The adoption of steam engines for oceangoing vessels in the mid nineteenth century revolutionized shipping. On the face of it shipbuilders were presented with two choices. They could either strive to ...

This is an article detailing the period when sidelights began to come into use and eventually became mandatory. Prior to their use it was only recommended that mooring lights be shown, with the ...

The official home of The Society for Nautical Research and The Mariner's Mirror. The world’s oldest society dedicated to the study of maritime heritage.

This article gives a detailed insight into the life of John Tyrrell, following archaeological investigations of the third rate ship Anne, the only English ...

This article provides a survey of Guernsey-based privateering from roughly 1689 to 1815. The opportunity is also used to discuss reciprocal privateering by the French (from St. Malo to Dieppe), as ...

Folklore, myths and legends relating to the sea have existed for as long as humans have been travelling by sea. The alien nature of the marine environment, the almost inconceivable scale of the oceans ...

Land-based gunpowder weapons were mounted in ships from the 1330s and thereafter were modified specifically for maritime use. Shipboard guns were primarily defensive weapons in the 14 th and 15 th ...

Dr Sam Willis explores the many wounds that Nelson received in his life, as well as his fatal wound received at the Battle of Trafalgar. Sam speaks with Michael Crumplin, a retired consultant general ...

In 1628 the Dutch and Spanish had already been at war, with the occasional truce, for sixty years. What initially had begun as a war for Dutch independence in northern Europe had by this stage spilled ...

Part 7 of a series of articles drawn from the manuscript of the late Sir Oswyn Murray, originally planned as a volume in the Whitehall Series. This Part deals with the organisational structure of the ...

Today we have episode 7 of our Iconic Ships mini-series in which a curator of a historic ship makes a case for their ship being iconic, or a historian takes a ship from history but which sadly no ...

During the First and Second World Wars British fishing trawlers were turned into the Royal Naval Patrol Reserve to help clear the seas of mines and even take on the deadly U-Boats. They became known ...