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Part of a series of naval and sea-life memoirs, this title offers an alternative to the usual top-down history, and has much to say on the topic of press gangs. It includes an eyewitness account of Hawke's great victory in Quiberon Bay in 1759.
This is a well-researched and highly readable account of naval life, both ashore and at sea, from a respected and admired historian and writer of whom it was written: ‘An author who really knows Nelson’s navy’ (Ramage’s Prize - The Observer) and ‘An expert knowledge of naval history’ (Ramage at Trafalgar - The Guardian).
This remarkable work is a comprehensive historiographical and bibliographical survey of the most important scholarly and printed materials about the naval and maritime history of England and Great Britain from the earliest times to 1815. More than 4,000 popular, standard and official histories, important articles in journals and periodicals, anthologies, conference, symposium and seminar papers, guides, documents and doctoral theses are covered so that the emphasis is the broadest possible. But the work is far, far more than a listing. The works are all evaluated, assessed and analysed and then integrated into an historical narrative that makes the book a hugely useful reference work for stu...
Study of voyage narratives, including Cook and Bligh, set in the context of British imperialism.
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Overturns the generally held view that the press gang was the main means of recruiting seamen by the British navy in the late eighteenth century. SHORTLISTED for the Society for Nautical Research's prestigious Anderson Medal. The press gang is generally regarded as the means by which the British navy solved the problem of recruiting enough seamen in the late eighteenth century. This book, however, based on extensive original research conducted primarily in a large number of ships' muster books, demonstrates that this view is false. It argues that, in fact, the overwhelming majority of seamen in the navy were there of their own free will. Taking a long view across the late eighteenth century ...
Provides a detailed picture of the lives of the commanders and those around them, both at home and at sea. An original and evocative window onto the lives of men who bridged the two worlds of eighteenth century Europe and the Far East.' Professor Nicholas Rodger. This book represents a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the East Indian maritime world of the European trading companies. The Dutch East India Company, which ruled large and important parts of what is now Indonesia, and which controlled the highly lucrative trade from the Dutch East Indies to Europe, much of it a monopoly trade in pepper and other spices, was in this period larger and better established than ...
Like other groups with dangerous occupations, mariners have developed a close-knit culture bound by loss and memory. Death regularly disrupts the fabric of this culture and necessitates actions designed to mend its social structure. From the ritual of burying a body at sea to the creation of memorials to honor the missing, these events tell us a great deal about how sailors see their world. Based on a study of more than 2,100 gravestones and monuments in North America and the United Kingdom erected between the seventeenth and late twentieth centuries, David Stewart expands the use of nautical archaeology into terrestrial environments. He focuses on those who make their living at sea--one of the world's oldest and most dangerous occupations--to examine their distinct folkloric traditions, beliefs, and customs regarding death, loss, and remembrance.
"[A] rollicking narrative . . . Superb"--Ben Wilson, Times A brilliant telling of the history of the common seaman in the age of sail, and his role in Britain's trade, exploration, and warfare British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words. In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs. Proud and spirited, learned in their own fashion, with robust opinions and the courage to challenge overweening authority, they stand out from their less adventurous compatriots. Taylor demonstrates how the sailor was the engine of British prosperity and expansion up to the Industrial Revolution. From exploring the South Seas with Cook to establishing the East India Company as a global corporation, from the sea battles that made Britain a superpower to the crisis of the 1797 mutinies, these "sons of the waves" held the nation's destiny in their calloused hands.