Maritime

David Carpenter recalls the vanished world of the London docks in the 1950s.

The journey that led N.A.M. Rodger from a schoolboy passion for warships to his becoming the historian of the British Navy took some unexpected turns. He regrets none of them.

Jonathan Fenby asks why the greatest maritime tragedy ever to affect Britain was hushed up at the time and has remained a virtually untold story. 

A rebellion erupted on the Russian battleship Potemkin on 14 June 1905.

Bernhard Rieger considers how luxury liners became icons of modernity and national pride in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Janet MacDonald looks at the surprisingly good rations that kept the Jack-Tars jolly.

Peter Monteath recalls what happened when two explorers, whose nations were battling for supremacy, met on the other side of the world.

The pirate William Kidd was executed in London on 23 May 1701.

John D. Grainger investigates the creation of C.S. Forester’s naval hero of the Napoleonic Wars - and identifies not one but two Hornblower originals.

The battle between the British Navy and that of the French Republic took place on August 1st, 1798.