British Naval Research Articles

The ‘Prince Royal of Denmark’s Yacht’: A career in royal, naval and whaling service, 1785–1837

Following the French Revolutionary, American and Napoleonic wars between 1793 and 1815, many smaller British warships were sold to merchant ship owners directly or to shipyards for breaking or resale. Identifying changes from naval to commercial employment is not always straightforward and the availability or accuracy of a vessel’s history not always assured. One yacht built at Deptford in 1785 with Danish royal connections and then a British naval career presents such questions. Sold out of naval service in 1818, ostensibly for breaking, it is argued that the former yacht was not broken up but rebuilt and resold to become a whaleship from 1820 to about 1837. The vessel provides an unusual case study of a transition from royal to naval service and then into mercantile employment.

Liquor Rations and Labour Management in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

Abstract A striking yet underexamined system of labour management circulated between land and sea in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world: the use of liquor rations to stimulate worker productivity. Turning to the British naval warship and the American slave plantation, this article depicts how labour supervisors in both settings relied on carefully regulated quantities of alcohol to extract more labour from their workforces. Even as Anglo-American temperance activists called for sobering up the working classes, many naval commanders and slaveholders held firm to the belief that managed intemperance was an essential tool for mobilizing workers. The study of liquor rations and the arguments endorsing their distribution helps to reveal how a spectrum of coercive labour practices swept through the Atlantic world amid the emergence of an industrial capitalist order. Zooming in on the history of these rations enables us to discern labour extraction strategies that operated between the poles of violent coercion and market-based exploitation, and that animated vital sectors of the Atlantic economy during the nineteenth century.

The Bonny Landing: The anatomy of Black Africa’s first amphibious operation, July to September 1967

The amphibious landing of troops at Bonny during the Nigerian Civil War is often described as a landmark feat accomplished by the military of a modern Black African state. It was the first of five landings which along with the instituting of a naval blockade formed the basis of the encirclement and eventual defeat of secessionist Biafra. This article captures the transformation of an erstwhile civilian marine department into a naval force which endured sabotage and defection prior to successfully transporting, landing, and affording covering fire for the federal Third Infantry Division. The article explains the military and political objectives, and also reveals the pivotal role played in its planning and execution by James Rawe, an expatriate British naval officer who was a veteran of the Normandy landings.

Hunting the Royal Navy’s Medical ‘Snark’: Diagnosis, Prevention and Treatment of Tropical Neurosis in British Sailors, 1943–1945

Summary Between 1943 and 1945, Britain’s Royal Naval Medical Service dispatched urgent missions to investigate physiological and psychological effects suffered by British sailors who were deployed in tropical climates. This article draws on the resulting, previously neglected, medical articles and medical research reports to examine understandings of ‘tropical neurosis’ in the wartime Fleet. Exploring how tropical neurosis was encountered, framed and explained by senior naval medical professionals, this article investigates the condition’s portrayal as a serious health and military risk during the Second World War. This research analyses hitherto unexplored intersections of constructions of race, gender and environment in British naval medical conclusions and recommendations, delivering significant new understandings of the insidious operation of medical racism in Britain’s wartime armed forces. It also establishes, for the first time, how this ambiguous illness was construed as a threat to Britain’s naval war effort, and even the very future of Empire, by the Navy’s medical branch.

A major midlatitude hurricane in the Little Ice Age

Abstract. An unusually severe hurricane (Louisbourg Storm) struck Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1757. Historic records describing storm conditions as well as damage to ships and coastal fortifications indicate an intensity beyond any modern (post-1851) Atlantic cyclones striking the same region, yet this storm struck during a cold climate period known as the Little Ice Age (LIA). Its track and timing coincided with a British naval blockade of a French fleet at Fortress Louisbourg during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). This provides a unique opportunity to explore growing scientific evidence of heightened storminess in the North Atlantic despite a colder climate expected to suppress hurricane intensification but which research is increasingly showing to have supported North Atlantic storms of exceptional strength. Weather attributes extracted from the logs of naval vessels scattered by the Louisbourg Storm provided multiple hourly observations recorded at different locations. Wave height and wind force estimates at ship locations were compared to extreme storm surge heights calculated for Louisbourg Harbour and a shipwreck site south of Fortress Louisbourg. Comparing these metrics to those of modern analogues that crossed the same bathymetry reflects landfall intensity consistent with a powerful major hurricane. Historical records show this storm originated as a tropical cyclone at the height of hurricane season and intensified into the northern midlatitudes along the Gulf Stream. Its intensity at landfall is consistent with established seasonal climatological models where highly baroclinic westerlies driven by autumn continental cooling encounter intensifying north-tracking tropical cyclones fuelled by sea surface temperatures that peak in autumn. Stronger seasonal contrasts from earlier and colder continental westerlies in the Little Ice Age (LIA) may have triggered explosive extratropical transition from a large hurricane resulting in a more severe strike. It suggests that tropical cyclones lasting days to weeks and the conditions that generate them are likely masked by cooler historic mean annual to multi-decadal LIA climate reconstructions.

The Wisdom of ‘Modest’ Beginnings: Lord Salisbury, Arbitration, International Law and British Naval Supremacy

ABSTRACT Lord Salisbury, according to the historiography, was notoriously sceptical of international arbitration. Yet, at the end of the nineteenth century, Salisbury’s last government entered into an arbitration agreement with Venezuela in relation to its border dispute with British Guiana and a general arbitration agreement with the US. It then took the lead in establishing a permament court of international arbitration at the fist Hague Peace Conference in 1899. This article explains why that change in Salisbury’s outlook occurred, how Salisbury developed a distinctively Conservative approach to arbitration in international relations and how the British contribution to the development of an institutional international rule of law at the end of the nineteenth century was as much a Conservative moment as a liberal one.

Severing the Sinews of the Spanish Empire: British Naval Policy and Operations Regarding the Silver Fleets during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, 1737–1740

ABSTRACT In studies on the War of Jenkins’ Ear, a conflict between the British and Spanish empires, historians tend to focus on colonial expeditions, such as those against Porto Bello and Cartagena. On the other hand, operations against Spanish silver fleets, the mainstay of the Spanish imperial trade system, have attracted far less attention. This article examines these somewhat undervalued operations against the silver fleets as well as those concerning other Spanish shipping during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, giving their political and diplomatic backgrounds. This analysis demonstrates the significance of the issue of the silver fleets in Anglo-Spanish relations at the time. It also indicates the deep involvement of France in this issue and its influence on British naval operations. Finally, this article describes the development and implementation of British naval policy to put economic and financial pressure on the Spanish empire, arguing that the naval operations during this period were one of the earliest attempts at using blockades on both sides of the Atlantic, which Britain further developed in later imperial wars that took place during the long eighteenth century.

Time to Talk Turkey: The British Naval and German military missions to the Ottoman Empire in 1912–14

Time to Talk Turkey: The British Naval and German military missions to the Ottoman Empire in 1912–14

The Charting of Arousa Bay: A Case Study in British Naval Pathfinding in the Peninsular War (1807–1814)

ABSTRACT Military reconnaissance and mapping in the Peninsular War have been well studied; less attention has been given to the analogous provision of navigational intelligence for the Royal Navy. This depended on exploitation of such data as was held in the Hydrographical Office in London, supplemented with information from pathfinders on the front line. The present case study examines survey and charting of the rias of the Galician coast, which were of strategic importance for support to Spanish guerillas and to the Duke of Wellington’s army as it advanced through northern Spain.

Turret versus Broadside: An Anatomy of British Naval Prestige, Revolution and Disaster, 1860–1870 by Howard J. Fuller (review)

Turret versus Broadside: An Anatomy of British Naval Prestige, Revolution and Disaster, 1860–1870 by Howard J. Fuller (review)

Western Technology and China's Industrial Development: Steamship Building in Nineteenth-Century China, 1828–1895 by Hsien-ch'un Wang

Reviewed by: Western Technology and China's Industrial Development: Steamship Building in Nineteenth-Century China, 1828–1895 by Hsien-ch'un Wang Bert Becker (bio) Western Technology and China's Industrial Development: Steamship Building in Nineteenth-Century China, 1828–1895 By Hsien-ch'un Wang. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. xvi + 229. Hsien-ch'un Wang's book describes the process of transferring steam-engine technology to China in the nineteenth century and the subsequent impact on Chinese technical education and shipbuilding. It highlights how Chinese senior officials either welcomed or hindered technological innovation and progress. Steamship building depended on government subsidies. The book demonstrates the scientific and technological underpinnings of this transfer process. Wang presents the early attempts to build steamers in China in a very readable and even exciting way, with colorful descriptions enhanced by impressive images. Wang writes that once Chinese officials understood the importance of steam power for military purposes, they recruited European technicians and instructors, starting an education process that lasted until the end of the century. Translating steam-engine management manuals and popularized science textbooks from European languages introduced Chinese readers to new terms and concepts. The Fuzhou Navy Yard serves as a case study illustrating the fundamental problems of transferring Western science to China. The major value of the book is that Wang largely and consistently employs Chinese primary and secondary sources. Furthermore, he compares China's path to modern shipbuilding with the Japanese experience around the same time. His aim is to reject common notions that the Chinese government in its years of decline was too inept to acquire steam technology (as U.S. historian John Fairbank's seminal studies suggest), or that internal socioeconomic or political dynamics or a deep-rooted conservative society (as other historians argue) sufficiently explain China's difficulties handling steam technology. Wang sees China's techno-scientific settings as the major factor impeding technological progress. Before the 1911 revolution brought an end to the Qing dynasty, structural inefficiencies such as the dominance of senior officials making poor decisions, a weak fiscal system, and a lack of funds had prevented major progress in China's shipbuilding industry. Remarkably, Wang addresses the problematic lack of private initiatives that turned the Chinese "age of steam" into a government-sponsored phenomenon. Yet he does not draw the logical conclusion that the manic absolute state control of technical developments was perhaps the main reason why China lost out to [End Page 645] its rival Japan, suffering a humiliating military defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). Historians interested in the history of science will find much important and useful information in Wang's book on China's knowledge of Western sciences at the time. It is fascinating to read that missionaries were the first to introduce technical books and discover how "collaborative translations" and complicated teamwork between (mostly English-speaking) foreigners and Chinese translators worked in practice. This is described in such a sophisticated and detailed way that the book is also valuable for linguistics experts. Educational historians will learn about the lack of curricula science in China, the establishment of new schools teaching scientific subjects, and individual students pursuing a science education in China and abroad. For maritime and business historians of China, the chapter on the Fuzhou Navy Yard's founding and development is certainly the most interesting. It is well situated in the context of global shipbuilding history, demonstrating the French and British naval schools' diverse influences creating and shaping the Chinese Navy. Wang rejects the notion that the Navy Yard's progress was hampered by Chinese staff preferring civil service to a technical career. He considers government intervention crucial, an assumption that is reinforced when comparing the Fuzhou Yard with the British Royal Naval Dockyards. By subcontracting work to private shipbuilders such as the prominent marine engineering company Armstrong, the British Admiralty stimulated competition, driving private shipbuilders to develop new designs that attracted contracts from the Royal Navy or even foreign governments. Unable to play a similar role, the Fuzhou Navy Yard received insufficient funding from the central government to provide domestic shipbuilders with the financial resources they needed. It is revealing to learn that, from...

Women’s Labour, British Naval Hospital Ships, and a System of Medical Care, 1775-1815

This research note uses new methodologies to investigate the presence of women nurses and other labourers on British hospital ships during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Using pay lists, musters, and log book records, it is possible to track the work of women labourers throughout the naval medical system of care. The work of women on these ships challenges our previous assumptions concerning medical care in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Cette note de recherche fait appel à de nouvelles methodologies pour enquêter sur la présence des infirmières et des autres ouvrières sur les navires hospitaliers britanniques pendant les guerres révolutionnaires et napoléoniennes. À l’aide de listes de paye, de listes des membres d’équipage et de registres des journaux de bord, il est possible de suivre le travail des femmes dans tout le système de soins médicaux de la marine. Le travail des femmes sur ces navires nous oblige à revoir nos suppositions antérieures concernant les soins médicaux à la fin du 18e et au début du 19e siècle.

The Man without a Country: British Imperial Nostalgia in <i>Ferry to Hong Kong</i> (1959)

On New Year’s Eve 1959, Ferry to Hong Kong was screened at the Lee Theatre and the Astor in Hong Kong. Produced by Rank as its first CinemaScope feature, the big-budget movie tells the real-life tale of Steven Ragan (he was also known as Michael Patrick O’Brien), a stateless drifter who was stuck for ten months on the ferry sailing between Hong Kong and Macau from September 18, 1952, to July 30, 1953. The British film was Rank’s major Anglo-American joint venture of the year. Positioned within Cold War contexts, Ferry to Hong Kong could be seen as a British cultural-diplomatic response through cinematic soft power to reestablish national assurance on Asian Cold War fronts, following the 1956 Suez Canal debacle that witnessed the death of Britain’s imperial might at the hands of the Eisenhower administration. Unlike such vaunted Hollywood pictures as Soldier of Fortune (1955), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), and The World of Suzie Wong (1960), which imagined the incursions of American white knights into Hong Kong (as a stand-in for China), Ferry to Hong Kong conveyed imperial nostalgia and loss. The film turns the antihero into a paragon of British gallantry who saves the passengers and refugees from the hands of Chinese (Communist) pirates. The sinking ferryboat is the traumatic device used to recall British naval war stories and retell romantic and narcissistic tales of British valor and international influence. More than an adventure of a vagabond, Ferry to Hong Kong was an espionage thriller in uneasy disguise. The film preceded Gilbert’s three James Bond films, all of which affirmed the power of the individual in cracking transboundary networks of espionage and political intrigue.

Mary Wills. Envoys of Abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign against the Slave Trade in West Africa.

Mary Wills. <i>Envoys of Abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign against the Slave Trade in West Africa</i>.

Arthur Jacob Marder: A Glorifier of the British Sea Power

In this article the author analyses the academic career of Arthur Jacob Marder, a prominent student of British naval policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even though he graduated from Harvard, Marder faced serious difficulties in obtaining a position at American universities because of the ethnic and religious prejudices prevalent in the 1930s. Marder chose British naval policy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as his field of research. A key issue in this vast area of study were the reforms put in place by Admiral John Fisher to prepare the British Navy for the Great War. His first monograph, “The Anatomy of British Sea Power”, was published in 1940. After encountering restrictions on access to British Admiralty documents in the 1940s and 1950s, Marder turned to private archives to locate sources for his study. He managed to publish both Sir Herbert Richmond&amp;apos;s diaries and the three-volume correspondence of Sir John Fisher. The five-volume treatise “From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow” was the crowning achievement of Marder&amp;apos;s research. Marder is considered the founder of the classic concept of the so-called naval revolution of Sir John Fisher. Marder had the unique opportunity to study British naval documents, most of which no longer exist today and are forever lost to future generations of historians. This is the primary reason why Marder&amp;apos;s work retains its significance to this day.

Politeness, Civility, and Violence on the New South Wales “Frontier,” 1788–1816

AbstractInterrogating the relationship between politeness and violence in Warrane/Sydney, 1788–ca. 1816, this article investigates the impact of Enlightenment thought in the transoceanic British colonial world. The author argues that polite sociability was crucial to the imposition and self-justification of the British occupation of Eora country. Principally examining the published and personal journals and diaries of First Fleet officers, the author reveals how politeness was a display of European notions of civility understood within a stadial model of progress: Enlightenment ideology enabled the ruling naval elite to consider their invasion friendly, despite the lethal violence of colonial occupation. Foregrounding the construction and performance of a status-specific whiteness in colonial space, the author shows how politeness in the colonial context justified rather than mitigated violence. In so doing, they hope to destabilize our understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment, politeness, and violence. In what is primarily a study of Enlightenment and settler colonialism, Indigenous perspectives provide a crucial framework to comprehend the British naval elites’ commitment to the imposition of civility by force in Warrane/Sydney.

The Officer Corps of the British Navy in the Observations and Assessments of Russian Representatives to the Grand Fleet, 1914–1918

In this article, the author examines the assessment of the Royal Navy’s command staff contained in official reports, correspondence, memoirs, and diaries of naval officers Mikhail Kedrov, Mikhai Smirnov, Gustav von Schultz, and Sergei Izenbek, who were official Russian representatives to the Grand Fleet during the Great War. The purpose of this article is to summarise the views of representatives of the Russian Navy on the traditions, general and professional culture of British naval officers, the level of their maritime, special and tactical training, the specifics of their mentality, service subordination, relationships in a naval environment, the ways of service and everyday life. Considerable differences in the professional qualities of the officers of the British and Russian fleets were noted, stemming mainly from the different principles of recruitment and training of the command staff, as well as the growing distrust of the British naval corporation towards Russia as an ally during the war. The author concludes that professional analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the Royal Navy&amp;apos;s command staff significantly complemented and updated the image of the British ally formed in the Russian naval milieu during the Great War and in the years following, and contributed to a more balanced self-assessment of Russian naval personnel.

Life is Like a Song: Samuel Pepys’s Diary as a Collection of the Ephemeral

The present study focuses on the question of the narrative models that the early modern individual was able to draw upon in composing a diary autobiographical narrative, and what image of everyday life was formed thereby. This question is explored on the basis of the famous diary of English naval official Samuel Pepys. Pepys was also known as a collector of one of the types of ephemera that were extremely popular in the 17th century: broadside ballads. Certain features of Pepys’ diary allow us to discuss a possible influence of broadside ballads on the image of everyday life which is shaped in the diary. By analysing the range of meanings which have developed around the broadside ballads and the practices associated with them, and comparing them to those of the diary, we can conclude that there is a similar image of everyday life as part of an elusive, fleeting and actual present, which may be understood in the future and which therefore needs to be preserved.

‘Rather a Sham’: The 1931–1933 British Naval Mission to China and the Failure of Anglo-Chinese Naval Diplomacy during the ‘Nanjing Decade’

This article explores the 1931–33 British Naval Mission to the Republic of China. An undeniable failure in its stated objective of fostering the reform and reorganization of the Republic of China Navy (ROCN), this Mission has been almost entirely overlooked by both historians of the interwar Royal Navy and scholars of Anglo-Chinese relations during the ‘Nanjing Decade’ (1927–1937). Utilizing British Admiralty and Foreign Office documents, as well as the official reports and private correspondence circulated by the Mission’s head – and sole member – Captain H.T. Baillie-Grohman, this article demonstrates that British policymakers had little faith in the Mission’s ability to achieve tangible short-term reform within the ROCN. Instead, British officials understood the Mission as an expedient way to foster long-term Anglo-Chinese goodwill which could be exploited once the Republic of China had attained a true measure of political and economic stability. However, even these vague long-term diplomatic objectives were doomed to failure in the face of the Nanjing Government’s severe economic limitations and lack of interest in naval development during the early 1930s.

Book Review: The Development of British Naval Aviation, 1914-1918 by Alexander Howlett

Book Review: <i>The Development of British Naval Aviation, 1914-1918</i> by Alexander Howlett