Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

The Armada Portrait "The Armada Portrait is perhaps the most immediately recognisable depiction of Elizabeth I and, arguably, of any British monarch. It captures both the drama of a pivotal moment in Britain's history - the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 - and the majesty of the Tudor monarchy. But while the image it presents is one of assuredness, success and migt, the portrait both overstates English power and downplays the real dangers the Armada presented to England and its queen. By understanding the portrait and its symbolism, the history of the Armada and the turbulent Elizabethan age come to life."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 3 copies available. 92ELIZABETH I:7.041.5

Abolition : a history of slavery and antislavery /Seymour Drescher. In one form or another, slavery has existed throughout the world for millennia. It helped to change the world, and the world transformed the institution. In the 1450s, when Europeans from the small corner of the globe least enmeshed in the institution first interacted with peoples of other continents, they created, in the Americas, the most dynamic, productive, and exploitative system of coerced labor in human history. Three centuries later these same intercontinental actions produced a movement that successfully challenged the institution at the peak of its dynamism. Within another century a new surge of European expansion constructed Old World empires under the banner of antislavery. However, twentieth-century Europe itself was inundated by a new system of slavery, larger and more deadly than its earlier system of New World slavery. This book examines these dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence, economics, and civil society in the ebb and flow of slavery and antislavery during the last five centuries. 2009. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.8

From Jack Tar to Union Jack : representing naval manhood in the British Empire, 1870-1918 /Mary A. Conley. Conley, Mary A. 2009. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 656.61.071.22-055.1"1870/1918"

The cartographic state : maps, territory and the origins of sovereignty /Jordan Branch. "Why is today's world map filled with uniform states separated by linear boundaries? The answer to this question is central to our understanding of international politics, but the question is at the same time much more complex - and more revealing - than we might first think. This book examines the important but overlooked role played by cartography itself in the development of modern states. Drawing upon evidence from the history of cartography, peace treaties and political practices, the book reveals that early modern mapping dramatically altered key ideas and practices among both rulers and subjects, leading to the implementation of linear boundaries between states and centralized territorial rule within them. In his analysis of early modern innovations in the creation, distribution and use of maps, Branch explains how the relationship between mapping and the development of modern territories shapes our understanding of international politics today."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 528.9

Hospital ships and troop transport of the First World War / Campbell McCutcheon. "The biggest shipping loss of both world wars was the hospital ship Britannic, at almost 50,000 tons. Supposedly safe to travel the seas, many hospital ships were lost in both wars. From the smallest of motor launches through steam yachts and converted ocean liners, Campbell McCutcheon tells the story of the First World War hospital ships. Many succumbed to accidents, mines or German submarines but many also faithfully provided a vital service without loss of life or accident. Troopships were also vital right from the very first days of the war, when ships carried the BEF across the English Channel in August 1914. Meanwhile, convoys that included many great pre-war ocean liners pressed into service were bringing Canadian and Australasian troops to the UK and France, and later American troops as well. Many would continue in service until long after the war had ended, repatriating soldiers well into 1919, and their story is also told in this beautifully illustrated book."--Provided by the publisher. 2015. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.828.6"1914/1918"

London Docks in the 1960s / Mark Lee Inman "The 1960s were the last decade of what might be called the traditional London docks scene. Ships could still be seen in the Pool, upstream of Tower Bridge; one could see lines of ships berth at the Royal Docks. Famous shipping companies, some like P&O dating back over a hundred years, were represented, and cargo-handling methods were unchanged. Barges were brought in to deliver or collect cargoes, while veterans of the war years and possibly earlier could still be seen. It was still possible to see passenger ships in the Royal Docks. As the new ships appeared they were a little bigger and a little faster, but otherwise little different from their predecessors of an earlier generation. All this is captured through Mark Lee Inman's historic and rare images, taking in the stretch from Tower Bridge right down to Tilbury. The photography is supported by a wealth of available technical detail, including the vessel?s date of build, gross tonnage and ownership, along with a comprehensive summary of its history and any claims to fame."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 627.3(421)

The Cree Journals : the voyages of Edward H Cree, Surgeon RN, as related in his private journals, 1837-1856 /edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. Cree, Edward H 1981. • BOOK • 3 copies available. 355.49"1837/1869"(42)

From hunter to hunted / Bernard Edwards. "In the early stages of the Second World War, Donitz's U-boats generally adhered to Prize Rules, surfacing before attacking and making every effort to preserve the lives of their victims' crews. But, with the arming of merchantmen and greater risk of damage or worse, they increasingly attacked without warning. So successful was the U-boat campaign that Churchill saw it as the gravest threat the Nation faced. The low point was the March 1943 attack on convoys SC122 and HX229 when 44 U-boats sank 22 loaded ships. The pendulum miraculously swung with improved tactics and technology. In May 1943 out of a force of over 50 U-boats that challenged ONS5, eight were sunk and 18 were damaged, some seriously. Such losses were unsustainable and, with allied yards turning out ships at ever increasing rates, Donitz withdrew his wolf packs from the North Atlantic. Expert naval author and historian Bernard Edwards traces the course of the battle of the Atlantic through a series of thrilling engagement case studies."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.451.6"1939/1943"

The Kaiser's U-boat assault on America : Germany's great war gamble in the first World War /Hans Joachim Koerver. "A deeply researched and engaging account of the use of U-Boats in the First World War. The focus touches on both diplomatic and economic aspects as well as the tactical and strategic use of the u-boats. The book also examines the role played by US president Woodrow Wilson and his response to American shipping being sunk by U-boats and how that ultimately forced his hand to declare war on Germany."-Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.451.6(43:73)"1914/1918"

Portishead Radio : a friendly voice on many a dark night /Larry Bennett. "Portishead Radio was the world's largest long range maritime radio communications station. Originally located at a site in Devizes, Wiltshire in 1920, the transmitters were relocated to Portishead, near Bristol, shortly after the receiving station was moved to Highbridge, Somerset during the 1920s. The station, originally operated by the British Post Office, provided vital communication links both to and from ships at sea, using Wireless Telegraphy (Morse code), Radiotelephony, and latterly, Radiotelex. The developmental and war years are recounted in detail, as well as the rise (and eventual fall) of commercial maritime radio traffic over 80 years of service. The aeronautical and leisure markets are recalled, as well as other services provided by the station. The station closed in 2000, as satellite technology became the preferred method of ship-to-shore communication. This book gives both a technical and social history of the station; how it worked, what it was like to work there, and fondly recalls many of the stories and characters who became part of the station's charm. Using many photographs, staff memories, and with recently-found magazine and newspaper articles, the complete history of this important and much-missed station can be told for the first time."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available.

Hellenistic and roman naval wars, 336 - 31 BC / John D. Grainger. "The period covered in this book is well known for its epic battles and grand campaigns of territorial conquest, but Hellenistic monarchies, Carthaginians, and the rapacious Roman Republic were scarcely less active at sea. Huge resources were poured into maintaining fleets not only as symbols of prestige but as means of projecting real military power across the Mediterranean arena. Taking the period between Alexander the Great's conquests and the Battle of Actium, John Grainger analyzes the developments in naval technology and tactics, the uses and limitations of sea power and the differing strategies of the various powers. He shows, for example, how the Rhodians and the Romans eschewed the ever-larger monster galleys favored by most Hellenistic monarchs in favor of smaller vessels. This is a fascinating study of a neglected aspect of ancient warfare."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 930

Torpedo bombers, 1900-1950 : an illustrated history /Jean-Denis G. G. Lepage "The torpedo-bomber was a very short-lived weapon system, operational for scarcely half a century from just prior WWI to the 1960s. Yet during its brief existence it transformed naval warfare, extending the ship-killing range of ships and coastal defences to hundreds of miles. The Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm led the way, recording the first sinking of a ship by aerial torpedo in August 1915 but all major navies eagerly developed their own torpedo bomber forces. The torpedo-bomber reached its zenith in WWII, particularly from 1940-42, with notable successes at the Battle of Taranto, the sinking of the Bismarck and Pearl Harbor. It was the weapon of choice for both the US and Japanese in the big Pacific battles such as Midway. In the latter stages of the war, increasingly effective anti-aircraft fire and interceptor aircraft started to render it obsolete, a process completed post-war by long-range anti-ship missiles."--Provided by the publisher. 2020 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.74632

A sideways launch : the technical and social history of James Pollock, Sons & Co Ltd, shipbuilders and engineers of London and Faversham, 1875-1970 /Anne Salmon Salmon, Anne 1993. • BOOK • 3 copies available. 629.12Pollock

Illustrating the phaenomena : celestial cartography in antiquity and the Middle Ages /Elly Dekker. "The introduction of the moving sphere as a model for understanding the celestial phenomena caused a great breakthrough in scientific thinking about the structure of the world. It provided the momentum for making celestial globes and mapping the stars. Celestial globes were produced first by Greek astronomers, and soon became greatly appreciated in antiquity as decorative objects (3 antique globes). The design and construction of the globe varied greatly as it passed through the Arabic (10 scientific globes made before 1500) and Medieval European cultures (3 scientific globes made before 1500). It was the starting-point for the design of many maps in antiquity and later in the Middle Ages (33) serving to illustrate books such as Aratus's Phaenomena. In the early fifteenth century scientific celestial maps (5) were constructed in their own right, independent of globes. In this book all extant celestial maps and globes made before 1500 are described and analysed in detail. This prestigious study will appeal to academic historians of science and astronomy, and art historians alike."--Provided by the publisher. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 524.3(084.4)

Boudin at Trouville / Vivien Hamilton. French painter Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) was an important precursor of Impressionism. He believed that "everything painted directly and on the spot has a strength, a vigour, a vivacity of touch that can never be attained in the studio", and spent his summers painting outside directly from nature and his winters finishing his paintings in his studio in Paris. Born in the port of Honfleur, the sea and beach scenes of the northern French coast provide the subject matter and inspiration for much of his work. This book was published in connection with exhibitions held at The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, and the Courtauld Insititute, London, between November 1992 and May 1993. Chapters cover subjects such as "Beach Scenes", "Jetties", "The Port", "The Fishmarket", and "Washerwomen" and deal with Boudin's modernity and the wider art history of Normandy. 1992. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 7BOUDIN

Battle in the Baltic ; Steve Dunn. ''Though for most participants World War I ended on 11 November 1918, the Royal Navy found itself, despite four years of slaughter and war weariness, fighting a fierce and brutal battle in the Baltic Sea against Bolshevik Russia in an attempt to protect the fragile independence of the newly liberated states of Estonia and Latvia. This new book by Steve R. Dunn describes the events of those two years when Royal Navy ships and men, under the command of Rear Admiral Alexander-Sinclair, found themselves in a maelstrom of chaos and conflicting loyalties, and facing multiple opponents. Today few people are aware of this exhausting campaign and the sacrifices made by Royal Navy sailors, but the pages of this book retell their exciting but forgotten stories.''--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 947.0841

The Channel : the remarkable men and women who made it the most fascinating waterway in the world /Charlie Connelly. "A bulwark against invasion, a conduit for exchange and a challenge to be conquered, the English Channel has always been many things to many people. Today it's the busiest shipping lane in the world and hosts more than 30 million passenger crossings every year but this sliver of choppy brine, just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, represents much more than a conductor of goods and people. Criss-crossing the Channel - not to mention regularly throwing himself into it for a bracing swim - Charlie Connelly collects its stories and brings them vividly to life, from tailing Oscar Wilde's shadow through the dark streets of Dieppe to unearthing Britain's first beauty pageant at the end of Folkestone pier (it was won by a bloke called Wally). We uncover the tragic fate of the first successful Channel swimmer. We learn that Louis Bleriot was actually a terrible pilot. And we discover how - if a man with a buttered head and pigs' bladders attached to his trousers hadn't fought off an attack by dogfish - we might never have had a Channel Tunnel. Here is a cast of extraordinary characters - geniuses, cheats, dreamers, charlatans, visionaries, eccentrics and at least one pair of naked, cuddling balloonists - whose stories are all united by the English Channel to ensure the sea that makes us an island will never be the same again."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 909.096336

Never to sail in her : Victoria & Albert III, Queen Victoria's last Royal Yacht /Mike Keulemans. "In the days when Britannia ruled the waves, arguably from the mid-18th Century, Britain had established a naval hegemony that was to remain unrivalled until the 1920s. As a result of the rich pickings afforded the academic or enthusiast, a significant proportion of the ships that had fought to achieve and represent the nation's maritime superiority are well recorded, indeed some of these vessels, perhaps most notably H.M.S. Victory,a re preserved to this day. By the mid 1800s, Heads of State of maritime, and quite a few not so maritime, nations would vie with each other to build bigger, faster and more opulent Royal or State Yachts. Perhaps because we did not feel the need, with a Royal Navy that was the envy of the world, Britain's dominance of the oceans saw our Royal Yachts somewhat less ostentatious than many others. They were reflective of the whims of the Monarchy and embodied British inventiveness and technology, evidencing the industrial progress of our small island nation that, towards the end of the Victorian era, was building over 60% of the world's ships. One important vessel which to date has largely avoided the chronicler's attention is the Royal Yacht VIctoria & Albert III. Here that omission is put to rights."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. txt

Black and British : a forgotten history/David Olusoga. "In Black and British, David Olusoga tells the richt and revealing story of the long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa and the Caribbean. It is a story that reaches back to Roman Britain, Elizabethan 'blackmoors' and the global slave-trading empire. Black Britons fought at Trafalgar and in both world war, while the great industrial boom of the nineteenth century was built on American slavery. This edition, fully revised and updated, features a new chapter encompassing the Windrush scandal and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, events that put black British history at the centre of urgent national debate. Black and British is vivid confirmation that black history can no longer be kept separate and marginalized. It is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation and it belongs to us all."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 305.896041

Feminism, interrupted : disrupting power /Lola Olufemi. "More than just a slogan on a t-shirt, feminism is a radical tool for fighting back against structural violence and injustice. Feminism, Interrupted is a bold call to seize feminism back from the cultural gatekeepers and return it to its radical roots.More than just a slogan on a t-shirt, feminism is a radical tool for fighting back against structural violence and injustice. Feminism, Interrupted is a bold call to seize feminism back from the cultural gatekeepers and return it to its radical roots. Lola Olufemi explores state violence against women, the fight for reproductive justice, transmisogyny, gendered Islamophobia and solidarity with global struggles, showing that the fight for gendered liberation can change the world for everybody when we refuse to think of it solely as women's work. Including testimonials from Sisters Uncut, migrant groups working for reproductive justice, prison abolitionists and activists involved in the international fight for Kurdish and Palestinian rights, Olufemi emphasises the link between feminism and grassroots organising. Reclaiming feminism from the clutches of the consumerist, neoliberal model, Feminism, Interrupted shows that when 'feminist' is more than a label, it holds the potential for radical transformative work."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 305.42

Harrison decoded : towards a perfect pendulum clock /edited by Rory McEvoy and Jonathan Betts. "Brings together the output of a forty-year collaborative research project that unpicked and put into practice the fine details of John Harrison's extraordinary pendulum clock system. Harrison predicted that his unique method of making pendulum clocks could provide as much as one-hundred-times the stability of those made by his contemporaries. However, his final publication, which promised to describe the system, was a chaotic jumble of information, much of which had nothing to do with clockwork. One contemporary reviewer of Harrison's book could only suggest that the end result was a product of Harrison's 'superannuated dotage.' The focus of this book centres on the making, adjusting, and testing of Clock B which was the subject of various trials at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The modern history of Clock B is accompanied by scientific analysis of the clock system, Clock B's performance, the methods of data-gathering alongside historical perspectives on Harrison's clockmaking, that of his contemporaries, and some evaluation of the possible influence of early 18th century scientific thought."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 522/.5

A Game of Birds and Wolves: the secret game that revolutionised the war /Simon Parkin. "1941. The Battle of the Atlantic is a disaster. Thousands of supply ships ferrying vital food and fuel from North America to Britain are being torpedoed by German U-boats. Britain is only weeks away from starvation - and with that, crushing defeat. In the first week of 1942 a group of unlikely heroes - a retired naval captain and a clutch of brilliant young women - gather to form a secret strategy unit. On the top floor of a bomb-bruised HQ in Liverpool, the Western Approaches Tactical Unit spends days and nights designing and playing wargames in an effort to crack the U-boat tactics. As the U-boat wolfpacks continue to prey upon the supply ships, the Wrens race against time to save Britain. With novelistic flair, investigative journalist Simon Parkin shines a light on Operation Raspberry and these unsung heroines in this riveting true story of war at sea. "--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. PBK0215

Springboard to victory : Great Yarmouth and the Royal Navy's dominance in the North Sea and the Baltic during the French Wars 1793-1815 /David Higgins. "Great Yarmouth is best known for being a seaside resort and for its former status as the country's leading herring fishing port, but what has largely been forgotten is that during the French Revolutionary War (1793-1802) and the two Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) it was the main support base for naval and military operations in the North Sea and the Baltic. It was not until I researched a book called The Beachmen that I became aware of this dramatic period in the history of the town and the nation and I was surprised to find that nothing substantial had been written on the subject. Of course, a great many books had been produced on the navy's involvement in these wars, but most concentrated on the high drama of the six major fleet actions and the exploits of Horatio Nelson rather than the equally important, but more mundane, means by which the navy's warships were kept at sea."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available.

Slave empire : how slavery made modern Britain /Padraic X. Scanlan. "The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its rivals. But this claim that the British empire was 'free' and that, for all its flaws, it promised liberty to all its subjects was never true. The British empire was built on slavery. Slave Empire puts enslaved people at the centre the British empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In intimate, human detail, Padraic Scanlon shows how British imperial power and industrial capitalism were inextricable from plantation slavery. With vivid original research and careful synthesis of innovative historical scholarship, Slave Empire shows that British freedom and British slavery were made together."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.362094109033

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