Studies in Port and Maritime History – serie

Beyond Trawlertown takes a journey through the British distant-water fishery and its port-city connections in an era of disruption. In 1976, defeat in the Anglo-Icelandic Cod Wars saw the British trawling fleet excluded from their traditional hunting grounds. Combining with wider global factors, the move brought an end to long-established trawling practices, with profound social, economic and cultural repercussions. Through a case study of the port of Hull, oral history and archival research explore the challenges, responses and legacy of rapid change. Although the emphasis is on Hull, this is far from a local history. Hull’s position among the world leading distant-water pioneers gives the story international significance. Focusing on memory, lived experience and place, the book goes beyond established narratives. Personal acts of remembering offer cultural perspectives on how global events and marine policy impact upon the seafaring communities that live with the consequences. The Cod Wars signaled an end, yet amid the disruption there were also new beginnings. And in the wake of an active fishery, the rhythms of the past continue to resonate in the negotiation of fishing heritage within the contemporary city. Through the convergence of time, place and memory, this holistic narrative of interweaving stories reveals the intricacies of our human interaction with the marine environment and the aftermath when its threads are broken.

This book investigates the highly engaging topic of the literary and cultural significance of ‘sailor talk.’ The central argument is that sailor talk offers a way of rethinking the figure of the nineteenth-century sailor and sailor-writer, whose language articulated the rich, layered, and complex culture of sailors in port and at sea. From this argument many other compelling threads emerge, including questions relating to the seafarer’s multifaceted identity, maritime labor, questions of performativity, the ship as ‘theater,’ the varied and multiple registers of ‘sailor talk,’ and the foundational role of maritime language in the lives and works of Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, and Jack London. The book also includes nods to James Fenimore Cooper, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Meticulous scholarly research underpins the close readings of literary texts and the scrupulously detailed biographical accounts of three major sailor-writers. The author’s own lived experience as a seafarer adds a refreshingly materialist dimension to the subtle literary readings. The book represents a valuable addition to a growing scholarly and political interest in the sea and sea literature. By taking the sailor’s viewpoint and listening to sailors’ voices, the book also marks a clear intervention in this developing field.

This edited collection re-examines the relationship between art and the sea, reflecting growing interest in the intersections between art and maritime history. Artists have always been fascinated by and drawn to the sea and this book considers some of the themes and approaches in art that have evolved as a result of this captivation. The chapters consider how an examination of art can provide new insights into existing knowledge of port and maritime history, and are representative of a ‘cultural turn’ in port and maritime studies, which is becoming increasingly visible. In Art and the Sea, multiple perspectives are offered as a result of the contributors’ individual positions and methodologies: some museological, others art historical or maritime-historical. Each chapter proposes a new way of building upon available interpretations of port and maritime history: whether this be to reject, support or reconsider existing knowledge. The book as a whole is a timely addition, therefore, to the developing body of revisionist texts in port and maritime history. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume relates to a current trend for interdisciplinarity in art history and will appeal to those with an interest in art history, geography, sociology, history and transport / maritime studies.

This book investigates the highly engaging topic of the literary and cultural significance of ‘sailor talk.’ The central argument is that sailor talk offers a way of rethinking the figure of the nineteenth-century sailor and sailor-writer, whose language articulated the rich, layered, and complex culture of sailors in port and at sea. From this argument many other compelling threads emerge, including questions relating to the seafarer’s multifaceted identity, maritime labor, questions of performativity, the ship as ‘theater,’ the varied and multiple registers of ‘sailor talk,’ and the foundational role of maritime language in the lives and works of Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, and Jack London. The book also includes nods to James Fenimore Cooper, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Meticulous scholarly research underpins the close readings of literary texts and the scrupulously detailed biographical accounts of three major sailor-writers. The author’s own lived experience as a seafarer adds a refreshingly materialist dimension to the subtle literary readings. The book represents a valuable addition to a growing scholarly and political interest in the sea and sea literature. By taking the sailor’s viewpoint and listening to sailors’ voices, the book also marks a clear intervention in this developing field.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.Throughout much of history, imperial China has exhibited a seemingly capricious relationship with the sea. At times, it has welcomed commerce and travel across its vast waters with open arms, yet at others, it has sought to completely cordon off the littoral and the waters beyond. This intermittent approach has fostered a maritime community that, over time, has become increasingly estranged from the dominating Confucian society. Consequently, this has led to behaviours among the coastal residents that pose challenges for those attempting to govern them, with each influencing the other in turn.In Shaping the Blue Dragon, Ronald Po examines China’s relationship with the maritime world from the Ming through the Qing by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people engaging with the blue domain. Pirates, cartographers, administrators, naval generals, maritime writers, emperors, visionaries, and travellers. Most of their stories are unheard in the Anglophone community. Despite the range of their backgrounds and expertise, their cumulative lives were all bounded to the sea. They bared their own souls and mirrored their own logics and reflections in their actions, yet in doing so their characters, identities, and life histories were largely shaped by a maritime China that was in transition between the fourteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

An Open Access edition will be available on publication on the Liverpool University Press website, thanks to funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).Ocean liners fascinate writers and the public alike. As icons of modernity, mobility, glamour and national prestige, they are widespread in popular culture and, equally, in the canonical novels, plays and poems of the twentieth century. Yet in many literary narratives, darker stories appear, whether of forced migration, shipwreck, war or profiteering. Over the course of a century, ocean-going steamships carried millions of emigrants, refugees, troops, businesspeople, criminals, celebrities, convalescents, socialites, tourists and students. Some travelled in style; others in extreme discomfort. Liners also transported cargo, mail, animals, plants and (inadvertently) diseases. With the arrival of the jet age, the passenger liner suddenly lost its practical purpose. Yet its symbolic resonance was undiminished as it came to embody nostalgia for a lost age of elegant, leisurely travel by sea. This book explores the idea of the ocean liner in the literary imagination, asking how it transformed from an industrial machine into a potent symbol, and how it became a focus for dreams and terrors. It also investigates the role of the liner in print culture. Many stories about ocean travel were themselves read, lent, sold or even published at sea, and shipping lines were active agents of international literary exchange.

This edited collection re-examines the relationship between art and the sea, reflecting growing interest in the intersections between art and maritime history. Artists have always been fascinated by and drawn to the sea and this book considers some of the themes and approaches in art that have evolved as a result of this captivation. The chapters consider how an examination of art can provide new insights into existing knowledge of port and maritime history, and are representative of a ‘cultural turn’ in port and maritime studies, which is becoming increasingly visible. In Art and the Sea, multiple perspectives are offered as a result of the contributors’ individual positions and methodologies: some museological, others art historical or maritime-historical. Each chapter proposes a new way of building upon available interpretations of port and maritime history: whether this be to reject, support or reconsider existing knowledge. The book as a whole is a timely addition, therefore, to the developing body of revisionist texts in port and maritime history. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume relates to a current trend for interdisciplinarity in art history and will appeal to those with an interest in art history, geography, sociology, history and transport / maritime studies.