When I undertook a PhD project on sailors back in 1993, work on impressment per se was scarce. One of the more memorable works had been published in 1913. [1] The secondary literature that is available now amounts to an Aladdin’s Cave of riches compared to what I had to work with two decades ago. […]
Previous posts on this website have made references to the stereotypical image of sailors as engaging in immoral activities such as drinking, gambling or visiting prostitutes when they were in harbours. This same image was invoked in late 19th century and early 20th century Finland by advocators of sailor’s homes, reading rooms and Seamen’s Mission’s stations. […]
Last week I attended the annual Social History Society conference held at the University of Portsmouth. It was my first Social History Society conference, and I was particularly lucky to have the opportunity to present a paper on sailors and naval pageantry alongside my PTUC colleagues Daniel Swan and Chris Spackman on the first panel […]
Professor Jonathan Hyslop delivered a fascinating and stimulating keynote lecture for the Social History Conference delegates on the 1st April 2015 entitled ‘Navigating Empire: Ports, Ships and Global History,’ an excerpt of which is below. The lecture was a call to theorize three core elements of the maritime in connecting transnational, imperial and global histories, […]
The Sailor’s Hornpipe, also known as “The Jig of the Ship,” “Jack the Lad,” or “Deck Dancing,”[1] was a common sight in ports, danced and performed in sailortown areas across the globe. The Sailor’s Hornpipe became a staple dance of the Royal Navy, so much so “the sailor’s hornpipe was one of the glories of […]
Review: Daniel Owen Spence, Colonial Naval Culture and British Imperialism, 1922-67. Manchester University Press, Studies in Imperialism, 2015 – full details here. This is not your traditional naval history. Aligning himself with those whom he describes as ‘cultural-naval historians’ (2), Spence aims – as he puts it in the book’s final sentence – to understand […]
