Maritime Past Research Articles

A Study of the Sewn-Plank Boats of Goa, India

The study of traditional boats has enhanced our knowledge of the maritime past. Traditional boats are both river- and sea-worthy. They have been used in rivers for transporting cargo to inland ports from ships anchored at sea, and have often been used in naval warfare. In this paper an attempt has been made to study the sewn-plank boats of Goa, their building techniques and other features in order to understand their quality and how they were used in the past for an inland river-transport system. © 2011 The Authors

Maritime Maryland: a history

Harvested for food, harnessed for power, and home to more than 3,600 species of plants, fish, and animals, the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries have long been essential to the sustainability and survival of the region's populations. Historian William S. Dudley explores that history in an engaging and comprehensive account of Maryland's storied maritime heritage. Dudley paints a vivid picture of Maryland's maritime past in its broadest scope, exploring the complex and nuanced interactions of humans, land, and water through descriptions of shipbuilding, steam technology, agricultural pollution, commercial and passenger transportation, naval campaigns, watermen, crabbing, and oystering. He also discusses the evolution of recreational boating-yachting, cruising, and racing-and the role of underwater archaeology in uncovering the bay's shipwrecks. These interactions become chapters in the larger story of Maryland's waterways, a story that Dudley tells through insightful prose and stunning illustrations. This rich history of Maryland's waterways reveals how human enterprise has affected-and been affected by-the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

Taipi, Tipii, Typee: Place, Memory, and Text A Response to Robert C. Suggs

'7wassuspendedovertheYawningChasm." IllustrationbyH.MooreforHermanMelville, Typee:LifeintheSouthSeas(Boston: D.C.Heath,1902),67. Taipi, Tipii, Typee: Place, Memory, and Text A Response to Robert C. Suggs JOHN BRYANT Some might argue that it does not matter whether Melville did what he said he did in Typee; it is the text and our reading of it that matters, not the biographical events upon which that text is based. The assumption is that we cannot retrieve the past— whether the writer took an eastern or a northern route over the mountains—or know a writer's intentions. Therefore, our critical efforts are best reserved for the text itself, as we receive it. And this line of reasoning might go some distance if the text in question is, in fact, a fiction like Moby-Dick in which the narrator's voice is removed from the precise particulars of Melville's maritime past. That is, for the most part, the text of Moby-Dick does not require us to read it biographically (although quite obviously one can, and some have). Typee, however, is different because its rhetoric insists upon Melville's authenticity: he was there; this is what he saw; it aroused him and angered him; this is (he says) the "unvarnished truth."1 Of course, we know that, in the case of Typee, the truth was obviously "heightened for effect," as one reviewer put it. At the same time, this reviewer allowed that "many of the incidents . . . seem too natural to be invented."2 Modern readers recognize that "authenticity" in a narrative is itself a fabrication : that is, a good writer can manipulate a text so that the narrator's voice sounds sincere, without wax, unvarnished. One strategy in performing this feat is for the narrator to admit his limitations: his doubts, fears, and ignorance. And repeatedly ESQ \V.51\ 1ST-3RD QUARTERS | 2005 237 JOHN BRYANT Tommo tells us in Typee that he was "baffled" by what he had seen and amazed at what he had done. The same might be said for Ishmael; he, too, is radically unstable, and famously so. But from the moment the narrator demands to be called Ishmael, we know that we are launched into a fiction that bids farewell to biography. Typee, however, demands biography: it is rooted in a place and forged, initially, out of memory, then ceaselessly revised before, during, and after publication. It is a biographical text that forces us to question its authenticity. Typee is a fluid text. That is, it is a work that exists, textually, in revision and may be read in its various sequential versions in both manuscript and print. If Typee is that kind of text that requires us to seek out biography, then the writing process itself (evident in the text's revisions and evolving versions) may be seen as part ofthat biography. Accordingly, in order to read Typee, we need to know the conditions of its creation; and we need to be able to discern actual biographical events (let's call them "facts") from linguistic inventions and manipulations (call them "fictions"). The point is not to settle the matter of Melville's fabrication of authenticity but to find a way to differentiate reality and mind or, more to the point, memory and imagination, in the writing process and in a piece of writing . In my approach to Typee, then, it is useful to know the facts of creation as clearly as possible, from the narrative's earliest inception to its final revision. Archaeologist Robert C. Suggs has written an engaging (although flawed) essay arguing that Melville's recounting of his escape into the mountains and over to the valley ofthe Taipi is entirely false. He offers evidence, but I will show that his evidence is less than meets the eye. Moreover, he ignores evidence that shows the likelihood of Melville's veracity on certain important details concerning his escape route. But let me stress that, while I think Suggs's essay aims to undermine Melville's claims to authenticity, I do not believe that authenticity is the real issue, for even if Suggs's thesis were true, readers of Typee would want to ask why Melville would play...

The Management of the Maritime Archaeological Heritage in the Bailiwick of Guernsey: a Case Study

Guernsey and the other islands in its Bailiwick have been visited and settled by people arriving by sea for thousands of years. Guernsey Museum manages the display and interpretation of this maritime heritage and, in conjunction with the Receiver of Wreck, administers the legal protection of historic wreck. Over the last 25 years a considerable amount of research has been undertaken on many aspects of the islands’ maritime past. Museum displays and media presentations have been made to disseminate information about the islands’ maritime archaeology to the wider world. This paper will highlight the various aspects of maritime archaeology in Guernsey and illustrate how Guernsey Museum manages this rich archaeological resource. © 2004 The Nautical Archaeology Society

The sea and archaeology

Abstract Man has been a seafarer for at least 40,000 years, and must have used raft or boat on lakes and rivers at an even earlier date. Maritime archaeologists seek evidence for such activities from earliest times until written records predominate. Direct evidence for water transport is not available before 8,000 B.C. and is biased towards Egypt and Europe. Much archaeological, environmental, ethnographic and experimental research is required to fill the great temporal and spatial gaps in our knowledge of the prehistoric maritime past. For later centuries, archaeologists can complement the work of historians: in this article examples of such work are given and assessed.

Modern technology recaptures the maritime past

Interactive media and environmental reconstruction are providing new tools to make the ancient maritime past come alive for today's public, a challenge being taken up by Italian museums.

Threats to underwater cultural heritage. The problems of unprotected archaeological and historic sites, wrecks and objects found at sea

The discovery of the wreck of the Titanic and the recovery of artefacts from the site has highlighted the lack of legal protection for underwater cultural heritage on the outer continental shelf and the deep sea-bed. After the wreck was found in 1985 it became apparent that there was no way of protecting it from salvage. Virtually any wreck could now be located and it is vital that this new opportunity for gaining a deeper understanding of the maritime past is not squandered. Unless a solution to this problem is found, within decades there will be no more wrecks worth protecting.

Beyond Jack Tar

P OPULAR history of seafaring in America has always commanded a wide and enthusiastic audience. Clipper ships to California, piracy in the Gulf of Mexico, whaling voyages to tropical seas, naval actions off Chesapeake Bay: all form part of a maritime mythology that supports a sizable corner of the publishing market as well as some of the most important of America's historical museums. This popular history has no comparable academic counterpart. Consider how little most students of early American history know about the fisheries, shipbuilding industries, and seafaring communities of the thirteen colonies. American people may be interested in their maritime past, and a large group of museum historians and popular writers may labor hard to answer their questions, but the great majority of academic historians-those who train other historians-pay maritime subjects little heed. Accordingly, the maritime history of early America is strong on public presentation but weak on analytic content. A number of possible explanations for this imbalance suggest themselves. One is that in simple quantitative terms seafarers and their families did not count for much, since most colonists belonged to agricultural or craft households that earned their living from the land. Another is that maritime subjects have not mattered terribly in the greater calculus of national affairs that activates scholarly attention today. Twentieth-century historians are far more preoccupied with topics such as class, race, gender, and economic policy-all of which have contemporary resonance-than they are with the origins of shipping and fishing industries that have spent most of this century in decay. Another is the absence of any well-defined body of maritime theory around which research and debate might be organized. Labor historians can argue the questions formulated by Marx and Weber; economic historians have an even more refined body of thought descending from Adam Smith to give direction to their work; and ethnohistorians can work with models of cultural behavior derived from anthropology. American maritime historians do not in the main address one another at all. Lacking any powerful common agenda, they sit as it

A People of the Sea: The Maritime History of the Channel Islands.

A People of the Sea records the varied and intriguing maritime past of the Channel Islands and their inhabitants. Beginning with prehistoric time, the book draws on records from Britain, France, Canada and the Islands themselves.

The United Kingdom's progress in marine technology

From a long maritime past, the last two decades have presented the U.K. with new opportunities to explore and exploit the seas. A concentration on 'enabling technology' and integrated programs of work is now resulting in a much expanded capability to work in the oceans, on our own behalf, and with developing nations. This paper describes how the new capability has emerged, gives some examples of specific topics, and indicates some references for further detail.