Other South American Rivers are Available
I don’t usually plug other people’s books on this site, but occasionally, titles come along that really deserve a bit of a leg-up – especially if they fall within my usual very strict and narrow remits (i.e. seventeenth century, naval, seventeenth century naval, or absolutely anything else whatsoever that interests me), and/or if their publishers […]
The Tailed Men are Coming! The Tailed Men are Coming!
Yes, a bonus post this week – and following on from the last one, ‘The Butterboxes are Coming! The Butterboxes are Coming!’, which used one of the principal insults seventeenth century Brits directed at the Dutch, I thought I’d even the score by using one of the worst Dutch insults for us. Goddeloze staartman, the […]
The Butterboxes are Coming! The Butterboxes are Coming!
…butterboxes, of course, being one of the principal terms of neighbourly respect (umm…) that seventeenth century Brits used for the Dutch. They were certainly coming in 1667, culminating in the famous attack on the Medway in June, and they’re coming this year, too, for the 350th anniversary! So I thought I’d use this blog to […]
Noah’s Archive
So there are conferences which you go to and think ‘meh’, conferences which take place on a Saturday and you’ve completely forgotten what they were all about by Monday, and the conferences that fire you up and leave the building thinking you’re Thor or Wonder Woman (delete as applicable) and that the bad guys had […]
Boaty McBoatface? Lame, Say the Shades of Countless Generations of Mariners
So Boaty McBoatface won the vote, then. Quelle surprise. Just about the one and only reason I wish I could still be alive in two hundred years time is to see how the maritime historians of that era (assuming that there are such things then; i.e. both maritime historians and eras) interpret this bizarre phenomenon of […]
Whale of a Time
What a weekend it was! Weymouth Leviathan, the UK’s first and currently only maritime literary festival, was undoubtedly a tremendous success. A packed programme embraced a wide variety of talks and other events, many of which were attended by large, enthusiastic audiences. From a personal point of view, it was great to be able to […]
Samuel Pepys versus The Incredible Hulk
Don’t make me angry; you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. Or, alternatively, it is a truth universally acknowledged that those who get outraged by things on Twitter are in need of a life. Having said that, occasionally one sees something on Twitter which is so staggeringly crass that the metaphorical shirt-ripping (but, of course, […]
Blind Spot
There was an interesting thread on Twitter a couple of days ago which attempted to pinpoint the first use of the term ‘sea blindness’, referring to the perceived ignorance of the sea and maritime affairs in modern Britain. This got me thinking about some of the other ramifications of the term, and about the potential […]
