Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

HMS Beagle : the story of Darwin's ship /Keith Stewart Thomson. Thomson, Keith Stewart. 2003. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.45

Billy Waters is dancing : or, how a Black sailor found fame in Regency Britain /Mary L. Shannon. "Every child in Regency London knew Billy Waters, the celebrated 'King of the Beggars'. Likely born into enslavement in 1770s New York, he became a sailor in the British Royal Navy. But when he lost his leg in a fall from the rigging, the irrepressible Waters created a new role for himself: he became London's most famous street performer. His extravagantly costumed image blazed across the stage and in print, and his legend would live on for decades. But for all his contemporary renown, Waters died destitute in 1823. Mary L. Shannon's biography draws together surviving traces of Waters' life, bringing us as close as possible to the historical figure. Considering Waters' influence on the London stage, his appearances in visual art, and connections with writing by Douglass, Dickens, and Thackeray, Shannon asks what it meant to find fame in nineteenth-century popular culture. This is a vital attempt to recover an individual from historical obscurity - and a fascinating exploration of Black lives in the Regency metropolis."--Provided by the publisher. 2024 • BOOK • 1 copy available. txt

From Ushant to Gibraltar : the Channel Fleet, 1778 -1783 /Quintin Barry. "In 1778, when the expected war finally broke with France, Lord Sandwich, the long serving First Lord of the Admiralty, had to find the resources to match the French fleet not only in the Channel but in other theaters of war such as the West Indies, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In addition, the Royal Navy had to protect Britain's extensive maritime commerce, covering the large inbound and outbound convoys on which the country's economy depended. This book is a study of the men who led and the men who managed, both afloat and ashore, the Channel Fleet."-- 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.009

A great and rising nation : naval exploration and global empire in the early US Republic /Michael A. Verney. "Conventional wisdom holds that, until the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States was a feeble player on the world stage, with an international presence rooted in commerce rather than military might. Michael A. Verney's A Great and Rising Nation flips this notion on its head, arguing that early US naval expeditions, often characterized as merely scientific, were in fact deeply imperialist. Circling the globe from the Mediterranean to South America and the Arctic, these voyages reflected the diverse imperial aspirations of the new republic, including commercial dominance in the Pacific World, religious empire in the Holy Land, proslavery expansion in South America, and diplomatic prestige in Europe. As Verney makes clear, the United States had global imperial aspirations far earlier than is commonly thought."-- 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.00973

Wild east : the British in Japan 1854-1868 /Joshua Provan. "For over two centuries, Japan had been hidden behind a veil of seclusion. This changed when Commodore Perry arrived in 1853. Britain was fast to get in on the action; however, their sudden appearance had accelerated the pace of political change in Japan. The newcomers found themselves increasingly out of their depth in a power struggle that they did not understand. The shogun and emperor were at each other's throats and factions were jockeying for position. Britain's first diplomats found themselves the targets of assassins and to their confusion discovered that the emperor had no legislative power and the shogun's word was no longer law. Yet with the lessons of the opium wars still in recent memory, a slew of British soldiers, ambassadors, interpreters and adventurers attempted to protect imperial interests in Japan without causing outright war. This is the story of the rocky beginning of Anglo-Japanese relations, a story of the 'Wild East', full of political schemes, gunboat diplomacy, assassins and samurai, set in the dying days of the Edo period and the twilight of the last shogun."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 327.5204109/034

Limeys : the true story of one man's war against ignorance, the establishment and the deadly scurvy Harvie, David • BOOK • 2 copies available. 92LIND, James

BP shipping : the golden years 1945-1975 /Ray Solly. "This is an in-depth appraisal of the 30-year post Second World War period that covered significant changes in the history of British Petroleum Shipping."--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 387.5448

The globe : how the Earth became round /James Hannam "The Globe tells the story of humanity's quest to discover the shape of the world. Philosophers in ancient Greece deduced the true shape of the Earth in the fourth century BCE; the Romans passed the knowledge to India, and from there it spread to Baghdad and Central Asia. In early medieval Europe, Christians debated the matter but long before the time of Columbus, the Catholic Church had accepted that the Earth is round and not flat. However, it wasn't until the seventeenth century that Jesuit missionaries finally convinced the Chinese that their traditional square-earth cosmology was mistaken. An accessible challenge to long-established beliefs about the history of ideas, The Globe shows how the realization that our planet is a sphere deserves to be considered the first great scientific achievement."--Provided by the publisher. 2023. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 525.1

China's hidden century : 1796-1912 /edited by Jessica Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell. "The accompanying hardback catalogue to the British Museum exhibition, China's hidden century: 1796-1912. Cultural creativity in China between 1796 and 1912 demonstrated extraordinary resilience in a time of warfare, land shortages, famines and uprisings. Innovation can be seen in material culture (including print, painting, calligraphy, textiles, fashion, jewellery, ceramics, lacquer, glass, arms and armour, rugs, silver, money, and photography) during a century in which China's art, literature, crafts and technology faced unprecedented exposure to global influences. 1796 - the official end of the reign of the Qianlong emperor - is viewed as the end of the 'high Qing' and the start of a period of protracted crisis. In 1912, the last emperor, Puyi, abdicated after the revolution of 1911, bringing to an end some 2,000 years of dynastic rule and making way for the republic. Until recently, the 19th century in China has been often defined - and dismissed - as an era of cultural decline. Built on new research from a four-year project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and with chapter contributions by international scholars from leading institutions, this beautifully illustrated, 336-page book edited by Jessica Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell sets out a fresh understanding of this important era. It presents a stunning array of objects and artworks to create a detailed visual account of responses to war, technology, urbanisation, political transformations, and external influences."--Provided by the publisher. 2023. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 951.03

Grand fleet destroyers : Part I : flotilla leaders and 'V/W' class destroyers /John English. "This book describes the design, development and careers of two distinct groups of vessels, the destroyer leaders and the 'V/W' class destroyers, which were originally designed as leaders. The majority of the 93 vessels described in this volume were to have long careers, covering both World Wars. The 'V/W's only had limited fleet service in the last year of WW1 and an extensive programme of conversion into anti-aircraft escorts had been initiated pre-war, but was terminated early because of the need to have as many escorts as possible at sea. Later, with the greater availability of escorts, especially corvettes and ex-US destroyers, a programme was initiated to improve the A/S armament, AA armament and, especially, the range of the surviving 'V/W' destroyers. There were some losses during WW1 and in the Baltic 1918-20, but severe losses during WW 2. The early leaders, the 'Marksman's, were, except ABDIEL, quickly disposed of, but the 'Scott' and 'Shakespeare' leaders were operational for most of the 1920s and 1930s and survivors operated as escorts during WW 2. The 'Shakespeare's were the basis of the design of the leaders to the 'A/I' classes built 1929-1937. The 'V/W's themselves were the basis of the destroyers of the 'A' to 'I' classes and many destroyers built for foreign navies during the 1930s."--Provided by the publisher. 2019 • BOOK • 1 copy available.

Admiralty correspondence to Chatham dockyard officers Dawson, Peter 2002 • FOLIO • 2 copies available. 623.81(422.3):354.71(044.4)

The Royal Navy day by day / A.B. Sainsbury. Sainsbury, A B 1992. • FOLIO • 9 copies available. 355.49(42):930.24

Ghosts and kippers : schoolboy memories from the Royal Hospital School, Greenwich Waldie, Paul (coll) 1994? • PAMPHLET • 1 copy available. 355.231.4(421.6)

Agder historielag : arsskrift nr. 67 Agder historielag 1991 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 948.5

The Time Museum catalogue of chronometers Randall, Anthony G 1992 • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 681.113.92

The unforgiving minute : how Australia learnt to tell the time /Graeme Davison. A history of time and time-keeping in Australia. 1993. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 529(94)

Princes and parliamentarians : faces from the English Civil War at Greenwich /National Maritime Museum. National Maritime Museum (Great Britain) [ca1992]. • PAMPHLET • 2 copies available. 069(26:421.6):355.48"1641/1660"(42)

Country Life, Hussey, Christopher 1923-1937. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 725.171(421.6)+72:354.71(421)

A cultural history of exploration / general editor: Laruen Beck and Fabio Lopez-Lazaro. "What has driven humanity to expand across the globe? How was it achieved? And what has it meant to be on the receiving end - not the explorer but the explored? In a work that spans more than 5,000 years, these questions are addressed by 43 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. Aided by a wide range of case material, they illustrate the meaning of exploration in a global context from antiquity to the present day. Individual volume editors ensure of the cohesion of the whole and, to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in a single volume, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. The six volumes cover: 1. Antiquity; 2. The Middle Ages; 3. The Early Modern Age; 4. The Age of Expansion and Enlightenment; 5. The Industrial Age; 6. The Modern Age"--Provided by the publisher. 2024. • BOOK • 6 copies available. 909

Entangled pasts, 1768-now : art, colonialism and change "Informed by ongoing research into the Royal Academy and its colonial past, the expert contributors to this handsome book explores themes of migration, exchange, artistic traditions, identity and belonging, and consider how art might help set a course for the future." 2024 • FOLIO • 1 copy available. LON-ROY

A history of Devonport Robinson, Chris 2010 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 942.358

Seining along Chesil : voices from a Dorset fishing community /Sarah Acton ; with Gail McGarva [and three others]. "For hundreds of years, fishing communities along the Dorset coast lived from the shoals of mackerel that migrate between May and October. Fishing the traditional way, with seine nets in shallow waters, tightly knit crews used wooden lerret boats to pull bumper catches ashore. Bound by this communal, seasonal activity, their friendships and rivalries, identity and language, were shaped by the sea. The stories, photographs and recordings collected here give us a vivid picture of a way of life that has largely disappeared. We hear of family gatherings on the beach, and of men and women who lived for the fishing and whose intimate local knowledge, gleaned over a lifetime and passed down over the generations, were essential to their livelihoods. These voices echo through time to tell us about people who were completely connected to place and who lived by 'the ways of beach'." 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 338.3727094233

The price of victory : a naval history of Britain, 1814-1945 /N. A. M. Rodger. "At the end of the French and Napoleonic wars, British sea-power was at its apogee. But by 1840, as one contemporary commentator put it, the Admiralty was full of 'intellects becalmed in the smoke of Trafalgar'. How the Royal Navy reformed and reinvigorated itself in the course of the nineteenth century is just one thread in this magnificent book, which refuses to accept standard assumptions and analyses. All the great actions are here, from Navarino in 1827 (won by a daringly disobedient Admiral Codrington) to Jutland, D-Day, the Battle of the Atlantic and the battles in the Pacific in 1944/45 in concert with the US Navy. The development and strategic significance of submarine and navy air forces is superbly described, as are the rapid evolution of ships (from classic Nelsonic type, to hybrid steam/sail ships, then armour-clad and the fully armoured Dreadnoughts and beyond) and weapons. The social history of officers and men - and sometimes women - always a key part of the author's work, is not neglected. Rodger sets all this in the essential context of politics and geo-strategy. The character and importance of leading admirals - Beatty, Fisher, Cunningham - is assessed, together with the roles of other less famous but no less consequential figures. Based on a lifetime's learning, it is the culmination of one of the most significant British historical works in recent decades. Naval specialists will find much that is new here, and will be invigorated by the originality of Rodger's judgements; but everyone who is interested in the one of the central threads in British history will find it rewarding."-- 2024. • BOOK • 1 copy available. txt

British naval gun mountings : from 1890 : 18-inch to 4.5-inch Mark 8 /Ian Buxton "This book provided an expert account of the design, construction and installation of such mountings, and their manufacturers, supported by a range of internal and close-up photographs. The reference value of the work is enhanced by data tables of gun mountings characteristics, plus extensive lists of all mountings made by Vickers at Barrow from 1900 and Elswick from 1922." 2024. • FOLIO • 1 copy available.

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