Abstracts of recent articles in the Mariner's Mirror
| Volume, Author | Title | Abstract |
|---|---|---|
| 98.2 May 2012 Barrington Rosier | Repair Records of the Eighteenth-century Navy: the missing data | The Admiralty Progress Books provide the historian with a near continuous record of the building, repair and maintenance of Royal Navy ships over a period of more than two centuries, from around 1700 to 1912. This article analyses information on repairs from the Progress Books that cover the eighteenth century, including discussion of the data not included in them. |
| 98.2 May 2012 Kelby Rose | Nostalgia and Imagination in Nineteenth-century Sea Shanties | Shanties were an everyday feature in the lives of nineteenth-century merchant sailors. In their primary function, shanties were used to co-ordinate the heavy physical labour of a group of seamen required to handle a sailing ship effectively. The lyrics of shanties, however, reveal a secondary use of the songs - collective nostalgic expression. Through a thematic analysis, this paper investigates the relationship between the structure, function, and significance of the shanty as a means for self-expression and group identity in the context of nineteenth-century merchant sailing. |
| 98.2 May 2012 Martin Bellamy | A Ludicrous Travesty? James R. Napier and the Lancefield | When James R. Napier's shipyard failed in 1861 he was left with the small steamer Lancefield, which he had built to a novel design on his own account. After failing to find a buyer he established a marginally profitable service from Ardrossan to Belfast, but came up against the might of the Glasgow & South Western Railway Company who wished to expand their empire into coastal shipping. Using James R. Napier's letter books as evidence, this paper analyses the bitter conflict that resulted in Napier's withdrawal from ship owning. The Lancefield was used to test Napier's theories in the design and operation of ships which earned it a far greater scientific significance than its commercial success warranted. |
| 98.2 May 2012 Michael Stammers | Speculating Gig Boats, 'Shilling Sickers' and Riggers: A social history of Mersey watermen | Watermen in small boats performed a range of functions in ports and anchorages both large and small around the British Isles. They acted as tenders, berthed and moved ships, carried crews, passengers and luggage and helped in salvage work. There has been a great deal of research on port labour but this has concentrated on dockers and stevedores and ignores the diversity of other workers required to run a large port. This article evaluates the many different tasks (some illegal) performed by Mersey watermen from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century and the difficulties the authorities had in regulating these freelance operators who were an essential component of the port. Studies in other ports may well confirm this was a situation in common with Liverpool. |
| 98.1 Feb 2012 Michael Flecker | The Jade Dragon Wreck: Sabah, East Malaysia | A shipwreck was recently discovered by fishermen divers just off the northernmost tip of Borneo. While it was heavily looted in the space of a couple of months, an official excavation has resulted in some important discoveries. The ship, dated to about 1300 ad, was of the South East Asian lashed-lug tradition and the ceramics cargo was almost exclusively Longquan celadon. Both the wreck and the cargo are analysed in this article in order to determine the likely origin and destination of the ship and the role it played in regional trade |
| 98.1 Feb 2012 S. A. Cavell | Social Politics and the Midshipmen's Mutiny, Portsmouth 1791 | In 1791 Thomas Leonard, a midshipman assigned to duty aboard HMS Saturn, refused to subject himself to the masthead punishment ordered by his First Lieutenant and triggered a series of events that came to be known as the Midshipmen's Mutiny. The incident involved the young gentlemen of the Channel Fleet and made visible a break down in the Royal Navy's system of officer recruitment and advancement in the pre-commission ratings. The 'mutiny' highlighted a confusion among the young gentlemen involved over which took precedence, social rank or naval rank. It also revealed a high degree of sensitivity to matters of honour among the corps of officer trainees stationed in Portsmouth. Evidence from court martial records shows that conflict over issues of gentlemanly honour and naval subordination, as it related to officer aspirants, was no isolated problem. This article examines the facts of the 'mutiny' and the reasons why it has remained in the shadows of naval history |
| 98.1 Feb 2012 Alistair Roach | Miniature Ships in Designed Landscapes | Miniature sailing ships were seen on lakes in a number of English parks and gardens during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were often used for mock naval battles (naumachia), but were also sailed purely for pleasure, or perhaps to provide a focal point within the estate. Between 1689 and 1815 Britain was involved in a series of conflicts and it is not surprising that Anglicized naumachia and similar nautical pastimes became a popular and patriotic entertainment, which also celebrated the Royal Navy and Britain's imperial power. Although the ships concerned were often depicted in contemporary pictures relating to the various estates, little appears to have been written about the vessels employed. This article focuses on vessels from two particular sites as examples of this stylized form of nautical entertainment |
| 98.1 Feb 2012 Itsaso Ibáñez, Luis-María Fernández-Martínez and Esperanza Díaz | Importing Nautical Knowledge: Nineteenth-century specialized journalism in Spain | In Spain, the advancement of science in the nineteenth century was hindered by political instability within the country. Very little domestic scientific production took place, and even less was done to keep abreast of the advances taking place abroad. In scientific and technical disciplines, knowledge transfer occurs primarily through specialized journals, whose readers may effectively track the spread of new ideas. This paper discusses the relevance of nineteenth-century Spanish nautical journalism in communicating advances in maritime knowledge, which it reviews through the spread of 'new astronomical navigation', one of the key advances in nautical positioning of that century |
| 97.4 Nov 2011 Patrice Decencière | Some Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century French Trials of Square-rigged Warships Tacking? | There are but a few insights of how sailing ships really behaved when tacked, though many factors might affect the time to complete the manoeuvre. This article is concerned with French tacking trials of square-rigged warships in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and introduces data on comparative performance |
| 97.4 Nov 2011 Philip Macdougall | British Seapower and the Mysore Wars of the Eighteenth Century? | The naval aspirations of Hyder Ali (1760-82) and Tipu Sultan (1782-99), rulers of the southern Indian state of Mysore, is a much neglected subject. In creating a naval force, that clearly emulated those of the European nations, it was seen as a means of first neutralizing the power of the British before being ultimately used to remove all European colonizers from the subcontinent. Factors both aiding and working against the creation of this fleet are discussed together with the interest shown by the French in developing a working arrangement with the nascent Mysore naval power. That the efforts of the two Mysore rulers came to very little was a result of a series of swift and decisive actions taken by the British at the outset of any period of hostility combined with the difficulties faced by a land power developing an effective maritime force |
| 97.4 Nov 2011 Michael Ellery | William Campbell and the Harrington: Privateering in Chilean waters in 1804? | An account of the seizure of the San Francisco de Paula and Extremeña from Chilean ports by the armed merchant snow Harrington, Captain William Campbell, in 1804. Britain and Spain were not then at war and on the arrival of all three vessels off the Australian coast in March 1805 they were detained by Governor Philip Gidley King pending instructions from the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in London. Based on a study of English and Spanish language sources, it examines the implications of departures from the requirements of the Prize Act and highlights the difficulties experienced in international communications at the time |
| 97.4 Nov 2011 Raymond W. Westphal Jr | Parliamentary Politics and the Singapore Base: A surplus of opinions and few answers, 1918-29? | At the close of the First World War, the British government continued to examine how to defend an empire that spanned the globe. This challenge was compounded by a number of debt-conscious members of the House of Commons and post-war governments who were eager to reduce defence spending. Thus the challenge for the Royal Navy and their parliamentary supporters was how to successfully sell a scheme explaining that the establishment of a naval base in Singapore combined both fiscal responsibilities with realistic strategic planning |
| 97.3 Aug 2011 Michael S. K. Trimming | The Pechili Trader: A hull lines plan | This article is concerned with the submittal of an original hull lines plan, extracted from reliable contemporary evidence, and primarily based on an outstanding scale model of an authentic traditional Northern China sea-going sailing trading junk: the Pechili (Kiangsu) Trader. It addresses specific challenges to the naval architect from established scholars of Chinese junks. |
| 97.3 Aug 2011 Bruce L. Mouser | The Rio Pongo Crisis of 1820 and the Search for a Strategy for the Anti-Slavery Squadron off West Africa | This article focuses upon the conundrums faced in 1820 by an officer of the Anti-Slavery Squadron and by a slave trader resident upon the African coast, neither of whom was certain of the rules of engagement or what might be expected from the other. In this case, forces allied with the slave trader fired upon and captured a pinnace belonging to HM Gun-brig Thistle, torturing and killing most of its crew. The squadron's officers and colonial officials at Freetown responded by sending a joint Royal Navy and Royal Africa Corps expedition to retrieve survivors of the crew and punish those responsible for the initial attack. A lack of adequate and long-term instructions from London and misunderstandings among participants on the African coast at the moment were the principal causes of this incident, which became complicated enough for it to be discussed in Parliament. The article also reviews the actions of a particular officer and their consequences with respect to evolving squadron policy. |
| 97.3 Aug 2011 Tim Beattie | 'Entirely the most absurd and false narrative that was ever deliver'd to the publick' An Inquiry into What Really Happened on George Shelvocke's Privateering Voyage | It has been generally agreed that the two contemporary published accounts of the privateering expedition undertaken in 1719 by John Clipperton and George Shelvocke are thoroughly unreliable and the writers, in the words of O. K. Spate, 'hard liars both'. Recent studies, by Glyndwr Williams (1997), Philip Edwards (1994) and Jonathan Lamb (2001 and 2004) have tended to favour William Betagh's narrative over that of Shelvocke but have noted that there is insufficient objective or official confirmation to support either. In this article I make use of newly unearthed chancery files in the National Archive and in the British Library and evidence based on an internal analysis of the two books to show that Shelvocke had, as Betagh contends, planned at an early stage to defraud his owners and make off with the bulk of the purchase accruing from his voyage. It has also been possible to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the chancery case brought by the voyage's investors and provide a more accurate account of what happened to the prize money. |
| 97.3 Aug 2011 Ian Speller | 'Hit hard, move fast and sustain action': The Replacement of the Royal Navy's Amphibious Warfare squadron and the Rationale for HMS Fearless and HMS Intrepid | This article examines the circumstances in which the old ships and craft of the post-1945 Royal Navy's Amphibious Warfare Squadron were replaced by the new assault ships HMS Fearless and Intrepid. It analyses the impact on the requirement for amphibious forces of the change in emphasis in the late 1950s from major war contingencies to a new focus on mobile and flexible forces capable of responding to limited crises overseas. This called for a radically different type of capability than had been provided by the Amphibious Warfare Squadron and eventually resulted in a force built around two commando carriers, two new assault ships and six logistic landing ships. The article analyses alternative plans for the shape and size of the new amphibious force and examines the different design studies that resulted. It identifies a number of different ship types that were considered and demonstrates that the requirement to be able to land a joint all-arms force of up to a brigade group, supported by tanks and artillery, was key to the eventual decision to build Fearless and Intrepid and establishes the strategic rationale that underpinned the construction of these ships and demonstrates why they were built as amphibious transport docks in favour of the other design options. |
| 97.3 Aug 2011 Lars Bruno and Stig Tenold | The Basis for South Korea's Ascent in the Shipbuilding Industry | The last 50 years have seen a dramatic shift in the hegemony of the shipbuilding industry. Today more than 90 per cent of the world's newbuilding orders have been placed at yards in South Korea, China and Japan. South Korea emerged as a major shipbuilding nation in the period from 1970 to the late 1980s, when world shipping was in crisis. The aim of this paper is to explain how the country managed to gain this position. After a presentation of world shipbuilding in general, and South Korean shipbuilding in particular, the paper analyses domestic and international factors that can explain South Korea's growing market share. At the domestic level, we consider the interplay between the country's comparative advantages, technological learning and a conscious industrial policy aimed at escalating shipbuilding capacity. At the international level, we suggest that the severe crisis in shipping and shipbuilding might in fact have been beneficial for South Korea's ability to grab market shares. |
| 97.2 May 2011 Martin Wilcox | 'This Great Complex Concern': Victualling the Royal Navy on the East Indies Station, 1780-1815 | The East Indies station was the largest and most challenging area in which the Royal Navy operated during the long eighteenth century. Although operations on the station are well understood, its administration has until recently been the subject of little research. This article, which builds upon work by the author on the victualling of the Royal Navy during the wars of 1793-1815, examines how the East Indies squadron was victualled. It traces the system of purchases by agents during the 1780s, which was marred by corruption and disputes between the navy and East India Company, and how the system was altered by the engagement of contractors to provide food after 1789. In particular it focuses on how, under the controversial but effective Basil Cochrane, a robust victualling system was established which made a crucial contribution to eventual British dominance in the eastern seas. |
| 97.2 May 2011 Seán T. Rickard | Le Corsaire Idèal: The Life of Dublin Mariner Patrick Dowlin | This article assesses the little-known or documented history of Irish bucker, American privateer and French naval officer Patrick Dowlin, encompassing the period of the American War of Independence. It also provides information regarding Dowlin's closest compatriots and describes several ruses used by smugglers, privateers and their armateurs at sea or ashore in achieving their goals. Some minor ship histories have been included to help explain the practices of the period while also serving to illustrate Dowlin's sea-going career. The article questions current assumptions regarding the full impact of Dowlin's role during the war. It does this by utilizing hitherto unused sources, which not only amplify his actions but those of his compatriots. It assesses the impact of their privateering efforts. It also documents nautical events that occurred during Dowlin's lifetime to illustrate his endeavours and those of his contemporaries. |