Feature Category
Ghost Ships
Posted on December 20, 2013 12 Comments
[To leave a comment go right to the end of the page and just enter it in the ‘Leave a Reply’ box] Ghosts and ghost stories are a long-established Christmas tradition. In A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens has miserly Ebenezer Scrooge encountering Yuletide spirits past, present and future. But ghosts are not confined to dry […]
Jack Tar
Posted on December 14, 2013 7 Comments
[To leave a comment go right to the end of the page and just enter it in the ‘Leave a Reply’ box] One of the most familiar icons of British maritime history is Jack Tar, the sailor. We don’t know for sure where the moniker ‘Jack Tar’ come from. The word ‘tar’ as a familiar […]
The Cold War Under the Sea
Posted on November 8, 2013 17 Comments
[To leave a comment go right to the end of the page and just enter it in the ‘Leave a Reply’ box] I must confess to a special interest in ‘Hunter Killers’ by Iain Ballantyne; all of my time in the Navy was during the Cold War. I’ve found no other book that delves so […]
‘The Best Job in the World’: A Guide Aboard Victory
Posted on November 3, 2013 26 Comments
[To leave a comment go right to the end of the page and just enter it in the ‘Leave a Reply’ box] HMS VICTORY is among the most famous ships in history; the only surviving warship that fought in the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic wars. She served as […]
The Immortal Memory
Posted on October 21, 2013 13 Comments
[To leave a comment go right to the end of the page and just enter it in the ‘Leave a Reply’ box] Today is the anniversary of Horatio Nelson’s great victory – and mortal wounding – at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. At the time a sailor in Royal Sovereign wrote to his father […]
USS Constitution and the War of 1812
Posted on October 10, 2013 9 Comments
[To leave a comment go right to the end of the page and just enter it in the ‘Leave a Reply’ box] This month in 1797 a ship was launched in Boston that would come to count among the most famous ships in history, USS Constitution. The world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat, she remains […]
Novelists and 18th & 19th Century Sea Battles
Posted on September 25, 2013 17 Comments
[To leave a comment go right to the end of the page and just enter it in the ‘Leave a Reply’ box] One historical period, the climax of the age of fighting sail (the twenty-two- year period of the French and Napoleonic wars, 1793–1815), has always drawn me irresistibly, as it has done for so […]
HMS Victory
Posted on August 7, 2013 25 Comments
[To leave a comment go right to the end of the page and just enter it in the ‘Leave a Reply’ box] There’ve been many famous ships in Britain’s proud history – Mary Rose, Golden Hinde, Cutty Sark, Trincomalee, Great Britain, Discovery … but one ship stands head and shoulders above the rest – HMS […]
Julian Stockwin 