Isaac’s Coastal History blogs
In 1925, J. Stanley Gardiner, a Cambridge don and fisheries expert, made a public statement of regret that the Great Barrier Reef existed. “It is the greatest pity in the world,” he told the Royal Geographical Society, “… a tragedy so far as the people of Queensland are concerned.” Gardiner explained that the reef was […]
When my father was seventeen years old, he lied about his age and joined the U.S. Merchant Marine. He got a lowly job in the engine room (his official job title was “wiper”) and spent several years as the misfit sailor who haunted used book shops in every port. He was one of those working-class […]
Today, I’m happy to introduce The Coastal History blog’s first guest post. Julia Leikin is a Ph.D. candidate at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Recent events involving Russia and Ukraine have prompted many op-ed pieces and impromptu reflections on lessons from the past. Some commentators have drawn attention to Russia’s religious […]
I’m writing today in response to Glen O’Hara’s recent blog post, “What about the Silence in the Archive?” Glen visited the National Archives of the United States in search of American commentary on British water policy. The short version is that he discovered U.S. bureaucrats had a lot to say on everyone’s water policy (the […]
This weekend, I broke out the French dictionary and made my way—slowly—through an impressive article that belongs alongside Michael Pearson’s “Littoral Society: The Concept and the Problems,” and Danny Vickers’ book Young Men and the Sea. [1] At the Port Towns and Urban Cultures conference this past July, Oliver Le Gouic wrote down a name […]
Taverns and other drinking establishments occupy a privileged place in the iconography of ports and sailortowns. Who could forget the free-and-easy multicultural egalitarianism of ALL-MAX, the East End dive immortalized by Pierce Egan? [1] In The Many-Headed Hydra, Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh speculated about what sorts of conversations sailors, slaves, sex workers, and assorted […]
