise national narratives in maritime museums

ABSTRACT The article argues that British maritime museums do more to represent the nation than the sea, thereby contributing to nation-building discourse, and offers an alternative way of thinking about belonging through the lens of maritime mobilities. The United Kingdom’s national maritime museums are, of course, but a few among many museums seeking to incorporate a more diverse range of community voices and perspectives into their collections and exhibitions. Yet maritime museums are a particularly pertinent example of Britain’s nation-building discourse due to the global reach of Britain’s seaborne colonialism and exploration, and the concomitant range of their galleries. The article discusses the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, Cornwall (NMMC) in the wider context of how maritime museums depict the nation. It argues that the NMMC’s presentation of the sea illustrates how nation-building connects with colonialism in latent, largely unacknowledged ways that are broadly representative of Britain’s maritime museums. The article concludes that were maritime museums to take seaborne mobility as a starting point for decolonialised exhibits, they would provide visitors with a greater range of tools with which to critically analyse Britain’s maritime histories, the legacies of which are still being played out today.

‘Peace throughout the oceans and seas of the world’: British maritime strategic thought and world order, 1892–1919

Abstract Prior to 1914, British strategic thinkers considered the question of how to maintain British world power in the twentieth century. They developed visions of co-operation at sea between not only Britain and the Dominions, but also other states in the international system. During the First World War, these ideas merged with plans for the League of Nations, which British policymakers envisaged as a tool for enforcing peace through the use of sea power. This article explores these ideas, providing a different interpretation of the origins of the League, and the maritime strategic thought of key individuals including Halford Mackinder.

Trabalhadores no mundo: marinheiros indianos, c. de 1870-1940

A expansão da marinha mercante britânica na era do vapor foi estimulada pelo emprego de tripulações do subcontinente indiano. Entre os mais mal pagos do mercado, os marinheiros indianos eram os trabalhadores internacionais pioneiros que compunham quase um terço da força de trabalho na marinha britânica em 1937. Rotulados genericamente como “lascars”, seu emprego em regimes semelhantes a contratos firmados reforçou o status de “coolies”, promoveu a desoneração/desqualificação do trabalho marítimo e instituiu hierarquias racializadas no trabalho na marinha mercante, que perduram até hoje dentro e fora do setor. Este artigo apresenta um breve relato das condições de vida e de trabalho dos marinheiros subcontinentais, explora a atitude dos sindicatos britânicos em relação ao emprego dessas tripulações e destaca sua crucial contribuição para a expansão da navegação imperial britânica e, de maneira mais geral, para a dimensão marítima do poder imperial britânico.

Visiting the ‘Liverpool of the East’: Singapore's place in tours of Empire

This article explores the idea of Singapore's repute as the ‘Liverpool of the East’ and the depictions of Britain's maritime empire in Asia. It does so via two important cruises related to the British Empire. The first is the Royal Tour of 1901 and the second cruise was the Empire Cruise of 1923 to 1924. By examining the reception afforded to both royal and naval visitors, this article argues that we have insights into what it meant for Singapore as a port city in a British maritime and imperial network. This article explores how Singapore was depicted as a maritime hub through these tours and concludes with a reflection that similar descriptions still hold a place in modern descriptions of Singapore.

Crusoe’s Animals, Annotated: Cats, Dogs, and Disease in the Naval Chronicle Edition of Robinson Crusoe, 1815

The 1815 edition of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, edited by “the Hydro-grapher of the Naval Chronicle,” a periodical serving as the journalistic arm of the Royal Navy, was intended to promote “a nautical point of view.” In this article, I examine the copious notes to the 1815 edition, focusing on the role of animals in the British maritime enterprise, especially cats and dogs. The notes by James Stanier Clarke illustrate both the ways that Defoe’s text was read a century after its publication and the debates that helped to define Britain’s maritime enterprise. Dogs aboard ship lead Clarke to a long dis cussion of the “cosmopolitan” strain of rabies that eventually showed up in the South Sea islands. Clarke rejects textual evidence of zoonotic transmis sion of the disease, either exposing the limits of his own scientific understanding or the limits of his willingness to acknowledge the role of Europeans and their shipboard animals played in spreading disease.

Forming Readiness in Future Navigators for Professional Activity in Maritime Universities of Great Britain

Abstract The article is devoted to the problem on training of maritime specialists in universities of Great Britain; in particular, it is a question of training navigators. It was noted that there are dozens of maritime educational institutions and a long tradition of training maritime specialists in the country. The system of maritime education in the United Kingdom is effective, and the level of training of specialists, including navigators, allows them to qualitatively perform their official duties on ships, which, in its turn, guarantees the safety of navigation. The peculiarity of professional training of navigators is that the educational program is focused on practical activities in accordance with the requirements of the rules of the International Convention on the Training and Certification of Seafarers, recommendations of the International Maritime Organization and other regulatory documents. It was found out that the UK Nautical Institute is working on the continuous improvement of the educational level of specialists operating maritime vessels. The article also discusses the training of navigators at the Maritime Centre of the University of London and at the University of Plymouth. The training of navigators on simulators is considered as a type of practical training and is conducted in accordance with national and international requirements for a computer simulator complex and software training complexes. The author of the article draws attention to the sufficient number of modern simulators, training equipment and laboratories, which are used to work out practical skills of future navigators. It has also been clarified that in all UK maritime higher education institutions the mandatory condition for successful completion of training is the completion of maritime professional practice. The number of hours for such practices is determined by the relevant regulations. The high ranking of British maritime education institutions attracts students from around the world. For international students there are comfortable conditions for admission, study and residence. They can improve their English language skills and take preparatory courses for admission.

Scotland, Scottishness, British Integration and the Royal Navy, 1793–1815

With few exceptions, existing research in British social and maritime history has never focused on the presence and role of Scotsmen in the Royal Navy of the French Wars era (1793–1815), on their identification and self-presentation within this institution, and on attitudes towards naval warfare in Scotland more generally. Situating the problem within current debates on ‘four nations’ history and the development of British identity, this article aims to fill this gap. It will consider, in turn, the Navy's institutional language and practices, individual experiences, and, chiefly employing as a case study the 1797 victory of Camperdown, achieved by the Scottish Admiral Duncan, public representations in the Scottish press. This will help to illustrate the often ambiguous relationship that Scots in the Navy—and particularly on the quarterdeck—could have with their homeland, and the powerful attraction, reinforced by the naval environment and administrative structures, which Englishness exerted on them. More broadly, it will be shown how the late Hanoverian Navy, as a markedly Anglocentric institution, acted as a key instrument of cultural, social and political assimilation of Scots into Britain, thus offering a valuable case study for an investigation of patterns of British integration.

The Environmental History of Computing.

From Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (a product of an increasingly global British maritime empire) to Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine (designed to solve the problem of "seeing like a state" in the newly trans-continental American Republic) to the emergence of the modern petrochemical industry, information technologies have always been closely associated with the human desire to understand and manipulate their physical environment. More recently, humankind has started to realize the environmental impacts of information technology, including not only the toxic byproducts associated with their production, but also the polluting effects of the massive amounts of energy and water required by data centers at Google and Facebook (whose physicality is conveniently and deliberately camouflaged behind the disembodied, ethereal "cloud"). This paper grounds the history of information technology in the material world by focusing on the relationship between "computing power" and more traditional processes of resource extraction, exchange, management, and consumption.

Collecting the sea shanty: British maritime identity and Atlantic musical cultures in the early twentieth century

This article explores an important phase in the survival of the sea shanty as a collected, recorded and documented musical form. The final demise of the sailing ship as an economic mode of transport in the early twentieth century inspired a plethora of books and memoirs celebrating the age of sail, and many authors focused on the sea shanty. Collectors debated the accuracy of written versions, the sanitisation of lyrics and the likely origins of particular songs, trying to establish both the ‘authentic’ shanty, and their own varied maritime qualifications for writing about it. The shanty also became important to wider debates about national identity, with its multicultural origins sitting awkwardly with the mainstream folk movement’s search for an English musical tradition.

‘And yet, everything we do is usually based on the English’: sailing the mare incognitum of Star Trek ’s transatlantic double consciousness with Horatio Hornblower

While pitched and sold to television executives as being a space western – which of course it was not – the world of Star Trek was intentionally and systematically modelled on the British golden age of sail as found in Napoleonic sea fiction. This article offers a synoptic and decidedly transatlantic critique of Star Trek, exposing a hidden British maritime world embedded beneath a veneer of ‘Americanness’. In doing so, it re-addresses and offers a corrective to the question of why Star-Trek-as-space-western has guided most Star Trek scholarship. It will show why it makes sense to re-historicise Star Trek not only as a product of the 1960s, but also as a distillate of impulses that originated in the late 1940s and 1950s. Remapping the origins of Star Trek along these lines reveals how and why it was only logical that the world-building of Star Trek was intentionally and continuously modelled on the eighteenth century British naval world. This maritime endowment is embedded in five maritime dimensions that shape the ontology of Star Trek’s future world in space. They encompass operational discourses, nomenclature, visual and conceptual aesthetics, and character archetypes as well as rituals, traditions and an entire maritime milieu.

The problem and potential of piracy: legal changes and emerging ideas of colonial autonomy in the early modern British Atlantic, 1670–1730

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on British maritime law to discuss the challenge of transferring Admiralty law to Britain's Atlantic colonies, considered through the lens pirate trials and executions. Colonial governors in North America and the West Indies tolerated piracy during the seventeenth century to obtain goods barred from the restrictions imposed by the Navigation Acts. These deals were largely ignored, but the increasing piratical insults against the Crown and pressure from foreign competitors, such as Spain, forced British officials to crack down on piracy. Unfortunately, years of tolerating pirates had allowed these criminals to become too numerous for British officials to transport captured pirates back to England for trial and executions. As a result, by 1700 they had to establish their maritime legal ruling body, the Admiralty Court, throughout the American colonies under the jurisdiction of local governors. However, complex geographical challenges in the Caribbean and religiously influenced social laws in North America forced colonial governors to alter the English system to fit their needs and create autonomous legal networks. This article argues that the establishment and maintenance of British Admiralty law in the Atlantic colonies led to the development of early American ideas of autonomy.

‘Isaiah's Call to England': Doubts about Prophecy in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Prophetic thought in nineteenth-century Britain has often been presented as divided between those mostly evangelical constituencies who ‘believed' in its literal fulfilment in the past, present or future and those who ‘doubted' such interpretations. This essay seeks to question that division by tracking the uses of one set of prophetic passages, those concerning the ‘Ships of Tarshish’ mentioned in Isaiah 60: 9 and elsewhere. It examines their appropriation from the late eighteenth century onwards by those seeking prophetic-providential justification for the British maritime empire. Next it shows how such such ideas fuelled missionary expansion in the years after 1815, suggesting that by mid-century that there was a growing spectrum of ways in which such passages were used by religious commentators. The final section shows how biblical critics seeking to bolster the integrity of the Bible as a text reconstructed the geographical and economic settings for these passages, establishing their historical veracity as they did so but in the process undermining their supernaturally predictive status. Thus one way of bolstering ‘faith’ – the study of prophetic fulfilments – was rendered doubtful by another. By the end of our period Tyre and Tarshish retained much of their homiletic punch as metaphors for the sin brought by trade and luxury, but those who saw them as literal proxies for Britain were in the minority.