British Shipping Research Articles

Shipping in Dire Straits: New Evidence on Trends and Cycles in Coal Freights from Britain, 1919-1939

New monthly freight rate indices for 13 coal trade routes from Britain 1919-1939 are presented. The new indices form the basis of a review of the interwar freight markets and their relationship to the timing and severity of general business cycles. New time series of laid-up tonnage provide the background for this discussion. The Great Depression starting in the autumn of 1929 created a shipping cycle of unusual length and severity. Real freight rate indices used as a cross-check on productivity gains in shipping raise some doubt on previous estimates of productivity growth in British shipping in the interwar years.

Colonizing paradise: landscape and empire in the British West Indies

In Colonizing Paradise , historian Jefferson Dillman charts the broad spectrum of sentiments that British citizens and travelers held regarding their colonial possessions in the West Indies. Myriad fine degrees of ambivalence separated extreme views of the region as an idyllic archipelago or a nest of Satanic entrapments. Dillman shows the manner in which these authentic or spontaneous depictions of the environment were shaped to form a narrative that undergirded BritainAEs economic and political aims in the region. Because British sentiments in the Caribbean located danger and evil not just in indigenous populations but in Spanish Catholics as well, DillmanAEs work begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers and conquistadors. Colonizing Paradise spans the arrival of English ships and continues through the early nineteenth century and the colonial era. Dillman shows how colonial entrepreneurs, travelers, and settlers engaged in a disquieted dialogue with the landscape itself, a dialogue the examination of which sheds fresh light on the culture of the Anglophone colonial Caribbean. Of particular note are the numerous mythical, metaphorical, and biblical lenses through which Caribbean landscapes were viewed, from early views of the Caribbean landscape as a New World paradise to later depictions of the landscape as a battleground between the forces of Christ and Satan. The ideal of an Edenic landscape persisted, but largely, Dillman argues, as one that needed to be wrested from the forces of darkness, principally through the work of colonization, planting, cataloguing, and a rational ordering of the environment. Ultimately, although planters and their allies continued to promote pastoral and picturesque views of the Caribbean landscape, the goal of such narratives was to rationalize British rule as well as to mask and obscure emerging West Indian problems such as diseases, slavery, and rebellions. Colonizing Paradise offers much to readers interested in Caribbean, British, and colonial history.

Greenland in the center: what happened when the Danish–Norwegian officials met English and Dutch whalers in Disko Bay, 1780–1820

ABSTRACTBetween 1780 and 1820 crucial changes took place in the economic and cultural relationship between Denmark–Norway and its North Atlantic dependencies. In Greenland, the state imposed a stringent set of social and economic controls, at the same time when the restrictions on trade in Iceland and Northern Norway were relaxed. In 1776 the Royal Greenlandic Trading Company was established, but during the eighteenth century the waters around Greenland were a hub of international whaling trade as Dutch, American, and British ships came into contact with the Inuit, who were legally under Danish-Norwegian social regulation. This article uses records of Danish officials in Greenland and those of incidental observers to understand the disjuncture between the law of Denmark–Norway and the realities of Disko Bay. The officials contended with better equipped foreign ships, the Inuit desire to trade with these ships, and communication problems with the capital. This period is characterized by experimentation with different methods of production, contrasting strongly with the later nineteenth century, in which Danish–Greenlandic policy became more restrictive. By the nineteenth century international whaling trade had followed the declining whale stocks westward to the Canadian and American waters, so Denmark-Norway could impose these restrictions more easily.

Whispers in a bottle: the language of liquor and the politics of prohibition in nineteenth-century New Zealand

In 1835, in the Hokianga region of New Zealand, missionary William White and Additional British Resident Thomas McDonnell spearheaded the introduction of a prohibition on spirits. Predating British rule, the resolutions on prohibition were termed ‘native law’. McDonnell’s cooperation with White, a known rival, is unusual. I suggest that the key to understanding this cooperation lies in McDonnell's history as a maritime captain. British ships in the South Pacific operated within a legal vacuum in terms of the management of crew behaviour. Alcohol maintained order and, accordingly, became a symbol of power. The lawless environment aboard ships bore similarities with pre-1840 New Zealand, allowing McDonnell to exploit his knowledge of traditional maritime power plays. Consideration the Hokianga prohibition resolutions in this context illuminates both the development of this early example of New Zealand law-making, as well the ways in which settlers established control in the absence of British law.

Prejudice and paranoia: a comparative study of antisemitism and Sinophobia in turn-of-the-century Britain

ABSTRACTRenshaw examines in comparative terms two of the most virulent manifestations of racial prejudice in early twentieth-century British society. The language of antisemitism and Sinophobia in the Edwardian period and the years preceding the First World War, the similarities and differences in the ways that these two forms of prejudice were articulated, and the overlap between them are analysed. Five strands of anti-Jewish and anti-Chinese sentiment and action are discussed. The first examines how international manifestations of antisemitism and Sinophobia, suspicions aimed at Jews and Chinese as transnational diasporic communities, and perceptions of these minorities, through Russian pogroms, the Boxer Rebellion in China and the post-Boer War economic situation in South Africa, were framed in narratives of victimhood and aggression. Second, the transnational and colonial circuits of racialized discourse and the relationship between periphery and metropole are considered, as are divergences in the articulation of anti-Jewish and anti-Chinese prejudice. The third strand investigates the use of the language of ‘invasion’, used by both the political right and the left in discussing Jewish and Chinese immigration and economic activity in Britain, with Chinese employment in British industries (in this period particularly as sailors on British ships) framed in the context of a demographic ‘Asiatic’ takeover of European societies. The fourth strand looks at the intersection of racial prejudice and sexual and social angst, the visceral association of immigrant groups with dirt and disease, and the sexual threat that racist and antisemitic literature attributed to Jews and Chinese. Finally, physical manifestations of antisemitism and Sinophobia in the period and the racial violence that occurred in Cardiff and Tredegar in 1911 will be described and placed in context. The article positions Edwardian antisemitism and Sinophobia as a transitory stage in the evolution of British racism: a bridge between the separate domestic and colonial forms of prejudice present in late Victorian discourse, and the new manifestations of racism located in British cities and ports, but aimed at non-white minorities, that emerged in the interwar period.

Crowdsourcing platform gets results

On the Zooniverse, data-analysis projects mesh public outreach and scientific discovery.On the Zooniverse, data-analysis projects mesh public outreach and scientific discovery.

“The Dreadful Effects of British Cruilty”: The Treatment of British Maritime Prisoners and the Radicalization of the Revolutionary War at Sea

Historians of the American Revolution have long noted the horrific conditions American sailors endured in British captivity. Treated as rebels and pirates, more Americans perished in British prisons and prison ships than in combat. Yet few scholars have questioned how the revolutionaries responded to such provocation. In answering this question, this essay explores how revolutionary Americans addressed the problems of capturing, confining, administering, and eventually releasing enemy mariners over the course of the war. At the outset of hostilities, colonial Americans possessed a normative set of expectations about the conduct of war at sea derived from their understandings of European conventions and their experience in prior imperial conflicts. These norms stressed the humane treatment of enemy prisoners and their speedy release through equitable exchange. As the war progressed, however, and Americans learned of the continual abuse of captured American sailors, Parliament's criminalization of American privateering, and a surge of loyalist privateers that brought civil war to the high seas, revolutionaries began to reconsider this humane stance. These factors coalesced to radicalize the revolutionary war effort, transforming captive British and loyalist mariners into ideal objects of retributive justice in the eyes of their captors. Politically constrained from either forming a naval bureaucracy capable of curbing the war's escalating violence or ending the odious cycle of retaliation through a large-scale prisoner exchange, Congress only exacerbated the problem. Captive mariners continued to endure unremitting horrors for the remainder of the war. Though Washington and others trained in the European mode decried this transformation, once begun, peace alone could end the radicalization of the Revolutionary War at sea.

Transplanting English Plantations in Aphra Behn's <em>Oroonoko</em>

Aphra Behn's 1688 novel, Oroonoko, tells the story of "the royal slave," in the subtitle's phrase, ostensibly an African prince captured by an English ship captain off the African coast and transported across the Atlantic into slavery in Surinam. Overlooked in this brutal, murderous, dismembering finale is the violent role of an Irishman, "one Banister, a wild Irish Man." This essay springs from a few simple questions: Who was this man, this Irish man, and what is he doing in Surinam, and in Behn's novel? The answers to those questions offer important points of access to the larger, contextual implications of Behn's novel—its relationship to British political developments more or less contemporary with its publication, its reflections on the comparatively late English emergence in the transatlantic slave trade, and the formal disjunctures within Behn's novel that reflect and highlight related tensions in plantation modernity.

Reconstructing a Wartime Journey: The Vollard-Fabiani Collection, 1940–1949

Abstract:In 1940, the British Admiralty detained a British passenger ship sailing from Lisbon to New York at the port of Hamilton, Bermuda, for a contraband search. Customs authorities seized four crates containing hundreds of artworks by leading European artists. Suspected of being sent to New York for sale by the French art dealer Martin Fabiani for the economic benefit of German-occupied France, the captured collection—originally the property of art dealer Ambroise Vollard—was confiscated as a prize of war and sent to Ottawa, Canada, for wartime safekeeping. The National Gallery of Canada stored the collection from 1940 to 1949, when British courts instructed the collection’s Canadian custodian to release it to its rightful owners, Fabiani and the Vollard heirs. This essay reframes the wartime journey of the Vollard-Fabiani collection and challenges the long-held notion that it belongs to the narrative of Nazi-looted cultural property. This essay also highlights an important role played by the National Gallery of Canada during World War II.

Sacred vessels: British church ship models

What is the significance of ship models hanging in British churches today? What is their function and what can they tell us about maritime culture, trade, and art in the context of the church through the ages? My doctoral research will examine the purpose and prevailing contemporary interpretation of ship models in Scottish churches and how these have altered from pre-Reformation church practice to the present day. Through a chronological study of the geographical spread of the practice of hanging ship models in churches, and by examining the folklore of the sculpture within a church context, my research explores the societies and individuals that commissioned these unique forms of sculpture and for what purpose, how the public’s interpretation of ship models in churches has developed and how the historical value placed on them has changed in recent years.

In the Image of the Other: Nineteenth-Century British Voyagers and Okinawans at the Point of Meeting

An early nineteenth-century British voyager, Captain Hall, published in 1818 an account of his landing at Okinawa Island and encounter with the court nobility of what was still at that time the Kingdom of the Ryukyus: Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo [Ryûkyû] Island in the Japan Sea. The paper asks: Why did the Ryukyuans respond to the unannounced entry into their waters by two British naval ships by a seemingly boundless hospitality? With a sideline view on the Sahlins-Obeyesekere controversy, the author proposes that even as the Ryukyuans were eulogizing the entry of the British by showering them with one-sided attention and acknowledging their royal credentials, they tried at the same time to make a bid for their departure. They might have been deploying ritual techniques apparent still today: of welcoming and (subsequent) sending-off in one single act.

A British Strike in an African Port: The Mercantile Marine and Dominion Politics in Durban, 1925

The world-wide British merchant shipping industrial dispute of 1925 threatened to bring the commerce of the British Empire to a halt. Although it rapidly faded in Britain itself, the strike took off with remarkable effect in the ports of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, almost paralysing the southern hemisphere operations of the world's largest cargo and passenger fleet. Through exploring the course of the strike in Durban, South Africa, this article shows how this globalised British labour dispute brought out tensions within the politics of the empire, both between dominions and metropolis and between political factions within those dominions. The article analyses the strike from the perspective that the exercise of power within the empire was radically fragmented. It shows that the course of the struggle was shaped by intensely conflictual relationships between South Africa and imperial power-holders in London, by rivalries between political factions within the South African state and by regional divisions between the Pretoria government and Natal Province. Together, these tensions produced the state policies towards the strike that enabled it to last far longer in Durban than might initially have been predicted.

Alphonso Lisk-Carew: Imaging Sierra Leone through His Lens

In Freetown in Clarkson’s day—1792—the author gives two of the best contemporary views ... in the Freetown of 1894 one discovers the palpable dissimilitude between some of the pictures and the scenes they are said to represent. The author of the work before us declares that hardly anything has been done since Clarkson’s day and his word must stand, even if the sun has to be pressed into the service to give misleading photographs. Photographs never make mistakes ... but photographers may misrepresent! (Sierra Leone Weekly News 1894).

The Royal Slave: Nobility, Diplomacy and the “African Prince” in Britain, 1748–1752

William Ansah Sessarakoo, the son of a powerful Fante slave trader on the Gold Coast, was tricked and sold into slavery in Barbados by a British ship’s captain during the 1740s. He was emancipated and brought to Britain in 1748, where he enjoyed a brief period of national celebrity before returning to the Gold Coast in 1750. This paper examines the specific political and cultural circumstances surrounding his remarkable journey, through the lens of the media generated about him during his time in Britain. It demonstrates that the most extensive contemporaneous account of Sessarakoo’s story,The Royal African, was in reality an attempt to generate popular support for a moribund Royal African Company and incorporate slave trading into narratives of national identity, based on notions of economic responsibility and honour. Adhering to conventions typified in Thomas Southerne’s stage adaptation ofOroonoko, further popular representations of Sessarakoo emphasised his aristocratic status and putatively inherited ‘noble’ characteristics. In doing so, they emphasised perceived differences between him and the majority of African peoples, who were deemed suitable for enslavement. The paper closes with an examination of some of the effects of Sessarakoo’s visit on Euro-African trade and diplomacy on the Gold Coast.

Graffiti of British Ships at La Aljaferia Castle

La Aljaferia Castle is situated on the west side of the Spanish city of Zaragoza in the north-east of the Iberian peninsula. It was built around 1065 to 1081 ad by Al-Muqtadir, head of the Islamic ...

‘Success to the Dobson’: commemorative artefacts depicting 18th-century British slave ships

Between c. 1720 and 1807 Britain dominated the transatlantic slave trade, yet throughout the same period material representations of the trade remained markedly few. A demand for Liverpool ceramics depicting slave ships did, however, develop in the later 18th century. These artefacts provide important insights into both the aspirations of those directly involved in slave shipping, and contemporary understandings of the slave trade itself. They also point to the emergence of an actively pro-slavery material culture: a direct response, it may be argued, to the propagandist strategies adopted in the 1780s by the abolition movement.

The Dutch-Algerian War and the Rise of British Shipping to Southern Europe (1715-1726)

In 1715, just two years after the United Provinces had been able to conclude the War of Spanish Succession, the Republic received a declaration of war from the Regency of Algiers. The disastrous results for Dutch shipping and trade in Southern Europe forced the conflict-weary Republic to wage a war of attrition. Only with great difficulties were the Dutch finally able to ‘defeat’ the Algerians after a long conflict in the Western Mediterranean and to conclude a long-lasting peace in 1726. The war years had meanwhile allowed British shipping to rise to dominance in the profitable carrying trade between Northern and Southern Europe, a position that the British held until the outbreak of the Revolutionary wars at the end of the eighteenth century. The Dutch-Algerian war of 1715-1726 can be considered among the key conflicts of the early modern age. It was one of the main causes of a structural shift of shipping hegemony from the Dutch Republic to Great Britain.

Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783 by Robert Emmett Curran (review)

Reviewed by: Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783 by Robert Emmett Curran Jason K. Duncan Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783. By Robert Emmett Curran. ( Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2014. Pp. xviii, 315. $29.95 paperback ISBN 978-0-8132-2583-8.) Arthur Schlesinger Sr. once famously remarked that “anti-Catholicism was the oldest prejudice in American history.” In a masterful work by a senior scholar covering the first two centuries of history in British America, Robert Emmett Curran illuminates what Schlesinger meant. Devoting his introduction to the European background of this story, Curran demonstrates the long-term consequences of Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church in the 1530s. As England struggled for the better part of two centuries to determine if it would be a Protestant or a Catholic kingdom, its colonies in the New World became caught up in the turmoil. The effect of this history on American Catholics was enormous. Once the scene shifts to America, Curran gives much attention to Maryland, the closest thing there was in those lands to a “Catholic colony.” He traces the doomed ventures of Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, to forge a pluralistic society in the Chesapeake. Those efforts ran aground in the light of an invasion by Puritans in the middle of the seventeenth century and the imposition of the penal laws in the aftermath of England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. Nonetheless, Maryland Catholics remained a distinct and viable community, albeit one forced to keep much of its religious life hidden. Catholics in New York were less fortunate. Jacob Leisler, a German Calvinist, took advantage of the expulsion of James II, a Catholic, to expel New York’s Catholic leadership, appointees of the now deposed Stuart king. What Catholics remained in New York had to endure close to a century of oppression and systematic denial of their religious and political rights. Curran deftly recovers the overlooked plight of Irish Catholics of the West Indies, some of whom were essentially enslaved after Oliver Cromwell had them sent to Barbados and other colonies. As tragic, or worse, was the fate of the Catholic Acadians. Caught between the struggle for power in America between Great Britain and France, they were forcibly expelled from their homes in the 1750s, victims of a brutal process that today would be described as ethnic cleansing. It was during that Seven Years’ War that anti-Catholicism in British America reached a peak. What came next was truly stunning—a revolt against British rule in America, one fueled in part by anger, especially in New England, over the Quebec Act of 1774. That law granted to Catholics in lands gained from France [End Page 674] full legal protection. The religious liberties of Protestants were also guaranteed, but no matter. Curran explains how patriots in the thirteen colonies now saw George III as taking a turn toward Rome similar to that of the Stuart kings. In the war that followed, most American Catholics, having little stake in the status quo, supported the Revolution. There were Catholics, notably in Pennsylvania, where the religious climate had been more tolerant, who remained loyal to London. The course of the War for Independence, involving as it did a patriot alliance with Catholic France, changed the direction of history for American Catholics. It also did not hurt their cause that none other than Benedict Arnold claimed his defection came from principled opposition, as a good Protestant, to the entry into the war of Catholic France. In one of the great ironies of the American Revolution, Catholics benefited enormously from its results. Soon after British ships sailed away from New York City in late 1783, for example, Catholics in that city emerged from their isolation, took their newly recognized rights in hand, and established their first parish. One of the many strengths of Papist Devils is Curran’s deft use of recent scholarship on early American Catholic history, both published and unpublished. He may have missed an opportunity or two to integrate this history somewhat more into the general narratives of colonial America. Even so, Curran demonstrates in convincing style why Schlesinger’s claim must...

Invisibility in the Color-Blind Era: Examining Legitimized Racism against Indigenous Peoples

Invisibility in the Color-Blind EraExamining Legitimized Racism against Indigenous Peoples Dwanna L. Robertson (bio) A few of the whites that I’m around make Indian jokes.… I’ve been called a basket weaver, blanket Indian, blanket ass, skin, breed, which I don’t let bother me, you know. ’Cause I just look at the person that’s doing the talking and the so-called name calling, and a lot of that shows ignorance, the way I look at it. I laugh at it and go on and try not to let it deter me. Will (Chickasaw) Beginning in the mid-1990s, scholarship on the ideology of color-blind racism gained acceptance within the mainstream of the sociology of race in the United States. Scholars contend that after the US civil rights era, overtly racist acts generally gave way to color-blind (covert) racism in the maintenance of white privilege.1 It became socially unacceptable to express blatant antagonism toward people of color.2 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explains that this shift allows whites to refute all culpability for the current racial oppression of minorities.3 Indeed, color-blind racism enables whites to justify the current gaps in educational attainment, wages, chronic health disorders, and wealth, between them and everyone else, through the ideologies of individualism and culture without thought to historical context. Thus, the political and economic inequality of people of color becomes their own fault. Marginalized groups still experience inequality, but Bonilla-Silva argues that it is increasingly covert, institutionalized, and “void of direct racial terminology.”4 Yet, this does not hold true for Indigenous Peoples in the United States.5 Like other marginalized groups, Natives certainly experience the [End Page 113] same covert mechanisms of color-blind racism that limit life opportunities. However, Natives still routinely experience overt racism in the form of racial epithets like “redskin,” “injun,” and “squaw” and horribly distorted depictions of Natives as mascots, reminiscent of the propaganda used against black, Irish, and Jewish people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And this overt racism is not confined to hate groups but is visible in everyday discourse and throughout the media. Historically, Native Peoples were portrayed as savages, Native women as sexually permissive, and Native culture as engendering laziness.6 Contemporary American Indians still live under the prevalence of Native misrepresentations in the media, archaic notions of Indianness, and the federal government’s appropriation of “Indian” names and words as code for military purposes. Their oppression also becomes invisible in the very visible mechanism often used to reproduce racial inequality—through informal communication—with statements like being an “Indian-giver,” sitting “Indian-style,” learning to count through the “one little, two little, three little Indians” song, or getting together to “pow wow” over a business idea. This racialization goes beyond words and pictures. While minstrel shows have long been castigated as racist, American children are socialized into playing Indian. Columbus Day celebrations, Halloween costumes, and Thanksgiving reenactments stereotype Indigenous Peoples as a much-distorted, monolithic culture. That is, other groups assert racial power over Indigenous Peoples by relegating indigeneity (complex understandings and representations of Indigenous identity) to racist archetypes and cultural caricatures. Playing Indian is actually an American tradition with its roots in colonial times.7 During the Boston Tea Party, when colonists rebelled against British rule by boarding English ships and throwing the tea into the harbor, they were dressed up in blankets and feathers and had black soot and grease on their faces, pretending to be Indians.8 Playing Indian is racist—in no way different from wearing blackface or participating in minstrel shows—because it collapses distinct cultures into one stereotypical racialized group. Even worse, because playing Indian is deemed socially acceptable (e.g., normal, legitimate), any other racial or ethnic group may now participate—without recognizing the inherent racism in doing so. Historians, philosophers, and Indigenous media document that Indigenous Americans cope daily with overtly racist language, images, and behaviors without social recourse. I argue that racism against [End Page 114] American Indians has been normalized and institutionally legitimized, thereby rendering it invisible. To legitimize is to make legitimate, that is, to justify, reason, or rationalize in accordance with...

Decolonisation, corruption and post-colonial politics in the Royal Malaysian Navy, 1946–1976

The Royal Malayan Navy (RMN) was created after the Second World War as Britain sought to secure its regional strategic and economic interests through naval and political federation. By guiding the transition towards independence through political concessions to maintain Malaya's integrity, it was hoped imperial influence could be preserved through transferring pro-British colonial institutions such as the RMN. Thus, while Malaya was declared independent on 31 August 1957, the country's navy depended upon British officers, equipment and ships for more than a decade, with UK firms continuing to profit from procurement. A culture of corruption, which developed during the war, flourished from the new opportunities post-colonial political patronage offered individuals involved in the supply and maintenance of the RMN. The ruling party also furthered their nationalist interests by imposing Malay quotas, language and religion upon the service, side-lining British-trained, non-Malay personnel whose allegiance might lie elsewhere. Decolonisation therefore created a vacuum within Malaysia's post-colonial navy which competing imperial, corporate, personal, and nationalist opportunists looked to fill. Adopting a transnational analysis combining original and existing oral histories and archival sources from Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and the UK, with conceptual writing on imperial transition, corruption and patronage, this article presents new insights into the issues created by Malaysia's decolonisation and post-colonial naval development. It widens debates on neo-colonialism and its consequences for British hegemony; how decolonisation created new opportunities for individual, political and economic advancement through the navy; and the impact of Malaysian affirmative action and ‘Islamisation’ policies upon non-Malay naval personnel.