My passion for tales of seafarers and Atlantic history, more generally, emerged from my own wanderlust and love of travel. I’m constantly amazed at how early modern sailors crossed the globe amidst the most pressing challenges imaginable. By reading these sailing histories, with accounts of everything from monsoons to cannibalism, we might not feel quite so inconvenienced by a short flight or train delay! During my academic career, I have had the opportunity to complete research in different parts of Britain. This experience of living transatlantically has transferred to my scholarship and outlook. I hope you find the books on my list as fun and fascinating as I have!
I appreciate this book for bringing the local into the world of Atlantic seafarers. Daniel Vickers is one of the deans of early American social history (he is one of the historians mentioned in the Harvard bar scene in the film Good Will Hunting) and turns his talents here to explain how American seamen were different in the Age of Sail. The simple answer is that they were young. Unlike the long-distance professional seafarers of Europe, sailing in America, especially New England was more of a life stage on the way to other jobs and pursuits.
These sailors were not rootless wanderers forced to go to sea because they were poor; they were rooted in specific communities and filled a necessary role in local economies. As exciting as we find tales of mutiny, scurvy, and shipwrecks, most early American seafarers lived much more stable lives. I find this variation…
Two centuries of American maritime history, in which the Atlantic Ocean remained the great frontier.
Two centuries of American maritime history, in which the Atlantic Ocean remained the great frontier Westward expansion has been the great narrative of the first two centuries of American history, but as historian Daniel Vickers demonstrates here, the horizon extended in all directions. For those who lived along the Atlantic coast, it was the East-and the Atlantic Ocean-that beckoned. While historical and fictional accounts have tended to stress the exceptional circumstances or psychological compulsions that drove men to sea, this book shows how normal a…
In writing character-driven space fantasy, heavily influenced by my training as an electromechanical engineer, I’ve realized a love for stories with a heavy emphasis on moral dilemmas and shifts in thinking. How does a character change direction after realizing much of what they always believed was a lie? When well-trained instincts pull them backward instead of propelling them forward? I love these stories, mirroring my own messy self-discovery journey through life. The settings and stakes are more fantastical, but that makes them more appealing. A way to confront my own trials without becoming burdened by them. If the characters can do it, so can I.
I’m a sucker for unique worldbuilding, and this book's combination of military traditions and the age of sail with magic space travel scratches that itch nicely. Dianne Morrison tells a heartfelt and deeply emotional tale that is at once both a coming-of-age story following a young elf’s pursuit of dreams as a star-pilot and a gritty cautionary tale on the horrors of war.
I felt for Shaundar and friends as they struggled through their own challenges to pursue their dreams, their patriotism as they snuck away to join the new war effort, and their horror as those dreams fell apart and survival became paramount. Check the content warnings on this one, as the narrative leans heavily beyond heroes and into the dark sides of war.
Toy Soldier: A derogatory slang term for an elven marine.Battles great and terrible, small and bitter, raged across Known Space as the wars of Elves and Orcs played out their legacy of hatred across the stars themselves. Epics would be written, songs would be sung; but wars are fought by real people with loves and families and homes.
All Shaundar Sunfall ever wanted to be was a Star-Pilot. Raised on his father's ship, he has found an affinity for the stars -- although as a mixed-race elf and a bit of troublemaker, he often runs afoul of his commanding officers.…
Since the publication of my first book in 1988, my emphasis has always been on history as “story.” That is, the stories of men and women in past centuries with whom we share a common humanity but who faced challenges very different from our own. My goal is to bring their stories to as wide an audience as possible. Whether they describe Newfoundland fisherman in the 17th-century North Atlantic, expatriate Irish men and women in 18th-century Bordeaux, or colonial New Yorkers defying British authority on the eve of the American Revolution, the common theme is the impact of trade and the sea on the lives of ordinary people.
The common seaman and the pirate in the age of sail are romantic historical figures who occupy a special place in the popular culture, but they remain little known to us. But their lives are not beyond recovery. Rediker tours the sailor's North Atlantic, following seamen and their ships along the pulsing routes of trade and into rowdy port towns. He recreates life along the waterfront, where seafaring men from around the world crowded into brothels, alehouses, and city jails. And Rediker explores the natural terror that inevitably shaped the existence of those who plied the forbidding oceans of the globe in small, brittle wooden vessels. The mariners in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea are working men, struggling to overcome the exploitive tendencies of the age in which they lived.
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea focuses upon the seamen's experience in order to illuminate larger historical issues such as the rise of capitalism, the genesis of free wage labor, and the growth of an international working class. These epic themes were intimately bound up with the everyday hopes and fears of the common men who toiled upon the deep.
This book is arguably the best compilation of information about the topic of English privateering during the Anglo-Spanish war of 1585-1605. The reader learns every aspect of this type of naval warfare in light of geo-politics and national economics. The blurring of the distinction between privateering and piracy during this era is fascinating. The raw data has helped me craft authentic historical fiction novels set in that era.
Privateering was a form of legal private warfare at sea in which individuals who possessed suitable ships took the opportunity offered by a war to plunder enemy commerce. In this study of privateering during the Elizabethan war with Spain, which was originally published in 1966, Dr Andrews shows that it was closely connected with trade, in particular having a stimulating effect on oceanic commerce and that it was at the time the main form of English maritime warfare. Dr Andrews begins with an account of how privateering became legal and how it was organised. He then examines the various types…
I have a passion for ships and the sea which I try and bring to my writing. I was first drawn to the Age of Sail by earlier novelists in the genre who opened my eyes to a fascinating world. I went on to study the 18th-century navy at university, I sail myself whenever I can, and have always loved the sea. When I decided to give up a well-paid job in industry to try my hand as an author, there was only one genre for me.
2005 saw the bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar, and a slew of books about the engagement. The best of the lot was Men of Honour. In it Nicolson broadens his focus away from the mechanics of the battle to explore the psychology of the protagonists and explains the world they grew up in so that the reader understands why they acted in the ways that they did. Good history answers the ‘what happened’ question. Great history lets you understand why.
An unforgettable look at the contradictions of heroism, as embodied by Horatio Nelson and as tested by the battle of Trafalgar. Adam Nicolson looks at the variety of qualities - ruthlessness, bravery, kindness, cruelty - that combined in both Nelson and his troops to carry that fateful day.
Trafalgar gripped the nineteenth century imagination like no other battle: it was a moment of both transcendent fulfilment and unmatched despair. It was a drama of such violence and sacrifice that the concept of total war may be argued to start from there. It finished the global ambitions of a European tyrant…
My interest in pirates began after attending the Real Pirates exhibit in Denver, Colorado, in 2011. All I can say now is that while I walked through the exhibit, I felt as though the pirates were personally speaking to me, asking me to tell the world their stories. I wrote several non-fiction articles about some of the men who sailed with Sam Bellamy on the Whydah Galley, the vessel featured in the exhibit. The writing and research were fun and fulfilling. In the last few years, I moved into fiction because I like reading fantasy myself and I wanted to explore the freedom of writing without having to document everything I wrote about.
This book is for those who want to read verified facts about women during the age of wooden sail.
It is both entertaining and informative. For many of the chapters, the author gives you the “popular” tale, then tells you what really happened. It’s a good book for those who want to read about strong women, some of whom really did “go to sea,” during a period of time when women had few rights and few opportunities outside of the home.
For centuries, the sea has been regarded as a male domain, but in this illuminating historical narrative, maritime scholar David Cordingly shows that an astonishing number of women went to sea in the great age of sail. Some traveled as the wives or mistresses of captains; others were smuggled aboard by officers or seamen. And Cordingly has unearthed stories of a number of young women who dressed in men’s clothes and worked alongside sailors for months, sometimes years, without ever revealing their gender. His tremendous research shows that there was indeed a thriving female population—from pirates to the sirens of…
I’m a writer-researcher based at the University of East Anglia. My work is driven by a love of travel and the sea, and an interest in how people move between cultures and ideas across time. I’ve written widely on early modern travel writing and maritime culture, plays about cultural encounter including first contact, and the intersections between ideas about gender, race, colonial and/or imperial identities, and power. At heart, I’m a cultural historian interested in how people and writing can say one thing but mean another.
Studies of early modern piracy often either focus on one or two exceptional women – Elizabeth I, Gráinne Ní Mháille, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read – or neglect women altogether. This book challenges assumptions about early modern women’s contribution to and involvement with piracy, exploring how female lives intersected with it in numerous and nuanced ways. Female family members often acted as receivers and dealers of stolen goods: their involvement shows agency in relation to piracy, though female victimization was also common. In fact, partnerships with women were part of the wider patterns of support pirates received from seafaring communities; familial relationships often triggered female involvement since economic integration and domestic connections were linked in the maritime world. Appleby suggests that due to the changing nature of piracy, female agency diminished by the end of the seventeenth century.
Piracy was one of the most gendered criminal activities during the early modern period. As a form of maritime enterprise and organized criminality, it attracted thousands of male recruits whose venturing acquired a global dimension as piratical activity spread across the oceans and seas of the world. At the same time, piracy affected the lives of women in varied ways. Adopting a fresh approach to the subject, this study explores the relationships and contacts between women and pirates during a prolonged period of intense and shifting enterprise. Drawing on a wide body of evidence and based on English and Anglo-American…
I recently retired as a military and naval history professor at the University of Memphis, where I continue to teach strategy for the US Naval War College. I am the author of seven books and many articles on maritime and military history and the histories of technology and sexuality.
Alfred Thayer Mahan was the first modern scholar to seriously explore naval strategy. He discussed how strategy at sea differed from strategy on land, what naval power could and could not do, and the advantages of being a sea power like Great Britain as opposed to a land power like Russia or Germany.
Unfortunately, Mahan’s works, particularly his classic The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), are ponderous and often difficult to read. Jon Sumida’s short book summarizes and explains Mahan’s key ideas, often better than Mahan himself, and underlines their enduring importance.
Between 1890 and 1913, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan published a series of books on naval warfare in the age of sail, which won a wide readership in his own day and established his reputation as the founder of modern strategic history. But Mahan's two principal arguments have been gravely misunderstood ever since, according to Jon Tetsuro Sumida. Instead of representing Mahan as an advocate of national naval supremacy, Sumida shows him asserting that only a multinational naval consortium could defend international trade. Instead of presenting Mahan as a man who adhered to strategic principles, Sumida shows that he stressed the…
I have a passion for ships and the sea which I try and bring to my writing. I was first drawn to the Age of Sail by earlier novelists in the genre who opened my eyes to a fascinating world. I went on to study the 18th-century navy at university, I sail myself whenever I can, and have always loved the sea. When I decided to give up a well-paid job in industry to try my hand as an author, there was only one genre for me.
This book is always on my desk when I am writing. Nick Rodger is the greatest living authority on the Age of Sail, with an astounding knowledge of his subject from the grand strategy of fleets down to the daily life of individual sailors. The book is a distillation of a lifetime of careful research into a highly-readable, single volume that lets the reader step through a door into a vanished world.
Meticulously researched, Rodger's portrait draws the reader into this fascinatingly complex world with vivid, entertaining characters and full details of life below the decks. The Wooden World provides the most complete history of a navy at any age, and is sure to be an indispensable volume for all fans of Patrick O'Brian, English history, and naval history.
Let's face it: pirates of the Golden Age are just cool. No one would actually want to encounter them, but they have been the stuff of escapist dreams since childhood. Adventure, fellowship, treasure–the “romantic” aspects of piracy are what make these otherwise nasty individuals anti-heroes par excellence. As an adult and academic and as an occasional crewman on square riggers, I adopted pirates as a favorite sub-set of maritime history. As with other aspects of the past, I view the history of pirates and piracy as really two narratives: what the records tell us happened and why and what our persistent fascination with them reveals about us.
I first read Rediker’s work as a graduate student, and from the first pages, I was “hooked.”
Want to understand what made pirates tick? In this book, pirates are recast not as violent, unthinking brutes but as ordinary, sea-going laboring men driven to lawlessness by the brutal demands of expanding Atlantic trade.
I especially appreciated Rediker’s situating pirate behavior and customs within the broader world of maritime life. He argues that these outlawed men created a floating society that was then the most egalitarian and democratic in the Western world.
Pirates have long been stock figures in popular culture, from Treasure Island to the more recent antics of Jack Sparrow. Villains of all Nations unearths the thrilling historical truth behind such fictional characters and rediscovers their radical democratic challenge to the established powers of the day.
