J D Davies - Historian and Author

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National Maritime Museum

Review: The New Tudor and Stuart Seafarers Gallery at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

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A disclaimer: this post has been written and posted rather more rapidly than usual, as it was only yesterday evening (19 September) that I went with the ‘LadyQJ’ of my Twitter feed (aka Wendy) to the launch event for the four new permanent galleries at the National Maritime Museum. So apologies if there are more typos and glitches than usual…

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Still ghastly after all these years

Launch events are tricky things, to which one sometimes goes with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. They tend to be full of people in suits who all know each other, are called names like Tristan or Miranda, and who call each other ‘dahling’. Then there’s the object of the launch. Will it actually be any good, or will one be left stranded in a sea of seemingly approving humanity, the only person in the vast space thinking that this particular emperor has no clothes? Such were my feelings as we rolled up to the National Maritime Museum for the official opening of its new permanent Endeavour galleries, which increase the museum’s exhibition space by 40% (and in the process, make it possible to do what had previously been impossible, namely to get around the entire building without using GPS).Obviously, I was particularly keen to see the new Tudor and Stuart Seafarers gallery, having been part of the focus groups that contributed ideas to it during the planning stage, and also being a contributor to the new book which ties in to the themes presented in the gallery. On the other hand, the NMM has quite a bit of form in getting things spectacularly wrong. Some of us have never forgiven it for infilling the lovely old Neptune Hall and inserting a ghastly mezzanine floor which seems to serve little purpose other than to provide sufficient space for corporate junketing, which was what the launch event ultimately was.

‘Blimey, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John have changed a bit’

Anyway, we were fortunate enough (or cunning enough) to position ourselves right in front of the stage on said mezzanine, so had a perfect view of the ‘warm-up’ act, an energetic set of Polynesian dancers – there because the galleries were being launched, and indeed are named, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the beginning of Captain Cook’s first voyage. We then had an equally prime view of the speakers, all of whom were, in their turn, mere warm-up acts for the guest of honour, bona fide national treasure Sir David Attenborough, whose every step to the podium was greeted with ecstatic applause and cheering worthy of any rock star. Inevitably, the great man focused on the new Pacific gallery, on the wonders of Polynesian culture and navigation, and on the current perilous state of the Pacific and all the other oceans. So warm was the reception for this speech that he ended by channelling his late brother Dicky and bowed theatrically to all corners of the room.

The national treasure holds forth

With the speeches over, it was time to explore the galleries – or, in our case, one gallery. Reader, if you came here seeking a review of the Pacific gallery, or the polar one, or, umm, ‘Sea Things’, then I suggest you go elsewhere. Time was tight due to the angst-inducing game of chance that’s otherwise called ‘the Thameslink railway timetable’, so although we passed briefly through Polar Worlds on the way out (looks good, stuff about Franklin and Scott of the Antarctic, wedding dress of the first woman to get married in Antarctica, etc), we spent all our time in the Tudor and Stuart seafaring gallery. Inevitably, too, that’s where the few like-minded souls who actually already knew a bit about sixteenth and seventeenth century maritime history gathered, so there was some chinwagging to do.

And the bit you’ve come here for, namely the verdict? Well, the gallery is quite small, but it’s perfectly formed, and certainly has plenty of interest and impact. As you go in (or go out, depending on your route), there’s a large display case with some of the outstanding 17th century ship models from the NMM’s collection. Old friends, these (regardless of Sir David’s damning recollection that when he first visited the museum as a small boy in the 1930s, it was full of nothing but ‘boring’ ship models), as indeed were quite a few of the exhibits – the most controversial probably being the manuscript journal of the Restoration seafarer Edward Barlow, which had made national headlines on the previous day following the discovery of the author’s previously unseen confession to rape. (Kudos to the NMM press department for placing the story in a way guaranteed to drum up extra interest in the new galleries, although presumably they had little to do with the equally serendipitous news story of the week, the likely discovery of the wreck of Cook’s Endeavour off the American coast.) Pepys is there, together with Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, but the principal focus of the gallery is on navigation and exploration, so the Anglo-Dutch wars, and even the Spanish Armada, are arguably secondary. There are some extraordinary Tudor navigational instruments, which makes one wonder how they actually lifted them, let along took bearings with them, and a profusion of wonderful sea charts. Inevitably, too, there’s a ‘pirates’ display, and interactive fun stuff for the younger visitors. The latter will probably also love the little model of a seventeenth century dockyard, complete with tiny moving holograms – a master shipwright, a sawyer, even a dog – and one suspects that their enthusiasm will outweigh the siren voices of those who protest that the ship on the stocks is being built in completely the wrong way. However, perhaps the most evocative items in the entire gallery are the items recovered from the wreck of the London, which blew up in the Thames estuary in 1665 (and which will also be central to a new exhibition at Southend museum, which I hope to get to see soon).

So yes, the Tudor and Stuart gallery is a well conceived, enjoyable, informative, and thoroughly welcome addition to what modern parlance would term the museum’s ‘offer’. Indeed, when taken together with the newly refurbished Queen’s House, the seventeenth century and its naval history are arguably now front and centre of the National Maritime Museum’s permanent displays, and although I might be just a little biased, I can’t but applaud that state of affairs enthusiastically!

Enough words, though. Here are some pictures to give you a flavour of what it’s like…and I certainly intend to get back to Greenwich soon with my tourist hat on, to take a look in the other new galleries!

We want more models! More!
‘These foreigners, they come over here, they take our ships…’
Respect to all Tudor navigators
‘The pirate bit’
Likely to divide opinion
Exhibits from the wreck of the London

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Next week, this blog returns to one of its core purposes, namely raising awareness about, and providing new information regarding, seventeenth century naval history. Guest blogger Frank Fox, the leading authority on Stuart warships and their deployment, returns with a definitive listing of the British fleet at the Battle of Solebay, 28 May 1672 – a major contribution to the study of the Anglo-Dutch wars. When the post is published, though, I’ll actually be in Trnava, Slovakia, for reasons previously alluded to on this site. Expect to hear more about my trip in the near future!

Sounding the Trumpet

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I don’t often review books to which I’ve contributed, but this week, I’m going to make an exception and do a bit of trumpet blowing. During the last couple of weeks, the post has brought, inter alia, two complimentary copies of titles with which I was associated to varying degrees. The first is of the National Maritime Museum’s new book, Tudor and Stuart Seafarers, produced to tie in with the opening next month of the museum’s new Tudor and Stuart gallery – one of no fewer than four new galleries, which will expand the museum’s exhibition space by a staggering 40%. Needless to say, I can’t wait to see all of that, and hope to blog about it as soon as possible after the launch event. The second is the first volume of Famous Battles and How they Shaped the Modern World, published by Pen and Sword. I’m not actually in this one – my contribution, on the Dutch attack on the Medway in 1667, is in volume 2 – but even so, I’m evidently entitled to a freebie, so I’ll throw in a bonus review!

A book

Tudor and Stuart Seafarers is lavishly produced, with wall-to-wall colour illustrations drawn from the NMM’s own collection. It’s clearly aimed at general readers, such as the sort of visitors who’ll go around the gallery and decide they’d like to know more about what they’ve seen, and I suspect it’ll also be an ideal ‘coffee table’ book. So those looking for a detailed academic thesis will undoubtedly be disappointed, although all of the authors have taken to care to ensure that their chapters reflect modern research, in many cases their own. There’s an introductory overview by James Davey, which tackles head on some of the uncomfortable truths about imperialism and slavery, followed by a chapter on ‘New Worlds, 1485-1505’ by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, who provides the European and global contexts of the voyages of exploration by the likes of Columbus, Cabot and da Gama. James Davey returns with Chapter 2, ‘Adventurers: England Turns to the Sea, 1550-80’, which does exactly what it says on the tin (and will undoubtedly get James an acknowledgement in the next instalment of my Tudor naval series). David Scott then provides a clear, insightful synthesis of ‘The Spanish Armada and England’s Conflict with Spain, 1585-1604’, although I’d have liked to have seen a little more coverage of the war after 1589 – a personal bugbear which readers of The Rage of Fortune will know all about!

Chapter 4, ‘Building a Navy’, is, to paraphrase the eminent naval historian Mr Ernest Wise, the one wot I writ, so I’ll leave judgement on it to others, who even now will be sharpening their quills in such remote outposts as High Wycombe and Bolton. Chapter 5, ‘Using the Seas and Skies: Navigation in Early Modern England’, is by Megan Barford and Louise Devoy, and again does what it says on the tin, deploying particularly fascinating illustrations even by the standards of this book (let’s face it, you can’t go wrong with old sea charts, unlike the mariners who were trying to use them). Laura Humphreys contributes Chapter 6 on ‘Encounter and Exploitation: the English Colonization of North America, 1585-1615’: the dates may suggest that the Mayflower has been forgotten, but in fact, the chapter does cover this, and it also provides the beginning of James Davey’s introductory chapter. In Chapter 7, Robert J Blyth looks at ‘Of Profit and Loss: The Trading World of Seventeenth Century England’, while Chapter 8 sees Elaine Murphy examine ‘The British Civil Wars 1638-53’ – the subject of her new book with Richard Blakemore, who provides Chapter 9 on ‘Life at Sea’. In Chapter 10, Rebecca Rideal considers ‘The Seventeenth Century Anglo-Dutch Wars’, while Chapter 11 inevitably brings us to ‘the P word’, with Aaron Jaffer’s study of ‘A Sea of Scoundrels: Pirates of the Stuart Era’. Christine Riding concludes the book with a chapter on ‘Art and the Maritime World, 1550-1714’, and again, the richness of the NMM’s collection, plus the production of the book entirely in colour, means that this is really a feast for the eyes.

So what criticisms might I make, other than the ones suggested above?

Well, that’s obviously a tricky one, given that I have a clear vested interest in the book’s success. But here we go regardless…

First and foremost, the title, Tudor and Stuart Seafarers, is blatantly Anglocentric, as some of my Scottish friends were quick to point out on Twitter. (Yes, Scotland is in there, but probably not as much as it could or should have been.) But with thirteen published books under my belt – fifteen, if you include the Quinton prequel novella and my current work in progress, of which more below – I’m a veteran of that peculiar circle of Hell reserved for those who sometimes have to agonise about the best title for a new book. Indeed, I was once prepared to go to the wire over the title I originally wanted to inflict upon the first Quinton novel, Gentleman Captain. I thought my title was brilliant, my (then) newly-acquired agent thought it was rubbish, and duly suggested GC instead. To cut a long story short, he was right (as he invariably has been ever since), I was wrong…and I suspect similar angst might have accompanied the naming of this particular tome. After all, British Seafarers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries might have been more ‘politically correct’, but it would be quite a mouthful, and would undoubtedly fail on what it took me a long time to realise is one of the most important criteria of all when deciding on the name for a book: how small a font size would one need to fit the title comfortably on the spine, and yet make it large enough to stand out on the shelf in a bookshop?

Secondly, the choice of themes means that, inevitably, there are gaps. Readers of this blog (and I hope you’re both well) might already have noticed a strange leap from 1505 to 1550 in the chapter coverage, and although this is tackled head on by James Davey, who suggests there was very little focus on the sea in England in the first half of the sixteenth century, and the naval side of that period is touched on in the ubiquitous Chapter 4, I can’t help but feel that we may have done at least a slight injustice to two or three generations of seafarers. The same is true of the French wars of 1689 to 1713, which continue to be a hugely neglected area of naval history…yes, partly because people like me continue to focus on the earlier period, which has the advantage of the colossal amount of source material assembled by naval history’s Marmite man, Samuel Pepys. (For instance, the book makes no mention of the Battle of Barfleur in 1692, one of the biggest British naval victories before Nelson’s time, or the capture of Gibraltar in 1704, or, come to that, that strangest of all colonial interludes, the earlier English occupation of Tangier.)

But these are relatively minor points. If this book gets more people interested in, and knowledgeable about, early modern maritime history, then all of us who were part of ‘the team’ will feel that it’s very much ‘job done’. Moreover, it is truly heartening to see a book on this subject where nearly half the contributors are women, two of whom wrote the chapters specifically about naval warfare.

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Another book.
(Blogger suffering from caption inventiveness fatigue)

And so on to Famous Battles and How They Shaped the Modern World. The title has undoubtedly conscious echoes of one of the great seminal works of military history, J F C Fuller’s Decisive Battles of the Western World and Their Influence Upon History, which was one of the first proper, weighty books of this kind that I read, probably when I was fourteen or fifteen or thereabouts (and yes, you’re right, I really should have been getting out more instead). To betray a little insider secret, this was originally going to be a single volume, but like Topsy, it just growed, and the publisher ultimately decided to split it into two. It grew out of a day school in Reading a couple of years back, where contributors to this and the second volume spoke about their chosen battles, and was really fun to be involved with: from a personal point of view, I’d like to thank the joint editors, Beatrice Heuser and Athena Leoussi of the University of Reading, for their support, input and efficiency.

At this point, I should issue a disclaimer to the effect that I haven’t yet had time to read the book, but knowing the original parameters of the project and the line the editors took, I think it’s important to stress from the outset that this is light years removed from the old histories of battles. (‘At 0907 precisely, General Melchett despatched orders to the 69th Brigade, consisting of the 4th Barsetshire, the 7th Midsomer Murderers, and the Old Hogwartian Rifles, to advance upon the Grand Redoubt de Certain Slaughter. These orders were conveyed by Captain A. M. P. P. Q. Radish, riding a four year old grey stallion called Brian.’) The original focus of the day school, and of the projected book, was on the myths surrounding the chosen battles, and that focus still underpins this volume – it certainly underpins my own essay on the Dutch attack on Chatham. This first volume concentrates on the ancient and medieval eras, going from the siege of Troy, via Marathon and Thermopylai (and no, I didn’t know it was now spelt like that, either) to the wars of the Ancient Israelites, the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest, the Battle of Hastings, Béziers 1209 and Courtrai 1302. There are also two overview chapters, by Athena and Beatrice. I can safely say that, with the exceptions of Troy, Marathon and Hastings, I don’t know that much about most of these, so will look forward to finding out more…and again, the fact that exactly half the contributors are women suggests that the days when military history, like maritime and naval history, was written exclusively by old white men in blazers, are thankfully long behind us.

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Finally, after keeping my head down recently, I’m delighted to announce that I’ve completed the first draft of my new Tudor novel for Canelo. I can’t say much more about it until the publishers decide whether they like it or not, but suffice to say that it developed in some unexpected directions as I expanded it from the original novella, especially when I stumbled across the extraordinary story of a real family who encountered unbelievable tragedy as they struggled to cope with the impact of Henry VIII’s policies, and realised that I had a way of weaving their story seamlessly (I hope!) into my existing narrative. But I’m glad to say that I managed to stick to my principles about writing a Tudor novel, especially when it comes to wives, teen models, and Those Queens; and by coincidence, the line I intend to take through the entire planned trilogy fits neatly with the big themes developed by the other contributors to Tudor and Stuart Seafarers. Great minds, etc.

Anyway, there’s going to be quite a bit of dashing around in the next few weeks, so blogging may continue to be intermittent. But a real highlight should be the Historical Novel Society conference in Scotland in a couple of weeks’ time, where I’m looking forward to catching up with lots of old friends – and if time allows, I’ll try to blog either during it or immediately afterwards!

Samuel Pepys versus The Incredible Hulk

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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, never trouser-ripping) green transformation takes place, and any pretence at possessing a life has to be laid aside. Thus it was with something that emerged at the weekend from the normally uncontentious – indeed, generally very useful and informative – Twitter feed of the National Maritime Museum, referring to Samuel Pepys. I quote: ‘How did a a tailor’s son turn a corrupt & inefficient Navy into a powerful fighting force?‘

Now, to be fair to the person who runs the NMM Twitter feed, this is a direct quote from a page on the museum’s achingly politically correct new website, which itself links to the current exhibition on Pepys and his times – reviewed previously, and generally positively, in this blog. So I’m certainly not shooting the messenger here. But whoever came up with the original message needs to be gently taken down to the shop at the entrance to the exhibition, and shown what’s on the top shelf of the very first case that one sees. It’s quite a big book with a nice colourful cover. It’s called Pepys’s Navy: Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-89, and it’s by a shy, retiring historian and author whose name currently escapes me. It also contains several hundred pages, based on said author’s thirty years of research and many previous writings on the subject (including an earlier academic book), and on the writings of others who have come independently to exactly the same conclusion, that – as my remarkably un-green reply to the tweet in question put it – ‘He didn’t, and it wasn’t corrupt and inefficient to begin with’.

I certainly don’t intend to prove those points here. For one thing, it would take far too long. I’ve already written a couple of books to prove it (a shiny new paperback edition of Pepys’s Navy will be out this summer) and am currently working on a third, Kings of the Sea: Charles II, James II and the Navy, due out from Seaforth Publishing in the summer of 2017, which will produce even more evidence to the same effect. Besides, even these days, criticising Samuel Pepys to any degree whatsoever is a bit like shooting Bambi’s mother: there are still plenty of people out there who were brought up on Sir Arthur Bryant, or the various books and websites that essentially maintain the same tired old line, and I’m not going to convert them with one blog post. Come to that, I’m probably not going to convert them with three books, umpteen articles, and goodness knows what else, but one has to try…

No, my point is this. The notion that Pepys ‘saved the navy’, to paraphrase Bryant, is based on books that were published between 40 and 120 years ago, drawing on a narrow range of sources, and shaped by schools of historical interpretation that have long fallen by the wayside. To describe the navy of his time as ‘corrupt and inefficient’ is simply wrong, but it is also attempting to measure an earlier age by modern standards, always a very dangerous thing to do (albeit a very common one, as the various attempts to get apologies for all sorts of actual or alleged historical wrongdoings demonstrate). These days, I’d argue, organisations, media outlets, and so forth, that have a very wide reach – like the BBC, newspapers, national museums, and, yes, schools too – surely have a responsibility to present stories about history that either reflect the best possible consensus of modern scholarship, or, at the very least, don’t recycle dated and discredited myths and theories to new audiences. I recently blogged here about the prevalence and attractiveness of myth in what we might call ‘popular history’, and nowadays, of course, it’s easier than ever to keep such myths alive, to give them a wider audience than ever before, and, indeed, to create entirely new ones, thanks to the seductive openness and seeming credibility of the internet, not to mention the gullibility of some of those who access it. Indeed, one of the most popular sites on the entire Net, Wikipedia, has a deliberate policy of not allowing articles to be based on original, primary research – and while one can see why rigorous failsafes would need to be in place to prevent abuse, the alternative, and thus the current policy, as Wikipedia’s own page explaining it makes explicitly clear, is that articles can only refer to published works, the implication being even if they are known to be wrong, and to other unimpeachably reliable sources such as – wait for it… – ‘mainstream newspapers’.

That’s right, ‘mainstream newspapers’. Like, presumably, the Daily Mail and The Sun.

Sorry, got to go, my shirt seems to be starting to stretch a bit…

Pepys Show and Tell

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These days, I approach major exhibitions dealing with subjects I know something about with a considerable degree of trepidation. Maybe there’ll be massive omissions, or catastrophic errors of emphasis, that wreck the whole thing. Perhaps right-on organisers will have applied a gut-wrenchingly awful, unhistorical, and anachronistic interpretative slant. Maybe the layout of the exhibition space and/or the exhibits themselves will be disastrously misconceived. Perhaps it’ll pitch the subject matter in such a dumbed down, lowest-common-denominator way that it makes ITV’s Saturday night schedule look like The Ascent of Man. Maybe it’ll have one of those patronising audio tours voiced by an actress who failed the auditions for Downton Abbey. And so forth.

Consequently, I went along to the official opening of the National Maritime Museum’s new winter exhibition, Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire and Revolution – aka #PepysShow – with somewhat ambivalent expectations. Quite apart from the issues I’ve listed above, there was the particularly awkward social dilemma that I knew several of those who had put the exhibition together. If it was truly awful, should I dare tell the truth in this blog? Should I risk being ostracised by those good folk, and being banned for ever from the gorgeous acres of Greenwich?

Probably the best exhibition bookshop in the world.
Probably the best exhibition bookshop in the world.

Fear not, gentle reader, all was well – for pretty much the first thing one sees on entering the shop at the entrance to the exhibition is my book Pepys’s Navy, prominently displayed.

Therefore, I can say categorically that this is the greatest exhibition that London – nay, the world – has witnessed since the much less impressive affair in the Crystal Palace in 1851.

In case any of you doubt my objectivity, I call as witnesses the other invitees and fellow members of the prawn sandwich brigade who attended the opening – although whether it’s appropriate to use that term in this instance might be doubtful, as one of them was the current Earl of Sandwich himself, who is surely the ultimate arbiter of whether something is or is not a prawn sandwich event. (Another of the attendees was Jeremy Paxman – who really does pull those facial expressions all the time, so it’s not just an affectation for the TV.)

Anyway, to the exhibition itself. Even laying aside the bias that I’ve now declared, this is very impressive on almost all criteria – beginning with the execution of Charles I (which Pepys famously bunked off school to witness) and running through the Commonwealth to the Restoration, where the focus switches to a thematic approach based on the principal interests of Pepys’ life. Cue sections on the royal court and mistresses, the theatre, science, London civic life, and so on. Many of the exhibits are absolutely fascinating, and often stunning – ranging from the very grand (such as Charles II’s huge coronation portrait) to the intimate (a snuffbox given to Nell Gwyn by Charles II) to the humbling (Sir Isaac Newton’s telescope) to the globally important (e.g. the letter of invitation to William of Orange from the ‘immortal seven’). Several of them gave even this jaded old veteran of seventeenth century studies pause for thought, and some new insights into the period. For example, James II’s wedding outfit and light cavalry armour (the latter being the last armour ever made for a British monarch) made me realise that he was much shorter and slighter than I’d always imagined him to be. You really do learn something new every day.

The centrepieces of the exhibition, both in a thematic sense and in terms of their physical placing within the space available, are the displays on the Plague – possibly a bit understated – and the Great Fire of London, with a decent CGI show accompanied by readings from Pepys’ diary, together with a large section on Pepys and the Navy, which obviously gladdened my heart. The latter includes the superb contemporary model of the St Michael, and the great Verrio painting of ‘The Sea Triumph of Charles II’, originally from Windsor Castle; both of these will be featuring heavily in my new book, Kings of the Sea, so it was great to see them ‘in the flesh’. Pepys’ trip to Tangier in 1683 is also well covered, and his shorthand ‘Tangier journal’ is on display. However, this serves to emphasise the most obvious omission from the exhibition – namely, the diary itself. Here, though, the organisers were hamstrung by Pepys, who specified that the contents of his library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, the diary included, should never leave the premises. Honestly, some people just show no consideration whatsoever for those who come after them…

If I was going to be nitpicking, it wouldn’t really be about the omissions – after all, these are principally a matter of interpretation and personal opinion, but I’d have liked to have seen, say, more on Pepys’ family background, and, obviously, a lot more on his dealings with the officers and men of the navy (e.g. couldn’t there have been just one more of the ‘Flagmen of Lowestoft’ portraits, say the one of Sir William Berkeley, to flag up the ‘gentlemen vs tarpaulins’ issue that occupied Pepys for so long?). But the exhibition complies with the modern orthodoxy that such things have to be minimalist: hence lots of empty space, both between exhibits and on the walls, and very brief explanatory panels (although, thankfully, the latter aren’t dumbed down, and are more Ascent of Man than X Factor). I know this is probably heresy in museum circles these days, but surely it’s possible to fit in a bit more without reverting to Pitt Rivers Museum jumble?

Still, none of this detracts from an exhibition that undoubtedly has to be rated a triumphant success (as does the splendid accompanying catalogue), and which should fulfil the vital objective, as far as I’m concerned, of raising awareness of the late seventeenth century as a whole, and especially its naval history. And, of course, if only a tiny number of those who visit it buy that rather good looking book on Pepys’s Navy…ahem.

 

 

 

 

Of Babies and Bathwater

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Two blogs for the price of one this week – my latest, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, observations on the Carmarthenshire Archives affair/scandal/fiasco (please select favourite apocalyptic noun), and this one, some thoughts on last week’s conference at the National Maritime Museum about ‘the emergence of a maritime nation’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In all essential respects, the conference was a tremendous success, and hugely enjoyable from my viewpoint as a common-or-garden delegate. Long time readers of this blog will recall that I’ve provided a checklist by which such events can be assessed, and this one measured up well:

Purpose – box ticked, i.e. Academic historical conferences exist solely so that delegates can meet up again with people they met at previous conferences, and to bitch about the people who haven’t turned up to this one. And, one might add, it was great to meet the real live incarnations of various Twitter avatars with whom I interact a lot.

The conference programme – lots of sex and pirates; well, you can’t go wrong, can you? But see my qualifying remarks below.

The graveyard shift – Given added spice by the biblical weather on day 1, which led to slight concerns that the entire conference might be washed away, perhaps turning pirate itself as it swept past Southend on the ebb – rather like Monty Python’s Crimson Permanent Assurance.

Sleep – Not a problem, thanks to some nifty scheduling that ensured consistenly high levels of interest.

Victuals – Excellent; the National Maritime Museum was markedly generous with its sandwiches, and, perhaps more surprisingly, with egg custard tarts, too.

That guy – He wasn’t there.

That other guy – He was there.

So all in all, a very successful event, which also emphatically ticked another two boxes in my case – quantity of notes taken, and number of ideas hatched. But the conference also raised another issue, and actually fulfilled a prediction I made a couple of years ago:  …historians do have a habit of throwing babies out with bathwater, and historical trends do tend to reverse after a while. For example, one wonders just how long it’ll be before some bright-eyed young doctoral student stands up and scandalises a conference by talking exclusively about Admiral Byng’s lasking manoeuvre during the Battle of Minorca. (‘But…but…this isn’t what naval history is meant to be about! It’s about whether navies are gendered spaces! Burn the heretic!!’)

No, we didn’t get Admiral Byng, but we did get the odd situation that out of twenty papers, precisely one and a half – debatably one and two halves – were about the Royal Navy. Now, to some extent conference organisers are slaves to the papers they get offered,* and as I’ve said before in this blog, it’s great that historians are now exploring all sorts of new themes and connections. It’s terrific, too, that such occasions now reach out beyond the discipline of history, as witnessed by the several papers from literary scholars looking at maritime writing in the early modern period. But I have a feeling we’ve reached that tipping point where the baby is about to disappear down the proverbial plughole: perhaps young postgraduate students and early career academics have become so keen to branch out into new and exciting territories that a degree of balance is being lost. Old-fashioned naval history – administration, operations, battles and, yes, dead admirals – may be just that, old-fashioned and thus unfashionable, but at the end of the day, it’s still absolutely central to our understanding of national and global history, and it still fires the interest of that elusive constituency which many of the speakers at the Maritime Nation conference didn’t address at all, namely the proverbial ‘man [and woman] in the street’. Academics in general have a tendency only to talk to, and write for, each other, and it would be a sad day indeed if maritime history ever became a self-congratulatory navel-gazing little world of its own, ignoring both the broader public and superficially less ‘politically correct’ areas of study.

Or to put it another way: less navel-gazing, more naval gazing, please.

(Sorry.)

 

* And yes, before anyone raises the obvious point – I could and perhaps should have offered a paper myself, but didn’t due to pressure of work. Of which more next week. 

Annus Mirabilis: Or, a Very Good Time for 17th Century Naval History

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This is turning into something of an annus mirabilis for we few, we happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters), who nail our tattered colours to the rickety mast of seventeenth century naval history.

Next month, on 4 July, there’s what promises to be a fascinating day at Hastings under the auspices of the splendid Shipwreck Museum there, devoted to the wreck of the warship Anne. This year is the 325th anniversary of the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690, after which the Anne, a third rate and one of the ‘thirty new ships’ built for Charles II between 1677 and 1685, was driven ashore and burned. The wreck survives at Pett Level and is sometimes exposed at exceptionally low tides; I’ve blogged about her, and my visits to her, here and here. There’s a terrific line-up of expert speakers: Ann Coats, Richard Endsor, Peter Marsden and Robert Stone. Unfortunately, the day also features some idiot rambling inanely about Pepys’s Navy, and then reading the account by Frank Fox, avec la participation de Peter Le Fevre and Richard Endsor (as they say in French films), which provides a highly likely identification of the important and enigmatic Normans Bay wreck and which was originally published on this site.

Three weeks later, the National Maritime Museum is staging a major conference on Tudor and Stuart seafaring, which I’ll be going to. It’s a sign of how the study of naval and maritime history has broadened in the last 30 years or so that this includes topics as diverse as shipboard stress aboard early East India company ships, pirate executions, maritime law and state formation, women and the navy in the British civil wars, the cultural politics of early modern sea captains, and 17th century Scottish ship models. (Not a battle to be seen, as I’ve commented previously on this site.) This is a preliminary to the opening in November of a new exhibition about Samuel Pepys, itself a forerunner of the 400th anniversary of the Queen’s House next year and the subsequent opening of the NMM’s new permanent gallery on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The latter will apparently include some of the fantastic art and ship models of the period; if it’s half as good as the Nelson, Navy, Nation gallery that opened a couple of years back, I’ll be installing a camp bed and making it my permanent address.

On 4 and 5 September, at Portsmouth, the Ordnance Society is holding a conference on ‘Guns From the Sea’, although sadly, I won’t be able to get to that one. The programme looks absolutely fascinating, though, and contains a significant amount of seventeenth century interest. For example, there are papers on the ordnance of Louis XIV’s navy, and on some of the finds from the wreck of the London in the Thames estuary. The London, which blew up off Southend on 7 March 1665, was one of the great ships of both the Commonwealth and Restoration navies, and the wreck site has yielded, and continues to yield, a remarkable amount of valuable material. Moreover, its destruction provided me with a crucial scene in the third Quinton novel, The Blast That Tears The Skies, although I used a fair amount of dramatic licence in order to get Samuel Pepys to the wreck site not long after the explosion took place!

Outside the realms of naval history, too, these are halcyon days for seventeenth century buffs in the UK. A new National Civil War Centre recently opened in Newark, and I hope to hack up the A1 to investigate it in the not too distant future. So on the back of all these terrific developments for UK-based fans of the seventeenth century, all we need is a major TV series to finally drive those pesky Tudors off our screens and provide us with a Stuart version of Poldark.

Hmm.

As it happens, I can think of a suitable series of books with lots of action and intrigue, with a handsome young hero who takes his shirt off from time to time…