HMS Captain: Technological Triumph to Tragedy

Dan Snow is a history broadcaster. He has spent 25 years making documentaries, initially for the BBC, where he covered the discovery of Ark Royal off Gibraltar and participated in many other wreck programmes. A decade ago he founded History Hit, a digital history platform. It is now a multi-award winning business making podcasts, tv shows, social videos with millions of subscribers and users. In 2022 he was on the expedition to find Shackleton’s Endurance under the ice of Antarctica.

A Reader in War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, Dr. Howard Fuller was the Rear Admiral John D. Hayes Fellow in U.S. Naval History through the U.S. Naval Historical Center (now Naval History and Heritage Command) in Washington, D.C.; he has also been a West Point Fellow in Military History, Caird Research Fellow, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  Dr. Fuller is a frequent contributor to conferences and journals on both sides of the Atlantic, Editor for the International Journal of Naval History, and was a Managing Editor for the British Journal of Military History.  His first book, Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power (2007, Greenwood Press, reprinted in 2010 by Naval Institute Press), was runner-up for the 2008 John Lyman Book Award in US Naval History; followed by the critically-acclaimed Empire, Technology and Seapower: Royal Navy Crisis in the Age of Palmerston (Routledge, 2013).  His latest research monograph, Turret versus Broadside: An Anatomy of British Naval Prestige, Revolution and Disaster 1860-1870 (Helion & Company, 2020), was the first comprehensive academic study of the Captain tragedy.  Since 2021 Dr. Fuller has also been the founder and project manager of the University's 'Find the Captain' Project (https://findthecaptain.co.uk).

Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, and Director of the Laughton Naval History Unit. His work focuses on the naval, strategic and cultural history of the British Empire between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War the evolution of naval historical writing and the history of technology. He has lectured on aspects of his work around the world, including the rediscovery of HMS Erebus in Canada. He has also made several television documentaries. His books include a biography of HMS Warrior, the first ironclad battleship, The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy against Russia 1853-1856. Manchester 1990, Aldershot 2011, 'The Foundations of Naval History': Sir John Laughton, the Royal Navy and the Historical Profession. London 1997, Nelson: Britannia’s God of War. London 2004, Admirals. London 2008, Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation. London 2009 and The Challenge: Britain versus America in the Naval War of 1812, London 2012, winner of Anderson Medal of the Society for Nautical Research for the best maritime history book. He published Crusoe’s Island: A rich and curious history of pirates, castaways and madness in 2016 – a study of English insularity and the South Pacific. His latest book, Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the conflict that has shaped the modern world. Yale University Press 2018 examines the cultural construction of maritime identity won the 2018 Gilder Lehrman Book Prize in Military History and has been translated into several languages. The British Way of War: Julian Corbett and the Battle for a National Strategy, Yale UP 2021 won the 2024 Hattendorf Prize for Distinguished Original Research in Maritime History his latest book is No More Napoleons” How Britain managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One, Yale UP 2025.