The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

The story of HMS Captain is one of the most shocking in naval history. Laid down in 1867 and, unusually, partly funded by the public, she was one of the most innovative warships ever constructed.She had a very low freeboard and two enormous rotating armoured gun turrets situated very close to the waterline in between the upper and lower decks. Turret ships were not a new invention but, hitherto, had only been used for coastal work: they were essentially floating iron rafts with an enormous rotating gun. With HMS Captain, for the first time we see that principle applied to a fully-rigged ocean going ship equipped with steam a engine and made of iron.The designer, Captain Cowper Phipps Coles wanted a high-tech man-of-war which could go anywhere and sink anything. As with all turret ships, she was designed with a low freeboard but ended up with a lower freeboard than originally planned, and the vessel’s high centre of gravity made her dangerously unstable.On the night of 6 September 1870, Captain was part of a combined fleet of the Channel and Mediterranean Squadrons of the Royal Navy, on manoeuvres in a diplomatic show of force, when a fierce gale  knocked her down before the crew could cut loose her sails. Nearly the entire crew of some 500 officers and men went down with the ship, including her celebrated designer. Only eighteen men survived.More English sailors were lost aboard HMS Captain than at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) or at sea during the entire Crimean War (1853-55).The loss of the Captain was a national catastrophe, touching Queen Victoria personally, and memorialised at St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. The University of Wolverhampton have recently launched a project to find her wreck. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Howard Fuller, the man behind the new project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Uluburun ship sank somewhere around 3,400 years ago near what is now Kas in Turkey and was discovered in 1982. The subsequent excavation was carried out at a time when underwater excavation was a new discipline and it had a profound change on the way both that we investigate underwater heritage and understand the ancient world. It still remains one of the oldest shipwrecks ever discovered and the wealth of knowledge provided by the wreck remains astonishing even to modern standards. To put its age into context, the period which it illuminates is 1000 years before Alexander the Great was born and it remains one of the best preserved Bronze Age sites of any description ever discovered. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Professor Micahel Scott, author of X Marks the Spot: The Story of Archaeology in Eight Extraordinary Discoveries. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An episode that revels in the extraordinary mix of adventure, horror, myth and fact that makes maritime history the BEST type of history! – We’re finding out about the history of castaways: of people set adrift on open boats, marooned by accident or even on purpose on isolated islands. This is the history of being abandoned; of being adrift; of being alone. Many never came back and are lost to history, a tiny dot vanishing on the horizon of the past, never to be seen again. Others did make it back to tell their story. This means that historians have been able to study castaways and their experiences and what a history it is…to find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with maritime historian Graham Faiella, author of 'Castaways: Adrift and Abandoned'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Indigenous perspectives are a crucial and immensely valuable part of the broad narrative of Australian maritime history. Aboriginal people witnessed the arrival of Macassan, Dutch, French, English and American vessels as these people explored, sought out trepang and harvested whales. Some of their vessels were wrecked and their survivors arrived as ‘strangers on the shore’, interacting in a variety of ways with Indigenous peoples. These observations and experiences have been reflected in numerous rock art representations and there are also rock depictions of Aboriginal craft.To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Mack Mcarthy who worked for many years as Inspector of Wrecks at the Australian Maritime Museum. Mack also headed the ‘Australian Contact Shipwrecks’ Program, an analysis of the interaction of Indigenous peoples with shipwreck survivors, and the study of Indigenous maritime depictions on the Western Australian coast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1861 the engineering maritime marvel ss Great Britain was chosen to take the first ever English cricket team to Australia. The tour was the brainchild of Melbourne-based businessmen, the caterers and wine merchants Felix William Spiers and Christopher Pond who had failed to persuade Charles Dickens to conduct a lecture tour of Australia. With cricket’s popularity growing in Australia they invited a team of leading English cricketers to tour the country. They arrived in Melbourne to a rapturous welcome on December 23, and played their first game on January 1, 1862. A quarter of the city’s population watched the match. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Natalie Fey from the ss Great Britain to discuss the players who went over on the voyage, how they would have lived and trained on the boat; Victorian cricketing superstar EM Grace, who wrote a very detailed diary which shows his first impressions of Australia; and the ss Great Britain's new mini cricket exhibition which goes on display on the 16th June with newly acquired collection items. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The pearling industry was one of northern Australia’s major industries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The historic vessel Penguin was built in 1907 for for a pearling company based on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait. She is one of the few surviving pearling luggers to retain much of its original construction and layout, and the only Queensland-built lugger in a museum collection. It is also significant for its association with Japanese lugger builder Tsugitaro Furuta, one of Australia’s major lugger builders of the time; for its service during World War II; and finally for its service to the Dauan Island community. While we were recording the interview shipwrights restoring the hull discovered some beautiful oyster shells which were cleaned for us and shined for the first time in over a century.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our mini-series on Maritime Asutralia continues with an episode dedicated to Brisbane's fabulous dry dock. The dock now sits in the grounds of the Queensland Maritime Museum on a bend on the south side of the Brisbane River and contains the magnificent historical vessel HMAS Diamantina, a river class frigate built in the 1940s, and the Carpentaria, a lightship built in 1917 which provided a crucial service warning mariners of dangerous shoal waters off Fraser Island and off the western approaches tot he Torres Strait. The dock itself, the third oldest in Australia, and built in 1876, offers a fascinating insight to Australian maritime history, and in particular shipbuilding and maritime trade in Queensland. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Russell Cobine, a retired shipwright with a lifetime of experience working in dry docks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our mini-series on the maritime history of Australia continues with a tour of the Queensland Maritime Museum in Brisbane. Dr Sam Willis explores the museum with volunteers and local historical experts Kasper Kuiper and Keith Boulton. We explore the museum's extraordinary collection of ship models including the Orion (1934), Otranto (1925), Orcades (1947) all of the Orient Steam Navigation Company; immigration to Australia; wrecks off the coast of Queensland and the navigational dangers of the Great Barrier Reef; the Queensland Government's paddle ship Lucinda; the skiff Fury (1939) and the champion racing boat Estrellita (1951). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The pursuit of Germany's most famous battleship is one of the most dramatic stories of the Second World War and one of the best tit-for-tat / an eye for an eye stories in history. It began with Bismarck sinking HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, in May 1941 and ended three days later with Bismarck being hunted by sea and air by a huge British squadron until she was trapped and destroyed. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with naval historian Angus Konstam. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 The passing of the Queen in September has encouraged historians to shine a light on the era of her reign - the 70 years between 1952 and 2022 - an extraordinary period in which the world fundamentally changed several times over. One particularly revealing way to look at this period is through the experiences of the Royal Navy. It’s quite a story. Throughout Elizabeth’s reign the Royal Navy changed beyond all recognition. In 1952 the UK was still a global and maritime superpower with a large empire. It had the second largest navy, the largest shipbuilding industry and the largest merchant fleet in the world. The vast networks of seaborne trade routes were policed by a navy of a size and versatility that it was able to engage independently in most foreseeable types of conflict. Today, the UK’s superpower role is much diminished, and its empire has gone. The nation’s shipbuilding industry and merchant fleet are shadows of their former selves. This change all happened in the shadow of the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Falkands war, and the Cod Wars - just to name a few of the significant international maritime events of that time. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with the maritime historian Paul Brown author of Elizabeth's Navy: Seventy Years of the Postwar Royal Navy  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode explores the wonderful Essex coastline – for those of you not familiar with the geography of England, this is the beautiful area a little to the north and east of London.We find out about boats built in Essex and the history of the boatbuilding infrastructure that created them, and in particular about 130 surviving vessels all built in Essex before 1965 that have somehow survived, many in the most surprising of ways. Some have assumed new roles for which they were never originally intended; others have been rescued from a rotting death on the shoreline and lovingly restored in sheds, up estuaries, on beaches all the way along the Essex coast. They vary from 80ft Thames Barges, three classes of Fishing Smacks to important pulling boats, skiffs and bumpkins. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Lyndon March, who helps run a community dedicated to preserving these wonderful craft and also to telling their story…you can find Essex Heritage Work Boats on Instagram @essexheritageowrkboats  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The historic ship Edwin Fox has a remarkable history. Built in Calcutta in 1853, she is the only surviving ship that transported convicts to Australia; one of the world's oldest surviving merchant ships; she served as a troop ship in the Crimean War; carried indentured servants to the Caribbean from China and immigrants to New Zealand. She is now preserved in Picton, New Zealand. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Heather Fryer, a volunteer researcher at the Edwin Fox Maritime Museum. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With frequent headlines in the news highlighting the plight of refugees suffering shipwreck in the Mediterranean, death at sea is an important contemporary issue. This episode explores the historical context of death sea. The age of sail was a period of expedition and conflict where seafarers were increasingly important to the fortunes of the nation. Their work at sea was complicated with many unique hazards which brought them closer to death, whether their own or that of those around them. Accidents and military action were joined by the dangers of disease and nutrition that were amplified in the tightly enclosed world of a floating vessel. Death was another challenge for a crew to overcome and their success depended on.A focus on the ways in which the dead were treated and remembered by those around remind them is a compelling window into the values of the seafaring community. What were the practical considerations of burying the dead at sea? How was the dead body prepared and disposed of? What was the importance of folklore and supernatural to the seafaring community? How were deaths at sea memorialised?To find answers to all of these questions and many more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr Dan O'Brien, historian of undertakers and funerals in eighteenth century England with a particular interest in death at sea. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode looks at one of the greatest of all maritime mysteries – the extraordinary tale of the Mary Celeste.On 4 December 1872, in the middle of the Atlantic near the Azores, the brigantine Dei Gratia chanced upon another brigantine. She was under sail but entirely silent, and it soon becomes clear that she was entirely deserted. She was called Mary Celeste.Ever since - for over 150 years - the mystery of why the Mary Celeste was abandoned and what happened to the ten souls on board has spawned thousands of conjectures, conspiracy theories, fictions and fantasies; mostly myths made from fractured truths.To find out more – and in a bid finally to unpick the myth from the reality, Dr Sam Willis spoke with maritime historian Graham Faiella, author of The Mysterious Case of the Mary Celeste: 150 Years of Myth and Mystique . They discuss her story from beginning to end – from her construction in the Bay of Fundy, through her life as a merchant ship, on to her final fateful voyage, and then to the remarkable enquiry that took place in Gibraltar, as British maritime authorities were the first to embrace the challenge of trying to understand what happened. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We continue our mini-series on the maritime history of Africa with an exploration of the extraordinarily colourful history of Mozambique Island - a UNESCO World Heritage site complete with fortified city and historical links that take us back to the era of the Portuguese exploration of Africa in the fifteenth century. Vasco da Gama was the first European to arrive here in 1498 and returned in 1502 with Portuguese settlers, and it went on to become central in Portuguese plans to control trade in the Indian Ocean. The island of Mozambique was particularly valuable as the first safe harbour after ships had endured sailing around the Cape of Good Hope but still had many thousand of miles to go on their voyage to the east. Unsurprisingly the island has a significant history and heritage that links the African, Arabic and European worlds, and also is surrounded by very important shipwrecks. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Ricardo Duarte, an archaeologist based in Mozambique Island, where he develops research in shipwreck studies and Underwater Archaeological sites, supporting UNESCO efforts to protect this endangered heritage. Ricardo has also studied coastal sites linked to early urban development in Eastern Africa, and the history and social organisation of coastal societies and their relation with the sea.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The fourth episode on our mini-series on the maritime history of Australia takes us to Perth and the workshop of Gerry Westenberg. Gerry has been hand-crafting scale model ships for well over 50 years and has built more than 130 in that time. He started this lifelong job by trying to modify a 1/600 scale Airfix kit of HMS Ajax to be HMAS Perth...with mixed success. Over time he has improved his skills and found a scale that works for him – 1/192 - based on the Empirical scale of 1 inch to every 16 feet. Over the years Gerry has built ships such as RMS Queen Mary, a Roman bireme, an Egyptian Royal Barge, HMS Hood, HMAS Sydney I, II, III and IV, RY Britannia, and HMS Barham, to name but a few. He has had two exhibitions held at the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle, the first in 2019,with the second held in 2021, whilst a third exhibition will commence on April 8th this year running for approximately 3 months. The centrepiece of Gerry's collection consists of over 40 Australian fighting ships tracing all major classes from the inception of the RAN to today’s modern fleet. To find out more Dr Sam Willis visited Gerry at his workshop.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the third episode in our mini series on the maritime history of Australia. In episode one we learned about the arrival of the Dutch in Australia; in episode twp we learned about the Dutch ship Duyfken, the first European ship to land men on the Australian mainland; and today we’re moving on in time to hear about William Dampier and his ship HMS Roebuck. Dampier is an extraordinary character. A natural scientist, explorer and pirate, Dampier was the first Englishman to explore any part of Australia as well as the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. Dampier was born in 1651 and died in 1715, and so he lived in this fascinating period in English history in the aftermath of the execution of Charles I and at a time of giant leaps in maritime capabilities. The world was changing at intense speed. Dampier began life in the merchant navy, joined the Royal Navy, fought against the Dutch, joined the buccaneer Bartholomew Sharp’s crew’ and sailed around the world, all the while keeping a diary that would become one of the most important and popular travel narratives of the period. He was then given a ship, HMS Roebuck, and a mission to explore the east coast of New Holland, the land we now know as Australia. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with historian and archaeologist Dr Mac MCarthy – the man who actually tracked down and found HMS Roebuck.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this the second episode in our mini-series exploring the maritime history of Australia we hear all about the Duyfken - the small dutch ship which, in 1606, is credited as being the first vessel on board of which a European crew first sighted the Australian mainland. To find out more about this ship and this crucial moment in time in global history, and also about the replica of the Duyfken that was built in Fremantle in 1999, Dr Sam Willis spoke with Graeme Cocks, a founding member of the Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation, and subsequently its Project Director, Graham was responsible for the launch and final fit out of the replica and also for the history-making Chevron 2000 Duyfken Expedition to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Queensland, as well as the VOC 2002 Duyfken Voyage from Sydney to Indonesia and The Netherlands. This was the longest age of discovery replica ship voyage ever completed. Graham is the author of a book to be released later this year titled Through Darkest Seas which documents the building of the Duyfken replica and tells the story of the ship’s voyages through Indonesia and around the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first episode of a new mini-series on the maritime history of Australia. We begin in the port of Fremantle, Western Australia, at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum to learn about the long and fascinating history of the Dutch in Australia. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Elly Spillekom, who worked as the coordinator of the Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation, is a volunteer at the Shipwrecks Museum and a curator of the Dutch Australian Foundation. As Sam and Elly explore the museum we hear the story of how and why the Dutch were the first Europeans to sight Australia on board the Duyfken in 1606; how they went on to explore the coast; and why so many of the Dutch ships that followed the Duyfken were wrecked off Western Australia.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the second episode of a two-part mini-series on the history of maritime special forces. In this episode we explore the history of combat divers - an elite within an elite.Combat divers must pass selection twice – firstly into their chosen elite military unit before passing a specialist combat diving qualification. Units are extremely small; they use specialist kit and vehicles; their work is dangerous and lonely; and their operations are cloaked in secrecy. Their history is rich and fascinating and runs from the Second World War to the present day, as so powerfully shown in the recent attack on the Russian Nordstream gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. As their kit and equipment has constantly evolved, so has the nature of their work and their capabilities. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with former Royal Marines Commando Michael G. Welham, a man with extensive military and commercial diving experience and author of the recent ‘Combat Divers: An illustrated history of special forces divers’. Sam and Mike discuss the Second World War roots of combat divers working in Grand Harbour, Malta to protect allied shipping; managing risk underwater; navigation underwater; equipment and weapons; the use of marine mammals in underwater warfare; and a variety of operations that highlight the changing challenges of special forces divers over time including the actions of Soviet Spetsnaz divers in Swedish territorial waters during the Cold War. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first episode of a two-part mini-series on the history of maritime special forces. In this episode we hear about the Second World War origins, development and early history of the SBS - the 'Special Boat Service'. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Saul David, a military historian given unprecedented access to the archives of the SBS for his book - SBS - Silent Warriors: The Authorised Wartime History. Founded in the dark days of 1940, Britain's Special Boat Service was the world's first maritime special operations unit. It started as an inexperienced and small outfit that leaned heavily on the courage and enthusiasm of volunteers but went on to change the course of the war. Its operational inventiveness has served as a model for special forces ever since. Their assignments were some of the most challenging of the war. Feted by history they have gone on to become legendary military operations. The SBS operated globally: in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Channel and the Far East. Operating with flimsy canoes and armed with close-combat weapons - often nothing more than knives, pistols and their bare hands - these men operated repeatedly and successfully deep behind enemy lines. They landed secret agents, destroyed enemy infrastructure, attacked enemy shipping, spread uncertainty and fear and paved the way of some of the most important large-scale operations of the war, including D-Day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The subject of navigation in the Middle Ages is fundamental to maritime history as it lays the foundation for the exploration, migration, global trade and international wars that followed. It is also a fascinating and multi-faceted topic; one which takes us out into the deep oceans where issues of wind, current, tide and depth are all influential, but also up into the sky where the sun, moon, planet and stars help us find out where we are and WHEN we are: the history of navigation is intimately linked with the question of time at sea. To find out more, Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr Seb Falk from Girton College, Cambridge, an historian who specialises in the history of astronomy, navigation and mathematics from their ancient origins to modern developments. For Seb the Middle Ages were a time of wonder. They gave us the first universities, the first eyeglasses and the first mechanical clocks as medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky. Seb is the author of an important recent book: The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The history of time and how it relates to the maritime world is one of the most significant chapters in global history. The question of time is nothing less than the question of civilisation; the question of us. Time itself has been harnessed, politicised and weaponised; clocks have been used to wield power, make money, govern and control; to exchange knowledge and even beliefs. For the maritime world, the history of time takes us from some of the most ingenious inventors and scientists the world has ever seen to the spread of empires around the globe. To find our more Dr Sam Willis spoke with David Rooney, an expert on the history of timekeeping and civilisation who has worked as the Curator of Timekeeping at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and is the author of ‘About Time: A History of Civilisation in Twelve Clocks.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hitler's relationship with his navy is one of the most intriguing topics of the naval history of the Second World War. Hitler was the Commander-in-Chief of all German armed forces - including the Kriegsmarine - and yet he was a man with no experience or understanding of seapower. The result was a strange and fractious relationship with his navy which was ill equipped, poorly manned and, more importantly poorly understood by the Nazi leadership. The relationship soured to such an extent that, in 1942 after an Allied convoy successfully made it to Russia in the dead of winter, Hitler publicly and furiously denounced the navy and demanded that all heavy German warships should be scrapped. This relationship presents a fascinating conundrum at the very heart of the otherwise formidable Nazi war machine and to consider it helps us understand the broader role of the impact of seapower on the course and ultimate outcome of the Second World War, and it also helps us understand Hitler as a man and as a political and military leader. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Hitler biographer Professor Frank McDonough. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We continue our mini series on maritime disasters with HMS Gloucester a British warship lost in the spring of 1682 off the Norfolk coast. It’s quite a story: here is a ship with an impressive career that takes us from her end on that sandbar in Norfolk all the way to the British presence in the Caribbean during the Cromwellian Commonwealth – a key moment in global history. Her later career was intricately linked with the troubled history of the Stuart monarchy and when she sank one of those on board was none other than James Stuart, the future James II. The wreck was recently discovered off Norfolk and to find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr Benjamin Redding - Senior Research Associate on the Gloucester Project at the University of East Anglia. Together with Professor Claire Jowitt, he is writing a cradle-to-grave history of this most historically and culturally significant seventeenth century warship.This episode continues our mini series on maritime disasters: if you haven’t heard any of these so far do please check them out – we have covered so many extraordinary stories including the shocking wreck of the mighty Vasa in the seventeenth century, that magnificent ship that sank on its maiden voyage within sight of shore; the ss Waratah, a huge passenger liner that simply vanished in 1909; Preussen, the enormous and only five-masted full-rigged merchant ship ever built which sank in the English channel in 1910; the early submarine the HL Hunley which holds the record for the vessel being sunk the most times….and so much more! I should add here that we are also working on a future episode on the wreck of the Batavia – a dutch vessel which ran aground off western Australia in the summer of 1629 leading to one of the most appalling horror stories in all of history let alone all of maritime history… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the First and Second World Wars British fishing trawlers were turned into the Royal Naval Patrol Reserve to help clear the seas of mines and even take on the deadly U-Boats. They became known as 'Harry Tate’s Navy' - a nod towards the celebrity comedian known for his bungling of everyday tasks and slipshod approach to life. Taking this wry criticism on the chin the fishermen-turned naval personnel embraced it and Harry Tate's Navy became a byword for exceptional resource fullness and courage in the face of appalling difficulty and danger. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with the historian and journalist Rose George who is currently working on a major new study of the history of the fishing industry.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode was recorded at the fabulous Dockyard Museum in Barrow-in-Furness during the filming of their magnificent collection of ship models for the Lloyds Register Foundation's project 'Maritime Innovation In Miniature'. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Barrow experienced one of the fastest and most extraordinary transformations in history when it changed from a small farm to one one of the largest and most successful shipbuilding centres in the world in just a handful of years. Dr Sam Willis speaks with John Irving, Barrow local and premises manager at the Dockyard Museum to find out more about the history of Barrow and about their extraordinary collection of ship models, two of which are now immortalised in super high-definition video - HMS Vengeance, one of Queen Victoria's most important battleships and RMS Orion, a passenger liner from the 1930s that transformed our expectation of comfort and safety at sea. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our series on Iconic Ships continues with one of the most battle-honoured ships of Nelson's Navy: HMS Agamemnon. Today we got back to those days of the wooden walls to hear about this 64-gun Third Rate that saw service in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic War. She fought in many of the major naval battles of those conflicts and had a reputation as being Nelson’s favourite ship. After a remarkably eventful career her working life ended in 1809 when she was wrecked off the River Plate on the coast of Uruguay. The location of the wreck has been known since the early 1990s but in recent months has become the focus of efforts to preserve it, as the wreck is threatened by erosion, treasure hunters and ship worm decay.To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Mary Montagu-Scott, director of the museum in the historic shipbuilding village of Buckler’s Hard on the Beaulieu River in Hampshire, where HMS Agamemnon was built. Mary has always had a passion for maritime heritage, the sea, and sailing. She is currently active in maritime archaeology, keeping boatbuilding skills alive and as a trustee to the National Museum of the Royal Navy, HMS Victory, HMS Medusa and is commodore of her local yacht club. Mary's dream is to dive on the wreck of HMS Agamemnon, built in Bucklers Hard in 1781, and to see this great ship's story brought to life again on the original slipways.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We continue our mini-series on maritime Africa with an episode on Songo Mnara and Kilwa, two significant maritime settlements on the Swahili Coast. In the previous episode we heard how the Swahili coast of east Africa is particularly rich in its maritime cultural heritage and trading past, where African and Arabic cultures have mixed for centuries across the Indian Ocean. In this episode we investigate two locations in great depth, both Swahili stone towns that made their place in global maritime history. Dr Sam Willis spoke with Mercy Mbogelah, who manages the ruins of both sites for UNESCO World Heritage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We continue our mini-series on maritime Africa with an episode on the Swahili coast – a fascinating part of east Africa particularly rich in its maritime cultural heritage and trading past. The Swahili coast is distinctive for its mixture of African and Arabic cultures and the way that the two have been bound together by maritime trade across the Indian Ocean. There is also clear Chinese influence here as well, reflecting historic maritime trade routes thousands of miles longer and which date back to the Middle Ages. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr Stephanie Wynne- Jones form the University of York. Her work in Africa explores the deep links between people, landscapes, history and material culture and she has directed a series of excavation and survey projects in eastern Africa, including a study of early towns on Zanzibar and large-scale excavations at the World Heritage Swahili town of Songo Mnara – which we will find out more about in an upcoming episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Dr Sam Willis speaks with Professor Paul Kennedy about the fundamental change in the balance of naval power and the strategic landscape that occurred in the Second World War. By the end of the war, the Italian, German, Japanese and French navies had been all but eliminated; the era of the big-gunned surface vessel ended; and America had risen as an economic and military power larger than anything that world had ever seen before. Paul Kennedy is the J. Richardson Dilworth professor of British History at Yale most well known for his 1976 book The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. In this episode Paul brings his sweeping insights to the question of seapower in World War Two. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J. Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description of vessels, often directly from plans, reports and records of conventional ships. But this left a gap in their knowledge - 'But what of the unorthodox ships, the rebels from tradition: those monsters and freaks of the nautical world which, throughout the whole of the 19th century attained transient fame (or notoriety) before disappearing from the scene for ever?'. Guthrie's pamphlet aimed to answer that question by exploring some of the most radical nautical designs of the nineteenth century.This episode, the last of four, looks at the unique iron vessel that was designed and built to bring 'Cleopatra's Needle' - a 3500 year-old, 224-ton, 21-metre high ancient Egyptian obelisk made of granite - from Alexandria to London, where it still can be seen on the banks of the Thames at Embankment. This is the remarkable story of how it got there.For the Egyptians, obelisks were sacred objects for the sun god, Ra; it’s thought that the shape symbolised a single ray of sun. They were placed in pairs at the entrances of temples, so that the first and last light of day touched their peaks. The obelisk that became known as Cleopatra’s needle was made around 1450 BC, in Heliopolis in what is now a part of Cairo. It was moved to Alexandria by the Romans in 12 BC, where it remained, lying on a beach, for almost two millennia.But in 1819, to commemorate Horatio Nelson’s great naval victory over Napoleon in 1798 at the battle of the Nile, the Sultan of Egypt presented the obelisk to the government of Great Britain….but with no suggestion as to how the British might claim their reward. In Ebay terms – this was ‘collection only’. Unsurprisingly, The obelisk stayed where it was.Fifty-eight years later a Scottish traveller and soldier in the British army, James Alexander, heard of the story and became interested in the challenge that Cleopatra’s needle posed to a mighty maritime Empire. He convinced a wealthy and philanthropic businessman, William Wilson, to fund a project to move the 224-ton granite obelisk, 3000 miles to London – a seemingly impossible task. Enter John Dixon, a talented and energetic civil engineer from Durham, who had made his name building the first railway in China. Dixon’s solution was to make a pre-fabricated iron vessel in London; take it in pieces to Alexandria and assemble it around the obelisk. The iron tube with the obelisk nestling inside, would then be towed back to London. The journey was nearly a disaster...To go with this audio episode we have created a video animation which explains the history of the needle, the design of the Cleopatra, and her fraught journey to London.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On 7 December 1872 the Challenger expedition set sail from Sheerness. It’s purpose was conceived just two years earlier, in 1870, by Charles Wyville Thomson Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University. Thomson had managed to persuade the Royal Society of London to ask the British Government to furnish one of Her Majesty's ships for a prolonged voyage of exploration across the oceans of the globe….a voyage of deep-sea exploration, unique for its scale of ambition and scope. Their job was to do nothing les than map the ocean floor and search for life in the abyss.This remarkable expedition was made possible by extraordinary technological and scientific developments, international co-operation on an unprecedented scale and also large-scale co-operation between civilians and naval personnel. Its results did nothing less than change the way that we think about the maritime world. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke the with Erika jones, Curator of Navigation and Oceanography at Royal Museums Greenwich. Erika's work focuses not only on the Challenger expedition but more broadly on nineteenth-century science and the development of modern oceanography.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J. Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description of vessels, often directly from plans, reports and records of conventional ships. But this left a gap in their knowledge - 'But what of the unorthodox ships, the rebels from tradition: those monsters and freaks of the nautical world which, throughout the whole of the 19th century attained transient fame (or notoriety) before disappearing from the scene for ever?'. Guthrie's pamphlet aimed to answer that question by exploring some of the most radical nautical designs of the nineteenth century.This episode, the third of four, is on 'Cigar Ships', which, as Guthrie drily notes: 'in this context refers to the shape of the vessel, not her cargo, and this group of steamers represents the railwayman's approach to naval architecture' as they were conceived by the Winans brothers who came from a family of brilliant and wealthy railroad engineers. Their first cigar vessel was built at Baltimore in 1858. To get a modern historian’s perspective on these extraordinary ships Dr Sam Willis with Stephen McLoughlin, a naval historian of immense knowledge of the period and the many maritime innovations it produced. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our third episode dedicated to the maritime history of Africa. We find out about indigenous African whaling; European and American exploitation of African waters; the numerous uses to which whale products were put both in Africa and abroad; the written and the archaeological evidence available for the study of whaling in Africa. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoked with Dr. Lynn Harris who has worked as a maritime historian and underwater archaeologist for over 40 years in South Africa, Namibia, Costa Rica, North and South Carolina and is currently employed as a Professor at the Program of Maritime Studies at East Carolina University. We also hear from Lindsay Wentzel, a third-year master’s student in East Carolina University's Program in Maritime Studies. If you haven’t heard our previous two episodes on the maritime history of Africa please go and find them in the back catalogue – the first is on the history of indigenous African canoemen and the second on the desolate and vengeful skeleton coast of Namibia, home to thousands of shipwrecks from centuries of maritime trade, war and exploration passing Namibia’s coast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The skeleton coast of Namibia is one of the most iconic maritime locations on earth. Here the fearsome Namib desert runs right to the sea. Over the centuries the sand dunes have grown and the shoreline has moved further away as the desert reclaims the sea. The coastline itself is formidably dangerous. Plagued by shallow sandbars, fog and treacherous currents, thousands of ships are known to have wrecked here from the earliest period of European exploration of the African coast. The result is an extraordinary collection of shipwrecks surrounded by desert. To help understand the rich history of this extraordinary place Dr Sam Willis spoke with Eliot Mowa, a lecturer at the University of Namibia with an expertise in maritime history and the maritime culture of Namibia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Preussen was a marvel of a ship. A steel-hulled, five-masted, ship-rigged sailing ship built in 1902 and named after the German kingdom of Prussia.Until the launch of Royal Clipper in 2000, a sail cruise liner, Preussen was the only five-masted full-rigged ship ever built and carried six square sails on each mast. Not only did she have a fascinating career at a time when the sun was setting on the great clipper ships, she also had a fascinating and abrupt end in 1910, and ended up wrecked in the English Channel near Dover. Parts of her hull can still be seen today.To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Frank Scott, a retired naval aviator and qualified square rig ship-master, who commanded various square riggers ranging from 80 to 800 gross tonnes. In his long sail training career Frank served in fourteen square riggers, under seven different national flags. This podcast goes alongside an animation of the Preussen's rigging plan which can be seen on the Mariner's Mirror Pod's YouTube Channel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This begins a handful of episodes that will explore the maritime history of Africa. We begin with the fascinating story of African canoemen. African indigenous seafaring canoemen operated as middlemen between European traders and the coastal estuaries, rivers and land of West Africa. The topography of the coast often necessitated their involvement in trade because it was variably rocky, broken by sandbars and shallow waters, or treacherous in other ways to large sailing ships. Canoemen allowed access to trade by using surfboats that could surmount the waves on the coast in ways European boats could not. They often were hired as navigators and pilots on European ships or worked as menial labourers or ordinary seamen on European ships. Canoemen also frequently came alongside European ships to board them and trade goods or enslaved people. As a result, when Europeans began to build trading entrepots, such as Elmina Castle in Ghana, Monrovia in Liberia, or Cap Verde in Senegal, they hired canoemen to contract out trade.  To find out more about this little-known aspect of African maritime history Dr Sam Willis spoke with Megan Cructcher, a PhD Student in the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University who is looking into the roles, identities, and material culture of these canoemen in West African maritime history, especially during the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Part 3 of a three-part special audio tour of HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and a First Rate ship of the line which, by 1805, had already acquired a significant history. This, the final episode, looks at everything open to the elements – the weather deck, quarter deck, poop deck and forecastle and includes a look through HMS Victory's remarkable visitor book, signed by dignitaries for generations, including the late Queen Elizabeth, her mother and her sister. The first episode explored the lowest two decks, the hold and the orlop deck, both below waterline; and the second episode looked at the gun decks where the sailors lived and fought Victory’s 104 guns. Dr Sam Willis was taken on a tour of Victory by Tony Noon, one of HMS Victory's tour guides, and by Rosey Thornber, Principal Heritage Advisor for HMS Victory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Part 2 of a three-part special audio tour of HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and a First Rate ship of the line which, by 1805, had already acquired a significant history. This, the second episode, looks at the gun decks where the sailors lived and fought Victory’s 104 guns; the first episode looked at the lowest two decks, the hold and the orlop deck; and episode three will look at everything open to the elements – the weather deck, quarter deck, poop deck and forecastle. Dr Sam Willis was taken on a tour of Victory by Tony Noon, one of HMS Victory's tour guides, and by Rosey Thornber, Principal Heritage Advisor for HMS Victory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Part 1 of a three-part special audio tour of HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and a First Rate ship of the line which, by 1805, had already acquired a significant history. This, the first episode, looks at the lowest two decks, the hold and the orlop deck, both below waterline; the second episode will look at the gun decks where the sailors lived and fought Victory’s 104 guns; and episode three will look at everything open to the elements – the weather deck, quarter deck, poop deck and forecastle. Dr Sam Willis was taken on a tour of Victory by Tony Noon, one of HMS Victory's tour guides, and by Rosey Thornber, Principal Heritage Advisor for HMS Victory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fishwives were a remarkable group of women who were involved with the British fishing trade and made a name or themselves for being particularly loud and outspoken, and became a byword for hardiness and industry. Dr Sam Willis spoke to the historian and journalist Rose George who is currently working on a big research project looking at fishing communities around the world and has become fascinated by the fishwives, in particular on their profound impact on British politics. It's a story of technology, economics, shipwreck, survival, frustration, wealth, poverty and, of course, fishing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The SS Waratah was a passenger and cargo steamship built in 1908 for the Blue Anchor Line, a British shipping company operating between the United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia between 1870 and 1910. On only her second voyage, on a leg of the journey from Durban to Cape Town in the summer of 1909, this enormous ship of 9,339 tons, with the capacity to carry over 1000 passengers, simply vanished. Locating the wreck has defied the efforts of numerous explorers, archaeologists, historians and adventurers ever since. To find out more about this ship, and to look at her plans and the written records of her design, construction and reports into her loss, Dr Sam Willis visited the archives of the Lloyds Register Foundation and spoke with Max Wilson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On 26 September 480 BC one of the most historically significant naval battles in history was fought between an alliance of Greek city states and the mighty Persian empire: the battle of Salamis.Prior to the battle the second Persian invasion of Greece had seen convincing wins for the Persians at the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium. The Greek victory at Salamis became a turning point as the depleted alliance of Greek city states finally thwarted the seemingly unstoppable Persian king, Xerxes. Within a year, two further Greek successes put an end to any Persian attempt to conquer the Greek mainland. The Persian empire was immensely strong, was able to absorb the naval and manpower losses suffered at Salamis and continued to flourish for another 150 years, but the Greek victory had a profound impact on the sense of Greek national identity and the ideology of freedom. It also ensured that Greek culture would continue to flourish - and thus lay the foundations of philosophy, science, personal freedom and democracy that many societies around the world know and value today.To find out more about this battle which can claim to be one of the most significant in history, Dr Sam Willis spoke with the military historian and expert on the ancient world, Jeffrey Cox.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On 20 September 1519 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan left Spain and headed westwards on a voyage that would subsequently echo through the centuries as the first circumnavigation of the earth. The riches of Asia were first tasted by the Portuguese in the late 1490s but the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas reserved for Portugal the eastern-bound maritime routes to Asia. It thus became commercially imperative for the Spanish to find a western-route to Asia, and in particular to the riches of the Spice Islands in the south western Pacific where nutmeg, mace and cloves were to be exclusively discovered. Magellan's subsequent voyage is both well known and poorly understood. For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry. Magellan, in fact, did not attempt – much less accomplish – a journey around the globe, and in his own lifetime the explorer was actually abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure. His real ambitions were in fact, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market and more on exploiting Filipino gold. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke to the brilliant historian who has made this case and untangled the myths that made Magellan a hero, Felipe Fernandez Armesto. Felipe occupies the William P. Reynolds Chair at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a professor of history and, concurrently, of classics and of the history and philosophy of science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description, often directltly from plans, reports and records of conventional ships. But this left a gap in their knowledge - 'But what of the unorthodox ships, the rebels from tradition: those monsters and freaks of the nautical world which, throughout the whole of the 19th century attained transient fame (or notoriety) before disappearing from the scene for ever?'. Guthrie's pamphlet aimed to answer that question by exploring some of the most radical nautical designs of the nineteenth century. This episode, the second of four, looks at the circular ships, usually associated with the Russian Vice-Admiral Popov, that came to be known as Popovkas. First built in 1873, these vessels were designed for the defence of Russia's shallow Black Sea coasts. With a limited draught of just thirteen feet, these vessels were nonetheless heavily armed and armoured. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with the naval historian Stephen Mclaughlin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description, often directltly from plans, reports and records of conventional ships. But this left a gap in their knowledge - 'But what of the unorthodox ships, the rebels from tradition: those monsters and freaks of the nautical world which, throughout the whole of the 19th century attained transient fame (or notoriety) before disappearing from the scene for ever?'. Guthrie's pamphlet aimed to answer that question by exploring some of the most radical nautical designs of the nineteenth century. This episode, the first of four, looks at Monitors, a vessel type named after the original ship Monitor, built by the Union Navy in 1861 during the American Civil War. She led to an entire class of vessels all of which shared her curious design: an ironclad warship designed to float only just above the surface, with a single turret, to present as small a target as possible. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Andrew Choong Han Lin, a curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.Subsequent episodes will look at circular ships, cigar ships and the unique Cleopatra, an iron vessel designed and constructed for the sole purpose of bringing an ancient Egyptian obelisk to London from Alexandria. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the second episode dedicated to that maritime masterpiece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.The first episode is a fabulous new reading of the poem with a specially-commissioned composition and soundscape designed to enthral the listener with the poem's weird, ethereal, supernatural glory.This episode explores the text by crossing the boundaries between history and science, land and sea, past and present. Dr Sam Willis speaks with John Spicer, Professor of Marine Zoology at the School of Biological & Marine Sciences, at the University of Plymouth. John argues hat the poem could teach us a lesson or two about the way we treat our environment today.In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner a sailor kills an albatross, which sets off a chain of events that fundamentally alter the sailor's world. Similarly, today we live in a world in which humankind is increasingly out of kilter withe natural world. The world is changing; it is transitioning. We are grieving for our climate. In particular there are numerous ways in which we have irrevocably altered the marine environment. The ocean's temperature is increasing and it is becoming more acidic. Through our activities that have impacted biodiversity we have set in motion what some scientists consider the greatest extinction of life in its history. Coleridge would not recognise the world in which we live after successive and relentless generations of technical and industrial revolutions, and yet his poem is oddly prophetic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first of two episodes dedicated to that magical piece of prose so beloved by all with an interest in the sea – Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, first published in 1798. Many know of it, some have read it but few people have actually heard it in full, and listening to this masterpiece is the best way of appreciating its full maritime and supernatural glory.This episode therefore presents The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in full. It is also a traditionally masculine poem, written by a man and usually read or performed by a man, usually an English man – so to help appreciate this story through a different lens, the story is read today by the wonderfully talented Elaine Kingston – who you are soon to discover, is a Scottish Woman. To bring the story to life we have also commissioned the multi-talented composer Jamie Whyte to create an original work that combines music and sound effects. The combination of Elaine's reading and Jamie's soundscape creates a dramatic new interpretation of this poem.Coleridge’s story begins at a wedding party where a man is accosted by a grizzly old sailor, beady of eye, who begins to unravel his own history. We hear how he sailed from his home harbour south, and is trapped in ice at the South Pole. They manage to break free and the sailors credit their salvation to an albatross; but the mariner then shoots the bird with a crossbow. Although, initially, it seems like a good move for these superstitious folk, things start to go horribly wrong and the murderer of the albatross is blamed. The sailor is forced to hang the carcass round his neck and over time becomes more appreciative of the natural world - which redeems him.The text is dramatic and haunting and Coleridge explores numerous themes and sub-themes. It defies any single interpretation but you will certainly hear themes of retribution, punishment, guilt, curse and fear.Part 2 of this episode features an interview with Professor John Spicer, Professor of Marine Zoology at the School of Biological & Marine Sciences at the University of Plymouth, who believes that the poem could teach us a lesson or two about the way we treat our environment today.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scholars debate the period when pirates actually ruled the waves - and the answer certainly depends on the location in question - but by general consensus it was all over by 1730 and it had begun some 80 years earlier, around 1650. The Golden Age of Piracy had been born in this crucial period when European maritime powers were flexing their muscles and starting to project naval power beyond the horizon. As empires grew so did the quantity and quality of trade and the seas became littered with merchantmen carrying indescribable wealth across the oceans. And yet this was a time when the maritime geographies of the new empires was imperfectly known, and when navigation was still as much guesswork as it was a science - this was the period immediately before the means to calculate longitude accurately had been discovered. The result was that ships carried this trade at predictable times of year, on predictable routes, in locations that were impossible to police adequately. Although European naval powers did create naval bases in the tropics, it was a slow process and one with many pitfalls. At the same time thousands of young men were learning how to sail and how to fight in a near endless series of maritime wars. The result? A period of piracy so intense and colourful that it still lives on today in myth, legend, and increasingly detailed and accurate histories. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with pirate historian Dr Jamie Goodall. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.