Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

The Battle for Norway, 1940-1942 / Introduced and compiled by Martin Mace and John Grehan ; with additional research by Sara Mitchell. "Despatches in this volume include that on the first and second battles of Narvik in 1940; the despatch on operations in central Norway 1940, by Lieutenant General H.R.S. Massy, Commander-in-Chief, North West Expeditionary Force; Despatch on operations in Northern Norway between April and June 1940; the despatch on carrier-borne aircraft attacks on Kirkenes (Norway) and Petsamo (Finland) in 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey; the despatch on the raid on military and economic objectives in the Lofoten Islands (Norway) in March 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey, Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet; and the despatch on the raid on military and economic objectives in the vicinity of Vaagso Island (Norway) in December 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey. This unique collection of original documents will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians, students and all those interested in what was one of the most significant periods in British military history."-- 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.5421481

Jeopardy of every wind : the biography of captain Thomas Bowrey /Sue Paul. "In 1669, fleeing a London decimated by the plague and the Great Fire, a young English child arrived, alone, at Fort St. George, the first English fortress in Mughal India. The boy survived to become a maverick merchant-mariner, an 'independent' trading on the fringes of the East India Company. Captain Thomas Bowrey gained renown in numerous fields. Operating throughout the East Indies and speaking Malay, the lingua franca of diplomacy and trade in the region, he would write and publish the first ever Malay-English dictionary, a seminal work that even a century later would be used by the likes of Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. It has also been claimed Bowrey wrote the earliest first-hand account of the recreational use of cannabis. Bowrey's shipping interests, however, were plagued by pirates, privateers and mutiny and included the tragic Worcester, which played a pivotal role in the union of England and Scotland. Subsequent projects included the east African slave trade and his collaboration with Daniel Defoe in the founding of the South Sea Company. Despite everything, Bowrey succeeded in amassing sufficient fortune for alms-houses to be built in his name following his death, but his true legacy is his papers that lay hidden in an attic for two centuries and which now shed light not only on the exploits of this remarkable man but also on life and commerce at the start of globalisation."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. txt

English paleography and manuscript culture, 1500-1800 / Kathryn James. "An engaging, accessible introduction to reading and understanding early modern English manuscripts. This engaging book provides an essential introduction to the manuscript in early modern England. From birth to death, parish record to probate inventory, writing framed the lives of the early modern English. The book offers a detailed technical introduction to the handwriting of the period, from 'secretary hand' through the 'copperplate' that defined the early British Empire. Case studies trace the significance of manuscript to British cultural identity, exploring the intersections of manuscript and print, the roles of manuscript in the bureaucracy of the early modern state, and the complex practices surrounding manuscript in the lives of early modern readers and writers. Exercises offer the opportunity to practise reading and transcription, pointing to examples ranging from John Lydgate through William Wordsworth. Richly illustrated and drawing extensively on Yale University collections, this book opens the study of early modern English manuscript to a new generation of students and scholars."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 411.7

British battleship vs German battleship : 1941-43 /Angus Konstam ; illustrated by Ian Palmer. "At the outbreak of World War II, the four key Capital German ships comprised the Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Their primary threats where the Royal Navy's King George Vclass battleships, the most modern British battleships in commission during World War II and some of the Navy's most powerful vessels. Five ships of this class were built: HMS King George V, Prince of Wales, Duke of York, Howe (late 1942) and Anson (late 1942). The powerful vessels in this class would clash with the pride of the Kriegsmarine in two major engagements: first, during the Battle of the Denmark Strait and subsequent pursuit of the Bismarck between 24 and 27 May 1941, and again at the Battle of the North Cape on 26 December 1943. This addition to the Duel series compares and contrasts the design and development of these opposing capital ships, and describes the epic clashes on the high seas that ended with the destruction of the Kriegsmarine's major naval assets."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.545941

Marine painting : images of sail, sea and shore /James Taylor ; in association with the National Maritime Museum Greenwich. Taylor, James. 1995. • FOLIO • 5 copies available. 758.2

Witnessing slavery : art and travel in the age of abolition /Sarah Thomas. A timely and original look at the role of the eyewitness account in the representation of slavery in British and European art. Gathering together over 160 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints, this book offers an unprecedented examination of the shifting iconography of slavery in British and European art between 1760 and 1840. In addition to considering how the work of artists such as Agostino Brunias, James Hakewill, and Augustus Earle responded to abolitionist politics, Sarah Thomas examines the importance of the eyewitness account in endowing visual representations of transatlantic slavery with veracity. "Being there," indeed, became significant not only because of the empirical opportunities to document slave life it afforded but also because the imagery of the eyewitness was more credible than sketches and paintings created by the "armchair traveler" at home. Full of original insights that cast a new light on these highly charged images, this volume reconsiders how slavery was depicted within a historical context in which truth was a deeply contested subject. 2019. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 704.949326

River Thames shipping since 2000 : passenger ships, ferries, heritage shipping and more /Malcolm Batten. "Take a look at the River Thames in East London now and you would think that it is commercially dead. Where once the banks of the river were lined with riverside wharves, these have been replaced by or converted to luxury apartments. The mighty London Docks, including the 'Royals', once the largest expanse of enclosed dockland in the world, had all closed by 1983 and have since been redeveloped as Docklands, with a financial centre, London City Airport, the University of East London, houses, shopping and other amenities. But the commercial life of the river didn't die - it just moved downriver. Tilbury Docks were adapted to handle the new pattern of container ships and Roll-on, Roll-off ferries. New terminals were built with easy access to the M25 and Dartford Tunnel (and later the Queen Elizabeth II bridge). However, some ships still come up to London and Tower Bridge is still raised at times for visiting cruise ships and warships on courtesy visits. At Woolwich, fast commuter ferries to London cross paths with the traditional Woolwich Free Ferry, while a passenger ferry still links Gravesend with Tilbury. Heritage craft, including the traditional Thames barges, can still be seen at times on the river. This book features passenger craft such as cruise ships, ferries and heritage shipping that have worked on the Thames since 2000, and is a companion volume to the author?s book on cargo shipping."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 386.3520942109051

The invention of pastel painting / Thea Burns. "Chalks and pastels are particularly appropriate materials for portraits because they appear effortlessly to convey the warm tones and soft, matte velvety surface of skin. Portraits and head studies therefore figure prominently in histories of pastel. The Invention of Pastel Painting describes the relatively sudden emergence in the later seventeenth century of sets of friable pastel sticks and a new artistic practice of painting in pastel. The author reconsiders the use of natural and fabricated drawing sticks as tools, firmly locating their use in the context of historical function. 'Artistic techniques have a social history; they are signs endowed with cultural meaning by society.' The visual, documentary and etymological evidence does not support the concept of a narrative history of pastel gradually progressing from a 'simple' original state in the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, Jean and Francois Clouet and the Dumonstiers to an increasingly richly coloured and technically complex visual record in the paintings of Robert Nanteuil, Joseph Vivien and Rosalba Carriera, and then continuing to evolve through the nineteenth century. In considering the history of chalk and pastel, the author argues that the change is aesthetic, not formal, and is grounded in social function and technical response. She has drawn not only on artists' letters and accounts, documents, critical and theoretical writings, and, broadly, the secondary literature, but also on close visual examination and scientific analysis of selected chalk drawings and paintings in pastel, particularly those created between 1500 and 1750."--Provided by the publisher. 2007. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 741.235

The Titanic and the city of widows it left behind : the forgotten victims of the fatal voyage /Julie Cook. "When Titanic foundered in April 1912, the world's focus was on the tragedy of the passengers who lost their lives. Ever since, in films, dramatisations, adaptations and books, the focus has mostly continued to be on the ones who died. The Titanic and the City of Widows it Left Behind focuses on another group of people - the widows and children of the crew who perished on board. Author Julie Cook's great-grandfather was a stoker who died on Titanic. Her great-grandmother had to raise five children with no breadwinner. This book focuses on Emily and the widows like her who had to fight for survival through great hardship, whilst still grieving for the men they loved who'd died on the ship. Using original archive sources and with accounts from descendants of crew who also lost their lives, the book asks how these women survived through abject poverty and grief - and why their voices have been silent for so long."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 656.61.085.3TITANIC

Five hundred years of Deptford and Woolwich Royal Dockyards; Marking the 500th anniversary of the foundation of the Thames yards by Henry VIII opened by Dame Joan Ruddock MP for Lewisham Deptford : Transactions of the Naval Dockyard Society Volume 11 January 2019; conference held at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich 20 April 2013. The Naval Dockyard Society. 2019. • FOLIO • 1 copy available.

The bloody flag : mutiny in the age of Atlantic revolution /Niklas Frykman. "Mutiny tore like wildfire through the wooden warships of the age of revolution. While commoners across Europe laid siege to the nobility, and enslaved workers put the torch to plantation islands, out on the oceans, naval seamen by the tens of thousands turned their guns on the quarterdeck and overthrew the absolute rule of captains. By the early 1800s, anywhere between one-third and one-half of all naval seamen serving in the North Atlantic had participated in at least one mutiny, many of them in several, and some even on ships in different navies. In The Bloody Flag, historian Niklas Frykman explores in vivid prose how a decade of violent conflict onboard gave birth to a distinct form of radical politics that brought together the egalitarian culture of north Atlantic maritime communities with the revolutionary era's constitutional republicanism. The attempt to build a radical maritime republic failed, but the red flag that flew from the masts of mutinous ships survived to become the most enduring global symbol of class struggle, economic justice, and republican liberty to this day"-- [2020] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.133"17/18"

The duchess and the captain's wife : Herzogin Cecilie and her circle /photographs, Pamela Eriksson ; text, Ulla-Lena Lundberg ; picture editor, Per-Ove Hèognèas ; archives, Freya Darby ; English translation from the Swedish original by Ulla-Lena Lundberg with Nigel Kelly. "Certain ships, like certain people, grow larger than life over time. In maritime history the Herzogin Cecilie sails on, her splendour undiminished. The circumstances of her shipwreck still evoke heated feelings eight decades after her drawn-out tragedy. Surrounding the Duchess, as the ship is affectionately known, bustle a cast of finely drawn, large characters as if written for the opera: voices that carry over the roar of the ocean, costumes cut for dramatic effect, backdrops created from thousands of metres of sail, tall ships racing from the ports of southern Australia, Cape Horn and the Devon coast. An exciting find of photographs lies behind this book. Ulla-Lena Lundberg's text is a breathtaking true story about the young sea captain Sven Eriksson and his wife Pamela Bourne. Pamela's unique photographs depict everyday life on the ship on the oceans. The crew, the officers, the sea form a triangle drama which captivates the reader far beyond the horizon of the past."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.4/5

Cross-dressed to kill : women who went to war disguised as men /Vivien Morgan. "Cross-dressed to Kill is a collection of extraordinary stories by women cross-dressers of English, Irish, French, Prussian, Russian, Spanish, American and Israeli nationalities. Describing how and why hundreds of young women dressed as men to fight as soldiers in the 17th to 20th centuries. Fearless, 'tomboys' and decidedly full of 'pluck and spunk', they watched their fathers, husbands and brothers head off to war, before breaking free from domesticity and joining the army too. Answering questions about their sexuality, were they lesbians or transsexuals? There are the intimate details of how they kept their disguise for so long and their sex secret; plus their 'affairs' with women while masquerading as men. Are they early feminists? They certainly crossed the gender line, risking prosecution for cross-dressing was a crime and faced jail, whippings and execution. Once discovered and their stories told, royalty applauded and rewarded their actions, the public packed theatres to see them, but not all found fame and glory. Many were killed in combat. Read their first-hand stories of revolution and war, travelling to the fields of Flanders, the West Indies and India to fight for their country - as sailors, soldiers and pirates too. Would you have dared do what they did? Read in the Appendix the roll call of so many inspiring women from around the world, once forgotten but now remembered."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available.

The journey to the Mayflower : God's outlaws and the invention of freedom /Stephen Tomkins. "The illegal underground movement of Protestant separatists from Elizabeth I's Church of England is a story of subterfuge and danger, arrests and interrogations, prison and executions. It starts with Queen Mary's attempts to burn Protestantism out of England, which created a Protestant underground. Later, when Elizabeth's Protestant reformation didn't go far enough, radicals recreated that underground, meeting illegally throughout England, facing prison and death for their crimes. They went into exile in the Netherlands, where they lived in poverty - and finally the New World. Stephen Tomkins tells this fascinating story - one that is rarely told as an important piece of English, as well as American, history - that is full of contemporary relevance: religious violence, the threat to national security, freedom of religion and tolerance of dangerous opinions."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 285.909031

Artemisia Gentileschi and feminism in early modern Europe / Mary D. Garrard. "Artemisia Gentileschi is by far the most famous woman artist of the pre-modern era. Her art addresses issues that resonate today, such as sexual violence and women's problematic access to political power. Her forceful paintings with their vigorous female protagonists have excited modern audiences, especially feminists. This book breaks new ground by placing the artist in the context of women's political history, and the feminist protest that was bubbling in early modern Europe. Mary D. Garrard discusses recently discovered paintings, offers fresh perspectives on known works and examines the artist anew in the context of early modern feminism."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 759.5

Of penguins and polar bears : a history of cold water cruising /Christopher Wright. "We have been cruising and exploring polar waters since the nineteenth century, but very little has been written about them. Drawing on expert research, Of Penguins and Polar Bears seeks to rectify this, and looks at activity in both the Antarctic and Arctic waters the homes of the penguins and the polar bears to provide insight into how the passenger trades developed in these regions. With over a hundred stunning pictures, this is a must-have gazetteer for anyone thinking about cruising the Earth's 'last frontier'. From William Bradford's cruise to Greenland in a seal-hunting boat in 1869 to the newest builds of the twenty-first century, let Arctic expert Christopher Wright take you on a journey through lands less travelled."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.911

Inky fingers : the making of books in early modern Europe /Anthony Grafton. "From Francis Bacon to Barack Obama, thinkers and political leaders have denounced humanists as obsessively bookish and allergic to labor. In this celebration of bookmaking in all its messy and intricate detail, renowned historian Anthony Grafton invites us to see the scholars of early modern Europe as diligent workers. Meticulously illuminating the physical and mental labors that fostered the golden age of the book - the compiling of notebooks, copying and correction of texts and proofs, preparation of copy - he shows us how the exertions of scholars shaped influential books, treatises, and forgeries. Inky Fingers ranges widely, tracing the transformation of humanistic approaches to texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and examining the simultaneously sustaining and constraining effects of theological polemics on sixteenth-century scholars. Grafton draws new connections between humanistic traditions and intellectual innovations, textual learning and craft knowledge, manuscript and print. Above all, Grafton makes clear that the nitty-gritty of bookmaking has had a profound impact on the history of ideas - that the life of the mind depends on the work of the hands."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 094/.2

Time in maps : from the Age of Discovery to our digital era /edited by Kèaren Wigen and Caroline Winterer. "Maps organize us in space, but they also organize us in time. Looking around the world for the last five hundred years, Time in Maps shows that today's digital maps are only the latest effort to insert a sense of time into the spatial medium of maps. Historians Kèaren Wigen and Caroline Winterer have assembled leading scholars to consider how maps from all over the world have depicted time in ingenious and provocative ways. Focusing on maps created in Spanish America, Europe, the United States, and Asia, these essays take us from the Aztecs documenting the founding of Tenochtitlan, to early modern Japanese reconstructing nostalgic landscapes before Western encroachments, to nineteenth-century Americans grappling with the new concept of deep time. The book also features a defense of traditional paper maps by digital mapmaker William Rankin. With more than one hundred color maps and illustrations, Time in Maps will draw the attention of anyone interested in cartographic history."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 912.09

Life after the harem : female palace slaves, patronage and the imperial Ottoman court /Betèul Ipsirli Argit. "The first study to explore the lives of female slaves of the Ottoman imperial court, including the period following their manumission and transfer from the imperial palace. Through an analysis of a wide range of hitherto unexplored primary sources, Betèul Ipsirli Arg¸t demonstrates that the manumission of female palace slaves and their departure from the palace did not mean the severing of their ties with the imperial court; rather, it signaled the beginning of a new kind of relationship that would continue until their death. Demonstrating the diversity of experiences in non-dynastic female-agency in the early-modern Ottoman world, Life After the Harem shows how these evolving relationships had widespread implications for multiple parties, from the manumitted female palace slaves, to the imperial court, and broader urban society. In so doing, Ipsirli Arg¸t offers not just a new way of understanding the internal politics and dynamics of the Ottoman imperial court, but also a new way of understanding the lives of the actors within it."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.3/6208209561

Spoils of war : the fate of enemy fleets after the two World Wars /Aidan Dodson, Serena Cant. "The fates of defeated navies offer fascinating insights into both the intent of victorious powers and the plight of conquered nations. This book traces the histories of navies and ships of defeated powers in two World Wars, from the months leading up to the relevant armistices or surrenders through to the final execution of the post-war settlements. In doing so, it discusses the way in which the victorious powers reached their final demands, how these were implemented, and to what effect. The later histories of ships that saw subsequent service are also described. The authors have drawn on material from archival and in some cases archaeological sources, many never previously published, and in doing so a wide range of long-standing myths are busted, many of them deriving from numerous errors and misunderstandings that have passed into the 'standard sources'. The fascinating and highly original narrative is accompanied by lists of all navy-built enemy ships, and some significant ex-mercantile vessels, in service at the end of the various hostilities and includes key dates in their careers and their ultimate fates, the latter checked as far as possible in archival sources. This story, completely overlooked until now, offers a new and compelling insight for all those interested in the naval history of the two World Wars."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 359.8352

Strangling the axis : the fight for control of the Mediterranean during the Second World War /Richard Hammond. "This is a major reassessment of the causes of Allied victory in the Second World War in the Mediterranean region. Drawing on a unique range of multinational source material, Richard Hammond demonstrates how the Allies' ability to gain control of the key routes across the sea and sink large quantities of enemy shipping denied the Axis forces in North Africa crucial supplies and proved vital to securing ultimate victory there. Furthermore, the sheer scale of attrition to Axis shipping outstripped their industrial capacity to compensate, leading to the collapse of the Axis position across key territories maintained by seaborne supply, such as Sardinia, Corsica and the Aegean islands. As such, Hammond demonstrates how the anti-shipping campaign in the Mediterranean was the fulcrum about which strategy in the theatre pivoted, and the vital enabling factor ultimately leading to Allied victory in the region."-- 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.54/293

Murder on the middle passage : the trial of Captain Kimber /Nicholas Rogers. "On 2 April 1792, John Kimber, captain of the Bristol slave ship Recovery, was denounced in the House of Commons by William Wilberforce for flogging a fifteen-year-old African girl to death. The story, caricatured in a contemporary Isaac Cruikshank print, raced across newspapers in Britain and Ireland and was even reported in America. Soon after, Kimber was indicted for murder - but in a trial lasting just under five hours, he was found not guilty. This book is a micro-history of this important trial, reconstructing it from accounts of what was said in court and setting it in the context of pro- and anti-slavery movements. Rogers considers contemporary questions of culpability, the use and abuse of evidence, and why Kimber was criminally indicted for murder at a time when kidnapped Africans were generally regarded as 'cargo'. Importantly, the book also looks at the role of sailors in the abolition debate: both in bringing the horrors of the slave trade to public notice and as straw-men for slavery advocates, who excused the treatment of enslaved people by comparing it to punishments meted out to sailors and soldiers. The final chapter discusses the ways this incident has been used by African-American writers interested in recreating the trauma of the Middle Passage and addresses the question of whether the slave-trade archive can adequately recover the experience of being enslaved."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. KD372.K56

US Navy destroyer escorts of World War II / Mark Lardas ; illustrated by Adam Tooby and Irene Cano Rodrâiguez. "[Destroyer escorts] did yeoman service during World War II, fighting in both the Atlantic and Pacific, taking on both U-boat and Japanese submarines and serving as the early warning pickets against kamikazes later in the war. They also participated in such dramatic actions as the Battle of Samar (where a group of destroyers and destroyer escorts fought Japanese battleships and cruisers to protect the escort carriers they were shielding) and the capture of the U-505 (the only major naval vessel captured at sea by the US Navy). The destroyer escorts soldiered on after World War II in both the United States Navy and a large number of navies throughout the world, with several serving into the twenty-first century. This book tells the full story of these plucky ships, from their design and development to their service around the world, complete with stunning illustrations and contemporary photographs."--Provided by the publisher 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.81254097309044

Catastrophe : stories and lessons from the Halifax Explosion /T. Joseph Scanlon ; edited by Roger Sarty. "On December 6, 1917, the Canadian city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was shattered when volatile cargo on the SS Mont-Blanc freighter exploded in the bustling wartime harbour. More than nineteen hundred people were killed and nine thousand injured. Across more than two square kilometres some 1200 homes, factories, schools and churches were obliterated or heavily damaged. Catastrophe explores how the explosion influenced later emergency planning and disaster theory. Rich in firsthand accounts gathered in decades of research in Canada, the US, the UK, France and Norway, the book examines the disaster from all angles. It delivers an inspiring message: the women and men at 'ground zero' responded speedily, courageously, and effectively, fighting fires, rescuing the injured, and sheltering the homeless. The book also shows that the generous assistance that later came from central Canada and the US also brought some unhelpful intrusions by outside authorities. Unable to imagine the horror of the initial crisis, they ignored or even vilified a number of the first responders. This book will be of particular interest to disaster researchers and emergency planners as well as those intersted in history, journalism, the Maritimes, and Canadian studies."-- 2020 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 971.6/22503

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