British Navy Research Articles

Una mirada al Buenos Aires prerrevolucionario: Los Recuerdos del Buenos Ayres virreynal de María Sánchez de Thompson y Mendeville

Rondando los años 1860, la porteña María Sánchez de Thompson y Mendeville redacta unas breves memorias, dejando constancia de numerosas fragilidades del Buenos Aires virreinal en vísperas de la independencia. Recuerda con más de seis décadas de distancia un Buenos Aires colonial aún muy español, en el que la introducción paulatina de modales, ideas, y objetos importados por viajeros, diplomáticos y comerciantes británicos se recibe, en determinados sectores de la buena sociedad criolla, como sendas promesas de acceso al progreso. Este artículo propone revisar la percepción por María Sánchez de Thompson de un acontecimiento definitivo y fundador de la historia argentina, la doble tentativa de ocupación del puerto de Buenos Aires por la marina británica en 1806 y 1807. Analiza en particular la manera en que la autora recalca la paradójica actitud de muchas de las grandes familias de la alta sociedad ante los «lindos enemigos» británicos.

Our Suffering Brethren: Foreign Captivity and Nationalism in the Early United States by David J. Dzurec III

Reviewed by: Our Suffering Brethren: Foreign Captivity and Nationalism in the Early United States by David J. Dzurec III Sarah Sillin (bio) Our Suffering Brethren: Foreign Captivity and Nationalism in the Early United States david j. dzurec iii University of Massachusetts Press, 2019 236 pp. David J. Dzurec III's Our Suffering Brethren traces a history of white American captivity from the American Revolution to the end of the Barbary War. Throughout this era, the British navy and Barbary corsairs repeatedly captured American ships—whether to impress, imprison, ransom, or enslave those aboard—thereby evoking a sense of American vulnerability (7). Dzurec's history demonstrates that captivity profoundly influenced early US politics by eliciting widespread public concern; it thereby became a source of nationalism that served complex, sometimes contradictory interests. Americans' loss of freedom offered a key justification first for the Revolutionaries' cause and then for a stronger federal government. Yet rather than simply unifying the country, captivity became the subject of fierce political debates. Indeed, Dzurec argues that Federalists' and Republicans' responses established a key pattern in US politics: each party asserted its unique ability to provide national security, even as both invoked the same nationalist rhetoric by playing on fear of a foreign threat (194). In examining such rhetoric, Dzurec develops a nuanced reading of how international encounters shaped the government's relation to citizens. Federalists and Republicans alike located political capital in American captives' suffering, as they claimed authority to enter into new wars, negotiate for US captives, or forge treaties. But even as politicians played on voters' anxieties, he suggests, so too did public discourse inform US politics. The apparent arbitrariness of captivity, which elicited concerns that "any American could be taken captive," also thereby fostered a sense that "any American could join the debate about the nature of Independence" (38). Though the nation's early presidents responded to this sentiment with [End Page 300] calls for limiting public involvement—like the private fundraising efforts to redeem Americans captive in Algeria—public opinion and political policies continued to shape one another. To understand the reciprocal influence of public opinion and political rhetoric, Dzurec explores a rich historical archive. His readings of sailors' letters and narratives (with particular attention to Ethan Allen's and John Dodge's memoirs) highlight the influential role of their accounts in circulating news of captivity and shaping Americans' impressions of these events. Moreover, he delves into Americans' responses to such accounts by analyzing the more official discourse of political policies and representatives' correspondence, alongside public commentary in news editorials, plays, and printed accounts of local festivities. Together, these texts allow him to argue that politicians' and private citizens' responses informed one another, while considering how they shifted over time. Captivity became first a touchstone in arguments for American independence and confederation in the late eighteenth century and then a lightning rod in early nineteenth-century political debates as the Federalist and Republican parties both purported to be the party of national security. Dzurec moves chronologically, so that the first half of Our Suffering Brethren identifies how captivity fostered American nationalism, starting with British impressment. Of course, captivity was not a new experience or trope; rather, Dzurec contends, colonial-era captivity narratives provided revolutionaries with "a historical precedent for the type of threat they faced" (37). Moreover, he suggests that stories of captivity became a means for revolutionaries to claim sympathy. Yet rather than halt captivity, the end of the war left Americans unprotected by British treaties with Barbary states. When Algerian corsairs captured American merchant ships in 1785, captivity took on new importance in US politics by fostering interest in a stronger federal government. Even as Americans' captivity strengthened arguments for the federal government, though, it also raised new possibilities for individual Americans to participate in foreign relations. Dzurec explores how such private involvement ebbed and flowed. In the 1780s, Americans began fundraising to help ransom their countrymen, then paused this involvement when the Constitutional Convention afforded the government more power to act on their behalf. Although Washington and the Federalists believed "public sentiment ought not play a role in politics outside of election" (63), the [End Page 301] formation of Democratic...

The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage by John Harris

Reviewed by: The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage by John Harris Robert Colby (bio) Keywords Middle Passage, Slavery, Atlantic slave trade The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage. By John Harris. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. Pp. 300. Cloth, $30.00.) On September 21, 1859, the barque Pamphylia slipped out of New York harbor. Though purportedly bound for Honduras on a sugar-trading circuit, all evidence pointed to a diff erent, more sinister destination. A Cuban [End Page 704] firm with ties to the slave trade had recently acquired the vessel but obscured its ownership through a charter to another, New York-based Cuban company. This crucial fiction offered the ship an all-important talisman: the right to sail under the U.S. flag. Four months later, however, a British cruiser patrolling for slavers apprehended the Pamphylia near the mouth of the Congo River with six hundred captive Africans aboard. Normally, a ship running under American colors would have been virtually immune from British scrutiny. But after timely intelligence put the warship on the lookout for the Pamphylia, U.S. sovereignty did not shield the slave traders. The British navy took custody of the enslaved, who still endured a simulacrum of the Middle Passage, steered first to St. Helena and then to the British Caribbean to be placed as apprentices. Nevertheless, from the perspective of both the British government and the slave dealers involved, an illicit slave-trading voyage had been successfully suppressed (169–74). In The Last Slave Ships, John Harris demonstrates the outsized role Americans played in the nearly five hundred slaving ventures launched between 1852 and the trade’s final demise in 1867. Though only a handful ended on U.S. soil (including the famous Clotilda and Wanderer), 91 percent took place on U.S.-built ships (59). Others were helmed by American captains, crewed in U.S. ports, or funded by capital laundered through American financial institutions. The confluence of these elements, moreover, made lower Manhattan a particularly convenient hub from which slave traders from Cuba, Brazil, and Portuguese colonies in Africa could continue their operations. The greatest benefit American participation offered slave traders, however, was the protective aegis of the star-spangled banner. The nineteenth century saw a series of nations gradually, though often half-heartedly, endorse efforts to suppress the slave trade. Americans celebrated their early abandonment of the traffic and, through a series of laws and treaties, nominally committed to its cessation. In their case, however, not only was the flesh weak but the spirit also was less than willing. Unless (and, in many cases, even if) slave dealers were caught in the act, prosecution was difficult; U.S. law left considerable loopholes through which suspected slavers could slink, including a failure to ban the equipment required for the trade and a cumbersome definition of citizenship. Ironically, the surviving slave trade also provided moral cover for American slaveholders and their allies who desired to annex Cuba even as they ignored U.S. complicity in that traffic. It was little wonder, then, that three-quarters of [End Page 705] the hundreds of slave ships descending on Africa in the 1850s and 1860s sailed under U.S. colors (59). Only the Republican Party’s ascendancy in the 1860s undercut Americans’ participation in the slave trade. Having campaigned against Democratic hypocrisy on the matter, the Lincoln administration cracked down on slave trafficking, passing new laws, deploying intelligence gathering tactics of the sort favored by the more-successful British, and aggressively prosecuting slave traders like Nathaniel Gordon. Most importantly, Secretary of State William Seward signed a landmark treaty removing many of the protections offered by U.S. colors. With the national government’s authority deployed more enthusiastically than ever before against the trade, the American resources so crucial to its survival dried up, leading to its ultimate demise in the late 1860s. In showing the importance of laws, treaties, and their enforcement to the slave trade, Harris adds a crucial political component to our understanding of the second slavery. This economic phenomenon certainly rested on surging global demand for slave-produced commodities...

Reasons for the Dissolution of the Navy Board: the Collapse of the English Navy or the Struggle of Factions at the Court of James I?

Reasons for the Dissolution of the Navy Board: the Collapse of the English Navy or the Struggle of Factions at the Court of James I?

The Falkland Islands: between the United Kingdom and Argentina

The Falkland Islands belong to the British Overseas Territories, which remained after the collapse of the colonial system. This archipelago, which consists of more than 700 islands, has a strategic importance because it is a transit point on the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The Falklands is home to the British Air Force and Navy. Since the 19th century, the islands have become the subject of a constant territorial dispute between the United Kingdom and Argentina, which defended its right to them both at the negotiating table and on the battlefield. The aim of the article is to study the dynamics and content of Argentine-British relations associated with the "Falklands issue" and ways to normalize them. Both sides have repeatedly resorted to the system of international law to influence each other, but their territorial dispute has not yet been settled. The maintaining strong economic, political and cultural ties with the inhabitants of the archipelago, as well as the strengthening of their British identity, currently remains a key factor in the superiority of the United Kingdom over Argentina in the "Falklands issue".

Knowledge translation is everybody's business

Successful application of research outcomes into routine healthcare practice rarely occurs as an immediate result of their publication [1]. A much-cited example is the 40-year delay in the British Navy’s adoption of vitamin C for the prevention of scurvy, despite substantial evidence of benefit from the first ever controlled trial conducted by James Lind in the 1770s [2]. The delayed adoption of research outcomes is often referred to as the evidence-practice gap [3]. Whilst science has moved on in the 200+years since Lind’s study, the gap still persists, contributing to inefficient use of resources and avoidable mortality and morbidity. The more recent 10-year delay in the adoption of prenatal corticosteroids to prevent preterm birth despite unequivocal but under- collated evidence, is estimated to have cost the lives of tens of thousands of babies [4]. Similar ‘gaps’ have been shown with the translation of basic science results into clinical practice [5,6].

World Citizenship in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Juvenilia

World Citizenship in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Juvenilia

BRITISH PROTECTIONISM AND OIL INDUSTRY PRIOR TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PETRONAS

The existence of protectionism policy in Malaya and Borneo had been practised by the British specifically in the oil industry during colonialism. This policy was to prevent the largest American oil corporation, from dominating the oil market in Southeast Asia. The two British oil companies, the Anglo-Saxon Company and Shell Company in the early 20th century completed their business relationship with the Dutch oil company to control the oil industry in Southeast Asia. Oil producer colonies in Southeast Asia was solely granted oil supply through British oil company to prepare the outbreak of the First World War. This marked the height of British protectionism by providing continuous oil supply to the British Navy and expanding oil exports during the First World War. Later, PETRONAS adopted protectionism and monopoly strategies to increase equity ownership of Malays in the oil and mining industry.

The Mamluk Bridge at Dayr Sunayd

A long-overlooked Mamluk bridge spanning the W?d? al-Hasi (Na?al Shiqma) between Gaza andMajdal (Ashqelon) was built at the behest of Sultan Baybars about 1270, as mentioned by ?Izz al-D?n Ibn Shadd?d in his Ta?r?khal-M?lik al-??hir. It was also noted in a variety of travel accountsspanning the 17th through 19th centuries and it was even photographed in the 1880s. Later itbecame a point of interest during the Great War when it was shelled by the British Navy as partof the Third Battle of Gaza, yet it survived to be repaired. Since it was on an important road evenin 1948, it was destroyed by a unit of Palmach in an attempt to impact infrastructure. The bridgeis one of the smallest of the six known Baybars bridges, yet it fully fits with the technologicalcharacteristics of the other examples.

The Ronas Voe Incident, 1674

The last organized sea operation of the Third Anglo-Dutch War was an expedition by the British navy to capture a Dutch East Indiaman lying in a Shetland harbour disabled by storm damage and grounding. This little-known action was conceived, planned and carried out entirely after King Charles II had publicly accepted a treaty with the Netherlands to end the war. The event is remembered in Shetland and even commemorated with a monument of sorts, but what actually happened has never been very clear. This article reconstructs the sequence of events, with gaps yet remaining, based on rather scattered and incomplete evidence. Aside from the narrative, the article offers an example of British prize condemnation procedures in the 1670s, the disposition of prize goods and rewards to captains and crews of victorious ships. It offers an example of the lading of outward-bound Dutch East Indiamen of the period. This particular East Indiaman is also helpful in resolving a controversy over the design of such ships in the mid-seventeenth century. Finally, the article raises questions about a potential archaeological site near the arm of the sea in which the action took place.

The English Navy in the Twelfth Century

Abstract This article investigates the naval strategies of England’s post-Conquest kings, especially from c.1100–1189, a period for which modern scholarship has yet to recognise the existence of a royal navy. It demonstrates that post-Conquest kings deployed warships, summoned defensive fleets, and launched their own invasion navies throughout the long twelfth century. Previously unnoticed evidence for the maintenance of warships under Henry II is discussed and records of fleet recruitment are used to shed light on the systems behind naval levies. Given all this evidence, it can firmly be concluded that there was a navy at the disposal of England’s Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings. The origins of this navy are twofold. Firstly, twelfth-century tactics drew on Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish systems and precedents, suggesting the long continuity of post-Conquest naval activities rather than sudden naval innovation under any particular king. The ‘English navy’ therefore did not decline after the Norman Conquest, nor was it a new foundation of Richard I. Secondly, England’s twelfth-century rulers relied upon the maritime skills and co-operation of coastal and port inhabitants across the realm. These coastal denizens’ motivations for participation in royal navies reveal both the extent and the limitations of English royal power. Royal naval activities took place against the backdrop of a European north that was becoming ever more connected by sea routes. English navies were therefore a crucial component of territorial expansion and warfare across a realm situated in the midst of extensive pan-European trading networks.

Disciplining the Empire: Politics, Governance, and the Rise of the British Navy, by Sarah Kinkel

Disciplining the Empire: Politics, Governance, and the Rise of the British Navy, by Sarah Kinkel

Çanakkale Zaferi’nden Sonra Batı Anadolu’da Havacılık Faaliyetleri (1915-1918)

The Ottoman Empire actively fought on many fronts from the Caucasus to Iraq, from the Suez Canal to Çanakkale. Apart from these fronts, the Ottoman forces were also active in areas where there was no effective fight by taking active/passive defense measures. Being under the threat of the British and French navy just off the Western Anatolia coast, and also having the assistance of the Allied Forces to carry out air operations with aircraft carriers wherever they wanted, led to the deployment of aviation units by the Ottoman Commander-in-Chief in the relevant regions. The aim was both to ensure the security of the capital Istanbul and to take measures against possible landing operations with the air troops in Gallipoli against the possibility that the Allied forces would make a landing over Gallipoli or Izmir after the Battle of Gallipoli. Using archival documents, this study examines the aviation operations carried out in Western Anatolia after the Çanakkale Victory.

The French Flag in Zanzibar Waters 1860s–1900s: Abolition and Imperial Rivalry in the Western Indian Ocean

ABSTRACT Between 1860 and 1900 British authorities repeatedly accused the French government of fostering the Indian Ocean illegal slave trade as France allowed dhows to fly her flag. This article intends to question the idea, still dominant in today's historiography, that the French flag was the key element explaining the persistence of the Indian Ocean slave trade and the failure of the British navy in stopping it. Using both British and French archives, this article confronts these arguments with new historical data. It will make clear that if dhows under the French flag played a substantial role in the Indian Ocean slave trade, they were far from being the crucial actor of this nefarious traffic. It also brings a new light on the history of the Indian Ocean slave trade and its abolition in showing the importance of British and French imperial preoccupations as well as its important impact on international law.

Sarah Kinkel. Disciplining the Empire: Politics, Governance, and the Rise of the British Navy.

Sarah Kinkel. Disciplining the Empire: Politics, Governance, and the Rise of the British Navy.

Conflicto y guerra en el Caribe. Papel desempeñado por las milicias de indios frente al intento de invasión británica a Santiago de Cuba (1739-1748)

En el presente artículo estudiaremos las causas y el desenlace de la victoria hispana sobre la armada inglesa del almirante Edward Vernon durante el sitio a la ciudad de Santiago de Cuba (1739-1741) en medio de la guerra del Asiento. Prestaremos especial interés en nuestro análisis al accionar de las milicias de indios de los pueblos de San Luis de Los Caneyes y San Pablo de Jiguaní, que junto a otros grupos armados llevarían un peso decisivo en expulsar al enemigo, y salvaguardar los intereses del imperio español en tierras cubanas. In this article we will study the causes and the outcome of the Hispanic victory over the English Navy of Admiral Edward Vernon during the siege to the city of Santiago de Cuba (1739-1741) in the middle of the War of the Seat. We will pay special attention to our analysis of the actions of the Indian militias of the towns of San Luis de Los Caneyes and San Pablo de Jiguaní, which along with other armed groups would carry a decisive weight in expelling the enemy, and safeguarding the interests of the Spanish empire in Cuban lands.

Dazzle camouflage as queer counter conduct

Developed as an anti-surveillance strategy during World War I, dazzle camouflage used sharply contrasting colors to disguise ships in the British navy from enemy observation. Unlike traditional camouflage that was meant to keep one’s forces or weaponry hidden, dazzle camouflage used hypervisibility to deflect attention, making it impossible to detect a ship’s movements. In this article, I develop the concept of dazzle camouflage as a form of queer counter-conduct, arguing that queer subjectivity offers a generative vantage point for theorizing resistance to the hegemonic gaze. I draw on three forms of queer protest against everyday surveillance: Chelsea Manning’s response to trolling on Twitter, drag queen practices of reading, and a pair of art projects from visual artist Zach Blas. Taken together, these practices allow me to characterize dazzle camouflage as leveraging aesthetic playfulness and boundary work. Conceptually, my goal is to bring together surveillance studies and queer theory as frameworks for building a more robust account of dazzle camouflage, and moreover, an account that can be instructive for queer activism in a context of everyday digital surveillance.

A Re-appraisal of the King’s Ships in the Reigns of Richard I and John, 1189–1216

Claims have been made for the establishment of an English royal navy in the twelfth century. This article offers a reappraisal of the documentary evidence to assess whether Richard the Lionheart or his younger brother John can be credited with creating this instrument of royal power. Their use of ships in warfare and the possession of vessels by the Crown was very similar. A small group of ships owned by the king was quite common, but the casual use of the term ‘our galleys’ by clerks makes it difficult to distinguish these from the more numerous vessels on paid service to the crown. The major purpose of ships in warfare was to provide logistical support. More warlike actions were rare. Neither monarch had the resources or the need for more than a small squadron of ships owned by the crown. The evidence for the establishment of a naval base at Portsmouth is investigated and it is concluded that rather than a permanent dockyard it was simply a secure winter boat yard where the king’s vessels could be drawn up out of the water with their rigging safely stored. Technical developments in ship design and weaponry in the course of the sixteenth century and changes in the nature of warfare led to the emergence of what is rightly called the Royal Navy. However if the term is more loosely used for a squadron of vessels in royal ownership, which provided the core of conscripted fleets in actions at sea, it may, perhaps, be justifiably applied as early as the late twelfth century.

Uncle Tom's (Ship) Cabin

Uncle Tom's (Ship) Cabin Cynthia Alicia Smith (bio) In Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life among the Lowly (1852), there are several curious, largely unexamined moments when Tom figures as a sailor. He assists the steamboat mariners with their labor, rescues Eva when she falls into the river, and is variously described as an "Italian sailor," a "mariner shipwrecked," and a "half-drowned mariner."1 Nineteenth-century readers and artists noticed such associations, so why have scholars missed this dimension of the novel?2 The absence of critical consideration of Stowe's maritime references may have to do with the way scholars understand Tom's relation to domestic fiction. Stowe's enslaved hero is known for exhibiting the traits of a nineteenth-century heroine through his "gentle, pious, chaste, domestic, long-suffering and self-sacrificing" nature.3 This feminization allows contemporary readers to resolve the tensions that arise from depicting a black male protagonist through sentimental characteristics.4 However, there is more than one sentimental tradition in Uncle Tom's Cabin. References to Tom as a sailor show that Stowe also used maritime sentimentalism. Stowe became familiar with maritime culture through her uncle, Samuel Foote, a sea captain who brought home nautical tales to his relatives, including his favorite niece, Harriet.5 In her [End Page 47] famous novel Stowe rewrites one prominent character from antebellum sea narratives: the "sentimental sailor," a figure who also appears in various nineteenth-century genres. Rescuing those in physical peril, the sentimental sailor—a name I take from Thomas Mercer's eponymous 1772 poem—converted others to the golden rule and advocated liberty, charity, generosity, and kinship. For example, Catharine Maria Sedgwick's 1826 short story "The Chivalric Sailor" chronicles the adventures of Frank Stuart, a heroic Christian sailor who rescues the distressed, particularly Perdita, a young British noblewoman who is forced to work in a Maryland sea captain's scullery.6 When Stuart hears about Perdita's predicament, he smuggles her aboard a British-bound ship and hides her throughout their journey across the Atlantic. Stuart's nautical prowess and charitable deeds enable Perdita to gain her freedom upon their arrival in England. Many years later when Stuart becomes a privateer for John Paul Jones during the American Revolution, he ends up rescuing Perdita again. Stuart's vessel captures a British ship that Perdita is on, and he safely brings her home. Shortly after this incident, Perdita's husband repays Stuart for his deeds by saving him from the British navy. Thus, Sedgwick emphasizes how the sentimental sailor's rescues surpass even conflicts among nations. Like Sedgwick, many antebellum writers used sentimental sailors to promote nonnational forms of personal and collective identity.7 The conversions that these sailors' rescues prompted acquired multiple meanings: while the sentimental sailor in religious tracts evangelized the rescued to Christianity, writers who advocated for humanitarian issues used the sentimental sailor to enlist readers' support for abolition and mariners' rights. Although the sentimental sailor rose alongside sentimental literature in early America, literary critics have essentially ignored these heroic mariners, partly because scholars have defined nineteenth-century sentimentalism through the passive heroines of domestic [End Page 48] literature who promote religious conversion within the home. Yet recovering the sentimental sailor reveals that the maritime world also had a sentimental literary tradition, one that contradicted the sentimental heroine's nationalist goals by encouraging readers to adopt humanist values and see beyond their communities' cultural prejudices. Although sentimentalism prototypically incites sympathy, nineteenth-century sentimental texts have nationalist and imperialist tendencies. Amy Kaplan notes that domesticity is an "ambiguous liminal realm between the national and the foreign" and that the ship, a mobile domestic sphere, situates the ocean as an imperialist space.8 Yet Kaplan's focus on the woman's sphere and domesticity as a nationalist force does not acknowledge maritime sentimentalism. While ships are indeed domestic spaces, they represent a different type of social geography from houses because ships combine both the public and private spheres. Maritime sentimentalism, then, presents an alternative sentimental tradition that encodes an international perspective as well as nationalism and imperialism. The sentimental sailor's popularity indicates Americans' deep cultural awareness that creating an empire is...

Hyperbole and Awe

Hercules – the most powerful warship in the British navy