Maritime

J.H. Bennett introduces William Dampier, the circumnavigator of the globe, and the first Englishman to land in Australia, who spent part of his youth as a planter in Jamaica and a Caribbean buccaneer.

Bernard Pool describes how the diarist was determined, in the interests of the Navy and for his own satisfaction, to strike the best possible bargain for the Crown.

C.R. Boxer portrays a key moment in the Thirty Years War. Dutch fortunes were not prospering when Piet Heyn revived his compatriots’ spirits by the daring capture of a Spanish treasure fleet.

David Woodward introduces Alfred von Tirpitz; the creator of the German High Seas Fleet, who was also the advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare.

C.R. Boxer writes that, taken in conjunction, the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery in the fifteenth century form one of the watersheds of history, comparable to the twentieth-century conquest of space.

Christopher Lloyd marks the tercentenary of Robert Black, Cromwell’s “General at Sea,” whose name ranks with those of Drake and Nelson in English naval annals.

In 1794, at the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, 'the nation wanted a victory'. It was provided by Admiral Howe.

The Wilhelm Gustloff, once an elegant cruise-liner of Hitler’s Reich, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine on the night of 30 January 1945.

Nora C. Buckley explains how, during the 15th century, Chinese seafarers were active in Indian and African trade. 

Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a young Yorkshireman named Edward Barton was despatched to the Sultan’s court to promote the interests of the Levant Company.