The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Iconic Ships 19: Preussen Nov 06, 2022

Show notes

Preussen was a marvel of a ship. A steel-hulled, five-masted, ship-rigged sailing ship built in 1902 and named after the German kingdom of Prussia.

Until the launch of Royal Clipper in 2000, a sail cruise liner, Preussen was the only five-masted full-rigged ship ever built and carried six square sails on each mast.

Not only did she have a fascinating career at a time when the sun was setting on the great clipper ships, she also had a fascinating and abrupt end in 1910, and ended up wrecked in the English Channel near Dover. Parts of her hull can still be seen today.

To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Frank Scott, a retired naval aviator and qualified square rig ship-master, who commanded various square riggers ranging from 80 to 800 gross tonnes. In his long sail training career Frank served in fourteen square riggers, under seven different national flags.

This podcast goes alongside an animation of the Preussen's rigging plan which can be seen on the Mariner's Mirror Pod's YouTube Channel.

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Maritime Africa: African Canoemen Oct 28, 2022

Show notes

This begins a handful of episodes that will explore the maritime history of Africa. We begin with the fascinating story of African canoemen.

African indigenous seafaring canoemen operated as middlemen between European traders and the coastal estuaries, rivers and land of West Africa. The topography of the coast often necessitated their involvement in trade because it was variably rocky, broken by sandbars and shallow waters, or treacherous in other ways to large sailing ships. Canoemen allowed access to trade by using surfboats that could surmount the waves on the coast in ways European boats could not. They often were hired as navigators and pilots on European ships or worked as menial labourers or ordinary seamen on European ships. Canoemen also frequently came alongside European ships to board them and trade goods or enslaved people. As a result, when Europeans began to build trading entrepots, such as Elmina Castle in Ghana, Monrovia in Liberia, or Cap Verde in Senegal, they hired canoemen to contract out trade.

To find out more about this little-known aspect of African maritime history Dr Sam Willis spoke with Megan Cructcher, a PhD Student in the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M Universitywho is looking into the roles, identities, and material culture of these canoemen in West African maritime history, especially during the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.

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HMS Victory - An Audio Tour Part 3: The Weather Deck and Visitor Book Oct 21, 2022

Show notes

This is Part 3 of a three-part special audio tour of HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and a First Rate ship of the line which, by 1805, had already acquired a significant history. This, the final episode, looks at everything open to the elements – the weather deck, quarter deck, poop deck and forecastle and includes a look through HMS Victory's remarkable visitor book, signed by dignitaries for generations, including the late Queen Elizabeth, her mother and her sister. The first episode explored the lowest two decks, the hold and the orlop deck, both below waterline; and the second episode looked at the gun decks where the sailors lived and fought Victory’s 104 guns. Dr Sam Willis was taken on a tour of Victory by Tony Noon, one of HMS Victory's tour guides, and by Rosey Thornber, Principal Heritage Advisor for HMS Victory.

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HMS Victory - An Audio Tour Part 2: The Gundecks Oct 21, 2022

Show notes

This is Part 2 of a three-part special audio tour of HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and a First Rate ship of the line which, by 1805, had already acquired a significant history. This, the second episode, looks at the gun decks where the sailors lived and fought Victory’s 104 guns; the first episode looked at the lowest two decks, the hold and the orlop deck; and episode three will look at everything open to the elements – the weather deck, quarter deck, poop deck and forecastle. Dr Sam Willis was taken on a tour of Victory by Tony Noon, one of HMS Victory's tour guides, and by Rosey Thornber, Principal Heritage Advisor for HMS Victory.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HMS Victory - An Audio Tour Part 1: The Hold Oct 21, 2022

Show notes

This is Part 1 of a three-part special audio tour of HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and a First Rate ship of the line which, by 1805, had already acquired a significant history. This, the first episode, looks at the lowest two decks, the hold and the orlop deck, both below waterline; the second episode will look at the gun decks where the sailors lived and fought Victory’s 104 guns; and episode three will look at everything open to the elements – the weather deck, quarter deck, poop deck and forecastle. Dr Sam Willis was taken on a tour of Victory by Tony Noon, one of HMS Victory's tour guides, and by Rosey Thornber, Principal Heritage Advisor for HMS Victory.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fishwives! Oct 10, 2022

Show notes

Fishwives were a remarkable group of women who were involved with the British fishing trade and made a name or themselves for being particularly loud and outspoken, and became a byword for hardiness and industry. Dr Sam Willis spoke to the historian and journalist Rose George who is currently working on a big research project looking at fishing communities around the world and has become fascinated by the fishwives, in particular on their profound impact on British politics. It's a story of technology, economics, shipwreck, survival, frustration, wealth, poverty and, of course, fishing.

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Maritime Disasters: SS Waratah - The Ship That Disappeared Oct 03, 2022

Show notes

The SS Waratah was a passenger and cargo steamship built in 1908 for the Blue Anchor Line, a British shipping company operating between the United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia between 1870 and 1910. On only her second voyage, on a leg of the journey from Durban to Cape Town in the summer of 1909, this enormous ship of 9,339 tons, with the capacity to carry over 1000 passengers, simply vanished. Locating the wreck has defied the efforts of numerous explorers, archaeologists, historians and adventurers ever since. To find out more about this ship, and to look at her plans and the written records of her design, construction and reports into her loss, Dr Sam Willis visited the archives of the Lloyds Register Foundation and spoke with Max Wilson.

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Great Sea Fights 10: Salamis Sep 26, 2022

Show notes

On 26 September 480 BC one of the most historically significant naval battles in history was fought between an alliance of Greek city states and the mighty Persian empire: the battle of Salamis.

Prior to the battle the second Persian invasion of Greece had seen convincing wins for the Persians at the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium. The Greek victory at Salamis became a turning point as the depleted alliance of Greek city states finally thwarted the seemingly unstoppable Persian king, Xerxes. Within a year, two further Greek successes put an end to any Persian attempt to conquer the Greek mainland.

The Persian empire was immensely strong, was able to absorb the naval and manpower losses suffered at Salamis and continued to flourish for another 150 years, but the Greek victory had a profound impact on the sense of Greek national identity and the ideology of freedom. It also ensured that Greek culture would continue to flourish - and thus lay the foundations of philosophy, science, personal freedom and democracy that many societies around the world know and value today.

To find out more about this battle which can claim to be one of the most significant in history, Dr Sam Willis spoke with the military historian and expert on the ancient world, Jeffrey Cox.

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The Magellan Myth Uncovered Sep 20, 2022

Show notes

On 20 September 1519 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan left Spain and headed westwards on a voyage that would subsequently echo through the centuries as the first circumnavigation of the earth. The riches of Asia were first tasted by the Portuguese in the late 1490s but the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas reserved for Portugal the eastern-bound maritime routes to Asia. It thus became commercially imperative for the Spanish to find a western-route to Asia, and in particular to the riches of the Spice Islands in the south western Pacific where nutmeg, mace and cloves were to be exclusively discovered. Magellan's subsequent voyage is both well known and poorly understood. For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry. Magellan, in fact, did not attempt – much less accomplish – a journey around the globe, and in his own lifetime the explorer was actually abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure. His real ambitions were in fact, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market and more on exploiting Filipino gold. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke to the brilliant historian who has made this case and untangled the myths that made Magellan a hero, Felipe Fernandez Armesto. Felipe occupies the William P. Reynolds Chair at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a professor of history and, concurrently, of classics and of the history and philosophy of science.

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Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century II: Circular Ships Sep 14, 2022

Show notes

Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description, often directltly from plans, reports and records of conventional ships. But this left a gap in their knowledge - 'But what of the unorthodox ships, the rebels from tradition: those monsters and freaks of the nautical world which, throughout the whole of the 19th century attained transient fame (or notoriety) before disappearing from the scene for ever?'. Guthrie's pamphlet aimed to answer that question by exploring some of the most radical nautical designs of the nineteenth century.

This episode, the second of four, looks at the circular ships, usually associated with the Russian Vice-Admiral Popov, that came to be known as Popovkas. First built in 1873, these vessels were designed for the defence of Russia's shallow Black Sea coasts. With a limited draught of just thirteen feet, these vessels were nonetheless heavily armed and armoured. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with the naval historian Stephen Mclaughlin.

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