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Great Sea Fights: The Battle of the Nile, 1798
32:21|The Battle of the Nile of 1798 was one of the most important naval battles that has ever been fought. This episode presents an introduction explaining the context of the battle and is followed by a reading of an account written by Captain Samuel Hood of HMS Zealous. The battle was fought at a key moment of French expansion. The French army, led by Napoleon, had been landed in Egypt by a huge French flotilla, protected by a powerful naval force. A British squadron, led by Horatio Nelson, caught them at Aboukir Bay and inflicted a devastating defeat. The result was that Napoleon's army was stranded and Nelson's fame burned more brightly than ever.
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Predator of the Seas
34:46|This is the extraordinary history of a single ship - a Baltimore clipper.Once she was the Henriqueta, a slave ship; but subsequently she became the Black Joke, a hunter of slave ships.In her former life she trafficked over 3000 captives across the Atlantic; in her new life she became the scourge of Spanish and Brazilian slavers.To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with the maritime historian Stephen Taylor who has captured and explored this story in his latest excellent book ‘Predator of the Seas’In the research to illuminate this ship’s curious double life Stephen has explored the lives and experiences of both slavers and abolitionists, captives and crew. We hear about the business of slavery in Africa and Brazil run by the Portuguese; the Royal Navy’s preventative squadron that purchased the ship in 1827 and turned her against her former masters; and about the British seamen and Liberian Kru.Kidnapped at Sea
34:57|This episode presents an astonishing and tragic story from the American Civil War with great relevance to the present day.It’s the story of a black teenager called David Henry White who comes from Delaware and has done all in his power to create a life for himself – he has signed onto a merchant ship for work with the prospects of pay and promotion. Life has different plans for him however. When war breaks out he finds himself crossing paths with the USS Alabama, a confederate commerce raider of immense power blazing a path of success. White’s ship is taken and he also is taken and forced to work on the confederate warship, captained by Raphael Semmes.White works on board until his fate is sealed in battle and the Alabama sunk. Semmes survives but White does not. He drowns. After the war Semmes writes his memoirs which paint the world in which White lived and died a very different way to how it appeared in reality.It's a story of the life and tragic death of a disempowered black boy, of an entitled racist naval officer, and of the profound and lasting power of written propaganda. After listening to this podcast you will burn with the light of the true historian, and never believe anything you read again without checking who wrote it, and more importantly WHY.To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Andrew Sillen, author of the new book that unpicks this remarkable tale in the finest detail: Kidnapped at Sea.Secrets of the Great Ocean Liners
44:20|This episode explores one of the world’s greatest historical collections relating to the golden age of ocean liner travel. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with John Sayers, a man who has dedicated his life to creating the most wonderful collection. In the early 1950s John’s parents took him across the Atlantic on the Cunard Line’s RMS Franconia eastbound to the UK, and RMS Queen Elizabeth back westbound to America. Shortly after that he came across five souvenir ocean liner lapel pins at a Sunday morning antiques fair and from that moment on his career as a collector began. What started with lapel pins and then souvenir spoons and napkin rings soon moved onto ephemera - printed bits and pieces relating to everyday life on board ship - a crucial source of historic material that helps us reconstruct the lived experience of those aboard, both passengers and crew. That collection, which includes posters, tickets, brochures, sailing schedules, letters written on board, passenger lists, menus, advertising material (the list really is endless) – is now held in the John Johnson collection at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and to illustrate it John has written a fabulous new book: Secrets of the Great Ocean Liners.Indian Figureheads From the Royal Navy's Bombay Dockyard
35:47|Bombay, now Mumbai, was a major shipbuilding centre for the Royal Navy in the first half of the nineteenth century. The ships were magnificent, built from the famous Malabar teak and by the hands of a highly skilled Indian workforce. This episode explores that fascinating history through one particular aspect of a sailing warship’s construction: the figurehead. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Clare Hunt, a Senior Curator for the National Museum of the Royal Navy based at their site in Hartlepool. Clare has been charged with the care and management of HMS Trincomalee since 2016, a frigate built just after the end of the Napoleonic wars in Bombay dockyard.European Ship Surveyors in China, 1869-1918
31:32|In this episode we explore the fascinating history of Europeans working in the complex maritime world of China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular we find out about ship surveyors working for the classification society Lloyd’s Register, and how those employees influenced the global perception of maritime safety and risk management. This group has never previously been studied so everything you hear in this episode is 'new' history that helps us understand not only the functioning of ship surveyors in China at that time but more broadly the encounter and connections between Imperial Britain and China, a meeting that was rapidly intensifying, socially, culturally and economically. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Corey Watson, from the Centre for Port Cities and Maritime Cultures at the University of Portsmouth.The Last Shantyman
34:54|Stan Hugill was known in his lifetime as the ‘Last Working Shantyman’ and became a guardian of the tradition of maritime music. Stan had a colourful and eventful life. He spent 23 years at sea including a stint as the official shantyman on board the steel four-masted barque Garthpool, the last British commercial sailing ship. In the Second World War he worked as the helmsman on the ss Automedon which was sunk by a German auxiliary cruiser and led to Stan being held as a prisoner of war for four years. In later life he taught sailing skills in Wales and aboard the sail-training vessel Pamir. In these years Stan began to write down the shanties he had learned, authoring several books, recording several albums and regularly performing in public. He became something of a star in the British folk scene anchoring a BBC show Dance and Skylark in the 1960s ‘featuring The Spinners with Bosun Stan Hugill who welcomes friends and visitors aboard his old Sailing Barque.’ To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Mollie Carlyle, a historian of maritime music with an encyclopaedic knowledge of her own and an expert on Stan’s life.