PhD Candidates John D. Bolt and Elizabeth C. Libero discuss what it is like to study with the Port Towns and Urban Cultures research group. John’s research examines the development of the Royal Marines over the nineteenth century, and Elizabeth’s research looks at British South Atlantic expeditions in the early nineteenth century. For more […]
Why maritime history matters: Maritime highways – A personal journey. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book aptly titled The Prize, Daniel Yergin quotes Admiral ‘Jacky’ Fisher as telling Winston Churchill, on the latter’s appointment to First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1911, ‘east of Suez oil is cheaper than coal.’[1] It later became clear […]
Animal husbandry at HMS Excellent on Whale Island expanded considerably at the onset of the First World War. As it became clear that war to about to break out, the island management began to view the island with different eyes. Although it was surprising that sailors would be put to farming duties, men were tasked […]
In 1832 the Fourth Sea Lord of the Admiralty suggested there was a need for ‘theoretical instruction’ in gunnery. Thus what had been previously considered an art became a science.[1] Marine artillery embraced the science and technology of the age, and this modernisation of gunnery was aligned with a transition from sail to steam ships. […]
Promote your events via PTUC! If you have a Port Town, Urban, Maritime or Naval-themed event, we can include it on our website. Please contact PTUC@port.ac.uk with the details. See below for some of the events that may be of interest to you! 2018 April 5th-6th Apr – ‘Healthy or Unhealthy Cities?’, Urban […]
International Symposium, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg & University of Bielefeld Bielefeld University (Germany), 13-14 April 2018 Deadline for submissions: 9 August 2017 Until recently manifestations of piracy as well as of its state-sanctioned counterpart, privateering, were mostly discussed as geographically isolated cultural phenomena. Depictions of armed robbery at sea in the early modern period have traditionally tended to focus […]
