The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

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The Six: The Chinese Survivors of the Titanic Disaster Aug 14, 2023

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Of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board RMS Titanic on her fateful last journey, eight were Chinese, all travelling Third Class. Six of those eight survived, an exceptionally high survival rate for any given nationality. Remarkably, four escaped on the same lifeboat as the Titanic’s owner J. Bruce Ismay, while another was the last person rescued alive from the water. Those six men were forgotten by history until, in 2020, the film maker Arthur Jones and historian Steven Schwankert joined forces in a bid to track down those men in the historical records and tell their stories. Not only does the research itself tell a fabulous tale, but so too does the history they uncovered. For these Chinese men, surviving the Titanic disaster was not the end of their troubles – it was just the beginning. They faced deportations, slurs on their characters and racial condemnation. As research for the film progressed it became clear that almost nothing was known about these man in their subsequent years and that some may never even have told their families what they had experienced. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Arthur Jones, Director of The Six.

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The Maze Collection of Chinese Junks Aug 07, 2023

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In the stores of the London Science Museum is a highly significant collection of ship models of Chinese junks. They were commissioned by Sir Frederick Maze who worked as the Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service from 1929-1943. Maze was a true Sinohpile and was particularly fascinated by Chinese maritime history. He lived in China at a time of rapid modernisation and could plainly see Chinese maritime traditions disappearing in front of his eyes. As a result he commissioned a series of ship models of Chinese junks and sampans, to be built in Hong Kong and Shanghai by expert Chinese shipwrights. They are an extraordinary collection and demonstrate a stunning variety of Chinese shipbuilding traditions and technology and details of daily life - down to the religious beliefs of the sailors. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Donna Brunero at the National University of Singapore, an expert on the maritime realm and port cities of Asia.

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The Chinese Shipwrecks of South East Asia Jul 31, 2023

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This episode continues our mini series on maritime China with an episode on Chinese shipwrecks found in Southeast Asia and what they tell us about the development of Chinese shipping and trade from the ninth century onwards. The wrecks include the ninth century Belitung wreck, twelfth century Flying Fish, thirteenth century Java Sea, fifteenth century Bakau wreck, and from the seventeenth century the Binh Thuan and Vung Tau Wrecks. Together they provide unmatched insights into world maritime engineering and innovation, industry and manufacturing in China, and a network of trade that linked China to the world beyond its shores. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Mike Flecker, one of the world's leading authorities on the development of Chinese shipbuilding and trade, and who led excavation teams on all of these wrecks.

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Zheng He and the Chinese Treasure Fleets Jul 25, 2023

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A Ming Dynasty court eunuch, a diplomat, an explorer, a mariner, a Muslim…Zeng He lived from the 1370s to around 1433 and achieved what many have since considered to be impossible.

Between 1405 and 1433 Zeng He commanded seven expeditionary voyages. He explored the East China Sea, South China Sea, up through the Straits of Malacca to the Bay of Bengal, around India and Sri Lanka to the Arabian sea, the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and on to the east coast of Africa. He did this with enormous ships in enormous fleets. If you believe the sources some of this ships were almost twice as long as any wooden ship ever recorded. On the first voyage it is believed that there were no fewer than 265 ships in total, 62 of them being of the largest type, the 'Treasure Ships'. Historians believe these largest vessels had five or six masts and were up to 300 feet long - but that is the most conservative of estimates. There is very little physical evidence to prove any of this with the exception of one 36 foot-long rudder, a monstrous piece of timber that does suggest a ship of at least 300 feet in length.

Zeng He's seven voyages provide a fascinating foundation for historical debate and narrative. Here is an empire using seapower to reach out beyond its borders in a golden time of exploration which does not last. The scale of the fleets, the distance of the voyages, and the activities of the Chinese are all very much unsettled in the minds of modern historians. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Professor Tim Brook, a historian of China at the University of British Columbia.

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HMS Captain: Victorian Catastrophe Jul 17, 2023

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The story of HMS Captain is one of the most shocking in naval history. Laid down in 1867 and, unusually, partly funded by the public, she was one of the most innovative warships ever constructed.

She had a very low freeboard and two enormous rotating armoured gun turrets situated very close to the waterline in between the upper and lower decks. Turret ships were not a new invention but, hitherto, had only been used for coastal work: they were essentially floating iron rafts with an enormous rotating gun. With HMS Captain, for the first time we see that principle applied to a fully-rigged ocean going ship equipped with steam a engine and made of iron.

The designer, Captain Cowper Phipps Coles wanted a high-tech man-of-war which could go anywhere and sink anything. As with all turret ships, she was designed with a low freeboard but ended up with a lower freeboard than originally planned, and the vessel’s high centre of gravity made her dangerously unstable.

On the night of 6 September 1870, Captain was part of a combined fleet of the Channel and Mediterranean Squadrons of the Royal Navy, on manoeuvres in a diplomatic show of force, when a fierce gale knocked her down before the crew could cut loose her sails. Nearly the entire crew of some 500 officers and men went down with the ship, including her celebrated designer. Only eighteen men survived.

More English sailors were lost aboard HMS Captain than at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) or at sea during the entire Crimean War (1853-55).

The loss of the Captain was a national catastrophe, touching Queen Victoria personally, and memorialised at St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.

The University of Wolverhampton have recently launched a project to find her wreck. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Howard Fuller, the man behind the new project.

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A Bronze Age Maritime Treasure: The Uluburun Ship Jul 10, 2023

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The Uluburun ship sank somewhere around 3,400 years ago near what is now Kas in Turkey and was discovered in 1982. The subsequent excavation was carried out at a time when underwater excavation was a new discipline and it had a profound change on the way both that we investigate underwater heritage and understand the ancient world. It still remains one of the oldest shipwrecks ever discovered and the wealth of knowledge provided by the wreck remains astonishing even to modern standards. To put its age into context, the period which it illuminates is 1000 years before Alexander the Great was born and it remains one of the best preserved Bronze Age sites of any description ever discovered. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Professor Micahel Scott, author of X Marks the Spot: The Story of Archaeology in Eight Extraordinary Discoveries.

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Castaways Jul 03, 2023

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An episode that revels in the extraordinary mix of adventure, horror, myth and fact that makes maritime history the BEST type of history! – We’re finding out about the history of castaways: of people set adrift on open boats, marooned by accident or even on purpose on isolated islands. This is the history of being abandoned; of being adrift; of being alone. Many never came back and are lost to history, a tiny dot vanishing on the horizon of the past, never to be seen again. Others did make it back to tell their story. This means that historians have been able to study castaways and their experiences and what a history it is…to find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with maritime historian Graham Faiella, author of 'Castaways: Adrift and Abandoned'.

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Aborigines and the Sea Jun 27, 2023

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Indigenous perspectives are a crucial and immensely valuable part of the broad narrative of Australian maritime history. Aboriginal people witnessed the arrival of Macassan, Dutch, French, English and American vessels as these people explored, sought out trepang and harvested whales. Some of their vessels were wrecked and their survivors arrived as ‘strangers on the shore’, interacting in a variety of ways with Indigenous peoples. These observations and experiences have been reflected in numerous rock art representations and there are also rock depictions of Aboriginal craft.

To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Mack Mcarthy who worked for many years as Inspector of Wrecks at the Australian Maritime Museum. Mack also headed the ‘Australian Contact Shipwrecks’ Program, an analysis of the interaction of Indigenous peoples with shipwreck survivors, and the study of Indigenous maritime depictions on the Western Australian coast.

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The First Cricket Tour to Australia and the ss Great Britain Jun 19, 2023

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In 1861 the engineering maritime marvel ss Great Britain was chosen to take the first ever English cricket team to Australia. The tour was the brainchild of Melbourne-based businessmen, the caterers and wine merchants Felix William Spiers and Christopher Pond who had failed to persuade Charles Dickens to conduct a lecture tour of Australia. With cricket’s popularity growing in Australia they invited a team of leading English cricketers to tour the country. They arrived in Melbourne to a rapturous welcome on December 23, and played their first game on January 1, 1862. A quarter of the city’s population watched the match. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Natalie Fey from the ss Great Britain to discuss the players who went over on the voyage, how they would have lived and trained on the boat; Victorian cricketing superstar EM Grace, who wrote a very detailed diary which shows his first impressions of Australia; and the ss Great Britain's new mini cricket exhibition which goes on display on the 16th June with newly acquired collection items.

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The Pearling Lugger Penguin Jun 15, 2023

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The pearling industry was one of northern Australia’s major industries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The historic vessel Penguin was built in 1907 for for a pearling company based on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait. She is one of the few surviving pearling luggers to retain much of its original construction and layout, and the only Queensland-built lugger in a museum collection. It is also significant for its association with Japanese lugger builder Tsugitaro Furuta, one of Australia’s major lugger builders of the time; for its service during World War II; and finally for its service to the Dauan Island community. While we were recording the interview shipwrights restoring the hull discovered some beautiful oyster shells which were cleaned for us and shined for the first time in over a century.

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